The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman wrote:

RC wrote:This is basically the consequence of any gold valued magic item system, where you can simply trade one item for another. Regardless of how you assign value to items, at some point, there's going to be a winner's tier of items that come to the top.

Gold isn't the important fact here. It's resource management. Every time you can't have everything because of some kind of resource restriction, there are going to be winners and losers based on how much resource they consume. The reason why 4e has so many trash drops in it, is because it has three separate resource tallies. Gold Cost, Item Slot, and Item Dailies Slots. In order to be worth having, an item has to be competitive across all three categories.

-Username17

That you can have any magic item you want ready in just one hour make things just worse.
In 3.x it could happen that the magic item you wanted was not availlable and you could not wait the time necessary to craft it, so you had to set your sight on some different magic items. in 4e you just say that you'll be back in a couple of hour to pick it up (assuming you can't just make it yourself)

RandomCasualty2 wrote: Well, separate tallies can actually be a good thing because they can create more complex decisions and thus it becomes more situational.

???

No, they don't. Having three separate tallies for 4E magical items just makes the complex decisions EASIER. You can safely ignore about 90% of magical items ever printed. I'm not even exaggerating, look at my earlier analysis in this thread. Why? Because first thing you do is see if it has anything other than 'daily power' on it. If it doesn't, you check out the magical item daily. Is the daily worse than that on a, say, Stone Band? If so, you throw it in the trash. It doesn't matter what else is on it, you're using your dailies for Stone Bands anyway.

The 4E magical item daily effect really increased the sheer volume of trash drops.

Now you have have to trade off between if you want something cheaper that occupies a more valuable slot or something more expensive that uses a slot you don't need.

That was the 3E system. And considering how Not Well it worked at all (hint: people picked the first one because of how costs scaled and ended up throwing a bunch of items in the trash) adding another restriction would've only made things massively worse.

I wouldn't pay for a darkskull if they cost 1/10th of what they cost in the book, but I would still put it in my backpack if I came across one for free. 90% of 4E items I would throw in the trash if the rest of the party was already loaded up with the bare-minimum bonus and I wasn't allowed to sell it.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: No, they don't. Having three separate tallies for 4E magical items just makes the complex decisions EASIER. You can safely ignore about 90% of magical items ever printed. I'm not even exaggerating, look at my earlier analysis in this thread. Why? Because first thing you do is see if it has anything other than 'daily power' on it. If it doesn't, you check out the magical item daily. Is the daily worse than that on a, say, Stone Band? If so, you throw it in the trash. It doesn't matter what else is on it, you're using your dailies for Stone Bands anyway.

Well yeah, 4E pulled it off badly, but normally having more resources pools to burn on items makes the choices harder. 4E just had the problem of having items that just weren't that good honestly, mixed in with some super items. The daily powers were weak sauce and many items, like the iron gauntlets of power or whatever had a property that was crazy awesome (well crazy awesome by 4E standards anyway).

Ideally you have some kind of resources like:
1. Equipping cost (X active magic items at once)
2. Resource cost to acquire (gold)
3. Activation cost

Now, the first thing you want to do here is make the equipping cost into something real. That means eliminating pretty princess dress up style where you're constantly changing clothes. Including a bonding time of 24 hours for every magical item. So you can't just get several cheap ones and keep swapping them out.

The activation costs should be something diverse, burning crap like action points, one of your encounter powers, one of your daily powers or whatever. I'd generally avoid activation costs that drain hp, as those tend to make battles closer to rocket launcher tag.

The resource cost is the the cost that can change in play, because you will get some items for free, and others you'll have to pay for.

A system like that should give people a variety of loadouts assuming that you can't sell items back for much value.

After that, it's all balancing various items so you don't have items that are overly cheap in all areas.

It's okay to have items that are expensive to acquire and have cheap activation and equipping costs, basically your games equivalent to MtG Moxes. While it's also okay to have cheap items that cost you an arm in a leg in magic item slots and activation costs.

