RPG with fast narrative combat, mostly like a back and forth between the player and gamemaster with fast resolution...

RPG with fast narrative combat, mostly like a back and forth between the player and gamemaster with fast resolution, is there something like this?

Mainly just depends on gm/players.

Google angry gm. He has a whole schtik on combat pacing.

The tldr version of his articles- during combat he asks for what the pc does. If there isn't an immediate answer the pc essentially looses a turn.

fate

im totally serious

Really depends on the players. In my groups, some of my friends think ahead, and are ready to go with their actions. Others, have to stare down, re re re read their character sheets, and hum and hah over what becomes just a half action aim and single shot.

Play one of the tigher OSR games, apply with the timed turns and give bonuses if players do stuff that would give them an advantage.

For example snapping a guards spear, pushing people into each other, tripping and riposting an attacker, ect. would give minor mechanical bonuses if players were snappy about it.

Its far more in the GM/players than the system, although you won't get what you are after with the 3.5/4/Pathfinder crowd

From personal experience at least, 4e seems a lot more forgiving than 3.PF when it comes to combat.

Powers give a simple effect that can be used during combat and PCs are treated as heroes capable of supernatural feats that aren't hampered by the RAW/RAI.

While I agree in spirit, in practice there are a lot of status effects and damage riders that tend to compound the further along you get. I adore 4e for its encouraging teamwork from the mechanics on up-- but even with the damage bump/hp reduction I wouldn't call its combat particularly fast.

Hong Kong Action Theatre if it can still be found. Its got a great scaling system so heroes can plough through crowds of mooks, but still struggle to beat the villain

I think it also depends on whether or not you're dealing with one big dude or a bunch of weenies that gang up on you.

>RPG with fast narrative combat, mostly like a back and forth between the player and gamemaster with fast resolution

Dungeon World is exactly that.

>inb4 omg it's shiiiiit here's a giant image macro

Fuck you nerds, my group loved it.

Dungeon World's combat is quick and reactive, and actually pretty fun once everyone gets the hang of it.

Shame it's attached to an otherwise mediocre system.

Wushu Open

By extention, all PbtA games that involve significant combat.

>people unironically suggesting 4e

It has the slowest combat of any RPG I've ever played.

You could literally spend a whole evening on a single encounter.

Wow, nice anecdotal evidence you shill

You're right that it's slow, and a terrible suggestion for OP, but it's not the slowest combat around. I don't know what is, but I know Shadowrun used to be much worse.

Once everyone's got the system down reasonably well, and has a little imagination, FFG's Star Wars RPG is the epitome of narrative + combat

I'm guessing you've never played Shadowrun 5e with a hacker on the team?

Also, it's only slow because combat is much more involved and teamwork/strategy is actually required. Stuff is still happening every turn.

>fast
theoretically any system when the players get enough experience. I don't know how you'd build a combat engine around speed.
>narrative combat
exalted 3e

He is the epitome of bad gms. Don't take any of his advice. He is a salty cock and I don't want any of his advice anywhere near any table I play at.

He literally thinks the best rpers are min maxers. You can't make that shit up.

One Roll Engine, especially REIGN, might be just the thing. Especially the fast part: there are no separate To-Hit and Damage rolls, and everyone rolls their dice at once, not in order of Initiative. I've never played a game with faster combats.

This is why people hate 4e.

It plays like a tactical wargame.

You spend the vast majority or your time in combat. Whether or not the combat is engaging or not is subjective. Personally I find it very tedious.

In my opinion, RPGs should be equal parts exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat. 4e is like 75% combat.

It's not even that combat is complex, it's quite simple, but it's just so time consuming that people just get bored and lose interest in the overarching plot and, ultimately, the game itself.

Combat should be a means to an end. One way of solving problems. Not the focal point of the entire game.

>You spend the vast majority or your time in combat.
hasnt that been the case for every single edition of DnD?

In old school (early TSR) D&D, most of your time is spent trying to avoid combat, because odds of a TPK are high, especially at low levels. Combat is a failure state, not the default.

