# Cynicism of an AD&D refugee



## pawsplay (Nov 10, 2008)

Ok, fair warning. This is a fairly cynical post. 

So, with 4e, they decided to streamline things, silo classes into their archetypes, and try to balance everything. They also created an explosion of individual powers for every class. Some classes got more powers, others ended up with less. There are plenty of advanteges to the approach they took.

But there is a glaring weakness. It isn't very easy to improvise a new class, and each class is pretty limited in what it does well. Multiclassing sometimes works well, but other times, it just doesn't do anything.

Now, the easiest way to address this problem is to publish. More paths, more powers, a couple of new classes. Every gap is now a potential new area for published material. Which, by the way, costs money, either in terms of a Dragon subscription or in the way of a new book.

So where does that leave us? Let's say you played and enjoyed an Eldritch Knight in D&D 3.5. Well, in 4e, you can choose to 

A) suck worse than a poorly planned 3.0 fighter/wizard, by taking less than exciting multiclass choices
B) lose your character's basic flavor, by taking somewhat more effective multiclass choices
C) play something else
D) pay money

Now, there's no question that fencers, fighter-mages, lightly armored fighters and the like benefitted a lot from the 3.5 splatbooks. But even with just core, they're _viable_. Perhaps not ideal, but in their own niche, as good as anything else. Not so with 4e.

Much like Rifts, you have to pay to play. Sourcebook after sourcebook, slowly giving you the options you need to play the character you want, or giving you the upgrades you need to compete with the other PCs. 

It reminds me of the darkest days of AD&D 2e, when TSR began publishing a splatbook for every class and every race, full of "kits." In addition to the power ups to be found, these kits more often than not simply allowed you to do something you wanted to before but found strenuous under the class system. Now, I can think of precious few AD&D 2e characters, kit or no, who can't be translated into 3.5 terms, usually with just core. But 4e? Forget about it. 

I quit playing AD&D around when Powers & Skills came out. While some have made comparisons between 4e and the earliest editions, 4e reminds me strikingly of AD&D 2.5. Only this time, born as what it will be, with built-in incompleteness. Dare I say it, collectability?

In the long run, 4e may end up costing similarly to what 3.5 cost to many collectors. But it's clear it was designed with returning revenue in mind. Online subscriptions. Classes forever in need of expansion. Old options excised and then reintroduced. With 3.5 I felt like a I had a choice; very rarely did an option in a new book presuppose something in another. Toward the very end, I saw just the beginnings of "new core" with new Invocations and such showing up in each book. But never so much it crowded out what I could use. I cherry-picked from the very beginning, and I never felt left out. Sure, I didn't have the Dragon Slayer with its full BAB and two good saves and caster progression at 1st level, but so what? I didn't _need_ it, and if someone referenced it online, it didn't take much to fill me in. 

While I am sure the new D&D was designed with lofty game play goals in mind, I do not hesitate to suggest it was designed with certain financial goals in mind, too. Now, I am one for good business, but I would never deliberately attempt to make my customers pay more for less value, and that's what I feel is being sold here.


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## doctorhook (Nov 10, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> ...
> 
> So where does that leave us? Let's say you played and enjoyed an Eldritch Knight in D&D 3.5. Well, in 4e, you can choose to
> 
> ...



I've gotta correct you here, pawsplay:


A. is impossible. In 4E, effectiveness is built into the basic mechanics of every class, making every character at least moderately effective; one or two feats spent on multiclassing will never break you in 4E. OTOH, in 3E, if you multiclassed poorly and wasted a couple feats, you'd be totally hooped compared to an average, single-classed character. Thus, it's impossible for a 4E character to "suck worse than a poorly planned 3.0 fighter/wizard."
B. is an old debate: Do character options define "flavor"?
C. is always applicable.
D. is _especially_ always applicable. On this basis, I feel this is a particularly unfair argument against 4E, particularly if it's leveled at DDI. A DDI subscription costs dramatically less than the total of all of the material it presents, especially when you consider that it presents the mechanics from each book.



			
				pawsplay said:
			
		

> Much like Rifts, you have to pay to play. Sourcebook after sourcebook, slowly giving you the options you need to play the character you want, or giving you the upgrades you need to compete with the other PCs.
> 
> It reminds me of the darkest days of AD&D 2e, when TSR began publishing a splatbook for every class and every race, full of "kits." In addition to the power ups to be found, these kits more often than not simply allowed you to do something you wanted to before but found strenuous under the class system. Now, I can think of precious few AD&D 2e characters, kit or no, who can't be translated into 3.5 terms, usually with just core. But 4e? Forget about it.
> 
> ...



I absolutely agree that 4E has been designed with a financial motive, but I disagree that it's the sole motive. I recognize your concern about 4E presenting less material, although I don't share it; I definitely disagree that 4E is a "[deliberate] attempt to make... customers pay more for less value," because I definitely don't feel that 4E has been of less value than 3.5E has. In fact, I'd argue it offers me more value, because I have to worry much less about balance when a new product comes out for 4E than I did with 3.5E.


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## Kwalish Kid (Nov 10, 2008)

Well, the people at WotC could have decided to design D&D without any ability to make money and then *never published it*.


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## WarlockLord (Nov 10, 2008)

I agree with the OP here.  So much is missing from core that it feels like WoTC put "pump our customers for more money" over "make a good product."


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## pawsplay (Nov 10, 2008)

Well, I didn't want to get too far into the mechanical nitty gritty, but just to be clear, what I intended to address with A) was the option of spending a couple of feats to do power swaps that are not synergistic. Sucking worse than a poorly planned 3.0 fighter/wizard was perhaps a hyperbole... I will grant that the 4e version probably sucks no worse than the 3.0 version in its own special way.


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## ExploderWizard (Nov 10, 2008)

WarlockLord said:


> I agree with the OP here. So much is missing from core that it feels like WoTC put "pump our customers for more money" over "make a good product."




It was simply an effort to produce what they believed to be a good game over a longer product cycle than the previous edition. Supplemental material sells better if its considered core. Core books are more likely to be purchased by everyone in a group rather than just those interested in particular info from a specialized splat. Thats the reason WOTC produces so few adventures. One person in niche market group buying a product is not a good revenue model. 

As a bonus, the slew of core books weighing down the 4E crowd will make the idea of most everything being on cards in 5E welcome news. 

Game design goes hand in hand with planned obsolescence.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 10, 2008)

Pawsplay said:
			
		

> While I am sure the new D&D was designed with lofty game play goals in mind, I do not hesitate to suggest it was designed with certain financial goals in mind, too. Now, I am one for good business, but I would never deliberately attempt to make my customers pay more for less value, and that's what I feel is being sold here.




No matter what edition, you are being pumped for everything you're worth. The less work they have to do for your dollar, the better off they are. That's pretty basic business, there. 4e is no different than any other incarnation of D&D in that respect.

Now, usually what makes it okay is this idea of _value_. But value is a pretty subjective thing. One man's trash and all that. 

You could say that the lack of variety is diminishing D&D's value for you. It's true that 4e has less out-of-the-box options than 3e, and it's also true that part of the reason for some of that is to drive up sales of future books. That's less variety.

But variety isn't important to everyone.

Some people find greater value in whatever 4e is giving them. They don't find that much value in greater variety..

Yes, 4e was made, in part, to make more money, and that certainly affected the game at many levels. The ultimate question is this: Is what is left valuable enough to you? If so, you're good. If not, there's a lot of alternate options out there.


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## Cadfan (Nov 10, 2008)

Hmm.  I mean, if its Eldritch Knight you're after, you could be a Wizard of the Spiral Tower, or you could be a Warlord multiclassed into a Wizard, or... well, you get the idea.

I dunno.  I understand that some people are really, really attached to certain races and classes, and those races and classes aren't in the core rules.  But come on now.  Haven't we moved beyond that?  Limited space, need to add new material while paying homage to the old, depth to classes versus number of classes, doesn't that basically cover it?

Come 5e, 4e grognards are going to be raging because the, I dunno, Hexblade is core, and the Warlord got bumped from the PHB.  I guess I can understand it, if Fighter got bumped I'd be annoyed, but it seems like this is a non issue when you view it from a distance.


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## jdrakeh (Nov 10, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> Now, I am one for good business, but I would never deliberately attempt to make my customers pay more for less value, and that's what I feel is being sold here.




White Wolf product lines must give you fits, then.


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## Remathilis (Nov 10, 2008)

WarlockLord said:


> I agree with the OP here.  So much is missing from core that it feels like WoTC put "pump our customers for more money" over "make a good product."




I'm beginning to think the worst thing WotC ever did was give away 3.X for free in the form of the SRD. By doing so, the created an expectation that the D&D rules should be mostly free, fairly complete, and all further/future supplements were only "splat" that served to clutter the game with rules the DM must work tirelessly to squelch.

While I don't think 4e's core is "complete" I can completely see the rationale for stringing out its release of important info and making the supplements much more important to the game as a whole. Does my wallet like it? No. But I completely understand them wanting to make money by selling stuff.


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## CleverNickName (Nov 10, 2008)

Mourn arriving in 5...4...3...2...  

I really don't know enough about the new rules to start writing new material, so maybe someone else can answer this question:

How hard would it be to create your own version of an Eldritch Knight in 4E?  This seems like it would be the best way to solve the "not getting what I want, and not wanting to spend more money" problem.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 10, 2008)

> Does my wallet like it? No. But I completely understand them wanting to make money by selling stuff




If you don't like it, why pay for it?

That's mostly rhetorical, really, but if most consumers' wallets don't like it, they will have more and more trouble making money by selling stuff _like this_.

4e has to provide a solid motivation for paying for the game, a solid _value_. That's subjective, of course, but it's easier to find value in something that you find has a lot of useful content for the money you paid than to find value in something that you find has less useful content than you expected for the money you paid.


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## Holy Bovine (Nov 10, 2008)

The worst thing any RPG publisher can do is give the impression they want to make money.

Actually that's the second worse thing.  The worse thing is them trying to make a _profit_.


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## Remathilis (Nov 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> If you don't like it, why pay for it?
> 
> That's mostly rhetorical, really, but if most consumers' wallets don't like it, they will have more and more trouble making money by selling stuff _like this_.
> 
> 4e has to provide a solid motivation for paying for the game, a solid _value_. That's subjective, of course, but it's easier to find value in something that you find has a lot of useful content for the money you paid than to find value in something that you find has less useful content than you expected for the money you paid.




Ah, I only dislike because I'm poor, but in response to your thought, I did think 3e was a better value:money ratio. It doesn't make 4e any more/less fun, but I get the feeling I paid for a lot less in the 4e books than I got in the 3e books (one need only look at the magic items section or the traps section to see this).


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## CardinalXimenes (Nov 10, 2008)

CleverNickName said:


> Mourn arriving in 5...4...3...2...
> 
> I really don't know enough about the new rules to start writing new material, so maybe someone else can answer this question:
> 
> How hard would it be to create your own version of an Eldritch Knight in 4E?  This seems like it would be the best way to solve the "not getting what I want, and not wanting to spend more money" problem.



Well, you could play a swordmage. You're a guy who hits people with swords and casts spells to help you do that better. If you want more classical wizard powers, then you just multiclass into wizard- since both swordmages and wizards share Int as their prime requisite, your powers are every bit as strong as a "real" wizard.

You could argue that you can't really be a heavy-armor type with that class and not waste feats, but Eldritch Knight doesn't let you wear _any_ armor without some other prestige class ability.


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## Irda Ranger (Nov 10, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> It isn't very easy to improvise a new class,



I think it's actually easier than 3E. Because of the universal mechanics (not just d20, but effects like stun and slide) you can see the tradeoffs the different classes have made. That makes it much easier to adjust the settings, so to speak.




pawsplay said:


> each class is pretty limited in what it does well.



That's a feature, not a bug.  Put another way, it's crystal clear what each class is good at.




pawsplay said:


> So where does that leave us? Let's say you played and enjoyed an Eldritch Knight in D&D 3.5. Well, in 4e, you can choose to
> 
> A) suck worse than a poorly planned 3.0 fighter/wizard, by taking less than exciting multiclass choices
> B) lose your character's basic flavor, by taking somewhat more effective multiclass choices
> ...



B.s.  How much money have you spent on 3.x vs. 4.0?  A lot more, I bet. You already own all the options.




pawsplay said:


> Now, there's no question that fencers, fighter-mages, lightly armored fighters and the like benefitted a lot from the 3.5 splatbooks. But even with just core, they're _viable_. Perhaps not ideal, but in their own niche, as good as anything else. Not so with 4e.



Sure they are. It's called playing a Rogue. The "Fighter" (the class) is the heavy weapons guy. If you want to be a skirmisher play a Ranger or Rogue. They're Martial classes for a reason.




pawsplay said:


> splats are evil! (paraphrased; not actual quote)



Bah. Your arguments are old & tired. They've been aired a hundred times already.

4E is designed so that each book is "complete." You don't need any additional books to play a Fighter. That's pretty cool. The additional books will bring whole new classes, races and power sources (and those books will also be "complete" in that sense).

The fact is that lots of people like buying more race & class options. That's not my cup of tea, but I understand the market demand there, so WotC would be dumb to let someone else supply it.


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## malraux (Nov 10, 2008)

Remathilis said:


> Ah, I only dislike because I'm poor, but in response to your thought, I did think 3e was a better value:money ratio. It doesn't make 4e any more/less fun, but I get the feeling I paid for a lot less in the 4e books than I got in the 3e books (one need only look at the magic items section or the traps section to see this).




I sorta see this point of view, but I also think that what WotC has done by not making the PHB I, MM I, DMG I not overbroad is to make sure that later products have a similar value to money as the core three.  Give how little of the books is actual rules, I think its entirely plausible, though not likely, that the PHB II will look exactly like the phb I, just with new races, classes, etc, making the PHB I irrelevant if you don't need stuff from it.

This might be a worse deal for people who only ever buy the phb I, but its a much better deal for people who buy a large range of books.


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## Imaro (Nov 10, 2008)

jdrakeh said:


> White Wolf product lines must give you fits, then.




Huh??  ... I don't get this.  I feel that spending a little over $100 on nWoD books...gives me a more robust and complete game than the core 4e books give me.  Maybe I just don't get what you're talking about.  Please explain.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 10, 2008)

> This might be a worse deal for people who only ever buy the phb I, but its a much better deal for people who buy a large range of books.




I don't get this.

How?

Future splats could be chock full of brand spankin' new stuff to get the bang for my buck.

They don't need to parse out the core in order to make new splats a "better deal."

The "better deal" would be to give us new stuff in the future, rather than just making us more able to do again what we did two years ago just fine.


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## darjr (Nov 10, 2008)

One thing that I think keeps getting missed in this argument is the cost of development.

Even if the core books have fewer options or mechanics or word count, they could still be a better value through development. Time, effort, skill, care, and love for the work of developing quality rules costs money. That value isn't recorded in number of options or word count. 

I guess an example would be simplifying the rules. Lots of fine tuning of rules and stripping some of them down to bare essentials, while trying to still provide good play, results in a smaller word count, and seemingly or really, in fewer options.

Another example is editing. Sometimes good editing starts by being ruthless and cutting until only the simplest of prose that expresses an idea is left. Should that end product cost less than the unedited, uncut version? Not necessarily, because the value might have gone up even as the end product got lighter.


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## malraux (Nov 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> I don't get this.
> 
> How?
> 
> ...




But really, for 3e, the splats were never as good as the core, IMHO.  Certainly there was never a splat so good that I didn't see a reason to use it over my PHB, just as a supplement to.

Besides, I'm certainly not arguing that WotC is parsing out little bits of stuff, just that they are thinking ahead so that future books will have a space.


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## chitzk0i (Nov 10, 2008)

I see an additional option: borrowing books from your D&D group.  Unless you play exclusively online, if someone else in your group has a book, you could use it too.


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## Imaro (Nov 10, 2008)

darjr said:


> One thing that I think keeps getting missed in this argument is the cost of development.
> 
> Even if the core books have fewer options or mechanics or word count, they could still be a better value through development. Time, effort, skill, care, and love for the work of developing quality rules costs money. That value isn't recorded in number of options or word count.
> 
> ...




Call me skeptical of this reasoning... especially since the skill challenge rules still don't seem to have been ironed out properly (even with the errata) ... and there has been a nice bit of errata for the core rules released since they went on sale.  Just not sure I'm buying this is where all the value went.


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## Delta (Nov 10, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> While I am sure the new D&D was designed with lofty game play goals in mind, I do not hesitate to suggest it was designed with certain financial goals in mind, too. Now, I am one for good business, but I would never deliberately attempt to make my customers pay more for less value, and that's what I feel is being sold here.




Gygax agrees. From Dragon 1979:



> From a standpoint of sales, I beam broadly at the very thought of an unending string of new, improved, super, energized, versions of D&D being hyped to the loyal followers of the gaming hobby in general and role playing fantasy games in particular.
> 
> As a game designer I do not agree, particularly as a gamer who began with chess. The original could benefit from a careful reorganization and expansion to clarify things, and this might be done at some future time. As all of the ADVANCED D&D system is not written yet, it is a bit early for prognostication, but I envision only minor expansions and some rules amending on a gradual, edition to edition, basis. When you have a fine product, it is time to let well enough alone. I do not believe that hobbyists and casual players should be continually barraged with new rules, new systems, and new drains on their purses.


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## darjr (Nov 10, 2008)

Imaro said:


> Call me skeptical of this reasoning... especially since the skill challenge rules still don't seem to have been ironed out properly (even with the errata) ... and there has been a nice bit of errata for the core rules released since they went on sale.  Just not sure I'm buying this is where all the value went.




No, I'm not saying it's where *all* the value went. I do think that, at it's core, its a great game, and they've done great work with it. I'm satisfied with that value. Some of the bits and pieces, some even important ones, have issues, but the big value changes for me are in things like the increased ease of putting scenarios and encounters together.

That kind of thing, in my opinion, took a lot of heavy lifting, and demolition of the older rules, sometimes right down to the foundation, before building 4e could begin. I think more so than in any other version change. In some ways I'm very surprised there are not *more *issues with the system.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 10, 2008)

> But really, for 3e, the splats were never as good as the core, IMHO. Certainly there was never a splat so good that I didn't see a reason to use it over my PHB, just as a supplement to.




Well, part of that was that 3e didn't want you to replace the PHB with anything else. It was made so that you wouldn't have to or want to. 

That said, there were definitely campaigns that I played where splatbooks gave us more classes and races for the players than the PHB did. And there's a whole galaxy of 3rd party products that were leaps and bounds better than the core in many respects.

Certainly, 3e gained a lot of value for me by focusing on brand new stuff after the core covered the basic needs of what D&D had been up until 3e began.


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## Vegepygmy (Nov 10, 2008)

Remathilis said:


> I'm beginning to think the worst thing WotC ever did was give away 3.X for free in the form of the SRD. By doing so, the created an expectation that the D&D rules should be mostly free, fairly complete, and all further/future supplements were only "splat" that served to clutter the game with rules the DM must work tirelessly to squelch.



That expectation did not originate with 3E or the OGL.  4E is the first edition of the game that was not intended to be "fairly complete" in 3 books: the DMG, PHB, and MM.  (I'm talking about the AD&D-2E-3E-4E line here, obviously.)


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## Imban (Nov 10, 2008)

Vegepygmy said:


> That expectation did not originate with 3E or the OGL.  4E is the first edition of the game that was not intended to be "fairly complete" in 3 books: the DMG, PHB, and MM.  (I'm talking about the AD&D-2E-3E-4E line here, obviously.)




