What SHOULD the D&D Next Fighter Look Like? [Archive]

Ziegander

2012-07-10, 07:16 PM

Because I think most of us agree that proficiencies, weapon focus, and slayer does not an effective or interesting class make.

The playtest Fighter provided does not showcase a character that is the best at fighting. Certainly not within the playtest module, and doubtful in any other modules.

Now, I'm actually okay with a Fighter's proficiencies making him deal more damage with his weapons (the 2d6 damage his Greataxe deals, for example, does not reflect the 1d12 damage a Greataxe is said to deal in the How to Play document), and I think the same principle should be applied to his armor proficiencies. A Fighter wielding a Greataxe deals more damage than a Rogue wielding a Greataxe, so, in my opinion, a Fighter wearing Scale Mail should have better AC than a Cleric wearing Scale Mail. It's just numbers, but it will help cement the Fighter as "best at fighting."

I like the idea of the Fighter, and only the Fighter, getting Opportunity Attacks. I think were I designing the class, the Fighter would never be using a "basic attack" on his turn - he'd be throwing around a couple different at-will attacks and maybe a recharge attack as situations dictate.

A Fighter's use of "basic attacks" would be in Opportunity Attack spamming, which he gets to use whenever an enemy makes a tactical mistake (for example, moving out of his threatened area, or failing on an action for which they had Disadvantage).

So, the Fighter gets better use out of weapons and armor than other classes, he gets more effective attacks than other classes, and he gets to make lots more attacks than other classes. For a basic start, this goes a lot further toward making the Fighter "the best at fighting."

NEW: The following is what I came up with on page 3, cross-posted for more visibility. If anyone is willing to playtest this version of the Fighter in D&D Next, especially alongside the other classes released in the playtest docs, please let me know how it works out.

Class: Fighter
Durability and experience combined with weapon mastery over his equipment helps the Fighter dominate the battlefield. Fighters gain the following features.

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: You can wear all armor, use all shields, and wield all weapons.

You have Damage Reduction 2 when wearing armor and a +1 bonus to AC when using a shield. Any weapon you wield, including an Unarmed Strike, deals +2 damage on a successful hit.

When you reach 5th level you have DR 4 when wearing armor, +2 AC when using a shield, and +4 damage with weapons you wield on a successful hit. These bonuses continue to increase every four class levels (DR by 2, AC by +1, and damage by +2).

Opportunity Attack: You may immediately attack a moving enemy just before it moves beyond your reach or an enemy that fails at any action for which it has disadvantage if it failed within your reach. This is not an action (or a reaction). A Fighter may attack another Fighter in this way if he has more Fighter levels than the other Fighter.

Fighting Style: You begin play with the knowledge of two different special attacks that you may use as an action on your turn. These attacks represent your superior knowledge of weapon mechanics and fighting techniques. At 1st level, choose any two of the following.

Defender's Mark - If Defender's Mark hits, your target's attacks against your allies have Disadvantage until the start of your next turn.

Duelist's Strike - If Duelist's Strike hits, your target's attacks against you have Disadvantage until the start of your next turn.

Hungry Steel - Your attack with Hungry Steel is made with Advantage but each attack made against you until the start of your next turn gains Advantage.

Slayer's Tenacity - Your attack with Slayer's Tenacity has Disadvantage, but even if it misses you deal damage to the target equal to the higher of your Strength or Dexterity modifiers.

Steel Wind - Steel Wind attacks up to two creatures that are either adjacent to you or adjacent to each other.

Tactical Strike - Even if you miss with Tactical Strike, choose an ally adjacent to the target. That ally receives Advantage on the next attack it makes against the target before the start of your next turn.

These special attacks cannot be used in conjunction with your Opportunity Attack feature (Fighting Style attacks require you to spend your action on your turn; only basic attacks can be used with Opportunity Attack).

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So, there you have it. That's my proposed, 1st level "Fighter fix" for D&D Next. At 2nd level, as I envision it, the Fighter gains his "encounter attack", which isn't necessarily a once per encounter thing, but simply is a situational attack that is powerful but can't be used all the time. At 3rd level, I would give them a passive "stance" type ability that is on all the time. Something like, "Peerless Skill" that gives the Fighter advantage on all Strength and Dexterity based contests (like Bull Rush and Trip) would be appropriate.

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But what are some other thoughts?

Gamer Girl

2012-07-10, 08:17 PM

Well lets not go for the 'at will' and 'encounter' stuff from 4E..

The problem is a fighter just fights, as you would expect...and unless the fighter can do anything, that is cast spells, people will always complain. And that is what 4E attempted, to give the fighter spells.

I do like the idea of the fighter ''getting more'' out of armor and weapons.

But I like 'sneaky characters' to get attacks of opportunity(though I hate the 4E idea that a sneaky thief is an awesome powerful striker). But I'm fine with a fighter getting more 'physical' attacks of opportunity.

navar100

2012-07-10, 08:19 PM

He can use tactics not involving directly dealing damage that are nonetheless effective. A classic movie trick - opponent attacks hero. Hero ducks. Opponent hits other bad guy.

He's not a dumb jock out of combat. The rogue should keep his niche of being the most skillfull, but the fighter should have some knowledges and perceptions of competence.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-10, 08:43 PM

"Best at fighting" is a very vague goal to be working towards; and I'm not exactly sure what you mean when you talk about non-standard attacks.
I'm not intimately familiar with much outside of D&D, but I know that in most systems combat can take many forms: multiple opponents, one large Boss-type opponent, ranged combat, enemies with DR, or tons of attacks, or that you can't easily get close to, or even enemies you don't WANT to get close to.
Plus, if the fighter is far and away the greatest melee combatant, what does that mean for other physical attack-type classes?

In D&D 3.5, one of the fighter's main problems is that there are many enemies at higher levels that it can be difficult to attack normally, or that may be highly resistant to purely damage-based strategies. What I think is important is that a well-built & well-played fighter should always have SOME option in combat that makes him helpful to his group.

When I redid the basic fighter for a 3.5 fix, the first thing I did was give him lots and lots of feats. With the addition of a few splatbooks, I hope this grants the fighter room to master 2 or more different weapon styles, and pick up anything else that seems useful: spell-like Manuevers from the Tome of Battle, new weapon-combination attacks from the Complete Warrior, or anything else that can expand his repetoire.
The other two major additions where an ability called "Battle Cry", which is mostly short-term buffs and debuffs, and a class-feature for supplementing the fighter's meager list of class skills. In other words, all things targeted at increasing his versatility.

My ideal "warrior" base class would probably look a lot more like some of the ToB or other Gish classes (Duskblade, etc) from 3.5, all of which have solid combat-related traits, PLUS other features for when whacking the monster-of-the-week with a sharp metal object isn't a good idea.
A purely-melee fighting class for a full 20 levels would always (IMO) seem less exciting and probably less useful than his counterparts with access to magic or magic-like abilities.

Edit: TL;DR
Kind of like what Gamer Girl and navar100 said, but with more words :smallwink:

Seerow

2012-07-10, 10:34 PM

What the Fighter should look like depends a lot on what the other classes look like.

I can say for sure what he shouldn't look like is a Cleric who forgot that he had another 20 spells left for the day, or like a rogue who forgot that he has actual skills.

Masaioh

2012-07-10, 11:16 PM

-A fighter should be one of the strongest classes, physically. Look at characters like Conan and Beowulf, and the ridiculous things they did.

-A fighter should have access to weapon techniques that no other base class would be able to use. This is what a fighter presumably does for a living, so he should be the authority on how to best cripple and kill things.

-As an extension to the above, a fighter should have access to weapons that no other base class would (normally) be able to use. The class should include proficiency with exotic weapons and armours.

Logic

2012-07-10, 11:30 PM

In my 3.x games, fighters get a free feat from the weapon proficiency tree at 6th, 11th, and 16th level. This isn't the best option, as fighters get a crap-ton of feats in the first place, but I still think it's helpful.

I like the idea of weapons and armor being put to better use in a fighter's hands. A weapon die upsize? More Armor bonus? Damage Reduction? These could be used to augment a fighter, but not all will fit and not be taking something from other classes like the Barbarian.

Seerow

2012-07-10, 11:47 PM

holywhippet

2012-07-10, 11:58 PM

Well, when I did the play test the player with the fighter, when fighting kobolds, was kind of bored. His minimum damage ability meant that every turn a normal kobold died. There was no need for him to roll to hit or for damage. He just removed a kobold mini each turn.

How about a fighter gets an extra hit against the same/a different enemy if he hits over AC by a certain amount maybe? Cleave only kicks in if you actually kill an enemy which is a bit weak.

The rogue was doing about the same amount of damage on a hit provided he was able to flank for combat advantage. The fighter really needs to be dishing out a whole lot of damage.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-11, 12:08 AM

Well, a clear problem is WotC wants to cast the Fighter as being the brain-dead simple class for people who want to sit at the table but don't actually want to try to play the game. So I suggest we sit the fighter as far away from that role as possible, and make a new class to take its place:

The Spectator

Adventuring is a hard life! Why would you want to deal with all the headache of calculating attack bonuses, shopping for items, or arguing over who gets the loot?

Spectators aren't interested in doing any of the work of adventuring, they're just along for the ride, hanging out with their good friends.

Class Features

Don't mind me: At first level, the spectator gains the ability to blend into the background, away from the danger zone. She cannot be harmed or affected in any way, shape, or form, except by talking to them.

Noncombatant: The spectator has access to no feats, background benefits, or racial features. She automatically fails at any attempt at action they attempt to make, except talking (but still fail automatically at social skill checks).

No risk, no reward: Her complete non-action means the spectator gets no reward for doing what she does. She does not count as a member of the party for any purpose, including, but not limited to, the dividing and awarding of experience points or treasure.

WyvernLord

2012-07-11, 02:11 AM

Jerthanis

2012-07-11, 02:11 AM

In my opinion the way to fix Fighter is to drop Rogue, Ranger, Barbarian and Paladin as classes unto themselves.

The reason Fighter can't seem to get its own niche is because any time it starts being able to do something other than swing a sword, it starts looking more like another specific class. If it can sneak and evade traps and guards it must be because it's not a Fighter. If it can track and use woodlore to accomplish minor supernatural feats it must be because it's not a Fighter. If it gets bursts of strength, it must not be a Fighter. If he's sworn to a religion and his faith grants him blessings, he can't be a Fighter.

I admit it would be possible to give Fighter its own niche while keeping all the other martial mundane or semi-mundane classes intact, but other than persuing an ephemeral "Best at fighting" goal which I'm not even certain would be a solution even if it were attainable, I'm not sure what niche it could really call its own.

I've got a lot of other ideas, but they start to break down the class structure even further and I'm sure this is already more radical than anything we'll ever possibly see.

TuggyNE

2012-07-11, 02:31 AM

In my opinion the way to fix Fighter is to drop Rogue, Ranger, Barbarian and Paladin as classes unto themselves.

The reason Fighter can't seem to get its own niche is because any time it starts being able to do something other than swing a sword, it starts looking more like another specific class. If it can sneak and evade traps and guards it must be because it's not a Fighter. If it can track and use woodlore to accomplish minor supernatural feats it must be because it's not a Fighter. If it gets bursts of strength, it must not be a Fighter. If he's sworn to a religion and his faith grants him blessings, he can't be a Fighter.

I agree with your diagnosis, but not your proposed solution; I would reverse it and simply eliminate the Fighter, once and for all, because it is just too vague and broad a goal. It was fine when there were only three or four classes in all, but these days, a class needs a niche, and "melee and ranged combat with DPS and control" isn't a niche at all.

Knaight

2012-07-11, 02:32 AM

I admit it would be possible to give Fighter its own niche while keeping all the other martial mundane or semi-mundane classes intact, but other than persuing an ephemeral "Best at fighting" goal which I'm not even certain would be a solution even if it were attainable, I'm not sure what niche it could really call its own.

The obvious niche is that of a general master of arms. They've got a real knack with weapons, of whatever sort they use, and they can use basically all of them. I'm thinking something along the lines of broad weapon categories, where the fighter gains extra ways to use each and every one of them to some extent, which includes ways to counter each and every one of them. Then, on top of that, they get a selection of reasonable noncombat abilities (though a decent skill system would prevent this from being necessary as a class feature).

With that said, the other obvious method is just to remove the generic fighter entirely, and have a whole host of fighting classes. The paladin, ranger, rogue, and barbarian are a good start, and some sort of duelist and archer could help round it out.

Jerthanis

2012-07-11, 02:45 AM

I agree with your diagnosis, but not your proposed solution; I would reverse it and simply eliminate the Fighter, once and for all, because it is just too vague and broad a goal. It was fine when there were only three or four classes in all, but these days, a class needs a niche, and "melee and ranged combat with DPS and control" isn't a niche at all.

I had thought of that too, and find it an acceptable and in many ways simpler alternative... but then I would also propose ending the Cleric and Wizard classes and replacing them with specialized subclasses like Druid if Druid just got Natureish spells and Wizard with things like "Enchanter" and "Necromancer"

I mean, if the mundanes are locked into a limited selection set of the parameters of their powers at character creation, so too should magical classes.

Knaight

2012-07-11, 03:29 AM

Ziegander

2012-07-11, 04:18 AM

Well lets not go for the 'at will' and 'encounter' stuff from 4E.

My thought process works like this, Clerics or Rogues, for example, may have basic proficiency in fighting, and they use basic attacks for their offense, augmented either by spells or by stealth.

The Fighter on the other hand has a much more thorough and advanced proficiency in fighting. The same style attacks that the Cleric and Rogue are using as standard actions on their turns, the Fighter is just throwing around willy nilly, assailing fools that make tactical errors while within his arm's reach. Instead, on the Fighter's turn, he's using special, non-basic attacks with his standard actions, and he should have a couple, default options that are basic attacks with added features (at-will) and a situational or recharge attack that is significantly more powerful than a basic attack, but can't be used all the time.

But I like 'sneaky characters' to get attacks of opportunity(though I hate the 4E idea that a sneaky thief is an awesome powerful striker). But I'm fine with a fighter getting more 'physical' attacks of opportunity.

I'm not sure I follow the difference in your mind between a sneaky character's attacks of opportunity and the Fighter's greater number of "physical attacks of opportunity." Can you explain?

He can use tactics not involving directly dealing damage that are nonetheless effective. A classic movie trick - opponent attacks hero. Hero ducks. Opponent hits other bad guy.

Non-damaging tactics could involve the classic Bull Rush, Dirty Trick (thank you Pathfinder), Disarm, Grab, Pull, etc maneuvers that we've come to expect, while the "elusive target" dodge maneuver could be a special opportunity attack.

A fighter should have access to weapon techniques that no other base class would be able to use. This is what a fighter presumably does for a living, so he should be the authority on how to best cripple and kill things.

This is exactly the sort of thing I mean when I say special at-will attacks and situational/recharge attacks.

How about a fighter gets an extra hit against the same/a different enemy if he hits over AC by a certain amount maybe? Cleave only kicks in if you actually kill an enemy which is a bit weak.

There's a new game coming out, designed by former 3.5 and 4e designers, that does something similar, and I've been exploring the design space in this way as well. For example, a special attack that reads, if your attack hits and you beat the opponent's AC by 5 or more, then ignore that foe's damage reduction for this attack.

Siegel

2012-07-11, 04:32 AM

Right now the fighter has something really cool going on. If he finds a way to learn how to cast from Scrolls/Wands/Items whatever. He can twice per day cast 2 spells in one round. I would just make him an instant wizard.

Right now we don't know if this will work but i am sure there will be a multiclass feat or something that will make this work.

TheOOB

2012-07-11, 04:42 AM

Giving a fighter spells or special attacks and what not is not the answer. While having a martially oriented class that uses special attacks can be cool(Tome of Battle was one of the best 3.5 supplements), there is room for a class that focuses on just being as good at attacking and defending as possible.

You have the remember that everyone plays D&D for different reasons, and one of the more common player type is the casual player. The casual player doesn't care much about the game you are playing, but they just want to hang out with friends. The important thing to remember about casual players is to not force them to participate more than they wanted.

In 3.5 the fighter had a purpose. Sure it was entirely too weak, but it was still a great class to hand a new or casual player. You help them select their feats, but otherwise in combat their job was simple, make attack rolls and soak damage. Occasionally a trip, grapple, or disarm was in order, but the meat of the class was hitting things with sharp sticks.

The 4e fighter ruined this. Now every class has up to a dozen plus special abilities, usable at different frequencies. You now forced the casual player to do what they hate, make hard choices. In 3.5 if they attacked a foe every round, you are getting what you need from them. in 4e the casual players not only has to stay informed as to what all their abilities do, but they must figure out what ability to use when.

Ergo, I think the fighter should be fairly simple, they should hit things and get hit. I think their special abilities should focus primary on making the fighter hit often and hit hard, and make them difficult to kill. A few combat tricks are not bad, but nothing that adds extra resource management. I also think giving them some out of combat utility is useful as well.

Ultimately, D&D needs classes that work well for casual players.

WitchSlayer

2012-07-11, 04:44 AM

Lucid

2012-07-11, 04:50 AM

I haven't been following the whole D&D Next stuff, so I can't really comment on what's already been shown, but the ideas here make me think of a Warblade coupled with the BFC options of a Crusader.
Think about it, some thngs mentioned are special attacks(maneuvers), weapons master(weapon aptitude), better at making AoO's(Thicket of Blades stance).
Would require some tweaking ofcourse (and needs to include archery), but seems to me a lot like what you're describing, and would (to me atleast) be fun to play.

But maybe this is just the ToB fanboy in me speaking.

TuggyNE

2012-07-11, 05:21 AM

I had thought of that too, and find it an acceptable and in many ways simpler alternative... but then I would also propose ending the Cleric and Wizard classes and replacing them with specialized subclasses like Druid if Druid just got Natureish spells and Wizard with things like "Enchanter" and "Necromancer"

I wouldn't have a problem with this. In fact, I'd prefer to rearrange the spell schools to make simplistic forced full specialization (a la warmage) work more effectively; 3.5's schools were pretty uneven.

Basically my philosophy in designing classes is much like any good project: "defined by what you say no to". Fighter tries to say yes to everything; so does Wizard. One of them actually gets just about everything, the other very little.

Saph

2012-07-11, 05:36 AM

Golden Ladybug

2012-07-11, 05:41 AM

With my purely 3.X experience of D&D, and little knowledge of any of the other editions, here's what I think would work :smalltongue:

The Fighter needs a better skill list; some Knowledge skills and Spot/Listen/Perception would go a long way to helping the Fighter out
The Fighter should be able to melee well. From what I understand, in AD&D, the Fighter was the only class with iterative attacks. Perhaps mimic this by allowing the Fighter to make "Full Attacks" as a Standard action (neatly helping out with its mobility issues as well)
Feats =/= Class Features. Bonus Feats are great and all, but there has to be more than that to look forward to.
Make the fighter the best at combat maneuvers; perhaps add half their class level as a bonus to Trip/Grapple/Bull Rush/Sunder/Disarm/Etc
Weapon Focus/Weapon Spec/GWF/GWS as standard, rather than having to buy them with your feat slots. I don't know why this isn't a thing
Allow the Fighter to overcome enemy defenses without relying on the party wizard; X/day can bypass DR, Incorporeality, etc
Have the option to "fighting spirit" your way through things. At a high enough level, I want my fighters to be able to cut down Walls of Force and punch their way through Dominate Persons
More returns on weapons and armor than other classes; less ACP, more AC for armor, better damage and higher to-hit with weapons, based on their class level

What I'd like to see from the Fighter is someone who is really good at fighting, and a middle ground between the "Skilled" Ranger and the "DPR" Barbarian. They're able to wade into combat and start kicking ass and taking names; good at hitting, hard to hit back and with a toolbox of combat maneuvres that don't require half an hour of cross-referencing to understand. They're calm, collected and powerful.

The Barbarian, on the other hand, should be able to pick one thing on the battlefield and then that thing dies. That might put them in the middle of combat, where they run the risk of getting absolutely flattened by that one thing's friends, but they can take it. The Ubercharger concept, but less ridiculous.

The Ranger shouldn't be the one you go to for straight up damage, but when they're in their element, they're a force to be reckoned with. Traps, Shots from the Undergrowth, Poisons, Hits below the Belt; dirty tricks that mess with the enemy, and wear them down. They have some modest spellcasting ability and a useful pet on the side.

...hmm, that turned into a rant and a half, didn't it?

Conners

2012-07-11, 05:49 AM

Couldn't they add in some actual fighting moves as powers? Rather than the strike which heals your character somehow, how about a counter?

Of course, I can see why they don't in some ways... A lot of IRL fighting techniques wouldn't transfer well to DnD, since IRL fights end quickly with good techniques, but DnD is meant to last in-game minutes of static brawling.

Krazzman

2012-07-11, 06:22 AM

I for my way of imagining a fighter is split into a few roles.

Tactical Fighter (denying movement, outwitting)
Dirty Fighter (tricks and stuff to gain advantage)
Duelist (good one on one fighter tending to be more finesse, lowering ac of enemies, giving them disadvantage)
Battlefield veteran (good in the mids of battle, getting a bit of CC[or in dnd terms BC])

Or in other terms I want him to have options outside of I hit. ToB was a good starting point.

Conners

2012-07-11, 06:24 AM

The difficulty comes in phrasing and statting abilities which don't seem like magic.

Analytica

2012-07-11, 07:26 AM

I see the Fighter as the archetypal Hero. It's the Fighter that gets chosen by the deities to stop evil, it's the Fighter that ends up forging empires, and it's the Fighter that ends up leading armies. From a fluff perspective, the Fighter is the defined protagonist. The other party members may be cooler or may actually be masterminding things, but they are there to support the Fighter (this can go for villains too - the evil necromancer has a blackguard for their mailed fist). The question would be, then, how to support that rules-wise.

One option could be that magical items either only work for a Fighter, or work much better for a Fighter. That is, the only way to kill that lich is to use an enchanted blade, and the blade only works like that for someone with the shounen conviction/sheer vitality/belief in winning that the Fighter has.

In 3.5, I have been thinking of doing this by:
- Making almost all magical items scaling, in that they have little innate effect but become powerful as you do, as well as removing a lot of magic items along with the WBL concept.
- Making magic items work like Incarnum, in that each item effectively has a few soulmeld-like effects it can give you. You do not want a more powerful sword, but you might want to get a sword with a different repertoire of abilities.
- Making your ability to use these magic item effects dependent on your level in particular classes.

I.e. only your rogue levels count for unlocking the bonuses to movement and stealth that the sneaky boots give you, or for using the magical skeleton key. Only your cleric levels count for unlocking the holy symbol's powers of healing and resurrection. Only your wizard levels count for unlocking the ability of the magic staff or scrying bowl. And only your fighter levels count for unlocking the abilities of the battered heirloom sword, mail and shield to deflect magical and physical attacks, kill immortal creatures, leap chasms like an action hero, or heave away the stones blocking the cave entrance.

Other things could be making the fighter the most resilient party member in all aspects, the one who responds best to healing, and give them leadership abilities in the sense that anyone acting under their inspiration or guidance gets bonuses.

Seerow

2012-07-11, 09:21 AM

Conners

2012-07-11, 09:29 AM

Minutes would be an exaggeration, for most combats--but you get the idea.

Flickerdart

2012-07-11, 09:42 AM

Yeah, battles in D&D usually last about 3 rounds (18 seconds) and will rarely go over half a minute.

JellyPooga

2012-07-11, 09:42 AM

Personally, I like the approach that Dungeon Crawl Classics (a retro clone of classic D&D) takes towards Fighters...Fighters are the guys that fight!

Not only are they the only ones with a halfway decent attack bonus and the only ones with access to the biggest weapons and best armour, but they're the only ones that can even attempt 'combat manouevers' like bull rush, trip, called shots, etc. The other classes just aren't geared towards combat in the same way; Thieves have to utilise their sneaky abilities to get the job done, Wizards have to rely on magic, etc.

Admittedly, DCC doesn't have classes like Ranger and Barbarian that are also 'fighting' classes, but it would be no great leap of the imagination to have them be "reduced numbers, wider skill-base" clones of the 'base' Fighter.

If you don't want to be quite so restrictive, then just make Fighters that much better at doing those things than everyone else, to the extent that no-one else with bother.

Conners

2012-07-11, 09:43 AM

I can't think of many combats that went for as little as three rounds.

pasko77

2012-07-11, 09:47 AM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-11, 10:11 AM

obryn

2012-07-11, 10:26 AM

I like Fighters. I think the Fighter should exist; it's pretty much a requirement for a D&D game, IMO.

While I love the 4e Fighter, I don't honestly expect (or want) the Next Fighter to be structured similarly. What I do want is for the Fighter to have some good perks making sure he's awesome at fighting. And that's all of fighting - not just the bare-bones attack/damage/get hit/lose HP part of it.

The Next Fighter should have some interesting tactical options built into their class structure. I don't want them to be "commoner with bigger numbers" or what have you. That holds pretty much no interest to me. I think 4e's Knight and Slayer are two interesting starting points, but I'm fine with an even simpler Fighter so long as the class has defining features and options of its own rather than just working as a baseline.

-O

Deepbluediver

2012-07-11, 10:39 AM

Of course, I can see why they don't in some ways... A lot of IRL fighting techniques wouldn't transfer well to DnD, since IRL fights end quickly with good techniques, but DnD is meant to last in-game minutes of static brawling.

Yeah, battles in D&D usually last about 3 rounds (18 seconds) and will rarely go over half a minute.

I'm not sure that's something we really want to change, though.
A movie that culminates in the hero having a 10-minute duel with the BBEG makes for great cinema, but translating that into game terms you would need each character to dodge, block or otherwise negate about 95% of all attacks.

Essentially it's 2 tanks playing rocket tag: avoidance and DR up the wazoo, first person to get in a solid hit wins. I worry that mechanically it would probably devolve into 2 players standing toe-to-toe, each trying to be the first to roll a natural 20 and max damage in the same turn.

