The Gaming Den

Monsters need to be able to interact with the rest of the world for you to be playing a real game*. I think the funniest part of this quote and the entire, "4E is bad," viewpoint is there are always these statements that imply 4E isn't capable of doing something when there's no real logic...

Piell, its' obvious from your comment about low level save or dies that you haven't played low level 3.5 At low levels "I hit it with my sword" is a fucking save or die, and the enemy doesn't even get to roll anything! A first level wizard casting a first level spell is looking at like DC...

One thing I notice; how come people attacking 4E never actually provide any support for their idiotic claims like, "classes are imbalanced to the point of irrelevance," or such but any positive support is rapidly met with, "BUT CAN YOU PROVE IT?" Burden of proof? PSHAW 4E IS THE...

One thing I notice; how come people attacking 4E never actually provide any support for their idiotic claims like, "classes are imbalanced to the point of irrelevance," or such but any positive support is rapidly met with, "BUT CAN YOU PROVE IT?" Burden of proof? PSHAW 4E IS THE ...

4e combat is miserably complicated, requires extensive play aids (battle map, miniatures, marker, initiative chart, status effect markers, marking tokens, power cards that must be consulted with near every use, and I'm sure I've missed a few things), is often unbalanced to the point of irrelevance,...

1) Metagaming, no it's not. It's not metagaming to know about the wall of stone spell, because it's a DC 20 spellcraft check to know what the wall of stone spell does, it's in the rules. It's a DC 25 spellcraft check to see a wall of stone and know that someone actually made that wall with the spel...

Novembermike: I think you're completely wrong. In a video game, the only things that work are things that were programmed in to work. So the "DM" (the game designer) has decided: "I'll give them the macguffin if they bring the X back from the Cave of Horrors." And then you go do...

That's what Darwinism appears to be arguing, yes. Where? In the post above yours. I'm just fucking with you, though. I do find it somewhat ironic that people who are fans of 4e - where, if an earlier post is to be believed, you can buy essentially any spell scroll you want in a moderately sized tow...

Are you seriously arguing that a character having knowledge of how the game system works and how two creatures (known in game to him) compare are the same thing? That's what Darwinism appears to be arguing, yes. Fortunately, knowing that wizards can actually learn "better spells" as they ...

There was no expectation that the PC knew that Wizards get Wall of Stone at level X. Your character might be a wizard, but he's never seen the spell and he has no idea how hard it is to cast. Er, how do you know that? Perhaps he's a graduate of the campaign world equivalent of Hogwarts. Perhaps he'...

Aren't the players just metagaming here? No. I'll explain. The PC never saw that character sheet and the concept of a character level is completely foreign to him, so it seems like this is just bad roleplaying. If a homeless hobo with no money leaps out of a Lamborghini Gallardo and points a gold p...

Yes, exactly! More seriously, as far as I can tell there's sort of one core disagreement between the Denners and the pro-4e people. A couple of posters upthread commented something like, "the game splits into combat, which needs well-defined rules, and social interactions/everything else, whic...

If a stone tower goes up overnight in D&D, you can be fairly confident that somewhere around is a guy who's capable of casting Wall of Stone, and probably casting it quite a few times if the tower is of any size. If it goes up overnight in Ars Magica, you can be pretty sure that there's a serio...

Are you serious? I've run Call of Cthulhu games in haunted houses and caves, and there are no home-building or geophysics rules in that system. You seriously need a system as complex as Dwarf Fortress in order for your players to have verisimilitude? There is already an extensive body of work on ho...

I'm flat out admitting I am dismissing idiots with the minimum possible effort. To be stupid, I would have to do things like be persistently wrong, compulsively lie, defend people's right to not do the job they are paid to do, make MMO style claims and then deny that means the subject I am referrin...

The best part about Roy is his unrelenting bile actually helps people see how irrational hatred for a book is silly.

Oh and he's ended up supporting arguments for 4E really well just because of contrast. That's fun too.

Ignoring more Persistent Fail. But I don't care that the dot is green, that fucker pissed me off. Fuck you video game invincibility. Amen. And this is why it's important to play a real game. Like 3.5. That way, when you decide "Hey, that fucker pissed me off. I want to kill him." then you...

You're still missing the point; even if there is planning in place for situations those situations do not exist until the players begin to interact with them. In any game. For the red dragon who is a possible encounter; are you simulating him when the players aren't interacting with him? Do you stag...

TPK sucks, no doubt about it. But living without the fear of TPK is not living, and is unfun. Wasn't that the whole idea of points of light? It's a dangerous world out there. You should be surprised every day that you didn't die the previous day. When you realize that every encounter is level appro...

One thing a lot of people don't seem to understand is that this whole imaginary world deal where monsters don't exist until the party has to deal with them? Yeah, that's every tabletop, not just 4E. In any game the world literally does not exist until the party begins interacting with it; you may h...

I hate the idea that just because the PCs are level X, they must always face level X challenges. It's so retarded that I couldn't play the game. If you run into a flying dragon that you can't beat right now, you run the fuck away, talk yourself out of it, offer a ransom, roleplay... whatever. You p...

One thing a lot of people don't seem to understand is that this whole imaginary world deal where monsters don't exist until the party has to deal with them? Yeah, that's every tabletop, not just 4E. In any game the world literally does not exist until the party begins interacting with it; you may ha...

I hate the idea that just because the PCs are level X, they must always face level X challenges. It's so retarded that I couldn't play the game. If you run into a flying dragon that you can't beat right now, you run the fuck away, talk yourself out of it, offer a ransom, roleplay... whatever. You p...

But anyway, back to the HDA. The HDA is so intense in this edition that regardless of what the defender is doing the monsters are just flat-out encouraged to ignore defender marks and swarm a squishy anyway. This is of course helped along by the fact that generally defenders, even those with good m...

Contrived scenario: A party of melee combatants and a wizard face a swarm of high flying enemies. How on earth is "a group of harpies attack, dropping rocks" contrived? It happens in stories all the time, and I put it to you that such a thing is less contrived than "Yeah, one harpy a...