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Message: <blockquote data-quote="catastrophic" data-source="post: 5617313" data-attributes="member: 81381">Implications of mechanics, for gameplay, as opposed to meaningless drivel about how fun somebody's terrible 1e rogue was despite himself, or whatever.   These are roleplaying games. If they're games, then the rules have to add to the fun. Otherwise, why have them? For the sake of tradition, no matter how many absurd, time-wasting hoops they require you to jump through? There's roleplaying, there's craft, but they should not be a crutch for design. Design should pay it's way, otherwise, why are we paying people to do it? Sure, we don't pay them much, or often, but still. It's a skill, and it deserves respect. You can dismiss whatever you want, but this isn't about character optimisation- it's about good design which leads to players having more fun, and all players being able to contribute to a substantial degree in game.  You can dismiss good design because you don't care about the amount of time, in fact the number of fans our hobby loses to idiotic tripe like 3e style fighters. But design matters, system matters, and the best way for a roleplaying game to make fun is for it to be well designed.  And I don't give a damn if you scoff at that. You're not a rational contributor to the discussion. You reject design, fine. I don't have to take your viewpoint seriously. And fighters never do that. This is not about minutia. This is not about dps decimals.  This is about the fact that at high levels, fighters can't make will saves, despite often facing them from high level monsters. Your heroic fighter? Will scream and run away unless he's standing next to a paladin.  This is about the fact that full progression spelllcasters can cast 'be better than a fighter at fighting' 50 different ways, and for the cleric, do it all day off one spell slot and a turn undead attempt or two. And on top of that, they get to nuke everything, raise the dead, fly, ect, ect. This is about the fact that when a new player joins D&D, half of them are going to say "i wanna play a cool guy with a sword!', and most of those people are going to end up playing a fighter. In 4e, they get to be a cool guy with a sword. In 3e, even at low levels, they play a boring garbage class that does the same thing over and over again, and is rapidly left behind. This is about fighters and many, many many many other builds in 4e being utterly WORHTLESS past a very low level, and people having MUCH LESS FUN as a result. And again, I don't care about the guy who loves his boring do-nothing fighter. I care about good design, not people who aren't engaged in the game enough for design to matter. Not to mention many many many many other problems that again, damage people's fun. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />, wizards at low level? One spell, then a crossbow. You can tell your little fairy tales about how that 'makes up for' them being stronger later, but that's garbage design that doesn't work in play.  In play, it leads to 15 minute days, it leads to people dropping in an out of classes- or games- based on when their pc starts or stops being fun, it leads to the kind of negative outcomes that 4e makes an effort to prevent. It doesn't always work, 4e has a lot of flaws- but it's better than wallowing in failure. I don't care who wants to boast about their hard-earned wizard from the old days, and how it's really really important to their play style that the guy with the sword starts looking like a complete chump at some arbitary point in the storyline. This is D&D, not ars magica. I don't care about the sacred cows, especially when they step all over people's fun. I'm interested in making fun for people, not just the people who shoult their 4e-bashing outrage the loudest who insists that everyone act like there's no such thing as merit in design, and no way to improve play, because after all, everything is just, like, your opinion, mannn! Either we recognise that design can improve, and that improving design improves play, or, we act as a stagnant backwater, hostile to improvement and genuine design goals. Either we recognise that play experiences can be improved with design, or we buy into the copout that all design can do is service play-style, when in reality, that is only part of what design does, and that the features people are defending are toxic to good design, and good play. We have old timers playing 4e. We have people who've never liked dnd playing it. And we have a shitload of people who used to play 3e, and are damn glad to see the back of it. 4e is well designed and deserved credit for that. Discussion of it should not be dominated with the outrage of people who rejected it before they even saw it, because frankly? You have no idea what you're talking about. Well, at least you admit it.</blockquote>

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