Fighter design goals . L&L April 30th

[dkyle]

Depending upon the character creation rules you might have a scenario where instead of making a ranger the optimal choice becomes customizing your fighter to make him more ranger like same thing with your paladin or rogue. If the fighter is superior to the other melee classes how do you protect those classes without making the fighter the guy who can only do athlectics endurance intimidate etc?

Yes, that's a good reason not to simply make the Fighter the best at fighting. There will be an intense pressure to just play a Fighter, and get as much non-combat stuff out of Backgrounds as possible, to get both the best fighting, and "good enough" non-combat. Since when dealing with DM fiat, all a player really needs is something to point to when convincing the DM to let them do something.

My ideal would be to balance all classes on both combat capabilities, and non-combat capabilities, and only have serious tradeoffs within those two spheres. But that doesn't seem like what they are going for.

However, if they do have some awesome non-combat mechanics in store for us, than I'd be more OK with having the tradeoffs between combat and non-combat they seem to be going for.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Some things I didn't see addressed.

The Three Pillars approach - Combat, exploration, roleplay.
They have said that some characters will be better at one of those than the other, but all will have core competence in each.

So the Fighter is the best at fighting - Combat is where he shine. In the exploration side he is effective, but the Rogue or Ranger can outshine him. Maybe in the roleplay side (perhaps social stuff) the bard shines, while the fighter is competent, but not the best (assuming mechanical input into roleplaying which may be a big assumption).

So yeah the fighter is the best at fighting, doesn't mean he dominates the game, just shines the most in combat.

I also remember the whole "I wish I was a fighter" "I wish I was a wizard" thing from one of the older articles - and I could see this (completely made up).

Round 1 - fighter wads into the big group of enemies and takes down 2. Wizard dailies and damages on.
Round 2 - Fighter does something special and drops 3 more. Wizard finished off his first one.
Round 3 - fighter takes down 2, wizard rolls well and takes 1 down.
Round 4 - fighter takes down 3 again, and wizard seeing that there are still a whole bunch of them throws a fireball and drops the last 5.

4 round combat - fighter takes out 10, wizard 8. Fighter got some special stuff (taking out 3 in two other rounds) and wizard got his fireball.

Again, I'm just pulling this out of thin air, but that could be a way for the wizard to do well in combat, but the fighter outshines him.

 

[Iosue]

Can you move and make all the attacks in one round, or do you have to remain stationary?

Movement in BECMI is a separate part of the combat sequence from Melee, so you can move and still use all your attacks. OR, you can use the extra attack for extra movement or actions. The BECMI fighter is a dynamic dynamo of dynamite action.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Movement in BECMI is a separate part of the combat sequence from Melee, so you can move and still use all your attacks. OR, you can use the extra attack for extra movement or actions. The BECMI fighter is a dynamic dynamo of dynamite action.

Right on, thanks, and rounds are 10 seconds, right, so you could move up to 40 feet and get all your attacks?

 

[Njall]

I don't think it gets much clearer than what Mike himself said. EVERY SPELL and keeps fighting. Wizard is out of spells = easy fighter kill.

Even assuming that he literally means every spell and that it's not just hyperbole (which it probably is) then stop throwing offensive spells at the fighter? Summon some monsters, cast invisibility, teleport away, drop a boulder on him with telekinesis and so forth. He doesn't say that he can dispel each and every spell the wizard casts, does he?
Also, keep in mind that D&D is not a PvP game. Even if Fighters were immune to spells ( something that's not a given at all ), how effective your wizard is in a game depends on how he performs against monsters and NPCs, not against his fellow adventurers.

 

[dkyle]

I don't think it gets much clearer than what Mike himself said. EVERY SPELL and keeps fighting. Wizard is out of spells = easy fighter kill.

He might mean "this is how it could reasonably play out", or perhaps "expected to play out", not "this is how it will always play out".

But, really, if we are getting a system where there are major tradeoffs between combat, exploration, and interaction, then shouldn't the Fighter, if he's as primarily dedicated to combat as he's traditionally been, be expected to beat the Wizard, who has traditionally had much greater non-combat capabilities than the Fighter? If the Wizard is competitive on combat, but much better on other things, that's not balance.

