>>96918299
I mean, it was the best edition of D&D, yeah

>>96918299
I haven't played it, but it feels kind of lame that I need a power to just...describe the way I might normally attack.
>read the stuff
Oh this is a troll thread?
Well from a gameplay (read video game) perspective those all do different things and the choice is actually important, in context.

>>96918299
Why the fuck would anyone ever play a martial in any edition of D&D? Just play a game that isn't a Wizard-Simulator if you want interesting martials.

>>96918299
No, it's because it answered the disparity by incredibly ham-fisted normalization and utterly fucked the non-combat rules. Y'know, the stuff you need to mechanically support an IN-CHARACTER role rather than naked slot-filling that despite its seemingly-frequent technical novelty still reminds far too much of MMO party composition.

>>96918409
Ironically, where the theoretical gap is the worst (3.5), Fighter 20 has its greatest variety with the most whacky bullshit to dig into. Folding feat chains around eachother is a horribly tedious headache, of course, but there IS a lot of interesting mechanical shenanigans available. Because "interesting" mechanics do not at all entail respectable marginal utility, setting DPR records as an all-day-every-day field of competency does jack shit when the hard permissions gauntlet arrives.

i remember when it was new, playing a cleric and just saying 'i attack with my mace'. nope, i needed to use one of my POWERS (i think they added a 'basic attack' later).

but then the DM also complained that i was using some healing boost power during rests, since those extra d4s slowed down everyone rolling their healing surges.

it's a fun open-ended tactical skirmish game. but it's just too slow. no way around that.

>>96918299
5e Battlemaster was the better system.

>>96918481
Basic attack was in the book from day one. It's literally in the combat rules, since you use it for opportunity attacks. Are you just fucking around?

>>96918494
God the line between "genuine retard" and "basic shitposter" is fucking blurry here

>>96918381
Those all do different things, yes. The first is melee only and Invigorating, so it gives you temporary hp. The second is rattling, which inflicts a debuff on the target and can be used with any weapon. The third targets reflex, usually a lower number, instead of AC and you need to use light blades. These are all your most simple effects you can use without limit

>>96918445
>Ironically, where the theoretical gap is the worst (3.5), Fighter 20 has its greatest variety with the most whacky bullshit to dig into. Folding feat chains around eachother is a horribly tedious headache, of course, but there IS a lot of interesting mechanical shenanigans available. Because "interesting" mechanics do not at all entail respectable marginal utility, setting DPR records as an all-day-every-day field of competency does jack shit when the hard permissions gauntlet arrives.
This.

>>96918445
>>96918549
It really wasn't interesting. Even in the absence of spellcasters almost everything you could do with it outscaled by appropriate challenge enemies and your return on doing all that work was Jack shit. The best debuff is dead, anything else is a waste of time.

>>96918577
Tripping and fearlocking stand out as great toys.

>>96918589
Except on all the things it wouldn't work on. Another thing that hurt the sense of "variety" is just how many regular ass enemies were categorically immune to your shit.

>>96918577
The Martials are the chief inflictors of Dead because they have a grotesque amount of low-hanging DPR workhorses that have no meaningful endurance limits in themselves, the problem is that there is a VERY long list of things that COULD get in the way of applying that easily-inflated DPR they have no recourse for on their own and extremely little outside combat.

>>96918602
Trip immunity is actually pretty rare and isn't THAT hard to keep up the numbers on, its application issues are from maintaining positioning requirements and the size limit. And Fear-locking is in a weird tangled mess of how you handle [Mind-Affecting]. Most importantly, even with these application issues it's still got a lot of room to offer more fights per day than pure-casting solutions, the issue remains primarily with bringing almost nothing outside the fighting to make it worthwhile over the very long list of ways for a mostly-caster to get good enough at many of them.

>>96918496
Well, fucking obviously. That nigger is also rolling healing surges.

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>>96918299
the problem with 4e is that the rules are hidden all over the place with stupid fucking keywords

>crushing surge has the Invigorating keyword, meaning that if you have proficiency with Endurance, you gain temporary hit points when you hit with it
>disheartening strike has the Rattling keyword, meaning that if you have proficiency with Intimidation, the target gains -2 to attack rolls for 1 round when you hit with it
>piercing strike targets your reflex, meaning that it bypasses armor.


Here's what they'd look like in 5e

>>96918724
The keywords are great because it saves on repeating language. The only people it hurts are the people who don't read the book.

>>96918299
Attack vs AC or Attack vs Save is a meaningful difference, though?

>>96918737
I think keywords should just be keywords, otherwise you have to look in 20 different places for the rules

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>>96918299
That image perfectly encapsulates 3eeaboo retardation. >>96918522 gets it right. All of these ARE different, while ALSO being at-wills. Aka your "I've used all/want to conserve my interesting powers" powers. You would know this if actually read the PHB.
>pic somewhat related

>>96918745
But the keywords are listed in several places in each book. In the Powers section (usually at the very beginning of the chapter), in the glossary, and if you had a class or class option that heavily used it.

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>>96918299
>I think D&D 4e was an under-appreciated edition because of how it gave martials something to do in combat other than say "I attack."
So does 5e. Just because it isn't chock full of pointless minutiae and "the same attack + status effect as last level, but 6[W] damage instead of 5[W] damage" doesn't make it worse or inferior.

>>96918481
>i remember when it was new, playing a cleric and just saying 'i attack with my mace'. nope, i needed to use one of my POWERS (i think they added a 'basic attack' later).
Kek this. Basic attacks suck, and there's no options for a Dex melee ranger.
Because
>wahhhhh Dex is a god stat!!!
Okay then just balance around that? Lmao.

>>96918589
>tripping
Decent
>fearlocking
Retarded, and symptomatic of söy faux-masculine tough guy faggotry.

>>96918784
Battlemaster is fucking dogshit.

>>96918792
So is the 4e fighter

>>96918784
Fading Strike dumbass.
>>96918812
Nah, one of the best classes in the game and very well designed. 4e Fighter should be the standard

>>96918784
Why are you posting Battlemaster like it's the standard and not a massive exception to the game's design?

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>noooo I can't have 15 different copies of the same ability like in 4e where I shift an ally 10 feet and pretend it's epic gameplay in a system with no flanking rules
Warlord fags are insufferable holy shit. They cannot cope with the fact that not everyone liked their stupid-ass "shouting the severed arm back on" abilities and pointlessly shuffling people around out of turn and giving them attacks out of turn. There should have been more abilities like that in general if that was what people wanted. Be happy they put that shit in 5e at all. Adding your charisma to some ally's attack is fucking moronic. You idiots really need to stop overestimating the power of Charisma just because you all have an 8 charisma IRL, you cannot "inspire" someone to suddenly become proficient with a sword. inb4 "momma bear lifts car off her baby with insane strength" bullshit. Guess what? No matter how handsome you are, you're not making her wet enough to do that. That's reserved for maternal instinct only, you fucking incel freak. Seriously, you warlord players are fucking insufferable. You micromanage the entire table and screech like a little bitch when people don't utilize your buffs the exact way you would. It's like a constant pressure cooker especially because a lot of warlord players have anger issues from losing constantly at RTS games. That's why they play TTRPGs, because they're easy mode where you have to try to lose instead of try to win. As a result you can just sit there and give your abilities out and tell people NO MOVE THERE or NO ATTACK THIS GUY and half the time you don't even know how other peoples' powers work. Yeah, fuck yeah am I glad they didn't include Warlord class in 5e. You guys were fucking insufferable cunts and they probably didn't want the normgroid infestation they planned to herald in with 5e D&D to be repulsed by your sweaty tryhardness. I cannot think of a more tryhard class, a more söy class than fucking warlord. Good. Fucking. Riddance.

>>96918862
lmao

>>96918784
>Retarded, and symptomatic of söy faux-masculine tough guy faggotry.
what? what's wrong wtih fearlocking???

>>96918840
>Why are you posting Battlemaster like it's the standard and not a massive exception to the game's design?
Because it doesn't need to be, lol. Why does every class need martial fighting dice? Not everyone wants to deal with the metacurrency shit.

>>96918834
>Fading Strike dumbass.
Moving out of melee with a 1[W] power isn't a viable long term strategy, dumbass. One power isn't archetype support.

>>96918862
4e has more variation than people give it credit for, but not as much as the glazers say it does

personally, I feel warlords could have had so much more going for them
>false cavalry: When you move your mount, can leave behind leave behind a 20-foot-radius cloud of dust in each space you move through that lasts for 1 round. Enemies that see it must make a save or be frightened for 1 round
>choose your battlefield. you take advantage of a terrain feature you noticed. the terrain in an area nearby grants one of the following benefits: it's difficult terrain to your enemies, it makes your allies invisible, or it provides cover
>trench warfare: you take advantage of a nearby ditch. mark a trench up to 80 feet long in a shape you want. it can have multiple branches, but must be continguous. Creatures in the trench are protected from ranged attacks originating outside the trench, and visa versa, except for AOEs

>>96918862
Holy shit you sound mad. Seek mental help.

>>96918299
3e did it better as usual
>Sunder
>Disarm
>Trip
>Charging as a specific mechanic rather than just a reflavor
>Grapple + use rope
Post-3e D&D really missed out by removing interaction with enemy items during combat

>>96918409
in real early D&D a lvl 1 fighter was bad ass if he spent his starting money on men at arms instead of chainmail. Being a literal warlord was fucking awesome.

>>96919001
Rose tinted glasses. Charge and trip were the only good things, and even then you were pigeon holing yourself.

>>96918961
It's literally the entire Hunter build from martial power 2. You didn't play the game

>>96918299
So what do we have here.
We have Crushing Surge, a 1[W] attack that gives temporary HP equal to the con modifier thanks to the invigorating keyword. Yeah, technically invigorating requires you to be trained in endurance but let's be real you're not picking up an invigorating power without having that trained.

Next is a rattling attack for rogues. So 1[W]+Dex and the target has a -2 to attack rolls until their next turn unless they're immune to dear. Yeah, requires you to be trained in intimidate but you wouldn't pick up a rattling power without it.

And then finally is Piercing Strike. Oh Piercing Strike. The worst type of 4e power. Unlike the previous two, Piercing Strike is a type of power that's what I'll call "boringly efficient." The only thing that's special about piercing strike is that it's a weapon attack that targets a non-AC defense. So except against certain types of enemies, it's just an attack with a built in bonus to hit as its effect. Straight forward, efficient and boring. Personally I always forwent it for Deft Strike and Sly Flourish - which were less efficient in terms of their ability to hit as frequently but were generally more interesting.

