What should have been done differently in 4E

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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.

This is my personal opinion, but I am not so keen on having a party with a large group of followers moving into combat. Mass Combat can be fun, but I don't see it as my focus. I am role-playing one character, not 2, 3 or even a dozen. Also, if you up the number of "entities" a player controls, you must reduce the complexity of handling the individual entity. If every Cohort or Follower is even just like a 3E Fighter, that's a lot of workload. And it will certainly not reduce the time spent on combat... Unless I simplify the combat and character build rules.

That's also why I think "formation options" are not a good solution if the average party consists of 4-5 players. (And unfortunately, in my group, it's more like 3-4 players... Which is a problem in 3E and will stay a problem in 4E).

 

[ExploderWizard]

Same with dnd fighters. They still have Reflex and AC. That's why they have the best armors too.

Sadly no. They do not. A fighter needs a feat to wear plate these days. If I could imagine the ONE class that would be trained in all armors, I would have picked fighter. Oh well.

 

[xechnao]

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.

Bodyguards are not to be facing monsters around every day or week. Guides or scouts are usually the ones used this way in the wilds in real life. And they do not act as bodyguards.

 

[xechnao]

This is my personal opinion, but I am not so keen on having a party with a large group of followers moving into combat. Mass Combat can be fun, but I don't see it as my focus. I am role-playing one character, not 2, 3 or even a dozen. Also, if you up the number of "entities" a player controls, you must reduce the complexity of handling the individual entity. If every Cohort or Follower is even just like a 3E Fighter, that's a lot of workload. And it will certainly not reduce the time spent on combat... Unless I simplify the combat and character build rules.

That's also why I think "formation options" are not a good solution if the average party consists of 4-5 players. (And unfortunately, in my group, it's more like 3-4 players... Which is a problem in 3E and will stay a problem in 4E).

All you really need is just two extra rolls. A leadership roll to make your order succeed the way you want and a group's efficiency roll based on your order, the result of your order roll and the group's quality itself. Your group can be represented by a template as swarms for example. Of course this abstraction may not fit really well with a tile board & miniature scheme of Wotc's miniature scale but oh well, I want emphasis on a better rpg and not on buying 28mm miniatures.

 

[Aldarc]

Sadly no. They do not. A fighter needs a feat to wear plate these days. If I could imagine the ONE class that would be trained in all armors, I would have picked fighter. Oh well.

Woe be to the fighter who must spend one of his dime-a-dozen feats for plate armor proficiency!

 

[ExploderWizard]

Woe be to the fighter who must spend one of his dime-a-dozen feats for plate armor proficiency!

Touche! Its true. Now that powers have moved in, feats are the forgotten children looking for a new home.

 

[D.Shaffer]

All you really need is just two extra rolls. A leadership roll to make your order succeed the way you want and a group's efficiency roll based on your order, the result of your order roll and the group's quality itself. Your group can be represented by a template as swarms for example. Of course this abstraction may not fit really well with a tile board & miniature scheme of Wotc's miniature scale but oh well, I want emphasis on a better rpg and not on buying 28mm miniatures.

...Honestly, it's beginning to sound less like you want sword and sorcery and more like you want a full blow mini's wargame here. Characters leading wargroups of followers shares much more, in genre, with wargames like 40K then to DnD in my view of things.

 

[xechnao]

...Honestly, it's beginning to sound less like you want sword and sorcery and more like you want a full blow mini's wargame here. Characters leading wargroups of followers shares much more, in genre, with wargames like 40K then to DnD in my view of things.

You have a point. Thing is I was commenting on 4e D&D design. And 4e is minis. D&D is supposed to be build on pulp sword & sorcery, at least so far, IMO. And I see this problem in 4e's D&D regarding this so I wanted to spell it out. That's all.

 

[Shazman]

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.

Yeah but most of the time, you will fight as many or more monsters as there are party members at one time. That means the monsters will probably be attacking everyone unless you can decide which direction they will attack from and prepare accordingly. If you get jumped, everyone is their own defender.

 

[jmucchiello]

If you have a problem with Defender as a role, use the superhero term and call them Bricks.

...Honestly, it's beginning to sound less like you want sword and sorcery and more like you want a full blow mini's wargame here. Characters leading wargroups of followers shares much more, in genre, with wargames like 40K then to DnD in my view of things.

Well having lots of henchmen is a 1e concept, isn't it? Dungeon expeditions back then were always half-a-dozen PCs and their 20-odd mercs and hirelings.