Editing Fighter (section)

===3rd edition===
In 3.x, the advent of [[Feats]] was supposed to make fighters more attractive to play. The fighter gets loads of feats, making it the only class that can take more than one full-size feat tree (Archery, Weapon Specialization, etc.). But feats brought a nerf in disguise. Fighters could no longer use the best weapons like the "spiked chain" without spending feats to do so, or taking a significant -4 penalty to hit. The only fighter feats really worth getting involved a horrible exploit in 3.0 called "the bag of rats" (the fighter dropped a bag full of rats in front of an enemy, then used Whirlwind Attack feat to attack all the rats in a single round, then used Great Cleave to get a free attack on the enemy for each rat killed. This was clobbered in 3.5). There were other nerfs as well. Bonus attacks received hit penalties that made them nigh-worthless, and actually using them meant choosing between movement or full attack, one of [[Monte Cook]]'s more subtle and fiendish nerfs in his endless quest to ensure [[CoDzilla| total spellcaster domination]]. Bow rate of fire and damage was nerfed, and crossbows, which any character could use, got a significant damage increase. And while no spellcaster had to deal with dead-level bullshit, fighters got them ''every other level''. At least rogues got sneak attack dice everything was immune to.

The new skill system overtook things that any character could do in previous versions of the game, and with their tiny number of "skill points", fighters became helpless bumbling buffoons in just about everything... not that more skill points would have helped them. All of their class skills that benefited from their best stats (strength and dexterity) suffered huge nerfs when wearing heavy armor. They had no class skills that benefited from their second most important stat (constitution) and only one (ride) that benefited from their third most important stat (dexterity), and the rest of their stats were dump stats. So, in other words, they had exactly one skill that was actually worth putting skill points into.

Meanwhile, spellcasting became so easy, and surviving to the level where higher level spells were possible so likely, that a single [[CoDzilla|caster]] could bring down entire armies in one or two rounds.  The result was that your party was better off having an animal companion or the ''summon monster'' line of spells than with a fighter.  Fighter became something you multi-classed your [[rogue]], [[barbarian]], or [[cleric]] into for one or two levels, in order to get their bonus feats and weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies. It was still a scrumptious dip class for those first few levels, but it was generally best left behind afterwards.

Fighter is the only class in the game to have '''two''' iconic characters that actually got used:  Tordeck the dwarf and Regdar the human. Tordeck came first, but the suits came and demanded the Fighter iconic be a Human male ''and'' this human male be prominent in art. In response, the devs made both the iconic and, as an in-joke about their disdain for the situation, illustrations featuring Regdar were primarily of the him being victim of various hazards or abilities. This ended with Regdar appearing dead in the core book for 4th edition.

====How to play one effectively====
You've got three options, depending on how optimized you want to be:

#Dip and get out (dungeoncrusher alternate class features aren't bad even if you don't wanna go past 2)
#Add some homebrew bullsh** to make them suck less
#Play as an orc or warforged. Orcs have +4 strength and no penalties to con or dex, which is fucking amazing for a +0 LA race. Warforged, meanwhile, have a shitload of immunities so you don't have to worry about saves so much and can take Adamantine Body at level 1 and be borderline indestructible for those first several levels until they can prestige into Juggernaut. If all you can do is hit stuff with a stick, you might as well get really really good at it. Dwarf might also be a good choice of race.

Weaponwise, you'll want to get one of the best options: spiked chain, rope dart, or dragon chain (for trip builds), kaorti resin jovar or kaorti resin elven courtblade (for crit builds), dwarven warpike (for polearm builds), gnomish quickrazor (for iaijutsu focus), and so on.

{{D&D3-Classes}}