I’ve DMed and played extensively in both editions; I DMed three 3.x campaigns which ran from 1st to 20th level. IMO/E, 3.x doesn’t work well past about 12th level. The mechanics bog down at about that point, it’s a pain to keep track of all the bonuses and buffs which might be on a character (and what stacks with what, or doesn’t), you begin to run into the “save-or-die” issues, and it can take 5-10 minutes for even an experienced player to resolve his turn in combat.
A monk is really not like a fighter, though. What if I want to play a soldier with armour and a longsword and a shield, but I want some options per round without having to go unarmed and punch people while doing cartwheels?
But I don’t *want *to cast spells. I want to be a fighter and have options each round. Options which are ways of using my sword and my shield.
(This is an example, you understand - I’m not saying that I, personally, want to play a fighter).
Saying “you can achieve that by becoming a spellcaster” doesn’t help me in this case.
That’s why I said “maybe”. I wasn’t sure of your definition of “fighter type”. Given your further explanation, I’d suggest taking a look at some of the splatbook martial-type classes:
- Samurai and Swashbuckler from Complete Warrior
- Knight from Players Handbook II
- Marshal from Miniatures Handbook
- Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade from Tome of Battle (I’m not terribly familiar with ToB, but the “maneuvers” and other features in that book feel like early versions of what wound up in 4E).
Yeah, it was pretty much 4E development trials, I think.
Warblade from the Tome of Battle is perfect for this.
But the way you’re choosing to define granularity and number of options for characters is itself subjective - my take, having GMed both 3/3.5 and 4E, is that there are more options for characters in 4E, not fewer.
You clearly feel differently, but that’s subjectivity for you.
I think that depends a little on the class, but overall, I agree with you.
I think that wizards and their ilk might’ve actually lost a little in the way of options in 4E. But, I think that the non-arcane classes likely have far more options in 4E.
For instance, in 3.x, the vast majority of fighters which I saw had one of two fighter builds:
- Big two-handed weapon (and even then, it was almost always a greatsword, a greataxe, or a falchion), focusing on maximizing damage output
- Sword-and-board (one-handed weapon and a heavy shield), focusing on maximizing armor class
Other builds were possible, but usually not nearly as effective.
At least in 4E, you have a few more alternatives which are still effective.
Spellcasters lost rmoe than a few, but I do agree about nonspellcasters. I was greatly annoyed at how little there was to do for half the classes in DnD3, which was one reason we corrected that in play. Nonetheless, having lots of options doesn’t mean those are really meaningul, and the options you get tend to be rather monomaniacal.
A lot of the options that spellcasters lost, they get back in rituals. There are a lot of rituals. Lots and lots. To the extent that any time I want some handwavium to move the plot along, I just say ‘a ritual did it,’ and everyone’s ok with that.
If you don’t want to cast spells, don’t play 4E. Sure, they may be called ‘maneuvers’ or ‘exploits’, but a rose is a rose.
No, it’s not, really. In the PHB for 4E, I have, what, eight classes? That are all kind of similar. There are two major build options for each class, so if you want to argue that those are distinct, you have sixteen different characters you can build.
In 3E’s PHB, I have, if memory serves, 11 classes. But I also have free multiclassing - which means that at second level I have 66 possible characters. 4 or 5 of those combinations are forbidden by alignment restrictions, but I think the math is pretty clear on this one.
With each level you gain in 3E, the possibilities just widen further.
Feats vs. feats, paragon paths vs. prestige classes, skills vs. skills, spells vs rituals - 3E outstrips 4E in every one of these in raw numbers. Hell, even races - in 3E, how many dozens of monsters are playable thanks to ECL? 3E’s even got almost twice as many character alignments.
But you’re arguing, it seems, from the standpoint of ‘options (in a given combat turn)’. Which wasn’t what I was specifically talking about, but let’s go there. For most classes, 3E’s got more options in a combat turn, too. Any caster class definitely has more options. But let’s single out the fighter, as that seems to be the ur-example. A 4E fighter has more options than a 3E fighter, you say. Apples to oranges - the 4E Fighter is a Caster Class. The 3E fighter is a character that makes a lot of choices outside of and before combat in the form of feats, and then applies those choices to make consistent, reliable damage.
So I say the 3E fighter still has more options - he’s just exercising them at a different decision point.
You’re welcome to prefer 4E, but if you say it has more options I have no choice but to laugh at you. That’s ludicrous on its face.
In your terms. Which you’ve now defined, thank you, and I agree, as you have defined choice, 3E wins. Happy?
I’m not really a huge fan of 4E. I know a fair amount about it, because I’ve been GMing it for more than a year. I do find it annoying that the majority of a thread titled “Tell me about D&D 4th Edition” is taken up with variations on “it’s a game that sucks because it’s not D&D 3rd Edition.”
