Paragons of Fey Valor

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'd XP you, but I can't yet.

I'd rather write flavorful PPs that are strictly "black" (to use a CharOp parlance) than a boring PP filled with "sky blue" powers.

I agree strongly with this.

Powers that are ranked "red" or "sky blue" to me, indicate a failing, even if a minor one, of the designers to keep power creep under control. Most things should be black, a few purples, a few blues, maybe, but very, very few sky blues, and ideally, nothing should be red or gold.

 

[bargle0]

Question when using the numerical scale of that chart. Doesn't that leave only a fixed number of variables and lead to cookie-cutter outcomes?

if the 55% hit rate you cite is correct, why not roll percentile every time you attack. If you get 55 or below, you hit.

Missing is boring. The math has long been fixed with Expertise feats, and this is only reinforced by the appearance of so many accuracy boosting features in Essentials. History and precedence are on my side on this issue.

I'm not suggesting extraordinary measures, here. There are a whole lot of level 20 paragon path dailies that use attribute + 9 for their attack roll, and almost none of them are CharOp darlings. Frankly, I'm kind of surprised that the editor and the QA process that was allegedly installed last winter didn't catch this issue. When I bring these PPs up in the appropriate venue, I will approach it as an editing mistake rather than a design mistake.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Two cents on the matter of optimization versus story builds.

In my opinion people play these games to:
1. Enjoy time with friends.
2. Experience a good story and have a character that looks cool.
3. Help their friends finish a story by having their character be useful to that end.
4. Keep a piece of their youth with them. (more for older players)

Having character options that are flavorful and support the points above is important and I think most people would rather have options that are consistent and make sense with the story. Comparative game mechanics shouldn't matter.

However, the 4e game suffers because it's very clear that fundamental game design documentation was not in existence or followed by those who were designing content for the game at some point. We have feat bloat, we have power bloat and power cross-over. We have the need for some players to break down the game in charts much like bargle0's in order to meet the balance requirements that make the above four goals possible.

Simply put, if there are "better" ways to be more effective, those ways become part of the firmament to keep things balanced such that the game can be fair to everyone. If those "better" ways cost different things to different player types then system mastery becomes more important to play certain kinds of characters.

This runs counter to a design goal of 4E and is unfair.

So if you're a person who feels the need to optimize you're right.
If you're a person who feels that there needs to be less focus on optimization you're right.

Unfortunately you've both been given a crappy paradigm to work in. Guess it must be time for a new version, which was obviously a part of the internal QA discussion from a year or two in. A truly balanced system will not generate as much buzz or profit as one that is fundamentally flawed and needs a reboot every three-seven years.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The problem is there's no way you can ever achieve this, except to make a game that is very close to devoid of (or completely devoid of) any meaningful mechanical choices at all. Consider BECMI. Basic is very close to this. You randomly roll 6 stats, and pick a class, then roll hit points. You have literally one choice, and then you get to buy equipment, which you could consider more of a part of play vs chargen really. It is a perfectly fine game, but even in AD&D where only a couple things were added (race AND class) you instantly have some optimization.

Once you have a system which has several categories of choices and a large number of valid combinations of such you really can't insure that all of the millions of possible combinations of those choices are all equal. You could simply introduce nothing but new options that are clearly inferior in some way and will NEVER equal the existing options, or you WILL end up with some degree of 'creep'.

The best you can really do is make sure that there's nothing obviously and egregiously out of whack about a new option. Put it in the 'middle of the pack' as close as you can and don't worry about it, and if the concept demands something a bit nice, or might not really be super incredible and remain true to the concept, well, its better to have a good concept.

So the game IS going to have outliers in terms of optimization. The worst ones on either side probably need to be quashed, and there's nothing wrong with bargle0 saying "hey, this can be closer to the ideal baseline with this tweak". He's probably right about that. The ultimate point is though, given that we play an option rich game like 4e, the game will be too complex to practically perfect every option. If the number of options available strikes someone as excessive then they need to think about whether 4e does what they want. You can certainly tell WotC you'd like them to make you a different game of course, but beyond that there are still plenty of options.

 

[Kobold Boots]

The problem is there's no way you can ever achieve this, except to make a game that is very close to devoid of (or completely devoid of) any meaningful mechanical choices at all.

