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If you guys run some D&D, I want to actually get a game in sometime.

The OOT group fell apart due to the "dubious reliability of the gays". Belkira even tried to appease them with tentacle rape, demon rape, and leather outfits, etc. but it did not work.

The worst part is I'm not joking.

Basically 4e is the WoWified version of D&D, it takes some classes that were more RP powerful (Rangers, rogues, bards) and makes them more combat powerful, everyone is more RP powerful because of the reclassifications to skills (the only positive change imo in 4e) which grouped certain skills together to make it easier to assign points and get what you want as well as simplifying several of the "what the heck am I making this check against?" scenarios. Combat is crappy imo, everyone is like a mage spewing 3d6 fireballs but oh wait when the ranger does it it's just a volley of arrows. Combat is about spamming abilities, some at will, some X times/combat others Y times/Day, everyone can heal them selves because face it no one ever wanted to play the Cleric in 3.5 so WotC in classic fashion shot the class in the balls and took away their prime reason for existing. As for "balance" in 4e, it's better than homebrew 3.5, but that is like saying your shoe tastes better before you stepped in that pile of dog ****, in classic WotC fashion every new book in 4e power creeps almost as much as every new edition of a certain card game they make. In 4e if you want to be the biggest baddest ************* you can be you are consigned to spend money on a new book Wizards releases every few months because the power creep is stupidly bad. I like the fact that 4e standardized creation of challenge based encounters, which promotes more skill usage and makes it easier for a DM to create and assign awards for skill challenges. As for RP in 4e, sure skills may be simplified but evil organizations be damned you can't be lawful and organized in 4e because the alignments got changed because people were all like but the laws are good, and don't realize that Lawful wasn't regional or kingdom laws but rather your prefence for order, planning and set system of ideals and goals, whether they be "Killing is bad" or "Burn orphanages if they don't pay you for `insurance`". From an RP standpoint this was a bad move on Wizards' part and is one of my least favourite changes in the 4e system.

tl;dr

4e:

good:
-simplification of skill based challenge creation and standardization for EXP and fiscal rewards
-Reclassification of skills to allow for more versatility in character progression
-some minor combat/magic rolling simplifications

Bad:
-Game balance is subject to the same rapid power creep shown in everything Wizards of the Coast has done in the last 10 years
-Combat is far to ability spam, special abilities aren't nearly as special if you can do them all the time
-Healing, not everyone should be able to heal themselves for dozens of hit points several times a day. This removes incentive to have a properly balanced party with an actual healer.
-over simplification of allignment categories to benefit the people that were to stupid or lazy to try to understand the L/N/C G/N/E grid.


Pathfinder>3.5>Munckin>Yahtzee>4e

I would say exalted is better than 4e but worse than 3.5 just cus characters are all so lulzy powerful.

That brings the scale to

Pathfinder>3.5>Maid RPG>Exalted>Munchkin>Yahtzee>4e

Edited, Feb 7th 2011 6:24pm by Manosuke

I don't know enough about 4e to comment on anything else, but:

It seems to me like Alignment is something the DM, not necessarily other players, has to know in order to determine how events and encounters play out.

In essence, your players were all able to act however they wanted, correct? Would this not make it harder to predict?
I guess this wouldn't be such a bad thing if the DM has a knack for improvisation, but it just seems to make things needlessly random.

I dunno, maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Edit: Also, I always understood the alignment system to be a broad generalization, not very specific in nature.

Edited, Feb 7th 2011 7:06pm by Kirby

Depends on the GM I think.

Then again, I think a lot of this stuff depends on the GM. They really make or break the experience, and I am very thankful that both the GM in my last campaign and the GM in my current campaign put effort into their campaigns and give the players fairly free reign to do what they want, and often have several scenarios prepared.

There's nothing stopping you from doing the same thing in 3.5, and I don't see you as having a problem with the alignment system itself.

It's basically what your character's tendencies boil down to, which might be easier for the DM to deal with on a regular basis. I'm not sure.

Assuming makes an *** of you not me. I have played 4e up to level 15 in a fairly long campaign and another campaign to 12, not once did anyone in either campaign play a healer. Why? Simple it wasn't needed you could easily get by on surges or random personal abilities, basically you get X free Potions Cure Light Wounds a day without the having to use a potion. Used all your Surges? Party barricades themselves in a room and 8 hours later you have more free potions(read: Surges) (and your daily use abilities back). I have seen it, I know it happens, I partook in the idiocy for long enough to realize that while there were a few positive changes 4e was largely a step in the wrong direction. Pathfinder is what 4e should have been.



Obviously it means that a character is more powerful for roleplayed encounters. A rogue for instance gets the ability to pick locks, disable traps, place traps, and many other things far better than most characters, a Bard gets oh so many abilities and class skills that make it ridiculously useful for diplomacy, bluffing, providing distractions and the like. Barbarian while it is one of the more powerful fighter combat classes gets something like 8 class skills not many of which are useful for roleplaying encounters.



