D&D 4E 4e -- Is The World Made Of Cheese?

[Lizard]

If you could handle 3E fighters with Power Attack carving their way through walls, you can handle this.

Maybe. But it seems every time I start liking 4e, the rules (if you can call them that) go out of their way to slam me in the face with ham-fisted "simplicity" that makes the game world impossible to believe in.

 

[hong]

Maybe. But it seems every time I start liking 4e, the rules (if you can call them that) go out of their way to slam me in the face with ham-fisted "simplicity" that makes the game world impossible to believe in.

So stop thinking too hard about fantasy.

 

[Lizard]

After reading page 66 of the DMG as suggested by a previous poster, it looks to me like those determinations are in your hands.

So why am I playing D&D and not Amber, again?

Rules are just a framework. Sometimes too much scaffolding gets in the way.

So I paid 75 bucks for...what, exactly?

"Dude, just make some stuff up" can easily be written on a fortune cookie. I find it hard to believe it took "seven digits" of development money to come up with that. If this was a simplification which actually fixed something many people complained about, I could see it, but it didn't. I do not recall many threads entitled "Hardness is too hard!".

Does removing hardness remove lookup time? No, you still need to work out object hit points, and it's not likely you'll bother memorizing a rarely-used chart. Does it simplify math? A tiny bit, but since resistance is still in the game, not much -- especially since bashing objects usually happens out of combat, when having a single extra number to factor in is not a big deal. Does it save space in the rulebook? Not much.

Will it lead to a lot of house rules, arguments, and inconsistency between game sessions and between DMs? Yes.

It's a change for no appreciable gain that carries some serious drawbacks.

A DM has enough work to do dealing with all the myriad situations no designer or rules set could predict. Telling him to "use common sense" for situations which are common occurences in play and which are trivial to write brief, useful, rules for is increasing, not decreasing, the DMs burden. I do not find my burden lighter when I have to do impromptu game design at the table.

 

[Lizard]

So stop thinking too hard about fantasy.

By "too hard" you mean "at all", and by "fantasy", you mean "anything".

 

[Sitara]

@Lizard; I'm surprised you haven't mentioend how rangers can, forsome reaosn, only use their maneuvers with two weapons and/or how non-rangers cannot truly dual weild.

 

[Lizard]

@Lizard; I'm surprised you haven't mentioend how rangers can, forsome reaosn, only use their maneuvers with two weapons and/or how non-rangers cannot truly dual weild.

Not really sure of the relevance; that's like saying "why can only wizards cast arcane spells", or whatever.

Actually, I think in 4e, anyone can duel-wield with a light weapon in their off-hand, it just doesn't mean anything without the 2-weapon fighting feats. Rules changes of that nature don't bother me, because they lead to a lot few situations where the game rules and common sense smash into each other.

You have special training, you can do Cool Stuff with two weapons. If you don't, well, you can pick up two swords -- no magic force will stop you -- but you won't be especially effective with them. I'd have PREFERRED a 3e-style table of penalties for various combos of weapons, but this is a case where I see the in-play gain from simplification; in eight years of playing 3x, I never saw anyone try to wield two weapons unless they'd optimized for it to get the penalties to -2/-2. So since the bulk of the 2-weapon chart in 3x hardly ever entered play, stripping it out makes sense because the 'edge cases' rarely came up. On the other hand, hardness comes up a LOT, isn't confusing/complicated/bloated, and helps add a smidgen of verisimilitude to the world.

Besides, you can always multiclass to ranger to get cool dual-wield powers.

 

[hong]

By "too hard" you mean "at all", and by "fantasy", you mean "anything".

So... everything is fantasy?

 

[Lizard]

So... everything is fantasy?

Many philosophers say so.

 

[hong]

Many philosophers say so.

So stop thinking too hard about philosophy.

 

[Obryn]

Yes, the lack of object hardness makes the baby jesus cry.

Or, at least, it makes me cry.

-O