The Fighter, revisited (again) [D&D 3.5]
There've been a few discussions on these boards about the Fighter (and martials vs casters, etc). I've commented critically on a proposed homebrew Fighter or two, even. However, I agree the Fighter could use a bit of love and so next time I run a game I'm planning on applying some houserules to bump it up a teeny bit (or full-on homebrewing a new version of the class, more or less). I'm not planning on running another game any time soon, though, so I figured I'd throw my ideas out for discussion/comments/suggestions/whatever.
Worth noting that if I were redesigning 3.5 from scratch, I'd do things differently; since I'm thinking of houserules for a game, the smaller the number of changes and the simpler, the better (so, "Fighters get feats every level" gets bonus points as compared with some complex set of new mechanics).
Also, I'm just kicking around ideas here; I'm less concerned about a finished thing and more about the principles.
Design Principles
Martial characters tend to work pretty well at the low levels when "hit things" is a very viable strategy and in fact one of the deadlier ones, and even at low levels they tend to be able to hit things pretty well just from full BAB etc. The problem is dealing with all the other stuff which is stopping them from being able to hit things. They also tend to have few options, if any, other than hitting things.
Thus, our aim should be to diversify the Fighter's abilities. Right now, a Fighter can do a lot of things if he picks the right feats, but long feats chains and feat taxes mean that even with all those bonus feats it's hard to get everything you could want, and the nature of 3.5 means that you really need to focus in on just one or two things. I would rather Fighters not be able to do 1000 damage on a Charge if that's their one trick, and instead do a lot more things moderately well.
An Aside: How not to do it
The most popular homebrew Fighter is probably Pathfinder's (yes I just called Pathfinder homebrew, I'm just winding you up ). This definitely bumps the Fighter up a tad. For me, though, it completely fails to do what it ought to do. The Fighter gets paltry bonuses to saves, armour training which is nice but mostly equates to a higher AC, and weapon training which is just +s to attack and damage. Oh, with specific weapons. So it adds the one type of thing the Fighter doesn't really need, and makes the Fighter even more narrow. There are some stealth buffs to the Fighter in the changes to Concentration and the addition of feats like Step Up and Disruptive. These make it way easier for Fighters to shut down spellcasters in the low-to-mid levels. However, there are also a lot of stealth nerfs in the changes to combat manoeuvres (congrats, you now need even more feats to do one thing acceptably!) and whereas 3.5 had some decent options in splatbooks, almost all of Pathfinder's new feat options are really lame (even Disruptive is like a poor man's Mage Slayer).
More Design Principles
Anyway, it's worth asking what you want the Fighter to be able to do.
At very low levels, this class is basically the mook of the D&D world. He's all about hitting things to some moderate level of effectiveness. Fine. All other classes are doing much the same sorts of things at this stage. But by a few levels in, we want our Fighters to be able to do more stuff. They should each have at least one "trick" of some kind, like tripping or charging, rather than just hacking and slashing. They ought to have some resilience to counters, and you ought to feel like they're going to cause you some hurt if they get up close.
At the higher levels, well, it's probably going to need more fundamental changes to the system to put martials on a par with casters. However, there are lots of things that a Fighter at this stage could be good at, including the tactical and mental. Granting bonuses to allies, figuring out the right way to fight certain foes and exploit their weaknesses, and just having general guts.
Also, martials are too often mechanically boring. Even a L1 Wizard typically has 3+ L1 spells to choose from, plus cantrips. Martials are generally charge, or full attack, unless they're forced to move-and-attack. Tome of Battle was the right sort of thing to fix this. Why not make Fighters more like Warblades?
General Changes
I'm trying to constrain this mainly to the one class, but there's a wider "martials vs casters" thing going on here and anyway the Fighter specifically is as much his feats as the Wizard is her spells. I'd want to implement a whole bunch of general changes and also buff some specific feats. I won't go into excruciating detail, but the general idea is:
-Harder Concentration and Tumble checks. This makes threatening more... well, threatening.
