AD&D 2nd Ed Rules still being the better, easy to understand (not MY trouble, but my friends are no Einstein... It took them HOURS to learn what THAC0 was and why AC was better when lower) easy to play and still being funny without needing a single Demon as player character. I find very inteligent to make 5 like them, I found that the 4th Edition didn't make sense after reading the manuals (who could want to play as an Elf, while you can play as a Demon with 24HD???). Also, hope they make BG3 with 2e, I won't buy it if they make it 3e.
I find very inteligent to make 5 like them, I found that the 4th Edition didn't make sense after reading the manuals (who could want to play as an Elf, while you can play as a Demon with 24HD???).
Where on Earth did you find a 4e manual that let you play as a 24 HD demon? I owned quite a lot of 4e books and they kept the different races pretty closely balanced (and Elves were pretty popular because their racial ability let them reroll one attack roll per fight).
im not saying 4th ed invented power gaming....its just 4th ed used power gaming as its standard where as in 3.5 you had to "work" at it, you needed certain feats or spells. where as 4th ed....it just happens
It really doesn't "just happen." You can't powergame just by following the normal character creation steps. Just like 3E, you'd have to pick the right feats, and now you also have to pick the right powers. Slapping any two at-wills and any combination of dailies and encounters together isn't going to make a power gamed character. You can't even necessarily min-max to the same degree as previous editions, since your stats can never be made lower than 8, no matter how useless that stat may be to your character, and only one stat can even do that.
I think the problem with 4th edition was that it was just that bit more restricting than previous version. It was too combat-rule oriented. That means that it is easier for 4th ed. players to hack & slash, rather than roleplay. The DM usually has little other choice than to follow, as his players are less likely to try to think out of the box (it's a matter of DM skill). Ergo, the usual way to win in 4th ed. is to powergame and players are more likely to minmax etc.
@Michail I think the DM has plenty of choice, but 4e makes it so easy to set up combat encounters that it becomes a path of least resistance for the DM. I ran 4e campaigns where we would go consecutive sessions without initiative being rolled. Of course, in that situation, it was pretty clear that we were not playing to the strengths of the system, as there were few rules that covered what we were doing and so had little reference to our sheets. That said, it's also a matter of playstyle as to whether you think having rules that cover non-combat conflict resolution is even desirable. I know people who wince at the idea of even picking up a die when they're deep in a negotiation or scene, at which point your rules system becomes irrelevant for those parts of your game.
I think the problem with 4th edition was that it was just that bit more restricting than previous version. It was too combat-rule oriented. That means that it is easier for 4th ed. players to hack & slash, rather than roleplay. The DM usually has little other choice than to follow, as his players are less likely to try to think out of the box (it's a matter of DM skill). Ergo, the usual way to win in 4th ed. is to powergame and players are more likely to minmax etc.
Everything you just said is a pack of utter nonsense, and yet it's the same line I see towed everywhere.
There's nothing more combat-oriented about 4E than, say, 3E. Skills that are mostly non-combat, ability checks that are mostly non-combat, rituals that are geared towards non-combat situations and replicate many of 3E's non-combat spells, utility powers that affect interaction skills or stealth, etc.
As Kaigen said, I've had several sessions in a row where initiative wasn't even rolled. The last session we had involved the party finding out their princely patron has been allied with an antagonist that's been working from the shadows since Day 1 of the campaign, an imprisoned elemental, and they went to confront him about it. I thought combat was virtually assured, but the party has decided to work together with them to fight another threat. This could have happened in any edition, and nothing in 4E did anything to hinder it.
Hm.. I am a 1st and 2nd edition fan, and a DM discretion fan, so whatever you have against 3rd ed., don't take it out on me please.
EDIT: On the matter of lines towed, i only suggested that some things are harder to do in 4th edition. I meant exactly what i said, nothing more, and i was being very polite about it. So, as an afterthought, i have to ask you to apologise for that "nonsense" thingie.
@Michail I think what @Schneidend is trying to say is that 4e isn't actually more restrictive or harder to do non-combat roleplaying with than other editions. Proportionally, 4e has more rules devoted to combat than previous editions, which can certainly give the impression that the "right" way to play is combat heavy, and which can make one feel that they are working against the system when they play in a less-combat oriented style.
