Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

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Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Essence »

This class needs no comment.


FIGHTER
Alignment: Any.
Hit Die: d10.

Class Skills (2+Int):
The fighter’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Knowledge (anatomy), Ride (Dex), and Swim (Str).

BAB: High
Saves: Fort High, Ref Low, Will Low

Class Features by Level:

Code: Select all

[br] 1 Bonus feat[br] 2 Bonus feat[br] 3 Bonus feat[br] 4 Bonus feat[br] 5 Bonus feat[br] 6 Bonus feat[br] 7 Bonus feat[br] 8 Bonus feat[br] 9 Bonus feat[br]10 Bonus feat[br]11 Bonus feat, combat focus[br]12 Bonus feat[br]13 Bonus feat, universal proficiency[br]14 Bonus feat, combat specialization[br]15 Bonus feat[br]16 Bonus feat[br]17 Bonus feat, improved combat focus[br]18 Bonus feat[br]19 Bonus feat, skilled wielder[br]20 Bonus feat, improved combat specialization[br]


Class Features
All of the following are class features of the fighter.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A fighter is proficient with all simple and martial weapons and with all armor (heavy, medium, and light) and shields (including tower shields).
Bonus Feats: At 1st level, a fighter gets a bonus combat-oriented feat in addition to the feat that any 1st-level character gets and the bonus feat granted to a human character. The fighter gains an additional bonus feat at every fighter level thereafter. These bonus feats must be drawn from the feats noted as fighter bonus feats. A fighter must still meet all prerequisites for a bonus feat, including ability score and base attack bonus minimums.
These bonus feats are in addition to the feat that a character of any class gets from advancing levels. A fighter is not limited to the list of fighter bonus feats when choosing these feats.
Combat Focus (Ex): At 11th level, a fighter gains a +1 bonus to all attack rolls. At 17th level, this bonus increases to +2.
Universal Proficiency (Ex): At 13th level, a fighter takes no non-proficiency penalty to attack rolls for wielding a weapon that he is not proficient in.
Combat Specialization (Ex): At 14th level, a fighter gains a +2 bonus on all weapon damage rolls. At 20th level, this bonus increases to +4.
Skilled Wielder (Ex): At 19th level, the penalty a fighter takes for wielding a weapon that is the wrong size for him is reduced by 2 (for example, a Small fighter with this ability takes no penalty for wielding a Medium shortsword.)


Thoughts?


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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Username17 »

The fact that you even have a "skilled wielder" ability indicates that you are attempting to use 3.5 Weapon Size Rules - which are so terrible that I can't really give a positive review to any of this.

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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Essence »

:lol:
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Essence »

After discussing this class on Nifty, I've come to the conclusion that the 19th level ability needs to be replaced with this one:

Skilled Wielder: At 19th level and beyond, the fighter gains a cumulative +1 bonus to each attack in a full attack action. Attacks made at the fighter's highest BAB do not count toward the accumulation of this bonus.


This effectively turns an attack bonus of +34/+34/+29/+24/+19 into an attack bonus of +34/+34/+30/+26/+22, making the later attacks slightly more valuable without increasing the power of the earliest ones.

Any commentary?



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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Essence »

OK, so I'm retooling this tool all over again, because my attempt didn't really make any improvement over the Fighter's core problems.

I'd like some advice.

I want to give the Fighter some abilities that are actually...well, Fightery, without having to make up an assload of Fighter-only bonus feats. I'd also like to have the Fighter automatically gain all of the numeric feats (Combat Focus, etc) without having to invest in them.

So, I'm basically looking at a class list like this:

Bonus Feats(Ex): A Fighter gains a bonus feat that he meets the prerequisites for every time he gains a class level. (No, I don't care whether it's from the Fighter Bonus Feat List or not.)
Combat Focus(Ex): A Fighter gains a +1 bonus to all attack rolls. This does not stack with the bonus granted by the Weapon Focus feat. At 8th level, this improves to +2. At 16th level, this improves to +3.
Combat Specialiation(Ex): A Fighter of 4th level or higher gains a +2 bonus to all weapon damage rolls. This replaces the Weapon Specialization feat. At 12th level, this improves to +4. At 20th level, this improves to +6.


Now, what I want is special 'strikes' or 'maneuvers' that replicate some of the most useful spell effects that casters get at various levels, basically following the Warlock's Invocation progression, except with at-will Ex abilities rather than SLAs. So, four groups (Least, Lesser, Greater, and Supreme), with Least coming online at level 1, Lesser at level 6, Greater at level 11, and Supreme at level 16. One new ability known at levels 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, and 20.

