Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what a Martial Controller would look like?

[Cadfan]

And there you are. Controller-type "debuff" powers that target all three defenses and retain a martial, non-magical flavor.

Those are defender type powers.

You could make an argument that the "three square radius" powers aren't defender type powers, but first you'd have to explain to me how a non magical martial artist can hit everyone in a 3 square radius in one round. That's 49 squares, counting the one he's standing in, and depending on how you count angles. At the very least, it involves hitting enemies who are 30 feet apart, in multiple directions and on multiple angles.

[snip]
Archer. Their arrows can be anywhere.
[snip]

I think you're confusing some of the roles a bit. While reach is probably necessary to a controller, reach doesn't make someone a controller. If what you're doing once you've stretched your influence across the battlefield is shooting someone in the eye with an arrow, that's a striker behavior.

Plus, some of your ideas, while good, aren't going to fill out a whole class as a controller. They might make nice feat chains for adding a controllerish twist on a class, but the class itself is going to end up filling some other role. Once you give a class the melee power necessary to grapple and throw an enemy, well, you've built yourself a defender. A defender with one neat controller type ability, but a defender.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Let's add some further evidence.

ARCHER ABILITY
Arrow Pin: Your arrow pierces the enemy's body and pins them to the ground on which they stand, rendering them immobile.
{a typical "control your enemy's movement" power}

GRAPPLER ABILITY
Body Toss: You can make a Strength check to throw your enemy away from you. It takes falling damage when it lands.
{This lets you re-position your enemies fairly effectively}

FREELANCER ABILITY
Kebab: You pierce the enemy's body with your spear, and they stay on it. You can move the enemy anywhere within your spear's reach. You can free them, or they can free themselves, and when they do, they take damage again.
{Makes it so your target won't want to escape your reach unless they think they can take the damage}

ALCHEMIST ABILITY
Stinkbomb: If you touch a target with a ranged attack, that target is nearly impossible to approach: you make an Alchemy check vs. Fortitude for all who come within 20 ft. Those you hit become nauseated.
{Can be used defensively, to protect the vulnerable soft bits, or offensively, to stop others from receiving healing}

SWASHBUCKLER ABILITY
Daring Leap!: If you have higher ground, you can give it up in order to avoid all AoO's for moving this turn
{one of those movement abilities I was mentioning}

TAUNTER ABILITY
Pathetic Toothpick: Roll a Bluff check vs. Will. If you win, the target is convinced that their current weapon is rather shoddy, and they will not use it to attack with.
{We know weapons define combat abilities: this lets a taunter force an enemy to use a sub-par weapon}

WUXIA ABILITY
Torpedo Kick: Execute a normal attack against an adjacent target. If you hit, the target is hurled away from you 1 ft. per point of damage, and takes falling damage when they land.
{Another "move your enemy around" ability}

COMBAT TRICKSTER ABILITY
BEHIND YOU!: Try a Bluff vs. Will. If you win, your target is considered flanked by you.
{A set-up kind of move, really}

YO-YO MASTER ABILITY
Swing: You can move within your weapon's reach times two without provoking any AoO's
{Another one of those "bring the fight to the enemy" moves}

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think you're confusing some of the roles a bit. While reach is probably necessary to a controller, reach doesn't make someone a controller. If what you're doing once you've stretched your influence across the battlefield is shooting someone in the eye with an arrow, that's a striker behavior.

You're not necessarily sticking them in the eye, though. You're making them dance, or covering an area with an arrow rain, or pinning them to the ground, or shooting their hand to make them drop their weapon, or shooting their face to blind them, or littering the ground around their feet with arrows, or....lots of things, really.

They might make nice feat chains for adding a controllerish twist on a class, but the class itself is going to end up filling some other role. Once you give a class the melee power necessary to grapple and throw an enemy, well, you've built yourself a defender. A defender with one neat controller type ability, but a defender.

Not necessarily. Yeah, they might not all be good full-on classes (though they probably could be), but someone who has melee power doesn't need to be a defender. If they're mobile, if they don't wear much armor (and so can't really take a good hit), if they rely on knocking enemies prone and throwing them around, they're not going to be able to defend anyone. Instead, they're about getting to the enemy and making sure the enemy can't do his job very well. And, AFAIK, that's "controller" territory.

Though I do think a lot of the debate stems from no one really knowing what a "controller" can actually do. I'm speculating based on the idea that a controller helps dictate what actions an enemy is capable of, or gives the enemy tough choices about what to do. Do you bunch up and form a spear wall when there's a fireball there? Do you wield weapon X or weapon Y? Do you cross the barrier, despite taking the damage?

I think a grappler can put that question in the mind of any enemy, without having to stand in one spot and be a stone pillar like a Defender would have to be.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

Those are defender type powers.

