1.. They already said you could swing things around a bit. 2. That kind of comes with a class based system. Certain classes are better at things than other classes. You wan absolute freedom to make your barbarian the best fighter in the universe play a classless game and slap the term barbarian on him when describing him. You want a game where your abilities are somewhat pre-defined play a class based system. While you can shift things around a bit and remain a class based system, if you can totally shift things around it no longer is a class system, you are playing a classless system with fancy title son the characters. 3. What sounds dreadfully bad is a morass of sameness that comes with making every class just as good at everything as every other class. Even if it is done in somewhat different ways.
1. I don't think very highly of that suggestion, currently. Depends on how big the gap is, how much you can close that gap without taking a different class, and whether you need to give up combat ability or potential combat ability for it. 2. Instead of being the best at something broad, like combat, they can instead specialize in manners of approaching combat. Like a Barbarian who makes use of powerful charges and single strikes as compared to a Rogue who fights by making careful consideration of the angles of her attacks and weaknesses of her opponent. Same purpose, kill the enemy, different method of accomplishing it. And they can still have out-of-combat ability that doesn't need to be lessened to compensate for their in-combat ability. How fun! 3. You mean like every melee class choosing between a charge or a full attack? Or is this a reference to 4th Edition, because if it is then I don't understand. The difference between a Swordmage and a Barbarian in that game is startling compared to the common pool of options shared by non-casters in earlier editions.
Classes can be balanced in combat and still fight differently. Very differently. This is objective fact, personal taste as to how interesting those differences are not withstanding. With that in consideration, I do not accept that classes should specialize in combat, social, or exploration. This will only serve to dilute the variety that we would otherwise experience by letting each class bring its own unique perspective to each of these 'pillars'.
Maybe, Barbarian should be the 'old fighter', who mindlessly stands still and lawnmowers; while Fighter retains the 'new fighter' gimmicks 4E was nudging at.
I'm going to make a wild guess it is because fighters fight, all the other class fight + do other things. You are basically saying a hybrid should be just as good at a specialist at their specialty. To use their combat, explore, social set up, fighters are like 80, 10, 10 the ranger and barb are more 60,30,10 and the paladin 60,10,30.
Rather than assigning numervalues that can be misleading due to individual interpretation, let's look at the categories as:
Good
Better
Best
Everyone starts out with Good in each of the three pillars and gets a bump here or there to customize. For instance, a fighter may be good in exploration and interaction, but is best in combat; a wizard may be good at interaction, but is better in combat and exploration; a cleric is good at exploration. but better at interaction and combat; a bard is good at combat and exploration, but best at interaction. And so on. Customizing will likely allow one to boost how well an individual character is at their various pillars, with classes just providing the baseline.
Playtest or get off the playtest boards.
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I want justice for the voice that can't be heard Vindication for every suffering and hurt Let retribution hold dominion over earth --Nemesis, VNV Nation
Instead of talking about "best" (especially "best in damage," as if that's the whole game), we should talk about method of operation, not ignoring anything outside combat.
One might say "no one class should be the best at combat," but that's missing the point; you should rather say "no one class should be the best at the game." Each class has its own approach to the game.Show
Clerics exorcise ghosts, banish devils, and ward away demons, and are the resilience of a party (never resent the role of party heal/buffer). They may also be the only class in a band of misfits respected in high society (be nice to the clerics). Fighters have the most weapon and armor familiarity and (according to previews) act the most times in a round, and may deal more damage in a normal, noncircumstance-specific attack. They are the straight-forward heavy-duties when it comes to combat.
Rogues focus on misdirection and wheel-greasing in combat, exploration, and NPC-interaction. They don't protect themselves with metal, but by not being present when a scape-goat is made, not being present when the gnoll has a mace ready, by knowing how to be in a safe place when death is on the prowl.
Wizards blast things, sure, but they also make things fly, teleport, and change from one thing into another. Why aren't they the best class in the game? They get worn out, they need time, they need space, they are little without their magic, but that doesn't mean their magic flees them entirely after 4 rounds of mess. Magic can also be dangerous for the user, but I don't know how much that aspect will make it into 5e (it was often/always the case with some spells such as Wish).
Another big concern expressed by "no one should be the best at combat," is really "I want something fun to do at all parts of the game." One design challenge is making sure each class's weakness is fun; a wizard shouldn't run entirely out of magic and twiddle his thumbs any more than the fighter should twiddle her thumbs outside of combat.
If a fighter doesn't get to be the best straight-up melee combatant, then what's its "hook"? What might tempt you to play the class in preference to the others? That's another open question.
Personally, because it might be the class I want to play. Maybe that's how I want my character to fight. I mean that with no snark at all. If all the classes can compete on equal footing in a combat situation then it becomes less about "Which is the best" and more about "Which conveys the character I want to play".
The class you want to play? So play it. If I play a Ranger because I want to be a cool woodsman who has the whole "hunter" aspect to him, is an expert tracker etc. I'll play him. But I have to accept that there will be thins he is NOT good at. If I want to play the same type of character, but still be able to be the "best" at melee, then I'll play a fighter, but give him all the same flavor that I would have given said ranger. Honestly, you can pick your class and look at it as no more than a set of abilities (mostly). Flavor it however you want.
For instance, if I want to play a Pirate, I might play a seafaring Rogue or Fighter, depending on what I want him to be able to do. It's no less of a pirate, because that's what I created him to be.
