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<blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 5863561" data-attributes="member: 158">True, not everyone wants to play a barbarian or ranger to hit as hard as one, for all the baggage that those classes imply. (And one could with DM permission mod a Ranger to just be &quot;Urban Archer&quot;, but it's an extra step that you have to do outside of the rules that some people would rather not have.) Also, the whole &quot;A fighter can do just as much damage as a Striker&quot; thing that I've seen some others state just isn't true -- an OPTIMIZED fighter could do as much damage as an un-optimized ranger, but an optimized one is still going to show him up. In 4E role design, this is a good thing, and works as intended -- but a LOT of folks don't like the design feature. The slayer really should have come along in 2008, and the community would not have had as much rancor on the topic. Suddenly, a fighter wasn't the premier &quot;heavy hitter&quot; any more.I actually disagree with that, IF you play with 1E AD&amp;D with the combat rules as they were written in the DMG.... which very few people ever did back in the day, myself included. In 1E combat, EVERYONE was &quot;sticky&quot;, not just defenders. If you wanted to engage someone, you either charged them, in which case the longer reach weapon struck first (gave a lot of advantage to those pikes and two-handed swords), or you spent your entire turn engaging them in melee; you couldn't start attacking until next round. To move away from someone you were engaged in melee from, they got a free attack on your backside. I don't even believe there was a &quot;fighting withdrawal&quot; (which came with Basic D&amp;D in 1981). It was just that fighters were better built to hurt their melee opponents, and the &quot;defender stickiness or marking&quot; was built into the basic rules.Fighters did do their job, but the feature that helped them was removed as D&amp;D evolved in its definition of what were &quot;fun&quot; combat rules.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Henry, post: 5863561, member: 158"] True, not everyone wants to play a barbarian or ranger to hit as hard as one, for all the baggage that those classes imply. (And one could with DM permission mod a Ranger to just be "Urban Archer", but it's an extra step that you have to do outside of the rules that some people would rather not have.) Also, the whole "A fighter can do just as much damage as a Striker" thing that I've seen some others state just isn't true -- an OPTIMIZED fighter could do as much damage as an un-optimized ranger, but an optimized one is still going to show him up. In 4E role design, this is a good thing, and works as intended -- but a LOT of folks don't like the design feature. The slayer really should have come along in 2008, and the community would not have had as much rancor on the topic. Suddenly, a fighter wasn't the premier "heavy hitter" any more. I actually disagree with that, IF you play with 1E AD&D with the combat rules as they were written in the DMG.... which very few people ever did back in the day, myself included. In 1E combat, EVERYONE was "sticky", not just defenders. If you wanted to engage someone, you either charged them, in which case the longer reach weapon struck first (gave a lot of advantage to those pikes and two-handed swords), or you spent your entire turn engaging them in melee; you couldn't start attacking until next round. To move away from someone you were engaged in melee from, they got a free attack on your backside. I don't even believe there was a "fighting withdrawal" (which came with Basic D&D in 1981). It was just that fighters were better built to hurt their melee opponents, and the "defender stickiness or marking" was built into the basic rules. Fighters did do their job, but the feature that helped them was removed as D&D evolved in its definition of what were "fun" combat rules. [/QUOTE]

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