Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 12, 2020, 01:07:42 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 12, 2020, 09:13:20 AM
It's not a matter of bypassing; it's using the material as intended.

And material, as intended, asks the GM to only use monsters in the specific listed way. Which means not bypassing the intended level brackets and not using a high-level normal monster for a 'Solo' encounter. And as intended asks the GM to keep the PC in a very specific band of power as asked by the item parcel system. Saying 'Well in my games we bypass it', is the opposite of material as intended. Your shifting goalposts.

Now before I go on: I have very many things I find admirable about D&D 4e, and in fact, I usually want to defend it when it gains criticism. And I RESPECT the ambition behind it very much. I respect 4e way more then I respect 5e, or even PF 1e or PF 2e.
But you're trying to sell a cow as a horse here. And I really like cows, but it's not a horse.

QuoteBasically, a tight simulationist system for those portions wasn't needed because those situations were generally less complex

99.9% of all Tabletop RPGs have more in-depth combat systems than they have for anything else. Because as you put it, that's when things get more high stakes and people are less willing to abstract such things. 4e is not unique with that sort of reasoning or design. But 4e is the one that gets singled and criticized for this the most.

And that's because it's the MOST combat lopsided, and the least developed on the everything else scale in ratio of what exists. It is the MOST like a videogame where your options in 'combat' exist on a separate reality than your options outside of combat. In a videogame, you may be the lord of all elemental magic, but it manifests as just a '+100 dmg bonus to fire spells'. You may be a master illusionist but it manifests as a '+25% confusion chance for your light mana' spells'. You may be a ninja, but that grants you a '+55% crit chance with the dagger weapon class'.

Your elemental lord can't just dispel the flames around the keep of the lost one (because you need to get the key of zazerkin at the end of the dungeon)
Your illusionist can't trick the hostage exchange by disguising your warrior as the oracle maiden of sunrovia (because the story isn't designed that way)
And your Ninja can't just sneak into the pirate ship and take the research notes you need and bypass the boss fight (because they programmed that dungeon damnit).

4e might be slightly less extreme than that (the Ninja can sneak I guess), but it's still applicable. You may be a paragon of Illusions, but you can make a Illusionary wall once every day (At like level . Unless of course, you play mother may I with the GM that suddenly stops existing the second combat starts (Again like videogame logic).

QuoteBut you weren't expected to be engaging in combat any more often than in prior editions. Less in some ways as trash mobs like lone castle guards were intended to be handled without even going into the full combat, just a check or two to see if you can knock him cold/slit his throat without being noticed and before he alerts anyone (blows whistle/rings bell/etc.).

Then they utterly botched this implication in ANY of their published adventures, which were combat gauntlets, with monsters that purely existed within the listed power bands.

All the things you listed as 'unique design goals' for 4e are not elements unique to itself. It's not that people 'didn't get it' or 'brought the wrong assumptions'. All D&D editions very much expected a sort of improv approach to the use of your abilities, with specifics mainly for combat.

4e just has the most ridgid combat abilities, with the loosest and least helpful suggestions for improv for anything else. With such a lopsided framing, its 4es fault for discouraging improv. With an extended GM book for handling combat, not improv.

Compare 4e to say...Godbound. It's very specific with the uses of your powers in combat and pretty loose with everything else (to the point of dispensing with skills altogether in favor of backgrounds). But it makes use of those 'out of combat' abilities much more organic, and places having them at all on a pedestal similar in value to combat abilities.

Godbound also doesn't waste space. 4e has 3/4ths its pages dedicated to lists of very similar combat powers and abilities that could be condensed into a 'make your own' system with 3 pages.

I've noticed that you don't see people criticising 13th Age, even though it shares similarities with D&D 4E?  Most of the time comments about 13th Age are very positive; because 13th Age doesn't claim to be the current edition of D&D, with all others being out of print.  13th Age doesn't have to carry that baggage, because it's not labeled D&D.  It's it's own thing. 

