D&D 5E Fixing the Fighter

[Neonchameleon]

How about starting with, I don't know, a class that actually does get me there like every other edition of D&D before 4e. Then I don't have to waste feats on stuff the PC should already have.

Where do you think "There" is?

 

[Obryn]

Except maybe he doesn't want to spend his feats to get up to heavy armor or any of the other bits that come as a package deal with a class-based system. In that case, your solution is not what he wanted.

Would this be a viable character in 3e without any feats?

AD&D, I'll give you.

-O

 

[billd91]

Would this be a viable character in 3e without any feats?

AD&D, I'll give you.

-O

It's not a question of being without feats. It's a question of having to divert feats to make up for what you're missing and want because you had to build as a different character class.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Would this be a viable character in 3e without any feats?

AD&D, I'll give you.

A 2e fighter without Weapon Specialisation in the bow is in roughly the same place as a 4e non-slayer fighter using just ranged basic attacks. Except not proficient at all with most weapons. So yeah, I'd say the 2e and 4e fighter are about equivalent.

It's not a question of being without feats. It's a question of having to divert feats to make up for what you're missing and want because you had to build as a different character class.

Divert feats? You mean divert those things that did not exist before 3E? And as for what you are missing, not a hell of a lot. Just armour, really. Feats are there to be diverted.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Or, you know, you just build a Ranger with heavy armor, etc. that is exactly the character type you wanted but just doesn't say "fighter" on the tin.

Well for one thing, I don't want the ranger theme and secondly I don't want the hunter's quarry mechanic.

Pathfinder fighter's and their awesome customization do me just fine.

 

[Remathilis]

I had a long reply to this last night - and then the forums crashed. A lot of WotC adventures do suck, especially the early ones (I've never played a DCC module). And not to put too fine a point on it, I don't think I could design a module more effectively than Where the Wild Roses Grow to turn 4e into a snoozefest. It's not that the abstract design is bad - it's just that it's a complete mismatch for 4e.

Its pretty typical of my gaming style: adventure seed, investigation, mini dungeon at the end. To be honest, I was trying to emulate 4e's style which came from those early awful 4e modules. (The DCC was worse; it was a module written for 3.5 and then retrofitted for 4e; it had ogres in rooms too small for them and a combat that involved facing two sets of duergar AND a trap without a short rest between them at 1st level. It was nearly a TPK.)

4e didn't handle KotB very well. It didn't handle my own stuff well, and it didn't handle its OWN stuff well (two modules written by the company that designed the bloody thing and one by one of the best module companies at the time). 4e in 2008 was something that nobody had learned to write for.

I've mentioned one thing earlier that really makes 4e combats to be dynamic - terrain that encourages movement (pits, things to throw people onto/off/over/away from/towards). There is precisely none of that in the entire catacomb. And there's the one thing that kills any attempt at dynamic combat - no space. Those corridors are all tiny.

Which creates a weird situation for me; 4e can't handle realistically proportioned dungeons. It sucks at dungeon crawls. Its amazing at set-pieces (one of the best adventures I ran was a white-dragon solo in an abandoned banquet hall, with tables and windows and stuff) but not every dungeon room is 160 by 160 foot with pits and traps. The learning curve for dungeon design was horrible coming from 3e, and most, if not all my design philosophies apparently no longer were valid.

The map was culled from Heroes of Horror, published by WotC in 2005. Funny how they're idea of dungeons changed in 3 years? BTW: I don't think there was a single map in WotC's Map a Week gallery that would have been better.

There's also the monster selection. There's only one actual bad monster in there (the Wraith is one of the three suckiest monsters in the Monster Manual; the three are The Dracolich (stunning everything leads to pure frustration), the Purple Worm (what idiot thought that a solo with no interesting aspects that does only the damage of a standard monster was a good idea?) and the Wraith (insubstantial so it takes half damage, weakening touch so the damage is normally halved again, and then regenerates). For the record Monster Vault Wraiths don't weaken and don't, I think, regenerate. Instead they turn invisible whenever someone hits them with an attack that doesn't bypass their insubstantiality - and they do extra damage when invisible (and the attack makes them visible again). Much, much more interesting and incites paranoia especially when they can walk through walls.

Yet further proof WotC released a half-baked edition? The MM1 is bad. Horrible. I'd wager half the monsters in there are unusable do to poor math. Yet that was all I had when this module was written.

