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[Earthquake Damage]

Monks in general are just really bad in 3.5e.

You think so?  I always thought of them as a specialty class.  They have some all-purpose capabilities, but in most roles they're inferior to other classes.  Where they shine, IMO, is wizard slaying.  They have spell resistance, speed, and ki strike.  But I've never played one, so they might not fill that role as well as I think they do.

[Chutney]

They are dependent on too many attributes, really. Wisdom for AC/class features, Strength for damage, Dexterity for more AC+skills(dexterity may be drop-able, actually) . On top of that, their speed is negated by Flurry of Blows being a full-round action. Their fluff is whacked out (they're like pensive religious type Western Monks + Wuxia action hero Eastern Monks combined haphazardly). Their spell-resistance is also negated by wizards ability to cast Time Stop, iirc. Or summon creatures like Pit Fiends or Angels. It's crazy how much things wizards get that counter almost everything designed to counter wizards.
They are fun, don't get me wrong. Monk was my class before I found psionics (handily, the psionics handbook has 2 prestige classes for monks that makes them WAY better than vanilla monk), and I enjoyed it...but the fact that I couldn't deal damage without using 3-4 source books and I missed 90% of the time (almost always immediately followed by the enemy full-attacking me and bringing me so deep into the negatives it's rather silly (from 36 to -36 was my proudest moment)) pointed out the flaws in the class to me.

Interestingly, 4e has made the monk a psionic class, which fortifies my belief that the psionic prestige classes were that much better than the base monk :p

[Sowelu]

As a longtime D&D junkie (still have my old pre-first-edition three tan books), I hated 4th Ed. as soon as it came out and while reading through the books, mostly because it turned bland and lost all its flavor.  It focuses only on combat and pretty much nothing else, the world it's set in is uncompelling, and out-of-combat stuff just doesn't seem very interesting.  Earlier versions of D&D had a lot more 'crunch' for out-of-combat mechanics, because plain old 'roll a d20 and add' sucks.

Thing is, though, once I actually sat down and played it, I realized that it was the first time I actually really enjoyed D&D combat as a game in years.  Usually I just played D&D as a roleplaying game with creative puzzle solving and trying to abuse the GM, and combat was something you tried to avoid because it was tedious.  But now it's tactically interesting.

The main thing I don't like is the loss of verisimiltude.  Healing surges are too game-y.  In this universe, hospitals shouldn't exist, because absolutely everyone (presumably even civilians) can use four consecutive ten-minute rests to restore all their hit points, no matter how low they were, as long as they have enough of their daily healing surges left.  And the magic item system weirds me out.

I guess it's kind of like Erfworld though.  Sometimes the mechanics are just contrary to your expectations of how the world should work.  For example, it takes the same amount of time to run diagonally as it does horizontally/vertically.  It's a total wallbanger, but...meh.

[Neonivek]

My problem right now is that I feel that the improvements that 4e made will be thrown away once the next edition comes out (Which will try to compete with pathfinder)

Which is a shame because some of them, such as adding half your level to skills or giving everyone moves or giving mages at will spells that do things, would make my experiences a lot smoother.

I fully expect Version 5 to be a cruddy "Lets compete with Pathfinder" return to 3.5 junk.

[Cthulhu]

'roll a d20 and add'

I can't say I remember any part of any version of D&D that wasn't this.


How many times are we going to have to discuss the whole "HP loss does not translate directly to injury" thing?  Healing surges aren't suddenly, magically healing your injuries, they're a second wind, a burst of energy triggered by the adrenaline rush.  Also, I'm pretty sure healing surges only happen when you use an item or a power to activate them.  Until you're down to like 10% of your health, HP loss is rolling with blows, close dodges, small injuries.  Stuff that will feel better after you sit down for a little bit.

[Neonivek]

'roll a d20 and add'

I can't say I remember any part of any version of D&D that wasn't this.


How many times are we going to have to discuss the whole "HP loss does not translate directly to injury" thing?  Healing surges aren't suddenly, magically healing your injuries, they're a second wind, a burst of energy triggered by the adrenaline rush.  Also, I'm pretty sure healing surges only happen when you use an item or a power to activate them.  Until you're down to like 10% of your health, HP loss is rolling with blows, close dodges, small injuries.  Stuff that will feel better after you sit down for a little bit.

The Bard has an ability FAR worse

He INSULTS the enemy

It actually manages to kill enemies as it actually does damage.

[Sowelu]

Out of combat, you can use healing surges at will by taking a short rest.  In combat, you need a special ability.

"Roll a d20 and add" was...well, earlier versions liked to use tables for stuff, and 4th Ed. doesn't have tables.  It doesn't even have the random encounter tables that nobody used but everyone liked to look at, and that's a shame.

And yeah, I know, HP is not directly tied to health--except that it used to be.  There used to be rules for healing HP gradually over a period of many days if you didn't have magical healing.  Magical healing was omnipresent so it wasn't often used, yes, but if you were hurt, you were HURT.  You might have been able to fight at full capacity yes, but you were indeed injured, not just shaken up a bit.  It's silly to say that someone who has 80 max hp, and is only recovering 6 hp / day with non-strenuous bed rest, is simply regaining their wits and wincing at bruises for two weeks.  Yeah maybe they don't have a broken arm, but it's not trivial injuries, that's for sure.  In this version, there is literally *no such thing* as an injury which lasts for more than one day, the world simply has no concept of it.