The problem that I see is that defensive fighting is highly reactionary, and D&D is set up to be mostly offensively turn-based. I hit you, then you hit me, back and forth until some one runs out of HP. If you want to break up this stalemate, then you need to alter the way in which the order of actions plays out. For example, via either feats or class features, let fighters (or other melee combatants) take immediate actions in response to OTHER character's actions, and in return you give up Move or standard actions on your next turn. Essentially, your turn becomes a resource pool that you can spend at any time, expanding on mechanics like Attacks of Opportunity.

Thinking about AoO just now, I had another idea. There is a sort of arms race between what actions provoke AoO, feats that let you gain additional AoO, and class features or other feats that grant immunity to AoO. What would you think of reducing the immunity to AoO in exchange for a chance to negate them? Basically, rather than feats like Improved Grapple dis-allowing AoO, you get an opposed attack roll to block or parry.

I like AoO, and they get mentiond in the rules a lot, but in the games I've played they don't seem to be used nearly as much as I expect because there are too many ways to avoid them.

Morty

2012-07-11, 10:42 AM

I don't have all that much to contribute to this discussion, but doesn't the fact that D&D Next is supposed to be modular render the "complex vs. complex Fighter" discussion moot? I'm not sure how this modularity is supposed to look like, but allegedly D&D Next is supposed to cater to more than one playstyle.

Analytica

2012-07-11, 10:42 AM

This works in fiction because the hero is the person we're supposed to be most able to relate to, so they're given down-to-earth abilities and morals (when compared to, say, the wizard) to facilitate this as well as give them a real sense of vulnerability.

The problem here is that D&D is supposed to be a team game where each player at the table is equally important. Taking one character and making them the "chosen one" that the game revolves around and everyone else plays second fiddle is directly counter to that. Really, it's the reason why we hate intra-party imbalances so much in the first place.

I see how you mean. In my experience though, this is a case where two properly directed wrongs can make a right - the hero player gets to shine in heroic combat encounters, the thief player gets to shine in shady dealings and assassinations, and the mage player gets to shine in knowing about things and determining which obstacles the group runs into by utility magic and research. I've had a lot of fun in the latter roles. It might make the individual DM's job more challenging, though, since they will then have to make sure that the game contains sufficient amounts of each. And if a particular game mostly revolves around combat encounters, I can see how it wouldn't work well at all.

Seerow

2012-07-11, 10:48 AM

I'm not sure that's something we really want to change, though.
A movie that culminates in the hero having a 10-minute duel with the BBEG makes for great cinema, but translating that into game terms you would need each character to dodge, block or otherwise negate about 95% of all attacks.

Essentially it's 2 tanks playing rocket tag: avoidance and DR up the wazoo, first person to get in a solid hit wins. I worry that mechanically it would probably devolve into 2 players standing toe-to-toe, each trying to be the first to roll a natural 20 and max damage in the same turn.

Personally I wouldn't mind seeing a much more cinematic style of combat evolve, where rounds aren't always strictly 6 seconds. This would require retooling of durations and such to work, but think for example, if you have two level 20 Swordsmen fighting, they are going back and forth, fighting each other to a standstill for like 10 minutes at a time, where each one gets an opening for a really telling blow off against each other once in that span. But one of those level 20 swordsmen going up against a bunch of low level minions is basically like a scythe through wheat, where he's cutting down several more every second, before they even have a chance to react.

Actually making the mechanics for it work would be difficult, but I do think having epic fights that take longer than seconds in game but not hours out of game is something that would be nice to have. These longer timeframes also allow for more interesting things to be done in combat. The Mage might have time to get off his 30 minute cast time ritual, you might be able to set up a trap or some elaborrate scheme while the BBEG is distracted. Etc

killem2

2012-07-11, 10:55 AM

I do feel that a fighter should get weapon focus type things as a bonus feat, and then have it progress like rangers favored enemy, where if he say chose Weapon Focus (Whip), next level (and I do feel it should be every level or at least every other level), that weapon should get + 1 to damage, or a +1 to hit (primary attack only).

I also feel a straight fighter should again a bonus to str at some interval, maybe a 1d4+1 permanent increase, or perhaps a 1d4+1 ability increase divided between your three highest abilities. (in case you built certain fighter)

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-11, 11:02 AM

I see how you mean. In my experience though, this is a case where two properly directed wrongs can make a right - the hero player gets to shine in heroic combat encounters, the thief player gets to shine in shady dealings and assassinations, and the mage player gets to shine in knowing about things and determining which obstacles the group runs into by utility magic and research. I've had a lot of fun in the latter roles. It might make the individual DM's job more challenging, though, since they will then have to make sure that the game contains sufficient amounts of each. And if a particular game mostly revolves around combat encounters, I can see how it wouldn't work well at all.

Then your idea just devolves into "The Fighter is best at combat."

Dienekes

2012-07-11, 11:31 AM

Personally here's my thoughts, which are probably not very original.

The Fighter is the most skillful at fighting character in the entire game. If you want pure damage output you go to a Barbarian. If you want to be untouchable you go to a Paladin (or a Crusader type or whatever, non-magical defensive warrior), but the Fighter should be able to do things with his blade that the other two couldn't even dream of.

So as 5E is getting started we've seen how the game is lining up.
You can move before and after your action so mobility is no longer an issue for anyone.
There is only standard actions apparently.
No attack of opportunity means enemies can jump in attack and bolt
HP is the scaling defense while all saves are far more static

Ok from this we see a few things that would obviously make sense as extensions of this.

To do a lot of damage, full-attacks need to be standard actions.
To be defensive you need the GM to keep giving you corridors to go all 300 on, or we really really need some mechanic for making it incredibly dumb to try and dart in attack and dart out of range.
Or a way of making sure the opponents attacks focus on them
HP will become unoptimal as a means of dealing with opponents unless you do ridiculous damage (the Barbarian method I'm hoping)
Spells largely target AC (huzzah we can defend against that!) or ability scores (****)

So, martial types to even be potential threats will need be able to attack ability scores in some way, and be able to not get screwed from things that attack ability scores. A better defined IHS type ability could do nicely for the defensive option.

Now so generic combat does not fold into: I attack, I attack again, I attack again for good measure I think basic combat maneuvers need to be implemented

Basic maneuvers should be things like:
Push: Attack vs Str if success opponent moves back X feet
Disarm: Attack vs Dex if success opponent drops weapon
Trip: Attack vs Cons if success opponent falls down
Marked: Attack vs AC if success opponent takes half damage and -2 to any attack roll against anyone but you
Feint: Attack vs Wis if success opponent loses Dex to AC against your next attack
Target Arm: Attack vs AC if success opponent takes half damage and disadvantage on it's next attack roll.
Target Leg: Attack vs AC if success (and opponent has only 2 legs) that opponent takes half damage and can only move at half speed

And basic stances
Aggressive Stance: -X to AC +X to damage
Defensive Stance: -X to attack +X to AC

These would be open to anyone, and are essentially all at-will abilities. As characters gain levels they unlock more of these maneuvers, with the Fighters gaining them faster, or the full-set while others gain only some of them. Or make them cost feats, however you want to balance it.

Further maneuvers and stances can become more complex, but do not all have to be. The maneuvers should open up options like parrying, taunting, ignoring DR, ignoring AC, weakening opponents, lunging, pinning down opponents, dashing to wounded allies, taking other opponents hits, charging for more damage, inspiring allies with your awesomeness, ect. As levels are gained and additional attacks are gained some maneuvers can be applied to each individual attack and some take the full action to do just one. There should be a lot of them, and they should be invented by folks who are much more intelligent and creative than I.

So that's there to make martial combat more interesting, but does not fall into the head scratching confusion of why I can only do this move once a day, did I forget how?

Now as I said, Fighters should be the best at these and it should show in their actual class features. And yes they should have class features. The 2/day double action is a start, but I hope it scales up to more times per day. But, one thing that should be clear is that the maneuvers above should not take the place of standard attacks. If you want to deal damage, standard attacks should be the most effective way of going about that. This can be accomplished through some numbers finagling, maybe doing the half damage thing a bit more, or taking penalties to the attack roll for some maneuvers.

The Fighter's chassis should make it easier to do these maneuvers with the least penalty, reducing penalties and maybe at high enough level turning full action maneuvers into attack maneuvers and apply multiple maneuver effects into the same attack.

That takes care of in combat stuff. Out of combat stuff, well one of the advantages of the new Background thing is you can pick your starting skills. Giving the Fighter Perception is a relief and a nice benefit. Personally I think these Backgrounds should give more than just 3-4 skills. Depending on how big the skill list is (and by the weirdness of some of the skills presented: Commerce, Folklore, Insight as a few examples) leads me to believe that there will be a lot of skills. So I see no reason why each Background shouldn't grant 5-6 skills. This will give everyone a reasonable amount of out of combat utility, and with the Rogues getting 2 Backgrounds right away they still keep their crown as the king of skills. It might not be enough alone admittedly but to get further ideas of what needs to be accomplished to be reasonably successful in out of combat situations in this game I would need to see more of it. Let's be honest here, the original playtest did just about nothing in that regard.

Analytica

2012-07-11, 12:04 PM

Then your idea just devolves into "The Fighter is best at combat."

Well, there would also be McGuffins that only the Fighter can use effectively, and you could extend it from combat to some other suitably heroic aspects. Things like the labours of Hercules, or the things leader/warrior caste Exalted have powers to do. Including the bit about magic items working really well for Fighters but not others appeals to me, since it is then possible to let them (and only them) do some impossible things and still have the physics of the setting work reasonably like real-world equivalents in the absence of the supernatural.

Clawhound

2012-07-11, 12:51 PM

Fighters should not exist.
In a game like D&D everyone fights, so some class whose stitch is "fights better" is necessarily unbalanced.
Exactly as there is no "magic user", but there are Mage, Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid, etc, there is no need for a vanilla "fighter". There already are ranger, rogue, etc.

I quite agree.

"Fighter" doesn't make something appear in your head.

"Big Bruiser" does make you think of something. So does "Rash Risktaker." You can then give them abilities that match their theme. I Big Bruiser could get advantage with weapon damage, while the Rash Risktaker get advantage by doing daring stuff. The "Old Master" gets a free parry every round. The "Grizzled Veteran" is immune to fear and knows a lot about creatures.

Dienekes

2012-07-11, 01:15 PM

Ehh if we get rid of the fighter we should probably get rid of the wizard and sorcerer as well, as they're just as generic and replace them with summoner, necromancer, elementalist, summoner, and so forth.

Though honestly I prefer the idea of instead just making the classes Rogue, Warrior, Wizard, and Cleric and make all those things specific sub-classes you can choose to focus on.

So the we have the classes: sub-classes

Cleric: Druid, Favored-Soul, Hospitaller, Paladin, Priest, Shaman
Rogue: Acrobat, Assassin, Bard, Factotum, Hunter, Noble, Thief
Warrior: Archer, Berserker, Brawler, Fencer, Soldier, Weapon Master
Wizard: Elementalist, Enchanter, Illusionist, Necromancer, Summoner, Warmage

But I can guarantee that's not gonna happen

Ziegander

2012-07-11, 01:19 PM

So, let's recap. Compared with other classes, the Fighter should:

Be proficient with the best equipment
Deal more damage with weapons
Get more defense out of his armor/shields
Have the most HP
Have better, non-basic attacks
Make opportunity attacks
Get some more mileage out of special maneuvers such as Bull Rush and Trip

The "at-will" attacks I mentioned a few times are simple things like, "If your attack hits the enemy's next attack against you has disadvantage," or "Make your attack against two creatures that are adjacent both to you and to each other." I would expect, at 1st level (and maybe simply always), that the Fighter would have two of these type of attacks.

Beyond the couple at-wills, I expect the Fighter to have a third, powerful attack that he can only use in specific situations. Maybe it can only be used against a prone enemy. Maybe it has to be recharged a la Tome of Battle recovery. Maybe, in order to use it, the Fighter has to accept disadvantage to his attack. Maybe, in order to get the full effect, the Fighter has to beat his opponent's AC by 5 or more. Whatever the restriction, the Fighter has one powerful attack that he can rely on occasionally to really disrupt his opponents. Attacks with bonus damage and additional effects that force saves from the ability scores. A whirlwind attack with knockback. An attack that ignores DR and deals constitution damage. Things like that.

The Fighter doesn't need to learn a new power every level, with staggeringly complex interactions, like in 4e. It doesn't even need to have the complexity of a Tome of Battle character. I'm advocating two at-will special attacks and one extra-special attack (they don't ever necessarily need to have more than that at any one time, but being able to cycle through many of these attacks would be a good thing). That's it. Simple and effective, but still with options.

Seerow

2012-07-11, 01:28 PM

Really getting rid of the Fighter and Wizard and breaking them up isn't likely to happen in a core book. The classes exist to be a relatively generic baseline that can fulfill a whole crapton of concepts. There simply isn't room in core page count wise to have 5 different fighter archtype classes and 8 different wizard archtype classes.

And honestly I'm okay with that. The core probably should be a few very generic feeling classes that are well rounded and can be specialized through choice. Later splat books can provide more specialized classes that are more potent at the chosen role but have less overall flexibility.

The trick is to not make the generic classes over or under powered. Fighter fell on one extreme, and wizard fell on the other. They need to land somewhere in the middle while still being generic and flexible. Let the later dedicated specialists shine more in their niche while not being as capable out of it.

Yora

2012-07-11, 01:40 PM

We don't need more classes, we need less! 8 to 10 should be more than enough for all characters imaginable.

So, let's recap. Compared with other classes, the Fighter should:

Be proficient with the best equipment
Deal more damage with weapons
Get more defense out of his armor/shields
Have the most HP
Have better, non-basic attacks
Make opportunity attacks
Get some more mileage out of special maneuvers such as Bull Rush and Trip

That's the easy part. But there's still the more important question of "what does a fighter do".

The best solution that I know is the stunts from Iron Heroes. Use pretty much any Strength or Dexterity skill to gain advantage or deal disadvantage to an enemy. Add Jump to a Charge attack, kick over chairs to create difficult terrain, throw sand in the face, bull rush enemies over handrails, Balance check to slide down railings to increase your maximum movement range for the round... Just get creative and hulk out with fun! :smallbiggrin:
If you have high strength, use it. If you have high Dex, make use of that. Since that's your speciality, you'll be really good at it.

Dimers

2012-07-11, 01:48 PM

When I think of a "fighter" that isn't some other concept already (like champion, berserker or street thug), I think of a weaponmaster, someone who's gotten so good with one kind of weapon that they can pull off stunts that other people just can't. Alternatively, a fighter could be particularly good with a fighting style -- like sword-and-board, duelist, wrestler, TWF. A few might even make better use of a particular type of armor somehow.

The abilities should depend a lot on the weapon/style/armor type. This saw some use in 2e options, not much in 3.X (aside from a few abilities of exotic weapons), and more in 4e. Powers available to the 4e fighter class had bonus effects based on what weapon you used, and many feats gave extra benefits for using a certain weapon or shield or for preferring light armor. Axes were high-damage. Small swords got past armor a little better. Polearms gave you some battlefield control, and shield did too but in different ways. Ranged weapons saw some differentiation too. This is something that D&D has done considerably better than GURPS, in my opinion.

I'd like to see options for this kind of thing in a 5e module, if they don't appear in the base game. Maybe multiple tracks of increasing bonuses? As you level up you can take a couple bonuses from multiple tracks or get everything from one ...

I think a lot of fantasy-lit fighters are also commanders, able to give their party some kind of bonus. The 4e warlord didn't do that concept justice -- I think 3.X bard and marshall were much more what I was looking for there. A commander fighter would be nice in 5e, but that's not central for me. Weaponmaster/specialist is. Likewise the toughness and ability to power through all manner of debuffs -- that's fitting but not a deal-breaker.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-11, 02:24 PM

Seerow

2012-07-11, 02:39 PM

Except we already have 5 fighter archetypes in 5e core: The Ranger, the Paladin, the Assassin, the Barbarian, and the Warlord (and possibly the Rogue, which I would count but not everyone would agree with that). And that's not counting unintentional Fighter+'s we might see like the Druid or the Mace Cleric.

Assuming they actually go through with making each of these a separate class. I seem to remember seeing something where they said the intent of that statement was that all of those classes be available in concept, but not necessarily each one a class of its own. So you could have the Fighter subsuming the Barbarian and Warlord (I believe this is the one that was specifically being referenced. Where Warlord could be a theme of Fighters. Though it may have been Ranger), the Rogue subsuming the Assassin, etc.

If they actually have more than 12 full classes in core, I'll be shocked. If they want to avoid spellcaster domination, they will need abilities for non-casters, which will eat up even more page count and I'd expect them closer to 5-8 core classes.

JohnnyCancer

2012-07-11, 02:52 PM

Using Pathfinder I've played a Fighter who didn't worry so much about damage as he did about tying up enemies and helping shape the battlefield; which is easily accomplished since you can make a combat maneuver check as part of an attack action in lieu of a regular attack. The bad-guys are less dangerous if they're disarmed and lying on their back, enemy spell casters are boned if I sunder their holy symbols or spell component pouches, and setting up a flank is easy if I overrun my foe.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-11, 03:49 PM

Assuming they actually go through with making each of these a separate class. I seem to remember seeing something where they said the intent of that statement was that all of those classes be available in concept, but not necessarily each one a class of its own. So you could have the Fighter subsuming the Barbarian and Warlord (I believe this is the one that was specifically being referenced. Where Warlord could be a theme of Fighters. Though it may have been Ranger), the Rogue subsuming the Assassin, etc.

If they actually have more than 12 full classes in core, I'll be shocked. If they want to avoid spellcaster domination, they will need abilities for non-casters, which will eat up even more page count and I'd expect them closer to 5-8 core classes.

Well, one reason why I *do* think they'll go through with their promise of "Every Core base class from prior editions will be Core in 5e" is because of the outrage at 4e's launch over the absence of the Barbarian, Monk, and Sorceror.

The problem with class systems (though also one of its greatest benefits) is the fact that class becomes a part of a character's identity. When a someone says "I'm a Paladin" you not only instantly know a great deal about their mechanical abilities and place at the table, but also their place and function within the setting as a whole. Removing the Paladin class from the game and making their abilities just things that fighters can optionally get destroys this built-up identity.

Paladin-players want to play a class called "Paladin", not a Fighter with Smite Evil and a stick up their ass. And I think WotC's learned this lesson.

Ziegander

2012-07-11, 04:07 PM

Do you think that Paladin players would be exceptionally outraged if they could play a Fighter using the Paladin archetype (to put it in Pathfinder terms)?

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-11, 04:15 PM

Do you think that Paladin players would be exceptionally outraged if they could play a Fighter using the Paladin archetype (to put it in Pathfinder terms)?

I'm not entirely sure if they'd be "outraged" over it, per se: What I do know is they'd be much happier with a dedicated Paladin class like they've always had. Separate class == Separate sense of identity. I mean, do Polearm Fighters feel like entirely different characters from Greatsword Fighters?

What I can say is, for some people at least, the effect is quite real. I was quite disappointed in Legend's classes for one reason: The Wizard was replaced with the lame-ass "Tactician." Bleh, I had to do some significant refluffing and homebrew two new ability tracks so I could play a proper Wizard.

Jothki

2012-07-11, 04:18 PM

One option could be that magical items either only work for a Fighter, or work much better for a Fighter. That is, the only way to kill that lich is to use an enchanted blade, and the blade only works like that for someone with the shounen conviction/sheer vitality/belief in winning that the Fighter has.

That's my thought on the matter as well. Set up correctly it could actually provide quite a bit of variety, a player who wants to just walk up to things and hit them could just stack passive bonuses, while someone who wants more complexity could load up on triggerable effects.

Ziegander

2012-07-11, 04:29 PM

I'm not entirely sure if they'd be "outraged" over it, per se: What I do know is they'd be much happier with a dedicated Paladin class like they've always had. Separate class == Separate sense of identity. I mean, do Polearm Fighters feel like entirely different characters from Greatsword Fighters?

Well, Polearm and Greatsword aren't archetypes of the Fighter class, nor should they be. In Pathfinder, Fighter archetypes are things like Aldori Swordlord, Dawnflower Dervish, and Tactician, and they definitely can feel like entirely different characters when done right. Of course, Pathfinder does also have stupid crap like, "Free Hand Fighter" and, "Polearm Master," but those are bad examples and not the way such things should/must be handled.

On a different topic, or getting back to some of my original thoughts, actually, giving the Fighter and only the Fighter opportunity attacks also, indirectly, gives him superior mobility. When the Fighter is on the battlefield, he can do his "spring attack" thing with impunity, but when you try it within his reach he will make you pay for it.

Conners

2012-07-11, 07:31 PM

@Deepbluediver: You can do a fighting system like that. But, you can't just slot it into anything, and would probably need a different system than D20.

navar100

2012-07-11, 09:24 PM

An idea I've been playing with is that given that the fighter's supposed to be the best all-round combatant, their niche could be being the master of combat maneuvers. So, you know those feats that boost a particular combat maneuver? Like Improved Trip, Improved Disarm, Improved Grapple, and the PF Greater line? The fighter just automatically gets all of them.

Usually the problem with these feats is that one or two like Improved Trip are really good, but the rest are too situational. But if you could automatically use the "strong" version of combat maneuvers rather than the "weak" version, they'd be much more worthwhile. It would give the fighter a lot more versatility, and it would be kind of cool to get to use all those weird specific feats that normally nobody takes (like Sundering a hydra's heads).

It would make the fighter a pretty good newbie class (since they can just say "I do maneuver X" and have a good chance of having it work) but would work for veterans too.

In 3E you could already do all that; the catch was they provoked an attack of opportunity unless you had a feat, which just removed the AoO and gave a +2 or +4 bonus to the roll. Ideally, 5E will keep AoO rules, fighter automatically does not provoke AoOs for such maneuvers, while anyone else needs to take a feat. As a start.

Personally I wouldn't mind seeing a much more cinematic style of combat evolve, where rounds aren't always strictly 6 seconds. This would require retooling of durations and such to work, but think for example, if you have two level 20 Swordsmen fighting, they are going back and forth, fighting each other to a standstill for like 10 minutes at a time, where each one gets an opening for a really telling blow off against each other once in that span. But one of those level 20 swordsmen going up against a bunch of low level minions is basically like a scythe through wheat, where he's cutting down several more every second, before they even have a chance to react.

Actually making the mechanics for it work would be difficult, but I do think having epic fights that take longer than seconds in game but not hours out of game is something that would be nice to have. These longer timeframes also allow for more interesting things to be done in combat. The Mage might have time to get off his 30 minute cast time ritual, you might be able to set up a trap or some elaborrate scheme while the BBEG is distracted. Etc

That is what minions are for in 4E. There are beholder minions. Imagine a 3 E fighter one swing killing a beholder. To get the same feel without minions is to use 1 hd goblins and orcs in level 20 adventures. However, you may also want the fighter to one swing kill ogres and trolls at level 20. It's not elegant, but "bigger numbers" is one way to do it. The fighter gets bonus damage against opponents of lower HD. The lower the HD, the more damage. How much per HD lower to be determined.

Seerow

2012-07-11, 09:46 PM

In 4E that's what minions are for. There are beholder minions! Imagine a 3E fighter taking one swing at a beholder and killing it. For doing away with minions, to get the same feel the DM should be using low HD monsters in high level adventures. Why should 1 HD goblins and orcs stop appearing just because the party is level 20? However, you might also want the 20th level fighter to one swing kill ogres and trolls. It's not elegant, but "bigger numbers" is one way. The fighter gets bonus damage on his hits against opponents of lower HD. How much per HD difference is to be determined.

I'm not quite sure you get what I was suggesting. To be clear, it's not about the actual time you take fighting the enemy out of game. I don't care if it takes 1 hit in one turn or 5 hits in 10 turns. The idea is to have a more cinematic style where fights between equally matched opponents last longer as there's a lot more give and take. I want a fight to potentially last 30 minutes to an hour in game, without taking 4 back to back sessions in the same combat. Because actually playing through that much is boring, but from a cinematic perspective, your climactic showdown the BBEG being resolved in 18 seconds just feels wrong. I mean as I recall Gandalf and the Balrog fought for literally days, not seconds. I would like a system that can accomodate longer combat times without necessarily making all combats that long, and without making combat take forever out of game.

Conners

2012-07-11, 09:53 PM

Can't think of many movies or realities where a fight lasts 30 minutes. Unless you count stuff like hiding in trenches, or stopping to talk/catch your breath.

Seerow

2012-07-11, 09:56 PM

Can't think of many movies or realities where a fight lasts 30 minutes. Unless you count stuff like hiding in trenches, or stopping to talk/catch your breath.

I'm more referring to literature, myth, and legend. Of course most movies (or even TV shows) wouldn't have fights last that long, for the same reason that most games wouldn't want to play out every 6 seconds of a 30 minute long fight. It'd get really boring pretty quickly.

On the other hand, movies and tv do typically have fights lasting in the realm of minutes at least, as opposed to seconds. And as mentioned, books and legend has instances of fights lasting longer. (Offhand the afformentioned Gandalf vs Balrog which iirc lasted days, and I seem to remember Beowulf's fight with the sea monsters supposedly lasting a really long time, and he was fighting underwater!)

Conners

2012-07-11, 10:11 PM

I'm more referring to literature, myth, and legend. There are some myths where heroes fight for days. Largely, I think it's just a matter of saying each round is one day, in those cases.

Seerow

2012-07-11, 10:13 PM

There are some myths where heroes fight for days. Largely, I think it's just a matter of saying each round is one day, in those cases.

Right. That's the sort of thing I'm looking for though, a system where round length is variable, and there is some way to adjudicate it. I mean right now as a DM you can say "No each round lasts a day" but that messes with a lot of other assumptions in the system (for example: spell casting).

I honestly have only the vaguest idea of how it might be doable, I just know it's something I would love to see done and implemented well. It's not a dealbreaker if it's not there, but it is one of the few things that can make me say "Okay I'll buy the book" just to check it out.

But either way this is getting a bit off topic from what the D&D Next Fighter should be.