The other thing is you want all these resources to go up as you level. That is, higher level PCs have more gold, more magic item slots and more resources to pay activation costs. Because you want even low level PCs to feel the drain of lack of magic item slots. 4E was actually half right in the concept of having only high level people using rings and only epics using ioun stones. It's a good base concept of increasing the number of magic items as you level, however, they shouldn't do it based on body slots, but rather on overall magic items you can have active.

If you want to see a good example of a multi-resource equipping system, you should check out EVE. Outfitting ships is a great example of this sort of thing.

You've got: limited slots to put things, CPU cost to equip things, Powergrid costs to equip things, capacitor cost to activate things, money cost to buy things.

And it all works out pretty well actually. 4E was just poorly balanced as fuck and just didn't do a good job with it.

If you have three separate resource pools and different things drew from different resource pools, then you'd have at the very least three different best items that you wanted to put in a pile and dance around. As is, 4e went the route were everything uses the same resource pools. Everything uses Gold, everything uses item slots, everything uses actions, everything uses item daily power slots. It's just a longer checklist you have to go through before you find out that something is suboptimal and therefore worthless.

-Username17

Its a bit of a necropost, but I have been looking to get into some 4e defense for a while. So I'll start here.

Okay, its clear a lot of people here don't understand basic tactics. I don't blame them, it took a while for me to figure why I would want to castle in chess.

Anyway, at wills have very powerful tactical purposes.

Lets look at the most basic, an at-will that pushes an enemy 1 space, aka, tide of iron.



Okay, the first example is the most basic example. You will encounter this situation quite a bit due to the fact movement doesn't vary widely.

Ranger moves back to gain some distance from the enemy.

And fighter is left with two choices.

1. He can do a simple damage attack like surestrike or his basic attack. If he does this the enemy can try attacking the ranger. Here I assume the Fighter makes his Attack of Opportunity, however since the fighter can only make one Attack of Opportunity per that enemy's turn, the enemy is free to charge ranger, hitting him. And placing ranger in a bad position.

2. Fighter can use Tide of Iron, which in addition to pushing the enemy back, lets him shift forward as well. (Important if lets say, the fighter had to move first to reach the monster.) Now should the monster get stopped by fighter's AoO, his charge won't reach the ranger.

Ergo Tide of Iron allowed the fighter to defend much better then he would have been able to otherwise. In theory he should this have been a two-weapon fighter, he should have tried bullrushing the enemy instead as defending the ranger is more important then trying to just deal the most damage himself. But thats just one other option.


As for the second example, this is a rescue.

Wizard is up against a wall with a monster in front of him. He does not possess a close range power. Its up to fighter to save him.

Fighter races over and uses tide of Iron to knock the enemy away. He chose not to shift forward as that would have given the monster to walk around the fighter and attack the wizard from a non-adjacent position.

So now the monster is marked and will get attacked by the fighter when it tries hitting the wizard.

These are just two examples, there are many others but they are far more terrain based, keeping an enemy mired in difficult terrain, pushing him into a flanked position and so on.

Anyway I hoped this proved that at-wills are more then a repetitive single action spam no different then 3.5's standard attack chains. They aren't fancy, but the fact that a fighter has to make the choice, "Should I just attack or is there a reason I would want to push the enemy?"

Means that there are meaningful choices to make even when you are down to at-wills.

In addition I would want to point out that Grab immobilizes the enemy, causes a -2 penalty to his attacks and lets you move an enemy as you wish. Which is useful quite often. And since sheathing is a minor action and it doesn't provoke an AoO, its far more useful in 4e then in 3.5.

Same with bullrushes and charges. If you don't have a power that imitates its effects these are good alternatives.

Lets see, as for the resource pool, seeing something as sub-optimal doesn't mean you are going to get to do anything with it. If you put all of your gold into buying magic items, by level 10 a party of 4 will each have 12.5 magic items, most of which will be lower then their level. This is using none of that money for expendables, skill challenges or rituals. Start selling off those items to get optimal, you are either going to d up with a lot of slots unfilled, or you are still going to be stuck with a lot of sub-optimal stuff.

