The problem is only due to certain mods preferring 4e and not liking my choice of terminology. Make fun of my posts all you like, that edition is doomed. Sorry (whoops, it's true, it's happening, it's already a done deal. deal with it).
It's a munchkin game for children raised in MMO mentality. Yes, that's offensive. So what, as the mods say, people in real life go for a jog and get blown up, the stakes here are so small it's silly to even fret about what we write here. I make games for a living, so sue me for having an opinion from the designer side of the table. Probably all of you have played my games and you have no idea how the other side (the producing) side works. We iterate every day on game design decisions, and the ONLY reason to resort to ridiculous rules like 4e is because your engine is LAME. What I'm trying to explain is, 4e, from my point of view as a videogame programmer, is not only a poor ruleset inherently, but encourages videogamey DMing simulating a VERY poor physics engine, that on top of that is slower than the ones that can simulate it better!! It's a lose-lose proposition. Once you play Next or PF or whatever else a bit more, you'll see the wisdom in my ways. Y'all are smart, but how many AAA games have you designed and implemented that I've played? What are YOUR credentials that makes your opinion so much less "asinine" than mine? Huh? Go into specifics.
In the case of D&D, what I'm implying is that 4e DMs are running a (poor) turn-based-strategy board game that IMO cannot compete with a video game physics-wise, and is both slower AND less realistic than other editions that don't even go there. So why bother? The strength of D&D lies in fluid use of imagination and expected outcomes, not some ruleset thinking it's a good idea to define what "to fly" means, or "fire" means. In 4e, you cannot set a house made out of match sticks on fire without DM approval (target== creatures). Don't pee on me and tell me it's raining == don't attack me with fire damage at-wills in the middle of a barn and not AUTOMATICALLY burn the whole thing down. 4e turns suspension of disbelief on its head, it requires active disbelief to even be sustained past the first round of battle. And continuously thereafter. It is a crime against the imagination to subject ourselves to a game based on imagination that attempts to codify what effects "fire damage" does. No other edition did that. It disgusts me, and I will not apologize for it.
Page 42 is the D&D equivalent of the Not-withstanding clause in Canadian parliament allowing expressly unconstitutional laws remain on the books, and encourages forum arguments to say "see, houserules on the fly are built into the power system so the power system, if it sucks, can be ignored". Uhhh, sorry, the entire game is premised on faulty logic and is an insult to the spirit of dungeons and dragons.
AEDU powers are a system full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (since fluff is irrelevant, i.e. story is irrelevant since it's not RAW, it must be houseruled). I'm telling you guys, those who hate me, (or the mods who will ban me for saying this), in 20 years nobody will be playing 4e but people will still be playing AD&D 2nd edition, despite it's numerous flaws it is a far, far, far superior system as it encourages between-the-lines thinking, rather than stymies it in a series of, yes, asinine restrictions.
I mean, they recently came out with an article giving Dragonborn aka Draconians the ability to "fly" quote unquote (because fly doesn't really mean anything in 4e, it's a non-sequitur keyword, same as "acid" or "cold" with effects that are completely arbitrary).' Do you realize how offensive it is to a physicist to think any creature would have any valid reason to have to have to fly back down to "Altitude 1" at the end of their turn? It is absurd and silly. The designers can't even make sense of the 4e rules, they are so contorted. You say "green" is blue", but then when you speak to people you say "green" but forget it's "blue" i.e. they write rules that have no effect or contradictory effects because they are so inherently obtuse. Why should you be able to hover at 5 feet off the ground rather than 6 feet? Ten feet? Why can you fly up 15 feet but, within 6 seconds, fly back down to precisely 5 feet before the end of your turn. It is an affront against all that is decent to subject ourselves to rules such as these. Why spend time playing it? Is it fun to play such a dragonborn with such a limitation? I played a cleric in PF in two months and was flying and fighting dragons and demons from other dimensions and I had no issues with DMs not being able to cope with a PC who could fly. Ever. 4e shackles DMs in the name of "balance" that in reality means it has square thoughts that resist circles.
You cannot die of cold in 4e, you can die of HP loss resulting from "cold" powers. But then you have feats like "Wintertouched" but not "Firetouched" Why is that allowed? Why is that canon? Since when? How does that make sense? If you say fluff is separate from crunch, why exactly is it so much better to die in flames than to freeze to death. How YOU experienced both? I'd welcome a quicker death any day. The point is, it's all nonsense, and if I'm not free here to say so, then by all means ban me and prove to everyone how little-minded you are.
Words mean things. Fire means more than is imagined in the limited / asinine 4e ruleset. I program physics in game engines for a living, if my games can do more than a 4e DM can, Houston, you have a problem. Humans should USE their imaginations, not be limited by some ridonculous ruleset. Let's let it die for good, and give it a nice, slow funeral pyre. (target == all objects, including obsolete rulebooks)
I guarantee you all, that in 20 years from now, there will be more 2e players than 4e ones.
To respond to the OP, I think it's offensive to not "bash" 5e as well, for the same reasons. If the rules suck, say so. Don't mollycoddle us like children. Criticism now will mean a workable game system for another 20 years. Ideally, a decent system that allows the imagination to thrive and doesn't require computers (because our minds .....you shouldn't need to look up whether a "fire" spell sets the house on fire, it just should, period). ///sigh.
