Cavaliers...Did UA have it right?

[Stormonu]

I think the answer is going to lie in the archtypes you have in mind. If, for example you imagine a paladin to be based on someone like Lancelot, then making the paladin a chevalier/cavalier subclass would seem appropriate.

Overall though, I would see them as seperate; I could see a fighter taking cavalier as a subclass or a paladin taking cavalier as a subclass - both having the attributes of a mounted aristocratic warrior, as well as cavalier/knight having its own class if it has distinct enough abilities.

 

[steeldragons]

Anecdotal only - I haven't run into many cases in D&D where someone wanted to play a heavily armored fighter, good in mounted combat, who was bound and empowered by oaths... where those oaths *weren't* religious in nature.

Also, a good point. I can't think, even in the 1e UA days, of anyone I played with being all "OO! I'm gonna play a cavalier!" But is that just because the paladin already had cornered the market, so to speak? Or cuz magicky fighter guys were kooler than non-magiky fighter guys? Is there just a, kinda, inbred bias from the years of D&D (and such like) games that didn't offer a cavalier/knightly type beyond the "take a fighter and give him/add this..."

So, I see no particular need for the cavalier. Give me a a paladin, and a fighter who can be good at mounted combat, and I'm set to go.

Fair enough.

Moreover, I think that in the typical D&D world, there's a qualitative difference between power granted by oaths to secular authorities, and that granted by oaths to divine powers.

That does seem a natural conclusion. One is magic the other isn't.

IMHO there is no compelling argument for separating cavaliers from fighters in the first place, and if you do, how do you balance a cavalier vs. a fighter who specializes in mounted combat?

I'd keep both cavalier and paladin as subsets of the broader "Fighter" class.

Well, I am not one to be overly concerned with "balance", per se. I want thing reasonably "fair" and have no problem with a bit of "symmetry" (each class gets something from column A and something from column B...all Warrior classes get XYZ while Wizard classes get ABC..." that kinda thing.)

Does the Fighter need to match a Cavalier inch-by-inch/every step of the way? imho No, I would say not. Part of my attitude toward "specialized/specific archetypes" of the broader classes is that, sure, they get maybe a few "extras" that the general Fighter/Cleric/Rogue/Mage doesn't get...but those broader classes expand and gain more abilities more, overall, that the specific guy, by virtue of his specificity, doesn't get access to.

So...well, I guess to answer your question, that's how I "balance" things. Look at the class over the course of the game (or, say, 10 levels at a shot)...not just "everyone PC who is 5th level has to have all of the same/equally effective stuff." I just don't like that...and correct me if I'm wrong, but that is what a lot of people mean/are looking for when they use the B-word.

Not a popular view nowadays, I know. But works for me.

(be getting to the the rest of responses in a few. I have some errands to run.)

HAPPY FRIDAY ALL!!!

 

[delericho]

Also, a good point. I can't think, even in the 1e UA days, of anyone I played with being all "OO! I'm gonna play a cavalier!" But is that just because the paladin already had cornered the market, so to speak? Or cuz magicky fighter guys were kooler than non-magiky fighter guys? Is there just a, kinda, inbred bias from the years of D&D (and such like) games that didn't offer a cavalier/knightly type beyond the "take a fighter and give him/add this..."

Somewhat. In general, I think there are two ways to structure a class-based system: you can lots of tiny little, specialised classes; or you can have a few very broad archetypes.

"Fighter" is a very broad archetype, that covers just about any non-magical combatant, from Robin Hood to Lancelot to Boromir. Provided it uses weapons and doesn't use magic, it's a Fighter. (Excluding the skills niche inhabited by the Rogue, of course - that's another rant.)

What that means is that if the system includes a "Fighter" class, that vastly narrows the range of other warrior-type classes that can fit. If it doesn't use magic in some form, there's not really much it can do that the Fighter can't.

 

[Umbran]

Also, a good point. I can't think, even in the 1e UA days, of anyone I played with being all "OO! I'm gonna play a cavalier!" But is that just because the paladin already had cornered the market, so to speak?

For my groups, I think there were a couple more simple reasons:

1) The cavalier, with those ever-rising stats, seemed... cheesy. It raised a big question as to why *nobody* else could raise stats. It seemed unfair.
2) Whatever the class was really capable of, it was sold as a mounted combatant. Dungeon crawlers had no use for such a character.

 

[steeldragons]

Somewhat. In general, I think there are two ways to structure a class-based system: you can lots of tiny little, specialised classes; or you can have a few very broad archetypes.

I get what you're saying...but is this really as "either/or" as that? Does it have to be one way or the other? Why can't a class based system have both? D&D, for most of its incarnations, has both. PF has both. I guess I just see the room, for table to table/individual to individual choices, that a player might want a specialized type [cavalier]...or a general type to be general [I want a fighter who can be good at all types of fighting] OR taking a general/broad class and making a specialized type that the system doesn't offer separately [I'm going to focus all of my skills/feat/maneuver/proficiency options be a the greatest swordsman the realms have ever seen!].

