Talk:Mkill's Fighter (3.5e Alternate Class Feature)

Author's analysis

Let's see how this class addresses a few of the main whining points of the standard Fighter:

• once you take a feat, you can't change it / no way to adjust your abilities to certain threats

With the ability to switch out 7 of his 21 feats at level 20 there is enough room to adjust your combat tactics to specific enemies. What's even better, you can try out certain feat combinations before you choose a feat permanently. And you can add in new stuff right when a new book comes out.

• only good for a 4-level dip / rapidly loses power once the level is in the double digits / the fighter's power curve is linear, while the full casters have a quadratic one

With feats slightly increased from 11 to 14 and class features to fill the dead levels, the fighter does still advance in a rather linear way, but it will take longer for wizard, cleric etc. to outclass him.

• low maneuverability

With the extra 5 foot steps, I consider this fixed. Anything more than that would mean, that the fighter a) could fly by his own powers, which would be pretty strange, or b) would step into monk territory.

• dead levels

Fixed.

• maneuvers like grapple and trip become impossible at high levels because the monsters have gigantic size and strength scores

I fear this is a deep-rooted problem in the way the D&D power level advances. While PCs advance by adding class levels, monsters mainly just grow bigger to "explain" the excessive strength scores, hit points and damage ratings of high-CR enemies. While that hardly makes a difference for some PC tactics, such as save-or-die spells against will, it is crippling for tactics that have heavy size and strength modifier, such as grapple and trip.

I shunned away from doing much here, for several reasons. First, it is rather build-dependent. An opportunist or a two-weapon expert does not do much tripping or grappling so there would be not much benefit for them.

Fixing this also has the problem of suspension of disbelief: How does a 4 foot dwarf grapple and pin a dragon the size of a castle? I wish there were rules mechanics to do maneuvers like climb up the dragon's back to get at it's neck, but so far nobody dared.

• dependent on equipment

This is also less a fighter-specific problem than a general problem: High-level charaters carry around insane amounts of treasure, and it's likely they'll have an item to solve pretty much anything.

On the other hand, this means, they'll suffer a huge power drop when the items are disabled or lost. Some classes can handle this better then others. Notably the spellcasters can do a lot without equipment or create the necessary stuff on the spot.

Some of the new combat styles I introduced here have abilities that were only possible with equipment before, such as energy resistance, but I decided to add only a few, otherwise the fighter would lose its essence. --Mkill 10:52, 26 June 2007 (MDT)

Play Test

I am interested in play testing when i GET A CHANCE IT LOOKS GOOD. 88.110.250.94 14:42, 18 July 2007 (MDT)

Disscusion

One that worries me about the swap feats are how "gamey" the idea is. It makes no sense flavor-wise for a fine tuned soldier to 'forget' and 'pick-up' abilities on the fly, so to speak. Someone who was an archer one day cannot suddenly become a fencing master by 'forgetting' to use his bow. If you instead did something like the sorcerer's spell changing ability that helps keep the world more real, and help keep the game world more believable. So basically what I would do would change it so that each time that swap feat came up they can switch one fighter feat for another, but it's permanent until the next one comes up. --TraumaVictim 13:40, 20 July 2007 (MDT)

It's as "gamey" as wizards loading a spell in their memory and then totally forgetting about it once it is cast.

"Dude, that Fireball was awesome! Do it again!"

"Huh? Fireball? I can do that? Man, I have no idea!"

Well, so much for D&D "realism".

As I see it, most high-level fighters are veteran enough that they can fight with pretty much anything and adapt their style to the situation. It's not that they become a completely new fighter under these rules here, they still keep 2/3rds of their feats (if you count both bonus feats and normal feats). While the general direction is fixed (AOO specialist, power attack brute, archer etc.), you can make some minor changes. You can pick up a weapon, train with it and master it. And you can forget tricks, but lets face it, it's human(oid) to forget things. As any athlete that didn't train for a month how the effect is on his performance.

If the feat swapping gives you a headache, you can require that fighters have to spend 1 week training one feat before they can "swap it in". I did not include that in the class description, because it creates more paperwork, you need to keep an extra list of feats that your fighter has trained and can choose during his daily training. I prefer simple rules over realism.

I believe that in actual play, most players will have two or three feat sets selected for their fighters, like most wizards and clerics, who have their favorite daily spell selection and only add in new spells if some unusual circumstances demand it. --Mkill 00:43, 21 July 2007 (MDT)

Ah, but since when has magic been realistic? Magic is a strange and unpredictable force (sadly, D&D doesn't represent this unpredictability at all). Things like this do happen with magic, the energies escape your mind, etc. Feats are different. A fighter feat represents a skill you might learn, and you don't just "forget" skills one day and "remember" them on another. A wizard doesn't just "forget" spells, either. Instead s/he prepares them ahead of time and uses them up. The energies of the prepared spell are "used up", and thus the wizard cannot cast them again. This is not a criticism, however. I like the idea of preparing to use certain feats ahead of time, even though it is slightly "gamey" as TraumaVictim pointed out. I suggest an alternative way of doing it; a fighter learns a feat every level, but s/he must prepare a feat ahead of time to use it (in a similar way to the way that a wizard does) and is limited to the number of feats s/he can prepare a day (for example, a 10th level fighter would know 10 fighter bonus feats, but would only be able to use 6 of these feats each day), but a fighter could use each prepared feat any number of times a day (like a normal feat) unless the feat stated otherwise. That way the fighter is versatile without truly forgetting any of his feats.

I do, however, think that the 5ft step thing allows too many 5ft steps: 4 per round allows some fighters to move as far as they normally could for free with no attacks of opportunity. Some fighters could actually 5ft step further than they normally could move normally as a free action with no attack of opportunity (a halfling fighter could, for example).

I am not a big fan of the combat style thing, either. The SRD fighter lets his/her feat choices dictate what type of fighter s/he is. The combat style thing assumes that all fighters of each type have the same style of doing things, which is not necessarily true. Also, the combat styles do not cover all types of fighter possible.

I hope this will help you improve your fighter. --Sam Kay 11:51, 12 August 2007 (MDT)

Formatting

It appears that the preload for 3.5e Alternative Class Feature has been deleted. I view several of the other pages, and it seems there used to be a formatting convention, so I more of less copied that. Coaldstone (talk) 18:52, 21 January 2020 (MST)