4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[Derren]

(This also is why [MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION]'s "Want to be a paladin? Behave like a paladin." runs into trouble. Unless it's mechanically encouraged it can easily turn into "Behave like a paladin? Get in line for a Darwin Award to no positive effect.")

Why? Behaving like a Paladin has nothing to do with your combat style but more about how you RP your character. Why should a paladin be hardcoded to fight a specific way. What about a paladin to Corellon? Why does he have to wade into melee instead of using a bow? Or what about the paladin of a trickster god? Because that is your vision of a paladin?

 

[Dragoslav]

I actually don't think this is true - nor do I think it should be.

It would be quite possible in 4e to have a cowardly (well, more cowardly than a driven madman, at any rate!) paladin who uses missile weapons and "kite marking" and such like - presumably they would be some other alignment than Lawful Good, but even that is not set in stone. What you would not get, however, is such a paladin with the power Valiant Strike - because it would be close to useless for them.

You make a good distinction, but my example was only of a player who, specifically, wanted to be paladin and use Valiant Strike refluffed as, specifically, a cowardly maneuver.

 

[S'mon]

I am interested in discussing this because I have seen 2 schools of thought as far as 4e fans are concerned...

The larger group (as far as my experiences go) claims that 4e is, because of it's effects based design, virtually divorced from class or even powers meaning anything...

The smaller group as represented by posters like pemerton, manbearcat, s'mon, etc. claims that 4e's classes and powers have baked in thematic qualities and thus very much have a specific meaning.

Now, IMO, I don't think both of these claims can be right so I am curious in getting down to whether the game actually pushes and forces a player to play and adopt these thematic elements...

You can certainly choose class and powers without any regard to the thematics. The beauty of 4e's class & power design is that the thematics are so baked into the mechanics that you act like a brave Paladin just by using the powers effectively. The only guy I can recall 'failing' was the Warlord player who for 3-4 sessions refused to turn over the page on his pregen PC sheet and only ever used the Basic Attack on page 1. Obviously he did not seem very Warlordy. But all he had to do to play in a thematically appropriate manner was to turn the page. Absolute minimal effort required.
IME players are 'pushed' by the system to play in a thematically appropriate manner, because it is mechanically optimal, but they never feel 'forced'. It's not like Paladin or Cavalier mandates in 1e where players benefit mechanically from 'working around' the restrictions. A player can consciously ignore all the thematics but they still come out in play. My player Stuart played his Wizard PCs completely as pawns, zero personality, but they certainly still acted in a thematically appropriate manner in combat. Whereas I recall 3e Wizard PCs who acted in very un-Wizardly ways that the players felt were promoted/rewarded by the system.

It may be that Hybrids cause problems, I've never used the Hybrid rules. And a player willing to cripple his PC mechanically could deliberately go against the thematics of the powers he's chosen (Paladin who lurks at the back and throws daggers); but I don't know why he would want to waste his own time doing so, and I've never seen this in 4e.

 

[S'mon]

See I don't think it has anything to do with familiarity... I am actually speaking to the stance that the 4e rules and guidance support... I will repost what I put in the other thread as an example...
Here are some examples, quoted from the corebooks of what I (and I think innerdude) are speaking of...
PH 1, page 55
A power's flavor text helps you understand what happens when you use a power and how you might describe it when you use it. You can alter this description as you like, to fit your own idea of what your power looks like. Your wizard's magic missile spell, for example, might create phantasmal skulls that howl through the air to strike your opponent, rather than simple bolts of magical energy.
PH 2, page 4 A power's flavor text is only a starting point. You can modify that flavor however you like, as long as you don't change the power's game effects. Maybe you would rather think of the barbarian power macetail's rage as channeling the World Serpent, a primal spirit that appears in some shaman powers. You might say, 'The earth shakes beneath my feet as the World Serpent stirs, knocking my foe to the ground!'

EDIT: So that being said, couldn't I say that valiant strike is actually the ability of my paladin to use the crowd and confusion of combat to misdirect and confuse foes so that they are opening themselves up and he is getting sneaky hits in on them? This in turn doesn't support a valiant character archetype... and in fact could support the sneaky cowardly archetype I suggested before or am I missing something here?

