4e / GSL 11 Reasons Why I Prefer D&D 4E

[Jürgen Hubert]

Crossposted from my blog.

• No long-term advance planning for PC character development. No longer do players have to worry how precisely to build their characters at first level when they want to take a specific prestige class twelve levels later. Now they can take character advancement one level at a time.
• Easier high-level PC creation. Creating high-level PCs - whether to replace an existing character or to start a campaign at a high level in the first place - is now simplicity in itself. You do no longer have to worry about what choices your character made at lower level - thanks to retraining, it's easy to justify the current character feats, powers, and skills. Similarly, picking magic items is easy - you start with three items with specific levels, and have some spare cash over to purchase weaker items.
• Fighters are now actually interesting. In 3.5, Fighters usually did little more than doing the same attacks over and over again, and their only real tactical choices involved which enemy to hit. No longer - they now have a variety of options as large as that of the other classes.
• Less-complex high-level spellcasters. Once your player characters hit double digits, deciding which spells your high-level wizards, clerics, and druids choose every day became a real chore, and it frequently held up the game while the players of these characters made up their mind. No longer - even wizards, who still can make some choices in that regard, now spend much less time on figuring out their daily spell lists.
• No class is useless in a specific fight. Who doesn't know the frustration of a rogue in a fight that involved constructs or undead? Or of a monk in a fight that involved only monsters with the "wrong" type of damage resistance? Or of a wizard when all the enemies had high spell resistances? Some classes were pretty much ineffective against certain kinds of enemies, leaving their players frustrated when an adventure featured them strongly. This is now pretty much gone, and for this I am grateful.
• Rituals. Separating most of the non-combat spells into rituals was a stroke of genius. Now the list of available rituals can be modified at the DM's leisure without giving a specific class too much power or taking too much power away from it. It also makes it easier for world-builders - they no longer have to take hundreds of spell effects into account when figuring out how magic may have impacted society. Conversely, since you do no longer have to be a high-level member of a specific class when you want to cast specific rituals, it's easy to justify NPCs who can cast individual rituals without making them into powerful combat spellcasters, turning them into "support roles" within the adventure without having to explain why they don't defeat the enemies of the local community instead of the PCs.
• Skill challenges. Skill challenges are a blast to run. They allow the DM to say: "I think these skills would be the most appropriate in this situation, but feel free to convince me of the appropriateness of other skills at well." This allows the PCs to get really creative with their skill uses and gives them a level of narrative control that I was really surprised seeing in a D&D edition.
• Minions. Minions are lots of fun for the DM. They allow me to "swarm" the player characters without overwhelming them, or without making me keep track of the hit points of large numbers of enemies. Back in 3.5, having two dozen enemies attack the PCs at once was a logistic nightmare. Now, it's no problem at all.
• Easier high-level NPC creation. In D&D 3.5, I was so frustrated with how much time I spent on creating high-level NPCs - time I could have used on developing the actual plot of the adventure - that I even created a Wiki to have better access to a large number of NPCs (ironically, the wiki became a huge hit while I soon afterwards abandoned D&D 3.5 for other RPGs...). But now, creating high-level NPCs is even easier than creating high-level PCs. Thanks to the straightforward level bonus, calculating derived stats is a snap that doesn't even involve looking up a variety of tables, and giving them specific powers is a straightforward process which doesn't take up much time.
• Easier monster creation/modification. Building and modifying monsters now is much easier. For my playtest adventure, I built an Aufhocker, a fey creature from German mythology that jumps on the backs of people and frightens them to near-death, and I was astonished how easy the process was. 3.5 sorely lacked such detailed guidelines.
• In-depth discussion on building encounters and monster roles. The chapter on building encounters and monster roles in the DMG is one of the most impressive pieces of GMing advice I have seen in any RPG. The CRs in 3.5 were extremely vague in comparison. Lengthily explaining how different types of monsters interact with each other in a fight, and giving them according roles that they are built around irrespective of origin was a stroke of genius!