-Fewer feat taxes, shorter feat chains. I don't want to have to take 3+ feats to be able to do one thing well. Imp Trip doesn't need to require Combat Expertise; Spring Attack doesn't need to require Dodge. Whirlwind Attack would actually be pretty nice to have even just as an option if it didn't require sooo many things before you could take it.
-Weapon groups. Let Weapon Focus, Imp Crit etc apply to multiple weapons. They are weak, and this eases the pain of specialisation just a tiny bit.
-More active. "You gain a bonus to AB and damage" is boring. We should reward smart tactical play, add a (small) resource management element, and also try to make these classes more interesting. If Mobility instead gave you a 1/encounter bonus move action, it's suddenly way more interesting and also actually useful.
Actual Stuff
OK so some actual changes I might make to the Fighter, finally!
Bonus feats - I'd actually be tempted to make these more like 1 per 3 levels rather than 1 per 2, because I'd also be thinking about adding....
Versatile Training - Gain more bonus feats, but you can only pick one of each "type", where "type" is a fighting style like TWF or something. Kind of like the opposite of Ranger combat styles - so by L20 you might have Imp Unarmed Strike, TWF, Rapid Shot, etc. Most of these feats are kind of useless to you so this isn't aimed at increasing the overall power level, it's aimed at diversifying options and making it easier to get unrelated feat trees. A switch-hitter might actually become viable if you don't need twenty feats to be a good meleer and fifty to be an archer, and if you're already getting one of each for free.
Martial Adept-ness - I don't want just to replace the Fighter with the Warblade, but ToB is a thing now. I see the Fighter as someone who could end up learning any of a wide variety of fighting styles (hence the above) so we could let him recover manoeuvres gained via Martial Study some way (perhaps as a Warblade does), and perhaps give him a higher IL. This lets you use the class as a pseudo-initiator if you want but without necessarily buying in fully to any given ToB class. To make this more than just a wannabe-Warblade I'm also thinking you could tie this to some of those revamped feats (like Mobility) and some Fighter abilities, recovering other per-encounter stuff (like Adaptability; see below).
Bravery/Tenacity - Pathfinder's idea of giving bonuses vs fear was thematically nice but mechanically pointless. Instead, how about an ability to suppress fear effects for a small number of rounds per day? I'd limit it so that foes could feasibly still overcome you (because flat-out immunities in general are bad and I'd rather nerf others than hand out more) but it's still way more useful than a meagre +1 to saves or whatever.
Adaptability - OK, something actually useful - gain extra feats dynamically. Pathfinder's Brawler's ability is the most similar thing, except I'd probably make it 1/encounter or the like, and I'd probably make it a swift action from the get-go since stopping martials from full-attack is kind of cruel. However I'd probably have this come online a little later - around that point where we start to expect Fighters to be able to adapt to unusual situations and exploit any monster's weaknesses rather than just being guys who hit things hard. Immediately, this boost the Fighter's abilities up a lot because now they can go and find exactly the right tool for the job in a way reminiscent of Polymorph/Shapechange or the Erudite (albeit a lot weaker). On its own this is nice, but with the changes to feats and feat chains, this looks even more useful - if I can dynamically gain Imp Trip, Imp Bull Rush, Imp Overrun etc whenever I want it without have to take Combat Expertise or whatever first, it means I can effectively use any of those manoeuvres well whenever I want (but I'm slightly more limited than just having all of those feats). Like, nobody wants to take Imp Overrun because it's rubbish, but when that one time when Overruning would be useful comes up - bam! - you can do it.
I'd also like to give Fighters more out-of-combat options. At the very least, an expanded skill list seems like it could help a tad.
Conclusion
I'm not trying to turn Fighters into "Tier 1" caster classes here. For those who subscribe to the "Tier System", these sorts of changes probably only raise them to T4 or T3 at best, and probably only on the back of Adaptability - It depends on exactly how those things are implemented (I was thinking something like Adaptability gained at L9 and lasting 3 rounds, 1/encounter - that's nice, but doesn't really upgrade the class a whole tier). Really, though, T3 is about right. Still, I'm probably being far too timid in the changes, though I would like to try some of these things out in an actual game and see how they play out.
