tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5093473916215018208.post2691340549572896074..comments2024-03-03T00:13:20.566-08:00Comments on A Pack of Gnolls: 4E meets AD&D (pt 1)Sullyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08775443433933924102noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5093473916215018208.post-37574232427427365692011-06-09T12:09:37.452-07:002011-06-09T12:09:37.452-07:00"Options"
-I actually agree with you her..."Options"<br />-I actually agree with you here. But I also agree with you when you talk about "options" the second time. Where I draw the line and say that it's not worth it any more is the part where you have to buy four different fucking PHBs just to build a character. Pathfinder, in comparison, may be a damn heavy tome, but that one book is all you need.<br /><br /><b>Meanwhile...</b><br /><br />"Hour-Long Combats"<br />-Oh God yes. I played a 4E campaign and nothing else, not even mass combat in Rifts, has left me so consistently bored out of my skull.<br /><br />"Balanced Encounters"<br />-Again, I could hardly agree more. In fact, I want to add that the balance fetish in 4E is also imposed on the party with the formalization of roles; your strikers and defenders or whatever it was. 3E had the "each party must have a cleric" bug; 4E takes that and applies it to every role. My last campaign, I DMed for a mage, a fighter-mage, and a thief, no balance anywhere, and we made it work because everything was based on player action.<br /><br /><b>And then again</b><br />"Limit on spells/day for spellcasters."<br />-Why? Because frankly I'm disgusted with the power creep that I've seen over the editions. It doesn't matter whether you use Vancian magic, or power points, or mana, or Fatigue levels; you need to limit magic use. So quit your whining.<br /><br />I am curious, though... if you don't like spells to be a limited resource, how does that jive with your possible upcoming defense of 4E's ability to do resource-management?<br /><br />"Different level progression/experience charts for classes"<br />-Given that at high levels mages far outpower fighters, and given that (for example) rocket science is far more difficult to master than knitting, what you seem to be doing is criticizing a system that <em>actually makes sense</em>. Minus points for you.<br /><br />"Nonhuman level limits. <br />Nonhuman-only multiclassing. <br />Race-restrictions on classes."<br />-I agree with you on these, actually.<br /><br />Now justify this dislike in the face of 4E's obvious matching of various races to various classes. Oh, eladrin make good rogues and wizards. If you want to "shine" you'd better make your eladrin a rogue or wizard. See, this is so much better than those old-school silly halfling rogues. 8^P<br /><br />Okay, that's enough for now, methinks. I suppose I could have said most of it more tactfully, but please do take everything I've said in serious good humor, as a rational challenge rather than an attack, and respond (if you care to) in kind. Thanks!Confanityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10361443460498670841noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5093473916215018208.post-38504952431029811812011-06-09T12:05:17.732-07:002011-06-09T12:05:17.732-07:00"Balance between different types of character..."Balance between different types of characters is a good thing. Simple as that. Everybody gets a chance to shine."<br />-So what you're telling me is that all players have the exact same tastes? All players like using the same mechanics to shine in the exact same way?<br /><br />See, I have to disagree. Sometimes I went for the meticulous planning and only-intermittent action of the wizard. Sometimes I went for the flavor-text-rich religious adventures of the cleric. Sometimes I went for the roll-a-handful-of-dice-and-be-done-with-it consistent foe-slaying of the fighter. Sometimes I wanted to have all sorts of crazy skills and played a thief. Never once did I think to myself, "Gee, I do so wish to spend the rest of my gaming days choosing from an endless series of identical Powers, differentiated mostly by flavor text that nonetheless lacks verisimilitude."<br /><br />And that's just the mechanical angle. Some people RP because they want to kick in doors and split skulls. Some people RP because they want to be clever, to use their wits to solve puzzles and evade foes. Some people RP because they want to bend the very forces of nature. Some people want to get henchmen and followers and titles and land and castles; others want to amass vast lore; others just want to make a list of the monsters they kill. All the versions of DnD before 4 had, as you say, iconic classes tailored and hard-wired to appeal to these different tastes. 4E is a buffet where all the dishes look different but taste the same.<br /><br />But wait! It goes even deeper than that! Not all players want the same amount of time shining! Some want to hog the spotlight. Others just want to hang out with their friends and maybe roll some dice and quote some Monty Python. And there's a whole range in between. 4E <em>only</em>caters to the OCD crowd who is willing to spend hours carefully constructing a character, as you yourself pointed out. Not everybody wants to or even can commit that kind of time and calculation.