D&D 5E 5e Fighter, Do You Enjoy Playiing It?

[Sacrosanct]

Except it's not sour grapes. I wanted a fun fighter like in 4E. And because a bunch of shrieking guys with incredibly narrow and concrete imaginations yelled louder about how their fun would be ruined if someone else played (not even THEM!) played a class in a manner they disapproved of, I got the shaft. It's why I utterly hate anyone who clings to their willfully limited v-tude as a reason to screw someone else out of fun.

"It's not sour grapes, now let me go on a whiny rant about how I didn't get my way when clearly I'm in the significant minority, and I'll personally insult everyone else with a different opinion."


Yep, no sour grapes at all...

 

[Sacrosanct]

My examples were examples of rulings and not adjusting the core rules.

Ruling #1: What you want to do is similar to a power, so the power provides a great example of how to adjudicate it.
Ruling #2: The exact mechanics of the power should not be used as is because the power is a daily power and/or you are not expending a power use to use it. In other words, make sure the person using the power and expending a resource to do so is always better at doing it than someone trying to improvise it.

That runs in parallel with the core rules, it does not alter them, and it literally cannot alter them because there is no hard and fast rules for improvising a power.


Now there are some modifications that I made to the core rules (altered feat-based multiclassing, added a lasting injury system, etc), but those modifications exist separate from the improvision of abilities.

Let me repeat, because you obviously didn't read it:

Basically, everything you're saying is the exact opposite of what people say is great about 4e--the removal of DM fiat and the reliance on clearly defined rules. So forgive me if it seems odd that you are relying on DM fiat to support your favorite edition when that edition was designed intentionally to remove DM fiat.

You're arguing that 4e isn't more limiting than AD&D, as long as you play it like AD&D. So....congrats I guess? If you have to take the one edition that was specifically designed to codify most everything and take DM Fiat away, focusing on rules not rulings, and turn it into AD&D (rulings over rules) in order to not having it be limiting, then that doesn't exactly prove your point very well. And we've already got definitive proof that the more you codify and tightly define abilities/skills/powers, the less likely people will go outside of that box, but the more likely they will rely on what's on the character sheet. This is pretty widely accepted by pretty much everyone. We even have an example right here in this discussion with Hussar assuming it "wouldn't even fly" in AD&D but was easy in 4e because there was a power defined for what he wanted.

But don't worry, I'm giving you another opportunity to reply so Ashkelon can XP your post like he's done with every single one.

 

[MechaPilot]

Let me repeat, because you obviously didn't read it.

I read what you said and I also realize that the removal of fiat is a strawman that hearkens back to the ridiculous arguments that 4e neutered DMs. 4e didn't remove fiat. I can quote from the 4e PHB that shows fiat wasn't removed, "Your DM might rule that you can't use powers in special circumstances, such as when your hands are tied." (4e PHB, pg 54, bottom of the second paragraph).

If the DM has the ability to say no to your powers if she thinks you shouldn't be able to use them, then that's fiat. There's also the 4e DMG, pg 12 which describes a player stating what she wants to do and the DM telling her how to do it.

But don't worry, I'm giving you another opportunity to reply so Ashkelon can XP your post like he's done with every single one.

Yeah, that's weird isn't it. Without even so much as a PM to introduce him/herself.

 

[Sacrosanct]

It's not a strawman when that's the argument people have been making for years as a feature of 4e. It's right up there as the biggest selling point along with "everything is balanced." Certainly you can admit that you've seen that argument come up ALL THE TIME, about how it's a great game because it puts the power back into the player's hand from the DM. Heck, it was even mentioned in this forum today even that player narrative is a good thing, as opposed to DM narrative.

So that's not a strawman. In order for it to be a strawman, no one could have made that argument. And they have. All the time.

 

[MechaPilot]

It's not a strawman when that's the argument people have been making for years as a feature of 4e. It's right up there as the biggest selling point along with "everything is balanced." Certainly you can admit that you've seen that argument come up ALL THE TIME, about how it's a great game because it puts the power back into the player's hand from the DM. Heck, it was even mentioned in this forum today even that player narrative is a good thing, as opposed to DM narrative.

So that's not a strawman. In order for it to be a strawman, no one could have made that argument. And they have. All the time.

It's a strawman because 4e never removed fiat; if a power works it literally works because the DM allows it to, so says the PHB. It's also an intrinsic element of the old proning an ooze argument. The DM was never obligated to allow the proning of an ooze, again the PHB is my source for that (though essentials certainly gave what I thought was an adequate fluff reason for applying the penalties of being prone to an ooze when it described disruption of an ooze).

The argument that 4e put more power in the hands of the players comes as a result of what I call "necessary explanation." If a DM is going to say no to or onerously adjudicate an action, the DM generally requires little to no explanation in many editions because there is no rule that the DM is departing from. In 4e, if you're going to say no to or negatively modify a power, the presumption is that the DM should be able to justify departing from the rules text for a good, or at least persuasive, reason.

