The End of 4e D&D.

[Psychic Robot]

The loss of 4-5 points of damage doesn't really matter. Also, the fact that you can add your Charisma modifier to your attack rolls in place of your Strength modifier is painfully retarded.

[sake]

I'm sorry... are we still in the place where stats in 4E actually mean something in regard to combat besides being a class' arbitrarily chosen primary attack stat? Cause when I run a game I don't even see a pc using CHA to hit something with a sword anymore, I just see them using their particular primary stat to hit something with a sword.

[Psychic Robot]

Touché.

[RandomCasualty2]

I'm sorry... are we still in the place where stats in 4E actually mean something in regard to combat besides being a class' arbitrarily chosen primary attack stat? Cause when I run a game I don't even see a pc using CHA to hit something with a sword anymore, I just see them using their particular primary stat to hit something with a sword.

Yeah pretty much stats shouldn't even exist anymore. They're totally stupid in the context of 4E.

[TheFlatline]

I'm talking about something with skin of steel (aka, built in plate armor or something). And yes, knights did deal with fighting people in metal armor, and they had weapons specifically made to fight against it.

Again, we're talking about 1/8th to *maybe* 1/4 of an inch of steel for human metal armor. Thicker than that and you can't fucking move. Full plate is like 200 pounds of kit to begin with, and by the time you add padded armor, chain, and your 40 pound lance (note how most knights are mounted) you're hauling a shitload of weight around. For really thin metal. Again, I know, I do armor repair for a full-contact jousting troupe.

But that's not it. Tempering methods were shit back in the middle ages. Your large sheets of armor probably weren't tempered properly. And it was so expensive and so difficult to make plate armor, you'd have to be able to repair it. Which means your steel is annealed. That means you can work it cold. Which means it's structurally soft and easily breakable. So plate armor, while effective against hand-held swords and shit, really wasn't fantastic against heavy blunt force trauma.

So yes, getting hit with a maul will deform an 1/8th inch thick piece of annealed metal.

However, we're not talking about some shitty thin piece of metal made by humans are we? We're talking about, to use your words "armor plating". Like scales maybe? And strength is no longer a limiting factor either, so it's entirely possible for a balor to wear 1/2 inch thick steel plates, maybe even thicker. You can beat on that shit until trumpets sound and judgement day comes, and you won't beat through that skin. In fact, between armor plating on a demon, and your big-ass maul/mace, I'm going to bet money that the maul/mace will fail before the armor does. Hardened tool steel smithing hammers get dings and chinks in their faces when working mild, soft steel, at forge temperatures.

My point to all of this is that you can't drop an expert 14th century knight into combat with a balor and expect him to stand a chance. You simply can't. Hell a knight versus an armored car from today would be a losing proposition. Frank is completely right. You simply *cannot* have mundane fighters versus supernatural. You *have* to give them some kind of supernatural edge, or get ready to do Checkov's Gun for *every* fight you get into.

[CatharzGodfoot]

There are degrees of supernatural bullshite. A 3e D&D fighter can shoot arrows impossibly quickly and impossibly accurately without resorting to 'magic'.

[Juton]

There are degrees of supernatural bullshite. A 3e D&D fighter can shoot arrows impossibly quickly and impossibly accurately without resorting to 'magic'.

Things that are heard to measure, like skill and intelligence are fine to bs. Things that are easily quantifiable, like strength are not.

If we let a 20th level Fighter have a +40 to attack through BAB, feats and whatever that's fine because it's abstract bullshit. The problem is when use power attack to make a sword swing more powerful than a tank's cannon.

The hypothetical Iron Demon is made of pure, concentrated bullshit, a fighter is going to need a dump truck's worth of it to keep up.

[Kaelik]

The problem is that Fighter who bullshit throws thousands of pounds of force per square inch, suddenly people throw a goddam hissy fit if he then throws a 400 pound object, or lifts a mountain, or breaks down a wall by just running through it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

lol at the rest of this board ignoring all of the other anti-mundane fighter arguments in hopes that they can 'win' by focusing on a point of argument while ignoring the rest.

What's the opposite of a strawman?

[Lago PARANOIA]

But I'll indulge you guys. Because I love you.

There are degrees of supernatural bullshite. A 3e D&D fighter can shoot arrows impossibly quickly and impossibly accurately without resorting to 'magic'.

And that extremely specific level of suspension of disbelief, even if it does somehow render Batman able to beat Doomsday, completely eliminates mid and high-level fighters' ability to contribute.

I mean, really, even if you do decide to indulge peoples' crybaby cognitive dissonance and let the fighter-fellaters have their fighter-cock, what about the rest of the adventure? You're still not letting him lift a rhino and do a marathon with it.

