What CAN'T you do with 4e?

[LostSoul]

Create an effective spear-wielding ranger? Or an effective bow-wielding fighter? Without multi-classing?

For your Ranger:

Give him a spear. Ask the DM if you can use it as two weapons - the off-hand being the butt of the spear, as a club. Not exactly RAW, but not that far off, either.

Alternately, write down the stats for longsword as your main weapon and shortsword as your off-hand, and call it a spear when you play. Changing colour isn't really against the RAW, is it?

Take Dungeoneering instead of Nature.

Choose Armour feats when you level up.

 

[pawsplay]

For your Ranger:

Give him a spear. Ask the DM if you can use it as two weapons - the off-hand being the butt of the spear, as a club. Not exactly RAW, but not that far off, either.

Alternately, write down the stats for longsword as your main weapon and shortsword as your off-hand, and call it a spear when you play. Changing colour isn't really against the RAW, is it?

Take Dungeoneering instead of Nature.

Choose Armour feats when you level up.

Excellent. This approach will work well for the banaphone-wielding South Bostonese runelumbler I've been wanting to play.

 

[sinecure]

removed

 

[Ginnel]

As that is your take, I must ask that you defend it against my inquiry and counter arguement.

For magi-tech, while I agree some of the larger uses of magic like raising an island and a floating city would beg for a ritual, what about functions that require that the magic take less time to set than a mundane action or be inexpensive enough that it can be unbiquitous. I'm thinking if you were to play in a Netheral, Halraa, or Shade game. High magic empires, where its use is both easy and ubitiquitous. Where magic is highly understood and items would be required to function continously or many times per day. From what I've seen of 4e it doesn't handle that well, and perhaps I missed the many times a day part of the items a day rules..

Hmm so because the system only has magic items with either daily or constant magic item effects, it means you can't take the at-will or encounter type powers and apply them to magic items, thats blatantly false.

For Gnomish Inventions, (Skill challenges? What skills, as it seems that 4e lacks it utterly and given the way that the skills system is set up, people of completely unappropriate backgrounds could attempt such a thing as well. More over this applies to any non-magical craft such as siege weapons or alchemical substances. The advantage is that anyone can do it, but the disadvantage is that anyone can do it. Can the characters build such weapons and hire crews to man them? Can they lure a dragon or another such creature into traps of their own design? Can they fortify their stronghold/homebase against attacks while they are away?.

Make the Feat required for making stuff fluff dependent, you can't do it without being in the guild or apprenticed or without a manual whatever you like, imagination is your only limit, same goes for making new skills.

Want a siege weapon hmmm find a magic item or power of appropriate
add in some push give it a range of 100-200 if you really feel you need to and add a price on it.

Fortifying a Stronghold, why would you need rules for this? the players say they want to do A, B and C make DC's for breaking in harder attribute arbitary price to these changes, anything that requires sapping or siege weapons is really gonna be story based anyway why would you need to know that a wall has 150hp and a siege weapon does on average 40 points a round just have the wall come down at a specified time, if you need it to be utterly random try the death saving throws roll for the wall each time when it fails 3 it falls down, if the players fortify their stronghold it gets a bonus to saves or needs to fail more saving throws or both.

Finally Planescape, are you serious?
Alignment is easy enough to fix and adding a planar version of the Lore skill isn't that hard either. But my gods man, a thousand minor changes would have to be made. Everything planar gutted. Wide tracks of the monsters rewritten. All those non-combat abilities of monsters coming into play if you want to play one or ally yourself with one (not to mention trade with them). Baatzuu, Tanari, and Yugoloths, o my. Lack of shapeshift amongst celestials and fiends a problem. Heroes becoming demi-gods on something resembling a regular base and being generally more durable as impacts on the setting.

Argh celestials can't shapeshift, solution? bang take a creature with stats and powers a celestial would have and...wait for it.... wait for it.....add the shapechange power!! genius. Want the Great Wheel *pop pop pop* the planes come back with a thought from the DM, non combat abilities have a glance at rituals nothing similar there? try plucking from 2nd ed and putting in to 4th ed, not balanced tone it down or change, honestly I can't see a problem with anything.

Don't want players becoming Demi Gods, try having epic destinys such as Faction leader or Proxy maybe? Commander in the Blood War. Want the gods back, they're here man no problem, want to give clerics of gods different powers, you can do it.

Want a Modron, take a look at warforged and translate across?

Translating from 2nd ed to 3rd wasn't easy, neither will 2nd to 4th but its doable.

 

[lutecius]

I'll skip on all the concepts I liked (druid, bard, sorcerers) that were left out of phb1 because they will all be available (most likely altered beyond recognition) if I buy more books or pay 15$ a month for the right to playtest them.

I can't play a non-vancian class. At least 3e non-spellcasting classes, sorcerer and psion didn't have those wtf moments when you can't take a simple action twice "just because you've already used that slot". Now all the classes are sort of vancian.

