Okay people, a little wake up call.

[Andor]

That's just because there are so many prestige classes that give the wizard's full spell progression plus a bunch of other cool stuff. Why play a merely overpowered class when you could be playing an equally overpowered class that gets a bunch of extra cool stuff?

Um.. No. I was including pure spellcasting prestige classes when I said that. I think I recall a Wizard/Cleric/Mystic Theurge but he was still not a striaght wizard, and he was kind of a dead weight really, certainly he was not the dominant character. (The player said a lot of things like "In 5 levels I'll stop sucking.")

Let me think. Last party had a cleric, a druid, a rogue, and a ranger.

Party before that had a Swordsage, a Warblade, and a Rogue.

Party before that had a Binder, a Warblade/Rogue, and a Warlock.

Before that Totemist, Cleric/Fighter, and a Rogue/Warlock.

Hmm... Going back to the Planescape game in Colorado we had a Psion, a Fighterish character, a Rogue, and there were two more players in that game, but it was a few years ago and I don't recall exactly. No wait, one of the was the Cleric/Wizard/Mystic Theurge.

I honestly do not recall the last time I saw a straight wizard or wizard/prc in 3ed....

 

[pawsplay]

I can run the same campaign, with the same characters, and have the same outcome (generally speaking) in 1e, in 2e in 3e and in 4e. I can have all my NPCs. I can have my gnomes running around, i can have all the events in any campaign in any edition, just because the rules are different doesnt mean anything.

Lucky you. If I had to run my current campaign in 4e, I'd have to houserule so many creatures and races it would be 3.75.

 

[smathis]

Yes, 3e. The 4e is basically draft 3 or 4 of what was started in 3e and given some options in Unearthed Arcana.

According to the SRD, "Complex Skill Checks" are only performed with one skill (rolled against multiple times). And there's no guidelines for failed rolls. As in, "4 failures mean you lose".

So what 4e's introduced into the mechanic is...

1. Players can fail a skill challenge / complex skill check by a means other than being interrupted or just running out of time.

2. Skill challenges / complex skill checks can now span wider breadths of time. Rolls no longer need to be performed in successive "rounds".

3. Players can roll against pretty much any applicable skill in a skill challenge. And they can even roll against non-applicable ones if they come up with a good enough reason.

4. Players now get XP for Skill Challenges. Whereas before, that was not possible RAW (at least according to the Unearthed Arcana SRD).

I'd say Skill Challenges are to Complex Skill Checks what the d20 Resolution Mechanic was to THAC0.

So we're not in disagreement over that point.

But that doesn't make 3e better suited to non-combat encounters. If anything it proves the point I was making, 4e has the better resolution mechanic if only that through the successive changes it's become better and more focused at what it was meant to do.

Again, I'm not saying 3e's bad. But the poster I was responding to said 3e was better than 4e at non-combat encounter stuff.

I just don't see it.

 

[almagest]

Search and replace at will, but I disagree that wizards (and clerics) can do everything that everyone else can do. Consider the fighter since I was talking about them. There is no way a wizard can step into the shoes of a fighter. They simply don't have the combat feats or stamina for it unless you want to pull up some kind of nerfed spell. But bad spells can be easily dealt with - just change or disallow them. A few bad spells doesn't invalidate a class and mean that it is broken in concept ( which seems to be the claim of some going through this thread re: 3E wizards).

Now, I have seen some clerics step into the role of a fighter (with mixed results), but I've never seen a wizard effectively do it in any of my 3.x games.

Uh... Shapechange? Polymorph? Alter Self? Draconic Polymorph? Those can instantly make a Wizard obscene in melee. Or, if you don't want to use "game-breaking spells," try some simple weapon (or weapon-creating spell) with haste, true strike, wraithstrike, bull's strength, bear's endurance, false life, cat's grace, mage/greater mage armor, shield, magic/greater magic weapon, heroics or whatever that spell is that can give you a fighter feat, tenser's transformation, blur, displacement, mirror image, invisibility/greater invisibility, major image, and/or fly/overland flight.

Seriously. Wizards are godlike in 3/3.5e. Check the d20 optimization forums on WotC if you somehow need even more evidence.

 

[Sledge]

I agree with the OP that 4E seems a little limited. Considering the page count increased greatly for non-spell casters, something had to give. At 320 pages, the PH is still a hefty volume.

I did a little comparison and the 4e PH has a significantly larger font size and greater white space. Just on the font size/spacing there is a 28% or so increase in size. The math I did suggests that the content of the 4e book is really only around 250 3.5 pages assuming the art is the same and the white space increase is negligible.

