Roles - do they work?

[ProfessorPain]

In case you anyone here wants more information on roles, please refer to this link. Or maybe this link.

I think you have just unleashed a can of worms.

 

[Spatula]

Want to be a heavily armored striker? Avenger.

Looks like the Avenger is super-lightly armored, actually.

I guess it comes to me disagreeing with the designers on what the fighter role should be. I don't see fighters at defenders, but as defenders and or strikers.

Then there's no issue. Grab a big weapon and go to town.

I actually loved the old 3E fighter because they were feat monkeys with large base attack bonuses. For me this fit the concept of the fighter; someone who was a trained warrior.

...and fighters are still trained warriors? With a better-than-normal attack bonus, to boot (via the fighter weapon talent).

 

[ProfessorPain]

Looks like the Avenger is super-lightly armored, actually.

Then there's no issue. Grab a big weapon and go to town.

...and fighters are still trained warriors? With a better-than-normal attack bonus, to boot (via the fighter weapon talent).

but the strikers are still better at dishing out big damage than they are.

 

[Spatula]

but the strikers are still better at dishing out big damage than they are.

Rogue 1 daily + sneak attack = 5d6+dex damage.
Ranger 1 daily = 2d8+str (two attacks), +1d6 (quarry) damage
Fighter 1 daily = 6d6+str damage.

Now, the fighter isn't doing the most damage at all times, because that's the trade-off for being a tough warrior type instead of a scout or a pickpocket. And if you don't want to be a tough warrior, then why are you looking at the fighter?

 

[Scars Unseen]

And if you don't want to be a tough warrior, then why are you looking at the fighter?

Because being a fighter doesn't have to mean being a slab. Remember that constitution is one of four possible prime stats. You could just as easily make a fighter that relies primarily on dexterity and wisdom, which would make him neither tough, nor strong(but no less effective).

I think that you are looking at this too much from the role perspective, and not enough from the character concept perspective. A fighter is not someone who is tough. He is not someone who is strong. A fighter is someone who fights. That is his primary function. If I make a swashbuckler, then a rogue just might fit the bill. But if I want to make a duelist, then I don't care about thievery skills. I don't care about sneak attacks. I care about swordsmanship. Skill with a weapon. Fighting. And yeah, I could pretend that my character's sneak attack is really some sort of sword maneuver. I could pretend that the fluff for all of the abilities means something else. Or I could play a fighter, a class already designed for my character concept with the only exception being that the word "defender" was typed into the Class Traits block. So which is easier for me to get around? A single word or several pages of fluff and slightly off flavored mechanics?

 

[Spatula]

Because being a fighter doesn't have to mean being a slab. Remember that constitution is one of four possible prime stats.

The fighter is inherently tough by virtue of armor and hit points. That's how the fighter has always been, in every edition of D&D, independant of one's CON score.

 

[drothgery]

Because being a fighter doesn't have to mean being a slab. Remember that constitution is one of four possible prime stats. You could just as easily make a fighter that relies primarily on dexterity and wisdom, which would make him neither tough, nor strong(but no less effective).

I think that you are looking at this too much from the role perspective, and not enough from the character concept perspective. A fighter is not someone who is tough. He is not someone who is strong. A fighter is someone who fights. That is his primary function. If I make a swashbuckler, then a rogue just might fit the bill. But if I want to make a duelist, then I don't care about thievery skills. I don't care about sneak attacks. I care about swordsmanship. Skill with a weapon. Fighting. And yeah, I could pretend that my character's sneak attack is really some sort of sword maneuver. I could pretend that the fluff for all of the abilities means something else. Or I could play a fighter, a class already designed for my character concept with the only exception being that the word "defender" was typed into the Class Traits block. So which is easier for me to get around? A single word or several pages of fluff and slightly off flavored mechanics?

Except that's not accurate at all. Almost all of the fifteen or so pages of powers and class abilities for fighters are designed around the 'defender' role, not just the word 'defender' in the class description.

It's concept -> combat role (or possibly roles; multi-class feats, paragon multi-classing, and paragon paths that help bridge roles all exist) -> class. Fighter is character class. It's at the bottom of the chain. The class name may be more generic than the class actually is (fighter and wizard suffer from this, to some degree), but a D&D4 character class is a pretty specific thing, to the point where the two-classes-in-one Ranger really ought to have been broken up, except that would have given us 4 strikers in PH1.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Except that's not accurate at all. Almost all of the fifteen or so pages of powers and class abilities for fighters are designed around the 'defender' role, not just the word 'defender' in the class description.

