Now that 4th Ed. has been out for a while...

[Dullyanna]

How do you all think it's turned out? I've been away from the forum for months, so I'm kinda out of the loop, and I'm curious to hear your basic experiences with it. Is the 4th ed. more balanced/less exploitable than its predecessor, or is it just as bad?

[Jack Zander]

4E is definately more balanced than 3E. That was never a question. The balance isn't what people have issues with.

Lurk moar.

[Saint Nil]

I've played it, and while it is much more balanced, it's quite boring. I don't play D&D to just go kill monsters, I play to explore a world, meet interesting characters, and develop new concepts. 4E focused too much on balance, and not enoguh on creativity and fun.

[Oslecamo]

Since there's still plenty of people around here playing and talking about 3e, it goes to show that indeed 4e changed too much.

The main complain is altought WOTC indeed made a great balance, character versatility, both creation and play wise got strongly hacked, probably to prevent cheese from the root.

Wich is very nice if you want a light game where you don't have to think too much to win the battles.

Wich isn't very nice if you want a more imersing game where you can actually burst out of a wall carrying barrels of flaming oil at your back while dual wielding halflings, and optimize every little detail of it.

Thus a lot of people still play 3.X.

[Inyssius Tor]

Everyone, more or less, agrees that 4E is startlingly well balanced.

It may or may not have sacrificed everything else in the sake of that balance, but I don't believe I've ever heard anyone say anything that might concievably insinuate that 4E might not be startlingly well balanced.

(Except for a couple of exploits, yes. A whole six-man party of identically built warlords, using these two abilities from Martial Power, can juggle the initiative order amongst themselves to get a whole bunch of extra turns at the beginning of a fight; the capstone of the Demigod epic destiny allows you to abuse the same power indefinitely for the last three or four rounds of the last seven or eight fights you'll ever be using that character in. Even these exploits aren't really the stuff of Dirty Tricks or anything, of course.)

[potatocubed]

Conversely I find 4e just as fun as 3.5, and a lot less effort to run. Admittedly, if I wanted proper roleplaying I'd go to RuneQuest or Burning Wheel instead, but for a once-a-week laugh with some other gamers it fills the niche perfectly.

[BardicDuelist]

Good:
I find that new players are very easily introduced to 4e, especially in the fact that they can play any type of character they'd like (spellcasting is the same as fighting).

It is FAR more balanced than 3e, and there is virtually no powercreep from the newest supplements. Even the Dragon articles don't have anything horribly game breaking (although the playtests can occasionally allow for something, they are playtests and the point of publishing them is to find that out).

I have found that its simplicity has led my players to focus more on roleplaying. Your crunch is very combat oriented, but at higher levels, it's not all book keeping. They like that, as they just want to play, not manage resources similar to that of a small city/country with a single character.

It's DM's dream if you have limited prep time. It is simple to run and homebrew. Since I've been stuck DMing for a while and have school, work 30 hours, and fencing 3-4 days a week, this last bit is probably why we play 4e.

Bad:
Occasionally, especially with spellcasters, I get the sense that one of the players really feels that they have a lack of options. I've been rather generous with the handing out of rituals and alchemical items, and this seems to have subdued that point.

One last thing to note: While the art is often recycled garbage, the new art is very nice and there appear to be considerably less copy-edit errors. DDI support is very solid, and the tools, like the character builder, are actually very well designed. Bugs are worked out quickly and effectively. That, at least, has given me a new respect for WotC.

[Asbestos]

I've played it, and while it is much more balanced, it's quite boring. I don't play D&D to just go kill monsters, I play to explore a world, meet interesting characters, and develop new concepts. 4E focused too much on balance, and not enoguh on creativity and fun.

I've seen people do creative and fun things in 4e. Heck, that's the only real use for the wizard cantrips. Also seen some creative use of skills and such. I think that the players still have plenty of room to be creative, I don't see why 4e players wouldn't try the old 'I toss a barrel of oil down the steps at the kobolds and hit it with a scorching burst (or some other fire based thing)' Sure, they can probably take out the kobolds without doing that, but they'll get hurt less and save healing surges/dailies by being creative.

[Shadow_Elf]

I like that the 4e rules focus on combat balance. I dont need a book telling me how to be a drama major. I dont need rules for my person's speech patterns.
I like the idea of "beat this DC, you can do it"
Apart from overoptimisation (the warlord combo someone just mentioned, for example), it is extremely well balanced. Who wants to play a party of 6 identically built warlords anyways? That would be horrible to play and RP.
Another thing people have been saying is that you cant do random stuff in 4e. Such as tie your opponent to great flail, attach it to a nearby chandelier and use him as a punching bag/returning short range projectile. I doubt (though Im not sure) you could have had the rules sorted out for this straight out of the books five months after 3e came out. Its still very new, and people are forgetting that 3e has many more years of errata and splatbooks to support the crazy stuff.

[Dullyanna]

Better to have two strikingly different editions than have one be a rehash of another, IMHO. It sounds like the 4th Ed. turned out the way it was supposed to, for better or worse. It's also a really good sign if there hasn't been any stinky limburger cheese arising from the supplements for it.

[Hzurr]

For the record, I really enjoyed 3.XE, and never ran into the balance problems that people around here moan about. There are things I really like about both systems, and I have fun playing either.

However, I'm currently DMing a 4E game, and playing in a 3.5E pathfinder, and while playing 3.5, there have been a number of times that I've said to myself "Wow, I wish this was 4E," and the opposite has never been true while DMing the 4E game.

That being said, I still am having fun with 3.5, and after we finish our current 4E campaign, my group might decide to go back to 3.5, and I'm fine with that. However, given my druthers, I'll stick with 4E.

Now all I have to do is find a way to keep Mark Hall from suggesting that we go back to 2nd ed.


Also, in regards to the people who say that 4E is too limiting, or is boring because it limits what you can do, I disagree. I think combat is significantly more interesting, because tactics have become more paramount than 3.5. Out of combat, things are roughly the same, as far as I can tell. In my opinion, my players are more creative with their 4E powers than they ever were with their 3.5E ones, even though 3.5 *technically* gave them more options

--edit--
Also, one of the things that I noticed between the two editions that I really like is the way they handled healing. It seems that players tend to go longer in a day then they did in 3.5E, and the Clerics (I love what they did with clerics) are able to participate in combat, yet still fill the in-combat "healbot" roll that people expect, which was difficult to do in 3.5

[Oslecamo]

I doubt (though Im not sure) you could have had the rules sorted out for this straight out of the books five months after 3e came out. Its still very new, and people are forgetting that 3e has many more years of errata and splatbooks to support the crazy stuff.

Five months after 3e came out, people tought weapon focus was a great feat, almost nobody played druids and wizards were shooting fireballs.

[Morty]

We've been through this dozens of times. And then some more dozens of times, usually with a lot of flaming. I, personally, find 4ed too abstract, limited, oversimplified and heroic to my tastes, so I stick to 3.5, for all its faults.

[BardicDuelist]

I've really concluded that the players with the most imagination see the most options. In any edition. As long as you have a DM that's willing to roll with it (not necessarily let them get away with it, but give it a chance), you always have options.

[Eorran]

I like 4e a lot. I've seen a large number of very varied opinions, though.
In general, my impression is people agree:
*4e is more balanced than 3.X
*Encounter design takes less time in 4e. Many DM's find their workload reduced.
*4e incorporates action or cinematic elements (Second wind, healing surges)
*Combat rounds in 4e are shorter, but fights last more rounds, so actual time spend in combat isn't greatly different
*Levelling up is a much more incremental process in 4e than the leaps and bounds it was in 3e (for spellcasters, at least)
*There are fewer skills which can be replaced by spells. A lot of the old utility spells like spider climb, invisibility, knock, fly,etc. have been reduced in duration, effectiveness, or availability.

I've had a lot of fun so far playing & DMing 4e. I'll note that my players like the streamlined-ness of the game, and prefer a narrative-driven game.

Keep in mind: this is the Internet. There can be no consensus, only fights to the death*

* Death meaning long arguments from which nothing results.

[ShaggyMarco]

I've played it, and while it is much more balanced, it's quite boring. I don't play D&D to just go kill monsters, I play to explore a world, meet interesting characters, and develop new concepts. 4E focused too much on balance, and not enoguh on creativity and fun.

People with these kind of complaints either have never played DnD creatively, regardless of edition, or have not given 4th Ed a chance beyond running rules-heavy sessions.

The creativity and immersion of previous DnD never had anything to do with the rules and in 4th Ed, they've made that explicit. You are now free from the rules telling you how many people of which level live in each town and how much time you have to spend killing monsters to be a good cook.

4th ed is more fun/tactical to run combats in, has less combat encounter building time built-in, is way harder to break, and has brought me back to DnD after a few years of getting bored with 3.5 and going to Mutants and Masterminds/Star Wars.

[Mina Kobold]

Never played it, The rules are changed so they look like a video game. It's no longer like any other DnD edition, trust me I played 1E for years and I liked 3.5 (it just seems more detailed and with only a few major changes that where understandable) but 4th NO WAY it's more like cheap online games now. They've changed their rules from realistic and fun to "balanced" and wierd. According to 4th you can't do stuff like building and they can't even come up with excuses of why there is those annoying encounter/whatever powers (in 3,5 you had limited amounts a day wich is realistic since your energy isn't infinite and you have to rest, it was also fun since it was challening)I don't get the good about 4th ED.:annoyed:


EDIT: It's not that 4th ED isn't playable but it was supposed to be DnD I can't see it, it's not like any other edition. I have played first 3.5 and read 4th. (the following is compared to 3.5) In first the combat system was the same exept the saving throws that was more specialiced but the change was okay, in 4th they've only kept very little and changed each thing that I liked. In 1st the magic system was the same with just some flaws and less spells and flexibility, in 4th they've just threwn that system and a lot of good spells to replace it with a video game like wierd system.

The above are just examples I'm way to lazy to write all this at once.

[Morty]

People with these kind of complaints either have never played DnD creatively, regardless of edition, or have not given 4th Ed a chance beyond running rules-heavy sessions.


Prophets are among us, it seems. How else would you be able to know what people you've never met have or haven't done?:smallsigh:

[Xefas]

I absolutely love 4th edition when I'm DMing. Monsters are incredibly fun to play as, since you're essentially either building your own party to confront the PC's party, having access to Defenders, Strikers, Controllers, and Leaders just like them, or you're The Boss Monster.

It's very easy to create epic multi-tiered boss encounters like you would see in a video game, which leads me to my next point that homebrewing and coming up with stuff on the fly is much easier than 3rd edition. This lets me craft the world more easily to appeal to my players, and it also lets me reward their creativity without having to worry that I broke something and will have to fix it later.

However, the greatest boon to all this is that I don't have to spend as much time working on statblocks and mechanics when I'm DMing. People say that "4th edition is for kiddies", but ironically, as I've grown up, I've had *less* free time, which means 4th edition appeals to me *more*. Not to mention that it lets me spend more time making the world immersive, and having more interesting NPCs.

When I'm a player, however, it's...worse. I mean, I suppose I have more time to think about my character and identify with him (to improve my roleplaying), but I already made time for that sort of thing in 3.5 edition whether I had to manage a spell-list or not.

There's a massive loss of creative options as far as the mechanics go. This isn't just because there aren't as many splatbooks out for it yet; just look at the stuff you can do in the 3.5 PHB with spellcasters. You can make an orbital bombardment platform if you put your mind to it, and not at a particularly high level either.

Then again, this loss is only for casters. Non-casters finally have options. Not a whole lot of options (not as much as with Tome of Battle, even), but options. But, who plays straight non-ToB non-casters in 3.5 anyway?

As a "for-instance", in a 3.5 game right now, I'm playing an Artificer who is slowly replacing his body parts with magic items until he becomes what I've dubbed an "Artifice Lich" (his phylactery is the item he'll be replacing his brain/spinal chord with). I can't see myself ever being able to do this in 4th edition.

[Oslecamo]

The creativity and immersion of previous DnD never had anything to do with the rules and in 4th Ed, they've made that explicit. You are now free from the rules telling you how many people of which level live in each town and how much time you have to spend killing monsters to be a good cook.



Sure. Now, you can't even be a cook of any kind, and there aren't people in town, just monsters with humanoid aspect, who also don't know how to cook, wich is irrelevant since nobody needs to eat.

[Dullyanna]

Never played it, The rules are changed so they look like a video game. It's no longer like any other DnD edition, trust me I played 1E for years and I liked 3.5 (it just seems more detailed and with only a few major changes that where understandable) but 4th NO WAY it's more like cheap online games now. They've changed their rules from realistic and fun to "balanced" and wierd. According to 4th you can't do stuff like building and they can't even come up with excuses of why there is those annoying encounter/whatever powers (in 3,5 you had limited amounts a day wich is realistic since your energy isn't infinite and you have to rest, it was also fun since it was challening)I don't get the good about 4th ED.:annoyed:

Balance and streamlined encounters>Realism and detailed skill systems, at least to some people.

[LibraryOgre]

Now all I have to do is find a way to keep Mark Hall from suggesting that we go back to 2nd ed.

I don't feel like being pelted with fruit by a bunch of college students afraid of a little 2nd grade math. "Ooooh, subtraction is so hard!" Granted, the fact that I'm keeping track of stats for OUR ENTIRE GROUP, often better than the players themselves, gives credence to their complaints.

Overall, I've enjoyed 2D20. I don't consider it to be D&D, even to the extent that 3.x was, but it's a fairly fun game with a fair number of options for any given "straight" character concept... if you want to play X race with Y class, it works pretty well; though the fact that you can more effectively play a strength-cleric than a strength-paladin ranks under those things that are "just not right". Multiclassing is a bit messed up, making it difficult to have a character with a mixed concept, but it's not horrible.

[Quirinus_Obsidian]

Keep in mind: this is the Internet. There can be no consensus, only fights to the death*

* Death meaning long arguments from which nothing results.

That is signature worthy!

On the count of 4e; I still have not played it. I have 2 games that are long running in the 3.5 world, with characters, both Player, Non Player, and Player that became Non Player, and one that became a Deity. It would literally take months, possibly years, to convert to 4e. A 3rd game has converted completely over to Pathfinder.

Now, the conversion to Pathfinder would be much smoother. That process would be quite interesting, but since the final rules have not been released, that has to wait.

I don't have any experience with 4e, so I am not sure either way what to think about it. I don't like the changes that I read about; and am not intimately familiar with all of the rules, so I am not going to say yay or nay.

[tyfon]

There are generally three ways to balance game:

- Everybody has access to all options, players do as they wish, we see that in GURPS, also in WoD games (well, almost - clans and such). This is, unfortunately, completly against D&D tradition
- We create lots of options and possible chices, but limit them to class/race/something - and then test extensively for balance - impossible, 3e proven that.
- We create streamlined system with narrow options - like chess - you have black and white - they are both 16 same pieces, but slightly different, because white go first. Of course, both going first, and responding, have some advantages and disadvantages.

D&D 4e is the last option.

Still, I have fun.

But for me, personally, 3e was more fun.

[JackMage666]

Since I kinda more prefer the roleplaying aspect, I prefer 4e. I know this is contrary to what most people are saying, but the way I see it, the streamlined simplicity of 4e means you don't need to fear making X character, because it's going to be generally effective as everyone else. However, in 3.5, you sometimes felt you had to take Y class or Z prestige class, which lowered effectiveness, or the class itself was just lacking (here's looking at you, Monk). In 4e, you don't need to worry about that stuff, so much, because it's streamlined so everyone is effective as each other, for the most part.
Of course, I don't really think it matters what system you're playing on for roleplaying itself, so the simplicity of 4e just makes it easier.
That said, I do extensively know 3.5e rules, and have been playing it for years now. I have 2 games starting that are 3.5e, so I'm not of the camp that's going to rule out either.

[Comet]

I like 4ed. It feels like the old gold-box AD&D computer games. Gamistic elements do not make this a bad roleplaying game.

For me, D&D has always been about adventuring with your friends, facing epic obstacles and dividing the loot with an excited glee. This 4th does very, very well.
And no, I don't need the rulebook to tell me how to roleplay thankyouverymuch. The only part of the game that needs rules are the conflicts and the rules for these D&D 4 provides in spades.
It feels to me like WotC has finally realised what D&D is supposed to be about. The game has become more genre-savvy, if you like. Instead of trying to do everything and failing horribly it does one thing very, very well.

Realistic it ain't. But I dont need it to be realistic. If I wanted realistic, I'd play some other system. If I wanted drama with rules, I'd play something different again.
Oh, wait, I do want all that. And I do play something different occasionally.
Diversity is a grand thing.

Oh, I almost forgot. Just because the rulebook doesn't state that "people live in the villages and most of them do normal medieval jobs" it is safe to assume that we have been thrown into supermarioland? Common sense is nice, since it's so very common. Use it. And rule 0:smallsmile:

[Hzurr]

I don't feel like being pelted with fruit by a bunch of college students afraid of a little 2nd grade math. "Ooooh, subtraction is so hard!" Granted, the fact that I'm keeping track of stats for OUR ENTIRE GROUP, often better than the players themselves, gives credence to their complaints.



Yeah...you forget that most of them are Liberal Arts majors, and haven't had to do math in years. Notice that Wes and I (the two people with B.S.'s) are the two that can do their own math.

[Shadow_Elf]

Sure. Now, you can't even be a cook of any kind, and there aren't people in town, just monsters with humanoid aspect, who also don't know how to cook, wich is irrelevant since nobody needs to eat.

There arent rules for cooking, because it is a primarily fluff aspect of the game.
I really like keeping track of money spent on food and lodging, since it adds realism. There are rules for foraging for food, as well as bringing it with you. Rules for cooking wouldnt be too hard.

PC: I am going to sautee some mushrooms
DM: Roll for Nature (sets DC)
PC: I try to flip them
DM: Roll for Acrobatics (sets DC)
PC: *flips mushrooms*
DM: A Wolf walks into the camp at the smell of the cooking Mushrooms
PC: I flip the mushrooms into the air, this time really high, and smack the wolf on the snout with my frying pan, catching the mushrooms as they come down
DM: Roll one Acrobatics for the toss, an attack roll with combat advantage for the pan and another acrobatics to catch them. If you fail either acrobatics, you lose the mushrooms on the ground, but you can still make the attack.

This exchange was brought to you by 4e mechanics.

[BardicDuelist]

One generalized assumption that I tend to get from these arguments is that players who say that 4e is limiting read gaming books as "if it doesn't say I can, I can't." I suppose this is normal, part of the 10 commandments of optimization, etc. I just don't read it that way.

I read the books as "if it doesn't say I can, there isn't a rule for it. I still can, but the DM may have to ad hoc something, or it may be a strictly roleplaying thing."

See, the people that see 4e as like a video game are probably reading the books as one would read the script for such games. I just don't see it that way. Anything outside of combat and certain skills that can directly or indirectly affect combat (stealth, diplomacy, finding and disabling traps, knowing about monsters, etc) is rather unnecessary to have rules for, in my opinion. Combat is where players need to be on an even footing, and need to be limited by mechanical options.

Even if they want to do something crazy like tie a pixy to a flail and swing it from a chandelier, it's not that hard to think on the fly enough to allow it.

Outside of combat, I let the acting take over. Why not? Yes, combat may feel more like a video game to some people. I don't think it does, but it might. How does the roleplaying feel as such? How is this any different? If anything, the lack of constraints or rules for these situations should make it feel more open and less like a computer game.

Yes, there is still the limit that is inherent in a class system. It will always be there, unless you play a classless system. If you want that, D&D, of any edition, isn't really for you.

[AmberVael]

Meh. I'll admit I have played as much 4E as I might have, but overall I'm not as fond of it. Something about having more rules almost makes it seem... easier to be creative for me. Or more worthwhile or something. I play DnD to have rules. If I want not to be bound by rules when doing something, I'll play freeform (which I do. It's fun. Woohoo.)

Point is, when you have rules, it is more restricting. However, it also allows you to see the restrictions and thus when you're able to think outside of them, and create something despite them, it feels like you've accomplished something. It's not as easy for me to do that kind of thing with 4E- maybe it's because I don't know the system as well as I could, or there aren't enough rules and variations for me to create like I would want to.
*shrug*
Anyways, I'm not as fond of 4E. I don't hate it, but I'd rather play 3.5, if I can.

[Mina Kobold]

Balance and streamlined encounters>Realism and detailed skill systems, at least to some people.

Y a system with powers you can keep casting each rounds and some you rest a few minutes for wich there's no limits a day... really realistic (not to forget you have no needs or weaknesses anymore and can't do anything non-battle like cooking and make fubby machines:smile:) I wish it where still 1st edition with my homebrev half-elf fighter I had a lot of fun with him and we ignored flaws and our DM made some rules so no-one used flaws to cheat to much *snif* :happytears: I love 1st edition.

[Blackfang108]

Prophets are among us, it seems. How else would you be able to know what people you've never met have or haven't done?:smallsigh:

I look at the amount of RP in my current 4e group and wonder how anyone says you "can't do out of combat" or "out of combat is too shallow" or anything similar.

we've spent more time out of combat than in combat in every session except the last. (and then only by a little bit.)

We've (thankfully) talked our way out of several fights.

The goblin Rogue has (annoyingly) talked us INTO several others.

I staged a last minute escape from the headsman's axe. Alone.* With no backup, or armor, and only a Butcher's Knife for a weapon. Entirely off the cuff.

I have held counsel with Lords and good Goblins. I have fought a corrupted Eidolon. We just found out that there is a forcibly-created Dracolich somewhere in the countryside.

I was the cook for the group. Well, still am, until the goblin admits that he found Everlasting Provisions in the last dungeon. I hold watch longer than anyone else, because only have to trance for 4 hours.

There's plenty of versitility, if you and your DM have the imagination, you can do anything.**

*Along with a stolen horse. He never got a name because I sold him to buy a new weapon and set of (cheap) armor. I couldn't very well wander around slaying monsters in my underwear. I'm not Conan.

**Except cast disentegrate, AKA, "Remove Door".

[Oslecamo]

This exchange was brought to you by 4e mechanics.

And you could have done it just as easily in 3e.

How is 4e better in that aspect?

EDIT:Also, congratulations, if you're a good acrobatic guys you're automatically also a fantastic cooker, as by your little inprovisation.

Why buy the books at all? Just roll d20s against a fixed DC.

[Blackfang108]

And you could have done it just as easily in 3e.

How is 4e better in that aspect?

Then why do they bother with including Everlasting Provisions?

[Kaiyanwang]

There are a lot to things to say about 4th edition intent toward the game, a lot of them not approachable without fire resistance / fire immunity gear.

Anyway, even among 4th detractors (like myself, time passes and I'm more sure about my starting feelings) is difficult to find one that doesn't admit that the sistem is more balanced. IMHO, the balance is a minor issue in a RPG and a bigger one in a MMORPG, unless players are total jerks and/or the DM is unable to say no.

IMO, too much has been sacrified to te shrine of balance and pidgeonholing. If for someone ( a lot of people, as far as I know) this is positive, good for them.

IMHO, 4th has a good math but is built as a whole for less kind of gamestyle (I know that this sentence is highly debatable).

More, maybe it's me, but seems that the "core" books didn't learned too much from the experience of the 3rd edition and they seem made to be immediately "splatbooked".

[Serenity]

Never played it, The rules are changed so they look like a video game. It's no longer like any other DnD edition, trust me I played 1E for years and I liked 3.5 (it just seems more detailed and with only a few major changes that where understandable) but 4th NO WAY it's more like cheap online games now. They've changed their rules from realistic and fun to "balanced" and wierd. According to 4th you can't do stuff like building and they can't even come up with excuses of why there is those annoying encounter/whatever powers (in 3,5 you had limited amounts a day wich is realistic since your energy isn't infinite and you have to rest, it was also fun since it was challening)I don't get the good about 4th ED.:annoyed:


EDIT: It's not that 4th ED isn't playable but it was supposed to be DnD I can't see it, it's not like any other edition. I have played first 3.5 and read 4th. (the following is compared to 3.5) In first the combat system was the same exept the saving throws that was more specialiced but the change was okay, in 4th they've only kept very little and changed each thing that I liked. In 1st the magic system was the same with just some flaws and less spells and flexibility, in 4th they've just threwn that system and a lot of good spells to replace it with a video game like wierd system.

The above are just examples I'm way to lazy to write all this at once.

On at wills, encounters, and dailies:

One could just as easily argue that it makes little sense for the barbarian, a warrior who has built his fighting style around a berserk rage, to only be able to enter the frenzy that is his signature once or twice per day until late in his adventuring career.Or that a system that effectively encourages and in some cases forces characters to set up camp rather than pressing on after their urgent goal has versimilitude problems of it's own.

4e has at will, encounter, and daily powers. The first represents minor tricks that are so basic and elementary to the class, are so deeply ingrained and require so little energy that they can do them practically as easy as thinking. Any wizard worth the title, for example, can conjure little colored lights or make a tiny object float a bit without effort. Encounter powers are specialized maneuvers that require focus and positioning and significantly more energy than at-wills. Thus, you can't use them constantly, but if you have a moment to recollect yourself, you can use them again. Dailies are extraordinarily powerful, requiring sufficient expenditure of energy that they can't be done very often at all. Your mileage may vary, but I think it makes at least as much sense as 3.x.

[Morty]

There's plenty of versitility, if you and your DM have the imagination, you can do anything.**


Maybe, maybe not. I don't care, 4ed discussions with people telling me I'm stupid because I don't like their precious 4th edition bored me long ago. But statements like the one I quoted are annoying regardless of context. "Yeah, I've never met the people I'm talking about, but I have profound knowledge of what they do".

