Removing homogenity from 4e

[I'm A Banana]

If what you roleplay fits the alignments and archetypes (and whatever else) that the rules presume, then the rules might be a good roleplaying game for you. If the rules clash with what you are roleplaying, then it is a bad roleplaying game for you. But I certainly don't roleplay Lawful Good because it is in the rules.

I think that if Lawful Good wasn't in the rules, though, you'd see less people playing it.

That's sort of the idea of "role-playing rules" in an RPG. They help you play a role by making playing the role part of the game. Being Lawful Good is now a part of the game, because it is defined as a game element. You get to make an interesting choice about what kind of character you want to be, and this helps people decide how their characters will act going forward. In 3e and 4e it's not always a very significant choice (less so in 4e), but it's still there, helping people figure out how their imaginary character can behave in this imaginary world.

You can look at Lawful Good and go "This isn't like me, but I can see my hero like this, so I'm going to try to play my hero like this." This makes the game better at encouraging roleplaying -- at encouraging you to take up the mentality of another character and play that character, rather than pretend to be yourself.

Some people start with the "I want to act like a stereotypical knight in shining armor!" idea already fully formed and ready to go. Others might need to be lead there with things like Lawful Good (and the Paladin class from pre-4e).

Not that it's a prerequisite, just that, in my mind, it helps make the game between the books better at enabling role-playing. I personally think 4e could use a few dozen more elements like that.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now I have to commit seppuku for entering this thread again and taking it off on yet another tangent.

 

[Hussar]

For me that is all backwards. You roleplay what you roleplay.
If what you roleplay fits the alignments and archetypes (and whatever else) that the rules presume, then the rules might be a good roleplaying game for you. If the rules clash with what you are roleplaying, then it is a bad roleplaying game for you. But I certainly don't roleplay Lawful Good because it is in the rules.

But what about classes? You roleplay a thief because that's the role you take in the rules. There are very specific limitations you acquire when you choose a class in D&D. Your role play in a classed based system has to be at least partially colored by your choice of class.

---- damn, just scrolled down and saw I got ninja'd by KM.

 

[Hussar]

Going back to homogenity in 4e for a sec.

There's a point that occurs to me that I don't think has been made in this thread. If it has, sorry, I missed it, it's a long thread.

3e uses non-combat abilities to balance combat abilities. 4e doesn't. 4e only balances combat abilities with combat abilities.

Now, in 3e if I want to make Suave McStabbity, that's no problem. I take rogue and I'm off to the races. But, if I want to make Suave McFightswell, then I have a problem. Social skills and skills in general are balanced off against being able to mix it up in combat. Thus fighters get only 2 skill points per level and don't actually get class access to Diplomacy.

So, if I want to make Suave McFightswell, I have two choices - paladin, which comes with HUGE amounts of baggage, or ranger, which again, comes with an animal companion and all sorts of other baggage.

In other words, because non-combat is balanced with combat, my choices are actually very limited for what classes I can take if I want to make a character that can do both combat and non-combat well.

OTOH, I can take pretty much any class in 4e and be Suave McFightswell. At worst I can be Notbadtalker McFightsok.

So, isn't that a case where 3e is more homogenous than 4e?

 

[Vegepygmy]

So, if I want to make Suave McFightswell, I have two choices...

The notion that there are only two ways (and particularly those ways) to model "Suave McFightswell" in 3e, with its incredibly robust multiclassing rules, is...erroneous at best.

 

[Freakohollik]

Going back to homogenity in 4e for a sec.

There's a point that occurs to me that I don't think has been made in this thread. If it has, sorry, I missed it, it's a long thread.

3e uses non-combat abilities to balance combat abilities. 4e doesn't. 4e only balances combat abilities with combat abilities.

Now, in 3e if I want to make Suave McStabbity, that's no problem. I take rogue and I'm off to the races. But, if I want to make Suave McFightswell, then I have a problem. Social skills and skills in general are balanced off against being able to mix it up in combat. Thus fighters get only 2 skill points per level and don't actually get class access to Diplomacy.