Why did you leave him out to hang like that?

Telling a fighter 'okay, you can only be good at combat, we'll suspend our disbelief JUST THIS ONCE' makes them inferior for the rest of the fucking adventure when you suddenly hold them to a higher standard again. When this shit is pointed out, we get one of these canned responses! So here's my canned response, in increasing severity of hatred.


Take away the druid/cleric/paladin/ranger/barbarian's toys, too! That way the Badass Normal won't eventually end up inferior. I don't want that stuff in my game anyway.

Then play E8 or E6 or whatever else the fuck. Stop trying to slip your shriveled penis in high-level play then. If you don't like it, then don't. We'll be talking about how high level play should function over here. You can play with the little kids over there.


Give the fighter some Chekov's guns! The fighter has the ability to conjure up conveniently-appearing portals, spheres of annihilation, and whatever the fuck needed to advance the plot!

Frank pretty much destroyed this non-argument, I'm not going to repeat it unless asked.


Load the fighter to the gills with some magical items! It's not cool if Conan casts a teleportation spell, but it IS cool if he has a ring that casts the spell for him!

Okay, but you realize that you stealth-transformed the 'mundane fighter' into 'artificer with martial arts', right? If you permanently stick Batman into an Iron Man suit, he's not Batman anymore. He's fucking Iron Man. If you permanently give Batgirl a Green Lantern ring, she's not Batgirl anymore. She's fucking Green Lantern.

I don't care if you want to play 'artificer with martial arts', since it's a cool concept, I just want you to stop lying to yourselves by calling this character a Badass Normal. Seriously. It's that easy. Just stop being such a blind, delusional douchebag for just this one instance.


So what if the fighter is useless out of combat? Some people like playing that kind of game! They'll be happy if they just get to roll numbers and scream 'Twin Strike!' even if they can't help advance the plot for the rest of the story.

To this I say, go fuck yourselves.

First of all, a person who does not want to participate in vast portions of the game should not be catered to. The rules should either give him the tools to participate anyway or this person should play another fucking game. If you want to play 'mass murdering psychopath' in Shadowrun, you don't get to whine that that archetype isn't supported. You can deal with it or play something else.

Secondly, not everyone who would pick a 'boring vanilla damage' character actually wants to play them. There are people who took levels in 3E aristocrat. Not because they didn't want to have abilities, but because they thought aristocrat sounded cool. Seriously, I've played with people like that. You can go to fucking TenebraeMUSH right now and find those characters. I want to reserve a special 'fuck you' for introducing a trap option. And you know it's going to be a trap option, because no one is going to have the balls to give this class a huge disclaimer of: 'Note, you will be increasingly unable to contribute meaningfully to non-combat plots as time goes on, even though your combat ability will stay relevant'. I know you fucking won't, because that would be admitting to yourselves that the archetype is a piece of shit after a certain point and we can't have self-honesty, can we?

[RandomCasualty2]

However, we're not talking about some shitty thin piece of metal made by humans are we? We're talking about, to use your words "armor plating". Like scales maybe? And strength is no longer a limiting factor either, so it's entirely possible for a balor to wear 1/2 inch thick steel plates, maybe even thicker. You can beat on that shit until trumpets sound and judgement day comes, and you won't beat through that skin. In fact, between armor plating on a demon, and your big-ass maul/mace, I'm going to bet money that the maul/mace will fail before the armor does. Hardened tool steel smithing hammers get dings and chinks in their faces when working mild, soft steel, at forge temperatures.

Well note, I'm not talking your average human doing this, I'm talking about people with World's Strongest man level strength.

Your average human knight in the middle ages, sure, he's gonna get his ass kicked, but then again, those guys weren't crazy strong either. Sure they were pretty fit, but they're not the peak of what humans are capable of by any means.

And if you're talking about guys with swords, generally even creatures with armor plates for hide are going to have weaknesses, at joints or certain spots on the body where the armor is thinner. I can easily see some skilled swordsman jamming a greatsword there.

Now, obviously yes you can set the bar to the point that you've got monsters with impenetrable armor and absolutely no weak spots. But that really doesn't prove much besides the fact that you can create a monster that a mundane hero can't kill. But we already knew that. Nobody is saying that you can't raise the bar to the point that humans can't compete. That's obvious that you can.

The real question is if you can create believable situations where highly skilled human-level heroes can kill stuff like "demons with skin like iron" and the answer is pretty much, yes.

