Yes to 4th edition

[ColonelHardisson]

Sighs. Like what?

I'm not sure why you feel the need to use the classic trollish "sighs" trope. It's not conducive to real conversation. Would you talk like that to someone in real life and expect a real exchange of viewpoints? I'm trying to have an actual conversation.

What would it take? A system or device which each player would have access to, which would all be interconnected in some way, into which everyone would input all their stats, bonuses, skills, and other modifiers. Each player would state what they wanted to do, buttons would be pressed, and voila - the machine takes everything into account that has been inputted and instantly gives the results. No rules lawyering. No forgetting of mods. No debate as to what stacks with what.

 

[Ranger REG]

I'm trying to have an actual conversation.

What is currently wrong with 3.5e?

If you want me to start? Fine.

If there is anything I felt wrong is that WotC did not reform the magic spell system. It makes spellcasters at low levels too weak and spellcasters at high levels too strong. Pretty weird considering that all of the classes now uses one XP Level Progression, as opposed to various XP progressions of the early editions (and of TSR's philosophy).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Babomb, what you (generally) say in response to my humor is true- up to a point.

I thought of it less like M:TG than DDM and other minis games, like Confrontation. If they went that way, D&D 4Ed & DDM might actually fuse, with DDM being a set of stripped down combat rules. Heck- the DDM combat rules could even replace the ones we're familiar with, perhaps even returning to the very wargame-esque Att rating vs Def rating.

I personally know people who will not play games with proxies. If you don't have the mini and the card for the Ogre Ranger in Chainmail (the one that directly presaged DDM), you weren't allowed to play it. For players like that, multiples of the Fighter page would have real meaning.

Of course, whoever made a game like that had better be generous with the critters/page in a swarm...

Yes, producing larger books gets you economies of scale in printing costs. However, but for the problem of torn pages, I didn't really have a problem with the binder format from the Monstrous Compendiums.

For the game I mockingly envisioned, that could be solved with heavier stock- perhaps even like the Pirates of the Spanish Main/Rocketmen: Axis of Evil plastics. Each page would have the stats and a picture...and a pop-out plastic mini.

For the record- I don't think it would work...but then again, there were some very bright people who never thought people would pay for flavored water, or stinky, noisy horseless carriages, or play RPGs without friends. Now we zip through traffic with our Coca-Cola in the cup-holders of our Volvos on our way to the internet cafe to log on into our favorite MMORPGs.

As I pointed out elsewhere, Rackham is taking a new slant on their Confrontation minis fantasy combat game, producing a new game with the Confrontation rules as the underpinning for their new RPG...kinda like the close link between Battletech and MechWarrior. The key difference is that Confrontation isn't a collectible minis game.

 

[sullivan]

You're making the assumption that most people have problems with PrCs. I don't think any of us have the data to make such assumptions. Some people on the internet claim to have problems with them.

You didn't seem to challenge the initial assumption of a lot of PrC misuse was occuring, so I was running with that. *shrug*
EDIT: Correction. Sorry, it was actually your assertion that this was happening.

Prestige Classes are a great concept that has been overused and often used quite badly.

I have largely ignored the mass of PrC for some time. So I'm not really in a position to talk about how well PrCs work in practice one way or another other than this recent experience and that the reason I have come to over time largely ignored the mass of PrC is because of the high useless:useful noise ratio, from my subjective view and uses, I was seeing in published PrCs. I'm just offering up a possible explaination that could be driving the effect of overuse and poor use that had been described.

Because simply blaming the driver is ignoring data and an entirely bad way to approach design of a product. The design of the car is within your control, the driver is largely out of your control, and the most direct way there is of influencing the driver is through modification of your car (including instruction manual, to further run with the analogy).

I will admit that I misspoke - skills/feats/multiclassing do skew the game towards being more similar to GURPS (or whatever classless system you prefer). But the game remains firmly, and obviously, a class-based system.

I don't delude myself to thinking that D&D will ever drop positioning itself as a "classed" system, but I am noting that in someways it has become less class constrained than some 10-15 year old systems that were billed as "classless". As well as adopting other aspects that aren't really about class/classless, but that are for a number of reasons associated with "classless" systems. Like skills.

