4e Martials Done Right?

So I get the disdain for D&D 4e and I'm not a huge fan of the changes they made in several aspects of the game. But one thing I did like was giving martial classes more to do, both in and out of combat. I've always liked having more options, which is why I've always preferred hybrid classes myself.

So how would you handle martial exploits/utility abilities that were present in 4e? What would you do to make them palatable? Beyond removing them, of course. One of the biggest complaints about the exploit system was that it made martials and casters interchangeable, so how would you keep exploits but differentiate them from caster abilities?

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Essentials was an attempt at this.

I think it could possibly be done well, I'm just not sure that it's really worth the effort.

>One of the biggest complaints about the exploit system was that it made martials and casters interchangeable, so how would you keep exploits but differentiate them from caster abilities

You could start by reading the fucking book.

You need a really complex system that emphasizes how in real life most combat is done by maneuver repetition rather than improvisation, making your character really good at some particular stuff and middling at others. Then, it must be coherent with the tone - a wizard that can do dimension bending has to contend with incredibly rapid bowmen and warriors that can hit someone from behind the horizon line. This is seen as too similar with magic, thus people don't like it. In short, if you want options, emphasize your character's maneuvers, unique personal tactics and possibly superhuman capabilities.

Also, 4e didn't make martials and castsrs interchangeable, it used the same engine with variations for each, including between casters, which makes casters and martials feel more distinct. But it did look similar, so people didn't like it:

>One of the biggest complaints about the exploit system was that it made martials and casters interchangeable
how do you fucks still not get that a game finally having good, unified formatting doesn't mean the powers are the same

I never said I thought this. I said that's a major complaint people have. I was challenging people who say that to come up with their own idea to make the system appeal to them.

Those people were going to find reasons not to play one way or another, even by lazy bullshit like this, so there is no point in trying to get them to play.

I've been panning around with this.

I am tempted to just straight up make superiority a 1/turn resource rather than short rest though.

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This isn't a "4e is good/bad" argument. This is a "how do you implement martial abilities well" discussion. So regardless of if they're going to play or not, I'd still want to hear their opinions. This is about the mechanics in question.

Also I gave fighters one Artisan or Instrument proficiency and a gaming proficiency. More stuff they can do downtime, and it makes sense that they would have SOME trade or hobby outside killing stuff.

Huh, that's neat.

The only thing that stops martials doing interesting things in any other edition of the game is a lack of imagination on the part of the martial.

There's no such thing as an uninteresting character class, just uninteresting players who need a big list of power buttons to press in exchange for an imagination.

so basically you want to keep martials good without the part that made martials good?
One of the reason 4E fizzled out were the Essentialy that tried to pander to grognards who didnt like that martials had "spells".

It doesnt work. 4Es system is good as it is

What if you added short rest cooldown abilities tied to martial-flavoured skills, like Athletics and Acrobatics. Like, if you are proficient in Athletics, you can move up to your speed as a bonus action, can't use it again until short rest. It would offer the most to martial classes that are more likely to have those skills, but would still be available to spellcasters if they want to go that way.

There's also the matter this is grossly unrealistic and doesn't really work. Fighting is made through repetition. How can you prove your fighter has mastered a particular type of maneuver (see: the many ways of striking any martial art has) when you haven't got something to prove it?

This superiority dice and maneuver system that 5E dabbled in is wishy washy.

The reason it exists is so that you can have 4E at wills without calling them that.
By inventing a "generic" system for maneuvers you can mask the fact that what you want to create is at will powers while mixing them in with what are basic things everyone can do.

But in the end you still are using what is basically 4E at will powers but with far less variety and far less flavour than 4E has.

I hate this stupid argument so much.

Playing 'Mother May I?' with the GM is not an excuse for shitty game mechanics and classes not being given the tools to do their job.

This is cool, Superiority is really powerful for 1/turn though.

One problem that still remains is reverse progression, where the fighter gets all the best Maneuvers at level 2, then gets worse ones at all the higher levels.

It's an impossible fix, I'm afraid. There will always be a best option.

