Clerics were not just healers in any edition of D&D.
please read what I wrote, I never said that. I was replying to your idea that healing is (or should be) a role to itself, something that would cause the issues I stated
Wizards were not just for Area of Effects in any edition of D&D.
again I Never said this, I said wizards had many AoE's, and I was saying that a role based on AOE's is a bad idea
Knowing there is a dragon ahead, helps everyone kill the dragon. Rogues always had backstab. They could always hide. Being able to hit harder than the fighter occasionally is nothing new. 4E made rogues into melee combatants first who always hit harder than the fighters.
that is not what you said, you said "sneak" is a role, to which I replyed the reasons that is a bad idea, I even said sneak+striker is a good idea
While I spoke about the fluff, I was inferring about mechanics that support that fluff. Rangers are good in nature setting, good aligned, skilled at tracking, and have bonuses against specific creatures. Rogues are skilled in nonconventional combat and noncombat situations due to abilities that they have that are unique to them.
and I was saying that going to deep on that kind of stuff is a bad idea because it means EVERY ranger must be "good aligned, skilled at tracking..." I should be allowed to break that mold if I want to.
I disagree on many points.
Dying is not always final either. Many groups I have been in have found ways of bringing characters back. Fragile characters can often outlive the tough ones since they take more precautions.
Dying may not always be final but how easily you can bring someone back is dependant on the campain, therfor it should not be assumed to be easy in the base game. and even if all it costs is gold and time its still much worse then failing at socal or exploration. and that assumes there is someone left alive, in a TPK it would not matter how easy it is bring someone back
You don't need rules for combat. People are just accustomed to having them.
how much damage does a fireball do? how far can you jump? does armor impede this? can I attack twice in one round for reduced damage?
you need rules for those type of questions otherwise you might as well just should "I fireball the bad guy" or "I sword the bad guy" then after 5min of yelling say he is dead.
it also means the character I make at home, will play the way I think he will not in a random fashion becaus the DM think invokers should not have any burst attacks.
RP however because its basicly talking the DM can say what the NPC would say
"I spit in the kings face" "sigh, the king order's his guards to take you to a cell you idiot"
that needed no rules, same with exporation "I am looking for tracks a mountain dweling animal would make" "roll nature....ok you find some tracks of a mountain lion, you think its going back home"
There are groups that want to do 75-90% non-combat as well. Specializing in combat or non-combat doesn't mean you can't roleplay in other situations. You are just less effective. Everyone doesn't need to be a winner all the time.
I prefer balanced classes considering both combat and non-combat scenarios. Characters need not be equally useful in all scenarios. I don't want this kind of balance. In your opinion it is bad design. In my opinion it is good design as it represents reality And the increased need for teamwork.
keep in mind there is no effive differnce between being unable to do anything in a pillar, and doing it so badly (relitive to another party member) that there is no point in trying.
if the bard has 15 dipomacy and you hare 0 then you really dont have the option to roll, if you could succed then the bard would find it trivial, if the bard did not find it trivial then you would find it impossible.
I am not saying every situation I am saying every pillar, if you want to talk the king into paying you more the bard will be the best, but if you want to talk a chieften into giving you more forces maybe the fighter can intimidate him by convincing him his only hope is to give him more forces, and in this the bard is not as good.
or maybe your trying to trick a merchant into selling you something at under market price and the bard and fighter are on even footing.
the bolded sencence is a paradox, if classes are balanced you DONT have large parts of the game where one is worthless while the other one is overpowered.
and I am sorry but no it is not my opinion that balacning that way is bad desgin, it IS bad design telling a PC "your a fighter, so play the Wii until we get into a fight, your utterly worthless outside of one" is bad design period.
Balancing a game does not require full strength for each encounter. I like the idea of worn, battled, and weary adventurers marching into a final battle and hoping to survive. In your scenario, daily powers should be renewed before each fight to reach full strength. I try to force my PCs to struggle onward. It makes them uncomfortable knowing they aren't at full strength but I think it adds to the climactic battle. My goal is not to kill the players but to make the last fight exciting. The adventure is balanced as a whole and not for each individual encounter. This is my preference.
not full but you have to have some idea when you make the encounter, and there should be a known middle ground between nothing and full. this is what encounter powers are for, the DM knows that everyone will have enounter powers, and that, baring a very very bad day, everyone will be 3/4+hp. this means if he has a monstar that does 1/2 the max hp of the lowest hp person he will not be killing anyone.