>>96919023
If you could do it as a called shot / get it as a status effect on hit, it would have been fine, and better than 4e had it.
Actually just making improved Trip/Disarm/Sunder let you make that attempt on a regular melee hit, would have been fine.
The whole problem with it was that you gave up damage to do it.
Change that, and 4e and the dissociated mechanics cancer is forgettable rules bloat.

>>96918980
Not an argument.

>>96919039
>You didn't play the game
Sorry I didn't have that book retard. I played 2 years of 4e you retarded faggot.
>bro you didn't have this supplement so you didn't play
You don't know shit about my life faggot. I can get 4 people who will confirm to you that yes, I was there for 2 years, barely missed a session, and played D&D 4e. Suck my dick retard.

>>96918872
>lmao
not an argument.

>>96918948
>what's wrong wtih fearlocking???
Because it's gay. Morale isn't really a mechanic in D&D anymore, so it's usually left up to the DM. Fear that isn't supernatural is usually retarded bullshit. This "I intimidate you super hard in battle" shit is just stupid entry-level "I wanna play a fighter but just attacking isn't good enough for me" and that's the first thing they think of. It's retarded.

>>96919076
Darksydephil get the fuck out.

>>96918784
God I forgot how much battlemaster fucking sucks ass.
"here's an incredibly limited class mechanic. Also even though you've hit with an ability, the thing you're spending dice on can still fail because the idea that you could just do something upsets the wizard player too much"

Genuinely, going from a 4e fighter to a 5e Battlemaster sucked so fucking much. You could FEEL how much it sucked compared to what came before.

>>96919093
it's not even the casters who hate it. it's the champion players. the guys who get off on sucking, and refuse to learn the rules.

>>96919073
Your complaint was retarded. Basic attacks are basic because they are for oas, and even then a bunch of classes get things they can substitute for the basic attack which make it better. Now I'm pointing out to you that they made an entire subset of powers specifically to cater to the pedantic complaint of not being able to monostat in one of the most popular supplements of the entire game line. If you actually played for that long then I can guarantee you weren't paying attention and are one of those losers who doesn't read the book.

>>96918737
The keywords are fun, but their implementation was lacking. What's funny is that WotC solved this problem, *twice* in Magic the Gathering and just didn't think to apply lessons learned from one game to another.

Genuinely, the 4e design team could have benefited so much if leadership in wotc had enough brain cells to rub together and applied some of the lessons about templating from MtG to 4e.

Because the hit line of Crushing Surge should just read:
1[W] + Strength damage. Invigorate (Gain Temporary Hit Points equal to your constitution modifier.)

>>96919130
That's an entire sentence they would have to reprint for every single invigorate power in books that already dedicated like 50% of their space to powers. Again, if you just read the book you wouldn't need to re-reference it on each one of these things. They already write it out multiple times in the book in different places.

>>96919073
>You don't know shit about my life faggot. I can get 4 people who will confirm to you that yes, I was there for 2 years, barely missed a session, and played D&D 4e. Suck my dick retard.
Because you're full of shit.
You're talking about how a melee dex ranger had no melee basic replacement. Anon pointed out that they did in MP2. You're now trying to act like this was some obscure supplement book that you never heard of and that it wasn't something you could have possibly known about.

ONE PROBLEM ASSHOLE
PHB MELEE RANGERS ARE STRENGTH BASED.
If you were playing a dex based melee ranger, that means you were either
1. playing poorly on purpose and blaming the system.
or
2. using Martial Powers 2. Because that's where the support for that archetype was. Which is also where Fading Strike was.

>>96919023
NTA, but he was right. 3e did it better. Everything after 3.5 was just unmitigated trash for people who don't like D&D or were born too late to be fully actualized human beings.

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>>96919093
>God I forgot how much battlemaster fucking sucks ass.
No you didn't. You're just a whiny bitch.
>Also even though you've hit with an ability, the thing you're spending dice on can still fail because the idea that you could just do something upsets the wizard player too much
Hahahaha rent free. You martialcucks are like American blacks, literally EVERY problem you have has to be framed in the context of your "oppressors" (whites, or spellcasters). It's fucking hilarious.
>Genuinely, going from a 4e fighter to a 5e Battlemaster sucked so fucking much. You could FEEL how much it sucked compared to what came before.
Yeah you could FEEL it because you have no fucking argument as to what the actual problem is.

>>96919182
>PHB MELEE RANGERS ARE STRENGTH BASED.
Yep. And it's a retarded over-limiting mechanic.
5e has support for Dex-based melee rangers.
4e doesn't.
So why should I care about 4e?
>Because that's where the support for that archetype was. Which is also where Fading Strike was.
One power isn't support you dumbass.

>>96919140
Well, it's a two part issue that I'm pointing out here.
First is that you should be putting the invigorate keyword in the hit line, not elsewhere in the power. Make it clear that invigorate is an effect that you get for hitting something.

Secondly, I suggest reminder text because it's just a useful training tool. Honestly I'd probably just stick it on at-wills and then you can throw invigorate on encounters and dailies without and go "you get it. You get how this works."

>>96919191
I was complaining about how much battlemaster sucked ass compared to what came before it. I'm not really interested in debating you or convincing you or whatever you think this was. Your opinion doesn't matter to me.

>>96919200
See the super cool thing is that they already thought of that but one better, because when you would print out your character sheet using their dope as shit character builder, it would list all your important keywords on your character sheet and then tell you what any relevant modifiers it would produce would be. You could also skip this just by knowing your own rules.

>>96919194
4e has support for it, you dumbass. The point was you were playing stupid on purpose, probably to have something to complain about since 4e rangers are the most powerful and useful the class has ever been.

>>96919194
>Feat exists that let's you use dex for basic attacks instead of strength
>Don't take it
>Complain
?

>>96919194
>Yep. And it's a retarded over-limiting mechanic.
The game told you "this is a strength based archetype" and you chose to ignore it. This isn't on the game. This one is on you.

>5e has support for Dex-based melee rangers. 4e doesn't.
Yes it does. It's in Martial Powers 2. It's a series of powers that were mainly there to support the new Hunter Fighting Style - which was meant to be a more flexible way to ranger, allowing you to both use dex for melee attacks and also to more easily switch to making ranged attacks.

Or alternatively, you could have picked up the Essentials book and played the Scout subclass. Which just had dex to melee attacks as a class feature. It was a literal "turn your brain off" level feature.

But let's pretend that neither of those are options. For some reason, your incredibly specific ranger character needs to be using a different fighting style, and needs to be a PHB ranger. But also needs to have a dex based melee basic. Okay. Pick up the melee training feat. Congrats. You can now use dex for your melee basic all the time, forever. Yeah, the damage is slightly worse. You had other, better options.

>>96919242
Imagine looking at twin strike and going "this class is underpowered" with a straight face.

>>96919259
Didn't they also make it piss easy to look up Powers even if you didn't have the supplement? I remember the character builder was cracked pretty much same day every day it got an update, which included all the sources. There's like zero excuse to not know about something from a mainline book

>>96918299
>know nothing about 4e
>look these up
>First one adds temporary HP per hit based on constitution
>Second one imposes a -2 to hit which I assume is a flat -10% chance
>Third one targets a save which from a quick glance at monsters means this attack is significantly more accurate than usual
I'm... not seeing the problem? That first ability alone is really powerful.

>>96919232
The builder thing was nice, yeah. I also ran enough public games to know that usage of the builder wasn't consistent across the hobby (except lair assaults, but that was it's own thing.) But it's also kind of not my main point.

>You could also skip this just by knowing your own rules.
Yeah. They should. But also reminders help.
I'm not trying to say "oh 4e fucked up and was so bad." I'm saying that the templating for powers could have been improved and it's slightly maddening because the people that they would have needed to talk to for advise on templating were IN THE SAME FUCKING OFFICES.

>>96919308
This was already talked about in an interview forever ago. Powers had to be formatted for print, so the decision was to encapsulate as much as possible into keywords and tags in order to be able to print the most amount of powers per book.

>>96919292
Honestly? The first one is probably the worst out of all of them.

-2 hit is really potent, since it can let you do things like risk AoOs or provoke marks more easily, and if the enemy is making multiple attacks or area attacks it's taking that penalty to hit each person.

And targetting non-AC defenses with a melee just straight up one of the most powerful things that a power can do.

Compared to that, 3-4 temporary hit points really isn't all that much.

>>96919292
You're correct about everything except for
>That first ability alone is really powerful.
Because of the way non-AC defenses work in 4e, having both high strength and constitution is actually pretty bad since they contribute to the same defense. A level 1 fighter with high str and con's stats would look something like: 19 AC, 20 Fort, 14 Ref, 11 Will, which is very lopsided. Especially since fortitude targeting attacks are both less common than reflex attacks and less dangerous than will targeting ones.

>>96918299
Counterpoint: I enjoy playing fighters because I can say "I attack," every round, and do big fucking numbers. If I wanted to keep track of a bunch of powers, I could play pretty much any other class.

>>96919350
You're in luck anon. They made the essentials classes especially for people like you.

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>>96918481
I need to impress upon the thread what a moron you are. Because, not only was basic attack introduced in the PhB, the actual page in question is that this mechanic is on was listed in the Table of Contents.

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>>96919001
3e had more granularity but under a punitive framework (as in the mechanics were designed to impair such actions unless specialized), conversely 4e got full retard by removing the granularity of 3e action economy by encapsulating everything within the aedu powers rails. Both game are essentially garbage to their core.

>>96919441
I would complain too but the way 4e did it actually worked. Also it was basically the same action economy I don't know what you're talking about.

>>96918299
You could always do something other than attack. You can grapple, you can knockdown, you can switch weapons, you can say something, you can interact with an item, you can intimidate. Doing "I attack" rounds and nothing else has always been a skill issue of the player.

>>96919469
It's been years since I touched 3.5 and I only have a 4e book on hand. 4e has Standard, Minor, Move and Free actions on a Player's turn, plus triggered actions off their turn. And you could sub out some on turn actions for others. Also, you can get more Actions by spending Action Points.

>>96919023
>Rose tinted glasses
I'm 19 and I switched to 3e because 4e and 5e are for people who want either a tabletop JRPG (4e) or a storygame where you roll dice but win regardless (5e), the downside is that almost nobody I know IRL plays 3e, but I have run a game of 3e before and the players liked it.

>>96919512
>4e has Standard, Minor, Move and Free actions on a Player's turn, plus triggered actions off their turn.
>And you could sub out some on turn actions for others
3.5 has Standard, Swift, Move, Free actions, and misc actions (ie 5-ft step) on a Player's turn, plus immediate actions off their turn, and you sub these actions out if you're doing a full action or full round action
it's genuinely the same shit

>>96919525
Yeah, the biggest difference between the two seems to be Action Points and a lack of Full Rounds in 4e.
>>96919516
My DM is planning on running 5e with 3.5 feats and Skills. He looked at me blankly when I asked Feat Taxes. Going to get dumb in a hurry at that table. Can't wait, honestly.

