D&D 4E Melee Training Restored

Marshall said:

Honestly?!?

Get rid of the Fighter as an archetype. "Fighter" is a first level title. Its little better than Grunt, Peon, Thug or Girl with Sword. Eventually the Fighter grows up and actually makes something of herself. THAT is the class the character belongs to.

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Yeah, that's a fine suggestion. In HoML there is actually (currently at least) no class which is called 'Fighter', per-se. However it is somewhat hard to do. Maybe its just that the idea of that class is etched deeply into the DNA of D&D-likes, but it does afford a lot of flexibility to players in terms of imagining their character's details. OD&D, with its 'big 4' (especially the Fighting Man and the Magic User) certainly was built around that concept at first. Admittedly the Cleric and the Thief are depicted somewhat more narrowly, so we can see things immediately starting moving in that direction. Still, it is tough with the fighter, especially since it often gets burdened with the "mundane sword-swinger" baggage. Once you make it that limited, then its hard to sub-divide it and get anything useful.

Anyway, HoML doesn't have THAT problem (neither does 4e). However I still find it hard to split fighters up. Is 'Knight' a class? If so, how does it differ specifically from 'Samurai' or 100 other such concepts. What class do you put "hard boiled mercenary" into? Is that a class? If so how do you mix it in together with culture-specific classes like Knight and Samurai? Or should the factoring be along some different lines? 'Noble Warrior', 'Common Warrior', 'Peasant Champion', 'Buccaneer', 'Thug', ....?

Its a HUGE can o' worms as soon as you open it! Rogue runs into equal issues, and adjudicating the dividing line between them when the criteria seems to be more 'story origin and background' vs actual mechanics (cause lets face it, a Knight and a Mercenary don't seem to really be mechanically very distinct) is VERY arbitrary and tricky.

At one point I had experimented with giving each character an 'archetype', basically a generalization of OD&D's 'big 4' (warrior, mystic, and trickster IIRC). It is probably workable, similar to the 2e 'class family' concept, but I also liked source/role too much and having a 3rd dimension was a bridge too far. Anyway, its not really clear where each class goes, even in that high-level of a breakdown, nor which things are 'archetypal' and which should be stuck firmly to 'class'. The end result felt like 4e with 3 classes and a lot of builds.

AbdulAlhazred said:

OD&D, with its 'big 4' (especially the Fighting Man and the Magic User) certainly was built around that concept at first. Admittedly the Cleric and the Thief are depicted somewhat more narrowly, so we can see things immediately starting moving in that direction.

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The Original OD&D 3, before the theif & paladin, map precisely to the 3 Sources in the 4e PH1. The 'Big 4' map less nearly to the 4 Roles, since the roles were so much more nearly balanced.

Still, it is tough with the fighter, especially since it often gets burdened with the "mundane sword-swinger" baggage. Once you make it that limited, then its hard to sub-divide it and get anything useful.

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Its been problematic since day 2, when the Thief came out, and established, that while it was OK for the magic-user to tap all the magic in genre & more ('cept healing), and for the cleric to you no healing & biblical miracles while wearing heavy armor, the non-supernatural skills & feats of genre had to be not only under-modeled but split between two classes.

The martial source never recovered, not even in 4e.

I still find it hard to split fighters up. Is 'Knight' a class? If so, how does it differ specifically from 'Samurai' or 100 other such concepts. What class do you put "hard boiled mercenary" into? Is that a class? If so how do you mix it in together with culture-specific classes like Knight and Samurai? Or should the factoring be along some different lines? 'Noble Warrior', 'Common Warrior', 'Peasant Champion', 'Buccaneer', 'Thug', ....?

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That's just one of the weaknesses of a class system.

Class + quasi-classes like race, sub-class, Kits, Feat-chains, Backgrounds, Themes, Paths, Destinies, and Archetypes can help with that.

Tony Vargas said:

The Original OD&D 3, before the theif & paladin, map precisely to the 3 Sources in the 4e PH1. The 'Big 4' map less nearly to the 4 Roles, since the roles were so much more nearly balanced.

Its been problematic since day 2, when the Thief came out, and established, that while it was OK for the magic-user to tap all the magic in genre & more ('cept healing), and for the cleric to you no healing & biblical miracles while wearing heavy armor, the non-supernatural skills & feats of genre had to be not only under-modeled but split between two classes.

The martial source never recovered, not even in 4e.

That's just one of the weaknesses of a class system.

