What is a Fighter, Anyway?

One of the problems we're having in Aeronauts right now is the design of the combat. Combat is something I've wrestled with in every system I've DM'd in - Dungeons and Dragons, Eclipse Phase, Exalted, pretty much anything where there's a bad guy the players want dead. Of those that I've run, Dungeons and Dragons (and its offshoots) is the only one that puts any real work into trying to tell the DM how to make a decent encounter. Even then, all it really does is say "throw this much monster at your group", and then weights the monsters. That's fine for making sure a party isn't overmatched, but lousy if the monster happens to have a special ability that completely negates one or more of the party members (I'm looking at you, golems). The group may still pull through, but during that combat, one of the players isn't going to be doing very much, won't be terribly engaged, and in general won't have a good time. Now, a good DM can work around that and make sure they always pick monsters that engage every player, but the point I'm trying to make here is that D&D (which, as a reminder, does this the /best/ of any system I've seen) doesn't help the DM out at all in trying to make sure that every player is engaged in every combat.

If your players aren't engaged, there can be... consequences.

That's something we're trying to do with Aeronauts; we want the DM's job to be made easier when running and designing the game, so we want to be able to give the DM the tools to create encounters that will be engaging for all members of the party. Likewise, we have a goal of trying to support any kind of party the players want to make. Dungeons and Dragons has this assumed constraint where you'll probably have an evenly distributed group. Someone will be the muscle (like a fighter), someone will be the healer (like a cleric), and someone will be the caster (like a wizard). Anyone else who enters the party can be whatever they want, as long as those three roles are fulfilled already. I think a DM might have to work a little harder on their encounter design to support a party of a fighter, a barbarian, a monk, and a rouge, or four specialist wizards. 

It's a situation that really requires a unique campaign setup.

We at Electric Purple Studios have been thinking a lot about encounter design lately. Ideally, we want each player to have something to do in combat (players get bored very quickly otherwise) and to be threatened by something (otherwise the encounter feels very easy for that player, a problem I've had with wizards in D&D in the past). We've had some success in our designs, but I think we can do better. The question is, what makes a good encounter? I thought I'd analyze an existing system to find out, and it occurred to me that although the monster / XP system in Dungeons and Dragons is complex and ill-balanced, the classes themselves tend not to be. And so, I begin a multi-part series: examining the abilities and behavior of the basic, default classes in Dungeons and Dragons. Today: The Fighter.

Always fun to go back to basics.

Let's start at level 1. The level 1 fighter is nice and simple. He gets one move action and one standard action. The move action can be used to do a lot of things in theory, but in practice it's only ever used to move. A monster might do something that gives the fighter something else to do with the move action, but those are exclusively reactive actions rather than player choices, and more often than not are just a tax on the player (for example, being tripped and then having to stand up). The standard action can be used to attack or (if you're feeling daring) to make a SPECIAL attack, such as (shudder) disarm, or (shudder shudder) grapple. In theory, the special attacks would allow fighters a greater degree of freedom in choosing how to approach different enemies, but in practice, the subsystem is messy and punishes players for trying to use it unless they have specialized their character into using one of those particular attacks. 

Some DMs prefer to avoid those rules.

So, ignoring special attacks for the moment, the level one fighter can move and attack, and that's really it. Nice and simple, but not very deep. Now thematically, the fighter rushes headlong into battle and either slays the enemy or holds the line long enough for his buddies to do something nasty. However, if this was all the fighter was, then the monsters would really have no incentive to hit the fighter until they had moved past him to devour his less-armored wizard buddy. _His actions don't allow him to do anything to stop the monsters apart from killing them_. And yet, a majority of first-level wizards remain uneaten. The players don't always engage in claustrophobic five-foot-wide hallways where the monsters physically can't move around the fighter, so how can this be? The answer is in a much maligned system in Dungeons and Dragons: the Attack of Opportunity.

Oh, come on. It's not that bad. Stop hiding under the bed.

The Attack of Opportunity is a system that makes melee combat 'sticky'. If you're unfamiliar, the rule is a perhaps-overly-complicated way of saying that once you're in melee combat with someone, you must first move away from them before you can move around them, or else they get to make a free attack against you. This means that a fighter now covers more area than just his single square to prevent enemies from moving, and encourages him to continue to re-position himself relative to his opponent to ensure that he always stands between the hungry monster and the tender, succulent wizard. Helping that idea is another subsystem the game uses: the five-foot step. Even if you don't want to use a whole action to move anywhere in a turn, or moving would otherwise trigger attacks of opportunity, you can always move one square (five feet; hence the name, see? clever). This means the monster can fully direct its attention to the fighter engaging it, but also edge its way closer to the rest of the group where it can be more effective, and the fighter can prevent that movement as long as possible. So, these two systems (which are true for everyone, by the way) combine to ensure that combat stays mobile and that even players whose action space is severely limited are encouraged to watch the board and move tactically to make the most of the systems. 

Keep your eye on the ball. Or, monster. Whatever.

So, what does it all mean? Well, the fighter is more complex than he appears at first glance. In terms of how we've been thinking for Aeronauts, his job in combat is not just 'hit the monster', but 'prevent that monster from getting to my friends'. The source of the damage he takes is then any monster who wants to damage his friends - he takes that damage onto himself, but likely reduces it due to having higher defense. He controls the battlefield, but he has to keep in mind the basic rules of the game more than his class features to do so. It's possible, though difficult, to engage more than one monster at a time with the AOO rules, so he'll be less effective against a larger number of smaller creatures or against fast creatures, and more effective against fewer large creatures or against fewer slow creatures. Since he shifts the focus of attacks from his teammates to himself, he also puts himself in more danger the tougher the individual monster is. Also, since he's just taking advantage of the core rules in order to fulfill his class role, it means that other classes can be as effective in the "fighter" role without having to list the same "fighter" feature over and over again in each class. Whether this is bad because it makes the fighter a non-unique character class or whether this is good because it allows basically anyone to step into that role when it's needed is an exercise left to the reader. 

Although some classes definitely go too far in the other direction of complexity.

What does this mean more generally? Well, it means that if someone wants to play a sort of defensive role and protect their allies while dealing damage, there needs to be some way to force the enemies to shift focus to that player and away from other players. This is a little harder if most of the battlefield has ranged attacks, and it less necessary if characters are more even in terms of their survivability. Characters with equal health and similar defenses don't need to protect each other as much as a heavily-armored, tough fighter needs to protect his sickly wizard buddy. Speaking of, the next post will be all about that stick-thin master of eldritch and arcane magic. Stay tuned.

-Olivaw Out