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squidyak wrote:

expert marksman does not equal expert woodsman
flashy duelist-rogue. a grim duelist wouldn't have rogue abilities. many schools of fencing have very little movement.
monks do not exist

-Their "expert woodsman" status is is defined by them having the option of having nature as a trained skill in 4E. They get no other nature abilities.
-What planet do you live on that you think unarmored sword combat isn't all about movement? Every fencing style i know of, eastern and western is about movement, range and positioning.
-monks do exist - they will be in a future book.

squidyak wrote:

player characters are allowed to be evil. it follows that evil characters worship evil gods.

And such would be up for discussion with a DM, who, if he approves, should let them know who they can worship.

squidyak wrote:

Until you actually see a 25' chasm. It's pretty big.

but jumpable. Especially by heroic characters. The current men's record for long jump is 8.95 meters (or around 27 feet)

squidyak wrote:

I concede the bag will work. The point of bringing up moats is to give an example of exactly how much work would go into building a 30' wide and 30' deep barrier.

1) depth has nothing to do with it.
2) ALL Castles would be build like that. Has nothing to do with teleporing high elves. Its about making sure ARMY's cant Seige your castle successfully

squidyak wrote:

I find the extra at will power to be negligible. You choose your extra power at first level, so it'll be something that doesn't really have much meaning by mid-levels.

It scales in power as you level.

squidyak wrote:

But wouldn't that be the natural reaction of the ignorant and ill-educated masses who are constantly warned of demonic powers by their churches. This is reinforced by the fact that in the dnd universe, those demonic forces actually exist.

Ask a 15th centry jew in prague how he was treated. You know.. when common people thought Jews actually were born with horns because that was the myth...

squidyak wrote:

But wouldn't members of a standing army be fighters? The DMG is actually kind of unclear on this. Since there's no npc warrior class, I'm inclined to make them fighters. Another option would be to give them hit points and an attack bonus and just let em loose.

No, they wouldn't be "fighters" NPC's dont have PC classes. They would be humans(or whatever race) that had proficiency with a bow.

squidyak wrote:

What class is supposed to represent a character who learned to use a bow as a part of a standing army? Or is every archer in every army a ranger?

That depends - is he a superb marksman and trick shot -yes.. ranger. Does he know which end to fire and can hit the right side of a barn but isn't william tell - something else, like fighter.

squidyak wrote:

I find the comment on the foil to be dubious. I don't think the strongest man on the planet could do that. A foil doesn't have the rigidity required to accomplish that feat.

I actually know several people personally who can do it. That number includes several junior olympians and a few olympic alternates...

squidyak wrote:

I'd like the spending of a feat to be a gain. Spending a feat to trade one power for another of equal level or less is a net loss. You basically spend a feat and gain nothing for it.

you gain versitility.. and yes.. its worth it.

squidyak wrote:

There's no turning. The lack of facing is a whole other problem that both 3e and 4e have in common. But the whole point of having an 8 foot spear is that you get to attack the other guy first. The point of a spear hedge is that you can't get to the wielders without suffering many attacks. Spear hedges don't do that anymore, and are of no use in combat. As for using the shaft, you need an awful lot of room for that. I might let somebody choke up if there's nothing in the 5' square behind them or attack with the shaft if there's an open square to the side, but in most circumstances a long spear is useless against an opponent who gets inside the point.

yes.. you attack the other guy first.. you dont react to the other guy. there is a differance there and the rules acknowledge it - you dont get AoO with a reach weapon, but can make other Attacks at reach.

As for the shaft, you strike outward with the but or the shank.. not the tip. You dont need a lot of room for that.. just enough to move that part. Is it less effective then another, shorter weapon, yes.. but better then nothing.

squidyak wrote:

Not talking about house rules here, reviewing rules as written. Wounds are something I've always added to the RAW since 2e.

In other words you dont want to talk about house rules, but you always houseruled the HP to be debilitating wounds.. um.. okay..

squidyak wrote:

If you missed it, it was still a hit. The groups I've been in seemed to enjoy it.

so was the roll i didn't roll a confirm roll for.. i just wasted 5 seconds of my life for something that was stupidly pointless

squidyak wrote:

It's way to easy to be hit in combat for that to be a viable defense.

Which is why the to hit modifiers for those powers are lower bonuses.. its harder to do them.

squidyak wrote:

All characters should die with one well placed blow. If everyone died in one blow, there would be no such thing as battle scars.

or a game. Which is kinda the point of D&D.. you know.. be a game..

leshracnuker wrote:

I never had any warnings or bans before 4e. It took this edition to make me do this.

This edition did not make you do anything!

An inanimate object, let alone a person can not make you do anything.

Even with a gun to your head you still have a choice.

