Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 4519885" data-attributes="member: 61155">While not familiar enough with Saga to know what you are looking for - what 'unfashionable play style' do you feel 4E is somehow against?  I have found the 4E class building system to have a remarkable level of versatility and customizability. The opening of skill access and former class features via feats allows one to adapt to almost any character concept they might have.  Most complaints I've seens have been built around, honestly, mechanical concepts, like not being able to play a Rogue who Sneak Attacks with a Greataxe. That isn't a character concept, and I don't feel there is any fault in a system that lacks that potential - as long as one can play a stealthy thief who slices people apart with a greataxe, which is an entirely viable concept.  You mention being frustrated that others forced your fighter to act as meat-shield - that is a group problem, not part of 4E. It is no different than 3rd Edition clerics who wanted to fight in melee, but got told to sit in back and heal the group. Each class can generally fit into several roles, even if they have some specific ones they default to.  Fighters are Defenders with a bit of Striker, and can just as easily be heavy-hitting warriors as meat-shields. If you want to play a Fighter as a damage-dealing machine, the system is more than ok with that - the only thing standing in your way, apparently, is the group you play with.   Sure, you could assemble a fighter/rogue/sorcerer/druid/bard/wizard, but... what does that mean? What character concept is that?  Pretty much any genuine concept you could build in 3.5, you can build in 4E. There are a few exceptions, mainly dealing with elements that haven't come out yet (unarmed combat, shapeshifting, for example). But 4E can build many very different types of characters, in what I feel is a much more fluid fashion than in 3rd Edition.    I really didn't find this to be true. 90% of fighters are good with one weapon, and spent their rounds taking a 5' step and a full-attack. Of the rest, a handful were specialists in tripping foes with spiked chains, but combat manuevers were generally weak unless you were extremely designed for them.  I'm actually rather amazed you can insist 3rd Edition fighters ended up very different from each other, while insisting 4E character building isn't flexible.  What character builds do you see missing from 4E? Seriously, compare it to the launch of 3.0. In 3.0, trying to play a hybrid build was very, very challenging - a Fighter/Wizard took a significant hit to both side's effectiveness. Even for the Arcane Trickster or Mystic Theurge, it took many, many levels of being subpar to really start to feel decent at the split roles. The primary use of multiclassing was to grab a single dip of barbarian or cherry pick a few abilities from top-heavy classes that only enhanced what you were already good at.  In 4E, there are a variety of ways to play a character good at two things - and with 4E multiclassing, you are actually decent at both roles. And while 3rd Edition eventually got better at this, from introducing various feats and prestige classes... I think 4E is much more effective right out of the gate, and with more potential to cover different concepts in the long run.   Only in the same way that 3.0 was bad for roleplaying because you couldn't play a Dragonborn Warlord/Warlock.  Specific lack of options is going to vary between every edition - that isn't something that hinders roleplaying, that is the inherent limitation in only having so many pages available in any given product. You feel one set of options might be better than another; someone else might feel differently. That isn't the fault of the system.  And, honestly? Right now, in 4E, you could build an Orc Fighter/Charisma Rogue, or Fighter/Warlord, and run it in a very similar style to a 3.0 Fighter/Bard... and I bet it would be a much more functional character on the table. And I bet when the PHB2 comes out, and you can assemble a half-orc fighter/bard, it will also be an entirely viable choice.  And that, at least on this topic, feels like the important thing to me. The core multiclassing rules for 4E seem better suited to building character concepts than in 3rd Edition. You might have less options, but most of those missing options are entirely mechanical ones, rather than actual character concepts - and the options you do have are actually playable at the table, rather than hybrids that sound awesome in theory and are useful in practice.</blockquote>

Verification