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Nov 6, 2012 -- 1:22PM, Zardnaar wrote:

Nov 5, 2012 -- 4:27AM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

Oct 28, 2012 -- 3:06AM, Zardnaar wrote:

They all dealt XYZ damage+ some status effect.

Name one ability in any other edition that doesn't do any of the following.

1.Damage
2.Effect
3.Damage+Effect

 It was the same thing for every class though. The only thing you had to look forward to was a better damage+ effect ability. There was no interesting ability as such.

 COmpare 3.5 Rnager to the 4th ed ranger. 4th ed ranger is just damage. Of course 3.5 had its bad classes and overpowered classes but it felt more organic bad word maybe) that 4th ed. This was probably due to 3.5 multiclass rules and the way you built your character was a large part of the fun in 3.5.

 4th ed was alot more linear if that makes any sense. It was at least good at doing what it was designed to do. The kicker being what if you did not like the linear progression or tactical combat aspects of D&D. 4th ed got better in that regard as the game expanded via splats and the like but it felt clunky. Star Wars Saga would release a new talent tree of maybe half a page, 3.5 would release a feat chain, 4th ed would release a new character option like the tempest fighter or a new class.

 Didn't help the 4th ed bloat situation.

I have compared the 4e ranger to the 3.5 ranger. I find the 3.5 ranger far more 'canned' and rigid than the 4e version. 3.5 ranger is on rails. At level 1 EVERY 3.5 ranger MUST pick a favored enemy. At level 4 they MUST all pick an animal companion. ALL 3.5 rangers gain terrain benefits in woodlands starting at level 7, and they ALL gain spell casting of a specific type.

Now, 4e rangers have pretty much all the same options. They can pick from the same fighting styles, they have the option of a beast companion, and you could easily gain various sorts of casting. You can gain all the things that the 3.5 ranger does or can get via feats or in many cases by just selecting the right power or building up a skill to a certain degree (which could happen in a variety of ways). Very few of these things are MANDATORY however. 4e classes don't get fixed additional class features, instead they have choices to add elements to the character or do swaps (via things like theme) to select from various choices.

Thus we can easily see that I can make a wider variety of characters using the 4e ranger than the 3.5 ranger. Consider a 10th level PC made with 3.5 rules and a 15th level 4e PC (since there are 50% more levels in 4e). The 3.5 character WILL ALWAYS have woodland skills, an animal companion, spell casting, and certain tracking abilities plus IIRC exactly 3 sworn enemies. He'll also have some number of feat choices (not honestly sure how that is determined in 3.5, the SRD doesn't seem to cover character creation).

The 4e ranger will have 9 feats (probably 10, maybe 11 actually) of which at most 1 is mandatory. He'll have a set of skills, mostly based around the ranger list but with background he could change that some. He will have no specific tracking or terrain advantages, but could easily have those from a mix of skills, powers, and feats. He might be a wilderness guy with an animal companion, or he might be a knight skilled in archery with almost no wilderness skills at all. He could be a sniper, a battlefield archer, a giant killer, etc etc etc.

Of course your 3.5 ranger could be some weird amalgam of different classes, but once we start talking about 3.5 MCing we have to admit we're going to talk about hybrids and etc as well...

Nov 7, 2012 -- 12:24PM, Zardnaar wrote:

 THere are plenty of ranger varients in the 3.5 and PF splat books like different powers in various 4th ed books. The ranger in 4th ed is one of the more boring powers because most of its powers are just really increasing amounts of damage and some skills. A 3.5 ranger gets more damge via favoured enemy, extra attacks and bonus feats based on fighitng styles but it also has spells and alot of interesting abilites.

