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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7674905" data-attributes="member: 996">I'm not sure if that would be 'helped' rather than 'complicated.'  I've played games that make that sort of distinction, and they can easily break down if you can find a way to target just one of those pools, typically the smaller, make'em dead, one. D&D hps actually work pretty well, apart from over-promoting 'focus fire,' for capturing the 'plot armor' common to the genre.  (Well, they worked a little better at it with old-school saving throws at high levels.)  But, they are abstract and varied enough in their definition, in order to do that, that they do leave the door open for all sorts of odd ways to heal or do damage - including inspiring back hps or intimidating them away. Preach it, brother.  You think the Cleric concept is so unappealing that it needs that level of niche-protection for it's healing function?'Holy?'  Holy, sure, like I said, Paladin with a sub-class briefly in post-UA 1e, for those that used it at all.  I guess turn it around:  have a Cavalier as Paladin sub-class in 4e.  But another divine sub-class that could just as easily be done with MC'ing doesn't really accomplish much, IMHO. Yes.  Or, to put it another way "representative of the feel of the Classic Game."   We could play RPGs without Abstraction.  We'd probably get arrested or killed, but we could do it.   That's a hard fail for every edition, then. The 'defender' was /based/ on the fighter's Iconic role, from 2e, all the way back to Chaimail, as a front-line infantry figure who protected his back-line artillery support.Part of the awesome of the 3.x fighter was that it could thumb it's nose at iconic role.  It could interdict a portion of the battle field with a pole-arm, loose hails of arrows from the back lines, tank in the front, leap-attack-charge with a big weapon, mow through lesser foes like wheat before the scythe, disarm or trip less skillful foes, and on and on - and that's just combat, with 18 feats to everyone else's 7 (instead of 8 to their 6), it actually /could/ manage to pull together some interesting alternatives.  Compared to that, the 4e & 5e fighters are both potentially disappointing.    The 5e fighter starts to go there:  it can be STR or DEX based, style lets it be melee or ranged... and then, multi-Attack DPR, that's it, you're a beatstick, non-negotiable.   You've already pointed out the downside of the Defender-role 4e fighter relative to the 3.x fighter's customizability.The spell-less ranger took away a major class feature, so, yes, you could take the Fighter, take away it's major class feature (those extra attacks, or maybe even just two of them), and replace them with, say, 'Commands.'  So, as his action, instead of 3 attacks, a mid-level Warlordified Fighter might Make 2 attacks and issue 1 Command.  Commands would be similar to Battlemaster maneuvers, but give up damage (thus have room to be much more powerful), and be essentially at-will.   Presumably, you could trade in an attack for an extra Command, too.  Could work. Would need more commands/maneuvers, and "higher level" and/or resource-limited ones, as well.</blockquote>

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