Search Posts
Consider the opportunity to use net + two other weapons. 1st: throw the net to entangle the opponent (1st attack)
next round:
if you have three attacks and quickdraw, you can use your net and attack twice within one round. don´t know if it´s worth all those feats though.
I think 4e supports many ways of gaming. It can (!) support the roleplaying part by simplifying rules, making combat faster and by this give the roleplaying part more space. On the other hand i would agree with your friend that a system providing a coherent world by simulating a "real" feeling how things like healing should work also can support roleplaying a lot.But it depends on the gamers. I know some guys who use the 4e system for "real" roleplaying as i defined it and guys who enjoy the combat system and the "gaming" aspects.
i think there are two concepts or definitions that are mixed up at the moment. One concept is "roleplaying" as the OP defines it, which means acting in the role of another person. The other concept is "playing a role-playing game", which includes all the gaming experiences around the table and the feeling what roleplaying means for gamers. Let´s separate those definitions or we compare apples with pear.
The gaming materials you use when you sit down to play D&D (or other systems) are defined as "role-playing game", so you are playing a "role-playing game" the moment you use those materials for your game. The question the OP raises is if there is a certain degree of interaction with PCs/NPCs or "speaking in character" that should be called "role-playing" in order to seperate it from other forms of gaming. I think that you indeed can have a deeper roleplaying experience if you really act and speak in character, but not everyone is a good actor. If someone feels forced to act and doesn´t enjoy it, the whole gaming experience can be affected. So the definition of "roleplaying" must be broader to include all the gaming experience from groups sitting around a table and using "roleplaying" materials. The point that in my opinion seperates roleplaying games from other forms of gaming is indeed the seemingly useless (inter)actions, which have nothing to do with "winning" the game, e.g. if the group spends hours in a tavern or the group plays out a shopping tour etc.
great example, i agree that it´s all about a creative way to deal with a situation. The solution the paladin suggested was more like shooting the 17" thick armor plates.
I am running a game for a group of modern day commandos. Their task is to sink an enemy battleship in port. The problem is, their equipment drop failed to happen and they are left with pistols and submachine guns. Their plan: shoot at the hull with their small arms until it sinks. If I rule that such a thing is impossible, am I being too gamist or too simulationist? What percentage would you assign to the likelihood of success? That´s a good example. I would allow a slim chance even to such a plan. What if they hit a locked bullseye to the armory (which incidently was just opened by a crewman) ? What if the shooting causes panic and some idiot pushes a wrong button on that battleship, causing a series of catastrophic events ?Of course the difficulty depends on many factors: How long will they shoot at the hull ? How long until fire will be returned ? What could happen in the meantime ? Often the fun begins if idiotic plans work or genius plans fail (by dice rolls)
It applies to all ranged touches as well. didn´t notice that, thanks for the clarification
The difference here is that Paizo let his customers partizipate in the development of the Pathfinder line. By doing this they bind their customers tighter to the product. So although nobody can say if the product line will be successful, i don´t think that Paizo would drop Pathfinder without warning or without partizipating it´s customers (e.g. by releasing an incomplete version for free)
My group (in Germany) converts: 5 ft. = 1,5 m
it´s not very hard to convert and much more accurate, although when using a battlegrid we almost always use feet or squares. (So we sometimes have to use 3 scaling systems *sigh*)
My group stayed at the Slippery Eel at first, then switched more and more (as characters did come and go) to the Drunken Morkoth to be near the Striders.
The Tipped Tankard is the only tavern in the SCAP with a map (except the Brass Trumpet, which is closed), so this place could be used as well. It lacks rooms to rent though, but that shouldn´t be a problem.
