Tovec
Explorer
"It insitutes a way the rules are made and what their goal should be."So, why do you think the 'CAW' preference shapes the rule system?
That is what I said then, and it is what my reply shall be. Also, CAS does the same, but that line only makes sense in relation to the rest of the paragraph and to the two lines before it.
How many times do I have to say this, I care not for the "balance" issue you have having with other posters. Since you have twice drawn me in however I will now respond to it - see below.A balanced system is not the same thing as a balanced encounter. Why would class balance, for instance, get in the way of running combats that had that 'war' feel to them? Why would a system for balancing encounters get in the way - wouldn't it just make the process of constructing extremely challenging (imbalanced) encounters more consistent?
Isn't all back and forth trying to rationalize a preference?What's patently false? That D&D is a game? That a game should at least try to be balanced?
This really is sounding like rationalizing a preference, again.
I may have been unclear. It is patently false that "it is just a game and therefore it will work itself out". That there is no need to look after other types of preferred play because they'll fall in line. It is false because we didn't. It is false because after 3 years they are having to make a new edition to reclaim their old membership.
Those keywords weren't used in previous editions? What about Types, subtypes, weaknesses, abilities, etc.?I /really/ don't see that, at all. I think what you're getting at is that 4e has rules - including things like damage types, conditions, and keywords that are used consistently, even though there can be any number of exceptions to add in yet more possibilities. That makes the rules fairly precise and easy to adjudicate, it doesn't leave a lot of 'wiggle' room for, well, 'cheating.' (I wish I could think of a better word to express that than 'cheating' - getting around the social contract of the rules somehow. Oh: Meta-gaming?)
My problem, one that I was trying to avoid raising, has to do with the implied limitations or expectations associated with those keywords or with ability descriptions at all. That the Fireball doesn't touch paper because it targets only creatures. Things like that. I'm not going to get into it over and over so I'll leave it at that.
I do think that previous editions did a better job of setting the expectations at: "does this happen in the real world? Yes? Okay then it happens in the game." Whereas in 4th it is set at: "does this happen in video games? No? Then it doesn't happen in the game."
There's that word again - balance. I didn't realize that all editions of DnD had been working to improve balance. I thought they had been working to improve the game, all aspects not just balance. I think that 4th edition went too far, as do many, into the balance-direction. It balanced many things at the sake of too many other things. It is a trait many of us dislike about 4e.I think D&D, though doing so slowly, had been improving over it's various editions. AD&D was more ambitious than 0D&D, 2e refined AD&D and improved production values, 3e made a real stab at modernizing the game, roughly balanced it at single-digit levels, and took the bold step of going open source. 4e further improved over 3e.
Seemingly, a perfectly desireable state of afairs...
When you say things like "modernizing" I just have to shudder and remember that clip from How I Met Your Mother - where Barney says "Newer is always better" and sticks to it even when provided grape scotch.I do know that. And I am totally OK with it. Indeed, I'm an older gamer myself, and have my first loves from the olden days. I adore 1st ed Gamma World, even though I recognize that it's a terrible game by modern standards, and a pretty marginal one even by the standards of 1978 (that did have it competing with RuneQuest, afterall).
I don't go around trying to tell people that it's /better/ than later, more refined, better executed versions of the game. (Though, nothing could be quite as bad as the 3rd ed...)
So? Does the term work, are we satisfied with it and understand its implication? We don't have to agree with the term, or think it is ancient to use it.The OP just made up 'CaW' a little bit ago.
That is ALMOST what he (I assume he, may be she) is saying. What he did say was "Many of us dislike the "modern" redesign goals of 4e" and gave the example of balance. Balance by itself isn't a bad thing. It becomes bad when it cuts away at many of the elements we enjoy. It becomes an issue when it reduces the fun of a sizable segment of the playing population.Kudos to you for admiting an actual dislike of balance. That actually heads off a lot of back-and-forth we might otherwise have.
This is the first time I've needed (in this post) to break up what you have said, but you state many things which are opinion and misrepresentation as well and it would be a jumble if I left it all to the end.Here's were we get into the problem areas. There's opinion, and there's misrepresentation.
