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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gothmog" data-source="post: 4403558" data-attributes="member: 317">This is bordering on the surreal/absurd now.  I'm not personally trying to bait or antagonize anyone on the boards, and while I like 4e and enjoy playing it, I'm not a 4e fanboi.  For example, I'm not a fan of the 4e town portal/teleportal travel at low levels.  Sure, at high level, thats ok- make it a ritual, but low level to me should be about trekking through the wilderness and having some random encounters, discovering some haunted ruins, etc.  What some folks consider set piece encounters or trivial because they didn't relate directly to the adventure at hand, I see as potential chances for character growth.  4e has some issues and problems, but nothing near the level of what 3e had.  So, I'm not a big fan of flight- never have been.  But as to your points:A) Yep, flight can let you skip overland travel encounters, which isn't my thing.  Thing is, this occurs later in 4e, which means the PCs don't have the ability to circumnavigate encounters as easily up until that point.B) Flight is pretty definitively broken in 3e, or at least highly abusable at the least- and I posted an exhaustive example why, the numbers involved, and how each situation could play out with ranges in each edition, etc.  I'm not sure if you're even trying to debate that 3e monsters and characters had fewer effective options to deal with this- because its really not debatable when you look at the evidence.  Hurling a javelin with a -4 in 3e vs a +11 in 4e is a HUGE difference in effectiveness and likelihood of success.  And yes, your point that the ogres or targets could use cover is valid, and something they absolutely should do.  But 3e wizards had more spells per day and more ways to neutralize the terrain or cover advantage, and/or make their own terrain to block their enemies in and just blast at their leisure (wall of fire, wall of force, and other terrain mod spells).  And once those ogres get to cover, they are still in deep- they still have no effective way to deal with the wizard while he drops spell after spell on them.  In short, 3e wizards and spellcasters in general were too freaking powerful in comparison to monsters and non-spellcasters.C) Superman flight isn't heroic- its superheroic.  Flying at will from prolonged periods rarely, if ever shows up in myths and fantasy literature.  It clearly is the province of superheroes- and I don't want a superheroic fantasy game.  If I did, I'd play Exalted.Yes, 4e has a flying chariot for overland travel, AT 22nd LEVEL!  Yes, you can grant flight 8 to another character AT 22nd LEVEL!  Flight in 3e is a 3rd level spell, and wands with flight can easily abused creating th F-16 fireball shooting wizard of death (and I saw this multiple times during the 3e era).  Flight in and of itself in the game isn't wrong, and some folks like it.  But when the wizard is dominating every fight and keeping other players from having fun using the same tactics over and over ad nauseum every fight (something that was common not only with wizards, but clerics and druids as well in 3e), and the designers didn't consider that possibility, the game is suffering from poor design.  The point of the game is to have fun, and when the game becomes unfun for the other players, there is a problem.  Yes, you can houserule away the problems to some degree, but that doesn't change the fact the game is flawed.  This is just one of the ways 3e was flawed and poorly considered, and while 3e made some great strides forward in streamlined mechanics, much of the core design and assumptions used seems rushed and poorly considered to me if the goal is a game that is fun for all players and the DM.I don't hate 3e.  I don't like it, because it can't do much of what I want out of a fantasy RPG without a ton of work and modding, but its not worth my time to hate a game.  I do think the designers of 4e looked at people's complaints about 3e long and hard, and tried their best to make a game that makes sense, is fun for all players involved, and solves a lot of the game-breakers of previous editions by slaughtering some sacred cows.  For me, 4e simply is a superior game to 3e in every regard.So don't take people criticizing 3e (or 4e) so personally.  Its not like any of us here wrote the rules for the game.  No game is perfect.  3e was a decent system for its time, and had some great innovations, but it had flaws, and clapping your hands over your ears and singing "LALALALALA" doesn't make it not so.  4e isn't perfect either, but its a damn sight better designed and more thought out than what has come before.</blockquote>

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