2. Healing surges + increased healing potential + Cleric healing + Spell healing + regen + damage reduction + (- damage inflicted on you with buffs) + (no real sense of death due to poor death save rules) = near impossible to kill players.
One player throws an ability that reduces incoming damage a player recieves, another throws one that reduces the damage a creature deals, another throws a regeneration spell on the character, another character uses a burst heal to heal that player, the charater self heals, and all of it is increased because of the aura of another class that increases all healing in its radius.
This is just ridiculous. There are 2 types of fights in a 4e game, the one you always win because its too easy even though its +4 CR higher than you are or less, and the one that DM's have to throw which is 5 CR+ or higher that kills you straight out without a chance.
The introduction of minions was a mistake, saving throws for death at 10+ auto stablize you was a mistake, and allowing all thse other abilities, spells, powers, and self healing to stack created players that were invincible.
There must be danager in a D&D game without throwing something that is just silly just to kill players.
I played 4e a lot so, I have a lot of examples but here's one
a 7th level party consiting of 2 clerics, an avenger, a warlord, and a warden decide they want to fight the CR 14 dragon who's ment to be the final boss after several adventures.
They buf buff buff buff, the dragon's attack are reduced by x amount of damage, he recieves x amount more from all damage, the players gain x amount more each time they are healed, the party all gains regen, and stuns the dragon each round with dailies, and the warden stands there and solos the dragon, twice his CR, while continually driving the dragon into the ground with fighter powers and feats that assume he will never leave or be able to reposition himself.
The party, within the rules, destroys the solo mob in 4 rounds. The dragon didn't even get to take an action.
All legitimately within the rules.
Now, you tell me how fun it is for both sides if they can auto slay a monster that they should never face in a million years for there level, and for the DM who can do nothing to counter it?
I don't know what game you were playing, but I've been running 4e for a couple of years now (since PHB II) and I've never encountered such a situation. Since any kind of buff has to be delivered in the course of a round, the dragon's going to get in some licks. A whole party getting regen makes me ask "What powers give the entire party regen at 7th level?" Now, I will give you that stun powers were to common, so that seems legit. The rest? Sounds like you're using only the first three books, which we all know are out of balance, and later books fixed.
For me, the combat system of 4e was far too rigid for my tastes; if I wanted to describe some kind of awesome attack, or novel stratagem to overcome an enemy, I could do so but only if said description ended with my character using one of a limited set of abilities that he possessed. If I wanted to, for example, slide down a bannister, leap off of it to land beside an enemy, grab him, and smash him into a wall, I could, but only if my fighter possessed an ability to shift an enemy a set number of squares.
Which he does, since bull rush is a universal manuever. There is very little reason to want to do that in any edition of D&D, however -- it's basically undefined behavior in 1st edition (so you can declare you do it, but its up to the DM whether it does anything at all), and its a lousy option in 3e or 4e, since bull rush is mostly useless. Actually, 4e comes closest to having rules that make it useful, since there's rules in the DMG for improvised attacks (which were rarely used because powers were better, but that's not appreciably different from other editions of D&D).
2. Healing surges + increased healing potential + Cleric healing + Spell healing + regen + damage reduction + (- damage inflicted on you with buffs) + (no real sense of death due to poor death save rules) = near impossible to kill players.
One player throws an ability that reduces incoming damage a player recieves, another throws one that reduces the damage a creature deals, another throws a regeneration spell on the character, another character uses a burst heal to heal that player, the charater self heals, and all of it is increased because of the aura of another class that increases all healing in its radius.
This is just ridiculous. There are 2 types of fights in a 4e game, the one you always win because its too easy even though its +4 CR higher than you are or less, and the one that DM's have to throw which is 5 CR+ or higher that kills you straight out without a chance.
The introduction of minions was a mistake, saving throws for death at 10+ auto stablize you was a mistake, and allowing all thse other abilities, spells, powers, and self healing to stack created players that were invincible.
There must be danager in a D&D game without throwing something that is just silly just to kill players.
I played 4e a lot so, I have a lot of examples but here's one
a 7th level party consiting of 2 clerics, an avenger, a warlord, and a warden decide they want to fight the CR 14 dragon who's ment to be the final boss after several adventures.
They buf buff buff buff, the dragon's attack are reduced by x amount of damage, he recieves x amount more from all damage, the players gain x amount more each time they are healed, the party all gains regen, and stuns the dragon each round with dailies, and the warden stands there and solos the dragon, twice his CR, while continually driving the dragon into the ground with fighter powers and feats that assume he will never leave or be able to reposition himself.
The party, within the rules, destroys the solo mob in 4 rounds. The dragon didn't even get to take an action.
All legitimately within the rules.
Now, you tell me how fun it is for both sides if they can auto slay a monster that they should never face in a million years for there level, and for the DM who can do nothing to counter it?
I don't know what game you were playing, but I've been running 4e for a couple of years now (since PHB II) and I've never encountered such a situation. Since any kind of buff has to be delivered in the course of a round, the dragon's going to get in some licks. A whole party getting regen makes me ask "What powers give the entire party regen at 7th level?" Now, I will give you that stun powers were to common, so that seems legit. The rest? Sounds like you're using only the first three books, which we all know are out of balance, and later books fixed.
Give me specifics, or I'll call BS.
what is described above to me feals more like how i remember 3.X everybody having 10+ buff with durations that lasted hours.
in 4th you can do realy powerfull things if you have all your daily powers available and are fully rested bur you can only pull somthing like that off in 1 enciunter.
