What Core Class was actually fun to play

[Imaro]

Okay I've noticed a trend with the hype around 4th edition. Basically the fact that none of the four core classes were "fun" to play. The arguments basically go something like this...

Cleric: Not fun because I have to choose between healing or hitting something.

Rogue: Not fun because my sneak attack doesn't work on everything.

Wizard/Sorcerer: Not fun because my spells eventually run out.

Fighter: Not fun because I get outclassed in damage at higher levels and my core feats suck.

Okay, I can kind of understand the fighter complaint (though I wonder how the fighter will fare in 4th ed. where everybody seems highly capable in what has traditionally been his/her role)...but the rest of these just seem like arguments along the lines of "my character should have no drawbacks." What I'm asking is...

1. Do you agree with the above sentiments?

2. In 4th ed. as a player is it really desirable to have no drawbacks in a game about overcoming challenges?

3. Shouldn't the different classes be geared towards different types of players and what they enjoy doing in the game? I guess a prime example is the fact that there was a noble class in SWSE...not the best in a fight but certainly geared to face other challenge a parrticular player may find more enjoyable than combat. (I get the impresion every class in 4th ed. will be what could best be summed up as...different types of damage dealers.)

4. What did you play that was actually fun for the 3 years of 3.0 and five years of 3.5?

 

[bonethug0108]

Added a point

1. Yes, I fully agree. Though the classes were still fun to play, those things made them very unfun, and they came up often(though with the cleric is more of a "I have to heal him because that is my job" sort of thing; healing can be fun, but having to do it because if you don't have a healer you die was what was annoying).

2. They will still have drawbacks, but not ones that come about because of bad design(hopefully). A fighter can't hit mutliple enemies in a large area, nor can he do as much damage as a striker most of time. So the classes aren't becoming jacks of all trades, they are just becoming less about arbitrary drawbacks and more about differences between what each can do.

3. Yes, they should. There are other ways than the arbitrary way 3e did it, though.

4. Didn't play 3.0, but I loved the ninja class. Sometimes I felt that I should be able to use my ghost step more, and I would be okay with it being less powerful. I had no idea is we would run into more than 4 encounters in one day, and even if I did save my ghoststep, sometimes it would be wasted because we wouldn't fight any more. Then I felt a little ripped of because I could have used it earlier.

I know people will scream, "but resource management is fun." To me it was very unfun.

 

[jdrakeh]

I enjoyed playing a Rogue with skills weighted toward social deception, which allowed me to avoid the trap of "creeping thiefism" (i.e., the phenomena of having a thief tag along solely to check for and/or disarm traps) the that shows up in many games. I also enjoyed playing a straight-up fighter geared toward kicking butt.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The major problem with wizards, clerics and druids is that they're too much fun.

 

[Nifft]

Cleric: Not fun because I have to choose between healing or hitting something.

No, tons of fun! But I do enjoy buffing my friends.

Rogue: Not fun because my sneak attack doesn't work on everything.

True, but only if you don't have the foresight and budget to invest in UMD and magic item tricks. Still, the "naive" use of a Rogue can be un-fun.

Wizard/Sorcerer: Not fun because my spells eventually run out.

As above, requires some foresight and magic item budget, possibly including item creation feats.

Fighter: Not fun because I get outclassed in damage at higher levels and my core feats suck.

True. Fighters do suck at high levels. Worse, they're one-trick ponies: unlike a Rogue who has many (hopefully diverse) skills and UMD if his Sneak Attack isn't appropriate, the specialized and effective Fighter has only direct combat application.

1. Do you agree with the above sentiments?

Sorta, but not really.

2. In 4th ed. as a player is it really desirable to have no drawbacks in a game about overcoming challenges?

No. That would be silly.

3. Shouldn't the different classes be geared towards different types of players and what they enjoy doing in the game?

Yes! But they shouldn't require a specific role to be filled. Clerics are fun for a small minority of players (myself included), but clerics are assumed by a large majority of modules.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Rechan]

1. Do you agree with the above sentiments?

Yes.

2. In 4th ed. as a player is it really desirable to have no drawbacks in a game about overcoming challenges?

You mean like the drawback of being a wizard and having very little defensive capacity (low AC, few HP) and yet having the most offense? Because that's a drawback illustrated in R&C.

3. Shouldn't the different classes be geared towards different types of players and what they enjoy doing in the game?

Isn't that what they're doing? There are 4 roles, but multiple classes that can fill that role. Each class can appeal to people.

You may need a Leader who can heal. But if no one wants to play a cleric, they can play a Warlord instead.

You may not need a Leader in the first place, given Second Wind and some choice feat selections.

4. What did you play that was actually fun for the 3 years of 3.0 and five years of 3.5?

Nothing. But then, I'm primarily a DM and have very little player experience.

I've actually played the most lately, and said classes were:

Archivist - Didn't really get to play this long enough to be interesting. Game ended after one fight that all I managed to contribute was a Searing Light.
Beguiler - Would be fun, but the DM is so harsh on Bluff, and my illusions and enchantments do jack in the adventure. :\
Cleric - Boring and annoying.
Bard - Much like the Beguiler, I felt like dead weight, contributing nothing but a +1.
Fighter - For one session. I built my character badly, so I was always hitting, but only doing 2-3 damage because I was a halfling focusing on throwing. Wasn't pulling my weight in the heavy dungeon-crawly game.
Wizard - Back in HS I played a wizard in a game that catered to the fighters. It was boring as dirt.

