Forked Thread: Rate WotC as a company: 4e Complete?

[Rechan]

equipping your Ogres with missile weapons and the feats to use them effectively (I recommend swapping those greatclubs for either spears or tridents and shields, and swapping out the weapon focus likewise),

Totally off topic, but holy crap this made me think of Ogre Spartans.

Also, a single use of Dispel Magic on the Flying mage would make them feather-fall downwards. Perfect targets for Ogres playing whack-a-wizard. Or worse yet, give the ogres a Harpy leader, who dispels and then tears into the mage.

Totally not useful in all (or most) circumstances, but just sayin'. Fun thoughts.

 

[Vocenoctum]

In the particular case of fly, this should include things like equipping your Ogres with missile weapons and the feats to use them effectively

I know ogre's are the running example, but they're not CR5 monsters, so I think the simple solution is "use appropriate monsters". I think a 5th level group should be able to dominate against ogre's, but that's just me. Give the ogre's a pet dragon, or a catapult or something if you want to... or an Ogre Mage...

Granted, folks using ogre's in groups to make a suitable challenge, fine. Then make sure that group of ogre's is prepared to fight a flying enemy.

Have you tried altering fly to make it a Personal-range 4th level spell? If not, I suggest you do, because you may well find the combination of the two changes fixes, rather than just delays, the problems you have been seeing - it does restrict the party to only the one flying 'superhero', and it also makes even that a much more costly investment.

4e coulda handled it fine by making it a sustained spell (standard action) and removing the 5 minute limit. Sure you can fly over chasms, and you can spend an action point or two for combat, but eventually you'll have to land if you want to fight.

 

[Intense_Interest]

If you're playing a "Swords & Sorcery" style game, rather than 3e's default high-fantasy assumptions, then presumably you know you're going to need to make some changes to the game to make it work.

I have never read a high fantasy (Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis) that included the Rocketeer or his medieval counterpart. High Magic =/= High Fantasy.

In the particular case of fly, this should include things like equipping your Ogres with missile weapons and the feats to use them effectively (I recommend swapping those greatclubs for either spears or tridents and shields, and swapping out the weapon focus likewise), providing enemy spellcasters with sorceries of their own, and ensuring that your foes make use of available terrain to ensure they're not fighting in locations where the PC Wizard can just take to the air and blast away with impunity.

If I design my encounter with egregious amounts of metagaming to handle something, at some point between "use terrain" and "everyone has dispel magic" I am not playing a game with friends but kludging a magic engine into a usable shape.

Why would any player choose fly if, at the moment it is selected, every monster comes armed with Anti-Fly? At that point it only exists in the metagame to force the DM to keep it in mind while he is making a rounded encounter for everyone.

Have you tried altering fly to make it a Personal-range 4th level spell? If not, I suggest you do, because you may well find the combination of the two changes fixes, rather than just delays, the problems you have been seeing - it does restrict the party to only the one flying 'superhero', and it also makes even that a much more costly investment.

I tried playing 3.5E, and then dumped the entire magic system and played Spycraft. I couldn't find any reason to pull out the shield to play Spellslots & Spellslots.

 

[Branduil]

Yeah I'm also having trouble thinking of a fantasy story where people can just fly around without andything helping them. Most fantasy stories you can only fly if you have a magical mount or a broom or something like that. That's one reason I was never a big fan of fly in previous editions of D&D.

 

[delericho]

I have never read a high fantasy (Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis) that included the Rocketeer or his medieval counterpart. High Magic =/= High Fantasy.

Nonetheless, the default assumptions of D&D 3e is high-magic. If you're not going to play in that style, then you're going to have to make some alterations.

If I design my encounter with egregious amounts of metagaming to handle something, at some point between "use terrain" and "everyone has dispel magic" I am not playing a game with friends but kludging a magic engine into a usable shape.

Why would any player choose fly if, at the moment it is selected, every monster comes armed with Anti-Fly? At that point it only exists in the metagame to force the DM to keep it in mind while he is making a rounded encounter for everyone.

Alternately, you could simply use the full range of encounter types and environments provided by the rules. So, the Wizard with fly can handle the wandering Ogres without difficulty. That's okay, because this uber-tactic doesn't work against the dragons, NPC spellcasters, golems and similar that the game also provides. There is a huge range of encounters available, and fly negates at most a very very small percentage of them.

Once again, if you elect to play in a Swords & Sorcery style that constrains you to use only a specific subset of encounters, then that's your prerogative, but you will need to adapt the game to meet your revised requirements, and it is not a failure of the game if you fail to do so. Otherwise, it's like running a Mac, refusing to use emulation software, and then complaining that it doesn't run Windows applications.

 

[delericho]

Yeah I'm also having trouble thinking of a fantasy story where people can just fly around without andything helping them.

Peter Pan. Pixie dust is a material component.

 

[Intense_Interest]

Nonetheless, the default assumptions of D&D 3e is high-magic. If you're not going to play in that style, then you're going to have to make some alterations.

You couldn't define High Magic without at least 5 references and a sheet of caveats. D&D is functional magic, workman's magic, but "high" is a wishy-washy term with little bearing. Any magic is "high" compared to none, and all the matters of degree are lines in the sand.

Meanwhile, a once-a-week spell that did 200d20 fire damage is also suitably "high" in the same way that producing a bog-standard Fireball is; yet game breaking is game breaking no matter what the genre is.

Alternately, you could simply use the full range of encounter types and environments provided by the rules. So, the Wizard with fly can handle the wandering Ogres without difficulty. That's okay, because this uber-tactic doesn't work against the dragons, NPC spellcasters, golems and similar that the game also provides. There is a huge range of encounters available, and fly negates at most a very very small percentage of them.

The full range of encounters that are built to metagame a certain player from having fun by using his power set aren't the tools I should be forced to use as a DM.

If I have a player that builds a character that can go invisible, and then ensure that every important encounter includes True Sight or some variation, I am not allowing that player to participate. I've had arguments at the table to the effect that "if you're going to nerf an option whenever it was useful, don't include it at all!"

 

[Vocenoctum]

The full range of encounters that are built to metagame a certain player from having fun by using his power set aren't the tools I should be forced to use as a DM.

If I have a player that builds a character that can go invisible, and then ensure that every important encounter includes True Sight or some variation, I am not allowing that player to participate. I've had arguments at the table to the effect that "if you're going to nerf an option whenever it was useful, don't include it at all!"

In the same way that a rogue not being able to sneak attack undead/ constructs meant not that you never used them, but also not that you used them all the time. Sometimes fly lets a mage dominate an encounter, other times the group is inside and flying to the top of the 10' room is meaningless. Sometimes invisibility is great, othertimes there's a guard standing in the doorway and you can't slink between his legs...

 

[JoeGKushner]

Peter Pan. Pixie dust is a material component.

Yeah, but those ability score penalties for playing children are a real pain. And then there's the whole cannons thing...

 

[Doug McCrae]

There is a huge range of encounters available, and fly negates at most a very very small percentage of them.

The majority, I'd say.