On the marketing of 4E

[AllisterH]

I think you missed the point.

I was specifically asking those who felt the imbalance between spellcasters and non-casters only appeared with 3e, whether they thought breaking the mold (i.e. a radical departure from the way these classes worked in all the previous editions, not just 3e) was necessary.

I was referring to 4e's power system, not the customization or lack thereof.

Needless to say, the following is only my opinion.

AS someone who believes 3e broke spellcasting, I think 4e's system makes more sense for what modern gamers want.

Two of the restrictions on spellcasting was simply that a) wizards didn't get to choose their spells and b) magic items were not something that a player could easily control.

The DMG in previous editions hammered the point that magic items AND (something many people forget) spells were supposed to be carefully controlled by the DM.

Players nowadays expect control not just over their items but their spells. IT's the latter I think which is the biggest problem in rebalancing 3rd. A spell like KNOCK is balanced in 1e/2e due to rarity but not so much in 3e with it not only being common but also easily slottable via wands/scrolls.

re: 3e muliticlassing

Can't see how 3e multiclassing is considered an essential part of D&D. It basically turned D&D into a point buy system basically (every level purchase this amount of abilities)

 

[AllisterH]

You do realize that when you compare LG to "regular Good," that's Neutral Good by definition, right?

And it seemed to do just fine with Chaotic Good - I've never had a problem with a character concept of "screw the law! I know what's right and I'm doing it!" Robin Hood always seemed like a classic example of this, at least to me.

You miss my point. To me, Neutral Good can say "screw the law! I know what's right and I'm doing it" just as easily as Chaotic Good (notice, you're basically saying that the law is evil which a NG character should have no trouble ignoring either)

LG characters I expect to work within the law system to either change it or find a precedent in ignoring the law.

 

[gribble]

Of course, such the 10 Strength fighter does not exist.

[DIGRESSION]
Actually, my longest lived 3e character (got up to around lvl 24), was a "fighter" (actually a samurai) with 10 Str. In 3e, not only was it possible, but it was actually a feasible and very effective build. This was in a party that consisted of him, an epic level wizard and an epic level cleric. Never once did he feel like a suboptimal character, or like he wasn't doing his job in the team.

And that's why I just don't get posts that say that fighters above level 10 sit around watching the wizards and clerics do everything when playing 3e... it just wasn't my experience.
[/DIGRESSION]

I now return you to your regularly scheduled edition skirmish...

 

[AllisterH]

[DIGRESSION]
Actually, my longest lived 3e character (got up to around lvl 24), was a "fighter" (actually a samurai) with 10 Str. In 3e, not only was it possible, but it was actually a feasible and very effective build. This was in a party that consisted of him, an epic level wizard and an epic level cleric. Never once did he feel like a suboptimal character, or like he wasn't doing his job in the team.

And that's why I just don't get posts that say that fighters above level 10 sit around watching the wizards and clerics do everything when playing 3e... it just wasn't my experience.
[/DIGRESSION]

I now return you to your regularly scheduled edition skirmish...

Ok, I'll bite.

How is this possible?

Unless you're getting massive buffs from the other classes via either spells or magic items, you're not even going to HIT an epic level monster

 

[Alzrius]

You miss my point. To me, Neutral Good can say "screw the law! I know what's right and I'm doing it" just as easily as Chaotic Good (notice, you're basically saying that the law is evil which a NG character should have no trouble ignoring either)

It really just sounds to me like you're fuzzy on what the Neutral in Neutral Good means. I can understand that, but that doesn't mean that it was a problem with the game itself that needed to be fixed.

It's also erroneous to say that a Chaotic Good character thinks the law is evil - he just doesn't care about it in his personal interpretation of doing good.

LG characters I expect to work within the law system to either change it or find a precedent in ignoring the law.

That's a fair summary of a LG character - I just think there are also equally fair and easily-understood summaries for the other eight alignments also. That really didn't seem like it was broken in any real regard (that said, I admit some people didn't like having an alignment system at all...but changing it from a nine-point grid to a five-point scale didn't satisfy that particular complaint).

 

[Mouseferatu]

...but I've often seen stuff changed just because it wants to be different, or on a whim, or for a reason that doesn't hold up under scrutiny but they want to try it anyway.

In such cases--IME and IMO, of course--even such changes made on whim or without a goal in mind are still suggested because the person suggesting them thinks they at least have the potential to be better than what came before. Again, they may be wrong, and sometimes one can even point to objective reasons they shouldn't have been made--not often, but sometimes--but I've never heard of such a change being made or suggested without some motivation beyond just "I feel like making this different," even if that motivation is something as simple (and potentially false) as "I think it'll sell better this way."

 

[gribble]

Ok, I'll bite.

How is this possible?

