( continues...) Like I said, I haven't heard any claims that it's unbalancing - it's only once per encounter and just a single target, right? So, nice against one oppponent, but I have trouble seeing it winning a combat single-handed (unlike, for instance, colour spray in 3E).

One caveat: there is an element to the rogue's slide ability that IMO isn't realistic, namely it still works on immobilised opponents. If you're using the opponent's momentum against them, there needs to be some momentum to use.

But that actually leads into another advantage I think 4E has over 3E, and for me it's a big one: the rules are so much less ambiguous now. They've been a lot more stringent with using well defined key words, stricter definitions, and avoiding open-ended options that area just begging to be cheesed (e.g. 3E polymorph). Makes it easier for a newbie to learn, and makes it much easier to avoid rules-lawyering and the associated metagaming.

He said the game is very well balanced for the most part across the board. However, he's now reversed his position on game balance, and has decided that, at least as far as the form it took in 4e, game balance is actually a crappy way to make an RPG. Everything comes across as SAME. The amount of variation and flavor between characters (or lack thereof) he found to be very off putting.

From my experience, I disagree. LARP, sure. RPG, not so much, for three reasons.

1. Gaming with players who play to exploit overpowered options just isn't as much fun. Whether you prefer more RP or G, D&D is still best as a cooperative game. Balance encourages that.

2. It's easier on novices. It also sucks to build a character that you expect to be competent, and then find that the options you chose just aren't up to snuff. (These two reasons I sum up as, if the system encourages excessive benefit from system mastery, it also encourages metagaming, which detracts from simply being able to make a character that fits your concept and playing them.)

3. A character who has trouble meaningfully contributing in a fight (or conversely, a combat-only build that has troublew finding something to do outside of a fight) encourages its player to be disengaged from the game at these times. It also hurts the party, and thus the cooperative feel of the game, because it puts the other characters at risk.

I don't think of myself as a great role-player. My first LG character was really just me in a pointy hat, my second I retired for a couple of years because he just wasn't real to me, my third had a couple of traits but ultimately was more because I wanted to try a spiked chain fighter. I had a bit of a breakthrough with my first Eberron character, a warforged with a Kryten-like personality and an insanely literalist bent in conversation. He was an utter blast to play, and for maybe the first time I really found myself getting into a role. (Since then I've had some other fun characters, like a dwarven Montana-type survivalist and conspiracy theorist, and a halfling marshal called Napoleon, Lord of the Undergrowth.) So I feel I've made progress, but it doesn't come naturally to me.

The reason why I mention this is that I still don't see 4E's more restrictive options as in any way damaging my opportunity to roleplay. In some ways it's better, because some characters I'd find that I was trying to express their persona through mechanical choices, and it just became trapped on the page. I get that others are going to relate differently, and I really don't see myself as in any position to judge others, but for me I'm doing fine building characters in 4E.

FTR: I'm currently working on three different possible characters. Ok, I'm working on sixteen, but most of them are still just numbers on a page, not a personality. But the three that are starting to become real for me:

1. A tiefling wizard. I'm too old to do Emo; so, I figure, my tiefling will also be old, and rather than doing the "Life is pain" route, he's a crotchety old bastard a la Victor Meldrew. (continued...)

( continues...) 2. A dragonborn fighter (multiclass paladin). After meditating on the dragonborn's teeth, I decided this guy has the soul of a birdwatcher; but rather than looking for every bird in the world, his Life List is that he wants to try to eat every non-unique creature in the Monster Manual. Except the plants, because "do these choppers look like they were deigned for rabbit food?" He'll become a Champion of Order, or in other words, "A place for everything and everything in its place - namely, my axe in your belly, and your flesh in mine."

3. A half-elf, or more precisely, "Half-elf, and all man, baby!" (There may be gestures.) I haven't got any further on this one yet.

So anyway, like I said, I have no more trouble coming up with characters in the new set than in the old. So if I can have a system that is at worst neutral on RP, but is also a better G, I'm in for it.

The DMG has about 6 pages in it that are worth owning, and that really pisses me off (it's basically full of shit telling you how you can do whatever you want and how to have imagination).