As my Drill Instructor said way back in basic training

"No person or thing in this world can motivate you Privets, this motivation must come from within. I can only give you the tools and the reasons to get up and do something, ultimately it falls on you to move those flabby chunks of meat you call buts"

(that was cleaned up for the boards)

sparrowhawk4 wrote:

Only your missing the point. The "fighter" is a place name for an architype - the armored front line melee soilder. Its a hold over sacred crowd from previous editions of D&D(I mean if they called it soilder and there was no "fighter" class in the game people would be having even more screaming fits)
And yes, there is now a martial leader, striker and defender - Rogue/ranger, warlord and "fighter". the name "fighter" is not the same as in previous editions. If anything, look at the classifications in 2EAD&D - Warrior, magic user, priest and rogue.

Yes, but I don't want to be a ranger to be a striker, I want to be a fighter. WoTC deciding to limit roles by classes stifles roleplay to an unacceptable degree. No class should be pre-defined into one, or even two catagories by the "rules."

non-magical warriors are not limited to be defenders. the martial defender is called a fighter.

I understood this. Plainly, I don't agree with it.

Again.. martial warriors are not limited. The martial warrior that fills the defender role is called the "fighter" in 4E. Why is this a hard concept to grasp.

Because it's a stupid concept.

No. You mean no power source type. Power source + role= class. What your complaining about really is that you dont like that they named the class fighter instead of the power source, when it comes down to it.

No, I meant class. Tell you what. You don't tell me what I mean, and I won't tell you what you mean.

You mean power source.. and they do. Your missing the design philosophy here.

Nooo. I'm disagreeing with design philosophy that I consider to be poor design.

Druid and Cleric sucked too. And if you have to fix the skill point alotment in 3.X then you see the problem.. i shouldn't have to "fix" the game at get go.

No. They had few points, but they had useful skills to put them in. Only fighters had few points AND skills that weren't overly useful, making them cross class with those few points if they wanted to do something useful.

A trained athelte will have a better chance of swiming to sure, even having been trained in it, then someone who has not been atheteticaly trained. A weight lifter who doesn't run still is likely to beat the couch potato in a foot race..

Swimming is a skill that if you don't know, will most likely kill you no matter how athletic you are in other situations. Running is MUCH different than swimming, so comparing apples to the Sun doesn't mean much.

It does when it saves time and the likelyhood of you using those skills seperately is remote.

I used them separately all the time. All it takes is a modicum of creativity.

Rogue- better at diplomacy because of magic,

False. Charm, et al. just got you in trouble when the charm wore off and the person you used it on realized that magic was used on him. Made the situation much worse over the long haul.

same with stealth(invisiblity, silence)

Invisibility was often seen through, and silence made anyone in the area KNOW that someone was in the area with a silence spell on. There are a myriad of sounds around you always, and when they all go poof, you become acutely aware of that fact. A wizard being sneaky often just ended up alerting the enemy.

locks and traps(knock)

You had to see the door, which meant that the wizard was often in the area of the trap he just set off with the knock spell.

Fighter - SoD spells, Polymorph, Summons

SoD spells often failed on any single monster capable of challenging the party, and were usually wasted space at that point. Damage was much more reliable. Polymorph was the same, worse really, since fortitude was almost always the best save for these creatures. As for summons, nothing in there invalidates a fighter, it just gives him some other creatures to fight along side.

Cleric - out did all spells except healing

ROFL. Clerics are amazing at spell casting.

Paladin - same as Cleric and Fighter

Yep. See clerics and fighters.

Monk - Your joking right..

No. What wizard spells give you monk abilities? I never said monks were better, only that the wizard couldn't replace one.

Ranger - You mean the underpowered mix of figher and druid? Yeah.. easily replaced by wizard. only thing going was track.. which was easily replaced by scry and other divination magic.

Um, no. Outclassed? Sure. Replaced? No. Useless? No.

The Stray wrote:

Most of these complaints are based on personal preference, but here are my answers anyway:

1) Ideas for using the classes in non-standard ways, for one. I'd have liked a sidebar giving ideas for tweaking the fluff of the classes a bit, and I would have liked to see multiclassing a bit more open.

See.. what more open do you need it. What character concept can you not make that isn't something a new class really should cover anyway?

The Stray wrote:

2) Tactics for monsters in combat. What about ecology? What about a short, canned description I can use to make the scene come alive? How do most of these monsters fit into the new cosmology? That is the sort of thing I miss.

See, i dont. Because it allows me to more freely come up with the fluff I want, not what WOTC decided for me.

The Stray wrote:

3) It would have been nice to have been provided with at least some hooks to hang the monsters on, appearance-wise. It's easier to change a description when you have one to work with in the first place.

They do.. hence the art.