The problem is solved, the character (cleric/warlock) decided to return (because the player eventually realized the evacuation would take much longer than he anticipated). At the same time the group attacked a mob of horses (stampede event), enraging them even more. The horses broke through and fled along lava avenue.Returning player: "Where am i ?" DM: "Lava Avenue - oh, and there´s a stampede coming your way" It was fun, because later they blocked the main streets to the north to contain the animals. That was the moment the urban avalanche took place at the east gate... so they trapped hundreds of people. When an elder fire elemental joined the party, the fun began... I hope to start the hookface event this evening and i´m excited. One of my players wants to switch character, so he could be the primary target for hookface. (As an ironborn he would be a nice toy for the dragon to collect). We´ll see
somehow reminds my of some rabbit i know...
I don't know if anyone here is familiar with it, but there is a PrC in the Book of Exalted Deeds called the Fist of Raziel which has some very interesting applications. A nice PrC indeed. I think adapting some of the improvements regarding the smite ability would point into the right direction.
my problem at this Moment is the following: Even before the group finished evacuating half of the city, one character decided to leave the town because he ran out of teleportation magic. He argues that the citizens can leave the town on their own and that he has better things to do (finding out where the cagewrights are hiding). After all, the whole world is in peril and he thinks he is the only one to stop the portal from opening. The rest of the group will stay and help evacuate the city and the leaving player is by no means to be convinced to stay as well. So now there are still 10 encounters to go and the group is weakened. Could become interessting when Hookface arrives... At least they already fought off the Lake Monster...
Oh i miss those days...
my experience to this day was more: I must have thought of a dozen different characters of different races and classes all of which just scream"WE ARE BASICALLY THE SAME, DOING X DAMAGE AND EFFECT NUMBER Y OR Z !" But honestly i let my worries stop every character creation after reading the available powers, so i maybe should just build a complete char and playtest him to judge the system properly...
nice thread, keep it up. Im almost encouraged to finally build my first 4e char...
Those that want to play restrictionless reckless damage dealers - let them play fighters....but then let them see what can truly be special with a lot of discipline and alot of faith. Let them say, "I knew I should have listened to my priest and become a paladin....." Amen, Brother
I think the main roleplaying problem with palas in my campaigns was: "So, who will distract him while we torture the goblin for informations ?" I once played a pala alongside a evil char who constantly had to hide his alignment .
That said i see the paladin more as the fanatic "smiter", but thats just my gaming experience and i´m glad that this concept is supported by some of you guys.
So give them back the means to do awesome things once in a while !
Some examples / archetypes ? When i think of paladins i think of warlords leading their men into battle, inspiring courage and holding up the banner ! William Wallace (in Braveheart) inspiring his men ? -> Paladin
I picture leaders who excel normal fighters in their fight against evil
When i think of paladins i also think of great warriors drawing their sword to call down the might of their god and strike fear into the hearts of evil ! He-Man - raising his sword and calling for the power of Grayskull ?
King Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone ? Arthurs Knights of the Round Table ? -> If they don´t embody Palas, nobody does. But as others have stated, as it is now, a "modern" Pala is NOT able to express those concepts, so he should either be transformed into a prestige class or (better) be pushed up a lot ! As i stated in another thread regarding fighter vs.caster i think too much balancing does not necessarily improve good roleplaying.
For this we have the bard ;-)
if my counting is correct ***************************************
Daidai, how did you handle the antimagic cone? Because when I ran, it seemed to negate the whole battle. Neither side could do much of anything to the other. i used it when casters where in range and closed it to use flesh to stone on the fighters when possible. So i switched between open and closed eye, as needed. The spit attack was of little use, so i clearly had to use the eye rays after a while. The group didn´t dare to enter the room completely, so i pinpointed them at the door.
