No, I do not think it is fair that fighters get to choose not to use their fireballs when there is a wizard in the party.
Anyone else wonder why they didn't combine the 3.5 spell system and the 4th edition..
- Thread starter Celtavian
- Start date
No, I do not think it is fair that fighters get to choose not to use their fireballs when there is a wizard in the party.
That's the second time you accused me of trolling when all I'm doing is asking what I think is a reasonable question. If you don't like the question maybe you could say so without the overt hostility?
Your position appears to be that the balance of casters and non-casters was basically fine as it was. I believe that's simply untrue and that casters needed to be reigned in to have a hope of parity between the classes, it will take a lot of convincing for me to think otherwise because all evidence I've seen points to this conclusion.
This perhaps was my biggest problem with magic as presented in 3e (and to some extent prior editions). I hated the fact that to combat magic you needed bigger and better (or at the very least different) magic. It lead to an inescapable arms race that the "mere" non-casters were completely left out of.
re
Yep. This is what I see too that bothers me. This is what I refer to as a lack of creativity.
They made this version with balance and playability as their primary influences. I felt they made previous versions with the idea of "What is a fantasy a wizard? What is a fantasy fighter?"
Not "The wizard does more than the fighter, that isn't right".
This new version doesn't sit well with me. He doesn't seem like a wizard. Even the fighters don't seem very fighter-like. For me a fighter is someone who has a fighting style and he can use that fighting style whenever the conditions for a maneuver are right. Not just once an encounter or once a day.
A fighters fighting style dicated to the enemies how they should fight the guy. If a big bad two hander fighter shows up that can whirlwind attack, better not surround him like stalks of wheat.
So even though they made melees more interesting, they are still less like fantasy fighters that have particular fighting styles. I wouldn't be surprised to find a few people who liked having a particular fighting style as a melee as opposed to a few once a day or encounter abilities that once used can't be repeated for reasons that are not real clear other than "game balance".
I was hoping they would build on the idea of fighting styles and work in a viable martial arts system into 4th edition. It seems like I will have to wait for some future edition to do that.
This edition was built to serve as a foundation for MMORPGs. It is built alot like an MMORPG. Though I think that is a smart move for business reasons, I sure don't like it as an old school DND player.
Yep. This is what I see too that bothers me. This is what I refer to as a lack of creativity.
They made this version with balance and playability as their primary influences. I felt they made previous versions with the idea of "What is a fantasy a wizard? What is a fantasy fighter?"
Not "The wizard does more than the fighter, that isn't right".
This new version doesn't sit well with me. He doesn't seem like a wizard. Even the fighters don't seem very fighter-like. For me a fighter is someone who has a fighting style and he can use that fighting style whenever the conditions for a maneuver are right. Not just once an encounter or once a day.
A fighters fighting style dicated to the enemies how they should fight the guy. If a big bad two hander fighter shows up that can whirlwind attack, better not surround him like stalks of wheat.
So even though they made melees more interesting, they are still less like fantasy fighters that have particular fighting styles. I wouldn't be surprised to find a few people who liked having a particular fighting style as a melee as opposed to a few once a day or encounter abilities that once used can't be repeated for reasons that are not real clear other than "game balance".
I was hoping they would build on the idea of fighting styles and work in a viable martial arts system into 4th edition. It seems like I will have to wait for some future edition to do that.
This edition was built to serve as a foundation for MMORPGs. It is built alot like an MMORPG. Though I think that is a smart move for business reasons, I sure don't like it as an old school DND player.
Fifth Element
Legend
At which point the party rests, to allow the wizard to regain his best spells. Or at least do everything within their power to avoid fights until the wizard recharges.
Fifth Element
Legend
And the abstraction is: the conditions for a maneuver are only right once per encounter, or once per day (or perhaps more if the power is reliable).
I primarily DM as well and my experience is the exact opposite (having to compensate for mages much more than fighter). I suppose we'll simply have to agree to disagree.
re
After reading through this thread, I am getting the following.
