Anatomy of a Failed Design: Role Protection.

[Amra]

Nice post Lago; I'm in full agreement - particularly with respect to the massive pile of fail that is the attempt to create in-party balance. I'd comment further but I think you've probably said everything I might have, but better!

[Username17]

Nicely done Lago.

The supposed purpose of Role Protection is twofold:

• Encourage Diversity within teams.
• Make everyone feel like they are contributing something unique to the team.

Now, obviously those goals were completely failed. Self synergy is so intense that characters like the Paladin are only effective in all or nearly-all Paladin parties. But as Lago has already alluded to, it goes all the way up to the point where Ranged synergizes with Ranged and Melee synergizes with Melee and never the two shall meet. So the diversity encouragement is out the window. Players are encouraged instead to laser focus on not just a single role or two, but often doubling up on classes or even builds of classes nominally within the same role.

The unique contribution concept is just dead on arrival because there are less roles than expected players. If players are supposedly encouraged to be contributing different things, there should be more roles than the expected number of players. If you design the game around 5 PCs, there need to be at least 6 roles if you want people to spread out, preferably more. Now 4e D&D only dropped with 8 classes, and only 4 roles - so there was just no way for that to ever work. And that's before we get to Lago's astute analysis that indeed the words "Striker," "Controller," and "Defender" pretty much don't mean anything at all.

So...

What to do instead: To make the concept fly at all you need each role to provide distinct and instantly recognizable synergy with other roles. You need to have enough roles on the table that each character can be a different role and still have other roles still yet unexplored so that there is room for the "average" team to add new members without toe stepping.

Example Setup:

• Harrier: The Harrier role specializes in ranged attacks that disorient and distract their targets, leaving them at significant defensive penalties in melee.
  Exemplars: Ranger, Psion
• Belligerent: The Belligerent role specializes in interdicting movement through melee presence, making it difficult for enemies to go or attack where they want.
  Exemplars: Fighter, Druid
• Protector: The Protector role specializes in negating enemy attacks, especially against his compatriots.
  Exemplars: Paladin, Illusonist
• Dazzler: The Dazzler role specializes in dropping status effects on enemies that weaken their offensive potential.
  Exemplars: Enchanter, Rogue
• Striker: The Striker role specializes in crushing enemies who are already engaged or disadvantaged.
  Examplars: Assassin, Battlemage
• Leader: The Leader puts chaff on the battlefield, which whether it is rats or skeletons is quick to die but eager to soak hits or distract enemies.
  Exemplars: Necromancer, Bard
• Buffer: The Buffer grants bonuses to other characters, especially offensive ones.
  Exemplars: Cleric, Warlord
• Controller: The Controller role gets to adjust the battlefield itself to limit the mobility and options of enemies.
  Exemplars: Conjurer, Swashbuckler

There. You can instantly see how a Psion + Fighter team might work, with the Fighter locking down enemies into melee to keep them off the Psion, and the Psion stunning away their melee defenses with mindblasts so the Fighter can rip them in half. You can see how Rogue + Battlemage team might work, with the Rogue throwing sand into an enemy's face to make them stagger around long enough for the Battlemage to turn their heart into an ice cube. And so on.

Seriously, it's not rocket science. You just need to make it so that the expectation is that not all the roles will be filled and that the benefits of having two people from any two different roles are synergistic. Some of them can even be boring and obvious like how the Cleric gives his team mates a non-stacking morale bonus while he does his thing, thereby encouraging you to have a cleric without encouraging you to make a party of clerics.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, so we know that 4E roles suck piss through a straw. There's the obvious fact that the roles aren't well-defined and don't do what they are supposed to do.

Now, the basic 4E goal of roles were to make it so that 1) everyone gets a turn to be awesome and 2) people have to work together to be awesome. They don't work, but it's a good goal.


But there's also the additional problem in that the concept of roles kind of goes against the adventuring genre. Really, the idea of the cleric/rogue/thief/wizard team being the ideal adventuring team is kind of crap. Now, while it's fun to play a team of Luffy, Batman, Tsunade, and Sailor Moon I don't think it's neither desired nor required to make these characters the most powerful combination. We don't really care if all of the characters use wands and wear robes or all of the characters use big swords and wear loincloths. We do want it to be so that we can still have our adventuring dream-team of Conan, Lancelot, Musashi, Devon Aidendale, and Gimli and have it work. I mean, really, while Strength through Diversity is one of the best lessons you can teach to someone in real life... sometimes you'll have situations where everyone wants to play an assassin. And I think that's okay.

Now reforming the skill, feat, and magic item system will go a long way towards making these characters feel different, but that doesn't go the whole nine yards. There's still the issue of making these characters useful and different in combat while keeping their special effects the same.

One idea I was kicking around was the concept of a color wheel. That is, all powers from now on have a color associated with them. If you use that power, it temporarily makes you that color and the enemy(ies) you target with it also get that color, replacing previous ones. If you use some powers (offensive or supportive) on a character that has a certain certain they function at increased or reduced effectiveness. Now, here are some issues:

1) Is there going to be an elemental system on top of this, or is this going to be the elemental system? If it's the former it might be too complicated for some players to keep a handle on. If it's the latter we might have to accept the idea of druids being a very 'earth' class and fighters being a very 'fire' class and so-on.

2) Should colors synergize by having like colors compliment each other, opposing colors compliment each other, or splitting the difference--like colors impede offensive powers but help supportive powers? If like colors synergize, this encourages a 'Team Blue Power' party, which may or may not make up for the fact that you're missing role synergy. If different colors synergize, then players are made to take colors that don't step on each others' toes.

3) How should the colors be distributed? If they're distributed by role, then you might have a situation where roles that are not immediately complimentary to each other (such as belligerent + controller, protector + striker) get a post hoc boost by their color wheel. If they're distributed by class then you can have a situation where people deciding to play a fighter, druid, cleric, and warlord can still feel very different from each other.

[Username17]

Now, while it's fun to play a team of Luffy, Batman, Tsunade, and Sailor Moon I don't think it's neither desired nor required to make these characters the most powerful combination. We don't really care if all of the characters use wands and wear robes or all of the characters use big swords and wear loincloths. We do want it to be so that we can still have our adventuring dream-team of Conan, Lancelot, Musashi, Devon Aidendale, and Gimli and have it work. I mean, really, while Strength through Diversity is one of the best lessons you can teach to someone in real life... sometimes you'll have situations where everyone wants to play an assassin. And I think that's okay.

While this is a quite defensible set of design goals to have, they weren't the 4e goals so it's completely unfair to hold it against them that they failed to lie up to that. The fact that Harn, Robin, Amelia, and Sailor Mercury is not a particularly good team in 4e actually is a design failure because the goal was in fact to encourage people to play that group.

