3.X/Pathfinder

From the Player's Handbook alone:

• Why is Bane resisted by Charisma? No big guys, please.
• Why is Banishment resisted by Charisma?
• Why is Calm Emotions resisted by Charisma?
• Why is Confusion resisted by Intelligence?
• Why is Dispel Evil and Good (Dismissal) resisted by Charisma?
• Why is Divine Word resisted by Charisma?
• Why is Feeblemind resisted by Intelligence?
• Why is Hallow resisted by Charisma?
• Why is Magic Jar resisted by Charisma?
• Why is Planar Binding resisted by Charisma?
• Why is Plane Shift resisted by Charisma?
• Why is Seeming resisted by Charisma?
• Why is Symbol (Hopelessness) resisted by Charisma?
• Why is Symbol (Insanity) resisted by Intelligence?
• Why is Zone of Truth resisted by Charisma?

>spoiler
Do you feel in charge?

Definitely 4e

The idea that different stats effect different defenses is great. A super tough guy in full plate armor with a massive tower shield is very difficult to hit with a sword. But maybe he's not very quick on his feet? Throw things that would require swift movement at him and watch the carnage

4e is definitely the best system for pure combat, it heavily details what you can do in combat while leaving a lot of the out of combat stuff alone. Personally I like that the rules are so combat focused so when you're out of combat you aren't flipping through dozens of rulebooks

4e is awful. The saves are easily the most nonsensical, and only make sense in a purely gamist fashion, especially with how a character can choose one of two stats to apply to them.

They function fine for 4e-style combat, but the problem with 4e combat is that you have to turn off your brain and just let the powers resolve and then figure out what happened, often having to perform extreme mental gymnastics and shattering anything resembling a suspension of disbelief. But let's not get started on how 4e combat is a caged hydra of problems.

If anything, I would have applauded 4e if they just got rid of AC altogether and turned it into a pseudo-fire emblem-esque triangle, but I guess they wanted to keep the D&D sticker on the cover for the purpose of sales.

What are you even talking about?

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Is it targeting their mental abilities? Intelligence.
Is it targeting the metaphysical being as an entity or their internal self? Charisma
Is it targeting their willpower? Wisdom

It's not a perfect rule of thumb but it gets me pretty close. Think about the spells logically rather than intuitively.

>Is it targeting their mental abilities? Intelligence.
>Is it targeting their willpower? Wisdom
Functionally no difference.

>Is it targeting the metaphysical being as an entity or their internal self? Charisma
Yeah, that explains Calm Emotions and Symbol (Hopelessness)... right?

>Is it targeting the metaphysical being as an entity or their internal self? Charisma
Legit autists have a sense of self so strong to the point they can't even comprehend the other. Does it mean they have absolute Charisma?

>4e
>attacker makes attack rolls against AC, Fortitude, Reflex, or Will
In retrospect this was elegant as fuck and should have been taken into 5e, because if works even if you strip out the AEDU power system and general highly specific encounter focus of abilities.

> The saves are easily the most nonsensical, and only make sense in a purely gamist fashion

U wot?

It's Fort/Ref/Will, just the same as 3.PF, which was originally instituted because it's a manageable number and anyone can grasp what they mean intuitively.

5e 6 saves are much closer to the offputting mess that was Save vs Spell, vs Death Ray, vs Polymorph or Petrification, because it's hard to say at a glance whether Int or Cha is a more valuable save or what kind of effects they protect your from.

are you the same guy from or something? Because if you are, you need to tone that shit down bruh.

4e is the best just because it doesn't require as many rolls. Targeting an uncommon save and having to wait for a player to figure out what their stat is and roll it brings combat to a screeching halt.

>Targeting an uncommon save and having to wait for a player to figure out what their stat is and roll it brings combat to a screeching halt.
For the longest time I've wondered why combat is so unsatisfying to me whenever I play most systems and now I know why.

It's hard to maintain narrative flow when you have to stop the action every five seconds because the player forgot to add a modifier to his check and shit.

>Functionally no difference.

One is about reasoning past something, using your smarts to rationally dismiss an illusion for what it is.

The other is natural stubborness and a refusal to give in to implanted thoughts that aren't your own.

And the intuitive difference is so small that them being different things is just a nuisance.

4e attacker rolls vs static TN, defender never needs to roll, combined with 5e style of having 6 save stats, plus class design that gives every class an actual mechanical benefit relative to the function and flavor of the class in question for not dumping their core attributes.

On the surface, 5e, but it needed more work to be done to have it function properly. Most things are Dex, Wis, and Con saves due to legacy reasons, and they didn't spread out the saving throws well enough. There's a clear difference between the three 'strong' saves and the three 'weak' ones.

