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## Arguments in favor of 4th Edition

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ckafrica
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Post by ckafrica » Tue Apr 07, 2009 7:45 pm

> RandomCasualty2 wrote: The problem 4E made with this concept was that the paragon and epic tiers didn't really change the game at all. They felt basically the same as heroic. And that sucked.
> But I still believe 4E had some good concepts in there. They were just put together in such a way that produced a game that wasn't fun to play.

From what little I've seen I'd tend to agree with you. I definitely don't like the idea of role protection but I liked the idea of how the abilities worked (though execution sucked) and I liked the idea of rituals.
The tiers could have really set the game stages apart and on fire but they didn't. I think the tiers should have been night and day different. A 10th level character should have had more in common with a 1st than and 11th, while 11th and 21st level should have attached a bunch of new power options, opponent options and situations that the characters might face.
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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin » Tue Apr 07, 2009 7:51 pm

> RandomCasualty2 wrote:But I still believe 4E had some good concepts in there. They were just put together in such a way that produced a game that wasn't fun to play.

This was one of the worst parts, for me, that there were many genuinely useful concepts being thrown around... and they were all implemented in the most retarded way imaginable. While retaining horseshit like wealth-is-competence.
It's like watching a really bad adaptation of a really good original work. I hereby dub 4e the 'I, Robot (with Will Smith)' of RPGs.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Tue Apr 07, 2009 10:12 pm

> tic wrote:

> > 4e can never allow any character to be able to do something as simple as make a wall of stone that stays forever. That would break any 4e character.

> Wouldn't a ritual suffice? There are rituals of permanent duration. Maybe a zone, but that's aimed more at encounter-length things, so a ritual'd be the way to go, I think.

No, a ritual would not suffice. See, when you want to make a fucking wall, you want to make it now, not 9 minutes after all your companions have been slaughtered and you are completely surrounded by enemies who are just waiting for you to finish making the wall so they can mock you for sucking so much.
Making a wall in 3 seconds is cool. And useful.
Making a wall in 10 minutes that costs 8374589gp is shitty.
Because you can just use that 8374589gp to hire a bunch of guys with fucking pickaxes and shit to make the damn wall for you in 10 minutes.
When I talk about changing the world, I mean in some way that is different then a level 1 Commoner. Seriously, a level 1 Commoner can hire people to perform the actions of any ritual as fast as the ritual can be performed.
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CatharzGodfoot
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Post by CatharzGodfoot » Tue Apr 07, 2009 10:20 pm

A Wall making ritual would be totally fine, so long as that cost was commensurate with the result. You can spend some money to hire some people who take some time to build a stone wall, and that can be cool. Being able to cut out the builders and do the same thing by magic is also cool. It isn't as 'OMG amazing' as trapping someone in a permanent stone prison in the blink of an eye, but it's certainly a useful thing to be able to do.
The mentality of 'If I can't replicate 3e D&D exactly, it sucks' is just as dumb as the 4e mentality of 'Nothing can happen besides damage and stunning'.
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Tue Apr 07, 2009 10:27 pm

> The mentality of 'If I can't replicate 3e D&D exactly, it sucks' is just as dumb as the 4e mentality of 'Nothing can happen besides damage and stunning'.

And what do you think that people are trying to recreate from 3E, hmm?

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Tue Apr 07, 2009 10:31 pm

Okay, I'm in a game right now and one of the big problems is that goblins have overrun the farmland and people are starving in one of the capital cities.
And people are halfway into the Paragon tier.
Someone mind fucken explaining what's going on here? This kind of adventure is beneath paragon-level heroes. The book said as much. So I dig deep into our well of resources of the PHB/AV/PHB2 and try to MagGuyver a way to proceed with famine relief. And the books are of no help. Our so-called mighty heroes can't even break a damn war-induced famine.
The only possible way we can do that is if we kill enough goblins with pretty headdresses and the DM goes 'okay, the goblins withdraw'--even though what we did had no relationship with the effect.
EDIT: Now, I'm not saying that 3E was superior in this regard because frankly you were also screwed if you didn't read the rules/spellbook or you were a sword-based class. But 4E specifically advertises that you go on world-changing adventures and then doesn't even give the tools to do so. Your powers suck, your class features suck, where is this world-changing power supposed to come from?
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Tue Apr 07, 2009 10:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Doom
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Post by Doom » Tue Apr 07, 2009 10:50 pm

