Transcending the mundane. How to make martial classes epic.

[Celebrim]

The fact is though, it did create martial classes that truly felt epic. The Fighter, the Rogue, the Ranger, the Warlord, each one of them felt epic.

I have been trying hard to avoid getting into an argument over whether 4e accomplished its goals, because - while there is pretty good concensus over what 1e, 2e, and 3e each did well or didn't do well - 4e is still a subject over which there just isn't a lot of agreement. And that lack of agreement still tends to stir up a lot of very passionate opinions.

I am glad that for you it feels epic. But understand, even though I agree about the facts you go on to state, I could hardly think of anything that feels to me less epic than the mundane things that you describe. In particular, I feel that what you describe is simply the truth that the 4e classes can each contribute to the board gamey tactical game that is at the core of 4e, and that your description of what is epic comes way to close to describing what is useful about knights, castles, and bishops and uses basicly the same sterile gamish language that you would use to describe the effectiveness of those game peices.

In particular, when you say something like:

The lesson is to look at what these classes have that 3E classes didn't. Battlefield control...

I'm just tuning out, because we are coming at the game from such a completely different perspective. I would argue that the really biggest change isn't to look at what the martial classes gained, but to look at what the rest of the game lost.

The key is to give people more influence on the battlefield with martial characters.

Honestly, I'm not even that worried about the battlefied per se, nor do I care much for 4e's notions of what the battlefield is.

I would love to agree with you in some respect about the positive lessons we could learn about design by inspecting how 4e addressed this question, because it would make this subject far less touchy and far less of a risk that mentioning 4e would derail an interesting thread. But for me, all the lessons from 4e about how you go about answering the OP's question are negative. I'm aware that the 4e designers were very much aware of the problem, but for me it's an object lesson in how not to approach the topic.

 

[Edgewood]

I'll apologize in advance as I have not read each and every post in this thread, in case what I say has already been covered.

The idea of the 'mundane' PC classes and those who wield magic are of course rated on their power based on their level as compared to the rest of the world. 99.99% of my campaign world is filled with common folk who will never attain such lofty heights in power or fame that the PCs and a few select NPCs will.

The thing is that in a lot of games where I have played PC, it was assumed that as my PC leveled up in power, so did the opponents and the challenges presented to him. Suddenly the 1st level rogues and bandits were no where to be seen when my PC was 10th level. It's as if ALL of the world around leveled up with me.

As a GM I like to throw a group of low level enemies at party. Nothing makes a 'mundane' fighter feel like an invincible force after plowing through his tenth enemy. My point I guess is to keep in mind that power is a relative thing and the tendency to keep the world around the group as powerful as they are when they level up may take away from that feeling of power.

 

[GreyICE]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]: You seriously mean to say that slashing into a dragon as it attempts to escape, sending it crashing back into the earth doesn't feel epic? You mean to say tricking a monster into getting out of position and then punishing him with a quick stab to a vital spot isn't the sort of thing that high level warriors in fiction do? You mean to say that turning to an ally and yelling "On your feet man. You can die when I give you permission to!" and watching him struggle back to his feet and turn to face the threat isn't the sort of heroic image you have of a grim and gritty warlord?

See, lets see what these all have in common: They affect the gameworld in ways that are more epic than "damage!" High level wizards never felt epic because of "Damage!" They feel epic because they can alter the flow of time, stop armies in their tracks, change their shape as they desire, and reshape the very world around them.

If the difference between a level 18 wizard and a level 8 wizard was "5d6 more damage!" then the level 18 wizard would feel pretty boring.

This was my point.

 

[S'mon]

The key is to give people more influence on the battlefield with martial characters.

I agree, and I think 4e clearly made martial type PCs much more epic than in prior editions (esp 3e). It also made high level spellcasters much less epic than before, so the two lots met in the middle as well-balanced classes. But clearly casters lost out while non-casters gained. That does not bother me personally, I think 4e casters still stack up well compared to most literary antecedents (except Rialto the Marvellous), and are closer to most swords & sorcery casters than were 1e-3e ones. But some people clearly like Gygaxian 'reshape reality with a word' high-level casters, so understandably were miffed.

 

[Celebrim]

If the difference between a level 18 wizard and a level 8 wizard was "5d6 more damage!" then the level 18 wizard would feel pretty boring.

This was my point.

Oddly, it was mine too.

 

[GreyICE]

Oddly, it was mine too.

Perhaps then this would be better suited for you explaining how to make the martial classes epic beyond 'battlefield effects' then, while accepting that "anime style" martial arts where you move so fast that there's multiple images of you on the battlefield or hit so hard that entire mountains shatter are... not going to be well accepted by the fanbase.

As far as I read your solution was to bring the power levels of feats and skills up, but that's a rather handwavey solution, if you see what I mean. If the feats don't give the fighter greater level of battlefield control and truly make him something unique on the field of battle (rather than just, as you said, a guy with a pointy stick) then they're dead out of the gate. And unless they're level gated (you must be level 11/15/18 to take this feat) you won't succeed in making higher level fighters feel more epic - they'll be able to do... the same things they were able to do at low levels.

