*D&D 4ed*

[K]

Well, you don't attack them, but the break things strength check he's talking about lets you burst through walls. Its pretty over the top.

I don't think it is over the top at all. A character with maxed Str still can't break through a 6" wooden wall until 6th level because he can't make the check. If he has Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, he could do at around 5th level.

"Oh no, they have wood!"

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

I'll list my grievances with 4e that I've seen so far


1. Ask your DM’s permission before worshipping an Evil Deity
2. Good and Unaligned Deities grouped together
3. Half-Elves Suck (again)
4. You can walk or run while prone but can't crawl while walking
5. Took 3.5 32 point buy and chose 10 of those points for us, and added and extra point to make a score a 14
6. Sustain only 1 power per turn
7. Allies don’t grant cover to monsters
8. Inane Feat Ability Score Requirements (i.e. Astral Fire, shields, etc.)
9. Pointless RPGA blurbs (we don’t care Wotc, quit wasting space)
10. Paladins have Plate armor proficiency but fighters don’t, fighters have martial ranged weapon proficiency but Paladins don’t
11. Toughness feat is better than Constitution
12. Clerics don’t get shield prof. but warlords do
13. Saving Throws suck, players are discouraged from having powers containing them
14. Magic Carpet, 10 squares above ground? Phantom Steed, 10 squares above ground!

I'd like to run a playtest with 5 characters against a solo monster. It seems that my best interest would be to have 1 character use powers that automatically stun or immobilize an enemy til the next turn, then next turn have a different character use a stunning or immobilizing power. Meanwhile everyone is trying to beat this thing to death.

[Harlune]

I haven't yet tested which is more interesting: a 20th level 3e Fighter, or a 30th level 4e Fighter. Subjectively (and I know that others disagree) I believe that different numbers on a sheet are not interesting abilities. By that standard I think it might be possible that a 20th level 3e Warrior could be more interesting than a 4e 30th level Fighter.

I've often wondered how people would have felt about the 3E fighter if they had put all the stuff about mounted combat (and the all important flying mounts) bullrushes, trip, disarm, etc right in the fighter's class information (okay, giving the class enough bonuses and free feats for them so they wouldn't need to be spec'ed for to be useful would have been helpful too).

I mean that's the only reason I can see that people seem to think the 4E fighter has more options, because they put all the crappy abilities right in the class section instead of buried around in various other parts of the book.


On a seperate subject, how are magic scrolls being handled now? Do they even still exist? Did I just miss seeing a scribe scroll feat? and what the hell is the point of even bothering with invisibility and silence now?

[Shatner]

Well, you don't attack them, but the break things strength check he's talking about lets you burst through walls. Its pretty over the top.

I don't think it is over the top at all. A character with maxed Str still can't break through a 6" wooden wall until 6th level because he can't make the check. If he has Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, he could do at around 5th level.

"Oh no, they have wood!"

Pretty much. To make the situation clear, here are the numbers:

Maximum Possible Strength Scores (barring items or other boosts)
20 (+5) at 1st lvl
21 at 4th lvl
22 (+6) at 8th lvl
23 at 11th lvl
24 (+7) at 14th lvl
25 at 18th lvl
26 (+eight... darn emoticons) at 21 lvl
27 at 24 lvl
28 (+9) at 28 lvl


Task Task DC -> minimum level accomplishable*
Break down wooden door: DC 16 -> 1st
Smash wooden chest: DC 19 -> 1st
Break down barred door: DC 20 -> 1st
Force open wooden portcullis: DC 23 -> 1st
Break down iron door: DC 25 -> 1st
Smash iron box: DC 26 -> 2nd
Burst rope bonds: DC 26 -> 2nd
Break through wooden wall (6 in. thick): DC 26 -> 2nd
Force open iron portcullis: DC 28 -> 6th
Break down adamantine door: DC 29 -> 8th
Burst iron chains: DC 30 -> 8th
Smash adamantine box: DC 32 -> 12th
Force open adamantine portcullis: DC 33 -> 14th
Burst adamantine chains: DC 34 -> 14th
Break through masonry wall (1 ft. thick): DC 35 -> 18th
Break through hewn stone wall (3 ft. thick): DC 43 -> 28th
* assuming the only bonuses are from the maximum possible, unenhanced strength score of a character at that level plus the level bonus (1/2 level round down)

Of course, strength enhancing items (belt of ogre strength, giant strength and titan strength giving a +1, +2 or +3 respectively) would speed this along a bit.