Dang, I came too late to the party...I'm a long time lurker on the boards; I generally only post when I see idiocy unaddressed. This will be an exception.
Needless to say, I've seen very little reason to post here, and plenty of reason to post on the boards the Gleemaxian Ze4lots frequent.
If I were a female, and not a misanthrope, I'd seek Frank out to have his children, for the good of humanity.
Man, reading this thread rocked. Hard. Shame they didn't stay longer.
Ah well, off to class.
That is all.
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CatharzGodfoot
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Post by CatharzGodfoot » Tue Apr 07, 2009 11:23 pm

> Lago PARANOIA wrote:

> > The mentality of 'If I can't replicate 3e D&D exactly, it sucks' is just as dumb as the 4e mentality of 'Nothing can happen besides damage and stunning'.

> And what do you think that people are trying to recreate from 3E, hmm?

An instantaneous creation of permanent geological features.
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RandomCasualty2
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Post by RandomCasualty2 » Wed Apr 08, 2009 1:45 am

Well honestly I don't know why a ritual wouldn't suffice for creating walls if you want to create structures and dungeon corridors. If you just want to trap someone in stone, then the wall could be temporary and nobody would really care, because the guy you trap is going to be something you'd use in combat, so if the power lasts for 5-10 minutes, that's fine.
I'm actually fine with some of the ritual cost situations, because I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to attach some gold costs to conjurations. I like the concept of having a bunch of commoners build things more cheaply, but a wizard can build them quickly. So if you wanted to quickly create a bunch of food to feed the hungry, a cleric or wizard could create a feast, but it's going to be a lot more expensive than having farms and having the people support themselves.
That sort of system still allows commoners to have a place in the world and be somewhat important to people. At the very least if wizards are going to be islands, not needing farmers, or laborers or anyone else, it should be much more expensive than just relying on mundane craftspeople. Of course, building a castle the long way takes years, and a wizard could do it in a few hours.
Last edited by RandomCasualty2 on Wed Apr 08, 2009 2:35 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by koz » Wed Apr 08, 2009 2:57 am

> Doom314 wrote:
> If I were a female, and not a misanthrope, I'd seek Frank out to have his children, for the good of humanity.

Right behind you, sir, right behind you.
Everything I learned about DnD, I learned from Frank Trollman.

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Absentminded_Wizard
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Post by Absentminded_Wizard » Wed Apr 08, 2009 3:34 am

> Psychic Robot, referring to the Bag o' Rats fallacy wrote:I've never seen that one bandied around before.

I think that one was more an ENWorld than WotC thing.
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ckafrica
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Post by ckafrica » Wed Apr 08, 2009 5:08 am

RC: yes if magic is going to affect the economics of the world (effecting supply and demand of food), we need to figure out how to price so it is only used to the extent desired.
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Wed Apr 08, 2009 5:20 am

I'm okay with rituals being able to do economy changing things.
We are talking about human civilization managing to stay afloat in a world that's always tearing itself apart.
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Gelare
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Post by Gelare » Wed Apr 08, 2009 5:31 am

I personally have greatly enjoyed being able to, on a whim, invite a hundred fifty of my closest friends to a banquet in my invisible mansion in the middle of anywhere I happen to be. And assist recently devastated cities by creating miniature quarries in convenient locations. And so on. It's kind of like going from fighting goblins to fighting demonic hordes as a measure of awesome; when you have gone from purifying rotten food to sustaining a whole town by yourself, you know you're pretty awesome.
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RandomCasualty2
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Post by RandomCasualty2 » Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:28 am

> Crissa wrote:I'm okay with rituals being able to do economy changing things.
> We are talking about human civilization managing to stay afloat in a world that's always tearing itself apart.