Insulting someones grammar on a forum is like losing to someone in a drag race and saying they were cheating by having racing stripes.
Not only do the two things not relate to each other (the logic behind the person's position, and their grammar) but you sound like an idiot for saying it (and you should, because its really stupid )
but the lag time in a tabletop is so much worse than a video game that the video quality of a video game would win. Would you rather watch a seamless movie in standard 2D or a high quality High Def 3D but could only watch in in 15 second intervals with 45 seconds of lagtime between each.
Irrelevant and not a good comparison. The lag time in a TTRPG is acceptable because it is not a visual medium. I would not want to watch OTHERS playing a TTRPG.
I will take my imagination over the forced graphics anyday. And I love video games.
You accept lag time in TTRPG. Some video gamers don't And never make the transition to TTRPG.
You watch others in TTRPG whenever it isn't your turn.
The original point of comparison was strictly visual combat simulation. In my opinion, Video games simulate visual combat better than TTRPGs can. This is due to a combination of speed and real-time developments. Video games do not need to be turn based and are not delayed by real world aspects such as decision making, die rolling, calculations, and distractions.
Eletronical and MMO RPGs do really have advantages over TTRPG. Most differences are basically the difference between having a DM and having a machine. Other than that, there is the thing that RPG video-games are centuries ahead of D&D in terms of design. They have a multitude of systems available. Just look at Final Fantasy and all the changes that one game have over another. In Final Fantasy II you don't even have classic levels.
There is one advantage in class design that it’s not mentioned very often. The short version is: being a Wizard actually means something. I will try to explain this. A class is formed by several parts: It has the mechanics, which is obvious. But it also has fluff, flavor, description and legacy. Basically there are the stories about characters of that class, the class’s identity and all of such. To better represent my opinion, I shall bring to the discussion another commercial franchise: Final Fantasy. In many FFs there exists the Job system, which is really just a class system. Many times the Final Fantasy’s games uses a system different from that, but usually it’s a system unique to the game, and even so references to the Job system exist, so the Job system wins as most common system used by FF. Thing is, many people recognize FF Jobs, from classical Jobs such as Black Mage, White Mage, Warrior, Ninja, Paladin, Dragoon to less iconic Jobs such as, I don’t know, Jobs that only appeared in one to three games. Thing is, with considered time, these Jobs have all sort of Fluff and Legacy with then. Many characters not only use one Job, but also marked the series. When people talk about the Black Mage, for instance, not only they will remember the concept itself, but they will also remember all the appearances made in Job based games (which, in that specific case, are many) and also many characters like Palom from FFIV or Vivi from FFIX or Lulu from FFX. Things is, these Jobs marked the series and being one of them actually has meaning, because this Jobs have strong identities attached to them. The problem with classless systems is that, they are classless. What is a Wizard in a classless system? This really matter? In a classless system, is there some meaning in being a Wizard? The problem with classless systems is that these identities are kinda of lost, because being a Wizard is not so important, because being a Wizard does not have any mechanical marks and basically in a classless system, there is no Wizard by default, this doesn’t have meaning in a practical way. With class bases D&D, however, that is different. Being a Wizard in D&D has meaning, an when people talk about Wizards in D&D they will not only remember the current version of the Wizard, they will also remember all versions of the Wizard, and all characters and NPCs that are Wizards, and now, they will also remember the mechanical difference and the flavor, identity difference between the Wizard and the other spellcasting classes. This is something really hard to put in words, there is my best shot.
