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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 8:35AM
#291
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Date Joined:
Oct 12, 2011
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I am under the belief that 4e is the edition where the difference between SUPER OPTIMIZED and 'chosen for flavor' has the least drastic gap between them.
If I'm mistaken, and 3e discourages min/maxing further than 4e does, please correct me.
In AD&D though it's up to luck how capable you are as there's not much in mechanical customization.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 8:43AM
#292
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Date Joined:
Jan 10, 2012
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After all, if he went down there would be no raise dead spells to raise all the fallen party members.
You keep ignoring my question. I know you had fun with your fighter/cleric and you were able to raise or heal the rest of the party between fights, but how did the rest of the party feel about needing to be raised or healed up from near dead all the time? Were they having fun, or did they resent you for not being a team player in a cooperative game?
Also note that I have been saying all along that any behavior is okay as long as everyone agrees on it. If your fun diminishes the fun of anyone at the table without their consent then you are being selfish.
They never had a problem with it, if anything they encouraged it. After all, I'm sure the party would feel much worse if I died and the remaining party members had to drag all the bodies back to town and then pay 1000's of gold to have my character raised. You're also making the assumption that my character never healed anyone else in the party during combat.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 8:46AM
#293
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2010
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I am under the belief that 4e is the edition where the difference between SUPER OPTIMIZED and 'chosen for flavor' has the least drastic gap between them.
If I'm mistaken, and 3e discourages min/maxing further than 4e does, please correct me.
In AD&D though it's up to luck how capable you are as there's not much in mechanical customization.
I would agree with your first statement with regards to 3E and 4E. Although the comparison kind of doesn't work with regard to early editions since optimzation as a concept was different back then.
Having said that, I would expand on your last statement and say that it wasn't so much about "luck" as it was about the dice and letting them help tell the story on a more basic level. And I would say that that is simply a different way to play the game, neither better nor worse. In recent editions, we've moved away from that. The dice have less and less say with each iteration as to what we can and can't do and what we are or are not good at. Some love this. In general I think most people are ok with it. I would argue that this has some impact on the "feel" of the game. I personally like the dice to help tell the story, even more than just whether I hit or miss. I like the challenge of shaping the narrative according to the dice. This is totally a personal asthetic concern. I understand other most likely prefer more control.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 8:46AM
#294
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Date Joined:
Jun 30, 2008
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I am under the belief that 4e is the edition where the difference between SUPER OPTIMIZED and 'chosen for flavor' has the least drastic gap between them.
For the most part that is correct. There are a handful of very noticably under powered classes and races and a handful of overpowered options if you are full on optimizing. But you can mix pretty much any race and class combo put just a few minutes into picking your powers themes etc. and you will still contribute and not be noticably outshined by someone else. I have never seen a 4E PC that didn't contribute to the party on a consistent basis.
If you have someone doing a full on optimized Kulkor Arms Master charger or something then there is very noticable difference between that and another casual PC, but even then the casual PC is still probably contributing.
my handbooks & builds
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 9:23AM
#295
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Date Joined:
Jan 12, 2012
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I for one don't feel comfortable seeing yet another edition coming out. I have just gotten used to (and like more than 3rd edition) the 4th edition rules and game style. It finally made playing every class worth something to play, unlike 3rd edition where if you were a 1st level wizards you were basically a one hit a day wonder who cast his meager magic missile then sat down the rest of the fight unless you really wanted to hit something with a staff or a crossbow, that is what other classes are for like ranger or rogue. Sure at higher level you got better spells, but unless you play a campaign where you start high, you had best enjoy a miserable time being the party's third wheel after you got your one spell off. The concept of a wizard or sorcerer or any other spell caster with a spell always ready is something I like. What I don't want to see D&D regress back to that, might as well just play a party of fighters then and tear out the spell section of the book. If 5th turns out to regress to a 3rd edition like game, then why even buy it? Might as well buy Pathfinder (a.k.a. the repackaged D&D, but I don't believe the hype that says it’s a 3.75 edition, it’s still just 3.5 to me). I would also like to see it compatible with 4th in some way so that all the books I have bought now don't go to waste.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 9:52AM
#296
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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. I personally like the dice to help tell the story, even more than just whether I hit or miss. I like the challenge of shaping the narrative according to the dice. This is totally a personal asthetic concern. I understand other most likely prefer more control.
