The Official "4e Critique and Rebuttal" Thread

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Fuchs
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Post by Fuchs »

lighttigersoul wrote:If you want to bring up specific design goals to discuss or counter with, please, feel free. The problem is, everyone bashing 4th edition is doing it with 'But I don't like it!' not 'But that's counter to the design goal!'
Please read the thread before posting such lies.

Again, please read the thread. I can't take you seriously if you post such nonsense in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. This is not about "I don't like it", it's about mechanical and conceptual failures.
Roy
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Post by Roy »

Fuchs wrote:
Roy wrote:Hey, while we're at it, perhaps the MOBs should form a nice line, allowing the PCs to farm them. And then the PCs can stand outside and be like LFG for Orcus farmz, and LF Controller for dragon grindign.
Don't forget "/Shout Camp Check!"" when you enter a dungeon.
Aren't most dungeons in MMOs instanced now?

Ignoring more 4rry blame shunting, goal post shifting, and persistent failure.

Riddle: In what profession can you demand the customer do your job for you and not only not get booted out the door amidst peals of laughter on the spot, but actually be supported in your decision by that same customer?

Answer: Tabletop game designers.

And you thought patch it later was bad...
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Mister_Sinister wrote:Clearly, your cock is part of the big barrel the server's busy sucking on.
Can someone tell it to stop using its teeth please?
Juton wrote:Damn, I thought [Pathfailure] accidentally created a feat worth taking, my mistake.
Koumei wrote:Shad, please just punch yourself in the face until you are too dizzy to type. I would greatly appreciate that.
Kaelik wrote:No, bad liar. Stop lying.
Standard Paizil Fare/Fail (SPF) Type I - doing exactly the opposite of what they said they would do.
Standard Paizil Fare/Fail (SPF) Type II - change for the sake of change.
Standard Paizil Fare/Fail (SPF) Type III - the illusion of change.
Crawfish
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Post by Crawfish »

Hippogriff, level 5 skirmisher flying mount 4200 gp
Griffon, level 7 brute flying mount 9000 gp
Manticore, level 10 elite skirmisher flying mount 45000 gp
Wyvern, level 10 skirmisher flying mount 21000 gp

yawn
Fuchs
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Post by Fuchs »

lighttigersoul wrote:An average party is meaningless.

An average party is a Controller, a Defender, a Leader, and two Strikers (This is by the book.). The problem is each of those roles has so many options that this only helps you understand damage output and defense capabilities.

If you use a Laser Cleric, a Wizard, a Greatbow Ranger, a crossbow rogue, and heavy thrown fighter, you're going to have a very different set of capabilities than a group that is a Greatweapon Fighter, Lazylord, Two Weapon Ranger, scoundrel rogue, and a druid.
We are talking about the fact that using some classes/builds are inferiour to other classes/builds within the same role (and focus). That you can't even understand defenses and damage output without going into specifics. That there are classes and builds that suck compared to the powerful ones.
cthulhudarren
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Post by cthulhudarren »

I hate the idea that just because the PCs are level X, they must always face level X challenges. It's so retarded that I couldn't play the game.

If you run into a flying dragon that you can't beat right now, you run the fuck away, talk yourself out of it, offer a ransom, roleplay... whatever. You plan a strategy for later for when you might be able to beat the dragon. Or you just get the hell out of Dodge. To me this is how you play an RPG and not an MMO.

God forbid every encounter doesn't take place during initiative or on the encounter area as designed by the module.

Sure, you could run into a band of 1st level goblins at 10th level, but you can hand-wave past that encounter and get to doing something else.
Crawfish
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Post by Crawfish »

Actually the game world just existing and the levels not changing is how MMOs work

At level 1 you can't run out and kill whoever the end boss of WoW is, I'm pretty sure

Maybe I'm not as well versed in mmos as the people in this thread but I'm pretty sure they don't have levels that adjust to the level of the player, but have static levels you have to deal with
lighttigersoul
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Post by lighttigersoul »

tzor wrote:Violence, the problem with their argument is even worse than you are suggesting. If monsters literally do not exist unless they are fighting the PCs then the whole notion of “Points of Light” collapses. There are no monsters in the woods, or anywhere else the PCs are not. Everything is love and happiness, except wherever the PCs are.
This is again, not true.