>>96919516
I don't mean to come as condescending, but you really haven't had enough time to understand how this thing gets all fucked. Until the stupid console war shit of 4e vs 5e came out, it was pretty much unanimous that 3.5 was an inherently broken system that didn't really accomplish the fantasy it wanted to portray.

>>96919643
>, it was pretty much unanimous that 3.5 was an inherently broken system that didn't really accomplish the fantasy it wanted to portray.
Give or take a few arguments about whether it was better to ban expansions, select classes or all of Core.

>>96919187
No, he wasn't. Combat maneuvers were shit.

>>96919658
True. Also minor correction on my part, it was 3rd vs 4th edition wars. I swear you saw people who used to bitch up and down about having too many skills or fears that required too much investment to be any good and now that's "classic flavor"

>>96918299
>wow, so unique.
look at me, i have given a name and a block of text to describe a basic attack that deals damage= stat modifier + weapon damage
just like any other attack would in the previous edition
>no, this is totally not the same but videogamified anon wtf are you talking about

>>96921212
As others have explained they actually have different effects, but the formatting makes them look all the same unless you know how to parse them.

>Crushing Strike
The Invigorating keyword makes it so the attack gives you temp hp on a hit.

>Disheartening Strike
Rattling keyword causes it to inflict a debuff to hit on successful attacks

>Piercing Strike
Ignores AC

>>96921419
ok, thanks for explaining anon.
4e really is badly formatted
this really is some video game shit though,unless am i misunderstanding something? are these not basic at will attacks
>Crushing Strike
Why would every "basic" hit give temporary hp, wtf are you a vampire?
>Disheartening Strike
is the debuff additive or an one time thing? if not why would it be on a "basic" attack
>Piercing Strike
yeah, that shits sounds straight up op, i guess they wanted a strong dex fighter cause they kinda sucked in 3e

Also how does this system stop people from going all meta and using the top maneuvers and making every character play the same?

>>96921506
Basic Attack is something every character can do.
At-will powers are not basic attacks. They are the equivalent to cantrips, but every class has their own list of cantrips.
The difference is that some things calls out for basic attacks, like attack of opportunity or the attack of a charge.
>are you a vampire
It's temporary HP. The flavor of the power explains the power. It's some kind of morale booster.
>Rattling
Debuffs doesn't stack unless stated otherwise. Rogues can build around rattling and taking advantage of rattled enemies.
>straight up op
Anon didn't explain correctly, it simply targets the reflex stat. Think of it like a reflex saving throw.
>stop people from going all meta
There is enough diversity in powers and feats and they are good enough to allow for varied gameplay.

>>96919643
Different Anon, but how can any edition of D&D be broken, when you can work with your DM to come up with compromises?
That's what people here were telling me for years whenever I'd bring up the fact that 5e is mechanically-broken and incomplete.
Rewrite what you don't like, right?

>>96919643
>>96919658
I understand that, and I think that a variant of E6 would be best, as well as removing self-scaling abilities like Manipulate Form, and requiring all templates and prestige classes to be justified in-world (giantitp and similar powergamers often leave out how they actually obtain the templates and prestige classes they include in their builds, since both are setting-specific and most prestige classes require finding a specific individual to train you).

>>96921764
If you have to fix it, it was by definition broken.

>>96921506
>is the debuff additive or an one time thing?
Most likely until the end of the attacking Rogue's next turn, during which time the attackee is granting combat advantage, meaning he's set up for a Sneak Attack.

>>96919343
So you become more vulnerable to attacks in exchange for being able to soak damage? Interesting design.

>>96921990
3.5 isn't broken. You can straight up play the game as is and you wont have a problem if players wont try to break the game or munchkin it.
A broken game is one that doesnt work, for different reasons not one that can be exploited.

Almost all the problems come down to people abusing the game to play in a certain way and dms not curtailing the game to the experience they want.

You can just say no to dipping and munchkin stuff. it's not hard.

>>96919867
I really like the variety of feats in 3e, but there are a bunch of feats that are complete dogshit and only exists because it's a stepping stone for another feat.

>>96922065
3e would've massively benefited from less feats, but they all scale by hitdie, like weapon focus giving +1 to hit every 4 levels and so on.

>>96922042
I blundered my way into making a Druid thwt was better at fighting than The Fighter, first time playing it, never looked at a CharOp board just pure vibes and "Ooh this looks cool." 3.5 was busted as shit.

>>96919210
>I was complaining about how much battlemaster sucked ass compared to what came before it.
Yep, and you got blown the fuck out on that point.
>I'm not really interested in debating you or convincing you or whatever you think this was.
Of course not. It would be futile for you to argue an indefensibly stupid assertion like that.

>>96922105
I was even thinking that Feats could be upgraded like magical weapons, in the sense that every "feat point" invested makes it "feat +1" etc.
This wouldn't change much the idea of investing feat points, and it would allow you to specialize more your character in a way that makes sense.

>>96919259
>The game told you "this is a strength based archetype" and you chose to ignore it. This isn't on the game. This one is on you.
Nope. It's on the game, for failing to make such an archetype viable, when it was viable in the previous edition of the game. Not good, btw, but at least playable.
And the edition after made it viable too.
Only 4e doesn't make a Dex-based melee ranger viable. Is Drizzt Str-based? No he isn't. The most popular ranger in D&D, is inadequately represented in 4e. What a great edition!
>allowing you to both use dex for melee attacks and also to more easily switch to making ranged attacks.
With some gay withdrawing maneuver? I guess so.
>Okay. Pick up the melee training feat. Congrats. You can now use dex for your melee basic all the time, forever. Yeah, the damage is slightly worse. You had other, better options.
I had that feat. "Slightly worse" damage? Bro it's literally unplayable because of 4e's dumbass infinite treadmill damage scaling.

5e DOES NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM
And 4e offers nothing in return but a trading cards power system.

>>96919254
>basic attacking
And you accuse me of not playing 4e? LMAO

>>96919276
Never said it was underpowered. I said it sucked because it couldn't support a very common archetype that is embodied by one of the most famous D&D characters of all time.

>>96922235
Drizzt is from 2e and he did attack with strength

>>96922235
But it is viable. There's an entire tree of powers available for Ranger that do exactly what you're asking. It comes from a mainline book and was in the online resources, at least one of which was completely free.

>>96922253
>he did attack with strength
He was always described as relatively strong but he is repeatedly compared to Wulfgar in terms of brawn v.s. speed in terms of fighting style. He is only attacking with Str in 2e as a limitation of that system. As soon as they brought him into 3e they gave him Weapon Finesse. They would have in 4e as well but they had to make everything into some gay template that was hard-locked on using a particular stat. And no, this isn't the same as some chucklefuck wanting to make a Strength wizard. Finesse has been a concept in D&D for a long time. It just didn't work with the dumbass trading card AEDU power system. They fixed that in 5e.

The only thing I'll give 4e ranger credit for, is not being a spellcaster, and actually being viable.

>>96922336
>He is only attacking with Str in 2e as a limitation of that system.
They could have literally said "Drizzt uses dexterity in place of strength when calculating to-hit and damage bonuses when attacking with scimitars" and nobody would've said a damn thing.

>>96922336
Is this some kind of satire? He already had rule breaking stuff in 2e (and was referring to a few wrong things), and in 3rd, Weapon Finesse didn't apply to his weapons until after the 3.5 update.

>>96922456
I honestly expect damn near every NPC in D&D games and sourcebooks to break the rules in some way.

>>96922336
>They fixed that in 5e.
Where Dex is the God Stat and nobody uses Strength anymore.

>>96918381
>that I need a power to just...describe the way I might normally attack
Why though? There are specifically named maneuvers in real life that must be honed as an individual skill.

>>96922565
>Where Dex is the God Stat and nobody uses Strength anymore.
Not in melee, where Str-based greatsword / Great Weapon Master still reigns supreme.
Yes, Sharpshooter + archery style is overpowered, but that would be the case whether finesse weapons existed or not.

>>96922456
>and in 3rd, Weapon Finesse didn't apply to his weapons until after the 3.5 update.
It wasn't the 3.5 update, it was the dervish prestige class. And yes, his specific weapons still had issues. but you could still play a Drizzt clone and use shortswords and Dex. And in 5e this continues. 4e is the retarded child bump in the road here.

>>96918754
>just a bunch of geometric shapes
Kek i've read that one verbatim on /vp/

>>96922602
I'm going to assume you're choosing to ignore Scout Ranger and the entire Hunter Ranger build and power line to keep bitching about something you're factually wrong about

>>96918299
Honestly it always read like the kind of shit you'd see on play-by-post RPs on MSN Groups back in the mid-early 00s. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

>>96922235
No, Dex melee Ranger was not playable in 3E. It was total shit.

Man you could have just played strength/dex. Did you just sit and seethe for years because you had to put points in Strength?

>>96922108
druid starts to pick up pace at levels 6-8 after getting wildshape and especially wildshape (large) which is the single most busted class ability in core as well as natural spell.
Even if the fighter plays sub optimally these are the levels where he can deal better damage with a two handed weapon and power attack than anybody along with the barbarian so i am calling bullshit anon

>>96922745
You're calling bullshit on CoDzilla. Okay.

>>96922745
There's nothing bullshit about the post. You can, in fact, be on par or outdo the fighter just by picking things you like.

>>96922768
i am calling bullshit on someone outfighting the fighter without optimizing for it, with just picking le random fun stuff.
I have actually played vanilla unoptimised casual 3.5 with total newbies at the low levels, unlike you probably, and the fighter didnt lag behind in combat in the slightest

>>96922796
Exact opposite of my newbie experience. The fighter was constantly frustrated because an actual unoptimized fighter is lacking severely in tools

>>96922821
anon, my friend played a vanilla, greatsword/ heavy armor power attack fighter straight out of the phb and was tanking a shit ton of hits for the party with his high AC while dealing a shit ton of damage on mooks and kicking ass.
I don't know what to tell you.
My own rogue experience on the other hand was horrendous in combat but at least i was the skill monkey that invested in int and did pretty much everything outside combat for the party along with the bard

>>96922856
Extremely limited movement, no skills to speak of, shit saves, the list goes on. But you're still talking about a two-handed power attacker, which means he is already using two optimal things together and not like our fighter who wanted to be all Romaboo with a short sword and shield and did NOT take power attack.

