Were the four roles correctly identified, or are there others?

[Nagol]

The most deadly.

So what distinguishes deadly from dangerous? To me they are synonyms.

 

[Morrus]

So what distinguishes deadly from dangerous? To me they are synonyms.

Deadly's worse. Dangerous doesn't have to be life-threatening, but deadly does. Deadly - likely to cause death; dangerous - likely to cause harm. Deadly is a subset of dangerous, of course.

 

[Nagol]

Deadly's worse. Dangerous doesn't have to be life-threatening, but deadly does. Deadly - likely to cause death; dangerous - likely to cause harm. Deadly is a subset of dangerous, of course.

So if Defenders are the most dangerous, and Strikers are deadly, and deadly is worse than dangerous but a subset of dangerous then Strikers are more dangerous than Defenders but Defenders are the most dangerous!

Kirk logic bomb incoming!

 

[Neonchameleon]

Our group's Fighter would throw himself off the airship if he only hit for 1d8+7 damage with a 50% chance to hit an even-level enemy. That's dire. Good grief. If you have AC32 (so, early teens levels) and you're hitting that light and that unreliably, as a Fighter, something is very seriously wrong.

Good point. I ran the AC numbers but didn't run the damage. As a rule of thumb the fighter's static damage should be approximately the same as the rogue's. So if the rogue does xd6+15 damage, the fighter should be doing yd+15.

Floor level static damage for a fighter who started at Str 18 should be at level 12:

4 (stat) + 1 (stat increase) + 3 (+3 weapon) +2 (weapon focus) +2 (Iron Armbands of Power - Heroic Tier) = +12

That's not high, it's just a baseline. The fighter should be doing more than that.

Also if the rogue is doing 5d6 damage at paragon tier, and their sneak attack is 3d6 that means they are using a [2W] power. Let's give the fighter the same advantage. And take into account the fighter also gets a free +1 to hit.

So. If the rogue's hitting 65% of the time the fighter should be hitting at least 55% of the time (Combat Advantage). Without CA the fighter is one of the most accurate classes in the game.

If the rogue's doing 5d6+15 damage (average 32.5), the fighter should be doing at least 2d8+12 damage (and this is a minimum for competence for level 12). (average 21). They are then threatening on their Combat Challenge to do a further d8+12 (average 16.5).

More likely if the rogue is doing 5d6+15 damage with a shortsword is that the fighter will be doing 2d10+15 damage with a bastard sword and threatening another d10+15 and at least one of those attacks will have Combat Advantage, so will match the rogue's to hit.

So. It's two points easier to hit the rogue than the scale-and-large-shield fighter. This much is true. But is that really what you want to do?

d8+7 damage as a fighter? I've seen that at level two and it's very possible at level one (+1 longsword, Weapon Focus, Str 20). What is your level 12 fighter playing at that they are doing so little damage? Fighters who don't deal damage can not do their job.

And the difference between damage-defenders (I'm excluding Paladins and Swordmages) and strikers is that you can adjust your tactics much more easily to turn defenders into "just" something scary. Strikers almost always perform, defenders (chiefly fighters) can outmatch strikers if the enemy lets them. But most of the time strikers will do more damage because no one in their senses will take their eyes off the fighter. And strikers have much more control over where their damage is applied than defenders - the bodyguard is dispatched at the defender which lets the striker dart through to shank the mage.

 

[Morrus]

So if Defenders are the most dangerous, and Strikers are deadly, and deadly is worse than dangerous but a subset of dangerous then Strikers are more dangerous than Defenders but Defenders are the most dangerous!

Kirk logic bomb incoming!

If you like, I guess.

 

[Neonchameleon]

So what distinguishes deadly from dangerous? To me they are synonyms.

A wizard with an ogre bodyguard will throw the ogre in the way of the fighter because if the fighter reaches the wizard then the wizard is strawberry jam.

A wizard with an ogre bodyguard can try throwing the ogre in the way of the striker but it isn't going to do much good. The striker will just tumble past the ogre. But they have abetter chance against the striker when it reaches them than they would if the fighter reached them.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Deadly's worse. Dangerous doesn't have to be life-threatening, but deadly does. Deadly - likely to cause death; dangerous - likely to cause harm. Deadly is a subset of dangerous, of course.

Deadly in this case is worse for the individual. Dangerous is worse for the group/goal.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think they were disabled for the same reason everyone else said. They were just made more useful. You don't have to take minuses, use special equipment or have a special build to be able to non-lethally fight someone. If the group wants to keep an enemy alive, they will be. If they choose not to, the person doing non-lethal isn't punishing the party.

It really isn't any different. In 3.5e, if someone was doing non-lethal it just meant we had to hit it another time or two with lethal damage to kill it. It was still possible for someone to accidentally kill the creature that had non-lethal on it. After all, if a creature had 50 hitpoints and had taken 35 lethal and 10 non-lethal, an attack for 15 lethal still killed the enemy.