Can the thread at large tell me if we're discussing system or story, because you all seem to have it mixed up.
Let’s take a good example of this in another genre; the city of Gotham. In the comic world there is this monster called the Joker. He routinely goes to random places, robs people and kills them for the most insane or reasons, (he once killed government officials for not accepting his argument that fish poisoned by him to create joker like smiles should be patented and he should be getting all the royalties). Thus the Batman has to find him; prevent him from harming others; and capture him.
This is called story. It needs no mechanics. The Joker runs around at the hypothetical GM's whims, doing anything he wants The Joker to do. This is an adventure hook.

So our party (The Bat Family.) goes on an adventure to locate and capture the Joker. They meet up with the Joker after some arbitrary challenges put before the Bats (As defined by the GM/Writer.)

Then the climactic encounter! This is when you give the Joker combat stats and worry about the mechanics he'll be using. Of course, the mechanics this time will be different than last time (Last time he was using gas grenades and punching, this time, he brought a gun and has goons with him!)
But in the 4E world, he doesn’t exist, except in the presence of the Batman. The Joker is not the problem to the people of Gotham, the Batman is! Why? Because when the Barman is not around, neither is the Joker. If you kill the Batman you eliminate the whole Joker problem.
Again, mixing story with mechanics. Mechanically, yes, the Joker is only a monster when the party is fighting him. The rest of the time, he's an antagonistic NPC.

What the 4th edition players are saying in this thread that this is the realities of actually playing the game. The NPCs only exist in so much as they are in the open and being interacted with. They're props in a story that the group as a whole is telling. This is true in EVERY system, not just 4th edition.

Of course, you may not like narrative driven games, and prefer the regularity of a spawn table that tells you when, what, and how monsters appear in the game world. Of course, there's not ecology outside of MMO levels of 'the forest has forest creatures.' The encounter table doesn't take into account that the PCs have killed 300 wolves in the last week and that the local ecology is probably empty, it just spawns a few more for them to grind.
Darwinism
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Post by Darwinism »

cthulhudarren wrote:I hate the idea that just because the PCs are level X, they must always face level X challenges. It's so retarded that I couldn't play the game.

If you run into a flying dragon that you can't beat right now, you run the fuck away, talk yourself out of it, offer a ransom, roleplay... whatever. You plan a strategy for later for when you might be able to beat the dragon. Or you just get the hell out of Dodge. To me this is how you play an RPG and not an MMO.

God forbid every encounter doesn't take place during initiative or on the encounter area as designed by the module.

Sure, you could run into a band of 1st level goblins at 10th level, but you can hand-wave past that encounter and get to doing something else.
Actually there's nothing saying that you can't throw an ancient red wyrm as a plot device at your players in 4E; it's just usually a really horrible railroading mechanic which probably means you're a bad DM.

And if it's a combat encounter then you're definitely a bad DM because then you're just proving to your players that you're the DM and can arbitrarily fuck them over when you want, which they probably already know if you're that kind of guy to begin with.



Oh and Roy, please never change. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't around to spout idiocy and claim victory because everyone is doing the equivalent of averting their eyes to try and not notice the retarded child shitting his pants in the corner. You're just so precocious!
Last edited by Darwinism on Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:42 pm, edited 2 times in total.
cthulhudarren
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Post by cthulhudarren »

Roy wrote:
But I don't care that the dot is green, that fucker pissed me off. Fuck you video game invincibility.
Amen.
Novembermike
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Post by Novembermike »

tzor wrote:Violence, the problem with their argument is even worse than you are suggesting. If monsters literally do not exist unless they are fighting the PCs then the whole notion of “Points of Light” collapses. There are no monsters in the woods, or anywhere else the PCs are not. Everything is love and happiness, except wherever the PCs are.

Let’s take a good example of this in another genre; the city of Gotham. In the comic world there is this monster called the Joker. He routinely goes to random places, robs people and kills them for the most insane or reasons, (he once killed government officials for not accepting his argument that fish poisoned by him to create joker like smiles should be patented and he should be getting all the royalties). Thus the Batman has to find him; prevent him from harming others; and capture him.

But in the 4E world, he doesn’t exist, except in the presence of the Batman. The Joker is not the problem to the people of Gotham, the Batman is! Why? Because when the Barman is not around, neither is the Joker. If you kill the Batman you eliminate the whole Joker problem.

