I'n a little concerned...

[Zinovia]

If you think about it, shoving someone back with your shield isn't a particularly spectacular or special move, it's part of every sword-and-board fighter's fundamental repertoire. It's only the fact that it required an abnormal check in 3.5, and actually replaced any damage you might otherwise have done, that made it a relatively rare and specialised maneuver.)

QFT.
Moving someone around in combat is easy to do in real life. It's hard to resist being moved backwards, or forced to circle. 3.5 was unrealistic in the way it made simple maneuvers like a shield bash something ineffective that you wouldn't do very often because of the special case rules that were applied. Fighters would be shield-bashing all the time, forcing their opponents to back away. It shouldn't be a super-rare special ability, but as others have said, it's the bread-and-butter of any shield-carrying fighter. Not everyone who picks up a shield will be good at it, because maintaining your defenses while bashing takes practice. People new to shield fighting tend to use it to hide behind, and don't have a good feel for how to move the shield just enough to block an incoming shot. This can justify the cleric carrying a shield, but not having the nifty moves with it that the fighter does.

Don't think of the At Will abilities as something special. They aren't. They are your usual selection of combat moves (or simple spells) that you can use any time. I'd rather see the wizard zapping foes with magic missiles (and needing to roll to hit) than having to resort to a crossbow in most low-level fights.

Resource management is very much a part of 4E - more than it is in 3E for any of the non-spellcasting classes. So if you enjoy deciding when to make optimal use of a limited resource, then 4E is all about that between daily powers, per-encounter powers and action points. 3rd edition only measured party resources in terms of cleric and wizard spells remaining. 4E involves everyone in the tactical choice of when to use their best moves.

 

[billd91]

QFT.
Moving someone around in combat is easy to do in real life. It's hard to resist being moved backwards, or forced to circle. 3.5 was unrealistic in the way it made simple maneuvers like a shield bash something ineffective that you wouldn't do very often because of the special case rules that were applied. Fighters would be shield-bashing all the time, forcing their opponents to back away. It shouldn't be a super-rare special ability, but as others have said, it's the bread-and-butter of any shield-carrying fighter.

This is making lots of assumptions, including the assumption that in 3.5, the characters were actually standing pretty still. Remember that they had 25 square feet to bounce around in. In D&D, particularly in earlier editions, the attacks made and the special maneuvers were, in effect, the attacks that counted and didn't necessarily reflect some of the moves that fighting might entail.

 

[Baka no Hentai]

So you end up using an at will ability 90% of the time. I'm not seeing much difference between 3e and 4e at that point.

What I would prefer is for there to be no dominant strategy for the PC to follow every time. When playing with the pre-gens from the D&D Experience, there were definitely dominant strategies once the per encounter abilities were exhausted (and in some cases even before they were exhausted). I don't think a single PC used their regular attack. If the designers want to see PCs not doing the same thing round after round, then there should be better balance in the choices and the basic attack should be better than it is. More damage would be nice to balance out the other perks of the at wills for melee-type characters.

That's the thing though... as far as my understanding goes, even a first level character has options of multiple at-will abilities that they can choose from, and these options increase as they level up.

Sure, the basic attack isnt that sexy, but say you're playing a warlock... you have a straight up at-will damage dealing attack, but you also have the option of an attack that does less damage but conceals you from the enemy. Both of them are optimal for different situations, and it is up to both the player and the DM to make sure that those options are utilitzed to their fullest. Regardless, those options are there, which cannot be said for 3rd edition.

Even if a player chose to only use eldritch blast, at least he has the option to use an ability that is part and parcel to his class every time, as opposed to "Well, I've used my 3 spells for the day so now I'm stuck using my sling" or even worse "Well, I only have 3 spells today, I can't afford to use any of them on the first fight in the morning!"

 

[I'm A Banana]

Comments?

It's working as-intended. In exchange for pushing him back every round, the fighter is giving up, say Cleave (which may or may not apply), or some other at-will ability.

I'm not a huge fan of largely ditching the basic attack, and I think the idea of "it won't be boring if they do it every round if it has a cool name and some secondary effect!" is probably off, but maybe I'm just being cynical, here.

I'm kind of in el-rammen's camp. I want there to be a use for the basic attack, and having some martial powers limited to per-encounter or per-day can seem arbitrary to me.

 

[joela]

summary

el-remmen:

In 4e, you get three types of abilities. Per Day, Per Encounter, and At Will. You also get a number of other types of attacks that you may use At Will, but which are not considered "powers" because they're available to anyone from any class.