So, if I want to make Suave McFightswell, I have two choices - paladin, which comes with HUGE amounts of baggage, or ranger, which again, comes with an animal companion and all sorts of other baggage.

In other words, because non-combat is balanced with combat, my choices are actually very limited for what classes I can take if I want to make a character that can do both combat and non-combat well.

OTOH, I can take pretty much any class in 4e and be Suave McFightswell. At worst I can be Notbadtalker McFightsok.

So, isn't that a case where 3e is more homogenous than 4e?

In 4e diplomacy isn't a class skill for fighters, nor will your fighter have a very high charisma score, unless you specifically gimp yourself in combat. So you can't really take any class and be as suave as you want. You'll have to settle for 1/2 level and feats while your paladin friend might have +8 more diplomacy than you.

A 3e fighter can sacrifice fighting ability for diplomacy too. Take skill focus, and the +2/+2 feat, get 5 ranks in the synergy skills, and take diplomacy even though its not a class skill. There you go. Notbadtalker McFightsok. All you had to give up was 2 of your many feats and some skill ranks.

Maybe 4e lets you have a decent diplomacy more easily, but you have to give up some fighting ability in either edition. Both 3e and 4e tie your class to your out of combat abilities.

 

[Mournblade94]

This.

The homogeneity of 4th Edition is a myth perpetuated almost exclusively by those with little to no actual play experience.

It doesn't need to be removed. It was never there to begin with.

I played 4e for 6 months. pretty much all of my players got bored, partly becaue of the homogeneity, but mostly because the power structure interferes with immersion. Some people feel it is Homogeneous, some do not, but it is incorrect to say it is merely a misconception.

I found it to be extremely homogeneous and I am a tactics player.

Where 3rd edition would let you play R.O.Y.G.B.I.V the entire visible spectrum, 4e I found lets you play R.G.B. There are Differences in the roles sure just like there is a difference in a City of heroes controller compared to a scrapper. But within roles? I haven't found it, and there are a very many people who have not found it.

6 months of running 4e once a week is an adequate amount of time to form an opinion on a game.

 

[ExploderWizard]

In 4e diplomacy isn't a class skill for fighters, nor will your fighter have a very high charisma score, unless you specifically gimp yourself in combat. So you can't really take any class and be as suave as you want. You'll have to settle for 1/2 level and feats while your paladin friend might have +8 more diplomacy than you.

This is partially the reason I will be dumping the "class skills" restriction for my upcoming campaign. Since every 4E class can be decent in a fight I see no good reason to restrict skill selection. Each class will get the indicated number of trained skills but can pick from the whole list. This way the PC's can be trained in the skills they want without having to play class X or Y.

 

[Mallus]

The notion that there are only two ways (and particularly those ways) to model "Suave McFightswell" in 3e, with its incredibly robust multiclassing rules, is...erroneous at best.

Heh... I find the notion that 3e has incredibly robust multiclassing --ie, a really flexible character generation system-- erroneous at best.

3e can't hold a candle to M&M2e, which has the most robust character generation rules in all of d20. Though, to be fair, M&M doesn't really have multiclassing, it's character generation system is a classless point-buy.

(hey, everyone has a game they like to pimp!)

 

[SSquirrel]

Its Bryon.

That aside, I completely disagree with your assessment. See my sig. Are you suggesting my daughter is not roleplaying because she does not have a book?

People mis-spell Hagen as Hagan or think it's my last name and Kirk my first all the time. Heh. My daughter turns 4 today and she walks up to me and asks me to hand her the invisible trophy or says she is looking for her invisible purse, filled with invisible makeup and lipstick. She builds a pillow fort and calls it her castle and then her 1 1/2 yr old sister Maeve becomes "Monster Maevey" or Beryl comes charging into the computer room to tell me a dragon is attacking her castle.

Roleplaying is alive and well any and everywhere and anyone could be doing it. No rules to the 4 yr old version of roleplaying called Pretend

 

[Fifth Element]

But you may have missed the key point that Fifth Element (god I hated that movie) was jibbing me with my own catch phrase.

Indeed. (And the name's not from that movie, though I did enjoy it.)