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A gathering of Martial Controllers - what do you think
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7373845" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p></p><p> 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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7373845, member: 996"] 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. 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. 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. [/QUOTE]
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