To me the players are special not because they are different from the rest of the world, but because they are the focus of the game. A 20th level Paladin protecting X-town from an invasion by an Orc horde is as important as the player's 20th level Paladin doing the same thing. He won't get the same attention because he's not the focus (after all it is I who play him, not one of the players and I have to play loads of characters).
O.K. Here is where you are failing and failing utterly. First off, lets get semantics out of the way.
1. A 20th level NPC paladin cannot be as important as a players 20th level Paladin doing the same thing. He cannot be because he is not the focus of the game.
2.
There is no such thing as a 20th level paladin. Class and level only serve as mechanical constructs by which NPCs and Monsters interact in combat with PCs. It is nothing else. If you want a guy who is a powerful Paladin, then you make him a powerful paladin. And all the time he is doing his thing with only NPC/NPC interaction, he is a powerful paladin doing exactly what you want him to do
The other day, i ran an adventure, and the orcs kicked a guys face in. I didn't need to roll to have the orcs kick a guys face in, because that is retarded, they're NPCs, they all do what I want when i want why i want because I said so. Now, when they interact with players they may or may not be minions, may or may not be elite, or solo or whatever. All of that is just a construct to inform the interaction with the players.
Your players never know the paladins attack bonus, backstory unless you tell them, AC, his powers. They don't need to. All they need to know is that he is strong, and he kicks ass for the Lord Moradin
But one thing they do all have in common: They are the most powerful people in their world. They are not unbeatable, but they deal in arcane forces that other people cannot emulate or equal in power. They are mysterious and considered dangerous to toy with due to that arcane power. They have a particularly feel that 4E does not capture.
So literally, the problem is that the class that you play is not the most powerful entity on the entire world. Well then, i see we have gotten to the heart of the matter.
In my experience, the 3E wizard was the guy who enabled the entire party to win. When I talk about the wizard stepping up when the light is darkest, I don't mean stepping up and winning alone. I mean he was the guy who cast Haste making the party stronger. He was the guy who cast fly on the fighter so he could actually fight the dragon or flying demon. He was the guy who cast resist energy on the party so they could withstand the hail of energy blasts being rained down on them. He was the guy who stepped into to render the enemy wizard inert so the rest of the party could wade through the minions to kill that big bad guy.
Ahh yes. In your experience the 3E wizard was the guy who won the fight, and the rest of them were just there to clean up after you won the fight. I would think we're getting closer to the heart of the issue, but we totally pegged it ages ago.
The 4E wizard would be laughed at if it tried to rule a kingdom with his weak hit points and limited arcane magic. He is nothing like the wizards I listed.
Of course he would, what right minded DM is going to let a player rule a Kingdom when there are worlds to be saving?
If you have other problems its because you are failing to realize that outside of the players there is no such thing as a wizard. If you want to give a wizard a bunch of wild ass crazy abilities you are free to do so. Because what makes an NPC vivid to the players is not its stat block
I have yet to see a wizard able to do everything by himself. Too many creatures that can see through invisibility, fly, and do any number of attacks that can annhiliate a wizard once they get ahold of him.
And those same monsters do the same thing to a fighter. Except faster, with a lower likelihood of being stopped by a save or die, detected before they are in range, or even damaged at all by the fighter.
Folks like you that make ludicrous and false claims about the wizard class either don't have much experience playing a wizard or with one. Because I know that wizards can't do everything alone. I have yet to play in a party where the wizard did not need and appreciate a good rogue and warrior.
Well that's great, because i have played wizards and sorcerers and bards nearly exclusively throughout the entire 3e lifespan and i never once felt that i "needed" the other party members. Not certainly in the slightest did i need them to be anything but wizards, sorcerers, druids, or clerics.
I like the 4e Wizard even more than previous incarnations. Because now, i can be very powerful and "controllery", but i don't make the fighter, rogue, or ranger obsolete. Because i can, by default, use powerful arcane techniques and alter the very world around me. But at the same time, if i want to be a wizard that is so awesome he kicks people in the face instead of bothering with arcane words of power, i can be a fighter, and take "ritual caster"
I ran a level 20 playtest adventure of my own design recently and most of the time, the result was "Oh man, what the wizard did really defined that fight". Because that is what wizards do now, they define fights, they don't win them.
The thing I seem to see is that you can't have a subjective opinion that is your own and not meant to be looked at as an opinion that everyone should share without being attacked for it. When I wrote the original post, it was all my own opinion. It was my scream at what I thought was wrong with 4E for myself.
No, you can have all the subjective opinion that you want, just as we can have all the subjective opinion to call your subjective opinion stupid.
A bunch of misconceptions about what 4e is
O.K. here is the real problem. You don't understand roleplaying games. Roleplaying games are not to be read, they are to be played. That stats of an ogre minion do not define i literal creature that walks around in the world that has 1 hit point, it defines how that creature interacts with the player.
A NPC farmer could stab it as many times as it wanted, and if the DM doesn't want it to die, it doesn't die. Minions are just a framework to make it easier to deal with situations where you want a creature that is going to bite it as soon as the players thwack it.
Trust me, your players, or you will feel mighty powerful when you cleave through a horde of minions. And they will feel threatened at the same time (the last time i had a player who didn't feel threatened by minions he ate 70 damage in a single round and nearly died. Later, that same player, in a different game, jumped out of a window rather than be surrounded by minions)
That's a good understanding of the game. Yep, it is the aesthetic that I want. If an RPG does not give you the aesthetic you are looking for, then it becomes a game of numbers.
I play for the aesthetic. Which basically amounts to the feeling I get when I imagine the battle on the battlefield or the adventure as it progresses. I want things to look and act a certain way that jives with what I have read in fantasy books. I don't pretend that 3E is perfect, just that it is closer to what I am looking for.
Aesthetic is something you and your DM create. Aesthetic is not inherent in the system. That is another reason why you are getting told off. Because you are whining about your own inadequacies to find the Aesthetic in a system you like.
Just like I want a crit from my warrior to level someone. Not just be a maximum damage hit that I could roll regardless of whether I crit or not. So it is not just the aesthetic for casters I am looking to get back. I want that powerful hit aesthetic back for my melees as well. For my own tastes, a crit should be a tremendous hit that levels an opponent of roughly the same level as you.
A crit from a brutal rogue using a +1 shortsword is likely to do 33.5 average damage with an at will[mundane is 4.5 less]. With an encounter power, you're looking at upwards of 42.5 damage with a Daily, 45.5.
A level 3 Soldier has about 45 hit points... You're going to be downing that target with a crit from your brutal rogue. Your ranger might not on just the crit, but he has more attacks coming to do more damage.
A fighter can do upwards of 44.5 damage on a crit with a daily and +1 weapon(rogues have a pretty hefty DPR advantage on at-will powers)
I could with work capture what I'm talking about in 4E by reducing the attack roll of the minions or monsters. But I can do exactly the same thing in 3E.
So you're willing to spend a lot of time making sure wizards are not overpowered by extending encounter length(which actually makes the more powerful, not less, but i digress), flat out banning things which would otherwise be legal(which must include about half of the wizard repertoire). But you are not willing to spend less time to do the same for 4th?
My point is that Jackie Chan doesn't use Tumble once per encounter. No, don't even try to argue because he doesn't.
I wasn't aware that players could only use acrobatic stunts once per encounter or that rule 42 doesn't have rules for adjudicating "doing cool things with the environment" all the damn time.
Oh wait, that is because players can use acrobatic stunts as many times as they want and the DMG has rules for adjudicating doing cool things with the environment all the damn time.