Then you are doing it wrong, a fighter can have so much versatility in combat but most people tend to make the cookie cutter high STR, high CON fighter that uses a ******* sword two handed for the 1.5 times STR bonus etc. Kirby had a cool fighter he was gonna make that specialized in oponent positioning, control, disarmament as well as being really good at mounted combat. Be creative, like you seem to be telling me to do.



If you are talking actual D&D 3.5 SRD with no variant rules, it is incredibly balanced with one or two minor hiccups. The unbalance becomes an issue with non-SRD variant rules, which is why when I DM I reserve the right to limit what people can take from non-SRD books.



I am gonna ignore the fact you just told me to steal copyrighted materials, and the fact that you told me to play a game with only half the official rules.



Alignments give a starting point for basing you characters actions, this will shift and change as your character grows and develops. That said, I also have people fill out a questionaire on their characters with background history, beliefs and the like so that when Character Y says I am gonna stab Character Z for being an elf, and they said in their background that they hate elves because of some traumatic event and want them all dead, I will let them, otherwise I will tell them **** off and stop being so lolRandom. Also because the whole 4e alignment grid was generally regarded as a bad change we did alter our 4e campaign to use the original grid from before lol4e



My perceptions of 4e are wrong in the same sense that 1+1=2 is wrong, that is you take the values out of context and add 1.3 and 1.3 to get 2.6 which technically equals three.

A decent monk build can rape a wizards face off, just saying. Spell Casters are particularly potent in 3.5 but they are also glass cannons, one hit and they get shattered. Sure you may have super powerful abilities but if you are rerolling your character all the time or getting resurrected/reincarnated all the time, you either won't be able to play the game much or will be practically useless with your permanent stat loss on dying. Also there are oh so many ways to @#%^ with a magic user (although it could be applied to any RPG system) wild magic/dead magic zones are particularly fun.



That or we managed hate well with several tank jobs (with abilities that provoke a mob into attacking it), most mobs that are a danger occur in small enough numbers that bouncing hate when one person is close to death would allow us to keep everyone alive, if just barely. Our DM actively tried to kill us several times, we built our characters to complement one another, and did a very good job of it. That said we did still reroll a few characters along the way. The issue with combat in 4e is the mob set ups, in addition to the random abilities everyone can spam, I forget the names for the tiers of enemies but the lowest (and most common) are always one shottable which with multiple people with AOEs get cleared out fast, the second tier can typically take 2-5 hits before dying while still posing little threat to a party and usually occur in a ratio of less than 1:4 with the first tier mobs, the top tier being the actually challenging enemies that pose a threat if you can control who/what they attack it is fairly easy for a party of 4-5 people to kill off the little things letting the big bad evil guy (BBEG) beat on your best meat shield for 3-4 rounds then trade off. In 3.5 everything posed atleast somewhat of a threat and even a mid tier enemy could drop a mage in one hit if they land a critical.



Not illegal, Supreme Court Ruling in Canada, the work is largely available in another country before it is licensed and released on the market here... some other legal mumbo jumbo that makes it so as long as I am not uploading it (downloading is still exempt after localized release) after a company in North America has a copyright claim and a localized product I can do what ever. Downloading a book that is largely available for resale in Canada however, not such a fly move according the the SCoC.



Opinion, thus this isn't really a valid argument for/against anything and given the general attitude towards 4e by the D&D community at large, the more valid statement would be for you to say, "I prefer to play 4e and find it to be more fun, however a majority of people still prefer 3.5e or Pathfinder (which is essentially 3.75 and largely regarded by a lot of people as `What 4e should have been.`"



Can't just use special abilities at whim, sure he can attempt a trip, disarm etc. (but then so can anyone) but most of his combat feats would be triggered by specific events, while yes he could in theory "use" those feats effects relatively often it isn't at his discretion to just say I am gonna use X feat now.



I never said they didn't, also I am not sure that a Wizards/Sorcerers spells per day would really be spammable, given that anything that is useful in combat at your level would be roughly in the last two tiers of spells you gained access to, and they quickly reach the multiple rounds of casting time fairly quickly. Anything lower than that is best reserved for situational spells like Knock, Identify, Mage Hand... simply because spell resistance gets to be significant fairly quickly. Mages also paid far heavier a price for those abilities in 3.5, 4e mages are much more survivable than a 3.5 mage which are more easily one shotted.



FTFY



Most of the jobs in 4e can manage most of what I described as opposed to actually having to plan a build a character to do it.