The thing is that we don't want our world turning into Forgotten Realms where god wizards rule over the entire thing and low level PCs basically are shit.
That's inherently the problem with large power gaps, is that you do have epic people like Elminster running around who can pretty much kill any number of heroic tiered people. Further, they can also completely break the heroic economy to the point that there literally is no heroic economy. Once they can generate infinite gold, then gold becomes valueless.
One system may be setting up different economies for people in heroic, paragon and epic. But managing the overlap has to be handled carefully. You don't want to automatically make it so the paragon and epic guys can saturate the heroic tier with infinite magic items or wealth, so either there has to be no incentive to do that, or even paragon and epic characters are limited in resources somewhere (even if that resource just happens to be time). If creating gold and crafting heroic swords cost them a great deal of time, then you could figure it may not be a world changing problem.
And it's important that while powerful, paragon/epic characters aren't too powerful, otherwise low level heroes don't even have reason to exist. There still needs to be meaningful quests for starting PCs. And I've just never liked the bullshit explanation that high level people go off on planar adventures for some reason. Not when the evil high level wizard with plans of world domination has yet to conquer the world, and the evil smiting paladin still has evil to smite in the world.
Last edited by RandomCasualty2 on Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:31 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Wed Apr 08, 2009 7:18 am

> That's inherently the problem with large power gaps, is that you do have epic people like Elminster running around who can pretty much kill any number of heroic tiered people. Further, they can also completely break the heroic economy to the point that there literally is no heroic economy. Once they can generate infinite gold, then gold becomes valueless.

1) Gold is just a currency. If there was too much gold to cover economic activity, people would find something else to use after there was hyperinflation, much like what would happen in the real world if you declared a rock-based monetary system.
In fact, from what we can see, gold is probably the most idiotic thing in the world to base an economy on in D&D since it has a huge amount of secondary uses that greatly exceed what's needed to actually run an economy. You can literally go into the backyard and set fire to a city's entire wealth to create a shiny +5 rock--a resource expenditure way in excess of what you get. The D&D economy, honestly, would make more sense to be based on chicken bones. At least there would be a chance that the money supply would match what's needed.
2) If the people were able to create infinite capital/labor then the world still wouldn't collapse, things would either transform into a Star Trek-style utopia where all of the adventure and horror lies outside civilization or the world would transform into some kinda-dystopia like Shadowrun where the underclass tries to jack shit from the overclass or they make their fortune out in the real world.
3) Why should rituals only be able to be done by certain people? I think it's bullshit that a farming community can't hold their hands and do a little prayer that cures their littlest cancer patient or ensures a good harvest. The peasants only have to suck spellcaster cock because the current system makes them.
4) Why should rituals have no sort of associated cost with them? If you don't want Avatar the Last Airbender-style antics where having superpowers be a free lunch, then don't make them be. The wizards who generate water to quench their desert city's thirst need to devote spell slots to keep it going and/or search for additional resources.
We don't want rituals dipping into peoples' monster killing fun. Rituals should have some sort of cost to go with them. Gaining levels means that you're able to mitigate or handle the costs better.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Wed Apr 08, 2009 7:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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RandomCasualty2
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Post by RandomCasualty2 » Wed Apr 08, 2009 7:35 am

> Lago PARANOIA wrote: 2) If the people were able to create infinite capital/labor then the world still wouldn't collapse, things would either transform into a Star Trek-style utopia where all of the adventure and horror lies outside civilization or the world would transform into some kinda-dystopia like Shadowrun where the underclass tries to jack shit from the overclass or they make their fortune out in the real world.