By all means, please feel free to debate.

[Khuxan]

Rather than debate you, since I agree with much of what you said, I'd rather ask a question I think is more interesting:

What don't you like about 4E D&D?

For a while after 4E came out I was disillusioned because I had expected it to be perfect. I became much more interested in the indie game Reign (Greg Stolze), and I felt that 4E was soulless. I think 4E captures the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons perfectly, and I had a great session DMing 4E. But I felt like there was something missing.

So that's why I ask - because as much as I like 4E, I cannot escape the feeling it's missing something.

[Particle_Man]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

[*]No long-term advance planning for PC character development. No longer do players have to worry how precisely to build their characters at first level when they want to take a specific prestige class twelve levels later. Now they can take character advancement one level at a time.

I disagree. The initial ability score point-buy must take into account what feats (heroic, paragon and epic) one will want to have that have certain ability score prerequisites, because usually you will one to focus the most frequent ability score increases on two stats, and the other 4 stats may be the prerequisites in question.

This may matter more to some classes than others, but I certainly noticed it with my wizard.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Khuxan

Rather than debate you, since I agree with much of what you said, I'd rather ask a question I think is more interesting:

What don't you like about 4E D&D?

Here are a few things that come to mind:

• Too few classes. I would have preferred it if they had used a smaller font size and packed more information into the books. I'm missing druids, bards, and monks, and would have preferred to see them in the PHBI instead of having to wait for the PHBII. I didn't buy many rules supplements with D&D 3.5 (I consider setting books to be more interesting) and would have preferred to do the same with D&D 4E.
• Too few rituals. While I like the overall concept of rituals, there were a great number of flavorful spells that could have easily been translated into 4E rituals with little work and without hurting game balance. The current list of rituals is much too short for my tastes.
• Where are the metallic dragons? While I can live with most of the changes in the monster rooster in the MM, I would have preferred the metallic dragons to be included.
• Loss of scope within the classes. Fighters are now melee fighters. Wizards have little in the way of illusion, summoning, and necromantic powers. While some classes - especially the martial ones - have gained a lot more options (and the "ranged fighter" archetype is now sufficiently filled by the ranger), some archetypes can no longer be built within the existing classes. This wouldn't have been a problem if new classes had been created to fill those archetypes, but again, the number of classes in the PHB is sadly limited.

Apart from that, all I can think of is fairly minor stuff (for example, in our playtest game we found out that Needlefang Drake Swams are grossly overpowered for their level...).

[Monkey Boy]

Hi Jurgen,

Are you asking for feedback on your 11 reasons? Or asking for people to give their own 11 reasons? Just to mix things up here's my top 11 things I don't like from 5 sessions of play and 2 as DM.

11. Characters too similar. Few choices make it hard to differentiate.
10. Some at will abilities are no brainers. Ranger I am looking at you.
9. Tieflings and Dragonborn being shoehorned into established settings.
8. the presence of golden-spray icefrost adepts style language (thankfully this was toned down)
7. Dungeon and Dragon no longer in print
6. Low level combat falls back to the same powers over and over. My warlord very rarely does anything other than his 'here have another go' power as it is simply too effective to do anything else.
5. HP inflation, combats simply take too long.
4. Eladrin artwork.
3. skill challenges - I think these are poorly explained.
2. Paizo not onboard making it unlikely we will see mature adventures.
1. Magic items boring and limited.

My group are playing 4e now and having fun but I am leaning more and more towards savage worlds after each session.

[amethal]

Nice to see a positive post about things you like about 4th edition.

It has certainly helped me to explain to myself why I am not so keen on 4th edition, because what you like about it are generally not things that particularly bother me. If they had added rituals and skill challenges to 3.5, that game would have been perfect

Have you read Dungeonscape? That has guidance on creating encounters, monster roles and the like. Does anyone know if the 4th edition discussion builds on that, or if its a new thing for the new edition?

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Monkey Boy

Hi Jurgen,

Are you asking for feedback on your 11 reasons? Or asking for people to give their own 11 reasons?