Edit: it is possible that strawman is the wrong term. What is the term for an imaginary concept to rail against? Because the notion that fiat was removed is definitely imaginary or illusory.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Way to ruin a perfectly fine thread. Yes 4e was different. Yes 4e was fun for me. I did like the 4e fighter, but after a few levels I missed maneuvers independent from powers. Although improvising worked wonderful in 4e, in my experience no one did. When I had the chance to play instead of DMing I fell into the same trap. The powers were so neatly written and poerful, that I didn't think about not using them.

Was it my fault instead of 4e's fault. Of course it was. But I noticed that my fun is greater without rigid codified powers.

Even when using spells as a wizard, which are closely defined powers, I usually end up taking flexible spells over powerful spells.

So in a way I agree with both of you. The rules system really tried to further improvising (page 42) but in the end, even those with good intentions ended up not using them very often.

 

[Celtavian]

Way to ruin a perfectly fine thread. Yes 4e was different. Yes 4e was fun for me. I did like the 4e fighter, but after a few levels I missed maneuvers independent from powers. Although improvising worked wonderful in 4e, in my experience no one did. When I had the chance to play instead of DMing I fell into the same trap. The powers were so neatly written and poerful, that I didn't think about not using them.

Was it my fault instead of 4e's fault. Of course it was. But I noticed that my fun is greater without rigid codified powers.

Even when using spells as a wizard, which are closely defined powers, I usually end up taking flexible spells over powerful spells.

So in a way I agree with both of you. The rules system really tried to further improvising (page 42) but in the end, even those with good intentions ended up not using them very often.

I'm with you. Even in 4E martials didn't feel like they knew fighting styles. They felt like they spells disguised as fighting maneuvers. As a person that likes to read on warriors and enjoys martial skills, I like fighting to feel like training, not spells. 3E felt that way. 4E did not. 5E is back to feeling like a martial is trained in a style of fighting rather than using spells made to look like fighting powers.

 

[pemerton]

What's been illustrated time and time again is that if you give someone paints and tell them to paint a picture, and give another group paints and tell them to paint a tree, you're going to get a much larger variance in paintings in the first group.

Perhaps. Perhaps not, if all of the first group are sitting in a life model class with the model sitting at the room in front of them.

But in any event, I don't think painting has much to do with action declaration in RPGs.

But the CORE mechanic of the game is balanced around the AEDU system. In fact, it's constantly being harped as one of the best things about 4e--being extremely well balanced.

But unlike the other editions, where you are coming up with a way to handle something that doesn't have a specific rule, in 4e you are explicitly overriding an existing rule and ignoring a core part of the game mechanics (how powers are assessed and the economy of how to use them) to achieve the same thing.

The CORE mechanic of 4e is AEDU. Another CORE element of 4e is page 42, which permits improvisation and sets out parameters (DCs, damage expressions) to govern that improvisation. Permitting improvisation via p 42 isn't breaking the game, it's playing it as the designers wrote it.

I can personally report that I see far more improvisation in 4e play than in AD&D play. I haven't played enough 3E to make any comparison to that system.

 

[Celtavian]

I can personally report that I see far more improvisation in 4e play than in AD&D play. I haven't played enough 3E to make any comparison to that system.

I haven't played enough 4E to speak on it.

3E/Pathfinder improvisation was fairly rare because the level of rules codification did not require much improvisation. If a player wanted to do something, there was usually a rule for it. There was almost nothing a player wanted to accomplish that wasn't codified at some point. The rule for general effects fell under the Dirty Trick maneuver in Pathfinder.

Players tended not to use maneuvers like Sunder because they didn't want to lose magic items. You could effectively wipe out opponents weapons. Disarm them. Move them around with reposition. Grapple. Overrun. Knock prone. Pathfinder eventually released an interesting martial arts system as well with a fantasy flavor that was very fun.

Most of improvisation in 3E/Pathfinder consisted of things like cutting down a pillar to bring a roof down or creative use of items in a room. Most everything was codified as more books were released until you could hardly do anything without looking in a book for the rule. That's one of the things that started to turn me off about the game. It was a very robust rule set for player options. Players could accomplish a ton with feats, skills, and combat maneuvers, far in excess of either of 4E or 5E. You had to know the system to know how to adjudicate it as a DM. It started to feel like homework.

Then again Pathfinder characters were ridiculously powerful at high level. Even hordes of demons couldn't slow them down. Once they released Mythic Adventures in Pathfinder it went from ridiculous to "I can't even challenge a party of these characters." Nightmarishly powerful characters in Mythic Adventures. Then again they were supposed to be characters like Hercules or any mythical hero you read about with a god as their parent.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

"It's not sour grapes, now let me go on a whiny rant about how I didn't get my way when clearly I'm in the significant minority, and I'll personally insult everyone else with a different opinion."


Yep, no sour grapes at all...

I really don't think you understand what the term "sour grapes" refers to. If I pretended I didnt want to play a fighter anyways THAT would be sour grapes. Am I bitter? Hell yes. But at least get your terms correct lol.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sour_grapes