[Oslecamo]

But statements like the one I quoted are annoying regardless of context. "Yeah, I've never met the people I'm talking about, but I have profound knowledge of what they do".

Completely agreed. I'm tired of people saying how I play the game whitout I telling anthing.

[macd21]

My 2c:

Pro: Combat is a lot of fun. One of the most entertaining combat games I've ever played.

Con: Combat is the only improvement. Character gen and development is pretty boring - you just select new combat abilities, pretty much. There is very little characterisation beyond what your character can do in combat. The skill challenge system is awful and (IMO) stifles roleplaying rather than encouraging it.

So, basically, I see it as a fun game, but a poor roleplaying game.

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah...you forget that most of them are Liberal Arts majors, and haven't had to do math in years. Notice that Wes and I (the two people with B.S.'s) are the two that can do their own math.

Notice my degree in History, with a minor in English. Notice my career as a teacher and librarian, equal to y'all college careers.

Notice my lack of tears.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Right. My impressions:

(1) 4E has streamlined character creation, combat, skills, and leveling. This means you spend less time crunching numbers.
I like this change. After playing 4E for awhile and going back to 3E, I noticed how absurdly long it took to level up a character once you hit the mid-tiers (LV 6-10), particularly if you have access to splat books. Common combat conditions have easy-to-remember modifiers/results (If you're at a disadvantage, you usually grant Combat Advantage; if you use a ranged attack or move next to someone, you trigger an Opportunity Attack, full stop).

The skill system has been cut down to skills that should require a roll, if you are a hero in a Heroic Fantasy adventure. This means that cooking, playing lutes, and making pottery does not require a systematized skill system, so it's not included. Furthermore, skills advance uniformly and characters choose what skills they are trained in (+5) right off the bat. No more min/maxing skill points for synergy bonuses and to beat static DCs while buffing your variable DC skills. Diversity in skill usage is preserved by the spread between untrained (+Ability Score only) to trained (5+Ability Score) to focused (8+Ability Score, requires a feat). If you are trained in a skill, you are almost certainly better off than someone who is not.

Common Complaints
The system has been oversimplified; you cannot portray a realistic system with it.
This hasn't been a problem for me because I don't try to define "reality" abstractly. Every system has its own internal logic, and I follow it unless it gets in the way of the system's goals. For me, a system is OK even if it doesn't have a sub-system for cooking, tying rope, playing music, but some people clearly object.

(2) 4E is the clearest and easiest D&D system to DM.
Relevant experience: DMed 2E, 3.0, 3.5, 4E
The DMG provides an excellent guideline for designing adventures for the new system. The XP Budget is simple to calculate, and holds up under play-testing - a few monsters excepted. The Treasure Packet System provides a generous amount of loot and is easier to track than Wealth By Level, if you go in for that kind of thing. And the rules for running the game are unified, so you don't need to use three different systems in a single encounter (3E Example: a psion, a wizard, and a ToB class fight) which saves a lot of brain-sweat for the DM. Also, the DMG provides a table of sample DCs and damages for "situations the rules don't cover" which, while not perfect, do work quite well, if you ignore everything on DMG 42 aside from the table itself :smalltongue:

If you like a system that tells you how to use it, then you'll like 4E. Some DMs prefer to wrestle any new system to the ground, and institute lots of houserules to make the system conform to their storytelling desires. 4E does not particularly need this, but if you want to fiddle with the system, it is very easy to do too. I, for example, only use the XP Budget and Treasure Packets as guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules. For me, this is normal, but I understand some 3E DMs treated the WBL rules as a bible.

Common Complaints
(none that I've found)

(3) Classes are now uniformly complex, and segregated into roles.
In 3E, I found that easy multiclassing basically nuked the concept of "classes as professions." Anyone could be as well trained as a fighter with no more than a single dip in the class, they could find traps with a dip in Rogue, and with certain arcane combinations, once character could do everything.

Additionally, 3E classes often spilled over into other classes roles. This is not just the problem of the replacement class ("why play a monk when you can be an unarmed swordsage?") but also the Batman Wizard and the CoDzilla. Magic made it possible for individual characters to cover all conceivable roles in a party, and some class features actually replaced entire classes (e.g. Ranger animal companions >>> low-level Fighters).

Lastly, 3E gave some classes a wide variety of options in encounters (specifically combat) while others basically had one. Wizards had a wide variety of spell combinations to tailor to a given encounter, while Fighters could only full attack and repeat. Yes, most Fighters picked up some trick (the ubercharger, tripfighter, etc.) but due to feat limitations, they typically did not have more than one trick, which paled in comparison to the options available to spellcasters or even ToB classes.

4E has solved these problems.

Classes are now grouped under their roles (Defender, Striker, Controller, Leader/Buffer) and have little ability to overlap. A Fighter is now a Defender who can Strike occasionally, but not as well as a Ranger. These broad roles help keep the classes distinct, and the limitations of multiclassing prevents any one character from absorbing the best features of several classes. Aside from discouraging players from doing everything at once, it also provides broad guidance to new players as to what their class is supposed to do. Classes still matter even within their roles, thanks to class skills, class features, and power selection - a Rogue and a Ranger are both Martial Strikers, but they play very differently.

Additionally, classes are given similarly complex options in encounters. Everyone gets At-Will, Encounter, and Daily powers, and these powers generally do more than raw damage. Fighters can trip, stun, whirlwind attack, and move enemies about the field just like Wizards can - but they can't both do everything equally well. Fighters have more melee powers based on weapon damage but have few burst powers (and fewer that can operate outside of arms reach). Wizards have mostly ranged, area of effect powers that provoke status effects, but generally only do moderate damage. This gives all characters opportunities to do more than raw damage in combat, without blurring the distinctions between classes overmuch.

Common Complaints
Classes are dumbed down and identical; everyone uses the same basic system and all powers are Ability v. Defense, 2d6+Ability Damage
I disagree (see above) but your mileage may vary.

I think these cover the broadest features of 4E, and the basic objections to them. I like 4E a lot (for the reasons given above) but as you can see from this thread, there are many who do not.

[Saph]

4e's definitely more balanced, and it's easier to learn. And I think the rules simplifications are good.

Unfortunately, I don't think the loss of mechanical variety is worth it. After all the cool stuff I've gotten used to being able to do in 3.5, 4e characters feel clunky and limited. All my favourite abilities and magical effects are either incredibly restricted, or outright useless.

Another problem I've found is that after all the hype about 4e's tactical combat, it ended up being fairly shallow. Mastering the new system was fun to begin with, but after about the fourth or fifth session, I felt like I'd hit the top of the learning curve. It was basically the same one or two tactics, repeated over and over. By contrast, I've played hundreds of sessions of 3.5 and I'm still learning new tricks.

I still like 4e for one-offs, due to how much more effective 1st-level characters are and how much quicker it is to make a character. But all in all, I'm very grateful that my group prefers 3.5. :)

- Saph

[Artanis]

My 2cp:

Many people like 4th Edition because it is more balanced, easier to play, easier to learn, and more geared towards being a fun game than being a simulation. It's harder to make an utterly crippled character to fit a concept, instead requiring some work to fit some concepts into the admittedly more constrained mechanics. There's fewer books out at the moment, meaning you don't have to look through eleventy zillion books to find that perfect combination that best encompasses exactly what you want to do.

Many people like 3rd Edition for the exact same reasons.

[mangosta71]

IMO, too much has been sacrified to te shrine of balance and pidgeonholing.

Balance prevents pigeonholing. A big part of 4th's appeal is that you don't have to pigeonhole your character to be effective.

Personally, I find all the rules that govern roleplaying in 3.x to be very constrictive; 4th is more freeform roleplaying. There seems to be less "make a roll, then RP that."

Both 3.x and 4 can be a lot of fun as long as your group isn't a bunch of twits, but then neither is enjoyable anyway.

[Tormsskull]

My usual playing group is made up of Basic D&D and 2e AD&D veterans. We tried to play the Keep on the Shadowfall, but ended up qutting half way through.

4e seemed far too much like a regimented combat simulator than an immersive role-playing game. I completely disdained the way the books were written, especially the part about types of players, including Powergamer, and the ways to keep them happy.

I much preferred the older way of writing: Powergamers = bad, and here's how you deal with them.

And to be completely honest no one has even mentioned 4e again since.

[Oracle_Hunter]

My usual playing group is made up of Basic D&D and 2e AD&D veterans. We tried to play the Keep on the Shadowfall, but ended up qutting half way through.

God, I can't believe WotC made that piece of crap as their flagship module for 4E. It's awful! :smallyuk:

Anyone who plays KotS is going to come away from the game thinking 4E is just a big combat simulator. It really isn't, at least as my experience (DMing and PCing) tells me.

[RPGuru1331]

I will never stop being amused by fans of DnD making their 4e complaint "It's a combat simulator". I really, truly, will not.



Personally, I find all the rules that govern roleplaying in 3.x to be very constrictive; 4th is more freeform roleplaying. There seems to be less "make a roll, then RP that."
Rules that govern RP? In 3.X? What am I not rememberring?

[LibraryOgre]

Rules that govern RP? In 3.X? What am I not rememberring?

I think he is referring to the skills Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate and Sense Motive. While they don't govern how you RP, they do determine how good your character is at things.

The problem I find (and this is somewhat exacerbated by 4e over 3e, actually), it that everything comes down to a pretty random die roll. Training helps, but a low roll will almost always show that you lose... no matter how convincing your arguments, someone who rolls a 2 will lose out.

It's not required... the DM can say "Ok, you succeed". However, the common complaint is then "My character who specialized in these skills does about as well as the character who did not, because the player who did not specialize is just a good talker."

It quantifies role-playing... it doesn't make it impossible to role-play, but it does disincentivize good role-playing by making either good role-playing irrelevant to role-playing successes, or making role-playing oriented builds irrelevant to mechanical success in convincing people.

[Mina Kobold]

Well what if I wanna make a robot pet: in 3.5: Effigy, diminiutive golem, etc. In 4th: Eeeh no way I have to make it all on my own, if I wan't my rouge to make crazy gadgets I have to try making a balanced rule on my own they don't made a guideline to make it possible in a fun way that don't ruin my day.


But that aside it just because 4th ED isn't DnD anymore. If WotC wanna make this kind of game they shouldn't call it DnD. All previous edition where the same in basic and has just improved and added flavor to stuff, but 4th edition got rid of all those basics, THAT is my proplem I think it would be nice if they had called it something else and made an ACTUALLy DnD edition.

[Shadow_Elf]

And you could have done it just as easily in 3e.

How is 4e better in that aspect?

EDIT:Also, congratulations, if you're a good acrobatic guys you're automatically also a fantastic cooker, as by your little inprovisation.

Why buy the books at all? Just roll d20s against a fixed DC.

I never said 4e was better than 3e in that aspect. I just said it wasnt worse. So arguing that you cant cook in 4e doesnt work. But that doesnt mean it is easier to cook in 4e.

Just for the record, I never said Acrobatics isnt a mandatory cooking skill. Does everyone you know who cooks flip their mushrooms? No. Only the ones who have the reflexes to do so. Or the ones that try and fail.

And this isnt World of Warcraft where the amount of time you spend cooking the meal makes it give you more HP. Either you pass the Nature DC, successfully making a palettable meal, or you fail, making the mushrooms burnt and or yucky. You can still eat them. You just need to eat. They dont confer HP, healing surges or a morale bonus to a stat. They are just food.

And you dont get attacked by a wolf every time you sautee mushrooms. If you do, then you have a very uncreative DM.

[ShaggyMarco]

Maybe, maybe not. I don't care, 4ed discussions with people telling me I'm stupid because I don't like their precious 4th edition bored me long ago. But statements like the one I quoted are annoying regardless of context. "Yeah, I've never met the people I'm talking about, but I have profound knowledge of what they do".

I never claimed to have "profound kowledge" of your experiences. My point was that anyone who dislikes 4ed on the basis of its lack of roleplaying has either NOT given it the same amount of roleplaying effort they've put forth in other editions (aka, they've been so bogged down in new rules they haven't grown comfortable with their new characters), or they've only ever called putting a couple of ranks in Profession (Sailor) roleplaying and called it a day.

EDIT: A third option occurred to me. You may be bitter that YOUR favorite older edition character no longer works as well in this edition because they have either not yet gotten to your character archetype (a very valid concern) or your character was built around a combo/ability/rules concept that no longer exists in 4ed (for instance, my 3.5 FR Cleric of Mystra who trained himself to be a counter-spelling machine in order to fight servants of Shar and those who abuse The Art too much. No Counterspelling in 4ed=much of the mechnical flair of the character goes away. That said, I will adapt him. Also valid.)

Rules don't make RP. If you need rules for RP purposes, then you aren't thinkng very creatively.

The 4th ed rules just drop the need for gimping a character in some way if your character concept (personality, not build) requires you to be a cook, blacksmith, or dancer.

Complain that it doesn't simulate a real working world? Sure. It doesn't do that. I don't know that any edition has ever done this well, and 4th ed doesn't even make an attempt at it. You don't like all classes using a unified system? That's a matter of taste, and I understand if your tastes differ. Complain about the quality control issues of skill challenges and the stealth skill because they shipped broken, complain about their flagship module not even following their own rules for building modules or monsters; don't complain about 4ed limiting your RP ability. RP doesn't exist in your character sheet or in the rulebook. It exists in your heart, in your mind, and at the table.

There are lots of valid complaints I've seen of 4th ed. The lack of RP support shouldn't be one of them.

[Inyssius Tor]

I think he is referring to the skills Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate and Sense Motive. While they don't govern how you RP, they do determine how good your character is at things.
Ah. So... like the skills Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate and Insight in 4e, then. I see.

[RPGuru1331]

Well what if I wanna make a robot pet: in 3.5: Effigy, diminiutive golem, etc. In 4th: Eeeh no way I have to make it all on my own, if I wan't my rouge to make crazy gadgets I have to try making a balanced rule on my own they don't made a guideline to make it possible in a fun way that don't ruin my day.
Beast tamer Ranger, fluff the pet as a robot. Unless you just mean a robot pet, as in a non-combat one. In which case, just have a robot pet.

And your Rogue can't make a robot pet anyway, in 3.5, though he could have one made for him.


It quantifies role-playing... it doesn't make it impossible to role-play, but it does disincentivize good role-playing by making either good role-playing irrelevant to role-playing successes, or making role-playing oriented builds irrelevant to mechanical success in convincing people.
Where I come from, we just add bonuses when people roleplay something well; Anything. Yes, even a sword hit. Just because another system has a good idea doesn't mean you can't use it. Making it player-based just makes it about the player's charisma, and while I really wouldn't complain about that, does sort of defeat the purpose.

[Artanis]

Well what if I wanna make a robot pet: in 3.5: Effigy, diminiutive golem, etc. In 4th: Eeeh no way I have to make it all on my own, if I wan't my rouge to make crazy gadgets I have to try making a balanced rule on my own they don't made a guideline to make it possible in a fun way that don't ruin my day.


But that aside it just because 4th ED isn't DnD anymore. If WotC wanna make this kind of game they shouldn't call it DnD. All previous edition where the same in basic and has just improved and added flavor to stuff, but 4th edition got rid of all those basics, THAT is my proplem I think it would be nice if they had called it something else and made an ACTUALLy DnD edition.
This pretty much proves my point.

[Emperor Tippy]

My opinion hasn't changed. I've played it, it's alright for pick up games with players who don't know the 3.5 rules off the top of their head and don't have a large resource base to draw upon (it's much easier to run monsters and NPC's when you have a binder filled with hundreds of character sheets to use for them). Otherwise it gets a resounding "meh" as far as I'm concerned.

[Mina Kobold]

I think he is referring to the skills Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate and Sense Motive. While they don't govern how you RP, they do determine how good your character is at things.

The problem I find (and this is somewhat exacerbated by 4e over 3e, actually), it that everything comes down to a pretty random die roll. Training helps, but a low roll will almost always show that you lose... no matter how convincing your arguments, someone who rolls a 2 will lose out.

It's not required... the DM can say "Ok, you succeed". However, the common complaint is then "My character who specialized in these skills does about as well as the character who did not, because the player who did not specialize is just a good talker."

It quantifies role-playing... it doesn't make it impossible to role-play, but it does disincentivize good role-playing by making either good role-playing irrelevant to role-playing successes, or making role-playing oriented builds irrelevant to mechanical success in convincing people.

Our DM only make us make such checks when there's a reason (the Npc is suspisious, the talkers CHA is stated: Hell no!, our excuse is really really bad, etc.)so they are usefull for challenges but not necessary always, try using common sense and you have a great time playing 3.5.

[ShaggyMarco]

Well what if I wanna make a robot pet: in 3.5: Effigy, diminiutive golem, etc. In 4th: Eeeh no way I have to make it all on my own, if I wan't my rouge to make crazy gadgets I have to try making a balanced rule on my own they don't made a guideline to make it possible in a fun way that don't ruin my day.


But that aside it just because 4th ED isn't DnD anymore. If WotC wanna make this kind of game they shouldn't call it DnD. All previous edition where the same in basic and has just improved and added flavor to stuff, but 4th edition got rid of all those basics, THAT is my proplem I think it would be nice if they had called it something else and made an ACTUALLy DnD edition.

Where in 3.x was the crazy gaget support? Could you make crazy gagets within the first 8 books?

4th ed DOES already have Alchemy rules which include a number of somewhat crazy gagets to use as baselines. That's a feat that Rogues are encouraged to take (Thievery prereq), and it appeared in the 4th/5th book of 4th ed.

Artifcers are also gadgeteers. In the 1st month of on-line content, WotC gave us a somewhat playable Artificer that could make gadgets/modify his crossbow to shoot trick ammo.

As for Robot Pets? I bet it is just a matter of time before non-combat pets show up in rituals (Eberron book maybe?). I also would be surprised if we didn't see Construct Pet rules within the next year or two.

[Oracle_Hunter]

The problem I find (and this is somewhat exacerbated by 4e over 3e, actually), it that everything comes down to a pretty random die roll. Training helps, but a low roll will almost always show that you lose... no matter how convincing your arguments, someone who rolls a 2 will lose out.

This is why I use Skill Challenges for extended/important RP exchanges. It helps to remove the sheer randomness you mention and it can cleanly be used to aid bad speakers with good characters and good speakers alike!
DMG 42 gives you three DCs for any check: an Easy, a Normal, and a Hard. If your good speaker makes a good argument, give him the Easy DC - and you can give a Hard DC for bad ones. Sure, sometimes the dice crap out, by that's the point of using them, no? Real people can be put off by your tone, your dress, or even by some unrelated incident earlier in the day. But a trained, 1st level Diplomat rolling against an Easy DC just needs a 5 or better to succeed without taking CHA into account - that's about as easy as you can make it without neutering the effect of the dice entirely.

And for the bad speakers? The DMG suggests, and I heartily approve, of allowing characters to roll Insight to pick up things about the NPC. Maybe they detect he is prideful, or greedy, or brash - even a bad speaker should be able to use these hints to at least make reasonable speeches. This allows characters built to be The Face (Insight, Diplomacy, Bluff - good CHA and WIS) to be The Face even if the player is having an off day.

You could do this in 3E, of course, but it wasn't an obvious course by any means. If you are running 3E games still, I think using a similar method for RP-based negotiations will produce more consistent results than ad hoc rulings.

[tyfon]

God, I can't believe WotC made that piece of crap as their flagship module for 4E. It's awful! :smallyuk:

Anyone who plays KotS is going to come away from the game thinking 4E is just a big combat simulator. It really isn't, at least as my experience (DMing and PCing) tells me.

This is something troubling me - is mechanics 'bad' or is it just modules that are streamlined, railroading, tactical warfare simulators ?

If one compares "Eyes of the Lich Queen" and, let say, "Heart of the nightfang spire" ...

[Mina Kobold]

Beast tamer Ranger, fluff the pet as a robot. Unless you just mean a robot pet, as in a non-combat one. In which case, just have a robot pet.

And your Rogue can't make a robot pet anyway, in 3.5, though he could have one made for him.


Where I come from, we just add bonuses when people roleplay something well; Anything. Yes, even a sword hit. Just because another system has a good idea doesn't mean you can't use it. Making it player-based just makes it about the player's charisma, and while I really wouldn't complain about that, does sort of defeat the purpose.

What if I wan't it to be combat and have robot traits (I think you misunderstood me I mean't how is its traits and bonuses). What about stuff it could do in 3.5 I would be done in 15 min. but in 4th it's very hard and take long time. And acording to Complete Arcane, Yes he can make it (effigys can be made by a craft(metalworking/woodworking) check-. and gadgets are just traps and magic devices.)

[Artanis]

I never understood why people insist on penalizing a player for wanting to play a "face" character just because he doesn't have a silver tongue, and for rewarding players for dumping CHA through the cellar just because they do. Do people force their players to finish a massive-difficult sudoku every time they want their character to make an INT-based skill check? How about making the player go do bench presses every time they want to make a STR-based check?

People complain about 4e reducing the number of options available when making a character. But others (and sometimes the same) then, even in 3e, go on to restrain character options anyways by saying, "oh yeah, you, the shy guy here for the first time? You aren't allowed to play a bard. Moron McIdiot over there gets to be a supergenius while playing WoW during the session, but you aren't allowed to be the face despite trying really really hard and doing your very best."

[/vent]

[Mina Kobold]

Where in 3.x was the crazy gaget support? Could you make crazy gagets within the first 8 books?

4th ed DOES already have Alchemy rules which include a number of somewhat crazy gagets to use as baselines. That's a feat that Rogues are encouraged to take (Thievery prereq), and it appeared in the 4th/5th book of 4th ed.

Artifcers are also gadgeteers. In the 1st month of on-line content, WotC gave us a somewhat playable Artificer that could make gadgets/modify his crossbow to shoot trick ammo.

As for Robot Pets? I bet it is just a matter of time before non-combat pets show up in rituals (Eberron book maybe?). I also would be surprised if we didn't see Construct Pet rules within the next year or two.

Gadgets=magic devices and traps. robot pet= a little homebrev golem or shield guardian.

[Oracle_Hunter]

This is something troubling me - is mechanics 'bad' or is it just modules that are streamlined, railroading, tactical warfare simulators ?

If one compares "Eyes of the Lich Queen" and, let say, "Heart of the nightfang spire" ...

The problem with KotS is that it is just one massive dungeon crawl. Any potential RP is dealt with ham-handedly, and you don't really get to see how Skill Challenges can work well (because WotC didn't figure it out themselves until months after 4E's release :smallannoyed:). So if that is your sole experience with 4E you will see a system that appears to be focused on making dungeon crawls work well. That is to say, a combat simulator.

The worst part? One of 4E's greatest advantages (the ease of DMing) isn't even shown because it's a pre-made adventure. It was a horrible showcase module!

Now, are all modules combat simulators? While I don't care for them, I have read over a few which provide interesting NPCs and complicated negotiations and plots - the Ptolus 3E modules, for example. So yes, modules can be good, and the showcase module for a new system should show off the best of the new system.

[Crow]

Our group gave 4e a try for 7 sessions (or 6 or 8 or something), then nearly unanimously decided to go back to 3.5e. One of the things that really put me off personally was that the edition made no bones about setting you up to buy more splatbooks. You weren't buying a whole edition, but a portion of one. Out of those sessions which I ran, I had to resort to the monster creation rules a number of times, and the variety of treasures was horrible. You had basically the same crap repeated up the list over and over again, just with a bigger bonus. The common solution was "Buy Adventurer's Vault!". All classes were different (which is good), but all of them felt the same (which is bad).

[Oracle_Hunter]

What if I wan't it to be combat and have robot traits (I think you misunderstood me I mean't how is its traits and bonuses). What about stuff it could do in 3.5 I would be done in 15 min. but in 4th it's very hard and take long time. And acording to Complete Arcane, Yes he can make it (effigys can be made by a craft(metalworking/woodworking) check-. and gadgets are just traps and magic devices.)

Wait, what? :smallconfused:

Could you explain how this is "very hard and take a long time" in 4E?

If it's not a combat creature, then it doesn't need stats or anything; write out its personality and description and you're done. If your DM disagrees, talk it out with him.

If it is a combat creature, you can either base it off the Figurines in Adventure's Vault, or brew one up using the Monster Creation Rules in the DMG. And no, the Monster Creation Rules don't take forever to use nor are they complicated - the DMG essentially gives you a checklist to follow if you want to make a monster that fits within the rules.

It sounds to me that you are looking for a section in a 4E book called "making robotic pets." You're not going to find it because 4E's philosophy is to use general rules to resolve particular situations, rather than writing up a new system for every new situation.

Really, almost any "4E can't do this" can be solved as follows:
(1) Is this an important part of the plot or adventure? If no, then it doesn't need a system to resolve it. If yes, continue.
(2) Find a similar situation in a 4E book. If none exists, refer to DMG 42 or the DM's Toolkit in the DMG.
(3) Apply the rules, reskinning the fluff to match the situation.

This applies to everything from naval battles to robotic pets. It is a different paradigm from 3E, but it is a very functional one.

EDIT:
@Crow
I've used the DM's Toolkit extensively in my campaign too. I took monsters from the MM and either reskinned them (converting a Rat Swarm into a Gnasher Beetle Swarm), added a template (buffing up the Bandit Leader by adding the Rogue template on the Human Bandit entry), or adjusted levels (dropping a Tiefling Blackblade down 3 levels to act as a bouncer) to get what I wanted. I have not yet had to make a new monster from whole cloth, and I feel like I'm running a pretty diverse campaign. What did you have to brew up?

