Anatomy of a Failed Design: Role Protection.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 7:30 pm

Okay, you've heard me rant about it before and you're going to hear me rant about it again.

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. And that's the fundamental problem with the role. If your defense is too good then monsters just ignore you unless you have a super-punishing mark feature. Battlerager fighters get away with it because they do 'enormous' amounts of damage for getting ignored. The closest two ideas I've seen to an actual 'defender' class is the Hospitaler Paladin PP and the Shielding Swordmage. And those two classes are saddled with other problems.

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. So sucks to your mobility. Furthermore, doing an increased amount of damage is not a role. Everyone in this game does damage. Fighters do more damage than anyone except half-elf avengers and rangers. Warlords do a respectable amount of damage and have a bunch of other advantages to boot. An uptick in DPS is not a role, it's something you write on a character sheet.

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 or just taking away the ability of an enemy to act at full capacity. So at what point does the 'controller' and 'striker' function differently? I say at no point whatsoever. Even though defender is a vague and worthless role, at least it plays a little differently from how strikers and controllers are supposed to act. But controllers and strikers use fundamentally the same tactics. Target the biggest, strongest monster and wail on them until they go down.

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--which increases the good ol' days of players drawing straws to see who gets to play the cleric. Ugh. At least there's a nice selection of them to pick from at this point in the game; warlord, cleric, bard, and shaman.

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.

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.

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. The rogue does a very remarkable job of inflicting punishing status effects at higher levels; only orb wizards do a better job, really. But that's not what the class was designed for. See, the idea of the controller class was to have a person who could disable enemies at any corner of the battlefield. Because if they could only lock up enemies in their melee reach, that would make them a... wait for it... a defender.

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. Many times, controller powers are just not up to par--especially considering the distances you're supposed to engage enemies. If you're some poor fighter facing down a pair of Zombie Brutes, would you rather have a wizard plinking away with their at-wills/encounters or would you rather have a ranger or another fighter?

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.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 8:34 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote: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. So sucks to your mobility. Furthermore, doing an increased amount of damage is not a role. Everyone in this game does damage. Fighters do more damage than anyone except half-elf avengers and rangers. Warlords do a respectable amount of damage and have a bunch of other advantages to boot. An uptick in DPS is not a role, it's something you write on a character sheet.

Striker is a role for people who want other people to suck it up for them.

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 8:41 pm

I don't know what that means, Crissa.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 8:54 pm

Here's another major problem of the leader role. That is, the game designers don't have any faith in it.

See, the people who designed 4th Edition seem to believe that giving an ally a bonus isn't as much fun as using the bonus for themselves. Which may or may not be true; I mean, people complained bitterly about holding the short straw and having to play the cleric back in 2E, so I can sort of see where they were going with this.

But their solution to this problem was rather than making it so that leaders were interesting to play on their own and making their buffs/healing just being incidental to the role, they decided that if giving bonuses to your buddies is less fun, then if the bonus is bigger then you'll have more fun!

This is what caused the Warlord to completely F everything in the A. While Battle Captains stand out even over other warlords, having a warlord is pretty much mandatory for any high-level party. A Tactical Warlord who pops Precision Stance is pretty much telling you that he wins the battle, you stupid fucks. The powers that Battle Clerics get by and large chew, but it doesn't even matter because they have Righteous Brand, which is in the God Tier of powers. They get a spot in the party even if they do NOTHING but spam that attack and Healing Word. I can only think of three other At-Wills that would make a character worth it even if that's all that they can do: Dual Strike, Twin Strike, and Opening Shove.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:29 pm

Between-party balance isn't as big of a problem as within-party balance. If everyone kicks ass, you can just make the opposition more powerful.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:42 pm

Between-party balance isn't as big of a problem as within-party balance. If everyone kicks ass, you can just make the opposition more powerful.

The point I was trying to make was that the only way WotC feels confident about classes that give other people the spotlight is to make the numbers really huge. How many people do you think would want to play a class that's essentially 'you give up your turn, your buddy takes a turn again, but with 5% bonus to all statistics'? Now how many people would want to play a class that does the same thing but the bonus becomes 25%?

That is the leader role in a nutshell. Claiming that DMs will retroactively increase the defense bonuses of monsters because there's a Battle Captain in town completely misses the point of the role.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:44 pm

CoDzilla still stands strong.

Was CoDzilla that good prior to third edition?

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp · Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:49 pm

Yeup. Try playing Dungeon Hack or one of these older 2nd edition computer games, or even Baldur's Gate. Cleric stands head and shoulders above the fighter.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 10:00 pm

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp wrote:Yeup. Try playing Dungeon Hack or one of these older 2nd edition computer games, or even Baldur's Gate. Cleric stands head and shoulders above the fighter.

