Please buff the fighter.

[Rhalius]

It's something that has bothered me since release pretty much, especially since going online. The fighter is terribly underpowered in later levels. They do well early on but the extra feats just don't measure up against the free feats and more special feats other classes get, on top of their spells, rage, sneak attack and other advantages.

Also, better prestige class options. Weapon Master has a long rediculous list of requirements and is the only option that forces you to bend over backwards to meet them.

I haven't ever played 3.5 D&D with pen and paper, but since this year I do play 5.0 as a fighter and looked up online that the general consensus is that the fighter is a pretty strong class there.
So perhaps some inspiration could be taken from there to improve things.

One thing could be that the fighter could get weapon focus, specialisation and their epic counterparts in ALL weapons they are proficient with as they level up.
It adds some versatility to the class without really making them stronger. They could switch easier between melee and ranged, and would be the only class that could viably wield two different weapons when dual wielding.
They could still need to take these four feats as a requirement however, but at a certain level it simply applies to all IF they have the feat.
They just should not get it early on to prevent people from exploiting by taking a few levels in fighter for it.

Another thing I'd improve would be their attack bonus. In PnP they get 5 attacks a round, more than any other class, without using special abilities or such. The fighter gets no bonuses to attack at all, they can only pick up weapon focus and epic focus. Which is available to all other classes as well.
I suggest they get a feat that improves several times as they level, increasing their attack bonus. And increasing it through epic levels as well.

They don't get second wind either which lets them regenerate some hitpoints in PnP, I suggest to give them a trait modified of the survivor trait that the champion archetype gets: Letting them regenerate some health when they are below half their health. This would of course need to be tweaked for balance to ensure it's not too much to be overpowered or too little to matter.
In PnP they get it at level 18, which seems reasonable to do in this game too.

I think these three things would really solidify the fighter as the reliable warrior who has staying power in longer battles and actually gets a chance to hit high level enemies.

[Ettanin]

3.5e differs completely from 5e. Also, fighters get bonus feats every 2nd level which allows them to get much more specialized in combat than all other classes. Fighter is not weak per se.

[Swiftereagle]

Fighter isn't weak per se he says. It certainly is if you factor in the monk class which is pretty much immune to everything.

[n00bdragon]

Fighter is dumpster tier in 5e and he's dumpster tier in 3e too. He sucks in NWN because it is trying to accurately reflect the design of 3e. If you want to play a more powerful character just pick a more powerful class, like Cleric or Wizard.

[red255]

Fighter is a dip class. you dip 4 levels in fighter for weapon spec. you don't need to go crazy with it. you take some weapon master, you take some dwarven defender, champion of torm, doesn't really matter, but you don't need more fighter

Champion of torm is basically a fighter but better after level 4.

[Selphea]

Fighter is a great class, just not by itself. It's good at unlocking prestige classes like Weapon Master and Shadowdancer. It's also good at turning non-combatant classes like Bard/Pale Master into absolute tanks. If you're a Dex-based character it lets you pick up Exotic weapons, the whole dual wield series and all the Fighter goodies and still have feats to cover the basics like Blind Fight and Finesse.

I do agree it'd be nice to get buffs though. I think a few PWs do what you're asking, though I can't name which ones offhand.

[Rhalius]

The extra feats are not enough, other classes tend to get as many feats but a lot of those are automatic when they reach a certain level and it's something unique to them.
Fighters don't get anything more than acces to two feats and they still need to purchase those feats and don't automatically get them. And all it does is give +6 melee damage in total with a single weapon.

Every class should be viable, none should be just to dip a few levels into.

Fighter is far from dumpster tier in 5e. Their strength is they don't rely much on rest. Short rest is enough to get their limited use abilities back and they can do a lot without spending limited use abilities. They aren't fancy but reliable. When the mages of the party are spent, the fighter can keep on going as long as there's health potions.
And in PnP, resting has more consequences and is not always possible. There's more pressure for time there since villains their plots don't rest while the players do.

But seriously, the extra attack bonus needs to happen. Bioware did a crappy job translating the fighter class to videogame form and it's about time it gets fixed.

