The Official "4e Critique and Rebuttal" Thread

[Mystic Mongol]

No one is saying it isn't OK to get supernatural power from swords except the Martial Power Source and the proponents of the Fighter class.

4e D&D claims that you should be allowed to contribute at epic level when people are taking upon themselves the mantles of dragons and gods with nothing more than the ability to hit things with a sword in a completely non-supernatural way.

No, it claims that run on sentence, but with swords in a completely supernatural way.

It's all fiction. So why is fiction about books high fantasy, but fiction about swords worthless pap? Especially considering how many of the stories, novels, and legends these games are based upon were about brave men with swords fighting gods and dragons, while the wizards just kind of hung around and acted mysterious.

[FatR]

Instead of repeating yourself, could you reword your assertion, or find a clearer way to explain it?

No. Whether you are unabe to comprehend clear English, or just pretend to be, that's not my problem either way.

[Mystic Mongol]

Instead of repeating yourself, could you reword your assertion, or find a clearer way to explain it?

No. Whether you are unabe to comprehend clear English, or just pretend to be, that's not my problem either way.

I'm beginning to feel downright unwelcome!

[MGuy]

Holy crap a lot of stuff was shit in this thing for such a short amount of time. I expected a lot of defenses against me not being able to light my campfire the regular "Your MC is just stupid (shouldn't have to play Mother May I)" or "Light can't be used to make fire (Umm how not?)" but for someone to claim that I probably made that shit up? You don't need to make up having to camp in an adventure, being in a dark place, or fucking wanting to signal something! I mean wow. I need to make shit up for a game I had to walk an hour and 30 minutes to play on any day it was being played? Really? Then just to make it better you're saying "I'm" not being imaginative with my paladin?" because I'm trying to use his combat abilities for non combat purposes... seriously.

My primary reason for not liking it isn't even REALLY a big issue in the game as there are more larger, blatant failings for 4E. You motherfuckers are just here to shit all over these threads and don't have anything of value to bring to the table.

[Mystic Mongol]

I didn't claim you made up needing to camp, or a light. I claimed you made up a smug DM sitting at the other side of the table, saying, "Your radiant holy flames generate neither light nor flame, MY ADVENTURE IS UNASSAILABLE, bu fu fu fu fu." I mean... who would do that? And who would play in that guy's adventures?

[Roy]

By the way, where are these particular 4rries from? If we're going to be invaded by a bunch of mouth breathers, I'd at least like to know where they are from.

-Username17

I think what happened here is we said something bad about Scientologists 4.Fails, so they all came here to ask us what our crimes are. Think they're from SA, by the way.

Instead of repeating yourself, could you reword your assertion, or find a clearer way to explain it?

No. Whether you are unabe to comprehend clear English, or just pretend to be, that's not my problem either way.

I'm beginning to feel downright unwelcome!

Hi Welcome

[FatR]

What is SA? Something Awful forums?

[Mystic Mongol]

Hi Welcome

Thanks!

I came because I regularly make an effort to discuss things with people who radically disagree with me, and some fellow goons mentioned the '4e Critique and Rebuttal' thread, which seemed like a nice place to have some of both. There seems to be a lot more of the one than the other.

I'm leaving now because I'm tired. But I still like you!

[MGuy]

I didn't claim you made up needing to camp, or a light. I claimed you made up a smug DM sitting at the other side of the table, saying, "Your radiant holy flames generate neither light nor flame, MY ADVENTURE IS UNASSAILABLE, bu fu fu fu fu." I mean... who would do that? And who would play in that guy's adventures?

I don't claim to know the rules as some others who spent more time with the game might. But my MC who had been playing for a while stated "There are no rules for that" and "That's not how it is meant to be used". Both are true which is why I gave up on the system.

[Lago PARANOIA]

No, it claims that run on sentence, but with swords in a completely supernatural way.

Nothing about the fighter class or any of the martial classes are supernatural. It's all low-grade 'realistic' action hero shit. Which is of course fine at low level; James Bond Jr. would be a huge help with Harry Potter and friends during years one and two. But at higher level when the supernatural characters like the monk and swordmage are (supposed to be) getting an upgrade in special effects and scope... the martial classes don't.

So you have a small suite of options.

1) Ban the fighter and associated martial characters from the game. You don't let people play level 10 commoners, why let them play level 16 warlords?

2) Stop the game before this point.