If only WOTC had done that to start with.  They could have given 4E a totally different name, and left 3.5 in print; though possibly with a slower release schedule.  What if 4E didn't say D&D on the cover?

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 15, 2020, 10:39:42 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on December 14, 2020, 08:14:08 PM
Because Pathfinder is Dungeons and Dragons without the Branding?

Yeah, just like conversations about Corvettes inevitably turn into conversations about Camaros, because they are both automobiles made by Chevrolet.

Or maybe there is some other reason...

No it is more like talk about Blue Corvettes inevitably turning into conversations about Red Corvettes.

Quote from: Razor 007 on December 15, 2020, 01:35:22 PM
I've noticed that you don't see people criticising 13th Age, even though it shares similarities with D&D 4E?  Most of the time comments about 13th Age are very positive; because 13th Age doesn't claim to be the current edition of D&D, with all others being out of print.  13th Age doesn't have to carry that baggage, because it's not labeled D&D.  It's it's own thing. 

If only WOTC had done that to start with.  They could have given 4E a totally different name, and left 3.5 in print; though possibly with a slower release schedule.  What if 4E didn't say D&D on the cover?

4E would have been more welcomed without the D&D branding.  Almost all the people I played with for the first few months it was out had the same issues...

too much like a video game
all classes felt the same with different names for their abilities
too fiddly compared to even 3.5/PF

We did think it was one of the better organized PHBs for new players.

Interestingly enough, all of us actually enjoy 13th Age when we play. 
Granted, these are just one-shots...although we have used the same characters at different levels sometimes.

While 13th Age is similar to 4E in many respects, it removes a bunch of fiddly clutter and doesn't say D&D on the cover.

As an aside, I actually use the 13th Age magic item 'power bands by level' and the item 'downsides' in my heavily house-ruled 5E Primeval Thule campaign because it fits well in a low-magic S&S style game.

As for PF2, not a chance...My house cat playing with some dice and a magic 8-ball, will get more play-testing done and make better rules interpretations in a week than those idiots can make in a year.

Played PF for a number of years but finally couldn't stomach the level of game-design ignorance the further along it got.

Quote from: TJS on December 14, 2020, 05:08:49 AM...
It's both mid cruch AND oversimplified.  The two are not mutually exclusive.  For a game with the amount of crunch that it has, it's oversimplified.  It's also weirdly inconsistent in that regard (Charge was removed presumably to make TOTM easier but spells with precise dimensions remain).  And yes, the straightjacket of subclasses is a big part of the problem, as is the ubiquity of certain spells and options.

Ok, I get what you are saying - what you are calling oversimplification; I'd call lack of choice, lack of mechanical variation, subclasses on rails, or how you noted it: 'straightjacketing'. Or, just BAD game design.

We are essentially in agreement on the end result.

5e as I have been told IRL – is the all about having fun edition that doesn't put any of those pesky restriction on player choice, something, something...

So pick which of the 93 different races you want to play, and just don't think about and handwave most of the rest as you tell your character's "story".

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 15, 2020, 10:45:15 AM
So expressing a preference for certain mechanics over others is "edition warring"?  Interesting take.  So I guess saying that mechanically 1e>5e>3e>4e is a downright jihad...

Only on the big purple. You literally can't compare systems, or give a personal value judgement at that place without a mod warning. But then again that place is just one big jihad at this point.

Here you can tell the other guy that if they actually play the hot mess that is AD&D1e RAW using all the rules that they are full of it up to their eyeballs.

Quote from: Razor 007 on December 15, 2020, 01:35:22 PM
...I've noticed that you don't see people criticising 13th Age, even though it shares similarities with D&D 4E?  ...

Shares similarities is the key phrase.

It trimmed down a lot of nonsense, and made the system workable for more than battlemat gaming.

Also, you get a lot less critiques because almost no one plays it.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on December 15, 2020, 08:04:45 AM
...And he probably doesn't even put butter on it, the heathen.

That shit's just not right.

Sometimes you just have to take a stand. And if toast is on offer - it must have butter.

Not margarine, not that "I can't believe it's not..." crap.

