The defender's masochism

[Dausuul]

There's a difference if you want, but knowing that the base premise in a battle is that two teams (the "PCs" and the "monsters") are attacking each other until one slays the other, saying "don't attack my friends" is equivalent to saying "attack me" from where I'm standing. They're not starting from a standoff where everyone has the choice to attack or not; they're in a battle, the fighter, on his turn, moves in and marks his opponents. There is a difference in terminology to which I agree, but the end result is essentially the same.

Okay. So what? You have a party in which there is one guy in robes and one guy in full plate armor. They are collectively going to eat X attacks. By your reckoning, they cannot avoid eating X attacks. Why is it crazy and unrealistic that the guy in full plate armor tries to get most of those attacks to come at him instead of at the guy in robes?

When you put heavy infantry in front of the archers, this is the exact same strategy. Your army is going to eat X guys with pointy sticks charging you on horseback. You want those attacks to go at the folks with shields and breastplates and pointy sticks of their own, instead of at the guys in leather with bows. Sure, the heavy infantry don't have a Defender Aura, but physical positioning makes an adequate substitute.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm sorry, but just because your favourite version of D&D made it impossible to play a guy who guarded his friends, doesn't mean it SHOULD be impossible.

Hey, it's never been /impossible/. Difficult, yes, dependent on the DM, often, but never impossible. In paleo-D&D fights often took place in doorways and 10' corridors - choke points. A fighter or two blocking the way were the only possible targets of monsters who lacked ranged attacks - and there wasn't a whole lot of moving characters around, either.

In 3.x, OAs could make carefully built fighters fairly good at discouraging enemies from closing or moving past them to get at the rest of the party - given some constraint in the environment (though a choke 'point' for an enlarged spiked-chain fighter could be 50' across). Lots of enemies could make a hash of that sort of 'defense,' but it was something.

4e does a much better job, mechanically, of supporting the defender role, though the frequency of push/pull/slide powers and more open, dynamic combats make the role, itself, harder, as well.

One thing that'd really help is making mark-punishment, but not the mark penalty, contingent on making 'attacks that don't include the fighter.' It gets too trivially easy for monsters with Close attacks to evade marks entirely. That -2 should always be there.

 

[Leatherhead]

So playing a tough character is, well, pointless. Because if you're tougher than your ally, the monsters have no reason to go for you.

I'm sorry, but just because your favourite version of D&D made it impossible to play a guy who guarded his friends, doesn't mean it SHOULD be impossible.

It's a pretty standard mythic scenario, holding back the foe, protecting your ally. But, according to you, it should be impossible.

Tough characters get to charge headlong into combat and break up formations.

 

[billd91]

So playing a tough character is, well, pointless. Because if you're tougher than your ally, the monsters have no reason to go for you.

I'm sorry, but just because your favourite version of D&D made it impossible to play a guy who guarded his friends, doesn't mean it SHOULD be impossible.

It's a pretty standard mythic scenario, holding back the foe, protecting your ally. But, according to you, it should be impossible.

A couple of things here:

1) They aren't always going to know you're tougher than your ally. Lots of low-intelligence monsters out there that won't necessarily be able to tell that one little guy is tougher than another little guy.

2) It's a role playing game and that applies to the DM too. Some of those guys like the orc barbarian will want to engage the fighter mano a mano to prove their mettle. And some will avoid it like the plague no matter if the fighter "marks" them or not.

3) Like Tony Vargas said, it's never been impossible. But various editions have provided different ways to do it, ranging from being a bit more simulative (you need advantageous terrain to do it) or gamist (mechanics just "do it", no matter the situation). Frankly, the former works for me and my role playing style more than the latter, but then the tactical board game aspect of RPGs isn't why I play them.

 

[keterys]

Huge piles of hitpoints that must be agonizingly whittled down stretched out the length of combats meaning that more incoming damage than ever had to to funneled somewhere because the monsters average hp were so many magnitudes above the PC's.

Every now and then, I'm reminded that people must be playing a different game than I am. When I design 4E adventures I have to put fair effort into making the combats not end in the first round / letting key NPCs getting a chance to act so they can say or do something before they die

And even then, it's a crazy rare combat that takes more than 3 rounds.

End of the day - there _is_ a happy medium between rocket tag (who goes first? Okay, they kill the encounter) and the nerf grind (Did you seriously just do 8 damage at level 22, when I have 200 hp?). That point may vary from person to person, of course.