>>96922903
everybody has limited movement in the low levels, but yes a short sword/tower shield fighter without power attack wont be plowing through encounters

>>96922938
Wow, it's almost like using an unoptimized fighter is shit.

>>96922903
>>96922856
You don't even have to bring in CoDzilla. This exchange alone demonstrates how shitty the game actually is.

>>96922948
it aint great but it doesnt break the game. A broken game is one that doesnt work, not one that needs some tinkering or a little expertise to work. I mean once someone figured that power attack was good,aka the dm that was the only one that had played a short campaign before, told all fighting guys to take power attack at the start and that was it practically. Problem solved.
Eventually you would get there and he would be able to deal damage and play the game.
The wizard did fuck all for the first 4 levels but they were having fun despite that because its a game you play with your friends.
Yeah you can be kinda bad at things but who cares, at the early levels everything has low hp and dies easily and the bonuses are small enough that it's mostly up to what you roll.
I aint preaching about how raw newbie vanilla is the best game, but about how it is perfectly playable aka not broken.
Broken literally means i cannot play the game for some reason like it's fatal or some shit

>>96923000
Except it only gets worse the further along you go and the more bad character building you do. The game is broken because you DO need to pick the right stuff or you will reach a failstate where you can't meaningfully interact with level appropriate challenges

>>96922796
Animal companions are 75% of the way there, man.

>>96923000
Brother in 3.5 you don't end up "kinda bad" if you don't optimize at least a little. You end up literally useless. Personally I think you're conflating the time spent with friends with some inherent goodness of the game. You're almost always going to have fun with friends; the game is still bad

>>96923090
>the game is bad for catering to people who put zero effort into making a decent character

>>96923090
Brother you are conflating my arguement.
I am not saying that the game is good, even though i think it is if you know what you re doing and everyone is into it.
i am saying THE GAME ISN"T BROKEN even if you dont know what you re doing. You might feel bad but you will be ble to play the game and no, sucking so hard you cant play at level 12 after 2 years of play doesnt count

>>96923120
Are you ESL?

>>96923130
You can be fucked WAAAY sooner than level 12.

>>96923090
>Brother in 3.5 you don't end up "kinda bad" if you don't optimize at least a little. You end up literally useless.
I should tell my party that, none of us have optimized yet somehow we keep having fun and beating everything the GM throws our way :/

>>96923130
There is a reason 3E had a problem with turning new players into repeat players.

>bloody path

>>96923182
This is bait.

>No! nobody has ever played 3.5 and had fun!
Seething nogames ITT

>>96923187
AoO is one of those mechanics that's always either super weak or super powerful with no middle ground.

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>>96923187

>>96921990
Okay, but whenever bringing up why 5e is broken, I always got either extreme of "HYTNPDND" or "rewrite what you don't like rules lawyer autist".
So, being an edition of D&D, why does 5e get a pass from criticism while the other editions don't?
If 3e, 3.5e, 4e or whatever is broken, just rewrite what you don't like you rules lawyer autist, or don't play D&D.

>>96922768
No he's calling bullshit on you playing the game, because you haven't.

>>96923515
>Okay, but whenever bringing up why 5e is broken
5e isn't broken, though?

>>96922745
>Even if the fighter plays sub optimally these are the levels where he can deal better damage with a two handed weapon and power attack
They might, but it's just as likely that the Fighter might fall into a trap option like using a sword and shield or focusing on dex weapons.

I know this because I had the same experience from the inverse, where I was the Fighter player who had no clue what I was doing and realized halfway through the first session that the Druid with a sling and a wolf companion was more effective in every way that mattered.

>>96923000
>A broken game is one that doesnt work,
Have you ever played one that would fit your definition of broken? If so, what was it?
Hard mode: not FATAL.

>>96923885
not really because i tend to avoid games that look broken and unplayable
Senzar was really famous along with Eoris but i have no hands on experience for example

>>96924011
Never heard of them, so I'll take your anonymous opinion as gospel truth.

4e was good because it had design goals and achieved them. if those design goals aren't things you want out of a TTRPG then of course you're not going to enjoy it, but 4e was a good well-balanced tactical grid based high fantasy wargame. a lot of people who played it weren't looking for that, though, which is why it has the reputation that it has.

unfortunately, 5e iterated on it and on the issue where people didn't get what they wanted by being a bad, horrendously balanced high fantasy wargame but having a much bigger marketing budget so it could sell itself as a bunch of things it wasn't

>>96918784
>So does 5e. Just because it isn't chock full of pointless minutiae and "the same attack + status effect as last level, but 6[W] damage instead of 5[W] damage" doesn't make it worse or inferior.
The battlemaster abilities should have been universal to all martials, or designed so every class has a few interesting maneuvers. Casters get fewer, mostly like cantrips, and martials get many more with variety and class-specific tricks. And all of them needed to come as a natural part of class progression, instead of being something you opt into.

As it stands, Battlemaster is a rancid wet fart of what could have been.

>>96918784
>So does 5e. Just because it isn't chock full of pointless minutiae and "the same attack + status effect as last level, but 6[W] damage instead of 5[W] damage" doesn't make it worse or inferior.
5E is the worst edition in terms of worthless vestigial mechanics though. Spell levels, tool proficiencies and stat totals are entirely pointless and serve no purpose to the game whatsoever for one

>>96924623
>The battlemaster abilities should have been universal to all martials
Why?

>>96924633
>Spell levels, tool proficiencies and stat totals
How do they not serve a purpose?

>>96925249
NTA but I can answer two of these
Stat totals do nothing. They only serve to sit next to the modifiers that will then be actually used. The only reason they are there is because "D&D has stat totals" and 5E is nothing but a huge exercise in D&D branding.
Tool proficiencies are irrelevant. Almost every background has a similar skill/ tool pairing. Tools are only useful for people without skills, and skills mean you never need to use tools.

>>96918496
>>96919405
fair enough, my bad. the system was new and i think the issue was that we used some official computer program to generate the sheets every level. which was horrible and tedious in itself.

they printed powers on there, so it was a case of '...why NOT use one of your at-will powers?' (i believe the basic attack might have some benefit? don't have my books handy.)

>>96918709
this shit though, i barely remember. again maybe we misunderstood at the time, but there was some cleric ability that granted a (dice) bonus to healing. and then everyone used their endogenous healing potions between fights, and they got the bonus.

maybe it was as simple as "you roll one d4, and then everyone gets +(d4} HP" but whatever it was, we all agreed it was slowing things down. we'd just accept less healing. but...there was no reason NOT to have had more healing. the issue was it meant we couldn't get to the next fight/skill challenge set piece ASAP.

>>96925295
>Tools are only useful for people without skills, and skills mean you never need to use tools.
This is how it works in 5e? You'd think tools would be needed for certain skill usage, proficient or otherwise, so that it encourages players to think about what sort of gear to grab before they set off.

>>96925332
Proficiency Bonuses are Skill or Tool and don't stack. So as long as you have the skill you will never need the tool. So the mechanic is simply completely pointless.

>>96925324
>but there was some cleric ability that granted a (dice) bonus to healing
This is a common thing for Clerics, actually, but they were d6, not d4, so either that first anon is dumb, or their group wasn't playing 4e... Possibly both.

>>96925249
>Why?
Because it's a good way to give martials greater versatility without having to overhaul the entire game and create a series of martial spells just to make it feel like martials aren't a fucking afterthought.

>>96925324
The 4e character builder is the least tedious thing about 4e. When it came out, it was literally the best one on the market because it correctly sorted everything, printed nice little reminders of everything you can do, narrowed down the options per level to only valid choices, and just a bunch of other conveniences. You have to be trolling or clinically retarded to see this as anything but a benefit to parsing a system you clearly do not know how to play.

>>96924623
>>96925517
Non-supernatural classes having daily abilities is an unnecessary removal of verisimilitude (another example of "unnecessary removal of verisimilitude" is monsters in 5e not having death saves by default, or monsters in 5.5e not having critical hits RAW). Fighter maneuvers should be something that you can do by spending parts of the action economy (i.e. one of your attacks in a multiattack, spending your entire turn, or a move-equivalent action) in order to do something which other classes can hypothetically do but they would likely fail the rolls for, such as grappling, sundering, shoving, disarming, tripping, or preparing to counterattack (D&D doesn't exactly have this, but my idea is that it would be a form of opportunity attack which only works when readied, but has a significant attack+damage bonus when used in response to someone else attacking you or an adjacent creature, similar to setting a polearm against a charge but for all weapons and not just charging). Notably, D&D 4e and 5e have completely removed sundering and disarming except when a class ability (usually a spell) specifically states that it can destroy/remove items, which is not an accident but is an intentional feature of 4e and 5e disliking direct interaction between statblocks other than HP damage and hardcoded buffs/debuffs. Wounds and individual body part targeting would also significantly buff martial classes if elemental/non-physical spells cannot target specific body parts. Abilities like a barbarian's rage could be changed to cost short-term wisdom damage or just have an increasing DC to not become fatigued which resets after resting (both of these have diegetic rather than gamist explanations). Using spells in combat is also overly unpunishing, since editions before 4e had all sorts of ways to interrupt even instant spells, while in 5e you can just take 1 level in fighter and be a regular wizard otherwise.

>>96919484
3.5e has rules for these actions, and later editions removed many of them. Making martial classes powerful doesn't require anime-esque and immersion-breaking abilities which do physically impossible things without lore justifications, it is possible to just make melee combat crunchier than just fighting at full strength until you instantly fall down at 0 HP. I think one of the main reasons that it's so hard to damage/disarm the weapons/armor/shield of an enemy in 4e/5e is that the developers didn't want to add rules for modifying an enemy's statblock based on it's equipment, especially since a lot of enemies have retarded elemental weapons that don't even deal the correct damage amount for their weapon type, but also can't be used by players because they would be more powerful than some of the best magical weapons.

>>96925877
Who the fuck said anything about any of that?

>>96925877
No, that would nerf martial classes.

>>96924623
>As it stands, Battlemaster is a rancid wet fart of what could have been.

Especially if you have ever seen the 5e playtest version.

>>96925249
>>The battlemaster abilities should have been universal to all martials
>Why?

During the intial playtest pretty much every "martial" class got a few of the dice with the Fighter's gimmick being that it got more of them. The dev team ignored all the positive reception to the system and pretty much revealed that the playtest was an ad campaign and not an actual playtest as they removed stuff from each new version of the playtest.

>>96925920
The central concept of the Battlemaster is "what if fighters had limited abilities which didn't expend diegetic resources?". Arguably, battlemaster would still be underpowered in non-abstracted scenarios (i.e. scenarios where vertical terrain and line-of-sight actually matters) if all of it's maneuvers were at-will/1-per-bonus-action.

