My take.

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Even if this is true -- and it sure seems suspect to me -- is it really your belief that six hours after, say, Frazier-Ali -- six hours! -- the two fighters would be perfectly able to go at it again? And then again, six hours after that? Really?

Do you expect Ali to go against a Dragon (even a young one) together with 5 boxer friends and survive?

 

[The Little Raven]

Even if this is true -- and it sure seems suspect to me -- is it really your belief that six hours after, say, Frazier-Ali -- six hours! -- the two fighters would be perfectly able to go at it again? And then again, six hours after that? Really?

Beowulf spends seven days and nights swimming, non-stop, in chain mail and bearing a heavy iron sword. Then he stops to fight a number of sea monsters. And barely loses the race.

Frazier and Ali are cool and all, but they aren't fantastic heroes.

 

[Incenjucar]

Even if this is true -- and it sure seems suspect to me -- is it really your belief that six hours after, say, Frazier-Ali -- six hours! -- the two fighters would be perfectly able to go at it again? And then again, six hours after that? Really?

They would be in much better shape than if someone had been shoving a sword into them or slicing off large parts of their torso or shattering their ribcage.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Do you expect Ali to go against a Dragon (even a young one) together with 5 boxer friends and survive?

It wasn't my analogy.

Frazier and Ali are cool and all, but they aren't fantastic heroes.

It wasn't my analogy.

They would be in much better shape than if someone had been shoving a sword into them or slicing off large parts of their torso or shattering their ribcage.

It wasn't my analogy.

The poster who made the analogy said that 4E heroic fights are like boxing matches between professional fighters, and that's why 4E heroes can go from "1 HP from death" to "completely fine" in six hours. I pointed out that professional fighters are not completely fine in six hours.

 

[AllisterH]

That is in my opinion, extremely poor design on the part of the DM. You are punishing players for getting skillful at something, rather than letting them enjoy the rewards of thier skillfulness. Some DC's should scale with level, but on average walls shouldn't get smoother, floors more slippery, treasure more exotic, objects harder to craft, runes harder to decipher, entanglements harder to escape from, ropes harder to tie, animals harder to handle or ride, weather harder to survive, wounds harder to treat, and so forth simply because the characters are getting tougher.
.

Actually, I would disagree and state in fact that most skills do scale with level in that skill encounters become more dangerous AND the use of opposed checks.

Take Balance for example. At 1st level, forcing a party to fight on a 2-inch wide bridge that is severely sloped, slippery and obstructed (DC 32) would be equivalent to putting the party up against a 15th CR monster. What you put the 1st level party up against is crossing a bridge that's 7-12 inches wide (DC 10).

The same thing applies to many other skills with multiple DCs. It seems like the designers fully intended for skill challenges to be set for the appropriate level of the party. Sure there are DC 10+ obstacles but just like monsters, they should only show up at the appropriate level for the party.

Then there's the skills that do scale with level DIRECTLY. For example, at first glance, Rope Use doesn't make sense that ropes are harder to tie one could argue. However, Rope Use is what used to oppose Escape Artist checks and Escape Artist checks itself are also used to get out of grapples which DO scale with level.

Same thing even shows up with Handle Animal where to rear an animal its tied to the HD of the animal (which is somewhat bogus given that elephants are generally considered much more trainable than say wld cats like lions/tigers)

Similarly, there are opposed check skills like Bluff, Spot and Forgery which have no static DC

Basically, skill challenges SHOULD be more challenging as you increase in levels since this is what it seems like the designers intended for.

True, there are skills like Appraise which has only 1 static DC but even here, I tend to come down on the side that believes that by 20th level, even the barbarian PC should be able to know more about diamonds/rubies than he did at 1st level.

The thing is, he only knows as much as a 1st level Professional Appraiser (a,k.a, has just opened his first shop/still on the last leg of his apprenticeship) using the SWSE which I think is fine/realistic.

 

[fedelas]

The problem is that a tactical game, with many PC powers that can interact in unpredictable ways, is much harder to write for as DM. 4th edition look to give the DM many more powers that he has to account for when creating suitable challenges for the characters. Consequently, the DM is forced to either buy pre-packaged adventures (created by prefessionals who can afford to spend time doing the required math), or spend his time creating suitable combat challenges rather than making good NPCs or interesting adventure hooks. Personally, I think that's the point - to make the game so hard to write for (while all the while telling us its easier) that homebrewing DMs will simply give up and buy their adventures and game worlds.

As a DM, I see 4th Edition's promises of faster prep and easier DMing as akin to the scams a lot of store pull at Christmas time. They raise their prices by 20%, and then have a 15% off sale. All people see is the sale, and they forget that they're actually paying more than they did for the same items in November. 3rd edition (especially at high levels) made DMIng so hard compared to previous incarnations of the game, that anything will seem easier. I won't compare 4th edition to 3rd edition; that's the comparison WOTC wants me to make. Instead, I can pull out my old AD&D and Rule Cyclopedia material, and compare it to them. And you know what, 4th Edition is going to be a headache to DM, if you are a homebrewer.

