Dark Sun returns

[Titanium Dragon]

You aren't arguing with the evil 3.5 fanbois who are mean to you on WotC their arguments are not our arguments. Try to pay attention to what we actually say. (Not that you've given any indication that you listened to what they actually said either, for all we know from how little you understand what we say, they could have been well reasoned intelligent people who you strawman as much as you do us).

I am paying attention to what you are actually saying. The problem is that you seem incapable of understanding that your fundamental premises are wrong, and I am attacking your fundamental premises.

No one is claiming that only spellcaster can have abilities that affect stuff outside combat. No one is claiming that all abilities must be spells, and no one is claiming that everyone must be a spellcaster.

Yes, they are.

Now, they aren't saying it in so many words. But they aren't going to, because they don't understand that it is what they are saying. That's why I'm saying you suck at game design - you don't recognize the consequences of your decisions.

Of the many examples presented of out of combat abilities, the only specific example I've seen Frank present is "character that has black market connections" You'll notice that's not casting a spell to get black market connections.

You mean something like a Streetwise check?

But guess what, that means that half of the characters in 3.5 matter out of combat. That's better than the zero in 4e. Yes if you want to play 3.5 with a Fighter that is actually a valuable contributing member to the team, you'll have to wrihe a fighter class that doesn't suck. That also already happened! Frank Trollman wrote it!

Ah, I see your problem.

100% of characters matter out of combat in 4th edition. Not 0%. I know its easy to get the two confused.

You need to pay attention to what people are actually saying, not what you wish they were saying. People need to be able to influence the story. None of them being able to is not better than half of them. It is worse. It is terrible. The solution to some classes being fun and others being shit is not to make all of them shit and redefine shit as fun.

I am paying attention to what people are actually saying. But that's not all I need to be paying attention to. I need to pay attention to whether or not they are correct.

You have the right to your own opinions, but you don't have the right to your own facts. That's apparently what you don't quite grasp.

I'm attacking the "facts", your premises. So when you say "half is better than 0%", and I say "that's bullshit, all characters matter out of combat in 4th edition", that doesn't mean I'm not listening to what you're saying. That means I'm calling you wrong. There's a fundamental difference between the two.

And I'll read this Black Forest thing now.

EDIT: It looks to me like the Black Forest is heavily oriented towards non-combat conflict resolution. This is obviously going to be quite different from a game like Dungeons & Dragons, which is oriented towards combat resolution.

[MGuy]

I'm a bit lost as to what this debate is over. Is this about how well designed 4e is or is this all a comparison between 4e and 3.x?

[Titanium Dragon]

I thought it was supposed to be about Dark Sun, at some point.

[Morzas]

Good thing there aren't any of those in 4e, right?

Morzas, I'm sure you don't really know anything about me.

I'm quite active on the errata boards on WotC (and, really, the Orb of Imposition is only a part of the problem). The fundamental issue is that they simply did not pay attention to static saving throw penalties, which are inherently broken. Yes, the Orb of Imposition is broken.

Cool story, bro. I'll take that as an admission that 4e has a save-or-die problem. Glad to see we're on the same page.

Also, whether I know anything about you or not doesn't matter here. Your reputation at some other forum doesn't matter either. Instead of hiding behind those things in an attempt at arguing from authority, you should try reading what other people are posting and responding with well-thought out posts of your own. It's much more productive.

[Titanium Dragon]

Cool story, bro. I'll take that as an admission that 4e has a save-or-die problem. Glad to see we're on the same page.

I don't think you really understand. 4th edition was designed to not have these effects in it; thus, their inclusion was inadvertent. They have fixed some other similar issues (such as Blade Cascade) and I believe they will fix this one.

Conversely, 3.x was designed with the idea that save or die effects were a good idea and the system is rife with them and built on top of them.

Also, whether I know anything about you or not doesn't matter here. Your reputation at some other forum doesn't matter either. Instead of hiding behind those things in an attempt at arguing from authority, you should try reading what other people are posting and responding with well-thought out posts of your own. It's much more productive.

If you better understand where someone comes from, you will better understand their positions and why they hold them.

[TarkisFlux]

TD, I'm just observing the conversation here, but it looks like the fundamental disconnect between you and everyone else is the degree to which people want to be able to affect the story. You want everyone to be able to help complete or advance the story equally, and gain more equal screen time as a result of that equality. From my experience with 4e, it is an actual improvement in that regard. Everyone you're arguing with wants to be able to help create the story with defined abilities. That's a subtle difference from simply advancing the pre-written plot, and it's not one that 4e supports particularly well short of massive DM fiat.

