Fighter Improvements: Combat Techniques

[Nevrus]

Fighter is a little lacking in identity, mechanically. It's usually just a bunch of feats that add bonuses to another identity, like Weaponmaster. This suggestion is to add some base-line abilities in line with the abilities other classes get, in order to improve their general performance and make pure fighter more viable.

Without Commentary:
Class Abilities
Level 10: Second Wind (Swift/Half-Round Action)
The fighter recovers 5 + 1/2 Con Mod hit points per fighter level. Shares a ten minute cooldown with Lay on Hands and Wholeness of Body.

Level 15: Indomitability (Free Action)
The fighter steels themselves to take blows, gaining 20% immunity to all physical damage. Lasts one turn. Improves to 30% at Fighter Level 21 and 40% at Fighter Level 28. Only useable while wearing heavy armor. Eight minute cooldown.

Level 20: Action Surge (Free Action)
The fighter presses in to push beyond their limits. For five rounds they gain one additional attack per round. Ten minute cooldown.

Level 26: Precise Strikes (Combat Mode, exclusive with Power Attack/IE)
The fighter focuses on landing hits at the expense of power. All damage they deal is reduced by 50% but they gain +5 (Soft) Attack Bonus.

New Feat: Epic Combat Mastery
Requirements: Fighter Level 28, Epic Weapon Specialization, Strength 25+
The fighter's combat abilities improve. This feat grants the following benefits:
+1 Attack
Second Wind now grants regeneration equal to the fighter's Constitution modifier for one turn when used.
Indomitability's cooldown is reduced to five minutes.
Action Surge's cooldown is reduced to five minutes, and it now lasts one turn.

Commentary:
The Level Order
Each ability has been placed at a level that reduces the abusive use cases and comes in where it would be helpful.

Second Wind at level 10 puts it out of the 4/6 dip range. Scaling on fighter levels and constitution mod means that it's always worth half of your total Fighter Level HP. This rewards higher investment in the Fighter class and Constitution. A ten level dip with a 14 base con buffed to 26 means this would give 90 HP. It also makes it a useful tool for levelling because it cuts down on healing item costs and allows some healing without flat-footing or turning off Expertise.

Indomitability at 15 adds something to what would otherwise be a dead level, and still enables some synergy with multiclassing such as Divine Champion or Earthkin Defender.

Action Surge at 20 puts it just within the reach of the classic 20/7/3 weapon master build. It IS a slight buff to them, but a five round extra attack that stacks with haste and is on a long cooldown is not comparable to Thundering Rage's throughput.

Precise Strikes at 26 compensates fighters who fall behind in the AB game by giving them a unique hook into actually hitting opponents- sacrificing damage to do so. It's still positioned so that a light dip can be taken but nothing taken beyond this point is going to significantly increase their damage output. It's positioned so that it's out of the reach of WM builds, but could allow for some light splashing of other classes.

Epic Combat Mastery as a feat investment lets it be impactful, in that it pushes pure fighters into a realm of doing the things they're supposed to be doing very well- hitting things and not dying. Their more impactful abilities become more frequently used because of the reduced cooldown and they get to enjoy windows of power and windows of weakness. Making it exclusive to pure fighters lets these pure fighters feel like they really are becoming the ultimate warrior by taking those last three levels instead of losing out on what they could get with a rogue or divine dip.

The Balance
Second Wind is better than Lay on Hands and Wholeness of Body for characters that aren't invested in those linked attributes heavily. It's worse than them for those who are. It does provide Fighter with something it lacks- survivability and pushing their HP pool. It's not as good as rage, considering its longer cooldown and the fact that it falls off if you multiclass. But that's fine- this is a multi-benefit package.

Indomitability gives fighters access to even more survivability. It becomes their unique 'tanking' power- for a limited time, take much less physical damage. It's stronger than Barbarian's rage reduction at higher levels, but it has a longer cooldown and a lower uptime. The numbers were chosen so that pures in full Adamantium could, at level 28, enjoy 50% damage reduction. The heavy armor requirement means that Elven Chainmail is out and it's not useful for dex-based characters- this is to give Strength a little extra cookie.

Action Surge provides fighters a hook into the APR game. It only adds up to a total of an extra five attacks (If you can remain engaged for the full duration), but the button will still feel goooood to click, especially if you're two-handing. It becomes the capstoney Cool Thing Only I Can Do. As previously stated, Thundering Rage is still better, but this closes the gap a bit.

Precise Strikes is intended to break the current impasse that martial characters that aren't Paladins or Divine Champions face when up against the current 70 AC ultra-defenders. Reducing damage to hit more means that it won't be instagibbing these dodgy characters but it WILL put them in a position where they aren't safe, and the fighter's damage reduction and various combat techniques (knockdown, disarm) can harry them while putting up with their meager damage output. Being unavailable to explosive-critting WMs (because they can't take 5 levels to get improved multiplier and pick this up) means that this will help those who want to hit often or hard-to-catch targets, instead of those that want to obliterate everything.
(It would be nice if we could find a place to give this to Barbarians that aren't weapon masters as well- it'll only net them +3 AB over raging anyway, and will help them similarly overcome this impassable, impossible hurdle called EDodge. Make it exclusive with rage so they can't use it to pull of nutzo damage.)

ECM just adds on all of this to add a touch more offense and a touch more defense. It's throughput through and through but it lets them show off their "look how cool I am as a fighter" buttons more, which could make the difference in long engagements. Making it strength exclusive also further solidifies a role for strength in the meta.

Here it is and the logic behind it. I think this would improve a lot of builds and help mitigate some of the dex creep that people have been complaining about- because Fighter is the base upon which a large number of builds are made, but fighter on its own has always struggled from falling behind in potential and flavor.

[garrbear758]

Approved. We are not going to use all of these ideas, and the ones we do use will likely change somewhat, but there are definitely some good ideas in here that we can use to give strength builds some more options and survivability.