Making fighters interesting without giving them spells

I usually play a homebrew system sort of like 3.5e. I tend to like letting my players attempt to do more or less whatever they want regardless of their class and just penalize them if they arent trained. However, without giving fighters, rangers and rouges spells (abilities, skills or whatever you want to call them) i dont know how to make them interesting compared to wizards and sorcerers.

Even if i do give fighters and the like spells i still feel like theyre uninteresting. "I hit the enemy with my super hit i can only do occasionally" isnt really as exciting as "I polymorph the enemy" or "I freeze them in ice". Similarly, for rangers i feel like "I shoot 3 arrows" is much more dull than "I turn the ground underneath my opponents into quicksand".

I try to make sure combat isnt the focus of my campaigns and encourage the players to find interesting ways to prepare for or circumvent combat but sometimes they just go in to slog it out and i feel like its tremendously boring. Certainly, the setting may be interesting or the opponents unique but it'd be nice if the gameplay reflected this.

Oh, im something of a novice as well.

If you like "The d20 System, but not" sorta systems, look into Open Legend or Fantasy Craft. Both have all sorts of special augmentations and effects that get baked into normal attacks.

In Fantasy Craft's feat system you specialize in weapon categories, and feats grant special stances and attack tricks on top of static bonuses. On top of that, the differences between weapon types is less stratified so with a simple staff or dagger you can still be quite a threat.

In Open Legend RPG, which is free/'open source', there is a system of Banes and Boons that encapsulates positive and negative effects you can impart, whether through banal or extraordinary means.

There are a lot of compelling options there that wouldn't be hard to do for a dedicated fighter sort of character.
Additionally, any time your attack beats their defense by 10 or more you can apply a Bane that uses the attacking attribute (and of a power level up to the attackers rating in it) for free. Each weapon has banes their more effective with, lowering the stat prerequisite, and with a feat you could lower that to 5.

Open Legend is a bit different from the 'normal' d20 System formula, though. Stats add dice to rolls rather than flat numbers, all dice can explode, and the damage actually dealt is the difference between the roll and target.

It also has an Apocalypse World sort of way of handling failed rolls where something interesting is always meant to happen, with this as a more structured option: if you miss an attack you can inflict 3 damage, a bane, or force them to move 10 feet. But, what you're attacking can do the same to you.

What you're asking for isn't really possible. The problem is rooted in how bad the default actions in 3.PF are.

Basically everything that isn't directly attacking someone isn't worth doing, because it's unlikely to work and more likely to just get you hurt instead. You have to invest a lot of feats in it to make it even halfway good and even then it's generally not worth it.

But without a resource mechanic, classes can only operate on the same level as those default actions.

Casting classes get more powerful effects because those actions are limited, as opposed to the default actions you can take. The Tome of Battle/Path of War stuff gives martial classes a resource mechanic (with a handy built in justification if you care about that) that allows them to take actions beyond the defaults and makes playing them actually fun.

But to fix it without giving martial classes a resource mechanic you'd need to massively increase the effectiveness of the default actions. Giving every martial character every feat related to trip/sunder/bull rush etc by default would be a patch, but you'd not get a real solution without completely reworking the fundamental combat system, and at that point you're making an entirely new game.

Allow them to switch around stance freely in battle once per turn allowing them to use different attack style and range of attack and area of attack damage and damage type. The one they specialized in give them the same amount when they are in the stance and give him a passive +1

Thanks for the suggestions, ill look into these.

When i said its a homebrew 3e its pretty homebrew. I only really use 3e for ideas for spells and general stat balancing. Ill happily throw it all out of the window. The only reason i used it to begin with was because i dont like 5e and it seemed more down to earth. Suggestions like those above were unknown to me since, like i said, im pretty new.

I encourage my players to try and do interesting things like disarm their opponent or trap them but, like you say, direct damage is the safest bet so they often just resort to that. Introducing a resource for martial classes might be something i try. The idea of only being able to "hit it harder", "trip them up" or "throw them" once a day or some other arbitrary amount never appealed to me because its a bit nonsensical. I suppose having giant crab-eagles, bee-people and borrowers is also quite nonsensical but i can suspend my disbelief very easily for these things compared to random limitations on what should be repeatable actions.

Try reading the Tome of Battle/Path of War anyway, they have good ideas to draw from.

will do, thanks for the idea.

Easy. At least as far as combat is concerned. Just use crit tables and success tables from rolemaster, but only the martial classes get access to them.

As a quick rundown, when you hit with attacks you get crits ranging from A severity (weakest) to E or something, and you roll a D100 to get a result. A plain hit might do 5 damage, a solid hit might do 5 damage and a A crit, E is if they eat a grenade or something.

Just homebrew how the crits get done. Fighters get crits after they get extra attacks, rogues whenever they sneak attack, etc.

Fighter feats that arent shit. Pick one of these each level.

On a roll of 19-20 on an attack roll you get a free combat move such as a trip, sunder, shove, disarm, etc. Enemies get a save to avoid. Increase range by +2 each time taken.

Instead of attacking you can add +1d6 to a single nearby targets AC this round. Increase number of targets you can protect by +1 each level.

Whenever you kill a target, get a free attack on another target. Can chain +1 each time taken.

You get a special attack, add level to attack roll. dealing 1d4 damage on a miss, weapon damage +level if you hit. Name your special attack, usable once per adventure. Make a new one each time taken.

You're welcome.

I actually already do something like this.

