Adventurer class

[Nifft]

IMHO Ranger can be a fairly generic adventuring dude.

1/ Power Attack -- Favored Enemy (Humans)
- Grab yourself a Longbow, a Longsword and a Heavy Shield.
- Social encounters? You have a +2 to Bluff and Sense Motive vs. Humans.
- Melee? You can be defensive with your shield & longsword, or offensive with Two-Handed Power Attack.

2/ Ranged Combat Style -- Rapid Shot
- Now you're adaptable. You are decent at melee and range.
- By this point, you should have a MW Chain Shirt. Consider also picking up Spiked Gauntlets and a Glaive.

After just two levels, the Ranger can do lots of things. He's pretty good at outdoorsy stuff, he's got a lot of skill points which he can put into Spot, Listen, and athletic skills, as well as the expected Survival. He can track, use wands, fight in melee and at range -- using any weapon a Fighter could use -- and he's got some (small) bonuses in the more common social situations.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Wepwawet]

I think the blandness is sort of the point. The idea is to have a class that's very simple, so a new player can pick it up and play without having to make a lot of decisions about what talents or spells to take or whatever.

How in the nine hells is choosing your saves, class skills and all the details simpler to a newbie, than picking a class with all that already defined, and just having to choose some 1st level powers???
First the newbie has to understand what all that stuff means to be able to choose something. It's simpler to state what kind of character they want and the DM or the other players direct him to the character class and powers most adequate.

Obviously I'm talking about the example configuration in the original post.

 

[kenmarable]

Bland is a good word for it... dull and insipid... having little or no distinctive flavor.

A class that is supposed to help new players get into the game by avoiding one of the biggest premises to character creation: choices you can make to make the character different from others? That sounds incredibly lame.

Well, I can see two different types of "simplification" for an easy to pick up class.

One is, as you say, limited choices during creation. Yeah, that's not a ton of fun.

However, the other is limited choices during play. I can see that as being a useful "pick and play" character. The 3.x fighter is a clear example of plenty of choices in creation, but in play, you pretty much swing and hit. Now, an experienced player can incorporate all kinds of fun stuff with bull rushes, cleaving, etc., but for someone just picking up and playing, a fighter is pretty basic but still powerful enough to have an impact on the game.

The 4e fighter looks to be far more Bo9S like with choosing maneuvers. Personally, I greatly prefer that. However, some people I've played with (not even all of them new players just joining up) would really dislike that. They don't want to choose "fighter spells", they want to swing and hit and deal out a lot of damage in combat. (And, surprisingly, they are not all hack-n-slash "roll-player" gamers, some really get into their characters' personalities. It's just in combat, they want to roll a couple dice and deal out a lot of damage, no fancy planning or choosing maneuvers and such. People who prefer checkers to chess.) I'm the complete opposite and thought the fighter looked boring until Bo9S came out.

I can see the good design interest in giving each class more options during combat, but some players I have gamed with don't want those extra options in combat. I hope there is a class or classes that have choices of talents or whatever that allow those players to make the characters they want - simple damage dealers.

 

[Gloombunny]

...
Obviously I'm talking about the example configuration in the original post.

Point. I may have misinterpreted his intent.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

IMHO Ranger can be a fairly generic adventuring dude.

Cheers, -- N

I've seen this done before. Makes for a very versatile character.

To the OP, I think as others have said it'll be better to just use one class with appropriate feat/talent selection or multiclass than to create an 'adventurer' class.
Keep in my though I'm generally in favor of fewer, more versatile classes (if I had my way there'd just be cleric, fighter, rogue and wizard with talent trees for customization and specialization).

 

[The Little Raven]

The 4e fighter looks to be far more Bo9S like with choosing maneuvers. Personally, I greatly prefer that. However, some people I've played with (not even all of them new players just joining up) would really dislike that. They don't want to choose "fighter spells", they want to swing and hit and deal out a lot of damage in combat. (And, surprisingly, they are not all hack-n-slash "roll-player" gamers, some really get into their characters' personalities. It's just in combat, they want to roll a couple dice and deal out a lot of damage, no fancy planning or choosing maneuvers and such. People who prefer checkers to chess.) I'm the complete opposite and thought the fighter looked boring until Bo9S came out.

Throwing in Power Attack, Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, Two-Weapon Fighting, or any of the numerous fighter feats means they have to make more decisions than just "I hit him with my mace. WHAM!" Deciding when to Power Attack, or who to choose as your Dodge target (if you even remember), or remembering to throw in your +4 AC bonus vs attacks of opportunity with Mobility... that's no different than choosing to use "Dragon Tail Cut" or whatever.

So, to me, it seems that anyone that has an issue with selecting maneuvers should already have an issue with feats and their usage in 3.X, especially given the myriad options (both good and incredibly bad).

 

[Matthias]

Fourth Edition characters seem to be designed to bring something specific to the party, whereas this class doesn't do anything, really.

Well, it's supposed to be generic on purpose.

