Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Has gurps changed over the years. I had that back when it was 1st edition, and I remember it for having an insanely detailed character generation system, and an interminably long (and lethal) combat system. I think you needed to roll five dice to resolve one strike.

pretre wrote:Nicely said, Anpu42.

I agree completely. In fact I think he actually worded what I dislike about 4E the most...team work. Personally I like teamwork, but a lot of the people I play with do not play the game like it should be played. They still play it like it is 1E-3.5E. I remember playing a wizard and the DM pretty much make striker encounters. I couldn't damage the creatures at all because he refused to build encounters that were fair to all classes. I got to the point that I didn't want to play the game anymore. The DM said you get a cut of the XP if you do at least 1 point of damage, but the huge ass creatures that he made us fight were impossible for my wizard to damage most of the time.

So for the time being I am playing Pathfinder because it can be used as a D&D ruleset and it more in line with my group's playing style. If everyone actually played 4E like it is supposed to, I would switch back to it.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Redbeard wrote:Has gurps changed over the years. I had that back when it was 1st edition, and I remember it for having an insanely detailed character generation system, and an interminably long (and lethal) combat system. I think you needed to roll five dice to resolve one strike.

Yeah it has changed some of the years. I am currently using the 4E book. I don't like its construction, (hardback and colour) because it seems to fall apart at a sneeze. The combat system in fourth edition is much like third. In terms of maneuvers, the Move and attack maneuver is new, allowing for a full move followed by a poorly aimed attack. A major change from the third edition rules is the removal of Passive Defense scores for Armor. In third edition, armor had a Damage Resistance stat and a Passive Defense stat. The PD added to your active defense chances, this has been eliminated in fourth edition. Your active defenses are now equal to 3 plus half of your relevant skill for parry and block, or speed for dodge,(with a modifier to dodge for encumbrance). Shields now provide a defense bonus that adds to your active defense, they are the only item providing such a defense bonus now. Quite a bit different from the old 1E book...

Although character gen still takes ages, unless you set some pretty harsh restrictions on what folks can take.

Lord Scythican wrote:I remember playing a wizard and the DM pretty much make striker encounters. I couldn't damage the creatures at all because he refused to build encounters that were fair to all classes. I got to the point that I didn't want to play the game anymore. The DM said you get a cut of the XP if you do at least 1 point of damage, but the huge ass creatures that he made us fight were impossible for my wizard to damage most of the time.

Ouch, there's your problem. Bad DM.

No game is capable of withstanding a bad GM. 1st immutable law of RP.

For the Wizard at-will thing, it's the an area-of-effect, right? That weakens it right there the way my group approves powers. It'd be great if it would be useful, but depending on the targeting/positioning requirements, most area effects are very limited use as you end up toasting your team mates if the GM is at all aggressive. We find that so many characters need to set up flanking and such to up damage and to-hit rates that area effect spells that don't discriminate between allies and enemies get limited use.

Redbeard wrote:Has gurps changed over the years. I had that back when it was 1st edition, and I remember it for having an insanely detailed character generation system, and an interminably long (and lethal) combat system. I think you needed to roll five dice to resolve one strike.

The current edition is still, by default, a bit overly complex in my opinion. One major complaint is it's still very possible to make a fundamentally useless or illogical character unless the GM does a lot of work. For example, making a reasonable modern day character you end up with tons of skills just to 'make sense' like basic computer skills, driving, etc. Combat can require multiple rolls, but generally only if you're using automatic weapons and such.

Still, the books, mostly for the previous edition, for historical settings and such are very cool resources. I'd just ignore the rules and use something like Savage Worlds, d20, or similar.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

pretre wrote:

Lord Scythican wrote:I remember playing a wizard and the DM pretty much make striker encounters. I couldn't damage the creatures at all because he refused to build encounters that were fair to all classes. I got to the point that I didn't want to play the game anymore. The DM said you get a cut of the XP if you do at least 1 point of damage, but the huge ass creatures that he made us fight were impossible for my wizard to damage most of the time.

Ouch, there's your problem. Bad DM.

