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xanaphia
2009-02-14, 11:31 PM
When 4e first came out, I decided to wait for the SRD to come out before buying it. However, on January the First the SRD turned out to be a list of page numbers. I want to know whether buying 4e is worth it or not.

I only own PHB, DMG, MM1, 2, and 4, and XPH.

Should I buy the 4e books?

Are they more balanced?
Are they more fun?
Are they different for RPing purposes?
Are they as mechanically diverse?

Thank you.

Eldariel
2009-02-14, 11:41 PM
Should I buy the 4e books?

That depends entirely on you, other players you play with, your preferences, etc.


Are they more balanced?

Yes. 4th Edition is the epitome of balance. Everyone uses the same mechanics (that is, everyone has At Will-powers, Per Encounter-powers and Daily powers, rather than one guy having an infinite bunch of maneuvers with different recovery methods, the second guy having a vast list of prepared spells and the third guy drawing from his overall power bank to do whatever needs to be done) and most game changing stuff is limited to one use per day, so most fights are "poke you, poke you" for a dozen turns until there's that one poke too much. Also, defenses scale pretty accurately to attacks, meaning there's practically always an about-average chance of succeeding vs. failing.


Are they more fun?

Depends entirely on your type as a player. If you enjoy mechanics and variety, probably not. If you first and foremost want balance, definitely. If you want all battles to last long and the game to have lots of battles, 4E. If you want the chance of one-shot ending just about any encounter should the dice fall the right way, and tons of mechanics that just exist to represent the gameworld, 3E is for you.


Are they different for RPing purposes?

They lack lots of basic non-combat mechanics and overall, the material is directed towards combat rather than playing a character in a world. The latter is easy enough to just come up with on the spot, of course though.


Are they as mechanically diverse?

No. In diversity, 4E just doesn't measure up to 3E; the open multiclassing, classes crossing archetype roles (such as Wizard substituting for the Fighter or the Fighter doing the battlefield control), varying base mechanics for classes and weird spells are pretty much dead. That said, there's still a decent number of concepts 4E can realize; just not quite as large a variety as 3E, so it should be sufficient for most needs as long as the mechanics aren't the part that foremost interests you.

Kaihaku
2009-02-14, 11:44 PM
When 4e first came out, I decided to wait for the SRD to come out before buying it. However, on January the First the SRD turned out to be a list of page numbers. I want to know whether buying 4e is worth it or not.

I only own PHB, DMG, MM1, 2, and 4, and XPH.

Should I buy the 4e books?

Are they more balanced?
Are they more fun?
Are they different for RPing purposes?
Are they as mechanically diverse?

Thank you.


A thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104486) nearly on this exact topic was recently locked. There was some good discussion going back and forth there, so I'd suggest reading it.

xanaphia
2009-02-14, 11:46 PM
Thanks.

Also, does it have all the non D&D specific stuff in the DMG?

It's looking like 3.5 wins.

In hindsight, should WOTC have done anything different?

EDIT: Sorry, I only just spotted Kaihaku's post.

Nightson
2009-02-14, 11:48 PM
1. Ignore the internet
2. {Scrubbed: Maybe we could say "borrow"} the books
3. Try the system out
4. If you like it buy them, if you don't then pass

Johnny Blade
2009-02-14, 11:51 PM
Are they more balanced?
Yes, mainly since every character has the same power progression.


Are they more fun?
Uh...I say it isn't, unless balancing party members is something your playgroup can't handle via simple communication. That's mainly because there aren't as many different character designs possible and mostly, all levels feel the same, apart from the likely increasing scope of your endeavors.


Are they different for RPing purposes?
Yes, definitely. And I must say they're worse. First, there are no mechanically exotic races, and the existing ones don't have any drawbacks, just different bonuses. They are also all at the same power level - it's how they "solved" the level adjustment issue.
Also, the skill system is simplified, feats have less of an impact, and your powers constantly change, meaning you replace weaker old ones with better new ones, so it can be hard to recognize a character as mechanically individual.
Of course, mechanics alone can't stop you from roleplaying, but anyway, differences are there, and 4e doesn't do a lot to support unique characters.


Are they as mechanically diverse?
Yeah, I guess I already got into that, but the answer is a NO!, which really needs to be bolded.

Note: This is based solely on the core books. I found 4e so boring after a (short) while that I didn't even bother to check for further publications.

Also, it would be important to know what makes a system "fun" for you. I mean, I regard 4e as inferior to 3.5 and a spectacular design failure, but that doesn't have to mean much if you still happen to enjoy playing it more, does it?

Aron Times
2009-02-14, 11:57 PM
4E takes a gamist approach to roleplaying. Unlike 3E, it doesn't attempt to simulate reality; it was built as a game first and foremost.

If realism (within the context of a fantasy world) is what you want, stick to 3.5.

If you prefer good gameplay, play 4E.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-14, 11:58 PM
I'll disagree strongly with Johny Blade's assessment of 4E; my reasons are on page 1 of the other thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104486).

Mando Knight
2009-02-14, 11:59 PM
No. In diversity, 4E just doesn't measure up to 3E;

Clarification: not yet, if the previews of the PHB 2 are to be believed. No, you don't have Maneuvers and Arcane Spells and Divine Spells and all such sorts of different ways of representing abilities usable per day like in previous editions. That's represented in the single mechanic of learning and using powers as you level. However, don't mistake this with homogeneity between all of the classes. Each class's powers have different focuses and effects, like an illusionist's spells compared to those of an evoker or cleric. That said, most of the difference between the classes comes from the abilities gained at first level and the different Paragon Paths gained at eleventh.

The PHB 2 seems to have far more complex classes than the first 4E PHB, including two (or is it three?) classes to fill in for the 3.5 Druid, with different primary focuses. (Druid is a Controller, Warden is a Defender, not sure if the Shaman is near enough to a 3.5 Druid to bear comparison...) The Barbarian and Sorcerer both have more complex methods of adding extra damage than the Warlock, Rogue, or Ranger.

LurkerInPlayground
2009-02-15, 12:00 AM
Depends entirely on your type as a player. If you enjoy mechanics and variety, probably not. If you first and foremost want balance, definitely. If you want all battles to last long and the game to have lots of battles, 4E. If you want the chance of one-shot ending just about any encounter should the dice fall the right way, and tons of mechanics that just exist to represent the gameworld, 3E is for you.

They lack lots of basic non-combat mechanics and overall, the material is directed towards combat rather than playing a character in a world. The latter is easy enough to just come up with on the spot, of course though.

This is blithely incorrect. 3E supports more combat mechanics than non-combat ones. So it's unfair to say that 4E is any more "combat-centric." This is D&D, it's a game about adventurers who fight things.

Combat mechanics in 4E are also simpler. But this also means that you can streamline combat in order to breeze through them faster. This can also be a good thing. It's also a lot more heavily tied-in to the "chess" style of combat gameplay. So if people say that 4E is more "tactical" that's what they mean.

As such, it's not accurate to say that 4E is any less capable of roleplaying in a fictional world. One strength 4E does have is that the skill system is a lot more streamlined. Again a good thing, because you spend less time worrying about adjudicating the skill rules.


No. In diversity, 4E just doesn't measure up to 3E; the open multiclassing, classes crossing archetype roles (such as Wizard substituting for the Fighter or the Fighter doing the battlefield control), varying base mechanics for classes and weird spells are pretty much dead. That said, there's still a decent number of concepts 4E can realize; just not quite as large a variety as 3E, so it should be sufficient for most needs as long as the mechanics aren't the part that foremost interests you.
This is true.

What is being left unsaid is that 3E is enjoyable if you like spend a lot of time optimizing your characters beforehand. 4E keeps this to a minimum, which actually allows you to roll up a character rather quickly. In addition, this character isn't necessarily gimped just because you didn't optimize in a optimization-heavy campaign. There are also mechanics that allow you to circumvent "buyer's regret" as well.

Since this balance is enforced however, no single player can dominate play as easily and you're forced to rely more on the team dynamic to see you through. Characters are more closely welded to their party roles, instead of whether or not they're an exotic build concept.

I have no problem with character optimization, it can be enjoyable. But 4E is excellent if you actually want to skip straight to the game with a minimum of fussing around with crunch.

Eldariel
2009-02-15, 12:02 AM
Clarification: not yet, if the previews of the PHB 2 are to be believed. No, you don't have Maneuvers and Arcane Spells and Divine Spells and all such sorts of different ways of representing abilities usable per day like in previous editions. That's represented in the single mechanic of learning and using powers as you level. However, don't mistake this with homogeneity between all of the classes. Each class's powers have different focuses and effects, like an illusionist's spells compared to those of an evoker or cleric. That said, most of the difference between the classes comes from the abilities gained at first level and the different Paragon Paths gained at eleventh.

The PHB 2 seems to have far more complex classes than the first 4E PHB, including two (or is it three?) classes to fill in for the 3.5 Druid, with different primary focuses. (Druid is a Controller, Warden is a Defender, not sure if the Shaman is near enough to a 3.5 Druid to bear comparison...) The Barbarian and Sorcerer both have more complex methods of adding extra damage than the Warlock, Rogue, or Ranger.

Due to the way multiclassing is handled in 4.0, it's practically impossible for it to ever measure up to 3.X in diversity. 3.X has effectively unlimited options (even if considering only the playable ones); 4.0 has a ton, but far, far fewer.


This is D&D, it's a game about adventurers who fight things.

Huh, I must've missed that memo. A game about conflict (usually), yes, but those conflicts can range from political to social.

xanaphia
2009-02-15, 12:05 AM
Quoted from the other thread by Oracle Hunter

What 4E does have to offer is:
(1) A better non-caster gaming experience
(2) A more "beer and pretzels" and less "spreadsheets and encyclopedias" method of character design.
(3) Dynamic combat (particularly for non-casters)
(4) Less "save or suck" combat, and more "meat grinder" combat

I think that non casters had fun in my old games.

I like speadsheets and encyclopedias.

What do you mean by dynamic?

Save or suck combat seemed quite realistic to me.

The thing I loved about 3.5 was how it was a simulation of life in a fantasy world, which means for me I liked 3.5.

Looks like no 4e for me.

Johnny Blade
2009-02-15, 12:10 AM
I'll disagree strongly with Johny Blade's assessment of 4E; my reasons are on page 1 of the other thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104486).
You know, that reminds me of one thing: the tactical side of combat is handled better in 4e than in 3.5, although - again, in the core rules - it sadly doesn't encompass many options, mainly damage and extremely short status effects, plus some movement-related tricks. Again, I have to state that 4e suffers from not changing the feel of combat over the course of your adventuring career. Basically, you do the same stuff over and over again.

Also, I don't think the caster/non-caster dichotomy still applies. Everyone does the same now, only that some need a stick for it. :smallwink:


(I'll admit I haven't known about, much less read, that thread until now, by the way, so sorry if the above has already been said once too often.)

LurkerInPlayground
2009-02-15, 12:13 AM
Huh, I must've missed that memo. A game about conflict (usually), yes, but those conflicts can range from political to social.
So what?

If you'd bothered to read the whole post, I've just said that 3e has more rules for combat than it does for non-combat. 4e isn't any really different in practice.

You can mumble all you like about how 3e models and simulates geopolitical realities and economics and any number of cool widgets, but you'd be lying.

Most of that falls under storytelling or roleplay and not under mechanics.

RTGoodman
2009-02-15, 12:19 AM
Are they more balanced?

Yes. See other posts about how balance was probably the number one design goal of 4E.


Are they more fun?

Not necessarily - I have fun with both systems equally. I like 4E a little more for its ease of use and a few other factors, but that's purely a personal preference thing.


Are they different for RPing purposes?

No. 3.x might have more WRITTEN about the RPing, but nowhere in 4E is there anything against it. If you've got role-players, then they can roleplay in 4E. It just takes a DM and group willing to not have to have EVERYTHING codified in a rulebook. Like someone said in the other thread, D&D's older editions (especially in the beginnings) were more tactical war-game than role-playing game, but you can get a mix of the two in ANY system if you've got players and a DM willing to do both.


Are they as mechanically diverse?

No, not yet. 4E may not EVER become as mechanically diverse, but we don't really know. As we go along, though, it seems like it HAS become more diverse (what with new multiclass feats that give different options, whole new class builds, new powers/feats/races/classes, and new and more complex system like the summoning and Sorcerer stuff in PHB2).


I say don't just say "no" to 4E off-hand. Go into it with an OPEN MIND (since I've seen a LOT of people both here and elsewhere go into wanting to hate it and not even giving it a chance while playing), play a FEW sessions (i.e., not just one), and see where you are at that point. What do you like, what don't you like? From there, it's up to you.

Either way, remember this - YOU DON'T HAVE TO MAKE A "ONE-OR-THE-OTHER" KIND OF CHOICE.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-15, 12:21 AM
Looks like no 4e for me.

Which is exactly why I posted the list as I did. Helps people figure out quickly which system best fits their headspace.

BTW, "dynamic" combat refers to combat that is more than just "stand 'n hack." In 3E, non-casters had little opportunity to offer debuffs, move about enemies - basically do anything aside hack away and use magic items. Yes, one-trick fighters or rogues could trip or disarm, but that was the limit of their abilities - barring exotic splatbook classes which were half-magical on their own.

In 4E, everyone has access to some degree of debuff or battlefield control. Yes, people still have specialties, but everyone has the ability to influence combat by more than taking up a square and doing damage. Me, I like this change, but not everyone does.

EDIT:
Gosh, I'm beginning to wish that the mods would post a sticky thread where everyone is allowed to write one post about 4E v. 3E - spoilered for length - so that anyone who wants to hear the opinion of The Playground can just go and check.

Oh, and if you like simulationist games, pick up some 2E or 1E books. They do a far better job by keeping magic rare and life extremely unfair. :smallbiggrin:

Eldariel
2009-02-15, 12:24 AM
So what?

If you'd bothered to read the whole post, I've just said that 3e has more rules for combat than it does for non-combat. 4e isn't any really different in practice.

You can mumble all you like about how 3e models and simulates geopolitical realities and economics and any number of cool widgets, but you'd be lying.

Most of that falls under storytelling or roleplay and not under mechanics.


Lurker, that kind of repetition is pointless and achieves nothing. I know what you said. That doesn't change the fact that 3E does just fine simulating non-combat focused games and with little work, creates a fine image of a working world with its own rules and functionings.

All I've got to say is that my play experience in 4.0 has been much more "game" than "simulation". 3E has done just fine in the "simulation"-part. Make what you will of it, but don't claim they're "equal" in the sense of simulationism when it's blatantly false.


For the record, the reason I only responded to that part of the post was specifically to avoid a pointless backlash. Seems like that part failed though.

Johnny Blade
2009-02-15, 12:26 AM
4E may not EVER become as mechanically diverse, but we don't really know.
I'm actually fairly certain that we do, unless they totally revamp multiclassing and make classes that have different power progressions, which I find a rather unlikely scenario.

Also, the effects that you can produce as a 4e character aren't as diverse as before, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Nightson
2009-02-15, 12:28 AM
I think 4th edition actually has a lot more about roleplaying, at least some new players found the introduction to it in the 4e handbook to be very easy to understand and get, something they didn't get when I had them page through the 3.5 handbook before.

LurkerInPlayground
2009-02-15, 12:31 AM
Lurker, that kind of repetition is pointless and achieves nothing. I know what you said. That doesn't change the fact that 3E does just fine simulating non-combat focused games and with little work, creates a fine image of a working world with its own rules and functionings.
No. You're refusing to actually to listen because you've already made up your mind.

3e does not lend itself better to this than 4e. It's patently false. Crunch-wise there are only the skill mechanics, some special skill-related perks and traps that are "noncombat." Which is to say that there's nothing there that 3e has that 4e doesn't.

With a "little work" I can do exactly the same with 4e. It doesn't take rules to tell a convincing story with deep dramatic non-violent conflict or interpersonal relationships or exploration or a persistent and rich campaign setting.

You are selectively lying in order to prop up your preconceived position.


All I've got to say is that my play experience in 4.0 has been much more "game" than "simulation". 3E has done just fine in the "simulation"-part. Make what you will of it, but don't claim they're "equal" in the sense of simulationism when it's blatantly false.
*facepalm*
Yes, which is to say that you can make fictional characters with more options. Most of those options just tells us how they fight.

That's not versimilitude. That's a fetish being passed off as deep fidelity to "accuracy."

Hal
2009-02-15, 12:34 AM
I'll share my own thoughts, summed up from the other thread.

Basically, melee characters are viable out of the box without a lot of fiddling. In 3.5, you had to fish around to make a viable melee-ist who wasn't a ToB/Cleric/Druid.

On top of that, you can play your character and have a variety of options. Granted, most people who played casters in 3.5 will find their options curtailed. If you played a melee in 3.5, though, you'll be amazed that you get to do things during a round that aren't just moving and attacking.

In all, try it to see if you like it. Best test you can get.

Kaihaku
2009-02-15, 12:34 AM
In hindsight, should WOTC have done anything different?

Well, any answer to that will be subjective and many people will point out their favorite version of 3.75 as what should have been done but...

Personally, there are three things that I wish had been done differently. I only think one (#1) of them was a big mistake though.

1. The flavor of 4e. The core books shouldn't have had such a strong setting-specific flavor to them and Forgotten Realms should not have been altered to fit the new flavor in the core books. I think that was the biggest source of outrage in the beginning, especially among Realm fans (I'm not one, BTW), and definitely hurt broader acceptance of the new system.

2. The switch from OGL to SGL is probably wise from a business prospective but I, personally, hate that decision more than anything else. The OGL made Dungeons and Dragons a community effort, and it was better for it.

3. For system changes, I can understand why WotC simplified the system and it works really well for what it is. I would rather that they had left in more options for complexity; things like schools of magic. I can't say what WotC should have done here but I would have certainly liked it if 4e built on everything introduced by 3e and added more rather than just selecting the best bits and refining them.

Eldariel
2009-02-15, 12:43 AM
No. You're the one repeating yourself and I'm tired of arguing with a person who can't be bothered to listen.

3e does not lend itself better to this than 4e. It's patently false. Crunch-wise there are only the skill mechanics, some special skill-related perks and traps that are "noncombat." Which is to say that there's nothing there that 3e has that 4e doesn't.

With a "little work" I can do exactly the same with 4e. It doesn't take rules to tell a convincing story with deep dramatic non-violent conflict or interpersonal relationships or exploration or any of the dozens of non-mechanical things you just listed.

I even said as much. You just chose to bring up the paragraph before it, for whatever reason. The last sentence was "The latter is easy enough to just come up with on the spot, of course though." So yes, you can make similar mechanics for 4E. I agree. Fact is though that they're right there for 3E without any kind of making-up-on-the-spot; that's what I said in the paragraph and it's still true. They're not there in 4E. For some reason, you decided to claim that "This is blithely incorrect." when it seems very factually correct to me.


You are selectively lying in order to prop up your preconceived position.

I'd appreciate if you didn't strive to undermine my credibility to further your own claims. Nothing of what I've said has been a lie thus far. But whatever, this is such a waste of time. People can draw their own conclusions. I'm not even going to touch the rest of your post since, sufficient to say, it's another misunderstanding and would result in another pointless convo and lead to absolutely nothing.

Kaihaku
2009-02-15, 12:46 AM
You are selectively lying in order to prop up your preconceived position.

Deep breaths? A different opinion is not a lie.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-15, 12:48 AM
I'm actually fairly certain that we do, unless they totally revamp multiclassing and make classes that have different power progressions, which I find a rather unlikely scenario.

Also, the effects that you can produce as a 4e character aren't as diverse as before, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Mechanical diversity is an interesting subject, no? What is meant exactly by this term?
Is it that each class should operate off an independent rule set? Wizards learn spells like this, clerics do it like this; fighters use one system to attack and ToB classes use another? This sort of mechanical diversity was at its peak in games like Shadowrun where basically every conceivable "class" had a chapter worth of mechanics to learn. This slowed down games a lot and made it less likely for casual players to try new classes; who wants to learn an entirely new game just to change classes? For me, this kind of "mechanical diversity" is not an asset to a game.

Or is it that classes operate in different fashions? That the way you play & fight as a cleric is different than how you'd do it as a fighter? If so, then 4E has a goodly amount of diversity already, and is getting more with every new class. A Fighter does not operate on-or-off the field the same way as a Paladin; a Ranger fights differently from a Rogue - heck a TWF Ranger fights differently from a Bow Ranger! Each class has a different power suite to choose from; this allows for significant variation between builds.

In addition, classes within a grouping (like "Striker") work differently on the same battlefield. One does not play a Rogue (CA for Sneak Attack) like they would a Ranger (high mobility melee or debuff-heavy ranged), nor does any character (let alone class) operate identically in parties of varied composition. In a Defender-light party, the Warlord is going to be playing tank; in a Striker-heavy party, he's going to tag-team baddies with the Strikers.

Off the battlefield, the mixture of stats, skill choices, and even feats can provide mechanically distinct characters. Utility powers can also make a big difference - the Warlock who took Beguiling Tongue instead of Ethereal Stride has substantially different options in interacting with NPCs.

As for increasing mechanical diversity, one needs look only at the splatbook classes. We have two builds that are focused on teaming up with a Summon, one which relies heavily on chance for effectiveness, a third that has a unique resource pool (Rages) that can be used to fuel his powers, and yet another which focuses on shapeshifting powers. These are not just "features" you pick up from some dip-class; these are unique characteristics that only one particular build has to offer. And WotC keeps coming out with new twists with every release!

Personally, I've felt that the "do everything" feel of 3E minimized this distinctiveness. Or more accurately, the "do nothing" of skill-less and power-less fighters and the "do everything" of casters. Mundane classes generally had few mechanical options available to them; feats could provide a single trick to use in combat, and PrCs provided others, but rarely anything that had relevance outside of combat. Meanwhile, casters not only had access to spells that could let you be anything from Fighter to Rogue (and more), but also to most magic items which could cover up gaps in your internal spell allowances. Sure, you could RP and have a good time without worrying about mechanics, but where was the diversity? It really seemed like you only had two switches - do everything or do nothing.

So, that's my take. What do y'all mean by "mechanical diversity?"

RTGoodman
2009-02-15, 12:53 AM
I'm actually fairly certain that we do, unless they totally revamp multiclassing and make classes that have different power progressions, which I find a rather unlikely scenario.

I'll give you that we probably won't ever see classes with different power progressions or anything, but we've seen recently new mechanics that aren't anything like the stuff in the Core book. The Beast-Master Ranger, for instance, in Martial Power, and the random-die-roll Sorcerer build in PHB2, and even the Multiclass Versatility feature (or whatever it's called) of the Bard that lets them take multiple multiclass feats - all of those are pretty good indications that we ARE getting more mechanical variety as more sourcebooks come out.

What I'm saying is, I don't think we're going to see whole new systems out there (Standard Magic, Invokers, Psionics, Binding, Truenaming, Shadowcasting, Martial Adepts, Incarnum, etc.) in 4E, but within that structure I think (though I'm sure there'll be people that disagree) there IS room for mechanical diversity.

In other news, I'll be taking bets as to how long it'll take before the thread gets locked because people can't be civil to one another. Double-or-nothing if you guess the number of posters banned once it's all over! :smallamused:

LurkerInPlayground
2009-02-15, 12:55 AM
I even said as much. You just chose to bring up the paragraph before it, for whatever reason. The last sentence was "The latter is easy enough to just come up with on the spot, of course though." So yes, you can make similar mechanics for 4E. I agree. Fact is though that they're right there for 3E without any kind of making-up-on-the-spot; that's what I said in the paragraph and it's still true. They're not there in 4E. For some reason, you decided to claim that "This is blithely incorrect." when it seems very factually correct to me.
If you admit as much then you have no position to defend!

If you have to make up the mechanics for 3e to handle the "social interactions" then it's not "superior." 3e has roughly the same amount of rules as 4e for handling out-of-combat stuff. Skills and traps. 4e could be argued to be a more abstracted version of 3e's rules for exactly the same thing, but that's totally irrelevant.

You'll also note that it's not a foregone conclusion that more rules makes it easier to build that "realistic world" here. And you don't really need rules to say, "My character here is an assassin who takes his professional ethics very seriously." Nor is it a foregone conclusion that those rules handle it better than another set of rules or ad-hoc rulings.

What you are being is pointlessly pedantic. "It's in the rules!"
To this:
- No it isn't.
- Nor is it automatically better even if it had them.

I'm not misunderstanding anything about your position. It's riddled with contradictions that you won't admit to.

Break
2009-02-15, 02:27 AM
Mechanical diversity is an interesting subject, no? What is meant exactly by this term?

_____

Is it that each class should operate off an independent rule set? Wizards learn spells like this, clerics do it like this; fighters use one system to attack and ToB classes use another? This sort of mechanical diversity was at its peak in games like Shadowrun where basically every conceivable "class" had a chapter worth of mechanics to learn. This slowed down games a lot and made it less likely for casual players to try new classes; who wants to learn an entirely new game just to change classes? For me, this kind of "mechanical diversity" is not an asset to a game.

_____

So, that's my take. What do y'all mean by "mechanical diversity?"

The quoted portion is the closest to what I take "mechanical diversity" to mean, though I would not go as far as to call them independent rulesets - just a different set of mechanics would suffice, as it's not quite learning an entirely new game just to get into a class with different base mechanics than one is used to.

This lack of mechanical diversity is my largest personal disappointment with 4E (and the main reason why I sliiiiiightly prefer 3E to 4E). Although trimming the bloat from the game is a very good thing in my mind, I felt this streamlining had gone a bit too far and was not worth losing options and concepts.

The power system indeed works, though not for all character or class concepts - every class must get an attack power here, a utility there, and so forth without room for breaking that progression. This is fine for me when it comes to, say, martial classes, but classes that focus more on support suffer from the progression given.

It may work out for all the classes so far, but eventually, WotC may have to fit a square peg into a round hole if they're going to attempt making a class that is interesting to play, but won't work right with the current progression. Even if 3.x had bad subsystems for some classes, it at least used them when something that existed didn't work quite right; 4E only has a little of this, with the difference between powers and rituals springing immediately to mind.

Kaihaku
2009-02-15, 02:39 AM
If you admit as much then you have no position to defend!

Or perhaps is just tired of a discussion turned debate now bordering argument?


If you have to make up the mechanics for 3e to handle the "social interactions" then it's not "superior." 3e has roughly the same amount of rules as 4e for handling out-of-combat stuff. Skills and traps. 4e could be argued to be a more abstracted version of 3e's rules for exactly the same thing, but that's totally irrelevant.

You are incorrect and, no, I'm not lying because my opinion disagrees with your own. Even with the volumes of guidelines you cast out as "non-rules" such as how to create a dungeon ecology, medieval kingdom, planar cosmology, deities, etc; there are still more rules in 3.5 for "handling out-of-combat stuff."

DMG 3.5:
Chapter 4:NPCs (25 Pages)
DMG 4e:
Chapter 6: Cast of Characters (2 Pages)
Chapter 10: Creating NPCs (3 Pages)

Maybe there were just really concise?

DMG 3.5:
Chapter 7: Section: Creating Magic Items (8 Pages)
PHB 4e:
Chapter 10: Rituals (1 Paragraph)

PHB 3.5:
Chapter 4: Skills: Crafting (1 Page)
PHB 4e:

PHB 3.5:
Chapter 4: Skills: Perform (1/2 Page)
PHB 4e:

PHB 3.5:
Chapter 4: Skills: Profession (1 Page)
PHB 4e:

DMG 3.5:
Chapter 4:NPCs: Leadership, Followers, Cohorts (3 Pages)
PHB 4e:


3e does not lend itself better to this than 4e. It's patently false. Crunch-wise there are only the skill mechanics, some special skill-related perks and traps that are "noncombat." Which is to say that there's nothing there that 3e has that 4e doesn't.

Quite the absolute statement. You are absolutely positive that there is nothing that the 3e ruleset has that the 4e ruleset doesn't? Without a doubt?

Leadership: Assembling a group of followers is no longer part of the rules.
Mundane Item Creation: Rules for crafting mundane items are no longer part of the rules.
Magical Item Creation: Rules for creating magical items still "exist" but have been greatly simplified. Most strikingly, magical items now cost as much to make as to purchase, which raises the question why anyone would sell one for zero or negative profit.
Perform: Social skills are not limited to negotiating and lying. Oration, comedy, acting all can influence vast groups of people.
Epic Spells: Yes, there were specific rules for creating your own world/race/plane in 3.5 and, no, they do not appear in 4e.


You'll also note that it's not a foregone conclusion that more rules makes it easier to build that "realistic world" here.

If you had said better instead of easier, I would have agreed. But having set rules in one place to alter as you deem fit certainly makes it easier.

And for a Dungeon Master who is not skilled at coherently ad-libbing various pieces of a fantasy world together but who wants to present a "realistic", or at least stable, "world" those rules and guidelines are extremely helpful.


And you don't really need rules to say, "My character here is an assassin who takes his professional ethics very seriously." Nor is it a foregone conclusion that those rules handle it better than another set of rules or ad-hoc rulings.

The rules are important because they are the standard that doesn't change from one group of people to the next. Each group of people can then customize them as they are willing and able, but that customization has nothing to do with a discussion of base system mechanics.

Do the rules handle situations better than ad-hoc? That depends on the Dungeon Master and, again, has no place in a discussion about base system mechanics. Do the rules handle situations better than another system? There are a number of rules that I feel 4e implements better than 3.5, so no it is not a foregone conclusion. However, that goes both ways.

There are few experienced Dungeon Masters who bother to pour through the 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide to see what the DC is to disable the hinges of a door; but those rules are there. Is it important for them to be there? That depends solely on the playing style in question; a playing style which 4e does not support without a great deal of customization despite your claims otherwise.

I'd imagine it takes a great deal of time to decide how a hewn stone floor interacts in a game as compared to a uneven flagstone floor. That's not something I'm really interested in, but obviously some people are and they are not wrong for feeling that way.


What you are being is pointlessly pedantic. "It's in the rules!"
To this:
- No it isn't.
- Nor is it automatically better even if it had them.

-Yes, in fact, "it" is in the rules.
-While true, that is also is subjective.

Personally, when I Dungeon Master I am not generally not interested in pages upon pages describing how to create a dungeon ecology and there is certainly something to be said in favor of slimming down the Dungeon Master's Guide. But that is my preference not an absolute truth and it certainly does not justify attacking the creditability of someone who does hold that preference.


I'm not misunderstanding anything about your position. It's riddled with contradictions that you won't admit to.

Obviously you believe so, but what makes you so certain that you are absolutely correct?


That's not versimilitude. That's a fetish being passed off as deep fidelity to "accuracy."

That's an inappropriate and false statement. I think you'd benefit from taking a moment to reflect on how you're presenting yourself.

Mobey_Wee
2009-02-15, 02:43 AM
Mechanical diversity is an interesting subject, no? What is meant exactly by this term?
Is it that each class should operate off an independent rule set? Wizards learn spells like this, clerics do it like this; fighters use one system to attack and ToB classes use another? This sort of mechanical diversity was at its peak in games like Shadowrun where basically every conceivable "class" had a chapter worth of mechanics to learn. This slowed down games a lot and made it less likely for casual players to try new classes; who wants to learn an entirely new game just to change classes? For me, this kind of "mechanical diversity" is not an asset to a game.

Or is it that classes operate in different fashions? That the way you play & fight as a cleric is different than how you'd do it as a fighter? If so, then 4E has a goodly amount of diversity already, and is getting more with every new class. A Fighter does not operate on-or-off the field the same way as a Paladin; a Ranger fights differently from a Rogue - heck a TWF Ranger fights differently from a Bow Ranger! Each class has a different power suite to choose from; this allows for significant variation between builds.

In addition, classes within a grouping (like "Striker") work differently on the same battlefield. One does not play a Rogue (CA for Sneak Attack) like they would a Ranger (high mobility melee or debuff-heavy ranged), nor does any character (let alone class) operate identically in parties of varied composition. In a Defender-light party, the Warlord is going to be playing tank; in a Striker-heavy party, he's going to tag-team baddies with the Strikers.

Off the battlefield, the mixture of stats, skill choices, and even feats can provide mechanically distinct characters. Utility powers can also make a big difference - the Warlock who took Beguiling Tongue instead of Ethereal Stride has substantially different options in interacting with NPCs.

As for increasing mechanical diversity, one needs look only at the splatbook classes. We have two builds that are focused on teaming up with a Summon, one which relies heavily on chance for effectiveness, a third that has a unique resource pool (Rages) that can be used to fuel his powers, and yet another which focuses on shapeshifting powers. These are not just "features" you pick up from some dip-class; these are unique characteristics that only one particular build has to offer. And WotC keeps coming out with new twists with every release!

Personally, I've felt that the "do everything" feel of 3E minimized this distinctiveness. Or more accurately, the "do nothing" of skill-less and power-less fighters and the "do everything" of casters. Mundane classes generally had few mechanical options available to them; feats could provide a single trick to use in combat, and PrCs provided others, but rarely anything that had relevance outside of combat. Meanwhile, casters not only had access to spells that could let you be anything from Fighter to Rogue (and more), but also to most magic items which could cover up gaps in your internal spell allowances. Sure, you could RP and have a good time without worrying about mechanics, but where was the diversity? It really seemed like you only had two switches - do everything or do nothing.

So, that's my take. What do y'all mean by "mechanical diversity?"

I'll pretty much second that. Well said.




Yes, definitely. And I must say they're worse. First, there are no mechanically exotic races, and the existing ones don't have any drawbacks, just different bonuses. They are also all at the same power level - it's how they "solved" the level adjustment issue.
Also, the skill system is simplified, feats have less of an impact, and your powers constantly change, meaning you replace weaker old ones with better new ones, so it can be hard to recognize a character as mechanically individual.
Of course, mechanics alone can't stop you from roleplaying, but anyway, differences are there, and 4e doesn't do a lot to support unique characters.


What do you mean by exotic races? It sounds like you just want more rules for roleplaying. That in no way means it's not supported. Thae question was "are they different for RP'ing purposes?" And i don't see how most of this is relevant. There are less rules surrounding aspects of rp'ing, and we will see more exotic races with the release of different books, but I'm not sure what you're looking for RP'wise


Well, any answer to that will be subjective and many people will point out their favorite version of 3.75 as what should have been done but...

Personally, there are three things that I wish had been done differently. I only think one (#1) of them was a big mistake though.

1. The flavor of 4e. The core books shouldn't have had such a strong setting-specific flavor to them and Forgotten Realms should not have been altered to fit the new flavor in the core books. I think that was the biggest source of outrage in the beginning, especially among Realm fans (I'm not one, BTW), and definitely hurt broader acceptance of the new system.

2. The switch from OGL to SGL is probably wise from a business prospective but I, personally, hate that decision more than anything else. The OGL made Dungeons and Dragons a community effort, and it was better for it.



I can agree with that. Especially with what they did to FR, but it's very easy and open for you to tone down a bit. I DM FR 4e, and I pretty much ignore most of the spellplague stuff. For instance, the ruins of starmantle, supposedly ravaged by the spellplague and glows now or something, well one of the big first quests my players will have, is to figure out what happened to starmantle, why it's not around anymore. I don't know yet, but it will be something my players and I will enjoy more than the spellplague. Same for some of the deities. I'll just stick them in another deities court, and say they're still around. or make up a divine channeling feat for Helm.

Anyway, just a few examples, my point is that it's open enough for you to change the flavor of it without too much trouble.

and 2, yeah. OGL good.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-15, 02:46 AM
The quoted portion is the closest to what I take "mechanical diversity" to mean, though I would not go as far as to call them independent rulesets - just a different set of mechanics would suffice, as it's not quite learning an entirely new game just to get into a class with different base mechanics than one is used to.

Fair enough, but have you ever played Shadowrun? I mean, 3rd Edition or earlier. In this game you had Deckers, Riggers, and Magic Users each with entire chapters devoted to How You Play. Hell, Vehicle Combat used an entirely different set of rules than any other type of combat - and "normal" combat already had a different rule set for melee and ranged combat!

Personally, I banned Riggers & Deckers from my games outright - not uncommon, actually, among SR GMs. They were just too much work to handle.

With that experience, I just can't see how having more sub-systems within a supposedly unified game is a plus. From experience, I can tell you that no two 4E builds play exactly the same; 4E just manages to capture that feel without having to re-invent the wheel for every class. A class that can shapeshift at-will is just different from one which can create minor magical effects at-will. Heck, even a class that requires CA to do high damage and one which does not play very differently in combat, even though both are Strikers.

Is "mechanical diversity" really just about the number of sub-systems a game has? If so, I highly recommend picking up a copy of 2nd or 3rd Edition Shadowrun - I honestly have not found another game with that level of complexity.

Also:

This is fine for me when it comes to, say, martial classes, but classes that focus more on support suffer from the progression given.

Why do you say this? :smallconfused:

In my experience, Warlords and Clerics work extremely well as support classes, if that is how you want to play them. You do realize that many of their powers primarily provide a buff or debuff along with a small amount of damage?

EDIT:
@LurkerInPlayground
Just so :smallsmile:

LurkerInPlayground
2009-02-15, 02:47 AM
I think it should be noted that Oracle Hunter is trying to make a distinction between rule complexity and play variety.

4e classes achieve play variety while standardizing the core mechanic of how each class works. Variety is done by varying the powers, their advantages and class features. Feats adds some variance, but not nearly as much as 3e feats could. The core mechanic of skills and rolling to hit is universal.

3e mainly does this by Vancian magic, feats and class features. Class features especially. But the real watchword of 3e seems to really be more about customization. Whether *all* the options actually introduce that much variety is a separate issue. Moreover, a lot of those options include their own subsets of rules.

2e makes casters pay for their Vancian variety by actually being vulnerable. Note however that complexity isn't necessarily the same thing as variety. 2e is more "freeform" and keeping the mechanics down can be a good way to ad-hoc player options or consequences into the game. Finding pit traps, for example, involved poking the ground with a 10-foot pole. Puzzles of that sort were more "point-and-click adventure," so to speak.

Of course, there wasn't really very many core unifying mechanics. Thief skills ran off percentile dice. Casters got a Vancian system. Druids and paladins had their own class features as well. And while this was complex, there weren't many ways to mix-and-match your characters. No feats, skill points or prestige classes existed. Mechanical variety came purely from what you rolled for your stats and the race/class combination you picked out.

Myatar_Panwar
2009-02-15, 03:00 AM
I think that non casters had fun in my old games.



Basically, melee characters are viable out of the box without a lot of fiddling. In 3.5, you had to fish around to make a viable melee-ist who wasn't a ToB/Cleric/Druid.


I like 4e, I like it alot. But in regards to 3.5 I cannot disagree less when people say that playing a melee character is boring or that you need to be crazy supplement-happy in order to be viable. As far as I can tell, my level 5 fist fighter (homebrew class, basically rogue/fighter who uses fists) is doing just fine, and his two feats are endurance and diehard. Not exactly optimized right there. And I'm having a ball just punching stuff every round with little variation. Would I like a slue of martial powers to complement this? Hells yeah! But I'm not bored by any means.

Now for viable-ness, it really depends on your party. Ours has been just fine in balance terms, until last session when we got into a bit of a pickle, and our psion who has just been blasting decided to break out the good stuff, grease. Never in my 4 years of D&D'ing had I seen a caster use it, and its results were terrifying. We survived the encounter when we should have all died without a doubt, because this little guy only had to use one pp a round greasing up our enemies while we pounded them.

If our casters were ever actually batman-esque wizards using spells such as that on a common occasion... then yes, the melee guys would need to optimize like crazy, without a doubt, and it would be very sad.

Break
2009-02-15, 03:09 AM
Fair enough, but have you ever played Shadowrun? I mean, 3rd Edition or earlier. In this game you had Deckers, Riggers, and Magic Users each with entire chapters devoted to How You Play. Hell, Vehicle Combat used an entirely different set of rules than any other type of combat - and "normal" combat already had a different rule set for melee and ranged combat!

Personally, I banned Riggers & Deckers from my games outright - not uncommon, actually, among SR GMs. They were just too much work to handle.

I can't say that I have played any edition of Shadowrun. If the subsystems were indeed as divided as you say they were, then that's also a mechanical diversity problem, but on the other side of the spectrum. That isn't palatable to me, either.


With that experience, I just can't see how having more sub-systems within a supposedly unified game is a plus. From experience, I can tell you that no two 4E builds play exactly the same; 4E just manages to capture that feel without having to re-invent the wheel for every class. A class that can shapeshift at-will is just different from one which can create minor magical effects at-will. Heck, even a class that requires CA to do high damage and one which does not play very differently in combat, even though both are Strikers.

