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Dec 11, 2011 -- 9:37AM, Zappy wrote:

Dec 11, 2011 -- 9:11AM, Cassan wrote:

Dec 11, 2011 -- 8:36AM, Zappy wrote:

Dec 11, 2011 -- 7:41AM, Cassan wrote:

Its almost like all the rules lawyers got together and said if you cant translate it into a movement, one of a limited list of conditions or multiple of Weapon damage then you cannot have it.

You've made the claim before to not being out to invalidate martial characters. However right along side of that you want to totally eliminate everything they can do. So let's hear it. Please give me an example of a "creative" power for the martial character of your choice (I'd prefer Fighter though). Any level. Base class, Paragon path or Epic Destiny. Encounter or Daily. If the creators of the game are so uncreative please enlighten us as to how it "should be".

Designing games is hard, its not that any of the existing ones are not creative - its just that as a whole the list is not very extensive as to the different types of effects each power has.

The truth is though there are only so many conditions and effects that can be created before the game gets bogged down. Blinded, Dazed, Deafened, Dominated, Dying, Helpless, Immobilized, Marked, Petrified, Prone, Restrained, Slowed, Stunned, Surprised, Unconcious, and Weakened are all of the possible conditions. Then there's movement Push, Pull and Slide. I can't think of anything else that is not just another word for one of them. And of course there's damage. After all the fuss that was made about Martial characters using the push mechanic now there is call for them to do more things?

I completely agree, thats why I find it hard to come up with a good alternative - I'm not that creative.

Pluisjen came up with a system about 40 pages back that was a point based system for combat.  It seemed a little heavy on bookeeping but its that kind of innovation that is needed to distinguish 5e.  Come up with alternative, tactical, elegant way for the combat and melee classes to play out a battle that is not so heavy on movement and miniature placement.  You can still have the movement and miniature placement, but remove the requirement for it to have a meaningful game and I think you would be well along the way to a distinct and interesting edition - then we can focus on other issues.

Dec 11, 2011 -- 9:11AM, Cassan wrote:

Dec 11, 2011 -- 8:36AM, Zappy wrote:

Dec 11, 2011 -- 7:41AM, Cassan wrote:

Its almost like all the rules lawyers got together and said if you cant translate it into a movement, one of a limited list of conditions or multiple of Weapon damage then you cannot have it.

You've made the claim before to not being out to invalidate martial characters. However right along side of that you want to totally eliminate everything they can do. So let's hear it. Please give me an example of a "creative" power for the martial character of your choice (I'd prefer Fighter though). Any level. Base class, Paragon path or Epic Destiny. Encounter or Daily. If the creators of the game are so uncreative please enlighten us as to how it "should be".

Designing games is hard, its not that any of the existing ones are not creative - its just that as a whole the list is not very extensive as to the different types of effects each power has.

As to the solution thats where a game designer needs to come up with something innovative not me - I would suck at designing games.

Personally the challenge I would give down for the melee fighters is make the powers scale more, make them more unique, and come up with a different way to make the powers effective in combat.  A different way to make the choice strategic.  

This reminds me of something else that bothers me with the melee classes.  In 2e magic users would have spells that they memorized, priests would have spells that they preyed for.  So in either case it made sense why they had a specific list.

Now I have no issue with casters having at will or encounter powers but it seems wierd that melee classes have encounter and daily powers - why force them to 'pick one' that they can only use on that particular day - I mean why can the fighter do a particular melee manoever one day but not another day.  

Why not have a smaller list that are very unique, strategic, with a wide variety of tactical effect that they can pick from dynamically.

Every situation you play through is different. So yes, you may have a specific power, but the way it plays out is going to be different in EVERY fight. I kinda get the feeling you realy haven't played 4e that much or something. I mean maybe you guys have a peculiar (to me) kind of game you play. In the games I run there's very little repetition of situations. The rogue may have Dazing Strike (an encounter power), so pretty often he dazes things, so what? Every monster he's fighting is different, every tactical situation he finds himself in is different too. He knows how to hit people in places they don't want to be hit and he's not above doing it (hint, its a halfling rogue). Its actually quite funny and there's nothing I see about how that works that should be changed.

Now, likewise the same character has Blinding Barrage. He carries around a stack of shuriken and he's gotten real good at flinging them around! Why shouldn't he have an expertise in performing this trick? If he say wanted to use his stack of shuriken to make a set of footholds to climb a sheer rock face. He can do that, just the exact same way he can do it in say AD&D, make a skill/ability check against some DC.

The point is the game is no less flexible than before, and only the most rigid and unimaginitive interpretation stops that from being true. Here's another example that illustrates using a power in an odd way:

The wizard in a group wanted to exterminate some nasty vermin in some vent shafts. She had Stinking Cloud, but clearly the standard employment of that power wouldn't let her fill the shafts with poison because you have to have LoE to every spot and the way movable zones work it just wouldn't be possible by strict interpretation of the mechanics of the power. So, instead the DM (me) said "OK, you can sit down with your Arcana skill for a while and try to figure out a way to expend your Stinking Cloud power to make a cloud that settles down into the shafts" and then I had her run a simple SC to figure it out properly and control the spell. That's it. All fun. No problems. What's the issue here? lol.