You know why fighter sucks?

ok but why just spontaneous exploding? I mean, can't wizards do literally anything in d&d? I've never played the game myself but like, can I not just wish an entire asteroid into existence and blow up the entire planet we're on?

Fighters should get to move and full attack, move and attack everyone along the way, and move and full attack everyone along the way. (For archers: shoot everyone in sight as a full attack.)

I would also suggest that they get swift action attacks, spell resistance, and spells-that-dont-allow-spell-resistance resistance, fear effects, fear immunity.

Then I'd throw in some abilities to help them get to the fighting, such as being able to jump 200ft, smash through walls of force/ice/bullshit, free movement across slippery surfaces, spider webs, balance beams, etc.

In addition to the even-level permanent feats that define personal combat style, there should be odd-level floating feats that can be reselected with an hour's training that describe situational practice.

3.5 and PF are still popular as hell.

... nigger you're trying to tell me being in a dude's face in violent? being in a dude's face is being in a dude's face, now don't get me wrong ripping a dude's organs out is violent but i don't know how you gonna tell me it is more violent than exploding that dude and also every other dude hard enough you couldn't find their organs if you tried

>Fighters are the ones who wield their weapons.
Yes, fighters are the ones who wield magical weapons created by the casters.

>le fighta iz bad cause he's got only feats
>every other pure martial (at ex barb)is as weak as him despite having unique abilities
Makes perfect sense

It's not about weak or strong.

in PF at least barbs are flat-out better than fighters despite still being low-tier because they have at least some utility - but they're still designed with the notions of "balance" and "realism" in mind while casters...aren't

That is the problem really, martials are at the mercy of a game designer playing with a corded mouse trying to decide whether yanking a weapon cord should be a swift action or a standard one, while wizards get to create a demiplane of nukes populated by neutronium golems at will because "well they're wizards!"

Fighter was always always always the bottom of the barrel in 3.PF, right up until recently when they started getting decent shit.

Rogue is much in the same boat desu so maybe you got a point there.

I'm sorry to hear you're too weak to RIP AND TEAR, casterfag.

..

>Fighter sucks because he has no substance, period.

No, fighter also sucks because he has really fucking massive gear dependency, and his shtick is highly counterable in non-fighter ways.

Make the mage similarly gear-dependent and counterable in non-mage ways, and the situation improves.

We've taken for granted too long that when the mage casts (insert buff) then his buff is up and everyone else just has to suck it up unless they are another mage who took Dispel Magic, which sucks. So here's a fix to this: Each buff requires a separate focus/talisman/channel/holy symbol/etc. Focus must be worn to keep buff up. Focus is not itself affected by buff. Focus has a minimum size and visibility. Focus is destructible. Focus is expensive to buy/create. Focus is attuned to a specific spell - want a different buff, get a new focus. Experienced mages look like pic related, decked out in spell-supporting bling.

Mages who can buff with Immunity to Everything, Protection from Everything, and Animal's Everything shouldn't be possible to mistake for commoners any more than Greatsword Mithrilplate Towershield Guy. And their spells shouldn't be immune to fighter removal any more than fighter's gear is conveniently exempt from mage removal. A mage with Death Ward up has his skull-bling glowing bright silver, and the fighter can sunder, disarm, or just shoot the damn thing off. Fly? Shot off, hope you packed featherfall. OH WAIT, I JUST SHOT YOUR FEATHERFALL FOCUS TOO, ENJOY THE FALLING DAMAGE.

(Protection from Arrows? Okay, shoot the PfA focus first; this is why focuses are not themselves affected by their own buffs. No, you can't cast a buff twice to have each focus cover the other.)

*casts Haste, Bull's Strength, Giant Form, Iron Body*
*teleports behind u*
heh...too slow kid

Goddamn, it is not Casters vs Martials thread!

that makes no sense. if the focus is just a small object, how is it not protected from arrows? just that one fucking spot on your robe is not protected?
also despite not making sense, it's funny because if everything you described was in the game, wizards would still be bullshit

>this entire post, interpreted unironically, is literally casters doing what casters do in the game known as "dungeon dragons three and a half"
wish i played that vampire edge game instead cuz evidently dnd is edge central with mages unsheathing their double buffs and teleporting behind u

But user, martials having abilities is:

a) anime
b) MMO
c) just making martials casters

A martial should ONLY ever be able to stand in front of the enemy and swing his sword around for six seconds at a time. A person with supposed nigh-superhuman levels of physical fitness and martial skill being capable of tripping enemies, throwing his sword or employing different combat maneuvers and tactics without building entirely around one ability and sacrificing everything else? That's some weeb anime shit brah!

