Home » Ancient Posts » It’s not an “I Win” Button, It’s a “We Win” Button    
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Rachel Ghoul

Really Shortymonster called it– if a fighter is specialized for fighting, not getting an opportunity to fight makes her come off as a little bit pointless.

Rachel Ghoul

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ChrisS

I think it's related to the near indestructibility of characters in new editions. If there is no/little risk of death to your character, why wouldn't you want the fight to go on so you can strut your stuff rather than have a spellcaster end the fun right away? Whereas in older editions, anything that kept you from risking your scrawny neck was a godsend.

The Raging Zephyr

When I play games, my character looks for the party's spellcasters to do something.

I already know my limits ahead of time; as a fighter, I can take on a handful of men my strength or beat away a horde of weaker foes, but my solutions to problems generally involve whatever tools I have on-hand to accomplish tasks. As a rogue, I rely on the rest of the team to handle fights while I do the busy work of figuring out how to disarm traps, which doors to lock and unlock, and what guards I need to silently dispatch before someone warns them of impending doom encroaching on their territory.

As a wizard, I need to think about how to best help everyone else, which generally involves taking maybe one damage-dealer to help wipe out the less-dangerous folk, as well as a lot of other spells that vary in utility (illusory wall, dimension door, cloudkill, and grease come to mind.) I don't have time to think solely for myself and what I can do in a fight; I need to think about how to avoid fights and save the rest of the party in a pinch.

Hamel™

4E fans are just criticizing a style of play (aka munchkinism) born with AD&D 2nd Edition, standardized in 3E and supported by official TSR/WotC products.

It's not a matter of balancement, but something concerning a whole bunch of idiots playing Evil characters in an idiotic way against the classical party trope.

p1r8z0r

4e is an amazing and highly-valuable D&D system in that it keeps a-holes like that away from my table.

Randall

@1d30: I've already allowed for those players who are playing mainly because they want lengthy tactical encounters — it's easy to see why someone ending the combat quickly even with a win for the party would upset them. As I don't play with powergamers, I've seldom see people pick a class because it is "more powerful", players tend to pick classes because they fit the character concept they have.

@rorschachhamster — One reason to keep some encounters short even in 4e: the party has non-combat stuff they want to get done in today's 4 hour game session.

Anonymous

I think the only way they 'lose' is in that they never got the chance to show how awesome they were before the wizard beat them too it.

Anonymous

Further, with the healing mechanisms in 4e, there is (almost) no reason to keep an encounter short – in fact, the encounters are what the pcs are geared for.

Anonymous

It's possible that they want the tactical "combat as sport" experience. It's also possible they view the game balance as PC vs. PC.

Not always in the sense of intra-party conflict, but in terms of character choice. Let's say you have eleven types of PC to choose from and four of them are markedly more powerful and versatile than the others, creating two castes of adventurer: powerful and not. Some players will want to play the Not Powerful types, but at some point that feels like choosing to play a quadriplegic PC just for the challenge.