Fighters and their Issues
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 8:17 am
This reply actually stemmed from another thread, but since that thread really had little to do with fighters, I figured it'd be best to move it to its own thread. The conversation had moved on to how alot of the new changes seemed to be giving fighters the short end of the stick: while I tend to agree this is true, I also fully acknowledge that the latest changes are a work in progress, and by no means are they meant to be the final result. With that in mind, I figured I'd make a few observations.
In D&D, fighters are, at first glance, woefully weak when compared to most anything else. Sure they get lots of feats, but generally what those feats do is creep their damage potential up slowly, while the rest of the classes are gaining spells or sneak attack damage that jumps up every level or two. Eventually, they're left behind except for a few key things, almost none of which exist in FK.
1) Spell Resistance. One of the balancing factors that helps keep fighters relevant is that, as you advance, spell resistance is more and more common, until eventually actually landing a spell is a crapshoot. Fighters bread and butter becomes their ability to hit things that are resistant to their wizard buddies fireballs.
2) Secondary attack actions. Technically bash fills the role of some of these (grapple, trip, bull rush, etc), at least partially, but something like grapple that allowed a fighter to effectively nullify an enemy wizard, or trip to assist everyone in the group (since it drops the targets AC until they get off the ground) would give the fighter the versatility that makes them playable in D&D.
3) "Christmas Tree effect". In D&D, this is the term used to describe the rapid escalation of magic items that PCs need to keep up with what 3E calls "Effective Character Level". This obviously isn't terribly important in FK, since things aren't built around a semi-rigid Challenge Rating system, but it has some relevance here because fighters are the single worst offenders in the Christmas tree effect. Most other classes gain abilities that allow them to be effective without mass quantities of magic items; not so with fighters. They need their magic armor, need their magic sword, take them away, and its like taking magic away from a wizard.
Because of this, the recent changes are of course going to look worst for fighters: magic item stacking was removed, and the game has yet to balance itself by adding the more powerful items that its avoided for so long (because of the stacking). I'm quite sure this issue is a known one, and the staff has already said they are working on it, so I doubt it'll be an issue for too long, but for right now, it is.
Part of the issue I suspect is that the feat system is really still being implemented (there still aren't all that many to choose from), and in D&D, a fighters value comes almost entirely from their ability to gain mass quantities of feats. By adding some of the more valuable fighter-based feats, such as weapon specialization and two-weapon fighting feats, as well as some of the more exotic sorts like two-weapon rend, I suspect fighters problems would be rendered moot pretty quick.
Overall I love the recent changes, both because I think they're great additions, and because it means the game as a whole is moving in a really fun direction. So, while this post has been by and large a collection of my personal observations, I'd like to take this moment to say to the staff that, I know I've made a pain of myself since I returned (and for that I am exceedingly sorry), but I personally appreciate all the hard work, and think its bringing some really positive results.
Keep it up!
In D&D, fighters are, at first glance, woefully weak when compared to most anything else. Sure they get lots of feats, but generally what those feats do is creep their damage potential up slowly, while the rest of the classes are gaining spells or sneak attack damage that jumps up every level or two. Eventually, they're left behind except for a few key things, almost none of which exist in FK.
1) Spell Resistance. One of the balancing factors that helps keep fighters relevant is that, as you advance, spell resistance is more and more common, until eventually actually landing a spell is a crapshoot. Fighters bread and butter becomes their ability to hit things that are resistant to their wizard buddies fireballs.
2) Secondary attack actions. Technically bash fills the role of some of these (grapple, trip, bull rush, etc), at least partially, but something like grapple that allowed a fighter to effectively nullify an enemy wizard, or trip to assist everyone in the group (since it drops the targets AC until they get off the ground) would give the fighter the versatility that makes them playable in D&D.
3) "Christmas Tree effect". In D&D, this is the term used to describe the rapid escalation of magic items that PCs need to keep up with what 3E calls "Effective Character Level". This obviously isn't terribly important in FK, since things aren't built around a semi-rigid Challenge Rating system, but it has some relevance here because fighters are the single worst offenders in the Christmas tree effect. Most other classes gain abilities that allow them to be effective without mass quantities of magic items; not so with fighters. They need their magic armor, need their magic sword, take them away, and its like taking magic away from a wizard.
Because of this, the recent changes are of course going to look worst for fighters: magic item stacking was removed, and the game has yet to balance itself by adding the more powerful items that its avoided for so long (because of the stacking). I'm quite sure this issue is a known one, and the staff has already said they are working on it, so I doubt it'll be an issue for too long, but for right now, it is.
Part of the issue I suspect is that the feat system is really still being implemented (there still aren't all that many to choose from), and in D&D, a fighters value comes almost entirely from their ability to gain mass quantities of feats. By adding some of the more valuable fighter-based feats, such as weapon specialization and two-weapon fighting feats, as well as some of the more exotic sorts like two-weapon rend, I suspect fighters problems would be rendered moot pretty quick.
Overall I love the recent changes, both because I think they're great additions, and because it means the game as a whole is moving in a really fun direction. So, while this post has been by and large a collection of my personal observations, I'd like to take this moment to say to the staff that, I know I've made a pain of myself since I returned (and for that I am exceedingly sorry), but I personally appreciate all the hard work, and think its bringing some really positive results.
Keep it up!