When did the Fighter become "defender"?

Bedrockgames · May 11, 2012

pemerton said:
I guess vagueness is in the eye of the beholder. I didn't find this very vague:

The claim here seems clear to me: that one of the top 10 stupid things in 4e is that the fighter hangs back bodyguarding the squishies, rather than rushing into battle to fight.

You would have to ask the op. My take on it is he has an issue with the fighter as defender which he appears to interpret as body guard. He does go on to give an example of the fighter choosing to hang in back to defend the wizard, but I am not persuaded he is suggesting that is all fighters can do. I alsonthink the line about the fighter beheading the orc, suggests he wants the fighter to absorb more of the striker mechanics ( but I could be wrong).

Hussar · May 11, 2012

Funny how favourably interpreting other people's points seems to be directly proportional to how much their opinions happen to line up with one's one.

Just saying.

Tovec · May 11, 2012

renau1g said:
I'll disagree with this, I'd like the game's baseline to assume a fairly balance party (as it always has). An all rogue party is probably a lot less likely than a Fighter (or other strong guy), Rogue (or other skill guy), Cleric (or other heal/buff guy), and Wizard (or other magic guy).

The DM can then makes adjustments to the game accordingly. So if a group of all rogues, he can make the game very explore pillar heavy (and lots o' traps) and a lot of high hp enemies (assuming 5e keeps rogues dealing damage like 3/4e).

If it's all Fighters, then a potential heavier focus on the combat pillar, remove/reduce a lot of traps, etc.

I know this is a little old

By this logic the party should never encounter traps unless they have a rogue?
They should never encounter tough fights unless they have fighters?
They should never need magic/encounter magic unless they have a wizard?
They should never need healing unless they have a cleric?

Am I missing something or is that what you are trying to say?

Libramarian · May 11, 2012

Estlor said:
A Defender (with a capital "D") is specifically a class that possesses a mechanical ability that allows them to attract the attention of a monster and punish them if they choose to ignore them. (They're basically single creature melee controllers.) This usually manifests in the form of mark + punishment. Each serves a different purpose.

Marking a creature serves to raise the other PCs defenses to a level comparable to that of the Defender, removing the incentive to avoid attacking the Defender due to their superior defenses.

Punishment serves as that last push to make the Defender the ideal target.

So, basically, the Defender is that guy who stands off to the side of everybody else and waves his arms screaming, "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!" to try and buy his Striker buddies enough time to uncork their big guns all over whichever monster they want indiscriminately.

I want the Fighter to be both the Striker and the Defender. The defender/striker split seems to a port from MMOs, which is messed up imo because I believe it was invented there to (a) make combat more interesting against AI controlled opponents, and (b) to provide additional combat-based class differentiation (because exploratory and social gameplay in MMOs is too weak to support a class niche). In other words, it's compensating for the computer RPG medium's weaknesses compared to the tabletop RPG medium. I don't know why we would bring it back to tabletop D&D unless the goal were to actually to emulate MMOs.

pemerton · May 11, 2012

Tovec said:
By this logic the party should never encounter traps unless they have a rogue?
They should never encounter tough fights unless they have fighters?
They should never need magic/encounter magic unless they have a wizard?
They should never need healing unless they have a cleric?

Am I missing something or is that what you are trying to say?

I don't know about the poster you're responding to, but my rule of thumb is - if the build of the PC's indicates that the players' aren't interested in it, then I try not to bring it into the game.

If all the players in an AD&D game build thieves of one sort or another, for example, that tells me something important about the game they want me to run.

AngryMojo · May 11, 2012

pemerton said:
If all the players in an AD&D game build thieves of one sort or another, for example, that tells me something important about the game they want me to run.

And what a game it will be!

pemerton · May 11, 2012

AngryMojo said:
And what a game it will be!

The last AD&D campaign I GMed was for two PC thieves, a duergar fighter/thief and a svirfneblin illusionist/thief. It was a fun campaign, and played very differently from the earlier game with the same two players, which involved a more traditional PCs + henchmen party.

renau1g · May 11, 2012

Tovec said:
I know this is a little old

By this logic the party should never encounter traps unless they have a rogue?
They should never encounter tough fights unless they have fighters?
They should never need magic/encounter magic unless they have a wizard?
They should never need healing unless they have a cleric?

Am I missing something or is that what you are trying to say?

pemerton caught most of what I was saying. If there was all Fighter party they would still encounter traps, just less of them than if an all rogue party.

As he noted, the players (by their character choices or in some cases tell me directly) tend to give me ideas about the game they want to run. My old group would never build a PC that had Charisma as an important skill, they didn't like deep, long social encounters, nor political intrigue. They gave me those hints at character creation with the 8 CHA barbarian, the 9 CHA Fighter, the 11 CHA rogue, and the 12 Cha cleric. That doesn't mean I ignored social encounters completely and it sucked for them when they did need to have some important social interactions. They solved most of their problems with combat. They loved kicking the door in and knocking heads around, so I DM'd to that play-style and we all had a good time

Hussar · May 11, 2012

Libramarian said:
I want the Fighter to be both the Striker and the Defender. The defender/striker split seems to a port from MMOs, which is messed up imo because I believe it was invented there to (a) make combat more interesting against AI controlled opponents, and (b) to provide additional combat-based class differentiation (because exploratory and social gameplay in MMOs is too weak to support a class niche). In other words, it's compensating for the computer RPG medium's weaknesses compared to the tabletop RPG medium. I don't know why we would bring it back to tabletop D&D unless the goal were to actually to emulate MMOs.

Again, the root of your problem is semantics. You see "defender" and think that the fighter isn't dishing out the beatings. That's just wrong.

Fighters may not out damage the striker consistently, but, overall, he's not too bloody far off. There's tons of x2 and x3 (and x4 or more) attack powers for fighters if you want to just lay down the beatings. With your bonus attacks from your marking powers, it's certainly not uncommon for a fighter to be, if not the best damage dealer in the party, certainly a strong contender for the top spot.

Now, you don't have to play fighters this way. I prefer a more controllery fighter myself with lots of battlefield control powers and area of effect attacks, but, that's just my personal preference. But, wanting a fighter to be a defender and a striker? That's built right in there.

As an aside, I truly do believe that the overwhelming majority of issues that people have with 4e are due to the presentation of elements in 4e. If the writers had either backed off a bit in how they present the classes, or had included a few pages with each class on how easy it is to blur the lines between roles, it would have gone MILES towards defusing these misunderstandings.

Fifth Element · May 11, 2012

Hussar said:
Fighters may not out damage the striker consistently, but, overall, he's not too bloody far off. There's tons of x2 and x3 (and x4 or more) attack powers for fighters if you want to just lay down the beatings. With your bonus attacks from your marking powers, it's certainly not uncommon for a fighter to be, if not the best damage dealer in the party, certainly a strong contender for the top spot.

Indeed. Fighters have a bunch of good-multiplier, reliable attack powers. The fighter will get his x3 damage, it's just a matter of when.

Hussar said:
As an aside, I truly do believe that the overwhelming majority of issues that people have with 4e are due to the presentation of elements in 4e. If the writers had either backed off a bit in how they present the classes, or had included a few pages with each class on how easy it is to blur the lines between roles, it would have gone MILES towards defusing these misunderstandings.

Fair comment, I think.