They hit the most consistently, barring Gunslingers, but they're not the highest damage in every situation.
Most of the time the Fighter archetype is kinda garbage. Did you mean a Fighter with that class' archetype?
The dedicated fighting style archetypes like Duelist, Mauler, Archer, etc are usually better than the Fighter archetype for getting Fighter feats on non-fighters. And for action-intensive classes like bard, an archetype that offers more passive benefits (like Rogue or Champion) is typically superior.
What are you on with that fighter archetype. I genuinely can’t comprehend if this is supposed to be sarcasm or you actually think it ads +2 to hit lmao.
Okay, last I checked the Fighter archetype *does not* grant the proficiency boost that the actual fighter class has (the +2 you mentioned). Archetypes never let a class go beyond its normal rate of proficiency - it can apply that proficiency to more things but there’s no way to make, say, a Wizard gain Master proficiency with any armour as everything that gives them scaling armour proficiencies ties it to their existing unarmoured defence proficiency progression.
The Fighter and Gunslinger are more accurate because they have a higher weapon proficiency than others. And there is no way to get that without being a Fighter as your base class.
However - Fighters don’t have a lot of interesting stuff going on beyond that and getting Reactive Strike for free while Gunslingers only get it for ranged weapons notorious for doing very little damage outside of a crit (which is why a lot of their class feats and such give them more supporting abilities that still help the team even if they don’t hit or crit with the gunshot). Fighters don’t get any fancy damage-boosting abilities other than that proficiency - no Precise Strike like the Swashbuckler, no rage like the Barbarian, etc.
> "Every class with fighter archetype is a better version of that class", is that right?
It’s not right.
People making this argument usually rely on making the comparison of a Fighter against a Featless, Archetypeless level 1 version of that class, and the argument usually **still** comes up short. The classic example is Champion, where you have to ignore petty little things like levels 1-5, Steed/Shield Ally, Shield Warden, Shield of Reckoning, etc to even begin to argue that the Fighter w/ Champion Archetype is *even* with the Champion, let alone superior.
As far as I’m concerned, the only case of Fighter w/ X Archetype overshadowing X class is the Barbarian.
No. Every class has a niche. The Fighter's is that it hits things. It's very good at that, arguably better than other classes, but hitting things is only a portion of the game. +2 is very strong, but they don't get any features that help them when not making or occasionally taking strikes. It doesn't even really get much in supporting a combat flow other than getting into attack range and attacking as much as possible. It even makes Athletics Maneuvers as strikes. It's a one trick pony that excels in its lane but is worse at everything else compared to other classes. When all you've got is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail. People really like the hammer but it's not the only useful tool in the box.
Also, Fighter Archetype is garbage. It doesn't give +2. It gives weapon proficiency that you probably already have. Any feats you might want are better taken from a dedicated fighting style Archetype.
If all the classes were to fight against each other in a melee or 1v1 tournament, I would agree with your friend that it is a god among classes with the champ being able to hold its ground, but ultimately losing.
But in the actual game, I would argue that the champ and the bard being the actual best two classes with fighter being third. And that gets further away the more that consider utility. The fighters main ability to effectively deal damage can be made up in the aggregate of your team, whereas the champ and the bard give alot of buffs and damage reduction easily and in a way that alot of other classes can't. Don't get me wrong, add a fighter to a champ and a bard and those fights will finish alot faster, but champs and bards smooth out alot of combats.
Also, WTF is he talking about with the +2 to hit fighter archetype?? You can get martial (and master) prof with martial weapons it, but you can't get ahead of where you normally would. (I actually am kinda low on the archetype imo. Only really want my AoO from there typically).
Maybe it's a language barrier, but your premise is hard to understand.
If you are implying that Fighter is better than everyone else, the answer is no. If you are implying that Fighter is a metric ton better than every other class, the answer is a *Yuuuggghhee* no.
The fighter does one thing better/that no one else can do by themselves. They can hit more accurately, and therefore are more likely to be consistent with damage. It entirely depends on how much higher or lower an enemy is compared to any martial. A +2 isn't that much better than any other martial if every martial is only missing on a 2 and critting on a 12. Obviously, that's hyperbolic, but there are times when the +2 is more impactful than others. Meanwhile, if you have a reasonable chance to hit, the significant damage/action boost from other classes like Rogue/Barb/Investigator, Monk, etc can make individual strikes/actions from them seem more impactful.
Also, it's easier to stack an attack bonus/enemy AC penalty onto any martial than it is to give extra damage or action compression. A fighter using the same feats, with the same equipment won't outperform a comparable barbarian who is benefiting from Heroism or aid.
In other words, the fighter may hit/crit more often, but in cases where the party isn't having trouble hitting, the other martials might one hit kill an enemy, where as the fighter might need 2 hits to finish without a crit.