A good number of players, quite possibly the majority, had the following conditions occurring:
1. You had a bad priest or no priest: It seems like the melee weren't getting healed and buffed by the neighborhood priest. I don't hear much about priests in the 3.5 campaigns.
2. Wizards did what they wanted: Melees were left to their own devices while the wizard flew around the battlefield dropping nukes like it was going out of style.
We actually have a player who tries to do this. He ends up having to run the majority of the time and having to be saved by the priest. Sad thing is he almost gives up on the encounter if he can't nuke the enemy down. I get the feeling that a great many wizard players from 3.5 would have been very disappointed playing in our 3.5 campaigns because overnuking or coming right out with a death spell was like signing a warrant for your destruction.
3. Encounters were not designed with the wizard in mind: Your DMs weren't taking into account what the wizard could do and designing encounters to make it so that going off and nuking was a death sentence.
I'll be honest. You could not play regular modules without boosting hit points and tailoring NPCs to fight against the standard power of wizards. For that reason I don't fault the majority of players for their dislike of the 3.5 wizard. That is a fault of the game designers for tossing out overpowered spells like Avasculate and Solipsis and Prc classes like the Archmage that required a complete rethinking of encounter challenges that might have been fine for a PHB version of the wizard, but were not fine when taking into account a wizard with a Prc and access to other spellbooks.
So ultimately I can see why alot of people do like 4th edition. Thinking back on it, it did take alot of work designing encounters and quite a few house rules to make high level DnD challenging.
For example, we gave feats to Paladins, Rangers, and Barbarians one every five levels. Fighters and rogues were more often multi-classed with a Prc than a straight class. Almost no one ran a straight class rogue, though Scout was one of the best designed single class rogue-types in 3rd edition and that was the most attractive single-class rogue type to run.
This is why I completely understand and like what 4th edition did with melee classes. I give them big props for finally giving melee classes interesting powers. I just wish they had not had to rip the heart out of wizards and priests in 4th edition.
I include priests because I enjoyed being a priest that my melee classes loved. I liked being the priest that had that remove paralysis ready when a fighter missed his will save. I liked having restorations prepped so that the poisoned rogue or the unlucky melee that was ambushed by spectres could get his levels back. I liked having death ward so my melee comrades could wade into a battle against an army of wraiths. I liked having the big heals when the melee was going toe to toe against the dragon. I liked playing a priest and creating a spell strategy for keeping my party alive and protected as well as occasionally throwing down against undead.
Alot of that is lost now. Priests can heal a few times a day not including healing word. I'm going to miss it in 4th edition.
A well-played priest and wizard was a thing of beauty. I don't mean just nuking, but also helping those melees on the battlefield as they threw down with the powerful stuff we were fighting. You could actually pull off fighting a horde of demons if your cleric and wizard supported their best damage source (the melee classes) rather than trying to do all the damage themselves. That made for some epic encounters I will remember that I don't think will happen with per encounter and daily powers.
We used to sit on the majority of our spell power until we reached one big encounter that would require we spend just about all of it one big, epic battle that took everything we had to win.
Now, most players will blow their encounter powers every, well, encounter. Dailies will be the only decision we have to make when to blow them off. Before you had to think about when to use your magic power. Those that blew it off willy, nilly didn't have it when it was needed much to the detriment of their group.
But as I said, this kind of encounter challenge took alot of work at high level. That is almost always a negative factor when it comes to entertainment. People don't play games to feel like their working. So I guess I understand the sentiment towards simplification, power reduction, and power scaling.
And regardless of whether I miss the old spell system or not, as long as my DM can still make it fun, I'll play. I like getting together with my buddies and throwing down against some baddies. Heck, I've played simpler game systems and enjoyed them like Boot Hill and Aliens. I'll just look at this as another game system to try out with my buddies.
