JrK
Prophet
For attacks Trailblazer's solution is good: at 6 BAB you get two attacks at full BAB -2 instead of one at full and one at -5. The penalty is diminished by 1 at 11 and 16 respectively.
Since most newer games and scenarios assume that PCs have sort of life insurance in form of the overaching plot, then we have this "combat as sport". If PCs meet a "monster", we can start putting our minis on the board, because surely the "encounter" has been prepared with our "party level" in mind. It's like Oblivian: the P&P, everything scaled to your level.
I fucking give up. So many times I challenged your bullshit, so many times you backtracked or said "nah that's just the way I personally play" or some shit. The above proves it for real though: you are a complete retard.
Oblivion has retarded encounter-design, a simplistic underlying system, and extremely little difference between enemies and environs and the role they play in combat. Even IF your claim that there is more level scaling in modern P&P adventure paths than in OD&D ones (which there isn't, I'm playing The Banewarrens, Kingmaker and Rise of the Runelords right now, only the latter has more level-scaling than most OD&D print stuff I've played), your comparison to Oblivion is completely absurd because they would share at most this one characteristic with the game.
Every time you've displayed your anachronist bullshit views of how P&P fares today I've challenged you. Every time you've rectified yourself by saying "I'm sure we just have different playing styles and that's OK". But this has nothing to do with playing styles, you're seeing with rose-tinted glasses and making bullshit claims. The Cormyr Trilogy is the very anti thesis of life insurance, Kingmaker is pure sandbox, The Banewarrens has everything from nevermind encounters to insane undefeatable shit and Rise of the Runelords is a smooth scaled ride.
There's such a diversity of adventures that your generalization is absurd and the very fact that you make it anyway is a stunning display of how little you actually know about what you're talking about. You're content with doing what you've always done and peace be with that but stop framing everything else as crap.
The lack of tolerance of different styles is exactly why division is a factor in tabletop gaming, which it shouldn't be, since stuff is being produced in bounds for almost all styles. We should be busy agreeing that this shit we love is as legitimate as any other hobby.
That's why I'm fucking butthurt, moron.
The article clearly puts 4E on the "combat as sport" end, and imo 4E is like Oblivion of P&P games (or WoW, whatever, same retarded shit for me).
Different playstyles and games can be fun, even though I think that some of them are shit. If I say "XYZ edition/playstyle/game is shit" and you "challenge" me by saying "No, because blahblah", then how can I reply? "Sure, it can be. Have fun with your XYZ". Still, does admiting that something I consider shitty can be fun forbids me from stating negative opinions about it?
What have I done (always)? Curious to learn something new about myself.
A u was biją murzynów.
Try to be a bit more ingenious. Retard and moron are kinda done to death.
I love the new ignore. I was able to guess who andrzej was arguing with without spoilers.
Your Everything-is-Valid mantra is absolute bullshit.
4th Edition is a million times more complex than anything Oblivion could hope to ever be. Hell, if Oblivion had been turn-based in 4th Edition it would have been one of the most complex CRPGs we'd have ever had. I'm calling you out on the comparison because it's an absurd one to make. 4th Edition combat plays nothing like WoW-combat, the very fact that you suggest it makes me think you've never tried it.
Bullshit. A system can be horribly designed, but delegitimizing an entire style of play as "bad" is bullshit, and a waste of time to boot. It's like saying SCI-FI is arbitrarily bad and ROMANCE arbitrarily good because they're sci-fi and romance. Judge each system and game on it's own merits, not the fucking genre.
You do realize cRPGs pretty universally follow the "combat as sport" formula, right?Btw, there's a popular ENWorld topic that has some interesting thoughts... Nothing about 5th ed specifically, but about playstyles in earlier editions. Worth a read imho: Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War: a Key Difference in D&D Play Styles.
The guy misses the point, I think. Or perhaps he didn't get where lies the problem.
Imo he really adresses the problem of emergent gameplay vs. railroaded story-gaming. Both are to some extent tied to the question of PC mortality: whether it is accepted to see a lot of such or not (in story-games it's often not accepted, because such games tend to fall apart if too many of the player-controlled "actors" die).
Since most newer games and scenarios assume that PCs have sort of life insurance in form of the overaching plot, then we have this "combat as sport". If PCs meet a "monster", we can start putting our minis on the board, because surely the "encounter" has been prepared with our "party level" in mind. It's like Oblivian: the P&P, everything scaled to your level.
He seems to be pro-sport so to speak (I judge from his ineptitude in describing this "combat as war" gamestyle), but it's fun to see how he manages to point out all of the popamole of this playstyle. In his eyes, only players with "combat as war" mindset think about tackling their foes with caution, analyzing their enviorment and trying to tip the balance before the fight actually starts. Wow.
