The Glade 4.0

So, I'm running a 3.5 campaign right now, and with a couple players running around Spain at the moment, one of my other players started a little 4e thing to see what it was like. These are my thoughts so far -

1) Lots of homogenization. Everyone is more or less equally effective in combat.

2) MMO-esque. You have roles that are clearly defined. I feel constrained by this.

3) Encounter/At Will/Daily powers. When I look at the Wizard, I dearly dearly lament the loss of such a cool and varied spell list to choose from. I have to take these specific powers, and there's not a lot of variety to be found. I can't change my spells out to suit my needs on a given adventure. There's not fun of the researcher. As a fighter, I feel like I did playing a jedi in Saga, which I kind of liked. but there were more power choices in Saga.

4) Two weapon fighting is probably the most realistic in terms of what it can do, but I miss the ability to attack twice in one round. In the end, it's a wash.


I feel locked in by the generation system. I have a role that I pick, a class that fills it, but I don't feel like my class is necessarily all that distinct. I dunno. What do you folks think? Is pathfinder the answer? I feel like I want to play a D&D game based on the Saga rules set.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

I haven't looked much at Pathfinder, but my brother tells me it looks a lot like fourth edition.

I've played it a few times, and it's fun, but it's not D&D. It was a backdoor for Mike Mearls to get his own game published.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Thoughts? 4e blows. If you like Saga though you might like it, although I love Saga and hate 4e.

Pathfinder is basically 3.5 "Revised."

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Supplement books expand the limited choices a lot. Utility powers and ritual casting are meant to pick up the more generalized applications of magic, while skill challenges pick up similar general-purpose mundane exploits.

4th edition is, in that way, a lot more freeing, if your DM can handle it.

I think my favorite way to explain this is something I'll steal from an anonymous commenter on the internet. In a game system, every rule is a way to explain what you can't do.

In this way, 4th edition has a lot fewer rules than 3.x or Pathfinder. Instead, it has much broader outlines that your DM can (and should) allow you to fill in.

In addition, as far as roles go -- that's true to a degree. Each class is a slightly different mix of roles, mechanically, so something should appeal, I would think, particularly as you look into PHB2 and PHB3. Maybe the specific flavor of a class doesn't really excite you even though the mechanics are what you're looking for; that's what working with DMs is for. Flavor can be reskinned, especially when the powers are as "homogenized" (as you put it) and modular as they are. Sometimes, it can even be as simple as replacing a power source to get the fit you feel comfortable with.

I've heard a lot of criticism that 4th edition is too "gamey" or pulls the focus away from the RP. I don't buy it; you just don't need rules to RP. You get as much RP out of 4th edition as you put in, outside of combat, and in combat, 4th edition can be very good at structuring a very neat, cinematic feel when you get your group into the flow of 4th edition.

That said, I won't argue that it's a game system for everybody, both as far as playing and running games. I love the system, for instance, yet I feel I was a mediocre DM for my group for it, at best, as my qualities as a DM just don't align with the strengths of the system.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

It felt like a mix of a Superhero rpg and D&D. I mean really, split the tree?

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Raell Kromwell

Taking any combat action in 4e feels like one is pushing a button...in fact, I suspect it will be very good for video game makers who want to license D&D's rulesets. (Far better than 3e was for that purpose.)

3e, by contrast, was pretty open with regard to what you could do: if you could imagine it, you could find a way to do it -- for magic using types, anyway. Finding creative and unconventional ways to apply spells and abilities was a game in and of itself. Melee combat rather limited your choices by comparison, which was a major complaint for a lot of people. I'd say the polar opposite of 4e is White Wolf -- where you can attempt anything you can describe.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I like White Wolf, but feel that 4e should be nuked from Orbit, as it is the only way to be sure...

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I haven't had a chance to try 4e yet (and I want to at least once just to give it a fair shake) but this is exactly the impression I get from reading the rules of what it's like.

I haven't played in Pathfinder, but just looking it over makes me think it has a lot of good ideas. I think the real answer is a) 3.5 b) houserule it liberally and c) don't let anyone be a douchebag with theoretical "I win" button abilities.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Have you considered running a saga pbp at all?