A lot of the Basic line *was* complete in one book or boxed set, of course.


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## Sigdel (Nov 10, 2008)

Vegepygmy said:


> That expectation did not originate with 3E or the OGL.  4E is the first edition of the game that was not intended to be "fairly complete" in 3 books: the DMG, PHB, and MM.  (I'm talking about the AD&D-2E-3E-4E line here, obviously.)




I don't quite agree with you on this. I think that in all the editions of D&D that it was made with a level of complete in the three core books. With 4e they knew that splats were going to be demanded by the players so they made it with built in "sockets" that you can just simply apply the new books in. Where they clamped down is that the characters are more rigid in their use. Adding in the spellblade from FRPG will not unbalance your game like adding in a warlock in 3.5 might. 
Trust me on the warlock bit, I ran one for two years (lvls 1-18) in a game that was not meant to handle something with those mechanics. It wasn't the DM's fault, it's just the game had no way to counter that fact that I could nail a touch AC on a 2+, and that was without and kinds of feats to boost my to hit rolls. The game just did not have any built in defenses to that kind of oversight. With the way 4e is designed (so far) that will just be too hard to do.


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## Jack99 (Nov 10, 2008)

If the price of a better, more balanced and more fun game (4e) is that I have to buy a few more books in order to be able to do the same that I could in previous editions, it is fine with me.


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## jensun (Nov 10, 2008)

jdrakeh said:


> White Wolf product lines must give you fits, then.



Hey, you have to remember.  TSR in its 1e days produced all of those hardbooks for love, never for something as dirty as profit.  

*my kingdom for a roley eyes smiley*


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## Aus_Snow (Nov 10, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> It isn't very easy to improvise a new class



How not?




> Now, there's no question that fencers, fighter-mages, lightly armored fighters and the like benefitted a lot from the 3.5 splatbooks. But even with just core, they're _viable_. Perhaps not ideal, but in their own niche, as good as anything else. Not so with 4e.



Viable how?


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## justanobody (Nov 10, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> It was simply an effort to produce what they believed to be a good game over a longer product cycle than the previous edition. Supplemental material sells better if its considered core. Core books are more likely to be purchased by everyone in a group rather than just those interested in particular info from a specialized splat. Thats the reason WOTC produces so few adventures. One person in niche market group buying a product is not a good revenue model.
> 
> As a bonus, the slew of core books weighing down the 4E crowd will make the idea of most everything being on cards in 5E welcome news.
> 
> Game design goes hand in hand with planned obsolescence.




The problem is that planned obsolescence has been realized to be flawed as people are smarter than they were in the 50' and don't want to waste money on something that won't last. Now everything is made to last longer without having to buy spare parts for it.

IE: those missing form it initially.

So while WotC wants to lengthen the lifespan of 4th by making more things to buy, it also losses interest as by the time something finally comes out that someone may want, the risk is that they will have moved on to other things and left 4th edition behind.

If you want to make add-ons, they always come after the core, not before.

Look at the campaign books. How do you explain that new core classes or races exist and no update to a setting book for a few years?

Forgotten Realms at the forefront of the RPGA now will take a big hit if people have no ability to play a new class or race that start later on after PHBII. Unless Eberron will replace LFR with Living Eberron after PHBII that will include any new races/classes brought out after that.

Make the core first, then bring on the add-ons/supplements. Sure this won't guarantee the company to make more money, but neither will the way they thought up to make PHBII, DMGII, etc.

The product lifecycle is up to WotC to make things people will want to buy, not tell them when they can buy what they consider a complete game.

When people get tired of buying, then the lifecycle is over, so making the best material rather than holding things back is the best thing to do.

Sure those classes are coming, but should someone have to spend $40 on a book for a single class?

Supplemental material disguised as core, only turns people off about something.

Are they always going to keep all core material in print? In 2011 will they be selling a "core set" that includes PHBI-IV, DMG I-IV, MMI-IV?

$480 to play D&D? How much does the PS4/X-Box 720 cost?

Or are the new PHBs going to replace the older ones buy just adding errata and pages for the new classes/races to them.

This has been discussed to death, so I will leave it as is. The "everything is core" is a design flaw from marketing, R&D, etc.

Sales in the splat PHBs/etc will be lower and lower with each year.


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## rounser (Nov 10, 2008)

> I'm beginning to think the worst thing WotC ever did was give away 3.X for free in the form of the SRD. By doing so, the created an expectation that the D&D rules should be mostly free, fairly complete, and all further/future supplements were only "splat" that served to clutter the game with rules the DM must work tirelessly to squelch.



So instead, it's been replaced by incomplete core rules with stuff to squelch and clutter, right in the core three books.  That's so much better than keeping dragonborn, eladrin and warlords in splats.


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## Obryn (Nov 10, 2008)

Vegepygmy said:


> That expectation did not originate with 3E or the OGL.  4E is the first edition of the game that was not intended to be "fairly complete" in 3 books: the DMG, PHB, and MM.  (I'm talking about the AD&D-2E-3E-4E line here, obviously.)



I think there are a few definitions of "complete"-ness that get conflated when someone's talking about 4e.

The core book set is very complete in that you could run a campaign for several years without exhausting all the options.  You don't need any books beyond the first three to run a fulfilling campaign, as long as you don't enter into it with any preconceived notions about races, classes, or monsters that must be included.

It is incomplete in that it doesn't include everything from previous editions' core books.

-O


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> The problem is that planned obsolescence has been realized to be flawed as people are smarter than they were in the 50' and don't want to waste money on something that won't last. Now everything is made to last longer without having to buy spare parts for it.



But is a game defined by how long you can use its core products, or by how much supplemental products you can get. A Complete Warrior or Martial Power is not a spare part. It's a new thing.

I think a game system is more akin to an Operating System. You don't expect an OS to have everything out of the box and to have no new applications to come out. You want to get new games or new programs for it and use them. If someone told you there wouldn't be coming out much, you would actually say that this is probably not a good OS to use.

We are currently running four 4E campaigns, and I think they would be playable just using the Core Rules till 30th level. Before that, we haven't tried out everything. That's a long "bang for my buck". But i am also looking forward to the supplements, because I get even more things, some I might just find more inspiring or allowing me to explore character options I haven't thought of before or always wanted to try out before.

I remember some people saying that they had enough supplements for 3E to probably last them a life time. If that's true, then 3E fans should be pretty content, because there is enough stuff that they don't even have to remotely care about the fact that there is no longer any 3E support. (Except of course, there is - Pathfinder and other OGL products still exist) But it seems some 3E fans do care - do they expect to live longer then the others? Or play that much more? 

I think there is nothing wrong in planning an edition to be easily extensible. There might be something wrong in holding stuff back, though - at least if it was already finished on release date. And I think that's not how it is for most things (Frost Giants and Gnomes, perhaps; Druids and Barbarians - I think not). The extra time a later release gives the designers will affect the quality of the products.

If I look at 3E, I see a few classes that might have benefited from a longer development cycle - Monks and Bards were always very weak classes, and barely seemed to work. Rangers were criticized a lot and probably had the most number of variants for all classes (Spell-Less Rangers, Rangers without or with different weapon styles and so on). I don't think it would have bad for the game if these classes had been published a year later in a separate book. 
Similar - the multiclassing rules in 3E were interesting - but unfortunately, they tried to have a unified system from the get go, and it worked badly for multiclassed spellcasters. Only by later creating Mystic Theurge like classes they found a at least somewhat workable fix. It wouldn't have hurt if the had the multiclassing rules built in a more "open-ended" way, like they effectively did in 4E - the core concepts like multiclass feats and paragon multiclassing are set, but the multiclass feats are inherently suitable for expansion. This is a great design choice to sell more books later, but also a great choice to ensure that you can expand and improve on the multiclassing rules later.


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## pawsplay (Nov 10, 2008)

jdrakeh said:


> White Wolf product lines must give you fits, then.




You mean there's more than one book in each series? I had no idea.


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## pawsplay (Nov 10, 2008)

Holy Bovine said:


> The worst thing any RPG publisher can do is give the impression they want to make money.
> 
> Actually that's the second worse thing.  The worse thing is them trying to make a _profit_.




The worst thing they can do is give the impression they don't care _how_ they make money. I have never noticed a significant anger toward simply making a profit, in fact, I have often seen fans applauding good sales and stating their intention to financially support a line they enjoy.


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## justanobody (Nov 10, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> But is a game defined by how long you can use its core products, or by how much supplemental products you can get. A Complete Warrior or Martial Power is not a spare part. It's a new thing.




I can get pink fuzzy dice for my car too if I want them, but I don't need to get them from Ford. Accessories are not necessities. I can get the optional veggie basket for my fridge instead of the drawer, but those are just options.

You don't need to buy a new fridge every year, or car. Likewise you don't need to buy a new game every year.

A game is defined on who you are. The company wants the products to sell in whatever way they can get them to so they don't drop the product line (see D&D podcast #28). While the consumer wants the product they have to buy less often and maintain less.

New "core" books each year is upkeep and maintenance that the customer doesn't have to need.

Just claiming PHBII as core just means that the first 3 books are not a complete game.

How many board games do you buy that require more to be bought later?

If you want continued money from the consumer you have to either get more consumers for your product, or give existing ones things they will want to buy. Not trick them into thinking they will need an optional part for any reason because you neglected to put it in the box.

DIY bookshelf complete with instructions. (Screws sold separately.)

That is what it boils down to.

Add on to it PO, and that is what people get when they have to spend more all the time is PO'd.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 10, 2008)

Holy Bovine said:
			
		

> The worst thing any RPG publisher can do is give the impression they want to make money.
> 
> Actually that's the second worse thing. The worse thing is them trying to make a profit.




I'd amend this.

The worst thing any RPG publisher can do is give the impression that they want to make a profit by deliberately limiting your game.

"Give us money or don't have fun!" is a bad impression to give. And yet some have definitely gotten that impression.

I mean, it's a slightly misleading impression, because there's still a wealth of options, it's just that they're power options and build options, not as many race or class options.


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## pawsplay (Nov 10, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> I think a game system is more akin to an Operating System. You don't expect an OS to have everything out of the box and to have no new applications to come out. You want to get new games or new programs for it and use them. If someone told you there wouldn't be coming out much, you would actually say that this is probably not a good OS to use.




If the OS comes with limited functionality and requires a lot of specialized software design to create new functions for, that is also not a good OS to use. There are of course various forms of incompleteness.

Backwards compatibility: This is inevitible at some point, but it's very weird in a D&D game when you can't rework _concepts_ which in theory should be independent of the system. If you were playing a gnome bard, guess what? But setting aside specific races and classes and ability sets... what about all those miniatures? What is shocking to me is that for the time, ever, only a smallish portion of the D&D miniatures can be used in previous games, because so many monsters have changed so much. And the ones that are still there frequently have a new aesthetic. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that you would do as well with Mage Knight figures for a 3e game, and something like Reaper is clearly superior. What is a 3e player supposed do do with a flame archon? Were you hoping for a complete run of 3e demon and devil minuatures? ... Too bad for you. This represents not only a stack of obsolesced books, but of discounted time, since whatever you knew about Forgotten Realms or Eberron or Greyhawk simply cannot apply in the new D&D, with its dragonborn and tieflings and eladrin. High elves can teleport? Who knew? 

Incompleteness of design: Every system has things it covers and things it doesn't. With 4e, we've seen a new surge in things in covers, or things in covers in such a way other things become more problematic. I'm speaking mainly about numerous combat options. And things like polymorph or large PCs? Well, the design team decided they were too hard to balance, so they're gone. Virtually any effect that could have unexpected consequences is gone. Look at the succubus charm... they might as well have called it Bigby's Interposing Dwarf. 

Incompleteness of modularity: To create a new class for 4e literally requires you to map out 30 levels of stuff, including ideally at least two "builds." A race now needs more than a quick profile... to be balanced, they need PC treatment, especially racially specific paths. In 3e, I could tweak a class if I wanted, but it's hard to imagine stripping down a 4e class and giving it something a little different. Many, many powers presuppose certain weapons or skills or whatever. I've written many variant classes... many, such as turning a barbarian into a corsair, are nonsensical in 4e. To use the OS analogy, the new OS here doesn't come loaded with a lot of program modules and each program has to be written and compiled with a lot of code. New applications are bloated, and tedious to design. Try imagining the class variants section of Unearthed Arcane rewritten for 4e... it would be a 64 page pamphlet by itself. Or, to put it another way, a sizable chunk of Martial Power. Or Martial Power 2.


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## Mallus (Nov 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> The worst thing any RPG publisher can do is give the impression that they want to make a profit by deliberately limiting your game.



Some gamers have unreasonable value expectations for products. A publisher has to accept that. 

It's perfectly fine for someone to feel that the 4e core doesn't offer them what they want. It's perfectly unreasonable for them to feel that 4e doesn't offer a complete game or a wealth of playable character options.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> I can get pink fuzzy dice for my car too if I want them, but I don't need to get them from Ford. Accessories are not necessities. I can get the optional veggie basket for my fridge instead of the drawer, but those are just options.
> 
> You don't need to buy a new fridge every year, or car. Likewise you don't need to buy a new game every year.
> 
> ...



Your assumption is that you somehow _need_ the PHB II and so on. But you just don't. The game works at is. Naming them PHB II is a marketing ploay, implying: 
"We treat this as Core, so you can expect further support for it, even in other settings." (this is actually the only thing that really matters - it means it's not like the 3E new base classes that you often had only one book and would never see again - and this was criticized, so there is obviously a portion of the market that finds this better then the idea of purely contained supplements!)
"We worked on this with the same effort as for the first one." 
"This is stuff you really want to have - it's core!"

But the truth is it's still just a supplement you can buy or ignore.


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## Starbuck_II (Nov 10, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> Sure they are. It's called playing a Rogue. The "Fighter" (the class) is the heavy weapons guy. If you want to be a skirmisher play a Ranger or Rogue. They're Martial classes for a reason.



 This is for the win!
Really, Fencers aren't tanks: they don't wear heavy armor: why choose the heavy armor guy to make him?

So Rogue makes more sense.

In 3.5: you could argue BAB, but in 4th: BAB is the same for every class.


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## pawsplay (Nov 10, 2008)

Mallus said:


> It's perfectly unreasonable for them to feel that 4e doesn't offer a complete game or a wealth of playable character options.




Then I shall be unreasonable.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 10, 2008)

The OS comparison is interesting. Recently I had the thought that 4e (and most editions of D&D) doesn't know whether it's a system or a game.

If it's a game, it needs to be tightly focused on one thing. Mario doesn't need to be able to engage in zombie survival horror. If you're playing Metriod, you don't need to worry about recruiting the right quarterback. A game that tries to branch out and give you more diversity usually suffers for it, but a game that is tight and specific often benefits from it. 

4e is fairly focused around minis combat, but it's not quite a pure minis combat game.

If it's a system, it needs to be able to cover a broad amount of things. No one expects the hardware to cover everything, but the Wii should be able to do an FPS, an RPG, it should be able to cover Mario and Metroid and Zelda and a variety of other games.

4e is certainly not broad enough to be a system.

4e isn't a system you plug games into, and it's not a game that you have a devoted single-issue support for. It can't figure itself out, in so many ways, so people who want one thing or the other aren't happy.

I'd say it's more of a game than a system, but it's still not a very focused game (half of the core books will go unused by most gamers, for instance).


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## pawsplay (Nov 10, 2008)

pawsplay said:
			
		

> Now, there's no question that fencers, fighter-mages, lightly armored fighters and the like benefitted a lot from the 3.5 splatbooks. But even with just core, they're viable. Perhaps not ideal, but in their own niche, as good as anything else. Not so with 4e.




Just to clarify, since this seems to be causing some confusion, the "they" in that second sentence refers to "concepts not explicitly supported by the core books," not to fencers specifically. In 4e, fencers are rogues. The 4e equivalent would be something like a guy in plate armor who wields two axes, or a non-blasting wizard.


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## tomBitonti (Nov 10, 2008)

Will you grant that it is possible that WotC/Hasbro has repriced (higher) the D&D product line?  That is consistent with a profit maximizing strategy for a monopolist.  That is also consistent with D&D being sold by a large corporation, which presumably has done a study of the D&D market and has selected a price point based on this analysis -- more so than any of the companies that sold D&D in the past.  My impression is that this is the first edition of the product to have gone through a proper market analysis.  (I could be wrong: Does anyone see that 3.0 or 3.5 having gone through a lot of market analysis?)

My own impression is that the first three books are _much_ less complete than the first three books for 3.0 or 3.5E, in the sense that they provide many fewer _player options_ in terms of class concepts and builds.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 10, 2008)

> Some gamers have unreasonable value expectations for products. A publisher has to accept that.
> 
> It's perfectly fine for someone to feel that the 4e core doesn't offer them what they want. It's perfectly unreasonable for them to feel that 4e doesn't offer a complete game or a wealth of playable character options.




But these demands, to a much larger extent, were met in a previous edition.

Obviously, it's completely possible to satisfy most or at least MORE of these demands than 4e chose to.

Really, the core of this is the pagecount consumed by the powers system, because that's probably reason #1 that there weren't more races or classes, and is yet another glaring flaw in the powers system for me. 

4e doesn't consider diversity in that respect to be very valuable. Some players disagree. It's not unreasonable to expect a continuation of what you've had before.


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## pawsplay (Nov 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> 4e is fairly focused around minis combat, but it's not quite a pure minis combat game.




I remember reading the _Miniatures Handbook_ skirmish campaign rules and wondering, "I wonder what would happen if you used this as a role-playing game and improvised everything non-combat?"

Apparently, WotC wondered the same thing.


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## Obryn (Nov 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> New "core" books each year is upkeep and maintenance that the customer doesn't have to need.
> 
> Just claiming PHBII as core just means that the first 3 books are not a complete game.



I think you have a misunderstanding of what "core" means for 4e, as opposed to earlier editions.  I say that because this is a pretty ... well, insane philosophy.

For 1e, 2e, and to a lesser extent 3e, a new core book likely meant you may need it down the road as a reference material for other products.

For 4e, there's no such assumption.  Because NPCs and monsters are built on separate systems, their entire combat capability is summed up in a stat block.  If there's a Swordmage in an adventure, I won't need to have the FRPG to figure out what that Swordmage can do in combat.

It's a marketing gimmick.  It's also a philosophy - as in, "We'll concentrate on making universal books that can be used in any setting."

4e's PHB2 will be no more needed for 4e than 3e's PHB2 was for 3e.

-O


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 10, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> But these demands, to a much larger extent, were met in a previous edition.
> 
> Obviously, it's completely possible to satisfy most or at least MORE of these demands than 4e chose to.
> 
> ...



Yeah, think about how many more classes and races 3E could have offered if there hadn't been all these stupid spells in it!


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## pawsplay (Nov 10, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Yeah, think about how many more classes and races 3E could have offered if there hadn't been all these stupid spells in it!




Well, the number of spells in 3e is pretty staggering to someone raised on BECMI.


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## Lackhand (Nov 10, 2008)

nm -- snark that was beneath me and nontopical to boot.


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## Arnwyn (Nov 10, 2008)

Mallus said:


> Some gamers have unreasonable value expectations for products. A publisher has to accept that.



If something previous offered what some consumers want, then it is not "unreasonable expectations". Obviously.



> It's perfectly fine for someone to feel that the 4e core doesn't offer them what they want. It's perfectly unreasonable for them to feel that 4e doesn't offer a complete game



Please be consistent.