Thoughts?
Everyone loves arguing about martials vs casters, right? Well, have at it!
Worth noting that if I were redesigning 3.5 from scratch, I'd do things differently; since I'm thinking of houserules for a game, the smaller the number of changes and the simpler, the better (so, "Fighters get feats every level" gets bonus points as compared with some complex set of new mechanics).
Also, I'm just kicking around ideas here; I'm less concerned about a finished thing and more about the principles.
Design Principles
Martial characters tend to work pretty well at the low levels when "hit things" is a very viable strategy and in fact one of the deadlier ones, and even at low levels they tend to be able to hit things pretty well just from full BAB etc. The problem is dealing with all the other stuff which is stopping them from being able to hit things. They also tend to have few options, if any, other than hitting things.
Thus, our aim should be to diversify the Fighter's abilities. Right now, a Fighter can do a lot of things if he picks the right feats, but long feats chains and feat taxes mean that even with all those bonus feats it's hard to get everything you could want, and the nature of 3.5 means that you really need to focus in on just one or two things. I would rather Fighters not be able to do 1000 damage on a Charge if that's their one trick, and instead do a lot more things moderately well.
An Aside: How not to do it
The most popular homebrew Fighter is probably Pathfinder's (yes I just called Pathfinder homebrew, I'm just winding you up ). This definitely bumps the Fighter up a tad. For me, though, it completely fails to do what it ought to do. The Fighter gets paltry bonuses to saves, armour training which is nice but mostly equates to a higher AC, and weapon training which is just +s to attack and damage. Oh, with specific weapons. So it adds the one type of thing the Fighter doesn't really need, and makes the Fighter even more narrow. There are some stealth buffs to the Fighter in the changes to Concentration and the addition of feats like Step Up and Disruptive. These make it way easier for Fighters to shut down spellcasters in the low-to-mid levels. However, there are also a lot of stealth nerfs in the changes to combat manoeuvres (congrats, you now need even more feats to do one thing acceptably!) and whereas 3.5 had some decent options in splatbooks, almost all of Pathfinder's new feat options are really lame (even Disruptive is like a poor man's Mage Slayer).
More Design Principles
Anyway, it's worth asking what you want the Fighter to be able to do.
At very low levels, this class is basically the mook of the D&D world. He's all about hitting things to some moderate level of effectiveness. Fine. All other classes are doing much the same sorts of things at this stage. But by a few levels in, we want our Fighters to be able to do more stuff. They should each have at least one "trick" of some kind, like tripping or charging, rather than just hacking and slashing. They ought to have some resilience to counters, and you ought to feel like they're going to cause you some hurt if they get up close.
At the higher levels, well, it's probably going to need more fundamental changes to the system to put martials on a par with casters. However, there are lots of things that a Fighter at this stage could be good at, including the tactical and mental. Granting bonuses to allies, figuring out the right way to fight certain foes and exploit their weaknesses, and just having general guts.
Also, martials are too often mechanically boring. Even a L1 Wizard typically has 3+ L1 spells to choose from, plus cantrips. Martials are generally charge, or full attack, unless they're forced to move-and-attack. Tome of Battle was the right sort of thing to fix this. Why not make Fighters more like Warblades?
General Changes
I'm trying to constrain this mainly to the one class, but there's a wider "martials vs casters" thing going on here and anyway the Fighter specifically is as much his feats as the Wizard is her spells. I'd want to implement a whole bunch of general changes and also buff some specific feats. I won't go into excruciating detail, but the general idea is:
-Harder Concentration and Tumble checks. This makes threatening more... well, threatening.
-Fewer feat taxes, shorter feat chains. I don't want to have to take 3+ feats to be able to do one thing well. Imp Trip doesn't need to require Combat Expertise; Spring Attack doesn't need to require Dodge. Whirlwind Attack would actually be pretty nice to have even just as an option if it didn't require sooo many things before you could take it.
