More bold pronouncements about how everyone but us loves your favorite game despite all the evidence being to the contrary.
Everyone doesn't love 4th edition. Indeed, on the order of 99% of the US population doesn't play it, and 99.9% of the world population.
But their target is not everyone in the US population, either. While they are trying to reach a bigger audience than their previous one, they are trying to reach most of their prior audience.
It is also funny how the people who hate 4th edition claim it is going to fail. Seriously, it has been selling pretty well, and several of the books have had multiple printings already.
More defense of skill challenges for no discernible reason (I mean, other than a compulsive desire to suck 4e cock), because as discussed, they are total ass from both a mechanics and what they actually would do if done 'right' direction.
Okay, so let me get this straight:
You, who have been complaining about how awful magic tea party is, are also complaining about the idea of a mechanic which involves the entire party in a noncombat challenge which involves rolling dice and has real mechanics and consequences?
I don't think that's a particularly coherent position. Perhaps you can explain it to me?
The way I see it, noncombat mechanics are not a bad thing, and the idea of having everyone take turns in contributing to the encounter (like a combat) via roleplaying and rolling dice (which is, on some fundamental level, what D&D is) but which is distinct from combat in that you aren't fighting monsters and loss does not equal death, but some other story consequence, is different and interesting.
This is not to say that the execution of skill challenges is excellent. I understand what they were going for. I also understand that most groups simply don't get it. While a fun freeform mechanic in theory, in practice I've found most players prefer a greater degree of structure.
It also suffers from mechanical issues, namely the possibility of characters having massively different skill check modifiers, resulting in near or actual automatic success or failure for at least one character. This is a result of its cuing off of:
Ability scores (which vary as much as 10 at upper epic)
Magic items (another 6)
Racial abilities (another 2)
Feats (another 3)
Training (another 5)
Powers (another 5, though as much as 10 in some cases)
For a total variation of 36. Its actually possible to be even further than that if you really try.
But even with just ability score, training, and a magic item, you can have a difference of 21, and this isn't all that unlikely, unfortunately. There are solutions to this, actually, but it requires three grades of success and you have to change the rules as well so people cannot aid another and have to actually try to make rolls themselves.
A claim to have addressed my list of 4th level spells that includes the assumption that charm person is a fourth level spell.
Okay, I'm wrong.
Where is this list of 4th level spells? I just went through the thread and couldn't find it.
MGuy wrote:-I think the wealth system is a bit stunting,
I think parcels are awesome, and I think to some extent misunderstood. The DMG does say that you shouldn't give them too much gold in consumables (potions in particular) because it will stunt their wealth. On the other hand, giving 100% compensation for consumables is probably a bad idea, because consumables by their very nature are turning gold into temporary power, and if you let them do that all the time, they will always have that temporary power boost. It also encourages you to give them some amount of reagents aside from gold.
I don't think that spending money on consumables is necessarily a bad thing, because, to some extent, it is difficult to waste a huge percentage of your gold on them. Unless you're using high level rituals incessently, you really aren't going to burn too much gold on them, and you shouldn't be toting around 25 potions of vitality.
Now, this is not to say the system is absolutely perfect, but I have not seen significant problems with it as far as players spending excessive amounts of gold on consumables.
The biggest problem I've seen with it is people not pooling their gold and instead doling it out and disregarding the fact that some people got magic items but one guy didn't, which results in no one being able to buy anything useful for a long time. One party has figured out that pooling gold is the smart thing to do, and has started to use their gold in a communal manner which has worked out much better, as people who had weaknesses got them shored up.
-I think they went a bit overboard in evening classes out to the point of making them bland and boring
I strongly disagree with this assessment. How much 4th edition have you played?
A lot of people complained that the classes were all very samey, or that they were bland. But in practice, I've found them to be quite exciting and dynamic, and to function quite differently. It feels different having a rogue and a ranger in the party, let alone a sorcerer or warlock, and clerics, warlocks, bards, artificers, and shamans all feel very distinctive in practice. The defenders I've seen have also been quite different, though I've never seen a Warden in action. I have not seen enough of the Invoker and Druid to say how different they feel from the wizard in practice.
I do not feel like any character I have played or which has been run in my campaign is bland.