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This. Why is it that wizards can do a bunch of things codified by the mechanics but a warrior has to ask the GM "hey, I to do X cool idea"?

>The only thing that stops martials doing interesting things in any other edition of the game is a lack of imagination on the part of the martial
Fuck off.
>hurr durr if martials were more creative
Then the martial would still have to play "DM may I" to do anything and then face penalties for doing basic shit that he should be able to do normally while the caster gets a full 3rd of the fucking book full of buttons to tell the DM to piss off.
>Can my martial dual wield at a moments notice if it becomes necessary DM?
>Sure with a -10 penalty so that its worthless to try
>Can I shoot my bow at someone over the horizon line
>Lol no, long range for a longbow is 300 feet
>Alright, I move up to this guy and attack him 4 times
>You can't full attack and move
5e doesn't solve the shit either because even if they did have all their combat maneuvers casters would still have narrative control with spells.

Every RPG game is mother may I. If your GM is so horrendously bad that he can only allow the specific list of abilities the rules deem your character is allowed to do in any given situation, why aren't you playing a video game?

If you have a shit DM and you pick your super cool daily power to use and he just says 'no it fails because the enemies are immune lol' , you're still playing mother may I. The rules do not give you a defence to shit dming. However constrictive rules like in 4E do hamper good gming.

The entire point of rpg's is the ability to do anything you want which a good DM facilitates.

>limited resource ability that lets you do a combat maneuver being used by players in DnD since B/X
>somehow 4e at-wills despite being limited, without going into the massive differences between 4e's over-complicated X vs Y x too many
I spend a lot of time in /4eg/ and I know you fucks aren't there and aren't playing.

The 4e trollpostiing has gotten outrageous on Veeky Forums lately. It's unbearable.

Is 10 years the new cooldown for something to be contrarian hipster central?

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Because the wizard can't do even 1/10th the things outside the codified mechanics that the warrior can.

They have different mechanics and focus, I'm sorry that your brain is too small for this.

So you'd be okay with casters having a 5 word description of each spell, with no information based on how many creatures it impacts, range or duration? And the casters then have to negotiate every spell they cast with the DM?

It's telling that the only interesting examples you can bring up are 'shooting a bow a long way', ' moving and hitting someone' and 'moving and hitting someone with two swords.

You're proving your horrendous lack of imagination and diet of video games.

So what you are saying is that i should come up with creative ways to attack my opponent as a martial.
And since we are talking about creativity here this does not mean i add a destrciption, but i chose to discribe the attack in such a way that it has an outcome on the battle.

Such as pushing my enemy around with my shield, goading him into attacking me so an ally can strike him. Catching a blade with my shiedl that was supposed to hit an ally.
Signaling my friends when there is an opening to strike.

And then the DM would, on spot, make up a dice roll that would correspond to my action, making the desired outcome happen.
But then the DM also needs to decide what moves are feasable for my character to make and which are not. These he could do on spot, or he could tell me beforehand what i couldnt do.

Meanwhile since we want to keep the game consistent, the DM should maybe write down what i have done before so he doesnt have to make these up on spot again.
Perhaps we could also categorize these descriptions so the combat doesnt drag on too long because theres other people other than me who also want to have their turns.

And then maybe we should need a name for these, since i am a martial and im just discribing my attacks, im not doing any magic and i dont ahve any restrictions when to do them, but i do them when i choose to.

Maybe we could call them at wills.
And maybe we could write them down so it isnt a huge hassle on the game.
And maybe we could balance them before hand so the GM, me and the other players know what is going on at each point during the game.

Gee i wonder why nobody has come up with a system for this.

We're playing best board game user. No need for any "Mother May I" every single thing you can or should do is written on your character sheet and you just pick from the list.

And you are completely missing the point.

Every character can improvise things based on talking with the GM. That is such a standard thing it doesn't require discussion.

But it's also entirely irrelevant when you're discussing what classes provide. When one class gives you a whole slew of incredibly powerful options you can use without any negotiation, and another gives you jack shit, then that's shitty game design and a fucking problem.

