How are you not complicating it by giving Megaman E-ups that essentially make combat longer and more drawn out?
If you only have X amount of HP and 3 CLW potions the DM will only give you a challenge that you can survive with that limited amount of HP
If you have X amount of HP, healing potions, and surges then the DM will need to give more dangerous and more numerous opponents as you'll be powering up through the dungeon.
Part of the point was to stop the fifteen minute adventuring day - the fact you can get through more encounters before needing to rest for the night was by design.
As you said in your OP, you dont "get" 4E, and this is part of it. Healing surges are part of your health, not "power ups" with a linear "1 hit point = nearly dead, full hit points = unwounded" scale. If you're at full hit points with no healing surges, you could well be wounded.
It's a fundamental shift in thinking, it just uses the same words. You can't analyse 4E hit points as if they're 3.5 hit points. Theyre obviously similar, but the design goals and implementation were different.
*shrug* they clearly have. The fact there are penalties doesn't change that, nor does the fact that negative con equals death - nobody is suggesting its not modelling wounds, merely that its not only about wounds. (Those numbers are abstractions too). The fact archers can only pull off a particular shot once per day is due to the system's embrace of abstraction...
Heck, even the position on the battle mat is abstract.
@Steve: Again, that doesn't make sense considering that being at half hit points means you are bloodied and take penalties. You're making it abstract when they clearly haven't.
...Welcome to D&D? :)
Honestly I prefer my concrete definitions of hit points, damage, and healing surges because abstractions throw me for a loop, too. But if you can swallow hit points and damage as the abstractions they're presented as in other editions, healing surges shouldn't be a big leap.
the final thing was being able to navigate the books, i feel with 4.0 I need a computer program just to create the character...
Oddly, I'm one of the few 4e fans who isn't in love with the character builder, and you just demonstrated why. 4e characters aren't any more complicated than 3.x characters on average -- 3.x casters are of course more, while 3.x warrior-types are slightly less -- but the CB software has created a very seductive path of least resistance. And as soon as a player uses the CB to make a character, he or she is prone to think:
1. This is so much easier than creating a character by hand! 4e characters must be complicated! Even though, as I said, this simply isn't true.
2. There are so many options, I...I can't choose!!! Meanwhile, if the player were simply looking at the PHB options and/or one or two splats -- as he would have done for 3.x -- it'd be perfectly manageable.
...and that most of the time it's done in a randomized fashion of character creation.
Mind expanding on this? Because unless you mean 'creativity,' there's nothing random about 4e chargen, so your complaint totally lost me.
It's not old-school D&D (but 3E wasn't, at first, until it was, and now everyone and their uncle claims it's the One True Heir. Which is fine - I love the PF engine), but 4E was not as bad a system as people make it out to be. It just tried to innovate *too* much.
The ultimate tragedy of 4e, I think, is that it threatened the comfort zones of more conservative D&Ders. 4e is like a charming man -- he's smooth, he's confident, and he's not coy about what he can offer. But many long-time D&Ders reacted with "Whoa, slow down Don Juan, let's get to know each other first!"
Those who decided they like 4e have wide comfort zones, and new players don't know the difference of course, but some gamers simply have a limited tolerance for change.
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What really threw me off, was, honestly, the fact that IMHO, it didn't deliver on any of it's promises.
I distinctly remember one of the devs saying that "I'm gonna be an axe fighter" will have special meaning to other weapons. It turned out to be wrong.
Now, don't get me wrong, i played it a couple times (had fun too), but it's just too far out of my comfort zone. And since i Played OD&D, 2nd ed, AD&D 2nd ed and 3.x, i found no parallel between the systems. Except for the ability scores.
Swordmages and dragonborn are cool. Playing a mighty reptilian race wielding a huge sword appeals to me.
