D&D General When Was it Decided Fighters Should Suck at Everything but Combat?

[JohnSnow]

I disagree with the MMO “Tank, DPS, Healing, Magic” role thing because it literally comes from D&D’s “Core 4.”

Fundamentally, other than healing, there’s three things you can do in combat (I’ll tackle healing in a minute).

1. You can be a frontline melee combatant.
2. You can be a skirmisher, either attacking from range, or acting as a highly mobile melee combatant.(*)
3. You can cast spells.

Now, spellcasters can function in a LOT of different ways, including targeted attacks, area attacks, manipulating the battlefield, or weakening adversaries. Which makes their niche complicated.

Healing isn’t a particularly interesting thing to do in combat. If a low-level potion can replace your niche, it’s not a very good niche.

(*) A reasonable argument could be made that a ranged combatant and a skirmishing melee combatant are two very different roles. I tend not to think so, because part of what happens in a normal fight is that most archers have to use weapons other than their bows at times.

I’d draw the Aragorn-Legolas comparison. While Gimli is a frontline fighter, wading into combat with his axes and hacking enemies down, Aragorn generally prefers to fight as more of a skirmisher, even though he does it from melee. He dashes in, makes his kills, and moves on to the next target. While he doesn’t even carry a bow in the books, he has one in the movies and it very much suits his preferred combat style.

Legolas, by contrast, is a mostly a ranged skirmisher, shooting his bow from a distance, and fighting in melee (using a single long knife, in the books, and paired ones, in the films) only when necessary.

Different fighting styles can be as much a combat niche as DPS, Tank, Healer and Mage.

(As an aside, I would note that Clerics got the things needed to be a second-string fighter in early D&D, and “extra fighters” was almost always what was suggested once the primary roles were covered).

 

[Bill Zebub]

While Gimli is a frontline fighter, wading into combat with his axes and hacking enemies down, Aragorn generally prefers to fight as more of a skirmisher, even though he does it from melee. He dashes in, makes his kills, and moves on to the next target.

What's the textual evidence for this distinction? I may be forgetting something, but I can't think of any examples in support of this.

 

[Staffan]

I disagree with the MMO “Tank, DPS, Healing, Magic” role thing because it literally comes from D&D’s “Core 4.”

Fundamentally, other than healing, there’s three things you can do in combat (I’ll tackle healing in a minute).

1. You can be a frontline melee combatant.
2. You can be a skirmisher, either attacking from range, or acting as a highly mobile melee combatant.(*)
3. You can cast spells.

Now, spellcasters can function in a LOT of different ways, including targeted attacks, area attacks, manipulating the battlefield, or weakening adversaries. Which makes their niche complicated.

This is what I disagree with. I think the "what" is more important than the "how". A frontliner can fight using pure martial badassery, or by being divinely empowered, or by using arcane powers learned through study. They still fulfill the role of "frontliner", but the play experience will likely be quite different. Now, D&D has historically not been very good at providing options for arcanely powered frontliners (with the exception of 4e's swordmage), but that's a different problem.

Healing isn’t a particularly interesting thing to do in combat. If a low-level potion can replace your niche, it’s not a very good niche.

Healing is a bit of an odd duck. It's very hard to design a game where it is useful but not a necessity. You can design the game with the assumption of attritional encounters that aren't individually likely to kill anyone but just waste resources, in which case in-combat healing is useless because the actions spent on healing would be better spent on ending the encounter sooner. Or you can design on the assumption that any given encounter can and will deal enough damage to the PCs that they need to mitigate that during combat in which case healing is necessary. There's very little middle ground.

 

[nevin]

I disagree with the MMO “Tank, DPS, Healing, Magic” role thing because it literally comes from D&D’s “Core 4.”

Fundamentally, other than healing, there’s three things you can do in combat (I’ll tackle healing in a minute).

1. You can be a frontline melee combatant.
2. You can be a skirmisher, either attacking from range, or acting as a highly mobile melee combatant.(*)
3. You can cast spells.

Now, spellcasters can function in a LOT of different ways, including targeted attacks, area attacks, manipulating the battlefield, or weakening adversaries. Which makes their niche complicated.

