The Gaming Den

Just as playing under a good DM doesn't make a system good, playing under a bad DM doesn't make a system bad. But having a rule that covers it does. Where do the rules for 4e say "DMs let your players play improv theater before every attack". More importantly, where do the rules for 4e sh...

The knee kick sounds like a trip to me, and I'd probably allow the description in a 3.5 game. And other DMs wouldn't, like the three 3.5 DMs I played under. In 4e That description is protected by the rules, just as long as the end result remains unchanged. The end result of your description is &quo...

Where's the 4E example? You just described bull rush and power attack. That wasn't even your post I was responding to. Anyway that wouldn't have been bullrush in 3.5 unless you got the improved bullrush feat and if thats powerattack then normal attack in 3.5 is even more useless for cinematic effec...

You have said that 4e has better character development. You have not exlpained why...At least not to my satisfaction. If this is a matter of opinion, so be it. Otherwise, I would appreciate some extrapolation in this point. Okay, most everything in 3.5 is linear. Ignoring the third party stuff, nea...

And that whole "errata every single monster in Monster Manual 1" math formula thing. Its not an errata, the people who say that are just fear mongering. its a simplification for essentials, all the original monsters are still valid and not obsolete. And if memory serves skill challenges h...

If the amount of posts I need to respond to keep increasing, I'll reach the max word limit.

Verb, you're hedging your statements more and more. Before you were saying 4e had much better development in character power and terrain and tactical options, now you're down to saying that the character development is probably about the same as 3.5 and the terrain rules are comparable, and that th...

Double post. Sorry.

Sorry, I lagged and triple posted.

I wish there wasn't so much juggling to be done as to what I'm defending.

They aren't all bad, they aren't all good, many are mediocre and about on par with an at-will. Some are better, some are worst, and nearly all are highly situational. Its about on par with 3.5 mundane terrain wise. As far as fantastic terrain goes, I'm not quite sure if 3.5 has fantastic terrain, th...

Yeah, same with 3.5. For a wizard: alter self (humans)>polymorph (limited selection)>shapechange (turn into absolutely anything, anytime) or fly>overland flight or dimension door>teleport>teleport without error Not seeing 4e's advantage here, and we could do this for a lot of classes/spells whateve...

It then gives you a damage table, DC table, skill table, and a couple other tables, each with three options to pick from. So getting winged by a ballista, falling into a brazier of flame, falling down a set of stairs, having a predictable bolt of lightning hit you, being forced to listening to chem...

It then gives you a damage table, DC table, skill table, and a couple other tables, each with three options to pick from. So getting winged by a ballista, falling into a brazier of flame, falling down a set of stairs, having a predictable bolt of lightning hit you, being forced to listening to chemi...

Its not a contradiction. I am struggling not to sound pretentious, but there are more factors to the feel of one's character, game and development then raw numerical power.

I would disagree, there is definitely a change of feel as you go up in tiers imo.

Allowing for one style of play instead of multiple is objectively a flaw in 4e. If I wanted to play a D&D 3.5 campaign where it's level six forever I can do that . You mean just freeze XP and throw only level 6 battles at the party forever? Obviously thats not what you mean since 4e can do that...

I'm going to pull out the SRD instead of getting exact page number citations (oh, hey! That's another advantage for 3.5, the core books are online) From the opening of the skills chapter they have a table of what difficulty classes mean in terms of actual difficulty. This is in the beginning of cha...

Those are still implicit (Except DMs little helper). Find a similar situation or house rule, still leaves you trying to figure it out.

My first game I played up to level 8 as a cleric that prestiged into a combat medic. My opinion still stands.

But I don't want to go into it in this thread. Thats too far off-topic for mme to be comfortable with.

If you want to stipulate that 4e's improvisation framework was better than 3.5's, that's fine, but you're going to have to bring some data to the table. 3.5 had an entire subsystem for simulating real-world interactions which let you cobble together impressively robust solutions for ad-hoc problems...

The game is nothing but formulas. Mechanically speaking, nothing else exists except the formulas. I wish that was true, but they decided to make powers and item properties the exception. Unless you are talking base damage, accuracy or a basic increase in some skill or stat (And I can't figure out h...

Is again highlighting 4e's flaws while trying to defend it. Thats only a flaw if you consider it a flaw, since it in no way effects balance, its not a flaw. One, tripping is useful to non-strength builds, therefore non-strength builds should have that option, two, in terms of narrative I should be ...

None of my math leads to an encounter trip being worth anything ever. It would completely fucking useless, and people wouldn't even use it except because they got bored of using their superior at wills, and defaulted. I can think of a use. A rogue/wizard/ranger ect tripping the big brute in front o...

Its not a flaw that a trip would have minimal difference from a grab tactically. When you trip a guy, the biggest advantage from that comes from the fact they have to stand back up to fight you or trip you from down there and if you are quick enough you can whack them while they are still down. With...