Which class do you hate the most?

Klaus · Mar 4, 2012

KarinsDad said:
So, how exactly is it that you had Fighter Thief combinations without a high Dex? Thieves couldn't really wear heavy armor in the early versions. They often wore leather because of the penalties to most of their skills of other armor types. Fighter Thieves could wear heavier armor, but couldn't use thieving skills while wearing it. Fighter Thieves didn't need high Dex for their thieving skills, they needed it for their AC.

That comment was in regards to single-classed Fighters.

The multiclass fighters I saw did it for THAC0 and hit points, but other than those two things, they behaved pretty much like single-classed members of the other class.

KarinsDad · Mar 4, 2012

Klaus said:
That comment was in regards to single-classed Fighters.

The discussion was actually on ranged specialized Fighters, something that didn't really happen in 4E, as you illustrated, until Essentials.

Your point that Fighters had to take Str Con in earlier versions isn't really valid, both because players have played ranged specialized Fighters, and also because of your own multiclassing examples. The difference in 1E/2E of hitting 60% of the time with a melee weapon vs. hitting 55% of the time against a specific AC foe with a 17 Str, 10 Dex Fighter gets totally trashed in latter versions of the game.

None of this changes the fact that ranged specialized Fighters got somewhat phased out in 3E and even more phased out in 4E until the advent of Essentials which basically forced the player to actually take a subclass of Fighter to accomplish the goal. Another reason this is true is because the 3E/4E 17 Str Fighter is +3 to hit in melee versus the 10 Dex Fighter with ranged. Players are incentivized to not play the ranged specialized Fighter archtype anymore by the rules.

Just because one of the core functions of the Fighter has been to get into melee range often in D&D historically doesn't mean that the Fighter who is proficient in all types of weapons shouldn't be able to use all types of weapons because of other rules. The game mechanics shouldn't be the roadblock here like they are in 3E and morseo in 4E.

JRRNeiklot · Mar 4, 2012

Mattachine said:
In the 18 years I played AD&D and 2e, I never had a player roll up and play a fighter--that would be about 20 different players, many of whom played D&D for as long as I have. There were a few multiclassed fighters (fighter/magic-users and fighter/thieves), and the rest of the warriors were rangers or paladins.

I'm curious as to how all these players managed to qualify for rangers and paladins.

Ratskinner · Mar 4, 2012

Minigiant said:
Carve the "woodsman" part of the ranger and it isn't a ranger, it's a fighter. It would one issue I had with 4E. The wilderness aspects were almost completely regulated to skills and divorced from class.

Also I don't think themes will be complex enough to fully replace the flavor of certain class. A "woodsman" or "sorcerer" theme would have to be a page or 3 each just to be a justifiable replacement of classes.

Its hard to say without seeing the rules, but I don't think you'd need that much space for each one. I'm also not talking about replacing all the flavor, just parts of it.

Lanefan · Mar 4, 2012

Mattachine said:
In the 18 years I played AD&D and 2e, I never had a player roll up and play a fighter--that would be about 20 different players, many of whom played D&D for as long as I have. There were a few multiclassed fighters (fighter/magic-users and fighter/thieves), and the rest of the warriors were rangers or paladins.

I have to wonder if you were somehow discouraging players from playing pure Fighters, either intentionally or not; because otherwise that's a rather shocking statistic.

Question: how many characters in total have come and gone through your games? (i.e. what's the sample size?)

My namesake 1e character here has been a pure Fighter his entire career (despite a penchant for occasionally stealing swords from people) and he's rarely if ever been the only Fighter in whatever party he's been running with at the time. We've had some other pure Fighters (including one designed as a full-on archer) run up some exceptional career numbers as well, so it's not like the class is unplayable.

Lan-"fighting, fighting, fighting the world"-efan

Mattachine · Mar 4, 2012

Lanefan said:
I have to wonder if you were somehow discouraging players from playing pure Fighters, either intentionally or not; because otherwise that's a rather shocking statistic.

Question: how many characters in total have come and gone through your games? (i.e. what's the sample size?)

