FT 5000 Swording your fire balls

[codeGlaze]

FT 5000 : Fighter Thread 5000
* Discussion imperfectly cloned/split from here

You don't need to get very elaborate with giving fighters all kinds of planar teleportation powers or wide area nukes. People that play fighters don't want that stuff anyway.

False.
I enjoy weapon-wielding characters more than casters.

My favorite fantasy tropes are the guys that can run into 100 enemies and start swording them with fireballs, creating shockwaves with their feet and/or weapon swings. Very much "sword magic" blended with benders and anime tropes.

I also happen to know a lot of people that would think that's pretty sweet.

I'm in pretty much the same boat FWIW. If you want to go full Advent Children in my game... have at it.

and start swording them with fireballs

I just noticed that the Desert Wind Maneuver "Death Mark" from Tome of Battle does exactly this. You sword someone and they turn into a fireball. Fucking awesome.

Frank I'm not talking about bigger bonuses, I'm talking about growing angelic wings you can fold up into the astral plane when you hit level 10 if your distantly related to celestial, or growing twenty feet tall when it's convenient if you have a giant ancestor somewhere in your family history, if you're somehow related to a dragon you'd start breathing fire and shit, and it doesn't have to be something in your blood maybe you have the favor of some god so you start gaining bits of that power as you level up. And yes you just get the "you must be this tall to ride" bonuses too. And I'd be willing to bet there would be less backlash if you dumped the fighter from the game altogether and tapped into a different concept in people's minds.

Bit of a simplification, as the 'scope' of combat becomes larger as the power level rises. You can't kill Freddy unless you can enter dreams or pull people out of them. You can't stop Alucard unless your attacks are best described as strategic. And so on.

Not really. I don't know of any enemies in the monster manual that can't be killed by a magic weapon if the wielder is capable of getting in range if your melee attacks are suitably powerful. Incorporeals have the closest thing to a fighter immunity and that's at least partially bypassed by even the weakest of magic weapons.

Wall of Force and Forcecage are the only things that weapons or physical might can't prevail against, and it'd certainly be reasonable to give a fighter a way to cut through those, as well as mobility powers to follow fast moving things like dragons or they could be master of bow and sword, so they can shoot down fliers. Also sword techniques that let them launch ranged shockwaves works too.

As for getting to other planes, I don't think many people care if the fighter can't do that on his own. The fighter is part of a team, and it really doesn't matter if Wonder Woman has to use Batman's dimensional portal or not. If anything, the guy that gets stuck being the planar taxi is at a disadvantage because he's burning a spell slot to do it.

[Lokathor]

Sooooo... the Soulborn?

Cause a Soulborn with some [Combat] feats does this.

[darkmaster]

Okay, so to my mind here's the deal, if you think the fighter as is can't be used because the class doesn't get access to any kind of magic and people won't let you make the fighter magic you do not throw your arms up and say "Fine! no tactical sword guy!" If you really think you need to dump the fighter fine, but you gotta replace it with something.

I say a "hero" class instead of a fighter class would work fairly well because the hero can just do impossible shit. In a world of magic the hero can just be magic for any number of reasons. Seriously do the sorcerer thing here and do a bunch of archetypes or more likely do the tome monk thing and let the hero pick level appropriate powers ala carte preferably personal powers and enhancements to their weapon and armor that only they can access with like a note that decedents of the hero can tap into the level appropriate powers of the hero's gear and it helps them get their own power which is honestly just a story hook.

[Josh_Kablack]

This had been argued about extensively in the previous 4,999 threads. Refer to them for why in the mind of most Western gamers, the flavor text of "magic" is universally better than the flavor text of "swords" at the concept level, and that makes it impossible to write mechanics which balance them out.


That said, there is conceptual space for the "fighter niche" to be filled by a "sword mage", who has sword magic, and about as much in common with actual swordfighting as fire mages have with actual fire fighting

Example characters from fiction

[RadiantPhoenix]

A cleric whose holy symbol is a sword and whose somatic components involve swinging the sword.

[tussock]

The http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=372500 post.

There are enemies that you cannot effectively sword to death. @toobig @toonumerous

That's just the wrong fiction. "Too big" and "too many" are things that Sláine (for instance) is perfectly capable of chewing his way through with Brainbiter. Wandering around inside a dead god and killing their bits is a thing in D&D, live ones could have the same feature.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/Slaine

He regularly takes on whole armies and eldritch abominations (even whole armies of eldritch abominations at times) and comes out on top, mostly through raw brutality - or supernatural powers that push that raw brutality Up to Eleven.

No one's going to complain if the Hulk or Thor kill thousands or something the size of a city, and there's no real reason to stat things in D&D in a way that Fighters can't just kill it. Even if they have to do it piece by piece. Sure, they also need planar travel and whatever, but the setting can just have faerie rings and plane-shifting mists and elemental vortexes that high level grunts can survive walking up to and passing through.

