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12 months ago ::
Jun 29, 2012 - 10:47PM
#1911
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All of that matters to you if your goal is solely power and ability to do the supernatural. THAT's why wizards exist and have the shroud of absolute power surrounding them. It's part of the myth and mythos of the wizard. Some people don't play the wizard because they want to be a lord in charge of an army with a castle...it speaks to a lot of people on a fantastical level...others WANT to be the powerful Elminster type...Elminster is powerful in fiction in a way that Drizzt will never be. Not every player is solely interested in how much gamist power they can accrue. Some are...the wizard is there for them and eventually should get to the point that they overpower the fighter in raw power....that's the wizard's purpose in life...to be a supernatural master of magic and supremely powerful...that's why Raistlin was the one competing with a god for rulership.
I advocate reducing the raw unadulterated, no price to pay power of 3x wizards, but I don't think the wizard in any way diminishes the high level fighter because of his raw game-mechanic power.
I don't see any reason the game should artificially restrict itself to only one set of concepts for wizards or for fighters. Sure, I could be the mysterious Merlin type that lives in some cave somewhere and is only known as a wonder worker. I could also be a battle mage leading an army and aiming to become a king. Likewise you can play the fighter that is "King Arthur" with his castle and knights, or Fafhrd the wandering sell-sword who has tricks up his sleeve and supernatural connections or Vainamoinen who meddles in world shaking magic and god killing, etc.
It isn't a matter of 'gamist power'. It is a matter of your character being innately powerful and there being some degree of logic and narrative reasoning behind how he relates to the rest of society. It is about choice and relevance in the game world. That was always one of the biggest flaws in AD&D. Half the characters were artificially relegated to one narrow concept, and half to the other. This is one of the great things I find about 4e, it is much less restrictive in this way. I REALLY don't want to go back to the whole programmed destiny fighter who's choice is "build a castle and have some (rather weak and thus not terribly useful to a hero) followers" or else all you can do is just ignore the whole class feature and get nothing.
This is where things like themes (and before them PPs and EDs, and PrCs too I suppose) work well. They let YOU decide. You can be a lord of a domain or endowed with superhuman abilities, or any of dozens of other things. That's more what I'd want to see.
That is not dead which may eternal lie
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12 months ago ::
Jun 29, 2012 - 11:13PM
#1912
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Also, I don't like the idea that martial classes are the ones who have to suffer because a few people don't want to manage resources. Why can't we have casters be resourceless (after all, it's magic! Why would it ever run out?) and mundanes have to manage endurance? The only reason is because of tradition.
I think a lot of people don't want to manage resources. A lot of others do.
The classes using magic can be defined any way because how magic works is open to the game designers.
The martial classes do have at least somewhat of an analog in the real world. We all agree it's cinematic and not really realistic. But things like daily resources for a purely martial character is just not believable to a lot of people. It blows away any pretense of taking the campaign seriously. And that is why people argue the way they do. Encounter powers the way they work in 4e are pretty much just as bad. I could come up with some quick fixes for those though that would minimally suffice.
I have no SPECIAL love for resource management. I'm not sure very many people do really. I think players want OPTIONS, and they're WILLING to manage resources to get them (or in some cases not). The reason resources exist is because nobody has figured out a viable way to make a game anything like D&D without them. Any class that lacks them is highly limited by the very nature of the logic of how the game works. It isn't something that you can bypass. Certainly in 38 years of trying I haven't seen a game designer do it yet. You can have ALL the PCs have no resources (IE something like Traveler) but once some do they are on a different power level and the rest either get them too or are left behind.
We'll never agree on your phobia for daily resources, so it isn't worth debating again. I'd just note that while encounter type resources add some extra punch to your character they don't add a LOT (especially if you have very many choices of encounter resources to use since then you pretty much always can use some). Daily resources let you 'step up' by taking a real risk. When you unleash your daily you are going for broke, or at least setting up the enemy for a hard fall or permanent disadvantage. The other issue there is overall adventure pacing. Daily resources really allow you to vary the intensity of encounters much more. Without them the PCs can't really 'dig deep' to nearly the same degree.
That is not dead which may eternal lie
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12 months ago ::
Jun 29, 2012 - 11:16PM
#1913
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You said that you didn't want to give fighters too much mobility because then there would be no advantage to being a ranged combatant. I named several advantages to ranged combat even if a melee-warrior has infinite movement speed.. I'm not sure why that is complicated, or why you're arguing.
You listed ONE CORNER CASE. Hardly my consideration of 'several advantages even if a melee has infinite movement speed'. Furthermore, unless you ringed the figher in a lake of lava or the like and tossed him on the island, infinite movement speed -would- indeed cover the distance. 120' bursts of speed in heavy armor is MORE than enough, and if you want more, well, whatever. It's not debatable.