3) Force the fighter and his retarded friends to get a real power source. The fighter discovers that he has the ability to hulk out like Chu Chu there, the rogue finds a book of spells, the warlord suddenly gets a ghost army, etc.. This also includes giving the fighter a super-special sword that has all of the superpowers that they need.

4) Do the One Piece thing and allow martial characters to do explicitly impossible but game appropriate effects--the rogue can backstab someone hard enough to cause earthquakes, the ranger can twirl his blades so fast to create a tornado, the fighter can cut off his good arm and have it fight independently from him, etc..

5) Stealth nerf the actual magical characters. When Darkseid uses his Omega Beams, they move slow enough so that Batman can avoid them. If Doomsday body slams Green Arrow, he has a chance of living through it despite it cracking the road in a 300m radius. When Green Arrow and Batman and Conan aren't on screen, Darkseid's Omega Beams are suddenly allowed to move several times the speed of sound again and when Doomsday casually backhands a bystander they explode into paste. Or not.

6) Allow the imbalance to remain, giving you Linear Warriors / Quadratic Wizards.

I won't blame you if you find most of these solutions dismaying. I prefer 4 myself but I don't like putting up with grognard whining of 'weeaboo!' and 'retarded!' and 'fightan magic!'. 4E decided to go with option 5 and I can't say that I approve.

[Mystic Mongol]

Numbers!

Oh, wait, I'm coming back for this post because I like it.

I'd argue that 4e went for both answers 4 and 5. We don't have the explicitly enormous earthquakes or whirlwinds, but they can do things that can't be explained by just physical might... the grappling fighter, for example, can just juggle monsters dozens of times larger than him, no problem.

While I understand the frustrating surrounding option 5, nerf spellcasters significantly, ultimately I find myself agreeing with them. The problem is that there's an attitude that 'magic can do anything'. Bear with me here.

The underlying reason between the unbalance of the wizard class is that everything crazy and cool and weird gets rolled in with it. Gandalf throws some exploding pinecones, wizards get the fireball. That jerk in the Vance story has a 'prismatic spray' and wizards get a wide variety of powerful prismatic effects. Witches in English lore are followed by cats infused with the spirit of satan, so wizards get familiars they can control, and so on. Even when the original source of the power isn't from a spellcaster... the hound of ulster's salmon leap or warp spasm, as I keep returning to... it's wizards who get Jump and Polymorph.

Ultimately, the constant growth of the pool of spells means there's a spell for any purpose... which means the wizard can do anyTHING, just by casting the right spell. Need a house? Move earth. Need a fighter? A wide variety of summons are available. Need a thief? Not with teleport, invisiblity, detect traps you don't! Family obligations? Send your clone! Want to get laid? There's a wide variety in the book of erotic fantasy.

Personally, I can't stand this. What's a challenge to someone who's class feature, who's special power is to have all the powers? What meaningful stories can we tell about someone who's all powerful? Superman suffers a similar problem, but all of his stories tend to be about balancing all of his super abilities with the people in his life... who aren't super. But a wizard can just cast a spell to make those people cool with it. Ultimately, to a well designed and played wizard, there are no challenges. And what kind of game is that?

As for solution 4, no number of earthquakes or power of whirlwinds caused by the martial classes attacks is going to make up for the fact that a wizard can simply teleport away, find the right spell for the job, and return... or just teleport away and ignore them.

4e scaled casters down, a hell of a lot, and I can't see that as a bad thing.. because now they have choices, and plans, and have to struggle to solve problems... instead of just quests to find the spell, "Complete Module 7E."

Lago, if you've got a response as well written as your last I'd love to read it, but I am running late as is and really gotta get runnin'.

[Roy]

Hi Welcome

Thanks!

I came because I regularly make an effort to discuss things with people who radically disagree with me, and some fellow goons mentioned the '4e Critique and Rebuttal' thread, which seemed like a nice place to have some of both. There seems to be a lot more of the one than the other.

I'm leaving now because I'm tired. But I still like you!

And yes, Something Awful forums. Interesting that a forum with a name like that would choose to support 4.Fail. I mean, it is Something Awful. *dum dum pish* Jokes about the name aside though, I was previously under the impression they were a competent forum. However, seeing they support 4.Fail proves, without a doubt this is not the case.

