Community

May 4, 2012 -- 10:23AM, thorbardin wrote:

@Nelyo

Yeah I can agree with chaosfangs statement too, "rules vs roleplay".  So perhaps my bête noire isn't balance... (although I'd still run around the ragged rocks arguing about why all classes don't need to have combat parity and you'd run around the rocks too and tell me its important to keep everyone engaged and meaningful in combat and I'd there's more than combat and you'd say combat has always been the focus of the rules everything "else" is player/dm investment and i'd feel like the kid at the back of the math class going, but i just don't get it *chuckle*... and yadda yadda.) Perhaps, because balance was made to be the shining epithet of 4e, that's what I saw to waggle my disapproving finger.

- - 

On the whole psychology thing... a thought as to why the power cards may seem immutable (as in follow them exactly, don't dare try to make your own stuff up), is that the wizards power cards are spells and spells have always been immutable through the ages. You couldn't willy-nilly be inventing versions of "burning extremities" (unless your name was Mordenkainen). The fighter (heck every class) also has power cards, they are their special effects...  the thought: "...they then must be like the wizards power cards and ergo also immutable." It's perhaps short sighted. 

As to them themselves, the power cards, I liked them. Especially for the martial classes. Not so much for the casters. And no i don't know how to fix that, if it even should be fixed. Forget I said anything.

The other reason we as a group didn't invent stuff in combat is that we didn't feel like we knew enough of the system to do so. We didn't start slapping on house rules until we felt we could reasonably understand their effects, and I'm pretty sure we had no idea what we were doing to the balance of the game by halving hitpoints and surges in an effort to speed up combat. We just eventually did it to solve "something" we didn't enjoy, long combats.

It never occurred to any of us to make up our own powers. We (embarrassingly *blush*) missed out on pg 42.  

One of the biggest things, I feel, was that 4e was very *different*.  People who had played D&D from edition to edition knew it.  You know that a long sword is expected to do 1d8 damage, after a while you probably memorized it's speed factor.  You know that Fireball does 3d6 damage + 1d6 to a maximum of 20d6 damage in a 15' radius and require sulfur and bat quano as reagents.  Wizards get 1 spell at level 1, 2 at level 2, and then 2/1 at level 3.  Fighters were the only class that got a +1 to thac0 every level...I'm just plopping things down from memory, so I'm likely wrong on things, but you get the idea.

People KNEW the game.  3rd edition changed some things, but overall much of it was the same, or at least close enough.  

But then this 4e came along, and assuming you were walking with with an open mind, you still had all that knowledge in your head from the previous game.  Here you had cards with different color tabs, that had alot of game data on it.  Sometimes you were doing damage with your sword but you weren't using your strenght, you were using your Dexterity (Or oddly enough your CHA or INT).  Fighters now had options, and even though perhaps in third you had "power attack" or "Cleave" it just seemed odd for it to be writen out on a card.  Wizard were greatly changed, now not needing their spellbook very much, and not having the same progression they always had in the past.

You were brand spaking new to the system, but it said D&D on the front and you felt you should know how to play D&D.  All the new stuff got in the way as you tried to pick it up and you couldn't right away play the way you wanted. 

And, depending on how you did things in the past, the learning curve could have been much worse.  If you didn't really use minis ever in previous games you were in for a rude awakening, but if you had used minis all along, you had a faster learning curve. 


And when I say "You" I mean a random person, not YOU specifically.