Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Staffan]

Some people are just too centred on combat and don't consider that there are other styles of play. I got roasted when I created a character in 4e that was a skill monkey, almost impossible for an opponent to lock down, and made to make the life of a single opponent (DM) hell. It was a 4e Warlock/Bard multi. "You aren't doing enough damage!!!!"

I can kind of sympathize.

D&D as commonly played is pretty combat focused. And the way you win in combat is by getting your opponent's hp down to 0 (or in 4e, getting them down to half and then Intimidating them – I believe that was a thing, right?). There's definitely something to be said for crowd control, but that's either using one character's actions to negate the actions of a stronger opponent, or using a single action to render one or more opponents irrelevant for a few rounds and letting you focus on a smaller number (a four-on-three fight followed by a four-on-one fight is a lot easier than a four-on-four fight). But if you need to dedicate yourself to sandbagging a single opponent, that's essentially taking both yourself and that foe out of the equation, and then leaving it to the rest of your party to deal with (after they've expended encounter resources in dealing with the rest of the enemies). And 4e is kind of known for having sloggish combats to begin with, so things making combat take longer can be unpopular.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Random thought du jour:

I saw a vehicle on the road today. It looked like a regular vehicle, and I was thinking about how it was in good condition. But nothing that special- they were a dime a dozen not that long ago.

And then I saw that it had an antique license plate.

It's that feeling you get when you first notice that the rebellious music you loved as a college student is playing in the elevator.

 

[prabe]

Random thought du jour:

I saw a vehicle on the road today. It looked like a regular vehicle, and I was thinking about how it was in good condition. But nothing that special- they were a dime a dozen not that long ago.

And then I saw that it had an antique license plate.

It's that feeling you get when you first notice that the rebellious music you loved as a college student is playing in the elevator.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The 2003 movie (with Eric Bana) used a combination of nanotech and gamma radiation, plus mutant DNA from experiments Banner Sr. did on himself.

That was the one I was thinking of; so not the one that is assumed as canonical for the MCU (that's the Norton one).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Some people are just too centred on combat and don't consider that there are other styles of play. I got roasted when I created a character in 4e that was a skill monkey, almost impossible for an opponent to lock down, and made to make the life of a single opponent (DM) hell. It was a 4e Warlock/Bard multi. "You aren't doing enough damage!!!!"

This is surprising in the D20 sphere, where most of the core capabilities for classes are combat centric?

 

[Meech17]

Random thought du jour:

I saw a vehicle on the road today. It looked like a regular vehicle, and I was thinking about how it was in good condition. But nothing that special- they were a dime a dozen not that long ago.

And then I saw that it had an antique license plate.

It's that feeling you get when you first notice that the rebellious music you loved as a college student is playing in the elevator.

The green Mitsubishi Eclipse that Paul Walker drove in the beginning of the first The Fast and the Furious film would be eligible for historic tags. (Depending on jurisdiction of course. Here in Michigan it's 26 years, and the hero car is 29/30 years old at this point.)

The other day I heard Green Day in the grocery store.

 

[overgeeked]

View attachment 383544

If only it were limited to Twitter.

 

[Ryujin]

I can kind of sympathize.

D&D as commonly played is pretty combat focused. And the way you win in combat is by getting your opponent's hp down to 0 (or in 4e, getting them down to half and then Intimidating them – I believe that was a thing, right?). There's definitely something to be said for crowd control, but that's either using one character's actions to negate the actions of a stronger opponent, or using a single action to render one or more opponents irrelevant for a few rounds and letting you focus on a smaller number (a four-on-three fight followed by a four-on-one fight is a lot easier than a four-on-four fight). But if you need to dedicate yourself to sandbagging a single opponent, that's essentially taking both yourself and that foe out of the equation, and then leaving it to the rest of your party to deal with (after they've expended encounter resources in dealing with the rest of the enemies). And 4e is kind of known for having sloggish combats to begin with, so things making combat take longer can be unpopular.

There wasn't much that took me out of combat, when I used it. It was mostly a perception thing. It didn't look like I was doing a lot of damage but when you're getting your hits nerfed by a resist, while mine are multi-type and getting right through, I'm actually doing comparable damage. For some reason the DM never clued into this either, so I would frequently be left to my own devices.

EDIT - I should also mention that as a Warlock, with a Rod of Corruption (and some other stuff), I could pretty much wipe the field of minions by the second round. That's pretty handy.

 

[Ryujin]

This is surprising in the D20 sphere, where most of the core capabilities for classes are combat centric?

And then you end up needing a skill; to get through something, or you actually need to talk to someone instead of just killing them, and suddenly find out that having a min-maxed bunch of Barbarian Multi-Classes just doesn't seem to cut it.

It might be why I enjoyed playing TORG so much, way back when. You could have a character who would attack with interaction skills, instead of just beating everything about the head and shoulders with a big stick.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And then you end up needing a skill; to get through something, or you actually need to talk to someone instead of just killing them, and suddenly find out that having a min-maxed bunch of Barbarian Multi-Classes just doesn't seem to cut it.

The problem is you usually don't need to do a trade-off. Just bring a rogue or other skill enhanced class, let them most focus on their combat abilities, but make sure you have commonest support skills. Yeah, you may miss some that a really skill focused character will, but unless the GM is just hammered on that, its not going to be that visible, and its rarely going to risk getting someone killed.

It might be why I enjoyed playing TORG so much, way back when. You could have a character who would attack with interaction skills, instead of just beating everything about the head and shoulders with a big stick.

Well, that's the gig; lots of other games have some pretty easy ways to have your cake and eat it too, or don't actually tie up most of the basic character design with combat. An old-school typical RuneQuest character would probably want to maintain whatever one-handed melee weapon and shield he used, probably a ranged weapon, and give some attention to a backup weapon like a shortsword or a dagger. But that left plenty of training time for Oratory, Persuade, his Perception skills and the like if he wanted to do so.

With the D&D sphere (outside of, to some degree 13th Age since Backgrounds are disconnected from class), you really want to take one of the classes that support skill use if you want to have it good, and those are usually not as direct combatants (though some, as you noted, do a lot of valuable combat support depending on class and the specific system).