To be fair, you did list a rather extreme example of mechanical diversity gone wrong. All I'd rather see are systems fitting the concepts given rather than 4E's tendency to do the reverse.

If a concept would fit better with a different subsystem, then use one, deviating only enough from whatever norm the game uses such that the concept does what it's supposed to do. Difference for the sake of it just should not happen.


Is "mechanical diversity" really just about the number of sub-systems a game has? If so, I highly recommend picking up a copy of 2nd or 3rd Edition Shadowrun - I honestly have not found another game with that level of complexity.

Perhaps I misspoke when I was defining mechanical diversity; it isn't merely a matter of subsystems, though I find it to be a loose measure of such diversity. After all, if the different subsystems really don't accomplish things that are different to begin with, they're not really diverse, no matter how many of them there are.


Also:


This is fine for me when it comes to, say, martial classes, but classes that focus more on support suffer from the progression given.

Why do you say this? :smallconfused:

In my experience, Warlords and Clerics work extremely well as support classes, if that is how you want to play them. You do realize that many of their powers primarily provide a buff or debuff along with a small amount of damage?

Yes, I do realize that. I've been in a few 4E games; among them, once as a tactical warlord, and once as a Divine Oracle ranged cleric. The power system works for them, as they've got a healthy mix of abilities that are meant to be used for attack and for support.

The problem comes if a concept leans heavier on one end of such an attack/support spectrum than the existing classes. In this case, the heavy support class in question would still have to take the same amount of attack powers as every other class, due to all classes being lumped into the same progression - attack powers are all taken at the same level, new utilities for support do the same, and so on.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-15, 03:11 AM
If our casters were ever actually batman-esque wizards using spells such as that on a common occasion... then yes, the melee guys would need to optimize like crazy, without a doubt, and it would be very sad.


:confused:
Did you just call using Grease an act of great Batman-ship? It's an incredibly common 1st level spell.

Anyhoo, I feel I should clarify this:

A better non-caster gaming experience
4E provides non-casters with more options both in combat and out of combat. They get more skills, can use them more effectively, and are able to provide a wide variety of buffs, debuffs, and other combat modifiers in addition to raw damage.

This is not to say you can't have fun with mundanes in 3E; I recently finished a campaign as a tavern brawling Rogue/Fighter which was most excellent. But, 4E definitively allows non-casters to be more effective at life than they were in 3E. For me, that makes for a better experience, and I am sufficiently confident that most people would agree with me (other things being equal) that I listed it as a general feature of 4E.

EDIT:

The problem comes if a concept leans heavier on one end of such an attack/support spectrum than the existing classes. In this case, the heavy support class in question would still have to take the same amount of attack powers as every other class, due to all classes being lumped into the same progression - attack powers are all taken at the same level, new utilities for support do the same, and so on.

Ah, then this is a question of nomenclature. An "attack" power is merely one that targets enemies rather than yourself or allies; it can still have effects which buff, debuff, or what have you. Each class has a different assortment of powers to choose from at a given level; some classes have almost entirely damage powers, while others have powers which cause little HP damage, but mainly result in status effects. Thus, while any character starts out with 2 at-wills, 1 Encounter and 1 Daily, for a Fighter this may mean 4 high-damage powers, while for a Cleric this may result in 4 buffs.

An example:

1st level Fighter
At wills - Cleave (damage 2 monsters), Reaping Strike (damage on a miss)
Encounter - Covering Attack (2[W] damage, allow an ally to Shift 2)
Daily Brute Strike (3[W] damage)

1st level Cleric
At wills - Lance of Faith (grant an ally +2 on their next attack vs. monster), Sacred Flame (Temp HP or grant a Save)
Encounter - Divine Glow (allies in area of effect get +2 on attacks)
Daily - Beacon of Hope (allies in area of effect regain 5 HP; +5 on all future healing powers)

Although both characters are the same level, the Fighter is able to deal out far more damage than the Cleric, but unable to provide as many buffs as the Cleric does. Sure, all attacks do damage, but 1d8+WIS is nothing compared to 2[W] + STR; the intent of each power is clear. Furthermore, both the Encounter and Daily powers of the Cleric provide those effects even on a missed attack.

You see, the Powers System isn't about forcing everyone to take the same suite of powers; it's about managing the power level of a character. It's really more like spell-slots - a high level wizard can cast more spells per day than a lower level one; this is a way you measure power in 3E.

***
EDIT 2:
@Break Re-reading your post, I fear I really didn't understand your point. Are you saying that classes that are designed with support in mind are unable to provide sufficient support? Or that all classes cannot be made into support classes? :smallconfused:
***

Oh, and moar Shadowrun
The multiple sub-systems were by no means useless! In fact, they were extremely well designed to model real-world situations.

- Shotguns had choke settings that varied their spread; increasing the spread of a shot decreased its power but increased its likelihood of hitting.
- Explosions could rebound from walls, making explosions in contained spaces extremely deadly. Grenades and Rockets took time to explode after they were thrown/launched.
- Hand to Hand combat was a matter of skill; even if you lead the attack, if you were outmatched by your opponent, you took damage, not him.
- The Rigging (Vehicle) Rules contained modifiers for road conditions, the difficulty of shooting out of windows, and vehicles had an acceleration value which depicted how quickly they could accelerate and decelerate.
- Getting injured imposed steep penalties; even if you survived a life-threatening injury, there was a good chance that you suffered lasting damage.

And then there were the "classes"
- Decking involved moving around in The Matrix (a 1980's Future Internet) so you needed rules for building your decks (computers), creating programs, accessing sub-systems, defeating countermeasures, etc.
- Magic involved not only casting, but also interacting with spirits and maneuvering in the Astral Plane. Astral Combat, of course, followed its own rules.
- Hermetic Mages practiced magic differently from Shamans, so they needed different methods of improving their magic, summoning spirits/elementals, and casting.
- Physical Adepts were a type of Mage that was like a Monk, but useful. So they needed a special sub-system too.
- Riggers controlled vehicles and drones with their minds. So you needed special rules for building these from scratch, modifying them, and running them remotely while doing other things.

And I didn't even mention Cyberware v. Bioware! No, Shadowrun is an incredibly diverse game, but that was its problem. It was so darn complicated, and the modeling sometimes quite clunky, that people just ignored or houseruled around various bits of it.

The moral of the story is that sub-systems are not a good in and of themselves; heck, they're not even a good proxy for gameplay variation. A well-made system will have a core set of rules principles and find a way to make them do as much work as they can without making a game too limited. Why, Freeform RPGs are among the most diverse gaming experiences out there, after all. :smallsmile:

FoE
2009-02-15, 03:12 AM
because this little guy only had to use one pp a round greasing up our enemies while we pounded them.

Was this a Book of Erotic Fantasy campaign, by any chance? Sounds dirty. :smalltongue:

Myatar_Panwar
2009-02-15, 03:31 AM
:confused: Did you just call using Grease an act of great Batman-ship? It's an incredibly common 1st level spell. Not great, but I did call it an act of Batman-ship. Now that I think about it, I feel silly because it is a very simple spell.

Our party casters usually focus on blasting so viewing a non-damage spell which just wreaked creatures really put a new perspective on the game for me. And I don't like it.

@Face of Evil Oh gawd, it does. Damn, I may sig myself.

Break
2009-02-15, 03:48 AM
An "attack" power is merely one that targets enemies rather than yourself or allies; it can still have effects which buff, debuff, or what have you. Each class has a different assortment of powers to choose from at a given level; some classes have almost entirely damage powers, while others have powers which cause little HP damage, but mainly result in status effects. Thus, while any character starts out with 2 at-wills, 1 Encounter and 1 Daily, for a Fighter this may mean 4 high-damage powers, while for a Cleric this may result in 4 buffs.

____

You see, the Powers System isn't about forcing everyone to take the same suite of powers; it's about managing the power level of a character. It's really more like spell-slots - a high level wizard can cast more spells per day than a lower level one; this is a way you measure power in 3E.

You're right in that attack and support aren't necessarily mutually exclusive when it comes to the power system.

However, there's more to it than amounts of attack and support available - concepts being fit into the power system also have a set usage limit, with roughly the same amount of at-wills, encounters, and dailies between classes at the same level, with little wiggle room available. You can't make a character that mimics the 3.x warlock by taking a lot of at-wills and not focusing on dailies and encounters, just to name an example, as every class has the same usage limits on their abilities.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-15, 04:00 AM
You're right in that attack and support aren't necessarily mutually exclusive when it comes to the power system.

However, there's more to it than amounts of attack and support available - concepts being fit into the power system also have a set usage limit, with roughly the same amount of at-wills, encounters, and dailies between classes at the same level, with little wiggle room available. You can't make a character that mimics the 3.x warlock by taking a lot of at-wills and not focusing on dailies and encounters, just to name an example, as every class has the same usage limits on their abilities.

Ah. Yes, well, that was made for power balancing reasons, after all.

Considering that everyone gets at least 2 At-Wills, and a majority of their powers are available every Encounter, is the allure of someone with, say, 6 At-Wills really as great as it was when that sort of power was tightly rationed on a daily basis? I guess I just don't see it as much of a loss.

But, if you really want some more fluctuation, I will note that most classes have at least one Encounter-usage Utility power per level. My Cleric, for example, uses only At-Will and Encounter Utilities, 'cause I like the flexibility.

Reluctance
2009-02-15, 05:12 AM
I wonder how many of these complaints are real things people wanted to play at the table, vs. how many are just people looking for things 4e can't do for their own sake. Were there really that many people who wanted to play pure healbot clerics back in the day? I remember that being the role the new guy was pressured into playing.

(That, or people taking the powers too literally. Were there really that many pacifist characters who never forced enemies to make saving throws? It's a negligible tweak to say that your cleric's attacks sap an enemy's will to fight, or that a feylock's "defeats" an enemy by turning it into a small, harmless animal. The books could stand to encourage this point of view even more, but it's the same net effect as casting Hold Person or Baleful Polymorph. The only difference is that 4e keeps you playing the same game everybody else is.)

I'll grant that 4e has its share of flaws. But when most discussions center around the fact that is more focused around things that come up most often at the table while 3.x is better at covering edge cases, that doesn't strike me as something to be bothered about.

Conners
2009-02-15, 05:50 AM
As many have said, it depends on you, as to whether you should buy the books.

The fun also depends on you, but I find it more enjoyable for the fact my Fighters can use strategy more, rather than being stuck hitting the zombies with a stick for several rounds.

One thing I like about 4E, is that it doesn't tell you exactly how to RP, and just leaves you vaguer guide-lines. A lot of the social skills were left out, as has been said, but we still have all the basic stuff: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Insight (aka: Sense Motive), Streetwise (AKA: Gather Information and the like), and Thievery (although pick-pocketing and breaking into the homes of people isn't really a "social" activity).

Mechanically diverse... Well, they have all the basic stuff, I guess.... But then they tend to leave out more detailed or specific guidelines, and generally don't tell you at all for more complex things.


With the comment someone made about 4E not being as realistic as the past editions. I'd like to point out that this may be true, but in a five-foot-step sort of way, meaning it hasn't dropped that far so well as I can see it.

Yakk
2009-02-15, 05:55 AM
This is a slightly different approach to the question...

3e/3.5e was mostly an ad-hoc game. Pieces where thrown in by a myriad of designers, with only lip service paid to any kind of meshing of mechanics between one system and another. By this point, 3.5 has lots of 'experimental' cruft in it, and some of it works better than others.

The upside is that it has lots of quirky corners -- the downside is that it has lots of quirky corners.

4e was designed at a high level with a particular goal and style of gameplay in mind. The 4e style of gameplay for a combat encounter is roughly as follows (note that the game mechanics don't match this exactly, this is the high-level design).

1> Everyone helps defeat the opponents.

2> Attack/defense rolls scale like d20+K+1*Level, for some rough constant K, plus some per-character variation.

3> HP scale like K+C*Level, with K and C being determined by the role/particular character/details.

4> Damage per-hit is set up so that an average hit does about 1/4 of the average monster's max HP, assuming everyone is equal level.

5> Hit chances are about 50% per action. This gives the widest area in which a +/- modifier has nice "smooth" effects.

6> Party size is about 5 players. That means "instant-kill" is resource-intensive (on average, 5 players ganging up on 1 target take 1.6 rounds to take it out...)

7> Encounters are balanced on a 'group of opponents' level, not on a 'party vs one monster' level. A typical encounter has about 5 opponents, but exceptions allowing anywhere from 1 to 20+ to work should exist. This means that "instant kill" on the other side is also resource-intensive.

8> Both Players and Monsters are given "roles", which are high-level plans for combat role they are intended to fullfill. These roles aren't hard and fast, but there is a significant amount of "role protection" for PCs -- each classes features give a strong enough role bonus that "overshadowing" someone in their role will be difficult and resource-intensive.

9> Characters, even at high level, should be relatively easy to build. Nothing as crazy as a 500+ spell wizard spellbook.

10> Monsters/opponents/NPCs should be far far easier to build than characters. DMs should be able to build an encounter in less time than it takes to play the encounter, and have some confidence that it will play well.

11> Skills should be valuable. A skilled lockpicking character should be better than an equal-level spellcaster at unlocking locks. We want the world to use mules, and if magic is cheaper than a mule, nobody will use mules.

12> The game world itself should be designed around "places to adventure" rather than cosmology.

13> The +/- 5 level range of opponent should mechanically work (well, mostly). Beyond that point, raw combat mechanics don't have to work that well -- things can be done by GM fiat, or you can use alternative mechanics (turn the mob of 100 level 1 humans attacking a level 10 party into a swarm of humans, instead of requring that the level 1 human stats make "crunch well" when fighting a level 10 party).

14> Focus on core competencies. Players and GMs are perfectly capable of saying that the PC Dwarf makes the world's best Grog without having to mechanic it up -- often, mechanics around that kind of thing can get in the way as much as help.

15> The game should progress from Heroic (saving a town from goblin invaders), through the Paragon (saving the empire from the invading horde of gnolls), through to Epic (saving the Raven Queen, the goddess of Death, from Orcus, the demon-god-thing of Undeath). Game mechanics should move relatively smoothly over this progression -- with the exception that at Epic tier you have powers that say "the first time you die in a day, X happens". Scale (the fact that an Epic character is using powers that rival the gods) is a matter of flavor -- a mid-Epic character shouldn't even bother to roll damage to kill a mere Paragon-tier opponent. This is that +/- 5 level range thing -- a level 25 (mid-epic) shouldn't encounter a level 19 or under opponent as a single opponent, as the mechanics are allowed to break down. You can "alias" the low level opponent up as a minion (game-mechanical trick to generate a simpler opponent), or use swarm rules (for hordes of lower-tier opponents), etc.

16> The goal of the combat mechanics is to allow the DM to build an interesting and challenging combat encounter, and let the players determine if they defeat it -- it isn't to determine how many level 1 peasants it takes to kill an ancient level 28 red dragon.

...

Does that help describe 4e?

Baltor
2009-02-15, 06:53 AM
I have played a few 4.0 games and did not enjoy the experience. Sure the game is more "balanced" in the way that most people here seem to define it(direct damage measured in each individual encounter) but it does so by forcing one to fit into one of the four roles presented in the handbook (defender and so on)

Hal
2009-02-15, 08:57 AM
I like 4e, I like it alot. But in regards to 3.5 I cannot disagree less when people say that playing a melee character is boring or that you need to be crazy supplement-happy in order to be viable. As far as I can tell, my level 5 fist fighter (homebrew class, basically rogue/fighter who uses fists) is doing just fine, and his two feats are endurance and diehard. Not exactly optimized right there. And I'm having a ball just punching stuff every round with little variation. Would I like a slue of martial powers to complement this? Hells yeah! But I'm not bored by any means.



See, my experience is that it's right around there that your experience will start ending. The problem is that monsters and casters start getting stronger spells, making it easy to simply remove a fighter (or whatever) from combat straight away. You might even find it difficult to land enough hits to feel like you're contributing to battle effectively.

Oslecamo
2009-02-15, 09:33 AM
Does that help describe 4e?

In my own experience, what you just explained is the theory. In practice:

1-The numbers don't scale as well as you say. Optimization is still important, and a bad choice of stats powers will still deliver a weaker character and a good choice will deliver a stronger character. This diference isn't very big at begining, but it grows over the 30 levels. The lucky thing is that's easier to spot the errors. You're just hiting 50% of the time if you want to hit just 50% of the time. From fighter weapon specialization to party buffs you can hit a lot more than half the times.

2-Solo monsters, as well as 20 minion mobs, are considerably weaker than 5 monsters of the same level. Solo monsters are too easy too overrun with debuffs, and there's plenty of powers that allow you to quickly chew up trough several minions per turn, turning their numbers useless.

3-The roles aren't very defined. The fighter can compete with the rogue's damage, the rogue is controling, the cleric can excel at tanking or dealing damage if he works for that. The monsters aren't much better.

4-Skills are weak, and rituals are even weaker. INT is the new dump stat, and you could pick your skills randomly whitout really hurting your character, unlike powers or stats.

5-Combat fun is mostly concentrated on the begining of the ecounter, and then quickly dies. Once the players and monsters have shot their ecounter and daily powers, the players could as well go eat a snack since the rest of the battle is spamming the right at will power untill your oponent drops. Once the players get the advantage, the monsters are doomed, but their bloody high HPs means the players will still need a lot of time to finish hacking them.

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-15, 10:03 AM
3-The roles aren't very defined. The fighter can compete with the rogue's damage, the rogue is controling, the cleric can excel at tanking or dealing damage if he works for that. The monsters aren't much better.



Well, IMHO, this SPECIFIC thing is good, not bad. Why shouldn't a fighter very good to slay things with few strikes of sword? Why shouldn't a smart rogue able to keep at bay enemies? An so on.

Artanis
2009-02-15, 11:49 AM
I have played a few 4.0 games and did not enjoy the experience. Sure the game is more "balanced" in the way that most people here seem to define it(direct damage measured in each individual encounter) but it does so by forcing one to fit into one of the four roles presented in the handbook (defender and so on)


3-The roles aren't very defined. The fighter can compete with the rogue's damage, the rogue is controling, the cleric can excel at tanking or dealing damage if he works for that. The monsters aren't much better.
Case in point :smallbiggrin:

The roles are clearly defined, yes. A Fighter is a Defender, a Warlock is a Striker, and a Warlord is a Leader. However, no class is forced into a role: Fighters are pretty good Strikers if they work at it, Warlocks are pretty decent Controllers if they work at it, and a Warlord makes a pretty decent Defender if he's played well.

And the fact that there's people who see both ends of the spectrum only reinforces that point :smallcool:



*stuff about mechanical vs. play diversity*
QFT. I would like to point to something that 3.5e supporters often miss during discussions about this sort of thing: the Warmage.

The Warmage is a full caster. He gets 9 levels of spells, a massive number of which are straight off the Wizard/Sorcerer spell list. He uses the exact same casting mechanics as the Sorcerer, including the spells/day gained at each level and when he gains a new level of spells. Hell, in some ways, the Warmage is more versatile than the Sorcerer, since it can wear medium (or even Heavy, I think) armor without a penalty and knows a MUCH higher number of spells.

But.

That's in theory. In practice, the Warmage is an overglorified archer. Yes, he knows more spells than the Sorcerer, but they're all variations on "blow **** up". The VAST mechanical difference between a Warmage and a "normal" archer-type with a bunch of exploding arrows does nothing to make them play differently.

In 4e, everybody has the same general mechanic. The powers all look similar on the surface, but in use, they are VASTLY different. And the fact that they call themselves "attacks" means nothing. Just look at Sleep. Sleep is brought up in a lot of discussions regarding a (relatively) borderline-overpowered specific build of the Wizard...and Sleep does no damage. It's called an "attack", but it does zero damage. On the other hand, the Ranger has arguably the most deadly at-will in the game, which nearly matches some classes' daily powers.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-15, 03:24 PM
13> The +/- 5 level range of opponent should mechanically work (well, mostly). Beyond that point, raw combat mechanics don't have to work that well -- things can be done by GM fiat, or you can use alternative mechanics (turn the mob of 100 level 1 humans attacking a level 10 party into a swarm of humans, instead of requring that the level 1 human stats make "crunch well" when fighting a level 10 party).

All in all, well said.

I picked this out because a "swarm of humans" conjures up a most hilarious mental picture :smallbiggrin:

Maybe I'll put my PCs in charge of some "Angry Mobs" when they assault the Necromancer's Castle. I suppose their aura damage will be fire-based; torches, y'know :smalltongue:

Tequila Sunrise
2009-02-15, 03:44 PM
The thing I loved about 3.5 was how it was a simulation of life in a fantasy world, which means for me I liked 3.5.
Would you care to clarify how 3e (or any edition) is a good simulation? Not to single you out, but every time I see a comment like this all I can do is go :smallconfused: "bwuh?" I mean, what do HP simulate, unless everyone in your world is a crazy kung-fu movie master or has the magical ability to be stabbed repeatedly and not die?

TS

Johnny Blade
2009-02-15, 04:00 PM
What do you mean by exotic races? It sounds like you just want more rules for roleplaying. That in no way means it's not supported. Thae question was "are they different for RP'ing purposes?" And i don't see how most of this is relevant. There are less rules surrounding aspects of rp'ing, and we will see more exotic races with the release of different books, but I'm not sure what you're looking for RP'wise
I mean that there are no races that deviate from the very narrow "two +2s to an attribute, plus some other stuff on top of it" norm, meaning that a minotaur is, mechanically, not too different from an orc.
And that is absolutely worse than what 3e did. Sure, LA and racial hit dice were clunky, and those monster class progressions they did later were not only a case of questionable logic (after killing approximately 50 goblins, a young centaur finally hits puberty), but also didn't really solve many of the problems the system had, but at least there was a system.
4e offers absolutely nothing in this regard.

(Incidentally, this is one of my main problems with the system. It actually hurts roleplaying as much as this is possible by making you play characters with mechanically indistinguishable races and out-of-combat abilities whose in-combat abilities are constantly changing, with older ones simply being forgotten, which is impairing immersion somewhat.)



Also, concerning mechanical diversity - which I regard as the variance of possible character builds for this matter -, saying that you'd have to learn a new system if you wanted to play a Druid instead of the Barbarian you had last time in 3e is about as right as saying that there are only the 4 basic roles in 4e and the classes themselves are just there for flavor and filling pages.
Actually, I think that 3e managed to implement all those different methods of casting (plus martial maneuvers) quite well into the existing framework. They often weren't balanced well, but that's not a fundamental problem.
(The main problem as I see it was that the core rules had horribly overpowered magic on the one side and poorly scaling martial combatants on the other, which the system couldn't get rid of.)

4e, and that's why I think it's a design failure, does nothing. Everything has to fit into one framework, and while that makes balancing easier, it does so by being the laziest solution only and reduces the possibilities for further design greatly.

I admittedly don't know anything about Shadowrun, though.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-15, 04:10 PM
I mean that there are no races that deviate from the very narrow "two +2s to an attribute, plus some other stuff on top of it" norm, meaning that a minotaur is, mechanically, not too different from an orc.

But what about racial powers? Eladrin Teleporting, Elven Accuracy, Halfling Luck and so on? Hell, that's what made races more interesting than in 3E where it was pretty much just +/-. And those are all base races!

Could you provide some 3E examples? I just don't see how you can say a teleporting race that doesn't sleep and starts with a free extra skill is the same as a small race which is hard to hit with OAs and in general.


Also, concerning mechanical diversity - which I regard as the variance of possible character builds for this matter -, saying that you'd have to learn a new system if you wanted to play a Druid instead of the Barbarian you had last time in 3e is about as right as saying that there are only the 4 basic roles in 4e and the classes themselves are just there for flavor and filling pages.

Really? You don't think playing a wizard or a Favored Soul is mechanically more complex than playing a barbarian? For Wizards alone, you need to start familiarizing yourself with all the spells, reserve feats, metamagic, and so on. Clerics are worse, since you really need to learn all the spells. It is roughly equivalent to learning a new system; you need to learn all sorts of new rules (implicit and explicit) in order to play the character - and the amount of new information required can truly be staggering.


I admittedly don't know anything about Shadowrun, though.

Psh, kids these days. Wouldn't know a street sam if he geeked you in the face with an Ingram Smartgun :smallamused:

Kurald Galain
2009-02-15, 04:24 PM
5-Combat fun is mostly concentrated on the begining of the ecounter, and then quickly dies. Once the players and monsters have shot their ecounter and daily powers, the players could as well go eat a snack since the rest of the battle is spamming the right at will power untill your oponent drops. Once the players get the advantage, the monsters are doomed, but their bloody high HPs means the players will still need a lot of time to finish hacking them.

This is actually a big problem in 4E. Frequently, after two or three rounds, the outcome of the combat is clear, but it will take half an hour or so to "clean up" the rest. Although it helps if the DM simply ends the fight at this point by having the monsters surrendering.

Johnny Blade
2009-02-15, 04:33 PM
But what about racial powers? Eladrin Teleporting, Elven Accuracy, Halfling Luck and so on? Hell, that's what made races more interesting than in 3E where it was pretty much just +/-. And those are all base races!

Could you provide some 3E examples? I just don't see how you can say a teleporting race that doesn't sleep and starts with a free extra skill is the same as a small race which is hard to hit with OAs and in general.
That's true, although 3e had races with special abilities - even the basic Gnomes, plus well playable races like Killoren, Raptorans, Pixies, and so on. But, you're right, racial powers can add some flavor there.
However, my problem is that while 3e had a system of compensating stronger racial features with slower class progression, deeply flawed as it may have been, 4e does nothing, resulting in, to go back to my example, Orcs and Minotaurs having the same strength bonus. Also, Kobolds and Elves also have the same average strength.
I'm not saying that 4e would allow absolutely no flavor or variety, it's just that there are not too many options the system gives itself.



Really? You don't think playing a wizard or a Favored Soul is mechanically more complex than playing a barbarian? For Wizards alone, you need to start familiarizing yourself with all the spells, reserve feats, metamagic, and so on. Clerics are worse, since you really need to learn all the spells. It is roughly equivalent to learning a new system; you need to learn all sorts of new rules (implicit and explicit) in order to play the character - and the amount of new information required can truly be staggering.
Of course it's more complex, but the basic rules still are the same, and I've only ever seen one player who was actually interested in playing the game and still didn't know how his Wizard spells worked. He was 12 years old at the time.
Really, it's not that hard.

By the way, you don't need to learn all the spells at the same time, unless you start at a high level. Which most new players don't.

Also, if a player really doesn't want to handle this amount of complexity, he can always just play a Barbarian, Rogue, Warlock, whatever, whereas 4e classes all have roughly the same amount of complexity.



Psh, kids these days. Wouldn't know a street sam if he geeked you in the face with an Ingram Smartgun :smallamused:
Eh, if you have the time, I wouldn't mind if you'd go ahead and find some Shadowrun players for me.
Also, I fear that the amount of new information I'd be required to process in order to play it would be truly staggering. :smallbiggrin:


By the way, the server hates me. And possibly all of us. Anyway, if this discussion goes on, I won't reply right away.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-15, 04:37 PM
This is actually a big problem in 4E. Frequently, after two or three rounds, the outcome of the combat is clear, but it will take half an hour or so to "clean up" the rest. Although it helps if the DM simply ends the fight at this point by having the monsters surrendering.

*shrug* again, not in my experience.

Between the strong at-wills that monsters possess, rechargeable powers, and bloodied powers I've found combat to remain highly varied, even up through the end. Particularly towards the end, when the PCs have spent all their Encounters and are now deciding which Dailies they need to use to get through the fight. Of course, I have more than 1 or 2 encounters per day, so resource management has a larger impact than it might.

RebelRogue
2009-02-15, 06:27 PM
I mean that there are no races that deviate from the very narrow "two +2s to an attribute, plus some other stuff on top of it" norm, meaning that a minotaur is, mechanically, not too different from an orc.
Whether or not you find the mechanics interesting or not, I just don't see why that has anything at all to do with rules interfering with roleplaying!

masamonkey
2009-02-15, 07:14 PM
I haven't played 4E yet, but I'm thinking of picking up a PHB to see what it's like. I do have my reservations though.

Honestly, if I want to play a streamlined system, I'll play a White wolf game and if I want to build a great character, I'll play Gurps or BESM or aforementioned WW games or Shadowrun or just about anything but D&D. I only play D&D because it's D&D and really, that's the main reason everyone plays it. Part of that experience has always been ridiculous spell system, rigid class structures, lack of any cohesion between skills/powers/ability/spells, a lack of real rp advantage/disadvantage representation and a billion inconsistent little systems for the most minute little things. Also gnomes.

So far, what I hear from 4E sounds like a generic system's generics without all the options of a point system and it still manages an inconsistency between game systems and the same old table look-up fetishes. Also, people like to disregard it, but the fluff is the reason why you play D&D as opposed to a better system and with 4E, they've made changes I'm really not comfortable with. Yeah 3E did a hell of a lot of that too, but every single piece of fluff I've seen out of 4E has left a seriously bad taste in my mouth.

ken-do-nim
2009-02-15, 11:16 PM
I've decided to take the view that OD&D, AD&D (D&D 1E & 2E), CD&D (BX, BECM, RC), 3E (D&D 3.0 & 3.5), and 4E are 5 different role-playing games that happen to share a name for marketing purposes. Liking one doesn't imply anything about a different version, and there simply is no reason to say that you have to choose between them. Believe it or not, I know people who play both OD&D and 4E.

A generic answer to the OP's question is that anytime you are interested in a new rpg, sit in on a session or two of it before making a purchasing decision. I also think that there are some rpgs that you want to master and attempt to be the GM for, and others that you have more casual interest and just want to be a player. Therefore buying just the PHB first is appropriate. (As an aside, I finally decided I liked 3.0 enough to buy the DMG & MM a month before 3.5 came out. Grrr...)

horseboy
2009-02-16, 12:58 AM
This sort of mechanical diversity was at its peak in games like Shadowrun where basically every conceivable "class" had a chapter worth of mechanics to learn. This slowed down games a lot and made it less likely for casual players to try new classes; who wants to learn an entirely new game just to change classes? For me, this kind of "mechanical diversity" is not an asset to a game.The scary thing was, it was all the same rule, just permutated so you'd forget to apply this thing or the other and you'd be like, wait, crap, where's that chart. Combat and magic were close, but, yeah, having to do all that math to figure out the damage based on the relative speed of the rigger's drone vs the running razor guy multiplied by it's armour minus this-that-or-the-other, huge PitA.
If a concept would fit better with a different subsystem, then use one, deviating only enough from whatever norm the game uses such that the concept does what it's supposed to do. Difference for the sake of it just should not happen.That's what SR did. You didn't have to figure out the foot/pounds of force a 10mm APDS round would hit with, it hit with the same every time. A vehicle hitting someone else, however...

And I didn't even mention Cyberware v. Bioware! No, Shadowrun is an incredibly diverse game, but that was its problem. It was so darn complicated, and the modeling sometimes quite clunky, that people just ignored or houseruled around various bits of it.I was so upset they never put bioware in 2nd edition. I think that was a lot of the problem there, Shadowtech was a 1st edition book that never got updated.


14> Focus on core competencies. Players and GMs are perfectly capable of saying that the PC Dwarf makes the world's best Grog without having to mechanic it up -- often, mechanics around that kind of thing can get in the way as much as help.Defiantly agree with this, especially when you're given so few character resources as in 3.x.
5-Combat fun is mostly concentrated on the beginning of the encounter, and then quickly dies. Once the players and monsters have shot their encounter and daily powers, the players could as well go eat a snack since the rest of the battle is spamming the right at will power until your opponent drops. Once the players get the advantage, the monsters are doomed, but their bloody high HPs means the players will still need a lot of time to finish hacking them.We found that true in 3.x as well. That's why combat was usually called after they failed their save vs. Glitterdust.
Would you care to clarify how 3e (or any edition) is a good simulation? Not to single you out, but every time I see a comment like this all I can do is go :smallconfused: "bwuh?" I mean, what do HP simulate, unless everyone in your world is a crazy kung-fu movie master or has the magical ability to be stabbed repeatedly and not die?I would like to know this too, not to mention all the problems with the skill system, the equipment, the weapons and everything else brought up in non 4th vs. 3rd threads.

Is it worth getting? Meh, depends on what your group is playing.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-16, 03:55 AM
Would you care to clarify how 3e (or any edition) is a good simulation?
Oh, that's easy. 3E tries to be realistic. As a result, one part of it is realistic, another part of it is not, and a third part is highly impractical to play with as a result of its (attempted) realism.

4E tries to be playable. It puts gameplay first, and in particular it wants to avoid the third part mentioned above. As a result, pretty much all of it is playable, and whether or not any part of it is realistic is really not the issue.

A good example is the grapple rules. 3E's grapple rules try to be realistic. Whether or not they succeed at that is debatable, but more importantly, in trying to be realistic they have become rather hard to actually use in the game. 4E grapple rules take the opposite approach: they try to be playable, and succeed at that. In doing so, they sacrifice the realism, i.e. you can no longer pin people, or prevent them from attacking, casting, or speaking.

Which of the two is preferable is, of course, entirely to taste.

Satyr
2009-02-16, 04:50 AM
I had the impression that D&D, 4th edition, strongly focuses on one single gamestyle - and has therefore almost intolerbale drawbacks. It works really good with this one playing style, but it has the adpatability of a koala bear and it enforces you to either play this one, prescriptive style and does not only no support but actively sabotages alternative styles of palying.
I think this is not only a very patronizing form of roleplaying, but I am also not very fond of the particular style over substance playing style, that constantly require that your shut up your brain and play dumb, because it all falls apart when you think too much about it.

So, if you want to have a game, where character coolness is a giveaway instead of an award for hard work, blood and sweat,
critical thaught is shunned upon as soon as it comes in the way of pure entertainment,
and where versimilitude is handwaved away in favor of getting cool gimmicks,
this may be the game for you.

I found it to be intellectually understraining and restrictive, but you don't even need a Gm for the game, as long as you have enough random encounters...

Anakha
2009-02-16, 04:59 AM
Satyr, what is this one playstyle that you think 4E makes your play? I'd like to hear some elaboration on it.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-16, 05:06 AM
I had the impression that D&D, 4th edition, strongly focuses on one single gamestyle - and has therefore almost intolerbale drawbacks. It works really good with this one playing style, but it has the adpatability of a koala bear and it enforces you to either play this one, prescriptive style and does not only no support but actively sabotages alternative styles of palying.
I think this is not only a very patronizing form of roleplaying, but I am also not very fond of the particular style over substance playing style, that constantly require that your shut up your brain and play dumb, because it all falls apart when you think too much about it.

Yeah, no.

Personal experience again, but I've found DMs capable of running a standard D&D game (some dungeon crawling, some social intrigue, some zany antics) without any more difficulty (and, when I ran such games, far less) than in any other edition of D&D.

As far as I can see, the only thing 4E doesn't "support" is a game in which you focus more on baking bread than going on adventures - and even then, the system is more than flexible enough to allow you to homebrew up any number of crafting skills, if you really want them.

And "adaptability of a koala bear?" :smallconfused:

EDIT: So, out of curiosity, how did you arrive at your conclusion about 4E?

Satyr
2009-02-16, 05:07 AM
sorry, double post because the server didn't want to do the same thing I wanted.

Satyr
2009-02-16, 05:08 AM
It works well with the standardised kick-in-the-door-and-kill-everything-because-the label-says-it-is-evil style. Much emphasis fighting and killing things and take their stuff afterwards. Yes, that has always been the centre of D&D; no, it has never (as far as I know) be it to the same extend and exclusivity it has with the current edition.

Cainen
2009-02-16, 05:37 AM
Which of the two is preferable is, of course, entirely to taste.

But which it chose isn't, and which is far more likely to be the more popular RPG isn't. I guarantee you that there -is- someone out there that has been shafted with regards to gaming under realistic circumstances by 4E.


I wonder how many of these complaints are real things people wanted to play at the table, vs. how many are just people looking for things 4e can't do for their own sake. Were there really that many people who wanted to play pure healbot clerics back in the day?

As someone who enjoys playing pure healers, I'd have to say no. That doesn't mean I wasn't overlooked, however.


It's a negligible tweak to say that your cleric's attacks sap an enemy's will to fight, or that a feylock's "defeats" an enemy by turning it into a small, harmless animal.

Which is completely irrelevant as a response to the complaint, as it is a call for mechanics. It doesn't matter what the fluff is if it does not simply -feel- like what you intended to do.


The only difference is that 4e keeps you playing the same game everybody else is.

...which is problematic if you are not fond of any central aspect of 4E, as you have no way to escape it aside from not playing the game or asking the DM to overhaul it completely, neither of which are ideal.


1> Everyone helps defeat the opponents.

This has the issues associated with any teamwork-based game, so it's not necessarily optimal, let alone the best choice for heroic fantasy.


4> Damage per-hit is set up so that an average hit does about 1/4 of the average monster's max HP, assuming everyone is equal level.

Which, luckily, keeps strikers from being the most-valued class. On the other hand, it contributes to the meat grinder gameplay, which really isn't the best choice for heroic fantasy.


5> Hit chances are about 50% per action. This gives the widest area in which a +/- modifier has nice "smooth" effects.

Have you ever played without a Leader? This coupled with healing is why they're almost necessary to a consistent group, and even with them there's no such thing as a guarantee.

You really have no idea how many times this has bitten people in any 4E game I've been in.


11> Skills should be valuable. A skilled lockpicking character should be better than an equal-level spellcaster at unlocking locks. We want the world to use mules, and if magic is cheaper than a mule, nobody will use mules.

And they're certainly valuable, but does 4E's skill system really support what it claims to? For a very significant part of the game, skills are limited to your class unless you feel like nerfing your character or multiclassing. Guess what? That specific part of the game is over HALF of the time, level-wise, that I intend to stick around for in a 4E game.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-16, 05:46 AM
Have you ever played without a Leader? This coupled with healing is why they're almost necessary to a consistent group, and even with them there's no such thing as a guarantee.

You really have no idea how many times this has bitten people in any 4E game I've been in.

Have you played 3E without access to healing? It's very much the same thing.

It seems that you have a problem with 4E being a team-focused game rather than an individual-focused game.

There is a reason that you a party which features a Leader, Defender, and Striker functions much better than one with a missing role. Now, since there are 2 choices for Leader and Defender classes (and 3 for Strikers) I think this is not an unreasonable amount of coordination, particularly compared to 3E where to play without a Healer was fatal at low levels.

This is also the same reason that skills are limited to classes; to encourage people to find their own niche in a party. Not everyone needs to pick locks, not everyone needs to be able to detect magic, and not everyone needs to scale towers. This is not to say it isn't helpful to have 2 or 3 people with decent scores in these areas, but it is really not feasible for one person to fill all possible skill niches - which means everyone has to be good at something.

Some people would prefer to have a more individualized game; that's fine, 3E and many other systems (WoD, for one) support this kind of gameplay. But it is not automatically bad that 4E focuses more on teamwork than individual success.

Cainen
2009-02-16, 06:14 AM
Have you played 3E without access to healing? It's very much the same thing.

There's a very significant difference between not having a healer in 3.5, where you could get wands to replace them, and not having a Leader in 4E, which leaves you entirely at the mercy of the dice. As well, I never actually brought up 3E, and 3E isn't exactly 4E in any sense of the word, so it's not a relevant comparison and it certainly doesn't take away the issue of this being problematic in 4E.


It seems that you have a problem with 4E being a team-focused game rather than an individual-focused game.

Yes. I can not COUNT the amount of times I have been saddled with utterly incompetent teammates and ended up failing at something while there was nothing I could do about it. Unfortunately, 4E's usually ended up being the realistic choice if I want to play a game.


There is a reason that you a party which features a Leader, Defender, and Striker functions much better than one with a missing role.

Nope. Leaders are significantly more useful than any other role. Strikers can be replaced by a Fighter, who simultaneously fulfills both his role as a Defender and as a Striker. Defenders can be replaced by very careful management and switching of PC placement, assuming everyone's not a Wizard with Con as a dump stat. Alternatively, Controllers can simply keep the enemy from striking. Controllers are a matter of area of effect abilities - its stated role can be dealt with by playing mindgames with the DM, if you're so inclined. Leaders simply can't be replaced in that manner.


Fighters can do fine Now, since there are 2 choices for Leader and Defender classes (and 3 for Strikers)

How is this relevant?


I think this is not an unreasonable amount of coordination, particularly compared to 3E where to play without a Healer was fatal at low levels.

Stabilizing usually did the trick at first level unless crits were involved. Wands did it once you could afford one.


This is also the same reason that skills are limited to classes; to encourage people to find their own niche in a party. Not everyone needs to pick locks, not everyone needs to be able to detect magic, and not everyone needs to scale towers.

