NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Choice" data-source="post: 6010438" data-attributes="member: 90669">Not really.  Compared to other RPGs, D&D has had a relatively slow edition turnout rate.  By itsself, 4th edition (and now Next) is pretty much in the average for how soon after the previous edition it came out (the real outlier being the switch from 1st to 2nd, 11 years, which can probably be tied to internal problems at TSR).  You might have a point about 3.5, but then again, I think the "half-edition" was more a product of user feedback than a "oh crap! Sales of our books are down. Quick, publish a new PHB!"  I don't "assume" anything, I know, from personnal experience and from having seen others experience the same burnout and frustration, that imbalance in 3E can kill games.  Apparently, I wasn't alone, and others voiced it in a clear enough way that the designers at WotC recognize it to this day as a problem with the game.There are plenty of legitimate issues with 4th edition D&D.  I know I have quite a few.  But the "I can't play the type of game I used to play back in [insert favoured edition here]" is one I just don't get.  I would really like to know what types of games you cannot run under the 4E ruleset that you could under another edition.I mean no offence when I say this but, if you're playing in a 3.X game, maybe you should?Let's look at the fighter, the very concept of the fighter, independent from any edition.  He's a tough guy, good with weapons and armours; in most D&D settings, he'll have the best selection of both these things.  So he's pretty good at swinging steel and kicking butt.  In 2nd edition, the one I'm most familiar with, he'll mow down goblins and orcs in a single hit at low levels and, by the middle of his career, he'll be able to stand toe-to... well face to toe with giants and trade blows with those monsters.  Let's say, for argument's sake that he's level 9, fights with a two-handed sword (with a modest +1 enchantment, wears full plate, and has a suitably heroic strength score of 18(70).  He comes up against a frost giant and engages it in combat.  He'll hit on a roll of 8 or more and do an average of 13 hit points of damage per attack (he gets 2 each round).  Considering the frost giants 65 hp average, our fighter takes him out in about three rounds.  Now, consider that in 3.5, the giant's hp doubled, and the fighter's damage potential (by core rules only) increased, but not by much (2d6+10 before any magical enhancement beyond a +1 weapon), it'll take him an average of two more successful attacks to put it down.But what about the wizard in all of this?  In 2nd edition, faced, along with his buddy the fighter, with a frost giant, he still has a plethora of possible actions: a fireball could singe the fighter, the frost giant's save against magic is good enough that a charm monster has less than 50% chance to hit, other options mean getting up-close and personnal with the giant (and its axe), so no.  So he stands back, fires off a lightning bolt taking (on average) half of the creature's hp (roughly a quarter with a successful save) and letting the fighter do the rest (maybe getting a magic missile in here and there for good measure).  In 3rd edition though, the logic is completely reversed because of how saves work:  the giant's Will save is a pathetic +6, even with the +5 bonus for casting the spell in combat, the wizard's got a decent chance of hitting with charm monster.  If he has spell focus (or its greater version) in enchantment, his odds are even better.  And, he can do this more than once per fight thanks to scribed scrolls.  So, not only did he just invalidate an entire encounter by not playing the same game the fighter's forced to play, he now has a buddy that's stronger than the fighter for nine days!But you can't judge everything from combat, right?  So how do those two guys fare in a social encounter situation?  In second edition, they are pretty much on the same footing: there are no "social" non-weapon proficiency in that edition of the game (well, unless you count "etiquette"), so whoever speaks "louder" at the table wins.  That's fair, abitrary, but fair.  Sure, the wizard can cast friendship or charm person and win the encounter, but he doesn't have that many spell slots, and if he faces an individual with loads of hit dice, he's kinda gambling dangerously.  In 3rd edition, again, both classes start at a pretty even footing: they both suck at social encounters.  No social skills and two skill points per level... But the wizard's not some dumb jock; his intelligence modifier means more skill points, so he could, technically buy his way into being a half decent orator, while the fighter will be good at... climbing stuff, I guess.  But again, the wizard can bypass that whole "we must convince the duke with Diplomacy, Bluff or Intimidate" thing with a quick eagle's splendor, or with any charm spell or, to be really nasty, a dominate person spell.  He's got the slots for it now or the scrolls for it if need be.See, the game isn't unbalanced because casters do things better than non-casters, the game's unbalanced because casters don't play the same game as non-casters.But, I hear you say, what about when they run out of spells, surely then the fighter will shine.  That just means it's time to go back to a safe spot and rest a while.  Nobody does that, you'll retort.  Sure, nobody puts their pet hamster in the microwave to dry them out either, it doesn't stop the microwave makers from putting a warning label on there anyway.  I can fix this, you'll add, by making sure no spot is ever truly safe to rest in.  That's just putting a phonebook under an uneven table leg; at some point, someone's gonna notice it and point it out.I'll agree that that no D&D game (or any RPG game for that matter) will be completely "typical"; players personalities insure that.  But to say that the style portrayed in the DMG and in published adventure after published adventure is not a base expectation is sort of ridiculous.  When you can't run an adventure straight out of the book without editing core content, your game has problems.  A "no jerk move" policy helps, but that's giving cough syrup to a man dying of lung cancer.[A quick precision: the frost giant exemple comes from a post by light warden from the Something Awful forums, I just dumbed it down a bit because I can't approach its concise and meticulous approach]</blockquote>

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