[Username17]

I'd argue that 4e went for both answers 4 and 5. We don't have the explicitly enormous earthquakes or whirlwinds, but they can do things that can't be explained by just physical might... the grappling fighter, for example, can just juggle monsters dozens of times larger than him, no problem.

No. He actually can't. He can immobilize and damage creatures dozens of times larger than himself. He cannot, however, juggle. More importantly, he cannot "lift a big rock" or "push open a castle gate" or do anything else vaguely interesting and plot developing that you might be able to do with having tremendous strength. Because, get this, he does not have tremendous strength!

While I understand the frustrating surrounding option 5, nerf spellcasters significantly, ultimately I find myself agreeing with them. The problem is that there's an attitude that 'magic can do anything'. Bear with me here.

That is indeed a problem. It would be better to go to some sort of codified system where there were a great many things magic could do. 4e went for the opposite solution, where magic simply can't do anything. And that's fucking boring.

Personally, I can't stand this. What's a challenge to someone who's class feature, who's special power is to have all the powers? What meaningful stories can we tell about someone who's all powerful?

That's a completely disingenuous reading. People have limited amounts of spells. The ability to have any power doesn't make you all powerful. You're only all powerful if you can have all the powers at the same time. If you have the choice "select any power" you don't have all the power, you have one power.

Having a class that could select any power from a limited resource pool renders the class system rather moot. But it doesn't render the characters either uninteresting or unchallengeable.

4e scaled casters down, a hell of a lot, and I can't see that as a bad thing.. because now they have choices, and plans, and have to struggle to solve problems... instead of just quests to find the spell, "Complete Module 7E."

People aren't even complaining about wizards being scaled down at any particular level. The level numbers are meaningless. You could be on a 10,000 level scale and have the first 3,000 levels of the game represent childhood. It's not even important. The problem is that characters in general do not ever get anything interesting to do. The "epic" wizard just does fire damage in a 40' radius instead of a 10' radius. That's not epic. That's not even different. It's still fire damage in a radius that is large for my room but small for a real battlefield.

Having a bunch of powers that you select from that do real things to the real world gives you real choices. The ability to spec yourself for electricity or acid damage for the day is not a real choice. That is an MMO toggle.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

4E didn't go for 4 at all. Just read the damn descriptions of the martial-based powers, paragon paths, and epic destinies. With a handful of exceptions (like the Tiefling fighter PP) it's all Vanilla Action hero bullshit metagamed upwards to work correctly. The fact that a Brawling Fighter can put a titan into the headlock is just a quirk of the rules in the same way that a squad of children with knives can tunnel through castle walls faster than a catapult; otherwise people wouldn't object to the fighter being able to pick up a 3 ton boulder and doing a marathon with it.

Personally, I can't stand this. What's a challenge to someone who's class feature, who's special power is to have all the powers? What meaningful stories can we tell about someone who's all powerful? Superman suffers a similar problem, but all of his stories tend to be about balancing all of his super abilities with the people in his life... who aren't super. But a wizard can just cast a spell to make those people cool with it. Ultimately, to a well designed and played wizard, there are no challenges. And what kind of game is that?

No doubt, the wizard has too many schticks to do at once. 3E classes like the Beguiler and Warmage and Dread Necromancer were popular because they didn't do everything. So, we split up the classes:

Wizards: They get the blasting and summoning spells.
Warlocks: They get the illusion and enchantment spells.
Necromancer/Shaman: They get the necromancy and divination spells.
Artificer/Engineer: They get the conjuration and transformation spells.
Paladin: They get the buff and healing spells.

They're no longer 'do anything' classes'. They now have specific weaknesses and schticks. If you have a Wizard, an Engineer, and a Paladin you still have a need for an (appropriately powered) Rogue.

The problem is that even if you have a fair split of powers the martial classes are still stuck at the 'useless' level unless you further nerf the magical classes. The fighter is conceptually inferior to the bard, so if you have to nerf classes like the bard and warblade further in order not to piss into the fighter's cheerios you end up with, well, Batman dodging Omega beams.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That's a completely disingenuous reading. People have limited amounts of spells. The ability to have any power doesn't make you all powerful. You're only all powerful if you can have all the powers at the same time. If you have the choice "select any power" you don't have all the power, you have one power.

Having a class that could select any power from a limited resource pool renders the class system rather moot. But it doesn't render the characters either uninteresting or unchallengeable.

