Alright already!!!

[HP Dreadnought]

LOL! Somebody else took exception to that comment and got in faster than I did.

 

[dren]

If the fighter is going to use his at-will power over and over again every round, it's going to be boring.

This is one of my few complaints about 3.X system, it may cost a lot of feats / items to get really good at a combat maneuver, but once you have them it's in the players best instance to keep repeating the action...as the benefit is fantatastic (i.e. disarm, trip, etc...) But what is best for the character, is boring because, well, it limits the players creativity because they know the numbers and most will use those numbers to get advantage in any given circumstance, and few players (in my experience anyway) will pick a maneuver because its cool vs one they believe will succeed.

It's one of my hopes of the new system that nasty but effective maneuvers will be limited to encourage PC ingenuity, without skimply replacing it with easy to kill monsters that provide limited challenge. Lots of maneuvers sounds cool, as long as it doesn't slow down combat because players need to look through lists. Right now its only bad for PC spellcasters that don't know spells....

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Once again I think the limits of predesigned FIRST level PC's get in the way of honest assessment.

Let's just make up a few "possible" at will powers for our Warhammer wielding Fighter:

1) ATK v Fort, X+Str Damage, Target is stunned until Fighters next turn

2) ATK v Ref, X+Str Damage, Target is slowed until Fighters next turn

3) ATK v Wil, X+Str Damage, Target is staggered until Fighters next turn

4) ATK v AC, X+Str Damage, Target suffers a -2 AC penalty until Fighters next turn

5) ATK v AC X+Str Damage + Y damage.

Now we'll say you get to pick two of those 5, heck take all 5, which one are you going to use EVERY round?

Your choices are too similar: stunned versus slowed, staggered, or -2 AC. If the only choices are that similar and dull, I would say you have a point.

Looking at the two at-will powers listed on the D&DXP sample characters, you have a choice of damaging your opponent and getting some small bonus damage against an adjacent opponent, or you can damage your opponent, push them 1 square and then shift into their former square. I can see circumstances where I might need to decide which of these to use. I can also see times where neither is useful (solo fight against an enemy who is two sizes larger).

I think the at-will powers may have more variety to them than what you listed. The trick will be to decide which ones to select.

 

[Nebulous]

<crying from laughing so hard> Yup, this one is very funny! You think people would be happy their mage of choice isn't pulling out a crossbow and hoping their god of choice was watching at that moment to let them roll a 20!

I know, having the wizard constantly cast magic missile, even if he can miss, is 100x better than pulling out a crossbow. Maybe if they just renamed the spell "Magic Crossbow" everybody would be happy.

 

[kennew142]

Well at least in 3.5 I CAN do something else other than the one or two per day and per encounter spells than "magic missile, magic missile, magic missile"...

How many different things can your 3e character do at first level? It's been confirmed that characters will have more per encounter and per day powers at higher levels. Characters should have plenty of things to do in combat. Out of combat we have rituals to further expand our repetoire.

All of these facts are available for anyone who wants to look for them, but we can't let a little research get in the way of good rant now - can we?

 

[glass]

Thanks! Your little declaration here put into words perfectly the reason why I feel irritation whenever someone trops out v3.5 to defend some aspect of v4.0.

Except that 3.5 worked pretty damn well, so saying '3.5 did X' is an excellent rebuttal to 'X doesn't work'.

Of course, fighters could get a bit repetitive in 3.5, so possibly just being as good as 3.5 won't cut it here. Fortunately, the OP was pointing out the 4e will be better in this respect than 3.5 was, so we're still good.


glass.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Doing the same attack every round is exactly what fighters did in practice in 3E.

I didn't say anything about 3e. This is, after all, the 4e forum. I generally feel that the discussion should be mostly about 4e. If you'd like to bemoan how fighters can't really do anything in 3e, I'm sure a whole mob of helpful ENWorlders will pour out of the woodwork to help you make your 3e game better.

Also, just a general matter of advice: it's not very useful in a discussion to state something as categorically as you state the above. It's overblown and exaggerated, and you're not doing your case any favors by stating inexact assumptions in a categorical way.

