The Essentials Fighter

[Remathilis]

Hey, people wanted to know how people could view 4e's classes as "samey". I gave you examples. You have every right to reject my examples, but keep this in mind...

1.) PHB3 and Essentials BOTH show that there was some call for mechanical diversity between classes. Psionics was a test run, Essentials (so far) has let the cat out the bag.
2.) If everything was hunky-dory in will/encounter/daily-ville, I doubt we'd be seeing such a radical change for a basic set. Moreover, we'd probably just see a few predefined builds using the existing power-structure, so as to integrate better with the previous materials, Char Builder, etc.
3.) They wouldn't be trying to appeal not only to new players BUT ALSO to lapsed players such as myself who quit after PHB2 and is quite happy to be running Pathfinder.

Essentials has me excited about D&D/4e for the first time since PHB2 (at which time, I found I was have less fun playing 4e than I was 3e). Still, if I'm wrong, I guess I can continue to give my money to Paizo...

 

[Old Gumphrey]

I can't WAIT to see what the rogue does!

It's going to "do damage" with a sneak attack/backstab mechanic, and have a bunch of miscellaneous "thief" abilities to go along with that. It will be ruinously boring.

 

[mkill]

It's going to "do damage" with a sneak attack/backstab mechanic, and have a bunch of miscellaneous "thief" abilities to go along with that. It will be ruinously boring.

Some people judge classes based on how they play.
Some people judge classes by how they look when played by others.
Some people judge classes by what they look like on paper.
Some people judge classes by a half-baked preview.
You... well I don't know, I guess you're psychic or something, and probably regenerate unless you take fire and acid damage.

 

[pemerton]

You CAN, however, play a ranger like a warlock in 4e.

I liked your first couple of posts on this topic, but with this one I think you've overreached.

In a certain sense I can play a 3E wizard like a 3E fighter - engaging foes in close combat and trying to hit them with my staff - but as a strategy it will become obviously unsuccessful within the first couple of rounds of play.

The same is true for the archer ranger and the warlock. The archer ranger is (in my exprience) very easy to play just by pointing and shooting. The warlock, on the other hand, has to do all sorts of tricky stuff to make up for its poorer baseline damage, for example by taking advantage of the possibilities for mobility opened up by its shadowwalk, its Misty Step and Eyebite (in the case of a Feylock), etc. Played like an archer ranger a warlock will be obviously inferior.

 

[pemerton]

ITwo PCs are different not by rules, but by roleplaying

Personally I'm not all that interested in this as the measure of PC difference. If the PCs are different, I want this reflected in the mechanics.

Now, there are all sorts of ways of reflecting this difference in the mechanics - 3E at-will fighter vs Vancian mage is one, 4e Tide of Iron vs Thunderwave is another - and as it happens I'm quite partial to the 4e approach. (Although there are other non-D&D ways of doing it that I also quite like, such as Rolemaster.)

One way of cashing out my desire for mechanics to matter is this example: if part of my PC's background is that I'm a grubby street urchin, then the rules of the game should reflect this when I attempt a skill challenge invovling infiltrating the Duke's castle (eg the mechanics should make it easier for me to infiltrate via the scullery than the throneroom - the game shouldn't simply rely on me to make that choice because it is consistent with my background). Conversely, if my PC is a titled member of the nobility, that should make it harder for my PC to successfully use Stealth in the same skill challenge.

And whether I infiltrate by using Stealth, or via the scullery, or via the throneroom, should in turn make a difference to how the encounter plays out.

Of games I'm familiar with, the ones that make this sort of mechanical differentiation most front-and-centre are 4e (in combat, and to a very high degree with both tactical and roleplaying ramifications), and HeroQuest and Hubris Games's Maelstrom (in the full range of encounters, but at a more abstract level of resolution than 4e combat). Outside of combat 4e can approximate to the approach that I like if skill challenges are used in a certain way, but the actual support for this approach from the skill challenge rules themselves is a bit underdeveloped, at least at this stage of the game's development. (Although I think it is better supported than many critics of skill challenges assert - especially post-DMG 2.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

Regardless of how a wizard uses his powers, he can't duplicate the knight's ability to lock down monsters and hold them back. The real problems in terms of balance come up when class X is strictly better than class Y at almost everything, to the point that the "smart" move (in terms of overcoming obstacles) is to call on X whenever possible.

Interesting. That would explain how you can get away with giving Controllers such remarkable potent at-wills and versatile utilities compared, say to Defenders. I'm still not sure I entirely see it, but it's interesting.

Still, you have to retain class balance within each role. If the Knight isn't up to snuff, it'll be ignored and people will keep playing Fighters. If the Knight is able to compete with Fighters, Swordmages and the like in circumstances where they get to make liberal use of their dailies, it'll overshadow them when the dailies run out or need to be conserved.

You'll have balance like you had in 1e and 3e - balanced in the long run, on average, but with big situational and campaign-specific swings that can include one class or another sucking or dominating throughout a given campaign. A much less robust sort of balance.