I think it’s useful to provide explanations of where 4E differs from previous editions, because people may well be familiar with those, but knocking 4E for not being 3E isn’t particularly fair, or useful.
For myself, I prefer other games - Runequest being my all-time favorite - but I haven’t been spending my time in this thread campaigning for them, because that’s not the subject.
BTW all, I forget to mention until re-reading this thread, but Marks do not work the way a certain 4e fan claims. There are all kinds of marks, and they override one another in defiance of all common sense. So a holy mark provided by divine fiat is overridden by a fighter’s challenge which is overridden by a sorcerer’s spell which is overridden by a rogue’s cunning trick. They can do anything and often do. The concept isn’t bad for “balance”, but it makes no sense whatsoever. It’s a pure bookkeeping simplification trick.
Not a pure one, no.
“Marked” is a condition - mechanically, it gives the target -2 to hit anyone other than the marking character, and grants the marking character a free opportunity attack if the markee moves or attacks anyone else. The rationale is that you have the attention of that foe; the fact that various classes have different ways to get someone’s attention doesn’t grant that person the ability to split their attention in six different directions.
The fighter gets the orc’s attention with a stamp of his foot and a glare, then the sorcerer casts a spell to distract the orc, causing it to shift its attention to him. Then the rogue steps in with a flourish; he now has the orc’s attention.
Don’t let the fact that the ways of getting to the outcome are different distract you from the fact that they’re all producing the same outcome, and thus “overwriting” one another makes sense in real-word terms.
Precisely: it doesn’t grant them the ability to split their attention in six different directions, which should mean that if they’ve all Marked him the moment he attacks any of them, the other five should pounce. It’s certainly more interesting for two rogues to be able to work in concert to lock someone down like that than to suddenly not be able to attack him if he is distracted because he is distracted.
If that’s what the rules for Mark were trying to model, then I’d agree with you. However, the Mark rules aren’t trying to model what happens when you gang up on someone; that’s Combat Advantage.
For game-balance purposes, Marking someone gives you a smallish advantage. Stacking those small advantages would turn them into big advantages and unbalance the system. I’m not saying that the explanation I’m offering for Mark is the only one that makes sense; I’m simply saying that it’s a reasonable framework for understanding Marking in a world context that helps make the rules context make sense. It requires some amount of willing suspension of disbelief; then again, so does playing an RPG in the first place, so I don’t find it much of a stretch.
I didn’t start the hijack, but when people started talking about the comparative merits of the games, I got drawn in because it’s been on my mind lately.
And the only terms I can conceive of that 4E has more options than 3E is if your terms include redefining ‘more’ as ‘less’.
Nonsense. Easily, refuted nonsense, in fact.
Slamming someone with a shield to push them back a space is not a ‘spell’. (Tide of Iron, Fighter 1)
Sacrificing some AC to hit harder is not a spell. (Brash Strike, Fighter 1)
Grabbing someone is not a spell. (Grappling Strike, Fighter 1)
An attack that deals some minor damage even when you miss is not a spell. (Reaping Strike, Fighter 1.)
Lunging forward two spaces before attacking is not a spell. (Deft Strike, Rogue 1)
Managing a sneak attack from the side is not a spell (Clever Strike, Rogue 1)
Striking and then ducking into the shadows to hide is not a spell (Gloaming Cut, Rogue 1)
Setting yourself up for a better attack next round if you attack the same target is not a spell (Probing Strike, Rogue 1).
Preparing to Riposte an attack against you is not a spell (Riposte Strike, Rogue 1)
Making an attack and then swiftly stepping away is not a spell. (Fading Strike, Ranger 1)
Shooting TWO WHOLE ARROWS AT ONCE is not a spell (Twin Strike, Ranger 1.)
Throwing a weapon and then moving to stab someone else is not a spell. (Throw and Stab, Ranger 1)
I could go on, but what’s the point? Could you come back and point to a few powers that are hard (but by no means impossible) to rationalize? Sure, but your ridiculous blanket statement that everyone in 4E is a “spellcaster” is patently false. It collapses in on itself as soon as you actually look at what is being discussed.
Spells and exploits and maneuvers are all castable abilities. The only thing that separates them are terminology and imagination. They are mechanically identical. All 4E classes are Caster Classes.
Picking one of your examples above - Twin Strike. It is a castable ability that lets you attack two targets. This may represent ‘stringing two arrows and firing’, or ‘rapidly firing two arrows in succession’ or even ‘channeling magic energy to duplicate the arrow in mid-flight’ or a hundred other things, that you could choose from to fit whatever ‘power source’ you wanted.
In other words, the only thing that seems to disqualify it from being called a spell is the flavor text.
It’d be like asserting that Psionic Powers in 3E aren’t spells. Of course they are. They are equivalent in all but name.