What's your Fifth?

[Holy Bovine]

Looks like Striker is definitely the odds on favorite here. By about 3:1 over any other choice. The poor controller.

Why no doubling up on controllers?

I think people are intimidated by controller classes. They can be hard to use if you are not a tactically minded individual. I know at least 2 of my players have shied away from them as they don't feel they could use them to their best effect. Of course the 4 people I know playing controllers are really good at it (except last session when the one wizard managed to hit his dragonborn Paladin ally twice with AoE - it did save the party though as they were getting surrounded by swarms).

 

[MarkB]

I think people are intimidated by controller classes. They can be hard to use if you are not a tactically minded individual. I know at least 2 of my players have shied away from them as they don't feel they could use them to their best effect. Of course the 4 people I know playing controllers are really good at it (except last session when the one wizard managed to hit his dragonborn Paladin ally twice with AoE - it did save the party though as they were getting surrounded by swarms).

It's funny - in our group, our two wizards went with quite different philosophies. My friend's Staff wizard freely chooses indiscriminate area-effect spells, and makes no bones about the fact that he'll deploy them in ally-occupied areas if he thinks the effects on the enemy are worth it. On the other hand, he's defense-specialised, having one of the highest ACs of the group even before using any of his immediate-interrupt powers, and is quite happy to stand on the front lines and bear the brunt of attacks as an extra Defender.

My Orb wizard, on the other hand, has more modest defenses, and I prefer to keep him behind the front lines - but I've also specialised him in enemies-only spells, to the extent that Thunderwave is about the only spell he has that is likely to catch allies, and I actually chose a 5th-level Daily at 9th level because none of the 9th-level choices were sufficiently target-discriminating.

Both versions work well, each in their own way.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Because too many people are still hung up on the 3E/Video Game mentality of "Damage R0XX0Rs!!!" instead of seeing how ultimately awesome controllers are. And I'd place part of that on DMs designing adventures too. There's two schools of thought (with varying degrees of overlap):

Ummm...no.

Damage dealing was considered inferior in 3e for casters. Even for melee, optimizers preferred trip and lockdown builds. Charge craziness was fun to think about, but easy to foil for the DM.

In videogames control is very important. Especially tactical RPGs, you often need to hold the enemy in place, slow them down, speed up your own guys, etc...to steal items from them, let lower level folks get some xp, etc...

The only times RPG video games tend to make damage the be all and end all is games where there just aren't as many tactical options.

 

[Herschel]

Ummm...no.

Damage dealing was considered inferior in 3e for casters. Even for melee, optimizers preferred trip and lockdown builds. Charge craziness was fun to think about, but easy to foil for the DM.

In videogames control is very important. Especially tactical RPGs, you often need to hold the enemy in place, slow them down, speed up your own guys, etc...to steal items from them, let lower level folks get some xp, etc...

The only times RPG video games tend to make damage the be all and end all is games where there just aren't as many tactical options.

You assume I'm only discussing actual "hit points" and only "rpg" video games. The quick kill is the thing, not the mechanic used. Controllers are VERY tactical but usually set up the kill rather than execute it themselves and many people just don't seem to want to deal with the finesse.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

defender striker striker

and defender striker strike controller...

not exactly the fifth member but...

 

[Thanee]

Cannot answer that without multiple choice.

Party right now is usually made of 4 characters, 2x Defender, 2x Leader. Nothing can kill us.

There is also a Striker, but the player currently has little time.

Initially there has been a Controller instead of the Striker, and one of the Defenders was a Striker instead (char died when there was no Raise Dead available; he also wanted to try something else, so no real problem). At that point we only had double Leaders.

Bye
Thanee

 

[On Puget Sound]

group1: 2 leaders, 3 strikers, 1 defender who is frequently absent

group2: 3 strikers, 1 defender/ leader (hybrid warlord-swordmage), 1 defender who is frequently absent. Oddly, this group started out defender-heavy.

 

[Quickleaf]

Looks like Striker is definitely the odds on favorite here. By about 3:1 over any other choice. The poor controller.

Why no doubling up on controllers?

Well, my group of 7 players epitomizes the results of this poll. 2 Defenders, 2 Leaders, 2 Strikers, and 1 Controller. I think Holy Bovine's comment about controllers requiring more player buy-in, requiring more tactical finesse than other classes, is right on.

Also, it would be interesting to view the % results of the poll after normalizing for # of classes of each role (i.e. the large gap of strikers in the 5th role vs. other roles may largely be due to the abundance of striker classes).

 

[Dice4Hire]

Looks like Striker is definitely the odds on favorite here. By about 3:1 over any other choice. The poor controller.

Why no doubling up on controllers?

I don't see the need for even a single controller, unfortunately.

 

[Thanee]

Yeah, Controller is a completely redundant role. They are fun, if you like messing with the enemies positions and such, but it's simply not necessary or even as useful as the other roles, which have a more definite impact.

The poll result (with Striker leading by far and Controller being faaaaar behind) doesn't surprise me at all.

Bye
Thanee