in a way that just knocks all the props over and pushes everyone else in the group away
Reminds me of when I assisted a DM in making this dramatic encounter that the game had been building up to for weeks; He had this boss up on a platform and was going to give the players a heck of an encounter, only for the 'researches everything' power gamer to activate his most powerful ability (4e daily power) and one shot the boss in one turn. All the players' faces fell when they were left with the task of just mopping up the minions (4e feature; these creatures have normal stats but only 1 hp) while he was proudly telling me about "this is the value of researching how to build a character". The guy completely failed to read the room.
I never liked 4e and my attempts to play it have very similar stories to yours. No one in my group missed 4e when we moved to Pathfinder except, well, the resident That Guy.
Reminds me of when I assisted a DM in making this dramatic encounter that the game had been building up to for weeks; He had this boss up on a platform and was going to give the players a heck of an encounter, only for the 'researches everything' power gamer to activate his most powerful ability (4e daily power) and one shot the boss in one turn. All the players' faces fell when they were left with the task of just mopping up the minions (4e feature; these creatures have normal stats but only 1 hp) while he was proudly telling me about "this is the value of researching how to build a character". The guy completely failed to read the room.
I never liked 4e and my attempts to play it have very similar stories to yours. No one in my group missed 4e when we moved to Pathfinder except, well, the resident That Guy.