Are Fighters *Really* OP in Pathfinder 2e?

Any chance you gonna do another Pathfinder Build? I get it, Baldurs Gate3 and DnD will probably draw the larger crowd, but it's been 4 Months

play pf1 with 3 action

Nice royals shirt! I’m a KC native!

Fighters. Heh.
Laughs in Magus.

I would say only OP if its compared to another martial. Alot of casters have that extra +2 as well.

PF2e players are a little too obsessed with numbers. I recently did a live play, and most of our level 1 characters did not have a +4 in one stat. I was kinda surprised on the feedback I got that we were an underpowered group. We all had +3s, and sometimes two of them, but not having that +4 was some kind of terrible thing. BTW, our group did fine with +3, but maybe at later levels I will regret it. Who knows.

Tbf, they're called "fighters", they should be the best at fighting

If hitting things is the sole purpose of your existence, you're better be good at it.

Don't have the feats to spend? Drink a drake heart mutagen!

The MUSCLE spellcaster, could take a two handed weapon, and cast shield cantrip!

Str 16, Dex16, Con 12, Wis 12. Martial weapon, light armor, shield block of shield cantrip... Studded leather, steel shield, and say longsword...
You can make changes to this idea, for deity or feats.

Seriously, war priest of iomedae...
Magic weapon,
Guidance
True strike...
Seriously, bard enigma muse, bam!
Magic weapon
Guidance
True strike.
Seriously, human wizard, arcane bond longsword.
Magic weapon,
Guidance,
True strike....

The fighter only becomes awesome when the fighter has awesome friends...
Item bonus, status bonus, circumstance bonus, and Fortune effect. As much as you can.

Fighters aren't op,
Just have everyone else get "magic weapon" "guidance" and "true strike "...
Suddenly the fighter isn't all that.

It isn't just the plus 2, although that is pretty huge given how tight the math is in PF2E. Its that fighters have, mechanically, every advantage available. Great proficiency progression for their weapons, armor, and perception; access to all weapons and armor, some of the very best class feats, perhaps the best engagement with the 3 action economy in the game, not needing any riders to just do what they do (no stance, rage, hunt prey type action taxes or spell slots resource limiters) in addition to being able to hit and crit much more reliably. Critting more often is the most powerful thing in Pathfinder. In a game where everything is tightly constrained and mathematically precise, crits are about the only break out mechanic, and critical hits are insanely powerful, both in terms of raw damage, and in some very potent weapon critical specializations. So taken all together, the fighter is absolutely OP, and sits comfortably at the top of the class heirarchy. It is the measuring stick in Pathfinder, with other classes being rated well the closer in performance to the fighter they can get.

From a purely mechanical stand point, I would contend there is very little reason to play anything but fighters and rogues in PF2E, fighters for the above reasons, rogues because on top of being very competent in combat, they are capable of being very good/excellent at everything else outside of combat as well.

I love this mobile dwarf running around and smashing things (even if they aren’t always #1 on damage)

Kind of reminds me of Poppy from league of legends

Where's the rest of this clip.... 😩

Seeing how Pathfinder 2E still has some old holdovers from the 3.X era of D&D, a single +2 in a combat with a lot of math can make or break a roll.

If your party is doing a good job of buffing your strikers and debuffing your enemies, then proportionally the fighter's +2 matters less while the flat damage boosts of classes like the barbarian benefit more from being helped with hitting.

Fighters are crit machines, and have early access to a very powerful reaction. Haven't played one yet, but I've played alongside a few, and it's always a blast for the party, but at early levels the GM sometimes never gets to participate in combat beyond moving into position to die.

Bards and Fighters are definitely the most over-tuned classes in the system, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I see it as a ceiling that other classes can be safetly elevated to with future content. Hopefully the new player core takes the opportunity to really fine tune the classes that need it (looking at you witch).

It's not just that Fighters fall outside the normal bonus curve. It's the fact that crits are more than twice as good as a normal hit (between Critical Specialization, Deadly/Fatal, resistances, etc).

Then, when you get to the levels where you can expect to crit your Aid checks regularly, and you stack all your buffs and debuffs properly (Fear, Flat Footed, Heroism/Inspire Courage, Aid), where other classes might crit on a 13, the Fighter will crit on an 11. At that point you're looking at an average dpr more than 30% higher than other classes do at base. Oh, and unlike Gunslingers Fighters are less MAD and have fewer action taxes and are much less dependent on Deadly/Fatal.

And sure, other classes have sources of bonus damage like Barbarian Rage damage, Sneak Attack dice, Magus spell strikes, and Thaumaturges ensuring Weakness on everything... but the more optimized your party is, the more the Fighter outperforms these other compensatory features (not to mention Fighters being able to gain partial access to some of these sources of bonus damage (or somehow even worse, True Strike) via Archetypes).

I'm not sure the Fighter will really shine on the spreadsheet, which can't account for the force multipliers that truly make the Fighter terrifying. Like, on paper, at base as the spreadsheet would show it, the Barbarian looks like it does more damage than the Fighter. But optimizers know that that's an illusion when you really take teamwork into consideration.

