D&D 3.x 3.5 and before and 4th edition.

[Runestar]

I liked the way they redesigned the way monsters worked in 4e. At least higher lv foes aren't just large+ spellcasters pretending to wear armour and wield weapons.

Though this only works because PCs no longer have as many options at their disposal.

 

[Aus_Snow]

My "minion" template has always had minimum HP (i.e., according to HD, etc.) - as well as a bunch of other alterations. Likewise, my "elite" template? Maximum HP, and a few other things.

Because then, all it represents is the weakest (or strongest) of that type of being, rather than something altogether "other". Can't stand that kind of "meta" BS.

 

[billd91]

Had 4e been presented to me as a new version of the stripped down D&D miniatures game from 3e, I would have been far more accepting of it. At that level, I think it's a good game.

Trouble was, it was WotC's new version of D&D and it didn't live up to its predecessors. For good or ill (depending on the viewer), D&D has baggage and traditional elements. 4e, as I see, doesn't fit with them very well. It sacrifices a lot of D&D's charm and flexibility for game play balance, to its loss, in my opinion.

There are some interesting ideas coming out of 4e. At first I thought that the idea of having 6 stats with the player choosing three to be his defensive stats was kind of nice. It made it easy for players to figure out what to concentrate on for their stats and they could pick ones that had good synergy with their offensive powers. Trouble was not every stat still isn't equal and some class builds are hit more than others with the implications. So the much vaunted balance started showing its deficiencies to me.

In the end, there were simply too many things about 4e that I didn't like as a replacement for my preferred versions of D&D. Paizo kept a version of 3.5 in print with upgrades that I enjoyed, so I went with Pathfinder for my D&D game.

 

[Jhaelen]

So yeah, 4E is playable at level 20 or 30 and 3E often is not. But that's only because they flattened out the advancement and cut a god chunk off of each end, limiting your play options. I'm just not that impressed with it, you could accomplish the same thing for the most part in 3E by just starting at level X and slowing down the xp and treasure gains to make the game end before the PCs reach a power level you don't want them to.

That's true. I won't argue that.

However, I still prefer the 4e approach to the 3e fix of starting at level x (say, 5) and stop playing at level y (say, 12). Imho, it's more 'honest' (for the lack of a better term), since you aren't presented with a game that breaks down at the higher levels if you don't houserule it or simply stop playing when reaching them.
If the designers knew, and everyone's experience is that the game isn't playable at level 'y', then don't give me rules for level 'y+1' to 'y+n' and pretend everything is going to be just fine!

But that's obviously a matter of preferences.

It would have been nice if they had come up with a better solution, i.e. a game that allowed all the outrageous 3e high-level powers and still be perfectly balanced _and_ playable, but apparently it wasn't to be. Maybe 5e will achieve that 'holy grail'

 

[Alexander123]

I have not been in the world of D&D for a long time, but I would like to ask as this will help me better understand, is the reason some people say that games start to break down at the higher levels because optimization is possible? I have had experiences playing Diablo 2 where heavy optimization takes place and some build are definitely better than other builds and this sort of behavior is encouraged. (not a bad thing in my opinion, I like optimization. A person should rightly be concerned with getting the maximum return from his investments.) Of course I am against infinite loops and things that obviously need to be patched and I favor the way patching is done in Diablo 2 (where powergaming is possible and in fact necessary for success at the higher difficulties.), but I am not against optimization, in fact, I encourage optimization because optimization means in my view getting the maximum return from your investment.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I have not been in the world of D&D for a long time, but I would like to ask as this will help me better understand, is the reason some people say that games start to break down at the higher levels because optimization is possible? I have had experiences playing Diablo 2 where heavy optimization takes place and some build are definitely better than other builds and this sort of behavior is encouraged. (not a bad thing in my opinion, I like optimization. A person should rightly be concerned with getting the maximum return from his investments.) Of course I am against infinite loops and things that obviously need to be patched and I favor the way patching is done in Diablo 2 (where powergaming is possible and in fact necessary for success at the higher difficulties.), but I am not against optimization, in fact, I encourage optimization because optimization means in my view getting the maximum return from your investment.

Optimization isn't it so much (as long as the party as a whole is rughly optimized to the same level, DM can always just make the monsters tougher, issue's when one guy needs CR 14s to be challenged and everyone else can barely survive a CR 12, for example), it's just the sheer complexity. As you go up in level and cheap buff items and low level utility spell slots becomes plentiful, all the little things you have to keep track of just balloon out to frequently unmanageable levels, leading towards people's turns taking very long to resolve and the game dragging.

As for why not publish for levels "y + 1" and up? Because maybe some people WANT those power levels. I haven't played much high level D&D admittedly, but I like that the rules for it are right there and would like to experiment with it (cautiously) more in the future. If i was playing 4E and wanted that higher echelon...I'd be coming up with it myself, rather than just reviewing and nerfing/banning unbalanced rules that already exist. I'd rather have rules for something that are flawed than have to work from scratch, I'm paying for a rulebook, afterall. And you could apply that sentence to pretty much anything 4E doesn't cover (at least in core, didn't they not even provide hardness values for objects?) or the myriad "rules" of "follow the DCs on DMG page 42."

 

[Jack Simth]

is the reason some people say that games start to break down at the higher levels because optimization is possible?

