The roots of 4e exposed?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Nobody is going to deliberately run dumb casters in 3.x.

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

(And yes, it WAS an Int-based casting class).

FWIW, I’ve also played low-STR martial PCs, too.

 

[Maxperson]

The flaw here is that this is not something DESIGNERS can work with. When they are relegated to making every single non-full-casting class basically irrelevant in most play, that is a huge roadblock to doing all sorts of things with the game. This is the fundamental aspect of 3.x which basically demanded the creation of a new edition at some point. The 3e paradigm is simply not suited to vast swaths of fantasy, even within what D&D could do in principle. If you're going to gut the whole thing anyway, then you might as well tinker...

I mean, there's no specific reason why d20, as it was envisaged in the 3e era, cannot form the basis of a perfectly good FRPG, but its HARD to do because 3e is already sucking up that air. D20 Modern was reasonably successful, because it did exactly that, it tossed casting and did away with most of the problematic class mechanics. Things like Iron Heroes worked OK, but just can't compete with D&D. PF hit on what was obviously a solid middle ground, they didn't fix the issues, but they did rework a lot of the details enough to make a game that was both 3.x and at the same time not QUITE 3.x. It is interesting to see however that PF2 is going down the 4e path, because sooner or later designers just get tired of what they can't do on the 3e chassis.

And I totally disagree with you Max. It has very little to do with caster stats and some certain items. Nobody is going to deliberately run dumb casters in 3.x. So any limitations put in place by below 16 on a prime stat is meaningless, and most people who are going to seriously play a wizard will give him an 18 INT right off. That's all it really takes. One feat to get rid of interruptions of casting, and a couple other modest tweaks, and you're gold. Even without those you're still tier 1 and the non-casters are starting out behind you at level 1 and getting further behind with every level. Fighter types terrible save progression is just icing on the cake!

This is the nature of 3e, it just is.

You can say that, and you can disagree with me, but you can't change the facts. The fact is that I was never irrelevant, whether I played a caster or non-caster. Nobody in a game I ran was irrelevant, caster or non-caster. Sure the power imbalance doesn't itself render anyone relevant or irrelevant. Only way a person will be relevant or irrelevant is through his perceptions of that imbalance. You perceive yourself to be irrelevant as a non-caster, so you are. I don't, so I am not.

 

[houser2112]

.. and there were DM's that specifically found ways to kill the characters of the players who did this, and told them about it .. Nothing says "kill me" like telling a DM that you're going to be something before you earn it.

Man, I've played with dick DMs before, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Meh, then just make exactly the same character and do it again and again and again. Really rub that DMs face in it.

Just claim you're like the guy from my high school games, who played a human male sword-and-board fighter in every single campaign.

If you know your DM prefers players to organically grow their character based on what happens to it during play; don't go letting him know that you built out 20 levels of awesome because it really shows the DM that you don't care about sharing the experience as much as you do playing your cool build. Desire the cool build, and if the DM does nothing to give you other cool options by all means play it.

I agree that you should hide your audacity to plan a character ahead of time. The only problem with this is that often the road to even the most obvious PrCs involve somewhat unintuitive build choices to get into them before the campaign ends. Again, playing with dick DMs sucks.

I wouldn't classify them as like what he was talking about. Anyway, they were so simple that it wasn't an issue. AD&D fighter attack bonus was pretty much a fixed number, all the time. It might be slightly different for a different weapon, but it was easy to just write the bonus on the line for that weapon.

Honestly though, I think the amount of variance in attack bonuses in 4e is being exaggerated a bit.

Hey, I was just refuting your statement that multi-attack didn't exist before 3, not making any value judgements.

 

[Kobold Boots]

You know I would love to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Just give me one reasonable excuse for a DM to go out of their way to cheat and kill a PC just because the Player is excited enough to try and plan out their character build.

I mean the PC still has to adventure to earn XP to level up so it is not as if the Player is trying to some how cheat the system. They still earn their levels the normal way.

Thanks for the consideration.

I don't see this as being something that necessarily requires an excuse. I'm also not trying to defend anyone who acts this way. I simply see it as a matter of courtesy and a learning methodology. As I've said before in other places; it's impossible for the DM to "cheat" due to Rule 0 so I'm removing that as a condition to this answer completely.

When it happened to me, builds weren't even a thing yet. I was playing 1e and laid designs on getting to name level, starting a stronghold and becoming a lord of the area around a town called Haven. (because every campaign had a town called Haven back in the day it seems). Nevermind that I started at 0 level and had a DM that was big on story who wanted folks to develop their characters based on events that happened in the game in a more organic way. I wanted what I wanted, and didn't bother to ask the group what they were playing or what their goals were.

First time I died it was because the rogue in the group was being paid to protect the interests of the lords of the town.
Second time I died it was because my interests ran contrary to the religious powers who were entrenched in the town.
.. this started getting expensive ..

End of the day, my ranger ended up being a rogue/fighter because that was the best combination that allowed for success given what I wanted to be doing. I wouldn't even consider building a character to level 20 ahead of time when playing 3rd ed, because I wouldn't expect to live to see it. Wasted time and effort.

Point being: What you want to be often isn't what will work best given the world, the story at hand and the players at the table with you. I get that there's a portion of the player community that focuses heavily on optimizing things for their own reasons.. but I don't see the point based on my experiences. If yours are different, all the power in the world to you.

