You mean +2 is an automatic failure in 3rd edition.
Really? How often does a +2 succeed? Even at level one, a +2 to a skill check (with no training) is going to fail more often than it succeeds. At higher levels? You won't stand a chance. The guy who's focused on the skill has a bonus that is so much higher than yours that one of two things happens; he will automatically succeed at most such checks, so your +2 is not needed, or the DM will have the DC's scaled to match his bonus, which means your +2 will never succeed. With flat math, even with the highest skill bonus you can start with (+8), you still have a chance to fail even low-DC tasks. And automatic failures (DC higher than 20) are reserved for only the most difficult tasks.
Your point? 6 was where we ran out of spare hit points.
Ok, I'll concede that duration isn't necessarily a limiting factor. Our group played things cautious, lured single monsters out and the like, so we ended up not losing much HP.
However, there is still the fact that the Fighter, even if you have your spell, is flat-out better at combat.
Having just looked at the fighter sheet, only +2 damage is mentioned on there. There is a further +1 to hit and +2 damage that is never explained. And the Cleric has +1AC that is unexplained, the wizard has +1 to hit that is seemingly unexplained. But this math has been through time and again. And the +1 never mysteriously materialises.
Sorry, you're right, that wasn't explained on the sheet; I got the two abilities mixed up. The +1 attack, +2 damage was revealed by earlier playtesters to be a "built in" class feature. Weapon Focus is going to be an option that can be chosen starting at level one, with other options able to replace it. The +1 attack and +2 damage is going to be given to all Fighters, no matter what options are chosen.
(Nobody knows about the Cleric's AC or the Wizard's attack. Though some have speculated that Wizard's might be the "focused offensive magic" type, and gain +1 to spell attacks. But that's just speculation.)
The trouble is that he's both too combat focussed and not good enough at combat. I called out the 2E Fighter as good for a reason. The 2E fighter (or post UA Fighter) has Weapon Specialisation. He attacks half as often again as anyone else.
He has the highest hit points, the highest attack, the highest damage... how is that "not good enough" at combat?
(Also, it doesn't have any bearing on the discussion, but for clarity; the phrase should be "... half again as often." Though even that's a little clunky to say...)
That Hold the Line and Defender are a sucky combination as part of the same package.
How so? Hold the Line protects allies that are too far away for you to use Defender on, while Defender protects the allies that are right next to you. The fact that they both use the same action means nothing, since they're both for completely different scenarios. And they fit an overall
theme (hey, fancy that... "Theme") of protecting your allies. They're just two different, yet equally effective ways of doing so.
And this is the part I'm calling an insult. We do improvise. We do do cool things. Some of which are right there on the sheet, some aren't, and some are uses of the things on the sheet that the designers probably never thought of (like the Death from Above from a thief).
Implying that players of any RPG anywhere is to me an insult to all the players of that RPG.
Your group may do this... but, as I said earlier, dozens that I have personally witnessed do not. I ran Encounters at a local gaming shop, with a new group of players almost weekly. It's a system issue; having a specific list of "Things you can do that are cool." makes many, if not most people look at the list to determine what they can do first, before even thinking about doing something that's not on the list.
What edition did you start with, by the way? I did notice that the few people who tended to try to improvise more often started in earlier editions; the most common improvisers started with 1e and 2e. The problem is that many new gamers are coming straight from video games. In order for them to get into the "improvising" spirit, they need a system that actively
encourages improvisation, instead of simply
allowing it.
This from a Pathfinder player? Everyone levels up their skills and a +5 swing from training is huge.
Yes, from a Pathfinder player. And for the record, I have that exact same problem with Pathfinder. As for your second sentence... what are you trying to say? If it refers to 4e, then it sounds like you're agreeing with my issues with the skill system. If it refers to Pathfinder, then it's a +3 from training a Class Skill, not +5... and I do agree that it's still too much of a difference.
I want to clarify something here; I'm not saying that I don't like 4e... I do. I also like Pathfinder. I like them
despite their faults. But from what I've seen, Next is much closer to my ideal design goals; simple game, simple system, flat math, and so on. That's all.
Encounters is specifically designed to be Lowest Common Denominator 4e. It's intended to make sure all groups will start at the same point at the evening and end at the same point of the evening no matter where in the world they are and who is DMing.
No, it's designed to have everybody on the same starting point, but very few people actually bothered to try to run Encounters in that little 1 hour timeslot. I, and my fellow Encounter DM's, set aside a full 6 hour session each week, and we played it like any other adventure. If we finished one adventure in a night (rare), we started the next.
The PC's could act within the adventure however they wanted. And that still doesn't say anything about the fact that people rarely bothered to try improvising. That's not an adventure issue, it's a system issue. They saw that their character sheet gave them lots of abilities, and they used those abilities because... why not? They have something from their character sheet that they can do every turn, nobody ever stopped to think of trying something else.
And I wasn't using Encounters as an example of how play should work, I was simply mentioning that running Encounters was how I encountered so many different players. I didn't like Encounter as written very much; all the worst aspects of pre-made adventure design in one place.
1: This is explicitely against the 4e Rules - see Page 42 of the DMG for details.
2: It's the 'Bag of Sand' principle from GURPS. If sand in the eyes always worked then barbarian warriors would give up carrying swords and instead carry sand around.
1: What is? Keeping improvised actions from being as good as powers? No it's not.
2: And here you are countering your own
#1 . First off, that's why improvised actions are so situational. For example, sand in the eyes; you take up your action, use a contested Dexterity check, and the target has hampered vision for one round. This applies concealment to all targets, and that's it. That's useful in many cases (if nothing else, it allows a Rogue to get hiding), but it's not always better than an attack.
Same with pushing enemies into terrain and the like; that won't always be better than an attack, but when it's available, should always be useful.
(Also, as you say, sand in the eyes doesn't kill the enemy, it just helps kill them. So swords are still just as important.)
Having an interesting and creative group who manage to circumvent a lot of my stat-preparation and then attack things I really don't expect them to then becomes a problem W00t! No, I don't think I'll be playing a system that makes having an interesting group into a problem.
It won't be any more of a problem in Next than it is in 4e. Just because a monster's abilities are in their stat block, that doesn't remove the need to know how the monster you're running works in order to run it properly. In 4e, if you haven't already looked over a monster's abilities before-hand, learned how they work and how they work together, and studied what role the monster has in combat and how it plays that role... you're going to be just as lost with that monster as you would be with a monster you haven't prepped with in Next.
The only big difference is that you'll have the exact same problem with all of that monster's henchmen, and each of their 3-4 special abilities, whereas in Next, those henchmen won't have nearly so much baggage that comes with them; as previously mentioned, most henchmen abilities will come from their boss.