Forcing a character who wants to play a swordsman to take bow feats/themes/magic items to be able to contribute in fights is a bad design. It's fine to have the fighter be at a disadvantage, even a significant one, against flying foes, but "-5 to attack, -15 to damage" from switching to a longbow isn't a balanced, or fun, disad! Compare to 4e, where the Melee fighter can pull enemies with certain utilities, and where his ranged attacks mark forcing many flyers to close with him or eat penalties.
Unless you can show me your credits in a AAA RPG title, please don't bother talking to me about 'bad design'. I'm sick of the hundreds of millions of design 'experts'. If you want to play a 100% specialized never-uses-anything-but-a-sword fighter, well, you pay a price for such overt specialization. Don't super-specialize then complain that you didn't specialize in the thing you need now. That's what specialization -is-. You give up being great at one thing to be spectacular at another. Also, don't make the tricky and oh-my-god-overused ploy of changing the lack of a -bonus- into a -penalty-. You don't have a -5 penalty; you're just not getting the +5 BONUS you typically have (and I'm guessing it's from specialization). Big difference.
So if DnD 3.5 split each level into two levels, and went up to level 40, you'd still stop at 20?
Don't make the mistake of confusing me for someone who loves 3.5. I don't. I -barely- tolerate it, and even then I have to cut out 90% of the incredible amounts of immersion-breaking things. But, assuming they actually SPLIT it evenly into two levels (so level 20 was EXACTLY analogous to level 10) then I'd still go up to 40 (which would be 20), although most our games would fall around the 30 mark, give or take. If they stacked 20 levels on -top- of the current power charts...yup. Still wouldn't go past 20.
Edited to add: See, once all your abilities are 'unlocked', so to speak...we don't consider there to be anything else to do. Sure, we could sit around and 'sandbox' all night, but that's as boring as counting sand on a beach as a continual campaign style (in our opinion). Not to say I don't like sandbox -elements- -- I do -- but a whole sandbox itself is just...blech. Anything past 20 is venturing into god territories, and, frankly, we find that to be something that was fun at 16, not 40. No offense to those who enjoy it -- that's great! Just, my players don't.
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12 months ago ::
Jun 29, 2012 - 11:30PM
#1914
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Date Joined:
Sep 26, 2001
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All of that matters to you if your goal is solely power and ability to do the supernatural. THAT's why wizards exist and have the shroud of absolute power surrounding them.
I advocate reducing the raw unadulterated, no price to pay power of 3x wizards, but I don't think the wizard in any way diminishes the high level fighter because of his raw game-mechanic power.
I don't see any reason the game should artificially restrict itself to only one set of concepts for wizards or for fighters.
It's becoming clear that 5e is going to have to do so to achieve it's mandate.
How it's going to accomodate something like "The wizard must be overpowered because that what a wizard /is/" while also paying attention to calls for balance is perplexing.
Love 4e? Concerned about its future? Join the Old Guard of 4e"You want The Tooth? You can't handle The Tooth!" - Dahlver-Nar. "If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D&D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly" - E. Gary Gygax
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12 months ago ::
Jun 30, 2012 - 12:38AM
#1915
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Date Joined:
Sep 26, 2005
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Monsters start flying around level 5. By high levels, the vast majority of them do, either through spell casting or natural flight. A lot of the most iconic enemies in the game, Demons, Devils, Dragons, etc, almost universally have flight. Flight is a big thing in any edition of D&D, and is something that a melee character needs a method to deal with. If he can't fly himself, he needs a way to force the enemy to the ground to fight him on his terms.
The actual problem lies in monster design. There's a good reason why you -don't- want characters to fly - it is BORING. Some people will be like: NO FLYING IS COOL But let's look at it. What is cool about flying? Well, it makes terrain much less meaningful and interesting. It makes monsters a lot less interesting. It removes nonflying monsters as foes. It removes a wall or a cliff as a potential barrier or challenge. In other words, flying sucks because it takes away a lot of fun, interesting things. The actual solution to the problem is making sure that flying enemies can't just fly around and ping away at the characters forever; they need to swoop in to engage, and then the characters can confront them properly. Making all characters fly is a terrible solution because it doesn't actually solve the problem and it creates a whole bunch more problems. Summon Monster, Time Stop, and Simulacrum have allows spellcasters to break action economy long before Quicken Spellcasting was a glimmer in Monte Cook's eye.
All things that have to be fixed. I don't see any reason the game should artificially restrict itself to only one set of concepts for wizards or for fighters.
Because if you don't make decisions, then the game will suck. Its okay to have, say, a striker spellcaster and a controller spellcaster. The 3.x wizard can never come back in a game where the fighter is meant to be relevant, though.