Right now, I would make Vancian the standard magic system for most classes in D&D (including Wizard and Cleric). What people complained is the fact that the Wizard was Vancian-Only. If it was Vancian-Default, that would be different. I've long advocated supporting both the Points of Light setting and settings full of magic items. I had some thought on one spellcasting system. Spoiler:Show
It is basically composed of three parts: 1. The Standard System: The standard system would be classic Vancian. Wizard: classic Vancian, have to learn spells first, and then prepare them. All the 9 spells levels. Cleric: It would be Vancian, but with some differences, The Cleric would carry on the tradition of choosing spells directly from the class’s spell list, but it would have some old school disadvantages to compensate, such as 7 spell-levels for Clerics and Druids (and even less for Paladins and Rangers), and most divine’s spells would be about healing and support (the Druid and the Ranger can have more offensive spells), and, in general, they would have less spells, perhaps even having divine spells (Cleric, Druid, Paladin and Ranger) be worse than arcane spells, as I’ve told that it was like this in pre-3rd Edition. 2. The Flagships The Flagships are classes that represent one alternative magic system in the standard system. They, by default, are not Vancian, they use another system (with the possibility of using Vancian or other systems). Sorcerer: This Sorcerer would be a little different than the other casters. They would have the same spell list as the Wizard (a la 3.X) and they will use, by default, flexible spell-slots spellcasting (the current system. Very like 3.X Sorcerer, but with class benefits that make then different, a la 4th Edition. With regards to other classes, I would make Bards Vancian, but the Warlock is also a good candidate to some different spellcasting mechanics. Possibly the Witch (4e post-Essentials subclass) somewhere? 3. Modular Magic Systems And there would be a module that changes the way that the spellcasting works. This would be a module that has guidelines about altering the default spellcasting mechanics. The guidelines would consist of how the quantity of spells cast can be ported over, and from which spells they prepare, etc... Let’s give a proper example: The Wizard would be classic Vancian. Thing is, for alternative casting systems, the Wizard would have guidelines that would be something on these lines: “They always prepare spells from the list of know spells. In alternative spellcasting modules, he can prepare a number of spells equal to 1+ Wizard’s level, and the number of spells slots or equivalent is equal to the number of spells per level per day.” This is not something that will have problems of text space. All that you need is some short guidelines about which spells they can chose to cast and how much spells they cast. The rest of these mechanics would be stated only once, in the module of alternative magic system. The good points: • Not only every Vancian class would have an option to be non-Vancian, but also the non-Vancian classes would have the options to be Vancian. Why some classes in default would be Vancian while others not? Add some variety for the new players and players of things like RPGA and Encounter. That and many of the editions of D&D had it like that. • It manages to both being classic with classic Vancian and satisfy the non-Vancian fans with flagships and modules. The bad points: • Using alternative magic systems do not raise your raw power but make casters more flexible. The classes that are already flexible (such as Sorcerer) would need some more flexibility to keep up. No idea how to handle martial characters, although.
We should get rid of at-will cantrips. Spoiler:Show
Okay, now that you’ve got the first panic reaction, let me explain it. Yes, many people like at-will cantrips and they are popular. They have everything that it takes to be popular. However, I think we should remove them from the game, at least as an assumption to all caster classes. First: At-will cantrips blur up the distinction between casters and martial characters, and makes being a gish useless. Basically in non at-will cantrips systems there is an advantage in martial characters: the fact that they have abilities that they can always use. But if we give every caster at-will cantrips this blurs up the difference between classes, take out a huge advantage of martial classes. There is also the gish issue. Basically in non at-will cantrips systems, there is a huge advantage of being a gish over being a full caster. The advantage of have some reliable action when out of spells. At-will cantrips weakens that advantage. Just for you to have some idea I was talking previously about the possibility of the Wizard being weaker than the Cleric (some time ago), and when I quoted the fact that the Cleric is a gish, people talked that this is not important, that it doesn’t have such impact because it will use its at-will cantrips. Being a gish should matter. Of course when being a gish actually matters, we can rebalance the classes but it should matter.
Second: At-will cantrips go into the opposite direction of trying to balance casters. Really when we are trying to balance classic or neo Vancian casters, why give to all of them at-will cantrips? Why we cannot use the absence of at-will cantrips to provide a drawback to balance casters? Third: At-will cantrips weaken the challenge of resource management. Really when you always have magic a great part of the challenge goes away. The possibility in being out of magic is not a bug, it is a feature It is part of the system, and this challenge don’t have to go away because it is fun. The challenge of running out of magic is part of the system, and fun. Fourth: At-will cantrips do not fit properly under every system. Really is not that I don’t like at-will magic, but I don’t think we should bake in every spellcasting system. In 4e it worked because it was part of AEDU, but now, they don’t feel part of anything. They seem to be an arbitrary addition to the game. The 3.5 Warlock was special because it was a class with at-will magic in a game where it doesn’t exist, otherwise, at-will magic. We can have at-will cantrips but it should be done it right, and not being a default assumption for every caster class. I’m worried if they are going to launch a mana spell-point based magic system for spellcasters. This system should not have at-will, no mana cost magic as default for every caster class, because running out of mana is part of the mana system. In Final Fantasy they even have no MP cost magic, but they do it right, and when they use no MP cost magic, it is special because it is in a game that is otherwise MP based.
