Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AllisterH" data-source="post: 4429504" data-attributes="member: 51325">Needless to say, I agree. I would rate 3E as the edition with the lowest amount of tactical choice * in-battle* based on the relatively short length combat tends to be (2-3 rounds whereas both 1e/2e had longer combat rounds closer to 4E IME). 3E is more akin to CONSTRUCTED in M:TG where the build itself is a much larger determinant of whether or not you win the battle then what you do during the battle itself. Choosing the right buffs, feats, PrC are all pre-battle decisions and are characteristic of 3E. THIS is actually tactics since it deals with the in-game battle but 4E focus on the table much moreso rewards tactical thinking in battle.  re: "Blame the players"I've noticed that lately, it seems akin to say the rules themselves aren't the problem but the players are. I call hogwash on that based on the fact that players only ACT in a certain manner based on their response to the rules. The "fear" of random death for example is not because players are "weak" or "less true gamers" but the fact that nowadays, even the lowliest CRPG tries to make you CARE about the character and in tabletop RPGs, you're actually expected to come up with backstories and in both, character creation is no longer "Roll 3d6 6 times, pick a class and you're done". It couldn't be the fact that now, character creation ACTUALLY takes time? I could whip out a new 10th level character by the time my next turn was up in a 5 man party back in 1e, yet now that I couldn't even do this in 3E (and actually expected not to, remember, I got to have a decent  backstory otherwise I'm not a real "ROLE-PLAYER") and it of course is my fault for being weak in not wanting to do this due to a random roll that I had pretty much had no control over. Really, I distinctly even remember reading a 2E DRAGON article where the DM and players were it was even suggested that you shouldn't even allow a character into a campaign that doesn't have a backstory worked upon by both player and DM. Yet it is the fault of the PLAYERS for fearing random death? How do you guys come to THAT conclusion? Or is this a case of trying to use your cred as a 1e oldtimer to impress newer players? That won't work on me unfortunately since I played 1e just as much. Similarly, the 3e "15 minute workday". IF your DM doesn't believe in trash/warmup fights and actually believes that every fight should be tense for the players (i'm not even talking challenging fight but one that certainly uses more than 20% of a team's resources), how can the blame lie with the players for wanting to rest RIGHT AFTER since they're capability has taken a significant hit just from using up even the lower level buff spells. Hell Paizo even uses this to their advantage in one of their modules where in a gladiator type combat, the PCs are told battle is coming so to prepare (they buff up) yet some "random" occurences causes the match to be delayed until the buffs run out. Yet it STILL is the fault of the player and DM? re: SimulationistUm, reading this thread AND others, there were MULTIPLE times when people disparged 4E for not being for Simulationists and that 3E is better if you actually want to match the experience of a book and 4E is for those that like "videogames" Not once did I see anyone mention how genre-busting the existence of wands of lesser vigoe and the cheesiness of nightsticks make hash of any novel aspiration (Really, ProfessorCirno, using a D&D novel to rebut my point? Come on, even in D&D, this was an abnormality). The thing is, I kinda agree with you that D&D should model itself but then I think it's not kosher to then turn around and argue for Simulationism as being the hallmark of 3E when it produces situations like that. Seriously, I know people hate the power system of 4E as being "so like a videogame" and all that, but how in the world do people tolerate the crack pipe that is wands of lesser vigor/cure light wounds?</blockquote>

Verification