That being said, in my view, 4e provides just as much guidance and information for running non-combat encounters as previous editions, if not more so. 4e lays out some nice guidelines for how to conceive of a variety of encounters, how to award experience for them, and how to keep things moving if the party fails to meet their objective, all areas in which previous editions more or less told me to wing it and do things ad hoc. So it seems very odd to me to describe 4e as "more restricting" than previous editions.
(As an aside, I dislike the false dichotomy between "combat" and "roleplay." You can roleplay in combat, and in fact, if you're playing a Fighter in earlier editions and don't want to get bored, you pretty much have to. And a "roleplay" segment of talking with NPCs in character can easily devolve into a mechanical exchange of rolls, much like combat. These are not opposing things, and treating them like they puts them into an aesthetic hierarchy which implies that negotiating with the king is somehow a more worthy activity than slaying the dragon.)
@Kaigen When i wrote "restricting" i had something like this example in mind: -Player: i jump on the giants back and grab the magic gem from his helmet. -DM: Which of your powers are you using? -Pl. : I don't know... I just want to grab the gem... -DM: None of your powers, at will, encounter, daily or whatever do that. You can't do it. -Pl. : ...
This is of course an example of a bad DM, who can't think outside the box, even when a player takes the inititative. Still, it is how many DMs play (an actual quote: "If you want to try something and i don't know the rule for it, you have to show me the rule for it... in a book you have with you at that moment"). This is a problem not exclusive to 4th edition, it just became more prominent, exactly because they tried to provide rules for all sort of situations. It made life easier for DMs, but also took away much of their power over the game (improvisation breeds creativity... and house rules, but i'll take the former along with the latter). In fact, this was the main complain driving the move to DnD Next.
@Michail - I don't usually like to jump into edition wars, I personally think each one had their strengths and weaknesses and bring something to the table. I also generally feel that with the right group you can have fun with any edition and play the game you want.
However, I must comment here. Have you played 4th edition? I'm asking honestly, because if you had, that situation is easily resolvable, just like I believe every other edition...
Just for fun though, I found your rule covering this situation nicely, in the player's handbook for 4e:
"Interacting with the Environment A typical adventure environment is full of dangers, surprises, and puzzles. A dungeon room might hold a complex bank of mysterious levers, a statue positioned over a trap door, a locked chest, or a teleportation circle. Sometimes you need to cut through a rope, break a chain, bash down a door, lift a portcullis, or smash the Golden Orb of Khadros the Reaver before the villain can use it. Your character’s interaction with the environment is often simple to resolve in the game. You tell the DM that you’re moving the lever on the right, and the DM tells you what happens, if anything. The lever might be part of a fiendishly clever puzzle that requires you to pull several levers in the right order before the room completely fills with water, testing your ingenuity to the limit, but rules aren’t necessary for pulling a lever. You simply tell the DM which lever you pull. If a lever is rusted in position, though, you might need to force it. In such a situation, the DM might ask you to make an ability check (see page 26); no particular skill is involved, just a raw test of your Strength. Similarly, the DM might call for Strength checks to see if you can break through a barred door or lift an adamantine portcullis. This table shows DCs to break through, break down, or break open some common dungeon features. When you’re a 1st-level character, breaking down a wooden door is a challenge well within reach if you have a high Strength score. When you reach epic levels, you can sometimes break through a masonry wall with a single blow, and with time, you can force your way through 3 feet of solid stone!"
@Michail What 4e really needed was a big flashing neon sign pointing to page 42 of the DMG, which basically said "Players trying to do something not covered by the rules? Pick a skill/ability check that makes sense and give it a target number from this table, with a circumstance bonus/penalty if you think one's called for." It seems, based on all the complaints about 4e being "restrictive" that a lot of DMs just missed that page entirely, when if more attention had been called to it it could have answered a lot of their problems. In the example you give, assuming the DM didn't just want to treat it like a grapple, they could have just referenced page 42 and said "Give me an athletics check against DC X."
@Michail What 4e really needed was a big flashing neon sign pointing to page 42 of the DMG, which basically said "Players trying to do something not covered by the rules? Pick a skill/ability check that makes sense and give it a target number from this table, with a circumstance bonus/penalty if you think one's called for." It seems, based on all the complaints about 4e being "restrictive" that a lot of DMs just missed that page entirely, when if more attention had been called to it it could have answered a lot of their problems. In the example you give, assuming the DM didn't just want to treat it like a grapple, they could have just referenced page 42 and said "Give me an athletics check against DC X."
