Order of the Stick killed 4e

[Kaelik]

Consider OotS. Almost all of the plot could be done in 4E. Sure, the jokes would be different, and there wouldn't be the constant belittling of non-casters. But Liches, gods, the Gates, etc? Those all still work. The biggest change would be Miko since Paladins in 4E don't fall, but you could have her story without her "fall" causing a loss in abilities. A lot of the rest would be detail changes, escape changes, and other stuff at the edges. Some homebrew would be needed still, of course, but Rich isn't afraid of that.

Yeah, all you would have to add is every single combat effect that wasn't hitting something with a greatsword or shooting an arrow.

Like the Druid animating trees, the Druid casting spells, the Druid transforming into a Bear, the save or death battle of high level Clerics, all the combat effects, all the summoning which happens in like every fight, all the AoE effects that are large enough to matter and capable of doing damage. All the transportation effects. Oh yeah, and the Lich Phylactery.

But sure, the completely arbitrary plot gates with no rules would totally port over.

[nockermensch]

But see, Kaelik, that was a NPC Druid. In 4E he would be an unique Elite Monster with daily powers that allowed him to do that.

[Drachasor]

Consider OotS. Almost all of the plot could be done in 4E. Sure, the jokes would be different, and there wouldn't be the constant belittling of non-casters. But Liches, gods, the Gates, etc? Those all still work. The biggest change would be Miko since Paladins in 4E don't fall, but you could have her story without her "fall" causing a loss in abilities. A lot of the rest would be detail changes, escape changes, and other stuff at the edges. Some homebrew would be needed still, of course, but Rich isn't afraid of that.

Yeah, all you would have to add is every single combat effect that wasn't hitting something with a greatsword or shooting an arrow.

Like the Druid animating trees, the Druid casting spells, the Druid transforming into a Bear, the save or death battle of high level Clerics, all the combat effects, all the summoning which happens in like every fight, all the AoE effects that are large enough to matter and capable of doing damage. All the transportation effects. Oh yeah, and the Lich Phylactery.

But sure, the completely arbitrary plot gates with no rules would totally port over.

4E had AoEs that could stifle large groups and dealt notable damage. Let's remember that short of using metamagic, 3.X AoEs do not do good damage at all. And overall martial characters in 4E have more combat options that aren't JUST hitting things with a sword. Let's remember that in 3.X outside of ToB martial characters are awful and not good for much beyond hitting stuff. 4E actually increases how much they can do.

That said, I am certainly not saying the combats would be the same nor every aspect of such a combat. Certainly casters are much weaker compared to 3.5. That said, the plot-important parts of battles could certainly play out the same. What matters there is who lives, who dies, who gets away, what is said, etc. The exact mechanics are not critical, generally. Of course, the overpowering weight of casters in a 4E OotS would be gone, but that doesn't damage the plot of the story overall (especially if major Villains become solo monsters and/or treated as just being NPC encounters and not actual classes).

Teleportation can largely be handled by various methods of running away. Travel time is fairly mutable overall, and off-hand I don't recall any point where the plot truly hinges on instantaneous travel.

Liches still have phylacteries.

That said, I certainly enjoy the 3.5 mechanics more and probably wouldn't find a 4E version as much fun.

Edit: I feel very weird defending 4E in any way since I view it as a very flawed system. Let me make my point another way. Copy over some monster mechanics (like phylacteries) and you could use a lot of game systems as the basis for the OotS story. Again, details would change, in some cases they'd change a lot, but the overall narrative structure of a story can be rather independent of the system. This does NOT mean all systems are equally good for play. But a comic strip has much lesser requirements of a game compared to people playing it.

[Doom]

I dunno about 4e's AOEs doing significant damage. Wasn't the fireball basically incapable of killing a goblin?

[nockermensch]

I dunno about 4e's AOEs doing significant damage. Wasn't the fireball basically incapable of killing a goblin?

It can kill lvl 26 minions just fine, though.

[Kaelik]

4E had AoEs that could stifle large groups and dealt notable damage. Let's remember that short of using metamagic, 3.X AoEs do not do good damage at all.

