The roots of 4e exposed?

[Tony Vargas]

So you're only messing with yourself.

It's a hypothetical he's not actually doing it just talking about it: he's only messing with you.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Number 2 does not apply because a smart DM would not kill a character just because a Player plans out their character arc.

In reality people have a idea of what they want to be and then go out and do it all the time.

Lets' not get into "what happens in reality" unless it happens at the table during a game. It's a classic crutch used by folks all the time and it doesn't ever end well.

I think the term "smart" is relative so I'm sorry I introduced it. Opened up the floor to the "reality" comment.

Simply put. If you know your DM prefers players to organically grow their character based on what happens to it during play; don't go letting him know that you built out 20 levels of awesome because it really shows the DM that you don't care about sharing the experience as much as you do playing your cool build. Desire the cool build, and if the DM does nothing to give you other cool options by all means play it.

(Breaking my request about "reality" to make a point)

Because "in reality", people who wanted to be astronauts grow up to man a fryolator all the time. Reality has a way of making kids who want to be doctors into lawyers too. Reality is that you're not in a bubble when you play at a table with other people and the cool build at level 1 isn't going to work if you stick with the same game til level 20, never does.

So you know my bias, I had to learn that lesson the hard way.

KB

 

[Shasarak]

Lets' not get into "what happens in reality" unless it happens at the table during a game. It's a classic crutch used by folks all the time and it doesn't ever end well.

I think the term "smart" is relative so I'm sorry I introduced it. Opened up the floor to the "reality" comment.

Simply put. If you know your DM prefers players to organically grow their character based on what happens to it during play; don't go letting him know that you built out 20 levels of awesome because it really shows the DM that you don't care about sharing the experience as much as you do playing your cool build. Desire the cool build, and if the DM does nothing to give you other cool options by all means play it.

(Breaking my request about "reality" to make a point)

Because "in reality", people who wanted to be astronauts grow up to man a fryolator all the time. Reality has a way of making kids who want to be doctors into lawyers too. Reality is that you're not in a bubble when you play at a table with other people and the cool build at level 1 isn't going to work if you stick with the same game til level 20, never does.

So you know my bias, I had to learn that lesson the hard way.

KB

You know I would love to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Just give me one reasonable excuse for a DM to go out of their way to cheat and kill a PC just because the Player is excited enough to try and plan out their character build.

I mean the PC still has to adventure to earn XP to level up so it is not as if the Player is trying to some how cheat the system. They still earn their levels the normal way.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. 2E had multi-attacks, and the schedule of when they happened was accelerated if you specialized. I'm pretty sure this rule went as far back as 1E, as well.

I wouldn't classify them as like what he was talking about. Anyway, they were so simple that it wasn't an issue. AD&D fighter attack bonus was pretty much a fixed number, all the time. It might be slightly different for a different weapon, but it was easy to just write the bonus on the line for that weapon.

Honestly though, I think the amount of variance in attack bonuses in 4e is being exaggerated a bit.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

As someone who loved 3e, I'm going to disagree with you here. 3e was fantastic in that it added a better skill system, feats, class abilities, and so on. However, it really did start to become cumbersome and break down towards the end with how many options there were and having as many rules as it did. I can't begin to tell you how many fights or even social encounters were disrupted as we had to pour over books to find this rule or that so we could get the wording. The insanely high bonuses to rolls was also an issue. 5e has gone back to that, but in a much more streamlined way.

You are correct that the building options are anemic compared to 3e, and I would like to see more options than we have been given, but it still needs to be a lot less than 3e gave us. WotC has a history of overreacting to issues, though. You can see it in 5e with the over reduced options being put out, and in bounded accuracy, which while needed, has been bounded too much. People like a feeling of advancement and bonuses provided a clearer view of that. I think +10 over 20 levels would have been a better way to go.

3.x just has a HUGE problem with casters being gods and everyone else being irrelevant. There are very few real limitations on casting and those are easily overcome if your DM actually tries to make an issue of them in practice. When the best you can be as a non-caster is tier 3, no matter what you do build-wise short of being handed something like 5 of the best items in the book, its pretty ridiculous. Even then you won't approach the versatility of a tier 1 caster, not even close.

PF doesn't help this at all really. There were options that might do so in 3.5 books, IF you stopped using the PHB classes, but that was not a very viable option for most tables.

