Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6069099" data-attributes="member: 87792">I'm going to jump right in and say that from what I can see now you are repeating in good faith a range of fallacious edition warrior claims.  They are so commonly repeated in bad faith that it's often hard to see that they can be repeated in good faith.First things first, forget Come and Get It.  It is one single seventh level encounter power and I can think of only one other fighter power like it - Warrior's Urging which is a twenty second level encounter power that might as well be named Improved Come and Get It.  There are ten other optionsfor level seven encounter powers that you can take instead of Come and Get It.  That said, I'd estimate that half of all 4e fighters choose CAGI because it is so cool - it's a classic cinematic move.Look at the fighter's poower list as a whole.  Every single combat power on that list is a weapon attack power.    Every single one of them is a melee (or close - Whirlwind Attack style) power.    I don't believe there's one single fighter attack power with an elemental keyword - the fighter doesn't produce fire, lightning or any of that nonsense.  They are simply the masters of using weapons in melee combat.  The barbarian hits harder.  The ranger's faster.  The rogue's more accurate.  But the fighter is the master of melee combat.  You can not afford to even take your eyes off a fighter who has targetted you or he will have a free opening that a member of another class simply couldn't exploit.  The fighter's a master of certainly cinematic and possibly outlandish swordplay (or axeplay or maceplay or [weapon of choice play]).  But swordplay all the same.  And all the fighter's combat powers are about making the business end of that weapon meet the enemy.So why does a fighter need powers?  Simple.  Character Customisation.  At Will powers are what you do most of the time almost without thinking.  Encounter powers are signature moves.  Daily powers are full spotlight stuff.  To illustrate, let's simply take two sword and board fighters.  Both have identical stats (Str 18, Wis, Con, and Dex 14 each, Int and Cha 10).  Same class, same stats, same equipment.  Cookie cutter stuff?  Not really.  Their At Wills say how they move.  Our first fighter has Tide of Iron and Cleave.  Tide of Iron adds a push and follow up to his at will attack and requires a shield.  So he uses his shield to bully the enemy and drive them backwards.  Cleave does a little damage against an enemy adjacent to you when you hit (generally used to lay out a minion).  So our first fighter is forceful, using shield as a weapon to bully with, and driving the enemy backwards.  Our second fighter uses the other two at will powers in the PHB.  Reaping Strike and Sure Strike.  Sure Strike gets +2 to hit, but does less damage than a basic attack.  Reaping strike cuts through and does a little damage even on a miss.  So our second fighter is precise, accurate, and always gets his target whether by finessse, or simply bullying through their defence.  Our two fighters are already very different because they physically move differently on the battlefield and their approach to sticking their longsword into their enemy is demonstrably different.  (The four encounter powers in the PHB are all different and as signature moves further flesh out your character; Lunging Strike is a lunge that adds to your reach,  Passing Attack lets you dart between two foes - if you hit the first you can move and attack a second. Spinning sweep knocks someone down, and Steel Serpent Strike pins them in place).Does that explain a bit more about 4e powers, how the fighter powers are not magic (the wizard powers are very visibly magic), and why you would want them?  After 4e I find anything you can do with 3.X/Pathfinder fighters to be very limited and bland.  And there to be more diversity in the 4e fighter class than between any non-casters outside the Book of 9 Swords in 3.X.  The entire Whirlwind Attack feat chain, for instance, has about the effect of the Sweeping Blow level 3 encounter power.  Then you've made the two textbook mistakes about roles and balance.  Balance means something simple.  There is no such thing as "Picking a bad class."  (Outside the sub-par classes in Heroes of Shadow, anyway - seriously, there are three notably weak 4e classes (still tier 4 by 3.X standards) and all three are in that book).   With the nerfing of magic, and the greater focus on skills this produces, everyone can do some things well outside combat (and if you want a fighter who's a ritual caster and so casts spells out of combat and picks up a sword when the rubber meets the road you can).  It's not that everyone's the same.  It's that everyone should be able to contribute most of the time.Roles are just a very broad overview of what you contribute in combat.  To illustrate I'm going to take up your "How would a single brute monster fare against different classes in a given role."  I'm taking a brute as a default monster.  The role I'm choosing is striker (i.e. high damage) - you may see some old favourites going past and therefore see how different the roles are.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ranger.  The PHB ranger is really two separate combat classes unless you try to build a mishmash.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Archery Ranger.  It's an archer vs an ogre.  How do you think this is going to go?  In all honesty how it goes depends whether the archer has room to keep stepping back and filling the ogre with arrows (or using special shots to slow our ogre) or whether the ogre can pin them against a wall and get opportunity attacks when the archer shoots.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Two Weapon Ranger.  This will be short and bloody.  Two weapon rangers do the most damage in the game - but they wear light armour, no shield, and don't have a great dexterity.  Their armour class is horrible - especially for a front line combatant.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Rogue.  There's a big question here.  Can the rogue get sneak attack?  If the rogue has taken a range of powers that do things like daze their target they will be lethal.  If they've taken powers to allow themselves to hide more easily and there's nowhere to hide, or high damage powers and rely on flanking for combat advantage, the rogue is strawberry jam.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Warlock.  The warlock is often considered weak - but here the warlock will have a ball - they specialise in neutralising single targets.  Each of the three different types of Warlock in the PHB has a different at will attack power - and with any of them our ogre is in trouble.