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Swordmages and dragonborn are cool. Playing a mighty reptilian race wielding a huge sword appeals to me.Oh; - I forgot to mention Swordmages. I liked them, too, though ultimately they didn't get enough support I liked the concept and found it different enough from the "standard gish" to have individuality (sort of like the Magus class in PF has individuality, of a different flavor).
The ultimate tragedy of 4e, I think, is that it threatened the comfort zones of more conservative D&Ders.
I boldly flirt with reaction, yet I liked it.
This isn't a "Bash 4E thread" so I don't want to get too much into the flaws of it, but I think it has to be admitted that out-of-the-box (and thus first impressions), there were some mechanical flaws that soured people.
I found that a lot of the rule changes were just alternate rules in 3.5 Unearthed Arcana made core. So I can see the continuity.
There is a continuity, but the *feel* of it just seemed different for a lot of people. I see their point; I still think it was a worthy effort, but to a lot of people it played so differently as to be "not D&D."
People can argue the point but it's an aesthetic thing. I do think more people should have given it a chance than did, but people's tastes are hard to argue.
It had a lot of merits that too often get overlooked, but it is what it is and I can understand why it broke the base.
At full hit points you take no penalties. At half you take penalties. At zero you are unconscious. At negative con you are dead. That seems to provide a progressive, linear idea on what the wounds represent.
I played in a system that used that once actually. I felt like it was too much number crunching, especially in rocket tag cases where I was constantly readjusting and doing math. I think its best left to have those penalties left to special abilities(hello martials with nice things!) Wounds are pretty cool, don't get me wrong, but sometimes its just a little more number crunching than I want. YMMV.
What an incredibly timely topic.
At full hit points you take no penalties. At half you take penalties. At zero you are unconscious. At negative con you are dead. That seems to provide a progressive, linear idea on what the wounds represent.
Not sure where you got this idea; the bloodied state (half hp) can create various opportunities -- some for you and some for your enemies -- but carries no inherent penalties.
I distinctly remember one of the devs saying that "I'm gonna be an axe fighter" will have special meaning to other weapons. It turned out to be wrong.
FYI, there are options for "I can do stuff with my axe you can't do with your sword," such as combat styles, if you search a bit. But I don't think you can play an axe guy with all unique axe-attacks and axe-feats after the low levels.
The ultimate tragedy of 4e, I think, is that it threatened the comfort zones of more conservative D&Ders.I boldly flirt with reaction, yet I liked it.
This isn't a "Bash 4E thread" so I don't want to get too much into the flaws of it, but I think it has to be admitted that out-of-the-box (and thus first impressions), there were some mechanical flaws that soured people.
Oh sure, 4e has its flaws, but I can't agree that it objectively changed too much. If it doesn't feel like D&D to some gamers, well, I think the world would be a happier place if more people had wider comfort zones. (And not just in regards to gaming!) But it's just a feeling, so there's not much to be done about it.
What an incredibly timely topic.
If someone is playing the game, or wants to know about the game, a friendly discussion is always timely. :)
Oh sure, 4e has its flaws, but I can't agree that it objectively changed too much. If it doesn't feel like D&D to some gamers, well,
All I know is I know a fair number of people from all across the world (teh intranets gamers; - it's not that I get around much, it's just there was a period when I played a fair amount of PBeMs), and a lot of them took one read through 4E and said "meh, it just doesn't seem like D&D" and never looked back (a few of them moved on to Warhammer, for example).
I can understand their PoV. My initial reaction wasn't *that* dis-similar (it was "oh...this seems...different. But lets see what it can do," and I tinkered with it and it grew on me).
There are a number of things about it I never quite got to like (for a reason unknown to even me, I never really liked how they handled magic items, for example), but as you mentioned any system has drawbacks; none of the D&D games I've loved (and I include PF as an iteration of that) have been without things that annoy me. Each has a mixture of great stuff and less-than-successful stuff (and people's ideas of which are great and which suck varies), so it is what it is.