Which is problematic if people are designing characters based on what they want to play, not the party's needs. If someone needs a certain class's skills, the odds are that they're going to take the ones that complement them thematically. Class skill lists run counterclockwise to this idea.

Expecting someone to give up their fun when they're likely playing for their own fun is not a good idea. As well, there are roles people refuse to play, and it's foolish to expect every party to mesh together perfectly simply because of the reasons I stated. The mess of a multiclassing system the game has doesn't help in the least, and it certainly doesn't help at mid-Heroic.


This is not to say it isn't helpful to have 2 or 3 people with decent scores in these areas, but it is really not feasible for one person to fill all possible skill niches - which means everyone has to be good at something

Everyone being good at something doesn't nullify someone else's being good at everything, nor does one make the other impossible. There's nothing saying that a party's skill choices have to complement each other's, so they failed at doing that, too.


Some people would prefer to have a more individualized game; that's fine, 3E and many other systems (WoD, for one) support this kind of gameplay.

And yet 4E does not.


But it is not automatically bad that 4E focuses more on teamwork than individual success.

I never claimed otherwise. I did, however, claim that it was utterly unoptimal for my kind of game, and that's true no matter how you slice it.

AgentPaper
2009-02-16, 06:23 AM
Actually, 4E was designed so that you didn't specifically need a leader/healer class. You can replace the extra damage you would have dealt with another class attacking things. You probably won't be quite as effective, but it can be done. You can use potions for healing, or just be a bit more defensive to avoid dying, and resting a bit more often. Not having a leader isn't going to break your group, but it does help, same with any other role.

Still, I agree otherwise that if you like games focusing more on individual strength, 3.5 is better, and there are probably other systems even better than that.

Cainen
2009-02-16, 06:26 AM
Actually, 4E was designed so that you didn't specifically need a leader/healer class. You can replace the extra damage you would have dealt with another class attacking things.

Which has yet another 55% chance to hit. That won't make up for potentially four missed attacks that probably would've hit with bonuses to hit OR damage bonuses. It's a matter of healing and more consistency - you are at the mercy of the dice without a leader, period.

Fixer
2009-02-16, 07:48 AM
When 4e first came out, I decided to wait for the SRD to come out before buying it. However, on January the First the SRD turned out to be a list of page numbers. I want to know whether buying 4e is worth it or not.

I only own PHB, DMG, MM1, 2, and 4, and XPH.

Should I buy the 4e books?

Are they more balanced?
Are they more fun?
Are they different for RPing purposes?
Are they as mechanically diverse?

Thank you.
I am not going to finish reading all the other posts on this because they appear to be debating mechanics and D&D is not solely about mechanics.

You have purchased 6 books. This may or may not represent a significant investment in gaming for you. If it is a significant investment for you, I would suggest against investing in 4.0. 3.5 books should be getting less expensive, there is a limit to how many there are, and 4.0 books are likely to get more expensive and do not, at present, have a limit as to how many there will be.

Another thing you need to consider is your gaming group, or potential gaming groups. If they are/want to play 3.5, there is no reason to invest in 4.0 because you will be the only one playing it. If they are all playing 4.0 then it makes more sense to go that way.

Mechanics and power levels don't really matter. No game is perfectly balanced. Just figure out what others are playing, want to play, and figure out if that is what you want to play and invest in that. Ignore the debates over mechanics and have fun, as that is what the game is supposed to be about.

Lappy9000
2009-02-16, 08:11 AM
Have you played 3E without access to healing? It's very much the same thing.And playing with a lack of teh healz in 3.5 is eaiser than everyone seems to think.

To the OP:
I don't like the feel of it meself. Definitely read Yakk's opinion. He summed up 4e quite nicely, and in a manner that I probably wouldn't be able to due to my considerable bias on the issue. Try out 4e and see if you like it.

Satyr
2009-02-16, 08:36 AM
Stupid Doublepost above caused by server connectability - or lack thereof.



Personal experience again, but I've found DMs capable of running a standard D&D game (some dungeon crawling, some social intrigue, some zany antics) without any more difficulty (and, when I ran such games, far less) than in any other edition of D&D.

My personal experiences are the complete opposite of this, but as these are both completely subjective impressions that isn't helpful. So, let's just focus on what the game claims it works for - including the ridiculous statement That " it is entirely possible to play D&D without a Dungeon Master".

In comparison to older editions, characters in D&D4 have almost no abilities which are not related to either combat or adventuring. The individualisation of these characters is reduced to a very narrow collection of powers and skills, while everything unrelated to combat or adventuring has no significant influence on the gameplay, but is only colportage. For a character-focused gameplay based on the individual choices and character traits, this is a hindrance, which becomes especially obvious in the complete lack of weaknesses. In this setup, players aren't encouraged to play round characters, but flat and flawless ones.

The complete ignorance of the versimilitude level is another point of debate; the standard D&D 4th edition apporach is to handwave anything resembling a plausible structure as long as it looks cool or simplifies the gameplay. This may be favorable for players who agree with this style over substance approach, but it causes headaches to people who actually want to think about the events in the game. The replacement of the cause and effect chain through aesthetic preferences leaves the game in a state of permanent arbitrariness and makes it so much harder for the player to relate to the game world and campaign events; if the game style is focused on the immersion in the gaming world, this is, again a serious handicap, as the deeper interconnection between events is replaced through superficiality.



As far as I can see, the only thing 4E doesn't "support" is a game in which you focus more on baking bread than going on adventures - and even then, the system is more than flexible enough to allow you to homebrew up any number of crafting skills, if you really want them.

I really don't care about craft or similar skills; my complain is more about that characters in D&D 4 are completely focused on what you can, instead of what you are.


And "adaptability of a koala bear?"

It is an old comparison; there are games out there which are like cockroaches and will cover every niche for a game and fit in every gaming style - Gurps is the best example, for such a game. The other extreme are games with an extreme narrowminded approach which only fit into one, specific niche and are completely overstrained when taken outside of their biotopes. Like koalas.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-16, 09:36 AM
Actually, 4E was designed so that you didn't specifically need a leader/healer class.
I think the actual design was that it needs one of each role.

However, regardless of whether it was designed to work without a healer, I think it's pretty obvious that it doesn't work without a healer, unless party members are prepared to multiclass into a healer, carry a lot of potions, or die a lot.

Any dice-based combat system is going to be somewhat swingy; the PCs need healing to recover from the "bad" swings. Monsters are going to down a PC at some point; unless you have a healer around, this will take the rest of the group a touch-ranged, standard action that may fail in order to bring said character back up, with so few hit points that another blow will likely bring him down again.

Cainen
2009-02-16, 09:45 AM
Any dice-based combat system is going to be somewhat swingy

That's a massive simplification and you know it is. It's not the dice, it's the probability of success.

50-55% isn't reliable enough, especially when you're comparing to the succeed-on-2s before circumstance mods you'd see in the first round of a Shadowrun 3E fight. Though why you'd be getting into a fight in Shadowrun is situationally-based, it does illustrate the gulf between their design philosophies - 4E's design is a matter of succeeding in the first place, which can backfire TERRIBLY at the slightest provocation, and Shadowrun's design is a matter of placing your successes, which only really backfires on extreme odds or in the hands of a stupid player.

AgentPaper
2009-02-16, 11:16 AM
I've DM'ed for a group that started without any leader class, did fine, and later on had a warlord join them, and they did a bit better, but not amazingly so. Still, I don't want to bog this thread down with math and statistics so I'll just clarify my earlier point, that the game was designed to work without any single role. This is true, but the game was also designed so that having a balanced group of each role will perform better. Sure, replacing that cleric with a ranger might reduce your damage output significantly, but it's not going to make you useless. This is also true with 3.5, but less so, especially for healing. Recovering from wounds is much harder, since there is no healing surge mechanic. Sure, you could use a wand to shore that up, but you might not have access to wands, and it can run out.

Mando Knight
2009-02-16, 11:50 AM
3.5 books should be getting less expensive, there is a limit to how many there are, and 4.0 books are likely to get more expensive

...maybe. If demand is high for the 3.X books, then the price will grow, since the supply is fixed.

Also, I don't see any reason why 4E books should get much more expensive than they already are, even with the current economic situation of the US.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-16, 11:54 AM
that the game was designed to work without any single role. This is true, but the game was also designed so that having a balanced group of each role will perform better. Sure, replacing that cleric with a ranger might reduce your damage output significantly, but it's not going to make you useless.
That's an empty definition. In any roleplaying game, no group is ever "useless" or "unable to do anything". However, in order to defeat several level-appropriate encounters per day with a reasonable success rate (which is, you know, the point of D&D), you will need a healer. Note that omitting one of the other three roles makes much less of a difference.


This is also true with 3.5, but less so, especially for healing. Recovering from wounds is much harder, since there is no healing surge mechanic.
That has nothing to do with healing surges, at all. In 4E, you heal fast because the rules say that six hours of sleep removes all your wounds.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-16, 11:58 AM
4.0 books are likely to get more expensive
I assume that you mean that owning a complete set of 4E books is likely to get more expensive, because more books will be printed. I fail to see why the PHB would increase in price.


That's a massive simplification and you know it is. It's not the dice, it's the probability of success.
Obviously. Adding more dice makes the system less random; 1d20 is way more swingy than 3d6 or 6d10 or something like that. It is a design feature of D&D that the result of any individual roll is much more dependent on luck than in other RPGs. This works reasonably well in combat, less so outside combat (giving us such common artifacts as the orc brute beating the ancient sage on a knowledge check).

Lappy9000
2009-02-16, 12:08 PM
This is also true with 3.5, but less so, especially for healing. Recovering from wounds is much harder, since there is no healing surge mechanic. Sure, you could use a wand to shore that up, but you might not have access to wands, and it can run out.Personally, I liked that it was eaiser to die in 3.5. Now this may be just me (Here's the tag that I'm simply relating my own experiences and not making any assumptions about 4e as a whole) but my time while playing a 1st level wizard wasn't as harrowing as 3rd edition ("How do I have 26 hit points???"). Despite being grappled, out of healing surges, and being assaulted by some crazy construct of a challenge rating 2 levels higher than our party, I just wouldn't die :smalltongue:

I much more enjoyed the panic of running from that last kobold to preserve my 5 hit points 'cause I've used all my Burning Hands spells for the day. Battles are so much more intense when everyone's coming dangerously close to dying and the cleric's low on healz (of course, then the DM crits, and everyone's hosed....)

Edit:
I assume that you mean that owning a complete set of 4E books is likely to get more expensive, because more books will be printed.Yeah, there's that, too. One of my big turn-offs of 4e :smallfrown:

PHB makes it seem like you need to buy all the other books to get the full play experience (like primal, shadow, ki, psionic energies and the like). 'Least how I read it.

Awesomologist
2009-02-16, 12:24 PM
I am not going to finish reading all the other posts on this because they appear to be debating mechanics and D&D is not solely about mechanics.

You have purchased 6 books. This may or may not represent a significant investment in gaming for you. If it is a significant investment for you, I would suggest against investing in 4.0. 3.5 books should be getting less expensive, there is a limit to how many there are, and 4.0 books are likely to get more expensive and do not, at present, have a limit as to how many there will be.

Another thing you need to consider is your gaming group, or potential gaming groups. If they are/want to play 3.5, there is no reason to invest in 4.0 because you will be the only one playing it. If they are all playing 4.0 then it makes more sense to go that way.

Mechanics and power levels don't really matter. No game is perfectly balanced. Just figure out what others are playing, want to play, and figure out if that is what you want to play and invest in that. Ignore the debates over mechanics and have fun, as that is what the game is supposed to be about.

You sir, have posted with a sense of reason and understanding. There is no place for this on the internets!

Otherwise I agree with everything that Fixer mentioned above.

Knaight
2009-02-16, 12:27 PM
This works reasonably well in combat, less so outside combat (giving us such common artifacts as the orc brute beating the ancient sage on a knowledge check).

That said, this actually should be able to happen occasionally. It should be a rare fluke, but possible. Granted, in 4e there is probably only an 8-10 difference, in 3e its not necessarily much bigger, and in both cases it happens freakishly commonly. But it should be possible. It should just be more like fudge(which has 4d3-8 as its die mechanic, which is a lot less clunky than it sounds because of how its actually rolled, and it has a trait ladder with 9 levels on it, which everyone is rated all up and down on. The orc brute would be minimum-low on a knowledge skill(lets say poor, which is -2) and the ancient sage would be superb or legendary(+3, +4).) where the odds of it happening are well under one in a hundred, if the dice get pulled out at all, which in most cases they won't for the sage.

On another note, I kind of liked the lethality in 3e. I wasn't a huge fan of save or dies, but in general if you play like an idiot and manage to get surrounded, your going down at a reasonable pace, as opposed to in 4e where you will be fine for a round or two, giving your friends time to bail you out. Although the lack of wound penalties is kind of sad, and I'm not a hit point fan, preferring the fudge wound track, or the Mutants and Masterminds style injury system.

its_all_ogre
2009-02-16, 03:32 PM
i do not agree that you need a healer, but it does make it easier. if you have more striker and defender roles you can kill enemies so much faster that it is less of an issue.

3 fighters and 3 rogues working well in tandem would be slaughtering monsters really fast ( except solo's maybe?) and be taking very little damage as a result. fighter moves in and hits monster, rogue moves in and sneak attacks it. possibly killing it. wash rinse and repeat.
(my group does this with our rogue, ranger, twf ranger, fighter, warlord, wizard)
although we have a warlord i have never used both inspiring words and rarely actually use one now that we've got our tactics sorted.

finally why does int being a dump stat matter?
historically cha was the dump stat, 3.5 also had this issue.
i can only assume people with lots of pc's with int 8 are not roleplaying their characters as the mentally deficient specimens they should be.

who would hire a bunch of int 8 adventurers? i mean they can't talk properly, they dribble everywhere and they can't count properly once they run out of collective fingers?!

Myatar_Panwar
2009-02-16, 03:59 PM
See, my experience is that it's right around there that your experience will start ending. The problem is that monsters and casters start getting stronger spells, making it easy to simply remove a fighter (or whatever) from combat straight away. You might even find it difficult to land enough hits to feel like you're contributing to battle effectively.

In the session after you posted this, I was insta-killed by some creature at the very start of the session. I didn't even see it, I just walked out and BAM. Dead. Luckily the party was able to resurrect me, but it seems that your theory is already starting to prove itself.

Anakha
2009-02-16, 04:05 PM
How odd? A game where you play Adventurers, and all of your abilities have to do with combat and Adventuring? What a foreign concept. I though Dungeons and Dragons was all about how to paint your dungeon for under 50 bucks, and bake souffles for dragons.

tyckspoon
2009-02-16, 04:16 PM
i can only assume people with lots of pc's with int 8 are not roleplaying their characters as the mentally deficient specimens they should be.

who would hire a bunch of int 8 adventurers? i mean they can't talk properly, they dribble everywhere and they can't count properly once they run out of collective fingers?!

Either you're intending to be non-serious without using the appropriate markers, or it's time to remind people that Int 8 is not idiocy. It's only one step below average. An Int 8 being is perfectly capable of learning advanced things, understanding difficult concepts, and otherwise taking on the trappings of stereotypically Smart People- it's just harder for them, as mechanically represented by less skill points/trained skill choices and penalties on Int-related stuff.

AgentPaper
2009-02-16, 04:19 PM
I agree that 4E is better for kick-in-the-door style gaming than 3.5 is. However, that does not mean that the game is worse for any other style of play. There are many styles of play that don't work as well in 4th edition, but there are also many styles that work better in 4th. If you don't have much combat in your game, then most of 4E's strong points will likely be lost, so playing 3.5 might be more attractive. If you have at least a moderate amount of fighting, then 4E starts to shine more, and many of 3.5's failings start to show.

More combat doesn't mean more mindless, but if you're running a game on nobles, plots, and intrigue, then you don't really care about what makes 4E fun, and 3.5 works well to tell you what that wizard can do, how those guards fare against the goblins you tricked into attacking, and so on and so on. If you value party balance and tactics, and want to run a more "traditional" DnD campaign, 4E is probably better. If your game has less focus on fighting, or you want the wizard to out-shine the fighter, or just can't get enough of the crazy optimizations you can pull off, 3.5 is probably better.

Edit: The above is a good point. Basically, every 2 points you can become better at a certain field. Of course, the whole skill system breaks down really fast when you realize that being smarter makes you a better athlete than, you know, being strong and fit.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-16, 04:40 PM
My personal experiences are the complete opposite of this, but as these are both completely subjective impressions that isn't helpful. So, let's just focus on what the game claims it works for - including the ridiculous statement That " it is entirely possible to play D&D without a Dungeon Master".

I'm sorry to hear that. It's no fun to suffer through a bad campaign. Still, I don't think this is a fault of the system; could you describe this session? Particularly with attention to features of 4E that caused it to fail?

I'll post a summary of the campaign I'm running; It's the 4E game that I've been in the longest.

The World
A homebrewed one, centered around a largely-human empire that has been broken up after its army was destroyed in a conflict with a army of enslaved Dragonborn, serving an alliance of dragons.

It is important to know that Tieflings are refugees from an even more ancient nation which was smashed by its own gnoll slaves. They brought Infernal Studies (disguised as "mysteries") to the then-ailing human empire; they were instrumental in its revitalization
and currently fill an uneasy niche among the humans. Also, a formerly prominent human religion (Elshara the Witchhunter) has been relegated to fringe position because of their virulent hatred/distrust of Tieflings.

The Characters

Bastianne, Half-Elven Paladin of Destine
Destine is a mysterious divinity (androgynous!) of the elves/eladrin associated with manipulating fate. She has been traveling as an adventurer for undisclosed reasons, disguised as a paladin of Vechsel (a human deity of secrets and prophecy).

Wrothgar, Human Warlord
A sergeant in the empire's Grand Army before it was destroyed by the backlash from a mystic superweapon deployed by the empire to assassinate the Dragon Lords. He fled during the confusion for the safety of the Deepholds - dwarven settlements - before making his way across the mountains to the relative safety of the Grand Duchy of Grunplatz. He is currently serving as a mercenary, to make enough money to survive.

Vanka, Tiefling Infernal Warlock
The spoiled son of a wealthy Tiefling merchant family, he was inducted into The Mysteries (Infernal Pact) by his father, who was a great scholar. By the time he turned 18, he decided that his family was too restrictive, so he went off to find his own way in the world.

Their Adventures
The PCs met up in a trading fortress in the southern Grunplatz where they heard about a border town (Woodshome) offering a 500 gold reward for the capture or death of a hobgoblin named "Redskull" who has been raiding farms by the town.

Adventure I
On their way to town, they find a farm as it is being raided, and intervene, driving off the goblins. They are met by the Captain of the "Lord" Reeve's personal guard who gives a little more information, and lets them know that the reward has been doubled. The PCs chase the goblins into a vast, and mystical, forest known as The Spiderhaunt. After a lengthy pursuit, they find the goblins' hideout and defeat them; capturing a surrendering goblin and a map of the forest - with many odd marks. Upon investigating the hideout further, they discover a hidden door which conceals a short underground passageway, expertly made, that ends at a vast runed door.

The goblins had apparently been taking notes about this door, to be passed back to Redskull, and the PCs are dismayed to discover that the door is Arcane Locked. They are also confused, because the door is covered with Infernal Runes (the language of the Tiefling Empire... and devils) which are written in some kind of code. There is also a mural depicting bound demons, chained humans, and robed tieflings; since the Tiefling Empire is on the other end of the continent, this is most confusing. A very good History Check by Wrothgar revealed a lot of backstory about the Tiefling Empire - much the the chagrin of the actual Tiefling. Of course, the Tiefling Empire fell over 100 years ago, and Vanka never cared much for history :smalltongue:

Unable to break through the door, the PCs left with their goblin captive (who escaped in the night) and proceeded to Woodshome proper.

Adventure II
The PCs arrived at Woodshome, and discovered that the Lord Reeve had instituted an "adventurer's tax" of 1 GP apiece, to pay for "trouble" that adventurers may cause. In the process of checking in, Bastianne charms the Lieutenant on duty - and frequently comes back to him as a liason with the Watch. Most amusing; I think he's going to ask her out soon.

A quick investigation of town reveals that a retired wizard ("Baldy" Baldwin) does sell Scrolls of Knock, but the PCs cannot afford one yet. Vanka, being Ritually Trained, offers to work for him to pay for the Scroll; since scroll-making takes so long, he agrees. After Vanka knocks off for the night, he decides he needs some entertainment, and locates a local "cat house." After lengthy negotiations with a so-called "Lady of Vechsel" he settles on a price for the night (thanks to very good Diplomacy checks, just for the price of the room... and for all of the other overpriced drinks he bought for her already). He stays for the night.

In the middle of the night, Vanka awakens to some commotion outside his room. Disturbed to discover that his "companion" is missing, he looks out and sees five burly men standing over a male corpse and carrying off a Vanka's companion. Despite being outnumbered and naked he tries to stop them, and jumps out the window when things went really bad.

The PCs haul Vanka out of jail the next day (the Watch picked him up in the alley where he dropped unconscious from the fall) to find Vanka raving about a kidnapping. Since nobody had reported it, everyone ignored Vanka. Later in the day, the PCs are approached for a job; apparently news of their heroics the day before had spread. It turns out that the daughter (Karli) of a wealthy tanner had vanished from her room (in the family house) overnight, and a ransom note had turned up around noon. Unable to pay the outrageous ransom demanded, the patriarch sent his son out to hire the PCs to rescue his daughter for 200 GP; the PCs can keep whatever they don't spend on the ransom - which was 1000 GP.

Funnily enough, the description of the daughter is exactly the same as the woman Vanka slept with the night before. Huh. :smallwink:

After sleuthing about, it is revealed that the security team of the "cat house" had kidnapped the disguised Karli - obviously having found out her secret - and killed a meddlesome adventurer before fleeing. The owner of the "cat house" was doing his best to cover it up (it sure looks bad for him!) and the security team was hiding out in the slums (a shanty-town build around the Tannery) under the protection of a minor crime lord. The PCs ultimately found their hideout and, after a pitched battle, were knocked out after killing two bandits and knocking out Leroy (the boss of the security team). Fortunately, the PCs had recruited a couple of the crime lord's cowardly minions after slaughtering his bodyguard, and they were able to spook the remaining security team members by pretending the Watch was coming.

After richly paying off the minions, the PCs recover Karli and begin escorting her home. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that Karli's dad is a respected member of the local Elsharan community, and so while Karli is smitten with Vanka, they can never truly be.

Vanka gets over it really quickly.

The next day, the PCs do some shopping, and begin to learn more about the town. Vanka, rather than going back to work for Baldly, wastes the whole day hanging out with their friendly innkeeper. In the evening, Baldy turns up and reveals that his assistant, a boy (Hedwig) who gathers ritual reagents from the Spiderhaunt Woods for him, hadn't come back from his foraging this morning. He hires the PCs in exchange for a Scroll of Knock, and they go to investigate the caves where Hedwig was supposed to be.

Adventure III
The caves turn out to be infested with goblins; goblin signposts are everywhere, making a path deep underground. Ultimately, the PCs stumble into a series of ruins that appeared to have been submerged by volcanic action at some point. The ruins have magic glow globes lighting some parts, and have been thoroughly looted by someone. After finding a secret door, the PCs find a completely intact trapped vault area, where a company of goblins are working on opening an Arcane Locked door like they found in Adventure I; they have also kidnapped Hedwig.

A vicious battle ends when the Goblin Hexer and a few remaining goblins flee the ruins. Hedwig is ultimately revealed to have been sent down here with a Scroll of Knock by Baldy to recover some book that he had learned was here. The Scroll was taken by the goblins, so the PCs had no choice but to go back to Woodshome. Once there, it is revealed that Baldy has been investigating these weird ruins which are scattered throughout the Spiderhaunt and trying to figure out who made them.

The PCs take their scroll, blow the check, and come back for another. Baldy agrees, if they take Hedwig along (to cast the scroll) and recover the book for him. The PCs agree, and after uncovering a false wall behind an apparent "vault" uncover the tomb of a High Priest of Orcus who reigned for over a hundred years in the kingdom of "Llonagoth" - which nobody has ever heard of. The PCs return the book to Baldy and, upon discovering that the book is written in an archaic form of Infernal, Vanka offers to help translate for gold.

OK, that's about a third of the campaign so far. I'll post the rest later, if you think this campaign is still just a "kick down the door" campaign. Believe you me, I haven't needed to do a whit of homebrewing in terms of the rules to make this work, and work extremely well.

Coming up: the PCs disturb an ancient evil, bully an old woman, and kick ass with the Elsharans. :smallsmile:

DM Raven
2009-02-16, 05:18 PM
Should I buy the 4e books?



Here we go again...I'm not even going to bother surfing this flame wave.

MY OPINION:

4th is a better game system overall. You do just as much in fourth as you can in third except the game rules have more balance and don't promote min-maxing as much. That said, both editions have stupid rules that can/should be nerfed or taken out by the DM.

The magic system in 4th edition is a bit shallow compared to what it was in third edition.

The alignment system is too watered down in 4th.

4th edition makes it fun to play a melee classes, it offers more variety and tactical play during battles.

The economic system is bad in both editions...oh well...

Magical items are more balanced and can do more interesting things in 4th edition.

Building characters takes more work in 4th edition...though you don't get as much of a boost to your badass meter when you theorycraft.

I would recommend 4th as the better system. It made me actually want to play a melee class again. It does feel more gamey, however you learn to role-play with the gamey as you use it more and it works out to more fun during battles.

lesser_minion
2009-02-16, 05:46 PM
How odd? A game where you play Adventurers, and all of your abilities have to do with combat and Adventuring? What a foreign concept. I though Dungeons and Dragons was all about how to paint your dungeon for under 50 bucks, and bake souffles for dragons.

Would you like to rephrase that?

At the moment, you have done nothing more than caricature one play style to which 3.x lends itself in an attempt to imply that 3.x is in some way 'ridiculous', or that the arguments in favour of 3.x are ridiculous. And the implication that 3.x is about baking souffles is wrong.

3.x is a roleplaying game. It is about crafting the character you want to play. It isn't a perfect system for telling a story, but the idea is to take a few compelling, well-rounded characters, and cast them as the protagonists in a story. A good character build is one that models your character concept accurately. The system notoriously breaks down if that concept is "I Want To Be Invincible MUAH HA HA HA!".

At points, 3.x can feel like there is too much emphasis on the DM to preserve balance in his game, as the only balancing factor seems to be that the game will not be fun if everyone pulls out every exploit they can think of. However, it is a co-operative game. All of the players should be concentrating on having fun. As long as each player remembers that they shouldn't be overshadowing the other players, this isn't somehow impossible to achieve. As far as I can tell, that is the play style for which 3e is intended.

My problem with 4e being the successor to 3e is that they looked at 3.x, noticed the flaws and instead of fixing them they kicked a massive portion of the game to the kerb. It looks quite good as a game in its own right, but it does lose a massive amount of the flexibility of 3e. 3e was a system - a whole pile of tools you can use to make your game. 4e seems to just be the game.

eepop
2009-02-16, 05:46 PM
Building characters takes more work in 4th edition...

I would agree that making a 1st level character in 4E takes longer than the average 1st level character in 3.5E.

But I would disagree after that. Whereas the difficulty in making higher than first level characters in 3.5E is pretty much exponential, 4E is very linear.

And beyond that, leveling up is generally much easier in 4E than 3.5E.


So while you told the truth there, it is a little misleading.

Knaight
2009-02-16, 06:10 PM
Here we go again...I'm not even going to bother surfing this flame wave.

MY OPINION:

4th is a better game system overall. You do just as much in fourth as you can in third except the game rules have more balance and don't promote min-maxing as much. That said, both editions have stupid rules that can/should be nerfed or taken out by the DM.

1. The magic system in 4th edition is a bit shallow compared to what it was in third edition.

2. The alignment system is too watered down in 4th.

3. 4th edition makes it fun to play a melee classes, it offers more variety and tactical play during battles.

4. The economic system is bad in both editions...oh well...

5. Magical items are more balanced and can do more interesting things in 4th edition.

6. Building characters takes more work in 4th edition...though you don't get as much of a boost to your badass meter when you theorycraft.

I would recommend 4th as the better system. It made me actually want to play a melee class again. It does feel more gamey, however you learn to role-play with the gamey as you use it more and it works out to more fun during battles.
1. The magic system is not "a bit shallow". It is a torn down mess of what it used to be, far less powerful, and far less versatile. Its the difference between a puddle and a swimming pool. Which is a pity, because there are much better ways that the magic system could have been handled (starting with making it a little more risky to throw spells around casually)

2. Yes, the alignment system is watered down. It probably should have just been tossed at the point 4e left it at, it went from a useless tool with way too much game effect to a useless tool that doesn't even make as much sense anymore.

3. At the expense of being able to do some stuff whenever wanted. 3e did have lousy melee combat though, up until tome of battle came out.

4. And 1e, 2e, etc.

5. More balanced yes, interesting things no. Sure there are some cool items, but 3e had stuff like the decanter of endless water, the apparatus of kwalish, the eversmoking bottle, etc. Weapon abilities became more interesting, but wonderous items got pretty badly maimed. Not that people don't just make these up at the drop of a hat anyways.

6. At first level yes, but once you get into high levels 3e casters take way, way more work than a fourth edition character ever will.

Asbestos
2009-02-16, 06:24 PM
5. More balanced yes, interesting things no. Sure there are some cool items, but 3e had stuff like the decanter of endless water, the apparatus of kwalish, the eversmoking bottle, etc. Weapon abilities became more interesting, but wonderous items got pretty badly maimed. Not that people don't just make these up at the drop of a hat anyways.

They keep getting added back in, for instance the AoK is in the AV.

Mando Knight
2009-02-16, 06:30 PM
I would agree that making a 1st level character in 4E takes longer than the average 1st level character in 3.5E.

And then WotC made it easier with the trial version of the 4E Character Builder (http://www.wizards.com/download.asp?filename=700_DDI_CB.exe)... (link is to the download of the trial version...)

AgentPaper
2009-02-16, 06:48 PM
1. The magic system is not "a bit shallow". It is a torn down mess of what it used to be, far less powerful, and far less versatile. Its the difference between a puddle and a swimming pool. Which is a pity, because there are much better ways that the magic system could have been handled (starting with making it a little more risky to throw spells around casually)

*snip*

5. More balanced yes, interesting things no. Sure there are some cool items, but 3e had stuff like the decanter of endless water, the apparatus of kwalish, the eversmoking bottle, etc. Weapon abilities became more interesting, but wonderous items got pretty badly maimed. Not that people don't just make these up at the drop of a hat anyways.

*snip*

Opinion, same as the poster you quoted. I wish you would at least say that this is your opinion, and not declare it as if it were fact, which is misleading. That said, I'll give my opinion on the matter:

While my first reaction to the changes to wizards was similar to yours, I've since realized that while you aren't as powerful, the wizard class has actually improved, as you actually need to use tactics and thought, instead of just throwing out a save-or-suck and then proceeding to sip some tea while your fighter goes and gets his clothes bloody. Of course, many DMs will design campaigns and fights specifically to challenge the wizard, but that's a seperate issue.

Wizards are still the most complicated class when it comes to powers, and they do treat their major spells, their daily "powers", differently from most, since they can switch between them day-to-day depending on what they think they might fight. Not as tedious as planning out an entire spell list, but easily just as important. Rituals also make for an interesting class feature, as while anyone can do them, they won't unless there isn't a wizard in the party, since he gets it for free and does it better.

Magic items is again opinion. While some of the more unique wonderous items are no longer present, this isn't to say they won't work in the system with just the tiniest bit of homebrewing, and many are being added anyways if you're not willing to go that far. Everything else, however, has improved immensely. In 3.5, you could choose between a dozen or so enhancements to stick on your weapon that would do something that was pretty nifty. However, they quickly lost their uniqueness as you realized that only a few of them were any good, and kept using the same over and over. In 4E, all of those enhancements still exist, but there's also at least a few times as many new ones, not even counting the torrent of cool and interesting weapons in the adventurers vault.

Of course that's mostly my opinion, but the fact remains: There are less options for the wizard in 4E as compared to 3.5, but by no means do they have no options. There is more variety in magic items in 4E, at least comparing core books to core. Even non-core, the adventurer's vault has such a large number that it at least is comparable to 3.5, if not equal. Most of those items are re-makes of items from 3.5, too, so it's drawing from a large list of very unique items in the first place.

Anakha
2009-02-16, 07:04 PM
Would you like to rephrase that?

At the moment, you have done nothing more than caricature one play style to which 3.x lends itself in an attempt to imply that 3.x is in some way 'ridiculous', or that the arguments in favour of 3.x are ridiculous. And the implication that 3.x is about baking souffles is wrong.

3.x is a roleplaying game. It is about crafting the character you want to play. It isn't a perfect system for telling a story, but the idea is to take a few compelling, well-rounded characters, and cast them as the protagonists in a story. A good character build is one that models your character concept accurately. The system notoriously breaks down if that concept is "I Want To Be Invincible MUAH HA HA HA!".

At points, 3.x can feel like there is too much emphasis on the DM to preserve balance in his game, as the only balancing factor seems to be that the game will not be fun if everyone pulls out every exploit they can think of. However, it is a co-operative game. All of the players should be concentrating on having fun. As long as each player remembers that they shouldn't be overshadowing the other players, this isn't somehow impossible to achieve. As far as I can tell, that is the play style for which 3e is intended.

My problem with 4e being the successor to 3e is that they looked at 3.x, noticed the flaws and instead of fixing them they kicked a massive portion of the game to the kerb. It looks quite good as a game in its own right, but it does lose a massive amount of the flexibility of 3e. 3e was a system - a whole pile of tools you can use to make your game. 4e seems to just be the game.

Because its a role playing game about adventurers. I was refering to certain posts that claimed that the game is all about combat and adventuring, and whined that all of the powers were combat and adventuring based. If you want your adventurer to have previously been a blacksmith, write it into your backstory. You don't need a useless skill to show your backstory, which we had in 3E. If you want a system that is more about political stuff, i might recommend Dark Heresy, or use GURPS and HEROES or one of the generic systems.

Dungeons and Dragons has always been about the dungeon crawl combat experience. For those of you who've never picked up and read 1E, everything was mostly combat. It has, and will always be, a dungeon crawl game. 3E tried to change that by adding ways to do urban, politico style adventures. But 3.x doesn't lend itself to dungeon crawl, it can be dungeon crawl, and was partially designed around dungeon crawl.

As for the DM attempting to preserve balance, 4E is better for that. Since every class works the same, there is no Batmen-wizards. There is a reason to play a melee class past 10. The DM isn't forced to design encounters so that the Fighter(Who would be doing mostly fighting, and very little non-combat) isn't just a meatshield for the wizard.

A lot of the flaws in 3.x couldn't be fixed easily. Sometimes its better to throw out something than attempt to fix it to placate a small few. Your options are limited because i can't even fill a shelf with 4E books, whereas i could fill a bookcase with 3.5 books. Its a game, Dungeons and Dragons isn't a toolset. It seems like you expect DnD to be GURPS. Its not, it never will be. 3.x was not a system to base a game around, it was a game. I mean, most systems don't seem to have classes, or established skills.

As for the OP, go into 4E with an open mind. Sit in a few sessions and see if you enjoy it. All I heard about 4E before it came out made me hate it. Then 2 of my friends sat down, and we tried some demo encounters out, and i found combat to be more enjoyable, and my other friend enjoys being able to play a Fighter that will be useful at lvl 10, or a wizard that isn't done in 2 fights.

mcv
2009-02-16, 07:15 PM
D&D has always been very gamist. It's always been about working together to overcome obstacles (and usually those obstacles are monsters in need of killing). AD&D2 and D&D3.x strayed a bit from that path towards simulationism, but didn't even get halfway there, and ended up sort of weird hybrids. D&D4 seems to me like an unapologetic return to pure gamism, and is in that respect more pure and more balanced than any previous edition of D&D.

I'm not a big fan of that kind of play, however. It's too limited, too restrictive, and its disregard for realism and credible character builds rubs me personally the wrong way. To me, D&D4 looks and feels like a skirmish wargame. A very fun and exciting skirmish wargame, with excellent support for long skirmishing campaigns, and room for growth, development and customisation for the characters, but it doesn't push my RPG button.

Then again, if you don't want gamism, you shouldn't be playing D&D at all. Even D&D3.5, with all its many options and possibilities, is still too restrictive for me. It has a lot more freedom, but not enough for me, and the freedom comes at a hefty price: it's completely unbalanced.

So for a real RPG campaign, I'd personally prefer D&D3.5 over D&D4 by a wide margin, but there are a lot of other systems I prefer over D&D3.5. D&D4 probably gives a more pure, focused and balanced play experience, but it's just not what I'm looking for in a RPG.

If you love 3.5 but want a newer, more balanced version of it, have a look at the Pathfinder system instead. That might be more to your liking than D&D4.

Yukitsu
2009-02-16, 07:55 PM
It's not really worth getting unless you really don't like 3.5, 3.0 or whatever edition you happen to have the books for. (Hint, the core 3.5 rules are public access.) Basically, you can have a good game with either system, and it really comes down to the question of whether or not you're willing to shell out a couple hundred for a few books of rules, or if you wouldn't mind sticking with a system that works, but isn't supported anymore.

Me personally, I found 4.0 similar to playing chess against a somewhat dim person who happened to give me the handicap of taking away all his pawns and both his rooks. It's easy, and if the story is well written the ironically emphasized combat doesn't eat up as much time as 3.5 combat. On the other hand, asking constant questions of the DM as to what we can or cannot do out of combat, as opposed to providing a splat and page reference can also get tedious. I also prefer the higher rate of player fatalities in 3.5 personally, though either can be tuned towards any other style of game with the effort.

lesser_minion
2009-02-16, 08:19 PM
I'm fully in agreement that D&D is a roleplaying game about adventurers, but it does not have to be about combat. Or even Dungeons or Dragons. The game has been around for over thirty years, and there is nothing wrong with wanting a break from dungeons. 3.X gives half a chance of that - half a chance of being as well-rounded a combat role-playing game as, say WFRP. There is nothing wrong with versatility.

As I said, 3.x is a toolkit. You can streamline it to create a deep-immersion game. Or you could throw out all of the skills and go pure hack-and-slash. The default, according to the DMG, is be somewhere in between. Which is why characters have access to skills like Craft and Profession. You can use almost any kind of style you want to portray your group of adventurers. And the mechanics will be genuinely different when you do. You haven't actually said anything to justify your point, all you've done is tried to direct me to about six alternatives to D&D.

The picture you presented of a game where melee classes are worthless past level ten and skills like craft and profession are useless is a generalised, innacurate and unfair view of the game. Those skills can and should see use, depending on your DM.

Would you care to provide examples of the flaws that couldn't be fixed easily? As far as I can see, every flawed or broken concept that 4e leaves by the wayside instead of fixing was a wasted opportunity to make the game better.

I would dispute the claim that 4e only has fewer options than 3e because it has fewer books out - core 3.X is less restricting than 4e ever will be. Why? Because it encourages players to actually play their own game. If I don't like a rule, I can change it. Do the same in 4e, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

Aron Times
2009-02-16, 08:37 PM
The thing to consider here is that although 3.5 had far more options than 4E, most of them were traps. Fighter 20 is a trap. Spellcaster multiclassing is a trap.

There are very few trap options in 4E. Most options are viable, and you would have to go out of your way to gimp your character in order to fall into a trap build.

3.5 had a lot more options than 4E, but 4E provides a lot more freedom than 3.5.

Optimystik
2009-02-16, 08:51 PM
I thumbed through the 4e PHB a while ago, and I was impressed. Quite a lot has been pared down from 3.5, but the little I did see seems to be both extremely accessible to new players and much, much easier to convert to a CRPG, both of which are more important to me than poring over supplement after supplement for character options in 3.5.

They've also neatly skewered the problem of MAD classes by letting you boost 2 ability scores as you progress instead of one. In other words, they're free to make just about every class MAD without watering them down. Paragon Paths seem like a very functional replacement for PrCs also.

I'm cautiously... well, optimistic. :smallsmile:

THAC0
2009-02-16, 09:00 PM
MY OPINIONS

Before I begin, I have played 1st, 2nd, 3.5, and 4th edition. Prior to the release of 4th edition, my favorite edition - without a doubt - was 1st.

I am playing in a 4th edition campaign that has run from level 1 to 13, currently.

I have played a wizard (controller) and warlock (striker) as my main characters. I have also run briefly/created clerics and paladins.

Overall, I definitely prefer 4e to 3.5. I slightly prefer it to 1e, largely due to the magic system.

