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13 months ago ::
May 28, 2012 - 11:43PM
#51
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Date Joined:
May 28, 2012
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The fighter is the linchpin of the fighting line; consistantly a threat. Unless the party is stopping for the day after each fight so the magic user/clerics can top up on voodoo, they're variable threats. Without the fighter, the rogue doesn't get as many chances to get advantages. The clerics are forced into frontline service to fight, taking their spells out of the equation. By killing one person, you've shifted the entire dynamic of the party and forced them into a bad situation.
With the party as shown, killing the fighter first takes at least one spellcaster out of the game, they now have to act as the warrior. Next kill the rogue, they have high damage potential with the advantage thing. By this point the other cleric will have had to step up, either out of magic or forced into close combat. Only one spell cast left shooting, and they'll be out of the good stuff pretty quick. It behoves monsters to kill the fighter first. This of course, is based around a frontal assault (the most common fight in D&D), where two groups go head to head; in this case, it is better doctrine to smash the strongest point, then flood in and push out. In any sort of flanking or ambush, your tactical accumen works fine, as the party has been caught out of position and the magic user/clerics are easy pickings, allow the fighter and rogue to be encircled and killed.
I'm not looking at it as a single encounter, but a two or even three stage fight as an intelligent humanoid looks to kill the adventurers messing up its cave and stealing its stuff.
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13 months ago ::
May 28, 2012 - 11:46PM
#52
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Date Joined:
Sep 22, 2006
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But that's not the best desicion. The fighter dishes and TAKES the most damage, while the Wizard is peanuts up close. It's always better to go for the easy kill rather than the hard one. It kills party resources faster, which makes it harder to win a fight, which makes it harder to stay alive.
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13 months ago ::
May 29, 2012 - 12:36AM
#53
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Exactly. To use a modern analogy if I have only an assault rifle or Squad Automatic Weapon, even a medium machinegun, it is pointless for me to target even a light armored vehicle except to try to kill an exposed crew member, it is a far better use of my resources to try to eliminate artillery crew members, officers, and regular infantry while the person with the antiarmor weapons does his thing. Right now the fighter is a light armored vehicle with a sniper rifle, I'd like him to get a AT-4 and a handgrenade added to his combat load out (Opportunity Attacks are a separate issue I want to see just put back in the game along with some guidance on improvisation that DM's are then free to modify, its to open for my tastes right now).
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13 months ago ::
May 29, 2012 - 12:37AM
#54
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Date Joined:
May 24, 2012
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Well, it mostly comes to how big of a **** your DM is, really. If the DM plays the metagame and wants to kill the party, he will be able to do so, 10 times out of 10, no doubt about it. That's actually the whole challenge of being a DM: create a credible threat and make the PCs fear for their lives, while at the same time trying not to make things *too* difficult or 'unfair', because that isn't much fun either. The DMs job is to entertain the players, not win the game. So yeah, a ruthlessly efficient DM could just focus fire the casters and healer to death and then calmly kite the fighter to death, in fact he could effortlessly do this in any previous edition as well should he wish to. But would this be fun for the players? I think you all know the answer... On the other hand, if the fighter can't come up with ways to kill the dumb enemies and the wizard can't protect himself and the party in general fails to co-operate to overcome the challenge, well then they probably deserve the TPK, so maybe next time around they might have learned something.  -- But I do agree, that the lack of AOOs was a bit of surprise to our group as well, and I have a pretty strong gut feeling that the AOO will almost certainly be a part of D&DN, at least as an optionl rule. Count on it.
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13 months ago ::
May 29, 2012 - 1:07AM
#55
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I wonder if this isn't so much a problem with the abilities of the Fighter as a problem of using 4E tactics with D&Dnext rules.
Why was the party engaging the Warlord and his consorts in such a wide open space? If the fighter is aware he can't pull bad guys why does he rush forward to engage? Why doesn't the wizard disengage from the Warlord, find a corner and then have the Fighter and Cleric hold the corner protecting the wizard while he launches his spells? Also what was the rogue doing this whole time. It was mentioned he had to be smoked out at the end of the fight, did he just hide the whole time?
