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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5762962" data-attributes="member: 82106">Agreed, but lets consider this. In what edition of the game has the fighter (etc) ever been even faintly realistic? You really seriously think that a fighter could even stand in front of 25 tons of scaly raging dragon for 3 seconds flat? Even slow it down? The very concept is utterly absurd. In fact FAR more absurd than a fighter threatening 2 targets enough to slow them down.The problem with the concept that in earlier editions the fighter could 'do his job' of defending the 'squishies' was thin at best. It TOTALLY relied on the DM to run the monsters in an almost completely absurd way. I mean, sure, fighters are kinda dangerous, but they're dangerous sort of on a ratio of a rocket propelled grenade is dangerous, and the wizard is dangerous like an H-Bomb is dangerous. Any monster that isn't completely stupid wouldn't even look twice at the fighter on its way to gnaw on the guy behind him. At least now you don't need the DM's permission to do your job. There have been any number of proposals of 'more realistic' ways to handle this, but IMHO all of them are rather convolved and awkward to actually use at the table. Marking gets the idea across, it works well enough mechanically, and gives the player some control. And honestly, given how unrealistic the whole situation is anyway, can we just play and have fun? Why is it that 4e in particular has to be nit-picked to death and every other edition of the game gets a pass? I don't get it. I've played all of them. They have all been highly enjoyable and I've never had major issues with any of them as long as people were willing to just get on with it and play instead of crawling up the systems tailpipe and get all finicky about it. Really, its a question, WHY do people feel so compelled to get all on 4e's case? There's some sort of bad attitude that was somehow released by 4e changing some things. I'm absolutely at a loss to even begin to understand it.[MENTION=58416]Johnny3D3D[/MENTION]I don't know man. I think you play with a group of people that, as much as they may not be raving jerks about it, are extreme optimizing players. There's just no way in heck level 8 characters are crazy overpowered. I'd just have to say that your DM is not super tactical, creates scenarios that heavily favor the PCs, and the players are using really optimum tactics, items, etc. My experience is I'm reasonably tactical and while I've always had some tactically adept players there were always the other half of the players who varied from tactically daft to routine common-sensical people that took advantage of obvious openings but weren't brilliant. I also don't tend to hand out whole kits of optimum items. Everyone will likely get an item or two that are really good for their builds, but they aren't just going to get handed the best stuff. I play the monsters to win too, within the limits of what I figure monsters would do at least. I figure most monsters are pretty used to fighting and have fairly well rehearsed tactics, and they fight in situations where they can get the tactical advantage. Even at high paragon/low epic I've found that under that set of assumptions and with that sort of group of players the monsters do fine. I think the thing is that with a game where tactics and teamwork are so much a part of the game that its VERY hard to create a combat system where you can simply challenge every sort of possible group at different skill levels with the same sort of monsters. As much as 4e has set up a very structured framework of math around fights so that the challenge level is consistent there's still a variance of about 2-300% that is accountable to the side of the players. I don't know that there's really any way around it. Maybe just playing a more 'fourthcore' like type of game where everything is just deadly as all hell and the focus gets heavily shifted to the players needing to out think the DM, prepare carefully ahead of time, etc. You can definitely play 4e in that kind of mode. It becomes much less focused on tactical skirmishing as the centerpiece type of challenge. When the PCs DO fight in that sort of game they're usually already in deep doo-doo and the fights are preposterously brutal. Read through that 'Crucible of the Gods' module. I guarantee, there's no group of players that ever lived and breathed that won't find that challenging (honestly I expect the 1st time through success rate for parties in that thing is basically zero and I wouldn't consider it a usable adventure except as a bit of a fun diversion from normal play).</blockquote>

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