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## About This Content
## D&D Classics: Complete Fighter’s Handbook

Who says fighters are the poor cousins of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
game? No one will say it aloud after reading the Complete Fighter’s Handbook:
128 pages of mind-expanding advice on how to make your fighter the leanest,
meanest threshing machine for leagues around.

New weapons, new proficiencies, new fighting styles, and fighter “kits” make
this optional AD&D accessory a useful item for players and DMs.

Product History

PHBR1: Complete Fighter’s Handbook(1989), edited by Aaron Allston, was the
first “splatbook” for 2nd edition AD&D. It became the model for every
Completebook that followed (and there were a lot, not all of equal quality or
similar usefulness), and it is jam-packed with rules for expanding the role of
fighters in an AD&D game.

The Complete Fighter’s Handbook is also the book that first introduces kits in
D&D. Somewhat maligned by the end of 2nd edition AD&D due to uneven standards
of game balance across different titles, kits were nonetheless a godsend at
the time they first appeared. They allow players to clearly and dramatically
differentiate their fighter characters. Sick of playing a 2nd edition vanilla
fighter with few choices? This is the book for you.

Contents Under Pressure. The Complete Fighter’s Handbookis a superb example of
how good layout and attention to detail can make a book more useful;
considering that this 124-page book didn’t have an index, the table of
contents is so complete that it didn’t require one. Both sections and sub-
sections in each chapter are called out, making it simplicity itself to find
the rule you need.

And there are a lot of rules – this is a book that prefers rules crunch to
evocative flavor text. Other than a 17-page nod to roleplaying different types
of fighters and other martial characters, the book is filled primarily with
new optional rules and combat techniques.

Kit-Bashing. Character kits were initially designed to differentiate fighter
builds without adding (much) additional power to the character. There were 14
kits in this book, from “amazon” to “wilderness warrior”: barbarians,
berserkers, cavaliers, peasant heroes, pirates, samurais, and more. If you
ever wanted to play a gnome beast-rider mounted on a giant bat, you came to
the right place.

Character kits worked hard to balance mechanical benefits with roleplaying
hindrances, but they weren’t always completely successful. The swashbuckler,
for instance, was particularly interesting since it offered a version of the
normally heavily armored fighter that the regular core rules couldn’t easily
provide. However, that the swashbuckler’s hindrance of “trouble seeks out the
character” isn’t really much of a hindrance at all. (It’s D&D, right? Trouble
alwaysseeks out the character, and that’s what makes the game fun.)

The Fighter’s Handbookalso cemented non-weapon proficiencies as a necessary,
almost mandatory, rule of 2nd edition AD&D. It’s easy to forget that in the
core rules NWPs are completely optional. With kits using them so extensively,
though, in practice that optional status didn’t last for long.

Rules, Rules, Rules. This book contains the first major combat rules expansion
for the 2nd edition of the game. It was pretty complete and inclusive,
providing optional systems for weapon proficiencies, ambidexterity, fighting
style specialization (such as “two-weapon style”), punching, grappling, called
shots, parrying, hit locations, and many more. There are guidelines for
mounted combat and tournaments, and advice for how to deal with problematic
combats. Players are even provided with excellent tactics for fighting, such
as wolf-pack tactics and adjusting the group’s tactical mix.

Gear Up. Most of the Equipment chapter concerns new weapons for the
specialized kits introduced in this book. Samurai weapons, pirate weapons,
swashbuckler weapons, savage weapons… if you have a nifty new kit, you’ll
need gear to go with it. It’s impressive that (with the possible exception of
the katana) none of the new weapons are particularly over-powered. New armor
is also introduced, along with a system for damaging and repairing armor that
never found much favor in the gaming public.

What this book does notprovide is a plethora of new magic items. There are
only seven listed in the whole chapter, most useful but none iconic.

Solid and Useful. Devoid of the game imbalance excesses that made some of the
later Completebooks a little more difficult to use, the Fighter’s Handbookis a
fun, well-written rulebook that demonstrably improves the game for anyone
playing a martial-based hero.

About the Creators. Aaron Allston is a prolific author whose recent works
include Star Wars novels and the new non-fiction book Plotting: A Novelist’s
Workout Guide.He has worked on games such as Car Wars, Champions, Dying Earth,
GURPS, Ghostbusters International, Dungeons & Dragons, and many more.

Converted by: Mike Wilson

Released on April 22, 2019. Designed for Fantasy Grounds version 3.3.8 and
higher.

Requires: An active subscription or a one time purchase of a Fantasy Grounds
Full or Ultimate license and the included 2E ruleset as well as the D&D
Classics: Player’s Handbook (2E).

Fantasy Grounds – D&D Classics: Complete Fighter’s Handbook