The Essentials Fighter

[Tony Vargas]

One of those problems being that the classes largely play the same. This is in my experience, not just on paper. Swordmages, assassins, barbarians, shamans, invokers, all play the same powers metagame, all gaining vaguely equivalents options (attack vs. defense = damage + role-dependent effect) at exactly the same rate and recharging them at exactly the same rate.

Yep. That's how 4e cracked the problem of class imbalance that had plagued D&D from it's inception. No longer did one class only get to shine when others sucked, everyone gets to have fun. No longer does the DM have to finagle his story around to challenge and provide spotlight time to the wildly different talents of the unlimitted-use-abilities of the damage-grinding fighter or skill-heavy rogue vs the one-shot uberpower of spells and whacky brokenness of psionics.

Of course, while all classes face nearly-identical resource-management isuses (and are thus much, much easier to balance against eachother), they still do differ greatly in 'fluff,' and each role is quite distinct. A fighter plays nothing like a rogue, even though they're both martial and both have the same number and useability of powers. A fighter played like a rogue will be ineffective, a rogue played like a fighter will be ineffective, briedly, before he dies. Wizards and Invokers play pretty similary, but Warlords and Clerics really don't. If you can get past the universality of general mechanics like power progression and keywords, the classes become quite distinct in feel. If you can't, then, yeah, Thunderwave and Tide of Iron will seem frustratingly similar to you.



When people used to whine endlessly about class balance if 'Fighter SUX' threads and CoDzilla rants, I'd point out that it could all be fixed - it just wouldn't really be D&D anymore. I believe 4e proved my point. 4e has achieved class balance, and made the DM's task much easier. It's done so with a bit of elegance and a bit of kludginess, but it hasn't been able to hold onto quite all of the D&D feel. Far more than I expected, but not enough for everyone.


I'm afraid Essentials may be trying to get some of that back, by again giving us classes that feel different on a mechanical level - and, as a consequence, cannot be balanced with eachother save through heroic effort on the part of the DM.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Thing is, there's no such thing as perfect balance.

No, really. There just isn't.

Even classes built on the same skeleton, like the "4E classic" characters, are only almost balanced. There's simply no way to ensure that one class's combination of powers, class features, and available feats and weapons don't synergize a little bit better, under every circumstance, than another class's combination of powers, features, feats, etc.

All any game can do is strive to make them balanced enough.

And that's all I ask of the Essentials classes, too. I really and truly don't care if the knight is worse than the fighter if he's dazed for the entirety of the combat, or if the knight is better because a combination of feats give him a bonus to hit, in one particular stance, that's 1 point higher than what the other fighter can get.

As long as no class outshines the others on a regular basis--as long as the classes are all equal a majority of the time--and as long as the class's feel and built are fun to play for someone, well, that's absolutely sufficient.

 

[FireLance]

Thing is, there's no such thing as perfect balance.

No, really. There just isn't.

Even classes built on the same skeleton, like the "4E classic" characters, are only almost balanced. There's simply no way to ensure that one class's combination of powers, class features, and available feats and weapons don't synergize a little bit better, under every circumstance, than another class's combination of powers, features, feats, etc.

All any game can do is strive to make them balanced enough.

Quoted fur truth.

And if you ask me, IMO, YMMV and all that, the base 4E engine is strong enough that a little more imbalance, at least, to the extent that we've seen with the Essentials line so far, isn't going to break it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Thing is, there's no such thing as perfect balance.

No, there's not. There's no such thing as 'perfectly safe,' either, but I'll still put on my seat belt.

The classes in AD&D (1&2) were hardly balanced at all, and some of the attempts at 'balance' were quite the opposite of what we tend to think of as balance, today (a class's superior features would be 'balanced' by higher stat requirements - yeah, right).

3.x a DM could get to balance if he ran multiple-encounter days with a wide variety of challenges and relatively little 'telegraphing' of what challenges might be like - and if the players didn't powergame too agressively. It was very difficult, but possible.

4e is adequately balanced out of the box. Encounters are reasonably balanced if you just follow the DMG guidelines - which are not hard to follow at all. Classes are reasonably balanced if you're all powergaming at about the same level (from not at all, to fairly agressively), though, of course, talented optimizers /can/ and do break the system, there's little danger of sneaking such abominations past a DM.

All any game can do is strive to make them balanced enough.

Sure, and 4e has accomplished that handily, while 3.x was only potentially balanced, if the DM worked hard enough at it, and the players behaved themselves.

And that's all I ask of the Essentials classes, too. I really and truly don't care if the knight is worse than the fighter if he's dazed for the entirety of the combat, or if the knight is better because a combination of feats give him a bonus to hit, in one particular stance, that's 1 point higher than what the other fighter can get.

The relative balance of the Knight is more fundamentally problematic than an odd corner case like that. If it really turns out to have minimal daily resource-management issues, then it simply won't be balanced with the standard 4e classes. It'll be overshadowed durring 'short' adventuring days, and could dominate in unusually 'long ones.' It's more complex than that, of course.

What it comes down to, though, is that when all classes share similar (not even identical) resource-management issues and have similarly-balanced sets of limitted- and unlimitted-use powers, the DM doesn't have to worry much about the number, variety, or predictability of his encounters. He might through a too easy or too hard day at the party, or he might have a definite style that he tends towards (a lot of DMs like to have infrequent, but very tough, encounters, for instance), but it won't create class-balance issues, whatever he does. When classes have very different resource-management issue, yes, they have been differentiated in a heavy-handed, mechanical way that is impossible to miss, but, they also become imbalanced relative to eachother if the DM deviates from a certain 'sweet spot' in terms of pacing and challenge. If he deviates in a given direction consistently, it becomes problematic.