Is this a useful paradigm? What kinds of strikes/maneuvers should exist?

There needs to be at least three abilities per fighting style per group, so figuring on: one-handed melee, sword and board, TWF, THF, archer, flinger, mounted, and unarmed, there needs to be at least 24 strikes/maneuvers per stage. (Are there any fighting styles I'm missing?)

And, the big question of course: is this conceptual process actually capable of making the Fighter a viable class?
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Username17 »

The core problems of classes in general in D&D mostly settle around multiclassing. Namely, that when you are a Red 4/Blue 8 you are supposed to be as powerful as a Blue 12 or a Red 12. Further, the game is supposed to be extensible, and equally balanced by the time someone is a Red 40/Blue 80. Vs. Being a Blue 80. Noone has so far made any classes that make a serious attempt to do that.

Mathematically, having any ability which is +1 to Blue at every Blue level is impossible to balance in that fashion, because the game is generated on a d20. Collecting bonuses to specific tasks is by definition non-extensible. Sooner or later the person with Mono-Blue is going to have +19 or more on the person with Red and Blue, and that means that either:

* The challenges will be set by the person who is all-blue, so there's no point in even being in the party as a multiclassed character.

or

* The challenges will be set to the guy with a splash of Red, in which case the all Blue guy has wasted a crap tonne of levels, because his additional bonuses don't do anything.

---

I don't think that rewriting things so that Fighters are "better" at accumulating bonuses every level of Fighter is a worthwhile goal.

You could replace all feats with things kind of like Tactical Feats that scaled to your character level and retain the idea that Fighters lived and died by Bonus Feats. But you can't run them off of increasing attack bonuses - because mathematically that is incompatible with the idea of multiclassing.

And I would rather have multiclassing and extensibility than keep class-level-based attack bonuses.

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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

I think focusing Fighters on feats was a mistake. Feats are intended to, and generally do, allow variation within a class. But they don't generally add as much power as a class-granted ability. For example, few, if any, feats are going to match +4 to str/con for several rounds. And if they did, the prereqs would be so stringent you might as well just make them class abilities anyway.

I see Frank's point, but I think there's something to be said for letting Fighters get huge BAB. The main problem I see is that it doesn't affect the fighter dramatically, in the "oh, wow, that's kewl" sort of way.

For example, at 16th level, the fighter has to hit bonuses of, say, +28/+23/+18/+13, and is fighting things that have an AC of, say, 33. The fighter is going to almost always hit once, and miss once. Giving the fighter another +5 to BAB doesn't change that very much. You're going to get incremental changes to how much damage gets done, the sorts of things that Frank sees right away, and other people see years down the line when they've moved on to Shadowrun or something.

IOW, I think bigger numbers are nice, but they don't really change how the fighter feels. Not htat I'm feeling up a lot of fighters. Or whatever.
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Essence »

My logic behind giving fighters the bonus numbers came directly from Frank's New Year's List post, in which he said
The Troll wrote:Greater Weapon Focus is not a class feature. When a Spellcaster gets an enhancement - whether it's Divine Favor or ?Barkskin - that enhancment just keeps going up every few levels automatically. The fact that the Fighter has to keep investing in Weapon Focus (which really wasn't all that great to begin with) to keep it improving is the exact opposite of building up to anything good ever.


So, I figured that just preventing a Fighter from wasting a feat slot on that crap would help allieviate the problem of non-scaling and help force the fighter to take options instead of bonuses.


Frank wrote:And I would rather have multiclassing and extensibility than keep class-level-based attack bonuses.


I agree...but I'm not willing to do enough work to rewrite the entire game from the ground up in order to accomidate that ideal. I am, however, willing to rewrite the fighter in order to compensate for those things that you listed in your New Year's post, and try to bring it up to at least the level of the Rogue, if not the Cleric. What I'm really asking is if my ideas above go any significant distance toward that goal.
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Username17 »

Essence wrote:I agree...but I'm not willing to do enough work to rewrite the entire game from the ground up in order to accomidate that ideal.


Tough shit. The Fighter is based around the bonus feat. And Feats suck my asshole. Feats have a ginormouslist of problems, and you can't make a Feat-based character without solving them.

Basically when your class looks like
...
Feat
Feat
Feat
...
it is only as good as you've made feats. And feats, as conceived, suck my asshole. And that's really that.

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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Neeek »

A better solution to the whole Weapon Focus tree of stupidity would simply to have it scale: Your attacks with this weapon are +1 per iterative attack. Same with Weapon Spec: +2 to damage per iterative attack.