Personally I think you're missing that the PHB 1/2 suggested reskins are little more than surface decoration that don't go to the power's source (Virtue of Valour) the way yours do. A Necromancer or Witch Doctor who flings spectral skulls is still a Wizard. A World Serpent-channeling barbarian is still a barbarian. Personally I see your Paladin reskin as more radical, but I can see that others might disagree. It seems very appropriate for a Blackguard, though.

 

[LostSoul]

Why? Behaving like a Paladin has nothing to do with your combat style but more about how you RP your character. Why should a paladin be hardcoded to fight a specific way. What about a paladin to Corellon? Why does he have to wade into melee instead of using a bow? Or what about the paladin of a trickster god? Because that is your vision of a paladin?

I think that's a fair and reasonable way of looking at things. I think that some players want the mechanics to support their class archetype - if your class is called Fighter you should be able to fight (high hp, can wear armour and use weapons, etc.). The archetypal Paladin wades into melee, even if he worships Corellon or Zehir. Which is restrictive, but I think class-based systems are going to restrict you in some way, and restricting you to playing to the archetype is not necessarily a bad way to go.

 

[Derren]

I think that's a fair and reasonable way of looking at things. I think that some players want the mechanics to support their class archetype - if your class is called Fighter you should be able to fight (high hp, can wear armour and use weapons, etc.). The archetypal Paladin wades into melee, even if he worships Corellon or Zehir. Which is restrictive, but I think class-based systems are going to restrict you in some way, and restricting you to playing to the archetype is not necessarily a bad way to go.

Except when you look at editions before 4E a fighter could fight in any way he wants. Sword & Shield? He can do that. Two handed polearm? He can do that. Mobile skirmisher? He can do that. Archery? He can do that. None of those fighting styles were more effective than others because of being hardcoded by the rules. Other classes were not quite as flexible, mostly the ranger with its 2 weapon or archery focus, but still even when the player decides to use a different fighting style he was not penalized by it.
4E started to hard code fighting styles for every class where you are actively penalized by not fighting the way the game designers envisioned your class to fight and that I heavily dislike.

And what exactly is a paladin? Before 4E it was a lawful good divine warrior who fights against evil. In 4E it was a divine empowered fighter of a church. Neither of those definitions requires a hard coded combat style.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

[MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION]

I think 4e's skill system doesn't really exist as a useful design in a vacuum though. Its a nice system for reinforcing characterization. I pick Athletics, my character solves problems with physical prowess. Your character is strong, but he doesn't show that bent. He can probably do athletic things reasonably well, but I excel, it is my shtick. For a narrower focus you could say pick a background that gave you a focus (Occupation - Athlete, professional diver, now I can ask the DM for all sorts of bonuses if I use Athletics to swim). I like that separation. The broad skills also encourage things like "Why does my 20th level wizard break doors open pretty well? Magic!" Sure, its his +10 level bonus to STR checks, but I can pretend it is because he knows a lot about Arcana, so he can make himself stronger than a normal person. You can cover a lot of ground that way.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I actually don't think this is true - nor do I think it should be.

It would be quite possible in 4e to have a cowardly (well, more cowardly than a driven madman, at any rate!) paladin who uses missile weapons and "kite marking" and such like - presumably they would be some other alignment than Lawful Good, but even that is not set in stone. What you would not get, however, is such a paladin with the power Valiant Strike - because it would be close to useless for them.

I also doubt you would use the Paladin class for that character. Instead you might make him say an Archer Warlord. He can call himself 'paladin', and operate as such in narrative terms, but given his lack of adherence to the classical archetype he's got little use for the class. If he needs more divine type abilities he could be a STR cleric, MC into a divine class, or maybe play some other class.