"Fighter" is a very broad archetype, that covers just about any non-magical combatant, from Robin Hood to Lancelot to Boromir. Provided it uses weapons and doesn't use magic, it's a Fighter. (Excluding the skills niche inhabited by the Rogue, of course - that's another rant.)

Right. But why can't a class-based system say: if you want to be Robin Hood, you could be a Fighter who specializes in Bows/Archery or a Ranger who does the same?...or, for that matter (to tie it back around), someone who wants to follow the Robin of Lockley (or wherever he was suposedly from) and make a Cavalier, with a Knight/Noble background/theme/whatever the system offers in this vein, who specializes in archery from horseback?

If you want to base it on a Fighter, you get WXYZ. That's what Fighters get. You'll get options for S-V as you gain experience/levels.

If you base it on a ranger, you get, maybe, XY and UV built-in already. The W and Z? S and T? Well, you'll have to figure out a way to get those separately if you want them...or base your character on a Fighter instead.

Lancelot: Fighter and use class options to specialize/take ABCD. Take a Cavalier, which already includes AB and comes with EF built-in. Or, in a high magiky setting/campaign (or just a desire on the player's part for a magiky Lancelot-style character), use a Paladin with the A and C built-in, maybe KL come with the paladin, and then take G and J options to round out the remaining knightly/cavaliery stuff.

Multiple avenues to similar, but not exactly the same, type of character.

I really don't have a problem with that and would love to have a party/table with 3 knightly (or any other example type) characters with one being a Fighter, one a Cavalier, and one a Ranger. Maybe the one rides, but kicks ass hand-to-hand. One kicks ass while riding, but is still capable hand-to-hand. One is notably (by design and desire) the weakest hand-to-hand, but kicks ass from range, whether riding or not! They're all in haveay armor. All carrying shields. All thundering across the field on their warhorses. All can use a lance/spear (but the Cav. is notably better with it). All displaying the banners of their houses/orders/individual crest. Anyone will look at them and say "Ah! Three Knights." But, regardless of the trappings, they are all very different characters, conceptually and, in at least some ways, mechanically.

What that means is that if the system includes a "Fighter" class, that vastly narrows the range of other warrior-type classes that can fit. If it doesn't use magic in some form, there's not really much it can do that the Fighter can't.

Assuming your initial "either/or" premise. Yes, that's true.

I dunno. I see both takes, but I guess I fall more on the side of it being possible (for a system) to do broad and specific classes and leave it to the players/DMs/tables to define which way is the best [for them] to go.

I think the/a system can do/offer both...then it's the players who decide (or DMs to define for their particular game) if they can/want to accept or allow the multiple avenues or choose one [broad] or the other [specific] way to go, just from their own personal preferences, what fits their character concept best, and/or bias toward class structure.

Not to get too tangential here. haha. And I will be getting to the other responses.

 

[steeldragons]

For my groups, I think there were a couple more simple reasons:

1) The cavalier, with those ever-rising stats, seemed... cheesy. It raised a big question as to why *nobody* else could raise stats. It seemed unfair.
2) Whatever the class was really capable of, it was sold as a mounted combatant. Dungeon crawlers had no use for such a character.

Yeah. #2 was always a big one. "I'm great on a horse? So what?!"

From what i've seen of the PF cav, they have good in and out of combat stuff that doesn't depend on being mounted, though they are good on a horse as well (and a couple of things work better or only if they are mounted). As [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] mentioned earlier, the mounted aspect of the 1e cav wasn't necessarily their "defining" feature (though I think they did, automatically, get a horse to start play...which no one else could). The automatic "rich guy/aristocrat" thing didn't help.

Just to touch on another point, I do think a cavalier class can easily be done with no automatic wealth/noble title.

I think, over time, we...well "many" or at least I...tend to see "the mounted warrior guy" as the most obvious differentiating thing for the class nowadays...and in a game where most (or the bulk of many) adventures are going on indoors or underground, that doesn't help make it a strongly desirable character type. But it seems there's a lot for the class to offer...which, yes, might/could be overlap with a Fighter (or Paladin) character, but with separate skills/abilities built in that a Fighter would have to choose/take a different way [than being built in to the class].

Put another way...I think a case can be made for "All Fighters can be played as Cavaliers. But not all Cavaliers can be played as Fighters."...and/or vice versa?...but both/separate classes can work in the same game space/world.

 

[Umbran]

Just to touch on another point, I do think a cavalier class can easily be done with no automatic wealth/noble title.

Can? Sure, you can. But why *should* you?

