Fighter design goals . L&L April 30th

[tlantl]

I agree with most of what you're saying, it's very much the 1e approach. Do you think all spells should be risky to cast, or just a few? Iirc most 1e spells didn't have any drawbacks - magic missile for example. And should this also apply to divine spellcasting? There could be something akin to potion miscibility/wand of wonder/deck of many things randomness with potentially very negative consequences whenever any spell is cast. Or perhaps that would slow the game down too much.

I like the idea of spells being more disruptable in combat. Defensive casting or taking a five foot step backwards was too easy in 3e, imo. Maybe if all casting was a full round action.

It's hard to say. the newer versions of the game did so much damage to the character side checks and balances that some of the things that used to reduce the sheer number of unrestrained spells can't be used without going back to a time when you couldn't add ability scores, had defined limits on the numbers of spells you could learn, and couldn't expect to ever have a bonus spell. These things will cause riots.

Spell failure and casting times have no meaning today. The rounds are too short and casting times are too fast. Again we have the problem of not being able to go backwards because people will rebel. The argument being that these things were bad design that has to stay buried. I contend that removing them is the bad design, but hey I'm a fossil.

A lot of the problem with wizard and cleric spells is the freedom players have to use them. Even now I control the spells available by only letting wizards learn spells they actually have in their possession and clerics use lists I devised during 2e for specialty priests. if the player strays from their alignments or fail to put their god's interests before their own then they suffer losing access to spells. But I use rules found in books that have been out of print for a while.

I like dangerous magic items. they give players pause. Not everything in a hoard is going to be useful or desirable. The magic items in 3e were disappointing. They were either too powerful or too generic. Players wound up looking for certain items to increase their abilities and damage output which made adding cool trinkets a waste of time since they never got used.

All I can say is that the guys trying to reinvent the wheel again have their work cut out for them.

 

[Shadeydm]

How so? 4e started from the basic premise that every class was equally good at fighting... this is a definite break from that paradigm.

"Too often in D&D, the high-level fighter is the flunky to a high-level wizard. It’s all too easy for combinations of spells to make the wizard a far more potent enemy or character, especially if a wizard can unleash his or her spells in rapid succession. A wizard might annihilate a small army of orcs with a volley of fireballs and cones of cold. The fighter does the same sword blow by sword blow, taking down waves of orcs each round. Balancing the classes at high levels is perhaps the highest priority for the fighter."

This sounds exactly like the sort of thing I would expect to hear from 4E designers. The fighter taking out <waves> each round models which prior edition exactly as a base line? Sounds more like stuff that would needed to be stipped away and not added to emulate previous editions. Its hard to know without seeing the mechanics but you make vague statements you leave things open to various interpritations. Roland also cleaved a mountain with his sword, this models which previous edition as a base line?

 

[avin]

#6 is what I mostly want to see.

Wizards can't be the 3E's monsters anymore: dealing the best damage while flying, getting invisible, scrying, reading minds, etc.

I'll wait and see how that unfolds.

 

[Shadeydm]

What? The assumption that the Fighter is the best at combat, that they're the toughest member of the party, that their skills are mundane, is not a 4e thing. It was true in AD&D and BD&D, so I can't see what your complaint is here.

I have no issue with the fighter being the best at combat that is very general statement again its like saying the magic user is the best at using magic...and your point is what besides stating the obvious? When you say the fighter takes out WAVES (plural) of enemies each ROUND (singular) I don't really see this as a baseline from which you build towards prior editions. In a vaccum I have no issue with it, but in the context of building one edition to rule them or should I say include them all it doesn't sound right. Again the mechanical reality might change this but we dont have the mechanics just the statement.

 

[Stoat]

This quote:

"The fighter’s many hit points and high AC renders many monsters’ attacks powerless."

Makes me a little nervous. I want fighters to have high survivability. I want them to be able to absorb tremendous amounts of damage and keep coming. I don't want them to literally ignore attacks.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This article raises some fine goals but ultimately i dont think it answers the big question people have: will fighter operate using a powers system like 4e or be more in the classic mold. I support all the points he made, and i think few wiuld disagree except folkswho really need the mage to be the powerhouse at 18th level. But what is going to make or break the game for me is how they achieve these design principles.