[Psychic Robot]

Sure is strawmen in here. The only point of Lago's worth addressing is this:

Then play E8 or E6 or whatever else the fuck. Stop trying to slip your shriveled penis in high-level play then. If you don't like it, then don't. We'll be talking about how high level play should function over here. You can play with the little kids over there.

Just because you want something in high level play doesn't mean that everyone else does.

[CatharzGodfoot]

But I'll indulge you guys. Because I love you.

There are degrees of supernatural bullshite. A 3e D&D fighter can shoot arrows impossibly quickly and impossibly accurately without resorting to 'magic'.

And that extremely specific level of suspension of disbelief, even if it does somehow render Batman able to beat Doomsday, completely eliminates mid and high-level fighters' ability to contribute.

I mean, really, even if you do decide to indulge peoples' crybaby cognitive dissonance and let the fighter-fellaters have their fighter-cock, what about the rest of the adventure? You're still not letting him lift a rhino and do a marathon with it.

Why did you leave him out to hang like that?

Telling a fighter 'okay, you can only be good at combat, we'll suspend our disbelief JUST THIS ONCE' makes them inferior for the rest of the fucking adventure when you suddenly hold them to a higher standard again. When this shit is pointed out, we get one of these canned responses! So here's my canned response, in increasing severity of hatred.

If we're 'anti-straw-manning', it's only because we feel threatened by your masterful use of straw men.

I have no problem with 'mundane' warriors in the higher levels of a D&D-type game running full-tilt through walls or shooting arrows that hit like tank shells. I have no problem with them grappling dragons or being even more convincing than a charm monster spell. These are all tasks which don't need to be surrounded by arcane words and sparkly auras.

We just say, 'Sure, it's impossible in our world, but somehow this very hardcore warrior can do it without resorting to "magic". Because.'. and we don't have to let them pick up mountains, either. It's still possible to say that even though the warrior's body can withstand and exert extreme forces, when she tries to pick up a mountain she just breaks off a big rock.

I don't have a problem with a game in which high-level warriors are forced to be effectively gadgeteers. If they are, that should be exclusively part of the class. But I think that it's perfectly reasonable to take the class further them you claim without gadgets. Just because a task is impossible doesn't mean that a high-level warrior can't easily accomplish it without resorting to magic.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Just because you want something in high level play doesn't mean that everyone else does.

Sure, but when we could accommodate both tastes (you have E8, the rest of us have E20) but one side insists that we can only do it one way, you'd better have a damn good reason for it.

I have no problem with 'mundane' warriors in the higher levels of a D&D-type game running full-tilt through walls or shooting arrows that hit like tank shells. I have no problem with them grappling dragons

They don't have to pick up damn mountains. But they do need to be able to pick up 1.2 ton boulders and do a marathon with it at the very minimum and do other physical feats of similar impressiveness.

But no. They can't. They can outgrapple dragons who weigh 5 tons and take them to the floor and use nonmagical arrows to pierce tank armor, but they can't actually pick up the rock and haul it around since they can't handwave it with 'the fog of combat'. That is a load of horseshit.

What's with this specific level of suspension of disbelief?

I don't have a problem with a game in which high-level warriors are forced to be effectively gadgeteers.

Then stop calling them warriors or fighters when they get to that point. They're fucking gadget knights or artificers or whatever the fuck who happen to be good with a sword.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I have no problem with 'mundane' warriors in the higher levels of a D&D-type game running full-tilt through walls or shooting arrows that hit like tank shells. I have no problem with them grappling dragons

They don't have to pick up damn mountains. But they do need to be able to pick up 1.2 ton boulders and do a marathon with it at the very minimum and do other physical feats of similar impressiveness.

But no. They can't. They can outgrapple dragons who weigh 5 tons and take them to the floor and use nonmagical arrows to pierce tank armor, but they can't actually pick up the rock and haul it around since they can't handwave it with 'the fog of combat'. That is a load of horseshit.

What's with this specific level of suspension of disbelief?

Why can't they, Lago? Because 'Fighters can't have nice things, *fapfapfapfapfap* '?

I don't have a problem with a game in which high-level warriors are forced to be effectively gadgeteers.

Then stop calling them warriors or fighters when they get to that point. They're fucking gadget knights or artificers or whatever the fuck who happen to be good with a sword.

Well, they're a warrior that happens to have a lot of neat magic items at that point. A warrior like Perseus is a warrior. And please don't try to turn this around by saying that Perseus was a whiny little bitch. That's beside the point.

[Maxus]

I agree with what seems to be Lago's point--Melee types should get exponential power growth and actual abilities. If I can subdue a dragon with my bare hands, you'd think I'd be able to help my best friend move to a new house. If not actually pick his house up and carry to where he wants to go.