I can't really customize my character's class. Yes some options weren't optimal with 3e multiclassing. Most options are suboptimal now. In 4e the cost and restrictions are such that the multiclass choices are first dictated by what is viable, not what fits your character concept.

I can't play a single class whose powers don't primarily translate into movement or damage.
If you changed the powers' short descriptions, i'm sure most classes with the same role would be interchangeable (not that the effects fit the descriptions very well in the first place)

I can't play without a battlemat. It was hard with 3e, now it's just impossible with all these powers focused on movement and positioning.

I doubt points 2 to 5 will change anytime soon because they pertain to the core design and balance of 4e.

 

[evildm]

I don't think that there's anything that can't be done in 4e, to be honest. In fact, I find it much easier to do whatever I want with it than 3e was. I'm actually gearing up to run a Planescape game and so far I haven't had any issues. If I need a fiend to be in some sort of magical disguise/shapeshift then it just happens. I don't need it in the fiend's combat stats and I'm sure whatever's listed in their stat block is not ALL that they're capable of either.

For things like inventions I'd have it be like a series of quests. Rather than just putting in the time, maybe the inventor needs some plans for a component from here, some special metals from there, some lost artifact here, and some special tools. Once he's completed the quests, he's got his item all built and it's, for all intents and purposes, a magical item of some sort. I think this is alot more fun than "roll craft and pay blah blah money and wait a week."

 

[ExploderWizard]

I have yet to see a single thing 4E cannot do, or a game type 4E will not work for.



Resource management can be achieved through a slew of 1/day magical items in your bag of holding that your character switches out based on the situation. Combine this with ritual scrolls and ritual magic and you can have your gadget master with an answer to any situation with ease.

Well if "do anything" means ignoring the RAW then you can do anything with any edition sure enough. If a bagful of magic items means a bagful of 4E items you can keep them. I know I've always wanted a super powerful item that lets me teleport 1 whole mile , once per day with a limitation that my destination must be within line of sight. Can I get a side of mountaintop and telescopic goggles with that please?

All of the classes are ready to roll all day, they have a few special ubermoves but they can fight and do cool stuff all day long. They have more cool stuff to do at will than any edition before them as well.

Can you sunder weapons? Attempt to trip or disarm more than one opponent per "encounter"? Can a wizard prepare two fireballs for the day if he knows that trolls are on the march towards town? Can any caster at all produce effects in combat that don't do damage and perhaps last longer than a round? Can you do anything while under Greater Invisibility than wander around and scratch your butt?

Thats just a few things. There are more.

 

[BryonD]

I don't think "can't" is the issue. I mean, as I see it, I "can't" have a character put on a pair of gloves of strength and flat out be stronger in all ways and have the mechanics of the game actually reflect that. The game doesn't model the world and provide a model for "gloves of strength" , it models a combat system and provides "gloves of as close to strength as the restrictions on math ranges for combat will allow". Are gloves of strength a deal breaker? No. But the reality that the entire system puts modeling a world far behind modeling a *simple* combat system is pretty much a deal breaker.

Can you model a world with 4e? Certainly. You can also pick up girls in an old Pinto. Can't isn't the issue.
But if you've got 3E and a convertible Porsche, there certainly isn't a reason to switch on either count.

 

[Cadfan]

Can you sunder weapons?

No.

Attempt to trip or disarm more than one opponent per "encounter"?

Yes. Nice use of scare quotes, by the way. Ominous, but unclear.

Can a wizard prepare two fireballs for the day if he knows that trolls are on the march towards town?

You can't take fireball twice, but you could choose to take multiple spells-that-create-balls-of-fire. If the underlying question is, "can I choose spells in such a way that I customize myself against expected foes," the answer is yes. If the underlying question is "can I cast the same per-day spell twice," the answer is "no, not without special items or abilities."

Can any caster at all produce effects in combat that don't do damage and perhaps last longer than a round?

Yes, lots.

Can you do anything while under Greater Invisibility than wander around and scratch your butt?

Yes.

This has been an episode of Simple Answers to Questions that Weren't Intended Seriously. Thank you.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't think "can't" is the issue. I mean, as I see it, I "can't" have a character put on a pair of gloves of strength and flat out be stronger in all ways and have the mechanics of the game actually reflect that. The game doesn't model the world and provide a model for "gloves of strength" , it models a combat system and provides "gloves of as close to strength as the restrictions on math ranges for combat will allow". Are gloves of strength a deal breaker? No. But the reality that the entire system puts modeling a world far behind modeling a *simple* combat system is pretty much a deal breaker.

Can you model a world with 4e? Certainly. You can also pick up girls in an old Pinto. Can't isn't the issue.
But if you've got 3E and a convertible Porsche, there certainly isn't a reason to switch on either count.

Why do Gloves of Strength have to increase an ability score?

Simulationist speaking, your _real_ strength doesn't change, right? You're not transformed into a stronger being, your muscles don't grow? Or do they?