david
Stark II PC Kallistier WhatNot
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one bad dude, not two
Posts: 148
harahan, la
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ooo! OOO! OOOO!! another 3.x vs 4e vs Other Systems discussion! i love these!!
for my two coppers, i started playing d&d by knowing what the game was, but not having books. my brothers and i made up rules, got some dice, and pretended. THAT is what d&d comes down to: pretending and having fun. the rules we used inspired the actions we took, but didn't force us not to untie a rope because we used a big sword and that sort of thing. we eventually upgraded to boardgames like HeroQuest and Dragon Strike, and from there, it has all been an addiction of horrid proportions. my uncle had 1e and 2e books and the original heroes unlimited, and we played both of those. my very first d&d character was an assassin named Fuzz, and my older brother rolled awesomely and made a paladin. needless to say, our party devolved into a heinous social situation in a forest, and that campaign ended. but d&d was awesome!
i ended up growing all the 2e stuff, going into the skills & powers sets, and all that, absorbing the rules and having fun (i do my own taxes with no difficulty, to let you understand my rules/math prowess and joy at the systems). eventually, TSR was gone, then WotC came about with more that Magic (which i started playing in '93) called D&D 3e. and it was good!
all the rules, all the options! it progressed/digressed with each new supplement, depending on how you look at it. when it was stopped for 4e, i embraced the new edition and left the old. so now i play 4e (in addition to occasionally playing GURPS and d20 modern, Star Wars, etc, on the side). is 4e better than 3.x? i like it more, but only because it is as complicated as i want it to be, but not too much so. some folks NEED certain rules to play a character, but the rules only help shape the combat. if you want a painter-character, then your character paints in 4e. in 3.x, you needed skill points to paint. since painting doesn't have anything to do with combat and rarely (if ever) has any skill challenge application, there doesn't need to be rules to cover it. 3e had rules for stuff that didn't need rules; that became the problem after all the supplements came out to cover everything. however, for those that played it for its entire duration, it was canon.
my younger brother loves 3.x and calls 4e "broken." i don't know how he comes to that when, as it was pointed out, a low level fighter always beat a low level wizard, and at level 20+ a wizard said "die" and the fighter died. the rules made it a more broken system to me, though many players and DMs worked around it to make it fun. 4e equalized everything, to keep players on the same level for the most part, making it less broken in that regard, though it also made most characters too similar in power for some players. someone said that the class role was basically the class, and that is almost true. there are some differences, such as a fighter (defender role) being far different from either a paladin or a warden, but in general all three take lots of damage, deal a decent bit back, and keep enemies on them during fights. oh well, i guess it all depends on what you want your character to be in the end that makes you pick differently there: a weapons master; a holy knight; a force of nature.
and on the thought of a 4e bard insulting someone to damage them: try flavoring the effect rather than reading the book's description. if it is a ranged attack, since a bard is arcane think of it as a magical bolt or ray, or an effect that happens only on the target. it is magic; it doesn't need to follow the rules of physics. maybe the bard hums a tune to touch his arcane energy source, maybe he dances around a tree like an acid-tripping-elf in a forest, but describe it the way you want. the effect and damage are rolled the same as a longsword slowing an enemy, so just describe it better. the game works better if you try to enjoy it more than if you try to read the book aloud and have fun. it just doesn't work that way, to those that need a rule for everything, and everything needs to be as written. and as just mentioned by sombrenote: use houserules to make things work better for you. that's how i started gaming: houserules only, call it d&d, and have fun.
in general, i play 4e because it is the newest version, and most likely to be supported for the next few years. has it got problems? yes. did 3.x? yes. i still play 3.5 every once in a great while online, but rarely, simply because after examining all the rules i've seen more flaws in it that there should be. so, play on with whatever game you like. play a character, not a set of statistics. if your fighter grew in a fishing village, assume he can swim, catch a fish, bait a hook, and all the other stuff one might expect. he just might do it better than the monk that never fished before.
oh, and that leads me to one last thought (finally!): player characters in most games are better-than-average compared to most people. that means that while most people can put a worm on a hook and fish, or tie their shoes, a player character is more likely to catch the bigger fish quicker, and can tie many types of knots that common folks like myself cannot tie. i'm a 10 in stats, heroes are 11+. so if your "hero" doesn't have ranks in knot tying, he can probably tie his shoes and untie many knots, he just isn't a sailor-class knot maker.
i'm sure i might have ruffled some feathers, might have brought up some good points, might have changed some minds, but in the end, i just gave my own thoughts and agreed/disagreed with others. so lets not fight, lets just game on.
and pathfinder actually sounds interesting as a newer 3.5...i never did really try it, but i might now to shake things up. thanks for the review beyonder!
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