Quote from: Hairfoot;367745the Abyssal Maw Cycle.

One of the better things produced by these forums in recent years. Thank you!

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367834Well, there is. I start by taking part in the conversation, and then one of you retards decides to battle me, and then I respond, and then the tears flow like rain.

I don't disagree that there's a method, but I do disagree with your assessment of your method.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367834What, would you like to battle too?

No, I have integrity and don't actively seek battle with lesser opponents.  Ultimately, it's a hollow and pointless victory.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367834Exactly how important is maintaining the status quo for you guys anyway?

As far as I'm concerned, it's not important at all, nor even a consideration for me.

As I've said in the past, I'm willing to look past your little bullshit games when you are honestly talking about your gaming experiences with 3.x D&D, 4e D&D, and the Living 'X' organization.  You really have some insightful information and observations.  

I'm a firm believer that reasonable people of good will can agree to disagree.  However, as you have clearly stated in this very thread, sometimes you are not being reasonable nor coming from a position of good will.

I disagree with a lot of your statements when you are 'retard farming,' as you put it.  However, my disagreement with some of your statements does not automatically equate to being your enemy in all things and all matters.

I'm happy and eager to discuss actual gaming with you when you're speaking from a place of good will and you are not retard farming.

Quote from: Ian Absentia;367846That doesn't count, trouble-maker.  It's the response to his provocation that starts it.

!i!

Exactly.  If people would just stop pointing out when the Wonder Twins are posting ingenuous bullshit, everyone would be happy!

Quote from: Seanchai;367820Like what constitutes roleplaying or a roleplaying game? There are core concepts in the hobby that are hotly debated. For example, I think of "roleplaying" as play acting and thus Estar's definition of "roleplaying materials" makes no sense to me - that stuff is fluff or flavor.

When I say that immersion is meaningless, I mean a debate about its causes and ways. Upthread someone suggested that it has levels and that said levels vary by person. But I don't think it's that uniform. I think it just is where it is and isn't where it isn't.

You can take a mechanic from one edition of a game and people won't have a problem with it. Put the same mechanics in another edition or a different game and suddenly it "breaks immersion." I don't doubt that it does, but the listed reasons as to why are probably iffy...

Moreover, as a psychological state, anyone can claim to be in it at any time and who can gainsay them?

Seanchai

What I don't understand is why you feel the need to gainsay them, when they've never given you a reason to doubt what they post. So things might not work for you that way, bully for you. Doesn't mean it couldn't possibly work that way from someone else. I'm saying I don't like the way the powers work in 4e. I explain why that is, and all you can post is how wrong I am. How the hell would you know? I'd love to see you instead discuss how they work for you and what you like about them, but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

Would like to see those house-iterations...as my DnD4.0 campaign is starting to collapse under its own weight at around level 15 (no shock there, Dungeons and Dragons collapses at high levels, too), I'm definitely thinking about starting over, using the DnD4.0 rules as a base, but fixing them.

Definitely looking for advice.

First thing I'm doing is fixing the broken character generation...I hate that a dwarf simply cannot be a fighter in this system. I can either rework the whole combat system, or just allow a floating +2 to attributes (one +2 goes to Con or Wis, giving dwarfs an inclination...the other goes to Str for fighter-dwarves, or elsewhere for other dwarves), so that's what I'm doing.

The broken magic item and broken weath by level system is easy enough to 'fix'...trash the latter, and throw out the ability to make the former.

The broken "15 minute workday" is still here, and I concede it's fundamental to the design. I'm hoping that characters not starting with APs, instead having to earn them during play, will help a little.

After a year and a half, I still don't know how to fix the broken skill-challenge system, or skills in general, beyond scaling paragon stuff to +10 (eg, 'heal' on a character struck down by a paragon monster is DC 20, not the trivial-at-that-level DC 10).

Exception based design means there are broken abilities out there (eg, "Certain Justice", paladin paragon path, read it until you get how busted that is, an encounter power vastly stronger than most dailies)...I'm going to have to case by case such crap, and i don't like that at all.

I have no ideas how to fix the broken healing/monster damage/grindy combat issues (they're all interrelated). It's just way too much, and I don't know how to fix healing without making it feel like I'm just screwing over the cleric or whatever. Past healing, increasing monster damage and lowering monster hit points seems to help, I'm doing + 1/2 level damage, 20% hit points, would love to hear other suggestions.