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13 months ago ::
May 29, 2012 - 1:32AM
#56
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Date Joined:
Sep 22, 2006
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..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />So yeah, a ruthlessly efficient DM could just focus fire the casters and healer to death and then calmly kite the fighter to death, in fact he could effortlessly do this in any previous edition as well should he wish to. But would this be fun for the players? I think you all know the answer...
Disagree. I do not think it's the DM's job to "allow" the players to have fun, because he can just kill them anyways. This is where I feel rules make a much better game than a social contract, by and large. I do not think it would be unreasonable, however, to have a disengage rules in core, in from AD&D.
And I disagree that it's ruthless to use basic tactics. The wizard not only holds powerful spells, but goes down the easiest. It's common sense for any trained tactician in a world like this. It makes prefect sense for the Warlord.
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13 months ago ::
May 29, 2012 - 2:31AM
#57
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Date Joined:
Jan 27, 2010
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Some points that i like to contribute to this topic: 
1: Response to moving through threathened and enemy squares.We had a situation were our hafling rogue had his way cut off from the rest of the party by two burly orcs. Given that there are no rules as it stands at present time, we improvised a tumble past skill contest through one of the orcs squares. The hafling roled DEX+modifier VS the orcs STR+modifier to symbolise that the hafling tried to tumble between the orcs legs going prone and get up infront of him, the orc wanted to counter this move and kick the hafling back using brute strength. Dices were thrown and the hafling won, and ended his turn in the square in front of the orc.This shows that we improvised with a skill contest to slip past an enemy space, but it would be better that there were a fixed set of rules for this kind of movement. 2: Marking/crowd control manuvres during combat.Lets just pretend that an orc is attacking your party wizard, having just moved past your fighter, the fighters turn is next. What can you do as a fighter to get CC? In my game, i would advice the fighter (she is kinda new to D&D and roleplay) that she could try to improve via skill contest. Likeso either 1)Intimidate/provoke the orc to into attack her, thus "marking" the orc. Fighter: Cha+intimidate VS Orc: Cha+(his DM ruled intimidate) 2) Grab the orc and pull him 1 square back adjacent too you. Fighter: Str+attack VS Orc: str+attack. 3) Ready an action as to as soon anyone moving adjacent to the fighter tries to go past, she tries to trip and knock the enemy prone. Fighter: Str+attack VS Orc: str+attack. All these examples are improvised and in the spirit for the new skill contest mechanic. As it stands right now, it is our main and only way to do CC as a fighter. 3: Combat experienced enemies should be played there after.
Okay i can understand why enemies like "zombies" might just pummel away at the first living being who enters their reach, frontline fighting the fighter, while they are getting blasted from afar by the wizard and cleric. Smarter enemies would go after the biggest threat always. 2LSAN had a brilliant example on how so, with the hobgoblings targeting the spellcasters first. Based in the lore about the Hobgoblings cultural affinity for war and combat. THAT IS NOT METAGAMING! Metagaming is only if choices are decided upon off game talk. Being it roleplay matters or combat.
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13 months ago ::
May 29, 2012 - 2:36AM
#58
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So yeah, a ruthlessly efficient DM could just focus fire the casters and healer to death and then calmly kite the fighter to death, in fact he could effortlessly do this in any previous edition as well should he wish to.
Not in 4e.
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13 months ago ::
May 29, 2012 - 2:45AM
#59
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Date Joined:
May 18, 2009
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I agree, it is not metagaming for a Hobgoblin Warlord to aim for the mage first. I'd call shenanigans if, say, the rats all went for the wizard because they don't really understand the concepts of "unit tactics" or "threat identification". Part of playing the monsters is using the strategy a monster would use even if it's not the best strategy (a wild animal will probably strike at the last enemy that hurt it, a kobold will charge when it outnumbers the enemy but flee as soon as they no longer have a numbers advantage, and a warlord will kill the mage, then the healer, then everybody else).
