4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[D'karr]

To me this is semantics... if I have no powers in the paladin class that work on ranged weapons... then I effectively loose my powers if I choose to be a bow paladin... The game just doesn't come out and tell you that.

Then it's a good thing that all classes have a power called Ranged Basic Attack. You see, you do have a power to be a bow Paladin. It's right there on your character sheet.

Oh, and BTW, there are options to multiclass or create hybrid character that would still provide you with support to be a much better bow paladin, if that is what you wanted.

And the class does tell you that from the start. It's a melee defender at it's core so it works "better" when it uses melee attacks. And the class writeup does have quite a bit about charging into the fray and standing stoically in the front lines. That's all paraphrased, as I'm not going to post the class writeup again if you chose not to read it the first time.

 

[D'karr]

And yes, the game DOES tell you that, if you take all of 3 seconds to look at the powers and notice that almost none of them are ranged.

You get proficiency with simple ranged weapons, which is pretty low on the totem pole of weapons, and NONE of the powers at first level for ranged weapons. You are a defender, the entirety of the class writeup makes no mention of ranged attacks, unlike the ranger for example. Yep, what else was needed?

 

[Sunseeker]

You get proficiency with simple ranged weapons, which is pretty low on the totem pole of weapons, and NONE of the powers at first level for ranged weapons. You are a defender, the entirety of the class writeup makes no mention of ranged attacks, unlike the ranger for example. Yep, what else was needed?

It's also a pretty good melee striker. But yeah, I think that 4e is pretty clear about what Paladins can and cannot do.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I feel the paladin's code is fairly well defined:


• Do not willingly do evil.
• Respect legitimate authority.
• Act honorably.
• Help the needy.
• Punish the wicked (those who threaten or harm others).

And there's some more rules about palling around with evil folks, but that's not a huge deal.

I don't get the problems people have with the paladin because it's very clear-cut. The only time that you're going to run into a problem with this is douchebag players and douchebag DMs, and they're going to be douchey without the paladin's code of conduct.

I'm sure you got a zillion responses to this, but it is not at all clear-cut. After 35 years of playing mostly AD&D I can tell you that there are more interpretations of what is the right thing to do in any given situation than there are people who have played D&D. What I disliked about AD&D's approach was that it is antagonistic. It offers the DM a set of tools to use to rake the paladin player over the coals or just plain punish them. AT BEST you end up with a player playing what they wanted to play in the first place, a lawful good holy warrior. If that's what they were going to do and wanted to do they didn't need all those restrictions in the first place. Otherwise the restrictions are just a source of conflict with the DM since clearly we're talking about some sort of power gamer (why else play a paladin and not want to play your alignment).

4e's approach ASSUMES you are going to play what and how you want. This is the answer to Bedrockgames comment too. The WHOLE POINT of the design is not to try to balance via punishment, which always fails one way or the other. Either the player isn't being punished and then they're just playing a more powerful PC, OR they ARE getting punished so why bother in the first place? Instead just make the class balanced to start with and treat the player like a thinking person that can decide how to play. 4e's class design choices will then let you play that concept well with mechanics that work specifically for that. Again, the alternative is mechanics that are overpowered or else negated.

There are other dimensions to this way of thinking. Races in 4e have benefits. Some people claim it is "all in your perspective" but its not true. A 4e half orc wizard can have an 18 INT, not the 20 INT of his Eladrin buddy, but just as good as all other non-+2 races. His AD&D counterpart is so far behind the elf wizard that it is pointless to even bother, he's crap, worse than anyone else around. In other words its a proscriptive mechanism, it tells you what NOT to do. Why would you want to tell people how not to be creative? I don't get it. Both systems accomplish "an elf/eldar is the best wizard" but one is far better at fostering some creativity (not even touching on the "thou shalt only play classes X, Y, and Z" rules of AD&D).

