Having the paper say it's okay is one thing but actual combat proves to be different.
A team of Ranger's can deal with threats quickly because of their high amounts of damage but the other classes don't always fair so well.
"it just means that the characters need to compensate for the missing function."
So how does another class from a different role handle the healing part of a leader?
Other classes have minor healing, there's self healing, and there are items. There's always been an issue of healing without classes built to do it in dnd, but 4e minimizes it, and broadens the number of classes with healing.
You don't need any of the roles to play 4e. thinking that you do proves that you don't understand 4e.
You have low system mastery. Replacing the healing of leaders/doing without it isn't even hard. You're going to miss the enabling far more, which is why warlords are better leaders than clerics.
I've never once played a 4e game with all four roles covered, or with characters built with filling roles in mind. We've run published adventures without problems, so we aren't getting by because the DM fiddles with things to suite what we have, either.
The game just works. Your complaint is about something that only exists as a perception.
Exactly. I have a weekly campaign running now with:
Halfling AD Rogue - Striker Elf Bow Ranger - Striker Pixie Arcanist - Controller Human Cavalier (Paladin) - Defender
Notice, no leader! This party does fine. The paladin is a secondary leader and MCed into Warlord to get an extra 1/day heal. With a Cloak of the Walking Wounded, the Inspiring Word, her existing cavalier HS donating power the party has enough to get by. A couple of the other PCs have an item that can grant them some THP or resistance now and then. There's no problem.
In the other extreme, I played one game where we had...
Artificer Warlord Cleric(me) Bard Paladin Ranger
It also happened to be the one time we didn't discuss our aprty set-up before hand, so we laughed and decided, why not?
Story -- if I understand your distinction between "mechanical" and "good" Powers, it's that just giving a flat bonus doesn't affect tactics, and therefore doesn't lead to teamwork. Where as Consecrated Ground (damage to enemies and healing to allies in a small area) affects tactics dramatically, and therefore leads to teamwork. (fighter pushing enemy into ground, wizard immobalizing enemies, warlord sliding ally into the right location, etc).
If that's your distinction, I agree that i find powers that affect tactics more interesting, and could live without flat bonuses.
Yeah, that's pretty much my second point. To slightly expand on it, though, I don't actually think 4e was especially better for that sort of teamwork than say, 2e was, it was just more codified.
Calling Strikers a trap choice is... a unique perspective. It's the most stackable role in the group, adding a second defender, leader or controller adds less with each than the one before, in contrast each additional striker adds more than the previous.
That has not been true in my experience. For me, it's like this:
Character A deals 100 DPR consistently on his own.
Character B has the most HP, Surges, and Defenses, and either deals 90 DPR or dictates the actions of the enemy while dealing 80 DPR.
Character C deals 75 DPR himself, but can also heal, enable Character B to dictate enemy actions more efficiently, and add 10 DPR to character A, 15 to character C, and/or 20 to Character B.
I'm sorry, but the extra damage is just not worth it. It's not like Strikers are doubling or even "50% more"ing Defenders or Leaders.
I also don't think the presence of multiple Defenders or Leaders have significantly diminishing returns. Each Defender decides how another enemy or two will act each turn, or put out enough extra damage to almost equal a Striker (or as a Swordmage, reduces enemy damage by a similar amount). And yes, while the Healing from additional leaders has diminishing returns, the buffs and enabling absolutely do not.
Some of the groups that felt strongest in 4e for me and my group was something like Warlord (leader focused on enabling not healing), controller (keep some of them busy), a damage focused defender and 2+ strikers.
The strongest groups I saw all had two leaders and one or two defenders. I never saw a party without a Striker because I have one player with a near phobic fear/hatred of responsibility, but, while providing excellent damage, she basically functioned outside of the party. Her enabled attacks sucked (until the Slayer and Barbarian, Striker basic attacks were terrible, and generally couldn't trigger their bonus striker damage anyway), for example, so the best way to increase party damage didn't really work with her. The only thing Strikers add to a party is damage--I just don't think they bring enough extra damage to justify not taking another Leader or Defender.
Strikers are head and shoulders above anyone else in damage, as they should be, not only in at will but especially in the ability to just explode an enemy in a single round.
I've just not seen the "head and shoulders above" that you're talking about. Yes, it's noticeably higher, but it's not such a profound amount that I wouldn't still rather another Leader or Defender.
"Well it -is- a hamburger, so the idea that ham should be in it would seem to be part of the premise, right?" "Well it -is- a driveway, so the idea that people should drive on it would seem to be part of the premise, right?"
A driveway is a portion of a property set aside for the purpose of driving cars on. In suburban homes, the driveway is a short, usually cement, stretch used to connect the road to the garage, which the car will drive on to transfer from one to the other. In larger properties, this is often shortened to "drive," which really serves the same purpose.
A parkway is a road designed with a wide median, in which grass is planted and landscaped. The result is a small strip of grass that looks much like a city park.
The idea that ham should be in a hamburger is as ludicrous as the idea that only ham lives in Hamburg, Germany. Or even that the hamburger is created from ground-up residents of that city.
The term "role-playing game," however, does seem to necessitate the playing of a role. However, is that a role, as in something an actor would play in a play or movie? Is it a small part of a larger group that has certain skills that the group relies on?
I think it's both. Is not the actor just a part of a larger group that has a skill the group needs for success (in this case, acting)? Would the actor be successful without other people on other roles, like make-up, lighting, sound, writing, directing and so on? Indeed, wherever the term "role" is used, some form of teamwork exists.
I think soliloquys alone put the role question to rest. They require no one else. And yes, while 4 people acting are also working in tandem, that doesn't make the meaning of 'role' take on the tandem aspect. When we discuss someone having the 'role' of Julius Caesar, we don't mean that they're the Emperor of the acting troupe, nor would we expect Brutus to physically assault him at some time.