I really detest censorship, and PC mentality, although I appreciate being nice to people, I don't think critiquing a set of rules for an RPG on some website to be some crime worthy of punishment. If you can't handle that, that says more about you than it does me.
It's a munchkin game for children raised in MMO mentality. Yes, that's offensive. So what, as the mods say, people in real life go for a jog and get blown up, the stakes here are so small it's silly to even fret about what we write here. I make games for a living, so sue me for having an opinion from the designer side of the table. Probably all of you have played my games and you have no idea how the other side (the producing) side works. We iterate every day on game design decisions, and the ONLY reason to resort to ridiculous rules like 4e is because your engine is LAME. What I'm trying to explain is, 4e, from my point of view as a videogame programmer, is not only a poor ruleset inherently, but encourages videogamey DMing simulating a VERY poor physics engine, that on top of that is slower than the ones that can simulate it better!! It's a lose-lose proposition. Once you play Next or PF or whatever else a bit more, you'll see the wisdom in my ways. Y'all are smart, but how many AAA games have you designed and implemented that I've played? What are YOUR credentials that makes your opinion so much less "asinine" than mine? Huh? Go into specifics.
In the case of D&D, what I'm implying is that 4e DMs are running a (poor) turn-based-strategy board game that IMO cannot compete with a video game physics-wise, and is both slower AND less realistic than other editions that don't even go there. So why bother? The strength of D&D lies in fluid use of imagination and expected outcomes, not some ruleset thinking it's a good idea to define what "to fly" means, or "fire" means. In 4e, you cannot set a house made out of match sticks on fire without DM approval (target== creatures). Don't pee on me and tell me it's raining == don't attack me with fire damage at-wills in the middle of a barn and not AUTOMATICALLY burn the whole thing down. 4e turns suspension of disbelief on its head, it requires active disbelief to even be sustained past the first round of battle. And continuously thereafter. It is a crime against the imagination to subject ourselves to a game based on imagination that attempts to codify what effects "fire damage" does. No other edition did that. It disgusts me, and I will not apologize for it.
Page 42 is the D&D equivalent of the Not-withstanding clause in Canadian parliament allowing expressly unconstitutional laws remain on the books, and encourages forum arguments to say "see, houserules on the fly are built into the power system so the power system, if it sucks, can be ignored". Uhhh, sorry, the entire game is premised on faulty logic and is an insult to the spirit of dungeons and dragons.
AEDU powers are a system full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (since fluff is irrelevant, i.e. story is irrelevant since it's not RAW, it must be houseruled). I'm telling you guys, those who hate me, (or the mods who will ban me for saying this), in 20 years nobody will be playing 4e but people will still be playing AD&D 2nd edition, despite it's numerous flaws it is a far, far, far superior system as it encourages between-the-lines thinking, rather than stymies it in a series of, yes, asinine restrictions.
I mean, they recently came out with an article giving Dragonborn aka Draconians the ability to "fly" quote unquote (because fly doesn't really mean anything in 4e, it's a non-sequitur keyword, same as "acid" or "cold" with effects that are completely arbitrary).' Do you realize how offensive it is to a physicist to think any creature would have any valid reason to have to have to fly back down to "Altitude 1" at the end of their turn? It is absurd and silly. The designers can't even make sense of the 4e rules, they are so contorted. You say "green" is blue", but then when you speak to people you say "green" but forget it's "blue" i.e. they write rules that have no effect or contradictory effects because they are so inherently obtuse. Why should you be able to hover at 5 feet off the ground rather than 6 feet? Ten feet? Why can you fly up 15 feet but, within 6 seconds, fly back down to precisely 5 feet before the end of your turn. It is an affront against all that is decent to subject ourselves to rules such as these. Why spend time playing it? Is it fun to play such a dragonborn with such a limitation? I played a cleric in PF in two months and was flying and fighting dragons and demons from other dimensions and I had no issues with DMs not being able to cope with a PC who could fly. Ever. 4e shackles DMs in the name of "balance" that in reality means it has square thoughts that resist circles.
You cannot die of cold in 4e, you can die of HP loss resulting from "cold" powers. But then you have feats like "Wintertouched" but not "Firetouched" Why is that allowed? Why is that canon? Since when? How does that make sense? If you say fluff is separate from crunch, why exactly is it so much better to die in flames than to freeze to death. How YOU experienced both? I'd welcome a quicker death any day. The point is, it's all nonsense, and if I'm not free here to say so, then by all means ban me and prove to everyone how little-minded you are.
Words mean things. Fire means more than is imagined in the limited / asinine 4e ruleset. I program physics in game engines for a living, if my games can do more than a 4e DM can, Houston, you have a problem. Humans should USE their imaginations, not be limited by some ridonculous ruleset. Let's let it die for good, and give it a nice, slow funeral pyre. (target == all objects, including obsolete rulebooks)
I guarantee you all, that in 20 years from now, there will be more 2e players than 4e ones.
To respond to the OP, I think it's offensive to not "bash" 5e as well, for the same reasons. If the rules suck, say so. Don't mollycoddle us like children. Criticism now will mean a workable game system for another 20 years. Ideally, a decent system that allows the imagination to thrive and doesn't require computers (because our minds .....you shouldn't need to look up whether a "fire" spell sets the house on fire, it just should, period). ///sigh.
I really detest censorship, and PC mentality, although I appreciate being nice to people, I don't think critiquing a set of rules for an RPG on some website to be some crime worthy of punishment. If you can't handle that, that says more about you than it does me.
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