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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6193045" data-attributes="member: 42582">According to the actual class writeups, the ranger should be the best at this. And the druid perhaps second best, along with the rogue (the rogue has more stealth, but the druid more swamp capability).  For me it's a genre worry if the wizard is best, or if the druid is better than the ranger. After all, it was Aragorn, not any of the Elven lords (some of whom in D&D terms might be thought of as druids), who tracked down and captured Gollum.Maybe it is - we need to know more about what is going on at the table, in the framing, in the adjudication etc.But stepping back a bit - everything else being equal, the person who builds a (non-archer) fighter wants to play a heroic melee-fighting type. (Various editions of the game have nominated such legendary figures as Hercules and Arthurian knights as fighter exemplars.) In the "indie" style, then, the GM's job is to make possibility a combination of gratification and challenge. The balance between gratification and challenge will depend on both table expectations and system expectations (4e leans towards gratification; Burning Wheel leans towards challenge). For the challenge to arise, the player of the fighter therefore needs resources to turn his/her PC into a melee-fighting hero, while the GM has the resources to oppose to these attempts. In 4e, the player's resources include the Athletics skill, magic items, Come and Get It (to pull enemies in) plus terrain that the GM is expected to build into the encounter. The GM's resources include terrain (especially pits, chasms etc) and then archers and controllers on the other side of such terrain, which make the fighter's life hard by inflicting damage and debuff outside melee range.4e's rules and guidelines make it pretty easy to build this sort of challenge for the fighter player (I can't comment on 3E in this respect). It mostly requires GM force at the point of framing, and then just following the logic of the resources presented when it comes to the moment of adjudication.What about for the wizard player? The contention of those who think 3E wizards are more versatile, and more capable, is that there is no simple way of framing a situation in which the GM provides him-/herself with certain resources (monsters, terrain etc) and the player brings to bear his/her resources (ie PC capabiliites) and then by simply adjudicating in accordance with the logic of those resources the GM can provide the wizard player with an engaging challenge in which the wizard's arcane prowess has the chance to shine through. I think that the sorts of capabilities that they would point to include: Protection from Arrows for negating many ranged attacks; Stoneskin for negating many melee attacks; Dimension Door and Teleport for negating the GM's terrain based resources and in many cases for in fact reframing the scene altogether; Charm, Dominate, Magic Jar etc for sidestepping challenges posed by hostile NPCs/creatures; etc.When  [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] talks about the use of GM Force to balance the wizard I think what is being pointed to is not the force of scene framing, nor of adjudication via following the logic of the GM's resources within the framed scene, but GM force to radically change the suite of resources enjoyed by the wizard (or other spellcaster player): eg depriving wizards of their spellbooks, depriving clerics of their symbols or divine patronage, etc. The analgoue for a fighter would be suggesting that they be balanced by having thieves break in and steal all their armour and weapons. But while some people think this might be a fun scenario from time-to-time, I've never seen it suggested as a balancing requirement for fighters.Personally I don't think it's part of, nor an essential part of, 4e, but I can't comment on 3E, which is what this thread is primarily about.I'm not sure what your actual play is like, or what different styles you play in, or have played in. But my own experience - and I don't think it's unique, but I also don't know how widely it generalises - is that once you switch to "players hook the GM" it makes no sense to talk of storytelling because there is no individual person telling the story. There are, rather, game participants with suites of resources engaging one another via the action resolution mechanics, with the GM having put certain things at stake (via framing the scene) but the players essentially taking the lead in resolution (because their PCs are the protagonists, wheres the GM's characters are the antagonists). How it unfolds isn't known, or knowable, in advance.I don't think I said that mechanics determine playstyle. I did say that some mechanics get in the way of some playstyles, and others facilitate it. For instance, on the assumption that carrying capacity is not, in general, a very dramatically gripping topic, my view is that any mechanical system that looks to encumbrance as a significant factor in action resolution (and you have pointed to this in multiple posts on this thread) is a mechanical system that is impeding rather than facilitating "indie" play because it is a mechanical system that draws the table's attention away from dramatic stakes and onto prosaic matters like carrying capacity.Converseley,  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has given a good example in a post just a little bit upthread of how some mechanics can facilitate one form of play over another, for instance by allowing stakes to be set and then establishing an uncontentious resolution system for working out what happens, in which the way in which players and GM can deploy their respective resources and the impact of those resources on resolution is pretty clear.The description isn't meant to be exclusive. The more technical terms is "narrativist", but as I said earlier on ENworld this word is not generally used in the way that it is used at The Forge.But there are plenty of ENworld posters who are familiar with the approach, and play (or have played) D&D in more-or-less this way. For instance, on this thread posters like Campbell, Manbearcat,  [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] and others haven't had much trouble self-identifying. Conversely, if you read through the current alignment thread in which you are participating with these playstyle distinctions in mind, I think that you'll find that nearly all the posts there are assuming a "storyteller" approach to play, emphasising the priority of GM-contributed over player-contributed story and thematic elements. Whereas in wargame style alignment plays quite a different role (for instance, being Chaotic is meant to make moment-by-moment decisions easier, but makes it harder to gain the long-term benefits of reliance and reliability); and in narrativist style alignment is mostly unnecessary, or perhaps a player-chosen personaltiy descriptor shorthand (which, interestingly, is also its main role in 4e).</blockquote>

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