But the fact is, sub-optimal>nothing.

Anyway, as every good munchkin knows, its the sub-optimal that are most often overlooked by the balancing team.

Besides, you can't expect every item to be equally useful, its an art not a science. Somethings are just going to not be as good.

And lets see, I agree that something as basic as setting stuff on fire have gotten more then a short mention on page 42 of the DMG. But I guess this way the damage scales with level and allows the GM more control.

One more thing a -2 penalty or a +1 to defense may sound pretty sucky, but you must think in context. Lets say you're a Rogue, If your Bard hits the enemies with a -2 penalty to their defense, your Fighter marks the enemy and gives you flank and your Psychic adds another -2 penalty to their attack, you are getting the equivalent of

a +4 to your attack and a +4 to your defense. Thats a 40% difference from at wills alone. And that'll stack with most ongoing stuff.

Not flashy but useful.

What I like most about 4e is that even as a melee character, I have something to think about, options to decide on and plans to make while the the wizard decides whether he wants to put the enemies to sleep, freeze them, electrocute them or set them on fire.

Course if he takes too long I'm back to feeling like I'm in 3.5.

How is your tide of iron example any different from the 3.5 fighter tripping the monster, causing him to not be able to move to the ranger or forcing him to stand up and getting smacked in the face?

CapnTthePirateG wrote:How is your tide of iron example any different from the 3.5 fighter tripping the monster, causing him to not be able to move to the ranger or forcing him to stand up and getting smacked in the face?

The 3.x fighter needs to make an unarmed attack (provoking attacks of opportunity) and is at a serious disadvantage unless you have specifically built the character to be a trip monster. A 4E fighter has to commit far fewer resources to doing this than a 3.X trip fighter.

CapnTthePirateG wrote:How is your tide of iron example any different from the 3.5 fighter tripping the monster, causing him to not be able to move to the ranger or forcing him to stand up and getting smacked in the face?

Tide of Iron does damage to the monster, without provoking an attack of opportunity and doesn't require a feat to accomplish. The power works across your entire career without suddenly becoming useless once you begin fighting things with 10 or more HD. Also, the rules for adjudicating it are right in front of the player in an easy to understand format, rather than nestled within a paragraph among many paragraphs in the combat section of the PHB.

I'm not super "GO 4E!" guy by any stretch of imagination, but I recognize that there are a few good ideas there, one of which is the attempt to give cool shit to martial types, who sorely need it.

Of course, where this falls flat is that monsters don't actually give a shit about their move actions, so unless they're dazed then pushing them 1 square doesn't really do anything spectacular. Also, instead of just saying that Fighters in 4E are channeling the Strength of past warrior generations with every swing of the sword or whatever, the writers instead pretend that these are badass normals, which makes people cry "fowl!" whenever Fighters do things that stretch the imagination.

Verbannon wrote: Lets say you're a Rogue, If your Bard hits the enemies with a -2 penalty to their defense, your Fighter marks the enemy and gives you flank and your Psychic adds another -2 penalty to their attack, you are getting the equivalent of

a +4 to your attack and a +4 to your defense. Thats a 40% difference from at wills alone. And that'll stack with most ongoing stuff.

No, that's a +20% chance for you to hit them and a -20% for them to hit you. Those are two separate percentages. They cannot be added together to make the numbers seem more impressive. And that's beside the point that bullshit bonuses are, in fact, bullshit, and them being so important in 4E is a major designflaw

I will admit that 4E had a number of fairly good ideas that were implemented poorly. But "Hey let's make it important to need to grab every single little boost in battle" is not a good idea. It is a bad one. Plain and simple.

Blicero wrote: No, that's a +20% chance for you to hit them and a -20% for them to hit you. Those are two separate percentages. They cannot be added together to make the numbers seem more impressive. And that's beside the point that bullshit bonuses are, in fact, bullshit, and them being so important in 4E is a major designflaw

I will admit that 4E had a number of fairly good ideas that were implemented poorly. But "Hey let's make it important to need to grab every single little boost in battle" is not a good idea. It is a bad one. Plain and simple.

