Testing The Correlation Between Class Preference And 4E Love/Hate

[justanobody]

For those of you who are more dissatisfied with 4E, particularly the classes, powers system, or resource management model . . . did YOU typically like spellcaster-types or non-spellcaster-types before?

I like fighters and thieves most.

 

[usdmw]

Hate 4e. Have played all earlier editions, excluding od&d.

Almost always play a fighter, generally an archer if the edition supports weapon focus.

 

[MerricB]

I was about to post the same thing.

FWIW, I am dissatisfied with 4E (though perhaps marginally less dissatisfied than I was with 3E/3.5) and I prefer to play barbarians and magic-users (not at the same time, duh!).

I've now got the image in my head of an AD&D Barbarian/Magic-User having to beat themselves up...

Gah!

I guess my early AD&D years have just imprinted themselves on my brain just a bit...

I'm really enjoying 4e, but although my favourite classes are Bard and Wizard, I'm actually a Dungeon Master, so I'm not seeing it from the player's viewpoint so much.

Cheers!

 

[WalterKovacs]

This is a big point of debate. Its genre confusion. For some people having four color superheroes runs against the genre of heroic fantasy. It would be like having Gandalf in the X Men. Sometimes genre blends can work out great but they usually run better in a universal system that handles both styles. The 4E design shifted the genre focus away from fantasy and more towards supers with fantasy trappings. Some people are happy with the shift and others would prefer that D&D remain a fantasy game at its core and let those who run it decide how much supers stuff to add to the mix.

Didn't someone get yelled at for taking something too literally.

My point was that, in the case of superhero genre, there are ALSO different power sources.

You have some that are alien (Superman). You have some that are magically arcane (Dr. Strange) or you have some that are divine (Thor). You have a lot of science based, either technological (Iron Man) or biological (Hulk, Spider-Man, X-Men ... a lot of the Marvel heros are mutants or mutates). Then there are the exceptional humans who don't have superpowers ... but do some stuff that is STILL pretty incredible. Batman is probably the paragon of this, but there are a lot of "street level" types that are human, but much better than anything we'd see in our reality.

That kind of idea, translated to a fantasy setting, is that a fighter, at the peak of human ability AND training can do things that would seem nearly impossible.

What heroes do, even martial heroes do, is NOT an everyday occurance, unless you assume that everyone waking around is "at least" a martial hero. The people who are the best at what they do in society are going to be much better at what they do then anyone else, and capable of accomplishing feats that some people don't believe to be possible. In a world with magics, and gods having direct power (or at least, being able to bestow upon people the magic to have direct influence) is just as likel have a higher "peak" of human ability that we do.

 

[Fifth Element]

Eh, there might be a slight correlation, but in some sense it's quite a dismissive hypothesis. It smacks of an attempt to dismiss 4E critics who don't like the changes to spellcasters, by painting them as being upset that their characters can't dominate play anymore.

 

[kk14]

I used to play mostly casters and rogues in 3.x, and I dislike 4e.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I guess the part I put in bold text helps explain why the shift from fantasy to supers happened.

The rules for every edition of D&D have been primarily concerned with combat. Admittedly, the parts of the rules that are not combat specific are just as important. However, given how much combat happens in typical D&D games, the rules for them need to be balanced. And it is very difficult to balance the game if you try to justify in combat discrepencies with out of combat abilities. The 4th edition ruleset decided to make some pretty heavy mechanical changes to acheive two goals. Streamline the preptime and book keeping in game, and make every class equally capable as other classes in battle. Other editions lead to this kind of problem at some point.

[ame=http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw]YouTube - Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit[/ame]

It may make for great fiction. It will not make for a great game in the long run.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Thasmodious]

OK then if that is the assertion then riddle me this?

Why, if OD&D is a "miniatures combat engine with a few bits of wire and pretty words tacked on" does the system not require a board or markers to play?

Umm, OD&D combat was Chainmail, which used minis and rulers. Sure, it had an optional combat system in the rules, but the assumption was that you were using Chainmail to conduct your combats and an entirely seperate game for exploration. Revising history is unkind to historians.

Let's also remember that the original covers for the OD&D books had "playable with Paper and Pencil [/b]and Miniature Figurines[/b]" right under Dungeons & Dragons.

 

[firesnakearies]

The rules for every edition of D&D have been primarily concerned with combat. Admittedly, the parts of the rules that are not combat specific are just as important. However, given how much combat happens in typical D&D games, the rules for them need to be balanced. And it is very difficult to balance the game if you try to justify in combat discrepencies with out of combat abilities. The 4th edition ruleset decided to make some pretty heavy mechanical changes to acheive two goals. Streamline the preptime and book keeping in game, and make every class equally capable as other classes in battle. Other editions lead to this kind of problem at some point.

YouTube - Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit

It may make for great fiction. It will not make for a great game in the long run.

END COMMUNICATION

So, so true. That video is awesome! I love the fact that 4E has taken such steps toward eliminating "Angel Summoner vs. BMX Bandit Syndrome", because I definitely saw it rear its ugly head plenty of times in 3.x and in other role-playing games.



$

 

[RFisher]

I wonder why everyone seems to have no problem at all with Wizards and Clerics who are totally "divorced from reality", but anyone with a sword in his hand had better be exactly like the next door neighbor in real life...

Same reason that if they put out an edition of D&D with Cleric as the only class people would have a problem with it. People want the option to play either.

A reasonable analogy. However, while playing as Batman can be pretty damn awesome, its not nearly as much fun when the guy next to you is playing Superman and your up against Doomsday.

Or to use the Marvel analogy, you can put someone like Captain America on the Avengers. But if you have guys like Thor or the Sentry on the team at the same time, you are going to run into situations where Captain America is not really going to need or be able to do much.

My group is playing Marvel Super Heroes right now. We almost always go with random chargen because it’s really hard to come up with concept that haven’t already been done. Well, and I think we’re just the kind of people who enjoy random chargen anyway.

So, needless to say, we usually end up with some Batman/Superman and Cap/Thor sorts of combos on our teams.

Yet, it’s just like I say about D&D: A PC is only boring or useless if the player allows them to be.

I’m having a great time figuring out how to make the most of my PC. It almost always means either power-stunting or doing things unrelated to the stuff written on my character sheet. I’m hardly ever just using my powers in a straight-forward manner. And it’s a blast.