Yes, as a Tank there was certain bit of "Defending" taking place as a result of what a Fighter did, but it was only one aspect...an aspect that was a side effect of what a "Tank" was really supposed to do: stand toe-to-toe with the bad-guys, take whatever they dish out, and inflict massive amounts of damage on them. However in 4E, the massive amount of damage part became a facet of the "Striker". That is not how it's always been. The original Fighters mantra was "an overwhelming Offense makes for the best Defense". The only "Defending" they did was killing all the bad guys before they killed him and his party.
That appears to be a mix of misunderstanding and retcon.
First, in 4e the fighter very much does stand toe to toe with the bad guys, take whatever they can dish out, and inflict massive amounts of damage on them. Their secondary role is striker, and is striker for a reason.
As for the original fighters, oD&D derived from tabletop wargames. Where one of the fighter's roles was absolutely to defend squishier artillery-mages. If we're talking about the original fighters, they weren't significantly better at dealing damage with weapons than clerics - no specialisation rules until Unearthed Arcana.
IME If the fighter isn't close to one of his allies then he isn't making the monster use up extra movement and/or stopping him (via Combat Superiority) form attacking said allies (you know, his job)... and he also isn't making the monster choose between taking the -2 and an extra attack by him vs. a squishier opponent and lower AC (via Combat Challenge).
IME if the monsters aren't at least slightly bunched up or attacking at range, they have already lost. Focus fire drops them.
And as for forcing the monster to choose between a penalty to attack allies, and attacking the fighter? If the fighter is making it so the monsters
can't attack his allies because of positioning then the fighter is still winning. He's forcing them to take a bad choice (attacking the fighter) and this is as effective as offering them the combat challenge.
Basically the fighter is doing his job if he locks two enemy monsters down in open terrain. Or takes the Elite.
It is funny how often this argument comes up. It is equally funny how often this argument is hyperbolic.
I've demonstrated how in PF the fighter has about the combat potential of a crippled L10 Summoner.
I clearly remember playing in an epic level game in 3.5 where the melee character single rounded a colossal+ construct,
Out of curiosity, how many buffs had the casters given the fighter?
I couldn't compare to the power that character had, as a tier 1 caster in that game.
Really? What about either finding the combats or avoiding them? At everything that isn't directly combat related the wizard leaves the fighter in the dust.
Similarly, I have often played low level fighters and never had a problem keeping up and (usually) surpassing the casters when we deal with any number of situations involving the enemy.
Now let me introduce you to Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard. A 1st level fighter has about twice the hit points of a wizard (assuming Con 14). And the wizard gets to be more useful than the fighter by casting spells 2-3 three times per day (plus cantrips) while the fighter is swinging a shiny bit of metal.
A 5th level fighter still has about twice the hit points of a wizard. But the wizard has 2-3 third level spells, 3-4 second level spells, and 4-5 first level spells. That's up to a dozen spells, most significantly more powerful than the fighter had. While the fighter is still swinging his shiny bit of metal.
The post you quoted was saying that in previous editions you started with a concept and worked toward making a character. They are then saying that in 4e you were limited by the concepts available and then creating the character. You may think these to be the same thing but many of us don't believe the same as you do.
It's a distinction without a difference. In
every edition you are limited by the concepts presented. And in every edition you either start with a concept and work towards a character or take a concept from the list available. And I've done both in every edition I've played.
Once again this one talks about the rigidity of the system. Previously to 4e, you could decide you wanted to use a bow and get powers that relate to it with almost any class or concept. Now you have to decide which class or concept you want because only certain ones allow you to use a bow.
This is a strawman.
1: Any class can use a bow at the cost of a feat in 4e. Just like in 3.X or AD&D.
2: I don't care how many feats your wizard burns on his bow in 3.X or AD&D. He is never going to be that much use with it because his BAB falls behind fast. So your 9th level wizard has spent all his feats on Weapon Proficiency: Composite Bow, Weapon Focus: Composite Bow, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot. He still has a BAB of +4 at 9th level. The fighter who has invested literally additional resources all into the bow is shooting at a BAB of +9/+4. (And Arcane Archer stops your spellcasting progression).