Be well,
KB

 

[Celebrim]

When it happened to me, builds weren't even a thing yet. I was playing 1e and laid designs on getting to name level, starting a stronghold and becoming a lord of the area around a town called Haven.

I first encountered the concept of builds playing 1e AD&D in the late '80's. Builds weren't a thing in AD&D if and only if the group consensus on ability scores was to keep them fairly low. If the group used ability score generation methodologies that consistently generated above average ability scores, or if they tolerated cheating of some sort in ability score generation (rolling up characters until you got what you wanted, or fudging results, which are really the same thing), then builds were very much a thing in 1e. They were relatively straight forward compared to what you'd see develop as almost its own separate 'charop' game in 3e, but they existed and involved system mastery and could vastly outperform groups that built characters based on other whims than manipulating the rules into creating the most powerful character possible.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If the group used ability score generation methodologies that consistently generated above average ability scores, or if they tolerated cheating of some sort in ability score generation, then builds were very much a thing in 1e. They were relatively straight forward...

That's a build the way a dugout canoe is the Titanic. Primitive & much less elaborate, also unlikely to be sunk by an iceberg in the middle of the North Atlantic.

 

[Henry]

Pathfinder 2 is still taking shape. It seems truer to the direction D&D was going than 4e was. It would have been less controversial and done better. 5e would not have been needed.

What a difference ten years makes. So many of the changes that 4e made have similarities in changes to PF2 (skill ranks by level instead of points; attacks, AC, and saves driven by level instead of charts; much tighter math for both PCs and monster creation rules) as have some ideas that we saw in 5e (such as a version of the "Groovian" magic system) . A large number of Pathfinder players are pretty happy with these changes (I'm not going to say "most", because I can't say with certainty). O do know that in addition to a lot of people online, that my home group is pretty stoked about all they've read so far.

I think it proved, if anything, that a lot of people just weren't ready for a change back then, and the way the change was handled was more of the problem than the changes themselves.

 

[Shasarak]

I didn't actually find combats to be any faster in AD&D, particularly 2e, than in 4e. If the fight was pretty much not worth fighting and low level, then yeah, but why bother? This is why 4e just tells you to skip that stuff. Call it out as a scene "you run into 2 hall guards, you kill them before they can so much as take a step."

Meaty AD&D fights still take an hour or more.

I agree that you can have long fights in any DnD system.

The main problem for me with 4e fights was that every* fight was a long fight.



*OK so we did have one fast fight where the Rogue went first and hit and killed every minion with an AoE. But I guess that would be an equivalent to the 2 guards example above.

 

[Shasarak]

Thanks for the consideration.

I don't see this as being something that necessarily requires an excuse. I'm also not trying to defend anyone who acts this way. I simply see it as a matter of courtesy and a learning methodology. As I've said before in other places; it's impossible for the DM to "cheat" due to Rule 0 so I'm removing that as a condition to this answer completely.

I dont buy the excuse that having a rule saying that you can cheat means you can not cheat. Sure you can have a party walk into a room of 50 Orcs and every single Orc pulls out their javelin and throws at the one guy. I have seen the comic too:



If that happened to my character and then DM started bragging about it then I would not turn up with another character.

When it happened to me, builds weren't even a thing yet. I was playing 1e and laid designs on getting to name level, starting a stronghold and becoming a lord of the area around a town called Haven. (because every campaign had a town called Haven back in the day it seems). Nevermind that I started at 0 level and had a DM that was big on story who wanted folks to develop their characters based on events that happened in the game in a more organic way. I wanted what I wanted, and didn't bother to ask the group what they were playing or what their goals were.

First time I died it was because the rogue in the group was being paid to protect the interests of the lords of the town.
Second time I died it was because my interests ran contrary to the religious powers who were entrenched in the town.
.. this started getting expensive ..

End of the day, my ranger ended up being a rogue/fighter because that was the best combination that allowed for success given what I wanted to be doing. I wouldn't even consider building a character to level 20 ahead of time when playing 3rd ed, because I wouldn't expect to live to see it. Wasted time and effort.

Point being: What you want to be often isn't what will work best given the world, the story at hand and the players at the table with you. I get that there's a portion of the player community that focuses heavily on optimizing things for their own reasons.. but I don't see the point based on my experiences. If yours are different, all the power in the world to you.

Be well,
KB

I am sorry to hear about your bad experiences. It really sucks when the DM railroads your character like that.

 

[Charlaquin]

What a difference ten years makes. So many of the changes that 4e made have similarities in changes to PF2 (skill ranks by level instead of points; attacks, AC, and saves driven by level instead of charts; much tighter math for both PCs and monster creation rules) as have some ideas that we saw in 5e (such as a version of the "Groovian" magic system) . A large number of Pathfinder players are pretty happy with these changes (I'm not going to say "most", because I can't say with certainty). O do know that in addition to a lot of people online, that my home group is pretty stoked about all they've read so far.

I think it proved, if anything, that a lot of people just weren't ready for a change back then, and the way the change was handled was more of the problem than the changes themselves.

So true. As a 4e fan, PF2 is really feeling like a lot of the ideas I loved from that game are getting a second chance. I really hope it catches on. I think it would be delightfully ironic if PF2 became the game 4e fans spurned by 5e adopt.