Now, having a game without role protection at all is a very plausible design goal. Most point-based systems strive for that (and may be lambasted for failure if there are demonstrable roles that need to be realized or which can be identified). And your goal of having any collection of character themes (whether containing redundancies or not) be reasonably functional is certainly a reasonable goal to have. But neither of those were what 4e was going for, so the fact that they did not achieve them is not a mark against them. Shitty chicken soup is shitty because it's bad as chicken soup, not because you'd rather hae a baked potato. Even if you would.

One idea I was kicking around was the concept of a color wheel. That is, all powers from now on have a color associated with them. If you use that power, it temporarily makes you that color and the enemy(ies) you target with it also get that color, replacing previous ones. If you use some powers (offensive or supportive) on a character that has a certain certain they function at increased or reduced effectiveness.

Like Chrono Cross, only hopefully with less urine in my eyes and hair.

Color wheels have a lot of advantages if you want characters to be allowed to come out with characters of similar or dissimilar themes and you still want to encourage coop play and interdependencies. It means that you can have two characters playing ostensibly the same character except that arbitrarily one of them is a White Knight and the other a Black Knight (or water/wind, red/green, whatfuckingever). It means that a party can have a fire mage and an ice mage on the team and have that be as different for purposes of interdisciplinary synergy as if they had a swordsman and a priest of Giant Frog.

And indeed, if that was the goal, WotC fucking owns Magic the Gathering. And handing everyone a mana color (that determined interparty synergy and specific enemy advantages) in addition to their class (that determined character theme and the weapon that they happened to carry in their hands like in the actually published 4e rules) would be a very reasonable way to accomplish that. But again, if you were making this from scratch and you wanted role protection to be a "thing" you'd actually want to hand out substantially more mana colors than expected players. So bring on the Purple, Orange, and Brown mana.

If you didn't want role protection to matter in such a setup, you'd want to ditch out colors until there were substantially more players than colors so that teams would expect to have at least one person able to spam any color. The obvious choices would be to dump Black and White and just go with the same Red/Blue/Green triumvirate as Disgaea.

-Username17

[NoobCrusher]

Biggest problems, 4E doesn't even know what the roles are supposed to do. They're just blurred all of the time. Classic example is the defender. Trading defense for offense is actually a POOR move. Everyone ignores the super-armored paladin because their mark does jack for damage.

Each defender class goes about doing its job of defending in a different way. And the perceived "sacrifice" of damage is only relative to classes like strikers, whose forte is to do lots of damage. Enemies that ignore a fighter take an asston of damage. If enemies focus on the fighter, the fighter might not do all that much damage but at that point the defender is doing their job of diverting attacks to a target that are less likely to land upon.

The paladin's mark sets up a disincentive to attacking anyone but the paladin (in the form of guaranteed damage). They also have lay on hands, which is basically defending as well since it transfers wounds from the target to the paladin for a minor action. Fighters are all about positioning and being a roadblock, and are incredibly effective at defending if you get a player with common sense. Swordmages are also solid - like you say, the shielding swordmage straight up prevents damage dealt to others. Doesn't get much more direct than that.

Striker is just a worthless role to begin with. They're supposed to be highly mobile DPS vehicles. Well, the idea of being highly mobile is complete crap, considering that every mobility power published so far is inferior to having a ranged weapon.

Except with ranged weapons you can't gain combat advantage like you can when flanking in melee. You also can't get AoOs with a ranged weapon. There are tradeoffs.

Furthermore, doing an increased amount of damage is not a role.

Dropping an enemy efficiently is not a valid strategic role? Since when? I guess you never made ass kickers in 3rd Ed that were built around doing tons of damage?

Furthermore, the idea of splitting 'controller' and 'striker' completely misses the point. The goal for any adventuring day that involves combat is to reduce the amount of damage you take relative to the enemy. You can either do this by increasing your DPS to reduce the number of rounds an enemy can act

Bingo! That's the idea behind the striker role that you're complaining about. Also I think you might be playing too much WoW, because in D&D it's actually DPR (Damage Per Round).

So at what point does the 'controller' and 'striker' function differently? I say at no point whatsoever.

controllers and strikers use fundamentally the same tactics.

Have you played 4e, or are you going off of theory? Scratch that, actually, because even if your answer is the latter you're flat out wrong. Controllers can restrict movement at a range, clear minions through area of effect powers, and confer debuffs that make it more difficult for enemies to hit or do damage. Strikers beat the hell out of tough guys while being a defender's flank buddy. Strikers are more narrow in their focus, but even a good striker will prioritize their targets. You'll notice the difference between them and a controller when your wizard stops a big bad from closing in on him or other ranged types, or wastes 4 minions at once that would've gotten some shots in a few rounds later.

What about big bads then? Strikers shine there, but controllers are insurance that other things don't get in the way of focusing on the main threat. Once the situation is under control, they're support damage.

If any two class roles are similar by design, it's defenders and controllers.

And then there's the healer. Okay, one of 3E's biggest things I enjoyed was that no class was really mandatory at low levels. Yes, they pretended that healers were, but they really weren't. Except for mass heal, in-combat healing was a big joke. All healing was done with godsticks and only parties like an all-fighter group couldn't handle that. But in a stunningly stupid move 4E decided to return to the days of having mandatory classes in the group

Leaders aren't any more mandatory in 4e than they were in 3rd. They're helpful and good to have, sure. But there are plenty of temp-hp gaining powers that don't belong to leaders. There are also potions.

In 3rd you ran into problem of having to pay exorbitant amounts of money for a good healing wand that made a difference in combat. Same as you'd have to do with potions in 4e if you were hurting for heals. At least in 4th Ed you have the advantage of surges scaling with level.

But you know what? The idea of all healing being done by one person is worthless. It just increases the 'dogpile on the loser' tactics that this game has. And since healing is generally done as a minor action, it doesn't even matter who does the healing in the first place. Seriously, does it really impact game balance that an inspiring word comes from a rogue instead of a cleric? No, all that matters is that parties only get two minor-action heals per encounter.

Dogpile on the loser? Right, except when controllers, strikers and defenders do their job and don't let enemies do that. Giving a healing power to a support class makes total sense, too, I don't know what you're talking about with giving it to a rogue. But hey, if you want to do that you can. It's called multiclassing.

Okay, now let's get into the second problem with role protection. The melee vs. ranged interaction. The game seems to suggest that the best party mix is of ranged and melee characters. Except that the game in no way works out like this. 4E correctly realized that melee combat is a fundamentally disadvantaged combat mode so tried to give it some bennies. This didn't work out too well for reasons separate from the thrust of role protection.

You mean like rogue sneak attack and the plethora of rogue abilities that revolve around mobility and gaining combat advantage for said sneak attack?

But even if it was given bennies to compensate for it, a few problems persist. One is that there are no melee controllers right now.

