pawsplay's dealbreaker list

[pawsplay]

But if they were going to be given so few hit points as to only need one hit to take out anyway, then what's wrong with the idea?

Have you seen the orc bareknuckle death match thread? If it they die in what hit anyway, what do we gain from the 1 hp thing? I can tell you what we lose: the ability of an orc not to go down in one hit. Every single hit will be a finishing blow, which is kind of boring. In the movies, the mooks sometimes take at least a little effort to put down. But in 4e, it would take a different kind of orc.

It's no different than requiring a feat. In 3e, if you tried using two weapons without TWF, you were basically throwing your attacks away. 4e is all about the removal of suboptimal choices, so they took out the ability to use two weapons if you didn't have TWF (or its 4e equivalent).

It is different. Rather than creating options for two weapon fighting, they've trimmed them down. I don't see how you can get any more different than that. It's a pet peeve of mine, since two weapon fighting is, in real life, very effective and commonplace throughout history.

Times change, different monsters become popular.

Yet the frost giant has held up pretty well for the past 1500 years or so. What's wrong with it now?

It's not that pulling out the crossbow is the problem, it's the resource-management game. It's the idea that a low-level wizard can toss one, maybe two spells a day, which is dull and not really evocative of fantasy fiction. While being able to throw spells all the time may be a bit much, it is a step in the right direction.

My opinion is the opposite. In fiction, magic tends to be two or more of slow, dangerous, unreliable, subtle, or exhausting. I can think of very few fantasy characters who could sling magic missiles or the equivalent all day who were truly human.

Illusions are absurdly difficult to adjudicate, and usually wind up causing no end of problems.

And yet appear in virtually every other game on the market. What do they know that the 4e team doesn't? For that matter, why haven't they destroyed my games?

Gnomes didn't have a niche. They were sorta-halfling sorta-dwarf sorta-elf, all balled into one weird conglomerate. Attempting to carve out a niche for the gnome would require messing with at least one of these races' shticks.

Well, they were illusionists, at one point. Or thief-illusionists. And there's the whole badger thing. But here's the thing: I like gnomes. Whether or not they have a completely unique "niche" is less important to me than whether they are appealing. Dragonborn have a niche, and I have little inclination to play one. So as far as I am concerned, dragonborn are taking up real estate that could be occupied by the more attractive, and more traditional, gnome.

Plus, gnomes should not look like Elijiah Woods. They should have big, big noses.

It's once every five minutes, it's 30 feet, and they have to travel through a coterminuous plane to do so.

It's still a super power.

But it beats "I stand there and full-attack it." You have to admit, having more options is rather neat, and gives somebody other than the wizard and cleric some fun things to do and consider. It makes the game a bit more tactical.

I haven't had that problem. But last I heard, they actually took away tripping and disarming, or at least nerfed them. I don't think there's anything "boring" about trying a full attack against, say, a hydra. Or a fire elemental. To me, it's an invented problem.

Maybe somewhere out there are players who slug it out with level 12 warriors all day or something, but I've never seen such a game.

To prevent a bunch of products of the like that we saw in the 3.0 glut. By keeping a bit of a tighter control on what's going on, WotC can at least help out to ensure that the market isn't flooded by a ton of crap.

Hasn't Darwinian selection already taken care of that, pretty much? And it certainly won't protect us from WotC's glut of crap. In fact, now you get free crap in every MM.

 

[tuffnoogies]

My one point of agreement is the open gaming thing. I'm VERY disappointed with the direction 4e is going, and I honestly think they are doing themselves a disservice.

I'm surprised this is such a big deal for so many people. I hardly noticed that 3.x was OG. I couldn't care less if 4e is either. To each their own, eh?

 

[pawsplay]

...Have you read any of the recent news about the licenses? Both are still more than capable of supporting open gaming.

Have you? I think you must be confused, because the GSL is not an open license.

Open gaming wasn't exactly some huge movement before 3E. It seems like talking about it as if it was is a bit fallacious.

What do you mean by "fallacious?" I didn't specify any particular year. And open gaming systems predate D&D 3e.

 

[Hussar]

/snip


I'm less interested in comparing D&D 4e to Radiohead than I am to D&D 3e, which was seemingly a very successful game.

Yup, 3e was successful. But, that's not the same as saying the OG movement was. As far as D&D was concerned, by this time last year, you had less than five companies producing OGL material for D&D. And that's counting Green Ronin which produced what, 5 or 6 Bleeding Edge modules last year for 3.5. Outside the pdf market, there was pretty much no 3rd party D&D support anymore.

So, given that pretty much nobody was supporting D&D anymore, what sense does it make to hope that companies will support 4e?

Never mind the fact that the new GSL is apparently pretty much as open as the old STL, which is what drove the OGL movement in the first place.

 

[Guild Goodknife]

Yeah, i understand that everybody is welcome to share their personal thoughts about 4E with us here...but reading a collection of (highly subjective) dislikes of one member every now and then just becomes a bit... tedious after a while. I mean i like to read lots of different opinions in thematical focused threads, but guys, come on what do we gain from these 'collection of previously posted likes/dislikes of one single member' threads? And what does the OP gain from this thread? Most of his points were discussed to death elsewhere by now...

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

...And what does the OP gain from this thread? Most of his points were discussed to death elsewhere by now...

Whining is cathartic.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Yeah, i understand that everybody is welcome to share their personal thoughts about 4E with us here...but reading a collection of (highly subjective) dislikes of one member every now and then just becomes a bit... tedious after a while. I mean i like to read lots of different opinions in thematical focused threads, but guys, come on what do we gain from these 'collection of previously posted likes/dislikes of one single member' threads? And what does the OP gain from this thread? Most of his points were discussed to death elsewhere by now...

Whining is cathartic.

Or maybe he thought the Fourth Edition Forums was the proper place to post his thoughts on Fourth Edition.

It disturbs me that "disliking somethings about 4e" somehow automatically equates to "whining."

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Eh, he's not just posting his thoughts, he's negative language and in some cases rather ridiculous hyperbole to make his point.

Maybe that's not whining, but it sure ain't a logical argument, nor does it promote discussion (I'd argue that it shuts it down before it starts, actually).

That said, it's really just a matter of opinion and preference. Paws doesn't like it, so he isn't gonna play. Pretty simple, really.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Eh, he's not just posting his thoughts, he's negative language and in some cases rather ridiculous hyperbole to make his point..

Nevermind that those who sing 4e's praises are not required at all to provide any amount of rational argument or thought into why, that their arguments tend to fail just as poorly as some of those made against 4e.

Screw. This.

As Kamikaze Midget has been saying as of late, the fanbase is more destructive to the game than any design decision. Rather than constructive discussion of the ruleset, we have a ton of fanbois who hate on anyone who doesn't immediately love the new game. Rather than discuss the game for its merits, and have rational discourse on what elements are good and which are poor, we have... garbage.

Clearly I should not have bothered coming back to EN World.

 

[Jim DelRosso]

Have you seen the orc bareknuckle death match thread?

Honestly, that thread supplies pretty much a textbook example of a problem that only exists on the internet, and will almost certainly never come up at the table.

if it they die in what hit anyway, what do we gain from the 1 hp thing? I can tell you what we lose: the ability of an orc not to go down in one hit. Every single hit will be a finishing blow, which is kind of boring. In the movies, the mooks sometimes take at least a little effort to put down. But in 4e, it would take a different kind of orc.

Well, you've kind of solved your own problem: the ability of an orc to take more than one hit isn't lost when there are 4-5 orcs in the MM who can take more than one hit. And even 4e minions can take a little effort to put down, since you don't automatically hit them.