The Gaming Den

King of the Potato Men wrote:Why does everyone bring up the "Gandalf can teleport" fallacy up?

It's not a fallacy, it's a sound logical argument:

p1. Wizards with access to 5th level spells in D&D can teleport
p2. Gandalf is a wizard with access to 5th level spells
c: therefore Gandalf teleport.

Socratic Syllogism for the win*

You are attacking premise 2, and I'll admit that such a premise is shaky and unverifiable.

However, my example was in the context of a DM deciding to run a game like LotR, so I can modify it to

p1. Wizards with access to 5th level spells in D&D can teleport
p2: Some DMs think Gandalf has access to 5th level spells.
c therefore some Gandalf-like characters in LotR-emulation games can teleport

And my larger point was that such limits the type of games which can be run and can lead to bad gaming experiences.

Roy wrote:
the only reason you don't automatically fail at life is because the enemies can't either.

Wait what?

You don't automatically fail because the enemies can't fail either?

If the enemies can't fail, that means they win
And if your enemies win, that means you lose
And if you lose, that tends to mean you automatically fail.

You're seriously saying "4e sucks because <nonsensical paradox> here."

So in rebuttal, let me present some equally valid reasons why 4e outright rocks.

Or are you just trying to trip me up with the semantics that make you count as your own enemy in 4e? That would at least be funny.

Frank wrote: And while I will grant that the first two are choices (even if they are boring choices in 4e), the last one is just the option to get a stacking bonus you need to stay on the RNG or to slip a little bit behind the RNG. That's not a choice at all.

Er, how many stacking bonus feats that effect RNG-type rolls are there in 4e?

I know all of three that add to attack rolls.

And while there are a large number that add to defenses (Armor and Shield Proficiency / Specialization, Lightning Reflexes et al, Paragon Defenses, Knowledge Domain) the various prerequisites and keywords do serve to keep any given character from being able to take more than a handful that will stack. Unless someone wants to post a worst-case here, I'm pretty sure everyone stays on the RNG, and being a couple points behind while still on the RNG in return for other benefits (like healing an extra 15/round) is totally choice. Totally. Like to the max. Dude. Far-out.

Frank wrote: So no. I don't think that anyone is out of line arguing that it is easy to make a fail character on accident and that you don't have meaningful choices every level.

I still think there's a bunch of irrational 4e hate groupthink going on in the Den

And I still think that asking me to defend 4e by arguing against both P and ¬P is dirty pool.

It's not like there aren't plenty of completely rational things to hate about 4e


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*And by "win" I mean the continued successful direction change in this thread and wholesale ignoration of the original post. I knew an edition war would do it! You guys are getting too predictable - but everyone is a winner in this thread. Thanks and great job all!
Sorry I have to get back to real life and can't keep going here, but feel free to carry the torch

Josh wrote:And I still think that asking me to defend 4e by arguing against both P and ¬P is dirty pool.

How is that asking you to defend against P and ¬P? You're the one who is trying to force a false dichotomy to get us to admit that a shitty subsystem has good parts. The argument is simple:

• Not all of your levels give choices that are meaningful.
• Your options are boring as fuck.
• It is entirely possible to make a character whose contribution means fuck all.

So for claim #1: That Utility Spell the Wizard learns that is going to be Spiderweb Tomed into an extra Web every day? It doesn't make any difference what that spell actually is. The Wizard could just write "Your Mother" on his character sheet for that level and the effect would be the same. Therefore there is at least one level where the character gains no meaningful choices. Therefore the claim that all levels provide a meaningful choice is effectively refuted and point #1 stands.

As for claim #2:

Encounter • Divine , Implement , Radiant
Standard Action Area burst 1 within 5 squares
Target : Each enemy in burst
Attack : Wisdom vs . Will
Hit : 1d8 + Wisdom modifier radiant damage , and each ally in the burst gains a +2 power bonus to AC until the end of your next turn.

Point #2 stands.

As for Claim #3: Starlocks. Point #3 stands.

-Username17

Roy wrote: Point 1: The Fighter is not 'easy' to teach. At least not if you want Eric making a viable character. If you do it's harder than the Wizard, where you can just say 'Hey Eric, Evocation sucks as a spell school, do something else ok?'

I assume you're talking core fighter and not Tome fighter here.

That being said, the fighter is real easy to teach. He's hard to build, but not particularly difficult to play at all. The thing is that in 3.5, you tended to just overspecialize in one thing, and you had one super move. Whether that's ubercharge or being a chain tripper or whatever, it doesn't matter. The point is that there's one thing your character does really really well, the thing that you burned all your feats on, and the tactics are as simply as "do that thing as often as possible."