Putting everyone on the same schedule of powers can help, but it helps a lot more to give each role some area of expertise that the other roles don't intrude upon.

The same 'schedule of powers' puts everyone on the same resource-management footing, which made the classes much better balanced and the DMs job much easier.

Backsliding and giving different classes radically different resource-management issues would make the game harder for you to balance - and harder for each DM to keep balanced.

Hopefully, Essentials will be more along the lines of what we've seen of the Mage and Warpriest so far - edging a bit towards the classics, but mainly in feel - and the Knight's yet-to-be-detailed features will turn out to put it on more even footing with 4e classes like the Fighter, in terms of both overall effectiveness and resource-management.

 

[Tony Vargas]

As two your question about about melee combatants, I could build a melee that...

Seems like these are all doable in 4e, too.

The main difference is that in 4e, there's generally a very clear build that lets you do something from level one on, while in 3.x you often had to craft an unintuitive build that only 'matured' at some later level.

a.) Fought Sword and Board, defending allies.

Defender Fighter or Paladin.

b.) Went Two-handed, power-attack and massive damage.

Greatweapon Fighter or Barbarian (or Avenger, for that matter).

c.) Spring-Attacked into-and-out-of combat.

Rogue does quite a bit of this.

d.) Dual-Wielded two blades.

TWF Ranger, Tempest Fighter.

e.) Dealt massive damage in exchange to lower-to hit and defense (rogue)

OK, you got me, here, nothing sucks quite that hard in 4e. You don't have to give up much to-hit to get in good damage. Afterall, giving up to-hit to do 'more damage' can very easily do /less/ damage throughput.

f.) Raged, improving his physical scores. (barbarian).

Well, barbarians do still rage. And, there's Battlerager fighters.

g.) Used Smites and Divine spells to boost combat ability (paladin).

They're called 'prayers,' now, but aside from that Paladins, Clerics and Avengers can all do that.

h.) Used Hexes and debuffs to weaken foes (hexblade)

The Warlock certainly curses & debuffs enemies pretty nastily. A Scourge Warlock does so while weathering melee, and a pact blade can be a shortsword or rapier if you want the sword-wielding feel.

i.) Did extra damage when he moved around the battlefield (scout)

Well, some /monsters/ do that now. The Ranger does this indirectly. With HQ going on the nearest target and Prime Shot, mobility to get in close and out again is a feature of the class.

j.) Didn't need strength to be effective (swashbuckler/duelist and somewhat rogue)

Thanks to melee training, that's everyone. Rogue, big time, if you like DEX, though.

k.) Could strike multiple times per day with his bare hands, dealing damage equal to steal weapons and perhaps stunning his foes while doing so (monk).

Monk's still beating on people with his bare hands. The Brawling Fighter can do a bit of that, too, and some fun grappling moves.

l.) Could use a powers system like spellcasting to augment powerful attacks (Tome of Battle classes)

ToB was a warm-up to 4e, which has Stances, encounters and dailies to beef up melee performance quite nicely.

m.) Could quickly cast offensive spells while fighting in melee (duskblade)

Heck, wizards can cast spells in melee (Close spells, like Thunderwave). The Swordmage is the more obvious analog, though.

All the archetypes you mention are covered. They're done with fewer, more flexible mechanics (like keywords), and with much better balance across classes.

One thing 3.x did well that 4e doesn't, on the melee front, though, is the 'tactical reach fighter' or 'battlefield control' build. I'm surprised you missed that.

Yeah, all of them used the d20 to resolve hit/damage, but each introduced a different unique mechanic show off its classes focus.

Which went a long way towards hopelessly breaking 3.x, too. Each new mechanic potentially interacts with each prior mechanic to spawn broken combos and system breakdowns.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

All the archetypes you mention are covered. They're done with fewer, more flexible mechanics (like keywords), and with much better balance across classes.

One thing 3.x did well that 4e doesn't, on the melee front, though, is the 'tactical reach fighter' or 'battlefield control' build. I'm surprised you missed that.

Heh, its a trip to charops for you! FWT fighter, glaive, HBO, Polearm Gamble, Polearm Momentum, lots of dex, Tide of Iron, you can literally make a fighter that can hold up to eight monsters semi-adjacent and give them ZERO chance to ever escape. Its a very cute build and despised by DMs the world over. Does take 10 levels to get fully baked though.

Which went a long way towards hopelessly breaking 3.x, too. Each new mechanic potentially interacts with each prior mechanic to spawn broken combos and system breakdowns.

THIS is the key really. 3.x certainly had PLENTY of 'mechanical diversity' but the problem was 80% of the stuff in the books either ended up being horribly broken or utterly ineffective. It was a system filled with bad choices and I honestly think the whole reason 4e HAD to come along and do what it has done is that 3.x just collapsed under its own weight. 4e is up to 30+ books and shows no sign of breaking down. I'm not trying to bash 3.x, but just saying it sort of inevitably failed in the end.