Swordmage has controller built right into the class what are you talking about? Hell, give a fighter a net and he's got control with every attack he lands.

But let's take a step back for a second. Except for stuns, blinds, and dominates--which all happen to be pretty rare and carefully rationed--most of what the controller does the melee characters don't really care about. Invokers for example have an at-will that slows in a burst. That's berserkly powerful... if your party isn't already in melee. Slowing or immobilizing a hydra doesn't really help out the poor fighter bastards who have to wade in and wail on the damn thing.

So what you're saying is that certain controller abilities are situational. I guess they'll have to learn to use their powers strategically like everyone else.

I could go on, but overall, there's little synergy between melee and ranged characters. The ideal party in 4E is not a razor paladin/artful dodger rogue/laser cleric/archer ranger/wizard. The ideal party is a team of a tempest fighter, a battlerager fighter, polearm fighter, a brutal scoundrel rogue, and a Battle Captain ... or a combination of wizards, archer rangers, and laser clerics. The idea of roles was to prevent this situation, but it only reinforces it.

There's hardly such thing as an ideal party. Good players can make just about any party work. 4th edition made it damned difficult to screw up party composition.

For you to be saying all of these things, I'm wondering how much 4th Edition you've actually played?

[TavishArtair]

Each defender class goes about doing its job of defending in a different way. And the perceived "sacrifice" of damage is only relative to classes like strikers, whose forte is to do lots of damage.

The paladin's mark sets up a disincentive to attacking anyone but the paladin (in the form of guaranteed damage). They also have lay on hands, which is basically defending as well since it transfers wounds from the target to the paladin for a minor action.

This doesn't address the problem that the paladin's divine challenge does crap for damage. Guaranteed or no, it will merely cause people to laugh it off.

Dropping an enemy efficiently is not a valid strategic role? Since when? I guess you never made ass kickers in 3rd Ed that were built around doing tons of damage?

The so-called "ass kickers" in 3e that are built around doing tons of damage are the entire party. No, no one should be doing particularly more damage than another person for two reasons

1) It pushes people off the RNG, and is hard to balance accordingly. Either you let other people catch up (which is happening in 4e, hello tempest fighter!) and thus totally invalidate the role of the striker (lol?) or you accept the striker doing higher white numbers and thus have a problem where the RNG has to now be retuned to accomodate a party inclusive of a certain number of strikers and only that.

2) It's a god damn flavorless ability. Having higher numbers is a totally boring, totally vertical upgrade that no one gives an iota of carnal knowledge about. If you really get excited about that then just go home, this argument isn't for you.

Have you played 4e, or are you going off of theory? Scratch that, actually, because even if your answer is the latter you're flat out wrong. Controllers can restrict movement at a range, clear minions through area of effect powers, and confer debuffs that make it more difficult for enemies to hit or do damage. Strikers beat the hell out of tough guys while being a defender's flank buddy. You'll notice the difference when a wizard stops a big bad from closing in on him or other ranged types, or wastes 4 minions at once that would've gotten some shots in a few rounds later.

How about when a striker can't efficiently take down a big bad with a lot of hit points? The controller can slow their movement and keep them at bay longer. Once the situation is under control, they're support damage.

And the only god damn difference between a striker and a controller is how much damage one allows to slip past while the thing is in the process of dying. I have seen fights run where the players went up against two Orcuses, yes, the god damn Demon Lord in stereo, and stunlock and kill both using wizards, and frankly the only thing that a god damn striker would matter for is making the fight take less time... it was a done deal.

Leaders aren't any more mandatory in 4e than they were in 3rd. They're helpful and good to have, sure. But there are plenty of temp-hp gaining powers that don't belong to leaders. There are also potions.

The ignorance of this statement is just staggering. The difference between a leader and all these potions and crap is that the leader gets access to healing surges as a [/i]minor action[/i] so he can do other things at the same time.

Dogpile on the loser? Right, except when controllers, strikers and defenders do their job and don't let enemies do that. Giving a healing power to a support class makes total sense, too, I don't know what you're talking about with giving it to a rogue. But hey, if you want to do that, you can. It's called multiclassing.

Healing powers you can get through multiclassing don't matter because they don't stack up to having two god damn healing words and a series of encounter powers that all have "heal something" tacked in somewhere. You cannot measure up with the multiclassing rules.

There's hardly such thing as an ideal party. Good players can make just about any party work. Really 4e made it damned difficult to screw up party composition.

That anecdote completely misses the point of what is better and what is worse. Because you can "make it work" is not the point. What is ideal is not "making it work," it is doing what is ideal. If a party has to be mechanically suboptimal to be interesting, then the game is poorly designed. Throughout you are going on about how you have all these options, but they aren't there, because they are not only a little suboptimal, but often vastly, which makes taking the choices seem quite stupid. If you have a group, say, that is roleplaying characters, say, that are trying to win a war, say, be it against the forces of evil or what-have-you, then having them arrange their battle order in a way that is contrary to tactical sense, makes no sense at all.

So in 4th edition, I can't run a game where the characters actually want to win the god damn fight, without feeling stupid every time we do something that is overtly contrary to good sense, like going on an excursion without having a god damn leader class there. And I don't play games, nor roleplay, to feel stupid. My characters should be taking actions that make sense.

Before you drag up any other old chestnuts about "making it work" in the story, I don't want to play a game wherein I have to bend the story over backwards every time in order to make things make sense either, so if you suggest I "make do" with it, you are essentially stating not only something that I obviously already can do, but also something which I am not paying to do. The value of 4th edition, essentially, is the value of three books, priced at around $100 in total, so I better get a return on that value. I don't. So I don't like it. It's a waste of my god damn time and it doesn't even have much good design.

[Psychic Robot]

4e avengers!

[NoobCrusher]

This doesn't address the problem that the paladin's divine challenge does crap for damage. Guaranteed or no, it will merely cause people to laugh it off.

It may not be "good damage", but it adds up and it is guaranteed. A paladin with 18 Cha deals 7 radiant damage (some enemies are vulnerable to this too, remember) guaranteed on a marked attack. Fighter combat superiority can miss outright and so can an assault swordmage's aegis. And again, laying on hands is pretty much a "here let me negate those last couple of hits on you at my own expense". Paladins are capable defenders.

The so-called "ass kickers" in 3e that are built around doing tons of damage are the entire party. No, no one should be doing particularly more damage than another person for two reasons

I actually agree with you that rangers are boring. They deal a lot of damage and only target AC and that's pretty much it. But rogues can do interesting line-breaking techniques to close in on a caster in the back and tear him up aside from being just an awesome flanking partner. I can't speak for all the strikers but my original point was that the striker is a distinguished role. Whether or not it's flavorless is subjective and irrelevant to the discussion of role definition. Strikers do more damage than non-striker classes and are there to deliver a beating while other classes do their jobs of mitigating, controlling and healing.

