D&D Gold/XP Equivalency (is now general D&D playstyles thread)

[krogothwolf]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

Oh and 4th ed is fantastically shit.

I'm going to take it you don't like it either? :p

We like to have a good mixture of roleplaying and Combat and we all actually enjoyed 3rd when we finaly switched over from 2nd. We did that 2 years ago. But thanks for explaining it to me. I think I'll agree with them for saying we'll stay away from 4th lol.

[Nikose Tyris]

4th edition is actually not terrible as long as you realize well before you go into it that it's not actually D&D.

The 4th edition rules in Star Wars [Aka "Saga edition" are beautiful btw.]

[Meister]

I made numerous 3.5 characters and with all of them I had the urge to look through as many sourcebooks as I could so I wouldn't miss any good spells or feats, and also to map their development as far in advance as possible to make sure I wouldn't screw up along the line. Whereas my 4E character has a better backstory with more potential subplot hooks than any of them* and I can basically pick whatever each levelup and still feel like it's totally fine. For what that's worth.

*not that any have come up yet because we're playing Keep on the Shadowfell and oh God what a terrible slog of a dungeon crawler

[Tev]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

Oh and 4th ed is fantastically shit.

I'm pretty sure you're wrong. My experiences out of combat with 4th edition have been very entertaining. Their new skill challenge system was a very nice way to involve multiple players in everything from diplomatic encounters to helping a village put out a raging fire.

Also, I think you are not being fair to just how modular 4th ed can be. Saturday the GM for our 4th ed game successfully transferred the mass combat system from the Legend of the Five Rings RPG as well as used source material from the old Rolemaster RPG on previous occasions.

I personally have found it much easier to translate items from the old 2nd Edition D&D Encyclopedia Magicas for the 4th Ed Divine game that I run than I ever could for 3rd Ed and its variants.

Also, I rather like that 4th Ed gave D&D back its own damn system. I always felt the system was the soul of any particular game. Having everything fall under the banner of d20 just made every game the same with a different set of clothes. It was like playing Candy Land with Monopoly pieces and it sucked.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by Tev

I'm pretty sure you're wrong. My experiences out of combat with 4th edition have been very entertaining. Their new skill challenge system was a very nice way to involve multiple players in everything from diplomatic encounters to helping a village put out a raging fire.

Also, I think you are not being fair to just how modular 4th ed can be. Saturday the GM for our 4th ed game successfully transferred the mass combat system from the Legend of the Five Rings RPG as well as used source material from the old Rolemaster RPG on previous occasions.

I personally have found it much easier to translate items from the old 2nd Edition D&D Encyclopedia Magicas for the 4th Ed Divine game that I run than I ever could for 3rd Ed and its variants.

I'm confused by this. One of the major complaints with 3rd ed was that it was too open and that the rules allowed too much variation. 4th ed is a lot tighter, everything is heaps more defined.
Especially items. I mean there are far more spells and magic abilities in 3rd ed so it is very easy to either find equivalents for any items you moving or know what level it should be if you're making up new abilites.
My problem with out of combat 4th ed is the skill system which I don't think works very well. Sure roleplaying still works as always but without a good skill system it's harder to seperate you from your character and I feel the skill system in 4th ed has been really paired down so every character ends up with pretty similar skill sets. This is a big problem for us as we used to make huge use of skills, particularly charisma based diplomatic skills, and haven't got 4th ed to gel.

Originally Posted by Meister

I made numerous 3.5 characters and with all of them I had the urge to look through as many sourcebooks as I could so I wouldn't miss any good spells or feats, and also to map their development as far in advance as possible to make sure I wouldn't screw up along the line. Whereas my 4E character has a better backstory with more potential subplot hooks than any of them* and I can basically pick whatever each levelup and still feel like it's totally fine. For what that's worth.

Well to be honest that was never a problem for us as a good chunk of our stuff was custom levelled for our characters- like all of our prestige classes and good chunks of our feats were custom.
We tried to do similar things in 4th ed as its much harder to get a feel for power of the classes we make and abilities are harder to design.

Originally Posted by Nikose Tyris

4th edition is actually not terrible as long as you realize well before you go into it that it's not actually D&D.

The 4th edition rules in Star Wars [Aka "Saga edition" are beautiful btw.]

If you don't mind could you enlighten me on this? Cause we had great fun with Star Wars 3.5 and could check out this. Is it basically just star wars updated to 4th ed?

[Tev]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

My problem with out of combat 4th ed is the skill system which I don't think works very well. Sure roleplaying still works as always but without a good skill system it's harder to seperate you from your character and I feel the skill system in 4th ed has been really paired down so every character ends up with pretty similar skill sets. This is a big problem for us as we used to make huge use of skills, particularly charisma based diplomatic skills, and haven't got 4th ed to gel

Yeah, I have a friend who is really hung up on the pairing down of skills from 3rd to 4th. Really, I just feel that it opens each of the skills up to more RP interpretation. I mean, back in the days of 2nd Ed we just had like 2-3 "Non-weapon proficiencies" and we got along just fine. I was never really big on piles of skills in the first place.

I do need to stress again that I and my players are enjoying the heck out of the multiple success/failure skill challenges though. It really is giving my players some good times helping to come up with how a challenge plays out and working together instead of everyone and their mother making a roll for the same thing and seeing who got the highest and going with it.

[Nikose Tyris]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

If you don't mind could you enlighten me on this? Cause we had great fun with Star Wars 3.5 and could check out this. Is it basically just star wars updated to 4th ed?

Saga Edition sees Jedi advancing in power in a much more reasonable fashion for jedi. They get their talents (things from lightsaber Block/deflect/reflect, Jedi consular skills, jedi guardian skills, jedi sentinel skills...) from a number of trees that don't impact your feat selection. the way Saga edition was constructed rule-wise gives you a plethora of choices just for your level 1 human jedi, if you choose to play that.

I've been playing a Force Sensitive human Scout/scoundrel and he's been slowly gaining force talents and sneak attack abilities, while focusing on his blaster and force powers. No lightsabers needed.

It's really fun and I highly recommend it. 4th edition rule set shines outside of the D&D universe.

[Odjn]

Originally Posted by Meister

I made numerous 3.5 characters and with all of them I had the urge to look through as many sourcebooks as I could so I wouldn't miss any good spells or feats, and also to map their development as far in advance as possible to make sure I wouldn't screw up along the line. Whereas my 4E character has a better backstory with more potential subplot hooks than any of them* and I can basically pick whatever each levelup and still feel like it's totally fine. For what that's worth.

*not that any have come up yet because we're playing Keep on the Shadowfell and oh God what a terrible slog of a dungeon crawler

What classes have you played? There are some (Duskblade, Frenzied Berserker) that are pretty awesome without having to twink, and Duskblade is PHB2. And on the other hand CoDzilla or mages that almost require massive cheesery.

[Mirai Gen]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

Oh and 4th ed is fantastically shit.

Why hello there subjective preferences, how are you today?

[BitVyper]

Oh and 4th ed is fantastically shit.

I'm with you. There's some good ideas there, but the simplification of everything caused it to lose pretty much everything I liked about 3.5, and what I liked about 3.5 vastly outweighs the few things I like about 4e.

Why hello there subjective preferences, how are you today?

Try reading the rest of his post where he actually compared the two much more fairly than I've seen anyone else do yet. If you leave the last sentence in context with the rest of the post, it's pretty obviously intended as a statement of opinion, so there's really no need for the sarcasm.