Well Shadowrun really doesn't have infinite capital and labor. While the megacorps are very wealthy, their wealth is still some finite number, and they can't afford to give every lowly security guard high rating deltaware because it wouldn't be cost effective. Corps are still about profit margins, and that means that their capital is far from infinite.
Utopias generally don't work very well, because then you wonder why people bother adventuring at all, and everyone by default has infinite gear.

> 3) Why should rituals only be able to be done by certain people? I think it's bullshit that a farming community can't hold their hands and do a little prayer that cures their littlest cancer patient or ensures a good harvest. The peasants only have to suck spellcaster cock because the current system makes them.

Well, I don't think we really want everyone to end up being a wizard. While a few low level prayers might be ok to bless crops. At some point we want people actually forging things with hammers and anvils and farming things by hand. Unless you want to base the game as just solely a game where everyone is a spellcaster and uses magic to do everything.
I don't really have a problem with low level people having to go to high level people to cure diseases or to help their harvest some. I mean that shit happens in real life too, where if you're sick, you end up going to a doctor who is more skilled in medicine that you are.

> We don't want rituals dipping into peoples' monster killing fun. Rituals should have some sort of cost to go with them. Gaining levels means that you're able to mitigate or handle the costs better.

Yeah, though I never really liked rituals taking spell slots, simply because it adds another level of crap you've got to worry about. I actually like that 4E characters can just cast a ritual whenever they want, and it expends some resources ,instead of the lame "I didn't prepare a locate object today."
Sometimes it's okay for that resource to simply be time. Other times, I think it makes more sense for people to have to burn gold or something, especially if they're conjuring allies or creating permanent structures. Summoning a pit fiend should pretty mcuh have a cost as though you were just hiring a mercenary with similar abilities. That way you don't run into the absurdity of 3E where you can get armies of demons through planar binding.
Last edited by RandomCasualty2 on Wed Apr 08, 2009 7:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Wed Apr 08, 2009 7:53 am

> Well Shadowrun really doesn't have infinite capital and labor. While the megacorps are very wealthy, their wealth is still some finite number, and they can't afford to give every lowly security guard high rating deltaware because it wouldn't be cost effective. Corps are still about profit margins, and that means that their capital is far from infinite.

The point I was trying to make was that the game doesn't end if there is one organization in the setting that has all of the toys--so there's no reason for you to be afraid of the threat of infinite wealth.
And what you're seemingly missing is that making huge mounds of gold does not make infinite wealth. Seriously, outside of creating magical items and jewelry, gold has no secondary use in the time period in which D&D takes place. And gold being the raw resource for magic items is only like that in order to simplify the system, not because of any magic properties.

> Well, I don't think we really want everyone to end up being a wizard.

Why do you need to be able to be a wizard to use magic? You don't need to be a doctor to set a bone or a thief to pick a lock or a fighter to swing a sword. So why should you need to be a cleric to beseech the spirits to bless your crops?
If you don't want a society where people hold hands and chant all day to get things done then rituals should either be unable to replicate natural labor or they require some other sort of cost to use them. For example, if in order to make a house you need to sacrifice 100 skulls from sheep who died of old age, 12 iron statues of mountains, and a pile of timber then you're still going to need sheperds, blacksmiths, and lumberjacks.

> I don't really have a problem with low level people having to go to high level people to cure diseases or to help their harvest some. I mean that shit happens in real life too, where if you're sick, you end up going to a doctor who is more skilled in medicine that you are.

You're not completing your analogy. A real life D&D analogy for this situation would be having to go to your Congressman and ask for their attention when you're sick.
I really can't believe how you're failing to see how the situation you describe like a low level character having to go to a high level character for something as incredibly basic to D&D society as curing a disease or blessing crops WON'T CREATE THE EXACT KIND OF SITUATION YOU'RE CRITICIZING WHERE PEASANTS HAVE TO SUCK WIZARD COCK.

> Sometimes it's okay for that resource to simply be time. Other times, I think it makes more sense for people to have to burn gold or something, especially if they're conjuring allies or creating permanent structures.