I don't think there's anything WRONG with the 3.5 ranger. It is just a bit 'on rails' compared to the 4e one right out of the book. I'm sure there are plenty variations in splatbooks, and prestige classes and whatnot to create other variations. Spells are OK, but honestly I found that an odd choice. It isn't an option you can easily ignore yet it is almost trivial to get spell casting as a 3.5 character by MCing. I never understood why it was included in the base class. Again, I'm sure there are variants that let you do other things besides cast, but still. Overally though I think the 3.x martial classes are all fairly dull compared to casters.

 Thats comparing one of the more interesting (IMHO) classes in 3.5 with one of the least interesting 4th ed ones though. THe 4th ed ranger is one of the better classes in 4th ed like the 3.5 Cleric which while powerful was also boring IMHO. One of my players a couple of months ago had a high stength pathfdiner melee cleric and he had not played one before and was kinda of excited. As a DM I try tobe somewhat interested in my players PCs as they build them etc but I had been seeing clerics like that one since 3.0 back in 2001.

I'll agree, the 4e ranger is one of the most single-task and in some sense boring classes out there. STILL you can make a wide range of variations on the concept in 4e even out of the box with just PHB1 you have several choices.

 In the 4th ed PHB I find the Rogue and Wizard to be the most interesting 4th ed classes and the ranger to be the least interesting. In 3.5/PF I find the Bard and Ranger near the top, and the Cleric, Wizard and Barbarian near the bottom.

I like most of the PHB1/2 classes. The ranger is probably the most straightforward of all, but even it is reasonably interesting and you can vary it a fair amount (so a nice elvish bow ranger and an eladrin spear and spiked buckler ranger and a human spiked chain ranger will all be reasonably distinct for instance). I thought the sorcerer was probably the next flattest class, though the barbarian might qualify as well. In any case they are both pretty interesting. Honestly its hard to think of a 4e class I wouldn't play a few times. The 3.5 cleric is FINE, but too tempting to min/max and stuck in a healing role it hardly matters WHAT options your cleric may have in theory, in practice he's casting CLW with every slot all day. Other 3.5 classes are much like the ranger in many cases, they are a bit stuck on rails OOTB. You have some options but major features of your character are usually hard-coded.

 I liked the 4th ed DMG but never got the same feeling from the 4th ed classes I got from 3.0. Part of that was due to the AEDU power structure and role and part of that would have been in 2008 4th ed was still d20 which I had been playing since 2000. 3.0 at first was very interesting as it was totally new. 4th ed just had a big pile of powers to read from. It would be like getting a PHB in third ed and just having the wizard, cleric and druid n them and someone hands you the 3.5 spell compendium to read. I know the classes played very differently but reading them was tedious.

 For us that was a large factor in the lack of 4th eds wow factor and we played a mixture of 3.5, 4th and SWSE through 2008/2009. We switched to 4th ed in 2010 once a few more splats came out and then then silverlight came along. I'm getting bored running Pathfinder its main appeal being its world and adventure paths. Running 4th ed is not an option even as a DM I like it. Half of my players don't like it and I spent 3 years trying to get people to play 4th ed. I prefer DMIng 4th ed but I like houseruled 3.XYZ better and its easier to find players for it.

 4th ed was also the 1st version of D&D I never actually got to play. No one else locally will DM it and the only other 4th ed DM I  knew of left town but dumped it before he left and he was one of the 4vengers here back in 2009.

 When you can't find players or a DM it doesn't mattr how good or bad 4th ed is- you won't be playing it.

Well, it would be true for any game that finding players is necessary. I can't say how that goes for others. Nobody really even blinks an eye when I say '4e', they just go roll up characters .

Last night was funny as heck. The halfling rogue got right between 2 Blazeworms that came out of a portal and hit them with One Two Punch, that was some funny stuff. I think once a player gets off the idea that "all powers are just the same" and puts a bit of imagination into picking and using them stuff really jumps in 4e. That same player has done lots of amazing power uses, like using Bowl Over for some really funny stuff. I think he really is the type that gets into finding all these little gems though. The rest of the players were just suitably appalled when the Xorn came out of the wall and ate the ranger, lol.