You are an idiot. Again. 4e AoEs are often very small. They also don't do fuck all for damage because all 4e attacks do substantially less damage against enemies to ensure longer lives.

And overall martial characters in 4E have more combat options that aren't JUST hitting things with a sword. Let's remember that in 3.X outside of ToB martial characters are awful and not good for much beyond hitting stuff. 4E actually increases how much they can do.

Can you read? Like, at all? Honestly, have you at any point in your 15 posts ever said anything that didn't demonstrate your complete inability to read what other people say?

You retard, no one was talking about stupid sword fighters. I just fucking said that you could model anything Roy does in both editions just as well, because he does one fucking thing. But real characters do real things, and those can not be done in 4e. So whenever the elf, the dwarf, the lich, the goblin cleric, the vampire, or anyone else who actually fucking does stuff actually fucking takes an action, 4e can't mimic that.

That said, the plot-important parts of battles could certainly play out the same. What matters there is who lives, who dies, who gets away, what is said, etc.

Yes, by that logic you could mimic it in any game or no game at all, because by that logic, fuck you. You literally just defined a fight where Roy throws his sword in a circle that instantly decapitates everyone as identical to a fight in which Roy throws his sword, misses, it goes off a cliff, gets beaten to a pulp, and then saved by the timely arrival of someone else as "the same."

So sure, to the extent that those two situations are the same, all the fights can be mimiced in 4e. But even though they are "the same" they will be way more fucking boring to see, and they will suck.

The exact mechanics are not critical, generally.

Unless you spend say, six weeks watching just the mechanics in a medium designed to provide entertainment, then it matters if looking at those mechanics is entertaining.

Teleportation can largely be handled by various methods of running away.

You are an idiot, and knowing that you are mortal and will eventually cease to exist gives me pleasure.

Liches still have phylacteries.

But they don't cast Wizard spells. Because they are NPCs, and so operate under bullshit stupid mechanics instead.

[Corsair114]

I dunno about 4e's AOEs doing significant damage. Wasn't the fireball basically incapable of killing a goblin?

If you want to get into it, you can min-max around making Fireball *pretty* potent if you're willing to run a Genasi Wizard.

You'd need the racial feat to add your Strength Mod to your spells with the Fire/Cold/Wind/Lightning/Earth keywords, but at that point your elemental spells are pretty close to a Sorcerer's for damage.

Arcane Admixture can be used to add the Cold type to it, for purposes of working with the Lasting Frost (Target gains Vulnerable Cold 5) and Wintertouched (Target grants Combat Advantage when hit by a Cold Spell). This also includes the bonus of allowing whatever power has the Cold keyword to, basically, bypass resistances since powers with multiple keywords use the lowest resistance for purposes of damage calculation. Throw in an Enlarge Feat, for a larger AoE at the cost of -2 taken to damage and you have one of the better minion and mook clearing dailies.

Man that's just depressing to read over. :/

[Drachasor]

4E had AoEs that could stifle large groups and dealt notable damage. Let's remember that short of using metamagic, 3.X AoEs do not do good damage at all.

You are an idiot. Again. 4e AoEs are often very small. They also don't do fuck all for damage because all 4e attacks do substantially less damage against enemies to ensure longer lives.

4E: A Fireball is a 7x7 square, or 49 total squares.
3.5E: A Fireball is about 50 squares in area.
4E: Fire Burst is an encounter spell level 7 that's 5x5 or 25 squares, this is not bad. This is a pretty common area.

4E Ice Storm: Also 49 squares (level 9)
4E Prismatic Beams: 11x11 or 121 squares (level 15)

4E Cloudkill: 11x11, 121 squares (level 19)
3E Cloudkill: 20ft radius, so just 50 squares.

4E Evard's Black Tentacles: 9x9, 81 squares (level 19)
3E Black Tentacles: 20ft radius, so just 50 squares.

Etc.