Yup. Bad GM can ruin the game. I think the rules-as-written for 4th pretty much say to make sure everyone gets XP, and generally thr group should stay at the same level. In fact, a lot of GMs seem to be moving to just handing out a level every 2-3 sessions as it's the same effective thing and easier to deal with. 4th edition got rid of some of the weird ideas of 'XP as a resource' for things like creating magic items anyway...

Balance wrote:For the Wizard at-will thing, it's the an area-of-effect, right? That weakens it right there the way my group approves powers. It'd be great if it would be useful, but depending on the targeting/positioning requirements, most area effects are very limited use as you end up toasting your team mates if the GM is at all aggressive. We find that so many characters need to set up flanking and such to up damage and to-hit rates that area effect spells that don't discriminate between allies and enemies get limited use.

In fact, I'm fairly certain that Ally-Friendly vs non-Ally-Friendly is a balancing factor by WOTC for spells. You'll find that non-ally-friendly generally does more damage. Also the reason that my current character is an Invoker. I love ally friendly AOE.

4th edition got rid of some of the weird ideas of 'XP as a resource' for things like creating magic items anyway...

Oh man, I hated that. There was that weird minigame that you could play where you used item creation to stay even with the party based on the differences in XP rewards depending on your level. (If you were one level behind, you could often get 'free' xp for item creation because of the increased rewards you got from what the party got.) It was silly.

I'd say "universal" rather than "immutable."

Also, don't forget the Second Universal Law: no RPG is capable of withstanding bad players.

Manchu wrote:I'd say "universal" rather than "immutable."

Also, don't forget the Second Universal Law: no RPG is capable of withstanding bad players.

Agreed. I just like the way the word 'immutable' sounds.

Anpu42 wrote:I have played D&D since 81, and there is still a Rule from 1st ED
Rule 0: The GM can do anything he wants in his game.
Most players forget this.

Use the Bloodied DMG, grants +5 to intimidation checks against unruly players.

I would argue that all those DM stereotypes are prevalent in any edition of the game, just the rule set may support a certain type better than others. I know of one DM back in New York that runs his games like your 2nd edition DM example and he currently is running a 4e game.

Manchu wrote:It cannot be emphasized enough that 3E was the players' Bill of Rights.

Really, how so? Not disagreeing with you, just curious how you came to that conclusion.

Balance wrote:For the Wizard at-will thing, it's the an area-of-effect, right? That weakens it right there the way my group approves powers. It'd be great if it would be useful, but depending on the targeting/positioning requirements, most area effects are very limited use as you end up toasting your team mates if the GM is at all aggressive. We find that so many characters need to set up flanking and such to up damage and to-hit rates that area effect spells that don't discriminate between allies and enemies get limited use.

Almost everything a Wizard does is AoE or multi-target so it is inherent in the class to do such things. To compare it to another spell, Freezing Ray, might illustrate why it is two powerful for an at will. They both do damage and slow targets, but Freezing Rays is limited to 2 targets, does a d8, cannot be expanded, and is once per encounter. Stone Blood can effect between 9 to 21 (expanded) targets, does a d6 (not that Wizards are sought out for their damage anyway), and can be used anytime you want. There are lots of way to ignore, or minimize hitting allies in a burst so it really isn't a huge problem. I have the War Wizard feat which gives a penalty to the roll for hitting allies and even if it does they only then take half damage if they are hit. Toss in the Fortune Cards that allow you to ignore one ally in a burst and it isn't that big a concern.

I looked it up and found the other daily that didn't make the transition was a level 1 daily spell that turned the target into a toad. It is a save ends daze in which the target can only make a move or shift action, which at level one is really quite good.

A GM can do anything he wants, but the players are under no obligation to stick around.

Running a game for zero players gets boring quick.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
For the wizard at-will thing, it sounds like the best recourse may be to resort to social engineering.

I'm playing a druid and the AoE spell thing has bit me a couple times. Some of the druid spells avoid friendly fire, some aren't. And I'm multitasking between AoEs and turning into a weird melee combatant anyway...

BTW, is the group using the original or 'fixed' version of Magic Missile? It the original 4.0 books it required a hit roll but did better damage, but was errataed to auto-hit for nearly no damage.

Lord Scythican wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

Wardragoon wrote:I have never played pathfinder and alot of people were saying theres a difference so I decided to add it as an option

I was just joking with you. Should I have used the winking emoticon instead?

