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When did the Fighter become "defender"?
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<blockquote data-quote="Eldritch_Lord" data-source="post: 5907928" data-attributes="member: 52073"><p>But the point is that the perception of <em>how</em> you do them is different.</p><p></p><p>If you want to make a TWF character in 3e, you pick feats relating to TWF. If you want to make an archer character, you pick feats relating to archery. Someone who wants to make a TWF or archer character decides on that, then decides "Hey, ranger gives me these feats for free, and we're going to be fighting lots of dragons so Favored Enemy would help with that, I think I'll be a ranger" or "Hmm, I really want to focus on this, there are a lot of feats I'd like, only a fighter will give me that many feat slots I think I'll be a fighter" or similar. All of the weapon-related feats are in one big pool, and you pick those <em>first</em>. You can focus on number of attacks or damage or debuffing or range or several of the above, mixing and matching to your heart's content.</p><p></p><p>If you want to make a 4e character focusing on TWF or archery, it doesn't work that way. You decide you want to make an archer, then you need to go through the different classes and figure out which classes let you do what you want to do. If you want to make lots of attacks, you go with ranger. If you want to debuff people with your attacks, you go with rogue. And if you'd rather make lots of attacks with a bow and be sneaky, well, you're out of luck, because rangers are the longbow class and rogues are the sneaky/social utility class. Past that, being an archer, at least in PHB1, prevents you from being a defender, leader, or controller if you want powers relating to your schtick. To use your warlord example, you can build a leader or controller or defender who happens to use a bow, but you can't build an archer who happens to be a leader or defender or controller.</p><p> </p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, it comes down to perceptions. The ranger writeup is full of powers that say "make an attack with two weapons" while the fighter writeup is full of powers that say "if you're wielding an axe or hammer, you get X benefit." <em>Can</em> you make an axe-and-shield ranger or a dual-swords fighter? Yes, easily, as I already said, and adding more books only makes it easier. But someone who wants to make a guy who uses an axe is obviously going to want to use powers that give benefits for using an axe and someone who wants to make a guy who uses two swords is obviously going to want to use powers that let you make two attacks.</p><p></p><p>There are plenty of people out there who want to build their TWF character as a ranger, not because making two attacks makes the ranger more powerful but because they want to make two attacks per round because that's what they thing TWF should do and the ranger gives them powers that let them do that. If the dual-attack or weapon-specific powers were divorced from class, or if the fighter got all the weapon-specific powers but could play as any role, those people would be happy, but tying role to fighting style gets in their way.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><em>And many people don't see "being a defender" as a primary schtick.</em> "I want to be an amazing archer like Legolas or Robin Hood" is a schtick. "I want to protect my friends and prevent enemies from escaping" is a schtick. If you want to be a defender, you can pick a defender class and then pick a bunch of powers from that class and be pretty much guaranteed to be a good defender, then you can choose what weapons to use after that. If you want to be an archer, you <em>can't</em> just pick an "archer" class with a big list of archery powers and pretty much be guaranteed to be a good archer, and then choose among striker-y multiattacks or controller-y debuffs or the like after that. It is the elevation of roles above fighting style as a schtick that people object to, not the roles themselves.</p><p></p><p>And lest you think this is purely theoretical, it's not; I keep using the archery example because that case came up with a player in one of my 4e games. He wanted to be an archer because the 2e character he was converting over was an archer, so he looked at the available classes to decide on which one would work better. He liked the sneakiness and mobility of the rogue's utility powers (his previous character was a cleric/thief who used a longbow for the range), but all of the rogue's ranged powers require a crossbow, light thrown weapon, or a sling and he wanted to keep using a bow. Next he looked at the ranger, and definitely liked the archery powers there, but 4e rangers don't have divine casting, so he wouldn't be able to focus on both archery and healing as he had before; he considered the Initiate of the Faith feat, but a 1/day Healing Word wasn't enough healing.</p><p></p><p>Eventually, we built his character as a cleric/rogue and just dropped the archery aspect, but he was kind of ticked off that he wasn't able to use archery-related powers because the choice was "archery, sneakiness, healing, pick two" instead of "take sneaky healer, add archery" so he couldn't both support the party and focus on the bow and have both of those relatively equally-supported as he had before.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Why is that so unrealistic? What's so hard about divorcing fighting style from role? They weren't intertwined in prior editions with the implicit roles, and there's no reason that WotC had to make e.g. weapon-specific riders a feature of fighter powers instead of making them feats like Light Blade Precision and Polearm Gamble so rogues, warlords, and rangers could access them as well. Whether that would be a better or worse implementation for the game, the point stands that fighting style and role don't have to be so closely linked (as we can see with the Tempest fighter and Prescient bard) and that's what people have objected to.