Alas, low on time, so can't list the other broken things I'd like to try to fix, but the above are a start.

Has anyone sat down and seriously tried to fix all this? Or do folks just go to another system?

Quote from: Doom;367908First thing I'm doing is fixing the broken character generation...I hate that a dwarf simply cannot be a fighter in this system. I can either rework the whole combat system, or just allow a floating +2 to attributes (one +2 goes to Con or Wis, giving dwarfs an inclination...the other goes to Str for fighter-dwarves, or elsewhere for other dwarves), so that's what I'm doing.

That's a houserule I've been toying with too - erase ability bonuses from races, players automatically get +2 to their primary and +2 to their secondary stat as per their class build choice.*

If that's too radical, let players foregoe one racial +2 for a free +2 bonus of their choice (selected permanently at level 1). A more clunky way to achieve this is to have a generic feat at heroic tier which lets them either do that (alter 1 racial bonus) or change which ability their attacks use for the attack roll (cf. the "Melee Training" feat in PH 2, page 187). But I'm tired of going more clunky, seeing that the WotC designers do too (as in, "Fuck this, people don't need to burn feats to have functional builds - this warlord's ranged attacks will work on STR, not DEX. There, done." as per Martial Power 2).

* It's purely system mandated, but if you want rationalizing here's my attempt: these bonuses don't represent racial heritage but your biological make-up. Look at humans - we've produced weight lifters and pianists. There's training as you grow up, but there's also underlying biological differences - the big boned guy vs. the dexterious guy.

Quote from: Windjammer;367911That's a houserule I've been toying with too - erase ability bonuses from races, players automatically get +2 to their primary and +2 to their secondary stat as per their class build choice.*

If that's too radical, let players foregoe one racial +2 for a free +2 bonus of their choice (selected permanently at level 1). A more clunky way to achieve this is to have a generic feat at heroic tier which lets them either do that (alter 1 racial bonus) or change which ability their attacks use for the attack roll (cf. the "Melee Training" feat in PH 2, page 187). But I'm tired of going more clunky, seeing that the WotC designers do too (as in, "Fuck this, people don't need to burn feats to have functional builds - this warlord's ranged attacks will work on STR, not DEX. There, done." as per Martial Power 2).

* It's purely system mandated, but if you want rationalizing here's my attempt: these bonuses don't represent racial heritage but your biological make-up. Look at humans - we've produced weight lifters and pianists. There's training as you grow up, but there's also underlying biological differences - the big boned guy vs. the dexterious guy.

I like it. Hadn't run into this yet, but I would be making a dwarf fighter eventually as that's one of my fav race/class combos, so it's nice to see others coming up with some way of dealing with that.

re: Dwarf Fighters. I feel so funny making the inquiry but here goes.

Are you guys sure you aren't getting too hung up on optimization?

Like I'm really shocked to hear things like "you can't have a dwarf fighter.."- I've seen tons of dwarf fighters.. there was a dwarf fighter in the Orcus campaign (now 29th level!)

Quote from: Windjammer;367911That's a houserule I've been toying with too - erase ability bonuses from races, players automatically get +2 to their primary and +2 to their secondary stat as per their class build choice.*
(...)

* It's purely system mandated, but if you want rationalizing here's my attempt: these bonuses don't represent racial heritage but your biological make-up. Look at humans - we've produced weight lifters and pianists. There's training as you grow up, but there's also underlying biological differences - the big boned guy vs. the dexterious guy.

That is a cool houserule.

If you wanted to go farther, you could even have slots for racial abilities built into the classes progressions. Once you hit this or that level, you'd get access to a racial ability linked to a particular class, which would reflect for instance how an elven fighter would differ from a dwarven fighter in the way they were trained, practiced and came to fight the way they do.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367919Are you guys sure you aren't getting too hung up on optimization?

Like I'm really shocked to hear things like "you can't have a dwarf fighter.."- I've seen tons of dwarf fighters.. there was a dwarf fighter in the Orcus campaign (now 29th level!)

I find that optimization is not as important in general, but I would say that it can get a bit more difficult in cases where one player's not focusing on optimization and others are. Possible frustration ensues. I've played suboptimal characters pretty happily, although admittedly I don't have a kenku warlock whose highest stat happens to be Dexterity.

