D&D 4th Edition - The positive, constructive thread, Negativism, go post elsewhere! Options

[Bull]

Multiclassing and flexibility of choice in the system looks good to me. I really like the ritual magic is available to anyone willing to expend 1 or 2 feats. All you need is Arcane/Religion and Ritual Caster, and some money, and you can now have access to a lot of spells. Buy a multi class feat, and you can choose encounter powers from another class, I haven't analyzed this much, but I'm sure there are some interesting things you can do with this. Anyone can do the disable traps/pick pockets by choosing the right feat, it's not a choice restricted to certain classes.

So, you can have the Wizard with thieving skills, a Fighter who at 8th level can Raise Dead, and Cleric that can cast lots of Arcane spells. And it's all pretty easy to get.

Yeah, and considering that feats are all pretty minor overall, this is pretty cool. I want to play a Rogue with Magic Missile, so he doesn;t need a ranged weapon (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bull

[Wounded Ronin]

That really bothers me, unless the character can scream "hadouken" while throwing his non-magician magic missile.

[FrankTrollman]

It doesn't bother me in the slightest. Since all 4e Rogues are Taki, Voldo, or Xianghua and they can't ever aspire to being other Soul Calibur characters, the prospect of one of them training with the Soul Edge for a while and shooting lasers at things is just fine.

The problem is that the combination is completely mechanically non-viable. As a Rogue you do all your damage with powers and class features that can only be used with your rogue weapons and not with neebly beams that you got from setting a couple of feats on fire. That and the fact that all your Rogue powers run off of Dex/Str/Cha and Magic Missile runs off of Intelligence. If you make concessions to having a good Intelligence, your actual Rogue powers won't be level appropriate. The stat bonuses are calculated into the numbers you need in order to hit the defenses of the enemies of your levels, if you spread them out all of your attacks don't work.

-Frank

[Bull]

You know what, that's it. Knock the thread crapping off right this instance.

Constructive posts stating that why you dislike a game is fine. Constantly posting such things, especially when thread starters and other memebrs have asked you not to repeatedly is not ok. State your case, and move on. ANything else is a combination of trolling and baiting. Aka Threadcrapping, pissing on others parades because you feel like being an ass.

Frank's got a time out coming, the rest of you, consider this a blanket thread warning for here and elsewhere.

[DireRadiant]

Anyone had a chance to do Mounted Combat yet? That looked really interesting to me. No one needs the mounted combat feat to ride. But if you do take the Mounted combat feat, and when you do get a mount, no prices or taming animals rules...., the way to use them on combat looks very straightforward, and you get access to the special mount powers! So if you are riding a Manticore, you can fire off a special spiked tail range attack as your standard action.

The trick is finding creatures you can use as mounts in the monster manual.

[Malicant]

And convincing your DM that you can actually tame and ride the creature of your choice.

[Bull]

Anyone had a chance to do Mounted Combat yet? That looked really interesting to me. No one needs the mounted combat feat to ride. But if you do take the Mounted combat feat, and when you do get a mount, no prices or taming animals rules...., the way to use them on combat looks very straightforward, and you get access to the special mount powers! So if you are riding a Manticore, you can fire off a special spiked tail range attack as your standard action.

The trick is finding creatures you can use as mounts in the monster manual.

I hope you're not too tied up GMing this year at Gen Con. I wanna get a game or two of D&D4e in and try out some of this. So far I've only been able to do the one basic session down at Origins to try out some basic combat (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Seriously, we're gonna kidnap you and make you play with us (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ork.gif)

[DireRadiant]

If you can peel yourselves away from Rockband, I can take a look at preparing a set of 5th, 15th, and 25th encounters, terrain maps, and scenarios and we can run through them to exercise the rules. Bring, same or different, characters of those levels and we can see how much fun we can have. Totally a tactical exercise, but we can have fun with it.

[hyzmarca]

The problem is that the combination is completely mechanically non-viable. As a Rogue you do all your damage with powers and class features that can only be used with your rogue weapons and not with neebly beams that you got from setting a couple of feats on fire. That and the fact that all your Rogue powers run off of Dex/Str/Cha and Magic Missile runs off of Intelligence. If you make concessions to having a good Intelligence, your actual Rogue powers won't be level appropriate. The stat bonuses are calculated into the numbers you need in order to hit the defenses of the enemies of your levels, if you spread them out all of your attacks don't work.

-Frank

My solution to D&D stat priority issues is to simply reroll until I get 18s in everything. It can be tedious, but it works wonders and is still perfectly viable in 4e . A player with enough common sense to create his character using this method should have no difficulty creating a rouge who is also a viable magic missile caster.

