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Oct 30, 2012 -- 3:17PM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Oct 30, 2012 -- 10:17AM, Felorn wrote:

Oct 30, 2012 -- 2:44AM, WhisperMagellan wrote:

Yeah, the PH was really limiting on character options. You only had 8 races and 8 classes. That's only, like 64 posibilities. And the classes only had 2-3 different builds... so that would be 128 characters... And then there were the different feats you could take... and the different power options for encounter, daily, and utilities... and then there was to variations on which stat array you used... Yeah, that was a serious limitation there. only 512 options (race, class, build, encounter power, daily power) before working out which feat(s) and stat array you wanted to use. And that isn't even touching which weapon the melee and martial characters chose. Sure, some of the choices are sub-optimal, but they can still fun.
Hate to break it to you, but I played a PH1 fighter up to lvl10 and loved it. and a PH1 cleric to lvl8. Then the other books came out... And they provided some interesting options...
The only character that got really worked over was my Fey-pact warlock: it took until arcane Power and the DDI articles with new Warlock powers and feats to make it anywhere comparable to the other striker classes that came out in the PH1 (and no, I don't want to start that argument again).

The books were too expensive? Yes. Certainly.
Is the system too limited? Only as limited as your imagination and willingness to refluff.
Most major liabilities: uneven release of material, failure to provide source material, utter failure to market/PR, shoddy editing.
Other liabilities: way too much time/effort to create a minis game (which failed), mid-edition release of Essentials as another failure/distraction

3.5 had more class combos than the total number of things you just gave. 

Sure, after how many books? And as Salla says, many of those options were EXCEEDINGLY weaker than the others, not like a LITTLE BIT, but like "you might as well just sit back and watch the fight" weaker.

And no, how powerful a specific given character is isn't the point. You don't have to be the most powerful, it is still fun, but when a system says "You CANNOT EVER make a guy that swings a sword that holds a candle to ANY guy that uses magic PERIOD" then that's a rule system that has serious issues. It may be fine for some people but just because you don't 'get' what the problem is doesn't fix it either. 4e fixed it. It just plain frigging fixed it open and shut case fixed.

Frankly it is a kick-ass system and I have no real interest in switching. In fact I just fired up a 2nd weekly 4e game to run again whole new campaign, starting at 1st it looks like (Some of these players have mid-paragon PCs we used in an earlier campaign too, which might be fun to work in, we'll see). DDN? I don't even want to hear about that stuff. Have fun with it. I can find plenty of players for 4e games. I've got 30 books worth of 4e stuff, and DDI is working fine. Time to just have fun. If you all are too hung up to get in on the fun, too bad for you! (Honestly, play what is fun for you, its all OK, but I'm done even hearing any more 4e crapping upon).

Just with the Core book at just level 2 there are nearly 110 options, for class/race combos. Then you can multiclass even further after that. :D 

I also never crapped on 4e. No reason too its a fine system. I was just saying. And just because Salla played a fighter in a 3.5 game where there was a power gaming  show hogging wizard doesn't mean other classes are useless.

Oct 30, 2012 -- 5:32PM, WhisperMagellan wrote:

Hmmm.
Everyone can do something decent at any time.
Everyone can do some impressive stuff once per encounter.
Everyone can do something awesome once per day.
What's not to like?

I have no idea why everyone is saying that the spell casters were out-classing the non-spell casters. I played in a group where the mounted paladin ruled the battlefield, and the casters were lucky to get more that 2 or 3 creatures in their area effects. On the other hand, the cleric dropping the celestial Orca into the underground lake to fight the aquadic monster there was pretty fun. Sure, there were some great spells, but it sounds to me like people are fussing about limitations that do not necessarily apply. Sure, the Wizard could cast a 20D6 fireball. My archer could hit a target 300 yards away, 2-4 times per round (depending on level). Sounds to me like people bitching about a class they never learned to play, or restricting themselves to using calculators as RPG methods.

 Damage dealing spells weren't that broken in 3.5. At a casual level 3.5 worked fine it took a little bit of system mastery to really break it. The big offenders were.

1. Polymorph. Druid polymorphs into whatever, spell buffs himself and can bea a fighter in melee. Even flying around a s a hawk dropping spells was a big advanatage. A wizard could shapechange into a balor and create a vorpal sword, then another one, then another one etc. Wizard shapechanges into a Dragon, casts mage armor and shield.

2. Stacking buff spells. Usually Clerics and Druids. Fighter takes a feat giving +1 or +2 to hit or damage damage. Cleric uses persistent metamagic to gain a +10-25 bonus to hit and damage. And then power attacks. Ring of counterspells were used to counter dispel magic.

3. Action economy spells. Timestop, 3.0 haste.

4. Summoning spells. All sorts of abuse here. Some feats let you apply templates to summoned creatures, others let you conjure up creatures that could grant wish spells.

5. Spell DCs scaling faster than defenses. Fighters got dominated very easily, Mordenkainens disjunctions was a big F you to a fighter with hundreds of thousands of gp invested in his gear.

 At least it was better than 3.0 where spellcasters could get infinate ability scores, cast 17 spells a round (no I'm not joking timestop+haste), clerics could double stack certain spells (+25 hit/damage), and spell DCs could get into the 30s by level 10 or so.