The only way a wizard is going to do something other than completely suck with a bow is simple. He needs to take levels in classes other than wizard - dropping a spell level to fighter, barbarian, or ranger - and another one as he enters Eldritch Knight. At that point your wizard is only (only!) three points of BAB down. He can try Rapid Shot, bringing his to hit penalty to -5. Or Manyshot for -7 given that he just qualifies for it.
Now let's try the archer-wizard in 4E using just PHB options. Weapon Proficiency feat again. But this time I'm at least not giving up a lot of accuracy on the ranger. What I'm giving up is the equivalent of iterative attacks and the manyshot feat. You know, the ones that take a ridiculous to hit penalty. But wait. I have enough Dex to qualify for the ranger multiclass feat. And then I can spend a second feat to trade encounter powers with the ranger. So I get some archery that is up to ranger standards (probably either Disruptive Shot or something to give me two shots). So at the cost of three feats I can get some good shooting in, and am able to shoot fast. Without having broad-side-of-a-barn-door problems. At level 10 I get to swap dailies. And at level 11 I take the Sharpshooter Paragon Path.
The 4e PHB wizard-archer makes the 3e PHB wizard-archer look like a joke who can't hit the broad side of a barn door. (Actually at high level the PHB wizard-archer simply quickened-true-strikes but I digress).
So I guess it's not mixing and matching talents (although it takes less skill to understand how to do it in 3E). What it is is the historically weird combination of combining heavy armour, the class called "fighter", and archery. Rather than taking a ranger and buying him the heavy armour feats. Because I for one don't see how the word "fighter" written on the character sheet is part of
anyone's in character concept. The class is a metagame choice to best reflect your concept.
Forgive me, I haven't really followed 4e too much and I am prone to making mistakes when I say these sorts of things, but didn't hybrid classes come out in PHB3? Also, as I understand it, hybrid classes were created in response to people disliking the current form of multiclassing available in 4e. If what I have said is true, I can understand the poster's objections very clearly then. By PHB1 alone, creating the class they want is very difficult in 4e but no where near as difficult pre-4e.
Pre-4e is not synonymous with 3.X. 3.X had advantages and disadvantages. Its advantage was massive flexibility in concepts. Its disadvantage was that an awful lot of ways of taking advantage of that flexibility
sucked.
You want to mix and match wizard casting and cleric casting? In AD&D it was easy (for a non-human). You effectively took a hybrid character. In 3.X? Your best path is Mystic Theurge. Which at level 7 looks like Wizard 3/Cleric 3/Mystic Theurge 1. At level 7 you can only cast 2nd level spells while the wizard and cleric are casting 4th level. And you have a BAB of +3 and problems wearing armour and casting spells. You suck. And one thing I guarantee. Sucking is almost never part of someone's character concept. And this is a problem with 3.X - so many things look like a good idea but actually just suck. (Hello there Monks, not that you weren't an improvement on the 1e monk).
As for other concepts you want, give me a non-magical leader of men who actively increases their ability on the battlefield in any edition pre-4th.
Fighting style and role already are more connected (intertwined if you like) in 4e than they were in previous editions by the sheer fact that we KNOW that a wizard is a controller, a fighter a defender, a rogue a striker and a cleric a leader.
Don't make me pull my 2e PHB which had its own roles. As for the rogue being DPR, go look at the 3.X class. Look at the hit points and sneak attack. And then come and tell me what part of that doesn't say DPR glass cannon to you?
While it's the case for many elements of 4e that a better presentation could clear up lots of problems, I think the problems people have with roles stems from a different issue, namely the fact that classes were defined by combat role rather than thematic niche.
Which isn't true. Classes are
defined by thematic niche. They are then sorted and balanced by combat role. (With the occasional exception that fills in the grid like the Fightbrain (a.k.a. the Battlemind).