So included in *my* comfort zone is being comfortable with people who didn't like 4E as much as I might have hoped (it certainly would have helped in finding people to play it with), but I can say that about RPG gaming in general. It's an esoteric taste.
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4th edition was easy to teach, easy to learn. It was completely scaled almost to perfection if you followed the rules corrected and knew what did what.
I would play 4th edition, those times I did play, I was always entertained and enjoyed the system there.
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4th edition was easy to teach, easy to learn. It was completely scaled almost to perfection if you followed the rules corrected and knew what did what.
I would play 4th edition, those times I did play, I was always entertained and enjoyed the system there.
I still love your username.
This has nothing to do with the thread.
How are you not complicating it by giving Megaman E-ups that essentially make combat longer and more drawn out?
If you only have X amount of HP and 3 CLW potions the DM will only give you a challenge that you can survive with that limited amount of HP
If you have X amount of HP, healing potions, and surges then the DM will need to give more dangerous and more numerous opponents as you'll be powering up through the dungeon.
Healing surges were a pacing mechanic to allow for more combats in a 'day'.
A DM could certain ask the players how they 'recover' during their short rest. The point wouldn't be to add requirements, but rather introduce the flavor and purpose behind the rest. Much like when a DM describes any situation to help make it more meaningful, rather than just use game terms and quickly rush through something.
The Short Rest required time for them to stop what they were doing and catch their breath in a non-dangerous moment. If the action continued, like running through a dungeon to avoid being discovered by a monster, it didn't count as a short rest.
Healing surges were a resource management tool for the players and DM to utilize to create a more action packed adventure, and it works much better than increasing HP or decreasing damage.
Lets say a character could fully recover from 0 to full 3 times with surges, essentially giving them 4X HP (where X is their normal full hp). If we instead just gave them 4X, the first fight would feel trivial if it only used up 25% or less of their HP. They'd feel barely scratched and their safety DURING the fight would be assured.
Put 75% of those HP in reserve allows for the character to be potentially be threatened each fight, plus it ensures that some resources can only be accessed after the fight to help prepare for the next one.
It isn't for modeling the real world. It's a mechanic designed to improve the story by allowing for more action in a given adventure and to allow that action to be spaced closer together (unlike the 9-hour delay with the 15-minute adventuring day method). It might be unrealistic, but solves a problem without requiring the DM to hand out potions and wands of CLW, which I actually find MUCH more annoying, both as a player and DM.
13th Age uses the Healing Surge method (renamed to Recovery) and I absolutely love it. There, the pacing mechanic is even more pronounced. You aren't allowed a full rest until you've had 4 encounters, at which point the DM should introduce an opportunity to rest and recover fully (you still get the short rest between each combat). I think it's brilliant and love it as both a player (currently in two games) and will once I DM it (running other stuff at the moment).
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It made Pathfinder big.
If you ask from a 3.5e fan like me, that is NOT a good thing.
Oh sure, 4e has its flaws, but I can't agree that it objectively changed too much. If it doesn't feel like D&D to some gamers, well,All I know is I know a fair number of people from all across the world (teh intranets gamers; - it's not that I get around much, it's just there was a period when I played a fair amount of PBeMs), and a lot of them took one read through 4E and said "meh, it just doesn't seem like D&D" and never looked back (a few of them moved on to Warhammer, for example).
I can understand their PoV. My initial reaction wasn't *that* dis-similar (it was "oh...this seems...different. But lets see what it can do," and I tinkered with it and it grew on me).
There are a number of things about it I never quite got to like (for a reason unknown to even me, I never really liked how they handled magic items, for example), but as you mentioned any system has drawbacks; none of the D&D games I've loved (and I include PF as an iteration of that) have been without things that annoy me. Each has a mixture of great stuff and less-than-successful stuff (and people's ideas of which are great and which suck varies), so it is what it is.
So included in *my* comfort zone is being comfortable with people who didn't like 4E as much as I might have hoped (it certainly would have helped in finding people to play it with), but I can say that about RPG gaming in general. It's an esoteric taste.
