Class abilities: ADnD vs DnD4

[Frenzy-kun]

I open this post to see if I am the only one who feels this way about the fact that all the classes, specially fighters, has been buffed with plenty of skills, making them to play as you are supposed to play other classes based on ability's pools (like wizards), and as consequence, making them to lose part of what made them unique.

 

There was a notable problem with AD&D fighters, as well as in 2.5. Name it Baldur's gate. Warriors were boring. A lot. The only thing you could do with them was to click on the desired enemy. Rangers were more or less the same, though you sometimes had to run away from your enemies, but that was it.

 

I jumped directly to D&D4, and what I found was not much better. Yeah, they are not boring anymore, but they are not fighters either. The huge amount of skills makes him look more like a wizard than a soldier. Yeah, instead dazzling ray you name it tornado attack, but I cannot really find much difference between a wizard and a fighter now, since everything is about using skills. Name it martial, name it arcana, the "way of playing" is the same.

 

In E4, the classes splits in strikers, controllers, leaders and defenders. As far as I remember in BG, when you had a wizard you can be any, and with priests you could make any character into any of those cathegories. A wizard with spirit armor, stoneskin, and tenser's transformation could easily be the best tank in the game. A wizard can be both controller with docens of controlling spells and striker with some spells that could almost insta-kill every creature in the game.

 

But now that's not it anymore. Every class is more or less the same. So many different classes and yet, so similar. But when comming back to baldur's gate, you find out how every class had a diffeerent role, and as well as a different way to play:

 

- Wizards were managing the situation. Change your wizard, changes how the combat develops. Status, mass damage and hundreds of spells to deal with any situation. They mostly interact with multiple enemies.

 

- Clerics buffs and heals. They can hold enemies in the front line when done. They mostly interact with alies.

 

- Rangers and bow thieves attacks from the distance, targeting the weak enemies and interrupting wizards. They mostly interact with wizards and other archers.

 

- Thiefs can backstab, hide, set traps in the field. They are the one who takes care of almost all the exploration part finding traps, disarming them and picking locks. They mostly interact with scenario.

 

- Warriors and Fighters holds the enemies and prevents enemies to advance. They mostly interact with other warriors and single units.

 

Evert class had a different way to interact  with the game. You had to build a team that suits all the roles. Instead, in D&D4, although you can still do the same, it feels like they are all the same because all the characters have everything: buffs, debuffs, mass damage, single damage, a huge skill pool. You find an enemy and use your "spell", just like wizards. Sometimes I feel that I have no reason to choose a wizard anymore because I can have the same playstile but with higher resistance in a fighter. I am not saying that warriors should stick with rage and that's it, but if everybody can use "magic", then magic users have no reason to exist.

 

I think for instance druids should not use cleric spells, but focusing in shapeshifting. Druids should buff themselves, not others. Then clerics should buff all the team at the cost of the combat abilities that the druid has. Wizards, sorcererers and warlocks should be based on area damage and controlling, striking and empowering, and hexing and debuffing, respectively. Fighters should work on holding and parrying.

 

That's a different class. If everybody can do a bit of everything, then those distinctions are diluted, even if they still have an orientation. Specially if it overlaps another class main point (for instance a deadly strike for a fighter that deals the same damage as a thief's backstab. Then, what do you want a thief for in combat?). It also removes the utility of multiclassing, where you basically reduce the raw power of every class to obtain versatility. Multiclass in D&D4 is used to obtain cheesy combos, not to obtain versatility like in BG2, where your thief/cleric as used to get basic healing and exploration and focusing the other 5 members in raw combat, or you create a fighter/mage to be able to stand in first line as a wizard. A cleric/fighter to make a non lawful paladin. Plenty of things that are worthy because of the value of being polivalent, something missing in D&D4.

 

 

So, my suggestion would be to avoid the situation where everybody can do everything. Focusing on one role, and the different kits should be different ways of approaching that role. After all, you play with a team. It's not like you have only one character and he has to deal with every possible challenge, but you have a team that has to deal with every situation. I would like a game where you select your classes according to what you want them to do, not because what you think looks cooler. A game where you potentially can make a team of 6 wizards, 6 fighters or 6 rogues because every class can handle every situation doesn't seem very appealing to me. Sinergy between classes is needed so every class does their role to complement each other in different ways. One of the best and most important part in this kind of game is your party configuration, a level above character customization, and having polivalent classes ruins that part. I really prefer a boring fighter that behaves as a fighter rather than a fighter that behaves like a -sword magic wizard-.