Personally I strongly prefer the more grounded characters. The common soldier or sellsword who gets caught up in plots bigger than them and rises to the occasion, becoming a hero by their own bravery, skill with a sword and their own wits.
No special powers, divine favor or whatever.

[Selphea]

Originally posted by Rhalius:

The extra feats are not enough, other classes tend to get as many feats but a lot of those are automatic when they reach a certain level and it's something unique to them.
Fighters don't get anything more than acces to two feats and they still need to purchase those feats and don't automatically get them. And all it does is give +6 melee damage in total with a single weapon.

Every class should be viable, none should be just to dip a few levels into.

Fighter is far from dumpster tier in 5e. Their strength is they don't rely much on rest. Short rest is enough to get their limited use abilities back and they can do a lot without spending limited use abilities. They aren't fancy but reliable. When the mages of the party are spent, the fighter can keep on going as long as there's health potions.
And in PnP, resting has more consequences and is not always possible. There's more pressure for time there since villains their plots don't rest while the players do.

But seriously, the extra attack bonus needs to happen. Bioware did a crappy job translating the fighter class to videogame form and it's about time it gets fixed.

Personally I strongly prefer the more grounded characters. The common soldier or sellsword who gets caught up in plots bigger than them and rises to the occasion, becoming a hero by their own bravery, skill with a sword and their own wits.
No special powers, divine favor or whatever.

I actually feel no other class can do what Fighter can do if you plan your build out.

For an extreme example, that's up to 19 pre-epic feats as a Human, which is enough to pick up all the feats for Dev Crit, dual wield, exotic proficiency, Imp Knockdown and Imp Expertise without skimping on basics like Toughness, Blind Fight, Weapon Focus, Weapon Spec. After all that it still has feats to throw into Dodge and Mobility for good measure, so that it's Tumble class is the most gimmicky class in the game: Shadowdancer. While everyone else does the plain ol' Rogue.

Then it just kind of runs around in stealth to ambush people with Improved Knockdown and up to 3 Dev Crit checks. If they fail Discipline they eat another 4 more Dev Crit checks from dual kukris. If it gets in trouble it swaps the offhand Kukri for Tower Shield and presses Improved Expertise. Instant tank transformation. No other class can do that as fluidly.

Where Fighter really shines is when it's in a build with both an ambitious feat spread and a feat-hungry multiclass, like Bard + Blackguard which gets no bonus feats but needs a combination of song feats, metamagic and combat feats. You could go Fighter 20 in that build and get amazing mileage out of Divine Might with Lingering Curse Song with Extended War Cry.

That said, I do agree that melee classes are behind casters. That's a perennial NWN problem. I also agree that in most situations Fighters are not the best melee class. But they're not dumpster tier, they're above average. I rank them above Blackguard which is feat hungry and gimmicky, above Barbarian whose temporary Rage doesn't even outdamage Epic Spec, above Purple Dragon Knight which is a complete mess. Probably on the same tier as Ranger, who only has high level Bane vs Undead/Constructs going for it.

[ayrtep]

Take care make a pure fighter as they quickly run out of feats. Rather just use fighter as a tactic to grab a few quick feats while building something else.

[red255]

fighter has a few general prestige builds.

a Fighter Bard RDD 10, has alot of fighter levels. the huge amount of strength it gets allows it to use a two handed weapon like a greatsword to good effect, and improved knockdown is rather powerful with such a weapon. it also gets the strength required for devestating critical rather early in the 20s.

it is a great thing, and mainly a fighter. the dash of bard allows it access to appraise, tumble, use any item and preform.

its very powerful while being very versatile. Most of the game's content is available for you, you can use your single level of bard, to craft various things at the various crafting tables in the campaign

the other path is the fighter/WM/dwarven defender. which is a tad tougher to kill and spend more of its levels as a dwarven defender than anything else. its not really something I enjoy mainly because of the amount of things immune to critical hit.

but yeah.

being married to a particular weapon type isn't that bad.

[ɃƵ Crazy Cat Lady]

These excuses though, guys, if you are suggested to not go full fighter but just take a few points in fighter guess what that means? Means OP is right, and it needs a buff, and devs need to give you their attention, and make the changes. He's not asking for build advice, he is trying to tell the devs to FIX the game.