Aww. The poor DMG, it gets no love. I largely agree, though I found more than 6 pages I'll use. It has the crunch stuff for prepping both combat and non-combat encounters (skill challenges!), setting rewards, and of course customising things. So that's five chapters, more or less. As for the rest of it, great if you're either new to role-playing (which, after all, is probably the segment most in need of a DMG), not so necessary for experienced players. (I think necessary for another reason, namely the amount of flak I've seen WotC taking for the notion that 4E doensn't support role-playing. But that doesn't make this stuff useful, it just makes it a signal of priorities.)

I mentioned before, this edition seems to be structured in a more modular fashion. That's hit the DMG hardest. Prestige classes and magic items have been moved to the PHB. Planar info is in a later supplement. There's no longer the need to provide table after table of NPC builds (I think there wasn't before, admittedly) because the antagonist-building philosophy no longer needs the same detail. What's left is role-playing 101. I'm curious to see what they put in to justify the DMG II (and especially III, IV and so on), but it's not an automatic buy.

Aw, BT.... You seem to like so much about the new edition.

Everything about it is just making me want to rant and scream about it, but I don't want to make you feel bad, or like I'm attacking you or something you like.

Should I come here to rant about 4E? I don't want to drive you away from our shiny gaming thread! (Yes, I think you a strong enough human that someone else ranting about the terribleness of something you like, I just thought I'd make the offer)

Oh, the roguezilla stuff is also from computer games I think. They're going for special moves, some wuxia supermove stuff. If you don't want dwarves doing spinning jumping headkicks of doom, you're kind of out of luck with 4E. But if you want snazzy fun combat options, then there you are.

I'm sure you didn't intend it this way, but as someone who likes 4E, and who doesn't have any interest in "dwarves doing spinning jumping headkicks of doom", I found this kind of insulting. It's one thing to decide it doesn't suit your style of role-play. It's quite another to deride what other people get out of it.

Oh, and I disagree with ditching LE as an alignment. What were the Nazis if not LE? But I like Unaligned.

They didn't ditch the underlying outlook, they just rolled it in with the rest of "Evil". That I don't mind, but I think they should've removed CE and LG while they were at it. I tend to think the alignment system proved to be more a source of always-edifying arguments in moral philosophy, and doesn't really seem to have added much to defining a character.

I kept trying to use the DMgenie and WotC's computerized tool, but every program got the rules wrong somehow. Still, I thought it was faster to just do that and then scan the results for errors.

Have you ever used HeroForge to do characters? They have a similar monster builder called MonsterForge. Not sure of its accuracy, and I don't know that it covers everything, but it might help.

It sounds like 4E is geared towards action gamers more than role players.

Not really. I think it'll suit action gamers nicely, but the role of combat within a D&D game hasn't changed - it's still whatever the DM makes it. The position of roleplaying hasn't changed - it's still whatever the DM and players make it. The reviews I've read aren't short on role-playing experience, both outside of and within combat.

The last time I played D&D it was a World of Greyhawk thing where all the effort seemed geared towards the combats. Every time I tried to roleplay something, the DM said, "Oh, that part is assumed, we need to move on to the encounter, we have a time limit." I didn't go back for a second session. Darn it, I like dickering with an innkeeper about the price of dinner and whether I get a bed to myself.

I enjoyed Living Greyhawk a lot, but the mods usually structured the story to include three or so combats, and if you were at a convention or for any other reason had a time limit on the session, then the role-play was probably going to suffer. Running a campaign on that kind of scale is going to feel somewhat different from the flexibility a home game offers.

Combat has always played a major part in D&D. However, the level of roleplaying is entirely dependent on the group & the DM. The new skill challenges can make social encounters a dynamic event involving many of the group.

Oh, that reminds me! I tried out a skill challenge framework in my last Eberron campaign session. I think it worked out nicely. It got the players more engaged, kept me engaged too, ensured that things didn't just grind to a halt or devolve into a "Diplomacy check!" "I made my Aid Another roll." I like it, it gives me a framework that encourages a good session without me having to do ridiculous amounts of prep.

. . . then there was the D&D campaign where the DM thought he was the next Weis and/or Hickman, and we were working out his plot points and themes. He had us spend an entire session working out fully fleshed characters with backgrounds and all, then threw us through a dimensional warp where those backgrounds and relationships didn't matter and we didn't know anyone in the party. Plus he finally admitted that the monsters were designed to kill as many characters as possible and that "it will all make sense in a few weeks, when we get to the next stage."