If I were using the kind of houserule we're talking about, I'd be doing it for psychological reasons more than anything else.

Well, it's simple mathematics...as long as you don't mind being 10% less of a fighter (basically, a 2 level penalty) than a str-race, then, yeah, it's ok. You might be a bit hung-up on a "+1", but in a game where you're expected to hit on an 11 or better, you're basically cutting down 10% of your ability. In a game where everything is level-balanced, playing with a 2 level penalty is really hurting the other players. If everyone is playing bad characters, it's ok, but you just can't mix players like that.

In Dungeons and Dragons, I seem to recall (been a long time since I played) a dwarf couldn't use a 2h sword. Granted, that meant that a dwarf's top damage might be less than other races, but there were plenty of other, viable, fighter options that didn't involve using a 2h sword. In DnD4.0, no matter what option the dwarf takes, he's clearly weaker than a strength-race fighter.

I don't like to think of dwarves as "a race of second-rate fighters", and I'd really like to open up the classes to the other races beyond those with the 'perfect' ability mods.

Windjammer's rule opens things up quite a bit, but, for me, I rather like that certain races will have certain inclinations/disinclinations (dwarves generally won't be a str/dex class, for example, and will favor wis/con classes).

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367919Are you guys sure you aren't getting too hung up on optimization?

Not really. I rolled up my last 3.x elven wizard's stats with 3d6, assigned abilities in order rolled. He's actually non-functional (with an INT of . So personally I wouldn't care a bit about my own houserule. It's my players we are talking about. They aren't optimizers either, so:

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367919I'm really shocked to hear things like "you can't have a dwarf fighter.."

I'd never say that (though I see that Doom's post I was responding to did). Thing is, though, that stuff like that Melee Training feat I mentioned, or similar stuff like Weapon Expertise, strike me as stealth nerfs. I hate stealth errata, because they become compulsary choices for players who care about them. Now you're right, it's the players' fault for caring about them (and the dev's giving in to their desires). But see, rather than blaming it on anyone in specific here, I just say: ok, let's play without stealth errata, let's simply assume that you all took the feats to make every race+build equally playable. (Which, incidentally, is even more important if players whose PCs die don't get to pick their new character's race but roll it up randomly, as is the case in my home campaign.)

Personally I don't care if I'm a +2 short on my primary stat. But I've recently been convinced of my players to think otherwise, and provide them with an easy fix. It's secondary abilities, actually. Here's one example of many: one of the invoker's level 1 power has the secondary effect of pushing a target the number of squares equal to his secondary stat-modifier (CON I think, it's covenant of wrath). If you don't have such a modifier (as could easily be the case if you rolled up your 4E stats using 3d6, as Greywulf did in his first campaign) that effect vaporizes.
And that example translates across the board, because thankfully there's a ton of creative secondary effects on powers in the game, especially once we factor in power-enhancing feats like divine domains and martial practices. To utilize these extra effects, 'the game' has a very strong expectation that you have good (if perhaps not fully optimized) stats for your primary and secondary ability. I'm not saying that the game is 'unplayable' if your group doesn't utilize these secondary effects. But then we're back at where I started - it's totally fine to play an elven wizard with INT 8 in 3.x, provided you're happy to run around not casting a single spell in the game.

PS. Ever notice how the Player's Handbook 2 races give people a choice where to put one of their +2's between two stats? That's my idea, from October 2008 as a fix to keep Pathfinder backwards compatible:

RACIAL BUILDS

Every race comes in one of two ‘builds’: the core build, which is 3.5/OGL compliant, and the variant build, which is not.

A racial build consists of two interlocking elements:
o Ability adjustments
o Your character’s favored class

All other racial traits are constant across core and variant builds of the same race.

Your choice of race determines your negative ability adjustment and limits your options when taking a favored class.

o Dwarves (-2 Charisma): Fighter (core build) or Cleric (variant build).
o Elves (-2 Constitution): Wizard (core build) or Ranger (variant build).
o Gnomes (-2 Strength): Bard (core build) or Sorcerer (variant build).
o Half-Elves (no negative ability adjustment): Any. You don’t receive a +2 ability adjustment.
o Half-Orc (-2 Intelligence): Barbarian (core build) or Druid (variant build).
o Halfling (-2 Strength): Rogue (core build) or Bard (variant build).
o Human (no negative ability adjustment): Any. You don’t receive a +2 ability adjustment.

