Class Compendium: The Warlord (Marshal)

[Aegeri]

Have you read a Slayer thread? The consensus on the interwebs is that they are possibly more powerful than other strikers.

Um, consensus? This is news to me as I read a lot of CharOp to see what kind of strange builds and rules can produce on a regular basis. My understanding is the opposite: The Thief/Slayer/Scout are excellent mid-range strikers, but their lack of any potential solid nova ability cripples them substantially compared with regular strikers. This isn't to say they are bad whatsoever, but their specific reliance on charge builds to keep up with other non-E strikers is a substantial weakness. Unless you build your slayer/thief/scout to really whore charging, you can really fall behind in damage.

So they are hardly more powerful - while they certainly are more reliable in so many ways. But when it comes down to it their ability to deal massive damage like some other strikers (Rogues, Rangers and Barbarians as good examples) falls distinctly short of the mark.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

What maintains it in long, drawn-out 'grinds' and fast, brutal 'alpha strikes?' In 8 encounter days and single-encounter days?

And here is where your house of cards crashes.

What keeps a Wizard balanced with a Bow Ranger? In 4e, with its amazing balance, these two ranged classes should be roughly balanced, right? I mean you keep comparing Slayers and Wizards, so obviously, the comparison is valid based off of roles.

So the balance between a bow ranger and a wizard is maintained between say, a well designed, hard to lock down solo, and a horde of minions and non minions of an equal xp value. Right? Of course they aren't balanced, just like an AEDU fighter will totally kick ass more than a Knight, if the player knows it is safe to nova. Just like you argue the Slayer and Mage aren't balanced in many circumstances. But on the whole? Assuming typical play? It doesn't follow.

To explain:
Your assumptions:

P: Class balance exists, if and only if there does not exist game situations in which one class is better suited than another.
Q: Pre-Essentials 4e had class balance.
R: The Slayer and Mage are not balanced.

My assumption:
R: Wizard v. Bow Ranger solo and minions is equivalent to Slayer v, Mage nova versus many encounters.

If my assumption is right, then Your assumptions are contradictory. Please provide evidence and make sure your work is logically sound, using actual logic and not Internet logic.

Thank you.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Power Strike is an ALWAYS HIT damage bonus.

It's really not. It's a damage bonus you add on after you hit. You don't say "I'm using Power Strike, so I auto-hit." Mechanically & mathematically, it's just about identical to Reliable. Which is pretty darn good, really, but there are reliable encounter powers. Reliable is comparable to half damage on a miss, or a strong effect line, too - so while the Slayer's encounters may be kinda butch compared to older 4e encounter powers, compared to other Essentials encounter powers - like the Mage's, that all do half damage or have an effect - it's not that special.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What keeps a Wizard balanced with a Bow Ranger? In 4e, with its amazing balance, these two ranged classes should be roughly balanced, right?

Sure, apart from the differences in thier /roles/. Ideally, you don't send a striker after minions, because you have a controller to sweep them away. It's a cooperative game, and that's part of the cooperation. Though, if you must send a striker after minions, a bow ranger, with a variety of multi-attack options, can whittle down minions faster than, say, a typical rogue.

You put the archer ranger in a series of long combats, he runs out of dailies and is reduced to at wills. You put the wizard in a long series of combats, he runs out of dailies and is reduced to at wills. You put the wizard in an alpha situation, and he can bust out a strong daily. You put the archer-ranger in an alpha situation and he can bust out a strong daily.

What keeps a Wizard balanced with a Bow Ranger?

The comparable resource management they share under the AEDU structure - and the efforts of the designers in balancing at-wills with at-wills, encounters with encounters and dailies with dailies. A much easier task than balancing at-wills against dailies.

In 4e, with its amazing balance, these two ranged classes should be roughly balanced, right? I mean you keep comparing Slayers and Wizards, so obviously, the comparison is valid based off of roles.

Above, I compared the Slayer to the Barbarian, both strikers, with similar concepts. I have compared the level of benefits recieved from Essenitals by the Fighter class as a whole, to those reaped by the Wizard class as a whole. And, I've compared the resource management of Martial E-classes to those of 4e classes. That necessarily includes the Slayer in one category and the Wizard in the other, but also includes the Knight, Rogue, Hunter & Scout with the former, and every non-psionic pre-Essentials 4e class in the latter. But, when it comes to detailed comparisons, I've tried to keep it within the same role and function, to minimize any objection or 'noise.'

So the balance between a bow ranger and a wizard is maintained between say, a well designed, hard to lock down solo, and a horde of minions and non minions of an equal xp value.

