The Role of the Fighter in a Party

[Basket Burner]

You're down a lot of wealth at 10th level because your non-magical, non-masterwork 30 GP tower shield really puts a dent in your 49,000gp.

What worthless comments.

Oh, you're using a normal shield, aka one that lacks level appropriate bonuses, as well as the hardness and HP boost. It pops from one hit from anything then. All you have managed to do is waste your turn.

However, with 49,000GP, a Fighter could easily afford a Large Adamantine Tower Shield, say, +1.  With a hardness of 22 and 50 or 60 HP; that shield stands up to nearly every CR10 monster listed except the Fire Giant.

Fun fact: Tower shields are made of wood. The metal ones weigh a whole lot more, which is why they aren't standards. That's why they're in Races of Stone and not the PHB.

You're also forgetting about the part where you hide behind your door and they look at you, wonder what you're doing and then go kill someone else.

I vaguely recall something very funny about doorstop builds. I would have to ask about it though.

[Nachofan99]

Fun Facts: You're the one who assumed a 10th level character would be using a normal shield.

I just showed that even a normal shield with no mods at all *does not* get broken by every CR10 creatures in 1 round.  Some do, many don't.  Some take multiple rounds.

For 30gp, a low tier terribad Fighter just wasted a Monster's Turn and helped keep it off the party and lost less HP than normal.

Carrying stuff is pretty EZ when you're Large (or Bigger) and have a Strength Score in the 20s (or 30s).

If a Fighter just wasted the monster's first turn by using a Readied Action to hide behind their door, how is the monster getting to the rest of team PC without getting an AoO/Standstill to the face?  It's going to Withdraw and have 2 turns wasted?  Wow, you're making the Fighter sound much better than I think it is.


Were you trying to say something regarding not being able to get an Adamantine Tower Shield because it's wooden and the DMG says Adamantine must be applied to metal stuff?  As you said it yourself, Steel Tower Shield is in Races of Stone and it's a "whopping" 75gp and is metal for the purposes of Adamantine.  Sure I get it, CORE ONLY FINAL DESTINATION NO ITEMS GO!

I wonder if there are any mildly good special magical tower shields.  Just a thought.

[X-Codes]

It's not just that.  A Cleric with 1 relevant buff is absolutely NOT the same kind of melee that a Fighter with 1 relevant buff is.  Divine Power isn't some awesome buff that the Cleric casts that makes him better than the Fighter, it's a buff the Cleric casts just to put himself on-par with the Fighter.  As such, every time the Cleric doesn't have to cast Divine Power, the Fighter effectively saves someone else a 4th-level spell.

Basically that, yes. He doesn't do it very well(just slap that same buff on a ToB character and watch the differences), but he does act as a better target for the buff until persistables come into the picture.

You don't get that many Persistent spells unless there's an Incantatrix in the party.  If you can manage 3 without cheese, then you are so completely dedicating your build to DMM: Persist that you might actually be hurting your buffing capabilities overall.  In any case, if you can get 3 persistable buffs, there's little reason for those buffs to be anything other than Recitation, Mass Lesser Vigor, and Lesser Holy Transformation: one spell for Flight (and some really nice bonuses aside) and two buffs that everyone, even the party Wizard, Druid, and Druid Pet all get, nevermind the Rogue and the Fighter.

[Sir Giacomo]

In agreement with nachofan99 here on the usefulness of the tower shield.

A question (jumping into the discussion at this point):
What would convince the "fighter is useless" side of the fighter's capability?

For instance, a (core) build getting through the same game tests?

- Giacomo

[X-Codes]

In agreement with nachofan99 here on the usefulness of the tower shield.

A question (jumping into the discussion at this point):
What would convince the "fighter is useless" side of the fighter's capability?

For instance, a (core) build getting through the same game tests?

- Giacomo

:rageface

[Nachofan99]

X-Codes!

(click to show/hide)

When I play a DMM: Persist cleric I regularly use Recitation and Mass Lesser Vigor.  Lesser Holy Xformation is totally BA, ty for mentioning it!

[Solo]

In agreement with nachofan99 here on the usefulness of the tower shield.

A question (jumping into the discussion at this point):
What would convince the "fighter is useless" side of the fighter's capability?

For instance, a (core) build getting through the same game tests?