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Eldritch_Lord, post: 5907928, member: 52073"] But the point is that the perception of [I]how[/I] you do them is different. If you want to make a TWF character in 3e, you pick feats relating to TWF. If you want to make an archer character, you pick feats relating to archery. Someone who wants to make a TWF or archer character decides on that, then decides "Hey, ranger gives me these feats for free, and we're going to be fighting lots of dragons so Favored Enemy would help with that, I think I'll be a ranger" or "Hmm, I really want to focus on this, there are a lot of feats I'd like, only a fighter will give me that many feat slots I think I'll be a fighter" or similar. All of the weapon-related feats are in one big pool, and you pick those [I]first[/I]. You can focus on number of attacks or damage or debuffing or range or several of the above, mixing and matching to your heart's content. If you want to make a 4e character focusing on TWF or archery, it doesn't work that way. You decide you want to make an archer, then you need to go through the different classes and figure out which classes let you do what you want to do. If you want to make lots of attacks, you go with ranger. If you want to debuff people with your attacks, you go with rogue. And if you'd rather make lots of attacks with a bow and be sneaky, well, you're out of luck, because rangers are the longbow class and rogues are the sneaky/social utility class. Past that, being an archer, at least in PHB1, prevents you from being a defender, leader, or controller if you want powers relating to your schtick. To use your warlord example, you can build a leader or controller or defender who happens to use a bow, but you can't build an archer who happens to be a leader or defender or controller. Again, it comes down to perceptions. The ranger writeup is full of powers that say "make an attack with two weapons" while the fighter writeup is full of powers that say "if you're wielding an axe or hammer, you get X benefit." [I]Can[/I] you make an axe-and-shield ranger or a dual-swords fighter? Yes, easily, as I already said, and adding more books only makes it easier. But someone who wants to make a guy who uses an axe is obviously going to want to use powers that give benefits for using an axe and someone who wants to make a guy who uses two swords is obviously going to want to use powers that let you make two attacks. There are plenty of people out there who want to build their TWF character as a ranger, not because making two attacks makes the ranger more powerful but because they want to make two attacks per round because that's what they thing TWF should do and the ranger gives them powers that let them do that. If the dual-attack or weapon-specific powers were divorced from class, or if the fighter got all the weapon-specific powers but could play as any role, those people would be happy, but tying role to fighting style gets in their way. [I]And many people don't see "being a defender" as a primary schtick.[/I] "I want to be an amazing archer like Legolas or Robin Hood" is a schtick. "I want to protect my friends and prevent enemies from escaping" is a schtick. If you want to be a defender, you can pick a defender class and then pick a bunch of powers from that class and be pretty much guaranteed to be a good defender, then you can choose what weapons to use after that. If you want to be an archer, you [I]can't[/I] just pick an "archer" class with a big list of archery powers and pretty much be guaranteed to be a good archer, and then choose among striker-y multiattacks or controller-y debuffs or the like after that. It is the elevation of roles above fighting style as a schtick that people object to, not the roles themselves. And lest you think this is purely theoretical, it's not; I keep using the archery example because that case came up with a player in one of my 4e games. He wanted to be an archer because the 2e character he was converting over was an archer, so he looked at the available classes to decide on which one would work better. He liked the sneakiness and mobility of the rogue's utility powers (his previous character was a cleric/thief who used a longbow for the range), but all of the rogue's ranged powers require a crossbow, light thrown weapon, or a sling and he wanted to keep using a bow. Next he looked at the ranger, and definitely liked the archery powers there, but 4e rangers don't have divine casting, so he wouldn't be able to focus on both archery and healing as he had before; he considered the Initiate of the Faith feat, but a 1/day Healing Word wasn't enough healing. Eventually, we built his character as a cleric/rogue and just dropped the archery aspect, but he was kind of ticked off that he wasn't able to use archery-related powers because the choice was "archery, sneakiness, healing, pick two" instead of "take sneaky healer, add archery" so he couldn't both support the party and focus on the bow and have both of those relatively equally-supported as he had before. Why is that so unrealistic? What's so hard about divorcing fighting style from role? They weren't intertwined in prior editions with the implicit roles, and there's no reason that WotC had to make e.g. weapon-specific riders a feature of fighter powers instead of making them feats like Light Blade Precision and Polearm Gamble so rogues, warlords, and rangers could access them as well. Whether that would be a better or worse implementation for the game, the point stands that fighting style and role don't have to be so closely linked (as we can see with the Tempest fighter and Prescient bard) and that's what people have objected to. [/QUOTE]
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