It absolutely has been. 4e just made it "worse" by giving everyone the same breadth of options that magic users had.

DnD has always, always been 100% about going into dungeons and killing monsters. Everything is secondary to that an exists to facilitate that.

>hasnt that been the case for every single edition of DnD?

No it hasn't.

Combat was always presented as one of the many options to resolve situations.

Oftentimes, players would be awarded more XP by completing tasks without resorting to violence.

The problem is that young players these days have the "WoW mentality" of killing everything in sight for XP having been raised on video games.

To each their own.

I liked how powers and monster abilities always swung the battle and changed the state of your advantage swiftly and I also enjoyed how the game focused on delivering long but rewarding combat scenarios where utilizing 100% of the party's abilities was the difference between life and death.

It made you feel like a team of badasses taking on the world, though I can understand why that might not appeal to everyone.

Going into dungeons? Yes.

Killing monsters? Sometimes.

Look at old modules like the Tomb of Horrors.

There's actually very little combat in it. The majority of the module comprises traps and puzzles.

There were also often ways in which combat could be avoided and situations in which it was wise to do so.

These days, players just assume that if a monster is encountered that it must be the appropraite challenge rating for them so they try to kill it, so they do. After all, that's what video games do right?

>DnD has always, always been 100% about going into dungeons and killing monsters.

Except in early editions, where XP was gained for treasure brought out of the dungeon, and XP for killing monsters was a piddly consolation prize that was not at all worth the risk.
In those editions it was about going into dungeons, NOT fighting monsters any more than strictly necessary, and getting out with as much loot as you could manage.

It's not a bad game.

It's just not D&D.

I think it could have been quite successful if it weren't marketed as such.

t. anonymous faggot on the internet

But he's not wrong.

This is why giving players too many options is a bad idea.

I absolutely LOVE 4e, but even I must admit its biggest pitfall is slow combat. Granted, when you compare it to tactical skirmish games like warmhordes, battletech, or mordheim, which it is easily as tactically deep as, it comes out VERY MUCH on top of the heap in terms of speed.

However was asking for something that 4e explicitly does not do. My two suggestions would be FATE, Dungeon World, or my personal favorite: Hi-Lo Heroes.

Making combat tactically deep enough to be a game in and of itself is not a flaw. If your DM sucks so bad he can't make the rest of the game fun enough to be a game in and of itself, so you spend all your time on combat, that's on him.

>It's just not D&D.
>It's just not OGLd20, which I have come to equate in my mind as the only thing that can possibly be "D&D" because I'm a millennial who started playing after the OGL dominated the market.

FTFY

When 3e came out, it "wasn't real D&D" but "MTG edition made by shitty WoTC sellouts"

When 2e was revised it "Wasn't real D&D"

When D&D got an "a" attached to its name, or got a 2nd edition, it "Wasn't real D&D"

Every edition, save 3e/3.5/PF/[Insert-Genre]d20 (which are intentionally the same game) and 5e (which is just a heavily polished 3e... not a bad thing, just not something new) have been something fundamentally new and different from that which came before.

t. samefag

What is it with 4e fanboys on Veeky Forums? Is this where you all congregate and circlejerk?

4e was the biggest departure for the series in terms of both gameplay and flavour.

It was badly received and WotC (hopefully) won't make the same mistake again.

>4e was the biggest departure for the series in terms of both gameplay and flavour.
Compared to what? The "change" from 3e into 3.5? The "Change" from 3.5 into PF? I'd bet good money that you started with an OGL game, and have played so many OGL games that you can actually tell the difference between the three aforementioned games. Unless you've been around for an edition change that wasn't a shift away from OGL (3/3.5/PF into 4e) or a shift back to OGL-in-all-but-legal-definition (4e into 5e) you don't know what you're talking about. There is a whole quarter century of D&D that existed independent OGL and that cannot be measured by its similarity to or difference from OGL.

I'd rather be an anonymous faggot than a horrible manchild gm supporting faggot.

Provide evidence of your claim that "he thinks the best rpers are min maxers."

Honestly you just strike me as a salty faggot that he's done more for the hobby than you ever have.

