Wrong.  Fighters and Wizards are a world apart when you concider what they can do.  Fighters are best for holding back opponents, keeping them from the squishy parts of the party, while at the same time being tough enough to stand in the middle of a massive melee.  Wizards' powers, however, are designed to affect a large group of opponents, as opposed to focusing on a single enemy - the ones best suited for taking down a single enemy is, in fact, the Rangers, Rogues, and Warlocks.

And, as for the racial powers, the only thing I can see that even remotely fits the description you gave, is the Fey Step possessed by only one race, the Eladrin (High Elf, for the 3e people out there! :p).  This lets you teleport 5 squares, and so could conceivably let you bypass a trap, assuming you know where it is and how it works.  However, inventive players have been bypassing traps for a long, long time now, so this isn't anything new.  Besides - unless your whole party are Eladrin, what good does this do?  One of you can bypass the trap, while the others are forced to stay behind?  While it might be useful at times, it's certainly a far cry from being 'broken', and certainly not incredibly so.


Well, concidering that each class in the PHB has over a dozen pages devoted to them, what did you expect?  For every 3e class to be ported over right away?  Five of the classes from the 3.5 PHB are no longer present, and really, do you need two classes as similar as Sorcerer and Wizard right away?  The other four 'missing' classes might reappear in a future PHB, but none of them are essential to a good fantasy RPG - nor is the gnome or half-orc, the only two races to get the axe (gnomes can still be found - in the Monster Manual, with playable stats, for those who just have to play one).  And, concidering that they've added three races (two for those of you who refuse to see the wisdom in changing Elf into Elf (Woodsy) + Eladrin (Magic-y), rather than have one race be supposed to fill two rather different archetypes), that's hardly a loss at all.


Few skills - yes, but concidering that a Rogue no longer needs to maximise Disable Device, Search, Open Lock, etc., that's a good thing, I'd say.  Most skill uses are still around, they've just been put together into broader, more useful skills, such as Thievery, Stealth, or Athletics.

Item creation isn't done with feats, it's done with Ritual magic, which requires you to take the Ritual Caster feat.  Then, you can pick up the rituals that lets you craft magic items, and go nuts with it, as long as you can afford the gold for it.  And, oh, yeah - it no longer costs XP to craft things!  Yay!

Multi-classing - I completely disagree, especially concidering how you gain a new feat at every other level, rather than every third level.  Spending a feat to get training in Thievery, Sneak Attack once per encounter, and the ability to take Rogue-only Feats or Paragon Paths?  Sign me up, please!  And with the Power Swap feats, you can enhance this even further - your high-AC Fighter can now stand in the middle of melee and blast huge areas of enemies with magic, rather than targetting single foes!  Your Rogue can now make attacks with two weapons!  And your Priest can join his friends on the front line, with some Fighter or Paladin exploits, dishing it out with the best of them.  Destroys your character?  Hardly.  As broken as multiclassing used to be?  Not even close.  A perfectly viable character option?  Definitely.


Well, here's some good news, then - it won't.  It's just impossible to convert all of RoA's characters, so even if we wanted to make the change over, it would be too much work for too little gain, especially concidering the fact that you're not the only one who wouldn't be interested in making such a change.  So, RoA is likely to stay 3.5 forever, and I for one can't see anything changing that.

I haven't spent much time with my new 4E PHB, but it seems to be much the same as for any new edition (as opposed to .5 editions) in that you would not be able to convert 3E/3.5 characters to it.  I think if you want an RoA 4E that would/should be a whole new game, not a bubble area.  Weren't any of you RPGA members/Living City players when 3E was coming out?  Sure they handled it all about as badly as possible, but I don't think anything would have made a conversion work well.  (And then Ryan Dancey got his hand - and both feet - into LC and finished the kill.  *sigh*  But that's another gripe.)

If you're concerned about having evolving/new rules, perhaps you should check out the Paizo version of 3.5?  They say they will not be doing any wholesale conversion to 4E, but will maintain the connection to 3.5.

What I've seen of the Pathfinder rules looks pretty darn good in my opinion.

For anyone with experience with change management, this forum is quickly proving to be a classic example of the different change types.

You have the idealists who embrace the new edition with whole hearts

The rationalists looking at it from all perspectives, analyzing the good and the bad

And then you have the  cammudgins who rabble about how terrible everything is with broad generalizations, exaggerations and oversimplifications about how terrible everything is.

Personally, I'm a cammudgin. 4E sucks, RoA should convert to AD&D 2nd ed because that was the classic and we don't need none of this wizards of the coast crap. If it isn't TSR, it isn't D&D

:D

Whatever - everyone knows that the Star Wars Saga Edition is the greatest form of d20 rules ever created, anyway.  :p


Thankfully, no need to convert RoA to that - it's got a newly created community of it's own, right here on RPoL!  Check it out if you have any interest in Star Wars, or just good roleplaying systems in general.  :p

Shameless plug, Annhi :p

Actually, as was pointed out to me today - in a seminar on "children in the digital age" no less - Douglas Adams said it the best;

What is this "shame" of which you speak?  :p

Shame, Annihilator, shame.  You should be advertising for the older SW D20 rules, like me!  They have their own community too, right here.

