New Classes and XP Progression

Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 6:09 pm

serleran wrote:
Actually, you should play 4e. Its so close to C&C that it may give you an idea on why certain things were not done, or were done. It never hurts to give a game a trial play -- you might like it, and then what? You've found something fun to enjoy.

Meh, I'll just take your word for it. I will admit, I bought the three core books (and the PHB twice, one for my wife) and I couldn't make it through character creation before I figured out what I had known since information had started to leak out - it wasn't for me. So they sit on the shelf, taking up space. The only 4th Edition of anything I'll be playing is GURPS.
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serleran · Post by **serleran** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 6:14 pm

I should say I have not, nor have any desire to, played 4th edition D&D. Unless someone ran it, locally. And that's not going to happen. I simply don't want to purchase the game since I already know, from what I have read of it, that it would not be the game I want to run.
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MacLeod · Post by **MacLeod** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 8:41 pm

I played through the first portion of The Keep on the Shadowfel...

It wasn't the worst thing I have ever encountered in my life as related to RPGs. At the same time though it was quite obvious that 4E should only appeal to a select group of people. 4E has some good ideas over 3E however; combining skills, balancing classes, normalizing numbers... But I think the whole Powers thing broke it. I don't think people whom are interested in D&D want to play a game that uses something called Power Cards.

Not that I think RPG and Card Game couldn't marry well (I have the blueprints for such a game written up)... but not for D&D.

Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:11 pm

MacLeod wrote:
I played through the first portion of The Keep on the Shadowfel...

It wasn't the worst thing I have ever encountered in my life as related to RPGs. At the same time though it was quite obvious that 4E should only appeal to a select group of people. 4E has some good ideas over 3E however; combining skills, balancing classes, normalizing numbers... But I think the whole Powers thing broke it. I don't think people whom are interested in D&D want to play a game that uses something called Power Cards.

Not that I think RPG and Card Game couldn't marry well (I have the blueprints for such a game written up)... but not for D&D.

I agree that there are some good ideas in 4e...I have to take that on faith, though. Honestly, the only thing I saw that was interesting, was minion rules. To me, combining skills was okay, then they went and futzed it up by removing skill points and the ability to select points every level - almost like they thought their fan base wasn't capable of doing a little resource management (much like they did with vancian casting, but I digress). With balancing classes, they may have gotten closer than 3e did (again, I'm assuming), but I've heard there are still problems. It's so funny that they are trying so hard to get away from their roots, when it was their roots that actually got it right. I'm a firm believer that it's nearly impossible to balance the classes, and two efforts by WotC has only reenforced that notion. C&C did what I thought should have never been changed - realized that there are too many differences between classes and to keep those differences and actually have the classes with difference and flavor, that there was no way to have them progress the same. In this time of homogenization, I'm happy to see C&C strike out their own path...especially when I think it's the right one.
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LD's C&C creations - the witch, a half-ogre, skill and 0-level rules

Troll Lord wrote:
Lord D: you understand where I"m coming from.

MacLeod · Post by **MacLeod** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 9:38 pm

I don't mind the loss of skill points. WotC is doing essentially the same thing C&C is doing in that respect.
In fact... The way the numbers progress is very much C&Cish! 4E takes it one step further and apply the Level bonus to stats... which creates a standard. This aspect I very much like. The Powers part makes the game unplayable though.
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Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 10:01 pm

MacLeod wrote:
I don't mind the loss of skill points. WotC is doing essentially the same thing C&C is doing in that respect.
In fact... The way the numbers progress is very much C&Cish! 4E takes it one step further and apply the Level bonus to stats... which creates a standard. This aspect I very much like. The Powers part makes the game unplayable though.

I don't mind the loss of skill points either, because I don't play it!
Hey man, whatever floats your boat. I'm glad there are more differences with 4e than there are similarities, that's for certain.
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LD's C&C creations - the witch, a half-ogre, skill and 0-level rules

Troll Lord wrote:
Lord D: you understand where I"m coming from.

MacLeod · Post by **MacLeod** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 11:15 pm

The point is, I bet you'd play 4E if it didn't have powers.
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Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 1:26 am

And I'd hate to have to take your money, kiddo. Removing gnomes, druids, barbarians, bards, druids, monks, sorcerors, vancian casting, putting magic items in the PHB (Seriously? WTF is is with that?), and a ton of other things that have absolutely no bearing on the addition of "powers" in the game is why I'm not playing. Hell, just search for my forum name over on the Wizards boards, if they haven't burned those old posts down, and you'll be able to see my complaints/criticisms.
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LD's C&C creations - the witch, a half-ogre, skill and 0-level rules

Troll Lord wrote:
Lord D: you understand where I"m coming from.

DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 1:30 am

Lord Dynel wrote:
sorcerors

Sorcerers?

Aint never been sorcerers in D&D.

MacLeod · Post by **MacLeod** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 1:44 am

My music teacher would always pronounce that, "Sauce-er-rer." Drove me craaazy.