Agreed.

The word "bonus" implies something EXTRA...if you absolutely need the bonus to succeed, then it's not really a "bonus" at all, in my opinion.

I like 4E's idea of modular monster building, where their numbers are a simple BASE VALUE + LEVEL BONUS. The problem, is that monsters scale faster than players, so that characters actually lose efficacy over the course of their careers if they don't take the right feat taxes, have a high enough starting score, AND get the magic items that they require at the right levels.

One of the biggest problems with 4E's mathematical balance is that it leaves no room at all for deviation, which discourages things like playing against stereotypes.

Another is that the system is balanced from a baseline of exceptional characters, rather than average ones. This, of course, was a problem that many iterations of the game had, but it's one more in a long list that 4E failed to fix in any meaningful way. However, I'm of the opinion that fighting efficacy should be completely removed from ability scores altogether.

hey shut up idiots

verbannon while probably a troll does raise a valid point in that 3e fighters suck and that 4e tried to make them more defender-y which it did (albeit poorly). the difference between 3e and 4e is that while the 3e fighter could attempt to trip the mechanics were a fucktitty. combining a push 1 mechanic that synergizes with an attack of opportunity that can stop an opponent's movement is not a bad idea buuuut 4e still did it halfass

Indeed, we're looking at the one part of 4e that worked in some sense, "the fighter can defend better than before".

This is the wrong thread for that, unless there's something in the previous page that says the 4e fighter is uniformly worse than the 3e fighter.

Isn't there a thread of "what 4e does right?"...this goes there. At best.

Doom wrote:Indeed, we're looking at the one part of 4e that worked in some sense, "the fighter can defend better than before".

This is the wrong thread for that, unless there's something in the previous page that says the 4e fighter is uniformly worse than the 3e fighter.

Isn't there a thread of "what 4e does right?"...this goes there. At best.

Soooo...this is supposed to be an echo chamber of non-dissenting opinions?

I was under the impression that when people made points in a discussion forum, that those points were subject to debate.

Well, in theroy yes, but just about nobody around here likes 4e, so there's that.

Novembermike wrote:The 3.x fighter needs to make an unarmed attack (provoking attacks of opportunity) and is at a serious disadvantage unless you have specifically built the character to be a trip monster. A 4E fighter has to commit far fewer resources to doing this than a 3.X trip fighter.

No? There are multiple weapons that can trip in the PHB, and tripping with weapons provokes no AoO nor does it require special feats to do. In fact if you're tripping without a weapon you're probably doing it wrong.

Tripping is also only really ineffective against things that are substantially larger than you, or absurdly stronger or more dexterous than you. For the investment of 1 feat you gain a decent bonus and damage on successful trips. The majority of other ways you're going to improve your trips are from increasing your strength or size, both of which also improve your overall combat ability.

darkmaster wrote:Well, in theroy yes, but just about nobody around here likes 4e, so there's that.

People here don't really like ANY game, I've noticed. Or at least they're hyper-critical of pretty much all games.

This isn't a bad thing, mind. The discussions on this board are focused on design theory and mechanics, so criticism of games is an important tool toward that end. But they still take a giant, wet crap on just about everything.

I don't really have a horse in the 4E vs. Pathfinder race, as I don't really like 4E and I flat out hated 3rd edition...but it seems to me that a lot of people defected to Paizo because they were butt hurt at 4E's mere existence. I get the sense that people on this board actually wanted 4E to be better, and feel cheated that it wasn't.

Previn wrote: No? There are multiple weapons that can trip in the PHB, and tripping with weapons provokes no AoO nor does it require special feats to do. In fact if you're tripping without a weapon you're probably doing it wrong.

Tripping is also only really ineffective against things that are substantially larger than you, or absurdly stronger or more dexterous than you. For the investment of 1 feat you gain a decent bonus and damage on successful trips. The majority of other ways you're going to improve your trips are from increasing your strength or size, both of which also improve your overall combat ability.

