Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord_Blacksteel" data-source="post: 6170483" data-attributes="member: 53082">Among 3E's other "gifts" to us was the concept of "builds" and optimization. Fighters went from being good at all combat (barring ability score issues) in older editions and using whatever magic weapon came to hand, to being specialized to some degree in 2E (depending on which options were allowed) to being hyper-focused on a single weapon in 3E. It used to drive me crazy to have fighters stowing away a +X magical axe just because they had weapon focus longsword. Gods forbid they run into something with DR10/+1 because they wouldn't think to use the axe without prompting by me! This started the whole concept of wishlisting and fed into the optimization thing too. I've seen the symptoms described above as well, where a fighter won't even take a bow (or forgets he has one on his sheet by about 3rd level) because he hasn't spent feats on it. It usually only takes one encounter with some nasty flying creatures to rectify this but even that's not a sure thing. As many feats as fighters get it was rare in my to see anyone focus or specialize on more than one weapon - to me that seemed like a smart & practical way to go, if a little less flashy than whirlwind attack.Wizards never seemed to have this problem to this degree. They were happy to use whatever wands etc. came their way in all of the earlier editions, and by 3E they could craft the scrolls & wands they really wanted if it didn't turn up. Specialists had a little of it but it wasn't crippling in the cases I saw.I saw it occasionally with rogues and clerics ( I know I weapon-focused a few clerics at least) but "I'm a greataxe guy and only a greataxe guy" didn't seem to be as common a mindset with them.Then 4E came along and pushed a lot more specialization onto characters, from things like orb wizards to all of the expertise feats. I'm a fan of 4E, but it made wishlisting and builds an even bigger part of the game and I'm less a fan of those.One positive sign with Next, I notice the feats are not tied to individual weapons, just weapon types: great weapon master applies to all heavy weapons, fencing master applies to all martial finesse weapons, etc. The wording is a little sloppy in some , as with archery master where two of the benefits apply to "ranged attacks" but the third applies to "long bow or short bow" only. This does at least move things in a direction for a broader focuses when it comes to weapon boosting.Also specialist wizards in Next don't have to give anything up - the specialization is pure bonus. This too is a good thing in my mind, as it should keep the "oh I don't use that" mindset out of the wizard player's head too.</blockquote>

Verification