Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Fighter: Samurai, Sharpshooter, Arcane Archer & Knight

I'm getting, like, unhealthy amounts of mad, clicking on that broken link.

 

[Azzy]

Gosh, that's an awful lot of baggage! Are you sure you don't want to put some of it down? 4e... apologists? 4e Justice Warriors? I think that's more than a little inappropriate, particularly considering the political implications of the latter. A lot of people started playing with 4e, love 4e, and consider it an important part of DND, let's try to avoid othering them shall we?

You know the real kicker is when there are people like me that purposefully avoided 4e, and are completely okay with the marking ability of the knight subclass.

 

[RotGrub]

And you obviously do not want this. You go so far as using degradory terminology to describe us fans of 4e. You make me sad. I wish our community could be better than this hateful morrass.

If you consider the content of the post I was replying to, that statement was rather innocent.

 

[kalil]

If you consider the content of the post I was replying to, that statement was rather innocent.

No. It really wasn't. It was straight up tragic.

 

[RotGrub]

I've had plenty of replies with decent people that would attest to yes.

I just have a hard time accepting in good faith those who demand that someone else not get an option they have been waiting for, when they don't ever have to use it

For the record, that's not my opinion. My disagreement is with how your lovely option is being prescribed.

 

[kalil]

For the record, that's not my opinion. My disagreement is with how your lovely option is being prescribed.

Then you are doing a very poor job at expressing you opinion. Because that is exactly what it sounds like.

 

[Sacrosanct]

You know the real kicker is when there are people like me that purposefully avoided 4e, and are completely okay with the marking ability of the knight subclass.

Same here. I only have one minor nitpick with it (as i mentioned a few posts earlier), but it is WAY better than 4e's Come and Get It. I can visualize how the knight marking works in mundane combat, so that's good enough for me.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

So since everybody is in, let's just face it, universal agreement that these subclasses' names make them literally unplayable, I'd like to propose some generic alternatives.

I think you're going to have to demonstrate some justification for such an all-encompassing claim.

And to reiterate my position, it wasn't so much marking I was against, that was just the example brought up. My point I argued earlier was that anyone who likes a mechanic that is really only liked by a minority (whether that be marking, damage on a miss, save or die, level drain, etc), then that person can't demand that the game include that mechanic. It certainly doesn't mean any fan of any one edition is being disregarded or shunned, especially if we can point to other things from that edition that are included. I see that one a lot ("My favorite mechanic isn't in the game, so WotC LIED to us and they're not inclusive at all!") There are finite resources and finite time, so I would rather have the designers working on things that would benefit the most gamers. That's plain business sense as well. So I'm not holding my breath that they will put out optional rules to incorporate save or die into the game any time soon.

That would be why I objected to Rotgrub's portrayal rather than any of your posts.

Completely incorrect. My opinion is that there should be options for everyone. What I don't agree with is how these options are being prescribed. In this case, I'd rather see a Knight sub class that is modular and not exclusive to a particular style of play without modification.

Either of the official subclasses would seem to fit. They don't limit you to any one style of play (ranged combat for example) unlike most of the subclasses currently suggested for playtesting.

With that said, there is no need to be angry. At this rate, I do predict that 4e justice warriors will get their warlord subclass. It's only mater of time now.

You've mentioned that before. What exactly is a "(4e) justice warrior"?

 

[Darkness]

Public Health Announcement

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[The-Magic-Sword]

You know the real kicker is when there are people like me that purposefully avoided 4e, and are completely okay with the marking ability of the knight subclass.

That's fair, honestly my opinion is that different editions of DND are pretty different game systems, and that it's nice we have so many game systems in general that can cater to different tastes. I honestly don't begrudge something like 3.5 or Pathfinder any more than I would begrudge something like World of Darkness- 5e presents an interesting case because of it's unifying goals, which is probably why I'm happy to argue about it's direction, because it's goals are somewhat based on representation of fans from different editions.

In my eyes, the sharp disagreements illuminate that a careful sort of balance must be struck, you need to have class options that appeal to each edition, that also don't conflict within the math of the game system (so far so good). But you also need to strike compromises that are honestly going to effect how most tables (where legal options = legal options) are going to play out... do we have marking, for instance? The ship for it to be on most things or whatever has sailed, so now we're talking about a lonesome subclass among many- my point of view is that 5e should be as expansive mechanically as the system math allows, and let players sort out what they're comfortable with using at their table.

 

[RotGrub]

Gosh, that's an awful lot of baggage! Are you sure you don't want to put some of it down? 4e... apologists? 4e Justice Warriors? I think that's more than a little inappropriate, particularly considering the political implications of the latter. A lot of people started playing with 4e, love 4e, and consider it an important part of DND, let's try to avoid othering them shall we?

Admit it! You had just as much fun reading it as I did writing it.

Marks take a variety of forms, the basic mark is a -2 to a single monster, a verbal distraction- or a threatening stance, or an aggressive pushing attack, where the onslaught is designed not to land a hit, but keep the foe right here. Class marks, which are the ones usually used, vary considerably which is probably why the default presentation is so abstract- a fighter is standing ready to cleave them in two should they drop their guard to attack someone else. A sword mage has a magical shield ready to spring up if their allies are attacked, like a hex. In fact it's only the fighter that even relies on non-magical effects for it.

yes, that's 4e.

