I can see this in principle but have never encountered it in practice.
At 1st level in Moldvay Basic, if my fighter can afford plate armour (60 gp from memory, so most likely) it is virtually suicide not to use it: dropping the hit chance from 6 in 20 to 3 in 20 (or thereabouts) is effectively doubling my life expectancy. At higher levels, where I have the hit points to open up a wider range of choices, I probably have magical plate mail, which (depending on which bit of DMG text you read - the rules as stated in the Armour section near the start are different from the rules stated in the Magic Item section near the end) either encumbers at one step lower (so comparably to studded leather) or not at all.
The advantage of a lighter armor in Expert D&D is more can be carried without impeding movement. If I'm maxed out to the heaviest encumbrance, my encounter movement is only 10' a round (30' running). It's one of the choices that make up the game. Do I want to go for maximum protection, or for more mobility/carrying capacity? Of course, an important aspect of this is that Expert D&D is not exactly an heroic fantasy game, but rather a fantasy exploration game. So you have the usual caveats about avoiding combat and so on. All of that is orthogonal to the discussion here, though. The point being that the structure of the game was that you create your role and also how you fulfill it. A lightly armored ranged fighter is entirely doable -- provided one doesn't do as Williams suggests and just wade into melee trying to pin down foes. You
can do that, of course. And many did. But the game isn't built around specialization. Of course, to some folks this is a bug, not a feature! There isn't that much mechanical difference between randomly generated fighters.
Naturally, magical armor does much to remove choice of armors -- but in Expert D&D perhaps less than you'd think. Magical armor doesn't ignore encumbrance -- it's just lighter. Magical plate is 250 cc vs 500 cc for regular plate, magical chain is 200 cc vs 400 cc for regular (the numbers are a little lower in Basic vs Expert). But! I have to disagree that one "probably has plate mail", unless the DM puts it in there. Due to randomness of the treasure rolls, an adventurer will probably see a lot of treasure rooms before they find that choice magical plate. Which is kind of the point of the game. Further, this means that roles can change over a PCs career. Maybe I start off as light, mobile ranged fighter, but in the course of my career I find some magic armor, or a magic sword. So I become a "wade into melee" type. Or vice-versa, I start off as a heavy-armor melee guy, but find a magic bow, or some magic arrows, and so I become a long-range sniper. Or, I mix-match as the situation dictates. What role I decide to fulfill will vary based on the situation.
At low levels the fighter in my 4e game - who also is proficient, like the AD&D fighter, in longbows - would often open up with ranged attacks. At 28th level he is unlikely to hit with a longbow on much less than 20 (having not pumped DEX very much, and having only a +1 longbow to work with - but having not pumped solely CON either - off-STR stat bonuses have been allocated across DEX, CON and WIS), but from time-to-time he will make ranged attacks with his Mordenkrad that is enchanted as a heavy thrown weapon.
Sure. My point is not that one can't or should never have a fighter make ranged attacks in 4e. My point is that Skip Williams looked at the fighter and said, "This guy's job is to wade into melee." I looked at the fighter and said, "This guy's job is to handle any kind of combat needed -- skirmishing, range, spear range, close melee." Take, for example, missile fire. Surely with his DEX bonus, this is the thief's thing, right? But actually, when you run the math (by XP, rather than level), even with a DEX 10 fighter and a DEX 18 thief, the fighter spends a good chunk of the game matching or nearly matching the thief's DEX bonus with his superior to-hit numbers. The situation is even more pronounced in AD&D, wherein the thief's DEX bonus gives him a +3 advantage until 4,000 XP, when the fighter hits Level 3 and cuts this down to +1. At 18,000 XP, Level 5 for the fighter, his to-hit numbers totally match the thief's, and at Level 9 (25,000 XP), he shoots ahead with a +1 advantage on the thief, and never looks back. And that's not even accounting for the fact that in AD&D, fighters can use longbows, while thieves cannot.
Again, my point here is not that you can't build fighters in 3e or 4e to exploit ranged attacks, perhaps to an equal or near-equal level as a DEX-based rogue or ranger. My point is in earlier versions of the game, before the fighter was seen as the "wade into melee and pin enemies down" guy, you
didn't have to. Combat was the fighter's thing, and he could fulfill a number of different roles within it.
Multi-role characters are fairly easy to build in 4e, though of course to some extent it depends where I draw the role boundaries (eg is defender/controller multi-role, or is a defender really just a melee controller?).
I don't necessarily disagree with your statement here, but I think our personal standards for "fairly easy" are quite different here. I have no doubt it is easy for you and your players. As someone who's never been particularly good at nor inclined to "building" characters, I don't find it so easy, and the glut of feats in 4e didn't make it much easier. To put it in 5e terms, I'm a Champion kind of guy. So on that front, 4e's codified roles system is more constraining than freeing for me. When I stayed in the default role, I prospered. When I tried to break out of it, I floundered.