3rd edition's solution isn't very intuitive, though. These combat tricks require specialization and a pretty good investment of "character build" currency such as feats just to not be terrible at it. And even then, polearm tripping is your one schtick and winds up being inferior in almost every way to the tried and true "stand and full attack". Essentially, it requires a lot of rules navigation in order to learn how to pull off what eventually becomes a trap option, anyway.

4E at least made an attempt to spice up the fighters repertoire with a minimum of investment, even though the attempt fell short in many ways.

Soooo...this is supposed to be an echo chamber of non-dissenting opinions?

you must be unfamiliar with how nerds work

I was under the impression that when people made points in a discussion forum, that those points were subject to debate.

you're just going to get a bunch of intellectually dishonest ranting and raving about how 4e sucks because well we're nerds

Psychic Robot wrote:

Soooo...this is supposed to be an echo chamber of non-dissenting opinions?

you must be unfamiliar with how nerds work

I do know how they work...they never pass up a good argument. Especially about esoteric, trivial bullshit.

JDSorenson wrote:3rd edition's solution isn't very intuitive, though. These combat tricks require specialization and a pretty good investment of "character build" currency such as feats just to not be terrible at it. And even then, polearm tripping is your one schtick and winds up being inferior in almost every way to the tried and true "stand and full attack". Essentially, it requires a lot of rules navigation in order to learn how to pull off what eventually becomes a trap option, anyway.

3rd edition is really simple fro tripping. It's basically opposed str checks with size modifiers. That's both pretty simple, and relatively intuitive.

It takes NO actual resources to maintain a roughly 50/50 chance to trip things that aren't much larger than you, or have a strength or dex score that is much, much higher than yours.

Besides the expenditure of 1 SINGLE FEAT, EVERYTHING you do to increase your ability to trip directly increase your ability to do damage, because the 2 ways after you get Improved Trip with a weapon is by increasing your strength score, or increasing your size. Resource wise it's a non-issue.

Additionally you should still be full attacking even if tripping is your stick because you should be using combat reflexes and AoOs for the actual trips, probably with a spiked chain, guisarme or halberd.

Basically you seem to know exactly nothing about how tripping works in 3.x or why it's suboptimal to actual do it.

I think people are personally offended by 4e simply because WotC posted design documents detailing their thought processes and the reasoning behind creative decisions.

Those documents are evidence of fundamental incompetence by designers. It literally felt like they were not only not listening to the desires or needs of the fans, but they actually were mocking us. Hubris and gross incompetence is a recipe for disaster.

Now, often fans want impossible things and no one thinks every design must be perfect or perfectly suited to everyone.... but there is no excuse for putting nipples on the Batsuit because absolutely none of the fans appreciate it and anyone with any goddamn sense in their head should know that.

Previn wrote: 3rd edition is really simple fro tripping. It's basically opposed str checks with size modifiers. That's both pretty simple, and relatively intuitive.

It takes NO actual resources to maintain a roughly 50/50 chance to trip things that aren't much larger than you, or have a strength or dex score that is much, much higher than yours.

Besides the expenditure of 1 SINGLE FEAT, EVERYTHING you do to increase your ability to trip directly increase your ability to do damage, because the 2 ways after you get Improved Trip with a weapon is by increasing your strength score, or increasing your size. Resource wise it's a non-issue.

Additionally you should still be full attacking even if tripping is your stick because you should be using combat reflexes and AoOs for the actual trips, probably with a spiked chain, guisarme or halberd.

Basically you seem to know exactly nothing about how tripping works in 3.x or why it's suboptimal to actual do it.

I have a vague recollection of how it works. As I stated before, I can't stand 3rd edition and I'm not particularly fond of 4th.

The problem is that the examples that you're citing are all buried within 3.x rules esoteria. The rules for tripping aren't ALL in one place, the books don't actually come out and SAY that trip attacks are for AoO's and the like. They don't actually tell you that you're not very likely to be fighting monsters of comparable size and Attributes past 10th level or so. They don't tell you that enemies are pretty much immune to this kind of crap at higher levels, do to alternate forms of movement like flight and teleportation.

