Word of Mearls: Official Player races will not get Oversized Weapons. Forked Thread

[Stormtower]

Now, on the more direct topic of minotaurs and bugbears with oversized weapons... they just shouldn't have gotten them in the first place, nor should other races. Poof, no balance problems with PCs, no disconnect for NPCs, and since they're monsters they can do whatever damage we want them to do anyways.

This, this, this a hundred times over. Bye bye to oversized weapons for PCs an all the cheesy bugbear and minotaur PCs. If 4E is going to be the "balanced edition" it's important to keep this stuff in line.

 

[Cadfan]

I get the impression that "no oversized weapons for PCs" is something of a hasty patch applied in retrospect after they noticed that they had broken something so early in this edition. And so I don't like it as a position. A better position would be "we ought to very carefully make sure we don't break anything every time we release a new book." At the time, having released 1 new book, they had a 100% rate of failure with respect to that position. Not that I don't like the book, and it's really a minor issue; it's just that I look at this sort of thing and wonder whether it's the beginning of a trend.

I basically agree. Weapon progression is, in my opinion, inherently broken. I've been saying that for a long time, and I still believe it. I personally wouldn't blame Brutal- I like Brutal, I think it has a lot of potential as a mechanic, and it only really fails when it interacts with another mechanic that was already kind of lousy. While we're looking at things in retrospect, I'd rather we didn't have the lousy mechanic instead of having to give up on the new, cool one.

Weapon progression and hand jives are the two things that I really think 4e should have noticed and fixed.

That and chromatic dragons, but that's never going to happen so I might as well stop complaining. But I won't.

 

[DracoSuave]

The reason it isn't clear is because of two different ways of reading the opening blurb:

1) Blah blah PC blah blah.

see it says PC, its written like PC races, its obviously meant for PC's, they're just bare bones because there is no feat support. Why would you read the opening blurb anyway


2)WE HAVEn't TESTED THESE. YOU SHOULDn't MAKE PC CHARACTERS WITH THESE. *WINK*WINK*

obviously if you read between the lines, these are meant for PC's to be played, they just say all that opening stuff for liability issues, like the "NO DIVING" signs at kiddie pools.

Heh. Yeah. Pretty much.

Yeah, its just a case of WoTC taking back a lollipop that was never ours anyways, its hard for people who were holding it to let go.

Exactly. Honestly, I think they -did- test them, and that's why they came up with the 'what the- no, this oversized crap ISN'T good in the hands of PCs.' That's the sort of thing that leads to such introductory blurbs like 'This not balanced for PCs, mkay?'

Also, about Stunty.

Ranged attackers love stunty. Shift away from a meleer, move action, plink them with arrows. The making that shift a minor rather than a move action -really- opens up the tactics. A melee attacker with Shifty benefits a rogue, period. Doesn't matter if the rogue doesn't have Shifty or not.

I've yet to see a battle where I didn't wish for Shifty.

 

[DracoSuave]

Dupepost baleeted

 

[77IM]

Why do people feel that oversized weapons are inherently imbalanced and should never be allowed? There are plenty of ways to balance them. The most obvious is an attack penalty:

Oversized: You can use weapons of your size or one size larger than you as if they were your size. However, when using a weapon that is one size large than you, you take a -2 penalty on attack rolls using that weapon.


I voted "negative" in the poll not because I like oversized weapons (they're OK, but not absolutely necessary for the monster races they apply to) but because I think absolute fiats like "we will never do X" or "we will always do X" are bad design guidelines that led to many of the problems with 3.X. (For the record, I have confidence that Mearls understands this and would backpedal on his statements if somebody came up with a really good and balanced concept involving oversized weapons.)

-- 77IM

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

The reason it isn't clear is because of two different ways of reading the opening blurb:

1) Blah blah PC blah blah.

see it says PC, its written like PC races, its obviously meant for PC's, they're just bare bones because there is no feat support. Why would you read the opening blurb anyway


2)WE HAVEn't TESTED THESE. YOU SHOULDn't MAKE PC CHARACTERS WITH THESE. *WINK*WINK*

obviously if you read between the lines, these are meant for PC's to be played, they just say all that opening stuff for liability issues, like the "NO DIVING" signs at kiddie pools.