3e supported that sort of cooperative story generation for a small subset of characters (even if many GMs never embraced it), though that led to screen time or even 'keeping up' problems for mixed parties at high levels. You said that the solution to the spot light issue was to cut abilities from some to reapportion the spot light pie, and any act which removes abilities from the game reduces the amount of story creation vehicles as a result. That 4e includes some of them does not make up for the loss of others, and their implementation further decreases their story creation value. The powers that one could use in 4e to generate stories you have already admitted to be limited use rituals that will actually hurt your character if you over-use them. Thus, the whole of the story creation tools at your disposal is inferior in comparison by virtue of their inherent limitations or simple absence. Their absence does little to diminish the story completion tools available, and may even serve to highlight them. Which brings us back to the apparent positions of both sides here.

As an aside, the alternate solution to your spot light dilemna, that you have disregarded for reasons unclear to me, where you just boost the under-achievers up to the same level as the story writers, would achieve the same pie reapportionment by giving . That you believe that makes everyone spellcasters doesn't make it an irrelevant or ineligible solution, and I'm frankly unconvinced that it's even an accurate assessment of the resulting situation. While I don't generally play Tome games, they support the view that it does not just result in spellcasters.

Anyway, that's what this whole mess looks like to me, and I'm done here. Back to the shouting match, and maybe someday we'll get back to Dark Sun.

[RandomCasualty2]

I don't think you really understand. 4th edition was designed to not have these effects in it; thus, their inclusion was inadvertent. They have fixed some other similar issues (such as Blade Cascade) and I believe they will fix this one.

Honestly I doubt it. It seems that for whatever reason, they aren't fixing the orb issue. Either they don't read their own boards at all, they're too stupid to understand the problem, or (and this is way more likely) one of their designers is playing an orbizard and doesn't want to nerf himself.

[Kaelik]

I'm attacking the "facts", your premises. So when you say "half is better than 0%", and I say "that's bullshit, all characters matter out of combat in 4th edition", that doesn't mean I'm not listening to what you're saying. That means I'm calling you wrong. There's a fundamental difference between the two.

Yes you are saying we are wrong, no you are not right to say that we are wrong. Characters who have to permanently give up actual resources in order to have story effects don't matter. They suck giant monkey nuts.

Characters that get to do story related things without permanent power reductions are good characters that matter. Having 0 people able to influence story events is inferior to having half of them able to.

Only half of 3.5 characters can, when confronted by a giant ass wall into a locked down city with archers on top:

1) Dig a tunnel under silently to enter
2) Teleport inside
3) Fly over the archers while disguised and end up inside.

On the other hand 4e characters can:

1) Try to assault the city.
2) Dig a really big ass tunnel slowly over the course of years by burning giant piles of money.
3) Some very few classes can fly over, but generally not, and none of the ones that can fly can do it while disguised and at speeds high enough to escape people watching them.
4) Make Phantom steeds that aren't fast enough and die quickly. Also, set money on fire to do so.

One of those sets is good. The other is not.

[Titanium Dragon]

TD, I'm just observing the conversation here, but it looks like the fundamental disconnect between you and everyone else is the degree to which people want to be able to affect the story. You want everyone to be able to help complete or advance the story equally, and gain more equal screen time as a result of that equality. From my experience with 4e, it is an actual improvement in that regard. Everyone you're arguing with wants to be able to help create the story with defined abilities. That's a subtle difference from simply advancing the pre-written plot, and it's not one that 4e supports particularly well short of massive DM fiat.

3e supported that sort of cooperative story generation for a small subset of characters (even if many GMs never embraced it), though that led to screen time or even 'keeping up' problems for mixed parties at high levels. You said that the solution to the spot light issue was to cut abilities from some to reapportion the spot light pie, and any act which removes abilities from the game reduces the amount of story creation vehicles as a result. That 4e includes some of them does not make up for the loss of others, and their implementation further decreases their story creation value. The powers that one could use in 4e to generate stories you have already admitted to be limited use rituals that will actually hurt your character if you over-use them. Thus, the whole of the story creation tools at your disposal is inferior in comparison by virtue of their inherent limitations or simple absence. Their absence does little to diminish the story completion tools available, and may even serve to highlight them. Which brings us back to the apparent positions of both sides here.

As an aside, the alternate solution to your spot light dilemna, that you have disregarded for reasons unclear to me, where you just boost the under-achievers up to the same level as the story writers, would achieve the same pie reapportionment by giving . That you believe that makes everyone spellcasters doesn't make it an irrelevant or ineligible solution, and I'm frankly unconvinced that it's even an accurate assessment of the resulting situation. While I don't generally play Tome games, they support the view that it does not just result in spellcasters.

Anyway, that's what this whole mess looks like to me, and I'm done here. Back to the shouting match, and maybe someday we'll get back to Dark Sun.

