Fighters, battlefield control, and protecting allies

[xanen]

I've been reading the threads about "what's wrong with fighters", and I sympathize. You can make a fighter that competes fine in the damage arena (giving it out and taking it), but has issues with anything that interferes with that straight-forward "I hit them really hard" ability.

One area I see discussed a lot is battlefield control -- intercepting enemies before they spike the spell-casters, denying enemies their actions, etc. I think this is a very valid area to focus on, and hopefully doing that will bring out a couple ideas for improving upon this.

I'm not a big fan of 4E attempts to better this (as I understand them; I'll admit to only skimming the rules, because I'm not interested in changing my games to that large an extent -- this is why 3P appeals to me), but I think they are dead on in noticing that fighters need more options.

One class that catches my eye is the Knight from PHBII -- the knight has abilities that let her force enemies to treat her threatened squares as rough terrain, which is a simple enough ability that can make some differences in a battle -- you break charges, deny 5-foot steps, make people pay double movement, etc. They also have the ability to absorb blows that would have struck allies (the Devoted Defender PrC from 3.0 also did these sorts of things).

I propose making feat chains along these lines. One simple enough feat might be:

Intercepting Movement
---------------------
As an immediate action, take a 5 foot step that places you either in the path or adjacent to a moving enemy. If the enemy does not avoid you and continues to move, you make take an AoO even if you have no AoO's left for this turn.

This lets the fighter at least have an option to engage the enemy rather than be run around. He's going to force the enemy to stop in a square of his choice, and probably be able to also place himself near allies in order to use a second feat like this:

Protect Ally
------------
As an immediate action, place yourself in the path of harm for any single ally adjacent to you. You declare this intent anytime the ally is the target of a successful attack, but before damage is determined. This protection extends to all weapon attacks, as well as weapon-like spells such as rays that require a target roll. By taking this action, you received the damage in place of the ally

I think these sorts of ideas, developed into a chain of 2-3 feats each, could give a reasonable fighter some extra options for dealing with "weird stuff". If you have a mage casting spells but surrounded by summomned flying demons, you need some option that lets you affect them, and deduce their air superiorty

I dislike "super-natural" ability justifications for why tough guys attack fighters first (which is what 4E uses) -- an essential magic ability lets your fighter taunt enemies into battle so he can be the tanker. I'd like to see less of that and more or "I'm the commander, I know the field of battle, I will force you to fight on my terms.

In looking at 3P, pondering a 5 lvl fighter, I see that he has 7 feats;
he can easily take a killer package of Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, One of the +2 to saves bonus sfeat, Skill Focus: Diplomacy (so he can keep him men in order. With Toughness a nice choice too, he'll take that an leave himself with one feat choice. Taking something like Intercepting Movement at last give a chance for the fighter to be a movin nerfer in the combat, bolluxing up their lines and setting up th rogues and spellcasters to pick apart the less focus enemy ranks

Just from these basic ideas, could something come out? I think being oble to more swiftly and the battlefield and to take control of foes and friends is how a fighter does battlefield control in the large.

I'd be most interested in a couple simple feats and feat chains that give the fighter a chance to pursue some options that might better his enjoying in playing.

[Mistwalker]

You are a touch early to be talking about feats.

The schedule has the discussion on feats starting November 10th.

Jason has indicated that he plans on having a fair number of feats that will be of benefit to the fighter.

I like the idea of a feat that will stop a charge/movement past a fighter, for a round.

As long as people realize that us nasty GMs will use those same feats against the players....

[Diego Bastet]

While Its early, you can just make your topic about feats and we all can discuss it.

[Mosaic]

xanen wrote:

One area I see discussed a lot is battlefield control -- intercepting enemies before they spike the spell-casters, denying enemies their actions, etc. I think this is a very valid area to focus on, and hopefully doing that will bring out a couple ideas for improving upon this.

I'm not a big fan of 4E attempts to better this ...

I've only played twice, and then only low level, but the whole Marking thing in 4E seemed kinda' cool. Basically, you engage an opponent and if they attack anyone but you ... crap! now I can't remember ... you get an AoO? they take a penalty? Something like that. Anyway, they are "encouraged" to attack you and only you. Anyone have any more experience with this, good or bad?

There are also a lot of feats in 4E that allow you to push/pull/switch places with an enemy. At first it seemed to make things much more dynamic, albeit, miniature dependent. Anyone with some real experience with these?

