D&D 4E A gathering of Martial Controllers - what do you think

[Garthanos]

In terms of 'roguing', I dunno, I just remember the words of Musashi in Book of Five Rings "every movement of the sword should be a killing blow." In other words "fooling around with fancy tricks is just BS, if you're going to swing, make it a death shot."

my dad had his teachers cursing at him because they were pushing the death shot philosophy ... and he pointed out visibly that taking out an arm with 50% chance could increase the chances of the following kill shot from 5 percent to 30 percent .. numbers were taken from thin air of course. (Obviously in D&D even taking out an arm can be just hit point depletion but once you have decided to use weakened for that and slowed for leg and some belly wounds). The cursing was in Korean and they also offered to have him teach.

This becomes even more trope affected and you will notice in movies a deadly attack is rarely right away and things like a pommel strike is unrealistically frequent...

The Samurai philosophy is not exactly a truth ... the samurai wanted big obvious "honorable" kills disabling an enemy may indeed be more reliable. A rogue is very very much not a Samurai.

In Kendo my teacher pointed out that attacking a leg didnt count as a point... but he appended in real combat you might to do that because it was the opening you get.

Hence the rogue dashing past a bunch of enemies hamstringing a bunch of easier openings... may be an extreme instance but isnt him passing up dozens of kill shots because he just doesnt have them.

 

[Garthanos]

but at the same time it seems at least semi-magical to me.

unlike the martial power source... and tell me again how tool use is magical inherently.

 

[Garthanos]

I think the concept of Warlord as leader is just a more thematically powerful way of doing it. It seems much more natural and less forced to me.

I think they are already out of the box quite controllerish. Even things they do now are more like controller tricks being cast as something else... you more realistically didnt affect your ally to give them an opening you affected the enemy next to the ally.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

my dad had his teachers cursing at him because they were pushing the death shot philosophy ... and he pointed out visibly that taking out an arm with 50% chance could increase the chances of the following kill shot from 5 percent to 30 percent .. numbers were taken from thin air of course. (Obviously in D&D even taking out an arm can be just hit point depletion but once you have decided to use weakened for that and slowed for leg and some belly wounds). The cursing was in Korean and they also offered to have him teach.

This becomes even more trope affected and you will notice in movies a deadly attack is rarely right away and things like a pommel strike is unrealistically frequent...

The Samurai philosophy is not exactly a truth ... the samurai wanted big obvious "honorable" kills disabling an enemy may indeed be more reliable. A rogue is very very much not a Samurai.

In Kendo my teacher pointed out that attacking a leg didnt count as a point... but he appended in real combat you might to do that because it was the opening you get.

Hence the rogue dashing past a bunch of enemies hamstringing a bunch of easier openings... may be an extreme instance but isnt him passing up dozens of kill shots because he just doesnt have them.

Well, there's this, Musashi won, won a stupendous number of times, and against stupendous odds. I don't think he was being 'flashy', he was being EFFECTIVE.

So, yes, I don't really radically disagree with you, its possible that the most effective thing to do at a given time might be cutting someone's arm or whatever. What seems unrealistic to me is when that's the WHOLE ESSENCE of your tactics. Realistic martial arts (broadly defined) seems to be that you attack in the most effective possible way commensurate with the situation. So you'd expect a strong element of killing blows, probably more so the more skilled you are, and some mixture of weaker attempts to disable or even just disadvantage, your opponent. The exact mix will depend on the types of weapons in use, the relative skill levels of the opponents, and the tactical situation.

So we could see Musashi as the extreme case of 'skilled opponent' who simply struck first with such speed and power that he often ended fights with the first blow (IE the famous duel on the island with the improvised boken). Weaker combatants opt for relatively less risky attacks in the hope that they can disable their opponent enough to swing the odds in their favor.

Of course we shouldn't get too caught up in realism either, but its always a nice place to ground our approach to mechanics as a first cut since it makes it a lot easier to create coherent narrative and establish unambiguously what the fictional positioning of the characters means. That was always why I found such things as an archer as a controller so unsatisfying. While you can certainly invent fantastical imaginary reasons for it to work, its hard to make that stand up to the application of even genre logic, let alone anything real-world.

 

[Garthanos]

Of course we shouldn't get too caught up in realism either, but its always a nice place to ground our approach to mechanics as a first cut since it makes it a lot easier to create coherent narrative and establish unambiguously what the fictional positioning of the characters means.

It is worth pointing out that battles against anything but minions in fiction follow a rule that makes some unlikely attacks more likely than they are in anyway realistically in fantasy logic this is as they are a surprise and not what is expected... just attack the main body mass is the best gun shot but not if you are the lone ranger.

 

[Garthanos]

Well, there's this, Musashi won, won a stupendous number of times, and against stupendous odds. I don't think he was being 'flashy', he was being EFFECTIVE.

Honor !== Flashy exactly ... its socially important and if you it is flashy and you intimidate the blazes out of 3 guys by killing one outright and as you pointed out he might outclass the one guy massively so that for him the delay of disabling shot is more costly and less effective but not because its more reliable.

I think in fiction the only enemies where pure kill it is the most expedient is minions... and in real life even most people are not overwhelmingly able to do kill shots against others who are trained and at all ready so that usually intermediate disabling makes sense in both the fiction and reality.

So, yes, I don't really radically disagree with you, its possible that the most effective thing to do at a given time might be cutting someone's arm or whatever. What seems unrealistic to me is when that's the WHOLE ESSENCE of your tactics.