<br /><br />And finally! Your underlying assumption is flawed. If old-school DnD has one advantage, it's that ability to "shine" is limited only by the player's willingness to imagine doing stuff. You seem to believe that a character can only "shine" if their DPS is equal to that of any other member of their party, but rolling a Con of 6, or only casting one spell per day, never stopped any of my characters from shining by running around and accomplishing stuff in-game.<br /><br />Examples: -I had a character "shine" by catching a cockatrice in a bag and trying to beat it to death against a tree. The bag ripped (of all the times to roll a 1!) and he got killed, but it was a blast. -I had a character "shine" by assassinating a fellow PC who had idly threatened to kill him. We had a trial! It was crazy! -I had a character "shine" by singing an impromptu song about xorn during an orcish siege of the town we were in. My friends thought it was hilarious. -I had a character "shine" by hunting down and killing the demon-possessed general who had killed her family, then helping drive the demonic army out of her homeland. She was a fighter with a mere Strength of 12 and she's my favorite character ever.<br /><br />Is your ideal game really one where everybody "shines" just by being exactly as effective as everyone else in combat, where everyone uses the same mechanic, at the cost of hours spent poring over paperwork and min-maxing? 8^(<br /><br />"Power Sources"<br />-In other words, you like the thin veneer of flavor text that covers the vast expanse of samey powers. I'm not impressed.Confanityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10361443460498670841noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5093473916215018208.post-75916895881830776232011-06-09T12:02:31.695-07:002011-06-09T12:02:31.695-07:00So wait, why do you like 4E?
"The Core Mecha...So wait, why <em>do</em> you like 4E?<br /><br />"The Core Mechanic"<br /> -This is where it becomes clear that I'm reading the series from top to bottom. I have to repeat, though... why is using the same d20 for everything good? If that's your taste, sure, whatever, but it's not an <em>inherently</em> good think like "iconic character types." It doesn't strike me as a positive quality of 4E. And in practical terms, if you always use the same die for all rolls, and rolling high is always good... doesn't that make you extra vulnerable to loaded dice and similar cheating? I saw a "joke" d20 once, for example, where the 1 had been replaced by a second 20. Very subtle and hard to detect, but perfectly designed to take advantage of a "core mechanic." Having a "core mechanic" is like every computer in the world running Windows: there's no benefit, and lots of potential drawbacks in matters of both security and personal taste.<br /><br />"Powers/Exploits/Spells/Prayers"<br /> -Hang on. You think that the system enforcement of using the same four moves again and again and again and again in every combat all the time is exciting and interesting?<br /><br />Your implied criticism of old-school gaming ("I hit it with my axe") merely serves to show that you've never really played OD&D. In any given combat, a fighter might be front-rank with that axe, or second-rank with a pole weapon, or back-rank with a missile weapon or a flask of flaming oil. Magic-users had the power to essentially end encounters with a single decisive spell, and thus had to carefully consider what spells to memorize, and what to use, and when.<br /><br /> And, perhaps most importantly, there were a lot fewer hit points in those days. Even if all you did in a given fight was "hit it with my axe," you only had to give most foes a whack or two before you were done. Even if a 4E PC has three different at-will powers, their enemy has 50hp and ultimately they're going to have to repeat themselves a lot more than the axe-fighter you poked fun at.<br /><br />"Codified Combat Modifiers"<br />-I agree with you that codifying this kind of stuff can be useful and reduces the amount of arbitrary DM fiat in the game. But who the hell are you to tell me the only proper way to DM is to memorize a hundred different status effects? I have a job, and a fiancee, and a difficult foreign language to master for the better job I hope to get later, and other responsibilities, and I <em>don't</em> have the free time left over to satisfy your self-righteous memorization fetish.Confanityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10361443460498670841noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5093473916215018208.post-18358847919889123302011-06-09T12:01:44.315-07:002011-06-09T12:01:44.315-07:00I have to agree that starting an edition war is po...I have to agree that starting an edition war is pointless; nobody wants to do that. But what I do want to do is pick at what I feel to be logical failings in your argument. You're free to enjoy and play whatever system you want; I may not understand why you like something, but I don't care and certainly don't object. What I object to is you attempting to justify your tastes using spurious logic and false claims about the objects of my tastes. 8^PConfanityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10361443460498670841noreply@blogger.com