Class + quasi-classes like race, sub-class, Kits, Feat-chains, Backgrounds, Themes, Paths, Destinies, and Archetypes can help with that.

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Just classes by another name. That was the upshot of my experiment, I could call it something else, but I just ended up with effectively 3 classes, or you could call them 'power sources', whatever. And then I'd still have to make a bunch of 'sub classes'. It seemed an experiment that was pointless. So I simply settled on mostly how 4e parsed it, several power sources that are loose but generally thematic, and then if you want a 'build' of character, you pick a pretty specific archetype and make a class. It works. Given that I've stripped a lot out of 4e's class design its not that hard either.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Just classes by another name. That was the upshot of my experiment, I could call it something else, but I just ended up with effectively 3 classes, or you could call them 'power sources', whatever. And then I'd still have to make a bunch of 'sub classes'. It seemed an experiment that was pointless. So I simply settled on mostly how 4e parsed it, several power sources that are loose but generally thematic, and then if you want a 'build' of character, you pick a pretty specific archetype and make a class. It works. Given that I've stripped a lot out of 4e's class design its not that hard either.

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Further off on a tangent, maybe I should ask in your HoML thread, but, with regard to quasi-classes, things that act like classes but combine with them, I've often thought that you could leave Role & Source independently 'floating,' so you could just choose Martial & Defender, instead of Fighter, say...

But, other threads about resource mixes have me thinking if it wouldn't be kosher to have a quasi-class that floated free of Role & Source and determined your resource mix? I don't have a good name for it or anything, but the standard 4e AEDU version might be the 'Hero,' a dynamic character who comes through when it coutns; an all-at-will 'Stalwart' who always puts in the same solid base-line performance for his Source & Role, regardless of what he's facing or how long he's been at it; a mostly-daily 'Specialist' who's awesome in one narrow specialty and can pull out the perfect, even overwhelming, solution infrequently in that specialty as well, etc...

Tony Vargas said:

But, other threads about resource mixes have me thinking if it wouldn't be kosher to have a quasi-class that floated free of Role & Source and determined your resource mix? I don't have a good name for it or anything, but the standard 4e AEDU version might be the 'Hero,' a dynamic character who comes through when it coutns; an all-at-will 'Stalwart' who always puts in the same solid base-line performance for his Source & Role, regardless of what he's facing or how long he's been at it; a mostly-daily 'Specialist' who's awesome in one narrow specialty and can pull out the perfect, even overwhelming, solution infrequently in that specialty as well, etc...

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One of the 4e descendant threads has something very akin to that... on 4enclave.org however my experience has been it's way way too easy to yank the game into being all about the specialist mayaps the problem is they become a specialist in so many things as they level instead of staying a narrow solution.

Garthanos said:

One of the 4e descendant threads has something very akin to that... on 4enclave.org however my experience has been it's way way too easy to yank the game into being all about the specialist mayaps the problem is they become a specialist in so many things as they level instead of staying a narrow solution.

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I picture the specialist as being darn-near unplayable, like a 3e NPC class.

Though, the mostly-daily is pedantic, I think it would work better as an all-at-will like the Stalwart. Maybe Wild-something for the mostly-daily type...?

The point, though, is intentional imbalance favoring the 'Hero.'

Garthanos said:

One of the 4e descendant threads has something very akin to that... on 4enclave.org however my experience has been it's way way too easy to yank the game into being all about the specialist mayaps the problem is they become a specialist in so many things as they level instead of staying a narrow solution.

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More meandering thought on the Specialist:

Savant (Specialist):

A Savant is a member of a class with exceptional but erratic talent for the greatest feats of the class but no talent or patience for the more pedestrian applications.

Meta: Savant is a template for players who want more of a challenge than a regular class represents. The player must manage tight resources and make difficult choices to succeed as a Savant-templated character.