I think there's *supposed* to be a difference between the strong saves and the weak saves, since every class gets proficiency to one of each.

>The saves are easily the most nonsensical
>exactly the same saves as 3e
I don't follow

3.5 is best, makes the most thematic sense in that different situations have different defenses, and saving throws are simple

>you'll always have a weakness that someone else has to cover

How, exactly, does someone "cover" for your bad saving throw? It's not like they can do anything to influence the result.

Don't castrate me but I like 4e, it makes it much more simple.

Why is it so bad to have different situations be mechanically represented? Is it just that cool to hate Pathfinder?

If everyone has a bad Wis save, a mass Wis-targeting effect has a good chance to effectively end the fight. If some people in the group have good Wis saves they will likely be unaffected and can cover for their less Wis-endowed teammates while they shake off the effect.

4e's works a lot better with keeping it working the same for everyone. It also makes it easier to have non-spells targeting defences other than AC.

Shouldn't you have to save to roll against a spell?

That way, you don't feel like you got screwed over and there was nothing you could do about it.

But how is that principle any different if applied to attacks? Either way, it should all be resolved the same way.

Attacks don't take away control of your character unless they're the last hit point.

It's the same fucking thing.

Of those, 4e. In the real world, the best defense system is rolling against your defense (not as a contest, just a normal check) to defend against an attack.

Why are you obsessed with minutiae?

I feel it encourages tactical/strategic play, which is an aspect of TRPGs that I enjoy.

I hope they make things more complex in 6e... I don't like the "simple everything" rule

I'll take heavily homeruled 3.5 for now.

Crunch heavy systems are dead
Only Pathfinder is left

It does if it's a stunning fist/neither does a fireball.

The bsest system is homebrew OSR

>OSR
>attacker makes roll against whatever the DM says

it requires you to not have a shit DM, but that is an issue beyond mechanics.

Neither do most spells.

I think the Monk and Rogue would also laugh at that idea. 4e monks can Want No Trouble into you punching your mate and rogues stun people all the time.

That's an argument against save or dies/save or sucks, not an argument against unified defences.

Maybe immunity to mind effects altogether?

>Why is Bane resisted by Charisma?
You resist it by feeling in charge

i dont know why no one is supporting 3.5

Reducing AC to one number regardless of circumstance is one thing i hate about 5e. Flat footed and touch ACs are logical situations that happen, and are pretty easy to calculate.

The saves are also better than 5e. They arent tied to a stat, for instance you can have charisma based fortitude saves, so all stats are relevant in saves. However the 3 types of saves are logical and separate.

3.5 is a pretty decent system, only thing that really bugs me is hp bloat and balance

>The saves are also better than 5e. They arent tied to a stat, for instance you can have charisma based fortitude saves, so all stats are relevant in saves. However the 3 types of saves are logical and separate.

The fuck?

For much the same reasons why "weak saves" in 5e are pointless, so too are touch and flat-footed AC generally pointless.

There are few effects in the game that target someone's touch AC that aren't spells and there are few times when you can actually target someone's flat-footed AC that aren't generally pointless or given to you via DM fiat.

It's much easier to have it target a singular AC number than split it between a bunch of situational shit that just meant that you had to memorize more numbers.

I fucking hate the cancer that is touch AC in Pathfinder.
The median touch AC of monsters at every fucking CR is around 12, it simply doesn't scale. The result is that at higher levels, targetting touch AC is an almost guaranteed "you hit" without any investment whatsoever, which is dumb.

yeah

The complete lack of balance between touch and flat-footed is ridiculous, they should increase together at roughly the same rate, with some monsters leaning towards one or the other, but instead, every monster leans towards flat-footed and so touch AC just gets comparatively easier and easier to hit

touch AC and flat-footed AC in 3.5 are targeted much more often than intelligence saves or charisma saves in 5e

Not to say 3.5's save system is good, it isn't, it feeds the already massive imbalance in terms of attribute value, along with save bonuses being stupid across the board, especially when compared with earlier editions

The real kick to the nutsack is how only mages benefit from touch AC.

With the exception of guns (which, of course, nobody fucking uses) there aren't really any weapons that allow you to target someone's touch AC.

On the other hand, most damage spells that force you to roll end up being against touch AC, which is a problem when you have shit like disintegrate that can easily chump a single target enemy if you apply meta-magic to it like maximize or twinned.

>plus class design that gives every class an actual mechanical benefit

But in everyone worked the exact same.