These spells do plenty of damage to kill minions (obviously), which is the primary use of area spells in 4E. For any large group you'd use an AoE on in 3E, in 4E it would be a minion. So they both get the job done within their systems. And there are a number of AoEs in 4E that have some nice area debuffing potential.

And overall martial characters in 4E have more combat options that aren't JUST hitting things with a sword. Let's remember that in 3.X outside of ToB martial characters are awful and not good for much beyond hitting stuff. 4E actually increases how much they can do.

Can you read? Like, at all? Honestly, have you at any point in your 15 posts ever said anything that didn't demonstrate your complete inability to read what other people say?

You retard, no one was talking about stupid sword fighters. I just fucking said that you could model anything Roy does in both editions just as well, because he does one fucking thing. But real characters do real things, and those can not be done in 4e. So whenever the elf, the dwarf, the lich, the goblin cleric, the vampire, or anyone else who actually fucking does stuff actually fucking takes an action, 4e can't mimic that.

I think that it is you that missed something here. I was saying that the 3E base martial classes can't replicate what the 4E base martial classes can do. The latter have more options. So 4E does something a little better here (if you ignore ToB).

That said, the plot-important parts of battles could certainly play out the same. What matters there is who lives, who dies, who gets away, what is said, etc.

Yes, by that logic you could mimic it in any game or no game at all, because by that logic, fuck you. You literally just defined a fight where Roy throws his sword in a circle that instantly decapitates everyone as identical to a fight in which Roy throws his sword, misses, it goes off a cliff, gets beaten to a pulp, and then saved by the timely arrival of someone else as "the same."

So sure, to the extent that those two situations are the same, all the fights can be mimiced in 4e. But even though they are "the same" they will be way more fucking boring to see, and they will suck.

The vast majority of plot-important combat bits in OotS are about who wins and by how much. This can most certainly be done if it spoofed 4E rules just as well as it can do it by spoofing 3E rules. Heck, some of the major elements aren't even rules-legal in 3.5, such as Roy's fight with Thog as gladiators.

So yes, in a very real sense the rules do not matter since the story comes first. Rich has said as much.

The exact mechanics are not critical, generally.

Unless you spend say, six weeks watching just the mechanics in a medium designed to provide entertainment, then it matters if looking at those mechanics is entertaining.

Which is the opposite point of the OP.

A comic based on 4E wouldn't lack traction because you can't make a comic that uses 4E rules and poke fun at them. It would lack traction because 4E lacked traction. Not enough people would know enough about the system and like it to care about the comic.

Teleportation can largely be handled by various methods of running away.

You are an idiot, and knowing that you are mortal and will eventually cease to exist gives me pleasure.

If teleportation is not plot critical then teleportation is not require by the plot. If all it does is speed up travel when large amounts of time are being skimmed over anyway or could be skimmed over, then it does not matter. Long distance teleportation is simply not important to the OotS's plot. Insults do not change this.

Liches still have phylacteries.

But they don't cast Wizard spells. Because they are NPCs, and so operate under bullshit stupid mechanics instead.

And this is irrelevant to Xykon's importance in the plot.

[Kaelik]

4E: A Fireball is a 7x7 square, or 49 total squares.
3.5E: A Fireball is about 50 squares in area.
4E: Fire Burst is an encounter spell level 7 that's 5x5 or 25 squares, this is not bad. This is a pretty common area.

1) 3e: Fimbulwinter, several miles. Also, 20ft radius is basically the smallest range of a significant AoE, if something is really AoE, you see a lot of 40ft radius spells.
2) Squares are not a good measure of the size of an area. 4e effects include the corners, but since you place the areas yourself, including corners doesn't often allow you to hit more enemies. Instead, it makes it often much harder to hit enemies without hitting allies, but you are still only capable of hitting the same number of enemies as before. Two enemies 40ft apart can still be hit by fireball in 3e but not 4e, and enemies can be included.

For any large group you'd use an AoE on in 3E, in 4E it would be a minion.

No, level 5 Paladins are not minions. If you have to rely on the premise of the terrible minion system to justify AoEs that do any damage at all, you are wasting your time.