Ziegander

2012-07-11, 10:24 PM

Right. That's the sort of thing I'm looking for though, a system where round length is variable, and there is some way to adjudicate it. I mean right now as a DM you can say "No each round lasts a day" but that messes with a lot of other assumptions in the system (for example: spell casting).

I honestly have only the vaguest idea of how it might be doable, I just know it's something I would love to see done and implemented well. It's not a dealbreaker if it's not there, but it is one of the few things that can make me say "Okay I'll buy the book" just to check it out.

But either way this is getting a bit off topic from what the D&D Next Fighter should be.

Start a new thread, because, this is interesting, and I have some ideas.

Gamer Girl

2012-07-11, 10:50 PM

I'm not sure I follow the difference in your mind between a sneaky character's attacks of opportunity and the Fighter's greater number of "physical attacks of opportunity." Can you explain?

Sneaky classes should get AoO that don't do damage, but instead do things like trip, disarm, stun, and such. When you think of a sneaky character, you should not be thinking of a '100 points of damage' in one hit(like the 4e striker). Fighters should get the 'sneak attack' type damage in 3E that does more damage.

Logic

2012-07-11, 11:03 PM

Sneaky classes should get AoO that don't do damage, but instead do things like trip, disarm, stun, and such. When you think of a sneaky character, you should not be thinking of a '100 points of damage' in one hit(like the 4e striker). Fighters should get the 'sneak attack' type damage in 3E that does more damage.

I disagree. I don't want fighters with sneak attack, I want rogues with sneak attack.

I also think Fighters should benefit their allies more. Things like flanking bonuses for the fighter and his allies might be nice, and fighter level (perhaps divided by some amount) added to combat maneuvers, allied attack rolls, allied AC (when performing a specific actions) etc.

The fighter is definitely the class in need of the most fixing, and it shows it by no one agreeing on how to do it.

Synovia

2012-07-11, 11:11 PM

Logic

2012-07-11, 11:18 PM

"I move, and power attack at -X" just isn't any fun.
Which is why the fighter should have more options than that. The "GIVE HIM FEATS. LOTS OF FEATS!" idea was intended to give the fighter versatility (i.e. improved sunder, improved disarm) but as it stands, even those options kinda fall flat, which is why most fighters are resigned to what you just described.

EDIT: Redundant language is redundant. Sorry to anyone that sees how badly formed that run on sentence was.

Oscredwin

2012-07-11, 11:23 PM

You do want a class for the "marginal player": the DM's roommate, the wizard's boyfriend, the Cleric's son. They won't take the class again, but they'll come back and play something more complicated. There should be starter classes that are a little weaker (not much) and a lot less complicated. Honestly the 3.5 fighter was a good attempt at that. I think the Barbarian also filled the niche. There was no excuse for the paladin and monk though, or the Ranger's lack of damage (does a ranger keep up if you assume you're always fighting his top favored enemy?).

Synovia

2012-07-11, 11:40 PM

You do want a class for the "marginal player": the DM's roommate, the wizard's boyfriend, the Cleric's son. They won't take the class again, but they'll come back and play something more complicated. .

I strongly disagree with this. They don't come back because they're bored all the time. Simple means lack of options. Lack of options is NO FUN.

We need more thematic characters, who can do cool things, and less characters like the wizard who can do everything. (and less characters like the fighter/samurai/etc, who can't do anything).

I'd like to basically get rid of everything tier 1,2,4,and 5, and start off with the idea of building tier-3 style characters- characters who have a clean focus, and something they're really good at, but aren't dead weight outside of that. Classes like the Dread Necromancer, and the Beguiler.

The fighter doesn't have anything like that, he just has more BAB. Playing a Rogue isn't any more difficult than playing a fighter. There's just a little extra set up (more skill points). Playing a bard isn't either, as long as somebody can give you a list of spells.

Having a class thats delibrately boring is just absurd.

Ziegander

2012-07-11, 11:42 PM

I suppose it comes as no surprise that the, self-proclaimed, "King of Fighter Fixes," has taken interest in what exactly the Fighter should look like in D&D Next. I do get coherent images in my head of consistent character types when I read the class name, "Fighter." I've said before, when asked why I brew so many darn Fighter remakes, that I guess I just get the Fighter concept more than any other class. It communicates with me and I can comprehend what it's trying to say. Or at least I like to think I do.

This guy is a Fighter:

http://dice20.com/2e/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Pathfinder1_Fighter_500.jpeg

This guy probably isn't:

http://www.plasticrypt.com/bestiary/images/thumb/7/7f/Katapeshi_half_orc.jpg/360px-Katapeshi_half_orc.jpg

This girl is a Fighter:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v253/Lhiannan_Shee/DwarfWarrior.jpg?t=1259940176

This girl probably isn't:

http://i456.photobucket.com/albums/qq283/David-Aiello/FemaleDrowFighterorRangerorRogue.jpg

Fighters use comfortable, practical, and reliable equipment that will serve them well in a variety of situations. They are experienced and pragmatic, taking a straightforward and level-headed approach to matters. Fighters are prepared, making efforts to keep themselves that way, because they do not have the faith of the Paladin or the impulsive passion of the Barbarian - instead they possess training and either wisdom or tactical acumen.

A Fighter relies on his skill with arms to win the day. He is not a magic user, but he is not dumb. His mind simply turns instead to the ringing of steel against steel and the opening of the floodgates of blood gushing from open wounds. He applies his keen intellect to the battlefield, planning attacks and defenses a step (or often many steps) ahead of his competition, making fools out of lesser warriors and of mages that underestimate him alike.

Class: Fighter
Durability and experience combined with weapon mastery over his equipment helps the Fighter dominate the battlefield. Fighters gain the following features.

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: You can wear all armor, use all shields, and wield all weapons.

You have Damage Reduction 2 when wearing armor and a +1 bonus to AC when using a shield. Any weapon you wield, including an Unarmed Strike, deals +2 damage.

When you reach 5th level you have DR 4 when wearing armor, +2 AC when using a shield, and +4 damage with weapons you wield. These bonuses continue to increase every four class levels (DR by 2, AC by +1, and damage by +2).

Opportunity Attack: You may immediately attack any enemy that moves beyond your reach or that fails at any action for which they have disadvantage if they failed within your reach. This is not an action (or a reaction). A Fighter may not attack another Fighter in this way unless he has more Fighter levels than the other Fighter.

Fighting Style: You begin play with the knowledge of two different special attacks that you may use as an action on your turn. These attacks represent your superior knowledge of weapon mechanics and fighting techniques. At 1st level, choose any two of the following.

Defender's Mark - If Defender's Mark hits, your target's attacks against your allies have Disadvantage until the start of your next turn.

Duelist's Strike - If Duelist's Strike hits, your target's attacks against you have Disadvantage until the start of your next turn.

Hungry Steel - Your attack with Hungry Steel is made with Advantage but each attack made against you until the start of your next turn gains Advantage.

Slayer's Tenacity - Your attack with Slayer's Tenacity has Disadvantage, but even if it misses you deal damage to the target equal to the higher of your Strength or Dexterity modifiers.

Steel Wind - Steel Wind attacks up to two creatures that are either adjacent to you or adjacent to each other.

Tactical Strike - Even if you miss with Tactical Strike, choose an ally adjacent to the target. That ally receives Advantage on the next attack it makes against the target before the start of your next turn.

These special attacks cannot be used in conjunction with your Opportunity Attack feature (Fighting Style attacks require you to spend your action on your turn; only basic attacks can be used with Opportunity Attack).

1
So, there you have it. That's my proposed, 1st level "Fighter fix" for D&D Next. At 2nd level, as I envision it, the Fighter gains his "encounter attack", which isn't necessarily a once per encounter thing, but simply is a situational attack that is powerful but can't be used all the time. At 3rd level, I would give them a passive "stance" type ability that is on all the time. Something like, "Peerless Skill" that gives the Fighter advantage on all Strength and Dexterity based contests (like Bull Rush and Trip) would be appropriate.

Logic

2012-07-11, 11:47 PM

Having a class thats delibrately boring is just absurd.
The fighter ISN'T deliberately boring. It just falls flat in execution. I honestly think the fighter is such a broad character that it has the most potential for kit classes (samurai/cavalier/Barbarian/tactician/warlord/etc), modified templates. I personally hated the Tome of Battle, because the flavor of the martial classes were replaced with "I'm a spellcaster now!"

Oscredwin

2012-07-11, 11:49 PM

Simple doesn't have to be boring. It just means not having to learn a separate subsystem or having to work to get a condition to be effective. Give him the option of swinging a sword every round and have a decent impact on the game, and allow him to get creative or take advantage of options that are pretty straightforward.

Also playing a rogue means you have to understand flanking, denied dex, and flatfooted. It isn't that simple to a new player.

navar100

2012-07-12, 12:04 AM

I'm not quite sure you get what I was suggesting. To be clear, it's not about the actual time you take fighting the enemy out of game. I don't care if it takes 1 hit in one turn or 5 hits in 10 turns. The idea is to have a more cinematic style where fights between equally matched opponents last longer as there's a lot more give and take. I want a fight to potentially last 30 minutes to an hour in game, without taking 4 back to back sessions in the same combat. Because actually playing through that much is boring, but from a cinematic perspective, your climactic showdown the BBEG being resolved in 18 seconds just feels wrong. I mean as I recall Gandalf and the Balrog fought for literally days, not seconds. I would like a system that can accomodate longer combat times without necessarily making all combats that long, and without making combat take forever out of game.

Then that becomes a matter of semantics. In 2E a round was 1 minute. A 5 round combat (any system) might take 1 hour of real world time to play out. To have 15-20 rounds of combat is tedious. Real world playing time matters. If they can make a 10 minute in game combat take only 10-20 real world minutes to play out, great, but at what expense of the simplicity/complexity ratio of character builds and combat options?

In a book, it takes a second to read "Gandalf and the Balrog fought for days". You're not reading the sentence one word a day for seven days so you can feel the length of the battle. For a movie, a minute devoted to the scene is enough. For a game, a 30 real world minute epic battle over 5 metagame combat rounds enough, regardless of how long a round is in game: 6 seconds, a minute, or whatever. Realism can only go so far.

Synovia

2012-07-12, 12:18 AM

The fighter ISN'T deliberately boring. It just falls flat in execution. I honestly think the fighter is such a broad character that it has the most potential for kit classes (samurai/cavalier/Barbarian/tactician/warlord/etc), modified templates. I personally hated the Tome of Battle, because the flavor of the martial classes were replaced with "I'm a spellcaster now!"

I didn't say the fighter was deliberately boring. I was responding to someone stating that there should be a deliberately optionless class for new players. I think thats patently absurd. Optionless and Boring mean exactly the same thing in the context of a game.

Simple doesn't have to be boring. It just means not having to learn a separate subsystem or having to work to get a condition to be effective. Give him the option of swinging a sword every round and have a decent impact on the game, and allow him to get creative or take advantage of options that are pretty straightforward.

Also playing a rogue means you have to understand flanking, denied dex, and flatfooted. It isn't that simple to a new player.

A fighter needs to understand every one of those things too. The fighter just doesn't get anything better than a +2 to hit for them.

Swinging a sword every round isn't fun. It takes decisionmaking out of the process, and the entire game is about decisionmaking. You need to give the fighter more meaningful decisions, and in order to do that, you need to give him more options.

kieza

2012-07-12, 12:55 AM

One of the issues with martial vs. magic is that spellcasters get to do special stuff, and martial classes don't. So, in order to balance them out, we're all talking about how to give martial classes something special as well.

What if martial classes were designed around special stuff not working on them? Especially if an aspect of monster design was to encourage DMs to put monsters with special stuff in most encounters? I'm not talking about outright immunity to magic here; but I think it would be interesting if martial characters had lots and lots of ways to negate anything but direct damage. So, you could blast him with cold or set him on fire, but if you try to charm him, his indomitable will lets him power through it, and if you try to suck out his soul, he's so tough he shrugs it off. Some of this could be a flat bonus to saves; others could be of a form where the fighter has to use up a reaction or brace himself ahead of time for a specific scenario.

It'd be an interesting dynamic: casters would have trouble taking down a fighter (unless they're a simple direct-damage caster), but on the other hand, a fighter might have trouble getting through a caster's special defenses (flight, teleportation, walls of force, etc.). I think the end result might be a situation where casters and martials both work best taking out their enemy counterparts.

dps

2012-07-12, 01:14 AM

I do like the idea of the fighter ''getting more'' out of armor and weapons.

Weapons, yes, but I'm not so sure about armor. If I'm a fighter and you're not, and you and I are both wearing full plate, and each of us gets hit in the chest by an arrow, mine's not going to stop it any better because I "know" how to use my armor. That's because you don't actually "use" actively--it's passive.

A shield would be an exception.

In my opinion the way to fix Fighter is to drop Rogue, Ranger, Barbarian and Paladin as classes unto themselves.

The reason Fighter can't seem to get its own niche is because any time it starts being able to do something other than swing a sword, it starts looking more like another specific class. If it can sneak and evade traps and guards it must be because it's not a Fighter. If it can track and use woodlore to accomplish minor supernatural feats it must be because it's not a Fighter. If it gets bursts of strength, it must not be a Fighter. If he's sworn to a religion and his faith grants him blessings, he can't be a Fighter.

I admit it would be possible to give Fighter its own niche while keeping all the other martial mundane or semi-mundane classes intact, but other than persuing an ephemeral "Best at fighting" goal which I'm not even certain would be a solution even if it were attainable, I'm not sure what niche it could really call its own.

I've got a lot of other ideas, but they start to break down the class structure even further and I'm sure this is already more radical than anything we'll ever possibly see.

I think you have some good ideas here, but yeah, they're not gonna make it into DnD.

If I were to design an RPG, I think that I'd only have a 2-4 base classes. Basically, if your character is oriented towards physical combat, then you're a Fighter. Things like Paladins would be sub-classes, and you couldn't take any sub-classes until you'd already learned basic fighting techniques. So maybe after you're at Level 2 as a Fighter, when you level up the next time, you could chose to become an Archer, and from then on you'd get archery skills at a discount, and bonuses to your archery rolls, but at the cost of other weapon skills costing more. Or you could chose to remain just a basic fighter, and not get any discounted weapon skills, but not suffer any extra costs, either. And maybe you couldn't become a Paladin until, say Level 6. Of course, some of that stuff would be tricky to balance, and would have to be balanced not only within the Fighter class, but also against the other class(es). But again, that's not DnD.

Dienekes

2012-07-12, 01:21 AM

Synovia

2012-07-12, 01:24 AM

Weapons, yes, but I'm not so sure about armor. If I'm a fighter and you're not, and you and I are both wearing full plate, and each of us gets hit in the chest by an arrow, mine's not going to stop it any better because I "know" how to use my armor. That's because you don't actually "use" actively--it's passive.

On the other hand, if hes a fighter, he knows that if the arrow hits the seam on the underarm, hes dead, wheras if it hits the ridge on the shoulder, its going to harmlessly bounce off.

The cleric, on the other hand, doesn't know that, and doesn't have the instincts to make effective use of that knowledge.

honestly , if I was going to redesign the D&D system, I'd pretty much ditch classes as a whole, and instead allow a character to take some predefined number of groups of abilities. A ranger would basically be a character with "martialist, animal companion, and TWF/Archery", A rogue would be "Martialist, Skilled, and Backstab". Druid would be "animal companion, divine caster, shapeshifter", but using the system you could turn around and say I want to be a "Maritialist, shapeshifter, skilled" which would be some sort of strange Fighter/Rogue/Bear hybrid.

You'd take packages that describe what your character is good at, rather than a class that describes who or what your character is. It would be way more flexible than a class system, because adding a new module/package would essentially give you an exponential increase in possible archetypes.

Menteith

2012-07-12, 01:39 AM

I could get behind a Fighter using an Attack Roll for Armor Class, on either themselves or an ally.

Tvtyrant

2012-07-12, 01:51 AM

My suggestion would be to give the Fighter regular maneuvers, but they improve more than with other classes.

So they get their level as a bonus to grappling checks, half of their level to trips, etc. They also gain the ability to use those abilities with weapons that you normally can't use them with, like a dagger to trip. Finally give the Fighter the ability to impose some status effects as maneuvers in the form of called shots. So instead of attacking to do damage, the Fighter can attack somethings leg to slow it, or its eyes to blind it.

Effectively remove the charger mentality (which a Barbarian is better at anyways) and make them good at reducing their enemies to a blubbering mess.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-12, 09:43 AM

@Deepbluediver: You can do a fighting system like that. But, you can't just slot it into anything, and would probably need a different system than D20.

Why not? In an ideal world, you could probably rebuild the entire combat system (as some other posters have proposed), but I'm trying to find a way to work within the existing framework.
You can already delay your order in initiative or ready an action and make AoO as immediate actions; I just want to build on that.

You have the remember that everyone plays D&D for different reasons, and one of the more common player type is the casual player. The casual player doesn't care much about the game you are playing, but they just want to hang out with friends. The important thing to remember about casual players is to not force them to participate more than they wanted.

I don't believe in dumbing down content for people; especially when the basics of D&D are fairly simple. The difference in optimization between a new person and an experienced player might create a large gap in their respective power levels if they picked the same class, but designing classes without options is not a legitimate solution.

For example: a new player playing a druid might pick and Dodge and Toughness and wild shape into a bear. The experienced gamer with 100 campaigns under his belt might pick Power Attack, Shock Trooper, and wild shape into the face-shredding acid-spitting dinosaur from obscure Monster Manual X. The new players sub-optimal choices doesn't mean they need to be shoe-horned into an optionless class.
On the contrary, the more options that a class has at every level, the harder it is to get stuck in a trap. If you can completely rework your fighting style within 3 levels (via feats of other features) then the fact you started on the path to TWF and are suddenly facing enemies with DR is less painful.

The issue with limiting a fighter to just attack and damage combat buffs is that I feel it's a very small target to hit just right; you're essentially aiming for a fighter that is always helpful in combat but doesn't make every other melee class superfluous.
I would feel better about giving the fighter small bonuses to using weapons and armor (Pathfinder's Armor/Weapon training features did a decent job of this, IMO) and then finding other options to diversify him with.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll

2012-07-12, 12:31 PM

The system that I've had in the back of my head for a long time basically involved using "hero points" to give insane bonuses to various things, to represent heroic willpower. The 'class' of the character just changed what those hero points could be spent on: you could spend a point to enter a rage, or to do a feat of acrobatics, or to jump across a huge pit, or to shrug off a magical effect.

I guess it works something like Willpower does in the World of Darkness.

Then again, lately I've been disliking the idea of classes at all...

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-12, 12:40 PM

Ziegander

2012-07-12, 01:17 PM

One thing though:

[Steel Wind...]

...Wouldn't it make more sense to let you attack two creatures adjacent to you OR each other?

I stole it directly from Tome of Battle. The idea is that you're making a single swing with a melee weapon and hitting two creatures that are right next to each other. But, since all of the other Fighting Style attacks are equally good for melee as they are for ranged, I think I will change it to your wording. Makes it a bit more useful for melee characters that way too. Like a mini whirlwind attack.

Synovia

2012-07-12, 05:17 PM

As an aside, something I've always wanted to try out, just as an experiment? A class-based system where each class is designed by a different designer, completely independently, merely sharing a common core system (like the six ability scores, standard/move/minor actions, and the d20 mechanic). Get a really diverse, talented team of creative people together and just let them go wild, making whatever they can get really passionate about.

The system might not exactly be playable right out the gate, but I'd bet anything that it'd have very interesting results.

I think you'd need to heavily moderate it, or you'll end up with something analagous to the PHB classes, where you have a handful of classes that can break the world, and a handful of classes who have to spend a bunch of feats just to break a shield.

Ziegander

2012-07-12, 05:35 PM

So would anybody, Saph perhaps, be willing to playtest my version of the D&D Next Fighter in the Caves of Chaos adventure to see how it stacks up when compared to the other classes?

navar100

2012-07-12, 06:56 PM

Can't think of many movies or realities where a fight lasts 30 minutes. Unless you count stuff like hiding in trenches, or stopping to talk/catch your breath.

This comes close. :smallsmile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psnQnYtXFyo

Where's my bubblegum?

INDYSTAR188

2012-07-12, 09:28 PM

I just wanted to say that I really like what the Fighter in 4E is able to do. I'm specifically talking about her class features that allow her to 'mark' an enemy. I personally like the idea of taking the concept of the Fighters AEDU powers and working them into a 5E appropriate format - such as the fighting techniques mentioned earlier. Also, I really like the idea of a Fighter gaining a bonus to attacks and defenses and/or a DR of some type.

NMBLNG

2012-07-12, 10:07 PM

I like the 4e fighter as well. Though I wouldn't mind blurring the lines of combat roles a bit, allowing fighters to be striker or controller (which some fighters can do)

I also think that there needs to be the option of simple classes. Something where a very new player can create and level a functional, effective character without assistance from others.

Logic

2012-07-12, 10:15 PM

I also think that there needs to be the option of simple classes. Something where a very new player can create and level a functional, effective character without assistance from others.
Simple classes are fine, but not so simple that a new player feels shoehorned into something subpar. It shouldn't be as simple as "pick the archery or TWF tree" either.

A "beginner's" class should be able to be played by a veteran player at no detriment. The "Base classes" should all be acceptable "beginners classes."

Ziegander

2012-07-12, 10:17 PM

Added my "fix" to the original post. I'll be working on the level 2 "encounter" powers and the level 3 "stances" in the coming days. I think it works as a very simple class that is effectively "better at combat," in spirit, than the other classes without overshadowing them, while also having options that don't weigh or slow it down. It seems mechanically viable to me, easy to play, and interesting in its own right for what it is. Let me know if you want to playtest it! I'd actually love to hear the thoughts of a casual player that usually plays Fighters because they are easy.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-13, 12:47 AM

So would anybody, Saph perhaps, be willing to playtest my version of the D&D Next Fighter in the Caves of Chaos adventure to see how it stacks up when compared to the other classes?

I'll talk to my group and see if anyone wants to give it a try, but I can't make any promises. To get them interested though I'll probably need bigger changes than just a fighter fix.

I think you'd need to heavily moderate it, or you'll end up with something analagous to the PHB classes, where you have a handful of classes that can break the world, and a handful of classes who have to spend a bunch of feats just to break a shield.

Oh, I'm well aware: Like I said, the resulting system would almost certainly be unplayable. I still think there's a lot we could learn from such an experiment.

Saph

2012-07-13, 06:07 AM

So would anybody, Saph perhaps, be willing to playtest my version of the D&D Next Fighter in the Caves of Chaos adventure to see how it stacks up when compared to the other classes?

Unfortunately we've switched away from Next and back to our Pathfinder game at the moment. I could ask my group when the next iteration of the playtest comes out, though.

Ziegander

2012-07-13, 08:02 AM

I'll talk to my group and see if anyone wants to give it a try, but I can't make any promises. To get them interested though I'll probably need bigger changes than just a fighter fix.

Unfortunately we've switched away from Next and back to our Pathfinder game at the moment. I could ask my group when the next iteration of the playtest comes out, though.

Understandable guys. I was kind of worried that might be the case at this point. Oh well. At least it shouldn't be long now before the next playtest packet comes out.

Dimers

2012-07-13, 08:28 AM

I mean, do Polearm Fighters feel like entirely different characters from Greatsword Fighters?

In 4e, yes. GURPS, possibly. Shadowrun, 3.X, AD&D, not so's you'd notice. Even with polearm and greatsword being two-handed weapons, 4e lets the polearm fighter do battlefield control quite effectively, while a greatsword fighter hacks things to a quicker death.

It's unfortunate that "controlling fighter" and "DPR fighter" (and "dirty fighter", "protector of the innocent fighter", et cetera) are tied to weapon type, but on the other hand, you can always refluff. And as long as the mechanics exist to differentiate one type from another, the system is doing its job.

Some game settings connect those subclasses to specific weapons. Consider the katana -- in its home setting of Japanese history it's not just a blade, it's a sign of a specific code of honor, it's a claim of training, and it's a personal symbol. That's all because of fluff. A katana's composition and structure don't cause those things. They do make it hard to break and better than average for cutting. Its balance makes it a good two-handed fencing weapon. Mechanically, a katana's characteristics imply dueling, very serious one-on-one fights. But it's the setting that makes it a weapon of an honor-driven noble class rather than a rapacious killer's tool.

I've homebrewed a setting in which the staff is associated with quirky, tricksy, unpredictable fighting, and the weighted chain makes it likely that the user will be manipulative and society-oriented. And either one is less likely to use heavy armor than someone trained with sword or axe.

To sum up: with some mechanical differences built into the system, one fighter can differ from another just based on preferred weapon. Add to the mix some setting-specific associations between weapon and demeanor, and you can have a wealth of possibilities. That's a large part of why I want to see 5e make the fighter a weaponmaster.

Synovia

2012-07-13, 09:14 AM

I also think that there needs to be the option of simple classes. Something where a very new player can create and level a functional, effective character without assistance from others.

Again, I'm going to strongly disagree with this.

When I started playing, it was with a buddy who was an experienced player (and he DM'd our game) and a couple of other friends. We were all role-playing newbies.

The party, completely composed of newbies was a Cleric, Ranger, TWF Rogue, and a Wizard.

The wizard and cleric had to do a bit more prep work, but at first level, a wizard is pretty damn simple. By the time the wizard gets really complex, the player has usually figured out what they're doing. Nobody really had any problems.

So, thats my piece I guess: All the classes should be simpler at low level, and more complex at higher level. Newbies should be started at low level.

I think this whole "We need a simple class for the newbies" is a canard. ALL of the classes are simple at low level. Having a class that is simple for 20 levels is boring.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-13, 09:34 AM

So, thats my piece I guess: All the classes should be simpler at low level, and more complex at higher level. Newbies should be started at low level.

I think this whole "We need a simple class for the newbies" is a canard. ALL of the classes are simple at low level. Having a class that is simple for 20 levels is boring.

What if that newbie wants to join their friends who are already at level 15?

Really, I think simplicity vs. complexity is the wrong question. When a player says "I want a character who's really complicated and there's a lot of options", they don't mean "I want a character who has to manage pages and pages of material and roll a bajillion different dice every turn." They mean they want a character who is deep and interesting to play and, really, who doesn't want that?

