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JrK

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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.
 

Father Walker

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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.

Care to elaborate why so butthurt?
 

Grunker

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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.
 

Father Walker

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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.

I didn't mention OD&D in my last post, that's for starters. 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).

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.

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?

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.

What have I done (always)? Curious to learn something new about myself.

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.

A u was biją murzynów.

That's why I'm fucking butthurt, moron.

Try to be a bit more ingenious. Retard and moron are kinda done to death.
 

waywardOne

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I love the new ignore. I was able to guess who andrzej was arguing with without spoilers. Some people enjoy Lady Gaga and Justin Beiber; that doesn't make their "music" equal to Led Zeppelin and The Cure. Your Everything-is-Valid mantra is absolute bullshit. If you ever develop any taste or discernment, you won't need to pad 99% of your "arguments" with logical fallacies.
 

Grunker

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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).

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.

Also, I dislike 4th Edition, and I don't think it's very good design, but obviously for different reasons than you.

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?

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.

What have I done (always)? Curious to learn something new about myself.

You've reiterated many times in this thread that OD&D is where your interests lie.

A u was biją murzynów.

Google translate also tells me you're an imbecile. Well what do you know.

Try to be a bit more ingenious. Retard and moron are kinda done to death.

Mainly because they apply to people like you who are to stuck in their beliefs to ever make concessions.

waywardOne:

I love the new ignore. I was able to guess who andrzej was arguing with without spoilers.

Yesssssssss. Let the butthurt flow through you, my child.

Breathing.jpg


Your Everything-is-Valid mantra is absolute bullshit.

:lol:

dat reading fail

I'm not saying everything is valid. I'm saying every genre is valid. It's meaningless to say "POP IS ALWAYS BULLSHIT", however it's more than alright to say that Justin Bieber is a sucky twat who should get the fuck off the stage. Certainly there are plenty of badly designed systems (AD&D, for instance, is a horrible piece of shit in its design), but there are no arbitrarily incorrect style of P&P in and of itself.
 

Father Walker

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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.

Bros, is he serious or just trolling?

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.

I tend to point out why I think something is bad. Then again, following your reasoning this forum is a waste of time to boot.
 

LeStryfe79

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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?
 

Johannes

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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 rat
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the opposition with 4ed powers than 1ed spells, since they’re specifically written to be resistant to be used for rat
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ing 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".
You do realize cRPGs pretty universally follow the "combat as sport" formula, right?
 

Grunker

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Then again, following your reasoning this forum is a waste of time to boot.

Wrong again. Mass Effect is a bad shooter and bad RPG, but I (and, I would say, the Codex) are not saying SHOOTAHS BAD or RPGS BAD. Even Mondblut says he has no problem that Biotards want to Biotard, his problem is that they say they're producing RPGs which confuses genres which is obviously bad for people trying to follow their favourite genre.

You're welcome to call 4th edition a bad system, but that wasn't what you said.

Bros, is he serious or just trolling?

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.

I tend to point out why I think something is bad.

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.

LeStryfe79

Hey Grunk, did you ever run Oriental Adventures for 3ed? I loved that book, but never had a chance to play it.

Can't say I did. Didn't even know that much about :)

My favourites are The Banewarrens and Kingmaker. I just finished running the first and I'm running the latter right now.

Also, where did your old avatar go?

Free avatars man, copyleft is bro!
 

Father Walker

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You do realize cRPGs pretty universally follow the "combat as sport" formula, right?

Yes, but we are talking about P&P in this topic, 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.

Ok, let me explain it to you like I would do to a 5 year old, since you clearly don't get it.

First let me quote my initial post: 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.

As you can see, I'm laughing from a certain gaming style, which I think ranges from "mildly funny" to "decline". What I'm talking about, is certain set of assumptions regarding to the way encounters are organized in many (but obviously, not all) "modern" games. Things like 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. This mechanic brings to mind our favorite game, Oblivion, since its scaling works in a similar way. You know, monsters and loot are spawned in such way so that they are adequate to your level. I don't see specific stat & skill mechanics of both games compared here, but perhaps you did.