The issue is that people are unwilling to accept that it was DM fiat in 3.x too. How do people respond to their village/city being flooded? DM fiat. Sure, you can't flood villages anymore via magic spells, but that's a change in power level; that's not a change in the ability to affect the world, simply the magnitude of change you are able to affect.

The idea that somehow, magically, you are no longer able to change the world is blatantly false.

"The story" can be linear or non-linear, previously defined or highly spontaneous. This is as true in 3.x as it is in 4e. True, it is more difficult to go randomly as far off the rails in 4th edition as you could before, but that's not really a bad thing because, typically speaking, when you sit down at the table there is a consensual unspoken contract that the DM will give you the opportunity to affect the world, and not dictate your characters' actions, but that the characters will not go out randomly in another direction and waste the DM's preparation. There are people with intrapersonal issues who violate this contract, but catering to those people is not something which is meant to be encouraged.

Rituals are not story creation tools, nor are they meant to be. And here's an important point - neither were spells in 3.x. They can be used to affect the course of the story, but so can powers and rituals in 4th edition. The magnitude of these changes are, of course, different - you can no longer burrow through the walls with an adamantine axe or teleport anywhere at a moment's notice. But this isn't a bad thing because it they make telling the stories that D&D is meant to be about difficult or out and out impossible.

The idea that 3.x was about cooperative story creation any more than 4e was is, charitably put, complete garbage. It was easier to be uncooperative about story creation in 3.x, but making being a dick and claiming it is IC harder is not a bad thing.

As an aside, the alternate solution to your spot light dilemna, that you have disregarded for reasons unclear to me, where you just boost the under-achievers up to the same level as the story writers, would achieve the same pie reapportionment by giving . That you believe that makes everyone spellcasters doesn't make it an irrelevant or ineligible solution, and I'm frankly unconvinced that it's even an accurate assessment of the resulting situation. While I don't generally play Tome games, they support the view that it does not just result in spellcasters.

I neglected it because, frankly, the stories which could be told were:

1) Mostly shitty.

2) Not what D&D was designed for.

[schpeelah]

I am paying attention to what you are actually saying. The problem is that you seem incapable of understanding that your fundamental premises are wrong, and I am attacking your fundamental premises.

No you aren't. Here's how that particular part of discussion went:
Rituals are one of two ways you contribute out of combat. You say setting prices to limit their use is good design. Frank says limiting people's ability to contribute in this way is bad design. You say Frank is upset b/c his wizard can't have all the rituals to himself.
See the point somebody got it wrong?

[Titanium Dragon]

I am paying attention to what you are actually saying. The problem is that you seem incapable of understanding that your fundamental premises are wrong, and I am attacking your fundamental premises.

No you aren't. Here's how that particular part of discussion went:
Rituals are one of two ways you contribute out of combat. You say setting prices to limit their use is good design. Frank says limiting people's ability to contribute in this way is bad design. You say Frank is upset b/c his wizard can't have all the rituals to himself.
See the point somebody got it wrong?

Um, this seems like a perfectly valid back and forth to me.

1) Rituals are one thing you can do out of combat.

2) I say that setting prices to limit their usefulness is good design, because they are meant to be a secondary means of interacting with the world.

3) Frank responds that it is bad to limit these contributions.

4) I disagree, because the point of them is meant to be something you use to get out of a jam, similar to a potion, rather than as a primary means of interacting with the world out of combat. If you make them a primary means of interacting with the world out of combat, then ritual users end up again too good compared to everyone else at interacting with the world out of combat, which is what happened in 3rd edition.

I don't think that's an invalid back and forth where someone magically got far off track of what the other person was saying.

[Kaelik]

Okay, wtf PR seriously posted a giant tirade and then deleted it. I'm not terribly upset or anything, but it was hella weird.

[Psychic Robot]

Yes, Kaelik, I did post a tirade. I hemmed and hawed about posting it, and then I posted it, and then I deleted it, and then I edited it, and I'm finally posting it again, and re-editing it. (It's a whole confusing process that halfway makes sense if you're a psionic construct.)

While I am thoroughly not-fond of Titanium Dragon and I am even less fond of 4e, I'm going to have to defend some of what he and mandrake saying. Why? Because they're right, and I hate intellectual dishonesty, and I'm burned out on anger over a stupid game.

First of all, skills absolutely do matter in 4e. They matter like they do in 3e, except they have fewer "awesome" applications because the players can't jack them up to ridiculous levels. (As in, no +180 Diplomacy checks.) When you have to jump over a pit, you're rolling a Jump check (or whatever the 4e equivalent is). In 3e, you might roll a Jump check, or you might just fly over the pit, or you might teleport over it. The fact that you can circumvent the skill check entirely demonstrates, in one way, how skills matter more in 4e than in 3e: if you don't have your Jump skill or access to one of the extremely-limited ways of defeating the obstacle without making a Jump check, you're pretty much screwed. (Is that a good thing? Not in my book, but that's a matter of opinion.)

