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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 4295097" data-attributes="member: 8158">In no particular order:1) In 4e, it seems that virtually every opponent is supposed to be susceptable to virtually everything a PC can throw at it. If you have an attack that slides a foe around, it works on a purple worm or colossus just as easily as it does a goblin. If you have a mind-affecting power, it works on mindless undead. If you have an attack that knocks a target prone, it works on oozes and swarms and other things to whom the term "prone" should be meaningless. And while we're on swarms, even the most particulate swarm can now be killed with a sword. Putting aside any debate about verisimilitude, there's the much more concrete matter of monsters not being able to do what they were intended to do. A purple worm is supposed to be this enormous, implacable thing--it makes players move, not vice-versa. Oozes and swarms are supposed to be formidable because their amorphous forms shrug off physical abuse, while zombies and skeletons from previous editions were only regarded as formidable because they could ignore crowd-control effects like charms and illusions. I don't accept the argument that this homogenization is a good idea because it's unacceptably "unfun" for a player to press a power's hotkey and find it doesn't work against a particular target. The aforementioned creatures have been in the game a long time, and in my experience there's not this huge sense of entitlement. Players didn't storm out the door in protest of having encountered a golem, rust monster, rakshasa or something else that their standard playbook didn't work against. Indeed, gamers have been conditioned by movies and books to accept the idea of encountering a monster that shrugs off conventional attacks. It's what makes monsters scary. The key to such creatures is using them in moderation, not making them homogeneous. 2) I don't see the overall benefit of letting players manipulate what ability scores are used for their attacks and defenses. If that's going to be the design, then there ought to be some reward for investing in the ability scores that aren't the character's prime choice. I don't mind a rogue having a low INT and not suffering for it. I do mind a rogue wanting to be smart and not gaining an appreciable value for investing in a high INT.3) Many powers display sloppy design elements. You should not have an attack that says "keep attacking until you miss". You should not be presented with a choice between an at-will power that lets you make two attacks and another at-will power that gives you only one attack at +2; one is hands-down better than the other and it doesn't take a math whiz to figure out which. And going back to my first issue, powers ought to have reasonable restrictions based on their effects.4) Coin-toss saving throws biased in the PC's favor--even formidable opponents don't seem to impose saving throw penalties on the PC's. The eptiome of the designers' preferrence for simplicity over elegance--the club over the rapier.</blockquote>

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