To take a look at the martial classes for a moment, fighters in previous editions are the dudes in heavy armor who do fancy stuff with different weapons,
Let me stop you right there. You are talking about "previous editions" as if they were all 3.X. In AD&D
fighters only had four weapon proficiency slots, and needed to spend two on one weapon to specialise. (Weapon Specialisation having only come in with Unearthed Arcana). Which means that AD&D 1e pre-Unearthed Arcana fighters were (like all other classes) only proficient in a narrow range of weapons. And 1e post-Unearthed Arcana and 2e fighters were tightly focussed weapon specialists (specialisation being overwhelmingly strong).
Of course fighters took less of a penalty for being non-proficient than other classes - but that was more than outweighed by the strength of weapon specialisation. So each individual fighter had the narrowest range of good weapons of any PC.
paladins are the dudes on horseback who smite evil things, rangers are nature-y TWF/archer dudes with animal companions,
Which edition? The 1e ranger was an Aragorn ripoff right down to being able to use Palantir. The two weapon fighting of the ranger was IIRC specifically to give them a different fighting style to the fighter.
barbarians are tough dudes that flip out and kill things and are really hard to kill themselves,
Which edition? Because that describes the 3e and the 4e Barbarian. But the
1e Barbarian was defined by:
[FONT=Arial Narrow,Arial,Helvetica]Barbarians fear and oppose all magic except the simplest of clerical magics (ministrations of the gods). They cannot use magic items of any sort at low levels, and will always gain experience points for destroying any magic item. They will not knowingly work with magic-users at low levels, and at even the highest levels will view such wizards with suspicion even if well known to them. This chart shows the degree to which magic will be tolerated by barbarians:
Level Actions and Abilities
- May associate freely with clerics.
- May use potions.
- May use magic weapons.
- May use magic armor.
- May associate with magic-users (and their sub-classes) if the need is great.
- May use weapon-like miscellaneous magic items.
- May associate with magic-users occasionally.
- May use protection scrolls.
- May use most magic items available to fighters.
To compensate for their reluctance to use magic items, the barbarian is presumed to have the ability to hit creatures normally protected by the requirement that magic weapons be used.
[/FONT]
Nothing about raging in there. The first actual time a barbarian got to rage was
The Complete Barbarian's Handbook with a single kit from 2e having some form of rage (and a dwarf
fighter kit). Now I vastly prefer the 3.X and 4e Barbarians to that antisocial pest. But would you
please stop trying to claim that all prior editions worked in the way 3.X did. Because they simply didn't.
and rogues are sneaky dudes who are fragile in stand-up combat but are great in ambush situations. So far, so good.
Thieves prior to 3.X. In 1e the class was called the thief. In 2e the class was the thief and the role was the rogue. Bards were also rogues in 2e (having changed immensely from their 1e incarnation). Although this is minor quibbling.
In 3e, for instance, a 2HF fighter with Power Attack and Shock Trooper was more striker-y, a S&B fighter with Stand Still and Combat Reflexes was more defender-y, a TWFer with combat style feats and Cleave was more controller-y, and a fighter with Leadership and bunches of teamwork benefits was more leader-y.
And they were all strikery defender-wannabes with d10 hit dice and heavy armour proficiency. In 4e a 2 handed fighter with high damage powers is more strikery than the sword and board fighter who had cleave and tide of iron as his at wills - that sword and board fighter was more controllery. Your power
selection is part of your customisation. And as for leadery? If you want a leadery martial character in heavy armour in 4e, write "warlord" at the top of your character sheet.
In 4e, they took everything martial characters could do and split them by combat role first, then schtick second--instead of deciding to be a weapon master or a sneaky guy or an archer and then choosing what combat niche to fill, you choose a role and then pick your schtick based on that.
Or you decide on what you want to play and then pick your class and build to that end. This latter is the way I do it most of the time. All that changed was the default presentation.
If you wanted to have Combat Challenge and wield two weapons,
You needed to wait until Martial Power 1 for the Tempest Fighter. Not everything showed up immediately - that's why we have splatbooks.
or Hunter's Quarry and have a shield,
You took Hunter's Quarry as a multiclass feat or took a spiked shield.
instead of having a blank slate and building up to the role of your choice
I don't know which game you think you have a blank slate once you've chosen your class. But it's no edition of D&D I've ever played.
