Fighter

[Tony Vargas]

I do not like marking and I don't want fighters to be shoe horned into a role.

Fighters are being shoe-horned into a role: the role of "guy who fights exactly as hard in ever round of every day until he's dropped." More seriously, the no-daily-resource-management or 'consistent performer' role. Not that there are roles in 5e, anyway.

As for some use of CS to support the Defender speciality, I think it's a fine idea. It could be part of a Shield-based Fighting Style that merely synergizes well with Defender, or it could be an option available to Fighter-Defenders.

Even if the fighter were given a defender-useful CS option out the gate, nothing would force anyone to actually /use/ it, using CS dice for damage all the time would still be a perfectly viable option.

And, really, that's the 'worst' case.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Fighters are being shoe-horned into a role: the role of "guy who fights exactly as hard in ever round of every day until he's dropped." More seriously, the no-daily-resource-management or 'consistent performer' role. Not that there are roles in 5e, anyway.

As for some use of CS to support the Defender speciality, I think it's a fine idea. It could be part of a Shield-based Fighting Style that merely synergizes well with Defender, or it could be an option available to Fighter-Defenders.

Even if the fighter were given a defender-useful CS option out the gate, nothing would force anyone to actually /use/ it, using CS dice for damage all the time would still be a perfectly viable option.

And, really, that's the 'worst' case.

One of the problems of the expertise system ultimately is t hat it will allow "spamming" the same power over and over. If it turns out that dealing extra damage helps the party more than playing defender, than that's what will appen all the time, and vice versa. That's really one of the reasons encounter and daily powers in 4E were so great - spamming these powerful abilities was not possible. At-Wills where spammable but also designed (usually) in a manner that they had a situational aspect to them, so switching between your options usually often. Maybe this can be done for the Expertise abilities as well, but it will be harder, since there will be more of them availalble to a character and they are all at-will. Just one outlier and you have the standard spam choice...

 

[Yora]

The good thing aboutthe maneuvers is, that you can use them as opportunities arise.
You have to decide to use Glancing Blow only after you already made your attack and missed. Or you chose to use Parry or Protect after a particular nasty blow. Or you pull up an ally who is dangling over a chasm and throw in a Jab at the enemy that is trying to stop you.

Deadly strike is a bit too easy, though. After a hit, there is not much reason not to put all your dice into extra damage that you get reight now, instead of keeping the dice for the possibility that you want them later. But probably not.

It could be more interesting if you regain all your dice after you finished your turn instead of when you start it. That way you can use your dice to assist allies and when it comes to your turn, you can dump all unused dice into extra damage. But when you have to save points now for the possibility that you might use them later, the dice will probably be wasted if you don't take Deadly Strike at any time you don't plan on something else.

 

[tlantl]

One of the problems of the expertise system ultimately is t hat it will allow "spamming" the same power over and over. If it turns out that dealing extra damage helps the party more than playing defender, than that's what will appen all the time, and vice versa. That's really one of the reasons encounter and daily powers in 4E were so great - spamming these powerful abilities was not possible. At-Wills where spammable but also designed (usually) in a manner that they had a situational aspect to them, so switching between your options usually often. Maybe this can be done for the Expertise abilities as well, but it will be harder, since there will be more of them availalble to a character and they are all at-will. Just one outlier and you have the standard spam choice...

Who really cares what other people do in their games. Why does it matter if I want to use my CS dice to add damage every round, or to push, pull, or trip when ever I want to push, pull, or trip.

It's my character. I should be able to play the game the way I want play the game.

I really think that getting worked up enough to oppose a play style is a waste of energy. I certainly don't see one use of these dice to be so wonderfully overpowered that no one would ever use anything else. They give me the option of doing something other than stand and swing if I want to. But if I want to just swing my sword, ax, hammer, or even my shield every round for some extra damage then I'd like to be able to do just that, every single time I hit something.

 

[Stalker0]

Who really cares what other people do in their games. Why does it matter if I want to use my CS dice to add damage every round, or to push, pull, or trip when ever I want to push, pull, or trip.

I agree.

One issue in 3e was in order to be "good" at manuevers other than damage, you had to focus feats and magic items into them. So you became shoe-horned into those actions.