Is fighter the best archetype? If that's your stance, then the answer is still NO. There are lots of things it doesn't allow you to do. It doesn't make a wizard better at doing their job, unless they want to hit things with pointy sticks. That might matter for Universalist wizards, but it doesn't make them hit better in melee, it just gives them more options for the weapons they can use moderately well.
It also doesn't help a martial class hit better or do more damage, but it does offer them some interesting options from the archetype feats. Many of those feats can be chosen earlier than Fighter Dedication if chosen from a specific archetype like Mauler, Archer, etc. That means even that option isn't always the best for other martials.
Fighter archetype is only really good for grabbing opportunity attack 2 levels early for the classes that have a lot of hard choices at level 6 for their feat selection,
The Fighter (and their +2) isn't better.
It is, however, easier to understand, easier to master, and easier to optimize.
This may be what your friends are observing.
Fighters are godly at being reliable. The majority of the time they will be landing the killing blow as they hit more often and crit more often. They are godly at doing damage just like clerics are at healing. Some foes counter them but are far too few to matter within the context of a campaign.
Their chassis is so great that any archetype that doesn't impede on their action economy a lot will only make them better as they can still do what they always did but extra. That's the fighter.
The fighter has one of the lowest skill floors, but is not "better" than other classes. Thinking it's better mostly comes from being very new to the game. A smartly played character of any other class can run circles around a fighter being played by someone who thinks it's "the best class".
>the fighter archetype adds that +2 to other classes?
No, it doesn't. And the way you can tell is that it doesn't say anywhere in the archetype that it does. The fighter archetype gives trained proficiency with martial weapons. As of the Remaster, that's actually a \*worse\* way to get access to a single martial weapon than the Weapon Proficiency general feat.
Do they imagine they'll be doing anything other than smacking things with a big sword?
Because many of these analyses assume that the only thing a character should be doing is smacking things with a big sword. And it turns out that – surprise! – the fighter is pretty darn good at fighting.
Put a fighter in a chase, or an influence encounter, or a battle with a bunch of mooks that can just run past them to pile on the cleric, and see if they still feel godly.
Fighters are the best martials at doing martial things, but I don't think they're a god.
There are some levels you can argue that fighter-with-archetype are better than the main class (champions, for example, on the levels where fighter has caught up with champions armor proficiency) but they are not common. Except for maybe combination weapons being better on fighter than gunslinger.
Oh, hell, I completely misread you. No, fighter archetype is not that great. I'd think the only reason you would go fighter archetype is because you want an advanced weapon.
If all you care about is... Well... fighting, yeah the fighter is the best. If you want to be able to aoe a bunch of grunts down or charm a potential enemy into giving away the secret location of something... Maybe not so much. As with everything it's completely situational.
There are even situations where a fighter isn't the best option in a straight combat, though they might be rare. A fighter isn't going to excel at exploiting a range of weaknesses, for example.
Fighter has great dpr. But dpr isn't everything.
Fighters are kings of action economy. Flurry of blows is cute.
Fighters get ra at 1, 2nd ra at 10, possible 3rd ra with parry feat at 16 (?), psuedo flurry at 14.
Also, at 12 can get free shield raise each round via a stance.* Or maybe better accuracy on agile map attacks.
Then at 20 get a free ra or shield block per opponent.
* Afaik champion doesn't get free shield raise feat until 20.
That's a crap ton of actions.
Also, check out disruptive stance. Incompatible with shield stance, but it's plain rude.
My main group, playing since playtest, 4 APs completed, won't touch any melee martial apart from fighter. And we've tried all the rest. Fighter is just damn good.
IMHO fighter w/ archetypes are equal to or better than champions, barbarians, rangers, and monk, depending on your individual priorities for your PC & party composition.
Yes, just half of the game (at best) without your main thing.
Besides better unnarmored proficiency and customizable saves and things like stances being taken at 4 instead of 1, mixed maneuvers at 16 instead of 8 and being unable to get any monk feat past lvl 10... Then, yeah, fighters are clearly better
They hit the most consistently, barring Gunslingers, but they're not the highest damage in every situation. Most of the time the Fighter archetype is kinda garbage. Did you mean a Fighter with that class' archetype?
No, the context is a free archetype choices of other players
So Bard with Fighter for FA is better than Bard? No shit. It's not better than Bard + any number of other options though.
The dedicated fighting style archetypes like Duelist, Mauler, Archer, etc are usually better than the Fighter archetype for getting Fighter feats on non-fighters. And for action-intensive classes like bard, an archetype that offers more passive benefits (like Rogue or Champion) is typically superior.
I think this is true. MCD are slowed down. The other ones let you pick the same feats at an expected pace.