I enjoy the balance of the classes (I do have some few issues with this, but nothing is perfect). I like the simplified skill system. Heroic tier was quite enjoyable to play, and seemed quite balanced.

The issues I have seen are as follows:

Math. I cannot imagine playing this game, especially at higher levels, without a computer. There's too much adding of two digit numbers to make things quick.

Defense balance. Especially once you hit paragon tier, your defenses suck compared to a monster's to-hit. In early paragon, the average monster will need a three or so to hit your lowest defense.

DM-side. I've not DMed this, but my friends who have are increasingly less than pleased with the monsters. In general, their complaint is that there are too many options to keep track of, without an inordinate amount of time spent. And they find that if you don't keep track of them when planning encounters, you'll wind up with something really wonky, like AoE stun spam against your party's weakest defense.

ETA: The skill challenge system (NOT the skill system) is also so broken we've just thrown it out.

That said, those issues are not quite enough to have us switch back to 1e. We really enjoy the new magic/power system and class balance too much.

Limos
2009-02-16, 09:11 PM
I really am enjoying 4e. I am DMing a PBP game in this very forum which is going quite well. We've only been in two encounters so far, both were over relatively quickly (2-3 rounds) but we got a lot of cool stuff going on during the fight.

Most of our time has been taken up doing impromptu skill challenges, whether it's Intimidating the farmers, finding the goblin lair, or trying to bluff travelers into thinking you are prisoners while your Doppleganger wizard poses as the Slaver.

They just had an encounter with some stereotypical adventurers and really latched on to the campaign setting's racial tensions. I had the Human Halberdier make one comment about taking the Kobold Paladin as a trophy and after killing him our Warlord plucked out his eyes for his own trophy.

Our Paladin confronted the Goblin sentries directly, when he was supposed to get a surprise round, and got a natural 20 on the Intimidate check.

Really we've spent most of our time doing Roleplay and skill challenges, and very little time fighting in comparison.

I never played a 3.5 game that managed not to dissolve into metagaming the second we entered combat.

TheEmerged
2009-02-16, 09:12 PM
MY OPINIONS

<snip>
ETA: The skill challenge system (NOT the skill system) is also so broken we've just thrown it out.

Make sure you've checked the errata. It's still not 100% but it's less "3.0 Psychic Combat" now than "hey, this vase as a chip on the rim" :smallwink:

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-16, 09:27 PM
Math. I cannot imagine playing this game, especially at higher levels, without a computer. There's too much adding of two digit numbers to make things quick.

Could you give an example? I can understand some trouble when adding up 3[W] + Sneak Attack damage, but here's the shortcut I use:
Pre-calculate Crit Damage for x[W] attacks. Or at least 1[W] crit damage. Particularly for Rogues, this can help limit the number of modifiers and such you need to add before rolling for extra crit damage.

Example:
A Vicious Greataxe +3 with Brute Strike, STR 18
Pre-calculate 1[W]+STR; 12+3+4 = 19
Now it's just 19 + 12 + 12 +4d12, or 43+4d12.

If that's still too hard, keep a calculator by you or a pad of paper.


DM-side. I've not DMed this, but my friends who have are increasingly less than pleased with the monsters. In general, their complaint is that there are too many options to keep track of, without an inordinate amount of time spent. And they find that if you don't keep track of them when planning encounters, you'll wind up with something really wonky, like AoE stun spam against your party's weakest defense.

This surprised me. Few monsters have more than 4-5 powers total, and most have far fewer than this. Unless your friends are making ridiculously diverse monster groups (4-5 different monster types) it should be fairly easy to just flip to the page of the MM where the entry rests, glance at it, and then act.

Do your friends plan encounters in advance? That is generally the right way to do it in any edition; otherwise the chance of random TPK can be large.


ETA: The skill challenge system (NOT the skill system) is also so broken we've just thrown it out.

Don't give up on it yet. I've found it to be helpful for long-distance pursuit challenges and social challenges; a lot of it is in the design.

Example
Long Pursuit Challenge
(1) Determine enemy speed

(2) Ask party whether they want to keep together, or split up

(A) If they keep together, take the lowest Endurance Bonus in the party, and find the highest speed everyone can move at.

(B) If they split up, have everyone roll Endurance separately. Anyone who fails the challenge is left behind.

(3) Moderate DC Base, modified as follows:
+5 DC if Speed 4 less than Enemies
+2 DC if Speed 2 less than Enemies
+0 DC if Speed is within 1 of Enemies
-2 DC if Speed is 2 more than Enemies
+5 DC if Speed is 4 more than Enemies

SUCCESS: The PCs overtake the Enemies; the enemies getting too tired to keep up their pace.

FAILURE: The PCs tire out first; they may try again if they all spend 1 Healing Surge for 0 HP.

It's more art than science, but it can be used. I'd recommend playing with Skill Challenges some more.

THAC0
2009-02-16, 09:47 PM
Could you give an example? I can understand some trouble when adding up 3[W] + Sneak Attack damage, but here's the shortcut I use:
Pre-calculate Crit Damage for x[W] attacks. Or at least 1[W] crit damage. Particularly for Rogues, this can help limit the number of modifiers and such you need to add before rolling for extra crit damage.

Example:
A Vicious Greataxe +3 with Brute Strike, STR 18
Pre-calculate 1[W]+STR; 12+3+4 = 19
Now it's just 19 + 12 + 12 +4d12, or 43+4d12.

If that's still too hard, keep a calculator by you or a pad of paper.

I find that any math involving multiple double digit numbers slows things down considerably. I mean sure, I could do the mental math. But some people would take forever. Especially when you've got a bunch of modifiers affecting you from buffs, etc.




This surprised me. Few monsters have more than 4-5 powers total, and most have far fewer than this. Unless your friends are making ridiculously diverse monster groups (4-5 different monster types) it should be fairly easy to just flip to the page of the MM where the entry rests, glance at it, and then act.

Do your friends plan encounters in advance? That is generally the right way to do it in any edition; otherwise the chance of random TPK can be large.

Compared to 3.5, the monsters are much simpler, yes. But we prefer 1e - I'm not big on DMing, but all of my friends agree that the 1e monsters are much simpler to run.

And yes they do plan things out ahead of time, but there are a lot of little things that go into it (what defense does the target, what defenses does my party have), and quite frankly none of us have the time we had in college, between jobs, family, and real life.

Again, this wasn't much of a problem in heroic tier, but from what I see in paragon, it's becoming more frustrating for them.

FatR
2009-02-17, 08:08 AM
The thing to consider here is that although 3.5 had far more options than 4E, most of them were traps. Fighter 20 is a trap. Spellcaster multiclassing is a trap.

There are very few trap options in 4E. Most options are viable, and you would have to go out of your way to gimp your character in order to fall into a trap build.

3.5 had a lot more options than 4E, but 4E provides a lot more freedom than 3.5.
My experience is direct opposite. In 3.X you can take just about any class, including even the reviled Fighter 20 and still obliterate most opposition, that is presented by MMs and published adventures because there so much ways to gain mechanical power, that one poor choice doesn't make you useless. In 4E you must perfectly optimize for every last +1 or be unable to keep up with monsters at higher levels. Taking an incorrect race-class combination automatically screws your character. Taking powers not from your character's subclass list usually amounts to throwing power slots away, which usually means that you have about 2 viable choices when selecting a power (hint: fighting classes in 3.X have alot more viable choices when it comes to feat selection).

AgentPaper
2009-02-17, 08:26 AM
My experience is direct opposite. In 3.X you can take just about any class, including even the reviled Fighter 20 and still obliterate most opposition, that is presented by MMs and published adventures because there so much ways to gain mechanical power, that one poor choice doesn't make you useless. In 4E you must perfectly optimize for every last +1 or be unable to keep up with monsters at higher levels. Taking an incorrect race-class combination automatically screws your character. Taking powers not from your character's subclass list usually amounts to throwing power slots away, which usually means that you have about 2 viable choices when selecting a power (hint: fighting classes in 3.X have alot more viable choices when it comes to feat selection).

While I can't say your opinion is wrong, (it's your opinion, after all) I have to disagree. There really aren't many ways to get +X to hit, though damage is a bit easier to increase, but that's less important, and the bonuses aren't huge, always 1-2 at most. If you don't get nimble blade and use a dagger as a rogue, you lose +2 to hit, which isn't going to make you useless, especially since you're probably using another weapon that does more damage, or has it's own special feats.

Taking a "incorrect" race-class combination is outright impossible. Name a race and class that don't work, and I'll show you how it does in fact work well. (for example I brought up the eladrin fighter before, who works just as well as any other race fighter) Taking powers that don't belong to your subset will indeed make you less powerful, but it's ridiculously easy to know what powers will work well for you. What's your highest stat? Pick powers that use that for attack/damage. That will work well for you, though you'll have to know how/when to use it, of course.

Oslecamo
2009-02-17, 08:31 AM
Taking a "incorrect" race-class combination is outright impossible. Name a race and class that don't work, and I'll show you how it does in fact work well. (for example I brought up the eladrin fighter before, who works just as well as any other race fighter) Taking powers that don't belong to your subset will indeed make you less powerful, but it's ridiculously easy to know what powers will work well for you. What's your highest stat? Pick powers that use that for attack/damage. That will work well for you, though you'll have to know how/when to use it, of course.

You do realize that in 3e I could play a crippled commoner and still pull my own weight in the party with enough optimization, right?

So, by your argument, 4e is no better than 3e in that point, since it's impossible to take a bad race-class combination in both if you optimize enough.

AgentPaper
2009-02-17, 08:47 AM
You do realize that in 3e I could play a crippled commoner and still pull my own weight in the party with enough optimization, right?

So, by your argument, 4e is no better than 3e in that point, since it's impossible to take a bad race-class combination in both if you optimize enough.

Well first, I don't believe that you could, in a party of similar-skill people, make a crippled commoner pull is weight. Sure, if you're a god of optimization and the guy with the druid doesn't know which stats go where, you could probably beat him, but that doesn't make them similar in power.

My argument isn't that you can make a "bad" race-class combination good with enough optimization. It's that there are no "bad" race-class combination.

Aron Times
2009-02-17, 08:54 AM
What he means is that you can play a race that doesn't have bonuses to your primary stats and still be effective in 4E. This is because none of the races have penalties to ability scores.

Compare the 3.5 half-orc (+2 strength, -2 intelligence, -2 charisma) to the 4E half-orc (+2 strength, +2 wisdom). The former is four points behind a race with an int bonus, while the latter is only two points behind.

Even better in 4E are race/class feats. Tiefling fighters are normally suboptimal, but give him Hellfire Blood and Lingering Wrath and now he has a consistent +2 bonus to attack. He actually becomes more accurate that a human or dragonborn fighter.

Basically, if a race is a suboptimal choice for a class, Wizards creates a feat to compensate.

This doesn't require heavy optimization. The abovementioned tiefling fighter only needs two feats to be an effective fighter. Compare this to the amount of hoops that a half-orc wizard has to jump through in order to be effective in 3.5.

FatR
2009-02-17, 09:16 AM
While I can't say your opinion is wrong, (it's your opinion, after all) I have to disagree. There really aren't many ways to get +X to hit, though damage is a bit easier to increase, but that's less important, and the bonuses aren't huge, always 1-2 at most. If you don't get nimble blade and use a dagger as a rogue, you lose +2 to hit, which isn't going to make you useless, especially since you're probably using another weapon that does more damage, or has it's own special feats.
+2 to hit isn't huge in 3.X, where mid-high level characters often hit on 2 anyway. It is huge, when you need to have a race with bonuses to your primary stats, best available weapon, correct feats and correct powers to hit level-approptiate opponents even 50% of the time after the first few levels (because your base attack bonus grows slower that enemies' defences). The game is built on assumption of squeezing every possible minor bonus of the system just to remain competitive. Sure, you can crush underpowered opponents without painstaking optimization, but level-appropriate monsters of second and third tiers run by a DM that actually tries to defeat the party with these monsters will kick your ass, unless you make all the proper choices. (Although, I admit, with appearance of more and better stuff in the supplements this balance of power already began to shift.)


Taking powers that don't belong to your subset will indeed make you less powerful, but it's ridiculously easy to know what powers will work well for you. What's your highest stat? Pick powers that use that for attack/damage. That will work well for you, though you'll have to know how/when to use it, of course.
Except, you know, I already said there is usually just 2 of these powers to choose from, and this doesn't look like a great variety of choices.

Fixer
2009-02-17, 09:57 AM
This doesn't require heavy optimization. The abovementioned tiefling fighter only needs two feats to be an effective fighter. Compare this to the amount of hoops that a half-orc wizard has to jump through in order to be effective in 3.5.
Headband of Intellect +2 (to compensate for penalty)

...

One item vs. two feats....

AgentPaper
2009-02-17, 10:00 AM
A look in the DM's guide reveals that monster AC averages to 14+monster level, plus or minus 2 for role, and a bit more for elites and solos. Thumbing through the monster manual shows that this is pretty accurate, with few exceptions, and most of those are only 1-2 off of normal. As a player, you start off with +2-3 to hit with your weapon, and +3-5 to hit with your ability modifier, so a total of +5-8 to hit.

Let's say average player has about +6 to hit, so either an accurate weapon or 18 in their attack stat. So you're already ahead of the monster by 2, and to keep that lead you have to increase your to-hit by 1 every level. Well, you already get +1 every other level, since you add half your level to your attacks, so that leaves 15 points to get. You get a chance to add to your main stat 8 times over your career, so that's +4 to your hit, real easy. 11 points left. Over your career you should get a nice magic weapon, +6 in the end, so that's 5 points left.

If you're just looking to hit a 50-50 mark, that leaves only 3 points to get from feats and other items over the course of your career. Basically, with no real optimization, you have to roll a 13 or higher to hit normally. That's not great, but it's not terrible. You can very much hit enemies. Now, let's say you did a little bit of optimization. Say you have 18 in your attack stat and an accurate weapon, that brings you to hit on an 12. Flank your enemy, and now you're hitting on a 10. After that, just start looking for feats that help you hit, and it's not hard to start hitting pretty reliably, even at level 30.

In case you're curious, here's how those bonuses will typically play out over the levels:

Level 1: +4 from 18 in attack stat, +2 from weapon
Level 2: +1 from half level
Level 3: +1 from magic weapon (You should have one by now, if not earlier)
Level 4: +1 from half level
Level 5: nada
Level 6: +1 from half level
Level 7: +1 from magic weapon (You should have a +2 by now, if not earlier)
Level 8: +1 from half level, +1 from increasing attack stat to 20.
Level 9: nada
Level 10: +1 from half level
Level 11: +1 from magic weapon (You should have a +3 by now, if not earlier)
Level 12: +1 from half level
Level 13: nada
Level 14: +1 from half level, +1 from increasing attack stat to 22.
Level 15: nada
Level 16: +1 from half level
Level 17: +1 from magic weapon (You should have a +4 by now, if not earlier)
Level 18: +1 from half level
Level 19: nada
Level 20: +1 from half level
Level 21: +1 from increasing attack stat to 24.
Level 22: +1 from half level
Level 23: +1 from magic weapon (You should have a +5 by now, if not earlier)
Level 24: +1 from half level
Level 25: nada
Level 26: +1 from half level
Level 27: +1 from magic weapon (You should have a +6 by now, if not earlier)
Level 28: +1 from half level, +1 from increasing attack stat to 26.
Level 29: nada
Level 30: +1 from half level

(I put the magic items in where they fit, but you get one on average every 5 levels, by the DM guide's reccomendation)


So as you can see, without a lick of optimization, you can easily keep up with the monsters, and with just a few feats or special modifiers, you can push that to hitting more often than not. You're not going to be hitting every attack on a 2, but you can get it into the single digits without much trouble.

Edit:

Headband of Intellect +2 (to compensate for penalty)

...

One item vs. two feats....

That's not compensating for the penalty. The wizard without a penalty will still have 2 more than you, because he'll also have that same headband. Or do half-orcs get magic items more easily somehow? And what do you mean by two feats? :smallconfused:

DM Raven
2009-02-17, 12:57 PM
1. The magic system is not "a bit shallow". It is a torn down mess of what it used to be, far less powerful, and far less versatile. Its the difference between a puddle and a swimming pool. Which is a pity, because there are much better ways that the magic system could have been handled (starting with making it a little more risky to throw spells around casually)

2. Yes, the alignment system is watered down. It probably should have just been tossed at the point 4e left it at, it went from a useless tool with way too much game effect to a useless tool that doesn't even make as much sense anymore.

3. At the expense of being able to do some stuff whenever wanted. 3e did have lousy melee combat though, up until tome of battle came out.

4. And 1e, 2e, etc.

5. More balanced yes, interesting things no. Sure there are some cool items, but 3e had stuff like the decanter of endless water, the apparatus of kwalish, the eversmoking bottle, etc. Weapon abilities became more interesting, but wonderous items got pretty badly maimed. Not that people don't just make these up at the drop of a hat anyways.

6. At first level yes, but once you get into high levels 3e casters take way, way more work than a fourth edition character ever will.

First let me say that I respect your opinion...

1) It's not a mess, it's balanced. Magic in 3.x was stupid overpowered as it was in just about every edition until 4th. Casters were overpowered as you approach the higher levels and something had to be done to make people want to play other classes again. My only regret is that they had to simplify the magic system down to a power-based system. I really liked my illusionist and my summoner back in the day. Don't believe me? Look at any D&D message board that talks about min/maxing characters...

2) That's your opinion...some of my best games happened because of philosophical debates between lawfull good and lawfull good. Plus, I really like the idea of "good" battling "evil." People who try to embrace both sides to various extents having to make decisions that take them away from their ideals to be victorious in their conflicts. If you didn't use it, thats fine, but don't be rude and dismiss it as "foolish" or "a waste," thats just your opinion.

3) That's a bad argument, because you can do whatever you want in 3.x or 4e if you have a creative DM. And the tome of battle was a step in the right direction, but more needed to be done...

5) Most of the flavor magic items can be houseruled in. But the way that the smaller magical item effects mesh with the player powers and tactics make them much more interesting to use in combat. My opinion is formed from using both magic item systems extensively as a player and a DM, 4e does it better...

6) I disagree, again as someone who has played both editions quite a bit, I would say that 4e takes more work. Planning out your power path, feat path, paragon path, and epic path takes careful planning. While there are more feat and "complete" books to siphon through in 3rd edition, the actual character planning and building takes more work due to the complex nature of powers, feats, skills, and the various paths at higher level.

lesser_minion
2009-02-19, 12:04 AM
I think I'm going to have to take issue with the claim that Magic Users were stupid overpowered in prior editions of D&D - the fighter or theif they could potentially end up fighting would generally be a much higher level and have access to SoD effects (poison) generally much earlier than the wizard could ever get them, there were usually only twelve spells to a level which made turning into Batman pretty difficult, and you had virtually zero hitpoints, spell slots or chance of hitting anything.

The spells were powerful once you got to pretty high levels, but the rules made it very clear that being able to reshape reality with a word required a ridiculous amount of investment.

When they made 3e, they basically looked at this and decided that it was a bad thing, so they:
made them level faster Gave the wizard more spell slots (again - 2e did this as well, IIRC) Gave the wizard potentially more hitpoints Gave the wizard more spells Gave the wizard better access to weapons Gave wizards the chance to continue their spell after being injured Made spellcasting faster (a round used to be a whole minute of activity - during which you could cast one spell, which was declared at the start of the round and usually resolved near the end, after the opponent has already hit you and automatically disrupted your spell) Nerfed poison without touching instant-death spells Gimped fireball (IIRC, there was no difference between attended and unattended gear - and with the old rules for damaging objects, Fireball used to be a pretty scary Save-or-Lose)


Overreaction, much?

Asbestos
2009-02-19, 02:01 AM
You do realize that in 3e I could play a crippled commoner and still pull my own weight in the party with enough optimization, right?


Not only do I not believe this, but I challenge you to actually show the build. Also, define 'pull your own weight', being the guy that always has a chicken handy doesn't cut it.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-19, 04:39 AM
When they made 3e, they basically looked at this and decided that it was a bad thing, so they:
made them level faster Gave the wizard more spell slots (again - 2e did this as well, IIRC) Gave the wizard potentially more hitpoints Gave the wizard more spells Gave the wizard better access to weapons Gave wizards the chance to continue their spell after being injured Made spellcasting faster (a round used to be a whole minute of activity - during which you could cast one spell, which was declared at the start of the round and usually resolved near the end, after the opponent has already hit you and automatically disrupted your spell) Nerfed poison without touching instant-death spells Gimped fireball (IIRC, there was no difference between attended and unattended gear - and with the old rules for damaging objects, Fireball used to be a pretty scary Save-or-Lose)


QFT. Note that this applies to a lesser extent to every caster, not just wizards.

Also, to add to the list, they

removed any and all drawbacks from spells (e.g. that Shout can deafen the caster, or losing your identity when using Polymorph Self, or the Wild Surge table)
let specialist casters cherry pick their banned schools (these used to be fixed)
added metamagic feats, some of which are a huge power boost
removed racial, level, and class restrictions for wizards (and for most other classes, of course)
added many prestige classes that give full casting advancement in addition to other benefits
added mechanical benefits to having a familiar, which used to be mostly flavor
for a non-wizard example, spontaneous casting for clerics and druids; plus domain benefits for the cleric, and better shapeshifting options for the druid


Gee, I wonder why the company is called Wizards of the Coast...

Panda-s1
2009-02-19, 05:19 AM
I really don't get the "you should have fun in a game argument" for 3.x. Or rather, it seems incredibly flawed. Basically you're saying that in 3rd ed, everyone needs to behave or no one has fun. That's not to say it's not true for any game, but it's like giving a bunch of swords to a group of 8-year-olds and telling them as long as they play pretend and not actually hurt each other then everyone will have fun. Now in the real world this can have dire consequences, but in playing a game there isn't any. So little Jimmy, who's tired of playing pretend decides he wants real blood and all is ruined.

Now I know there's perfect groups out there who'd never deign to actually "attack" their fellow group members, but alas the world isn't perfect. Even in a group that gets along really well you might have the one guy who goes out of his way to make a broken character, or the guy who always tries to get all the awesome stuff so he's one step ahead of everyone else. Now you may say in certain games like World of Darkness or Dogs in the Vineyard you can potentially make some crazy ass character as well, but those games are much more narrativist oriented, and is marketed to players who understand that getting along and telling a story is much more important than trying to make the most overpowered character ever. But D&D isn't like that! D&D is so inherently gamist it encourages this behavior. Yeah I can make my lvl 2 commoner character, or I can make a ZOMG AWESOME WIZARD/CLERIC WITH 2d10 DAMAGE EVERY TIME HE HITS A MONSTER WITH A SPELL character. And then the game rewards you for this behavior 'cause suddenly you're more adept at killing monsters and getting **** done than the commoner. It's ridiculous, and honestly I'm surprised things like levels and classes and hit dice managed to stay on in 3rd edition, there seems to be a notable shift away from such things in more modern RPGs. But the designers respect D&D for what it is and what it has been, and only took out the stuff that the majority of people found detrimental to the game, finally gave fighters the special maneuvers and tricks they deserved (and no, feats definitely don't count), and made sure all the "swords" were padded and while maybe Jimmy can manage to bruise his friends, there won't be any blood shed.

See that's the thing about 4e. I don't have to worry about my party members going off the deep end and making an overpowered character. Instead of 3.X where you can, and the only thing that's stopping it from happening is the goodwill of people, which is constantly contested by the game giving more in return for giving up said goodwill. 4e was designed to be decent for everyone from the get go and there on out. Sure maybe I don't have the greatest freedom 4e, but this really is a case of giving up certain freedoms for a better overall design.

lesser_minion
2009-02-19, 06:32 AM
4e does some things better than 3e - it is generally better written, with most concepts presented very clearly (3e can be tricky to understand at points). The rules are generally much tighter, the art is generally of very high quality, and the fluff for most of the monsters and player races is generally an improvement on what went before. I also like the keyword system.

The magic items system is also a plus - as well as cutting down on 3e's rampant stacking cheese, it is now generally pretty clear how powerful you have to be to cast a particular spell.

The powers system works reasonably well, but I don't really consider it to be a particularly good way of handling fighters. I also prefer the more realistic elements of 3e (not being able to heal all of your injuries with a single night's rest) to 4e's strange Epic Existence Failure system.

My big problems with 4e can be summarised pretty simply - I don't like the homogenised mechanics (swinging a sword is NOT casting a spell, why are they modelled in almost exactly the same way?) - and I think the writers gutted way too much of the 3e content when they built 4e.


But the designers respect D&D for what it is and what it has been, and only took out the stuff that the majority of people found detrimental to the game

I still think they were way too trigger-happy in culling content from the game. Do you have any examples of things that 'the majority' of people found detrimental?

FatR
2009-02-19, 07:11 AM
So as you can see, without a lick of optimization, you can easily keep up with the monsters, and with just a few feats or special modifiers, you can push that to hitting more often than not. You're not going to be hitting every attack on a 2, but you can get it into the single digits without much trouble.
As your own numbers demonstrate, you can't. You fall behind even with 18 in the key stat, putting all attribute advances in the key stat and having the best available weapon. While monsters at higher tiers, as one of the posters above noted from his experiences, can hit you fairly easily. Daily/encounter mechanics aggravate the problem of not hitting even 50% of the time, because it is very easy to waste your big attack. Flanking and stuff does not help, because monsters can do it too.

Mando Knight
2009-02-19, 11:16 AM
Not only do I not believe this, but I challenge you to actually show the build. Also, define 'pull your own weight', being the guy that always has a chicken handy doesn't cut it.

Unless you weigh as much as a chicken. :smalltongue:

Kurald Galain
2009-02-19, 11:30 AM
Unless you weigh as much as a chicken. :smalltongue:

Duck, not chicken.

Buuuurn!!!!

Doug Lampert
2009-02-19, 12:50 PM
As your own numbers demonstrate, you can't. You fall behind even with 18 in the key stat, putting all attribute advances in the key stat and having the best available weapon.

Um, best case has a 20 in the key stat. EVERYONE will put as many attribute advances as possible in the key stat and by level 30 EVERYONE will have the best available weapon. His assumptions are in fact a minimal effort.

He used an enhancement bonus, but not an item bonus (these are separate, and there are items that give an item bonus to attack). He used max abilities increases, but no power bonus. He didn't even use max starting attribute. And he didn't debuf the monster (hint, you have 4 dailies by level 30 and three more dailies from item powers increasing to 4 from item powers after two encounters, you can afford to burn about two dailies per patrol encounter by level 30, you'll be imposing LOTS of status effects even if you somehow miss every actual attack roll.)

You can EASILY do better than what he gave. Keeping roughly even with monster defenses is fairly easy.

Meanwhile the PC AC goes from +2 for leather to +11 from masterwork hide armor, +15 from level, and picks up +4 from attributes. 28 points of improvement IF you do NOTHING else to improve defense except buying gear you're supposed to have and spending one whole feat. Meanwhile the monster attack goes up by 29, yeah, that's no where near keeping up, you loss ONE WHOLE POINT if you make a minimal effort to keep up.

If you're not keeping up with the monsters on all but one defense then you're doing it wrong. If Dex and Int both aren't important to you then you get the +12 improvement for masterwork heavy armors and still stay close to even on AC, you should always keep up on AC and shouldn't miss keeping up on more than one NAC defense.

THAC0
2009-02-19, 01:36 PM
Um, best case has a 20 in the key stat. EVERYONE will put as many attribute advances as possible in the key stat and by level 30 EVERYONE will have the best available weapon. His assumptions are in fact a minimal effort.

He used an enhancement bonus, but not an item bonus (these are separate, and there are items that give an item bonus to attack). He used max abilities increases, but no power bonus. He didn't even use max starting attribute. And he didn't debuf the monster (hint, you have 4 dailies by level 30 and three more dailies from item powers increasing to 4 from item powers after two encounters, you can afford to burn about two dailies per patrol encounter by level 30, you'll be imposing LOTS of status effects even if you somehow miss every actual attack roll.)

You can EASILY do better than what he gave. Keeping roughly even with monster defenses is fairly easy.

Meanwhile the PC AC goes from +2 for leather to +11 from masterwork hide armor, +15 from level, and picks up +4 from attributes. 28 points of improvement IF you do NOTHING else to improve defense except buying gear you're supposed to have and spending one whole feat. Meanwhile the monster attack goes up by 29, yeah, that's no where near keeping up, you loss ONE WHOLE POINT if you make a minimal effort to keep up.

If you're not keeping up with the monsters on all but one defense then you're doing it wrong. If Dex and Int both aren't important to you then you get the +12 improvement for masterwork heavy armors and still stay close to even on AC, you should always keep up on AC and shouldn't miss keeping up on more than one NAC defense.

I'm not sure what your thinking as far as keeping up on NAC defenses once paragon tier hits. By level 13, your crappy NAC is going to be somewhere around a 19 (16 level, 0 stat, +3 item). The monsters I've been seeing are at least +17 to hit, which means they hit on a two. Even if you've gotten a few extra points from somewhere, they still hit on a four or five.

As far as your strong NACs, you've got 16 level, 3-5 stat, 3 item, and maybe 2 class or feat. That gives you about 25, give or take. Again with a +17 to hit, they are hitting on an 8.

I dunno, I think the math for NACs is a little wonky at higher levels.

Yukitsu
2009-02-19, 01:56 PM
Not only do I not believe this, but I challenge you to actually show the build. Also, define 'pull your own weight', being the guy that always has a chicken handy doesn't cut it.

This is my recollection of the archer build used in the wizards forum that someone put out to demonstrate that a commoner archer can do comparable damage to a fighter archer. IIRC the fighter did about 300 damage instead.

PB 32 gives the stats

Str 16 (+2)
Dex 16 (+2)
Con 16 (-2)
Int 10 (-2)
Wis 8
Cha 8

Race is wood elf.

First level feat is point blank shot. This character deals A simple d8 at range with a longbow, but has a +4 to hit, melee with a two handed weapon he deals 2d6+6 with the same to hit. At level two, he'll deal d8+4 and have +5 to hit, or the same melee with +5 to hit. Level three he has +4/+4 with d8+4 per hit. On average through all these levels, he'll deal enough damage to severely damage most enemies of the right CR.

Level 6 he needs endurance and at level 9 steadfast determination. Level 12 is travel devotion. Level 15 is far shot and 18 is precise shot.

At the end game, said commoner wields a skillfull splitting bow +5 with arrows of the right alignment and metal property. Total damage is in the realm of 200 on average. Adding on a belt of battle and travel devotion, 3 rounds per day, the commoner deals 400 in one round. Attack is BAB 15, enhancement +5, stat will be + 11. +31 to hit. Tack on boots of speed and greater bracers of archery and you hit +34, which is sufficient. Mage slayer arrows increase this to 36 against most opponents. Close range bumps it to 37, and rapid shot drops it by 2 to 35. For reference, a Balor has a functional 39 AC. Damage per shot winds up being (d8 +2d6 +9+8)x2 or an average of 59 damage. This archer has 5 shots, 3 at full BAB, one at lower and another at even lower. He averages 4 hit sets for 236. He pulls off both travel devotion and a charge from the belt of battle and does another 236 for a total of 472.

The only problems with this build are that it's fragile (but no more so than a level 1 through 20 wizard that relies on a crossbow for his first 3 levels) and that it spends almost all of its cash just to pull this off. However, if the enemy makes the mistake of ignoring the commoner, which is likely, he has a good chance of taking out one or two people before they can kill him.

Mando Knight
2009-02-19, 01:58 PM
I'm not sure what your thinking as far as keeping up on NAC defenses once paragon tier hits. By level 13, your crappy NAC is going to be somewhere around a 19 (16 level, 0 stat, +3 item). The monsters I've been seeing are at least +17 to hit, which means they hit on a two. Even if you've gotten a few extra points from somewhere, they still hit on a four or five.

As far as your strong NACs, you've got 16 level, 3-5 stat, 3 item, and maybe 2 class or feat. That gives you about 25, give or take. Again with a +17 to hit, they are hitting on an 8.

I dunno, I think the math for NACs is a little wonky at higher levels.

Funny you should mention level 13... rolled up this paladin (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheets/view.php?id=109202) (with the DM giving us 25 points instead of 22, so he's got +1 Strength and +1 Constitution above normal...), and his NADs are indeed 7-9 points behind his rather absurdly high AC. An adult blue dragon has trouble hitting his AC, but will relatively easily pound his Reflex and Will... (He can take an adult white easy, though. Solo. NAD attacks from an adult white hit him only about 25%-40% of the time, and AC attacks are crit-to-hit-only...)

Yakk
2009-02-19, 03:11 PM
As your own numbers demonstrate, you can't. You fall behind even with 18 in the key stat, putting all attribute advances in the key stat and having the best available weapon. While monsters at higher tiers, as one of the posters above noted from his experiences, can hit you fairly easily. Daily/encounter mechanics aggravate the problem of not hitting even 50% of the time, because it is very easy to waste your big attack. Flanking and stuff does not help, because monsters can do it too.

Players have abilities that add (stat) to other player's attacks, or decrease a monster's defense by (stat).

At level 1, these are rare, and the impact is about +3 to 5 to hit.

At level 30, these are more common (more encounter, more dailies, ways to refresh daily and encounter powers, etc), and the impact reaches +7 to +10 to hit.

If each member of the party generates an average one effect that gives you a +8 to hit in a fight (including yourself), that means you get such a bonus every second round in a 10 round fight.

+4: stat ups
+6: magic weapons
+1: feats/weapons (there are plus-to-hit feats, really)
+8/3: getting a stat-bonus-to-hit every 3nd round from someone helping you.
+1: Paragon Path (or you get a feature that is just as good)
+1: Epic Destiny (or you get a feature that is just as good)
+15: level
---
+30.666 over level 1 to-hits number, on average, per round.
Passing the target by 1.666.

And yes, 4e presumed you worked hard and optimised your character for your to-hit bonuses.

If you don't optimise:
+4: stat ups
+6: magic weapon
+1: other
+15: level
+1: occasional boost from an ally
----
+27 over level 1 to-hit modifier, falling behind 2 points since level 1 compared to a monster's AC growth.

...

And that is why playing 4e is tempting. The people who wrote 4e did this math, and you don't have to. It is true that if you take an inexperienced player and ask them to make a 30th level character, their character will probably be pretty ineffective for a level 30 4e character -- but the core of the engine doesn't fall apart.

4e isn't perfect -- they screwed up a few things. But a reason to play 4e over 3e is that the level of mathematical care that went into making it far surpasses 3e. You don't have to do the math to gain the benefit of the care that went into crafting 4e. Doing the math helps explain it (to those who can do the math) -- to those who cannot do the math, the result is a number of things.

First, you tend not to get overshadowed by your group mates. Nearly eveyone will have a chance to shine during an encounter.

And second, building encounters is easier for the DM. By orders of magnitude. It can still screw up (note: fire beatles and needledrake swarms are way way way too strong as written, and the elite-ization templates are often crap), but there is a solid foundation under your feet.

Asbestos
2009-02-19, 07:51 PM
PB 32 gives the stats

Str 16 (+2)
Dex 16 (+2)
Con 16 (-2)
Int 10 (-2)
Wis 8
Cha 8

I would hardly call someone with the physical stats of a professional athlete, average intelligence, and only slightly subpar planning and social skills 'crippled'.

As for FatR saying 'you can't even hit the monsters half the time unless you optimize', that's just plain false. Here's another thread on these forums where someone made one of the most unoptimized builds ever... and he's still hitting half the time. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105073) So... yeah, lying about the edition you don't like, awesome.

Panda-s1
2009-02-20, 03:03 AM
I still think they were way too trigger-happy in culling content from the game. Do you have any examples of things that 'the majority' of people found detrimental?

OKay, detrimental is a strong word, and I wrote that on little sleep.

But my point still stands.

Firstly would be the Vancian magic system. Yes it is the scape goat of pre-4e, but the record does stand that even the designers were surprised how many people applauded when they announced it was going away. And from what you pointed out it worked better in 2nd ed., but became potentially broken in 3.X.

And okay, I can't type, I'm tired. Seriously. But I do want to ask you, what makes you believe they were "trigger-happy"? I read most of their design articles and listen to the podcasts and what have you, and they seem to have pretty decent answers to why they removed certain things in making 4e.

Yukitsu
2009-02-20, 03:30 AM
I would hardly call someone with the physical stats of a professional athlete, average intelligence, and only slightly subpar planning and social skills 'crippled'.


Meh. It's a fairly gibbled build if he can't solve problems with arrows, so in my opinion the character as a whole is crippled, even if capable of meaningfully contributing to combat.

Talya
2009-02-20, 06:48 PM
4E makes me feel like Wizards of the Coast is planning to re-release a new version of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in 2010, giving it all the diversity and character building options that 3.x had out of the box. Of course, it would probably still end up being a tactical combat game played on a grid.

I believe 4e rules are good for some things, and firmly look forward to seeing computer games based on them...but I don't really have much use for it at the table. Even 3.5 is a bit too heavy on the need for combat maps. If the character build options weren't so amazing in 3.5, I'd prefer Exalted over it simply because it's crunchy while being more freeform at the same time. I don't think it's possible to run 4e combat without a map...too many abilities are "Slide your opponent blah blah." I don't see an RPG as primarily a way to play tactical combat games.

lesser_minion
2009-02-20, 11:10 PM
Well, Vancian magic's main problem as far as 4e is concerned is that it doesn't really fit when fighters are being powered up with a load of special attacks that use a similar mechanic to the spellcasting rules.

Did they need the game so finely balanced that they had to homogenise everything, though?

Panda-s1
2009-02-21, 12:20 AM
4E makes me feel like Wizards of the Coast is planning to re-release a new version of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in 2010, giving it all the diversity and character building options that 3.x had out of the box. Of course, it would probably still end up being a tactical combat game played on a grid.
Why would they do that? Part of the reason why they got rid of most of the choices was many of them were poor. I mean sure they got rid of some things that seemed "cool," like multiclassing, or Perform and what not, but at the end of the day they decided what needed to be removed in order to design a better game.


I believe 4e rules are good for some things, and firmly look forward to seeing computer games based on them...but I don't really have much use for it at the table. Even 3.5 is a bit too heavy on the need for combat maps. If the character build options weren't so amazing in 3.5, I'd prefer Exalted over it simply because it's crunchy while being more freeform at the same time. I don't think it's possible to run 4e combat without a map...too many abilities are "Slide your opponent blah blah."
What is it with the 4e being a better computer game argument? I really don't get it, I've been playing 4e kinda like I've been playing 3.5, I mean hell I've had sessions where I didn't use a battlemat at all just 'cause fights took place where a mat wasn't necessary. I'm really failing to see how it's so different than last edition that I have to change my running style (which never centered solely around combat).

I don't see an RPG as primarily a way to play tactical combat games.
Try telling that to the original set of D&D players.


Well, Vancian magic's main problem as far as 4e is concerned is that it doesn't really fit when fighters are being powered up with a load of special attacks that use a similar mechanic to the spellcasting rules.

Did they need the game so finely balanced that they had to homogenise everything, though?

Well if they spent all that time and came to that conclusion, I'm gonna have to say yes.

But what about touch and ray spells for wizards? I mean isn't that just like a Dex vs. Reflex power in 4e?

Honestly, after going through a lot of the powers I realize they don't have to be, well, "powers." You're probably familiar with the new Cleave, but it may very well be written like this for 3.X:

Cleave (ex): Whenever you hit an enemy with a melee attack, you may deal your strength modifier in damage to another adjacent enemy.

Did they have to make everything a power? No, but if in the end it works to the same effect, does it really matter?

And on the subject of homogenization, one thing I never liked were the "non-combat" skills (Craft, Perform, Profession), and after looking through 2nd ed. I hated them even more.

In the non-weapon proficiency system, you had things like dance based off of Dex, blacksmithing based off Str, astronomy based off Int, and gem cutting based off Dex. But what happens in 3rd ed. design? They homogenize nearly all the proficiencies into three skills! Honestly, if they really cared then you'd be able to either choose what ability modifier to use for Profession (and probably have a thing that says the DM can adjudicate what kinds of things you could do with the skill), and they would have a list of what abilities to use for what kind of Craft or Perform you wanted to use. But no, the greatest blacksmith in town is not the guy who's built like an ox, but the guy who can outwit the party bard. Never mind the fact that the famous blacksmiths in all the stories were of average or lower intelligence...

Sorry I went on that tangent. If you're interested, Mike Mearls explains the loss of these skills here (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1037843), and he makes a pretty good argument. But the more I look into 3rd ed. design processes, the more things I see that I don't like.

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-21, 06:09 AM
Why would they do that? Part of the reason why they got rid of most of the choices was many of them were poor. I mean sure they got rid of some things that seemed "cool," like multiclassing, or Perform and what not, but at the end of the day they decided what needed to be removed in order to design a better game.





