Forked Thread: PC concept limitations in 4e

[Thasmodious]

I played a smart 2e human barbaric fighter who traveled widely eventually learned 1e OA martial arts then switched class to mage fairly early in his career. He continued on in a 1e campaign gaining a lot of levels of magic user but rose as a merchant prince and defined mostly for his politics. In 3e I recreated him as a ranger/monk/wizard eventually moving to harper mage and loremaster focusing on him as a political mover and monster hunter. When the same campaign converted to 3.5 he ditched monk for an unarmed feat, and loremaster for eldritch knight becoming a knowledge expert who focused on magically powering his melee attacks but using a lot magic for defense and divinations. He did a lot of planning and tactics for both combat and plots. I've used him in a number of 3e campaigns starting over at lower levels where he focused at times on politics and magic, sometimes focusing on monster hunting other times on investigations.

I've done translations of him to Shadowrun and GURPS and seen him used as an NPC hunter in a vampire game I played in.

In 4e I was thinking wizard multiclassed to some martial class to be primarily a caster with a secondary role as a martial combatant. Mechanically it is really not viable to try to do that kind of a route. Multiclassing from a martial to wizard and picking up rituals is viable and the route I now focus on.

Fighter really focuses on being a heavily armored tank and using yourself as a combat sponge which was never really the style I used in playing the character.

Lightly armored striker is more the style he mechanically used before so I was looking over ranger and rogue but they don't really feel right, if ranger had more non specific weapon style based powers it might have worked better.
Rogue had great skills but the combat stuff is all small blades and dex with surprisingly no int based options.

Warlord and leader role is looking like the closest fit I can find with a ton of feats spent on appropriate skill development.

Since eldritch knight fit him in 3.5, I'd say swordmage is your straight answer, and that still gives you room to multi to pick up some other avenue that fits.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Like the Hero system. Wouldn’t be a bad thing, I think. Yet, it would make it even a greater disconnect from previous editions.

As I advocated in another topic, this is one area where I think 4E didn't go far enough. OTOH, Hero has been out in some form for over two decades now, and there are still people that rebell against the very idea of working from effect.

Hmm, it's Friday. So today I guess I think that limiting powers to some examples, providing a "power builder" option--and incidently shortening the class list section by almost an order of magnitude--would have both forced people to bridge this conceptual gap and made it easier to so bridge. Not to mention that we could have then had more variety in powers and more classes in the same space.

Ask me on Monday, and I'll be thinking that the reaction to what we got is such that without the massive list of powers, we'd have whole groups of people totally incapable of playing the game, without massive help.

 

[Remathilis]

Is that "invalid options" nonsense still going on?
That is pure powergamer talk, nothing more. A option does not have to make you do you 50d12 damage to be valid. It just has to lead to interesting characters which most choices in 3e does.
So stop with all that "4E is so much better because every choice makes me kill things better" nonsense. Not everyone sees killing power as ultimate goal in their role playing game.

See, I'm going to switch sides on you for this one (Yay True Neutral Druids!)

An "invalid option" is one that might be your characters primary schtick, but someone else does it better OR you cannot fill your classes primary role with it. A lightly armored weapon-finesse fighter in core 3.5 is an example; he cannot deal damage and take blows like a regular str-based greatsword-and-plate fighter. Classes like swashbuckler or duelist make it possible, but they require additional materials. Other examples include caster multi-classing without Theurge-like classes, or how bards have no niche to call their own (poor fighters, adequate rogues, meh spellcasters).

4e started on the right path; they balanced things in combat (via the a-w/en/da system) and out of combat (via skill training and ritual cost), but they did a curious thing; they said "some options are so far gone, we'd rather remove them than create the illusion of existence."

I do think there is a place for non-lethal powers in 4e which are balanced against damage-and-effect powers (check out the bard for an example or two). And I don't lament being useless in combat as a fair trade for Trapfinding.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I think you might have misunderstood where I was coming from. I was merely pointing out that transparent choices are not much choice at all.
I am not a fan of competetive character builds or "rules mastery" either.

I am a rabid Basic D&D fan thanks.

I think we have different definitions of "transparent choices" and I'm not explaining what I mean by that well enough. I'm not even sure I'm using a good term here. I'm trying to say that some choices in 3E were hidden duds, while I feel the bad choices you could make in 4E (causing a situation where your PC is MAD) are easier to see.

As a Basic fan why are you arguing the limitations of 4E? When Basic is by its very nature the most limited form of D&D since OD&D (not that it is a bad game by any means).

Is that "invalid options" nonsense still going on?
That is pure powergamer talk, nothing more. A option does not have to make you do you 50d12 damage to be valid. It just has to lead to interesting characters which most choices in 3e does.
So stop with all that "4E is so much better because every choice makes me kill things better" nonsense. Not everyone sees killing power as ultimate goal in their role playing game.

Good choices do not require powergaming. In fact, the choices in 4E seem very balanced to me, so you would find it difficult to create a character that is too far over or under the power curve. 3E obviously encouraged Powergaming by its very nature (I point you to the Character Optimization boards for proof), but also had the potential for novice players to make woefully ineffective characters. In the same party you could have some PCs too high above the power curve and other too far below the power curve. That caused the DM to have an almost impossible time balancing encounters. Do you punish the group becuase rules masters have turned your encounters into cakewalks, or do you punish the casual player by killing his characters until he gets it right?