As for splatbooks - I hate 'em. Particularly the lazily edited ones WotC is churning out these days. They have good ideas in there, but not enough to buy the whole dang book. So I skim 'em over in bookstores and appropriate the needed mechanics (such as the Pet Rules in MP and AV) when necessary. When it comes to magical items, I either swap around effects (Lighting becomes Radiance, +1 to STR checks becomes +1 to INT checks), or make 'em up whole cloth. It's no worse than in 2E, and now that I have reasonable guidelines, I can work without fear of disrupting my own game.

As to the "sameness" of the classes, I can't say more than YMMV. Personally, I'm plenty happy just playing with the PHB races, the PHB classes, and the PHB PP and ED. They covered all the basics, IMHO, and that's all they needed to do.

[TwystidMynd]

Sure. Now, you can't even be a cook of any kind, and there aren't people in town, just monsters with humanoid aspect, who also don't know how to cook, wich is irrelevant since nobody needs to eat.


Huh. That's weird. Somehow my halfling Rogue is a very good cook in 4e, and she was taught by her mother who is an NPC (who also knows how to cook).

I can't explain it!

[Tormsskull]

I never understood why people insist on penalizing a player for wanting to play a "face" character just because he doesn't have a silver tongue, and for rewarding players for dumping CHA through the cellar just because they do.


I like the explanation of 'Intelligence' from earlier editions. Specifically that while Intelligence does reflect how smart your character is, you the player provide the character's real intelligence. I feel the same way about Wisdom and Charisma.

Dumping Int is no reason to not participate in a puzzle-solving encounter. Dumping Cha is no reason to not participate in any kind of social encounter.
Dumping Str, Con, or Dex is no reason not to participate in combat.

Its not a perfect system, and requires a DM's arbitration, but it is far better than "My character's smart, so he solves this puzzle."

[tyfon]

The problem with KotS is that it is just one massive dungeon crawl. Any potential RP is dealt with ham-handedly, and you don't really get to see how Skill Challenges can work well (because WotC didn't figure it out themselves until months after 4E's release :smallannoyed:). So if that is your sole experience with 4E you will see a system that appears to be focused on making dungeon crawls work well. That is to say, a combat simulator.

I'm playing (hacking my way throught) this module now. Fight, fight, sleep, fight. Explore, find secret door, fight. Fight. Ohhh, talking skeleton! Fight! Fight. Hey, guys, we should return to Tristram, so Cain could indetify our items ! Ooooops... wrong game ?



Now, are all modules combat simulators? While I don't care for them, I have read over a few which provide interesting NPCs and complicated negotiations and plots - the Ptolus 3E modules, for example. So yes, modules can be good, and the showcase module for a new system should show off the best of the new system.

I admit, not all. And it is not system feature - I remember module for Vampite:TM (Nights of Prophercy) - Telegraph hill - whole story is about fighting, jumping rooftops and car chase...

But I'll tell You one thing - my DM is lazy one - in fact he has little time, and belives that drinking beer and hitting on ladies is better than preparing adventure (I agree! ;) ). Thus, We played all D&D 3e modules series (SunlessCitadel>Bastion of Brokne Souls) maybe without two + City of Spider Queen. Only two adventures whole group remembers as "yeah, that was great", were "Voice in Dreams" and "Standing Stone" - and I have my theory telling why is that so.

WotC is shoting itself in foot with adventures they publish

[Mina Kobold]

Wait, what? :smallconfused:

Could you explain how this is "very hard and take a long time" in 4E?

If it's not a combat creature, then it doesn't need stats or anything; write out its personality and description and you're done. If your DM disagrees, talk it out with him.

If it is a combat creature, you can either base it off the Figurines in Adventure's Vault, or brew one up using the Monster Creation Rules in the DMG. And no, the Monster Creation Rules don't take forever to use nor are they complicated - the DMG essentially gives you a checklist to follow if you want to make a monster that fits within the rules.

It sounds to me that you are looking for a section in a 4E book called "making robotic pets." You're not going to find it because 4E's philosophy is to use general rules to resolve particular situations, rather than writing up a new system for every new situation.

Really, almost any "4E can't do this" can be solved as follows:
(1) Is this an important part of the plot or adventure? If no, then it doesn't need a system to resolve it. If yes, continue.
(2) Find a similar situation in a 4E book. If none exists, refer to DMG 42 or the DM's Toolkit in the DMG.
(3) Apply the rules, reskinning the fluff to match the situation.

This applies to everything from naval battles to robotic pets. It is a different paradigm from 3E, but it is a very functional one.

Fine you won I give up 4th ED is probably better in all ways:mad::frown::frown: But my problem is still that they changed the system too much try argue against that and i'll consider 4th ED.

[RPGuru1331]

Whatever. Splatbook spam is one of DnD's worst problems, temporarily alleviated by a new edition; I couldn't care less what it says on the matter.

As to 'robot traits'. You really just mean "Immunity to all those spells I don't want hitting it". No, I doubt those would go in base, though you could probably work something out.



Fine you won I give up 4th ED is probably better in all ways But my problem is still that they changed the system too much try argue against that and i'll consider 4th ED.
I don't have to. The whole point of an edition change is to change the baseline mechanics. The new ones are easier to learn and easier to teach to any friends you make who you want to get into DnD.

[tyfon]

Fine you won I give up 4th ED is probably better in all ways:mad::frown::frown: But my problem is still that they changed the system too much try argue against that and i'll consider 4th ED.

Hey, It's not about "all arguments are pro 4ed" - don't like it - don't play it. It is your opinion that matters !

[Artanis]

I never said it's a reason not to participate. I said that if the stat is there, it should have a purpose. A lot of people make CHA utterly pointless by giving eloquent players with 6-CHA PCs a free pass on social stuff and shy players with 18-CHA PCs an automatic fail on every Diplomacy check, despite not doing the same thing to the other stats.

If somebody plays a 4-CHA barbarian with a stutter, extreme body odor, worse table manners than a german shepard, and a vocabulary smaller than :thog:, then by god, he should have trouble on diplomacy rolls. But some people insist that since that player is smooth and suave, Stenchthor the Walking Atrocity automatically seduces the princess while the guy with the 20-CHA bard automatically gets slapped in the face just because the player isn't very good with girls.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Fine you won I give up 4th ED is probably better in all ways:mad::frown::frown: But my problem is still that they changed the system too much try argue against that and i'll consider 4th ED.

I... I was just trying to answer your particular problem. It really is easy to make robot pets using the tools in 4E, if you so desired. Honest!

You're perfectly free to dislike the system because they "changed it too much," but I think it was unfair of you to claim that 4E was inflexible when, in fact, it is quite flexible.

[Morty]

Fine you won I give up 4th ED is probably better in all ways:mad::frown::frown: But my problem is still that they changed the system too much try argue against that and i'll consider 4th ED.

No, it's not. Don't change your mind simply because some people on internet aren't going to let you get away with an opinion different to theirs.

[Mina Kobold]

Whatever. Splatbook spam is one of DnD's worst problems, temporarily alleviated by a new edition; I couldn't care less what it says on the matter.

As to 'robot traits'. You really just mean "Immunity to all those spells I don't want hitting it". No, I doubt those would go in base, though you could probably work something out.



I don't have to. The whole point of an edition change is to change the baseline mechanics. The new ones are easier to learn and easier to teach to any friends you make who you want to get into DnD.

I'm on Mensa IQ I can do it, but it was just a try to explain that they cut out our guidelines so we have to be good at wierd stuff and remember it to do simple stuff such as cooking. I already told you that I just hate that everything is TOO new and not even the basics are the same (They has been the same since 1st ED)

[tyfon]

I never said it's a reason not to participate. I said that if the stat is there, it should have a purpose. A lot of people make CHA utterly pointless by giving eloquent players with 6-CHA PCs a free pass on social stuff and shy players with 18-CHA PCs an automatic fail on every Diplomacy check, despite not doing the same thing to the other stats.

If somebody plays a 4-CHA barbarian with a stutter, extreme body odor, worse table manners than a german shepard, and a vocabulary smaller than :thog:, then by god, he should have trouble on diplomacy rolls. But some people insist that since that player is smooth and suave, Stenchthor the Walking Atrocity automatically seduces the princess while the guy with the 20-CHA bard automatically gets slapped in the face just because the player isn't very good with girls.

It's very, very old problem... same as INT stat - problem is that when playing, especially in stressful situation people get intuitive - players should play their low CHA, but forget about it when 20 crossbowman aim at their character. On tho other side DM is engaged in the story as much as players, and tends to hear players talking to NPC rather than look at their stats. In some situations is going to get silver-tongued player to succeed (Yes - says sergant - You can pass, soldiers put crossbows down), and moment later realizes that character's CHA score is 5... but it is too late to rol back action.

[rayne_dragon]

4e seems okay, but I still think it's lost it's the true D&D feel. Of course, I still prefer 2nd edition to either 3.whatever and 4.

Overall I think it makes a better computer game than a pen & paper rpg.

[Tormsskull]

But some people insist that since that player is smooth and suave, Stenchthor the Walking Atrocity automatically seduces the princess while the guy with the 20-CHA bard automatically gets slapped in the face just because the player isn't very good with girls.

I've never encountered players like that, TBH. I've had some DMs allow a character with a low charisma to succeed on diplomacy checks, and I've had some DMs refuse to have a 22 CHA ladies man smooth talk the panties of a lady, but in both cases it made sense.

This is one of those times when just because the stats say something it doesn't mean it is right. A person casting glibness can easily get a huge modifier to their bluff skill. Does this mean that they should be able to convince the king to hand over the key to the kingdom? Of course not. Regardless of what the books say, common sense prevails.

[Mina Kobold]

I... I was just trying to answer your particular problem. It really is easy to make robot pets using the tools in 4E, if you so desired. Honest!

You're perfectly free to dislike the system because they "changed it too much," but I think it was unfair of you to claim that 4E was inflexible when, in fact, it is quite flexible.

I didn't say it was inflexible just that it's hard to do stuff since I have to make the rules for it myself not that it couldn't be done


No, it's not. Don't change your mind simply because some people on internet aren't going to let you get away with an opinion different to theirs.

I didn't change mind it's just that Oracle Hunter was right with some of it I still think they changed too much.

[RPGuru1331]

This is one of those times when just because the stats say something it doesn't mean it is right. A person casting glibness can easily get a huge modifier to their bluff skill. Does this mean that they should be able to convince the king to hand over the key to the kingdom? Of course not. Regardless of what the books say, common sense prevails.

I think you're both arguing the same thing, but since you're wording it from a different starting place you think you disagree, to be perfectly honest. It seems like you're both saying "Weigh the stats and the situation".

[Oracle_Hunter]

This is one of those times when just because the stats say something it doesn't mean it is right. A person casting glibness can easily get a huge modifier to their bluff skill. Does this mean that they should be able to convince the king to hand over the key to the kingdom? Of course not. Regardless of what the books say, common sense prevails.

Even when magic is involved :smallconfused:

I would have thought that, if anyone could convince the King that they were the new Incarnation of the kingdom's founder, it would be a magically-enhanced bard... at least initially. Glibness isn't mind control, after all, so when the bard begins using his newfound powers to bankrupt the kingdom and sleep with various ladies, he may find some who doubt his claims. And who express their doubt with knives :smallamused:

[tyfon]

I have a question - do We really need CHA, INT and Diplomacy skill ?

[Oslecamo]

I never said 4e was better than 3e in that aspect. I just said it wasnt worse. So arguing that you cant cook in 4e doesnt work. But that doesnt mean it is easier to cook in 4e.


Fine. You can cook. With rule 0. And everybody cooks in the same way, no matter what, when or where they're cooking. Urrah!



Just for the record, I never said Acrobatics isnt a mandatory cooking skill. Does everyone you know who cooks flip their mushrooms? No. Only the ones who have the reflexes to do so. Or the ones that try and fail.


Too late. Next time I play in a campaign of yours, remember me to go to the local thieve's guild when I want to eat something. With those high acrobatic checks they will make the finest food in the city!



And this isnt World of Warcraft where the amount of time you spend cooking the meal makes it give you more HP. Either you pass the Nature DC, successfully making a palettable meal, or you fail, making the mushrooms burnt and or yucky.

And in 3e, you can actually make diferent grades of salted mushrooms, from vanilla mushrooms that give out a few silver, to top quality mushrooms only kings can afford.




You can still eat them. You just need to eat. They dont confer HP, healing surges or a morale bonus to a stat. They are just food.

No you don't. Do you get weaker, or exhausted? Can you even die? No.

Just as low level 4e clerics don't even need an holy symbol to cast their spells. The only use the implement has for them it's giving the enanchment bonus, so no point in buying a vannila holy symbol.

[Raz_Fox]

First: on the Player/Character mental stats arguement, I agree with Artanis. I'm not very charismatic in RL, but that doesn't mean that my character should be penalized when I do my best to RP my character's discussion with the king. In fact, it should be the player who tries to talk his way out of every situation with a silver tongue and Cha 8 who should be penalized for not role-playing his character's stats. Player /=/ Character.


As for the main point of discussion: I like both of them. I lurve 4th Edition a lot, but I also enjoy playing 3.5 upon occasion. Unless I'm trying to play something complicated, like an awakened animal. I tried making one in 3.5 two weeks ago. :smallfurious:

Both are different games and different styles, and I will play both of them. I will only DM 4th, but as a player I love both games.


@Keveak: Life is too short to bother with something useless to you. If you don't like 4th Edition, don't play it. If you want to try it out and throw out your old prejeduces, go ahead. Just do what you enjoy. :smallsmile:

[hamishspence]

yes. Some people are rapid learners but terrible socially. (High INT low Cha) Some people take a while to learn things but are "born leaders" (Low INT high Cha)

And some people have learned the hardway exactly how to make friends and influence people, from books and lots and lots of practice, despite low aptitude for it (Low Int Low Cha High Diplomacy)

[Artanis]

I've never encountered players like that, TBH. I've had some DMs allow a character with a low charisma to succeed on diplomacy checks, and I've had some DMs refuse to have a 22 CHA ladies man smooth talk the panties of a lady, but in both cases it made sense.

This is one of those times when just because the stats say something it doesn't mean it is right. A person casting glibness can easily get a huge modifier to their bluff skill. Does this mean that they should be able to convince the king to hand over the key to the kingdom? Of course not. Regardless of what the books say, common sense prevails.
You mention a low-CHA PC succeed on a Diplomacy check. Tell me, did he get a high roll? Or did the DM just like what the player said and give it to him? If it's the former, then it's fine: that's the entire point of the skill. If it's the latter, then the DM just gave the player a whole bunch of free stat points and skill points for no cost whatsoever.

You mention the 22-CHA player failing to seduce the woman. Was it because the woman would not have been seduced no matter what? Or the 22-CHA character got a really terrible roll? Or was it because the player was bad with girls and didn't roleplay it well enough for the DM's standards? If it's one of the first two, then that's fine: that's the whole point of the skill. If it's the third one, then the DM just invalidated that player's entire character on a whim.

You mention the Glibness spell. The entire point of the spell is that it makes the character better at that. If you don't want the king being talked out of his kingdom, then don't even make it a check. If the DM is letting the player roll, then guess what: he's decided that it IS possible to do so, and if Glibness puts the character over the top of whatever (presumably absurdly high) DC is set, then yes, common sense dictates that MAGIC made the character just that persuasive.

[Mina Kobold]

I have a question - do We really need CHA, INT and Diplomacy skill ?

Bard: I convince him to give me his stuff.
Barbarian: I solve the puzzle to give me ultimate power.

With those things this can't happen and everything is fun because it challenge you, without them its possible and ruin the game.

[ShaggyMarco]

No you don't. Do you get weaker, or exhausted? Can you even die? No.

You don't get back your Daily powers. (you are weaker)
You don't get back helaing surges that you've used up. (your exhaustion causes you to no longer be able to come back from rough fights)
Once you are out of daily powers and healing surges, you can find that a fight can very easily swing against you. (And you will die.)

If you are staying awake forever just cause you say your character can, not for any kind of, "that was the longest night of horrible battle after battle I've ever seen OMG epic fights!) then you aren't roleplaying anyway, and all you wanted was a combat simulator, which 4ed CAN be...but it doesn't have to be.

[Artanis]

Edit: Adding quote due to Ninja

Bard: I convince him to give me his stuff.
Barbarian: I solve the puzzle to give me ultimate power.

With those things this can't happen and everything is fun because it challenge you, without them its possible and ruin the game.
I wouldn't even let them roll. They at least have to try to RP. If they put out a good effort, I would let them roll as the characters' stats dictate.

[tyfon]

Bard: I convince him to give me his stuff.
Barbarian: I solve the puzzle to give me ultimate power.


RP it.


With those things this can't happen and everything is fun because it challenge you, without them its possible and ruin the game.

Situation: Players presented with riddle:
-BARB: Oh, Ik now, it is...!
-DM: No, You are not allowed, You are dumb!
Series of rolls, approx. two minutes pass...
-NOT-TOO-SMART-PLAYER: yeah! I rolled 19!
-DM: Ok, Your character guessed answer - it is 'frog'!

Situation in which one of players just geusses answer seems more natural and more RP for me. Just feeling.



EDIT ->

one of players - not good with strategy, and obviously not very smart plays brilliant warlord-tactician:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1282

[Asbestos]

Stuff...


No you don't. Do you get weaker, or exhausted? Can you even die? No.




Page 159 of the 4e DMG, rules for starvation, thirst, and suffocation. You get weaker/exhausted (lose healing surges that you can't regain by any means other than eating/breathing/drinking) and eventually when you run out of healing surges you start taking damage and can die.

This whole cooking mushrooms in 3.x vs 4e has got to be one of the more amusing 3.x vs 4e arguments I've seen.

[TwystidMynd]

Fine. You can cook. With rule 0. And everybody cooks in the same way, no matter what, when or where they're cooking. Urrah!

Too late. Next time I play in a campaign of yours, remember me to go to the local thieve's guild when I want to eat something. With those high acrobatic checks they will make the finest food in the city!

And in 3e, you can actually make diferent grades of salted mushrooms, from vanilla mushrooms that give out a few silver, to top quality mushrooms only kings can afford.

No you don't. Do you get weaker, or exhausted? Can you even die? No.

Just as low level 4e clerics don't even need an holy symbol to cast their spells. The only use the implement has for them it's giving the enanchment bonus, so no point in buying a vannila holy symbol.

I'm sure you're committing some sort of fallacy here, but I don't really care enough to find the name of which one.

You made an absolute argument initially: "You can't cook in 4e!"
An absolute argument, logically, can be contradicted by a specific counterexample. You were provided with this counterexample: "I can cook in 4e! Look at me toss mushrooms. Heck, I can even use Acrobatics to make it cooler!"
You took the counterexample, and presumed that the specific counterexample applied generally. This is not a valid counter-argument.

[Inyssius Tor]

Too late. Next time I play in a campaign of yours, remember me to go to the local thieve's guild when I want to eat something. With those high acrobatic checks they will make the finest food in the city!

Yes, because shroom-tossing skills obviously translate directly into food quality. Yep. You know what makes steak delicious? Trained jugglers.

[RPGuru1331]

This whole cooking mushrooms in 3.x vs 4e has got to be one of the more amusing 3.x vs 4e arguments I've seen.

Especially since no matter where you go with it, you lose.

In 3.x, if you put no skill points into Profession: Cook, you are a failure as a cook, and will be lucky to not burn the water, without a Wis bonus (Or an int bonus if you say it's craft).

In 4e, by virtue of kicking ass, you can cook really damn well. Of course, that's going to be a necessity for cooking well in 3.x..

[Mina Kobold]

RP it.


Situation: Players presented with riddle:
-BARB: Oh, Ik now, it is...!
-DM: No, You are not allowed, You are dumb!
Series of rolls, approx. two minutes pass...
-NOT-TOO-SMART-PLAYER: yeah! I rolled 19!
-DM: Ok, Your character guessed answer - it is 'frog'!

Situation in which one of players just geusses answer seems more natural and more RP for me. Just feeling.


http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1282

Both me and my current DM let everyone try like everybody else should. Yes it's harder but it could happen.



Edit: Adding quote due to Ninja

I wouldn't even let them roll. They at least have to try to RP. If they put out a good effort, I would let them roll as the characters' stats dictate.

I agree stats are usefull and necessary and the game is almost impossible without them

[hamishspence]

or, if you're feeling generous, Brew Potion can double as Cook Really good food. Complete Arcane encourages alternate versions of consumable items, so Buns of Cure Light Wounds is certainly an option. :smallbiggrin:

[tyfon]

Especially since no matter where you go with it, you lose.

In 3.x, if you put no skill points into Profession: Cook, you are a failure as a cook, and will be lucky to not burn the water, without a Wis bonus (Or an int bonus if you say it's craft).

In 4e, by virtue of kicking ass, you can cook really damn well. Of course, that's going to be a necessity for cooking well in 3.x..

So, all right - player is great cook, or carpenter, or blacksmith because he said so. And? What kind of impact it brings to the table ?

Are players going to go and make tons of money with that? Build empire? D&D is not about playing cook. Exalted is not about being accountant, and Cyberpunk is not about sitting in office as Duty Manager in Call Center

Both me and my current DM let everyone try like everybody else should. Yes it's harder but it could happen.

Of course -there are several approaches to this problem - but it is hard to explain why brilliant character is not one that really has brilliant ideas. of course instead of playing characters preparing for battle one could roll dice and say "John came up with Napoleon-like stratagem", but I don't think it is much RP.

[kbk]

The insinuation that they took the roleplay out in 4th ed. is kind of striking. Its always been my philosophy that flavor, roleplaying, and a lot of similar concepts come from beyond the rules. 4th ed. simply balanced the rules.

It struck me that a lot of people who disliked 4th at the onset were hardcore min/maxers who wanted to play uber characters. Obviously, this is a gross simplification of the problem. 4th clearly has less options, but then again, its still a young system. 3rd shipped with what? 6 prestige classes in the DMG.

Good:
Characters are fairly balanced.
Character building and adventure building is streamlined.
Combat is incredibly tactical. Its important to know your surroundings and exploit them.

Bad:
Characters have less options (I'd expect this to change as they ship more products).
Encounters & players seem built to pigeon-hole certain roles. I miss my gish MCed bladesinger. This may change with more hybrid classes in PHB2, like the Bard. We'll see.
Combat is incredibly tactical (Its hardly possible anymore to play even the simplest encounters without miniatures and a battle mat).
Skill challenges don't make a lot of intuitive sense to me. Some things like the cracking of a complex safe may require a series of rolls, where you can make or lose progress. Those situations would fit well within the skill challenge framework, but other things like bluffing the king into funding your adventuring troupe just seem like an extended roll wouldn't make sense.

Overall, I enjoy it and will look forward to playing more. I'd still play a few 3x games, but to me, certain character concepts, spells, and feats from 3rd were just too broken for me to take it very seriously.

[DiscipleofBob]

After reading Martial Power, I have come to two conclusion:

1. From the DM's perspective, 4th Edition has already become a VAST improvement. The setup of the Monster Manual, the simplicity of monster statistics, the ability to basically switch around numbers and abilities of said monsters as necessary without too much extra work, the inclusion of "roles" so DM's don't have to spend another hour theorizing to figure out how best to play an NPC. All these are excellent factors which make DMing a much more fun experience. Less time on the crunch, more time on the fluff.

2. I wish I could say the same from the player's perspective. Oh, sure, it's much easier to make a character, but it's much harder to make a character off an already conceived concept. The Powers system really irks me, and here's why.

Create a character, any character really. I'll use a level 2 Rogue because it illustrates my point best so far. Okay, go through all the other points of creation, now get to powers. You get to pick 2 at-will powers, 1 encounter power, 1 daily power, and 1 utility power. You get an extra at-will if you're a human, and an at-will from another class as an encounter if you're a half-elf. Let's look at Utility powers. I get to choose from various skill-related abilities related to Stealth, Acrobatics, Athletics, Thievery, or Bluff. I can choose to be able to be really good at stealth, or I can choose to be really good at thievery, etc. The problem becomes no matter how much I want to, I can't get both. I can't be stealthy and have the ability to Tumble of all things at the same time. I can switch between the two every time I level, but never get both. At later levels, I'll have to get other powers appropriate for those levels. No matter how appropriate I feel two powers of one level are, I CANNOT get them. A 3.5 rogue would be EXPECTED to check "all of the above" on this list. That was their point.

So what does WotC release in Martial Handbook? Some alternate class features, a bunch of new powers, a bunch of new paragon paths, some new epic destinies, and some new feats. Most of which I STILL can only choose one of no matter how much I feel having both would be appropriate for my character concept. This is no longer balance and more so WotC telling me and other players "You can't have it because our rules say so."

Even with an entire splatbook for Martial characters, my ranger can either be an archer, a two-weapon fighter, or have an animal companion (okay, so the only thing the archery thing does is give you a bonus feat and is doable without the Ranger path feature, my point still stands.) If I want a warlock with cantrips, I have to play a wizard. If I suddenly decide it might be a good idea for my character to get some healing abilities to help the party, unless I'm already a healer the most I can really get is a 1/day "spend a healing surge, buddy." Same goes for any other combination of class features. I can't just multiclass, because multiclassing only gives you two predetermined class features from the other class. In 3.5, at least you had the option, and if the DM felt it was powergaming or imbalanced or anything like that, they could always just say "no." 4th edition gives me, as a player, the impression that too many people played rough with their toys or something so now they have to take them away and impose strict rules on everybody.

For the record, balance was never really an issue in our gaming groups. The only times I ever felt left behind as a player was my very first game (where my DM let one of the players start out with their own customized legacy armor), and any game where the DM decided it was okay to let one person play a gestalt character when everyone else play a regular character.

