Fighters -must- wear heavy armor

[Mercule]

The implication of that was that if you want to do cool things with a weapon, as opposed to just hitting things with it, you want to be a fighter. But doing interesting things with your weapon as opposed to just hitting things is what I would want a swashbuckler to do. So there is a potential concern there.

Keeping in mind that we all have only limited information to base any assumption on:

I think it depends what kind of "interesting things" you want to do with your weapon. If you want to grin while you shrug off an attack, while running your opponent through with your greatsword, that would seem to be the kind of interesting that a fighter is designed for. If you want to deftly slide inside your foe's reach, carve your initials on his spleen, then slide out again without being touched, that's the rogue's brand of interesting. Finally, sending and arrow through seven orcs' faces without stepping out of cover is ranger-interesting.

Anyway, that's how I understand the division of duties in 4e. We'll see in June, and I'm not going to get too worried until then.

 

[Lord Zack]

Where's the funny? What if someone liked Rangers with spells? Now he has to houserule that.
The new Ranger isn't any more flexible than the old...

And why is bad to play a Rogue or Ranger if you want to play a lightly armored character? The Rogue & Ranger class obviously excel at fighting lightly armored - why need a third class that can do that, too
Or do you just think that any one that is fighting with a melee weapon should be a Fighter, regardless of the rest of his equipment?

Actually, no he doesn't due to Training Feats.

And if I at least talk about a lightly armored fighter, I mean someone of the Defender role. Therefore a Fighter or Rogue won't be able to do what I want, except maybe through multiclassing of some kind.

 

[Voss]

QFT. If you don't want to be the guy in the heavy armor, up front, holding the line - don't play a Figther. That's what they do. That's what they're best at.

We know that the Rogue is now a dex-based Martial-powered class that can hold it's own in combat (one playtest report explained that the Rogue even stepped into the Defender role long enough to win the fight when the Fighter went down for the count). I'm thinking that if you want to play the swashbuckler or ninja guy, play a Rogue. Likewise, if you want to do the ol' Legolas skit, play a Ranger.

And if you want to play a fighting guy without the other baggage of a rogue or ranger and still don't want heavy armor? Say you want to be strength focused rather than dex focused, for example. Or follow a cultural trope that doesn't involving buckling swashes or running around the woods with animals, yet not wearing full plate? (Vikings, Celtic warriors [naked man with a two handed sword- dacian falx, late roman republic period] and Spartans seem appropriate here). The 4e response seems to be 'go do something biologically impossible to yourself'.

 

[Cadfan]

The lightly armored fighter who uses a weapon in one hand and nothing in the other, while functioning as a defender, is a strong, popular archetype. If its not possible out of the box, popular opinion will demand it.

That's just how it is, like it or not.

Look at 3e. Try to count up the PRCs and feats that were created to try to patch the fact that this archetype just wasn't workable using fighter or rogue. You've got the Duelist, a number of weird PRCs in splat books, feats like Einhander, about a million different feats designed to create a "parry" option... Eventually an entire base class was created, and THAT needed patched, because it wasn't strong enough. The demand was there, and WOTC tried at length to satisfy it. They'll end up doing the same thing again, most likely.

Hopefully they'll skip to the end and just create the character class right away. A character who uses a weapon in one hand, with the other hand empty, and who uses light armor instead of the heaviest available, has forgone a great deal of power right at the start. He COULD be using a two handed weapon and plate, but he's not. That means he needs something to compensate, and THAT means he needs his own class.

 

[Remathilis]

Except for barbarians and rangers (which were fighter sub-classes in 1E), many of the 2E kits, fighter/wizards, fighter/thieves, and 3E fighters with Spring Attack. I think earlier editions gave a penalty to longbow use in heavy armor, not sure there.

Barbarians could wear any armor and use shields. (UA 13). If they wore armor that was "bulkt or fairly bulky" they lost their special AC bonus (+2 per dex point over 14, UA 18). This essentially meant that while a barbarian with a high dex in light armor did better than a fighter with a high dex in light armor, both wearing the same bulky armor had identical ACs. Ergo, unless you had a high dex or a reason to wear lighter armor, you were not "penalized" for wearing heavier armor.

By the same token, rangers in 1e had NO penalty for wearing full plate or fighting with a shield. 2e rangers lost access to their twf ability in armor heavier than st. leather, but 1e rangers did not.

1e fighter/mages and BECMI elves suffered no penalties to casting spells in armor, ergo they could wear full plate (but not shields) and still cast spells. 2e fighter/mages did suffer the penalty to spellcasting in armor (as a single-classed mage) and thus had to rely on their magic to protect them (as a single-classed mage does).

1e fighter/thieves could also wear any armor, but (as per the thief class) if they wore armor heavier than leather, they lost access to their thief skills. UA and 2e fighter/thieves instead penalized thieves to their percentiles based on armor worn.

 

[Voss]

Actually, 1e fighter/mages couldn't cast in armour. mage/anythings couldn't cast in armor.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Spartans seem appropriate here

It was my understanding that the Spartans wore heavy armor. I could be wrong.

The lightly armored fighter who uses a weapon in one hand and nothing in the other, while functioning as a defender, is a strong, popular archetype. If its not possible out of the box, popular opinion will demand it.

The Duelist was there "out of the box" in the core rules. Works pretty well, too.

Wearing light armor and not using a shield sounds like a poor defensive approach against medieval weaponry. It makes sense if you're on a boat, or trying to avoid drawing attention, or in an environment where you have to Climb, Balance, Tumble, Jump, or Swim. But I think it's best that it remain strong in those circumstances, and not be an all-around equal choice to, you know, actually preparing yourself for combat.

 

[Storminator]

In 3E, you could have easily invented a feat "light armor training" that gives +1 or +2 AC in light armor. What 3E did instead was to offer advantages for the lightly armored fighter such as Spring Attack, faster movement, and Tumble (yes, even as a cross-class skill). You could build a fighter who, while not as able to withstand direct attacks, was very good at reducing the number of attacks he would take. Which, IMO, is how a lightly-armored fighter should work.

I think that's how a lightly armored character should work. As I understand it, the point of a fighter is to draw attacks that are directed towards other characters. In short, he goes out of his way to not avoid attacks.

And that is why it assumes he has heavy armor/high AC.

PS

 

[Voss]

It was my understanding that the Spartans wore heavy armor. I could be wrong.

Possibly. I just tossed them in at the end because I knew a significant number of people were enthralled by the Movie of Garbage. There are pretty good odds that someone wants to play out a scene from 300, which involved, uh, scanty armour.

 

[pawsplay]

It was my understanding that the Spartans wore heavy armor. I could be wrong.

The armor worn by Spartans and Athenians of the time is described in 3.5 as a bronze breastplate.