NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ExploderWizard" data-source="post: 6239404" data-attributes="member: 66434">4E has felt way more superheroic in genre than traditional fantasy. The fantasy elements serve more as trappings than as meaningful factors impacting how the world works and feels. This overall feel was generated largely by the need to balance all classes around their combat contributions. When balance reaches that granular a level, things tend to get silly. The world must bend to the balance conventions so that everyone can feel special all the time.If the game world has to contort itself into matrix-like reality generated for the sole purpose of making sure everyone gets to be equally awesome all the time, how is being impressive that big of a deal? Want to talk about "expected mechanical effectiveness" ? 4E has that in spades. It is staring me in the face every time I play my bugbear fighter and there is a situation that requires ranged combat. The competency gap between a character designed for such activity and one who is not is staggering. My contributions in such situations compared to the ranger is like a school kid with a spitball involved in a military firefight. If the system is balanced then surely the situation is reversed in melee right? Nope. In melee the ranger still kicks ass while the humble fighter approaches basic competency. In what fantasy source fiction do we find the warrior archetype that specializes in taking beatings to a degree that greatly exceeds their ability to give them? MMOs are about all I can think of.I hope bounded accuracy will fix this in Next. I think balance can be better served by narrowing the competency gap. If the difference between a specialist and a generalist never goes beyond a +1 or +2 then they can both contribute usefully in areas outside their respective areas of focus.</blockquote>

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