Dice make crappy story tellers...
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 9:57AM
#297
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2010
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. I personally like the dice to help tell the story, even more than just whether I hit or miss. I like the challenge of shaping the narrative according to the dice. This is totally a personal asthetic concern. I understand other most likely prefer more control.
Dice make crappy story tellers...
Simple solution. Remove the To-Hit and Damage Rolls. Remove saving throws. Remove skill checks. Then you can tell your story exactly the way you want. Let the MD decide if the monster hit or miss. Let him tell his story. No dice to muck it up.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 10:29AM
#298
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Date Joined:
Apr 16, 2009
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I fear that they may try too hard to "satisfy everybody"
I just hope that doesn't actually morph into "offend nobody" - which is a lot easier but also actually satisfies pretty much nobody.
Unfortunately, I think "offend nobody" is the second most likely possibility - behind "satisfy the people who are already satisfied by 2E and Pathfinder but hate 4E".
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 10:37AM
#299
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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. I personally like the dice to help tell the story, even more than just whether I hit or miss. I like the challenge of shaping the narrative according to the dice. This is totally a personal asthetic concern. I understand other most likely prefer more control.
Dice make crappy story tellers...
Simple solution. Remove the To-Hit and Damage Rolls. Remove saving throws. Remove skill checks. Then you can tell your story exactly the way you want. Let the DM decide if the monster hit or miss. Let him tell his story. No dice to muck it up.
Simple but crappy and assumes its the DMs story... instead of the groups story.
Extremes are still just extremes the wider the impact of dice the less like a story and the more "like a mush that has to be fixed" it can become. This is a pattern it does not necessarily mean that a diceless extreme is ideal NOR does it imply DM totalitarian determinism NOR does it imply game play free of mechanics.(see resource management) NOR does free of dice free you from randomness any time you have choices from limited knowledge you have random.
Dice can cause unexpected things to happen.. but the coolest unexpected things to happen are when your players suprise you with decisions and ideas.
Oh and yes dice "help" provide inspiration but there are some better sources for that too.
Its certainly subjective ... "do you like craps" or "chess" .. I have a game at home called nightmare chess which inserts random factors in to a regular game of chess.
Conversely I like MTG the cards also have randomness... but deck design often hinges around reducing that.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 10:47AM
#300
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Date Joined:
Apr 16, 2009
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In fact, when I watch players build their characters in 4e it is very different process. In general, everyone is focused on combat tactics alone. Players will say, “Hey why don’t you take this power that grants CA so I can use this power X all the time.” As an old school DM, I want to tell the players to shut it and stop min/maxing, but I can’t because that is just the nature of 4e. Previous editions discouraged this kind of min/maxing, but 4e encourages it.
I saw it happening all the time in AD&D and 3.5E. (Didn't play the in-between editions much.)
In fact, people are now focused on min/maxing the party’s abilities and powers far more than thinking about their characters in role playing terms.
To the extent that I agree that this is true, it's because in 3.5E your abilities and powers didn't really matter (unless you were a caster). However, to get what effectiveness you could as a level-10 fighter, you had to plan most of your feats and equipment around the casters' favored effects. (Still, if two characters synergized to kill more than 10 enemies in one round, they were both casters.)
This kind of behavior makes me laugh. Don't these players realize that as the DM I could kill them at a whim I so chose? Don't they realize that if an encounter is too easy for them, I'll just toss a few more brutes in the mix?
I'm sure they not only realize it, but expect it.
Heroic individuals do heroic things. Heroic teams synergize well to do heroic things that are beyond what they could do individually. Naturally, they need to be presented with suitable challenges where they CAN do such heroic things; the master swordsman does not demonstrate his combat prowess by slicing a cake.
Even the themes and backgrounds you select in 4e have some sort of mechanic benefit to them. In 4e I see players picking backgrounds for the sake of the bonus and not for the sake of role playing the background. This is why in my game I require the players to write a paragraph on their characters mentality, physical description, and history before they play.
I picked my Bard's background for a single specific ability that is the entry benefit. It's pretty powerful for a level-1 character. However it is also part of the source material that is the inspiration for the character, and the theme is easy to fit in.
I loved that character because he was a self sufficient machine.
So why did he hang around with those other guys all the time?
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
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