Large red dragon mini with only 5 fire resist...

[glass]

This is one of the "small" things that could ensure I'll never even try 4E.

I've always been bothered by illogical monster design. For example, the balor only became immune to fire in 3.5E despite being surrounded by some pretty serious magical flames since 1E (and possibly earlier). AFAIC, the nightmare doesn't actually exist as its flaming hooves have burnt it to a crisp. Um, shouldn't a nightmare also have fire resistance at the very least?

I hope this is not a step backward in design logic simply as a result of wishing to bow at the nebulous altar of "game balance".

That is something of a non-sequitur. I have always thought it was illogical that creature made of flesh, bone and sinew could be completely immune to physical damage from fire.


glass.

 

[glass]

Also, correct me if I'm wrong... But I believe that most poisonous snakes are not immune to their own venom, should another snake of the same type bite them, yes?

Indeed, and I believe scorpions have been known to sting themselves to death. Although that could easily be a myth.


glass.

 

[Mirtek]

See, that's what you don't seem to be getting.

It was designed for people to unknowingly make useless characters on purpose. It was designed to trick new players into making bad choices by offering bad choices disguised as good choices, so that they will later learn that some of the stuff in their PHB is worthless trash.

Intentionally designing trash is a horrible way to design games.

Like Derren said: The way the game is designed you have to deliberately and knowingly put a lot of effort into making a character in such a way that this could happen to you.

You don't just stumble in such a situation with any build but a build specifically made to provoke this to happen

He can't "take fire away," because there's no way to "take fire away." Sorry, thanks for playing.

Then he should quit his job as god of fire.

There's nothing to prevent a Fire Giant or Red Dragon from, for example, drinking molten lava. Clearly you have no problem with this. A lot of us do.

For a dragon this is perfectly fine, as dragons are stated to being able to diggest rocks. The giant however would get trouble once the lava cools down within his stomach.

 

[glass]

Oh come on, just look at this argument. How many people tried to explain dragons having resistance to elements with real life scientific examples.

Those were rebuttals to the argument that dragons not being immune to fire was 'illogical'.

Maybe saying "removing magic" invokes the wrong images. Let me rephrase that in "changing dragons more into brutes/beasts". That probably fits it better. Many people want to change, imo reduce, dragons into huge predators and nothing more.

I can't speak for everyone at ENWorld but I certainly don't want to make dragons into simple beasts. And there is no evidence that the 4e designers do either. Even though they have will no longer have spellcasting by default, they have expressly said that they will still have 'a suite of magical abilities'.


glass.

 

[med stud]

Like Derren said: The way the game is designed you have to deliberately and knowingly put a lot of effort into making a character in such a way that this could happen to you.

You don't just stumble in such a situation with any build but a build specifically made to provoke this to happen

It's not that hard. Create a fighter, at level 1 you take Toughness, Combat reflexes and Weapon focus (longsword). If you are new to the game all of those feats sound kick ass but you wind up with a totally pointless fighter.

Your DM might refer you to better feats but then it's the DM's system mastery that comes into the picture.

I think there will always be optimal and suboptimal builds, and I think there should be, but there should be no way of screwing yourself over.

---

EDIT: On topic with the fire immunity/fire resistance. I think 5 is low for a dragon but I don't like immunities generally. It's like the Ring in LotR; any weak ass fire can't melt it, it has to be the fire of Mount Doom. I prefer creatures the same.

 

[Mirtek]

It's not that hard. Create a fighter, at level 1 you take Toughness, Combat reflexes and Weapon focus (longsword). If you are new to the game all of those feats sound kick ass but you wind up with a totally pointless fighter.

First of all: Nothing wrong with WF (longsword)
Secondly: Yeah, two suboptimal feats, however your character is far from pointless.

I think there will always be optimal and suboptimal builds, and I think there should be, but there should be no way of screwing yourself over.

Your example doesn't show a screwed fighter, just a slightly suboptimal fighter.

 

[Lackhand]

First of all: Nothing wrong with WF (longsword)
Secondly: Yeah, two suboptimal feats, however your character is far from pointless.

Your example doesn't show a screwed fighter, just a slightly suboptimal fighter.

It's first level: suboptimal fighter is screwed.

 

[Mirtek]

It's first level: suboptimal fighter is screwed.

How so? Which feats would give him a noticeable rise in survivability or combat progress? Power Attack may be nicer, but making a huge difference? Don't think so.

At first level toughness is pretty good even for a fighter with 18 Con, it's still a 21% increase in hp, it only starts to suck after level 3 (up until then it's as good as improved toughness, a feat I take almost always)

Moral of the story: If I am a fire mage who can burn anything without resistance/immunity to cinders, I just have to stay away from something with resistance/immunity. And even that is an exaggeration, as I still are very likely to have a few tricks up my sleeve that will hurt even such an opponent (even if I have to rely on my companionst more then usual)

Edit: Forgett that I dared to mention power attack, I forgot that it's actually once of the terrible 3.x misstakes that made the whole system unsufferable and will be gone in 4e

 

[med stud]

How so? Which feats would give him a noticeable rise in survivability or combat progress? Power Attack may be nicer, but making a huge difference? Don't think so.

At first level toughness is pretty good even for a fighter with 18 Con, it's still a 21% increase in hp, it only starts to suck after level 3 (up until then it's as good as improved toughness, a feat I take almost always)

Moral of the story: If I am a fire mage who can burn anything without resistance/immunity to cinders, I just have to stay away from something with resistance/immunity. And even that is an exaggeration, as I still are very likely to have a few tricks up my sleeve that will hurt even such an opponent (even if I have to rely on my companionst more then usual)

Edit: Forgett that I dared to mention power attack, I forgot that it's actually once of the terrible 3.x misstakes that made the whole system unsufferable and will be gone in 4e

Weapon focus longsword means that he will most likely use longswords or one feat goes in the crapper. Combat reflexes with a non-reach weapon won't see much use; that's one feat that practically goes in the crapper. Monte Cook himself has said that Toughness is created to be suboptimal so that says it self that it is bad.

Weapon focus (longsword) is a nice feat yes but it is more or less mutually exclusive when it comes to combat reflexes. You have screwed yourself over since out of three starting feats you have one that is usable.

 

[Benimoto]

Power attack hardly made 3rd edition insufferable, but since it didn't completely do what the designers wanted it to do (it was often a worse choice the bigger and harder your normal hits are), and had other side effects (favoring two-handed weapons to the point that 1 handed weapons and thus shields often fell by the wayside) it could probably be qualified as a mistake, and thus, combined with other mistakes, a reason to make a new edition.

But that's kind of off topic. I do like the resistances over immunities model. I think it's unrealistic that any animal is completely immune to all fire. Most of our machines and devices that emit fire can be destroyed by their own flames. A candle, a lighter, a blowtorch, or even a flamethrower can all be destroyed by fire. And even our most durable devices don't really have any chance of surviving being dipped in lava.

I think resist 5 is low for a dragon, but of course we're viewing it all out of context. We don't really know how old that dragon's supposed to be, or how much fire resistance older dragons have. We especially don't know if the minis game stats are particularly relevant to the RPG stats. In the minis game's previous incarnation, resistances and immunities were often dropped and lowered to make pieces fit the competitive environment better. The red dragon is coming out in the first set, and since there may not be many things that can do much fire damage, the designers may not have wanted the dragon to dominate play the way it might if it had higher resistance.

I think that immunities have got to go for normal, flesh-based monsters and maybe for all monsters. Even elementals could be modeled better on resistance. Like the other players said, it might just be that too hot of a fire overpowers weaker elementals, while tougher ones laugh it off.