The cavalier has two shticks that make the class stand out - mounted combat and knighthood/noble title/oaths.

If you work without the latter, you're just doing "melee combatant who is good on a horse". Why should this *not* be a branch of being a fighter? If you put in in the fighter, the player gets a good way to choose how far he or she wants to dip into being a mounted fighter, instead of it being all-or-nothing. Depending on the rest of game design, I don't think you gain a whole lot from pulling just that one aspect of combat out into a separate class.

To analogize - if you're doing that, why aren't you pulling all the wizard school specializations out as separate classes?

 

[delericho]

I get what you're saying...but is this really as "either/or" as that?

I don't think it's an absolute rule, but I think if you start with the broad class, it then becomes really difficult to introduce the narrower version afterwards - the new version either needs to do something the old one couldn't (which is unlikely, since the old one was the broad class), or it needs to do something better (which almost certainly causes balance problems - as, indeed, the UA Cavalier did).

That assumes, of course, you omit the possibility of subclasses, kits, prestige classes, or similar, but none of those is really a new class, but rather a specialisation of the same, and so is somewhat different as a result.

 

[Celebrim]

I get what you're saying...but is this really as "either/or" as that? Does it have to be one way or the other? Why can't a class based system have both?

Well, let's put it this way. A system can have both. But if it does have both, I'll feel the need to rewrite it to clean it up.

But in particular, given the nature of mundane versus magical, dividing up magic-users into increasingly narrow classes that can't do everything might make sense provided you were willing to similarly gimp the spell lists of iconic concepts like Wizard or Cleric. That would create classes that just weren't equipped to direct the story in every possible situation. But dividing the fighter up just simply does not make sense because mundane is an inherently smaller set of ways to drive the narrative than magic is.

Right. But why can't a class-based system say: if you want to be Robin Hood, you could be a Fighter who specializes in Bows/Archery or a Ranger who does the same?

You certainly can and certainly D&D 3.X did and was a highly successful system. But ultimately, part of what brought 3.X down was the crushing weight of 'there is more than one way to do things'. Some freedom in how you create an archer is fine. In my game you might make a fighter, a hunter, a champion with the Hunt portfolio, or an elf of just about any class. Or you might mix it up and take a little from several areas. Heck, the archer in my current group is a multiclassed Explorer/Sorcerer who uses divination spells to guide his arrows Jedi knight style. But I think I've been careful to distinguish between them. The fighter is distinguished by what he fights with - bow. The hunter is distinguished by what he fights against - say undead. A priestly elven archer would still be foremost a cleric that happens to fight with a bow. My explorer/sorcerer has a very different feel and overall set of skills and strengths than an equivalent fighter specialized in archery would.

On the other hand, I can think of almost no differences between the concept of an aristocratic, honorable fighter specialized in mounted combat and a cavalier. I can't think of anything a cavalier 'ought' to be able to do, that our hypothetical fighter couldn't do. Creating one from a fighter in my game in a very archetypal fashion would look something like:

a) Assign you abilities in a balanced fashion and take either take 'Unusual Background (Aristocrat)' as your starting trait to broaden your skill list to include things like Appraise, Diplomacy, and Knowledge (Heraldry & Nobility) or else take Noble Rank if you want to start play as an actual knight.
b) Take a lawful alignment. Write into your backstory something about honor and chivalry. Preferably align yourself with some noble clan, temple, or higher ranking aristocrat. Figure out your station in life - a penniless but admired Knight of the Road, a landless third son seeking a leige, a down on your luck mercenary, a household knight, a last survivor or disgraced outcast, a noble bastard, or a rakish gallant seeking adventure.
c) Take the Courage feat with your general feat (or bonus human feat).
d) Spend your fighter bonus feats on mounted combat. Max out your ride skill.
e) Spend some of your skill points on Leadership and/or Tactics. Put whatever is left into things that fit your background.
f) Keep doing that as you level up, and as the mounted combat feats near capstone gradually start taking more feats to enhance your ability to boost and protect allies in combat.

Now, if I created an actual Cavalier class at most it would just be a fighter with the equivalent of a class ability equal to a bonus starting trait and the equivalent of a smaller and less flexible bonus feat list. The Cavalier and the Fighter of the same level, at any chosen level, would look almost identical and have essentially the identical stats and concept.

Where you seem to want to go with base classes is exactly the opposite of where I want to go. You seem to be happy with the concept of every one could have basically the same character, but of different classes. What I want from base classes is everyone could play the same class, but each have radically different character concepts. Thus, what I want is that you could have a party of 6 Fighters, or 6 Fanatics (think Barbarian), or 6 Hunters (think Ranger), or 6 Rogues and they'd all be so distinctive they leave plenty of space to develop your character without feeling like the middle child in a big family.

 

[steeldragons]

So, you began the discussion with the 1E Cavalier, lets return there.