Don't get me wrong, 4e is fun to play, I personally just find it less fun that 3.5, as do a lot of people. The 4e standard rules are more limiting to play style, and tend to allow for less individual specialization. Everyone has so many useful combat abilities that all the tweaking to find the perfect progression for your character so you can be the biggest hitter, or the best bluffer, liar, diplomat, thief, or the has a contingency for everything Wizard, the Shapeshifter Druid, the Support Druid, the epic animal companion druid(i swear to god Imma get a wyvern), the crit hit scimitar fighter/dervish serves little purpose because you will still be just as good as everyone else at combat. Specialization like this is far less rewarding in 4e. 3.5 allows a greater degree of variance in play style, specialization and freedom without using custom or variant rules, sure I may not be very good at combat on my Bard right now, but the party takes me along because I speak and read 9 languages I have Bardic Knowledge, and Bardic Music abilities that help them do better in combat, I fill a unique niche in the party. I found there was far less of that in 4e everyone was useful in combat which may help people get through the times when they are not particularly useful to their party which is definitely an issue for one person in our campaign with ADD but you can tell that makes the times when he is the only person in the party capable of accomplishing something all the more rewarding to him (as a DM timing these occurences to keep all your players interested and active is the hardest challenge). There are also several things missing from the base skills you can take in 4e compared with 3.5 (and it only improves in pathfinder which like 4e grouped some skills into one and simplified and standardized the x vs. y skill determinants). I would have to go through the 4e books again to find exactly what but I know we ended up adding several skills and such into our campaign because 4e didn't have them and didn't allow room for us to accomplish certain goals with the existing skill set.

You prefer 4e, where everyone gets to be their own special carbon copy snow flake cut out. Sure there is some variance depending who cut it out and what scissors they used, but essentially it all comes out to roughly the same pattern. Some of the abilities may vary one might be a ranger and be able to shoot arrows in AOEs or for spike damage, one may be able to provoke mobs and threaten them into attacking them to draw fire away from others, but roughly each is of similar usefulness, ability and damage output. I prefer 3.5 where the snowflake cut out is a blank peice of paper but everyone gets the same scissors. I may cut out a snowflake that can't fight, but could talk a dragon out of it's hoard, or is so good at hiding it can hide in their pursuants shadow without being seen. Or I may cut out a snow flake that is good at holding up the other snowflakes and pushing the other snowflakes to new heights by Inspiring Courage, Heroism, or Competence or save them from a sticky situation by charming a crowd with my songs. I may make a magical snow flake capable of spewing out fiery death and dealing mass amounts of damage, but that magical snowflake is incredibly fragile, and in need of protection. I could cut out so many more snow flakes, but I am sure you get the point.

Edited, Feb 7th 2011 10:40pm by Manosuke

I'm going to leave that reply there, but I think I'm pretty much said all I feel like saying. I'm sorry if I annoyed or frustrated you Manosuke.

I vote that instead you and I find some kind of random topic to chat about all night to alleviate my boredom.

So I tried Salmon, Tofu, and Lentils for the first time recently. I had a small health food kick.

The salmon turned out quite well. I think that was largely because I got lucky with the supplier. It was wild salmon, and a good price for wild salmon. It was also flash frozen which can be fresher than "raw" chilled salmon. It was also precut and each steak was individually packaged which made it very easy to handle. I ended up broiling it in the oven with a a very simple brown sugar, salt, pepper, and lemon zest glaze. It was good, but I think that had to do more with the salmon than the glaze I made. Simple, cheap, quick, would eat again.

Lentils are interesting. They're a type of legume and smell and taste much like lima beams. Sprouted lentils contain a complete set of plant proteins, but most lentins are missing a few like most protein rich plants, and so you have to mix them with something else. You also have to thoroughly cook them before eating, because apparently raw lentils contain "antinutrients" which are bad for you. I tossed some boiled lentils into a chili dish and probably got more protein than more body knew what to do with. Their taste alone isn't too great, but you can hide it easily or find a way to work with it.

Tofu was as expected. I tried a variety of method of eating it. I fried it, I toasted it, I grilled it, and I had it raw. I also tried it with a few different toppings, from a vegetable garnish of onions and garlic, plain, with some soy sauce, and a strawberry preserves topping. Soy sauce and fried as well as strawberries on top of raw tofu both tasted fairly good. Would eat again.

I'd like to try some good tofu. I've had some a couple Japanese restaurants, but I'm not fond of the consistency or flavor.

A room mate is thinking of making some tofu stir-fry some time, maybe I'll try that.

Try giving it a coating of coconut milk and "breading" it with crushed macadamia nuts. Or make a coconut milk and fresh pineapple sauce/topping for it. Both of those are tasty.

Lentils go excellent with bacon(and you don't have to use too much to make them awesome). Good Eats did an entire show on lentils, and those recipes are pretty tasty.

Also, just toss em in soups. They'll absorb the flavors of the broths and become quite tasty.

Not a big fan of tofu, myself. It's good in miso soup, but otherwise, I tend to avoid it.