Devyn said:
You say its lame for a GM to ban the content of a book his player has bought. I say its lame for anyone. player or GM, to include any power, class feat or ability simply because its in a book. The GM needs to be clear at the start of his game on the books, classes and feats that will be included. Then he should carefully look new material over before allowing them into his game. If he isn't careful, that new power that just came out in WotC's new "Book of Uber-Powers" could very well break his game.
And I say it's lame that you have to worry about players breaking the game.
I just don't see the point. If you value powerful characters over everything else, play Pun-Pun* Otherwise, what's the point?
Since power is obviously not the main goal of a character, the question becomes campaign-significant. If you trust the people at your table to show up and try to have fun, you should probably also trust them not to ruin everyone else's fun....
I seem to have veered off topic.
My main beef is that I can see how I would make a random class ability generator for 4e fairly easily. Assign points for each of the following action consequences:
damage a target,
move miniature(s),
inflict a standard_status_ailment
give a standard_status_buff
heal
Multiply by three for multiple allied targets, or five for multiple enemy targets. It would be more difficult to do the flavor text, but given the shortness of the PHB examples it seems doable.
Assign a certain number of points per level, then generate classes.
With a bit of programming, you could make it into a nice little computer game.
And it's possible they did something similar. That is, the abilities seem to be generated by choosing from a list of options, adding some damage, then shoehorning in some flavor text. I'd prefer a system that allows for, say, a defenestrating sphere that's actually usable in combat.
The weird compromise between "realistic" combat and the healing surges/minions rules also bugs me. If they wanted to abstract the game more, they shouldn't be using miniatures. As it is, the rules seem less like a video game and more like a board game. Why can the knight only move in an L shape? It's his class ability. The current compromise makes it seem like the everyday world and combat world act differently.
If I want to play a pure miniatures board game, I'll choose Descent. It's fun, it's mindless destruction, I don't have to worry about baby kobolds. Yes, characters are pregens with random additional bonuses. I don't want to invest time writing backstory for a pawn, or statting him up.
If I wanted to play a more abstract game with a non-vancian magic system and a new default setting, I'd choose Dresden instead. The core system used handles everything similarly, which prevents the odd random encounter/minigame feel 4e is giving me for combat.
And if I want ultra gripping violent realism where you can know about every punctured kidney and severed finger, and armor wears down over time, and a wrestler can, like, rip the quiver off someone's back and beat them to death with it, I'd play Dwarf Fortress, because there's no way I'm keeping track of all that stuff.
The reason I liked 3e was the fact that the rules seemed like they'd work for combat and non-combat situations. Other than the stupid economy stuff (which no version handles well), and a couple of other abstractions, it actually seemed plausible that the world worked based on the rules given**, and combat just was the only time you really cared enough to count rounds.
*The best way to handle this as a GM is simple: pass them the screen and start rolling 4d6 drop 1. It's amazing how few players want to immediately start GMing.
** Yes, HP are unrealistic. So are turn-based game systems. It just saves a lot of time to do it this way. Dwarf fortress does limb-based injuries, and
