I'll apologize in advance if I leave anything out. :)
It's come up in several places, but I'd just like to throw out there--and put forward a hope that the final Pathfinder changes will make it possible for defenders to be defenders. I hope this will be attacked from several angles--it itself is a complex issue that deserves a multilateral approach.
A survey of the boards shows these suggestions, some echoed by Jason, some not:
- Lifting or lessening the restrictions imposed on movement based on armor could help.
- Adding abilities to paladins, fighters, (monks?) to intercept/slow the BBEG before it gets to the wizard could help. The classic "defender" role, the guy in the heavy armor and shield.
- Adjusting the movement/action disparity between martial classes and casters could help.
- Adjusting the to-hit and AC values of monsters to bring them more in-line could help.
- Including more feats for the S&B fighter to make their role more interesting could help.
- Including more feats for defender-style fighting to make this role more interesting could help.
These are aimed at seeing the defender being a defender, and taken together would seem to approach it from several levels. ...It seems a complex problem, to me, overall, that "just a few feats" or "alot of feats" wouldn't fix. (Besides, "just add a feat!" when it comes to patching just...please no. I don't want my character walking around as "one big patch!" :) )
I like the above ideas, and while we've to some degree, all been treating Pathfinder as the Holy Grail to Fix Everything, I'm going to just say I hope at least it'll alleviate the issue, and make these sorts of PCs more interesting to play.
To anyone, if I've missed your suggestion, it wasn't intentional. I had to sacrifice specifics for generality here, or risk taking up 20 or so pages.
My proposal for this was to allow characters to ready a partial charge. This would mean that a defender could move and attack when an enemy approaches their ally, and be in the enemy's way afterward, breaking any charges.
Flavorfully, this corresponds to actually running to intercept the charging dragon, which is what should happen, rather than what currently happens, which is that no matter what way the fighter runs, the dragon can choose to run the other.
My proposal for this was to allow characters to ready a partial charge. This would mean that a defender could move and attack when an enemy approaches their ally, and be in the enemy's way afterward, breaking any charges.
Flavorfully, this corresponds to actually running to intercept the charging dragon, which is what should happen, rather than what currently happens, which is that no matter what way the fighter runs, the dragon can choose to run the other.
Aye. "Battlefield control" can belong to the wizards, socrerers of the bunch, but defenders need to be able to defend and tie up the BBEG. Prevent it from getting through the lines, which was a classic role of infantry. "Don't let them break through!"
I saw a challenge mechanic in one playtest that I enjoyed, but it seemed a little too 4e. The "attacks for movement" feats seem nice, too. The one issue there I see with the latter is:
"I'm a warrior, so moving and attacking is always going to be important. So, because I need to do that I'm going to take these feats that let me do that." Says the set of warrior after warrior, chiming in unison.
The warriors then look back and go, "Oh, crud! Now I don't have any room for anything interesting, because I basically spent all my slots on required feats that let me move around like I should've been able to." ...don't "charge" the PC for a patch, in other words.
So I very much hope this doesn't happen. It would be the new Power Attack, something every martially-focused PC would be required to have. So, a very big "please no" on this.