Of course, by the same token, if the monsters don’t exist except in the presence of the PCs why should anyone else? In fact, why isn’t this some insane dream on the part of the PCs? Yes, 4E is Inception. Well, actually I might have misspelled that; 4E is insipid.
The Joker isn't a typical monster, he's a Boss (or whatever 4E calls it, I'm not personally a huge fan of 4E). He does things so that the player has a reason to fight him. His henchman, however, are typical monsters in the sense that it doesn't really matter which henchman are with the Joker when he does something. You can effectively create them out of thin air have literally no consistency with them and chances are that nobody will call you out on it.

Also, I know you felt clever with the Inception bit, but it's the dream world of the DM, not the PCs. Also, the reason that Gotham can't kill batman in this case is that if they kill batman they kill themselves (the players stop playing).
ScottS
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Post by ScottS »

Crawfish wrote:Hippogriff, level 5 skirmisher flying mount 4200 gp
Yes as noted above. 4200g = lv9 item cost, which is probably the earliest you can get relatively permanent flight (haven't gone through the entire list recently). In game terms, the PCs aren't going to have 4200g from treasure unless they save up all their shares from lv1-8 (sum of parcel totals from 1-8 = 22395, split 5 ways = 4479), which means they didn't spend anything on more immediately-useful/RNG-maintaining gear and whatnot. (I guess you could put this on your wish list if you were a masochist, or you could do the group party fund thing and convince everyone that having a 'griff or Ebony Fly was a priority.)
Last edited by ScottS on Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
talozin
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Post by talozin »

lighttigersoul wrote: I like how 'it's in all the fiction' is your guys' primary defense for it, totally ignoring that in fiction, movie, book, or otherwise, that the flying enemies were used to push the characters along OR the characters had a means of dealing with them.
I'd hate for someone to think I was ignoring that.

There's basically two options for dealing with flying enemies. (Actually, let's back up - "flying enemies" is a specific instance of a problem that occurs in multiple situations. There's something similar going on when, for example, the PCs and a band of giants get stuck on opposite sides of a chasm and are both racing to get to the maguffin at the end of it. But "flying enemies" is useful shorthand, so we'll go with that.)

Option 1 is that they are basically plot devices. PCs don't require, and indeed probably shouldn't have, abilities that meaningfully interact with them on a mechanical level, because otherwise the PCs are going to fucking kill them, and then they're no longer a plot device but an instance of Option 2.

Option 2 is that they are opponents (or allies, whichever), rather than plot devices, and, just like other monsters, can be attacked, killed, captured, looted, interrogated as to where their secret base is, and so forth. PCs in this instance do need abilities that deal with them, because that's what they're expected to do.

Unfortunately for Option 1, D&D takes place in a genre where character concepts like "fire wizard" and "archer" and "dude who summons holy lightning from God" and "knife-thrower" exist. If we're going to accommodate those concepts, then flying monsters are Option 2. If we aren't going to accommodate those concepts, then they can be Option 1, but the resulting game is going to look strikingly un-D&D-ish.

What I think is that if they're going to be Option 2, characters should not have the possibility of being unable to deal with them. It's problematic if/when the game requires that you advance your character in order to counter flying enemies, while permitting you to not do that. If you can pick "counter flight" or "be more badass in melee", and the game lets you pick either one, then eventually someone is going to pick "be more badass in melee" and not have a counter for flight.

But the way to handle this is not by treating flying enemies as prima facie evidence of ass piracy; the way to handle it is for the game to offer "be more badass at countering flight" or "be more badass in melee", because everyone just gets a counter for flight, and can deal meaningfully with it. Whether that looks like a bow or a chakram or the ability to leap to great heights or whatever, they can do something level-appropriate against the Harpy Air Force, and then everybody's happy.
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Post by Novembermike »

talozin wrote: Unfortunately for Option 1, D&D takes place in a genre where character concepts like "fire wizard" and "archer" and "dude who summons holy lightning from God" and "knife-thrower" exist. If we're going to accommodate those concepts, then flying monsters are Option 2. If we aren't going to accommodate those concepts, then they can be Option 1, but the resulting game is going to look strikingly un-D&D-ish.
I actually agree with this, but with the caveat that if the party doesn't have an abundance of these concepts then everything goes back to option 1.
Darwinism
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Post by Darwinism »

One thing a lot of people don't seem to understand is that this whole imaginary world deal where monsters don't exist until the party has to deal with them? Yeah, that's every tabletop, not just 4E. In any game the world literally does not exist until the party begins interacting with it; you may have text describing how many eggs a harpy lays or where she likes to lay them, or some esoteric facts about a city, but this information doesn't exist in the game world until the players begin to interact with it.
Last edited by Darwinism on Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
cthulhudarren
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Post by cthulhudarren »

Darwinism wrote:
cthulhudarren wrote:I hate the idea that just because the PCs are level X, they must always face level X challenges. It's so retarded that I couldn't play the game.