Healing isn’t a particularly interesting thing to do in combat. If a low-level potion can replace your niche, it’s not a very good niche.

(*) A reasonable argument could be made that a ranged combatant and a skirmishing melee combatant are two very different roles. I tend not to think so, because part of what happens in a normal fight is that most archers have to use weapons other than their bows at times.

I’d draw the Aragorn-Legolas comparison. While Gimli is a frontline fighter, wading into combat with his axes and hacking enemies down, Aragorn generally prefers to fight as more of a skirmisher, even though he does it from melee. He dashes in, makes his kills, and moves on to the next target. While he doesn’t even carry a bow in the books, he has one in the movies and it very much suits his preferred combat style.

Legolas, by contrast, is a mostly a ranged skirmisher, shooting his bow from a distance, and fighting in melee (using a single long knife, in the books, and paired ones, in the films) only when necessary.

Different fighting styles can be as much a combat niche as DPS, Tank, Healer and Mage.

(As an aside, I would note that Clerics got the things needed to be a second-string fighter in early D&D, and “extra fighters” was almost always what was suggested once the primary roles were covered).

well using legolas is what I call the outlier. What they did in the movie with him was just F'ing stupid. In the books he was a bad ass ranged attacker and a decent melee warrior and even with the amount of people he killed at range before Gimli hit the front line gimli killed just as many as he did. I'd never allow a "Legolas" as per the movie in the game. If your deal is ranged then be bad assed at range, if it's melee be bad assed at melee but if you want to be a swiss army knife character then you'll not be as good as any specialist and that's what we lost somewhere along the way is the Warior is the specialist. They should at high levels be able to pick up any weapon do large amounts of scary damage and be nearly impossible to kill compared to the other classes except paladins.

That was the deal with fighters at the beginning of D&D. The problem came when we decided that all characters should use the same rules for combat and leveling. Wizards used to level faster than warriors. Unfair right? But one hit before you cast your spell and you lost the spell, The options for increasing your Armor Class were very limited till high level and even them it took a looong time (days) to memorize all your spells and the best you'd get was a decent armor class and stoneskin gave you some freebie's against attacks but multiple missilles or similar things all counted as individual attacks for stoneskin. So Ranger hits you 3 times with arrows then fighter hits you 3 times first combat round and you are down by 6 of your stoneskin freebies. A wizard without martial protection was a dead wizard. In all out melee you wanted warriors, paladins and rangers in that order. The ranger though 3, and the thief were damn near necessary in natural and city environments to prevent you from getting killed by terrible surprise rolls that would give the enemy 3 full round attacks on the party. Imagine that game.

Everything since 2e through to pathfinder there has been an attempt to make mages, rogues and other classes better and less squishy without making the warriors, or rangers overall more powerful and maintaining their niches. Those classes should be squishy. When walking down a city street you should want a big bad ass who can kill with ease with you.

With skills (that screw the game up in so many ways. But that needs to be another thread entirely) I think saying fighters suck at everything but combat is disingenuous but I do think modern D&D might benefit from the old 1st edition surprise rounds. Few characters besides Warriors and Paladins can survive a full three rounds of damage from a normal group of say bandits at thier levels. Mages, monks, clerics and the like suddenly need the warrior, the ranger and the rogue to save thier ass from the scary sneaky things of the world. The problem is we took away the scary threat of a surprise attack wiping the entire party, or a rogue sneaking in and killing the mage first combat round and now warriors are just that guy who does a scary amount of consistant damage and no one is worried about them. We need to get back to a game where when that rogue sneaks into the party, a decision needs to be made. Am I more worried abut the warrior or the mage, and the answer should be oh hell they can both kill me when I unload.

All that rambling really just to say that niches are important and the idea that every class should be able to fill any niche is hurting the overall game. I think that toxic Idea started with elven war mages in heavy armor around 2e.

If you want every class to fill every role if necessary then you need something like GURPS and no classes. And I honestly have had more players upset by other classes filling their niche than being upset they can't do what other classes can do. In my experience more players like classes having a niche than not.