[Selphea]

Everyone in this thread has agreed Fighter isn't the strongest class. The convo is about whether it's dumpster tier when Barbarian, Blackguard, Purple Dragon Knight, Assassin exist.

Multiclassing is something all melee builds need to deal with because of certain mechanics like skill dumping into Tumble and splashing into multiclasses for front-loaded feats like Evasion. Even if the OP's requests were granted, skill dumping and multiclass splashing will still exist and it would still be unattractive to go pure single class.

I did run through some possibilities myself and have an idea of what I'd do to buff Fighter. Even then, i concluded that any solution will have to factor in multiclassing - which I am personally fine with.

I would be interested to hear other ideas on how Beamdog can fix the game though.

[Tesseract]

I guess the fundamental question is whether the (unmodded) game should be a faithful adaptation of D&D 3e, or change things in the name of balance, or stay true to what the game has been in the past. Obviously some things are already different to pnp, but how much can you change and still have it be NWN?

Fighters and spellcasters progressing unequally has been a recognised issue since the very earliest versions of D&D, and has become a well-known trope[tvtropes.org]. The percentile strength thing in AD&D is one of a long line of never-entirely-successful attempts at balancing their capabilities somewhat. Some might even consider fighters being overtaken by spellcasters in power at higher levels to be an iconic feature of D&D.

Way back in original D&D, the rules for the class actually stated that fighters gained political power as they levelled up. So wizards got reality-altering spells, but fighters got to command the armies and economic resources of their own barony, and had influence with other leaders.

So getting back to the original question, I think on the whole I'd prefer the base game to stay with mostly NWN classic rules, with perhaps some changes as long as they (a) don't make balance worse, and (b) bring the game closer to pnp 3e. Of course pnp 3e has its own issues, which is one of the reasons why 3.5 happened, but I think changing editions would mean it's no longer the same game.

That's just the base game with default settings though. For custom content, or if players want to choose a non-default ruleset, the more options the better. Assuming it's technically possible, allow using 3.5e rules, or 5e, or Pathfinder, or whatever else someone can dream up.

[Rhalius]

Just giving fighters an increasing attack bonus would be enough, it's what they should have gotten to begin with.
Start giving that from level 10 or so onwards, improving into epic levels as well and that would go a long way and would not help much with all the multiclassing, which has rightfully been reduced a lot by 5.0.

They'd stop missing those high AC targets.

I don't care much about some prestige classes being underpowered, would be nice if they get buffed but the core classes matter most.

Barbarians do get some unique stuff even outside of their rage and they can improve that rage pretty well with some feats.

Alternatively, fighters could be given more unique feats that no others can take, preferably stuff that doesn't become available at lower levels and mainly in epic levels to prevent broken multiclass shennanigans.

[ɃƵ Crazy Cat Lady]

Game needed to completely do away with the dnd system to be perfectly honest.

[Selphea]

NWN actually nerfed Fighters in many ways compared to D&D.

Tumble isn't supposed to be a must-have for a frontline fighter but because of NWN's 8AC house rule, ACs are inflated and if you don't have Tumble you're so much squishier.

Knockdown isn't supposed to require a feat but it does.

Discipline never existed either but again if you want to be a viable frontliner you need it otherwise you'll never be able to move if your opponent spams Knockdown.

Fighters are supposed to get Intimidate so that Blackguard is a natural unlock but they don't. i guess that'd make them too intimidating.

There's a whole lot of archery feats that didn't make it into NWN so the gap in performance between an archer shooting 6 arrows a round to tickle a single target vs an offensive caster with instant death AoEs is downright laughable.

And then on the spellcaster side they were for some reason buffed to be better in melee. The PnP editions had no such thing as lv2 or 3 weapon buffs adding 1d4 + 10 Fire damage with no save. Buffs are also not supposed to stack the way they do in NWN to give you +20 AB after a round of buffs. Those are entirely house rules which make Clerics so much better Fighters than Fighters.

I could rant for days but frankly the takeaway is there's so much broken stuff i don't think it's a matter of band-aiding another house rule for Fighter AB. But if there's something you really believe in, just make a mod.