Yes but the cards the were playable were a much smaller slice of the pie. From Mirage onward you had not only type 2 but also limited. So almost every card in those sets is playable in at least one format.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;800328Yes but the cards the were playable were a much smaller slice of the pie. From Mirage onward you had not only type 2 but also limited. So almost every card in those sets is playable in at least one format.

I personally hate the formatting because of the planned obsolescence model. It's why I quite MtG and L5R almost back to back (give or take a couple years) when they switched to such formats. However, yes the new formats "unbanned" quite a few cards so as to open the play field.

Generally, since CCGs are directly competitive, each set pretty much printed a mere handful of competitive Broken-thru-Strong cards. And the rest were essentially uncompetitive garbage, de facto banned by the sheer competitive environment. It was a rather accepted paradigm up until Mirage.

Mirage, and block sets from then on, basically plays really well with itself. And because previous card pools are inaccessible, commons and uncommons that were previously accepted de facto garbage had to up their game to cover design gaps. It explains why so many of the earlier sets had such a swing between power levels.

The price for such a happy secret garden was a treadmill. Not a price I was willing to play.

Besides, home games allowed us to micro-manage the power level of cards without pissing around with WotC approved formats. Yes, you could play Sol Ring, Swamp, Dark Ritual, and up to 4x Black Vise turn one in a friendly Fallen Empires+ matchup, but in practice it was frowned upon (excess Black Vises) because there was no point. Might as well escalate dick measuring contests until someone whips out the Alpha rares and who Channel+Fireball-ed in their neighborhood first.

At some point "pro play" expectations are just stupid; it adds nothing to the pick-up game.

Quote from: Opaopajr;800330At some point "pro play" expectations are just stupid; it adds nothing to the pick-up game.

That's a big assumption, MtG is a competive game and I'd wager that the decisions that the "pro play" expectations WotC trickle down to make casual experience better. The fact that they design for limited for example means when new players open a bunch of packs and make a deck out of those cards they end up having a better time.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;800340That's a big assumption, MtG is a competive game and I'd wager that the decisions that the "pro play" expectations WotC trickle down to make casual experience better. The fact that they design for limited for example means when new players open a bunch of packs and make a deck out of those cards they end up having a better time.

It's an assumption born out of experience, especially after returning to observe the past 5+ years from a long hiatus. The design is tighter, but the environment is just more poisonous, the "winning pool" more obvious faster, and chased harder. Unless you get sponsored, burn money chasing pro-play (or Vintage foil dreams), or ghetto-ize yourself to a CCG circuit junkie in aspirations thereof, there's no there there anymore.

The block sets have tighter flavor and greater average card competitiveness. But they also get "solved" in record time now. End result is far less experimentation and exploration. Narrower pool, narrower parameters, narrower solutions.

(At this point we should move this to Other Games before we derail any more.)

Besides all the sturm und drang about DPR on GWF and great axe v. great sword, I notice no one is talking about the annoyance of de facto restriction to Rogue's weapon choice by Sneak Attack's swing.

Sneak Attack pretty much allows only 7 weapons to choose from, for the most part only really 4 without optional feats and multi-classing. Sneak weapons must either have finesse or be a ranged weapon. And of finesse melee you need light keyword or Dual Wielder feat so as to milk two-weapon fighting for all its worth. It makes the range of weapon builds very narrow.:

Simple Melee
Dagger (because all the others do not have the critical finesse keyword. the light and thrown keywords just pushes it over the top early game.)

Simple Ranged
Lt. Xbow (just for d8 love, and little loading worries for most builds)
Dart (cheap, mid-range, until enough gold for more daggers)
S. Bow (go to ranged weapon, with no loading worries)
Sling (the ONLY native ranged bludgeoning, and the ONLY bludgeoning that works with Sneak Attack. Yes, that matters.)

Martial Melee
Rapier (needs Dual Wielder feat.)
Short Sword (Two-weapon finesse d6s, however you cannot throw. solid early, later Sneak Attack makes it forgettable.)