And the only god damn difference between a striker and a controller is how much damage one allows to slip past while the thing is in the process of dying. I have seen fights run where the players went up against two Orcuses, yes, the god damn Demon Lord in stereo, and stunlock and kill both using wizards, and frankly the only thing that a god damn striker would matter for is making the fight take less time... it was a done deal.

You're talking about a specific fight where you're encountering two super badass elite things. What about more balanced encounters that aren't boss fights? Strikers take down individual targets faster than controllers do. Controllers slow enemies down and make it harder for them to do what they want to do. I don't know how else to spell it out for you, man. You seem to be focused on this myopic view because in one particular fight the strikers and controllers were just piling on damage.

The ignorance of this statement is just staggering. The difference between a leader and all these potions and crap is that the leader gets access to healing surges as a [/i]minor action[/i] so he can do other things at the same time.

Drinking potions are also a minor action there, champ. And I'm actually playing in a game without a leader. We're doing fine so far. Leaders are useful, yes. Damned useful even. Not once did I say or imply that I don't recognize how they're different from using non-leader healing/temporary hitpoints. I said leaders aren't mandatory.

There's hardly such thing as an ideal party. Good players can make just about any party work. Really 4e made it damned difficult to screw up party composition.

That anecdote completely misses the point of what is better and what is worse. Because you can "make it work" is not the point. What is ideal is not "making it work," it is doing what is ideal. If a party has to be mechanically suboptimal to be interesting, then the game is poorly designed. Throughout you are going on about how you have all these options, but they aren't there, because they are not only a little suboptimal, but often vastly, which makes taking the choices seem quite stupid. If you have a group, say, that is roleplaying characters, say, that are trying to win a war, say, be it against the forces of evil or what-have-you, then having them arrange their battle order in a way that is contrary to tactical sense, makes no sense at all.

No, my "anecdote" definitely did not miss any point worth making. This isn't WoW, where you absolutely need super specific party compositions to get through content. And if you can't be flexible enough as a DM to not throw fights at the party that you know they can't overcome, then you should re-evalute your skills as one. "Mechanically suboptimal" covers an immense number of race/class builds, all of which not only can be "made to work" but are often still good. Just because you're squeezing out 2 less damage per round compared to another build of your class doesn't mean you aren't feasible in combat. The options are still there whether you like it or not. Min/Maxing is not mandatory.

Seriously, can you give me an anecdote of a situation where your party couldn't win a fight without feeling stupid? Explain this situation/these situations that were such a roadblock that you couldn't see yourself playing a game with anything but optimal characters because I'm reeling from the absurdity of this. If I had your theoretical "roleplaying characters", implication here being suboptimal, in a fight, how exactly are you thinking they wouldn't position themselves tactically? Did being suboptimal somehow change the rules? Each class role is going to try to do its job. Any failure to do so lands on the player and/or dice rolls, like most tabletop games.

It sounds like you have a very rigid idea of how the game should be played and can't see beyond it. In fact I'm wondering what game you have been playing. Because it doesn't sound like 4e to me at all.

[RandomCasualty2]

Swordmages are also solid - like you say, the shielding swordmage straight up prevents damage dealt to others. Doesn't get much more direct than that.

The problem is that healers tend to be better anyway because they remove damage directly and unlike the defender, who just draws fire, they can heal themselves. So the cleric doesn't bother with marking and worrying about being swarmed and all that bullshit. He just drops a heal on whoever needs it.

Defender marking requires lots of careful planning and positioning, while healing is just a straight up fire and forget that you can fire across the entire battlefield at higher levels without concern for positioning or tactics. Not to mention it's more effective too.

[Doom]

4e avengers!

Is it the elitist "obviously you haven't played 4e" lines that give it away?

[NoobCrusher]

The problem is that healers tend to be better anyway because they remove damage directly and unlike the defender, who just draws fire, they can heal themselves.

What problem? Defenders have higher AC and usually higher NADs, too, so while they're drawing fire they're also getting hit less often than attacks that would otherwise target the healers. Also, a shielding swordmage's aegis can be triggered any number of times in a fight. A cleric can only heal twice per encounter, and should use it conservatively.

If you're trying to say that healers make better damage soakers than defenders, you're wrong. Leader AC tends to be mediocre at best. Dex and Int are pretty much dump stats for a shaman, actually, so their AC tends to be abysmal. What's better? Getting hit far less due to high AC and getting support heals when needed, or letting the healer get smacked around much more often, forcing them to use heals on themselves? A party with the latter strategy isn't going to last long. A party without a defender might be able to scrape by with a leader being a damage soaker, but without marks it's an unreliable tactic. Defenders are clearly better at taking hits.

Defender marking requires lots of careful planning and positioning, while healing is just a straight up fire and forget that you can fire across the entire battlefield at higher levels without concern for positioning or tactics. Not to mention it's more effective too.

What...? More effective than defending? They're two different things. Also, a heal usually has a range. Clerics have daily heals that are melee touch only, and healing word has a range of 5. Positioning definitely DOES matter. So do tactics.

[Username17]

Yes. Yes it is.

Sigh. Marking is and always has been bullshit. It's a fucking -2 to attacks. Any "Defender" whose personal damage output is significantly less than other characters and/or who has defenses that are 3 or more points better than his compatriots is by definition not drawing fire unless the DM is choosing to humor him.

The one and only party in which the Paladin is not a fucking joke is Knights of the Round: 4 Paladins and a Warlord. The Paladins all have identical defenses and similar offensive outputs so their stupid marking and grindlocks actually matter. They kill enemies relatively slowly and they don't stun opponents very often, but they have a lot of hit points and a lot of healing surges so they can grind things down and eventually win.

Ranged attacks do not synergize with melee attacks in 4e. Full stop. Do not pass Go. A Bow Ranger does substantially less damage than a Fighter. However, a Bow Ranger can attack from a point at range where his enemies cannot attack him back. If his compatriots all also hae ranged attacks, then they can collectively grind down opposition without taking any attacks back. It's slower than a Fighter/Warlord attack pack, but it is in its way more certain.

Yes, you can defeat enemies with a mixed party of Paladin/Warlock/Fighter/Rogue/Cleric. You can defeat the enemies because the game is not very difficult. But the fact of the matter is that the game will kind of look like "the fighter show" because the Warlock's ability to attack enemies without being attacked in return doesn't do anything so long as the enemy has anyone to attack. The Paladin's bonus defenses don't really mean anything when you have to rest as soon as the Rogue runs out of healing surges. So both of those guys have abilities that would be helpful for soloing mobs, but which don't really come into play because you're handily winning all your fights and it never really comes down to the wire.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

The only effective 'defender' really are shielding swordmages. They cut out the bullshit and give people what they want; a reduction in damage to targets of their marks. It's a pretty big reduction in damage, too; at epic a swordmage can slice 20 points of damage from an enemy's attack.