Nope. They shared a common framework and clearly defined roles, but how they actually functioned within that framework and how they executed those roles were distinctly different.

I think the reason why 4e fans come across as ornery pieces of shit is because while complaints made against Pathfinder, 3.5 and 5e are all rooted in experience from playing the game, it is extremely obvious how the vast majority of complaints made against 4e are made by people totally ignorant of how 4e works

Imagine if someone complained about how in 3.5 rogues can do too much stuff and how stifling it feels to only have access to each prepared wizard spell once, instead of being able to cast spontaneously

>it is extremely obvious how the vast majority of complaints made against 4e are made by people totally ignorant of how 4e works
Or maybe 4e is just a bad game?

I personally don't like 4e exclusively because of Healing Surges, but that's mostly because when 4e came out I was primarily playing the Healer role in my parties, and finally enjoying it because I had recently discovered Full Plate Frontline Clerics in 3.5e.

In my opinion, 4e's good for a pick-up game where you meet up with a bunch of people at a con or something, play for a few hours, then go home, likely never to see each other or play that game together ever again.

What don't you like about them, specifically?

Easy-access, no-thought healing for everybody.
>But user, you can buy potions fairly cheap in both 3.5e and 5e.
Yes, but you have to buy them. Healing Surges feel like a cop-out so that parties don't actually have to think about their team comp at all.

Perfect example for

That's... Not actually how they work, though?

>Easy-access, no-thought healing for everybody.
That's literally the opposite of what healing surges are.
Healing surges are a hard limit on how much healing you can receive in a day, nothing less, nothing more.

Nope, they functioned the exact same.

When I want classes, or at least a split between magical/physical I want a BIG damn difference in how they work. Powers were literally spells given a different coat of paint. This is why 4e looks and feels both boring and soulless to me.

This may also be our perceptions. To me a "common framework" is that each character still uses largely the same stats, common dice, and other such things. The 4e power system to me is just someone making the exact same house and painting over it several dozen times.

Look, I'll freely admit that I only played the starter kit a couple of times with somebody else DMing the system. If I'm wrong, then that's fine. I'm cool with being wrong.

That's how the healing surge thing was explained to me, and that's how it was used when I played.

>Nope, they functioned the exact same.
t. person who never actually played 4e

But you're just looking at the facade. Going inside, each house might have a completely different layout, a unique style, different conveniences or completely different functions for the spare room.

That is 4e classes. If you don't understand what you're looking at, of course they all look the same, but take a step through the door and they're all completely different.

I like how they split up the saving throws, really characterizes the abilities a lot more. I thought different ACs were kind of neat though, because it allowed more strategical approaches and more differentiation in battling physical enemies. I think 5E would have benefited from that as well as it is a lot less magic-centric as 3.X. Combined with actual purely martial abilities that target touch/flat-footed and less specific names for the two (dodge and soak are nice and evocative for example) the combat system would have been elevated from 'acceptable' to 'really good'

Actually I have, one game for a year.

I did go inside of those houses user. They didn't have different insides, but rather similar insides. Sure they looked nice, but in the end everything was the same inside except in a different coat of paint.

Healing surges are limiting factors on healing

You get a certain number of them per day, depending on class and constitution modifier, and the vast, vast majority of methods of healing require you to spend surges to use them. Cleric's healing word? Needs a surge. Potion of cure wounds? Needs a surge. Rolling a 20 on your death saving throw letting you get up? Hold on there, you need to spend a surge, and if you're out of surges, you can't use any of those things at all

Haha what the fuck, that's not how it was explained to me at all. I mean that's shitty in its own way, but it's not the "easy mode healing" I was led to believe it was.

That's because the way normal AC scales is a shitty solution.

>"Oh, this monster hits harder/gets more abilities, so the CR is higher? Crank up the Natural Armor bonus!"

Even when there's absolutely no reason why something should be tougher than, say, a turtle. It's born out of the conscious decision to have a BAB-AC arms race, even though there is little justification for it.

'Players roll saves' is a dungeoncrawler thing to keep rolling for the DM rare and restricted to combat. It's supposed to keep focus on the characters when encountering a trap or harmful environment effect instead of having stuff 'done to you'.

4E isn't a dungeoncrawler, so ditching it is appropriate. 5E is, so it isn't.

Can you explain further? Because your description doesn't line up at all with my understanding of how 4e actually works. What about the classes seemed at all similar to you, beyond the formatting?

>4E isn't a dungeoncrawler
It's literally designed for "x encounters per day" play style, which is exactly what you have in dungeon crawling.

