Arguments in favor of 4th Edition

[MartinHarper]

We don't even know that. Thanks to the item threshold rules on page 174 of the 4e DMG, the Yuan Ti archer is assumed to be decked out in +2 equipment that the players don't get when he dies.

My understanding from that page is that the Yuan Ti archer has an inherent +2 enhancement bonus to attack rolls that doesn't stack with any enhancement bonus provided by equipment, rather than being decked out in evaporating magic items.
Of course, a Yuan Ti PC wouldn't get that, because giant frog.

[Psychic Robot]

The DMG specifically says that the magic item threshold exists because monsters are assumed to have equipment on them that is magical.

[Gelare]

We keep getting all these fallacies. We need more.

Page 42 Fallacy: You can't criticize the game for not having the option to do something because you can make up a rule for the game to do something.

That's not particularly catchy, but I think it works. Any suggestions?

Geez, now there is an important one. I can't count how often I've seen people confronted with a giant, gaping hole in their game system respond by saying that the DM should just magical tea party it. I can sit around a table and play magical tea party without hundreds of dollars of rulebooks, thanks very much.

[RandomCasualty2]

We keep getting all these fallacies. We need more.

Page 42 Fallacy: You can't criticize the game for not having the option to do something because you can make up a rule for the game to do something.

That's not particularly catchy, but I think it works. Any suggestions?

Well, to some degree, I think claiming house rules is okay in this discussion simply because we all house rule 3E too.

I mean 3.5 is pretty much unplayable past the early levels unless you house rule a bunch of balance loopholes. I think that all of us play with a pretty good amount of house rules, whether its the tome series or our own homebrew customs. Indeed, I dont think any of us are playing RAW 3.5

So I think it's perfectly reasonable to allow house rules into the discussion, simply because in actual play, you're going to see house rules regardless of edition, and in the case of 3E, probably a great deal of house rules. Honestly I wouldn't touch 3.5 RAW with a 10 ft pole.

[Psychic Robot]

Huge difference between "modifying existing rules" and "pulling shit out of your ass," though.

[Gelare]

Well, to some degree, I think claiming house rules is okay in this discussion simply because we all house rule 3E too.

I mean 3.5 is pretty much unplayable past the early levels unless you house rule a bunch of balance loopholes. I think that all of us play with a pretty good amount of house rules, whether its the tome series or our own homebrew customs. Indeed, I dont think any of us are playing RAW 3.5

So I think it's perfectly reasonable to allow house rules into the discussion, simply because in actual play, you're going to see house rules regardless of edition, and in the case of 3E, probably a great deal of house rules. Honestly I wouldn't touch 3.5 RAW with a 10 ft pole.

House rules are great and all, but remember, the exist because someone, somewhere, fucked something up with the actual rules, and now everyone who plays the game has to fix it. That's the kind of thing that should really be fixed in the actual game, and saying that people can house rule it isn't really an argument that it's not fucked up in the first place.

[Psychic Robot]

and saying that people can house rule it isn't really an argument that it's not fucked up in the first place.

The way the 4etards use it, it's basically an epically bad Oberoni: "The game isn't missing anything because the DM can house rule it!"

[RandomCasualty2]

House rules are great and all, but remember, the exist because someone, somewhere, fucked something up with the actual rules, and now everyone who plays the game has to fix it. That's the kind of thing that should really be fixed in the actual game, and saying that people can house rule it isn't really an argument that it's not fucked up in the first place.

That's true. However, in this case the argument is not Core 3.5 versus 4E, it tends to be house ruled 3.5 versus 4E. Because when we think of 3.5, we are thinking about the 3.5 we actually play, not the RAW 3.5 that nobody plays because it's ridiculously broken.

So it's fair to allow 4E people to present house rules, so long as they're actually implementable house rules. If people have a good way to fix 4E skill challenges, I think that would be fair game. Of course, I'd also want to see the proposed fix as well, because "Someone could fix it" isn't actually a playable system and therefore doesn't help 4Es case at all, because that's basically saying that you have to wait for a custom system to even come out before you can play (And there's no guarantee that system will even work)

[Psychic Robot]

How much of a difference is there between "3e house rules" and "4e house rules," though?

3e house rules: use your head; don't let players break the game.
4e house rules: create entire subsystems because the devs are lazy and untalented.