You can try to argue that the roles aren't perfectly balanced - and you'd be right, because a DM could tilt his campaign towards the strengths of one role and away from those of another. He'd have to work at it - and often, DM's /do/ need to do just that, when the party is missing a role - but it's certainly possible.

Thing is, that's at least as aplicable with Essentials classes. You can build a pretty butch archer-Slayer for instance (just max dex and grab bow feats and stances that work with RBAs). He'll put out a lot of damage vs lockdown-immune solos that frustrate the wizard (and won't care about the solo's effect-negating traits, because he has no save-ends powers to dish out), and be reduced to popping one minion of a horde at a time while a wizard sweeps them away en masse. A stark example of a role-related imbalance. Particularly stark because of the Slayer's focused, inflexible, low-option aproach to the striker role. The archer-ranger, compared to the wizard in the same situations, pops two or more minions every round in the latter, so isn't as imbalanced relative to the wizard as the archer-slayer. Similarly, in the former situation, he may well find he has a daily or two that /do/ inflict save ends conditions, that would be noticeably less effective against it, so he's also less imbalanced compared to the wizard in that case - in addition to being neatly balanced with the Wizard in terms of resource management.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

So, what you are saying is that class balance is only important when comparing the varying conditions that support your argument, but any varying conditions that do not support it are exempt from their effect on class balance? Because Slayers and Mages have different roles too. Seriously, have you considered that maybe, just maybe this is a simple irrational, emotional decision on your part because you really like the AEDU system for symmetry, or other non-logical reasons? I hate lots of things about 4e for completely emotional reasons, I just try to be honest about that and not demand that's others conform to non-existent logical argument to support my emotional feelings.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Okay assume wizards comes out with Double-strike stance, that allows a slacker to make two attacks with a balancing penalty. Something they could easily do. This minor, non-structural addition takes your argument about bow-rangers and destroys it. It's not structural.

It really seems your entire argument is that If you DM runs games that always allow for extended rests after every fight, the Slayer is underpowered. While this is true, that game is a degenerate example of a 4e game. It is run in a way that is counter to explicit design tenets of 4e.

 

[Aegeri]

So, what you are saying is that class balance is only important when comparing the varying conditions that support your argument, but any varying conditions that do not support it are exempt from their effect on class balance?

The difference is he is comparing apples with apples: Defenders that use AEDU to defenders using the non-AEDU structure. You're trying to make some argument that different roles excel in different ways so AEDU wasn't balanced - which is nonsensical. A wizard should be better against minions because - this is actually a stated design thing BTW - controllers are *meant* to kill minions. The ranger naturally does far better against a solo, because strikers are designed to kill single enemies quickly and extremely efficiently. You shouldn't confuse roles in the party and balance: 4 roles combine to produce an effective party. How a character is compared is with those within their own roles: not outside of them.

Comparing how the Slayer performs to say, a Ranger is a more valid and worth while comparison. Both are strikers and one has very different conditions they work under. Of course, I actually disagree that the Slayer is going to be competent against the Ranger - especially once the ranger builds his bunch of cheesy out of turn interrupt attacks. The Slayer has a decent minimum threshold per encounter for DPR, but the maximum damage is far lower than the Ranger - who when he goes banana's will really blow a ton of DPR. This is part of the problems with the non-AEDU Slayer/Knight/Thief in that without charge tricks, their DPR is competent all day long - but not remarkable enough compared to other strikers.

This has strengths and weaknesses. In Tony's case, I suspect he puts a lot of weight on the all day long competence of these classes. For me, I put a lot more weight on how they will perform when the going actually gets tough. I find in such encounters their lack of options and simply performing the basics - albeit extremely well - isn't going to be enough.

A great example of this is the first of the "essentials" DnD encounters seasons vs. the level 4 solo black dragon. To say that the essentials party got annihilated in a good amount of cases would be an understatement. The Knight was simply unable to do a thing about the dragon, the thief was good DPR but once again came up chronically short on actually being able to deal with the dragons powers. The Warpriest and Mage would be fine though - as they are still AEDU - and I can never remember what the last character was (Maybe a scout?). I'm not surprised that party got ruined though.

Running this same encounter with one of my own groups, the party of Fighter/Ranger/Warlord/Barbarian/Invoker were also really badly hammered - but won without the major risk of a TPK. The simple reason is that with more tactical options came workarounds - the fighter could stay at range and mark the dragon with a handaxe to avoid the automatic hit acid. Keeping the -2 penalty on, combined with an at-will from the invoker that also put a -2 penalty on made a huge difference. A successful Warlord Lead the Attack combined with the Barbarian/Rangers sinking in multiple attack dailies/encounters tore the dragon down while bloodied very quickly - again minimizing the amount of damage.

