Do You Like Classes About Gladiators?

[GalahadPC]

So, here's my first post in the three years since I've registered. Sorry, I'm shy. Also, I'm sorry if somebody's hit this topic already, but I don't have the search feature to find out. :/

Anyway, the lack of any new full-fledged classes with Dark Sun seems to have missed out on two opportunities: first, introducing the Gladiator as a signature class of the setting (see Swordmage and Artificer), and second, finally filling that ever-elusive missing link in power/role combos - the martial controller. The funny thing is that they could go well together.

Here's what I'm thinking of with a homebrew Gladiator class: he's a fighting showman, using a combination of non-damaging fear-based blasts and bursts along with rattling melee attacks primarily to hinder his enemies before dramatically putting them out of their misery.

Whereas the Warlord uses calls, commands, rallying cries, and feats of daring to inspire his allies to action, the Gladiator uses boasts, threats, challenges, and feats of brutality to scare the pants off his enemies. Other martial classes do heaps of damage with crippling effects as secondary, while the Gladiator will use his powers to scatter, corral, drive back, slow, and daze them, then slowly whittle and bleed them out.

Intimidation would most likely be an auto-skill, and other class skills would include Athletics (obviously), Bluff (for feinting), and Heal (as professional real-world gladiators were athletes who had to stay in good health).

Armor would probably top off at chain-level, and weapons would include melee and heavy thrown weapons, and maybe a free superior weapon from a choice of the more exotic ones.

As far as filling his role, the Gladiator certainly won't be creating difficult terrain or raising barriers unlike the magical controllers (which is currently all of them), and his minion-popping will be limited to area attacks within the reach of his weapon.

What he can do is use fear-based will-attacking blasts and bursts to cause forced movement, slowing, and dazing at heroic tier, upgrade to knockdown, immobilization, and stunning at paragon, and finally unconsciousness or domination at epic (I can fully see an epic Gladiator terrify an enemy so horribly that he convinces it to turn against its allies).

Melee attacks will frequently be rattling, will often target NADs, and can do all the above stuff and more - blinding, deafening, dropping weapons, ongoing damage, or whatever. Other martial classes' attacks should provide good indicators of what can be done here, amplifying their effects while reducing the damage.

As a special extra, some Gladiator powers - I'm thinking the daily ones, most probably - could include melee attacks that do hellacious damage to any target suffering from certain crippling effects, essentially being "finishing moves." Heck, maybe that's what all the dailies should be.

I'm a little torn about which ability scores it should use. I'm tempted to make it a Charisma primary, with Strength secondary for the brute-force Gladiators, and Dexterity for the more, let's say, "artistic" ones.

So here's where I need help. I absoutely suck at gauging things like game balance or coming up with details. So is anybody else out there interested enough in seeing if this can work, maybe tweak what I have there and come up with class features and powers? Or is this concept doomed to being a boring failure?

What say you all?

 

[ZephyrTR]

After reading your headline, i came in ready to tell you a Gladiator class would be redundant to a Fighter class, but now I'm pretty intrigued.

Its true a lot of the fighting abilities a Gladiator would have would be similar to a Fighter's, but I really like what you're arguing with a Gladiator class being more like the opposite of a Warlord class.

I also like the idea of the 'finisher' as an option for Gladiators who wanna do burst damage occasionally. It's really reminiscent of the retiarius (a type of Roman gladiator) who would first entangle their enemy with a net, throw their trident at them, then come in with a large knife to finish them off.

Consider these gladiators as inspiration:

Hoplomachus: attempts to spear his enemies before coming in close with a sword and shield
Thraex: uses a curved blade to hit the unarmed backs of his enemies; a small square shield for parrying
Murmillo: Wears a signature helmet decorated with sharp points
Scissores: Uses pronged weapons to disarm their enemies
Secutores: Heavily and sleekly armored so as to pursue targets with ease, but must win quickly or will pass out from exhaustion due to their constricting helmets.