He was a guest on the Happy Jack podcast and they got a listener question regarding rpers and min maxers.

"I agree with you, min maxers make the best roleplayers."

He then went on a very long spiel (one of many on the episode) about how min maxing is the best way to play. I would bring up the exact episode, but I'm at work.

>I have time to shitpost on Veeky Forums at work but not to substantiate my claims while taking someone's opinion out of context

k lol

I remember trying to get into 3.5 after playing Baldur's Gate for five years. Felt weird.

Yeah, you got me. That clearly never happened and Angry is a benevolent glorious god because I don't feel like sorting through like a year of podcasts to find the episode let alone a time stamp.

All I know is that he was a massive prick for that entire episode. Pedantically claimed Fate isn't an rpg, and said meta gaming is fair.

Although to be fair, that is the only exposure I have had to him. But he was just such a massive cunt.

Off the top of my head: Fate/Fate Accelerated, Marvel Heroic and the rest of Cortex Plus if it clicks with the group, any Powered By the Apocalypse game, Risus.

I think there's probably a breakdown in communication here regarding the definition of 'min/maxing'.

Min/maxing is having low lows for the sake of having higher highs--specializing in one thing to the detriment of something else. And, having those mechanically-derived/reinforced character flaws *can* mean you have more things to play with in RP.

>Pedantically claimed Fate isn't an rpg
Okay, *now* he sounds like a jackass.

The most accurate answer.

I was actually about to say Fate Accelerated.

4e completely and utterly changed the way classes worked after its predecessor (to the point where it changed the entire feeling of the game, where combat and non-combat felt clearly separated).

3.X, meanwhile, just updated some classes and added skills and feats. It was all complete shit, but it wasn't that big of a departure from 2e.

>It was all complete shit, but it wasn't that big of a departure from 2e.

Except for the emphasis on builds, the emphasis on the RAW, the disparity between casters and martials, locking away most basic martial abilities behind feats, and the game focusing on combat to gain XP over its predecessors that focused more on exploring tombs and taking loot.

3.PF was arguably as massive a departure from OSR as 4e was a departure from 3.PF.

>3.PF was arguably as massive a departure from OSR as 4e was a departure from 3.PF.

Holy fuck stop lying!

4e is a completely different game. Every class was given exactly the same amount of powers with different cooldowns (at-will, encounter, daily)

The mechanics are ripped straight from an MMO. I even remember Mearls talking about how much WoW the devs were playing at the time.

The result is something completely alien to D&D. It bears almost no resemblance to the previous editions of D&D and that's why it was so poorly received.

People want D&D not tabletop WoW.

Every edition of D&D is different, every single one, but for relatively different reasons.

Also, at-will, encounter, and daily powers made more sense than, say, racial spell like abilities that could only be used X times per day for arbitrary reasons that made no sense to the race.

I mean, I can understand why a power that deals three times your normal damage output is a daily power but I cannot for the life of me understand why an Ifrit, whose part fire elemental, can only use burning hands once per day when they're always on fire

>Tomb of Horrors.
Tomb of Horrors is not in any way a standard TSR adventure.

>Every edition of D&D is different, every single one, but for relatively different reasons.

Yes but 4e clearly stands out as the most "unique" and not in a good way.

Cooldowns on powers make absolutely no sense other than "muh class balance".

Explain to me why a fighter can't hit you with his shield more than once per encounter?

Fuck that. Do we really need 30 powers that basically do the same thing (i.e. hit your enemy with an axe) so that players have to memorise that shit or spend 15 minutes deciding what they want their character to do so that the group can do more that one fucking encounter per game session?

Compared to the 2e to 3e change? I think not

>4e clearly stands out as the most "unique"
LBB OD&D is pretty unique, in its own way. For one thing, you're meant to use an actual wargame for combat resolution.

>Cooldowns on powers make absolutely no sense other than "muh class balance".

Actually it makes perfect sense.

At wills are basic powers that you can reasonably expect someone to perform without straining or overextending themselves, such as the fighter's cleave which simply allows you to strike at one adjacent enemy.

