Imaro
Legend
Uhm... One level 7 encounter power... that not every fighter is going to have... and there's now a chance for it not to work. Uhm, ok. What are you doing until you reach that level??
When did the Fighter become "defender"?
Uhm... One level 7 encounter power... that not every fighter is going to have... and there's now a chance for it not to work. Uhm, ok. What are you doing until you reach that level??
Argyle King
Legend
There are powers which do similar things at earlier levels.
Also, you're not fighting in a vacuum. You have other party members. It's not overly difficult to work together to use powers which put the enemy in a position they don't want to be in and/or put yourself in a position you do want to be in.
Imaro
Legend
Like what for the fighter? I'm honestly curious what earlier pwers are similar to CaGi because I'm about to lay a Tempest Fighter in a DS campaign and would be interested in taking something on the level of CaGi at an earlier level.
So then wouldn't the fighter, in most cases, need to be near the other members of the party and not off on the side fighting a monster? Just saying.
I've found Frigid Blade does a pretty nice job of greatly hindering, if not outright stopping at mid-levels, movement. At low-levels dropping your enemy's speed to 2 or 3 is pretty close. And if they do get away, Dimensional Vortex or Transposing Lunge them.
Argyle King
Legend
Looking at only PHB (since my 4E books are packed away at the moment):
Level 1 has both Spinning Sweep and Passing Attack. While they do not do the same thing as Come and Get It, they are both powers which hit multiple foes. In the case of Spinning Sweep, the foes are knocked prone. Have fun using a move action to stand up, and then trying to move away from the fighter and getting smacked again.
The idea being to mark as many of the enemy combatants as possible to maximize how many people you can control via your class features and OAs. Later on, if you can pick up Heavy Blade Opportunity, you can start using cleave as an OA and hit two of them each time one provokes. I'm sure this isn't even close to what's available on CharOp boards. As said, I am not a CharOp guy.
If you're looking for something to lock down a creature when it comes to a one-on-one engagement, and you don't mind burning 2 feats to Multiclass, the Warlord Daily Villain's Nightmare is pretty nice. Yeah, you need to use two feats, but you pick up a good battlefield control/defender daily at an early level, and you also grab a little bit of healing ability along the way. Did I mention that Villain's Nightmare targets Reflex? So, as a fighter, you're using your primary ability against a defense which is typically lower than AC.
If you have a wizard as part of your party, Thunderwave is an at-will ability. I bring that up because -as said- you're not fighting in a vacuum. With as many powers as there are in 4E to move people around the battlefield, it's generally pretty easy to have your team help move an enemy close to you.
Whether or not you want to be close to them highly depends upon the situation and what tactics you wish to employ. Obviously, if there's a choke point, doorway, or something similar, that's where you want to be. That's smart in pretty much any game you play. However, when it comes to D&D 4E, there are going to be times when you want to be close to your allies and there are also going to be times when you don't want to be. The availability of areas attacks and similar things create a lot of situations in which you don't want to be grouped together.
I can't make on statement or list one specific list of powers to cover every situation because what you use and what's best is going to depend upon what the battlefield looks like. That being said, there are a few powers (such as Come and Get It) which -even after the errata- are good enough to be pretty universally useful. I'm admittedly also starting to get rusty on my 4E knowledge due to currently playing other games, so there are probably some I missed too.
Estlor
Explorer
This thread has kind of moved away from the original response I wanted to make, but I'm going to make it anyway.
The premise of the OP appears to be born out of a disconnect between the connotation of "defender" compared to the specific 4e denotation of "defender." It's like they were equating Defender = Tank = Bodyguard when that's simply not the case.
"Tank," as an informal role, absolutely exists in 4e. A number of non-defender classes are perfectly capable of tanking - warpriest, Con/Dex monk, and an avenger with a defensive focus. All you need to tank is some combination of 1) lots of HP/surges and 2) good enough defenses that monsters miss more than 50% of the time.
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.
That said, I'm absolutely in favor of decentralizing the roles so that, to a certain degree, if you want to be a fighter that's more of a leader and hands out bonuses/minor heals, the correct choice of feats/powers will allow you to do that. You'd still be the only class that gets a native mark+punishment ability out of the box, you just wouldn't be pushed toward defending with every power.
To the OP's point of playing a bodyguard, the class that actually excels at that is the Warlord. They have quite a number of reaction powers that involve putting themselves between an ally and an attack or coming to an ally's rescue. But they already play a lot like a non-defender fighter out of the box, right down to even having an archer variety.
The premise of the OP appears to be born out of a disconnect between the connotation of "defender" compared to the specific 4e denotation of "defender." It's like they were equating Defender = Tank = Bodyguard when that's simply not the case.
"Tank," as an informal role, absolutely exists in 4e. A number of non-defender classes are perfectly capable of tanking - warpriest, Con/Dex monk, and an avenger with a defensive focus. All you need to tank is some combination of 1) lots of HP/surges and 2) good enough defenses that monsters miss more than 50% of the time.
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.
That said, I'm absolutely in favor of decentralizing the roles so that, to a certain degree, if you want to be a fighter that's more of a leader and hands out bonuses/minor heals, the correct choice of feats/powers will allow you to do that. You'd still be the only class that gets a native mark+punishment ability out of the box, you just wouldn't be pushed toward defending with every power.
To the OP's point of playing a bodyguard, the class that actually excels at that is the Warlord. They have quite a number of reaction powers that involve putting themselves between an ally and an attack or coming to an ally's rescue. But they already play a lot like a non-defender fighter out of the box, right down to even having an archer variety.
Kurtomatic
First Post
Really? Then why the heck why did you start this topic in the Next forum? Could it be that..?
Why, yes! I'm sure you were.
I see combat superiority used primarily to stop creatures escaping the fighter. If they shift away they trigger Combat Challenge, and have only a standard action left. If they move away, they trigger an OA and Combat Superiority, and find themselves locked down.
My experience GMing a 4e fighter fits completely with these two posts.
In my game, Passing Attack, Footwork Lure and Sweeping Blow (? the 3rd level close burst) have all played this role - multi target mark, forced movement, battlefield control.
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.
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