My Party rested several times before they reached V, so they hit him with full strengh. But as the mages were contained into the antimagic field and the two melee fighters had almost no ranged firepower, it was up to the scout to do the trick. But because she was charmed in the first round of combat, it still was a tough battle for them.I tried to keep them moving by letting them know (through Meerthan) that riots were breaking out and that their "base" had been pillaged. (The half-orc mercenaries were "collecting" the 30% property tax.) They were also attacked by Lady Rhiavadi while resting, but still insisted in resting, mostly because they had difficulties to keep up their fly abilities. *edit* the final fight was epic, because as the Beholder began to flee and disintegrated his way out, the scout flew after him. 2 times the beholder killed the scout, 2 times he was rescued (by the spell revify) and able to keep up the chase. Just at the same moment when the beholder broke through the streets of Cauldron, ready to unleash death clouds to it´s citizens, the last two arrows struck with a natural 20 and killed him. I love showdowns like that
Because you add twice your power attack bonus when whielding a two-handed weapon (in addition to the 1 1/2 Str bonus). So if you want to make use of the power attack feat effectively, you just have to use a two-handed weapon.That´s one reason why using a shield isn´t as effective as it should be.
Take a step back and imagine a level 6 wizard who can only cast a second level spell. They can use it any time all of the conditions are met (fairly stringent) and as many times as they want, but it is a single second level spell. Even if that spell is something great like Glitterdust, guess what?... well except that your level 6 wizard has low HPs, low AC and maybe won´t even stand one round in melee. My gaming experience is so different from yours a can´t tell (i don´t want to claim it would be better, of course). And i don´t think that the only challenging encounter for a fighter is a brute with low AC and many hitpoints.
But that can be done with almost every class (if including splat books).
If it requires special GM handling, isn't it automatically broken? You don't fix things that aren't broken, right? I think that logic, correct or not, is a foundational part of the split here. i didn´t say that you have to fix the fighter with special GM handling. I said that a certain GM handling can lead to a "broken" encounter for the fighter or to a bad gaming experience. But you can just as easily create frustrating encounters for spellcasters (or thiefs). So my opinion is that if the fighter has the feeling that he is of no use in a campaign compared to the spellcaster it is more likely a sign that the GM (or the group including the spellcasters) is doing something wrong than a sign for a broken system. I can only rely on my own gaming experience where nobody in the group, including fighters, a scout, a healer and spellcasters feel useless or overpowered.
What'd go a long way is if less specialization were required to be considered competent. Everyone suggesting to give fighters more options to specialize has my fully support.
You have many of those options if you build your fighter. I once played a minotaur with the leap attack feat that does exactly what you discribed as a "heroic leap". His jump could go up to +45 and he could do between 59 to 94 dmg with one blow (if it was a crit, the max.dmg was 282) And he could hit with a touch attack (3 times a day thanks to a magic item). Oh, he was lvl 12 at that time.*edit* i forgot: he could throw a rock as part of his charge, dealing additionally 16-30 dmg to up to two squares
@Crusader of Logic: reading your "battle log" i can understand the crusader getting frustrated: He seems to be the only one who gets beaten up, while your casters blast from behind. No one seems to buff him properly, just the druid casts healing on him
No wonder other players switch their character to become caster edit: if i as a GM present one encounter after another where the casters get bashed and put under too much pressure (dispel magic, antimagic field, mage slayer, see invisibility, and so on) my players would change to play fighter classes. And yes, i´m sure about that, for i experienced it quite this way.
you´re absolutely right about casters being much more versatile in many situations. I think nobody doubts that. The question remains in what situation this can be called "broken" or in what situations the fighter guy gets frustrated about it ?
agreed, but the caster HAS to choose every 24 hours. The fighter not. Also, as you stated, his options are less permanent. This can be positive and negative.The question is if this makes the game broken ?
True, what I actually mean is that the aquisition of gear can turn very rapidly into an arms race. I grant you that point. D&D depends very much on the equipment you have and this can easily lead to an "arms race". By the way i see the same problem with casters who must always have the right spell prepared at the right time. They also must balance their offensive, defensive and ulitity spells, much like a fighter has to pick the right gear.