Encounter powers are abilities that are more powerful but either take more effort to perform or will only work on an opponent who is unaware of the blow, such as the fighter's spinning sweep which not only deals damage but knocks an enemy prone.

Daily powers are abilities that are even more powerful than encounter powers but require almost all of your personal store of power to perform without injuring yourself, such as the fighter's brute strike which allows you to deal three times the damage of a normal swing with a standard attack.

>Explain to me why a fighter can't hit you with his shield more than once per encounter?

Because his opponent is aware of the tactic and is less likely to fall for it again and the Fighter isn't willing to leave himself open in case his opponent has a defense to counter it.

>Do we really need 30 powers that basically do the same thing (i.e. hit your enemy with an axe) so that players have to memorise that shit or spend 15 minutes deciding what they want their character to do so that the group can do more that one fucking encounter per game session?

Oh my mistake, you're one of those 3.PFags who haven't read the book and only hate because people talk about how much they hate it.

My mistake.

I guarantee that you never played back when 2e was current.

The biggest change between 2e and 3e was that THAC0 became BAB.

>will only work on an opponent who is unaware of the blow
But you can fight the same person multiple times over different encounters.

Yeah, 3aboos forget, but it was a huge shift. I started in '81 and 3e was the first edition change where I was like "nope, I'm out."
This guy too, though his complaints are almost humorous in retrospect.

And that ability scores suddenly became a lot more important.

>Cooldowns on powers make absolutely no sense other than "muh class balance".

You mean, kinda like how a soldier and a wizard being equally dangerous makes no sense other than class balance?

The entire D&D class system is a (failed) attempt at stopping you crybabies from flipping the table when the guy with the dagger who's good at picking pockets isn't as lethal as the guy who shoots fireballs.

Besides, D&D edition wars are stupid, you are all playing a dense, clunky system that is badly out of touch with the fantasy genre in general.

D&D is basically Star Wars episode 1-3, long, effects packed crap that has none of the oomph of the source material and mainly exists as a a way to cash in on retards who'll buy anything with a Jedi in it.

At least 4th edition was an attempt to give D&D players what they all want deep down: World of Warcraft in paper form, so I respect it for not half-assing it like previous and later editions.

Dude, just stop it. Attempting to justify those mechanics as anything but pure games design decisions with no connection to the lore runs smack into the wall of common sense.

If you can only do something once per day, why doesn't that take into account the times when you more or less whiff your roll, or factor in things like how exhausted your character is, or if it's especially in the zone etc?

"Personal store of power" if you use up your personal store of power on ability A, how come you can still do ability B?

Daily cooldowns are nothing except a button with a timer on it to minimize the amount of crying over what abilities would be op if you could do them more often.

Look at this fag desperately trying to defend his broken, nonsensical, failure of a system.

It's sad really. I mean, even the developers agree that 4e was poorly executed.

>Because his opponent is aware of the tactic and is less likely to fall for it again and the Fighter isn't willing to leave himself open in case his opponent has a defense to counter it.

Are you seriously suggesting that you can't hit your opponent with a shield twice in a single battle because he's somehow "wisend up to your tactics?" How the fuck are you supposed to hit him more than once with your sword then? What about a different opponenent?

4e makes absolutely no sense mechanically. It's a bunch of gameplay mechanics given fancy names so that things are "balanced".

It's a fucking MMO on paper and caters to the lowest common denominator of gamers that were raised on League of Legends and PewDiePie videos.

You should be ashamed of yourself for defending it here.

>inject critical hit systems
2e had at least three ways of handling crits, one straight out of WFRP.

>Ctrl f "gurps"
>0 responses
Wtf

Okay, that's easy to explain to.

In the heat of battle, you're hesitant to try the same move twice, both because you're afraid that your opponent can defend and because you're afraid that he can counter it.

After the encounter is over, you stop and think about different ways you can apply your maneuver in future conflicts so it isn't as obvious.

You then encounter the guy you fought before, only this time, rather than swinging your sword in a telegraphed arc towards a shin, you decide to swing your sword towards a knee after you lock blades with him.