-eliminate a number of things that you could do in 3.x (solo adventuring is nigh impossible, raising an army, building a guild, playing against your class's pretexts)
Solo adventuring is possible, actually, and I'd say it works better than it did in 3.x because characters are more resilient and thus less likely to die from a single bad round.
I don't feel that building against your class pretexts is necessarily something worth preserving, because the classes exist in order to feed different takes on various roles, and roles exist in order to make sure everyone feels like they have stuff to do and are special.
Removing rules for raising an army and building a guild are things they actually removed, but I don't think these are acutally bad things to remove. A lot of people didn't use these things, and actually felt they were inicimal to their roleplaying. I tend to ally myself with this view. In D&D, I'm not playing the lord of a land - I'm playing a wandering hero. He might be a do-gooder or he might dissect peasants out in a field, but he does these things himself, he doesn't have people to do things for him.
This is not to say they are bad in general, but I feel they are bad in particular in D&D because D&D is meant to be a combat heavy heroic roleplaying game and I don't feel that army building or having a guild are particularly helpful for those ends, and in fact often harm it by giving them either extra turns or people who will do things instead of them actually doing things themselves. There was, at one point, a setting called Council of Wyrms which was oddly sort of built around this very dynamic - each dragon had a servant (called a kindred, IIRC) who could basically engage in tasks on their behalf, so sometimes the dragons would go out adventuring, and sometimes the servants would go do something their masters were too busy doing and you'd play a more or less standard D&D adventure (rather than an adventure where you were playing a dragon). It always felt rather awkward and forced to me, though.
-Safety helm is on all the time (its too easy to not die most of the time, things just don't feel very dangerous)
I strongly disagree with this. In playtesting I've killed a dozen characters at least, possibly more, and in my current campaign alone I've killed four PCs - two in one encounter, and one each in two others. There was a situation where only one character was left standing and had only six hit points left and only a natural 20 on the dwarven fighter's death saving throw saved the party from wiping (or at least from the cleric being the sole survivor). There has been another situation where three of the characters were unconscious and dying, and two of them actually died. In another situation, the characters actually
lost the combat, having one comrade die on the ground while the other three fled. And this in the space of 13 adventures and as many levels (12). I don't feel that the game is easy mode, and neither do my players. Of course, I play my monsters quite brutally, and I have more practice at 4e combat than any of my players (or indeed, all of them combined).
-A number of things bother me about monster generation but I haven't done it enough times to form any concrete complaints beyond that I feel my options are a bit limited and that some get a bit too much hp. So this is not a big issue with me.
Monster generation is actually wonderful; I've been very happy with my custom monsters. I think the biggest issue is that the guidelines aren't specific enough, especially when it comes to non-standard monsters.
Also, while people complain about the "padded sumo" effect, I've only witnessed it in my level 30 playtest; my playtests at up to level 16, and my campaigns (the current one is up to 13th level) have not revealed this effect at all, so it seems to be an epic only thing (and I strongly suspect I know the cause).
-Separation of monsters from PCs, some former monsters are now no better than PC races (why is the full orc just as strong as a half orc? and why is the minotaur so gimped?)
These are good things. Playable races need to be on the same power level.
-Though I understand what you mean about 1 person getting too many turns I just can't agree with having one attack action between you and your animal companion.
Well, a lot of beast encounter powers give the beast one attack and you one attack. They aren't "full actions", though, so they resolve much faster (and the ranger in general attacks twice per round, which is fine as usually you can roll the dice together).
-Skill Challenges (of course)
I think the real problem isn't skill challenges but skill modifiers. If skill modifiers worked better, I think there'd be a lot less to complain about.
-Lack of attention paid to non combat activities (people have told me time and again its to be more free form so that the DM can get more hands on but still I feel they should've covered it)
I don't really feel like I'm lacking in anything, and I feel like skill challenges help a lot, and if the modifiers were beter, I'd feel even better about it.
I certainly don't feel like it was any sort of decrease from 3.x, and we actually roll meaningful dice out of combat a lot more often now.
I found the old town generation system to be amusing, but clunky and cumbersome, and in reality, you pretty much just put in whatever NPCs were appropriate anyway because that's what you needed narratively - or at least, that's what everyone I knew did. I've already expressed my opinion on leadership and similar things, so I'm not sure what else I'm missing (other than this mysterious list of 4th level spells Kaelic made which I apparently can't find or are in another thread).
