D&D General I'm a Fighter, not a Lover: Why the 1e Fighter was so Awesome

[Micah Sweet]

I wouldn't mind that either. But that's not how the game is really built. Most of the classes that get good "I don't take damage at this time" abilities are second-line or even back-line types (Rogue, arcane casters with Shield or Silvery Barbs). You have to literally spec into it as a Fighter, either by taking the cruddy +PB to AC Dueling Feat, or becoming a Battlemaster and throwing one of your mastery dice at an attack.

And if players do go out of their way to get things like shield, I see a ton of DM's gripe about it. I think it's a psychological thing- we'd rather do a boatload of damage to a raging Barbarian, despite the fact he's basically ignoring half of it, than attack a player and have them turn a hit into a miss, lol.

Honestly maybe the solution is to cut monster damage or increase player hit points if you want to shed in-combat healing. Unfortunately, having Clerics heal people is so ingrained into the D&D experience that we're stuck on this swinging pendulum between "healing too good" and "healing not good enough", because the developers can't seem find the right balance.

I'd prefer a design that just says "you are assumed to start every fight at full hit points, but sources of in-combat healing are exceedingly scarce", but that path was soundly rejected, so here we are.

Clerics can and should heal people, just not in the moment after the PC dropped so the player still gets to take their turn without missing a beat. At the very least they shouldn't be able to do that from range.

 

[James Gasik]

Clerics can and should heal people, just not in the moment after the PC dropped so the player still gets to take their turn without missing a beat. At the very least they shouldn't be able to do that from range.

Yeah, but then every support class that heals has to be highly mobile to get close enough to heal and tanky enough to survive inevitably becoming the target of incoming monster damage, becoming some sort of inverse defender*, since abilities to protect your healer aren't built-in to any class and you have to go out of your way to get them (and even when you have them, they're mediocre at best).

*Or otherwise disincentivize attacking the support guy, but then again, that line of thinking is probably what led to the creation of Spirit Guardians...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, but then every support class that heals has to be highly mobile to get close enough to heal and tanky enough to survive inevitably becoming the target of incoming monster damage, becoming some sort of inverse defender*, since abilities to protect your healer aren't built-in to any class and you have to go out of your way to get them (and even when you have them, they're mediocre at best).

*Or otherwise disincentivize attacking the support guy, but then again, that line of thinking is probably what led to the creation of Spirit Guardians...

Ok. In real life medics have to go to the wounded person, at risk to their own health, to help them during combat. I see no reason D&D has to be different.

 

[James Gasik]

Ok. In real life medics have to go to the wounded person, at risk to their own health, to help them during combat. I see no reason D&D has to be different.

Because we actually want people to play medics?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because we actually want people to play medics?

I don't feel that's a hard line limiting factor. I'd happily play a healer who had to actually be able to touch their patient.

 

[James Gasik]

I don't feel that's a hard line limiting factor. I'd happily play a healer who had to actually be able to touch their patient.

While being in just as much danger as the person you're healing, if not more? Knowing that nobody has any ability to protect you from monsters, arrows, and fireballs?

Seems like you'd end up spending most of your time healing yourself, or laying on the ground dying hoping there's a medic who can heal you...

 

[Flying Toaster]

In 1E lower level thieves were not very good at any of that stuff anyway and if they tried to pick locks in 1980s era adventures at low level they would die from a poison needle or other trap.

The knock spell is the only way for low level characters to open locks without breaking them or without really good luck.

IIRC dwarves had bonuses to pick locks, find/remove traps, and poison saves, so they had at least a somewhat better chance of being a decent “safecracker” thief. AD&D poisons and venoms mostly seemed to come in “instantaneous save or die” flavor, which was neither realistic nor fun.

One of my favorite changes in 2E was letting thieves allocate skill points so they could specialize and have at least two decent skills at 1st level. The party could have two specialized thieves, maybe a dwarf fighter/thief or gnome illusionist/thief for safecracking and a stealthy wall-climbing elf mage/thief. Of course halflings were great thieves too - I should have played one of those.

 

[Micah Sweet]

While being in just as much danger as the person you're healing, if not more? Knowing that nobody has any ability to protect you from monsters, arrows, and fireballs?

Seems like you'd end up spending most of your time healing yourself, or laying on the ground dying hoping there's a medic who can heal you...

And yet, again, there are combat medics in real life.

 

[James Gasik]

And yet, again, there are combat medics in real life.

Yeah, so? I wouldn't want to be one, would you?

 

[Baron Opal II]

Yeah, so? I wouldn't want to be one, would you?

That doesn't change the fact that there are those who would.