D&D 4E Martial classes

[Garthanos]

I agree and even though I know the Damage on a miss stuff got a bad wrap here, I loved the one that let my dwarf fighter deal his con mod damage when he missed with an attack

Love the flavors of that sometimes as the "I never miss" precision and others as perhaps so aggressive the enemy always has to exert somehow to get out of really hurting.

 

[Undrave]

One of the things I liked most about 4E is that, through feats and powers, they made weapon choice actually matter. Instead of just "this one does d4 piercing, this one does d8 bashing," different weapon types had different applications -- spears and polearms were better for tripping and pushing, axes got better crits, swords were better for opportunity attacks, hammers could daze or stun, etc. As you built up your character, you were essentially building an unique fighting style, instead of just spamming one trick every round.

Heck, they didn't even bother with damage type. I agree that weapons were way more fun in 4e. It's like there was no room in 5e for making weapons interesting... The damage type barely EVER matter. Only a handful of monsters have resistances and even less have a weakness.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Love the flavors of that sometimes as the "I never miss" precision and others as perhaps so aggressive the enemy always has to exert somehow to get out of really hurting.

Yeah you can see it as "You may have blocked that blow, but it rattled up your shield arm" or "you may have ducked, but you had to do it so aggressively to not lose your head, that you twisted unnaturally". I could go on. In fact, there are so many ways to fluff it that I have to assume that anyone who thinks it's "unrealistic" just lacks imagination.

 

[Garthanos]

Yeah you can see it as "You may have blocked that blow, but it rattled up your shield arm" or "you may have ducked, but you had to do it so aggressively to not lose your head, that you twisted unnaturally". I could go on. In fact, there are so many ways to fluff it that I have to assume that anyone who thinks it's "unrealistic" just lacks imagination.

There was a heritage I felt in 3e where people expected the game to nail it all down its related to the "a rule for everything" ... Picturing game action the way you wanted is a D&D heritage back to 1e though, 4e gave me both game significant choices and by making it flexible, empowers my visualization.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Yeah you can see it as "You may have blocked that blow, but it rattled up your shield arm" or "you may have ducked, but you had to do it so aggressively to not lose your head, that you twisted unnaturally". I could go on. In fact, there are so many ways to fluff it that I have to assume that anyone who thinks it's "unrealistic" just lacks imagination.

My favorite was leaning into the Fantasy aspect and accepting that luck is an actual thing in the world and for certain characters, that's all their HP was. Damage on a miss was having such a close call that your luck literally almost ran out.

We also had the Bond rule where certain characters' HP was represented by clothing damage and healing was 'freshing up'.

 

[Garthanos]

My favorite was leaning into the Fantasy aspect and accepting that luck is an actual thing in the world and for certain characters, that's all their HP was. Damage on a miss was having such a close call that your luck literally almost ran out of luck.

My gameworld had characters who were regenerative and they had monster style hit points for them losing hit points were very real wounds in part because they were not instinctively cautious no matter how good their training. However healing those wounds was not only quick but drew on deep energy sources by way of a connection they had with something called the unicorn force both a talent and only controlled emotionally. It didnt require one reflavor a longtooth shifter, just describing things that way worked fine.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

My favorite was leaning into the Fantasy aspect and accepting that luck is an actual thing in the world and for certain characters, that's all their HP was. Damage on a miss was having such a close call that your luck literally almost ran out.

We also had the Bond rule where certain characters' HP was represented by clothing damage and healing was 'freshing up'.

The damage on a miss argument was stupid from the beginning.
Damage on a miss was always present in DnD with regard to spells.
Also fully clad warriors could always be hit without damaging the Armor in any way. So what is it if not a hit on the armor that you "noticed" or exhaustion from barely escaping deadly blows.

In Warhammer and in Rolemaster HP were merley exhaustions. In Warhammer you start getting wound once you are below 0 hp. In Rolemaster if you are hit with critical hits. HP are easily recovered.

So a fighter is so skiled that every attack wears you down at least a bit, that does not sound terribly metagamey or discconnected, but rather awesome. A fighter just knows what they are doing.

 

[Garthanos]

So a fighter is so skiled that every attack wears you down at least a bit, that does not sound terribly metagamey or discconnected, but rather awesome. A fighter just knows what they are doing.

It's very much a perfection of flavor to me.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

My favorite was leaning into the Fantasy aspect and accepting that luck is an actual thing in the world and for certain characters, that's all their HP was. Damage on a miss was having such a close call that your luck literally almost ran out.

We also had the Bond rule where certain characters' HP was represented by clothing damage and healing was 'freshing up'.

That's right, more creative examples!

So a fighter is so skilled that every attack wears you down at least a bit, that does not sound terribly metagamey or discconnected, but rather awesome. A fighter just knows what they are doing.

And it's really as simple as that.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

4e is my favorite edition, and the caster/martial balance is a big reason.

Having said that I really want a 'next' evolution of the game that follows more 4e path. weapon spesfic powers and feats mixed with skill powers and later PHB class modifications all seem like such good ideas.

in 2e we had house ruled ways to multi/not multi into casters called dablers so martial classes could cast, in 5e they did it with subclass, but 4e i saw the most martial classes stand on there own.