If a game doesn't offer them what they want, then it is - by definition - not a complete game to them. (Or is this just one of those creepy ENWorld "it must be objective!" moments...? Weird.)


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## The Little Raven (Nov 10, 2008)

CleverNickName said:


> Mourn arriving in 5...4...3...2...




...taking my name in vain? 



> If a game doesn't offer them what they want, then it is - by definition - not a complete game to them.




By this definition, no game ever made is a complete game, because no game offers everyone everything that they want.


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## Cadfan (Nov 10, 2008)

Arnwyn said:


> If a game doesn't offer them what they want, then it is - by definition - not a complete game to them. (Or is this just one of those creepy ENWorld "it must be objective!" moments...? Weird.)



But this is something that SHOULD be objective.  A game is complete or incomplete without reference to whether I like it or whether I feel it has everything I want.

I'm always a bit bothered by this retreat into "I feel 4e is X, so its X for me!"  By turning a public reason into a private reason, you are embracing the total irrelevance of your opinions.  If you can't be bothered to bring public reasons to a public discourse, stay home.  Vote with your wallet, fine, but don't bother wasting everyone's time with arguments that _you yourself_ believe have zero relevance or power to convince for anyone other than yourself.

Political scientists have spilled all kinds of ink on this subject.  Start with Rawls and work your way up.


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## Puggins (Nov 10, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> Now, there's no question that fencers, fighter-mages, lightly armored fighters and the like benefitted a lot from the 3.5 splatbooks. But even with just core, they're _viable_. Perhaps not ideal, but in their own niche, as good as anything else. Not so with 4e.




Have to rewind back to the original post, because I need to point out that this statement is utterly, hilariously wrong.

Using just core (which is the premise of your entire post, may I remind you), effectiveness of fighter mages in 3.5e ranged from mediocrity to outright putrescence.  You were boxed into taking a single prestige class that had little or no flavor and that saddled you with numerous issues:

(1) You still suffered from spell failure.  Your only really choice for armor was the mithral chain shirt- even leather armor was less viable than the ubiquitous MCS.  And shields were wholly useless.

(2) You suddenly became a victim of MAD.

(3) You were never as effective as a single class wizard (never mind a wizard with full spellcasting prestige classes in his portfolio).  They'd even show you up in the melee department once shapechange became available.

On the other hand, you would be far more effective than a single class fighter- which is like saying that winning one dollar with a lottery ticket is better than getting poked in the eye with a cattle prod.

Fighter mages in 4e are far, far more effective, and really easy to design:

(1) Start with Fighter.
(2) Add multiclass: Wizard
(3) Add Ritual Casting
(4) Add other multiclass feats to taste
(5) Use wizard of the spiral tower prestige class.

You wind up with a character who has a fairly wide range of magical abilities and still performs his duties as fighter with skill and vigor.

 You have a reasonable argument (though I disagree with it), but the example you chose doesn't do anything but argue against your main point.


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## Mallus (Nov 10, 2008)

Arnwyn said:


> Please be consistent.



I am reminded of a quote about hobgoblins... 



> If a game doesn't offer them what they want, then it is - by definition - not a complete game to them. (Or is this just one of those creepy ENWorld "it must be objective!" moments...? Weird.)



It's one of those "hey, let's try to be a little more objective moments". Whether you feel that's creepy is entirely up to you. 

I like to make distinction a between "complete" and "has precisely what I want". Without such a distinction, "complete" loses a lot of its utility as a word for describing things in the exterior world.


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## Obryn (Nov 10, 2008)

arnwyn said:


> please be consistent.
> 
> If a game doesn't offer them what they want, then it is - by definition - not a complete game to them. (or is this just one of those creepy enworld "it must be objective!" moments...? Weird.)





You're redefining "complete" in a way that's not consistent with the way it's being used in this thread.  By making it relative, you're cutting off all meaningful discussion.

-O


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## billd91 (Nov 10, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> But this is something that SHOULD be objective.  A game is complete or incomplete without reference to whether I like it or whether I feel it has everything I want.




Well, then let's be objective. The 4e core game offers fewer character types than core games of previous editions (no druids, bards, or barbarians, very limited enchantments, polymorphs, illusions). The 4e core game offers fewer mundane-style creatures suitable for lower-level challenges and for building a living world in the Monster Manual than previous editions.

4e is a _less_ complete D&D, comparing core to core, than previous editions of D&D. Since I _want_ to play D&D rather than some subset of D&D, 4e is therefore an incomplete game.


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## MrMyth (Nov 10, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> So where does that leave us? Let's say you played and enjoyed an Eldritch Knight in D&D 3.5. Well, in 4e, you can choose to
> 
> A) suck worse than a poorly planned 3.0 fighter/wizard, by taking less than exciting multiclass choices
> B) lose your character's basic flavor, by taking somewhat more effective multiclass choices
> ...




I'm not sure where you got this idea. The 4E multiclass fighter/wizard is just as flavorful and effective as the 3.5 Eldritch Knight. Being able to throw around spells and swing your sword with equal skill - _actually equal skill_ - is far more built into the core system than it was in 3.5.

Honestly, I find 4E - with the feat and skill system allowing for more direct customization of characters - to be much easier to build diverse concepts in, especially ones that 3.5 would have kicked out the back door as ineffective. 

Now, as more books come out, there becomes more _ways_ to build your wizard/fighter types, just like in 3.5. But you don't need to purchase them by any means, and I'm not sure why you think that is the case.


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## Mallus (Nov 10, 2008)

billd91 said:


> Since I _want_ to play D&D rather than some subset of D&D, 4e is therefore an incomplete game.



Aha... that's the difference. I don't want to "play D&D". I want to play my own personalized game of high-adventure fantasy. D&D is merely the tool I use to create my game (therefore, I think more in terms of fantasy and adventure archetypes and less in terms of strict fidelity to traditional D&D components).


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## Arnwyn (Nov 10, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> But this is something that SHOULD be objective.



Good luck with that.

If it's objective, it's something that is easily measurable and agreed upon. You're already on thin ice when it comes to a game. For chrissake's, people have a hard enough time discussing and agreeing on what's "objectively" good/bad about _movies_, which a lot more people have spent a lot more time discussing. Turns out, it goes all the way down to "it's objectively a bad movie if the mic boom can be seen on film". Beyond that... turns out nobody can agree. Huh.

Applying it to D&D? A laughable endeavor.



> I'm always a bit bothered by this retreat into "I feel 4e is X, so its X for me!"



Yeah, some of ENWorld's "usual suspects" seem to have a problem with that (but only towards 4e, it seems). Whatever.

My comments weren't even edition specific. How 'bout that? The flailing by said "usual suspects" continues.



> By turning a public reason into a private reason, you are embracing the total irrelevance of your opinions.  If you can't be bothered to bring public reasons to a public discourse, stay home.  Vote with your wallet, fine, but don't bother wasting everyone's time with arguments that _you yourself_ believe have zero relevance or power to convince for anyone other than yourself.



On an _internet messageboard_? Wasting time? Really? Again... good luck with that. (It's solved, though, by putting people who you think are irrelevant on ignore lists.) I am impressed with your (overly) optimistic view of public discourse, however.



			
				The Little Raven said:
			
		

> By this definition, no game ever made is a complete game, because no game offers everyone everything that they want.





			
				Arnwyn said:
			
		

> (Or is this just one of those creepy ENWorld "it must be objective!" moments...? Weird.)


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## justanobody (Nov 10, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Your assumption is that you somehow _need_ the PHB II and so on. But you just don't. The game works at is. Naming them PHB II is a marketing ploay, implying:
> "We treat this as Core, so you can expect further support for it, even in other settings." (this is actually the only thing that really matters - it means it's not like the 3E new base classes that you often had only one book and would never see again - and this was criticized, so there is obviously a portion of the market that finds this better then the idea of purely contained supplements!)
> "We worked on this with the same effort as for the first one."
> "This is stuff you really want to have - it's core!"
> ...




The failed premise is that a complete game is what you are told it is, rather than what you want out of it. If they remove Boardwalk and Park Place form monopoly and add in another Chance and Community Space, then it will not make everyone happy that they tried to replace their old game to still be able to play with something inferior that was not what they wanted.

Likewise always changing what races and classes are core is silly. They could have added the new class, and 2 new races, and made elves bi-polar without taking other stuff out, and given people what they most wanted, and what was in the past book as core.

D&D needs a firm core, and not all this wishy-washy crap.

Make up your damn mind if monk's exist or not!

Then you make people wait a entire year for the class they were wanting all along, while other people are already playing and this player gets disgruntled playing something they didn't want or having to convert or kill off a character when most other players could "convert" to 4th edition with the "standard" classes in the first PHB.

I just don't believe the splat books are core philosophy.

If they are optional, then call them so, and stop trying to lie to consumers for whatever reason. I think they even said they left out classes to encourage people to buy the new books to get into the habit of a new PHB or DMG coming out each year.

That is just plain wrong on design, marketing, and ethics.

If you want consumers to buy new books, then make something of quality that they will want to buy, not by holding out things you:
a) didn't have time to finish because you rushed the product out
b) wanted to save for later to get someone to buy a new book
c) didn't want implications of rape in core material

But now...here is the funny part...Humans rape orcs and that is where half-orcs come from for the Realms. Not monsters raping humans, but those brutal humans invading orc villages and having their way with the orc women. 

I guess all half-elf parent unions were just the most happy thing ever right Tanis?

They need to find a core, like other games did decades ago, and build onto that. Then D&D would be a much more stable game. Transition between editions would be much smoother for players. Maybe even make some more money for the company at the same time with a more confident player base about the product.

Now its like looking for the blue lines after peeing on the stick to see if its good news or bad coming your way....

Be consistent. It is ok to have the same sort of material in the core, and have only one set of core, that make people comfortable about changing with things they know and are comfortable with, without resorting to tactics to get people to buy extra books to get what they had in the past like 2nd, 3rd, 4th all have done.

You want the splat books to sell? Make it of the quality that people cannot resist!


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## billd91 (Nov 10, 2008)

Mallus said:


> Aha... that's the difference. I don't want to "play D&D". I want to play my own personalized game of high-adventure fantasy. D&D is merely the tool I use to create my game (therefore, I think more in terms of fantasy and adventure archetypes and less in terms of strict fidelity to traditional D&D components).




Then perhaps you shouldn't try to tell D&D players that 4e is a complete game for playing D&D rather than a complete "some-other-FRPG" suitable for your particular brand of adventuring.


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## Imban (Nov 10, 2008)

So, here's what *I* mean by not complete.

With 3e, when it came out, there were certainly things from 2e not included in the core three 3e books, but there was very to which the designers actively responded "we will be putting this in a later book". If I had to go off the top of my head, I'd really just say psionics and a few prestige classes were like that, not things that were core material in 2e.

With 4e, before it came out, we'd been told explicitly that a lot of things core to D&D were being held back - bards and druids until PHB2, frost giants until MM2 - and there are times where the books itself mention that a monster entry is intentionally incomplete, as with archons. (And if anyone doesn't expect archons in every upcoming Monster Manual...)

For a non-D&D comparison, M&M is complete in one book. Even though I greatly enjoy the Mastermind's Manual and Ultimate Power, neither of them is essential to play the game or even contains things I consider "core" to the M&M experience, they just make it better. In fact, until I read Ultimate Power I didn't think there was anything in Ultimate Power I was missing.

Exalted is *very* incomplete, with five main character types, and the need for a second book to get more than "BS it" for all but one of them, and the need for four more books to get the actual rules to play the other four as PCs. Oh, and books constantly referring to future publications in the line. (Which often gets funny when things have been changed rules-wise between the first book in which something is mentioned and the actual writeup.)


----------



## Arnwyn (Nov 10, 2008)

Obryn said:


> You're redefining "complete" in a way that's not consistent with the way it's being used in this thread.  By making it relative, you're cutting off all meaningful discussion.



You yourself point out in your Post #35 that there are multiple definitions of "completeness" (good ones, I might add).

So far it doesn't look like it's being used just one way in this thread. My response was _specifically_ to Mallus' post. Go from there. (Maybe he just made his point so poorly that my post was rendered moot because I couldn't figure out what he was trying to say? Quite possible.)


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## Mallus (Nov 10, 2008)

billd91 said:


> Then perhaps you shouldn't try to tell D&D players that 4e is a complete game for playing D&D rather than a complete "some-other-FRPG" suitable for your particular brand of adventuring.



I'm offering my opinion that 4e meets the definition of a (reasonable) complete tool set for creating high-adventure fantasy campaigns, which, as it so happens, bear more than a passing resemblance to those created by prior editions of D&D (and I *am* a D&D player, as much as any other, and more so, in terms of quality --I kid... somewhat).

I guess it comes down to what you think D&D is. I see it as a set of tools for creating simulations of fantasy stories/films. Seen it that light, the game is complete if it supports a reasonable number of tropes and archetypes. Since 4e seems to support the slaying dragons, the rescuing of princesses, the playing of knights, wizards and dashing swashbucklers, it meets my definition of reasonably complete. 

It's certainly doesn't support all of the now-canonical D&D minutiae (some of which is on the way). If that's what you're after, then I concede that it isn't.


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## billd91 (Nov 10, 2008)

Mallus said:


> It's certainly doesn't support all of the now-canonical D&D minutiae (some of which is on the way). If that's what you're after, then I concede that it isn't.




And that's why, in part, there can be no completely objective definition of whether or not 4e qualifies as a complete game in the AD&D strain. I have played a number of druid characters and have been able to do so with just the core, no splat books necessary, since 1st edition. I've had the character class, spells, and suitable servant and companion animals in my monster manuals. 

Then 4th edition came along and now? Not so much. 4e is incomplete if it is trying to be the successor to the game that has included such characters for over 25 years as part of its core.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> The failed premise is that a complete game is what you are told it is, rather than what you want out of it. If they remove Boardwalk and Park Place form monopoly and add in another Chance and Community Space, then it will not make everyone happy that they tried to replace their old game to still be able to play with something inferior that was not what they wanted.



But D&D 4 is explicitely marketed as D&D 4. If your proposed Monopoly 2.0 was just marketed as Monopoly, I would probably be bothered by changes, but if it's a "new edition", I wouldn't expect it to be new. But with a version identifier, I know to expect changes. 

Well, at least me. Maybe I am reasonable like that.



> D&D needs a firm core, and not all this wishy-washy crap.



D&D needs a solid rules foundation. If the foundation sucks, even supplements can't fix my game. 



> Make up your damn mind if monk's exist or not!



Why? Should I also decide now if I ever want to support Dark Sun or reserve that for later?



> I just don't believe the splat books are core philosophy.



I think splat books and other rules supplements are fundamental. They are the only thing that will keep the producing corporation around. And they are the thing that will ensure that I will continue playing the game even if I have tried out all the 8 races and 8 classes, or if I have tried out all the 8 races and 12 classes. 



> If they are optional, then call them so, and stop trying to lie to consumers for whatever reason. I think they even said they left out classes to encourage people to buy the new books to get into the habit of a new PHB or DMG coming out each year.
> 
> That is just plain wrong on design, marketing, and ethics.



They are not calling them "PHB II, III" etc. despite being optional, they are calling them this because they provide more rules that you can drop into your game without breaking it, and with full ongoing support. So you know if the PHB II introduces 3 new arcane classes, people will still get support after that one. And that is important, because they already wanted the support (or at least the option for it) for the PHB I classes. Lack of support for base classes that were introduced in later books has always been a critique in 3E, and only towards the end of 3.5, WotC changed things - you could get new invocations for your Warlock from Complete Arcane in Complete Mage.



> If you want consumers to buy new books, then make something of quality that they will want to buy, not by holding out things you:
> a) didn't have time to finish because you rushed the product out
> b) wanted to save for later to get someone to buy a new book
> c) didn't want implications of rape in core material



You believe the Barbarian, the Bard or the Frost Giant will not be something of quality? 

It's not about rushing a product out. It is about deciding when to be finished. You just can't wait till you have get everything nailed down perfectly. If everyone would try that, we would never get any book out. Heck, I would still be writing my diploma thesis!




> They need to find a core, like other games did decades ago, and build onto that. Then D&D would be a much more stable game. Transition between editions would be much smoother for players. Maybe even make some more money for the company at the same time with a more confident player base about the product.



What other games? Torg only had one edition, I suppose, but it had lots of supplements that definitely replaced what you'd consider "COre" to Torg. Shadowrun? 3E only introduced Bioware and metamagic initiation in a later rulebook.



> Be consistent. It is ok to have the same sort of material in the core, and have only one set of core, that make people comfortable about changing with things they know and are comfortable with, without resorting to tactics to get people to buy extra books to get what they had in the past like 2nd, 3rd, 4th all have done.



The flaw in your assumption is that a tactic cannot serve both purposes - continually selling people stuff, and making good products. Maybe it's because you just think of tactics, and not of strategy. The strategy is to create fully supported, fully tested, and well designed and developed supplements containing iconic D&D elements to ensure healthy sales. 



> You want the splat books to sell? Make it of the quality that people cannot resist!



Ah, well, then WotC is doing fine. I love my Adventurers Vault and I am looking forward to the Martial Power supplement.


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## justanobody (Nov 10, 2008)

Mallus said:


> I'm offering my opinion that 4e meets the definition of a (reasonable) complete tool set for creating high-adventure fantasy campaigns




Well D&D 4th edition is a game, not the latest bulk collection by Black & Decker...ergo not a set of tools.


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## Thasmodious (Nov 10, 2008)

This "less options" nonsense has to die.  In 3e, most of those 'more options" were mechanically nonviable.  They were terrible choices to make.  They existed solely because of the "free" multiclassing system but without a heavy dose of rules mastery, novice and even experienced players could easily make mechanically terrible characters.  And the means did not exist in the core books to fix it.  Fighter/wizard?  Eldritch Knight didn't come close to making that basic staple workable.  It was years and splatbooks before 3e ever made that an actual mechanically viable build, and many would claim it never really got there.  I was certainly never happy with its representation in 3e, as the fighter/mage was always among my favorites.  Just because you could make a barbarian1/rogue1/fighter1/wizard1/sorcerer1/cleric1 does not mean it is anything approaching a viable choice.  The very fact that a player could easily fail at the most basic element of an RPG game, character creation, simply by choosing poorly among the choices given is pretty serious design failure.

That doesn't happen in 4e.  Out of the box, you simply can't make terrible choices built for your class.  Sure, you could, if you qualify, buy a feat that does nothing for your class, but its clear the feat does nothing.  It is not clear in core 3e that Alertness is a useless feat, that nimble fingers is a waste of the limited feat options for a rogue (despite being designed for a rogue), its not clear that the rogue has to hit the ground running with his feat selection if he is ever going to reach the best rogue feats, which lie at the end of feat chains.  

3e didn't have an amazing array of options.  Sourcebooks were mostly about finding ways to do basic options in better mechanical ways, not present wholly new options.  Some fancy new caster is really just a flavor of an old caster only crafted into its own class.  The concept is still the same.  A hundred ways to do wizard/cleric with only 2 of them mechanically superior does not a wealth of options make.

3e had 11 base classes.  Of those, certainly the fighter was the weakest and the sorcerer was artificially restricted and inferior to the wizard.  It took sourcebooks to correct this.  But nevermind that.  Add to that 16 prestige classes and you're done.  Sure, you can multiclass into thousands of combinations by purely statistical analysis, but only a tiny fraction of those combinations represent mechanically viability.