Seriously, is "When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to knock the target down. You add the superiority die to the attack's damage roll, and if the target is Large or smaller, it must make a Strength saving throw. On a failed save, you knock the target prone." or

"When a creature you can see moves into the reach you have with the melee weapon you're wielding, you can use your reaction to expend one superiority die and make one attack against the creature, using that weapon. If the attack hits, add the superiority die to the weapon's damage roll." or

"When a creature misses you with a melee attack, you can use your reaction and expend one superiority die to make a melee weapon attack against the creature. If you hit, you add the superiority die to the attack's damage roll."

Really something which you should only be able to do 4 times per rest? I think all of these should be at-will fighter abilities, but without the superiority die since that's unnecessary number bloat.

>>96926006
If spellcasters actually needed foci to cast spells, and if it was possible to interrupt spells with a casting time of 1 action, they would be significantly nerfed rather than being reskinned artillery.

>>96925898
It doesn't break my immersion. I'm sorry you feel that way.

>>96925369
> either that first anon is dumb, or their group wasn't playing 4e... Possibly both.
it is me ;_;
but yeah i'm dumb. just not remembering it much. i remember the SHIT out of our 3.x games, 4E came along and it was this slog of tactical fights that was kind of fun, we even had some of the tiles and things when they came along, but damn. i can't even remember what adventure we played, or anything that happened. something about a big boss demon coming through a portal unless you defeated all the mini-bosses.

there's no way around it, really, it's taking a LOT from CRPGs/JRPGs/MMORPGs.

>>96925673
might be a matter of taste, but i feel like you should never ever need that. any more that you should need that fuckhueg JavaScript 3.x one that guy made.

between sessions, it's off to a laptop, then away to a printer. i can't just do it all with pencil and paper...? (i know you COULD, but again: why? just use the software :^))

Wizards know they fucked up.

>>96926214
You can do it with pencil and paper, I did and it was also very quick. Actually much faster than 3.x because you have way less derived values. Were you high or something?

>>96926214
You know, I posted in another thread that almost nobody actually knows how to play D&D, they just sit at the table and vibe. They didn't like 4th edition because you could actually learn the rules instead of it being a Mystic code. You're a great example of that.

>>96926024
Kill the retarded WotC employee in your head that demands fighters must just through a dozen hoops and sell both testicles in order to do one thing that isn't a basic attack.

>>96926214
You can totally do 4th edition characters with pencil and paper because almost every single value is just your level.

>>96926265
nah i was NOT high and i solidly remember everything being pure algorithms. like you were basically doing what-if flowchart shit. think Magic: The Gathering, but the last 20 years of it where you know it's all properly honed with keywords and mathematics. rather than them having fun and giving less of a shit about balance, like autists (no offence to autists, but that type of systemising brain).

that's not what all rules are. Basic/Expert D&D actually have step-by-step procedures for "just make it up, bro! ~vibes~" shit in later D&D (and in storygames). those rules work a treat.

>>96926311
You are like the prime example of somebody who should never be talking about game design. Every post feels like it's carefully calculated to demonstrate the Dunning Kruger effect

>>96926334
well i know 4E has its fans. i started this discussion saying it's a pretty tight skirmish combat game.
at best, it's not to my taste and doesn't reflect how i like to play D&D. and yeah i've lost my smarts and my memories due to drug abuse, but back then i was class at maths. loved all that stuff lol.

but eh, i just want a dungeon crawl game with some towns and wilderness exploration. even for...whatever 4E is, you need tiles, you need combat that takes forever, you need a bunch of things. "oh but you technically don't NEED them", the chorus cries. okay, but they're very heavily assumed.

>>96926311
Are you high right now?

>>96926360
nope, sober. "high" makes me think of weed anyway (i get psychosis)

>>96926359
You really are the holotype. D&D being a game with real rules works against you, because you're just there to vibe with your friends and calvinball. Which is absolutely fine, but that also means your opinion on rules means fuck all because they're antithetical to your game experience

>>96926385
fair enough. but i feel like you're characterising me as "anti rules" or something. i just think the rigid mathematical interlocking systems are better suited for computers.

hell, i used to program back then. imagine going to then play a game and you're running out programs. the sequence of play in B/X is sort of this, but without the extra layers of complexity. there's maths, it can even get as complex as you'd like. people bemoan encumbrance systems.

but all the tedium with actual variable_name stuff? sozboz, you've lost me.

>>96926412
I mean, there's the 40k rpgs which kinda disagree. I think peeling back the veil just spooked you to be honest

>>96926412
I think you missed the part where a lot of the 5th edition rules are just 4th edition rules but written out long form and more confusing and less consistently.

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>>96918299
Damn that's crazy, but what if we let characters do fun and cool stuff every turn, instead of stuff that's lame as fuck?

>>96919350
Then RPGs aren't for you. Leave. NOW.

>>96919484
>just waste your turn being ineffective

>>96922042
No, the fundamental problem with 3.5 is that, if you're playing a martial, you have to go out of your way to even not be an active detriment to the party, and if you're playing a caster, you have to go out of your way to not break the game.

At level 1, you can destroy the intended design simply by writing wizard on your sheet and picking sleep or color spray. Because the designers literally did not play test 80% of the spells in the book. At all. They didn't even think about them.

These aren't obscure rules interactions, uncharitable interpretations, or bizarre powergaming builds that abuse bugs in the rules. They're just individual spells that were written in the book, being cast according to their rules, and adjudicated according to their rules.

>>96922042
Almost none of the most powerful characters you can make multi class, by the way. Almost no one who discusses this game actually understands it.

>>96922796
"Le fun stuff" isn't random at all. There are only a few spells that matter at each spell level, and anyone with the reading comprehension of a fifth grader can identify them instantly. And they're also the only spells that are fun to use.

>>96923000
3.5 quite literally does not work out of the box.

>>96923182
You're making your opposition's point for them.

>>96926796
That's kind of a myth that's been perpetuated for a while, when the reality is very different. Trolls love to repeat it, but it's just nonsense that ignores how there's "broken" business spread all around, and the whole "casters vs. martials" nonsense is just lies layered over more lies.
>At level 1, you can destroy the intended design simply by writing wizard on your sheet and picking sleep or color spray
That's bullshit. Maybe taking care of one battle a day isn't breaking the game, you disingenuous troll.
I can almost guarantee you've been shitposting in the same exact fashion for over a decade at this point, and I can only imagine it's because there's nothing left of your soul.

>>96926835
My oppositions point is that the game is fun and works fine? Well ok then.

>>96926845
No, it's pretty true. There's entire treatises written on how many options spellcasters have from the word go.

>>96926845
No, it's based on games I run and play in. I have more hours in 3.5 than you've spent breathing.

>>96926859
Your opposition's point is that you don't understand the game very well.

>>96926859
Did that make you feel better about losing the argument? lol. You'll reply to this post too, and you still won't understand how you owned yourself.

>>96926845
Yes, the caster can, at first level, defeat one entire encounter by himself.

Do you want to guess how many encounters the fighter can defeat, by himself, at first level?

>>96926872
>>96926880
>Y-you lost!!! Don't reply to me!!!
Kek
Ngl you just sound jealous that I have a game and you don't.

>>96926895
Don't include me in your deflection. You still have a very poor grasp of how the game actually works and it shows in every post.

>>96926895
Thanks for proving me right, nogames.

>>96926907
>>96926909
>Seethes, proves me right immediately
Think about me this Saturday, I'm not gonna be thinking of you

>>96922235
>And you accuse me of not playing 4e? LMAO
Yes. You'd know how important mbas are if you played that game even a bit.

>>96926925
>Seething
lol, the defense of the witless

>>96926925
Yes you are.

>>96926869
Wow, it's like he doesn't want to challenge actual experience

>>96923182
Nta.
3.5, like all rpgs depend heavily on the group. If no one really cares about builds and optimization, and are willing to ignore the inherent imbalance between full casters and everything else, i.e. everyone are casuals, then yeah the game works. It was the most popular system for years. The problem is that nearly everyone in this thread are not casuals, and so will never experience a group without try hards, because at a minimum they are the try hard that will ruin it for the others.
You see it in all competitions where people put in unequal effort. MtG where one guy brings a competetive deck to a casual table. Sports where one guy practices three times a week. FPS where one guy spends over 40 hours a week on a game etc. You literally can't put these in the same run as someone who only does something once a week for fun.
There are people in this thread who are quoting rules from memory from the splat books of a dead game. That's how different they are from your group. Just remember that you are the one having fun, and always ignore edition wars unless you specifically want a fight.

>>96926985
Like all RPGs, it depends on the rules written in the rulebook.
It is not arguable that the monk gets 3/4 BAB and is therefore non-functional.
It is not arguable that characters can have negative hit points, and it is not arguable that your hit points are set to zero when you begin drowning.
If you have to fix a product to use it, you should not have purchased it.

>>96926985
Man the flaw in this reasoning is that if nobody knows how to optimize, or is it even aware that there is class imbalance, it'll work out. That's actually not the case. Challenges as written often cannot be meaningfully dealt with unless you kind of know what you're doing, and it's also really easy for one person to outstrip the rest of the group by picking good options that just fit their playstyle. It's also really easy for a person to torpedo their character by picking a lot of really bad options that just sound nice. Things will not balance out if you don't know what you're doing, it's very likely that things will be worse than if you at all consciously decided to make the best characters you could.

>>96926865
>No, it's pretty true. There's entire treatises written on how many options spellcasters have from the word go.
Effort put into trolling doesn't make it less trolling. You understand there's whole novels that are just trolling?
Look, I get it. You're not going to stop trolling today, or tomorrow, or the next day, especially if you've been doing the same song and dance for more than a decade. But, here's hoping a wild horse kicks you in the head and that's enough to get you to wake up and snap out of your cycle.

>>96927099
You think the people who wrote those were trolls? They loved the game

>>96927013
>It is not arguable that the monk gets 3/4 BAB and is therefore non-functional.
Counterpoint: his group doesn't care
>It is not arguable that characters can have negative hit points, and it is not arguable that your hit points are set to zero when you begin drowning.
Play with a real GM
>>96927052
>Challenges as written often cannot be meaningfully dealt with unless you kind of know what you're doing
Don't run pre-written shit
>and it's also really easy for one person to outstrip the rest of the group by picking good options that just fit their playstyle.
Yeah, but it either hasn't happened in anons game or they don't care
>It's also really easy for a person to torpedo their character by picking a lot of really bad options that just sound nice.
Yes, 3.5 and espescially 3e was terrible for this. Ivory tower game design was one of the most retarded ideas of that era.
You're both missing the main point that if the players don't care it doesn't matter. And you caring a lot isn't a convincing counter argument.

