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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brother MacLaren" data-source="post: 3922364" data-attributes="member: 15999">No, I'm not a troll.  I've been around here for years and have gone into these points on numerous other threads.  Let me explain.1) Basic/Expert D&D had several design elements that I loved.  "Wizards start off weak, but can eventually become very powerful."  "Magic has its uses, but magic is limited, where Strength can be used as often as needed."  A wizard who starts weak and can run out of spells is a class I'd love to play again.  It makes him fundamentally a frail human novice with some abilities that he's just learning to master.  The idea that he can run out makes him seem more human.  Now, the warlock can never run out... it's a good class, it's a neat concept, and he's suitably creepy/alienish, but it's not how I see a novice wizard.  2) In Basic/Expert, you got HP at all levels; saves and attack rolls improved at some levels, not all, and there were no skills.  So the complaining over "dead levels where all we get are HP, BAB, saves, and skills" sounds like whining to me.  Also, in 3E, plotting out your character build became much more a component of the game than it had before.  Focusing more attention on what abilities you get at each level is, I think, contributing to this trend.  I just don't see "Dead levels" as a valid complaint.  The game should, in my mind, be about cool stories and about clever tactics to overcome challenges, not about flashy abilities and character builds.3) Every alignment and every god ALREADY has a holy warrior.  It's called the cleric.  Paladins were representative of two things: first, an attempt to model a certain heroic archetype such as your Galahads; and second, an idea that the forces of evil were numerous and the forces of good were less numerous but had an elite champion.  The code is what makes the paladin class worth having; otherwise, just use a Ftr/Clr.  I'd rather see the class removed than see it corrupted.4) Playing a support character can be a great deal of fun.  It's a team endeavor, not a game to see whose star can shine the brightest.  Sometimes the cleric's best action is to get the fighter back on his feet, and the bard's Inspire Courage is often the difference between winning and losing.  I have no problem with that.  It's a team effort.  And some of my favorite moments in games have been sitting back and watching other PCs handle everything.  The players are my friends, the characters are my PC's allies, and it happened to be immensely entertaining to watch the bard make his one-man stand against the death knight and liches, or to watch the arcane trickster do some body-hopping infiltration-slaughter on her own.  4E seems to be based on the idea, "If you aren't doing something cool, the game isn't fun."</blockquote>

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