4E hates small characters.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:18 pm

I just noticed that there are no reach weapons in any of the core, class, or setting books for small characters.

Which means that not only do they not have reach but they also can't use Polearm Gamble or Footwork Lure + Polearm Momentum or any of that shit--which is supposed to be the big payoff for using a polearm in the first place.

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised since the only classes capable of using a bow competently are the ranger and fucking bard. Man, fuck this edition.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:21 pm

Honestly, I'm kinda okay with small characters not being reach fighters. The halfling with a 10 ft spear just looks pretty stupid anyway.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:28 pm

Yeah, because the 5 and a half foot human carrying a 12-foot pike is so much less stupid.

I really wish people would stop sticking their 'lol selective realism' dicks into game balance.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:38 pm

4e eats a bag of dicks. It's a poorly-designed MMO that has shitty updates. It's only saving grace is playing stupid-powerful characters and winning.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:48 pm

And the patches don't address the most glaring balance issues.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:49 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Yeah, because the 5 and a half foot human carrying a 12-foot pike is so much less stupid.

Yeah, pretty much being small means you're gonna have a smaller reach. That's a natural drawback for having little arms. It doesn't mean small characters have to suck at combat, but I'd prefer their combat style to be something based on getting close to people and shanking them with daggers.

Why is it that small characters need to be in every way equal to large characters? Can't they have their own schtick. Yoda was a pretty awesome fighter and he didn't need a pole arm.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:53 pm

Okay, let's do some simple division here.

Human beings are about 5 and a half feet, especially that period in history. In the picture I posted the pikes averaged about 15 or 16 feet in length.

Halflings are three and a half feet--they're actually much bigger in 4th Edition but whatever. But now RC2 says that a 10-foot long pole is too much for them to wield without 'looking stupid'.

Anyone see what's wrong here?

(edit: sorry, I got the ratios wrong. I'm assuming 5 and a half foot humans and one could stand on the top of the head of another and still have a lot of room leftover for the pike's length, so I'm saying 15 or 16. The original figure I had was 13 to 14 feet, which is too low)

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 12:01 am

RC, why is it that you think losing a mere foot in height will make you unable to wield a polearm of reach length?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 12:20 am

Fucking Swiss.

On a more serious note, the edition was created to sell books, not to make any sense. Fundamentally you get two stats and any powers you get have to trigger on one or both of those stats or you'll suck. These stat assignments are the actual "classes" of the edition and all the stuff involving roles and races and selections and shit is just obfuscation. The 15 classes are Strength/Wisdom, Charisma/Constitution, and so on. The proficiencies of these classes are completely random and not all of them were meaningfully supported in the primary document. Which is puzzling, because a number of them got partial support in the core rules. Like how Intelligence/Dexterity got a race but no powers in the PHB.

That could actually be good if they nutted up to the fact that that is what they were doing. 15 classes is kind of a lot, but their power card format is so trivially easy to write up that you could seriously have thrown down something playable for all fifteen of them. And it wouldn't be a complete railroad either, because you could have single attribute powers that were workable for 5 different classes. Looked at at this level it would be a lot easier to do "multiclassing" because overlapping your schtick with another character just involves you taking powers that only require one of your tag stats.

So the way this would work is that you'd ditch actually having numeric stats at all. Call a spade a spade. You have a Primary Bonus, a Secondary Bonus, and a Tertiary Bonus. You have a small amount of control over those numbers, but mostly they just rise evenly as you go up in level. An ability would tell you to add your primary bonus or your secondary bonus or your tertiary bonus to various rolls. Furthermore, you would have precisely two "focus attributes" and that would be totally binary. You'd either have one or you wouldn't. Actual powers would require one or two focus attributes before you could select them.

So Righteous Brand would require you to have tagged Strength and Wisdom. Cloud of Daggers would require you to have tagged Intelligence and Wisdom. But Burst of Radiance would only require tagged Wisdom, so an Int/Wis character or a Str/Wis character could take it. And in either case they'd just be adding their Primary Bonus to their to-hit roll.

But fuckit, if they did something crazy like that they'd be forced to admit that they could make a fairly complete fantasy game in less than a thousand fucking pages. And that would harm the gravy train of the freelancers writing the damn thing.

