How do you like your martial characters?

[slobo777]

The Essential model of stances and "once per encounter, on a hit you can add this effect" would seem to me to be the best compromise between giving martial characters extra stuff to do (and making them as fun as spell-casters), but without making them as complex to play as spell-casters.

Edit: Other than that, a range of "standard rulings" for combat maneuvers that everyone can attempt would also be useful, covering pushing, tripping, disarming etc.

 

[Oni]

At-will combat maneuvers that anyone can attempt, but martial characters are best at.

This, also give me broad mechanics that can be applied to a wide variety of situations, not a bunch of narrow, complicated subsystems. I want fighters that can throw sand in peoples' eyes, rip rugs out from under people, and kick people in the junk without having to look up the throwing sand, yanking rugs, and junking maneuvers, and....oh wait they're not in the book, can't do that.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Wuxia is something that martial characters should not be able to represent, typically. (I'd actually say Wuxia doesn't belong in D&D, but I don't mind a non-intrusive source book .)

I disagree with this a lot. Wuxia should be an option for high-level Fighters. A 15th level Fighter should be able to wreck the same flying demonic horde that his Cleric and Wizard buddies do-- whether he does that by knocking them out of the air with his crossbow, daring them to come back down and fight like men, or just Peter Panning his ass up there to stab them with his sword should be a stylistic decision.

I agree that low level mundane characters should be limited by physics. It might be Hollywood physics, but, still reasonable. But high level martial characters should get a touch mythic. I have no problems with that 15th level fighter obliterating armies and punching through mountains, just because he's that mythic.

I think this is a 'calibrating your expectations' sort of thing-- we really need to sit down and figure out what levels mean what in terms of what kind of power characters (from all power sources) are wielding. Set benchmarks. Figure out at what level divine ascension is the next logical step, and then scale your characters backwards from there.

For instance, I consider 1st level a good benchmark for 'exceptional talent': a hardened combat veteran is still 0th level. A 1st level Fighter is the fencing academy's most promising student or the farm kid who killed half a dozen goblins with a pitchfork in his first battle.

I'm a Rules Cyclopedia kinda guy, so I like the idea that 36th level is when you start playing a different game entirely-- after 36th, you're no longer advancing in character levels, you're advancing in deity levels. A 36th level Fighter might not be as powerful as the recognized God of War in his particular milieu, but he isn't a servant of the war god; he's either an ally or a rival.

Consequently, you divide that in half... 18th level is about the threshold between 'super hero' and 'demigod'. This is where Clerics and Wizards get 9th level spells, this is where 'immortality' might show up as an actual class feature, and so forth. I'm thinking that 'immortality' shouldn't be a class feature... so much as just a given for what being 18th level means.

Cut it in half again, and you get 9th. 9th is where details like physics just don't matter so much anymore. This is the level where Clerics raise the dead and where Wizards get to decide whether or not 'gravity' is a thing that applies to them anymore. This is the level where I think Batman should be able to breathe in space and learning to fly is a matter of throwing yourself at the ground and missing-- you shouldn't have to do these things, but they should be options.

Cut that in half one more time (let's round up) and you get 5th. 5th is the level the magic happens-- no, seriously. 5th level is where 3.X characters start breaking real-life world records without trying. This is where a good Dex score and max ranks in Acrobatics part ways with reality and where swimming in plate mail becomes a viable option.

D&D needs to be able to support all of these levels of play. And it's never really done it well-- there's always way more support at the bottom levels than the top, and before 4e the game only got up to around 12th before the math stopped making sense. The main issue, though, is that some people are only interested in 5th level D&D or 9th level D&D-- a perfectly valid matter of preference-- and the D&D rules have just never been designed to linger at a given power level.

What I would like to see is something like E6 as a core rules variant. But instead of having a level cap at 6 and then only gaining skills and feats thereafter, you take advantage of Next's flat math: you gain theme choices and feats normally, but your maximum class level in a single class is X and your effective character level (for ability boosts and theme prerequisites) is equal to your character level times X/36.

And, seriously, if that doesn't point out just how absolutely god-awful 3.x multiclassing would be in this system-- and the need for a real rules fix rather than a bunch of PrC patches-- I just don't know how to explain it any better.

 

[GX.Sigma]

I agree that low level mundane characters should be limited by physics. It might be Hollywood physics, but, still reasonable. But high level martial characters should get a touch mythic. I have no problems with that 15th level fighter obliterating armies and punching through mountains, just because he's that mythic.

I hope the Fighter gets a decision point where he can choose "superhero" or "warrior king."

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Umm... none of the above? I guess encounter powers if I had to pick one.

I like martial characters that hone their techniques to the point of Charles Atlas super powers, and then by near epic levels have gone super saiyan. There shouldn't be unexplained daily limits on their awesome, but requiring a set up time, or having some sort of cooldown period works fine.

As far as style goes, I like lightly armored or no armor, lots of acrobatics and maneuvering around. Hefty use of martial arts techniques, and detailed descriptions of exactly how my character is leaping onto your sword as you thrust it, landing on it for a moment to smile at you, then corkscrew flipping over your head to behind you and delivering a fatal slash as my character sails past.
Having mechanics to parry, either for a certain class, as a feat chain for a certain fighting style, or something else, is also welcome. Just so long as you also gain the ability to parry spells.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

4E fan though I am, I can totally understand not being with non-magical dailies and such.

Thing you got to remember is, it isn't just martial dailies I have a problem with. I'm okay with having some abilities you can use once a day, or several abilities that you can use a total number of X times per day-- what I'm not okay with, whether it's Martial or Arcane or Divine or whatever, is having several separate abilities, each of which you can only use once per encounter or once per day.