[RPGuru1331]

So, all right - player is great cook, or carpenter, or blacksmith because he said so. And? What kind of impact it brings to the table ?

Are players going to go and make tons of money with that? Build empire? D&D is not about playing cook. Exalted is not about being accountant, and Cyberpunk is not about sitting in office as Duty Manager in Call Center

To be fair, 'being a good blacksmith' can be relevant in Exalted, since the standard for a good blacksmith is to create swords more awesome then Balmung, giant robots, and cannons powered by essence...

Or an accountant so good they can reshape reality based on their numbers :smalltongue:

[Nerd-o-rama]

Or an accountant so good they can reshape reality based on their numbers :smalltongue:I have my next Mage: The Ascension character.

[tyfon]

To be fair, 'being a good blacksmith' can be relevant in Exalted, since the standard for a good blacksmith is to create swords more awesome then Balmung, giant robots, and cannons powered by essence...

Or an accountant so good they can reshape reality based on their numbers :smalltongue:

All right, because of power-system Exalted is different - but I'm pretty sure there is no charm tree for accounting :P Or investment banking ;) (here we could discuss if players could destroy world with bankig skill:D)

[kbk]

After reading Martial Power, I have come to two conclusion:

-snip-



In short, they completely screwed up the multi-class system. This is my least favorite part of 4th ed., because some of my favorite characters were multi-classed.

I think some of this can be fixed with a number of house rulings on MC, like, say, if you take the wizard MC feat, you can do cantrips. Basically, lenient rulings like that where there really isn't a fundamental balance change can do a lot to fix that flavor.

[Artanis]

Exalted is awesome like that :smallbiggrin:

"Hey, I just killed fifteen demigods piloting giant robots. With my bare hands."
"Meh."
"Meh? What do you mean meh?"
"You know those two silver pieces I found between the seats?"
"Yeah..."
"I now own fifteen giant-robot factories."

:smallbiggrin:

[FoE]

As a player, I'm a Slayer, so I looooooove da combat. If I'm not in a fight, then I'm looking for one. 4E meets mah needs.

As a DM, the job of making an adventure is soooooooo frickin' easy. No more spending three hours on a homebrewed monster that will last five minutes! No more slogging through stats! AND MINIONS! ME LOVE DA MINIONS! Finally, I can run a zombie horde without being crushed under two tons of paperwork!


But that aside it just because 4th ED isn't DnD anymore.

Pfffft! What nonsense! Let me telll you friend, I cut my teeth on 1E when I was growing up, and 4E is closer to 1E than 3.5E any day of the week.

[DiscipleofBob]

In short, they completely screwed up the multi-class system. This is my least favorite part of 4th ed., because some of my favorite characters were multi-classed.

I think some of this can be fixed with a number of house rulings on MC, like, say, if you take the wizard MC feat, you can do cantrips. Basically, lenient rulings like that where there really isn't a fundamental balance change can do a lot to fix that flavor.

Very true, it is much easier to houserule. The only problem comes when as a player you come across a DM who likes the rules just the way they are.

[hamishspence]

I remember Basic D&D gaming- I do think, compared to that, 4th ed has good mix of simple monsters and interesting combat options. Also, more things for monsters to do besides stand still and hit you,in the case of melee ones.

[Yukitsu]

For sake of trying, I built myself a few arcanists with 4E. While I was a bit taken aback by how much less versatile casters are in 4E (I don't cast combat spells, I cast out of combat spells) I was even more irritated by how similar they all came out. For sake of stupidity, I randomly rolled my class, race and stat configuration, and wound up with fairly workable, samey characters. Damage was similar, to hit was similar, defenses were similar.

Mostly, character creation is bland. It's like tofu, but less nurishing. People like the system for its ease of use, but it's not easy to use, it's just a vapid anything goes system where there isn't really any significant punishment for making characters in a dimwitted manner.

[Crow]

The one argument in favor of 4e that I really cannot understand is how it is somehow so much more tactical than combat in 3.x. Mostly this is followed by something about being aware of your surroundings and exploiting them to your advantage.

How is this any different from any other edition?

The idea that 4e has fewer rules so it allows you to be "more creative" somehow is also a pain. If people really want to take that approach, why not do so in 3.x? If I want to inflict a wound that will hobble my opponent and slow him, what is stopping the DM from making something up on the fly? It is ok for cooking mushrooms in 4e, but not for combat in 3.x?

[Tormsskull]

You mention a low-CHA PC succeed on a Diplomacy check. Tell me, did he get a high roll?


He rolled above average and the DM gave him an undisclosed bonus for the way he worded his request.



You mention the 22-CHA player failing to seduce the woman. Was it because the woman would not have been seduced no matter what?


Yes. This particular NPC was not interested in members of the PC's race.



You mention the Glibness spell. The entire point of the spell is that it makes the character better at that. If you don't want the king being talked out of his kingdom, then don't even make it a check.


That's one way of doing it, for sure. But I think telling the player that it is impossible is giving them too much information. How would the character know that there is no way that the king would give away his kingdom (aside from common sense of course)? If the player rolls a high number, lets say 50, and the DM says it fails, then the player is left wondering if the DC was simply higher, or if it was not possible.

Flat out telling the player it is impossible doesn't give the player the opportunity to attempt what they want, and in addition gives them mechanical information when RP information would work even better.



If the DM is letting the player roll, then guess what: he's decided that it IS possible to do so

Is this just the way that you play, or is this actually written somewhere? It may actually be, but I've never played that way. Sometimes a skill check DC is super high, so high in fact that the players can't even make it, but I'll still let them roll.

To me a roll indicates that a character is attempting something that they believe they are capable of. Not that they are actually capable of that thing.

[Kris Strife]

Yes, only the high Int char can solve puzzles because no one ever over thinks something and misses the solution. I'm looking at you Gandalf, Mr. I know everything wizzard who got stumped for hour by wordplay a halfling commoner grasped in the middle of combat... Speak friend and enter.

And theres no such thing as idiot savants who cant tie their own shoes but can instantly figure out cube roots mentally and notice the pattern of which rooms are trapped and which arent from that... Cube anyone?

[hamishspence]

considering that way back when, 3d6 in order was character gen, and there were no feats, 4th ed is a decided improvement.

But next to 3rd ed? Depends what you think of Tome of Battle. I see it as the prototype for 4th ed.

3.0 core, with no supplements, compared to 4th ed core? i think Powers are perhaps more fun than 3.0 Builds. At least to begin with.

[DiscipleofBob]

The idea that 4e has fewer rules so it allows you to be "more creative" somehow is also a pain. If people really want to take that approach, why not do so in 3.x? If I want to inflict a wound that will hobble my opponent and slow him, what is stopping the DM from making something up on the fly? It is ok for cooking mushrooms in 4e, but not for combat in 3.x?

I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here...

While yes, houserules solve everything, the problem becomes when you have a DM who doesn't want to make houserules, who likes the rules just the way they are, and thinks that if he goes outside the rules then he's somehow breaking the reality of the game. This becomes even more of a problem when a stunt you pull in one game (let's say, dual-wielding halflings for the sake of argument) comes out as a feat in some splatbook which says something like "you must have this feat to dual-wield halflings" or "you still get a -8 penalty for each attack" or something like that, and the DM decides that since that's how WotC wrote it, that's how it must be.

[Mina Kobold]

Craft(metalworking) wich is the skill needed for black smiths would make you able to repair the fighters shattered sword or the wizards golems or figure out how devices traps and the like work, so it's ver useful so are other stuff, if you are a fisher you'll be stable on boats where others aren't and let you know about sea stuff.

[Yukitsu]

The idea that 4e has fewer rules so it allows you to be "more creative" somehow is also a pain. If people really want to take that approach, why not do so in 3.x? If I want to inflict a wound that will hobble my opponent and slow him, what is stopping the DM from making something up on the fly? It is ok for cooking mushrooms in 4e, but not for combat in 3.x?

Actually, there are rules of hamstringing an opponent in 3.5. Since it gives an obvious mechanical advantage that is defined in the game, it requires a feat.

[kbk]

For sake of trying, I built myself a few arcanists with 4E. While I was a bit taken aback by how much less versatile casters are in 4E (I don't cast combat spells, I cast out of combat spells) I was even more irritated by how similar they all came out. For sake of stupidity, I randomly rolled my class, race and stat configuration, and wound up with fairly workable, samey characters. Damage was similar, to hit was similar, defenses were similar.

Mostly, character creation is bland. It's like tofu, but less nurishing. People like the system for its ease of use, but it's not easy to use, it's just a vapid anything goes system where there isn't really any significant punishment for making characters in a dimwitted manner.

All of those noncombat spells got moved into the rituals section. Take a look. More rituals are to come, I'm sure.


The one argument in favor of 4e that I really cannot understand is how it is somehow so much more tactical than combat in 3.x. Mostly this is followed by something about being aware of your surroundings and exploiting them to your advantage.

How is this any different from any other edition?



Because so many powers, especially rogue powers, have to do with shifting, sliding, pushing or pulling. For better or worse, there are way too many movements to just visualize in your head anymore. Hence, its more tactical. Combat is more dynamic, as characters generally (Except for some really high level casters in 3rd ed) have more options.

[Oslecamo]

I'm sure you're committing some sort of fallacy here, but I don't really care enough to find the name of which one.


Sure. I'm comiting the " I hope other people know what a fallacy actually is" fallaccy. Silly me.

Because you used rule zero for cooking, and by using rule zero you automatically assume the system can't do cooking on his own, as per the Oberroni Fallacy. Your DM allows your character to cook. Congratulations. It still isn't in the DMG. It's your own invention, and exists only in your campaigns.

[Shadow_Elf]

One of the major problems with 4e (although I really do love it, nothing is perfect [except maybe Profiteroles]) is the MC system. Since all of a class's features are given at level 1, and the rest is determined by power selection, you can't just "take a level" in a different class. Just giving them access to the powers (like the current MC) without much of the features doesn't work, and just giving them features without access to the powers wouldn't work either, since most features don't scale enough with level.

I tried homebrewing an MC system for 4e (which many people told me was overpowered, based on it being better than the current MC system), but everyone who gave me feedback either loved it or hated it vehemently. However, in a few playtests I've done, it hasn't seemed too overpowered at all, and in many situations, I wouldn't take the MC feat chain I made over feats in the books, which is a good sign. If anyone's interested, you can find it through the link in my sig. [/self advertising]

I've mentioned this before, but to all of the people saying that 4e is more limiting that 3.Xe, please remember that you couldn't perform all of this cool and crazy stuff/character concepts within 5 months of 3e's release. It took a whackload of splatbooks, core book sequels and 3rd party material to give you all these options you know and love. So, in time, I think that many of these things will be possible in 4e also.

One final note for this post. Just because a level 2 rogue can only take either the Stealth or Bluff utility, doesnt mean they can only be good at either stealth or bluff. It just increases the number of cool things you can do with one or the other. It doesnt mean that you can only train and focus one stat all the way (which, infact, is impossible since you no longer "invest" in skills...), it just means that you learned a trick using one or the other. In 3e, if two wizard spells fit your character concept, but you could only learn one or the other, the character wasn't ruined or limited. They just had to pick a spell.

[chiasaur11]

I have my next Mage: The Ascension character.

I think that was the bad guy in the first issue of Howard the Duck.

[Tengu_temp]

I've only read the first several posts, and don't feel like reading more, so I'll ask - has this thread devolved into a thinly-veiled edition flamewar yet?

[Yukitsu]

All of those noncombat spells got moved into the rituals section. Take a look. More rituals are to come, I'm sure.

If I used them to the same extent I used hours duration or permanent duration spells in 3.5, I'd have delayed the party 10 hours. I usually have the majority of my spell slots assigned to what are now rituals.

[RPGuru1331]

Craft(metalworking) wich is the skill needed for black smiths would make you able to repair the fighters shattered sword or the wizards golems or figure out how devices traps and the like work, so it's ver useful so are other stuff, if you are a fisher you'll be stable on boats where others aren't and let you know about sea stuff.

Repairing the fighter's sword? NOt if it's magic. Nor the wizard's golem. Nor devices or traps...


I've only read the first several posts, and don't feel like reading more, so I'll ask - has this thread devolved into a thinly-veiled edition flamewar yet?
Thinly veiled?

[Crow]

I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here...

While yes, houserules solve everything, the problem becomes when you have a DM who doesn't want to make houserules, who likes the rules just the way they are, and thinks that if he goes outside the rules then he's somehow breaking the reality of the game. This becomes even more of a problem when a stunt you pull in one game (let's say, dual-wielding halflings for the sake of argument) comes out as a feat in some splatbook which says something like "you must have this feat to dual-wield halflings" or "you still get a -8 penalty for each attack" or something like that, and the DM decides that since that's how WotC wrote it, that's how it must be.

You can apply the same argument towards cooking mushrooms in 4e though. Why does 4e get a pass, but 3.x doesn't?

[hamishspence]

hope not. Hopefully complaints about the other edition will stay low-key for a while longer.

I like both editions- I figure each are good at providing different things, gamingwise, and each are capable of breaking down, given sufficient optimization. Characters that can kill Tiamat or Orcus in one round, are the equivalents of 3.5 Pun-Pun and his competitors.

Rule the Universe stuff seems harder to get in 4th ed, more "kill an aspect or a demon lord in moments"

[tyfon]

Craft(metalworking) wich is the skill needed for black smiths would make you able to repair the fighters shattered sword or the wizards golems or figure out how devices traps and the like work, so it's ver useful so are other stuff, if you are a fisher you'll be stable on boats where others aren't and let you know about sea stuff.

This argument is not really appeling to me. My uncle is sport-fishin every weekend. He saw sea once, twenty years ago. balancing on boat would be rather acrobatics - and swimming is, I think, athletics.

If there is need for players to know stuff about, let say, volcano, would we need separate stat for that. This is system of secondary skills from old WoD games - increbidly roburst and incredibly useless.

[RPGuru1331]

You can apply the same argument towards cooking mushrooms in 4e though. Why does 4e get a pass, but 3.x doesn't?

Because 4e starts and ends with "Weird stuff goes through the GM" rather then trying to make the weird stuff legitimized through feat expenditures?

[Yukitsu]

Cooking is skill expenditure, actually. Craft or profession, both used towards making a product for the purpose of making money.

[Crow]

Because 4e starts and ends with "Weird stuff goes through the GM" rather then trying to make the weird stuff legitimized through feat expenditures?

Just wait until you get more 4e splatbooks.

[ColdSepp]

If I used them to the same extent I used hours duration or permanent duration spells in 3.5, I'd have delayed the party 10 hours. I usually have the majority of my spell slots assigned to what are now rituals.

And that is pretty much the reason they where made into rituals. They didn't want the Casters to be doing everything.

[RPGuru1331]

Just wait until you get more 4e splatbooks.

Possibly. I did point out earlier that splatbook spam was only temporarily alleviated.

Either way, it's a difference in the basic assumptions of the game. That's why you lack Profession and Craft, remember?

[Artanis]

Yeesh, I go to post in a couple other threads for five minutes...:smalleek:



That's one way of doing it, for sure. But I think telling the player that it is impossible is giving them too much information. How would the character know that there is no way that the king would give away his kingdom (aside from common sense of course)? If the player rolls a high number, lets say 50, and the DM says it fails, then the player is left wondering if the DC was simply higher, or if it was not possible.

Flat out telling the player it is impossible doesn't give the player the opportunity to attempt what they want, and in addition gives them mechanical information when RP information would work even better.
If it's impossible then it's impossible, one way or another. You talked about a situation where glibness could be enough to make it possible. If the DM makes it impossible, then I don't see why you would be complaining about Glibness's massive effect of...well, nothing at all.

As for allowing a roll, I meant a roll with a theoretical chance to succeed. What you describe isn't a skill check, it's a d20 roll for the sake of making the character roll a d20, in this case with the purpose of making him wonder whether said action is either impossible or else really really hard.

[Crow]

Because so many powers, especially rogue powers, have to do with shifting, sliding, pushing or pulling. For better or worse, there are way too many movements to just visualize in your head anymore. Hence, its more tactical. Combat is more dynamic, as characters generally (Except for some really high level casters in 3rd ed) have more options.

Shifting, sliding, pushing, and pulling, don't make combat any more tactical than it was before. Combat has always been as tactical as the players are willing to make it. If anything, I think the powers system stunted creativity by giving players the illusion that they can't do something if they don't have a specific power for it.

[Yukitsu]

And that is pretty much the reason they where made into rituals. They didn't want the Casters to be doing everything.

The problem is, it's not game breaking stuff necessarily. I like to lock up my spell book every day, make sure our sleeping area is protected from attacks, make sure we aren't being scryed, cast steed spells, letting the party move to their destination faster, making sure everyone has a good meal without having to cart food around with us, and basically do a ton of daily chores. My 3.5 character at low levels can do this in the same time it takes for a 4E character of higher level to clean the parties laundry. Utility spells were basically hosed in 4E, even with the inclusion of utility and ritual abilities.

[hamishspence]

the impression I get (and hope) is that even with splatbook spam, the gap between casters and melee will not reappear and grow huge.

I'm not sure if poor weapons (or powers) will be catastrophically worse than Great weapons (and powers) arising in splatbooks.

But my guess is- no, a bad power won't completely wreck the character.

This is, however, only my surmise.

[Artanis]

If somebody thinks they can't do something with no rule for it in 4e, then they'll also think the same in 3e, or Exalted, or Shadowrun, or WoD, or Battletech.

...well, maybe not Exalted, but I digress.

[Edea]

How do you all think it's turned out? I've been away from the forum for months, so I'm kinda out of the loop, and I'm curious to hear your basic experiences with it. Is the 4th ed. more balanced/less exploitable than its predecessor, or is it just as bad?

It definitely has its problems (such as ******* with the saving throw mechanic using various class abilities and magic items, my God that was a stupid thing to do), but 4e's issues are not on the level of 3e's. Long story short and on-topic: yes, 4e is more balanced/less exploitable than its predecessor.

[TwystidMynd]

Sure. I'm comiting the " I hope other people know what a fallacy actually is" fallaccy. Silly me.

Because you used rule zero for cooking, and by using rule zero you automatically assume the system can't do cooking on his own, as per the Oberroni Fallacy. Your DM allows your character to cook. Congratulations. It still isn't in the DMG. It's your own invention, and exists only in your campaigns.

In 3.5, there is no rule that specifically dictates how a character may learn to play the harpsichord. Sure, there's the Perform(____) skill, but the PHB/DMG don't explicitly state that "Harpsichord" can be filled into that blank. Therefor, by your logic, there are no harpsichord players in all of 3.5.

Similarly, there is no rule in 3.5 that specifically states that platypi exist. Therefor, by your logic, there are no platypi in all of 3.5.

If you play the game assuming that you can only do what the rules say, excluding everything else, then your game is going to be very limited.

It is A way to choose to play, but it is not the way I choose to play. However, if it is the way you choose to play, then you should recognize that it is by your own choice that you limit yourself, and not by the system's design.

[TwystidMynd]

I've only read the first several posts, and don't feel like reading more, so I'll ask - has this thread devolved into a thinly-veiled edition flamewar yet?

Yes. To meet the 10-character minimum, I will add this sentence.

[Mina Kobold]

This argument is not really appeling to me. My uncle is sport-fishin every weekend. He saw sea once, twenty years ago. balancing on boat would be rather acrobatics - and swimming is, I think, athletics.

If there is need for players to know stuff about, let say, volcano, would we need separate stat for that. This is system of secondary skills from old WoD games - increbidly roburst and incredibly useless.

You get a bonus for having a fisherman skill that doesn't reguire you to be agile therefore this lets mages be at least useable in situations like that, but this don't mean you can't have both this just mean that it gives minor bonuses to stuff related to fishing (sort of jack of many trades master of one)

[DiscipleofBob]

I've mentioned this before, but to all of the people saying that 4e is more limiting that 3.Xe, please remember that you couldn't perform all of this cool and crazy stuff/character concepts within 5 months of 3e's release. It took a whackload of splatbooks, core book sequels and 3rd party material to give you all these options you know and love. So, in time, I think that many of these things will be possible in 4e also.

I'd like to believe you. I really, really, would. However, Martial Power, WotC's idea of a splatbook for fighters, etc., doesn't really give 'options.' It gives more powers to choose from (you only get one of per level you get powers), some more paragon paths (you only get one of per character), and some alternate class features (you have to give up the very basic stuff you have now to get them.) This is not a trend towards more options, this is a trend towards "4th edition will stay basically the same way it is now. You will only get one class per character, you have to choose between these powers and you can never get the others unless you make a new character." At the risk of bringing up a dead horse to beat, D&D is not an MMORPG. These characters we make have fleshed-out backstories, personalities, etc. that we might want to continue playing through a long campaign. We can't just make a new character with a few mouse clicks and grind our way through the early levels to get to paragon paths.




One final note for this post. Just because a level 2 rogue can only take either the Stealth or Bluff utility, doesnt mean they can only be good at either stealth or bluff. It just increases the number of cool things you can do with one or the other. It doesnt mean that you can only train and focus one stat all the way (which, infact, is impossible since you no longer "invest" in skills...), it just means that you learned a trick using one or the other. In 3e, if two wizard spells fit your character concept, but you could only learn one or the other, the character wasn't ruined or limited. They just had to pick a spell.

Ah, but even that wasn't true for wizards in 3.5. A wizard could still eventually learn that other spell through a few more levels, and without sacrificing his spellcasting ability from later levels. If he couldn't, he could always find some other wizard's spellbook and learn it that way, or purchase an appropriate wand or scroll. Due to the limitations of item powers/day, 4th edition wizards don't even have that.

[Artanis]

You sell the thread short! There's mindless poo-flinging civilized debates going on about topics other than merely the different editions!

[hamishspence]

not compared to the flamewars on Gleemax. This is more of a flameskirmish :smallbiggrin: And I hope it stays fairly chatty- its informative.

[mangosta71]

Shifting, sliding, pushing, and pulling, don't make combat any more tactical than it was before. Combat has always been as tactical as the players are willing to make it. If anything, I think the powers system stunted creativity by giving players the illusion that they can't do something if they don't have a specific power for it.

Do they not? In 3.x, very few creatures have an ability that forces an opponent to move, which opens up more options for itself and its allies. You can move, and the rogue can move too to set up flanking. In 4, you have the option of forcing your target to move instead if that would be advantageous. Maybe you're attacking a guy that's holding a bridgehead, or you want to pull a single creature out of a defensive line.

And if that doesn't make it more tactical, what about limited use powers, so your character has to do something different every round instead of just doing exactly the same thing every time his turn comes up?


The problem is, it's not game breaking stuff necessarily. I like to lock up my spell book every day, make sure our sleeping area is protected from attacks, make sure we aren't being scryed, cast steed spells, letting the party move to their destination faster, making sure everyone has a good meal without having to cart food around with us, and basically do a ton of daily chores. My 3.5 character at low levels can do this in the same time it takes for a 4E character of higher level to clean the parties laundry. Utility spells were basically hosed in 4E, even with the inclusion of utility and ritual abilities.

So the rest of the party has to pitch in for the chores. Why is it bad that you can't completely render everyone else irrelevant?

[TwystidMynd]

You can apply the same argument towards cooking mushrooms in 4e though. Why does 4e get a pass, but 3.x doesn't?

There are lots of pro-4e arguments that get thrown around in threads like this, and I think there's a misconception around the ones that apply to both 4e and 3.x (like the one you reference).

Specifically, in any game, you may encounter a DM who isn't willing to allow a houserule that your previous DM allowed. The problem rises when someone tries to say that (3.x or 4e) is better because "the DM allows me to do [this]." It doesn't matter what system you're playing in, at this point, because it's a DM ruling.

I believe that's the point here. DiscipleofBob wasn't trying to imply that 4e is better than 3.x in this regard, merely that it isn't worse. Thereby implying that citing the "The DM lets me do this in X edition, but not in Y edition" is not a valid reason for disliking Y edition. Certainly, there are great things about X and Y, and reasons for disliking either edition, but that reason isn't among them.

[hamishspence]

weapons of knockback, and various tactical feats. However the movement isn't often on such a dramatic scale, or as controllable.

[Tormsskull]

If it's impossible then it's impossible, one way or another. You talked about a situation where glibness could be enough to make it possible.


I said:


This is one of those times when just because the stats say something it doesn't mean it is right. A person casting glibness can easily get a huge modifier to their bluff skill. Does this mean that they should be able to convince the king to hand over the key to the kingdom? Of course not. Regardless of what the books say, common sense prevails.


Regardless if your bluff skill is +1 or +99, the king simply will not be 'bluffed' into giving you his kingdom.

If the complaint is that glibness does nothing, I'd counter that glibness does nothing in this particular situation.

I actually do not have a problem with glibness. All it does is make those situations where bluff can work a whole heck of a lot easier.

I think the 'problem', if there is one, is when players expect that a certain number on their character sheet equates to guaranteed things happening in game, and when they don't, complaining and referencing rules in the books to make their case.

[Yukitsu]

And at any rate, the skill you want to look at is diplomacy, not bluff, because that can make the king into a fanatic, who will give you the kingdom.

[Saph]

The problem is, it's not game breaking stuff necessarily. I like to lock up my spell book every day, make sure our sleeping area is protected from attacks, make sure we aren't being scryed, cast steed spells, letting the party move to their destination faster, making sure everyone has a good meal without having to cart food around with us, and basically do a ton of daily chores. My 3.5 character at low levels can do this in the same time it takes for a 4E character of higher level to clean the parties laundry. Utility spells were basically hosed in 4E, even with the inclusion of utility and ritual abilities.