Because 95% of the standard D&D plots exclude all those other ways.

Here's the average D&D scenario involving that dragon:

The PCs are asked to recover a powerful magic item hidden in a dragon hoard by the King. The dragon discovered the item recently and picked it up and brought it back to his lair. He loves the item and finds that it completes his collection completely. He will not give it up for anything. He is a dragon, he is extremely overconfident, capable of defeating almost anything to come into his lair and he knows it. He's also Chaotic Evil which means he loves causing chaos and suffering whenever possible. The more chaos and suffering he creates, the happier he is. If the PCs want the item, he'd tell them no just because it is more fun to see them suffer. The dragon hates intruders and loves his privacy. He loves killing because he loves the look on people's faces as they die and the sounds they make when they scream, being Chaotic Evil. He regularly makes trips to the nearby villages in order to capture and eat villagers to sate his hunger and there are bounties on his head from at least 5 different villages. The King is amongst these people and will offer a larger bounty than all the other villages if you bring back the dragon's head.

The item is in a magically locked chest in a secret chamber at the back of his cave since he valued it so much that he locked it up specially. His lair has wards on it that inform him when any creature enters it. It will even wake him from sleep. The wards detect even invisible creatures.

Now, if you have a DM who runs that as written, find me a group of adventurers where that DOESN'T end in combat. Half the party will want to kill the dragon simply because it is in the way and talking to it takes effort. The other half will want to kill it simply because they are good aligned and don't want the dragon taking any more lives. Even if you get the rare group who is extremely uncaring and yet diplomatic who want to talk to the dragon and don't care that it is slaughtering people....then you have the bounty on its head which means they might just do it for the money. Even if you get past all of that, the dragon isn't willing to negotiate or befriend them. It wants them out of his house and doesn't want them to come back. Or, more likely, it wants to kill them just to hear them scream. There might be a brief negotiation followed by the dragon trying to kill them.

Is it possible that there's a scenario where you sneak past or befriend a dragon? Sure. But it's likely if that scenario exists, it is because your DM planned for it to be a non-combat encounter all along. I've almost never seen a situation where a combat encounter was turned into a non-combat encounter. Most D&D combats are set up to be nearly unavoidable on purpose. You don't see Conan negotiating with the Evil Cultists about to summon their Ancient God for a reason.

Well, it kinda sounds to me like your saying that if you set up a scenario where the only logical course of action is to slay the dragon, where that is the whole object of the adventure then the PCs won't skip that (not always true actually). Of course this argument is tautological. However, if you design your adventures to have multiple possible solutions, or at least extrapolate and allow for and encourage non-linear thinking in your players, then they will certainly do different things, and this is true in ALL editions of the game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, it's not. If there is a defender, the enemy is caught between a rock and a hard place.

That's why it's good the role is called "Defender" and not "Tank". A tank is best ignored, because all he does is soak damage.
But a Defender does more - he soaks damage, but he also punishes you for not attacking him. A Defender is as deadly as a Striker if you ignore him. You can't "win" by ignoring him, he'll stab you dead, or take away your damage, stop you in your tracks, doesn't let you go away, or teleport you to places you did not want to be (whatever flavor of Defender you have).

I think there is nothing more artificial about the defender abilites then there is about sneak attack or curses.

Right, and if you look at the feats and other add-ons for fighters you see that a LOT of them are there to help punishment. There's a feat that adds +CON to OA damage, another one that adds an attack bonus, several that add damage or other perks to CC and CS, etc. The whole point is to make it HURT when you provoke defender punishment. Anyone who thinks a fighter can't hurt you BAD with OAs and CC really hasn't played one. A good solid fighter should be already doing close to striker damage, and being ignored will up that character's damage output by EASILY 50%. Then you get into the builds that can shove an enemy around using an OA (great in combo with zone damage BTW), etc. Its just not at all fun to ignore a well-built fighter. Now and then it DOES make sense to provoke, say if you can take down the nasty rogue for the price of one OA, but its fairly rare.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just to reinforce something I said earlier and that is how 4e defenders (should) work:

Strikers are not the most dangerous people on the battlefield, defenders are. If the enemy wants to take down the most dangerous person on the battlefield that's the defender, not the striker. But denying defenders interrupts is like denying rogues Sneak Attack; it makes them a whole lot less dangerous than at full power, and it's much easier to do even than denying Sneak Attack.

(Now Paladins and Shielding/Ensnaring Swordmages are exceptions).

I think the DM provoking makes combats somewhat quicker and more interesting, but it isn't exceptionally good tactics. A fighter that intimidates the enemy into attacking him has the INITIATIVE, he's controlling how the fight goes, and that's subtle but very important. He can tie up a certain enemy when its tactically useful, and then go tie up a different one when that makes sense. Whatever thwarts the enemy's plans. If the enemy DOES ignore him, then he basically becomes a very nice bonus striker.