Second of all, that entire multipage run-around regarding wealth reimbursement was a classic example of Frank Trollman intellectual dishonesty:

1. Make a claim.
2. Avoid supporting the claim.
3. When people learn that your claim isn’t true, yell a lot.

Either Frank is a liar or he can’t understand that people who aren't inside his head can't hear his thoughts. I don't care which, but I'm sick of that nonsense.

Nowhere in 4e do the rules say "don't reimburse players for spending their money on rituals." That's horseshit, and anyone who lies like that deserves a kick to the crotch. An accurate claim would be, "The wealth distribution rules in 4e don't compensate players for spending their money on rituals." And no, that's not semantics--there's a world of difference between the claims, and you should feel embarrassed for lying in a debate on the Internet.

Good grief.

Anyhow, Titanium Dragon is also correct in saying that the 4e audience is not the majority of the people on the The Gaming Den. He's right. I also do not care. We are criticizing 4e because 4e is flawed in several fundamental areas, and the areas that you, Titanium Dragon, are saying are improvements in 4e are largely subjective.

Now, before getting into this, I’m going to be blunt: I don’t want to hear any nonsense about how…

1. I’m wrong because I don’t understand game design.
2. My ideas are bad for the game.
3. 4e isn’t targeted at me so it doesn’t matter.
4. [Insert psychobabble here.]

That’s bullshit, and you know it. Even though I don’t like you and you don’t like me, I think we can treat each other with a modicum of civility and fairness. Dismissing anyone’s arguments with such sweeping statements is insulting and underhanded, and I’m pretty sure that you know that.

Now, let us continue...

As an example of your subjective claims, you stated that:

All people must be capable of contributing equally. When you make it so one character can solve 80% of the problems by themselves, the game sucks. And that is 3.x. That is why 3.x is a bad game.

Well, that's not really true. 3e was far from a bad game. In fact, you might say that you're not the target audience for 3e. And that'd be a kick to the testicles, wouldn't it? But I'm not interested in spineless dodges; I'm interested in talking, so let's talk balance. Namely, how balance only matters in a competitive game. And even then, it doesn't matter that much.

Were there some huge balance issues in 3e? You're damn right there were. Did many of the real game-breakers not make it into play? Yep, either via DM fiat or players not realizing the potential for breakage. However, there were plenty of people who liked playing Core fighters in 3e. Why? I don't know why, maybe they just liked having a lot of feats and swinging a sword without having to worry about spellcasting or smites or things of that nature.

The thing is, 4e almost seems designed as a competitive game, where it's almost as if the players are working to see who is the best at doing what--they're making tallies, keeping score, checking to make sure that the fighter is balanced against the wizard. In my current Pathfinder game, nobody feels gimped, even the bard or the cleric who uses all his spell slots on cure spells. It's because we're not counting up all the damage we're doing and comparing numbers. It's because we're having a good time. While I am inclined to analyze the game on a mechanical level, the bard just likes making speeches and riding around on her buffalo, the rogue likes stealing and sneak attacking, and the cleric likes healing people. There's no real concern about intraparty balance (except on the DM's side of things).

So, no, balance is not the end-all, be-all of game design. And to top it off, some people enjoy the challenge of making weak characters excel. (How many people like playing Bowser or Ganondorf in Smash Bros.? I sure do.)

(And I'm not saying that intraparty balance is bad or that anyone who cares about intraparty balance is a crybaby who doesn't want the wizard to outperform him. There is a lot of merit to the complaints about balance in 3e, and balance is something I want in my games to some degree. I'm just saying that balance isn't some god we need to worship.)

As a final nail in the coffin of your "imbalance is bad for games" statement, I want you to consider Ultima Online, at least back in its glory years. Nobody with a rudimentary grasp of system mechanics could call that game balanced. Mages could teleport, open portals from one place to another, conjure elementals and demons, hurl fire and lightning, magically heal themselves and others, cure and inflict poison, and do all sorts of nifty things that the mundane characters could only sort-of do. (Sure, the fighter could heal himself with bandages, and he could have a poisoned weapon, but that's not the same as being able to do it on a whim.) Furthermore, the game had very few viable character builds, and character death was frequent.

And yet people loved it. It was the singularly most popular MMO prior to WoW, even making a world record for its success. People loved playing lumberjacks and miners and tinkers and chefs and all sorts of characters that would get destroyed once the reds got home from high school at 2:30 PM. Again, people loved it.

