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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7751200" data-attributes="member: 996">The added complexity of puting 'manuever' on every Martial power, 'spell' on the arcane, etc, and burying the 'power' generalization in a sidebar somewhere might've helped.  But, seriously, only the Wizard was Vancian.  And saying that having a daily makes you a caster in function is factually false, and extremely contentious phrasing.  It is fair to say that players long accustomed to the innately imbalanced and genre-contrary D&Dism of giving only casters high-power, limited use abilities, could jump, wrongly, to that conclusion.   But it is important to understand that they were absolutely wrong to do so, and that continuing to do so, knowingly, was s hallmark of h4ter edition warring.It's also yet another example of the phenomena:  in 4e, no single-class fighter could cast a spell, not even metaphorically, in 5e a single-class fighter of the Eldritch Knight martial archetype begins actually, litterally, casting, actual spells at 3rd level, and it's a non-issue. A trivial one. Always seemed pretty minor to me, though I'd mix Power Attack and Combat Expertise with Spring Attack, reach,  & Combat Reflexes to force a modest degree of tactical interest onto a fighter build.  Problem was at low levels you were left cursing opportunities that passed you by before you had the right feat; while by the time you had the full set and could pull those cool tricks, they were obviates by the types of foes you faced and the magic your party brought to the table. I keep doing that, sorry... It really depended on the table and how you came at it.You actually could play paragon or epic 'cold," say with pregens,  but combat ran much slower than if you were playing a character that you'd leveled up, 'organically,' yourself.  For established players, the first few times could be really slow, too, until you got used to actually having choices, as a non-caster, and as a caster, to your one optimal use of a daily, at best, swinging an encounter rather than 'pwning' it.  I've long had a pet peeve over long skill lists and open-ended skills, 3e had both, not nearly so bad as many other games, but as bad as D&D ever had it. Not because they were in squares, though.  3e used 5' squares, and let you convert from ft to aquares, constantly.  4e used 5' squares for everything and simplified it.  Both were spuriously criticised as 'grid dependent' compared to AD&D, which used scale inches that could be either 10' or 10yds, depending, and didn't match the scale of the minis it was used with, which was closer to 1" = 6' anyway - That's not "grid independent," just needlessly complicated5e's roughly between 3e & AD&D, that way. That is incorrect, even metaphorically, in terms of rules: only Wizards (pre-Essentials) prepared spells each day, only they had that 'burden' (of superior versatility)... And it was a much smaller burden. Minor action attacks were beloved of Charop (so suspect), but virtually identical to 5e bonus action attacks, and less complicated than 3e iterative attacks - and also much less common than either.  And, it's not like 5e bonus actions have the shield of tradition or familiarity.Off-turn actions are needed to render cyclical turn based initiative less absurd, and 3.0 through 5e all use them. 5e, arguably, not enough to avoid the cyclical round becoming absurd.  In 4e, power choice could allow you to all but specialize in them, or eschew them almost entirely. You'd rob yourself if some of the fantasy/action genre cadence of combat that way, but half hps/double damage was a commonly-mentioned variant (though I can't say I ever saw anyone use it - the closest was one convention game where the DM doubled all damage, PC & monster, after (on?) the third round.)The 13A escalation die could have been nice for 4e, if Heinsoo had thought of it 6yrs earlier...</blockquote>

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