...which unfortunatly makes it run into the +19 problem faster, though this isn't a problem for Weapon Spec.

By extension, there would only be 2 TWF feats: Basic(Shrinks penalties, with the amount shrunk growing each iterative attack) and Improved(makes your off-hand attacks match your basic attacks)

So we need more feats, ones that both scale and don't suck. Well, we can just plain drop Dodge, or make it a straight +1 dodge bonus to AC, with an additional +1 per iterative attack.
How about Improved Base Attack Bonus? +1 to BAB, and can be taken as often as you like.

The problem comes back to the two places it always does however:
1) The +19 limit
2) What do we want fighters to beat?
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Essence »

Frank, did you even read my suggestions about the whole strike/maneuver idea? The one where I mentioned giving fighters at-will Ex abilities, structured akin to the Warlock's invocations? That are actually level-appropriate (like giving Fighters a Harmstrike at 12th level or something)?

Why are you continuing to rant about how much Feats suck when what I'm trying to ask you is whether an alternate Fighter structure is feasible or not?
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Username17 »

Yes, and I read that the first ten levels of the class just provide a bonus feat. It doesn't even matter if you wave your hands and say "and a bonus non-selectable ability at class level 11 that's level appropriate to character level 11" - because class level 11 of Fighter isn't character level 11.

If at Fighter level 11 you get something level appropriate, the Fighter/Rogue still doesn't get anything level appropriate before Epic level. And Epic still doesn't work, so the exercise is a failure.

If you want characters to have something that's going to work, they have to get something level appropriate every level - not just every level after 10th.

Of course, it doesn't help that the specific abilities you are talking about aren't worth wiping your ass with. I mean, negating non-proficiency penalties? Are you serious? So the Fighter can use an Exotic weapon. Whuptedo. That's like one point of damage, and it in no way scales.

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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Essence »

Then, no, you didn't read. The abilities I'm trying to add to the Fighter start at level one, just like the Warlock's invocations start at level one.

Obviously, I made a mistake by bringing back this old thread and attaching my new ideas to it. It's apparently so old that you don't realize that the first four posts within it are from April and aren't what I'm talking about.

Start with the fifth post. Read it, and ignore the first four. THEN you can tell me that my idea sucks, and why. :)
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Neeek »

Essence at [unixtime wrote:1105070132[/unixtime]]
I want to give the Fighter some abilities that are actually...well, Fightery, without having to make up an assload of Fighter-only bonus feats. I'd also like to have the Fighter automatically gain all of the numeric feats (Combat Focus, etc) without having to invest in them.


How is this...
Essence at [unixtime wrote:1105070132[/unixtime]]
Now, what I want is special 'strikes' or 'maneuvers' that replicate some of the most useful spell effects that casters get at various levels, basically following the Warlock's Invocation progression, except with at-will Ex abilities rather than SLAs. So, four groups (Least, Lesser, Greater, and Supreme), with Least coming online at level 1, Lesser at level 6, Greater at level 11, and Supreme at level 16. One new ability known at levels 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, and 20.


...not effectively granting the Fighter a bunch of Fighter-only feats?


Essence at [unixtime wrote:1105070132[/unixtime]]

And, the big question of course: is this conceptual process actually capable of making the Fighter a viable class?


It depends. How good are these abilities going to be? Do you have any examples of what one might be in mind(better yet, one of each power level)? Do you want them to require lower ones of the same type to get the higher ones? Will they just naturally evolve to be better, or do you have to spend another slot to get Lesser when you already have Least?

Also, you're going to need more than 24 sets. Otherwise every fighter fighting in a given manner will essentially be the same.

An alternative would be to have a bunch of lower abilities of each type, and what ones you can get at higher levels depends on what you took at lower levels. Like if you took the "Suicidal Warrior group", then you could have "Impale Self"(a disarm attempt that automatically occurs when you are hit) and "Painful Deflection"(trade hp for AC, basically using your hands to stop incoming attacks) at the Least level, then at the Lesser level have "Grab Weapon"(A disarm effect that does base weapon damage to you, but has a big bonus, no disarm against you for failing and ends with the weapon in your hand). Not that these abilities are necessarily good. I'm just illustrating the idea.

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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Essence »

Neek wrote:How is this......not granting the Fighter a bunch of Fighter-only feats?


<sigh> Because they're not feats. They're class features, which are independent from feats in that their existence does not make a "bonus feat" into a more powerful ability, but rather keeps the "bonus feat" where it's always been, and layers powers on top of them.