Alrighty, suggest 'creative' examples. Suggest something even more exciting and over the top so it can be even less functional.

>However constrictive rules like in 4E do hamper good gming.

Prove it you ignorant shitstain. Because I've run 4e, and you are completely talking out of your arse. 4e has incredibly effective structures and guidelines to support a GM and make their job easier, and they're no more restrictive than any other ruleset.

Well, you could invent more powerful maneuvers that are unlocked for purchase at higher levels, like 4e fighters or like the disciplines Way of the Four Elements monks get.

So a full party of casters is playing a boardgame is it?

Yeah that sounds good. I'm actually all for magic being a pretty loose and nebulous thing as this actually allows a GM to dictate how powerful magic is in his game rather than being forced to let the game itself decide.

This also forces the player to be imaginative when it comes to the spell and how he wants it to manifest and creates and means a spell is different every time rather than just being 2d10 fire damage at 30 foot to one target ( YAWN)

Likewise magic is obviously something that's going to be unique to a game and the world its in that we don't have any basis for in reality, whereas the myriad of things a martial can do are already set in reality and so you only have to extrapolate from that position rather than an extra imaginary one to work out something engaging.

That'd be really difficult, honestly. There's only so many maneuvers to begin with, and all the bases are already covered.

>Likewise magic is obviously something that's going to be unique to a game and the world its in that we don't have any basis for in reality, whereas the myriad of things a martial can do are already set in reality and so you only have to extrapolate from that position rather than an extra imaginary one to work out something engaging.

Yeah, no. The caster/martial double standard is fucking stupid.

If you're in a fantasy setting, then realism is irrelevant when it comes to martials. Mythic heroism and fantasy storytelling is a much better basis than how things worked in real life, because that's the exact same basis you're using for magic.

So make a suggestion on a system that incorporates exploits that works for you. That's what this thread is about, not bitching like you're doing.

I think the issue of the way Veeky Forums doesn't see Mother May I for martials as a flaw is that Veeky Forums knows very little of how any physical activity really is. It's almost entirely based on repetition, on doing the same thing over and over and over until the movement is burned into your memory and you do it as one cohesive moment and even then you have to go further and further and further until you have absolute control over it. That happens even in vidya, especially fighting vidya. Improvisation in fighting means you've run out of options.

It should be your last resort. Your first resort should be the thing you damn well know.

>Yeah that sounds good.

Great, so why are you playing D&D at all? Just sit down with your friends around a table and do storytelling. Why bother with the dice?

Literally any OSR system, or Runequest, or Harnmaster, or Rolemaster, or GURPS or BRP.

Basically anything that isn't 4E.

It's not that we're ignorant. It's that we're not stupid enough to assume that sort of dull real world bullshit is relevant to a game about over the top fantasy heroes, or to let tired 'realism' get in the way of interesting and enjoyable game mechanics.

Then have a discussion about those systems and why you like them, instead of trying to start arguments.

Great, so why are you playing D&D at all? Just sit down with your friends around a wargame table and play some warhammer/warmachine/mageknight. Why bother with roleplaying?

I mean, you're not wrong in that it's about over the top fantasy heroes, but the thing is - even those over the top fantasy heroes have trained for hours on end (or alternatively, been blessed with the spirits of gods in which case then those gods certainly must be better at doing certain things in particular) at a certain particular thing. The idea here is that someone in the martial side should be able to say "I wanna do this cool shit" much like how casters do and the DM will barely have a say in the matter, and this can be justified as the Martial just being that fucking good.

I don't care much for how powerful casters are from 3rd edition onwards in D&D however making every class a caster is a pretty awful solution for this unless you want to re-write the game entirely from the ground up with the premise like ARS Magicka does.

Adding martial exploits does not reduce roleplaying. You still have situations where you're having to discuss with the GM things that are not codified in the books.

You're the one who said you were entirely okay with freeform magic, not me. Magic even with the spells as they are, are not hard codified. The same would apply to martial exploits.