...Oh yeah, speaking of bards, more of that crazy lack of verisimilitude stuff that makes it feel more like Erfworld.  A Commander (or whatever the class was--the non-magical Leader class, like a military non-divine cleric) has abilities that make people run faster, or take extra (basic attack) swings.  And that seems silly.  If you have one big beefy fighter, and twenty level-one commanders, they can make the big beefy fighter take 21 swings per round at a guy.  Back in 3.5th edition there was a myth that bards worked kind of like that, because one bard could give you a +1 to your rolls...except that they specifically didn't stack.  No such restrictions with this guy. 

[Earthquake Damage]

The Bard has an ability FAR worse

He INSULTS the enemy

It actually manages to kill enemies as it actually does damage.

That's pretty realistic, actually.  I took 2 damage just from reading that.

[Argembarger]

If you have one big beefy fighter, and twenty level-one commanders, they can make the big beefy fighter take 21 swings per round at a guy.  Back in 3.5th edition there was a myth that bards worked kind of like that, because one bard could give you a +1 to your rolls...except that they specifically didn't stack.  No such restrictions with this guy.

Yeah, speaking as a DM, I'd never let my players get away with those shenanigans...

Shame nobody noticed that loophole. I'm sure there's others. Still, house rulings ftw.

[Sowelu]

Well, they're not loopholes exactly.  They're just game mechanics that have their details filled in almost as an afterthought.  "Okay, at this level let's give the paladin one ability that does 4x damage, one that does 2x damage at range and can't be dodged, and one that does 2x damage and lets someone within LOS use a healing surge.  How does it work?  It just does, man."  And it kinda works for that.  It's just silly is all.

[Earthquake Damage]

Yeah, speaking as a DM, I'd never let my players get away with those shenanigans...

Shame nobody noticed that loophole. I'm sure there's others. Still, house rulings ftw.

3.5 has its share of loopholes.  AFAIK they never fixed the "bag of rats" trick.

[Cthulhu]

Line up hundreds of peasants from one kingdom to another, have them all ready an action to hand an item to the peasant in front of them.

Hand the peasant at the back of the line an item.  Since the readied action is free the item travels to the other kingdom instantaneously.

Also, if your friend is at -9 HP tie a rope to him and toss him in the water.  When he starts to drown he'll reset to 0 HP and you reel him back in.

These things are the equivalent of glitches in a game, except unlike a vidjyagaem you can just say "No, it doesn't work like that"  I wouldn't criticize a system over stuff like this unless it's rampant and egregious.

[Psyco Jelly]

My group plays pathfinder, but we dabbler in 4e. It was fun, perhaps a little homogenous, but damn if it wasn't fun to minmax. Especially since we got the PHB 3. The hybrid class options were awsome. My players ended up with a Monk/Avenger hybrid with untouchable defenses of all catergories and manvering enemies into all kinds of horrible things, a Psion/Wizard that could call up a wall of fire and force punch them through it longways for upwards of 15d6 damage, get stun them, and then force trawled back for another 15d6 damage. At level 9. And finally a Bard that mulplied the other guys abilities by a zillion. Then the boss came around, and hit the Monk/Avenger on his first attack. If players minmax, you need to present them with even tougher challenges.

Aside from those shenanigans, I prefer pathfinder because it's easier to present social challenges and the like, and the multiclassing makes for more variation. Although I admit to taking a large amount of inspiration from 4e, along with GURPS and Demon's Souls for my roguelike.

[Heron TSG]

3.5 has its share of loopholes.  AFAIK they never fixed the "bag of rats" trick.

That was actually part of 3.0, which 3.5 fixed. It's specifically denied by the fact that the slain enemies have to be a challenge (or pose a threat) to your character.

[Sergius]

About HP: is it wounds? Is it not? I say most spells in 4e point to HP definitely NOT being wounds. Not all of them... and you have that "bloodied" status, which seems to me the point where the combat "gets serious". How else can you explain that spells that slow people down by planting mud on their feet does damage. HP is a generic "can still fight" or whatever stat. Minions have for all (most) intents and purposes 1 hit points. So they can't spend "healing surges" since they're either in tip-top shape or dead (or maybe they still have -10 HP to live, but you don't care because once they drop you don't stand guard or check their "vitals"). I'd say most peasants are the same. Hospitals? That's a bit naive.

Older editions were much more ambiguous about this. How can a person fall 10 stories and survive if he has enough HP? How come higher level people need to spend more time/more healing spells to get to fighting shape?

Been playing LOTRO for a while, at least they had the good sense to call it something else. "Morale". And healing is actually methods to raise morale (so Captains and Minstrels do it). Getting hit is bad for morale obviously. And being riffed at by rock musiMinstrels. And this reviving business is easier to explain than "resurrection".

I'm of the opinion that ever-increasing HP with levels is a bad mechanic, so I'm not defending it. But pre-4 it used to get pretty ridiculous: for every example that said HP was wounds, there were 10 ways to prove it wrong. For every example that said HP was "capacity to fight" or "luck" or whatever, 10 ways to prove that wrong. I'd rather have GURPS's "fixed" Hit Points that don't "level up" in multiples, or more cinematic wounds from other games.

There was a big webpage dedicated to pointing out most of the AD&D holes but I can't seem to find it. It had a very deep explanation on hit points.