You can claim ANYTHING as a fighter-only bonus feat if you want to rewrite it that way. Hell, I could write a fighter-only Bonus Feat that says "You gain Clerical casting ability like a Cleric of 6 levels higher than your character level." The content of an ability doesn't allow or prevent that ability from being rewritten as a Feat. But the rewriting of an ability as a feat does change what it means to have a Bonus Feat -- which is what I'm trying to avoid.


Neek wrote:How good are these abilities going to be?


Like I said above, I want each ability to be more-or-less on par with the spells that a roughly-equivalent caster would be getting at the same class level.

For example, Least Maneuvers would have stuff that equates to Blur, Mirror Image, the stat buffs, Spiritual Weapon, Reach, Vigilance, Darkvision, Haste, GMW/Magic Vestiment, Divine Favor, Claws of the Vampire, etc.
The Lesser Maneuvers would have stuff that equates to Fire Shield, Stoneskin, Truestrike (out of depth according to the charts, but you know it belongs here), Poison, Slay Living, Dimension Door, etc.
The Greater Maneuvers would equate to stuff like Heal, Harm, Oak Body, Shield of Prudence, etc.
The Supreme Maneuvers would have stuff akin to Affinity Field, Hide Life, Iron Body, True Metabolism, Mass Harm, etc.

I'd probably avoid any blasting ability, and instead have maneuvers that made weapon attacks deal spell-like damage in addition to their usual ("flame arrow" without the suck).

Does that more-or-less clear that up?
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Neeek »

Essence at [unixtime wrote:1105243069[/unixtime]]
Does that more-or-less clear that up?


Sort of. However, I think you either need to make them Fighter-only bonus feats(so you can take more) or power them up significantly, since you get far less of them than casters get spells, and they still get other class features.

It would help if you could create a style. As is the attempt is essentially trying it figure it out without a concrete example.
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Username17 »

I don't know why your paradigm involves getting new powers slower when Wizards get their new power faster. It seems like it's destined to make Fighters overpowered at level 1 and underpowered at level 13.

Or to put it another way, let's imagine that we are using the 3.5 GMW and Magic Vestments tree as a comparison. The Cleric, at 6th level is going to be able to make his armor magic all the time - at +1. At 7th level he can do the same thing for his weapon of choice. At 8th level he has enough spell slots and duration to do the same for his shield - and all three bonuses jump to +2. And so on.

The Cleric's rate of bonus accumulation increases over time. And the paradigm you are looking at involves the Fighter getting a +1 every time his level doubles. What the hell? Sure, you might be able to play kissy-face long enough to get that working for a few levels, but there's no way in hell that you're going to be able to keep that going even for 20 levels.

The paradigm of spellcasters is inherently quadratic - you get more abilities that stack together and scale linearly. If you get abilities that don't stack, or which stack assymptotically, you lose D&D. Period.

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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Essence »

That's where this theory of the at-will Ex strike/maneuver comes in. The strikes and maneuvers would contain those stacking, quadratic bonuses by mimicking the most often-cast buff spells from each caster type at each level. The Least Maneuvers would contain the equivalent of Divine Favor, the Lesser Strikes would give you something akin to True Strike, etc.

Basically, what I'm asking is: does allowing the Fighter to replicate all of the spells that he would beg someone else to cast on him or for him, without necessarily wasting actions in combat to do so make the Fighter capable of keeping up with the casters?

What if the Fighter can only cast a selected very limited number of those buffs, like the Warlock?
What if he could cast any few he wanted, but no more than X on at a time?

Is this a paradigm that is capable of bringing the Fighter up to speed? (Assuming that I've already fixed all of the obviously broken crap like the wealth-by-level system and the existence of spells that break the game by their nature.)
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Username17 »

It's capable of keeping the Fighter from being directly and provably inferior to the Cleric in his chosen role. That is, if the Fighter has everything the Cleric could cast on himself to mimic a Fighter and has some extra piddling unnamed bonuses and hit points - he's always going to be a little bit ahead of the Cleric in terms of standing there like an idiot and hitting people with a stick.

Right now, of course, he isn't. The Cleric and the Druid simply have bigger numbers than he does, and therefore are able to do everything he can do - better - and still do other things at all. But if you actually went through and gave the Fighter all of those bonuses in addition to his own small and shitty bonuses - that would obviously no longer be true.