It's concept -> combat role (or possibly roles; multi-class feats, paragon multi-classing, and paragon paths that help bridge roles all exist) -> class. Fighter is character class. It's at the bottom of the chain. The class name may be more generic than the class actually is (fighter and wizard suffer from this, to some degree), but a D&D4 character class is a pretty specific thing, to the point where the two-classes-in-one Ranger really ought to have been broken up, except that would have given us 4 strikers in PH1.

You misunderstand me. There is(currently) no build in the books that covers my character concept, so I am going to have to create one, powers and all. So I have to choose whether to make a new class(which I am loath to do) or use an existing class. So yes, it is just the word defender in the class description. The concept of a fighter(someone who is trained in the arts of fighting) fits my concept better than that of a rogue(someone who sneaks around and steals). Moreover, the base class abilities of a fighter fit my concept better than those of a rogue. Therefore, instead of trying to completely retool the rogue to fit my concept, or trying to completely retool my concept to fit the rogue class(something I haven't had to do since 2E) I will ignore the artificial role limitation thrust upon the fighter class and make something that actually works.

And in any case, 4E classes are anything but specific. One could argue that because every class now works on the same system(rather than the separate sub-systems of previous editions) that 4E classes in fact tend toward the generic. All the limitations placed upon the classes in 4E are artificial rather than built into the design.

The fighter is inherently tough by virtue of armor and hit points. That's how the fighter has always been, independant of one's CON score.

Except that there have always(at least since 2E kits, I didn't play 1E) been builds of the fighter class that utilized light armor(such as the one that i am creating). So your argument's down to hit points.

 

[Dausuul]

In general, I approve of the role system, both for PCs and for monsters. It both improves transparency for users of the system (players and DMs) and helps to keep the designers focused.

That said, I have quibbles with a few specific elements. I think (and the design team has evidently come to agree with me) that the Controller role was poorly thought through; there should not be a role built around just having multi-target attacks. It makes the Controller heavily dependent on meeting a specific type of opposition - lots of minions and weak monsters - and is often boring to play. The new definition of the Controller as the "anti-Leader," the guy who debuffs and disrupts enemies, works a lot better for me.

I also think the Soldier role was badly designed. Soldiers were apparently intended to be the monster counterpart to Defenders, but instead of having "stickiness" abilities like PC Defenders have, they just have high defenses. High defenses should not be a monster selling point; Soldier monsters, particularly Soldier monsters that are higher-level than the PCs, contribute substantially to combat grind.

Minions are way too weak at high and even middling levels. They need a major upgrade. One DM I play under started hitting us with minions that could dish out a whole boatload of damage - something like 2d8+7 damage, per minion, at 16th level - and it was a huge improvement. We quickly came to have a lot of respect for those little bastards. Sure, they only had one hit point and you could blow them away like nothing, but if a few of them got up close to you, you were going down. (And let's not get started on the ones with ranged attacks...)

Solos, on the other hand, while their power level is fine, need a big versatility boost. As Vayden recently observed to me, the problem with solos is they're built, like all 4E monsters, on the 5-round model; a monster only needs 5 rounds' worth of attacks because that's all it's going to survive. But that's not true of solos, which have the hit points and defenses to last 10+ rounds; during which time they must provide a whole battle's worth of excitement all by themselves. They need to be more fox, less hedgehog. I think it should be a given that every solo has at least one "limit break" power, some new and unexpected ability that only comes online when the solo is bloodied.

Those are the roles I have problems with. The rest seem fine, and the overall concept is brilliant. (One thing - the Leader monster tag should not be merged into Controller. The Leader shtick can work on any monster and has nothing to do with what the Controller does.)

 

[Nymrohd]

I will agree on Soldiers and solos. Solos should only appear as special monsters, should be fewer, and should have a boatload of specials. And I am not sure paragon and epic tier solos needed 5xhps instead of 4x like heroic ones. As for soldiers, some are very well designed but some are simply high defense accurate hitters that frustrate players, especially if they are elites.