PS, how does that ref half work in 3e? Oh yeah, it kills everyone, not half the people, like using AoEs on minions.

I think that it is you that missed something here.

No, you missed something. When I say "You won't be able to mimic the actions of many characters" a valid counterargument is not "No I won't, but some characters could arguably do more things."

The vast majority of plot-important combat bits in OotS are about who wins and by how much.

No, the vast majority of plot-important and not plot-important combat bits in OotS are about entertaining the reader for several weeks based on showing them an interesting suspenseful combat. Since 4e is not interesting or suspenseful in combat, that would not be mimiced in 4e.

Heck, some of the major elements aren't even rules-legal in 3.5, such as Roy's fight with Thog as gladiators.

Yes, because boring combat is bad for a web comic, so he makes shit up to make it interesting when he has to show boring mechanics. Which, since all of the 4e mechanics are boring, would mean that 4e would be bad for the webcomic.

Which is the opposite point of the OP.

A comic based on 4E wouldn't lack traction because you can't make a comic that uses 4E rules and poke fun at them. It would lack traction because 4E lacked traction. Not enough people would know enough about the system and like it to care about the comic.

No you dumbshit, what I said is identical to the OP. A comic based on 4e rules would lose traction because 4e rules create uninteresting and shitty action. Not because people don't know the rules. Even if you know the rules, they are still boring as shit to watch.

If teleportation is not plot critical then teleportation is not require by the plot.

That tautology is a tautology. But if teleportation is important or interesting or game changing, it may not be required, but may help the comic be enjoyable, and make the plot better.

If all it does is speed up travel when large amounts of time are being skimmed over anyway or could be skimmed over, then it does not matter. Long distance teleportation is simply not important to the OotS's plot.

You are wrong. 3 comics ago teleportation resulted in Xkyon showing up at all during the events. It is also essential to his departure as well.

That is one of many times that teleportation has drastically changed outcomes. Your absurd belief that you could tell the story about how Xkyon found his phylactery in an hour and their work didn't delay him, but then he followed them an hour behind the entire time is stupidly irrelevant, because that is not the story that is being told.

And this is irrelevant to Xykon's importance in the plot.

I know you have established your position that replacing all the combats with "[Combat occurs here]" would be "the same" because you are an idiot. But the thing is, while the story might superficially arrive in many of the same locations, no one would care, because no one would read that webcomic, because it would be boring as shit.

[fectin]

Kaelik. Stop.

His whole premise is that

What matters there is who lives, who dies, who gets away, what is said, etc. The exact mechanics are not critical, generally.

I.e. Star Wars and The Magnificent Seven are the same, because the heroes win (exact details don't matter). Why are you even engaging with that? It's not even wrong.

[Kaelik]

Kaelik. Stop.

His whole premise is that

What matters there is who lives, who dies, who gets away, what is said, etc. The exact mechanics are not critical, generally.

I.e. Star Wars and The Magnificent Seven are the same, because the heroes win (exact details don't matter). Why are you even engaging with that? It's not even wrong.

Because that is fucking stupid, and so I am "engaging" with that by pointing out that it is stupid.

[vytzka]

The fact that the mechanic of marking in 4E may have come from football just makes it even more fail, and possibly a deeper level of "WotC does not know their market"

My favorite bit about the sports marking explanation is that you can't double-team in 4e.

[Drachasor]

Kaelik. Stop.

His whole premise is that

What matters there is who lives, who dies, who gets away, what is said, etc. The exact mechanics are not critical, generally.

I.e. Star Wars and The Magnificent Seven are the same, because the heroes win (exact details don't matter). Why are you even engaging with that? It's not even wrong.

Because that is fucking stupid, and so I am "engaging" with that by pointing out that it is stupid.

And you do this by showing you don't know that the diagonal of a 7x7 square is greater than 40. You clearly never really learned how the 4E system works. You don't understand what minions in 4E represent, and falsely assume the game models a contiguous world rather than separately modelling slices of time. You have confused tactical depth and complexity. And you seem to have missed that fact that A causes B is not the same as B causes A. Lastly, you have not grasped how comics and stories in general work -- game mechanics are just not a tenth as important as you think they are.