4e has 8 base classes.  Only 3 less than 3e and well within the range of other PHBs from the low of 3 through 1es 5 base and 5 subclasses (and that was it).  It has 31 paragon paths and 4 epic destinies.  For those counting, thats 43 to 27 in favor of 4e versus 3e.

And in 4e, you can't accidentally make a bad PC.  All those classes are balanced, all those paragon paths.  And the rules, powers, and options are in place to play the whole game level 1-30.  That is a complete game with a wealth of options, far more options than any edition of D&D before 3e and no mechanically terrible options like in 3e, where the core actually encouraged you to play multiclassed casters and give up caster levels.


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## Obryn (Nov 10, 2008)

billd91 said:


> Then perhaps you shouldn't try to tell D&D players that 4e is a complete game for playing D&D rather than a complete "some-other-FRPG" suitable for your particular brand of adventuring.



Once again, you're using one definition of "complete" and trying to argue against other definitions of "complete" by extension, which really doesn't work.

If you're arguing that there's no 1:1 correspondence between 3e core and 4e core, well, gosh golly you're right.  By this definition, though, 2e wasn't a complete game, either, since it eliminated half-orcs, assassins, and illusionists as a separate class.

If you're arguing that it's impossible to play a complete game of D&D using just the core rules, I beg to differ!  I'm running a very complete game of D&D right now.  It's a recognizable D&D game, complete with classes, races, levels, and magic missiles.

Incompleteness in one sense doesn't necessarily lead to incompleteness in another sense.



Arnwyn said:


> You yourself point out in your Post #35 that there are multiple definitions of "completeness" (good ones, I might add).
> 
> So far it doesn't look like it's being used just one way in this thread.



No, I agree - there's already 2 definitions of completeness floating around.  My argument is that adding a third one (which is a relative comparison, rather than an absolute one) would probably not help resolve anything. 

I think Mallus was simply pointing out the same kind of conflation - "doesn't have everything in previous editions" versus "doesn't allow a complete game to be played."

-O


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## Cadfan (Nov 10, 2008)

billd91 said:


> Well, then let's be objective. The 4e core game offers fewer character types than core games of previous editions (no druids, bards, or barbarians, very limited enchantments, polymorphs, illusions). The 4e core game offers fewer mundane-style creatures suitable for lower-level challenges and for building a living world in the Monster Manual than previous editions.
> 
> 4e is a _less_ complete D&D, comparing core to core, than previous editions of D&D. Since I _want_ to play D&D rather than some subset of D&D, 4e is therefore an incomplete game.



4e offers more character types than core games of previous editions (warlocks, warlords, vastly deeper options for fighters, rogues, paladins, and rangers).  And it offers more mundane-style creatures suitable for lower-level challenges (multiple varieties of kobolds, goblins, etc, in addition to rules for building kobolds, goblins, etc using npc rules or class templates as per 3e).  As for building a living world, I'm not sure what combat stats for a house cat have to do with that.  Are you under some impression that house cats do not exist in D&D unless combat stats exist for them?

Look, seriously, we all know what the deal really is.  4e offers _different _options.  For example, it focused on depth of class detail rather than variety of total classes in the PHB.  You can disagree with that!  But that doesn't make 4e an incomplete game, and saying so makes you sound silly.


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## billd91 (Nov 10, 2008)

Obryn said:


> Once again, you're using one definition of "complete" and trying to argue against other definitions of "complete" by extension, which really doesn't work.
> 
> <snip>
> Incompleteness in one sense doesn't necessarily lead to incompleteness in another sense.
> ...




The difference in definitions of "completeness" ultimately come from defining your purpose in shopping around for an edition of D&D. For some of us, there's filling the game niche of what we've come to know as D&D, something 4e falls short of in a core to core comparison, for others a playable RPG, something 4e accomplishes. Whether or not 4e is actually complete, depends more on which perspective is more important to you.


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## avin (Nov 10, 2008)

More edition wars? 

Where's my "ignore topic" function? 

AD&D people ranted 3.0
3.5 people ranted 4.0
4.5 will rant about 5.0


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## Mallus (Nov 10, 2008)

billd91 said:


> And that's why, in part, there can be no completely objective definition of whether or not 4e qualifies as a complete game in the AD&D strain.



Who said anything about a completely objective definition? All I'm after is a enough (temporary) agreement to allow for some discussion.



> I have played a number of druid characters and have been able to do so with just the core, no splat books necessary, since 1st edition.



So? My first D&D character was a 1e half-orc fighter assassin (inexplicably named for the protagonist of the wonderful Book of the New Sun...). The fact I couldn't play him in 2e did not make 2e an incomplete game (whatever its other faults might be). 2e offered support for a wide enough variety of archetypal fantasy characters to qualify as complete --using a reasonably reasonable definition of the term-- my poor, oddly-named 1/2 orc fighter/assassin notwithstanding. 



> 4e is incomplete if it is trying to be the successor to the game that has included such characters for over 25 years as part of its core.



Incomplete? Sure, I'll concede that. But all I'm after is reasonably complete (seeing as I far more likely to get that in a commercial product). I live in a paradise of diminished expectations.


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## Mallus (Nov 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Well D&D 4th edition is a game, not the latest bulk collection by Black & Decker...ergo not a set of tools.



The Surgeon General has determined that being overly literal causes cancer.


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## justanobody (Nov 10, 2008)

Mallus said:


> The Surgeon General has determined that being overly literal causes cancer.




They also claim that "Smoking these cigarettes are known to cause cancer in the state of California". So As long as I stay out of California I should be fine.


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## Mallus (Nov 10, 2008)

Arnwyn said:


> My response was _specifically_ to Mallus' post. Go from there. (Maybe he just made his point so poorly that my post was rendered moot because I couldn't figure out what he was trying to say? Quite possible.)



Here, let me help you out...

Some people have unrealistic expectations.

"Complete", when used in this context, shouldn't be mistaken for "all-inclusive". As in, 4e is complete while it is not all inclusive.

Hope that helps!


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## Imp (Nov 10, 2008)

Even accounting for the endlessly-harped upon invalid options, there are _still_ more character options in core 3e, simply because the multiclassing system generated so many variants. Saying otherwise is like blabbering to me that the sun is in fact the moon; it's one of those things that invalidates every other perspective a person may have on the two systems.


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## Mallus (Nov 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> They also claim that "Smoking these cigarettes are known to cause cancer in the state of California". So As long as I stay out of California I should be fine.



Stop talking about smoking, it makes me want a cigarette (and I quit two years ago)!


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## tomBitonti (Nov 10, 2008)

Thasmodious said:


> This "less options" nonsense has to die.




Well ... I don't think that a count of the number of options will say whether or not the system is complete.  You could have 7 billion types of mages, but no agile fighters.  Lots of options, but an incomplete system.

But I don't think the original statement was about the count of options.  There are lots of options.  (Whether there are _more_ or _less_, that is a different question.)

I don't think the original question is whether or not WotC/Hasbro has been up front in saying that certain classes will not be available until additional books -- not the PH1, DMG1, MM1 -- are available.  (There is a question of whether WotC/Hasbro has been forthright about what is "core" and whether there is a strategy to stretch out the content.)

I don't think that the original question was whether or not there was substantial _quality_ and/or _value_ in the first three 4E books.  (I personally see big pluses _and_ big minuses as an answer to this question.)

I gathered that the question was whether or not the core three books have provided as complete a game as was provided the first three core 3.5 (or 3.0E) core books.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 10, 2008)

avin said:


> More edition wars?
> 
> Where's my "ignore topic" function?
> 
> ...




Hey, I didn't rant about 4.0 - and I used to play 3.5! 

But a more useful information for you: There is actually an Ignore Thread function! At the top of each thread page, under the "Thread Tools" roll-out button thingy... It's a nice feature to have!


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Well D&D 4th edition is a game, not the latest bulk collection by Black & Decker...ergo not a set of tools.




Why do you hate Bosch? And as a long-time-ago Shadowrunner, I know that toolkit isn't just toolkit. There are Electonics (B/R) toolkits, Mechanics (B/R) toolkits, Planes (B/R) toolkits and many more! D&D is a Fantasy (B/R) toolkit. (And just one of many)


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## Arnwyn (Nov 10, 2008)

Thasmodious said:


> This "less options" nonsense has to die. In 3e, most of those 'more options" were mechanically nonviable.



Heh. Talk about nonsense that has to die.

Good bit of irony, there.


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## justanobody (Nov 10, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Why do you hate Bosch? And as a long-time-ago Shadowrunner, I know that toolkit isn't just toolkit. There are Electonics (B/R) toolkits, Mechanics (B/R) toolkits, Planes (B/R) toolkits and many more! D&D is a Fantasy (B/R) toolkit. (And just one of many)




I prefer De Walt myself. But hey suck for playing an RPG. Building a gaming table they are good at. I play games, not tool kits.


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## Thasmodious (Nov 10, 2008)

tomBitonti said:


> I gathered that the question was whether or not the core three books have provided as complete a game as was provided the first three core 3.5 (or 3.0E) core books.




That question has been answered.  4e is certainly more complete than 3e.  Every class in the PHB is complete and workable through all levels of play.  All the elements you need to run the game are included, including a starting town and setting (the Vale) that were not present in 3e.   

The core elements of D&D gameplay are present, the basic four classes from which all others grow - fighter, cleric, wizard, thief; spells, dungeons AND dragons, levels, alignment, gelatinous cubes, its all there.  

Yes, it's D&D.  Yes, it's complete.  No, this is not a discussion.

Yes, its vastly superior to 3e.  There's your discussion.  Ah, if only we had a search function wherein we could determine if whether or not 4e is better than 3e has ever been discussed before.  If it has, it surely must be well off the main page by now...


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## Imaro (Nov 11, 2008)

Thasmodious said:


> That question has been answered.  4e is certainly more complete than 3e.  Every class in the PHB is complete and workable through all levels of play.  All the elements you need to run the game are included, including a starting town and setting (the Vale) that were not present in 3e.




So you've played every class in the PHB throughout all levels...to determine that they have all been created perfectly?  Uhm, yeah...right, call me skeptical.  Also where are my rules for creating traps in 4e??  



Thasmodious said:


> The core elements of D&D gameplay are present, the basic four classes from which all others grow - fighter, cleric, wizard, thief; spells, dungeons AND dragons, levels, alignment, gelatinous cubes, its all there.




Wait a minute...so it's 4th edition but only has to adhere to the standards of basic D&D to be considered complete?  What is that 1970's complete, because it's 2008, and four classes ain't gonna cut it (unless they're good ole 3.5 Gestalt classes )...and where are my Frost Giants!  Oh yeah, and I don't see no metallic DRAGONS either (does this mean it's less Dungeons & *Dragons* than other editions?)




Thasmodious said:


> Yes, it's D&D.  Yes, it's complete.  No, this is not a discussion.




Sure it is, you're discussing and agreeing with yourself...Because all of the above is true... *for you*



Thasmodious said:


> Yes, its vastly superior to 3e.  There's your discussion.  Ah, if only we had a search function wherein we could determine if whether or not 4e is better than 3e has ever been discussed before.  If it has, it surely must be well off the main page by now...





Yes because 4e is perfect, especially those Skill challenge rules...  Oh, and it can't get off the main page if you keep posting in the thread.


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## MichaelSomething (Nov 11, 2008)

I think this is a question of if you would rather order take out from home or try your luck in the kitchen.  

If you got the money and time, order out.

If you can cook well, then head for the kitchen.  



May I be so bold as to suggest The Advanced Player's Guide?  Written by Enworld's own Mouse-vampire guy (I would spell his forum name if I could but I can't so I won't).  It contains all the class/race stuff the PHB doesn't have.


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## pawsplay (Nov 11, 2008)

tomBitonti said:


> I gathered that the question was whether or not the core three books have provided as complete a game as was provided the first three core 3.5 (or 3.0E) core books.




That is basically the heart of what I was getting at.


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## CleverNickName (Nov 11, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> CleverNickName said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I would never.



			
				pawsplay said:
			
		

> That is basically the heart of what I was getting at.



I think this has annoyed everyone at one time or another, even hardcore 4E fans.  To add frustration, we don't have an online SRD to help us 
"wing it" until we can pick up the next "official" release.

3.x spoiled us.


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## Lanefan (Nov 11, 2008)

Someone way upthread hit my main annoyance: *lack of backward compatibility*.  0e to 1e wasn't bad, 1e to 2e was just strange...but a character from one edition could be shoehorned into another without *too* much of a headache.

3e, despite the conversion manual, pretty much did away with direct backward compatibility, though if careful one could pretty much build any old-school character archetype (my experiment was using 3e to make a 1e Illusionist; she did OK) even if such a build would make the optimizers cringe.

I haven't dug deeply enough into 4e yet but from what I've seen in the PH and adventures I think I'd have a very hard time trying to build anything not directly supported by the system as published.  Make a 1e Illusionist in 4e?  Now there's a challenge for ya!   (hint: no spells, rituals or non-weapon abilities allowed if they cause direct physical damage.  Have fun.)

You can still play original Risk using the contents of a Risk-2210 box...they even put a supplement in the rulebook explaining how.  Why can't I do this with D+D?

As for the business about number of class options - someone said 4e has 47 options where 1e had 10 and 3e had 12+8; whatever - why does that matter?  Once you get past the very basics - fighter, wizard, sneak, cleric - the game-mechanics of the character really shouldn't matter that much.  It's a sad thing to see "characters" made of feats and skills and powers rather than personalities and alignments and role-played interactions.

Lane-"the thread title includes 'cynicism'"-fan


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 11, 2008)

Mudstrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> Yeah, think about how many more classes and races 3E could have offered if there hadn't been all these stupid spells in it!




Y'know, it may have been meant as snark, but I 100% agree with this statement, literally. There were too many spells in 3e. A lot of them could have been limited or codified or condensed or turned into class abilities or whatever.

This was probably more because of 3e's desire to preserve the "D&D Game" for what it had been in previous editions, and is understandable in that light, but I think 3e could've been much more useful to some people with more race/class options and fewer spells in the back.

Probably could've been more useful to ME, at least.  

"Give Everybody Spells" probably wasn't the best solution to this problem for everyone, is all I'm sayin'.


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## RFisher (Nov 11, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> No matter what edition, you are being pumped for everything you're worth.




It doesn’t seem to be working. I’ve only bought two of their books since 3.5 came out, and one of those was second-hand.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 11, 2008)

RFisher said:


> It doesn’t seem to be working. I’ve only bought two of their books since 3.5 came out, and one of those was second-hand.




Then you're not worth that much to WotC (or any other publisher that would prefer to have continued sales)? That's okay. RPGs are not the only thing the publishers or producers would like to sell more of, but can't because some people are content earlier...


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## Thasmodious (Nov 11, 2008)

Lanefan said:


> (hint: no spells, rituals or non-weapon abilities allowed if they cause direct physical damage.  Have fun.)




That's apples and oranges though.  4e is a new system with a slightly different way of approaching combat (finally truly abstracting HP).  Everything does damage, but damage isn't direct physical damage.  Believing a yawning portal just opened up under your feet and that you are falling as you drop to the ground does "damage" because thats the way the system works now.  4e doesn't do non-damage attack spells, which include illusions.  They have an effect on an enemies ability to wage war, that effect is measured by loss of HP.  




> As for the business about number of class options - someone said 4e has 47 options where 1e had 10 and 3e had 12+8; whatever - why does that matter?  Once you get past the very basics - fighter, wizard, sneak, cleric - the game-mechanics of the character really shouldn't matter that much.




That was me, and I was making the same point you just ended the above statement with.  Point was, it didn't matter.  But people seemed to miss that point.  Guess I didn't make it that well.



> It's a sad thing to see "characters" made of feats and skills and powers rather than personalities and alignments and role-played interactions.




That would be truly a sad thing to see.  Thankfully, that's up to the players and DM, so it's not anything I'm going to see.   It's certainly not anything D&D has ever condoned.


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## RFisher (Nov 11, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Then you're not worth that much to WotC (or any other publisher that would prefer to have continued sales)? That's okay. RPGs are not the only thing the publishers or producers would like to sell more of, but can't because some people are content earlier...




You seem to assume I haven’t bought many non-Wizards books in that time and that I wouldn’t have bought many Wizards products if they had done something different. If so, you are wrong on both counts.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 11, 2008)

RFisher said:


> You seem to assume I haven’t bought many non-Wizards books in that time and that I wouldn’t have bought many Wizards products if they had done something different. If so, you are wrong on both counts.




But maybe the products you would have bought are products others wouldn't have bought? Or are products WotC just can't make because they are bad at it?


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## pawsplay (Nov 11, 2008)

I was looking at Ultimate Feats at the used book store yesterday and a thought occured to me. That was probably a great idea for a product when it came out. But I don't think there's a lot of market for that now. Same with adventures. And what's the reason?

Who keeps playing a game a few years after it's out? The fan, the hobbyist, the tinkerer. Someone who could dash out a new class if they had to. Someone who already has a dozen D&D books and can find something they like. Likely, this person has enough experience to be a little pessimistic whether an entire book of feats is really going to add much to their gaming experience unless they are really good feats, or whether an adventure is better than anything they could write themselves. 

I wonder when WotC decided this person was not worth selling product to. Because that's pretty much how I see things. WotC doesn't want you kit-bashing your own classes, they want you to buy them and the pages and pages of cards, sorry, powers, that come with them. They don't care about loyalists because they think there is a whole world of new players out there waiting to be captured. They think old school players can fend for themselves, hoarding out of print materials, writing house rules, running furtive convention games and playing with their old college buddies.

I would totally buy a D&D T-shirt if I thought it was cool. I would buy another monster manual, I would buy ten, if I thought they were cool. If I keep running D&D year after year, rulebooks will need to be replaced. After five years of errata, I wouldn't mind paying money for an incrementally revised rulebook.  Come on, $40 every five years? Bring it on. 

There are plenty of people willing to sink $200 a year into the newest, hottest D&D. But how many of them are going to stick with it? What is going to happen to the D&D brand? Star Trek split between the original series and TNG, but at least they got to keep sharing the same universe. 

I'm not sure the new edition is entirely the product of "market research," which WotC did plenty of for 3e. Sometimes I suspect changes were made to suit the personal preferences of the designers, who decided that since they were now King of D&D, they could do that. And with WotC wanting to raise revenue, and a staggered schedule of publication being the plan, and with a mandate to fix problems, this was the perfect opportunity.  The only problem was this huge existing fanbase.

I think the problem was eventually solved by calculating who would shell out more money this time around. A lot of people were willing to convert, to stay current. Some bought the new core, even while keeping what they already had. I don't think WotC was incorrect in thinking 4e would reinvigorate sales. Obviously, plenty of people were ready to try something new. I just worry that it was short-sighted.

Eventually, the new edition is going to play out, as all must at some point. And then what will happen? Each generation of D&D player will be stranger to the one before. Will the name D&D even mean anything by the time 5th edition rolls out?

I feel really alienated, moreso than when Forgotten Realms, that new kid on the block, became THE D&D setting, moreso than around when Powers & Skills came out and I left AD&D behind pretty much forever. It became a thing of historical interest to me. 

I was reading the D&D celebration book the other day. I really wonder if WotC has forgotten the lessons learned. 3e brought D&D back from the dead. What it did, must have been at some level a successful strategy. Avoiding an explosion of must-have sourcebooks was considered a design goal, and for good reason. 