I really don't mind spell slots, for instance, as long as they're not the whole magic system. If you have good 4e-style at-wills and ritual magic with them, spell slots are a good resource mechanic for magical abilities. But with spell slots, you can prepare the same spell more than once-- or spam it, if you're a Sorcerer-- and you get a certain number of each level of spell per day.

Same way, I don't mind the ki pool of the PF Monk or the arcane pool of the Magus. They're daily abilities, sure, but they're a daily pool of abilities. Not an ideal solution, in my opinion, but if you gave Fighters a ki pool or a tactics pool or a grit pool, I wouldn't cry.

I like the concept of having encounter and daily resources for every kind of character. I just think that the 4e AEDU construct is far too rigidly structured to feel organic; it feels very artificial to me, and I hate to be that guy, but it damages my immersion.

To be fair, the intent of it was to keep characters from doing the exact same thing every single encounter, but it does also force certain constraints in doing so. While I've only discussed my perspective on Attack powers, I'd like to think that the idea or a similar one can also be applied to utility abilities in some way.

I'm not a fan of Utility powers being a separate pool from Attack powers. If you have to force people to take some balance between Attacks and Utilities, that's fine-- I suppose-- but they should come from the same power pool. If you've had to Iron Heart Surge three times already to overcome the tyranny of mind control, paralytic poison, and true love... you should have less 'stuff' available for Whirlwind Attack and Sapphire Nightmare Blade.

 

[I'm A Banana]

4E psionics are extremely easy to deal with early on.

Subjectively be that as it may, if you were to compare relative complexity (which is what I was doing), ADEU is less complex than ADEU + Power Points.

Whether or not someone finds that "too complex for a fighter" likely depends on the person.

I find the person with a sword not running out of steam to be really really strange, personally. Magical force being endless? Absolutely. Physical force being endless? Bwah? I mean, that's just objectively absurd. Physical exertion drains you of energy. It's very video gamey to be unable to tire from swinging a sword for hours at a time with zero change in effectiveness. I guess I just find it rather a painfully ironic perspective.

Sure, it's unrealistic. It can be justified (you're a HERO, you don't RUN OUT OF ENERGY!), but it's just a justification.

I like it not because it's realistic, but because of the psychology and gameplay of it. The design of it appeals to me. Different characters should play differently, and one of the ways in which D&D has distinguished non-magical characters is not to have limited-use abilities. They opt out of the resource-management minigame that vancian spellcasters need to go through, and instead embrace a "how can I use these tools?" mindset. They have no loss-aversion, which encourages the players to use their abilities all the time and to the fullest. They have no need to ration resources, no need to back off of a threat that they can handle.

I don't think these things are automatically tied to power source (I mentioned the 3e warlock for a reason), necessarily. They are historically, which is important to acknowledge in the first release, I feel, but there's no reason we can't have more different kinds later. And sure, I think that "resource-spending warriors" and suchlike should be a part of the game, just as I think that "at-will warlocks" and suchlike should be a part of the game.

But playing a fighter who always has all his tricks available is a valuable gameplay experience for D&D for me (just as playing a wizard who might run out of all her tricks is), and if I can't do that, it won't be as awesome as if I can.

 

[Klaus]

I think it's critical that high-level warriors be able to do more as part of a single turn than either "I attack for damage" or "I trip/disarm/grab/push." You need to be able to combine things into maneuvers.

Have you seen Batman fight in the Arkham Asylum video game? He grabs one thug, snaps his elbow, shoves him into a pair of other thugs, then shoots his grappling hook at a fourth, yanks him, and then judo flips him over a railing so he falls and is knocked out. I want that sort of stuff.

Why do you assume that each of those attacks wouldn't happen on a separate round?

A low-level fighter can do all of these things, just by calling the appropriate action. You're describing a grapple, an unarmed strike, a bull rush, a ranged attack (with a ranged grapple), and another bull rush. But only a very high-level fighter (ie., Batman) would be able to do them all at once (by way of multiple attacks per round, and a spiffy weapon).

If a fighter just stands there swinging his sword, it isn't because the rules force him to do so.

Sounds to me like Batman just did a (in 4e parlance) a close burst attack against a bunch of minions. Which wouldn't be a bad thing to add to a Fighter or Monk in DDN.

 

[Klaus]

As for martial being nonmagical, I disagree. I'd like to see epic-level warriors being able to do the impossible.

For instance, let's look at Kelanen, the Prince of Swords, a quasi-deity in the Greyhawk setting. He was so good with a sword that he could let go of it, and it would keep on fighting like a dancing sword. He could cause a sword he uses to fight against up to nine enemies at once (Book of Nine Swords?). He could cleave through magic barriers and the like. And intelligent swords refused to attack him.

 

[Mallus]

I come at this question from the perspective of a long-time DM whose watched many a spell-casting PC rapidly outpace their martial counterparts in terms of interesting options as they leveled. Which inevitably placed more burden on me to ensure the sword-using (and shadow-hiding-in) folks could meaningfully contribute.

I have no problem with martial PCs doing the impossible. It seems only equitable that they get to do so, just like the people in the pointed hats and miters. The 2e PHB used demigods and epic folk heroes as examples of "mundane" fighters. This is instructive, not to mention a good idea.

I'm also okay with per encounter/per day/per week martial abilities. They're simply a way to put extraordinary results on a workable schedule. I see no difference between a critical hit system that produces extraordinary results, on average, twice per day and a 4e-style power framework that grants 2 "dailies".

They are two different ways to do the same thing. I slightly prefer the 4e-style method, because it places a decision in the players' hands. And I find the claim that a chance-based critical hit system is more "organic" (whatever that means) and less contrived is, well, let's say problematic.

How is a %5 chance (or so) to stab something in the eye any less contrived than a "daily"?