Whichever you prefer, frankly. I intend this to be an open debate.

9. Tieflings and Dragonborn being shoehorned into established settings.
7. Dungeon and Dragon no longer in print
4. Eladrin artwork.
2. Paizo not onboard making it unlikely we will see mature adventures.

I wanted to focus on the actual rules themselves. As for point 9, I cannot comment on that yet since I've barely started reading the new FR campaign setting - the only setting presently in print where this issue could apply at the moment.

For the development of my own Urbis, the new races actually worked out fairly well. I'm glad that I hit on the idea of Zionist Dragonborn, and the eladrin made the existing elven realms much more interesting...

8. the presence of golden-spray icefrost adepts style language (thankfully this was toned down)

What do you mean with this?

[vagabundo]

I agree with this list. I'm enjoying my DMing - on and off the table - a lot more these days.

However - whats missing - something is missing from 4e. It is not a race or class or spell. I think the homogenisation of the classes through the power structure has taken a little of the mechanical flavour from the game.

I also find that i'm defaulting to a mini - well counters in my case - wargaming mode when I am DMing. I think it is an easy trap to fall into because 4e is so mechanically beautiful and easy to run I dont have the "oh no not comabt" feeling I had for the last few years running 3e.

It is something I am going to change, more ad hoc skill challenges and a little more random, non treatening NPC encounters and some mini-less encounters - lets play old skool guys - for smaller more minor combats.

Saying that, my players have not noticed and they love the new classes and the tactical sytle of play. I've never seen them take to an edition like this before.

[functionciccio]

Originally Posted by Monkey Boy

5. HP inflation, combats simply take too long.

This.

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Originally Posted by amethal

Nice to see a positive post about things you like about 4th edition.

It has certainly helped me to explain to myself why I am not so keen on 4th edition, because what you like about it are generally not things that particularly bother me. If they had added rituals and skill challenges to 3.5, that game would have been perfect

Aren't incantations and complex skill checks in the Unearthed Arcana book?
I think the biggest problem was that it was hard to balance the "alternative" spell systems for ritual-like spells. But maybe just nobody tried hard enough?

Have you read Dungeonscape? That has guidance on creating encounters, monster roles and the like. Does anyone know if the 4th edition discussion builds on that, or if its a new thing for the new edition?

I haven't read it, but if I am not mistaken, it is a book of WotC? I am pretty sure that the designs of 4E were at least informed on that. I suppose the monster role idea might have been around far longer than that, at least in the design community, but only in 4E they decided to make it an explicit part of the mechanical expressions for monsters.

In a way, that was an inconsistency in 3E. Character Classes tend to define a certain "role" and were used to describe HD, skill points, BAB and Saves. But for monsters, they didn't go from the personality/combat role approach, they went from the origin (outsider, elemental, humanoid and so on) approach. If I'd wanted to redo how monsters are done in 3E, I would probably remove the idea of type/origin defining HD and instead base it on the "goals" or "role" of the monster. If it makes sense that a Ranger has different saves then a Fighter, why shouldn't be the same be true for a Demon that fires energy burst and a Demon that fights with a greatsword?

[CapnZapp]

The single best improvement in 4E, to my mind is

Rituals.

Having them (and having them separated from a certain wizard level, as you say) adds immensely to the storytelling power of the game.

I'm not yet there, but I imagine less high-level complexity will become a strong second over time. (This would include at least three of your points: Less-complex high-level spellcasters, Easier high-level PC creation & Easier high-level NPC creation)

---

As for dislikes,

My current pet peeve is monster hit points: as in how some get absurd heapings (i.e. most monsters) and others get absurdly few (i.e. minions).

The concept of minions (or mooks) is great for a certain style of play, but it ruins verisimilitude for others. Having them in the game by default (as opposed to some secondary option) means the game shuts out many gamers. Having minions fosters a heavy elitism, where some people (and monsters) just are better, more worthy to live, than others. Not to speak of absurd consequences, where "minion people" die from injuries everybody else would consider a scratch only.