Stop denying the heroic figure their awesome, stop giving them shit like +1d6 fire damage, and just let them do what they need to do. If Forcecage stops them with no save, don't do that.

[Cyberzombie]

No one's going to complain if the Hulk or Thor kill thousands or something the size of a city, and there's no real reason to stat things in D&D in a way that Fighters can't just kill it.

Honestly, I don't even know where these supposed fighter-immune monsters are. I certainly can't recall any.

There's nothing I can remember in the monster manual (or the ELH for that matter) that can't be killed by doing weapon damage to it. There are monsters with superior mobility and tactical movement to try to deny melee combat, but there's nothing that can't be killed by just stabbing it. Some things like liches and vampires might come back after being stabbed, but mundane weapons are fine for defeating them in battle.

[ubernoob]

//

[shadzar]

No one's going to complain if the Hulk or Thor kill thousands or something the size of a city, and there's no real reason to stat things in D&D in a way that Fighters can't just kill it.

Honestly, I don't even know where these supposed fighter-immune monsters are. I certainly can't recall any.

Well in response to a non-anime style fighter like Goku, and staying with a more mundane beater like the Hulk; anything that flies is immune to fighters to MANY people because once out of range of his sword, the fighter can no longer sword it to death.

Hulk overcomes this by being able to jump into the air, grab the flying thing and beat the shit out of it. Even magic users, and their magical creations Hulk can continue to beat the shit out of anything until it breaks, or he tires/calms down.

the problem with using Thor in this example is that he IS A GOD, and therefore NOT mundane like Hulk.

Fighters do not need to have some seeming magical to fight fliers, not even need Hulk's freakish jump, thought enough strength and why not be able to jump? fighters just need Nemo's from LXG ability to attack quickly. without using magic, Nemo from that movie actually seems to be what I would consider the AD&D Blandesinger. TWF done right, and not needing to be a Ranger, just a simple mundane fighter.

so for MANY the simplest fighter-immune example given around these parts is anything that can fly. Also anything that requires +X to hit where a fighter couldn't punch it because his naked fists are not +X. which leads back to how "planes" screwed up the game in that a +X requirement to hit means the weapon and the creature exist on more than one plane at once, and thus you must attack it on ALL planes it exists at the same time. Since a mundane fighter cannot exist on more than one plane, being a simple human; then he has no chance as a class.

[darkmaster]

Okay if we're going to talk about anime fighters then I really need to point you to Kenichi: the Mightiest disciple. Seriously, in that show martial arts=super powers. The Muay Thai master can literally hulk jump. People watching actually think he just disappears because he's that fast and can jump that high. The Jujitsu master is basically Captain America+ he can lift solid stone statues his own size and considerably larger with one hand and throw them around like nothing has never been shown to noticeably tire because he put himself through a training regimen that gave him a perfect physique, and is also a master poet, artist, doctor, and potter on the side.

The Kenpo Master is basically what the monk should be actually, he's just crazy good at punching things with kung fu, well Kenpo but you get the point. Martial Arts=super powers.

For anyone who's interested the first big arc was made into an anime and brought over to the states. The story is about a kinda clumsy, cowardly high school kid named Kenichi who begs his way into the karate club in order to better himself but they force him to do all the cleaning up and never let him train and when he's caught using the facilities one of the other members challenges him to a fight with the intent of beating him to a blood pulp. Luckily Kenichi's newest friend happens to have a grandfather who owns a martial arts dojo so he learns a very basic move and through a series of stunning upsets this cowardly kid who hates fighting ends up with a brutal street gang out to kill him. It's a fun watch and the ending, while not exactly giving closure is a good cut off point. And, last I checked you can watch it on Netflix.

[ubernoob]

//

[darkmaster]

Well, I mean, Kenichi himself doesn't get so many of the super powers, except maybe super strength? and toughness, that kid can take a beating. But yeah at one point he back drops a sumo wrestler. But like everyone important has super strength so, there's that. Well, I like it anyway.

[tussock]

Honestly, I don't even know where these supposed fighter-immune monsters are.

There's things that take all your actions away and/or negate most or all your attack forms, can destroy your equipment which you need, and which kill you in one round with their normal attacks. Air Elementals are endless fun, but most of the MM is just plain faster than you and often kills you quicker than you can kill them. They may not be strictly immune but the only time they'll fight you is when they choose to, and while real DMs tend to play nice there, that's not really in the rules.

Archery helps, and you should always be a bowman, but being functionally immune to archery is also fairly common and it makes the closet trolls even harder to take.