I disagree with you. Explaining why would give away too much of my own projects and result in a lengthy post that would be misunderstood and beaten on by those who feel similarly.

4E breaks on three levels.

1. Multiclassing.
2. Feat-balancing.
3. Lack of expository game design documentation that everyone needs to follow to be on the right path.

The third is the worst offense and if such does exist then I'll apologize for the assumption.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I disagree with you. Explaining why would give away too much of my own projects and result in a lengthy post that would be misunderstood and beaten on by those who feel similarly.

4E breaks on three levels.

1. Multiclassing.
2. Feat-balancing.
3. Lack of expository game design documentation that everyone needs to follow to be on the right path.

The third is the worst offense and if such does exist then I'll apologize for the assumption.

Ah yes, you have the answer but we of the unwashed masses wouldn't understand. Thx! lol. For my part I judge game design concepts on their merits. We all have different points of view, but really, put up or forget about it. If you can't take some criticism game design isn't a good choice of activity.

As for point 2 it is simply exactly what I'm talking about and I get the impression you've missed something there. There is more that can be said on that though. All feats don't need to balance. You get MANY feat choices from a single pool over the course of the game, thus some can be better or worse. You may wish to take the better ones first, or not depending on preferences, but picking one option doesn't exclude the others. In that sense feats are good mechanism.

I don't even know what you mean by 3. 4e is the most transparently designed version of D&D in existence, by far. While it might require some analysis to fully understand the ramifications of some things it certainly is about as minimal as it will ever be in any game. If you're talking about speaking to the players about what choices they might like to make I would refer you to the PHBs, which in EVERY SINGLE CASE provide a guide to setting up a level 1 character. You're informed of what the key ability scores are, which ones to focus on for at least a couple builds per class, and starting power and feat choice that will work with that class and build. Short of literally handing the players a pregen for every class/build there's not a heck of a lot more that can be done in that direction. Beyond that there may be other things you're trying to get at with this point, but I'm really not sure what they are.

I think presentation is something that can be practically infinitely polished, and 4e is clearly not without some points where it can stand improvement there. It is still one of the best presented systems I know of. Presentation is HARD, there is no one approach that works for all audiences, and D&D in particular is catering to a really wide audience.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Ah yes, you have the answer but we of the unwashed masses wouldn't understand. Thx! lol. For my part I judge game design concepts on their merits. We all have different points of view, but really, put up or forget about it. If you can't take some criticism game design isn't a good choice of activity.

Thanks Abdul. Appreciated. I'll file this advice under the category of "Yellow snow and other useful tidbits."
To your other points. I'm sure you know what I'm on about and are posting out of boredom.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Thanks Abdul. Appreciated. I'll file this advice under the category of "Yellow snow and other useful tidbits."
To your other points. I'm sure you know what I'm on about and are posting out of boredom.

Yes, yes, everyone is an armchair game designer. Trust me, I'm astounded! lol.

Alternatively you're unclear. No, couldn't be that.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Alternatively you're unclear. No, couldn't be that.

I've already stated that I'm not interested in elaborating. So I've already accepted/admitted a certain lack of clarity on my part.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've already stated that I'm not interested in elaborating. So I've already accepted/admitted a certain lack of clarity on my part.

It was the whole "well, I have the answers and explanations to these things, but all I wanted to do was tell you I have all these answers, not talk about them" that honestly comes across as BS. Obviously, one need not discuss anything one does not wish to. You just come across as self-important. I don't know what other goal there would be to saying you have an answer to something that you won't share. lol.

Naturally, you may have exceeded us all, and your original post could be taken as "wow I have this exciting solution to all this but I can't tell". The thing is I've read through and sometimes even played with or playtested a lot of different stuff, and written plenty of rules myself too. It is easy to THINK you have a brilliant approach, but the honest truth is most of the time the rest of the world won't be as impressed by it. Maybe its dismissive, but without actually being able to see something to criticize the safe assumption is that someone making such claims is falling short. There's a reason games are a bunch of trade-offs and compromises and never exactly do even what they set out to do (let alone what the audience actually wanted). It is REALLY hard to do right. Climb Mt Everest, then everyone can see you can do it. Saying you can? Meh, not without a track record.