melnorme asked: Another example of "overcompensating fixes" to the Infinity Engine. You gave Fighters per-encounter abilities such as Knockdown to make them less boring and give them more control over the battlefield compared to the IE's "walk around and auto-attack" Fighter. But then you also added melee engagement to the game for largely the same reasons. Engagement sounds appealing when I imagine it overlayed on top of Baldur's Gate, but it seems less appropriate when you have so much other stuff to do.
I did a video update on melee engagement and making fighters “less boring” was not a reason I gave for its addition. Very early in development, players complained that IE melee characters were not sticky. Both 3.X and 4E D&D (especially the latter) have mechanics to address this. The AoO/OA systems can be triggered by many things — among them, moving away from a melee opponent who is adjacent to you (or who has marked you in 4E*).
PoE’s Disengagement Attacks are only triggered by movement and there are a number of things you can do to avoid Engagement, actively end Engagement, or passively exit Engagement with a high defense against Disengagement Attacks.
For fighters, using Knockdown is one way to quickly end Engagement against them by a single target because Prone ends Engagement. Graceful Retreat combined with a paladin’s Zealous Charge gives a total of +30 or +35 defense vs. Disengagement Attacks (the latter also increases movement speed, whether you want to waypoint around enemies or simply get away from them after being Engaged).
If a fighter is being Engaged by three+ opponents, it’s more difficult to get away, but fighters are also designed to more easily deal with being stuck in situations like that than a class like rogue. Rogues have access to abilities like Escape and Coordinated Positioning because they are more likely to have their faces stomped in if they try to take on three enemies in melee at once.
And again, it’s very easy to build front-line characters who are dominantly passive. For fighters, take
Vigorous Defense at 1st, something like Confident Aim or Defender at 3rd (they currently have more options at 3rd than any other front line class), specialize at 5th, take Weapon Mastery at 7th, Armored Grace at 9th, and Critical Defense at 11th. You could play the entire game with a fighter who only has one active use, per encounter defensive ability. You don’t even have to target anyone with it.
* Marks do not always trigger “official” OAs, but mechanically they are very similar.
