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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ferratus" data-source="post: 4078022" data-attributes="member: 55966">I have only a funny link to add to this conversation to sum up my feelings on the matter:<a href="http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1235" target="_blank">http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1235</a>As for prior editions of D&D, they had no rules for serious roleplaying other than making Charisma or skill checks.   Imagine if they were previewing 2e or 3e, and giving sneak peeks of the rules.  Of course there would be more attention paid to the various options your character would have in combat.As for the more subtle idea that having effective tactical rules and placing the game balance to the point where you can be expected to face most challenges without dying... well I simply don't have patience with that argument.   It is true that in 2e as opposed to 3e you spend more time trying to do things other than combat, but that was because you spent all your time without spells and down to 5 hit points, stuck in a dungeon between monsters you ran away from and monsters you know you couldn't fight.  Now this might be okay if you have a DM who simply allows you to use trickery and diplomacy and is nice enough to allow your crazy ideas to succeed, but I don't think most DM's allowed for fiat rules in your favour.  In our 2e nostalgia campaign that we are playing now, we have one or two combats then we wander around the dungeon looking for a safe enough place to rest and trying to amuse the DM enough to let us pull off crazy schemes to stay alive.   That's pretty much what I remember the experience being from 2e campaigns back when I was a teenager as well.  That's not a roleplaying feature, that's a wargaming application that doesn't know what to do with itself between skirmish battles.In 3e, especially when you got to higher levels, diplomacy all but vanished when you could pretty much ensure that you could take anything the DM could throw at you because you bought complimentary magical items, had various types of bonuses stacked together, and had maximized your damage output.   Judging by what I've seen so far, 4e has more effects, but I don't think it makes the impossible more commonplace.I also fail to see how 4e discourages roleplaying more than 3e.  Quite the opposite, with the new social rules for handling roleplaying, it will allow the player to shine as a roleplayer even when all the DM's characters are as stubborn and uncooperative as he is.The objection that fighters abilities are too wire-fu, perhaps this will help.  4e just seems to be putting in game mechanics to explain how exactly your fighter has been able to kill storm giants, red dragons, and astral dreadnaughts all these years.   You certainly described it using wire-fu in the past in order to sustain your suspension of disbelief.  The only thing different is you say "I'm using my Leaping Salmon technique" rather than "I swing my sword at it", and then the DM does a long spiel of exactly how you hit the dragon in something other than the ankle.Unless you think that fighters should be plain ordinary guys while wizards shoot pure  awesomeness out of their fingertips.  If that's the case, be prepared for an all wizard party in every one of the games you DM. As for the healing surges, I think it really comes down to a choice.  Ypu have healing surges to keep yourself going until you clean out the dungeon, or you sleep in the monster infested hell hole to recover your healing spells.  Which one snaps the suspension of disbelief again?</blockquote>

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