I think the problem with a thread like this is that it is just an excuse to edition war again. It seems pretty clear that alot of the "old school" don't want any 4E in Next, and alot 4vengers don't want any 1/2/3E in their Next. Sadly, I don't think this has anything to do with wanting Next to be a great game. It has to do with wanting Next to determine who won the Edition War. The answer is simple - the only way to win is not to play. Both sides have lost, because they've gone all Hatfield and McCoy on each other. All the bluster about any particular edition being bad only serves to point out that you don't actually want D&D Next to be a game everyone can get behind. Instead, you really want Next to be an endorsement of your particular edition, style of play, etc., so you can finally win the argument and prove that all "XE" people play the wrong way. For those of us who just want D&D Next to be a good game, this is getting to be a real drag.
I don't think it's out of line for either the Grognards or the 4e fans to expect to see "their" games in 5e.
Remember, we have been (repeatedly) told by Mearls and other Devs that the goal is to Unify all the players and ALL the editions into ONE game that can be played simultaneously at the same table.
So, with that as the stated goal, both 'camps' have the right to expect to see "their" game in 5e--it's not about "edition wars" it's about "I like Edition X" and I want to play that in 5e.
5e wasn't sold as "just the next edition", it was (is) sold as "The Unifier of ALL D&D"...
The problem is, at this very moment, 5e is a fusion of previous D&D games, without the modularity to to play it as 1e, 2e, 3e, or 4e let alone all of those combined.
People are right to express their concern that--at the moment--they're not seeing what they (thought) was promised.
Remember, no one knew what the playtest would be until we got it, so no matter what it came out as, there are going to be many who were probably expecting something very different based on all that we've been hearing about what 5e is supposed to/going to be.
If there's an Edition War, I'm not seeing it, I'm just seeing people's concerns over not being able to have the modularity they were expecting (from the start).
Have you read this thread? All I see throughout is accusations of one edition being broken, another edition being an MMO and having no RP, etc. That's pretty typical edition warring right there.
Of course everyone should be able to see "their games" in 5E. That is the goal. The problem is, everyone expects 5E to be X.5(X being whatever edition they like). They expect the game to be built around their personal playstyle, rather than actually uniting playstyles. If people aren't seeing every edition's influence in the packet, they just aren't looking.
We've known for quite a while that what we were getting in the playtest was incomplete. I think the 15-20% figure was tossed around quite a bit. We weren't promised modularity in the playtest. We were always told there would be core rules, and modularity would be added in later. We don't even have all the core rules now.
D&DN is making me appreciate the editions of old that I sadly never took part in.
That's only for core rules though. If classes stay around this, I will start sounding less like the grognard that never was and more like a 4e fan. Fighters, powers, HERE. *points vigorously at the table*
Homebrew Psionics blog posts archive: Spoiler:Show
UPDATED Dec/18/2012: BAMN! Random update with a modest amount of hard rules for Animal Affinity, Telepathy, and Telekinesis. ADDED: Discipline Burn and more "soft" ideas. Dec/13/2012: Small Psionics Homebrew Update, now that I'm done with Finals.
Really old. Nov/02/2012: I'm working on a homebrew Wilder, and so a homebrew Psionics system. Here's a 3 part post with info on where I am in the design process. Part 1, Hard rules/example soulknife discipline: Link. Part 2, Basic ideas/goals on basic numbers and classes: Link. Part 3, Direction/ideas I want to take with specific disciplines: Link.
If I wanted to, for example, slide down a bannister, leap off of it to land beside an enemy, grab him, and smash him into a wall, I could, but only if my fighter possessed an ability to shift an enemy a set number of squares.
Really? You didn't think of simply declaring a Charge and using a Bull Rush as the basic attack? Both options were right there in the core book.
Cattle die, kindred die, every man is mortal. But the good name never dies of one who has done well. Cattle die, kindred die, every man is mortal. But I know one thing that never dies: the glory of the great dead. - Hávamál
D&D 4th Edition Bard builds: The Dashing Swordsman, The Master of Sound and Illusions, The Warrior Skald
Captain Morality!(No point in not having fun with it. ;-))
If I wanted to, for example, slide down a bannister, leap off of it to land beside an enemy, grab him, and smash him into a wall, I could, but only if my fighter possessed an ability to shift an enemy a set number of squares.
Really? You didn't think of simply declaring a Charge and using a Bull Rush as the basic attack? Both options were right there in the core book.
Given page 42 of the DMG, you didn't even need to do that. People seem to be under the mistaken impression that 4e removed all instances of "DM, may I?", but that's just not the case. 4e just decided not to make that the entire principle behind making the game work. You could still ask to do unusual stuff and have the DM adjudicate it, as you could in every edition before it.
so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin." NPC: "Really?" Fighter: "Yes." NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?" Fighter: "I do." NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?" Fighter: "What?" NPC: "I don't know what it means either." Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do." NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics." Fighter: "These what?" NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
Given page 42 of the DMG, you didn't even need to do that. People seem to be under the mistaken impression that 4e removed all instances of "DM, may I?", but that's just not the case. 4e just decided not to make that the entire principle behind making the game work. You could still ask to do unusual stuff and have the DM adjudicate it, as you could in every edition before it.
The "problem" is that the style of 4e seemed to lend itself to Rules over Fiat, and while all DMs could have adjudicated things on their own, most seemed to have defaulted to Rules Only, and if they couldn't find one to support what you were trying to do, then you couldn't do it.
But that just gets to the heart of the issue with DM Fiat--it requires Good/Knowledgeable/Flexible/Confident DMs in order for it to "work" properly. When Rules Alone arbitrate most things, then you just need a Capable DM, and those are much easier to find...
"I'm just killing time, since it's killing us." --Cyon Fal'Duur, Pathfinder Chronicler: Rogue Ascendant
i'd rather have a "capable" GM who's got rules to adjudicate most actions and can focus on the story being told then a "good" GM who's spending most of the session adjudicating actions due to poor rules and being forced to focus on how the story is being told.
