Mearls Speaks of 4E

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

I just don't really see anything wrong with his design paradigm of not including stuff he couldn't balance.

I guess it's just a YMMV stuff at this instance.

I really believe that barbarian, monk, druid, and bard should've been included in the basic book. If they moved the magic items to the DMG, got rid of that ridiculous flavor text for all of the abilities, and shrunk the font a notch or two while making things closer together I think we could've fit them all in.

I also really believe that the game needs disarm and sunder in the game. Disarming is done at least once in practically any swords and sandals epic and frankly there's just not enough options for collateral damage in this game. I do agree that sunder, when used against PCs, was nothing but a magic item hoser.

However, in this edition, sundering a foe's weapons doesn't even do jack against treasure drops. So why not?

But like I said, your YMMV. If you can't balance something in abstract you shouldn't put it into the game, but that should only be the last resort after you've already used up all of your last resorts.

And given how A) a lot of 4E's stuff isn't balanced correctly in the first place and B) they've decided to go off on wild tangents about stuff no one cares about it just pisses me off.

...

On the bright side, maybe they'll learn their lessons by the time the future books come out and we'll get a nice, playable monk/barbarian/druid/bard class.

If that does happen then I guess I'll be happy in the end, but the process they used to get to that stupid bullshit endpoint was flawed. And I'm still going to be out 30-90 dollars.

[Psychic Robot]

Wow. That is an epic story, one that Frank will need to tell his children's children some day.

[Koumei]

It's a bit blurry as to who the winner is. It's as though Skip punched the referee to get disqualified, just so he could keep his title.

[Voss]

But the game isn't balanced correctly. A lot of the core assumptions are fucked from the start and what you have is a game that grows progressively more boring and pansifying as time goes on.

Well then bash Mearls for that shit. They are certainly valid points, and there are many other good reasons to not like 4E.

I just don't really see anything wrong with his design paradigm of not including stuff he couldn't balance.

It isn't his design philosophy though. He might *say* it is, but everything he's ever published says otherwise. Skill challenges, solo monsters, Iron Heroes [weapon master, armiger, feat masteries and magic system especially], Book of Iron Might all suggest that his real design philosophy is if it isn't working, he eventually says fuck it, stops working and publishes it in shit form anyway.

And thats not OK.

Admittedly, some of the shit he gets blamed for isn't his fault. Some, because he didn't actually work on it, and some because the 'community' has inflated his status to Designer-Pop-Icon, and the constant fellatio is just that fucking annoying. But at the end of the day, he gets paid to do shit that he's legitimately bad at, and when someone tries to feed you a plate of shit and is somehow convincing people that its really good eating, you have to fucking call them on it.

[Angry_Pessimist]

It's a bit blurry as to who the winner is. It's as though Skip punched the referee to get disqualified, just so he could keep his title.

How about someone posts the URL to the heated debate with Skip that caused the whole fiasco?

That way, I can see for myself.

[Psychic Robot]

That's what I wanted, but I figured that it has been buried under a festering heap of feces and gonorrhea-related discharge.

[Neeeek]

How about someone posts the URL to the heated debate with Skip that caused the whole fiasco?

That way, I can see for myself.

It's pretty much gone. It was on like 3 WotC board updates ago. You could try the Wayback Machine, I guess.

[MartinHarper]

I also really believe that the game needs disarm and sunder in the game.

It just needs more at-will powers period. Or at least an option for those PCs who can handle having more choices.

It'd be nice to have each power source provide some free at-will powers. So all martial characters get bull rush, grab, disarm, and sunder, all arcane characters get magic missile and cantrips, and all divine characters get bless, smite, and heal.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

It'd be nice to have each power source provide some free at-will powers. So all martial characters get bull rush, grab, disarm, and sunder, all arcane characters get magic missile and cantrips, and all divine characters get bless, smite, and heal.

They DID fucking do that for the divine and arcane characters, but then decided to put these abilities on the pissant, throughly disappointing replenishment schedule of encounter/daily powers.

