Enhancing Fighters

abacus

I've been thinking lately about how the Fighter class could be expanded beyond its tank-point-click-smash existence and how to differentiate it from its Warrior brethren.

One idea that occurs to me is the standard fantasy trope of the skilled/experienced warrior training his comrades or marshalling them in combat (think Jon Snow with the Watch, or Boromir sparring with Merry and Pippin).

Is there any scope within the engine for Fighters (and I mean specifically Fighters rather than Paladins, Rangers, etc) to gain some skill or passive trait to represent this?

Perhaps an aura similar to a (properly implemented) Bard's song that develops as she levels up?

You'd have to properly differentiate the Bard's abilities too, which would be a challenge, but I think it might be worth it.

Maybe to represent the training aspect she could have an ability which she can "cast" on a teammate, granting the ally proficiency (or greater) in a particular weapon type?

Thoughts or other ideas welcome...

lroumen

I think all warriors have the guard button available. That is at least something, although I think not many people use it much (I like it very much).
Perhaps that button can be expanded for the different warrior styles.

Pantalion

I touched on this elsewhere, but seriously, innates.

Fighters regain use of fighter innates every turn.

Parry: Lose 1 APR. Gain a bonus to your AC equal to half your level. Lasts for 2 rounds.
Flurry: Gain 2 APR for one round. Lose 2 to hit and 2 AC.
Whirlwind: All enemies within 5 ft must save vs wand or take damage equal to the fighter's level.
Shield Brace: Fighter's damage resistances are all set to 50% for one round and they gain immunity to stun. Must be wielding a shield.
Bleed: All attacks gain "save vs. death or start bleeding 1 HP a round for four rounds, magical healing removes this status" for 1 round. Must be wielding a slashing weapon.
Trip: Trip target if they fail a save vs. death. Must be wielding a spear, halberd or quarterstaff.
Pummel: Target must save vs. death or be rendered unconscious for one round. Must be wielding a blunt weapon.
Contingency: Heroic Resolve: When helpless, save vs. spell. If successful, remove paralysis on self.
Heroic Willpower: Chaotic commands on self for 2 rounds.
Punt: If hit, target is knocked down and moved away from the fighter, only works on smaller/mid sized enemies.
Warcry: Yeah, as the HLA, a reusable once-per-minute attempt at crowd control.
Bolster: Remove fear on target lasting 1 minute, target gets +2 to hit and damage.
Lunge: Gain +10 to hit, -10 to AC, and +10 to damage for one round, attacks set to 1.
Tempo: For two rounds, hitting an opponent gives that opponent -1 AC.
Surge: Gain haste for 3 rounds.
Disrupt: Attacks cause 10% spell disruption for two rounds. Spell disruption lasts for one minute.
Gouge: If the fighter hits, the target is blinded unless they save vs. death at +2.
Greater Flurry: Gain Improved Haste for two rounds. Lose 2 to hit and 2 AC.

A fighter gaining some of the effects normally reserved to their betters spellcasters, this will not only give them more tactical options but help make them more relevant without needing to shroud themselves in magical gear designed to emulate the same effect.

And an Epic level Fighter "HLA" from PnP that should be included:

Weapons count as +1, +3, +6 for the purposes of overcoming weapon immunities.

Epic level fighters should also be upgrading to things like "Gain Spell Turning for one round if wielding a shield" or "Gain 90% damage resistance.", just because they're that badass.

Demivrgvs

@abacus have you checked my revised Fighter from Kit Revisions?

I gave it two stances which simulate PnP Power Attack and Combat Expertise feats, plus a Tactician "aura" similar to what you seem to ask for.

You can get more details here: http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=17358

I'll upload a new KR build within a few days, thus feel free to comment on the current status or suggest other stuff.

@lroumen the guard button is hardcoded.

lroumen

Time to get it externalised

Pantalion

@Kilivitz - Since we're gaining popularity, so to speak, we should probably continue this here.

Kilivitz said:

I like this parallel with Achilles and Hercules. A lot, actually.

And I concede your point, though I don't think the fault lies on Fighters and their abilities, but on the way that enemies scale to their level.

"Attack lots of times" and "Attack very accurately" are respectively "attack 10 times a round" (with a ridiculously low THAC0 to boot) and "make sure EVERY hit is a critical". In theory, these abilities make a warrior as deadly as you describe with your examples.

This is, unfortunately, exactly the problem with fighters.

AC is of strictly limited utility, since it realistically maxes out at level 1 - Full Plate, max gear, max dex, done.
THAC0 is of strictly limited utility, since it literally maxes out at level 21 and because it can never get better than 95% hit chance.
HP is of strictly limited utility, since high level enemies HIT LIKE TRUCKS.

Everyone gets those things. An epic level 40 fighter gets merely twice the "to hit bonus" from their fighter levels and specialisation compared to the mage non-combatant who only knows how to swing a stick.

So APR is the only thing that fighters get that makes them significantly better than non-warriors, but even that grants diminishing returns. 2 APR is a 100% boost over 1 APR nobodies, but 3 APR is only a 50% bonus over 1 APR nobodies who know TWF, 4 APR is only a 33% bonus against 1 APR nobodies wielding Belm, and so forth.