When "core" becomes bigger every year it means two things:

A) a percentage of experienced players will be lost every time you publish a sourcebook, if they reject some of the supplemental material you previously published, and
B) the cost of becoming an acculturated new player just got higher

It looks like to be a hip and with it player these days, you need to plan on laying down $60 to $100 on buying the core rulebooks, plus plan on spending another $40 a couple of times a year on new core, assuming you don't try to collect it all. Then you are going to spend a few dollars more a month for online content. 

If you take a yearlong break from spending cash on D&D, you are probably gone for good. You might cherry pick a few things, but once you can't keep up, you're not going to catch up. Why should you? You've already spent $300 on enough gaming material to last a lifetime. 

The whole model is based on creating a supply then trying to manufacture a demand for it. I think that style of marketing is on its way out... look at the economy now, with all the bloat it's had to shed. The way to do business is to find a need and address it.

Bundling things like the tabletop and online magazines and stuff with a new edtion was, in my opinion, a mistake. People might have paid for that stuff anyway. If you want to create revenue, you have to find a product people continuously want. Trying to hype something is going to produce, at most, a fad.

Plenty of people love 4e and I am happy for them. I don't. But let's say I were a 4e fan. I would really worry about what would happen if WotC decided 4e wasn't profitable enough before publishing a lot of stuff I was looking forward to. I don't _want_ a gaming hobby that my publisher thinks I should be spending $200 a year on. I am not that target demographic. 

If you were going to sell a new edition of D&D to me, you would do it like this:

A) Create something awesome
B) Put it in a big, awesome package
C) Mark up the price generously, which I will pay because it's awesome
D) Sell it to me and let me enjoy it


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## Mallus (Nov 11, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> WotC doesn't want you kit-bashing your own classes...



Where is the evidence for this?



> ... they want you to buy them and the pages and pages of cards, sorry, powers, that come with them.



WotC wants to sell you as much supplemental material as they can. As did TSR. It's just the business model.



> If I keep running D&D year after year, rulebooks will need to be replaced.



I'm lucky, all of my 1e books from the mid-to-late 1980s are fine. 



> After five years of errata, I wouldn't mind paying money for an incrementally revised rulebook.



See, I would. I get annoyed when a company tries to sell me what is essentially the same product several times over. Also, learning a new system every few years is fun, it's like an artist branching out and exploring new techniques/media. 



> But how many of them are going to stick with it?



My group is still playtesting the new edition. The early results are positive, but far from conclusive. 



> What is going to happen to the D&D brand?



It'll endure. There have been several substantially different games released under the D&D brand, and the brand is still around. 



> Sometimes I suspect changes were made to suit the personal preferences of the designers, who decided that since they were now King of D&D, they could do that.



You suspect that the people paid to design the new edition of D&D actually _designed the new edition of D&D_. I suspect you're right. I further suspect they were hired because of their design skills, which they applied to 4e. 



> I don't think WotC was incorrect in thinking 4e would reinvigorate sales.



They weren't. It's been the pattern for every new edition. 



> Obviously, plenty of people were ready to try something new.



Again, that's been the pattern.



> Eventually, the new edition is going to play out, as all must at some point. And then what will happen?



5e. 



> Will the name D&D even mean anything by the time 5th edition rolls out?



How much does OD&D have in common with 3e? Heck, 3.5e is markedly different from initial 3.5e, when you consider the addition of things like per-encounter abilities and all those new magic systems. The paradigm began to shift inside of the last edition (as it did in 2e after Skills and Powers, come to think of it).

I just don't see how's there anything _new_ here in the release of 4e. This has happened before (hopefully it'll happen again). So WotC is looking to create steady revenue stream, how is this new or surprising? The D&D brand-holders have always tried to keep the market buying. Their model has never been to sell a single, premium-priced package --which creates a big barrier to entry, BTW.


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## Raven Crowking (Nov 11, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> The worst thing any RPG publisher can do is give the impression that they want to make a profit by deliberately limiting your game.
> 
> "Give us money or don't have fun!" is a bad impression to give. And yet some have definitely gotten that impression.




This.


RC


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## Imban (Nov 11, 2008)

Mallus said:


> How much does OD&D have in common with 3e?




You'd be surprised. O -> 1e -> 2e all had quite a lot in common with each other, and while 3e basically threw out the rule system to start over, it adhered tightly to 2e's game world.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 11, 2008)

> I wonder when WotC decided this person was not worth selling product to. Because that's pretty much how I see things.




I disagree. WotC knows they have a hardcore audience, and they will cater to it. That's half the reason for the transparency of many of 4e's rules, and the siloing: you know that when you change something, you'll only be changing that thing, and you will clearly see what the effects will be. Or, at least, that's one of the ideals (whether or not 4e really achieves this is probably up for debate).

Wizards wants EVERYONE to play their game, and I don't think they'd make a choice that they didn't really believe in just to make it more difficult for tinkerers. 

I mean, it is ridiculously easy to design a new power, for instance. 



> There are plenty of people willing to sink $200 a year into the newest, hottest D&D.



It's more like $200 every 10 years, which boils down to $20 a year or so? And besides, I think WotC is probably seriously considering what it would take to get longer and longer editions, to get off of the "edition treadmill."

Part of that formula is likely to bump sales of products in the 8th year of the game. If they can keep sales high throughout the decade, they don't need the sudden cash influx that a new edition will grant them.



> I'm not sure the new edition is entirely the product of "market research," which WotC did plenty of for 3e. Sometimes I suspect changes were made to suit the personal preferences of the designers, who decided that since they were now King of D&D, they could do that.



I mostly disagree. They're putting out the game they think most people want. There's just a few problems with that, and those problems tend to drive away some people.

#1: Not everyone wants the game that most people want. D&D has a lot of fringe tinkerers who value control over their own games quite highly.

#2: The game that most people say they want probably isn't the game that they *really* want because people are irrational, panicky apes. 

I believe 4e's focus on combat, for instance, comes directly from the perception that combat is the most fun thing you can do in D&D, and that perception occurred because combat has been an action-packed central pillar of the game from day one, and the "20 minutes of fun crammed into 4 hours" perception means that fun only happens when the dice are rollin'. 

I think that's a slightly misleading perception, but I can easily see how they got there, and how 4e serves those needs.



> Will the name D&D even mean anything by the time 5th edition rolls out?



Sure. If we're lucky, it'll mean even more.



> The way to do business is to find a need and address it.



I think that's what they're doing. Problem being mis-identifying a large part of the needs.  



> If you take a yearlong break from spending cash on D&D, you are probably gone for good. You might cherry pick a few things, but once you can't keep up, you're not going to catch up. Why should you? You've already spent $300 on enough gaming material to last a lifetime.



I think this is a fairly valid fear, though. It's amazing how liberating it can feel to decide "Hmm...not this time..." I'm sure 1e fans have felt that for a while now.


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## Puggins (Nov 11, 2008)

Lanefan said:


> I think I'd have a very hard time trying to build anything not directly supported by the system as published.  Make a 1e Illusionist in 4e?  Now there's a challenge for ya!   (hint: no spells, rituals or non-weapon abilities allowed if they cause direct physical damage.  Have fun.)




Are you talking about the mechanical difference or about the thematic difference?  Causing direct, physical damage is abstracted (correctly, IMO) and no longer means that you're taking a dagger or a fireball to flesh.  It represents harming the individual's ability to defend himself.  Look at the (free) Dragon Article "Characters with Class: Wizards", in which illusions are featured.  They still do damage most of the time, representing the mental toll they take on the target.

That said, you are correct in saying that the illusionist is hard to replicate in 4e, at least completely.  None of the at-wills are illusion-heavy.  Most levels give you at least one option for an illusion spell, and the cantrips are very nice in terms of pulling off what used to be low-level illusions, but the translation isn't perfect.  This will likely be improved possibly remedied by Arcane Power.

Of course, this can be remedied by simply reflavoring the powers.  But I'm betting you're not too hot on that, right?



> As for the business about number of class options - someone said 4e has 47 options where 1e had 10 and 3e had 12+8; whatever - why does that matter?  Once you get past the very basics - fighter, wizard, sneak, cleric - the game-mechanics of the character really shouldn't matter that much.  It's a sad thing to see "characters" made of feats and skills and powers rather than personalities and alignments and role-played interactions.




How odd.  You first point that 4e is not varied enough in a mechanical sense ("I can't model an illusionist"), then you say that mechanical variety is unneeded.  The mechanical options in 4e give you far more variety in character options than was possible before in the case of non-pure wizard characters.  Want a reasonable fighter/mage?  No problem, 4e can do that.  Want a fighter that has a good base of skill support?  Sure, you can do that too.  Want to play a cleric of a god of thieves without gimping yourself?  Check!

You're looking for specific examples of variety, and I will happily agree that 4e can't cover every single character concept right off the bat.  Of course, 3.5e couldn't either- it covered less ground than 4e, in fact.  It did cover some cases that 4e doesn't, but 4e covers plenty that 3.5e couldn't in a satisfactory manner.

If you're looking for a dedicated illusionist from core, then 4e fails.  I'll argue that your demands there are fairly narrow, though, and won't apply to anyone looking to make an organic character- why wouldn't a wizard who prefers illusions not want to learn even the most fundamental attack spells if he's going out adventuring, for example?  I'd figure he'd want magic missile or fire burst as a backup, no?


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## pawsplay (Nov 11, 2008)

Mallus said:


> See, I would. I get annoyed when a company tries to sell me what is essentially the same product several times over.




Obviously, if you are happy with the updates you currently have and your books are in good shape, you would be under no obligation to "upgrade" which I think is a state people enjoy.



> paradigm began to shift inside of the last edition (as it did in 2e after Skills and Powers, come to think of it).
> 
> I just don't see how's there anything _new_ here in the release of 4e. This has happened before (hopefully it'll happen again). So WotC is looking to create steady revenue stream, how is this new or surprising? The D&D brand-holders have always tried to keep the market buying. Their model has never been to sell a single, premium-priced package --which creates a big barrier to entry, BTW.





What you are describing, though, is the AD&D 2e in its death throes. That model was ultimately not successful. The fan base revolted, sales shrank, and the design team ran out of steam. TSR went out of business.


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## lexoanvil (Nov 11, 2008)

as far as im concerned the only thing that has ever been "core" in D&D is fighting-men(fighters) clerics , wizards ,elves ,humans, halfings, dwarves and two a lessor degree rogues and gnomes after thoes you have hit core. as much as i love bards druids barbarians how is the dession to go with newer classes not core? 4E players handbook is ALL you need to play the game(as a player) and have a good time. the only people complaning about it are people who don't like the selection they were given. its simple economics i would love for every edition to have added core but if the page count of the books goes up so must the price. given that every class has 15-20 pages dedicated to it and with 8 classes in the phb you need to leave room for the rules and other things. now if Ph2 comes out with a considerablely low page count and 8 classes i might be pissed.


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## Imaro (Nov 11, 2008)

lexoanvil said:


> as far as im concerned the only thing that has ever been "core" in D&D is fighting-men(fighters) clerics , wizards ,elves ,humans, halfings, dwarves and two a lessor degree rogues and gnomes after thoes you have hit core. as much as i love bards druids barbarians how is the dession to go with newer classes not core? 4E players handbook is ALL you need to play the game(as a player) and have a good time. the only people complaning about it are people who don't like the selection they were given. its simple economics i would love for every edition to have added core but if the page count of the books goes up so must the price. given that every class has 15-20 pages dedicated to it and with 8 classes in the phb you need to leave room for the rules and other things. now if Ph2 comes out with a considerablely low page count and 8 classes i might be pissed.





So..if a book has a smaller page count, less words and more whitespace...shouldn't it cost less by your criteria?? Just saying.


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## lexoanvil (Nov 11, 2008)

Imaro said:


> So..if a book has a smaller page count, less words and more whitespace...shouldn't it cost less by your criteria?? Just saying.



but normal standards sure. i felt the difference between the 2 was very comparable given the re-structure of the dmg.


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## fanboy2000 (Nov 11, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> #2: The game that most people say they want probably isn't the game that they *really* want because people are irrational, panicky apes.
> 
> I believe 4e's focus on combat, for instance, comes directly from the perception that combat is the most fun thing you can do in D&D, and that perception occurred because combat has been an action-packed central pillar of the game from day one, and the "20 minutes of fun crammed into 4 hours" perception means that fun only happens when the dice are rollin'.



If my personal experience is any indicator, I think 4e's focus on combat comes from people not using many the non-combat portion of the rules when they roleplay. I've DMed a many people who have put points into the either craft or profession under 3rd. In none of those cases did the rules for making money with those skills ever come-up. Sense PC were adventures, the need to make money via Craft (toymaking) as one of my players had, was unnecessary. 

The reason the points were spent on the skill was to put it on the character sheet. If the above player wanted to make a toy, he could roll the dice or just take 10. Sometimes he might take 20. The lengthy rules craft and it's sibling had was, for my game, superfluous.

Ironically, I don't think dropping the skills from the game was good idea, only dropping the lengthy rules. I don't think the rules were necessary. But I do think that the skills, as a devise for putting some personality in game terms and having them on a character sheet, was a good idea.

Personally, I've never had a problem with the PCs not roleplaying. My PCs always want to talk to some NPC or another. I just started a new 4e game. One person played 3e a little, another hadn't played sense 2e was current, and a third had never played any kind of roleplaying game ever. Minutes after creating their characters, they wanted to talk to the Lord Warden of the city. Minutes. One players was negotiating with poor farmers for pies.

Six moths ago with an entirely different group comprised of evil power gaming munchkins who live 600 miles from where I stand now, I had them in the City State of the Invincible Overlord. And they insisted on talking to the Overlord. It was a fun encounter, one of the characters got a city-wide bulletin put out about how stupid he was.

Your millage may vary.


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## Imaro (Nov 12, 2008)

lexoanvil said:


> but normal standards sure. i felt the difference between the 2 was very comparable given the re-structure of the dmg.




Huh?  I was talking about 3.5 core vs. 4e core (including the Monster Manual)...objectively there is a smaller page count over the three books (And less words) in 4e.  Yet it costs about the same (accounting for inflation) that 3.5 did for all 3 books.


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## Cadfan (Nov 12, 2008)

This whole "pay by the page" attitude annoys the heck out of me.  You're not paying by the page.  That's a silly perspective.  You're paying for a game.  The game is either worth the cost or its not.  The number of pages it took to write the game has nothing to do with it.  The word count of the game has nothing to do with it.

Go take a short walk over to the board game side of geekdom.  i recently purchased a board game that cost me about ten bucks.  The components included only four decks of cards, with forty cards per deck.  Did I get ripped off?  ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW FROM THE INFORMATION I'VE GIVEN!  The thing i bought wasn't the physical deck of cards, it was the game.  The game was either worth ten bucks, or it wasn't.  If it wasn't, then increasing the number of cards from 160 to 500 wouldn't have made a darn bit of difference if the game itself weren't altered thereby.

Deciding whether an RPG is worth its cost by looking at page count is like deciding whether to date someone based on their mass.


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## Imaro (Nov 12, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> This whole "pay by the page" attitude annoys the heck out of me.  You're not paying by the page.  That's a silly perspective.  You're paying for a game.  The game is either worth the cost or its not.  The number of pages it took to write the game has nothing to do with it.  The word count of the game has nothing to do with it.
> 
> Go take a short walk over to the board game side of geekdom.  i recently purchased a board game that cost me about ten bucks.  The components included only four decks of cards, with forty cards per deck.  Did I get ripped off?  ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW FROM THE INFORMATION I'VE GIVEN!  The thing i bought wasn't the physical deck of cards, it was the game.  The game was either worth ten bucks, or it wasn't.  If it wasn't, then increasing the number of cards from 160 to 500 wouldn't have made a darn bit of difference if the game itself weren't altered thereby.
> 
> Deciding whether an RPG is worth its cost by looking at page count is like deciding whether to date someone based on their mass.




I'm sorry that annoys you, but I can tell you 4e was the first time I felt the D&D corebooks were thin for the cost.  Also since it is a game built on options (powers, races, monsters, classes, feats, rituals, items, etc.) one can judge it by the number of options it offers and since more pages and less whitespace can translate into...well you should get the picture now.  How does not having a wider selection of classes, rules, settings, monsters, races, powers, etc...not alter the game?

 IMO it does matter.  I don't care how fun a one page PDF- only rpg is...I'm not going to think paying $100 was worth it...ever.


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## Cadfan (Nov 12, 2008)

Imaro said:


> I'm sorry that annoys you, but I can tell you 4e was the first time I felt the D&D corebooks were thin for the cost.  Also since it is a game built on options (powers, races, monsters, classes, feats, rituals, items, etc.) one can judge it by the number of options it offers and since more pages and less whitespace can translate into...well you should get the picture now.  How does not having a wider selection of classes, rules, settings, monsters, races, powers, etc...not alter the game?
> 
> IMO it does matter.  I don't care how fun a one page PDF- only rpg is...I'm not going to think paying $100 was worth it...ever.



If you feel that there wasn't enough in there to entertain you for the amount of money spent, that's fine.  I disagree.  I'm someone who likes playing non magical classes, so you can probably figure out why I like 4e core more than 3e core- 4e made a design choice to focus on depth of class rather than volume of classes.  So, we get Fighters that have, in core, as many or more viable choices than Fighters did over the course of years of 3e development.  But then we don't get Druids at all.  Its a design choice, and you're free to like it or hate it.

But white space is a meaningless metric.  The 4e Rogue isn't vastly better than the 3e Rogue because it takes up more pages.  Its vastly better because its better written, and doesn't contain absolutely moronic design choices like a decision to make the worth of its attack rolls entirely dependent on whether you take a certain feat that only becomes available at third level.*

And the attitude that says, "I paid X dollars for this product, and there's WHITE SPACE!  I've been robbed!" is stunning in just how thoroughly it misses the point.

*lets face it, we'd be ALL OVER that if it happened in 4e.


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## pawsplay (Nov 12, 2008)

Cadfan,

If there are fewer pages and fewer classes, isn't it logical to conclude that if they added a few more pages, they could have included more? Clearly the 4e design is partially at fault by making every class crowd the rulebook, but it seems like including less text only intensifies that problem.


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## Raven Crowking (Nov 12, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> The 4e Rogue isn't vastly better than the 3e Rogue because it takes up more pages.  Its vastly better because its better written, and doesn't contain absolutely moronic design choices like a decision to make the worth of its attack rolls entirely dependent on whether you take a certain feat that only becomes available at third level.*
> 
> <snip>
> 
> *lets face it, we'd be ALL OVER that if it happened in 4e.




Not sure about that.  Not sure about that at all.

It was less than a year before the 4e announcement that people were lambastad for pointing out problems with 3e, after all.


RC


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## Sabathius42 (Nov 12, 2008)

Imp said:


> Even accounting for the endlessly-harped upon invalid options, there are _still_ more character options in core 3e, simply because the multiclassing system generated so many variants. Saying otherwise is like blabbering to me that the sun is in fact the moon; it's one of those things that invalidates every other perspective a person may have on the two systems.




Except that you are percepting incorrectly...

What did you do in 3.5e to distinguish your fighter from the other fighters...

1. skill selection....same as 4e only 4e gives you more choice.
2. feat selection....same as 4e only 4e gives you more choice.
3. Equipment....same as 4e, with a nod to 3.5e having more magic items.
4. Power....oh wait...you don't get to customize your powers....