High Dexterity and weapon finesse. At later levels he picked up the Iaijitsu Master PrC. Throughout his career his MO was never to deal massive damage to the opponent, but rather to outlast them (in combination with the Cleric's healing). He concentrated on buffing his saves and AC up the wazoo and had the style feat that meant that power attacking enemies didn't add any bonus to damage. So usually the enemies would have about a 25% chance of hitting with their primary attack and needed 20s to hit with any iterative attacks, and that one hit (if it landed) wouldn't be doing any PA damage.

The enemies couldn't just ignore him either, because if they turned their back on them he'd Iaijitsu strike them into oblivion.

It worked very well, and kept the "squishy" magic/cleric alive. Essentially he was a defender in the days before 4e.

 

[Imaro]

I think personally for me the big issue was the difference between

Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil

AND

Chaotic Good and Neutral Good

AND

Lawful Neutral - Neutral - Chaotic Neutral

D&D always had no problem explaining/showing the difference between LG and regular Good, but it was the Chaotic and Neutral good that always seemed hazy.

Similarly, the difference between neutral and lawful evil never really seemed important. Chaotic evil and the rest of evil made sense...

I never had a problem with Chaotic Good and Neutral Good... IMO, NG means you are willing to use chaotic measures or lawful measures to expedite the greatest amount of good in the quickest fashion. Basically in the end only the achievement of good was important, not whether law or chaos was used to accomplish it. It's funny but I always felt like Paladins should have been this alignment as it would have made them a more flexible class but still kept the "purity" idea.

Chaotic Good, IMO, was a person who felt the greatest good could usually only come about through the circumventing of the inevitable bureaucracy, politicking, and traditions that law brings with it.

LN is someone whose code, whether good or evil, is the most important thing in their life... think Roland from The Gunslinger.

Neutral would be someone like Two Face from Batman comics or a character who actually strives to maintain balance in his own actions as well as in the world along the spectrum of good& evil/law & chaos... think Karla the Grey Witch from Record of Lodoss War or the Circle of Eight (as a whole) in Greyhawk.

CN, hmmm... IMO, the Joker from the recent Dark Knight movie... though he definitely spans the good/evil axis from neutral to evil dependin on what Joker one is talking about. More to the point I think CN is the self serving without regard to good or evil concerns type

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There's no such thing, in a creative endeavor.

No, really.

I disagree.

From my own personal experience as a musician, artist and jewelry designer, along with the experiences noted in Piers Anthony's annotated But What of Earth and many of the inexplicable changes in things like the movie/TV adaptations of The Scarlet Letter, Silence of the Lambs or Earthsea, I'd have to say that change for the sake of change, while sometimes thinly rationalized ("This sounds cooler!"), does exist.

I suppose, though, it depends upon how one defines "change for the sake of change"- a phrase that IMO is used more in an idiomatic than literal sense.

One literal example, though, may be the casting/recasting of the role of Harvey Dent in the original Batman movie and subsequent ones. Originally, Billy Dee Williams was cast- giving the role of a Caucasian comic book character to a black actor may have been such a change- but when Two-Face (the villain whom Dent would become) showed up in a subsequent role, Tommy Lee Jones- a white actor- was cast.

Acting abilities and scheduling conflicts aside, why the 2 race changes?

All that said, though, I'm with KM on this in regards to 4Ed. Many of the changes seemed arbitrary to me, and offered no obvious improvement to the original rules.

I love the old, 9 alignment system, and feel its one of the things that made D&D D&D. That said, I know its not for everyone.

However, the 4Ed 5 position system is...flawed. Despite my preference for the 9 point system, I feel that a 3 point system (G-U-E) or ditching alignment entirely would have been superior to what 4Ed gave us.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I suppose, though, it depends upon how one defines "change for the sake of change"- a phrase that IMO is used more in an idiomatic than literal sense.

One literal example, though, may be the casting/recasting of the role of Harvey Dent in the original Batman movie and subsequent ones. Originally, Billy Dee Williams was cast- giving the role of a Caucasian comic book character to a black actor may have been such a change- but when Two-Face (the villain whom Dent would become) showed up in a subsequent role, Tommy Lee Jones- a white actor- was cast.

Acting abilities and scheduling conflicts aside, why the 2 race changes?

That's just it, though. "Acting abilities and scheduling conflicts" aren't "aside." Burton chose Williams because he felt he was right for the role; the studio replaced him with Jones because they thought he'd be a bigger box-office draw.

The former is a very personal, subjective opinion; the latter is a financial one. But they're both reasons.

And that's what I'm getting at. "This sounds cooler!" may seem a thin rationale to you, but it's absolutely the reason for a lot of these changes.

Again, often times, they're wrong. Sometimes it makes the product worse, at least in the eyes of the bulk of the audience. But it's still a reason that the person who made the decision believed.

Obviously, I can't swear that nobody has ever said "I want to change X just because." But it's so rare as to be a statistical non-factor. No matter how thin, or even how wrong, other motivations for change might be, those motivations exist, even if only in the minds of one individual involved.