I mean yeah, the extra layers of abstraction they've thrown on it mean that they can keep writing up entire "classes" just to allow for Goblin spearmen or whatever. Seriously Goblin Spearmen require a unique weapon (the Banepike), and then a class that's proficient with it, and some powers to actually make that shit function. And yeah, the Marsh Warrior (or whatever) needs to have a couple of paragon paths and two alternate class feature platforms, and four different powers to select at each power juncture - you know the drill. Armed with the templates, I think the whole thing would take me about 12 hours of real writing work. I could do it in a day, but I would probably do it in two or three. And it would take up... about 12 thousand words. So it would sell for somewhere between 400 and 800 dollars. Not bad for 2 days of part time labor. And that's what's driving the gaping holes in the edition - the fact that patching the holes however slightly pays the rent and keeps the 'lancers in WoW credits and pizza.

-Username17

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 12:59 am

Dayum, and so speaks Zarathustra again.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 2:13 am

Isn't that like what Guild Wars does, only with two stats? (I've never played it, but from what I heard, each class has one big stat (Rangers have Sneakiness, etc) that determines your power)

sake · Post by **sake** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 2:37 am

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
Why is it that small characters need to be in every way equal to large characters? Can't they have their own schtick. Yoda was a pretty awesome fighter and he didn't need a pole arm.

Because making a brand new schick that actually makes up for having one dice size smaller damage, less weapon options, slower run speed, and having some class abilities just outright not work is hard. And even if you do manage to make some race bonus that balances all those disavantages, you have to deal with the fact that the casters and rogues will get that same bonus even though they're not affected by the drawbacks. so you'll need to have the bonus work in some complicated fashion so only some classes get it...

...or you could save yourself all this trouble by tossing logic aside one more time (and since this is 4E, who'd really notice) and just let the damn midget use a bloody great sword.

Of course, you could also just be WotC, give them nothing, say 'sucks to be you' and ignore all the mechanic problems that will happen because of it.

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 2:43 am

Blicero wrote:Isn't that like what Guild Wars does, only with two stats? (I've never played it, but from what I heard, each class has one big stat (Rangers have Sneakiness, etc) that determines your power)

I'm pretty sure Guild Wars is everything 4e wishes it was, but isn't.

koz · Post by **koz** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 4:45 am

Caedrus wrote:
I'm pretty sure Guild Wars is everything 4e wishes it was, but isn't.

Funny how I have been thinking (and saying!) this for a while... Glad someone agrees.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 4:46 am

sake wrote: Because making a brand new schick that actually makes up for having one dice size smaller damage, less weapon options, slower run speed, and having some class abilities just outright not work is hard. And even if you do manage to make some race bonus that balances all those disavantages, you have to deal with the fact that the casters and rogues will get that same bonus even though they're not affected by the drawbacks. so you'll need to have the bonus work in some complicated fashion so only some classes get it...

...or you could save yourself all this trouble by tossing logic aside one more time (and since this is 4E, who'd really notice) and just let the damn midget use a bloody great sword.

But I don't want everyone to be the same, that's part of the reason 4E sucked.

I want people to actually play different depending on what they are. The halfling swordsman should play different than a human polearm wielder.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 4:56 am

The problem is that the halfling polearm wielder is being completely locked out of a concept.

Did you think that the days of 1E and 2E D&D where only certain races could be a class were good? Why or why not?

Frantic · Post by **Frantic** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:27 am

This was copy/pasted in its entirety on /tg/ for some strange reason (I don't know if that's the OP's fault specifically but I wish you guys would stop shitting up that board), but there is a weapon that small characters can use with reach in one hand. It's the whip.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:29 am

Gnomes in WoW can use the same things as a Tauren. It's both balanced and looks cool. There's no real reason to limit one and not the other.

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:30 am

I have never been to /tg/ in my life.

I make rare as hen's teeth appearances to the WotC forums and the Nifty, but not there.

Anyway, the whip is a pretty nifty piece of work... for tactical or resourceful warlords. Seriously, you grab one of those bastards and spam Commander's Strike. They suck ass balls for everyone else.

And you know what? They're buried at the end of some dumbass gladiator article in Dragon #368 anyway. So even if the whip was a fix, which it's not, it's still a rip-off. I mean, I have a subscription to Dragon and other ridiculous features but I don't think other people should. That crap should be in the basic book, not buried at the end of some weapons table on a magazine notorious for releasing unbalanced material.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:34 am

Frantic wrote:This was copy/pasted in its entirety on /tg/ for some strange reason (I don't know if that's the OP's fault specifically but I wish you guys would stop shitting up that board), but there is a weapon that small characters can use with reach in one hand. It's the whip.