Example (Core) 3e house rules:
--Drowning can't increase your HP to -1.
--You can't wish-farm efreeti.
--Mordenkainen's Game Disjunction doesn't exist.
--Rangers get a full animal companion.

Example (Core) 4e house rules:
--Create a ritual to make undead.
--Invent summoning powers.
--Revamp the entire ritual system.
--Invent enchantment spells that do something interesting.

[Username17]

The Oberoni Fallacy is that if you say the rules do not have a specific problem because you could rewrite them during play to not have that problem, that you are wrong.

The Page XX Fallacy is that if you say that the rules are not missing something because you could add it yourself, that you are wrong.

---

Just as the Oberoni Fallacy can be avoided by carefully not saying stupid stuff that s a priori false and instead making the argument that the rule in question is actually fine as is, or that changing the broken rule is easy and obvious and thus does not constitute a major problem with the overall game; you can avoid the Page XX Fallacy by making an argument that isn't inherently wrong. For example, you could claim that you don't want the action or object in your games so that you prefer it to not have a rule. Or you could claim that the action or item in question should be free form gamed and thus having no rule at all save "make something up" is the best rule for it. You can even say that the action or item in question is a rare edge case, and that the extra page count for a rule covering it would be of negative overall value.

But seriously, saying that the mechanics for something are not missing because you can personally make up some mechanics for it and subsequently write them down makes you automatically lose. Not just the discussion, but life itself.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

How much of a difference is there between "3e house rules" and "4e house rules," though?

3e house rules: use your head; don't let players break the game.
4e house rules: create entire subsystems because the devs are lazy and untalented.

Hardly, 3E house rules tend to involve rewriting entire classes, spells and feats.

Just look at the entire tome series.

A whole new set of feats, the polymorph chain was entirely rewritten (as well as the poly mechanics), several classes got a total rewrite and many individual rules were changed.

As far as 4E goes, you're looking at:

-Making a new skill challenge mechanic
-Adding in and probably rewriting a bunch of rituals.

But in general, rewriting rituals isn't a big concern for most 4E players, because 4E is designed more towards the casual gamer, who just wants to pretty much kick down the door and start killing monsters.

[TarkisFlux]

On the off chance that Crimson Lancer or crazysamaritan are even still reading this thread, this other thread has a more detailed explanation of why skill challenges (post errata) fail. The details were pretty much skipped here, but there they are if you're interested in the math behind them.

I don't know what the design goal behind them was, so I'm not suggesting that they fail to meet it. They're just not an actual challenge, being so easy to push into almost certain/auto win territory that they fail to be meaningful except as an exercise in die rolling. Which is lame and unnecessary.

[RandomCasualty2]

I don't know what the design goal behind them was, so I'm not suggesting that they fail to meet it. They're just not an actual challenge, being so easy to push into almost certain/auto win territory that they fail to be meaningful except as an exercise in die rolling. Which is lame and unnecessary.

Well that's the main problem with skill challenges in general. They really are just an exercise in dice rolling. There's no strategy to them besides picking the biggest skill you have and rolling it, because your only goal is rolling high. Naturally you're going to pick the skill that gives you the best bonus.

Skill challenges need more dimensions. Right now, they're just about succeeding more than you fail.

But I think we probably want to have not only skill success/fail rolls, but also possibly skill impact values (Skill damage rolls effectively) and also some kind of time limit. So people can have more things to do than just pick a skill and roll dice. Failure shouldn't always be bad, sometimes it should just mean you don't do anything that round.

That way you can introduce more risk/reward choices to the challenge. You can have a low risk choice with a low skill DC that has very little impact, or you can try something chancy, where if you fail, you end up hurting everyone's chances.

[Gelare]

That's true. However, in this case the argument is not Core 3.5 versus 4E, it tends to be house ruled 3.5 versus 4E. Because when we think of 3.5, we are thinking about the 3.5 we actually play, not the RAW 3.5 that nobody plays because it's ridiculously broken.

So it's fair to allow 4E people to present house rules, so long as they're actually implementable house rules.

That's a fair point. I haven't played without 3.5 house rules for something like half a decade.

I can't say too much about it, since I don't have a lot of experience playing 4E, mostly because the prospect of doing so makes me want to stick my arm in a wood chipper. But it's clear that the problems people around here have with 4E go way beyond anything fixable with house rules. We're talking the fundamental everything about the game.