 

Do you share the same feelings?

[Suburban-Fox]

Personally, I never found fighters "boring", but I totally agree with 4th edition. I hated that particular incarnation of D&D, and felt that it destroyed a lot of what D&D was about. It turned it from a roleplaying game into a miniature skirmish game. I also agree that each class should have its place, and not always be geared towards maximum combat potential. If you want to stand at the front and hit things, you shouldn't be playing a rogue - you wouldn't expect a fighter to sneak into a tower, disarming traps and picking the advanced locks, so why would you expect a rogue to operate as well in combat as a fighter can?

 

However, it seems to me that you missed out the version which might have suited you better: 3.5 edition (or Pathfinder, which is similar, and has pretty much replaced 3rd edition). That had the right idea with fighters.

 

You could attack normally, as you do in 2nd edition, but you also had feats that you could choose from. All classes get one every 3 levels but some classes get extra feats granted to them at certain levels, or can choose bonus feats. Fighters got a lot of bonus combat feats, making them the best at this (though everyone could do at least some of it). Amongst the combat feats people could choose from are:

 

Power attack - choose to, instead of attacking normally, sacrifice accuracy for damage (you could drop up to 5 from your attack bonus and add it to damage if you hit)

Expertise - choose to sacrifice accuracy for defence (drop up to 5 from your attack bonus and add it to your AC until your next turn)

Disarm - an attack that does no damage, but has a chance to disarm your opponent

Trip - an attack that does no damage but has a chance to throw your opponent to the floor

Bull rush - an attack that does no damage but can drive your opponent back

Sunder - an attack that targets an opponent's weapon, and tries to break it

Shield bash - an attack with your shield that does...something cool, but you lose your shield bonus to AC until your next turn

 

They could also get passive feats which increased their defence/attack/certain things that they could do.

 

Bowmen had Rapid Shot, which let them shoot one additional time, but with slightly reduced accuracy on all attacks. They could also get something which reduced penalties for close or long range archery.

 

There were also feats that granted you the ability to use two weapons, that let you run faster, that let you move around in combat without suffering opportunity attacks...the list of feats was ridiculously large, and anyone could take them as long as they met the prerequisites, which could lead to a lot of unique and interesting builds. It could also lead to some cheesy, uber-optimised powerbuilds as well, but I guess that's always going to happen.

 

So my advice is: check out Pathfinder, if you can get your hands on a copy.

[Randomthom]

It's the constant battle between balance and differentiation. Too much focus on differentiation and you end up with over & under-powered classes, too much balance and you end up with homogenisation.

 

AD&D was probably too focused on differentiation.

4E is too focused on balance (and mimicking mmorpg group roles).

 

In AD&D's defence, it was more focused on being true to the lore. Epic characters truly were epic, powerful wizards were REALLY powerful. Fighters were useful but couldn't change the world in the way that wizards did.

 

In 4E's defence, it is very well balanced and actually can still be fun to play though fights tend to get bogged down by players who are too worried about making the wrong choice and thumbing through their action cards looking for the perfect solution. Also, playing a wizard totally focused on controlling the battlefield is a lot of fun and when done right can lay waste to the DM's best laid plans.

 

There's many good rule systems out there and many more bad ones. D&D has never been perfect.

 

I can recommend the Cortex system* and have heard good things about the pathfinder system (though it breaks down at high levels quite spectacularly, especially with min-maxed characters).

 

3.5/pathfinder is better balanced than AD&D and is more fluid & varied than 4E. The 2nd edition Star Wars D20 was also very good, essentially it was an adapted 3E D&D. One of my favourite elements of this system was the damage & crit system. Characters had Vitality Points and Wound Points. Wound points never increased (except with the toughness feat) and you started with your Con score e.g. a character with 14 Constitution had 14 wound points. Characters also had vitality points (which force-users could spend) which increased with level. Damage went to VP before WP unless it was a crit in which case it went straight to WP. This meant that a blaster rifle (3d8) could outright kill anyone anytime if you got lucky/unlucky. Palpatine himself could die to a lvl 1 with a blaster rifle if he rolled back-to-back 20s!