Nice. This is the most succinct summary I've read on the 4e abilities. Thanks!

 

[helium3]

While I wasn't able to attend the D&D Experience my DM did and he had nothing good to say about 4e and he is one of the more open minded people I know. One of the issues that got me worried is the use of "At Will" abilities vs. a character's base attack. In one of the games he played a Dwarf warrior-type and he told me that his character had an At-Will ability to attack and knock back the enemy with a successful attack. That ability did the same damage and had the same probability to hit as the dwarf's base attack. His question was, when would you ever use the base attack when most of the characters have an at-will ability that is as good or better that their base attack.

I don't know folks... I was really looking forward to 4e up until my DM's report but now I'm not so sure.

Comments?

I believe you're talking about Iron Tide? In the recent sessions of the game I'm running, I've started bolting elements of 4E onto the "monsters" in my encounters to see what happens and Iron Tide was by far the one that was the most interesting and useful. The ability to push a character away from you and then step into the square they occupy means that brutes can basically push the party out of an area they want to occupy.

In this case, it meant I was able to make a space for several Javelin Hurlers to come in and do their thing, even though the initial tactical set-up did not allow for that in a way that made sense.

So, at least some of the minor shifting abilities are really cool in how they allow the encounter to change over time. You can actually see issues of flanking and drives up the middle being considered.

 

[Imp]

The way I think of it is that 4e combat is more granular than 3e combat, which still carries with it some of the assumptions from the 1e days where it was imagined that your character was doing a lot more than what was described by roll-dice-see-if-you-hit. 4e combat more specifically describes the actions you are taking, including these at-will fighter shield-pushing actions.

 

[Kishin]

I'm sure there's a fair number of situations where you won't want to use something like Tide of Iron to continually advance and push back your opponent, for fear of plunging yourself too deep into enemy lines, so to speak, or otherwise distance yourself from the group.

Its still generally the best option to spam your at wills if the situation permits, but I'm sure there's plenty of DMs who don't plan on the situation always permitting.

 

[hazel monday]

QFT.
Moving someone around in combat is easy to do in real life. It's hard to resist being moved backwards, or forced to circle. 3.5 was unrealistic in the way it made simple maneuvers like a shield bash something ineffective that you wouldn't do very often because of the special case rules that were applied. Fighters would be shield-bashing all the time, forcing their opponents to back away. It shouldn't be a super-rare special ability, but as others have said, it's the bread-and-butter of any shield-carrying fighter. Not everyone who picks up a shield will be good at it, because maintaining your defenses while bashing takes practice. People new to shield fighting tend to use it to hide behind, and don't have a good feel for how to move the shield just enough to block an incoming shot.

This helped me a lot with reconciling some potential rules vs. imagination problems I was having with 4E combat. So thanks. I'm a bit more optimistic now.

 

[SmilingPiePlate]

Someone explained it very well in another thread.

One reason there's a basic attack is so that player attacks of opportunity (or whatever they're called now) are just quick sword swipes or what have you. The players actual attack actions are likely to be Tide of Iron or Cleave or other abilities that do damage and have an extra effect, but the basic attack remains so that attacks of opportunity are different from attacks made normally, and are slightly weaker, and so that players can't punt their opponents 10 feet with AoOs, or brute strike off a charge, or the like.

I'm not overly attached to the basic attack. It'll have it's place, but I like that they're differentiating things; it goes a long way towards giving each melee class a distinctive style. Fighter abilities give their fighting style a certain flavor, while a rogue, say, does different things, and a melee ranger (if that's even possible in 4e) has different powers. So the fighter with a shield is the dogged soldier, pushing his enemies back or slashing in wide arcs and handling many enemies at once, the rogue is the sneaky guy who slips in behind someone and stabs them in the kidneys, and the ranger is the lightly armored skirmisher who takes the ideal position, strikes hard, and then repositions.

I remember trying to play a melee ranger, and it wasn't that different from playing a fighter. I dual-wielded where most fighters didn't and I had a worse AC usually, but at heart, we both just positioned ourselves in melee and swung away, moving when our targets died. The fighter could specialize in a few combat gimmicks, but there wasn't much of a mechanical difference. 4e looks like it'll make the fighter and other melee classes have more distinctive flavor and fight differently, and to my mind, that's a good thing.

Also, I happen to really like sword and board, so I like that they're giving shield users cool and entertaining things to do.