I actually agree with Mystic Mongul on this point. This may not hold true for combat, but it does for noncombat. Unless you specifically construct an Eigen plot and carefully monitor resources, what often happens is that one player says 'I have such and such ability that will take care of everything' and then they use it. Of course it's bad encounter design to not take into account high-level abilities, but it happens all of the same. If it is going to happen then at least you can rotate the chair of who gets to play the trump card--if all of the characters have the 'I can do anything with preparation!' ability the spotlight is going to tend to go to the quickest-witted player. If the abilities are split up then even if the Warlock player goes 'I would use Speak With Dead in this situation' he's not going to steal the spotlight from the Necromancer because he doesn't have that ability.

This is a persistent problem with Mutants and Masterminds 2E. Because the stunting system can theoretically let you use a power to do anything as long as you can bullshit it convincingly (of course favoring the wizard and scientist-types again, sigh), the spotlight will often go to the player who can cut the knot the fastest. You may actually want to design a game that rewards the creative and quick-thinking types and punishes the uncreative people, but I think it's a bit harsh.

[Koumei]

And yes, Something Awful forums. Interesting that a forum with a name like that would choose to support 4.Fail. I mean, it is Something Awful. *dum dum pish* Jokes about the name aside though, I was previously under the impression they were a competent forum. However, seeing they support 4.Fail proves, without a doubt this is not the case.

SA used to be the gold standard of forums. Now it's something else that's yellowish. If I need to be more clear I'll suggest it naturally occurs in liquid form and you can make it yourself!

It has since become very similar to 4chan, and both are rotting hulks for very similar reasons, despite their hate-ons for each other "doing it wrong". It's the same place, just one has a $10 registration fee or whatever and the other has photos of penises all over the place. Unless that's actually both of them.

[Username17]

I actually agree with Mystic Mongul on this point. This may not hold true for combat, but it does for noncombat. Unless you specifically construct an Eigen plot and carefully monitor resources, what often happens is that one player says 'I have such and such ability that will take care of everything' and then they use it. Of course it's bad encounter design to not take into account high-level abilities, but it happens all of the same. If it is going to happen then at least you can rotate the chair of who gets to play the trump card--if all of the characters have the 'I can do anything with preparation!' ability the spotlight is going to tend to go to the quickest-witted player. If the abilities are split up then even if the Warlock player goes 'I would use Speak With Dead in this situation' he's not going to steal the spotlight from the Necromancer because he doesn't have that ability.

That's a huge problem with the Cleric and the Druid, since they literally can just do whatever they want if they wake up in the morning and spec themselves for that. But that's not what MM said. He complained about the Wizard. The guy who has a limited number of tricks taken from a very long list in his spell book.

The fact that Charm Monster, Dimension Door, Scry, Dimensional Anchor, Minor Creation, Wall of Ice, Rainbow Pattern, Black Tentacles, Stone Shape, Polymorph, and Fear are all 4th level spells on the Wizard spell list means that a wizard can do pretty much anything. So really there's very little point in classes existing. You might as well go with the Slayers model, where everyone plays an "Adventurer" and just selects different stuff. But a specific wizard only has 4 spells in his spellbook of the 4th level unless he finds some MC handouts at some point. So a specific character's ability to dumpster dive through powers is probably pretty limited.

-Username17

[Piell]

I actually agree with Mystic Mongul on this point. This may not hold true for combat, but it does for noncombat. Unless you specifically construct an Eigen plot and carefully monitor resources, what often happens is that one player says 'I have such and such ability that will take care of everything' and then they use it. Of course it's bad encounter design to not take into account high-level abilities, but it happens all of the same. If it is going to happen then at least you can rotate the chair of who gets to play the trump card--if all of the characters have the 'I can do anything with preparation!' ability the spotlight is going to tend to go to the quickest-witted player. If the abilities are split up then even if the Warlock player goes 'I would use Speak With Dead in this situation' he's not going to steal the spotlight from the Necromancer because he doesn't have that ability.

That's a huge problem with the Cleric and the Druid, since they literally can just do whatever they want if they wake up in the morning and spec themselves for that. But that's not what MM said. He complained about the Wizard. The guy who has a limited number of tricks taken from a very long list in his spell book.