I think Taly may have cornered the source of my discomfort a bit in the whole button-pushing analogy.

In this game, I am playing a War Priest. It's kind of fun to be a melee viable healer type. Only, the healing seems kind of bizarre. I let other people heal themselves. And I do it by smacking enemies about.

In a way, that really helps deal with the biggest complaints from clerics (bah, healbot sux). However, I don't feel like I have the big rescue heal. Then again, I never really needed it in combat so far.

I *love* that minions have 1hp and do a set amount of damage. Brilliant. I *love* that the stronger enemies have a lot more HP. We ran through the first section of the publicly available module and fought the uber goblin at the end. He had 105 hp. which means we didn't just drop him with concerted effort.

So, there are things that work out, but it still doesn't feel right. Much like an MMO, I feel like I'm always going to feel just strong enough to succeed, and not so much heroic.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

I like 4E

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This is on my list of things that are stupid about 4e.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

There's nothing super wrong with the system, really. Sure, there is basically 4 classes(striker, leader, defender and controller, what you actually call yourself doesn't matter because those four roles are basically the same across class) but they totally gutted the heart and soul of the fluff. They've basically destroyed one of the most lore rich settings. Sure, you don't have to play with the new fluff, but you're never going to get anything new out of the Forgotten Realms if you refused to have anything to do with the 4e conversion. That is where my problems with 4e come from. I hate them for doing it.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Again, entirely dependent on the DM. There's nothing preventing the DM from throwing no-win scenarios at you, or encounters that are underlevelled for your group.

I'd actually contend that it's far more likely you get this impression because 4e is so much more finely tuned that you don't get wild fluctuations in "real" overall encounter difficulty when you gauge encounter difficulty with the 4e rules, vs the much less precise 3.x encounter level system.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I should point out that, as I understand it, White Wolf is out of the PnP RPG market.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

There are holy wars over D&D system preference.

I like 4e, for its simplicity. I find it to be elegant instead of dumbed down, and (in my experience, as a DM) I don't have to keep nearly as close an eye on the players' character sheets.

The broad spaces they give you are easy to fill in with the way your group should go to maintain its flow and keep the game moving. You do need to be willing to houserule or modify some things, but it's more along the lines of "X player's class uses power source X", or "does necrotic instead of radiant" in the name of flavor, than "No, you cannot do that multiclass and ability choice because it would render everyone else irrelevant". Our only real problem with it is we have no miniatures and we like our combat observable instead of abstracted.

I find that roles, and the fact that everyone now has things to do that aren't just swinging a weapon for some, tended to make my players pay more attention to how their abilities overlap and synergize instead of "I hit X" for the martial fighters, while the spellcasters do interesting stuff.

It's definitely combat-driven, though. If you're not after a combat-driven game, my advice is go elsewhere.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

This is a rumor that circulates fairly often lately. They've done a number of PDF releases recently, and while I don't follow most of their game lines, they have a print Exalted book that's supposed to come out in August, and there are plans to release several of their PDF-only products in a compendium later this year.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I'd like to thank the contributors of this thread to making me aware of the existance of Pathfinder, which after a brief look over I have decided that I like very much.

I would like to get a happy zone and pretend just for a moment that right under this kaboom is where Hasbro/WoTC was..

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I very much like a lot of the Pathfinder changes. It's a shame it isn't more popular.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Interesting. The head of Mongoose North America frequents my FLGS, which is where I heard it about WW. I don't particularly care, except that at one point I thought about trying some of the WoD systems.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

My group has thought about switching over. The only resistance to this is the guy who plays a druid.

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Raell Kromwell

Makes you wonder if MMOs killed the PnP star.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

That's the root of some of the speculation around White Wolf, as they're working on a World of Darkness MMO. That, combined with the fact that they can't update their website and the brick & mortar stores never have any idea when their products are coming out, leads a lot of gaming stores to think they've gone out of business or that they're dropping their pen & paper lines.

Now, it may be true. Around the time they rebooted their WoD games, they went off the deep end on the pretentious bullshit, and they were recently acquired by some Icelandic company. Although, being bought out by Hasbro hasn't killed D&D yet, despite Hasbro's best efforts.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.