I can see great lengths were went to to limit party mobility. While I am of the impression that they went too far, I am unsure how much. I can see the desire to reign things in from 3rd and 3.5 ed.

[the_unthinkable]

At some point I'm going to have a closer look at the rules before declaring them utterly retarded. But on my not even complete skim I'm already confronted with this.

1) Shame on you WOTC art department. You fucking suck.

2) Do you notice how the DMG twice in the first 30 pages or intro goes out of its way to divide gamers up into arbitrary categories and insult them all? There is some glimpse into the mindset of the designers there, and it is NOT pretty.

3) A real scary glimpse into the mindset of the designers is the fucking "Puzzle" section. Yes, they will tell you in detail how every kind of player they imagine exists sucks but fucking mangled and poorly modified, non mechanical, game halting, entirely gratuitous, RIDDLES they endorse whole heartedly without a single warning or reservation. Hell they'll tell you to just grind the game to a halt to force the players to do a CROSSWORD or cold decode an alphabet substitution code.

They come remarkably close to endorsing that you force the players to do some Sudoku before you let them continue to play actual 4th edition.

Bloodly hell.

1. I agree that some of the art is bad, but you can't tell me it was all bad. The 4th ed. Balor pic was definitely better than 3.0/3.5's.
2. They finally got sick of the players doing things that DMs thought that shouldn't be done. Funny, I thought it was the players playing the game, not the DM. Why bash the biggest part of DnD? Sure DMs are needed, no doubt about that, but doing something like this to the players is definitely idiotic.
3. I like Sudoku, but when it gets to be more fun in all ways than this, there's a serious problem going around. Wait, there is. It's called 4th edition. And all these people supporting it make me feel better about my initial thoughts of what this was going to be like, really bad.

...As much as 3.5 had problems, it was big, flexible, customizable, and fun.

We finally get to what needs to be said. 3.5 may have been a mindsore for some, but in the end, I think even to some of those people, it's a lot of fun. I'd rather play unbalanced than boring.

One thing good about all of this is that new players can get onto something more simple, but they then need to go to 3.5 to be shown more.

[Psychic Robot]

My friend downloaded a PDF of it...he says there's nothing significant to differentiate a wizard from a warrior. The only real difference is the flavor text.

[RandomCasualty2]

My friend downloaded a PDF of it...he says there's nothing significant to differentiate a wizard from a warrior. The only real difference is the flavor text.

Well, the two seem more similar than ever because the mechanics have been unified and made more balanced. For one, the saves to defenses thing is a huge change, because wizards actually make nontrivial attack rolls now. So that's obviously going to make them feel a lot more like martial characters.

As far as balance goes, they've given all characters the ability to inflict some status conditions and made it so wizards lost the power of god to end a fight in one round. It's more a buff to fighters too that they can now do stuff other than just inflict damage, where as in 3.5 you really couldn't do anything interesting with a fighter beyond just damage people and maybe specialize in one gimmick, like tripping.

Wizards really needed to be toned down, the fact that you could end a level appropriate battle for the entire party in one round before anyone else had even acted pretty much said it all about how overpowered wizards were. And unless you wanted to just turn the game entirely into rocket tag, they had to be toned down.

I still think wizards have a distinct flavor to them. It's just that wizards are no longer gods among men and actually have to compete with level appropriate challenges instead of just turning the game into a matter of who wins initiative.

