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

Tony Vargas

Legend
They seem a starting point .. what happens if someone aware of them just moves through the zone without shifting?
If they're not in any way being menaced by anything closer to their level, and aren't making at attack, themselves (like a charge) at the end of it, just revert to the regular effects (so functionally ignored at higher level IIRC.) Of course, you could always have higher level instant-danger items, like, IDK, chaos shards, astral burrs, hell-embers, abyssal slime, whatever...
 

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Garthanos

Arcadian Knight
Ok, increasing the size, I'll grant. Damage, meh, it's for strikers. ;p. Excluding allies, like targeting enemies makes playing - and facing - a controller simpler, which I feel like undermines the role a bit.

And, of course, they're feats, not class features...

...sigh, you'd think I hate controllers or at least wizards, but, no, I like playing them, when there's some challenge and interest to it....
I think the Ally unfriendly specifically ought to be primarily a wizard flavor controller
 

Tony Vargas

Legend
I think the Ally unfriendly specifically ought to be primarily a wizard flavor controller
It is evocative of the classic magic-user, with his space-filling fireball and rebounding lightning bolt. ;) It's also an unintuitively-good combination with allies who are more or less obliged to melee and/or not that mobile, especially defenders, since it gives the enemy an incentive to engage the party closely rather than skirmishing or hanging back where you get pounded by the wizard's big AEs or blocked by walls or hampered by obscuring zones or the like. (Y'know, in retrospect, the early-4e wizard was maybe designed to work well with Fighters, melee Rogues & melee-capable STR Clerics... a classic iconic D&D party.)

Other pre-E controllers with selective AEs, like the Invoker got smaller AEs & Zones and shaded into secondary leaders. One consequence may have been (I played an evoker once at high heroic, so I'm not speaking from experience) that they work fine with ranged and more mobile melee types, since the above incentive is gone, and they can support fast/aggressive allies who close with the enemy early, especially strikers like Avengers or Rogues, even centering AEs on them when they get mobbed.


...oh, back on something like topic, now that I'm thinking about the subtle differences among extant controllers, the eHunter had a rather poor multi-attack that served few of the purposes of controller AEs, and a single-target condition-infliction at-will & encounter, none of which gave it much control, then it had wildly OP Primal daily 'utilities,' starting with Stalker's Mist (and not really going up much from there, because there's not a lot of up to go from there) that created crazy zones, delivering the real control for the sub-class. So I guess it had a flavor of its own, too. Sadly I know next to nothing about the Psion and it's flavor of control... The Druid, OTOH, was interesting, tougher than other controllers with primal-class hps, and with wildshape adding the flexibility to switch between melee-control beast powers and more traditional controller invocations, that's quite a bit of flexibility. There was also a druid sub-class that did a lot of summoning, and er, made plants grow. ::shrug::


Obviously Martial Controllers should get their own subtle gradations of control, too. The one I recall that was actually completed, the Dreadnought, tended towards melee and close blasts, featuring both standard-issue weapon combat and intimidation-based attacks using, I believe, martial implements. That's a flavor of control. My 'soldier,' (I'm re-incarnating as a Marshal warlord sub-class in 5e discussions, even that name is a step up) from the Martial Controller Underground used Formations of allies & facesless NPC 'troops' to deliver multi-target attacks all around his allies and/or using a formation to volley fire into a beaten zone or the like, and/or could be 'prickly' and zone-controlling like a 3.x tactical build. In between eds, I thought of a (Martial Arts/Fencing) "Master" martial-controller concept. The idea was manipulating enemies in combat, both through guile/intimidation and maneuvering/conditioning - that and being /really/ good at martial practices & providing grandmaster training both like the alternative rewards and as a stalking horse for powers that could be centered on allies. A later version was going to use a pool of dice to attack, and spend hits to inflict damage to multiple targets and expend hits (& misses) to activate various maneuvers.
 
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Garthanos

Arcadian Knight
It is evocative of the classic magic-user, with his space-filling fireball and rebounding lightning bolt. ;) It's also an unintuitively-good combination with allies who are more or less obliged to melee and/or not that mobile, especially defenders, since it gives the enemy an incentive to engage the party closely rather than skirmishing or hanging back where you get pounded by the wizard's big AEs or blocked by walls or hampered by obscuring zones or the like. (Y'know, in retrospect, the early-4e wizard was maybe designed to work well with Fighters, melee Rogues & melee-capable STR Clerics... a classic iconic D&D party.)
The enemy back when really should just fire higher initiative ranged weapons on the wizard and poof. *most dms I knew wouldn't because depriving the mage of his interesting resources was nasty at low levels. (not to mention easily lethal)

One thing I liked that was discussed back on the WOTC boards was that those original spells interacted with physical things you could theoretically interrupt the path of a fire ball so a DM who had a mind to let martial be awesome could have allowed a well timed hurled shield or dagger or some such making a fireball go off in the face of the caster and similar effects ie the physicality of magic really could be leveraged in favor of martial characters.
 