At the end of the day, the hp inflation from OD&D to more modern editions is counterbalanced by an increase in damage. An old fighter might do 15 damage, whereas a 3e full attacking hasted barbarian could clear 200 no problem, and a 4e ranger might blow that away for 400 or more.

HP-wise, PCs in 4e start higher than any other edition, but so does most damage (3d8+6 damage at 1st level? Sure!), and they increase slower than many editions. Certainly PCs in 3e almost universally had higher hp. Even mages with 1d4+2 at 1st would grow to 1d4+5 at higher level, and 4e classes don't tend to get more than 5 per level.

 

[TwinBahamut]

How about because "powers" for fighters just don't make much sense unless the assumption is that everyone is a superhero from level 1, then it works. For those that are not looking for Marvel four color in a fantasy game THAT doesn't work.

....and round and round it goes........

...

I really don't know what to say to this...

...

I hate superheroes, for the most part. Well, comic books, anyways. Don't read DC or Marvel stuff at all. The occassional TV show is nice, like the old Batman animated series, or Tiger and Bunny, but for the most part I avoid anything resembling superheroes like the plague. I would hate for D&D to actually take a lot of inspiration from them and replace its fantasy tropes with superhero tropes. Anime and videogame tropes? Great. Trappings of myth? Wonderful! Superheroes? Blegh.

I really like 4E, though.

I also really like martial weapon combat that doesn't devolve into the inanity of "I attack," too. That's just boring. Hurrah for the idea of "combat techniques" or "maneuvers" that means I don't have to be utterly bored when playing a D&D martial character.

 

[Someone]

The defender's masochism

Well, not exactly. Take the battlemind, for example. He can plant a compulsion that causes excruciating pain on an enemy that attacks anyone... who isn't the battlemind. So it's more like "punish me or I'll punish you", which makes it sadomasochism.

Or in other words:

How to deal with thieves, 4e style

We'll make a special force whith the task of dealing with thieves. These will be called "police". The police force will closely monitor thieves, and allow them to exclusively steal from policemen, harrassing them and hitting them on the head with a cane when they try to steal from anyone who's not a police officer. Policemen's houses will of course be heavily protected with solid doors and barred windows so it's more difficult for thieves to enter and steal from them.

Meanwhile we'll create a separate force whose task will be to replace the goods and money stolen from the policemen's houses. There's much debate as if this new force should exclude atheists from their ranks.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Every now and then, I'm reminded that people must be playing a different game than I am. When I design 4E adventures I have to put fair effort into making the combats not end in the first round / letting key NPCs getting a chance to act so they can say or do something before they die

Wow...you must be playing a different game. I love 4e, but unless the key NPC is a standard monster(and not elite or solo), that's nearly impossible unless your group is really big powergamers. Without big power gaming, the entire group would have to gang up on one NPC to take them out in a round.

And even then, it's a crazy rare combat that takes more than 3 rounds.

Not sure what level monsters you are using. That happens when I use level 8 monsters against a level 8 party, for sure. But most of the time I use level 9 or 10 monsters against a level 8 party. And I make sure there is one monster per PC.

I guess a party that was 50% or greater strikers might be able to do it. Or it might happen in a battle that everyone used their dailies. But it's rare to have a battle end in less than 5 rounds for us. Which is the way we like it, so I'm not complaining. I hate short battles.

 

[Kingreaper]

Hey, it's never been /impossible/.

There's never been an edition where it was impossible. EW apparently favours games where the only way to save your allies is to kill the enemies faster, so EW favours a VERSION of D&D where it's impossible.

There are far more versions of D&D than there are editions, due to the variability of houserules etc.


EDIT: as I've said before, I don't really care much how it's done, but I want to be able to stand in the way and guard my allies, and have it be meaningful and effective.

And I want to be able to do this without having to cheesebuild my character into something like the Tripmeister 3,000, who trips you if you stand up from being tripped.

(In fact, I'm quite hopeful that 5th will render more classes capable of picking up proper defensive techniques, as the most recent Ro3 suggested that defender mechanics will be spread about)

 

[Hassassin]

You know, it is hard to agree with you when you are advocating giving up a set of abilities that made the Fighter effective and fun in order to revert back to the list of abilities he had when he was weak and boring.

Make the abilities that were always there better and give the fighter extra bonuses when using them.

I don't like the addition of a new mechanic when the existing ones are lacking.

E.g. Fight Defensively (-X attack, +Y AC); Aid Another (use attacks to give +Z to adjacent character) => Defend Another (-A attack, +B AC to adjacent character)

(Balance X, Y, Z, A, B to match other abilities)