Actually you misspoke by saying sneak attack was the only way to do lots of damage in 3E. That was your initial definition of a striker mechanic, which you later amended once you were proven hilariously wrong.
The Striker can do lots of damage
consistantly. The 3E paladin runs out of Smite Evil uses. The wizard runs out of spells. The 3E rogue can keep Sneak Attacking as long as he has a team and isn't fighting certain creatures. The 3E rogue has the only class feature that compares to 4E strikers in a meaningful way.
Even if we discard that initial careless definition, lots of abilities in 3E can be considered generally analagous to "striker" mechanics. You admitted that with the line about wizards, druids, etc stepping on the toes of all the other roles.
In my humble opinion your actions were similar to those of an someone who is being an asshat. You can take my in my humble opinion comments with a big old grain of salt, in my humble opinion.
Mod note: That's more than enough of that, thanks very much. ~Umbran
Keep moving the goalpost if it makes you feel better, i guess, but keep in mind how bad it makes you look to anyone paying attention.
And keep twisting my words if it makes you feel better.
The expectations aren't ridiculous. They come from what the game was able to do before the most recent edition change. Expecting what you like about the game to remain intact is hardly a ridiculous expectation.
The only concrete expectation given, so far, was a paladin striker. The 3E "paladin striker" example was more equivalent to a 4E paladin that chooses class features and feats that focus on dealing more damage. You still end up with marking, but what's the real difference between 3E and 4E here? In 3E since you were up front dishing damage, the creatures you attacked were most likely going to attack you back. Now in 4E they have more incentive to attack you instead of your buddy who's come to the front to help and if they do decide to take the penalty and actually hit him you get to dish out more damage. How terrible!
Classes are contained within conceptual archetypes rather than mechanics because that's how we think of them. "Ranger" isn't about the particular mechanics the class has (like favored enemy or two-weapon fighting), it's about the particular feel those mechanics generate (an agile wilderness warrior!).
I'd buy this argument about conceptual archetypes if people were able to more easily step outside the box and see 'agile wilderness warrior' in more classes than just the one labelled Ranger. Instead it seems that people are unable to think outside the box and pigeonhole the class themselves because it's labelled Ranger.
This is because when we first approach an RPG, we don't approach it saying, "I want to maximize my attack rolls with my bow, so I'm going to be a ranger!", we say, "I want to be like Robin Hood, so I'm going to pick the ranger!" If my character isn't like Robin Hood, I don't want to be a ranger. I'm not going to pick the Ranger class if I'm interested in being a cultured, urbane mercenary for hire, even if my cultured, urbane mercenary for hire still wants to maximize his attack rolls with his bow.
And that's a problem. Like I said, in 3E I played a big-city noble-born character that was a Barbarian/Sorcerer. It's not the game's fault if people can't mold fluff material to their liking.
Or how about the rogue that specialized in surveillance and espionage, not breaking and entering? The fighter that shunned armor and went to finesse? The mage that focused on buffs not blasting? They existed, all of them, but is it easy to do now? Not really; possible, but highly improbable.
Not improbable. Existing without need for multiclassing, hybridization, or feats. The answers to your specific questions are: Rogue. Ranger or Rogue. Artificer.
That's my point, I don't WANT to be told what I should do. Regardless.
Luckily 4E doesn't tell me what to do either.
I prefer people to think outside of the box....
Me too. That's kind of my whole argument on demanding one's concept to be forced upon a class while ignoring others that will fit the concept better.
The idea that a fighter is a tank made only to suck up damage or a ranger is a DPS (what ever the #*$8 that means in D&D since seconds aren't used as far as I know) is MUD/MMO thinking.
It's usually spoken of as DPR. The terminology may have come from computer games, but the original concept was stolen by them from the way people tended to play TTRPGs.
It goes beyond what I believe an RPG is supposed to do and moved the RPG back into the realm of combat simulation. Combat is not a required element of play even though it is the one most often associated with D&D. If a player associated fighter with tank then the player is more apt to ignore the RP part and go just in for the combat (third wheel mentality). Again, this isn't a given, but is more likely to happen rather than not. Yes, I'm sure you don't do it and none of your friends or anyone else you know has, that's great, but it happens, I've seen it, I loathe it.
I've seen it too. In every edition of D&D from OD&D to 4E. IME it's the group, not the game.
"Casting spells" is not what 4e means by role. At all. There's "dealing damage really well" and "healing people" and "controlling the battlefield" with casting spells. Those are defined as "roles" in 4e. Casting a spell is just a means to an end.
FYI - casting spells is not a requirement of controlling the battlefield.
So, in 4e, my paladin has to have the "takes damage really well" role, whether or not I'd rather be a "dealing damage really well" paladin. It's not about spell vs melee vs skills, and it's not about class features. It's about the play style that is hard-coded and baked into the classes. D&D has always had this, but it's been more broad in the past. A Fighter wasn't always a "takes damage really well" type of guy. Now he has to be.
Yes, the Weaponmaster Fighter (capital F) must be that guy, but there are other fighters available to you that don't have to be that guy. Why would you insist to play a Weaponmaster Fighter if that's not what you want to play? Why would you eschew other fighting classes that match what you want?
Some people in this thread like the feel of broad archetype classes. The Fighter can represent of lot of different things: ranged, reach, sword and shield, two-handed, two-weapons, etc. The class "Fighter" is just the D&D archetype for "warrior" to me, for example. With this in mind, by narrowing the Fighter down to fulfilling one role very well (and other roles workably), you really take a bite out of the concepts that will fit into "warrior". I may envision my archer warrior as a light-on-his-feet kind of guy. I don't want to wear plate, I want to wear light armor.
