FrankTrollman wrote:
And that's the problem with the word Fighter. Doing anything level appropriate at 15th level is literally and specifically out of character, because the tactic of "fighting" things is basically obsolete at that point.
Well I don't think fighting things ever becomes obsolete, so long as you can become a bigger badass. I mean as long as there are bigger creatures, you're going to need bigger guns to take them down.
The problem isn't so much that fighting goes out of style, it's just that fighting isn't anything special. Everyone fights. A wizard is a "fighter", a rogue is a "fighter" and they're fighters in addition to doing other shit. So saying you're a fighter is just equivalent to saying "I have no secondary schtick." because fuck, this is D&D and everyone is a fighter. If you can't fight, you're dead weight.
First of all while "Fighting" is a verb "Fighter" is not. It doesn't hold you to anything to be a fighter. it "implies" that you fight well but doesn't limit you on HOW. There is no reason you fighter can't be a mastermind, a Sage, a folklorist, or even know spells. Again and I can't stress this enough it all depends on what the SYSTEM allows you to do. Don't believe me? Lets look at Goku. All he ever does, ever is fight. Yet he can fly, read minds, teleport, come back from the dead, morph, draw energy from the living, and shoot beams out of his hands. In Fullmetal Alchemist all the Fuhrer can do is "see" things better yet he can fight on equal footing with the state alchemists and other homunculous and he runs a country. Odysseus is a Fighter yet most of his story is spent avoiding fights. Hercules is a fighter, Kratos is a fighter, Ares is a fighter and they all became gods. Nothing binds a fighter from having world shattering, awesome abilities beyond the system he is placed in.
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.
Honesty, if you hear a story about "a great fighter" you think of something like boxing. Which really has nothing to do with the fighter at all.
The 1st ed guru's would tell us that just like the magic-user becme the later mage or wizard, the fighter is really a way of turing "fighting-man" into a job description.
If the game didn't have such a hard on for the class title "fighter" because its traditional D&D or whatever he would be called the Warrior.
"Fighter" as a class made just as much sense as "magic user" at the beginning of 1e. Both describe precisely what the character does: one fights, the other uses magic.
If you're playing or designing a game where more than one class uses magic or more than one class fights, those names should probably be scrapped and replaced with more evocative (or more specific, or less descriptive) ones. Even things like necromancer and thief are better: at least they leave some room for other people to do other things (like the illusionist, conjurer, cavalier, and assassin).
Last edited by CatharzGodfoot on Sat Dec 12, 2009 12:06 am, edited 2 times in total.
Now while in my opinion a 4E class is suckier than a 3E class in coolness (as long as you're not comparing them to jokers like the fighter), the new 4E classes are better than the 3E classes ported to 4E.
So, just judging it against their own material... shaman is a damn cool class. Warden is a great class. So is their version of the assassin. The Seeker is better in almost every way than the Archer-ranger. Avenger is also a cool class.
Now I'm not saying that some of the new classes aren't bupkiss. I've had several Swordmage players and all of them seem disappointed with the class because it plays counterintuitively to what they expect. The Invoker, Warlock (I know it's a 3E class, but their version resembles that one in name only), Sorcerer, and Artificer suck butt. The jury is still out on the bard and the monk, but only because the previous candidates were so pathetic that it's not worth looking at.
I guess what I'm saying is that if I had my druthers for 5E, there wouldn't be a Fighter, or at least the ranger they've been promoting. They would be a Warden or a Swordmage with the elemental stuff reflavored. There wouldn't be a Rogue either, they would be an Assassin or an Avenger. There wouldn't be archers, they'd be Seekers.
The Warden, as superfluous mechanically as the class is, has all of the schticks of an old-school Barbarian, Ranger, and Fighter and has a few more (flavor-wise) tricks up their sleeve. It's just a cooler class and performs the same role, defender, as the Fighter does.
If anything good comes out of 4E it'll be people realizing that no one's forcing them to play loser classes like the fighter. In the future, the warden will become the ranger, the assassin the rogue, etc.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
MGuy wrote:If its DnD I doubt they are going to drop their classic classes even if they have shiny new ones.