Though, you do remind me of that New York Cop (IIRC) the Daily showed interviewed many years ago about Christmas.

My point is that I pretty much think the OP has things backwards. 4E has tons of stuff you can tear into as an affectionate parody. It would be easy to make a comic that uses the 4E rules as inspiration. The problem is that 4E is not popular enough for affectionate parodies to be popular. Low popularity means a small audience and also means that fewer artists who care about the medium.

[Voss]

Oh, right. Friendship is Dragons. I gotta be honest- anytime they specifically mention 4e mechanics, it makes me wonder why the hell I read it.

To be fair, the entire thing is a giant fucking stupid railroad, so 4e is the best reflection of that, because the ponies can only deviate from the railroad by MTP, because their abilities do nothing.

Actually it isn't, if you read it. It starts out as a railroad, but then the players break the entire campaign (which was intended to take in-game years) by figuring out the elements of harmony in the first session. Then the DM has to work out fresh content, and it turns episodic, and the players keep fucking with his plans, like Rarity getting herself captured by the Diamond Dogs rather than letting them kidnap Spike (which was the intended setup).

[Drachasor]

Oh, right. Friendship is Dragons. I gotta be honest- anytime they specifically mention 4e mechanics, it makes me wonder why the hell I read it.

To be fair, the entire thing is a giant fucking stupid railroad, so 4e is the best reflection of that, because the ponies can only deviate from the railroad by MTP, because their abilities do nothing.

Actually it isn't, if you read it. It starts out as a railroad, but then the players break the entire campaign (which was intended to take in-game years) by figuring out the elements of harmony in the first session. Then the DM has to work out fresh content, and it turns episodic, and the players keep fucking with his plans, like Rarity getting herself captured by the Diamond Dogs rather than letting them kidnap Spike (which was the intended setup).

I thought it was going to be more railroaded than it was, but it is pretty comparable to Darths and Droids (though DandD has better writing, imho).

[Zaranthan]

My point is that I pretty much think the OP has things backwards.

I'm forced to agree at this point. While it's true that you cant tell OotS in 4E due to its lack of noncombat abilities, you also can't do it in, say, Shadowrun. No teleporting trumps a lot of the stuff V and Xykon have done, and no resurrection shits all over the ENTIRE Roy is Dead plotline.

[hogarth]

Also to be fair, it's not really a great comic anyway, as with most "lets take screenshots from (X) and add captions that tell the story of a gaming group playing those characters!" comics.

You can do that and be great. Darths and Droids is amazing, imho. FiD is not nearly as good -- but it isn't bad.

The problem with Darths & Droids is that it's a pretty crappy simulation of what it's like to play a tabletop RPG: they only stick to the idea that they're playing a game about half the time and the rest of the time they're just goofing on Star Wars.

It's definitely no DM of the Rings.

[Drachasor]

Also to be fair, it's not really a great comic anyway, as with most "lets take screenshots from (X) and add captions that tell the story of a gaming group playing those characters!" comics.

You can do that and be great. Darths and Droids is amazing, imho. FiD is not nearly as good -- but it isn't bad.

The problem with Darths & Droids is that it's a pretty crappy simulation of what it's like to play a tabletop RPG: they only stick to the idea that they're playing a game about half the time and the rest of the time they're just goofing on Star Wars.

It's definitely no DM of the Rings.

I think they do a fair job at it. My groups, I think, are closer to Darths and Droids than it is to DM of the Rings. Certainly I've never been in a group remotely as dysfunctional of DMotR.

[hogarth]

I think they do a fair job at it. My groups, I think, are closer to Darths and Droids than it is to DM of the Rings. Certainly I've never been in a group remotely as dysfunctional of DMotR.

I'm not saying anything about which one is more realistic, or whatever. I'm saying that if you're forgetting the central concept of your comic half the time, that's lame.

