I have been looking at making a few changes to the core 3.5 game for future games and have so far looked at the wizard and a few wizard feats. As part of that same process I’m also looking at the fighter to make changes to maintain their necessity at all levels. I like to see fighters and fighter types as an essential part of the game and I don’t want to see fighters who have to cast spells or have special martial ‘powers’ in order to maintain their power levels in comparison with their spellcasting counterparts. I don’t intend to discuss the fighter class here – I’ll do that another time – but I thought I would post some ideas I have concerning some core fighter feats.
In particular I wanted to revisit the Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization feats. Not that I see anything wrong with those feats. The problem as I see it is that once the Fighter has chosen those feats and their Greater cousins, there is (in core) little more that can be done to increase their attack and damage rolls. Given the high damage output of spellcasters at higher levels, it doesn’t make any sense to me to curtail the Fighter in this way.
As such, my proposal is to leave the existing Weapon Focus, Greater Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization and Greater Weapon Specialization pretty much as is and build upon them as fighter feat chains. The only change I would make to the existing feats is to make them only available to fighters and barbarians. Paladins and monks may also be included in the Weapon Focus chain of feats. Paladins almost certainly, but I’n not sure about monks.
The chains would work something like:
Weapon Focus – Fighter 1, +1 attack with chosen weapon
Greater Weapon Focus – Fighter 4, +2 attack with chosen weapon
Master Weapon Focus – Fighter 8, +3 attack with chosen weapon
Dedicated Weapon Focus – Fighter 12, +4 attack with chosen weapon
Ultimate Weapon Focus, Fighter 16, +5 attack with chosen weapon.
Prerequisites would include choosing a single weapon for the chain, requiring the previous feat in the chain, plus minimum class level
Weapon Specialization – Fighter 2, +1 damage with chosen weapon
Improved Weapon Specialization – Fighter 4, +2 damage with chosen weapon
Focused Weapon Specialization – Fighter 6, +3 damage with chosen weapon
Greater Weapon Specialization – Fighter 8, +4 damage with chosen weapon
Even Greater Weapon Specialization – Fighter 10, +5 damage with chosen weapon
Master Weapon Specialization – Fighter 12, +6 damage with chosen weapon
Dedicated Weapon Specialization – Fighter 14, +7 damage with chosen weapon
Superb Weapon Specialization - Fighter 16, +8 damage with chosen weapon
Absolute Weapon Specialization – Fighter 18, +9 damage with chosen weapon
Ultimate Weapon Specialization – Fighter 20, +10 damage with chosen weapon
Again, prerequisites would include choosing a single weapon for the chain, requiring the previous feat in the chain, plus minimum class level.
And that’s about it. The fighter would have a chain of weapon mastery feats to choose from throughout the entirety of their class, gaining both improved attack and damage on their weapon of choice.
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Now I would be tempted to do it differently (big surprise there
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While this would improve the accuracy & damage of fighters, it does so at a huge cost. Fighters need their versatility – they need stuff like Combat Reflexes, Blind Fight, Combat Expertise, Toughness etc. With this and the changes to Improved Trip & Improved Disarm, they just don’t have the feats to cover what they need. They have what, 18 feats? 19 if they’re human? You’ve got 14 feats here for boosting to-hit & damage alone – that leaves 5 for everything else. Not enough in my opinion.
I would have Weapon Focus & Weapon Specialisation as they are. But I would then replace the existing versions of Greater WF & WS with:
Greater Weapon Focus
Pre-reqs: Weapon Focus with chosen weapon, Fighter 6
Effect: You gain +1 to hit with your chosen weapon for every 3 levels of Fighter you have, up to a maximum of +6 at 18th level. This effect replaces that of Weapon Focus.
Greater Weapon Specialisation
Pre-reqs: Weapon Specialisation with chosen weapon, Fighter 8
Effect: You can add 1/2 your Fighter level as a damage bonus when using your chosen weapon. This effect replaces that of Weapon Specialisation.
Now these kick in when Fighters really start to fall behind (when 3rd & 4th level spells start to appear). As furtherances of the chain, I’d do something like:
Penetrating Weapon Specialisation
Pre-reqs: Weapon Specialisation with chosen weapon, Fighter 10
Effect: When attacking an enemy with damage reduction, you can ignore up to half your fighter level in DR, regardless of the source.
and
True Weapon Focus
Pre-reqs: Weapon Focus with chosen weapon, Fighter 12
Effect: When fighting a foe with magic concealment, such as through [i]blur[/i] and [i]blink[/i] you may roll twice and pick the better result.