Alrighty, excuse any minor discrepancies as I do not play 4e and do not wish to scour through the books to find examples.4e did not take resource management out of the game. Far from it, there are still dailies, more broadly in fact, and in addition to hps and healing there are surges to manage, there are still one-shot items like potions, and there's an extra layer of resource management in encounter powers.
Do you need to keep track of; food (rations, apples), ammo (bolts, arrows, sling bullets), basic equipment (candles, chalk, flour), spell components, pages in a spellbook?
Because if not then haakon1's point is valid.
The resource management you list are dailies, surges, and encounter powers. How are these different than the same abilities used in different editions? Cleric still needed to know how many turn undead they had left, barbarians raged, wizards had their spell-lists. I fail to see the point you are trying to make.
(Caveat: If your point was only to say that 4e still has things you need to track, please disregard this section.)
Yes, they are both 1d8+n. Do they both shunt the enemy back 2 squares (not 10 feet, 2 effing squares)? Do they both have the keyword of, let's say, acid therefore we know to have it deal 1d6+k continual for 1d3+l rounds? No? Sharing the mechanic for shocking grasp and a scimitar isn't really the same as sharing a mechanic across (nearly) all powers across (nearly) classes - at the same level of course.Consistent mechanics do not take away flavor. Again, far from it, they allow the game to cover a much broader range of possible flavors without unecessary complexity. Your claim of similar mechanics robbing flavor is doubly bogus, because common mechanics have always been in use. In 1e, shocking grasp, for instance, did 1d8+n damage. So did a scimitar. They were not the same, even though they shared that mechanic.
The wizard still uses recognizeably Vancian magic. In fact, the wizard's dailies are a bit closer to the magic of the Dying Earth than they ever have been, since they don't memorize rediculous numbers of them at high level.
Warriors are not spellcasters - 'essentially' or otherwise. They are merely no longer inferior to casters. Martial characters use expoits. Wizards use spells. Attack exploits are virtually always weapon powers - and /never/ implement powers. Attack spells are virtually always implement power. Attack exploits typicaly do untyped damage, or damage based on the weapon. Attack spells do a whole range of typed damages. The mechanical difference, alone are significant. The similarities are only significant in terms of balance. In terms of flavor/fluff or concept, they're meaningless.
If by Vancian, do you mean fire and forget? Then what do you count encounter and at wills? How is it "Vancian magic" for the wizard but different for the fighter?
Warriors are as much spellcasters as wizards are spellcasters. Both have X dallies, Y encounters, Z at wills per day. They differ ONLY in the power source. But as many 4e'rs have admitted, power sources are pretty much still just magic. I think a lot of us (on the non-4e side) find it puzzling why fighters NEED a power source.
By all means, feel free to express your opinions about 4e class balance and your preferences and opinions. But do not say that 4e classes are the same, that fighters cast spells, or that wizard's don't prepare spells. Because those statements are false.
We mean they are built the same, at level 6 how many of W (surges), X (dallies), Y (encounters), Z (at wills) do you get to use? Is there variation there?
Please refer to above comments about disliking balance.Sure, part of balance, which you don't like. No problem.
Actually, with all the racial feats and powers 4e introduced, the differences among races were probably a little greater than in 4e. PC races. Not LA races, that is.
Actually, with all the racial stuff in 4e, the differences in races are rather bland. Rather "balanced" to suit one another and to no longer have a perceived unbalanced effect.
(Caveat: I don't know what point haakon1 was trying to make about races.)
Why are all characters in 4e meant to be the main protagonist? The one who never dies? Imagine if comics worked that way, where (super)heroes never had the chance of dying, they never got sick, never lost a fight. Once upon a time, that was true but we have changed, evolved into something more closely resembling reality.Yep, and once again, feel free to go on in that vein all you like. You'll get no argument from me. 4e takes a very different direction in what it's trying to model or simulate. 3e modeled an internally consistent world in which the elements of fantasy stories might exist (and, once in a blue moon, the story of a PC party might even end up resembling one, slightly, if the dice were being really crazy). 4e modeled the story rather than the world. In most fantasy stories, most of the heroes don't die meaningless deaths at 1st level (whatever '1st level' would be in a narrative...). Different aproach, different results, different preferences. No bearing on how good a game either one is (was).