I couldn't stand it at first - I had most of the usual objections. Bought all the books then gave them all away. A little while later a guy in our group wanted us to play it, so I bought them all again and played in one campaign plus converted a bunch of modules, CotCT, and half of age of worms. It was only by recognising the abandonment of a simulationist approach that I could enjoy it. (The modelling of doppelganger abilities as an exchange of position being the clincher, in my case).
I can also see why lots of people don't like it though.
At full hit points you take no penalties. At half you take penalties. At zero you are unconscious. At negative con you are dead. That seems to provide a progressive, linear idea on what the wounds represent.*shrug* they clearly have. The fact there are penalties doesn't change that, nor does the fact that negative con equals death - nobody is suggesting its not modelling wounds, merely that its not only about wounds. (Those numbers are abstractions too). The fact archers can only pull off a particular shot once per day is due to the system's embrace of abstraction...
Heck, even the position on the battle mat is abstract.
But if you have healing surges, you're not as close to death as if you don't. It's not purely a one dimensional scale.
Take anything I say on this with this in mind: I only played 4e long enough to determine I didn't like it much and went back to 3.5 - and, of course, later to Pathfinder. My gaming group at the time and I had been looking forward to 4e with quite a bit of excitement, so I was particularly disappointed to discover I was not a fan, but there you go.
Things they did right, though?
-Ease of creation and of play, on all levels. Once you understand the system, it is just plain simpler than other editions, and if that's what you're looking for, then here it is.
That's...actually all I can come up with. I thought I had one or two more, but apparently not.
Oh sure, 4e has its flaws, but I can't agree that it objectively changed too much. If it doesn't feel like D&D to some gamers, well, I think the world would be a happier place if more people had wider comfort zones. (And not just in regards to gaming!) But it's just a feeling, so there's not much to be done about it.The ultimate tragedy of 4e, I think, is that it threatened the comfort zones of more conservative D&Ders.I boldly flirt with reaction, yet I liked it.
This isn't a "Bash 4E thread" so I don't want to get too much into the flaws of it, but I think it has to be admitted that out-of-the-box (and thus first impressions), there were some mechanical flaws that soured people.
Make up your mind! I either have a wide comfort zone because I love 4e... OR I don't have a very big comfort zone because I don't think of it as D&D in any sense of play. It is a whole NEW game with a completely different paradigm for play kinda like... like Mario Bros. and World of Warcraft had a kid. Everyone has clearly defined MMO style roles AND everyone is bouncing, jumping, teleporting, or otherwise being moved all over the battle mat. Don't get me wrong 4e is a blast to play, but it didn't have the varied style of play I expect out of 3.x D&D.
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I actually argue that D&D roles aren't as cut and dried as people make it out to be. Especially as more and more splat books were made available. The ability to do um...hybrid classes? I don't have my books here but you could mix two classes. Multi-classing also had some opportunities to mix up roles.
My friend rolled a paladin that focused on healing, had no problems keeping us up at the low end of paragon tier. Another friend loved fighters and multi-classed into sorcerer if I recall correctly, allowed for some neat tricks occasionally. My battle cleric wasn't too shabby at playing the fighter type duties when needed.
One thing I was happy about was that the organized play mods are free. True, they weren't of the best quality at times! But, it was nice to have a low-pressure way to engage in that sort of gaming. To be honest, I'd heard some absolute horror stories about Living City and such that made me think I would never even consider organized play.
And yes, the healing mechanic is amazing. I really hope to see something like that continued in the future as well as adopted by other games.
Stats were better balanced as well, something that started to happen in 3.5 and I felt the trend continued.
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4e had a lot of appealing goals.
I think it missed most of them, unfortunately.