No. Mixing up your combat and noncombat resource pool should never be done in a heroic fantasy setting beyond the bare basics. 3E D&D failed miserably when they allowed this.
Conjuring demons to serve you in battle should draw from the same pool of resources you use to spit fireballs or swing triple slash. Having castles be build should not reduce the amount of swording you do nor should you be allowed to get more fireballs by living like a bum.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Wed Apr 08, 2009 7:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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tic
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Post by tic » Wed Apr 08, 2009 8:34 am

> No, a ritual would not suffice. See, when you want to make a fucking wall, you want to make it now, not 9 minutes after all your companions have been slaughtered and you are completely surrounded by enemies who are just waiting for you to finish making the wall so they can mock you for sucking so much.
> Making a wall in 3 seconds is cool. And useful.

And a power. In fact, wizards can already conjure walls - not of stone, but other walls. Wall of Fire is a level 9 power. Wall of Stone would probably, at a rough guess, be similar in level or a little lower. No damage, but harder to get through.

> Making a wall in 10 minutes that costs 8374589gp is shitty.

A level 6 ritual costs ~150 gp. Level ~10-ish seems to hover around 500. The highest level ritual in the PHB, True Portal, costs 50,000gp. That's for a permanent magical portal from anywhere, to anywhere. Raise Dead on a heroic-level is 500gp. I think it's a safe bet that a permanent stone wall would cost something far more reasonable. Maybe a few hundred per square? Again, not something you use to make a house, or use as part of your standard options in combat, but when you see the smoke of an approaching army, being able to whip out walls in an hour or so is pretty damned awesome in my books.

> Because you can just use that 8374589gp to hire a bunch of guys with fucking pickaxes and shit to make the damn wall for you in 10 minutes.

That is some godly masonry right there. Laying sandbags, maybe. Even laying down bricks to fill, say, a 10' x 10' square would take a little longer than that, wouldn't it? I'm no brickie, so I may be way off, but that seems rather fast.

> When I talk about changing the world, I mean in some way that is different then a level 1 Commoner. Seriously, a level 1 Commoner can hire people to perform the actions of any ritual as fast as the ritual can be performed.

A level one commoner can hire people to create teleportation circles in an hour? To raise the dead in a few hours? To completely repair a door, currently in splinters, in ten minutes? To pull eight horses out of thin air in ten minutes? To break through 5-square-thick wall of solid rock or iron and repair it again in the same timespan?
You're absolutely right. With enough gold, he can hire someone to cast the ritual. Unless the peasantry got powers to tear holes in reality, I don't see any other way.

> I'm okay with rituals being able to do economy changing things.
> We are talking about human civilization managing to stay afloat in a world that's always tearing itself apart.

It's a question of scale, to my eyes. Keeping a village alive through a harsh winter is one thing. Creating a brand spanking new mine where there was nothing before is rather far-reaching. I mean, it alters trade routes, rewrites strategic points... in fact, wars over resources pretty much end if a source can be magicked up. Everyone has every resource. No one ever starves, no one ever suffers from a drought... assuming there's someone who can collect taxes, they'd pay the gold to get their taxes back. If there's not, a relatively low-level ritualist could earn some solid gold, or some property or something, without risking his neck in combat.
Depending on your campaign, your preferences, this may or may not be an issue. It does beg the question, though - why send a team of adventurers down to clear the kobolds and undead from the mine, when a single wizard can just cave it in and make a new one?
But yeah, I reckon some more economy-ish rituals wouldn't hurt at all. Being able to nurture a village, build a keep, that sort of thing... that's just as rewarding as killing the goblin chieftain. Maybe even more so.

> 3) Why should rituals only be able to be done by certain people? I think it's bullshit that a farming community can't hold their hands and do a little prayer that cures their littlest cancer patient or ensures a good harvest. The peasants only have to suck spellcaster cock because the current system makes them.