And on the subject of homogenization, one thing I never liked were the "non-combat" skills (Craft, Perform, Profession), and after looking through 2nd ed. I hated them even more.




Sorry I went on that tangent. If you're interested, Mike Mearls explains the loss of these skills here (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1037843), and he makes a pretty good argument. But the more I look into 3rd ed. design processes, the more things I see that I don't like.

Sorry but... screwing those skill maybe make a better game for you. I can admit that for a lot of gamestyle those skills are useless, but you can build campaign around them.

In my current 3.5 campaing ranks in skills like craft and perform are useful like, or more, than ranks in thumble or spellcraft. AND RANKS MATTER. In my past campaings, more epic-cheese-slash-the-evil-fiends only the wizard put ranks in craft, most for background.

This makes me thinks that in 3.5, even with evident falilures needing to be fixed, you can built several kinds of different campaings. In 4th, by desing, you have to play always in the same way.

Think about the sweet spot. Is, more or less, the same issue. If you liked 3.5 only in its sweet spot, you like the 4th. i like even the frail 1st level crossbow wizard, as well the TWF vorpal-vorpal epic fighter, the chronotryn-refluffed in-wow-moonkin druid, and the like. I like characters changing trhough levels.

You can play sweet spot only 3.5. Dm says: "ok, we play now a campaign from 3rd to 14th level. -30% experience award (from DMG)".

Next time, you'll restart a campaing from 1st to 4th. or to 40th. In one, Everybody will be a caster. In the other, only Hexblades, Ranger and Paladins will be casters (Hexblades will be "wizards"). In the next universe, there could be no magic at all, or the uber-mages will be only Warlocks and Dragonfire Adepts, and Dragon Shamans. And Dragons will have Divine Ranks, becasue you have rules to build your ownd deities. And so on, every time, the universe will be remade.

I don't want to say that your way to enjoy the game is wrong, or offend you.
I only say that 4th edition designers headed the game in a direction, IMHO, that lead it playable in few ways, sorta miniature game. Sometimes I feel like 4th edition desingers understimate customer (Int) score, see old 3.0 and 4th edition epic monster Phane (one broken, complicated and imaginative, the other "comfortably dumb", with his temporay aging effect. We could consider them the symbols of the two editions).

I once compared the 4th edition wizard to Wow mage, but I was wrong. It seems to me that Wow mage is more versatile in combat.

Maybe someday I'll change my mind, and I think those things because I'm getting older (and so, conservative ). Maybe one day I will take seriously 4th.. Dunno. If I want a simpler game, I have my red box.. there are true heroes, withous cool-ass maneuvers.

Where is my grog? My mouth is dried!

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-21, 12:23 PM
In my current 3.5 campaing ranks in skills like craft and perform are useful like, or more, than ranks in thumble or spellcraft. AND RANKS MATTER. In my past campaings, more epic-cheese-slash-the-evil-fiends only the wizard put ranks in craft, most for background.

Well now, I need to hear more about this. What kind of campaign is this, and how does it work?

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-21, 12:54 PM
Well now, I need to hear more about this. What kind of campaign is this, and how does it work?

Well, more or less a standard D&D setting, elves are Elves, Dwarves are dwarves and so on. I use something like 90% of official sources, and I mixed campaign settings (It seems odd but has a background explaination) But:

- To craft magic Items, I allow the use reagents, a la World of Warcraft, we can say. the idea came to me playing the videogame, and reading a sidebar in the DMG, that says that you can allow special reagents instead of XP cost for spells and magic item crafting.

Some reagents you find in the wilderness, other you have to kill things and take their stuff (blood, horns and the like). You need ranks in Craft, Profession, Knowledge and the like to gather and store them.

So, To enchant +1 a Dagger, you need (as an example) to sharp it on the fang of a lesser demon (met in the Cursed Cave of Wherever) and to thoug it in the blood of a magic creature, like a unseliee dryad living in the Black Wood.

To Enchant an axe flaming, you need the core of elements of a lesser fire elemental, and you thoug it in the blood of a... who knows, lesser devil. Sometimes my players go to search a monster only to kill him and take his stuff, often they go adventuring, kill things, and store their stuff.

Of course, the enchanting is level dependant. I you want the +3d6 lightning epic enchantment for you sword "Thunderdisappointment, Blamed Blade of the Windsucker", you have to take the core of elements form a Primal Air lemental (that will "drop" a d3 of them, of course).

I have to watch out, because even with limited drop rate, monsters continue to drop items... But Sunder+Giants, Thieves Guilds and the like are there for this.

- The setting is more or less 1000 years after the "epic-cheese-fight-the-fiends in the end of the world" one. the old world and the isolated nations are going to "globalize".

In the setting, being able in trade and in craft is HIIIGHLY valued. It brings honor, mechanichally (see UA). More honor, more trade, more trade, more honor. Similar things for perform, for a cultural point of view. Creatures does not exist only to be killed, even orcs have a culture, even if a brutal one.

I have to point out that even if is a gestalt campaing, my players, even the more munchkins, made characters for fun, and didn't optimized too much (the party is Fighter/Knight, Ranger//Beguiler, Dragon Shaman//D Fire Adept, Shugenja//Shadowcaster, Rogue//Psywarrior/Avenger, and a wonderful glam metal Hexblade//Bard). This made me more generous in assign skills (i.e, Craft(engineering) make you able to made siege engines and firearms, pimped with Dragon Magazine).

Further, my players are now enough mature to bring an help to the DM instead to try to cheat. As an example, the party Herbalist helped me to compile an extended list of herbs and exotic vegetables in all wotc manuals and dragon magazine - something like 50!)

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-21, 01:08 PM
How 2nd Edition of you! Back then, making a magic item was a quest in itself!

But, I think as you've pointed out, your campaign is highly variant from what could be considered a "standard" D&D campaign. And you could run the very same campaign without needing Craft or Perform skills at all - most of the adventure is in gathering components and making deals, no? The adventurers could just be agents of a trading company that has its own master-forger for making prestigious items.

Or do you use Craft and Perform in some other fashion? :smallconfused:

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-21, 01:17 PM
How 2nd Edition of you! Back then, making a magic item was a quest in itself!


:smallwink: I have the italian 2nd edition dungeon master guide in my room. Never seen better advices for DMing elsewhere (eve if i think that 3rd, and in most part even 4th edition DMGs are very good)

Consider this, OH: even if my PC trade and craft, the campaign is enough standard, they are at the moment, as an example, fightings undead in the Scar, a fissure of the terrain made in the North in an ancient war with a lord of undeath. Barring reagents for dark power items, and other small things, they are doing more or less the things that a standard group does.

My point is that you can adjust the game EVEN more, that adjustment between the rules I made are very small, seeing the potential. And that if you have more, and more subystems, the amount of tools at you disposal is very, very high. Subsystems is a good thing.

Some simplyfication in 4th is VERY good (see weapon groups in core w/o UA limitation: when i saw them the first time, I said "oh, they noticed it, at last. -even pathfinder has groups for a fighter class feature).

But... the are gone too far for my tastes.



Or do you use Craft and Perform in some other fashion? :smallconfused:

Sometimes there are challenges between performers*. Sometimes you have to rush the production of a material. Sometimes you will have to cook a VEEERY good dish, or the hag to poison will never eat it. Or simply you'll lose your honor at the great duke party.

Or the nimph will never notice the bard fell in love for a bad performing. And for the bard, a fey girlfriend is FAAAR better than an epic gear.

More, sometimes player need to see how much good are in that particular thing, if is important for the campaign. They enjoy getting better in crafting, knowing more metals to smelt and forge, more weapons, more healing herbs, and so on.

ericgrau
2009-02-21, 01:37 PM
When 4e first came out, I decided to wait for the SRD to come out before buying it. However, on January the First the SRD turned out to be a list of page numbers. I want to know whether buying 4e is worth it or not.

I only own PHB, DMG, MM1, 2, and 4, and XPH.

Should I buy the 4e books?

Are they more balanced?
Are they more fun?
Are they different for RPing purposes?
Are they as mechanically diverse?

Thank you.
In order:
1. The first thing to understand is that 4e is almost an entirely different game, so this question is largely a matter of preference. It's simpler and more "gamey" than 3e, which people tend to either love or hate to death. And if you already played 3e this way, you might not see much difference at all.

2. Complicated apples & oranges question. In some ways absolutely yes in others absolutely not. The things normally cited as imbalanced in 3e are totally gone, but other things related to lack of diversity (answer 5) are imbalanced I hear.

3. See answer 1.

4. Neither edition does much to support or interfere with RPing. That's mostly up to the players. However, the environment may or may not affect RPing depending on how you feel about answers #1 & #2.

5. No.

In other words your question is way too broad since the editions are so different and there are plenty of people who prefer one or the other or don't care even. You're probably gonna get a bunch of widely differing opinions in this thread, I haven't checked. Instead of basing your preferences on someone else's you should really learn more about 4e. There's a lot of sample info at www.wizards.com, there's a Penny Arcade podcast of some game sessions at that same site, and you can try playing it with others who already have the books.

horseboy
2009-02-21, 03:12 PM
I really don't get the "you should have fun in a game argument" for 3.x. Or rather, it seems incredibly flawed. Basically you're saying that in 3rd ed, everyone needs to behave or no one has fun. That's not to say it's not true for any game, but it's like giving a bunch of swords to a group of 8-year-olds and telling them as long as they play pretend and not actually hurt each other then everyone will have fun. Now in the real world this can have dire consequences, but in playing a game there isn't any. So little Jimmy, who's tired of playing pretend decides he wants real blood and all is ruined.
You left out all the Gygaxian players who have 20 years of experience with DM's doing everything they can to kill off the party so they have to be strong to survive. Or the actuator types who just look and see how easily the numbers can be broken, but then have to sit there and roll their eyes at the "threat" and sit there, wondering what's on tonight instead of paying attention to the game, because they're only pretending to be challenged because someone decided to play a troll blooded monkey grip fighter.

Granted I'm not sold on 4th being able to deliver the visceral "Oh God! Somebody kill it, kill it NOW!" feeling, but at least I can play a fighter with some reason to be on watch. Nice "mini-games" like that help hold my interest during the game, rather than 3.x "mini-games" to hold interest between games.
Sorry but... screwing those skill maybe make a better game for you. I can admit that for a lot of gamestyle those skills are useless, but you can build campaign around them.

In my current 3.5 campaing ranks in skills like craft and perform are useful like, or more, than ranks in thumble or spellcraft. AND RANKS MATTER. In my past campaings, more epic-cheese-slash-the-evil-fiends only the wizard put ranks in craft, most for background. Well, 1st, 2nd and 4th are all "details light" systems. They cover only the barest essentials and expect all other details to be "role played" (read DM-fiated). This is usually done to keep mechanics from "getting in the way" of the characters and their story. If you're fighter was a soldier in his background, then he's assumed to have a working understanding of modern heraldry. On the opposite side of the spectrum you have the "Details Heavy" systems. I don't know when I'm ever going to need to know that my Sociologist has a +105 to basic math, but I know it's there. The difference is not only the amount of detail, but the amount of character resources given. 3.x's epic fail was in trying to be a "details medium" system. The problem with being "medium" is that there is no clear cut line of "awh, screw it, that's good enough". So you only get "character light" resources, but an ever creeping amount of character detail. At the end of the day, yeah it is a play style choice. You can play the same games in both systems, even the third one if you're willing to suffer that much aggravation I suppose. In one the DM decides they've done enough to succeed, in the other the character rolls 394 on item creation and the third, you've had to switch classes three times to get the necessary resources and are festooned with all kinds of extra crap the character had to accept so that the player can do what he was trying to.
Subsystems is a good thing. Only when they work.

NPCMook
2009-02-21, 04:36 PM
- To craft magic Items, I allow the use reagents, a la World of Warcraft, we can say. the idea came to me playing the videogame, and reading a sidebar in the DMG, that says that you can allow special reagents instead of XP cost for spells and magic item crafting.

Some reagents you find in the wilderness, other you have to kill things and take their stuff (blood, horns and the like). You need ranks in Craft, Profession, Knowledge and the like to gather and store them.

So, To enchant +1 a Dagger, you need (as an example) to sharp it on the fang of a lesser demon (met in the Cursed Cave of Wherever) and to thoug it in the blood of a magic creature, like a unseliee dryad living in the Black Wood.

To Enchant an axe flaming, you need the core of elements of a lesser fire elemental, and you thoug it in the blood of a... who knows, lesser devil. Sometimes my players go to search a monster only to kill him and take his stuff, often they go adventuring, kill things, and store their stuff.

Of course, the enchanting is level dependant. I you want the +3d6 lightning epic enchantment for you sword "Thunderdisappointment, Blamed Blade of the Windsucker", you have to take the core of elements form a Primal Air lemental (that will "drop" a d3 of them, of course).

I have to watch out, because even with limited drop rate, monsters continue to drop items... But Sunder+Giants, Thieves Guilds and the like are there for this.

- The setting is more or less 1000 years after the "epic-cheese-fight-the-fiends in the end of the world" one. the old world and the isolated nations are going to "globalize".

In the setting, being able in trade and in craft is HIIIGHLY valued. It brings honor, mechanichally (see UA). More honor, more trade, more trade, more honor. Similar things for perform, for a cultural point of view. Creatures does not exist only to be killed, even orcs have a culture, even if a brutal one.

I have to point out that even if is a gestalt campaing, my players, even the more munchkins, made characters for fun, and didn't optimized too much (the party is Fighter/Knight, Ranger//Beguiler, Dragon Shaman//D Fire Adept, Shugenja//Shadowcaster, Rogue//Psywarrior/Avenger, and a wonderful glam metal Hexblade//Bard). This made me more generous in assign skills (i.e, Craft(engineering) make you able to made siege engines and firearms, pimped with Dragon Magazine).

Further, my players are now enough mature to bring an help to the DM instead to try to cheat. As an example, the party Herbalist helped me to compile an extended list of herbs and exotic vegetables in all wotc manuals and dragon magazine - something like 50!)

So, why not just make the Craft/Profession/Perform skills a part of their background, tie them to certain ability checks, and run it in 4E?

What about 4th edition prevents you from doing what you are doing in that 3.5 campaign(in terms of magical item creation), other than a ritual you could take out?

Edit:Heck, with 4E, you could use the Disenchant ritual to get back some of the reagents used to make a magic item, instead of getting residuum. Thats a cool idea.

lesser_minion
2009-02-21, 05:05 PM
So, why not just make the Craft/Profession/Perform skills a part of their background, tie them to certain ability checks, and run it in 4E?

What about 4th edition prevents you from doing what you are doing in that 3.5 campaign(in terms of magical item creation), other than a ritual you could take out?

First point, 4e is not some god-system that is somehow so Awesome that everyone who prefers its predecessors shalt be considered Deviant and Struck Down Upon with Great Vengeance and Furious Anger.

However, there are also practical reasons for using 3e for such a campaign. It is a lot easier to start from the base 3e provides when trying to increase the relevance of the Craft/Profession/Perform skills - while 4e doesn't touch them with a 10ft pole, 3e provides some basic mechanics for the skills. As a general rule, take character X and it will be much easier to model them and their capabilities in 3e than in 4e.

Kaiyanwang mentioned that he had to houserule very little in order to get that system to work - for 4e, you would probably have to add the skills back into the game (a fairly big portion of the exercise being making the skills relevant enough to be considered skills).

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-21, 06:29 PM
My point is that you can adjust the game EVEN more, that adjustment between the rules I made are very small, seeing the potential. And that if you have more, and more subystems, the amount of tools at you disposal is very, very high. Subsystems is a good thing.

Oh heavens no! :smalleek:

Am I the only person who has played Shadowrun out here? I really should write up a standard passage regarding subsystems, The Decker Problem, and the like.

OK, short form:
Subsystems are not good in and of themselves. A subsystem is always an admission that the base system was insufficient to model a given type of activity; if you can make a base system that adequately covers all situations, you have made the Perfect Game.

The key word, of course, is "adequate." Adequacy for RPGs tends to be in relation to the aim of a system.

D&D Case Study
2nd Edition, for example, was designed to create "adventurers" who go out, loot ruins, solve ancient mysteries, and the like. The Non-Weapon Proficiency (NWP) system was tacked on and rather shoddy; a single ability check (at some modifier) for success or failure - whatever that may mean. Aside from being "optional," NWP was an OK first stab at implementing a non-adventuring skill system in D&D.

3E implemented a full skill system, but you'll note that their efforts were a bit uneven. Tons of description on what Tumbling can do for you, but nearly nothing on Profession. Again, D&D is aimed at making adventurers who go on adventures, so this was adequate for most games. But, did anyone really use the Profession rules? No, because they were silly. Lawyers make as much as Sailors? All of these are Wisdom based? If your game were focused on your skill at a profession, this was a very poor system.

4E took a look at the skills sub-system and asked itself: is this something you need to roll for in an adventure? Generally, how well you sing, or how neat a haircut you give are irrelevant for looting temples and solving ancient mysteries. To do a Profession skill justice, you would need to spend chapters to detail how all the various medieval professions operate, and how they are paid - all for something that adventurers should really only be doing when there is nothing else to do. So WotC dropped these.

In 2E, TSR decided it might be nice to take the non-adventuring knowledge of characters into account, and slapped some stuff together. It was largely flavor, so the sub-system they made didn't really have to work too well. In 3E, WotC spread out both adventuring and non-adventuring skills, and created a full skill system. This worked for most skills, but failed for the non-adventuring skills; Perform, for example, gave little guidance as to the DCs for certain types of art, or what you need to roll to invent an original composition. In 4E, WotC realized that certain skills could not be modeled without devoting inordinate amounts of space and time to them, so it dropped them.

But was this a good idea? Yes, because tacking on many awkward sub-systems makes the game more difficult to learn and difficult to play. As an example, Shadowrun 3rd Edition:
Shadowrun is set in a unique fantasy/cyberpunk world where the characters are freelance black ops guys and may do anything from provide security on a fence deal to infiltrate a top secret base to free a captured AI from the system core. Needless to say, there were many different things that needed to be modeled, and FASA wanted as much realism as they could get. So they made sub-systems:
- Ranged Combat
- Melee Combat
- Explosive-weapon Combat
- Shotgun Combat
- Building a deck (a special hacking computer)
- Hacking various systems
- Hermetic Magic / Shamatic Magic
- Physical Adepts (Monks)
- Astral Combat
- Customizing vehicles/drones
- Vehicular Combat
- Cybernetics

Later splatbooks added new rules systems, or expanded existing ones. Each were impeccably designed and modeled their respective phenomenon extremely well. But it did not play well. Few GMs were willing to run a game where Riggers, Deckers, Mages, and Cybered-up dudes would actually all run together. Games were slow as GMs had to flip through the rulebook to find the relevant sub-system and basically read through it to make sure he didn't miss anything.

Could this be sped up? Yes. Seasoned Shadowrun GMs would have all kinds of cheat sheets prepared, and many things precalculated - but even they would need to look up the Shotgun Choke Rules whenever they came up.

In short, Shadowrun was a fine game, but its weight of sub-systems made it far clunkier to run than even AD&D. As time went on, some of the Shadowrun sub-systems were merged and simplified, just to make the game more playable.

So, to re-examine your original point. You have taken the 3E Perform rules, and adapted them to your campaign. Good, you created a sub-system that was adequate to your needs. However, how much change did you do? Do you still just have "perform-offs" being opposed skill checks (CHA + Skill Ranks), or have you made it a bit more like combat? IMHO, a good Perform sub-system would look more like the 3E combat system; it allows you to react to your opponents, and to introduce standard situational modifiers to influence the environment around you. Wouldn't it be nice if those mechanics were already available in the original skill system, as opposed to having to cobble together something far more complex?

Oh, and more sub-systems do not create more options. A flexible core rule system provides you with literally unlimited options; sub-systems alone limit you to whatever they can cover.

Now, for lesser_minion's benefit (and yours) here's a sample 4E Perform Skill - created in real-time
First, to separate out skills that better cover some types of performance:
- Dance
Acrobatics. Grace, flexibility, and coordination are far more important in being a good dancer than beauty and personality, so lets use a DEX-based skill that does just that. You can set out DCs for various dance steps (perhaps a History check to see if you recall a given style), with people being appropriately impressed by the difficulty of the steps.

- Juggling/Stage Magic
Thievery. Has Sleight of Hand right there, and is DEX linked.

- Oratory
Diplomacy. Oratory is about being convincing while speaking to a crowd - this skill exactly.

- Acting
Bluff. A good actor can cause the watcher to believe they are the character they portray.

Now, we're down to singing and instruments. Excellent. Now, you can divide up Sing and the various instrument "types" ('cause someone good at Piano can play a Pipe Organ :smalltongue:) but I'll just divide this into Instruments (DEX) and Singing (CHA). They both use the same system, but I never did see how being pretty made you better at playing the guitar.

Instruments (DEX) / Singing (CHA)
The skill to play a variety of instruments and to sing. This skill is commonly used by court musicians, oral historians, and wandering minstrels.

Someone trained in Perform has had formal coaching in the common instruments of the Realms and in control of their voice.

DCs
Common - DC 10
Advanced - DC 20
Expert - DC 25
With Flair DC +2
Original Composition DC +5

Explanation
Perform can be used to attempt songs of varying difficulty level.

Common Music could take the form of a drinking song, a hymn, or any tune which could be played by anyone with a modicum of talent or training. This type of music is one of the major sources of entertainment for the masses.

Advanced Music is best only attempted by talented performers. The subtleties of sound or the complexity of scansion can easily trip up the inexperienced, but when performed by a skilled musician, it can evoke strong emotions from the listener. Music performed at a royal court is typically Advanced Music

Expert Music is rarely heard, but awe-inspiring. Written by the greatest composers of all time, this music requires unbelievable control to pull off - any mistakes, and the song is ruined. Kings who hear of an Expert Performer in their realm often command a performance, so rarely do people of this skill appear.

Occasionally, a pair of Performers may wish to show up the other. In such a situation, a song may be performed With Flair - the musician in question attempts to perform the song in a particularly flamboyant fashion in order to impress the audience. Of course, doing so is a risky endevour - even a well known song can be ruined by a performer trying a bit too hard to impress the tavern wenches.

Sometimes, musicians attempt to write songs of their own. Creating a piece of music is time intensive and requires lots of trial and error; very often, the only way music can be perfected by trying it out in front of an audience. Performing an unfinished piece is more difficult than performing a tried-and-true piece of the equivalent class, but over time your original composition can become part of the common canon too!

(Note: You can make up rules for turning original compositions into canon songs if you'd like).
There you go. Now let's see it in practice:

An untrained, 1st level musician may be able to sing decently (+0 to +4 ability score means they'll be able to perform OK 50-75% of the time; not bad. A trained 1st level musician may be able to play Common Music perfectly (+5 trained, +4 ability) but is going to have trouble playing Expert Music regularly. Still, he can afford to play with Flair to show up any townies, without worrying about some drunk being able to beat out his trained fingers.

Even at 10th level (top of Heroic), an untrained person isn't going to do well with Advanced Music, while a Trained Musician can do OK (+ 5 + 5 +4), better with Masterwork Instruments (+2) and Skill Focus (+3). Why, a focused musician could try Expert and succeed 50% of the time (or better!).

So, Trained Musicians will always show up Untrained, and there is an easy way to demonstrate skill (and fight for ties!).

If I were running your campaign, I'd prefer to do it in 4E if for no reason than the fact that the Skill System allows trained people to be better than merely talented ones, and it is impossible for a bad roll to cause your 20th level Bard to screw up "Chopsticks."

What do you think?

lesser_minion
2009-02-21, 06:50 PM
That actually works quite nicely - my point was that there is more in 3.x to work with than in 4e, so the system takes less work to implement. That gives a practical reason to use this system, beyond Kaiyanwang's own points about 3e working very well for him. However, I accept that it isn't necessarily that much extra work.

As for trained skills, I think I prefer the idea of forcing characters to continually invest in a skill if they want to become the Epic Master Blacksmith Of Legend.

While I disagree with the assessment that Craft, Perform (also a social skill) and Profession are irrelevant to gameplay, I can understand the motives for kicking them to a sourcebook (a sourcebook which I don't think is too horrific a pitch to WotC, because if well-written it actually provides a useful aid to basically every role-playing game on the planet).

Perform might make a return when the Bard comes back to the game - I can see them having some sort of utility abilities that will work a little like free rituals.

Oslecamo
2009-02-21, 07:03 PM
- Dance
Acrobatics. Grace, flexibility, and coordination are far more important in being a good dancer than beauty and personality, so lets use a DEX-based skill that does just that. You can set out DCs for various dance steps (perhaps a History check to see if you recall a given style), with people being appropriately impressed by the difficulty of the steps.


You're joking right? You can be a dancing star if you have enough charisma and good looks, even if you can't actually dance better than the guy next door. But if you don't have the looks, well, you better be the best dancer in the world, because otherwise nobody will bother looking at you.

In more simple terms, is the town going to be more impressed by the HOT guy/gal doing some simple moves or the scarred old dirty person doing a very complex dance?

lesser_minion
2009-02-21, 07:34 PM
However, a dancer's overall quality of performance is dependent mainly on their Dexterity score in D&D terms - even if audiences might pay more attention to the aforementioned HOT character, a connoisseur would almost certainly prefer someone with actual talent.

Also, a character's physical appearance is NOT entirely a function of Charisma. Stereotypical 'dumb blondes' might be hot, but they have a low Charisma score. A high dexterity score combined with choosing Dance as a trained skill suggests that the character has the necessary physique to become a dancer. The choice of Dance as a trained skill or one with ranks implies that the character is actually quite hot as well as being quite skilled. I would probably stat a dancer as having some allure that goes beyond their physical appearance, implying a decent Charisma score, however.

In any event, I think I would combine the skill with things like Diplomacy and Insight/Sense Motive when it is used to impress or entertain (both 'distract the guards' and 'impress the duke' are potential Skill Challenges in 4e).

I would still suggest including Dance as a separate skill and not folding it into Acrobatics (you can actually use Acrobatics as a form of performance in its own right, but it is distinct from dancing.), if you were adapting this kind of campaign to 4e though.

horseboy
2009-02-21, 09:44 PM
Oh heavens no! :smalleek:

Am I the only person who has played Shadowrun out here? I really should write up a standard passage regarding subsystems, The Decker Problem, and the like.

No, no you are not. I was there when Sculpted systems came out near the end of 2nd edition. Yeah, some reason I never really did implement them. What with having to have the decker stat out multiple MPCP's for different sculpts and having to switch them out. No, last decker just said "slot it" and built a Cyclone instead. Cause, it was easier to implement a variable form motorcycle mecha than deal with that. (It was a short campaign. I didn't care, he had fun)

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-22, 06:28 AM
Oracle Hunter, maybe you partially miss my point about sub-systems (maybe because I explained it akwarldy, but have patience: English is not my main language).

The subsystem thing was not only, and not mainly about the skills.

I didn't create a sub-system. I have chosen, between the rules of 3rd edition, what where to put in the spotlight and what in the backgroun for my actual campaign. I found the idea of opposed perform + honor gained in Oriental Adventures. In the PH, you find the numbers for a perform check, from "meh" to "Planar Ludwig Van".

Simply, in my campaing perform is in the spotlight, in some extent. maybe in my next campaing, I will say: Ok we play a la Soul Calibur: here is Tome of Battle, only humans and few templates allowed. The use of some weapon can bring to gain Taint. Law/Chaos axis of alignment Screwed.

In the next, I will eradicate magic from universe. Rogue, Fighter, Marshal, Knight, Scout, No magic Ranger and Rogue. Most Monsters screwed, or with limided access to the Prime. Focus on Handle animals? Good/Evil axis of alignment Screwed.

You could say that you can do such martial campaign in 4th edition, too, but, in my point of view, would be illusionary.

Why? Because of Healing Surges. Because of the Warlord. Yes, Warlord kills martial campaings. Inthe previous 3rd edition campaing, things change a lot. A melee cannot charge with the certainty that his spleen will be patiently gathered by the Druid, and gently replaced. Even DRAW a weapon would be a serious act, more than in any other campaing. Healing herbs, and the healing skill will become invaluable. Poisons far more dangeorus.

Think about 4th edition Warlord. Yes, it's fantastic, but it's kinda a tactical cleric. It's different toward have a cleric as a leader, but a campaing with Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, Marshal, will be so different from a campaing with Fighter, Sorcerer(it's a striker? don't have access to PHII), Cleric, Barbarian?

Not so much. And this is intended by design. If you like only one gamestyle, 4th it's the best (maybe). But... we have an edition that seems to me a one trick pony.

Another thing: do you realize that in 4th edition, a 30 level deaf wizard would have 15 ranks in perform (mandolin)?

More, I don't think that a perform must have a mandatory use in combat. I respect you point of view, but mine it's different.

Anyway, OH: you are a very imaginative person! You are one of the few that can stimulate in me some interest in 4th :smallsmile:

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-22, 10:15 AM
Oh, I know that sub-systems are not the only reason you (and others) dislike 4E, but I just had to seize on that particular soundbyte.


Why? Because of Healing Surges. Because of the Warlord. Yes, Warlord kills martial campaings. Inthe previous 3rd edition campaing, things change a lot. A melee cannot charge with the certainty that his spleen will be patiently gathered by the Druid, and gently replaced. Even DRAW a weapon would be a serious act, more than in any other campaing. Healing herbs, and the healing skill will become invaluable. Poisons far more dangeorus.

See, here we have a reoccurring problem with D&D - lethality.

D&D was designed as a game of heroic fantasy; adventurers were supposed to be able to face down hordes of orcs and ferocious dragons without dropping from a hamstrung leg in the first 6 seconds of combat. You went on epic quests and, if you survived, you would be able to keep adventuring rather than spend months in bed recovering from burns and crush damage. For this reason, HP was designed as it is - life points that have no effect on combat performance until the end - and magical healing was equally quick-and-easy. Still, you can have extremely lethal campaigns, even with these handicaps.

In 2E, people had very few HP (randomly rolled and capped at 9-10 HD) and people could die from pretty much anything. Polymorphing had a chance of death, resurrection had a chance of death, and Ability Damage was practically permanent. Magic was highly limited, and magical items were supposed to be rare and precious.

A problem with this approach to lethality is that it was extremely arbitrary. Doing pretty much anything could result in your death, and even with powerful magics, you may stay dead. Fun for a beer & pretzels session, but frustrating when your carefully sculpted hero meets his final end being un-petrified after the party finished off the medusa.

In 3E, this kind of lethality was downplayed. No more System Shock rolls for polymorphing or resurrection, no more no-save deaths, and lots more magic available. However, a lot of the arbitrary-death situations were about. First level characters would still die ~5% of the time they took the first hit in a battle (crits with x3 weapons, mainly) while 2nd level characters were largely immune. Save-or-Die and Save-or-Suck spells could end a combat as quickly as it started (based on a single roll), and Ability Damage could make HP entirely irrelevant. Plus, the popular Hold-Person-Coup-De-Grace combo. That said, you could have free-falling fighters and everyone 5th level and higher can still survive an axe to the neck (Coup De Grace).

4E takes a different approach. It isn't very heroic (or particularly fun) to be taken out of a fight by a lucky shot or a bad roll in the first round, but if there is no risk, then rewards are boring. Adventurers should be able to run through a Temple of Doom in a single day, but there should be some way to show they are being worn down aside from watching the casters' spell slots. To this end, WotC made several changes:
- HP is high enough that neither PCs nor Monsters can die from a single basic attack of equivalent level. Minions were introduced to allow DMs to keep those big orcish hordes without making the fights impossible or trivial.
- Criticals maximize damage; this prevents "lucky shots" from overwhelming a fresh PC or monster, and makes sure that a "critical" hit is always a solid hit.
- Healing Surges are a new stat that reflects the exhaustion levels of the PCs. Magic can no longer keep PCs going indefinitely, and life-draining effects can now actually drain life. It is not "free healing;" it is limited healing, far more than in any previous edition.
- No more shortcuts around HP. If you're going to kill someone, you're going to have to get through their Health Points. What's the point of being a Fighter - one of the toughest guys around - if wizards are always taking you out by draining your CHA?

Long term damage is also modeled, finally. Disease, for example, is very dangerous. Cure Disease is a long, expensive, and potentially lethal Ritual which means that even up through Paragon and Epic, Diseases can be challenging to PCs. Healing Surges can be drained for a bad night's sleep, a grueling trek through the jungle, poison or disease. Plus, the Disease Track mechanic can be applied to everything from actual sicknesses to deadly poisons and awful curses; it's very handy.

In short, 4E is not "less" lethal than 3E (however constructed), it is differently lethal. Healing Surges may look funny, but when you really get to terms with them, you can see how much new depth they add to the game. They represent the long-term vitality of your character; it's not CON draining, which just kills you now, it is taking away 1/4 of your HP in the next fight, per point. Any character who enters a fight with 0 surges is on his last legs, but he can still fight valiantly; a CON 1 character will fall over in a stiff wind. It adds a whole new dimension in the hazards your players experience, trust me.

In D&D, combat is just never going to be as lethal as you'd like; it's not supposed to be full of broken limbs and scorched faces. And there is no intrinsic reason that HP should only be restored with magic; it's just what we've done before. If you haven't tried 4E, I heartily recommend actually sitting down and looking it over - it may not be a "god system" but it is mathematically sound and full of interesting mechanics. A sound system is a flexible system; I have yet to see something you couldn't approximate effectively in 4E.

Of course, I don't expect you or anyone else to try 4E on my say-so; that's why I try to illustrate my points and answer objections as best I can. It is not for everyone, but you'll never know until you try :smallsmile:

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-22, 10:52 AM
Oh, I know that sub-systems are not the only reason you (and others) dislike 4E, but I just had to seize on that particular soundbyte.

Of course, I don't expect you or anyone else to try 4E on my say-so; that's why I try to illustrate my points and answer objections as best I can. It is not for everyone, but you'll never know until you try :smallsmile:

OH, Well, why not? As I pointed out before, your argumentations are valid and well written. People cannot always agree, but I read what you write with interest, trust me. :smallsmile:

I see you point about surges, and the fact that designers realized that many players hated save or suck. 4th edition math for a lot of things is good, but I prefer a game with Slay Living and Mercurial Greatswords. It's a matter of taste. And of combat development, we could say..

If we challenge 4 Basilisks in 3rd edition:

- First and foremost, we could discuss if Basilisks pietrifying gazes are defenses or offenses. IMHO, they are mainly defenses. I a player of mine would say " bohoo B. is broken i cannot attack him whitout see him concealedt I would realize my failure as a DM, in the extent of showing the basilisk not like a magical and mysterious creature, but a thing to kill and loot (is a thing to kill,too but is not his feature).

-After that, players are adventurers. The go to an adventure, and interact with a world. See, at least in my game style, world interaction is faaar more important than plot. Plot is secondary, world come first. So, particular stunts, or crits, or save-or-die that can interfere with the campaing, Me, the DM, have to accept them (or go around them in a way that does not interfere with player perception of the interaction with a "real" world).

The same way, player must accept a 1st level orc barbarian that crits 63 damage with his axe. For my tastes, this is good. Maybe is anticlimatic, but axes have not climax. Axes have sharp edges made to break things (generally, orcs and adventurers).

I'm sorry but... one of the main critiques about combat in 4th edition is the thing that after a while (after you dropped some opponents), combat becomes grind. Come back to the basilisk above.

If you left alive one basilisk, he can, 1 HP left, one-shot a PC if he wanted to risk and not keep eyes closed, or use tricks/buffs whatelse. Well, that's a fight with magical beast. Don't wan to turn in stone, don't challenge them.

Few post above, i mentioned the Phane. 3rd edition phane is a nightmare in gameplay, needs an experienced DM, but, 9hells, that's a fight with a time abomination. 4th edition phane, WTF? A "shower" to cleanse debuffs, and the aging effect temporary. So, I fought a time abomination, able to age at sight things, but for a while. Why? because because my sister become upset if her human mage seems older? Or because there is no an "aged by Phane" function in D&D insider for character portraits?

I don't like the approach. And, to further confirm what i said before, you can screw SoD from 3rd edition, or tune down crits (by core or there are mechanics), but what if I want a more lethal 4th edition?

You, OH, once said a very interesting thing: classes in 4th can be fixed better by designers (If I well understood: You can add a power to fix a class issue). This is true. Maybe in the future we will see a splatbook with SoD. But things are kinda sad as they are now, for my tastes. You point the math, and the math is good, but I'd prefer a game changing level by levels, even with his problems (that I'd prefer see fixed, instead to see a new edition heading in direction I don't like).

HP can be abstact, and I couldn't like it so much, but see them becaome more abstract... it's worse.

But, afterall, we come to the same conclusions of the above posts:

- 4rth edition is more gamist. If you like the approach, you'll love it.
- Anyway, to the OP: I' dont' like 4th edition, but, as OH said, try it: for you tastes could be the best system ever.

Artanis
2009-02-22, 12:35 PM
- Anyway, to the OP: I' dont' like 4th edition, but, as OH said, try it: for you tastes could be the best system ever.
This is a very refreshing attitude to see :smallsmile:

Far too often, I see people saying "I hate 4e, I've never played it, I will never play it, playing it sucks, you shouldn't play it." It's rare that somebody who prefers 3.5 - especially for as many reasons as you do - actually recommends trying it anyways :smallbiggrin:




Note because text does not convey tone: this is an honest statement, and not sarcasm.

THAC0
2009-02-22, 01:27 PM
D&D was designed as a game of heroic fantasy; adventurers were supposed to be able to face down hordes of orcs and ferocious dragons without dropping from a hamstrung leg in the first 6 seconds of combat. You went on epic quests and, if you survived, you would be able to keep adventuring rather than spend months in bed recovering from burns and crush damage.

In 1e, if you dropped below 0 HP, you actually did have to spend a week in bed to recover from the trauma, regardless of how much healing you received.

It was SUPER ANNOYING, honestly, especially when your campaign was on a timeline.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-22, 02:01 PM
In 1e, if you dropped below 0 HP, you actually did have to spend a week in bed to recover from the trauma, regardless of how much healing you received.

It was SUPER ANNOYING, honestly, especially when your campaign was on a timeline.

Wait, didn't you die at 0 HP? That's what the book said in 2E anyhow.

Thane of Fife
2009-02-22, 02:46 PM
Wait, didn't you die at 0 HP? That's what the book said in 2E anyhow.

Optional Rule: Hovering at Death's Door. It pretty much says that you are physically incapable of doing anything for a week. I don't believe that there's any way around it as per the rules (though we generally ignored it). But otherwise, yeah, dead at 0.

Also remember that, barring magical healing, characters recovered 1 hp per day of rest, or slightly more if it was bed rest.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-22, 02:48 PM
Also remember that, barring magical healing, characters recovered 1 hp per day of rest, or slightly more if it was bed rest.

Yes, but it's easy for the DM to say "ok, it's now a month later, and you're all healed". This, incidentally, gives them plenty of "downtime" to do other stuff, like diplomacy or research. See, the characters don't have to adventure every single day of their lives. It gets rather silly if the Kingdom is imperiled every day of the week.

Advocate
2009-02-22, 02:55 PM
Should I buy the 4e books?

No.


Are they more balanced?

In the sense of being all the same yes. But everything is balanced with itself or clones thereof.


Are they more fun?

No.


Are they different for RPing purposes?

Definitely. Note different = different, and not better.


Are they as mechanically diverse?

A 3.5 Fighter is more mechanically diverse than any two 4.0 classes combined. No sarcasm.

THAC0
2009-02-22, 02:58 PM
Wait, didn't you die at 0 HP? That's what the book said in 2E anyhow.

I don't know about 2e.

Per the 1e DMG, page 82: "When any creature is brought to 0 hit points...it is unconscious."

Also: "Any creature brought to 0 (or fewer) hit points and then revived remains in a coma for 1-6 turns." (that's 10-60 minutes)

"Thereafter, he or she must rest for a week, minimum."

Etc, etc.

THAC0
2009-02-22, 03:01 PM
Yes, but it's easy for the DM to say "ok, it's now a month later, and you're all healed". This, incidentally, gives them plenty of "downtime" to do other stuff, like diplomacy or research. See, the characters don't have to adventure every single day of their lives. It gets rather silly if the Kingdom is imperiled every day of the week.

Yes, and higher level 1e play actually produced (in our games, anyway), multiple lengthy arguments by the casters on why we should always take several months downtime for potion creation and spell research and the like.

And the fighter just said "Hmph." :smallwink:

AgentPaper
2009-02-22, 03:08 PM
No.

In the sense of being all the same yes. But everything is balanced with itself or clones thereof.

