D&D 4E 4e With No Casters?

[Cbas_10]

One of the nice things about the roles is that they let you play around with power sources without messing up the basic structure of the game. You can totally do a no magic game with the PH by sticking to the fighter, rogue, warlord, and ranger. You wouldn't have a controller, but it is possible to create a martial one.

You can also roll things back another step and do some crazy stuff with the structure of the classes. Since many of the elements of character progression are unified, you could run classless D&D by allowing players to select maneuvers and spells from any class they want, mingling the two together, or start everyone with access to all heroic abilities and grant access to divine and arcane via feats.

The really nice thing is that this structure allows you to better depict many classic D&D settings and fantasy worlds. You can run pre-War of the Lance adventures in Dragonlance without clerics. You could run Conan with just the heroic classes for PCs and NPC spellcasters as villains and allies.

Okay. This is what I've been waiting for. Versatility, options, creative uses of the game without having to really spend time house ruling things. I've already pre-ordered the set of the corebooks, and now I don't regret it.

The one stumbling block is that the game expects fighters to wear heavy armor, but you could get around that by building a simple house rule (a fighter in light armor gets a flat bonus to AC to make up the gap).

Ugh. I guess I can't have everything. I know a fighter in lighter armor is at a disadvantage when not in heavy armor, but that can simply be a cool quirk about a character; a character with disadvantages would have to think things out more and compensate in other places. But when a developer says that "a house rule is needed because the game expects it"? Sorta sucks the wind out of the design-by-concept sails....But...we'll see.

 

[Cadfan]

Of course the fighter class assumes heavy armor. Its a melee class. It is capable of using heavy armor. The difference between heavy armor and light armor is very significant. Any class capable of using heavy armor assumes that it will in terms of the class' power balance. This is unavoidable.

This is why we need a swashbuckler class. So we can have a fighting class that doesn't assume heavy armor.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well the rogue backstabbed the swashbuckler and took its stuff. So probably a rogue with a swashbuckler-paragon path will work.

 

[The Little Raven]

A lightly armored combatant who specializes in movement, swift and furious melee strikes, and avoiding damage. Sounds like the rogue to me.

 

[AZRogue]

A lightly armored combatant who specializes in movement, swift and furious melee strikes, and avoiding damage. Sounds like the rogue to me.

You're right. A 4E rogue would probably serve perfectly.

It's just not easy to snap out of "But, I need a fighter to fight". Old habits.

 

[DamnedChoir]

Allowing various different builds in core is always better IMO than having to houserule such changes.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Its a problem because its a variant (which will probably not be in the PHB, or even in the DMG). Its easy to houserule sure, but something this important should be taken into consderation in the core. (there should be a way for warriors to be as effective in light armor without houseruling. Maybe they recuperate that AC by moving fast due to light armor or something)

I think you are looking at ftrs in the wrong way, they are a heavy armour specialist. If you want a swashbuckler type then the rogue or something in PHB2 etc will be for you

 

[Lord Zack]

But what If you want a lightly armored defender?

 

[Cadfan]

Personally, I'm not sure that a rogue fits what I want with a swashbuckler. We'll find out when we see the class, of course, but what I want is a dedicated combatant that fights head on. I do not want a character who sneaks around behind people and stabs them in the back. I guess we'll see whether that's a mandatory party of 4e rogue-ing, or whether there's enough choosable rogue powers to create a rogue who matches my vision of the swashbuckler. I'll be happy to play a rogue if the rogue swashbuckles the way I like, but I don't want to be shoehorned into sneaking and treachery when what I really want is to charge across the deck of a ship and make short work of a bunch of pirates.

But lets not derail the thread. Its already been established in other threads that no one agrees with me.

 

[Mephistopheles]

You can totally do a no magic game with the PH by sticking to the fighter, rogue, warlord, and ranger.

While this does sound promising I'm not sure it implies the kind of game we currently think of as a no magic game when taking into account the hints of pseudo-magical abilities typically non-magical classes are receiving in 4E. I'll wait for the crunch before calling it either way.