Hold on, which system? 4e? Ritecasting is just a feat, which requires training in Religion or Arcana. If you stat up an NPC like a PC, easy. Give 'em the feat and a ritual called "conjure light rain" or something. If you stat them up like a monster, you're pulling abilities out of wherever you want, so they can still have it. Expensive, but doable every so often. Peasants don't go casting rituals to cure themselves of a headcold or poison ivy problems, but they could probably use it every few years to ward off drought or famine or something.
So, really, anyone can cast rituals.

> You're not completing your analogy. A real life D&D analogy for this situation would be having to go to your Congressman and ask for their attention when you're sick.

I'm not quite sure that works. It's probably somewhere in the middle. I doubt high level wizards are like doctors - you can probably get to a GP pretty quickly, wizards are more... reclusive. But then, you've probably only got one congressman. There might be quite a few high-level wizards about the area, and even more lower-level ones. So it's probably more like a private investigator. You might not know where to find one off the top of your head, but if you look hard enough, there'll be someone about. They just cost money, and might not be as skilled as you'd like.
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Post by Gelare » Wed Apr 08, 2009 8:43 am

> RandomCasualty2 wrote:I don't really have a problem with low level people having to go to high level people to cure diseases or to help their harvest some. I mean that shit happens in real life too, where if you're sick, you end up going to a doctor who is more skilled in medicine that you are.

A dozen peasants can get together in a circle and sprinkle some herbs and cast Resistance. A skilled cleric can call up God and cast Remove Disease.
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Post by Username17 » Wed Apr 08, 2009 8:49 am

> tic wrote:It's a question of scale, to my eyes. Keeping a village alive through a harsh winter is one thing. Creating a brand spanking new mine where there was nothing before is rather far-reaching. I mean, it alters trade routes, rewrites strategic points...

Not in 4e it doesn't.
Remember, any equipment worth having in 4e is made from one hour of work, a pile of residuum, and a stick. +4 godplate is made out of residuum and a stick, not iron or adamantium.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Wed Apr 08, 2009 8:55 am

> Hold on, which system? 4e? Ritecasting is just a feat, which requires training in Religion or Arcana. If you stat up an NPC like a PC, easy. Give 'em the feat and a ritual called "conjure light rain" or something. If you stat them up like a monster, you're pulling abilities out of wherever you want, so they can still have it. Expensive, but doable every so often. Peasants don't go casting rituals to cure themselves of a headcold or poison ivy problems, but they could probably use it every few years to ward off drought or famine or something.
> So, really, anyone can cast rituals.

Nope!
You can only cast rituals if you're a certain level, levels which apparently people don't get. Peasants still have to suck adventuring cock.
However, according to the Monster Manual there are supposedly 13th level Eladrin and 6th level tiefling militiamen just wandering about, so who the fuck knows anymore.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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tic
  1st Level
  Posts: 26
  Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2009 7:50 am

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Post by tic » Wed Apr 08, 2009 9:23 am

> Lago PARANOIA wrote:

> > Hold on, which system? 4e? Ritecasting is just a feat, which requires training in Religion or Arcana. If you stat up an NPC like a PC, easy. Give 'em the feat and a ritual called "conjure light rain" or something. If you stat them up like a monster, you're pulling abilities out of wherever you want, so they can still have it. Expensive, but doable every so often. Peasants don't go casting rituals to cure themselves of a headcold or poison ivy problems, but they could probably use it every few years to ward off drought or famine or something.
> > So, really, anyone can cast rituals.

> Nope!
> You can only cast rituals if you're a certain level, levels which apparently people don't get. Peasants still have to suck adventuring cock.
> However, according to the Monster Manual there are supposedly 13th level Eladrin and 6th level tiefling militiamen just wandering about, so who the fuck knows anymore.

Everything has a level. PCs have a level. Monsters have a level. Traps and magic items have a level. And, given that there are 6th level militiamen, seems to me that a level 4 or 5 priest mightn't be too far from the realms of possibility.