After reading through this thread, I am getting the following.
A good number of players, quite possibly the majority, had the following conditions occurring:
1. You had a bad priest or no priest: It seems like the melee weren't getting healed and buffed by the neighborhood priest. I don't hear much about priests in the 3.5 campaigns.
2. Wizards did what they wanted: Melees were left to their own devices while the wizard flew around the battlefield dropping nukes like it was going out of style.
We actually have a player who tries to do this. He ends up having to run the majority of the time and having to be saved by the priest. Sad thing is he almost gives up on the encounter if he can't nuke the enemy down. I get the feeling that a great many wizard players from 3.5 would have been very disappointed playing in our 3.5 campaigns because overnuking or coming right out with a death spell was like signing a warrant for your destruction.
3. Encounters were not designed with the wizard in mind: Your DMs weren't taking into account what the wizard could do and designing encounters to make it so that going off and nuking was a death sentence.
I'll be honest. You could not play regular modules without boosting hit points and tailoring NPCs to fight against the standard power of wizards. For that reason I don't fault the majority of players for their dislike of the 3.5 wizard. That is a fault of the game designers for tossing out overpowered spells like Avasculate and Solipsis and Prc classes like the Archmage that required a complete rethinking of encounter challenges that might have been fine for a PHB version of the wizard, but were not fine when taking into account a wizard with a Prc and access to other spellbooks.
So ultimately I can see why alot of people do like 4th edition. Thinking back on it, it did take alot of work designing encounters and quite a few house rules to make high level DnD challenging.
For example, we gave feats to Paladins, Rangers, and Barbarians one every five levels. Fighters and rogues were more often multi-classed with a Prc than a straight class. Almost no one ran a straight class rogue, though Scout was one of the best designed single class rogue-types in 3rd edition and that was the most attractive single-class rogue type to run.
This is why I completely understand and like what 4th edition did with melee classes. I give them big props for finally giving melee classes interesting powers. I just wish they had not had to rip the heart out of wizards and priests in 4th edition.
I include priests because I enjoyed being a priest that my melee classes loved. I liked being the priest that had that remove paralysis ready when a fighter missed his will save. I liked having restorations prepped so that the poisoned rogue or the unlucky melee that was ambushed by spectres could get his levels back. I liked having death ward so my melee comrades could wade into a battle against an army of wraiths. I liked having the big heals when the melee was going toe to toe against the dragon. I liked playing a priest and creating a spell strategy for keeping my party alive and protected as well as occasionally throwing down against undead.
Alot of that is lost now. Priests can heal a few times a day not including healing word. I'm going to miss it in 4th edition.
A well-played priest and wizard was a thing of beauty. I don't mean just nuking, but also helping those melees on the battlefield as they threw down with the powerful stuff we were fighting. You could actually pull off fighting a horde of demons if your cleric and wizard supported their best damage source (the melee classes) rather than trying to do all the damage themselves. That made for some epic encounters I will remember that I don't think will happen with per encounter and daily powers.
We used to sit on the majority of our spell power until we reached one big encounter that would require we spend just about all of it one big, epic battle that took everything we had to win.
Now, most players will blow their encounter powers every, well, encounter. Dailies will be the only decision we have to make when to blow them off. Before you had to think about when to use your magic power. Those that blew it off willy, nilly didn't have it when it was needed much to the detriment of their group.
But as I said, this kind of encounter challenge took alot of work at high level. That is almost always a negative factor when it comes to entertainment. People don't play games to feel like their working. So I guess I understand the sentiment towards simplification, power reduction, and power scaling.
And regardless of whether I miss the old spell system or not, as long as my DM can still make it fun, I'll play. I like getting together with my buddies and throwing down against some baddies. Heck, I've played simpler game systems and enjoyed them like Boot Hill and Aliens. I'll just look at this as another game system to try out with my buddies.