Choose 1 daily @ 1st level, after 1st choose only daily utilities, and daily attack powers that do not have any Keywords that they do not share with your 1st level Daily - if there is no such daily available, you gain an additional use of your 1st-level Daily, but cannot use it twice in the same Encounter. You do not gain at-will or encounter powers from any source, including second wind & action points. You have 4 fewer surges than normal for your class. You have only at-wills that everyone gets, like Basic Attacks. You are proficient in only a single weapon or implement, if you choose a melee weapon with a Thrown property you must choose if you are proficient with it in melee, or throwing, not both. You can choose one at-will from your class if it is useable as a basic attack; if you do, you are non-proficient with all weapons for purposes of both your melee & ranged basic attacks. If all your daily powers have the weapon keyword (and are either all melee or all ranged), you gain a +3 to hit and damage when using your weapon to make your proficient basic attack. Otherwise, you gain the +3 to hit and damage only when you use a daily attack power. At 21st level, your basic attack or at-will does not gain an additional die of damage, instead, at paragon, any heroic-level daily you still have that rolls damage gains +1 die of damage, and at Epic, your paragon-level dailies do +1d, and your heroic improve to +2d. Savants can choose a single Background, and at 11th, a Pargaon Path but gain only the Path's level 20 daily power; Savants cannot choose a Theme or Epic Destiny. Stats: A Savant's Prime Requisite is 18 at 1st level, and goes up by 1 at all the usual levels, and +2 at 21st, his other stats start at 10, before reacial modifiers, and go up by 1 at 11th & 21st, only. His other stats start at 10 and go up by 1 at 11th * 21st. Skills: A Savant chooses one of his trained skills, with this skill he always succeeds at Easy & Medium checks and 1/day/Tier can choose to have a result of 20 on his check, before he rolls. A Savant can only roll for Easy checks with his untrained skills, and always fails if the DC is >= Moderate for his level, unlike the Stalwart, the Savant expends his action when he automatically fails a check.

Role specials: Savant Leaders gain their leader surge-triggering encounter power as a Daily that provides non-surge healing, instead. Savant Strikers who have an at-will damage boost (like SA or a damage bonuse to all attacks) can apply this damage boost only to their Daily Powers; if the damage boost is an Encounter power it becomes a 1/Tier Daily power, instead. Savant Defenders who mark at-will can mark only when they use a Daily Power, but the mark lasts the rest of the encounter (or until marked by another); if the mark is an encounter power, it becomes a 1/Tier Daily power, instead. Savant Controllers have no special adjustments.

Tony Vargas said:

Further off on a tangent, maybe I should ask in your HoML thread, but, with regard to quasi-classes, things that act like classes but combine with them, I've often thought that you could leave Role & Source independently 'floating,' so you could just choose Martial & Defender, instead of Fighter, say...

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Yeah, that's basically the way Strike! works, but then you're relegated to having powers which are basically either Role Powers (ick, what makes a power a 'defender' power particularly?) or Source based (not so bad, but still hard to do right IMHO).

But, other threads about resource mixes have me thinking if it wouldn't be kosher to have a quasi-class that floated free of Role & Source and determined your resource mix? I don't have a good name for it or anything, but the standard 4e AEDU version might be the 'Hero,' a dynamic character who comes through when it coutns; an all-at-will 'Stalwart' who always puts in the same solid base-line performance for his Source & Role, regardless of what he's facing or how long he's been at it; a mostly-daily 'Specialist' who's awesome in one narrow specialty and can pull out the perfect, even overwhelming, solution infrequently in that specialty as well, etc...

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That might be cool, BUT it has the issue of resource models. That is it is hard to see how a Stalwart and a Specialist would both live on the same sort of adventuring day... It would also be tough to grant each one the same 'story power'. The Specialist, with his "I can completely change the situation" powers would turn into the arbiter of what was possible in the overall parameter space of the party, much like an AD&D wizard, and the Stalwart would sort of just plod along. Both could be useful of course, but the Stalwart's contributions to the shape of the narrative would be hard to discern. This is probably fine for a 'skill test' type of "Step On Up" (gamist) system like OD&D was, but not so great for one that is story focused.

My answer, in HoML, to the class conundrum is that classes themselves are somewhat weak. They don't have power lists, instead they have a Class Feature, and a list of several Class Boons (3 of level 1 ideally, each being something like a build, but you could take more than one). Most of these major boons grant access to two powers, but that's not a universal. When you acquire a boon, you level.

Boons are generally of 3 basic flavors, class boons, race boons, and power source boons. Then there are the 'thematic' boons, which is a catch-all for everything else (these may all get swept up into one or another class at some point, but you're allowed to acquire anything that makes story sense, so that is more a way to organize them than anything else). You start with 3 major boons at level 1, so you could take 3 'dwarf' boons and be a very dwarfy dwarf, but not very distinctive as a Knight, though you'd still have your Knight class feature. In that case you'd be stuck using powers from the open 'martial' list, but that's not terrible. Your feature would insure they had a defenderish spin to them.

