Testing a theory

[Crazy Jerome]

And then there's category C. I love playing a swiss army knife wizard with a handful of scrolls, a few wands, and preparing for and being able to counter or disrupt most things. I just won't do it in 3.X because it is too easy. I like it because it's meant to be a challenge and that I use preparation and quick thinking to make sure I have a good enough tool for the job. When I played that sort of character in 4e the results were messy even at low heroic to the point that I retired my wizard. In 3.X my swiss army knife of choice is the bard - that way I actually need to work.

That's pretty much me on those rare occasions I get to play. Maybe it's that the groups where I've gotten to play haven't been all that challenging, but I like the archetype of playing the wizard, yet can't do it without dominating a game--or deliberately gimping myself. It's socially unacceptable in practice for me to play the class I want to play! The last time I tried (and with a pretty competent DM, too), I had to just sit on myself the whole game. Basically, I went into DM-mode, provided some characterization for my wizard, but spent my time thinking about how to make everyone else feel important without obviously doing stupid stuff.

The big exception, of course, is low-level Basic/Expert or AD&D, where a wizard player practically needs that mindset to stay alive. I wonder sometimes if the early D&D school of wizard hard knocks hasn't trained into the players the idea that the wizard must grasp for every advantage, with this passing down through the versions by osmosis.

 

[mlund]

And then there's category C. I love playing a swiss army knife wizard with a handful of scrolls, a few wands, and preparing for and being able to counter or disrupt most things. I just won't do it in 3.X because it is too easy.

Yup. Pretty much. My first long-running 3E character was an Arcane Trickster from Tome and Blood. Even with bad caster-levels I was still head-and-shoulders more useful than any two non-casters. It was way too easy.

I like it because it's meant to be a challenge and that I use preparation and quick thinking to make sure I have a good enough tool for the job. When I played that sort of character in 4e the results were messy even at low heroic to the point that I retired my wizard. In 3.X my swiss army knife of choice is the bard - that way I actually need to work.

Yup, as I moved into 3.5 I transitioned over to Bards so I could do some things the old-fashioned way. The fact that I could still abuse wands and scrolls to death was always a temptation, so I stayed away from crafting and often spent wealth buffing my nigh irrelevant personal melee and ranged attacks or buying real-estate.

The power-gamer in me never let me break the addiction to Save-or-Lose spells like Glitterdust, Silence, Hold, Charm, Dominate, etc. though.

And then there was that Beguiler ... oi ... that Beguiler ...

- Marty Lund

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And then there's category C. I love playing a swiss army knife wizard with a handful of scrolls, a few wands, and preparing for and being able to counter or disrupt most things. I just won't do it in 3.X because it is too easy. I like it because it's meant to be a challenge and that I use preparation and quick thinking to make sure I have a good enough tool for the job. When I played that sort of character in 4e the results were messy even at low heroic to the point that I retired my wizard. In 3.X my swiss army knife of choice is the bard - that way I actually need to work.

Yeah, oddly I found my 4e super utility wizard to be QUITE fun. Clearly if you have a moderately permissive or at least non-dickish AD&D DM you can probably get more utility out of your 2e utility wizard, at least at higher levels, but the great thing with the 4e one to me was that I had a good bit of flexibility right off, but it still took a good bit of cleverness to really push it to the hilt. Even so I quickly found my 4e wizard could really hog the spotlight pretty well if I wasn't careful. It wasn't bad with other experienced players, but in a less 4e savvy group it almost felt like old times... Once you hit paragon it gets pretty crazy too. The other characters generally catch up on the utility side but you also tend to pile it on pretty well on the fighting side.

 

[haakon1]

AD&D . . . Once we hit maybe 9th level [my ranger] simply wasn't relevant to accomplishing the overall goals of the party. The character was perfectly effective at hacking things to death, but there was no conceivable way any enemy you could face at that point who wasn't utterly incompetent or inconsequential was going to be stupid enough to let a non-caster within 100 miles of him. It was downright odd to be a major protagonist and just sort of be carried along.

My experience with AD&D is a bit different in that regard. Rangers were super effective at first level (my 1st level ranger did well in Hommlett with double anyone else's hit points), but for 9th level and above, my experience was:

-- We didn't do a lot of play at "name levels" (9th or higher). We never rose beyond maybe 11th level? We just started over when things reached that level.