I think what I was trying to say in my initial post is that a generic Adventurer class would fill the need for all the additional core classes that have popped up since 3.0 came out.

3.0 and 3.5 was moderately successful at stopping the proliferation of core classes for every possible character concept with its introduction of prestige classes, although WOTC themselves has published at least thirty core classes (albeit most of them were generalized enough to be core-worthy).

4E seems to be geared toward minimizing the actual number of core classes in favor of versatility within each class via talents and feats. If this is the case, then to forestall the proliferation this time around, a generic class could cover all the bases that the final set of 4E core classes won't sufficient cover so you won't need a new core class to do it.

So this generic Adventurer class wouldn't be a "beginner class" for newbies to learn the game, or to create the ultimate class that has the built-in ability do a little bit of everything. (In that, the Factotum is sort of appropriate but not really.) The generic Adventurer would be a customizable class on which you'd build your Ninjas, Spellthieves, Dread Necromancers, and all those other unusual core classes.

It would be impractical to make a core class for every possible logical combination of Hit Die sizes, good & bad saves, equipment proficiencies, and skill lists, so you'd need a "catch-all" well-rounded combination on which to build all those other core classes that people will want, but for which none of the existing 4E classes are quite appropriate. So instead of creating a whole new core class, new character concepts would consist of new feat trees to be grafted into the Adventurer (or one of the other core classes). Of course, new talent trees can always be created and grafted in to the existing classes so that you could use the 4E Fighter to build the 4E Samurai or turn a 4E Ranger/Rogue into the 4E Scout. But I doubt the existing classes will quite cover everything, even with customized talent trees.

d20 Modern's basic classes and "occupations" are a closer example of what I'm getting at here. Not that I'm advocating dropping all of six generic classes into the 4E mix, but it would be good to have a mixture of "flavored" classes (all the existing 4E classes) with one "catch-all" class (Adventurer) to cover anything else that would be worthy of core-class status but is not easily covered by one of the existing classes.

'Course, not knowing how those classes were built, I'm just speculating about what these will look like. When the Races & Classes book comes out it may turn out that the existing classes can cover all the bases and a "template" class for other character concepts won't be needed. But if there is room for another core class, I'll be able to get into specifics.

I hope this clears things up.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

For 4E, it looks as though Fighter is going to be spiced up beyond its 3.X incarnation, what with the whole mugging of knights and all.

If this is indeed the truth, then there should be a replacement to fill the role of generic adventurer. I wouldn't feel as comfortable defaulting a character to Fighter if Fighters were as flavorful as the rest of the classes. The next closest default class would be the Commoner / Aristocrat / Expert trio and I wouldn't care for that either.

So I want to propose to the 4E guys that you add a generic Adventurer class, similar to to the 3.X Fighter or Expert, the generic Call of Cthulhu PC template, or even the d20 Modern base classes.

Example configuration: Medium BAB, d8 hit die, one good save (selectable by the player), 10 selectable class skills, bonus feat slots (assignable to any feat) at 1st level and every odd-numbered level thereafter. Not sure how talents would work.

Naturally the Adventurer should not be so good that it eclipses the 4.0 Fighter (or any other class).

The Fighter wasn't really a generic adventurer class. He was from able to do everything you'd expect an adventurer do. He couldn't sneak around, was bad at perception, and hat little knowledge skills.
The Rogue was the closest to being a full adventurer class, simply because he had a incredible amount of class skills and skill points. (And with Use Magic Device, he could at least try some magic)

The problem with a "catch-all" class on a conceptual level is that there is not supposed to be a fullly-fledged allrounder. The protagonists are not 4 Indiana Jones, they are more like the Fantastic Four. It's a team play, so you can't really have a single "jack of all trades" that could replace any one of them.
Also, since the game is class-based, a all-encompassing class would defeat the purpose of the class system.

Some 3rd Edition classes still tried to be this kind of Jack of all Trades, or can be used to get there. But that comes at a high cost - they simply can't do anything really good, and that means the specialised characters will always look better in play, because there is always one thing they are very good at.

In the Star Wars Saga edition, basically every character has a "Jack of all Trades" function, at least for skills (half your level on all skills). But this allows anyone to specialise and have an ability to be very good at, without having abilities they totally and utterly suck at.

D&D 4 is supposed to emphasise and supplement the "roles" of characters more than 3rd edition did. This gives even less room for a non-specialised adventurer/jack of all trade character class. On the other hand, this design ensures that every character has something he is good enough to feel "worth having", unlike a only semi-competend Jack of All Trades.

---

The other question is what character is best suited for a beginner?
I think that will always be the Fighter. Playing an effective character in 3rd edition always required a lot of knowledge and experience, and the Fighter wasn't really easier. But the concept is probably the easiest to pick up - pick a weapon and stick it into the enemy.
Other classes usually have more concepts attached to them and must be understood and accepted first. (We don't know enough about D&D 4, but I suspect that magic still is its own subsystem which takes some learning, while everyone will want to be familiar with the combat system)