Martial Ranged
Hand XBow (feat tricks builds.)

Longsword is ignorable, even with Dual Wielder feat. Sneak Attack. must. have. finesse. Further, its better to have two melee chances to trigger Sneak Attack, so its versatile property is pointless.

It makes alternate thief equipment builds almost untenable by the sheer rapid increase of SA damage. Further with DEX doing most of the light and medium armor AC heavy lifting, SA + AC demands really curtails the diversity of Rogue builds. I'd excuse the poor armor/defense options as tradition, but weapon funneling is really annoying.

I really hope the DMG has an option to pitch that class feature into some old school Backstabbing.

Quote from: Opaopajr;800415Besides all the sturm und drang about DPR on GWF and great axe v. great sword, I notice no one is talking about the annoyance of de facto restriction to Rogue's weapon choice by Sneak Attack's swing.

Sneak Attack pretty much allows only 7 weapons to choose from, for the most part only really 4 without optional feats and multi-classing. Sneak weapons must either have finesse or be a ranged weapon. And of finesse melee you need light keyword or Dual Wielder feat so as to milk two-weapon fighting for all its worth. It makes the range of weapon builds very narrow.:

You omit scimitar, which pairs nicely with short sword for dual wielding without the Dual Wielder feat, because it's finesse and light and does slashing where short sword does piercing.

QuoteIt makes alternate thief equipment builds almost untenable by the sheer rapid increase of SA damage. Further with DEX doing most of the light and medium armor AC heavy lifting, SA + AC demands really curtails the diversity of Rogue builds. I'd excuse the poor armor/defense options as tradition, but weapon funneling is really annoying.

I really hope the DMG has an option to pitch that class feature into some old school Backstabbing.

I guess I'm OK with sneak attacks not being delivered via halberd. Why are you bothered by this? All I can think of:

• It's boringly the same that all rogues have (almost) the same weapons.
• Enemies are going to guess it's a rogue because of the finesse weapons.
• You want to squeeze out an extra point or so of damage on top of the d6 per two levels from sneak attack.

My answers to those objections:

• House rule that any reasonable one handed weapon can be used for sneak attack as if it were Finesse and Light, but only gets d6 damage (or d4 if it's also Thrown). Won't it be boringly the same that all rogues use two weapons to get the best result out of sneak attack?
• Enemies are probably going to see lots of dual wielders with Finesse weapons (Light or not according to Dual Wielder feat) who aren't rogues, because they have much better dexterity bonus than strength (my ranger and my sorcerer, for examples).
• :boohoo:

Hey, Deep Spawn was a pretty hefty beating (when combined with Basalt Monolith, you could get that thing out reasonably fast, and 6/6 trample untargettable is pretty decent), and it seems like Blue had one or two other cards...been too long for me to remember it all. FE was underrated as a set, pump knights and hymn to Tourach were pretty strong and playable in darn near every deck.

One thing badly overlooked in the cantrips mess is resistances. Plenty of monsters are pretty resistant to weapons, but spells, especially cantrips? Nothing, or very, very few. Suddenly, that 90% effective cantrip is every bit as good as weapons that deal half damage when meeting undead, for example. Toss in those cantrips that shut down regeneration (functionally equivalent to +10 damage!), and I'm still thinking the "infinite magic spells" thing needs to be scaled back to something less than infinity.

"I waste 'em with my crossbow" has been replaced with "Eldritch Blast ftw!"

Hey Doom, Jibba and Rawma why don't every last one of you whiny pussies open a winery in Petaluma? Don't forget the cheese while your at it also. Get over the fact that magic users don't need a weapon used by peasants and rogues to consistently miss with for your misguided and bullshit version of immersion.

You ignorant fucks act like magic users get EVERY possible cantrip when in fact they get 3-5 total and likely because of that probably take 1-2 combat cantrips by 20th level unless they take a feat mostly useless to them or another feat that requires said cantrip to have an attack roll (extremely limited choices there and even more useless unless you're an Evoker, Sorcerer or Warlock). About the ONLY class that would have multiple combat cantrips is the Eldritch Knight or possibly the Valor Bard (Shocking Grasp and Viscous Mockery come to mind as the best options).