I remember a few months ago I took these same comments wrong as well Wardragoon. I kept calling pathfinder D&D and Ahtman tried to learn me!

At least we have all moved on to making jokes about the dislike of one system or another.

Anyways you all should switch to Gurps. It is a way better system for D&D.

Gurps?

GURPS: Generic Universal Role Playing System, from Steve Jackson Games.

It's been around for quite a while, and has a definite. There are (although some may not be updated for the most recent edition) books for a ton of historical eras, fantasy, science fiction, as well as a lot of other settings both original and licensed.

It's extremely 'open' which is good and bad. If you don't lock things down you might give players a 'budget' to build characters and get a 'regular joe', a minor superhero type, and a wizard from one group of players. It'll be relatively balanced, although the 'regular joe' might not find a lot of use for his 'computer' skills in Middle Earth or wherever.

In reality, the GM needs to either set firm limits and expectations for player characters or be heavily involved in character creation.

Not a favorite system of mine, but Steve Jackson Games did some great supplements for GURPS that are great for historical game settings even if you toss the rules stuff. They wrote a bunch of the books like they were doing serious scholarly research.

Balance wrote:BTW, is the group using the original or 'fixed' version of Magic Missile? It the original 4.0 books it required a hit roll but did better damage, but was errataed to auto-hit for nearly no damage.

It's LFR so following the most up to date. I did like the Red Box version of it though. It is the current description but it allowed up to 2 targets instead of one.

I run 4E, but I try to downplay the combat. It seems like a lot of 4E adventures are combat-heavy, so I try to keep the characters immersed in the story, more than anything else. Not to say I won't run combats though. D&D without killing Orcs is like 40k without Spehhs Mehrens

swiftdraw wrote:Really, how so? Not disagreeing with you, just curious how you came to that conclusion.

Becouse on of the things 3.0/3.5 did was put the Players and the Monsters on the Same playing field, sort of. The monsters got Skills and Feats just like a Player Character. to if you wanted Your monster to have Great Cleave it wold have to have Power Attack and Cleave, just like a PC. So as one wat to put it was if the Moster Could Do it, your character should be able to do it.

Yeah, that's one aspect of what I mean. The 3E rules were both universalized (like Anpu points out) and rationalized. By 'rationalized,' I mean that the core mechanic can be and is used to determine everything and there is a stat for (basically) everything. Gone were the days of asking the DM what is possible in the game world. Thanks to universal, rational rules the players have an argument as to what is and is not possible. The DM had a lot more leeway to ignore these kinds of arguments in AD&D but ignoring them in 3E would draw justified criticisms of arbitrariness, unfairness, and the term (with negative connotations) that developed for it is "DM fiat." Looking back on AD&D, the DM's role was tyrannical and (in my mind) way too burdensome. Of course, some people claim 3E has encouraged rules-lawyering and that it 'restrcts' imagination.

Manchu wrote:Yeah, that's one aspect of what I mean. The 3E rules were both universalized (like Anpu points out) and rationalized. By 'rationalized,' I mean that the core mechanic can be and is used to determine everything and there is a stat for (basically) everything. Gone were the days of asking the DM what is possible in the game world. Thanks to universal, rational rules the players have an argument as to what is and is not possible. The DM had a lot more leeway to ignore these kinds of arguments in AD&D but ignoring them in 3E would draw justified criticisms of arbitrariness, unfairness, and the term (with negative connotations) that developed for it is "DM fiat." Looking back on AD&D, the DM's role was tyrannical and (in my mind) way too burdensome. Of course, some people claim 3E has encouraged rules-lawyering and that it 'restrcts' imagination.

And those people are WRONG. I'm joking of course, I can see where they're coming from. It's so reliant on the GM, though, that such rules-light systems will leave a lot of players feeling very dissatisfied with the game, and puts a huge burden on the GM to arbitrate fairly on the spot. GM's will always have to do that, but it shouldn't come up so frequently as to be the norm, in my opinion. I find that pre-existing rules to cover more eventualities makes for a more enjoyable game, and that it rarely detracts from the imaginative aspect of play.

So I'm really just repeating what you said, aren't I? AD&D DM, too tyrannical and too burdensome. You hit it on the head, for me.

