What CAN'T you do with 4e?

[The Little Raven]

Heh, ironic comment since the complaints against 3E over and over are about how people couldn't do so many things that I easily did all the time.

Wrong. We don't claim "You can't do this in 3e." We claim "You can't do this easily in 3e." There is a world of difference between those two statements.

 

[Gallo22]

You can do the exact same style of class creation you claimed to do in 3e: steal stuff from other classes.

Just because 4e has more stuff going on in each class doesn't meant you can't just be lazy like in 3e and just cherry-pick other classes to make your "new" class.

Yes, but I thought the whole purpose of 4th Edition was so you did not have to "cherry-pick" anything. This was the arguement from numerous gamers who did not like 3rd edition. They kept saying, "but you have to chagne this or that, we want a system that does not need house rules" This was beaten to death here on EnWorld???????

 

[Raven Crowking]

There is one thing I don't understand. When 4th Edition was coming out, those looking forward to it were commenting on how great it was going to be to have a rule set that did not need to be tweeked or house-ruled (like 3.X was) to play...

...now that it's out, half the suggestions given in this thread and other threads here on ENWorld are tweeks (or could be considered "house rules").

Consistency should not be expected from emotional arguments.

RC

 

[Scribble]

If a human NPC has the ability to brew a potion or animate a zombie or conjure a chipmunk then I want an in game explanation for why my character can't learn it. "Animating zombies is a divine gift of Orcus and you need to devote yoursef to an evil god to do so." is a valid reason why not. "Because you can only learn that at NPC vocational" school is not.

They pretty much equal the same thing.

In either case, my personal opinion would be that the PCs can learn these things, they just have to do some research into it.

If the player is willing to do research the DM should be willing to create a new power modeled after the NPC power. It's not that hard.

If it's something really bizare that could cause problems, then introduce something like the above... Where a drawback would make the power less disierable, and only the truly devoted would want it.

For most stuff I think it will be safe to just say hey that was unexpected and move on... The orc can shoot acid balls? Cool, I'll shoot it with my own acid ball!

Do you REALLY need to discover the means of exactly how an orc shoots acid? Or would you rather kill it and take its stuff?

I personally think a lot of the problem stems from the unknown.

A monster might have any power imageanable. This makes fighting that monster an unknown. The unknown is scary. Some people like being scared. Others want the player's guide from day one.

 

[Mallus]

Where are you getting this nonsense from?

I probably should have mentioned I was thinking about the One Ring itself. Specifically, that if it's defined as PC-usable you can't really include it in a campaign that seeks to emulate LotR.

If an inhuman creature (like, say, a ringwraith or Sauron, or Gandalf) has abilities my human PC cannot learn that's just fine and I never said it wasn't. I don't expect to be able to deadlift as much as a giant either.

That's good. But why does it matter if the opponent is classified as 'human' or 'inhuman'? Their abilities are still rightly called 'NPC abilities'. From a certain, game-y perspective, an NPC giant's strength and an NPC's mages spells are categorically the same thing: offensive capability.

If a human NPC has the ability to brew a potion or animate a zombie or conjure a chipmunk then I want an in game explanation for why my character can't learn it.

If that's what you meant, then I apologize. I took what you wrote as a blanket objection to NPC-only abilities, not a specific object to NPC-only abilities without sufficient in-game rationalization.

Note that all of my posts included examples of rationalization/justification for NPC-only abilities, so if that's what you were really getting at, why are you disagreeing w/me?

 

[pawsplay]

(If this conversion is actually everything you care about, you can do that with every class that exists in 4E.

Show me your interpretation of the Swashbuckler 6/Duelist 4.

This is only a subset of the 3E classes, but I am sure you can find a few classes in 1E or 2E you couldn't convert just using the core books, either..)

Name one.

 

[Gallo22]

Consistency should not be expected from emotional arguments.

RC

AHHHH Wisdom from Yoda. It's not an emotional arguement, it's fact. And now that it's true you have to write a sarcastic comment becuase you don't like what you hear.

FYI: I like tweeking games, no matter what version they are. I did not say it was a bad thing.

 

[DamnedChoir]

It seems to me, once again, that a large number of people are saying '4E can do whatever you want it to! ...as long as you change the mechanics and add a bunch of house rules.'

That's a really bad argument, but this thread isn't an argument over what is superior, as much as these forums seem to polarize instantly.

This is a thread about what you /can't/ do with 4E out of the box, so let's do that.

 

[The Little Raven]

Yes, but I thought the whole purpose of 4th Edition was so you did not have to "cherry-pick" anything.

Yeah, you don't have to. You can choose to.

But if you want to be lazy and not design an entire class, you can fall back on the cherry-picking method, which is what the person I quoted said they used to do back in 3rd Edition. Make up a couple new things, then crib the rest from other classes.

You can still spend the time making your class entirely unique from other classes, but that poster I quoted didn't want to do that, because it was too much work.

This was the arguement from numerous gamers who did not like 3rd edition.

Can you provide any links?

They kept saying, "but you have to chagne this or that, we want a system that does not need house rules" This was beaten to death here on EnWorld???????

There's a difference between want and need. A game that needs house rules is broken. A game that promotes house rules is awesome.

 

[The Little Raven]

Show me your interpretation of the Swashbuckler 6/Duelist 4.

Rogue 10.