NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 4090705" data-attributes="member: 5834">reWhy? Is it not true? I doubt greatly that you could disprove what I am saying. This generation of people read less and play video games and watch T.V. more. If you are going to design a game, you have to take this into account. When I grew up the, the first video game was an Atari console. The first video game I recall playing was Intellvision. Games such as that were like the Model T is to the modern hybrid car. Good for you. Then you should know the primary source material for original DnD was books. That is why you had a game that wasn't balanced, but fit the tropes of fantasy very well. From the beginning of DnD the casters had an advantage, thus it has been for every version of Dnd until this most recent one. There are different ways to balance games. In a game like DnD that is more of an exercise in joint storytelling, it is balance of purpose and effectiveness that should be sought. Not necessarily balance of power.That is how it is in 3rd edition. In a one on one fight, a prepared wizard will defeat just about any other class at high lvl. But that doesn't mean the wizard can solo an adventure. His companions are still very useful.Nice thing about warriors and rogues is their damage almost always works. They don't have the limitations of a certain number of spells per day, spell preparation, or having to bypass SR and resistances. So it did have balance, just not against each other.I prefer a game that focuses on balance of purpose rather than balance of power. DnD has been this for many incarnations. This is the first incarnation I can recall where the designers attempted to balance power and thrown purpose out the window. Now every class can heal. Every class can do good damage. Every class has special abilities that can do similar things.The elimination of death saves is another pathetic change in my opinion. As well as the removal of control magic and immunity to fear. For the first time in ages a paladin won't be immune to fear. There are just a ton of changes that are nothing more the watering down of DnD to a level that I do not like. It isn't being done with fantasy books in mind, but purely for mechanical reasons.4E is all about the mechanics. The designers were making all these claims about trying to remove clunky rules to improve focus on roleplay. But they also removed a ton of rules that were standard fantasy tropes such as death spells and petrification, the fearless knight, and turned swordplay from a skill based endeavor into strange powered swings the like you would see in Final Fantasy rather than Lord of the Rings. So how exactly am I supposed to view these changes as anything other than video game driven?In video games, you come up with ways to balance regardless of whether it fits. Like World of Warcraft could care less that King Arthur, Sir Launcelot, Aragorn, Sir Jamie Lannister, Conan, and various other fantasy warriors were just very able swordsman with few magical abilities to charge their weapons with. They care about whether the warrior has a formidable attack that can match the wizards in terms of damage.Since I prefer my game designers to base their designs off books rather that video games. How should I look at this new edition? The first edition to incorporate "per encounter" powers for all classes. The first edition to incorporate "at will" powers for all classes. Powers, not skills. A warrior has almost always been a skilled swordsman in almost every version of DnD with no magical abilities whatsoever unless he chose a particular feat path. Now he has abilities that can be nothing but magical.I'm sorry. Your criticism is not supported by the reality of the game design. This version is based on video games, the older versions are based on books. I don't like it. It has nothing to do with being condescending unless stating a truth people don't like to hear is condescending.</blockquote>

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