>>96927136
>And you caring a lot isn't a convincing counter argument.
Neither is your argument of I don't care so none of the very real flaws matter.

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>>96923588
It is.
Fundamentally.

>>96927167
Okay, why?
And if your argument is a screencap, I'm not wasting my time with someone who starts with "One class is better at something than another class" as if it's a criticism.

>>96927136
It's pretty hard to not care when you're clearly struggling. I know, I was at a table with a bunch of new people and we noticed when some people were constantly failing and some people were constantly succeeding.

>>96927183
Do you want me to cut and paste the text for you? Or are you going to willfully misinterpret that too?

>>96918323
It's mechanically well made but boring as shit.

>>96919018
In D&D 3,5 you can do that as well, it's called Leadership, and since you can choose the classes of your followers and cohort, and they're NOT all level 1, it's infinitely SUPERIOR to the older versions.
>but it's not part of the class by default
So what. Literally, so what.

>>96927183
You can safely ignore him. That image is just raw jank and nonsense, and posting it puts him at freezer-temp intelligence.

>>96927227
My man, that was put together by people who actually actively play the game and somewhat enjoy it. I don't know where this idea is that you have to hate a game in order to understand that it's bad.

>>96927183
I have a personal one: Anything they didn't lift directly from 4th edition is something that they also didn't seriously play test. Almost all of our feedback gets thrown out.

>>96927237
I don't know why you think you can convince someone that's actually played the game to treat you seriously, other than you likely don't understand how ridiculous you sound because you have zero experience yourself.

>>96927306
I have run every edition of D&D from 2e onward. You're the one who's trying to deny commonly acknowledged complaints and weaknesses of the games.

>>96927157
>>96927186
No response for either of these huh?

>>96918381
Nobody prevents you from making a melee basic attack (or ranged basic attack.)

>>96927227
Yeah you can kinda tell it's from someone who doesn't actually play the game, or any games, when they bitch about classes being... Classes.

>>96927490
It sure is easy to pat yourself on the back and lie. The image starts with "1 or 2 classes outdo all other classes niches". This is not complaining that class is do different things, this is complaining that a few classes can do other people's designated things better than them.

>>96927099
It's not trolling, you're just wrong. Since you've presented no reasoning, this post is trolling.

>>96927136
It matters whether you care or not. Concession accepted.

>>96927183
Not something. Everything.

>>96927227
Everything in the image is correct and you're incapable of refuting any of it.

>>96927330
I'm not on 4chan 24/7.
My first post in this thread was to a poster who wasn't having problems with 3.5 in their group, to reassure them that it's all group dependent. As long as they are having fun they are doing it right, it's a game after all. And then you kind of proved my point (to that anon) by being so obsessed with the shortcomings of 3
5 that you couldn't abstain from pointing them out.
Most groups will be better if they either consist entirely of people who care as much as you, or people who care as little as anons group. Mixing the two is when you have problems. And yes, the first group would probably be happier with a more balanced game.

>>96927183
If you don't understand why having one or two correct options in a game is bad, I don't know what to tell you.

>>96929373
You definitely are on this site 24/7. if you reply I'm right.

>>96929373
It doesn't matter whether you care and it doesn't matter whether you're having fun.

>>96927218
It's an RPG.
Good, solid mechanics that make the DM's job easier are boring only if your group is boring.

>>96928439
>>96927516
>>96929433
And this is how you can tell you don't play games, this isn't a thing in 5e. The shit you're complaining about is from two editions prior.

>>96931299
We get it anon, you're retarded. You don't have to keep posting it.

>>96931510
>Butthurt samefag keeps seething
Lol, no arguments and no games.

>>96926845
>Maybe taking care of one battle a day isn't breaking the game,

Having access to a spell that can single handedly endangered combat at 1st level is breaking the game anon. Having a spell at any level that's just an auto-win button for a combat is bad design.

>>96926985
>If no one really cares about builds and optimization, and are willing to ignore the inherent imbalance between full casters and everything else, i.e. everyone are casuals, then yeah the game works.

Not engaging with the mechanics being a requirement for the game to work is a really bad thing anon.

>>96931299
imagine admitting to eating shit lol

>>96925295
>Stat totals do nothing. They only serve to sit next to the modifiers that will then be actually used.
Wrong, they're there for people who roll stats. inb4 "nobody rolls stats" yes they do faggot
>Tools are only useful for people without skills, and skills mean you never need to use tools.
Are you retarded? The tool proficiencies are there for crafting, which is literally in the rules, and you can't use skills for it by RAW. You can ignore those rules, but that doesn't change the fact that it is the rules.

>>96925517
>Because it's a good way to give martials greater versatility
Why do they need that?
> and create a series of martial spells just to make it feel like martials aren't a fucking afterthought.
They've never been an afterthought. They've been the poster boys for D&D since...forever.
>martial spells
So you don't want a martial, you want anime bullshit. Okay go play BESM or Anima. Even Book of Nine Swords, which was cool, but not a replacement for default fighter. They basically turned fighters into spellcasters then acted like it was good enough for everyone and everyone asked for it. Nope. Some people just want to imagine they're a fighter.

Martial dice were fine but not every class needed them. People have fun with champion fighter and it objectively does decently well at its job. It's just kinda boring. Because it's for new players.

>>96932114
This post is bait

>>96932114
>Why do they need that?
Because I think a class should have more to do in the game then saying "I attack"

>>96932114
> It's just kinda boring. Because it's for new players.

And why should an entire character archtype be designed specifically to be boring for new players?

>>96926024
>When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to knock the target down
>Attempt
This is actually the biggest fucking failure of the battlemaster.
I already hit with the attack. I am spending my limited resources.He should be on his ass. Why should he get a save?

>>96932266
It's even retarded. If a player's first exposure to the class is a class that is boring, they're just not going to like the game. Because it will be boring.

>>96926931
>Yes. You'd know how important mbas are if you played that game even a bit.
In that entire campaign we probably did like 30 combats and I don't remember more than a small handful of basic attacks. Maybe they would have been better in some cases. But that doesn't mean we didn't play the game.

>>96927237
>My man, that was put together by people who actually actively play the game and somewhat enjoy it.
I played 5e to level 20 two times and that entire list is dogshit and not actually what's wrong with 5e.
Martialcucks just want reparations for being "tricked" into playing a fighter in 3.5 and their DM not letting them play the anime classes from Tome of Battle. I play fighter characters almost exclusively when I play, and the absolute faggotry of martialcucks over the past 10 years on this board has genuinely made me not associate myself with their ilk. I am not even memeing, the 2 times I have encountered this kind of martialcuck whining in real life, in one case of those cases the guy was a literal actual cuck whose wife had orgies with other men. I wish I was joking.

>>96932330
Sounds like no one had any idea what they were doing then. A significant portion of defender/leader/striker damage comes from basic attacks. Only controllers don't care about them.

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13th age was the creator of 4e's second attempt. It is another take on the same ideas with hindsight and without wizard’s interference.
13th age glorantha had another new set of classes that all assumed that the players would know how to play and written with the hindsight of what worked/didn't in 13th age. Pic related are the 1st level martial at-wills from 13th age glorantha

>>96932266
>why should an entire character archtype be designed specifically to be boring for new players?
Because it's not boring for new players? That's the point, it's FOR NEW PLAYERS. You and I have been playing this game for over a decade at least. I know people who played AD&D for 30 years and got into 3rd or 4th edition and got lost just playing a fighter in those editions, let alone a battlemaster. Yes there needs to be a simple retard option for new players. That's what champion fighter is.

>>96932196
>omfg did he just criticize us wanting our fighters to be able to do stuff like Goku -- I mean, Hercules? He must be trolling!!!
fuck off

>>96932272
>Why should he get a save?
Because that's not how reality works? If someone else hits you, he should just get to automatically knock you on your ass with his special powers? What if his special power is to disarm you and cuck you by auto-disarming you on every hit? lmao
Maybe realize that the gay-ass dice limiting your uses are fucking stupid, and a penalty to hit or something similar would be better. That way you don't always want to use it, because it degrades your damage output in the long run, but if you find a good situation for it, you can do it. And sometimes you'll just want to attack, because an enemy is almost dead. That's fine too.
>b-b-b-b-but a penalty to hit is PUNISHING ME BECAUSE WIZARDS DO IT FOR FREE WAAAHHHHH
This is the standard martialcuck response, and this is why they are so intolerable. They are so unbelievably entitled that they see the entire game around them being "punished" relative to casters, and cannot cope with not being able to do everything a spellcaster can. It's genuinely unhinged. They will throw decent game design ideas in the trash because REEEEE MUH CASTERS MUH CASTERS REEEE it's genuinely depressing. They won't even consider it, despite even in 3.5 a fighter having a much higher chance to hit than a wizard has for a monster to fail a spell save, on average.

>>96932114
>It's just kinda boring. Because it's for new players.
This is, frankly, a fundamentally bad mindset.
First off, let's be real here. New players aren't typically drawn to an actual training wheels class. New players are drawn to flashy, dazzly bullshit. So acting like fighters are something that's there to be used by new players ignores how new players generally behave.

Secondly, if you design your starter class to suck ass, people are just going to drop the game. It is, fundamentally, bad game design to make one of your classes worse and less interesting because "it's for new player."

And finally, you shouldn't really design any class to be bad on purpose. Sometimes you're going to make things that suck, but having your intentions to be "this will suck ass" is a terrible waste of resources.

>>96932565
>Because that's not how reality works?
I didn't show up to simulate actual combat. I showed up to play a fucking game.
> If someone else hits you, he should just get to automatically knock you on your ass with his special powers?
If he's using the "knock someone on their ass immediately" ability, yeah. Now, if you're a smart game designer you're generally going to make that a limited resource or make it so you gotta jump through some hoops to put someone in cycle of constantly knocking them over.
>What if his special power is to disarm you and cuck you by auto-disarming you on every hit?
Yeah man, what if someone designed some stuff that wasn't fun to interact with. Crazy idea. Fucking crazy.

>Maybe realize that the gay-ass dice limiting your uses are fucking stupid, and a penalty to hit or something similar would be better. That way you don't always want to use it, because it degrades your damage output in the long run, but if you find a good situation for it, you can do it. And sometimes you'll just want to attack, because an enemy is almost dead. That's fine too.
Or we could make the game fun to play instead

>>b-b-b-b-but a penalty to hit is PUNISHING ME BECAUSE WIZARDS DO IT FOR FREE WAAAHHHHH
Oh I don't give a FUCK about what Wizards do. I want to play a game that isn't dogshit.

