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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5436842" data-attributes="member: 22779">Hrm, I'm not sure if all classes have an ability that can push, specifically.  I know that you are certainly not forced to take those powers, even if they exist.  Some do and some don't have specific abilities.  Push is a pretty basic element of 4e combat where the focus on movement and positioning is so important, so, I'd be rather surprised if all classes didn't have push somewhere in their list.  Again, not that you have to take that specific power.What more typically happens is some classes and builds focus on forced movement abilities and others don't.  Strikers, generally, don't for example.  They're more about dealing damage than moving stuff around the battlefield.  Other classes might dabble in it and others might focus in it.  A warlord, for example, doesn't have a lot of forced movement powers, but, it does have a lot of ally movement powers - use this power to let an ally shift or get a free move action or whatever.  That's their schtick.In a way, I think it boils down to whether or not you think classes represent strict archetypes or not.  In earlier editions, a class was a very strong archetype and you were heavily penalized for stepping out of that.  A wizard cannot wear armor and cast spells, has a very limited weapon choice, and extremely poor attack bonus meaning that if I go all Gandalf on someone and start attacking with a sword in one hand and a staff in the other, I'm going to die very, very quickly.A wizard must use specific components to cast a spell.  A wizard must perform mechanically required actions (verbal/somatic actions) to cast a spell.  A wizard cannot cast spells in armor, or, in 3e, can cast spells in armor but will fail to cast sometimes.  A wizard will lose his memorized spell after casting.  His spells will always look exactly the same - duration, area of effect, saving throws are all mechanically dictated.And, in some editions, if I choose to step outside of that archetype, I'm penalized by the training rules and forced to spend character resources.  So, Gandalf would be spending two or three times as much money and time training for new levels as Aragorn would.3e weakened the archetypes considerably, but still has fairly strong ones.  This is why you see a bajillion different classes.  Every archetype is a new class.  If you want an armored wizard, play a War Wizard.  If you want a scholarly wizard, play that class.  So one and so forth.4e weakens archetypes even further.  Class is really just a bag of abilities centered around a specific (typically combat) theme.  It mixes in a fair bit of point buy class concepts - each level you have a list of three or four options (more once you go beyond core) for a new ability to add to your character.  It's similar to how point buy works - each time the PC is rewarded, he can buy new skills or improve existing ones.It's still a class based system.  But, it's further removed from the traditional classes as strong archetypes to a much larger degree than 3e was.  So, my human rogue takes an ability from the cleric list as his racial ability, and becomes a prophet of his mighty thewitude, Kord.Not that I couldn't do that in 3e.  In 3e, I'd take a level of cleric to do the same thing.  But, that comes with it's own shopping list of issues as well.I'm not saying you can't do things in one system or another.  Just that their approach to the goals are different.  The goals remain largely the same.</blockquote>

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