Lago PARANOIA wrote:
Most of this stuff is only of sperglords like me. Most people won't even notice the class imbalance because 4th Edition D&D is actually pretty easy if you know what you're doing. The only possible source of challenge is at levels 1-5 if you don't have more than one healer class per five party members and you're on an extended workday.
Very True. The group I was playing in was completely unoptimized and the DM still had to practically double the number the recommended monsters and use monsters several levels higher.
And that was before I realized that my defender was pretty much useless because we had no one who actually needed defending and rebuilt him as a Bravura Warlord. A 4E party with two warlords can pretty much blow the system apart.
Last edited by Dog Quixote on Sun Nov 20, 2011 7:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
Now he's advocating going back to 2E style exception based rules instead of attacks of opportunity.
This stuff just shows how terrible of a designer Monte is.
Seriously, why do people like this guy?
Looking at it, I have this to say.
STOP WITH THE FUCKING COMPLEXITY DIAL ALREADY! Look, this is just going to make it harder to standardize the rules between groups. 3rd edition kicked ass because it finally had 1 set of rules to rule them all (no pun intended). Now this sucks.
And exception based AoOs are stupid.
OgreBattle wrote:"And thus the denizens learned that hating Shadzar was the only thing they had in common, and with him gone they turned their venom upon each other"
-Sarpadian Empires, vol. I
Now he's advocating going back to 2E style exception based rules instead of attacks of opportunity.
So instead of saying "you get an attack of opportunity" in ten places and explaining how an attack of opportunity works in one place, it's better to explain how attacks of opportunity work in ten places?
I honestly think he was rifling though his stuff and found that picture of the imp with the lame caption. He then decides to base an article around it for some reason.
Rules to be presented when needed
Complexity to equate to PC level
The ability for a game to determine it's own level of complexity
Poll questions like those make me despair for the future of D&D. Reading the comments section of that article simply made my head hurt. Masturbation would have been a more productive use of my time.
Urrrr, doesn't a game group already have the ability to determine it's own level of complexity ? Is Monte just assuming that his readers will always play the current version of D&D and have never thought of "choosing a game system" or did I miss something ?
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
If you have to be level 5 to use special attacks than all my games have to start at level 5 and if you don't like grappling your game has to end at level 4. Fuck that. How about instead I use the special attack rules at level 1 and you don't have to use them ever. Wasn't that last week's column?
WotC spent seven years writing feats that become traps as soon as you get iteratives. And then Paizo did it some more. Splat writers are going to assume the combat engine works exactly one way (in 3e, about level 5 combat). If AoOs don't happen in early levels, the game will be full of melee abilities that provoke unavoidable AoOs and the writers will have no idea it's a problem.
Yeh, yet again, groups don't need to choose their own level of complexity if each player can choose their complexity via class choice. Then we can all play the same game at the same table; there are no "different groups", just some that lean toward simple Barbarian and Warlock types, while others lean toward Warblade and Wizard types.
But in general, it's nice if the game as a whole gets a little more complex at higher levels. So that we can avoid high level play being the same as low level +10.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
Resolving an attack action takes i seconds.
Resolving a move action takes j seconds.
Figuring out who is next in initiative order and getting them to start their turn takes k seconds.
If you can move and attack in one turn, resolving "I run up and hit the orc" takes i+j+k seconds.
If you can move or attack in a turn, "I run up and hit the orc" takes i+j+2k seconds.
For all values of k > 0, the second way takes more time and this article makes no sense.
OgreBattle wrote:"And thus the denizens learned that hating Shadzar was the only thing they had in common, and with him gone they turned their venom upon each other"
-Sarpadian Empires, vol. I
CapnTthePirateG wrote:And thus did melee classes get boned again.
I look forward to a combat with five hundred consecutive turns of:
"I run to the other side of the table."
"The orc runs after you."
"I run to the other side of the table."
"The orc runs after you."
"I run to the other side of the table."
...
The idea would work better as two actions per round. Two attacks, one move and one attack, one spell and one attack, two spells, whatever. Still makes moving a terribly weak option unless your ZOC is suitably awesome, and you have to halve the power and double the number of spells, but whatever. Workable. Likely make 4e's 50 ways to "attack + push" powers a bit more concise in presentation.
Ooh, maybe you could get two different actions per round. Go-go super-clerics.
One action per round isn't good though, because every action has to include some amount of optional movement and you may as well stick with a move and an action.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
tussock wrote:The idea would work better as two actions per round. Two attacks, one move and one attack, one spell and one attack, two spells, whatever. Still makes moving a terribly weak option unless your ZOC is suitably awesome, and you have to halve the power and double the number of spells, but whatever. Workable. Likely make 4e's 50 ways to "attack + push" powers a bit more concise in presentation.
Ooh, maybe you could get two different actions per round. Go-go super-clerics.
One action per round isn't good though, because every action has to include some amount of optional movement and you may as well stick with a move and an action.
Doesn't Rogue Trader/Dark Heresy do that? Every round you get two "half actions" that can't be the same thing. Keep in mind I don't know anything about Rogue Trader. I saw it in Dungeon: the Dragoning and assumed it was some 40k thing because all the examples involved bolters.
Two actions but only one attack would probably work better for D&D though and that's really just Standard + Move.
tussock wrote:The idea would work better as two actions per round. Two attacks, one move and one attack, one spell and one attack, two spells, whatever.
This is what our system does, with the caveat that you can't perform the same action twice on the same turn. For example, you can cast two spells, but they must be two different spells, or the same spell with different targets. Similarly, if you're attacking, you can't use the same combat technique on the same target twice.
If "charge" is a single action that requires you to not already be engaged, then melee characters might avoid getting screwed with a razor cock. Indeed, if people couldn't 5' step out of melee and then cast, melee lock-down would be a lot more achievable.
sake wrote:Always assuming that they remember to make every melee class actually able to charge in 5E.
They didn't do so hot a job of that in 4E...
Yeah, the "every rule you need for every class is contained in that class" idea was stupid. Not only does it lead to a whole fuck tonne of contradictions where the rules of one thing are incompatible with the rules of another, but it also leads to just plain missing rules. Classes straight up don't end up with rules that cover everything.
3E's high level function calls had problems, but at least they worked at all.
FrankTrollman wrote:If "charge" is a single action that requires you to not already be engaged, then melee characters might avoid getting screwed with a razor cock. Indeed, if people couldn't 5' step out of melee and then cast, melee lock-down would be a lot more achievable.
-Username17
Funnily enough, we instituted this house rule on round 2 of our first ever 3rd edition combat.
"I charge the archer to lock him down!"
"He steps one square back and shoots you in the face!"
":sad:"
We ruled that drawing a bead or preparing a spell couldn't be done after a 5' step pretty much immediately.
We ruled that drawing a bead or preparing a spell couldn't be done after a 5' step pretty much immediately.
Doesn't that pretty much invalidate the point of the 5ft step? Sounds like you turned it into a withdraw action that only gets 5ft of movement instead of half your move speed.