If you run into a flying dragon that you can't beat right now, you run the fuck away, talk yourself out of it, offer a ransom, roleplay... whatever. You plan a strategy for later for when you might be able to beat the dragon. Or you just get the hell out of Dodge. To me this is how you play an RPG and not an MMO.

God forbid every encounter doesn't take place during initiative or on the encounter area as designed by the module.

Sure, you could run into a band of 1st level goblins at 10th level, but you can hand-wave past that encounter and get to doing something else.
Actually there's nothing saying that you can't throw an ancient red wyrm as a plot device at your players in 4E; it's just usually a really horrible railroading mechanic which probably means you're a bad DM.

And if it's a combat encounter then you're definitely a bad DM because then you're just proving to your players that you're the DM and can arbitrarily fuck them over when you want, which they probably already know if you're that kind of guy to begin with.
If the party is marching thru a dragon's territory (sorry that it exists outside combat), there is a chance they'll encounter it. If I roll a random encounter die and it comes up, it's not the DM being a dick, it's the DM being nature. And sometimes it's a bitch. The DM is not there to hold hands nor to punish. It can be entirely random and not a plot device. Not everything in life has a reason for it. Most of life is a red herring, in fact.
talozin
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Post by talozin »

lighttigersoul wrote: Can the thread at large tell me if we're discussing system or story, because you all seem to have it mixed up.

This is called story. It needs no mechanics. The Joker runs around at the hypothetical GM's whims, doing anything he wants The Joker to do. This is an adventure hook.

What the 4th edition players are saying in this thread that this is the realities of actually playing the game. The NPCs only exist in so much as they are in the open and being interacted with. They're props in a story that the group as a whole is telling. This is true in EVERY system, not just 4th edition.
So this whole argument is basically an extended Simulationist vs. Narrativist flamefest. How disappointing.
Last edited by talozin on Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
cthulhudarren
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Post by cthulhudarren »

Darwinism wrote:One thing a lot of people don't seem to understand is that this whole imaginary world deal where monsters don't exist until the party has to deal with them? Yeah, that's every tabletop, not just 4E. In any game the world literally does not exist until the party begins interacting with it; you may have text describing how many eggs a harpy lays or where she likes to lay them, or some esoteric facts about a city, but this information doesn't exist in the game world until the players begin to interact with them.
Yes it does. Lets say I make a hex map of a campaign world. I mark some caves and lairs, ruins, whatever. Those things exist. There is a consequence for your actions. If you walk to the hex where I marked a dragon's lair, there's a chance you'll encounter the dragon.

Even if they don't go to the dragon lair hex, what if some bar wench says "There's a dragon living at mount fuckoff, so stay clear!" then that dragon exists.
Darwinism
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Post by Darwinism »

cthulhudarren wrote:
Darwinism wrote:
cthulhudarren wrote:I hate the idea that just because the PCs are level X, they must always face level X challenges. It's so retarded that I couldn't play the game.

If you run into a flying dragon that you can't beat right now, you run the fuck away, talk yourself out of it, offer a ransom, roleplay... whatever. You plan a strategy for later for when you might be able to beat the dragon. Or you just get the hell out of Dodge. To me this is how you play an RPG and not an MMO.

God forbid every encounter doesn't take place during initiative or on the encounter area as designed by the module.

Sure, you could run into a band of 1st level goblins at 10th level, but you can hand-wave past that encounter and get to doing something else.
Actually there's nothing saying that you can't throw an ancient red wyrm as a plot device at your players in 4E; it's just usually a really horrible railroading mechanic which probably means you're a bad DM.