@Michail Your suggestions as to what was "harder" to do in 4E was flat-out wrong. There's nothing more restrictive in the rules of 4E than 3E or 2E. Hence, I told you so. Admittedly, I was abrasive, and I have an unfortunate tendency to use stronger language. But, this is what people criticizing 4E baseless or just flat-out insulting it for no reason have done to me over the many months I've been on this forum. So, I apologize for being short with you.
Anyway, there's no section of the 3E player's handbook that tells you how to jump on a giant's back and steal his gem, either. Meanwhile, as Kaigen pointed out, the 4E DMG gives some loose guidelines and tables as to how to adjudicate those sorts of improved actions. Their example is a Rogue swinging on a chandelier to kick an ogre into a hearth with a full fire in it. As you mentioned, the Rogue has no powers that does this, so instead the DM makes the Rogue do an Acrobatics check, pushes the ogre in to the fire, and then rolls damage, and uses the suggested DC and die size tables in this same section. It's not quite the same as stealing a gem, but it's an ad hoc action that is not necessarily supported by player powers.
Nowhere in the 4E books does it say not to improvise. In fact, it says it all over the place. Even in the Player's Handbook it gives suggestions for talking to your DM to create variants of your powers. For instance, it suggests that players wanting to be evil or dark Paladins (they can be any alignment in 4E, to represent the champions of any militant God) should ask their DM if they can switch the Radiant damage of some of their abilities to other damage types, like Necrotic.
@Kaigen I'd have to disagree that 4E has "more" combat rules. It certainly doesn't have such a clunky amount of volume per combat rule. I mean, just compare the 3E grappling rules, a convoluted mess, to the grappling rules in 4E, concise and easy to use.
@ajwz In the estimation of myself, my players, and many fans, it had an excellent design team, especially the core books and Power Source books. This kind of comment that isn't constructive or really based on anything substantive other than vitriol is what makes me, as a 4E enthusiast, feel unwelcome on this forum and honestly pretty angry sometimes. If you would come up with a criticism that's actually based on anything, I'd be happy to attempt to refute it.
I'd have to disagree that 4E has "more" combat rules. It certainly doesn't have such a clunky amount of volume per combat rule. I mean, just compare the 3E grappling rules, a convoluted mess, to the grappling rules in 4E, concise and easy to use.
I would say that 4e has more combat rules in that each class has a big list of powers which are used almost exclusively in combat. The trick is that "more combat rules" doesn't necessarily mean "fewer non-combat rules" in an absolute sense, just in a relative sense. If you were to compare a Fighter from 2e, 3e, and 4e, they would probably have a similar amount of applicable rules text devoted to things they can do outside of combat. The difference is that as you go to later rules sets (most especially with 4e), the Fighter has a much longer list of rules devoted to things that they can do *in* combat, which creates the impression that the rules are more "combat-oriented." And that is perhaps a fair criticism, though it obscures the fact that 4e gives you plenty of rules for doing things outside of the initiative scale and having nothing to do with killing something.
@SirK8 , @Kaigen, Found a pdf. DMG page 42, check. Also pages 28 - 29 etc. However, see below too.
@Schneidend Apology accepted, moving on. I never wrote that there is something in 4th ed. rules against improvisation. Didn't even think about it. Read carefully and you'll realise that it is a prerequisite for my comment that improvisation is in fact quite possible. I only suggested that things are more likely to happen that way. Why? Simply because the push to improvise is just that bit weaker. Emphasis on "push" and "bit weaker".
And yes, the rogue, chandelier and ogre situation is described ad hoc in page 42 of the DMG, and the DM can pretty much do anything he/she wants in any given situation, may even disregard the rules completely and so on. Even without knowing about page 42 I called the DM in the example "bad". That much is obvious. So, we partly agree on principle (i am not dead wrong, you see?). But perception clouds truth, and we all bring baggage into a conversation. So, in turn, let me apologise for all those opinionated fans that insult 4th edition without giving reasons, and let me assure you I always explain myself.
I think the problem with 4th edition was that it was just that bit more restricting than previous version. It was too combat-rule oriented. That means that it is easier for 4th ed. players to hack & slash, rather than roleplay. The DM usually has little other choice than to follow, as his players are less likely to try to think out of the box (it's a matter of DM skill). Ergo, the usual way to win in 4th ed. is to powergame and players are more likely to minmax etc.