 

At high levels, 3.5E in particular did suffer from hit-point bloat and both 3.5 & pathfinder became very 'math-y' in combat. Turns could take a long time with people trying to calculate every variable in their favour before rolling a dice (which frequently became a player hoping "please not a 1" as anything else would do).

 

*Cortex is not a level-based system per-sé and suffers from a slightly confusing though more realistic damage system. It is far superior for non-combat interactions though.

 

It occurred to me as I was writing about the Star Wars damage system that it's not too dissimilar from the PoE system though I understand that PoE hit points will increase with level.

[Sabotin]

I don't think it's so bad to have some flexibility and overlapping with classes.

 

In my opinion players will make whatever they want to make, the only difference being how hard it is and what compromises they're forced to take due to the ruleset. So at the end of the day it will be the same-ish if it's a fighter/wizard, a ftr/wiz/bladesinger/wpnmaster or a wizard with gish spells/talents picked.

 

Next, you mustn't look at the ability pool in a vacuum, there's (usually) strings attached. You can only pick a certain number from the whole, thus limiting your options on the role. You also have to take into account the efficiency. Maybe the fighter can do the "big smash" for the same damage as a rogue's backstab, but only 1/day and with 3 talents taken for it as opposed to the rogue which only relies on circumstance and is otherwise "free"?. Playing into that there's also availability. Tenser is what, a 6th lv spell? Who's gonna tank the first 10 levels or if a fight is longer than the spell duration or if it gets dispelled, etc?

 

I think a soft limit on class functionality is a good idea, where you're not necessairly limited, but just better at certain stuff. I'm not sure how it will turn out in PE, but classes being different with their play dynamics also sounds like a good idea, to prevent that feeling of sameness you've mentioned with wizards and fighters with active abilities.

 

There was already a lot of discussion regarding classes on these forums I think. It became pretty obvious that everyone has their own opinion on how they should work though.

[Suburban-Fox]

 

At high levels, 3.5E in particular did suffer from hit-point bloat and both 3.5 & pathfinder became very 'math-y' in combat. Turns could take a long time with people trying to calculate every variable in their favour before rolling a dice (which frequently became a player hoping "please not a 1" as anything else would do).

 

Yep, definitely. Most D20 based games suffer from this, as players try their hardest to optimise everything they have at their disposal. It became a session of "okay, I have an attack roll of +8, but your Bless spell gives me extra, which stacks with your Bard Song, your Aura of Leetness and my specially crafted Amulet of Uber Pwnage, which means I'm adding 25 to this!" :D

 

But yeah, D&D and Pathfinder both break down at about level 9 onwards. Up to around level 6 is generally still playable, with level 8 characters being truly epic, but once too many characters get beyond level 8 then it gets silly, IMO. Of course, some people like the higher level style of play, and that's fine...it just doesn't work for me.

 

My personal favourite system is the Warhammer 2nd edition system. You didn't have classes but "careers", the first of which is what you spent your life doing (which can be anything from "nobleman" to "gutter rat" - typically people would roll for their first career which would result in a far more interesting mix than if everyone chose the ideal one for their build), but due to the way advances worked, you could never reach a point at which you become ridiculously powerful and immune to everything, like you can in D&D. Even at high levels, a low level character can still potentially hurt you...in D&D there's no way a low level character can ever hope to do more to a high level character than sting him slightly.

 

Of course, I know that this game isn't going to be done with the Warhammer system...I'm just pointing out that it's currently my favourite tabletop system out there (and that I wish somebody would do a CRPG based on the system - I'd do one myself if I had any ability at programming whatsoever!! )

Edited March 21, 2014 by Suburban-Fox

[khalil]

I've always really disliked the 4e hate.
It's no more conductive to roleplaying than any other edition of D&D.

As far as fighters not being fighters, I suggest you go play a 15th level fighter in 3.5 for several hours.
It's a good thing that these fighters aren't fighters.

[Frenzy-kun]

I don't think it's so bad to have some flexibility and overlapping with classes.

 

In my opinion players will make whatever they want to make, the only difference being how hard it is and what compromises they're forced to take due to the ruleset. So at the end of the day it will be the same-ish if it's a fighter/wizard, a ftr/wiz/bladesinger/wpnmaster or a wizard with gish spells/talents picked.

