Which, by the way, is a counterpoint that has nothing to do with my argument that regardless of the situation the "choice" is not a meaningful one. Even if you go back to my original post, I say "tend to" which is very different from never even if you have had a different experience about what commonly occurs. So you're putting your own words in my mouth, then defeating an argument I never made while quietly ignoring the one I did make, and then taking the moral high ground about it.
Your argument seems to be that fighters (read: maneuver using classes) do not have real options to use a maneuver that they don't have? Or if they do happen to have it, its either the only good option at that moment or useless?
I just don't see the point of taking you seriously. Your point has little to do with reality.
So a wizard who doesn't have fireball sure wishes he did when they run up against a troll? Or if he does, it's the "only real" choice to use it?
Rare circumstances? Like taking the "Cleave" at-will exploit at 1st level, vs taking Power Attack & Cleave at first level? Really? Taking the WWA exploit vs building with a DEX and INT of 13 and taking the Expertise, Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack and WWA feats in order, over 6 levels is a "rare circumstance?" Really?
Yes. You make a couple interesting assumptions:
Assumption 1, that the fighter took Cleave as one of the 2 at-wills he will ever have.
It's a viable choice at 1st level, and is only one of 4 exploit choices he makes at 1st. A 3.5 fighter at 1st gets two feats (one bonus feat that's actually his class feature) and must devote both to acquiring Cleave, not only devoting his only class feature choice to it, but his major customization choice, as well. At 10th, the 4e fighter has 8 attack exploits plus 3 utilities and 6 feats, the 3.5 fighter has accumulated enough bonus feats to complete the WWA feat tree in addition to the standard 4 feats, and the playtest fighter has, what, 5 maneuvers to spend his ED on, and the same feat and background choices as everyone else?
On top of that, the 3.5 fighter has only some feats that required he give up BAB to use them, while all the 5e fighter's maneuvers require he sacrifice the damage of Deadly Strike to use them.
Assumption 2, that "trivial enemies" really existed in 4e. Minions? Sometimes maybe. Depending on the DM. I know I rarely saw melee minions in all the years I've ragularly played 4e
Well, they're in the game, there's plenty of them in the books, and they are the sort of monster you'd use if you were looking for 'faster combats...'
Now you're just being rediculous. Every 'cool thing' martial characters ever got from 1974 through 2012 was taken away from the 5e fighter, then they gave him back /some/ of what he got in 3.5, and that's supposed to be a good thing?
This makes zero sense. I have no idea what you mean.
You implied that, at some point prior to 5e, martial characters lost some "cool things." It's a patently absurd thing to assert, since martial characters got a surfiet of cool thing in 4e, and the fighter got at least some in 3.5, and even a little something in AD&D. Up until 5e martial characters had been making some progress. The first playtest put the fighter back on square one, just a brute with big numbers and no options.
The 5e fighter initially got none of those "cool things" the fighter got in prior eds. In 4e, the fighter got a mark feature & combat superiority, making him an excellent Defender, and martial classes got daily and encounter powers, putting him on par with other classes for the first time. The 5e fighter fighter got none of those things. In 3.5, the fighter got bonus feats and full BAB progression with multiple attacks - at a penalty - for high BAB. The 5e fighter got none of those things. In AD&D, the fighter got percentile strength, weapon specialization, more hps for high CON, multiple attacks (at no penalty) at higher levels, and followers at 'name' level. The 5e fighter got none of those things. Now, several itterations into the playtest, the 5e fighter has ED, which roughly maps to BAB (but without the extra attacks), and Maneuvers, which roughly map to bonus feats.
To be fair, though, each edition they seem to give up on the fighter and start from scratch. 4e put everyone on the same attack progression (1/2 level), same feat progression, and did away with the Full Attack - all the 3.5 fighters 'toys,' gone. In return, of course, the martial classes got role support, and the full range of AEDU powers, finally putting them on par with casters, and the fighter, specifically, ended up the second-best-supported class in the game, with only the wizard having more powers to choose from. In 3.5, percentile strength, multiple attacks at no penalty, extra hps for high CON, all went alway, but BAB & itterative attacks and two-handed weapon damage gave some of that functionality back, and the customizeability of bonus feats was quite a step up from the dull but potent non-choice of weapon specialization & TWFing.
In constrast, casters tend to keep their toys but shed their limitations as editions roll by. :shrug:
Which, by the way, is a counterpoint that has nothing to do with my argument that regardless of the situation the "choice" is not a meaningful one. Even if you go back to my original post, I say "tend to" which is very different from never even if you have had a different experience about what commonly occurs. So you're putting your own words in my mouth, then defeating an argument I never made while quietly ignoring the one I did make, and then taking the moral high ground about it.
Your argument seems to be that fighters (read: maneuver using classes) do not have real options to use a maneuver that they don't have? Or if they do happen to have it, its either the only good option at that moment or useless?
I just don't see the point of taking you seriously. Your point has little to do with reality.
So a wizard who doesn't have fireball sure wishes he did when they run up against a troll? Or if he does, it's the "only real" choice to use it?
My mistake, I should have clarified "the only time I say never in those posts in which I make the argument you claim to be rejecting due to overuse of the word never." But since I also said you never seem to engage with my actual argument, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you were pointing to a never that wasn't actually in my argument. But let's just put that aside for the moment. And while we're at it, let's put aside the fact that there's a world of difference between "never" and "never seem" because that "seem" adds a little syntactic nuance that says, "it might not literally be the case that it's never happened, but it happens rarely enough that it has that appearance," thus eliminating the misleading absolutism that is supposed to be problematic about the word never. I'd rather focus on whether it's actually inaccurate. I've seen a lot of your posts on the boards, and not once have I seen you fairly construe the argument you're trying to defeat. I'll make you a deal: if you want to dig through your posts and point me to your very best rebuttal, I'll be happy to reconsider that statement. I promise to retract my statement if you can find one that passes muster. Of course if I disagree, you'll probably just accuse me of confirmation bias, but you don't really have much to lose. Or gain, I suppose, since I don't imagine you care what I think anymore than I care what you think. But the choice is yours.
And by the way, no, that wasn't my argument at all. You're absolutely right that that's a nonsensical argument and I can see why you wouldn't want to take it seriously. What I can't see is why you then chose to engage with it seriously as if someone were actually trying to make that argument. But like I said, I'm done arguing with you so I'm not going to explain it again.
Casters are shedding limitations in this version because they are losing spell power. The wizard's (or Magic-User's) limitations were what the devlopers thought allowed them to be so powerful. But with each edition they keep trying, in my eyes at least, to close the gap between melee and magic, and that means nerfing their spell power. But, in taking from the top, they are adding to the bottom so that the wizard isn't cheated.
TLDR: Weaker/more restricted spells = less limitations