My namesake 1e character here has been a pure Fighter his entire career (despite a penchant for occasionally stealing swords from people) and he's rarely if ever been the only Fighter in whatever party he's been running with at the time. We've had some other pure Fighters (including one designed as a full-on archer) run up some exceptional career numbers as well, so it's not like the class is unplayable.

Lan-"fighting, fighting, fighting the world"-efan

Players qualified for these classes in two ways:

1. Roll 4d6, arrange as you like--the only time I played 3d6, in order, was when I was a player (at age 10) in a Blue Box game
2. As I got older, I understood that the game was more fun for our group if people got to play the class and race they wanted, rather than letting a set of die rolls determine their course of play for the next several months or couple years

Anyway, players didn't want fighters explicitly because they didn't get anything that rangers, paladins, and barbarians didn't get, but those classes all got something else. Fighters were seen as NPCs.

How big was my sample size? I don't know for certain, but of those 20 players, they averaged 3-4 characters each in the years we played. My groups heavily favored casters, by the way: wizards, druids, illusionists, and Dragon Magazine variants/classes. A typical adventuring party would consist of a druid, two magic-users, a paladin, a thief, and a ranger.

outsider · Mar 5, 2012

Vyvyan Basterd said:
"Assassin, huh? What do you do?"

"I kill people for money."

"Oh, you mean just like all the other guys in your party?"

"Fighter, huh? What do you do?"

"I fight things."

"Oh, you mean just like all the other guys in your party?"

Vyvyan Basterd · Mar 5, 2012

outsider said:
"Fighter, huh? What do you do?"

"I fight things."

"Oh, you mean just like all the other guys in your party?"

And your point? Another generic class exists so therefore the assassin is obviuosly awesome?

Like I've said upthread, my hate stems mainly from the 1E version where the assassin was a thief that sacrificed effectiveness in other skills to gain a percentage chance to kill you. It was lame and is what I think of every time I think assassin. The 4E class is more interesting, IMO.

Lanefan · Mar 5, 2012

Mattachine said:
Anyway, players didn't want fighters explicitly because they didn't get anything that rangers, paladins, and barbarians didn't get, but those classes all got something else. Fighters were seen as NPCs.

How big was my sample size? I don't know for certain, but of those 20 players, they averaged 3-4 characters each in the years we played. My groups heavily favored casters, by the way: wizards, druids, illusionists, and Dragon Magazine variants/classes. A typical adventuring party would consist of a druid, two magic-users, a paladin, a thief, and a ranger.

Interesting.

For comparison, a snapshot of the two parties I'm currently running:

1. Fighter x 3, Thief, Illusionist, War Cleric, Normal Cleric, Monk
2. Fighter x 2*, Ranger, Thief, Cleric x 2**, Magic-user, Necromancer***, Thief-Illusionist

* - was 3, one died last session
** - one is a party NPC. All other characters noted are PCs
*** - homebrew sub-class of MU, similar to Illusionist in how it works

I've got data for a much larger sample size covering the various campaigns our crew have run (well over 1100 characters including party NPCs, about 750 PCs) that shows single-class Fighter is and has historically been by far the most commonly played class in our games. And yet you never had one? That's quite a disconnect in play styles.

Lanefan

airwalkrr · Mar 5, 2012

I really have to say that the warlord is one of the most ridiculous concepts for a class that has ever been thought up. It is not the mechanics of the class that bother me. And I am actually very fond of its 3.5 predecessor, the marshal. But the concept of an inspiring character who somehow inspires his allies to heal their wounds (and all similar mechanics relating to such things) is downright silly. The idea that I shout a battle cry and my allies heal is absurd. If the implementation had been such that the warlord only granted temporary hit points, I probably could have gone along with it. But let us be frank here; WotC can call the class role "leader" however much they want, but the warlord is a healer, plain and simple. I can only suspend disbelief so far. Mythology is full of miraculous healing, but it is typically a result of divine intervention or mystical concoctions of magic. As a game based on classical and medieval mythology, there really is no precedent worth mentioning of someone who "encourages" his allies to be healed. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my magic-users in robes, my thieves in the shadows, my fighters in full plate, and my healers in holy tabards and clerical vestments.