You can have simplicity without sacrificing depth, and you can add complexity while remaining shallow. "Simple, but interesting" should be what we're looking for in all characters, not just fighters.

Dienekes

2012-07-13, 09:40 AM

Actually I am ok with a class being simplistic, sort of pick up make maybe 2 or 3 choices and then you're done. That does not mean that they can't have options and tricks, but that they should be fairly straightforward and require less book-keeping and understanding of the game.

But as a predominantly 3.5 player I say that's the purview of the barbarian class. Hell the only decisions you have to make with that class is which feat to take and where to put my skill points. The Fighter of 3.5 was actually quite complicated as it's feat selection defined the class and if you made a bad choice you were stuck with it, forever.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-13, 10:36 AM

You can have simplicity without sacrificing depth, and you can add complexity while remaining shallow. "Simple, but interesting" should be what we're looking for in all characters, not just fighters.

The Fighter of 3.5 was actually quite complicated as it's feat selection defined the class and if you made a bad choice you were stuck with it, forever.

Both excellent points. I think that any character should be pretty easy to pick up and play at a competent level. The biggest thing is to avoid giving a class BAD options, or traps. There can be a difference between an exteremly optimized character and a merely decent one, but the best thing would be to aim for avoiding any option that makes the class essentially non-functional.

A wizard probably wouldn't count as a simple class, given the number of spells that are available via core and splatbooks, but any new player can grab a bunch of evocations and run around blasting stuff. He won't be as powerful as a wizard could be, but it's still probable that he'll have plenty of fun.
So long as the fighter isn't faced with entire cities worth of enemies that he is helpless against, I'd consider it a success. If the same class, when optimized, can go toe-to-toe with dragons, demons, and hordes of undead, so much the better.

1337 b4k4

2012-07-13, 11:42 AM

Having a class that is simple for 20 levels is boring.

Decades of roll players would disagree with you on that point. Mechanically simple does not translate to boring unless mechanics is all you find interesting.

And lets face it, hundreds of pages of rules is great for people who are rules people, but there are also plenty of people who enjoy playing that just want to get down to it and don't want to have to read a text book before they can being playing.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-13, 12:02 PM

Decades of roll players would disagree with you on that point. Mechanically simple does not translate to boring unless mechanics is all you find interesting.

And lets face it, hundreds of pages of rules is great for people who are rules people, but there are also plenty of people who enjoy playing that just want to get down to it and don't want to have to read a text book before they can being playing.

The issue with simple is that it tends to fall heavily into either the underpowered or overpowered categories; alot of the middle-tier D&D classes get that way by being limited in power, but high in versatility.

I think that just about any of the D&D 3.5 classes where playable without too much extra effort, once you knew the system. The complication comes into play if you really want to optimize your class to be all that it can be.

The problem with a so-called "simple" class like the fighter was that even when optimized, they frequently found themselves playing second fiddle to the druid and his animal companion, the shape-shifted Save-or-die casting wizard, and the 15-ft. tall nigh-unkillable cleric.

You shouldn't need to have memorized every combat variable and modifier to play a fighter, but he should have some potential for increasing levels of power as you advance.

Synovia

2012-07-13, 12:10 PM

What if that newbie wants to join their friends who are already at level 15?

I'd rather tell Newbies "you should start at low level" then "you should play this crappy class that can't do anything"

"Why don't you go stab that mook while the wizard tears a hole in the universe, pulls a freakish demon out of it, and smashes the real enemy to death with it?"

Decades of roll players would disagree with you on that point. Mechanically simple does not translate to boring unless mechanics is all you find interesting.
.

If any of this were true, we wouldn't need this thread.

Menteith

2012-07-13, 12:26 PM

I'd rather tell Newbies "you should start at low level" then "you should play this crappy class that can't do anything"

And I'd rather still be able to tell them that there's an intuitive class that can still compete at higher levels. I'll drag out the Warblade from D&D3.5 as an example of this - most Maneuvers are good enough that any Warblade will be functional, and it requires little bookkeeping. It's has a lot of depth to it, but it's competitive even with only a little input, and all of its mechanics are straightforward.

Synovia

2012-07-13, 12:39 PM

And I'd rather still be able to tell them that there's an intuitive class that can still compete at higher levels. I'll drag out the Warblade from D&D3.5 as an example of this - most Maneuvers are good enough that any Warblade will be functional, and it requires little bookkeeping. It's has a lot of depth to it, but it's competitive even with only a little input, and all of its mechanics are straightforward.

But you're making my point here, the warblade has way more options than the fighter does, and thats why its an interesting class. Its complex. The problem is that if you try to make the fighter anything more than "beatstick", the grognards come out and say "fighters cant have magic/powers".

I'm sorry, but the beatsick isn't fun to play.

We absolutely can't have the fighter be "the guy whose better at fighting." He needs to be "the guy who does awesome things while fighting". Giving him a +2 to damage, or a +2 to hit, doesn't add anything that makes play interesting, its just more book keeping. The fighter needs to be able to move about the battle grid in ways that no one else can, or abuse enemies in ways no one else can. He can't just do more damage.

High level casters can tear the universe apart with their minds. High level fighters need to be able to tear the universe (or atleast the universe as it is within the battlegrid) apart with their weapon.

Menteith

2012-07-13, 12:44 PM

But you're making my point here, the warblade has way more options than the fighter does, and thats why its an interesting class. Its complex. The problem is that if you try to make the fighter anything more than "beatstick", the grognards come out and say "fighters cant have magic/powers".

I'm sorry, but the beatsick isn't fun to play.

We absolutely can't have the fighter be "the guy whose better at fighting." He needs to be "the guy who does awesome things while fighting". Giving him a +2 to damage, or a +2 to hit, doesn't add anything that makes play interesting, its just more book keeping. The fighter needs to be able to move about the battle grid in ways that no one else can, or abuse enemies in ways no one else can. He can't just do more damage.

High level casters can tear the universe apart with their minds. High level fighters need to be able to tear the universe (or atleast the universe as it is within the battlegrid) apart with their weapon.

Oh. Yes, I agree entirely with what you're saying. I misunderstood your initial post.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-13, 12:50 PM

But you're making my point here, the warblade has way more options than the fighter does, and thats why its an interesting class. Its complex.

Polymorph is a pretty simple ability (or rather was until WotC started patching a bazillion extra clauses onto it to limit the abuses): You turn into any creature you can think of (within the HD limit) and gain all of its powers. You could easily make an entire, very playable (in fact, probably way overpowered) class out of absolutely nothing but Polymorph.

Seerow

2012-07-13, 12:57 PM

Polymorph is a pretty simple ability (or rather was until WotC started patching a bazillion extra clauses onto it to limit the abuses): You turn into any creature you can think of (within the HD limit) and gain all of its powers. You could easily make an entire, very playable (in fact, probably way overpowered) class out of absolutely nothing but Polymorph.

True, but that's because every form available is a new ability of its own. When you have 4 or 5 monster manuals filled with various monsters, Polymorph is basically 1000 or more abilities rolled into one, hence the abuses.

I honestly liked some of the later attempts to break polymorph up into various spells. I would like to see a redone transmutation school where the entire school is basically replicating the Polymorph/Shapechange spells. So it takes a dedicated transmuter to get the effect of Shapechange, to the point where doing so is exclusive of casting other types of spells and abilities. A character doing other wizardy stuff might be able to grow, or gain some natural armor, but he won't turn himself into a dinosaur and go eating people.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-13, 01:06 PM

But you're making my point here, the warblade has way more options than the fighter does, and thats why its an interesting class. Its complex. The problem is that if you try to make the fighter anything more than "beatstick", the grognards come out and say "fighters cant have magic/powers".

I'm sorry, but the beatsick isn't fun to play.

This is kind of why I like the "tons of feats" approach to fighter fixes; the basic fighter has the potential to be just about anything, kind of like a wizard in that respect.
There wheren't enough feats in core that where interesting and powerful to keep the fighter interested for 20 levels, but that is the kind of thing that is easily fixed with homebrew or splatbooks. For example, the Tome of Battle has fighter bonus feats for learning Stances and Martial Maneuvers.
And if you REALLY just want to play a beatstick, you can use up your extra choices on the Weapon Focus line.

Also, it makes it very easy to expand the options for all melee class with additional material. Just like the wizard/cleric/druid get ever increasing spell-lists, new feats would benefit any player that could qualify for them.

Nearly 1/3 of the PHB is spell descriptions (over 100 pages). Not to harp on this point (ok, maybe just a little), but when WotC finally put that much effort into melee classes, we got the TOB. So I'm supportive of almost anything that makes the fighter more like the classes that show up in there.

Synovia

2012-07-13, 01:07 PM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-13, 01:18 PM

True, but that's because every form available is a new ability of its own. When you have 4 or 5 monster manuals filled with various monsters, Polymorph is basically 1000 or more abilities rolled into one, hence the abuses.

True; But I don't think pages and pages of monster forms to turn into is necessarily inherent to the polymorph ability itself.

Something I do in Fate games (that's worked out quite well) is I handle transmutation effects by the player gaining a new, temporary aspect related to a single change in the character's physical form. "Claws", "Wings", "Scales", "Huge", and "Fire-breathing" are all acceptable but "Dragon" is not. You can get additional effects depending on your MoS on a spellcasting roll, so a powerful wizard could gain enough aspects to turn themselves into a dragon with a single spell.

Admittedly I don't really know yet how to translate that into a d20-ish form, but I do think that design direction holds great promise if we put some work into it.

Synovia

2012-07-13, 01:22 PM

See, now I think thats a pretty good way to handle polymorph, shapechange, etc (and for that matter, races).

They change what the character can do, they don't change numbers on a sheet.

1337 b4k4

2012-07-13, 02:15 PM

If any of this were true, we wouldn't need this thread.

It is true. That some people still desire a more mechanically complex fighter, or that they even find the fighter boring is not mutually exclusive with that truth.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-13, 02:59 PM

It is true. That some people still desire a more mechanically complex fighter, or that they even find the fighter boring is not mutually exclusive with that truth.

I doubt that two people are going to agree on what exactly is or isn't boring, or what should be considered simple. You might have a lot of fun in your game doing roleplay instead of combat, but the fighters schtick IS combat, and at that he frequently falls short. As I mentioned before though, simple frequently falls to either overpowered of underpowered, with it being very hard to hit a good middle ground.

Saying the the fighter needs to stay simple because that is what makes him popular is a vary poor argument IMO. There are plenty of classes in D&D and plenty of other systems with combat that are easily playable for new or casual players, and don't suffer from the fighters crippling lack of options when he can't bash humanoids in the head.

It would be easy to make the fighter more powerful, without making him any more complex or interesting to play, but if you provide options, you can make a fighter that is versatile and optimized for many kinds of combat, or you can make a dumb meatshield with a pointy stick.
This, to me, is the better design goal.

1337 b4k4

2012-07-13, 04:10 PM

You might have a lot of fun in your game doing roleplay instead of combat, but the fighters schtick IS combat, and at that he frequently falls short. As I mentioned before though, simple frequently falls to either overpowered of underpowered, with it being very hard to hit a good middle ground.

Arguably, his schtick is hit things with a stick because that's how the game evolved over time, and that's all he has left. In the beginning, around the days of the LBBs, the fighter was the everyman. With only a fighter, cleric and MU, the fighter was the jack of all trades, everything that wasn't a holy man or a mage. And at that time, he was truly the best at combat. He was the best hitter, the best damage absorber, the best shooter and so on and so forth.

Then as the game evolved, all his special things were torn away, his high damage was given to the barbarian, high dex sneaking was given to the thief. Tactical nuke damage was given to the rogue. Ranged weaponry and fancy footwork? That was given to the ranger.

I've linked and argued this before, but the fighter is in the rut he's in because honestly he should have been dropped a long time ago. (http://idungeoncrawl.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/is-it-time-to-drop-the-fighter/)

but if you provide options, you can make a fighter that is versatile and optimized for many kinds of combat, or you can make a dumb meatshield with a pointy stick.

Absolutely, but the key there is OPTIONS. 3.x and 4 didn't give you options, they gave you complexity. The goal should be (and this is true for all the classes, not just the fighter) that a brand new player should be able to sit down with a rule book, read over the different classes, pick one that sounds interesting and be able to stat out a new character at any level in about 10 minutes without having to wade through a text book of powers, feats or skills and without having to worry that out of game choices made today will suck in 6 months.

Synovia

2012-07-13, 04:13 PM

It is true. That some people still desire a more mechanically complex fighter, or that they even find the fighter boring is not mutually exclusive with that truth.

No, but some people isn't what you said.

You said this:

Decades of roll players would disagree with you on that point. Mechanically simple does not translate to boring unless mechanics is all you find interesting.
The "Decades of" insinuates that almost everyone, for decades, has like the fighter.

I see no evidence that this is true. People have been complaining about the fighter being boring for the entirety of the time I've played D&D. The fighter being interesting back when there were 3 classes is irrelevant, unless we're going back to 3 classes.

Knaight

2012-07-13, 04:32 PM

The "Decades of" insinuates that almost everyone, for decades, has like the fighter.

I see no evidence that this is true. People have been complaining about the fighter being boring for the entirety of the time I've played D&D. The fighter being interesting back when there were 3 classes is irrelevant, unless we're going back to 3 classes.

It insinuates that plenty of people like relatively simple mechanics. That doesn't mean that they like the fighter, largely because the fighter is an excellent example of relatively simple mechanics implemented poorly. I like plenty of rules light games, many of which have significant amounts of tactical depth where the entire combat system is simpler than what's needed to play the fighter class. I don't like the fighter, as it manages to have next to no depth in play despite the sheer amount of mechanics involved.

Logic

2012-07-13, 04:35 PM

The "Decades of" insinuates that almost everyone, for decades, has like the fighter.

I see no evidence that this is true. People have been complaining about the fighter being boring for the entirety of the time I've played D&D. The fighter being interesting back when there were 3 classes is irrelevant, unless we're going back to 3 classes.

In second edition, the Fighter was boring because his only advantage over Rangers and Paladins was the ability to Specialize further in weapons, and faster level gain. I think the second edition Fighter was boring. I don't think the 3.X Fighter is boring, but it could use more something. One thing I propose is the ability to make a sunder/disarm/etc with a regular attack roll. Perhaps this would be a Fighter restricted feat following some requirements in the feat tree.

lesser_minion

2012-07-13, 04:38 PM

The problem with the fighter is that IC, nobody with half a brain goes into a dungeon without martial arts training. Moreover, the fighter isn't doing any unique or exotic martial arts, she's merely progressed further.

OOC, nearly every party has to have "hurting people and breaking things" down whether they have a fighter or not. If the only way to be good at fighting is to have a fighter, the game is broken. If you don't need a fighter to be good at fighting, then there's little you can do to make her unique and compelling without giving her something to do out of combat.

In my opinion, since everyone in a D&D party has to fight, the combat rules themselves should be deep and interesting enough that nobody needs to rely on special abilities in order to be interesting and fun to use in a fight.

1337 b4k4

2012-07-13, 04:43 PM

The "Decades of" insinuates that almost everyone, for decades, has like the fighter.

Knaight has the right of it. It only insinuates that for decades people have found non-mechanically complex classes to be entertaining for many levels of play, which is inclusive of the group that actually do like the D&D fighter, but not exclusively those people. Nor does it imply a majority. It does however imply that it is still a current sentiment, and not mere grognards afraid of change, and this thread is indeed evidence of that fact, as is the relatively recent explosion of rules lite gaming systems (see the entire Microlite series of games).

Emmerask

2012-07-13, 05:30 PM

Deepbluediver

2012-07-13, 05:37 PM

Arguably, his schtick is hit things with a stick because that's how the game evolved over time, and that's all he has left. In the beginning, around the days of the LBBs, the fighter was the everyman. With only a fighter, cleric and MU, the fighter was the jack of all trades, everything that wasn't a holy man or a mage. And at that time, he was truly the best at combat. He was the best hitter, the best damage absorber, the best shooter and so on and so forth.

Then as the game evolved, all his special things were torn away, his high damage was given to the barbarian, high dex sneaking was given to the thief. Tactical nuke damage was given to the rogue. Ranged weaponry and fancy footwork? That was given to the ranger.

I've linked and argued this before, but the fighter is in the rut he's in because honestly he should have been dropped a long time ago. (http://idungeoncrawl.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/is-it-time-to-drop-the-fighter/)

Hmm...I went and read what you wrote, and while I think I understand what you are getting at, I'm not convinced we should give up on the fighter just yet. (Although I'd love to swap the name for the class with the NPC Warrior, which IMO sounds much more heroic :smallbiggrin: )

I like the fighter because you can pretty much make one of any race and stick him into any setting and not worry that he will seem out of place. Ideally, you would be able to say the same thing about his combat skills; there shouldn't ever be any enemy that a decently played fighter is totally helpless against.

If the fighter has lost most of his specializations, then maybe we can bring back something of a jack-of-all trades style of class. If a fighter isn't better against any one style of enemy, then the same fighter should be able to do a little bit of EVERYTHING else. Sneak into a castle alongside the rogue, snipe gargoyles out of the sky with the ranger, and smash dragon skulls with a giant axe like a barbarian.

Absolutely, but the key there is OPTIONS. 3.x and 4 didn't give you options, they gave you complexity. The goal should be (and this is true for all the classes, not just the fighter) that a brand new player should be able to sit down with a rule book, read over the different classes, pick one that sounds interesting and be able to stat out a new character at any level in about 10 minutes without having to wade through a text book of powers, feats or skills and without having to worry that out of game choices made today will suck in 6 months.

If you would explain the difference in what you mean by complexity vs. options, I would appreciate it; I don't want to misunderstand you.

The only thing I really disagree with is the "any level" bit; I think that all classes should have the potential to get a bit more complex as they increase in power. But I would be hard pressed to say there is any 3.5 core class that a person would be incapable of playing, once they knew the system.
As I've said repeatedly, there can be a gap between the most basic level of play, and high-op settings, so long as the basic level of play is still functional in most situations.

With regards to fixing the fighter specifically, here a few ideas:
One thing to think about is a retraining option that lets you swich your combat focus with a little effort. I think Unearthed Arcana had something like this, but it would be easy enough to build it into the class, like the sorcerer's option for switching lower-level spells.

The second thing is a better skill system so that classes other than the rogue and the wizard can pick up things outside of their specialty. If the fighter doesn't get a lot of skill points naturally, and tends to have low intellect, then we can come up with an alternate option.

The third would be better feats, if a large feat selection is your goal (mine usually is). I've seen fixes that gave the fighter more class features instead; mostly the end up in the same place. I've never played 4e, but I know that 3.5 had a few good feats, some more that looked good but didn't live up to their promise, and plenty more that where just bad all around. I think a few straightforward weapon chains that are all equally viable would be a good start.

The fighter relies on the player more than some other classes to add flavor, but I don't think that means the fighter is ready for the trash bin. If we don't have any single niche that the fighter fits into, then he needs to be a better generalist, and I don't have a problem with that as a design goal, so long as it is done effectively.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-13, 05:55 PM

Well the most important thing to me would be that you can actually block/parry blows, ac should only come in for the damage calculation (ie ac is directly subtracted from the dmg received or somesuch).

Fighters would be the most proficient class in blocking/parrying while wizards would be the least proficient class.

This alone would of course pretty much make d&d into a completely different game system.
I would advise caution in taking this route; blocking and parrying attacks makes for a good movie, but in D&D it really just means you have a lot of rounds where nothing changes. I'm alright with having options for a defensive style like Sword-n-Board, but I'm reluctant to turn every fight for every players into an avoidance/DR contest.

After this major change I would add maneuvers for fighters(no not the "magical" stuff tob has but actual maneuvers, lunging, feinting and some special maneuvers depending on weapon, these would make the tohit harder but the enemy would get penalties for blocking for example.
Fine, but this doesn't address the issue of what to do if whacking the enemy with a stick isn't a good solution. Different ways to deal damage is only the START of improved versatility.
Plus, there are already rules in place for some of this, and usually they are quite complicated.

I guess some of what I'm getting at is that rather than being fighter-only fixes, what we really need are some system fixes that just let the fighter be better.

Ofcourse the whole initiative system has to be overhauled too, instead of the current system the one with the lowest ini must first roughly say what he wants to do and then has to execute it last etc.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that, but assuming you wanted to keep the turn-based style of combat (and altering that is a BIG change), what about this as an improvement: Your initiative bonus is one half your BAB, plus your Wisdom modifier (how aware you are of your suroundings) plus your Dex modifier (how quickly you can react).

navar100

2012-07-13, 06:25 PM

True; But I don't think pages and pages of monster forms to turn into is necessarily inherent to the polymorph ability itself.

Something I do in Fate games (that's worked out quite well) is I handle transmutation effects by the player gaining a new, temporary aspect related to a single change in the character's physical form. "Claws", "Wings", "Scales", "Huge", and "Fire-breathing" are all acceptable but "Dragon" is not. You can get additional effects depending on your MoS on a spellcasting roll, so a powerful wizard could gain enough aspects to turn themselves into a dragon with a single spell.

Admittedly I don't really know yet how to translate that into a d20-ish form, but I do think that design direction holds great promise if we put some work into it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQZxRH6uoiY

I really liked this. RIP Simon MacCorkindale :smallfrown:

Ashdate

2012-07-13, 06:34 PM

Ofcourse the whole initiative system has to be overhauled too, instead of the current system the one with the lowest ini must first roughly say what he wants to do and then has to execute it last etc.

This (as you may be aware) is the way initiative is handled in some of the white wolf games. It introduces a few problems tho; you need to re-roll initiative each round, or those on the bottom have a huge disadvantage (which in itself can be time consuming).

The "current" D&D initiative model doesn't reward winning initiative heavily, but neither does it overly punish people for losing it.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-13, 08:21 PM

This (as you may be aware) is the way initiative is handled in some of the white wolf games. It introduces a few problems tho; you need to re-roll initiative each round, or those on the bottom have a huge disadvantage (which in itself can be time consuming).

The "current" D&D initiative model doesn't reward winning initiative heavily, but neither does it overly punish people for losing it.

I'm still not sure I exactly undestand this method. :smallconfused:

I've played several D&D games where we rerolled initiative each round; I enjoyed it a lot. It didn't seem to add that much time to combat as a whole, since everyone would roll at the same time with a different die.
It also let you get a lot more mileage out of things like improved initiative, and almost everyone got a chance to go both first and last in combat at different points.

To keep this thread on topic, I want to stop and take a step back for a second. Obviously we've had lots of conflicting opinions, with lots of different people all thinking they're right. Maybe the first we should do is try to mesh some of the different visions we all have for a fighter.
What I would want to aim for is a class that equal or at least challenge the current crop of tier 1s and 2s for power, versatility, or both (not ALL the change has to come from the fighter, some classes need to get smacked upside the head with the nerf bat, too). It seems to me that a fair number of people picture the fighter as a badass-normal, who doesn't do use anything even remotley resembling magic.
While this might be fine for dealing with orcs and goblins, my problem is to ask how this class is supposed to keep up by the time you are fighting 100-armed eldritch horros, soul-sucking demons, and legions of undead abominations.
With a class like the wizard (or any of a dozen others) if a creature is too tough for direct damage, save-or-die or mind control, they can summon up a few elementals or outsiders, shapeshift into a dragon, and try attacking that way. If the enemy is still more powerful, they can alter the very environment around them to gain an advantage. If all else fails, they can teleport away and come back when they are better prepared. The fighter gets nothing even remotely like that, and to me, that doesn't seem very fair.

If you have a different vision of the fighter, it might help if you could explain it in broad terms, and we'll see if we can't reconcile some of the difference.

Ashdate

2012-07-13, 08:33 PM

I'm still not sure I exactly undestand this method. :smallconfused:

Spoilered for information purposes, to not further derail topic:

It works like this. Pretend the following initiatives are rolled:

Rogue: 16
Monster 1: 13
Fighter: 8
Monster 2: 6

Actions are declared from the bottom up, and then done top down; every monster or player knows a rough idea of what the other is going to do (i.e. attack a particular target, cast a spell, etc.)

Monster 2 is next to the fighter, declares that he is going to attack the fighter.
The fighter, know that Monster 2 is going to attack him, says he is going to trip Monster 2 and then move out of range.
Monster 1 declares that he is going to try and grab the fighter to prevent him from moving.
The Rogue, knowing he won't be attacked, is going to move to flank Monster 2 and attack.

Then everything plays out in initiative order. The Rogue flanks and attacks, Monster 1 tries to grab the fighter, and if it succeeds, prevents the fighter from tripping monster 2 and moving away (and allows M2 to attack the fighter). If he fails, the fighter trips Monster 2, and moves out of range of M2's attack, ensuring that M2's turn is wasted.

It's neat, but it's not light and breezy; you need to roll initiative every turn, and it takes some adjustment for everyone to "think backwards" before "moving forwards".

Saph

2012-07-14, 05:20 AM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-14, 07:27 AM

I really don't recommend the White Wolf-style "declare first, act later" initiative system – our group tried it for a while and it was a nightmare. By the time it got down to the low initiative counts the combat would have changed so much that the actions declared at the start of the round were redundant or impossible. The result was that everyone started using the "abort" action (which you can do in White Wolf by rolling Willpower) to redo their action.

Effectively we ended up declaring actions twice, of which only the second declaration mattered, increasing the amount of time required for a combat for absolutely no benefit and making combat rounds take forever. After several sessions of frustration we abandoned it and started using the D&D method.

Hmm... I wonder if you could solve this problem by making resolution order dependent on the moves chosen, rather than randomly?

Like, each action a character can perform has a Delay value: Lower delays are resolved first, with ties being broken up by rolling. Naturally, more powerful actions have a larger delay. The longer the delay, the less likely it is that the action will do what you're planning it to do. This way, it's put up to player choice rather than "you rolled poorly on initiative? Sucks to be you!"