It's not balance that counts. It's the people you play with. If you're playing in an extremely combat-heavy game, balance counts. I'll be the first to admit that never hitting in combat is frustrating. However, once you're out of minis-mode and back to role-playing, balance is put on the back burner. And what happens if you're playing in a game where you spend about half an hour every session doing combat? How much does it matter then if the wizard can end the fight in three rounds?

Face it: it doesn't matter much at all. It's the spotlight that counts. If the spotlight is on everyone fairly equally, then combat balance doesn't mean a damn thing.

Then let's move on to skill challenges. They're broken. Completely. Frank did an accurate analysis of them that highlights their flaws, one of them most crippling being that it encourages dice spam. The reasoning is simple: you have a pool of successes and failures. Every time someone fails, you grow closer to failing the entire skill challenge. That means that only the people who are likely to succeed are encouraged to participate, since anyone who screws up has the chance of screwing it up for the entire party.

You claim that it's better to have some rules than no rules, and I wholeheartedly agree: it's easier to modify rules than construct them from scratch. And that conveniently leads into another flaw of 4e: not including rules in the Core--I'm using the 3e definition--books for things like enchanters, summoners, necromancers, druids, shapechangers, familiars, and animal companions.

Yes, I expect my fantasy games to support all of those things; it's hardly unreasonable to do so. After all, D&D is all about creating your own stories that mimic legends, myths, and fantasy literature. Wizards that aren't about "blasting things" or "causing difficult terrain" are probably more prevalent in literature than the 4e definition. Were 3e wizards too powerful? Absolutely, and they needed to be toned down. (No strawmen, please.) But that doesn't mean removing the ability to work with classic tropes.

The first thing I imagine that you're going to say is, "There wasn't room in the PHB for those things!" Perhaps. But perhaps the developers also could have used a smaller font (4e uses size 12 and 3e used size 10, I believe), added fewer page-spanning pictures, and created a better power design paradigm (as in, fewer powers that automatically scale rather 100 powers for each class).

And your second defense for the lack of rules is undoubtedly something along the lines of, "But the designers didn't have time to create those rules!" I call nonsense on this. Do you honestly think it's that difficult to say, "Well, most monster summoning spells should be daily powers that take a full-round action to cast"? No! Absolutely not. It's darn simple to work out a fix for the most egregious balance-breakers in 3e (and then incorporate them into the system).

At this point, I'm sure you're about to segue into a rant about how "spells shouldn't be able to solve every problem" and "charm person shouldn't exist."

Yes, you're right in saying that spells shouldn't be able to solve every problem. That's pretty lame, and it breaks verisimilitude because then you wonder why anyone is starving in a world where a fifth-level cleric can summon enough food for a small hamlet. (A slight exaggeration, but bear with me.) However, you then take this point to its extreme and support the ritual system, which punishes the wizard's pocketbook for using his class features to solve problems. That's backwards. Magic shouldn't be used constantly, but to make it an inconvenience that you only use when you're completely stuck? I have no idea why you would want to do that. Take knock, for instance. The 3e version was irritating because it replaced the rogue's ability to open doors. The 4e version is worthless because it takes 10 minutes to use and it chews into your wealth.

Let's say you changed the knock spell so that it took a minute to cast and cost 0 gp. Would the game break down? No. No, not in the least. And if you think it would, then I'm afraid our ideas about game balance are so alien to one another that there's little more to discuss.

Then let's move on to charm person. It's a cool, thematic spell for the spellcaster. What's wrong with its existence? Is it the fact that it circumvents the Diplomacy skill? I'm not seeing any real balance issues with it. The target likes you for 1 hour/level. The target won't kill itself, though, and you can't automatically make it do something it wouldn't normally do. As an example, consider that the PCs are talking to a mayor. They need him to do them a favor, but he doesn't trust them. The wizard whips out a charm person and suddenly he's buddy-buddy with the mayor. Ignoring the fact that the mayor is going to realize what happened when the spell wears off, how is that really any different than a skill challenge, save for the number of dice rolls you're not wasting time doing? Is not making a Diplomacy check five times a bad thing?

I guess I'm just not seeing what's so awful about spells like charm person. (Dominate spells, on the other hand, I can see being an issue.)

I guess I'm finished, then. I await your reply.

(Good grief, that was too long.)

[Kaelik]

Yes, Kaelik, I did post a tirade. I hemmed and hawed about posting it, and then I posted it, and then I deleted it, and then I edited it, and I'm finally posting it again. (It's a whole confusing process.)

It's cool, it was just weird, because I clicked quote and it said "this post does not exist" so I asked my computer how it knew which post I was talking about if it didn't exist.

It didn't answer.