Yeah, they do seem to have gone out of their way to make the majority of rituals useless. Basically there are a half-dozen rituals that are fantastically, amazingly good (return someone from the dead with no permanent damage for pocket change? Yes, please!), and a ton of rituals that are just one step up from worthless.

I played a 4e wizard for a while and I tried to figure out a way to make my ritual-casting class feature useful, I really did, but eventually was forced to the painful conclusion that nearly everything you could do with a ritual you could do better without using magic in the first place. I honestly think there was some kind of design conflict over the rituals chapter - it's like they ended up saying "We got told to put in all these utility rituals, but we don't really want to, so we're going to try and make them as impractical as we can to discourage you from using them."

- Saph

[Tormsskull]

In 3.5, there is no rule that specifically dictates how a character may learn to play the harpsichord. Sure, there's the Perform(____) skill, but the PHB/DMG don't explicitly state that "Harpsichord" can be filled into that blank. Therefor, by your logic, there are no harpsichord players in all of 3.5.

Similarly, there is no rule in 3.5 that specifically states that platypi exist. Therefor, by your logic, there are no platypi in all of 3.5.

If you play the game assuming that you can only do what the rules say, excluding everything else, then your game is going to be very limited.

It is A way to choose to play, but it is not the way I choose to play. However, if it is the way you choose to play, then you should recognize that it is by your own choice that you limit yourself, and not by the system's design.

This post deserves another read. It is very spot on.

[tyfon]

You get a bonus for having a fisherman skill that doesn't reguire you to be agile therefore this lets mages be at least useable in situations like that, but this don't mean you can't have both this just mean that it gives minor bonuses to stuff related to fishing (sort of jack of many trades master of one)

Really, I still do not see problem with letting player know how to fish. Or how to repair shoes. If something is relevant to the plot I'll just tell them they need test like everyone else. without modifiers.


Saph-> besides, burning some magic-special-something to perform ritual seems very anticlimatic to me. I can imagine French Tremere vampire burning 50 euro to create magical dagger...

[Shadow_Elf]

I'd like to believe you. I really, really, would. However, Martial Power, WotC's idea of a splatbook for fighters, etc., doesn't really give 'options.' It gives more powers to choose from (you only get one of per level you get powers), some more paragon paths (you only get one of per character), and some alternate class features (you have to give up the very basic stuff you have now to get them.) This is not a trend towards more options, this is a trend towards "4th edition will stay basically the same way it is now. You will only get one class per character, you have to choose between these powers and you can never get the others unless you make a new character." At the risk of bringing up a dead horse to beat, D&D is not an MMORPG. These characters we make have fleshed-out backstories, personalities, etc. that we might want to continue playing through a long campaign. We can't just make a new character with a few mouse clicks and grind our way through the early levels to get to paragon paths.

I'm pretty sure you just said "Martial Power gives your character more options, but they aren't new options, they're just different options"
Giving out new powers allows for a different character concept. Changing a class feature into one that gives you a different bonus allows for different customization. Giving your character a new PP/ED changes its fluff and crunch (PP features make a bigger impact on the character than you might thinking)


Ah, but even that wasn't true for wizards in 3.5. A wizard could still eventually learn that other spell through a few more levels, and without sacrificing his spellcasting ability from later levels. If he couldn't, he could always find some other wizard's spellbook and learn it that way, or purchase an appropriate wand or scroll. Due to the limitations of item powers/day, 4th edition wizards don't even have that.

How about the 3.Xe Fighter? you got a crapton of bonus feats. You could only specialize in one thing each level, but you could still take different tricks and stuff with later feats at later levels. You can take a lower level power in 4e if you think it suits you more than a higher level one.

One example of good skill synergy: Hide in Plain Sight is a terribly terrific utility. As long as no one is paying attention, you can vanish into thin air, and still attack /w CA. However, you need a distraction, or some form of concealment in order to do it. Here's where the "look, a distraction!" ability that trained Bluffers get comes into play. You need a good bluff check for your distraction, but you need a good Stealth check to beat the enemy's perception.

[Klabbath]

Never played it, The rules are changed so they look like a video game. It's no longer like any other DnD edition, trust me I played 1E for years and I liked 3.5 (it just seems more detailed and with only a few major changes that where understandable) but 4th NO WAY it's more like cheap online games now. They've changed their rules from realistic and fun to "balanced" and wierd. According to 4th you can't do stuff like building and they can't even come up with excuses of why there is those annoying encounter/whatever powers (in 3,5 you had limited amounts a day wich is realistic since your energy isn't infinite and you have to rest, it was also fun since it was challening)I don't get the good about 4th ED.:annoyed:


I'm with you, Keveak. I have zero interest in 4E (I don't find it a coincidence that on a keyboard the shift button turns a four into a dollar sign.)

I haven't really liked any of the revamps of this game since second edition. We've taken a fun an imaginative game with enough complexity to make it a challenge and turned it into a flippin' video game for the sake of what? Trying to attract the young folk that think if it's not on an XBox it's not worth playing?

I understand that publication of RPG books is a business, but 3.5 and 4E were developed solely for the purpose of making money and not in any way whatsoever to expand the game we all love. They made things considerably LESS playable by being some of the worst-organized books I've ever seen and randomly renaming classic features of the game. Traditional items such as "Cloak of Protection" and "Healing potions" were renamed for absolutely no valid reason that I can discern. Complex and useless rules like "attack of opportunity" were added to give players more hack and slash at the expense of actual roleplay.

This is also why they needed to add "free actions", "Five foot steps", and the like. Video gamers tend to notice when someone hits them with a sword from across a football field because they can see it. This is the first RPG I've ever seen with a flippin' PHYSICS ENGINE built into it!

I've played RPGs, most notably D&D, for almost thirty years. I'm in the middle of a 3.5 campaign right now and I hate it (The campaign is good. The gameplay is horrible.) The mechanics are lousy and overly complex and there are dozens of asinine errors of reality in the books. The Giant commented on this in one of his strips: how can a bard suddenly decide out of nowhere to take a level of magic user? How can a ranger suddenly add a barbarian level? This is such a fundamental rewrite to the core of Dungeons and Dragons that I don't even think they deserve the same name.

It's not the same as a 2E fighter deciding to pick up a new weapon proficiency in handaxe, which is plausible for anyone who has ever trained in traditional martial arts weapons can tell you. It's not the same as a Wizard suddenly getting the Ride NWP when he hasn't been near a horse during the section of the campaign that leveled him. IT'S A FRIGGIN' LEVEL OF ANOTHER CLASS! While this was possible in 1E and 2E, it was restrained by reduced skill points and split classing.

To put it into perspective, this morning I was evaluated by my principal (I'm a teacher.) He gave me a glowing recommendation for promotion and pay increase (granted me a level.) Rather than take another level of "Middle School Teacher" I decided to take a level of "Mechanical Engineer" instead. IT MAKES NO SENSE!

Okay, the sorcerer class is kind of neat. Too bad it's the ONLY class to get no bonuses to anything for having a high index attribute. No wonder they're limited. The only thing a high charisma does for them is give them a pretty smile and make it slightly harder to resist their magic attacks. At least wizards get skill points AND bonus spells for their attributes. Fighters do more damage. Rogues get better ranged attacks and armor class.

Sorcerers get... er... um...

Everyone wants to talk about how "balanced" 4E is. Who really cares? Game balance is not the developer's job, it's the flippin' DM's job! If you're going to allow a paladin, a 1E Unearthed Arcana Cavalier, and a Drow Ranger in your party then you better find a way to challenge them or you can turn in your DM's screen!

I don't need BALANCE in my source books, I need UNBALANCE. I need mechanical information that gives me ways to challenge my players. The players should be able to tip that balance BACK, that's the whole reason the campaign begins in the first place; the world isn't FAIR, and the evil hordes of the Underdark are boiling out of the Forgotten Mountains and menacing the city of Danjaac-Tor. Only a ragtag party of adventurers can take the Cleric of Baldruun's staff to safety on the other side of the peaks through the hordes of evil monsters.

While I'm ranting here, let me also add that d20 is like an infection. Everywhere I look more and more games are succumbing to the d20 rolling system.

The original Star Wars RPG had the simplest dicerolling component ever developed. Whatever your attribute number was (say a "4" strength), that was how many dice you rolled. If you're picking up a landspeeder (Difficulty 20) then you better roll at least three sixes and a two in order to do it, or four fives, or three sixes and a four, etc...

There. In three seconds I just taught you the game mechanics. We can RP now. As opposed to the 3E campaign I'm in now that has been going on for two months and we STILL have people who can't figure out how to make an opposed skill check or figure out those time-wasting and stupid attack of opportunity rules that we finally dropped by the end of the second game session. And these are not dumb people, of the five of us we have nine advanced degrees and four of us have been playing RPGs for more than two decades.

I wouldn't have a problem with the d20 system if it weren't gradually making it harder and harder to find the original sourcebooks by pushing them aside. When a gaming company suddenly drops a rolling system they've been using for two decades in favor of rewritten books using this flamin' d20 system (may its inventor take a natural 20 to the happy sack), they stop printing the books that brought most of us older gamers to the game in the first place.

One final complaint: the 3E and 4E books are cheaply made. VERY cheaply made. Every one of our seven PHBs has a broken binding and the glue is coming apart. Two of the four DMGs have split edges on the cover. Only the rarely used MMs are in relatively decent condition. Why is it that I just purchased from Half Price Books (used), three first edition DMGs, five PHBs, and two MMI and MMII's that all have almost no noticeable wear by comparison even though they were all printed in 1988!?!

Books manufactured LAST YEAR are dissolving. Books printed when I was in junior high are in better shape. My second edition books that I've had since 1993 show almost no wear to them.

I think this is a metaphor for 3rd and 4th edition right there: high gloss, badly put together.

Before someone says I just don't like change, which is a natural human proclivity at any rate, I need to point out that I really liked the changes made to 1ed to make 2ed. Note that there was a difference of some twelve years from when first edition was originally released (1977) and when it was revised into second edition (1989). 3e was published in 2000, and then in just eight years we have had TWO major revisions to the game. (3.5 and 4E).

Not to blow my own horn, but I'm a published non-fiction author, so I'm familiar with the publication process. In order to keep that timeline it means that WotC and Hasbro finished writing the 4E books no later than August of 2007. In other words, since 3.5 was released in 2003, they had to be writing 3.5 while 3.0 was printing, and they were writing 4e while 3.5 was printing. Logically, this means that they weren't absorbing feedback from competent and experienced gamers for more than a decade before revising the game (as from 1e to 2e), they were simply writing any dangfool thing they wanted.

The accelerated rate of change is easy to explain. In order to keep up with a video game industry that thinks it necessary to release a new version of Madden Football every ten months the producers of AD&D find it necessary to redo every fraggin' thing every couple of years. Then they stop making the old source books to force everyone to change. Since the books wear out so fast, anyway, when you go to buy a new one you're pretty much FORCED to "upgrade" to the new system, whether you want to or not.

It's one thing to make a change when one is needed. It's another thing to make pointless changes that have nothing to do with making a better, more playable system.

This isn't an RPG. It's a video game with low-res graphics.

This post turned into something of a book. There's a lot I've wanted to say about 3.5 and 4E for some time but I've had relatively few gamers in my life to discuss this with. Sorry if I bored anyone. Feel free to hit "Next."

[Artanis]

I said:


Regardless if your bluff skill is +1 or +99, the king simply will not be 'bluffed' into giving you his kingdom.

If the complaint is that glibness does nothing, I'd counter that glibness does nothing in this particular situation.

I actually do not have a problem with glibness. All it does is make those situations where bluff can work a whole heck of a lot easier.

I think the 'problem', if there is one, is when players expect that a certain number on their character sheet equates to guaranteed things happening in game, and when they don't, complaining and referencing rules in the books to make their case.
If they expect a stat to guarantee something, then that's a problem, yes. My problem comes when something OOC guarantees an IC result, one way or another, and that is almost exclusive to CHA-related stuff.

If I have a high CHA and high Diplomacy, then if I'm presented with a possible-to-make Diplomacy roll, then it's pretty damned unfair if getting tongue-tied guarantees a failed roll even if the dice show a natural 20.

[TheThan]

Ok we just started a 4E game, so we are still trying to figure out the rules.

But judging from the reactions of myself and the other players at the table. I will say that 4E looks to do the things that 3.5 doesn’t do well (ok… it doesn’t do well without splat books ). That is, combat.

Combat in 4.0 is truly fun, with everyone capable of contributing to the encounter. Where with 3.5 it was the spell casters that got to do all the cool stuff. Now that they have limited the spell casters, and beefed up the non-casters, my group is actually looking forward to getting into combat.

[tyfon]

The original Star Wars RPG had the simplest dicerolling component ever developed. Whatever your attribute number was (say a "4" strength), that was how many dice you rolled. If you're picking up a landspeeder (Difficulty 20) then you better roll at least three sixes and a two in order to do it, or four fives, or three sixes and a four, etc...


Sorry, I just had to quote... For me, problem is that d20, both 3e and 4e were IMHO never really good game engines. There are better out there. d20 is complicated and at same time does not provide many options nor good balancing.

One thing that I love and hate in 4e - retraining: It gives chance to players who have chosen poorly, or are just learning system. It is great and gives flexibility. Allows to make mistakes. It's rolling 20 for playability!

At the same time:
-Grimgroth, could blast them with fireblast ?
-Oh, no, I forgot how to do it... but see how I can summon strong windblast!

RP lame :/

[Oracle_Hunter]

Create a character, any character really. I'll use a level 2 Rogue because it illustrates my point best so far. Okay, go through all the other points of creation, now get to powers. You get to pick 2 at-will powers, 1 encounter power, 1 daily power, and 1 utility power. You get an extra at-will if you're a human, and an at-will from another class as an encounter if you're a half-elf. Let's look at Utility powers. I get to choose from various skill-related abilities related to Stealth, Acrobatics, Athletics, Thievery, or Bluff. I can choose to be able to be really good at stealth, or I can choose to be really good at thievery, etc. The problem becomes no matter how much I want to, I can't get both. I can't be stealthy and have the ability to Tumble of all things at the same time. I can switch between the two every time I level, but never get both. At later levels, I'll have to get other powers appropriate for those levels. No matter how appropriate I feel two powers of one level are, I CANNOT get them. A 3.5 rogue would be EXPECTED to check "all of the above" on this list. That was their point.

This is not true. While you cannot both stealth quickly and tumble at LV 2 (Fleeting Ghost or Tumble), you can do it at LV 10 (Shadow Stride). Furthermore, "Tumble" in 4E is the ability to Shift half your move (that is, to avoid OAs and move at half your speed). This was one use of "Tumble" in 3E; it also helped you avoid falling damage and perform acrobatic tricks. Now, the Acrobatics Skill lets you do the other parts of 3E Tumble. And there are many Rogue powers that allow you to Shift many squares aside from Tumble.

Also, you can still roll Stealth and Bluff normally, even without using the power - but you can choose to get a buff to one at level 2.

What we are running into here is an Expectations Problem. Just because something worked in one way in 3E does not mean it works the same way in 4E. A common example is the "no Two-Weapon Fighter" complaint; there is a two-weapon fighter in 4E, it is called the Ranger. Now there is an actual Two Weapon Fighter :smallannoyed: but the concept is the same.

Besides, what 2nd level ability in 3E allowed you to be good at Tumbling and good at Bluff :smallconfused: If you're thinking about a Feat, Skill Focus is available in 4E too.

EDIT:

The one argument in favor of 4e that I really cannot understand is how it is somehow so much more tactical than combat in 3.x. Mostly this is followed by something about being aware of your surroundings and exploiting them to your advantage.

Combat is more tactical in 4E because all players have access to powers that enable effective tactical action and 4E is designed with this in mind.
In 3E, only spellcasters had an effective method of battlefield control. Bull Rush is all well and good, but it really dropped off in effectiveness as time went on, particularly if you weren't a massively strong fighter. In such a situation, it only makes sense for the spellcaster to be concerned with battlefield tactics beyond "flank that guy for the Rogue, don't get flanked, and protect the squishies."

In 4E everyone has some access to both movement powers and status powers. This makes it possible for every character to exert some battlefield control, and assist their allies in ways far beyond flanking. The Fighter can make a decision between calling in a bunch of minions for the Wizard to nuke, dislodging the monster who is eating the Wizard with a Tide of Iron, dazing the bloodied monster so that the Rogue can Sneak Attack him, or just stepping up and clocking the Ogre and making sure he doesn't sneak into the back row.

And that's not even worrying about terrain! The capability of everyone to control the battlefield to some extend makes the game more tactical than it was when only one guy (the Wizard) thought about it.

Terrain now, is clearly part of the thinking in 4E. There is a good section of the DMG talking about various basic categories of terrain, how they can be used to make combat more interesting, and some suggested examples of each. Traps are usually portrayed as being part of an Encounter; they should be combined with monsters, and used to enhance the danger. 3E barely considered these uses of terrain, and certainly didn't expect traps to be used in combat encounters unless you were fighting kobolds. And even when it did, the players could seldom take RAW advantage of them (see above); the DM would have to cobble together some system which the PCs probably weren't aware of when combat started.

That's my explanation, anyhow :smallbiggrin:

[Tormsskull]

If I have a high CHA and high Diplomacy, then if I'm presented with a possible-to-make Diplomacy roll, then it's pretty damned unfair if getting tongue-tied guarantees a failed roll even if the dice show a natural 20.

You mean tongue-tied in real life? I'd agree. And I think you'd agree that regardless of your character's CHA, Diplomacy skill, and roll, there will always be something that you cannot accomplish with your Diplomacy skill.

The gray area is what exactly you think that you, as a player, should be able to accomplish, and what your DM thinks you should be able to accomplish. This will impact your decision to spend points on any particular skill.

Its another example of why the DM and the players should be able to communicate with one another and make sure they are all on the same page with their expectations.

[Mina Kobold]

@Klabath: I like 3.5 as an upgrade, I played 1st Ed for years first then read half an hour in the 3.5 books and we started I admit it might be advanced and that 1st ED was fun but I see the 3.5 as advanced rules (4th being a entirely different game) and yes multiclassing is wierd you should have a perenquis for it ( taking expert(arcanist) before wizard or something)

Man I'm tired I'll go to bed.

[Tormsskull]

This post turned into something of a book. There's a lot I've wanted to say about 3.5 and 4E for some time but I've had relatively few gamers in my life to discuss this with. Sorry if I bored anyone. Feel free to hit "Next."

I would like you to start your own RPG company and start producing a table top RPG. Then let me know where I can buy said game. Excellent post.

[Artanis]

You mean tongue-tied in real life? I'd agree. And I think you'd agree that regardless of your character's CHA, Diplomacy skill, and roll, there will always be something that you cannot accomplish with your Diplomacy skill.

The gray area is what exactly you think that you, as a player, should be able to accomplish, and what your DM thinks you should be able to accomplish. This will impact your decision to spend points on any particular skill.

Its another example of why the DM and the players should be able to communicate with one another and make sure they are all on the same page with their expectations.
Yup, tongue-tied in real life.

It appears we've gotten to a point where we agree :smallsmile:

[Rockphed]

Yup, tongue-tied in real life.

It appears we've gotten to a point where we agree :smallsmile:

It only took you three pages in the middle of a flame war. Congratulations!

[RPGuru1331]

They've been agreeing the whole time. That's the tragedy.

[Hal]

I'm just gonna toss out my own observations, and if they're too much like other responses, I apologize. I'm not reading 6 pages worth of this. *Nyah* :smallyuk:

4E feels a lot less flexible than 3.5, but this is largely because of the scaling down of non-combat options. The skill list still lets you get most of that stuff accomplished, albeit without basketweaving, but the lack of utility spells limits some aspects. I don't MIND having a spell list scaled back from the huge options available in 3.5, but you can't roll up a wizard or cleric and then look at your spell list to see if you can prepare anything to solve your puzzles. Again, not a bad thing, but there's just fewer options out of combat.

I like where combat has gone, though. With all the different powers, you'll always have something to do besides move/attack or full attack on your turn. Granted, at this point characters of the same class look practically identical, but 4E doesn't emphasize feats as much as 3.5 did, and it doesn't have dozens of splatbooks like 3.5, either. Give it some time, I'm sure there will be more character options in the years to come.

[Jack Zander]

I don't find it a coincidence that on a keyboard the shift button turns a four into a dollar sign.

So 1st edition gives you nasty Gary Gygax surprises!, 2nd edition is where it's @, 3rd edition is all about # crunching, and 4th edition is all about making $ for WotC. Does that mean the next edition is going to be based off of % somehow?

[Klabbath]

Sorry, I just had to quote... For me, problem is that d20, both 3e and 4e were IMHO never really good game engines. There are better out there. d20 is complicated and at same time does not provide many options nor good balancing.


THANK you! I've been saying that since it game out. Several of the people I've talked to love it because it makes "everyone come down to one rolling mechanic."

Yeah, it gives the same basic chance for EVERYTHING in five percent increments. The whole reason we have those extra dice, from the golf ball to the caltrop, is to alter the base percentage chance of something taking place. Using a d20 means everything you do is in five percent increments. I'm no math genius, but I think I've got to have at least ONE skill in my life that has a 37% chance of failure!

[Oracle_Hunter]

So 1st edition gives you nasty Gary Gygax surprises!, 2nd edition is where it's @, 3rd edition is all about # crunching, and 4th edition is all about making $ for WotC. Does that mean the next edition is going to be based off of % somehow?

Thanks for the lulz :smallbiggrin:

[Klabbath]

@Klabath: I like 3.5 as an upgrade, I played 1st Ed for years first then read half an hour in the 3.5 books and we started I admit it might be advanced and that 1st ED was fun but I see the 3.5 as advanced rules (4th being a entirely different game) and yes multiclassing is wierd you should have a perenquis for it ( taking expert(arcanist) before wizard or something)

Man I'm tired I'll go to bed.

I think that's the issue. 3.5 and 4E are not different versions of the old game-- they are new games in their entirety. This isn't a bad thing-- except that when these new games are released they stop making the old one.

Sort of like if they stopped making Traveler when Star Wars came out as an RPG. It's one thing for a game to die out on its own because people pick and choose the rules they prefer to play by, but it's another when the game designers and publishers force a game to extinction by no longer printing sourcebooks that some of us still really want. I don't let anyone eat or drink around my 1ed stuff-- there are a finite number of those books out there and I can't let the ones I have be destroyed or damaged.

[Hzurr]

-snip- really long post -snip-

Let me sum up your arguement:

"Hey kids! Get off my lawn!"

Now, this is an oversimplification, and you had some very valid points, but in the end, all it comes down to is that you like things the way they were. I hate to break it to you, but these times, they are a'changin. The d20 system is hugely popular for a reason. Even if you don't like this direction, and prefer the old one, that doesn't mean that it's the worst thing ever. It's a different system for a different generation of players. If the game hadn't have evolved, it would have died out. (Hmm...reminds me of the most recent Oots Script)

If you don't like it, then don't play it, but that doesn't inherently mean that these systems are "bad" or "not d&d." Is 2nd ed d&d the same as 3rd? Nope. Is it the same as 1st? Nope. Every edition is different, and ever edition is it's own distinct brand of d&d.

[Klabbath]

I would like you to start your own RPG company and start producing a table top RPG. Then let me know where I can buy said game. Excellent post.

I'm very honored that you would say that. Thank you very much!

In point of fact, I've been making notes for a while for a tabletop RPG based on the world created by David Eddings for his "Elenium" and "Tamuli" series. I haven't really pressed too hard (I have WAYYYYYYYY too many irons in the fire right now to worry about it.) but the world lends itself easily to gaming mechanics: four orders of church knights, a mysterious magical race, a thousand good or neutral younger gods, an unknown number of evil or insane older gods... it was made to be an RPG.

Step one is to rough out the mechanics and then contact Eddings and Hyperion books with a project synthesis. If I get a no-go I'll have to move in another direction with it, if I even go forward.

Of course, the project will NOT be d20. I actually plan to resurrect the d6 gaming method I described from Star Wars. My goal is to give players the ability to roll a PC in less than twenty minutes, even when they've never played before, and yet still have the flexibility to use various skills, magic, and fighting methods. (This is another problem with 3.5 and 4E: It took me an hour and a half to roll up my latest 3.5 character. Making characters is fun, but it shouldn't consume an entire gaming session.)

One thing I DO like about 3.5 is the OGL. Because of that, things like the d20 library are online for free, and that saves HOURS when you're gaming.

[LibraryOgre]

I never understood why people insist on penalizing a player for wanting to play a "face" character just because he doesn't have a silver tongue, and for rewarding players for dumping CHA through the cellar just because they do. ... But others (and sometimes the same) then, even in 3e, go on to restrain character options anyways by saying, "oh yeah, you, the shy guy here for the first time? You aren't allowed to play a bard. Moron McIdiot over there gets to be a supergenius while playing WoW during the session, but you aren't allowed to be the face despite trying really really hard and doing your very best."

There is the argument that the job of a DM isn't to challenge the characters, but to challenge the players.

[DiscipleofBob]

You can apply the same argument towards cooking mushrooms in 4e though. Why does 4e get a pass, but 3.x doesn't?

See, 4th edition is unlikely to come out with a feat that says "You must have this feat to cook mushrooms." A) 4th edition is unlikely to come out with rules that focus on cooking in general (watch them announce the new Gourmand's Power handbook ten seconds after I finish this sentence.) B) Feats in 4th edition usually don't let you do new stuff, they just supplement existing stuff with an extra +1 or +2 (with some exceptions of course.)