The answer to 'How do I do X?' always seems to be: Easy! Take race A and pretend it doesn't look like it looks. Now take class B and rewrite it's fluff and change all it's powers. Now multiclass with C and ask your GM (only now do we ask?) if you can take paragon path Q. Simple!

And what exactly is 4e bringing to this process?

4E brings a much more balanced power structure, thus allowing DMs to change and add things more easily without as much worry that they will skew the power curve too high or too low.

 

[Voadam]

Since eldritch knight fit him in 3.5, I'd say swordmage is your straight answer, and that still gives you room to multi to pick up some other avenue that fits.

I looked over the previews when it was first posted and it did not feel right. I never played a defender combat role as the character and the bamfing around focus was different. Duskblade in 3.5 didn't feel right either.

 

[Thasmodious]

I looked over the previews when it was first posted and it did not feel right. I never played a defender combat role as the character and the bamfing around focus was different. Duskblade in 3.5 didn't feel right either.

Ah. I still haven't actually seen the swordmage.

But I do have to take this to task, meant to mention this earlier -

In 4e I was thinking wizard multiclassed to some martial class to be primarily a caster with a secondary role as a martial combatant. Mechanically it is really not viable to try to do that kind of a route.

Do you mean mechanically it doesn't work for the concept or mechanically wizards/fighters are weak? Because if its the second, I'd have to disagree.

One of the first characters I made when I got the 4e books was an old favorite, a dwarf wizard/fighter that I could never really seem to get right in 3e. He was an old 1e/2e character. In 4e, he comes off great. As a wizard, he focuses on close burst spells and battlefield control (thunderwave, burning hands, freezing cloud, web, etc). Tactically, he looks for spots to engage heavy. He doesn't try and hold the line, he runs in and obliterates the line. Rush a gang of foes, thunderwave or burning hands them, crushing blow with a maul on the biggest, expeditious retreat out of there or dimension door, use shield to make up for some armor. With some nice magical leather armor (for 1 feat) along with the high Int, AC is generally fine, not great, but solid for a guy who isn't camping the line. Hit points are a tad low, but toughness helps. I statted him at 1st, 6th, 11th, and 21st and was happy with each incarnation. Admittedly, he hasn't actually seen play yet, as I primarily DM, but I reviewed the character recently with a lot more experience under my belt and he still seems solid.

Making this character, and doing it easily, without requiring advanced system knowledge or anything, was one of the things that impressed me initially about 4e (and that he didn't suck).

 

[RFisher]

Gaming, like anything else, evolves. The industry as a whole learns from every game system that comes out and developments in design improve games as a whole, learning from each other what works, what doesn't.

I dunno. From my observations of the industry... I’ve also seen a lot of forgetting the past. I’ve seen a lot of ignorance of many game systems out there. I think the space is so well explored at this point that real discoveries are quite hard to find.

It looks to me like D&D itself is following something of a pendulum path. (With procession.) Each new edition will be a reaction to the previous one. More concerned with being different from its immediate predecessor than the same with improvements.

 

[jdsivyer]

They did - we call it 4e.

HAHAHA!

*wipes tears of laughter from eyes*

 

[Ahglock]

I dunno. From my observations of the industry... I’ve also seen a lot of forgetting the past. I’ve seen a lot of ignorance of many game systems out there. I think the space is so well explored at this point that real discoveries are quite hard to find.

It looks to me like D&D itself is following something of a pendulum path. (With procession.) Each new edition will be a reaction to the previous one. More concerned with being different from its immediate predecessor than the same with improvements.

Not only that but when the changes are large enough, its not an improvement on a past game its just a first edition of a new game. I look at 4e shadowrun and its a great 1st edition game but it is deeply flawed. So game theory evolved, they learned things form past games but by making a radical departure and going with something totally new for there game they got a new game not a 4th edition of an old game and they will need an edition or two to work our the flaws.

 

[WalterKovacs]

1) The adventuring polymath. I loved the factotum-- especially a certain changeling factotum. Mechanically, I loved the inspiration points and the chance to try out a different wacky Skill application every encounter because I just could. Being able to trot out a spell in a pinch was fun (though I confess, it was most often polymorph), and it was comforting to know that just about any weapon I chose to include in a disguise was more than a prop. Conceptually, I guess this would be a less- fisticuffs-more-book-quoting Indiana Jones, or alternately, a more-fisticuffs-less-cocaine Sherlock Holmes (who was quite the disguise artist, some people forget).

I think a few mentioned it already, at least in part:

Doppelganger Bard

Heck, Doppelganger fits perfectly as a cunning bard, as it boosts int and charisma. The at-will change shape gives the cool powers. You have bardic knowledge so, if you go with jack of all trades, you are only -2 vs. trained skills. You can take as many multiclass feats as you want, which gives you versatility, and more skills to train in. You know how to use all non-superior ranged weapons, all simple melee, and a few military melee weapons. There is armor that you can get that can change the way it looks (Imposter's Armor).

Heck, it reminds me a bit of my character from one of the 3.5 campaigns I was in not long ago, a human bard that took the chameleon prestige class. So the bard being super-multi-classy fits well with tha.