Except you can cast ghost sound and light whenever you feel like it now. Excuse me while I take a dump all over my 4E books in joy.

...

While I'm complaining about shit, where the hell are the familiars?

I know they're supposed to be holding out on us so they can use them as a bribe for the next Complete Arcane stupidity but come the fuck on. Even if you disagree with me about disarm/sunder and the whole monk/barbarian/bard/druid thing, you know that people used familiars and used them a lot.

[fbmf]

Repeated from the post that started it all:

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Disturbing and graphic method of torture deleted.

As I have said, feel free to attack peoples rules writing ability, notion of game balance, etc... but not them personally. And no graphic depictions of how they should die. I'm not comfortable with wishing death on anyone.
[/TGFBS]

For the record, there are technically four people with mod powers: Me, Ramnza, Incarnadine, and Neil.

Incarnadine and Neil do not moderate. They fix technical problems because neither Ramnza nor I am terribly tech savvy. Incarnadine has moderated in the past but has asked not to be called upon to do so.

Ramnza and I moderate at least every 24-48 hours under most circumstances. We have let things go recently as we prepared for our wedding / got married / went on our honeymoon, but we are trying to catch up.

Please continue to report posts and such. It is very useful to us.

Game On,
fbmf

[RandomCasualty2]

I really believe that barbarian, monk, druid, and bard should've been included in the basic book.

Eh. I honestly could do without em. I mean they're either minor classes or classes with no real role.

The barbarian could be easily lumped into fighter by just adding a "Rage" utility power. Seriously. I never knew why people thought barbarian should be a class. It has one, and only one iconic ability, barbarian rage. Any supporters of the barbarian, I'd really like to hear why you like this class. Because to me it seemed like 20 levels of 1 class ability and totally not worthy of being a class.

The monk is one of those classes that just doesn't know what the hell it's supposed to be doing. And honestly I'm still not sure what people want out of a monk. I mean monks can do lots of cool stuff, but nobody is actually sure what monks are supposed to actually do when the shit goes down. Are they supposed to soak hits, deal damage, inflict status conditions? Nobody knows.

Bards, well I've already talked about how I hate them.

Druids I can sort of miss, but I can also see why they're going to take so long to balance. There's just too many roles a druid takes on. Primary caster, tank, damage dealer. The druid is another one of those classes that really needs to be conceptually rethought. The 2E druid basically just had shapeshifting as a cool utility afterthought. You didn't really go into bear form and maul people. Maybe we could just go back to that.

If there's one thing I actually thought 4E lacked, it was a good cleric setup. As a cleric, you're either the fighter/cleric who runs up and swords people, or you're the pure good servant of light who fires lasers out of his hands and eyes. I really don't see much room for anything else.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Eh. I honestly could do without em. I mean they're either minor classes or classes with no real role.

The barbarian could be easily lumped into fighter by just adding a "Rage" utility power. Seriously. I never knew why people thought barbarian should be a class. It has one, and only one iconic ability, barbarian rage. Any supporters of the barbarian, I'd really like to hear why you like this class. Because to me it seemed like 20 levels of 1 class ability and totally not worthy of being a class.

Every class is what you make of it. To use somewhat circular description, one role for the barbarian is that of a barbarian/ranger. More specifically, the goal is to get along well without much stuff just about anywhere and fight in a simple, straightforward fashion. The barbarian <is|should be> better than the fighter at tracking, survival, and generally getting along without a fuck-ton of gear. And they get battle frenzy.

The Tome barbarian accomplishes what it's designed to, which falls less on the side of 'wild man survivalist' than that of 'newbie-friendly melee monster'.

The barbarian could be distilled into a set of feats, but my perspective is that making a class is just plain easier.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

The monk is one of those classes that just doesn't know what the hell it's supposed to be doing. And honestly I'm still not sure what people want out of a monk. I mean monks can do lots of cool stuff, but nobody is actually sure what monks are supposed to actually do when the shit goes down. Are they supposed to soak hits, deal damage, inflict status conditions? Nobody knows.

