So in 5E that's what I'm doing. I'm just an great weapon fighter or an archer doing my thing round after round. Every once in a while I can push myself even further with an action surge* but I only have so much physical endurance.
Contrast that to 4E. I always had to be thinking in terms of AEDU rules in order to be effective. Am I in position to use encounter A or B? Oh wait, B would be great but I already used it. Should I use my daily in this fight and turn myself into Taz the looney toons tasmanian devil doing his spinning vortex of death and give myself an aura of weapon damage? That play cycle of deciding what power to use was the same for all PCs.
Because of those questions I'm not relaxing and simply enjoying chopping down orcs, maybe double checking to see if I need to go to the aid of the halfling. I'm constantly analyzing what card I should play next and when. It's an extra layer of complexity layered on top. I'm less likely to stay in character shouting battle cries because I'm thinking through my options.
And here I think we've come to a root difference, and thank you. I think I understand the complaint - and to me it's either "fiddly" or "irrelevant detail" - but calling it "samey" makes no sense at all to me; indeed when you say "samey" you are communicating the opposite of what I mean.
In 5e when I'm facing orcs with a warrior I'm running around chopping them down and turning my brain off. When I'm facing a dragon I'm running around chopping at the dragon. One foe or many it doesn't matter If I'm fighting on a narrow walkway or if I'm fighting on a flat plane or near a cliff edge I run around and chop at the dragon. To me this is quite literally the dictionary definition of "samey". No matter what the "official" situation is I do
exactly the same things. Therefore it is samey. And to me I find it harmful to roleplaying that I go about fighting goblins and dragons basically the same way when they are such different foes.
Also it doesn't matter whether I'm using a fighter with a sword and shield or a barbarian with a greataxe. I'm running around and chopping people, moving the same way and hitting the same way. What I'm doing is very very samey. When I'm playing a master of combat I
want to be playing someone within the setting who is able to bring out every nuance of what is already there.
Meanwhile in 4e this isn't even slightly true. In 4e if we are fighting near a cliff edge it's entirely possible that the only attack my fighter uses is
Tide of Iron. Because giving the monsters very short flying lessons is quite simply more effective than sweeping blows that might do more overall hit point damage but don't push people off cliffs. In another fight I might not use Tide of Iron at all because we're getting swarmed - and I might therefore only use Sweeping Blow and Cleave because it's right for the situation.
By definition therefore the 4e combats are not samey because I am doing different things and making different decisions when the fights are different because my abilities interact with more than just the hit points of my opponent (and even their hit points aren't just a binary switch). So each fight is its own thing.
And no the play cycle deciding when to use what level of power was
not at all the same even between two characters
in the same class. The resource count was the same - but on that scale a wizard is the same as a cleric. But there's a difference between a proactive "do more damage all combat" and a reactive "spend a healing surge" or even "leap into the enemy's way". You had as many abilities - but that was it.
What I do and how I approach a combat is to me far
far more interesting a question than how many times I can shout a battle cry. Indeed I'd consider that interesting roleplaying questions are ones like the Babylon 5 Set
- Who are you?
- What do you want? And what will you risk for it?
- Where are you going? And how the heck are you maniacs going to get out of this fine mess?
- Who do you serve and who do you trust? And who would you risk your life for and how much?
To me a battlecry answers one of those questions (it can be from three of the four questions) - and it answers it in a theoretical way. Meanwhile the 4e powers structure feeds into them all.
On top of that a lot of the powers just wouldn't have worked in a movies like LOTR.
And here I'm going to say two things. The first is that there is a spectacular amount of cast-magic in 5e; that doesn't fit LoTR in the slightest. The second is if you don't think certain powers fit
don't take them.
To summarize I get that people come from different perspectives. My issues are not universal and I get that sometimes the analogies I make could be construed as put-downs, but that is certainly not my intent. It's just trying to illuminate my viewpoint.
And thank you for that. Without your explanation I would never have understood that you (and I think other people) by "samey" mean "things are actually different and I have to think about them because I
can't just do the same thing". Which is the literal opposite of what I mean by samey.
Or more accurately I think you mean "This detail actively gets in the way of my roleplaying" - something I think about most gear porn games, especially with models of gun listed and given different stats. And I've been getting