You can have Freedom of Movement and Mind Blank and True Sight and Death Ward and all the various save buffs and everything else in that list, get yourself some touch attacks to ignore the AC and range issues and immunities, poly into something that can move and still attack, but you know what: you're eating a lot of other people's spell slots for breakfast, your casterlevel sucks, and the party might just have an easier day without having to carry you.


Yes, they gave most things in 3e D&D some AC and some HP. But they didn't give the Fighter any way to force the monsters to participate in losing them, and gave the monsters a lot of ways to force the Fighter-types to not participate in that. 3.0's Golems and Outsiders were reasonable Fighter-bait, and as such massively powered-up in 3.5.

[Josh_Kablack]

No one's going to complain if the Hulk or Thor kill thousands or something the size of a city.

Yeah, Marvel's Thor is another decent template for what high level fighters need to be doing in fantasy.

• Super Strength - to the point of being a terrain alteration power
• Can make unlimited super-strength attacks at range
• Flight
• Summons lightning to strike his foes
• Creates Whirlwinds to harry, hamper and move his foes about the battle field
• Summons Storms and other types of weather control abilities.
• Dimensional Travel abilities
• Has assortment of Asgardian Henchmen and Cohorts he can call on.
• Noncombat Lore and Royalty abilities (also an MD in his early alter ego)

The fundamental problem with the D&D "Fighter" archetype is that at the systemless level, when you concept out a fighter character, 95% of MCs are going to scoff all but about 3 of those abilities for being preposterous. And yet if you concept out a "Storm Mage", you won't get much, if any flak about anything on that list.

If you want to specifically look at things in terms of the 3.x ruleset, that's a character with moderate to good access to:

• Bull's Strength or Polymorph cheese or Tenser's Transformation plus with a couple of Wall spells and/or Move earth folded in.
• Any ranged attack spell. Telekinesis fits the flavor of repeatable magic superstrength weapon attack best, but it's hardly the only one
• Fly or Overland Flight
• Lighting Bolt or Call Lightning
• Gust of Wind and Telekinesis (combat manuever: Grapple and Pin). see also Control Winds. Although possibly a reflavoreds version of Resilient Sphere or Black Tentacles could be more similar to the tactical effects.
• Control Winds, Sleet Storm, Ice Storm, Fog Cloud, Solid Fog
• Plane Shift
• Leadership feat
• Ranks in Diplomacy, Heal and a couple of Knowledge skills..

Not one of those effects is above a 5th level spell, although comics Thor does seem to be able to throw quite a few 5th level spells -- meaning that he's most likely a level or three bit above the 9th level minimum for a straight caster to get them.

So at the system layer, in something like 3.x, your fighters should be looking at lot like that by no later than 12th level. That's the part I think everyone here agrees on.

Where their is considerable disagreement is whether you could make the target audience for an RPG accept that a class with abilities of that scope is called a "fighter". Lago has previously elaborated at a length rivaling Dostoevsky that you absolutely cannot and at any given table the MC will stealth nerf such in the name of realism and plausibility. Personally, I'm not as hardline as Lago on this point. I suspect that the current state of comics, anime and videogames being just common fantasy RPG precusors points than Tolkien, Lieber and Howard's writings changes things a little. More outright fantastically powered martial characters are more common in comics, anime and videogame source material than in more literary fantasy, and thus an audience approaching from such sources is likely a bit more accepting than hardliners like Lago think they are.

However, Lago's argumentation ad exhaustion has convinced me that this is still not a fight worth having. It much simpler to write game material where no class is boxed in by being called a "fighter" and all classes are flavored as having some form of magic.

[Cyberzombie]

Now, nonmagical fighter types have much more difficulty with flying/teleporting/invisible enemies, and that's a valid point.

Yeah, these are the main methods of thwarting a fighter. I really wonder if fixing the fighter could be done with:

• Give the fighter a method of beating the three things you mentioned above.
• Make the fighter actually scale properly by removing the iterative attack penalty and the requirement to full attack. Also allow AoOs to take all the fighters attacks instead of just one, so they scale properly too.
• Give the fighter final numbers which beat out the buffed cleric/druid's final numbers and are competitive with level-appropriate monsters.
• Give him all the rogue's skill stuff, along with a few rogue tricks for non-combat.
• Go the Tome of Battle route and give the fighter some powers like Moment of perfect mind that effectively let him auto-succeed on a saving throw each battle.

[Midnight_v]

I had a drunken rant about how Thor is largely: "Mjolnir" and while thor is in is own right another RACE, even humans who the hammer like turn into a "thor" with most if not all the associated powers and abilities.

In a lot of ways (to me at least) those thor-likes are basically guys have have a sorcerer cohort 2 levels lower than them, which also happens to be a hammer.

There are so many ways that you could go about fixing them mechanically, if everyone is past the whole "We hate superhumans" thing.