- Giacomo

The ability to contribute meaningfully to the wide variety of challenges and encounters the adventuring party is likely to face, such as:
*Small scale combat
*Large scale combat
*Social situations
*Stealth missions
*Breaking and entering
*Tracking objects
*Traveling to distant locations

Currently, the fighter is restricted to the first two. And he has trouble even then, hence the "tier 5" rating. Of course, it's entirely possible the entirety of the boards is wrong and awaits only a glorious visionary such as yourself to provide us with enlightenment, so why don't you build a core fighter at, say, level 13 and show us the fighter's capability at dealing with threats in melee for a party?

[StreamOfTheSky]

*Small scale combat - bash enemy's heads in
*Large scale combat - cheese out on trip with a spiked chain to halt enemies' movement and then bash their heads in
*Social situations - Intimidate
*Stealth missions - Draw the enemy's attention while the actually sneaky people go in and switch the document / steal the McGuffin / kidnap the foreign dignitary / get back to their rooms without their parents realizing they broke their curfews
*Breaking and entering - Power Attack!
*Tracking objects - Pay a hireling to do it for you.
*Traveling to distant locations - Ride skill.

There, easy.

[Solo]

*Small scale combat - bash enemy's heads in
*Large scale combat - cheese out on trip with a spiked chain to halt enemies' movement and then bash their heads in
*Social situations - Intimidate
*Stealth missions - Draw the enemy's attention while the actually sneaky people go in and switch the document / steal the McGuffin / kidnap the foreign dignitary / get back to their rooms without their parents realizing they broke their curfews
*Breaking and entering - Power Attack!
*Tracking objects - Pay a hireling to do it for you.
*Traveling to distant locations - Ride skill.

There, easy.

I, sir, applaud you.

[Nachofan99]

The Fighter will clearly "fail" any comprehensive same game test.  The class just is not that good *in comparison* to other classes, especially 20 levels of it.  However, it's just not as bad as suggested and I don't know too many games of 3.5 where people are playing straight up 20th level *anything*.

A Fighter can have all the Shield feats, with a couple of Charging feats, and a few Lockdown feats.  That's pretty solid.  If you mix in more classes and ACFs, it only gets better. 

However, the Fighter will never get 9th level spells or as many Maneuvers as a Warblade; that's why the Fighter is only T5/T4 and I firmly agree with that general placement.  But if you're kicking around with T4/T5 guys and you have access to a lot of sourcebooks you can definitely contribute and you can still beat team monster; team monster (with some notable exceptions) is designed to lose.  Not sure anyone realizes that.


If a completely new player joined my D&D group next session, and I asked them as a Player and or DM what do you want to play and they said "Fighter" - I would immediately say "Ok, the Fighter in this system is the Warblade."  I would hand them the ToB and their game experience would never suffer for it.  But if someone wanted to build a PC with levels of Fighter in it, I would let them because it's just not *that* detrimental for certain concepts.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I don't like Same Game Tests.  In real games with competent DMs, you don't just have one encounter a day.  SGTs all seem to heavily favor classes that can nova daily resources, which isn't a fair way to judge.  As long as the RAW is followed and cheap healing wands are easy to come by, hp is basically a binary thing: you either have enough to survive the encounter, or you don't.  If you do, you're at full for the next one, rinse, repeat.  And other than hp, a Fighter doesn't have daily resources (barring items).

Nor do I like the idea of a solo trial for a game which was meant to be played as a group...

*sigh* And now I've contributed to the derailment of the thread.  Oh well, almost no one was actually talking about what a single classed fighter could do and was just filling the thread with off-topic garbage anyway, 'twas a futile effort from the start.

[Nachofan99]

SotS,

I don't find any of your stuff terribly off topic.  SGT could also be called "sort of what a PC should be able to do in play" which is related to the OP. 

[veekie]

Nachofan makes a good point there. Its less whether the Fighter is a good class(its not, everybody seems to agree on that much), and more whether its usable enough to help beat Team Monster in a game, especially with the archetypical 4 man party in an archetypical dungeon crawl. And it is.

[LordBlades]

You don't get that many Persistent spells unless there's an Incantatrix in the party.  If you can manage 3 without cheese, then you are so completely dedicating your build to DMM: Persist that you might actually be hurting your buffing capabilities overall.  In any case, if you can get 3 persistable buffs, there's little reason for those buffs to be anything other than Recitation, Mass Lesser Vigor, and Lesser Holy Transformation: one spell for Flight (and some really nice bonuses aside) and two buffs that everyone, even the party Wizard, Druid, and Druid Pet all get, nevermind the Rogue and the Fighter.