4e did a great job of solving this conundrum with a two-part procedure: first, they sawed off the rough edges that made certain classes absolutely necessary. Most obviously, they gave all characters out of combat (and some in combat) healing, so the party wasn't screwed if nobody wanted to play a cleric.
But the party was equally screwed if no one wanted to play a leader. In fact, it was harder to play 4e without a leader than it was to play 1e-3e without a cleric, as the game was so much more designed for the four roles. It solved it beautifully if someone was willing to play a leader, but if everyone wanted to be a striker the game hiccuped. (And if you had two leaders in your five-man party everyone became extra hard to kill.)
See, I'd disagree with you here. I've seen a group play 4e from level 1 to 30 without a full leader. (They had a cleric hybrid.) I've also seen groups without a controller, with two defenders, etc. (Never seen one without a striker, but I'm guessing that would work too, just a lot slower.) You have to change your equipment, maybe pick up a couple feats, but the game is designed to allow different tactical approaches while remaining fairly robust.
I think this one of the underappreciated aspects of 4e is how much they actually did to REDUCE the "core four" requirement. Healing surges meant that once combat was over, the party could heal without dragging along a cleric or wand or NPC. Rituals divorced from class meant that you didn't need a wizard when you wanted to teleport somewhere and a cleric when you wanted to resurrect someone - anyone remotely magical could do the job by investing a feat or two.
My big question is how well 5e will continue that trend. They had HD for a while, and now those being whisked away to module-land; rituals are no longer class-independent, so you need a high-level wizard to teleport again; and the last L&L specifically said they're going back to an expectation that the party will RELY on clerical (or other magical) healing to get through its adventures. Does this mean that the DM will be responsible for tacking on modules to fit whatever the current party makeup is? As in, "the cleric couldn't make it this week, so for today everyone can use HD to heal out of combat"?
I agree that healing is boring and shouldn't be the heart of the cleric OR warlord class. But apparently the majority of players, and now WOTC, disagree with me, because the current system clearly encourages clerics to focus on healing, and they're explicitly moving in the direction of increasing this dependence.
I actually prefer if adventurers don't need to be fully rested and healed for every encounter. I am not sure why that has become the standard.
I don't know where it started from, but I imagine that it is used in RPGs in the same way that it is used in a lot of computer games in recent years, both first-person shooter types and computer RPGs. The reason is simple: if you know that players are going to be fully healed or almost fully healed, then you can play encounters based on that level of expected durability and available resources. A good example is with boss fights. If after every fight players get fully healed, generally speaking, then the boss fight can be planned as a difficult fight and would still be a difficult fight even if it was the first fight of the day. If, however, the players are constantly draining hit points and might come into a fight with only 25% of their normal maximum, then the boss fight might actually have been a push over had it been the first fight of the day. Even worse is that you can't actually know how much damage the party will have sustained during the course of reaching the boss fight, so it makes it very, very hard to determine the level of damage that the boss should be able to inflict. Being fully healed between every fight, again, within reason, makes the job of DMs and adventure writers easier as they are better at predicting what the party will look like at any given time.
The presence and absence of Clerics (and other healing classes and healing resources) in pre-4e games made a huge difference here since, generally speaking, a party will often be fully healed or mostly fully healed between every fight if they have access to such healing magic or they will be on a gradual decline of hit points if they don't. Someone writing an adventure book for TSR or WotC couldn't know beforehand what situation the party would be in, so they either had to write in such a way as it wouldn't matter, create release valves for the party to cheat out of later encounters if they were low on hit points, or just pick one assumption and go with it. With 4e, regardless of what a party could do within a battle, all adventure writers could safely assume that every party member had at least 80% of their hit points before every fight, within reason on the number of fights.