I can't really disagree with them for toning down a wizard's combat abilities. The mistakes they made with wizards were more about killing their non-combat potential.

[K]

Wizards really needed to be toned down, the fact that you could end a level appropriate battle for the entire party in one round before anyone else had even acted pretty much said it all about how overpowered wizards were. And unless you wanted to just turn the game entirely into rocket tag, they had to be toned down.

They had two choices: make Fighters more interesting or nerf all spellcasters. They nerfed all spellcasters....and all magic like items....and all monsters...and the system so that rules lawyers no longer have any rules to talk about.

So now people who want to wargame can just do that without having to worry about fantasy conventions muddling up their game. (Note that they seriously have a "play with no DM" option.)

The problem is that every martial ability is just a different mechanic for doing damage and every spell is a flavor rewrite (and slight mechanical difference) of the same four status effects.

What's left is something that you wouldn't recognize from fantasy novels or mythological sources.

What I really wonder is why they even tried? They had a perfectly fine minis game; did they thinK that rebranding DnD as a minis game would sell more minis? Or did they just want to make it easier for the console gamers?

[virgil]

Except that it was possible for the monsters to kill a player in one round before anyone acted as well. Also, the wizard was not alone in his capability. The cleric and rogue and druid were in the same boat.

My biggest concern for a proper high level game in 3E was the whole rocket launcher tag that everybody played when they weren't losers, but it was too ingrained into the system for casual fixes to happen, so I just accepted and went with it.

They certainly fixed that problem, and now almost everyone plays the Padden Sumo game, making it just a game of attrition where nobody has non-damaging attacks except for the very infrequent stuns.

[Voss]

Some of the disconnects between characters and monsters actively make my brain hurt.
I was looking at the templates. The rather excessively stupid elite templates. Particularly the class templates.

Take a third level human fighter, built with the elite erray so the stats are the same as the 3rd level human guard.
The fighter has 42 hit points
A level 3 human guard w/ the fighter template will seriously have 86 hit points, half the powers, and is somehow worth 2 characters (because its elite, you see).

And yeah, at this point the fanboys on ENworld and the designers will start gibbering about how its all ok, because it is exception based design. Which means, apparently, that believability, consistency and any sense of verisimilitude are the decayed artifacts of a previous generation are actively wrong and must be destroyed.

The seriously annoying thing is the actual potential in here. But for some reason its buried under a layer of shit that doesn't make any sense. Its probably playable under a DM with enough sense to rip the obvious flaws out (like solo and elite monsters), but playing under it as is will be an exercise in frustration every time the stupid shit pops up.

Grrr. It doesn't help that 3.5 is still fucked, and Paizo is going to introduce more flaws into it and not fix anything of note.

[Maj]

What I really wonder is why they even tried?

I seriously think they're planning on releasing some sort of MMORPG akin to WoW for D&D, and they wanted the rules to be as seamless as possible between the table top and computer versions.

Really, if 4E were something I'd want to play, I'd be grateful that they were still publishing actual books. The push seems to be to get everything more and more online.

[PhoneLobster]

I seriously think they're planning on releasing some sort of MMORPG akin to WoW for D&D, and they wanted the rules to be as seamless as possible between the table top and computer versions.

Take a look at the back page adds in the PDFs.

Specifically the one in the back of the monstrous manual.

Remember when Never Winter Nights was going to be the new medium to play D&D and table top was gonna be so totally outdated and doomed?

The same wank is back. This time the plan is to try and make sure it works by stabbing the table top rules in the face simultaneous to the release of the wanky/hacky online engine intended to replace it.

[Voss]

What the DDI crap? They can't even get their damn message boards to work effectively. Thats going to fail so badly, and its going to be glorious. If we're lucky, it will burn through enough cash and hasbro will sell the damn license.

[PhoneLobster]

Yes it will fail.