It's slightly more tactical than 2E combat where you just repeated "I attack" because some of your maneuvers won't work in certain situations, but it's not all that difficult for even a beginning player to figure out.

In 3e, I can choose to build a fighter who relies on Int, and make it work.

Is this the fighter class, or is a weird combination of multiclassing, or is it a warblade?

Psychic Robot wrote:

In 3e, I can choose to build a fighter who relies on Int, and make it work.

Is this the fighter class, or is a weird combination of multiclassing, or is it a warblade?

If you are quoting JE, it involves a Tome Fighter who uses a feat he made up that at level 1 gives you Int to Attack and Damage in place of Str.

I assume at level 6 it gives you +40 to Int for no reason or something. I have no idea, but it gives you Int to attack and damage, so you are really just building a Str fighter who has more skill points.

That's not really 3e, then. That's "in my campaign in which I created a homebrew feat that works in conjunction with a custom class, both of which happen to work with the 3e system."

Psychic Robot wrote:That's not really 3e, then. That's "in my campaign in which I created a homebrew feat that works in conjunction with a custom class, both of which happen to work with the 3e system."

I agree. That hasn't stopped JE from claiming that Tome + Gaming Den Community Feats is really 3.5 yet though.

Josh_Kablack wrote:

King of the Potato Men wrote:Why does everyone bring up the "Gandalf can teleport" fallacy up?

It's not a fallacy, it's a sound logical argument:

p1. Wizards with access to 5th level spells in D&D can teleport
p2. Gandalf is a wizard with access to 5th level spells
c: therefore Gandalf teleport.

Socratic Syllogism for the win*

But every DM worth his salt that want to play in Middle Earth as first thing should have to put down limits like "there are not teleport spells in middle earth" or Fly spells, or a number of other things.

Pretending to play in a specific setting while keeping using all the material present in D&D, even limited to the core, it is just stupid.

Exactly as would be stupid playing a Dark Sun game keeping Create Water & C. unchanged, just to use a more D&D related example.

So Gandalf don't teleport, because there is no teleport.

P.S. personally if I had to stat Gandalf in 3.x I'd make him a bard, but that is an another thread

I'd do as suggested and make Gandalf an outsider (since that's what he was), probably some custom job where all his supernatural stuff was spell-like abilities.

clikml wrote:I'd do as suggested and make Gandalf an outsider (since that's what he was), probably some custom job where all his supernatural stuff was spell-like abilities.

So, conduit, then.

IGTN wrote:

clikml wrote:I'd do as suggested and make Gandalf an outsider (since that's what he was), probably some custom job where all his supernatural stuff was spell-like abilities.

So, conduit, then.

A lot of his abilities also came from his artifact Ring of Fire.

Psychic Robot wrote:That's not really 3e, then. That's "in my campaign in which I created a homebrew feat that works in conjunction with a custom class, both of which happen to work with the 3e system."

Yeah ultimately this is the problem with any of the edition wars that happen here. It pretty much comes down to: 3.5 is "better" because the houserules to improve it are already written down, where as 4E houseruling basically has to start from scratch.

All I can say is speaking from RAW:

At low levels, playing 2E, 3E and 4E were both fun games. If I had to rank them in terms of fun factor. I'd probably say 4E> 3E> 2E. And that's for low level play.

In terms of high level play, this is reversed. 3E was rocket launcher brokenation and 4E was the ultimate agonizing grind. There's really nothing good to be said for high level 4E. It's not creative, it plays similar to low levels only everything takes forever, because the math sucks. Nobody ever dies and you hate life. So I'd have to say 2E> 3E> 4E for the high level game.

Of course, my experience with 2E was pre-internet so there was likely a great deal of problems that I didn't run into that I very well could have.

Josh_Kablack wrote:

Roy wrote:
the only reason you don't automatically fail at life is because the enemies can't either.

Wait what?

You don't automatically fail because the enemies can't fail either?

If the enemies can't fail, that means they win
And if your enemies win, that means you lose
And if you lose, that tends to mean you automatically fail.

You're seriously saying "4e sucks because <nonsensical paradox> here.

Fail. Try again, this time following along.

Everyone in 4.Fail is actually like a Monk(1). Which means you get all the pain of teaching them how to be viable, except more and also that you think you have options but you can't do much of anything useful or meaningful, and the only reason you don't automatically fail at life(2) is because the enemies can't either(3).

See how two builds on one, and three references back to one?

The only reason not being able to do anything useful or meaningful does not cause you to automatically fail at life is because the enemies are also stuck in Monk mode and therefore cannot do anything useful or meaningful either. The moment anyone, on any side stops being stuck in Monk mode they automatically win 4.Fail.

This is why 4.Fail breaks over stupid shit like saddling your ass and drawing your bow (Mongols), or stacking penalties to insta gib gods with your level 1 ability (Orbizards) and so forth.