Edit: Or, if you've ever seen Kung Fu Hustle...

[Lago PARANOIA]

Why can't they, Lago? Because 'Fighters can't have nice things, *fapfapfapfapfap* Drool'?

Eat me for that deceitful reversal. I'm not against Fighters having nice things. I am totally okay with characters like Zoro and Rob Lucci who cut buildings in half and fly just because they exercised a lot. I've said this REPEATEDLY and I don't know how you get 'sword-based characters can't have nice things'. They can. Mundane boddice-ripper characters can't have nice things. It's part of the fucking definition--otherwise they're not mundane boddice-ripper characters.

I'm okay with fighters doing all kinds of outrageous things--fuck, man, I'm okay with fighters being able to shapeshift to hill giant-sized monstrosities because they did enough situps. I know at least three famous stories where that happens and they're all awesome. Mind, they don't have to do everything, but if the paladin is going to summon a ghost army and the wizard is going to make the biggest city on the continent fly up into the sky then the fighter needs to do something equally impressive. Otherwise he doesn't need to be there.

It's you not giving the fighters nice things, not me. You're the ones saying that the fighter's special ability should be that he's really good at getting benefits from sucking other spellcasters' cocks. You're the one saying that their one superpower (use a sword real well) should be overshadowed by their l33t gear they didn't even make for themselves.

Well, they're a warrior that happens to have a lot of neat magic items at that point.

Is Tony Stark a martial artist who happens to use a personal mecha? Or is Tony Stark an artificer who uses martial arts? If you ask anyone who knows Iron Man they will describe Tony as the latter--that's because Tony's Iron Man suit is much bigger than his ability to fight in hand-to-hand. If you give Conan the Barbarian Green Lantern's ring or Iron Man's suit, no one gives a fuck about his ability to swing an axe real good anymore. His equipment looms larger than the character.

'Uses a sword well' is just one of a set of superpowers a fighter has. The example balor-fighting fighter also needs some mind-shielding boosters, a holy weapon of some sort, something that sees invisibility, something to boost his speed/something to let them fly if he's getting into melee, something to resist being burned up by getting too near the demon, and either something to help him teleport or to prevent the demon from teleporting.

Most of that shit is enough to create a lone superhero on its own. The fighter gets a combo-platter of them and we're supposed to believe that his most important ability is the ability to use a sword? Give me a break. His most important ability is being able to gather the materials for the superpowers he needs (probably pre-made, because he's a stupid fuck who needs to suck the cock of other characters) to have a chance.

Regardless, he's a 'magic' character by any stretch of the imagination.

[malak]

Going forward, the Dungeons & Dragons game will feature a system of proficiency with implements that works just like weapon proficiencies. If you are proficient with an implement, you can use it with any of your implement powers. It doesn’t matter where that power comes from—a paragon path, a different class, a new build, whatever—you can use any implement that you’re proficient with to use your power.

Each race now provides a +2 bonus to one specific ability and a +2 bonus to an ability chosen between two options. For example, dwarves now gain a +2 bonus to Constitution and a +2 bonus to either Strength or Wisdom.

We’ve made this change to make the races a little more flexible and give players stronger options when creating characters. It also better matches the Dungeons & Dragons world. Dwarves make good clerics and fighters. Elves excel at both archery and arcane magic.

The biggest effect of this is that some older feats have been surpassed in power by new ones. For example, you can now take feats that provide a bonus to Fortitude, Reflex, or Will defense in the heroic tier. Previously, such feats were reserved for paragon levels.

Whenever we introduced a new feat that makes an older one obsolete, we did so only because the feat was just as useful but no more powerful at lower levels.

For example, Seize the Moment is a paragon tier feat that grants combat advantage to enemies with a lower initiative on the first round of combat. Aggressive Advantage grants that benefit against all enemies. Aggressive Advantage is clearly a better feat, but the benefit it provides scales perfectly with level. Nothing has changed at 11th level to make that benefit weaker. In this case, we’ve taken a useful feat and made it available earlier in a character’s career.

Finally, as you’ve seen in earlier previews, many classes in the Essentials products rely on basic attacks. The Melee Training feat allows a character to use any ability to modify such attacks. That feat has been updated so that it provides the new ability’s full bonus to attack rolls but only half to damage rolls. Melee Training offers its intended flexibility in creating characters without becoming a default choice.

For instance, a slayer who uses Melee Training to attack with Dexterity matches a Strength-based slayer in damage while gaining superior mobility by relying on light armor. A knight who opts to attack with Constitution gives up some damage but has more hit points and healing surges. Such characters are viable without becoming clearly better than ones without Melee Training, at the expense of using up a feat slot.