No.

Definitely. Note different = different, and not better.

A 3.5 Fighter is more mechanically diverse than any two 4.0 classes combined. No sarcasm.

Are you trying to rile people up? Classes are not clones, except in that they get powers at the same time. These powers are vastly different from each other. I would argue that 4E is actually more diverse than 3.5, because feats have more impact, you have more choices between powers, and race and it's feats make much more of a difference. Whereas in 3.5 an orc wizard and grey elf wizard are in the end of the day a point or two different from each other, and that's it.

Of course, that's opinion, and to some they may seem less varied than what you can do in 3.5, but saying that they are all clones of each other is just blatantly false.

Advocate
2009-02-22, 04:02 PM
+2 to hit isn't huge in 3.X, where mid-high level characters often hit on 2 anyway. It is huge, when you need to have a race with bonuses to your primary stats, best available weapon, correct feats and correct powers to hit level-approptiate opponents even 50% of the time after the first few levels (because your base attack bonus grows slower that enemies' defences). The game is built on assumption of squeezing every possible minor bonus of the system just to remain competitive. Sure, you can crush underpowered opponents without painstaking optimization, but level-appropriate monsters of second and third tiers run by a DM that actually tries to defeat the party with these monsters will kick your ass, unless you make all the proper choices. (Although, I admit, with appearance of more and better stuff in the supplements this balance of power already began to shift.)

Indeed. Playing a 4.0 game is like forcing everyone to play a Fighter in 3.5. Except worse, because even more max optimization is required to keep up.

And to the guy who said no races get penalties anymore - incorrect. The difference between a +2 bonus and neither getting a bonus nor a penalty is exactly the same as the difference between a neutral stat and a -2 stat - +2. Even though it's not expressed as a negative number, you still take the opportunity cost of 2 points to that stat if you don't take the race that has the +2 in the right place. Which means it amounts to exactly the same thing as a 3.5 orc wizard vs 3.5 human wizard. Except worse, because 3.5 offers more ways to make up that -1 to everything you do that matters.

It's still a penalty, it's just making a Disguise check to appear as something else.

AgentPaper
2009-02-22, 04:12 PM
a +1 isn't going to make or break your character. Still, even classes that don't get that will usually get things that make up for it in their racial feats. Eladrin for example don't get a bonus to STR, but get eladrin weapon training, which increases their damage by 2 with certain weapons.

And 4E is FAR less dependant on optimization than 3.5. I don't know why people keep saying this. At the very least, point out where you think this is true.

NPCMook
2009-02-22, 04:17 PM
a +1 isn't going to make or break your character. Still, even classes that don't get that will usually get things that make up for it in their racial feats. Eladrin for example don't get a bonus to STR, but get eladrin weapon training, which increases their damage by 2 with certain weapons.

And 4E is FAR less dependant on optimization than 3.5. I don't know why people keep saying this. At the very least, point out where you think this is true.

Let's not forget that 4e even if you hyper Optimize you aren't penalizing the party because the DM doesn't have to increase the CR for 1 character

Advocate
2009-02-22, 04:31 PM
Are you trying to rile people up? Classes are not clones, except in that they get powers at the same time. These powers are vastly different from each other. I would argue that 4E is actually more diverse than 3.5, because feats have more impact, you have more choices between powers, and race and it's feats make much more of a difference. Whereas in 3.5 an orc wizard and grey elf wizard are in the end of the day a point or two different from each other, and that's it.

Of course, that's opinion, and to some they may seem less varied than what you can do in 3.5, but saying that they are all clones of each other is just blatantly false.

No.

Powers can best be summarized as one of the following:

Low damage.

Low damage, (status).

Low damage, (little push/pull thing).

And... yeah. Even looking at the total options, there aren't many. Then once you realize that the 'status' powers are stuff like daze, stun, and other such things that are just infinitely better than all of the other sorts and you end up with everyone of class x taking the same powers, that are near identical to the powers of classes y and z.

The 4.0 feats are things like... +1 damage with a certain type of attack. Then there are a lot of feats there that actually make you worse for taking them, like the 4.0 Power Attack. More of a difference? You are joking, right?

In general terms the system is so narrow, and tries to force everyone into still more narrow niches that it ends up breaking all the time, by pure accident, and over the silliest of things such as a mounted archer being able to kite nearly every enemy in the game to death, provided that they can hit them at all, because the enemy cannot catch up, and cannot outrange the archer. 3.5 certainly had things that could break it, but it was quite capable of handling 'bowman on horse'. Or how about how the other 'strikers' are just flat out better than a Warlock in every way, rendering that class pointless? Or perhaps the Fighter, a 'Defender', who does more damage than these 'Strikers' and what's more, does it exactly the same way as a melee range 'lots of attacks per round' character? So basically, Fighters are better melee Rangers than melee Rangers, Rangers are still only in the game because of some arbitrary 'only they use bows', the entire Striker archetype is just an offense/defense slider (and the Fighter does it better). And that's just core. 8 classes, of which 3 are already invalidated. The assumed party size is 5. Hm, choices... Where's that eye rolling smiley?

As to where I know 4.0 is more dependent on optimization than 3.5 is true... Every 3.5 class, except maybe Monks. Even the much maligned Fighter can at least be made to stay on the Random Number Generator without grubbing for every little +1. Give a newbie player in 3.5 a caster, and they'll end up at least mediocre. Even though they're largely clueless. No need to optimize to the max there.

Whereas in 4.0, you are automatically assumed to have to have a maxed out weapon the exact level it becomes available, assumed to have one stat maximized, with every level up possible thrown into it, and still need another 5 points from other stuff over 30 levels as otherwise, your effectiveness vs normal enemies drops by 5 points. Seeing as your base effectiveness is 10-13 points (50-65%), lowering that by 5 (to 25-40%) is HUGE. Especially when you consider these are just normal enemies. When you get into Elites and Solos, your effectiveness still drops, such that you can very easily end up unable to even touch them AT ALL barring automatic successes. Thus, you have fallen off the RNG.

AgentPaper
2009-02-22, 04:58 PM
No.

Powers can best be summarized as one of the following:

Low damage.

Low damage, (status).

Low damage, (little push/pull thing).
This is just a blatant lie. Damage fluctuates quite a bit, and there's much mroe than just *status* and *push/pull*, even though just those are far, FAR more than any 3.5 fighter could do, if not as much as a caster potentially could.

And... yeah. Even looking at the total options, there aren't many. Then once you realize that the 'status' powers are stuff like daze, stun, and other such things that are just infinitely better than all of the other sorts and you end up with everyone of class x taking the same powers, that are near identical to the powers of classes y and z.
Total options are low because there aren't half a billion books out yet. Comparing core to core, you have more options in 4E. And looking at the few sourcebooks that have come out, like martial power and adventurer's vault, those have more options than any one 3.5 book has, that I know of.

And you say that some powers just "infinitely better" than all other, well how about you show me some of those? Otherwise I could say "3.5 sucks because monks are infinitely better than any other class ever, so everyone has to play them." I'd be wrong, but that's as valid an argument as you're making here, without examples.

The 4.0 feats are things like... +1 damage with a certain type of attack. Then there are a lot of feats there that actually make you worse for taking them, like the 4.0 Power Attack. More of a difference? You are joking, right?
Power Attack isn't useless. Not as powerful as 3.5, and not an "OMG TAKE THIS OR YOU SUCK!" feat, but it's useful. And +1 damage with certain types of attacks is valuable, as it's hard to get additional damage. It's comparable to adding 2 to a stat for many classes.


In general terms the system is so narrow, and tries to force everyone into still more narrow niches that it ends up breaking all the time, by pure accident, and over the silliest of things such as a mounted archer being able to kite nearly every enemy in the game to death, provided that they can hit them at all, because the enemy cannot catch up, and cannot outrange the archer. 3.5 certainly had things that could break it, but it was quite capable of handling 'bowman on horse'.
Huh? How is an archer on a mount so invincible? Sure, if your party is made up of 5 fighters who forgot to bring bows, you're screwed, but that's the same as in 3.5. Bad tactics lose you a fight, same as always. And you could always, you know, hide behind something, or head into a wall, and then he can't hit you.

Or how about how the other 'strikers' are just flat out better than a Warlock in every way, rendering that class pointless? Or perhaps the Fighter, a 'Defender', who does more damage than these 'Strikers' and what's more, does it exactly the same way as a melee range 'lots of attacks per round' character? So basically, Fighters are better melee Rangers than melee Rangers, Rangers are still only in the game because of some arbitrary 'only they use bows', the entire Striker archetype is just an offense/defense slider (and the Fighter does it better). And that's just core. 8 classes, of which 3 are already invalidated. The assumed party size is 5. Hm, choices... Where's that eye rolling smiley?
Again, give examples here, or your argument is null. Fighters do more damage then rogues and rangers and warlocks? What the hell game are you playing? Show me your fighter build, and I'll beat it's damage with any of the striker classes. And hey look, here comes the PHB2 with 8 MORE classes.

As to where I know 4.0 is more dependent on optimization than 3.5 is true... Every 3.5 class, except maybe Monks. Even the much maligned Fighter can at least be made to stay on the Random Number Generator without grubbing for every little +1. Give a newbie player in 3.5 a caster, and they'll end up at least mediocre. Even though they're largely clueless. No need to optimize to the max there.
So your argument is, if you can hit the enemy on a 15 or higher, and do a little damage, you're contributing in 3.5, but in 4th edition, if you're not hitting on a 5 and doing half the enemy's health in damage per round, you're useless?

Whereas in 4.0, you are automatically assumed to have to have a maxed out weapon the exact level it becomes available, assumed to have one stat maximized, with every level up possible thrown into it, and still need another 5 points from other stuff over 30 levels as otherwise, your effectiveness vs normal enemies drops by 5 points. Seeing as your base effectiveness is 10-13 points (50-65%), lowering that by 5 (to 25-40%) is HUGE. Especially when you consider these are just normal enemies. When you get into Elites and Solos, your effectiveness still drops, such that you can very easily end up unable to even touch them AT ALL barring automatic successes. Thus, you have fallen off the RNG.
Yes, it's assumed that you have a decent weapon for your level. That's not powergaming. In fact, it has nothing to do with the player, but with the DM. If the DM isn't handing out magic items like recommended, then EVERYONE is going to suffer. But they won't be useless, at any rate. And putting more points into your main stat isn't optimization, it's what the PHB TELLS you to do, if you really can't figure it out yourself. And yes, you should try to pick up a few extra +hit stuff along the way. However, even if you never pick up a single feat or buff that makes it easier to hit things, you'll STILL be hitting things 1/4 times, which is much more than you can say for a fighter that does nothing but put a high stat in his attack score and keeps a nice +5 weapon ready. And this is at level 30, when you're literally epic and so are the things you're fighting. It's a bit harder to fight equal-level monsters there than when you're level 1, but you can still do it, even without a single little bit of optimization. Level 30 fighter who doesn't even use his feats can still do stuff. Can you say the same for a 3.5 fighter? :smallsigh:

Kurald Galain
2009-02-22, 05:02 PM
And the fighter just said "Hmph." :smallwink:

Weeellll, the fighter was supposed to get a stronghold with a bunch of soldiers, so he could meddle in political affairs while the wizard was busy researching stuff... :smalltongue:

Artanis
2009-02-22, 05:06 PM
Powers can best be summarized as one of the following:

Low damage.

Low damage, (status).

Low damage, (little push/pull thing).
Yes, because melee and range are such different things. And because 6d10+6+2d6 with a free outright move action is the exact same amount of damage as 1d4. And because utterly crippling the enemy's ability to act is the exact same thing as removing a devastating status effect from an ally. And because single-target attacks are the exact same thing as an area-effect one.

Oslecamo
2009-02-22, 05:18 PM
This is just a blatant lie. Damage fluctuates quite a bit, and there's much mroe than just *status* and *push/pull*, even though just those are far, FAR more than any 3.5 fighter could do, if not as much as a caster potentially could.


Yeah, 3e fighters couldn't trip!

Oh, wait, they could...

But they couldn't completely imobilize a enemy!

Oh, 3e grapple...

Still they sucked at ranged!

Hey, look, fast shot!

Guess they couldn't sunder the enemy's equipment...

Well hello sunder!

Or "gasp" continual 10 feet reach! No way a 3e fighter could pull that off!

Shall I continue?

Advocate
2009-02-22, 05:21 PM
This is just a blatant lie. Damage fluctuates quite a bit, and there's much mroe than just *status* and *push/pull*, even though just those are far, FAR more than any 3.5 fighter could do, if not as much as a caster potentially could.

Stunning Fist. Yes, it sucks, but like the 4.0 effects it has a low chance to work and a short duration if it does work so it is actually a good comparison. Now ask yourself, why didn't you use Stunning Fist more in 3.5? Once you understand the answer to that, you will understand the 4.0 issues a bit more.


Total options are low because there aren't half a billion books out yet. Comparing core to core, you have more options in 4E. And looking at the few sourcebooks that have come out, like martial power and adventurer's vault, those have more options than any one 3.5 book has, that I know of.

Except that I was comparing core to core. In 4.0 core, many cases are you have x options, but only y are worth taking. Choose y of them. In some cases, it's more like you have x options and can choose x of them... which means it's literally not a choice at all, as there are exactly as many powers as there are powers you can take. You can't even 'choose' to suck to be different.


And you say that some powers just "infinitely better" than all other, well how about you show me some of those? Otherwise I could say "3.5 sucks because monks are infinitely better than any other class ever, so everyone has to play them." I'd be wrong, but that's as valid an argument as you're making here, without examples.

Power Attack isn't useless. Not as powerful as 3.5, and not an "OMG TAKE THIS OR YOU SUCK!" feat, but it's useful. And +1 damage with certain types of attacks is valuable, as it's hard to get additional damage. It's comparable to adding 2 to a stat for many classes.

Anything that prevents enemies from acting > anything that does not prevent enemies from acting. This is the same reason why Power Attack is worse than useless. You don't care about doing slightly more than trivial damage. You care about hitting with your stunlock. PA reduces your accuracy, and thus reduces the chance of hitting with your stunlock.


Huh? How is an archer on a mount so invincible? Sure, if your party is made up of 5 fighters who forgot to bring bows, you're screwed, but that's the same as in 3.5. Bad tactics lose you a fight, same as always. And you could always, you know, hide behind something, or head into a wall, and then he can't hit you.

Completely missed the point. The point was that the PC was the horse archer, and he was fighting the 4.0 enemies. Hell, make it 5 horse archer PCs, make a group of it!


Again, give examples here, or your argument is null. Fighters do more damage then rogues and rangers and warlocks? What the hell game are you playing? Show me your fighter build, and I'll beat it's damage with any of the striker classes. And hey look, here comes the PHB2 with 8 MORE classes.

Fighters get more attacks per round. Full stop.


So your argument is, if you can hit the enemy on a 15 or higher, and do a little damage, you're contributing in 3.5, but in 4th edition, if you're not hitting on a 5 and doing half the enemy's health in damage per round, you're useless?

Straw man. In 3.5, even the really bad builds can still hit enemies reliably. They won't do nearly enough damage to make the enemy care that they are being hit, but they are hitting. An optimized version of the same beatstick will do relevant amounts of damage. Skip to 4.0, and it becomes infinitely more difficult to get those critical bonuses, thus you have to work much harder to accomplish much less. Also, the 3.5 RNG assumes that you will eventually hit the enemy 95% of the time, and the question is how hard you hit it to make it care. The 4.0 RNG assumes that enemies will scale in strength, offensively and defensively faster than you scale, thus you must optimize to catch up. That's just common sense. Also in 4.0, you're pretty much stuck in 'do not do enough damage to make enemies care mode', even if you use pure damage powers. This is why the stunlocks are the only things worth taking, as they can help keep you alive, and help speed up the Padded Sumo a bit.


Yes, it's assumed that you have a decent weapon for your level. That's not powergaming. In fact, it has nothing to do with the player, but with the DM. If the DM isn't handing out magic items like recommended, then EVERYONE is going to suffer. But they won't be useless, at any rate. And putting more points into your main stat isn't optimization, it's what the PHB TELLS you to do, if you really can't figure it out yourself. And yes, you should try to pick up a few extra +hit stuff along the way. However, even if you never pick up a single feat or buff that makes it easier to hit things, you'll STILL be hitting things 1/4 times, which is much more than you can say for a fighter that does nothing but put a high stat in his attack score and keeps a nice +5 weapon ready. And this is at level 30, when you're literally epic and so are the things you're fighting. It's a bit harder to fight equal-level monsters there than when you're level 1, but you can still do it, even without a single little bit of optimization. Level 30 fighter who doesn't even use his feats can still do stuff. Can you say the same for a 3.5 fighter? :smallsigh:

Except that you can only raise one stat to the max in this way. Most classes? Built off two stats. Oops.

A 3.5 Fighter would hit more than 25% of the time. See above.

Advocate
2009-02-22, 05:22 PM
Yeah, 3e fighters couldn't trip!

Oh, wait, they could...

But they couldn't completely imobilize a enemy!

Oh, 3e grapple...

Still they sucked at ranged!

Hey, look, fast shot!

Guess they couldn't sunder the enemy's equipment...

Well hello sunder!

Or "gasp" continual 10 feet reach! No way a 3e fighter could pull that off!

Shall I continue?

Um, most of those are actually bad examples.

RebelRogue
2009-02-22, 05:35 PM
Straw man. In 3.5, even the really bad builds can still hit enemies reliably. They won't do nearly enough damage to make the enemy care that they are being hit, but they are hitting. An optimized version of the same beatstick will do relevant amounts of damage. Skip to 4.0, and it becomes infinitely more difficult to get those critical bonuses, thus you have to work much harder to accomplish much less. Also, the 3.5 RNG assumes that you will eventually hit the enemy 95% of the time, and the question is how hard you hit it to make it care. The 4.0 RNG assumes that enemies will scale in strength, offensively and defensively faster than you scale, thus you must optimize to catch up. That's just common sense. Also in 4.0, you're pretty much stuck in 'do not do enough damage to make enemies care mode', even if you use pure damage powers. This is why the stunlocks are the only things worth taking, as they can help keep you alive, and help speed up the Padded Sumo a bit.
My experience is the exact opposite: If anything, there's way more "traps" and potentially bad builds in 3.5 than in 4e! The only way to go really bad in 3e, is putting low stats in your primary stats, basically. The problem of those last few bonuses to hit in 4e are a highlevel problem too. The trouble you can get yourself into in the way of bad (or at least suboptimal) builds in 3.5 at an equivalent level (epic) are legion! Nothing compared to picking a few good items.

Advocate
2009-02-22, 05:44 PM
My experience is the exact opposite: If anything, there's way more "traps" and potentially bad builds in 3.5 than in 4e! The only way to go really bad in 3e, is putting low stats in your primary stats, basically. The problem of those last few bonuses to hit in 4e are a highlevel problem too. The trouble you can get yourself into in the way of bad (or at least suboptimal) builds in 3.5 at an equivalent level (epic) are legion! Nothing compared to picking a few good items.

Falling into a trap in 3.5 does not hurt you as badly as falling into a trap in 4.0. If you ignore the traps, you're looking at more builds that aren't traps in core 3.5 than you are total builds in 4.0.

Also, I make my Will save to disbelieve throw random numbers on a page... otherwise known as Epic.

AgentPaper
2009-02-22, 05:47 PM
Stunning Fist. Yes, it sucks, but like the 4.0 effects it has a low chance to work and a short duration if it does work so it is actually a good comparison. Now ask yourself, why didn't you use Stunning Fist more in 3.5? Once you understand the answer to that, you will understand the 4.0 issues a bit more.
Because you can't use it with a weapon. How does this relate to 4e?

Except that I was comparing core to core. In 4.0 core, many cases are you have x options, but only y are worth taking. Choose y of them. In some cases, it's more like you have x options and can choose x of them... which means it's literally not a choice at all, as there are exactly as many powers as there are powers you can take. You can't even 'choose' to suck to be different.
This just after I saw you say, "There are only 6 feats worthwhile for a beatstick in core" in another thread. You have 6 by level 4 as a fighter. huh. Whereas in 4E, there are far more options as far as feats, and you get less of them. You get 6 feats by level 10, 7 as a human. What are these 6-7 feats that are the only ones worth taking?

Anything that prevents enemies from acting > anything that does not prevent enemies from acting. This is the same reason why Power Attack is worse than useless. You don't care about doing slightly more than trivial damage. You care about hitting with your stunlock. PA reduces your accuracy, and thus reduces the chance of hitting with your stunlock.
Yes. However, stunlock is difficult to impossible. How are you keeping the enemy stunlocked? And powers that stun do a lot less damage, so you're gunna have to stunlock them for quite some time. And if you miss one of those attacks? No more stunlock. Give examples, and I'll take you a lot more seriously. Where is this build that can keep an enemy locked down for long enough to kill things?

Completely missed the point. The point was that the PC was the horse archer, and he was fighting the 4.0 enemies. Hell, make it 5 horse archer PCs, make a group of it!
So, monsters in 4E are all slower than the ones in 3.5? You can't hide behind cover? The enemy won't run out of ammo? How does this work more in 4E than it does in 3.5?

Fighters get more attacks per round. Full stop.
...what? No, they do not. They get to attack once per round, the same as everyone else. What the hell game are you playing?

Straw man. In 3.5, even the really bad builds can still hit enemies reliably. They won't do nearly enough damage to make the enemy care that they are being hit, but they are hitting. An optimized version of the same beatstick will do relevant amounts of damage. Skip to 4.0, and it becomes infinitely more difficult to get those critical bonuses, thus you have to work much harder to accomplish much less. Also, the 3.5 RNG assumes that you will eventually hit the enemy 95% of the time, and the question is how hard you hit it to make it care. The 4.0 RNG assumes that enemies will scale in strength, offensively and defensively faster than you scale, thus you must optimize to catch up. That's just common sense. Also in 4.0, you're pretty much stuck in 'do not do enough damage to make enemies care mode', even if you use pure damage powers. This is why the stunlocks are the only things worth taking, as they can help keep you alive, and help speed up the Padded Sumo a bit.
Yes, it's harder to get +1s and +2s in 4E. No, you don't require them to fight, but they help. An unoptimized class in 4E will perform much better than one in 3.5. Hitting reliably in 3.5 is easy, sure, but doing relevant damage is easier in 4E. And you can still hit well enough to matter. The difference between an optimized character and an unoptimized one is far smaller in 4E than it is in 3.5.

Except that you can only raise one stat to the max in this way. Most classes? Built off two stats. Oops.
Except, you CAN raise two stats this way. You get +1 to TWO stats 6 times, and +1 to ALL stats twice. You're literally forced to not focus on a single stat. Even if you spread out into 3 stats, you'll loose a few points, but not be irrelevant. Compared to 3.5, where you can only raise 1 stat to good levels, and all the classes have different amounts of stats they use, from 1 to 4-5.

A 3.5 Fighter would hit more than 25% of the time. See above.
True, but he would still be useless. Whereas in 4E he wouldn't be. His attacks would still hurt, or inflict statuses that can't be ignored.


Edit: You keep saying there's more relevant builds in core 3.5 than there are in 4E, yet you have yet to tell us what even one of these is. Please share?

RebelRogue
2009-02-22, 06:12 PM
Falling into a trap in 3.5 does not hurt you as badly as falling into a trap in 4.0. If you ignore the traps, you're looking at more builds that aren't traps in core 3.5 than you are total builds in 4.0.

Also, I make my Will save to disbelieve throw random numbers on a page... otherwise known as Epic.
Again, not my experience. Could you point out a few of those traps, then?

Epic, schmepic... the fact is, that it's not a low-level phenomenon/problem you're referring to. My argument is still valid for mid-levels (although less exaggerated).

its_all_ogre
2009-02-22, 06:15 PM
Fighters get more attacks per round. Full stop.
.

i am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're referring to opportunity attacks and their mastery ability?

in which case you are still wrong UNLESS you're relying on the monsters to play with zero tactics.
in which case the dm playing them is playing inappropriately.

Advocate
2009-02-22, 06:29 PM
For some reason, the forums will not allow me to reply to this thread.

THAC0
2009-02-22, 07:10 PM
Weeellll, the fighter was supposed to get a stronghold with a bunch of soldiers, so he could meddle in political affairs while the wizard was busy researching stuff... :smalltongue:

The novelty wore off quickly for him, as I recall.

But then, some people just don't go for that kinda stuff.

Blackdrop
2009-02-23, 01:12 AM
Falling into a trap in 3.5 does not hurt you as badly as falling into a trap in 4.0. If you ignore the traps, you're looking at more builds that aren't traps in core 3.5 than you are total builds in 4.0.

Also, I make my Will save to disbelieve throw random numbers on a page... otherwise known as Epic.

What 4.0 builds are traps out of curiosity?

xanaphia
2009-02-23, 01:41 AM
Thank you for your responses.

I am liking 4e more and more by the minute. I love the new Cleave rule. I think I might just adapt the 4e feature things into 3.5.

I am very tempted to go out and get it...

Asbestos
2009-02-23, 03:25 AM
For some reason, the forums will not allow me to reply to this thread.

Then my thanks go out to the forums. :smalltongue:

Ha, but yeah, I'm going to chime in with the others and say... wtf trap builds are you talking about and how does 3.x have more 'viable builds' or whatever than 4e?

Kurald Galain
2009-02-23, 05:43 AM
Ha, but yeah, I'm going to chime in with the others and say... wtf trap builds are you talking about and how does 3.x have more 'viable builds' or whatever than 4e?
I don't think 4E has "trap builds" per se (although it has a few traps like Sure Strike, or using too low a primary stat).

Regarding viable builds, however, it is easy to list numerous things present in the 3E PHB that are absent from the 4E PHB. For instance, barbarians, druids, monks and bards; shapeshifting, necromancy, long-term buffs, and combat illusions; triple classing; alignment effects; clerics having fundamentally different spells depending on their deity; followers, familiars, and animal companions. Quite the list, isn't it?

That's just comparing the players' handbooks. And while some of this will be covered in future 4E books, some of these items from the very first 3E book will never be covered in 4E because it contradicts the design philosophy. So yeah, it's an obvious fact that you can do things with the 3E PHB that will never be allowed in 4E.

lesser_minion
2009-02-23, 05:48 AM
Thank you for your responses.

I am liking 4e more and more by the minute. I love the new Cleave rule. I think I might just adapt the 4e feature things into 3.5.

I am very tempted to go out and get it...

You probably should. I can't really speak for the actual in play experience, but the rules are mostly well-written and they seem mostly balanced. The only problems I have with it are that some of the powers feel very unrealistic - with more thought put into how things work in game terms than in character - and the they still seem to have gutted more material than was necessary, rather than reworking it and leaving it around as an option.

It also throws out a lot of 3e's (admittedly problematic in places) flexibility and replaces it with a mad splatbook drive.

A few concepts aren't explained too well - Oracle_Hunter gave a much better fluff explanation for the healing surges ability than the books do.

After reading the books, I'd probably have to give the game the thumbs up - it seems good, but not perfect. It solves basically every problem I had with 3e, and provides some pretty elegant solutions to some of them, but I don't really agree with quite a few of the design decisions they made in order to do so.

Tehnar
2009-02-23, 06:09 AM
I would recommend that you try 4e. Now I like 3.5e better, but I like playing 4e too. Thankfully you can do both and not be damned to the lower hells (since we are allready playing dnd and damned anyways :P).

There are some things I dislike about 4e, but that is mostly the design philosophy. However most of that comes up fairly infrequently. Except monsters in the MM, I think they are poorly done and for people new to DnD it leaves a lot of fluff missing, that to me makes monster come alive.

However the emphasis on multi monster encounters, and the various roles the monsters are designed to be is a very very good thing.


Also in my experience in playing 4e (1st to 8th level), in a party consisting of a ranger (bow), wizard, cleric, infernal lock and fighter (me), everyone is doing their part. The strikers are doing massive damage to single targets, the wizard is dealing damage to multiple enemies, the cleric is healing and buffing us, and I am protecting everyone from the baddies. The only time I got the feeling the fighter was a damage dealer was at level 1, and at that time the ranger missed a lot of his attack. At level 8 the ranger and warlock are routinely dealing 25-35 damage on a single target with their encounter powers, while Im more in the range of 10-20.

Advocate
2009-02-23, 08:08 AM
And I still can't seem to get my original reply through. Though other comments occasionally work, still can't edit in the real text. Between that, and all the nerd rage from certain oversensitive types I'm just going to leave this thread to spin its wheels ineffectually.

AgentPaper
2009-02-23, 10:32 AM
I'll also give my thanks to the spider monkey in an oversized hamster ball that keeps this board running...sometimes. :smalltongue:

And yes, I'm the same as Tehnar, though with the editions switched. I tend to like how 4E plays more than 3.5, but I can see the advantages of 3.5, and if I wasn't such a gamist, I would probably like 3.5 more than 4e. Some of my friends like 4e, and some...well, don't. One in particular will go on a rant if you so much as mention 4e, claiming it's the worst thing WotC could have done and the end of gaming. He's still a decent DM for 3.5, though. And he does the same thing for the new editions of Warhammer Fantasy, funnily enough. :smallwink:

But yeah, to anyone still on the fence: How important is balance to you? How important is realism? If you're somewhat concerned about the former and not obsessed with the latter, 4e is definitely worth a try. Play with someone who has the books already, if possible. (For example, you could join my game, which will be played over the internet with voice chat [/shamelessplug]) If you don't care about the former and the latter is important to you, you probably won't like 4e as much. Still, no matter who you are, you should at least try 4e if you ever get the chance, at the very least so you can have actual experience when you nerd rage about it all over the place. :smallwink::smalltongue:

Artanis
2009-02-23, 12:57 PM
Regarding viable builds, however, it is easy to list numerous things present in the 3E PHB that are absent from the 4E PHB. For instance, barbarians, druids, monks and bards; shapeshifting, necromancy, long-term buffs, and combat illusions; triple classing; alignment effects; clerics having fundamentally different spells depending on their deity; followers, familiars, and animal companions. Quite the list, isn't it?
I agree that all of those are much reduced or removed from the PHB, so take this post in that context. Now, that said, a couple of things are still there. Technically.

Alignment effects: As a Cleric or Paladin, you have to start as the same alignment as your deity (though Unaligned characters can start for any deity). Which deity you follow determines what Channel Divinity feats you're allowed to take. Of course, changing alignment doesn't make you fall or anything, but it's strongly suggested that the DM find other ways to make it Very Bad Idea to piss off your deity.

Fundamentally different Cleric spells: Again, the Channel Divinity feats. It's nothing like the 3.5 domains, but still technically a difference.

Combat Illusions: Can you further define exactly what you mean by this? Because there are several powers that are illusions that are used in combat, but they're largely stuff like 3.5's Phantasmal Killer in that they're called illusions, but the actual effect would work perfectly well with some other description. I guess Necromancy would be similar, with some powers resembling 3.5 "necromancy" spells, but that would work just as well under a different title.

Classes: True, those you listed are missing. But I think it's important that there are quite a few classes in the 4e PHB that weren't in the 3.5 PHB. The Warlord and Warlock are base classes that weren't in the 3.5 PHB. Plus, FWIW, there's a lot more core Paragon Paths than there were core PrCs.



Mechanically, I don't consider the loss of long-term buffs to actually be losing anything. I look at it this way: I would rather have 10 AC than I would 5 AC plus another 5 AC from a buff that I keep up pretty much permanently.

its_all_ogre
2009-02-23, 03:08 PM
going to comment on the lack of orc wizard ability in 4e because someone has brought it up who, in my experience of 4e, has not tried it.

with the point buy array you can get the following:
You can get 18, 14,11 or 18 13 13 or 18 12 12 12

now an orc can have int 18 str 14 con 14 and wis 12. i'd actually go str and con 13 personally. you now have the pre-reqs to get chainmail and then scale. is this optimal? no. is this orcish? hell yes! as orc wizard at level 2 running around in scale armour is a great concept! use staff as implement and you're fairly rocking, have a dagger to use the warriors surge racial power when a prone enemy i nearby and you can work just fine.

Dwarf Staff Wizard running STR 10 CON 15 DEX 8 INT 18 WIS 15 CHA 10 is a monster... he gets +2 at level one from his staff ability and can push people two squares with Thunder Wave. He then spends a Feat on Staff Mastery and gets a further +1 to AC... With a staff of defence (level 2 item) he gets a further +1 to all defences.... so at level 2 he can have an AC of 18 (20 with the staff ability per encounter and 22 with Shield!) He focuses on close blast powers and utterly rocks... (not that I have him built or anything....) At level 4 you boost INT and CON and then you just go INT and WIS.
It is a close assault wizard that totally rocks....

Dragon Born possibly being the worst, as their stats just don't fit.... but even so, they can go Wizard multiclass Paladin for some real amusement.... you are 5 squares away and I'll mark you then Ray of Frost you :) (generally I would go Cold based hear as you can also work the Dragon breath)

Halflings become annoyingly agile little wizards that get just where you don't want them to be. Lacking raw power, but possibly very harsh Warlock Multiclass.... and Wand Implement is good

Half Elf again are decent Wizards as the can get pretty solid stats, and CHA and CON are good additional stats for a wizard...

Elf certainly benefits from Elven Accuracy, Wands work well, they have high speed and reasonable initiative. Plus WIS is always nice.

Human/Tiefling/Eladrin obviously do it quite well due to the INT bonus, but even then they all have interesting quirks. now not many wizards will start with a 20 intelligence, i did it with a human the first time and will not do it again, your other stats are so low that you are not able to get many of the interesting feats so i feel this shows the wizard idea works.
better than 3.5.

i can, and have, looked at all of the races in conjunction with the classes i am interested in and there is a lot of fun to be had because you can make the classes and races work even though on the surface there is little utility.

halfling paladin for example, their racial bonuses make them a charisma paladin, with +2AC vs opportunity attacks they can waltz around the battle field in full plate and shield and when someone finally manages to hit them...second chance!

there really are far more builds and options available than there appears at first sight.

lesser_minion
2009-02-23, 03:42 PM
And he does the same thing for the new editions of Warhammer Fantasy, funnily enough.

7th edition WFB isn't that different to 6th edition, apart from the removal of every single possible variant including alternative scenarios, siege rules, skirmish rules and so on. Because the 'majority' of people didn't use them.

As for WFRP, I sympathise with your friend. 2nd edition was not an improvement (although I have to admit here that this is more a case of the designer of 2nd edition WFRP deciding that a fairly large portion of things I liked were bad things).

Overall, apart from the 'mad tirades' into which your friend apparently launches, there is no problem with taking issue with WFB7e or WFRP2e.

Yakk
2009-02-23, 03:56 PM
In 3e, there are (# of domains) choose 2 different clerics, times stat variation, for # of cleric builds, plus feats.

That is (# of domains) * (# of domains -1)/2.

In 4e, there are stats and feats. By level 30, there is # of paragon classes * 4^3 daily power choices * 4^3 encounter power choices * 4^10 utility power choices. I'll punt on the fact that different deities give you access to different feats for now.

To make the comparison easy, I'll take the ln of both sides.

ln (D(D-1)/2) =~ 2ln(D) - ln(2) for 3e (where D is the number of domains)
3ln(4) + 3ln(4) + 10ln(4) + ln(#P) for 4e.
=16 ln(4) + ln(#P)

Let's neglect the -ln(2) and +ln(#P) in 3e and 4e respectively.

16 ln(4) vs 2 ln(D)
where 4 is the number of choices that a cleric gets in 4e when they select a new tier of powers.

Note that the number 4 will go up as more splat books come out, just as the number of domains goes up.

When does it intersect? We get:
ln(D) = 8 ln(4)
D = 4^8
D = 2^16
D =~ 32768 dieties.

So at over 32768 deities, there are as many "pure clerics" domain choices as there are choices of powers for a level 30 4e cleric using only the PHB.

Note that in play, the 3e cleric can change up which spells they have loaded -- but that is not a build choice, as 3e clerics have access to nearly exactly the same number of spells (barring which domains they pick).

Note that 4e level 1 clerics have far less in the way of exponential blowup in the number of configurations. A huge chunk of the number of 4e configurations comes from the clerics accumulated utility power choices.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-23, 04:01 PM
In 3e, there are (# of domains) choose 2 different clerics, times stat variation, for # of cleric builds, plus feats.
Very funny, but if you're taking power choices on one side of the equation, you need to put spells prepared on the other side. Whoops, that throws a pretty huge wrench in your calculations, right there.

Artanis
2009-02-23, 04:10 PM
Prepped spells are a play choice, not a build choice.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-23, 04:26 PM
Prepped spells are a play choice, not a build choice.
Very funny again. Well, I'm sure you can convince a lot of people by attempting to razzle dazzle them with meaningless statistics. In the meantime that also proves that you really don't have an argument any more.

Hm, let's see how many permutations of prestige classes I can cram into 20 levels.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-23, 04:37 PM
Very funny again. Well, I'm sure you can convince a lot of people by attempting to razzle dazzle them with meaningless statistics. In the meantime that also proves that you really don't have an argument any more.

Would you accept any statistical analysis? :smallconfused:

When you say "4E has fewer options than 3E" you imply a mathematical statement. As such, math is the only way to prove or disprove this statement. So, if you'll define what you mean by "fewer options" I'm sure Yakk can work out the permutations.

Or, if you can find an equivalency (as Yakk did, Cleric v. Cleric) that you think would be appropriate, we can use that.

The point here isn't to "win" an argument; rather it is to identify which statements about either edition can be proved true or false. That will add clarity to the debate, and will provide more accurate advice for anyone trying to decide whether or not to try a new system.

lesser_minion
2009-02-23, 04:38 PM
Prepped spells are a play choice, not a build choice.

First point: I was under the impression that the discussion regarded the extent to which choice of deity influenced a Cleric's spell selection. In 4e, it doesn't. Except for one feat (there are at least three different builds possible for just one deity in 3e), and Channel Divinity.

In 3e, there are a lot of domains to choose from, and the number of possible combinations is given by (n^2-n)/2. In 4e, the number of possible combinations based on how your powers are influenced by your deity? One. That means that your estimate for the number of 3e domains needed to match the relevant options available to the 4e cleric is actually about 16,384 times greater than the reality.

While 4e may offer a lot of build options, virtually none of your choices are mechanically influenced by your deity. And very few of them can be considered as thematic choices for most characters, because most of the effects that would really tie the character to their deity rather than being generic cannot be implemented as powers, only as rituals.

Second point: Play choices, when properly characterised, are just as defining as build choices. Prepared spells have to be included in the above comparison (especially as there are a lot more in the realm of thematically appropriate spells for any given portfolio than thematically appropriate powers)

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-23, 04:51 PM
First point: I was the impression that the discussion regarded the extent to which choice of deity influenced a Cleric's goals and behaviour. In 4e, it doesn't. Except for one feat (there are at least three different builds possible for one particular deity).

For me, a character's "goals and behaviour" were the domain of RP, not mechanics. While I admit that 4E does not impose mechanical RP rules like Paladins Falling, I cannot see how that is a flaw.


Second point: Play choices, when properly characterised, are just as defining as build choices. Prepared spells have to be included in the above comparison (especially as there are a lot more in the realm of thematically appropriate spells for any given portfolio than thematically appropriate powers)

In this case, we're no longer talking about Build Options, at least not as I've heard the term used. Using this definition, I'll accept that while 3E has incredibly flexible casters, it lacks the sheer number of Build Options available in 4E.

This is why I used a Fighter v. Fighter comparison; both builds require permanent choices, 3E and Fighters supposedly have a wide variety of build options, based off of feat chains. The parameters I'd use are:
- 3E Fighters by Feat Chains available
- 4E Fighters by Power Selection

Personally, I'd just compare 5th level Fighters. IIRC, that was the least levels of Fighter you needed to complete an applicable feat chain. But I'm no mathematician. :smallsmile:

ravenkith
2009-02-23, 04:52 PM
In short? NO.

Explanation: One of our group members bought 2 PHs, the MM and the DMG when it came out. We played three sessions and then said 'forget it, we're going back to 3.5'.

Those books are now just very expensive paperweights.

Artanis
2009-02-23, 05:12 PM
Very funny again. Well, I'm sure you can convince a lot of people by attempting to razzle dazzle them with meaningless statistics. In the meantime that also proves that you really don't have an argument any more.

Hm, let's see how many permutations of prestige classes I can cram into 20 levels.
What arguement do I not have? I merely said that what you choose to do at the start of each day is NOT the same as what you choose to have access to at the start of the campaign. My statement has no bearing on Yakk's calculations, it only matters in relation to your offhand dismissal of said calculations.

And like Oracle Hunter, I would like to know if you would accept any statistical analysis.


