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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 3787820" data-attributes="member: 5143">It's not a matter of limiting play.  It's a matter of having fun and feeling worthwhile as the class you chose.  You do lose something with this gain.In 3e, it had the feeling of "you want to be a tank type...pick any class and if you build it the right way, you can be a tank.  You'll just do it in a different way depending on the class."  Unfortunately, it created a situation where some classes were MUCH better at being a tank than others.  And it had the weird side effect of making classes that you wouldn't EXPECT to be much better at roles than the ones you WOULD expect.  Thus, clerics were better tanks than fighters, paladins, or barbarians when built right.It sucks when you as a player sit down for the first time to play the game and say "Hey, I want to be a fighter.  Those are the types that are good at weapons and wear lots of armor, can take large amounts of punishment and stand up front, right?  Cool.  That's for me." then during the first session find out that with 2 spells, the cleric can take more damage than you AND deals more damage than you as well as being able to heal himself, cure diseases, protect himself from energy attacks and undead drain attacks, consult his god for answers to problems, and raise the dead.  It gets even worse when the Druid turns into an animal and due to equipment stacking and spell stacking is ALSO better than you.  Then the Wizard polymorphs and uses protection spells to have a better strength and ac than you.The same thing works for any implied role.  Players who are new coming into the game think of rogues as the primary damage dealers in a group.  They think of rogues as the ones that do very little damage, but when they move into the right position, they'll outdamage everyone.  Then they find out that...they don't outdamage almost ANYONE.So, the 4e philosophy is to make the classes each good at what they expect to be good at.  Fighters are Defenders, so although the game won't stop someone from getting rid of their shield and using a two handed weapon for more damage, Fighters aren't going to be outdamaging Rogues and Rangers.  Clerics might be able to increase their AC, but not to the level of a fighter.  Or if they can, it will take Clerics more ACTIONS to do it.  For example, fighters might get a "Martial Defense" stance where, as a swift action they add X to their ac for 3 rounds.  Clerics might have a spell to add X to their ac, but it will take a standard action so they'll be unable to do anything else.Yes, this will put an end to all of the players out there playing Clerics because they wanted to do the fighter's job better than he could.  A lot of people out there will mourn their loss and say "But I never thought of the cleric as a healer and buffer, I always thought they were the tank type."  But that's an impression that was only given to people due to quirks in the 3.5e rules, not because that's what clerics were supposed to do.  Now, in 4e, if you want to be a tank type, you play a Paladin or Fighter.  You want to play a Healer type, you play a Cleric.  You want to play a damaging type, play a Rogue or Ranger.  You want to play a tank type with a bit of healing, you play a fighter with a couple of levels of cleric.I, for one, won't miss the days of characters who could do EVERYTHING, making everyone else in the group feel useless.</blockquote>

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