Of course you can refluff powers in a lot of ways. That doesn't mean that the game isn't mostly built around playing fairly standard archetypes. IME 90% of the PCs in my games are old standbys, rangers, clerics, fighters, rogues, a paladin, a bard, etc. Now and then someone plays a Warden, a Shaman, or a Psion or something like that. Hardly anyone plays really unusual classes either, there have been a few Dragonborn, but not much more weird than that (a pixie). Most players just don't seem to need to go to extremes to have fun and like to stick with what they know how to play more often than not. I don't see a lot of heavy refluffing happening all the time. Its a technique, you can use it, some people do, but its not like 4e is filled with people doing it every day. IME the same was true in previous editions, most 3.x players play straight single-classed PCs of common races.

 

[LostSoul]

Except when you look at editions before 4E a fighter could fight in any way he wants. Sword & Shield? He can do that. Two handed polearm? He can do that. Mobile skirmisher? He can do that. Archery? He can do that. None of those fighting styles were more effective than others because of being hardcoded by the rules. Other classes were not quite as flexible, mostly the ranger with its 2 weapon or archery focus, but still even when the player decides to use a different fighting style he was not penalized by it.
4E started to hard code fighting styles for every class where you are actively penalized by not fighting the way the game designers envisioned your class to fight and that I heavily dislike.

And what exactly is a paladin? Before 4E it was a lawful good divine warrior who fights against evil. In 4E it was a divine empowered fighter of a church. Neither of those definitions requires a hard coded combat style.

I think you overestimate the Fighter's defining combat style. Of those that you listed, only archery isn't a mechanically optimal build. (I don't think - it could be.) That said, I understand the dislike. I'd have preferred the Fighter to be a little more effective in ranged combat. I can understand why they did that - they wanted to give the Fighter class a stronger archetype than it had before. I think that's a reasonable decision to make in a class-based system, even if it takes away flexibility from the class that was there in previous editions.

I think the same goes for the Paladin. They wanted the Paladin to exemplify a specific set of virtues - valiant, self-sacrificial, that sort of thing. I don't think the Paladin from the PHB is a good fit for all the different sorts of gods out there (or the Cleric, for that matter), and I agree that this causes some dissonance - why does my Paladin of Zehir (god of darkness) shoot light and colour? Again, I can see why they made that decision and I think it's a reasonable one (though less so than what they did with the Fighter).

(For me, the issue lies in the definition of "Radiant" damage. I have changed "Radiant" damage in my game to be a manifestation of the divine character's belief system - so your Paladin of Zehir would inflict "blinding darkness" (0 HP = permanently blind). This requires me to work out exactly what each power is doing with the player of that PC, but I enjoy that. I do the same with the other classes anyway.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except when you look at editions before 4E a fighter could fight in any way he wants. Sword & Shield? He can do that. Two handed polearm? He can do that. Mobile skirmisher? He can do that. Archery? He can do that. None of those fighting styles were more effective than others because of being hardcoded by the rules. Other classes were not quite as flexible, mostly the ranger with its 2 weapon or archery focus, but still even when the player decides to use a different fighting style he was not penalized by it.
4E started to hard code fighting styles for every class where you are actively penalized by not fighting the way the game designers envisioned your class to fight and that I heavily dislike.

And what exactly is a paladin? Before 4E it was a lawful good divine warrior who fights against evil. In 4E it was a divine empowered fighter of a church. Neither of those definitions requires a hard coded combat style.

Eh, but there wasn't a heck of a lot of distinction between different fighters using melee weapons in previous editions. You would do slightly different damage in some editions with different weapons, and it might be handy to pick up a spear if someone charged you, etc, but the difference between a Mace and a Battle Axe was pretty much zip. At most you specialized in a fighting style with specialization, and most PCs had a magic weapon they wouldn't give up (best to use your +2 sword against skeletons vs a normal mace, etc).

Now, consider a 4e fighter, he can also pick up any melee weapon (and is proficient with most of them by default). He's also going to probably prefer one weapon. Not sure I see a big difference. Likewise nonspecialized use of a bow and MBA use of a bow aren't radically different, the 4e and the 2e fighter can both pick one up and use it.

In either edition any PC could CALL himself a "paladin" and fight however he wanted. There wasn't much reason to want to play an actual paladin in AD&D and use a bow (code of honor aside it just didn't leverage the characters strengths much). Likewise in 4e, you wouldn't probably want to do that.