Butter.

Dairy allergy? No Excuse.

Have some fucking manners; you better be able to reach into the back of your fridge and make sure your guests will be able to eat their toast like civilized people. (Some jam or honey would also not be amiss...)

Anything less is an insult to Humanity, Un-American, and marks you as a soulless being devoid of all goodness.



And now that we got that important shit out of the way; back to debating the finer points of elfgames.

Greetings!

Thinking about PF, hearing all of the passionate critiques of it from people that have experience playing the PF system for years, makes me wonder--seeing that most of Paizo staff, along with Green Ronin staff, have been long-time employees of WOTC, and have a considerable pedigree of writing and game development experience--many of them making excellent contributions for 3E previously--how can they seemingly fuck up PF so terribly?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on December 15, 2020, 09:25:32 PM
Thinking about PF, hearing all of the passionate critiques of it from people that have experience playing the PF system for years, makes me wonder--seeing that most of Paizo staff, along with Green Ronin staff, have been long-time employees of WOTC, and have a considerable pedigree of writing and game development experience--many of them making excellent contributions for 3E previously--how can they seemingly fuck up PF so terribly?

Messing up is what happens when you're more concerned with some priority other than trying to build the best game system you can make. Pushing a woke agenda takes focus off other things.

Another element that can add to bad design is mistaking the loudest voices for the majority. One of PF1's initial problems was listening to people who didn't really want certain broken things fixed and were vocal enough that they kept a lot better of good earlier fixes from being implemented in the final version (Some people called it 3.75e, but I think 3.6e is probably more accurate for the initial core books).

Finally, in the case of PF2, as I mentioned earlier, 5e's design served to box Paizo in on directions they could take it without it starting to look like a 5e clone. Fiddly bits isn't for everyone, but 5e left them no good alternatives.

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 15, 2020, 10:02:31 PM

Quote from: SHARK on December 15, 2020, 09:25:32 PM
Thinking about PF, hearing all of the passionate critiques of it from people that have experience playing the PF system for years, makes me wonder--seeing that most of Paizo staff, along with Green Ronin staff, have been long-time employees of WOTC, and have a considerable pedigree of writing and game development experience--many of them making excellent contributions for 3E previously--how can they seemingly fuck up PF so terribly?

Messing up is what happens when you're more concerned with some priority other than trying to build the best game system you can make. Pushing a woke agenda takes focus off other things.

Another element that can add to bad design is mistaking the loudest voices for the majority. One of PF1's initial problems was listening to people who didn't really want certain broken things fixed and were vocal enough that they kept a lot better of good earlier fixes from being implemented in the final version (Some people called it 3.75e, but I think 3.6e is probably more accurate for the initial core books).

Finally, in the case of PF2, as I mentioned earlier, 5e's design served to box Paizo in on directions they could take it without it starting to look like a 5e clone. Fiddly bits isn't for everyone, but 5e left them no good alternatives.

Greetings!

Sad, but true, Chris! It is such a shame, you know?

I actually met some of these people, years ago. Sean K. Reynolds, the couple that owns Atlas Games, Michelle Lindroos and the Green Ronin people, and several others. It was Gen Con, back in 2003 or 2004. Of course, I always knew that many of them were libertines and at least somewhat on the fringe of things--but they all seemed like intelligent, interesting, and generally cool people.

Fast forward to now and recent years, and all of these people drop their masks, and embrace insanity. I haven't bought a damned thing from any of them in years, and certainly won't now. It's like a slow-motion train wreck, watching them just drive their companies and properties into the sewer.

It makes me wonder also though, don't these people want to be financially successful? Don't they have lawyers or some PR expert or two on staff that meets with them about marketing and corporate strategy on a regular basis--able to tell them, "Hey! SJWism is a fringe group of morons that are rejected by the majority of America--and it is the majority of normal, traditional American gamers that have the most money, and can sustain our business long term. The SJW's are a bunch of broke, whining crybabies that are sucking off of their single mommies, on welfare, or barely hold down a job as a barista at Starbucks."

