Do YOU nod to "realism"?

[KarinsDad]

I agree---but I've long since reconciled powers like "Come and Get It" as a granting a tiny bit of narrative control to the player using it.

Rather than 'taunting' oozes and zombies, perhaps the fighter is predicting a group of opponents will move into such a way that he can punish them for their mistake?

No magic involved, just a really canny warrior capitalizing on the mistakes of his opponents. The fact that the player forced the situation instead of the DM doesn't matter to the narrative at all.

Well, the fact that the game is played on a grid with concepts of foes being 5 or 10 or 15 feet away breaks this down narratively.

It's all nice and well to have the player write the story the way he wants, but it's better if he writes it in a way that makes sense to everyone sitting at the table and some of those people there don't just have to accept the incongruity with a scowl on their faces because that's the way some designer illogically wrote the power.

Moving Orcus closer to you when Orcus doesn't want to get closer to you reeks of non-saveable magic, not narrative control of the warrior getting closer to Orcus.

And a Warrior capitalizing on Orcus' mistakes with something he learned 20 some levels earlier? Yeah, that's an extremely big stretch.

 

[Argyle King]

I'm a writer. And the thing about realism you have to understand is that it is mutable.

Take the TV show CSI. Real life crime scene techs collect evidence, and that's it; they don't interact with suspects, don't follow through, they just inform the police and the police do everything. DNA takes at least a week to get back, and you have to send it off to a lab in some other state to get it done.

But that is not interesting TV. AT least, not interesting for a police procedural about crime techs. So the writers of the show changed the way it works for the sake of entertainment and enjoyability of the audience.

Writers do this all the time.

However, there's still an acceptable ballpark of 'reality.' That ballpark may be different depending upon your target audience and your genre, but there still is a ballpark.

If there were a CSI episode in which one of the agents were shot in the face, but -then he's in next week's episode looking perfectly fine- it's going to raise some questions about 'reality.'

Visual mediums also have limitations imposed upon them by their structure and time limit which books and print do not. Likewise, books and print have limitations which rpgs (as an interactive activity) do not. This is one of the reasons why I often am of the opinion that R. Howard's Conan stories were grim and gritty in spite of Conan being such an over-the-top character and surviving impossible odds in a regular basis. The character is needed for the series to continue.

Still, Howard writes in a way that makes the reader believe it; he doesn't just handwave and expect the reader to not notice. Conan still has limits. He might be the greatest warrior, but his personal skill still fails when faced with an enemy army. He may well kill 5 or 10 men, but he does not often do so without some sort of wound -unless he had a clear advantage. There's also the world around him which is painted in a way which passes as making sense most of the time. You don't see massive monsters roaming around everywhere; they are often unique creatures. Magic is capable of great things, but bartering with devils still comes with a price.

 

[KarinsDad]

Everyone's got some mighty different standards, though.

I mean, divine challenge is stupid / silly / nonsensical, but flying dragons, going toe to toe with gargantuan enemies of any kind, and _hit points_ are?

You've got it.

Divine challenge is stupid / silly / nonsensical and the only reason it was written in the first place was to attempt to turn a D&D Paladin into a video game aggro character which a Paladin never really was.

A D&D Paladin was a Holy melee Smiter who was resistant to many things and punished his enemies with his sword, not one that focused his enemies attacks on himself artificially. The class concept has changed pretty drastically. It's not the same feel, just because the Paladin still wears plate armor and uses a weapon. I know of two players who mostly played Paladins in D&D for years (decades in one case) who played a 4E Paladin for a while and then moved on.

A 4E Paladin doesn't play much differently than a 4E Fighter. Yeah, the penalties on their marks are mechanically different, but it's pretty much still damage for attacking someone else. The entire dropping of "good vs. evil" in 4E (i.e. no detect evil, no aura of good, no divine grace, no divine health, no code of conduct, etc.) has made a Paladin into a Fighter with a small ability to heal. No amount of "well, you could narratively decide to play the Paladin the old way" is going to change that. And Paladin's never had magical ranged damage spells. Most of their spells were healing, buffs, and debuffs. It was never about blasting foes at a distance with divine magic. It's a pretty different beast than before.

The biggest threat to the D&D Paladin was never an NPC. It was 4E.


Flying dragons, going toe to toe with gargantuan enemies of any kind, and _hit points_ are normal expectations of the game system and have been for over 30 years.


I think that the issue is one of expectations. Some people who have played the game for years had expectations that certain concepts would be the same or similar and those concepts were thrown out or totally changed. The same happened with 3E. When the designers change the mechanics and the class concepts so radically, there will be players who don't like it.

 

[KarinsDad]

However, there's still an acceptable ballpark of 'reality.' That ballpark may be different depending upon your target audience and your genre, but there still is a ballpark.

I think this might be the crux of the issue.