Hence why I mentioned control is definitely part of warlording and part of roging so yeah I do not see anyone actually saying the whole of being a Wizard is control as it simply isnt.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I just don't see 'martial controller' as a coherent thematic thing. I never did. What 4e explicitly did NOT set out to do was 'fill the grid' and just churn out something for every permutation of power source and role.

Yet it did exactly that for the arcane source with the addition of the Artificer in Eberron & Swordmage in the Realms, for Divine in PH2, and for the Primal and Psionics sources the moment it introduced them. You can't say "there's no Martial Controller because 'gridfilling just ain't our thang,' when it's the only grid left un-filled.

And, you can clearly see places where they had to back off what weapons and martial powers might logically do, to avoid stepping on the controller. Reach weapon rules are clumsily limited to avoid a 3.5 'battlefield control' build, precisely because it would have been a sort of de-facto controller. Had the Warlord's 'Hectoring' powers not been kept very few, it'd've been a secondary controller, and it was conspicuously lacking any sort of provision or mechanics for commanding even small units of NPC troops, which even adapted to the 4e action economy the way summons, mount, conjurations and 'pets' were, could have provided a lot of positional control and minion-sweeping, the way AE and zone spells did.

Of course we shouldn't get too caught up in realism either, but its always a nice place to ground our approach to mechanics as a first cut since it makes it a lot easier to create coherent narrative and establish unambiguously what the fictional positioning of the characters means. That was always why I found such things as an archer as a controller so unsatisfying.

The archer as controller was like the Swordmage as defender, focusing too much on what the iconic example of the Role /did/, not enough on what it accomplished. There's no reason an Arcane Defender should have a sword and get in someone's face - it could just be casting wards or conjuring blockers - and powering either with it's own mana/life-force, for instance. There's no reason a martial controller should be in the back, personally putting the whammy on enemies from a distance, merely substituting a bow for a wand - it could be a reach-based battlefield-controller like in 3e, or have hectoring warlord style powers, or command troops firing into a beaten zone from a safe distance, or, of course, combinations thereof.

It's hard to come up with just one focused class that doesn't also end up being too much a fighter or warlord or rogue, which is a weakness of the 4e Source/Role = Class paradigm. Under Essentials, though, you could quite easily have a Fighter, a Warlord, and a Rogue sub-class each that embraces the Controller role in different ways, as well as the Primal/Martial hybrid Ranger Controller.

Hence why I mentioned control is definitely part of warlording and part of roging so yeah I do not see anyone actually saying the whole of being a Wizard is control as it simply isnt.

At release, the Wizard was the only controller, and the vaguely-defined controller role (and the way reach had been nerfed to avoid stepping on even the minion-sweeping fraction of it), seemed, to me, suggestive of the Controller Role existing only to grandfather in the over-versatile wizard. Ditto the way rituals were handled.

 

[Garthanos]

And, you can clearly see places where they had to back off what weapons and martial powers might logically do, to avoid stepping on the controller. Reach weapon rules are clumsily limited to avoid a 3.5 'battlefield control' build, precisely because it would have been a sort of de-facto controller. Had the Warlord's 'Hectoring' powers not been kept very few, it'd've been a secondary controller, and it was conspicuously lacking any sort of provision or mechanics for commanding even small units of NPC troops, which even adapted to the 4e action economy the way summons, mount, conjurations and 'pets' were, could have provided a lot of positional control and minion-sweeping, the way AE and zone spells did.

I solidly feel like there was a backing off...

The archer as controller was like the Swordmage as defender, focusing too much on what the iconic example of the Role /did/, not enough on what it accomplished. There's no reason an Arcane Defender should have a sword and get in someone's face - it could just be casting wards or conjuring blockers - and powering either with it's own mana/life-force, for instance. There's no reason a martial controller should be in the back, personally putting the whammy on enemies from a distance, merely substituting a bow for a wand - it could be a reach-based battlefield-controller like in 3e, or have hectoring warlord style powers, or command troops firing into a beaten zone from a safe distance, or, of course, combinations thereof.

Agreed too much making a parallel about the how it did it instead of simply focusing on what it accomplished.

It's hard to come up with just one focused class that doesn't also end up being too much a fighter or warlord or rogue, which is a weakness of the 4e Source/Role = Class paradigm. Under Essentials, though, you could quite easily have a Fighter, a Warlord, and a Rogue sub-class each that embraces the Controller role in different ways, as well as the Primal/Martial hybrid Ranger Controller.

I didnt like the subclass concept when it first emerged but among the bits and pieces of post essentials (certainly not the essentials classes) like the Berserker may have changed my mind a bit.

At release, the Wizard was the only controller, and the vaguely-defined controller role (and the way reach had been nerfed to avoid stepping on even the minion-sweeping fraction of it), seemed, to me, suggestive of the Controller Role existing only to grandfather in the over-versatile wizard. Ditto the way rituals were handled.

And why martial practices were underfed the entire time... I find it a fairly rich arena for bringing on the awesome.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I didnt like the subclass concept when it first emerged but among the bits and pieces of post essentials (certainly not the essentials classes) like the Berserker may have changed my mind a bit.

The Berserker and Skald were really quite well-done. Actually, Heroes of the Feywild was probably the best thing to come out in the Essentials half of the run.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think they would have had to drastically change the structure of the combat rules to make strong 'zones of control' work well. The control afforded to wizards is really relatively weak and often circumstantial (at least in PHB1/2, it gets a bit silly later on with all the party friendly at-wills and whatnot).

As for a warlord-like controller, I'm all eyeballs, roll 'er out!