1337 b4k4

2012-07-14, 12:20 PM

If the fighter has lost most of his specializations, then maybe we can bring back something of a jack-of-all trades style of class. If a fighter isn't better against any one style of enemy, then the same fighter should be able to do a little bit of EVERYTHING else. Sneak into a castle alongside the rogue, snipe gargoyles out of the sky with the ranger, and smash dragon skulls with a giant axe like a barbarian.

Sure, but this gets to the heart of the matter as to whether the fighter can be interesting to play without having his own "special snowflake" powers. There are plenty of people on this very board who seem to argue that if the fighter can't do something that absolutely no one else can, then it's a bad design. After all, arguably there's no reason why the wizard or the cleric shouldn't be able to sneak, snipe and smash as well, since they're normal mundane activities (for certain values of mundane).

I can't find the link at the moment, but there was a blog post on WotC's D&D Next site explaining that one of their potential ideas was that with the tactical combat system, that even though ever class might be able to chose a tactic from the list, only the fighter can use those tactics without the various penalties associated with them. So for example, there might be a trip tactic which is a negative to damage, but the target is knocked prone. The fighter would be able to skip the negative damage modifier. So maybe you'd make the opposite work for non combat skills. The fighter can (with appropriate skill / background / feat whathave you) use any skill that another class can, but with negative modifiers. So you could have a fighter that can cast wizard spells, but with a failure chance. Or who can use magical healing, but at half value. Or can gain the extra damage from sneak attacks, but doesn't get advantage (or vice versa).

It could work, the only question is whether it's sufficient for the "fighter only powers" crowd. And that is really sort of the crux of my original argument against having the fighter. If every class needs to have their own unique abilities, than the fighter has to go simply because the fighter, by definition, history, and common sense, is not unique, and especially not that all of his unique flavors have been spun off into their own classes.

If you would explain the difference in what you mean by complexity vs. options, I would appreciate it; I don't want to misunderstand you.

By options I mean additional things I can drop into my character to make them more focused and more unique, but that I don't need to use to do that, and if I don't use, I'm not at any great disadvantage.

Complexity means that there's all these choices, and I have to parse and understand them before I can start playing, or I will be at a severe disadvantage, or maybe can't even play if I don't take those choices.

In other words the ideal goal would be that I can stat up a character in 10 minutes, or take 3 hours making character choices, and 90% of the time, the characters if of equal level, should be on equal footing. Character A may be less special and unique, and not have as many cool one time tricks, but he should as a result be more reliable or hit just slightly harder on normal attacks.

Something like where when leveling a character up, you can take standard +'s to hit and to damage, or you can forgo those in exchange for limited use powers that give you bigger +'s to hit and damage, but are only per day / per encounter powers. Under such a system (and bear in mind, this is an off the cuff sketch, not an already mathed out design), a 10th level fighter who took the "easy" path might have a base +10 to hit and +5 to damage. A 10th level fighter who took mostly powers might only have a base +5 to hit and +1 damage, but every encounter can use various 4e style powers that add stat bonuses to hit or damage, or might impart status effects and so on, and once per day can go crazy in a minion slaughter fest a la a wizards fire ball. Incidentally this should apply across all classes, not just the fighter. Wizards might forgo the fancy powers and spells to be allowed to use armor and simply a better magic missile. Clerics might forgo their special powers for more effective damage dealing and turning instead of healing.

If we don't have any single niche that the fighter fits into, then he needs to be a better generalist, and I don't have a problem with that as a design goal, so long as it is done effectively.

Absolutely, and I don't have a problem with it either. But there is a non-insignificant number of gamers who do.

Hmm... I wonder if you could solve this problem by making resolution order dependent on the moves chosen, rather than randomly?

Dark Dungeons (an RC clone) has a system wherein initiative is re rolled every round, individually, on a d6. Before initiative is rolled, there are 3 declaration phases. Players 1, Monsters and Players 2. Any players who announce their intent in the 1st phase get a +1 to initiative on the idea that they are moving quickly without waiting to see what the monsters decide to do. The disadvantage being that the monsters are allowed to react to those declared intentions. The DM declares the monster actions and then the remaining players declare their actions, getting a -1 to initiative on the idea that they hesitated, waiting to get a read on the monster.

navar100

2012-07-14, 01:39 PM

Well the most important thing to me would be that you can actually block/parry blows, ac should only come in for the damage calculation (ie ac is directly subtracted from the dmg received or somesuch).

Fighters would be the most proficient class in blocking/parrying while wizards would be the least proficient class.

This alone would of course pretty much make d&d into a completely different game system.

After this major change I would add maneuvers for fighters(no not the "magical" stuff tob has but actual maneuvers, lunging, feinting and some special maneuvers depending on weapon, these would make the tohit harder but the enemy would get penalties for blocking for example.

Ofcourse the whole initiative system has to be overhauled too, instead of the current system the one with the lowest ini must first roughly say what he wants to do and then has to execute it last etc.

Right, non-"magical".

How about:

"Your weapon sways back and forth in your hand, ready to block incoming blows. With the spread of a thunderbolt, you clash your weapon against your foe's blade as he attempts to attack."

Make an attack roll. Use the higher value of the attack roll or your AC against an opponent's attack. Let's call this new Fighter ability, oh, I don't know, how about Wall of Blades.

Another one:

"With a quick sidestep, you send a charging opponent sprawling."

Choose either your Strength or Dexterity modifier. You and a charging opponent make opposed rolls using that modifier. If you are larger, you get a +4 bonus if you choose Strength. If you are smaller, you get a +4 bonus if you choose Dexterity. If you win, your opponent can't attack you and you can move up to 10 ft. Let's call this new Fighter ability, oh, I don't know, how about Counter Charge.

Wait, we need a defense against evil magic. I got one:

"By drawing on your mental strength and physical fortitude, you break free of a debilitating state that might otherwise defeat you."

With this ability you can end an effect such as a spell, that has a duration. Just like that, poof it's gone. Let's call this new Fighter ability, oh, I don't know, how about Iron Heart Surge.

We need new Fighter attacks as well. Just swing a sword is boring.

"You slam your opponent with a mighty attack to disrupt his senses and leave him unable to defend himself while your allies close to finish him off."

When a Fighter attacks his opponent, standard action, he deals an extra 6d6 damage and opponent is stunned for a round, no save. Let's call this new Fighter ability, oh, I don't know, how about White Raven Hammer.

Yeah, Fighters don't need no stinking "magic".

1337 b4k4

2012-07-14, 02:40 PM

@navar100

All your sarcasm aside, I don't think anyone objects to having options for fighters (or any other class for that matter). From the earliest of days, tricks and maneuvers were being house-ruled in. My objection (and this is true for most of the people I know) with what 4e, and 3.x tried to do before it, was making those options and maneuvers required to play the game. People want the game to support a simpler style of play, and you can't do that if parsing and understanding 300 pages of rules is necessary before beginning the game.

As an example, I have in front of me, the Labyrinth Lord book. The complete game, including a bestiary, spells list, DMG and maps and index is 133 pages. Of those 133, a new player, in order to make an informed choice about what class and character they want to play would need to read 14 pages, 18 if you include an equipment list and 42 if they read every single for both clerics and wizards. If we were using the AEC (to emulate 1e instead of B/X), they would need 29 pages including the equipment list, or 82 if they read every single spell from all the classes. Dark Dungeons, including all spells, skills and weapon proficiencies would require reading 91 pages, 50 if you skipped the spells.

By comparison, in 4e, just the first PHB, a new player needs to read 20 pages before they even get to choosing a race, another 17 pages to get to class, another 125 to get to skills, another 13 to get to feats, and another 19 to get to equipment. A grand total of 194 pages that a new player must read and understand to fill out their character sheet, and that's before they even get to picking out equipment (45 pages) and rituals (another 19 pages).

In neither of these examples did I include the sections of the book that explain the combat and adventuring rules except those included in the quoted sections.

So let's review, for a new player to make an equipped, informed, new character of any level, including having read every single spell:

LL: 42 Pages
LL AEC: 82 Pages
DD: 91 Pages
D&D 4e PHB 1: 258 Pages

I really don't mind options or powers, I do mind having to drop a large text book in front of my players just to get them started on a game. It wouldn't be so bad if I could take a new 4e player and tell them, here, just read this 20 pages or so and roll up a character, and don't worry about those powers until you get the hang of things, but you can't. You can't run around in 4e making basic attacks all the time and actually be effective, and that's a problem.

navar100

2012-07-14, 04:20 PM

Talakeal

2012-07-14, 05:33 PM

Right, non-"magical".

How about:

"Your weapon sways back and forth in your hand, ready to block incoming blows. With the spread of a thunderbolt, you clash your weapon against your foe's blade as he attempts to attack."

Make an attack roll. Use the higher value of the attack roll or your AC against an opponent's attack. Let's call this new Fighter ability, oh, I don't know, how about Wall of Blades.

Another one:

"With a quick sidestep, you send a charging opponent sprawling."

Choose either your Strength or Dexterity modifier. You and a charging opponent make opposed rolls using that modifier. If you are larger, you get a +4 bonus if you choose Strength. If you are smaller, you get a +4 bonus if you choose Dexterity. If you win, your opponent can't attack you and you can move up to 10 ft. Let's call this new Fighter ability, oh, I don't know, how about Counter Charge.

Wait, we need a defense against evil magic. I got one:

"By drawing on your mental strength and physical fortitude, you break free of a debilitating state that might otherwise defeat you."

With this ability you can end an effect such as a spell, that has a duration. Just like that, poof it's gone. Let's call this new Fighter ability, oh, I don't know, how about Iron Heart Surge.

We need new Fighter attacks as well. Just swing a sword is boring.

"You slam your opponent with a mighty attack to disrupt his senses and leave him unable to defend himself while your allies close to finish him off."

When a Fighter attacks his opponent, standard action, he deals an extra 6d6 damage and opponent is stunned for a round, no save. Let's call this new Fighter ability, oh, I don't know, how about White Raven Hammer.

Yeah, Fighters don't need no stinking "magic".

So they are non magic, therefore there is no reason our fighter would need to spend extra time "preparing" a specific manuever, and then once he uses it he wouldn't to spend time "recovering" the manuever before he can do it again, right?

Seriously, Tome of Battle, imo, would have been a lot better if it just gave new options to the existing melee classes rather than just completely replacing them. Also, giving the warblade such "gamey" limitations, calling its manuevers "blade magic" and putting it in the same book as the blatantly paranormal crusader and sword sage do give it the impression of being a magical rather than mundane character.

navar100

2012-07-14, 08:20 PM

Seriously, Tome of Battle, imo, would have been a lot better if it just gave new options to the existing melee classes rather than just completely replacing them. Also, giving the warblade such "gamey" limitations, calling its manuevers "blade magic" and putting it in the same book as the blatantly paranormal crusader and sword sage do give it the impression of being a magical rather than mundane character.

But this is 5E, a fresh new start. The idea is the Fighter would have all these options in the first place. The literal word "Fighter" could be used for a class that has an ability of making an attack roll to count as his AC against an attack. The literal word "Fighter" could be used for a class that has an ability to move 30 ft, hit his opponent, do several dice of damage, and stun him for a round. It's the "Fighter" doing all that. Hooray, you're playing a Fighter!

Now, it doesn't have to be: take Book of Nine Swords, replace the number "3" or the word "third", which don't even exist on the cover anyway, and change them to "5" or "fifth" or "next" and call it a day. However, we know that is it quite possible to create warrior classes that have nice things and not be punished with mediocrity of "I attack" for the audacity of moving more than 5 ft in a round. To dismiss it as "magic" means colloquial you don't believe warriors should have nice things at all.

Talakeal

2012-07-14, 09:19 PM

To dismiss it as "magic" means colloquial you don't believe warriors should have nice things at all.

Quite the opposite actually. What I am dismissing as magic are arbitrary limitations on the fighters "nice things" rather than the nice things themselves.

If a fighter has "Iron Heart Surge" that is awesome and not magical at all.

But if you throw on arbitrary limitations like "Must prepare for 5 minutes before using, can only prepare 3 maneuvers at a time, and must recover between uses" then it starts to look like something magical because that is not how abilities work in the real world.

Now, if they put in some sort of fatigue or morale meter which gives a plausible reason for why maneuvers are limited then that could serve as a limitation on fighters that doesn't appear supernatural or vancian light, but they haven't.

Even so, I don't think it is necessary. Warlocks don't have a limitation on their abilities and they are T3, why can't you make a martial class with a similar power level that can use their abilities at will?

Menteith

2012-07-14, 09:29 PM

Quite the opposite actually. What I am dismissing as magic are arbitrary limitations on the fighters "nice things" rather than the nice things themselves.

If a fighter has "Iron Heart Surge" that is awesome and not magical at all.

But if you throw on arbitrary limitations like "Must prepare for 5 minutes before using, can only prepare 3 maneuvers at a time, and must recover between uses" then it starts to look like something magical because that is not how abilities work in the real world.

Now, if they put in some sort of fatigue or morale meter which gives a plausible reason for why maneuvers are limited then that could serve as a limitation on fighters that doesn't appear supernatural or vancian light, but they haven't.

That's something I could get behind. A series of maneuvers, you know so many of them and have a certain amount of Stamina that you can spend each encounter, similar to Inspiration from the Factotum, with every maneuver costing a set amount of Stamina. You should be able to keep stances without significant problems, however.

navar100

2012-07-14, 09:30 PM

Quite the opposite actually. What I am dismissing as magic are arbitrary limitations on the fighters "nice things" rather than the nice things themselves.

If a fighter has "Iron Heart Surge" that is awesome and not magical at all.

But if you throw on arbitrary limitations like "Must prepare for 5 minutes before using, can only prepare 3 maneuvers at a time, and must recover between uses" then it starts to look like something magical because that is not how abilities work in the real world.

Now, if they put in some sort of fatigue or morale meter which gives a plausible reason for why maneuvers are limited then that could serve as a limitation on fighters that doesn't appear supernatural or vancian light, but they haven't.

Even so, I don't think it is necessary. Warlocks don't have a limitation on their abilities and they are T3, why can't you make a martial class with a similar power level that can use their abilities at will?

Ok then, it's just a matter of implementation details to be determined, provided the Powers That Be of 5E are even considering such things. However, my original point against whom I originally responded to dismissing TOB as "magic" still stands.

Knaight

2012-07-14, 11:51 PM

As an example, I have in front of me, the Labyrinth Lord book. The complete game, including a bestiary, spells list, DMG and maps and index is 133 pages. Of those 133, a new player, in order to make an informed choice about what class and character they want to play would need to read 14 pages, 18 if you include an equipment list and 42 if they read every single for both clerics and wizards. If we were using the AEC (to emulate 1e instead of B/X), they would need 29 pages including the equipment list, or 82 if they read every single spell from all the classes. Dark Dungeons, including all spells, skills and weapon proficiencies would require reading 91 pages, 50 if you skipped the spells.
Labyrinth Lord is a dense, poorly organized, table heavy mess. Sure, it's 133 pages, but there are games thrice the length that are far easier to get into, because they are better written (looking only at how mechanics are described, and not what mechanics are). Later editions of D&D tend to be longer, yes, but they aren't any harder to get into. That said, it is absolutely trivial to find games that are short, light, and illustrate this nicely. A new player needs to read maybe 6 pages for Risus and Wushu, both of which can probably be condensed to 1 easily enough.

1337 b4k4

2012-07-15, 01:17 AM

Labyrinth Lord is a dense, poorly organized, table heavy mess. Sure, it's 133 pages, but there are games thrice the length that are far easier to get into, because they are better written (looking only at how mechanics are described, and not what mechanics are).

That as the case may be, the point is the amount of material a player "must" know in order to make an informed decision about the character they want to play.

Later editions of D&D tend to be longer, yes, but they aren't any harder to get into.

You seriously don't think its easier for a new player to pickup and go in early editions of D&D vs 3.5 or 4th? Seriously?

And yes, there likely are even easier to get into games. That's pretty much my point. D&D has evolved away from a game thats easy to get into. When options are not options but instead additional required complexity, new players have a harder time getting into the hobby. Only WOTC can say for sure, but I strongly suspect that 4e was a net loss for number of people playing D&D, and I have to imagine at least some of that was the sheer amount of material a player had to parse before they could begin playing.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-15, 04:25 AM

You seriously don't think its easier for a new player to pickup and go in early editions of D&D vs 3.5 or 4th? Seriously?

Depends on what you mean by "pickup and go." If you mean the DM just tells the players "Don't worry about the rules, I'll make all the calculations and build choices myself and just tell you when the roll." (which is really the only way you can play a pickup game with newbies in a rules-heavy system like D&D) then yes, earlier editions of D&D made this much easier on the DM.

If you mean the players spending some time with the rulebook to get acquainted enough with the rules to be able to play without constantly having to refer back to the book or ask the DM... yeah, the "core" system of AD&D was vastly more complicated than the core mechanics of 3.5 or 4e.

Emmerask

2012-07-15, 09:30 AM

Ok then, it's just a matter of implementation details to be determined, provided the Powers That Be of 5E are even considering such things. However, my original point against whom I originally responded to dismissing TOB as "magic" still stands.

Tob is a magic system more then a mundane system, look at the recovery system alone, it makes zero sense if you don´t take it as blade magic.

Overall tob was very much needed from a balance standpoint in 3.5 but that is more due to the fact that they completely overpowered magic classes so that mundane options just wouldn´t do much to change this.

Out of combat the most important things are class skills and skillpoints.
For class skills, I would allow mundane classes to pick 4 additional class-skills that reflect their free time character interests.
As for the skillpoints increasing it to 6 for a fighter is reasonable I think ( the dumb/unskilled fighter trope is boring).

In combat as I said maneuvers are a good thing and tob has some good ones but they should be doable every single time the fighter wishes to do the maneuver (the blatantly magical ones should completely go of course).

Casters must be brought down by quite a lot imo, weather they increase casting times for a lot of spells or decrease flexibility by allowing a wizard only one school of magic to chose... well thats stuff for a different thread.

Overall I wish d&d to become more ""realistic"" and not more and more anime style/magic/superhumans.

Then again there are a lot of systems who do this quite good already (dark eye for example) where fighters and casters are pretty well balanced and fighters make a ton of fun both in combat and out of it without having to resort to magic or powers.

Seerow

2012-07-15, 10:38 AM

Tob is a magic system more then a mundane system, look at the recovery system alone, it makes zero sense if you don´t take it as blade magic.

Nope, wrong. Sorry.

Look at the Warblade. If you can list any maneuver he gets access to that is magical, I'll be shocked. Because in dozens of arguments about this, I have yet to see one listed. The closest I've gotten is some guy arguing that all Damage Reduction is magical, and thus the Warblade being able to ignore it was magical (apparently somewhere along the line the Barbarian became a magic class in this guy's eyes).

The recovery method for the Warblade similarly makes plenty of sense. You have your maneuvers ready at the start of the fight, after using them, you need to spend a round doing a regular basic attack to recover your maneuvers. This could easily be interpreted as doing a set up strike or something along those lines.

Emmerask

2012-07-15, 10:47 AM

Point taken, though the majority of tob (ie 2 out of 3 classes) are still a lot more akin to magic then to standard maneuvers, so the point still stands.

1337 b4k4

2012-07-15, 10:48 AM

Depends on what you mean by "pickup and go." If you mean the DM just tells the players "Don't worry about the rules, I'll make all the calculations and build choices myself and just tell you when the roll." (which is really the only way you can play a pickup game with newbies in a rules-heavy system like D&D) then yes, earlier editions of D&D made this much easier on the DM.

I mean, you get some players together and you hand them primary book and say "Here, make a character that you want to play, we're starting at level 10", and then those players being able to create a character, having made an informed choice among the various races, classes as skills or powers if any. I'm not even talking about the core combat or adventuring rules, just building a character from scratch, the first task any new player needs to be able to perform.

And yes, even AD&D (at least 1e, I never played 2e) was simpler to work through than 4e in this manner (OSRIC, 115 pages including all the spells).

Dienekes

2012-07-15, 11:01 AM

Nope, wrong. Sorry.

Look at the Warblade. If you can list any maneuver he gets access to that is magical, I'll be shocked. Because in dozens of arguments about this, I have yet to see one listed. The closest I've gotten is some guy arguing that all Damage Reduction is magical, and thus the Warblade being able to ignore it was magical (apparently somewhere along the line the Barbarian became a magic class in this guy's eyes).

While Warblade is definitely the most un-magical (and also my favorite) ToB class there are some that definitely strain the brain a little, Lightning Throw is probably the worst in this regard. You throw your weapon: If it's a sword it deals piercing damage and goes through numerous targets. Then it just teleports back to you. Also some of Stone Dragons maneuvers are head scratchers why they need to be on the ground, actually as a whole that limitation makes much more sense for Setting Sun since the ground really is key to many grappling moves.

The recovery method for the Warblade similarly makes plenty of sense. You have your maneuvers ready at the start of the fight, after using them, you need to spend a round doing a regular basic attack to recover your maneuvers. This could easily be interpreted as doing a set up strike or something along those lines.

Sort of this, though again it's confusing and poorly explained why the Warblade could not have everything it knows how to do available to him. I sure haven't heard a satisfactory explanation for that one. Though I interpreted the recovering maneuvers a bit differently.

If you do the same thing repeatedly in actual combat, you will be blocked and beaten. It is also pretty standard fair in duels to engage in a flurry of motion then step back to try and refocus and regain advantage. Having maneuvers be used and then can't be used again actually forces you to act like a real swordsman.

Really though I love ToB. And I think it did what I kind of wish the core game did. It gave us 3 classes: True Warrior, Divine Warrior, and Arcane Warrior and from those 3 classes you could take specific paths so it acts like you want.

Want a non-magical speedster type? Warblade focus on Tiger Claw. Blasty Mage Warrior? Swordsage focus on Desert Wind and so on.

From that point, if you ever want to add a whole new archetype, it's simple create another Discipline and add it wear it fits.

Ashdate

2012-07-15, 11:14 AM

That as the case may be, the point is the amount of material a player "must" know in order to make an informed decision about the character they want to play.

Such a view allows no nuance or general understandability/"grokability" of the material. We could talk about "Thac0" and a general "bonus to hit" in the same amount of space, but one is much easier to understand than the other.

The length of the book says nothing about how easy or hard a game is to learn. It might be an initial barrier to opening the book (as it might look intimidating) but I would rather take a 300 page book I can read once to understand than a 200 page book I need to read twice to grok.

You seriously don't think its easier for a new player to pickup and go in early editions of D&D vs 3.5 or 4th? Seriously?

I think 4e is actually very friendly to pick up and go compared to a system like 2e. No unintuitive math to calculate attack rolls, no modified initiative based on weapon speed, no digging through the back of the PHB looking for spells, etc. Do classes overall more "things to do" (certainly we can agree that the fighter got more "options", but the Wizard got less)? Sure, but "more stuff" does not necessarily mean "complex".

There is a lot of readily understandable information inside a 4e power (including, but not limited to, the colour of the power matching the at-will/encounter/daily use, keywords, and a fluff description about how the power relates to what you're doing with this power). The overall complexity of a 4e power is generally quite low. Compare the 4e Wizard "sleep" spell compared to, well, any previous version of the spell. I'm willing to wager that the 4e version is easier to understand.

1337 b4k4

2012-07-15, 11:39 AM

Such a view allows no nuance or general understandability/"grokability" of the material. We could talk about "Thac0" and a general "bonus to hit" in the same amount of space, but one is much easier to understand than the other.

Sure, but you can't even get to discussing THAC0 vs BAB until you've made a character in the first place. But I'm not arguing that we need to bring back THAC0, or variable weapon speeds, I'm arguing that we need to bring back simple to parse and level classes that don't require reading a text book of information just to start playing the game. I want a system where these powers and spells and skills are truly optional, and that I can get a new player making his or her own personal character and then playing the game in 10 - 15 minutes.

No unintuitive math to calculate attack rolls, no modified initiative based on weapon speed

No, instead you get things like the Rogue, who has one attack roll and damage roll for normal attacks, another set of rolls for combat advantage, and depending on powers and feats chosen, a different set of rolls for fighting bloodied opponents. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the fact that a 4e rogue in the right circumstances is a walking blender, but it is a royal pain of the highest order keeping track of all the special circumstance modifiers and bonuses from everywhere that 4e has. And god help you when you level, going through all your equipment and skills and feats and powers again making sure that you got all the right bonuses from everything.

no digging through the back of the PHB looking for spells

True, but if you replace "spells" with "powers" you get the same thing in 4e.

There is a lot of readily understandable information inside a 4e power

Again, my issue is not that powers exist, my issue is that it is mandatory that you understand them all before you can make an informed decision about your character.

navar100

2012-07-15, 12:11 PM

Point taken, though the majority of tob (ie 2 out of 3 classes) are still a lot more akin to magic then to standard maneuvers, so the point still stands.

Paladins cast spells, heal themselves and others, and turn undead. Away with such magic!

Monks heal themselves, Dimension Door, have Tongues, SPELL RESISTANCE!, immunity to poison, and a save or die attack. Away with such magic!

What were they thinking with Crusader (Paladin substitute) and Swordsage (Monk substitute)?

Seerow

2012-07-15, 12:13 PM

Point taken, though the majority of tob (ie 2 out of 3 classes) are still a lot more akin to magic then to standard maneuvers, so the point still stands.

The other classes are a Paladin and a Monk analogue. Do you consider the Fighter magical because it is in the same book as the Bard, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer and Wizard? I mean 8 out of 12 classes in Core have access to magic, that's the same ratio as tome of battle. It doesn't change the fact that the mundane classes are in fact mundane.

Edit: Ninjad

Emmerask

2012-07-15, 12:29 PM

Yes because comparing a what should have been specialized book with a generalized book is a very apt analogy :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Seerow

2012-07-15, 12:30 PM

Yes because comparing a what should have been specialized book with a generalized book is a very apt analogy :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

It actually is a very good comparison. Unless you think the Paladin and Monk shouldn't have magical effects?

Emmerask

2012-07-15, 12:32 PM

paladin yes, monk no

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-15, 12:34 PM

It actually is a very good comparison. Unless you think the Paladin and Monk shouldn't have magical effects?