What it doesn't address, of course, is that what the Fighter does is kind of stupid and crappy thing to do even if you do it well. There are challenges other than combat and even combat challenges are relatively rarely solved in the best possible fashion by running up to the challenge and hitting it with a stick. If you made every Fighter into a "Cleric Archer" it would make it impossible to prove mathematically that Fighters were shitty - but they still wouldn't be all that good. So many enemies are swarms of beetles, or pudles of goo, or ghostly horrors, or ginormous scorpions, or whatever that being the best at standing there like a punk and sticking your sword into the other guy until one of you falls over isn't something that I'd write on my resume.

Essence wrote:What if the Fighter can only cast a selected very limited number of those buffs, like the Warlock?


Then he would keep up for a while until the Cleric eventually had enough more than he did that the Cleric's extra buffs outstripped the Fighter's modest bonuses from feats and then the Fighter would be useless again.

Essence wrote:What if he could cast any few he wanted, but no more than X on at a time?


Then he'd keep up for a while until the Cleric eventually had enough more than he did that the Cleric's extra buffs outstripped the Fighter's modest bonuses from feats and then the Fighter would be useless again.

Basically, the Cleric knows all his buffs. Eventually, he can have all of his buffs up all of the time. So if the Fighter only has some sample of the buffs, even if he has the ability to switch which buffs are in that sample, the Cleric is eventually going to be better. At being a Fighter.

Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon. And for the rest of your life.

Essence wrote:Is this a paradigm that is capable of bringing the Fighter up to speed?


It's able to keep the Cleric from fitting the entire Fighter class into its pocket as "another thing it can do". It does not, inherently, actually stop that from being faint praise. But with a DMing style in which enough "Fighter Enemies" are thrown down for the Fighter to cut in half, that could be enough to have the Fighter player keep having fun for the entire length of the game, and it could be enough for the rest of the party to not feel dragged down by the presence of the Fighter.

That could be enough, depending upon your goals.

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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Lago_AM3P »

Why do we even have a fighter class? Why can't the cleric class be the fighter?
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Maj »

<whiney voice>

Because spells are too complicated! I don't want to have to put thought into my character! That would be a waste of time!

</whiney voice>

Mostly, flavor reasons.

[pointless observation]

I find it vastly entertaining that the subject of taking these powerful spells away from the cleric isn't the subject of debate, but how to power up the fighter is.

[/pointless observation]

So why the hell should the cleric be allowed to be a fighter?
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Essence »

OK, so the issues at hand, once the Fighter is actually a better Fighter than the Cleric or Druid, seem to be:

1) The Fighter still can't do crap outside of combat.
2) There's still a lot of foes that are innately immune to sword-based characters, and the Fighter has no secondary method of defeating those foes.

Anything else?
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Username17 »

Essence wrote:Anything else?


3) The Fighter is still boring as snot. At 1st level you shout "I waste him with my crossbow!" and it's kind of novel. And 30 playing sessions down the line... you say the same god damned thing. Even as the Fighter advances in bonuses over time, he still doesn't advance tactically. The Fighter you played in March is just the same Fighter you played back in January... only with more numbers to keep track of.

4) Fighters are a known quantity before they walk into the room. As an opponent, you know exactly what to expect. You know that there is going to be Fighters, and you know how to prepare for them. Fire Immunity isn't necessarily useful against a Wizard, and your opponents might not have one, but Weapon Immunity makes every Fighter cry and you know he's going to be there.

5) "1)" is more than one problem.

Maj wrote:Because spells are too complicated! I don't want to have to put thought into my character! That would be a waste of time!


All this talk recently about Might and Magic made me remember something. In that game, there were a lot of Buff spells. But there was also some higher level package spells - "Day of Protection", for instance, just gave you all of your protections all day. If you were seriously concerned with the high-level spellcasters becoming too complicated (and I am), you could introduce packages that just buffed people to the point you were comfortable people buffing to in a short time-frame.

Maj wrote:
So why the hell should the cleric be allowed to be a fighter?


Because people want the magic-warrior archetype. And if I have to sacrifice the non-magic-warrior archetype for it in a fantasy game, I'm OK with that. Simply put, the heavily armed and magic hero is much more indespensible than the grizzled soldier as far as playable characters go.

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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by MrWaeseL »

Day of Protection is probably the way to go for high-level spellcasters, yes.
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Re: Ess' Project Class #10: The Fighter

Post by Essence »

"2)" and "4)" seem to be the same problem, to me. Or, at least, the solution is the same: give Fighters some sort of non-weapon offense, preferably three or five minor variants thereof. That'd allow a Fighter to take out sword-immune enemies and prevent him from being entirely predictable.

What those offenses would consist of is a challenge to invent without making the Fighter into another spellcaster, but I believe it could be done.

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