In previous edition changes, the ballpark of the reality change was reasonably similar. Things changed, but the imagery of the game stayed similar. The realities of the game stayed similar.

With 4E, the game suddenly "jumped the shark" with respect to its reality.

There are few good aligned monsters anymore and PCs are allowed to be monsters.

Fireballs are firecubes.

Wizards cannot dispel magic (and anecdotally, I've seen the Dispel Magic used exactly twice in the game system in 3 years and the roll failed both times, even in it's extremely limited capacity, it's next to worthless).

Flying typically lasts for about 6 seconds.

Teleport can be done by more than half of the classes (even some Fighters as an At Will) and it can often be done at very low level.

The realities of the game were turned on their head.


One of my favorites (IIRC), 1E Invisibility lasted until one attacked, 2E Invisibility lasted until one attacked or 24 hours, 3E invisibility lasted until one attacked or for 10 minutes per level, 3.5 invisibility lasted until one attacked or for 1 minute per level, 4E invisibility lasted until one attacked or for 6 seconds (but can be sustained for another 6 seconds as a standard action).

Is Invisibility really that game changing and threatening considering that the recipient really cannot stay invisible if he attacks? Is a +5 to defenses (but not area effects) REALLY that powerful of an effect?

This is, quite frankly, game design lunacy. The 2E Invisibility would be totally fine in 4E because the spell is already limited to one target as a Daily power. The designers are smoking crack here.

 

[Rechan]

Comment edited out. I just shouldn't participate in these discussions. My disbelief is suspended with bungee cords, and I can let slide a hell of a lot more than some people, be it game ormovie. Hence why these things always frustrate me - I cannot relate at all, and nothing I say matters.

Reality is far less important to me than internal consistency.

 

[Incenjucar]

Invisibility allows you to use non-attack powers, take a variety of actions such as disarming traps or activating magic items, gives you total concealment, and immunity to opportunity attacks. It is indeed very powerful. Remember, wizards are not the primary focus of the game anymore.

Something to keep in mind: A lot of the old favorites were old favorites because they were absurdly powerful, like Time Stop.

 

[KarinsDad]

Invisibility allows you to use non-attack powers, take a variety of actions such as disarming traps or activating magic items, gives you total concealment, and immunity to opportunity attacks. It is indeed very powerful. Remember, wizards are not the primary focus of the game anymore.

Something to keep in mind: A lot of the old favorites were old favorites because they were absurdly powerful, like Time Stop.

While I agree that Time Stop was ridiculous, Invisibility is not "very powerful" if the user cannot attack and keep it going. It's not even close to powerful. On the optimization sites, it's rated a 2 out of 6 (as is Dimension Door) and rightfully so (course, most of that is due to the fact that it's a standard action to use and to sustain).

Yes, a PC could sit there in his little invisible bubble and do the things you say, but so what? If a foe had a 50% chance to hit him, it dropped to 25% for 2 out of the 4 types of different attacks (ranged and melee, it doesn't help against close or area). So, the equivalent of maybe +3 or +4 (encounter dependent) to defenses. He's still not really that safe. Plus, invisibility does not prevent everyone from knowing exactly which square a PC is in. That requires a successful Stealth roll which Int Wizards rarely have an abundance of.

And is immunity to OAs that impressive? Not really. OAs very rarely happen in the game as is. Once players figured out how to avoid them manually two plus years ago, they have become an infrequent occurrence. I cannot remember the last time someone in one of our games provoked an OA unless it was done on purpose for some reason.

Teleport gives one immunity to OAs, but it's handed out at first level to most of the classes. Why isn't teleport considered potent if it has immunity to OAs?

And the Invisibility power is a Daily power. A DAILY. Let me repeat that. A DAILY. It should have some umph to it, but it is a sad sad power that very few players ever take (just like Dispel Magic).

Invisibility is the D&D equivalent of taking your shoes off at the airport. A knew jerk overreaction of mega proportions that was never well thought out, just implemented.


Face it. Everyone has a different opinion of what is overpowered and what is underpowered. But one thing that we should be able to agree upon is that just because a power is written in the books doesn't mean that it is balanced. There are a plethora of optimization guides on the WotC site where there are a ton of powers that are illustrated as seriously underpowered or overpowered for their level and many of the overpowered ones have been erratta-ed by WotC.

What this illustrates is that the 4E game designers, for all of their good intentions, are just people like the rest of us. People who make serious mistakes. I think in their effort to water down Wizard, Clerics, and Druids (i.e. CoDzilla), they made a lot of serious overreactions when nerfing spells (similar to taking your shoes off at the airport) to the point that for the most part, many canonical spells for these classes are now a bit of a joke.

Teleport is handed out like candy, but Flying and Invisibility are fairly non-existent (at least flying was until the Sorcerer came out, then Sorcerer only one round flying made a bit of a comeback).