But even beyond that with two exceptions (Deathlock Wight, Human Mage) I think every single monster wants to get into melee and stay there. The ones that get bonus damage for combat advantage aren't going to get flanking because of the incredibly cramped spaces. Which means that in five of the IIRC seven fights in the catacombs there are either four or five melee monsters who, because they have no room to move, are best off walking into melee with the enemy and trading blows until someone falls. (The two exceptions to the 4-5 monsters per fight are, naturally enough, the Dark Cabal and the Deathlock Wight). There's no room to maneuver and no incentive to maneuver. The combats are never going to be dynamic and interesting.

Technically, the corruption zombies were artillery but why argue details. Yeah, the dungeon had a lot of melee creatures. IT WAS A 2nd LEVEL DUNGEON NEAR A POPULATED CITY. There wasn't a lot of options. Ghouls, zombies, skeletons, bandits, bats, rats, oozes, wererats and some spooks. All stuff I could glean out the of the Monster Manual. My options for keeping them within 4 levels was fairly limited.

In earlier editions 90% of that stuff would have been cannon fodder, quickly cleared away. In 4e, there is no such thing.

And then there's the skill challenges. WotC are entirely to blame here for their presentation of them (the biggest problem being that the example actions should be indicative rather than "choose your own adventure"). Unless you get them, it's better to pretend they don't exist.

Again, I was using what the DMG told me to do. Skill challenges were the "kewl" new thing and I wanted to try them. I'm 90% certain we dumped them with a session after this.

I think if I were looking for an example of what not to do in 4e I don't think I could come up with a better adventure. No interactive terrain and no space anywhere, and almost every single monster being a melee fighter. Doesn't mean it would be a bad adventure in e.g. Swords and Wizardry or Dungeon World - but it completely misses any of the strengths of 4e and zeroes in with almost laser-like precision on the weaknesses right down to the final boss being a double hit point MM1 Wraith.

If you were looking for why 4e started out a glaring failure, I can think of no better adventure. Using only the three core books as they were printed in October of 2008 (Halloween adventure) a veteran DM of 16 years (at the time) couldn't make a playable adventure. The 4e Monster Manual was a train wreck, the DMG offered NO usable advice, and trying to build adventures "like the designers did" created a boring grindfest. WotC had no business releasing 4e in the condition it did, from the nonexistent DDi support to the books so errata-prone the three Core Books were practically unusable.

And 4e did get better. I'm sure you could redo the thing today using the Monster Vault, Essential's treasure, and a redrawn, 4e friendly map to make it a great adventure. The fixed rules for skill challenges, the revised monster math, the revised PC powers, all would make that thing great. However, those tools and insights weren't there when a group of players some (like myself) so wanted to this thing to work (seriously; search EnWorld for me @ 2008, I was an ardent 4e supporter). It just failed me on so many levels.

The fact this module could probably be rewritten for D&D, AD&D, 3e, Pathfinder, or a score of retroclones with little change and work, yet fail so spectacularly in 4e I think says volumes.

 

[TwoSix]

If you were looking for why 4e started out a glaring failure, I can think of no better adventure. Using only the three core books as they were printed in October of 2008 (Halloween adventure) a veteran DM of 16 years (at the time) couldn't make a playable adventure. The 4e Monster Manual was a train wreck, the DMG offered NO usable advice, and trying to build adventures "like the designers did" created a boring grindfest. WotC had no business releasing 4e in the condition it did, from the nonexistent DDi support to the books so errata-prone the three Core Books were practically unusable.

And 4e did get better. I'm sure you could redo the thing today using the Monster Vault, Essential's treasure, and a redrawn, 4e friendly map to make it a great adventure. The fixed rules for skill challenges, the revised monster math, the revised PC powers, all would make that thing great. However, those tools and insights weren't there when a group of players some (like myself) so wanted to this thing to work (seriously; search EnWorld for me @ 2008, I was an ardent 4e supporter). It just failed me on so many levels.

The fact this module could probably be rewritten for D&D, AD&D, 3e, Pathfinder, or a score of retroclones with little change and work, yet fail so spectacularly in 4e I think says volumes.

Mostly it says to me that it's a shame we won't get a 5e that's a "lessons learned" upgrade of 4e.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Its pretty typical of my gaming style: adventure seed, investigation, mini dungeon at the end. To be honest, I was trying to emulate 4e's style which came from those early awful 4e modules.

Oof. Urg. But the only thing you need to change for 4e is to not make the dungeon a physical dungeon. Either replace it with a set piece battle or set your "dungeon" aboveground most of the time.