So sure, I agree those two HLAs are... adequate, but even then, part-timing Mage/Thieves can manage to get 6-8 APR with Improved Haste with a "good enough" THAC0. So how earth-shatteringly epic is the warrior when they can only do something for a single round per day that a mage/thief can do for 1 round/level?

And critical strike? Take into account that a huge proportion of "actually dangerous" enemies are immune to critical hits, and it becomes "Automatic hit". Take into account the mage population of the Realms and it's not even necessarily "Automatic damage".

So it's okay, but again, we're competing with a Mage/Thief who can cast Power Word Stun or even Time Stop to make sure that every hit becomes an automatic hit, and they can do that while they're attacking 6-8 times a round, practically invulnerable to damage, and doing a host of other, useful, stuff on top of making the fighter feel inadequate.


So revamping fighter tactics to apply more useful effects would be a start, but what else?

You could remove +APR weapons, so non-fighters can only attack four times a round when buffed, but fighters use those same weapons, so you've just nerfed everybody, and that's a design faux pas. And even then, it's still just a 2.5x increase over what the fighter spends HLAs to accomplish.

You could keep fighters gaining APR throughout, so a level 19 fighter gets 2 1/2 APR, a level 25 fighter gets 3 APR, 31 gets 3 1/2 APR and 37 gets 4 APR - That way a multiclass F/M/T ends at 2 APR, a F/M or F/T caps at 2.5 APR, and Fighters in general can hit 5 APR with Grand Mastery and any weapon.

That's pretty fair, overall, though it doesn't really expand the fighter as a tactical entity it does give something that Rangers and Paladins would be jealous of, and they could even get their own special tactical innates to compensate - Smite Evil for a paladin, once per minute bonus damage/to hit against an Evil target that blinds undead? Twin Strike for a Ranger, giving their offhand as a bonus damage on main hand attacks for 2 rounds?

Finally, Warriors have THAC0 to spare, they should be able to leverage that in ways that non-warrior classes can't, with fighters being far and away the best at it. THAC0 penalty, AC bonus, THAC0 penalty, damage bonus, a damage penalty in exchange THAC0 bonus and weapon counts as +5 for penetration purposes.

abacus

Demivrgvs said:

@abacus have you checked my revised Fighter from Kit Revisions?

I gave it two stances which simulate PnP Power Attack and Combat Expertise feats, plus a Tactician "aura" similar to what you seem to ask for.

You can get more details here: http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=17358

I'll upload a new KR build within a few days, thus feel free to comment on the current status or suggest other stuff.

@lroumen the guard button is hardcoded.

Hi Dem,
KR is actually the only Revisions mod that I haven't played/ investigated... mostly because I'm very attached to Rogue Rebalancing and I wasn't sure how it would mesh.

I'm in the process of a couple of runs, so not looking to fiddle with my mix just yet... but soon

Demivrgvs

Pantalion said:

Finally, Warriors have THAC0 to spare, they should be able to leverage that in ways that non-warrior classes can't, with fighters being far and away the best at it. THAC0 penalty, AC bonus, THAC0 penalty, damage bonus,...

@Pantalion mind you that's pretty much what I did within KR. I also implemented a few maneuvers similar to what you suggested a few posts above (e.g. Disarm and Trip for now, I'll soon add Sunder). Check my link above, you should like what I did and I'm always open to criticism, feedback and suggestions.

@abacus KR's thieves are not ready yet, thus you can use RR's thieves. With the current build only two things will affect thieves: revised saves (they get much better "reflex saves"), and revised thac0 (they get slighty better thac0). Once KR's thieves are done, you can still pick RR ones if you prefer them, but I doubt you will, trust me.

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Pantalion

subtledoctor said:

Those are great ideas. Hey: in my mod for warrior and rogue classes, I've been slowly working on "Rogue Feats" for thieves and bards, as part of a component to overhaul the rogue classes. In the back of my mind I've thought I should also make a corresponding set of "Warrior Feats," but have not yet got around to planning them out. If you want to collaborate, or just pitch ideas to me, or just don't mind me using the ideas you've already discussed, I think I can make most of those a reality.

Oh, certainly, anyone's welcome to use whatever I put out there for game design. And if you want me to wax opinionated about anything in particular, just sling me a PM, I'm always happy to discuss design principles.

Osigold

Fighters who reach 9th level are entitled to small personal armies, according to the 1995 edition of the Player's Handbook, so they could always be allowed to call in the troops as a sort of summoning power. There's a lot of room to scale the scope of this ability, from the reasonably restrained (you can summon the leader, who is a 5th-7th level Fighter when you're 9th level and comes with magical weapons and armour) to the rather hefty (you can also summon your personal bodyguard unit, who could be, for example 10 1st level elven Fighter/Mages) and finally the downright absurd, summoning the whole army for all of the above plus about 120 0th-level warriors. Hey, mass combat is supposed to be much more viable in Siege of Dragonspear!

Best of all these abilities would be totally legit and 2nd Edition approved, even more so than something like the bard's song.

abacus

One that I liked from DA:O is Threaten... a crowd control type ability that overrides the AI to attack the user. If say an Assassin has downed an invisibility potion and is homing in on your Mage, the Fighter can adopt a stance to draw the attack onto himself... Could be very useful with SCS.

Flashburn

In my game, I've modified War Cry so that in addition to the fear effect, enemies must save vs. breath or be blasted away from the user like a wing buffet.

FUS RO DAH!

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