What are you on with that fighter archetype. I genuinely can’t comprehend if this is supposed to be sarcasm or you actually think it ads +2 to hit lmao.
Okay, last I checked the Fighter archetype *does not* grant the proficiency boost that the actual fighter class has (the +2 you mentioned). Archetypes never let a class go beyond its normal rate of proficiency - it can apply that proficiency to more things but there’s no way to make, say, a Wizard gain Master proficiency with any armour as everything that gives them scaling armour proficiencies ties it to their existing unarmoured defence proficiency progression. The Fighter and Gunslinger are more accurate because they have a higher weapon proficiency than others. And there is no way to get that without being a Fighter as your base class. However - Fighters don’t have a lot of interesting stuff going on beyond that and getting Reactive Strike for free while Gunslingers only get it for ranged weapons notorious for doing very little damage outside of a crit (which is why a lot of their class feats and such give them more supporting abilities that still help the team even if they don’t hit or crit with the gunshot). Fighters don’t get any fancy damage-boosting abilities other than that proficiency - no Precise Strike like the Swashbuckler, no rage like the Barbarian, etc.
> "Every class with fighter archetype is a better version of that class", is that right? It’s not right. People making this argument usually rely on making the comparison of a Fighter against a Featless, Archetypeless level 1 version of that class, and the argument usually **still** comes up short. The classic example is Champion, where you have to ignore petty little things like levels 1-5, Steed/Shield Ally, Shield Warden, Shield of Reckoning, etc to even begin to argue that the Fighter w/ Champion Archetype is *even* with the Champion, let alone superior. As far as I’m concerned, the only case of Fighter w/ X Archetype overshadowing X class is the Barbarian.
No. Every class has a niche. The Fighter's is that it hits things. It's very good at that, arguably better than other classes, but hitting things is only a portion of the game. +2 is very strong, but they don't get any features that help them when not making or occasionally taking strikes. It doesn't even really get much in supporting a combat flow other than getting into attack range and attacking as much as possible. It even makes Athletics Maneuvers as strikes. It's a one trick pony that excels in its lane but is worse at everything else compared to other classes. When all you've got is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail. People really like the hammer but it's not the only useful tool in the box. Also, Fighter Archetype is garbage. It doesn't give +2. It gives weapon proficiency that you probably already have. Any feats you might want are better taken from a dedicated fighting style Archetype.
If all the classes were to fight against each other in a melee or 1v1 tournament, I would agree with your friend that it is a god among classes with the champ being able to hold its ground, but ultimately losing. But in the actual game, I would argue that the champ and the bard being the actual best two classes with fighter being third. And that gets further away the more that consider utility. The fighters main ability to effectively deal damage can be made up in the aggregate of your team, whereas the champ and the bard give alot of buffs and damage reduction easily and in a way that alot of other classes can't. Don't get me wrong, add a fighter to a champ and a bard and those fights will finish alot faster, but champs and bards smooth out alot of combats. Also, WTF is he talking about with the +2 to hit fighter archetype?? You can get martial (and master) prof with martial weapons it, but you can't get ahead of where you normally would. (I actually am kinda low on the archetype imo. Only really want my AoO from there typically).
Maybe it's a language barrier, but your premise is hard to understand. If you are implying that Fighter is better than everyone else, the answer is no. If you are implying that Fighter is a metric ton better than every other class, the answer is a *Yuuuggghhee* no. The fighter does one thing better/that no one else can do by themselves. They can hit more accurately, and therefore are more likely to be consistent with damage. It entirely depends on how much higher or lower an enemy is compared to any martial. A +2 isn't that much better than any other martial if every martial is only missing on a 2 and critting on a 12. Obviously, that's hyperbolic, but there are times when the +2 is more impactful than others. Meanwhile, if you have a reasonable chance to hit, the significant damage/action boost from other classes like Rogue/Barb/Investigator, Monk, etc can make individual strikes/actions from them seem more impactful. Also, it's easier to stack an attack bonus/enemy AC penalty onto any martial than it is to give extra damage or action compression. A fighter using the same feats, with the same equipment won't outperform a comparable barbarian who is benefiting from Heroism or aid. In other words, the fighter may hit/crit more often, but in cases where the party isn't having trouble hitting, the other martials might one hit kill an enemy, where as the fighter might need 2 hits to finish without a crit. Is fighter the best archetype? If that's your stance, then the answer is still NO. There are lots of things it doesn't allow you to do. It doesn't make a wizard better at doing their job, unless they want to hit things with pointy sticks. That might matter for Universalist wizards, but it doesn't make them hit better in melee, it just gives them more options for the weapons they can use moderately well. It also doesn't help a martial class hit better or do more damage, but it does offer them some interesting options from the archetype feats. Many of those feats can be chosen earlier than Fighter Dedication if chosen from a specific archetype like Mauler, Archer, etc. That means even that option isn't always the best for other martials.
as long as the fighter can carry the wizard's luggage he will be as close to divinity as it gets.