[...You Lost Me]

But see, Kaelik, that was a NPC Druid. In 4E he would be an unique Elite Monster with daily powers that allowed him to do that.

The immortal words of DSM come to mind at this moment...

[Chamomile]

I never liked DMotR, because the group was so dysfunctional it was nearly impossible to enjoy. Darths&Droids was pretty good towards the beginning, but the more they get into the original trilogy the less room they have for bizarre plot derailing shenanigans. The original trilogy generally tells a pretty straightforward and well-paced story, so it makes less sense that it arises out of the chaos of multi-author collaboration, and trying to spin it such that it does typically just makes it all less cohesive and less coherent.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I dunno. "It'sa me! Greedo!" was pretty great.

[Kaelik]

And you do this by showing you don't know that the diagonal of a 7x7 square is greater than 40.

This is a concrete example of an insult, and therefore it deserves pointing out as being meaningful, unlike most of what you said.

That said, yes, the diagonal is "greater" than 40ft, even though in reality it is less because areas and movement ignore diagonals, so in fact, moving from one corner to the other is in fact 30ft of movement.

But good job at least articulating a criticism, even if it is wrong. As opposed to this drek:

falsely assume the game models a contiguous world rather than separately modelling slices of time. You have confused tactical depth and complexity. And you seem to have missed that fact that A causes B is not the same as B causes A.

Could you rephrase any of these in a form that actually means anything at all? I mean, besides that they are wrong, just get them to be some kind of meaningful criticism in the first place, regardless of truth.

Lastly, you have not grasped how comics and stories in general work -- game mechanics are just not a tenth as important as you think they are.

If you could only read, talking with you wouldn't be a complete waste of my time. I never said the game mechanics were important, I said the game mechanics ability to be interesting to watch is important, because when you read a passive medium like comics, you spend a lot of time watching the mechanics unfold. If that is boring as shit, then it doesn't matter if you could tell a different story with your boring to watch mechanics, because people would not read that comic.

My point is that I pretty much think the OP has things backwards. 4E has tons of stuff you can tear into as an affectionate parody. It would be easy to make a comic that uses the 4E rules as inspiration. The problem is that 4E is not popular enough for affectionate parodies to be popular. Low popularity means a small audience and also means that fewer artists who care about the medium.

And my point is that tearing into stuff as an affectionate parody doesn't create a 12 year comic, you also have to actually present interesting scenarios to read in the story. A 12 year comic is not an affectionate parody, it is part affectionate parody, and part entertaining to read story. And worse than books, it needs to be entertaining on a second by second basis.

[fectin]

I think the point is more that you can only successfully parody something that is good to start with. With rare exceptions, it is not possible to parody something like Plan 9 From Outer Space.

edit: Also, stop de-actualizing his thought art with your word-violence! Your fascist contiguity must fall before 4E's 4 time-slices. 4 simultaneous slices, same world rotation, contiguism is a lie!

[Xaos]

Oh, right. Friendship is Dragons. I gotta be honest- anytime they specifically mention 4e mechanics, it makes me wonder why the hell I read it.

To be fair, the entire thing is a giant fucking stupid railroad, so 4e is the best reflection of that, because the ponies can only deviate from the railroad by MTP, because their abilities do nothing.

Also to be fair, it's not really a great comic anyway, as with most "lets take screenshots from (X) and add captions that tell the story of a gaming group playing those characters!" comics.

Well, the original comic in that style, (or I THINK it was the original, it was the first one I saw, and then it linked me to Droids and Darths...), "DM of the Rings" had good jokes.

Also, the idea was that since Tolkein had influenced D&D so much, it'd be fun to think about LOTR as a D&D campaign in a world where D&D came first and Tolkein was a beleagured DM.

They were also railroaded, but they did add a twist by killing

Gollum

early in the story.

Here, let me find a link for...

...AW COME ON! SHAMUS, YOU ASSHAT! YOU CHANGED THE FORMAT SO I CAN'T JUST CLICK ON A "FIRST" BUTTON! ARRRRG.

Well, here's the archive. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom, you can find the beginning.