Much better is to take Elemental Adept and alter your single goto combat cantrip IF desperate.

Quote from: Opaopajr;800415Besides all the sturm und drang about DPR on GWF and great axe v. great sword, I notice no one is talking about the annoyance of de facto restriction to Rogue's weapon choice by Sneak Attack's swing.

Sneak Attack pretty much allows only 7 weapons to choose from, for the most part only really 4 without optional feats and multi-classing. Sneak weapons must either have finesse or be a ranged weapon. And of finesse melee you need light keyword or Dual Wielder feat so as to milk two-weapon fighting for all its worth. It makes the range of weapon builds very narrow.:

Simple Melee
Dagger (because all the others do not have the critical finesse keyword. the light and thrown keywords just pushes it over the top early game.)

Simple Ranged
Lt. Xbow (just for d8 love, and little loading worries for most builds)
Dart (cheap, mid-range, until enough gold for more daggers)
S. Bow (go to ranged weapon, with no loading worries)
Sling (the ONLY native ranged bludgeoning, and the ONLY bludgeoning that works with Sneak Attack. Yes, that matters.)

Martial Melee
Rapier (needs Dual Wielder feat.)
Short Sword (Two-weapon finesse d6s, however you cannot throw. solid early, later Sneak Attack makes it forgettable.)

Martial Ranged
Hand XBow (feat tricks builds.)

Longsword is ignorable, even with Dual Wielder feat. Sneak Attack. must. have. finesse. Further, its better to have two melee chances to trigger Sneak Attack, so its versatile property is pointless.

It makes alternate thief equipment builds almost untenable by the sheer rapid increase of SA damage. Further with DEX doing most of the light and medium armor AC heavy lifting, SA + AC demands really curtails the diversity of Rogue builds. I'd excuse the poor armor/defense options as tradition, but weapon funneling is really annoying.

I really hope the DMG has an option to pitch that class feature into some old school Backstabbing.

You can't use dual wield on sneak attacks. You can only make 1 sneak attack per turn.
Also the sneak attack damage doesn't vary by weapon unlike in early editions which means that you don't need to worry so much about the weapon to get the same bonus out of the sneak attack. Sneak attack with a d4 knife or a d8 rapier and .... the bonus is still d6

Quote from: jibbajibba;800503You can't use dual wield on sneak attacks. You can only make 1 sneak attack per turn.

You can only add the damage on one successful attack per round, but if you get two chances to hit you're more likely to get the bonus damage in that round. That is, if you miss with the first attack but hit with the second, you get the bonus damage on the second attack.

Quote from: Marleycat;800501Hey Doom, Jibba and Rawma why don't every last one of you whiny pussies open a winery in Petaluma? Don't forget the cheese while your at it also. Get over the fact that magic users don't need a weapon used by peasants and rogues to consistently miss with for your misguided and bullshit version of immersion.

You ignorant fucks act like

What did I do to get included in this rant?

Quote from: rawma;800508You can only add the damage on one successful attack per round, but if you get two chances to hit you're more likely to get the bonus damage in that round. That is, if you miss with the first attack but hit with the second, you get the bonus damage on the second attack.

Correct. You have a lesser chance with the off-hand attack. But its still another chance if the main hand misses.

Quote from: rawma;800510What did I do to get included in this rant?

I mistakenly thought you were whining about at-will cantrips I apologize. From my own play experience I have used a combat cantrip ONE time in 2 levels. I do use the non combat ones all the time though.

Quote from: Marleycat;800512You're whining about at-will cantrips. From my own play experience I have used a combat cantrip ONE time in 2 levels. I do use the non combat ones all the time though.

In what post did I whine about cantrips? I'm whining about being lumped in with those other whiners, not about cantrips.

Quote from: rawma;800514In what post did I whine about cantrips? I'm whining about being lumped in with those other whiners, not about cantrips.

See my above edit.