WarlockLord said:
I am worried about the loss of save-or-sucks. I can see the removal of the save-or-dies, though I might not agree with it. However, I have come across people complaining about paralysis and stun.
You're giving into uninformed unease (hysteria?). WotC hasn't released information on a vast majority of the 4E rules. Your only source of worry is that these effects haven't been mentioned in playtests? You need to relax a bit.
WarlockLord said:
Two Words: Emerald Frost.
If this is triggering a deep sense of worry, then you need to step back and reevaluate your priorities. It's a
name. It is the most harmless and easy change you can make in
any RPG. Your first worry is about the mechanics, which is a legitimate concern about the structure of the game. Your second worry, however, is about the arguably superfluous gloss painted over the mechanics. Do you really think that one is remotely equal to the other?
WarlockLord said:
If these things aren't wounds, then what the heck are they? They've been defined as a character's ability to turn a hit into a miss. So, what distinguishes a hit on HP from a miss? Most games I've played in describe HP as physical wounds, and now it looks like the casters will be shoehorned into damage.
There's nothing to assuage here. You need to fundamentally change understanding of hit points. You're being far too literal. It's not your fault. You can blame Gygax for calling them "hit points." That term suggests that when you lose points, it's because something has hit you. So for 30 years, players have thought that you only lose hit points when an attack damages the character somehow. I'm sure that the designers of 4E would love to change the term "hit points" to something else, like "reserve points" or maybe "life points."
Here's an example of how you need to change your way of thinking. Remember the duel between Inigo Montoya and Wesley in
The Princess Bride. In terms of hit points, they were both losing "hit points" during that fight. At first, when Inigo was winning, Wesley was losing hit points. He was being forced back, giving ground, and coming closer to defeat. Wesley turns it around (and starts rolling high on his d20, so to speak) and starts to whittle down Inigo's hit points. When Wesley disarms Inigo,
that signals that Inigo was at zero hit points. Inigo was defeated at that point, i.e. at zero hit points.
No one will disagree that the fight between Wesley and Inigo was dramatic and exciting. People want 4E fights to be dramatic and exciting. The Wesley/Inigo fight demonstrates how a fight can be dramatic and exciting without seeing a long series of actual wounds or injuries on the participants. Wesley and Inigo didn't stab each other twelve times with their swords. They didn't
need to in order to create excitement.
So when you begin your 4E game, you just have to describe the action differently. When a fighter
succeeds on his attack roll (notice I didn't say that the fighter "hits"), you just describe things differently. If the fighter's opponent loses its first 20 hit points (out of 100, so the monster is still relatively safe), you don't describe a gash on the monster's chest. Instead, you describe a series of skillful blows by the fighter that the monster barely avoids or how one of the fighter's swings slices off the end of a protruding horn. If the opponent was humanoid, you'd describe how the opponent's armor kept the blow from being fatal. The humanoid opponent is not bleeding, but has suffered "damage" in the form of fear that he's overmatched. He has lost the will to fight.
Your players will need to help you out. They can't always describe their blows as killing ones. They've got to be more vague at first. At the start of a fight, when opponents are still feeling each other out, they should things like "I feint at his shield to see if he bites." If that attack
succeeds, then you, as the DM, could reply with "Your feint works. He overextends himself for an instant. You can't follow up with a killing blow just yet, but you've exposed one of his weaknesses." Later in the fight, when an attack does succeed in bringing an opponent to zero hit points, you can use the earlier color about the shielf feint: "Finally, you take advantage of his shield side weakness you learned about earlier in the fight. Your sword slips under his shield and through his heart! He collapses to the ground!"
Ultimately, you're just going to have to deal with this. There's nothing to assuage you.
WarlockLord said:
Looks like the wizard will be stripped of much of his power, so that the fool with the metal stick can compete with the guy who can reshape reality with his mind.
How do you know that the wizard has been stripped of his power? Have you seen the rules? What are you worried about, that fighters can now deal 20d6 damage with an attack in 4E, just like wizards can in 3E? If wizards can still do 20d6 of damage in 4E, then no one has been "stripped of much of his power." The wizard still has his power to do 20d6. It's just the case now that someone else has the
same power as the wizard.
And what's with the irrational condescension in your language? "Fool with a metal stick" versus "man who reshapes the mighty forces of reality, time, space, and the universe with his mighty thoughts!"? You come across as an irrational fan of wizards who (A) won't like the changes to wizards regardless of what they are and (B) is unlikely to be susceptible to attempts to assuage you. If you intended that comment to be tongue-in-cheek, then a smiley would have helped.
WarlockLord said:
Can't say I agree. It probably would've been better to give martial characters countermeasures instead of nerfing the wizard
You are getting your ideas of class balance from MMOGs, likely Everquest and WoW. Those games are overwhelmingly focused on niche protection. MMOG players demand that each class be the best at one particular part of the game (DPS, tanking, heals, CC, whatever). When one class becomes the equal of another MMOG class, players of the aggrieved class cry that they've been nerfed ("OMG, Warlocks are getting more DPS on Gruul than Rogues. Rogues have been nerfed! WTF, Blizz! Please respond, Blue!").
Wizards have not been nerfed just because someone else can now do some of the things they do. Wizards can still do those things! It's like someone who owned a flat-screen TV three years ago complaining that so many more people can now afford to own flat-screen TVs. Unless you're hung up on the status of being rich enough to afford a flat-screen, your flat-screen isn't any less functional just because others now own them too. It's the same with your complaint about wizards. If fighters can now become invisible for a few rounds (unlikely, I'd guess) then your complaint is only valid if wizards
can't become invisble anymore. Do you know that this is what's going on in the 4E rules? What is your evidence to suggest that abilities that were exclusively for wizards in 3E are being taken away and given exclusively to martial classes in 4E? As long as the changes aren't exclusive (wizards can no longer do 20d6 damage, only fighters can), then the wizard hasn't been nerfed. Fighters have been buffed. You still have your flat-screen TV but now your neighbor has one too.