I loved the resource standardization, because that gets away from the linear fighters, quadratic wizards (but hey, we'll have enough fights every day that the wizards have to be careful with their spell slots). I didn't like how homogenized the individual abilities felt, or the amount of combat bookkeeping (since so many powers applied conditions with varying durations), but I loved that the resources were standardized across classes. (I also wish more classes had been provided with minor action powers, at least early on.)
I loved the intent in the DMG of providing tables to make it easy for the DM to create new monsters. I do wish there had been guidelines (not digging through the MM to synthesize the information myself) as to what conditions it was appropriate to attach to monster abilities at given levels.
I liked the move away from fighters feeling they needed to full attack (not that I've ever seriously played in a 4 encounters a day game after even middle levels). Though I pretty much only ever used my move action to shift.
I loved rituals. Specifically I loved that they pulled non-combat magic out, gave it a longer casting time, and then made it not consume the same resources as combat magic. I thought at least some of the costs were exorbitant, especially given how tight money felt to me.
I liked that healing surges put an upper limit on adventuring for the day, tying the healing you could receive largely to your character rather than the size of the bandolier of healing wands.
I really liked the default campaign setting, as sparse as it was. The feel of it was excellent. In fact, I'm hunting for replacement names for a campaign setting, so I can potentially publish it when it's done but not get sued for including "Nerath", "Bael Turath", and "Arkhosia".
Basically, I liked many of the goals of 4e, but I was disappointed in the execution of those goals.
I still love your username.
Uhm, thanks?
This has nothing to do with the thread.
What he said.
I am going to disagree with your assertion LazarX. Having been a 4e player from it's launch it became quickly apparent that the optimizers could optimize very well even in 4e. Despite a lack of splatbooks to lord over the table, optimizers had the numbers broken down so far to the point that unless you had one of a few specific builds you were worthless in combat. I remember the arguments over the mechanical benefits of playing an elf or the tricky uber math that went into every little choice from equipment to class/race abilities. Optimizers loved this new 4e game just as much as any game.
[If you lived your life by those splatbooks, as many 3.5 players were doing at the time, switching to 4E meant that all your special toys were gone and you were starting on the ground floor again at the same level as those 3.X players who had just played straight classes, It meant that you lost your edge that you had over that group of players.
Yes, I agree with you that was an issue; but that problem existed with each new edition. The move from 2E to 3E involved giving up a lot of splatbooks (many of which had come out only fairly recently). The move from 3.0E to 3.5E, dittoes, plus a number of people grumbled that the changes were juuusssst enough to invalidate a lot of player-related splatbooks (and justify republishing variants of them), but not big enough changes to "really warrant a new edition."
4E made enough changes to really warrant a new edition, and people reacted even more badly to that.
There are a lot of grognards who will grumble that the game has never been the same since the '80s (or, for the ones who really want to seem hard-core, the '70s), but kept playing each new edition, regardless, and just complaining. 4E, for whatever reason, caused larger numbers of people to simply drop D&D-as-such (possibly the availability of PF, which allowed them to keep playing something 3.x-ish, contributed to that. But note for PF they also had to buy all new books, and while it's "backwards-compatible," it...doesn't seem quite right to import things from 3.5E into PF games, especially player-related splatbook things, as many of the things players would *want* to import, 3.75E was specifically designed to exclude, because those things were some degree of broken. So people might import 3.x monsters into PF games, but not so much player-splatbook-related things. Which meant buying splatbooks from scratch again, that were written specifically for PF).
The reaction just seemed. . .worse. . .to the loss-of-splatbook reaction in other cases. Probably this had to do with the timing of 4E and the fact that, IIRC, people had only just recently been reassured that no new edition was even in the initial planning stage, and then they announced. . ."SURPRISE! We're coming out with a new edition and dropping our support for the old!"
All that stuff accumulated.
I loved rituals. Specifically I loved that they pulled non-combat magic out, gave it a longer casting time, and then made it not consume the same resources as combat magic. I thought at least some of the costs were exorbitant, especially given how tight money felt to me.
