Calling all Dungeons & Dragons players!

[Inarticulate_Underachiever]

Player's Handbook 3 was released recently and brought in the shiny new Psionic power source! According to the D&D forums the Psionic classes have got teething problems with how they function mechanically but I'm still going to make one for my new campaign in summer as I really like the fluff behind them.

Also, the Monk is a kick-ass class!

Anyway, discuss.

 

[Inarticulate_Underachiever]

Oh come on now, I know that at least SOME of you guys play D&D!

 

[zen5887]

Yeah, but no one plays 4th ed.

And psionics are the quickest way to break at game.

 

[JupiterBase]

Agreed 3.5 rules, and psionics in 3.5 is rediculous.

 

[Inarticulate_Underachiever]

How comes I'm the only one who plays 4th edition?

Psionics in 4th edition suck lol. Well, the Ardent class does anyway.

 

[AmayaOnnaOtaku]

Yes I overlooked the 4th ed books and got so mad at the classes and races that were removed I decided not to go into 4th edition

 

[stubbmann]

On the other hand, I play 4e. Gotta say, the Battlemind is very fun to play.

 

[Zannah]

Yeah, but no one plays 4th ed.

And psionics are the quickest way to break at game.

Nothing is an automatic gamebreaker. I've seen bad players break (read: ruin) the game with second level fighters, and I know people who play characters beyond god levels andd still put up good roleplay.

I agree on nobody playing 4th ed, though.

 

[ace_of_something]

Because people think that it was[a href=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuinedFOREVER]Ruined Forever[/a] going into 4th ed. Kind of like when they made 3rd ed. or when they made 2nd ed... Same thing.
Anyway, pretty much every edition psionics totally broke the game. My wife picked up the Ph3 (never having played anything but 4th) and I got to say i don't think it will break the game like it did in 3rd. But at the same time, i find the classes really, really uninteresting. Which is a bummer because Monk was one of my three favorite classes before.
Now, the Runepriest on the other hand... I totally intend on being a Warforged Runepriest in our next eberron adventure.

Also, 4th ed isn't bad. It's different. It has a different feel and style. I really feel like people who bash on 4th ed without doing more than a playtest are kind of like the indie kids who don't like a band once they have more than 50 fans. So they simplified it. Big fucking deal. Roleplaying isn't about the complexity of the rules in the least. You can roleplay with as little or as many rules as you want. If you can't roleplay because you aren't sure how your skills are divided or because you're not the most/least powerful guy in the room than that's on you, not the system.
If you expect a game to never ever change than you don't deserve a game like D&D that has been evolving itself for 30+years.

 

[Cabboge]

I normally play 3.5, but a friend needed an extra player to join a bunch of noobs in a 4th campaign. I honestly didn't enjoy it nearly as much as 3.5, but it has enough for me to play the campaign through. I just think people are to devoted to 3.5 to really enjoy 4, but that's just my opinion.

Also, psionics are broken and I tend to hate them constantly

 

[Inarticulate_Underachiever]

Wow the Ardent might possibly be the most pointless class since the Invoker.

 

[Tiny116]

I play 4th...because it was a new edition out and knew it would finally motivate my friends to play the blasted game.
I don't have PH3 yet but it looks like they included Minotor...why WHY it wa on DnD insider what a WASTE OF INK! *cries*

 

[Crosshead]

I'm still playing 2nd Edition AD&D to be honest. Heavily modded of course. We don't upgrade rules for any of our games really, preferring to jam to gether something that suits us. But then we've been doing this for years. If I was to recommend a fantasy game to a new-comer to the hobby though, I figure 4th edition must be incredibly polished by now. And probably has much better artwork than the ancient books wwe use.

 

[mantini]

I've been playing 4e for just over a year now. I dabbled in 3 and 3.5, but 4 is just so... simple. I remember being very intimidated just LOOKING at character sheets from earlier editions, and that's why I've settled on 4. It's not crazy coplicated, which makes it easy for people to join. I don't understand why there's this huge hate on for 4. I'm intrigued by the new classes and races in PH3, but I'm loving my shifter shaman from PH2 too much to build a new one.

And yes, the monk class kicks ass.

 

[Captain Picard]

What 4th Edition should have been:

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/

Anyway, I've played one short 2nd Ed. adventure, which ended quickly due to a hail of goblin spears on our 1st level group. What really got me into D&D was 3rd Ed. though. One of my friends was obsessed enough with D&D to buy EVERY 3rd Ed. book, and do all our DMing. Quite frankly, all the supplemental material for 3rd and 3.5 is overwhelming, not to mention the base classes are rather bland compared to the PrCs. This is where Pathfinder saves the day, in my opinion. With Pathfinder, all the base classes and PC races have been vastly improved with new abilities and features. For once, taking base classes to level 20 is actually a VERY GOOD IDEA, due to the fact that you'll gain useful abliitis and improvements the entire way, and a very worthy set of ablities at level 20. The 3rd Ed. practice of dipping a few levels into other classes just to gain certain feats or abilities, and juggling multiple PrCs was too ridiculous. Furthermore, certain mechanics like the skill system and combat maneuvers have been made simpler.

Anyway, no, I haven't played 4th Ed. However, based on everything I've read and heard, it seems like 4th Ed has turned the ruleset into that of a MMOG. Massive simplification and homogenization is the impression I walked away with after reading about 4th Ed.. Every class has a built in "healing" ability, and many classes have similar damage outputs that differ only in the type of damage dealt, or the weapon used. Certain combat maneuvers can only be used "once per encouter" even though it makes little sense in a realistic way. I recall reading something like "Fighters can only use bullrush (or maybe it was called "knockdown"?) once per encounter". Why is that? Certainly not because it's realistic. Heck, why CAN'T some big burly guy who's good at rushing and tackling do that more than once in a fight? It's not for realism's sake, it's for the sake of an abstract "balance" between all the classes with respect to their combat performance. I see 4th Ed. as a bid to draw in today's youth who are familiar with simpler game mechanics and MMOGs, and not with D&D prior to 4th Ed.

That's my two cents.

 

[Captain Picard]

If those who have posted in this thread are the entirety of the P&P D&D players on the Escapist, well, that's pretty sad.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

Sorry man i don't think you'll get much there..a vast majority of D&D players (or at least the ones i know) despise 4th edition.

 

[Fightgarr]

If those who have posted in this thread are the entirety of the P&P D&D players on the Escapist, well, that's pretty sad.

Considering there is a very large user group on the Escapist devoted to Tabletop Gaming, I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is a tiny, tiny fraction of the P&P player base on the site.

On topic: I've always avoided psionics in my campaigns. I also avoid buying supplements like that. Leaving alone that I play using a simple ruleset that I created myself, all of the supplement books could be invented by the DM themselves with a little creativity and knowledge of the rules and that doesn't cost $50.

 

[Ciran]

I don't despise it, but I will agree that if destroyed more things than it fixed, and Pathfinder (I guess you could call it DnD 3.75) has all the things 4e fixed while still keeping most of the 3.5 rules, so I don't see why I shouldn't stick with that. I will, however, agree that 3.5 psionics are broken, but making them worse than everything else in 4e isn't the right direction either, so I'm not quite sure why you mentioned that
Regardless, Wizards took DnD and screwed it over (even quite a bit of their 3.5 expansions were stupid), so I'm not really interested in anything they do anymore.