[tallforadwarf]

Mosaic wrote:

Anyone have any more experience with this, good or bad?

It works okay until you use it against the PCs. Then it's no fun and seems drastically unfair. The same would probably be true if you ported the idea to 3.0/3.5/3P, but I've not played with anything like this in these systems.

Peace,

tfad

[Christopher Walker]

Why not just add Combat Maneuver option to allow the fighter to control the battlefield with. A "Slide" maneuver, a "pull" maneuver could be added. A push maneuver allready exists = bull rush.

These could be made more difficult and add the ability to do them as an immediate action. This would definately slow down the game however.

[xanen]

tallforadwarf wrote:

Mosaic wrote:

Anyone have any more experience with this, good or bad?

It works okay until you use it against the PCs. Then it's no fun and seems drastically unfair. The same would probably be true if you ported the idea to 3.0/3.5/3P, but I've not played with anything like this in these systems.

Peace,

tfad

Why is it that letting the fighter (or paladin, or whomever takes the relevant feats) 5-foot step as an immediate action (in restricted circumstances) is unfair, but the wizard with a Quickened Grease (or even a readied action for the same) can nerf someone just as bad or worse?

I'm not in favor of any supernatural-ish "you must attack this person" abilities, but if I told my players "The wizard's bodyguard is staying very close to him, moving to either strike people approaching or to put himself in front of attacks", they'd be OK with that. I know from prior campaigns with these players that they definitely like to use tactics like that themselves.

Where I find taunt abilities and the like to be very MMO and not sensible as default abilities, these sorts of tweaks seem very in keeping with the just-slightly-beyond real abilities fighters should be developing in the game. If you can accept that these characters have beyond-Olympic ability scores and beyond Special Forces training, you can almost buy that they are incredibly dangerous foes that should be able to threaten anyone within 10-15 feet of them, and should be avoided at all costs.

[xanen]

Christopher Walker wrote:

Why not just add Combat Maneuver option to allow the fighter to control the battlefield with. A "Slide" maneuver, a "pull" maneuver could be added. A push maneuver allready exists = bull rush.

These could be made more difficult and add the ability to do them as an immediate action. This would definately slow down the game however.

They might be possible to do by default with no feat, but they should be AoO-provoking and non-immediate in that case. The feat would then open up the improved maneuver that is non-provoking and immediate.

[Dennis da Ogre]

xanen wrote:

Intercepting Movement

---------------------
As an immediate action, take a 5 foot step that places you either in the path or adjacent to a moving enemy. If the enemy does not avoid you and continues to move, you make take an AoO even if you have no AoO's left for this turn.

Protect Ally

------------
As an immediate action, place yourself in the path of harm for any single ally adjacent to you. You declare this intent anytime the ally is the target of a successful attack, but before damage is determined. This protection extends to all weapon attacks, as well as weapon-like spells such as rays that require a target roll. By taking this action, you received the damage in place of the ally

Nice thoughts here. Save these for the feat discussion.

[xanen]

Dennis da Ogre wrote:

xanen wrote:

Intercepting Movement

---------------------
As an immediate action, take a 5 foot step that places you either in the path or adjacent to a moving enemy. If the enemy does not avoid you and continues to move, you make take an AoO even if you have no AoO's left for this turn.

Protect Ally

------------
As an immediate action, place yourself in the path of harm for any single ally adjacent to you. You declare this intent anytime the ally is the target of a successful attack, but before damage is determined. This protection extends to all weapon attacks, as well as weapon-like spells such as rays that require a target roll. By taking this action, you received the damage in place of the ally

Nice thoughts here. Save these for the feat discussion.

Well, the exact feats need to be worked on. My biggest thought was, is this a direction to even look into? I'm phrasing my intentions as feats because that seems to be the best way to embody this. In 3.5, these sorts of things ended up either as abilities of non-core classes (like the Knight) or as PrC's. Neither one is a 3P kind of thing, in fact more and more everyone seems to be saying "minimize or eliminate prestige classes".

A lot of these abilities seem too good to be normal maneuvers, though. If we slide them over to feats and have a clear path of "here are feats for controlling movements, here are feats for protecting your allies, here are feats for nerfing opponents (daze, stun, etc)", I'm all in favor of that.

I'll keep working on these, maybe playtest them a bit myself. Suggestions welcome.