I kind of like the way they made DnD a wargame, positioning became paramount instead of just standing there in one spot swinging with your feet planted in the same spot the whole time. That's the one thing they got right with 4e. And, I understand your point, but I do not think the lack of versitility takes away from RPing. But, it's still very bad. I stressed over when I would use my daily and then it failed and I'm like, "uhhhh lame". The reason I hated playing spellcasters is because they cast a spell and then they gotta take a nappy nap. They turned my fighter into a mage!! ARRRGHHH!!!!! Unforgivable. And the character building was very streamlined, you just couldn't get creative with it and that's the same problem with 2e. Every class walks the same path, everybody is the same. 2e came up with great expansion material but it all lead to 3e, which I think has the most free will of any DnD game system.
If I had to pick one version it would be 2e, but that's just because I like the feel of it. 3e is logically the best. It just makes the most sense out of all of them IMO.
@Lateralus Your daily powers can't "fail." Some Dailies have the Reliable keyword, and thus are not expended if they miss. Those that aren't Reliable instead have effects that go off even if you miss, like dealing half damage or putting you in a special stance. Even without the inability to truly waste a Daily, using all your Dailies and Encounters is hardly the end of the world. Fighters have some of the best at-will powers in the game. Why just hit a guy with a flail when you can hit a guy with a flail, knock him to the ground, and drag him around behind you so that he's being flanked by your Barbarian pal? Massive improvement over 3E melee classes.
Every 4E class has variant class features, you can choose from a wide array of powers and feats, and you get your paragon path choice at level 11 to further define your character. The only feature from 3E's choices that you're more restricted on is the change from the a la carte leveling system, and really all you've "lost" there is the opportunity to be a huge tool and roll a Paladin 2/Monk 1/Sorcerer X.
No, we didn't allow that at our table. That doesn't mean the option shouldn't be there, just not gonna happen with us. Fighter/thief, human, hell yeah. That's my favorite build. A sorcerer/anything isn't a big deal considering the fact that sorcerers are basically born that way. Paladin/monk would require an extremely convincing background story, because those basic training skills are the polar opposite of each other. If you expand your mind (not promoting the use of Black Lotus) anything is possible. All it takes is one very unique NPC that is a 20th level character who is a 10 paladin/10 monk and wonders the realm recruiting people into his school/church.
Given more time at the table I would have fully adapted and realized the full potential of 4e but we disbanded and I haven't returned to PnP since. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the game, just too hard to get everybody together especially when people move away. I get my fix online now, even though some of my friends still have a game night.
@Lateralus Sort of like the 1e Oriental Adventures Sohei- Warrior Priests who tend to be more militant than Priestly. I could see that translating to a Paladin/Monk.
@Lateralus Also, I forgot about Themes, a more recent character-defining optional rule. You can be a Fighter...but you can also be a Fighter who is a merchant, or a thieves guild enforcer, or if you're a drow, a member of the Braegan d'Aerthe mercenary company, and each theme has various non-combat and combat-oriented benefits.
It's a bit more of an investment than a feat. You can only have one theme, and they're not always about your character's profession or past. They also grow with you, rather than give you everything up front. You usually get a minor passive benefit and an additional encounter power. Later, you get more passive benefits or a passive benefit improves, and you are given a list of optional theme powers you can take at particular levels instead of your class power of that level.
@Schneidend say, i haven't played 4th and didn't really bother with it, since our party stopped playing after 3.5.
Since you played, what did they do with the cleric? You know, THE clericzilla of 3.5 edition? I wanted to know if you can still make a Battle Cleric like before? Can you take a level of paladin for the plate proficiency as well?
@Mornmagor Clerics in general got a boost in that their basic healing was made a Minor (similar to a Swift) action, but suffered the general reduction in unlimited utility that spellcasters did in 4e. Multiclassing worked differently in 4e (you can't just straight up take a level of another class), but you could easily drop feats to get scale or plate proficiency (IIRC there was a class variant that let you trade something for scale proficiency out the gate, but I can't remember where it was from). Making a Battle Cleric in 4e basically amounts to picking melee range powers over long range ones and focusing more on Strength than Wisdom; it's easy, but more focused on handing out buffs than dealing damage like the old CoDzilla.