As if it was ever going to be anything else. Fighters don't suck in a void. Fighters suck because you're mentally benchmarking them against god tier casters with a million options and no dependencies (well, sometimes the spell component pouch, which is sixteen kinds of bullshit).
Not that is doing shit to fix the problem other than give casters a place to spend money though.

...

uh HELLO my friends are all NORMIES I couldn't get them to play fucking REAL GAMES if my livelihood depended on it

Think of the spell focus like an umbrella: it can keep you out of the rain, but it can't then keep itself out of the rain.

Just give them something with very few rules and see what happens. "normies" usually means people with a good sense of humor and enjoyable to be around so they'd probably take to easier things like Everyone Is John, Barbarians of Lemuria, Risus, or Fiasco well.

so, can it block arrows from behind you?

we play a lot of fiasco and also party games like everyone is john. but i was actually lying about the part where i implied my friends play dnd with me, i don't play hardcore tabletops with anyone anymore. fucking normies

>Fighters suck because you're mentally benchmarking them against god tier casters with a million options and no dependencies
>Not because linear vs quadratic - D&D is Ivory Tower, so it is understandable that there is a class that has less options, but is easier to play.

Are you being ironic?

yes he is being ironic you fucking dipshit

That you have to ask is by itself indicative of the problem. Yes that was ironic.

Suppose Loki shows up doing some lulz, and offers me a choice between fifty million dollars and twenty million pocky packets (the pocky packets cost $2.50 each in a store).

I'm taking the money, because it represents more options. With the money, I can buy enough pocky to enjoy and still do a lot of stuff other than pocky. Asking why the fighter sucks and saying it's not because they have less options is like asking why taking the pocky sucks, and you're not allowed to compare it to money.

Hold your horses - on multiple occasions I saw posters who actually were serious with those claims.

I always pictured fighters as the pragmatic, down-to-earth types of the martials. No higher calling, no obsequious moral codes, no loyalties, just someone trying to get ahead with the tools they've been given.

This is why other apellations fail. A warrior fights for glory. A soldier fights for their country. A knight fights for their Lord. What does a fighter fight for?

A fighter fights to survive. A fighter fights to get by, day by day, in a world where security and sustenance is paid for in bloodshed. A fighter fights because when your so-called brothers-in-arms shun you, and your country forsakes you, and your Lord or King or God or whoever else you foolishly gave your body in service to betrays you, he is sure of one thing: everything bleeds /somehow/.

A fighter fights because the day he stops is the day he lays down in the street and finally lets this wretched, perverse world tear him apart. And that day is /not today/.

easy there Sephiroth

Yes, fighter weaker than the wizard, we all know that, thank you.
Yet I never tried to compare the two in my post.

The thing is - it can be applied to a lot of different classes.

wrong pic

Meteor spell is shit.
Much better to create your own plane, mass teleport everyone there and turn them into your slaves.

>Fly? Shot off, hope you packed featherfall. OH WAIT, I JUST SHOT YOUR FEATHERFALL FOCUS TOO, ENJOY THE FALLING DAMAGE.
So how does one do "a wizard that is threat to the region" now?

I'm inclined to agree. I genuinely hate the fighter class. I wish we only had social class-classes

I give you a 4 out of 10 for subject matter inventiveness, 3 out of 10 for subtly, but 6 out of 10 for the amount of effort that went into writing all that at least.
Tips for next time; pick either a subject that doesn't come up over and over and over again and automatically sparks heated arguments and thus is an easymode target, or be subtler about your initial presentation.
My suggestion is the subtly first; it's sometimes pretty hard to come up with truly original troll topics but a good amount of subtly can really improve the overall quality of the trolling effort in general.

Your level of writing effort is really good though, that shows a lot of overall promise I think.

A big reason why fighters suck is a lack of knowledge on the part of both the players and, at least apparently, the developers of how awesome pure martial heroes can be. Western mythology is filled to the brim with pure martial warriors who through sheer grit, strength and skill could do impossible feats without an ounce of magic or divine blood.

Fighters should take inspiration from the Fianna, the elite warrior bands from irish mythology. These are the conditions to be admitted into the Fianna:

>No man was taken until he could defend himself from within a large hole in the ground up to his belt, with only his shield and a length of hazel rod. While nine warriors having nine spears and being a distance of ten furrows away from him let fly at him together. If he let anything past his guard and got hurt he was not accepted.

