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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4049071" data-attributes="member: 1054">Given that there has been a constant repetition of "If everyone isn't involved ALL THE TIME, they're Not Having Fun (tm)", and that there have been changes to the rules (fewer skills, auto-leveling skills, unified BAB/Saves) to prevent this, I have to wonder what other Fun Enhancements (tm) might be lurking about, unsuspected, waiting to leap out and grab us at any time. I mean, I'm not sure HOW the 4e rules could somehow mandate the entire party goes off to see the guildmaster, but if someone at WOTC marketing decides that it will be More Fun (tm) if they did...well....we'll see.Here's an example. According to at least one playtest, fighters have a power (at will or p/e, can't remember) which allows them to ignore hardness when striking an object. Cool for breaking swords. Very dramatic. Very in-genre. BUT... it also means that, given time, a fighter with this power (described as low level) can batter open ANY door/jail cell, or just tunnel right through a mountain. As a daily power, not nearly so bad. But at-will/per encounter? Troublesome. (Depending on the recharge rate of 'per encounter' powers, and the definition of an 'encounter'. I'd hate to see something like "Throg, do that thing where you smash the door to pieces!" "Throg can't. Can only do that when fighting orc. Throg sorry.")In some ways, I'm reminded of Dark Champions, where some super-skills, like ludicrous lockpicking, were bought as "Desolid, only to move through locked doors", to reflect a character who was so good at lockpicking his skill was better defined as a superpower than lockpicking 20-. I'm not calling this a bad thing or a design flaw, but it is a paradigm shift. Maybe in D&D, you DO want a thief who can't be contained by any lock. A large part of what matters, to me, is the level these abilities come at. Low-level characters are dirt common, and if a first or second level fighter has these reality-warping powers, this is a problem. If they don't come until Paragon or above, much less so. There's usually one tenth level NPC for every hundred or more first level ones.EDIT: In some ways, I realize, this is similar to the shift from 2e to 3e -- suddenly, a cleric could learn lockpicking and a rogue could grab a level of cleric or two. Previously single-class abilities were now open to all via skills and feats, within certain limits. The difference, to my mind, is cost. You could learn thiefy skills as a cleric, but you had to either waste rare skill points on them or multiclass, weakening your casting. In 4e, you just get better at everything, automagically. (Granted, again, this has always been a D&D problem -- BAB goes up if you never fight, you can put skill points into a skill you've never used, etc, so maybe this just keeps going down that same road. Trying to be fair, here.)</blockquote>

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