With the current CS system, I can do bonus damage every round if I want to. But....if there is a moment when knocking a guy prone would be better I can freely do so...there is no mechanical penalty except the loss of extra damage.

 

[Bow_Seat]

One of the problems of the expertise system ultimately is t hat it will allow "spamming" the same power over and over. If it turns out that dealing extra damage helps the party more than playing defender, than that's what will appen all the time, and vice versa. That's really one of the reasons encounter and daily powers in 4E were so great - spamming these powerful abilities was not possible. At-Wills where spammable but also designed (usually) in a manner that they had a situational aspect to them, so switching between your options usually often. Maybe this can be done for the Expertise abilities as well, but it will be harder, since there will be more of them availalble to a character and they are all at-will. Just one outlier and you have the standard spam choice...

I have two things to say about this:

1) this was what I liked the least about fourth edition, because as a martial class where everything that I am doing is a practiced physical action, why couldn't I just do the same thing over again? I really disliked that once I had used the most effective maneuver for the situation I couldn't use it again, even though it was clearly the best thing that I could do for the party at the time.

2) the point of having multiple CS dice means that you get full customization of your abilities per round. If you think about powers being balanced in fourth (just assume this is a blanket true statement) then you can see each one as giving up some Y[W] damage from a base power that was simply pure damage to apply some other bonus, X. The uniqueness of each power was determined by how much power that the ability gave up in order to get each of its specific bonuses. Instead of now knowing some number of maneuvers that are iterations of the same "give up some damage to do X" where X is any arbitrary bonus that makes the attack better, you now know every possible combination of damage and applied bonus to come up with the absolute best way to fight based upon what you need in that particular moment. Yes, if you could immediately read the situation and have perfect foresight then you could try to mathcraft the absolute best way to use your CS die, but that is not a practical assumption. What will happen is you will test out different combinations of CS application as you move with the flow of battle.

 

[kerleth]

Firstly, I love the Combat Superiority mechanic. Secondly, the few posts of yours I've read Bowseat seem very thought out and respectful, so I'm not picking on you or declaring an edition war (I have an extensive 3.X collection but have played 4E Old WOD and others). That said.....
The idea that ALL warrior abilities should be spammable is utterly ridiculous. As someone who has worked in a very physically demanding field for years and who did a little sparring in his spare time I can tell you with 100% certainty that real life "fighters" have "encounter powers". Maybe more of a 3/encounter you may do any of the following rather than the way of 4th edition, but they do exist. The real issue though is what people want to play. If it doesn't "feel" right to them, if they don't want to manage encounter or daily rescources, the option of something like a CS mechanic should be there. As far as your second point Bowseat, I agree with it completely and find it to be a great improvement to 4E implementation. I would still like to see something like 4E powers or 3E Tome of Battle as an option, maybe in a later book, though. The problem with spamming a power is not just in the character, but in the combat. If combat is always the same experience, of course the same powers will be spammed.

 

[Bow_Seat]

Firstly, I love the Combat Superiority mechanic. Secondly, the few posts of yours I've read Bowseat seem very thought out and respectful, so I'm not picking on you or declaring an edition war (I have an extensive 3.X collection but have played 4E Old WOD and others). That said.....
The idea that ALL warrior abilities should be spammable is utterly ridiculous. As someone who has worked in a very physically demanding field for years and who did a little sparring in his spare time I can tell you with 100% certainty that real life "fighters" have "encounter powers". Maybe more of a 3/encounter you may do any of the following rather than the way of 4th edition, but they do exist. The real issue though is what people want to play. If it doesn't "feel" right to them, if they don't want to manage encounter or daily rescources, the option of something like a CS mechanic should be there. As far as your second point Bowseat, I agree with it completely and find it to be a great improvement to 4E implementation. I would still like to see something like 4E powers or 3E Tome of Battle as an option, maybe in a later book, though. The problem with spamming a power is not just in the character, but in the combat. If combat is always the same experience, of course the same powers will be spammed.

Okay, well that's actually great to know. I don't know much about real life fighting. I am very involved in sports, but my sport is necessarily repetitive (rowing, hence the name bow seat). Coming from what I knew of physical exertion I have been under the impression that if you could do it once you could at least do it a few more times, exceptions apply of course (maxing in weight lifting comes to mind). Since I don't have any experience with combat sports, it's good for me to hear this kind of thing, because I never would have known that otherwise.