You could make an argument that the "three square radius" powers aren't defender type powers, but first you'd have to explain to me how a non magical martial artist can hit everyone in a 3 square radius in one round. That's 49 squares, counting the one he's standing in, and depending on how you count angles. At the very least, it involves hitting enemies who are 30 feet apart, in multiple directions and on multiple angles.

See, I thought the "defender" archetype had more to do with soaking up damage and focusing attacks on the defender himself. I see the "controller" archetype as a debuff master, to use the reviled parliance of computer games.

I was imagining that the non-magical martial artist could cover thirty feet by attacking each of those creatures very, very quickly. He'd bounce around, laying the smackdown on a bunch of creatures in the time it would take a lesser martial artist to attack just one. In my head it's a very wuxia thing to do. A lesser version of that would just allow him to hit all of the creatures surrounding him, which happens in just about any martial arts movie I've seen. Ooh, that's it! There should be three levels of each of those powers, one at each of the "tiers" of D&D 4e!

 

[Cadfan]

ARCHER ABILITY
Arrow Pin: Your arrow pierces the enemy's body and pins them to the ground on which they stand, rendering them immobile.
{a typical "control your enemy's movement" power}

A way to give a striker the ability to control one enemy in limited circumstances! A neat ability, and I completely support spreading the roles around a bit, but the fact that the same character could have shot his opponent in the face makes him a striker.

GRAPPLER ABILITY
Body Toss: You can make a Strength check to throw your enemy away from you. It takes falling damage when it lands.
{This lets you re-position your enemies fairly effectively}

A way to give a defender a controller type power. But since such a class is almost guaranteed to have the physical stats necessary to grapple, pin, and kill the enemy instead of throwing them, the class is going to be more innately a defender than a controller.

FREELANCER ABILITY
Kebab: You pierce the enemy's body with your spear, and they stay on it. You can move the enemy anywhere within your spear's reach. You can free them, or they can free themselves, and when they do, they take damage again.
{Makes it so your target won't want to escape your reach unless they think they can take the damage}

Ditto.

ALCHEMIST ABILITY
Stinkbomb: If you touch a target with a ranged attack, that target is nearly impossible to approach: you make an Alchemy check vs. Fortitude for all who come within 20 ft. Those you hit become nauseated.
{Can be used defensively, to protect the vulnerable soft bits, or offensively, to stop others from receiving healing}

This is controllerish. But wouldn't it be more logical to make the stinkbombs purchasable items, available to anyone?

SWASHBUCKLER ABILITY
Daring Leap!: If you have higher ground, you can give it up in order to avoid all AoO's for moving this turn
{one of those movement abilities I was mentioning}

I like this ability. I don't know why its a controller ability. It seems well suited for a striker, because it lets you get behind enemies and stab them in the spleen.

WUXIA ABILITY
Torpedo Kick: Execute a normal attack against an adjacent target. If you hit, the target is hurled away from you 1 ft. per point of damage, and takes falling damage when they land.
{Another "move your enemy around" ability}

A neat way to give a defender or a striker the ability to control a smidgen once in a while.

COMBAT TRICKSTER ABILITY
BEHIND YOU!: Try a Bluff vs. Will. If you win, your target is considered flanked by you.
{A set-up kind of move, really}

Striker again.

YO-YO MASTER ABILITY
Swing: You can move within your weapon's reach times two without provoking any AoO's
{Another one of those "bring the fight to the enemy" moves}

Don't know why this would be controller typed.

When people try to create a martial controller, they're going to most likely end up with a melee bruiser that naturally fills a striker or defender position, but who happens to have one, maybe two controller type abilities that affect small numbers of foes and which have limited range. Meanwhile the wizard is going to be splitting the battlefield with walls of ice, and granting his allies the ability to fly over lava.

I think we should give up trying to create a martial controller, and instead focus on creating ways to spread the roles around a bit.

In that vein, one thing I'm really hoping for is that thrown weapons will improve. That way my fighter, surrounded by orcs, can notice the rogue getting into trouble 30 feet off, and can save him by drawing and throwing a knife into the back of the rogue's assailant. This sort of force projection is a striker ability, but one for which any melee specialist is naturally suited. And its cool.

 

[Cadfan]

See, I thought the "defender" archetype had more to do with soaking up damage and focusing attacks on the defender himself. I see the "controller" archetype as a debuff master, to use the reviled parliance of computer games.

As long as the defender is forcing an enemy to deal with him instead of attacking his allies, he's being a defender. He could do that by having a high armor class and lots of hit points and forcing the enemy to attack him fruitlessly, but that's not the only choice. A character who trips an enemy so that the enemy can't run past him to stab an archer is behaving as a defender. A controller, by contrast, would throw down a wall of force blocking off 80% of the enemies, so that the controller's allies could stab the remaining 20% with little difficulty.