Nowhere in 4e do the rules say "don't reimburse players for spending their money on rituals." That's horseshit, and anyone who lies like that deserves a kick to the crotch. An accurate claim would be, "The wealth distribution rules in 4e don't compensate players for spending their money on rituals." And no, that's not semantics--there's a world of difference between the claims.

Nowhere in the rules do they state "Don't give infinity gold pieces to level 1 characters." But yet, they explicitly tell you to not do that by telling you how many gold pieces to give.

It is just semantics PR. Yes if you claim that anything the rules don't explicitly say "Do not do X" that doing X is within the rules, then it is a difference. If you say that though, you are retarded and deserve to be run over by a tractor.

Doing something that is exactly the opposite of what the rules tell you to do is not within the rules.

[Titanium Dragon]

Well, that's not really true. 3e was far from a bad game. In fact, you might say that you're not the target audience for 3e. And that'd be a kick to the testicles, wouldn't it? But since I'm going to try and speak reasonably here, I won't blow you off with such a spineless dodge. Instead, allow me to explain something very fundamental that you don't seem to understand:

I don't think that's really accurate anyway. I don't think the target audience has changed significantly between the editions.

Balance only matters in a competitive game. And even then, it doesn't matter that much.

Well, as I've explained on the WotC forums (though perhaps not to you), this is actually false. And David Sirlin agrees with me, as do the designers of D&D. I'm in good company. And we are right.

Balance is important in every game. In a game wherein you are competing "against the computer" (as you are in D&D, as the DM is not really your opponent; you are competing against the game system, more or less) balance is when the game is challenging enough to be enjoyable and you have a real chance of failure. Failure comes in many forms, and does not necessarily equate to "game over" (though having the possibility of that is not a bad thing, which is why games have preserved it). An unbalanced game is less fun than a balanced game, all other things being equal, because the challenge inherent in a game is a part of what makes the game enjoyable. A game which is too easy is boring, and a game which is too difficult is frustrating. You can see this in Devil May Cry 2 and 3, both single player games in the same series; DMC 2 was roundly criticized for being far too easy, whereas DMC 3 was criticized for being controller-snappingly difficult. Games are meant to present a challenge to be overcome by the player, and if the game is unbalanced, the game becomes much less enjoyable. And even beyond the difficulty level, if one aspect of the game is masively stronger for beating it than the others, even if the difficulty level with that one aspect is appropriate, it hurts the game. This is why balance is important in a single-player game - it ensures diversity in gameplay and appropriate challenge level. It cannot create these things out of whole cloth - if there isn't any diversity in the first place, it cannot make it out of thin air. But it can make it so that the diversity which is present remains present, and is not just a facade, a bunch of shitty choices and only a couple of real ones.

There is a secondary consideration as well, and this is that D&D, in many ways, is a competitive game. Not in a formal way, but there is an informal competition for "screentime", "time in the spotlight", or "relative contribution". This is another very important reason why the game needs to be balanced - if one player gets too much or too little of this, it makes the game less fun for the people who get too little (and sometimes the player who gets too much as well, because they feel like they are doing all the work and no one else is contributing). This is bad because it makes players unhappy. And in D&D, you may be stuck with a character for a very long period of time - weeks, months, or even years. This can put unhappy players in the uncomfortable situation where they aren't really enjoying themselves but all their friends are, and they don't want to quit playing with them because they are their friends but simultaneously feel like the game is a downer every week.

All of the above is why you are incorrect - balance does, in fact, matter in games which are singleplayer, and in multiplayer games which are not directly competitive.

Were there some huge balance issues in 3e? You're damn right there were. Did many of the real game-breakers not make it into play? Yep, either via DM fiat or players not realizing the potential for breakage. However, there were plenty of people who liked playing Core fighters in 3e. Why? I don't know why, maybe they just liked having a lot of feats and swinging a sword without having to worry about spellcasting or smites or things of that nature.

Here's the thing, though: a lot of people disliked this, and in my experience, the odds of someone quitting or changing characters if they played a non-caster character were about twice the odds of the same happening to someone who played a caster character.

You claim that it's better to have some rules than no rules, and I whole-heartedly agree: it's easier to modify rules than construct them from scratch. And that's another flaw of 4e: not including rules in the Core (I'm using the 3e definition) books for things like enchanters, summoners, and necromancers.

Okay, these are all bad under the 3e definition. Why?

Because they all violate the law of spotlight time.

Enchanters are bad because they charm and dominate people, which are insanely powerful abilities. You can in fact dominate people in 4th edition for very short periods of time, but they're high level abilities, and they are very limited in duration and uses. If you violate this, then they end up having multiple characters, effectively, which causes problems. And if you are talking about subtlely affecting the attitudes of people you're interacting with via magic, that's just a reflavored Diplomacy (or possibly Bluff) check.