Except it didn't made every class a caster. The idea that only casters get activated abilities or resource mechanisms is a stupid D&Dism that isn't true at all in the wider roleplaying space. Hell, it's not even true in 3.5, it's just incredibly unevenly implemented.

Even then, you can have designated awesome martial abilities alongside a general set of guidelines for improvisation- Such as 4e's page 42, with slightly tweaked damage expressions to make them more worthwhile.

Personally? I'd make these "spells" whatever you want to call them more personal, rather than things that impact the world around you.

Instead of having a cleaving strike, your exploit allows you to make multiple attacks on a turn. Making it so that these abilities are more focused on improving the martial class using them, rather than the enemies, would differentiate them from the spells casters often use.

...Except casters also get buffing spells that work like that?

4e Remake when?

We can call it "Road Searcher"

Yes, I'm well aware. But you're still avoiding giving the martial classes things like "smoke bomb" or "throwing knife" that essentially is a casted, targeted spell.

It's more like Barbarian Rage.

There's a few poor fucks around Veeky Forums working on some, me included. We'll have to see if any of them get anywhere.

I just don't understand your logic there. How is a thematically appropriate, narratively common thing like throwing a hidden knife or pulling out a smokebomb equivalent to giving martials spells?

They're narrative abstractions, which all 4e style powers are. If you don't like narrative mechanics, you won't like them, but talk about them in those terms. Calling them 'spells' is just stupid.

I'm just trying to suggest ways that exploits could be added and made to feel unique compared to a wizard's repertoire.

Like, nobody calls barbarians casters because they can Rage, despite it being a self buff that they can use on demand.

>However constrictive rules like in 4E do hamper good gming.

You are such a retard I'm not even going to argument. You're a blight on the gaming world.

But they already feel unique in actual play. Their mechanics and they way they interact with features and items creates a very different experience of using them.

What they don't do is look different, because some people can't tolerate consistent formatting for some bizarre reason.

Your concession is accepted.

>So how would you handle martial exploits/utility abilities that were present in 4e?

I dunno, my immediate reaction is "like they are in 4e." I mean, if that's what you want, then that's what you want.

>What would you do to make them palatable?

I dunno, make it so that you can repeat encounter exploits up to your maximum allowance, rather than being able to use each once? That would feel more simulationist.

>One of the biggest complaints about the exploit system was that it made martials and casters interchangeable, so how would you keep exploits but differentiate them from caster abilities?

Impossible to fix, as it's not a real problem. The classes in 4e were distinct as fuck. I have no idea how you'd go about addressing this complaint, aside from changing the format of abilities, since I guess that may have made people think classes were interchangeable?

Here's the problem. How is "throwing knife" any different than any single target spell cast by a sorcerer or wizard, beyond the damage it does?

Instead, having an exploit like "Sword Throw" that gives your character a boost to their stats on demand, for a free action, means that your character can be BETTER at the action than anyone else for that moment. Anyone can still throw their weapon, but at that moment your sword is almost always going to sink to the hilt, blade first, in the enemy's chest.

That would require, potentially, an athletics check and for you to have a bladed weapon in your hand to use. That's what would separate it from "knife throw", which magically puts a throwing blade in your hand.

>I dunno, make it so that you can repeat encounter exploits up to your maximum allowance, rather than being able to use each once? That would feel more simulationist.

I'm always leery of this as it leads to the same problem Psionics had. Instead of each power having a unique opportunity cost, once you've used it it's gone, it becomes trivial to just spam the same thing over and over, making the actual tactical choices presented in the battle a lot less interesting.

There are no more or less restrictions built into 4e's rules than any other edition of the game. There's just concrete options martials can pick that aren't reliant on DM fiat.

Yeah, I think the same way. It's a bad idea.

But what OP wants is what would make these powers more palatable to the people who felt they were too videogamey. These people don't care about good game design, generally, so making abilities spammable should be fine with them.

...Because you're not casting a spell? I'm not seeing any reason to act as if they're at all the same thing.