DS


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## Sabathius42 (Nov 12, 2008)

Puggins said:


> That said, you are correct in saying that the illusionist is hard to replicate in 4e, at least completely.  None of the at-wills are illusion-heavy.  Most levels give you at least one option for an illusion spell, and the cantrips are very nice in terms of pulling off what used to be low-level illusions, but the translation isn't perfect.  This will likely be improved possibly remedied by Arcane Power.
> 
> Of course, this can be remedied by simply reflavoring the powers.  But I'm betting you're not too hot on that, right?





You know....the warlord power that lets someone else make a basic melee attack would be perfect to refllavor as an illusion at-will.  It does no damage itself but could easily be explained as distracting or stunning someone long enough for a party member to get a free whack.  Just one more to come up with and we are gold.

DS


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## malraux (Nov 12, 2008)

For me, a lot of that white space adds value rather than subtracts.  The rule book now works well as a rule book, which for me is its first job, specifically because finding information is easy.  Moreover, the usage of various keys (the monster role or the general look and feel of the powers) makes it much easier to process the information once I find where it is.


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## Imp (Nov 12, 2008)

Sabathius42 said:


> Except that you are percepting incorrectly...
> 
> What did you do in 3.5e to distinguish your fighter from the other fighters...



I was talking about multiclassing. No, you're not going to convince me otherwise on that count.


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## Imaro (Nov 12, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> If you feel that there wasn't enough in there to entertain you for the amount of money spent, that's fine.  I disagree.  I'm someone who likes playing non magical classes, so you can probably figure out why I like 4e core more than 3e core- 4e made a design choice to focus on depth of class rather than volume of classes.  So, we get Fighters that have, in core, as many or more viable choices than Fighters did over the course of years of 3e development.  But then we don't get Druids at all.  Its a design choice, and you're free to like it or hate it.




I love how so many people have played levels 1 -30 in every class, and thus are assured that the game's classes are perfect at every level... 

I also love this fallacy that, if you aren't loving everything about 4e... well you musta played a spellcaster before... 

Yet a fighter could multiclass, with other warrior types in 3.5 to become more diversified...I mean what does the fighter do in 4e that he didn't in 3.5 with the right feat selection and multi-classing choices?  Especially once later splats are introduced?  He sure can't do more damage than a Ranger or Rogue now...but he could in 3.5...



Cadfan said:


> But white space is a meaningless metric.  The 4e Rogue isn't vastly better than the 3e Rogue because it takes up more pages.  Its vastly better because its better written, and doesn't contain absolutely moronic design choices like a decision to make the worth of its attack rolls entirely dependent on whether you take a certain feat that only becomes available at third level.*




Or you might like the Rogue in 3.5 better because he can actually be a specialist in certain thievery-based skill...instead of being basically the same in all of them...but wait a character's enjoyment  is only measured by combat effectiveness in the new D&D paradigm... 



Cadfan said:


> And the attitude that says, "I paid X dollars for this product, and there's WHITE SPACE!  I've been robbed!" is stunning in just how thoroughly it misses the point.




As is your hyperbole...stunning in how it both exaggerates to absurdity, yet still misses the point.  I'm saying when you can look at other rpg's by smaller companies and their games give you just as much or more bang for your buck...or designers come out and basically say... "Yeah, we knew you guys wanted this in core...and we knew it was popular and a staple of D&D...but we are going to purposefully hold it back so you have to buy another book to get it, not because we need more development time to do it right or don't have it ready."... Honestly was this attitude ever espoused by the designers or developers of previous editions?  Because I sure don't remember it.


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## Lanefan (Nov 12, 2008)

Thasmodious said:


> That's apples and oranges though.  4e is a new system with a slightly different way of approaching combat (finally truly abstracting HP).  Everything does damage, but damage isn't direct physical damage.  Believing a yawning portal just opened up under your feet and that you are falling as you drop to the ground



Yes, but does 4e even *have* a spell or ability that can do this?  I haven't heard of one yet.







> does "damage" because thats the way the system works now.  4e doesn't do non-damage attack spells, which include illusions.  They have an effect on an enemies ability to wage war, that effect is measured by loss of HP.



As opposed to loss of mobility, loss of powers, loss of senses, etc.  I think those are all still in 4e (though nowhere near as prevalent or powerful as any earlier edition), and would be the bread and butter of illusionists.  You think the cliff just fell on you.  You think you're in quicksand.  You think you can't see anything but fog because...well, suddenly it's foggy.  Or dark.  And you keep hearing those strange voices from just off to your left yet you'd *swear* nobody's there.  And where the frak did that Dwarf come from?!


> That would be truly a sad thing to see.  Thankfully, that's up to the players and DM, so it's not anything I'm going to see.   It's certainly not anything D&D has ever condoned.



Explicitly, no.  Implicitly, yes, at least in 3e...the build became the character.  I really hope 4e doesn't end up the same way.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Nov 12, 2008)

Puggins said:


> Are you talking about the mechanical difference or about the thematic difference?  Causing direct, physical damage is abstracted (correctly, IMO) and no longer means that you're taking a dagger or a fireball to flesh.  It represents harming the individual's ability to defend himself.  Look at the (free) Dragon Article "Characters with Class: Wizards", in which illusions are featured.  They still do damage most of the time, representing the mental toll they take on the target.



To be honest, I've actively avoided the D+D part of the WotC site pretty much since 4e came out, so if something's appeared there I haven't seen it.  Question is, can they do things other than raw damage?



> How odd.  You first point that 4e is not varied enough in a mechanical sense ("I can't model an illusionist"), then you say that mechanical variety is unneeded.  The mechanical options in 4e give you far more variety in character options than was possible before in the case of non-pure wizard characters.  Want a reasonable fighter/mage?  No problem, 4e can do that.  Want a fighter that has a good base of skill support?  Sure, you can do that too.  Want to play a cleric of a god of thieves without gimping yourself?  Check!



Touche.  I know what I'm trying to say but not sayng it well.  Perhaps, invent more classes instead?  Make, for example, Illusionist and Necromancer their own classes, rather than wizard kitbashes.  Make Swashbuckler its own class, ditto Archer.  Then admit that one member of any given class is going to *mechanically* function very much like any other member of the same class, and emphasize that the in-game difference between Lanefan* the gonzo and James* the steadfast comes from personality, not mechanics, and not "build".

* two old 1e Fighters that ran in the same party on occasion; James was played by a long-time friend of mine.  Mechanically almost exactly the same, yet you'd be hard put to find two more different characters if you watched them at work. 


> If you're looking for a dedicated illusionist from core, then 4e fails.  I'll argue that your demands there are fairly narrow, though, and won't apply to anyone looking to make an organic character- why wouldn't a wizard who prefers illusions not want to learn even the most fundamental attack spells if he's going out adventuring, for example?  I'd figure he'd want magic missile or fire burst as a backup, no?



Remember, I'm looking for direct  backward compatibility here.  1e illusionists couldn't cast Magic Missile until umpteenth level...giving it to them now at low level is incompatible.

And illusionist isn't the only one - there's Druid, Monk, Cavalier, Assassin - and while you can vaguely approach some of these via tweaking the 4e mechanics (Cavalier can get fairly close, in fact) it's a headache.

I'll give them a pass on Bard...that sorry class, while loaded with potential as an idea, has yet to work well in any edition. 

Lanefan


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 12, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Y'know, it may have been meant as snark, but I 100% agree with this statement, literally. There were too many spells in 3e. A lot of them could have been limited or codified or condensed or turned into class abilities or whatever.



Turning them into class abilities doesn't actually change anything. Spells are just the class abilities of spellcasters. 

The only problem of the number of spells is that spellcasters get a lot more class abilities then non-spellcasters. Every little spell is a class ability that your spellcasting character gets access too. He can customize from them as he sees fit, often he can even customize his character every in-game day!

The powers in 4E are the individual class abilities you can use to customize your character. And every character gets them, not just some privileged spell casters.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 12, 2008)

Lanefan said:


> Yes, but does 4e even *have* a spell or ability that can do this?  I haven't heard of one yet.



Yes and no - not Core rules, but one of the first Dragon Class Acts article did introduce new illusions. I think there was a spell like this one among them.





Lanefan said:


> To be honest, I've actively avoided the D+D part of the WotC site pretty much since 4e came out, so if something's appeared there I haven't seen it.  Question is, can they do things other than raw damage?



The illusions or spells in general? In general, spells can do damage + effect. Or just effect, too. Web and Sleep don't deal damage.



> Touche.  I know what I'm trying to say but not sayng it well.  Perhaps, invent more classes instead?  Make, for example, Illusionist and Necromancer their own classes, rather than wizard kitbashes.



It might please you to hear that this is what they are going to do, according to the information provided so far. While the Wizard gets some illusions, the PHB II is supposed to contain the Illusionist class. The Necromancer doesn't appear to be there, yet, though. It might be something for PHB III. (I can see why they delay them, they might want to introduce a new power source AND the Necromancer isn't exactly a "good" character type and evil classes can wait.)



> I'll give them a pass on Bard...that sorry class, while loaded with potential as an idea, has yet to work well in any edition.



It looks good for the Bard - a first preview was already around (but I am afraid it now requires a subscription, but I am not sure.)


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## justanobody (Nov 12, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> This whole "pay by the page" attitude annoys the heck out of me.  You're not paying by the page.  That's a silly perspective.  You're paying for a game.  The game is either worth the cost or its not.  The number of pages it took to write the game has nothing to do with it.  The word count of the game has nothing to do with it.
> 
> Go take a short walk over to the board game side of geekdom.  i recently purchased a board game that cost me about ten bucks.  The components included only four decks of cards, with forty cards per deck.  Did I get ripped off?  ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW FROM THE INFORMATION I'VE GIVEN!  The thing i bought wasn't the physical deck of cards, it was the game.  The game was either worth ten bucks, or it wasn't.  If it wasn't, then increasing the number of cards from 160 to 500 wouldn't have made a darn bit of difference if the game itself weren't altered thereby.
> 
> Deciding whether an RPG is worth its cost by looking at page count is like deciding whether to date someone based on their mass.




How would you feel if there was only a single word per page and the book price accounted for it.

You still get all the words, but the book is 100 times the size and cost.

Will you still enjoy the game as much paying $12,000 for the core books giftset because they wasted page space?

I mean it would only be a bit over 90,000 pages in the three books to carry with you.


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## rounser (Nov 12, 2008)

> I'll give them a pass on Bard...that sorry class, while loaded with potential as an idea, has yet to work well in any edition.



The 2E bard with the "blade" kit kind of worked, from memory.  The name seems a bit arbitrary, but the flavour worked, and it could hold it's own in combat.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 12, 2008)

> Turning them into class abilities doesn't actually change anything. Spells are just the class abilities of spellcasters.




Well, by that I meant turning spells that were pretty much guaranteed spells into shorthand class abilities. So that fireball, rather than take up the space that it did in the 3e PHB, would look something more like this:

*Fireball (Sp)*: You fill a 20' radius space with fire, dealing 1d6 fire damage per level (reflex halves). You can do this once per day per 5 levels.

Takes up a lot less space, and puts it in a place where every wizard will have it. 



> The only problem of the number of spells is that spellcasters get a lot more class abilities then non-spellcasters. Every little spell is a class ability that your spellcasting character gets access too. He can customize from them as he sees fit, often he can even customize his character every in-game day!




This is potentially a virtue, not a flaw. A lot of people who played fighters did really prefer to have less complex class abilities, and being able to address a multitude of challenges was the Wizard's goal. This came from balance being about dungeon exploration, and not about being in-combat, though. 

Plus, in the RAW, Wizards were a bit more limited than that. Divine casters were a bit out of control, but Wizards (and Sorcerers) had to pay a lot of gold for their class powers, if they wanted more than about a dozen spells. 



> The powers in 4E are the individual class abilities you can use to customize your character. And every character gets them, not just some privileged spell casters.




Not everyone WANTS powers. I don't.  I never played a Wizard in 3e because I am turned off by selecting cards to play from my deck like that. I'd rather have a small core of abilities that gets better, and a few new abilities added at significant levels, than some unwieldy pillar of spells.

That's not to say that the fighter probably didn't need some lovin' in that respect, and that the wizard could have used a tone-down. Making Rituals universal noncombat "spells" is a very good idea. Giving Fighters "swordball" instead of fireball and "mundane missile" instead of "magic missile" and "crossbow bolt" instead of "lightning bolt" isn't, in my mind, the way to go. It just means that chapter of the 3e PHB that was so intimidating gets quadrupled as we add "new spells" for the other classes, and that diversity gets pushed to the side. 

That's not really an acceptable sacrifice for a sub-par system, in my mind.


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## Raven Crowking (Nov 12, 2008)

KM, since I can't give you any more XP right now, may I instead thank you for your even-handed approach to examining the current edition?  Along with the posts of some other folks like MerricB (more should immediately spring to mind, but I am at work, and have had only one cup of coffee thus far), I am finding yours an immense pleasure to read.

Kudos.


RC


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## fanboy2000 (Nov 12, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Not everyone WANTS powers. I don't.  I never played a Wizard in 3e because I am turned off by selecting cards to play from my deck like that. I'd rather have a small core of abilities that gets better, and a few new abilities added at significant levels, than some unwieldy pillar of spells.



I don't think 4e powers represent an unwieldily pillar of spells. 

In 3.5 a fighter got 11 class features over 20 levels. At first level they got to choose their class feature from a list of bonus feats, the number of which a 1st level fighter qualified for was 33. This includes feats like cleave which could be qualified for by taking power-atack as a the first level general feat. 

By contrast, a 4e fighter gets 17 powers over 30 levels. At first level They chose 2 at-will powers from a list of 4, 1 encounter power from a list 4, and 1 daily from a list of 3.

In 3.5 a wizard has 46 class features over 20 levels. A wizard will, at 20th, be able to cast 40 spells, have 4 bonus feats, be able to scribe scrolls, and can summon a familiar. At first level though, the wizard only has 6 class features. Three 0 level spells, one 1st level spell, scribe scroll, and summon familiar. The three 0 level spells are chosen from a list of 19, and the one 1st level is chosen from a list of 39.

By contrast, a 4e wizards gets 17 powers over 30 levels. Wizards also get 4 non-combat powers, At first level the wizards chose 2 at-wills from a list of 5, 1 encounter from a list of 5, and 1 daily from a list of 4.

Given the way powers are selected in 4e, I would say that this is hardly unwieldy. Also, at-will powers, which stay with a PC from 1st to 30th unless the PC retrains, do get better. 



> That's not to say that the fighter probably didn't need some lovin' in that respect, and that the wizard could have used a tone-down. Making Rituals universal noncombat "spells" is a very good idea. Giving Fighters "swordball" instead of fireball and "mundane missile" instead of "magic missile" and "crossbow bolt" instead of "lightning bolt" isn't, in my mind, the way to go. It just means that chapter of the 3e PHB that was so intimidating gets quadrupled as we add "new spells" for the other classes, and that diversity gets pushed to the side.



Many of the fighter’s powers are modeled after fighter bonus feats, not wizard/sorcoror spells. The at-will fighter power, cleave, springs to mind. 

Recently, I walked three newcomers to 4e (one was a newcomer to rpgs in general) through character creation. One of them was a fighter. He chose his powers and it didn't take very long, the list is short and the powers are well defined. Personally, I don't think that powers are as bad as spells. What think that they replace is the prestige class mechanic. In my experience, few people ever played fighters to 20th level, they typically multiclassed with some of the classes in the 3.5 PHB and then went on to a PrC in some splatbook. So it seems to me that what 4e did, practically, was give people as many choices as they had in 3.5, but unify the mechanism by which people exercised that choice under one mechanic.



> That's not really an acceptable sacrifice for a sub-par system, in my mind.


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## Thasmodious (Nov 12, 2008)

Lanefan said:


> Yes, but does 4e even *have* a spell or ability that can do this?  I haven't heard of one yet.




Yes.  Phantom Chasm, level 1 wizard daily.  The target believes a chasm just opened up beneath them and they are plummeting to their death.  They take 2d6+int psychic damage and are prone and immobilized until end of next turn.

Powers aren't just damage, but damage represents the toll such attacks take on your mind, your ability to fight, your stamina, etc.




> As opposed to loss of mobility, loss of powers, loss of senses, etc.  I think those are all still in 4e (though nowhere near as prevalent or powerful as any earlier edition)




They are more prevalent.  I'm thinking you haven't actually read much of 4e?  I don't mean that sarcastically or anything, but you said you've avoided the wizards website since 4e came out and a statement like that and the above tells me you don't exactly grasp how many powers work.  Most of the powers in 4e do damage + an effect.  They may immobilize, slow, stun, daze, weaken, knock prone, knock unconscious, blind, deafen, etc., etc.  Their power is a bit more balanced than in 3e, with the removal of save or die effects and instant combat enders like petrification, which still exists, but powers that can cause petrification require you to fail at least two saves.  




> and would be the bread and butter of illusionists.  You think the cliff just fell on you.  You think you're in quicksand.  You think you can't see anything but fog because...well, suddenly it's foggy.  Or dark.  And you keep hearing those strange voices from just off to your left yet you'd *swear* nobody's there.  And where the frak did that Dwarf come from?!




Phantasmal Terrain, Phantasmal Assailant, Enemies Abound, Illusory Wall, Ghost Sound, all got you covered.  And in a few months, with PHB 2, the actual Illusionist class will be out with dozens of Illusion powers; which, incidentally, will most all do damage as well.


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## Thasmodious (Nov 12, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Not everyone WANTS powers. I don't.  I never played a Wizard in 3e because I am turned off by selecting cards to play from my deck like that. I'd rather have a small core of abilities that gets better, and a few new abilities added at significant levels, than some unwieldy pillar of spells.




Congratulations, you've just described the 4e power system.  A small core of abilities that get better, with a few new ones spread out over level ups...


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## ExploderWizard (Nov 12, 2008)

Thasmodious said:


> And in a few months, with PHB 2, the actual Illusionist class will be out with dozens of Illusion powers; which, incidentally, will most all do damage as well.




Which I think will be a huge letdown. The illusionist will feel the same as the wizard-causing damage that may or may not include a status effect as a minor annoyance for a round or so. The current list of powers gives me little hope but we shall see.


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## Fifth Element (Nov 12, 2008)

justanobody said:


> How would you feel if there was only a single word per page and the book price accounted for it.



How would you feel if we had a discussion about 4E without having ridiculously literal interpretations of every statement made by someone you don't agree with?


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## Raven Crowking (Nov 12, 2008)

deleted


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## Kishin (Nov 12, 2008)

Imaro said:
			
		

> He sure can't do more damage than a Ranger or Rogue now




Several two handed builds, particularly ones involving the maul, disagree with you.



			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Not everyone WANTS powers. I don't.  I never played a Wizard in 3e because I am turned off by selecting cards to play from my deck like that. I'd rather have a small core of abilities that gets better, and a few new abilities added at significant levels, than some unwieldy pillar of spells.




How is this not exactly what 4E is? At 30th level, your full complement of usable abilities is 17: 2 At-Will, 4 Encounter, 4 daily, 7 Utility. The At wills form the small core that gets better, along with any class feature powers.

17 is about x4 less powers/spells my 14th level Transmuter had at his disposal in 3.5E.

The whole process of using an ability in combat is selecting a card from the deck. Aren't you doing game design based on a series of electronic RPGs that exemplifies this process, even over the last decade when it became what would essentially be in PnP RPG terms a point buy system?



Fifth Element said:


> How would you feel if we had a discussion about 4E without having ridiculously literal interpretations of every statement made by someone you don't agree with?




Like I woke up in a reality where the internet didn't exist.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 12, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> The current list of powers gives me little hope but we shall see.