Not really. If everyone's on an even playing field, the DM can adjust quite easily, simply by using stronger/weaker monsters at them.

The problem is more one of there being a rather large discrepancy in character power between different classes at high levels. With very little work needed, it's a very simple matter for a Druid-20 to be very, very strong, handling combat very well and filling multiple party roles without much hassle. There's basically one feat (Core, even) that's needed for a Druid to do well; that, and prioritizing Wis and Con, and the Druid is pretty much good to go with a small amount of experimentation on tactics, spells, and wildshape forms - they're hard to goof up, really. Meanwhile, it takes a *lot* of work to make a Monk-20 that strong, and even once you do, you've specialized your monk, and he's basically a one-trick-pony (maybe a two trick pony, but that's about the limit).

If the Monk and Druid players are of equal skill in optimization, and they're in the same party, this gives the DM a problem: Anything that's a decent challenge for the Druid-20 in the party is going to be pretty much insurmountable for the Monk-20 in the party. Anything the Druid can't easily slaughter is liable to easily slaughter the Monk. And that's a problem that's hard to overcome without being very obvious about it - which tends to break immersion. That's the big problem of high-level play.

Do note that the Monk and Druid were just fairly simple examples - most the classes are that way to a significant degree.

 

[Alexander123]

This is interesting because in Diablo, melee characters like the paladin, amazon and barbarian were not dominated by casters like the necromancer and the sorceror while the casters also were very independent and did not require resting for spells and were prepared at any time and at any moment for battle as opposed to D&D casters. As far as casters in diablo, while curses and other spells did exist, mainly either you were a conjurer or an evoker. (translated to D&D spell schools.) Curses were also only an aid to melee characters and could easily be overcome by melee characters. And the paladin and the amazon had their own sort of magic as well as the barbarian who had something which could be called magic. And in Diablo the basic question was dealing the most damage effectively, essentially an effort to lower the opponents health bar to 0 before they do the same to you. Mana was something everyone had but some classes were more mana dependent while some less, but this was nothing which determined who dominated in the game. Now I think Diablo and D&D are two very different and interesting systems to compare (my opinion, feel free to disagree. might be because I have experience with Diablo.) because in Diablo such a thing did not take place. Melee characters like the barbarian, amazon and the paladin were just as capable as the necromancer who relied on summons and/or evocation and the sorc who also relied on evocation. So in this context, what do you think allows such a disparity to arise between caster and non-caster classes since this disparity is entirely absent in Diablo? I know this isn't the exactly the topic of the thread so if you all think that it is appropriate I will start a new thread with this post.

I might also note that classes in Diablo were capable of single-player as well as multi-player gaming as opposed to D&D which is and I emphasize this, built for multi-player and no character can solo a D&D game. (of course, while classes in Diablo 2 were independent, Diablo 2 battlenet is the most fun way to play it, absolutely and unequivocally superior to singleplayer.)

 

[Alexander123]

Of course, I understand that these two system are completely different and combat is very different also in these two systems since going through the whole Diablo game can be done in a few playing sessions (in multi-player) taking no more than four hours, and combat being calculated by a computer. Where as in D&D from what I understand a single round can take hours at the higher levels. Of course D&D offers certain things not available in Diablo and that is that the DM and the players are both intelligent opponents and therefore can be more of a challenge to the other, (similar to the PvP in Diablo.) also D&D offers role-playing opportunities not available in Diablo (although the role-playing that is available is truly amazing, really a monumental achievent.) because it is a computer game and pen and paper allows infinite possibilites the only limit being the imagination of the players and the DM.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

In Diablo 2, all of the casters are basically either blasters or summoners. Blasters, as noted, are weak. Summoning is rough in a game where, to put it in D&D terms, you're often facing encounter levels WAY above your ECL, based on the presumption of near unlimited fast healing (which said summoned minions can't generaly benefit from) and the ability to run back to teleport back to town constantly. The whole death is a minor inconvenience thing also makes it less useful to have minions to meat shield for you (and oh god, the lag they can cause...). It arguably takes MORE permanent investment to make a caster than non-caster, since damage depends entirely upon skill points into specific spells and their synergies; warriors can increase damage just by finding a better weapon or increasing stregth. Compare with D&D, where most casters can daily tweak/change their spell list and the spells require absolutely no investment beyond the slot (compared to say...the augmentation system of psionics) and noncasters only get a few feats that become locked upon selection. Also, later on in Diablo 2, energy resistances are extremely common, physical ones still not much so. And the fact the monsters come in droves and have insane health actually makes the whole "I can do this all day!" schtick meaningfull.

What few battlefield control spells there are are weak, very frequently ineffective or difficult to use (am I the only one that ever accidentally bone prisoned myself in with a bunch of enemies instead of coralling them apart from me? ), and extremely short in duration. Save or lose/suck/die is completely non-existant, the closest things to it are Conversion and curses that many things are plain immune to, and last very shortly and have dire consequences (confuse curse is a good way to suck in every enemy from at least 2 screens away very quickly!). Closest thing to a true save or lose, without hte save part, is Static Field. Which is why it's considered such a good skill...

I guess the TL;DR version is: D&D and Diablo are so completely and utterly different in every concievable way, it's not a surprise that balance works differently for each system. Although my analysis is based solely on D2, never played 1.