EDIT: I can never get these dang links to work anymore... link to another game

Anyway, everything I've heard about 4E leads me to not want to bother getting the books.  If I can find enough free information to read the rules and all that, I'll check it out, but I'd just rather stick with what we know and love.  What's the point of House Rules anyway, if not to fix things we think are broken?
This message was last edited by the player at 19:59, Mon 25 Aug 2008.

I might have advertised for it, if not for the fact that the old RCR rules are vastly inferior to the glory that is Saga.  :p

Bah, you and your silly d20 star wars. Back in my day, we only needed d6's. Tons and tons of d6's.

And hey, what do you know? d6 Star Wars has their own community too! And an RoA player to shamelessly plug it :D

link to another game

LOL Douglas Adams has it just right, I hate things to change unless I initiate it, rarely like new things right away, though I don't know if I was already that way at 30.  Maybe there are good things about 4E, I haven't really looked that hard to see, but for this forum/games the Paizo version sounds more practical since their stated intention is compatability with 3.5.

Don't worry, the buckets of d6s still get some use.  That's what fireballs are for, right?

Or in SWSE terms - Move Object.  :p  *throws jmkool into a wall for 8d6 damage*


I've always wanted to try the d6 game, but without any knowledge of even the basics, and no way of getting the rulebooks, I've pretty much given up on that one.  SWSE does everything I want from Star Wars, anyway, so it doesn't really matter to me, though.

I'd be happy to discuss d6 with you, but uh... about 4ed anyone? Anyone at all? 4th ed.

(steers train back on track)

Uhm, right, right, 4e...  the new FRCG?  Terrible.  Only good thing about it, is the lack of Drizzt on the cover, heh.

Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoyed reading the many many Drizzt books, but even I think he was overused. He was in both Baldur's gates, referenced countless of times in just about every sourcebook that came out for 3rd ed, and what bothers me the most is that he's supposed to be relatively unknown. He's supposed to be "that dark elf waaay up north" but the way Wizard's wrote it, there were 30 Drizzt's doing the rounds all around A-Toril.

At least Elminster has an excuse for being in every single adventure, he's enigmatic, eccentric, and practically a demi-god. But Drizzt was exploited, hands down exploited.

I miss the old 2nd ed days when Volo was the one in every adventure, not Drizzt.

Don't forget that BG2 was 2e. :p But Volo was in BG1... heh.

Am I the only one to find the Drizzt books' writing style absolutely boring, though? The best thing Salvatore ever had his hand in that I've encountered is the War of the Spider Queen... which he plotted, but did not write.

I enjoy Salvatore's humor. A lot of it is subtle, some of it is slapstick, but I have yet to read a book of his that didn't put a smile on my face one way or another.

My favorite series of his was the Clerical Quintet. I bought the huge 5-in-1 book and I've read it so many times it is falling apart. He can get a little heavy-handed at times, especially in the later books during the Drizzt exerpts, but there are a few good quotes. My college actually has a quote of his outside out Liberal Arts building.


"Spirit. In every language,
in every time and every
place, the word has a ring
of strength and determination.
It's the hero's strength,
the mother's resilience,
and the poor man's armor.
It cannot be broken,
and it cannot be taken away.

R.A. Salvatore"


I walked past that plaque just about every day for 5 years and I must say that everytime I read it, it picked me up a little. That's something that few authors can do. My top three authors:

Michael Crichton, William Gibson, and R.A. Salvatore (although J.R.R Martin is 5th and Douglas Adams is 4th)

I'm doing a "conversion" of sorts of my characters, trying to stay close to their 3.5e powers, but within the 4e rules. So far Quinlan looks like he will kick evil's butt big time in 4e, combining two striker classes.

J.R.R Martin?  I know of a J.R.R. Tolkien, and a Goerge R.R. Martin, but no J.R.R. Martin.

Since we're off the rails again already, anyway...

jmkool - I was looking through the community chat of the old d20 SW community, and without really seeing where it's been announced, it looks like it's dead/dying?  And that he head guy - Arkyn - is about to delete it or hand it off to someone else?  What's going on over there?

cough George R. R. Martin is what I meant. Too many initials in today's authors.

R.A. Salvatore
Geroge R. R. Marting
J.R.R Tolkein


Whatever happened to simple writer names, like Gibson or Asimov?

Tolkien is one of today's authors, now?  :p

I blame the LotR movies for Tolkeins resurgance into modern topics of conversation.

Also

<--- full of crap

Also, post moar in goblin combat thread!