 

Next, you mustn't look at the ability pool in a vacuum, there's (usually) strings attached. You can only pick a certain number from the whole, thus limiting your options on the role. You also have to take into account the efficiency. Maybe the fighter can do the "big smash" for the same damage as a rogue's backstab, but only 1/day and with 3 talents taken for it as opposed to the rogue which only relies on circumstance and is otherwise "free"?. Playing into that there's also availability. Tenser is what, a 6th lv spell? Who's gonna tank the first 10 levels or if a fight is longer than the spell duration or if it gets dispelled, etc?

 

I think a soft limit on class functionality is a good idea, where you're not necessairly limited, but just better at certain stuff. I'm not sure how it will turn out in PE, but classes being different with their play dynamics also sounds like a good idea, to prevent that feeling of sameness you've mentioned with wizards and fighters with active abilities.

 

There was already a lot of discussion regarding classes on these forums I think. It became pretty obvious that everyone has their own opinion on how they should work though.

 

I can understand that the purpose of RPGs are playing as you want. But I really think that the class concept is not where to apply this. Yeah, in a mixed pool as you suggest, some classes do some jobs better than other classes. But for that reasons we have the stats. If you have more strenght you already will work better on physical combat. If you go for constitution you will behave better in melee than any other character.

 

That's good. You don't need to stack bonuses over bonuses. It's not needed to stack fighter benefits over stat benefits over feat benefits, because if you can, then that's it. In my sense it's stupid to have a fighter with less than the max strenght. In the end there is not much of a choice. You cannot have a fighter with 13 strenght if you want to play competitive.

 

But if you stick the stats to what the strenghts will be, and you focus your class to what role the character is going to have, then it will make sense. You could have a fighter with 13 strenght and 18 dextery and constitution. Then, he is a tank. He won't be the best damage dealer, but if the role of the fighter is to hold the enemies and prevent them to pass through, then you could keep your casters behind blasting through enemies' defenses. Or even more, you could just cripple the enemies by casting hexes on them, poisoning and letting your defender to last long enough for the poison to make a huge difference.

 

If we go to the extreme of a soft limit, then the classes becomes pointless. You could just have a common ability pool, and then your characters could choose the ones that suits better. You don't need to be a mage to behave better than a druid in spellcasting. Just have bigger intelligence.

 

The concept of class is giving a role in the group. Having a fighter in the backline casting protection spells is odd. Specially because as you say, a priest would do better, and if they don't, it's pointless to choose a class. In the end, it leads into little choice, because the game is focused in letting you choose, rendering it as choosing a class as a matter of how fancy it is or what dressing style they have. While focusing on how every class behaves in combat would lead into being able to develop each class into different outcomes according to the stat distribution. Having the possibility of making any class into any playstyle brings nothing in the end, because if you like to cast spells around you can always choose the caster's class. If you choose a fighter is because you want to slice in two the people with a sword, not because you want to bring disease into the enemies. I cannot figure out why a player would want a warrior with a wizard's role except for the whim of having the word "fighter" written in the character sheet or the whim of having the graphic of a sword instead of a beam of light.

 

I can understand that in the PnP games they give more variety, since you are controlling only one character, for a year of campaign, and it will be really boring to have no choices. But in a game where you can control up to 6 different characters, I cannot see the purpose of removing the limit between classes. Because even if you want to be a fighter but love to cast spells, you can make a fighter and then hire a wizard for your team.

 

And I am concerned because in D&D4 I have no interest of replaying with other classes since their game style is pretty symilar. And I don't want it to happen to PoE. If all the classes plays the same, I  won't have any motivation to replay as a new character since I will be doing the same.

[Endrosz]

I open this post to see if I am the only one who feels this way about the fact that all the classes, specially fighters, has been buffed with plenty of skills, making them to play as you are supposed to play other classes based on ability's pools (like wizards), and as consequence, making them to lose part of what made them unique. ...