If they had made Rogue, Ranger and Warlord builds under Fighter so he could fulfill all four roles [Ranger has a Controller build] would that have been more to your liking?
They gave me defined abilities and skills for my class. They did not tell me how my class was supposed to act. We know the archetypes of the class. We know the strengths and weaknesses of our abilities. And we played with them, sometimesfor the better sometimes, against "type" for theworse...not because the rules said I was a striker or controller or whatever, so I should be doing X. But because, "This is what I want my character to do!"
That's what we do when we play 4E, so I'm not sure WotC's mind control lasers are as honed as you imagine.
Yes, the cleric has the reputation of the "heal-bot". Have I played healer-clerics/clerics of gods of healing? Sure I have. But the idea that that was what a cleric was supposed to do is something the game community has created.
So, no, if I was playing a cleric, I was not told, by the rules, that I was to be a healer. It was just something (albeit perhaps the most notable, aside from Turning Undead) the cleric COULD do...not a definition of the class.
By some people's comments, 3E certainly seemed to tell you this was your job by allowing all clerics to freely swap prepared spells for healing spells. But I don't believe the 4E roles tell you how to play, so I certainly don't believe 3E cleric abilities told you how to play.
Before that you were not told what/where/how your character had to be in combat. The class was not defined that way. It just made sense that the guy with the heavy armor and the most hit points would get up front. The guy who's going to be KO'd by a house cat should probably stay away from the orcs with the sharp n' pointies. And the guy who could move around the battlefield unseen and do lots of damage from behind would want to do that...but noone said this is the structure of how you must be in your battles.
No one is saying that now. The designers are telling you what toolset they used to design the character. Instead of having to infer what your character is desinged for they instead called it out. Its a matter of transparency, not forcing anyone to play a character a certain way.
Agreed. I get that. Makes sense. But it does seem to be how the codification was designed to make/push people to think...and then the entirety of the game being designed around combat encounters much moreso than exploration, problem solving and NPC interactions only served to fuel that conception/enforce that way of thinking.
I do agree that exploration has seen a diminishing spotlight since the start of 3E. Problem solving by its very nature challenges the player instead of the character. This started eroded late in 1E with the introduction of non-weapon proficiencies.
But, I believe that 3E complex task resolution (or whatever it was called) and 4E skill challenge rules were an honest attempt to revitalize problem solving and NPC interactions without discarding the skill system. The concept was good, but it needs alot more work.
Yes, yes. D&D has always had combat. Killin' things and takin' their stuff has always been fun and a large part of every game I've ever been in. We like action and adventure. Note "and adventure". The action (iow, "combat") was never the only part...and the game was not, by design, set up to be about combat...or one's Role in them.
The designers have been working on creating more options for non-combat applications. There are utility powers driven by skills, etc. I still think non-combat situations are too broad a spectrum to define and any system that tried to codify non-combat roles for D&D would fail. I don't think it's a coincidence that the four roles of 4E coincide with the four main classes of D&D. Comabt is easier to codify and make solid rules for. Non-combat is too wide open and can only really benefit from advice. I think the 4E DMG is the best D&D guide since the 1E DMG for this advice.
The difference is that in AD&D my heavy armour and high hit point fighter could still stand back and competently shoot enemies with a bow and arrow if that's what was necessary (and sometimes it was) to succeed or how I wanted to play him...
He most likely did it less effectively though. Just like a 4E Fighter. This can and often does happen in my games all the time. Sometimes the best course of action isn't what your character is best at doing. The shooting a bow example (or throwing a javelin) is one. Another was the front-line fighter taking an action to tend to the wounds of the dropped leader. He was best at attacking, not even trained in Heal, but he dtermined that his best course of action to survive was to attempt to revive the fallen leader. He was right. That choice was the turning point of a seeming TPK.
Dictating my class as a Defender and structuring my class abilities and majority of my powers around staying close, taking a beatdown and locking enemies down dictates and narrows my role and viable gameplay options in combat within that class or archetype.
This is where some of us talk about trade-offs. You
can do other things, just not as effectively (similar to the bow-using 1E Fighter - unless he was lucky enough to have high Str and Dex). If you want to be more effective at
both, then you need to make trade-offs.
It's a problem because, for me, anything that is just fiction, without a mechanical backing, is functionally empty and devoid of significance. It is a constant reminder that I am playing a game, not pretending to be a character. It makes me feel that I am numbers on a sheet rather than an imaginary character in an imaginary world. It's not specific enough. It's not significant enough. It's too empty and meaningless.
I'm not sure I understand. Fluff without rules is a constant reminder that you're playing a game? Fluff without rules makes you feel like you're not pretending to be a character? Fluff without rules makes you feel like you are numbers on a sheet? Is that what you're saying?
I think back to 1E when the Fighter was basically a decreasing THACO and the only real difference mechanically between two fighters was their stats, armor they could afford, and weapon choice. Yet we still imagined our characters as saracens, bodyguards, barbarians (before the class actually existed), etc.
Of course, instead of combat role, I'd like to see a broader concept of adventure roles, encompassing adventure-level challenges rather than combat-encounter-level challenges, but that's sort of another thread.
I would be higly interested in seeing this too. But who's going to be the company that risks entering uncharted territory?
I think each of these concepts fares better as a way to play a different class, rather than as a class all their own, myself.