These differences don't look important - but again when the going gets tough being able to step up and perform at X level is important. The difference between the essentials martial strikers like the scout/thief/slayer and say, your normal strikers is they are very consistent but entirely unremarkable. When you need them to really step up and toss a big amount of damage around - what those big dailies and other encounter powers can accomplish - they can't do it. Their minimum performance and maximum performance is very close - by design.

An AEDU class has a big gulf between minimum and maximum performance - due to extra damage being in unreliable ways like dailies and encounters. But when they come off with their dailies and encounter powers, they accomplish far stronger effects and far more upper performance. When the going gets tough, that party can throw down a lot of dailies and really hammer home just how big their advantage is. Hence why when I tried that Black Dragon encounter that wiped so many tables in the essentials only encounters season, it wasn't so bad - if still very challenging - for my regular party.

At the same time that party above if they faced that dragon when they don't have dailies and you have a long adventuring day, they would get hammered. In the same scenario the advantage would entirely shift and the essentials classes plain excel - they are practically immune to whatever happens during the day. So here is more towards Tony's point about balance - because if you have a short day the AEDU classes will annihilate the essentials martial classes in power. On the other hand, the longer and more grindy the day - where resources become more stretched the E-martial classes don't change in performance.

So there is a balance issue here - if a very subtle one and how important it is in gameplay is extremely hard to assess. A fully rested and without expending any dailies AEDU party, that can freely dump it on the black dragon I used as an example will do very well (and in fact did). That same party that has had say, 50% of its total powers depleted over the day? That's a much more interesting proposition. On the other hand your Warpriest/Mage/Knight/Thief/Slayer party is a very different prospect facing that dragon at the end of a long adventuring day. At least 3/5 members of the party don't care how many encounters they've faced that day.

Speaking of, take the parties above and switch out the essentials warpriest with the Warlord (Marshal). Now I have to wonder: How much more effective is that Knight/Thief/Slayer/Mage party with the Warlord replacing the Warpriest? Something to think about there. Then of course there will be the difference in epic tier and believe me, when you can recycle dailies/encounter powers more easily the AEDU classes will gain power as they become less at the mercy of the adventuring day (especially compared with low levels). A key thing to remember in these debates is powers like power strike, backstab and similar while reliable - are immensely unremarkable and very hard to recycle by the normal epic tier means.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

The difference is he is comparing apples with apples: Defenders that use AEDU to defenders using the non-AEDU structure.

Nope. You are incorrect, he was comparing slayers, which are strikers, to either weaponmasters, who are defenders, or wizards and clerics, which are controllers and leaders, respectively. If he mentioned knights, or rogues, his point is severely weakened. Thus why he didn't mention them.

None of these things are a type of fruit. What does fruit have to do with class balance?

Also, you seem to indicate that under some circumstances, AEDU characters can be better, and in some AEU characters can be better. Isn't that balanced on the whole?

This hinges on the exact level of sameness between class power breakdowns being crucial to balance. You know, the thing that many people excoriated 4e over. Maybe just taking a wee step back from the edge on that one is a good idea.

 

[MrMyth]

That second question is hard for a skilled designer to answer. Heck, it's hard for an insomniac fan to even phrase at 5 in the morning. Because, it is that much more complicated and difficult a question - and, it probably has no right answer. In some campaigns, a daily might balance an at-will, while in others, the same daily will overshadow the same at will.

And, we're not just talking theory. D&D never achieved much semblance of class balance prior to 4e, because it kept having to try to answer questions akin to that second one.

It is certainly true that balancing different resource structures is much harder than balancing within a single type of class design. And so I can get your concern, here, about Essentials classes. The potential for a lack of balance is there.

But... I don't think it is there in actuality. I think they have managed to find that balance. I don't see any significant disparity, nor do I feel they are balanced in an older style by making them strong at low level, weak at high - while there are fluctuations, I feel they aimed for a balance across all levels, and largely achieved it.

And perfect balance wasn't achievable previously, either - Warlocks, when the PHB came out (especially Star Pact) were considered underpowered compared to other strikers, despite an identical resource structure. They've since largely addressed that - and I imagine they will do the same if similar issues arise between Essentials builds vs earlier designs. But I haven't, myself, seen any indications that this is the case.

And even if there are small imbalances, and it may not be 100% perfect... any disparities are on a vastly smaller scale than the differences between fighter vs wizard in earlier editions. The two situations may be comparable, but the certainly aren't equivalent.

 

[TwoSix]

Is it easier to compare balance between classes of the same resource structure? Absolutely, yes.

Is a change in resource structure going to cause 3e style breakdowns in class balance? Absolutely not.

Is (precise balance + same resource structure) more or less valuable than (rough balance + varied resource structure)? Judgment call.