Fighter "Stunts": How will they work?

[Rechan]

How about "Because it's balanced".

No matter what excuse is used, there'll be a group of people not happy with it. As for me, I really don't care how it's explained, metagamey or not.

 

[Incenjucar]

Maybe... maybe fighters get repetitive motion injuries...

Seriously though, I'm comfortable with this mechanic. It would be pretty boring seeing someone do flip kicks ten times in a row.

 

[ashockney]

Champions

I'm familiar with, and always enjoyed, the Champions game system which allowed the melee fighters a wide variety of choices each round. You could punch, do a haymaker (big windup hit for a bunch of extra damage, sacrifice defense), throw, grapple, abort your offensive action to dodge, etc. You also could use some of your skill (combat skills) to either offense, defense, or damage. Then when you continued to gain more skills, you could take a "fighting style" which would allow you even more options, including martial throws, defensive strikes, offensive strikes, and special attacks such as killing strikes, nerve pinches, and strangle-holds. These were good examples of choices, which in combination with per encounter and per day abilities, would make for an interesting strategy in a combat.

 

[IceFractal]

Oh I'm fine with the actual mechanic, just not the explanation of it. It'd be like saying "the reason Wizards can only cast Fireball a certain number of times is because that's how many balls of bat guano they have, and you can't carry any extra or have someone else carry it ... for some reason".

 

[ptolemy18]

I generally have always played spellcasting characters, but from all the 4e hype, I expect fighters and other martial characters to be beefed up with lots of new, bizarre and powerful abilities in 4e.

However, I will say this: I don't think "resource management", i.e. "I can do x number of stunts per encounter," should NECESSARILY be a component of fighters. Why? Because in my experience of D&D, there is almost always a player (or two) who wants to play a 1e~3e fighter simply because they are the simplest class and have the least stuff to keep track of. On the other hand, there are some people (like me) who love book-keeping dozens of spells (or stunts) and re-memorizing new ones every day. Due to the tastes and experience levels of different gamers, I firmly believe there should be Simple Classes and More Complicated Classes... it's not a design error, it can be a conscious choice.

So while I'm totally cool with the power level of the classes being evened out, I would suggest that the "amount of bookkeeping per class" NOT be evened out. Different people simply prefer different types of characters, and some people like more rules nitty-gritty than other people, whereas some people don't even like having to choose Feats. So I firmly think there should be an easy-to-bookkeep martial class (and perhaps an easy-to-bookkeep arcane class, and a hard-to-bookkeep martial class, and a hard-to-bookkeep arcane class, etc.). Whether this "simple, easy to play" fighting class is the Fighter or the Barbarian or the Warlord, I don't know, but there should be one.

 

[Mad Mac]

Just a quick note on Fighter's abilites in Races and Classes...

Fighters "At Will" abilities are simple attacks they can use whenever. Defensive Strike is mentioned, giving the Fighter an AC bonus against the enemy he just hit.

Fighters "Per Encounter" abilities are special weapon tricks, suprise attacks, or advanced tatics than can only be used once per fight. They mention that if an enemy has already seen "Dance of Steel" he's not going to fall for it again in the same fight. Pretty metagamey, but I like how they're classifying the powers.

Fighters "Per Day" abilties represent a single act of incredible strength, endurance, and heroism. They can only be used once per day because of the great effort involved. "Great Surge" is the mentioned power, combining a devastating melee attack while calling on all the fighters inner reserves to heal himself.

 

[Ahglock]

Maybe... maybe fighters get repetitive motion injuries...

Seriously though, I'm comfortable with this mechanic. It would be pretty boring seeing someone do flip kicks ten times in a row.

I'd rather see 10 flip kicks in a row than have a really bad reason why he can't do 10 flip kicks in a row.

What would be nice is if the abilities scaled with level and were balanced so whether you chose to use different moves or the same one again it stayed balanced. That way you don't need a lame reason for why the same move can't be used twice.

 

[Ahglock]

Edit: One thing that has me apprehensive is the pure number of stunts(and abilities for other classes). Can they really cram enough in the PHB to make members of the same classes different? 20-30 stunts would be a lot for a fighter to choose. How much overlap are we going to be seeing?

I don't know but 20-30 stunts actually seems like a small number of maneuvers to me for a level 20-30 character. Not all maneuvers need to be class specific but I'd want to see a lot more maneuvers per class than I saw talents per class in the SAGA system. 25-30ish I'd guess, and by level 20 you could have 10 talents, though since talents weren't per encounter abilities its not a great example.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I'd rather see 10 flip kicks in a row than have a really bad reason why he can't do 10 flip kicks in a row.

What would be nice is if the abilities scaled with level and were balanced so whether you chose to use different moves or the same one again it stayed balanced. That way you don't need a lame reason for why the same move can't be used twice.

From everything I've read on the subject, it sounds like this came about like this:
"It's boring to do the same thing every round. It gets tedious. Everyone just stands in one spot and does a full attack. How can we make it so that people don't do that?

I know, we give them cool powers that are standard actions so they want to move around more often and they'll want to use all their cool powers. We'll make them spend an action to renew all their powers to encourage them to use different powers each round instead of the same one over and over again.

We've heard back from people. Some are complaining that all their players are doing are using their best power then renewing them and then using the best power again. We didn't think there was a "best" power, however, people always just use the one that does the most damage.

Ok, I guess next time we won't let them renew their powers, so they HAVE to do something cool and new each round of combat. Let's test it and see how it works.

Wow, this works perfectly and everyone agrees that they have more fun playing the game like this. We only have one problem, there's no good role playing reason why a fighter shouldn't be able to use the same power over and over again and some of our players were complaining that it didn't make any sense, although they love the game. They don't want fighters to have some mystical power source that can't be replenished without rest, they say that's stupid and fighters don't feel like fighters if that's the way it works. Let's just tell them that enemies won't fall for the same trick twice. It sounds pretty lame too, but we need SOME explanation and the game is more fun when people can only use the powers once per combat. And people are more willing to accept that excuse than any other we've come up with."