You mean like how nobody can tell if the fighter class is supposed to be like Iron Man and pull out his latest magic gadget and save the day, be really tricksy and agile and do backflips while wooing women like Errol Flynn, be Jack the Giantkiller and take on foes bigger than himself with some string and an axe, be like Luca Blight and be so hardcore that people are afraid not to kill everything in their path, be like Ichigo and get continually caught in an escalating penis contest and hit with swords so hard that the skies rend, be like the Green Knight and be so hardcore at taking damage that he survives decapitation, be an iajutsu master who specializes in highly ritualized one-hit one-kill battles, LOOK I COULD GO ALL FUCKING DAY MAN.

Maybe as far as 4E goes, the monk is impossible to implement, because they went as far as ignoring every kind of fighter concept except for Ichigo and Luca Blight and Luca Blight got rolled into his own class. I'm probably expecting a level of competence beyond what the 4E 'don't put in anything we don't understand because we're too lazy and stupid' design philosophy can encompass.

So never mind.

[Voss]

That answers your familiar question to. Pets are somehow hard. Even ones that suck at combat and are more a liability than a bonus.

[Koumei]

And of course, making a class is so easy (if time consuming) for this that someone could totally make up their own Barbarian etc. in a mockery of 4E, much like Frank did with the psion.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

But...but that action inherently unbalances the game, even if all your pet can do is 1 h.p. of damage! :shock:

I have to say I do find it weird that people blame Mearls for everything that sucks about 4e when Andy Collins was on the same design team. I mean, it takes more than the efforts of one individual to make something this bad.

On the Frank/Skip feud: I find it ironic that the ruling that firmly established Skip's rep as an idiot who couldn't interpret the rules as well as some guy who posted in the forums was far from his dumbest ruling. Frank's argument about Quicken Spell is absolutely correct if you look at it as a logical operation where you're manipulating this variable called "casting time." However, if you look at how it would play out in the game world, it makes no sense for the sorcerer to spend extra time chanting and gesturing to add an effect to his spell, only to have the effect take away that extra stuff and let the spell go off pretty much instantaneously (assuming that's a fair assessment of how long it takes to do a free action). Now, don't get me wrong, Skip made all kinds of crazy rulings where he obviously never bothered to look at the actual rules, but he actually had a leg to stand on in this case.

[Voss]

Only if you assume that fluff = rules. (And if you accept the idea that the full round action means extra time spent chanting and gesturing rather than just extra concentration- the whole round, not just the sorcerer's action, is 6 seconds, so I don't think that has much weight). The simple fact as that as gimped as sorcerers are, there isn't inherently broken about giving them quicken, since they still have to pay the real cost of the metamagic (higher level slot).

Really, the fact that they can't quicken is one of the major factors that makes them suck ass when compared to wizards. And the full round action for metamagic in general is just insult piled on injury.

[CatharzGodfoot]

However, if you look at how it would play out in the game world, it makes no sense for the sorcerer to spend extra time chanting and gesturing to add an effect to his spell, only to have the effect take away that extra stuff and let the spell go off pretty much instantaneously (assuming that's a fair assessment of how long it takes to do a free action). Now, don't get me wrong, Skip made all kinds of crazy rulings where he obviously never bothered to look at the actual rules, but he actually had a leg to stand on in this case.

Right, so a sorcerer casting a Silent Still spell makes noise and has to gesture because she has to spend 'extra time chanting'? Come on.

Sorcerers are allowed to take Quicken Spell, so evidently there was some intent that the be able to use it for something.

[Talisman]

Sorcerers are allowed to take Quicken Spell, so evidently there was some intent that the be able to use it for something.

Not necessarily. Quicken Spell has no prereq's; technically, Joe the Pig Farmer could take it. He could never use it, but he could take it.