I think something that they could do that would meet somewhere in the middle would be to take some of the more powerful CS mechanics (I know they are planning some that take more than one die) and make only usable once per day, or once every X rounds. I'm not being very specific as to the implementation, but hopefully that describes the gist of what I'm getting at. What would you think of that system? From what you've described to me, it would seem like this is realistically sensible, and possibly also mechanically feasible as well.

Edit: to make this a little more clear, I was thinking that if some abilities have minimum CS die requirements greater than 1 then if a maneuver requires more than (some number) of die then it has 1/encounter usability and if it has (some larger number) of minimum die then it has 1/day usability. Would that work?

Also, thanks for being polite to me. I didn't think that you were edition warring or anything like that. I came to enworld about a week ago because I was very sick of the wizards.com forums, and have really liked it here so far. I've been stuck in London with nothing but a laptop, public wifi, and a statistics textbook (seriously), so I've had a lot of time to keep running over the playtest materials.

 

[Vikingkingq]

Regarding the spamming issue, I think this is where basic vs. advanced maneuvers come in.

The fans of the simple Fighters, who have to be accommodated through the class mechanic, should be able to just spam Deadly Strike.

However, the PA/PVP Podcast's reveal of Riposte and Whirlwind Attack as higher-level multi-dice maneuvers I think shows the way things are going to go. Whirlwind Attack is rather powerful, but you can't spam it easily due to situational factors, and it eats up a lot of dice.

I've discussed a whole bunch of ideas for making the Fighter class non-spammy here.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I have two things to say about this:

1) this was what I liked the least about fourth edition, because as a martial class where everything that I am doing is a practiced physical action, why couldn't I just do the same thing over again? I really disliked that once I had used the most effective maneuver for the situation I couldn't use it again, even though it was clearly the best thing that I could do for the party at the time.

There have been trillions of threads about this topic, so I don't want to rehash all those discussions before that. My answer is - I don't fracking care why I can use it only once. What I care about is:
1) Is the power cool?
2) Is it thematically fitting?
3) Is it balanced?

If I could repeat such a power every time, it's coolness would erode. It's balance may become questionable, if it is one of many choices and I use it every time, it's probably too good. If I use it often, then it probably stops making thematic sense - something like trips works in my opinion only if you don't do it every 6 seconds, but works if it it's just part of your repertoire to deal with enemies.

2) the point of having multiple CS dice means that you get full customization of your abilities per round. If you think about powers being balanced in fourth (just assume this is a blanket true statement) then you can see each one as giving up some Y[W] damage from a base power that was simply pure damage to apply some other bonus, X. The uniqueness of each power was determined by how much power that the ability gave up in order to get each of its specific bonuses. Instead of now knowing some number of maneuvers that are iterations of the same "give up some damage to do X" where X is any arbitrary bonus that makes the attack better, you now know every possible combination of damage and applied bonus to come up with the absolute best way to fight based upon what you need in that particular moment. Yes, if you could immediately read the situation and have perfect foresight then you could try to mathcraft the absolute best way to use your CS die, but that is not a practical assumption. What will happen is you will test out different combinations of CS application as you move with the flow of battle.

Well, just as an example, as much as I am 4E fanboi, not every at-will power was balanced well. Careful Attack vs Twin Strike was never a contest, and Careful Attack is probalby just one of many powers that didn't hold a candle to Twin Strike. But: This was partially compensated by their also being encounters and dailies. Maybe Twin Strike was too good for an At-Will - but PCs could have 3-4 encounter and 3-4 daily powers at their disposal, so that's 3-8 rounds in a combat they won't even use their at-will, in a system where combats are 8 to 12 rounds long at most.
By having a "higher" but more expensive level of powers than the spammable at-wills, the imbalances between at-wills had much less impact.

The Expertise Dice system is certainly not a terribl idea. I really like it, actually. But there are drawbacks to it.

If it was my choice, I'd probably work the Expertise Dice somewhat differenltly. Don't have them refresh fully every round perhaps. Maybe they refresh fully if you don'tnuse them at all in one round, and only refresh partially in rounds you use them. This would require some managing of the pool. Could be an interesting module variant of Expertise.