So you think that there's no way they'll drop the Fighting Man, the Thief, or the Magic User? Of the 2 original classes (Fighting Man and Magic User), non of them have the original name. Of the first wave of expansion classes: Cleric, Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit, and Thief - more than half no longer exists and only one has its name in as a playable class in the latest edition.
D&D -> AD&D:
Dropped:
Dwarf
Elf
Gnome
Hobbit Renamed:
Fighting Man (now Fighter)
AD&D -> AD&D 2nd edition:
Dropped:
Assassin
Barbarian
Cavalier
Illusionist
Monk
Thief Acrobat
AD&D 2nd edition -> 3e:
Renamed:
Thief (now Rogue)
Magic User (now Wizard)
Classic classes fall by the wayside all the time. The 4e clusterfuck where the Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Monk, and Sorcerer weren't in the PHB any more isn't even the biggest culling that the game has gone through. And we aren't even considering the various oriental or arabian classes that have come and gone time and time again.
I'm not up on how things were way back when (before my time) but in these modern times I think they have a clearer attachment to the names they are using especially if they are trying to market to a larger audience. A lot of people who talked about 4e threw a hissy fit about missing classes in the PHB and they did that with the intention of releasing them in later books IIRC.
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.
FrankTrollman wrote:Those would be the three options so far discussed, yeah.
Make "non-spellcasters" into gadgeteers.
Force "non-spellcasters" to get spells at some level.
Let people do apeshit stuff equivalent to spells for no reason.
Any of them will work. K is currently trying to convince us that through the magic of rapidly moving cups and balls around he can not quite commit to any of them and have things still somehow work out. I am... unconvinced.
Echelon (my d20 variant, don't bother looking for it online yet because I haven't finished setting up the web site) is leaning toward primarily option 3 -- though it's not 'for no reason' but 'because they're just that badass'.
However, there may still be options for 1 and 2, in that you might take the inherent talent of 'gadget user', or decide to pick up some spell casting ability.
Mind you, this is an entirely classless system (though still with levels), so I don't mind mixing and matching this way. There are benefits to sticking to a single facet (combat, spell casting, etc.), but you don't have to -- and you don't suck if you decide to branch out.
FrankTrollman wrote:I'm pretty sure the Warden is going to be lost to time, because he's so unpopular that no one has bothered to fill in the class blurb on wikipedia.
-Username17
The Warden will be lost to time but the idea of a nature warrior who channels earth energy and shoots plants and rocks out of his sword/arse has already taken root. While the Warden will probably not exist in 5E in name, I fully expect that in that edition the name of 'ranger' or 'barbarian' will be copied onto the Warden's chassis.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Lago PARANOIA wrote:The Warden will be lost to time but the idea of a nature warrior who channels earth energy and shoots plants and rocks out of his sword/arse has already taken root. While the Warden will probably not exist in 5E in name, I fully expect that in that edition the name of 'ranger' or 'barbarian' will be copied onto the Warden's chassis.
The warden's concept - a melee fighter with magical tricks who turns into elemental or natural forms in order to be a complete hard case - was already present in 3e. It was half of the druid class. In some ways, the warden plays more like the 3e druid than the 4e druid does.
Even if 5e were going to be based on 3e instead of 4e, it seems reasonable that the schizophrenic nature of the 3e druid would be material enough for two separate classes.
Oh, I agree, as long as that shitfuck boring 4E Ranger quietly tagged in Warden while still keeping the title of Ranger.
Getting rid of a shitty concept (3E/4E ranger) and an overpowered one (3E druid) to get two decent classes is a great trade and as long as 5E doesn't wank off to the idea of 'Martial source can't do anything' it'll be a vast improvement over what we got in 3E and 4E.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Warden always struck me as what I always though a druid should be. A competent warrior who bound people up with roots and commanded natural attacks against them.
Really,I'd add wildshape to the warden and just call him the new druid.