So, since your opponent wasn't expecting you to swing your sword that way, you strike at his leg and he falls for the same trick because you applied it in a different way.

Or at least, that's how I see it.

>You mean, kinda like how a soldier and a wizard being equally dangerous makes no sense other than class balance?

Say that to my face, wizard, not online, and see what happens.

Oh sod off.

All you ever fought were wizards who relied on gimmicks and mystic mental dominance, that you defeated on pure stubbornness or with the aid of magical objects gifted to you by other wizards (yeah, People of the Black circle, magical belt much?)

Besides, brooding old priests who's ace in the hole is TURNING THEIR DAUGHTER INTO A TIGER is not exactly the same as fighting someone who can fly and set things on fire with his mind.

I respect where you're coming from, but do realize that you never had to deal with retarded D&D wizards who never should have been playable characters to begin with at the power levels they let them have.

>At least 4th edition was an attempt to give D&D players what they all want deep down: World of Warcraft in paper form, so I respect it for not half-assing it like previous and later editions.
That's clearly not what they wanted since everyone abandoned 4e and, for the first time in history, D&D actually had some serious competition with PF.

As cool as Conan is, he wouldn't really stand a chance against a D&D wizard like Elminster or Larloch.

>Dude, just stop it. Attempting to justify those mechanics as anything but pure games design decisions with no connection to the lore runs smack into the wall of common sense.

Compared to what?

3.PF where practically everything your character could do was abstracted to hell and back?

>If you can only do something once per day, why doesn't that take into account the times when you more or less whiff your roll, or factor in things like how exhausted your character is, or if it's especially in the zone etc?

Because when you push your body past limits it wasn't meant to go, you still feel the shockwave even if you miss a powerful swing.

It's not like your body just snaps back to normal after you throw a punch so hard that you actually rip the muscle fibers in your arm or something.

>"Personal store of power" if you use up your personal store of power on ability A, how come you can still do ability B?

For the same reason why a wizard who ran out of 5th level spell slots was still able to cast spells that were 4th level and lower or 6th level or higher.

You're digging from a similar store of power but you aren't necessarily drawing from the same exact source of power.

>Daily cooldowns are nothing except a button with a timer on it to minimize the amount of crying over what abilities would be op if you could do them more often.

Okay, so what does that make 3.PF where certain races could only perform their racial powers X times per day?

You still never answered my question.

At will and encounter abilities were one of the greatest things about 4e

As much as Veeky Forums talks about do everything wizards when your out of spells all you can do in previous editions was sit back and crossbow shit for no other reason than "fuck you I said so" I didnt pick a magic class to only do magic X times per day

And on the martial side they got to do some pretty cool shit too with the dailys like inflicy status effect like daze of make your melee attack a burst area effect

Sure it was 80% combat and sure it was a MMO based wargame but 4E had some pretty good ideas

The best I've ever heard it explained is to think of 4e combat in a cinematic sense. Since I can't remember what the powers do off the top of my head, let's just say the Fighter has a power that lets him hit an enemy with his shield to do weapon damage and knock the target prone. There is nothing stopping the Fighter from hitting anyone with his shield, but it would be little better than using an improvised weapon. In order to get the big benefit from the power, some special circumstance had to occur: the Fighter caught the enemy off guard, found an opening in his defenses, got a sudden surge of strength, something like that, and such opportunities can be reasonably thought of to present themselves only once in a particular combat. Rather than such circumstances being decided by chance or by playing mother-may-I with the GM, 4e decides to let the player decide when his character sees a gap in the enemy defenses or what have you.

>As cool as Conan is, he wouldn't really stand a chance against a D&D wizard like Elminster or Larloch.

That's true, but that's merely evidence of how D&D has redefined the wizard's power level up, and up, and up while leaving martials in the dust; a problem which had its roots early on, but which reached its apex with the ridiculous caster supremacy of 3E.
There's nothing about wizards versus martials that says they can't be on an equal footing. There are plenty of mythological heroes that could easily wipe the walls with Elminster or Larloch, but they're excluded from D&D, because martials get jack shit.