You don't get to have actual options. The game explodes and implodes simultaneously if you do so.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

Roy wrote: Point 1: The Fighter is not 'easy' to teach. At least not if you want Eric making a viable character. If you do it's harder than the Wizard, where you can just say 'Hey Eric, Evocation sucks as a spell school, do something else ok?'

I assume you're talking core fighter and not Tome fighter here.

Tome isn't easy to teach either, since to 'get it' you already need a solid understanding of mechanics. But yes, core.

That being said, the fighter is real easy to teach. He's hard to build, but not particularly difficult to play at all. The thing is that in 3.5, you tended to just overspecialize in one thing, and you had one super move. Whether that's ubercharge or being a chain tripper or whatever, it doesn't matter. The point is that there's one thing your character does really really well, the thing that you burned all your feats on, and the tactics are as simply as "do that thing as often as possible."

It's slightly more tactical than 2E combat where you just repeated "I attack" because some of your maneuvers won't work in certain situations, but it's not all that difficult for even a beginning player to figure out.

So your way of introducing new players to the game is to show them something that might as well not exist 4-6 levels from now? And you think that will make a positive impression on them?

Well, I'm talking [Tome], but, that's what my 3e stuff has become. The entire edition fits into the game, and I'll use [Tome] stuff alongside MM2 3.0 stuff.

Specifically the Soldier class that's come out recently. I've always been a fan of high-int fighters, even back in 2e where it just meant I could come up with good tactics, or explain why I was bringing an army to fight a dragon. It's something that I like to play, and my favorite characters tend to be like that, while overly exuberant characters are not. I guess I want to play a character that has similar advantages that similar characters do in the media that I consume.

Last I checked, Gandalf was a 5th-level Cleric.

Really though, most 4th- or higher level spells that people actually care about rip apart most assumptions about what a D&D setting should be. Heck, even fly and invisibility screw things up a little. If LotR could possibly be rationalized by D&D rules, it would be if they were playing E6.

And the Balor in 3.5 rules definitely does not describe the LotR Balrog to any reasonable degree. The LotR Balrog was like, CR 10 at most. Probably more like 8. And mostly taken care of through DMPC fiat nonsense.

Roy wrote: So your way of introducing new players to the game is to show them something that might as well not exist 4-6 levels from now? And you think that will make a positive impression on them?

Well this is what a core fighter happens to be. I mean there's just no way to get around that.

So if you're teaching them the core fighter, then you're teaching them those basics. The way you stay competitive the longest is just to specialize in one gimmick and spam it. You'll still become obsolete next to a well played wizard, but hopefully if you're dealing with newbie players, the rest of the group isn't all that well versed in playing casters.

Regarding the OP about dnd5(.com)...

The site is mine - I have had the domain for over a year or so. The image there currently was done for fun and was to accompany a 'fake' screenshot I put together. The two combined were done for a thread I posted over at EN World called "5e sooner than we think?" and was done just for fun, much like the last 'fake' D&D thing I put together...

Azeroth the setting for 2011?



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Anyway, I know you guys are not talking about the site, but I thought I would drop in and give some background (I'm making the rounds based on some site referrals)

Not unreasonable really. They did a World of Warcraft d20 and a straight up official Diablo II 3rd edition D&D port. There's no reason for them to not make an Azeroth campaign guide save for niggling over fine print in the license agreement.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Not unreasonable really. They did a World of Warcraft d20 and a straight up official Diablo II 3rd edition D&D port. There's no reason for them to not make an Azeroth campaign guide save for niggling over fine print in the license agreement.

-Username17

The d20 Warcraft game was done through Sword and Sorcery press which is white wolf's printer for d20 products.

I thought that this was an issue of parent companies. Blizzard is owned by Vivendi who is owned by somebody who hates the collective holders of Hasbro.

Also, at this point blizzard has more money than god, they could practically start their own pen and paper roll playing game and use fantasy flight games to distribute it.

Hell considering that slapping "World of Warcraft Offical Merchandice" and granting an in game pet for owning it makes anything worth its weight in fucking gold these days why not.

Buy the pen and paper wow game get a free "20 sided die" in game pet! Just like the wow cardgame now outsells everything but magic, the game would probably debut with 51% market share.

I would actually feel pretty hopeful if Blizzard got into the PnP market.

Can't be worse than the state of affairs right now.

weem wrote:Regarding the OP about dnd5(.com)...

The site is mine
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Anyway, I know you guys are not talking about the site, but I thought I would drop in and give some background (I'm making the rounds based on some site referrals)

Not a problem. I just thought it a bit funny to see. Welcome to the den.

I think that might be a nice campaign setting idea myself.