Fighter with the Martial Artist Archetype.... we thought monks were great, but is the fighter with the martial artist archetype once again a better monk?

I must say. the new quality of the sound and pitcher is just amazing , I loved you last swords bard build. thanks for the content, rock on

The best rogue is a fighter with the rogue archetype?? Yeah right. My rogue will take that challenge.

Looking forward to the build and more PF2e content.

I have a fighter in my PF2e game..... He is the reason most encounters are set to Moderate or Severe. Also!! Please more Pathfinder content!!!

I understand the need to focus more on D&D 5e due to the analytics, but really glad you are still giving PF2e some love.

Really interested to see your findings!

God forbid fighters be the best at fighting.

I feel fighters outshine a few melee classes depending on how they are built and the play-by-play decision making. Barbarians for example can be punished very hard for sub-optimal choices at character creation or if they don't manage their rage correctly, while fighters are very hard to mess up even for first time players.

Would I say Fighters are OP? Not really, they are just really good at fighting.

Also, check out gunslinger, it's got the fighters +2 math but with guns and fancy things you can do with guns!

Looking forward to this one. Since we decided we would eventually start a PF game I've wanted to build a Fighter since it seemed much better at letting me get the concept I wanted than in D&D, so I think I have a pretty good idea of how I want to do it, but it will be great to see what you come up iwith. Seems like a different style of character just judging from the name but there might be a few cool tricks to pick up :D

I play a bard in PF2. The party's fighter loves me :)

Gunslingers also get that plus 2, but only with guns and crossbows. Guns have low standard damage and extra high crit damage, so maybe that is why no one complains about them.

I do think out of all core classes in PF2, fighter might benefit the most from the Free Archetype variant. The fighter’s class chassis is really strong, and they usually have an impactful, powerful feat to choose whenever they get a new class feat.

The rules normally would require you skip some of those good feats for dedication and archetype feats if you wanted to go into Rogue or Barbarian or something, but Free Archetype let’s you have the strong Fighter chassis, the strong fighter feats, AND an archetype on top of all that. I really think in this case, even though people usually say there’s not much of a noticeable difference in power when applying the Free Archetype variant rule, there is here.

I'm here for the Pathfinder content.

Nobody can deny that the Fighter hits often, and hits hard. +2 to hit is also +2 to possibly crit in PF2e. It can specialize into any number of niche specialties in battle; sword n board, duelist, 2-hander, archer, what have you. When it comes to fighting, the Fighter is the best consistent hitter with good sustained damage AND good odds at critting. But it goes all in on combat. Out of combat, they're not the swiss army knife that a ROgue is or a magical toolbox like a Wizard.

> Are Fighters Really OP in Pathfinder 2e?
I sincerly hope so, I play one! ;)

To the community (Colby you rock)
I know it will get some heat but... when are we going to go 4th edition..? I mean, the stuff you can do starting at level 1 is just more fun... "Power" is a bad name though, maybe..

Looking forward to this one! I know you've mentioned your PF vids aren't doing as great, but I love getting to the end and seeing that the math really is tight. I'll watch every PF vid you put out, probably multiple times.

Gunslingers have this feature too! The class that i most liked was those guys with guns :D

Was this video supposed to only be 1 minute long?

You going to need to define "most" here

Because even on Reddit, I don't see it

I’m excited for this one.

Love seeing you making more PF2 videos! These will always be my favorite ones. They help a lot as I’m feeling around the system too

The fighter is a bit overtuned, but thats fine. It's meant to be the simple but strong class that anyone can pick up and be effective with. My main issue with the fighter isn't that it's powerful but that the fighter should be just as good at all weapons but Attack of Opportunity(AoO) make you heavily incentivized to use melee weapons. AoOs also incentivize using reach weapons over anything else because the chance for your AoO to trigger is way higher if you have reach. Paizo has explicitly mentioned the fighter getting more support for other types of setups in the remaster though.

I haven't really heard the "best rogue is a fighter with a rogue dedication" line of thought, but I would say that the rogues skills make them far more useful outside of combat. Playing a fighter can feel like you're just waiting until initiative is rolled because you don't have much to do outside of combat that is specific to your class. Fighter really is just a better barbarian though lol. But that's less so due to Fighter's strength as it is Barbarian's weakness.

I’m not too experienced in PF2 to know the answer yet, but I wonder if a similar thing applies to Champion to an extent too. Not so much that they have an extra +2 to hit compared to everyone else, but that they always have a +2 to AC compared to everyone else. Do they feel OP tanking wise? Unfortunately that’s a bit harder to measure

Do people not say this about Gunslinger too? They match fighter progression afaik, though they are obviously limited to guns

Considering how much the fighter has suffered in 3.5 to 5e, i love the pf2e fighter being considered 'op'.

Me a few days ago: Did you give up on pathfinder builds?
D4: We’re gonna do the math.
Me now: I need popcorn. Popcorn!!!

You should do a full on blaster pf2e build