In addition, 4ed removes a lot of items from the Combat as War gamer’s bag of tricks and it’s much harder to ratthe opposition with 4ed powers than 1ed spells, since they’re specifically written to be resistant to be used for rating and the lack of specific information about specifically how 4ed powers work in real-world terms make it hard for Combat as War players to use them to screw over the opposition instead of beating them in a fair sportsmanlike match since it’s hard to figure out exactly how to use 4ed powers for off-label purposes.
Interesting insight into mentality of 4E. So, all powers are shitty and usable on a gameboard so that players don't try to actually use them in a creative way and screw the GM by overcoming his dungeon in clever ways. Ok, no more questions about current state of "games" and "gamers".
Then again, following your reasoning this forum is a waste of time to boot.
Bros, is he serious or just trolling?
I tend to point out why I think something is bad.
Hey Grunk, did you ever run Oriental Adventures for 3ed? I loved that book, but never had a chance to play it.
Also, where did your old avatar go?
You do realize cRPGs pretty universally follow the "combat as sport" formula, right?
Oblivion is an extremely superficial system with what, 15 active skills and abilities and 40-ish spells crafted to interact in a poorly designed real-time environment without any positioning, any party, or any tactical depth whatsoever. Comparing a turn-based party-game to directly to this is completely absurd.
If anyone here is trolling, it's certainly you.
You can't say an entire genre is bad, it makes no sense to critize something completely without context. As I said it's like Sci-Fi is objectively bad, it makes no sense.
Challenge Rating are in those games for a reason, right? Like to scale the encounters so that they balance properly to the estimated power of the party.
3.5E DM's Guide said:A monster's Challenge Rating (CR) tells you the level of the party for which that monster is a good challenge.
3.5E DM's Guide said:To balance encounter with a party, determine party's level (the average of all member's character levels). You want the party's level to match the level of the encounter[...]
4ed = Tactical miniature based combat + whatever else the DM wants to throw in(this could be a lot based on the DM). The system could have been done better though. What Grunk is trying to say is that the style isn't the problem and I agree with him. OD&D and AD&D already exist in a completely playable form, and very little is stopping a group from pursuing these styles. In summary, all editions of D&D present themselves in a certain style, and this style isn't related to the quality of the game. 4e failed on several fronts, not because of its style, but because of its failures to meet the demands of that style. Keep in mind that I do not like 4ed. However, I think I might have liked a better version of it.
A monster's Challenge Rating (CR) tells you the level of the party for which that monster is a good challenge.
To balance encounter with a party, determine party's level (the average of all member's character levels). You want the party's level to match the level of the encounter[...]
So, all powers are shitty and usable on a gameboard so that players don't try to actually use them in a creative way and screw the GM by overcoming his dungeon in clever ways.
Your statement was:
So, all powers are shitty and usable on a gameboard so that players don't try to actually use them in a creative way and screw the GM by overcoming his dungeon in clever ways.
Which is partly true about 4th edition, because it's for the most part a shitty system and I already agreed with that. But it has shit to do with challenge rating, because there are far more ways to be creative in 3.5 than in OD&D. The way players have to think every turn in combat encounters in 3.5, the way they have so many options, so many angles to come at the challenges at, is the main thing I love about that system.
If there's a singular concept within a system that everybody dislikes, it's probably not why they play with that system.
In short: You are claiming to be a fan of OD&D, a system with extremely limited options in combat, and then you're criticizing 3.5 for not giving you enough options and ways to be creative in encounters. You then proceed to talk about how CR is the basis for level-scaling in 3.5, diplaying to the world that you know very little of the system since it is dysfunctional and nearly never used in the way you frame it (in part because no one wants to, in part because it's broken so it can't be used for that purpose even if someone did want to).
4E said:STEP-BY-STEP ENCOUNTERS
1. Choose an encounter level. Encounter level is relative to the number of characters in the party. An easy encounter is one or two levels lower than the party’s level. A standard encounter is of the party’s level, or one level higher. A hard encounter is two to four levels higher than the party’s level.
[...]
Levels of Individual Threats: Choose threats within two or three levels of the characters’ level. Threats in an easy encounter can be as many as four levels below the party’s level. Threats in a hard encounter can be as many as three to five levels above the party’s level.
Neither did I criticize 3.5 for not giving me options and ways to be creative in encounters.
3.5 wasn't the point of the initial post which made you jump on me
Since most newer games and scenarios assume that PCs have sort of life insurance [...] It's like Oblivian: the P&P, everything scaled to your level.
Which is untrue. It's a factually wrong statement.
Three third party "adventure paths"
I've actually found CR to be a useful mechanic in the game I'm running now. I've never known a DM to use the Encounter Level system (which is terribly broken) for more than a few weeks before realizing it's useless. The challenge rating system, however, actually has some degree of usefulness because for the most part monsters are numerically balanced around their CR.
Is it likely to release this year?