Yes, another of the things I loved but forgot to mention!
A lot of people who complained about "what was done to casters in 4E" didn't give rituals enough of a look. IMO. Partly the writer's fault, but partly a lack of creativity on the part of players. One could do amazing things with rituals. Simply amazing.
(One problem, though, was their sometimes fearsome costs...that was a downside for a lot of people who like their caster power cheap-to-free. But, that too, was an attempt at a fix for a genuine problem. The real problem is, though, by this time, everyone who plays D&D has gotten used to casters being able to cast most things cheap-to-free. Though of course a lot of people will now be tempted to mention the numerous spells with high component or focus costs, rituals just seemed expensive to even learn; which a lot of people naturally think is different*).
*evidently this is why, though almost everyone - including myself - grumbles about the caster-martial disparity in Pathfinder - in PFS according to an ongoing thread here casters aren't brought to PFS tables disproportionately compared to martial classes. This probably has to do a lot with how the rules are actually enforced for acquiring & casting spells in PFS, relative to casual home table play, where wizards, for example, are more common. So even the cost-of-rituals isn't exactly a total innovation.
I am going to disagree with your assertion LazarX. Having been a 4e player from it's launch it became quickly apparent that the optimizers could optimize very well even in 4e. Despite a lack of splatbooks to lord over the table, optimizers had the numbers broken down so far to the point that unless you had one of a few specific builds you were worthless in combat. I remember the arguments over the mechanical benefits of playing an elf or the tricky uber math that went into every little choice from equipment to class/race abilities. Optimizers loved this new 4e game just as much as any game.
That was what annoyed me slightly, trying to figure out what works best. That and certain races were inherently the best choice for a class, and as much a part of core as human. Thus if you wanted a +5% hit chance as a druid then you should be a X.
Anyway, the layout of the books were nice - the style of play seemed like it'd be great to introduce new players or standard games.
Even in movies those hero/adrenaline boosts wear off..There's always that one point in the movie where the hero has to find cover or a safe spot and he sits there awhile in dim lighting stitching himself up with fishing wire and sugar water. He doesn't go the rest of the movie with an untreated gunshot/stab wound. That being said the second winds/surges should either wear off eventually or have to be tied to some kind of Healing check then.
4E characters must take short rests to get back their healing powers and their second winds. This is your stitching up your wounds with duct tape or whatever. If the adventure is not letting you take short rests (maybe your trying to flee the burning building with baddies coming from every side) your going to quickly discover that healing is actually not that common n 4E. The class with the healing powers might have 3-4 by 10th level and everyone else has their second wind but that is usually pretty much it. If the adventure is pushing you (lets hope for good dramatic reasons) that healing and soon your hps are going to start to drop dangerously low dangerously fast.
On the other hand, this being a movie action hero simulator, if you can get that break to use your shirt to tie your wounds your doing pretty good..well until you start to run out of actual surges - which sort of represent just how many times you can come back from clobbered.
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That was what annoyed me slightly, trying to figure out what works best. That and certain races were inherently the best choice for a class, and as much a part of core as human. Thus if you wanted a +5% hit chance as a druid then you should be a X.
Anyway, the layout of the books were nice - the style of play seemed like it'd be great to introduce new players or standard games.
I'm confused how this is different from 3.5 and PF. All the systems offer stat bumps, all offer some skill bonuses. Many of the races in 4e get a feat and/or some sort ability. There were some races that were better suited to certain classes, but I'm failing to see how that's any different from PF.
Actually, because PF and 3.5 had penalties to stats as well as bonuses, I would say 4e did a better job of opening up the range of races that may be considered good choices for classes.
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How are you not complicating it by giving Megaman E-ups that essentially make combat longer and more drawn out?
If you only have X amount of HP and 3 CLW potions the DM will only give you a challenge that you can survive with that limited amount of HP
If you have X amount of HP, healing potions, and surges then the DM will need to give more dangerous and more numerous opponents as you'll be powering up through the dungeon.