Paladin? Sure. Monk? Maybe not.

Seerow

2012-07-15, 12:36 PM

paladin yes, monk no

Monk in core can teleport, go ethreal, punch someone so hard he can decide they die at any point days later, have a 90ft base movement, has spell resistance, can speak with any living creature, and eventually turns into an outsider. It may be a crappy class, but it's very obviously magical. If you look at non-core, it gets the ability to light himself on fire, shoot fireballs, and do all sorts of other magical things, though on a very limited basis.

A Swordsage isn't particularly more magical than the basic monk is.

Ashdate

2012-07-15, 01:07 PM

Again, my issue is not that powers exist, my issue is that it is mandatory that you understand them all before you can make an informed decision about your character.

I think we can agree that there are lot of undesirable things in 3.5 and 4e (I would agree with you that there are too many fiddly bonuses in both systems), but your entire argument seems to revolve around the number of pages a player "needs" to read, which says very little about what is contained inside. The fiddly bonuses don't make the game harder to learn, they're just easy to forget in the heat of the moment (which yes, is a problem).

In 4e, you can get pretty much everything you need to know about how a class functions by reading the description, class abilities, and the first level of at-will/encounter/daily powers, maybe looking ahead a few pages to see what comes next. If you need to carefully examine the spread of level 16 Utility Powers to decide whether a class is for you or not at level 1, then I would suggest that the problem is you rather than the book.

Claiming you need to read all the Fighter powers (from 1 to 30) to make an "informed decision" is disingenuous, the same kind of reasoning that would make a tiny, complicated table seem "better" than three pages of well-written and easily graspable material simply because it takes up less room in a book.

And to your point, I think I would have a much easier time teaching D&D to someone with 4e than I ever would with a previous edition. It's much more straight-forward than 3.5, and much more intuitive than 2e, especially with support from either character builder they're released, or with the power cards you can buy.

To the topic at hand tho, if Wizard is serious about implementing "optional modules", then they should have the "simple" fighter found in the playtest, as well as the "Tome of Battle" ones that people are describing here. If they're not, then ditch the simple fighter (and bring in the one with options) and admit that 5e is not the game for players who want pre-3rd edition D&D.

lesser_minion

2012-07-15, 03:38 PM

That's something I could get behind. A series of maneuvers, you know so many of them and have a certain amount of Stamina that you can spend each encounter, similar to Inspiration from the Factotum, with every maneuver costing a set amount of Stamina. You should be able to keep stances without significant problems, however.

No.

There are plenty of reasons why someone wouldn't be able to swing their sword in a particular way repeatedly over the course of the same fight, and many of them have nothing to do with tiredness or anything you could sensibly peg to tiredness.

If you use stamina points, you've thrown out a lot of the factors that should have gone into determining whether or not a character can perform a particular combat manoeuvre, and this means that a stamina points system is more likely to produce absurd and nonsensical results. That means it's actually less realistic.

Emmerask

2012-07-15, 04:05 PM

Knaight

2012-07-15, 09:38 PM

Fatebreaker

2012-07-15, 11:36 PM

That as the case may be, the point is the amount of material a player "must" know in order to make an informed decision about the character they want to play.

My point being that the number of pages is a highly deceptive statistic due to variation in how things are explained and organized. Also, I'd note that your arguments regarding only needing to know the character creation chapters fall flat - to evaluate the choices, they have to be understood in context.

Knaight's point is incredibly relevant. Page count is a very poor metric for determining "ease of introduction." A short page count might (might!) mean a handful of basic rules and off you go! Or it might mean a wall of text crammed to the margins. A large page count could be indicative of a nigh-insurmountable amount of rules and equations and powers and modifiers and legal-style blocks of mechanics. Or maybe it means that there are clear, well-spaced sections, with plenty of examples and artwork to help make things both interesting and easy to understand. Other factors play a much larger role in "ease of introduction" than raw page count.

Personal anecdote, spoiler'd for length:
I used to teach people how to play games for a living. I ran intro games most every day I worked, which was full time (and overtime!) for four years. I still teach folks how to play new games, largely because I'm the guy who wants to try new games. It's remarkably easy to break down some games into their core concepts and teach those quickly. Other games have a lot of "need to know" information which has to be learned up-front. Other games have a lot of interlinked bits of information, so learning one thing necessitates learning another. Others are just awful in their design, organization, and explanation. The funny thing is, looking at my shelf, all of those have approximately equal-sized rulebooks!

Europe in the Middle Ages is a board game with rulebook only, say, twenty to thirty pages long. I don't have a copy in front of me at the moment, so I apologize if that number is inaccurate. It is, however, monstrously incomprehensible.

This, for example, is the game attempting to be clear:

"In order to facilitate learning effective ratings procedures, summaries of the factors effecting such endeavors have been provided (see charts & tables)."

Translation: the following chart summarizes ratings procedures.

I would like to emphasize -- this is the part of the rulebook which is attempting to be clear and helpful. It gets significantly worse. Our group, deciding for some reason to play this monstrosity, turned the rulebook over to a few lawyers. We still, to this day, have not played it (but three years later, the lawyers say they're getting close to being ready to playtest it!).

By your measure, the rules (20-30 pages!) are easy to understand! By my experience, there are games from multiple-hundred page rulebooks which are much easier to learn and play, to the point where I can teach a 12-year-old to play them in about five or ten minutes.

jseah

2012-07-16, 07:42 AM

Well there are only few reasons why someone couldn´t try (try is the important part here ^^) to do the same maneuvers over and over again (a maneuver that absolutely requires a certain opening by the opponent for example).

The chance of success however should certainly be lower (or none-existent) if you do the same maneuver over and over.
How about this:
Martial maneuvers require certain conditions to be satisfied or suffer a significant penalty to success/effect.
These conditions are based on positioning or a minor status effect imposed by other maneuvers.

Eg. Trip is at -6 to success by default. If the opponent is Off-balance (status) or on poor footing (terrain), this penalty is reduced by 2, stackable. If the tripper has Readied Weapon (status), penalty is reduced by another 2.

Off-balance can be imposed for 1 round by a different maneuver (Pushing Strike) which has a different penalty offset by other conditions. Readied weapon could be from a stance or as a result of a different maneuver.

Combine with maneuvers that move targets or restrict movement, impose certain status on target or self, this leads naturally into flexible move chains and non-repeating combat.

Dienekes

2012-07-16, 08:08 AM

The only downside I can see to that is one of balance. Let's say a Fighter really, really needs to make sure someone doesn't move past him to get to the squishies. In 3.5 you can trip as an action, and you did your purpose and were effective. With your system to do that he would have to take a ridiculously huge penalty (-6? That's about his entire bonus), or try to set it up at which point the guy has spent his turn getting to said squishy.

Meanwhile the Wizard spent his turn actually casting the spell he wanted to cast.

If you want to actually model that repetitive combat is easily beaten, you could use a stackable penalty system. For each round in which you use maneuver X in a row you take a -1 penalty to the use of that maneuver for the rest of the encounter. Numbers to be mathed out of course, maybe the numbers reset if you refocus, or don't use the maneuver for 2 turns in a row or something. That way when you really, really need to you can do exactly what you want to do, but overuse it and it will soon become impossible.

The downside is of course bookkeeping. From the look of it, it could get really annoying.

Or if you're trying to model that combat is made up of a whole bunch of small things to take advantage of, honestly, I wouldn't. Maybe folks smarter than me could figure something reasonable out, but at this point I think we're getting too crunchy.

Ziegander

2012-07-16, 08:55 AM

How about this:
Martial maneuvers require certain conditions to be satisfied or suffer a significant penalty to success/effect.
These conditions are based on positioning or a minor status effect imposed by other maneuvers.

Eg. Trip is at -6 to success by default. If the opponent is Off-balance (status) or on poor footing (terrain), this penalty is reduced by 2, stackable. If the tripper has Readied Weapon (status), penalty is reduced by another 2.

Off-balance can be imposed for 1 round by a different maneuver (Pushing Strike) which has a different penalty offset by other conditions. Readied weapon could be from a stance or as a result of a different maneuver.

Combine with maneuvers that move targets or restrict movement, impose certain status on target or self, this leads naturally into flexible move chains and non-repeating combat.

Yeah, that's bad because it forces the game to introduce a bunch of new status conditions and terrain descriptors that players must understand and keep track of, not to mention all of the little -2s here and there.

I'd much prefer that, with Advantage and Disadvantage, WotC remove as many other status conditions from the game as they can. If an effect blinds someone, it makes them automatically fail to see things (Triple Disadvantage to Spot) and gives Disadvantage to attack rolls, but it doesn't need to deliver the Blinded condition that must then be cross-referenced.

Synovia

2012-07-16, 10:27 AM

So they are non magic, therefore there is no reason our fighter would need to spend extra time "preparing" a specific manuever, and then once he uses it he wouldn't to spend time "recovering" the manuever before he can do it again, right?.

Anyone who thinks that you can just do the same strenuous activity over and over again, has never had any sort of athletic training. Muscles fatigue, things get pulled, etc.

I may be able to bench X pounds 12 times, but I can only bench X+50 once. And if I do that, I can't bench anything for a couple of minutes.

There's nothing about AEDU (or recovered manuevers, or any sort of physical thing that is limited) that is inconsistant with physical activity in some form or another.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-16, 11:10 AM

I don't think that D&D is really set up well to handle fatigue based limits, in the sense of measuring how tired a player is and what, if anything, that prevents them from doing. I would prefer just about any combination of "X per day" or "use every 1dX rounds."

I don't mind having lots of different effects in a game such as blinded, dazed, deafened, nauseated, exhausted, etc; I think they add variety, although a few from 3.5 can probably be condensed. You don't need to memorize all of them, just keep the books or a reference sheet close at hand. If there is anything that you use frequently (like a barbarian's rage) it should quickly become familiar enough that you won't always need to check.

Emmerask

2012-07-16, 12:38 PM

Anyone who thinks that you can just do the same strenuous activity over and over again, has never had any sort of athletic training. Muscles fatigue, things get pulled, etc.

I may be able to bench X pounds 12 times, but I can only bench X+50 once. And if I do that, I can't bench anything for a couple of minutes.

There's nothing about AEDU (or recovered manuevers, or any sort of physical thing that is limited) that is inconsistant with physical activity in some form or another.

The thing is that the system currently is setup in a way that says (to stay with your analogy):

You can bench X once, after that you just can´t bench X anymore but X+50 is no problem at all because... (no one knows).

RedWarlock

2012-07-16, 12:45 PM

The thing is that the system currently is setup in a way that says (to stay with your analogy):

You can bench X once, after that you just can´t bench X anymore but X+50 is no problem at all because... (no one knows).

Actually, that's not as inaccurate as you think. I can bench 200 pounds, get exhausted, but then be able to get right up and do leg-extensions without any delay. It's a different movement, and thus a different part of the body being exhausted. Unless you want to get into tracking of individual limbs, I think being able to say a given maneuver being 1/encounter or 1/refresh is more generally valid than trying to track vitality or something like that.

Emmerask

2012-07-16, 12:51 PM

Hm might be, I´m not a fitness expert ^^

But there are certain maneuvers to my knowledge that pretty much are the same just with higher boni and there it falls apart.

For example I think it was something with concentration skill + x as damage where the x was higher for the higher level version (or maybe the skill cap?)

anyway these are basically the same, so why can´t I use the lower level one again instead of using the higher level one ^^

From diamond Mind it was I think

Ashdate

2012-07-16, 01:18 PM

Hm might be, I´m not a fitness expert ^^

But there are certain maneuvers to my knowledge that pretty much are the same just with higher boni and there it falls apart.

I think if you're sacrificing balance or ease of play for realism, then you shouldn't be playing D&D. AEDU may not be the pinnacle of realism, but it's a quick and easy concept in a game that needs quick and easy. Rather than make the mechanic "realistic", better to make it functional, and paper over it's limitations with fluff.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-16, 01:45 PM

As a supporter of the fantastic-realism standard of play, I still want to voice agreement with the idea that whether something is "realistic" or not, is a very poor benchmark by which to judge it's merit. Fun and functionality should take preference, at least in my book. If you can find some reasonable explanation for a particular quirk, even if it involves certain amounts of "it's just magic" handwaving, I'm ok with that.

Also, isn't psionics a system that gives you a very definitive pool of power from which to draw, letting you do anything that you know how with the power you have left? One of the best things (IMO) about D&D 3.5 was that it lasted for such a long time there was material out there for just about any game or character build you wanted.

If WotC really wants to make D&D Next succesful, they'll think at least a little bit about the ease with which people can add new material to the existing system.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-16, 02:02 PM

I think if you're sacrificing balance or ease of play for realism, then you shouldn't be playing D&D. AEDU may not be the pinnacle of realism, but it's a quick and easy concept in a game that needs quick and easy. Rather than make the mechanic "realistic", better to make it functional, and paper over it's limitations with fluff.

I used to think that way as well, but now I have a bit of a different perspective. Keep in mind I still agree with you in spirit, but I think the notion of "realism" in gaming can use some refinement.

Most games work on the principle of simulation (no, I don't mean that the way GNS theory does). That is, the idea is that the characters are interacting a world that works consistently (though not necessarily in a way exactly similar to our own), and the rules are there to play out the interactions. The plutonian ideal of a simulation is that the crunch matches the fluff, i.e., that the game plays out using the rules the same way it would if the characters were in a real place, performing their actions for real.

This is why it makes sense to say things like "the way magic works in this game is unrealistic." When we say that, we aren't literally complaining that magic works in this world in a way different from ours (in that sense, ANY magic at all is unrealistic), we mean that there's a disconnect from how we're told magic is supposed to work and how it actually works. For example, in 3.5 magic is strictly superior to everything but just as easy to learn as mundane skills, so why is magic rare in most settings? This is why many find Tippyverses so appealing, because it fixes the gap (by changing the fluff rather than the crunch, but still).

Now, this plutonian ideal is impractical because, really, to play out every last piece of the game world into the game mechanics would slow down gameplay and get in the way of the fun parts. When we say we want the rules to be "functional", what we mean is to strip out the unfun parts that don't contribute to the game while keeping the fun stuff.

The problem with this notion is "the fun stuff" changes with respect to both to individual players and to the genre of the game. This is why in-depth combat rules are invaluable in D&D but completely unnecessary in Puerto Rico, because Puerto Rico isn't about combat. This is also why you can't make universal game systems, just universal skeletons.

When you design a game system, you have to make the decision, "What's the fun stuff that must be kept at all costs, and what's the boring stuff that we can safely abstract away?" There's no right or wrong answers to this question, but your answer does change what kinds of groups your game will appeal to and what groups they won't.

kyoryu

2012-07-16, 03:00 PM

Anyone who thinks that you can just do the same strenuous activity over and over again, has never had any sort of athletic training. Muscles fatigue, things get pulled, etc.

I may be able to bench X pounds 12 times, but I can only bench X+50 once. And if I do that, I can't bench anything for a couple of minutes.

There's nothing about AEDU (or recovered manuevers, or any sort of physical thing that is limited) that is inconsistant with physical activity in some form or another.

Not only that, but having played in a number of sports, I can tell you that people *do* pull stuff out of their... pick an appropriate place... at key times that they can't do every single time. When the chips are down, I've seen hockey players (even at the rec league level) do amazing runs down the ice to score. Why don't they do it every time? Because they can't.

That said, I'd be totally fine with the DNDN fighter getting more "at-will" style maneuvers, and fewer "encounter/daily" maneuvers.

Fatebreaker

2012-07-16, 03:15 PM

Not only that, but having played in a number of sports, I can tell you that people *do* pull stuff out of their... pick an appropriate place... at key times that they can't do every single time. When the chips are down, I've seen hockey players (even at the rec league level) do amazing runs down the ice to score. Why don't they do it every time? Because they can't.

That said, I'd be totally fine with the DNDN fighter getting more "at-will" style maneuvers, and fewer "encounter/daily" maneuvers.

Sometimes, you're in the zone. I'm okay with a game presuming that there are some maneuvers, abilities, powers, etc., which are the peak of your character's current potential, but not always do-able.

Folks may not always like the fluff that's given as an explanation for that, but the basic concept of "here is something you can only do under specific circumstances" isn't a flawed one.

huttj509

2012-07-16, 03:19 PM

I used to think that way as well, but now I have a bit of a different perspective. Keep in mind I still agree with you in spirit, but I think the notion of "realism" in gaming can use some refinement.

Most games work on the principle of simulation (no, I don't mean that the way GNS theory does). That is, the idea is that the characters are interacting a world that works consistently (though not necessarily in a way exactly similar to our own), and the rules are there to play out the interactions. The plutonian ideal of a simulation is that the crunch matches the fluff, i.e., that the game plays out using the rules the same way it would if the characters were in a real place, performing their actions for real.

This is why it makes sense to say things like "the way magic works in this game is unrealistic." When we say that, we aren't literally complaining that magic works in this world in a way different from ours (in that sense, ANY magic at all is unrealistic), we mean that there's a disconnect from how we're told magic is supposed to work and how it actually works. For example, in 3.5 magic is strictly superior to everything but just as easy to learn as mundane skills, so why is magic rare in most settings? This is why many find Tippyverses so appealing, because it fixes the gap (by changing the fluff rather than the crunch, but still).

Now, this plutonian ideal is impractical because, really, to play out every last piece of the game world into the game mechanics would slow down gameplay and get in the way of the fun parts. When we say we want the rules to be "functional", what we mean is to strip out the unfun parts that don't contribute to the game while keeping the fun stuff.

The problem with this notion is "the fun stuff" changes with respect to both to individual players and to the genre of the game. This is why in-depth combat rules are invaluable in D&D but completely unnecessary in Puerto Rico, because Puerto Rico isn't about combat. This is also why you can't make universal game systems, just universal skeletons.

When you design a game system, you have to make the decision, "What's the fun stuff that must be kept at all costs, and what's the boring stuff that we can safely abstract away?" There's no right or wrong answers to this question, but your answer does change what kinds of groups your game will appeal to and what groups they won't.

To add a direct gaming decision/example, 3(.5)E had similar rules and methods for building PCs, NPCs, and monsters. This had everyone following the same 'rules,' but a number of people (including monster designers) found it headache-inducing to deal with everything linked to hit dice of particular types (more HD means more health, but also more abilities, etc. Particularly for types with small HD like insects, this meant that to get a large insect with a lot of HP, it had a lot of other stuff to deal with).

4E decided to streamline monster/NPC creation significantly, coming at it from the perspective of "this is where we want these things to end up approximately, start there, then modify." This made things much easier to design new monsters, and NPCs, but they no longer followed the same rules as PCs.

Some people found this a great move, saving them a lot of time and stress.

Some people found this broke their suspension of disbelief in how the world worked, as PCs by default followed completely different rules from everyone else.

Both of these views are valid.

I repeat: Both of these views are valid.

The balance between consistency, detail, speed, complexity, and probably dozens more factors can and will vary heavily in what particular people prefer. Most of the time it's impossible to state that something is objectively 'wrong' with regards to this, unless the design goals are clearly understood.

Clawhound

2012-07-16, 03:29 PM

"The Zone." Yeah. I like that. That would be a good hook to make the fighter's primary ability. Most importantly, players and DM's would "buy it". It lets you be fantastic without magic.

In The Zone gets you:
- Deny opponent one advantage
- Ignore one disadvantage
- Gain advantage
- Hits do maximum damage
- Opponents may not use reaction powers or abilities against you this round
- Get a save, every round, to remove any continuing effect

You can be "in the zone" for one round per day per level.

Emmerask

2012-07-16, 03:42 PM

Okay how about this:

As a fighter you get:

very basic maneuvers that can always be used
Feint
lunge
parry (convert one of your attacks to a parry move)
etc

more advanced maneuvers that can always be used once certain conditions are met
<insert stuff here>

even more advanced maneuvers that have the tob recovering method/once per encounter
<insert some tob stuff here that is not too blatantly magic (desert wind etc not for example)>

Synovia

2012-07-16, 04:13 PM

Emmerask, these are all things that are already tied up in "Attack". An attack is not a stabbing motion with a sword, its a series of parries, lunges, feints, etc.

Also, why do people have such an issue with the fighter doing something thats a little magical? No, he shouldn't cast spells, but if he hits someone so hard they explode, or he can blocks spells with his sheild, why do people have a problem with that?

"Guy with a sword" is the warrior class. The fighter is "Superhero with a sword"

Dienekes

2012-07-16, 04:34 PM

Emmerask, these are all things that are already tied up in "Attack". An attack is not a stabbing motion with a sword, its a series of parries, lunges, feints, etc.

That's a bit of a problem with abstraction. For instance a wizard casting a spell is not a bunch of incantations, counter-incantations, and hexes just to get their spell off. They just cast the spell. The opposing wizard can then attempt to counter-spell it, or whatever else.

We would like the same level of abstraction with the Fighter, or something similar. Because always saying: I attack, is about as boring as saying: I cast a spell. We want to know what spell is being cast, just as we want some variation in what attack is being made. Making parries and lunges actually do a thing could help start that and more can be added from there.

Also, why do people have such an issue with the fighter doing something thats a little magical? No, he shouldn't cast spells, but if he hits someone so hard they explode, or he can blocks spells with his sheild, why do people have a problem with that?

"Guy with a sword" is the warrior class. The fighter is "Superhero with a sword"

Does anyone have a problem with that? From what I heard most people are for giving the fighter's nice things.

Emmerask

2012-07-16, 04:35 PM

Dublock

2012-07-16, 05:00 PM

Thinking about the encounter/daily thing, I agree that seems...off for a nomagical class.

My thought what if you get a slightly higher attack hit then your "at-wills" but then it decreases each time you use it against that enemy, because they know of it, you are tired, etc.

Talakeal

2012-07-16, 06:49 PM

Yes its all tied up within the attack and I think that is one of the major problems why d&d fighter combat feels so boring ^^
Of course each of these normal maneuvers would need some nice stuff that goes along with it.

As for your second, yes I think this is actually the main problem with the thread, some want a more superhero rpg (or high fantasy), others want a low to mid level fantasy rpg, so no cutting so hard the corps explodes or running so fast a fire trail forms behind you or slashing so hard an energy beam erupts from your blade traveling towards the enemy ^^

A little magical I´m okay with, but not over the top please :-/

It really depends on where you draw the line between low / high fantasy or between hero / super hero.

Most heroes in both sorts of fantasy are more badass than anyone who has ever lived, but are still fundamentally human, and some super heroes also fall into this category.

Batman, Captain America, Aragorn, and Conan are all better fighters than any man who has ever lived, never fail, and are impossibly fit and skilled, but they are still fundamentally human and do things that are more or less within the human realm of potential.

On the other hand people like Super Man, Thor, Goku, or Rama all do things which are outside the bounds of human ability (or indeed physical reality as we know it).

Menteith

2012-07-16, 07:08 PM

On the other hand people like Super Man, Thor, Goku, or Rama all do things which are outside the bounds of human ability (or indeed physical reality as we know it).

In D&D's world, doesn't it behoove you to redefine "the bounds of human ability"? Or are you arguing that high level humans, regardless of class, aren't human? If a human can do it, it's therefore within the bounds of human ability. In D&D, humans are capable of doing things that are far different than what real humans are capable of. Thus, the bounds of human ability in D&D is vastly different from real life, regardless of what the fighter's abilities are.

navar100

2012-07-16, 07:17 PM

It really depends on where you draw the line between low / high fantasy or between hero / super hero.

Most heroes in both sorts of fantasy are more badass than anyone who has ever lived, but are still fundamentally human, and some super heroes also fall into this category.

Batman, Captain America, Aragorn, and Conan are all better fighters than any man who has ever lived, never fail, and are impossibly fit and skilled, but they are still fundamentally human and do things that are more or less within the human realm of potential.

On the other hand people like Super Man, Thor, Goku, or Rama all do things which are outside the bounds of human ability (or indeed physical reality as we know it).

And that thinking is what leads to Fighters Don't Get Nice Things. Warriors are limited to real world possibilities while spellcasters can do anything and everything because it's "magic".

Talakeal

2012-07-16, 07:20 PM

In D&D's world, doesn't it behoove you to redefine "the bounds of human ability"? Or are you arguing that high level humans, regardless of class, aren't human? If a human can do it, it's therefore within the bounds of human ability. In D&D, humans are capable of doing things that are far different than what real humans are capable of. Thus, the bounds of human ability in D&D is vastly different from real life, regardless of what the fighter's abilities are.

Yes, it does behoove one to redefine that. I don't believe that any D&D author has ever done so however, which is probably one of the reasons arguments like this keep cropping up.

I was using the term to mean humans in the real world. Personally the less human a character is the less I relate to it and the less I enjoy playing it, but that is just me.

And that thinking is what leads to Fighters Don't Get Nice Things. Warriors are limited to real world possibilities while spell casters can do anything and everything because it's "magic".

AD&D was more or less able to balance spell casting with realistic human limitations. 3E and 4E were not. Which is why when I play D&D it is almost always 2E or E6. If 5E cannot or will not strike this balance then there is nothing wrong with it, it just isn't the game for me.
Just like there is nothing wrong with other "super hero" games like 4E, Champion or Exalted, but they are never going to appeal to me as an individual.

Logic

2012-07-16, 07:45 PM

Just like there is nothing wrong with other "super hero" games like 4E, Champion or Exalted, but they are never going to appeal to me as an individual.

Glad to see a very rational take on The War of the Editions.

More on topic: I want the Fighter to be non-magical, to feel non-magical, to not have spells-by-another-name, and to be better at FIGHTING than the other classes. I dislike ToB, but that doesn't mean that all the ideas in that book have to be thrown out. I dislike 4th edition for how they treated classes, but I understand how they came to the conclusions they did.

Fatebreaker

2012-07-16, 08:09 PM

As for your second, yes I think this is actually the main problem with the thread, some want a more superhero rpg (or high fantasy), others want a low to mid level fantasy rpg, so no cutting so hard the corps explodes or running so fast a fire trail forms behind you or slashing so hard an energy beam erupts from your blade traveling towards the enemy ^^

A little magical I´m okay with, but not over the top please :-/

I want the Fighter to be non-magical, to feel non-magical, to not have spells-by-another-name, and to be better at FIGHTING than the other classes.