Awlll righty.

The 1E Cavalier as presented only barely has a mounted aspect. More attention is paid to the Cavalier's relationship to his armor than to his mount. Much more attention is paid to the Cavalier's artistocratic background (another set of new rules in the UE) and his code of honor than to his mount.

The 1E Cavalier IIRC had the following abilities:

1) Improved mounted combat
2) Automatic specialization (equalivent, though slightly mechanically different) in the lance, sword, and a secondary weapon
3) Slow improvement in STR, CON, and DEX that was rougly equivalent (assuming you had a 16 or better) to getting a free wish to improve his attributes in each every level. This was particularly huge if you could start with 18 in those abilities, particularly strength.
4) Improved starting wealth
5) Fear resistance

And probably some other things.

It's not at all clear to me that the key element of this is, despite the name, horsemanship, but the idea of an elite upper class warrior trained from birth. The Cavalier is just the Westernized implementation of that general concept; Samurrii would be another example of the same concept in different cultural trappings. Certainly in play, the Cavalier was not inferior to the fighter, and was in fact probably superior to the fighter - even when not mounted. Combat by a player with a mounted Cavalier was rare in my experience, not that they weren't awesome when doing so, but that they were fully effective without it.

The problem I have isn't so much the balance issue now, which we have the tools to fix, it's that until the Cavalier came along and stole it mounted combat was also the priviledge of the fighter. It narrowed the concept of the fighter to create a mounted combat specialist.

How so? I mean, the fact that a Cavalier class was available didn't, to my understanding, make it so having a Fighter character who could fight mounted was somehow inconsequential or inferior. I don't see the "taking away from the fighter" so much as "offering another option to do a mounted fighter."...with, as you noted, a sick amount of extra prestige/wealth/abilities...but it was, afterall, the 1e UA and that's kinda what that book was all about what we would now consider "breaking/broken options". hahaha. Whether that was noticed and/or intentional or just "We gotta offer players the classes in the cartoon" and they got a little carried away, I can't say.

Likewise, before them, inspiring and leading fighting men was also part of the domain of the fighter - as implemented by the idea that name level for a fighter was 'Lord' and would come eventually with the possession of followers and a castle.

Likewise, I feel that tactical skill and command in battle is also properly the sphere of the fighter.

It can be. Sure. It seems almost universal that our "hero" mythological (cultural, literary, et al...) archetypes are the fighters/sword swingers and double as (by desire, design or reluctantly) the "leaders" [not to be taken as the 4e term!] of their respective stories/bands.

Again, I don't see the cav "taking that" away from the fighter. Just the game giving us more than one type of character who can fill that role.

What I've seen over 30 years of the evolution of D&D is increasing diversity of spells, all of which get grouped into one of the two main categories of spellcasters vastly increasing the scope and sphere of options of spellcasters in the process. At the same time I've also seen a vast increase in the number of classes, most of which are martial classes of some sort - Barbarian, Cavalier, Samurii, Knight, Marshall, Warlord, and so on and so forth - each of which coming with a range of narrow class abilities which then become their sphere of influence and all of which hedge out the same mechanical expansion of the original martial class(es) that is enjoyed by spellcasters via spell selection.

I thought I was following right up til that last sentence. But I lost it...More spells for casters and more caster classes with expanding abilities. Got it. More martial/non-magic-using classes (though I would posit significantly less than caster/magic-using classes) creates...less expanding abilities?

I mean, I get the more you divy up the specialized classes, the narrower you have to get with their expertise...but how does this 'hedge out" mechanical expansion for the original martial classes [by which I am assuming you mean Fighters and Rogues?].

What I think you'd actually accomplish with a Cavalier class is just taking stuff from the fighter class, creating a new class that probably at least as effective in raw power as the fighter in combat, but which also has more versitility and more options in and out of combat.

More options built-in. Which, in theory, would amount to less options available overall. Yes. I suppose so. This doesn't, though mean the Fighter can't take similar options/make almost a duplicate character if a player desires...since the Fighter would have more options (be they "skill slots, weapon proficiencies, maneuvers" etc... or even stuff like "alignment options" or "armor permitted") which the already detailed cav doesn't.

Ultimately, it would just further dismembering of the concept of the fighter until the fighter would be left with only 'hits things with sticks' in his concept and sphere of influence. Then people would keep complaining about how martial classes couldn't get nice things, and how D&D classes broke into tiers of spellcasters and non-spellcasters with spellcasters in the higher tiers, and we'd continue to see pushes to make all classes including the fighter defacto spellcasters with their own list of magical powers.

I'm not sure if I agree...But this opinion of "having some of the same things as a Fighter" equates to "taking stuff away from the Fighter" seems to be very popular. I find it...interesting and unusual to my sensibilities.