But also it is clearly their master plan.

edit: I would like to also remind you of the failed 3rd edition character tools or whatever they called it. This has been a cherished dream of theirs for ages. And I lay you a bet the mechanics of the tabletop have been designed to support the new tools rather than the other way around.

[Harlune]

Specifically the one in the back of the monstrous manual.

Remember when Never Winter Nights was going to be the new medium to play D&D and table top was gonna be so totally outdated and doomed?

The sad thing is a NWN game would probably be more fun, interesting, and even more immersive than this 4e online stuff.

unless you wanted to just turn the game entirely into rocket tag, they had to be toned down.

Given the choice, I'd chose a game of rocket tag over no items, fox only, final destination any day...

...because rocket tag can be damn fun, the other is about sucking out every hint of joy out of a game in the name of balance and seriousness.

Though really, the whole rocket tag like flavor of the wizard was entirely the fault of the vancian spell system. When you only have 3 to 6 six offensive spells a day, they damn well better be instant kill, clear out entire rooms of nasties in one go effects cause otherwise you're going to actually spend most of your time playing a commoner with a crossbow instead a spellcaster.

[Koumei]

I've heard more people praising the wonders of exception-based design, so I'd just like to ask:

Seriously, what the fuck is that supposed to mean?

Are they referring to the bit where the basic rules look pretty simple, and every single thing that exists then has its own separate "I break the rules as follows:", making it no different from a really complex system? Or is it something else?

[RandomCasualty2]

The problem is that every martial ability is just a different mechanic for doing damage and every spell is a flavor rewrite (and slight mechanical difference) of the same four status effects.

Yeah, I agree that 4E did it badly.

But I don't necessarily thinking the base thinking was bad, only that the design team really did a poor job of pulling it off. Which I blame on the fact that they suck at math.

And really, while 4E sucks at telling stories, 3.5 really wasn't much better. I mean, with 3.5 you had to start out by explaining how the campaign world could even exist with fabricate and planar binding and all that bullshit. There was so much suspension of disbelief involved about even considering why Elminster didn't just gate in every evil wizard in the realm and soul trap him. The world generated by 3.5 just didn't look anything like the fantasy world most people envision and thanks to the godly mages, you couldn't easily tell stories like Conan or Robin Hood unless you wanted everyone to stay under level 5. Not to mention the rocket launcher tag aspect meant it was a total bitch to have any kind of recurring villains.

While I'm no strong supporter of 4E, I don't really think 3.5 was all that either. 3.5 had huge holes that you could stick an entire world through. It was really tough to tell fantasy stories even remotely like the books or movies you've read or seen.

3rd edition motto: "Yeah you can do that, but it'll totally throw game balance to all hell, so go ahead and turn into a giant or gate in a solar. You may want to kindly tell your friends that they're now playing sidekicks. "

4th edition motto: "You can't do that or anything else that doesn't involve doing hit point damage, so don't even try."

Given the choice, I'd chose a game of rocket tag over no items, fox only, final destination any day...

...because rocket tag can be damn fun, the other is about sucking out every hint of joy out of a game in the name of balance and seriousness.

Though really, the whole rocket tag like flavor of the wizard was entirely the fault of the vancian spell system. When you only have 3 to 6 six offensive spells a day, they damn well better be instant kill, clear out entire rooms of nasties in one go effects cause otherwise you're going to actually spend most of your time playing a commoner with a crossbow instead a spellcaster.

Yeah, rocket tag can be fun if you're playing a game where your character isn't persistent. The thing with rocket tag is that you've got to be okay with dying. Alot. And even worse, you can expect to be knocked out of the fight before you even get to take an action. Generally in my experience, PCs really don't like the rocket launcher tag experience, at least not when they're on the receiving end.

Because it's just not fun sitting on the sidelines the entire battle when a ghoul paralyzed you or you got unlucky against a finger of death. and worse still, chances are real good you'll TPK the party after a few battles. And at that point, it's campaign over.

I mean, that's ironically the kind of thing you can have in a miniatures game, where you control multiple pieces at once, but in an RPG, it's not really all that fun.