Regardless, any situation, in any edition, in any game, heck, in any VIDEOGAME, where you do the same thing over and over again is boring. It's pure game psychology: change fascinates us just as patterns delight us.

If fighters in 4e are using the same ability, round after round, that will be pretty boring to a very large number of people.

It doesn't really matter what anything else does. It just matters what 4e does.

I'm pretty sure the designers are clever enough that "same thing every round" is something that they've deliberately tried to avoid for 4e, so I don't think it will be a major problem, if it ever is at all.

In 4E you're going to have a choice among several per day, per encounter, and at will powers.

Sure sounds like it, yeah. But the criticism specifically said "after your per day and per encounter stuff is spent." So it really only matters how many at-will things you can choose to do in a given situation.

Probably plenty, I'd think.

4E is doing something to expand a fighters options by quite a bit.

I'm not really sure we can say that right now with any authority. I mean, in at least one case, 4e is doing something to specifically limit the fighter's options (Trip is per-encounter only, meaning that it is more limited than it was in the previous edition, where it was effectively at-will). But I think the general thrust would agree with your statement, even if some specific examples run counter to it.

However, there will be plenty of times a "basic attack" and a power are roughly the same thing: (cleave when there are no adjacent foes, for example) and basics seem mostly so you can't stack a at-will power with unique situations (charge+bull rush+tide of iron=flying foe). Also, there will be plenty of times you can't use your at-wills (neither at-will works if your using a bow to strike a flying foe). Lastly, we're not 100% sure what role feats will play into creating or augments combat situations.

However? What are you disputing? From what I can see, nothing in your post at all contradicts anything in mine.

3e is the baseline of comparison for the majority of the EN World community, and before the 4e announcement, it's game of choice. So because 3e already has the EN World seal of approval, it's not unreasonable to assume that aspects of 3e carried into 4e will also meet with approval.

That's screamingly disengenuous.

We've had nearly a decade of people who have been fixing what they've seen as wrong with 3e.

If 4e keeps what's wrong with 3e, not only will it STILL have a problem, it will ALSO have the problem of having been given the opportunity to FIX the problem, and squandering it.

3e's flaws are not accepted canon. 4e's flaws will not be, either.

 

[Incenjucar]

Well at least in 3.5 I CAN do something else other than the one or two per day and per encounter spells than "magic missile, magic missile, magic missile"... And frankly, being able to do it at will every round of every minute of every combat, all day long is just pathetically cheap and stupid.

I take it you never used a Wand in earlier editions? What was the standard charge limit again.... 50?

And in 4E, nothing is stopping you from using a host of different abilities, magical or no. It is false to claim otherwise. A particular at-will may be your best option, on average, but this just means your DM isn't throwing a wide enough variety of encounters at you.

Let's face it, NO good fantasy book has ever seen a party so well stocked, prepared, safe, etc that they didn't have concerns about their equipment and the need to rest to recoup and recharge and prepare for upcoming challenges.

NO True Scotsman would agree with you. Beyond that, 4E applies Vancian mechanics to every single class. EVERY SINGLE CLASS. So resting is MORE important. In prior editions, so long as the wizard had some wands or scrolls, and there was a Wand of Cure around, you never had to stop. I don't think 4E is going to be giving Wands of Tide of Iron out.

Taking that element out of the game cheapens the entire feel of an adventure by likening the grueling encounter-by-encounter exploration/clearing of a dungeon/ruins/whatever to being a 2-hour movie without the need for anything resembling reality and/or sensibility. You may as well have arrows that never run out by default and a seeming endless healing... oops, never mind I guess that last one they've already made steps towards including, haven't they?

The intensity is down, the volume is up. Everyone is a Vancian Caster now, but everyone can also swing their sword all day, too. 31 Flavors of Gish Mechanics.

*yawn*

:\

so instead of thinking and planning and doing all that "investment into my character"
I can sit back and play playstation during the combat and roll the to-hit and damage dice mindlessly doing the same magic missile over and over and tune in when combat's over - after all, it's going to be nothing but the same old thing over and over - and silly powers names and abilities names or not - that's not "more fun."

"I full attack."

More power doesn't mean it's more fun....

Good thing they weakened the spellcasters then.