Summoners are bad when their summons have independent actions. 4th edition summoners solved this problem by having them share actions with their summons. Only some summons are worthwhile, but this is not due to sharing actions but due to some summons being horribly designed.

Necromancers are bad when they have lots of undead, or even one undead with indepedent actions, for the same reasons as summoners. There aren't any yet, but there will be a class based around dealing negative energy damage and temporarily "dominating" dead enemies.

This is why they were removed as they were, and the new versions are much better.

Then let's move on to charm person. It's a cool, thematic spell for the spellcaster. What's wrong with its existence? Is it the fact that it circumvents the Diplomacy skill? I'm not seeing any real balance issues with it. The target likes you for 1 hour/level. The target won't kill itself, though, and you can't automatically make it do something it wouldn't normally do. As an example, consider that the PCs are talking to a mayor. They need him to do them a favor, but he doesn't trust them. The wizard whips out a charm person and suddenly he's buddy-buddy with the mayor. Ignoring the fact that the mayor is going to realize what happened when the spell wears off, how is that really any different than a skill challenge, save for the number of dice rolls you're not wasting time doing? Is not making a Diplomacy check five times a bad thing?

It is bad because it obsoletes the Diplomacy skill. As I pointed out, if you simply reflavor your diplomacy check as charming them via magic, its the same thing and the wizard doesn't get an unfair advantage.

[RandomCasualty2]

3e was far from a bad game.

Honestly, yeah it really was. I mean you can turn 3E into something playable with house rules, but it was still pretty godawful considering that they had so many chances to revise it to not suck.

I can somewhat forgive some of 4E's shortcomings because it's not really 4th edition, it's actually 1st edition of an entirely new game. Are there serious flaws? Yeah....but at least this is its first go around. The first time they actually rebuilt the game from the ground up. I imagine that with a few revisions the 4E engine may actually be good. Get a little bit more generous with the powers, make rituals not suck and make combat less of a grind. I mean yeah, it's a 1st edition of a new game, prone to all the bugs that that brings. It wasn't like Shadowrun 1E or AD&D 1E wasn't busted beyond belief either.

But shit, the broken stuff in 3.5 was running around forever. Did nobody notice that astral projection was totally broken and has been since fucking 1E? That shit is just inexcusable, and it had 4 "editions" to fix that (more if you count basic D&D). It's sorta like the orb wizard in 4E... why was this shit not fixed. We know the fucktard designers knew about it. Why didn't in all those editions, they actually did something about it?

[Titanium Dragon]

But shit, the broken stuff in 3.5 was running around forever. Did nobody notice that astral projection was totally broken and has been since fucking 1E? That shit is just inexcusable, and it had 4 "editions" to fix that (more if you count basic D&D). It's sorta like the orb wizard in 4E... why was this shit not fixed. We know the fucktard designers knew about it. Why didn't in all those editions, they actually did something about it?

You're making an incorrect assumption, actually: they didn't know that the orb was broken. The reason is that they did not really playtest epic, and indeed, from what I've read about playtesting, I understand why: a lot of their playtesting wasn't done with people trying to build broken characters, but people playing premade characters through delve-like things.

I don't think they really understood (or indeed, understand) well the breaking points of the system. Static saving throw penalties are one of them. Action generators are another.

[RandomCasualty2]

You're making an incorrect assumption, actually: they didn't know that the orb was broken. The reason is that they did not really playtest epic, and indeed, from what I've read about playtesting, I understand why: a lot of their playtesting wasn't done with people trying to build broken characters, but people playing premade characters through delve-like things.

I don't think they really understood (or indeed, understand) well the breaking points of the system. Static saving throw penalties are one of them. Action generators are another.

They didn't know the orb was broken when 4E was printed perhaps, but they definitely should know now. It's been brought up on the boards enough and the math is very easy to understand. The fact that it hasn't been errated yet is pretty sad.

And on a side note, the WotC playtest methods are extremely awful anyway to the point that I'm not sure how they can even get valuable game balance advice from them.

[Roog]

Okay, these are all bad under the 3e definition. Why?

Because they all violate the law of spotlight time.

Enchanters are bad because they charm and dominate people, which are insanely powerful abilities. You can in fact dominate people in 4th edition for very short periods of time, but they're high level abilities, and they are very limited in duration and uses. If you violate this, then they end up having multiple characters, effectively, which causes problems. And if you are talking about subtlely affecting the attitudes of people you're interacting with via magic, that's just a reflavored Diplomacy (or possibly Bluff) check.

Summoners are bad when their summons have independent actions. 4th edition summoners solved this problem by having them share actions with their summons. Only some summons are worthwhile, but this is not due to sharing actions but due to some summons being horribly designed.

