Crazy Jerome
First Post
This is not a problem. If you're going to have a class called the Fighter then he should absolutely rock at fighting. Especially if you're discarding the AEDU structure so the non-fighters are much better at things that don't involve fighting than the fighter.
And I don't see why Ranger and Paladin will necessarily avoid CS. They just won't get as much of it as the fighter.
This. I suspect that the confusion is caused by some short-hand being used in the playtest, with unexplained assumptions. Namely, that in some of the places where they are saying "fighter" here they should really be saying "martial" or "non-caster" or something like that. (And I suspect that they are avoid such language in part to keep people from gettting up in arms over whatever ideas it provokes--e.g. "martial" as a concept being confused with exactly the "4E martial power source."
As it happens, in the playtest, the fighter is the only "martial" class, though not the only non-caster. So in this case, I think they intend for CS to be the martial branch that substitutes for spells or rogue-ish trickery and skills.
Then when they get around to doing a hybrid martial/caster class such as the paladin, it becomes rather obvious how the split should break. To the extent that the paladin gets martial ability, it cuts into his spells. Up one, drop the other. (And then add on whatever else is needed to make the guy a "paladin"--a good working hybrid with its own flavor, as opposed to a fighter/cleric.)
That is, in the fighter/rogue/cleric/wizard playground, once the fighter has reasonable and pertinent toys to play with, same as those other three, then it becomes a lot easier to design the hybrids. You could make a case that a great deal of the ranger, paladin, barbarian, etc. issues in various editions have sprung from problems in the fighter itself. (Certainly not all, bu some.)
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