First point: I was under the impression that the discussion regarded the extent to which choice of deity influenced a Cleric's goals and behaviour.
Yakk calculated the different number of possible builds. KG replied regarding number of possible builds. I replied as such.



In 4e, it doesn't. Except for one feat (there are at least three different builds possible for just one deity in 3e.)

In 3e, there are a lot of domains to choose from, and the number of possible combinations is given by (n^2-n)/2. In 4e, the number of possible combinations based on how your powers are influenced by your deity? One. That means that your estimate for the number of 3e domains needed to match the relevant options available to the 4e cleric is actually about 16,384 times greater than the reality.

While 4e may offer a lot of build options, virtually none of your choices are mechanically influenced by your deity. And very few of them can be considered as thematic choices for most characters, because most of the effects that would really tie the character to their deity rather than being generic cannot be implemented as powers, only as rituals.
I've already said that 4e has nothing on 3.5 when it comes to how much choosing a deity affects a cleric's capabilities.



Second point: Play choices, when properly characterised, are just as defining as build choices. Prepared spells have to be included in the above comparison (especially as there are a lot more in the realm of thematically appropriate spells for any given portfolio than thematically appropriate powers)
And the discussion was regarding build choices. It doesn't matter how big an effect play choices have when they're completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Mando Knight
2009-02-23, 05:21 PM
In short? NO.

Explanation: One of our group members bought 2 PHs, the MM and the DMG when it came out. We played three sessions and then said 'forget it, we're going back to 3.5'.

:smallsigh:

TL;DR the rest of the thread, eh? The fact is, there are lots of people who like each of the editions of D&D best, and many who like or dislike them all equally.

You've just provided a simplistic example, addressing none of the concerns of the OP and lacking any concrete detail. It's entirely anecdotal without any detailed support for applying the anecdote to the mean of the D&D-playing populace, while at the same time stating your single anecdote as absolute truth.

Please list
the concerns you had with 4E that led you back to 3.5
any positive points about 4E that you may have found while playing
your experiences as they apply to the OP's original concerns

lesser_minion
2009-02-23, 05:23 PM
Cleric's goals and behaviour


For me, a character's "goals and behaviour" were the domain of RP, not mechanics. While I admit that 4E does not impose mechanical RP rules like Paladins Falling, I cannot see how that is a flaw.

You're right here. I meant spell selection, I just managed to write something completely and utterly different.


In short? NO.

Explanation: One of our group members bought 2 PHs, the MM and the DMG when it came out. We played three sessions and then said 'forget it, we're going back to 3.5'.

Those books are now just very expensive paperweights.

Would you care to elaborate on the problems you experienced? There are plenty of people on this thread who have clearly had very good experiences of the game, so your bad experience doesn't actually provide any reason for anyone to not play 4e.


In this case, we're no longer talking about Build Options, at least not as I've heard the term used. Using this definition, I'll accept that while 3E has incredibly flexible casters, it lacks the sheer number of Build Options available in 4E.

Thanks to the number of slots available for Powers, and the fact that 4e gives out more feats, there may be more possible permutations available in 4e. So mathematically speaking, there may be more 'build options' for characters in 4e than for characters in 3e.

However, mathematics don't actually tell much of the story - remember that 4e Clerics are designed with two possible routes in mind. So a lot of the power choices Yazz has described are going to amount to 'Drizz't with Combat Reflexes', 'Drizz't with Alertness' and so on.

Somehow, I get the impression that these kinds of differences are a bit too minor to suggest that they have a massive impact on characterisation.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-23, 08:40 PM
However, mathematics don't actually tell much of the story - remember that 4e Clerics are designed with two possible routes in mind. So a lot of the power choices Yazz has described are going to amount to 'Drizz't with Combat Reflexes', 'Drizz't with Alertness' and so on.

Somehow, I get the impression that these kinds of differences are a bit too minor to suggest that they have a massive impact on characterisation.

This is not strictly true either. Thanks to the structure of 4E, every choice you make for your character opens and closes different options both in and out of combat.
First, we have races. Every race provides boosts to ability scores, but they also can provide bonuses to skills, access to special feats, and unique racial powers. These are substantial and can create radically different characters from the base class.

Clerics in 4E are designed with one of two stats as a primary focus - Wisdom or Strength - with Charisma as a secondary stat of varying importance. However, the rest of 4E provides a series of options available to all characters that require different ability score focuses.

For example:
If a Cleric wishes to be a Ritualist, he will need decent Intelligence.

If a Cleric intends to wear heavy armor, he will need decent Constitution

If a Cleric wishes to become good with swords or bows, he will need good Dexterity.

Now, I think that stat placement is at least one part of build diversity. Take intelligence, for instance. If you have a high intelligence, then History, Arcana, and Religion become attractive, as does wearing light, instead of heavy, armor. Each stat affects a great deal. And, of course, putting points into one stat leaves fewer points for your other stats.

Moving on, we then have skill selection. You start with Religion, and can choose 3 others from a short list. Each skill you choose gives you a +5 to those rolls; the chance of success between someone who is trained and who is not trained is substantial. Even at first level, an untrained acrobat with DEX 20 will be worse than a trained one with DEX 12. More, your racial selection can provide an additional +2 to certain skills - this can make a skill you have a got stat in exceptional, or shore up an area that you cannot train in. Skill selection matters.

Now, we come to the actual powers. Yes, a WIS Cleric will always take 2 at-wills and a STR Cleric will take the other 2, but let's look at Dailies and Encounters:
Encounters
Cause Fear (WIS): Make a single enemy run at Speed + CHA, range 10.

Very useful for freeing allies from uncomfortable spots, but it doesn't do any damage on its own. A Tiefling with Hellfire Blood hits with +1 here, and Tieflings have a CHA bonus already... interesting.

Divine Glow (WIS): A Close Blast that covers a 3x3 grid, doing 1d8+WIS radiant damage to enemies, and giving allies +2 to hit until the end of your next turn.

This does a nice burst effect, and gives a buff to allies in melee. Best of all, it provides the buff even if you miss the bad guys. And radiant damage is super-effective against undead so, if you're looking to be anti-undead, not a bad idea.

Healing Strike (STR): A melee attack that does 2[W] (2 times base weapon damage) +STR radiant damage, marks the target, and allows one of your allies (within 5) to spend a Healing Surge.

Good damage and draws attention to you from an enemy of your choice. It also gives you an extra chance to let an ally heal every encounter - a heal effect that is enhanced by +WIS HP. A dwarf with Dwarven Weapon Training can wield a Maul (2d6 damage, +2 with the feat) and really clean up with this power!

Wrathful Thunder (STR): A melee attack that does 1[W]+STR Thunder damage and dazes the enemy until the end of your next turn.

Daze is very good - the target grants CA to everyone, can't take OAs, and can only take 1 action (standard, move, or minor) on his turn - but it doesn't do very much damage. It also does Thunder damage.

Dailies
Avenging Flame (STR): Does 2[W]+STR Fire Damage, and 5 ongoing Fire damage (save ends). If the target attacks on its turn, it can't make a save versus that fire damage. Also, it does half-damage on a miss.

A very damaging attack that also discourages the target from attacking for a turn. Tieflings with Hellfire Blood get +1 to hit.

Beacon of Hope (WIS): All enemies within 3 squares of you are Weakened on a hit until the end of your next turn. Additionally, you and your allies in the area of effect gain 5 HP, and for the rest of the encounter your Healing keyword powers restore +5 HP.

Weakened reduces the damage from a target's attack by half - not bad, but no damage either. But +5 HP on all healing abilities for the encounter makes this a tempting power to have, in case you are going to face a particularly powerful enemy.

Cascade of Light (WIS): A target with 10 squares takes 3d8+WIS radiant damage and gains Vulnerability 5 to all of your attacks (Save Ends). Does half damage on a miss, but no Vulnerability.

Vulnerability means that the target takes 5 additional damage every time you hit it; not bad at 1st level! Plus, 3d8+WIS is a decent amount of damage.

Guardian of Faith (WIS): Summons an insubstantial totem which you can move 3 squares on your turn. Any enemy that ends its turn adjacent to the Guardian is subject to a WIS v. FORT attack, and suffers 1d8+WIS radiant damage on a hit. It lasts until the end of the encounter

A persistent Daily power, but it does only low damage. On the plus side, it can be a form of crowd control by zapping anyone who hangs out near it. Plus, you can move it anywhere you want - no worries about having to fight your way through the enemy front line.

As you can see, no one power is the "obvious" choice to take for either a STR or a WIS Cleric. Additionally, each power provides a diverse array of effects, and may synergize with certain races and stat placement.

Finally, we have gear selection. You have a choice between wearing Chainmail (+6 AC, -1 armor check penalty, -1 speed) and Hide (+3 AC + DEX/INT, -1 armor check penalty); if you decided to invest in INT or DEX, Hide is your best option, but others will take Chainmail. Chainmail is pretty bad for a Heavy Armor though - maybe you have STR 13 and CON 13 and could take Armor Proficiency (Scale) for +7 AC, +0 armor check penalty, and -1 Speed. Or maybe you had STR 13 and took Light Shield Proficiency to get +1 AC and +1 Reflex? And then your weapon selection - various simple melee weapons or a crossbow - unless you took Dwarven Weapon Training (then you can choose among hammers and axes) or Eladrin Soldier (for Spear and Longspear - both at +2 damage). In any case, Elves can also pick Longbows and Shortbows, and Eladrin are all proficient with Longswords. Each weapon type (Spear, Bow, Heavy Blade, Axe, Hammer) has a couple of Paragon Path feats that are tied to them, each with their own future stat requirements.

There you go! If you want, you can start planning your future stat boosts (+1 to 2 different stats at 4 and 8; +1 to all at 11) to qualify for some Heroic Tier feats, or looking at multiclassing - but we'll leave that aside for now.

These are all the consequential choices a 4E cleric may have to make. Below are 5 different builds, with a description as to how they play. This is all strictly Core, using the Standard Array (16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10).

The Elven Bow Cleric

STR 10
DEX 16+2
CON 13
INT 11
WIS 14+2
CHA 12

You can swap DEX and WIS, of course. I went this way for better AC.

Skills: Religion, Heal, Insight, Diplomacy

Some versions of this build go MC Ranger to pick up Perception as a trained skill (WIS + 2 [racial] + 5[Trained] = +10 or +11) since the Cleric always raises his WIS - making his Perception likely the highest in the party - and because he uses a Longbow and the Ranger Class has some great controller-y powers to use it with.

Aside from that, the skill choices aren't that important here.

Powers
At Will
Lance of Faith, Sacred Flame (given)

Encounter
Divine Glow (weak CHA, so Cause Fear doesn't look good)
Elven Accuracy (racial power; lets him re-roll 1 missed attack roll per encounter)

Daily
Cascade of Light (he'll be towards the back, and with Ranger powers, he can do a lot of damage under this effect).

Equipment: Longbow (proficient 'cause he's an Elf), Hide Armor (+3+4 AC and Speed 7!)

How to Play
The Bow Cleric has many powers which have range 5 or 10, but he also has a Longbow that has a short range of 20, and a max range of 40. It also does 1d10+DEX damage - the best ranged weapon in Core. This lets him operate among the back lines of the party; staying within 5 of his allies to drop heals, and also hitting their nearby foes with Lance of Faith or Sacred Flame to keep his allies hitting and healthy.

The Longbow is for when the Wizard or Bow Ranger needs some supporting fire to drop a distant enemy, or for when he has to run to help a distant ally and has a leftover standard action. If he goes MC Ranger, he can swap out his 3rd level Encounter power (at level 4) for Disruptive Strike; lowering one enemy attack roll per encounter by 3+WIS after it has "hit" an ally.

And with Speed 7, he can be anywhere he needs to be. Fun!

The Dwarven Mauler

STR 16
DEX 11
CON 13+2
INT 10
WIS 14+2
CHA 12

WIS can be swapped with CON if you'd like a little more HP and an extra Healing Surge; I left the WIS high because of the +WIS HP that Clerics grant when they use a healing ability - good synergy with Healing Strike.

Skills: Religion, Heal, Insight, Diplomacy
Irrelevant to this build

Powers
At Will
Righteous Blow, Sacred Flame

Priest's Shield, the other STR at-will, isn't very good while Sacred Flame (grant Temp HP or a Saving Throw) is very good in a pinch. It is ranged, but because he can trigger his Second Wind as a Minor (rather than Standard) action, he's not as worried about OAs.

Encounter
Healing Strike

With the Maul, this is doing 4d6+STR+2 damage on a hit - very nice!

Daily
Avenging Flame

Same damage as Healing Strike (plus ongoing fire), and it can slow down the enemy assault. Good to use on a brawny BBEG when you need some breathing space.

Equipment: Maul, Chain Mail

With STR <15, CON 15, he can qualify for Scale Proficiency for LV 2, and Plate Proficiency for LV 4 (+8 AC, -2 armor check penalty, +0 Speed - he's a Dwarf). That makes him decently armored, even without a shield.

How to Play
The Dwarven Mauler takes his position at the front line, within 5 of anyone who could use a +STR bonus to hit on their next melee attack roll. He can dish out a lot of damage, so he can act as a back-up Striker if needed. He's still not strong enough to hold the front line by himself, but he's a great teammate.

The Omnissiah

STR 13
DEX 10
CON 11
INT 14+2
WIS 16
CHA 12+2

Our man's a Tiefling here, but the Omnissiah works well with pretty much any race. The 13 STR is to qualify for Light Shield Proficiency.

Skills: Religion, Arcana, History, Insight
The Omnissiah knows all! With a +3 on all his skills, he will have a very good chance on his Knowledge checks, not to mention Insight for detecting liars.

The Elven Variant can pick up Perception to See All, as well as Know All :smallbiggrin:

Powers
At Will
Lance of Faith, Sacred Flame (given)

Encounter
Cause Fear

Makes guys run Speed+CHA and, as a Tiefling, he can take Hellfire Blood to become even more accurate with it.

Daily
Guardian of Faith

Lets him add an extra source of damage to a tough encounter. Also a nice way to discourage bad guys from hanging out near him.

Equipment: Hide Armor (we'll be pumping INT), Dagger (+3 Proficiency bonus, in case he needs to take OAs), Light Shield (+1 AC, +1 Reflex).

How to Play
The Omnissiah isn't much for combat, but he's no slouch. He stays close enough to the action that he'll always have someone to buff with his at-wills, but never too far away from a meatshield.

No, the Omnissiah shines most outside of combat. He may be 1 or 2 points behind the Wizard in INT Knowledge Skills, but his high WIS makes important skills like Nature and Dungeoneering his purview. Knowledge skills are useful for Rituals (some which require skill checks), Detect Magic (Arcana), finding about ancient lore (History) and identifying monsters of all stripes.

By having an INT <13, he is also eligible for Jack of All Trades (+2 to all untrained skills) and Linguistics (learn 3 languages). Handy.


Combat Medic

STR 14
DEX 10+2
CON 13
INT 11+2
WIS 16
CHA 12

This one is funky, but fun - an Eladrin Cleric. INT 13 gives him access to Jack of All Trade, which is helpful in case he needs to do some climbing or balancing - among other things. The 14 STR is for the occasional STR-based controlling attack, and in case he gets stuck in Flanking Duty. Plus, he will qualify for better armor and shields now.


Skills: Religion, Heal, Arcana, Insight, Dungeoneering

Heal in 4E is a great combat skill. It can revive an unconscious ally (up from negative it 1/4 his max HP), give an ally an extra saving throw. As an Eladrin, our Combat Medic gets free training in any skill he wants; I chose Dungeoneering to help him identify hazards underground, but you could take anything.

Powers
At Will
Righteous Blow, Sacred Flame

Sacred Flame is extra-useful here, for when he finds himself out of position, using his Heal skill on a fallen ally. Righteous Blow isn't his best power here, but it is valuable for when he's playing flanking buddy.

Encounter
Wrathful Thunder

Daze is great. A Dazed opponent can't take OAs (allowing for easy PC repositioning), grants CA (good if you can't get into flanking, or for ranged attackers), and limits the opponent to a single action. This makes Wrathful Thunder highly versatile.

Fey Step (racial power) - Teleport 5 as a Move Action. When you need to get to your buddy, but there are a bunch of orcs in the way.

Daily
Beacon of Hope

Weaken all nearby enemies and buff his own healing abilities? Yes, please!

Equipment: Longsword (he's Eladrin), Chainmail, Light Shield (takes proficiency at LV 1).

How to Play
The Combat Medic is supposed to hang up front, preferably with a Rogue, who can both appreciate the Flanking and get use from the Daze that Wrathful Thunder grants. When not flanking or running interference, he can shift back and drop some Sacred Flames.

This build is non-optimal, but it is quite playable and, IMHO, a fun concept!

Battle Brother

STR 16+2
DEX 13
CON 14
INT 11
WIS 12
CHA 10+2

This is a Dragonborn designed to stand, side-by-side, with the party Defender - giving as good as he gets. Dragonborn are very tanky and can get nasty when out front. Since I'm completely ingnoring WIS powers, I've left WIS as a "dump;" DEX 13 will help qualify both for Heavy Blade Feats and Shield Specialization later on.

Skills: Religion, Heal, Diplomacy, Arcana

Trained Arcana allows for Detect Magic; it's sometimes helpful to have an extra set of Magic Eyes. Also, this'll help if he needs to cast Rituals.

Powers
At Will
Righteous Blow, Priest's Shield

Encounter
Healing Strike

He'll be wielding a Bastard Sword, so the damage will be OK. Plus, Healing Strike is just good.

Daily
Avenging Flame

Equipment: Bastard Sword (take proficiency at LV 1), Chainmail

This Build takes awhile to get going, but it's pretty good all the same. 2nd level, he gets Light Shield Proficiency; 4th he gets Heavy Shield Proficiency; 6th he gets Scale Proficiency. Now he's got +9 AC, +2 Reflex, and is wielding an accurate 1d10 blade - nice. He'll profit from picking up some Fighter powers via multiclassing, but it's not necessary.

How to Play
The Battle Brother is a frontline leader. Unlike the Dwarven Mauler, he will be very well defended while doing decent damage, making him like a second Defender. He'll be able to hand out a +4 to hit pretty much every turn - handy for Power Attackers and TWF Rangers.

Also unlike the Mauler, he can operate independently; he has sufficient defenses to solo some critters for a little while his allies regroup.

*phew* OK, there are five sample builds - all mono-class. As I noted, multiclassing is helpful for flavoring these builds, not essential to their function. Plus, there is a meaningful difference between Fighter-Clerics and Cleric-Fighters.

I, for one, have never understood the "they all play the same" line. You fight much differently when you have ranged buffing attacks and a longbow than with ranged buffs along - not to mention when you have sword & board instead! A teleporting STR Cleric fights differently than one who can heal himself easily - even if they have nearly the same stats and identical power selection. And as I showed with the Omnissiah, characters can be built with a focus on non-combat abilities; they just don't have to be useless in combat to do so.

Mando Knight
2009-02-23, 09:20 PM
A dwarf with Dwarven Weapon Training can wield a Maul (2d6 damage, +2 with the feat) and really clean up with this power!

The Dwarven Mauler

STR 16
DEX 11
CON 13+2
INT 10
WIS 14+2
CHA 12

WIS can be swapped with CON if you'd like a little more HP and an extra Healing Surge; I left the WIS high because of the +WIS HP that Clerics grant when they use a healing ability - good synergy with Healing Strike.

Skills: Religion, Heal, Insight, Diplomacy
Irrelevant to this build

Powers
At Will
Righteous Blow, Sacred Flame

Priest's Shield, the other STR at-will, isn't very good while Sacred Flame (grant Temp HP or a Saving Throw) is very good in a pinch. It is ranged, but because he can trigger his Second Wind as a Minor (rather than Standard) action, he's not as worried about OAs.

Encounter
Healing Strike

With the Maul, this is doing 4d6+STR+2 damage on a hit - very nice!

Daily
Avenging Flame

Same damage as Healing Strike (plus ongoing fire), and it can slow down the enemy assault. Good to use on a brawny BBEG when you need some breathing space.

Equipment: Maul, Chain Mail

With STR <15, CON 15, he can qualify for Scale Proficiency for LV 2, and Plate Proficiency for LV 4 (+8 AC, -2 armor check penalty, +0 Speed - he's a Dwarf). That makes him decently armored, even without a shield.

How to Play
The Dwarven Mauler takes his position at the front line, within 5 of anyone who could use a +STR bonus to hit on their next melee attack roll. He can dish out a lot of damage, so he can act as a back-up Striker if needed. He's still not strong enough to hold the front line by himself, but he's a great teammate.

Alternatively, you can use a Greataxe for High Crit at the cost of a more "swingy" damage curve (i.e. a flat curve rather than a bell curve). If you have access to the Adventurer's Vault, then with the same Dwarven Weapon Training feat, you can use the Waraxe for d12 damage with a shield, an Executioner's Axe for a better damage curve and High Crit, or the Mordenkrad for an even better damage curve...

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-23, 09:26 PM
Alternatively, you can use a Greataxe for High Crit at the cost of a more "swingy" damage curve (i.e. a flat curve rather than a bell curve). If you have access to the Adventurer's Vault, then with the same Dwarven Weapon Training feat, you can use the Waraxe for d12 damage with a shield, an Executioner's Axe for a better damage curve and High Crit, or the Mordenkrad for an even better damage curve...

Yeah, but I have issues with Adventurer's Vault; it makes Dwarven Weapon Training ridiculously good (see above :smalltongue:).

Besides, I just like the image of the Dwarven Mauler; I am actually playing an Elven Bow Cleric right now, though I rolled up an Elven Omnissiah for a trap-based one shot I'm going to be in. :smallbiggrin:

ravenkith
2009-02-23, 11:38 PM
Condescending Stuff

From the original post:
"I only own PHB, DMG, MM1, 2, and 4, and XPH.

Should I buy the 4e books?

Are they more balanced?
Are they more fun?
Are they different for RPing purposes?
Are they as mechanically diverse?

Thank you."

This request was what my original post spoke to, specifically: When my group and I played 4e, we unanimously decided that we were going back to 3.5 rather than play a game that was lacking in versatility, diversity, fun, and roleplaying.

Rather than use the $100+ invested, we simply abandoned it as a bad idea.

There are many, many reasons to complain about 4e as it stood when the MM, DMG and PHB were the only books available. Here are some of them:

There is no difference between a bad cleric and a good cleric, from a mechanical standpoint. You could literally say: "Oh you know what, I'm changing gods this week" and it would make next to no difference to your character sheet. You could change gods every session and it wouldn't matter.

This is aside from the fact that there really isn't much point in having a cleric at all, anymore, since everyone can heal, and the principle buffing functions seem to being filled by other classes.

First adventure: Kobolds. KOBOLDS. Kicking our collective asses from one end of the map to the other. Why? Racial ability to scamper away should someone approach you in melee, rationalized as them having learned to run away from the big bad meatsticks in life. You think wizards wouldn't have figured that one out? Is it a wizard class option? Of course it frickin' isn't.

This is just one example of a monster ability that renders an entire class useless.

Gnomes. As. Monsters. Uh, what?

Feats that aren't: Come on people, these aren't feats, they are they little packets of ketchup you get at restaurants with take-out: nice, unnecessary and just about enough to cover a french fry, let alone a pack.

Now, YOU invited me to rant - so I ranted. I was just going to leave it with a "We wasted our money on this system, don't make the same mistake", but you wanted me to add the "because it is a total piece of crap and relatively unplayable out of the box". So don't bash me because I think WOTC has lost it's fracking mind.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-24, 12:14 AM
Addressing some misconceptions:


There is no difference between a bad cleric and a good cleric, from a mechanical standpoint. You could literally say: "Oh you know what, I'm changing gods this week" and it would make next to no difference to your character sheet. You could change gods every session and it wouldn't matter.

Mechanically, yes; power is forever in the hands of the character. In world ramifications are a different matter entirely. Aside from being the behavior of a crazy person, this character would quickly acquire Apostate status with a great many religious institutions; many of whom may dislike a false priest wandering around, mocking their piety. And show their displeasure in a violent fashion.

It is now up to the mortals (not the god/DM) to police their own churches.


This is aside from the fact that there really isn't much point in having a cleric at all, anymore, since everyone can heal, and the principle buffing functions seem to being filled by other classes.

Everyone can "heal" (1/4 of their HP, once per Encounter as a Standard action) but not everyone can heal quickly or well without a Leader about. Warlords and Clerics provide a substantial advantage to PCs in combat, both in terms of healing and by buffs. Clerics remain the best healers, having Healer's Lore (+WIS HP) and the most powerful Healing abilities (including the CXW series, which restores a Surge (or more) worth of HP without spending any surges).

4E also decided to spread out buffing a bit, but Leaders remain the best and most reliable buffers. They are by no means "useless."


First adventure: Kobolds. KOBOLDS. Kicking our collective asses from one end of the map to the other. Why? Racial ability to scamper away should someone approach you in melee, rationalized as them having learned to run away from the big bad meatsticks in life. You think wizards wouldn't have figured that one out? Is it a wizard class option? Of course it frickin' isn't.

A common misconception. The kobold "scamper" is an Immediate Action; everyone gets one Immediate Action per round. It's in the rulebook (PHB 268), but often overlooked.

Wizards can't "figure this out" because it is a characteristic of the kobold race. Might as well ask them to "figure out" how to grow a tail.


Feats that aren't: Come on people, these aren't feats, they are they little packets of ketchup you get at restaurants with take-out: nice, unnecessary and just about enough to cover a french fry, let alone a pack.

They may seem worthless from a 3E perspective, but we are dealing with a 4E world. Within the mechanics of the 4E system, the so-called worthless feats can have a tremendous impact in the game. For instance, a +1 to hit with light blades, when you have CA, is huge when few feats grant any bonus to hit.

Reverent-One
2009-02-24, 12:18 AM
There is no difference between a bad cleric and a good cleric, from a mechanical standpoint. You could literally say: "Oh you know what, I'm changing gods this week" and it would make next to no difference to your character sheet. You could change gods every session and it wouldn't matter.

Except for Channel Divinity feats and their related powers.


This is aside from the fact that there really isn't much point in having a cleric at all, anymore, since everyone can heal, and the principle buffing functions seem to being filled by other classes.

Clerics can heal more than pretty much any other class I've seen, but you're right to a point, you don't HAVE to have a cleric in your party. Why is this a bad thing? I could see it being bad if you had to have one of every other class, thus making the cleric useless, except that you don't need any specific class. This is good because it allows a group of players to play what characters they want to play.


First adventure: Kobolds. KOBOLDS. Kicking our collective asses from one end of the map to the other. Why? Racial ability to scamper away should someone approach you in melee, rationalized as them having learned to run away from the big bad meatsticks in life. You think wizards wouldn't have figured that one out? Is it a wizard class option? Of course it frickin' isn't.

This is just one example of a monster ability that renders an entire class useless.


What does a Kobold being able to shift as a minor action have to do with Wizards?
EDIT: Never mind, OH understood what you meant and covered that.


Gnomes. As. Monsters. Uh, what?

Dwarves, elves, humans, ect are all in the MM too, so what's your point? That they don't get a spot in the PHP? There's a limit on space in there, they thought that other races deserved the spot more. Granted, whether they were justified in doing that or not is totally based on the opinion of the player.


Now, YOU invited me to rant - so I ranted. I was just going to leave it with a "We wasted our money on this system, don't make the same mistake", but you wanted me to add the "because it is a total piece of crap and relatively unplayable out of the box". So don't bash me because I think WOTC has lost it's fracking mind.

He didn't "bash" you because you don't like 4e. He asked you to put some useful information about your 4e experiences because simply saying you don't like 4e without giving the reasons doesn't help the OP at all.

Tech
2009-02-24, 12:20 AM
we unanimously decided that we were going back to 3.5 rather than play a game that was lacking in ... roleplaying.

What.

The rest of your claims are subjective, but the bit about roleplaying? About as false as well...FATAL being good?

Point is you're completely and utterly wrong.


This is aside from the fact that there really isn't much point in having a cleric at all, anymore, since everyone can heal, and the principle buffing functions seem to being filled by other classes.

Okay, so the fact that everyone has a standard action, once per encounter use that restores a quarter of their life suddenly makes Clerics useless? I don't know how I can tell you how wrong you are. Besides the fact that the Cleric heals people for their healing surge value plus an additional 1d6+wis mod AS A MINOR ACTION?

And the only other buffing filled by other classes would be the Warlord, who is the OTHER healing, buffing class.


First adventure: Kobolds. KOBOLDS. Kicking our collective asses from one end of the map to the other. Why? Racial ability to scamper away should someone approach you in melee, rationalized as them having learned to run away from the big bad meatsticks in life.

No, it's becuase they're tiny hateful slippery little bastards that're about the size of an eight year old as just about as scampery. Have you ever dealt with eight year olds running around?

PS: Yes, Kobolds. They're actually a viable threat now, as opposed to minor speed bumps and slapstick comedy, at best.


You think wizards wouldn't have figured that one out? Is it a wizard class option? Of course it frickin' isn't.

If you're a Kobold wizard you'd have it. Because it's a racial ability, as opposed to a class one. What, do you want to slap random extremely useful abilities on wizards willy nilly?


This is just one example of a monster ability that renders an entire class useless.

Yeah, no.


Gnomes. As. Monsters. Uh, what?

Gnoems are tiny ADHD sticky fingered midgets that nobody in their right mind should give a crap about.


Feats that aren't: Come on people, these aren't feats, they are they little packets of ketchup you get at restaurants with take-out: nice, unnecessary and just about enough to cover a french fry, let alone a pack.

I don't get your flimsy reasoning at all, so I'm going to just finish the rest of this sentence.


Now, YOU invited me to rant - so I ranted. I was just going to leave it with a "We wasted our money on this system, don't make the same mistake", but you wanted me to add the "because it is a total piece of crap and relatively unplayable out of the box". So don't bash me because I think WOTC has lost it's fracking mind.

Now it occurs to me the only reason you've dropped 4e in the first place was because of system shock, namely the fact that the transition from 3.5e to 4e was so completely and utterly radical that you were tripping over yourselves. In addition, you had like what, one, two, three combats in order to get used to 4e?

You'd do a lot better to just give it a try again without running into it expecting to be disappointed.


A common misconception. The kobold "scamper" is an Immediate Action; everyone gets one Immediate Action per round. It's in the rulebook (PHB 268), but often overlooked.

Good sir, that's the Goblin racial. Kobolds are Minor action shift.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-24, 12:32 AM
Good sir, that's the Goblin racial. Kobolds are Minor action shift.

Ah. I assumed he was referring to the infamous Dragonshield Tactics:

Immediate reaction, when an adjacent enemy shifts away or an enemy moves adjacent; at-will

The kobold dragonshield shifts 1 square.
"Shifty" wouldn't have caused the sorts of problems he was referring to. A beatstick can walk up to any kobold, whack him, and then on the kobold's turn, the kobold can shift (and get a Combat Challenge thwack from the Fighter) and then move somewhere else, if he desires.

I assumed that he ran into the same problem that a lot of people did when starting out 4E. If you didn't know that you can only take 1 reaction per round, this power would make it impossible to get adjacent to a Dragonshield.

Tech
2009-02-24, 12:36 AM
Ah. I assumed he was referring to the infamous Dragonshield Tactics:

Ooohhh, sorry then. It is I who was wrong.

Artanis
2009-02-24, 02:49 AM
lacking in...roleplaying.
*flips through PHB*
*looks through it again*
*does so a third time, just to be sure*

Nope, sorry, I can't find where it says "you are not allowed to RP". Mind giving me a page number where it bans you from roleplaying?

ravenkith
2009-02-24, 03:10 AM
KOBOLDS: Yep: dragonshield tactics, or whatever it is called. Which, as I recall, is explained as being a learned behavior, i.e. a chosen ability. An ability that renders melee beat sticks useless.

As a side note, Kobolds in 3.5 were meant to be a speed bump - on the road to level 2 or 3. There HAVE to be weaker enemies that PCs can fight and defeat in order to progress at lower levels.

ROLEPLAYING: The mechanics of every single class is now almost completely independent of roleplaying and vice versa.

The Wizard used to be a bookworm who used his intelligence to alter the world around him to his benefit, and there were aspects of the class that backed this up (spell book, ability to learn any spell through study, small HD, lousy in combat, physically frail, but with a will of iron.

I.E. the fluff and the class backed each other up.

The cleric used to be a warrior of god, bringing religion to the unconverted one busted skull at a time, with deity-specific powers and abilities that actually, you know, meant something, through the selection of domains. Tougher than wizards, better in combat, their spell selection was more defensive-minded.

Again, the mechanics backed up the fluff.

The way things currently are in 4e, the mechanics are almost completely disconnected from the fluff. Hence: the feeling of next to no roleplaying inherent in the system.

3.5 was straight up better for class flavor and differentiation between each class and each member of a class.

If I'm playing a cleric, I do not want it to be the exact same fricking cleric that 'Bob' played last month.

Gnomes: My point about gnomes is WHY BOTHER LISTING THEM AT ALL? THEY COULD HAVE PUT AN ACTUAL MONSTER IN THE SPACE FOR THE GNOME ENTRY!

In the end, I cannot be wrong. Why? Because this is my opinion.

If you do not agree with my opinion:

shock! Horror!

I don't care.

Tech
2009-02-24, 04:30 AM
KOBOLDS: Yep: dragonshield tactics, or whatever it is called. Which, as I recall, is explained as being a learned behavior, i.e. a chosen ability. An ability that renders melee beat sticks useless.

It only renders melee characters useless if everyone's incompetent.


As a side note, Kobolds in 3.5 were meant to be a speed bump - on the road to level 2 or 3. There HAVE to be weaker enemies that PCs can fight and defeat in order to progress at lower levels.

I, as a matter of fact, like my victories to be satisfying. Mowing down tiny midgets that don't even pose a half viable threat is not fun. Mowing down a pack of tiny midgets that know teamwork however, is satisfying.


The Wizard used to be a bookworm who used his intelligence to alter the world around him to his benefit

Still does that.


and there were aspects of the class that backed this up (spell book, ability to learn any spell through study, small HD, lousy in combat, physically frail, but with a will of iron.

Still have the spell book, thank god the magical swiss knife of death is gone, Wizards still have crappy HP, they're still fantastically crap in melee combat, they're STILL the squishiest characters, unless you invest con, shock and awe, and Wizards still have a good will defense.


I.E. the fluff and the class backed each other up.

The cleric used to be a warrior of god, bringing religion to the unconverted one busted skull at a time, with deity-specific powers and abilities that actually, you know, meant something, through the selection of domains. Tougher than wizards, better in combat, their spell selection was more defensive-minded.

Again, the mechanics backed up the fluff.

Clerics...still do this. Completely. I'm glad deity specific powers are gone, because there'd be more unnessecary crap that people would choose for pure mechanical benefit only.


The way things currently are in 4e, the mechanics are almost completely disconnected from the fluff. Hence: the feeling of next to no roleplaying inherent in the system.

In your opinion. I confess to be an amazingly mediocre roleplayer, yet when I crack open the collection of dead trees I call the 4e PHB I can find roleplaying everywhere. It doens't take a genius to do so, and 4e encourages roleplaying as much as, if not, more than 3.5e.


3.5 was straight up better for class flavor and differentiation between each class and each member of a class.

If I'm playing a cleric, I do not want it to be the exact same fricking cleric that 'Bob' played last month.

There are a smattering of varieties of Clerics one could play if some gave the game a chance and ignored the suggested builds that WotC put out for newbies.

And 3.5 had terrible flavor and terrible differentiation between classes. Just counting the core, the Fighter does nothing but charge and full attack. Trippers tripped with their tripping weapons and then attacked again. And repeat over and over. Barbarians just charge and power attack. Or rage, then do more of the same. Rogues get into flanking and throw off as many attacks as they could for Sneak Attack.

In fact, the only real options in core came to the spellcasters who had a giant section of the book devoted to their options.


Gnomes: My point about gnomes is WHY BOTHER LISTING THEM AT ALL? THEY COULD HAVE PUT AN ACTUAL MONSTER IN THE SPACE FOR THE GNOME ENTRY!

Despite my hatred of Gnomes telling me to agree with you, they take up a single page. A single page. They don't have a sprawling section devoted to them. A single page with two monsters. If they had a large section filled with redundant enemies I would agree with you. And their MM entry in the back? It takes just as much space as the rest of them. Gnomes make up a tiny, insignificant fraction of the MM.


In the end, I cannot be wrong. Why? Because this is my opinion.

If you do not agree with my opinion:

shock! Horror!

I don't care.

Opinions are not arguments. Discard them, or protect them. Don't you dare use them as a justification to say "YEAH WELL I WIN!"

Charity
2009-02-24, 04:49 AM
I love Saphs campaign notes, but this is a great example of where 3e bugs me

Session 16

Players present this week

The player of the Master of Shrouds switched back to his old character, the shapeshift druid, and the player of the cleric took over one of the old PCs, the reincarnated half-elf druid with the wolf companion, making a starting party of:

• 9th-level druid with bear companion (human turned goblin)
• 9th-level druid with wolf companion (human turned half-elf)
• 9th-level druid, shapeshift variant (human turned halfling turned elf)
• 9th-level fighter, "Ozzy" (tiefling turned halfling turned elf)

Yes, this meant that the starting party was Druid, Druid, Druid, Fighter. For the sake of sanity I'll refer to them as the bear druid, the wolf druid, and the shapeshift druid.

all that so called choice and when the chips are down, everyone plays a Druid...
Anyhow



KOBOLDS: Yep: dragonshield tactics, or whatever it is called. Which, as I recall, is explained as being a learned behavior, i.e. a chosen ability. An ability that renders melee beat sticks useless.

As a side note, Kobolds in 3.5 were meant to be a speed bump - on the road to level 2 or 3. There HAVE to be weaker enemies that PCs can fight and defeat in order to progress at lower levels.
Some folk prefer a challenge... quite a lot of folk


The Wizard used to be a bookworm who used his intelligence to alter the world around him to his benefit, and there were aspects of the class that backed this up (spell book, ability to learn any spell through study, small HD, lousy in combat, physically frail, but with a will of iron.
Then why was every wizards second highest stat Constitution then?


[The cleric used to be a warrior of god, bringing religion to the unconverted one busted skull at a time, with deity-specific powers and abilities that actually, you know, meant something, through the selection of domains. Tougher than wizards, better in combat, their spell selection was more defensive-minded.

Better than the melee classes in combat


[The way things currently are in 4e, the mechanics are almost completely disconnected from the fluff. Hence: the feeling of next to no roleplaying inherent in the system.
Mechanics do not make roleplaying happen, only you can do that.


not want it to be the exact same fricking cleric that 'Bob' played last month.
Except of course you will have all the same spells that Bob had, and not be forced to make a choice of which power to have, you can have all powers.


[Gnomes: My point about gnomes is WHY BOTHER LISTING THEM AT ALL? THEY COULD HAVE PUT AN ACTUAL MONSTER IN THE SPACE FOR THE GNOME ENTRY!
So you can play them... it seems so obvious to me.


I cannot be wrong. Why? Because this is my opinion.

If you do not agree with my opinion:

shock! Horror!

I don't care.

Opinions can be unfounded, based on ignorance and prejudice, does that mean they are 'right'?

Sebastian
2009-02-24, 04:53 AM
I'll just repost my contribute from the other thread which sum up my opinon pretty well.
----------
If what you want from D&D is just, how someone put it, "blowing up orcs" then it is probably worth it, I even going to say that is the best version of D&D for it.

If you want something more, or even different, IMHO, it is not worth the effort.
----------

Tech
2009-02-24, 05:02 AM
If what you want from D&D is just, how someone put it, "blowing up orcs" then it is probably worth it, I even going to say that is the best version of D&D for it.

If you want something more, or even different, IMHO, it is not worth the effort.

This is pretty much very incorrect.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-24, 05:08 AM
I'm glad deity specific powers are gone, because there'd be more unnessecary crap that people would choose for pure mechanical benefit only.

You mean like the mechanical benefits for your region of origin? Or from belonging to the same "clan" as the rest of the party? Or from joining an RPGA guild, or bringing those plastic cards along? Yeah...

Tech
2009-02-24, 05:12 AM
You mean like the mechanical benefits for your region of origin? Or from belonging to the same "clan" as the rest of the party? Or from joining an RPGA guild, or bringing those plastic cards along? Yeah...

In order, minor, I actually like this, and what?

Skjaldbakka
2009-02-24, 05:26 AM
Mechanics do not make roleplaying happen, only you can do that.

I can't agree 100% with that statement. Having played numerous different systems, I have found that the roleplay changes based on the system. Take WoD, for example. A third of your stats are social based, and social characters are perfectly viable. There is a desire to use things you are good at IG. Which means there is a tendency to work towards being able to use social skills to resolve a challenge if your character has them, and the support is there in the system.

