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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 4353969" data-attributes="member: 5834">re3E is like chess, at least the spell system is. The melee system never has been. 4E melee system an improvement for melees, 4E spell system a reduction for casters.Happened that way in 3E too. Funny you don't think a player has to watch the gameboard in 3E to know where people are standing before he casts a spell. I always had to track location to see what spells would be most effective at a given time whether it was maximising number of targets or determining where best to lay out the wall spell.Since I knew my spell lists prior to playing, I didn't need to bury my head in the books too often. No idea why you feel that was the case. Maybe the guys in your campaign didn't read the books prior to play.I did. I was always prepared and knew what the spells on my list did.I was not a fan of making up things players couldn't use. I liked to be able to take the same spells that players can use and construct an adventure around them or a successful enemy. I didn't design the adventure goal around a spell, but I designed strategies and tactics for the enemies that revolved around spells useable by the players.I always felt cheap giving abilities to enemies the players couldn't use in the case of classed NPCs. A well-designed, well-played NPC group should give the party a nice run for their money.PHB and supplement spells should be able to be used to fuel adventures whether kidnappings, imprisonment, teleport assaults, and the like. There is no long-term imprisonment spell. So I can't even do the scenario without making something up. See above as to what I think about making stuff up to screw with players. I don't much care for it. This is more a matter of how you like to do encounters. I was never a fan of punctuated encounters that occur according to points on the map.I ran encounters that were like domino's falling. Once things reached  a certain point, you would be fighting one huge knock down drag out battle against a horde of enemies with the big bad there as well. I did not like the idea of monsters in linked complexes staying in their own rooms waiting to die.I lumped a ton of the monsters together into climactic encounters. So it might go guard room, alert goes out, get ready for a continuous series of non-stop battles with nary a rest period.I made a point of keeping the tension ramped up as though they were in the middle of a war.Might be hard to do in 4th edition, but I haven't tested it. So we'll see how that goes. I'm not sure when encounters cut off.I know the way I ran it, one room of baddies would merely touch off a long and drawn out encounter that was meant to destroy the considerable resources of a high level 3rd edition party. They were either going to succeed, flee, or die.I noticed that terrain is still useable. And as I said, I like what they did for melees. But magic doesn't seem like magic anymore.It will encourage interplay of a certain kind, just not as diverse as 3rd edition in terms of what magic could do. It's nice that the fighter can knock the enemy into my cloud of daggers, but that isn't magic to me.I'm giving it a try with friends. I just told them I don't intend on buying the books and such.For 3rd edition, I and another friend bought the majority of books. If these guys are so hot on 4th edition, they can supply the books this time around. I'm not spending a ton of dough for a game I don't much care for. I'll just use theirs like they used mine. I'm not motivated enough about this edition to buy the books. I hope in the future they manage to bring the old versatility of the wizard and priest back while making melees as interesting as they are in 4th edition. That would be an edition I would pay for.But Andy Collins stated dislike of death magic, hold magic, and similar magic that I find interesting is going to prevent a version of DND being made that I like as long as he is a primary influence over design. Give me back Monte Cooke or the 3rd edition designers that knew how to make magic powerful and interesting rather than egalitarian and limited. Magic is like living in a communist society now, and that is not how it is in the fantasy books I read. I like my fantasy game to simulate books. I don't see why you can't give the wizard more power (not necessarily damaging power), while making a fighter feel like one heckuva a bad to the bone killer with weapons.It doesn't conflict one bit in my eyes. Fantasy games should be about balancing usefulness, not power. Wizards are fairly weak in 4th edition. I'd like to run a few one on one battles against melees to see if the balance has gone the other way. I noticed that wizards don't have powerful defense or utility spells to make up for their lack of hit points. Even Mirror Image is a mere armor class bonus. I'd like to see how it works.No one will fear wizards now that is for certain. They are just some wandering class in the game no more or less powerful than anyone else. Though that might be fine for some, for me as a story teller that is disappointing.</blockquote>

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