The fact that Charm Monster, Dimension Door, Scry, Dimensional Anchor, Minor Creation, Wall of Ice, Rainbow Pattern, Black Tentacles, Stone Shape, Polymorph, and Fear are all 4th level spells on the Wizard spell list means that a wizard can do pretty much anything. So really there's very little point in classes existing. You might as well go with the Slayers model, where everyone plays an "Adventurer" and just selects different stuff. But a specific wizard only has 4 spells in his spellbook of the 4th level unless he finds some MC handouts at some point. So a specific character's ability to dumpster dive through powers is probably pretty limited.

-Username17

Considering you can straight out buy scrolls in any major city in 3.5 (according to the rules) means your point is meaningless. A wizard can get basically any spell he wants easily enough, so to claim otherwise is being disingenuous.

Edit: Actually you only need a large town, for scrolls of level 8 or below that don't have expensive material components. The DMG indicates that a large town has a GP limit of 3000, and that "anything having a price under that limit is most likely available, whether it be mundane or magical."

[FatR]

It's not like one couldn't put titans into headlocks in 3.5. Delivering sufficient amount of hurt in combat was not hard if you cared, save for a small percentage of very high optimisation games.

The key point of contention here, and one of the main reasons why people don't like 4E, is not even fighters being weak versus fighters being strong. (Although fighters being vanilla action heroes also predisposes them towards being weak.) It is characters being able to influence the plot on their own, versus the plot happening to the characters. 4E goes out of its way to reinforce the latter. Trying to bring everyone down to the level of a vanilla action hero, who can only kill things, and only in quite mundane (therefore predictable) ways, even when this does not make any fucking sense anymore, is just a part of this, albeit a very big part.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Actually you only need a large town, for scrolls of level 8 or below that don't have expensive material components. The DMG indicates that a large town has a GP limit of 3000, and that "anything having a price under that limit is most likely available, whether it be mundane or magical."

Some DMs play it like Schrodinger's Magical Item Mart, some play it like Baldur's Gate where even if it does have magical items it might not have the ones that you want. Personally, I've never had any trouble playing as a wizard or cleric being able to snag scrolls I want but since it isn't quite RAW to let any magical item be available for sale everywhere (it should be with WBL though, otherwise you're screwing fighters) you have to play it as if you can't get any scrolls that don't come free with your level.

It's just one of the things you have to put up with when doing practical min-maxxing; always interpret rules in the way that can most screw the player without outright breaking it.

[Roy]

Stuff.

Lols.

[Piell]

Some DMs play it like Schrodinger's Magical Item Mart, some play it like Baldur's Gate where even if it does have magical items it might not have the ones that you want. Personally, I've never had any trouble playing as a wizard or cleric being able to snag scrolls I want but since it isn't quite RAW to let any magical item be available for sale everywhere (it should be with WBL though, otherwise you're screwing fighters) you have to play it as if you can't get any scrolls that don't come free with your level.

It's just one of the things you have to put up with when doing practical min-maxxing; always interpret rules in the way that can most screw the player without outright breaking it.

But it is RAW that you can get almost any 8th level or lower scroll in a large town. Now, you can certainly have a DM that rules otherwise, but from what I've seen from this thread it's clear that such an excuse doesn't make a difference when explaining why an edition sucks.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Trying to bring everyone down to the level of a vanilla action hero, who can only kill things, and only in quite mundane (therefore predictable) ways, even when this does not make any fucking sense anymore, is just a part of this, albeit a very big part.

Did the game bring everyone down to the level of vanilla action heroes in order not to unbalance the VAH and then made high-level play decidedly unepic to match...

Or did the game designers intentionally remove player agency in high-level play but then realized that you could justify snipping the balls off of clerics and wizards like naughty poodles if you used the excuse of 'at least fighters and wizards are balanced now!'--meaning that they intentionally missed the point of LW/QW but decided to go with LW/LW because those kinds of games are easier to design?

Who knows? Who cares? The overall effect is the same. No one gets to do anything cool at high level.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But it is RAW that you can get almost any 8th level or lower scroll in a large town.

What's the exact wording? I haven't looked at the 3E DMG in awhile, but I always thought it was 'you can find items up to this gp limit in this town' not 'you can find any item up to this gp limit in this town'.

[Piell]

What's the exact wording? I haven't looked at the 3E DMG in awhile, but I always thought it was 'you can find items up to this gp limit in this town' not 'you can find any item up to this gp limit in this town'.

The exact wording is what I posted before: "anything having a price under that limit is most likely available, whether it be mundane or magical."