If a player crits they roll on a table to decide some sort of critical effect ranging from hamstringing the enemy or stunning the enemy all the way to decapitating them

this is so numerical though. I feel like im playing spreadsheets and actuaries.

There are only so many ways i can describe someone stabbing or slashing an opponent before it becomes repetitive. Ultimately, this still just boils down to hitting things repeatedly or buffing stats. I appreciate thats the nature of combat but its so terribly dry.

i like the osr method of making everyone but fighters incapable of really fighting in any meaningful way and making spell casting risky and toned down vs 3.pf level spell casting.
i think its either that OR letting martials do stuff like run on branches and water crouching tiger hidden dragon style.
either way you really need to let fighters do stuff besides JUST fight. spell casting needs a high enough cost in terms of character building choices too that casters cant just learn spells AND any other out of combat thing a fighter can do.
it rly depends on how high fantasy you're going for tho i guess.
i think what you might want is something like E6 or what have you to limit the level characters get to, other wise this user is right that you can't really fix 3.pf in that way because of how the system is structured.

You'd be applying them to things the martial classes do more often and more consistently. Reversing a trap gets them a crit, sneak attack a crit, etc.

That way spellcasters get powerful, consistent effects that have only a few d6 damage variance. Martials get wild swings in crit power.

Totally agree on this one. Though instead of giving martial classes a resource mechanic, I've been tinkering with removing vancian casting in favour of a cooldown-like system that encourages usage of low level spells in between castings of higher level ones.
Martials can then use a variation on the cooldown for 'power moves' of sorts, so that they're essentially on the same resource mechanic as the casters, and also are encouraged to intersperse weaker moves during combat, so that their stronger moves are available when they need them.

I think part of the problem is that a vast majority of the people out there making games haven't had an ounce of training in martial arts. Riddle of Steel is the closest thing I've ever seen to a game designed by people who understood how combat worked.

Well most people also prefer thematic combat to realistic combat, and that's ignoring the fact that the existence of superhumans of any stripe completely changes the way combat would be fought.

I don't think I understand the term 'thematic' combat?

And monsters too. The medieval and renaissance arsenal was developed for killing people and horses, and while some of them would still work on a manticore or griffon, the people of that world would undoubtedly have their own tools and tactics for slaying those beasts.

That said, having an understanding of how combat works is still going to help you design a good combat system, even if you go the thematic route.

I mean combat as its done in fiction and movies, combat based around looking cool over practical effectiveness.

Swinging on chandelliers, shooting the gun out of people's hands, blocking attacks with your sword's sharp end, all things that are either impossible or useless in a real fight.

A real fight is quick, messy, and usually falls to the person whose bigger and better armed unless there's a huge skill discrepancy. Fake fights are slow, dramatic, and flashy.

Reading through medieval combat manuals, studying martial forms and seeing how real equipment was used, then applying it to RPGs is an acquired taste, not something most casual RPers are going to get into.

Is that something that people really prefer? Or is that just what they've gotten used to? I used to play in a group that was mostly Pathfinder/DnD. Recently we switched to The One Ring because we're all pretty into Tolkien. Everyone enjoys the way stances work in combat in how it's a risk/reward calculation. It's not flashy or dramatic - it's pretty lethal actually. And everyone thinks it's great, each round is a new gamble as opposed to just rolling the same attack dice each turn and comparing it to AC. I think you need to give players a little bit in terms of mechanics sometimes to get their imagination rolling. Then again, that's entirely anecdotal and only something I've seen locally.

Prefer is a strong word, I think it comes down to disinterest. Most people I know care more about looking badass like their chinese cartoons then realizing "yes, you can use a sword's pommel as a blunt instrument"

Really what I find interesting is introducing superhumans, and trying to deduce what kind of reasonable fighting styles they might come up with, or how 'realistic' fighting changes with ridiculous physical traits thrown in.

I would look at out of combat things. Give fighters a better ability to expand in to those areas.

Build followers/henchmen

Build fortresses

Leadership and intimidation

>>Even if i do give fighters and the like spells i still feel like theyre uninteresting. "I hit the enemy with my super hit i can only do occasionally" isnt really as exciting as "I polymorph the enemy" or "I freeze them in ice". Similarly, for rangers i feel like "I shoot 3 arrows" is much more dull than "I turn the ground underneath my opponents into quicksand".

how about stuff like

"I hit the ground so hard it shakes and knocks all enemies off balance"

"I hit the enemy so hard that they go flying off into the distance"

or something like "you hit the enemy with unbelievable force, roll a d20 to see if they explode into bloody chunks"

get DBZ with it

Right, let's turn martials into speshul snowflakes with Wizard spells. Go play a baby SJW library tog like 4e, you ducking autist.

What's wrong with giving fighters something like "you're able to spin with enough centrifugal force to knock enemies away while dealing twice your weapon damage" or "Multiply your jumping distance by your STR score" when the wizard has access to fireball and fly?

I mean, if we're taking D&D's scaling into account, a dude with 16+ STR should be absolute monsters as far physique is concerned.

This is exactly what i want to avoid. I usually throw in some magic items with limited uses for my martial classes but i want to avoid making them close-range burly wizards.
why cant they do this all the time? if they can its broken but if they cant its arbitrary. Why can they even do this besides magic? Yes its ultimately a game but i like to make sense within the world's parameters.
I thought about introducing a fatigue system but i worry it will either be too punishing or pointless.