As long as no class outshines the others on a regular basis--as long as the classes are all equal a majority of the time--and as long as the class's feel and built are fun to play for someone, well, that's absolutely sufficient.

That's actually what I'm saying. You put a class like a 3.x Fighter and a class like a 3.x Wizard in the same party, and there's an excellent chance one will outshine the other on a regular basis. No class in 4e is quite like the 3.x Wizard or CoDzilla - yet, the Mage only edges very slightly in that direction. The Knight is treading dangerously close to being like the 3.x Fighter, having a small set of always-available abilities of apropriately modest power.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Thing is, there's no such thing as perfect balance.

No, really. There just isn't.

Even classes built on the same skeleton, like the "4E classic" characters, are only almost balanced. There's simply no way to ensure that one class's combination of powers, class features, and available feats and weapons don't synergize a little bit better, under every circumstance, than another class's combination of powers, features, feats, etc.

All any game can do is strive to make them balanced enough.

And that's all I ask of the Essentials classes, too. I really and truly don't care if the knight is worse than the fighter if he's dazed for the entirety of the combat, or if the knight is better because a combination of feats give him a bonus to hit, in one particular stance, that's 1 point higher than what the other fighter can get.

As long as no class outshines the others on a regular basis--as long as the classes are all equal a majority of the time--and as long as the class's feel and built are fun to play for someone, well, that's absolutely sufficient.

Absolutely! No argument.

It just entirely puzzles me when I hear people say that because fighters and wizards both have 2 at-will powers, an encounter, and a daily at level 1 that there is ANY degree of 'sameness' at all beyond what's always existed in D&D. I literally find the assertion non-sensical. I don't even agree with Aegeri that characters are similar at level 1. There are a few classes that are FAIRLY similar. Wizards and Invokers are both AoE heavy controllers, so OK there's some similarity in how they play, mechanically, for a while. Still, drop those 2 characters into an encounter full of undead and the difference is night and day. They have quite different fluff too.

Now I really defy anyone to tell me that a 1st level brutal scoundrel rogue, a 1st level starlock, and a 1st level dragon sorcerer play ANYTHING alike. They simply don't. Nothing about the way those 3 classes approach an encounter is going to be similar. They are no more similar than analogous 3.5 classes.

And lets be clear, the entire point has been debated ENTIRELY in terms of combat, where the similarities in 4e are the largest. Outside of combat characters are quite distinct. The distinctions may fall a little less strictly in terms of class than in the old days but really probably not much more or less so than in 3.5.

Really, I think the knight will play fine. I'm not really convinced it brings as much new to the game as some people seem to believe but it I'm pretty sure the 4e devs are well able to handle making it work well enough.

 

[FireLance]

The relative balance of the Knight is more fundamentally problematic than an odd corner case like that. If it really turns out to have minimal daily resource-management issues, then it simply won't be balanced with the standard 4e classes. It'll be overshadowed durring 'short' adventuring days, and could dominate in unusually 'long ones.' It's more complex than that, of course.

Indeed. The real crux of the issue is: overshadowed by how much? Dominating by how much? Will it be something noticeable by the average player, or will it take advanced number crunching to show that one will theoretically deal on average an additional hit point of damage per round?

Don't forget that in 4E, the difference isn't between zero and forty or more daily powers. It's more like possibly zero (if a paragon path without daily powers exists, and the knight has absolutely no once-per-day type abilities) and four.

 

[Jack99]

That's actually what I'm saying. You put a class like a 3.x Fighter and a class like a 3.x Wizard in the same party, and there's an excellent chance one will outshine the other on a regular basis. No class in 4e is quite like the 3.x Wizard or CoDzilla - yet, the Mage only edges very slightly in that direction. The Knight is treading dangerously close to being like the 3.x Fighter, having a small set of always-available abilities of apropriately modest power.

Seriously? Did you just say that the mage is gravitating towards 3.x wizard/CoDzilla status?

Could you please explain which powers/abilities available to the mage made you say that?

 

[Aegeri]

You know, for the first time ever on this forum someone has managed to lose me with an acronym. What is "CoDzilla"?

Even classes built on the same skeleton, like the "4E classic" characters, are only almost balanced. There's simply no way to ensure that one class's combination of powers, class features, and available feats and weapons don't synergize a little bit better, under every circumstance, than another class's combination of powers, features, feats, etc.

I agree, but the core point is that while there are peaks and valleys in this, there is nothing that spikes up so much that you need to design the game around it. There is also nothing in 4E, except maybe a beast master druid, that is so utterly terrible you cannot play it and contribute at every level. That's a true triumph of 4E as a system and I'd like to see that continue.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

You know, for the first time ever on this forum someone has managed to lose me with an acronym. What is "CoDzilla"?

Cleric or Druid as Godzilla as I understand it.
Refers to the ability to design builds of these classes in 3.x that beats pretty much everything else into a cocked hat.

 

[Oldtimer]

You know, for the first time ever on this forum someone has managed to lose me with an acronym. What is "CoDzilla"?

Cleric or Druid Godzilla

That's Charop-speak for a heavily optimized cleric or druid that dominates both melee and spells.

Curses, ninja'd by mere seconds...