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fey Pact: Eyebite.  When the feypact warlock hits with eyebite they are invisible to the target until the start of their next turn.  Normally this is weak as everyone else can still see them.  But with only one ogre it's barely ever going to see the warlock.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Infernal Pact: Hellish Rebuke.  When the Infernal warlock hits with Hellish Rebuke, if they take damage before the end of the next turn the ogre takes the hellish rebuke damage again.  The Ogre is going down - it can't hit the hell'lock without hurting itself.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Star Pact: Dire Radiance.  If a target under Dire Radiance tries to approach the Starlock it takes Dire Radiance damage again.  Normally this isn't that great - but our starlock is going to keep retreating and kiting the ogre.  If the ogre comes forward it burns even faster.  If not it doesn't attack.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Avenger.  The avenger is probably even better off than the Warlock here; Avengers are master duellists who roll 2d20 when attacking isolated targets.  And their powers either help them isolate targets (they get divine magic to help) or help them kill isolated targets with the biggest two handed weapons they can carry.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Barbarian.  Is a Barbarian.  Almost a mirror match with the Ogre.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Sorceror.  The sorceror is in deep trouble.  Probably the squishiest class in the game, the sorceror specialises in area of effect elemental blast spells rather than doing damage to one target.  The ogre walks through the flames and turns the sorceror into strawberry jam.  (Of course if it was a handful of orcs rather than an ogre, the sorceror would incinerate them all at once).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Monk.  Theoreticaly interesting match-up.  It doesn't play to the monk's strength (wire-fu mobility, and the ability to punch out everyone around them in a turn) but monks do a fair amount of damage and are very hard to hit (as they need to be given that they regularly run up walls or wire-fu past the front line to beat up archers and casters, leaving themselves isolatied).  I think the monk wins in a fight that's boring because it fits none of the monk's ways of showing off.</li> </ul>All these classes are strikers.  All contribute in combat in the way strikers do - damage in the right places and killing the enemy fast.  Which do you think play remotely the same way?  Which do you think you could confuse for each other?The way they do it is significantly different.  A fighter is the best at keeping the enemy unable to look anywhere but at them.  A warden is the best at staying on their feet no matter what you throw at them.  A swordmage picks a foe, hexes it, and kites it - either they follow the swordmage (a challenge) or they suffer the effect of the hex (unpleasant).  Paladins are self-sacrificing people who keep everyone else on their feet.  Is it better to be an incredibly sticky defender or one who can stay up even when chewed on by a dragon by channelling the spirits of the earth through themselves but who people can walk away from more easily?No.  The fighter felt like the barbarian and the wizard like the sorceror.  A 4e fighter is no more like a wizard than a 3e wizard is like a cleric.  (In fact I'd say quite a lot less).You can drop a mid-level fighter from orbit and it'll walk away.And people do object when the power is reduced.  Ars Magica is a game that grew out of D&D - with the central conceit that it's wizards and their sidekicks.  And yes, I'll leave it out.I am - and you obviously haven't seen a well-played bard.  There's a vast amount of synergy in the class if you have the knowledge and system mastery to exploit it.  Which is exactly how I want wizards if I'm going for that sort of game - tricky and subtle rather than overtly powerful.   (In fact I'd probably play 3e with all casters being replaced by the Bard, and the Bo9S classes in play).The warblade more or less makes the fighter obselete.You mean that he wasn't the deus ex machina character who was taken away from the party for most of the story?  The Fellowship of the Ring works as two adventuring parties and an NPC.No.  The two problems are not the same.Indeed.  You can play games other than D&D.  But so-called Vancian casting does exactly what you are saying you can't do.  Vancian casting with all spells recovered at the end of the day is inherently problematic - and the wizard spell list makes things dire.  Many games other than D&D don't have problems here (make all spells take a minute to cast and combat lasting half a minute tops and you've niche protection).I've never actually seen it.  Merely friends who recap.I seriously don't think Supernatural would have a mundane figher dropped from orbit and survive.  Level five or six max. Because pre-4e D&D magic is completely out of control.  Especially 3e magic. 4e magic on the other hand - the fighters don't need magic.Come play 4e.  We have no save or die abilities.  Magic's trimmed down in the way you want!  (And the assassin class has a mastery of poisons).Misunderstanding.  Aragorn gets Athelas - magic of a sort.  I named the powerful casters as NPCs because in most renditions they are.  Nimue in most Arthurian stories doesn't do much except with Merlin (and then there are possibly two).  The PCs are Arthur and the Knights most of the time.And here we're in serious disagreement.  Non-magic is the domain of everyone.No one objects to Mundane +.  What is objected to is Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit.Gear that the wizard also gets.  And by your own example the wizard needs to mess up.  That's if we have a 3.X like magic system rather than a 4e like one.Pure myth twice over.  The first reason this is a myth is fighting is hard work.  If the fighter can fight with it all day he is not mundane.  The second reason is the fighter can fight with it until the fighter runs out of hit points.  The fighter is on a clock.  And it's harder to recover hit points in D&D than it is to recover spells.  Which means the fighter's endurance is a function of the healing spells available.Again you're arguing for 4e.  Of course 5e resistances and vulnerabilities are a lot less interesting than late 4e ones.Fighters are supposed to be in line with casters of the same level.  Hercules is in line with a level 9 or so caster.  Once more I say come play 4e.  It has everything you are looking for.  D&D Next is back to Quadratic Wizards.</blockquote>

Verification