Brennin Magalus
First Post
Wizards are of little use to me (I prefer sorcerers) but I think pruning spells from the wizard list is a viable option in 3e for those who want to keep wizards.
re
I agree to a degree. I did have to compensate for the variety that a wizard brought to the table like ensuring that there are ranged attackers present to deal with a flying wizard.
But the melees in our party had to be compensated for as well, specifically two-hander melees with power attack. I had a melee character with a greatspear that could outdamage the wizard on a round by round basis without using power attack. If he got to use power attack, the wizard could not touch him for damage, especially if he critted.
This guy was averaging 25 points a swing against evil creatures and more against evil outsiders. He was a half-orc fighter with an enormous strength and a tricked out greatspear and every feat to boost the damage. His ability to deal damage had to be accounted for because he could rip apart large groups of anything he could actually attack.
So though I had to take into account wizard versatilty, there were more than a few melee combinations that had to be accounted for as well in terms of their damage dealing. wizards weren't the only ones that had overpowered abilities in 3.x.
A twohander fighter was one.
The slower build two weapon fighter with two tricked out weapons was the other.
And the multiclass monk/fighter with the right feats was another, especially after they came out with the Amulet of Mighty Fists and Vow of Poverty that eliminated the monks inability to have a magic weapon.
And the Archer. You could build an archer from hell in 3.x edition that dealt sick damage.
So wizards weren't the only class you had to take into account for 3.5. I dealt with a ranger archer with the splitting magic item enhancement from Champions of Ruin and undead, dragons, and evil outsiders as his favored enemy. That guy didn't take a backseat to damage to anyone in our group. He had to be accounted for.
Dual wield rogue/fighter combos also could be strong against things not immune to crit.
So there were some melee combos that brought the pain.
One thing I will say, it is nice to see sword and board back in 4th edition. Shields were nice for defensive fighters. But it kind of sucked to be standing their with your shield and sword watching the other melees doing damage you could only dream of. The Paladin was the only class that seemed to shine with sword and board as he could use spells to augment his damage with a one handed weapon that a fighter could not.
I agree to a degree. I did have to compensate for the variety that a wizard brought to the table like ensuring that there are ranged attackers present to deal with a flying wizard.
But the melees in our party had to be compensated for as well, specifically two-hander melees with power attack. I had a melee character with a greatspear that could outdamage the wizard on a round by round basis without using power attack. If he got to use power attack, the wizard could not touch him for damage, especially if he critted.
This guy was averaging 25 points a swing against evil creatures and more against evil outsiders. He was a half-orc fighter with an enormous strength and a tricked out greatspear and every feat to boost the damage. His ability to deal damage had to be accounted for because he could rip apart large groups of anything he could actually attack.
So though I had to take into account wizard versatilty, there were more than a few melee combinations that had to be accounted for as well in terms of their damage dealing. wizards weren't the only ones that had overpowered abilities in 3.x.
A twohander fighter was one.
The slower build two weapon fighter with two tricked out weapons was the other.
And the multiclass monk/fighter with the right feats was another, especially after they came out with the Amulet of Mighty Fists and Vow of Poverty that eliminated the monks inability to have a magic weapon.
And the Archer. You could build an archer from hell in 3.x edition that dealt sick damage.
So wizards weren't the only class you had to take into account for 3.5. I dealt with a ranger archer with the splitting magic item enhancement from Champions of Ruin and undead, dragons, and evil outsiders as his favored enemy. That guy didn't take a backseat to damage to anyone in our group. He had to be accounted for.
Dual wield rogue/fighter combos also could be strong against things not immune to crit.
So there were some melee combos that brought the pain.
One thing I will say, it is nice to see sword and board back in 4th edition. Shields were nice for defensive fighters. But it kind of sucked to be standing their with your shield and sword watching the other melees doing damage you could only dream of. The Paladin was the only class that seemed to shine with sword and board as he could use spells to augment his damage with a one handed weapon that a fighter could not.
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