Tony Vargas

Legend
The enemy back when really should just fire higher initiative ranged weapons on the wizard and poof. *most dms I knew wouldn't because depriving the mage of his interesting resources was nasty at low levels. (not to mention easily lethal).
Yeah, it's funny the first wizard in our group was Staff of Defense, knew Shield, had good con and wore leather armor. I was still in old protect the mage mode, so I'd jump in and WPT shift her out of melee ("Get behind me!"), turned out she had the same hps & AC as I did. We also had the same INT.
 

Garthanos

Arcadian Knight
Yeah, it's funny the first wizard in our group was Staff of Defense, knew Shield, had good con and wore leather armor. I was still in old protect the mage mode, so I'd jump in and WPT shift her out of melee ("Get behind me!"), turned out she had the same hps & AC as I did. We also had the same INT.

Nods guess the point is the DM doesnt have to have the enemy play stupid so much anymore ...

And if you pump up the Wizards surges with the toughness feat and later that white lotus riposte feat the Wizard is not going to be too spooked at melee.
 

Garthanos

Arcadian Knight
If they're not in any way being menaced by anything closer to their level, and aren't making at attack, themselves (like a charge) at the end of it, just revert to the regular effects (so functionally ignored at higher level IIRC.)
Revert to portable difficult terrain?
 

Garthanos

Arcadian Knight
The Caltrops thoughts were inspired by Tony's Soldier Martial Control idea given that another couple classic battlefield tools molotov cocktails and smoke bombs, I have never seen them used in 4e? I know they amount to alchemical stuff which could be considered arcane but the question is about skill full deployment which to me falls within martial domain.

There could also be Schrodingers Pit Traps for these wandering heroes.
 

The Caltrops thoughts were inspired by Tony's Soldier Martial Control idea given that another couple classic battlefield tools molotov cocktails and smoke bombs, I have never seen them used in 4e? I know they amount to alchemical stuff which could be considered arcane but the question is about skill full deployment which to me falls within martial domain.

There could also be Schrodingers Pit Traps for these wandering heroes.

Yes, they are alchemy, which is technically 'Arcane' but could easily be reskinned (and anyway, who says mixing some outright magic into your martialness is a bad thing?). Smoke bombs (I think they're called 'smoke stick' in 4e) are actually not bad, but niche enough that you probably wouldn't use them in combat, instead preferring some sort of AoE that did damage and also had some similar effect. They COULD be useful in other situations though, or as an opening gambit (IE create cover instead of making an initial surprise attack, it can be a good trade off). 'Molotovs' exist in the form of Alchemist's Fire. The problem there is attacks using Alchemy just aren't good enough to be worthwhile, unless you get some overleveled alchemical goods, and even then only at low levels. The Blinding Bomb, and the Blast Patch are pretty handy things in certain situations. Honestly, MOST of the items can find a use in some specific situation, they are just mostly weak enough that you would find a better way if you planned ahead, and would be unlikely to have such a niche item otherwise.

Obviously the designers were afraid that if they made Alchemy powerful it would become practically a class of its own within a feat. I'm not sure they were wrong about that. The obvious answer would have been to actually MAKE IT A CLASS. I guess someone felt that thematically it would step on the Artificer's toes or something? Personally I am not that much of an artificer fan, the class misses a lot of what I would want in something like that, and what it does present is quite fiddly and hard to remember to actually invoke in play (lots of "oh, I give some other character a +1 they can use at any later time in the day if they do X", blah!). There was one in one of our parties, she LITERALLY never once remembered to use her class feature, not once.
 

Garthanos

Arcadian Knight
Obviously the designers were afraid that if they made Alchemy powerful it would become practically a class of its own within a feat.

They made alchemical opportunist as a supplementary feat to presumedly represent some skill at use... but it really doesnt go far at all.

Where as it seems to me if we combine them with other class control which force movement to enhance those powers or enable enhancing via your application skill they can deliver extra pop.

Effectively the unimpressive basic use they have now might be a good starting point. With feats to make them more skillful and better interact with powers.
 

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