> FrankTrollman wrote:

> > tic wrote:It's a question of scale, to my eyes. Keeping a village alive through a harsh winter is one thing. Creating a brand spanking new mine where there was nothing before is rather far-reaching. I mean, it alters trade routes, rewrites strategic points...

> Not in 4e it doesn't.
> Remember, any equipment worth having in 4e is made from one hour of work, a pile of residuum, and a stick. +4 godplate is made out of residuum and a stick, not iron or adamantium.
> -Username17

Any equipment worth a PC having. I'm pretty sure that that level 3 militiaman would be damned happy with a suit of well-made chainmail. Is magic armour better? Of course it is. It's also probably worth more than he'll make in ten years of labour.
Soldiers in the real world don't have the best and greatest of everything, because the cost is prohibitive. Special forces and the like might get more of it. Same here. The orc horde doesn't have magic weapons. Well, maybe they do, but it's a handful, scattered across the body of the army. Likewise, the guards and militia they battle don't have magic weapons or armour. The PCs do. The King's royal guard probably do. Warboss Blortz probably does, and his bodyguards might as well.
+1 curseforged armour costs 680gp. For that price, you could get a bit over 15 suits of regular scale armour, at 45 a pop. Alternately, you could equip almost ten men with scale armour, a heavy shield and a longsword. Or 13.6 potions of healing, totalling 136 hp healed (if you statted NPCs and PCs, and gave them healing surges. Else, ignore that). For the sake of inflicting a penalty once a day, and +1 to AC, you could equip a small squad with heavy armour, or a smaller squad with everything.
At higher levels, then yeah, magic gear probably comes into play. If you find a way to gain infinite resources, magic gear comes into play. If we have the villagers defending against a goblin tribe, they don't wield +1 axes and deflect blows with +1 shields.
Besides. The villagers already traded in their few magic trinkets to that wizard bloke who cast those rituals. He melted them down to residuum, and made other magic items that his adventurer buddies use.
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Username17
  Serious Badass
  Posts: 29894
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

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Post by Username17 » Wed Apr 08, 2009 11:45 am

> Tic wrote:Everything has a level. PCs have a level. Monsters have a level. Traps and magic items have a level. And, given that there are 6th level militiamen, seems to me that a level 4 or 5 priest mightn't be too far from the realms of possibility.

Oh sure, it might not be. But that's just it: you don't know. Because NPCs don't have feats. NPCs don't use rituals at all. Or rather, they do, they just use completely different rituals than PCs do and there are no rules for those rituals. Animate Dead is a ritual that specifically every NPC with the "Shadow Master" template knows that doesn't have any rules at all.
Do you not see why this is a problem?

> Tic wrote:Any equipment worth a PC having. I'm pretty sure that that level 3 militiaman would be damned happy with a suit of well-made chainmail. Is magic armour better? Of course it is. It's also probably worth more than he'll make in ten years of labour.

Probably? How would you know?
Leaving aside the fact that the 3rd level Hobgoblin Soldier in the actual Monster Manual is equipped with some set of Scale Mail, which in turn is 5 GP more than Chain, there's the little niggling detail that what people get for labor is undescribed in the 4e rules. You literally have no idea what a 3rd level militiaman makes. Hell, the 3rd level "Human Guard" has a fucking suit of Chainmail. (MM, p. 162)
Even talking about the economy or background of the 4e world is full of failure, because there is straight up no direct information. And the information that there is can charitably be called contradictory.
-Username17
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Psychic Robot
  Prince
  Posts: 4607
  Joined: Sat May 03, 2008 10:47 pm

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Post by Psychic Robot » Wed Apr 08, 2009 11:48 am

...Which, of course, demonstrates the "smash in the door" ideas that permeate the entire fucking game. 3e might be broken, but it was focused on creating a believable world for players to explore. 4e says, "Fuck it," and goes straight to the wargaming.

> Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.

> Ant wrote:

> > Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?

> You do not seem to do anything.

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