Later, I continue with a smug remark: 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".

I point out that the author of the initial article is pretty hilarious in his apology for bad design. Cutting choices available to the players so that they can be only used on the battle mat and only during combat encounter is silly, because the thing which draws me to P&P in the first place is the ability to act outside the box and invent clever solutions to overcome various challenges, which your character faces. It iches me to call such mentality retarded, but I don't want to split the gaming community any further.

As you can see, I've pointed out a specific detail of the playstyle/system and shared with others why I think it's bad. It has nothing to do with my fondness of OD&D, but then again, I can't forbid you from taking any of my statements about other editions of D&D as an apology for the original edition.

So Grunker, what the fuck were you talking about?

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.

What "genre" you are talking about? What the fuck. What context do I need to say that I don't like this rule or that rule apart from the ruleset and my views on it? What fucking context do I need to say that some guy is making hilarious statements (like the guy, who did this "combat styles" thing)? And where the fuck did I say that something is objectively bad? Do I need a fucking disclaimer under each of my posts telling you that it's my subjective opinion?
 

LeStryfe79

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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.
 

Grunker

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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.

Yeah, this proves you know very little of what you're talking about. Challenge Rating is used mainly in most D&D adventures to ascertain how much XP an encounter is worth. Because if you give XP for monsters, extremely hard challenges should yield more XP than very easy ones, right? If it was used for scaling, why do most adventures provide you with above-CR encounters? Why do they provide encounters that yield almost no experience?

That challenge rating is completely broken and stupid I can agree with easy, but it isn't used very often to scale encounters except in very bad adventures.

In short, LeStryfe explains exactly what I mean in much less space than I've managed to.
 

Father Walker

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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[...]

Well, reading the rulebook is a good way to learn about the implied playstyle of the game, right?

Still, good too see that you stopped making bullshit claims about things I say.

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.

I get your point man, but disagree. Ruleset pretty much implies how a game plays. Then again, it's apples and oranges.

Also, we've got Fallout 1 and 2 in a completely playable form too, right?

:hearnoevil:
 

Grunker

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A monster's Challenge Rating (CR) tells you the level of the party for which that monster is a good challenge.

Bang-up job there son, you managed to quote a line from a system universally agreed upon as retarded. That's like me linking to this article and saying: "lol that's D&D how stupid is that crap" when almost every D&D-player would agree that those monsters are crap (except the Owlbear of course that shit is awesome!).

Add to this that I have NEVER played a D&D adventure that scaled even within a framwork of only 20% - they've all had a huge mix of different opponents. The very reason CR is a crap system is that 3.5 opponents are so diverse (MUCH, MUCH, more so than AD&D ones) that you can't reasonably make a CR-system that makes sense. Opponents of the same CR differ wildly in difficulty.

Also add to this that about half the games I've played in D&D have not been tied to an adventure and much to your surprise I guess THE DM WAS CAPABLE OF NOT HAVING EVERY MONSTER BE OF EXACTLY THE PARTY'S CR :O

(not that it would matter much since CR is, as previously mentioned, a non-functional piece of shit).

TheMoreYouKnow.jpg


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[...]

I've never seen this followed in any game ever, not even Wizard's own material, but I have to wonder whether you think it's bad to help a new DM of 15 years out in this manner? I thought that was one of the things 4th did pretty well. When I was 15 encounters were never fun because I had no idea how to craft them. I have trouble seeing how you would help that along without inventing some sort of challenge-rating system.

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.

You are taking a couple of sentences from a retarded and broken system that every single 3.5 player ever including the designers hate with a passion, and you are making the point that that's what the system is about? I fucking hope the absurdity is obvious to you. If not, let me help:

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).
 

Father Walker

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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.