And worse yet, because ti's unbalanced, the mages are having all the fun and the fighter players are just getting bitchslapped by monsters.

The main cause of rocket launcher tag is that quite simply the mage was designed to be made of awesome and the fighter was just the default class you took if you couldn't be a mage. That was how it started back in the old Gygax days, and ever since we've been living with that stereotype. D&D started based on the same concept as Ars Magica. Spellcasters rock and if you're not a caster, you're a sidekick. We didn't really see it much in 1st and 2nd edition because it took forever to gain levels, so the most you'd probably ever see is 5th level spells after playing 2 years on the same campaign. It wasn't really that a 20th level mage wasn't a god, it was just that you rarely ever saw 20th level mages.

The thing I'm surprised about is that it took them all these editions to finally drop the Ars Magica bullshit and start trying to make a legitimate effort to balance the classes.

[virgil]

No, it's pretty much that. The reason they like is because you don't have much in the way of rules to follow except for what's explicitly written on your ability sheet; basically, you can't do anything except for what's written down for your at-will/encounter/daily abilities (and four other things everyone gets).

[RandomCasualty2]

I've heard more people praising the wonders of exception-based design, so I'd just like to ask:

Seriously, what the fuck is that supposed to mean?

Are they referring to the bit where the basic rules look pretty simple, and every single thing that exists then has its own separate "I break the rules as follows:", making it no different from a really complex system? Or is it something else?

Yeah basically it's magic the gathering, where every card has a different effect, and there are very few base mechanics.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Since so many problems with 3.5 PrC/monster/spell/feat design seemed to come from everybody being too lazy to look up the base mechanics to see how their new creation interacted with them, it makes sense that 4e went with exception-based design. It wasn't for the players; it was for the designers.

[K]

And really, while 4E sucks at telling stories, 3.5 really wasn't much better. I mean, with 3.5 you had to start out by explaining how the campaign world could even exist with fabricate and planar binding and all that bullshit. There was so much suspension of disbelief involved about even considering why Elminster didn't just gate in every evil wizard in the realm and soul trap him. The world generated by 3.5 just didn't look anything like the fantasy world most people envision and thanks to the godly mages, you couldn't easily tell stories like Conan or Robin Hood unless you wanted everyone to stay under level 5. Not to mention the rocket launcher tag aspect meant it was a total bitch to have any kind of recurring villains.

I always just kind of assumed that 3e Wizard's didn't know all the limits of the setting, so they never took their powers to the logical conclusion.

I mean, godly mages didn't gate in other mages because one of those guys you gated in might have a contingent effect that killed you with no chance of ressurrection. Rocket launcher tag breeds cowardice, and as a setting issue I'm fine with that: you only fight the battles you have to fight because dying is not the worse thing that can happen to you in DnD.

But that's just a setting problem, and it can be fixed by positing a certain culture (the Wish Economy) or just taking things to their logical conclusion (planar travellers = Sigil).

4e is deliberately set at a very low power, so that removes a huge number of available stories. I mean, 4e doesn't even have summoning of any kind anymore. It doesn't have a fluid economy. It doesn't even have internal consistency.

I can rationalize 3e's assumption that Robin Hood does his thing in a place that powerful characters don't care about, or that rocket launcher tag is offset by easy resurrection magic, or even that Low level adventurers fight in low level dungeons because high level guys are fighting in Gehenna and can't be bothered.

I can't justify that an actual Demigod only gets a few uses of a power only marginally better than the one he got at 1st level, or that GP = magic items and if you find a gold mine your wealth levels don't increase. That's just lame, and I'll just play Neverwinter Nights if I don't want to play an tabletop RPG.

[Username17]

I've heard more people praising the wonders of exception-based design, so I'd just like to ask:

Seriously, what the fuck is that supposed to mean?