[Roy]

Meh, to me, the most hilarious part isn't all their stupidity, or their inability to defend skill challenges.

To me the funniest part is that they thought they could take our criticism, prove it not to be true, and then declare victory.

Because if they can prove that 4e is not terrible, then by definition it must be awesome. Because you know, bland, mediocre, and pathetic don't exist. All things are great or terrible.

Extremist Fallacy. The idiot trolls are famous for it. WotC, Paizils, doesn't matter. It's the same reason why they keep spamming me with bullshit drivel about how my encounters are perfectly optimized and one mistake = death just because I said they were 'smart'. Also, clarifications are useless vs willful ignorance. Even with me looking right at the enemy, and distinctly recalling all the things I didn't do which would improve them, which definitionally makes them not max optimized...

Edit: More.

We keep getting all these fallacies. We need more.

Page 42 Fallacy: You can't criticize the game for not having the option to do something because you can make up a rule for the game to do something.

That's not particularly catchy, but I think it works. Any suggestions?

Geez, now there is an important one. I can't count how often I've seen people confronted with a giant, gaping hole in their game system respond by saying that the DM should just magical tea party it. I can sit around a table and play magical tea party without hundreds of dollars of rulebooks, thanks very much.

Or the people that then get mad and start spewing bullshit about you hate roleplay and are just in it to grind on mobs when you explain this to them very slowly. Even if you specifically mention otherwise. Especially if you do.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Can we add another fallacy:

Bag o' Rats fallacy: The existence of a patch for a specific loophole doesn't mean that all possible loopholes in the rules are automatically patched.

[Psychic Robot]

I've never seen that one bandied around before.

[Gelare]

Man, you know, reading over this thread, I can kind of envision it taking place in a D&D game. Some imps are sitting around a scrying pool, looking at this place they want to infiltrate to play a prank on some dude they don't like. What they didn't know was that today was "Bring your friends to work and invis them and give them giant motherfucking swords" day. Then the imps teleport in and get mobstabbed right in the fucking face like fifty times. They decide to go back to hell, because even there is safer than in here.

Sure makes other message boards seem tame by comparison.

[Crissa]

Yeah.

Listen, 4e... Have you heard the world parlay? I know it's often magic tea party time, but at least most systems let you have, I dunno, some sort of background in order to do that.

I think the bag o' rats has a corollary; just because there's an infinite loop doesn't mean the system as played is broken. If there's a sideboard or little asterisk or faq on how to deal with some edge case, that's more a problem to fix in the next edition than a game stopper. GURPS has these all over the place, as does Champions, etc. There used to be my spouse's favorite section, 'You could do this, but then you'd be a one-dimensional jerkwad?'

-Crissa

[tic]

Non-magical combat first aid

Crusader

Blasts of magical energy cast at-will

Oh you mean Warlocks and Demons and people who could actually get at wills that did something besides do 2d6 damage?

See the Complete Arcane Warlock is a weaksauce class in 3.5, because it does moderate damage and has a few moderately awesome at wills.

That also makes it 100 times better then any 4e class.

The 3e PHB came out in 2000. CArc came out in '04, ToB in '06. The first thing that popped to this poster's head as a solution was in a book that took six years to come out. By that logic, how are we to know that 4e won't have solutions to these problems by 2015?

"4e is limited! I can't play a necromancer!" Nope. Not really, not without a few new rituals. When I first got into 3e, I wanted to play a battlemage - a staple of fantasy, the armoured dude swinging swords and spells with equal proficiency. Yes, I could multiclass wizard and fighter, or sorcerer and fighter. I'd have to cop some spell failure from my full plate and heavy shield, sure, but there were ways around that. Mithral cuts it down by 10%. Then there's... no, wait, that was from a later book. Erm... oh! There was... no, that was 3.5... And, of course, my mithral full plate was 10,000 gp to buy. Not that it mattered at first level, because I couldn't even afford iron full plate.

So, really, come to think of it, out of the gate, 3.5 didn't even let you play the plate-clad swordsman. That's a pretty basic archtype right there.