My take on this whole thread is, that the Fighter darn well should be the "King of all Melee." It's what he was meant to do. As previously stated by others, the Fighter is a baseline. Yes a raging Barbarian might sweep in and do massive damage and have higher hit points, but he will likely have lighter armor on. The Fighter is meant to be a constant. He is constantly effective at what he does, rather than taking peaks and valleys, or relying on specific situations to reach maximum effectiveness (sneak attack etc.)
I'm going to make a wild guess it is because fighters fight, all the other class fight + do other things. You are basically saying a hybrid should be just as good at a specialist at their specialty. To use their combat, explore, social set up, fighters are like 80, 10, 10 the ranger and barb are more 60,30,10 and the paladin 60,10,30.
Rather than assigning numervalues that can be misleading due to individual interpretation, let's look at the categories as:
Good
Better
Best
Everyone starts out with Good in each of the three pillars and gets a bump here or there to customize. For instance, a fighter may be good in exploration and interaction, but is best in combat; a wizard may be good at interaction, but is better in combat and exploration; a cleric is good at exploration. but better at interaction and combat; a bard is good at combat and exploration, but best at interaction. And so on. Customizing will likely allow one to boost how well an individual character is at their various pillars, with classes just providing the baseline.
That is a better way to phrase it, but it wont appease the people who want every class to be equal in every situation.
The class you want to play? So play it. If I play a Ranger because I want to be a cool woodsman who has the whole "hunter" aspect to him, is an expert tracker etc. I'll play him. But I have to accept that there will be thins he is NOT good at. If I want to play the same type of character, but still be able to be the "best" at melee, then I'll play a fighter, but give him all the same flavor that I would have given said ranger. Honestly, you can pick your class and look at it as no more than a set of abilities (mostly). Flavor it however you want.
For instance, if I want to play a Pirate, I might play a seafaring Rogue or Fighter, depending on what I want him to be able to do. It's no less of a pirate, because that's what I created him to be.
My take on this whole thread is, that the Fighter darn well should be the "King of all Melee." It's what he was meant to do. As previously stated by others, the Fighter is a baseline. Yes a raging Barbarian might sweep in and do massive damage and have higher hit points, but he will likely have lighter armor on. The Fighter is meant to be a constant. He is constantly effective at what he does, rather than taking peaks and valleys, or relying on specific situations to reach maximum effectiveness (sneak attack etc.)
I fully accept that my character will be good at some things and bad at others. I don't think that needs to be so broad as 'Good in Combat' and 'Bad at socializing' though. Instead, I'd prefer a character who is perhaps good at charging single targets, but loses his edge against multiple opponent. Who can intimidate and bully people, but has no real talent for manipulation with honeyed words. This is a simplification, but it gets the point across. No one has to be 'bad at combat', they can be bad at certain approaches to combat.
And that's where my 'Class I want to play' comment comes in. If each class is roughly equal in combat, but approaches it in a different way, then I can pick a class based on how I want my character to fight, instead of picking a class based on whether it can fight at all. Apply this same logic to exploration and social encounters and you've got the jist of what I want out of this game. The ability to build a character based on how I want them approach adventuring, without being overly concerned about whether I'll inadvertently make myself useless in a broad range of encounters.
I think this article can help 5e acceptance along in two ways.
1) It brushes aside fears that the martial support is going to be returned to it's third-class/bottom-tier status and casters elevated back to the lords of the universe. In tone, anyway.
2) It might touch off an anti-martial backlash. Not that 4e hadn't already done so, but this could give it new legs.
The momentum from both of those could help get things swinging back towards the AD&D that Mr. Mearls has openly said he preferes.
The AD&D fighter was a bad-ass, by the numbers. Best THAC0, best choice of weapons and armor, best saves at very high level, best hps (prior to the barbarian), most attacks/round, highest weapon damage. Mind you, a number of those 'bests' were /ties/, and those that weren't were pretty marginal. It was also boring and option-less, and advanced stolidly in basic abilities while the power of casters exploded as they leveled.
3e was more so. Fighters got all the same 'bests' (with even more of the ties), plus more feats than anyone else. And, if anything, they were even further behind casters, particularly the 3 top-tier full-casters.
4e took away a lot of these marginal numeric 'bests' from the fighter, but made it balanced. The 4e fighter doesn't have the most hps (Warden), the highest AC (Paladin), the most attacks/round (Ranger - and AE caster controllers, really), or the highest damage with a weapon (pick a striker). But, it's also not a bottom-tier class, not that 4e really has class optimization tiers like 3.x did. At most it has two: supported (most classes) and under-supported (Seeker, Rune Priest, etc). The figher was certainly well supported prior to Essentials, and a solid defender.
5e is going to have much-compressed 'math' compared to 3e or 4e. That means a fighter can't have the kind of BAB advantage it had in 3e. In order to keep monsters workable at most levels, the fighter's "best" at fighting is going to have to be very marginal, indeed. A +1 like 4e weapon talent. A damage bonus like 2e Specialization. That's about it. Hit points and AC, likewise. In return for being 'the best at fighting,' the fighter seems poised to get nothing else. At all. No out-of-combat abilities, no versatility, no peak power, no mobility, nothing.
The 5e fighter will fight when presented with a foe who feels like fighting him rather than flying away or turning invisible or tricking him into letting it go or mind-controlling him into fighting his party (if they don't, likewise, decline the invitation). It will fight better than everyone else, with it's 5%-better attack and damage bonuses, one attack roll at a time, every round, without variation or option. It will be the AD&D fighter re-vivified.