And presumably it would be different because of the specific mechanical implementation, where it would interact with different features, have different keywords and do different things when you used it.

And no, a 'Throwing Knife' power does not magically summon a blade into your hand. There is no magic involved. It is a narrative power that plays off the trope of a rogue style character always having a knife handy- Which has plenty of thematic precedence, and seems a perfectly consistent basis for a power for me.

Out of interest, does the rogue actually have a power like this? I don't think there is one. IIRC all rogue exploits actually require you to have the weapon you're using.

You're looking at this from a narrative point of view. I'm looking at it from a mechanical point of view.

The big complaint about exploits were that it made classes similar mechanically, not story wise.

It doesn't matter if you're "not casting a spell". You could rename "Throwing Knife" to "Ice Spear" and it would remain, functionally, the same.

With "Throw Sword" you're actively forcing your character into a limited situation. The stat boost only applies to the character on that turn and only if they throw their weapon. It creates the exact same effect, but with more martial limitations. It is not a unique situation, as any character can throw their weapon, but either through luck, skill or a combination of the two, at that moment YOUR character is badass enough to throw their sword better than anyone else.

What, precisely, is wrong with my suggestion? I'm suggesting potential ways for exploits to work and all you're doing is arguing narrative.

>But in the end you still are using what is basically 4E at will powers but with far less variety and far less flavour than 4E has.
Then the next step is to introduce more.

>Hey GM , my rogue wants to use a flurry of flashblangs to temporarily blind my opponents
>cool use your power!
>Awesome the enemies stagger back blinded by my blows.

1 hour later

>another group of enemies appears
>I use my blinding barrage again!
>oh sorry you can only do that once a day user
>oh... why's that?
>just because rules say so lol, but you can do it again if you sleep for 8 hours...
>oh...

...Yep. No restrictions at all.

I believe Rogues got a smoke bomb skill that let them produce a bomb from nowhere.

>It doesn't matter if you're "not casting a spell". You could rename "Throwing Knife" to "Ice Spear" and it would remain, functionally, the same.

But that's not true. The tags would be different, the features each class has that interact with them would be different, potential synergies with feats, paragon paths or epic destinies would be different, etc etc.

The whole argument about similarity only works if you're being wholey reductive and ignoring the system as a broader thing, but a holistic view makes the actual distinctions incredibly clear, and it's that latter one which defines how they work in play.

You're fixing a problem that doesn't exist, IMO, with a solution that wouldn't actually mollify the people who complain about it anyway.

>you've run out of flash bangs and need a rest to make/find more
Done.

...How is that a restriction on the GM? Or are you just too retarded to follow the post chain?

Make the exploit allow you to throw any number of flashbangs. For each flashbang you throw, you roll to blind one enemy.

Boom, now there's a reason for your rogue to both buy or craft flashbangs and a limiation on the exploit that makes sense. You can use it as long as you have flashbangs.

Make crafting flashbangs require a long rest and you've also got a logical limitation.

>flurry of flashblangs

That's not what blinding barrage does. God you retards should just gather together and mass suicide like the cult you are.

I'm doing what the OP suggested while you're sitting here arguing about narrative. Fuck off if you don't want to contribute in a meaningful way.

>I don't want that happening, I go to the shops/alchemist supplies and stock up on as many as I can carry
>lol you can't do that because reasons


This is called a 'disassociated' mechanic and it's one of the many reasons 4E is trash. The mechanics don't translate into the game world and so instead of being a roleplaying game where you can make logical choices and they happen in the world it's a video game where you just sit and wait for your cooldowns to be active in order for the game to allow you to do something interesting again.

I'm arguing about narrative because exploits are a narrative mechanic. In a thread about how to do 4e mechanics 'right', there's plenty of room for the argument that they were done right to begin with.

>Hey GM , my rogue wants to use a flurry of flashblangs to temporarily blind my opponents

This wouldn't be an exploit, it would be an improvised action using flash bomb items.