-Weapon groups. Let Weapon Focus, Imp Crit etc apply to multiple weapons. They are weak, and this eases the pain of specialisation just a tiny bit.
-More active. "You gain a bonus to AB and damage" is boring. We should reward smart tactical play, add a (small) resource management element, and also try to make these classes more interesting. If Mobility instead gave you a 1/encounter bonus move action, it's suddenly way more interesting and also actually useful.
Actual Stuff
OK so some actual changes I might make to the Fighter, finally!
Bonus feats - I'd actually be tempted to make these more like 1 per 3 levels rather than 1 per 2, because I'd also be thinking about adding....
Versatile Training - Gain more bonus feats, but you can only pick one of each "type", where "type" is a fighting style like TWF or something. Kind of like the opposite of Ranger combat styles - so by L20 you might have Imp Unarmed Strike, TWF, Rapid Shot, etc. Most of these feats are kind of useless to you so this isn't aimed at increasing the overall power level, it's aimed at diversifying options and making it easier to get unrelated feat trees. A switch-hitter might actually become viable if you don't need twenty feats to be a good meleer and fifty to be an archer, and if you're already getting one of each for free.
Martial Adept-ness - I don't want just to replace the Fighter with the Warblade, but ToB is a thing now. I see the Fighter as someone who could end up learning any of a wide variety of fighting styles (hence the above) so we could let him recover manoeuvres gained via Martial Study some way (perhaps as a Warblade does), and perhaps give him a higher IL. This lets you use the class as a pseudo-initiator if you want but without necessarily buying in fully to any given ToB class. To make this more than just a wannabe-Warblade I'm also thinking you could tie this to some of those revamped feats (like Mobility) and some Fighter abilities, recovering other per-encounter stuff (like Adaptability; see below).
Bravery/Tenacity - Pathfinder's idea of giving bonuses vs fear was thematically nice but mechanically pointless. Instead, how about an ability to suppress fear effects for a small number of rounds per day? I'd limit it so that foes could feasibly still overcome you (because flat-out immunities in general are bad and I'd rather nerf others than hand out more) but it's still way more useful than a meagre +1 to saves or whatever.
Adaptability - OK, something actually useful - gain extra feats dynamically. Pathfinder's Brawler's ability is the most similar thing, except I'd probably make it 1/encounter or the like, and I'd probably make it a swift action from the get-go since stopping martials from full-attack is kind of cruel. However I'd probably have this come online a little later - around that point where we start to expect Fighters to be able to adapt to unusual situations and exploit any monster's weaknesses rather than just being guys who hit things hard. Immediately, this boost the Fighter's abilities up a lot because now they can go and find exactly the right tool for the job in a way reminiscent of Polymorph/Shapechange or the Erudite (albeit a lot weaker). On its own this is nice, but with the changes to feats and feat chains, this looks even more useful - if I can dynamically gain Imp Trip, Imp Bull Rush, Imp Overrun etc whenever I want it without have to take Combat Expertise or whatever first, it means I can effectively use any of those manoeuvres well whenever I want (but I'm slightly more limited than just having all of those feats). Like, nobody wants to take Imp Overrun because it's rubbish, but when that one time when Overruning would be useful comes up - bam! - you can do it.
I'd also like to give Fighters more out-of-combat options. At the very least, an expanded skill list seems like it could help a tad.
Conclusion
I'm not trying to turn Fighters into "Tier 1" caster classes here. For those who subscribe to the "Tier System", these sorts of changes probably only raise them to T4 or T3 at best, and probably only on the back of Adaptability - It depends on exactly how those things are implemented (I was thinking something like Adaptability gained at L9 and lasting 3 rounds, 1/encounter - that's nice, but doesn't really upgrade the class a whole tier). Really, though, T3 is about right. Still, I'm probably being far too timid in the changes, though I would like to try some of these things out in an actual game and see how they play out.
Thoughts?
Everyone loves arguing about martials vs casters, right? Well, have at it!