Power Struggle

(Did I mention I love my mid-to-late 90s/early 2000s rock?  Well, I do.)

How a game presents character options is kind of the central element of gameplay on the player side of the table.  In editions prior to 3rd, Dungeons & Dragons there were no real "active" abilities for non-caster characters (well, outside of lay on hands, maybe), 3rd Edition D&D added feats that could be selected as "features" (some were flat modifiers, some modified some existing abilities, etc.): Power Attack, Expertise, Spring Attack, etc. Fourth Edition brought in the idea of "powers for everyone", and while it was a gigantic step forward for several classes (the poor rogue and fighter benefited from it the most), it came at the price; every class "looks" the same.  Notice how I used "look" and not "feels" or "plays" the same; I've seen dramatic variations of gameplay within a single class that put 3rd Edition characters to shame (it my opinion, the 3.X rogue was the worst example of "every character plays the same").

So the challenge that lay before me when I started design work on classes was this: How do I ensure class mechanical parity while also diversifying the gameplay of each class?  I still haven't come up with a perfect answer, but I'll show you some of my work by contrasting the progress made on the Fighter with the some of the concepts done for the Wizard.

Definition of a Warrior

What makes a fighter a fighter?  What defines the class?  I have to agree with Mike Mearls (at least I believe it was him who said something to that effect) that designing the fighter was tougher than designing the monk.

Fighters are touchy to design; they're a broad archetype with dozens of valid interpretations: from the brawny battlerager to the dashing swashbuckler, the master marksman to the dedicated dwarven defender, all of those are exemples of fighters in various editions of D&D.  Compared to the monk or the ranger, he lacks a singular feature that defines both in combat and in the fiction of the game.  They also face a problem of identification; look at images of fighters in D&D-like games or systems and you'll discover that, at times, it's difficult to tell them apart from paladins, rangers, clerics or even rogues!

So the fighter has a bit of an identity crisis.  Still, there are a few areas where they have a clear place in the greater fiction of the game.

The defining trait for fighters seems to be their rapport to weapons; whenever one is portrayed, he or she is always wielding some sort of implement of war.

The Process

I decided upon three fighter archetypes for the original system document: the "sword-and-board" defender-type fighter, the aggressive, large weapon wielding-type fighter, and a sort of commander/battlefield marshal take on the class.  I then went through the powers list for the class, picking a few from the 4th Edition Warlord's list and began combining them into a sort of branching powers "tree".  The results were... less than satisfactory; it lacked personality and felt like an unoriginal retread of the 4E fighter.  That version got scrapped, and I looked to how Essentials D&D had approached the class.  There again, I found some interesting seed ideas, but nothing that struck me as something I could take up wholesale.

The break I had been looking for came when I began to look at the fighter's polar opposite: the wizard.  I found that, like the wizard, the fighter should have a currency, something that both symbolized its powersource and could become shorthand for its mechanics.  Where I settled on Essence being the wizard's currency, fighters got Bravery.

Once I had this figured out, I ran into another problem.  My process was still flawed, I was still trying to translate the list of 4E powers straight into my new system, applying a cost in Bravery to attack powers and utility powers... the end results sucked!  I was still faced with a bland class that lacked the depth of tactical play that the 4th Edition incarnation of the Fighter had, and because I had so many powers to choose from, I felt frustrated by how narrow I had to constrain myself.  But then it hit me: I'm not designing a new, full edition of D&D, and I should aspire to simply make a good little game that works and develop systems that work within themselves.

Bravery, Stances, Weapon Science, etc.

The core of the Forbidden Skies Fighter is Bravery; there are many ways for a fighter (and other classes I'll write about later) to gain Bravery, but they generally start an encounter with zero, and get more as the fight progresses.  Those points can be spent to trigger a number of different maneuvres that are tied to what weapons he or she is currently wielding and what fighting stance he or she is adopting.  Stances are the basic fighting postures the warrior can choose.  A Fighter might start knowing or mastering a single stance, but as he gains levels, he may choose to learn new ones.  For exemple, the defensive stance makes a fighter more adept at blocking attacks and making him tough to get by, while the aggressive ravager stance allows the fighter to deliver punishing blows and pushing his foes away with vigourous blows.

A Fighter begins his career mastering one specific set of tools.  As he gets more experienced, his mastery grows and he increases his skills with his primary weapons, but also masters other weapon groups.  The mechanics behind this feature closely mimic the 3rd Edition Ranger's favoured enemy ability.

Still, there remained a hole in the system: what about utility powers?  That came later... much later in fact.  And I'll write about this a little later, when things crystalize and take clearer shape.  Next time, I'll start an overview of the world of Forbidden Skies, the lands of Kyrohn.

Thank you again for reading, and be well.

E.L.F. - AKA The Choice