But again the discussion postulates a confrontation between a caster and a fighter. Think of a confrontation between two groups containing casters and fighters. That is a completely different situation
have you noticed the prize of this item ? you could afford 125 lvl 1 spells or 15 lvl 8 spells for that money. Also its mentioned that this book can never be part of random loot, so it´s also in the hands of the GM to hand it out.
thanks for the clarification. What are you pointing out ? That you can´t have everything ? I can only tell from my own group and there the fighters are well equiped in many aspects. (that´s the intention of this thread: share your experiences about the OPs question, so this is mine).
most of this lies in the hands of the DM, and you still have to pay the material costs to scribe learned spells into your spellbook
what ways would that be ?
please clarify what WBL means ? regarding the gear you need:
please let me know if i forget something and if you ask me if a fighter can afford such gear: yes, my group is very well equiped with all kind of stuff and believe me: it evens things out a lot.
to address the OP und summarize the intention of my posts: 1) yes, i (and i think all of us here) agree that fighters and
2) here we have multiple experiences. Some feel frustrated by unbalanced gameplay for years, others never experienced this as a problem. I myself met one or another situation where it was frustrating being a non-spellcaster, but especially with magic items i think a fighter can even out a lot. I want to remind you again that a fighter has much more money for buying magical equipment than a mage who must pay loads of money to add spells to theis spellbooks. Sorcerers and bards don´t have this restriction, but are limited in their spell selection. Clerics (and druids) are a different matter, for they have access to a huge spelllist.
From a theologists point of view this is just logical: Magic is defined as the Manipulation of higher powers by certain spells and formulas.
Your example is clearly exaggerated for i don´t think the difference between the classes are that big. The mage don´t have the protection like a tank has against an axefighter. And if the tank runs out of fuel in 1 Minute and out of shells in half a minute and if the tank can´t take out the fighter because he´s too agile (i speak of saves and magic items) then yes, it could be a fair situation.Besides, you again describe a duell. Now ask the axefighter if he would rather have a tank at his side or a boy with a sling ?
Summon monster spells last 1 round per caster level. If that's all the adventuring you do in a day, then yeah, send the fighter packing. You'll wish you had a fighter when you get ambushed by bodaks in the middle of the night. I wanted to illustrate an example where IMO the fighter could feel frustrated. You are right in your statement that there always can be situations where the mage depends much on a fighter
from my gaming experience: Those spells are potentially broken that substitute the fighter.
I also wanted to play a Bonded Summoner once (PrC from Miniatures Handbook), but our DM wouldn´t allow it for my Earth Elemental companion could fight much better than any fighter in the group, so i would have played a better fighting companion plus a complete spellcaster; that would have been broken. So summoning spells are questionable.
Why houserule it ? It´s in the rules that you can only prepare new spells in a 24 hours cycle, even if you rest 8 hours after 1 hour adventuring. After all, they are called spells per day.
This is interesting to me. I think that I've actually killed more wizards than any other class. Barbarians being the next. Wizards have too few hit points and there seem to be too many times where one save -- regardless of type -- kills off a wizard. (Or the dragon does three attacks on the wizard, or ...) Barbarians get killed because they wade into battle and have a crappy AC.
And why is this a problem for you ? This whole post sounds like the spellcaster can protect himself from all kind of harm and the fighter has none of that possibilities. Although this is true to a point, i have another gaming experience.
I also notice many posts describe a spellcasters potential powers (can deal this and that damage, can protect himself from this and that), but you have to consider the Vancian spell system: he must cast these spells, he (the wizard) has to plan carefully what spells he memorizes, how many spell slots he can use for protective magic, how many offensive spells he needs and what he casts in a given situation. The protection and offensive power a fighter has is permanent.
we had a similar problem regarding multiple acid fog spells. I think more than one fog or cloud spell wouldn´t (or can´t) overlap in the same area. The stronger spell effect would be active.(I only remember the discussion, not a specific rule for that)
Oh my, it´s almost impossible to keep track of all the posts, so if i repead anything said, i apoligize. I totally agree that you have a problem when the fighter (or any other class) feels useless, but thats a question of designing adventures and encounters.