 

[Keldryn]

I would like to take a moment to say that reading through this thread has given me a new appreciation for how D&D 4e is designed. I think that I gave up on it too soon -- the design of the published adventures and my stuck-in-older-editions mindset were working against me. I'm keen to give the game another chance.

A big thank-you to [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION], [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION], [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION], [MENTION=4346]Fox Lee[/MENTION], [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], [MENTION=336]D'karr[/MENTION], and of course [MENTION=63245]Evenglare[/MENTION] (for starting this thread in the first place) for sharing their insights into 4e, both in this thread and the "scene-framing" discussion.

There are still three issues that I have with 4e (time to play out an encounter at the table, the number of fiddly bonuses/conditions to track, and the number of out-of-turn actions), but I think that I can reign those in with better adventure design and by encouraging my players to avoid choosing complex or fiddly powers unless they can use them effortlessly.

The way in which character themes play out in the mechanics, the degree of control that a player has over his character's destiny, and the "carrot instead of the stick" approach to encouraging playing to type all go a long way to explain why I've found my recent visits to previous editions of D&D (and playtest of Next) fun yet somewhat unsatisfying.

Now back to arguing about paladins. Some things never actually change.

 

[Fox Lee]

I'm having a hard time seeing the difference, ultimately (going by your statements above) both games basically seem to be saying... play a certain way or have an unfun experience... am I missing something here?

As I said, one difference is that 3.5 pally's approach makes it unusable for anything that doesn't suit its flavour, and since the flavour and mechancs are one big pile it's difficult to sort out which is which. Thus, the 3.5 pally is only good for making the one exact one paladin archetype that the designers pictured. 4e paladin is useful for building lots of different "divine heavy armour tank" archetypes; just to grab some low-hanging fruit, the Blood Knight, the Knight Templar, the Combat Sadomasochist and the Boisterous Bruiser are all common tropes that could be represented excellently by 4e pally, while all would be disallowed by 3.5 pally.

This attitude demonstrates a difference in design philosophy that probably makes you either love 4e or hate it - and I love it. I suspect you could guess who does which by finding out their opinion on Prestige Classes in 3.5e. If you saw Prestige Classes as a character-building tool, and found it acceptable to ignore the requirement that a character join secret society x or arcane order y, then you probably like 4e; if you say Prestige Classes as inherently tied to their background and flavour, even the eunuch warlock, then chances are you hate 4e (if you saw them as a shallow powergamer tool and hated any use of them, you probably just stuck with 2e). For me, a versatile tool that I can use to actualise my vision for a character is exactly what I want a class to be - not a top-down package that includes everything from background concept to behaviour instructions.

The other big difference is that one of the limitations is inherent to any system where you have personal abilities and get to make tactical choices, where the other is arbitrary based on a single concept of a character archetype - and I don't like WotC's/TSR's/Gygax's writing enough to let them design my characters for me, in any edition. Therefore while both do carry a limitation, those limitations are not equal in my eyes; one follows naturally and is all but unavoidable, whereas the other is imposed deliberately.

 

[Sunseeker]

There are still three issues that I have with 4e (time to play out an encounter at the table, the number of fiddly bonuses/conditions to track, and the number of out-of-turn actions), but I think that I can reign those in with better adventure design and by encouraging my players to avoid choosing complex or fiddly powers unless they can use them effortlessly.

Half NPC health, increase damage(+5 per tier). Lower-level threats are still scary because they hit hard, but die more quickly so larger numbers are more viable at the table without soaking up too much additional time. I ran a dungeon run with 4 players about a week ago using this model and it kept the heat on while letting us plow through about 6 or so combats and a half a dozen skill challenges in 3-4 hours. Compared to normally running 1 or 2 combats in that time with maybe one skill challenge, maybe. Worked out pretty well for me. It's my first suggestion to anyone who feels combat is too long.

 

[Fox Lee]

I would like to take a moment to say that reading through this thread has given me a new appreciation for how D&D 4e is designed. I think that I gave up on it too soon -- the design of the published adventures and my stuck-in-older-editions mindset were working against me. I'm keen to give the game another chance.

