D&D 4E A gathering of Martial Controllers - what do you think

[Garthanos]

Bilbo Baggins did something that looked suspiciously like a rogues variant of come and get it by insulting giant spiders with a double back around....

 

[Garthanos]

Arguably the most common type of combat deception is the false opening ... taunting was common too, it has a big history as angry enemies make mistakes.

A false opening involves weapon position and stance and drawing attention to an apparent vulnerability, it is a lure to a trap and doesn't much care about enemy language use. Come and get it is just a big and fantasy version of this (seen in movies all the time) and very much the kind of awesome I love seeing the fighter have.

The footwork lure maneuver I have seen a boxer use ended with a clock cleaning every time (bringing the attack up from the floor) he was magnificent and could drag his adversary around by their collars.

 

[Garthanos]

Sure, why not?

EDIT: You know what? Here's what I really think. Why shouldn't ALL this sort of stuff really be skill powers?

What if we embrace the concept of a "trick" or "surprise action" bonus with our "augment" or "gambit" system. In effect this action gets a surprise bonus because its not expected but easily disrupted if they have seen it (particularly this encounter but maybe a benefit for recurring villains is having the player come up with different "methods")
[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] I think of this as implicit in many of the encounter and daily powers but we are adjusting the concept enough that having that element may need to be considered in a more explicit way.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What if we embrace the concept of a "trick" or "surprise action" bonus with our "augment" or "gambit" system. In effect this action gets a surprise bonus because its not expected but easily disrupted if they have seen it (particularly this encounter but maybe a benefit for recurring villains is having the player come up with different "methods")
[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] I think of this as implicit in many of the encounter and daily powers but we are adjusting the concept enough that having that element may need to be considered in a more explicit way.

Yeah, well, when I start to think about what makes a game simple and straightforward and leads to quick and satisfying play, then I think that its probably just as well to KISS and use encounter/daily powers, or at least ones with a resource cost. My initial design was that an 'encounter' power could be used once at no cost, and if you really wanted to use it again, then it would cost a point. Basically you can't SPAM, but you can repeat an especially effective tactic if its really critical to do so. This could represent slightly different variations of a "you can only pull this off once" trick, or just burning yourself out on one that is exhausting.

My basic idea was to replace daily with powers that simply ALWAYS require expenditure of a point, so they would only come up rarely (I had initially thought that 8 points would be a good starting number, but that's easy to tweak, remembering that they also serve as HS and AP).

Now, we subsequently thought about 'augments', so that might change the definition of 'power' slightly (IE a single power might have 0, 1, and 2 point variations for example). If I followed my existing design here, then an encounter augment would be 0 points the first time, and 1 point subsequently. Maybe Daily powers would be one point and then 2 subsequently? Or you just only get one shot. Its all tweakable. The exact costs could simply vary depending on the power, maybe some are just extraordinary and always cost 1 or 2 points.

This can all be combined with the idea of a practice/ritual that you use to prep from your larger list of powers every day, and that you can use to invoke some sort of 'utility version' of the power OO combat, or when the power isn't prepped, something like that.

This sort of a design seems like it would work well with a bunch of your martial controller concepts, like the bomb thrower/trap master pretty well.

 

[Garthanos]

Basically you can't SPAM, but you can repeat an especially effective tactic if its really critical to do so. This could represent slightly different variations of a "you can only pull this off once" trick, or just burning yourself out on one that is exhausting.

Works for me!
Nods one general idea is the character/player can be seen as coming up with an alternate version of the trick which does the job but it takes more "something" to do it as its not their tried and true method/technique

I like the idea of using the exertions as tied to that HS / Vitality
or an Action Point / Fate Point metric

This sort of a design seems like it would work well with a bunch of your martial controller concepts, like the bomb thrower/trap master pretty well.

hmmmm

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, I remember that one, basically, nyaaa! you'll never have a martial controller, wizards rule, fighters drool!

 

[Garthanos]

Yeah, I remember that one, musically, nyaaa! you'll never have a martial controller, wizards rule, fighters drool!

Huh? Oh, and to rub dirt in it, I did the leg work and the Martial Controller Underground was lost completely nothing in the wayback machine.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I still think it was extremely crappy of wotc to kill the forums with no archive.

 

[Garthanos]

This does open up obvious questions. where do you get these minions, etc. The answers would appear to be either highly magical or highly gamist...

One place to get your minions is to have them be plucky entourage minions who are revivable after the battle is done... who are taken out of the fight by a wound but not killed or who get intimidated in to crawling off hiding but can be convinced to push on etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Works for me!
Nods one general idea is the character/player can be seen as coming up with an alternate version of the trick which does the job but it takes more "something" to do it as its not their tried and true method/technique

I like the idea of using the exertions as tied to that HS / Vitality
or an Action Point / Fate Point metric

I also feel like this is a complexity reducer. If a player really just wants to do some few specific things mechanically, sure its 'spamming', but why fight them? With 4e as it is today you can always find 3 powers that are effectively identical anyway. I'd rather have one power, maybe one that can actually vary based on different weapon riders for instance, that keeps the character sheet simpler and cleaner and lets you only introduce DESIRED complexity.