Depends on one's definition of cheese (as in how many Nightsticks are considered cheese; for example in my group for example we've houseruled they don't stack so you're allowed only 1). So 2-3 spells sounds about right. I usually use Divine Power(or something better if available) instead of Mass Lesser Vigor as from my own experience Lesser Vigor Wands are enough for out of combat healing.

Slightly off topic: if somebody's bringing a Rogue and Fighter to a Cleric, Druid, Wizard party or the other way around, then he's being either ignorant or a bit of a jackass IMHO.

Nachofan makes a good point there. Its less whether the Fighter is a good class(its not, everybody seems to agree on that much), and more whether its usable enough to help beat Team Monster in a game, especially with the archetypical 4 man party in an archetypical dungeon crawl. And it is.

Straight to the point, and I agree 100%. The fighter might not be the sharpest tool in the shed (there are other much better candidates for the frontliner role in a classical 4 man party) but unless the game is crazily optimized, it can contribute. It doesn't do all that much, but neither is it dead weight 99% of the time (like a Monk or Soulknife).

[Zonugal]

Slightly off topic: if somebody's bringing a Rogue and Fighter to a Cleric, Druid, Wizard party or the other way around, then he's being either ignorant or a bit of a jackass IMHO.

Or you know, they want to try to play the classical/traditional adventuring party.

[Mooncrow]

Slightly off topic: if somebody's bringing a Rogue and Fighter to a Cleric, Druid, Wizard party or the other way around, then he's being either ignorant or a bit of a jackass IMHO.

Or you know, they want to try to play the classical/traditional adventuring party.

As much as I'm a huge advocate for "there's no wrong style of play" - that level of imbalance is going to be really, really hard for people to have fun with.  New and/or ignorant players aside, either the T1 classes are going to be bored to tears, or the fighter and rogue are going to feel useless and/or dead. 

[Zonugal]

Slightly off topic: if somebody's bringing a Rogue and Fighter to a Cleric, Druid, Wizard party or the other way around, then he's being either ignorant or a bit of a jackass IMHO.

Or you know, they want to try to play the classical/traditional adventuring party.

As much as I'm a huge advocate for "there's no wrong style of play" - that level of imbalance is going to be really, really hard for people to have fun with.  New and/or ignorant players aside, either the T1 classes are going to be bored to tears, or the fighter and rogue are going to feel useless and/or dead.

In a traditional/classical adventuring party you'll want/need a trap-finder. The Cleric can fill in for this role but that eats up one of their domains and naturally a Wizard can work around most traps (but that is really pushing it). So when showing a party made up of casters the only real choice is an Artificer? That seems mighty limiting...

But I do agree that there will be an imbalance within the party but I also feel a good player, team and DM can work past these sorts of mechanical short-comings. 

[LordBlades]

In a traditional/classical adventuring party you'll want/need a trap-finder. The Cleric can fill in for this role but that eats up one of their domains and naturally a Wizard can work around most traps (but that is really pushing it). So when showing a party made up of casters the only real choice is an Artificer? That seems mighty limiting...

But I do agree that there will be an imbalance within the party but I also feel a good player, team and DM can work past these sorts of mechanical short-comings.

A rogue-ish class 1/Wizard x/rogue-ish Prc (my favorite is Spellthief 1/Wizard 5/Unseen Seer 2/Incantatrix; I just find invisible Hydras and persistent Hunter's Eye fun) or even a Beguiler(with SCM for more power if you feel like it), Factotum or Chameleon can fulfill Trapfinding role just fine and bring tons more stuff to the table than a straight rogue.

It's rather hard to work past mechanical imbalances when they go past a certain magnitude. I've had several cases of vastly different power levels in party(last and most annoying one was a ninja in party with Druid, DMM Cleric, Incantatrix, Beguiler/SCM and Psion) and it's pretty unfun to play when whatever is able to threaten the strong guys is instadeath for the weak guys, and whatever is challenging for the weak guys, the strong guys can just walk all over. It's even more unfun when one of the weak guys fills exactly the same niche as one of the strong guys (like fighter and wildshape focused druid).

[Basket Burner]

Fun Facts: You're the one who assumed a 10th level character would be using a normal shield.

Ah yes, because when someone says level 10, and that it costs a lot of money they mean some dinky little mundane door and not a magical door. And then when you say it's actually just a dinky mundane door, because you realized how stupid it was to lose thousands of gold in half a round it means that I, and not you assumed they'd be using a normal shield. Right... You're very bad at this, you know that?