As a side note, it's very disappointing that I have to play with kid gloves on if I don't want to wipe the party. You can easily get away with adversarial DMing in 4e; put together an experience-balanced encounter (depending on optimization and level this can be anywhere from equal level to level +5), then do your best to murder every last one of the PCs. You'll give them a run for their money, but with clever tactics and teamwork the players can survive the worst you throw at them even at level 1. By contrast the 5e characters feel too weak and too limited in their options and teamwork capabilities; it doesn't help that monster design has regressed to the point where we can't even tell how strong a monster is and whether using it will lead to a cakewalk or a TPK.
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13 months ago ::
May 29, 2012 - 3:43AM
#60
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Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
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I will admit that when we walked into that room, I hadn't given much thought to how I would play the Hobgoblins against the party. The goal was not a TPK. The goal was to have a difficult encounter because we like to challenge ourself as a group.
In older editions we have always been able to take on harder encounters earlier than we should have been able to according to the guidelines given in the source material because we are usually so good at our tactics, improvisation, etc.
I wasn't until the Fighter stepped up and failed his Intimidate check that I realized I had the potential to roll the whole group, and I didn't really expect that it was going to happen until the Healbot Cleric went down with three hits.
As for the personal attacks against me being a bad DM, I would say that sometimes it refreshing as a player to have your whole group killed off. It's a wake up call that your not just playing a videogame with a reset button, or hitting the try again button. If you think that monsters killing party members is bad, maybe you should go back to the safety of those videogames, cause if you play in my campaign, I'm not going to "pull punches" so that you can feel good about your piece of paper being cool.
On a side note, I've played a game before where we were all killed and thought we needed new characters for next week only to come back and find out that the BBEG revived us to use us as part of his evil ritual.
I can say definitely say now, after reading through a lot of these responses that I know what I want out of the Fighter that the playtest did not deliver and that is more guaranteed effects.
Right now spells give the casters guaranteed effects that they can use both in and out of combat. A Fighters only guaranteed effect is more damage. That's not very helpful outside of combat, now is it? And after a while it's not as much fun as it seems.
Fans of the re-instated Improv rules will say, just roll, to which I will reply 'Does the wizard have to roll to levitate the cell door keys off of the sleeping guard?; Does the cleric have to roll to heal the king of the damage he sustained from the assassins knife?' and the undisputable answer will be 'No!, or course not those are spells...they're guaranteed to work - first time every time...Huzzah!!! The Fighter should not be the only class that has to throw every action to chance (die rolls).
So, there are two ways of looking at this IMHO:
1. You either give all of the classes guaranteed effects that are as useful as spells, and not highly situationally relevant or...
2. You go back to spells having a chance to fail, or not give you the guaranteed outcome. Put some risk back into being a spellcaster besides just having a bad AC and low HPs.
@JoonTehUnagi:
I'm right there with you on your options that you gave:
1. I have come up with my own houserules to mitigate bypassing, which are very similar to yours
2. Slayers use big weapons and wear heavy armor to smash enemies, not roll around grappling with them. However, I do understand your point. My brother, in the example given, didn't think it was a good idea to drop his shield and axe and grab the Warlord with two other Hobgoblins raining blows down on his head. The biggest problem my brother had was that in every Ability that mattered the Hobgoblin Warlord had him outclassed, he was Stronger, Smarter, and had more Charisma than our classic little dwarf.
3. I don't ever want to waste a standard action, as a Fighter, betting that I'm going to need to intercept an attacking monster unless I know for sure that he is going to do what I expect. Only under very specific circumstances is this a good option, such as receiving a charge from another figher on horseback, or a waiting on a monster running down a narrow hallway. If I ready an action and it doesn't happen the way I thought it would, I've really just missed a chance to put more damage on a monster that is now closer to killing me or my party.
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