What is the best fighter class?

[sleeper]

Let me point this out not sneak attack classes pure fighter classes? Which can do more damage and tank more hits?

[HeLLfire]

Do more damage and tank more hits are usually exclusive.
For the most dps you'd either go TWF or 2-H with powerattack, weapon focus, spez etc.
Barbarians and 2HF archtypes do good here.

For the best tank you'd go tower shield, dodge\combat expertice etc.
Probably a Tower shield expert into Stalwart Defender would be best here.

[Locklave]

That question is very complex. You need to say the specific type of fighter you want for a real answer.

2 handed fighter?
Sword and Board?
Two weapon fighting?
Tower shield super tank?

Everything you want costs something else. Going super tank means less damage, going super damage (any of those builds) costs you tanking.

Even 2 handed Fighter and Barbarian are different. Fighter does better sustained damage has heavier armor, Barbarian can do bursts of damage for limited time and is far more faster on their feet but lack armor. Barbarian has more Hp but you need to weigh that against the armor.

It's seriously complex. You need to detail how you want to play and what you'd be willing to give up.

"Which can do more damage and tank more hits?"

This is not a thing.

[Kyutaru]

Just be a monk so you can tank while you do damage.

[Wintermist]

For such characters that I want to be able to do a bit of both I tend to go with Paladin, since they add a lot of utility while also being able to take hits and deal damage. Unless you specifically want it to be under the Fighter category in terms of classes.

[dfedwards2001]

For damage, a two handed barbarian raging should outdamage a two handed fighter if only due to pounce on charge. Both should output tonnes of damage though and its seldom going to make too much difference which precisely does more.

A two handed paladin doesn't have quite as many bonuses except when he's buffed and smiting evil when he should catch up.

Similarly, a two handed ranger will do less except when he's buffed and fighting a favored enemy (or applying an instant enemy spell).

For tanking the fighter just has too many in-built advantages (heavy armour, armour training, spare feats to spend on defence). Which kind of fighter depends on what exactly you want to do. Aldori Defender, Tower Shield specialist, Duelist, Stalwart Defender all have various pros and cons.

Ignoring monks because there are too many potential builds.

[elven1289]

It's possible on an easy difficulty. Take Invulnerable Rager barbarian, the archetype with 10\- DR. On story mode, most of enemies hit si lightly, thah all of it will be stopped by DR.

[wendigo211]

Are you talking by itself, or buffed by other classes? If you're buffed by other characters, I'm thinking it might be the Monk. Those two extra full AB flurry Attacks +unarmed damage when buffed with Legendary Proportions might move them to the fore. Since you can get a +4 Agile Fist amulet (to use dex for both AC and damage) and get +5 dodge robes, you're looking at a higher AC than a Fighter too.

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Kyutaru:

Just be a monk so you can tank while you do damage.

Seconded. "Ignoring sneak attack classes" I assume means that you are referring to any kind of martial character and not fighters specifically. Monks are amazing and fun.

As far as "pure" classes go monks tend to have the highest AC out of anyone. The best way to get AC is through dex stacking combined with bracers of armor. Due to the low maximum dex bonus on armor, you'll end up going naked/robed regardless of class if you stack dex, so you might as well gain the extra Wisdom (or charisma) bonus to AC that monks have. Monks also have easier access to Crane style, which makes Defensive Fighting an actually affordable option (-2 attack for +4 ac, instead of -4 for +2), and then Crane Wing adds another +4 AC with some limitations.

As far as damage, Monks also have the best personal damage (discounting pets) of any non-sneak attack martial class. Their Unarmed damage die is insane, and flurry of blows adds additional attacks at highest BAB, so they hit more often than a 2-weapon fighter with better to-hit and higher damage than a 2-hander at high level.

To top it all off, they get style strikes and stunning fists which allow them to add additional affects to their attacks, or even additional attacks in the case of Ki Strikes.

Where a Monk becomes more questionable is when you compare him to a Sneak Attacker (which OP specifically doesn't want) OR a pet class. So Rangers and Mad Dog Barbarians have an advantage here, but only because of what their pets can do, not the class itself.

[dfedwards2001]

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

As far as damage, Monks also have the best personal damage (discounting pets) of any non-sneak attack martial class. Their Unarmed damage die is insane, and flurry of blows adds additional attacks at highest BAB, so they hit more often than a 2-weapon fighter with better to-hit and higher damage than a 2-hander at high level.

Monks are great and the game has some crazy good monk items but to this bit I'm skeptical. How does the monk get his to-hit higher than a two-handed fighter (+5 weapon, weapon training, gloves, greater weapon focus) or barbarian (+5 weapon, stance, mighty rage)?

As to damage are you taking into account standard attack vs full attack? Crits?

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by dfedwards2001:

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

As far as damage, Monks also have the best personal damage (discounting pets) of any non-sneak attack martial class. Their Unarmed damage die is insane, and flurry of blows adds additional attacks at highest BAB, so they hit more often than a 2-weapon fighter with better to-hit and higher damage than a 2-hander at high level.

Monks are great and the game has some crazy good monk items but to this bit I'm skeptical. How does the monk get his to-hit higher than a two-handed fighter (+5 weapon, weapon training, gloves, greater weapon focus) or barbarian (+5 weapon, stance, mighty rage)?

As to damage are you taking into account standard attack vs full attack? Crits?

You misread. Higher damage than 2 handed, more hit than 2 weapon.

Compared to 2 weapon Fighting, a Monk's flurry of blows does not suffer an attack penalty. While they might not have the weapon training bonus a Fighter does on their best hit, their second and third best hits will have a higher total bonus, making the monk more likely to hit over all.