I said it was an attempt, not that it succeeded.

Answered what question? Who do you think you're replying to?

And are you SERIOUSLY going to argue that 3 different ways of hitting someone uses up different, separate sources of power that are all just enough for one attack each and need exactly a day to recharge?

How about just accepting that hey, it's a games design decision, not meant to accurately model the lore of the setting, and stop whoring out your suspension of disbelief just to make wotc look good.

>How the fuck are you supposed to hit him more than once with your sword then?

Because you're hitting him with your sword in different ways that he's not expecting.

Y'know, like how the encounter/daily powers for the Fighter describes?

>What about a different opponenent?

They saw you use it on their friend and want to avoid having that shit happen to them?

It's not really that difficult to explain, you're just being obtuse and refusing to acknowledge how easily it makes sense.

>4e makes absolutely no sense mechanically. It's a bunch of gameplay mechanics given fancy names so that things are "balanced".
>It's a fucking MMO on paper and caters to the lowest common denominator of gamers that were raised on League of Legends and PewDiePie videos.

So what you're really saying is

>I never read the book but people said it's bad so I'm going to sperg out and explain how it doesn't FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL right to my autistic brain.

Mate, you're defending a version of the game where a fighter can't do something as simple as a shield bash more than once per encounter because it wouldn't be balanced otherwise.

Just admit that it was flawed and move on.

You guys need to stop it with the mythical heroes bullshit, the heroes in the sources that inspired D&D were never mountaincleaving god bullshit levels of powerful, and there's a reason evil wizards are the stereotypical bbeg that needs a band of lucky heroes to lay him low.

The mistake D&D made was not making wizards in the lore more powerful than the warriors, because that's how things work in MSOT fantasy settings, the mistake was letting people play wizards that powerful, in a game that mostly revolves around killing shit and where class system and characterization mainly revolves on what flavour of killing you can do.

Giving fighters retard anime powers that are completely contrary to what most people expect from high fantasy and sword and sorcery is clearly a much worse option than just reining in what power level of wizards should be playable.

Make the player wizards reasonable, instead of making the warriors unreasonable.

>They saw you use it on their friend
Then it should work on the guy who was distracted by my buddy trying to stab him.

>Y'know, like how the encounter/daily powers for the Fighter describes?
Oh yeah like all the varied and intersting powers like

>Sure Strike
>Wicked Strike
>Reaping Strike
>Lunging Strike
>Dual Strike
>Brute Strike
>Weapon Master's Strike
>Steel Serpent Strike

et fucking cetra

I mean holy shit at least WoW comes up with cool names for its abilities. This is beyond a joke.

But yeah there's no way you'd be able to hit anything with your shield more than once per encounter even if you're fighting against multiple opponents. Nope that just wouldn't make sense right?

>Answered what question?

The question I asked you a few posts ago which basically comes down to

>"Why is an Ifrit, who is part fire elemental, unable to use burning hands more than once per day?"

Because there's no real reason why except for balance made from a game design decision, which is exactly what you're shitting on 4e for doing.

>And are you SERIOUSLY going to argue that 3 different ways of hitting someone uses up different, separate sources of power that are all just enough for one attack each and need exactly a day to recharge?

It's stated fairly clearly in the book that the powers you utilize draw upon three different sources of power.

Martials draw from their own stores of physical strength and stamina, Arcane draws from their own stores of mana to cast spells, and Divine draws from their own stores of faith which they use to perform miracles and invoke favor from their deities

Have you even read the book, let along played a game of it before /pfg/ "convinced" you why it's the worst thing since Hitler?

I think the huge disparity between martials and casters in D&D is because most of the creators of the game and its various settings played Casters

Hell most named wizards and spells were named after former characters from the creators home games

No, because it makes sense for why you wouldn't want to rely on just one move to get you by through every single encounter you come across.

Do you just expect the enemy to just sit back and take it on the chin? No, because even the dumbest creature would be wary of something that hurt them and do everything in their power to avoid getting hit by that attack again.

Just because you can't accept it doesn't mean that it isn't a viable explanation.