The DCC was worse; it was a module written for 3.5 and then retrofitted for 4e; it had ogres in rooms too small for them and a combat that involved facing two sets of duergar AND a trap without a short rest between them at 1st level. It was nearly a TPK.

And that just sounds horrible.

Which creates a weird situation for me; 4e can't handle realistically proportioned dungeons.

Let me repeat that - I did a double take the first time. "realistically proportioned dungeons." Dungeons aren't a realistic terrain feature in the first place. You know what 4e does handle well and does give plenty of space? Outside. The great outdoors. And if you want somewhere more threatening? We have the Feywild and the Shadowfell.

It sucks at dungeon crawls.

This is reminding me of an old joke.
Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"
Doctor: "Stop doing that then!"

4e does not do well at dungeoncrawls. There are plenty of other things to do. And I very seldom find dungeon crawls fun at the best of times. (Somewhere like Caverns of Thracia is worthwhile for exploration - but that's hardly realistic either).

Its amazing at set-pieces (one of the best adventures I ran was a white-dragon solo in an abandoned banquet hall, with tables and windows and stuff) but not every dungeon room is 160 by 160 foot with pits and traps.

Of course not. Take 4e out of the dungeon and put it outside. Who needs pit traps when you have rolling terrain, hillocks, scree, rivers, and ponds? Or if the PCs are on a road put a ditch beside it and the bridge is the obvious spot for the ambush. These aren't components of big set pieces any more than a camp fire makes for a big set piece.

The map was culled from Heroes of Horror, published by WotC in 2005. Funny how they're idea of dungeons changed in 3 years? BTW: I don't think there was a single map in WotC's Map a Week gallery that would have been better.

Having just scanned the archive I strongly and emphatically disagree. I think there are precisely two maps there that would have been worse (White Plume Mountain and the top level of Undermountain) and every single other map on the right scale would have been an improvement.

Yet further proof WotC released a half-baked edition?

They pulled the previous attempt at 4e for being terrible 10 months in to playtesting - and still released 4e on time. It was shorted by a year. And then there was the tragedy round Gleemax.

Technically, the corruption zombies were artillery but why argue details. Yeah, the dungeon had a lot of melee creatures. IT WAS A 2nd LEVEL DUNGEON NEAR A POPULATED CITY. There wasn't a lot of options. Ghouls, zombies, skeletons, bandits, bats, rats, oozes, wererats and some spooks. All stuff I could glean out the of the Monster Manual. My options for keeping them within 4 levels was fairly limited.

Honestly? You didn't need those monsters there in the first place.

In earlier editions 90% of that stuff would have been cannon fodder, quickly cleared away. In 4e, there is no such thing.

In 4e there is no such thing as "cannon fodder, quickly cleared away"? Wait, what? You think minions are something other than cannon fodder?

Again, I was using what the DMG told me to do. Skill challenges were the "kewl" new thing and I wanted to try them. I'm 90% certain we dumped them with a session after this.

Agreed. The initial guidance for DMing skill challenges sucks.

The fact this module could probably be rewritten for D&D, AD&D, 3e, Pathfinder, or a score of retroclones with little change and work, yet fail so spectacularly in 4e I think says volumes.

The only thing you need to change to get that adventure to work is the map. I'd rather use MV monsters but the MM1 standard monsters and minions at low level are generally serviceable (other than the Wraith and the Needlefang Drake Swarm).

 

[Herschel]

Well for one thing, I don't want the ranger theme and secondly I don't want the hunter's quarry mechanic.

Pathfinder fighter's and their awesome customization do me just fine.

There's no "ranger theme" it' can be built as a plain, old archer fighter. You also don't need to use Quarry or put any resources in to it. Both systems can be used to build the same character. You talk about flexibility yet only accept certain naming conventions in building a character regardless of teh options given to you in any system.

 

[Herschel]

The fact this module could probably be rewritten for D&D, AD&D, 3e, Pathfinder, or a score of retroclones with little change and work, yet fail so spectacularly in 4e I think says volumes.

Wow, so apparently I'm doing badwrongfunusing 1E modules converted to 4E on the fly. Those guards to sneak up on and silence? Minions. Those room-after-room fights where the monsters just sit and wait for the adventurers while they killed his buddies 10' down the hall? They're dynamic wave battles that make a lot more sense and work a lot better than they did back in the day when run logically. Or they're skill challenged if they're just space-making gimmes where failure costs them HP/surges.