My statement had nothing to do with a fucking combat system, man. I was implying that those powers in 4E are hilarious because they are combat exclusive.

If there's a singular concept within a system that everybody dislikes, it's probably not why they play with that system.

Fair enough.

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).

I didn't claim that I'm a fan of OD&D. I'm not a sheeple. Neither did I criticize 3.5 for not giving me options and ways to be creative in encounters.

You can exchange my quotation of 3.5 with this, if you feel so butthurt about someone quoting shitty fragment of your favorite game:

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.

Anyway, I fucking give up. 3.5 wasn't the point of the initial post which made you jump on me. With each post you derail from the initial point even more towards some bullshit you've imagined.
 

Grunker

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You

a) Said scaling removed creativity

b) Quoted 3.5 for its scaling-advice

then you say

Neither did I criticize 3.5 for not giving me options and ways to be creative in encounters.

Apparently I don't even know what I don't even know.

3.5 wasn't the point of the initial post which made you jump on me

No, what made me jump on you was that you didn't stop at criticizing 4E as a system, you said

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.
 

Father Walker

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Well, in my initial post I said that scaling (or perhaps, assumption that PCs will survive stuff thrown at them by the GM) kind of derives from railroading. "Creativity" part was about shitty 4E powers which can only be used during combat encounters. So it becomes factually true, that you can't comprehend written word.

Yeah, I quoted 3.5E, but could as easily quote 4E. It's not about edition that much, but more about mentality. Still, it seems that certain editions attract people with certain mindsets (maybe, because they support certain style of playing?). I find it hilarious that some guy might treat actually "being creative" as some kind of "old-school" approach, you know. And his model is wrong in the first place, but whatever.

Which is untrue. It's a factually wrong statement.

Three third party "adventure paths" you've played don't prove that the author of the article wasn't funny nor that 4E don't have a big deal of scaling involved.
 

Xor

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You can't compare scaling in a video game to scaling in a P&P RPG. A video game can't react to the player(s) in the same way a real flesh and blood DM can, and the approach to balancing encounters in P&P games is entirely different. Unlike a video game, a human DM can reward players for making smart decisions by sending them up against reasonable opponents and punish them for stupid shit by having a dragon eat them.

The reason there are rules for balancing encounters in later editions of D&D is to make it easier for the DM to create interesting challenges for the party. The reason there's level scaling in Oblivion is to make the game easy for the player (it's actually probably more about not locking any content from the player regardless of level, but that's irrelevant to this discussion). In D&D, combat takes long enough that fights against too weak opponents tend to be boring because there are no stakes. You can spend an hour or two just wiping the floor with some goblins who can barely hit your AC. This is especially true at higher levels, where you can negate an entire class of opponent with a few spells. The CR and EL system in 3E and whatever 4E uses are there so the DM can decide exactly how difficult he wants an encounter to be, at least in theory. This way the DM can avoid sending the party against opponents they can wipe the floor with because that's boring, and he can also avoid forcing the party to fight an opponent they can't win against unless that was the intent.

I'm sure there are some groups where the players are never threatened by anything and the DM always makes sure they win every encounter they're in, but I've never played with people like that. Even in 4E, where things are rigged very strongly in favor of the players, it's possible to TPK.

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. They'll end up having an AC, SR, DCs, and other abilities balanced around a party of that level. If you're like me and you play with experienced players, you can send the group against multiple CR+2 or CR+3 monsters and suddenly they're having trouble because their BAB and CL are lower than what was designed for fighting those monsters. Sure, after a certain level of powergaming CR basically becomes useless, but that's no reason to dismiss it entirely. Like many parts of 3E, I like the idea but the execution is flawed.
 

Grunker

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Three third party "adventure paths"

Until recently I worked at a children's club playing D&D with kids, AND an RPG-store, simultaneously. My estimate is that I've played roughly 60-70% of all the adventure paths made for 3.5. The three I drew forth were just good examples.
 