I don't want to play in WOTC's world. I don't want them to make flavor decisions for me. From the first time I read the Moldvay Basic rules as a boy, I knew that I wanted to create an imaginary world and watch players interact with it. I wanted to play the villains, and watch the PCs try to spoil my nefarious plots. I wanted to create exciting locations filled with pitfalls, and watch PCs either cunningly avoid them, or die horribly. I bought modules and the original World of Greyhawk, not beacuse I wanted to run them, but to learn from them. I do not want to be reduced to a mere rules referee. I feel like that's what WOTC wants DMing to be.

The worst way 4th edition is going to negatively impact roleplaying is that there will be fewer creative DMs, the kind who create and love to play exciting NPCs. Roleplaying certainly suffers when there's nobody to play your role to.

I'm most a DM and 100% homebrewer; my worst problem with 3ed is the amount of prep. it take me,not in creating hooks and story plot ( i can take inspiration in many times: when i drive the car, listen to music, watching a movie etc.etc), but in writing monster stats, balancing combat encounter and so on. Most of the time my well an time consuming "climax combat encounter" ends-up in 3 combat round, very disappointing to me. If 4ed can give my a ways to run a great, exciting AND simple to run combat encounter i'm totally sold. I can think by myself about all the fluff and storyplay of my campaign/world (as i can do in every RPG rules/system).
Also more of my players ARE gamist people (playing warhammer, miniature games, sometimes TcG ) who liked to "drama queen" abit, so if I can give them a game where they can make signicant tactical decision on the battlefield( this is IMO the rules of the game work's) and exciting roleplaying situations (that's MY work) they will be VERY HAPPY (and me too...).
I don't actually know if 4ed can bring me this, but i liked 80% of what i've seen and in my book, this is good.
Cheers!

 

[malladin]

It wasn't my analogy.

It wasn't my analogy.

It wasn't my analogy.

The poster who made the analogy said that 4E heroic fights are like boxing matches between professional fighters, and that's why 4E heroes can go from "1 HP from death" to "completely fine" in six hours. I pointed out that professional fighters are not completely fine in six hours.

This is particularly funny as one of the people changing the example IS the original poster! If your going to discuss something you believe it's generally form to argue your point, not change it to something completely different as flaws are pointed out. What a laugh

 

[Hussar]

That is in my opinion, extremely poor design on the part of the DM. You are punishing players for getting skillful at something, rather than letting them enjoy the rewards of thier skillfulness. Some DC's should scale with level, but on average walls shouldn't get smoother, floors more slippery, treasure more exotic, objects harder to craft, runes harder to decipher, entanglements harder to escape from, ropes harder to tie, animals harder to handle or ride, weather harder to survive, wounds harder to treat, and so forth simply because the characters are getting tougher.

((Sidebar - on the skill points thing. I was referring to two different wizards - one specific with an 18 Int and one the base class. I assumed it was clear in context, my bad. Will be more specific in the future))

You cannot claim this though. Most skills do scale. Knowledge skills, for example, scale based on CR. Other than a few basic skills, like Appraise, every skill does actually scale by level because the challenges you face get harder as you go up level.

AllisterH makes several very good points. It's not bad DMing, it's how the rules actually work. 5 ranks in Spot isn't going to do squat against anything that hides after about CR 7. I would actually say that most skills with 5 ranks won't make any difference after 7th level. The challenges you face will just overwhelm your skills. That, or the skill monkey is bored out of his skull because he's cakewalking every challenge.

 

[Lizard]

Lizard - that's great and all. But, do you think that the rules should assume that every group plays this way?

I'm sorry, I sincerely don't understand the relevance of the question to what I wrote. Most of what I discussed isn't covered by rules, except generally. (It's one reason I'm disappointed by the removal of NPC classes in 4e; I like my important townsfolk to be as mechanically distinct as possible.) But otherwise, things like accounting for downtime and DM-granted XP bonuses can be done in almost any game which has, well, XP and downtime, and it works as well in 4e as it does in 3e.

 

[BryonD]

The problem is BryonD, 3e actively penalizes you if you try to do that. Climb, for a simple example, is a cross class skill for wizard. So, he has to burn 2 ranks each time. Say he's got an 18 Int, so, he's burning almost half his ranks every level just to be able to climb. Now, he still can't do anything else, like stand on the deck of a heaving ship (balance), tie a knot (use rope) or any of the truly useful skills like Spot or Search.

It's a zero sum game and he's being penalized heavily if he goes against it. Considering that DC's almost always scale by level, unless you keep a skill maxed, you might as well not bother. It's too expensive to keep skills maxed that are cross class, and there are far too many skills to even have a minor chance of success.

Look at what a wizard is pretty much expected to know:

Spellcraft
Concentration
at least 1 Knowledge skill

Already he's over his skill limits per level. How can he possibly afford to keep up other skills to the point where they will actually work?

First, for the archetypal wizard this is a good thing.

Second, there are feats out there to let you pick up a new class skill. Again, I am very much againt the idea that all wizards everywhere are skilled climbers. So the idea that some price must be paid somewhere else to be the exception is, again, a good thing.

It can be done. And I haven't even gotten in to magic items, multi-classing, etc...