The problem with this line of thinking is that these mundane or semi-mundane fighters are then expected to be on par with distinctly non-mundane wizards and creatures.

Rather, the individual desire for a "real" fighter is not a problem, until it is paired with a distinctly unreal world while still being expected to compete.

For those players who desire internal consistency in their setting or game, this pairing can be a prime source of dissonance.

Really, what the fighter SHOULD look like depends entirely on (#1) what the rest of the world looks like and (#2) what their place in that world is expected to be.

The more magical the world, the more unreal fighters must become if they are to keep up.

Gettles

2012-07-17, 04:12 AM

The problem with this line of thinking is that these mundane or semi-mundane fighters are then expected to be on par with distinctly non-mundane wizards and creatures.

Rather, the individual desire for a "real" fighter is not a problem, until it is paired with a distinctly unreal world while still being expected to compete.

For those players who desire internal consistency in their setting or game, this pairing can be a prime source of dissonance.

Really, what the fighter SHOULD look like depends entirely on (#1) what the rest of the world looks like and (#2) what their place in that world is expected to be.

The more magical the world, the more unreal fighters must become if they are to keep up.

Exactly if you design the fighter around a low "realistic" idea but build the wizard to be able to use any magic like ability used by any magical character in any form of fiction there is a huge problem. If the fighter's ability becomes "I can make 5 attacks as long as I stand still" while the wizard can destroy a city in one turn, this is a problem as the games becomes "the non casters watch the people with magic do everything."

If you want a high level fighter to be Captain America then a high level wizard should be Harry Potter. If you want a high level wizard to be Lina Inverse than an equal level fighter should be the Incredible Hulk. The classes should be built to be near the same scale.

Synovia

2012-07-17, 07:34 AM

Just like there is nothing wrong with other "super hero" games like 4E, Champion or Exalted, but they are never going to appeal to me as an individual.

D&D IS a superhero game.

A 5th level Wizard can fly, shoot rockets from his hands, and move things with his mind.

I can't see any way that a mundane fighter can stay on the same level as that.

lesser_minion

2012-07-17, 08:02 AM

Also, why do people have such an issue with the fighter doing something thats a little magical? No, he shouldn't cast spells, but if he hits someone so hard they explode, or he can blocks spells with his sheild, why do people have a problem with that?

With a good reason, it might be reasonable to compromise realism. However, you haven't actually demonstrated a good reason here.

Blocking spells using a shield is entirely realistic: it's an established fact that you can't cast a spell at someone on the other side of a wall, even if you know they're there, and even though most spells don't require you to shoot things at people. Intervening objects can and do usually block spells.

The general principle that should allow your fighter (or any other character) to block spells with a shield is in-place and established: the reason your fighter can't pull it off is not that he's constrained by realism, it's that he failed his last toilet-training class and is still waiting to resit. Realistically, a fighter should also be able to move fast enough that he's hard to target with spells in the first place.

As for hitting people so hard they explode, there is no justification for it. In play, it would be a useless "win-more" effect. It isn't needed for reasons of balance because it doesn't actually help you to win. Being unrealistic isn't necessarily bad, but being gratuitously unrealistic is, and it doesn't get more gratuitously unrealistic than this.

Just being unrealistic doesn't make you powerful. It's certainly easier to end up with an overwhelmingly powerful character when they can do unrealistic things, but that's because that character was poorly done, not because simply letting someone have some unrealistic capabilities automatically turns them into some stupidly overpowered nutter.

Likewise, merely being 'realistic' doesn't make you worthless -- much of the fighter's problem is not that he doesn't get to be unrealistically good, it's that he's actually unrealistically bad at what he's supposed to do.

A 5th level Wizard can fly, shoot rockets from his hands, and move things with his mind.

I can't see any way that a mundane fighter can stay on the same level as that.

A fighter would have no trouble pulling his weight alongside that kind of wizard, and would have no trouble fighting that kind of wizard.

None of these capabilities show a wizard to be a superhero: these things are far more limited than their equivalents as superhero powers (flying superheroes can fly all the time, not just for a few minutes, for example).

A 5th level wizard can be overwhelmingly effective in comparison to a 5th level fighter, but that is still not because what the wizard has is unrealistic: it's to do with having far more things to use, and to do with using them well.

Seerow

2012-07-17, 11:50 AM

A fighter would have no trouble pulling his weight alongside that kind of wizard, and would have no trouble fighting that kind of wizard.

None of these capabilities show a wizard to be a superhero: these things are far more limited than their equivalents as superhero powers (flying superheroes can fly all the time, not just for a few minutes, for example).

A 5th level wizard can be overwhelmingly effective in comparison to a 5th level fighter, but that is still not because what the wizard has is unrealistic: it's to do with having far more things to use, and to do with using them well.

A 9th level Wizard flies all day every day for a single spell slot.

Seriously though, name any super power, and there's almost certainly a wizard spell that will recreate it, or be more powerful than it.

If Wizards have access to those kinds of capabilities, saying Fighters can't have anything good because it's too unrealistic/superheroish then Fighters will always suck. There's seriously no way around that.

Synovia

2012-07-17, 11:50 AM

A fighter would have no trouble pulling his weight alongside that kind of wizard, and would have no trouble fighting that kind of wizard.

None of these capabilities show a wizard to be a superhero: these things are far more limited than their equivalents as superhero powers (flying superheroes can fly all the time, not just for a few minutes, for example).

A 5th level wizard can be overwhelmingly effective in comparison to a 5th level fighter, but that is still not because what the wizard has is unrealistic: it's to do with having far more things to use, and to do with using them well.

No, its not. The things a wizard can do are also simply more powerful than the things a fighter can do (in addition to a wizard being more flexible). A wizard is more maneuverable, has better range, and has more effective abilities. A fighter can stab an enemy hard, a wizard (even a low level one) can make it so that you don't need to stab those enemies.

Most of this is because the fighter "needs" to work within reality, and the wizard doesn't. There's no reason to constrain a fighter to doing things that only normal human beings can do. It just doesn't make sense in a world with wizards/druids/clerics.

Ashdate

2012-07-17, 12:11 PM

Blocking spells using a shield is entirely realistic: it's an established fact that you can't cast a spell at someone on the other side of a wall, even if you know they're there, and even though most spells don't require you to shoot things at people. Intervening objects can and do usually block spells.

You can handle this without creating a convoluted mechanic. In 4e (for example), wielding a shield gave you a bonus to your Reflex defense, which would "represent" a fighter (or other character) blocking the spell with their shield.

5e currently (if not a bit awkwardly) does this too, since it improves the fighter's overall AC. Perhaps (as has been suggested before), the Fighter might be able to coax another +1 to AC out of a shield that a cleric or thief couldn't, showing their mastery with it.

In response to the Wizard versus Fighter discussion, I think think Mearls understands that the problem isn't necessarily spell slots, it's spells themselves. As has also been mentioned "fixing" the fighter can't happen in a vacuum. If you want to have more "realistic" fighters stand next to Wizards, then you need to put a stop to the flying wizard that shoots rockets. If you want to keep the flying, rocket-shooting wizard, than the Fighter needs to be able to leap over tall buildings and rend steel with his bare hands.

Emmerask

2012-07-17, 01:01 PM

Well thats one possibility but there are others, for example you could completely keep the flying laser rocket shooting wizards alongside the mundane fighter if you introduce enough downsides to them.

A lot of games for example use the the more you dabble in the arcane stuff the more susceptible you become to it rule, while the mundane never uses magic type is extremely resilient.

They could introduce a stat similar to hp for casters that keeps track of their psychic exhaustion. Limiting the I can do everything this day with magic approach.

They could decrease the recovering time of spells greatly, "sure you can do everything with magic today, but tomorrow and the rest of the week you have not a single one".

They could increase the cast-time of spells so that even while someone can cast the awesome magic of superultradoom everything it will take him 3 rounds to finish it, be prepared to safeguard the wizard for the time.

While all of these are just random ideas that greatly need more flashing out, it shows that it is very possible to have the supermagician together with the mundane fighters.

Ashdate

2012-07-17, 01:18 PM

While all of these are just random ideas that greatly need more flashing out, it shows that it is very possible to have the supermagician together with the mundane fighters.

Not to downplay your ideas, but most of them are not "easy' fixes, which is what D&D needs. They might very well be appropriate in other systems, but they're all pretty much radical departures from previous editions.

Players (I think) will understand if the "Fly" spell becomes a 5th level spell (rather than 3rd level), and/or only works for a number of rounds equal to your caster level.

Players will not (overall) understand why you now need to keep track of spell fatigue, or why it now takes one minute to cast it rather than one round.

Think of it this way; on of the reasons they keep the d20, saving throws, and a class named the "fighter" is that there is some resonance between their role in 5e, and their role in previous editions. You won't see a system where wizards are 'more vulnerable' to magic, because that is not D&D. You won't see a "magic point" system because that is not D&D. You're not going to see the Wizard having to spend a week recovering their spells because that is not D&D. Etc.

Don't get me wrong, I understand how some people in here are tempted to reinvent the wheel for 5e, but that's not what the game needs; you'll alienate as many players (if not more) as you "gain" by making changes that don't have any accepted basis from previous editions.

Synovia

2012-07-17, 01:34 PM

They could introduce a stat similar to hp for casters that keeps track of their psychic exhaustion. Limiting the I can do everything this day with magic approach.

They could decrease the recovering time of spells greatly, "sure you can do everything with magic today, but tomorrow and the rest of the week you have not a single one".
.

We already have this. its called spell slots. It doesn't work. It just leads to casters sleeping every 20 minutes.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-17, 01:57 PM

Don't get me wrong, I understand how some people in here are tempted to reinvent the wheel for 5e, but that's not what the game needs; you'll alienate as many players (if not more) as you "gain" by making changes that don't have any accepted basis from previous editions.

Really it's this mindset that makes 5e have so many issues: The core of the system itself has problems that can *only* be fixed by radical, fundamental change. Don't make those radical changes and the system will remain broken.

And really, why bother moving to a new edition that's just as borked as the old edition? Why should I pay hundreds of dollars for books with nothing but ultimately cosmetic changes?

Emmerask

2012-07-17, 02:02 PM

Well casters going to sleep every twenty minutes is the dms fault not a system fault (ie stuff should happen even if the players decide to take an early nap)^^

@ Ashdate yes you might be correct that such drastic changes would deter more people from the franchise then gain.
Though if there are not enough differences to previous products there is (at least for me) no reason to actually buy this new d&d ^^

4e had a lot of changes in comparison to 3e and introduced a lot of "new" mechanics for example but these changes where pretty much all in the direct opposite direction then what I had wished for.

The last thing I read about 5e was that it will try to be a lot more modular then previous editions and will (again try to) encompass more or less all playstyles, seeing that E6 is very widely played I do think that I´m not the only one who wishes for a more lowish magic version of d&d (if this is then done via modules I don´t really care^^).

Menteith

2012-07-17, 02:03 PM

And really, why bother moving to a new edition that's just as borked as the old edition? Why should I pay hundreds of dollars for books with nothing but ultimately cosmetic changes?

That's sort of the place I'm at. My group doesn't have a problem sticking to our current edition, no one really wants to experiment unless there's something really attractive about a new system, and I haven't seen a single appealing thing about D&D Next (with the possible exception of Advantage, but that's still got some pretty irritating issues regarding stacking).

Ashdate

2012-07-17, 02:19 PM

Really it's this mindset that makes 5e have so many issues: The core of the system itself has problems that can *only* be fixed by radical, fundamental change. Don't make those radical changes and the system will remain broken.

And really, why bother moving to a new edition that's just as borked as the old edition? Why should I pay hundreds of dollars for books with nothing but ultimately cosmetic changes?

I disagree that the core system (if we may call it that) of 5e needs "radical" change; if we can agree that casters will potentially be a problem in 5e (due to all the problems they had in 3.5e), then solutions can be implemented without introducing "new rules" for casters (such as spell fatigue). I'm not saying the solution is easy, but you could make minor changes to how a Wizard works to "bring down" their power level significantly.

On one end, perhaps you limit the amount of spell slots the class has to something more akin to 2e than 3.5e (i.e. no bonus spells for intelligence, no easily made scrolls). Maybe you force all wizards to be really "specialized" (i.e. you pick a school to decide what spells you can cast), such that their utility becomes more limited. On the other end, you can either limit the amount of spells a wizard has access to (perhaps taking 4e's idea that casters should primarily be controlling the battlefield, not buffing or setting things on fire), and/or making the spells weaker overall, compared to 2e or 3.5e (perhaps Haste lasts only one round for example).

Similarly (as others have described), you can bring the fighter "up", by allowing them more attacks/day, granting special combat maneuvers, etc. I would suggest however, that bringing the casters "down" would be a much easier affair.

But to your point, I agree that there isn't much about 5e (as it stands) that excites me. They're going to have a hard time pulling my group away from 4e, but I would appreciate it if they made an effort to do so.

lesser_minion

2012-07-17, 02:29 PM

No, its not. The things a wizard can do are also simply more powerful than the things a fighter can do (in addition to a wizard being more flexible).

Again, this doesn't have to be overwhelming. In your example, the fighter could kill or function alongside your wizard with little difficulty, despite the wizard doing unrealistic things.

In D&D, the fighter isn't realistic or constrained by realism. In fact, he'd actually be better off in many respects if he was. Realistic arrows go straight over a wind wall and hit the wizard on the other side. Realistic non-magical armour impedes most spells, even ones that aren't blasts, just as realistic walls do.

It is not the fault of people who want the fighter to be essentially realistic that the fighter is overwhelmingly weaker than the wizard. The problem is that the people who wrote the wizard decided that once they'd done away with realism, they should do away with all the limits. It's not "fighter realistic, wizard unrealistic", it's "fighter unrealistic, wizard totally ****ing nuts"

Many of the ways one would write any good magic system could be incorporated into D&D with no trouble -- things like remembering that absolute effects are incredibly open to abuse; including safeguards against potentially game-breaking synergies; establishing lines in the sand that magic cannot cross; and applying established principles consistently.

kyoryu

2012-07-17, 02:43 PM

Siegel

2012-07-17, 02:55 PM

Menteith

2012-07-17, 03:00 PM

The biggest feature of the game (a heavily module based system) hasn't even been shown to the player base yet. I honestly feel like the first playtest dropped the ball by not showcasing anything very unique or interesting about the game. The only thing I can say about the system is that it currently hasn't shown me any reason that it's superior over previous editions of D&D, let alone newer RPGs.

Analytica

2012-07-17, 04:15 PM

Most of this is because the fighter "needs" to work within reality, and the wizard doesn't. There's no reason to constrain a fighter to doing things that only normal human beings can do. It just doesn't make sense in a world with wizards/druids/clerics.

I think this is a matter of preference. To my mind, wizards doing magical things are interesting because they involve some underlying laws of nature that are not found in reality. Stating that the laws of mundane physics in the game run off rule of cool, so that someone can in fact swim in lava just because they practiced athletics so long and hard, because physics works on narrative principles rather than being consistent, makes magic that comes from the flow of leylines/divine favour/psionic power less special, because then those things are not exceptional in this regard. It probably only matters to some people, but it would matter to me. Hence why I would like to make fighters have some advantage that is in fact also supernatural, and which distinguishes them from just people who happen to know how to fight, such as the ability to make much better use of magic items than anyone else, or being favoured by hero-minded deities.

Synovia

2012-07-17, 04:47 PM

Again, this doesn't have to be overwhelming. In your example, the fighter could kill or function alongside your wizard with little difficulty, despite the wizard doing unrealistic things.
.

How exactly does a 5th level fighter deal with a wizard who flies and can put him to sleep or blind him at will?

The problem is that if you do "radical, fundamental changes", people will complain that it's not D&D any more.

People will complain no matter what they do, so thats not a reason to keep things the same. What will kill D&D is a version that doesn't signficantly improve atleast some of the issues with imbalance.

The grognards are going to keep playing what they're playing, because there's no pleasing them.

Socratov

2012-07-17, 05:24 PM

Ok, I'm not going to react to othe rposts, just chip in my 2 cp on how a fighter should look like, and why. I will adress what a fighter is, how he should do things like he does and how he can be (a bit more) balanced compared to the more mystic classes (he will not wield the same power, but at least be an asset to a party apart from being a meatshield).

to define what a fighter should do you first have to define the idea of the class, so in other words, what does a fighter make?

First, and foremost a fighter is a user of weapons. when starting out he can use a weapon fairly well, but he is not going to pull off feats of strength right away. he will be comparable to a freshly trained soldier. when a fighter grows eh will be able to wield his weapon better, gain a signature way of fighting and grow to a veteran of battles (surviving ususally is the best tactic for growth). In the end the fighter will be a martial master. He will be able to wield weapons like no one can. he will wil lpull of feats no one thought even were possible. A master at arms will seem like a perfect blend of man and weapon moving with a grace and certainty that will strike fear into the hearts of enemies and inspire valor into the hearts of allies. In the field he will be a commander, moving like a tactician and ordering people around to their best potential in a fight. A fighter is not a pure bloodlusty warrior (we allready have a barbarian for that, a barbarian will never be a leader, he will be on the front of the line eager to draw blood and paint the battlefield red).

to summarise: martial skill, ways of surviving fights, leadership abilities, Cool Moves (tm).

So how can we make a fighter interesting? combat si boring if your routine will never change. if all your routine is walk up, hit with pointy end, rinse and repeat the combat is boring. At the beginning this is true. Your fighter will need to learn, gain experience and grow into a combat style.

so, let's check the list shall we?

martial skill: 1)weapon proficiencies. but instead of a fixed list i'd like to give the fighter a fised lsit of simple weapons (think 3.5 simple weapons) and up to 5 slots for usable weapons to pick from limited to 2 exotic, 3 martial, gained over the first 5 levels. this will encourage a fighter to pick tools for his toolbox. Now those slowts will be changable. Each morning the fighter will do his morning gymnastics much like a cleric prays to his god or a wizard prepares his spells. He will need an hour of uninterrupted time to practice his weapons and moves (more on that later). he can choose to change his weapons he is capable of using by neglecting a weapon and by spending a week training every morning using a new martial weapon. after that week the fighter will be fully able to use that martial weapon. obviously exotic weapons are harder to master so the fighter (let's call him bob) will need 2 weeks to change. if bob needs to master a weapon quickly he can save half the time by not fighting that time, but by using what is commonly known as downtime (while the wizard is making magic items and what not).

Master at arms: bob will also be able to use that time to maintain his weapons. In the right circumstances (like a nearby smithy, a workbench etc.) eh can alter the weight of his weapon, the balance, the edge etc. so he can add either the keen bonus (more damage), speed bonus (extra attack at penalty) or the balanced bonus (increased accuracy) to the weapon for one month. he will be able to modify his armor to make it lighter (raising max dex bonus) and easier to move in (dodge bonus?) or smoother (deflection bonus). Applying these bonuses requires 3 uninterrupted days of free time. With an hour each day he can add another day to the time limit to a maximum of 1 month extra. he can't change this bonus in this way.

survival: bob is tough. he will be able to take a beating with a nice hitpoint pool. he will also be very good at wearing armor to protect himself. he will have less penalties from armor simply because he has beeen trained, and become very good at using it. he will be albe to duck, roll, parry etc. to escape mortal blows.

Leadership. Bob will be able to inspire, instill fear and have a graps of tactics to end a fight effectively. he will use intimidation on foes either instilling fear, or drawing aggro. he will give a bonus to saves against fear to allies and and hand out bonuses on flanking and group tactics.

Last but not least, Cool Moves (tm): Remember Tome of Battle from 3.5? pretty much that, with a bit of ranger combat styles mixed in. let bob be flashy for once. bob will be able to use a few moves each encounter, to be refreshed each day (a bit like a wizard uses and prepares spells, only each encounter and less of them). Bob will be able to move quick, trip easily, slice and dice, the works. the disciplines are the styles, with the bonuses much like the ranger's combat styles.

Balance

Bob will never live up to the wizard. it's like comparing apples and oranges. But let's separate these fields shall we? The wizard is a weak but smart person. a good wizard will never take a weapon to hand (except for a utillity dagger), so please don't let a wizard (and priest like character for that matter) be able to fight like bob does. both bob and the wizard should be able to awe each other with the things they can do. bob should need a wizard, and a wizard should need bob.

To summarize, Bob now has a set of tools to use in a fight. he can show leadership, use multiple weapons, use cool moves, and have options besides walk up to enemy and hit it. A player playing bob will need to plan the fight. he will need to pick his moves, aquire weapons, maintian those weapons and allocate the resources he has available to him.

TL;DR - more options, more (careful) planning, more cool. (I'll leave the numbers to people with a lot more knowledge and experience in designing such a class).

Talakeal

2012-07-17, 05:26 PM

D&D IS a superhero game.

A 5th level Wizard can fly, shoot rockets from his hands, and move things with his mind.

I can't see any way that a mundane fighter can stay on the same level as that.

Just because some characters in the setting have paranormal abilities does not mean that everyone in the setting is a super hero. Take for example, Harry Potter, he can fly, shoot rockets from his hands, and move things with his mind. Yet 99% of the world is still perfectly ordinary muggles. And, a muggle with a gun can easilly defeat Harry Potter if they catch him unprepared.

Exactly if you design the fighter around a low "realistic" idea but build the wizard to be able to use any magic like ability used by any magical character in any form of fiction there is a huge problem. If the fighter's ability becomes "I can make 5 attacks as long as I stand still" while the wizard can destroy a city in one turn, this is a problem as the games becomes "the non casters watch the people with magic do everything."

If you want a high level fighter to be Captain America then a high level wizard should be Harry Potter. If you want a high level wizard to be Lina Inverse than an equal level fighter should be the Incredible Hulk. The classes should be built to be near the same scale.

You also have magic items to consider. The Hulk doesn't do anything that is "impossible" other than be inhumantly strong, fast, tough, etc. And a high level fighter is going to have magic items that enhance all of these aspects to super human levels.

Seerow

2012-07-17, 05:42 PM

Just because some characters in the setting have paranormal abilities does not mean that everyone in the setting is a super hero. Take for example, Harry Potter, he can fly, shoot rockets from his hands, and move things with his mind. Yet 99% of the world is still perfectly ordinary muggles. And, a muggle with a gun can easilly defeat Harry Potter if they catch him unprepared.

How many muggles actually killed a wizard with a gun? How many muggles were characters?

If you took random muggle Joe and drop him in next to Dumbledore and the rest of the Order, he's going to feel pretty useless because there's not much he can contribute. Sure, he can kill people with a gun, but most of the problems the group is dealing with doesn't involve killing people so that's not necessarily even useful.

You also have magic items to consider. The Hulk doesn't do anything that is "impossible" other than be inhumantly strong, fast, tough, etc. And a high level fighter is going to have magic items that enhance all of these aspects to super human levels.

If you want to make the magic item argument, you want Iron Man, not the hulk. And you know what, Iron Man is a totally valid D&D character concept. The class used to represent it is the Artificer, not the Fighter though. Because the Artificer actually gets class features that let him gain more magic items and use them more effectively than other people.

If you want to give the Fighter abilities like:

"At level X, you gain access to a magical armory. This magical armory contains various magic items up to value Y, that the Fighter can swap between any time he has access to his home base."

"Any magical item the Fighter uses that has a X/day usage limit, he may use that ability an additional number of times per day equal to half his fighter level. If the daily uses increase to 10, he may use this ability at will"

"Any weapon or armor the Fighter uses is automatically considered enchanted, as if affected by a Greater Magic Weapon or Magic Vestment spell, with a caster level equal to the Fighter's level +4"

etc.

But if you expect the Fighter to rely on random loot (or DM pity) and the group letting the Fighter take all of the items found (rather than taking an even split which is the norm for basically any game I've ever played), then you can't tie a Fighter's abilities to Magic Items. Because everyone else has magic items too, but also have amazing things they can do.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-17, 06:02 PM

How many muggles actually killed a wizard with a gun? How many muggles were characters?

If you took random muggle Joe and drop him in next to Dumbledore and the rest of the Order, he's going to feel pretty useless because there's not much he can contribute. Sure, he can kill people with a gun, but most of the problems the group is dealing with doesn't involve killing people so that's not necessarily even useful.

Also, how often do we see guns in a sword-'n-sorcery campaign? Lets take a poll: who's played at least one game in a setting with well-balanced firearm rules, and who's played at least one game with guns that they absolutely hated? :smalltongue:

navar100

2012-07-17, 06:03 PM

Menteith

2012-07-17, 06:19 PM

Did that. Called 4E. Didn't work for a lot of people.

4E isn't my favorite system, but I'll give credit where credit's due - it's an excellent tactical simulator, and is significantly more balanced than most systems. I'd rather that the try to fix the major problems (making core changes if that's what they think is best for the game) and make a unique system that's great in its own right, rather than make a system that lets me play D&D3.5 with less content.

Knaight

2012-07-17, 07:09 PM

Did that. Called 4E. Didn't work for a lot of people.

That's one example of significant change, though I wouldn't call it radical change by any stretch of the imagination. Saying doing something else won't work because someone did something else once and it failed is absurd. Your statement is like saying that systems that aren't D&D won't ever work, because some people don't like GURPS.

Also, how often do we see guns in a sword-'n-sorcery campaign? Lets take a poll: who's played at least one game in a setting with well-balance firearm rules, and who's played at least one game with guns that they absolutely hated? :smalltongue:
I've done both, and the consistent piece is generally that good gun rules fit right into the rest of the combat system without them being a subsystem of their own - unless gun rules are essentially the totality of ranged combat, which leaves most fantasy behind.

Deepbluediver

2012-07-17, 07:40 PM

4E isn't my favorite system, but I'll give credit where credit's due - it's an excellent tactical simulator, and is significantly more balanced than most systems. I'd rather that the try to fix the major problems (making core changes if that's what they think is best for the game) and make a unique system that's great in its own right, rather than make a system that lets me play D&D3.5 with less content.

