Quote from: Abyssal Maw;366471Well, to be fair, you could use 3.0 Savage Species to create a minotaur "monster-class" starting at 1st level, medium sized..with 1 hit dice. I wrote up a ton of these back when I was into it- I had a ghoul and gargoyle class I kinda loved.

3.5 Level Adjustments were kinda horrible though, because you'd get left in the dust after a while. Even the fairly tame ones like tieflings or drow (+1LA) would leave you an entire spell-level behind.

That is one of the rules I hate most in any game, but especially one as otherwise as flexible as 3.x. In fact, after years of being a huge Birthright fan and playing in a long-running Birthright campaign I ended up giving up on following the official Birthright conversion to 3.5 when they insisted on making scions take a LA to be blooded. It never made sense to me that the only characters even able to use true magic would never be able to reach top level as a wizard, especially when the more strongly blooded the character was (and then supposedly stronger in magic), the bigger the LA would be. It was very annoying, so we ended up running a couple campaigns and throwing out the LA and just gave blooded characters their blood powers with no adjustment. If it was ok to ignore the "balance" in 2e Birthright, it was good enough for 3.5 too, and it worked just fine.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;366471Well, to be fair, you could use 3.0 Savage Species to create a minotaur "monster-class" starting at 1st level, medium sized..with 1 hit dice. I wrote up a ton of these back when I was into it- I had a ghoul and gargoyle class I kinda loved.

3.5 Level Adjustments were kinda horrible though, because you'd get left in the dust after a while. Even the fairly tame ones like tieflings or drow (+1LA) would leave you an entire spell-level behind.

Still looking for the holy grail of game balance, I see...

My whole point was the Minotaur Rgr1, BrB 1 was comparable in both 3e and 4e.

In 4E the Minotaur has 70HP worth of surges, and at-will powers.

In 3e The Minotaur has a footstamp (That would scatter any minions in a 40' radius) the Mighty Roar... and Barbarian Rage good for a few rounds... as well as 10' reach (is that in 4e as well?)

Both can multiwield weapons although with the 3e offhand penalties, I chose just a Halberd or Greataxe to maximize damage. Note the 3e Mino can attack with the greataxe and gore as well simultaneously, but doing a bit lesser damage. The Str bonus means if the 3e Mino hits, it's really gonna hurt, and grappling or charging is bad news for the Minotaurs' foe if the Minotaur connects... 9-11' tall and strong means real trouble for a human sized monster or NPC. Don't see that featured in the 4e character writeup.

I imagine the 4e at-will powers allow for extra damage during attacks making the 4e Mino almost identical to the 3e Mino in terms of damage over the course of a medium length melee, and better at long term melees right up until the surges dwindle.

I actually like the way that Monster Levels were handled with Savage Species. Allowed one to take just about any intelligent critter imaginable and give it character levels. Seemed reasonable to me, if the Minotaur (or Orc) was accepted for sword training in some army or wizardry training at some magic school.

Didn't use many of the other Monster class/level variants but accepted Savage Species characters for any of my games.

Oh, and I generated up the stat block in under 10 minutes using Roleplaying Master... I'm missing about 7 or 8 skill points to add in yet, but only becuase I haven't demarked the default skills classes for a Minotaur. Using the racial build made me spend SP 2/1 for the 1/2 SP non-class character build.

Just as a personal preference, but now that I haven't played 3E for a while - And have seen the older games, as well - the 3E Minitaur stat block made my brain go "Ack!"

Quote from: Mistwell;366430That is the lowest level possible for that type of character according to the 3.5 rules.

For one thing, trying to compare 3.5 and 4e characters is like comparing apples and oranges. It doesn't work that well, because the underlying assumptions of the two systems are rather different.

For another, your comparison is dishonest at best. Of course the 10th-level character in 3.5 is going to look absurd and complicated when compared to a 1st-level 4e character. Go ahead and throw any other 10th-level character up here, it'll look just as absurd. This isn't just comparing apples and oranges, it's comparing apples and five-course meals.

Quote from: Joethelawyer;366251Just read a blog post here:

http://backscreenpass.blogspot.com/2010/03/players-handbook-3-review-4e.html

Pertinent part:

-snip-

Just came across another PHB 3 review which makes the same point, except better.

http://eyeofthevortexonline.com/articles/article180.php

QuoteOne of the biggest design goals of 4e was to balance all of the classes with each other from levels 1 to 30. This may have been a reaction to the widely criticized ability of wizards and clerics in 3e to dominate play from mid to high levels, rendering every other character class essentially useless. Why play a rogue or fighter if the spell casters can simply do your job and do it better? 4e solved this problem admirably.

In some ways, the hybrid rules are a step backwards. For the first time in 4e, it is possible to create a truly weak character by combining two classes that utilize such different abilities and have such different roles that you will never be able to effectively pull your weight. I think this is more than balanced out by the amazing variety in character creation that this one simple system provides. 4e already had a lot of options for the players; the hybrid character rules turn those options up to eleven.

So that's the catch. It's not that hybrids will produce ridiculously overpowered PCs. Rather, the discrepancy between under- and over-optimized PC builds that plagued D&D 3.5. is reappearing (although hardly to its full extent, I guess) because for the first time in 4E, you can open a book, and generate a character that is not remotely as efficient as others.

Interesting development. I prefer some degree of system mastery in a RPG. I also think newbies will avoid the pitfalls of weak hybrid builds because they won't start out on them but go for non-hybrids anyway.

