The Gaming Den

Prak_Anima wrote: ...or your character isn't an unstable little shit minded stabby smurf...

So the mayor should treat the head of the local vagrant gang with the same deference as the governor or the President?

So now we're getting to the problem of the level treadmill where convincing the king to stop taxing the peasants to death never gets any easier. The level treadmill where it clearly says by the time you're paragon tier kings treat you with the same deference as another king, and by epic you're runn...

you could give the DM some objective rules for determining whether something the players do work or not. Considering 4th edition offers this (Though Skill challenges are broken as written, standard skill checks aren't.) you'll just call us on 'page 42 fallacy' or whatever retarded idea you've creat...

Why again should we pay for a system that hasn't any social rules? Because we're talking about Dungeons and Dragons, a direct descendant of miniature war games applied to fantasy dungeon crawling and designed, specifically, around killing monsters, taking their stuff and getting more powerful to ki...

Roy wrote:Hey 4rries. You're only allowed to fail in a certain way a limited number of times before you are required by law to mix it up, or better yet stop failing.

You passed that threshold a long time ago, come up with some new material.

First, the less important flying monster issue: No it`s not a problem in 3e, because you have 1) spells like fly, airwalk, overland flight 2) spells like wingbind 3) grappling 4) the ability to have or make cover, stoneshape, windwall, control winds, wall of x, or even just carving a hole in the gr...

I'm curious, do you guys think strawmanning helps your position, or are you just looking to make 4e look as bad as possible? Because nobody has suggested the stuff that you claimed. But 4e DOES actually suggest "You can't take equipment off of the enemies, even if they were using it". I m...

No, that's just it. The debate isn't about "what's the best way to a strong narrative" -- reducing it to that question already assumes a particular model of game play. The whole point of GNS theory (and its successors) is that narrative-centric games are a style of game play, not the styl...

So this whole argument is basically an extended Simulationist vs. Narrativist flamefest. How disappointing. If you think I'd use, or even believe terms like that, you're underestimating how I approach table top games. All role playing games simulate. The issue is their models have different constan...

Violence, the problem with their argument is even worse than you are suggesting. If monsters literally do not exist unless they are fighting the PCs then the whole notion of “Points of Light” collapses. There are no monsters in the woods, or anywhere else the PCs are not. Everything is love and hap...

An 'all melee party' means builds without the capability to deal with flying monsters. In the later levels, it is possible for almost any class to get daily powers that let them fly for one encounter, allowing them to effectively deal with enemies that don't want to face them on the ground. The dif...

Except that you aren't supposed to fight NPCs. You said so yourself. So which is it? Invincible green dot that tells you you need the blue key for the blue door, or welcomes to to Corneria, or actual thinking being who exists for actual, in game reasons, and who you can actually interact with beyon...

Maybe it should be something you can use in combat too, to say, react to a bunch of flying attackers. I think you're missing the point. An 'all melee party' means builds without the capability to deal with flying monsters. In the later levels, it is possible for almost any class to get daily powers...

And before the stupid "3E was the same" gets brought up again: We all know 3E has a lot of faults. Not surpassing 3E in core areas doesn't make 4E a good game. Sure, you all stop defending the OGL as a better system (With or without Frank's houserules.) and we'll stop using your stock as ...

I appreciate your clarification. I don't know that I necessarily agree with that point of view, but that has more to do from my view of the "story" being an emergent property from gameplay and less of a plotted narrative. Sure, the proposed adventure might be about rescuing the princess f...

It's just flying monsters! They're in the Wizard of Oz, for God's sake! But it is flat not acceptable for an encounter with flying monkeys to be something the DM can't throw at a group without risking ass piracy. I like how 'it's in all the fiction' is your guys' primary defense for it, totally ign...

And yet, in 4e it is actually true. Characters are defied by their handheld equipment to such an enormous degree that Paladins basically can't even use bows. If there aren't melee brutes to grind against, the melee characters are useless. And having characters engage in the fight is the entire poin...

I'm still kind of floored by the notion that you shouldn't put an encounter with a dragon focused on strafing attacks, or a roc that behaves as described, into a game just because the PCs are a bunch of DMFs. Should I clarify beyond what I said? If you send a group of all fliers (Or the strafing dr...

Encounter budgeting is also in the DMG. How can you add monsters without throwing that out of balance? Jumping into the conclusion of a line of discussion without acknowledging the topic make you feel intelligent? The suggestions in the DMG that I am talking about are if the standard Level encounte...

More importantly, if you have a ridiculous striker, throw in more elites for them to burn their damage on. Ridiculous controller? More minions. Amazing Defender? Brutes were built to be their foe. Amazing leader? Add more monsters of any role. So, basically be a jerk . And more minions? Seriously? ...

Every 4E class contributes meaningfully, barring contrived scenarios. Yay for repeating myself. Um.... if by contrived, you mean "any situation at all" that would be true. But in reality, that is not the case. Contrived scenario: A party of melee combatants and a wizard face a swarm of hi...

To put it really simply, imagine you have a 4-person party. They do 20 DPR each and the DM sends out four 80-hp monsters to fight them. This means that the party will take them down in 4 rounds. If you add another party member that does 20 DPR, the DM compensates by adding another monster. Team PC ...

It's not effective because the health-damage asymmetry in 4E encourages monsters to completely ignore the defender and dogpile the squishiest-looking party member they can reach. Attacking the squishies is typically ALWAYS the best strategy, regardless of the damage output of the monsters or the HP...

This is also not true. When you have an extended party size it also jacks up the difficulty because the DM has to add more monsters--this does not come with a consummate increase in average treasure or experience. False. There's an entire section of the DMG about how to scale treasure parcels based...

Whether or not this means anything depends on how you envision the attack working. If he's poking something in the eyes than logic says it would go against Reflex but if he's using shadows to do some kind of mystical hubba bubba to your sight than Will fits... I can't acknowledge this as a credible...