What CAN'T you do with 4e?

[pawsplay]

You also don't have to concern yourself with finding the proper balance with BAB and Saves and such, as it's no longer class based.

That was the easy part.

Just balance the powers against powers of other similar rolled characters.

That is now the hard part.

 

[Henry]

That is now the hard part.

Not too terribly hard;

Wizard Daily 25's -- 4 to 5d10 area attacks

Ranger Daily 25's -- 5 to 6d8 to d10 weapon damage to one or two targets

Fighter Daily 25's --5d10 to 6d10 weapon damage to one target

Chart from Page 42 of the DMG -- Limited Damage expression 25th level 4d10+9 to 5d12+9

Looking at the chart on page 42, and taking the time to digest it thoroughly, and looking at what non-damage stuff strikers get, versus what defenders get, etc. I'm willing to bet one could set damage ranges and special abilities VERY closely to what the established classes get. As time goes on and more classes get released, one could design VERY accurately new classes from the get-go and keep them well within 4e's already set parameters.

I'm willing to bet what Ari releases for Necromancer Games (WHEN THE GSL GETS RELEASED FINALLY) will probably be dead-on - and me willing to get it.

 

[Lizard]

I was trying to be satirical by bemoaning the loss of the most useless rule in 3e. And that's up against some pretty stiff competition.

Odd. That rule was used in my last game session to help prove two characters' innocence when they claimed an NPC had killed another NPC, then plane shifted away...the investigator did a quick DM and found the necessary traces of high-level magic still lingering. (It didn't get them off the hook completely, but it DID convince the investigator that the 'teleporting murderous caster' wasn't a complete figment of the PCs imagination, esp. since he knew neither of them could cast the spells in question.)

 

[Qualidar]

No, it will.

You won't let yourself do it, for whatever reason.

Here, Mourn, let me phrase it so you can understand my point: 4e makes is 30 times the work to design a character class than 3e, which isn't worth the effort.

 

[Lizard]

If people in a fantasy world doing things that others cannot do breaks your suspension of disbelief, then I don't think you're trying very hard.

Depends on the things. One of the many great advances of 3e over 2e was removing a lot of the balance-only divisions, like "clerics can't use edged weapons" and "dwarves can't be paladins". 4e brings a lot of this back, in the form of different rules for PCs and NPCs.

Now, actually, I like the NPC-only abilities from a design perspective. You can make up kick-ass fun powers without needing to fit them into a class/level framework, and give them to ordinary mortals (whereas in 3x, if you wanted to do that, you had to give them to monster, who had all sorts of one-off powers, but to add them to a human/elf/dwarf, you either needed a PrC or some template). However, there's only so many times you can drag out the "special and unique training" or "spell taught by demon lords" or whatever before it gets tired. We need the "big book of excuses for why he can do that and you can't".

 

[Scribble]

NPC only powers were a staple of early RPGs. 1st ed, 2nd ed and Palladium to name a few.

And NOTHING drove me more mad then the BS idea that my PC could save the freaking world but could never, ever, under any circumstance learn an NPC ability, be it making a magic item or raising an undead army.

3e killed that nonsense and I danced on it's grave laughing manaically. Now madmen are trying to raise this hideous spectre from it's unholy grave and I say they Must BE STOPPED! ... *shifty eyes* *ahem*

I mean, I disagree with that design principle. Yeah... that's it...

The difference is this:

Early editions: Pcs have abilities, NPCs and Monsters have abilities. The twain might meet, but there's no info to help the DM make them do so... consequently most DMs said no.

3e: Thats BS we need monsters to not do stuff PCs can't do... So monsters should be built with abilities PCs can get... But that takes a lot of time and makes it harder to make monsters do cool mysterious stuff...

4e: PCs have cool PC stuff, Monsters have cool Monster stuff... if Pcs want to do cool monster stuff, DM's have guidelines for making cool monster stuff into cool PC stuff.

But if you don't care to study the nature of how an orc fires a ray of acid, and instead assume he does it in an orcish way you can still do your own cool stuff and move on.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

What can't you do with 4e?

Play D&D.

 

[Qualidar]

FAIL: That post is soooo page 2.

 

[Andor]

The difference is this:

Early editions: Pcs have abilities, NPCs and Monsters have abilities. The twain might meet, but there's no info to help the DM make them do so... consequently most DMs said no.

3e: Thats BS we need monsters to not do stuff PCs can't do... So monsters should be built with abilities PCs can get... But that takes a lot of time and makes it harder to make monsters do cool mysterious stuff...

4e: PCs have cool PC stuff, Monsters have cool Monster stuff... if Pcs want to do cool monster stuff, DM's have guidelines for making cool monster stuff into cool PC stuff.

But if you don't care to study the nature of how an orc fires a ray of acid, and instead assume he does it in an orcish way you can still do your own cool stuff and move on.

No in the old days some stuff was explicitly NPC only, for example making Magic items in Palladium. There were NPC only classes in D&D and Palladium. I don't care to take the san loss dredgeing up more suppresed memories would entail.

I don't want to see that return. *shudder*

 

[Doug McCrae]

Here, Mourn, let me phrase it so you can understand my point: 4e makes is 30 times the work to design a character class than 3e, which isn't worth the effort.

A caster class? 3e warlock takes up 12 pages. 4e warlock is 14 pages, and that's with 4e's greater use of white space AND including paragon paths which are analogous to PrCs. The two editions are practically identical in this respect.

Ofc 3e has much more variance in space between classes. The lowest, fighters and rogues take up much less than the highest, wizards. But I think you have to look at the average.

And also if we're including splats to the detriment of 4e to say it has fewer options, to be fair we must include them here. That means to recreate a class like the 3e wizard you'd have to do the spells from all the splats, a massive task.