On the other hand, if your point is that giving one class such a big leg up in combat, regardless of the other "pillars", is a bad idea, then I would agree with you.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yes we can assume that.

It specifically says a high level fighter can shrug off ALL of the spells a high level wizard can toss at him and keep fighting. ALL.

This means either A) Fighters are immune to magic. or B) Save or Die doesn't exist

And FYI, I play clerics about 80% of the time, prop that strawman up!

The actual quote is...

"Even if a wizard unleashes every spell at his or her disposal at a fighter, the fighter absorbs the punishment, throws off the effects, and keeps on fighting."

So, no... saying that the fighter is IMMUNE to ALL MAGIC is an assumption that is in no way accurate. It says he will absorb the punishment. He takes the punishment from the magic. He doesn't ignore it. He takes it.

He then throws off the magic effects. Does that therefore mean NO magic effect affects him EVER? Not at all. "Throwing them off" might require a round, maybe two rounds. Who knows? "Throws off" is not a synonym for "Ignores", unless you assume further than you probably should.

And he keeps on fighting. But do we know HOW WELL he keeps on fighting? Nope. No indication AT ALL what "keeps on fighting" actually means. For all we know... Cleric throws that "Hold Person" spell at the fighter and the fighter gets Held for two rounds. He then soaks up the damage the cleric deals to him while he's paralyzed. He then throws off the effect of the Hold, and maybe he's Slowed for a round or two after that, or perhaps he has some penalties to combat? Again, we don't know.

But that is a perfectly fine interpretation of what Mearls' said, without going so far afield as to actually believe the Hold Person or Wish spells have been stripped from the game as you assumed.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The Wizard has a direct method too: fireball and cone of cold. However, this is arguably the worst way for the Wizard to defeat the orc army. What if he rolls poorly on his initiative.

Fly and Protection from Arrows. At that point ordinary 3.X orcs only hurt him on a crit. He does this before rolling initiative. At this point he can plink away with a crossbow if he wants.

The fighter has a chance to survive the initial orc onslaught but the wizard doesn't have the toughness or skill of arms to last.

Unless he's remotely prepared. Or isn't fighting them head on.

 

[Bluenose]

I don't think it gets much clearer than what Mike himself said. EVERY SPELL and keeps fighting. Wizard is out of spells = easy fighter kill.

How does that argument go? Something about D&D is a team game; you shouldn't just rely on what's written on your character sheet, you should be creative; it's all right for some classes to be irrelevant at some points in play; D&D isn't just about combat; balance between classes just makes them all the same.

 

[Janaxstrus]

The actual quote is...

"Even if a wizard unleashes every spell at his or her disposal at a fighter, the fighter absorbs the punishment, throws off the effects, and keeps on fighting."

So, no... saying that the fighter is IMMUNE to ALL MAGIC is an assumption that is in no way accurate. It says he will absorb the punishment. He takes the punishment from the magic. He doesn't ignore it. He takes it.

He then throws off the magic effects. Does that therefore mean NO magic effect affects him EVER? Not at all. "Throwing them off" might require a round, maybe two rounds. Who knows? "Throws off" is not a synonym for "Ignores", unless you assume further than you probably should.

And he keeps on fighting. But do we know HOW WELL he keeps on fighting? Nope. No indication AT ALL what "keeps on fighting" actually means. For all we know... Cleric throws that "Hold Person" spell at the fighter and the fighter gets Held for two rounds. He then soaks up the damage the cleric deals to him while he's paralyzed. He then throws off the effect of the Hold, and maybe he's Slowed for a round or two after that, or perhaps he has some penalties to combat? Again, we don't know.

But that is a perfectly fine interpretation of what Mearls' said, without going so far afield as to actually believe the Hold Person or Wish spells have been stripped from the game as you assumed.

And save or die? I notice you left that out. His comment does not allow for save or die does it?

Wizards are also apparently unable to do 300-400 total pts of damage with every single of their spells, as a fighter can stand there and absorb all of their most damaging spells and keep fighting.