 

[RigaMortus2]

If I may be so bold, and step out of the box here for a moment...

What if they made a Shadowdancer a base class, and he had martial controller abilities. Jumping in and out of the shadows, attacking (stunning) enemies and what not? Maybe control the shadows and create walls and fog with the darkness. It's a stretch, but that is one way to make a "martial controller".

 

[Hella_Tellah]

As long as the defender is forcing an enemy to deal with him instead of attacking his allies, he's being a defender. He could do that by having a high armor class and lots of hit points and forcing the enemy to attack him fruitlessly, but that's not the only choice. A character who trips an enemy so that the enemy can't run past him to stab an archer is behaving as a defender. A controller, by contrast, would throw down a wall of force blocking off 80% of the enemies, so that the controller's allies could stab the remaining 20% with little difficulty.

Okay, but the Crippling Flurry ability I just wrote up is based on the Wizard's slow spell in 3e. It's not meant to force the baddies into attacking the monk, it's meant to limit the baddies' options. When a Wizard casts slow, is he a defender? Or does it become a defender power when it's done at close range?

 

[Cadfan]

I'd like a class like that. Walls of fog and darkness are definitely controller abilities. Leaping out of shadows and stabbing people is striker, but hey, no one says a class has to do just one thing. And a class like that sounds fun.

If the Shadowcaster and the Shadow Hand Sword Sage had a baby, I'd be the happiest man alive.

 

[I'm A Banana]

A way to give a striker the ability to control one enemy in limited circumstances! A neat ability, and I completely support spreading the roles around a bit, but the fact that the same character could have shot his opponent in the face makes him a striker.

I'm not so sure about that. Strikers are fine-point damage machines. If the archer is like most of D&D history, arrows will never do the kind of damage that melee can do. But they could easily carry rider effects on the arrows, and we definitely have precedence for turning one arrow into a massive rain of them (which could all share an effect).

I don't think an archer would be a good fit for a Striker at all. A rogue can sneak attack. A warlock can eldritch blast. A measly 1d8+Strength can't compare to EITHER of those in damage capacity, and it seems more likely to give archers other stuff to do with their arrows than to significantly buff up their arrow damage to rival sneak attacks and eldritch blasts.

A way to give a defender a controller type power. But since such a class is almost guaranteed to have the physical stats necessary to grapple, pin, and kill the enemy instead of throwing them, the class is going to be more innately a defender than a controller.

Grapple? Pin? That's definately controller territory. A defender doesn't mess with the enemies directly, doesn't manipulate their actions, they stand there, they soak up damage, they maybe manage to keep things within their reach, but they're not about crippling the enemy. That's controller territory, I believe. Defender territory, like was said about the fighter: "one you're in their reach, good luck leaving it!"

This is controllerish. But wouldn't it be more logical to make the stinkbombs purchasable items, available to anyone?

The old "unless you're trained to use this, it has a chance to go off in your hands" would be my way of protecting that niche.

I like this ability. I don't know why its a controller ability. It seems well suited for a striker, because it lets you get behind enemies and stab them in the spleen.

It would work well for a striker, too. But whereas a striker would follow it up with a bucket o' damage, a controller would follow it up by saying "COME AND GET ME!" and leading the enemies away.

A neat way to give a defender or a striker the ability to control a smidgen once in a while.

Again, a defender doesn't want people outside of their reach. A controller's job is to place the enemies where they will be the least effective. The controller kicks the enemy into the defender's reach, where the defender keeps him.

Striker again.

Which was showing how a class built mostly on controller abilities can still have a diversity. Perhaps instead of flanking, the target looses an action as they look for whatever is behind them. That'd be more controller-ish.

Don't know why this would be controller typed.

Another that would work well for a striker, but basically showing how a melee-based character can still have a lot of battlefield mobility, enabling them to get to where they need to control.

Basically, a defender with a lot of battlefield mobility would make a very good controller, because his reach would be an area of control, and if he could move the space of his reach every round, he can affect the whole battlefield.

When people try to create a martial controller, they're going to most likely end up with a melee bruiser that naturally fills a striker or defender position, but who happens to have one, maybe two controller type abilities that affect small numbers of foes and which have limited range. Meanwhile the wizard is going to be splitting the battlefield with walls of ice, and granting his allies the ability to fly over lava.

And the Wuxia will be creating chasms, and the Yo-Yo master will be creating swaths of destruction, and the Battle Trickster will be scattering caltrops and the Archer will be disarming and the Swashbuckler will be "pulling" creatures in a duel...

I think we should give up trying to create a martial controller, and instead focus on creating ways to spread the roles around a bit.

I think you've given too much "controller" territory to the "defender." So this is more about lacking a clear definition of these roles than about actually not being able to fill one of them.