LordDamax said:
Ok, I've been away all day since my OP.
First off, thank you all for reinforcing my last paragraph og the OP so strongly and effectively. I KNEW my opinion must be wrong, and I thank you for showing me the error of my ways. The acerbic and sarcastic replies really drove the point home how I'm an idiot for feeling the way I do. Thank you.
You criticize others for using sarcasm but then use it yourself. What?
In the attempt to balance, they made everyone the same. Everyone's special!
Your use of hyperbole makes it clear you are not in the least impartial. The reason is because while all attacks are able to do damage, they all have different effects. You ignored this completely, saying every ability is the "same." If you want to have a convincing post on the proposed vanilla flavor of D&D, you'll have to take all of its parts in consideration, including but not limited to: slowing, knocking prone, pushing, pulling, sliding, weakening, knocking unconscious, varying effects based on ability scores not used in the attack roll itself, attacks versus different defenses, bonuses applied with attacks, penalties assigned with attacks, et cetera.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but an 18th level wizard should be able to destroy an army, with a few 20th level fighters in said army. HES A FREAKING WIZARD!
What are you talking about? Why should wizards allow the decimation of an entire army and a few 20th level adventurers? "FREAKING WIZARD" means nothing outside of the context of the spells in previous editions which allowed wizards to decimate an army. In other words, there is no law of the universe that rules a wizard must be more powerful than everyone else in the end, and be weaker than everyone else in the beginning.
In a previous post I talked about how Wizard's perhaps aren't able to handle magical energy as well in the heat of combat, and so aren't any more powerful than the steel of a dedicated melee combatant. If you believe that certain players at the table should be more powerful than other players at the table, then so be it, nothing will change your mind. But inside the context of the world, anything can happen.
It's this diapering that 4E does that pisses me off. You are obviously stupid, and a twink, and a munchkin, and your spineless mushbrain DM allows it to happen, so we'll make a game system that prevents that with the rules. Lets make everyone special!
What are you talking about? You can say buzzwords like a professional, but what does balancing the classes have anything to do with diapering? In 3.5, you simply were worse off choosing a martial class instead of a caster in the end. It was, as far as anyone can tell, a design goal. So, by leaving bad choices in the game, that's how you separate the 'men from the boys' or the 'babies from the men' in order to satisfy your metaphor?
How is each class being equally powerful a, truly, general, all around, bad thing? Your complaints are with the classes being vanilla, but that has nothing to do with the overall power, that has to do with the uniqueness of the abilities of each class.
In my games, I'm chock full of fighters, barbarians, rogues and clerics, and rarely does anyone want to play the mage, because they routinely get their asses kicked by the archers and mages on the bad guys side who say "Holy crap, a mage, kill it, it's powerful!"
So, instead of everyone wanting to play the mage, no one wants to play the mage. Wouldn't it be better if it was in the middle ground, where a mage was just as good of an option as the fighter and the cleric? Remember now, magic doesn't have to be more powerful than steel, there is no law, so why shouldn't the classes have at least similar power levels?