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Ulminati

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And this is why I play pathfinder/shadowrun/burning wheel :}

Bear in mind that pathfinder is based on 3.5e d&d and as such suffers the same limitations as every single incarnation of D&D from chainmail onwards has struggled with.

It's not a very good RPG system. That every version of D&D has been is a miniatures combat system with optional LARP bits tacked on. The actual roleplay outside combat is entirely dependant on the GM and players making up conventions since the rules don't really cover anything that doesn't involve poking shit with a sword or flinging a fireball at it.

Compare this to, say, burning wheel where there's a fully fleshed-out debate system called duel of wits, or shadowrun in which combat skills are ~10-15% of the basic skill list in the core rulebook.

With this in mind, D&D should be judged not as a roleplaying game (which makes up an ever-dwindling tiny portion of the published material) but as a set of combat rules since that's what the books spend most of their time detailing. In this respect, 4E is/was both better and worse than 3.x. It was better because non-spellcasting classes suddenly got a host of options outside "I take a 5-foot step to flank again and make a basic attack"; because positioning became even more important; because marking buffing and debuffing made encounters more complex and tactical. It was also worse because spellcasters suddenly became a lot more streamlined; spell creativity was castrated in favour of rigidly defined power cards; encounters take up far longer because of HP bloat and intensive bookkeeping of status effects; a billion splatbooks were released almost immediately, introducing power creep and making it a nightmare for GM and players to keep track of rules in use.

If a turn-based computergame was released in which the player controlled 4-6 adventurers on a dungeon crawl that strictly followed the 4E core rulebooks, it would be awesome. (Assuming UI, AI and encounter design wasn't a horrid mess). As a pen & paper game, 4E spends way too much time on miniature combat and way too little time on roleplay.

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.

This. I've run prepublished adventures and written my own in d&d. CR is insanely useful when designing encounters since it gives me a baseline to tweak. If I'm writing my own, I like to test-run encounters with a copy of my players party before running the game to make sure that combat is difficult but winnable. Any shortcuts the system provides to reduce the number of test encounters I have to run is welcome.
 

Kaanyrvhok

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Quick question for any of yall kodexers that are in greater pulse n touch with 5e's development. Is it likely to release this year? I'm currently working on a pnp venture that I would like to publish and release this year in the year of the Dragon or early next year before Chinese New years.The rules dont matter much cuz its really low combat. I was using Pathfinder rules but its hard to publish Pathfinder material without winning or placing high in their American Idol contest. 4e OGL might be the way. I'm just not a big fan of 4e especially in a low combat RPG. So while they dont matter 4e would be the worse fit.

I should give a little back story about the project. I just went through a nasty breakup. My life went to shit and I'm not out of it. I write better when Im fucked up so its cool. My personal maelstrom is producing a game that has a 'fuck it attitude'. I decided to be the iconoclast's iconoclast. Folks say that if you try to please everyone you end up pleasing noone. I'm designing a game for everyone be it the basement loner or the 3000 text a week chick. The Game Master has to interview and analyze the player. If they arent typical RPG heads then the game is played atypically to meet the player. The game has 12 forms- two for each player type. I was writing where misery takes me. I had no intention to create something that would expand the market by reaching out to non-RPG heads. Just out of curiosity I would like to give this experiment an honest platform. Maybe it could exand the base maybe it cant. I dont care if it does or doesnt I just want to give it an opportunity. So... On what? 4e, 5e, a mix of both? Is there an OGL for Pathfinder that I dont know about?
 

Xor

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4E was officially announced in 2007 and came out in 2008. Since 5E was officially announced a few weeks ago, I'd expect it maybe as early as November, or early next year.

If the rule system really doesn't matter, you might be able to get away with releasing it for multiple systems.
 

Grunker

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Recently there has been discussion on merging Magic: The Gathering and D&D Next in some way... Not sure what that entitles exactly, but it seems Wizards wants to mesh their products with their cash-cow. MtG just became the most selling TCG in the world.
 

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