Ultimately all I know is that the dwarf greataxe fighter, the battle cleric, the brawny rogue, the starlock, and the human wizard in my game all play totally differently. In fact the players main challenge in combat I think has been figuring out just how different the melee types actually are. They spent months trying to play them all like they were pre-4e fighters before the players realized each class played totally differently. Likewise the wizard player and the warlock player had to learn just how totally different their powers were. I really don't think 2 'arcane' 3.x spellcasters would feel so different.

 

[Remathilis]

I liked your first couple of posts on this topic, but with this one I think you've overreached.

In a certain sense I can play a 3E wizard like a 3E fighter - engaging foes in close combat and trying to hit them with my staff - but as a strategy it will become obviously unsuccessful within the first couple of rounds of play.

The same is true for the archer ranger and the warlock. The archer ranger is (in my exprience) very easy to play just by pointing and shooting. The warlock, on the other hand, has to do all sorts of tricky stuff to make up for its poorer baseline damage, for example by taking advantage of the possibilities for mobility opened up by its shadowwalk, its Misty Step and Eyebite (in the case of a Feylock), etc. Played like an archer ranger a warlock will be obviously inferior.

Eh, you're probably right. When I said that, I didn't mean "use the exact same strategies" rather "target, shoot, move" which seemed to be the common thread when I saw an archer and a starlock in play. Granted, both were at low-levels (5th) and their were differences in subtle strategy (movement, reactions, melee backup, but mostly whether it was Twin Strike or Eldrich Blast being spammed).

And yes, its perfectly possible to play a paladin as a sub-opt fighter in 3e too.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I really don't get the whole "sameness" discussion. I disagree on a very deep, very basic level:

Two PCs are different not by rules, but by roleplaying

That works and works well in rules light games. In Dread, no two characters are mechanically different. On the other hand, for rules heavy games at their focal points it sucks.

Does it really make a PC more differnt from another that his ressources are distributed by day instead of by round?

Yes. It means that he needs to play a resource management game and worry about what'll happen later in the day.

What about... His name? His background? His backstory? The way his appearance is described? ... His battlecries? His small and big personality quirks? His beliefs and dreams, his goals in life, his philosophy? His way of speaking?

These are all not hardcoded into the rule system and therefore fit the rules-light comment above.

The way you describe his attacks?

In D&D combat is a focal point of the rules. And it helps differentiate characters if they are mechanically different. If your attacks move people around or smash them to their knees, of course you describe them differently because they do fundamentally different things. Conversely if they don't move people around, describing them as doing so is silly.

There is only one way that a Swordmage can play like a Shaman, and that is if you never treat your PC more than the numbers on his character sheets and he effects on his powers.

And frankly those two are so incredibly different that I want to know how you are treating them the same way even under those conditions. Fluff isn't the only way characters differ.

Now, I can agree that 4th edition doesn't do enough to help you create evocative descriptions at the table.

It does more than most games, simply by having powers that do things beyond damage. Just describing the physical effect leads to evocative descriptions.

If a Swordmage and a Shaman feel the same to you, you need to make them different by playing them different. No fiddling with the rules will change that.

If a Swordmage and a Shaman feel the same, I want to know why. The swordmage is a magic using duellist - the shaman does almost everything through his spirit companion. Not only will no fiddling with the rules change that, you need to be utterly ignoring the rules in order to make them feel the same.

Cool, we'll agree to disagree.

As two your question about about melee combatants, I could build a melee that...[snip]

And almost every single one of those can be done easily in 4e. (The exception being your summary of the rogue). On the other hand, the Shaman and Avenger (divine unarmoured assassin who swears to beat one target to a pulp and becomes lethally accurate when he gets to take that guy behind the woodshed) are incredibly hard to do in 3e. For that matter, so's the Brawler Fighter (think Hercules from the Legendary Journeys - sword and fist and as likely to punch people out as hit them with his sword).

Yeah, all of them used the d20 to resolve hit/damage, but each introduced a different unique mechanic show off its classes focus. You couldn't play a scout like a rogue, you couldn't play a hexblade like a paladin. You CAN, however, play a ranger like a warlock in 4e.

You mean a different mechanic like Combat Challenge, Divine Sanction, Covenant of Wrath, Inspiring Word, Rage, Hunter's Quarry, Sneak Attack, Shadow Walk, ...

4e isn't short of different mechanics that make the classes play very differently. What it doesn't do much is different structures. Because you don't actually need them to make things very different. (And for the record, a Warlock who tries to play like a Ranger is going to do about as well as a 3e Paladin who tries to play like a Fighter).

A different way to do things (in case I don't like the way one class does it) is all I'm asking, and it looks like I might be getting it.

There are different ways - every type of defender defends differently. What you mean you want is different structures. Which makes things far harder to balance and keep under control. And requires much more design and playtesting. (Looks as if you're getting your wish - and I don't object. But exception based design is a common paradigm for a reason).