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 Ninjacommando wrote:
They are just examples of over the top stuff that you can do in the game

And an impediment to new players. If anything explaining Locate City Bomb to someone with no knowledge of the game would probably make them think the game is overly complicated and, well, somewhat stupid.

 Ninjacommando wrote:
From my first play through of 4th ed and seeing that It was really just MMO on paper DND with classes doing what it said on the paper and not allowing you to truely customize said character.

 Ninjacommando wrote:
I think in the 8 years i've played dnd 3.5/pathfinder (only playing pathfinder 3 times, buts its great) The groups I played with only used mats and minis once. every other time was the Dm description and our imagination (always had a marching order)

In the 20 odd years I've been playing PnP RPG's I've never seen a 3/3.5/PF group that didn't use them. Anecdotal ball back in your court.

moved many times played with about 6 different groups. only used mats and minis once.


How do I play a Fighter in 4th ed that uses a bow and will be just as good as a ranger using a bow, without multiclassing.
been looking online and cant find it.

my local group is currently wrapping up a Pathfinder campaign. we decided to give it a try at the request of one of the players ... it isn't bad .. but combat is a bit slower to us. once it is over we will likely be going back to 4th edition. or giving a go at a system being built by a local company.

4th is easy to learn, and keep up with.

 Ninjacommando wrote:
moved many times played with about 6 different groups. only used mats and minis once.

I've played in as many that did, if not more.

 Ninjacommando wrote:
How do I play a Fighter in 4th ed that uses a bow and will be just as good as a ranger using a bow, without multiclassing.
been looking online and cant find it.

1. If you want to play a ranger, just play a ranger. Making a mage that wears armor and uses a great sword while never casting spells can be done, but it seems more like Snowflake Syndrome then anything else. "Just as good" is kind of vague here, to be honest.

2. They have similar names, but are radically different classes to earlier editions, so it doesn't work the same. In earlier iterations, including 3, Ranger is just a variant on Fighter to begin with, so just removing those special features and going with straight fighter isn't all that big of a leap. In 4E Ranger is no longer a variant of Fighter, so it doesn't reverse engineer as easily, or at all. Trying to fit 4E into a 3E box doesn't work, or vice versa. It depends on what you are trying to do with this bow wielding character, really. If you want to focus on striking down enemies there are several different ways to build ranger, as there is no singular way to play a ranger in 4E, and there are mutiple Paragon paths with different focuses. You can also go with the Essentials Ranger which controls the battlefield with arrows more than trying to make everything into a pin cushion. There is also the Skirmish Warlord as well if you want another ranged 'fighter' option.

3.5 and pathfiner are the sandbox of character creation while 4th is the character builder page from world of warcraft

A ranger is different from a figher in that Fighter is built for the sole purpose of combat, a Ranger is your wilderness survival expert that knows the land and helps his party survive in the wild.

3.5
here's your class, you can do pretty much what ever you want to do and still be useful. (Magic users can and will outperform non magic users)

4.0
Here's your class, you can do A B or C to be useful, everything else is horrible, (it did shrink the power tiers, which was good)

But 4th ed did bring on the greatest thing EVER to D&D
BEAR LORE


Pathfinder
See 3.5 (we balanced the bullgak spells and made non magic users more powerful)

I.. can't.. come up with anything witty... chucking too hard...bbl...unless i asphyxiate...

Oh look someone's trying to troll us into edition wars. How quaint.

 pretre wrote:
I'm not sure I understand. So you're saying it is easier to do a 'non-map' fight in 3.0 than 4.0? Both have the same limitations really.

"Okay a wight jumps out at you. We're just going to play this one out without the map. Based on what you were doing before it opened, X, Y and Z are next to the sarcophagus, so adjacent. Everyone else is 10 feet away. Roll initiative."

Anectdotal experience, I guess. As a player, in the above most of my stuff still works in 3.0, with the exception of a few special tricks and tactics. I don't really feel the need to ask if I can Power Attack in that kind of situation. In 4th, the majority of the combat routines seemed to have at least some area-effect stuff that made knowing potions more important.

Again, this is anectdotal, but my group felt like 3.0 did 'spot combats' like this better than 4.0. 4.0 combats are awesome when a few things come together, though: Ideally, you need some environment effects or interesting skill usages during the combat, and some abilities on the opposition that are fun and flavorful without being frustrating. The rules have some clever bits to make this difficult (I think it's hard to really 'stun lock' someone, for example, due to the timing of how saves are made).

 Ninjacommando wrote:
3.5 and pathfiner are the sandbox of character creation while 4th is the character builder page from world of warcraft

lol no

Fourth edition character building material just has better signposts. 3.5/PF is about game mastery ... which boils down to having no sign posts. Min/maxing makes some people feel clever.

Manchu wrote:

 Ninjacommando wrote:
3.5 and pathfiner are the sandbox of character creation while 4th is the character builder page from world of warcraft

lol no

Fourth edition character building material just has better signposts. 3.5/PF is about game mastery ... which boils down to having no sign posts. Min/maxing makes some people feel clever.

I feel clever when I do something goofy, like when I have a ranger with 43 different weapon combinations, who was fascinated with sharp and blunt objects, but also felt the need to stab/beat everything...

What?! I was 10

I don't feel the need to have an option for every single trait to play a character, so I kind of ignore a lot of what's out there for 3.5/Pathfinder in terms of player options. I can have fun regardless of how my class works and messing around with that stuff is only vaguely fun for me. I guess it's good that the option exists for people who want it, but the switch in how characters are built didn't bother me at all about 4th. I liked that it was initially simpler, but it quickly became filled with as many variant classes as it could manage!

I think Ahtman is right though that it is a daunting aspect of Pathfinder. I'm quite familiar with 3.5 so it doesn't feel that way to me, but I can see how the online SRD could be really intimidating if you were new. I'm planning to introduce some newbies soon so I think I might have a look at streamlining some of that for them, initially.

Convert the Dark Sun campaign to Pathfinder and I would be all over that.

Crap. They did it: http://paizo.com/campaigns/DarkSunPathfinderEdition/gameplay&page=21