To give an exampke. One way to balance out the fighter and make him equal with the wizard as he levels is to do what they did in 4e and give them encuonters, dailies, healing surges, etc. Mechanically this will achievebalance but it doesn't appeal to me. I would rather they do something like give the fighter the consisten ability to dish out more damage than other characters (or at least on average). Maybe in physical cmbat they get a steady damage bonus linked to level. Then give them other abillities that are not keyed to the 4e system. Perhaps the abillity to ignore attacks of opportunity (somewhow tied to level---maybe an increasing penalty for foes opportunity attacks). And dont put these abilities into a feat pool that other characters can access.

 

[Bedrockgames]

"Too often in D&D, the high-level fighter is the flunky to a high-level wizard. It’s all too easy for combinations of spells to make the wizard a far more potent enemy or character, especially if a wizard can unleash his or her spells in rapid succession. A wizard might annihilate a small army of orcs with a volley of fireballs and cones of cold. The fighter does the same sword blow by sword blow, taking down waves of orcs each round. Balancing the classes at high levels is perhaps the highest priority for the fighter."

This sounds exactly like the sort of thing I would expect to hear from 4E designers. The fighter taking out <waves> each round models which prior edition exactly as a base line? Sounds more like stuff that would needed to be stipped away and not added to emulate previous editions. Its hard to know without seeing the mechanics but you make vague statements you leave things open to various interpritations. Roland also cleaved a mountain with his sword, this models which previous edition as a base line?

I will say i agree to an extent in that it indicates he probably buys into a lot of assumptions behind 4E. For me i do think the 3e wizard was a bit overpowered. But the way to fix it isn't to restructurethegame or suck the life out of mages. Just look at what wasgoing on prior to 3e and then apply ose lessons well. Casting times, casting consequences and making it harder to manufacture magic item can all go a long way to bringing ore balance to the game without fundamentally reshaping it.

 

[Gold Roger]

Heh, I see the panic train is still in town.

Really we have not enough data to judge what these design goals actually mean for the game.

I can get them in very rough principle, but it doesn't tell us much about "new D&D".


We got some hard data on the playtest though. It's pretty much what I expected, starting very small. I guess I'll run playtest sessions as a bunch of one-shot games. That would allow playing with a greater range of different people than a campaign and then, when playtest gets "campaignable" I'd be able to measure who's interested and suited to join in the long run.

That might be pretty nice, actually. Just hope they give high level enough testing as well.

 

[Njall]

"Too often in D&D, the high-level fighter is the flunky to a high-level wizard. It’s all too easy for combinations of spells to make the wizard a far more potent enemy or character, especially if a wizard can unleash his or her spells in rapid succession. A wizard might annihilate a small army of orcs with a volley of fireballs and cones of cold. The fighter does the same sword blow by sword blow, taking down waves of orcs each round. Balancing the classes at high levels is perhaps the highest priority for the fighter."

This sounds exactly like the sort of thing I would expect to hear from 4E designers. The fighter taking out <waves> each round models which prior edition exactly as a base line? Sounds more like stuff that would needed to be stipped away and not added to emulate previous editions. Its hard to know without seeing the mechanics but you make vague statements you leave things open to various interpritations. Roland also cleaved a mountain with his sword, this models which previous edition as a base line?

This sounds exactly like the sort of thing that you should expect to be hearing from just about any game designer, especially from someone that's designing a class based game.
He's talking about fighters here, and he's assuring people that he's going to address what's considered a problem with the class; that's exactly what a good designer should be doing: he's providing actual info on how he's going to fix said problem. So, unless you think that "being clear, concise and going straight to the point" and "discussing balance" are 4e specific things...
The fighter taking out waves of mooks each round models 0e ( and 1e, IIRC ) perfectly, BTW, and the same goes for some builds of 3.5 ( or, even better, 3.0 ) fighters (Cleave and Great Cleave anyone? A fighter with great cleave can easily mop the floor with a huge number of lower level foes, especially at higher levels).

 

[GM Dave]

One way I see is to make the wizard's spells dangerous for him to use. Make the fireball do what fireballs do. If he wants to play with fire then things should get burned. Shoot a 60 foot lightning bolt in a 30 foot room it bounces back at you. Summon a demon without the proper protections, the demon eats you first.

A whole lot of spells lost their capacity to make the caster's life suck. If the cost of components, miscasting, side effects, being hit while casting, and bad planning return to the reality of spell casting then a lot of the caster's awesome power is contained.

Honestly reducing or limiting the number of dice a spell does for damage is a pitiful replacement for the hazards of spell casting.

Does this mean the greatest wizard of the Realms will now be known as El - Minimum - ster?



Boy, someone's gonna be cranky when they get back from hell.