Dispel Magic is a perfect example. It doesn't do anything now. Most monsters don't have zones, they have auras instead. And how often do monsters throw out conjurations? WotC's answer to how worthless it is was to change it from a Daily power to an Encounter power. Granted, that at least allowed the Wizard to almost always have it available, but it doesn't change the fact that zones and conjurations just don't show up in the game that often.

300 creatures out of 3800 of level 6 to 30+ have either a zone or a conjuration (350 out of 4800 total, but 6th level PCs rarely run into lower level monsters). As written, it's a Standard action spell (i.e. it uses up precious action economy) that is useful against less than 8% of all foes, and there's a 40% chance (or more against the really tough foes when you really need it) that it doesn't help. That means that it helps less than 5% of encounters or about once per two gaming levels.

So from level 6 to 30 (2.5 years of gaming for some groups), the spell helps maybe 12 times or once every 2.5 months. Very few people are going to take a spell that helps out that infrequently and takes a standard action, but doesn't do damage, if they actually know how infrequent it helps. Usually, they find it out via trial and error by having the spell for 9 levels and realizing in the last year, it only helped them a handful of times and they replace it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Thinking about it, there is something that does bug me in the 3.5 to 4E shift.

In their attempt to nerf CoDzilla and other casters, WotC didn't just do it at the Heroic and Paragon levels.

They did it at the Epic levels for powers that were originally heroic level earlier edition powers and not all that game breaking.

How many casters can fly around the battlefield at Epic levels for the entire encounter? It's possible, especially with specific magic items, but its still fairly rare. This could be done at level 5 in the earlier versions of the game, but is somewhat rare for Demigods in 4E.

I can see a group of 3E Demigods and 4E PC Demigods getting together for drinks, and the 3E Demigods are laughing their asses off because most of the 4E Demigod and Liches and other mega ultra powerful PCs cannot even fly.

3E Demigod 1: "Even my butler can fly on his own. My dog can fly on his own. I wish the damn cat couldn't fly on his own."

3E Demigod 2 whispers: "Should we tell them that Orcus took over WotC with the master plan to make every PC a superhero, everyone can be super. And when everyone's super, no-one will be."

3E Demigod 1 whispers: "No, no. If they find that out, they'll demand that WotC fire Orcus as CEO and put it back the way it was. It's better if the masses of players out there are totally unaware that his master plan worked. They cannot even fly. snort."

 

[Incenjucar]

That an individual has not experienced the full abuse of a power does not mean a power is not excessively powerful. Considering the array of tactical and out-of-combat uses, I can only imagine a very forgiving or casual game is involved. In the games I run and play in, OAs happen quite often, wizards with stealth powers are prone to seek access to the Stealth skill, monsters don't all have fantastic perception scores, players use non-combat utilities, and I've yet to see a character who can teleport at-will at level 1, or level 6 for that matter, because it IS quite potent.

Dispel Magic is a variable-use ability, true. I personally use a fair number of zone-based controllers, but it is certainly campaign-dependent. This is also an issue with a number of different abilities. Turn Undead is rather useless if the DM never uses undead. This issue has existed at least since 2E, and I wager earlier editions as well.

 

[Hussar]

I'm aware of Eberron. The way I'm running the current campaign goes beyond that though.

To give an example: the most recent session, I had the PCs fighting enemies who were using magic laser blasters. 'Shadow Bolt' (the actual power the enemies were using by RAW) became a black tube with two pistol grips (one at the back and one at the front) so as to be used like a storm trooper's assault rifle.

It's been a lot more satisfying running the game like this than trying to run my idea of fantasy. For me, the problem isn't often the big things (some of the 3rd Edition spells you alluded to,) it's some of the little details. I'm not suggesting 3rd Edition is my ideal though; for fantasy, I've come to embrace a system which isn't D&D at all. (Not Pathfinder either... just to clarify.)

Some of the bigger reasons why have already been discussed in a different thread.

Just happened to watch Krull the movie a week or two ago. Fantasy movie that has EXACTLY the weapons you are talking about, produced twenty or thirty years ago.

The idea of Pew Pew lazer guns in fantasy is hardly a new one.

While I agree that Time Stop was ridiculous, Invisibility is not "very powerful" if the user cannot attack and keep it going. It's not even close to powerful. On the optimization sites, it's rated a 2 out of 6 (as is Dimension Door) and rightfully so (course, most of that is due to the fact that it's a standard action to use and to sustain).

Are you kidding me? You obviously didn't play summoners very much did you? Because an invisible summoner, standing back about fifty feet so that whole 50% miss chance never comes up, obliterates most opposition if played well. Give me an invisibility spell and a wand of Summon Monster 4 and I can trash monsters well above my pay grade all on my own.