As for skills, well... honestly, skills need a reboot, period. Skill powers were the closest thing to good use of the skill system that D&D has ever done. 3E's skill system actively attempted to assassinate roleplaying, and 4E's was very vague. Like, you're either a good arcanist or you're not a good arcanist, there's not much difference between the two. And by high levels training was nowhere near as important as core stats, so your basic fighter who was raised on the streets and learned all sorts of tricks still has worse thievery skills than a noble thiefcatcher who has never attempted to pick a lock in his life (assuming the thiefcatcher was a Rogue). As for AD&D, welp.

So yeah, every incarnation of skills should be scrapped for 5E. Maybe we should focus on building a useful skills platform, but at the end of the day you KNOW casters are going to get equal access to it, thus putting us back at square 1 in terms of 'epic fighters.'

 

[Celebrim]

The thing is that in a lot of games where I have played PC, it was assumed that as my PC leveled up in power, so did the opponents and the challenges presented to him. Suddenly the 1st level rogues and bandits were no where to be seen when my PC was 10th level. It's as if ALL of the world around leveled up with me.

I think this is the fault of the notion of the 'adventure path', and in particular the post 3e era adventure path with its carefully constructed 3 level linear dungeon with 13.3 balanced encounters per level. If you trace it back to its origins, it's what I call the 'Blizzard North' RPG model, based on the fact that Blizzard really popularized the design with Diablo2, though you can also see it in Bethesda games were the world really does level up with you. The idea is that you work out the math ahead of time, so that it 'just works', but where 'works' means maintains a consistant level of challenge and a consistant experience rather than modelling living in a fantasy world.

When the DM has that perspective on what play is, then as a player you soon come to wonder why you bother to level up at all (at least I do). I see that its lately become vogue at tables to not track XP, but I wonder why we even have levels sometimes. If you look at an RPG like World of Warcraft which I site because the problem is so clear in the model in its purest form, at 5th level you are fighting boars and bears, but again at 70th level or 80th level you are once again fighting boars and bears. Is it really true that the bears in the country of X are 10,000 times as powerful as those in the country of Y? Is it really true that the meanest soldier in X, could return to Y and put everything right and resolve all the troubles with the least of trouble? That is to say, is it really true that in Y, where the bears are but 15th level, that they don't need a hero - a one legged, half blind eldery farmer from X would serve better?

Of course not. The only logical explanation is that in fact your character never leveled up, and was just as powerful at 1st level as you are at 85th (or 90th or whatever the cap is now). The foes you vanquished then were of the same order that you vanquish now. Nothing changed about your character in the game world. All that has changed is that at the level of game mechanics describing the world, the numbers describing the world were made arbitrarily larger because at some level the designer recognized that bigger numbers made the player feel more impressed - even if and probably especially if the number was in fact describing the same thing.

However, this more addresses the subject of how do we make the game feel epic under the first definition of epic - making what you do as a player feel like it matters. I'm not sure it addresses the other definition of epic, which is more like making the player feel like he has greater freedom to take narrative control as a result of the breadth and depth of his character's influence over the setting.

 

[Dragonblade]

Sounds like a problem that the classic WotC 3e supplement Tome of Battle can fix. It gives martial characters the tools they need to be as badass as casters. I never play 3e/Pathfinder without it.

Its has martial maneuvers at varying levels that let warriors do the cool epic things they should have been able to do all along. Some of the maneuvers are explicitly supernatural, like swinging your sword and creating a swath of flame, but many are not. Just badass feats of martial prowess, like powering through a monster's DR, doing tons of damage, or shaking off spell effects through your own fierce resolve and determination.

Check it out if you haven't already.

 

[GreyICE]

The Tome of Battle is functionally a 4E product in all but name, featuring most of the major mechanics of 4E transposed into a 3E setting (not entirely uncoincidentally they were working on the basics of 4E when the ToB was released). I suppose that might make it less offensive to some people, as if the name "4E" were a curse word in their language, but in terms of what it brings to the discussion, very little. ToB "epic powers" often gave characters far more control over their destiny, from swordsage teleports, to mechanical effects such as stuns and dazes, to healing and protecting allies.

Again it solved the problem of 'martial characters are not epic enough' by giving them maneuvers and powers that gave them much more control over the world around them.

But sure, lets just assume that I said "tome of battle" wherever I said "4E" and you'll have pretty much the same results (minus the fact that many of the ToB powers were more inherently mystical than similar powers in 4E - there was an awful lot of teleports and invisibility things going on in some of the schools).

 

[Scott DeWar]

Here is what I think of with an epic fighter; Quigly down under

He was so specialized with that buffalo long gun that normally shot good to 900 yards[?] and his shot a bit further. His employer cum antagonist thought in the end . . . . .

[sblock=spoiler alert]
. . . . . he was able to take Quigly down with a 6 gun, Quigly previously stating 'he had no use' for a gun like that. In the end the rancher found the error in his thinking.
[/sblock]

the way Q used that buffalo rifle was just plain epic.