Draco18s wrote:
In order to create a character I have to follow the ABCs of character creation. This should be easy!
Ancestry: well, but which one of these compliments the build I want to make?
Backgrounds: Uh, skip for now
Class! Ah here we go, what do I want to be?
Hmm...
Lets start by reading the class descriptions and looking at a handful of their powers ImeanFeats.
Two hours later
So, uh, I'm not sure what the difference between a sorcerer and a wizard is--when it comes down to play--beyond some flavor style. And Fighter and Ranger have a 30% Feat overlap.
*Scratches head*
Fox it, I'll build a fighter, those are easy!
Seven feats...
Complimenting seven different fighting styles...
THIRTY EIGHT different melee weapons...
TWENTY FOUR different weapon properties...
HOLY MOTHER OF GORUM WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO.
In order to make the most basic of choices about what weapon I want to use I have to compare 38 choices that offer a selection of 24 different keywords, all of which I have to understand before I can even begin to evaluate them.
And this is one class.
If I want to do a Cleradin I need to evaluate the gods (and still pick a weapon and armor).
If I want to do a Scorczard I need to evaluate the different bloodline/specializations and then pick spells.
If your goal was to streamline character generation you've failed miserably. You pigeon holed the classes more, making things less flexible for those folks that want to break the mold a little bit, but did nothing to fix the Analysis Paralysis when it comes to picking weapons.
Because of the way Fighter feats work (and Ranger) I actually have to pick a weapon before I can pick feats because what weapon I'm using will drive which feats are available to me (or vice versa: pick a style, then a weapon that matches it, but the weapon table does not easily allow a player to say "ok, I'm doing a TWF build, I need agile weapons, lets...
God yes. I can't agree more. The organization of the rulebook is dumpster fire terrible. There are SO MANY RULES that force you to find another rule or two just to find out what the first one does!
That kind of nesting is incredibly frustrating and time-consuming. It makes me not want to play this game. This book is not written for normal people, it is a book written by programmers for programmers and as such it misses its target audience entirely.
Take Bolstered for instance, when an enemy tries to afflict you with something and you succeed on the save you are Bolstered, meaning you are immune to the effect for the rest of the day. Why would you write that? You could've just written "on a success you become immune to this effect for 24 hours" instead of creating a whole new rule! And when a friendly creature buffs you, it makes NO SENSE when you read that you are Bolstered against the effect. Bolstered is a good thing, it means strengthened. Why would you use that term when talking about a beneficial spell? It's confusing, it sounds bad, and it takes just as much space as it would to forgo making a specific rule and just list the effect wherever it appears. It provides no meaningful benefit and instead causes confusion. KILL IT WITH FIRE.