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Oct 31, 2012 -- 6:53PM, Felorn wrote:

I know you can't do bard monks... I worked that in. Plus, what did you even play in 3.5? And with what kind of group. If 3.5 was broken as you say it is then why do so many people stay loyal to it?

Because most groups consists of people liking the same things, having the same skill level (or at least making sure those weaker in character building get help), sticking to unspoken table rules and a DM doing massive amounts of behind-the-screen work to make every PC at the table shine. You only had to take a look at a convention game like LG (especially at the bigger conventions) to realize how badly broken some combinations could be and how all martial characters at higher levels looked the same (and non were pure classed). In the end the biggest factor in fun at the table are the people and, baring extremes, not the game.

Oct 28, 2012 -- 1:51PM, Zardnaar wrote:

The classes were different but i just asked my players what they did not like about 4th ed. I never played it only DMed it.
 Basically they did not care about their characters. In 4th ed you basically picked a role or a class.

I'll admit that about the first 10% of developing my first 4E character was based on the class... and then the reason for picking that class got nerfed before I played the character, so I had to do something somewhat different (but by then I had a character concept, in addition to a mechanical concept. And I do have another character where the concept was originally purely mechanical (and required a specific class) and I selected feats and powers through several levels and then built a person to justify the results. That person now has a lot of complexity and I could build the character concept in at least one other class.

But the large majority of my characters have stories first and then I look for the classes, feats, and other options that allowed me to realize that character.

 Each class really had an obvious path to go down

I've never noticed that.

and I know a Cleric is a better healer than a warlord but as long as you had a leader for the most part it did not matter what type of leader that was. Or what type of striker you had.

You are correct, (nearly) all the leader classes can do the leader's job and (nearly) all the striker classes can do the striker's job. And that's beautiful. 

It was also rapidly obvious which powers, feats and items were better than others. You really had to just pick the best ones in your defined role going down a predetermined path of powers.

It is not the edition's fault that your group consists of powergamers.

And in what edition was this NOT true of powergamers?

YOu did get the choice where you wanted to go but for the most part it did not matter what class or role you took as long as you did not neglect DPS.

Actually, I neglect DPS quite often. Like when I'm doing anything involving D&D. Since we don't time  our games in seconds.

I also often neglect DPR. In fact, the character that was built mechanically through several levels and then as a character has the most attention to damage-dealing of any character I've ever built in any edition... I kept damage as low as possible within the class.

DPR is of primary importance only for a striker. For anyone else it's secondary at most.

The original classes in the PHB go the most support so generally they were the best classes to pick as well. As long as you didn't do anything too stupid like focus on defending or healing over damage you were good to go.

You know, there ARE roles other than striker and striker-with-a-side-of-healing. The other roles are effective and useful - and fun. Perhaps the most fun I've had relative to the amount of time I've played the character was with my Bard.

To my players they said they didn't really  care about their characters because they were ultimatly disposable or replaceable.

Definitely less true in 4E than in prior editions. Because you can start at level 1 and, by default, actually expect that your character will probably survive. In 1E it's more like "don't bother naming your character before level 4". 3E isn't quite that bad, but a first-level character is definitely wearing a red shirt.

But further: in 1E you could replace a fighter of any level with another fighter of the same level - and very little else, because in the levels where a fighter had something to do nobody else could do it decently, while in high levels nobody else was quite as useless. At least in 4E if you want to replace a character, you can replace it with a character of another class that does the same job comparably well but in a different fashion.

Sounds like someone needed to take your players' character sheets away and ask them who their characters are. Where they grew up, who they grew up with. What inspires them, what angers them. What they dream about at night.

Because the character sheet is not the character. The character sheet is (mostly) combat stats about the character. Which leaves everything else unaddressed. Why is Zelle (bard) adventuring, why does she avoid Korranberg, who are her parents and why isn't she interested in finding out - and what's with all that hair? Where is Berrian (ranger|fighter) from and why won't he name it, why is he so angry toward his likewise-unnamed father, and what debt causes him to take a tenth of his share of treasure to a church? Why does Paz (wizard) never use spells that immediately damage anyone? These are all critical information about the character as a person, but there is very little room for that sort of thing on the character sheet because they don't affect combat.