Hey, we're talking about the illusionist - we can't even trust what we see!


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## garyh (Nov 12, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Hey, we're talking about the illusionist - we can't even trust what we see!




I disbelieve this post.


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## Starbuck_II (Nov 12, 2008)

fanboy2000 said:


> In 3.5 a fighter got 11 class features over 20 levels.
> 
> By contrast, a 4e fighter gets 17 powers over 30 levels. At first level They chose 2 at-will powers from a list of 4, 1 encounter power from a list 4, and 1 daily from a list of 3.
> 
> ...



 You didn't count the class features of the classes (not iuncluding Prc/Destiny class features).
4e:
Fighter: Gets 3 Class features: Combat Superiority, Combat Challenge, and Weapon talent.

Wizard: Implement, Implement mastery, Ritual casting, and spellbook (you can change dailys).


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## Puggins (Nov 12, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Giving Fighters "swordball" instead of fireball and "mundane missile" instead of "magic missile" and "crossbow bolt" instead of "lightning bolt" isn't, in my mind, the way to go.




Fortunately, the 4e designers thought so too.  Fighter exploits are vastly different and far more understated than wizard spells.  Some higher level exploits start doing things that might seem fantastic, but 3.5e had that too- whirlwind, for example, which has an analog in the fighter's arsenal.  But there is no "swordball" or "crossbow bolt," or anything even coming close to resembling them.

From the comment you made, I think it's reasonable to infer that you haven't actually played 4e, at least for any substantial amount of time.  If I am wrong, my apologies.

In practice, the classes play drastically differently.  Thus far, I have seen six of the eight in the PHB, and they are all as stylistically distinct as any two 3.5e classes were.  The 4e paladin plays very differently compared to the fighter.  The rogue plays very differently compared to the ranger, and none of them play at all like the wizard.

I will say that the format in which they are presented makes the classes appear to be homogenous, but appearances belie the feel of each character in actual play.


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## ExploderWizard (Nov 13, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Hey, we're talking about the illusionist - we can't even trust what we see!




How very true.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 13, 2008)

fanboy2000 said:
			
		

> I don't think 4e powers represent an unwieldily pillar of spells






			
				Thasmodius said:
			
		

> Congratulations, you've just described the 4e power system. A small core of abilities that get better, with a few new ones spread out over level ups...






			
				Kishin said:
			
		

> How is this not exactly what 4E is?




There is a continuum, and it is a subjective call, but for my milage, even sitting here as the player of a 2nd level swordmage, yes, 4e already has an unwieldy pillar of spells. When I'm 30th level and I have a deck of 17-20 different spells to use, that's unwieldy. It's pretty friggin' awkward with only my six or so here at 2nd level. When you look at the Classes chapter and see 100+ powers per class, yes, that's TREMENDOUSLY messy.

In actual play, in *so many ways*, and this goes one-hundred times for 4e minis combat, I long for more simplicity. 

Part of the thing about wizards in earlier editions is that, by jotting down your spells, it helped you feel as if you were "keeping your spellbook." It was very in-character to have a library of different effects that you could pull out of your head at-will. In many ways, that's what a wizard WAS.

When I'm playing a fighter who just wants to stick pointy things into squishy things, I shouldn't have to bother with having to keep a spellbook. It's a *hassle*.

And it's a hassle that ate up a massive amount of pagecount, culling out a lot of diversity (to bring it back around to what started the tangent).


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## amysrevenge (Nov 13, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> And it's a hassle that ate up a massive amount of pagecount, culling out a lot of diversity (to bring it back around to what started the tangent).




Normally I disagree with you but understand your position.  This one I'm not really getting though.

Am I misreading this, or are you saying basically "There are too many choices, which leads to a lack of diversity"?


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## Imaro (Nov 13, 2008)

amysrevenge said:


> Normally I disagree with you but understand your position.  This one I'm not really getting though.
> 
> Am I misreading this, or are you saying basically "There are too many choices, which leads to a lack of diversity"?





I think what he's saying (and I could be wrong) is that the choices for any one class are so small that in effect alot of pages were eaten up, yet at low levels a class played by one player is going to be pretty similar, as far as their powers, to another fighter played by someone else.  

Now before anyone starts...yes this was like 3.5, but 3.5 used way less pages and whitespace to accomplish it in, so we could have the Druid, Barbarian, Bard, Monk, etc...so it wasn't like now where my reskinned ranger to be a monk, plays just like Kyle's Ranger.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 13, 2008)

> Am I misreading this, or are you saying basically "There are too many choices, which leads to a lack of diversity"?




It's probably more apt to say that there isn't diversity where it counts.

There's hundreds of different ways to deal damage and cause an effect.

But we don't have one book that contains bards and barbarians and half orcs and illusionists. 

I'm not looking for hundreds of different ways to deal damage and cause an effect. Really, if I have about 4, I'll be okay (especially if they're highly customizable).

I could do with another 10 or so race or class options, though. 

I'm not going to miss half of the powers.

I do miss half-orcs and druids.

A lot of power-diversity (which is probably a debatable ideal) means that there's not a lot of diversity in other places.

Hope that makes sense.


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## Betote (Nov 13, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> I'm not looking for hundreds of different ways to deal damage and cause an effect. Really, if I have about 4, I'll be okay (especially if they're highly customizable).




I wish they'd done something similar to Mutants & Masterminds, with effect-based powers to which you could add descriptors and modifiers.

So, instead of, say, 30 different "[w]+ability damage, X side effect" powers, we could have 1 "[x]+ability damage" power with 30 possible modifiers as "stun", "push", "shift"...

And that's still "exception-based design", just done right.


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## RFisher (Nov 13, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> But maybe the products you would have bought are products others wouldn't have bought? Or are products WotC just can't make because they are bad at it?




Of course. The point, however, is that it has nothing to do with how I feel about Wizards making a profit or not.



pawsplay said:


> What you are describing, though, is the AD&D 2e in its death throes. That model was ultimately not successful. The fan base revolted, sales shrank, and the design team ran out of steam. TSR went out of business.




The problem is that TSR had so many problems it’s hard to say that any one move they made is poison.


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## garyh (Nov 13, 2008)

Betote said:


> I wish they'd done something similar to Mutants & Masterminds, with effect-based powers to which you could add descriptors and modifiers.
> 
> So, instead of, say, 30 different "[w]+ability damage, X side effect" powers, we could have 1 "[x]+ability damage" power with 30 possible modifiers as "stun", "push", "shift"...
> 
> And that's still "exception-based design", just done right.




You probably are already aware of it, but GR is releasing a M&M tailored to fantasy - _Warriors and Warlocks_.

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Warriors-Warlocks-Mutants-Masterminds-Sourcebook/dp/1934547190/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226549765&sr=8-1]Amazon.com: Warriors & Warlocks: A Mutants & Masterminds Sourcebook: Dale Donovan, Matthew E. Kaiser, Steve Kenson, Aaron Sullivan: Books[/ame]


While I enjoy 4e, I also really like M&M, and have already preordered W&W.  Can't wait to see how they've tackled the genre!


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## pawsplay (Nov 13, 2008)

RFisher said:
			
		

> The problem is that TSR had so many problems it’s hard to say that any one move they made is poison.




I don't see the problem there. Anyway, my D&D celebration book goes into detail into exactly how that business model was choking them to death.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 13, 2008)

> I wish they'd done something similar to Mutants & Masterminds, with effect-based powers to which you could add descriptors and modifiers.
> 
> So, instead of, say, 30 different "[w]+ability damage, X side effect" powers, we could have 1 "[x]+ability damage" power with 30 possible modifiers as "stun", "push", "shift"...
> 
> And that's still "exception-based design", just done right.




That wouldn't be bad. The big case against that is that D&D is (and probably should be) class based, and that the classes should have some big differences in how they do stuff. Design like that often leads to (but doesn't HAVE to lead to) a more point-based/classless system, which is probably unappealing for D&D.

I'm totally OK with those differences being in things other than 20 different ways to squish goblins, though. You could address a LOT of the criticisms of 4e with less powers (including, funnily enough, the "sameness" of powers and the use of that system as a grand unifying mechanic).


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## Lanefan (Nov 13, 2008)

Thasmodious said:


> Yes.  Phantom Chasm, level 1 wizard daily.  The target believes a chasm just opened up beneath them and they are plummeting to their death.  They take 2d6+int psychic damage and are prone and immobilized until end of next turn.



Sounds good. 



> They are more prevalent.  I'm thinking you haven't actually read much of 4e?



I've bought and read the PH, the DMG, and about 3 adventures, one of which I'm currently running ret-conned to 1e...I'd like to think that's enough to at least get the basics. 


> I don't mean that sarcastically or anything, but you said you've avoided the wizards website since 4e came out and a statement like that and the above tells me you don't exactly grasp how many powers work.  Most of the powers in 4e do damage + an effect.  They may immobilize, slow, stun, daze, weaken, knock prone, knock unconscious, blind, deafen, etc., etc.  Their power is a bit more balanced than in 3e, with the removal of save or die effects and instant combat enders like petrification, which still exists, but powers that can cause petrification require you to fail at least two saves.



Sounds like the difference is that pre-4e lots of things did damage *or* an effect, where in 4e they've been combined.


> Phantasmal Terrain, Phantasmal Assailant, Enemies Abound, Illusory Wall, Ghost Sound, all got you covered.  And in a few months, with PHB 2, the actual Illusionist class will be out with dozens of Illusion powers; which, incidentally, will most all do damage as well.



Again sounds good, though I think I'd prefer it if the damage only occurred if the illusion was of something that would really hurt if it was real.  A "pit" to fall into: check.  Phantasmal Assailant: check.  However, and this might not be answerable yet, how creative will the spells allow one to be with the illusions?  For example, I was playing an Illusionist once  - we'd just arrived in a foreign port and our ship had been boarded for inspection.  The customs agent was such a prat that my Illusionist wanted to show him up a bit, so she spent about 10 minutes on a Minor Image (it was a 3e game) to ever-so-slowly "move" the gangplank to the dock about 3 feet to the right of its real location - and sure enough, he walked right over the side into the bay!  Now if a 4e Illusionist can do *that*, we're good to go! 

Lane-"but I still prefer gonzo Fighters"-fan


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 13, 2008)

Lanefan said:


> Sounds like the difference is that pre-4e lots of things did damage *or* an effect, where in 4e they've been combined.



That seems an accurate description. 

In 3E, many "tricks" were easily repeatable - you could trip, bullrush or disarm at will. It would have been totally unbalanced if these options also allowed to deal damage, because they would be superior to regular attacks. 

In 4E, they took away the repeatability by making stuff encounter or daily powers, allowing you to still deal damage with such powers. In a way, this makes a lot of sense - why shouldn't an attack that knocks you down not damage you? Especially if we're not talking about spells (magic can work as it likes, it's not based on reality), but about weapon attacks - a stunning fist attack certainly should deal damage, because you're hitting the guy hard enough to stun him!

In this context its interesting that the designers decided that Trip (not a standard combat option) was still way more powerful then Bullrush (anyone can do this at will, and some at-will powers grant the benefits together with damage, like Tide of Iron or, effectively, Scorching Weave), while 3E still treated them as mostly equivalent. Maybe it's just because being prone now grants Combat Advantage (and thus sneak attacks are allowed), or it is because it grants you a bonus to your next attack and costs your opponent an action (move) to undo. A bullrush _might_ require a move action to undo, but any bonuses are highly situational...



> I've bought and read the PH, the DMG, and about 3 adventures, one of which I'm currently running ret-conned to 1e...I'd like to think that's enough to at least get the basics.



Hmm. I don't really know if that is enough for the basics (but what does "basics" really mean) - of any game system. Many people assumed the 3E Monk was overpowered, but once they saw them in play, working in a party and applying stuff like the wealth by level guidelines in practice, things looked different. I am not sure even the designers understood the implications of being able to create/buy a magical item worth 750 gp that could heal a party after one or more encounters to full hit points.




> The customs agent was such a prat that my Illusionist wanted to show him up a bit, so she spent about 10 minutes on a Minor Image (it was a 3e game) to ever-so-slowly "move" the gangplank to the dock about 3 feet to the right of its real location - and sure enough, he walked right over the side into the bay! Now if a 4e Illusionist can do *that*, we're good to go!



I hope the designers had some such "at-will" minor illusions in mind. (I wonder if Illusionist will also have access to cantrips...)


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## justanobody (Nov 13, 2008)

RFisher said:


> The problem is that TSR had so many problems it’s hard to say that any one move they made is poison.




There were two actually, both made by Gary. 

Let the Blumes buy in, and then got LW to come in to clear out the Blumes, but Gary was ousted instead. 

Everything else was a result of those two things. But what can you do when your partner in business passes when things are starting to heat up and get rolling.


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## ExploderWizard (Nov 13, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> In 3E, many "tricks" were easily repeatable - you could trip, bullrush or disarm at will. It would have been totally unbalanced if these options also allowed to deal damage, because they would be superior to regular attacks.
> 
> In 4E, they took away the repeatability by making stuff encounter or daily powers, allowing you to still deal damage with such powers. In a way, this makes a lot of sense - why shouldn't an attack that knocks you down not damage you? Especially if we're not talking about spells (magic can work as it likes, it's not based on reality), but about weapon attacks - a stunning fist attack certainly should deal damage, because you're hitting the guy hard enough to stun him!




3E did make certain tricks do too much for the effort/risk expended but making a non magical maneuver limited on an encounter basis, while possibly balanced, comes up really lacking in the versimilitude department. 

One way to limit overuse is to make a particular trick valuable and easy to perform in a given combat the FIRST time. Once your opponents see the trick performed it will be less and less effective against that group. Thus the effctiveness could be based on the suprise factor which is easy to believe, but still possible to do again at ever worsening penalties.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 13, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> 3E did make certain tricks do too much for the effort/risk expended but making a non magical maneuver limited on an encounter basis, while possibly balanced, comes up really lacking in the versimilitude department.



Yep. In fact, Yep



> One way to limit overuse is to make a particular trick valuable and easy to perform in a given combat the FIRST time. Once your opponents see the trick performed it will be less and less effective against that group. Thus the effctiveness could be based on the suprise factor which is easy to believe, but still possible to do again at ever worsening penalties.



That's a possibility. Encounter powers in 4E could just work like that - you just take a -5 penalty if you want to perform an encounter power again, or a -10 penalty if you want to perform a daily power again. (Unfortunately, these numbers don't work; I remember at least one fighter encounter power that grants a bonus to attack higher then +5 while also dealing more damage. But you get the idea...)

Of course, what do you do if one opponent simply wasn't around watching you perform the maneuver? Does he get his "warning" telepathically? Do you keep track? Do you handwave it? Does it work?


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## Raven Crowking (Nov 13, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> That's a possibility. Encounter powers in 4E could just work like that - you just take a -5 penalty if you want to perform an encounter power again, or a -10 penalty if you want to perform a daily power again. (Unfortunately, these numbers don't work; I remember at least one fighter encounter power that grants a bonus to attack higher then +5 while also dealing more damage. But you get the idea...)




You could say that, in any case where there is an attack roll bonus of +4 or higher, the bonus is ignored and the attack roll has a -5 penalty.


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## vagabundo (Nov 13, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> 3E did make certain tricks do too much for the effort/risk expended but making a non magical maneuver limited on an encounter basis, while possibly balanced, comes up really lacking in the versimilitude department.
> 
> One way to limit overuse is to make a particular trick valuable and easy to perform in a given combat the FIRST time. Once your opponents see the trick performed it will be less and less effective against that group. Thus the effctiveness could be based on the suprise factor which is easy to believe, but still possible to do again at ever worsening penalties.




This is how 4e tends to work. The First "trick" is a an encounter power. After that you can do something similar but it is more difficult, e.g the Tumble utility and then Acrobatic stunt.


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## ExploderWizard (Nov 13, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Of course, what do you do if one opponent simply wasn't around watching you perform the maneuver? Does he get his "warning" telepathically? Do you keep track? Do you handwave it? Does it work?




LOS works ok. This could lead to some fun maneuvering of bad guys around corners before you " use your stuff" so that you could emerge and use it again on the other bad guys.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 13, 2008)

Raven Crowking said:


> You could say that, in any case where there is an attack roll bonus of +4 or higher, the bonus is ignored and the attack roll has a -5 penalty.




If we were to assume that the powers follow a certain "balancing" scheme by level or tier, we could translate the encounter or daily power advantage into relation to an at-will power, and then again translate this into a modifier to the attack. 

For example, if the system assumes an average hit probability of 50 %, and an encounter power deals twice the damage (assuming a purely damaging power is somehow balanced on "average" with damage + effect powers) at heroic tier then an at-will power deals, you could reduce the hit chance to 25 %. (-5 penalty). That are a few iffs, short-cuts and some averaging involved, of course, which still might make some powers a little better, or (which might not that bad) be better in certain situations.

I am fairly certain that the designers have a few guidelines regarding this, but I am not sure if they are solid enough. In either case, the rules are more complicated - and in the end, you're basically adding a complex framework of rules to achieve the same as in the original, basically just attaching an illusion.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 13, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> LOS works ok. This could lead to some fun maneuvering of bad guys around corners before you " use your stuff" so that you could emerge and use it again on the other bad guys.




That would indeed be fun. 
*Fighter pushes enemy behind a corner. BANG, POOF, AAAARGH. Fighter comes back from corner, enemy head on stick* "Come and Get some!" 

(Of course, not such a great solution for people that like neither encounters/dailies nor using the board... )


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## Raven Crowking (Nov 13, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully,

When WotC comes to consider creating a 5e, I hope you get on the design team.  

RC


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 13, 2008)

Raven Crowking said:


> Mustrum_Ridcully,
> 
> When WotC comes to consider creating a 5e, I hope you get on the design team.
> 
> RC




Well, I am looking forward to new career option in 2016 or so. I think than my current job might have gone boring enough... 

But you know, RC, I think you had a lot of good ideas and insights in the past, too  - yet I find that yours and my goals don't seem to match. I am not sure you really should want me on any D&D design teams. Even _if_ I'd somehow managed to help make a kick-ass game, it might not be to your taste.


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## Raven Crowking (Nov 13, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Well, I am looking forward to new career option in 2016 or so. I think than my current job might have gone boring enough...
> 
> But you know, RC, I think you had a lot of good ideas and insights in the past, too  - yet I find that yours and my goals don't seem to match. I am not sure you really should want me on any D&D design teams. Even _if_ I'd somehow managed to help make a kick-ass game, it might not be to your taste.




Perhaps not.

But I tend to think that there are elements of your design work that I really like.  I remember in the 4e-preview threads, how you'd point out that if X were done as Y it would be really cool, and, while perhaps WotC didn't end up doing it that way, I found myself agreeing that it would be cool.

If I were given my druthers, and could pick the design team, it would be the people I think "get" each past edition the best -- including 4e, and therefore meaning some folks who I would normally be arguing with here -- so as to have an edition that has the best blend of all that has come before.

And, I think, it is more important to occasionally mention that you appreciate the insights of people you don't often say "I agree" to.  After all, how else will they know?


RC


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 13, 2008)

Raven Crowking said:


> And, I think, it is more important to occasionally mention that you appreciate the insights of people you don't often say "I agree" to.  After all, how else will they know?



