On careful examination I have noticed a champion of torm does not give up ANYTHING compared to a fighter. He just gets extra bonuses that the fighter doesn't while still getting 100% of the fighter base abilities/stuff.

He cannot be evil while taking the class levels but can turn into evil later.

Am I missing something?

http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Fighter
http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Champion_of_Torm

Fighter bonus feats?

Champion of torm gets them too.
pre-epic CoT gets them all.

Level 21-40 the pure fighter gets 10 feats of choice.
While a champion of torm gets 5 feats of choice + 14 preselected feats (10 x sacred defense +1, 4 x divine wrath +2) + better reflex saves + class levels that count towards lay on hands and smite evil.

does a fighter 11/champion of torm 10 who takes a level in fighter get to choose an epic feat due to being an epic character or do they also have to be an epic fighter to unlock those?
If so a Fighter 30/Champion of Torn 10 loses nothing and only gains compared to Fighter 40
EDIT: I just tested it out and I can confirm that they can.
EDIT2: Having just leveled a fighter to max I can say that the extra 5 CHOICES of epic feats are not as useful since they are a choice between a very small list of feats.
I quickly acquired them all and was forced to repeatedly take levels of epic toughness (+20HP per each time you take it)

So basically you pick Champion of Torm if you want sacred defense + divine wrath for feats.
But if you really want to choose the feats yourself, pick plain fighter.

And then there's that the levels spent on CoT are not spent on weapon master. :)

Those two are the two most insanely powerful fighter prestige classes as far as I know,
one maximising attack damage and the other maximising defense.

Only in the epics... that is, (Fighter 40) vs (Fighter 10/CoT 30) you let 5 feats be preselected but you get 19 feats total instead of 10 and some other non-feat bonuses. (better base reflex saves, lay on hands caster levels, etc). And the choices the pure fighter gets are from a limited selection so you run out of good things to get.

Unless you have an illegal hacked character (ridiculously high int, wis, con, str, and dex... cha is not a requirement for any of those feats) you are only going to at most have an actual choice for 7 out of the 10 feats. The other 3 will be a choice between another level of epic toughness (+20 HP) and a non epic feat you already have (aka weapon focus and their ilk for secondary weapons). With my sample build I ran out of epic feats to take and was forced to take 4 levels of epic toughness.

But (Fighter 30/CoT10) gets same amount of feat choices identical to a (Fighter 40)... there is absolutely nothing to be given up for those 10 level dip into CoT for a fighter. (aside from the ability to instead dip into weaponmaster as you said :P)

Generally, CoT is the way to go if you can spare the class slot (since you can only have three classes). CoT can't get Weapon Specialization nor Epic Weapon Specialization, but since you're talking about multiclassing with fighter anyway, it's not an issue. CoT is worth it just for the bonus to saves.

The wiki lists both of those feats as available for an epic CoT

EDIT: I justed tested it out and I can confirm a CoT can take weapon specialization as their class bonus feat and can take epic weapon specialization as one of their classes bonus epic feats.

The only real advantage FTR has over CoT is Weapon Specialization (and the epic version - although CoT can take the epic feat if the character already has the regular Weapon Specialization from previous Fighter levels) and an extra feat (Fighter gets a bonus feat at level 1 and then every 2 levels, while CoT only gets them every 2 levels).

And yes, as you noted, a FTR 30/CoT 10 is better than a FTR 40.

Guess the most powerful fighter class might be taking enough fighter levels to get feats for Weapon Master (and weapon specialization), then go with some kind of split between CoT and WM. Havent done the math or checking up if things work, or ever even tried taking two prestige classes.

There are some builds out there doing just that (such as this one). It makes for quite a powerful melee build, although the downside is pretty limited social skills (aside from Intimidate). Plus such a build doesn't really start to get any better than a pure fighter until higher levels.

Ultimately I'd say comparing CoT to a straight fighter is setting the bar rather low. Sacred defense makes it better than a straight up fighter due to higher saves, but ultimately that's pretty much the only thing gained from the prestige class. When compared to what can be gained with some other prestige classes (or even other regular classes to add to a fighter) it doesn't really stack up all that well. It can be nice to add to a build if you have a spare class slot and just want BAB and feats with a little extra from sacred defense, but it doesn't offer anything special to really base a build around.

CoT increases on the fighters natural MAD [Multi Attribute Depedency]. Str is important, Cons is important, Cha becomes important, and you can't have ngative Dex/Wis scores due to AC/low will save. The only thing you can really dump is Int. You'll have to spread your alrealdy few attribute points even more, wich will hurt you on earlier lvs, and won't have really good scores on any attribute.

I seriously feel that CoT figter is a inferior cleric for most games. By the time you can get the prestige class, Dvine Power just kicked in for the cleric, granting full BBA+18 STR, allowing to dump STR, and cleric has all his buffing and healing spells, plus Divine Might, plus domains. It's also inferior to Blackguard, fot thar matter, due to spells and Sneak Attack, but is better than Paladin, wich has even greater MAD since his casting is based off Wis.

Ultimately, yes, CoT makes fighter lvls obsolete, but so does most others prestige classes and base classes. It has nothing to do with CoT being good or bad. Unless you have PRC or some mod to add more feats, there are few feats that are gamechanging, and everyone can get them with the regular feat gain. By lv 8~10, you alrealdy got every important feat that you'll need right off the bat

A fighter already has all those issues. CoT vastly improves saves of all kinds (sacred defense) and in particular improve reflex saves (changes from low to high progression), it adds cha for some abilities but you can ignore it and dump cha, those abilities will be meh but you are still ahead.

Yes, the Fighter does have these issues, but the fact that CoT makes it even worse is something bad that you was missing, so I pointed it out. Also, you *can* ignore 3/4 of his class features to dump char but then, the only thing you are getting from the class is better saves. It indeed is still better than straight 40 fighter, but as stated, that's not saying a whole lot because after a certain point, there are no good feats left.

And I don't know about you, but spending 10 lvs to gain better saves feels like a waste. The same amount in cleric would net you lv 5 spells, healing, will saves, 18 str, and a ton of utility and would still have the same Divine Warrior fluff.

Oh I was aware. Although I would say its only ignoring 1/3rd of the EXTRAS that gets that a straight fighter doesn't rather then 3/4th of the all the features of the class. (the majority of the features of the class are the feats every 2nd level and the BAB... same as fighter). A cleric gives up on the BAB though and that hurts too much with attack count per round. Sure the cleric can cast a spell to raise bab to full... but he has to be high levels to get that and can only do so several times a day. (and has even worse MAD then fighter).

Cleric is overall the best class in DnD, yes. But magic users are hugely nerfed in NWN where all their non-combat utility disappears.

Point taken. But what would you get with that 5 bonus feats that you wouldn't get otherwise? This is part of the reason that I don't count bonus feats as a class feature on a fighter build.

Actually, he doen't give up on BAB due to Divine Might. He can only get that at lv 7, sure, but you can only get CoT around that lv too, and until then, there are mutiple other ways to augment AB through spells that are still valid after divine might. As to worse MAD, I cant see how. He can safely dump Int, Str and Cha. Even his Dex can be a little lower, due to magic augmentation. But this is more of a problem with then Fighter/CoT build than with the CoT itself, I guess.

Dunno, maybe the PRC spoiled me and in pure NWN CoT really is a reasonable choice if you don't want to be evil and go Blackguard.