>No man was taken until he had woven his hair into many braids and he was set at a run through the woods, while the ones seeking to wound him were sent after him there having been just one forest bough between them at first. If he was overtaken and wounded he was not allowed entry, If his weapons had quivered in his hand he was not taken, If his hair was disturbed in any way out of its braiding he was not taken. If he cracked a dry stick under his foot as he ran he was not taken. He also had at full speed to jump a branch level with chest and stoop under one level with his knee without breaking stride or else he was not accepted. Also he had to extract a thorn from his foot without pausing in his stride or else he was not taken.

Again, this is just to get into the Fianna; they could all do this stuff, as like, a baseline, purely through training and physical prowess. That's what fighters should be like. They should have the same breadth of options as a wizard, but rooted in physical ability.

Go look up Kirthfinder.
Thank me later.

For all the bawling people do about 4e being the "video game edition" of D&D, it's always struck me that 3.X was more blatant about it.

Why? Because Feats are basically Perks from Fallout, if 90% of them sucked. It's basically a gamey mechanic that took away all the nifty things martials could do and locked them away.

>Western mythology is filled to the brim with pure martial warriors who through sheer grit, strength and skill could do impossible feats without an ounce of magic or divine blood.
Nah, they are always at least partially gifted with something more than usual and if not it's incredible plot armor and luck working towards their favor.
>Fianna
Fianna can't defeat wizards that can warp reality and create planes.

>Nah, they are always at least partially gifted with something more than usual and if not it's incredible plot armor and luck working towards their favor.
Yeah, and the wizard who is just a smart guy who studied magic at an arcane college doesn't really exist in mythology. It's basically a modern invention. Which is fine if you're willing to admit that DnD is a game that's become utterly divorced from its supposed literary and mythological precedents.

>Fianna can't defeat wizards that can warp reality and create planes.
That's because wizards can't do those kinds outside of Dungeons and Dragons and the literary realms spawned by it. It reshaped the way that people view wizards in the collective consciousness.

>Nah, they are always at least partially gifted with something more than usual and if not it's incredible plot armor and luck working towards their favor.

Also, there's no explaining Beowulf with that logic. Dude was just that ridiculous.

Cu Chulainn almost gets away with it, but he's technically descended from the Irish God of Light, even though he had human parents.

They beat the tuatha dé danann so hard they had to settle for a peace treaty where they got to live in the half of Ireland that was under the ground. And those were magicians powerful enough to make the underground a livable environment. Which is creating a plane, in DnD terms, because what's a door in the side of a hill that only fairies can open if not a portal to the feywild?

Gimme examples of mythological wizards that could do this shit.

There are plenty of goddamn games that have a fighter or warrior class whose entire gimmick is killing things with weapons and yet manage to have lots of cool abilities that are fun to use. Stop talking about this like it's still something that needs to be proved.

even pagan gods were kind of weaksauce compared to DnD wizards

>digging tunnels is creating a plane

>Fighter wins initiative
>Intereupts your spell
>Proceeds to double power attack your d4 ass

Frankly I think 4e did it right with the Fighter. You can argue that 4e screwed up Wizards royally, and that's a valid point of view, but there's no reason why you can't have a 4e Fighter in a game along with a 5e Wizard, except for the Wizard player feeling emasculated that he's no longer the start of the party at high levels.

...

Doesn't mean it's fair in a game where two people at level 7 should be of equal usefullness regardless of class.

You try digging your way into the halls of the sidhe.

>Yeah, and the wizard who is just a smart guy who studied magic at an arcane college doesn't really exist in mythology. It's basically a modern invention.
A wizard who is gifted by Gods and has secrets of the universe is a thing in mythology, hell even sorceresses is a thing. Their typical powers are more, curses, predicting future, alchemy, shapeshifting and blessings instead of fireballs though.
>Which is fine if you're willing to admit that DnD is a game that's become utterly divorced from its supposed literary and mythological precedents.
You were the one that brought analogy to mythology, I don't need to be told that modern fantasy has nothing to do with it other than some root connections.
>That's because wizards can't do those kinds outside of Dungeons and Dragons and the literary realms spawned by it.
Which is all of modern fantasy. Even in LOTR if Maiar are given freedom to fuck around they are basically nigh omnipotent angels.

>Which is all of modern fantasy. Even in LOTR if Maiar are given freedom to fuck around they are basically nigh omnipotent angels.
Maiar aren't mortals, though. There's a big difference between the divine and the mundane.

No caster in mythology, ever, is not descended from gods, devils, demons, or other inhuman sources.

Fighter's just a poor boy.
Though his story's seldom told,
He has squandered his resistance
To a thread full of mumbles,
Such are the posts
All lies and jest
Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest.