I appreciate your appreciation and return in kind 

But now we'll have to return to our regularly scheduled Edition & Design Death Match! We don't want to break out in tears or anything - there is an Internet to be won


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## Dausuul (Nov 13, 2008)

pawsplay said:


> So where does that leave us? Let's say you played and enjoyed an Eldritch Knight in D&D 3.5. Well, in 4e, you can choose to
> 
> A) suck worse than a poorly planned 3.0 fighter/wizard, by taking less than exciting multiclass choices
> B) lose your character's basic flavor, by taking somewhat more effective multiclass choices
> ...




Or E) make a perfectly viable fighter/wizard multiclass.  Play a fighter with a high Intelligence score, take the wizard multiclass feats, and concentrate on close-burst and blast powers like Thunderwave, Burning Hands, Fire Shroud, Color Spray, and so forth.  Don't forget to pick up Shield as your utility power.

Presto, you have a guy who can switch easily and smoothly between blasting with magic and swinging a sword.  What else do you want from a fighter/mage?

I don't get what you're complaining about here.  Fighter/mages in 4E core work infinitely better than fighter/mages in 3E core, even with the eldritch knight PRC.  The lack of arcane spell failure alone is huge.  The same is true for most complaints I've seen about "untranslateable" concepts... you can usually do them just fine in 4E, unless you insist on them being EXACTLY JUST LIKE THEY WERE IN 3E.


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## Imaro (Nov 13, 2008)

Kishin said:


> Several two handed builds, particularly ones involving the maul, disagree with you.




Please enlighten me, I will readily admit that I know nothing of these builds...but if you have defender builds that outclass the strikers in damage, how is this balanced?  How is this not the whole stepping on toes problem that was supposedly fixed by 4e?


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## Dausuul (Nov 13, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> But we don't have one book that contains bards and barbarians and half orcs and illusionists.




True.  But then, a 4E player switching to 3E might complain that "we don't have one book that contains warlocks and warlords and tieflings and dragonborn."


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## justanobody (Nov 13, 2008)

Dausuul said:


> True.  But then, a 4E player switching to 3E might complain that "we don't have one book that contains warlocks and warlords and tieflings and dragonborn."




But at least they would be going in the right direction!


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## Obryn (Nov 13, 2008)

Imaro said:


> Please enlighten me, I will readily admit that I know nothing of these builds...but if you have defender builds that outclass the strikers in damage, how is this balanced?  How is this not the whole stepping on toes problem that was supposedly fixed by 4e?



FWIW, I disagree with his assertion.

While you can certainly make a Fighter that deals out impressive damage with a two-handed weapon, they lack any Striker bonus dice.  Sure, they can do impressive damage to single targets a few times per battle (see Brute Strike), but they will tend to fall behind over the course of a combat, compared to a Ranger or Rogue.  On the other side of the coin, a Fighter is better with groups of enemies than a ranger or rogue would be.

Also, IMHO, two-handed-weapon fighters are kind of a sucker bet.  One of a fighter's many jobs is to stand up and take attacks.  Their significantly lower AC means they will drop sooner.

-O


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## Thasmodious (Nov 13, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> but making a non magical maneuver limited on an encounter basis, while possibly balanced, comes up really lacking in the versimilitude department.




Only to the unimaginative.  This has been discussed several times already.  Exploits are called exploits for a reason, they require a decently specific set of circumstances to pull off.  Descriptive players and DMs should have no problem describing that with the encounter and daily exploits.  Many powers lend themselves to this limitation naturally.  Others require a bit of creativity. 

Another way to look at it is simply that your suite of encounter and daily exploits are representative of the style of fighting you're good at.  Using those powers is just a representation of specific moments of brilliance, where things come together, over and above.  Fighting with a big hammer, you are often making sweeping bashed and huge overhead blows.  Sometimes, the situation is right, you find an opening and bam - crushing blow.  Sometimes you set up the perfect opening and Brute Strike follows.  That's what the exploits often are, just particularly good expressions of your fighting style.  

"You're always good with the spear Stabby Man, but when you feinted to the left to draw that orcs shield to the side and then faked a thrust at his right to get him to block and expose his chest to you, then ran him through, that was inspired!"
"Aww shucks, Sneaky Girl, your eyes shure is purty."


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## Thasmodious (Nov 13, 2008)

Obryn said:


> Also, IMHO, two-handed-weapon fighters are kind of a sucker bet.  One of a fighter's many jobs is to stand up and take attacks.  Their significantly lower AC means they will drop sooner.




It's mitigating.  If they are doing more damage then their sword and board counterpart, they are dropping enemies sooner, too.  So it works out about the same.  Building a fighter to defend by dealing heavy damage is quite viable, and they can outdamage strikers depending on their own focus.  Strikers aren't just heavy damage dealers or have to do the most damage.  A big part of their shtick is mobility.  They maneuver about the battlefield doing consistently heavy damage.  A defender with a big weapon can certainly come close.  The longer the battle or the later in the day, the more heavy damage will belong to the strikers, certainly.


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## Starbuck_II (Nov 13, 2008)

Imaro said:


> Please enlighten me, I will readily admit that I know nothing of these builds...but if you have defender builds that outclass the strikers in damage, how is this balanced? How is this not the whole stepping on toes problem that was supposedly fixed by 4e?



 Fighters are part Striker. So them doing Striker caliber damage isn't bad. The game is designed that way.

Remember every class is at least 2 haves.
Fighter: Defender sub Striker
Ranger: Striker sub Defender
Rogue: Striker sub Controller
Warlock: Striker sub Controller
Cleric: Leader sub Controller
Warlord: Leader sub Defender
Wizard: Controller sub striker


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## ExploderWizard (Nov 13, 2008)

Thasmodious said:


> Only to the unimaginative. This has been discussed several times already. Exploits are called exploits for a reason, they require a decently specific set of circumstances to pull off. Descriptive players and DMs should have no problem describing that with the encounter and daily exploits. Many powers lend themselves to this limitation naturally. Others require a bit of creativity.




Not quite. Coming up with BS reasons to cover up lazy game design does not make someone more imaginative. Imagination is required when designing mechanics so that the action makes sense while using those mechanics. I proposed a solution to a clumsy mechanic that might help out with a little work. It may not be the best possible solution but it seems more reasonable and imaginative than an on/off switch for mundane maneuvers. 

I am all for creativity in description. When it has to become a shield for under-developed or poorly constructed rules then I draw the line.


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## Thasmodious (Nov 13, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> Not quite. Coming up with BS reasons to cover up lazy game design does not make someone more imaginative.




Come on, that's just stupid.  There is nothing lazy about a game design using this framework.  You're not covering anything up.  A fighter with a sword fights a certain way.  In any battle, the situation is fluid, openings occur, maneuvers are made, some strikes are better than others.  Exploits represent that in a way that makes sense.  

"I'm all out of crushing blows" is looking at it the wrong way. 

"Man, did you see me catch that orc square in the chest after he was distracted by Bowman's arrow grazing his head (crushing blow), then when Sneaky Gurl threw dust in that big orcs eyes and cut his hamstring, man, he never saw that maul coming at him from the side at all.  That one felt good, landed full (brute strike), I don't see how he was still standing after that one.  Then Bowman nailed that awesome shot through his center.  After that, he just didn't have as much on those axe blows (excrutiating shot), and it was just a matter of time until I beat him down, no matter how much he was cowering behind that shield (reaping strikes until dead)."

Thats just basic description and martial characters fighting according to their styles which is all exploits are.  They are not hard to rationalize, make good sense, balanced, and, imo, rather brilliant game design.  You're incessant inability to wrap your brain around the concept does not mean someone else failed.  It's you that has the problem.


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## ExploderWizard (Nov 13, 2008)

Thasmodious said:


> Come on, that's just stupid. There is nothing lazy about a game design using this framework. You're not covering anything up. A fighter with a sword fights a certain way. In any battle, the situation is fluid, openings occur, maneuvers are made, some strikes are better than others. Exploits represent that in a way that makes sense.
> 
> "I'm all out of crushing blows" is looking at it the wrong way.
> 
> ...




Yeah you have a point. You could use those swell descriptions to narrate any fight, regardless of mechanics. I could describe that as a fight between an OD&D fighter and an orc chieftain and it would work out fine. 

Its all in the description, so if you resolved that fight with a few hit rolls and d6 damage rolls and arrived at the same results then you get the same thing out a little booklet as that massive rulebook. How incredible.

The original game seems to work just fine with a little creativity. You don't have a creativity problem do you.


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## Thasmodious (Nov 13, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> Yeah you have a point. You could use those swell descriptions to narrate any fight, regardless of mechanics. I could describe that as a fight between an OD&D fighter and an orc chieftain and it would work out fine.
> 
> Its all in the description, so if you resolved that fight with a few hit rolls and d6 damage rolls and arrived at the same results then you get the same thing out a little booklet as that massive rulebook. How incredible.
> 
> The original game seems to work just fine with a little creativity. You don't have a creativity problem do you.




Of course you could use such description for any fight, that's entirely the point.  And I love OD&D.  Played an OD&D game just last year.  It's just, for me, that the game has evolved in a positive direction to give me better tools to do the same things I've always done and wanted to do with D&D.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 13, 2008)

Thasmodious, it is not about being unimaginative to dislike Encounter powers. Just like it doesn't have anything to do not willing to manage an expensive spell list or count power attack variables in head or recalculate attack bonuses based on ability score modifications.

ExploderWizard, it's not lazy design to use encounter powers instead of a more involved method that achieves similar results. 

It is about deciding what you prefer from your game. Some people like to think of every rule element as representing something clearly defined in the game world - no fancy "narrative control" of players involved, just saying: I want to hit harder (maybe even make a called shot) - sure I expect this to be more difficult, but I always want this option. I want to see them, I don't want it abstracted by saying "this is the round where you might actually have a chance to pull of your hard-hitting attack". Even if this means I need to crunch a few numbers and spend a lot of time working out the math to play effectively - or just the character I envision to play. 

Or it's about choosing a high degree of usability and a fast playability, without taking away gameplay depth and tactical challenges. It's about making things more predictable, evoking a certain theme by rules (without the ability to change the theme with easy modifications), it is about making the play quick to learn but hard to master, but without loading people with statistics or number crunching - even if this costs us some "close to character immersion"...

There is no unimaginative and no laziness involved. It's all about preferences and the goals the player has and the goals the designers had with their system, and whether these goals match and are achieved. 



ExploderWizard said:


> Yeah you have a point. You could use those swell descriptions to narrate any fight, regardless of mechanics. I could describe that as a fight between an OD&D fighter and an orc chieftain and it would work out fine.
> 
> Its all in the description, so if you resolved that fight with a few hit rolls and d6 damage rolls and arrived at the same results then you get the same thing out a little booklet as that massive rulebook. How incredible.



But it wouldn't be the same kind of gamist fun. That's the difference. In the end, it all comes down to taking your enemy out. You could resolve this with 250 die rolls, or with just one. The goal is to find something that's neither too complex, nor too easy, so there are "tactics" in playing effectively and good and bad decisions to be made when selecting from options. In 4E, part of the approach is to make decision at play time more important then decisions at creation time and decisions during combat more important then decisions at "start-of-the-day-spell-selection-and-buffing" time.


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## Thasmodious (Nov 13, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Thasmodious, it is not about being unimaginative to dislike Encounter powers.




I wasn't saying that if you don't like encounter powers then you have no imagination.  I was responding to the charge that it is impossible to rationalize the ability to do certain things only once an encounter or once a day.  

I can entirely understand people disliking the power structure of 4e.  There is no doubt that it is the single biggest change and not everyone will be on board for something like that.  It's a different matter to tell 4e players that the things they are doing cannot be explained as anything but lazy design and gamist nonsense, unexplainable in-game.  That I will respond to.


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## Raven Crowking (Nov 13, 2008)

Thasmodious said:


> I wasn't saying that if you don't like encounter powers then you have no imagination.  I was responding to the charge that it is impossible to rationalize the ability to do certain things only once an encounter or once a day.




Impossible?  No.

Undesireable?  IMHO, yes.

YMMV.


RC


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## SteveC (Nov 13, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> Yeah you have a point. You could use those swell descriptions to narrate any fight, regardless of mechanics. I could describe that as a fight between an OD&D fighter and an orc chieftain and it would work out fine.
> 
> Its all in the description, so if you resolved that fight with a few hit rolls and d6 damage rolls and arrived at the same results then you get the same thing out a little booklet as that massive rulebook. How incredible.
> 
> The original game seems to work just fine with a little creativity. You don't have a creativity problem do you.



I just wanted to respond to this point: you can have all the creativity in the world, but if your attack just does 1D6 damage, you're really not doing anything other than mental ... gymnastics ... that's a word that I think Eric's Grandmother would approve of if you get my drift. As someone who played the game back in those days, I found myself leaving D&D precisely because of the lack of all options. Comparing a combat from OD&D or AD&D1 to, say, Fantasy Hero, shows off the differences quite well.

Now with the advent of 3E I came back to D&D because a lot of what I was doing in other games was back in the system. I had options again! With 4E this situation becomes (in my opinion) even better.

So as far as I'm concerned, that little booklet didn't arrive at the same results at all. I have no problem with folks that believe otherwise ... let them have fun, but for me, no thanks any longer!

--Steve


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## joethelawyer (Nov 14, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> The OS comparison is interesting. Recently I had the thought that 4e (and most editions of D&D) doesn't know whether it's a system or a game.
> 
> If it's a game, it needs to be tightly focused on one thing. Mario doesn't need to be able to engage in zombie survival horror. If you're playing Metriod, you don't need to worry about recruiting the right quarterback. A game that tries to branch out and give you more diversity usually suffers for it, but a game that is tight and specific often benefits from it.
> 
> ...





that's damn interesting to think about


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## pemerton (Nov 14, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> Not quite. Coming up with BS reasons to cover up lazy game design does not make someone more imaginative.





Thasmodious said:


> I can entirely understand people disliking the power structure of 4e.  There is no doubt that it is the single biggest change and not everyone will be on board for something like that.  It's a different matter to tell 4e players that the things they are doing cannot be explained as anything but lazy design and gamist nonsense, unexplainable in-game.  That I will respond to.



I'm with Thasmodious on this one. If 4e were the first-ever game to use these sorts of narrativist-oriented, fortune-in-the-middle mechanics, it might be different. But games like HeroWars/Quest and The Dying Earth - game written by such major figures as Greg Stafford and Robin Laws - have been around for years. Do those who call 4e's mechanics "lazy" and "bad design" really mean to imply that these other games, from which 4e's mechanics appear to draw signficiant inspiration, are lazy and badly designed too?

By all means express your dislike of a certain sort of RPG. But at least demonstrate some understanding of where that RPG's design comes from, and what sort of play it is intended to support.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 14, 2008)

> True. But then, a 4E player switching to 3E might complain that "we don't have one book that contains warlocks and warlords and tieflings and dragonborn."




Well, because that's entirely backwards, that's not a very fair comparison. Games evolve with time, and while the idea of a new version containing everything the old did is a fairly reasonable expectation to have, expecting an old version to contain everything the new version does is challenging the time-space continuum.


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## billd91 (Nov 14, 2008)

pemerton said:


> I'm with Thasmodious on this one. If 4e were the first-ever game to use these sorts of narrativist-oriented, fortune-in-the-middle mechanics, it might be different. But games like HeroWars/Quest and The Dying Earth - game written by such major figures as Greg Stafford and Robin Laws - have been around for years. Do those who call 4e's mechanics "lazy" and "bad design" really mean to imply that these other games, from which 4e's mechanics appear to draw signficiant inspiration, are lazy and badly designed too?
> 
> By all means express your dislike of a certain sort of RPG. But at least demonstrate some understanding of where that RPG's design comes from, and what sort of play it is intended to support.




That doesn't necessarily imply that the design of 4e and its powers isn't lazy and badly designed. Keep in mind that games that went with the narrativist-oriented, fortune-in-the-middle for a reason: to serve the needs of the game flavor they wanted (and probably to be not-too-D&D-like). 

Now along comes 4e onto the turf they may have staked out in contrast to D&D.

I'm not about to say that I think the 4e power structure is either lazy or badly designed. But I can see how someone could think it's not necessarily good design... _for D&D_.


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## pemerton (Nov 14, 2008)

billd91 said:


> I'm not about to say that I think the 4e power structure is either lazy or badly designed. But I can see how someone could think it's not necessarily good design... _for D&D_.



Fair enough. This still doesn't show that it's lazy - if anything, I'm impressed by the energy and inventiveness required to reconceive of the D&D mechanics along these sorts of lines!

But to be blunt, I get the sense that many of the "lazy design" critics are not arguing with the design decision to take D&D in a more narrativist direction, but rather are not very familiar with some of the RPGs that have influenced its design. But maybe I'm not just reading their posts charitably enough.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 14, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Well, because that's entirely backwards, that's not a very fair comparison. Games evolve with time, and while the idea of a new version containing everything the old did is a fairly reasonable expectation to have, expecting an old version to contain everything the new version does is challenging the time-space continuum.




Well, if you say "evolve" - sometimes evolution means that things die out (overpowered spellcaster?). Or that they have to move into a smaller niche (Gnome in the MM or in a later PHB?).


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## Raven Crowking (Nov 14, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Well, because that's entirely backwards, that's not a very fair comparison. Games evolve with time, and while the idea of a new version containing everything the old did is a fairly reasonable expectation to have, expecting an old version to contain everything the new version does is challenging the time-space continuum.




And thus only happens in Doctor Who rpgs......


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## ExploderWizard (Nov 14, 2008)

pemerton said:


> Fair enough. This still doesn't show that it's lazy - if anything, I'm impressed by the energy and inventiveness required to reconceive of the D&D mechanics along these sorts of lines!
> 
> But to be blunt, I get the sense that many of the "lazy design" critics are not arguing with the design decision to take D&D in a more narrativist direction, but rather are not very familiar with some of the RPGs that have influenced its design. But maybe I'm not just reading their posts charitably enough.




You may have a point. Lazy would imply a lack of effort. Perhaps the current rules were a best effort given the time and development budget to work with. In that case it was a mistake to rush a product to market that needed more time in the oven. The skill challenge fiasco alone showed everyone that much.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 14, 2008)

> Well, if you say "evolve" - sometimes evolution means that things die out (overpowered spellcaster?). Or that they have to move into a smaller niche (Gnome in the MM or in a later PHB?).




You betcha! Some things definitely die out or get punted to the sidelines.

But entire character concepts being nixed or told to wait on it (understand that the gnome in he MM is for NPC's, not for PC's) is a valid complaint.

And reforming the Powers system to be something a little less page-consuming and unwieldy would have given the designers more room to address that complaint. I'm sure the PH was limited more by pagecount than by cool ideas.


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## pawsplay (Nov 15, 2008)

I would never call 4e's design lazy. What I would call it is unambitious. I'm still disgusted by polymorph being thrown under the bus at the tail end of 3.5, and that 4e has completely moved away from anything that open-ended is a complete turn off to me.


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## RFisher (Nov 15, 2008)

I think I’d call 3e and 4e design pessimistic. 3e tried to codify as much as possible to avoid arguments. 4e actually shows some optimism leaving some things uncodified than 3e codified. But among the things they did codify, they tended to drop anything that anyone might have ever found to be a “problem”.

Yet for most of us, I suspect, these things they’ve tried to fix aren’t really problems.

(Which is not to say that there aren’t good things in the design of both, though.)


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## pawsplay (Nov 15, 2008)

I don't see 3e as "avoiding arguments" so much as just having a convenient rule to fall back on for most common situations and a few uncommon ones. It was with Living Greyhawk and the increasingly ambitious "errata" where things started getting weird.


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