What I find fun is trying to figure out a way to bypass that certain immunity, or that DR, or resistance or whatever. I don't even mind getting tricked into using a daily, when I played 4th edition, on a minion, it's a game and that is part of what the game is all about. I want things like DR, Immunities, Resistances and other things to make a return and actually have monsters that have these things because it makes sense.
Sure, bring them back. Just make sure that all classes have the same quantity of good options for getting around them. Wizards can get around fire-resistance, or take advantage of frost vulnerability, by prepping frost spells. What does the non-caster classes have? Can a fighter rest and turn his flaming sword into a freezing sword? Or does he need to drop dozens of thousands of gold on a golf-cart of weapons to carry around?
You know, I get that some people might need immunities and resistances to encourage creative play, but I have never found that it helped. I've played with people who have been really creative when fighting orcs and goblins, and I've played with rogues that hide during entire fights with undead (combining the impotence of losing a major class feature with the possibility for level drain and some people get downright squeamish).
Here is your whole entire problem, and others like you. You seem to think that each and every class should have the same chance of being able to get over each and every obstacle.
Non spellcasters are not supposed contribute anything magical, they are supposed to provide a good, strong sword arm and other things in between. You leave the spell casting up to the spellcasters and you leave the sword swinging to the melee guys. Something else some of you don't fully examine is the fact that you don't look at encounters. Unless you are in a specific campaign, you don't run into ghosts all the time. If you run into one here or there and you need a spellcaster to cast Magic Weapon on you then guess what normal people call that, teamwork! I like Pathfinder's idea of teamwork where if there is an obstacle that one PC can get through they can get help from one of their teammates and get the job done. Spellcasters such as Bards, Wizards and Clerics are there to help buff and do anything they can on their own to help after the buffing has been done. I'm glad Pathfinder gives me the freedom to be a buffer and a blaster if I choose to be. If we already have a buff type spellcaster then I can go a different route, or if that other spellcaster wishes to swap the role back and forth between us we can do that with just a simple change of spells. 4th edition didn't give me what I wanted.
Why are they "supposed to do" anything? I don't want to need a spellcaster in the group to make it through the day. Should it be helpful? Absolutely. Should it be required? Absolutely not. No class should be required to play the game.
The fact that Samrin doesn't want to NEED casters or magic items to simply be effective in an encounter is not illogical. Low-magic games, and games where no-one wants to play a caster should be entirely feasable in the rules without having a party of half-effective characters.
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Hmm, let me get this straight: - Theoretically spellcasters are supposed to be balanced because they are ** meant to support the non-casters ** limited in terms of spells, so they are better off buffing non-casters with spells that last the entire encounter ** physically weaker and unable to handle situations in the long run without the non-casters ** supposed to be played by people who take allies into consideration, because it is a team game and nobody should be a jerk or worse ** limited in terms of offensive capabilities, compliments of spell resistances and anti-magic barriers
- In practice spellcasters were generally out of control because they ** mainly supported non-casters by means of negating threats single-handedly (Sleep and Charm Person being the first among many spells [you can say they weren't as broken as they are pictured to be, but the mere fact that it's the DM himself who has to reign Charm Person in and not the system the group was playing with -- which means DMing required a VERY HIGH amount of System Mastery(c) and strong willpower to shut down players, even the creative ones who didn't intend the spell to be out of control -- and the fact that shutting down even just 20% of a mob [although when the dice roll good it can be as much as 100% of the encounter] with Sleep, pretty much speaks volumes of the problems at hand) ** easily got around the spell limitations as soon as level 1 [with store-bought or crafted scrolls, assuming RAW, not houserules], and rendered the spell-slot limitation useless by level 12, so the spell limitations were only good for roughly 1/4th of the game ** only needed non-casters in the short run while they couldn't handle themselves in a close fight unless the DM directly intervened through limiting offensive capabilities ** had no actual rules (hard or soft) on who can play them, so any power gamer or munchkin can play them unless the DM stepped in and said "no". ** could eventually bypass most limitations, including armor casting penalties [only applied to arcane classes, not divine classes who just so happened to have access to arcane spells as part of their link to Mystra, for instance (and not like there wasn't a set of feats that let you bypass it anyway)], immunities, and spell resistances (mainly via feats and spells that let you bypass them anyway).
Personal note: I never bothered with Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, and at times not even Mage's Armor (at least while the melee guys are doing their job of whacking stuff to bits, because I assume that they'll be building their characters without my buffs in mind), and instead went for the better spells, like Sleep (why bonus to damage or attacks when you can grant the chance to coup de grace enemies instantly?), Stinking Cloud (why not just have my allies through fire bombs and nuke the nauseated and possibly unconscious enemies in the cloud?), Web (negate melee groups, fire at will!), and other spells that would help the party by making their life easier overall... and what is easier, giving them an easier time to hit, or making sure their enemies couldn't do a thing to the party? Why bother with something that's situationally useful, when I can go for something that's only situationally useless [and that's thinking in character, as a mage]?