However, I wouldn't worry too much that the wizard's capabilities were limited, or that the list of rituals isn't very long. (ie. Not a single summoning spell)

That's what the PHx will give you. Every year until D&D4.5 or 5.0, we'll see a steady increase of powers, feats, spells until your quintupled you investment and are once again in possession of everything you use to get in a PH, DMG, MM, MM2, and FF. Name one edition after 1E that is different in that respect to 4E.

The thing to me is that this is the largest drop in actual content for quite some time. The 4e PH literally has things removed that would normally (in all prior editions) have been included in the PH. So too actually do what prior PH's allowed we need 2 4e PH's.

 

[billd91]

4. Players now get XP for Skill Challenges. Whereas before, that was not possible RAW (at least according to the Unearthed Arcana SRD).

Not true. If the DM considers the encounter dealt with by the skill contest, even in 3E, XP could certainly be involved. 3E dispensed with the idea that the creatures in the encounter had to be killed.

But that doesn't make 3e better suited to non-combat encounters. If anything it proves the point I was making, 4e has the better resolution mechanic if only that through the successive changes it's become better and more focused at what it was meant to do.

Again, I'm not saying 3e's bad. But the poster I was responding to said 3e was better than 4e at non-combat encounter stuff.

I just don't see it.

More non-combat skills, I think, means better suited, particularly when the core mechanic is virtually the same. Had a lot of fun with a bake off between the half-ogre cook and the chef of one of the local nobles in the Shackled City campaign. The half-ogre lost in the judging but won a lot of respect from the locals.
The granularity of the 3E skill system helped make this easy to do, with non-combat, background-style skills. But then, I always try make sure that these sorts of choices can pay off for PCs every once in a while. It's part of making an ensemble of PCs work so that no single one is the star all the time in the course of a campaign.

 

[hong]

More non-combat skills, I think, means better suited, particularly when the core mechanic is virtually the same. Had a lot of fun with a bake off between the half-ogre cook and the chef of one of the local nobles in the Shackled City campaign. The half-ogre lost in the judging but won a lot of respect from the locals.

I will bet money that 4E's skill challenge system will get more people more involved in noncombat interaction than 3E's unfocused menagerie of skills, without any directions for use, ever did.

 

[billd91]

I will bet money that 4E's skill challenge system will get more people more involved in noncombat interaction than 3E's unfocused menagerie of skills, without any directions for use, ever did.

I have my doubts because, once again, it was primarily the style of play at the table that determined involvement in non-combat interaction. If there wasn't much when playing with previous edition rule-sets, there won't be much under 4e. If there was a lot under previous editions, there will be plenty under 4e.

Players don't change their spots that much just because a decision resolution system gets a few refinements. Their involvement in role playing will be pretty much the same in the long run.

Oriental Adventures games worked for me because the milieu we were playing was sufficiently different from traditional dungeon crawling, not the rules, that I reinvented myself as a DM and have carried it forward into other games.

 

[hong]

I have my doubts because, once again, it was primarily the style of play at the table that determined involvement in non-combat interaction. If there wasn't much when playing with previous edition rule-sets, there won't be much under 4e. If there was a lot under previous editions, there will be plenty under 4e.

I am a dyed-in-the-wool buttkicker. I get bored when people want to hobnob with kings and barons and whatnot, because it's precious time that could be spent killing monsters and taking their stuff. And the skill challenge system has managed to make me enthusiastic about getting involved in non-killing activities. If it can do that, it can do anything.

 

[Sashi]

The thing to me is that this is the largest drop in actual content for quite some time. The 4e PH literally has things removed that would normally (in all prior editions) have been included in the PH. So too actually do what prior PH's allowed we need 2 4e PH's.

I'll admit, you've piqued my interest. What's missing?

The 3.5 PHB TOC goes:
Intro
Steps for Character Creation
1. Abilities
2. Races
3. Classes
4. Skills
5. Feats
6. Description
7. Equipment
8. combat
9. Adventuring
10. Magic
11. Spells

The 4E PHB goes:
1. How to play (which includes the introduction and core mechanic, which is actually it's own heading now)
2. Making characters (includes Ability Scores and Creation Summary)
3. Races
4. Classes
5. Skills
6. Feats
7. Equipment (including magic items, which is new)
8. Adventuring
9. Combat (which has a page # for bull rush, grab, run, etc)
10. Rituals

What's missing? (and if you say "spells" I will personally cast Defenestrating Sphere on your ass)