Drolyt wrote:Your problem seems to be with the 4e resource mechanic, which is indeed horrible.
OK, fair call, but it's also with having everyone on the same resource mechanic, because then they all have to be doing the same stuff to be balanced. And then you only really have the one class.
Loses the potential for things to seem awesome by comparison to other things. My at-will damage being awesome and your peak damage being awesome, rather than all our shit being middle-of-the-road.
It is a good thing for wizards to actually cast spells most rounds, and besides that by your own account wizards still have I Win buttons, they just spread them out more.
True. I happen to prefer crossbow/dart to at-will spells which are effectively the same thing, but not everyone does, and we can leave that choice up to each player.
Or you could just let fighters do interesting things and make sure wizards can't do game-breaking things?
Hey now, none of that.
[*] Fighters must be able to kill shit all day, at-will, that should go without saying. That is my interesting thing. Making the monsters die for daring to oppose me in a continuous stream of blood and gore. More monsters in each fight helps that.
[*] But Wizards must be able to win D&D, or some class. Wizards who just zap shit all day like a Fighter does aren't Wizards, they're Fighters in a frilly hat. The game needs a (not-round-one) win button, it's too open-ended and random to not have one (or it fucking well should be). May as well be the Wizard.
[*] Something though. Because occasional awesome, when it's needed, is a very good thing for everyone.
I'm not sure I agree with this. It gives nonspellcasters a purpose, but that purpose becomes "protect the wizard/codzilla so they can cast the awesome spell and win the game."
Even if that's true (which I would debate, but meh), if there's a genuine mechanical need for a non-spellcaster to be in the party past mid levels, that's a huge boost over 3e. And, as a Fighter playing type guy, that would seriously make me happy. As long as the monsters are dying when I'm hitting them, and there's a point to dragging me along to do that for a few rounds each fight.
See, when I want complexity and problems to solve, I sit in the DM chair. When I play, I veg out and use mechanically simple and direct characters with some RP bite to them.
Not at all against the notion of a barbarian whose rage bar goes off the chart and explodes everyone's head on round six or whatever, that's fine. Warlock as an at-will zap-zap magic guy is hunky-dory. All good. I'll play the at-will, you get the win button, whatever flavour you like. We cool?
@RadiantPhoenix: that sort of thing can be up to the players if you provide enough classes. You'd want the Barbarian and Warlock concepts I just shit out.
P.S. The Balor doesn't get to cast Blasphemy on round one either. No I can't immediately think of a mechanic for that which makes any
in-game sense. Easy enough to just label individual spells and effects as "not before round 5" or whatever, but I'm too tired to even try to write fluff for that.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.