I never once was able to do something that made an impression, a lasting mark, or even got the spotlight. All these characters have felt useless. Granted, I've never played a character above 5th level, so that might be the problem. Even so, the first 5 shouldn't suck so unendingly.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Okay I've noticed a trend with the hype around 4th edition. Basically the fact that none of the four core classes were "fun" to play. The arguments basically go something like this...

Cleric: Not fun because I have to choose between healing or hitting something.

Rogue: Not fun because my sneak attack doesn't work on everything.

Wizard/Sorcerer: Not fun because my spells eventually run out.

Fighter: Not fun because I get outclassed in damage at higher levels and my core feats suck.

1. Do you agree with the above sentiments?4. What did you play that was actually fun for the 3 years of 3.0 and five years of 3.5?

I don't agree. The core classes were always the most fun of all the options for the characters that I played. I played a heck of a lot of clerics and fighters, two rogues, and two wizards. Never felt bored with any of those core characters, nor did I feel outdone by others who had variant, PrC-ed, multiclassed, or 3rd-party-supplemented PCs. The core mechanic always worked beautifully for all the concepts I derived and played, and I had a lot of fun with each character.

 

[WayneLigon]

To some degree, I agree with all those statements.

The game is about overcoming challenges, but that challenge shouldn't include the game system itself.

It isn't a case of not wanting any drawbacks, but a case of - unless the GM is very careful in arranging an encounter - there are several broad areas of the game as it exists that means 'you basically came to game but now you get to sit on your hands for four hours'. I don't buy the arguement about, say, the wizard being for 'experienced players' who are content to play a resource management game and sit back for that one moment to pop off a spell.

I think people have gotten too caught up in the fun/not fun wording. Yes of course it was fun before, but what they are talking about it making it more fun by taking out the parts that suck. And I don't know about you, but coming to play a mage and being forced to hide behind fighters for five levels or more until I can pop my head out of my gopher hole and pop off a couple spells does suck.

 

[Xethreau]

1. For me, that is kind of the issue, but more like this:
Cleric: CRAP! Not only do I *have* to prepare spells, but I get like, what, 3 a day? Forget that. Plus no new class features past lvl 1. (I don't consider spells to be class features, btw.)
Rogue: Sounds right.
Sorcerer: No class features past first level... *awesome.*
Wizard: Gotta keep a record for spell book... Gotta keep a record for spells repaired... I understand RPing a book-worm, but this is ridiculous!


2. Well, I won't answer your question because its not founded on what I percive to be not true. All classes will have a strength, and all will have weaknesses; thats why there is a party. Wizards will always be squishy and slow. Rogues will be slightly less squishy, and not slow, but you gotta be patent and a quick thinker to use one right. Leaders will only have a few purely offensive abilities, it seems. And defenders have to take the heat for the entire party.

As in real life, most of the time your strength is an indication of your weakness.

3. Classes should each have their own flavor, which should be a factor for who likes what class. However, play style should be a topic for party roles. Strikers will play significantly diffently than controllers. Some people are more geared for selecting a class for flavor (like myself), and others sellect a class (which will probably be Role in 4e) for play style.

Flavor, power selection, and equipment choices should be some of the only things that differentiate classes; a new kind of "power system" from class to class, like what we saw in 3e, should not be a factor one has to worry about. I think 3e has so many classes because there were so many different kinds of "power systems" used: Class-feature only, Spellcasting, Manifesting, Invoking, and Martial Adepts all had different kind of mechanics, but there often times is not very much difference between the classes flavor and niche wise. Someone who wants to play a wizard should not have to learn a different set of rules from a rogue just because the in-world mechanics for the classes are so different from one another.

4. To be honest, I have never played very long in a single campaign for very long; the person who was DMing for me and my group kept having ADD attacks x.x Most of my characters I like because of their character, not necessarily because of their class powers. However, here are some classes that I did enjoy playing:
- Druid. Shapeshifting variant from PHB2 FTW!
- Warlock. Summon Swarm is mean at first level, and very flavorful for my character.
- I never got to play them, but Martial Adepts are made of awesome
- I enjoyed playing an epic level monk once, though I was a newbie then, and my build was very substandard; I couldn't damage the terrrasque, so I just ran circles around it to distract it.
- I enjoyed my Sorcerer and my Cleric for the full one game I played with them in it
- I played a bard once, and liked it, though I didn't use her class features too much at all

 

[Will]

Pretty much, I'm with everyone else.

I'll also add that as a DM, the list also bothered me; I hated feeling like a jerk to the rogue because I was using undead or plants or constructs. I hated trying to massage the game and justify to the players why they want to march ahead rather than reclaim spells. I hated putting them in the position of feeling like jerks because they actually want to be at the top of their game for the next dungeon, so insisted on resting the rest of the day.

Well, the cleric thing, not so much; in play, the cleric of 3.5e seems well balanced to switch quickly between healing and fighting as needed. And a martial cleric can be on the frontline, where healing is often necessary.

Still, tweaking that up a little wouldn't hurt.