4th edition powers, on the other hand, have this EXACT problem, and are even harder to implement on your character.


In 3.5, there is no rule that specifically dictates how a character may learn to play the harpsichord. Sure, there's the Perform(____) skill, but the PHB/DMG don't explicitly state that "Harpsichord" can be filled into that blank. Therefor, by your logic, there are no harpsichord players in all of 3.5.

Similarly, there is no rule in 3.5 that specifically states that platypi exist. Therefor, by your logic, there are no platypi in all of 3.5.

If you play the game assuming that you can only do what the rules say, excluding everything else, then your game is going to be very limited.

While I completely agree with you Twystid, I think the problem comes when you have an uncreative DM who is unwilling to give you the necessary leeway to (in this example) play a harpsichord. They might say "It's not in the book, so it doesn't exist in D&D" or "Use a lute or a flute" or even worse might say something like "Your attempt automatically fails" because they don't want to come up with new rules. Admittedly, with the above example, this does become a bit ridiculous, but for other examples, some DM's are simply this devoted to the rules that they are unwilling to bend them for story or PC sake even when you would in that situation.



So the rest of the party has to pitch in for the chores. Why is it bad that you can't completely render everyone else irrelevant?

See, that's the problem. The fighter and rogue and possibly not even the cleric in the party would be able to help with said "chores." I get where you're going, with the whole "Batman wizard solves everything without the rest of the party's help." This might be the case in some groups, but not in dare I say most. In the above example, the fighter might be gathering firewood or maintaining the equipment, or the rogue might be setting up some basic mundane traps or alarms in case of an attack, or the ranger might be hunting down some meat for tonight's dinner. Regardless of the rest of the group's function, there is some stuff that only the magic-users can take care of and shouldn't take an extra hour to finish. This does not make the wizard somehow render everyone else irrelevant.


I'm pretty sure you just said "Martial Power gives your character more options, but they aren't new options, they're just different options"
Giving out new powers allows for a different character concept. Changing a class feature into one that gives you a different bonus allows for different customization. Giving your character a new PP/ED changes its fluff and crunch (PP features make a bigger impact on the character than you might thinking)

I think this sums up one of my major complains of 4th edition quite nicely. I don't want to have to make at least a dozen characters just to get my money's worth out of Martial Power or any other splatbook. The problem is the way customization works in 4th edition is, in my opinion, inferior to the way customization worked in 3.5. At least in 3.5, if I wanted something it was never too late for my character to get it. I'd just have to wait a few levels or purchase the right item or do X quest. In 4th edition, if I want to customize something, I have to give up something else. In 3.5 if I wanted to, say, "walk and chew gum at the same time" I could take a level in "Walker" and a level in "Gum Chewer" or take the "Walk" feat at level 1 and the "Chew gum" option at level 3. The only time I couldn't take something is when the rules said "You're not a high enough level yet to do both" whereas 4th edition says "You'll have to choose to either be able to walk or to be able to chew gum, but don't worry, you can switch between the two every level."


How about the 3.Xe Fighter? you got a crapton of bonus feats. You could only specialize in one thing each level, but you could still take different tricks and stuff with later feats at later levels. You can take a lower level power in 4e if you think it suits you more than a higher level one.

So, using the Rogue as an example, "Hm... I'd really like to take Fleeting Ghost, Great Leap, and Tumble as those are all very basic character concepts that my character, a ninja, should have. But I can only take one of these at level 2. Oh well, I'll just use 3.5 thinking and wait until later. Okay, level 6, time to take one of those other utilities... but wait! Now I have Chameleon that I should take so I can keep up with the stealthiness expected from my level. And Slippery Mind and Nimble Climb would be really good for my character too. Oh well, I can take those at a later date. Level 10: All right, time to take... Wait, now I need Shadow Stride. Certain Freedom would also be really good for my character." The cycle perpetuates. I can't even use feats or multiclass levels to get these extra powers, 4th edition just says "You can't have them. Your character's on a power diet" or something like that.

[Artanis]

There is the argument that the job of a DM isn't to challenge the characters, but to challenge the players.
There is indeed that arguement, but it doesn't cover the absolute sort of case to which I refer.

[Ascension]

EDIT:


Combat is more tactical in 4E because all players have access to powers that enable effective tactical action and 4E is designed with this in mind.
In 3E, only spellcasters had an effective method of battlefield control. Bull Rush is all well and good, but it really dropped off in effectiveness as time went on, particularly if you weren't a massively strong fighter. In such a situation, it only makes sense for the spellcaster to be concerned with battlefield tactics beyond "flank that guy for the Rogue, don't get flanked, and protect the squishies."

In 4E everyone has some access to both movement powers and status powers. This makes it possible for every character to exert some battlefield control, and assist their allies in ways far beyond flanking. The Fighter can make a decision between calling in a bunch of minions for the Wizard to nuke, dislodging the monster who is eating the Wizard with a Tide of Iron, dazing the bloodied monster so that the Rogue can Sneak Attack him, or just stepping up and clocking the Ogre and making sure he doesn't sneak into the back row.

And that's not even worrying about terrain! The capability of everyone to control the battlefield to some extend makes the game more tactical than it was when only one guy (the Wizard) thought about it.

Terrain now, is clearly part of the thinking in 4E. There is a good section of the DMG talking about various basic categories of terrain, how they can be used to make combat more interesting, and some suggested examples of each. Traps are usually portrayed as being part of an Encounter; they should be combined with monsters, and used to enhance the danger. 3E barely considered these uses of terrain, and certainly didn't expect traps to be used in combat encounters unless you were fighting kobolds. And even when it did, the players could seldom take RAW advantage of them (see above); the DM would have to cobble together some system which the PCs probably weren't aware of when combat started.

That's my explanation, anyhow :smallbiggrin:

This is actually a large part of my problem with 4E. I don't see how it can be run without a map. Granted, a map really helps with 3.5 as well, but at least you can run 3.5 without one. The entire concept of movement powers irks me.

I will say that I am fond of Star Wars Saga Edition, and it also has a number of movement-based abilities (though not as many), but I'm more tolerant of a map-dependent system when it's not got the D&D name attached to it. I'd like to keep the map optional in D&D.

I have other complaints with 4E, but they're more minor issues and more commonly discussed, so I don't feel the need to spell them out. The movement powers are the big thing.


So 1st edition gives you nasty Gary Gygax surprises!, 2nd edition is where it's @, 3rd edition is all about # crunching, and 4th edition is all about making $ for WotC. Does that mean the next edition is going to be based off of % somehow?

Percentile dice. 5th Edition D&D will be based off the Call of Cthulhu system.

[PurinaDragonCho]

Combat in 4.0 is truly fun, with everyone capable of contributing to the encounter. Where with 3.5 it was the spell casters that got to do all the cool stuff.

I've heard people say things like that, and I always wonder if any of them ever rolled up a 1st level wizard and played that character up until mid- to high- levels. I personally LIKED the fact that the classes weren't balanced at every level. It gave you a payoff for playing that wizard from 1st level up. And yes, when I play a fighter, I expect that when it's my turn, my character will try to use his weapon to hit an enemy.

Different people want different things out of their game. That's human nature. I played AD&D back in the day. I didn't play 2nd edition, but I got back into the game about the time 3. came out. Yes, 3.5 is complicated. But I vastly prefer a complicated system with a lot of options to a system where every character is essentially the same (which, on some level, is what "balanced" means).

Fortunately, there are still a significant number of people who don't want to switch over to 4e, so I still have a few games going on. But I have zero, and I mean ZERO interest in switching over to 4e. I'll switch to a different RPG or give it up altogether before I join a 4e campaign. It just doesn't appeal to me at all.

That's just my personal preference. Some people prefer 4e, and more power to them.

[hamishspence]

problem was- when at really high levels- fighter became irrelevant- wizard could summon pets better than him. Or other caster. Playing a high level fighter alongside a high level wizard led to fighter being overshadowed badly.

[Klabbath]

Let me sum up your arguement:

"Hey kids! Get off my lawn!"

Every edition is different, and every edition is it's own distinct brand of d&d.

It's easy for you to say, "If you don't like it then don't play it." I'd rather NOT play it. Unfortunately, what am I to do when I can no longer find 2E sourcebooks because they have been out of print since 3.0 was released? When was the last time you saw a Traveler or Earthdawn book? How about Thieve's World, if anyone remembers that RPG?

One thing you're also forgetting is that the more cumbersome a set of rules is-- or the more you have to learn a new set of rules to accomplish approximately the same thing-- the more it slows down what you're trying to do. It's called the Law of Diminishing Returns.

I've been a football coach for 16 years. Every day at practice we have to balance two things: should we teach a new drill or should we use the old one? A new drill might be fresher and more interesting, but it also eats practice time to teach the players how to do it.

A new set of gaming mechanics is a lot like a new tackling drill. The object is not to perform the drill or use the mechanics, the object is to play the game. Why should I "evolve" and learn a new set of gaming mechanics when the ultimate objective is to play a game I've been playing for thirty years? The mechanics I've been using are just fine, thank you.

It's one thing to release a game called AD&D 3.5, change a bunch of the rules, and create a different game. It's another thing entirely to delete player choice by removing their alternatives. Even those of (you) that actually LIKE 3.5 are in for a world of hurt: Hasbro and WotC have already stopped printing those books, and the ones you have now are so badly made that they probably won't last until the turn of the decade. Where will you get replacement books in 2020?

And if you like 4E, what about 2010, when Hasbro releases 5E and you don't want to move on but are forced to do so? Think that won't happen? Think again. In this case, past performance is absolutely indicative of future activity. WotC did callbacks last month in my local gaming shops. ALL 3.5E sourcebooks have been returned to the publisher. The only thing my locals carry now is 4E. (I refer specifically to the "Key Three" PHB, MM, and DMG.) Hope you like the change, because you're stuck with it now.

"Evolve or die." Why? It's a great thread for a comic, but not so great when it's applied to real life. Should I buy a new car every year just because the old one doesn't have a GPS in it, even though I don't need one? Should I stop reading Chris Bunch and David Eddings and Terry Pratchett just because a new author came out with a new book last week? Should I find a new job even though I love what I do and I'm good at it, just so I can "evolve" into something else?

I neither need nor want a new game. If you DO, that's great. You're the target market, but that doesn't invalidate my point of view, and it doesn't make me a curmudgeon because I feel this way. I like the game I have. I want to PLAY, not learn a bunch of new rules.

All good things come to an end. I understand this. However my point was that these rules turned DnD into a video game, I don't like it, and I REALLY don't like being ramrodded into playing it just because it's the only game on the bloody market any more.

I also can't say enough about how difficult the books are to USE now. When I was in the Armed Forces I was responsible for document design of training materials. I took several classes in Structured Writing and Information Mapping. These classes taught me how to break up pages of text to make them easy to read and follow, how the eye moves across text, where to put boldfaced headings to be easily seen, what colors to use to make critical information stand out, etc. It is obvious, OBVIOUS, just from opening the 3.5 and 4E books that no one at Hasbro or WotC has ever taken one of these classes.

Words are jumbled around pictures that generally have little to do with the text at hand but "look neat." Charts and tables are poorly labeled and disorganized. The index is almost useless. (To be fair, I had similar complaints about 1E.) The page color "parchment" distracts from the text by lowering contrast and making visibility poor. These are SOURCEBOOKS. The reader is usually trying to find something in a HURRY. Properly designed research documents make this as swift and painless as possible.

The whole thing has a crammed look-- like the publisher was charging by the page count so they stuck it into as few pages as possible.

Perhaps my standards are too high. I expect an Electronics Technician to be able to read one of my documents and fix a radar while in 19 foot swells and seasick. WotC doesn't have to have the same requirements, but they could at least have TRIED to make the books easy to use.

Note that READING isn't the same as USING. The books have a Fry Graph score that places them in the 7.3 grade level for reading. (Basically it's syllables divided by sentences in 100 word selections randomly taken from the text.) To sit down and READ the books requires a seventh grade reading level. To actually USE the books without slowing your game down to a crawl trying to find something-- there's no graph for that.

I just think that these changes were not for the better. I think they have replaced my favorite game with a video game, and that makes me sad.

[Klabbath]

So 1st edition gives you nasty Gary Gygax surprises!, 2nd edition is where it's @, 3rd edition is all about # crunching, and 4th edition is all about making $ for WotC. Does that mean the next edition is going to be based off of % somehow?

Oh my Gods, Zander! I'm sitting in the back of a classroom filled with seventh graders who are all working on a typing tutorial. You just made 27 heads turn in my direction when I started snarfing diet pepsi all over my keyboard!

[Artanis]

*gets halfway through the Wall o' Text*

2010 for 5e is pretty pessimistic, don't you think?

And if people don't like whatever follows 4e, they stay with 4e. You talk about being forced to "evolve or die", but that's exactly what companies like WotC face. They have to come out with new stuff, whether that be a new system or splats for an existing system, or whatever, or else they wither away and die. And there's only so many things you can do when it comes to making unique stuff to put into splats. If you run out of ideas for things that are different from the several dozen base classes (not to mention the PrCs), then you can't release truly new stuff. And when that happens...the company will wither and die.

Players can stick with an old system for a long time if that's what they like, especially with all the books undoubtedly being on pdfs. The company can't. Demanding WotC to stay with an old, bloated, nearly tapped-out system puts your selfishness over the very survival of the DnD brand.

[Klabbath]

problem was- when at really high levels- fighter became irrelevant- wizard could summon pets better than him. Or other caster. Playing a high level fighter alongside a high level wizard led to fighter being overshadowed badly.

I'm not certain that I agree. While the mage has more INTRINSIC ability in his spells, a fighter of 10th level and a mage of 10th level should be roughly equal due to the fighter's ability to use any scroll or potion, competently use ANY magic weapon he's collected in ten levels of adventures, and generally whup backside.

The mage is nothing to sneeze at, but consider playing video games like Diablo as a comparison. Have you noticed that all of the really BIG bad guys-- like Diablo-- had magic resistance? Some of them were IMMUNE to magic.

Which means that mage you've been running who has been cutting through peons like a ginsu, is now stuck going toe-to-toe with a frickin' DEMON!

And, consider this: I once had a party of adventurers take down a lich rather easily. Why? Because after 600 years of living in his castle the lich wasn't interested in wasting his time every day memorizing combat spells. He was trying to discover total cosmic power-- spending nine hours a day ticking off fighting spells he hadn't used in six centuries (because NO ONE) was stupid enough to go screw with him after the first ninety or so years was a waste of his time.

What makes you so sure that the mage memorized combat spells the day the fighter picks a fight with him? Perhaps he was getting set up to make a magic item, and focused on charm and enchantments, or he was searching for something, so spent his time on divination.

BTW, they killed the lich. No problem. Evil's punished. Except that they couldn't find his reliquary. And he was a little aggravated that they broke his concentration.

[TwystidMynd]

It's one thing to release a game called AD&D 3.5, change a bunch of the rules, and create a different game. It's another thing entirely to delete player choice by removing their alternatives. Even those of (you) that actually LIKE 3.5 are in for a world of hurt: Hasbro and WotC have already stopped printing those books, and the ones you have now are so badly made that they probably won't last until the turn of the decade. Where will you get replacement books in 2020?

And if you like 4E, what about 2010, when Hasbro releases 5E and you don't want to move on but are forced to do so? Think that won't happen? Think again. In this case, past performance is absolutely indicative of future activity. WotC did callbacks last month in my local gaming shops. ALL 3.5E sourcebooks have been returned to the publisher. The only thing my locals carry now is 4E. (I refer specifically to the "Key Three" PHB, MM, and DMG.) Hope you like the change, because you're stuck with it now.

Luckily, along with the game, the times are changing too. Those of us who love 3.5 will happily refer back to the d20 SRD 20 years from now, because you know that there will be die-hard 3.5 fans that will preserve the media for themselves and share it with others.

Similarly, diehard 4.0 fans (and 4.5 fans, and 5e fans) will preserve the PDFs and websites for years after they stop printing it. The fans will evolve to continue playing their system, or they will evolve to play a different system. Evolution doesn't have a single preset course; there are plnety of ways to evolve... but either way, gamers will evolve, and gamers will continue playing whatever game they want.


I REALLY don't like being ramrodded into playing it just because it's the only game on the bloody market any more.
Good news: there are plenty of people supporting the AD&D system. You've said you still play it, right? Somehow you've managed to evolve in such a way that you still play the game you want to play. Perhaps you buy used books? Perhaps you use the books that've lasted you for 20 years? Perhaps you visit the websites that post AD&D information? Whatever, you're happy playing AD&D, and you've figured out a way to do so. That's great, and I'm glad you can keep gaming.



However my point was that these rules turned DnD into a video game...

You haven't really proven this point. You've stated it because you know that comparing D&D to video games is a great way to stoke the flames of dissent, but are acting as if it's a "super-argument" that proves your point without needing further validation. I'd just like to let you know that there are plenty of intelligent people on this forum that recognize that a flame-bait argument is not a successful argument.

[Kurald Galain]

Just to answer the OP's question, my basic experience with 4E is that it's fun to play, but not a roleplaying game. It's essentially an enhanced version of Descent (and to a lesser extent, Talisman), which is to say a fantasy board game with some light strategy elements. I don't actually mind, since I'm rather fond of Descent.

Cue flame response in 5, 4, 3...

[Magnor Criol]

Something about having more rules almost makes it seem... easier to be creative for me. Or more worthwhile or something. I play DnD to have rules. If I want not to be bound by rules when doing something, I'll play freeform (which I do. It's fun. Woohoo.)

Point is, when you have rules, it is more restricting. However, it also allows you to see the restrictions and thus when you're able to think outside of them, and create something despite them, it feels like you've accomplished something. It's not as easy for me to do that kind of thing with 4E- maybe it's because I don't know the system as well as I could, or there aren't enough rules and variations for me to create like I would want to.
*shrug*
Anyways, I'm not as fond of 4E. I don't hate it, but I'd rather play 3.5, if I can.

This. I haven't played any 4E; the books are too expensive for my empty college-student wallet right now, and my friends who game and I are pretty well set in 3.5 right now, with several different campaigns running. But Vael's point about the extra rules - there's something there.

I don't know how or why, but for some reason, the extra rules makes it more fun for me to make a character, idea, et cetera. I guess it's a sort of triumph by means of doing what I want within limitations. Without those limitations, sure I could do what I want easy - but there's be no challenge, no art to it. With the limitations, there's a skill to creating what you're imagining, and implementing it in a way that fits with everything else governed by those limitations.

[Klabbath]

*gets halfway through the Wall o' Text*

2010 for 5e is pretty pessimistic, don't you think?


Not really. WotC has averaged about one major rewrite every three years and they seem to be accelerating. They might call it 4.5, but we'll see another one in about 2 to 3 1/2 years.



And if people don't like whatever follows 4e, they stay with 4e. You talk about being forced to "evolve or die", but that's exactly what companies like WotC face.


I've never disputed this. In fact, I pointed it out myself.



They have to come out with new stuff, whether that be a new system or splats for an existing system, or whatever, or else they wither away and die.


Absolutely. There's also a legitimate reason to cease printing the older books-- WHEN THEY ARE NO LONGER IN USE BY PLAYERS. Do you think WotC was no longer selling those 3.5E books they called back last month?



And there's only so many things you can do when it comes to making unique stuff to put into splats. If you run out of ideas for things that are different from the several dozen base classes (not to mention the PrCs), then you can't release truly new stuff. And when that happens...the company will wither and die.


I've never disputed this, either. But this is NOT Dungeons and Dragons. This is a new game, a video game on paper, that is CALLED Dungeons and Dragons. It doesn't use the same items. It doesn't use the same mechanics, and it doesn't use the same processes. It is a NEW game. And it is supplanting the OLD game, to no one's benefit. Except the publisher's.

I keep wondering when they're going to add recall potions so we can warp back to town to sell our loot without losing our place in the dungeon.



Players can stick with an old system for a long time if that's what they like,


No. They can stick to an old system until they no longer have source books available. Then they are forced to change the instant their books wear out, are destroyed, or lost.



especially with all the books undoubtedly being on pdfs.


Ever try to play with a source book on PDF? Now, the d20 library online is one thing, featuring a database with search engine, but actually trying to find anything in a PDF on a laptop screen is a nightmare-- and I do a LOT of research as a professional writer and teacher. I usually have three monitors open when I'm doing electronic research. It's cumbersome and difficult to read on screen. (Although searching is easier with the search functions.)

Also, I have only found 3.5 and 4E on PDF with a scattering of Handbooks from 2E. I've never seen 1E on pdf.



The company can't. Demanding WotC to stay with an old, bloated, nearly tapped-out system puts your selfishness over the very survival of the DnD brand.

This is dramatic language that doesn't really make a convincing argument.

A: I'm not demanding anything. I'm stating my opinion that 4E is not as strong or as playable a game as 2E and that I don't see a personal need to relearn mechanics for a game I learned thirty years ago.

B:WotC bought the DnD line to make a profit. TSR was falling apart. WotC fell apart and had to sell their gaming division to Hasbro (keeping the WotC name). Somewhere in all these millions of dollars someone is making a profit-- or they are not despite all these changes. (Hmmm... TSR had DnD for twenty years before going bankrupt. WotC had it for ten before selling it. Hasbro has had it for three and a half... maybe these changes AREN'T what's best for profits OR the system.)

3: And if you want to discuss "bloated" gaming systems, why is it that I can roll up a 1E character in ten minutes, a 2E character in 45 minutes, a 3.5E character in an hour and a half... and only the Gods know how long it takes to wade through the game itself to roll up a 4E character (Haven't done it yet.)?

What makes a game bloated is creating a rule for EVERYTHING-- like 3.5 and 4E have done. It slows down the gaming, interferes with character creation, and detracts from the actual role playing.

I once "bluffed" a group of orcs in a 2E campaign by using a cantrip to make a fire flare up and amplify my voice to scare them away. Now, instead of RPing my actions, I roll some dice and my DM tells me "Yeah, you scared them off." The mechanics have gotten in the way of the GAME.

Here's another example: When I first started gaming we didn't have initiative (and we were HAPPY that way, young'un!) We had PARTY initiative that determined which party went first depending on surprise, higher ground, etc. Then we went around the table, usually clockwise, and everyone did their actions. Was it realistic? Not really. Was it fast? Absolutely.

Now we have to figure our modifiers, roll dice, compare them to everyone else's dice, sort out when spells take effect, determine penalties...

For one attack round we need to do about ten minutes of rolling. The mechanics have gotten in the way, and they have gotten more cumbersome and more frustrating with every edition. THIS is what I'm talking about. WotC has to "evolve or die" so they evolve PURELY FOR THE SAKE OF EVOLUTION. This is neither a good thing nor an improvement to the game, it's a pain in the rump.

Frankly, I'd be happy to go an entire game session without taking my dice out of the bag.

[hamishspence]

Accelerating? sure- 3 year gap between 3.0 and 3.5, but nearly 5 years to 4th ed.

[RPGuru1331]

Not really. WotC has averaged about one major rewrite every three years and they seem to be accelerating. They might call it 4.5, but we'll see another one in about 2 to 3 1/2 years.
The funny thing about this chicken littling is that it was 5 years between 3.5 and 4.0. 3.5 is the outlier, showing up after 3 years, and even then, the RPGA was unplayable because of how DR worked, and that was a driving force in changing to 3.5

[Klabbath]

I don't have a lot of time to reply. I have a wrestling meet to coach in an hour. Let me hit the highest points.


1) I'm not saying that AD7D is now a video game to score points in dissent. I'm saying it because it's true. WotC is not dumb. They scored big with M:tG. They managed to wean kids from video games to a flippin' CARD game.


HOWEVER, video games are easy, and so is M:tG. RPG, on the other hand, demands imagination. In 1977, when pong was the only video game and TV went off the air at night, students were trained to use their imagination in a variety of ways. Gaming mechanics were simpler, because RP was the answer to every situation: I don't need a "bluff" check, I can role play how I want to try to influence the guard and the DM can make a judgment call on how well I did.

Now, the player base is used to video games where they can immediately see the results of a partially randomized mathematical calculation. By creating a bluff SKILL that is ROLLED we have removed the RP from the situation and made the game more like a video game.

I came up with that comment when I opened the first 3E book, not when I came to this board, so your shot fell a little short. It's roll play instead of role play. If it were up to me, I'd drop almost every intelligence, charisma and wisdom based skill. It's one thing to pick a lock. It's another thing to jump from horseback to the ground. But come on, why do we have skills that take the place of role playing like "bluff" and "intimidate?"

2) I'm glad we can BOTH keep gaming. While I don't agree with you, I'd be happy to play in your campaign or to have you play in mine. I'm just looking down the road and hoping that we're still going to have the choices in ten years.

3) I hope to GODS that the d20 SRD is still there-- and hasn't changed in twenty years. That's the only thing that makes 3.5 tolerable for me is being able to find what I'm looking for relatively swiftly.

Gotta run. Wrestlers are waiting, but I've enjoyed the discussion and I hope you have, too. I'm thinking of starting a 1e PbP campaign sometime soon (Well... January.) If you're interested I'd love to have you in it.

Take care!

[hamishspence]

Problem with pre 3rd ed was- effectively, it forced people to play to their own abilities. A shy person couldn't play a character with high Cha and social skills, unless DM cut them an enormous amount of slack.

Sometimes, you want to play someone very different from you and the system shouldn't penalize you for doing so.

[TwystidMynd]

3: And if you want to discuss "bloated" gaming systems, why is it that I can roll up a 1E character in ten minutes, a 2E character in 45 minutes, a 3.5E character in an hour and a half... and only the Gods know how long it takes to wade through the game itself to roll up a 4E character (Haven't done it yet.)?