However, this paradigm still doesn't work. Swordmages don't have especially higher defenses than their buddies. So while shielding swordmages do a remarkable job at grabbing hate, second only to fighters, when they are actually the targets of attacks nothing much happens. Swordmage damage is extremely crappy so they actually take longer to take out enemies--which means that they suffer a higher volume of attacks anyway.

Hospitaler paladins work by the same principle. However, since paladins can only DC one enemy at a time, they still have the same problem of only being able to lockdown one enemy while everything else swarms around them and begins the gangbang.

[NoobCrusher]

Sigh. Marking is and always has been bullshit. It's a fucking -2 to attacks. Any "Defender" whose personal damage output is significantly less than other characters and/or who has defenses that are 3 or more points better than his compatriots is by definition not drawing fire unless the DM is choosing to humor him.

It's a -2 to attacks and a punishment. For a paladin that punishment is a guaranteed amount of damage as an immediate interrupt. This can actually kill the enemy before they make their -2 attack in some cases. If the DM wants to take the damage to hit another party member, they do so at their own risk. Fighters are downright devious here. They stop marks from moving or attacking anyone but them that they can reach. Shielding swordmages straight up prevent an amount of damage, also as a guarantee. Yeah, I'd say those three classes are pretty effective at defending if the players know what they're doing and your DM isn't particularly vindictive.

Ranged attacks do not synergize with melee attacks in 4e. Full stop. Do not pass Go. A Bow Ranger does substantially less damage than a Fighter. However, a Bow Ranger can attack from a point at range where his enemies cannot attack him back. If his compatriots all also hae ranged attacks, then they can collectively grind down opposition without taking any attacks back. It's slower than a Fighter/Warlord attack pack, but it is in its way more certain.

I don't get why this is a complaint. The advantage of doing ranged damage that doesn't rely on tactical melee positioning is that you don't get things like combat advantage. And are you kidding me? Rangers do sick amounts of damage even with archery style. A fighter could end up doing comparable amounts I suppose, if the DM constantly ignores his marks and lets him get enough free attacks.

Yes, you can defeat enemies with a mixed party of Paladin/Warlock/Fighter/Rogue/Cleric. You can defeat the enemies because the game is not very difficult. But the fact of the matter is that the game will kind of look like "the fighter show" because the Warlock's ability to attack enemies without being attacked in return doesn't do anything so long as the enemy has anyone to attack. The Paladin's bonus defenses don't really mean anything when you have to rest as soon as the Rogue runs out of healing surges.

You mean aside from the part where defenders have higher defenses and get hit less resulting in less damage being dealt altogether compared to a situation where those same attacks were being directed at easier to hit party members? Saying warlock being attacked = paladin being attacked = rogue being attacked doesn't work here.

So both of those guys have abilities that would be helpful for soloing mobs, but which don't really come into play because you're handily winning all your fights and it never really comes down to the wire.

-Username17

This forum is full of WoW players. If you're trying to say that various party compositions can work then I've already agreed with you a couple posts back. If you're trying to say that somehow defenders don't make a difference at damage mitigation then you're quite wrong.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Fighters right now are the best defenders and that is entirely by accident. Tempest fighters, battlerager fighters, and Dragonborn Shield & Board fighters do so much goddamn damage compared to the rest of the non-ranger party that it's sad.

Polearm fighters also make fine defenders because most monsters can't even approach them unless they have reach and the monsters content to use nothing but charging attacks. And when monsters start getting reach the Polearm fighter shows you that she MC'd into a Warpriest for Warpriest's Challenge and you're still not getting near her. Heavy Blade Opportunity + Footwork Lure + Polearm Momentum + Combat Superiority wrecks your face off, to the point where you start wondering why you don't just have nothing but Glaive fighters. And then you look at the Battlerager and Tempest fighters and go 'oh yeah'.

[TavishArtair]

I actually agree with you that rangers are boring. They deal a lot of damage and only target AC and that's pretty much it. But rogues can do interesting line-breaking techniques to close in on a caster in the back and tear him up aside from being just an awesome flanking partner. I can't speak for all the strikers but my original point was that the striker is a distinguished role. Whether or not it's flavorless is subjective and irrelevant to the discussion of role definition. Strikers do more damage than non-striker classes and are there to deliver a beating while other classes do their jobs of mitigating, controlling and healing.

Actually it's all about the subject of role definition. Either the rogue's abilities to bypass defensive lines are irrelevant to his role, and therefore make the rogue poorly designed, or the goal of a striker is to bypass defensive lines to do damage, making the ranger poorly designed.

You also haven't addressed that the fact that the RNG manipulation is impossible to balance has meant that two-weapon fighters have caught up so vastly to rogues that in many considerations they are the damage-dealer, not the strikers.

And frankly, I still don't give a shit about your divine challenge. It matters less and less as levels progress until it's just a poor joke. The paladin does not incentivize enemies to attack him usefully with the divine challenge ability. There are reasons to take paladin, you're right, but they aren't divine challenge, which is supposed to be the trademark ability of the paladin, and thus I don't give a shit about its class design.

You're talking about a specific fight where you're encountering two super badass elite things. What about more balanced encounters that aren't boss fights?

Let me try this again. Orcus x2 was bent over and raped. Orcus himself would fare no better. So either controllers are broke or solo monsters are a waste of page space. If you try to sell me pages that are better off empty, then I don't give a shit about your game design.

Strikers take down individual targets faster than controllers do. Controllers slow enemies down and make it harder for them to do what they want to do. I don't know how else to spell it out for you, man.

The problem is when controllers can stop... not slow, stop... enemies from acting, the relative per-turn damage output of anyone becomes less important, because the controllers are not adding to their damage, they are multiplying it by taking free turns. If you can't do the math, you are the one wasting everyone's time.

Drinking potions are also a minor action there, champ. And I'm actually playing in a game without a leader. We're doing fine so far. Leaders are useful, yes. Damned useful even. Not once did I say or imply that I don't recognize how they're different from using non-leader healing/temporary hitpoints. I said leaders aren't mandatory.

Potions are a limited supply and replace your healing surges with temporary HP, often much less than what it was, either that or you're getting handouts of additional potions or gold to buy potions to compensate for the lack of a leader. And frankly, you are going to find this more troublesome at low levels, where characters are too skint to pay out for potions. If the starting level 1 group has to include a cleric (or warlord, hey!), then you're still imposing on the players.

No, my "anecdote" definitely did not miss any point worth making. This isn't WoW, where you absolutely need super specific party compositions to get through content.

If I wanted to play WoW, I would go play WoW. If you're unable to manage an argument about games without referencing an MMO no one else brought up or was inclined to bring up, go suck yourself. What I am talking about is a universe that makes sense, and people taking actions that make sense within that universe. 4e does not provide, period. My suspension of disbelief is not extended for it, because I find it to be an unskillful and dull execution of a setting.