And if it's a combat encounter then you're definitely a bad DM because then you're just proving to your players that you're the DM and can arbitrarily fuck them over when you want, which they probably already know if you're that kind of guy to begin with.
If the party is marching thru a dragon's territory (sorry that it exists outside combat), there is a chance they'll encounter it. If I roll a random encounter die and it comes up, it's not the DM being a dick, it's the DM being nature. And sometimes it's a bitch. The DM is not there to hold hands nor to punish. It can be entirely random and not a plot device. Not everything in life has a reason for it. Most of life is a red herring, in fact.
Nothing says things don't exist out of combat, but things literally don't exist in any game world until the players come into contact with them. It's all just a thought exercise on the DM's part until then and players, as any DM should know, are very capable of invalidating any plan you have so why would you treat anything as existing in the game world before you need to? Oh and it is the DM being a dick and excusing it with a smug look and saying, "well the dice told me I had to fuck you over who I am to argue with an excuse to fuck you over because I have an inferiority complex," so yeah.

I dunno about yours but so far my life has been a series of pretty easily understood and not random at all encounters. I've yet to run across, say, an elephant in the middle of the road because some higher being rolled on a stupid chart.
Novembermike
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Post by Novembermike »

cthulhudarren wrote: Even if they don't go to the dragon lair hex, what if some bar wench says "There's a dragon living at mount fuckoff, so stay clear!" then that dragon exists.
What if she's lying? What if the "dragon" is an illusionist of middling talent?

Also, the point of "nothing exists until the players encounter it" is that it can be changed until the players recognize it as part of the world.
Darwinism
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Post by Darwinism »

cthulhudarren wrote:
Darwinism wrote:One thing a lot of people don't seem to understand is that this whole imaginary world deal where monsters don't exist until the party has to deal with them? Yeah, that's every tabletop, not just 4E. In any game the world literally does not exist until the party begins interacting with it; you may have text describing how many eggs a harpy lays or where she likes to lay them, or some esoteric facts about a city, but this information doesn't exist in the game world until the players begin to interact with them.
Yes it does. Lets say I make a hex map of a campaign world. I mark some caves and lairs, ruins, whatever. Those things exist. There is a consequence for your actions. If you walk to the hex where I marked a dragon's lair, there's a chance you'll encounter the dragon.

Even if they don't go to the dragon lair hex, what if some bar wench says "There's a dragon living at mount fuckoff, so stay clear!" then that dragon exists.
It exists as a concept, but it is not actually part of the game (flavor text describing your world is not mechanically part of the game because) until the players do encounter it.

Think of it as a Lone Wolf book; when you choose one path that is what exists in the game world, not the other possible paths that you could have taken. They're just possibilities, not part of your world.

Sorry.
lighttigersoul
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Post by lighttigersoul »

talozin wrote:So this whole argument is basically an extended Simulationist vs. Narrativist flamefest. How disappointing.
If you think I'd use, or even believe terms like that, you're underestimating how I approach table top games.

All role playing games simulate. The issue is their models have different constants. The interesting thing is that the mechanics of the model really don't matter. All role playing games have narrative. Whether it is 'emergent' and is developed from the players interfacing the system (The so-called 'simulationist' approach) or from a controlled set of motivational hooks set before players to walk through how they see fit, or anywhere between the extremes, a story develops. That's because human beings convert everything into stories. Narrative just exists.

If the debate is which is the best way to a strong narrative, you can debate it for years, but in general I prefer choice and consequence, but obviously I'm with people who feel that random encounter is the height of narrative truth.
talozin
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Post by talozin »

cthulhudarren wrote: Yes it does. Lets say I make a hex map of a campaign world. I mark some caves and lairs, ruins, whatever. Those things exist. There is a consequence for your actions. If you walk to the hex where I marked a dragon's lair, there's a chance you'll encounter the dragon.
Okay, I'm going to yeah-but you here. Yeah, but if the characters decide they're going to go to the dragon's lair, you, as the DM, should be interposing encounters along the way to ensure that they are at least potentially capable of dealing with it by the time they get there. "Dealing with it" may equate to "realize we're in way over our heads and run away", or it may equate to hearing the lamentation of the Dragon Women. It just needs to not equate to "rocks fall, everyone dies."