Compared to 2 handed fighting, a Monk's base damage die is huge. 2d8 at levels 16-19 and a whopping 3d8 at 20. They don't lose out on enhancement bonus either with a good necklace, nor do they lose out on bonus elemental damages because similar effects can be applied to natural/unarmed attacks with certain gloves. They do, however, lose out a bit on Crits with their at-best 19-20x2 crit (WITH improved critical). They still end up doing more damage. Also don't forget about the style strikes which add extra damage/penetration and the feats that combine all their attacks into one hit for the purpose of overcoming DR.

And yes, I totally forgot about the monk robes that add either +5 dodge +1 damage, or +5 damage +1 dodge (good/evil variants respectively). Monks have some crazy good items in this game indeed.

[Graygan]

Originally posted by sleeper:

Let me point this out not sneak attack classes pure fighter classes? Which can do more damage and tank more hits?

Overall? Without dips to get sneak attack? Straight up pure?

Monk. Either normal which is based on the unchained or Scaled fist which works better in this game because it gives you the face skills too.

Full BAB.

Easy to get very high AC with basic buffs from party members, good AC just by itself with self-barkskin.

Damage starts out low but ends up very very respectable.

Saves are good.

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Graygan:

Originally posted by sleeper:

Let me point this out not sneak attack classes pure fighter classes? Which can do more damage and tank more hits?

Overall? Without dips to get sneak attack? Straight up pure?

Monk. Either normal which is based on the unchained or Scaled fist which works better in this game because it gives you the face skills too.

Full BAB.

Easy to get very high AC with basic buffs from party members, good AC just by itself with self-barkskin.

Damage starts out low but ends up very very respectable.

Saves are good.

Damage only starts out low if you run Dex monk (you should) until you get an agile fist necklace, by that point it already exceeds the fighter/barbarian and only keeps going up from there. A level 1 monk with the same stats as a level 1 fighter will outdamage the fighter.

It's just that a level 1 monk probably will have more Dex/Wis and much less Strength, which leads to lower damage until he can apply his dex bonus in place of strength, at which point he loses nothing and gains armor. In fact a level 1 Dex monk with no agile fist amulet is virtually non-viable as a character. He does 1d6-2 damage, literally 0 on most attacks, unless he instead equips a crossbow and ignores everything his class is supposed to do. That's the price you pay for building around a magic item (or a 3 level rogue dip for finesse training, but OP doesn't want that).

[Midnight]

I mean, if we want low level damage potential with mid level AC insanity then sword saint into duelist is probably the best choice.

DEX builds in general are better tanks but they do get going later.

Anyway, dueling sword sword saint human gets full DEX-to-damage at level 1 along with some pretty high attack. Later on you can stack AC boost from INT with duelist and magic items for some insane dodge AC.

The damage will also be pretty respectable and you can make your weapon keen +1 at will. (Not that there's a shortage of dueling swords).

But that's not exaclty "fighter" class since sword saint does get spell casting.

[amiablequinn]

I've been tinkering around with some aldori builds and I have come across a pretty good one

aldori 8/thug 3/scaled monk1/duelist 7/paladin 2

the nice thing about this build is you can get an extremely high unbuffed ac so you don't have to deal with the annoyance, the downside is that a huge number of the AC boni do not kick in unitl the first round of combat. But you will have a very high initiative so that shouldn't be too much of an issue. Will save will be abysmal so watch out for enchantment effects.

Go halfling

Str 9
dex19
con 14
int 14
wis 7
cha 16

grab aldori 1/thug3/scaled monk 1 first because that will get you a ton of feats, 2d6 sneak attack and weapon precision, evasion (you will have an absurd reflex save in this build) and crane style by level 5. then do aldori until steel wall and transition into a duelist (you only need 1 additonal feat - combat mobility).

fully upgraded crane+aldori feat gives you a BONUS to hit when you are in defensive stance due to the wonky way the system adds in those feats

I chose the last 2 levels as paladin for the saves but you can do wahtever here, I would choose a full BAB class thoush because especially at harder difficulties oyu want the AB

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by amiablequinn:

I've been tinkering around with some aldori builds and I have come across a pretty good one

aldori 8/thug 3/scaled monk1/duelist 7/paladin 2

the nice thing about this build is you can get an extremely high unbuffed ac so you don't have to deal with the annoyance, the downside is that a huge number of the AC boni do not kick in unitl the first round of combat. But you will have a very high initiative so that shouldn't be too much of an issue

Go halfling

Str 9
dex19
con 14
int 14
wis 7
cha 16

grab aldori 1/thug3/scaled monk 1 first because that will get you a ton of feats, 2d6 sneak attack and weapon precision, evasion (you will have an absurd reflex save in this build) and crane style by level 5. then do aldori until steel wall and transition into a duelist (you only need 1 additonal feat - combat mobility).

fully upgraded crane+aldori feat gives you a BONUS to hit when you are in defensive stance due to the wonky way the system adds in those feats

I chose the last 2 levels as paladin for the saves but you can do wahtever here, I would choose a full BAB class thoush because especially at harder difficulties oyu want the AB

Why not Aasimar? More stats with less penalties and you get to take the Wings feat for an extra 3 AC (best feat in the game).

For what it's worth, this build is not supposed to work as well as it does. Flurry of Blows doesn't seem to care whether you are using a shield and/or two weapons and/or a non-monk weapon, it just adds a flat +1/2 attacks (main hand) no matter what. I think wearing armor might disable it, but that's all. The monks AC bonus doesn't seem to turn off with shields either, so again, bugs make it more OP than it should be.