Neonchameleon
Legend
You just don't get it, do you.
4e does not hard code the justifications for the limits into the system anywhere. Which means if you want to play a wizard who thematically casts as a Vancian mage you can - and the mechanics does not get in the way of this. If you want to play a wizard who is skillful and magic is a reflection of his skill it's not hardcoded and 4e doesn't get in the way of this.
By mandating the method as opposed to the outcome, the methods used are restricted. If you only deal with the outcome then there are few methods that are incompatable with given character concepts.
So Vancian Casting exists in RAW 4e. So does skill based casting (and if you want to make skill rolls, there's the entire ritual system to do it in). It's only process-sim games where this is a problem.
You mean "Because we have the OGL we can house rule". Good to know you need permission for that.
Political intrigue? A team running a con on someone? Because I've run both those in 4e and there are explicit reasons why both worked better than they would in 3.X (skill challenge systems, more versatile PCs, less overwhelming magic) or better than they would in e.g. GURPS - although not as well as they would in Spirit of the Century or Leverage. The 4e niche it does well is "Team of action focussed adventurers".
Which is the 3.X approach you seem to advocate.
The 4e approach is lego - all the parts fit together and you are intended to create something interesting witht hem rather than just what you bought.
No. I'm pointing out that the metaphor shows you just don't get the versatility of 4e.
And the howl causes enemies to recoil, to take damage, and to run away? Start with "Heavy metal Barbarian" as your character concept.
You started the "That's a bad character concept".
And now you're explicitely strawmanning. My point stands - if characters aren't balanced against each other then balancing them becomes meaningless.
Oh, you can build functioning characters in 3.X. But you made a claim about balanced ones - with the difference between a druid and a monk, talking about balanced ones is almost meaningless.
*snicker*
They pulled 3.0 off the shelves after two and a half years, replacing it with an edition that had a significant (although not sufficent) number of bugfixes. One of the reasons for the errata team was so they didn't have to do that again. Claiming that 3.X wasn't offered a bugfix when it was offered an entire new edition with many of the most blatant problems fixed (and new ones added) is ... revisionist.
And unlike most RPGs that I consider well designed.
All can be done badly by 3.X and house rules. That much I'll grant.
Let's run through this again to show just how the goalposts are shifting.
You: What fluff did 4e take with it from earlier editions?
Me: [Stuff]
You: So they got the stuff done right in previous editions. Got it.
And yes they did. Your own words.
They then threw out the bits that caused arguments at the table and made little sense outside Planescape with its Philosophers-with-Clubs like the Great Wheel, and made a mistake by throwing out the Realms fluff for whatever reason; although I detest the Realms and prefer the new stuff, there are groups of people who like the Realms and it serves that need. I'd prefer Ebberon and the Vale - but the Realms shouldn't have been torn up.
You are talking about 4e here? Rather than the edition with Polymorph and Shapechange taking the stats of monsters so you can't even unleash a poor monster like the Sarrukh on the world without the PCs stealing its stats - hence Pun-Pun.
On the other hand I could add a monster like the Sarrukh to 4e with literally no problem at all - the bits of the game that would be changed are shifted.
You are therefore objectively wrong about this claim (as usual). You don't normally break stuff by changing the rules in 4e - and for reasons like the pervasive magic system you often can in 3.X. But the misunderstanding is a common one and there's a good reason behind it. The 4e rules are elegant - and against them half-baked houserules simply look half baked. With a system that let the 3.5 Diplomacy rules go to print and in which Toughness was considered a feat worth printing you aren't going to have a set of house rules look bad.
You appear to be the incarnation of the Oberoni Fallacy. RAW is what I paid money for.
Given the amount of
spread about 4e, the community separated. That you've given 4e a try and not understood it is better than many, I agree.And I've challenged you on this in a number of ways. You just keep repeating assertions. Or do you mean that there isn't the OGL boom?
I gave at least half a dozen different reasons 4e has problems including the playtesting and the marketing. The economy is just one part of it. For you to pick out a single point and say "You're blaming one thing" and to then make an unlike with unlike comparison is deceptive. (TSR were thought to be insane for producing a few hundred brown box sets - 4e is orders of magnitude bigger than that although neither it nor 3.X reached the 80s high as far as I know).
Believe it or not I wasn't a member of ENWorld until about six months after I started playing 4e regularly. I was, however, a member of RPG.net for many years before that. Because it was about games I was interested in.
Hint: You are spending thousands of words to run down a game you don't like and seem absolutely obsessed with it. I suggest you take your own advice - becuase it's the first good advice you've given in this thread.