Can you take this to stupid extremes? You sure can - for example: complete Oblivion as a level 2 character -- the netherworld is apparently filled only with harmless imps, leaving it an open question as to why people were so worries about Oblivion Gates in the first place. But the flip side of that is walking out into Athkatla for the first time, buying a Rogue Stone at the shop because you think it looks awesome, and accidentally walking into the Twisted Rune stronghold. Neither outcome is much fun, one of them because it's a completely unsatisfying victory, the other because it's a ridiculously unfair defeat.
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Post by Roxolan »

Roxolan wrote:You are missing the point and I'm getting tired of repeating myself. This is not about normal gameplay. We're trying to determine if a character is a meaningful help to the party. To do so, we examine how a group would fare against the same encounter with or without him and see if there's a noticeable difference. As I've been saying, if you also add a monster then you're instead measuring whether the character is more or less powerful than the party average, which is a completely different question. It is inevitable that some characters will be less powerful than the party average, but in a well-designed game there shouldn't be a class that can't meaningfully contribute. Goddamn, how complicated is that?
Fuchs wrote:Look, stop the bullshit. 4E is not a mass pvp MMOG, where you fare better the more people you have on your side, even if they only absorb some damage that would otherwise have hit you.

4E is made to have groups of PCs handle size-appropriate encounters. Balanced, challenging encounters. You can only judge a character's efficiency within this frame work.

A hypothetical situation that only comes up if you stop following the core design of 4E is not, in no way at all, a measuring stick to judge a character
I've made my point as clearly as I can. I'm done.


ScottS wrote:
Crawfish wrote:wait so what makes the "flyers are a bitch" specifically apply to 4e? what would an earlier edition rogue, fighter, or barbarian do?
Fly (the spell) would normally come online at the start of the sweet spot, which is technically where 4e is supposed to begin (the rule of thumb I use is lv1 4e = lv4 older editions). You could also play races with intrinsic flight like aarakocra. Also see above (slightly ninja'd in re flight items; you can get stuff like this after a while in 4e, pretty sure Ebony Fly is the lowest at 9, living 'griff mounts are supposedly 5 but they're costed as lv9).
This is explicitly by design though (PHB p.28). Heroic is supposed to be the "ground-only" tier, paragon the "some flight, some teleport" tier and epic the "you can fight the whole encounter without touching the ground" tier.

If you're doing a heroic or low-paragonic encounter where the PCs need ranged attacks or flight, you are not playing the system as intended.
Fuchs wrote:Nobody is saying "it does not bother us with 3E".
Kaelik wrote:You put it in good games, like 3e, because it's not boring. That's why you have most fights in 3e, because they are not boring. And you have it be a set of harpies, because that's a common encounter when assaulting a fortress that happens to be up in the mountains where harpies are.

Do you also not allow Solo Dragons to fly in 4e? I mean, wtf is wrong with you?

Maybe the fact that a perfectly normal encounter that exists in fiction, makes perfect sense, is easily duplicable in every single version of D&D since it began to exist, and is actually an explicit encounter in 2e and 3e modules is "contrived" and makes for boring gameplay in 4e, but not 2e or 3e, is evidence that your edition is terribad.
Novembermike
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Post by Novembermike »

cthulhudarren wrote: If the party is marching thru a dragon's territory (sorry that it exists outside combat), there is a chance they'll encounter it. If I roll a random encounter die and it comes up, it's not the DM being a dick, it's the DM being nature. And sometimes it's a bitch. The DM is not there to hold hands nor to punish. It can be entirely random and not a plot device. Not everything in life has a reason for it. Most of life is a red herring, in fact.
If I really wanted the dragon to be there, I'd treat the dragon as an NPC (no need to stat it up, the players can't kill it) and let the players know what's coming (they see the dragon flying up and landing in it's lair). If they still want to proceed, the dragon will either kill them (no need for combat) or talk to them, depending on the attitude I want it to have, but only after giving them a couple chances to turn around.
talozin
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Post by talozin »

lighttigersoul wrote: If you think I'd use, or even believe terms like that, you're underestimating how I approach table top games.
I don't know what terms you use; but this thread really feels like a classic example of Edwards-esque viewpoint clashing. Of course, GNS theory is no longer in style among the cool kids, but I haven't kept up to date on the latest terminology.
The interesting thing is that the mechanics of the model really don't matter.
If you're saying "game mechanics don't matter", I strongly disagree.
If the debate is which is the best way to a strong narrative, you can debate it for years, but in general I prefer choice and consequence, but obviously I'm with people who feel that random encounter is the height of narrative truth.
No, that's just it. The debate isn't about "what's the best way to a strong narrative" -- reducing it to that question already assumes a particular model of game play. The whole point of GNS theory (and its successors) is that narrative-centric games are a style of game play, not the style of game play.
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