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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5727615" data-attributes="member: 27160">Provided all combatants line themselves up neatly, of course it's not confusing.  The 5' and 10' corridors may have facilitated this in many cases, but it's not a "general case".  What about this situation - are the moves of the two ogres/orcs/whatever to get at the Wizard "backwards" here?x G x x B x G xx F O x x C x xO x E \ x x x xx \ x x \ x x xx x \---> W x xO = ogre/orc, B = bugbear, F = fighter, C = cleric, W = Wizard, G = goblin, E = ettin.Or, what about the ettin "south" of the orc to the right of the fighter going directly diagonal (south-east) to get to the Wiz?  Or the bugbear going one step west (away from the cleric, with whom he's engaged) and then going south to get the Wiz?Even without flying or swimming the battlefield is at least two dimensional - never mind when we add in a third (from climbing, tunnelling, swimming or flying).Not if the defender is a fighter, no.  It becomes "I risk being hit, but the ogre will be attacked by the fighter first - an attack which, if my backstab has already worked, the ogre may not survive - before it can attack me, which it will do at -2.  All in all, it may be persuaded to either try to get away or to attack the fighter, first."Well, it may have started out there, but my specific objection was to the idea that fighters in older editions could effectively do their "job" (which was already clear) of stopping enemies attacking other party members.  The answer seems to me to be "they could in the very limited case where the terrain forced the enemy to line up to hit them, but in the general case, they could not without collusion from the monster player (i.e., usually, the DM)".For complexity, Basic and OD&D have it, I think - although OD&D falls apart on "ease of use" because the confusion over combat systems early on was, well, confusing.  On "fighters being able to meat shield", however, 4E seems to me to be clearly "better" than any earlier edition, since the fighter can do everything in this regard that s/he could do in earlier editions, plus be able to mark/combat challenge/combat superiority.  Not to mention powers like "Come and Get It" to draw the monsters to them...</blockquote>

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