Elfgames posted:

except you don't do that in 4e because if you're more than a few levels over the enemy then they can't hit you and you're either spending 5-10 minutes on a pointless fight you can't lose or you use the level x city guards and you're back to doing 25% damage.

and maybe i'm weird but "bigger numbers" isn't a huge draw to me if it doesn't matter, i'd much prefer smaller more meaningful numbers

Serf posted:

Sir this is a Mcdonalds drive thru

Plutonis posted:

This disingenous 'can't believe I'm agreeing with him' crap is staring to annoy me after the fifth time.

P.d0t posted:

From what I've read of gradenko's excellent detective work, at the outset of 4e the design team went in with the idea that all classes would have powers; from the monster math (if not the early adventure design) it was also pretty clear that their intention was that PCs should actually be capable of handling what you throw at them.

5e throws all that out of the window. As much as I admire the ways in which its core math is a direct refinement of 4e's (albeit I don't have complete faith in the AC or Saves' scaling) the change back to a game based around the 3.5 spell list was a huge backpedal from something I thought made 4e a big improvement over its predecessor.

Asimo posted:

I just want Warlords.

Less smarmy, the class really was the perfect addition to the game, emulated a shitload of fantasy hero archetypes that previous editions didn't really capture well, and had a lot of fun potential concepts and mechanics. And seeing it basically discarded before 4e was even halfway through it's life due to Mearls' dumb grog bullshit is aggravating.

Yawgmoth posted:

The game's strategy is mostly "pop your encounter, then use at-wills until you have a reason to get your encounter back and use it again, then at-will until enemies are dead" which isn't much of a strategy at all.

Yawgmoth posted:

This would be true if Vampire's character generation was "pick Celerity or Vigor, that is your Discipline. You can Go Real Fast or Be Real Strong 1/encounter. You can also pick Resilience as a Discipline but it sucks and you'll be pretty much useless."

Yawgmoth posted:

I'm not going to write a 185 page diatribe going over every lovely little thing about the lovely little system you're so involved in because writing too many words about something no one cares about is your job. If you really can't work out why "pick A or B at character creation, then do that every single combat round minus one" is the tactical level of a 3.5 D&D fighter and also boring as poo poo, then I guess you've got a lucrative career at Paizo all lined up.

Yawgmoth posted:

Oh okay, I'll just go back in time and tell Past Me that my experience isn't actually happening.

Countblanc posted:

Countblanc posted:

That's true but if the argument is that you don't make tactical decisions then "use the same power twice ASAP" doesn't really refute that.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Alexander damned the powers mechanics and marking system in 4E because they were not simulating anything that happened in the game world. For example, why could a Rogue only pull off his fancy Daily power once per day? The only answer was because those were the rules of the game, not because that was how combat ought or should work in the fantasy setting.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

if you must do this you should probably do it in a game that isn't completely wedded to a wargame framework

bbcisdabomb posted:

The only thing my newbie players really had a problem with was with the minor action ready at the start of combat, which I told them was dumb but I was running with it as part of the wargame aspect. This led to everyone making fun of it for a while, culminating in somone declaring that to really be ready for a fight they needed breakfast first. So they called in a caterer to bring in a full breakfast brunch and everyone, including the zombies they were fighting, sat down to eat. At the end of a multi-hour multi-course feast, the dishes were cleared, everyone returned to their places, and the player says "And with that minor action, I'm Ready."

Everyone got a free Ready action off that, because holy poo poo why not.

bbcisdabomb posted:

The Rules Compendium says it is a minor action to draw or sheathe a weapon, I guess the people I've played with just made it so you always had to spend the action. The GM who taught me 4e is pretty groggy in terms of realism, that's probably it. I just told my players it was part of the action economy so please don't try to cheese it, and that was accepted.

Gobbeldygook posted:

Yes. SuperMechaGodzilla is a very prolific CineD poster who haunts nerd movie threads. Blockbuster Video basically exists so people can discuss Star Wars without him and those who engage with him. Here are a few examples; I promise I am not cherry picking.


Edit: I want to emphasize that the first post is from the Star Wars thread and is about Star Wars.

Alaois posted:

cinema discusso, an intellectual place where people discuss stimulating films, like star wars, and superman vs batman, and the transformers

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/DungeonsDonald/status/887304857316667392

Anyone still got that picture of the dudes that burned their 4e books after 5e released (was announced)?

Halloween Jack posted:

I remember being involved in that argument. In Trollman's mind, if there is a magically-created castle, there needs to be a Butthead's Beatific Battlements spell that you can look up, and backsolve the caster's level from the square footage of stone created, and so on. To just make poo poo up is a tyranny perpetrated upon your poor PCs.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

I'm distrustful of the idea that something can be so overwhelmingly powerful that you have to limit it when no one else has limited use abilities, but at the same time, weak enough that frontloading it isn't a problem.

The 10-minute adventuring day is a response to a resource system that was already clumsy, frustrating, and required a lot of bookkeeping.

hyphz posted:

Yea, the problem isn't the scaling of spells, the problem is the easy ability for magic to just render anything that non-magic people can do irrelevant. Classically this is a part of most settings with magic and because of the unicorn problem rarity doesn't work as a balance, so it needs something else. Maybe everyone just expects there to be magic, maybe everyone can use a bit of magic in the area they work in, maybe people who have no magic are just "too real" to be reliably affected with magic, but you need something to change the situation.

Halloween Jack posted:

Well that, and there isn't one Arcane class that gets every Arcane power by default. So the Wizard isn't simultaneously a Controller and a Striker with a good helping of defense and buff powers to boot.

hyphz posted:

And serious restrictions on the power of that magic.

It also didn't deal with the non-combat issues of magic balance - ie, we come to a village where the crops are failing; the fighter can swing a sword and look at the wall, while the Wizard summons rain with one Arcana check. There were plenty of times in 4e where Skill Challenges would basically say "well, you can use Arcana on this if you can argue that it would apply (but magic can do anything so who the hell can argue it wouldn't?)"