>Touch AC: Piss easy
>AC: Mmok, but eventually becomes easy to deal with
>CMD: Pfhahahahahahaha, man, you wasted 12 feats and 300k GP for fucking nothing

I think he doesn't like that there are no unique subsystems, such as how Pathfinder had Spellcasting, Psionics, Initiating, Akashic Magic, etc.
While 4e classes are all very different on their own merits, they largely function within the same subsystem.

>It's literally designed for "x encounters per day" play style, which is exactly what you have in dungeon crawling.
No, that's exactly the opposite. Dungeoncrawling has a LOT more variance in amount and number of encounters, doesn't assume an even playing field like 4E does (very little long term buffs present, very standardized equipment, standardized 'utility' abilities).
While 5E uses some of these elements as well especially for classes like the Warlock, their presence is much fainter than in 4E, as for example its encounter powers require an hour rest as opposed to 4Es 5 minutes.

To condense each into a single sentence:
Dungeoncrawling is stumbling upon a sleeping, mature Dragon at level 2, sneaking past him to his treasure chest only to have no knock spell prepared, and then get ambushed while resting.
4E is X level appropriate encounters per day + 1 boss or else you'll just nova the latter.

>When I want classes, or at least a split between magical/physical I want a BIG damn difference in how they work. Powers were literally spells given a different coat of paint. This is why 4e looks and feels both boring and soulless to me.

Ah, yes, the good old "casters have extra system given to them while non-casters get nothing". Yeah, that sure was the pinnacle of game design, shame they tried to move away from it.

Exactly

And that's the problem, there are legit complaints about 4e, and people may not find it to their tastes, but complaints like your original one are the ones that get continuously repeated, and they don't apply to 4e at all

You can see how this would get infuriating

>Yeah, we have a nice subsystem for magic, but martials are kinda lackluster. wat do?
>I know, let's just rip it out completely!

Nice strawman bro.

See for my summary.

I'm not for giving martials nothing, I just want them to feel unique on their own. Look at Fantasycraft for example, there martials can kick ass and chew bubblegum but feel different from casters.

>what are rituals

I mean, i can see why people thought of "powers" as bland, but what's the alternative? There isn't much variance in how can you make abilities different in tabletop - they all essentially boil down to "pick a thing from the list".

In my dumb homebrew system i let fighters choose from a number of options to add to their normal attack (i.e. Attack can become Powerful Attack, or Cleaving Attack, or if you got more prefix "slots", Powerful Cleaving attack). Is it still too same?

I guess that's just a preference thing. I don't give a fuck about different subsystems, because the end result is what matters. Half the time subsystems just seem to be different ways of getting to the end result, which I find a lot more boring than taking one subsystem and using it to do a lot of different things.

>Nice strawman bro.

That's literally what they did in 3.x/PF tho.

wut? replied to the wrong post?

Different recharge timers,
5E is going in the right direction. Casters have dailies, very limited at wills and a little bit post encounter recharge. Martials are either completely at will or completely per encounter. Goes a VERY long way to differentiating classes simply because you must manage your resources very differently, and builds narrative cohesion because you can load off stuff like daily recharges on mages, where people can accept it, while keeping martials in a more natural-feeling at-will/per-encounter area that people associate with how stamina would work for a fantasy hero.
different interaction interfaces,
each class should have things he primarily targets. That, sadly, 5E did not do. To help with this, I think touch/flatfooted AC should be brought back. Martials should be targeting two forms of AC and one or two saves, Casters should each be targeting around 3 saves and maybe one kind of AC depending on class. Extended Rock-Paper-Scissors systems are easy to understand but add a lot strategic depth.

>wut? replied to the wrong post?
Nah, I replied to the right post.
You just completely missed the fact that 4e has the rituals subsystem so wizards can still do fancy shit if they want.

5e's resource management is cancerous with the ONE HOUR SHORT RESTS bullshit.

Balancing people who rely on long term resources against people who rely on short term resources is a fucking nightmare, both design and GMing wise, and as 5e has very much shown, it's very hard to make the latter anywhere as interesting as the former.

I don't think it's impossible to execute it well, but that I've yet to see a system do so makes me sceptical.

5e's resource management is borked because it runs on the assumption that you'll have 8 fights per day ans have time for 3 short rests, when it's far more likely you'll have 4 fights per day with maybe one short rest if you're lucky, making short rest classes far weaker and long rest clases far stronger

>while keeping martials in a more natural-feeling at-will/per-encounter area that people associate with how stamina would work for a fantasy hero.

Essentials, nigga. Do you play it?

It's not about how fancy your shit is, it's about how interesting doing fancy shit is mechanically.

It's more interesting than 3.x spellcasting.