Now, there is an important difference between being fully up on all resources, ie. exploiting the 5-minute work day, and being full up on hit points, used with plentiful healing magic or healing surges or whatever. This difference is made harder by the difference power level of daily abilities vs. at-will abilities, but that is a topic for another thread.
4e did a great job of solving this conundrum with a two-part procedure: first, they sawed off the rough edges that made certain classes absolutely necessary. Most obviously, they gave all characters out of combat (and some in combat) healing, so the party wasn't screwed if nobody wanted to play a cleric.
But the party was equally screwed if no one wanted to play a leader. In fact, it was harder to play 4e without a leader than it was to play 1e-3e without a cleric, as the game was so much more designed for the four roles. It solved it beautifully if someone was willing to play a leader, but if everyone wanted to be a striker the game hiccuped. (And if you had two leaders in your five-man party everyone became extra hard to kill.)
See, I'd disagree with you here. I've seen a group play 4e from level 1 to 30 without a full leader. (They had a cleric hybrid.) I've also seen groups without a controller, with two defenders, etc. (Never seen one without a striker, but I'm guessing that would work too, just a lot slower.) You have to change your equipment, maybe pick up a couple feats, but the game is designed to allow different tactical approaches while remaining fairly robust.
I think this one of the underappreciated aspects of 4e is how much they actually did to REDUCE the "core four" requirement. Healing surges meant that once combat was over, the party could heal without dragging along a cleric or wand or NPC. Rituals divorced from class meant that you didn't need a wizard when you wanted to teleport somewhere and a cleric when you wanted to resurrect someone - anyone remotely magical could do the job by investing a feat or two.
My big question is how well 5e will continue that trend. They had HD for a while, and now those being whisked away to module-land; rituals are no longer class-independent, so you need a high-level wizard to teleport again; and the last L&L specifically said they're going back to an expectation that the party will RELY on clerical (or other magical) healing to get through its adventures. Does this mean that the DM will be responsible for tacking on modules to fit whatever the current party makeup is? As in, "the cleric couldn't make it this week, so for today everyone can use HD to heal out of combat"?
I agree that healing is boring and shouldn't be the heart of the cleric OR warlord class. But apparently the majority of players, and now WOTC, disagree with me, because the current system clearly encourages clerics to focus on healing, and they're explicitly moving in the direction of increasing this dependence.
I have to agree, the freedom is picking your class is a huge boon in 4e, both within your role and being able to funciton with only 3 roles, or being able to cobble together feats and such to have leaderish abilities for the party with no leader.
Insulting someones grammar on a forum is like losing to someone in a drag race and saying they were cheating by having racing stripes.
Not only do the two things not relate to each other (the logic behind the person's position, and their grammar) but you sound like an idiot for saying it (and you should, because its really stupid )
I actually prefer if adventurers don't need to be fully rested and healed for every encounter. I am not sure why that has become the standard.
I don't know where it started from, but I imagine that it is used in RPGs in the same way that it is used in a lot of computer games in recent years, both first-person shooter types and computer RPGs. The reason is simple: if you know that players are going to be fully healed or almost fully healed, then you can play encounters based on that level of expected durability and available resources. A good example is with boss fights. If after every fight players get fully healed, generally speaking, then the boss fight can be planned as a difficult fight and would still be a difficult fight even if it was the first fight of the day. If, however, the players are constantly draining hit points and might come into a fight with only 25% of their normal maximum, then the boss fight might actually have been a push over had it been the first fight of the day. Even worse is that you can't actually know how much damage the party will have sustained during the course of reaching the boss fight, so it makes it very, very hard to determine the level of damage that the boss should be able to inflict. Being fully healed between every fight, again, within reason, makes the job of DMs and adventure writers easier as they are better at predicting what the party will look like at any given time.
The presence and absence of Clerics (and other healing classes and healing resources) in pre-4e games made a huge difference here since, generally speaking, a party will often be fully healed or mostly fully healed between every fight if they have access to such healing magic or they will be on a gradual decline of hit points if they don't. Someone writing an adventure book for TSR or WotC couldn't know beforehand what situation the party would be in, so they either had to write in such a way as it wouldn't matter, create release valves for the party to cheat out of later encounters if they were low on hit points, or just pick one assumption and go with it. With 4e, regardless of what a party could do within a battle, all adventure writers could safely assume that every party member had at least 80% of their hit points before every fight, within reason on the number of fights.
