Community

I just now realized I made a slip and said "stance" instead of "aura" in my second post on this side tangent. Just to be clear, I've been talking about Defender Aura the entire time, and not one of the stances like Battle Wrath and what have you.

Totally different things, sorry.

I totally forgive you.

I'm a DM.  My job is to make you WANT to play the game.  And its my job to make you feel so awesome that not only will you play again, but other players will want to play what you played.

I don't like the knight, mechanically, but the flavor is captured accurately by the mechanics.

When compared to the Fighter, flavor inferred from mechanics, a few differences crop up.

The Knight has the aura, a mechanical threat that requires no attack.  The Knight merely decides to look menacing.  He has the image of a bodyguard, faithfully defending his charge.

The Fighter doesn't have a threat in the same manner.  His mark derives from actually attacking.  Rather than look menacing, thus the Fighter makes every attack a threat if future violence.  Attacks that miss?  They're warning shots.  Attacks that hit?  Turn your back and I'll stab you in it.

To me, the Fighter seems like the casual veneer of a guy who knows that he can kill you with a spoon in 13 different ways.  He only looks as menacing as what his equipment would imply (like the wicked sword on his hip, or the blood stains on his armor).

A lot has been said about how stance modified MBA's are equivalent to traditional at-wills.  Mechanically, they're very similar (though obviously not identical), but flavor-wise, they're vastly different to me.

The Knight adopts his Cleaving Assault stance, his sword held at a low angle, enabling him to attack multiple enemies with a single swing of his broadsword.  After a few moments of violence, the petty thugs are on the ground, clutching their wounds and  moaning.  The Knight stares at the gang leader across the way.  He brings his sword up high, adopting the Brash Assault stance.  The gang leader nearly chokes on his own spit.

The Fighter gets up from the bar, mug of ale still in hand.  He glances at his mug for a moment, deciding whether or not he should finish it before killing the fat fool and his skinny toady behind him who insulted him a moment earlier.  He shrugs and toss the frothy liquid into the fat man's face.  As the big guy wipes the brew from his eyes, the Fighter draws his sword and smiles.  Which attack shall he use?  Cleave, and maybe take them both out now?  Or Footwork Lure, and pull the fat man into the barstools?  He make take a couple hits to bring down.  The Fighter decides to make it up as he goes.  Maybe he'll suprise himelf... The two fools move forward to grab him, but before they can move more than a step, the Fighter brings his sword across the the fat man's face and into the skinny man's side.  As the fatty grabs his face and screams, the skinny guy looks in shock, surprised that the Fighter could attack both of them at the same time...

Full disclosure: The scene with the Fighter actually happened in one of my games.  It was awesome.

While I certainly prefer the Fighter's mechanics AND flavor, I can see the appeal of the Knight's mode of operations.  They certainly feel distinct.

Despite being described as a Fighter Build, the Knight really is more of a sub-class.  Every other fighter build, from Great Weapon to Tempest to Battlerager, has the same basic flavor as the fighter in the ale scene (which was a 1hW Talent build).  The Knight, by virtue of having stances the pre-determine the coming attack, feels different in flavor from the other Fighter builds, who decide which attack to use moment by moment.

Since you can easily change stances, it doesn't really matter that much mechanically, but it plays differently.

I'm with Foxface. I like the idea of Stances they can be very cinematic. The stances we were shown though aren't all that interesting.

The sticking point for me really is in the lack of Encounter and Dailies. If Power Strike was a regular swappable Encounter and the Knight had dailies he'd be perfect for me.

I think the Knight stances would be a GREAT basis for a Samurai build too.