Necromancers are bad when they have lots of undead, or even one undead with indepedent actions, for the same reasons as summoners. There aren't any yet, but there will be a class based around dealing negative energy damage and temporarily "dominating" dead enemies.

This is why they were removed as they were, and the new versions are much better.

Counting actions is a poor metric for measuring screen time.

[mandrake]

In this post you explicitly stated that you change around the rules to skill challenges.

No, in that post I say that other people may use the framework of skill challenges with house rules to make a system that works for them.

You then later act surprised that people assume you are using house rules for skill challenges.

I'm surprised because they, like you, read into that post much more than was being said.

You then later make a whole series of posts stating that when a rule penalises the players for doing things in the way that creates the most fun in the game, this is fine and the rules do not need changing.

I made a series of posts saying that the most mechanically advantageous way of doing things and the most fun way is not always (or often) the same thing.

How does someone participating who's only effect is to change an automatic success into a possible failure make for a positive experience?

As I said, if it's an automatic success, it's not a challenge.

Finally, on this board saying "Oh the DM can fix it by ignoring the rules" Is tantamount to saying "Ignore me, I am a small child or at very best a mental retard who has no understanding of how rules should work" and is likely to be met with extreme derision. Posts like this one:

Saying that house rules are common in role playing games makes me a mentally deficient child. Gotcha.

Are basically saying that if a player is stupid enough to use the rules he is given the DM should then reward him with more treasure to compensate. Which basically says rituals shouldn't cost anything, at which point you area actually agreeing with people who are arguing against you whilst making noises like you are disagreeing. This is very confusing.

I didn't say full monetary reimbursement, I didn't say that there shouldn't be a cost, but that a good DM will keep his players power levels reasonably in line with each other.

There are explicit guidelines on producing wealth. They are to give out treasure parcels. They are on page 126 of the 4e DMG. That's the wealth rules. There is nothing about reimbursement. Mandrake is just being a fucktard.

-Username17

Explicit still doesn't mean what you think it does. Also fucktard. I'm beginning to think the word frank also may be beyond your ken.

The way he got butthurt over people talking about anal rape and Russian Roulette is making me a bit suspicious, but outside of places like 4chan I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. He could, after all, just be very dense.

You hush, adults are talking.

[mandrake]

Ahem.

I think 4e Dark Sun is going to kick ass. Dark Sun intrinsically kicks ass, and its ass kickery is more than enough to make up for any perceived flaws in 4E.

[MGuy]

Ok it seems like everybody essentially agrees that skill challenges as written suck. I don't really think anyone is disagreeing on that point.

Rituals suck as is because they are tied to wealth rules that, as written, discourage their use. One way or another everyone basically agrees on this.

3.x has balance issues, 4e has rail roading issues. Again no one is really disagreeing.

So what is this whole back and forth over? Is this an argument over editions or over game design?

[Red_Rob]

I made a series of posts saying that the most mechanically advantageous way of doing things and the most fun way is not always (or often) the same thing.

The point often made is that they should be whenever possible. Its like in Monopoly, people want to buy hotels and collect money. So thats what makes you win the game. In DnD everyone wants to be able to meaningfully contribute, and for their contributions to increase the groups chance of success. Mechanics that cause player contribution to lower the chance of success actively work against this.

As I said, if it's an automatic success, it's not a challenge.

In DnD there are plenty of challenges during a game, not just this one skill challenge. This is not a choice between the players easily winning the whole scenario with no challenge, or having a thrilling adventure. This is a case of a few times during the session the players could have succeded and instead they failed because someone wanted to try and contribute. This is not good games design. Players (even dedicated roleplayers) will always have half an eye on the mechanics of a game, and as soon as they catch on that they are making the group's chances worse this will lower the fun they are having.

If you are saying that its more fun for everyone to contribute and for a skill challenge to actually be a challenge that cannot be bypassed by 1 player spamming the same skill, and you accept that this is not the way the current rules encourage you to play, then you are accepting that the skill challenge rules need to be changed. I don't see what the disagreement is here.

I didn't say full monetary reimbursement, I didn't say that there shouldn't be a cost, but that a good DM will keep his players power levels reasonably in line with each other.

The point being made is that the rules should try to ensure the players are in line with each other, otherwise you can just say 3e is fine because you assume the DM will give fighters uber-lewtz and nerf casters. And if you say that then you shouldn't really be arguing about the rules because you aren't really using them, you're playing "whatever the DM thinks is fair at the time".

[Titanium Dragon]

Rituals suck as is because they are tied to wealth rules that, as written, discourage their use. One way or another everyone basically agrees on this.

Well, I think the disagreement is on whether or not that's a bad thing.

[Fuchs]

How many limits on character options (financial, and otherwise) should be there?