Lord Dynel wrote:
And I'd hate to have to take your money, kiddo. Removing gnomes, druids, barbarians, bards, druids, monks, sorcerors, vancian casting, putting magic items in the PHB (Seriously? WTF is is with that?), and a ton of other things that have absolutely no bearing on the addition of "powers" in the game is why I'm not playing. Hell, just search for my forum name over on the Wizards boards, if they haven't burned those old posts down, and you'll be able to see my complaints/criticisms.

hehe
In this alternate universe the removal of the powers would mean that the old system of magic would be in place. The rest of those classes are gonna show up eventually, somewhere. Think about it though... In addition to the fact that WotC is greedy, they didn't put those classes in that book because the Powers consume twenty million pages per class.
I suppose they put the magic items in the PHB to further make the DMG even more of useless waste of space? If the 3.5 DMG didn't have those wonky Exp tables, magic items and a few terms I wouldn't have needed it at all.
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paladin2019 · Post by **paladin2019** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 1:58 am

DangerDwarf wrote:
Sorcerers?

Aint never been sorcerers in D&D.

There have always been sorcerers in D&D, just like there's always been swashbucklers. They're all 7th level magic-users and 5th level fighters.

DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 2:02 am

My bad.

Now that's a sorcerer I can live with.

Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 3:20 am

DangerDwarf wrote:
Sorcerers?

Aint never been sorcerers in D&D.

Hmm. Okay, a slight misspelling I can own up to. As for no sorcerers in D&D?

I know my eyes are failing me, but I think it says "Dungeons & Dragons" at the top of the book there. And on page 51, I think that says sorcerers...yep, sure does. Imagine that!
Point I was making that any changes up to and including 3,.5 was acceptable. 4e took what little heritage it had left and took a big ol' steaming dump on it. At least to me, and that's all that matters....to me.
But the 7th level magic-user reference did crack me up. Don't get me wrong, I'd take 1st and 2nd edition any day over 3rd...I wish 3rd beve came into existance and they stopped at 2nd. But I'll take 3rd any day over 4th. Belee dat.
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LD's C&C creations - the witch, a half-ogre, skill and 0-level rules

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DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 4:12 am

Oh, that d20 game.

Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 10:21 am

DangerDwarf wrote:
Oh, that d20 game.

Yeah, that one that says "Dungeons & Dragons" on it.
Like I said, DD, I agree with you. The further I get away from 3.5/d20, the more I see its flaws. And I meant it with all seriousness when I said that I wish TSR/WotC would have quit after 2nd edition...sometimes I think it might have been better if TSR went out of business. But if one can call WotC's latest effort Dungeons & Dragons, then their previous effort can be called that as well. They certainly didn't embarass themselves any less with 4e and by no means redeemed themselves with its release...at least IMHO.
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LD's C&C creations - the witch, a half-ogre, skill and 0-level rules

Troll Lord wrote:
Lord D: you understand where I"m coming from.

DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 12:50 pm

I take the reverse view that if 3e can be called D&D then 4e gets to use it as well. I just had to razz ya for a bit since neither sorcerers or barbarians were core until the advent of d20 so their removal is by no means a big deal to me.

And like I've said before, when I want to play D&D, 4e isn't what I turn to. I think 4e is a great game, but it isn't what I play when I want to play D&D and while the mechanics may have taken a turn, I still think the heart and tone of the game is closer to D&D than d20 ever was.

oh, and for...

Lord Dynel wrote:
DD, did you ever make your class(es) and how did they turn out?

Actually did some refocusing here. With the release of StarSiege, I've been retooling the "crunch" of the setting some and going with the SS system. Works better for the homebrew setting I've been farting around with.

Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 1:16 pm

Thanks for finally answering my question, by the way!

Yeah, StarSIEGE was actually an interesting ruleset. I was honestly expecting "C&C with a space theme and classes" and what I got was something quite its own. I was very impressed. Glad to hear it worked out for ya.

As far as 4e and 3e goes, there both D&D..may not be my ideal vision and it actually pains me a little to address one as such, but that's what it says on the front of the books so I guess that makes it so, at least officially.
Here's an interesting note you might find amusing - one of my players is having a hard time with adjusting to C&C (I might make a thread about it). I told him that if we end up doing another game, I'm gonna whip out the 2nd Edition books and we'll play some AD&D. I'm not sure how he tok it, though.
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LD's C&C creations - the witch, a half-ogre, skill and 0-level rules

Troll Lord wrote:
Lord D: you understand where I"m coming from.

DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 1:44 pm

Can't ever go wrong with some good ol' AD&D. At a core book level, I think 2nd edition did a bang up job. Some of the later additions were sloppy in my opinion but the rules presented in the core 3 were friggin' great.

I'm probably just biased though because I spent most of my D&D life playing that edition.

Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 1:54 pm

DangerDwarf wrote:
Can't ever go wrong with some good ol' AD&D. At a core book level, I think 2nd edition did a bang up job. Some of the later additions were sloppy in my opinion but the rules presented in the core 3 were friggin' great.

I'm probably just biased though because I spent most of my D&D life playing that edition.

I played it for its entire run (89-99) and (again, as I step further away from 3.x) I think it was probably the best edition, for the main reason it was basically 1st edition, with cleaned up rules. I loved 1st Edition, back in 1989, but 2nd Edition came in and became a complete system, much cleaner than 1st, and handled things that I thought should have been done in 1st (like making dragons more powerful, the nonweapon proficiency system, specialty priests, to name a few). I thought the Core Three were come of the best books I think TSR ever prooduced in the post-Gygax era.
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LD's C&C creations - the witch, a half-ogre, skill and 0-level rules

Troll Lord wrote:
Lord D: you understand where I"m coming from.