Now, there is an important difference between being fully up on all resources, ie. exploiting the 5-minute work day, and being full up on hit points, used with plentiful healing magic or healing surges or whatever. This difference is made harder by the difference power level of daily abilities vs. at-will abilities, but that is a topic for another thread.
I liked the video game Karateka. You healed a little after each fight but generally not fully. Each successive combat wore you down. In order to win the entire game, it mattered how well you fought in the first fights as much as the final fight.
You see this in movies. The final battle, the hero is already injured and hurting from all the previous battles with the henchmen and underlings. The hero digs deep and pulls out a victory.
I dislike the idea among players that they need to always be at full capacity. Wizards are the worst in this regards. Many I've played with will burn through high level spells against the weaker enemies and then want to rest while others are still in very good shape.
As a DM, I force them to fight on. I guess I need to make it clear from the beginning that this is the expectation.
I actually prefer if adventurers don't need to be fully rested and healed for every encounter. I am not sure why that has become the standard.
I don't know where it started from, but I imagine that it is used in RPGs in the same way that it is used in a lot of computer games in recent years, both first-person shooter types and computer RPGs. The reason is simple: if you know that players are going to be fully healed or almost fully healed, then you can play encounters based on that level of expected durability and available resources. A good example is with boss fights. If after every fight players get fully healed, generally speaking, then the boss fight can be planned as a difficult fight and would still be a difficult fight even if it was the first fight of the day. If, however, the players are constantly draining hit points and might come into a fight with only 25% of their normal maximum, then the boss fight might actually have been a push over had it been the first fight of the day. Even worse is that you can't actually know how much damage the party will have sustained during the course of reaching the boss fight, so it makes it very, very hard to determine the level of damage that the boss should be able to inflict. Being fully healed between every fight, again, within reason, makes the job of DMs and adventure writers easier as they are better at predicting what the party will look like at any given time.
The presence and absence of Clerics (and other healing classes and healing resources) in pre-4e games made a huge difference here since, generally speaking, a party will often be fully healed or mostly fully healed between every fight if they have access to such healing magic or they will be on a gradual decline of hit points if they don't. Someone writing an adventure book for TSR or WotC couldn't know beforehand what situation the party would be in, so they either had to write in such a way as it wouldn't matter, create release valves for the party to cheat out of later encounters if they were low on hit points, or just pick one assumption and go with it. With 4e, regardless of what a party could do within a battle, all adventure writers could safely assume that every party member had at least 80% of their hit points before every fight, within reason on the number of fights.
Now, there is an important difference between being fully up on all resources, ie. exploiting the 5-minute work day, and being full up on hit points, used with plentiful healing magic or healing surges or whatever. This difference is made harder by the difference power level of daily abilities vs. at-will abilities, but that is a topic for another thread.
I liked the video game Karateka. You healed a little after each fight but generally not fully. Each successive combat wore you down. In order to win the entire game, it mattered how well you fought in the first fights as much as the final fight.
You see this in movies. The final battle, the hero is already injured and hurting from all the previous battles with the henchmen and underlings. The hero digs deep and pulls out a victory.
I dislike the idea among players that they need to always be at full capacity. Wizards are the worst in this regards. Many I've played with will burn through high level spells against the weaker enemies and then want to rest while others are still in very good shape.
As a DM, I force them to fight on. I guess I need to make it clear from the beginning that this is the expectation.
that was one of the idea's behind healing surges, that you can rest up for a little bit but it still took something out of you
Insulting someones grammar on a forum is like losing to someone in a drag race and saying they were cheating by having racing stripes.
Not only do the two things not relate to each other (the logic behind the person's position, and their grammar) but you sound like an idiot for saying it (and you should, because its really stupid )
You accept lag time in TTRPG. Some video gamers don't And never make the transition to TTRPG.
If you want to play TTRPG's you have to accept that lag time. it is the nature of the beast. Some TTRPG players don't play video games because they don't like the controller. I don't consider lag time in a TTRPG a problem, it is physical limitation of the game type which in order to control, requires a change in game play.