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand then there's this thread, where damage resistance (still in 4E), immunities (still in 4E, albeit typically in poison and with very few monsters), and other character-negating stuff are desired to be back in D&D Next [even though most of it never left, they just weren't scaled to the point where classes in general are placed in "Gotcha!" situations, wherein you HAVE to retreat *or die* if you don't have item X, spell Y, or goodness a missing class in the party like Cleric or Wizard (rogues and fighters are generally replaceable I think, since Clerics can go about as tanks anyway, and both Clerics and Wizards have spells that can readily mimic or replace Rogue class abilities)].
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
have you ever tried proactive enemies? like twenty dudes surrounding the party kind of stuff. until you're into the time stop and infinite demon army stuff superior numbers and positioning is significantly more effective against a caster than a smaller number of more powerful enemies without being harder for everyone else. sod will suck and you cant put them all to sleep or whatever if they're spread out right
furthermore, if you win forever why keep playing? i'd probably go "K you won forever congratulations with this unbeatable 100% reliable strategy, now let's play in an otherwise identical parallel universe except you don't do that because watching you do this forever is boring for everyone including you"
But not everyone wants to play a fighter who chooses a career as an adventurer. Not every campaign takes place in dungeons or the like. If my fighter has a different story and is reacting to circumstances rather than seeking out places with monsters and treasure, he has no reason to prepare. Further, not everyone has played this game for years or decades, and some players have never DMed and therefore don't have a clear idea of what's in the MM.
Ultimately, that's kind of irrelevant I think. You might not be playing a fighter, but you are playing an adventurer of some sort simply by sitting down at the table and playing. Adventurers of any stripe need to be prepared for what they might find, be that in a dungeon, or amongst a wilderness encounter, an urban setting, whatever.
Regardless of what your adventuring party does, inevitably there is going to be a point at which you simply don't have one resource or another. What that resource is will differ based on which classes exist in the party and so forth.
I - and clearly others - enjoy that aspect of the game, where things aren't always there to be defeated by a group of PC's assumed to have whatever they need. Packs/supplies/gear can get lost or destroyed, unforeseen circumstances can really delay or hamper a party, or any number of things can happen.
With that in mind, it is the party's job to make sure they are as prepared as they can be. If they are on a particular mission or job or whatever, it behooves them to try and get as much intelligence as they can on what they are likely to face. While I do think the "golf bag of equipment" level things can get to is ridiculous, I think a degree of preparation is good for the game. It makes people think and plan.
Ironically, while 4E is presumably tagged as a game with high tactical combat, I think the older editions were more tactical well before the fight ever broke out for those exact reasons.
As far as new players and DM's go, that's going to happen regardless of game, really. The game should absolutely provide advice for new folks (although hopefully they can attach themselves to more experienced players to show them the ropes), but ultimately they're going to make mistakes. It happens. It certainly happened to me - I cut my DM'ing teeth back in 2nd Edition, so it was very much a "sink or swim" situation, with all of the pressure that edition put on the DM. (Although honestly I think I'm a better DM for it, because I had to learn how to alter or ignore rules if necessary, deal with players, and figure a great deal out on my own or through working with my group.)
You're assuming a particular style of campaign here, as are a few other posters on the last few pages (and wow, I put down the computer for a couple hours and look what happens to this thread.)
It seems like a number of posters here treat D&D as a game of exploration, combat, and looting. The PCs are adventurers by choice and profession, and they spend their days looking for places where miscellaneous monsters lair and horde treasure. Details from the MM are treated as folklore and common knowledge. The DM's job is to, in a mostly fair fashion, assemble encounters that could defeat the PCs, who are trying to stay a step ahead. There is still roleplaying and storytelling in some of these games, but adventuring more or less as defined above is the central goal.
And that's fine. Campaigns I enjoy often have a bit of that. It's not my thing right now though, and D&D has always done a good job of supporting other assumptions anyway. Characters can be ordinary people, smugglers, rebels, agents of the church, loyal servants of a noble house, convicts, slaves, or anything else. Maybe they're out for revenge or trying to escape justice. Maybe they want to be free from oppression or to enforce someone else's will or to crush the enemies of the faith. Sometimes that does take them to ruins or tombs, but not necessarily often.
So if the MM is full of monsters that will ask all these different characters to please make sure they have slashing, piercing, bludgeoning, cold iron, magical, silvered, aligned, and adamantine weapons, I'm not going to rush out and buy a copy. D&D does not have to be designed solely around the concept of career adventurers hunting down complexes filled with rich monsters and using metagame strategies to win fights by selecting the right character options.
Ed_Warlord, on what it takes to make a thread work: I think for it to be really constructive, everyone would have to be honest with each other, and with themselves.
Areleth: How does this help the problems we have with Fighters? Do you think that every time I thought I was playing D&D what I was actually doing was slamming my head in a car door and that if you just explain how to play without doing that then I'll finally enjoy the game?