Characters should die, no scratch that. They should have the chance of dying. They shouldn't go out every day knowing that the world is designed for them to win. They should leave knowing that their actions will have an impact. They should leave knowing that if they die they die for a reason.
Aparently, if done often enough, stridently enough, viciously enough, and combined with a veritable boycott, it can kill a 3-year-old edition of D&D for the first time in the history of the game.
Good.
I still have faith that 5e can be designed to support both styles of play very well. For that to be true, it has to have balanced combat mechanics that CAS groups can use, but it also has to offer a lot of interesting mechanics and resources that CAW groups can use to "unbalance" encounters within their game.
My faith is waning that they can build a game to cater to all crowds. I clearly want different things than you do Hassassin. We want to build very different games.
But going forward I really don't want them to make a crappy product which is a mutant of 4e (or 3e or 2 or 1) with other editions thrown in. I DO want them to make a new game. A game which is its own, but incorporates elements from all prior editions. This is a FAR preferable idea to me, and one it seems like they are already doing - if you pay attention to the playtests reviews.
HP attrition from encounter to encounter is the most difficult part. CAS style without resetting HP or CAW style with are both problematic. This is where I think there must be an optional choice that groups will have to make. Probably from attrition to resetting, because adding a reset mechanic seems, to me, to be easier than removing one. But that's just my view, maybe they'll surprise me.
Just a general question, both for you Hassassin and to anyone else who wants to answer it. When in history, literature, myths, legends, etc. have we ever had stories where the heroes were good to go ALL THE TIME. Where they fight 1000 battles and end up as fresh as they start.
For me, this is a problem bigger than 4e but exacerbated by 4e's (healing surges and encounters). It seems like there SHOULD (looking at those sources) be a large amount of downtime, for prep, research and healing. I don't really want a video game mentality where you wait 2 minutes out of combat and suddenly you are 100% ready again. I would love to see a system where you fight, get tired (winded), need to surge into battle again (second wind) but then end up sore, fatigued and in need of extended downtime to recoup. Not just 5 more minutes and then good to go.
I digress, not the point of this post or this thread.
I do like Combat as War, cannot stand Combat as Sport. Let me break it down.I don't like Combat as War.
I think it leads to overly-cautious, non-heroic play. If the entire point is to stack the deck in your favor, then conversely you avoid all situations where the deck is not stacked in your favor.
Croaker and the Black Company are not heros. They're barely better than rapist scum. And they're not really people I would like my game to emulate. In Combat as War, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. I find that attitude to be anathema to the heroic play I like.
Combat as Sport is much better support for playing heroes in a traditional style.
I'd rather have King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table than Croaker and the Black Company.
Overly cautions? Good. Non-Heroic? I don't see how.
The point is to come out of the fight alive, the point is to defeat the enemy and for them to need to be defeated. I can't imagine anything more heroic, even if you have to be cautions and to overcome great odds.
Why does Combat as Sport support heroes more traditionally - to you?
Being King Arthur vs Croaker has nothing to do with the CAW/CAS debate. It does have to do with the outlook and playstyle of the characters but it has nothing to do with the rules of the game themselves. If anything I've found CAS people to be more interested in money, greed and shiny things than people playing for CAW where the goal and outcome matter more.
As far as your Black Company remark - I don't agree with your characterization but I do understand it - I want you to look again at my former post, I've quoted it here for your easy reference.
They are adventurers living a hard lifestyle, they get paid the big bucks not only because they are strong and courageous but because they have the knack for defeating the enemy where all others have failed. Because they risk their lives, and have a chance of not returning to their homes at the end of an adventure. They shouldn't simply win because they tried. They should win because they prepared. That is the point I was trying to make, the point which you glossed over in favour of the "it is a game" comment.