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themocaw wrote:

While I understand the points of views of some anti-4e players, I wonder about the reasons behind their points of view. Arguing that D&D 4e isn't realistic is one thing, but arguing in favor of 3e as being somehow more realistic bugs me. The same as claiming that 4e is far too oriented towards combat.

3rd Ed. really isn't a particulary realistic system. But if you want to, you can play quite realistic games with this system. The thing is that in 4th Ed. you won't die anymore and can fight dragons at 1st level (over-exegerating a bit here). I wouldn't say that the 4th Ed. rules are more focused on combat than the combat rules are. But the designers seem to aim for players of combat-oriented adventures, but they do that since three or four years allready.

Derren S. wrote:

This was rather aimed at PCs becoming good at every skill just because of the level. But yeah, only fighters being ablo to do what everyone can attempt is also such a "no believability" thing.

Really? you honestly think that trying to trip a lion trying to take a swipe at you or a huge guy with an axe that's trying to lop your head off is something that everyone can attempt and have a good chance at succeeding?

There's a fundamental problem with tripping, sundering and disarming in 3.5e: either you exploit the mechanics to gain a horribly unfun advantage over opponents or you don't use them at all. Sure- once in a blue moon you'll probably disarm a guy you don't want to fight, but I think that's happened perhaps twice in the past two or three years for me. On the other hand, the tripping and/or sundering specialist can make fights just plain boring. Something needs to be done about them, frankly.

As for the complexity of grappling, please try not to see it as a threat to your intellect. The truth is that a simple solution is always better than a difficult one: if you had to buy a program to organize your computer files, and one took 1MB of memory while the other one took 60GB of memory and both accomplished the same task, the choice of which one to use would be pretty clear, wouldn't it? That's something that German boardgame designers learned almost fifteen years ago: make the rulebook slimmer and the decisions more plentiful and you'll have a more popular boardgame on your hands. It's a pity that so many people are so in love with complexity in RPGs. Complexity is not better, and it should never be a design goal. If grappling could be rewritten to be more intuitive, then it SHOULD be rewritten, simply because a more complex system is not desirable if you can accomplish the same goals with less.

DaeganBt wrote:

I think the 1/2 level being factored into untrained skills makes sense in an abstraction of life experience. Characters get a little bit better all-round skill wise as they gain experience, and I think this makes sense. Assuming equal Ability, it would take 10 extra levels to match-up against another character that trains in a specific skill, again I think this is reasonable. I don't consider 1/2 level to be "good" at a skill, especially considering the advantage that someone trained in the skill has.

At level 20 someone has +10 to every skill and that is quite good when considering that training only gives +5.
Also I wonder how, for example, beduin warrior got his +10 to swimming. Of course you can simply ignore those ranks but it is still a awkward situation when this warrior who by all logic can't swim is dropped into water. Technically he has 10 ranks in swimming.

As far as nobody being able to trip or disarm without a /encounter ability, I've not seen/heard anything from the Devs to indicate that this is true. I am pretty sure that some classes will be better at it than others, but that's not all that different from previous editions anyway.

Daegan

http://thetome.podbean.com/2008/03/01/t … insgirard/

Making something like trip an encounter power (and one that only requires a single roll) as opposed to something everyone can do, that invariably requires someone to haul out the book, and that requires a batch of checks is an awkward tool to use. We can still have the battle scene in which I trip you or knock you off a bridge - but it moves more quickly, and the player who can trip knows exactly how it works and what his limitations are."

So not only can probably only the fighter trip enemies (and not the other melee classes like paladins and warlords), they can only do it (or even just try it) once in an encounter.

Derren S. wrote:

Also I wonder how, for example, beduin warrior got his +10 to swimming. Of course you can simply ignore those ranks but it is still a awkward situation when this warrior who by all logic can't swim is dropped into water. Technically he has 10 ranks in swimming.

Your logic is flawed. Their are plenty of people who have never been submerged in water before and can swim quite well right off the bat. That is not true of everybody, but it most certainly will be for nearly all heroic characters. What's more, ranks don't exist in 4E and someone who is not trained in Athletics still can't make use of the trained-only aspects of that skill.