You could also take 3 Knight boons and eschew much focus on your race to concentrate on specific elements of being a Knight (highly defenderish in this case). You could take all power source boons and likewise concentrate more on the offensive/fighting style sort of aspect.

These boons could be seen as being akin to themes/PPs/EDs in a sense. They also replace feats in a fairly obvious way. So there's a 4e-like level of build flexibility, but its a little less burdensome to achieve your build goals than 4e, and power lists are a LOT more restricted. I think I currently have maybe 100 powers written, but then it will probably take something like 300 to make a full 1-20 game with a full suite of classes.

Still, I don't know if a Pirate or a Samurai should be a class, or a boon... nor why that would be different from Knight (which seems awfully much like fighter right now).

AbdulAlhazred said:

Yeah, that's basically the way Strike! works, but then you're relegated to having powers which are basically either Role Powers (ick, what makes a power a 'defender' power particularly?) or Source based (not so bad, but still hard to do right IMHO).

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I've given it the occasional moment of thought over the years, and the obvious model is those occasional class powers that do something more/different for a given build.

So you'd have powers by source, but many of them would do something extra/different based on Role. Maybe not every power for every role, but significant numbers.

The other obvious point is class feature role support - except for controllers, most classes have role support mostly in their features.

That might be cool, BUT it has the issue of resource models. That is it is hard to see how a Stalwart and a Specialist would both live on the same sort of adventuring day... It would also be tough to grant each one the same 'story power'.

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Nod That's kinda the point.

The Stalwart would be there for the player who wants to zone out of the rules discussions and just RP a bit, roll a bit, woot! over a the odd crit, and generally drink beer, eat pretzels & socialize - or to join in on the fun without having to take center stage or make tough decisions ...or whatever's supposed to go on in the heads of those millions of players the Slayer was made for. All while still pulling their own weight.

The Specialist, with his "I can completely change the situation" powers would turn into the arbiter of what was possible in the overall parameter space of the party, much like an AD&D wizard,

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He'd be no different (actually, a bit less versatile) than the Hero, that way. The idea is for a player who wants more challenge in earning his 'story power' through careful resource management. Sorta like taking a handicap, really.

My answer, in HoML, to the class conundrum is that classes themselves are somewhat weak. They don't have power lists, instead they have a Class Feature, and a list of several Class Boons (3 of level 1 ideally, each being something like a build, but you could take more than one). Most of these major boons grant access to two powers, but that's not a universal. When you acquire a boon, you level.

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Yeah, I was having trouble following that.

Boons are generally of 3 basic flavors, class boons, race boons, and power source boons. Then there are the 'thematic' boons, which is a catch-all for everything else (these may all get swept up into one or another class at some point, but you're allowed to acquire anything that makes story sense, so that is more a way to organize them than anything else). You start with 3 major boons at level 1, so you could take 3 'dwarf' boons and be a very dwarfy dwarf, but not very distinctive as a Knight, though you'd still have your Knight class feature. In that case you'd be stuck using powers from the open 'martial' list, but that's not terrible. Your feature would insure they had a defenderish spin to them.

You could also take 3 Knight boons and eschew much focus on your race to concentrate on specific elements of being a Knight (highly defenderish in this case). You could take all power source boons and likewise concentrate more on the offensive/fighting style sort of aspect.

These boons could be seen as being akin to themes/PPs/EDs in a sense.

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They also seem akin to substitution levels in 3e or PF archetypes - but a broader, more powerful mechanic than either.

Though I'm still fuzzy on them leveling you up on top of all that...

Tony Vargas said:

They also seem akin to substitution levels in 3e or PF archetypes - but a broader, more powerful mechanic than either.

Though I'm still fuzzy on them leveling you up on top of all that...

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Yeah, like PrCs or a bit like level dips in some sense. I don't know PF well at all, so I can't comment on archetypes. Its more powerful in that it subsumes all these different 'languages' (the feat language, the PP language, the ED language, the item language) of 4e, so now things are more general.

So, the leveling... I inverted the concept of level advancement. Instead of leveling up to get 'stuff', you get 'stuff' to level up, but in the more generalized sense of gaining access to new character features (IE the new universal feat 'language'). As an example, if your Knight acquires a Flaming Sword, then he becomes a level 2 Knight! His new class feature is the sword (maybe it is a +1 sword with some attributes basically). He'll also get added bonuses, hit points, etc. of course. Later he might train under a master he meets high on a dangerous mountain and get Sword Expert boon, now he's level 3...