Bagpuss
Legend
What I mean by those 3 things is that that is all you get to do with no diversity.
Effect allows for a huge amount of diversity.
What I mean by those 3 things is that that is all you get to do with no diversity.
Effect allows for a huge amount of diversity.
You seem to be contradicting yourself. The example that you yourself give provides 16 million outputs from just 3 basic inputs. So why are you complaining that there are only 8 basic inputs in 4E, given the number of outputs that can result?Meaning there are only really 8 different types of attacks/powers.
RGB offers 16 million colors, but they are all still made from only 3.
So you are just combining a few rudimentary things to make all these other things.
What if you don't want to do one of those 7 effects, or damage, but something else?
Effect allows for a huge amount of diversity.
Empowering the player's creativity should be a function of the game, not a job for the DM.
True, the D&D magic system is probably one of the most quirkiest, I'm also glad that they conserved some of the quirky spells, though I hoped a bit that they'd tie more powers to the stunt system a bit more explicitly, so you could get more freeform-style magic (I mean it works, but it's a bit clunky).Then I read the Bigby's Icy Grasp write-up. And my skepticism went away.
The concept was sound and still allows those "odd-ball" magical effects that always made D&D magic so different from, say, Shadowrun magic. If you know one Shadowrun combat spell, you basically knew them all.
Very much agree with this. Where we disagree, I believe, is that I feel 4E accomplishes this, while you do not. C'est la vi.
However, if a rogue, wizard, and fighter, all with proficiency in the same weapon (all of them are eladrin, so they all have longswords) the difference is only the variance in Str score +1 (for the fighter wpn talent). This is a large deviation from the difference in Thac0 or Bab that existed previously. (Again, this was needed to give fighters combat superiority, something technically not needed in an era of fighter powers and class abilities.) The oddity comes in those weird corner cases (lets say our three eladrin all have the same str score, so the fighter is only +1 to hit better than the wizard when making an opportunity attack) though in play it typically seems much more varied (due to wizards having higher int and rogues higher dex, emphasizing those scores over str)
Unfortunately, that's the kind of creativity that I absolutely don't like to see in my games. Stone To Mud may be a borderline case, there's been more extreme 'creative' abuses of spells in the past. This kind of creativity is part of the reason why 3E became so complicated because it tried to prevent any loopholes.Granted it doesn't exist now, but an instant kill spell from a utility spell is what I call creativity!
Not really when it is just the same 7 effects mixed with X[W] damage.
You are still only doing one of 7 effects and/or some damage.