The fighter

If the fighter throws/swings the wizard, does that count as a magic improvised weapon?

Ahh, that would significantly hamper the fighter then.

Depends, is the Wizard affected by Mage Armor? Because then you might have a case

Hugely improved with the new rules at least, something they got right

Yes, but also Fighters are just way cooler in either edition of Pathfinder

And yet they still have lots of features in their subclasses, work great with quick multiclass options, and can just, ya know, wield a magic weapon.

My battlemaster fighter had a few levels in Battlesmith artificers and I had sooo many things I could do even though the only spells I really ever cast were Shield and Arcane Weapon. I had my steel defender doing all kinds of fun stuff, and even though being ranged took some flavour out I was still able to be creative. It was also awesome to have such a clean base to build my roleplay on top of and by the end he was the least background-heavy character yet still had tonnes of depth and character.

The only “issue” with them is that the burden of creativity lies much more heavily on the player and it’s more difficult to rest on cheap stereotypes. I’m playing a warlock now, the plot class, and I still took it several steps further all on my own because I can. The pathfinder fighter looks interesting, for sure, but come now.

“FIghter isn’t bad, just need to get levels in another class!”, which is like, really hard specially for newer players. Pathfinder does fighters waaaay better without needing to get creative with building your character.

This is still miles ahead of Fighter in 3.5 which simply didn’t exist. It was two levels you took to get extra feats for your REAL class and no one ever took more.

In 2e Pathfinder, yes. In 1e…no because 1e is just D&D 3.5 with a paintjob and there Fighter SUUUUCKED.

pours alchemist’s fire onto swords

khaby_lame_shrugging.jpg

Meh, Great Cleave combined with improved critical and some other stuff could lead to some crazy slot machine combo turns

I’m aware of what I said, but the other point I made is that fighters are not the boring easy class everyone makes them out to be. They are very open-ended and that can be a lot for people but it’s not a sign that they’re bad. They also have the echo knight and eldritch knight subclasses if you want a little help/inspiration/spice built into the class itself. I have an echo knight minotaur I played for a bit who was great fun to play in combat.

If we’re talking about complexity being the issue then you can back right the heck up with that “just play Pathfinder” nonsense. I really want to try PF2e, actually, but to act like it’s simpler than a 5e multiclass is something you must surely know is not going to fly. I made a PF1e barbarian once and the amount of choices I had to make as an experience 5e player was within my skill level but for your hypothetical new player it would be far more daunting a task.

Also “without needing to get creative” is such a tell. It’s really not that complicated, and it’s not 5e’s fault that someone might need a stricter framework. You’re not a worse person for it, necessarily, but the whining about it sure isn’t a good look.

Wizard-chucks, yo!

My Blade

And why do sword guys always go on and on about their swords?

nah, you must not’ve stuck around for the patches. They ruled by the end of PF1e’s lifecycle. You could make some pretty awesome fighters with the actual class features they got access to.

Any class can be open ended by multiclassing, that doesn’t make it good. Eldritch Knight is a worse hexblade, not even a half caster like a paladin since it can’t even get 5th level spells. Echo Knight is in an extra book made by someone not in Wizard’s and it shows, because it actually has flavor.

PF2 is completely different to PF1, PF1 is closer to 5e than it is to PF2. Even multiclassing in PF2 is ridiculously easy and fun, without having to worry about accidentally making your character completely useless in battle.

PF2 is stricter? Since when? It has more options that 5e ever did, it is just better. Go learn PF2 instead of judging it from your experience with PF1 before preaching 5e like a fanboy/girl.

Open-eneded because in comparison to something like a Warlock you’re simply handed a guy who hits real good and in comparison to a ranger there are no weapon specific stereotypes. You can be pretty much anything you want and there isn’t much distraction in the flavour text, even. Now, I personally don’t pay much heed to flavour text and roleplay things however the hell I want but I do know a lot of people get bogged down by the idea that rogues need to be theives and paladins need to be good and that 95% of the community still doesn’t know what “lawful” means and they should really change the word to “principled” to square that away.

The reason I said “stricter framework” was in response your comment where it seemed as though you were saying that the 5e fighter required creativity to make it fun and I assumed that meant that what you wanted was for other systems to lay things out for you a little more. I assumed that because nothing I was suggesting required building your own class and mechanics, it was all just fairly high-level rules found in the books(minus the Eldritch Knight, I thought I’d seen it elsewhere).

Oddly enough, though, the fighter in PF2e, I would imagine, requires much more thinking since much of its power appears to come from feats that you need to choose at every level. I love that idea, and technically you can do a similar thing in 5e with the optional feat rule, but I’m struggling to figure out where you’re coming from saying that it’s easier or that dedications are safe from bad choices. I don’t find it as daunting as an experienced player but it’s certainly a lot more opportunity to accidentally build poorly. Also 5e multiclassing really is not that difficult, though there are small details that I think should be ironed out(maybe there were in 2024, I don’t know at this moment).

End of the day, 5e Fighter may be a bit of a blank slate but that’s precisely why I love them. They aren’t at all boring if you bring your creativity and roleplay skills to them and that also depends on what kind of game you want to play. I also play a Warlock now that I’ve made fairly unique and love the amount I can do with him so it’s not like I’m scared of classes with more complexity to offer, either, I just see the value in all of them and play to their strengths and weaknesses appropriately.

Immunity to mundane damage is stupid.