[Malicant]

Unless you actually paid attention and read the rules that force a reroll when your stats are too high. Ah well, so much for 18 in everything.

[deek]

I read something somewhere, about a million years ago, probably on the RN list, and it stuck with me. I'll paraphrase here, since my memory is spotty at best...

"You don't need rules to roleplay. Rules do, however, act as a crutch for bad roleplayers. Take that whichever way fits."

I've had some great in character RP sessions over the years. All versions of D&D, Star Wars (D6 & D20), Shadowrun. And dice were barely touched, if at all, in every one of the sessions I remember so clearly.

Very good point...it mirrors my most memorable experiences role-playing as well.

In fact, in my latest SR4 campaign, I sat back and marvelled at my players in this one session. No dice, no combat, just three of them interacting, in character and productive to the game. When you don't have that in your game a whole lot, its just really awesome when role-playing just comes about from your whole group at the same time!

And yeah, we didn't need any guide or rules to have a successful role-playing encounter.

[hyzmarca]

Unless you actually paid attention and read the rules that force a reroll when your stats are too high. Ah well, so much for 18 in everything.

There is no such rule in 4e.

The appropriate rule is.

If the total of your ability modifiers is lower than +4 or higher than +8 before racial ability adjustments your DM might rule that your character is too weak or too strong compared to the other characters in the group and decide to adjust your scores to fit better within his or her campaign preferences.

In other words, this trick only fails if your GM is an asshole or if he has the slightest bit of common sense. The trick is to systematically beat down his emotional defenses until he is willing to agree to it. Then you can mention that since you're going to use this trick anyway it would be faster and easier if you all just skipped rolling and everyone has 18s in everything and when the rest of the group agrees with that he won't have much choice in the matter.

[Malicant]

In other words, this trick only fails if your GM is an asshole or if he has the slightest bit of common sense.

In other words, if he is not a complete tool. So, yeah, that rule exists. It's not even optional. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Also, you can circumvent any rule you don't like by talking your GM into it. Bullshitting is the first ability any gamer should acquire.

[Cantankerous]

You know what, that's it. Knock the thread crapping off right this instance.

Constructive posts stating that why you dislike a game is fine. Constantly posting such things, especially when thread starters and other memebrs have asked you not to repeatedly is not ok. State your case, and move on. ANything else is a combination of trolling and baiting. Aka Threadcrapping, pissing on others parades because you feel like being an ass.

Frank's got a time out coming, the rest of you, consider this a blanket thread warning for here and elsewhere.

Not to be an ass, but will that hold true as well on the threads where the game is being panned for it's perceived faults? Or will the opposite of critique be allowed ad infinitum while critique is panned?


Isshia

[hyzmarca]

In other words, if he is not a complete tool. So, yeah, that rule exists. It's not even optional. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Also, you can circumvent any rule you don't like by talking your GM into it. Bullshitting is the first ability any gamer should acquire.

It's optional in the sense that its use explicitly depends entirely on the GM's taste. If the GM feels that the character is too powerful or too weak then he may adjust the ability scores as he sees fit.

[DireRadiant]

As the threads title and description states, this is a thread purely for positive and positively constructive discussion about the new 4e D&D. PLease keep the negativity, negative non-constructive criticism, and flat out WotC Bashing in another thread (There's a couple around here).

Bull

Not to be an ass, but will that hold true as well on the threads where the game is being panned for it's perceived faults? Or will the opposite of critique be allowed ad infinitum while critique is panned?


Isshia

Oooh oooh, I can answer this...

Hmm, no, actually, it's better if you figure it out yourself.

[Bull]

If you can peel yourselves away from Rockband, I can take a look at preparing a set of 5th, 15th, and 25th encounters, terrain maps, and scenarios and we can run through them to exercise the rules. Bring, same or different, characters of those levels and we can see how much fun we can have. Totally a tactical exercise, but we can have fun with it.

Much as I'd love to take it to Gen Con, I won;t have Rock Band with me. Lack of Hotel Suite means no place to set it up. Regular hotel rooms are just too damn small. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Still, sounds like fun (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ork.gif)

[Bull]

Not to be an ass, but will that hold true as well on the threads where the game is being panned for it's perceived faults? Or will the opposite of critique be allowed ad infinitum while critique is panned?

Isshia

Here's the thing. Positive posts (Which I assume you mean the opposite of critique) generally don't engender a negative atmosphere. A negative atmosphere drives away posters and limits discussion to just those who enjoy arguing rather than discussing. While we try to give you guys the freedom to discuss things as you see fit, we also need to try and encourage an atmosphere where anyone feels free to post and discuss things.