I just showed that even a normal shield with no mods at all *does not* get broken by every CR10 creatures in 1 round.  Some do, many don't.  Some take multiple rounds.

What you have shown is a bunch of numbers that are random and flat out wrong in most cases that are deliberately biased to make your point. Glenn Beck is more honest and forthright than you.

For 30gp, a low tier terribad Fighter just wasted a Monster's Turn and helped keep it off the party and lost less HP than normal.

Except for the part where they ignore you, or pop it in one hit then lay into you, which is what actually happens.

If a Fighter just wasted the monster's first turn by using a Readied Action to hide behind their door, how is the monster getting to the rest of team PC without getting an AoO/Standstill to the face?  It's going to Withdraw and have 2 turns wasted?  Wow, you're making the Fighter sound much better than I think it is.

Monster looks around the field. It sees a tin can holding a door, an incredibly squishy looking dual wielder, and a very dangerous looking priest and mage.

You assume it attacks the doorstop. Why would it possibly attack the doorstop, who is readying to hide behind the door?

Were you trying to say something regarding not being able to get an Adamantine Tower Shield because it's wooden and the DMG says Adamantine must be applied to metal stuff?  As you said it yourself, Steel Tower Shield is in Races of Stone and it's a "whopping" 75gp and is metal for the purposes of Adamantine.  Sure I get it, CORE ONLY FINAL DESTINATION NO ITEMS GO!

More that it weighs 250 pounds or so and might require a separate proficiency even because it's so heavy.

In agreement with nachofan99 here on the usefulness of the tower shield.

A question (jumping into the discussion at this point):
What would convince the "fighter is useless" side of the fighter's capability?

For instance, a (core) build getting through the same game tests?

- Giacomo

Oh hey, I know you. You're that guy who managed to be the laughing stock of GitP at all places.

I was going to ask nacho if he could possibly do things any worse, but he just got Giacomo's support. So the answer is no.

I don't like Same Game Tests.  In real games with competent DMs, you don't just have one encounter a day.  SGTs all seem to heavily favor classes that can nova daily resources, which isn't a fair way to judge.  As long as the RAW is followed and cheap healing wands are easy to come by, hp is basically a binary thing: you either have enough to survive the encounter, or you don't.  If you do, you're at full for the next one, rinse, repeat.  And other than hp, a Fighter doesn't have daily resources (barring items).

Nor do I like the idea of a solo trial for a game which was meant to be played as a group...

*sigh* And now I've contributed to the derailment of the thread.  Oh well, almost no one was actually talking about what a single classed fighter could do and was just filling the thread with off-topic garbage anyway, 'twas a futile effort from the start.

There is no such thing as novas in that sense, and you will run out of wand charges rather quickly.

Example: Fighter fights something, kills it, but gets full attacked once for a hundred in the process. 18 charges gone, or over a third of a wand. That wand likely isn't surviving a single day. Sure he can have more than one, but he's still going to be running out quickly. Especially if he doesn't have unlimited time between encounters, such as fighting one while the guys in the next room hear combat and start mobilizing.

In a traditional/classical adventuring party you'll want/need a trap-finder. The Cleric can fill in for this role but that eats up one of their domains and naturally a Wizard can work around most traps (but that is really pushing it). So when showing a party made up of casters the only real choice is an Artificer? That seems mighty limiting...

But I do agree that there will be an imbalance within the party but I also feel a good player, team and DM can work past these sorts of mechanical short-comings.

Um, no you don't. Not even close.

All caster teams are not the slightest bit concerned about traps, and if they are they are doing it wrong.

As for Persists, you can manage 4 without any real difficulty with 0 or 1 Nightstick. You might be able to get 6 without Nightstick stacking.

[Mooncrow]

There is no such thing as novas in that sense, and you will run out of wand charges rather quickly.

Example: Fighter fights something, kills it, but gets full attacked once for a hundred in the process. 18 charges gone, or over a third of a wand. That wand likely isn't surviving a single day. Sure he can have more than one, but he's still going to be running out quickly. Especially if he doesn't have unlimited time between encounters, such as fighting one while the guys in the next room hear combat and start mobilizing.

As for Persists, you can manage 4 without any real difficulty with 0 or 1 Nightstick. You might be able to get 6 without Nightstick stacking.

Wow, people use wands of something beside lesser vigor for healing?