MagicalMaster wrote...
Generally true but a fighter is still perfectly fine -- Fighters don't seriously fall behind other classes until at least the early teens. And a level 40 fighter is considerably stronger than most people give it credit for. I'm not saying it's not weak compared to multi-classed builds but it's not as awful as people think (unless we're assuming everyone is playing a Sorcerer/Paladin/Monk, Fighter/WM/Rogue, or other similar power builds). So if he wants to learn a pure fighter to start, that's all right. It's definitely a lot simpler than a cleric and doesn't require knowing how to manage combat buffs.
Once upon a time, as a random thought exercise, I tried to make a high level Fighter work. The conclusion I arrived at was to burn so many feats out of necessity that only a Fighter would be able to pull it off.
Something with the following:
1. Full two weapon tree (Ambi+2WF+I2WF)
2. Full Kukri specialization (WF+EWF+WS+EWS+Imp Crit)
3. Imp Expertise
4. Imp KD
5. Full archery and Longbow feats (Point Blank+Rapid+WF+EWF+WS+ES+Imp Crit)
Can even throw in Alertness and Iron Will in for good measure to take Harper Scout for +2 Dex, a Tumble dump and access to stealth skills. Hotkey Kukri/Kukri, Longbow and Kukri/Shield and switch fighting styles depending on what the situation demands. It's not a bad character, but still lags behind specialized Tanks/Melee or Ranged DPS. With 10 levels of Shadowdancer and Epic Dodge, it might work as a real tank though.
Note that summons eat 20% of your XP which is generally a bad thing in campaigns.
The HP pool at level 1 is too low to risk fighting alone. I'd rather lose the 20% to have a badger bite the dust for me when the Half-Orc Barbarian enemy crits on his Greataxe, until my HP pool is enough to stand it, i.e. around 30-40HP at level 3-4.
So after you spend nearly a full minute buffing and need to watch buff durations both long and short term and need to manage a spellbook they're basically the same 
'>
I consider buff maintenance as part of a melee character's core gameplay in NWN. Even without the Cleric's spellbook a melee character typically dips into Rogue for UMD or hoards a bunch of spell cast items like Scabbard of Blessing and Potion of Aid to increase performance at the very least.
Fighters are quite good tanks until the mid to late teens. They just begin to get really outscaled and gain no key class features once you close in on epic levels and push past into them.
Why do you say that? There's like, two mitigation feats available to Fighters pre-epic: Expertise and Improved Expertise. If you're talking about tanking, what's stopping the Barbarian or Monk or Dwarven Defender, or even a Cleric or Paladin with Divine Shield from taking Improved Expertise and adding that to their own unique class features, which actually offer damage mitigation?
Suppose I balance a boss to do a melee damage burst on a DD or Barbarian tank in Improved Expertise at the start of their low HP phase. That burst is designed to burn the tank down in 6 seconds, requiring very serious powerheals from the Cleric. A Fighter that tries to tank that may very well go splat and cause a wipe.
The unique thing a Fighter gets is Weapon Spec, and NWN has far more damage dealing feats than defensive feats, so based on that I would say a Fighter leans more towards DPS.
Plant for Barkskin is another choice -- frees up amulet slot. Generally Travel or War is better but Plant isn't bad.
Left that out because I usually just slap an AC amulet on to save myself one buff.
Westan Willows wrote...
Right now I am learning Fighter. I'll learn Cleric later. That Domain stuff overloads me.
If you're really intent on being a Fighter, at least plan a multiclass into Dwarven Defender or Weapon Master. That way you get class features that help you fight better. As a Dwarven Defender you get scaling, always-on damage reduction. It will reach a point where weak enemies can hit you and you won't even take damage. You also become immune to Sneak Attacks. As a Weapon Master you gain more accuracy with your hits, you will crit a lot more often and you will crit very hard. If you want to be a straight up fighter, both classes are very very worth looking into, depending on the direction you want to take.
Otherwise, by Fighter 10 or so you run out of good feats to take and find yourself staring at a long list of unattractive options. You really don't want to reach a point where you have to decide between Improved Initiative, Dirty Fighting or Improved Parry for your feat (Hint: They're all awful).
Elhanan wrote...
Should not assume. Played a ton of mods, 5 yrs in a on-line Campaign, and have spent several yrs on various PW's. Would you like that crow to go?
I remember seeing Elhanan's username on Dawn of Nordock many years back, and he's been on the forums since the days of Cinnabar Din. Now, Dawn of Nordock is based on Nordock, so it's one of the easier PWs. I personally haven't seen him on some of the more hardcore, powergamey servers.
Side note: That's fair enough really. A lot of those servers left me with a very bad aftertaste. They're usually very poorly designed, i.e. focusing too much on power creep and bigger numbers, with very little focus on tactics. This boss with 100AC and 70 saves across the board couldn't survive your blade? Try the next boss with 110AC and 75 saves! And the bosses are all the same - nothing but autoattackers with DM Fast movement speed, except with different skins and sometimes on hit effects like casting Ice Storm on you every time you hit them or something. And yes, this even happens on low magic RP servers.
That's a big reason why I left NWN to get my hardcore powergamey DPS-parsing, dungeon-running fix, I only play NWN for the RP nowadays. But that's something for another thread.
Modifié par Aelis Eine, 21 décembre 2013 - 01:48 .