And D&D has always been a character-driven game, it was made to recreate the adventures of the great fantasy novels those were rich in combat and magic and powerful artifacts and monsters - but they were dominated by the stories of the characters that used and/or fought those elements.

Every genre revolves around utilizing and/or combatting the genre elements.

Ripping out the "little things" that allow a Wizard a lot of flexibility to slim down the list to a mindlessly simplistic limited choice list is not "more fun" to me... even if I can do more damage and do magic missile until I've whittled chessboard piece out of what once was a mountain.

This is not a valid criticism of 4E.

Where's the "caution" the "planning" the risk!?

"I full attack."

"I recharge my Wand of Magic Missiles."

"Ah man time to rez the fighter again."

Yeah it sucks to have a character die, or to go really big in a combat to realize it was a trap, a ruse to do just that - sap your strength, but that's part of the evil genius of the evil bad guy. Knowing it could happen and trying to plan and account for it and all that epic heroic wisdom that comes from knowing the fight isn't always as simple as it seems and not always the goal (such as the ruse fight to sap the party before the real fight begins) is part of what it means to be a hero and an adventurer. If you have no fear of running low on anything or no risk of over exerting yourself there's no reason to bother restraining and therefore no reason to bother playing - there's no challenge when you have limitless power to eventually whittle down your enemies with - at that point it becomes a game of lucky die rolls to hit and to do more damage as a pathetic over-hyped power-gamers war of attrition - and nothing else.

This is not a valid criticism of 4E.

You're either lying to us, or lying to yourself, I'm not sure which, but this just isn't valid.

Please, if you're going to make these hyperbolic claims, cite some evidence and show how it supports it.

 

[HP Dreadnought]

That's screamingly disengenuous.

We've had nearly a decade of people who have been fixing what they've seen as wrong with 3e.

If 4e keeps what's wrong with 3e, not only will it STILL have a problem, it will ALSO have the problem of having been given the opportunity to FIX the problem, and squandering it.

3e's flaws are not accepted canon. 4e's flaws will not be, either.

Actually you're being screamingly disengenuous on this point.

The VAST majority of posters here all play 3.x in some form.

There may be discussions over this or that aspect of the 3.x rules on the forums, but to imply that 3.x is not the baseline from which the latest version of the rules must be judged is ridiculous.

4E is about fixing the problems inherent in 3.x (and selling more books. . . but whatever). Whether or not some people switch will be driven by how well 4E addresses the problems of the previous edition. (Some will switch regardless, some won't switch at all. . . but its the fence sitters in the middle who are in question.)

The choice is, do I continue to play 3.x and its various problems, or do I switch to 4E and whatever problems it may have. So the whole point of most of the discussion around here is comparing and contrasting the two systems to determine which handles things better.

In the case of 4E, we've already seen enough to know that playing a 4E fighter is more interesting than a 3E fighter.

You cry about trip. . . how many people aside from trip specialists ever used it? In the case of trip specialists. . . they just did the tripping thing over and over again, so weren't really any more interesting than the straight melee types anyway.

 

[SmilingPiePlate]

This is one of my few complaints about 3.X system, it may cost a lot of feats / items to get really good at a combat maneuver, but once you have them it's in the players best instance to keep repeating the action...as the benefit is fantatastic (i.e. disarm, trip, etc...) But what is best for the character, is boring because, well, it limits the players creativity because they know the numbers and most will use those numbers to get advantage in any given circumstance, and few players (in my experience anyway) will pick a maneuver because its cool vs one they believe will succeed.

It's one of my hopes of the new system that nasty but effective maneuvers will be limited to encourage PC ingenuity, without skimply replacing it with easy to kill monsters that provide limited challenge. Lots of maneuvers sounds cool, as long as it doesn't slow down combat because players need to look through lists. Right now its only bad for PC spellcasters that don't know spells....

Said it better than I attempted to (and failed) earlier in the thread.

Trip in particular is really bad in this way. It's a risky, not-very-sure-thing maneuver that will, as often as not, leave a character knocked prone and wishing he'd just attacked, unless he invests in being good at it, at which point he very rarely wants to use anything else and just spams trip attacks.