@Mornmagor The Cleric probably had the biggest change to his dynamic of all the classes. All Clerics get Healing Word from the get-go, and its a minor action that can heal from a distance rather than a standard action touch spell. Healing Word heals the target by their healing surge value (about 1/4th HP) + 1d6 HP. It also improves with level, getting more uses per encounter and adding more d6s. So, right there, the Cleric is no longer spending the vast majority of his turn to cast a heal spell as in previous editions. There are other healing spells later on, some of which are touch spells and require standard actions, but those are usually much more powerful heals. Most of the Cleric's at-will, encounter, and daily powers have a buff, debuff, or healing secondary component, so the Cleric can bash a guy with a mace and heal a party member in the same standard action.
As for Battle Clerics, it depends on the powers you pick up. There are ranged powers that use your holy symbol and use Wisdom for hit/damage, but then there's also melee powers that use Strength for hit/damage. More recent supplements introduced some Wisdom-based melee powers, as well. They also had an article that gave the Cleric some more heavy-hitting options, like an at-will that does a lot more damage when used with a simple two-handed weapon like a greatclub.
@Kaigen First, I found that manual in the fire of the Nine Hells (alongside Blackrazor+3, a Cloak of Bravery (Khalid and Xan would like to have one :P), a Robe of the Evil Archimagi and a Wail of the Banshee scroll). Second, I was just exaggerating a tiny bit more I should have (I should have said 18HD Tanar'ri instead of saying 24HD Demon, I'm still exaggerating, well, I'm kidding, well, I'm making unpleasant jokes, well, I'm going to shut up, really, no, I was kidding again ).
@CrevsDaak Well, you had me confused, since Hit Dice isn't actually a rules concept in 4e (they got rid of it in favor of static hit point gains and rating creatures by levels), and there aren't any rules for playing more powerful races than the basic ones (i.e. no level adjustments like in 3e).
Comments
I find very inteligent to make 5 like them, I found that the 4th Edition didn't make sense after reading the manuals (who could want to play as an Elf, while you can play as a Demon with 24HD???).
Also, hope they make BG3 with 2e, I won't buy it if they make it 3e.
There's nothing more combat-oriented about 4E than, say, 3E. Skills that are mostly non-combat, ability checks that are mostly non-combat, rituals that are geared towards non-combat situations and replicate many of 3E's non-combat spells, utility powers that affect interaction skills or stealth, etc.
As Kaigen said, I've had several sessions in a row where initiative wasn't even rolled. The last session we had involved the party finding out their princely patron has been allied with an antagonist that's been working from the shadows since Day 1 of the campaign, an imprisoned elemental, and they went to confront him about it. I thought combat was virtually assured, but the party has decided to work together with them to fight another threat. This could have happened in any edition, and nothing in 4E did anything to hinder it.
Hm.. I am a 1st and 2nd edition fan, and a DM discretion fan, so whatever you have against 3rd ed., don't take it out on me please.
EDIT: On the matter of lines towed, i only suggested that some things are harder to do in 4th edition. I meant exactly what i said, nothing more, and i was being very polite about it. So, as an afterthought, i have to ask you to apologise for that "nonsense" thingie.
That being said, in my view, 4e provides just as much guidance and information for running non-combat encounters as previous editions, if not more so. 4e lays out some nice guidelines for how to conceive of a variety of encounters, how to award experience for them, and how to keep things moving if the party fails to meet their objective, all areas in which previous editions more or less told me to wing it and do things ad hoc. So it seems very odd to me to describe 4e as "more restricting" than previous editions.
(As an aside, I dislike the false dichotomy between "combat" and "roleplay." You can roleplay in combat, and in fact, if you're playing a Fighter in earlier editions and don't want to get bored, you pretty much have to. And a "roleplay" segment of talking with NPCs in character can easily devolve into a mechanical exchange of rolls, much like combat. These are not opposing things, and treating them like they puts them into an aesthetic hierarchy which implies that negotiating with the king is somehow a more worthy activity than slaying the dragon.)
When i wrote "restricting" i had something like this example in mind:
-Player: i jump on the giants back and grab the magic gem from his helmet.
-DM: Which of your powers are you using?
-Pl. : I don't know... I just want to grab the gem...
-DM: None of your powers, at will, encounter, daily or whatever do that. You can't do it.
