Fighter

Tordek, The manliest of all the Fighters. He is in it for the bitches.

The Fighter is one of the basic classes in almost every RPG system ever made.

Class role

The fighter's primary role is serving as a meat shield and smashing (slicing, piercing, whatever) things inanimate, living, and undead (as well as any others you can possibly think of). Fighters are also traditionally good at physical activities like jumping, riding animals, balancing, and drowning under the weight of their own armor. However, given their tiny number of skill points, they can typically only be good at one or two skills while the rest languish. Without fighter(s), a party typically needs tactics or a wizard mastermind of a high level to ensure that a GM with intelligence exceeding a doorknob doesn't pick at least one of them off any given day, or more likely; one guy who can summon creatures who make the fighter look totally lame by comparison, like Elder Earth Elementals. Outside of combat and roleplaying, however, the fighter is vulnerable to skill checks. For this reason, combat-focused rogues often MC into fighter for one or two levels for the bonus feats and HD.

Dungeons and Dragons

In D&D the Fighter class has existed since the very first incarnations (then called "fighting-man"). In 3.x the fighter is a meatshield that gets loads of Feats, making it the only class that can take more than one full-size feat tree such as archery and weapon specialization. This is "balanced" by taking away virtually all skill use ability, which means that the Fighter (usually encased in heavy armor) would have difficulty jumping across a 5-foot hole if the DM made them roll for it. In 1st 2nd and 3rd editions, the fighter's strength was endurance. Their killing power lasted far longer than that of the mages or clerics as they could not run out of sword. This benefit is, however, far outstripped by the fact that your average cleric could easily become a monster in close-combat, especially once one got to the higher levels (this being the main reason Fighters in 3.X are considered functionless wads of tissue).

Fighters were, for some unknown reason, considered seriously underpowered in D&D 3.5 up to the point of people saying "Yeah, sure, you can join; we could use a fighter. Just don't use any splatbooks." This was a polite way of refusing a request upon joining the party. If so much as one guy could summon creatures in a party, the fighter is rendered totally useless because summoned creatures can do the tanking job better.

In 3.5, the fighter makes a scrumptious dip class for a melee character, offering full attack bonus and two feats for the first two levels.

In 4th edition the Fighter is a "Defender", basically meaning that its main purpose is to serve as a meatshield and prevent the enemies from getting close to the squishies behind them. Fighters do more single-target damage than any other class in the game that isn't a "Striker" (and in some cases can out-damage strikers, especially if they get a lot of opportunity attacks). They also make the squares around them a living hell for anyone who tries to move through them at all if they're marked. They come in five flavors: "Great Weapon" (uses two-handed weapons, considered to be a striker by the back door), "Guardian" (the archetypical 4th Edition fighter, uses a one-hand weapon and a shield, has primary access to most of the best Fighter powers including the truly awesome Tide of Iron at-will), "Battlerager" (a berserker fighter build, lives on yummy, yummy temporary hit points), "Tempest" (a two-weapon fighter build for those who feel like they cannot live without a two-weapon warrior who wears heavy armor), and "Brawler" (uses a one-handed weapon, but leaves the other hand open so they can grab people while breaking faces, use them as human shields, or snap necks).

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