 

Your concern has been voiced several times on this forum before, and Sawyer gave roughly the same answer every time, which goes something like this:

 

Fighters do have a lot of abilities (as many as other non-spellcaster classes), but the majority of them are passive or modal.  Abilities like Constant Recovery, Confident Aim, and Critical Defense are passive, but are important for how fighters work.  Players may be less aware of how important those elements are since they aren't directly selecting and using them in combat, but they are still doing the fighter a lot of good.  On the other hand, it is important to use a fighters' active and modal abilities shrewdly.  Using Defender mode in a situation where fighters are dealing with a small number of enemies is unnecessarily hampering their attack rate.  Using Knock Down on an enemy when the fighter is the only one who benefits from it is usually inefficient.  And using it on a target with a relatively high Fortitude defense is statistically a bad idea unless the target's Deflection is equally out of range.

 

Fighters are still mostly passive lineholders and still mostly engage other brawler-type opponents. They just have some active skills to accomplish that same task in a more varied and tactical fashion.

[Tamerlane]

Hey neither of these games are Pillars of Eternity. And I mean I guess both have some degree of influence on the game (in that PoE is based on games that were based on 2e and is also taking some inspiration from 4e) but still... I'm... I'm just kinda confused as to what this thread is supposed to be about besides thinly veiled edition warring.

 

Also, give me either a 2e fighter or a 4e fighter. Just not a damn 3.X fighter.

Edited March 21, 2014 by Tamerlane

[J.E. Sawyer]

Personally, I never found fighters "boring", but I totally agree with 4th edition. I hated that particular incarnation of D&D, and felt that it destroyed a lot of what D&D was about. It turned it from a roleplaying game into a miniature skirmish game.

 

D&D started out as a miniature skirmish game (Chainmail) so it's not inappropriate for any edition of it to have a heavy combat emphasis, IMO.

[Allvaldr]

In the choice between diversification (2nd ed) and balance (4th ed) I much prefer diversification. Not all classes need to be equal, since D&D as we know is supposed to be a cooperative game. What needs to be balanced is the NPCs vs the party. There's no reason why mage PCs vs fighter PCs should be equal since you're not doing PvP. For an MMO you obviously want balance over diversification, but that's not here nor there.

 

 

Personally, I never found fighters "boring", but I totally agree with 4th edition. I hated that particular incarnation of D&D, and felt that it destroyed a lot of what D&D was about. It turned it from a roleplaying game into a miniature skirmish game.

 

D&D started out as a miniature skirmish game (Chainmail) so it's not inappropriate for any edition of it to have a heavy combat emphasis, IMO.

 

 

That. "Roleplaying" as we really know it was only added later on in the lifetime of the D&D product line. So even though I don't like miniature skirmish games myself, I don't mind if D&D takes some things from them.

[J.E. Sawyer]

In the choice between diversification (2nd ed) and balance (4th ed) I much prefer diversification. Not all classes need to be equal, since D&D as we know is supposed to be a cooperative game. 

 

Equal participation and contribution is a good goal, I think.  When "skill stuff" is going on in 2nd/3.X, the non-skill characters (and the people playing them) sit back while the "skill characters" do their thing.  When the "combat stuff" is going on in 2nd Ed. (especially) and 3.X, the skill-based characters roll in vain to make puny jabs at the enemy.  Rogues seemingly get some nice damage output from Sneak Attack but the fact is that the RAW frequently shut that off when encountering any enemy that is immune to crits (a lot of them).  I think it can lead to a boring pace in tabletop gaming especially because half of the party is either literally not participating (the rogues are sneaking now, the fighters are standing around waiting for them to be done) or only marginally participating.  There's really not much to "cooperate" on outside of the adventure as a whole.  In practice, rogues can sneak, fighters can't.  Fighters can do damage to almost everything and take hard hits.  Rogues can sort of hit some things hard and cannot be hit hard at all.  Wizards can (eventually) do almost everything.  Rogues being skill-based characters would be a lot easier to swallow if wizards weren't capable of trivializing many thief skills with even low-level spells (or potions/scrolls made/bought of those spells).

 

I also don't think a lot of 2nd Ed. classes are particularly diverse.  2nd Ed. rangers are only marginally differentiated from fighters, for example.  Most of the diversity came from kits, which could be really wildly varied -- but were also not core.

[Pipyui]

I never liked that D&D had such a separation between combat-capable and non-combat classes.  Roleplaying is only so much fun when you can't roll to kill a goblin or two.  I like when classes serve disparate combat roles, I just don't like when they can be divided so easily into combat and non-combat roles.