So think about encounters presenting only golems or anti-magic field effects and think about how useless your mage would feel. We had a fight with a beholder lately, the magic users were quite useless and it was the archer who totally saved the day. I also agree that in higher levels it is much harder for non-magic users, not as much in dealing damage but more in being versatile in many situations. But many of those situations can be evened out by magic items (especially if you use the magic items compendium). From the point of storytelling i would disagree that everyone wants to be a mage. If i go back to the Star Wars example:
Of course i acknowledge that players who very much act in a competitive way would disagree.
For example: A fighter in my group took the "Mage Slayer" feat, so no mage he is threatening is able to cast defensively. I read many posts here about groups with 1 fighter and the rest being spellcasters. Surely in such a group the only non-magic user could easily feel useless. In my groups there normally is a good mixture of classes, so it´s not that much of a problem. All in all my opinion is that there surely are unbalances, especially in higher levels, but it lies very much in the hands of the GM and the players if this results in players feeling frustrated.
thinking about it, i wouldn´t want the fighter be as powerful as the wizard... after all: it´s the wizard ! it´s like complaining how Jedis are more powerful than stormtroopers or that Luke Skywalker can beat Han Solo in any encounter. Why must everyone be "balanced" ? After all, as others have mentioned, they play together, not against each other. And why not playing a fighter who ist impressed by the powers this mage next to him can wield ? The problem is when EVERYONE around you wields some fancy magic and you are the only one being left behind. But we all know the mage´s (or sorcerers) powers are limited. It´s like having a rifleman attack a swordsman. He could kill him at a distance, but if he´s out of ammunition, he won´t stand a chance.
A fighter´s powers are (almost) always ready. Additionally, playing a mage means doing much more paperwork and preparation than playing a fighter class. So if i don´t want to decide what spells to learn, what to prepare today... i better take the fighter.
I agree that there are a lot of situations (climb, fly, see invisibility, magical effects etc.) where the fighter can feel lost. But it´s up to the DM to balance such situations and give the fighters their moments, especially in higher levels. We play at lvl 15 at the moment and none of my fighters feels useless, because they deal constantly quite a lot damage and can take about 4 times the beating the spellcasters can.
I would totally agree that you can´t allow others to yell at you or call you names.
So, if this won´t stop, make clear that you don´t like how things are going (chances are your pals don´t realize how their behaviour influences the game) and offer your position to others (best the ones yelling and argueing the most). One thing that I didn't mention though that toyrobots made me realize: I'm having a hell of a time making encounters that are challenging but not so much that 1/2 the party dies. For that, i am in a similar situation, for my party is very well balanced and very hard to challange in battle. So i changed the encounters and presented more encounters without battle: try social encounters where your fighters attack bonus and AC won´t be useful. Try environment challenges like water hazards, creative traps, let them get lost in the woods...The game mechanics give you so many different possibilities, use them
He's still a fairy though. Just ask Sesame Street. so what ?
I love how the combat rules (...) are simplified. I playtested with the new combat rules (it rox) I know this is a bit off topic, but can you clarify how the new combat rules change gameplay and "rock" ? I read through them and barely noticed any difference (except in channeling positive energy and regarding some combat maneuvers). Posting a link regarding this topic would also be fine, thanks
As for English, in colloquial english you will find any number of words and short phases quite literally stolen from other languages....and yes this is one of them. i know many german phrases in english, but that one was new to me(althoug the term "uber" is used quite extensive)
IMHO this is a direct result of the "balance uber alles" approach -Polaris there actually is an "uber alles" phrase in english ??? I´m German (where it is pronounced "über alles", by the way)and i didn´t know that (still laughing). Have to tell my class, seriously... |