-- The big adventure for our high level folks was with a group of ~9 characters of 7th-11th level. We did the Giant series and the Drow series. Most of the PC's survived it. We were each playing more than one PC, and all had been grown from 1st level. I had a Fighter (7th level elf - max level) and a Cleric (11th level human). My Ranger was dead before that "super campaign", where we brought together all the high level PC's who'd survived, from all the campaigns we'd played, so I don't know how a Ranger would have felt at those levels.

Nobody felt over or under powered -- my elf fighter was just fine, but he'd been very lucky with HP (61). Some days of travel were one fight-a-day scenarios. Others were long strings of adventure and combat, where we were being chased by giants, sneaking around the Vault of the Drow, infiltrating the Kuo-Toan city, etc. -- lots of small encounters with weak to medium powered stuff, which fighter types excell at, the opposite of the 15 minute work day since camping out really wasn't a safe option in hostile territory with a city full of enemies about.

The coolest thing I can remember is when, on a random encounter while traveling, we got ambushed by mind flayers. Every PC went down except my cleric. He prayed for divine intervention. The DM looked up the rules in the DMG -- roll a D20, roll high. I got a 00 and got my miracle zapping dead of the last illithid.

At LEAST in my 4e experience you could play the fighter and not be second-string when it came to a fight or at least SOME other types of problems.

I only played one 4e campaign, and only to 5th level. My experience with a paladin was that he was very much weaker than I was used to (in AD&D and 3e) -- more or less the same HP, AC, and saves as everyone else, even though he was expected to take the bulk of the enemy attacks as the lineman, very much unlike earlier editions where the Fighter-types easily could have 2-3x the arcane caster's HP and much better AC.

My combat experience was to usually miss, it took many many hits to make any progress (as opposed to weak foes doing down with 1-2 good hits in earlier editions), and he got knocked out frequently -- such that it usually made more sense to blow the encounter powers as quick as I could, before I went down again. Lots of rope-a-dope wounded for 12 hp, regain 12 hp, hit the monster for 12 hp, it's still not bloodied yet in round 6 stuff . . . it felt like playing Chekov . . .

Notably more effective than the rest of us were the Ranger archer and one of the arcane casters who did direct offensive spells.

I LIKE the way there's less of a huge gulf in mechanics between all the classes.
. . .
Honestly I think all the hew and cry about "every class needs different mechanics" is just going to make all these problems worse again.

I take the opposite "vive la difference" view. It'll be interesting to see if one game can make us both happy.

 

[Grammarsalad]

My theory is, people who worry about 15 minute adventuring day and Angel Summoner + BMX Bandit issues aren't actually people who LIKE playing Fighter types.

My theory comes from Fighter types being my favorite, and never having felt they were "broken" or weak.

Let's test it, shall we?

My suggestion: don't let your participants in on your hypothesis.

 

[Lanefan]

... roll a D20, roll high. I got a 00 ...

Not bad for a d20.

Lanefan

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, see the funny thing is there's a paladin and a ranger in the game I'm running now. A few weeks ago I threw a really heavily overleveled encounter at this party, with like 15 at level pirates and a couple of other things. It was pretty classic for this group. The paladin just kept getting pounded and pounded on. She's got like 6 pirates all whaling on her and getting CA and triggering extra damage. OK, so yeah, the character does only modest damage compared to the ranger or the stabby rogue, but still, she's taking hits for the rogue, taking stupid amounts of hits herself, and tying down half the encounter while the ranger and the wizard get to run around at least moderately unimpeded.

It is possible to create some dull characters, and not always intentionally. There's always kind of a point where I find that things pretty well gel for the whole party and everyone sorts out exactly how they do their thing in relation to the other PCs. You take a feat or two maybe or switch around a power and I really have yet to find a character in our games that didn't find their place in a fight. Outside of that it is a little more hit and miss, but if the DM is paying a little attention you should be able to engage any PC pretty reliably.