A better example would be the Sand in the Eyes power. Using it once allows you to throw sand in a dude's eyes, blinding him, and make an attack in the same action. However, doing this over and over again is hard, so if you want to do this again it will be two normal actions - one check to blind with the sand, and then an standard attack.

Learn to play the game before talking shit.

'disassociated mechanics' are a stupid buzzword and The Alexandrian is a hack

Also, you're a retard. If they really wanted to do that, that's why consumable items exist, nothing stops you stocking up on those and using as many as you like. The power, however, would represent the narrative convention of a character always having a fallback, a trick up their sleeve even when it seems like they're completely spent.

>One of the biggest complaints about the exploit system was that it made martials and casters interchangeable
This never happened. Martials and casters have access to very different effects and scaled differently if you bothered to pay attention to what their powers actually did and how their class features interacted with them. A Fighter isn't summoning up a giant hand of ice that stays around and grapples enemy, nor is he summoning a marilith or a flaming sword that mimics his every move.

I think Legend did it better if only because it was less afraid of having powers with different usage limitations(ie: one ranger 5th circle ability is twice per encounter, one rogue 5th circle ability is at-will, and one sage 5th circle ability is once per round), but I also think Legend is a weaker game than 4E because of how much harder it is to GM.

True, blinding barrage does

Hit: "2[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target is blinded until the end of your next turn."

Miss: "Half Dexterity modifier damage, and the target is not blinded."

It's a video game ability and has no relation to what is happening in the gameworld, its flavour being meaningless.

>disassociated' mechanic
Oh its you again. Kindly get a trip so we can filter you.

Except there's no actual powers that do this. Exploits that cause items to randomly materialize do not exist, at least not for martial classes.

So argue that with somebody else. I'm discussing the mechanics. It's apples and oranges. If somebody is talking about it not working narratively, then that's the discussion you can have.

Are you actually retarded? Serious question.

But I am discussing mechanics. Because exploits are narrative mechanics, thus powers operating on narrative rules or conventions is part of those mechanics.

Do you think he's the user from /osrg/ with no point, or the one from 4e threads where it's pretty accepted that he's correct?

Sometimes I wonder if it's the same user.

>or the one from 4e threads where it's pretty accepted that he's correct?

What?

It's only inherent because you don't gain access to better maneuvers as you level.

It's easy to accept that 4e has a lot more disassociated mechanics than most other role-playing games.

But just because it does, doesn't mean that it's bad or can be used as a pejorative.

Incorrect. One hundred knives.

The stock fluff for it is that your shots spray the creature's blood into its face, or open wounds in areas that would bleed into its eyes.

That said, like all 4e powers, it's designed so that players can describe their character's own actions in relation to it.

>its flavour being meaningless.
>A rapid barrage of projectiles leaves your enemies clearing the blood from their eyes
????

So then you'd be all for my "Sword Throw" idea, wouldn't you?

>Because the wizard can't do even 1/10th the things outside the codified mechanics that the warrior can.
[citation needed]

I personally liked 4e because you could play a martial hero and still keep up with casters. I thought that it really encouraged players to pick what they wanted instead of being in that weird spot where they're thinking during character creation, "Well I want to play a martial hero but casters are just better..."

Everyone has more fun when they're playing what they want to play without any reservations, instead of either playing something they didn't want to play becuase, "Well we need this" or feeling useless becuase they didn't pick something with more utility.

I just reject the notion of 'dissociated mechanics'.

It relies on the false assertion that the only basis for mechanics is the setting, which isn't and has never been true. The setting, the story or the needs of the game have always been valid basis for mechanics, to a greater or lesser extent, and all games vary these up. Calling them non-simulationist mechanics would be a much more honest way of putting it rather than hiding behind nonsense terminology.

Incorrect. Here's the flavour text for One Hundred Knives:

>Your blade blurs as you plunge it into your foe again and again.

You don't magically produce a hundred knives, you just stab your foe a fuckton of times very quickly.

I liked Tome of Battle

>Calling them non-simulationist mechanics
Holy fuck, I think this is the best thing that's come out of this entire debate. NAYRT, but I think I understand where you're coming from now.