Are they referring to the bit where the basic rules look pretty simple, and every single thing that exists then has its own separate "I break the rules as follows:", making it no different from a really complex system? Or is it something else?

The concept of Exception Based Design is that the complexity of the system is contained in the things using them rather than centralized in the general rules. Like a card game or a Warhammer army codex. The advantage of that kind of thing is that you learn the game in parts, giving it a shallower learning curve. The WAAGH! rules aren't in the basic rules and if you aren't learning on Orks you don't care. The disadvantage is that the game has a longer learning curve because the WAAGH! rules aren't in the basic book and the first time you sit down at a table with an Ork player he's going to blabber on at you about crazy crap and his troops are going to do bizarre shit that you have no context for.

The ideal system of exception based design uses similar rules over and over again such that the new rules you have to lean with each codex or card set are contextually similar to the ones you've seen before. And despite their earlier claims to the contrary about how crazy out-there the monsters and abilities were going to be, they've actually done that. All of the weird powers and abilities pretty much do the same four things over and over again, so there's not much to learn.

We were worried about Mearls' rants about exception based design because that can easily make a system where no one knows what anything does (think of trying to play Magic The Gathering against someone who has dense text on all his cards). But it turns out that what we should have been worried about was a barren wasteland where nothing interesting ever happened in the whole game. A Gibbering Abomination gibbers maddeningly and continuously, but all it does is mildly inconvenience people within 5 squares of it when its turn starts. It really is fast to learn, because its abilities seriously aren't different from what anything else does.

----

While we're on the subject of failure to deliver. Remember when they told us that the [W] notation included your attribute bonus, your "level bonus," and your enhancement bonus? When it seemed that high level abilities used b high level characters were going to do real damage that you gave a flying fuck about? What is up with that?

Now you've got a level 26 Storm Gorgon and it does d10 + 12 + 2d8 damage. That's right, it does about 2 points more on a standard hit than a 1st level Ranger with no special equipment does on a crit. Meanwhile, the damn thing has 248 hit points. Near as I can figure, the game is supposed to drag on longer and longer as characters go up in level. The high end attacks really don't do anything special, the damage bonuses are all linear, and virtually none of them get multiplied out by anything.

-Username17

[Harlune]

And worse yet, because ti's unbalanced, the mages are having all the fun and the fighter players are just getting bitchslapped by monsters.

The main cause of rocket launcher tag is that quite simply the mage was designed to be made of awesome and the fighter was just the default class you took if you couldn't be a mage.

The thing I'm surprised about is that it took them all these editions to finally drop the Ars Magica bullshit and start trying to make a legitimate effort to balance the classes.

But what we want when we say want class balance are fighters who are made of awesome to go with our mages made of awesome, what 4E gave us instead are fighters that are still made of suck and mages who are also made of suck... also clerics with their healing nerfed, because lord knows, it was their healing that was overpowered .

We really need to get the D&D fighter archetype moved away from the Aragon/Conan/King Arthur mold. That's done so much damage to the design of the class. Those guys are all low level PCs in a low magic setting run by a jackass GM who only lets his pet dmpcs be casters. They're horrible in any setting where casters aren't limited to just old guys in dresses who are too lazy to actually cast a spell or villains who are just smart enough to threaten the world but not smart enough to keep an idiot in loincloth from getting through his tower.

The D&D fighter should be doing crazy Hercules and Xena crap like getting a dragon in a headlock, deflecting a fireball with a sword, throwing a freaking boulder fifty feet into air to take out a flying creature. or getting swallowed by a giant monster only to just rip his way out of the creature's chest. And at really high levels the fighter won't need a pussified resurrection spell, because he'll just march right into the underworld and punch a god in the face till it agrees to brings his friend back to life. Y'know stuff that is made of awesome. And really, in 3ed there were prc's that could do that stuff, those just need to be distilled and added to the base fighter instead.

