D&D 4E Forked Thread: Some Thoughts on 4e


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If I can only take someone out of a fight for a single round and I am a high level wizard I go and find the idiot who told me that hard work and study would bring great power.........and beat him to death with my much more effective staff.

Hard work and study .... of magic ... lead to great power, much greater power than the hard work of the fighter, that in the earlier levels was doing most of the hard work, and the rogue, doing most of the difficult work, while the wizard occaisionally fired crossbow bolts [or arrows, go elves!] when there small number of spells didn't work. Seems the reward for the wizards "hard work" is much greater than the fighter's reward for being in the thick of things, or the rogue's work in disabling the traps, etc.
 

Perhaps the 3.5 fighter should have some words with his mentor as well. . .

Perhaps the 4E fighter should have some words with his mentor as well. . .

"Wait, let me get this straight. I study my entire life on how to fight. Fighting is what I do. My name is even Fighter. And that dinky little Rogue who cannot even lift half the weight I can still does more damage than me. What's up with that? Why didn't my master teach me how to fight?" :lol:
 

Fighter's are taught to defend themselves, rogue's are tought to exploit weaknesses.

A fighter that goes out of it's way to dish out a lot of damage can. And the rogue that acts as a fighter's sidekick can give the fighter a chance to get those interupt attacks and therefore do more damage. A rogue needs the fighter to flank and mark, so that the rogue gets his SA, and hopefully stays alive. The rogue, on the other hand, provokes some OAs [which being so charismatic is hard to hit him with] and let's the fighter do more damage.

A rogue without sneak attack is doing less damage than a fighter, especially a great weapon fighter. And a rogue without a defender is going to get himself killed. Part of a fight is not dying, not just the part where you kill the other guy.
 

Well, if you take the line in prestidigitation that says it "cannot duplicate the effects of any other power" literally, then ... there are warlock powers that make one creature attack another.
What's more, whichever creature is targeted by a power will be aware of all the particulars of the power ... so unless the spell is meant to compel the attack, the illusory rat will be known as a fake.

Now thats seriously dull...

This whole thing of knowing the power that affects you is one of the worse things a DM would like to draw attention to, in a game of with experienced players.
 

On the prestidigitation point ... ghost sound might be the more likely trick to get a monster not to attack you, it has a longer range and is basically there for tricking/distracting creatures [and for passing along secret messages]. Getting the monster to attack the other one is probably a bit too powerful for a "stunt" [basically a 1/encounter "can I try this?" trick that the DM allows, ussually involves a skill check].

Actually, that might be away to do it. Have it be Arcana vs. Insight. You basically use your cantrip to make a bluff check [but using Arcana], possibly getting the same results as you would for a bluff check [either an opportunity to make a hide check, or to gain combat advantage].
 

I'm with you Karinsdad. 4E magic system is boring. The only people that like the new magic system are those that weren't particularly good at the old one or never bothered to play a caster.

Spare me the condescension. I'm a wizard player from away back; I've been playing casters for twenty years, and quite effectively. I could abuse arcane magic like nobody's business in 3.X. And I like 4E wizards better than any other incarnation of the class.
 

It almost seems like Wizards looked at 3rd edition, saw that different characters of different complexities existed and figured no one could possibly enjoy a simpler, brawnier character whose development and fun came through personality and out of combat expression. I happen to disagree with this - I've played characters who did little in combat but run at the enemy and attempt to smash it to pieces.. because that's what I was trying to RP. And it seems like it was possible to play a character like that in 3.5 without severely gimping your group, but if you were to try to play a 'dumb fighter' in 4.0 who didn't - from level 1 - have the temperament to intelligently use all these various powers and to wisely save important powers and abilities for later, it just wouldn't work. In my opinion, 4.0 assumes and is balanced around the notion that every character has an intelligence of 18, regardless of what the character sheet says.

The player has to use the powers intelligently. The character - he's just doing his stuff.
The disconnect between player and character might annoy you, but if you're just doing it because you are worrying about gimping the group for playing your character as "dumb" as he is - that's not a 4E problem. Playing a Fighter in 3E effectively wasn't always easy. You had to spend a lot of thought in how to "build" your Fighter effectively (and if you spend so much thought, did the character also spend so much thought in what feats he wanted to learn?), and then to use your combat options effectively. All Power Attack All The Time was a simple option that unfortunately lead closer to failure then success, so it was "calculate Power Attack values and attack chance in your head to get the best value." Tripping and Grappling required identifying the targets best suited for it (and the situation where it would help, too.)
 

Perhaps the 4E fighter should have some words with his mentor as well. . .

"Wait, let me get this straight. I study my entire life on how to fight. Fighting is what I do. My name is even Fighter. And that dinky little Rogue who cannot even lift half the weight I can still does more damage than me. What's up with that? Why didn't my master teach me how to fight?" :lol:

Nah, the Rogue is also a martial class. So he also has a &^%& load of training. . . the hit hard and fast type, whereas the Fighter has the hit you if you ignore me, and stay in the fight longer than you can schtick. Using the name Fighter doesn't mean the class has to be better at fighting in every way, especially in a system that has historically been about combat, otherwise there'd be little point to any other class and you just have a reverse 3.5 wizard issue.
 

Fighter's are taught to defend themselves, rogue's are tought to exploit weaknesses.

A fighter that goes out of it's way to dish out a lot of damage can. And the rogue that acts as a fighter's sidekick can give the fighter a chance to get those interupt attacks and therefore do more damage. A rogue needs the fighter to flank and mark, so that the rogue gets his SA, and hopefully stays alive. The rogue, on the other hand, provokes some OAs [which being so charismatic is hard to hit him with] and let's the fighter do more damage.

A rogue without sneak attack is doing less damage than a fighter, especially a great weapon fighter. And a rogue without a defender is going to get himself killed. Part of a fight is not dying, not just the part where you kill the other guy.

In 4E reality a fighter is taught to be a meat shield while the rogue looks good doing the damage. This is an MMO thing.

A fighter that has to go out of his way to dish out a lot of damage is poorly trained as a fighter.

When you think about it, anyone who is well trained in martial arts and has good weapon skills (like a fighter) should be allowed to take advantage of suprise, flanking and be able to exploit openings as well as anyone. Denying these abilities to a fighter is done only for the purpose of justifying a semi-soft melee DPS class with high damage output and weak armor defenses.
 

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