If f(0) = 0, and f(.5) = .48 and f(1) = .85 then clearly we see a pattern ... f(x) increases without bounds!
Unless f(x) is sin(x).
Let this be an example of why extrapolating a pattern based on 3 points isn't a good idea. We'll ignore the fact that there are WAY more variables to the equation you're analyzing than just x (there's publisher, game designer, age of user, amount of free time, familiarity with the system, etc.).
It takes me 2 hours or longer to make AD&D characters, and an hour or so for 3.5 characters, and I can make a 4e character 30m or so. Should I then conclude that 1e is bloated, and must take me 4 hours to roll a character?
The point you make is a very poor one.


I once "bluffed" a group of orcs in a 2E campaign by using a cantrip to make a fire flare up and amplify my voice to scare them away. Now, instead of RPing my actions, I roll some dice and my DM tells me "Yeah, you scared them off." The mechanics have gotten in the way of the GAME.
See my earlier post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5351622&postcount=137) regarding the fallacy of concluding that a system is flawed because the DM does things differently in one edition than the other.

I don't mean to say that AD&D sucks, or that 4e is inherently better than anything else in the world, but rather your tone is making you seem very antagonistic to the idea of another kind of D&D, and you've offered little solid evidence to support your view. Certainly, you've pointed out that the books are poorly laid out. As a person schooled in technical design documentation, perhaps you have a point. I find that point hard to take, though, because I have no problem using the new sourcebooks. You've said that the new rolling system is more complicated than Star Wars RPG's rolling system, and offered proof by example, citing how easy it was to describe. Allow me to sum up the rules for d20 rolling: "Roll a d20 and apply modifiers. If your roll is higher than the DC, you succeed." In my eyes, you've proven that the Star Wars RPG has a nice, but different rolling system... you haven't proven, though, that the d20 system is overly complicated.

[Artanis]

I've never disputed this, either. But this is NOT Dungeons and Dragons. This is a new game, a video game on paper, that is CALLED Dungeons and Dragons. It doesn't use the same items. It doesn't use the same mechanics, and it doesn't use the same processes. It is a NEW game. And it is supplanting the OLD game, to no one's benefit. Except the publisher's.

I keep wondering when they're going to add recall potions so we can warp back to town to sell our loot without losing our place in the dungeon.
*rolls eyes. Oh yay, yet another person parroting the "4E R TEH VIDEO GAMEZ!" line




No. They can stick to an old system until they no longer have source books available. Then they are forced to change the instant their books wear out, are destroyed, or lost.

Ever try to play with a source book on PDF? Now, the d20 library online is one thing, featuring a database with search engine, but actually trying to find anything in a PDF on a laptop screen is a nightmare-- and I do a LOT of research as a professional writer and teacher. I usually have three monitors open when I'm doing electronic research. It's cumbersome and difficult to read on screen. (Although searching is easier with the search functions.)

Also, I have only found 3.5 and 4E on PDF with a scattering of Handbooks from 2E. I've never seen 1E on pdf.
Yup, I play with a source book on pdf every week. Multiple source books, in fact. Open all at once. I have no trouble.



This is dramatic language that doesn't really make a convincing argument.

A: I'm not demanding anything. I'm stating my opinion that 4E is not as strong or as playable a game as 2E and that I don't see a personal need to relearn mechanics for a game I learned thirty years ago.
If you don't see a need, then don't. Why are you bashing 4e though, when it's every single system that isn't 2e that you hate?




3: And if you want to discuss "bloated" gaming systems, why is it that I can roll up a 1E character in ten minutes, a 2E character in 45 minutes, a 3.5E character in an hour and a half... and only the Gods know how long it takes to wade through the game itself to roll up a 4E character (Haven't done it yet.)?
Ten or twenty minutes. Maybe thirty if you don't know the rules at all or you get indecisive.




What makes a game bloated is creating a rule for EVERYTHING-- like 3.5 and 4E have done. It slows down the gaming, interferes with character creation, and detracts from the actual role playing.
Then why are you chiming in with the anti-4e crowd when it's everything non-2e that you hate?



I once "bluffed" a group of orcs in a 2E campaign by using a cantrip to make a fire flare up and amplify my voice to scare them away. Now, instead of RPing my actions, I roll some dice and my DM tells me "Yeah, you scared them off." The mechanics have gotten in the way of the GAME.
That's a problem with the DM and/or players. Nothing is stopping a DM from letting you do that.




Here's another example: When I first started gaming we didn't have initiative (and we were HAPPY that way, young'un!) We had PARTY initiative that determined which party went first depending on surprise, higher ground, etc. Then we went around the table, usually clockwise, and everyone did their actions. Was it realistic? Not really. Was it fast? Absolutely.

Now we have to figure our modifiers, roll dice, compare them to everyone else's dice, sort out when spells take effect, determine penalties...
Write down your usual init bonus on your character sheet.

When init comes up, roll 1d20 and add what you wrote down.

Add or subtract any bonuses/penalties that came up in that particular case.

Compare numbers.

None of these four steps are difficult, and none take more than two seconds.




For one attack round we need to do about ten minutes of rolling. The mechanics have gotten in the way, and they have gotten more cumbersome and more frustrating with every edition. THIS is what I'm talking about. WotC has to "evolve or die" so they evolve PURELY FOR THE SAKE OF EVOLUTION. This is neither a good thing nor an improvement to the game, it's a pain in the rump.
You don't like a round of combat taking a long time, and you're complaining about 4e? Obviously you've never played Exalted. Or god forbid, Heavy Gear.



Frankly, I'd be happy to go an entire game session without taking my dice out of the bag.
Then, again, why are you coming in here to rail against 4e? If you hate using dice...then rail against everything. Don't single out 4e, then try to claim you aren't.

[mangosta71]

I've never disputed this, either. But this is NOT Dungeons and Dragons. This is a new game, a video game on paper, that is CALLED Dungeons and Dragons. It doesn't use the same items. It doesn't use the same mechanics, and it doesn't use the same processes. It is a NEW game. And it is supplanting the OLD game, to no one's benefit. Except the publisher's.

Second ed had completely different mechanics from first. Third brought in a new set. #.5 brought in yet another. So, by your argument, none of them are Dungeons and Dragons either.


Ever try to play with a source book on PDF? Now, the d20 library online is one thing, featuring a database with search engine, but actually trying to find anything in a PDF on a laptop screen is a nightmare-- and I do a LOT of research as a professional writer and teacher. I usually have three monitors open when I'm doing electronic research. It's cumbersome and difficult to read on screen. (Although searching is easier with the search functions.)

I actually find it quite easy. And, as you point out, the search function is MUCH faster than flipping through hundreds (or thousands) of paper pages.


A: I'm not demanding anything. I'm stating my opinion that 4E is not as strong or as playable a game as 2E and that I don't see a personal need to relearn mechanics for a game I learned thirty years ago.

If it was the same game, I would agree. But it isn't an expansion. It's an entirely new game.


3: And if you want to discuss "bloated" gaming systems, why is it that I can roll up a 1E character in ten minutes, a 2E character in 45 minutes, a 3.5E character in an hour and a half... and only the Gods know how long it takes to wade through the game itself to roll up a 4E character (Haven't done it yet.)?

10 minutes. 15 tops.


What makes a game bloated is creating a rule for EVERYTHING-- like 3.5 and 4E have done. It slows down the gaming, interferes with character creation, and detracts from the actual role playing.

4th DOESN'T have a rule for everything. It's far more abstract than 3 and 3.5.


I once "bluffed" a group of orcs in a 2E campaign by using a cantrip to make a fire flare up and amplify my voice to scare them away. Now, instead of RPing my actions, I roll some dice and my DM tells me "Yeah, you scared them off." The mechanics have gotten in the way of the GAME.

So some of them realize that it's just a trick, or maybe some of them are gutsier than the others and aren't scared. This is a problem?


Now we have to figure our modifiers, roll dice, compare them to everyone else's dice, sort out when spells take effect, determine penalties...

For one attack round we need to do about ten minutes of rolling. The mechanics have gotten in the way, and they have gotten more cumbersome and more frustrating with every edition.

In 3.5, at high levels when everyone is making 10 or 20 attacks per round, sure, it takes forever to make all the rolls. But in 4th, each combat round is very quick, as people only get one attack in their routine. No more guys charging in and killing the BBEG in a single round because they get a few dozen attacks that each deal 40d10 damage.


Frankly, I'd be happy to go an entire game session without taking my dice out of the bag.

Agreed. And this is far easier to do in 4th than any other session I've played with. Spend a couple hours just walking around town chatting with the villagers.

[TheEmerged]

Don't have time to read all 7 pages right now, so sorry if I'm rehashing anything. All opinions are mine, based on my experience with my playgroup -- no more and no less.

1> I for one welcome the removal of RP from the game mechanics. This represents something closer to the way we've always played the game anyway. There's NOTHING in 4th edition that takes away meeting interesting people, doing interesting things, or having mysteries -- these things have just (mostly) been removed from the whim of the dice.

2> However, there needs to be a bigger role for some out-of-combat utility powers. This is one of two problems I've run into adapting the Telepath class to 4e (the other is that we still only have 1 example of a controller class to work with), and the reason I'm much further along with the soulknife, shaper, and egoist.

3> The fights seem to move faster, at least in part due to the way that some of the work has been shifted from the GM's to the players.

4> There's not enough options available to players in combat. After a while, the fights start approaching monotony. I initially thought this would become mitigated at higher levels, but because the fights take more rounds this hasn't born out. We've been toying with a house rule allowing a limited "power swap" for encounter powers in combat; this also helps with the problems of some powers being too situational to be chosen over broader powers.

[Moff Chumley]

(I haven't read the whole thread. I'm sorry, I'm just answering the OP)

From my point of view, if you have an immaginative group and a lenient DM, 4e works terrific. If your group is less imaginative, and your DM plays closer to RAW, 4e doesn't work all that well and feels like an MMO, but without the inside jokes and Chuck Norris.

[Asbestos]

(I haven't read the whole thread. I'm sorry, I'm just answering the OP)

From my point of view, if you have an immaginative group and a lenient DM, 4e works terrific. If your group is less imaginative, and your DM plays closer to RAW, 4e doesn't work all that well and feels like an MMO, but without the inside jokes and Chuck Norris.

Hm, out of curiosity, why do you think a lenient DM is needed?

[KIDS]

I still can't get around to playing it tabletop since my real life group is all dispersed...

Online (play by post), it's much better. I am thoroughly enjoying it and like a vast majority of the changes as well as all the possibilities opened with the new edition.

However, one thing that I'm somewhat disappointed with is that most 4E advertisments I've seen start as bland WotC modules or just pure hack & slash, seemingly a bit more than 3.5 do. I'm not sure if this is whether to 4E having attracted more of that type of players or the pre-release whining causing a self-fulfilling prophecy. It might just be that I'm overreacting.

But overall, I find it a great thing and hope that most players will convert to playing it sooner or later.

p.s. forgot to add, I think the game would be vastly improved if a SRD was posted for free like with 3.5 (is it? I don't know of any...).
Also, I haven't bought any subscriptions or updates yet but the previews look fairly good and I'll get to it in the near future. So far it appears more satisfying than the 3.5 hyper-printing spree, but I suspect it might get out of hand just as well.

[RPGuru1331]

p.s. forgot to add, I think the game would be vastly improved if a SRD was posted for free like with 3.5 (is it? I don't know of any...).


....How? Just.. how?

[RebelRogue]

You will only get one class per character, you have to choose between these powers and you can never get the others unless you make a new character." At the risk of bringing up a dead horse to beat, D&D is not an MMORPG.
This, and more generally, the complaint that "4th ed is not D&D" has been bugging me for a while now! Back when I started playing D&D you had only one class: you pretty much picked one basic role and stuck with it. Yes, there was multiclassing rules, but in general you still picked one (or more) class(es) and stuck with them! And although it wasn't mentioned explicitly those classes still fell somewhat roughly within the roles of (wait for it...) Defender, Striker, Leader and/or Controller. To me, this "choose your role and stick to your guns" has always been a cornerstone of what defines D&D. It's certainly not a new thing invented by MMOPRGs! In short, I like my characters to have that "center pillar of vanilla" if you like. I'm not saying that's "right", but it is very much a defining aspect of what a D&D character was in the old editions. With 3rd edition, you suddenly had the option of multiclassing much easier. While the intentions of this was great, you eventually ended up with character class selections that looked like something out of a calculus textbook! (And even though I've got a degree in math) I die a little inside every time I see a character like "ClassA 3/ClassB 4/StrangeSplatbookClassC 2/CheesyPrestigeclassD 5/IJustTookThisForNoRationalReasonE 1". Don't get me wrong: I appreciate and admire the people who do put these things together - a lot of it is quite brilliant, but to me, it's an exercise: it's lost that level of simplicity, of a clearly defined role. As a lot of people have noted, one of the problems of 3.5 is that WotC silently assumed that the classes filled specific roles (i.e. wizards should blast etc). We've all seen that this breaks down when you actually allow the classes to break their boxes, but to me, a sure sign that something is "not D&D" is when a basic party of "Fighter/Cleric/Rogue/Wizard" is a bad (or even "wrong") choice for a four character adventuring group! In short WotC made the assumption because, in a sense that is what D&D was always about before 3rd edition! If anything, from a purely traditional point of view, 3rd ed has evolved into something that is not D&D in the classical sense!

Now, all of this is not to say that I hate 3.5; quite the contrary: I love the game, but I have a feeling I play it pretty "vanilla" opposed to a lot of people here. Yes, I'll gladly play a singleclassed Fighter anyday, no matter what people say! With 4th edition (which I love too), however, everything has been reset to make this the standard way of playing D&D. And to me, that's "real D&D" if anything is!

Phew, what a wall of text, hehe! :smallbiggrin:

[Lappy9000]

....How? Just.. how?

Sheer convenience as well as not feeling shoe-horned into buying each new edition of the Player's Handbook to get all the core material, I imagine.

[Tehnar]

Hmm I dont understand why the length of character creation is such a complaint. If it takes me an hour to create a character, well imagine how many hours of work your DM put in creating that just one session, not to mention the world you play in.


And personally, as a DM it takes me around 5 mins to create a non spell casting NPC, and another 15 min to pick the spells for a caster. Now they wont be optimised, and 90% of their abilities will be from the PHB but they work. Sure you can always put more detail in them with time, and I do that for more important NPCs.


Anyway the things I like in 4e are the emphasis on multi monster encounters, different monster of the same race (orc berserker, orc shaman, etc). The DMG 4e is well written but nothing really new there, as most of things in there are copied from various 3e books (Dungeonscape, DMG 2 etc...). But they got the good stuff in there.

The things I dont like are:
- the MM: apart from the stat blocks there is no information there. Some crappy knowledge check results that are totally pointless (our DM actually makes us roll nature/arcana so he can read the totally pointless information)
- the I get better at everything as I level up mechanic (1/2 level). It feels very wrong to me
- the lack of ability to be very good or very bad at something. There are inherent maximums and minimums in the systems the cant be overcome. You cant have AC that can be only hit on a 20 from most monsters while having a crappy to hit.

[TheEmerged]

Wait, people are complaining that you can only be one class in 4e? That... differs greatly from what I'm seeing. :smalleek:

That first dual-classing feat is so good that nearly every character I've seen (from someone in our group, or from my efforts to 'theory-build' a wide variety of combnations up to 30) ends up taking one (usually Warrior of the Wild). In fact, in our 5-person group 3 started out with one and the only reason the other two didn't (the human fighter and halfling rogue) was that the player said there were other feats they felt they 'had' to take first.

[Isomenes]

{Scrubbed}

I have grown more and more pleased with the system. It's an excellent medium for roleplaying and combat, and as various books and articles have been released, these have only sweetened the pot. It (and its splatbooks) will have a place on my gaming shelf for years to come, I imagine, not unlike 3E.

[RPGuru1331]

Sheer convenience as well as not feeling shoe-horned into buying each new edition of the Player's Handbook to get all the core material, I imagine.

It's a legitimately new edition. I can understand not being eager to buy a slightly revised WoD book, but you really ought to pay for a new edition's core book if you have any plans to play it. Convenience, meh, they seem far worse at it.

Notwithstanding that it exists.

[DiscipleofBob]

[wall of text here]

See, I first started playing in 3.5, and maybe that has a lot to do with my expectations. I played a 2nd-edition game once (well, it was a combination of 2nd and 3rd edition rules) and honestly didn't like the changes. It could've been a mere factor of comfort zone, or the fact that the DM had us all play wizards, tell us we were going into this exotic desert Arabian Nights-esque setting, and then throw the bait-and-switch by putting us through a dungeon crawl. It was supposed to be a prelim thing, but we never even got to the desert. That might've had something to do with it.

Every time I hear about older edition books or rules, it seems like the definition of painful. Classes that gain experience differently? Restrictions based on race? Ridiculous amounts of unnecessary tables? I have been sufficiently scared away on that. I guess it's got to be the comfort zone for a lot of people, and that's okay.

As for the multiclassing thing, let me tell you about my very first character. There were already 5 other people in the group: a Duskblade (most broken member of the party), a Rogue, a Psion, a Cleric, and a Bard. I probably should've been a Wizard, but I didn't want to deal with spellcasting on my first character, so I instead played a Ninja from Complete Adventurer. Why? Cause it looked cool. Anyway, I started out as Ninja 3/Fighter 2. I wanted to be able to hold my own in combat, and I just focused more on stealth and acrobatic type skills while the other rogue focused on social and trap-disabling skills. When the DM threw another ninja at us who could deflect my throwing knives thanks to Deflect Arrows, I was forced to look for a way around it. It didn't take long for me to come across the Master Thrower prestige class and its Palm Throw ability, which was exactly what I was looking for. When I decided the my character's greatest strength was his mobility and ability to infiltrate places, I started looking for items to complement this. I found the Cloak of Arachnida, which I had made into a body slot item, and the DM randomly gave us a Cloak of the Bat. On top of that, I had several +1 adamantine returning daggers (we were fighting a lot of constructs) as well as a Belt of Hidden Pockets made in-game. His final battle consisted of him being rescued after being captured, stripped naked, and tortured by artificers, grabbing ONLY his 'utility belt' (which of course had all of his weapons), and flipping around the room with only said belt and his ninja skills.

This illustrates what I liked about D&D: the ability to adapt a character's abilities as the campaign goes on. I had a character concept, and I made it. I could probably do a much better job today, but I was still satisfied. When the campaign situation called for me to adapt my character and adapt, I did.

I just feel from reading some of the "new options" that WotC has published for fourth edition, my 4E characters will never have that ability. Once I pick something, I'm stuck with it unless I remake the whole character. Sure, there is the retraining thing, but I still feel pigeonholed with my characters no matter how hard I try to make them interesting and unique.

[KKL]

I just feel from reading some of the "new options" that WotC has published for fourth edition, my 4E characters will never have that ability. Once I pick something, I'm stuck with it unless I remake the whole character. Sure, there is the retraining thing, but I still feel pigeonholed with my characters no matter how hard I try to make them interesting and unique.

Artful Dodger and the whole slew of movement based powers in MP don't do it for you?

Also, daggers can be throwing weapons.

[RebelRogue]

I know what you mean, DoB, and I like that too, in away. But I don't always like the way people use that freedom. I'm not saying I haven't had my share of fun doing a weird multiclass character or added a given prestige class, but sometimes it just becomes so far removed from the basic premise of the fantasy cliches that form the basis of D&D. I'm not saying it's "wrong", my point is merely that it's farther removed from the original core notion of the game than 4th ed. will (hopefully) ever be!

Edit: and just to make myself 100% clear: I'm only doing this to refute this specific claim, not to choose a side: I really like both systems.

[DiscipleofBob]

I know what you mean, DoB, and I like that too, in away. But I don't always like the way people use that freedom. I'm not saying I haven't had my share of fun doing a weird multiclass character or added a given prestige class, but sometimes it just becomes so far removed from the basic premise of the fantasy cliches that form the basis of D&D. I'm not saying it's "wrong", my point is merely that it's farther removed from the original core notion of the game than 4th ed. will (hopefully) ever be!

Edit: and just to make myself 100% clear: I'm only doing this to refute this specific claim, not to choose a side: I really like both systems.

Seconded. Both the fact that multiclassing (at least in 3.5) can be taken to ridiculous proportions in the wrong hands and that I really like both systems. I'd really like to find a way to combine the aspects I like from both systems into one.

[Asbestos]

I just feel from reading some of the "new options" that WotC has published for fourth edition, my 4E characters will never have that ability. Once I pick something, I'm stuck with it unless I remake the whole character. Sure, there is the retraining thing, but I still feel pigeonholed with my characters no matter how hard I try to make them interesting and unique.

Pre-Martial Power I already had a good idea for what I wanted my Eldarin Warlord to be, and was planning it out. Post-Martial Power I can now achieve that, awesomely. I'm going to multi into fighter, take Eldarin feats out the wazoo, retrain my Arcana skill into Stealth, drop my scale prof for another racial feat, strap on some hide armor, ready my greatspear and tele-surprise-charge into battle porting my reckless ranger friend out of the shadows with me. I'll be bamfing myself and my party around as much as possible and making sure that they keep on their damn feet for as long as possible (yay for that Eldarin Warlord feat that adds the Int bonus to Inspiring Word healing) Screw the party wizard, I plan on being the one controlling the battlefield.

Basically... more options = awesome. I can now actually achieve the concept I wanted and then some. Also, pigeonholing? Nah, I never really felt that way. My party actually has two taclords, my eldarin and a human, we are very much so different characters. Where his tactics are slow but steady, mine are just aggress faster! (http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=001383) Though, he has gone unconcious less than my Eldarin... oh well, I like to think I've done more memorable things.

Edit: How is this post relevant? I shouldn't drink and then visit here...

[Lappy9000]

I can understand not being eager to buy a slightly revised WoD book, but you really ought to pay for a new edition's core book if you have any plans to play it.

Yeah, that's just the problem :smalleek:

In mah mind:
3.5 Player's Handbook 2: Hey, expanding on previous classes. There's a few less archetypical ones, too. :smallsigh:
4e Player's Handbook 2: Hey, can't play bards, druids, or barbarians unless you homebrew them or buy me! :smallfrown:

Not really arguing a point, this is just my personal preference on the matter. Perhaps the most important factor being: I am cheap. So very, very cheap.

EDIT: Also, the free SRD isn't likely to ever come around for 4e. This depresses me greatly.

[Jayabalard]

People with these kind of complaints either have never played DnD creatively, regardless of edition, or have not given 4th Ed a chance beyond running rules-heavy sessionsThat's just a false dilemma (meaning, you're implying that it's an either/or situation when it's not necessarily either of the things you have listed). There are plenty of other reasons why someone would say that.

[RPGuru1331]

Yeah, that's just the problem :smalleek:

In mah mind:
3.5 Player's Handbook 2: Hey, expanding on previous classes. There's a few less archetypical ones, too. :smallsigh:
4e Player's Handbook 2: Hey, can't play bards, druids, or barbarians unless you homebrew them or buy me! :smallfrown:

Ohhh, the PHB 2... Note that 3.5's mostly WAS archetypal (They had MMO style tanks!), but yeah, I hear that complaint. I don't /care/, since I really don't care much about Bards, Druids, or Barbs, but I understand that.

[Lappy9000]

Ohhh, the PHB 2... Note that 3.5's mostly WAS archetypal (They had MMO style tanks!), but yeah, I hear that complaint. I don't /care/, since I really don't care much about Bards, Druids, or Barbs, but I understand that.

Yeah, the $$ is my main problem with the new edition. The rest is simply aesthetic, like how the Player's Handbook reminds me of a strategy guide and fluff issues with the races/classes that I simply don't like. Fluff is easily fixed, I just have no intention to do so until I've actually played the game (just bought the Player's Handbook in case I was ever invited to play 4e somewhere).

Since I haven't played an actual session, I obviously can't say much for the mechanics, so I'll just leave it at: Not my thing, but if you like it, awesome :smallsmile:.

[SadisticFishing]

The game is more balanced, gameplay is more fun, there's far more tactics involved involved in combat, every bit of RP that we knew and loved from 3.5 is still in the game...

Yep. Huge improvement.

[Klabbath]

I have about ten minutes to write a bunch of replies, so again I'll hit the highest points and let this drop.

1) To the poster that asked why I am here chiming in with the anti-4E crowd when "it's everything that isn't 2E that I hate": Thank you so very much for telling me what I like and dislike. To be blunt, I'm NOT anti-4E. the OP asked for an opinion of the game and I gave one. The fact that yours happens to differ from mine doesn't invalidate what I said. I'll play 4E. However, in a stack up of systems, of all of the incarnations I prefer 2ed.

2) To the poster that said I had not proven why 4E is a more cumbersome system based on three data points indicating the time it takes to roll characters, you're absolutely right. I gave a single example of the cumbersomeness of the rules as I have perceived them. I could also go into a lengthy discussion about weapon proficiencies and non-weapons versus skills but it's really beside the point: you like it and you'll defend the system to the death. More power to you. I don't care for it, but it seems to make everyone happy to misconstrue my opinions and experiences as some kind of an attack on the system.

Proof exists in math and in alcohol. I wasn't offering PROOF. I was offering EVIDENCE to support an OPINION. There's a significant difference between the two.

Another poster also mentioned that they didn't see length of character creation as important. I remind you that it is INDICATIVE, not CAUSATIVE. The quicker you can create a character, the faster you can get into the gaming. Character creation is a MEANS to an end. If it takes so long that it IS the end then there's something wrong with the system. In. My. OPINION.

