When did the Fighter become "defender"?

pemerton · May 10, 2012

Tovec said:
If a group is adventuring and realizes they need some extra firepower, or healing, or whatever, can they not adjust? Do they specifically need to be told you must have one of the following: Leader, Striker, Controller, Defender?

Have you seen this, on p 15 of the PHB:

The classic adventuring party includes one character of each role: wizard, fighter, cleric, and rogue.

Character roles identify which classes can stand in for each other. For example, if you don’t have a cleric in your party, a warlord serves just as well in the leader role.

Roles also serve as handy tools for building adventuring parties. It’s a good idea to cover each role with at least one character. . . If you don’t have all the roles covered, that’s okay too—it just means that the characters need to compensate for the missing function.

I GMed the first 4 levels of my 4e campaign with no leader PC. And guess what, the players compensated for the missing function by building more healing abilities into their non-leader PCs! Almost as if they'd read the rule book, or perhaps worked it out by common sense!

pemerton · May 10, 2012

Bedrockgames said:
I think if you stepped back and looked at what people are saying it is generally the whole of 4E doesn't appeal to them

I just read the last few pages of this thread, and what I saw was a series of claims that a 4e fighter is required to bodyguard - which claim has no basis either in the general rules of 4e, nor in the mechanical build of the PHB fighter, who only marks by attacking, whose mark punishment is more melee attacks, and who has very few bodyguard-style immediate actions (it is the paladin who has those).

Wiseblood · May 10, 2012

MacMathan said:
So I take it you never saw the Slayer, Tempest, other types of fighters, etc. The only one not done easily is the archer. There is even a fighter who does well bare handed. It is the apparent lack of knowledge of the current status of 4e that makes threads like these so frustrating to me.

I did not see them. I figured a year was good enough. It's a hobby not marriage.

Herschel · May 10, 2012

Tovec said:
As far as your actual comment however - DnD is about friendship and teamwork certainly but it shouldn't be mandated by the game. What if you aren't friends with the group? What if ROLE-playing develops and not everyone gets along. What if the party decides to fight one another for whatever reason? What if an encounter ends up being handled by only one person. Why does the game assume you are doing everything in a group.

Are you saying you can't "ROLE-play" balanced characters? That's just patently wrong. And if you aren't friends with the group then somehow that excuses one to be a selfish d-bag? I hope anyone who takes that view would not join public play. It's not exactly a behavior that's going to grow your customer base/game in any positive way.

The game is also not, nor should it be designed for, PvP as that's an anti-social behavior. Inner-party conflict still works in 4E but only for short bursts. Prolonged PvP just is weird and very swingy. You also don't need to do "everything as a group", combat is where the entire group should be involved. Keeping players engaged is a keybecause there are too many other things to do than sit around playing audience to a gloryhound.

Why does the game assume you have all 4 class types covered in a battle? It is a balancing act that the game expects certain things and if you start leaving the beaten path then the system stops being balanced. And since balance is the chief thing that 4e praises and talks about, when it isn't there it is sorely missed.

Because it's assumed as adventurers you're bright enough to take a well-rounded group with you to make things easier. And it has ALWAYS been that way. See the original PHB from the 1970s:

'The classic adventuring party includes one character of each role: wizard, fighter, cleric, and rogue.'

You don't need every role covered, but it makes things go a lot better, just like in real life. Some people enjoy the challenge of missing a role or going single-role also. A group of four rogues can do okay so long as they're tactically sound and get a little healing. They're just going to be very squishy and have very little room for error.

ForeverSlayer · May 10, 2012

I think the people are forgetting that the DM is the one who decides which monsters he is going to throw at his players. If a party is made up of all rogues, for example, then he may need to throw different types of monsters than he would for a party made up of fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric.

I don't the game to be geared towards a certain party composition.

Neonchameleon · May 10, 2012

ForeverSlayer said:
I think the people are forgetting that the DM is the one who decides which monsters he is going to throw at his players. If a party is made up of all rogues, for example, then he may need to throw different types of monsters than he would for a party made up of fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric.

I don't the game to be geared towards a certain party composition.

Not all games are played the same way. In a sandbox game you deliberately don't tailor the monsters - how the PCs handle things is up to them. But 4e is much more capable of taking alternate compositions than previous editions - good balance does that. (See the contortions to get healing without a cleric in DL and DS).

[MENTION=42437]Wiseblood[/MENTION], you might have given 4e a year. But the two weapon "Tempest" fighter was out in Martial Power in November 2008. It was the first player-side supplement for 4e and given that 4e was only released in June 2008, it was out less than six months after you started playing.

