The Gaming Den

I really do. More damage is not a fucking role. But people have it ingrained into their heads that bigger numbers = more fun. And that strikers generally don't have to do any thinking or planning or caring.

I am really tired of starting up a D&D game that has three or four out of the five players wanting to be strikers. Especially with how unbalanced the roles are at low levels.

Why did David Noonan foist this crap onto us?

Dealing damage to people actually ends fights. Undoing damage or soaking hits is just action denial or dragging things out until your damage-dealers (who are doing the "real" work) finish the battle. Everyone else sort of exists as a framework to keep the DPS alive until the battle is won.

Or something like that. So if you're going to rigidly say that some people deal damage and some other people don't, you're going to get players who are convinced that dealing damage is more interesting than the other "roles," even if actually playing a striker in 4e is boring as hell (archer ranger, for example).

At least with an all-striker party battles go fast. Fast as in "either all the enemies die quickly or we do", but still faster than the normal 4E slog.

And while the actual combat could often be played on automatic, the between-combat tactics like splitting foes up and gaining surprise can be interesting, and they become more important with no healer.

Rogue/Thief/whatever has always been a popular character concept. Not because of the mechanics, just the character concept. Sort of the antithesis of clerics.

The other 4e strikers - warlocks, rangers (and probably whatever the expansion options are) have some of the same stuff going for them. Warlocks have the cool, rangers are more stealthy tough guys.

Archmage wrote:Or something like that. So if you're going to rigidly say that some people deal damage and some other people don't, you're going to get players who are convinced that dealing damage is more interesting than the other "roles," even if actually playing a striker in 4e is boring as hell (archer ranger, for example).

Indeed. I would phrase things the opposite way: "I do damage, but not a lot of damage" is not a fucking role.

An all-striker party fight should go quickly, but only in theory .

I could make an argument that Strikers' benefit from flanking and use of quarry designation gives them the largest in-combat decision trees in 4e. This would account for their popularity and the fact that even though their damage is higher, fights are not notably faster.

Of course having seen new-ish players with Warlords in parties with Paladins or Clerics before, I don't think I could honestly believe such an argument in the first place.

Having played a Ranger, my decision tree was pretty limited at the Heroic tier: TWIN STRIKE.

Josh wrote: I could make an argument that Strikers' benefit from flanking and use of quarry designation gives them the largest in-combat decision trees in 4e.

You mean like every other melee class wants to flank and has to best decide who to mark/who to use this big-time action denial power on/who to give this one-use buff to?

It's a pretty weak decision tree. You can play most strikers in 4E except for some weird ones like a ZoC Ranger/Warden with a graphing calculator program.

Josh wrote: Of course having seen new-ish players with Warlords in parties with Paladins or Clerics before, I don't think I could honestly believe such an argument in the first place.

I have DMed a lot of 4E games both over the Internet and in RL and I have never seen a ratio smaller than 2 strikers in a five-person group. Which is incidentally the ratio that 4E recommends. But whatever.

I partially blame the role, but also the forced coolness. Seriously, the 'striker' classes get the coolest classes. Warlock, Ranger, Barbarian, Assassin, Sorcerer, Monk, so-on. I have had to tell people straight-up that someone needs to be a leader. I've even said that low-level 4E is much easier if the party has two or three healers in it, but the best I've ever seen was an Artificer/Cleric/Paladin with LoH combo on Red Tide MUX. They pretty much steamrolled things at low level. If everyone was playing Strikers they'd be fucked by encounter two or three.

It's a pretty weak decision tree. You can play most strikers in 4E except for some weird ones like a ZoC Ranger/Warden with a graphing calculator program.

I'm really not sure the graphing calculator is necessary

4e Defender: Move next to or Divine Challenge biggest enemy on board. Spam at will

4e Leader: Spam at will at closest enemy. Healing/Inspiring/Majestic/Adjective WORD anyone below 75% health

4e Controller: Use biggest remaining daily on largest group of enemies. When out of dailies spam at-will.

4e Striker: RANGER Designate enemy who is closer to you than anyone else and not marked designated by other strikers, spam Twin Strike. ROGUE: Move to flank or stab dazed/prone enemy with Sly Flourish. Repeat.

For leaders, I'd go with below 50% health...the level 16 cleric in my party regularly takes players from 0 to non-bloodied with Healing word.

Incidentally, Battle Captain warlords got a huge boost in MP2.

They had several Achilles' heels, the biggest one being that they tended to be deadweight in a ranged-heavy party. The second biggest one being not having enough inspiring words; you had to choose between either providing a bonus right then and there (the person can conserve their healing surges by... not spending them) or saving it up in case someone needs healing.

Well, MP2 fixed this. For one, they published a fscking feat that allows people to add half of their intelligence as an attack bonus to an ally when they used inspiring word. In MP1, they had a feat where you could use inspiring word on two people at once. And another feat that gave you an extra inspiring word. So by level 21 if people stagger their Action Points carefully you can pretty much give 2 people a +6-+8 to attack for five rounds of combat if you're not concerned about healing and are willing to bump your Charisma up to 21. This is even before we get into attack boosters.

Tactical warlords kind of chew before level 16, but past that point is where they start rocking your fucking faces off. Even before we get into the Battle Captain boosters, a warlord can bring an amount of single-target damage to the table between that of a wizard and a ranger if the party is well-coordinated.