All-around is a different thing. The closest we have in my 4e game is the paladin, who can fight in melee, has a small complement of ranged spell (prayer) attacks, can heal, and has top-notch social skills. The sorcerer is also pretty versatile - good mobility and combat (including at-will short-range flight), good stealth, reasonable social but a little shaky once the damage starts raining down.
I think all-around is something very much left by the wayside in 3e and 4e. The ability to ultra-specialize just doesn't make it viable. Forget all-aroundness, these are the editions that coined MAD as a dirty word. In 5e, the first character I made I deliberately made all-around, choosing an array that most spread my bonuses around. I've been very pleased with it.
But I'm still not seeing how a fighter built using the 5e Basic PDF can deliver AoE attacks or do serious healing. Which is not a criticism of 5e - maybe fighters who can do AoE attacks are broken in that system? But I don't think 4e is as rigid, nor 5e as versatile, as at least some in this thread are claiming.
Well, personally, I don't define all-aroundness with the ability to mimic all the 4e roles. In my case, I have a fighter who can do melee, but is still effective at range, while also having a bonus to WIS and CHA saves and skills. And I feel comfortable spreading out future ability score improvements to DEX, WIS, and CHA, or even INT. Or otherwise taking a variety of feats. In 4e, there was always a tension -- I wanted to spread things out, but never felt entirely comfortable with it, particularly with my tablemates given to specialization. (I should note that I'm talking about 4e a lot for comparison, since I played and enjoyed it. But the issues I have with 4e are not endemic to 4e alone; if anything the same or similar issues mean I have little inclination to play 3e at all, since specialization is
even more rewarded there.)
I'm not entirely sure where you fall. But presumably your 3rd level fighter with the DEX to take advantage of that breastplate isn't going to be as robust in melee as the 3rd level fighter whose player dumped DEX for STR and CON and is wearing the best heavy armour s/he can afford. That's a bit of role differentiation right there - in 4e terms we might be comparing a STR/DEX melee ranger to a PHB fighter. Admittedly your 5e PC can do something the 4e ranger can't, namely, put on a suit of plate, but you'll still be less effective as a bruiser than the character who was built to bruise from the start.
Sure, but the issue is one of degree of distinction, not distinction itself. The bruiser may be the best at melee. But I can be better than average -- and even more so if I decide to don the plate and go to work. IMO, 5e hits a sweet spot where specialization is rewarded, but likewise so is versatility.
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Iosue - I have to admit that in thirty plus years of gaming I have never once seen a character start switching armors. Why on earth would you take off plate in 1e? It's not like your fighter could sneak anyway. Same with 3e. Breastplate is almost as bad for stealth stuff as plate. And since all the stealth skills in 3e are cross class, who tries to make a stealthy fighter?
A couple things. We were talking 5e, not 1e or 3e. In 5e, chain, scale, and plate give disadvantage on Stealth. If I'm engaging in stealthy activity, I want the best armor I can get
without taking disadvantage in Stealth. That's breastplate. You expressed incredulity that a fighter would ever have anything but the highest possible AC. My contention is merely that sometimes, in some playstyles, there are other considerations.
But, as far as 1e goes, the thief's ability to move absolutely silently, even a squeaky floor, and to hide even in only dim light, doesn't preclude the fighter's ability to move stealthily, without making undue noise.
As for 3e, I have no idea. I don't play that and never have. My point is not that people make "stealthy fighters", but that fighter's
should be able to choose to be stealthy when they want. And that while I'm very aware that a great many people have played, "I buy plate mail and wear it all the time," and that this led to the fighter more and more to be
expected to always be wearing the heaviest armor they can obtain, and this in turn led to an implicit defender role for the fighter in 3e, and an explicit one in 4e, I am arguing that there are also a good number of people -- a significant minority at the least -- who didn't or don't play that way. For whom choice in armor and weaponry is very often mission specific. Happily, 5e accommodates both.
Bows are great but by and large most encounters start within one or maybe two rounds of movement. I've almost never seen encounters start at the long end of long range for a bow.
Did you play much wilderness exploration and/or hex mapping? In Expert D&D, standard encounter distance in the wilderness was 40-240 yards. In AD&D it was 60-240 yards. And that's assuming the bowman is the one doing the spotting, without anyone scouting ahead. Maybe it was just my group, but once we got out of the dungeon and were exploring the wilderness, the lion's share of encounters started waaaay out of melee range, or even one or two rounds of movement. In Expert, 40 yards out is 120 feet, and even the fleet of foot are going to take two or three rounds to reach that.
