What CAN'T you do with 4e?

[drothgery]

2) In-game response: sure you can learn to cast the undead army ritual. After 20 years of study. Just like the BBEG

... and sacrificing a few dozen virgins, and pledging your soul to Orcus.

 

[Intense_Interest]

If a character's STR score never added a melee "to hit" bonus(which would be fine) this works just great. Its the fact that natural STR does add this bonus while additional STR from magic does not. This is the type of "just because" that fits boardgame rules so well. In a roleplaying game this just slams its head against the nonsense wall.

In a roleplaying game that involves Magic Strength, its explained that the Magical Strength not only fails to help your weapons hit strongly but can actually hamper your swing because of the precise training that is required to strike well. This is basically the Natural vs Steroid argument co-opted from Home Runs into Fantasy, so its not so much of a nonsense wall as an effort/handwave wall.

 

[Korgoth]

What if I want the "Create Undead Army" ritual available to players? Not all games of D&D have to be about fantasy small unit tactics.

 

[BryonD]

They still make you stronger. They just don't do it by means of increasing your strength ability score. Instead, they make you stronger by providing bonuses on certain checks or damage rolls, ie, on the things that strength does.

Its a change from 3e that seems designed to minimize the "must have" nature of certain items. Now, for example, you don't hit more often when you wear gloves of strength. You also don't have to recalculate as many things if you take off your gloves. It means that a "gloves of strength" item is no longer mandatory for people who attack in melee using their strength score, but are instead useful for people who want to do things like pick up boulders. Its a nerfing, but thought went into it.

Expect not all things that strength does, and even some things it does, it, arbitrarily, does only 1/day. "They still make you stronger" is simply not a mechanical truism of 4E. It is only true when the math permits, which frequently isn't the case.

Yeah, thought went in to it. But the nature of the thought was: "How do we force fit this into the combat math allowance?". The thought was most decidedly NOT: "How do we make this make the wearer be stronger when wearing them because that is what gloves of strength do?". Thought went in to it and they answered the question they were after just fine. The problem is the question was based on building a board/battle game, not a persistent logical world experience rpg.

It is a total disconnect and again, just a drop in the bucket of why 4E is such a failure at being anything beyond a challenge resolution system (with a very heavy emphasis on combat) and an advancement scheme.

I can hand wave stuff with out any rules at all. I buy RPGs for mechanics that can live up to my imagination. 4E resorts to vastly too many short cuts and cop outs for simplicity-sake and fails to provide a remotely acceptable degree of mechanical support for the level of detail I already have.

 

[drothgery]

What if I want the "Create Undead Army" ritual available to players? Not all games of D&D have to be about fantasy small unit tactics.

Then you put a lot more thought into devising the 'create undead army' ritual, so that it's balanced for the PCs to use and doesn't require them to do anything that your PCs wouldn't go for. Or you get a 'create undead army' ritual from some third-party necromancy book.

 

[Mallus]

...why 4E is such a failure at being anything beyond a challenge resolution system (with a very heavy emphasis on combat) and an advancement scheme.

So it's a failure at being a traditional RPG?

I can hand wave stuff with out any rules at all.

Good. It's a valuable skill to have in this hobby.

I buy RPGs for mechanics that can live up to my imagination.

What does this actually mean?

 

[Ace]

Things I can't do in 4e counting only 3.5 core vs 4.0 core and ignoring things that will come in the update books (Druid, Monk, Barbarian, Sorcerer, Gnomes)

Make a character with non adventuring skills that are supported by the rules (no craft or profession in 4.0)

deviate much from a narrowly defined archetype -- you do you "one thing" and pretty much only that in 4e

create cool new prestige classes

make "real people" ala "And Everyone Else" my fave 3.x supplement

play as well w/o a battle mat and tokens -- its possible but it even harder than in 3.5

 

[Mallus]

Then you put a lot more thought into devising the 'create undead army' ritual, so that it's balanced for the PCs to use and doesn't require them to do anything that your PCs wouldn't go for.

Right.

I don't get why some people are so opposed to 'antagonist only' abilities. I see as a practical matter, protagonist and antagonist abilities serve different functions. PC abilities need to to balanced against frequent use and other the PC abilities. Antagonist abilities need to provide a challenge to the PC's for an encounter (or a few, at most, in the case of a recurring villain).

They need to do different jobs, so I don't see why they should be interchangeable. It's a little like insisting you should be able to weld with a food processor and julienne carrots with an acetylene torch.

 

[Voadam]

create cool new prestige classes

make "real people" ala "And Everyone Else" my fave 3.x supplement

1 Aren't epic destinies the new prestige classes?

2 Aren't noncombatant NPCs easy to generate in 4e?

 

[korjik]

Right.

I don't get why some people are so opposed to 'antagonist only' abilities. I see as a practical matter, protagonist and antagonist abilities serve different functions. PC abilities need to to balanced against frequent use and other the PC abilities. Antagonist abilities need to provide a challenge to the PC's for an encounter (or a few, at most, in the case of a recurring villain).

They need to do different jobs, so I don't see why they should be interchangeable. It's a little like insisting you should be able to weld with a food processor and julienne carrots with an acetylene torch.

As a specific example, my wizard collects any scrap of spell he can lay his hands on. To the point of if it is a choice of save the girl or get the bad guys spellbook, the girl better hope someone else is doing the saving. If I saw the wizard we were battling cast a spell, say Vile Obliteration, and my wizard hadnt seen it before, I would take great efforts to find the other guys books after we waked him. To be told 'oooh, sorry, that is a bad guy only power' would be a real problem.

Heck, the fact that I am limited to 3 dailies per level is really really REALLY annoying.