When anytime someone posts anything about a subject, whether it's D&D 4e, Unwired and the new hacking rules, or Cooking with Roadkill, and one or more posters continually pop up in that thread, and all subsequent threads just to bitch, whine, and tell everyone how bad the game is... Very quickly, few people want to participate in that discussion.

Now, I made it very clear in my original post that this thread was designed to be separate from the (at the time) 2 other threads that were pretty much nothing but 4e and WotC bashing. And despite my general warning, folks still decided to drag it into the dirt. My original topic title and description were silly, and intended that way, but I also figured it would give a clear indicator that this was not the thread for bitching. Apparently, it was seen as a challenge instead. I let it slide for quite a while, a lot longer than I should have, really.

Now, to answer your questions, I'm leaving the other threads be for now, so long as everyone is respectful of the opinions of their fellow posters. There is no right and wrong when it comes to opinions, and even less so when it comes to RPGs. They're games, everyone approaches them differently, everyone wants different things out of them. Remember that, respect that, and there's no problem.

[Cthulhudreams]

It is a pretty valid point about the system though. If you do want to play it 'down the line' as a GM, your players need to be very careful to maintain focused characters. The game assumes that you will do a reasonable job of building a focused character with a degree of optimization, which, for better or worse, means that the multiclassing isn't that hot per say.

Actually its not optimization, its synergy. The game's mathematical foundations are crafted on the assumption you will build highly synergistic characters and decisions that deviate from that synergistic line of build adversely impacts the very carefully balanced combat mechanic.

As a GM, possible mitigation strategies include hand waving limits or artificially boosting people to they are not penalized for not delivering on synergy. it does require careful collobration and critical examination of character concepts, and potentially tactical house ruling to fix the issues on a case by case basis for people playing outside of the 'synergy' line.

[Aaron]

Much as I'd love to take it to Gen Con, I won;t have Rock Band with me. Lack of Hotel Suite means no place to set it up. Regular hotel rooms are just too damn small. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bah. Leave the instruments aside until they're to be used, then push the beds aside and break out the rawk. A standard hotel room can host a game of Crisco Twister with room left over, so there's plenty of room for Rock Band.

[Halabis]

Actually its not optimization, its synergy. The game's mathematical foundations are crafted on the assumption you will build highly synergistic characters and decisions that deviate from that synergistic line of build adversely impacts the very carefully balanced combat mechanic.

Are we actualy sure of that? I was under the impression that one of the 4e design goals was to make i so that you couldn't build a useless character. Therefore even if you made suboptimal choices you would still be able to have a meaningful impact on the game. Basicly everyone is saying you have to optimize to be effective, but has anyone actualy sat down and run the numbers of unoptimized characters against a level appropriate challenge?

[Wounded Ronin]

Basicly everyone is saying you have to optimize to be effective, but has anyone actualy sat down and run the numbers of unoptimized characters against a level appropriate challenge?

Bwah hwah hwah, yes. It's one of the reasons we needed a seperate positive thread. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/talker.gif)

[Moon-Hawk]

Are we actualy sure of that? I was under the impression that one of the 4e design goals was to make i so that you couldn't build a useless character. Therefore even if you made suboptimal choices you would still be able to have a meaningful impact on the game. Basicly everyone is saying you have to optimize to be effective, but has anyone actualy sat down and run the numbers of unoptimized characters against a level appropriate challenge?

Hmmm, interesting question. And a tough one to answer, too, at least for me. I think it would be difficult to deliberately make a sub-optimal character, because if I'm intentionally making sub-optimal choices, I think I could make a pretty gimped character, but making a deliberately gimped character is not the same thing as a sub-optimal one. I'm sure that if I try my best I can make a worthless steaming pile of a character, but that's not really what you're asking.

What we really need is to have an 8-year-old child who doesn't know the rules of the game (or doesn't game at all) make all the design decisions. They'll certainly be sub-optimal, but not deliberately crappy. Hmm, or maybe someone's non-gamer girlfriend. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Moon-Hawk]

Bwah hwah hwah, yes. It's one of the reasons we needed a seperate positive thread. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/talker.gif)

Cool, what did you make? Details, details. (although possibly in another thread)

[Halabis]

Bwah hwah hwah, yes. It's one of the reasons we needed a seperate positive thread. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/talker.gif)

I see where its been done with skill challenges, and I certainly agree that they are broken, but i dont see that anywhere with the combat engine.