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In the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, fighter is one of the base character classes. A fighter is a versatile, weapons-oriented warrior class. The fighter is an adept warrior who fights using skill, strategy and tactics.
Unlike many of the other classes in Dungeons & Dragons, it is almost always incorrect for a player to refer to their own character (in game) as a fighter. Since the class covers a huge variety of professions, from knights to bandits, in the game world nobody is actually known as a "fighter".
Other combat oriented character classes are the paladin, ranger and barbarian.
Original Dungeons & Dragons
Fighter was one of the three classes in the original Dungeons & Dragons game, then called "Fighting Man" (the other two were Magic-User and Cleric).
1st and 2nd edition
In the 1st and 2nd editions of Dungeons & Dragons , fighters were the class best suited for physical combat, balanced by the weakness of not having any other ability. The reasons for their excellence in physical combat were simple:
- Since the fighter doesn't require high intelligence, wisdom or charisma ability scores, the character can obtain higher scores in strength, dexterity and constitution.
- Relatively fast leveling, which means that a character takes relatively little time to grow stronger.
- High hit points (HP), armor class (AC), and a lowTHAC0 relative to the other classes, which respectively represent the character's vitality, defense, and to-hit capability.
- Ability to take the weapon specialization feat, which increased the fighter's attack power with the chosen weapon.
Although a powerful and popular class, many players felt unsatisfied with the class. To these players, the fighter was a "simple" and "plain" class. In typical combat, a fighter has not many options besides "move" and "attack", making the character somewhat boring to play. This simplicity also associated fighters with the dumb-warrior-stereotype, which is represented by characters who possess great physical strength, yet are stupid and can't solve anything without resorting to brute force.
3rd and 3.5 edition
In the 3rd edition of the game, the mechanics behind fighters were significantly changed, allowing for a broader range of choices in character development. The increased choices allowed fighters to be characers who were sophisticated combatants and had access to a variety of techniques beyond brute force. The typical fighter in 3/3.5 D&D is a highly sophisticated and highly technical warrior with a vast array of tactics and weapons at his or her disposal.
Fighters in 3rd edition got bonus combat feats at 1st and at every even-numbered level. This allowed the player to customize his character's set of abilities, bulding an entirely different character by choosing different feats; a character with the fighter base class could specialise to become a formidable archer, or a cavalier capable of using both lances and swords with great skill, or a duelist with an emphasis increased skilled at disarming his opponents or tripping them up in combat. Many of these feats had ability score prequisties, encouraging fighters to place points in stats besides the traditional Strength and Constitution; this also allowed players who chose nonstandard point allocations to feel that they were gaining some benefit from their alternative choices. With 11 bonus feats, 7 regular feats and 1 bonus feat from character generation, a human fighter has 19 feats at 20th level, the widest selection of feats of any character in D&D.
In 3.5 edition, fighters haven't undergone major changes compared to 3rd edition, with exception of the Greater Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Specialization feats (which both increase their attack power with the selected weapons) becoming exclusively available to fighters.
In 2006 the release of the Player's Handbook II greatly increased the number of feats available to fighters as well as provided a number of abilities, similar to the Weapon Specialization ability, that were only available to higher level fighters; while the impact on the popularity of the fighter class remains to be seen initial reaction from the fan community has been positive.
There are two Iconic fighters for D&D 3rd edition: A dwarf male named Tordek and a human male named Regdar. Both are used with roughly equal frequency.
Non-player character
Outside of the player base classes, the Warrior class is a simplified and weakened version of the fighter, intended to be used as a non-player character, as town guard for example. A d20 System/D&D book devoted to expanding this class was released by Skirmisher Publishing LLC in 2003.
"Fighter (Dungeons & Dragons)"