Ancestral Relic and Item Familiar are equivalent power wise.
Ancestral Relic guarantees you half your expected WBL as opposed to all of it like CWI.
I started to think that feats are more restrictive than class abilities. A barbarian can take a feat to add his rage bonuses to ranged weapons. A fighter would have to spend another 5 feats to get the bonus. Though Knowledge Devotion is better than both abilities and ruins what I just wrote
What do you people consider 'Level Appropriate' at 5/10/15/20th level?
1) Fighting a few humanoids or big rats or something.
Fighter is pretty good on this point.
5) Fighting a troll, a couple of ogres, or a moderate sized group of humanoids. Occasional flying monsters like manticores. Very big, tough, zombies.
A melee fighter can deal with a couple the melee monsters, and a ranged fighter can deal with the manticores and other flying monsters, so if the fighter had twice the number of feats he should be able to be a threat to both.
10) Fighting one or more fiends with Greater Teleport and possibly Plane Shift, along with other SLAs. Fighting young adultish dragons with casting and flight. Fighting giants with Strength and Grapple scores in the mid thirties.
A base fighter should be able to keep up with the giants, I'm not sure how teleport comes in but for 3 feats you can return to home base if you think the demon is going to attack your family. Other wise the demon teleporting or plaine shifting away doesn't help it unless its a melee fighter. So again doubling the fighters feats should allow him to cover melee and ranged and twice the utility, a ranged fighter likely can put the hurt into the dragon.
15+) Yeah, it just gets worse from here.
That Doesn't really explain what he has to do with the teleporting monsters and casting dragon.
Now, I know there are level 10 threats that a fighter can handle, but it's typically something like two or three hill giants or big zombies, or something. Stuff that can fly and use SLAs will cause a fighter a lot of trouble. Higher level threats get more and more goodies to throw at the PCs.
How does the stuff with flying give the fighter trouble? Or do you mean just the melee fighters? The SLAs are over rated, the DCs tend to be low enough to where a fighter still has a 50/50 shot against it at most levels.
Looking at this, my solution would be to give fighters the following:
-Use their AC as spell resistance. The reasoning behind this is that heroes like Beowulf would have laughed at that attempt to fry them with a spell, and so the fighter should be able to do that true. Hell, you could probably flavor this as nonmagical, and just have it come from shear heroic mojo or something.
I'm against this, a fighter should be nonmagical, something like the Shield Ward Feat that also gave a bonus to reflex saves, would be more appropriate.
-Give them some kind of way to pierce Damage Reduction and Regeneration. I can remember reading an old epic (can't remember which)
where the hero stabbed a dragon through his armor; I want to be able to do that.
Regeneration and DR aren't big problems with fighters, and The Hobbit
-Give them some sort of way to weaken spellcasting monsters. I'm thinking some kind of "He whacks you. Roll a will save or lose one use of one of your x/day abilities." Plus, you could probably give them a way to stop demons and such from running away by having them disable their at will powers for 2-3 rounds each time they hit the enemy. Maybe make this a special combat action...
I'm definitely against this, the 3 mage slayer feats should be enough for the most part, maybe one that allows your attacks to disrupt supernatural powers and double the concentration check to maintain the spell when you damage a person who casts a spell.
-They need something like Iron Heart Surge. Seriously, exhaustion never stopped Beowulf or Heracles, so why should it stop our fighter?
I think Iron Heart Surge is the fighters Iron Heart Surge. At least if their is retraining available.
Automatically give the fighter all of the WF/WS line, all the way up to Weapon Supremacy for free, 2 levels before they can get them now.
...
Don't let anyone else get the WF/WS line of feats.
Tying them together is nice because it reduced feat-tax issues, but the fighter's problems were never about bigger numbers; they are about not being able to do level-appropriate things at higher levels. Although, this is pretty much what you've already said: It helps, but doesn't resolve core issues.
I decided to just give them the WF/WS line because seriously, they require fighter levels to take them as feats; they were obviously originally meant to be fighter class features.
A free WF/WS line with all weapons they are proficient with keeps them about where they should be with all their weapons, but I would slide GWF to 6th leave R/MWM at 8th, and give Weapon Supremacy at 15 and Grand Weapon Mastery at 18th, so he does an extra die of damage, and extra attack on every attack action.
Then double the amount of feats he gets so he is getting 54 feats over 20 levels, or 47 if he's not selling his soul and worshiping an Elder Evil. So 38 bonus feats for the Fighter, that have to be either taken from the fighter bonus list or feats available to first level characters. That is about how far I'm willing to go with giving the fighter magical abilities, if a 1st level commoner can't do it, then he can't get it with his bonus feats.
Then lets add all high saves, and 4 skill points per level and an improved skill list.
And his fighter level-2 to his initiator level for White Raven, Stone Dragon, Iron Heart and Diamond Mind manuevers. So they can both be thieving class stealing bastards. Its also my fall back option for power.
This allows the fighter to keep up with monsters, should be able to keep up with monsters in ranged and melee, and not roll over to spell casting ability, but won't allow him to keep up with insane spell casting options like gate, armies of undead with spell support, and 40 days worth of explosive runes.
In effect this gives weapon spec line to keep up in combat damage, and feats for tricks.
Whether the trick is a typical fighter trick like Improved Trip, Stand Still, or Close Combat Fighting, or a trick that a 1st level commoner could do like Shape Soulmeld, the 3 binding feats, or heritage feats.
So add free Weapon line, 25 more bonus feats with a more of a selection, two more high saves, 2 more skills a level and an initiator level similar to a warblade.
So its still things a fighter can do, but just more of it.
Thoughts?