Alright already!!!

[Ingolf]

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"...

Like WHAT?

Seriously . . . what is your first level wizard going to do once he's popped off his Color Spray and Sleep for the day? What useful weapons does he have left at that point aside from harsh language - and more to the point, based on what you know of 4e, what useful weapons does 3.5 allow that 4e does not?

 

[I'm A Banana]

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 will stand or fall on it's own. That's the nature of a new edition: you get to start over fresh, at moment one. It's a different game.

4E is about fixing the problems inherent in 3.x

That's a highly simplistic, and I'd wager, incorrect, view of it.

4e is, in part, about adressing some of the problems people had with 3e.

But it goes much farther, and does much more than that, too.

Otherwise, we'd have 3.75, not 4e.

Whether or not some people switch will be driven by how well 4E addresses the problems of the previous edition.

Actually, to switch or not is a very complex, and highly personal consideration, on which many both objective and subjective things weigh. It's not reducable to one simple estimation of rules quality.

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

That's a false choice. No one is making you play 3e, even if you don't play 4e. You could go with any other of a multitude of games, or even spend your free time in other ways.

4e isn't just competing with 3e's rules quality, here.

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

That's one of those subjective things that depends on lots of personal variables that are entirely independant of 3e or 4e's quality of rules. And, again, one of those categorical statements that don't really lead to good conversation.

What we have seen is that 4e's fighter has at-will powers that can be used all day long. Some people have expressed concerns that these powers, when the rest are expended, will be used over and over again, rendering the fighter a one or two trick pony by the time the day's out.

Is this more interesting? That's going to depend on a lot of subjective criteria, ultimately.

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.

I wasn't crying about trip. I was offering a specific counterpoint regarding your claim that 4e fighters clearly had more options than 3e fighters.

I said in 3e, a fighter (or anyone else for that matter) could choose to trip as, effectively, an at-will power.

In 4e, the fighter can only trip once per encounter, as far as we know.

This means that there is evidence that the 4e fighter has fewer options than the 3e fighter. So people are justified in their concern.

I happen to think 4e fighters probably will have enough options to keep them from repeating the same move over and over again in 4e.

But that has absolutely nothing to do with 3e, 2e, 1e, BD&D, OD&D, Chaimail, Cops and Robbers, The Story Stick, the Lord of the Rings, the legends of the Sidhe, the color of the sky on Thursday, how many jellybeans are in a jar, the Blogosphere, or who shot Mr. Burns.

If 4e has a problem, it's 4e's problem. No amount of decrying 3e is going to change that, justify that, or make it go away.

 

[HP Dreadnought]

You just spent a lot of time trying to convince people not to compare 3.x and 4E. Which is a waste of time I think. The comparison will be made regardless of how many times you claim 4E must stand on its own.

People on this forum by and large play 3.x. Those who try 4E and decide they don't like it will most likely switch back to 3.x because 'we liked it better.' Its safe to say a vanishingly small minority will decide to count jellybeans in jars as an alternative to 4E.

People are making direct comparisons between the two in their decision of what to play and therefore its an important line of inquiry to determine which system handles given situations better. Thus, how 3.x handles something is very important in the context of evaluating 4E. . . they are the two products most directly competing with each other.

 

[I'm A Banana]

You just spent a lot of time trying to convince people not to compare 3.x and 4E. Which is a waste of time I think. The comparison will be made regardless of how many times you claim 4E must stand on its own.

Comparisons can be made.

But just because 3e has a problem doesn't mean that 4e can have that same problem.

So saying "But 3e fighters had no options!!!!!! STOP SAYING 4E FIGHTERS DON'T HAVE ANY OPTIONS!" even if true, is completely useless, because it tells us nothing about what 4e fighters do and don't do.

People on this forum by and large play 3.x. Those who try 4E and decide they don't like it will most likely switch back to 3.x because 'we liked it better.' Its safe to say a vanishingly small minority will decide to count jellybeans in jars as an alternative to 4E.

If they do, crying about how jars full of jellybeans can't give you as many options for your fighter as 4e can is STILL completely useless.

