Why are there no sneaky leaders?

[Mengu]

I like pushing the envelope on what I can't do. So I'm playing a Warlord with 14 dex, stealth training, and an elven cloak. I'm wearing scale and light shield so no skill penalty. My stealth is as good as our ranger, and one behind our rogue. I can lead them for an ambush or alpha strike if we ever need to.

Background options give you an easy way to train or boost stealth, you can try:

Any Eladrin leader, pick a background that gives you +1 or +2 stealth, pick stealth as your bonus racial skill, and look for an item bonus to stealth.

Tiefling, Gnome, Drow, Kalashtar, Kenku can all make interesting stealth bards. Eladrin and Shadarkai can make good stealth artificers.

 

[yesnomu]

Actually...An Eagle Spirit Shaman with the Ghost Panther Paragon Path is almost an ideal "Sneaky Party Leader". I'm having a devil of a time thinking of an appropriate multiclass feat to get Stealth trained with, though.

The assassin MC is not great for a leader, but there's nothing wrong with it, either.

 

[The Human Target]

Is this a joke?

My sense of humor is not that subtle.

Probably. It's pretty obvious why strikers don't start with heavy armor prof (most strikers are dex or (less common) Int, and Barbarians traditionally don't use heavy armor despite their stat pairs being perfect for it), but heavy armor is a flavor thing -- not a capability thing. Whereas when you put together a sneaky party, you can do trivial multiclassing to add a sneaky controller and a sneaky defender...but while you can find striker sets with every stat and then some, dex leaders are all but impossible.

I don't see why you couldn't have a heavy armor striker. You can get some pretty amazing defenses with a lot of the light armor strikers as is.

I too see this as an issue, as the armored offensive knight is a classic striker concept. The current answer is that a greatweapon and tempest fighters are pretty strikerish, capable of more damage than some strikers. The fighter is like 4 classes in one with all its versatile builds. Still, i do think both the fighter and swordmage could exist as strikers as well as defenders.

The conclusion, I guess, is that I dislike classes.

Yeah, Fighters can somewhat pull it off. I just think its weird that there is no dedicated striker in anything heavier than hide.

 

[Dan'L]

Actually...An Eagle Spirit Shaman with the Ghost Panther Paragon Path is almost an ideal "Sneaky Party Leader". I'm having a devil of a time thinking of an appropriate multiclass feat to get Stealth trained with, though.

I almost hate to ask, but what about just taking Skill Training: Stealth then?

-Dan'L

 

[Starfox]

The problem is that, come Epic levels, the attribute difference between a Dexterity class and other is so large that you can't keep up on the Stealth skill. And stealth really is all about the skill in 4E, where even invisibility doesn't give a bonus to staying hidden - it just gives you full concealment.

 

[Flipguarder]

I just made a bard quasi-maximized for stealth (his lvl 30 cha was 26, 22 secondary stat) and his max static stealth bonus was 34

Then I made a rogue and did the same thing. The difference was the cost of one feat and the rogues was 39.

You can totally make a stealthy leader, you just have to spend a background, two feats and get a greater ring of invisibility. Not at all outside the realm of reason.

 

[eriktheguy]

It would make for some cool powers. Banner of camouflage! Trumpet of silence! Crusade of stealth!

 

[Garthanos]

I Trumpet of silence!

Maxwell pulls out his cone of silences and mumble mumble mumble.

 

[mneme]

My sense of humor is not that subtle.

My mistake.

I don't see why you couldn't have a heavy armor striker. You can get some pretty amazing defenses with a lot of the light armor strikers as is.

Oh, absolutely. Mind, there are some strikers that prefer heavy armor -- most Thaneborn Barbarians will do so at high levels, for instance.

My point is that you can see in the nature of the strikers we have why they don't wear heavy armor, but I see no balance/mechanical one except that striker=>stealth=>dex=>light armor; no reason we couldn't have heavy armor strikers in the future. I mean, we have:
Assassin, rogue: stealth class
Avenger: could have had a heavy armor (con secondary?) build. Don't.
Warlock: heavy armor out of flavor, but some warlocks wear it anyway.
Barbarian: heavy armor out of flavor, but some barbarians wear it anyway.
Sorcerer: arcane class, so heavy armor out of flavor.
Monk: heavy armor out of flavor
Ranger: heavy armor out of flavor (but a small number of rangers wear it anyway)



Yeah, Fighters can somewhat pull it off. I just think its weird that there is no dedicated striker in anything heavier than hide.[/quote]

 

[Rechan]

My point is that you can see in the nature of the strikers we have why they don't wear heavy armor, but I see no balance/mechanical one except that striker=>stealth=>dex=>light armor; no reason we couldn't have heavy armor strikers in the future. I mean, we have:
Assassin, rogue: stealth class
Avenger: could have had a heavy armor (con secondary?) build. Don't.
Warlock: heavy armor out of flavor, but some warlocks wear it anyway.
Barbarian: heavy armor out of flavor, but some barbarians wear it anyway.
Sorcerer: arcane class, so heavy armor out of flavor.
Monk: heavy armor out of flavor
Ranger: heavy armor out of flavor (but a small number of rangers wear it anyway)

Look at your list.

Now, my question is this: How many of those classes require moving around?

So, it's also a matter of:

Striker=>Highly Mobile=>Light Armor (No movement penalty).

That's likely one reason you haven't seen a heavy armor striker: they can't dance around the battlefield to get to their targets. Of course, one of the reason for being highly mobile is to avoid getting surrounded - a high armor Striker is OK with getting attacked (since hopefully the attack will bounce off his armor), so he doesn't need to flee. But, getting around the front line to shove your greataxe in the enemy caster's face will be far more tricky with a hampered movement.

A mounted striker, on the other hand...