Edited March 21, 2014 by Pipyui

[illathid]

Of all the editions of D&D I've played and DM'd, 4e was by far my favorite. Unlike the OP, I thought each of the classes really did a good job of feeling different. Defenders felt different from strikers, and rangers felt different from rogues. I also really appreciated how the designers tried very hard to make sure every class was effective in combat from level 1 to 30. You didn't have classes balanced like 2e wizards where they would be very weak at low levels and godlike at high levels. It had its flaws, but I'm glad that PoE seems to be taking some of it's better points and integrating them into its rule set.

 

I think it's been mentioned before, but I personally would love to see a PnP version of Pillars of Eternity.

[Suburban-Fox]

In the choice between diversification (2nd ed) and balance (4th ed) I much prefer diversification. Not all classes need to be equal, since D&D as we know is supposed to be a cooperative game. What needs to be balanced is the NPCs vs the party. There's no reason why mage PCs vs fighter PCs should be equal since you're not doing PvP. For an MMO you obviously want balance over diversification, but that's not here nor there.

 

This exactly. Personally, I've never had a problem with not being able to be 100% involved 100% of the time. I've always seen it as a cooperative game, where no one person can do everything, and the group has to work together to overcome obstacles. If everyone can sneak, pick locks, and disable traps as well as the rogue, why bother with a rogue? If everyone can fight as well as a dedicated fighter, why bother with a fighter, when a rogue can do everything that he can and more? That doesn't mean that the rogue should have no skill in combat whatsoever, but he shouldn't be as good as the dedicated fighter. That's why 3rd edition got it about right...rogues could be effective in combat, but fighters still dominated the battlefield. 2nd edition kind of encouraged people to see the fighter as the "boring, standard base class from which every other class builds upon", but they're supposed to be masters of martial arts.

 

Although this does remind me of something, actually...if a fighter is supposed to have been a guardsman, or from similar backgrounds, doesn't this mean that they should at least have spot/perception skills? They're not going to be very good guards if anyone can sneak past them.

 

Anyway, miniature skirmish games are fine - I even play a few of them from time to time - but they're not really the same thing. RPGs have gone beyond the point where you simply hack your way into a dungeon, kill everything in your path, and make your way out with lots of loot. There's a lot more emphasis on intrigue, and "cloak-and-dagger" type scenarios, and people doing things like scouting the battlefield and checking for traps. You don't get that in a game where the sole emphasis is on combat, and any skills you may have outside of combat can more or less be ignored. Imagine trying to scout ahead or check for traps in World of Warcraft...not gonna happen!  

 

Also, for the record, I may joke about how D&D4e is the worst thing to happen to roleplaying games and will be the death of WotC, and how that game shall henceforth be referred to as "the RPG that must not be named", and how it's a shame WotC never made any RPGs after 3rd edition, but that's just my classic British humour. I know there are people who enjoy it, and that's fine. It's just not to my taste.

[illathid]

 

Also, for the record, I may joke about how D&D4e is the worst thing to happen to roleplaying games and will be the death of WotC, and how that game shall henceforth be referred to as "the RPG that must not be named", and how it's a shame WotC never made any RPGs after 3rd edition, but that's just my classic British humour. I know there are people who enjoy it, and that's fine. It's just not to my taste.

See, the thing about D&D is the baggage it has around the name. It is my option that many people who disliked for 4e did so because it was too different from what they were used to. I mean look at what happened to Dark Heresy 2e. If D&D 4e had been released as a complete new RPG system, I think a lot of the people who hated it wouldn't have.

 

And while you're joking, there is some truth to it. It's not outside the realm of possibility that 4e, plus the recession, could be what causes the eventual collapse the RPG portion of WotC.

[Suburban-Fox]

 

And while you're joking, there is some truth to it. It's not outside the realm of possibility that 4e, plus the recession, could be what causes the eventual collapse the RPG portion of WotC.

 

Possible. According to my local RPG shop, D&D4e has more or less stopped selling. The only thing that really sells atm is Pathfinder.

 

I think the biggest problem is that, whenever they release a new one, they completely stop all old product lines, meaning people can't continue playing the old version. They either have to play the new version, or they can't get any new content. So when a 3rd party like Paizo steps in, and starts releasing content that's compatible with the older versions, people tend to buy from them instead. So...yeah, if WotC doesn't do something incredible with D&D5e, they could well lose the RPG section.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Suburban-Fox

[ravenshrike]

I can recommend the Cortex system* and have heard good things about the pathfinder system (though it breaks down at high levels quite spectacularly, especially with min-maxed characters).