Anyway, I think relying on "slog things down to 0 hit points" worked OK in AD&D but it is a bad way to build most 4e encounters. Now and then it can work if the situation is open ended enough, but pretty much every fight begs to be an action movie scene with more interesting elements. Maybe if that aspect is ignored then everyone is left with nothing but 'what the book says my power did' to rely on for some interest. I don't know. I do know I found out rather quickly that 4e definitely wants things driven forward in other ways besides gambling with dice. I'd rather the focus wasn't on all sorts of different power mechanics but more on the action. Just making them all basically 'the same' at some abstract level CAN stop people from worrying about that and let them pay more attention to what's going on.

 

[Lanefan]

Anyway, I think relying on "slog things down to 0 hit points" worked OK in AD&D ...

There's a reason for this: it usually wasn't much of a slog. Most monsters simply didn't have very many h.p., so if you could hit them hard they'd either go down, run away, or be easy pickin's next round. Failing that, they'd hit you hard, same result the other way. In any case the combat was short.

Sure, occasionally you'd get situations where the AC of both combatants far outstripped their ability to hit*, and those would go on for a while. But those are uncommon at worst, and more likely quite rare; and can happen in any edition.

* - worst case of this I ever saw was a mid-level Fighter who had put all her wealth into defensive items - had by far the best AC in the game, but limited offense - aaand she went through a Mirror of Opposition and met her own clone, which had the same equipment.

That one took 38 rounds. I counted. I can't remember if each needed a natural 20 to hit the other, or whether a 19 would do, but it was something like that. The only saving grace was that as it was a one-on-one fight each round went by really fast!

Lanefan

 

[Elf Witch]

I don't usually play fighters mainly because while I think they are awesome in smacking things around they don't have any skills for outside of combat. I find that limiting.

Looking at my favorite characters one was a fighter I brought her in I think at 11 level. I had rolled really well so I was able to have really nice stats in STR CON INT CHR. I took two levels of the noble from Rokugan which gave me some nice social classe skills and since we were playing Kalamar I took a feat that allowed me to pick a certain amount of cross class skills as class skills.

So she was of royal birth I had knowledge of nobility and royalty , diplomacy, bluff and sense motive. I got pluses using those skills in social situations. I also took knowledge history.

I don't think she would have been as much fun to play if I had been stuck with a 32 point buy and starting at first level.

Mostly when I play I prefer sorcerers, paladins and bards.

I never worry that I am not balanced or that some one is more powerful than I am. I care that my character has some way to contribute to the things I enjoy the most which are the role playing, puzzle solving and political intrigue.


Since I prefer those more than combat I play characters that can be good at those things.

I would love to see fighters given more options but not just to be better at killing things but in the other stuff as well.

When I DM I only worry about balance if I have a situation where I have a major powergamer at the table who refuses to share the spotlight.

 

[haakon1]

I don't usually play fighters mainly because while I think they are awesome in smacking things around they don't have any skills for outside of combat. I find that limiting.

It depends on whether "outside combat" is strictly about skill checks, or about more open ending role-playing of a more AD&D style. If it's more about just talking to NPC's in character, rather than Perform checks, Diplomacy checks, Gather Information checks, etc., class rules and skill points aren't as key. It's not like Fighters are mute . . .

The way I run it is skill checks are when something difficult comes up. You want to convince someone to change their mind. Talking to the stable boy or the gate guard isn't a skill check. Talking them into telling you what's in other inn guest's saddle bags, or letting you bring a kobold "guest" into town, those would be tell me what you're saying + skill check.

When I'm talking about Fighter-types, I mean Fighter + Ranger + Paladin, and Rangers have a lot of skill points, of course, while Paladins have Diplomacy as a class skill. I've often seen Paladins in the "face" role -- my 3e and 4e Paladins were usually the best at Diplomacy in the party.

About nobility, I pretty much let below take any background they want. I never had anybody ask for "heir to the throne" or even heir to a noble title, but I've had 2nd son of an important noble, distant bastard cousin of the king, and a daughter of the bishop. For me, there's no money or skill points from those, but it influences NPC's reactions in roleplaying. For example, #1 and #3 on that list find it easier to get in to TALK to a nobleman, but no guarantee of success -- just more likely to talk the servants into giving them access, rather than telling them to go away.