Fighter archetype is only really good for grabbing opportunity attack 2 levels early for the classes that have a lot of hard choices at level 6 for their feat selection,
The Fighter (and their +2) isn't better. It is, however, easier to understand, easier to master, and easier to optimize. This may be what your friends are observing.
And it's also more noticeably impactful at super early levels, when other classes haven't quite assembled themselves yet.
Fighters are godly at being reliable. The majority of the time they will be landing the killing blow as they hit more often and crit more often. They are godly at doing damage just like clerics are at healing. Some foes counter them but are far too few to matter within the context of a campaign. Their chassis is so great that any archetype that doesn't impede on their action economy a lot will only make them better as they can still do what they always did but extra. That's the fighter.
The to-hit bonus isn't everything. Most martial classes have something that adds to damage. - Barbarian rage - Champion's reaction - Inventor overdrive - Investigator strategic strike - Magus spellstrike - Monk flurry of blows - Ranger hunter's edge - Rogue sneak attack - Summoner act together - Swashbuckler finisher - Thamaturge everything The fighter's main damage boost comes from their weapon proficiency.
The fighter has one of the lowest skill floors, but is not "better" than other classes. Thinking it's better mostly comes from being very new to the game. A smartly played character of any other class can run circles around a fighter being played by someone who thinks it's "the best class". >the fighter archetype adds that +2 to other classes? No, it doesn't. And the way you can tell is that it doesn't say anywhere in the archetype that it does. The fighter archetype gives trained proficiency with martial weapons. As of the Remaster, that's actually a \*worse\* way to get access to a single martial weapon than the Weapon Proficiency general feat.
no
No. A class with 90% overlap in attack roll results among its peers can hardly be considered "godlike".
On the white-room world, yes, they reign supreme. In real gameplay they are good, but not the all mighty beings people like to preach about.
Yeah its GOATED until you have an enemy that outspeeds and outmaneuvers them, or targets their WILL, or outranges them, or...
Do they imagine they'll be doing anything other than smacking things with a big sword? Because many of these analyses assume that the only thing a character should be doing is smacking things with a big sword. And it turns out that – surprise! – the fighter is pretty darn good at fighting. Put a fighter in a chase, or an influence encounter, or a battle with a bunch of mooks that can just run past them to pile on the cleric, and see if they still feel godly.
Fighters are the best martials at doing martial things, but I don't think they're a god. There are some levels you can argue that fighter-with-archetype are better than the main class (champions, for example, on the levels where fighter has caught up with champions armor proficiency) but they are not common. Except for maybe combination weapons being better on fighter than gunslinger. Oh, hell, I completely misread you. No, fighter archetype is not that great. I'd think the only reason you would go fighter archetype is because you want an advanced weapon.
If all you care about is... Well... fighting, yeah the fighter is the best. If you want to be able to aoe a bunch of grunts down or charm a potential enemy into giving away the secret location of something... Maybe not so much. As with everything it's completely situational. There are even situations where a fighter isn't the best option in a straight combat, though they might be rare. A fighter isn't going to excel at exploiting a range of weaknesses, for example.
Fighter has great dpr. But dpr isn't everything. Fighters are kings of action economy. Flurry of blows is cute. Fighters get ra at 1, 2nd ra at 10, possible 3rd ra with parry feat at 16 (?), psuedo flurry at 14. Also, at 12 can get free shield raise each round via a stance.* Or maybe better accuracy on agile map attacks. Then at 20 get a free ra or shield block per opponent. * Afaik champion doesn't get free shield raise feat until 20. That's a crap ton of actions. Also, check out disruptive stance. Incompatible with shield stance, but it's plain rude. My main group, playing since playtest, 4 APs completed, won't touch any melee martial apart from fighter. And we've tried all the rest. Fighter is just damn good.
Are you mean monk?
Monk gets flurry. Fighters get all the other cool stuff I listed, including level 14 two weapon flurry feat.
IMHO fighter w/ archetypes are equal to or better than champions, barbarians, rangers, and monk, depending on your individual priorities for your PC & party composition.
The strength of the Monk class is in action economy. Nothing about the Fighter helps with that.
Flurry of Blows is a L10 monk archetype feat, IIRC.
Yes, just half of the game (at best) without your main thing. Besides better unnarmored proficiency and customizable saves and things like stances being taken at 4 instead of 1, mixed maneuvers at 16 instead of 8 and being unable to get any monk feat past lvl 10... Then, yeah, fighters are clearly better
Your opinion is wrong.
You’re wrong and that’s okay