The steps for tripping in 4E are a simple attack vs. static REFLEX defense. And that's without a power that's specialized for it. There are no size penalties or bonuses...just a straight restriction on tripping anything larger than you by 2 size categories.

I'll can discuss the failures of 4E all day long with you, but please do not pretend that the design of 3rd edition did anything to encourage this sort of stunt maneuver, or that it was easy, intuitive, or worthwhile.

Flying grapplers work pretty well. Pick up enemy, damage enemy and then drop enemy. Enemy lands prone and then you repeat when they try and stand up again.

Or just flying above something and then powerful blow/dungeoncrashing it into the ground repeatedly. Not great, but pretty funny the first couple of times you pull it off.

Those kind of tactics are not supported in 4e, with real flight being an out of combat ability. Ubercharging mounts, bloodstorm dervishes and soul eating flurry specialists were also culled by 4e's 'melee empowerment.'

Kind of a pity...I could have put the money I spent on 4e toward importing the ME collectors edition.

"people here don't understand tactics...?"

Jesus H. Christ, man. You really haven't seen some of the stuff which appears here.

No, really.

4e's a great game to play when you have some friends over and stuff. It's like Wii Sports or something--it's simple enough most people can jump into it, but mainly you're having a good time with the friends.

Yes, it tightened up the power gap.

However, it did it by making everyone do the same damn thing.

That's really the entirety of my problem with 4e. Combat takes too long, it's too much the same shit.

If you littered fighting areas with hazards and had a sort of Destructo-Scenery rule, all the pushing people back X squares would at least be enough to keep me paying attention to the game, because then I could knock an enemy into a statue which would fall over and crush them, or pitch someone into scaffolding or off a roof, Assassin's Creed style. It'd be acceptable in a low-magic and low-powered sort of game or setting. 4e would earn a lot of credit from me if it tried to present itself for that--and for including functional destructo-scenery rules.

But instead, I'm presented with the books (and players) going "THIS IS TRULY EPIC AND AWESOME."

Bullshit.



edit: Keep finding awkward sentence and junk. Straightening them out.

Maxus, you, sir, win the internet.

Saying they are all the same thing is like saying a queen is the same as a knight.

It looks like you are saying 3.5 combat is better then 4e because with the right spells you can unleash a level a sheer random chaos you would think you are playing paranoia.

Mechanics are not the only thing relevant matter in determining variety, but thats all you mean when you say "They are all the same, and thats its biggest problem". In my opinion the most important factor is its tactical variety. A Bishop and a castle may seem to be as similar to one another as two peas in a pod, but in play they become two very different animals.

And 4e does have a complexity far exceeding chess. Though chess makes for a good analogy.

A good analogy for post level 5 3.5 isn't chess, its more like a game of fairy checkers playing triple stack with kings start rules. Though a quarter of the pieces will have to be single to represent basic melee like fighters and Barbarians.

I have only played over the internet games with perfect strangers, and I honestly prefer 4e more then 3.5, with 4e you can just enjoy the game, with 3.5 unless you find the jokes made at the occasional absurdities amusing and share in a laugh when the rogue crits his crit on his sneak attack instant killing the big boss. You aren't going to have fun.

I play for four things

1. Cinematic combat.
2. Tactical combat.
3. A thought provoking story.
4. To develop my character.

I don't play to have a good laugh.

4e can deliver on all four, 3.5 can deliver on two, though one is often undermined by the absurdities and limitations of the system.

As for a direct response to your images, 4e is like shoot-em up, 3.5 is like crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

And I don't know about you, but in the games I've played 4e fights went far faster then 3.5. 30-45 minutes for 4e, and around 40-50 minutes for 3.5.

Fights much shorter for both when rather then full encounters, there is just a series of quick fights against 2-3 foes. Always really slow with the first 2-3 levels with both of them though, more so for 4e.

Now that I think of it, your post's wording "Pushing enemies into stuff" Makes me think you don't have a high opinion of a battle of maneuvers.