And if you can't be flexible enough as a DM to not throw fights at the party that you know they can't overcome, then you should re-evalute your skills as one.

Honestly, 4th Edition was the one which first made the claim it was so god damn gloriously balanced you could mindlessly throw encounters at your players. But even so, yes, actually. I am going to, in any game I referee, generally create a situation wherein, if the players come ill-prepared against a well-prepared opponent, that they will lose. If the definition of "preparation" by the game we are using is "bringing a cleric," then yes, I will up the ante accordingly. Bringing force multipliers is fair game for both sides.

"Mechanically suboptimal" covers an immense number of race/class builds, all of which not only can be "made to work" but are often still good. Just because you're squeezing out 2 less damage per round compared to another build of your class doesn't mean you aren't feasible in combat. The options are still there whether you like it or not. Min/Maxing is not mandatory.

And you are relying on the extremist fallacy. I am talking about obvious considerations here, bringing force multiplier characters such as the warlord or wizard. Frankly, ones who are so broken that they push everyone else off the RNG (or, in the case of the warlord, push everyone but their allies off) once they hit the field. Or, if the preferred party is blatantly all-melee or all-ranged, doing that. I am not talking about 2 damage per round, and you insult both me and yourself by relying on absurdities like that.

If I had your theoretical "roleplaying characters", implication here being suboptimal,

You are missing the point. I roleplay "optimal" characters all the time, because they are optimal at what they have chosen to be optimal at, whatever that may be. People who devote themselves to the life of the sword are good at wielding a god damn sword, and people who want to win a fight arrange things so they fight is goddamn won. If you can't get that through your skull, I don't know what to say to you. My problem is when interesting My problem is when strategic considerations become significant enough that they impinge on character selection, in order to reduce the amount of interesting characters that can be played without engaging in any significant degree of shooting yourself in the foot. I abhor the "someone gets stuck playing the cleric" mode of play, and as long as you design your system in such a way that clerics or whatever are "highly useful," and indeed in many senses an irreplaceable fvcking skill, then I'm very uninterested in your system, because what if no one wants to play a god damn cleric? Then everyone feels dumb because they aren't bringing a force multiplier, but indeed the enemies may.

It sounds like you have a very rigid idea of how the game should be played and can't see beyond it. In fact I'm wondering what game you have been playing. Because it doesn't sound like 4e to me at all.

The problem is when a system designs itself in such a way that it creates a box. Because these boxes invariably punish people for thinking outside of it, especially in something as big as character selection. 4th Edition does punish you for thinking outside the box, in many ways. By doing so, it makes itself an inferior game. Even if you can play it, even if you can wander all the way outside of that box, it's stupid for a design to punish players for doing so. I am not talking about player/DM interaction, I am talking about the design of the game. If you so much as even mention how I play the game again, without addressing how the game was designed to be played, I will summarily cease to respond, because you will have proven yourself so nearsighted that I am not even going to bother with you anymore. Either analyze 4th Edition design, or get out. I don't want your apologia.

[NoobCrusher]

The only effective 'defender' really are shielding swordmages. They cut out the bullshit and give people what they want; a reduction in damage to targets of their marks. It's a pretty big reduction in damage, too; at epic a swordmage can slice 20 points of damage from an enemy's attack.

You should have a look at what I've said about paladins and fighters and rethink that.

However, this paradigm still doesn't work. Swordmages don't have especially higher defenses than their buddies.

Um, yes they do. Take a 20 Int swordmage with hide armor. That's 21 AC at level 1. The swordmage warding they get which gives them +3 to AC beats a shield although it doesn't grant any reflex. But that's what the high Int is for.

So while shielding swordmages do a remarkable job at grabbing hate, second only to fighters, when they are actually the targets of attacks nothing much happens. Swordmage damage is extremely crappy so they actually take longer to take out enemies--which means that they suffer a higher volume of attacks anyway.

First off, no. Their damage is quite nice if you line up multiple targets for sword burst and AoEs like flame cyclone. Second, it's the job of other classes, like strikers, to kill things. Swordmages don't necessarily soak up any more or any less than other defenders due to their damage output differences. They can clear minions like pros, too (again, sword burst).

[Lago PARANOIA]

It's a -2 to attacks and a punishment. For a paladin that punishment is a guaranteed amount of damage as an immediate interrupt. This can actually kill the enemy before they make their -2 attack in some cases. If the DM wants to take the damage to hit another party member, they do so at their own risk. Fighters are downright devious here. They stop marks from moving or attacking anyone but them that they can reach. Shielding swordmages straight up prevent an amount of damage, also as a guarantee. Yeah, I'd say those three classes are pretty effective at defending if the players know what they're doing and your DM isn't particularly vindictive.

Ha ha ha are you fucking kidding me? Look, non-artillery standard monster hit points increase by 8 per level. Paladins get about an extra point on their divine challenge every 3 levels. What do you THINK is going to happen?

What incentive, exactly, does a paladin have to make a frost dragon attack them? A paladin has about a 23 AC while their wizard buddy has about 17. Even if their divine challenge goes off repeatedly, the amount of pain the dragon saves himself from taking out the wizard first is more than the amount of damage the dragon gets from just respecting the DC.

This problem only increases at higher levels.

I don't get why this is a complaint. The advantage of doing ranged damage that doesn't rely on tactical melee positioning is that you don't get things like combat advantage. And are you kidding me? Rangers do sick amounts of damage even with archery style. A fighter could end up doing comparable amounts I suppose, if the DM constantly ignores his marks and lets him get enough free attacks.

You mean aside from the part where defenders have higher defenses and get hit less resulting in less damage being dealt altogether compared to a situation where those same attacks were being directed at easier to hit party members? Saying warlock being attacked = paladin being attacked = rogue being attacked doesn't work here.

Combat Advantage isn't some I Win button. It's a modifier to attacks and lets rogues activate their special abilities--and any archer ranger worth their salt is going to have Frost bows anyway.

Archer rangers intentionally try not to get damaged, which means that the frontliners take more damage. Well, guess what? The adventuring day ends when anyone runs out of hit points/healing surges. If you are intentionally protecting your own ass at the cost of doing lower damage, then you're fucking over your buddies. Melee rangers do more damage but also take pressure off of their other frontline buddies--combats are thus both shorter and less painful for other frontliners and the adventuring day lasts longer.

And that's part of the problem of mixing up ranged characters who do less damage with melee characters. They're not playing the same game. Now, archery rangers get away with this because they still do more damage than most melee classes so most people won't notice; an archery ranger will end combat faster than, say, an avenger so they're stll extending the lifespan of the melee characters better. But if you have any melee characters then it's better to grab a beastmaster or a melee ranger.