[RadiantPhoenix]

No, Mjolnir is a Sorcerer or something with race: Hammer who sometimes picks up human cohorts.

Comic Book Thor has most of his powers even without Mjolnir.

[shadzar]

real legend Thor has most of his powers without it as well. Just when losing godhood, Thor also loses the right to wield it, though it does not agree, and violates Odin to return to Thor to prevent Ragnarok.

Thor is pretty much as mundane as Hercules, a son of a god, a demi-god or some such, and in no way MUNDANE.

mundane means devoid of arcane or divine powers. remember even Goku and Bruce Lee are using "divine" powers as martial arts all started as spiritual training by priests and such. which means ALL those "fighting styles" could be considered not mundane as well (see Monk class derived from Shoalin monks)

[RadiantPhoenix]

Red Mage: "This is our party cleric."
Fighter: "My name is Fighter and I'm a Fighter."
Red Mage: "He's a cleric of the deity named Dr Swordopolis."
Fighter: "I said I'm a fighter."
Red Mage: "Like I said, he's a cleric."

[Midnight_v]

No, Mjolnir is a Sorcerer or something with race: Hammer who sometimes picks up human cohorts.

Comic Book Thor has most of his powers even without Mjolnir.

No shit thor has powers of his own, via race. I actually started my post with that. "While thor is in is own right another RACE"

*ahem* I apologize if you were just saying that for clarification, but it pissed me off that you're like "NO", then go on to fucking literally repeat what I said.

I see you're saying those guys have no class levels but that isn't entirely true.

Most NOTABLY: Beta Ray Bill

Beta Ray Bill's life force and consciousness were transferred by scientists of his race into the body of an alien carnivorous equine-like beast that had been bionically restructured into a cyborg. Courtesy of highly advanced genetic engineering, the character possesses vast superhuman strength, speed, stamina, and durability, and a highly extended lifespan. Beta Ray Bill is also a superior hand-to-hand combatant. His combat prowess is such that he was able to fight Thor, noted as one of the best hand-to-hand fighters in the Marvel Universe, to a standstill.[4]

Beta Ray Bill's weapon, Stormbreaker, also has the same properties as Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, and includes the ability to transform into a cane when struck upon the ground and return Bill to his unaltered Korbinite form. Bill also possesses the advanced and sentient warship Skuttlebutt.

So basically he was literally a badass "FIGHTER" who got some kinda of superhuman cyborg prestige, then eventually got himself a thor's hammer.

Ultimately however, we're splitting hairs because Thor is a good example of what high level fighters have seen their characters as.
The thing is people, a lot of people seem to have a problem with saying: At X level you need a power source so you can hit benchmarks.

We've been at this for 5000 threads, I wish people would just crank out builds plus explanations at this point.

So for warriors that offend people we really don't care about...
Kensai/ Beta Ray Bill
Artificer/Ironman,
Transhuman / Captain America/Hulk/Fantastic Four (like in the after sundown sense)


For everyone else you just get to say "Warblade or Gish, right there on your sheet and get good things whole sale.

I think tussock once really hit onto something, basically D&D is supposed to have a more tangible reasoning for xp. As in 6000xp allows you to pull from this ability chart. In game reasoning, that hard men living hard lives actually get superpowers by "quickening" when they kill shit.

All that being said. . . I'd rather just play After Sundown classes in a D&D setting.
That way we can say "that guys a Fallen"
"That guys an Icarid"
"That guys a reborn"
"... that guy is an extra."

[hyzmarca]

No, Mjolnir is a Sorcerer or something with race: Hammer who sometimes picks up human cohorts.

Now that's a good idea. EquipmentQuest. All the PCs are intelligent items. Wielders are treated as cohorts, pets, or antagonists.

[Midnight_v]

No, Mjolnir is a Sorcerer or something with race: Hammer who sometimes picks up human cohorts.

Now that's a good idea. EquipmentQuest. All the PCs are intelligent items. Wielders are treated as cohorts, pets, or antagonists.

Its just sad that it seriously ended up actually BEING like that in D/d most of the time from what I've seen. Eventually, the fighter gets a mercy artifact sword.
Yet all these years later, assuredly there are better answers.

[shadzar]

meow!

[Ferret]

so basically you could just graft some kind of Weapon of Legacy-ish thing onto your Fighting Man class as a class feature and move on with your life?

Hrm. That's...actually not too bad, really.

I mean, seriously, we've all said over and over again that the problem is access to powers without having to suck off the DM or your Friendly Neighborhood Magic-Item-Supplier. Laying aside the fact that the Warblade is just conceptually superior in all respects, I think just building magic items into the fighter is a quick and easy fix.

[Josh_Kablack]

Fighter Thread number 2739 presented objections to that sort of solution.

And now I kick myself for failing to stick to the resolution I made in that one.