Revised Path: Revised Fighter Feats

“Revised Fighter Week” continues, looking at how to revise the fighter class for a potential Revised version of Pathfinder Roleplaying Game 1st edition. You can read about my design goals for such a project, and see an index of articles about it, here.

A crucial element of the fighter class are “fighter feats,” that is feats that only fighters can take. These are essentially hidden fighter powers that lay in the feats section rather than with the class description (a fact that’s worth looking at when a final Revised Path core rulebook is being put together, but not a crucial point at this stage of revising the game).

(Though, as a huge parenthetical aside, one way to fix this issue would be to just call the bonus feats fighters get “fighter talents,” and have “combat feat” be one fighter talent option they could repeatedly take. This basically matches how rogue talents work, and would make it clear to new players that fighters had special options unique to the class. It would also mean people not playing fighters wouldn’t have to read through a bunch of fighter-only feats in the feats chapter.

I just had this idea, and I kinda like it, but that’s again not really a power level or game mechanic redesign, it’s more a presentation and naming issue. It’s also a question of whether the benefits of such a deviation from the Pathfinder RPG 1st-ed way of doing it was worth asking the fan base to accept another change.)

The following absolutely aren’t all the fighter feats I’d want in a core rulebook, but they are some of the most important ones. Most of the changes I have made are to increase fighter’s flexibility in combat, and give them interesting options a little earlier in their careers.

(art by lombard)

FIGHTER FEATS

Disruptive (Combat)
Prerequisites: 6th-level fighter.
Benefit: The DC to cast spells defensively increases by +4 for all enemies that are within your threatened area.

Penetrating Strike (Combat)
Prerequisites: Weapon Focus, 6th-level fighter.
Benefit: Your attacks with weapons that gain a feat bonus to their attack rolls ignore up to 5 points of damage reduction.
Special: A character with 6 levels of monk may take this feat without meeting the prerequisites, but only with the monk and unarmed weapon groups.

Penetrating Strike, Greater (Combat)
Prerequisites: Weapon Focus, 10th-level fighter.
Benefit: Your attacks with weapons that gain a feat bonus to their attack rolls ignore up to 10 points of damage reduction.

Shatterspell (Combat)
Prerequisites: Disruptive, Spellbreaker, 10th-level fighter.
Benefit: As a standard action, you can attempt to sunder an ongoing spell effect as if you had the spell sunder rage power (Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Combat). You may use this feat three times per day, plus one additional time per day for every 2 points by which your base attack bonus exceeds +10.

Spellbreaker (Combat)
Prerequisites: Disruptive, 10th-level fighter.
Benefit: Enemies in your threatened area that fail their checks to cast spells defensively provoke attacks of opportunity from you.

Weapon Focus (Combat)
Choose one weapon group.
Prerequisites: Proficiency with a weapon in the selected weapon group, base attack bonus +1.
Benefit: You gain a +1 feat bonus on all attack rolls you make using the weapons within the weapon group with which you are proficient.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new weapon group.

Weapon Focus, Greater (Combat)
Prerequisites: Weapon Focus, 8th-level fighter.
Benefit: Your feat bonus to attack rolls from Weapon Focus increases to +2. This applies to all weapons for which you gain a bonus to attack rolls from Weapon Focus.

Weapon Specialization (Combat)
Choose one weapon group for which you have already selected the Weapon Focus feat.
Prerequisites: Weapon Focus, fighter level 4th.
Benefit: You gain a +2 feat bonus on all damage rolls you make using weapons with which you gain a feat bonus to attack rolls from Weapon Focus.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new weapon group.
Special: A character with 4 levels of monk may take this feat without meeting the prerequisites, but it only applies to weapons in monk and unarmed weapon groups with which the monk gains a feat bonus to attack rolls from Weapon Focus.

Weapon Specialization, Greater (Combat)
Prerequisites: Weapon Focus, 12th-level fighter.
Benefit: Your feat bonus to damage rolls from Weapon Specialization increases to +4. This applies to all weapons for which you gain a bonus to damage rolls from Weapon Specialization.

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This week is my break between my second and third courses of chemo, so I plan to post a lot more content than a typical week while I can.

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