Well, those aren't entirely based on the rules. I've seen this somewhat in Wizardry games, if for no other reason than the self healing. Because natural healing will age you pretty fast.

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp · Mon Apr 13, 2009 10:09 pm

You're correct they're not based entirely on the rules. However, they do demonstrate the power of the cleric over the fighter and the wizard. Or, play 2nd edition for yourself, and compare the cleric to the fighter and it should become obvious.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 10:43 pm

In SSI's Gold Boxes clerics were teh suck and warriors awesome. Especially the Solamnian knights, who had cleric spells up to 7th level, full thac0 and a nonmagical equivalent of platemail +4. Warriors killed monsters, magic-users dropped fireballs on enemy casters and the party cleric was a healing bitch.

shau · Post by **shau** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:31 am

I think you got it all wrong Lago. 4e makes a big deal about the idea of different class roles, but their heart isn't in it. That's why a brutal rogue feels pretty much the same as a tempest fighter and everyone can heal themselves by standing around a few seconds. They deliberately tried to make each class basically the same as every other class, and I think they succeeded.

What do Warlord's do that is so WTFPWN anyway? I only played 4e a few times in the low levels, and I really did not consider the class after I noticed it's wills were stuff like an "ally gets to make a basic melee attack against an adjacent enemy."

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp wrote:Yeup. Try playing Dungeon Hack or one of these older 2nd edition computer games, or even Baldur's Gate. Cleric stands head and shoulders above the fighter.

You know, the consensus on the Bioware forums was that a Cleric was the hardest character to solo the game with. That might have been with various mods installed though. I was never good enough at the game to confirm.

DeadlyReed · Post by **DeadlyReed** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:35 am

Faith and Avatars and the other 2E FR pantheon supplements made clerics totally awesome. Seriously, if those books are in play, you can forget about anyone playing thieves and fighters.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:33 am

shau wrote: You know, the consensus on the Bioware forums was that a Cleric was the hardest character to solo the game with. That might have been with various mods installed though. I was never good enough at the game to confirm.

Yeah, clerics were actually pretty hard to play in 2E, because their damage output was pretty much nil until they got flame strike, and they ran out of them quickly.

Really even in Baldur's gate, I always felt the clerics were a waste of space. You only really needed clerics so you could rest and heal at night. Besides that, most of their spells were horrible. Aside from hold person against humanoids.

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp · Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:48 am

Hold Person, Entangle, Animate Dead, Charm Person or Mammal, Chant, Invisibility Purge.

Those are all great spells that aren't healing from BG1 I believe (Charm Person or Mammal may be BG2). But anyway, the key about Clerics is that their THAC0 is almost as good as the Fighters, and that they can get Gauntlets of Ogre Power to match the Fighter's 18/00 Strength. So really, damage-wise, they're very close. Plus the Cleric has the good spells I mentioned above and can use wands

BTW, the key thing you learn from those games that should be apparent is that you should always be a Fighter/Something whether it's Dual or Multi-class cause you get good strength, better hitpoints, and a better Thac0.

I assume the boards are referring to BG2 not BG1. I think the hardest would be fighter to be honest, the Cleric can gain most of the attack and damage bonuses that the fighter does and summon stuff!

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 3:07 am

shau wrote:What do Warlord's do that is so WTFPWN anyway? I only played 4e a few times in the low levels, and I really did not consider the class after I noticed it's wills were stuff like an "ally gets to make a basic melee attack against an adjacent enemy."

Warlords have some good class features. For example, Bravura warlords have an AP feature that owns your face off at low levels--if someone hits with the attack granted from an AP, they get to make a basic attack as a free action, Resourceful Warlords add a hefty amount of extra damage if you have a good multi-attacking party and get some very nice powers (and also have a really good PP), and Tactical Warlords give big attack bonuses on a hit in addition to having ridiculous rider effects on a lot of powers.

Combat Leader in paragon gives a very hefty bonus to initiative. Always going first is a really big deal. But that's not the real moneymaker of warlords.

What warlords have going for them are their powers and they have the best out of any leader class, especially if you use Martial Power. Bards might catch up them with Arcane Power, however.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:41 am

BG 2:

Clerics actually existed to heal, and to restoration you every fucking goddam time you fought vampires.

Other then that, they do kinda suck.

The thing to keep in mind about BG 2 is, you could solo with a cleric by buffing and being a fighter and killing shit, but, you only had that for a little time, then you'd have to rest, and then you'd have do it again.