That being said, neither D&D 3.5 not 4E have any strong focus on social skills. They are both combat focused, mechanically, and aside from some people having issues with the lack of versimilitude in 4E breaking immersion, there really isn't any meaningful difference between the two systems in terms of encouraging more in depth roleplaying.

Sebastian
2009-02-24, 05:27 AM
This is actually a big problem in 4E. Frequently, after two or three rounds, the outcome of the combat is clear, but it will take half an hour or so to "clean up" the rest. Although it helps if the DM simply ends the fight at this point by having the monsters surrendering.

I think a good idea for the next edition would be to give every monster a "HP lost" value. To streamline combat more you could, rather that fight the encounter, just subtract the "HP lost" value form your hit points, so a goblin could be worth 5 hp, a gnoll 15, a young dragon 35, and so on. You meet 5 goblins? you lose 25 hp distribuite equally between the characters.

No, really, I started it as a kind of joke, but I think I could have something here. :smallsmile:

Charity
2009-02-24, 05:35 AM
I genuinely cannot fathom why folk say 4e doesn't support roleplaying yet 3e does, comparing the two side by side I simply don't see it...

I would also like to add in my opinion the players elect to roleplay or not.
The mechanics cannot make you speak in character, the mechanics don't make you act in character, the mechanics are always divorced from role playing they are merely a means of conflict resolution.
Edit -stuff moves fast here


I can't agree 100% with that statement. Having played numerous different systems, I have found that the roleplay changes based on the system. Take WoD, for example. A third of your stats are social based, and social characters are perfectly viable. There is a desire to use things you are good at IG. Which means there is a tendency to work towards being able to use social skills to resolve a challenge if your character has them, and the support is there in the system.
See, this is where our experiance diverge, I have played literally dozens of systems, and always found the players to be the key.
Heck my mate Ikkie can't play the new Bladerunner boardgame anymore because his characters back story was soo harrowing, straight up this is a boardgame we are talking about! Now most folk arn't in that immersed but really the system has never 'supported' or 'impaired' roleplaying in my experiance.


That being said, neither D&D 3.5 not 4E have any strong focus on social skills. They are both combat focused, mechanically, and aside from some people having issues with the lack of versimilitude in 4E breaking immersion, there really isn't any meaningful difference between the two systems in terms of encouraging more in depth roleplaying.

We are on the same page here.

Sebastian
2009-02-24, 09:09 AM
Very funny, but if you're taking power choices on one side of the equation, you need to put spells prepared on the other side. Whoops, that throws a pretty huge wrench in your calculations, right there.

And if he count paragons path he should count prestige classes, too.

Whoops, indeed.

Mando Knight
2009-02-24, 09:25 AM
And if he count paragons path he should count prestige classes, too.

...not unless he wants to take into account that you're forced to take a Paragon Path in 4E but not a PrC in 3.5, and that one can freely multiclass in 3.5, allowing for multiple PrCs and a massive, exponential explosion of choices. (regardless to whether or not they make any sense and/or are useful to the build)

Kurald Galain
2009-02-24, 10:11 AM
...not unless he wants to take into account that you're forced to take a Paragon Path in 4E but not a PrC in 3.5, and that one can freely multiclass in 3.5, allowing for multiple PrCs and a massive, exponential explosion of choices. (regardless to whether or not they make any sense and/or are useful to the build)
No, that is precisely the point. Yakk was adding a massive exponential explosion of options (many of which would be nonsensical or not useful) on one side of his equation, but not other side.

That means that his statistics are completely misleading.

Getting back to the issue that he was ignoring, it is easy to list numerous things present in the 3E PHB that are absent from the 4E PHB. For instance, barbarians, druids, monks and bards; shapeshifting, necromancy, long-term buffs, and combat illusions; triple classing; alignment effects; clerics having fundamentally different spells depending on their deity; followers, familiars, and animal companions. Quite the list, isn't it?

Charity
2009-02-24, 11:14 AM
No, that is precisely the point. Yakk was adding a massive exponential explosion of options (many of which would be nonsensical or not useful) on one side of his equation, but not other side.

That means that his statistics are completely misleading.

Getting back to the issue that he was ignoring, it is easy to list numerous things present in the 3E PHB that are absent from the 4E PHB. For instance, barbarians, druids, monks and bards; shapeshifting, necromancy, long-term buffs, and combat illusions; triple classing; alignment effects; clerics having fundamentally different spells depending on their deity; followers, familiars, and animal companions. Quite the list, isn't it?

Comming soon
Difficult to balance and adjudicate from DM to DM
Bard only
Broken
I assume you mean the 1 slot per level, mostly from the cleric list domain spells
Colour coded for your convenience.

Yakk
2009-02-24, 11:21 AM
There is no difference between a bad cleric and a good cleric, from a mechanical standpoint. You could literally say: "Oh you know what, I'm changing gods this week" and it would make next to no difference to your character sheet. You could change gods every session and it wouldn't matter.
4e core clerics are presumed to be of good gods, as that is what they are aiming the core gameplay at.

Doing a simple riff (swapping radiant for necrotic, for example) generates a more evil themed character, but going Warlock might work even better.


This is aside from the fact that there really isn't much point in having a cleric at all, anymore, since everyone can heal, and the principle buffing functions seem to being filled by other classes.The cleric is decent at fighting, great at buffing, and single handedly boosts the amount of 'healing' a group can do in combat by a binary order of magnitude, and does it for less cost.

You could get around the lack of a cleric in 3e using wand-cheese and the like. But a 3e melee character without any healing magic was not in good shape. They removed the "a melee character is only half of a character" effect.

First adventure: Kobolds. KOBOLDS. Kicking our collective asses from one end of the map to the other. Why? Racial ability to scamper away should someone approach you in melee, rationalized as them having learned to run away from the big bad meatsticks in life. You think wizards wouldn't have figured that one out? Is it a wizard class option? Of course it frickin' isn't.
You probably missed two (implicit) rules:
You can only do one immediate interrupt per round.
The immediate interrupt of Kobolds interrupts the movement, and the movement can continue afterwards.

If you missed those two things, Dragonshields do become nearly impossible to kill in melee. With those two, it becomes a matter of being hard to pin down, rather than immune to melee.

And yes, it is easy to miss that. If you just assume "immediate interrupt" can happen whenever the user wants as many times as they want, the Dragonshield is broken. Having that mechanical quirk in an introductory adventure without repeating the rules right next to the power was a screw up on WotC part.

I made the same mistake, noticed that it was broken, and then checked the rules.

Gnomes. As. Monsters. Uh, what?
They moved them to PHB2.


Feats that aren't: Come on people, these aren't feats, they are they little packets of ketchup you get at restaurants with take-out: nice, unnecessary and just about enough to cover a french fry, let alone a pack.
You do get 15 of them over the intended adventuring range. In comparison in 3e, you got 7. So each feat is weaker than the core PHB 3e passive feats.

But yes, if you like building up a super-combo of feats that define your character, you should be looking at 4e powers not 4e feats.


Now, YOU invited me to rant - so I ranted. I was just going to leave it with a "We wasted our money on this system, don't make the same mistake", but you wanted me to add the "because it is a total piece of crap and relatively unplayable out of the box". So don't bash me because I think WOTC has lost it's fracking mind.

pjackson
2009-02-24, 11:35 AM
from some people having issues with the lack of versimilitude in 4E breaking immersion

I am one of those people. For me immersion is the source of greatest fun in role-playing, and for that reason I won't be buying any 4e stuff beyond the PHB I got to see what it is like. Since I can measure my 2e and 3e collections in meters of book shelf space that makes it a big failure for me. (I also have some 1e and pre-1e stuff).

Artanis
2009-02-24, 11:52 AM
As a side note, Kobolds in 3.5 were meant to be a speed bump - on the road to level 2 or 3. There HAVE to be weaker enemies that PCs can fight and defeat in order to progress at lower levels.
So fire up Progress Quest for a couple hours and then start the campaign at level 3.


In the end, I cannot be wrong. Why? Because this is my opinion.

If you do not agree with my opinion:

shock! Horror!

I don't care.
It doesn't work that way. You cannot slap "this is opinion" on the end of a statement and suddenly make it correct. If I say, "clouds are made of white paint, and since that's my opinion, I can't be wrong!" then guess what, I'm still wrong.

You've stated most of your post as though it were fact. You clearly want to influence people - such as the OP - as though it were fact. If you want it to be an "opinion that can't be wrong", then you should make absolutely certain that nobody can mistake it for being otherwise, and that any facts you base said opinions on are, in fact, correct.

Winterwind
2009-02-24, 12:30 PM
Non-D&D player here.

I have been following this edition war in this forum pretty much since 4e came out with a lot of interest, because it offers a lot of insight into how people think about roleplaying, roleplaying games and the interaction of rules and gameworld.

There is something that has been puzzling me from the very start. Namely, the anti-4e-crowd's assessments that unified mechanics are bad, and unified mechanics getting into the way of roleplaying.

The reason why I find this puzzling is because I, generally, much prefer rules-light systems, with quick and simple mechanics, which allow to resolve any mechanical problem as quickly as possible and allow one to spend as much time as possible actually roleplaying the character, instead of wasting time with rules. Obviously, rules-light systems typically try to use as unified mechanics as possible - in fact, there often is only one mechanic that encompasses everything. And equally obviously, such systems do not get into the way of roleplaying - there are not many rules to deal with, practically the entire time of the session is used for roleplaying. Heck, if I wanted to, I could bring freeform as example, where roleplaying is all there is, as there are no rules in the way one usually means it anymore.

So... how does 4e (apparently) simplifying rules and unifying mechanics get in the way of roleplaying, exactly? It would seem to me simpler rules were, actually, a step towards a more roleplaying, less mechanically driven game.

Morty
2009-02-24, 12:34 PM
So... how does 4e (apparently) simplifying rules and unifying mechanics get in the way of roleplaying, exactly? It would seem to me simpler rules were, actually, a step towards a more roleplaying, less mechanically driven game.

First, you seem to have actually believed the strawman that all people who don't like 4ed claim that it hampers roleplaying. Sure, this opinion is around there, but it's by no means prevalent, much less unanimous. I, for instance, dislike unified mechanics because they make for a less interesting and diverse game. If wizards' spells and fighters' new ways of bashing in heads work the same way, it's boring and I feel less different when playing wizard, rogue or fighter. And now that I think about it, it does hamper my roleplaying somewhat, because I want my wizard and my barbarian to be actually different instead of using the same system of powers.

Winterwind
2009-02-24, 12:45 PM
First, you seem to have actually believed the strawman that all people who don't like 4ed claim that it hampers roleplaying. Sure, this opinion is around there, but it's by no means prevalent, much less unanimous.Eh, that was more me expressing myself poorly. I did not mean to imply everyone disliking 4e had this opinion, more that I wanted to know why the people who do have it. Sorry about that. :smallredface:


I, for instance, dislike unified mechanics because they make for a less interesting and diverse game. If wizards' spells and fighters' new ways of bashing in heads work the same way, it's boring and I feel less different when playing wizard, rogue or fighter.See, now this is a criticism I do understand, as opposed to the 'hampers roleplaying' one. It's not a sentiment I would necessarily share if it concerned me, but it's definitely understandable.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-24, 12:46 PM
I am one of those people. For me immersion is the source of greatest fun in role-playing, and for that reason I won't be buying any 4e stuff beyond the PHB I got to see what it is like. Since I can measure my 2e and 3e collections in meters of book shelf space that makes it a big failure for me. (I also have some 1e and pre-1e stuff).

Y'see, I don't think 4E "breaks immersion," but that's largely because I'm playing a game with wizards and dragons. Still, if you've read the PHB: what is it that bothered you so much?

EDIT:

I, for instance, dislike unified mechanics because they make for a less interesting and diverse game. If wizards' spells and fighters' new ways of bashing in heads work the same way, it's boring and I feel less different when playing wizard, rogue or fighter. And now that I think about it, it does hamper my roleplaying somewhat, because I want my wizard and my barbarian to be actually different instead of using the same system of powers.

This is another thing that confuses me; it seems like people are conflating "unified mechanics" with "playing the same." For me, play variation comes from how the characters interact with their surroundings. If you walk into combat as a wizard or a fighter, do you engage in the exact same tactics? Are your goals in combat the same? In my experience, no:
Fighter: Engage the enemy front line, trying to keep as many enemies within arms reach as possible. Deal moderate damage, but focus on keeping the enemies from breaking into your back line, or flanking your allies.

Wizard: Stay in the rear, dropping zones on clumps of enemies and targeted spells on high-value targets to impede their attacking ability. Avoid melee combat at all costs, and only move to the front line in order to fire off a Close Attack. And then, only when well defended.
And out of combat?
Fighter: Be the physical workhorse of the party; climbing walls, jumping pits, and watching the back of your weaker party members when they go into negotiations.

Wizard: Be the party library. Identify monsters, spells, ancient relics and the like to aid your party in the quest. Know and cast Rituals when necessary; Detect Magic for fun and profit.
Those are the strictly mechanical differences, of course; RP adds a whole new dimension.

Do people get some sort of joy out of pure mechanical diversity? Would it be better if fighters rolled dice to resolve things, while wizards drew cards? :smallconfused:

Morty
2009-02-24, 12:47 PM
Eh, that was more me expressing myself poorly. I did not mean to imply everyone disliking 4e had this opinion, more that I wanted to know why the people who do have it. Sorry about that. :smallredface:

Okay. I'm just being cranky as usual.


See, now this is a criticism I do understand, as opposed to the 'hampers roleplaying' one. It's not a sentiment I would necessarily share if it concerned me, but it's definitely understandable.

Noted. Now, I understand perfectly that some people don't give a crap about differing mechanics even though I prefer them. So it's nice to see people who feel the same way instead of picking others' opinions apart.


Y'see, I don't think 4E "breaks immersion," but that's largely because I'm playing a game with wizards and dragons. Still, if you've read the PHB: what is it that bothered you so much?

I hope Pjackson doesn't mind me responding for him. See, to put it simply without elaborating, the trouble with 4ed edition and immersion is that 3ed at least tried to build a fantasy world with its rules even if it failed at times. 4ed on the other hand, concentrates fully on the bunch of adventurers, i.e the PCs. Everything else is just background. At least that's how I see it, how does Pjackson do I have no idea.

Advocate
2009-02-24, 02:09 PM
Here is a very basic, but very critical flaw with 4.0 for those interested to address.

Now, let's say we have a base. It's filled with enemies of various sorts, with some sort of common theme. For the sake of this example, let's say undead, with mindless construct minions in a few places, and then a single curveball with something else entirely... say a living, magical beast.

PCs enter, and almost immediately have a chance of alerting the BBEG if they handle a trap wrong. Short answer is that the correct answer is to intentionally trip this trap, and not avoid it or disarm it. Ask if you want the long answer.

Regardless of what happens here, they find themselves at the very fortified front door, in the cross hairs of the guards. At the guard station, there are two alarm gongs, and there are more alarm gongs scattered throughout the complex. Barring multiple Silence spells, the alarm will be raised, and spread throughout. In under 1 minute, the entire base will have heard the alarm and began preparing for the intruders, assuming that this hasn't already happened. As a result, the PCs can expect to fight many fights in very rapid succession until they either destroy all of the occupants, retreat, or die. Further, any intelligent foe the PCs fight that gets hurt enough but doesn't die falls back to the main chamber for one massive epic BBEG fight. They also have inflict traps set up, that they can deliberately trigger on themselves to recover, and so forth.

Now, here's the problem in 4.0. In that system, this sort of thing just isn't possible. Full stop. See, first of all combat is much longer, to the point of being a grind. So while having significant reinforcements come in every 1-3 rounds or so is quite doable in 3.5, in 4.0 this will very quickly get out of hand, as there is no way they can deal with any credible threat fast enough. Second, and more importantly you are supposed to take 5 minutes off after every combat to scratch yourself, heal your little scratches (of a different sort) with Healing Surges, and so forth. It may take longer than that if you're hurt more. But most importantly, you have to do that to recover your Encounter powers, as otherwise they're just weaker Dailies. In 3.5, recovering after a fight takes far less time, perhaps even no time at all.

So same scenario in 4.0, party quickly runs out of firepower. They have no means to recover it, and the odds keep shifting against them as more forces arrive to bolster the ones that haven't died yet (as opposed to replacing those that do). They get grinded down into Padded Sumo TPK. Why? Because smart enemies were smart. That's it. The only way the 4.0 encounter paradigm actually works is if enemies nicely sit in their room and wait their turn to die, happily ignoring the carnage next door. Alternately, the enemies haven't actually 'spawned' yet, because you haven't entered the room. There are actual WotC quotes supporting this with statements like 'the monster exists for five rounds, so we only care about what it does during that time'. Not fights 5 rounds, exists 5 rounds. Think about that a moment.

When the system breaks right in half the moment you apply basic tactical sense to it, it's an excellent indicator of how fragile the system is. When one of the most sensible justifications for why it works is flat out stealing MMO logic... Well, need I say more?

Also, 4.0 breaks in half the moment either side starts focusing fire. Which, given that it's still a Critical Existence Failure based system...

http://www.walrusbucketsaga.com/images/91-polarbear-facepalm_(nomdeprun).jpg

Oh yeah, and there's something in the DMG along the lines of 'please don't play enemies smart by having them know basic things about their world's physics, as our system breaks in half the moment anyone uses it intelligently'.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-24, 02:39 PM
Oh yeah, and there's something in the DMG along the lines of 'please don't play enemies smart by having them know basic things about their world's physics, as our system breaks in half the moment anyone uses it intelligently'.

So... your complaint about 4E is that a party of random adventurers can't solo a fortress of well-trained soldiers :smallconfused:

I would have said that was a strength of the system. Now the PCs will have to sneak in, avoid alarms, and do their best to impair the castle's defenses. Isn't that the realism people are looking for?

Any comments about "spawn rate" or whatnot are irrelevant to the discussion; those are DM decisions, not rule-mandated ones.

EDIT:
Anecdote Time!
In my current campaign, the PCs have been waging a drawn-out battle with a Hobgoblin-lead platoon (5, 10 man squads) and some goblin mercenaries.

Story-wise, the leader of this platoon (Redskull) gathered his company (3 platoons) by subjugating a goblin tribe. Hobgoblins are officers, bugbears are sergeants, and goblins (mainly cutters) make up most of the grunts. The Hobgoblin command-squads are made up largely or entirely of hobgoblins, but otherwise a Hobgoblin Archer leads each squad - and he shoots cowards and deserters. Redskull has the goblin tribe's leadership directly under him; all the bad eggs under one basket.

Each of Redskull's squads are lead by a Goblin Hexer and have 3 Warriors (Hexer bodyguards), 2 Blackblades, and 4 Cutters. Do the math, and you'll see that a squad would be a 750 XP encounter - EL 6 for my 3 man party - which is a respectable value for honest-to-god mercenaries. Redskull's platoon have been deployed to an area of forest to gather lost artifacts from an ancient civilization. To feed themselves, they occasionally raid a nearby human settlement - the adventure hook to kick off my campaign!

My party of 3 PCs started off at level 1. How did they deal with this threat?
- The mercenaries weren't just sitting on their butts, waiting to fight adventurers; they were dungeon crawling! This means they took some casualties from traps, and would split up to secure the areas while they worked.
- The mercenaries don't "re-spawn;" when they die, they die. Without resupply, their numbers have dwindled, impacting their ability to carry out their primary mission and keep their own camp secure. This means they begin to get spread rather thin.
- Goblins are a superstitious and cowardly lot. When things go bad, they boogie!

Eventually Redskull figures out (from escaped squad members) that a single group of adventurers is responsible for all of his problems. What to do? Laying siege to town would be dangerous and he wouldn't have enough troops left to finish his job. There's no easy way to keep track of the PCs when they do leave town - it's a big forest. So he subcontracts to a smaller goblin mercenary company (4150 XP total) to hunt down and kill the PCs :smallbiggrin:

That is how you run a realistic campaign, and you can do it in any edition of D&D.

Reverent-One
2009-02-24, 02:42 PM
*snip for space*

I would debate whether or not that scenario is possible in 3.5. For example, from the Red Hand of Doom campaign journal Saph did here:


The module seems to assume that the PCs will hack their way into the Fane of Tiamat and kill every last living thing that they run into, retreating back outside the Fane every night to rest. While this makes for a suitably kill-filled climax, I can't help feeling that the quick raid approach that my group's taken is a lot more sensible. The PCs don't have time to methodically clear out the place, after all; their mission is to stop Azarr Kul, and nothing else matters if they can't do that.

It doesn't sound like 3.5 characters can always charge in, sound the alarms, and fight every single encounter in the fortress at once with only a slight staggering of arrival times without resting either. I mean, if they're getting cut apart by adventurers day by day, why don't the bad guys chase them outside and finish them?

its_all_ogre
2009-02-24, 02:47 PM
also for the situation you described i'd use minions.

i'm sure i could think up a convoluted method that 3.5 cannot handle too.

i do not care to, and would not expect anyone to accept it as a real point either. that would be foolish.

Mando Knight
2009-02-24, 02:53 PM
Oh yeah, and there's something in the DMG along the lines of 'please don't play enemies smart by having them know basic things about their world's physics, as our system breaks in half the moment anyone uses it intelligently'.

Say... what? That's... pretty odd. My DMG says pretty much the opposite. Instead, it outright states that you should use the monsters' abilities and play them at least somewhat intelligently. (Depending on the monster's Intelligence score) It even devotes the entirety of chapter 3 to the subject of playing combat encounters.

Advocate
2009-02-24, 03:17 PM
So... your complaint about 4E is that a party of random adventurers can't solo a fortress of well-trained soldiers :smallconfused:

I would have said that was a strength of the system. Now the PCs will have to sneak in, avoid alarms, and do their best to impair the castle's defenses. Isn't that the realism people are looking for?

Any comments about "spawn rate" or whatnot are irrelevant to the discussion; those are DM decisions, not rule-mandated ones.

They aren't 'soloing' as there is five of them. This whole adventure type doesn't work, because 4.0 takes you to take some long amount of time between encounters that you most likely won't have unless the enemies nicely wait for you to come kill them.

You try to sneak in? Ok. There are 5 guards watching you through arrow slits. They all have high notice checks. The only way to get past them, is to open the adamantine door right next to them, which is locked from the inside without alerting them. Also, there is a sixth guard standing back watching the door itself. If any of them see something out there they wait about oh... 3 seconds for the proper signal. If you don't give it they attack, while one sounds the alarm. Now, how do you sneak past again?

And this is just the front door. Don't get me started on the patrolling guards with 'if you are not undead, they see you automatically' that you literally can't go more than about oh... 12 seconds without encountering one, and whose first response on their very high initiative is to hit a gong if the alarm is not already raised, then go dive into a solid object to make a getaway, regroup, and attack in force. You could probably trick the golems, because they're mindless but the other foes will most likely try to engage you around the golems. It is free back up after all. Also, in 4.0 you don't get a readily available Silence, to stop the alarms from being sounded.

The Fane of Tiamat example is a big larger than a base, as there are literally dozens of troops there, along with a number of priests, minions, etc. They are also painfully poorly organized. Even in watching a DM do it that did have them spread the alarm, they were still only facing a few mooks at a time. Now, sending the mooks to stall is one thing. But give it a minute or two, and everyone in there who is available is going to be converging on your location. Also, you can retreat as long as you have a Druid or something to cover your tracks so you can't be found.

Minions? Oh right, those things that can't actually bother anyone, and die to a stiff breeze. Fine for mooks, not fine when it's stuff that could actually take a hit (or many hits) and still live. So you had to gimp the encounter - heavily to make it make any sense. Which is the same as gimping it by having enemies be stupid.

Speaking of enemies being stupid, that DMG line I referenced was a snarky way of drawing attention to the fact it actively discourages you from having enemies focus fire. Even though that'd be the smart thing to do, and it's so obvious so as to be a duh factor.

Tech
2009-02-24, 03:26 PM
{Scrubbed}

Nightson
2009-02-24, 03:36 PM
So in 3.5 you could handle 10+ encounters of your CR?

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-24, 03:40 PM
They aren't 'soloing' as there is five of them. This whole adventure type doesn't work, because 4.0 takes you to take some long amount of time between encounters that you most likely won't have unless the enemies nicely wait for you to come kill them.

What you are describing is kicking in the front door of an adamantine fortress and slowly walking forward, killing folks every couple of steps. A fortress, I hasten to add, that apparently has a Flawless Security System (tm). For me, this sounds like a parody of a hack 'n slash adventure, but I guess it is a good time for you? :smallconfused:

No, I'll freely admit this kind of adventure is impossible in 4E. 4E includes mechanics for exhaustion resulting from facing an endless stream of enemies without breaks; I find this a novel mechanic for D&D, and one that provides a lot of depth. For you, it appears to be a hindrance.

Out of curiosity, how would a 3E party defeat this Invincible Fortress? Clearly any magical form of egress would be countered by the appropriate counter-spell, and the bad guys have magic traps for perpetual unlife, so a meatgrinder strategy is failure. They're immune to mind affecting attacks and Fortitude-based save or die attacks (Undead). What are you supposed to do?

Anakha
2009-02-24, 03:42 PM
So, Advocate, tell us how a party of a Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue get through this base in 3.5, and how the same party in 4E do not.

Yukitsu
2009-02-24, 03:47 PM
What you are describing is kicking in the front door of an adamantine fortress and slowly walking forward, killing folks every couple of steps. A fortress, I hasten to add, that apparently has a Flawless Security System (tm). For me, this sounds like a parody of a hack 'n slash adventure, but I guess it is a good time for you? :smallconfused:

No, I'll freely admit this kind of adventure is impossible in 4E. 4E includes mechanics for exhaustion resulting from facing an endless stream of enemies without breaks; I find this a novel mechanic for D&D, and one that provides a lot of depth. For you, it appears to be a hindrance.

Out of curiosity, how would a 3E party defeat this Invincible Fortress? Clearly any magical form of egress would be countered by the appropriate counter-spell, and the bad guys have magic traps for perpetual unlife, so a meatgrinder strategy is failure. They're immune to mind affecting attacks and Fortitude-based save or die attacks (Undead). What are you supposed to do?

Is it actually adamantine? You'd probably cut all the doors off the hinges, sell it in town and buy some nicer stuff. Like armfuls of scrolls and staffs, and a +20 UMD item for the fighter. That way everyone is equally broken.

ravenkith
2009-02-24, 04:16 PM
RE: Opinion.

My opinion is just as valid as any one else's, and is based on my personal experiences with the game. YMMV. When I first posted, all I said was that 4e wasn't worth buying, and then explained that my group had unanimously decided to go back to 3.5e despite investing $100 or so in the new system.

Those are facts.

Basically, my complaint comes down to this: if I wanted to play World of Warcraft (complete with low-level grinds), I'd get on the computer and play it.

If I want to play D&D, I'll break out my 3.5 books, thanks.

Artanis
2009-02-24, 04:23 PM
RE: Opinion.

My opinion is just as valid as any one else's, and is based on my personal experiences with the game. YMMV. When I first posted, all I said was that 4e wasn't worth buying, and then explained that my group had unanimously decided to go back to 3.5e despite investing $100 or so in the new system.

Those are facts.

Basically, my complaint comes down to this: if I wanted to play World of Warcraft (complete with low-level grinds), I'd get on the computer and play it.

If I want to play D&D, I'll break out my 3.5 books, thanks.
What you state in this post is indeed opinion. And yes, your opinions are just as valid as anybody else's, as long as they're actual opinions. As I said before, slapping "oh, that's opinion" on the end of something doesn't make it correct, and it doesn't make it valid.

NPCMook
2009-02-24, 04:29 PM
RE: Opinion.

My opinion is just as valid as any one else's, and is based on my personal experiences with the game. YMMV. When I first posted, all I said was that 4e wasn't worth buying, and then explained that my group had unanimously decided to go back to 3.5e despite investing $100 or so in the new system.

Those are facts.

Basically, my complaint comes down to this: if I wanted to play World of Warcraft (complete with low-level grinds), I'd get on the computer and play it.

If I want to play D&D, I'll break out my 3.5 books, thanks.

You make me ashamed to be in the same area as you...

4e is not World of Warcraft, there is a World of Warcraft game, and guess what system it uses? 3.5 http://www.warcraftrpg.com/index.php

horseboy
2009-02-24, 04:33 PM
Do people get some sort of joy out of pure mechanical diversity? Would it be better if fighters rolled dice to resolve things, while wizards drew cards? :smallconfused:
Hey now, don't be dragging Deadlands into this. :smallamused:

ravenkith
2009-02-24, 04:47 PM
What you state in this post is indeed opinion. And yes, your opinions are just as valid as anybody else's, as long as they're actual opinions. As I said before, slapping "oh, that's opinion" on the end of something doesn't make it correct, and it doesn't make it valid.

???

First you say that yes, my opinion is just as valid as anyone else's, and then you say that it's not valid in the sentence right after that.

Second, I refer you to the OP which was asking for OUR OPINIONS.

Specifically, our opinions in regards to a comparison of 4e and 3.5, asking which was better.

I responded by saying that, I didn't think it was worth buying 4e, and gave as proof that after buying, playing and disliking the new version, all 6 of us agreed to go back to 3.5.



You make me ashamed to be in the same area as you...

4e is not World of Warcraft, there is a World of Warcraft game, and guess what system it uses? 3.5 http://www.warcraftrpg.com/index.php


There is an adaptation of the 3.5 system that takes place in the world of warcraft setting, yes. But it still plays like a roleplaying game, and not like an MMORPG.

4e plays just like an mmorpg, complete with low level grinds. It also played terribly out of the box, with just the 3 core books and the first module.

It might be different now that expansion material has come out - hell, it almost has to be - but it's not for me.

Artanis
2009-02-24, 05:08 PM
???

First you say that yes, my opinion is just as valid as anyone else's, and then you say that it's not valid in the sentence right after that.

Second, I refer you to the OP which was asking for OUR OPINIONS.

Specifically, our opinions in regards to a comparison of 4e and 3.5, asking which was better.
I said that opinions are valid, but that saying "this is opinion" does not make it an opinion. For example:

Valid: "I like pepperoni pizza the best!"
Not valid: "Clouds are actually made out of white paint, not water vapor! But I can't be wrong, because that's an opinion!"

See the difference?

And yes, the OP was asking for opinions. Which is why I want to see opinions stated as such. I do not like seeing people state opinions in such a way as to make them sound like - and be confused for - objective facts.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-24, 05:13 PM
Comming soon
Yeah, I know, but I'm comparing PHB to PHB.



Difficult to balance and adjudicate from DM to DM
Broken
Point is this: none of these things are a priori unbalanced or broken (although some of the implementations of them were broken). Yes, they depend on the DM. However, I trust my DM to adjudicate illusions, followers, and so forth, properly. I wouldn't play with that DM if I didn't trust him.

I understand that this is a luxury position - not everybody has enough players or DMs in their area that they have this choice. However, what we have here is a system that says "well, not all DMs can be trusted to adjudicate this ability properly, so let's remove the ability".

If you have a poor DM, this has just removed a potential venue for DM abuse, and the game has improved. If you have a good DM, this has just removed a potential venue for creativity, and the game is lessened. Of course, if you have a really good DM, he'll houserule it in anyway, but that's an Oberoni fallacy.

Advocate
2009-02-24, 05:26 PM
My nerd rage detector is beeping.


Simple, but effective. Filled with the undead and robots, servants requiring no sleep and only orders.

And Fluffy.

Actually the magical beast is a random Roper that was too much effort to remove, so they use it as waste disposal. The rest? Intelligent undead, commanding unintelligent undead and constructs.


Combat is longer than 3.5e, yes, but to the point of being a grind? Only one encounter has happened this way and it was specifically because the dice we've used were cursed by the rotting hand of some unlucky dead guy. Normally encounters run the gamut of not being too short, or too long.

If you say so.


Minions and standard enemies. Easily done enough.

Except that only a few of them actually qualify as minions, and even then they can survive one hit most of the time. So how about no?


Gee, humans (in before pedantry pointing out that not every person in the party is a human) taking a rest after a fight, who would have thought? If you're going on about how they literally need to sit down for five minutes, they don't. Just do non strenuous activity. Barring that they can barricade the doors and simply hole up to take a break. Alternately the DM could throw minions to cleave through instead of nothing but standards to make the encounter fun.

Ah, ok. So you have to gimp the monsters until they die to a stiff breeze to make this work. Even though the weakest enemy fielded against them had enough HP to survive one hit. They were likely single digited after, but they could do it. Barricade the doors? Oh right, that thing that takes far longer to do than to break through a door.


I'm sure the DMG has told me to play enemies smartly and not be a spineless chump. In the case you're being overwhelmed with numbers, you can oh, do what I said up there and MAKE yourself some room to breathe.

The thing that takes several rounds and might buy you one. Right.


I'm sure Dave Noonan has said that, so we can completely disregard whatever he has to say in the matter because he is an idiot.

I agree that he is an idiot. However, apparently idiots made this portion of the system, so it is very relevant.


I've been under focus fire situations before in practically every game I've been in and the system hasn't broken down at all. Maybe the characters have, but that's what happens to someone when a cartload of enemies unload on him.

Except that the moment they do, PCs die at the rate of 1/round. Every fight. Which lasts several rounds. And there are nearly 300 such fights. Have fun.


Cute, an image macro to further attempt to illustrate your shoddy points.

I'm fairly sure the DMG advocates playing enemies intelligently and I can safely say it encourages you more to be a bastard when playing the enemies than to play like a moron.

Oh wait, you wouldn't know, you've never read the DMG.

Cute. Baiting.


So in 3.5 you could handle 10+ encounters of your CR?

Straw man, but nice try.


What you are describing is kicking in the front door of an adamantine fortress and slowly walking forward, killing folks every couple of steps. A fortress, I hasten to add, that apparently has a Flawless Security System (tm). For me, this sounds like a parody of a hack 'n slash adventure, but I guess it is a good time for you? :smallconfused:

No, I'll freely admit this kind of adventure is impossible in 4E. 4E includes mechanics for exhaustion resulting from facing an endless stream of enemies without breaks; I find this a novel mechanic for D&D, and one that provides a lot of depth. For you, it appears to be a hindrance.

Out of curiosity, how would a 3E party defeat this Invincible Fortress? Clearly any magical form of egress would be countered by the appropriate counter-spell, and the bad guys have magic traps for perpetual unlife, so a meatgrinder strategy is failure. They're immune to mind affecting attacks and Fortitude-based save or die attacks (Undead). What are you supposed to do?

Flawless? No. Many different redundant measures, so that some level 3 peon with Silence can't just cake it? Damn right. That's also a massive straw man.

As for how they would defeat it... how about how they actually did? First though, to answer your question...

You teleport in. Ok. Except now you're Dimensional Anchored, so you aren't going anywhere, assuming you knew where to aim in the first place as teleporting underground is risky. You're somewhere in the complex. Depending on where, you are either noticed immediately, or noticed within a maximum of 2 rounds. Enemies converge and surround you, while you can't escape. The 'healing' traps are countered by actually destroying enemies so they can't be healed. Or just preventing them from reaching and triggering them, as they are only in one room.

Basic crowd control measures work fine. Nothing in there has Freedom of Movement, and only one could actually get it if he knew he needed it. Disintegrate would work extremely well against every undead in there save two. Heal/Mass Heal? Same thing. Stat penalties work just fine (undead are only immune to damage and drain, Ray of Enfeeblement works fine).

On the beatstick end... hit it with a level appropriate bludgeoning weapon. Nothing in there has a high AC except the BBEG, or any real defenses aside from the mobility defense. One enemy in there will counterattack for around 130 if you attack her. That's it for specific issues, though there are plenty of general beatstick failings.

They set off the initial trap, because the logical thing to do when faced with a trap is avoid it, thus they triggered trap 2. Basic Magnificent Bastardry at work. They arrive at the front door, and get shot at with some touch attacks that carried SA. However, most of the party was immune to SA, and warded against most elemental attacks so this did almost nothing.

The door gets broken down in two hits, allowing people to proceed inside and start smashing them up. PCs prevent the alarm from going off a few times, but there were so many redundant strategies to trigger the alarm that the enemies got it off anyways. PCs kill every guard except one, who ran off. They could have chased, but took about 3 rounds off to recover.

Open next door, and a golem is waiting. It gets smashed up pretty quickly, but by then what will henceforth be referred to as the Goon Squad had gotten themselves ready, snuck up without most of the party noticing, and threw open the door to join the fight. There's Hammer Time, who is practically immune to any spell that allows a save and counterattacks melee attacks for around 130 or so. There's the Chain of Command, who hits really hard, but not as hard, while using spells to get mobile and such. There's Gatling Gun, who shoots around 8 times a round for a minimum of 20 damage each, and likely more than that, and there's the Mother ****ing Batman who shoots off 8 disabling spells a round, every round. Also, some Dread Wraiths started wall hacking people, by attacking while inside floors and walls and such, eating up the 25% miss chance for doing this with Blind Fight to be Goddamn Bats. Turns out everyone was immune to death, energy drain, and negative energy but not ability drain. No one actually fails a save against the ability drain though until the Cleric throws up an immunity on everyone.

In the end, two of the Wraiths got destroyed by readied actions, the Chain guy got blinded, and the Hammer chick got locked in a Forcecage. The archer and batman retreat at around 40% HP each. The Chain guy also teleported away... but ended up coming back after everyone left to bail out his buddy, who everyone just left there. Also, the two surviving Wraiths retreated.

Party continues exploring, finding it conspicuously empty for the most part now... Everyone moves in, releases a prisoner after some uber Sense Motive and such, and keeps going. Eventually they find another golem, and deal with it very easily.

After this, they head through the third to last door they've seen... and find out where everyone went. Massive room, filled with... basically every enemy in the place, who had fallen back here. Why didn't they just come after them? Well, narrow corridors are one reason. They'd just divide and conquer themselves that way. Silly cave systems.

Technically, just getting to the last room counts as defeating the fortress, but they're doing a pretty good job against the massive epic encounter here. Just about finished it off in fact. So clearly, it is defeatable. It just wouldn't be in 4.0. One more thing I couldn't do there, right along with shapeshift, illusions, summoning, and a long list of other stuff.


So, Advocate, tell us how a party of a Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue get through this base in 3.5, and how the same party in 4E do not.

First off, the Fighter dies. Violently. The Rogue goes next, because every trap in the place is either employing Magnificent Bastard psychology where you don't want to disable it, despite it making you think you do or that you simply cannot disable such as the Symbol of Death... on the inside of the door, that triggers when you walk through the door. And you can't teleport, due to Anchoring. Note that the Rogue might not die, provided that he's smart enough to realize that basic intelligence was involved in the creation of the security measures. If he has a wand chambered Gravestrike wand, or Deathstrike Bracers etc + Perfect Two Weapon Fighting (takable as a Rogue 10) he'll be alright actually. His Blinking ring won't work though, so his SAs still won't be reliable. In other words, he's fine as long as he's competent and catches on quickly that any traps still used at this level are going to thwart disarming so as to not be completely irrelevant.

Anyways. Once it's down to two or three, they'd probably pull through. Most of the spells that have been critical here, such as Heal, Mass Heal, Maze... are still available after all. In fact the main problem is that they're stuck with 2, maybe 3 people that can actually contribute instead of 5 (Artificer, Cleric, Favored Soul, Gish, Wizard). They can still use all the same casting tricks. They just don't get to have a viable beatstick.


Is it actually adamantine? You'd probably cut all the doors off the hinges, sell it in town and buy some nicer stuff. Like armfuls of scrolls and staffs, and a +20 UMD item for the fighter. That way everyone is equally broken.

No, that's him straw manning me. The door is iron, set into stone. 60 HP, hardness 8 I believe. It will go down in two hits from any remotely competent beatstick, and more likely 1. However, that rather defeats the point of sneaking in now doesn't it? The other doors in the place are wood, except one that is stone.

If you were undead, with exceptional stealth capabilities, and knew exactly what to do you might be able to sneak in... but then what? Having a site based adventure in the first place is begging for casters to annihilate it utterly. It at least needs to avoid committing the fallacy that nearly every high level module makes by making it a well protected site.

Oslecamo
2009-02-24, 05:26 PM
all that so called choice and when the chips are down, everyone plays a Druid...


And fighter!:smallbiggrin:

You do realize you just admited druids and fighters can stand toe to toe and have fun in the campaign correct?

Anyway, Saph's campaign is an excellent example of the best 3e has to offer. yes it's bloody rules heavy, but it's those complicated rules that makes the game tick, since they allow the party to end in awesome situations nobody (not even the DM) could preview.