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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6078370" data-attributes="member: 42582">I've somewhat lost track of what your beef is with 4e.Upthread a number of posters, including me, suggested that the 4e PC build rules tend to produce PCs whose mechanical capabilities express their thematic/story orientation. The paladin's Valiant Strike power was mentioned as a particuarly clear example of this: +1 to hit per adjacent enemy, which thereby incentivises the player of the paladin to play his/her PC as valiant.I thought you were disagreeing with this claim about 4e - but in the post I've quoted, you seem to be complaining that 4e's mechanical PC builds incentivise and establish theme/story in just the way that I and others said they do! (As @Talifer has posted, if you don't want to play a knightly defender, why are you building a palain?)As to the paladin "enjoying taking the beatdown" - if you're playing a fantasy RPG, and you build a PC whose salient class features include heavy armour and shields, melee weapons, and bucketloads of resilience, why would you object to your PC frequently being in the centre of melee? If you didn't want to play a melee fighting PC, why build a knight? (Of course there are answers to that question, but most of them make more sense in a game like Burning Wheel than D&D, which has never had a particularly ironic streak.)As for damage levels, the paladin in my game is actually the third-most damaging of 5 PCs - not as much as the sorcerer or archer-ranger, but more than the fighter or wizard. Enfeebling strike plus Winter domain plus frost cheese plus a lot of effecs that make him better against bloodied foes take him to low striker level damage. Which seems to fit a grim devotee of the Raven Queen.This seems to be another post that accepts the characterisation of 4e being advanced by me and others, but objects to it.The answer to the question "why" is because you want a game that generates, more-or-less effortlessly, PCs with a strong thematic and story focus. I think 4e achieves this. That's one reason why I like it.Multiple posters upthread have pointed out that this is not true. The barbarian and paladin have different mechanics which mean that you can't just reflavour one as the other (eg barbarians wear light armour, paladin's heavy armour - and that's one of the most minor of their differences).</blockquote>

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