And knowledgable 4E players will know how to avoid the pitfalls thanks to their system mastery.

Really don't see the problem. The increase in char-gen versatility on the other hand seems pure win.

Hmm. Between this, the interview with the D&D With Pornstars guy (which included a positive depiction of someone running a game with pre-4E - and even pre-Wizards! - influences, and a link to an old school module), and the new BECMI-like box set series, I wonder if we aren't seeing some sort of shift in philosophy on the part of Wizards.

Yes, hybrid characters can weaker than usual characters. And there is a big disclaimer in PHB3 that some combinations may be underpowered.

I still don't get the whole "Why play a class that isn't as optimized as (blank)?" mindset. I thought the point of role-playing was to play a role, not play the optimal class. So what if wizards and clerics are uber l33t at higher levels. I'll still play a fighter or something, usually.

Which is rather baffling, as multi-class characters have always been 'weaker', depending on the aspect used to determine that.  Usually combat effectiveness.  I still read complaints here and there on other forums that 3.x multi-class characters can't keep up in combat, to which my usual reply is 'no shit'.  Multi-classing was always a choice of diversity over straight effectiveness.

Many of the complaints seem to revolve around the idea of character levels in 3.x, like 'my Fighter5/Wizard5 should be performing like a tenth level Fighter and a tenth level Wizard' or something similar.  Which makes no sense whatsoever to me.  Maybe I was reading the issue incorrectly, but as I remember it, multi-classing always meant you were playing the support role.  Launch a couple of spells to back up the Magic User, then wade into combat with the other Fighter types or whatever.  I can think of no logical or mechanical reason the one character would be as effective as the Fighter, and as effective as the Magic User.  If that were the case, no one would single class ever.

With combat effectiveness being a major design goal, I can see how the hybrid characters have backed the designers into a corner.  You can't make them as effective as regular characters, but making them less effective is going to impact their popularity.  The law of unintended consequence, I guess, but the difficulties of addressing this in a class/level system don't indicate a particular failure on WotC's part.  It's just a difficult mechanic to integrate properly.

I had a fun roommate this year at a certain D&D convention. I tease him a little, hopefully if he runs across this, he'll see it as funny and not too mean) but this was one of the funniest things I encountered all winter.

The guy was an RPGA judge from the 3E days, and kinda hated 4E, but was doing it anyway, because he still wanted to be part of the gang. All he could talk about was optimization. So after the gaming was over every day (it ends around midnight) we'd be in the room and he'd be wanting to debate stuff about 4E vs everything.

He'd say stuff like "You want to know what's wrong with 4E? Two words.. DRAGONBORN WIZARD!" (The implication being that dragonborn stats would make unoptimized wizards.)

and then "Two more words.. CHARISMA PALADIN!" (this was funny for me, from an AD&D1e point of view).

So we are all cracking up, and my (4E fan!) friend Alan is trying to negotiate and debate this guy based on the exact same things you are saying "but it's about the roleplaying!" and "that sounds like someones favorite character concept!"

We lol'd all the way back home. He's really a cool guy, and very astute about how to really layer things onto an encounter stat-wise. And he gave me some oranges, so I think he was a cool guy no matter what.

My favorite quote of his was something like this: "1.25 MILLION gold pieces.. does that sound like a lot of gold? Well thats the difference between a +5 and a +6 weapon! So don't tell me how unimportant optimization is!"

Oh man. It was funny stuff.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;366619He'd say stuff like "You want to know what's wrong with 4E? Two words.. DRAGONBORN WIZARD!" (The implication being that dragonborn stats would make unoptimized wizards.)

The funniest threads in the world are the ones over on the Gaming Den. Frank Trollman is sitting there right now arguing that there is no conceivable reason why anyone would ever make a halfling fighter. There are BETTER CHOICES. He'll tell you so. And he literally can't understand that someone would make a choice that was suboptimal from a mechanics perspective.

(He hates 4e. A lot.)

He also thinks that the game breaks if you have a 16 in your primary attribute, mind you.

Quote from: Thanlis;366622The funniest threads in the world are the ones over on the Gaming Den. Frank Trollman is sitting there right now arguing that there is no conceivable reason why anyone would ever make a halfling fighter. There are BETTER CHOICES. He'll tell you so. And he literally can't understand that someone would make a choice that was suboptimal from a mechanics perspective.

(He hates 4e. A lot.)

He also thinks that the game breaks if you have a 16 in your primary attribute, mind you.

That's it. I'm bringing a halfling fighter to RegCon.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;366623That's it. I'm bringing a halfling fighter to RegCon.

I had a halfling fighter in my Boston home game. He was completely cool.

Quote from: StormBringer;366616Which is rather baffling, as multi-class characters have always been 'weaker', depending on the aspect used to determine that.  

Not quite true as the old Xp model in 1st e meant that a 5/5 Magic user/monk had the same xp as a 6th level MU or a 6th level monk and I suspect the 5/5 guy was a lot tougher.

Remember it used to be that you doubled the xp between levels. On of the toughest characters I ever saw (and he came into our game and wouldn;t have allowed him to multi-class 3 classes ) was a Fght2/Monk6/MU8 played in a game of 9th level charcters. Now the Xp matched but ...

I always try interesting character twists. I had a half-orc Bard in a 3e game who wore black leather and carried a huge axe, for example. To me, its part of the fun.