This forum is full of WoW players. If you're trying to say that various party compositions can work then I've already agreed with you a couple posts back. If you're trying to say that somehow defenders don't make a difference at damage mitigation then you're quite wrong.

They don't, because WotC is wedded to the idea that being a defender means that you should do less damage.

Tempest Fighters grab the attention of monsters because they do sickening amounts of damage. Because they ALSO have higher-than-average defenses and get a bunch of incidental abilities that increase their stickiness a lot of people misinterpret their hate-grabbing as legitimate defender capabilities. But they're not. They just have higher damage and defense than their buddies, which makes them unbalanced.

Shielding Swordmages have the opposite problem. They heavily punish monsters for attacking party members other than themselves. But once they have the hate, what do they do with it? Well, they still have one of the higher ACs in the game--even though their fortitude and will defenses still tend to chew--so the rate an enemy depletes their lifebar goes down. However, they also do bullshit for damage, which means that combat ends up taking longer. Which means that they suffer a greater volume of attacks that their defenses don't make up for.

Polearm Fighters right now are about the only legitimate defender class, but they're not playing the game WotC wanted them too--they prevent enemy attacks altogether rather than aiming attacks at higher-armored targets.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Um, yes they do. Take a 20 Int swordmage with hide armor. That's 21 AC at level 1. The swordmage warding they get which gives them +3 to AC beats a shield although it doesn't grant any reflex. But that's what the high Int is for.

That's still not very much higher than a Paladin or a Tempest Fighter, who can nail a 20 and a 19 for their ACs, respectively

First off, no. Their damage is quite nice if you line up multiple targets for sword burst and AoEs like flame cyclone.

Level 11 Sword Burst Damage for a swordmage: 1d6+6(int)+2(WF)+2(enh) = 13.5 average damage if they hit.

Level 11 Grimlock Ambusher: 110 hit points.

That is fucking pathetic. AOE damage is unimportant in 4E because 'smear the queer' is much more effective unless you have a group stun.

Second, it's the job of other classes, like strikers, to kill things. Swordmages don't necessarily soak up any more or any less than other defenders due to their damage output differences.

But since they're contributing less damage, too that still means that they suffer a higher volume of attacks. And frankly, swordmages don't have all that much higher AC than their buddies. A tempest fighter in scailmail is only a point or so behind them and in return they do loads more damage.

They can clear minions like pros, too (again, sword burst).

Minions are a completely broken and frankly unimportant mechanic and having an ability to 'kill minions' is worth about as much as an ability of 'cupcake baking'.

[NoobCrusher]

Actually it's all about the subject of role definition. Either the rogue's abilities to bypass defensive lines are irrelevant to his role, and therefore make the rogue poorly designed, or the goal of a striker is to bypass defensive lines to do damage, making the ranger poorly designed.

Yes, I said it was about role definition and not flavorless damage dealing. Glad we agree there. A rogue, I'd argue, is well designed because while they may not simply range away at a back-row caster, they can dodge around opponents, reach them in melee, and even slide them against their will into other melee allies so that they can help lock them down. Or they can just stab away. From there, the rogue can move on to other back-row enemies like ranged attackers. Or they could be the fighter's flanking buddy to pile on some serious damage. They have options.

You also haven't addressed that the fact that the RNG manipulation is impossible to balance has meant that two-weapon fighters have caught up so vastly to rogues that in many considerations they are the damage-dealer, not the strikers.

Tempest fighters are sort of a hybrid between defender and striker. They still don't do as much damage as a two weapon ranger, and they have less AC than your sword and board type.

RNG is not impossible to balance actually. Two-weapon fighters can do some pretty sick damage, but so can rogues and especially so can rangers. Look at stormwardens with scimitar dance. RNG may not exactly favor the rogue, but look at what else they can do as well: re-position enemies, blind them, topple them over, attack non-AC defenses. Fighters just beat people's asses with raw damage a lot of the time while rogues are causing all kinds of other problems for them, in addition to respectable damage. A good party will help the rogue get sneak attacks more often, too. Warlords are a rogue's, especially a brutal scoundrel rogue's, best friend. Looking at two-weapon fighter RNG and declaring favoritism is, again, myopic. I hope this fits your credentials for analysis since I've been more specific than you have.

And frankly, I still don't give a shit about your divine challenge. It matters less and less as levels progress until it's just a poor joke. The paladin does not incentivize enemies to attack him usefully with the divine challenge ability. There are reasons to take paladin, you're right, but they aren't divine challenge, which is supposed to be the trademark ability of the paladin, and thus I don't give a shit about its class design.

Let me try this again. Orcus x2 was bent over and raped. Orcus himself would fare no better. So either controllers are broke or solo monsters are a waste of page space. If you try to sell me pages that are better off empty, then I don't give a shit about your game design.

My knowledge of max level characters is pretty limited. Despite the fact that you took one example to say that strikers and controllers are the same, and I've used my own example that applies to most levels of the game to show how they're not, I still can't consider you correct in saying that controllers and strikers are fundamentally the same. In your specific fight you've listed there (again, not all fights are boss fights and you should recognize this), controllers sound pretty broken. In countless other scenarios that I can list, controllers perform a very real and distinguishable function from strikers. This Orcus fight doesn't prove that controllers and strikers are fundamentally the same thing, though. Sorry.

The problem is when controllers can stop... not slow, stop... enemies from acting, the relative per-turn damage output of anyone becomes less important, because the controllers are not adding to their damage, they are multiplying it by taking free turns. If you can't do the math, you are the one wasting everyone's time.

Yes, controllers can lock enemies down, that's what they do. If a party of 4 PCs are fighting 10 relatively strong enemies, and the controller can lock down, say, two of them while the other 3 handle the other 8, then I don't see how this is broken. Just as you can think of situations where it's broken, I can think of others where it's not. Which is more consistently true?

Potions are a limited supply and replace your healing surges with temporary HP, often much less than what it was, either that or you're getting handouts of additional potions or gold to buy potions to compensate for the lack of a leader. And frankly, you are going to find this more troublesome at low levels, where characters are too skint to pay out for potions. If the starting level 1 group has to include a cleric (or warlord, hey!), then you're still imposing on the players.

But they... don't... need a cleric? I just told you I'm part of a group that's gone from 1-3 with no leader and we've done okay. It's not because our DM goes easy on us, either.

If I wanted to play WoW, I would go play WoW. If you're unable to manage an argument about games without referencing an MMO no one else brought up or was inclined to bring up, go suck yourself. What I am talking about is a universe that makes sense, and people taking actions that make sense within that universe. 4e does not provide, period. My suspension of disbelief is not extended for it, because I find it to be an unskillful and dull execution of a setting.