How 'bout some Core options?

Also, /tg/ is shit and will always be shit. Just like the rest of 4chan.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:36 am

Isn't the whip in core?

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:40 am

No, it's in Dragon #368, or more specifically the 'gladiator' feature.

There are no reach weapons available for small characters in any of the printed books and I own all of them except for Monster Manual II.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:42 am

RC wrote:I want people to actually play different depending on what they are. The halfling swordsman should play different than a human polearm wielder.

That's a strawman of course, since no one was heretofore suggesting that swordsmen should play the same as spearmen, but I should point out at this point that in a game where "guy who shoots ice beams" and "guy who causes fiery explosions" are considered "the same" that perhaps varying the ratio of wood to metal on your handheld pokey bit is a poor place to draw the line on an archetype. But regardless, the point here is that whatever niches you happen to define should defend themselves as niches by contributing in an obvious fashion and distinguishing themselves from other niches.

Now what 4e has done is produce a system in which a niche is defined incredibly narrowly, and a single "class" covers two or three of them as a rule over about 12 pages of a hardcover book. And by incredibly narrowly, I mean that a niche might seriously be one where a character wears heavy armor and throws specifically hammers at foes which then explode into poison clouds before the hammer sails back into his hand, creating modest impediments to enemy movement at short range and setting up damage over time on clusters of foes. With hammers. While wearing metal pants. That is what 4e calls a niche. The same class might also provide for an alternate niche where you throw javelins that create laser explosions that are immediately and transiently disabling but do less damage in the long run than the poison exploding hammers would have.

Now needless to say, by the time you've covered a meaningful survey of potential fantasy archetypes at that word to traction ratio you've basically filled the Library at Alexandria. And if you're Mike Mearles you got paid by the word to do it. But alas, as you've astutely noticed none of the niches really feel particularly different one from another. And that's partially because everyone writing this crap is just off doing their own thing, but it's also because the niches are so narrowly defined that making a master plan for how to create these classes would be basically impossible. Each character is heavily defined by the type of pants they wear, the thing they have in their hands while they are adventuring, and the two tag stats that they use - but what effects they really have on the battlefield are basically completely random. The products of pulling powers out of the power deck fast enough to paint in the conceptual space one pencil point at a time.

But regardless, that's not what you were talking about. You wanted a character in one niche (the halfling swordsman) to fight differently from a character in another niche (the human spearman). Sure. Assuming for the moment you haven't defined your niche as "warrior with a hand weapon" that's fine. But you've made a couple of secret assumptions which are frankly bullshit. See, when you mark off your conceptual space into niches you need to decide such things as whether changing the thing in your hand from a spear to a sword puts you in a different niche. You also need to decide whether changing from a Human to a Halfling changes your niche. And once you've made that decision, you need to support it mechanically.

Which is where the problem is. The problem is that changing your forehead markings to be a different race does not put you in a different meaningful category. It just changes your numeric modifiers on the niche you happen to be in. And that might push you off the RNG such that you can't compete. An Eladrin Beat Cleric isn't in a different niche from a Shifter Beat Cleric, he just sucks very badly at his job. In short, the human swordsman plays the same as the halfling swordsman; but the halfling spearman doesn't play at all because he has to wait until the Doomguard class and the Banepike are introduced in Shadow Power to even exist. And once that happens there is no saying whether he will play the same, better, or worse than any other previously written character because it's all generated by HAL.

-Username17

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:50 am

Crissa wrote:Gnomes in WoW can use the same things as a Tauren. It's both balanced and looks cool. There's no real reason to limit one and not the other.

-Crissa

QFT. In fact, Small tankers not only exist, but are a fairly common trope.

RandomCasualty2 wrote: I want people to actually play different depending on what they are. The halfling swordsman should play different than a human polearm wielder.

Nice Strawman, RC.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:57 am

What is the statline for it? (On the off chance I'm ever forced into a 4E game at gunpoint)

Also, I don't recall people bitching so much about Small characters being awesome (to a certain degree, they were) in 3E, or enormous characters having penalties too great for their benefits (they did unless you really cranked those benefits to be a one-trick-pony like a Charging Killifier).

So seriously, shut the fuck up. Small things are dumb and unimpressive. Let "give me a telescope so I can see his head" characters have a chance to shine.