People are making direct comparisons between the two in their decision of what to play and therefore its an important line of inquiry to determine which system handles given situations better. Thus, how 3.x handles something is very important in the context of evaluating 4E. . . they are the two products most directly competing with each other.

But you can't decide what is better for anyone other than yourself.

Figure out what 3e did to give the fighter options, specifically. Then, figure out what 4e is doing, specifically. And then talk about what you're seeing. That's a comparison. Crying about how limited 3e's fighters were is useless because it has nothing to do with 4e. Saying "4e's fighters will be more interesting!" is empty, because it doesn't show me how.

Show me what 4e will bring. Stop trying to defend 4e by pointing out the same flaw in 3e. Instead, defend 4e by showing these critics what, specifically, a fighter gets in 4e that makes him have more options than he did in 3e, or things that suggest he will, in the absence of ACTUAL evidence.

I'll even give you an example of what I'm talking about:

USELESS:

SIDE A: "Wow, check out those At-Will powers. A fighter using those all day is going to be dull as dirtcake."
SIDE B: "I am so sick of this! 3e's fighters were horribly limited and did the same thing every round!"

AWESOME:

SIDE A: "Wow, check out those At-Will powers. A fighter using those all day is going to be dull as dirtcake."
SIDE B: "Actually, with how fast combat looks to be going in 4e, it doesn't look like combats will have time to get dull! Look at what that Person from D&DXP is saying, it looks like things are fast and furious!"

One of those is about 4e, and is interesting and useful. One of those is just sound and fury signifying nothing other than misdirected nerd rage.

See what I'm saying?

 

[Cactot]

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

You appear to have missed the memo that the vast majority of DDXP demo groups had a TPK (a big part of which was not conserving per-day abilities and healing surges because of hard encounters earlier in the adventure). From everything that we have seen there seems to be a much greater ability to have a difficult encounter, unlike the abrupt switch of "too-easy" to "insta-gib-TPK" of 3/3.5, this combined with the removal of the ability for one character to be more powerful than the rest of the party combined should cause an overall INCREASE in the challenge rather than the inverse. It really makes me wonder if you honestly believe your own arguments, or if you are just trolling and trying to rabble rouse. I am very sorry that your precious wizard no longer has the power of god, but hey, you can always stick with 3.5! No harm done!

 

[ppaladin123]

I'll even give you an example of what I'm talking about:

USELESS:


AWESOME:


One of those is about 4e, and is interesting and useful. One of those is just sound and fury signifying nothing other than misdirected nerd rage.

See what I'm saying?

True but...a lot of the time "Goofus" says something like "4e is going to be boring because players will spam at will powers! 3rd edition was better because..." It's even happened several times in this post. If someone criticizes 4e by claiming 3e does something better, that opens the argument up to the sins (in question) of the previous edition.

The pro-4e camp gets annoyed by criticisms of 4e that simultaneously praise 3e when either a. there is no actual difference (as far as we know) between the rules in that instance or b*. the poster is imagining some alternate version of 3e that is missing the problem that supposedly appeared in 4e. This is unfair in the same way that the complete opposite "well, uh, 3e sucks too!" is.

* Note: I think "b" can occasionally lead into a fair discussion on house-rules. One can argue about whether 4e appears easier to house-rule than 3e. If 3e's supposed problems can be easily dealt with, that strikes a blow to those who think 4e is a necessary fix.

By the way, I think it is valid however to criticize 4e for keeping some of the problematic aspects of the previous edition. Some users won't switch to 4e edition because it did not fix what they saw as wrong with 3e edition. These folks have been turned off to d&d for a while now. They are another camp altogether.

 

[CleverNickName]

In 4e, you get one swing, but that one swing increases in damage more than the one swing in 3e (especially with powers). However the problem comes with AOOs. AOOs literally give you twice the attacks per round, which is a huge increase in power.

However, with the advantage of powers, this is negated somewhat. Since you can't use a power on an AOO, an AOO now becomes a weakened form of attack, allowing the mechanic without causing a 100% increase in attack power.