That sounds a lot like what Pathfinder tried to do, right?

Unfortunately, I doubt WotC is going to step back and publish D&D version 3.6. (though that would be ideal, assuming they could get the fix right)

It's probably to much to ask, but it would be nice if D&D Next was designed so that much of the published content could be fitted in with minor adjustments.

Seerow

2012-07-17, 07:45 PM

Menteith

2012-07-17, 07:47 PM

That sounds a lot like what Pathfinder tried to do, right?

Unfortunately, I doubt WotC is going to step back and publish D&D version 3.6. (though that would be ideal, assuming they could get the fix right)

It's probably to much to ask, but it would be nice if D&D Next was designed so that much of the published content could be fitted in with minor adjustments.

No, I'm saying that I don't want them to revisit D&D3.5, and that they shouldn't be afraid of making more radical changes to the system. Look, I love D&D3.5, but seriously, with as much content as there is (especially if one considers good homebrew), it's possible to do nearly everything in the game. I can play a low magic campaign fending off Kobold raiders who've taken over a nearby mine, and I can play demigods out to rewrite the Pact Primeval, and that will always be there for me. I don't need Wizards to shackle themselves to the problems that D&D3.5 has, let alone the problems of every edition combined into a new one.

4E tried to change core parts of D&D - whether or not it worked is subjective, but at least they tried, and they came up with a really neat edition that does appeal to some people because of its unique features.. But the sort of half baked mess that D&D Next has appeared as isn't going to draw away people from their previous editions unless it can give them something they're not already getting - and it hasn't done anything to distinguish itself.

Synovia

2012-07-17, 08:22 PM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-17, 09:10 PM

That's one example of significant change, though I wouldn't call it radical change by any stretch of the imagination. Saying doing something else won't work because someone did something else once and it failed is absurd. Your statement is like saying that systems that aren't D&D won't ever work, because some people don't like GURPS.

Navar does have something of a point though: 4e's (perceived) failure is precisely why they're running back to D&D's "roots" with their tails tucked between their legs and puddles on the floor. The designers need to get over that fear before we'll see any improvements in 5e's design direction, though I disagree that this fear is a justified one.

I've done both, and the consistent piece is generally that good gun rules fit right into the rest of the combat system without them being a subsystem of their own - unless gun rules are essentially the totality of ranged combat, which leaves most fantasy behind.

Ya'know, I still think a guns-and-spells-only fantasy setting could work...

Seerow

2012-07-17, 09:11 PM

Ya'know, I still think a guns-and-spells-only fantasy setting could work...

It does work. It's called Shadowrun. :smallwink:

Or are you thinking more civil war or wild west era as opposed to futuristic?

Emmerask

2012-07-17, 09:16 PM

An alloy of law (the book) rpg could be very interesting ^^

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-17, 09:23 PM

Or are you thinking more civil war or wild west era as opposed to futuristic?

Ding ding ding!

Plus, Shadowrun is more Cyberpunk + Magic than Fantasy + Guns.

navar100

2012-07-17, 09:23 PM

That's one example of significant change, though I wouldn't call it radical change by any stretch of the imagination. Saying doing something else won't work because someone did something else once and it failed is absurd. Your statement is like saying that systems that aren't D&D won't ever work, because some people don't like GURPS.

Well, yeah! :smallsmile:

The point is radical change is not itself the solution. There's going to be change, but that doesn't mean throw out everything like 4E did. 3E had its share of new systems - psionic power points, tome of battle maneuvers, incarnum chakras as well as new ways to do classes using the original system - beguiler, duskblade, knight. They're not all perfect, but they do have overall good press. Admitted 3E bias here, but even though 3E was a big change from 2E, it was still recognizable. The main friction at the time was people didn't want change. Now people accept and hope there will be change (not a political endorsement :smallyuk: ), but 4E showed not to the point of having a different game altogether, for the many people who didn't care for it.

Menteith

2012-07-17, 09:27 PM

Synovia

2012-07-17, 09:32 PM

Navar does have something of a point though: 4e's (perceived) failure is precisely why they're running back to D&D's "roots" with their tails tucked between their legs and puddles on the floor. The designers need to get over that fear before we'll see any improvements in 5e's design direction, though I disagree that this fear is a justified one.

Right, and I think this is exactly the problem. They think that they can satisfy everyone, and thats just not going to happen.

There's a big chunk of the D&D population that isn't going to buy 5E, no matter what it is. They'll say its too gamist, or too simulationist, or it isn't D&D, or some other trite crap like that, to justify the fact that they just don't like change.

4E was a huge step in the right direction, in that they looked at 3.5, and tried to fix the problems. It wasn't perfect, but it was definitely better at a lot of things. The important thing was they had a vision, and they went with it.

NEXT sounds like something the marketing guys came up with... we'll slam everything together and everyone will be happen, when in reality, no one will be happy.

Wizards needs to look at 4E, decide what the problems in 4E are, and fix them, whether that means breaking all things holy in D&D, or just making minor tweaks. They need to stop worrying about the grognards and the luddites, and just accept the fact that they're not customers anymore. They're angry people who aren't going to be happy unless you publish AD&D again, and then they're going to complain that its too expensive.

One only needs to look at the Blizzard forums for Diablo 3 to see what happens when you cave to your customers demands w/respect to mechanics: you get a disjointed mess that no one is happy with. They need to realize that the people they've hired to design the systems are better at game theory and design than the people who've been playing D&D for 20 years. They need people who can kill core mechanics of D20 if they don't work or don't make sense.

Seerow

2012-07-17, 09:43 PM

An alloy of law (the book) rpg could be very interesting ^^

Isn't there already a Mistborn RPG out there? I wouldn't doubt there's an Alloy of Law Campaign Setting coming out down the line somewhere eventually. But yeah that would be interesting to see.

Knaight

2012-07-17, 09:52 PM

Ya'know, I still think a guns-and-spells-only fantasy setting could work...

I wouldn't say guns only, but they could certainly take a major place. Still, at the end of the day somebody is going to want to stab somebody else with a knife and there need to be rules for that. Plus, there's also a lot of fun in having fantasy enable the use of stuff other than guns (for instance, in one of my settings there is alchemical metallurgy, which will let you shrug off bullets and get up close to most gunslingers, unless they've also consulted an alchemist when it comes to bullet production.

There's a big chunk of the D&D population that isn't going to buy 5E, no matter what it is. They'll say its too gamist, or too simulationist, or it isn't D&D, or some other trite crap like that, to justify the fact that they just don't like change.

4E was a huge step in the right direction, in that they looked at 3.5, and tried to fix the problems. It wasn't perfect, but it was definitely better at a lot of things. The important thing was they had a vision, and they went with it.
Sometimes, change shouldn't be liked. Change can be good, but it can also be bad, and there is always the possibility for screw ups. I admire the intention behind 4e, and the willingness to dramatically alter the system, I detest the way it actually played out. "It's bad because it's different" is a fairly insipid statement, but switching in good for bad doesn't make it better.

A drastic revamp may well be necessary, and that may well involve tossing the d20 based mechanic entirely, or even dispensing with classes. That doesn't mean that any particular drastic revamp is any good.

Fatebreaker

2012-07-17, 10:11 PM

I'd say that the real problem is that D&D doesn't know what it wants to be - is it a dungeoncrawling system? Is it a flexible system that's universal? Is it meant for narrative style play? Is it meant for more of a world simulation, where players have multiple characters?

In many ways, this is not D&D's fault, but it certainly is a case of it being a victim of its own success.

Because it's "the Big One" in roleplaying games, over the years it's accrued a variety of adherents whose playstyles are a bad fit for D&D and vice versa. So now we've got design by committee from folks with mutually exclusive design goals, most of whom don't even understand how the game actually functions.

Did that. Called 4E. Didn't work for a lot of people.

And it did work for a lot of other people.

4e tried to fix many of the imbalances which existed (in greater or lesser degrees) in previous editions of D&D. Whether you like that particular fix doesn't change that older editions of D&D possessed fundamental design flaws which, if left unchecked, cascade through whatever other changes you make and ruin concepts which the game tries to put forward. The concept that classes are equivalent choices, for example, which carries within it the concept that all players can contribute meaningfully without the DM taking pity or contriving scenarios, are both thrown out the window when the system supports a fundamental imbalance between two sets of classes.

Those flaws exist. Someday, the name "D&D" won't carry the system. On that day, they'd better have fixed those flaws.

They need to realize that the people they've hired to design the systems are better at game theory and design than the people who've been playing D&D for 20 years. They need people who can kill core mechanics of D20 if they don't work or don't make sense.

Well, some of the people they've hired are better than most of the folks who play. The raw size of the playerbase means that someone out there is qualified as a game designer, or has the talents to be one.

They need to stop worrying about the grognards and the luddites, and just accept the fact that they're not customers anymore. They're angry people who aren't going to be happy unless you publish AD&D again, and then they're going to complain that its too expensive.

This is absolutely true, and cannot be stressed enough.

Just because you play a version of Dungeons & Dragons does not mean that you are a customer of Wizards of the Coast, nor does it mean that they should even be trying to cater to you.

Plenty of folks who are "in" a hobby are actually non-customers. They're very easy to recognize: guys who play two or three editions out of date, never buy anything, and complain about everything. The thing which companies need to remember is that these non-customers are a distraction from the people who are actually doing things, learning things, and buying things. Don't bother trying to win them back. You'll lose money chasing those guys. They already have their hobby, and they don't want a new one. All that time and effort could have been spent chasing new customers -- and new customers need everything!

If I could only give Wizards a single piece of advice, it would be to identify exactly what they wanted D&D5e to be and who that was meant to appeal to. If they really want to appeal to the crotchety old crowd (as opposed to the excited old crowd -- those guys are great!), then I wish them the best of luck. They'll need it.

Kerrin

2012-07-17, 11:31 PM

I wish WotC had started with the good parts of the bones of 4, fixed/replaced the wonky parts, and added/expanded the system to include some new, unique mechanical sub-systems.

But, back to the fighter... One issue some folks have with giving the non-spellcasters nice things is the fluff explanations that explain/justify the nice things.

For example, the fighter has to spend an hour each day limbering up to prepare their chosen maneuvers for that day, or whatever fluff is used to explain a mechanic.

Quite a few folks get turned off by the explanation, not necessarily the mechanic. I mean, lots of folks get torqued off with various explanations of something as simple a Hit Points for crying out loud.

Starting with fluff is fine in game design for inspiration, but the fluff doesn't mean anything when designing the actual mechanics. I often wonder what folks' opinions would be if they were presented with just a set of raw mechanics with no descriptive terms woven on with it? Possibly provide a separate set of fluff suggestions and let folks pick whichever feel is right for them?

Talakeal

2012-07-18, 01:09 AM

The fighter isn't just any guy. He's not a soldier. He's not a tough guy, he's a PC class. He's the best soldier in his platoon. He's the toughest guy on the streets, and thats at level 1. He's supposed to be a hero.

A muggle is a commoner NPC. A fighter isn't.

Ok then, replace the Harry Potter example with any other media you like where there were one or more wizards or other paranormal characters and also one or more normal humans within the same setting.
Han solo is a main character in Star Wars, a setting with Jedi, and I don't recall him doing anything super human. Bilbo is a main character in a series with wizards and I don't recall him doing anything super human. Conan is a main character in a series with wizards and I don't recall him doing anything super human, etc. etc. etc.
My point was that just because one or more characters in the game have supernatural abilities does not mean the setting has to focus around super heroes.

How many muggles actually killed a wizard with a gun? How many muggles were characters?

If you took random muggle Joe and drop him in next to Dumbledore and the rest of the Order, he's going to feel pretty useless because there's not much he can contribute. Sure, he can kill people with a gun, but most of the problems the group is dealing with doesn't involve killing people so that's not necessarily even useful.

If you want to make the magic item argument, you want Iron Man, not the hulk. And you know what, Iron Man is a totally valid D&D character concept. The class used to represent it is the Artificer, not the Fighter though. Because the Artificer actually gets class features that let him gain more magic items and use them more effectively than other people.

If you want to give the Fighter abilities like:

"At level X, you gain access to a magical armory. This magical armory contains various magic items up to value Y, that the Fighter can swap between any time he has access to his home base."

"Any magical item the Fighter uses that has a X/day usage limit, he may use that ability an additional number of times per day equal to half his fighter level. If the daily uses increase to 10, he may use this ability at will"

"Any weapon or armor the Fighter uses is automatically considered enchanted, as if affected by a Greater Magic Weapon or Magic Vestment spell, with a caster level equal to the Fighter's level +4"

etc.

But if you expect the Fighter to rely on random loot (or DM pity) and the group letting the Fighter take all of the items found (rather than taking an even split which is the norm for basically any game I've ever played), then you can't tie a Fighter's abilities to Magic Items. Because everyone else has magic items too, but also have amazing things they can do.

I think we had a miscommunication at some point.

Someone said that a high level fighter should be like the hulk, and I said that a fighter can be like the Hulk as he has no super powers aside from super strength, speed, and endurance, all of which a fighter type will have thanks to his magic items.

All D&D characters have a ton of magic items by the time they get to high level regardless of class, it is hardly asking for something special or "DM pity" it is just how the game goes. Yes other character CAN choose to have super human physical attributes thanks to magic items, but only the martial types are likely to find those items a worthwhile investment, let alone have the base stats to back them up.

Siegel

2012-07-18, 02:51 AM

pasko77

2012-07-18, 05:30 AM

The fighter isn't just any guy. He's not a soldier. He's not a tough guy, he's a PC class. He's the best soldier in his platoon. He's the toughest guy on the streets, and thats at level 1. He's supposed to be a hero.

A muggle is a commoner NPC. A fighter isn't.

No, it is not true.
Maybe this is 4th ed. approach, but it should not be a design fundamental that the game revolves around telling the PCs about how special they are.

Gettles

2012-07-18, 05:41 AM

No, it is not true.
Maybe this is 4th ed. approach, but it should not be a design fundamental that the game revolves around telling the PCs about how special they are.

Yeah. Only the spellcasters should get to be special.

Synovia

2012-07-18, 08:00 AM

No, it is not true.
Maybe this is 4th ed. approach, but it should not be a design fundamental that the game revolves around telling the PCs about how special they are.

Every edition of D&D that I've ever seen has specifically stated that PCs are not the common rabble, they're heros.

If you don't want to play a hero, you should be using the commoner class, or something along those lines.

Ok then, replace the Harry Potter example with any other media you like where there were one or more wizards or other paranormal characters and also one or more normal humans within the same setting.
Han solo is a main character in Star Wars, a setting with Jedi, and I don't recall him doing anything super human. Bilbo is a main character in a series with wizards and I don't recall him doing anything super human. Conan is a main character in a series with wizards and I don't recall him doing anything super human, etc. etc. etc.
My point was that just because one or more characters in the game have supernatural abilities does not mean the setting has to focus around super heroes.

None of these are GAMES. They're Books/Movies. It doesn't matter that Gandalf could Roflstomp Bilbo because nobody is playing Bilbo.

Games need to be atleast close to fair for all the players to be interesting.

1337 b4k4

2012-07-18, 08:27 AM

At least in DnD Next the wizard has to roll for his spells, doesn't that at least make a bit better? I never understood why a DnD3 Wizard could just fire his stuff with 100% success every time he casts a spell.

It's a holdover from early D&D when wizards were really fragile. When you have 1d4 HP, at best can deal 1d6 damage from a quarter staff, have the worst to-hit progression of any class, one of the worst experience progression tables the worst AC you can have and you have to declare what spell your casting, if any, before initiative is rolled, and you will lose that spell if you're hit before your turn (assuming you survive the hit), the guaranteed success of the spell was a bit of a reward for surviving that long. It's been said before, but one of the reasons so many people have a lot of issues with 3.x wizards is that they pretty much removed all the checks against the wizard's powers that the earlier editions had.

Seerow

2012-07-18, 08:41 AM

I think we had a miscommunication at some point.

Someone said that a high level fighter should be like the hulk, and I said that a fighter can be like the Hulk as he has no super powers aside from super strength, speed, and endurance, all of which a fighter type will have thanks to his magic items.

All D&D characters have a ton of magic items by the time they get to high level regardless of class, it is hardly asking for something special or "DM pity" it is just how the game goes. Yes other character CAN choose to have super human physical attributes thanks to magic items, but only the martial types are likely to find those items a worthwhile investment, let alone have the base stats to back them up.

If the magic items are giving you all of your abilities that make you special, and you don't actually gain extra magic items or increased use out of them, then you are not actually effective. Items can let you pretend like you are, but you can literally give the same items to a fricken commoner and be just as effective.

Being the hulk means being able to do what the hulk does butt ass naked. Get angry, become supernaturally tough enough to be basically immune to anything, get angrier, get even stronger and tougher.

The Fighter isn't that. The Barbarian is closer, but still not quite there. Incidentally a Wizard using polymorph and other spells to improve himself exponentially is probably the closest thing in 3.5 to recreating that.

obryn

2012-07-18, 08:48 AM

Han solo is a main character in Star Wars, a setting with Jedi, and I don't recall him doing anything super human. Bilbo is a main character in a series with wizards and I don't recall him doing anything super human. Conan is a main character in a series with wizards and I don't recall him doing anything super human, etc. etc. etc.
Well, a few notes on that. First, none of the above feature a whole lot of D&D-style spellcasting. Jedi can do cool stuff, but Luke's a novice next to Han Solo. Gandalf hardly ever casts any spells - at least none that do anything more impressive than shining lights, being scary, or making fires. (And, besides, the whole point of the Hobbit is that you're sticking a normal and unremarkable person into a fairy tale.) Conan is fighting against sorcerers most of the time, and their magic is largely relegated to impressive ritual-style stuff. We're not talking Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit here.

And as for these non-magical heroes doing impressive stuff? Well, I agree - nothing supernatural, but they do some pretty clever and amazing things which would work just fine as Daily or Encounter resources. Daily/Encounter powers are a narrative conceit as much as anything. They're not an implication of magic. If they're suitably transparent, you'd have no idea if Conan just burnt his daily on beheading a giant snake; you're just watching or reading about him doing it. :smallsmile:

-O

Knaight

2012-07-18, 01:47 PM

None of these are GAMES. They're Books/Movies. It doesn't matter that Gandalf could Roflstomp Bilbo because nobody is playing Bilbo.

Games need to be atleast close to fair for all the players to be interesting.
Games only need to be close if they are a specific style. In D&D, Gandalf and Frodo are a problematic pair. In Fiasco, the equivalent would work absolutely fine.

Siegel

2012-07-18, 01:52 PM

Every edition of D&D that I've ever seen has specifically stated that PCs are not the common rabble, they're heros.

0 and first edition?

Menteith

2012-07-18, 01:54 PM

Games only need to be close if they are a specific style. In D&D, Gandalf and Frodo are a problematic pair. In Fiasco, the equivalent would work absolutely fine.

Gandalf's a 5th level Bardic Sage with a Ring of Elemental Command: Fire, while Frodo is a 4th level Rogue with a Ring of Invisibility. Or, if you'd like, Gandalf the Grey is a Solar archangel who's under a Geas to be a 5th level Bardic Sage unless confronted by an Evil Outsider of CR8 or greater, who has a Ring of Elemental Command: Fire, and Gandalf the White is a Solar who's under a Geas to use his powers only to protect those assaulted by Evil Outsiders of CR8 or greater. Either way, they work fine together.

Synovia

2012-07-18, 02:02 PM

0 and first edition?

Never seen 'em. They're 40 years old. I'm not. D&D has been a game about heros for a very long time.

brainface

2012-07-18, 02:04 PM

...Something about spells & guns

Deadlands is post civil war gunslingers and poker mages. You should look it up!

Gandalf seems like an interesting choice for wizard power. He doesn't... actually cast many spells, and he is one of the most powerful wizards in the world. Like, every 5th level d&d mage is a stronger caster, giant eagle summoning aside.

(The eagles come because gandalf's their friend, not because he cast Eagle Summoning X, it seems to me.)

Similarly, it's a rare D&D fighter that's as strong as Boromir or Aragorn, at least using the movies as reference. God knows what all shenanigans warriors could do in the books. I just get the feeling some people want mages much stronger than gandalf and want fighters to be soldier mook #34, not the guy that died under a newly made mountain of orc corpses. ^_^

obryn

2012-07-18, 02:06 PM

0 and first edition?
1e puts characters above the rabble, too. First off, there's the default 4d6 pick 3, sort to taste rolling method for ability scores suggested in the DMG (alongside several others). Second, your average normal person is 0-level with 1d4 hit points, cruddy saves, and cruddy attacks. PCs are 1st level, by default.

So yeah, PCs were definitely special compared to the rest of the population.

-O

obryn

2012-07-18, 02:17 PM

Gandalf's a 5th level Bardic Sage with a Ring of Elemental Command: Fire, while Frodo is a 4th level Rogue with a Ring of Invisibility. Or, if you'd like, Gandalf the Grey is a Solar archangel who's under a Geas to be a 5th level Bardic Sage unless confronted by an Evil Outsider of CR8 or greater, who has a Ring of Elemental Command: Fire, and Gandalf the White is a Solar who's under a Geas to use his powers only to protect those assaulted by Evil Outsiders of CR8 or greater. Either way, they work fine together.
Back to Gandalf... Did you ever see the Lords of Middle Earth books? They were written by ICE back in the 80's, and they have impressively insane MERP/Rolemaster stats.

If I remember right, Gandalf is somewhere around 150th or 180th level, being a maia and all. Aragorn is somewhere around... 70? I can't remember. I think Merry and Pippin were like 8th or 12th.

-O

Menteith

2012-07-18, 02:32 PM

Back to Gandalf... Did you ever see the Lords of Middle Earth books? They were written by ICE back in the 80's, and they have impressively insane MERP/Rolemaster stats.

If I remember right, Gandalf is somewhere around 150th or 180th level, being a maia and all. Aragorn is somewhere around... 70? I can't remember. I think Merry and Pippin were like 8th or 12th.

-O

Enh, I'd say that LotR is pretty clearly in E6, with regard to D&D3.5. I don't know why some people keep claiming the characters were doing insanely powerful things, when truth be told (in D&D3.5 terms) they were pretty low power. Difference of setting, and one of the reasons that LotR doesn't translate well to D&D3.5.

kyoryu

2012-07-18, 02:33 PM

1e puts characters above the rabble, too. First off, there's the default 4d6 pick 3, sort to taste rolling method for ability scores suggested in the DMG (alongside several others). Second, your average normal person is 0-level with 1d4 hit points, cruddy saves, and cruddy attacks. PCs are 1st level, by default.

So yeah, PCs were definitely special compared to the rest of the population.

-O

Special, yes, but not superheroic. And likely (at 1st level) not tougher than a typical guard/veteran/whatever.

The idea that at 1st level you were already "the best" at anything or even a superstar didn't really occur in 1st ed, at least.

Synovia

2012-07-18, 02:39 PM

Special, yes, but not superheroic. And likely (at 1st level) not tougher than a typical guard/veteran/whatever.

The idea that at 1st level you were already "the best" at anything or even a superstar didn't really occur in 1st ed, at least.

1st level PCs, even in 1E, had better ability scores, more HP, more feats, etc, then the common guard. That means they're tougher than the typical guard.

kyoryu

2012-07-18, 03:32 PM

1st level PCs, even in 1E, had better ability scores, more HP, more feats, etc, then the common guard. That means they're tougher than the typical guard.

Assuming the typical guard is 1st or 0 level. Which is not necessarily a true assumption.

And have you ever even played 1e? Why are you even talking about feats?

Talakeal

2012-07-18, 05:18 PM

Items can let you pretend like you are, but you can literally give the same items to a fricken commoner and be just as effective.

Nonsense. A commoner does not have the base ability scores, Feats, BaB, Skills, Saving Throws, or Hit Points, to do a 1/10th as well as a level 20 fighter even if they do have the magic items of said fighter.

Unless of course you are talking about a level 20 commoner with the PC stat array for some insane reason, in which case he might be able to approach the fighter in some areas but is still significantly worse in most.

1337 b4k4

2012-07-18, 08:27 PM

1st level PCs, even in 1E, had better ability scores, more HP, more feats, etc, then the common guard. That means they're tougher than the typical guard.

Just some food for thought from the B2 module...

Assuming that we can use the save values as reasonable substitutes for level where no explicit level is given, and providing HP:

Main Gate: 2 men at arms, 1st level fighters, 5hp
Towers: Bowmen, 1st level fighters, 4hp
Yard: Corporal of the Watch, 2nd level fighter, 15hp
Stable: 6 Lakeys, Normal Men, 4hp
Baliff's Tower: Baliff, 3rd level fighter, 22hp
Jewel Merchant: Guards, 2nd level fighters, 17hp
Evil Priest: Priest, unknown level (although if you go by named levels, 3rd level), 18hp; Acolytes, 1st level clerics, 7hp
Blacksmith: Blacksmith, 1st level fighter, 11hp, 2HD+3; assistants, Normal Men, 5hp
Provisioner: provisioner, normal man, 3hp
Trader: Trader and Sons, normal men, 2 or 3 hp
Bank: Banker, 3rd level fighter, 12hp; Clerk, 2nd level magic user, 5hp; Man at Arms 1st level fighter, 4hp
Watch Tower: 12 Guards, 1st level fighter, 4hp; Captain of the Watch, 3rd level fighter, 20hp
Bar: Mercenaries, 1st level fighters, 5hp; Tavern owner, son and help, nomad men, 6 or 5 hp
Guild House: Clerks, normal men, 4hp; Men at Arms, 1st level fighters, 6 hp
Chapel: Curate, 5th level cleric, 24hp; Acolytes, 1st level clerics, 6hp

And that's just out in the town, not in the inner keep. Assuming that the players meet all of these people they will meet over 60 people, the majority of whom are of at least first level.

It appears that at least in early editions of D&D, the first few levels were not meant to be that "heroic". Indeed, by the named levels, you're not a "hero" until 4th level, and even there it seems that they're talking more of the "saved grandma from her burning home" hero, given that you're still a level below "swashbuckler", 4 levels from "super hero", and not even a "lord" yet.