If the PHB1 had had Ranger-scale TWF and archery options for Defenders and Fighter-scale two-handed and S&B options for Strikers right out of the gate, rather than trying to make a defender-y Striker because you wanted to be a TWF-based Defender or a striker-y Defender because you wanted to be a S&B Striker, I doubt roles would ever have been a problem, but instead a complaint along the lines of "I'd rather make my TWFers the mobile, sticky ones and the two-handers the straightforward, burst-damage ones" gets boiled down to a vague "Why do fighters have to be bodyguards!?!?"
If the PHB had been eight hundred pages thick and had options that contained the kitchen sink, I doubt I'd have ever tried to lift it. That's the problem. What you are asking for is entire reams of paper - they'd have had to cut about half the classes to get as much as you want - or had to cut a lot of the subtle options, like the spear fighter being pretty effective. Your entire problem here appears to boil down to "The PHB simply wasn't thick enough".
Same thing with clerics being single-target damage dealers and buffers while wizards were multi-target damage dealers and debuffers
Clerics? Single target damage dealers? A wisdom cleric can make all his dailies and a large proportion of his encounter powers AoEs. And wizards can take single target attacks. Now the buff/debuff part is a point. And one I'm pretty sure has been dealt with by splatbooks.
But the point is that the perception of how you do them is different.
If you want to make a 4e character focusing on TWF or archery, it doesn't work that way. You decide you want to make an archer, then you need to go through the different classes and figure out which classes let you do what you want to do.
This is a point.
If you want to make lots of attacks, you go with ranger. If you want to debuff people with your attacks, you go with rogue. And if you'd rather make lots of attacks with a bow and be sneaky, well, you're out of luck, because rangers are the longbow class and rogues are the sneaky/social utility class.
You think rangers aren't sneaky? Seriously? High dex, stealth on the class list. Rangers are as sneaky as they've ever been - and a sneaky ranger is every bit as sneaky as an ordinary rogue. (Or you pick Bard or even Warlord, but I digress).
Past that, being an archer, at least in PHB1, prevents you from being a defender, leader, or controller if you want powers relating to your schtick.
So once again your problem is that the PHB 1 had too few options because it wasn't a thousand pages thick. There are two archer-leader classes (bard and MP2 warlord) and two archer-controller classes (seeker and hunter). You can't have a ranged defender - the two just don't work together.
Again, it comes down to perceptions. The ranger writeup is full of powers that say "make an attack with two weapons" while the fighter writeup is full of powers that say "if you're wielding an axe or hammer, you get X benefit."
Again it comes down to you wanting the kitchen sink in the PHB. The figher has plenty of two weapon powers. They just appeared in Martial Power. This is another 800 page PHB problem.
they want to make two attacks per round because that's what they thing TWF should do
No it shouldn't. Two weapon fighting is seriously overrated in D&D . [/grump]
And many people don't see "being a defender" as a primary schtick.
I don't see "Able to cast spells" as a primary schtick either. I see the type of spells mattering. Yet we have the 3.X wizard class.
Eventually, we built his character as a cleric/rogue and just dropped the archery aspect, but he was kind of ticked off that he wasn't able to use archery-related powers because the choice was "archery, sneakiness, healing, pick two" instead of "take sneaky healer, add archery" so he couldn't both support the party and focus on the bow and have both of those relatively equally-supported as he had before.
Again this is your 800 page PHB issue. And it wasn't "Archery, Sneakiness, Healing. Pick two." It was "There are no healer archers presented in the PHB". The Bard, the Warlord, and the Cleric all have archery options. And the Bard has a decent measure of sneakiness. That said, I definitely agree that the PHB rogue should have had shortbow proficiency.
Why is that so unrealistic? What's so hard about divorcing fighting style from role?
4e made the decision to support every class as well as it does the casters.
