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May 3, 2012 -- 4:33PM, benignbarking wrote:

In general, it would be useful in this forum if the 4e fans could stick to pointing out factual errors.  Most people are happy to learn something isn't as bad as they thought.  Telling the poster that, "If you jump through x hoop and y hoop, with DM permission you can get close." isn't exactly helping.  You just loose credibility. 

Its D&D - I get told by fans of earlier editions that my completely house ruled to death magic system from 1e era validates the crappy 1e magica system because D&D includes completely house rulling..

The above I could provide a link to.. and yes on these forums and and within the last few hours..

I say suck it up about the mehtods that barely tweak anything. (this is only partly sarcastic).

For what 4th ed was, it was fun to play a wizard. So, even though I am about to say what I didn't like about 4th ed casters, that dosn't mean I didn't like the game.

For me, what was missing, was the aspect of hunting down scrolls and spell books to build a library of arcane knowledge. Sure, you could do that to an extent with rituals but it was not the same. It used to be the major reason for why my wizards would go adventureing, it was to find more magic scrolls and knowledge! But in 4th ed, even though your powers were still cool in what they let you do, it was a little boring to have them just handed to you each time you leveled, as well as being able to 'retrain' them when you level, so that if later on you wanted to ditch one power for another you could. It didn't make much sense to lose a learned spell and gain another like that. Sure, you could pick out a couple spells when you leveled in 3.x but that was only a sliver of the possible spells for each level. So, just like a fighter enhances his stregth by getting a +3 animated tower shield and large size +3 flaming burst keen greatsword wielded with the monkey grip feat, the mage enhanced his power beyond the recived spells each level by collecting even more spells, adding more diversity and utility.

The other element that is missing is the possibility to use spells in unique and interesting ways. For example, in 3.0  spider climb spell let you walk on walls, so I made a half elf mage thief and I was only going to take spells like jump and spider climb so I could do things like run up walls and shoot with my bow or, after picking some ones pocket on the street, I would cast jump and leap up onto roof toops and run away (this was all inspired by crouching tiger hidden dragon by the way). but in 3.5, jump required you to have nothing in your hands, and in pathfinder, it simple gives you a +10 on climb checks. So, this kind of watering down of spells also means getting rid of cool things to do. 4th ed took this to the greatest extreem, by cleaving spells into combat spells and rituals, but even the rituals were mostly boring. 4th ed did this across all classes so it balanced out, but if the balance comes at the cost of fun is it really worth it? For example, the introduction of pixy fairies I thought was really cool, but why dose their 'fly speed' not work if they fly more then 6 feet off the ground? The reason is for balance issues. But really, was that the most fun way to make the pixy fairy? Same thing with the Ealdrin's fey step. Such a cool concept, that the elf can step into the feywild, and step back, getting a teleport like efect. But in the intrerest of balance and simplicity, there was very little written about this ability beyond the fact that it granted an encounter teleport ability. Why not make it more exciting? Spell it out that the character is entering the fey wild when using this ability, and thus structures, while similar, could be different since everything is overgrown with nature (the oppisite of the shadow fell). Why not make it a twice per day ability, but there is no time limit as to when you use your second use to come back to the prime material plane? Then add a little blurb saying "do not stay for to long in the fey wild for it is infested with dangerious creatures. And do not stray to far from where you entered, for it is easy to get lost and then you will have no idea what location you will be in when you come back to the prime material plane." Alot more interesting things can go on when a power's description is expanded beyond its quick refrence box of "encounter utility, teleport 6 squares" but it all gets shoved out of the game in the name of balance in 4th ed. Same thing with certain spells like mirror image, it was so much more fun when it actually made copies of you that had to be hit and then would wink out instead of just a plain +4 or +6 AC bonus (I dont remember which it was). 

4th ed did get it right when at the same time they made fighters more interesting and fun to play. While I talk about all the cool stuff I used to be able to do with wizards, it is not my intention to run all over other classes. Fighters became really cool in 4th ed, with being able to push, pull, mark, get temp hps, activate battle stances, chose different fighting styles that were class features and thus not a feat tax. It was neat how using different weapons with different powers gave nice boons. Fighters need cool things to do too and that should be the focus instead of making wizards more boring. After all, if you make wizards boring, but not make fighters more interesting, the fighter fans are still dissapointed that they dont have a more interesting class to play, and now the wizard fans are upset too because they lost the cool stuff they could do. So, instead, come up with stuff for fighters to do. I think when we talk about balance, it should not be in the sense of balancing every + and - to a T but should be making sure that every class is balanced in that they can do fun and interesting things, and give players a chanch to be creative with the class (see 'mighty deed of arms' in DCCRPG for an example of how awsome fighters can be without having to ramrod all the classes into the same shape. It relates to what I think Monte was getting at with his article on trick dice). 

So, basically, for DnDN, try to make each class feel different by having different features and abilities, not just slightly different aedu routines. Make each class have the possibility to do interesting things, which are not neccesarly combat related. Bring back the rouges ability to hid in shadows (that is, there is shadowy illumination? I make a check and succed, and so I dissapear into the shadows, becoming invisible), spice up fighters specialization abilities to do more than just a bonus to hit and damage, but grant at will like attack powers, and give them fighting styles that progress with level advancment, without it being a feat tax (for exampe, two weapon fighting style at level one means when a monster misses you you get a counter blow, representing your parry with off hand and counter strike with main hand. Then at level 3 it grants you a bonus to AC, then at level 5 if your first attack hits you get to make a second attack). Let them learn how to do things like push, pull, mark, trip, sunder, stun, blind, grabble, etc. Let only fighters, the most physically atheletic, get second wind, an ability to regain hps in the heat of battle, give them fighting stances that they can use and that change how they fight, and dirty tacticts taht only work the first time on an enemy, such as hidden dagger, or throwing dirt in the eye to blind an enemy. Maybe the fighter could start with the basic profecency in each type of fighting (sword and board, great weapon, and dual wield). Then, as they level, they can chose to imrpove these styles, along with getting a fighting stance every so often that can be combined with they style to create interesting combos. 

Then, you can have wizards be vancian, and just clean up the vancian rules so you dont have people trying to abuse weaknesses in the rules. IMO, I think cutting the number of spells down would be fine, and design the spells around Defensive (or escape), offensive (which can be damage or controlling), and utility, with a number of each type for each scool. So there might be three necromancy spells at level one, with each one being a defensive, offensive, and utility. So the level one spells for necromancy could be false life (defensive, giving temproy hp), ray of enfeeblment (gives an enemy a penaltiy to strength based actions as an offensive), and detect undead (utility). So if I want to play a necromacner all my bases are covered. Or, if I wanted to be a conjurere then maybe the level one spread would be summon mist (defensive granting miss chanch), summon monster (attack) or summon invisible servent (utility). Or, a player could mix spells from different schools if they want to be more generalist.

These spells sound awsome but if they are all dailies that have to be prepared in advance (no spending 15 minuets to prepare what ever you want when you want in the middle of the adventure nonesense), and the spells per day is controlled, it can be made to work out pretty well. (for example, dont have the number of 1st level spells grow to 4-6, keep it at around 2-3, but keep low level spells relevent even at higher levels. Just like the cleave feat/ability for a fighter is not pointless at high level, a sleep spell should not be capped at 4 hd and made useless at high levels either).