Marks might also be enforced in different ways, the act of marking someone, is a reference to marking them out for special treatment so to speak. We have the magical shields of the sword mage, or maybe it's a verbal onslaught that keeps an intelligent foe off balance- a threatening stance that keeps an animal wary, or a partial tackle as that golem tries to attack your buddy, timed to physically throw their attack off. The trick of it is that the character is inventively doing something as part of defending their allies. In a way, it's very freeing- because the mark can represent a variety of things, it models a lot of different things.

Why do I picture these players crying when he DM tells them their mark doesn't work due to the situation at hand? oh that's right, they are entitled to their entitlements.

If the player says "I'm going to watch him and try to tackle him to throw their attack off" the DM would normally have to adjudicate some janky way of handling it, or say no. If the player says "I'm going to get him to focus on me by taunting his mother" the DM would normally again, just sort of fiat if it can work. But these are pretty core aspects of combat, so its nice to have an abstract mechanic- "Ok so you have them marked, they'll take a penalty if they try to attack someone else" -to implement to cover such situations where the character is harassing their opponent to throw them off of other people.

Anyway, I think you're sort of straw-manning the arguments of people whom happen to be pro-mark! I don't think anyone would argue the effect is that extreme, it represents the stress, physical, or in some cases magical interference of a warrior trained (as defined by their selection of class, or in this case, subclass) to protect others.

Ok so a wall of force goes up between the knight and the target. Is the mark physical? if it is the DM might rule that it ends. The point is that you're creating those "Janky" situations that you're complaining happen without the Mark mechanics.

I guess we both have our versions of Janky... The difference is that you require a book with special class powers and I use innate DM authority. I swear I'm just a 0 level human...

But such abstract mechanics that are "mechanics first" have always featured prominently in the game, take for instance HP- it doesn't do a great job of simulating meat, and it's kind of annoying think of something as "hitting but not hitting" yet it's always been constructed that way. How about Treasure as exp in very early editions? That made players stronger by spending money REGARDLESS of what they spent their money on, why your strength would be proportional to the money found in that way is nonsensical. AC is another such element of the game that depends on abstraction- in the real world maces that could collapse plate were more effective against people in armor, not less, but in DND, you might as well have dodged it completely.

Trying to justify a mechanic by pointing to other bad mechanics? That's ok, because in my game we would fix those bad mechanics too.

People's wounds typically knit themselves up over night, and a single 8 hours of rest brings pretty much every character from almost dead to good as new, but that isn't narrative-breaking? In editions prior to 4e, there were spells that could detect alignment in the default game- "Well regardless of anything else, my evil-radar says you're evil so never mind any intrigue or moral questions!" and adventuring parties are often made up of people whom seriously hate and would never realistically travel together.

Auto healing is a terrible mechanic. It's sad because many OSR people I know laughed at this when they read the PHB for the first time. Oddly enough the original playtest presented options for healing and yet they ended up being relegated to the DMG. Of course, that's a whole other can of worms for another thread.

Know Alignment? No big deal. The default game had non-detection and other magic. Campaign settings like Ravenloft modified the spell.

Your rant about how an effect with a variable narrative is ridiculous just seems absurd given the basic premises of the game we're talking about.

Don't try to codify that which shouldn't be codified. Leave variables as variables, that's part of the fun.

About that last bit, you're going to have to run by me again how 4e mechanics are the only thing in UA? Because if that's the case I haven't been seeing it- it seems like the majority of the subclasses and classes in UA have been using the "modified 2e, modified 3.5e" design that most of the PHB uses. Mostly vancian casting spellcasters, and martials that hit things with their sword, with some neat utility. Especially out of the recent UA's I feel that this is the first one with any real 4e inspiration- mostly just in the shape of the marking technique of the knight, and the "special arrow" powers of the Arcane Archer. At best, the samurai feels like essentials design ( i hit things! and i get to add neat stuff using rest based resources to hit things better) but since essentials was employing a unified design dynamic where some of the more successful 4e principles were applied to more traditional DND designs in a less extreme way... that kinda seems to be the gold standard for the actual goal of 5e, which is to create a unified DND tabletop.

Consider how recent UA classes have moved away from the PHB class concept of supporting the so called "three pillars"

There is no other way to BE included, other than to have some options that do cater to the fans of 4e's design... the same way we have things that cater to design choices from earlier editions. It kinda seems like someone who likes 4e would be over stepping to you, unless there was none of the things that represent them in the game. It's not like a knight is hard to play without happening to have the word knight in your subclass- it COULD be a background, or a battlemaster, or many other things, the fact that this is called a knight is because they sat down to think of a fighter kit specifically for that, and realized that this mechanic was the best fit. Why not avoid it to make knights you do like, and let people who like it use it to make their knights?

[/quote]

Not true, the other prescription for inclusion would be to provide optional rules within the subclass. Much like we do for various other features in the PHB (human variants come to mind).