If I was leading a multi-million dollar corporation, I would honestly avoid catering to the terrible morons entirely, honestly patronize the normal customer base, and enjoy the steady growth and success. This isn't "patronizing" in the bad way, it is like, what? Business Management 101? I was a History major in school, and I think I had one business type class. They all kind of overlap to a certain degree in the basic materials, and even as a non-business major, I learned the basic principles of marketing and business. It is business "common sense" to go after your base market, put effort into creating products and services that they desire, and along the way, don't do anything or say anything that is likely to offend a large portion of them.

Amazing.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on December 15, 2020, 09:25:32 PM...
Thinking about PF, hearing all of the passionate critiques of it from people that have experience playing the PF system for years, makes me wonder--seeing that most of Paizo staff, along with Green Ronin staff, have been long-time employees of WOTC, and have a considerable pedigree of writing and game development experience--many of them making excellent contributions for 3E previously--how can they seemingly fuck up PF so terribly?...

At the time of Pathfinder 1e  Baizuo had no game development experience. They were all writers for an already complete game system.

Baizuo was a Magazine company that came into the RPG industry. Revamped the Dungeon and Dragon magazine line, made it a success and then had it pulled when WOTC decided to go in a different direction with 4e.

PF1 was based on a single employee's house rules. He made the pitch to the Baizuo powers that be when WOTC stuffed up the 4e SRD roll out.

They said Yes.

He found himself the lead designer for the Pathfinder RPG.

Baizuo openly admitted that Pathfinder did not correct any of the fundamental issues with 3.5.

It was just a paste job of house rules over the top of the d20 OGL to sell as their own game.

Quote from: Jaeger on December 15, 2020, 11:36:02 PM
It was just a paste job of house rules over the top of the d20 OGL to sell as their own game.

You just described the whole of the OSR.

Quote from: Shasarak on December 15, 2020, 11:38:32 PM
...
You just described the whole of the OSR.

Only if you are painting with the broadest brush possible.

The difference being that PF1e did not fix any of the underlying issues with 3.5x as a game.

The Pathfinder RPG was literally just 3.5x plus MOAR Classes, and Feats.

For the Good OSR stuff - the Core Mechanics of the d20SRD has been used to "build/Create" new d20 based games that are most definitely not the 3.5x rules mastery featapalooza, without getting sued by WOTC.
.

Quote from: Jaeger on December 16, 2020, 12:29:03 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on December 15, 2020, 11:38:32 PM
...
You just described the whole of the OSR.

Only if you are painting with the broadest brush possible.

The difference being that PF1e did not fix any of the underlying issues with 3.5x as a game.

The Pathfinder RPG was literally just 3.5x plus MOAR Classes, and Feats.

For the Good OSR stuff - the Core Mechanics of the d20SRD has been used to "build/Create" new d20 based games that are most definitely not the 3.5x rules mastery featapalooza, without getting sued by WOTC.
.

Ah, if you like it then its different and not derivative at all.

Where is the toast guy with his heart breaker?

Quote from: Jaeger on December 15, 2020, 11:36:02 PM

Quote from: SHARK on December 15, 2020, 09:25:32 PM...
Thinking about PF, hearing all of the passionate critiques of it from people that have experience playing the PF system for years, makes me wonder--seeing that most of Paizo staff, along with Green Ronin staff, have been long-time employees of WOTC, and have a considerable pedigree of writing and game development experience--many of them making excellent contributions for 3E previously--how can they seemingly fuck up PF so terribly?...

At the time of Pathfinder 1e  Baizuo had no game development experience. They were all writers for an already complete game system.

Baizuo was a Magazine company that came into the RPG industry. Revamped the Dungeon and Dragon magazine line, made it a success and then had it pulled when WOTC decided to go in a different direction with 4e.

PF1 was based on a single employee's house rules. He made the pitch to the Baizuo powers that be when WOTC stuffed up the 4e SRD roll out.

They said Yes.

He found himself the lead designer for the Pathfinder RPG.