Never left his home
Nor his family,
He was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the local game store,
Playing scared,
Playing slow,
Seeking out the poorer tables
Where the newbie players go,
Finding just the That Guys
Only hell could grow.

Asking only for some pages
He came looking for a game,
But he gets no offers,
Just a come-on from the whores
Of some twisted homebrew
I do declare,
There were times when I was so
lonesome
I played some homebrews there.

Then he's laying out his larping clothes
And wishing he was gone,
Going home
Where the Wizards of the Coast
Aren't bleeding him,
Leading him,
Going home.

In the store still stands a fighter,
A warrior by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry spell that knocked him down
And killed him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame,
"I am leaving, I am leaving."
But the fighter, still he games

I didn't bring the mythology comparison
But there are wizards like Väinämöinen, obviously they can not create planes, but "planes" was not a thing for many cultures much less creation of fucking planes. Again there are wizards that can manipulate weather time and luck, bless and curse fields and bring back people to life, shapeshift etc.

>Fighter's just a poor boy.
From a poor family.

Of course all of the wizards have some divine providence or some form of a blessing, they are magical after all, but magical talent is also a thing in most of the settings.
Merlin is not technically descendant from any sort of outright divine deity and same goes for a lot of mages from literally.
Magic as a concept was not even a thing back then, but again wizards in most of the settings are special, they are almost never people who learn magic from just reading books and have some form of arcane talent and often times literally only certain people can be wizards.

>Väinämöinen

literally a god

>Merlin is not technically descendant from any sort of outright divine deity and same goes for a lot of mages from literally.
Merlin is the offspring of a human woman and a demon.

The point I'm trying to make here is that over time the concept of wizard has gone from "wise dude who has prophetic visions and can maybe brew a love potion" to "almighty conduit of cosmic power", while Fighter has basically stayed the same from Basic to 5e, with 4e being a shining exception.

There's nothing wrong with a Wizard having that kind of power, but the Fighter (and for that matter other martial classes) should be equally elevated at high levels. A high level fighter should be able to salmon-leap over a gorge or fight underwater for a full day or be so physically mighty that his body radiates heat enough to turn water to steam.

I am okay with this, majority of fighter players are not okay with this though.
They want Fighter to both be absolutely mundane and somehow be able to lift a mountain.
If fighters become okay with being magical than sure.

>They want Fighter to both be absolutely mundane and somehow be able to lift a mountain.
Only caster players want fighters to be mundane. I have no problem with weeaboo fightan magic or demigod bloodlines

In the Bible, there was Samson, who was a regular dude that murdered a thousand soldiers using only the jawbone of a donkey.

They need to shift their perceptions then.

The stuff I'm describing is not "magical" in the sense of how magic in DnD works. Magic in DnD is the product of a spell cast by a dude who has learned magic or is somehow inherently magical, or is from a divine being. The abilities I'm describing are physical abilities honed by otherwise non-magical dudes who were just that powerful.

The argument against Samson is that his strength was divine in origin. He's like some sort of hybrid Fighter-Cleric. In 4e maybe he'd be an Avenger.

>Fighter sucks because he has no substance, period

That's kinda inevetible when the fighter's options boild down to "I hit it with my weapon". Which is not quite what happens in tabletop because we always can improvise, but fighters generally have less mechanical options than casters.

I'm not that well versed with different tabletop systems, so I'll use videogames as an example.

Look at early JRPGS, where the only option for a fighter is to select the "attack" option in the menu. The caster on the other hand has an entire toolbox behind the "magic" command.

Now look at modern action rpgs like Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma. Here fighters have much more option because different attacks are faster and can hit different parts of the enemy. And the caster can also be disadvanteged because their lightning strike doesn't hit the vulnerable belly of the enemy, but it's back.

If you want fighters to be balanced, you need to give them the options to be adaptable to the situation. Because you're other option is to give them absurdly high numbers while the mages get the versatility for everything that isn't combat.

If fighters have a similiar number of options to casters in the field, not just in making the characte build, then you can fine tune either of them much more easily. Though I have no idea how to implement that in tabletop without overloading the system with crunch.

>He's like some sort of hybrid Fighter-Cleric
I realized I just described a Paladin. I'm dumb.

samson was definitely a barbarian mechanically. he would just be some kind of divine subclass of the barbarian, like a totem warrior but with god.

Recently it occured to me that instead of more feats the fighter class should get a spell list uniquely their own. Earthquake, or sundering strike, or a tornado they form with their weapon. Maybe a screech to disrupt spellcasting. If a fighter can attack 4 times in 6 seconds I don't see any of this being a problem.