3,5 wouldn't let me play my battlemage at level 1without house ruling. 4e won't let me play my necromancer. 3.5 wouldn't let me play my werewolf (LA and HD) at level 1. 4e won't let me play a psion. Actually, to begin with, 3.5 wouldn't either. So, yeah, both lacked options to begin with. There were the basics, and then more added in supplements... like the crusader. Like the warlock.


I can get the annoyance at not having guidelines - even if not a full system, but the basics - for guilds, armies, all that. Then again, I was a little annoyed that 4e didn't have vehicles. They came in the Adventurer's Vault. I was really annoyed that there were no 'standard' shapeshifting rules - one of my homebrew settings uses shapeshifting extensively. PHB2 came out with it. Beyond that, weren't the first rules for running a guild in a 3.5 book? Leadership, sure, but actually running a guild? I may be wrong, it's not something I ever really touched much, so if someone can throw me a book and rough page, I will cheerfully withdraw my statement.


Now. Is everything in 4e perfect? Gods no. I particularly fear the imminent "fill the grid" of role/source (Martial Striker, Divine Striker, oh, we have no psychic striker. Soulknife sound good?). I fear that prestige paths and powers will become the new PrCs and spells) (we need six more pages. Got any fighter powers lying about? What about a wizard path?)

No system is perfect. Given time, the real problems will be houseruled, to the point that people think of their groups common houserules when they think of the system. Gelare recognised this about 3.5 - "I haven't played without 3.5 house rules for something like half a decade." I often got a little lost in 3.5 alignment discussions, because I never really bothered with them. They got ignored completely, save as a few subtypes on demons and the like. 4e doesn't have that advantage. It's not been around for half a decade. It's not been 'fan-fixed' to the extent that 3.5 has been. And, in your games, it may never get that chance. Cool. That's fine. There's still people playing 2e for similar reasons. Does that make 3.x a useless system? No. It means they didn't see the advantages of 3.x as worth their time fixing the problems. For others, it may have been that 3.x didn't fit their concept of what they wanted - if you want gritty stuff, you probably don't want 4e.

Then again, you probably don't want high-level 3.5e, either. No system's perfect.

[Murtak]

When I first got into 3e, I wanted to play a battlemage - a staple of fantasy, the armoured dude swinging swords and spells with equal proficiency. Yes, I could multiclass wizard and fighter, or sorcerer and fighter. I'd have to cop some spell failure from my full plate and heavy shield, sure, but there were ways around that. Mithral cuts it down by 10%. Then there's... no, wait, that was from a later book. Erm... oh! There was... no, that was 3.5...

Still Spell, spells with no somatic components.

[Psychic Robot]

Fail: huge difference between saying "ASF does not exist" and "pull necromancy rituals out of your ass." Also, clerics function perfectly well as battlemages, unless you're stuck on the word "cleric."

[Fuchs]

Also, clerics function perfectly well as battlemages, unless you're stuck on the word "cleric."

Exactly.

[tic]

When I first got into 3e, I wanted to play a battlemage - a staple of fantasy, the armoured dude swinging swords and spells with equal proficiency. Yes, I could multiclass wizard and fighter, or sorcerer and fighter. I'd have to cop some spell failure from my full plate and heavy shield, sure, but there were ways around that. Mithral cuts it down by 10%. Then there's... no, wait, that was from a later book. Erm... oh! There was... no, that was 3.5...

Still Spell, spells with no somatic components.

Still not possible at level 1. And, it also means I'm running quite far behind every other wizard, given that, even besides the lack of CL, I'm casting spells as if they were a level higher. Magic Missile is a level 2 spell. Power word kill doesn't exist until epic levels.

Fail: huge difference between saying "ASF does not exist" and "pull necromancy rituals out of your ass." Also, clerics function perfectly well as battlemages, unless you're stuck on the word "cleric."

Still house ruling. Is ASF easier than new rituals? Sure it is, you'll get no argument from me. But then, why not just ignore everything that annoys you? Where's the line drawn? Is it subjective? What about the party wizard? Can he bust out the full plate?

Renaming isn't an issue, but that does make your battlemage very focused on undead and buffing, and also lessens his offensive casting. Fireball > Searing Light, methinks.

[Leress]

Tic, you can do it at level 1. Just take wizard and be an elf there you go.

How is PR saying take cleric levels is a house rule? Have you looked at the cleric spell list?

Tic it seems like you can't divorce flavor from mechanics.