 

Pathfinder can be broken pretty spectacularly at level 8 with a min-maxed fey-spec kitsune sorc unless the DM throws a ****load of compulsion immune characters at the party with the specific intent on killing the sorcerer. Built out to level 20 the character can control most epic creatures outright 3/4 of the time. What's funny is that I didn't even mean to create such an uber character.

Edited March 22, 2014 by ravenshrike

[Jarrakul]

I haven't played 4E, so everything I say about it should be taken with a grain of salt. But my understanding is that it's well balanced but poorly differentiated, as the OP says. Earlier editions were well-differentiated (within categories, as Josh points out there wasn't much separating a fighter from a ranger) but poorly balanced. And, like the OP, I agree that both differentiation and balance are important. Differentiation because feeling samey is boring, balance because being unable to contribute is similarly boring. Which is why I'm concerned about things like the typically quadratic nature of spellcasters and concerned about the sorts of abilities non-casters get feeling too much like spells. It sounds like Josh continues to agree with my concerns (which is pretty convenient, I must say), and has plans to address them. So I'm pretty happy with what I'm hearing.

[AGX-17]

I've always thought that D&D should be viewed as an example of what not to emulate in a game system, really. If it lacks balance then it's of no value so long as you follow the Tao.

[Suburban-Fox]

I've always thought that D&D should be viewed as an example of what not to emulate in a game system, really. If it lacks balance then it's of no value so long as you follow the Tao.

 

That really depends on what you're trying to do, though. It worked for Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, but PVP was never the purpose of those games. Or D&D, for that matter. So 'balance' was never really on the agenda. The idea of D&D was never "my level 3 pally can totally pwn your level 4 rogue!", but more "okay, your pally can beat my rogue in a straight up fight, but just try getting through all of those traps without my help.".

[cornishr]

Not really, no.

 

To me, the classes are still similar to the roles they had before, unless you choose to alter them to suit your own preference/style. There are now just a few more classes to choose from and a few more cool things for each, as opposed for almost nothing for some of them. To my mind, it's still possible to have all the old classes but it's now also possible to create literally any combination of characters i could think of.

 

I've always played and a wizard and been gutted to not be able to carry a sword. Now i'm free at last!

 

There used to be basically mage and priest spells, fighters and thieves, now there is all manner of lovely classes. I think it's a vast improvement. I have to choose between a priest or a druid, a chanter or a cipher; cool.

 

 

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Played D&D since 2nd ed and 4th ed is my favourite when it comes to pnp. And I like how PoE is taking a lot of things from 4th ed.

[Jarrakul]

 

I've always thought that D&D should be viewed as an example of what not to emulate in a game system, really. If it lacks balance then it's of no value so long as you follow the Tao.

 

That really depends on what you're trying to do, though. It worked for Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, but PVP was never the purpose of those games. Or D&D, for that matter. So 'balance' was never really on the agenda. The idea of D&D was never "my level 3 pally can totally pwn your level 4 rogue!", but more "okay, your pally can beat my rogue in a straight up fight, but just try getting through all of those traps without my help.".

 

 

It's not so much about "my paladin is better than your rogue" as it is about the rogue not being able to do anything when undead show up, or the paladin not being able to do anything when there's a trap. The issue isn't optimality, but usefulness. Obviously some characters should be better in some situations, and that's okay. In fact that's the way it should be. But every character needs to be at least useful in every common situation, and you need at least some degree of balance to accomplish that.

 

Also, as much as it isn't supposed to be a competition, it's really frustrating to be obviously second-string. As is always the case for non-spellcasters in 3E after about 5th level, and for thieves in earlier editions. Fourth eliminates this problem, at the cost of differentiation, as noted before.

[rjshae]

I've always thought that D&D should be viewed as an example of what not to emulate in a game system, really. If it lacks balance then it's of no value so long as you follow the Tao.

 

I don't think it's quite that bad. But with D&D being the historical baseline by which all others are compared, it was only natural that newer systems would try to correct the limitations and imbalances of D&D.