Baizuo openly admitted that Pathfinder did not correct any of the fundamental issues with 3.5.

It was just a paste job of house rules over the top of the d20 OGL to sell as their own game.

Greetings!

Interesting, my friend! I didn't know some of that stuff. The Baizuo just cluster fucked it all from the beginning!

I was a long-time fan of 3E, 3.5E and so on. I loved it, and voiced my opposition towards 4E from the very beginning. However, while I loved 3E, after a number of years and dozens of books and supplements came along, I did recognize that 3E/3.5E certainly did have some significant flaws and problems with the system. Kind of like Rolemaster in that regard, in that the deeper problems with the system do not become immediately apparent, but remain hidden, until more experience is gained with the gazillion classes, feats, skills, features, special rules, and ever-escalating spells and special class powers. In addition, some of those same problems also remain camouflaged for any particular player character or NPC until such a character reaches higher class levels--say, above level 15 or so.

I never got on board with Baizuo because by that time, I was well-versed in the limitations of the 3E system--and as you pointed out, Jaeger, Baizuo made little attempts to actually correct the problems of 3E, instead opting for "MOAR!!!". I laughed, even back then, as I looked at my bookcase *stuffed* with so many books for 3E--I looked at Baizuo and said, "What? WTF?" *Laughing*

Then, of course, word spread continuously about how Baizuo was more and more "woke" and full of SJW BS. I'm glad that I never invested any money into them, for certain.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Shasarak on December 16, 2020, 01:18:33 AM

Ah, if you like it then its different and not derivative at all.

Never said anything about liking the d20 system. At all.

Lots of things are derivative.

That does not mean that one cannot make an empirical evaluation of the end result, classifying it hierarchically in relation to its peers based on how the source material is used.

Quote from: Shasarak on December 16, 2020, 01:18:33 AM
Ah, if you like it then its different and not derivative at all.

Where is the toast guy with his heart breaker?

If you rip the engine out of a pickup, bolt a seat to the hood and rig horses to pull it, is it still functioning as a pickup truck or is it now a wagon? If I take the head of an axe and use fire and hammer to reshape it into a knife blade... is it still an axe head?

Is Palladium Fantasy still D&D because it uses a d20 to hit and for saves, other polyhedrals for damage rolls and has hit points?

At a certain point sufficient changes have been made to something such that it is no longer the previous thing and is now something different.

Now, one can argue that changing something to look identical to something that was first created by someone else isn't terribly creative and that something was just a previous iteration of the thing changed that it's still that thing... but that's something you'd have to assess a bit more individually.

"Stars Without Number" for example, uses base mechanics in line with TSR editions of D&D, but it's redirection towards the science fiction genre marks it much more as an original work than as just D&D.

Sometimes it's not even material so much that the writers really don't or want to understand how high level play is supposed to be. Their is an archetype either for Sorcerer or Oracle based on fire and the 20th level ability is either 20 or 30 Damage Resistance. At that level any enemy is going to smash through that DR not unless the DM rolls poorly on the damage dice. Or the Geisha Archetype with a tea ceremony that takes then minutes of real time to use. All great and it offers a decent bonus except how often in a combat does one have ten minute to put aside to the Tea Ceremony.

What turned off many fans beyond their politics was despite their so called "play-testing" too much materialeither seems not get play-tested or even worse they get the feedback telling them to change problematic material and they ignore it. They were told before the gun rules went to print from their playtesters to change them as targeting Touch AC makes them so much better than the other ranged weapons. They told the playtesters they would take their feedback into consideration and ignored completely. With a polite nod and equally polite "too bad so sad suck it up". Their version of the Epic level rules Mythic does not work and requires some work on the DM part. As the players level the Mythic Monsters really don't match the ability of the players.

I am sure they were told that during the same "playtest" and ignored. Only so many times the devs can smile and go "oops we did it again". Made worse that because of the OGL their are other publishers either releasing more PF 1E or even releasing their version of a Pathfinder clone. While actually trying to listen to the fanbase.