Finally, there are a few changes to magic items and equipment. The big change makes it easier for Dungeon Masters to control access to magic items in the campaign.

More and more far-reaching changes, and some nice doublespeak.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So. When will we know for sure whether D&D Essentials is a failure or it somehow succeeds and Slavicsek and Mearls don't get shitcanned ? 6 months from now? 8 months from now?

[souran]

Take away the druid/cleric/paladin/ranger/barbarian's toys, too! That way the Badass Normal won't eventually end up inferior. I don't want that stuff in my game anyway.

Then play E8 or E6 or whatever else the fuck. Stop trying to slip your shriveled penis in high-level play then. If you don't like it, then don't. We'll be talking about how high level play should function over here. You can play with the little kids over there.

I have to say that this arguement is a little misplaced. The "top end" of "older" versions of D&D was an unplayable shithole. Infact, the designers pretty much said "we never test anything this high, we never play campaigns out this far, we have no idea if its balanced, or fair or even fun."

Thats fucking magic tea party. When you DONT design a portion of the game because you don't think most people will get there you are basically saying that that portion of the game doesn't matter.

High end casters need their power seriously fuckign nerfed to something that can more reasonably be challenged. High level play has to actually work, and the ONLY way you are going to get that is if you drastically reduce the power of upper end casters. Otherwise high level D&D isn't a game its just a way for people to piss in the communal sandbox.

[RobbyPants]

Now, obviously yes you can set the bar to the point that you've got monsters with impenetrable armor and absolutely no weak spots. But that really doesn't prove much besides the fact that you can create a monster that a mundane hero can't kill. But we already knew that. Nobody is saying that you can't raise the bar to the point that humans can't compete. That's obvious that you can.

The real question is if you can create believable situations where highly skilled human-level heroes can kill stuff like "demons with skin like iron" and the answer is pretty much, yes.

So, basically, you're saying if you want "mundane" heroes, don't raise the bar past X? In other words, don't play past level X.

Pretty much E6, E8, or E-whatever-the-fuck.

[Dr_Noface]

Lago, a high level Tome fighter (along with Tome feats and without Forge Lore) is an example of a combat effective badass normal that these people would want to play. Of course its fighting ability is superhuman, but thanks to the abstraction of the combat system, they don't notice.

Heck you could hand out even more stuff if you want. You could get away with giving it a 10 ft inherent speed boost every four levels. Give it a climb and swim speed too. Give it the ability to take 20 on Strength checks and Dexterity checks eventually. Give them a generic AC bonuses every few levels. Give it Hide and 2 more skills per level. None of that would suspend their disbelief.

In terms of items, the Tome Fighter only needs what over a more magical character? Maybe:

i) a flight item (to fly)
ii) a strength booster (to allow for the thematic smashings of walls and the throwings of boulders)
iii) 2 magic weapons (ranged & melee)
iv) armor, if Stength based

Thats five of eight items. And the people who want to play a "badass normal" don't care if they need to somehow get a hold of these items to play the game properly. They'll quest for them or ask their wizard friend to make them. They don't care if they must suck tasty wizard cock once in a while, why do you?

Or do people want a game where items are entirely unnecessary? In that case, yeah, badass normals are probably screwed. But I don't see D&D as a game lacking in the magical loot. I could see you lowering the number of permanent magical items a character would have to three, though. And as long as a character has three magic items, the badass normal with a magic sword works.

I suggested letting nonmagical classes attune more items and have buffs last longer. This would be justified by these characters having bodies and minds unsaturated by other magic. Bad idea?

I fully support adding more "obviously magical" martial characters. Mystical warriors (like the Tome monk) and themed casters (like the Storm Lord or Fire Mage) are my favourite kinds of classes to run as a player or DM. Just throw the grognards a bone, give them one "mundane" class. The Tome Fighter does the job nicely in my opinion.

[Psychic Robot]

Sure, but when we could accommodate both tastes (you have E8, the rest of us have E20) but one side insists that we can only do it one way, you'd better have a damn good reason for it.

Because I don't want to be cut off at level 8 when the game can go for 20 levels. Which is, essentially, "I don't like how you play, so nyah." And I'm okay with that reasoning.

[RobbyPants]

Too bad, so sad. That's kind of the way the game works.

You could, instead, look at it as a robust game that accommodates a variety of tastes, and any particular taste may only be viable for half of the available levels. What's so magical about the number 20 that you have to write it on your character sheet?

[TOZ]

Nerd cred.

'My guy is a level 8 Fighter!'

'Oh yeah? Mine's a 20th level Wizard!'