You'll usually find the opposite in actual practice. 4E characters are, compared to 3.5 characters of equal level significantly weaker. Healing Potions are actually not that common past around 6th level - they are too weak to waste a valuable healing surge on. What was really done was a kind of switch in difficulty level of the game. At 1st your really resilient. You have surges come out of your ears and don't usually take much damage from an attack so your actually pretty tough. By 3rd-7th your not so tough when your getting hit but you can know drink a healing potion and get back a full 10 hps which is not to shabby for that level. Get up to 11th level and now your in a world of hurt. Every hit does 1/3 to 1/2 your hps. Healing, actually reasonably good healing, mainly comes from a handful of powers the party has and even your second wind is no more then a stop gap.
What has actually happened here is the difficulty level has been reversed from the traditional progression. Your strong (and the game is easier) at low levels and it gets harder and harder as you progress to higher levels.
Yes you've got better powers and such but the margin for error is actually shrinking. At low levels you can be a bit sloppy by higher levels the margin is shrinking and you need to be playing well to persevere - all this of course can be modified by your DM via just how strong the monsters are of course but all things remaining equal players have it easier (they have more margin for sloppy play) at low levels then they do at high levels.
Historically D&D is lethal at low levels but easier as you gain levels. 4E reverses that.
That was what annoyed me slightly, trying to figure out what works best. That and certain races were inherently the best choice for a class, and as much a part of core as human. Thus if you wanted a +5% hit chance as a druid then you should be a X.
Anyway, the layout of the books were nice - the style of play seemed like it'd be great to introduce new players or standard games.
I'm confused how this is different from 3.5 and PF. All the systems offer stat bumps, all offer some skill bonuses. Many of the races in 4e get a feat and/or some sort ability. There were some races that were better suited to certain classes, but I'm failing to see how that's any different from PF.
Actually, because PF and 3.5 had penalties to stats as well as bonuses, I would say 4e did a better job of opening up the range of races that may be considered good choices for classes.
Generally because it was more situational and harder to get in 4E. Want a +1 Feat to damage, well it's only Shadow & Fire Powers. But only 6/8 of your powers are that...
Thus with the difficulty to get consistant bonuses, the most consistant advantage is due to being the right race.
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Just take implement expertise or whatever it's called. unless I'm recalling incorrectly it gave a +1 damage to all your implement powers. I don't think it stacked with specific power feats such as the one you describe.
I'm vaguely recalling that there was a feat to give you a bonus to hit with your implement powers, and another feat to give a bonus to damage.
I liked the way attacks are done. Makes it simpler to have all ways of attack done the same way in my opinion.
Oh yeah! This thread reminded me that even though I liked 4e well enough, I did hate the Dragonborn. Haaaated the Dragonborn. And their versions of Tieflings made me ignore the race until I discovered that they were actually pretty awesome in Pathfinder.
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I guess if you look at it as you don't have 10 hp but actually have 40 with healing surges it sounds more reasonable.
Another thing I couldn't get my head around was splitting the PHB into like 3 different books. This seemed like a cheap marketing gimmick because now these aren't optional books a DM can choose to add or ignore..they're core books that get an extra $50 out of you and are core.
I could be wrong on this as well..but it seemed to greatly limit the amount of spells that casters had. Instead of choosing from like 12+ spells a level now you had like 8 generic powers to choose a few from.
I'm only replying to this as the reply stays on topic. Casters might have received less book space (for once) compared to the other classes but non-casters got so much more than they usually do. Which is something I lovd about 4e. You didn't have to be a full blown caster to get neat stuff to do.
And again, since mine got deleted I think, 4e Avenger class is amazing and something I love.
I also loved that they tried to make the power of magic items scaled down a bit in how drastic a difference they were.
Loved Swordmage.
Loved people loved it.
Loved people loved Pathfinder because of it instead.