Yeah, its just a case of WoTC taking back a lollipop that was never ours anyways, its hard for people who were holding it to let go.

Circa early 2008:

Players: Hey, you took gnomes out of the game! What gives?

WotC: No, they're right there in the back of the MM. If you're playing a gnome, use those rules. We'll eventually publish a more fleshed out version, but we can't think of anything good right now. For now, the MM gnome is the official PC gnome. Also, for all you guys who insist on playing kobolds or misunderstood good-aligned drow elves that fight with twin scimitars but certainly aren't derivative of iconic characters from spin-off fiction, the stats for a bunch of other monster races are there too.

Also, as some people have suggested, I don't see Oversized as a particularly broken ability, except in synergy with other things. And anyway, if it's borked, why publish it, if you could just write a balanced version instead? Now we're stuck with it. Given that the suggestion is there, albeit behind police tape, to use these races as characters, why were they written with broken abilities in the first place?

Personally, I'm don't care one way or the other. I like balance, as I noted above. However, this whole scenario smacks of poor foresight and bad design. And, as I already said, we were promised that 4e was positively hewn from the still-beating heart of a foresight elemental, and tempered in the fires of careful game design.

 

[Mercule]

I have a strongly negative reaction to this statement. Personally, I don't care whether PCs can wield oversized weapons or not. What I really, really dislike is any ability that an NPC can have that is expressly prohibited to PCs. I hated this in 1e and 2e, and it was one of the reasons I was attracted to 3e and its "build 'em the same" mechanics.

Even though 3e NPC builds turned out to be a bust, I thought 4e was going to hit the sweet spot of having streamlined stats for the DM, but model the same thing.

I can get the idea that some abilities (mostly magical or divine) take years of practice, service, or just plain luck to attain and PCs are intended to be played, not spend 27 years navel-gazing, so they're unlikely to attain such things. It just depends on the "why".

In this case, the "why" of an NPC goliath wielding oversized weapons is because he is a goliath. If my PC spends the same amount of practice and luck in being a goliath, I expect a way to model the NPC's ability to wield an oversized weapon. I don't care one bit if it is statistically the same. But, there should be a way to model it. Make it a feat, a weapon multiclass path, make them take a -1 to-hit for a +1 damage, or something else if there needs to be a balance.

IMO, this is answering "no" to the wrong question. Goliaths have the ability to wield large weapons. If this is unbalancing to PCs, then the request that gets denied is "Can I play a goliath?" If you can have PC goliaths, they get to wield big weapons.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

In this case, the "why" of an NPC goliath wielding oversized weapons is because he is a goliath. If my PC spends the same amount of practice and luck in being a goliath, I expect a way to model the NPC's ability to wield an oversized weapon. I don't care one bit if it is statistically the same. But, there should be a way to model it. Make it a feat, a weapon multiclass path, make them take a -1 to-hit for a +1 damage, or something else if there needs to be a balance.

It seems almost trivial to fix this problem in retrospect. Just giving a +1 to weapon damage is pretty much mechanically equivalent to advancing the die type, but doesn't break the system when you start throwing in rules that interact with die type and number. Why, then, was it designed to be problematic when used by PCs?

 

[keterys]

It seems almost trivial to fix this problem in retrospect. Just giving a +1 to weapon damage is pretty much mechanically equivalent to advancing the die type, but doesn't break the system when you start throwing in rules that interact with die type and number. Why, then, was it designed to be problematic when used by PCs?

Beats me. That's the same solution I'd had for size changes in 3.x

 

[elecgraystone]

Personally I think this was WOTC using everyone to playtest Oversized. They knew and expected people to play minotaurs and bugbears out of the MM and they got to see how the power worked before they made an 'official' race with it, like the goliath. All they had to do was watch the forums to see how people were using it. Now it seems that Mearls has made up his mind on it.

I can see that Oversized has some issues, but like some of the others I'm not in favor of removing it from PC's and leaving it for NPC's. Better to errata how the ability works than to remove it from PC's.