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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4514386" data-attributes="member: 5143">That's exactly the point, though.In previous editions, different classes would play different games.  The fighter's only REAL option was to keep hitting the enemy until it died of hitpoint damage.  There were certain(fairly rare) circumstances where they could grapple enemies, or ready their actions to disrupt casters, or trip enemies.  However, most of the time these options were either impractical or impossible.  Most people realized pretty quickly that 10 rounds spent rolling to see if they could succeed in a grapple attempt to keep someone pinned or do unarmed damage of 1d3+7 nonlethal damage was rather pointless when the monster had an AC of 18 and 50 hitpoints.  Especially when you are able to hit on a 5 with your primary attack while power attacking for full for 3d6+32.  Most fighters realized that damage was the ONLY way to effectively beat enemies.  Once everyone got used to the system, the ONLY people I saw grappling were those who were obsessed with being different.  I once saw a player completely impressed with himself because he had kept an enemy pinned and out of the fight for 4 rounds straight without actually dealing any damage.  While one of the other fighter had taken out 2 other identical enemies with damage in the same time.Meanwhile, the casters and the fighters were out of synch.  The fighters were(mostly) doing nothing but hitting and dealing damage.  The casters, on the other hand, were playing the "cast and hope" game.  It goes like this: Cast a spell that takes an enemy completely out of the battle and hope they fail their save.  Some rounds they are extremely effective, taking out enemies that would have taken the fighter 4-5 rounds to take out with damage.  Other rounds they are next to useless because their action was spent casting a spell that had zero effect.The other method casters had of winning was ability damage.  If you can get an enemy's stat to 0, then they are effectively defeated.  But if you are doing damage to a stat, it tends to have very little effect until it actually reaches 0, so every round spend reducing stats was next to useless until you managed to reduce it to 0 before the rest of the party did enough damage to kill it.If the negatives given didn't defeat the monsters and if it made all its saves against your save or suck spells then it was possible for the wizard to contribute (next to) absolutely nothing to the combat.  Or their spells could take out all of the enemies without dealing any damage at all.  In which case all the damage done by everyone else in the party was (next to) absolutely useless.  After all, a character who fails its save or die when it is at 10 hitpoints is exactly the same as an enemy that fails its save or die when it is at 200 hitpoints.It also created really swingy combats that were rather anticlimactic.  I know, as a DM(and often as a player as well), it would be no fun to play through a long game leading up to the final confrontation against the Demon King, Demonator, when the Wizard casts finger of death and the demon rolls a 1.  Sure, the players would laugh and joke about it for a long time.  The time they fought the biggest, baddest, demon in the universe and it died without making an attack to a single spell.  But, at the same time, it also creates a feeling that they didn't accomplish anything.  I know, for me, it seems like "Why did they need us to save them from such a wimpy monster?  Why did we even bother spending the last 6 months playing this game if he was so easy to beat?"  For me, I would RATHER I have to wade through every last hitpoint and fight for every one.Finally, in 4e, everyone is on the same page.  Powers do damage and you use the damage to defeat the monsters.  No one bypasses the damage system, they just assist each other in dealing damage and keeping the monster where they want it.  Monsters are actually hard to beat and feel like you really need to be a hero to beat them and any farmer with a pitchfork would have died trying to beat them.</blockquote>

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