D&D General Nobody likes an edition warrior.

[Minigiant]

I think 4E had some good, even great, ideas. It just always felt half baked to me. I'm glad they brought some stuff along into 5E.

Like many have said, had the Essentials version of 4e been the Original verson of 4e, there would have been a lot less arguments withing the community and more time for the edition to fully cook itself. It was pulled out the oven a bit too early.

 

[Emerikol]

I think 4E had some good, even great, ideas. It just always felt half baked to me. I'm glad they brought some stuff along into 5E.

I try to stay positive these days. One thing I really liked about 4e as rules was the way monsters were handled. I liked the recharge mechanic a lot. It was an elegant solution. I also liked that the stat blocks were 100% usable. I used the online resources and took snapshots of the stat blocks and pasted them into an excel document with a tab for each encounter area.

I think the solutions for the five minute work day don't work for me in either 4e or 5e. I think the fixes to balance were unnecessary for my groups. Well, I would have liked to see the Rogue helped but the fighter was fine. We tended to have fighters, wizards, clerics, and fighter/rogue combos. For obvious reasons. I recognize these problems though were big problems for a lot of people which was why I suggested my original idea above.

 

[Minigiant]

Well, I would have liked to see the Rogue helped but the fighter was fine. We tended to have fighters, wizards, clerics, and fighter/rogue combos. For obvious reasons. I recognize these problems though were big problems for a lot of people which was why I suggested my original idea above.

I think one of the big issues with D&D in all the editions is the idea that the fighter and rogue/thief should be blanket classes.

Shoving 90% of nonmagical characters into 2 classes forces those classes to stretch into forms that could not meet the expectation of the majority of fans. Then you get into the whole thing of forcing so many characters to use the same mechanics whether or not you enjoy the mechanic as a player or like the mechanic as a flavor.

The fact that D&D is willing to make a bunch of spellcasters to match the ease, complexiy, and flavor needs of the community but all nonmagical warriors must be shoved into 1 or 2 classes has always been a weird aspect of D&D in all editions.

Nobdy likes an edition warrior. Why is it "an" singular?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If you consider powers that could only be used on an arbitrary, limited basis that did things like give a fighter an aura of automatic damage not supernatural, great. For you it wasn't.

Well that isn’t a genuine representation of what people who disagree with you have said.

What we have said is that 4e fighters could be supernatural, but weren’t necessarily so.

In 5e, the existence of the Eldritch Knight doesn’t make Champion fighters supernatural, does it? Of course not.

Nor is my fighter in 4e supernatural just because he could have had powers that could be interpreted as supernatural.


(Also the powers you were referring to almost all use auras or other effects to more fully model the “many attacks and defense and counters in a given turn, modeled by a single action” nature of D&D combat, so no, they weren’t in any way supernatural, you just didn’t like the way they modeled the same exact thing modeled by making several attacks in a turn)

 

[Oofta]

Well that isn’t a genuine representation of what people who disagree with you have said.

What we have said is that 4e fighters could be supernatural, but weren’t necessarily so.

In 5e, the existence of the Eldritch Knight doesn’t make Champion fighters supernatural, does it? Of course not.

Nor is my fighter in 4e supernatural just because he could have had powers that could be interpreted as supernatural.


(Also the powers you were referring to almost all use auras or other effects to more fully model the “many attacks and defense and counters in a given turn, modeled by a single action” nature of D&D combat, so no, they weren’t in any way supernatural, you just didn’t like the way they modeled the same exact thing modeled by making several attacks in a turn)

In my opinion, before essentials, fighters all had supernatural powers no matter what the fluff said.

Again though, it's just a game. Everything is made up, everything is a simplification. Where someone draws the line between "this would make sense for a skilled warrior" and "that's not physically possible (and hence supernatural)" is just an opinion.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

In my opinion, before essentials, fighters all had supernatural powers no matter what the fluff said.

That isn’t really opinion, it’s a statement that can be factually right or wrong, and it’s wrong.

Again though, it's just a game. Everything is made up, everything is a simplification. Where someone draws the line between "this would make sense for a skilled warrior" and "that's not physically possible (and hence supernatural)" is just an opinion.

Not really, but I’m not gonna push an argument about it that we have all had before.

 

[ccooke]

I think something that often gets lost in discussions like this is that D&D is constrained to be a mainstream game.

D&D is the biggest game in the RPG industry, and as such it makes a certain amount of money. WotC are a business, and they are not going to deliberately reduce the amount of money they make - their goal (perfectly reasonably) has to be to always meet or exceed their current success.

But because of that and the sheer size of D&D within the market, that means the game absolutely has to be a mainstream game. It can only be as big as it is by appealing to the largest number of people possible. It can't be seen as a success if it's the perfect dream system for a few niche groups - it can only be a mass market, mass-appeal system. That puts a lot of constraints on what can and cannot be done with it.

Every one of us is going to be in some niche; there are people for whom an edition is perfect and people for whom it is good enough. D&D has to be at least good enough for the largest number of people - but that means there are a huge number of players whose viewpoints contradict more than they overlap.

Basically, what I'm saying is: D&D can't be perfect for everyone. There will always be space for a more targeted, specific game for a particular niche, and that's where smaller systems can shine. I'm also not saying that mass appeal makes D&D bad - it's not. But to be what it is in the market, it can't ever be perfect for the majority of its players.

(Of course, the fact that 5e is currently the most perfect edition I've found personally probably colours this somewhat; maybe people who like it less will be less complacent about that? Go ahead and tear my argument to shreds if so)

 

[Minigiant]

Well that isn’t a genuine representation of what people who disagree with you have said.

What we have said is that 4e fighters could be supernatural, but weren’t necessarily so.

In 5e, the existence of the Eldritch Knight doesn’t make Champion fighters supernatural, does it? Of course not.

Nor is my fighter in 4e supernatural just because he could have had powers that could be interpreted as supernatural.


(Also the powers you were referring to almost all use auras or other effects to more fully model the “many attacks and defense and counters in a given turn, modeled by a single action” nature of D&D combat, so no, they weren’t in any way supernatural, you just didn’t like the way they modeled the same exact thing modeled by making several attacks in a turn)

In my opinion, before essentials, fighters all had supernatural powers no matter what the fluff said.

Again though, it's just a game. Everything is made up, everything is a simplification. Where someone draws the line between "this would make sense for a skilled warrior" and "that's not physically possible (and hence supernatural)" is just an opinion.

This is one of the reasons why I think D&D really should have formalized having muliple fighter and rogue classes early. Each with a different level of complexity and epicness.

I'd go with 3 each much like the wizard/sorcerer/warlock trend of 3e-5e. or 5 if you count clerics and druids.
Champion-Barbarian-Fighter-Knight-Duelist in in increasing complexity and formality order.

 

[Oofta]

That isn’t really opinion, it’s a statement that can be factually right or wrong, and it’s wrong.

I don't care what the label said, many the powers that fighters had (pre-essentials) were not physically possible even assuming action movie physics.

It's a judgement call with no measurable standard. Hence it is personal judgement and opinion. It's true for me because it's what I believe. It's not true for you because you don't. There is no universal truth for some things.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:

Irony.

The thread is titled, "Nobody likes an edition warrior". So, what do people do? Start warring over editions!

Thread closed.