-Pl. : ...
This is of course an example of a bad DM, who can't think outside the box, even when a player takes the inititative. Still, it is how many DMs play (an actual quote: "If you want to try something and i don't know the rule for it, you have to show me the rule for it... in a book you have with you at that moment"). This is a problem not exclusive to 4th edition, it just became more prominent, exactly because they tried to provide rules for all sort of situations. It made life easier for DMs, but also took away much of their power over the game (improvisation breeds creativity... and house rules, but i'll take the former along with the latter). In fact, this was the main complain driving the move to DnD Next.
However, I must comment here. Have you played 4th edition? I'm asking honestly, because if you had, that situation is easily resolvable, just like I believe every other edition...
Just for fun though, I found your rule covering this situation nicely, in the player's handbook for 4e:
"Interacting with
the Environment
A typical adventure environment is full of dangers,
surprises, and puzzles. A dungeon room might hold a
complex bank of mysterious levers, a statue positioned
over a trap door, a locked chest, or a teleportation
circle. Sometimes you need to cut through a rope,
break a chain, bash down a door, lift a portcullis, or
smash the Golden Orb of Khadros the Reaver before
the villain can use it.
Your character’s interaction with the environment
is often simple to resolve in the game. You tell the DM
that you’re moving the lever on the right, and the DM
tells you what happens, if anything. The lever might be
part of a fiendishly clever puzzle that requires you to
pull several levers in the right order before the room
completely fills with water, testing your ingenuity to
the limit, but rules aren’t necessary for pulling a lever.
You simply tell the DM which lever you pull.
If a lever is rusted in position, though, you might
need to force it. In such a situation, the DM might ask
you to make an ability check (see page 26); no particular
skill is involved, just a raw test of your Strength.
Similarly, the DM might call for Strength checks to
see if you can break through a barred door or lift an
adamantine portcullis. This table shows DCs to break
through, break down, or break open some common
dungeon features.
When you’re a 1st-level character, breaking down
a wooden door is a challenge well within reach if
you have a high Strength score. When you reach epic
levels, you can sometimes break through a masonry
wall with a single blow, and with time, you can force
your way through 3 feet of solid stone!"
Your suggestions as to what was "harder" to do in 4E was flat-out wrong. There's nothing more restrictive in the rules of 4E than 3E or 2E. Hence, I told you so. Admittedly, I was abrasive, and I have an unfortunate tendency to use stronger language. But, this is what people criticizing 4E baseless or just flat-out insulting it for no reason have done to me over the many months I've been on this forum. So, I apologize for being short with you.
Anyway, there's no section of the 3E player's handbook that tells you how to jump on a giant's back and steal his gem, either. Meanwhile, as Kaigen pointed out, the 4E DMG gives some loose guidelines and tables as to how to adjudicate those sorts of improved actions. Their example is a Rogue swinging on a chandelier to kick an ogre into a hearth with a full fire in it. As you mentioned, the Rogue has no powers that does this, so instead the DM makes the Rogue do an Acrobatics check, pushes the ogre in to the fire, and then rolls damage, and uses the suggested DC and die size tables in this same section. It's not quite the same as stealing a gem, but it's an ad hoc action that is not necessarily supported by player powers.
Nowhere in the 4E books does it say not to improvise. In fact, it says it all over the place. Even in the Player's Handbook it gives suggestions for talking to your DM to create variants of your powers. For instance, it suggests that players wanting to be evil or dark Paladins (they can be any alignment in 4E, to represent the champions of any militant God) should ask their DM if they can switch the Radiant damage of some of their abilities to other damage types, like Necrotic.
@Kaigen
I'd have to disagree that 4E has "more" combat rules. It certainly doesn't have such a clunky amount of volume per combat rule. I mean, just compare the 3E grappling rules, a convoluted mess, to the grappling rules in 4E, concise and easy to use.
@ajwz
In the estimation of myself, my players, and many fans, it had an excellent design team, especially the core books and Power Source books. This kind of comment that isn't constructive or really based on anything substantive other than vitriol is what makes me, as a 4E enthusiast, feel unwelcome on this forum and honestly pretty angry sometimes. If you would come up with a criticism that's actually based on anything, I'd be happy to attempt to refute it.
Found a pdf. DMG page 42, check. Also pages 28 - 29 etc. However, see below too.