You know what? That actually...
...makes sense.

I'm serious. For a while there, I was reading this thread and thinking to myself "yeah, that really is a screwball way to do it" for arguments both in favor of 3.5 and in favor of 4E. And then I read this little gem, and it was like a lightbulb lit up over my head.

Great post.

 

[MerricB]

To be fair, you could do a lot with the fighter.

With Trip, Disarm, Sunder, Bullrush and Grapple you had a lot of options even before we get to the Expertise, Power Attack, Fight Defensively series.

And then there was the Longsword & Spiked Buckler fighter that got to chose between Sword and Board, Two-handed, and TWF every round. And if you had Quickdraw, you could throw a dagger in any part of those attack sequences.

Granted I wrote an excel spreadsheet to calculate all the modifiers each round so that I could actually play a high level fighter...

Aren't we comparing two different things here?

A low-level fighter... no, let's get this correct... a first level fighter in any system is pretty limited. At present we only know about the 1st level fighter in 4e.

This 1st level 4e fighter has the following options each turn:

* Basic Attack
* Charge
* Cleave (at will)
* Tide of Iron (at will)
* Passing Attack (encounter)
* Brute Strike (daily)

If a 4e encounter lasts for 4 rounds (which is about how long a 3e combat lasts) then the fighter never actually has to repeat an action. Obviously, if the combat lasts longer then the "at will" powers get a bit more usage, but anyway.

On top of this, the 1st level fighter also has the "Combat Challenge" powers, which make the fighter care about what he attacks and where he stands.

(And we don't know about any other standard actions that might be available; the delve wasn't the full set of rules by any means. Is "Grab" standard?).

I believe it very unlikely that we'll see a 20th level fighter with only two "at will" powers, one "encounter" and one "daily". Surely they'll have more than that available? Even with 4 "at will" and 2 "encounter", the combat needs to go 7+ rounds before they must repeat an action, although they could if they like.

The fighter is also made a lot more interesting by the "location matters" (minicentric) take on 4e combat. With Tide of Iron pushing foes about, the fighter can push foes into a nice little group so the Wizard can hit them all with an area effect. Teamwork? Cool.

Cheers!

 

[JohnSnow]

I believe it very unlikely that we'll see a 20th level fighter with only two "at will" powers, one "encounter" and one "daily". Surely they'll have more than that available? Even with 4 "at will" and 2 "encounter", the combat needs to go 7+ rounds before they must repeat an action, although they could if they like.

I understand, to a degree, the argument that says, "While it's true that a 4e character has a number of options in combat, two at-will powers, and one per-encoounter just isn't enough variety."

However, and this is an important point, allowing characters to have more "at-will" powers doesn't change the game balance in the slightest. As long as you're picking all 1st-level powers, there's no difference (other than versatility) between having two at-will powers and having 5.

Per-encounter powers are different, but I believe those will be restricted to either more powerful magic or especially difficult to set up exploits. Basically, if something is such a no-brainer that you'd do it every round if you could (like tripping), it should probably be a per-encounter power. Because while it's cool the first time you knock a guy off his feet in a fight, it gets awfully old, awfully quick (as anyone who played in a 3e game with a trip-monkey can attest).

In other words, if you want your characters to have more options available in their pool of at-will powers, it's the easiest houserule to increase the number they can take. Balance-wise, it shouldn't change a thing.

Offhand, I think two is enough "at-will" special moves for a beginning character to have. But if you'd rather your guys have 3 or 4, it doesn't seem to me like the game will break if you allow starting PCs to have more tricks in their at-will repertoire.

Just my opinion.

 

[small pumpkin man]

An excellent point! Though I notice that monsters don't have a "Basic Attack" stat. I'm wondering if they have the same limitation. As a guess, I'd would bet that the first attack listed is assumed to be its basic attack, though some of those are decidedly "powers". For example the Human Guard has what appears to be a marking ability with his halberd attack.

Actually, they do. All monsters have a basic attack which is shown by a circle around the sword symbol which means melee, and yes, it is almost always the first attack.