>"Why is an Ifrit, who is part fire elemental, unable to use burning hands more than once per day?"
That one comes from the 'you can only hold so many arcane energy matrices in your brain at any one time, then you must rest to recover them' thing that explains how wizards work.

Early D&D history doesn't bear that out. The people involved in early D&D's development played and tested all the classes.
But then in early D&D a high level fighter and a high level wizard were still a pretty good match in a duel.

So because they all have the word "strike" in their name, it means that they're all the same?

Holy shit, just read the book.

Not necessarily, because the guy who your buddy tried to stab would be working off of adrenaline and wary of anything that you could possible do.

It's kinda like how a cornered rat will fight so viciously that they can potentially kill things like snakes and cats; when you're facing death and any mistake could lead you to your doom, you're going to be working off of instinct and snap decisions to try and avoid damage while eliminating the threat in front of you.

>would be working off of adrenaline and wary of anything that you could possible do.
And the guy I shield bashed wasn't?

So why can you use something like Slash and Pummel at-will but Shield Bash only once per encounter?

We both know why, but you just don't want to admit it.

>That one comes from the 'you can only hold so many arcane energy matrices in your brain at any one time, then you must rest to recover them' thing that explains how wizards work.

But that's the thing, it's not the Ifrit casting burning hands like a wizard, this is a special ability that the Ifrit has because he's part fire elemental.

If we're talking about a dude who is practically made of fire, how is it that his hands don't burn something more than once per day?

Since I have the rulebook in front of me let me say how those are different
>Sure Strike
At-Will Forego strength bonus on attack for +2 to hit
>Wicked Strike
At-Will -2 to hit to use both strength and constitution modifiers with two handed weapon
>Reaping Strike
At-Will Half Strength modifier damage on a miss. If you're wielding a two-handed weapon, you deal damage equal to your Strength modifier
>Dual Strike
At-Will make a secondary attack if using two weapons
>Brute Strike
Encounter 3[W] + Strength modifier damage.
>Weapon Master's Strike
At-Will 1[W] + Strength modifier damage. In addition, the target takes an additional effect based on the weapon you wield.

"Axe: The target takes extra damage equal to your Constitution modifier.
"Mace: You slide the target 1 square.
"Heavy Blade: Until the end of your next turn, you gain a +1 power bonus to AC against the target's attacks.
"Spear or Polearm: Until the end of your next turn, the target provokes opportunity attacks from you when it shifts."
>Steel Serpent Strike
Encounter 2[W] + Strength modifier damage, and the target is slowed and cannot shift until the end of your next turn.

Actually, Gary Gygax apparently hated mages and couldn't understand why anyone would want to play one over the Fighting man.

He also couldn't understand non-human characters, which is why Dwarves and Elves had a level cap that was lower than playing an ordinary human.

Is that really different to you?

I mean, you're still just hitting the monster with your sword.

>it's not the Ifrit casting burning hands like a wizard,
Especially since Efreet can't cast Burning Hands.

Because Slash and Pummel is using your free hand to punch a guy its more a fighting style then individual move

>Gary Gygax apparently hated mages
Well, that's bull. Mordenkainen was one of his characters.

Riiight. So your opponent won't fall for being hit by a shield more than once but he's completely oblivious to your tactic of hitting him with your free hand...

Do you honestly not see how fucking retarded your arguments are?

Hey, one time in Dodge City, Gary Gygax killed a man, just to watch him die!

All of those things are level one powers of course you just hit things you don't start doing more stuff until a few levels later
And a few are style moves like Dual Strike which lets you two weapon fight without taking multiple feats and Weapon Master's Strike which gives you differnt options based on weapon choice

Is there anything more delicious than martifalfag tears?

Because pummel/slash are basic attacks that wouldn't take much out of a Fighter of reasonable skill while a shield bash is something that opens an opponent's guard by slamming their face with a hunk of metal that they previously used to stave off attacks with that actually does require a degree of skill to pull off effectively without accidentally leaving yourself open in the process.

Does a fighter really need 30 different powers at level 1? Does any class for that matter?

It's needlessly complex.