>They won't even consider it, despite even in 3.5 a fighter having a much higher chance to hit than a wizard has for a monster to fail a spell save, on average.
>3.5
Why would I voluntarily subject myself to 3.x era design? That sounds fucking awful.

>>96926024
>diegetic
This is the latest buzzword (yes it's a real word, that doesn't mean it's not also a buzzword) that söyfreaks have latched onto, to cope with their Forge-era meta-narrative dissociated mechanics getting called out by everyone, and their only response being "uhh it's a GAME so any mechanics make sense it's okay to play darts or see who can make a sandwich fastest to determine whether or not you hit, because none of it matters because everything is subjective!!!1!!" post-modernist slop mindset. They like that they can make something as reasonable as mechanics being related to the characters in the game world and something they are aware of, seem less reasonable by using a word that the average person probably hasn't heard (then cope by calling you a retard for pointing this fact out). It's a psyop. They love it because it lets them call you a retard for calling them out on it, and it also has a subtle psychological effect that convinces midwits that dissociated mechanics are actually.... LE GOOD!!!!1!!!

>>96932565
Your idea of what constitutes decent game design ideas is mindbogglingly retarded. Fuck off and die already you obese lump of cottage cheese.

>>96932656
>I didn't show up to simulate actual combat. I showed up to play a fucking game.
Okay then go play chess. That meets your retarded condition, that has nothing to do with RPGs.
>If he's using the "knock someone on their ass immediately" ability, yeah.
Why should that ability exist?
>Yeah man, what if someone designed some stuff that wasn't fun to interact with. Crazy idea. Fucking crazy.
This is why "fun" is a buzzword. Retards like you use it to justify turning games into low-IQ dopamine dispensers because "well I'm the one playing so it should all center around me, I don't have fun if things don't go my way." You genuinely need to get the fuck out and go play some faggy storygame where you can hold up your X card whenever things don't go your way, and then the DM has to give you a sloppy blowjob.
>Or we could make the game fun to play instead
There you go with that bullshit again.
Loads of people have had FUN playing D&D the way it is for years. The only one not having fun, is you and your faggot-ass video-game addicted ilk.
>Oh I don't give a FUCK about what Wizards do. I want to play a game that isn't dogshit.
Well that's a contradiction in terms, but I can tell from your post thus far that "isn't dogshit" means "if I spend some imaginary points, I'd better succeed, or else I'm gonna shit my pants and cry and not have fun anymore" you sound like an absolute fucking child mate. You sound like the fucking fag in my group who literally pitched a fit because he rolled a natural 1 three rounds in a row. You sound like a literal manchild. I hope this is ragebait.
>Why would I voluntarily subject myself to 3.x era design?
You're not even reading my post, you stupid faggot. You just saw "3.5" and your retarded /tg/-meme brain activated.
>design is shit because it was part of 3.5e
That's fully logically fallacious. You won't even attack my argument on its own terms, because you're a stupid fucking fag who doesn't understand shit about game design.

>>96932610
>New players aren't typically drawn to an actual training wheels class. New players are drawn to flashy, dazzly bullshit.
Your only semi-legitimate point and it's an issue that D&D has. Still I have seen people drawn to flashy dazzly bullshit and not know how to use it, so it's as much an issue with player effort as anything else. Yes, it'd be nice if there was a simplified druid as well for all the girls who joined wanting to play druid then complained it was too complicated.
>Secondly, if you design your starter class to suck ass, people are just going to drop the game.
No one said it has to "suck ass" just that it needs to be dumbed down. Also, that's wrong, because if you design your starter class to be really complicated, people will drop the game too. Most new players are just excited to be playing an RPG. Champion fighters are relatively effective while also being simple. They don't "suck ass" they're just boring. That's fine for some new players.
>And finally, you shouldn't really design any class to be bad on purpose.
You keep conflating "bad" and "boring." Champion fighter really isn't bad, just arguably less complicated than Battlemaster fighter.

>>96932717
>Your idea of what constitutes decent game design ideas is mindbogglingly retarded
Your idea that games are there to suck your dick, and anyone who disagrees is an evil GURPS player simulationist retard, is mindbogglingly retarded.
Shove your moronic false dichotomies up your ass.

>>96932752
There are more people that have bounced off of D&D for its rules than there are people who haven't. Most of the others never gave a shit about the rules. Your argument sucks.

>>96932788
Why are there any complicated rules at all? It's not difficult to make a character that can everything the druid can do in a system with simple and elegant mechanics. The same is true of every class in the game.

>>96932788
bad is boring and boring is bad.

>>96932752
Not a single human being has ever enjoyed playing dungeons and dragons.

>>96932425
I'll take things that didn't happen for 600.

>>96932425
I've been in this hobby for 30 years and the only group that regularly has problems with giving warrior classes cool stuff are the people raised on 3rd edition.

>martialniggers
bro thought the noob hazing class was a serious option LMAO

>>96918299
>OP Image
>Every single attack uses different attribute/target combos
>Every single one is based on a different weapon
>Every single one has different tags that engage with the mechanics
Are the people who made this image originally just a retard who can't read?

>>96937475
Check the thread to see their average intelligence

>>96918840
>like it's the standard
If you played the 5e playtest you'd know that Fighter was a battlemaster by default.
WotC decided it was 'too complicated for people who just want to roll an attack each turn' and forced it into a subclass instead so that they could take Champion instead.
The martial dice was also going to be a resources that multiple classes used, monks ki dice and rogue's abilities would also use martial dice meaning you could multiclass between them more easily.
The guy who did all this work was told by WotC his designs killed too many sacred cows so he left and went on his own to make Shadow of the Demon Lord with the mechanics WotC left on the cutting room floor.

>>96937502
>WotC
It was Mearls.

>>96927490
>bitch about classes being... Classes.
Disingenuously interpreting the argument as wrongly as possible doesn't make you correct it makes you deluded
A class being good at its own job and then also being better than another class at its job is objectively bad design.

>>96932565
>That way you don't always want to use it, because it degrades your damage output in the long run, but if you find a good situation for it, you can do it
Oh so you want 3.5e's shit where you never use it unless you bought 50 feats. Well, go play that edition then retard.

>>96937952
The one who's disingenuous is you. You have no real arguments which is why you screech buzzwords and cry about basic mechanics existing at all.

>>96933409
Gatekeeping is a good thing. Look at the state of this hobby today.

>>96937502
>The guy who did all this work was told by WotC his designs killed too many sacred cows so he left and went on his own to make Shadow of the Demon Lord with the mechanics WotC left on the cutting room floor.
And then that faded from a niche to a total obscurity while 5e has reigned totally supreme since inception, proving WotC completely and utterly correct.

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>>96932710
I'm the anon you're replying to, I use "diegetic" to refer to mechanics which increase verisimilitude rather than decreasing it, and I hate the forge and narrativism. I would have said simulationist, except that D&D doesn't fully simulate events (there aren't really rules for facing or hitting specific limbs, for example). I also think dissociated mechanics are trash and that the modern playerbase's main trait is loving dissociated mechanics, which unites PBTAfags and players of nu-4e "tactical" (misnomer, simulationist games are by definition more tactical) games like lancer and draw steel, as well as games which mix gamist dissociated mechanics and narrativist dissociated mechanics (daggerheart, 5e).
>Check the captcha

>>96938224
I'd argue that the old mechanics don't really feel like a real world either. They're totally gamey.

>>96938224
Define "dissociate mechanics"

>>96937475
I know this thread is about 4e, but is almost every 5.5e monster having a different elemental weapon which deals arbitrary damage dice (rather than using the weapon type and size) + elemental damage, and which doesn't have rules for what happens if players pick it up good? Since 4e also did that. In contrast, 3.5e had detailed rules for weapon sizes, every monster with poisonous weapons stated what the poison's rules were, and monsters with magical weapons stated what item they were using.

For example, see the Bullywug in 5.5e, or the Cyclops Storm Shaman or Cambion Hellsword in 4e.

>>96938224
>verisimilitude
Infinite stamina Fighter wearing weapons and armor apparently made of lead for how heavy they are attacking 5+ times in <6 seconds.
>>96938259
I just give them an approximate stand in. Earlier editions also had a lot of arbitrary shit. Hell one of the things that third edition tried to sell you on was that everybody used the same building blocks. I think that turned out to be a failed experiment.

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>>96938251
It's been defined 17 years ago (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1545/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanic), but I'll do it again: Mechanics which make it impossible or exceedingly difficult to take seriously any attempt to design a world in which the game rules (i.e. using a special attack with a weapon being faster than running, but only in combat, or being able to poison constructs, or being able to knock oozes prone) make sense when you write a game report/chronicle describing what happened in your game only using in-world terminology and not leaving anything important out.

>>96938284
As I have stated before (>>96925877), a better way to buff martial classes than just increasing the numbers like in a JRPG (I've heard that 4e is a tabletop MMO, but it's actually closer to a tabletop JRPG in my opinion) would be making weapons actually designed to injure people by damaging their body parts (which would include near-certain death on headshots without helmets and would require a separation of evasion/deflection AC from armor AC) such that a crossbow-wielder can almost certainly beat an unprepared mage in a surprise attack, but the same mage might spend time and resources to summon a monster which can kill the crossbow-wielder.

>>96938293
I did this all the time when I recapped sessions for new players or people who missed when my group was playing 4e. What's the issue?

>>96938311
Man, not even 40k games want to waste your time like that. Plus I can already see bullshit like "impossible biologies" or whatever rendering that useless against a lot of the things you'd fight in a typical fantasy campaign. If you want to write a story, write a story: it can be as edgy and realistic as you want and it'll be easier than trying to introduce resolution mechanics that only serve to frustrate

>>96938312
If you recapped individual battle details there might have been some inconsistencies. There's a difference between 3.5e shaken/frightened/panicked (first the target becomes distracted and shaken, then the target must attempt to move away from you, then the target must run away and will also drop everything in order to do so irrationally) and 4e fear which is literally just knockback ("The goblin was running away and about to cut the rope bridge behind himself, so I used my fear spell! It didn't make him any worse at dismantling the bridge, but it knocked him back 6 squares, making him effectively 1.5 times as fast when escaping!")

This is just one of the many examples of mechanics which have objectively less accurate implementations in some games, yet 4efags have a sort of genre blindness that prevents them from realizing this ("Liek, how is being able to catch a ball extra hard but only once per day less internally consistent than having to manually prepare spells in a system modeled off the novels of Jack Vance?"), in contrast to 5etroons who just endlessly shriek "It's a fantasy game which means wish fullfillment, why should I have to care about realism!"