But if I were inclined to rationalize so, starting packages in GURPS makes that game more similar to D&D's class-based system than one which doesn't present any such packages, so it would seem GURPS players long for the structure classes would give them.

There are benefits to be had from both approaches, and it is really a sliding scale composed of various different aspects. I'm not even saying "hey, you got to make it less classless". But more like "interesting idea, now fix it up, or maybe replace it with something that works better for what people are trying to use it for".

I really don't have much of a vested interest in this right now. I don't expect to see 4e in any sort of time frame that is meaningful for my own personal needs at hand. Nor do I even expect it to address all of the issues that are at the root of our group's dissatisfaction with 3.5. I do hope though that 4e is an even better product, because even if I don't play it a better product that sells well will ultimately help bring about other improved RPGs. Sure I'll look at it when it comes out, it is now looking like the next D&D book I crack open will be a 4e one, but I can't say I feel any excitement about that yet.


Anyway I think I'm done at this forum now. Take care. See yah on the Nuttyside.

 

[librarius_arcana]

Looks like I'm out voted.

Not totally, I'm with you dude

 

[Psion]

There's nothing to indicate the new edition will be worse than 3rd edition - and it certainly can't get a whole lot worse than 3.5 lets face it.

Being the best edition of the game to date, and having seen many great games trashed by new editions, oh yes it certainly can!

 

[DungeonMaster]

Edition 3.5 was a drastic improvement over 3.0.

Wow, I love to see that there are still some 3.5 adherents out there. After all the nonsense with holy word, shapechange, improved trip and you name it - it's good to see a few can still keep the faith. And that's just core rules, when we get into hulking hurler land...
3.5 was a downgrade from 3rd edition. It is the "skills and powers" 2.5 edition look-alike. A sad chapter of a few wasted years of D&D soon to be forgot.

It is the deluxe edition of the game, and it makes it a lot easier to do simple things like make a monstrous PCs.

I see that making monstrous PCs are inherently important to you. How important they are to D&D: not a frigging drop .

It includes the core epic rule s(love them or hate them),

Not important to D&D either.

and it fixes a lot of balance issues that cropped up after 3.0 had been tested by the masses.

Uh... no. There are no playtester credits at the back of the 3.5 PhB. A full page exists in the 3rd edition PhB. The 3.5 "designers" just threw their own sub-moronic house-rules into the 3rd edition framework and gunked it up.

It is what 3.0 should have been, yet the amount it diverged from 3.0 is so minor that people could choose to upgrade slowly (or not at all) and still be able to play the game.

I agree with you on this, but I think 3.x needs more time before hitting the reset button.

Here we disagree even more fundamentally. 3.5 is DEAD . When you start publishing crap like "races of the dragon" it's time man. Stick a fork in it, it's done.

We've had the extreme nonsense edition, 3.5:
*oodles prestige classes that break and bend and twist rules
*level adjustments that don't work
*oodles of feats that don't work
*templates that don't work
*Andy collin's moronic take on the base spell system
*Noonan's absurd trap CRs
*poorly updated monsters

There's so much room for improvement that I can't honestly beleive a rational person would not see this edition as "done" - even one who likes stupid things like PrC and 700+ feats.

And for those of you who hate the previous editions of D&D I have this to say: I've been playing this game likely a whole hell of a lot longer than most of you and 3.5 is the only edition where I can't take 2 non-core books and try to incorporate them into my game. The quality of the writting + the lack of ANY cross checking between authors (despite having a much more transparent way of balancing simple rules) makes 3.5 the most wholly unbalanced and broken edition of all time. Time for it to die people, and we get back to something a whole lot better, namely stressing the archetypes and to hell with the mutant game mechanical abberations.

 

[Belen]

Can we get Henry to ban the 4e threads again?

 

[Ghendar]

Sacrilige!

Now report to the Master for Super-Mutant transmogrification.

Nice to see a Fallout fan here.

<threadjack>
Greatest Computer RPG EVER, imo
</threadjack>

 

[Ghendar]

I guess, in a manner of speaking. I like having a solid, complex base of rules on which to rely. On the other hand, getting a machine to crunch the numbers and make combat go faster would be helpful.

The only computer program I really need is one that will flawlessly create fully statted and equipped npcs so I don't have to spend hours statting them out. That's my #1 issue with 3.x.