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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 4949027" data-attributes="member: 51942">To each his own!  I do like some things about the character builder - particularly the ease with which you can whip up a character in it.  The basic character sheet isn't equally good for all characters, but that's pretty much impossible, so I can hardly fault them there.I play and enjoy 4e - I'm not focusing on 4e's complexities because I want an edition war.  3e has it's own issues.  Perhaps it's unfortunate, but it serves as a well known comparison point, which is why I used it - it's just so easy to compare to.  In any case, back to 4e...I do know that in combat, there are many, many effects that "happen", and that we spend a lot of time administering them.  It's perfectly normal for attack bonuses, damage and/or defenses of a creature to change almost every round, and even change several times a round or due to several factors.  A 4e combat also takes many rounds.  All in all, a bunch of effects occur and interact - and that may explain why some people just lose track during combat.  Part of this is fun - the areas of effects are small enough - and forced or voluntary movement effects common enough - to make battle interesting and tactical.  But there's also a gray area of effects which do have such obvious tactical aspects but provide a bunch of sources of yet another small boost or penalty to a game statistic.  These often encourage a party to cooperate and build characters smartly, so that's fun, but they also involve a lot of administration during combat, which is less fun.  It doesn't surprise me that people that aren't into tracking a bunch of numbers sometimes just zone out - or that they focus on what matters to them, and don't have a firm understanding of the combat section of the rulebook - which contains many rules that don't come into play very often.Just last Tuesday in our game an enemy's immediate action triggered OA's - and many people were surprised that the PC that was interrupted couldn't take an OA.  This is just a rule that very rarely sees play, and it makes sense that it isn't a focus for most players.</blockquote>

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