Your choice of favored class determines your positive ability adjustment.
o Barbarian -> Strength +2
o Bard -> Charisma +2
o Cleric -> Wisdom +2
o Druid -> Wisdom +2
o Fighter -> Constitution +2
o Ranger -> Dexterity +2
o Rogue -> Dexterity +2
o Sorcerer -> Charisma +2
o Wizard -> Intelligence +2

NB. Players get the +2 stat boost once they pick the favored class as their favored class . Players don't need to take levels in their favored class for the stat boost to come in. - Example: A player wishing to play a Dwarven Bard can pick either racial build, meaning he will get a +2 boost to either CON or WIS.

Quote from: Doom;367941Well, it's simple mathematics...as long as you don't mind being 10% less of a fighter (basically, a 2 level penalty) than a str-race, then, yeah, it's ok. You might be a bit hung-up on a "+1", but in a game where you're expected to hit on an 11 or better, you're basically cutting down 10% of your ability. In a game where everything is level-balanced, playing with a 2 level penalty is really hurting the other players. If everyone is playing bad characters, it's ok, but you just can't mix players like that.

In Dungeons and Dragons, I seem to recall (been a long time since I played) a dwarf couldn't use a 2h sword. Granted, that meant that a dwarf's top damage might be less than other races, but there were plenty of other, viable, fighter options that didn't involve using a 2h sword. In DnD4.0, no matter what option the dwarf takes, he's clearly weaker than a strength-race fighter.

Dwarves can use greatswords in 4E.

Well- dwarves who throw everything they have into strength are less strong than another race that chooses to throw everything into strength. But dwarves make up for it in constitution, durability, the sturdy second wind, their ability to stand their ground. Strength is definitely important for a fighter- but there's more than a few options for a dwarf.  

Some of you might be familiar with Matt James of Loremaster (and he posts every once in a while at criticalhits.com)-- his main character is an unstoppable dwarven fighter based around the invigorating powers-- (named "Rustybeard"). (If Sigmund is stil reading this, I've gamed with that guy at the Haven in Frederick). There was a moment at the Battle Interactive at DDXP where adventurers across all of the tables could sacrifice some of their life force to fuel a ritual- (the Battle Interactive is like a massive D&D event with 200+ adventurers fighting at once in the same adventure, sort of like a mass battle- the individual tables of 4-6 players are like 'squads')- when the main DM called out "Did anyone sacrifice.. 5 or more healing surges..?" it was only Matt James who jumped up and shouted "yeah!!" and I knew exactly what character he was playing at that moment.

Quote from: Windjammer;367945Not really. I rolled up my last 3.x elven wizard's stats with 3d6, assigned abilities in order rolled. He's actually non-functional (with an INT of . So personally I wouldn't care a bit about my own houserule.

I have nothing against rolling up characters (I prefer to roll as well!) but if you are doing the roll up stats, assign in order, it's always better to roll the stats first and then assign the class. Even in Basic D&D, this was kind of the standard. This is especially true if it's just 3d6. In 3.x I could see this making a few useless characters (you need at least a 10 in your spellcasting stat to even cast!)

4d6 drop the lowest and assign as desired (is Method I in the AD&D DMG) was the first real nod towards "make the character you want" vice "have the dice assign you a character" that I know of.

Quote from: Windjammer;367945If you don't have such a modifier (as could easily be the case if you rolled up your 4E stats using 3d6, as Greywulf did in his first campaign) that effect vaporizes.
And that example translates across the board, because thankfully there's a ton of creative secondary effects on powers in the game, especially once we factor in power-enhancing feats like divine domains and martial practices. To utilize these extra effects, 'the game' has a very strong expectation that you have good (if perhaps not fully optimized) stats for your primary and secondary ability.

My first thought on reading that was "That's crazy!", but then I thought about it, and if I weren't running LFR (where we have a standard method for character gen), I think I might like to try something like that. But I'd still have "roll first and THEN assign the class..")

The standard method (you are correct) doesn't just expect you have a decent set of stats- it ensures that you do- but it won't really let you get more than one really great statistic without building in a bunch of 10s and an 8. The "standard array" method used in 4th was actually introduced in a 3.0 book (Savage Species).