It's great to see somebody say a thing like that I was pretty heavily invested in 3.5 myself, so I was really sceptical of 4e, but I made a point of trying it anyway because I wanted to be fair. But even now, as an advocate of 4e, I would still play a 3.5e/Pathfinder game if another player in my group wanted to run one - I don't think they're bad systems overall, just not the best for what I want.

Your issues seem legitimate - I didn't find them any worse than in 3.5, but that may be because we also played with 3.5's more time-per-turn-intensive mechanics, like the Bo9S and Psionics. The main timewaster at our table isn't conditions but decision-making - worrying too much about which ability to use and where to move - and that's pretty much a given for our group unless the system forgoes tactical combat (or makes it needlessly easy - both would pretty much defeat the purpose for us).

Anyway, I think being willing to reconsider their opinion on something in light of new argumenst speaks well of a person, so I just wanted to say kudos to you I'm glad my ramblings could contribute something interesting to your experience.

 

[Bedrockgames]

4e's approach ASSUMES you are going to play what and how you want. This is the answer to Bedrockgames comment too. The WHOLE POINT of the design is not to try to balance via punishment, which always fails one way or the other. Either the player isn't being punished and then they're just playing a more powerful PC, OR they ARE getting punished so why bother in the first place? Instead just make the class balanced to start with and treat the player like a thinking person that can decide how to play. 4e's class design choices will then let you play that concept well with mechanics that work specifically for that. Again, the alternative is mechanics that are overpowered or else negated.

).

nothing wrong with 4E begin designed this way. It met a need for some people. For me, I honestly enjoy the game with paladins having behavioral restrictions as a balancing factor. I get that it didn't work for you, and I get that some people don't want the GM to wield that kind of power. But for many of us, it makes for a better game. So I don't think there is a design flaw there. Both apporahces are perfectly valid ways to make a game. It is simply a matter of what the audience wants. My own feeling is 4E to out things a lot of people wanted in the game. But perhaps I am wrong.

 

[LostSoul]

Why would it need to be paladin-specific? Can't fighters or rangers have a valor-dependent fighting style? I think that has been a significant objection to the class power structure in 4e. Why should access to different fighting styles be so walled off? Couldn't the martial powers mostly exist in a single pool that any character can choose from and leave it up to the player to carve out their specific idiom?

I think the reason they went this way was because they wanted a tight coupling of mechanical fighting styles with specific classes. Why? A few reasons. I think they wanted to provide a reliable experience; I think they wanted classes to really shine in their niche; I think they wanted the classes to have a default theme. Probably others.

They didn't need to do that - they could have made a large pool of martial powers, some keyed off of Dex, some with bonuses based on your class (e.g. "Brutal Scoundrel" and the like), and some with bonuses based on your weapon choice. (That might be an interesting design challenge.) Anyway, they didn't.

And while we're on the subject of martial powers, aside from the obvious mechanical differences, how is picking a particular martial power conceptually different from picking a particular combat feat in 3e-based editions of D&D/Pathfinder? If you take Power Attack and Cleave, you're going to put yourself in positions to make use of them. That's going to encourage taking the hands-on melee approach because if you stand back and plink away with the bow, you're not gaining the advantages those feats confer.

In my 3.5 game, the Paladin has a bunch of Feats that key off of his Smite and Turn Undead powers. They're melee-based, so he tends to charge into battle even when things look dire. We had a nice battle with some bugbears while this player was missing; the bugbears laid a trap for the PCs and the players decided to run. We ended the session there. In the next session, with the Paladin's player attending, he decided that he was going to challenge the bugbear leader to a duel and charged straight at her. He buffed up his attack with his Feats and laid her low. Her bugbears - already suffering under shaky morale - turned and fled (I use Intimidate as a kind of morale check mechanic).

So anyway. I agree, 3E can do the same thing with thematic Feat selection.