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12 months ago ::
Jun 30, 2012 - 12:59AM
#1916
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The actual problem lies in monster design. There's a good reason why you -don't- want characters to fly - it is BORING. Some people will be like:
NO FLYING IS COOL
But let's look at it. What is cool about flying? Well, it makes terrain much less meaningful and interesting. It makes monsters a lot less interesting. It removes nonflying monsters as foes. It removes a wall or a cliff as a potential barrier or challenge.
In other words, flying sucks because it takes away a lot of fun, interesting things.
The actual solution to the problem is making sure that flying enemies can't just fly around and ping away at the characters forever; they need to swoop in to engage, and then the characters can confront them properly. Making all characters fly is a terrible solution because it doesn't actually solve the problem and it creates a whole bunch more problems.
That's one solution to one problem - here's another problem: the Elemental Plane of Air, the Negative Energy Plane, the Positive Energy Plane, Limbo, the Astral Plane, etc. There's a lot of places in the end-game that you can't really exist in unless you can fly.
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12 months ago ::
Jun 30, 2012 - 4:56AM
#1917
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Date Joined:
Sep 12, 2007
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So what?? None of that proves magic exists. No one can summon lightning bolts or polymorph into a Hook Horror in real life. Just because someone practices a religion or believes in magic does not mean it actually exists in the real world. That's what fantasy is predicated upon. There are actual real world examples of people picking up swords and hacking eachother to death with them though.
Well, thank goodness there are all those real world examples of how picking up swords and hacking at dragons, trolls, giants, ogres, orcs, etc. works . . .
Really, if we approach the game world with the base assumption that magic, dragons, giants etc exist how hard it is it to conceive that the people in that world evolved in a different way than us. They had to become stronger, faster, etc than us in order to survive and that they also might have developed abilities and tecniques to fight these fantastical creatures that are so different from what we know and understand that they might appear to be magic to us.
Much like our advanced technology would appear as magic to them
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12 months ago ::
Jun 30, 2012 - 5:16AM
#1918
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So what?? None of that proves magic exists. No one can summon lightning bolts or polymorph into a Hook Horror in real life. Just because someone practices a religion or believes in magic does not mean it actually exists in the real world. That's what fantasy is predicated upon. There are actual real world examples of people picking up swords and hacking eachother to death with them though.
Well, thank goodness there are all those real world examples of how picking up swords and hacking at dragons, trolls, giants, ogres, orcs, etc. works . . .
Really, if we approach the game world with the base assumption that magic, dragons, giants etc exist how hard it is it to conceive that the people in that world evolved in a different way than us. They had to become stronger, faster, etc than us in order to survive and that they also might have developed abilities and tecniques to fight these fantastical creatures that are so different from what we know and understand that they might appear to be magic to us.
Much like our advanced technology would appear as magic to them
Shoalin monks do things that most people consider magical...
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12 months ago ::
Jun 30, 2012 - 5:20AM
#1919
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Date Joined:
Feb 12, 2009
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So what?? None of that proves magic exists. No one can summon lightning bolts or polymorph into a Hook Horror in real life. Just because someone practices a religion or believes in magic does not mean it actually exists in the real world. That's what fantasy is predicated upon. There are actual real world examples of people picking up swords and hacking eachother to death with them though.
Well, thank goodness there are all those real world examples of how picking up swords and hacking at dragons, trolls, giants, ogres, orcs, etc. works . . .
Really, if we approach the game world with the base assumption that magic, dragons, giants etc exist how hard it is it to conceive that the people in that world evolved in a different way than us. They had to become stronger, faster, etc than us in order to survive and that they also might have developed abilities and tecniques to fight these fantastical creatures that are so different from what we know and understand that they might appear to be magic to us.
Much like our advanced technology would appear as magic to them
Shoalin monks do things that most people consider magical...
hence the reason why Monk is its own class...
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12 months ago ::
Jun 30, 2012 - 5:31AM
#1920
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Date Joined:
Feb 12, 2009
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So what?? None of that proves magic exists. No one can summon lightning bolts or polymorph into a Hook Horror in real life. Just because someone practices a religion or believes in magic does not mean it actually exists in the real world. That's what fantasy is predicated upon. There are actual real world examples of people picking up swords and hacking eachother to death with them though.
Well, thank goodness there are all those real world examples of how picking up swords and hacking at dragons, trolls, giants, ogres, orcs, etc. works . . .
Really, if we approach the game world with the base assumption that magic, dragons, giants etc exist how hard it is it to conceive that the people in that world evolved in a different way than us. They had to become stronger, faster, etc than us in order to survive and that they also might have developed abilities and tecniques to fight these fantastical creatures that are so different from what we know and understand that they might appear to be magic to us.
Much like our advanced technology would appear as magic to them
So they aren't humans then. and what about being trained to use a sword (or whatever weapon your fighter uses) gives them the extraneous ability to do crazy **** like fly or jump 70 feet in the air and not get seriously injured on the fall. Also why can't the wizard do all of those things as well. They are the same race why aren't they stronger and faster too.
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