3) To the poster that rolled their eyes and lumped me in as "another 4E is a video game," I appreciate you categorizing me so swiftly. It makes it easier to confuse someone when they think they have you neatly bound into something you're not. 4E was written to appeal to a generation of electronics-bound youth. This is fact. As a public school teacher I can tell you about no fewer than nineteen peer-reviewed studies that have determined that effective teaching practices in 1980 were based on text, and effective teaching practices today are based on video. Draw whatever conclusion you desire from that, but I'm pretty sure that I know what I'm talking about. I'm no game designer, but I have written a paper or two on the subject of youth cognition and metacognition.

This is the one part of this thread that's based on solid facts, not on opinion. 4E was written to attract players who also have XBox's, Wiis, and PsPs. It's intentional ignorance to even try to claim that it wouldn't be made as absolutely similar to video games as an imagination-based RPG could possibly be in an attempt to capture some of that market share.

If you give me a couple of days I could even find the appropriate citations in Bloom's Taxonomy or Slavin's Educational Psychology to further support my point, but we'd be moving fairly far afield for a discussion thread that asked what everyone's OPINION of the system was.

And by the way, has it occurred to you to consider WHY so many people might consider this edition to be too similar to a video game? Is it possibly possibly possible that they maybe maybe might be onto something there? It's very easy to dismiss someone else's opinion with a roll of the eyes-- and it's usually wrong.

4) To the poster who said that 4E was not cumbersome because it was easy compared to other non-D&D games: I am not comparing 4E to Warhammer or any other game. I didn't even compare it to Star Wars in my earlier post. I said that the d20 rolling system made Star Wars more complex when it was added. If I wanted to take that point further I could point out that Star Wars originally only used d6. Period. Blasters did 4d6 damage. Ship armor was rated based on how many D6 they could take. (a d6 was one 6 sided. a D6 was ten six sided. Useful if you ever shot a human of 4d6 health with an XWing cannon doing 5D6 damage.) Lightsabers did 1D6 damage against inanimate objects and 3d6 against organics. Now there are a host of unnecessary dice and rolling and skills and JUNK clogging what used to be a simple and effective system.

You might just as easily say that 4E is not cumbersome compared to playing Final Fantasy on the XBox. The fact that they are both games does not mean that they are comparable. Even the fact that they are both FANTASY games doesn't make them comparable. That's why I compared only AD&D and only core rules, not extraneous source material.

5) To everyone: I find 4E to not be what I consider DnD largely because the system is unrecognizable. How it got that way is not important, but I refer you to the phrase "ratchet effect." Chihuahuas and Rotts are both dogs, and anyone can tell rather easily. They can even interbreed. However one cannot play a 4E character in a 1E campaign without fundamental restructuring and vice versa. In fact, it's hellish to even try to convert a 2ed campaign to a 3.5. Nothing matches up properly. Best to write a new one from scratch-- or buy one.

Terms, definitions, spells, equipment, and rules have been rewritten ("Haste?" "Sucks now." --The Giant, in a OotS strip from a while ago.) Some items have been changed for no apparent purpose (Why was a cloak of protection renamed to a cloak of resistance and turned into a saving throw helper instead of an AC bonus? Why were healing potions renamed? Did it really make the game flow easier to develop a new healing spell for every level and then rename the potions after it?)

We need look no further than our own government to determine that rules don't go away. New ones are simply added--continuously. Every year the NFSHSA Board meets to determine what rules high school football should be played under. They haven't REMOVED a rule in three years, but they ADD an average of four per year. This is normal human nature.

I think too many people in this discussion have their ego wrapped up in 4E. My not liking it is somehow a challenge to them because they do. Frankly, I do not CARE what game you prefer to play. Play Chutes and Ladders for all I care. The OP asked what everyone's opinion of 4E was, and since I'm part of everyone I answered. Yup, I'm long winded. The reason is that if I were to simply say, "I don't care for 4E." I'd get ninety-nine knuckleheads sending me posts like, "Another anti-4E player who thinks it's a video game."

Not only is that wrong, it doesn't even address reality. I'm not even anti-4E. However, when I sit down to play DnD, this version isn't what I have in mind.

And guess what? I don't need to have a reason why I don't like 4E. That's the way opinions work. I don't care for 4E because I don't like the picture on the cover of the PHB (or whatever damfool name they gave it now.) I don't care for 4E because I find the rules cumbersome and annoying. I don't care for 4E because my 4E DM needed a haircut. None of it is really relevant. The OP asked what people though, and I presented my personal feelings.

Your mileage may vary. Good for you.

At least we are not discussing that AD&D online thing. Someone please try and explain to me again how 4E is not a video game.

[Friv]

You kids these days with your "wanting games to make sense" and "be actually playable" without "houserules". Try playing a game of Changeling: The Dreaming some time.


All right, because of power-system Exalted is different - but I'm pretty sure there is no charm tree for accounting :P Or investment banking ;) (here we could discuss if players could destroy world with bankig skill:D)

The Charm tree you are looking for is Bureaucracy. It contains such tricks as instantly knowing local market conditions and making your local business run absurdly smoothly.

*grins* Which is why in any debate of 3.x vs 4th, my answer is always "Exalted".

But on topic... from what I've played of 4th, it seems like it's better than 3.x was at the things that D&D has been traditionally good at, and it's worse than 3.x was at the things that D&D has been traditionally less good at. Overall, I consider that to be an improvement, because it means that if I want to run a straightforward adventuring party, I have a clear and concise system for it. If I do not want to run an adventuring party... I have other games I can play.

[Ryshan Ynrith]

At least we are not discussing that AD&D online thing. Someone please try and explain to me again how 4E is not a video game.

The fact that it is run with a human being as the arbiter instead of lines of prewritten code. Very simple.

[Oracle_Hunter]

The fact that it is run with a human being as the arbiter instead of lines of prewritten code. Very simple.

Wait a second... DMs are human beings? :smallconfused:

[Jayabalard]

Wait a second... DMs are human beings? :smallconfused:some of them are.

[Asbestos]

And guess what? I don't need to have a reason why I don't like 4E. That's the way opinions work. I don't care for 4E because I don't like the picture on the cover of the PHB (or whatever damfool name they gave it now.) I don't care for 4E because I find the rules cumbersome and annoying. I don't care for 4E because my 4E DM needed a haircut. None of it is really relevant. The OP asked what people though, and I presented my personal feelings.



How do you all think it's turned out? I've been away from the forum for months, so I'm kinda out of the loop, and I'm curious to hear your basic experiences with it. Is the 4th ed. more balanced/less exploitable than its predecessor, or is it just as bad?

So, you are basically saying that not only is 4E bad, but 3.x is as well, right? Out of curiosity, since I didn't see it, what is your experience playing/DMing 4e? No walls of text plz, just a simple answer. Essentially, what are your basic experiences with 4e? (Not with WotC, the evil money grubbing company. I don't care at all about your opinion of them, just this particular product and your actual experiences with it.)

[Gralamin]

Wait a second... DMs are human beings? :smallconfused:

Of course we are. Now stand there while I fire my Human Laser (http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=081014).

[Oracle_Hunter]

some of them are.

I'm pretty sure those are just Cylons. Check for yourself. (http://store.quantummechanix.com/How-To-Spot-a-Cylon-Poster_p_2-20.html)

[Caewil]

What I like about 4E is that you can easily re-fluff a wizard into, say, an alchemist with barely any changes to crunch. Or a ranger into a spellwarp sniper. If you take the classes more as archetypes for a role rather than in themselves, practically anything can be played with a little creativity, simply by changing the way you describe the same mechanics. As for the skills problem, isn't there a feat that allows skill training?

When I start a 4E game with more experienced players, I ask them what they want to play, just pick the class which seems the most appropriate and modify it slightly. It's easy. I really don't see what all the fuss is about. I've been working on a non-magical ritual system as well to fill in some of the gaps. What I like about 4E is that it has a very solidly built structure which is fairly robust and has very little in the way of fluff. It's a little like getting an empty apartment and filling it in with whatever you want. With 3.5, I had to use home-brewing to solve systematic problems and balance issues - plus the 'apartment' had a lot of junk in it which I didn't want. And I think it especially nice not to have to refer to pages and pages of spells every time a caster levels-up or worry if this or that feat is balanced or not.

The main problem, as I see it, is that 3.5 and 4E call for a different mindset when playing. I've found that players who started on 3.5 tend to like it more than 4E while new players tend to prefer 4E over 3.5. All of these players prefer role-playing to rolling the dice. (this is a statistical tendency, mind you.)

Is anyone interested in setting up a large scale statistical analysis of 3.5 and 4E demographics? I'm bored and all those chi-squared and t-tests I learned in Math have to be good for something.

[Artanis]

So, you are basically saying that not only is 4E bad, but 3.x is as well, right? Out of curiosity, since I didn't see it, what is your experience playing/DMing 4e? No walls of text plz, just a simple answer. Essentially, what are your basic experiences with 4e? (Not with WotC, the evil money grubbing company. I don't care at all about your opinion of them, just this particular product and your actual experiences with it.)
It was buried in one of his walls of text, but he came right out and said that he's never played it.

[Break]

My own problem with 4E is that they did away with different mechanics for different classes. While the whole at-will/encounter/daily system works fine for most classes (particularly meleers), I do see Wizards trying to fit a square peg into a round hole eventually; not every mechanical concept is best represented under the power system as it stands. Rituals strike me the same way - though I love the idea of separating the combat and noncombat portions of a spellcaster's arsenal, the execution seems a little lacking, namely in the uselessness of most rituals for some reason or another, as Saph pointed out before.

I just can't see powers working out for everything.

That's really the gist of it - it took me a while to come up with the core of what I felt was really strange about the system. Anything else I have problems with as far as 4E goes(mostly falling stuff like having good design and ideas, but not executing them quite in the ways I would like, and so on) is fairly minor in comparison to that.

As for where I stand on the issue, I prefer 3.5's wealth of mechanical options, as I love tweaking them. I will more than happily play 4E, however - I only like it a little less compared to the previous edition.

[RPGuru1331]

It was buried in one of his walls of text, but he came right out and said that he's never played it.

Sh, he's trying to get the other guy to admit it.

[Charity]

This is the one part of this thread that's based on solid facts, not on opinion. 4E was written to attract players who also have XBox's, Wiis, and PsPs.

Given your very firm stance on the differance between opinion and fact I am suprised that you claim this as it is unsupportable.


It's intentional ignorance to even try to claim that it wouldn't be made as absolutely similar to video games as an imagination-based RPG could possibly be in an attempt to capture some of that market share.

And this is just an insulting and unnecessary attempt to pigeonhole all whom would disagree with you; again I am surprised given the strong stance you took in the rest of your post.

I agree that your opinion is as valid as any other, I disagree with just about every other conclusion you draw, though even given this fact I wouldn't have felt it necessary to make these points had you been less aggressive in your posting style, but I guess you were in a hurry and felt aggrieved...
As an aside, I have found from personal experience that the posts made while in such a state of mind are the ones most likely to give you cause to regret posting.

[Ridureyu]

A person asks for opinions about what sorts of games other people like. Bitter tooth-and-claw fighting ensues.

I wonder if people act like this about ice cream flavors, too...

[tyfon]

Anyway - 80% people out there will be playing 4e within a year, just because lack of sourcebooks for 3.x edition.

[Ridureyu]

For the record, I like them both, and for different reasons.

[Oslecamo]

Anyway - 80% people out there will be playing 4e within a year, just because lack of sourcebooks for 3.x edition.

Talk by yourself. Thanks to the internet magic, there's no lack of 3.X material out there.

Heck, at least the 3.X srd is completely free, in comparison to the monthly payment 4e srd.

If anything, it just shows that whitin a year there will still be more people playing 3.X, because anybody and everybody can get the rules for free.

[Kurald Galain]

I wonder if people act like this about ice cream flavors, too...
What? How DARE you say that vanilla is more yummy than strawberry! Everybody who likes chocolate ice cream is a {scrubbed}!!!! :smallbiggrin:


Anyway - 80% people out there will be playing 4e within a year, just because lack of sourcebooks for 3.x edition.
Unless Pathfinder takes off.

[tyfon]

Talk by yourself. Thanks to the internet magic, there's no lack of 3.X material out there.

Heck, at least the 3.X srd is completely free, in comparison to the monthly payment 4e srd.

All, right, we shall see. But I belive that lack of new materials from WotC, and new players attracted combined with people (quite numerous) who like 4e will sum up to 80%

[Oslecamo]

All, right, we shall see. But I belive that lack of new materials from WotC, and new players attracted combined with people (quite numerous) who like 4e will sum up to 80%

Like said above, us loyal players are and will keep homebrewing stuff for 3.X. We shall see who comes in top.

And sure, if you count the people who like 4e, you may reach 80%, but 70% of those people will still play 3.X at least half of the time.

[Thurbane]

I've played it, and while it is much more balanced, it's quite boring. I don't play D&D to just go kill monsters, I play to explore a world, meet interesting characters, and develop new concepts. 4E focused too much on balance, and not enoguh on creativity and fun.
I have to say this echoes my own (very limited) 4E experience.

It's not a bad system, just not one that caters to what I'm looking for in a FRPG.

[Charity]

It really doesn't matter who and how many are playing what as long as you are happy with the version you are playing.
Plucking made up figures out of .. the air may be comforting but all it does is add extra layers of contention to a subject matter that already has more than enough.

[Ridureyu]

It really doesn't matter who and how many are playing what as long as you are happy with the version you are playing.
Plucking made up figures out of .. the air may be comforting but all it does is add extra layers of contention to a subject matter that already has more than enough.

80% of 75% of the gaming population disagrees with you 66% of the time.

[tyfon]

It matters here only because rants about 4e/3e will be far less common. :smallwink:

[Charity]

It matters here only because rants about 4e/3e will be far less common. :smallwink:

Unfortunately I seriously doubt that, if we are lucky it may mean there are fewer participants.


80% of 75% of the gaming population disagrees with you 66% of the time.

You'd be surprised how often that happens to me... or maybe you wouldn't

In an effort to add something to the thread... (I know, I know) I find it is impossible to stop my group from roleplaying, even if we are playing an out and out boardgame, the idea that 4e or indeed any other system can alter the ability of the players to realise their characters is alien to me.

I've said it countless times but countless and one can't hurt so...

I find the personnel make a game rp heavy or not, the system plays little or no part in that. It merely acts as a method of conflict resolution and is no more influential than what denomination of coin you elect to flip in a coin toss.

[TwystidMynd]

Proof exists in math and in alcohol. I wasn't offering PROOF. I was offering EVIDENCE to support an OPINION. There's a significant difference between the two.
I'll take you at your word that you weren't trying to prove a point. But in that case, why bother posting those words? (spoilered for reference)


3: And if you want to discuss "bloated" gaming systems, why is it that I can roll up a 1E character in ten minutes, a 2E character in 45 minutes, a 3.5E character in an hour and a half... and only the Gods know how long it takes to wade through the game itself to roll up a 4E character (Haven't done it yet.)?
That sentence, to me, means nothing if you're not trying to imply that later editions increase character generation time. I may be missing something here, though, and I'm more than willing to revise my comprehension of your statements if you're willing to provide a little clarification.

As far as your opinions regarding character creation duration, I agree: I think that Character Generation and the levelling up processes should be simple, because those are things you do outside the game world. The longer you take on those things, the longer you are away from the game. Some groups work around this by only levelling/creating characters outside the game-day, so that play isn't interrupted, but I see that as a necessary evil, not a good design. I find it comforting to feel that WotC felt this way too, and streamlined character creation and levelling up so that it could be done mid-game (though, of course, it still takes time - it's just noticably less than in 3.x).



3) To the poster that rolled their eyes and lumped me in as "another 4E is a video game," ... I appreciate you categorizing me so swiftly. It makes it easier to confuse someone when they think they have you neatly bound into something you're not. 4E was written to appeal to a generation of electronics-bound youth. This is fact. As a public school teacher I can tell you about no fewer than nineteen peer-reviewed studies that have determined that effective teaching practices in 1980 were based on text, and effective teaching practices today are based on video. Draw whatever conclusion you desire from that, but I'm pretty sure that I know what I'm talking about. I'm no game designer, but I have written a paper or two on the subject of youth cognition and metacognition.

This is the one part of this thread that's based on solid facts, not on opinion. 4E was written to attract players who also have XBox's, Wiis, and PsPs. It's intentional ignorance to even try to claim that it wouldn't be made as absolutely similar to video games as an imagination-based RPG could possibly be in an attempt to capture some of that market share.

If you give me a couple of days I could even find the appropriate citations in Bloom's Taxonomy or Slavin's Educational Psychology to further support my point, but we'd be moving fairly far afield for a discussion thread that asked what everyone's OPINION of the system was.

And by the way, has it occurred to you to consider WHY so many people might consider this edition to be too similar to a video game? Is it possibly possibly possible that they maybe maybe might be onto something there? It's very easy to dismiss someone else's opinion with a roll of the eyes-- and it's usually wrong.


My problem (and I don't mean to generalize this to other people, though some may agree with me) with people comparing D&D to video games is the underlying implication in the words. I don't want to single out 4e here, because this comparison is drawn between all types of RPGs and video games respectively, it just so happens the 4e is a hot topic at the moment, so it gets most of the spotlight.

To me, it's offensive to both video gaming and RPGs to compare the two in such a dismissive way. It frequently seems like people criticize D&D because it's not cerebral (like video games) or because it's an anti-social activity (like video games), or because it caters to the lowest common denominator (like video games). All of these things are simply untrue of both media, and I'm surprised to read that there is a sort of rivalry between some RPG fans and some video game fans, because I know there's a huge population out there who subscribe to both factions.

I admit that there are ways that a badly designed video game can be boring, uninspiring, lacking in creativity, and be pushed out simply to make a buck. The great thing is that the companies that push these games out also push out great video games too. To me, this type of action is as if they're farming their cash cow to support their passion. I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly identify with that... my job is OK; I don't hate it. But I do it mostly because I want to be able to do what I want to do, and I recognize that means I need to farm a cash cow to do so.

Similarly, badly designed D&D games can be incredibly unfulfilling. I'm sure it's easy to picture a DM who does nothing more intriguing than putting you in a long corridor, evenly spaced with groups of 4 orcs, and tells you that there's a treasure chest at the end of the hallway. That would suck, and I'd think that's a terrible game.

Neither of these scenarios mean that video games or RPGs in general are bad, though. They can be good, and there are stories all over the GitP Boards that prove that there are some DMs who take the systems they're given and do wonderful things with them. It's the same way with video games (though you're less likely to find threads about them here)... there are some incredibly imaginative games out there, and some that just build on previously proven ideas.

You cite that the fact that lots of people compare D&D to video games as evidence that D&D is like a video game. If you can pose that evidence, then allow me to pose this: there are lots of people who think that WoW is the best game in existence. There are lots of people who think that NASA should be shut down. There are lots of people who believe that the Earth is 6 billion years old. There are lots of people who believe that Elvis is still alive.
I don't really mean to say that your opinion is wrong, because we both know that's not possible. I mean more to point out that your point about D&D being like video games is, at best, easily misinterpreted (because it's a hot-button for lots of people) and would be better conveyed if you explained what you mean when you say "D&D is like a video game!" and, at worst, better left out of a discussion if you mean to say disparaging things about either entertainments.

[Ceaon]

I like DM-ing 4E much more than DM-ing 3.x, because my players are far less likely to become extremely powerful within a few levels, just because they munchkin.
In some aspects, I liked playing 3.x better, because I like being a munchkin sometimes.

All in all, 4E feels smoother, but I suspect the plethora of additonal books and other additions will make 4E feel more and more like 3.x every day.

That's my opinion, and luckily, your opinions won't decide whether I'm going to play 3.0, 3.5, 4E or World of Darkness.

[TwystidMynd]

Like said above, us loyal players are and will keep homebrewing stuff for 3.X. We shall see who comes in top.

And sure, if you count the people who like 4e, you may reach 80%, but 70% of those people will still play 3.X at least half of the time.

Honestly, I just needed to make a remark about how easily your post could be inflammatory. Loyalty, especially in nations where loyalty is viewed as a very positive thing, can be a very treasured asset a person has. It can be insensitive to offhandedly imply that someone is disloyal... look at the wreckage that can happen in a marriage where one member of the union implies that the other has been disloyal.

I've noticed that a lot of arguments are made on these forums and, due to time constraints or post-length, we try to post quickly and concisely. Sometimes we lose some meaning when we try to make our posts shorter, though, and when that happens we can get a situation where two people who would otherwise agree are bickering back and forth because of a misunderstood sentence.

Perhaps I'm just acting like a different form of grammar police, but I just wanted to point out that you'd made a remark that could easily be taken the wrong way. By calling yourself "loyal" you implied that anyone who didn't play 3.x was "disloyal." As I mentioned before, that kind of implication can be offensive, especially considering that the choice really has very little to do with loyalty at all, and is really just about preference. I don't really know in what way you meant it, so for that reason I'm doing my best to not reply to it until I fully understand what you meant.

[mangosta71]

At least we are not discussing that AD&D online thing. Someone please try and explain to me again how 4E is not a video game.

I could have sworn that DnD Online was a 3.5 world...

[hamishspence]

And Baldur's Gate, and even older games (the Pools series?) the fact that a rules system lends itself well to making video games doesn't mean, that the rules system was designed around them.

[Kaiyanwang]

I think that the whole videogame thing has a lot of causes

1) Art: Eladrin - Blood Elves, as an example. Crazy-shaped tieflings weapons, and so on.

2) Gamist approcah IMO, is this thing that makes a lot of people say it feels like a videogame. See the HP more abstract than ever, maybe just to justify the existence of the marshal, and so on. For someone is good, for someone else (i.e. me) is bad but I think this is the big deal.

3) The whole power system remembers videogames powers and powers "cooldowns". Maybe this is a good thing, but

4) oversemplification (high debatable point, anyway - even for an anti-4th like myself), exspecially regarding a restriction of gamestyles

Anyway, IMHO, the 4th edition mechanics can be translated in videogame better thatn 3.5 ones. See "3)", first.

D&D and videogames share similar spaces, and videogames took a lot from D&D. maybe it was time D&D take something from them... Don't like so much WHAT they took but that is.

post scriptum: IMO, a lot of pidgeonholing and ovesimplification that people (even myself) connected to a video game-like design are in truth connected to a splatbook frenzy even bigger than the 3.5 one.

/Kaiyawang cast Energy immunity: fire
/Kayawang prepares an action (dispel)

[LibraryOgre]

Hm, out of curiosity, why do you think a lenient DM is needed?

I believe he meant "lenient" in the sense that "Yeah, that could work; roll it with a -2" not "And for slaying the wily kobold, you get a Holy Avenger!"

For example, my DM (Hzurr) is nicely lenient; he comes up with rules for the various weird crap we try (like hitting people with tables, picking up the table someone is standing on, throwing anvils, pushing people into the fire... I haven't pulled the "I grab him... ok, now I spend an action point to throw him at his buddy", yet). Players get to be creative and come up with wild tactics.

The opposite sort of DM would say "There's no rules for it, so you can't do it", or make it hard to do anything cool.

[tyfon]

You know what?

I'm starting to suspect that this whole 3e/4e discussion is about "Spells" chapter.

Or lack of it.

[RPGuru1331]

{Scrubbed}


Like said above, us loyal players are and will keep homebrewing stuff for 3.X. We shall see who comes in top.
You already lost in real life. Sorry. It's really just the internet that has a loud minority of the playerbase.



3) The whole power system remembers videogames powers and powers "cooldowns". Maybe this is a good thing, but
I'm sorry, but this is complete nonsense. Sorry. You raise some good points, but it's more like White Wolf's use of "Scene" as a duration.

[KKL]

You know what?

I'm starting to suspect that this whole 3e/4e discussion is about "Spells" chapter.

Or lack of it.

Or at least a good chunk of it.


It's really just the internet that has a loud minority of the playerbase.

Loud is not the correct word.

[tyfon]

I'm sorry, but this is complete nonsense. Sorry. You raise some good points, but it's more like White Wolf's use of "Scene" as a duration.

White Wolf durations are something completly different for one reason: scene and encounter limitation were created for different reason.


I'd like to remind that 4e creators already admitted that they imported many concepts from MMORPG.

I have no problem with that.

[RPGuru1331]

White Wolf durations are something completly different for one reason: scene and encounter limitation were created for different reason.


I'd like to remind that 4e creators already admitted that they imported many concepts from MMORPG.

I have no problem with that.

They were created for different reasons. It's still more like a Scene duration. Cooldowns means you get the ability back within that fight. Hell, even in PvP, you'll see, if you speced for it, the ability to blow Cloak of Skills and Vanish twice or even thrice in the same fight, if it lasted long enough. And most of my abilities will have incredibly short CDs. To take the example people love to quote, anyway. Encounters and Dailies are done within that fight; You will not see them again, period. Monster Recharges are similar to a CD, but we had those in 3rd ed too.


Loud is not the correct word.
Dare I ask?

[tyfon]

Main reason why You cannot use, let say, Dire Wolverine Strike multiple times in encounter is because 4e is about speeding up mechanics and simplyfying rules. In case of turn-cooldown players or DM would have to track time (You used this power 3 rounds ago, You have to wait another round...) and so on. This is, I belive (it is my opinion), main reason why they have chosen 'encounter' as a minimum amount of time to recharge. Same for daily.

Remember tracking dragon breath in previous ed ? Now it's roll for recharge. Makes sense, I suppose ?

[KKL]

Dare I ask?

I don't know, what's louder than the word loud?