Hmm, let me get this straight: - Theoretically spellcasters are supposed to be balanced because they are ** meant to support the non-casters ** limited in terms of spells, so they are better off buffing non-casters with spells that last the entire encounter ** physically weaker and unable to handle situations in the long run without the non-casters ** supposed to be played by people who take allies into consideration, because it is a team game and nobody should be a jerk or worse ** limited in terms of offensive capabilities, compliments of spell resistances and anti-magic barriers
- In practice spellcasters were generally out of control because they ** mainly supported non-casters by means of negating threats single-handedly (Sleep and Charm Person being the first among many spells [you can say they weren't as broken as they are pictured to be, but the mere fact that it's the DM himself who has to reign Charm Person in and not the system the group was playing with -- which means DMing required a VERY HIGH amount of System Mastery(c) and strong willpower to shut down players, even the creative ones who didn't intend the spell to be out of control -- and the fact that shutting down even just 20% of a mob [although when the dice roll good it can be as much as 100% of the encounter] with Sleep, pretty much speaks volumes of the problems at hand) ** easily got around the spell limitations as soon as level 1 [with store-bought or crafted scrolls, assuming RAW, not houserules], and rendered the spell-slot limitation useless by level 12, so the spell limitations were only good for roughly 1/4th of the game ** only needed non-casters in the short run while they couldn't handle themselves in a close fight unless the DM directly intervened through limiting offensive capabilities ** had no actual rules (hard or soft) on who can play them, so any power gamer or munchkin can play them unless the DM stepped in and said "no". ** could eventually bypass most limitations, including armor casting penalties [only applied to arcane classes, not divine classes who just so happened to have access to arcane spells as part of their link to Mystra, for instance (and not like there wasn't a set of feats that let you bypass it anyway)], immunities, and spell resistances (mainly via feats and spells that let you bypass them anyway).
Well said. Its funny how the restrictions that spellcasters have don't actually...well, restrict them effectively.
Hm. Now I'm kinda curious. Xun, earlier, you spoke of what casters and non-casters are supposed to do. Please, indulge me, and tell me, in your opinion, what is the role (what they are supposed to do) of the following classes:
Gold is for the mistress, silver for the maid Copper for the craftsman, cunning at his trade." "Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall, "But Iron -- Cold Iron -- is master of them all." -Kipling
Defenders: We ARE the wall!
I've replaced the previous Edition Warring line in my sig with this one, because honestly, everybody needs to work together to make the D&D they like without trampling on somebody else's D&D.
Miss d20 Modern? Take a look at Dias Ex Machina Game's UltraModern 4e!
have you ever tried proactive enemies? like twenty dudes surrounding the party kind of stuff. until you're into the time stop and infinite demon army stuff superior numbers and positioning is significantly more effective against a caster than a smaller number of more powerful enemies without being harder for everyone else. sod will suck and you cant put them all to sleep or whatever if they're spread out right
furthermore, if you win forever why keep playing? i'd probably go "K you won forever congratulations with this unbeatable 100% reliable strategy, now let's play in an otherwise identical parallel universe except you don't do that because watching you do this forever is boring for everyone including you"
Coming from a CRPG perspective where "twenty dudes surrounding the party kind of stuff" actually happens quite a lot (see: Icewind Dale 2), 4 casters in the party + 2 tanks work remarkably better than 4 tanks + 2 casters, at least IMHO. Basic tactic: use the terrain and summons to best advantage, make sure that their numbers don't matter, plink them off one by one while the tanks make full use of the dwindled numbers. Best done when each caster takes a particular role into account. One casts Web, another casts Sleep, and another casts Grease, making sure that everything that gets past is cut down by the tanks.
No need for Time Stop, Infinite Demon or what not Just acknowledgement that if 1 Wizard becomes quadratically better than 1 Fighter in the long run, how much more would a Wizard, a Sorcerer (another type of Wizard), a Paladin (spellcasting Fighter) and a Bard compared to a Fighter, a Barbarian (spellcasting Fighter), a Ranger, and a Rogue? Sure if you throw first group at the second group the second group would probably win, but against hordes of orcs accompanied by giants? I dunno who would have an easier time, assuming both groups were at least level 3...
But seriously, if the DM has to invent ways to negate the casters just to cater to the non-casters, then something is wrong then and there. I want immunities to be related to a story that the DM arbiters/regulates, not pits against the players in a head-on collision with them.
I would accept the existence of an anti-magic area that inhibited the use of anything but basic attacks and skills, but only if it was a pre-existing area that the PCs can detect, prepare against, and/or do something about. I would not accept a fast-casting spell that instantly created said anti-magic area.
And frankly, I really don't see the need for spell resistances. At all. Reason: you'll just be forcing the players to have their wizards take all those niftily-named spells that basically say "take this to render spell resistance useless!". It's needless micromanagement, if you ask me.
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
Just acknowledgement that if 1 Wizard becomes quadratically better than 1 Fighter in the long run, how much more would a Wizard, a Sorcerer (another type of Wizard), a Paladin (spellcasting Fighter) and a Bard compared to a Fighter, a Barbarian (spellcasting Fighter), a Ranger, and a Rogue? Sure if you throw first group at the second group the second group would probably win, but against hordes of orcs accompanied by giants? I dunno who would have an easier time, assuming both groups were at least level 3...