>>96938330
This is a really strange problem for you to have. Your issue is that in recounting your imaginary elf game, some effects may require some imaginative embellishment? Not to mention that you are graciously interpreting some older elements while intentionally talking like an idiot about the ones you don't like. For example, things do run faster when they are scared. Why is that a problem that is destroying your brain?

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>>96938326
>Plus I can already see bullshit like "impossible biologies" or whatever rendering that useless against a lot of the things you'd fight in a typical fantasy campaign
3.5e has coup-de-grace rules allowing you to try to kill a helpless foe, which is an automatic critical hit with a save-or-die attached, and both coup-de-graces and critical hits are ineffective against amorphous, undead, or object/construct targets, and flanking is ineffective against amorphous targets. This doesn't quite approach the level of decreasing effectiveness that fire or poison have against most high-level monsters, but it does mean that it isn't an instant win card. As for "impossible biologies", I would just make a standardized list of body parts and their typical HP scores based on size, and then give them extra hardness based on the monster's natural AC. 3.5e already has an official table for improvising homebrew monster damage based on size and limb types:

>>96938347
But that's not realistic, that's abstraction and disassociation. Reducing monsters to lego blocks instead of trying to represent their real biologies.

>>96938363
Every mechanic in a game is somewhat abstractive as it is a game where the actual data cannot be recorded due to the objects and creatures described by such data not physically existing, but there is a difference between attempting to simulate something as accurately as possible in a limited system (for example, 3.5e's fear conditions, and monsters like Krakens or Ropers having sunderable tentacles) vs throwing simulation out of the window and making fear a form of knockback, as well as making command effects just a form of telekinesis that also forces the target to attack. BLOODY FRICKING PATH.

>>96938397
Oh I see what kind of guy you are. Had plenty of you at my table. Just go write your fucking book. You will be much happier not having to work with other people to achieve your historical fiction vision. Because that's what you really want, you don't want a fun interactive experience to share with a bunch of other people. You want to pontificate on the particulars, get into the nitty gritty of all the involved mechanisms, spend time justifying things. That's all perfectly fine, but that's not a group experience. At least not the group experience that dungeons and dragons was made to do. And Bloody Path is damn fun to use.

>>96938397
>muh bloody path
Go watch any Jackie Chan movie. He uses that power all the time.

>>96938406
Oh and before you try to say something like I'm not a real player or whatever, I started in 2e. 4th has more in common with 2e then 3rd ever did.

>>96938397
Bootyblasted control freak DM spotted.

>96938039
>no argument
No (You)
Kill yourself shitposting faggot

>>96922796
Easy. Core only, fighter misses Power Attack, because player thought he doesn't need it or it was not part of his concept. Fighter is fucked.
And a lot of people start their games core only.

>>96939663
Also consider a noob picking balanced stats instead of specializing in strength. 14 in strength is a thing I've seen from new fighters

>>96939682
Yeah, that's another problem. D&D has very limited ability to grow your stats, while they are incredibly important for non-casters. If you were say getting Point Buy points as you level having suboptimal starting spread won't be critical, since raising lower stats up would be cheaper, but with the way it's done you are basically fucked from the word go. It would also make MAD classes way stronger since, again, raising lower stats is cheaper.

>>96937475
lol gay 4rry

>>96938039
Yep, you have no arguments. You lose.

>>96938224
Sorry you have brain damage and bad taste.

>>96938293
so it's irrelevant bullshit that doesn't matter.

>>96938330
It doesn't matter if spell slots are based on some shitty airport novels written by a retard, actually. They're still retarded.

>>96939817
In Vance novels wizards can hold like 3-5 spells in memory at once. With the highest number being 6 or something like that. D&D spell slots have shit to do with it.

>>96939838
Take your meds

>>96939838
you really believe this LOL

>>96931299
>the special permissions my daddy DM gives me are universal to every D&D campaign and anyone who says different is a NOGAMES !!

>>96930342
This. Me and my group still play it to this day. Hell, I have a session of it tonight and the party should be getting close to learning both who these cultist bastards are and why they need all these purple crystals and magical red pearls.

>>96938221
>Popularity is good
>Designing for the lowest common denominator is good
If this was /v/ you'd be sucking off EA for giving you yet another Madden game this year.

>>96938330
>"The goblin was running away and about to cut the rope bridge behind himself, so I used my fear spell! It didn't make him any worse at dismantling the bridge, but it knocked him back 6 squares, making him effectively 1.5 times as fast when escaping!"
You forced the goblin to run away from you instead of cutting the ropes of the bridge, thereby giving your party the capability to continue chasing them.
Are you actually retarded?

>>96941035
boring game

wow edition

>>96918299
there are ways to make martials do more then just attack every round that aren't the extremely dumb way 4E did it, all they had to do was give them a better action economy then spellcasters and let them do cool stuff without 5 feats and 12 levels among 3-4 classes

they could also just make casters have actual weaknesses again like AD&D

>>96938293
This is a ridiculous standard to hold. A pen and paper dice game is a terrible format to try to create a simulation of any kind of reality, nevermind the fact that if a game is FANTASTICAL it be definition is seperated from the rules we are used to. Claiming that it's easier to suspend your disbelief that a mage can conjure a ball of fire only once a day than a warrior being able to pull off a miraculous physical feat once a day has no logical grounding, it's simply post-hoc rationalization.

>>96938397
>difference between attempting to simulate something as accurately as possible in a limited system

The assumption that that's what it's trying to do is an incredible leak.

>>96938397
You mean command effects like Command, which is literally mind control?

>>96942826
>all they had to do was give them a better action economy then spellcasters and let them do cool stuff without 5 feats and 12 levels among 3-4 classes.
4e literally did that though. A big part of 4e optimization is getting as many basic attacks as possible per round with your melee character.

>>96939838
>D&D casters get more spells in their heads.
>It's completely different.

>>96943109
jesus, how dull

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>>96943226
This feat alone is more interesting than anything matrials are doing in 3.5 or 5e.

>>96943133
Yes.

>>96943272
I wasn't comparing it to anything. Dominant strategies are simply dull in and of themselves.

>>96941075
>>Popularity is good
Yeah, it's the objective measurement of success. WOTC was not designing a game to appeal to the ten hyper niche autists like (you), faggot.
>>Designing for the lowest common denominator is good
It's neither good nor bad, it's fine. Giving new players a means to engage with the game doesn't mean you have to ruin it, retard.
>If this was /v/
This is not /v/ zoomer, these are tabletop games, get the fuck out.

>>96941111
>You forced the goblin to run away from you
No, he knocked him back.

popular = bad

>>96943515
No, he forced him to run away.

>>96933409
>There are more people that have bounced off of D&D for its rules than there are people who haven't
Source?

>>96933773
>bad is boring and boring is bad.
Wrong LMAO that's literally wrong.

>>96936201
retarded statement

>>96933760
>It's not difficult to make a character that can everything the druid can do in a system with simple and elegant mechanics
Cool just play freeform RP and you can run a druid without any rules at all! Your reductionism reaches its apotheosis!

>>96937058
Retarded meme statement, no value. Extremely low-quality post.

>>96937227
>the only group that regularly has problems with giving warrior classes cool stuff
No one has a problem with that, it's just that your definition of "cool stuff" for warrior classes is "anime-tier bullshit" justified with muh Hercules, ignoring that he was a demigod.
And no, a high level D&D fighter is not a demigod, you fucking retard.

>>96945231
Nope it's literally right and you lose.

>>96937977
>Oh so you want 3.5e's shit where you never use it unless you bought 50 feats. Well, go play that edition then retard.
Nice retarded false dichotomy where you completely ignore what I said. Fuck you for wasting my time you stupid piece of shit.

>>96939808
>so it's irrelevant bullshit that doesn't matter.
Wrong. Just because you dismiss something doesn't mean it's irrelevant. Get help.

>>96945231
No, not freeform. A good system that's better than yours. Your preferences are wrong.

Anime is good and high level characters are demigods.

>>96945240
>Nice retarded false dichotomy
Nah there's no false dichotomy, that's literally what 3.5e does. Nobody uses Disarm in that game. Do you know why? Because it's fucking stupid and useless because of your gay retarded penalty. The only time it's not stupid and useless is when you use a million feats to make it actually good, which sucks and feels lame because you could just flatten the guy for a fuckton of damage instead.

wow edition :)

>>96943031
>The target is dazed until the end of your next turn. In addition, you can either slide the target a number of squares up to 3 + your Charisma modifier or knock the target prone.
Tell me that that isn't telekinesis. There is no mention of the creature's speed, or moving it on it's own turn. Yes, this is what command does in 4e.

>>96943003
It's not just "once a day", it's after you spend a number of hours depending on the spell's level to prepare the spell by meditating. I agree that sorcerers and other non-prepared spell-like ability sources are unrealistic. It's also not post-hoc, the vancian system was inspired by fantastical literature which was not made specifically for the game.

>>96941111
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Compel_the_craven
>2[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target moves away from you a number of squares equal to your Charisma modifier, avoiding unsafe squares and difficult terrain if it can."
How is this not knockback? It doesn't even say "the target's speed + your charisma modifier" (which Cause Fear states, but I also consider unrealistic since it somehow makes the target faster), it's literally just knockback with no correlation to how fast the target can actually run, meaning that you can knock back a fungus 6 squares even when it normally moves 1 square.

>>96946031
So? I love how people bring up 4e's mechanical abstractions are breaking verisimilitude as if 99% of players care about that shit over just being able to use cool abilities like befuddling an opponent with a Drill Sergeant's bark so hard they stumble back on reflex or trip over their own feet.

>>96946056
Knockback is in a straight line and can hit objects and be stopped, this causes the target to flee, thereby allowing the target to select the direction.

>>96945231
>No one has a problem with that, it's just that your definition of "cool stuff" for warrior classes is "anime-tier bullshit" justified with muh Hercules, ignoring that he was a demigod.
>And no, a high level D&D fighter is not a demigod, you fucking retard
Again, the only people who say stuff like this are people raised on 3e during its heyday. When I started in 2e, high level PCs in general were treated as demigods. Dark Sun even doubled down on that, if you're in the know. I don't know what about starting with 3e makes someone think there's this hard line between a fantastical warrior and a fantastical magician, since our inspirations always treated them the same.

>>96943133
When on one said you have 3-6 spells and on the other 60+ ? Yes.

>>96946056
>but I also consider unrealistic since it somehow makes the target faster
How the fuck is someone running faster when they're terrified out of their mind unrealistic?

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>>96946223
And let's not forget BECMI D&D, where the I stood for Immortal, had your player characters becoming these immortal godlike entities at the end of a campaign if you wished to play that far.

I always considered 4E a successor to BECMI rather than AD&D.