Fighters, between hardcore weapon specialization and better thaco/saves, could just tear through everything dual wielding ridiculous broken sword A and B (another problem for Clerics, you couldn't use most of the good weapons, only Crom Faeyr when you finally get it, but Fighters have badass axes that give regen and force save vs death on hit, and crom faeyr, or sword that gives negative levels on hit and sword that auto hastes, ect)

Casters of course, well, they were still casters, and they started at level 9, so they got to skip the shit phase.

Best Wizard tacitc? Memorize 2 Wizard's Eye spells, and nothing but Project Image in your 7th level slots.

Cast project image, create a copy of you that has all your spells prepared (like scrolls on an Astral Projection) cast Wizard's Eye with your image, have it move around to gain visibility, and then have your image go cast all your level 9-8 and 6-4 spells, soloing a couple encounters himself.

Then cast project image again, all spell slots still there, because fucking a, why not give them a clone that's as good as them for a single spell slot.

Also, helmet that creates simulcra 1/day, use that with your solo fighter, then gang bang them with twice the save or dies or twice the negative levels.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:45 am

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp wrote:
I assume the boards are referring to BG2 not BG1. I think the hardest would be fighter to be honest, the Cleric can gain most of the attack and damage bonuses that the fighter does and summon stuff!

Weird. I played through with a fighter as my main character in both games and thought that was the easiest.

The fighter meat grinder was pretty awesome.

Main thwart to casters seemed to be all the magic resistance. 2E MR was a bitch. Whereas there really wasn't much that couldn't be taken down with a girdle of giant strength and one of the uber swords.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:49 am

Indeed, especially in BG 2, but in 2e all together, you had this problem.

Saves where always, save vs X, a fixed DC. These became easier to make as you leveled.

BG 2 went from 9-40.
2e breaks down at level 15.

everything made every save.
And MR? it was a flat percentage. which in many cases was 100.

You had to actually start battles by using your sequencer of lower resist 3 times to get it so that any of your spells could actually do anything.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 5:58 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: 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--which increases the good ol' days of players drawing straws to see who gets to play the cleric. Ugh. At least there's a nice selection of them to pick from at this point in the game; warlord, cleric, bard, and shaman.

Well really, there's no reason that healers have to be mandatory. It's just that combat healing is brokenly good and should probably be nerfed down, or the other classes abilities should be boosted up.

The penalty for being marked and attacking someone else should be at least a -4, if not bigger. Rogue sneak attack damage needs to be larger.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 7:38 am

BG 2: I'm sorry, Cleric buff spells were absurdly powerful and necessary for fighting the dragons and things. I started every dungeon with a pile of buffs.

Wizards -- everything made every save, but nuking people with fireballs did enough damage that even halved it was still effective. Even Magic Missile wasn't bad. And you got Haste.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 8:22 am

Boolean wrote:BG 2: I'm sorry, Cleric buff spells were absurdly powerful and necessary for fighting the dragons and things. I started every dungeon with a pile of buffs.

Did you have a Fighter dual wielding badass weapons? I never had any problems killing dragons, ect.

Boolean wrote:Wizards -- everything made every save, but nuking people with fireballs did enough damage that even halved it was still effective. Even Magic Missile wasn't bad. And you got Haste.

Absolutely, DD all the way. Horrid Wilting ftw. Or Shapechange into a Mind Flayer, Timestop, and int drain them to death.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 9:56 am

I played an Inquisitor (paladin with massively powerful antimagic abilities) with the 2-handed holy avenger. Nothing like immunity to hold and charm and dispel magic on every hit with a save bonus for your main character who must survive every fight.

That said, I did the red dragon quest absurdly early.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 10:18 am

Boolean wrote:I played an Inquisitor (paladin with massively powerful antimagic abilities) with the 2-handed holy avenger. Nothing like immunity to hold and charm and dispel magic on every hit with a save bonus for your main character who must survive every fight.

That said, I did the red dragon quest absurdly early.

Remember when Frank explained that THW are for suckers? Doubly so in BG. You can get a fighter to dual wield, do 3 times the damage, and have riders like negative levels ect.

The thing to keep in mind is that every attack gets the same Str bonus to damage, and there is no power attack.

I could easily get 10 attacks a round (the engine caps it at 10) and wail away.

And I was using Katanas half the time. And BG invented Katana's cutting through tanks. (You get a +3 one that stuns no save right out of the gate.)

shau · Post by **shau** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 12:15 pm

If we want to talk about cheesing BG2, I had fun just luring enemies into my fighter/thief's traps. Nothing like starting a dragon fight with a few thousand points of damage. The fact that you could buy an infinite number of rings that would cast improved invisibility once a day meant you could sneak attack whenever you wanted as well.

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Anatomy of a Failed Design: Role Protection.

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