We're so used to living inside of D&D mechanical tropes that it's easy to forget D&D is just another game.

For example, we're too used to thinking of DMs as a separate category from "player." But the DM is actually a player, too -- that is, the DM is also a person who is playing the game.

Now there's a basic aspect to every game regarding who's on whose side. I don't know what the pros call it but for our purposes it's the 'hostility line.' In most games, if a player one side of the line wins then the players on the other side of the line lose. Now, this isn't necessarily the case with D&D but there is still an obvious hostility line -- PCs v. DM. Every game, including D&D, depends on a sense of fairness across that line. The easiest way to maintain this fairness is to give players on either side of the line the same or functionally equivalent options. The rationalization and universalization of 3E went a long way towards this goal. D&D has been more obviously "fair" since 3E than previously.

IMO, this is radically beneficial because opponents have to trust one another to play fairly in order to enjoy the game. When rules are rational and universal, the opponents can 'check' one another's application of those rules -- in other words, there is a sense of transparency. Now the literal transparency is something that we have an explicit tool -- the DM screen -- to avoid. But the reason we can tolerate (and even desire) a DM screen is because we trust that if we were to see "under the hood" everything would be working as we expect . . . with the exception of a few "fudges" to build the drama. Of course, whether (potentialyl) "fudging" the rolls is actually any fun is itself yet another example of the trust between DMs and players that universal and rational rulesets encourage.

4th at the moment. I have tried Pathfinder in the past, and I think it is great too. They are two different games, not really much to compare.

I love good ol' 2nd edition

Manchu wrote:We're so used to living inside of D&D mechanical tropes that it's easy to forget D&D is just another game.

For example, we're too used to thinking of DMs as a separate category from "player." But the DM is actually a player, too -- that is, the DM is also a person who is playing the game.

Now there's a basic aspect to every game regarding who's on whose side. I don't know what the pros call it but for our purposes it's the 'hostility line.' In most games, if a player one side of the line wins then the players on the other side of the line lose. Now, this isn't necessarily the case with D&D but there is still an obvious hostility line -- PCs v. DM. Every game, including D&D, depends on a sense of fairness across that line. The easiest way to maintain this fairness is to give players on either side of the line the same or functionally equivalent options. The rationalization and universalization of 3E went a long way towards this goal. D&D has been more obviously "fair" since 3E than previously.

IMO, this is radically beneficial because opponents have to trust one another to play fairly in order to enjoy the game. When rules are rational and universal, the opponents can 'check' one another's application of those rules -- in other words, there is a sense of transparency. Now the literal transparency is something that we have an explicit tool -- the DM screen -- to avoid. But the reason we can tolerate (and even desire) a DM screen is because we trust that if we were to see "under the hood" everything would be working as we expect . . . with the exception of a few "fudges" to build the drama. Of course, whether (potentialyl) "fudging" the rolls is actually any fun is itself yet another example of the trust between DMs and players that universal and rational rulesets encourage.

What is this playing like, its been over a years since I was a PC but you do bring up a great point as a gm

One of the other thing I saw alot of with 3.0/3.5 is House Rules and lots of them to make the game work for each group. Evrything from How to generate Character to Races, to Spell Casting
Now I admit I have only seen one or two 4e Groups, but I have seen very little House Rules Needed.

Insert errata joke?

4E is really good about errata, at least. I think they learned their lesson from 3.5.

I started playing back in the days of "Chainmail", then progressed to the Beginner, Advanced, then finally Expert "versions" of the game.

The best time I had playing was at the beginning of the 2nd Edition rules, where they made adventures out of "Shadowdale", "Tantras", and "Waterdeep". This was the intro to 2nd Ed. I've seen the rules for ver 3, and 3.5, and don't care at all for them.

If I could find some people to play 2nd Ed online, that would be nice


Priest

2nd currently.

3.5, mainly because it has the most resources that I have seen and everytime I try to swap over to Pathfinder (Or anyother system) my players tend to revolt.

Asukane wrote:3.5, mainly because it has the most resources that I have seen and everytime I try to swap over to Pathfinder (Or anyother system) my players tend to revolt.

Heh, I am trying to switch over to deathwatch, heres hoping no french revolutions occur.