Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

[Ahnehnois]

I take a much more cynical approach. Every piece of evidence for brokenness is debatable because people presume that admitting any flaw in a system means that the entire system is flawed. Which is basically just another form of edition warring with a funny set of glasses.

I certainly don't have any problems admitting that there are flaws with the system. There are lots. On a big fundamental level, the emphasis on combat and dungeoncrawling, the restrictiveness of the class system, the bookkeeping, the micromanagement, its basic failures in simulation. All of these are things that I was close to abandoning the hobby for back in the 2e days. The system works great for Baldur's Gate, but try to do some more open-ended storytelling for a live in-person game, and it feels restrictive. It's still clear that it was designed for wargamers to take small parties into illogical underground fortresses in search of endless monotonous combat and finite amounts of treasure. 3e was a huge step forward on the fundamental issues; much more open-ended, much less hackneyed.

There are plenty of specific mechanical issues, basic fixes and things that need to be rewritten. From this thread, it sounds like the social skills and infinite wish tricks could use some attention. Classes could stand to lose some dead levels. Magic item creation needs some rethinking. And so on and so forth. You're not going to get me to argue that.

But when people argue this magic v. nonmagic thing, it assumes a set of goals so alien and aversive that it's no surprise that people went en masse back to an obsolete and flawed game rather than pursue them. That's one of the first things I tell beginners who are worried their character won't be "good enough": Don't worry, it doesn't matter how powerful your character is, just play and have fun. No competitiveness, no advanced wargaming theory, just play the game.

So I say criticize 3e for tying the basic math too closely to class choice and level advancement, or for creating differences between PCs and NPCs that shouldn't be there, or for having too many fiddly little character abilities, or for forcing every class into some kind of combat functionality. You know, the things that PF didn't touch and 4e made worse. Show me some fixes for those and we'll talk.

 

[Nagol]

Incidentally, I don't see how this works. Once you've used up the Luck Blade's three wishes on the Astral Plane, they're also gone from the original Luck Blade.

"If the traveler's astral form employs magic items with a limited number of uses (such as potions, scrolls and wands), the uses are expended on the real items as well as on the astral copies."

MotP, p49

That's a good find! I took a quick look around and couldn't find any clarification. So arrows would be missing from the Ranger's quiver after all!

 

[Dausuul]

Incidentally, I don't see how this works. Once you've used up the Luck Blade's three wishes on the Astral Plane, they're also gone from the original Luck Blade.

"If the traveler's astral form employs magic items with a limited number of uses (such as potions, scrolls and wands), the uses are expended on the real items as well as on the astral copies."

MotP, p49

Well, I guess that settles that rather nicely. Good catch.

 

[Ranes]

...effects drawn from the copies of gear have no effect on the original.

Unless they're magical, consumable effects; see my post above.

 

[Ranes]

That's a good find! I took a quick look around and couldn't find any clarification. So arrows would be missing from the Ranger's quiver after all!

Not if he recovers them on the Astral Plane first, of course.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't want to quote the entirety of the long (and quite good) post # 903 @pemerton but I agree that things have, inexplicably, deteriorated when once we were having pretty clear communication, discussion and analysis. Randomly in the middle there somewhere (as has happened before) I was indicted for aberrant gameplay. Once that starts its pretty pointless to continue. I'm interested in focused analysis on component issues such as technique and systemic features. Not broad conflations of dozens of issues or sweeping generalizations of aberrant gameplay because you don't like the fact that I sometimes frame PCs directly into the action/conflict without violating the PC's build predicate.

There are more ways to skin the D&D cat than the compliation of serial accounting of time, granular process simulation, and strategic, procedural exploratory play. Scene-based play with genre logic, broad/open descriptor resolution, and transition scenes in between is a fully functional way to play and well supported by 4e and, although the system fights against you in certain areas, even before that. Further, if Dungeon World and 13th Age fall under the D&D rubric, then there are other non-deviant D&D systems that play at their best with scene-based techniques leveraged.

 

[Nagol]

Not if he recovers them on the Astral Plane first, of course.

Magical ammunition is destroyed if it hits -- in effect it has a single charge. Misses only survive 50% of the time.

 

[Dausuul]

That's a good find! I took a quick look around and couldn't find any clarification. So arrows would be missing from the Ranger's quiver after all!

Well, it only says the uses are expended, not that the items are physically destroyed. I would interpret this as the arrows losing their magical properties rather than vanishing altogether.

 

[Ranes]

Magical ammunition is destroyed if it hits -- in effect it has a single charge. Misses only survive 50% of the time.

Yep. I should have qualified my point but I just didn't want the unlucky ranger thinking he had to necessarily return entirely empty-quivered.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

What baffles me is why we even need to debate that the system has flaws in it instead of simply accepting that the flaws exist and then proposing various fixes and then debating the various merits of the fixes.

Instead, I get told I'm an incompetent DM for having these flaws exist in the game at all, and if I would just start playing Amateur Game Designer for every single game element, I'd have no problems at all

Well that's certainly not my argument. I take issue largely with the claim that the system is completely broken because of x,y,z. I don't find most of those reasons given as convincing that the system is broken, and that's a far cry for championing it as a flawless system that cannot be criticized.

And the problem is that flaws aren't being presented for proposing various fixes, they are being touted as reasons the system is completely stuffed. People aren't saying; "Hey I'm having this problem, how can we go about fixing it?", they are condemning the system as ridiculous, making blanket statements as if they were absolute fact, implying that if you can't see that the system really is broken then you are stupid or ignorant, or point-blank insulting people that disagree.

If it helps, I don't see myself as trying to deny that the system has faults. My agenda was to challenge blanket statements made. That's why I rhetorically asked why there was debate; its clear that many people feel the system isn't absolutely broken and that balance issues are often over-exaggerated.