[RandomCasualty2]

I can't justify that an actual Demigod only gets a few uses of a power only marginally better than the one he got at 1st level, or that GP = magic items and if you find a gold mine your wealth levels don't increase. That's just lame, and I'll just play Neverwinter Nights if I don't want to play an tabletop RPG.

Yeah, the flavor text that they associate with 4E is just stupid. I mean, the powers may not seem terrible if they didn't try to pass it off as your character being a demigod.

But that's just a setting problem, and it can be fixed by positing a certain culture (the Wish Economy) or just taking things to their logical conclusion (planar travellers = Sigil).

well I have a problem when the rules create "setting problems", because that basically means that I can't tell the stories I want to tell without doing weird shit. Having god wizards that rule over everything is fine if I'm running Dark Sun, but maybe I'd like fighters to have more of a real role in power? In 3.5 that's pretty much impossible, because the rules effectively dictate that high level spellcasters control everything.

But what we want when we say want class balance are fighters who are made of awesome to go with our mages made of awesome, what 4E gave us instead are fighters that are still made of suck and mages who are also made of suck... also clerics with their healing nerfed, because lord knows, it was their healing that was overpowered .

I don't really think that'd be at all possible without just turning the game into rocket tag. Because really awesome is relative. Wizards are awesome if you look at pure destructive power, but catch one by surprise and watch him drop in one round, or fail a save and die, and he appears not so awesome.

I personally like to think that awesome characters are strong both offensively and defensively. The hulk can punch hard, but he also needs to be able to soak attacks too. And that's one thing that 3.5 just didn't really give us. A legendary hero shouldn't be an eggshell with a hammer.

But just because you're balancing offense/defense doesn't mean that fighters have to be bland and boring, they can still have interesting jump attacks and sword counters and stuff like that. It just means that people don't die in one shot (at least not meaningful people).

The D&D fighter should be doing crazy Hercules and Xena crap like getting a dragon in a headlock, deflecting a fireball with a sword, throwing a freaking boulder fifty feet into air to take out a flying creature. or getting swallowed by a giant monster only to just rip his way out of the creature's chest. And at really high levels the fighter won't need a pussified resurrection spell, because he'll just march right into the underworld and punch a god in the face till it agrees to brings his friend back to life. Y'know stuff that is made of awesome. And really, in 3ed there were prc's that could do that stuff, those just need to be distilled and added to the base fighter instead.

odd that you mention Hercules and Xena, because really I was thinking of that when K mentioned the demigod thing. Really, the shitty demigod seems to reflect hercules and Xena almost perfectly, where Ares comes down and he's basically not tossing lightning bolts or doing anything meaningful, he just melees you, and if your good enough at melee, you can whip his ass. That seems exactly like 4E to me really.

I mean there's no way a character in 3.5 could ever melee a god like that. First, because gods don't melee, they just toss spells, and second because the god's bonuses are so ridiculously high, that you simply can't win.

With 4Es system of lame demigods though, it's actually possible to do a hercules and Xena thing where you can actually beat up Ares, instead of him coming down and slapping you with a DC 35 finger of death and you rolling up a new character.

Actually 4E is great for a fighter's campaign. The thing that it loses is that wizards are entirely just evocation based. Which is great for Final Fantasy but not so great for D&D. There aren't any confounding economy destroying paradoxes, but the wizard can't do anything interesting at all either.

Frank points out I think the most damning thing about 4E though, at least in my mind, and that's namely that the math isn't right. Instead of being offensively weighted, it's defensively weighted, such that it turns into longer and longer matches of padded sumo as you gain levels. And that just sucks. While I very much dislike rocket launcher tag, it is at least preferable to padded sumo. Spending an hour or more on each fight is just wrong and sawing away at something after you've burned all your main attacks just sucks. That just makes for boring gameplay.

While rocket launcher tag can be unfair and annoying, at the very least it doesn't bore the hell out of you.

[JonSetanta]

Class templates? Interesting. Must have missed that.
Can a player use an "elite" with a template for more HP, or is that outright Not Allowed?