You watch others in TTRPG whenever it isn't your turn.
But I am interested in what happens because my actions are dependent on it. I would not watch a film with that lag time, or even play a video game with that lag time because it would disrupt the film. The lag time does not disrupt the TTRPG experience.
The original point of comparison was strictly visual combat simulation. In my opinion, Video games simulate visual combat better than TTRPGs can. This is due to a combination of speed and real-time developments. Video games do not need to be turn based and are not delayed by real world aspects such as decision making, die rolling, calculations, and distractions.
This is self evident though. I might have missed a previous post somewhere but I don't think anyone would or could argue against this. I don't think it is valuable to compare a combat in TTRPG which is a storytelling fascilitator (even the results of dice rolls; the players and DM need to describe actions), to a video game combat which is dynamic and real time.
It is like reading an Avengers comic and expecting it to have the same visual effect as the film.
What the Comic can do, and often may do better than the film is invoke emotions in the reader.
Both mediums invoke emotion, but one is superior with sensory stimulus.
CAMRA preserves and protects real ale from the homogenization of modern beer production.
See, I'd disagree with you here. I've seen a group play 4e from level 1 to 30 without a full leader. (They had a cleric hybrid.) I've also seen groups without a controller, with two defenders, etc. (Never seen one without a striker, but I'm guessing that would work too, just a lot slower.) You have to change your equipment, maybe pick up a couple feats, but the game is designed to allow different tactical approaches while remaining fairly robust.
Doing something "without a full leader" is vastly different then doing something "without a leader". Hybrid removes most of the constraints on a traditional party.
Imagine a world where the first-time D&D player rolls stats, picks a race, picks a class, picks an alignment, and buys gear to create a character. Imagine if an experienced player, maybe the person helping our theoretical player learn the ropes, could also make a character by rolling ability scores and picking a race, class, feat, skills, class features, spells or powers, and so on. Those two players used different paths to build characters, but the system design allows them to play at the same table. -Mearl
I actually prefer if adventurers don't need to be fully rested and healed for every encounter. I am not sure why that has become the standard.
I don't know where it started from, but I imagine that it is used in RPGs in the same way that it is used in a lot of computer games in recent years, both first-person shooter types and computer RPGs. The reason is simple: if you know that players are going to be fully healed or almost fully healed, then you can play encounters based on that level of expected durability and available resources. A good example is with boss fights. If after every fight players get fully healed, generally speaking, then the boss fight can be planned as a difficult fight and would still be a difficult fight even if it was the first fight of the day. If, however, the players are constantly draining hit points and might come into a fight with only 25% of their normal maximum, then the boss fight might actually have been a push over had it been the first fight of the day. Even worse is that you can't actually know how much damage the party will have sustained during the course of reaching the boss fight, so it makes it very, very hard to determine the level of damage that the boss should be able to inflict. Being fully healed between every fight, again, within reason, makes the job of DMs and adventure writers easier as they are better at predicting what the party will look like at any given time.
The presence and absence of Clerics (and other healing classes and healing resources) in pre-4e games made a huge difference here since, generally speaking, a party will often be fully healed or mostly fully healed between every fight if they have access to such healing magic or they will be on a gradual decline of hit points if they don't. Someone writing an adventure book for TSR or WotC couldn't know beforehand what situation the party would be in, so they either had to write in such a way as it wouldn't matter, create release valves for the party to cheat out of later encounters if they were low on hit points, or just pick one assumption and go with it. With 4e, regardless of what a party could do within a battle, all adventure writers could safely assume that every party member had at least 80% of their hit points before every fight, within reason on the number of fights.
Now, there is an important difference between being fully up on all resources, ie. exploiting the 5-minute work day, and being full up on hit points, used with plentiful healing magic or healing surges or whatever. This difference is made harder by the difference power level of daily abilities vs. at-will abilities, but that is a topic for another thread.
It started back during 1E when railroad style adventures started appearing. A story based railroad doesn't have a lot of tolerance for running out of resources and heading back to town to rest, not like an exploration based sandbox. As story based railroading became more common, going back to rest became more of an issue, with the consequences being killing princesses if consequences for failing to finish existed, or the 5 minute workday when those consequences didn't exist.
Encounter based resource recharging is much easier to control and predict.