Loved love :D
Formatting was a thing 4e did very well, yes. Though I recall noticing a few points where they were inconsistent about how to use Hit/Miss/Effect in the power writeups, in the PHB.
As far as splat going away... I think it was more of "my favorite class is gone". I.e if you wanted to play a sorcerer, bard, or barbarian, you couldn't until the PHB2 came out. That moreso than the reduction in how much stuff was out there.
I did find a few too many false choices (my first character was a baladin with an axe; he was terrible because I wasn't focused on strength or charisma powers, and I has a +2 proficiency bonus; I hit maybe 40% of the time).
As far as rituals, I don't object to paying for things, but some of them just cost too much. Especially given how tight the wealth seemed to be, and the 20% sale value. Basically, I was paranoid about spending anything because if the GM didn't hand out exactly the treasure I wanted, it was going to be very expensive for me to get what I wanted, and paying for rituals would make it near impossible.
Some of them were effects you'd normally put up every time you camped, once the 3.5 wizard could dedicate a spell slot to it (Alarm, for example). But the ritual cost was too high to use effects like that regularly. But just the concept "this is a thing you can do, it takes a while, and it is not restricted to spellcasters (the primary casters just get the gateway feat free)" was amazing. Anyone could do it.
Loved love :D
I thought Misery loved company, not love?
;)
As far as rituals, I don't object to paying for things, but some of them just cost too much. Especially given how tight the wealth seemed to be, and the 20% sale value. Basically, I was paranoid about spending anything because if the GM didn't hand out exactly the treasure I wanted, it was going to be very expensive for me to get what I wanted, and paying for rituals would make it near impossible.
Some of them were effects you'd normally put up every time you camped, once the 3.5 wizard could dedicate a spell slot to it (Alarm, for example). But the ritual cost was too high to use effects like that regularly. But just the concept "this is a thing you can do, it takes a while, and it is not restricted to spellcasters (the primary casters just get the gateway feat free)" was amazing. Anyone could do it.
Its a tough choice to buy a ritual of your level but not one 5 or so levels below you when it starts to represent a pretty insignificant amount of your monetary wealth. the result is that rituals as a bigger part of the game is something that tends to come into play later in levels. Its the mid paragon wizard that has a library of such magic not a low level wizard.
Another thing I couldn't get my head around was splitting the PHB into like 3 different books. This seemed like a cheap marketing gimmick because now these aren't optional books a DM can choose to add or ignore..they're core books that get an extra $50 out of you and are core.
I agree that this was not a good decision, although I think this was a serious misreading of the market rather than a cheap ploy to sell extra books. in fact, I think it was the opposite - a response to people complaining that they needed half a dozen books or more to build a decent character at the end if 3.5's life.
I think their intention was that players needed the players handbook and then the splat book that suited their character. If you we're playing a psionic character you'd just get PH3, a barbarian PH2. If you were playing an arcane character you could pick up arcane power and skip martial power, etcetera. You didn't need any books if you bought the DDI subscription and initially that was as cheap as $10 a year, giving you access to every updated and erratad (sp?) power they'd ever released. Having missed the hype about what the online tools were supposed to do, the suite they actually released was phenomenal.
Where I think they misread the market was in assuming we each have only one character. I think that's the exception, rather than the rule. In my experience (which seems supported by what I've seen on the forums), people at the average table are predominantly divided into those who buy lots of books (beyond what they need) and those who buy hardly any. I think the former were annoyed at the chosen subdivision of material and the latter group oblivious (but well served by a $10 a year subscription, although many seem to have baulked at even that).
To keep on topic, I liked the fact they made the effort to innovate and mix things up. I just think it missed the market mood pretty badly. Personally, i think change and risk taking is to be applauded and I'm a little concerned that they will retreat from innovation with D&D:Next - although their embrace of the semi-public Playtest is encouraging. That's a much better way of enacting revolutionary change, in my view.