Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7615609" data-attributes="member: 7006">I think one thing that would be advantageous for me were I ever to go back to playing 4E is that because I wouldn't have D&D Insider (and thus the massive amounts of extra powers that the character generator collected for me)... the classes would go back to being more disparate (and thus more interesting and compelling.)This was something I discovered throughout 4E's lifetime that I now can look back on with regret.  Because almost every article in the online Dragon magazine included new powers for multiple classes... towards the end of my playtime a Fighter could have like 16 different 1st level Encounter powers to choose from.  Which ended up hurting things in my opinion, because in order to make these powers "different" than other 1st level Fighter Encounter powers in whatever specialized article they appeared in... designers were forced to start intruding more heavily into other classes' schticks, and create powers who effects at one point might have been only expressly available for just one class, but were now able to be used by multiple ones.I think this is where the whole "Every class feels the same!" response really started gaining traction.  It wasn't so much the beginning, when we were just using the first Player's Handbook and the couple powers at each level per class did not overlap so much. It was more only later on when a power's effects that might've originally only been able to be gained if you played a Cleric (for example) were now able to be taken by a Rogue, Sorcerer, and Warden (through the attempt of "fluffing" the effect differently in the flavor text.)I mean, I distinctly remember my very first 4E campaign had eight players, and each of them played the eight different classes in the PH.  And I never got the "these classes all feel the same!" vibe from them.  It was only in subsequent campaigns when we incorporated PH2, PH3, and powers found within the Character Builder that every began becoming more mushy as far as class separation and distinction were concerned.>>>That being said... my eventual boredom issues with 4E came about due to just the repetitive nature of combat over time because it only used powers for it.  And other types of spells (that you can find in 2E, 3E 5E and which are not directly grid combat related) did not have enough of a foothold for use in the game.  Things like illusions for example-- in the non-4E games you can decide to "get creative" and use illusions during combat in all kinds of creative ways based purely upon the player's imagination... but in 4E illusions were strictly one-concept "the 'illusion' does this X grid-related function".  You didn't get to decide how to use the illusion, the 'illusion' created an image of a pit on the ground and anyone in the radius fell prone as the 'illusion' made them think they were falling.  Which is the exact same effect as any number of other powers that did the same thing.  So that kind of missing ingredient in the game is what eventually made me quite happy to see return in 5E, and why I haven't had a need or desire to return to 4E.  (Although I did run a short Gamma World game recently, so I have in fact scratched the 4E itch in a certain respect.)</blockquote>

Verification