You keep using WoW terms so I decided to use it as an example of what 4e isn't, and it was appropriate in the context of my argument. If you can't manage an argument about games without telling me to go suck myself, go suck yourself. Wait.

Please tell me how 4e doesn't provide. If you just don't like the setting then say that, fine. But you've been relating this all to combat in this vague cloud of "some things don't make sense to me and make me and my players feel awkward and dumb so I don't like it". It's not very substantive. Give examples if you would be so kind.

And you are relying on the extremist fallacy. I am talking about obvious considerations here, bringing force multiplier characters such as the warlord or wizard. Frankly, ones who are so broken that they push everyone else off the RNG (or, in the case of the warlord, push everyone but their allies off) once they hit the field. Or, if the preferred party is blatantly all-melee or all-ranged, doing that. I am not talking about 2 damage per round, and you insult both me and yourself by relying on absurdities like that.

I think you and I are thinking of huge level discrepancies. Having played mostly 1-11, in none of those situations were wizards or warlords broken. Of course my 2 damage per round was hyperbole, too. My point, if you could've read between the lines, was that there are options and it's not as if you can't compete without certain race/class combos. You claim some of them are extemely underpowered and some are overpowered. Up until this point we've been talking mostly in generalities and in theory but we're just now getting into arguments where examples are becoming necessary, so please provide them.

I'm not going to quote the last two paragraphs because my response to both of them is the same: give me some anecdotes/examples so I can see things your way from your analytical perspective. All you've done here is speak in generalities and tell me I'm short-sighted for not magically knowing what 4e flaws you're speaking of. I understand conceptually what you're saying, and I may even agree with you on some points, but you need to drop the butt-hurt and give me something concrete to work with.

[RandomCasualty2]

What problem? Defenders have higher AC and usually higher NADs, too, so while they're drawing fire they're also getting hit less often than attacks that would otherwise target the healers. Also, a shielding swordmage's aegis can be triggered any number of times in a fight. A cleric can only heal twice per encounter, and should use it conservatively.

Higher AC? not by much. The only thing pretty much that is in the fighter's favor is that he has better starting armor proficiencies. That's it. By paragon tier, that advantage is gone and the clerics are wearing at least scale and holding shields. And then the ACs are even.

Swordmages end up with a little bit more AC than that, but it's still not by any means a huge advantage.

If you're trying to say that healers make better damage soakers than defenders, you're wrong.

No, I'm really not. Lets assume that the defenders do their job and the monster always attacks them.

Defenders have the benefit of 1 more hp per level than a leader has. 6 hp versus 5. So 10th level defender versus 10th level cleric, the defender has 10 more hp than a level 10 cleric. Because the defender will have better con and gets a few more to start with. Lets give the defender the benefit of the doubt and say he has 18 extra HP. That's pretty fair I think.

The cleric on the other hand has two healing words, each of which add 1/4 of the total HP of the guy being healed. At level 10, the cleric will have around 70 HP. That's 17 HP healed for surge value, and another 2d6 (average 7) added in for healing word, plus another 5 for the cleric's wisdom. So that's going to be 29 HP per healing word. And well you get two of them. So you're looking at 58 extra HP for the cleric healing himself.

So the defender's 18 HP edge from his class versus the clerics 58 extra HP leaves the cleric with 40 extra HP.

So as far as damage soaking potential, the cleric wins hands down. And unlike the defender, the cleric doesn't need to mark anyone or even draw fire, since he can heal anyone.

[Psychic Robot]

I can't comment on a lot of that because I have little knowledge of the intricacies of classes in 4e, save for the fact that everything does damage and everything is boring and everything is a grindfest.

However...

But they... don't... need a cleric? I just told you I'm part of a group that's gone from 1-3 with no leader and we've done okay. It's not because our DM goes easy on us, either.

Your DM is going easy on you. Leaders are good in 4e because they can heal as a swift action. In 3e, that would take a standard action, and it was inefficient. Since healing automatically scales in 4e, leaders are pretty much a necessity, especially when the game is balanced around you spending multiple healing surges in an encounter.

Yes, controllers can lock enemies down, that's what they do. If a party of 4 PCs are fighting 10 relatively strong enemies, and the controller can lock down, say, two of them while the other 3 handle the other 8, then I don't see how this is broken. Just as you can think of situations where it's broken, I can think of others where it's not. Which is more consistently true?

Fighting the BBEG: lock him down with an orbizard and it's game, set, match, and you're just left cleaning up the minions.

Please tell me how 4e doesn't provide. If you just don't like the setting then say that, fine. But you've been relating this all to combat in this vague cloud of "some things don't make sense to me and make me and my players feel awkward and dumb so I don't like it". It's not very substantive. Give examples if you would be so kind.

Six-hour autoheal trauma inn bullshit. Mounted archers break the game. Your pet doesn't do shit unless you tell it to do shit each and every round in combat. You can be knocked unconscious and then magically wake up with 25% of your HP remaining the next round. The entire game economy. The fact that you need to make a DC 20 Nature check to know that bears attack with their claws.

The fail is endless.

Having played mostly 1-11, in none of those situations were wizards or warlords broken.

That's because the wizard wasn't handing out -8 penalties to saving throws and the warlord wasn't handing out +8 bonuses on attack rolls.

[Orion]

If roles are so important...

Kindly explain the different between a Striker and a Controller, keeping in mind that Predator Druids and Artful Dodges are both high-speed, high-shifting melee characters who deal moderate damage + status conditions, while also have ranged and area attacks.

Also explain the difference between Leaders and Defenders, bearing in mind that by giving temphp only to allies, valor bards are incentivising the enemies to attack him instead of more vulnerable party members. And that Paladins and War Clerics do the same fucking thing.

You can explain defenders and strikers by explaining why a Tempest fighter does more damage than your mom.

Extra Credit: How is a wizard or invoker who learns summonings and conjurations like a defender? Answer: because he holds territory with th threat of AoOs and provides a new target for enemies to waste attacks on.

[Lago PARANOIA]

While we're on the subject, why are we knocking MMORPGs anyway?

MMOs have done wonders for the concept of game balance. Gygax's hateful philosophy over the RPG world and the idea that people shouldn't analyze the rules because that ruins the fun have been getting more discredited every year. That's a good thing. The reason why we were able to convince the makers of 4E that fighters and wizards were fucked up was because we took the MMO approach and came up with hard numbers, rather than rely on bullshit like 'feelings' and 'flavor text'. We have people who have played nothing but Everquest and World of Warcraft coming and taking a look at the game, going 'this is fucked up', and penetrating the insularity of the tabletop RPG world.

[Psychic Robot]

Extra Credit: How is a wizard or invoker who learns summonings and conjurations like a defender? Answer: because he holds territory with th threat of AoOs and provides a new target for enemies to waste attacks on.

Noooooo! He's CONTROLLING THE BATTLEFIELD! You're playing the game wrong!