@Schneidend
Apology accepted, moving on. I never wrote that there is something in 4th ed. rules against improvisation. Didn't even think about it. Read carefully and you'll realise that it is a prerequisite for my comment that improvisation is in fact quite possible. I only suggested that things are more likely to happen that way. Why? Simply because the push to improvise is just that bit weaker. Emphasis on "push" and "bit weaker".
And yes, the rogue, chandelier and ogre situation is described ad hoc in page 42 of the DMG, and the DM can pretty much do anything he/she wants in any given situation, may even disregard the rules completely and so on. Even without knowing about page 42 I called the DM in the example "bad". That much is obvious. So, we partly agree on principle (i am not dead wrong, you see?). But perception clouds truth, and we all bring baggage into a conversation. So, in turn, let me apologise for all those opinionated fans that insult 4th edition without giving reasons, and let me assure you I always explain myself.
If I had to pick one version it would be 2e, but that's just because I like the feel of it. 3e is logically the best. It just makes the most sense out of all of them IMO.
Your daily powers can't "fail." Some Dailies have the Reliable keyword, and thus are not expended if they miss. Those that aren't Reliable instead have effects that go off even if you miss, like dealing half damage or putting you in a special stance. Even without the inability to truly waste a Daily, using all your Dailies and Encounters is hardly the end of the world. Fighters have some of the best at-will powers in the game. Why just hit a guy with a flail when you can hit a guy with a flail, knock him to the ground, and drag him around behind you so that he's being flanked by your Barbarian pal? Massive improvement over 3E melee classes.
Every 4E class has variant class features, you can choose from a wide array of powers and feats, and you get your paragon path choice at level 11 to further define your character. The only feature from 3E's choices that you're more restricted on is the change from the a la carte leveling system, and really all you've "lost" there is the opportunity to be a huge tool and roll a Paladin 2/Monk 1/Sorcerer X.
Given more time at the table I would have fully adapted and realized the full potential of 4e but we disbanded and I haven't returned to PnP since. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the game, just too hard to get everybody together especially when people move away. I get my fix online now, even though some of my friends still have a game night.
There we go. Not that difficult to imagine.
Paladin/Barbarian might be a bit trickier.
Also, I forgot about Themes, a more recent character-defining optional rule. You can be a Fighter...but you can also be a Fighter who is a merchant, or a thieves guild enforcer, or if you're a drow, a member of the Braegan d'Aerthe mercenary company, and each theme has various non-combat and combat-oriented benefits.
Since you played, what did they do with the cleric? You know, THE clericzilla of 3.5 edition? I wanted to know if you can still make a Battle Cleric like before? Can you take a level of paladin for the plate proficiency as well?
Cheers.
The Cleric probably had the biggest change to his dynamic of all the classes. All Clerics get Healing Word from the get-go, and its a minor action that can heal from a distance rather than a standard action touch spell. Healing Word heals the target by their healing surge value (about 1/4th HP) + 1d6 HP. It also improves with level, getting more uses per encounter and adding more d6s. So, right there, the Cleric is no longer spending the vast majority of his turn to cast a heal spell as in previous editions. There are other healing spells later on, some of which are touch spells and require standard actions, but those are usually much more powerful heals. Most of the Cleric's at-will, encounter, and daily powers have a buff, debuff, or healing secondary component, so the Cleric can bash a guy with a mace and heal a party member in the same standard action.
As for Battle Clerics, it depends on the powers you pick up. There are ranged powers that use your holy symbol and use Wisdom for hit/damage, but then there's also melee powers that use Strength for hit/damage. More recent supplements introduced some Wisdom-based melee powers, as well. They also had an article that gave the Cleric some more heavy-hitting options, like an at-will that does a lot more damage when used with a simple two-handed weapon like a greatclub.
First, I found that manual in the fire of the Nine Hells (alongside Blackrazor+3, a Cloak of Bravery (Khalid and Xan would like to have one :P), a Robe of the Evil Archimagi and a Wail of the Banshee scroll).
Second, I was just exaggerating a tiny bit more I should have (I should have said 18HD Tanar'ri instead of saying 24HD Demon, I'm still exaggerating, well, I'm kidding, well, I'm making unpleasant jokes, well, I'm going to shut up, really, no, I was kidding again
5e is,
3.5e's engine with 4e races and classes modded in with a 2e texture pack.