 

[knightofround]

Sadly, I believe I read somewhere that WotC stated that it was not going to make a martial controller anytime soon...which is probably why it is one of the most common fan-built niches.

I really like the idea of the Gladiator being its own class. However, with the introduction of the Brawling Fighter in MP2 many of the things I'd think of as being "Gladiator-y" are already taken by the Fighter. I would expect Gladiator primary to definitely be Strength. I can envision a Gladiator with 8 Charisma who is a beast but doesn't care about the crowd...I can't imagine a Gladiator with 8 Strength dishing out more damage than a gladiator with 25 strength.

Another thing to keep in mind is that in order to fill the "controller" role very well, you need to be able to affect combat over a wide area. For the martial power source, where you can't have things like psychic fear waves shoot across the battlefield, that means reach weapons...which unfortunately clashes with the Gladiator stereotype. For that reason, I'd prefer to see a Gladiator class as a melee striker, similar to a Rogue, but focused more on debilitating the enemy than raw damage.

 

[ZephyrTR]

I think a lot of the powers a warlord gets greatly stretches what a 'melee power' class can and cant do in the purview of 4th ed. Even the rogue gets abilities that are hauntingly similar to magical fear effects.

A STR/DEX/CHA based melee class sounds like a lot of fun, where their STR abilities are predominately damage, their DEX predominately trapping and such and CHA mostly fear-like effects, taunting and harrying. It wouldn't be too brash to look to the Barbarian either for inspiration.

Why couldn't they have abilities that hit one creature for mid-range damage and then rolls a secondary attack CHA vs WILL against a Close Burst 2 to Immobilize or something? That stuff sounds right up their alley.

Of course KOR is right -- there's a lot of expansion on the fighter that gives them abilities just like the one described above. Blood Spray or something... So I dunno dude.

 

[GalahadPC]

Thanks for the input, guys!

@Zephyr: That's pretty handy info on gladiatoral styles... at the very least, it could help suggest what kinds of things would go into build options, especially since the Martial Power books opened the door to messing with a class' proficiencies as tradeoffs to powers.

@KoF: I've had the same concerns, and I remember a Dragon article talking about designing new classes saying something like "don't just slap together a power source and role and try to force it to work," which I'm sure is precisely because so many perfectionists want to see this last gap filled. That's why I never gave this much thought, until this morning when the whole "inverse Warlord" idea hit me.

The obvious problems demonstrate the inherent limits of the martial classes in general. Because it's nonmagical, there's only so many ways to envision powers that all basically say "club the guy over the head, and something cool happens," or "do something normal, but way awesomer." Then again, as Zephyr alluded, just because it's nonmagical doesn't mean it can't be fantastic. Paragon tier powers push the limits of mortal capability, and Epic goes straight into Hercules or Cu Chulainn territory. The Epic Rogue is pretty much a videogame ninja right there. I can envision a Paragon or Epic Gladiator commanding such awe and presence that even beasts and monsters feel compelled to cower before him at the slightest provocation.

Then there's that problem of area powers. I don't see him loosing barrages of projectiles like a Rogue or Ranger, so that was mostly out, which left me at first with nondamaging fear effects. Then like Zephyr said, there could be powers where he can clobber or hurl a spear through a guy, and have a secondary effect centered on the target, which has already shown up occasionally. Also, he could be mobile, unleasing multiple melee bursts while on the move, which some Rangers do. He might not be able to cover a large area, but two or three smaller ones can be just as good.

Come to think of it, those three approaches could work great conceptually with Str/Cha/Dex attacks respectively. Hm...

Well, I'll keep mulling this stuff over for now. In the meantime, I'll stubbornly choose to believe it's possible to separate him from the Fighter or the seemingly-natural striker primary role. The way I'm picturing it, a good Gladiator doesn't even really need to be a very good fighter, just very imposing and with loads of style. Think pro wrestler as opposed to Olympic boxer.

Thanks again for the feedback. It's been very helpful.