While D&D was laid atop of Chainmail and each class was given a 'basic category' of roles, the reason that the whole project got underway was because people wanted to play the individual on the battlefield, in the castle, in the dungeon. It was something fresh from playing units. As time passed, the role of the character became increasingly important; characters lasted from game to game instead of being reset and personality traits were laid atop them. We talk about Robilar the fighting man, not the Fighting Man Who Protects The Wizard, Robilar. Each class had it's strengths, but versatility - not role specialization - was the key to survival. These were all concepts when that term was coined.
As for driveways, I was actually thinking of one of those old quips: "Why do we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway? Why do we put cargo in a ship and a shipment in a car?"
Story -- if I understand your distinction between "mechanical" and "good" Powers, it's that just giving a flat bonus doesn't affect tactics, and therefore doesn't lead to teamwork. Where as Consecrated Ground (damage to enemies and healing to allies in a small area) affects tactics dramatically, and therefore leads to teamwork. (fighter pushing enemy into ground, wizard immobalizing enemies, warlord sliding ally into the right location, etc).
If that's your distinction, I agree that i find powers that affect tactics more interesting, and could live without flat bonuses.
Yeah, that's pretty much my second point. To slightly expand on it, though, I don't actually think 4e was especially better for that sort of teamwork than say, 2e was, it was just more codified.
Calling Strikers a trap choice is... a unique perspective. It's the most stackable role in the group, adding a second defender, leader or controller adds less with each than the one before, in contrast each additional striker adds more than the previous.
That has not been true in my experience. For me, it's like this:
Character A deals 100 DPR consistently on his own.
Character B has the most HP, Surges, and Defenses, and either deals 90 DPR or dictates the actions of the enemy while dealing 80 DPR.
Character C deals 75 DPR himself, but can also heal, enable Character B to dictate enemy actions more efficiently, and add 10 DPR to character A, 15 to character C, and/or 20 to Character B.
I'm sorry, but the extra damage is just not worth it. It's not like Strikers are doubling or even "50% more"ing Defenders or Leaders.
I also don't think the presence of multiple Defenders or Leaders have significantly diminishing returns. Each Defender decides how another enemy or two will act each turn, or put out enough extra damage to almost equal a Striker (or as a Swordmage, reduces enemy damage by a similar amount). And yes, while the Healing from additional leaders has diminishing returns, the buffs and enabling absolutely do not.
Some of the groups that felt strongest in 4e for me and my group was something like Warlord (leader focused on enabling not healing), controller (keep some of them busy), a damage focused defender and 2+ strikers.
The strongest groups I saw all had two leaders and one or two defenders. I never saw a party without a Striker because I have one player with a near phobic fear/hatred of responsibility, but, while providing excellent damage, she basically functioned outside of the party. Her enabled attacks sucked (until the Slayer and Barbarian, Striker basic attacks were terrible, and generally couldn't trigger their bonus striker damage anyway), for example, so the best way to increase party damage didn't really work with her. The only thing Strikers add to a party is damage--I just don't think they bring enough extra damage to justify not taking another Leader or Defender.
Strikers are head and shoulders above anyone else in damage, as they should be, not only in at will but especially in the ability to just explode an enemy in a single round.
I've just not seen the "head and shoulders above" that you're talking about. Yes, it's noticeably higher, but it's not such a profound amount that I wouldn't still rather another Leader or Defender.
"Lazy" Warlords got better as basic attacks got more and more options to boost their damage, and strikers damage features got changed to once per turn instead of once per round. Strikers have always been the stars of the system. No non striker can one round kill standard monsters, much less elites or solos. Strikers can. That is more useful than stunning a target. You'd have to be stunning multiple targets to beat it.
Any striker with either a primary strength score, static damage boosts that apply to every attack, a class feature to use their main stat for their mba, an at-will that can be used as an mba, or some combination of those, is a better choice for enabling than the defender, most of the time. Various types of keyword cheese just further boost it, of course. using an arcane mba by one means or another gives you white lotus ripost and then master ripost, and that's with striker level damage.
And you talk about defenders like their the bee's knees, but the wizard has so much multi-target action denial that you have to work your butt off to build a defender that compete at all in terms of control.
The two most important things to winning a combat are action denial, and killing targets. Leaders can contribute to both, and keep the classes that focus on those things alive, and thus are useful. Defenders keep everyone alive, and do a bit of both, and are thus useful. Controllers and strikers do one or the other better than anyone else. An all striker party, with themes to give some small support for other functions, will probably out perform a group made up of any other role.
Your striker player doesn't know what they're doing, or you don't know what to look for. Something, somewhere, is being done wrong. Some of your damage statements make this unavoidably clear.
More sex and gender equality and racial equality shouldn't even be an argument--it should simply be an assumption for any RPG that wants to stay relevant in the 21st century.
DoctorBadWolf: None of that explains why, every I time I see your avatar, it looks like some kind of stunted, half bent over walking neon fish. I cannot explain what makes me see that...but I prolly saw it 40 times before I actually realized what it -really- is. Now...I can't -unsee- it.
lol Now that you know what it is, you gotta admit it's epic, right?
Note that is the same argument many of us have for pre 4e. We can run just fine with no cleric.
Wait, people claim that you can't play previous editions without clerics?
I mean, no one I know wanted to, particularly in ADnD, but obviously you can. Previous eds have all sorts of problems, but healing only coming from one class isn't realy high on the list, even when it is the case.
Especially in 3.5, where you're better off using items to heal and having the cleric destroy everything.
More sex and gender equality and racial equality shouldn't even be an argument--it should simply be an assumption for any RPG that wants to stay relevant in the 21st century.
