The Campaign Builder's Guild

Currently, I'm working on a number of articles that I am submitting to Dragon Magazine; I hope that they'll buy some of my pieces, and I'll get to start making a name for myself as a designer. Because of the nature of the submission guidelines, though, I probably shouldn't work on my future submissions on a public message board.[note]As I told Nomadic, my late New Years Resolution is that I will not be posting on the WotC boards for some time. Long story short, I'll be working on my projects here rather than there.[/note]

But, I do have a few project ideas that I will not be submitting (mostly any project that comes off with the notion of "this is better than what you've done WotC"). One of the 4E projects I've been fiddling with for some time is the creation of a Martial Controller. I got midway through building my Archer class when I realized I was breaking one of my own class design rules: a class needs to cover a wide variety of character types. My Archer class, unfortunately, was only really covering one character type: coincidentally, the Archer. That narrow focus for the class was making the class a little boring. I could have continued with it, but I decided to take a wider look at the concept of a Martial Controller.

The current martial classes boil down to the following large character types:

*Tough Warrior.
*Tricky Warrior.
*Leader Warrior.
*And the Ranger.

Currently, the Ranger confuses my group. Purely looking at the mechanics of it, the TWFing build and the Archery build seem to have nothing in common to unite them in a single class. Looking at the fluff of the class, the Ranger is generally described as a scout, a tracker, a woodsman, a hunter, etc. One thing that unites these character types is Perceptiveness, so I will look at the Ranger as the Perceptive Warrior. The Ranger is the warrior who fights by knowing their enemy, anticipating their movements, and determining the best way to take them down.

So, rather than try to make a new class to fill the Martial Controller role, I'm going to be working on an alternate Ranger to fill that role. This is something I had hoped to see when 4E came out; I was thinking that the Ranger could be a Controller through use of their Archery, their Pet, and Traps. Instead, we got two Martial Strikers, one which seemed to be made from two unrelated character types. Now that 4E has the Tempest Fighter from Martial Power, I don't believe the Ranger needs to be the game's devout TWFer (I do think that anyone should be able to use two weapons, and I'm going to look at retooling the TWFing feats).

Instead, I believe the melee Ranger should be recast as a polearm user. The polearm's reach will give them better capacity for controlling the battle field. Even though I want to make all classes use a single attack stat, I believe the Ranger can still work as Str or Dex as attack stat with Wisdom as primary stats: this is because I cannot envision an unwise Ranger. I believe it will still work and allow for character variety because the Ranger will have many powers work as melee or ranged, Str or Dex; this way they will still have as many power options as other classes. I will also tweak the Beastmaster Ranger powers to be melee or ranged, mostly because I have a player who would like to play a bow using beastmaster ranger, and I believe a DM should seek to allow their players to play what they want (as long as it's reasonable; the no-armed swordsman sounds a little to ridiculous to make for a player, lol.

So, the first step towards making the Ranger a controller is to change their Hunter's Quarry ability from a striker ability to a controller ability. I believe this should be doable. The ability is described as the Ranger watching the foe so closely that they know just where to strike; instead, I think it could be changed to be described as the Ranger watching their foe so they can anticipate their actions.

At the moment, though, I can only think of one way to change it: allow the Ranger to make attacks of opportunity against their quarry, even at range or outside of adjacent reach (so a polearm user could attack someone in their reach that isn't adjacent). This would be control because it would discourage certain actions (moving away from your allies or making ranged or area attacks mostly). It shouldn't be more damage than Hunter's quarry (which is 1d6 per tier) since an attack roll and a trigger are required: At first level, a ranger's basic attack will be around 1d10+3, or 8.5 average damage, but it has a 50% or so miss chance, reducing the expected damage to 4.25, and it has to be triggered.

But I am wholly aware that there are probably better solutions. Any ideas?

Kerbump. I know there has got to be a few 4E players around here. Even if you're not, out of rules brainstorming on an ability to represent a hunter's careful eye would be helpful.

maybe allowing the ranger to attack adjacent targets? It is possible by sliding your hands closer to the head of the weapon.

Reach weapons no longer attack in a "doughnut". You can attack adjacent creatures and creatures 10 ft. away, but you can only make attacks of opportunity against adjacent creatures unless you have "threatening reach".

My idea was to give Rangers effectively "threatening reach" against their quarry. True threatening reach is currently unaccessible to PCs, so I'd be wary of giving it wholesale.

As I understand 4e, giving any PC threatening reach right now would be slightly over powered by the design standards. I predict you may see it in a power creep, though.
So go ahead and give it, see what happens. Then at lvl5, give them an encounter power that works as an opportunity attack that causes immobilize on a failed save, or something.

Remember that character classes are designed around having at most two builds. If you design a class for 4e, make sure it's powers/spells/abilities/feats are split into two categories featuring two different stat foci with differing effects.

Yeah, I'm going to keep the melee and ranged builds, just changing it so the melee build is a polearm user rather than a TWFer.

Threatening Reach is currently worth something more than a feat. There is a feat which effectively gives it, but you have to provoke combat advantage (sneak attack susceptibility, and you grant +2 to hit against yourself) from any target you take the OA against (and it's only allowed for OAs provoked from the person moving into a square adjacent to you from a square 10 ft. away).

Well I've been sitting on this for a while but this is what I've got so far.

For the melee build. I like the use of a polearm, I think it fits nicely (even if it steps on the polearm warriors toes). I don't know if theres a quarterstaff for 4e, but that could also be a weapon that could be used. Its versatile, can block/attack and is quite deadly in the hands of a master.

You mention that you want to Ranger to be the Perceptive Warrior. One direction I can see this being taken is giving the Ranger the ability to trip/knockdown opponents, perhaps an encounter power. Other things they could do would be slowing (ala cut hamstring/broken knee) and knocking back/prone as some daily powers.

For the ranged Ranger (haha) I don't see how you could make someone a controller, instead of say a striker. However if this is combined with the Beastmaster bit (having a pet I believe) the pet could be the control bit, with the odd shot helping out.

I've pretty much gotten the powers down; that's the easy part with me. In fact, all of the current controllers control entirely through their powers; not one of them have a controller class ability (one could argue that Wand Accuracy is control when combined with a controller power, and that Orb Supremacy aids in control, but both are 1/encounter which miffs me).

As for controller powers for the ranged ranger, that's the easy part. Push (show that makes you stumble), prone (shot to the leg), dazed (painful shot, requires time for the arrow to be removed), slowed (shot to the leg), immobilize (clothes or body pinned to the ground or a wall), zones to discourage movement (raining arrows down on an area).

Right now I'm looking for ideas on how to tweek the "Hunter's Quarry" ability to be a controller's ability. The AoO idea I have right now isn't quite sitting with me right, because it seems to overly control artillery monsters than it does to melee monsters.