The skill system is also kind of a bummer, and MCing is rather crazy. The idea that it is only because of 'too many options' IMHO doesn't cut it either, 3.0 PHB already has all the issues of 3e, ready made on day one. It just IS cumbersome. Its hard to run monsters, etc. etc. etc. It may be fun to play for various reasons, and late 2e was WORSE, but the reason 4e came out was purely that 3e cannot be fixed, its problems are inherent.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

AD&D had multiple attacks - all the way back to 1e - they were just limited to the fighter types. In fact, they got a significant boost from specialization when it was introduced in Unearthed Arcana in the middle of 1e's run. And while to-hit bonuses might have been lower, the ability to hit certainly wasn't lacking. ACs were largely confined to a 20 point range overall, and most fell within a 10 point range. Add in the lack of a constitution bonus for monsters (much less one driven higher for larger creatures) and combats were a heck of a lot faster.

I didn't actually find combats to be any faster in AD&D, particularly 2e, than in 4e. If the fight was pretty much not worth fighting and low level, then yeah, but why bother? This is why 4e just tells you to skip that stuff. Call it out as a scene "you run into 2 hall guards, you kill them before they can so much as take a step."

Meaty AD&D fights still take an hour or more.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I certainly won't argue that 4E elevated the slaughter to war crime levels.

Never had a better burger in my life

 

[Maxperson]

3.x just has a HUGE problem with casters being gods and everyone else being irrelevant. There are very few real limitations on casting and those are easily overcome if your DM actually tries to make an issue of them in practice. When the best you can be as a non-caster is tier 3, no matter what you do build-wise short of being handed something like 5 of the best items in the book, its pretty ridiculous. Even then you won't approach the versatility of a tier 1 caster, not even close.

This only really matters if you care about that sort of thing, though. The tier 3 classes were plenty good enough to stomp through the game. Also, if the DM was like me and controlled magic items, then the spellcasters wouldn't be running around getting tomes and headbands of increase stat of choice. The DCs didn't really spiral out of control unless the casters were raising their prime stat with items. My groups happily played with casters and melee combatants.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

3.x just has a HUGE problem with casters being gods and everyone else being irrelevant. There are very few real limitations on casting and those are easily overcome if your DM actually tries to make an issue of them in practice. When the best you can be as a non-caster is tier 3, no matter what you do build-wise short of being handed something like 5 of the best items in the book, its pretty ridiculous. Even then you won't approach the versatility of a tier 1 caster, not even close.

PF doesn't help this at all really. There were options that might do so in 3.5 books, IF you stopped using the PHB classes, but that was not a very viable option for most tables.

The skill system is also kind of a bummer, and MCing is rather crazy. The idea that it is only because of 'too many options' IMHO doesn't cut it either, 3.0 PHB already has all the issues of 3e, ready made on day one. It just IS cumbersome. Its hard to run monsters, etc. etc. etc. It may be fun to play for various reasons, and late 2e was WORSE, but the reason 4e came out was purely that 3e cannot be fixed, its problems are inherent.

Where you see bugs, others have seen features.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This only really matters if you care about that sort of thing, though. The tier 3 classes were plenty good enough to stomp through the game. Also, if the DM was like me and controlled magic items, then the spellcasters wouldn't be running around getting tomes and headbands of increase stat of choice. The DCs didn't really spiral out of control unless the casters were raising their prime stat with items. My groups happily played with casters and melee combatants.

Where you see bugs, others have seen features.

The flaw here is that this is not something DESIGNERS can work with. When they are relegated to making every single non-full-casting class basically irrelevant in most play, that is a huge roadblock to doing all sorts of things with the game. This is the fundamental aspect of 3.x which basically demanded the creation of a new edition at some point. The 3e paradigm is simply not suited to vast swaths of fantasy, even within what D&D could do in principle. If you're going to gut the whole thing anyway, then you might as well tinker...

I mean, there's no specific reason why d20, as it was envisaged in the 3e era, cannot form the basis of a perfectly good FRPG, but its HARD to do because 3e is already sucking up that air. D20 Modern was reasonably successful, because it did exactly that, it tossed casting and did away with most of the problematic class mechanics. Things like Iron Heroes worked OK, but just can't compete with D&D. PF hit on what was obviously a solid middle ground, they didn't fix the issues, but they did rework a lot of the details enough to make a game that was both 3.x and at the same time not QUITE 3.x. It is interesting to see however that PF2 is going down the 4e path, because sooner or later designers just get tired of what they can't do on the 3e chassis.

And I totally disagree with you Max. It has very little to do with caster stats and some certain items. Nobody is going to deliberately run dumb casters in 3.x. So any limitations put in place by below 16 on a prime stat is meaningless, and most people who are going to seriously play a wizard will give him an 18 INT right off. That's all it really takes. One feat to get rid of interruptions of casting, and a couple other modest tweaks, and you're gold. Even without those you're still tier 1 and the non-casters are starting out behind you at level 1 and getting further behind with every level. Fighter types terrible save progression is just icing on the cake!

This is the nature of 3e, it just is.