Just assure me that Stage 3 was profit.

Everything about it is just making me want to rant and scream about it, but I don't want to make you feel bad, or like I'm attacking you or something you like.

Hee. Well, especially after how I started off my previous post, no, not at all, I realise there are lots of people who dislike 4E. There is the caveat, there's a difference between ranting about the game and deriding the people who enjoy it, but we're cool. (Plus, when your PHB falls apart on you, it's hard not to take that personally.)

I do like 4E, I want to be able to discuss it here, I want you and anyone else who doesn't like it to be able to discuss it here too.

I want to be able to discuss it here, I want you and anyone else who doesn't like it to be able to discuss it here too.

Good! Because I want us both to be able to discuss it with each other! And pretty much everywhere else on the interwebs, this would involve dirty fighting and blood oaths, so it's nice to be able to have the 3E/4E conversation without it turning into personal attacks and jihads.

Oh, and I disagree with ditching LE as an alignment. What were the Nazis if not LE? But I like Unaligned.

They didn't ditch the underlying outlook, they just rolled it in with the rest of "Evil". That I don't mind, but I think they should've removed CE and LG while they were at it. I tend to think the alignment system proved to be more a source of always-edifying arguments in moral philosophy, and doesn't really seem to have added much to defining a character.

OI! I still have only read the character creation chapter, but what they did to alignment just bugs the crap out of me. I've long hated alignment, for many reasons, though I also understood its utility. My basic general solution to alignment is just to not use it.

4E seems to have tried to solve the problems by combining alignment with no-alignment to get the best of both worlds, but I find it to do exactly the opposite. The 4E alignment system is just a big mess that makes so much less sense than alignment as it existed before.

Also, for all their efforts to revamp alignment, it seems to me that, by leaving Lawful Good as an alignment choice, they've changed so much but done nothing at all to solve the "paladin-asshole straightjacket" problem that seems so rampant among paladin players.

(Plus, when your PHB falls apart on you, it's hard not to take that personally.)

Yeah right! I'm doing my best to not let the shit binding influence my opinion of the game itself, but it is just a big slap in the face. I've had the damned book less that 48 hours, and it's already partially unbound.

Well, we're going to lose power for a few hours today, while they replace our breaker box in preparation for rewiring our whole building to fully grounded outlets, so I'll have a few hours undistracted to read further in the book.

Just assure me that Stage 3 was profit.

I have no clue, because I bailed before Stage 1 was finished. When I asked someone later, I was merely the vanguard to a full scale exodus and the game fell apart completely.

Heh.

I was apparently thinking ahead. I have a pretty decent APC battery backup. If I remember correctly, the battery gave me about an hour or so of use, running my Dell desktop and a flat screen monitor (15 minutes with a CRT).

We just lost power in the house, and it will be out for about five hours or so.

The only things currently plugged into the battery? My Airport and the DSL modem.

Both our laptops are fully charged. I expect to be able to connect to the internet the enitre time I am without power today.

My basic general solution to alignment is just to not use it.

I can't remember if it was in Unearthed Arcana, Arcana Unearthed, or somewhere else, that I came across a rule for making alignment a percentage. Like, I'm 25% Chaotic and 45% Good. It was axial (25% != 75% Lawful, but a quarter of the way to the Perfectly Chaotic), so it was sort of "I'll be good about half the time, and the other half is whatever it is.

Then I dumped alignment entirely.

If I had to use alignment, it would be Good/Evil, without Law/Chaos. And even then there are problems. I've had several players who take actions I consider Evil, or at the very least Not Good, yet who swear on a stack of bibles they are Good.

Everyone thinks their motives are pure, right? Everyone's the hero of his own story.

The other solution I used for alignment was to rule that you could call yourself any alignment you wanted, without levels in an explicitly evil (or good) prestige class, humanoids and monstrous humanoids just do not register on detection spells, even if you are of evil alignment and conducting evil activities and thoughts at the time of the detection spells.

Basically, you needed to be an outsider, undead, dragon, aberration, or other explicitly evil (or good) kind of creature to be EVIL (or GOOD, or whatever) enough to register for detection spells. Thus, at least as far as alignment related spells worked, they still served their main function, but don't affect day to day life at all.