Why Are the Orcs Psychic?

[the_gneech]

I've been reading a long thread from late in 4E's lifecycle that was Let's Read 4E (From an Oldschooler's Perspective). It's been very interesting to see 4E discussed pro-and-con from the point of view of people who like it, rather than just flames from either direction in the era of edition warring.

Now I've got my own list of 4E pro-and-con

Comments

[the_gneech]

Well like I say, I was only skimming. I was mainly curious because I'd heard 13th Age being described as effectively "4E but better" on a 4E-friendly board, so I wanted to know what that would look like. My impression was that it had all the same 4E randomness, just squeezed into 1E-style single line stat blocks, which for me is actually the worst of both worlds. >.>

The setting, I have no idea. Like I say, these might have been magical orcs and I missed it. Thralls of mind flayers or something, maybe?

-The Gneech

[sirfox]

Going Devil's Advocate, maybe it's filling in the mechanic for Orc Rage or something?

I Guess that for things like the hippogryph, you could effectively "improvise a combat maneuver" to execute the "land on" thing, i suppose, but that's not really satisfying, i agree.

[the_gneech]

Sure, monsters can do anything players can, and a shove would knock someone down as well as anything. But it would be the height of foolishness for a monster to throw away its turn knocking a player down unless it had an ally who could follow up on it. (Rider, maybe.) At least with "knock down -and- do damage" as a power, it wouldn't waste a turn. XD

As the DM, of course, I have the amazing ability to add back in anything I want, but that also means time added to prep if I sit down and do that. Really it's the biggest weakness with all the 5E monsters, that so many of them have had tactically-interesting things stripped away in exchange for simplicity. I get why they did it, and it's better than 4E randomly adding the ability to turn invisible or whatever, but I think there's a middle ground to be found here!

-TG

[chatwithpsychic]

Just do what you want to do!