Imaro · May 10, 2012

I'm not going to get into the "Fighter = Bodyguard" argument (though I reserve the right to jump in later if I want). Though I will say I have expressed it before and still hope they do away with hardcoded roles for particular classes in the next edition. That said, I did want to comment on the line of reasoning and blanket statements being used in the following statements...

Herschel said:
Are you saying you can't "ROLE-play" balanced
characters? That's just patently wrong.

This wasn't at all what he was saying, but I think you know that already...

Herschel said:
And if you aren't friends with the group then somehow that excuses one to be a selfish d-bag? I hope anyone who takes that view would not join public play. It's not exactly a behavior that's going to grow your customer base/game in any positive way.

Roleplaying out inter-party conflict, and even PvP events in the game does not auto-equate to "being a d-bag"... if that's who you are then you're going to find a way to be a d-bag no matter what the game rules do. As for public play, and whether it would or wouldn't grow the customer base... I would say it depends on the group, the customers participating and their willingness to explore these things and agreed upon social contract for how far PvP and inter-party conflict should go.

Your blanket statements seem to be painting with a pretty broad brush... one I would say is too broad since there are quite a few rpg's, like Smallville or Vampire, that have inter-party conflict and PvP and are both fun and quite popular with some people.

Herschel said:
The game is also not, nor should it be designed for, PvP as that's an anti-social behavior. Inner-party conflict still works in 4E but only for short bursts. Prolonged PvP just is weird and very swingy. You also don't need to do "everything as a group", combat is where the entire group should be involved. Keeping players engaged is a keybecause there are too many other things to do than sit around playing audience to a gloryhound.

Here we go again... Inter-party conflict and PvP is not, in and of itself, an anti-social behavior. With people who want to play that type of game and are mature enough to handle it... it can be fun. I also don't agree everyone has to be in every combat. Keeping players engaged in no way equates to "MUST BE IN EVERY COMBAT".

Look, I've come to realize that different players are engaged by different things, and recognizing what engages a player is a trait of a good DM... not just throwing them all into every combat because it's something to do. I also know that my players are willing to be an audience for a small span of time if they in turn get equal time to interact with what engages them (and no, it's not always combat). I would even go further and say my players enjoy being the audience at times because it allows them to see a different aspect of the action, even if their character is not present.

What really needs to be addressed, IMO, is how a DM should divy up time, as well as cut back and forth and manage different encounters/scenes... as opposed to forcing everyone to go along for the combat ride... every time.

Fifth Element · May 10, 2012

Bedrockgames said:
Again i will let others making that specific claim defend it. But again experiences may vary and perceptions may vary. You may find the fighter is given adequate damage potential and options to be labeled as more than z bodyguard (perhaps a good deal more) others may not. I wasn't suggesting the truth falls in the middle. I was saying this is very much a matter of perspective...like a lot of otger edition war issues.

Suggesting that it's a matter of perspective is very much saying the truth is somewhere in the middle, because if it's purely a matter of perspective then neither side can really be correct.

I agree that most edition war issues are a matter of opinion and perspective. But that blanket statement does not necessarily cover a particularr issue.

Bedrockgames said:
Lets cut it with this stuff. This is a tired old line we all the time. By examinkng, i mean playing. I have played 4e. Sounds like the others here have too. They simply disagree. Even when folks make observations that are incorrect that doesn't mean they didn't play 4e (i had lots of guys who misunderstood mechanics in 2e and 3e but played with us for years.

Just trying to clarify what you meant. But once again, the only evidence presented that a fighter must be a bodyguard and is expected to not attack is a couple of lines from the class description, rather than addressing the actual mechanics themselves. Strong evidence to the contrary (ie, that the fighters marks by attacking) has not been addressed by those making the "bodyguard" assertion.

Herschel · May 10, 2012

ForeverSlayer said:
I think the people are forgetting that the DM is the one who decides which monsters he is going to throw at his players. If a party is made up of all rogues, for example, then he may need to throw different types of monsters than he would for a party made up of fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric.

I don't the game to be geared towards a certain party composition.

The point is that you're forgetting the game has ALWAYS been geared toward a certain party composition from teh time the very first PHB came out.

renau1g · May 10, 2012

ForeverSlayer said:
I think the people are forgetting that the DM is the one who decides which monsters he is going to throw at his players. If a party is made up of all rogues, for example, then he may need to throw different types of monsters than he would for a party made up of fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric.

I don't the game to be geared towards a certain party composition.

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.