Likewise, a wizard who happened into a Strength of 13 somehow could take Power Attack.

But I do agree that sorcerers should be able to Quicken.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Only if you assume that fluff = rules. The simple fact as that as gimped as sorcerers are, there isn't inherently broken about giving them quicken, since they still have to pay the real cost of the metamagic (higher level slot).

Really, the fact that they can't quicken is one of the major factors that makes them suck ass when compared to wizards.

You'll notice that I never said that sorcerers were broken or needed to be gimped by not taking this feat.

And, though flavor doesn't equal rules, RPGs are the one kind of game where you have to convince the players that your rules in some way represent the actions of imaginary people in an alternate world. Thus, game-world believability is a consideration. Now, some mechanics do lend themselves to multiple interpretations, but that doesn't mean that you can match any flavor with any mechanics and have it work for the audience.

Right, so a sorcerer casting a Silent Still spell makes noise and has to gesture because she has to spend 'extra time chanting'? Come on.

Sorcerers are allowed to take Quicken Spell, so evidently there was some intent that the be able to use it for something.

All right, having looked up the wording in the SRD, there is no explicit mention of chanting, but it does mention taking more time to cast the spell because they have to apply the effect on the spot. Therefore, the sorcerer must spend that extra time doing something in order to put the effect on the spell. Now, for Silent Spell, it's perfectly plausible for the sorcerer to spend that time only doing gestures. But if the sorcerer has to do a little something extra, whatever it is, it's less plausible to imagine some sort of micro time hop after applying Quicken Spell, especially since nothing suggests that metamagic feats are magical effects in and of themselves.

[Neeeek]

All right, having looked up the wording in the SRD, there is no explicit mention of chanting, but it does mention taking more time to cast the spell because they have to apply the effect on the spot. Therefore, the sorcerer must spend that extra time doing something in order to put the effect on the spell. Now, for Silent Spell, it's perfectly plausible for the sorcerer to spend that time only doing gestures. But if the sorcerer has to do a little something extra, whatever it is, it's less plausible to imagine some sort of micro time hop after applying Quicken Spell, especially since nothing suggests that metamagic feats are magical effects in and of themselves.

Umm. You think that there isn't a really easy explanation for this?

"It's such an easy spell, the sorcerer figured out how to do it in an instant without the ritual."

Seriously, 10 seconds of thought after 3 margaritas, 4 shots of vodka and 2 glasses of wine.

Where do people get this hang up about finding a reasonable explanation for a mechanic? If you can't find one, you aren't trying.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

True. Unfortunately that whole question and answer took place in the days before exception-based design.

[Psychic Robot]

Stuff about Mearls.

Really, I think there's one of two reasons.

1. Mearls was the lead developer, so he automatically takes the most flak even if stuff wasn't his fault. It's just how it is.

2. "Mearls" sounds kind of like "fails."

[Koumei]

Mearls also did a lot of the publicity stunts - talking with people, answering questions and all that. So he drew attention towards himself.

[Username17]

Mearls was not the lead developer. The lead Developer was James Wyatt, as he is the only person listed as a primary author on all three core books. Mike Mearls is listed as a primary author on just one book: the Monster Manual. And as we know, the Monster Manual is the most flippantly designed core book and the most isolated from the rest of the rules.

Mearls isn't even a listed member of their 4th edition development team (Rob Heinsoo, James Wyatt, and Andy Collins). He's just a contributing author and a member of the "final development strike team" whatever the fuck that means.

What he is, is extremely vocal about the supposedly central role that he had in 4th edition. And while we can tell from the fucking credits that this grandstanding is unwarranted, it's still annoying. And when he clams credit for systems that don't work (which he does constantly), then we are pleased to go after him.

But seriously, James Wyatt is the asshole here. He's just a relatively quiet and reserved asshole who doesn't jizz all over half the internet about what a superstar game designer he is for having worked on this steaming pile.

-Username17