This is basically the DnD 4e Fighter, and he's awesome.

I agree the fighter is a bad concept for a class. Every class is a fighter, the fighter is the only one who is stuck ONLY being a fighter.

The current "fighter" should really be a subtype of a broader class.

He was very clearly divine powered because cutting his hair literally made him lose powers

Fighters doesn't suck.
Class systems suck.

>The abilities I'm describing are physical abilities honed by otherwise non-magical dudes who were just that powerful.
You are describing something that does not exist in a DnD as a setting. It is literally impossible for a human being to become skilled enough to lift mountains.
I am fine with class becoming stronger via shit that is in the setting, but what you are saying is an absolutely different fucking setting.
Go play exlated or something.

i () didn't say otherwise. but he wasn't a spellcaster and his abilities are basically the same as a barbarian, which is why a divinely-empowered barbarian would be more suitable than giving him cleric levels.

DnD is a system, not a setting. Eberron and Dark Sun are settings. DnD is a system for exploring a fantasy world and killing fantasy monsters and taking their gold. Granted it's a system that's designed around a specific range of settings, but the point I'm getting at is that the system itself is wanting because it doesn't embrace the totality of human fantasy and mythology.

For the record, "lifting mountains" isn't something a fighter should be able to do, but by the same token high level wizards shouldn't be able to do a lot the stuff they're capable of either, at least in my book. But I'm willing to let that slide for tradition sake.

I think there's a clear difference between "can literally lift mountains bare handed" and "fighting so hard that you cause a river to change its course". One is in actuality a godlike feat, the other is exceptionally mighty.

And for the record, here's the reference to that, from the fight between Cuchulainn and Ferdiad:

>Such was the closeness of the combat they made, that they forced the river out of its bed and out of its course, so that there might have been a reclining place for a king or a queen in the middle of the ford, and not a drop of water was in it but what fell there with the trampling and slipping which the two heroes and the two battle-warriors made in the middle of the ford.

But here's the thing. While there might be examples of mythological wizards doing all sorts of things, rarely is there an example of one wizard doing all the things.

One might be really good at charms and hexes, while another might only really be good at controlling the whether.

A D&D Wizard is good at literally any type of magic he picks up, and can swap each day. One day he can be the greatest seer in the realm, and the next he's a master pyromancer. He can easily swap between summoning the beasts of the forest, summoning demons at little cost, conjuring walls of metal, and tricking people with illusions all in the same day.

Even specialty wizards tend to have insanely broad skillsets compared to most fictional examples.

>One is in actuality a godlike feat, the other is exceptionally mighty.
That's still a demigod worthy feat. especially since Cu'Chulainn is a fucking both incarnation of a God and son of a God.

There are several systems and settings that deal with this.
Settings where everyone is extremely magical and strong enough fighter can legit lift mountains because he is magical, to the point where people are born with certain spells like Elder Scroll.
Settings where wizards can do only specific shit which is easy to do even in DnD and you can both homebrew it or find a book that suits your type of magic since it's the most widely supported game out there.
There are settings where characters are basically gods like Exalted.
There are settings where classes are basically their own games, like World of Darkness so despite Mage being objectively stronger, you won't have to deal with it.

etc.

Caster vs Martial problem in DnD is not a problem because there are billion solutions out there.

Friendly reminder that DnD is not based in a setting. It has several settings based on it, but it is merely a ruleset, which is why they can add races to it wily nilly and the settings have to come up for reasons why these races are suddenly a thing.

>It's not a problem because their are a billion solutions

Except if you have to SOLVE it, it is a problem by definition.

ferdiad wasn't though

YOU have to solve it, I've never had any problems with any DnD edition ever.

Not exactly. The triumph of the 4e Fighter was that it didn't do any obviously supernatural shit, and yet was effective and fun to play at all levels.

Yeah but Ferdiad was just a dude, and he almost killed CuChulainn until CC's bros showed up to heal him and back him up, before Ferdiad killed them too in 3-on-1 combat.

It kinda reminds me of Arjuna and Karna, where Arjuna is the hero and favored of the gods and Karna is ostensibly the villain in the story, but Karna is actually a much better fighter and Arjuna only wins by cheating.

Ignoring a problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist

It's not a problem for me or my party because it was sort of natural in our minds that
>yeah, wizards should be more powerful than martials in this game
I guess we played 3.5 too much back in the day.

That being said you are forgetting the other more logical solution to lategame fighter that ADnD had.
Make Fighter basically a lord with an army.