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Originally Posted by The Firkraag
I think the key here is that most of the roll-play is combat related. While they have added rules for skill challenges so you can do some rolling and earn some experience out of combat, really the majority of rolls have always been combat related. Essentially that is no different now. You can still do all those things you used to do, but it is removed from the need for dice rolling unless you want it.
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Then again, even when the rules were there, there was only a need for dice rolling if you wanted it. Many people told me that they never or "almost never" had to roll anything involving fluff. I'm not sure why these people care whether rule for fluff exist in the new edition or not if they never plan on rolling for it anyway. In my games, these rolls happened more often, so of course we would miss having them in the new edition.
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For example, the ivory tower wizard can certainly still exist. Ritual magic is much more flavourful for ivory tower wizards than default six second spells.
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I have to admit, I have a lot to read up on when it comes to ritual magic. My assumption was that, since wizards along with everyone else are defined by their combat role, there would be little reason to be one unless you were primarily interested in combat. I'll give ritual magic a read as soon as I have the time though. Still, the skill thing is going to bug me. Of course, those sorts of problems existed in 3.x as well, with everyone automatically going up in BAB as they leveled.
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As for making your character optimal - well, if you felt like you had to before, you likely still will feel that way. If you didn't care before, you won't care now.
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Here I agree 100%. I wouldn't expect it to have changed.
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When it comes to abstraction, 4th edition has much more of it than previous editions, but while it can be a roadblock for some people, it does allow you quite a bit of liberty to decide how you imagine things working, and where there aren't rules, there is probably not a need for them to maintain balance and you can lean fairly heavily on story and role-play to decide how things work.
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And here I have to thank everyone for this thread not becoming what it has in other forums. Not that I expected the sort of "OMG u need rules for fluff. Lrn 2 rp lol" crap I've seen elsewhere to happen in MW, but I still wanted to express gratitude.
I like having the rules there because I do think they bring balance. Your character hasn't been an adventurer all of his/her life, and some vestiges, if not more, of that former life are likely to remain. I've always liked to see how characters manage to juggle these two sides of themselves early in their careers, and the rules added an excellent twist to that. (My favorite 3rd ed. games have been the ones where our characters have started off with NPC classes, and the game covered our road towards full-fledged adventuring.)
I don't
need the rules, but then again, I don't
need hard-and-fast rules for combat either. I've been in quite a few successful free form games.
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Anyway, I'm sounding like an apologist for a system I don't expect to actually play much, but there are some things I think are great.
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Just to be clear, there are things I like about it as well. I like that the combat rules are streamlined, I like the idea of "minions", I like the way they have worked with defenders and leaders, I like that the classes are more balanced, I like that they did away with the fire-and-forget magic system, and I even like the way they've combined a lot of the skills.