What should have been done differently in 4E

[Imaro]

I personally think the player should have been able to define his own role through the different builds.

As an example, why can't I have a rogue who is a defender instead of a striker? A rogue who parries and deflects blows with speed and deftness, who confuses and blocks a foe with his swift movements and speed of swordplay?

Or better yet, why can't I have a Fighter who is a striker, one who doesn't let the enemy take the fight to him but instead deals massive amounts of damage while leaving himself open to retaliation?

Or even a wizard who is a defender? His magical auras, wards and shields are used to protect himself and his companions from the damage of opponents.

I'm not arguing don't have the roles, only that I wish they had been available for players to decide within a class.

 

[xechnao]

I don't think your role in combat has anything to do with your character's internal motivations unless you want it to. The fighter doesn't fill the Defender role because he's a masochist, he does it because if *someone* has to go toe-to-toe with the monsters, he's better equipped and trained to do so and live than the guy in a robe.

If soliders get trained to fight in a fashion that allows them to hold the line and protect their allies -- that's not altruism, it's survival. You don't even have to like your allies for it to make sense to want to keep them alive and able to do their jobs.

Marking is just an abstraction of a fighter's ability to find openings and take advantage of them. There's no supernatural "You must attack me" compulsion, we're talking about a big armored dude with a sword bearing down on you. Turning away from him to hit an easier target gives him an opening. One mark at a time is simply because most of the time it's difficult to present a credible immediate threat to two people at once, and it makes the abstraction a bit simpler. (There are a number of higher-level powers that allow you to apply multiple marks, as well.)

I agree. Warlord is martial, ranger is martial. Just make them being able to go toe-to-toe with their martial weapons then. If you want to use the marking rule(which has many problems still) for halting the enemy then give a marking ability to the warlord or ranger. If you want something different add soldier formations.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The aggro mechanics is one of the reasons why 4E is a tactical board game to me. It can be a fun boardgame though.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Or better yet, why can't I have a Fighter who is a striker, one who doesn't let the enemy take the fight to him but instead deals massive amounts of damage while leaving himself open to retaliation?

Or even a wizard who is a defender? His magical auras, wards and shields are used to protect himself and his companions from the damage of opponents.

I'm not arguing don't have the roles, only that I wish they had been available for players to decide within a class.

The design choice was made to ensure that every class guarantees that you are useful in one area. Unfortunately, 3E didn't guarantee this. It was easy to become a dabbler, a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. And this was always a bad choice from a balance view. It is not "user-friendly" to allow this so easily.

There has to be a trade-off between balance/usability and flexibility.

IN another way - Classes represent archetypes. They exist to narrow what a character does. How narrow this is depends on the game system. 4E is narrower then 3E. Which means creating more classes will become important in the long term. (Like the Swordmage (?) for Forgotten Realms.)

--

For deciding whether a role is important, I remember a Races & Classes comment:
"If you don't choose a Defender, the Monsters will choose one for you"
The monsters will choose someone to attack. It's better to have someone that represents himself as a good target and can stand the heat. You surely could add Defender abilities to other classes, but that doesn't mean the role does not exist.

 

[xechnao]

Dp again

 

[xechnao]

"If you don't choose a Defender, the Monsters will choose one for you"
The monsters will choose someone to attack. It's better to have someone that represents himself as a good target and can stand the heat. You surely could add Defender abilities to other classes, but that doesn't mean the role does not exist.

Add formation options that are good to halt the monsters then if you like. If you need more men have the leader have a control of a group as a group (not micro-managing every member). This would bring even more tactics to the table. Marks OTOH IMO are a failure fluff and rules-mechanical wise -I am not talking about the separate defender role-concept right here I address above: I have both a problem with "defender" and marks that is
Regarding the groups: alas, fighters in 2e had some followers I remember.

 

[Henry]

The aggro mechanics is one of the reasons why 4E is a tactical board game to me. It can be a fun boardgame though.

Are you referring to the fighter and paladin marking abilities? That's not aggro in my opinion; if that were "aggro", then Clerics would have had "aggro mechanics since 1st edition - they had bless/bane, prayer, and enthrall spells since first edition, which penalized monsters, and drew attention to themselves. Aggro mechanics would have been something like, "if you do X damage to the monster, roll a 1d6. If it equals 1 or 2, then monster is attracted to you. add 1 to the chance per 10 additional damage" or something similar.

In fact I've seen some threads complaining that the fighter mark is not "aggro" enough!

But there are plenty of other reasons people don't like 4e; I just disagree that the marking is really "aggro" - if it were, it would compel a monster to fight the fighter or paladin.

 

[Imaro]

The design choice was made to ensure that every class guarantees that you are useful in one area. Unfortunately, 3E didn't guarantee this. It was easy to become a dabbler, a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. And this was always a bad choice from a balance view. It is not "user-friendly" to allow this so easily.

There has to be a trade-off between balance/usability and flexibility.

IN another way - Classes represent archetypes. They exist to narrow what a character does. How narrow this is depends on the game system. 4E is narrower then 3E. Which means creating more classes will become important in the long term. (Like the Swordmage (?) for Forgotten Realms.)

--

For deciding whether a role is important, I remember a Races & Classes comment:
"If you don't choose a Defender, the Monsters will choose one for you"
The monsters will choose someone to attack. It's better to have someone that represents himself as a good target and can stand the heat. You surely could add Defender abilities to other classes, but that doesn't mean the role does not exist.

I understand what the "design decisions" were, but I believe this is one of the major things that gives 4e an overly simplistic feel. I mean how far do I need designers to hold my hand? Not only are there "builds" for each class but also each class can only efectively perform one role. And another note is that you can still end up with a lopsided party if everyone wants to play a fighter or a wizard, this would have been avoidable if the classes were able to choose what role they wanted through something similar to the talent trees in Star Wars. With the unification of BAB, saves, etc. this would have been even easier to do.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Heh what? No, it does not connect as a role. Do you know anyone that his life philosophy or style constitutes to seek to take as many hits as he can and keep on going? Lol.

It's not his philosophy to take as many hits as possible, but to prevent other people to get hit - it's definitively not his aim to get hit.

And there's an actual job in Real Life(TM) that does that: Bodyguards.

Cheers, LT.

 

[lutecius]

I won't make a list of all the things that should have been done differently since there are already a lot of threads for that and this one seems to have taken a more specific and interesting turn.

Unfortunately, yes, considering war or combat, it is. It is the philosophy of militarily winning a war or combat.

No really no. There exist dramatic situations that can make one man to take and or lead the front and defend something. OTOH militarily we are talking about GROUP formations that make the front. But no one trains as to be a solo damage absorption machine. Perhaps one can train to be a daredevil striker that fears not to face his enemies, but not a damage absorption machine. It is just a wrongly taken concept from video-games to a tabletop rpg. If you wanted to include guys that can stop the advancement of enemies then find a way to give this ability to any martial build, say leaders or strikers within their contest.

I'm with Mustrum on this one, even though I don't agree with him on roles in general and hate how classes are being restricted to wargamey roles.

Cannon-fodder is as much a combat archetype as artillery or hit-an-run tactics. Look at riot control forces, bodyguards or even bouncers, they're specifically "built" to absorb damage.
They stand in the way of harm but that doesn't mean they're willing to take every blow and they will certainly try to dodge or parry if that doesn't endanger whatever they're protecting. Same with dnd fighters. They still have Reflex and AC. That's why they have the best armors too.