Combine this with the complaints fights take too long against regular monsters, and I believe you have yourself a mistake on the part of WotC.

Currently, my solution (after all, the best complaints are those coupled with a suggested solution) is to halve hit points for standard monsters (and assign the same amount to former minions).

If nothing else, this will make elites and solos truly stand-outs, which I too think is good for the game.

I might list other complaints about the game, but those are of such a nature, they could well be met by "okay, but why don't you go play another game then?".

Regards,
Zapp

[Monkey Boy]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

I wanted to focus on the actual rules themselves.

I think of 4e as more than just the rules. There is the whole sideshow taking place that leaves a bad taste. To be honest though I was just trying to fill out my 11 things and was running out of rules issues. I like 4e, its a nifty system. If it wasn't for the longer combat lengths I'd be a very happy gamer.

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

What do you mean with this?

Me - 'It's Bob the clerics turn.'
Bob 'I use Clarion call of the Astral sea' then I spend an action point and use 'Knights of unyielding valor.'
Me - Ok, just what exactly do those powers do?

I was being a little facetious with the golden-spray wyvern adept comment. As a general rule the powers are well named. Some spring out as unintuitively named. Its a fluff not a crunch issue.

[Monkey Boy]

Originally Posted by CapnZapp

My current pet peeve is monster hit points: as in how some get absurd heapings (i.e. most monsters) and others get absurdly few (i.e. minions).

The concept of minions (or mooks) is great for a certain style of play, but it ruins verisimilitude for others. Having them in the game by default (as opposed to some secondary option) means the game shuts out many gamers. Having minions fosters a heavy elitism, where some people (and monsters) just are better, more worthy to live, than others. Not to speak of absurd consequences, where "minion people" die from injuries everybody else would consider a scratch only.

Combine this with the complaints fights take too long against regular monsters, and I believe you have yourself a mistake on the part of WotC.

Currently, my solution (after all, the best complaints are those coupled with a suggested solution) is to halve hit points for standard monsters (and assign the same amount to former minions).

This is my hang up as well and is almost a deal breaker. The fights have taken too long and are boring the hell out of me. Fighting goblins shouldn't take this long! I will be implementing half HP for monsters in my current game, hopefully that will fix things for my group.

[vagabundo]

Originally Posted by Monkey Boy

This is my hang up as well and is almost a deal breaker. The fights have taken too long and are boring the hell out of me. Fighting goblins shouldn't take this long! I will be implementing half HP for monsters in my current game, hopefully that will fix things for my group.

I've seen this as a problem initially, but it seems to have gone away. My players are becoming more tactically aware and are doing a lot more damage per round.

I think in the long term, once the skill-set of players increases, the current HPs will be challenging but not over the top. For the moment I'm taking it easy on them, a little - I usually lob a third off the high HP monsters.

[D'karr]

Originally Posted by Monkey Boy

This is my hang up as well and is almost a deal breaker. The fights have taken too long and are boring the hell out of me. Fighting goblins shouldn't take this long! I will be implementing half HP for monsters in my current game, hopefully that will fix things for my group.

I guess that this is a case of different strokes for different folk. This is the kind of thing that would never even come up as a deal breaker for me.

The only time I've seen fights take "too long", which is a completely subjective measure, was when the party decided that they would have 2 controllers, 2 leaders and a defender. In addition the encounter was against brutes and soldiers, with no minions.

Without a striker the party will take longer to whittle down the opposition. I simply resolved that by killing the creatures when I felt it was appropriate, which is a completely subjective value judgement.

So that specific soldier might have had 10%-20% less HP and that brute might have had 20%-30% less HP but in the end the fight stayed exciting. So it was no big deal.

This situation is one that the DM has complete control over. My recommendation, before the fight starts to drag, go ahead and start ending it. My solution was to simply drop some HP as necessary from the creatures and then I awarded 10-50 less XP per creatures to signify not the standard level of challenge.

This was completely ad-hoc and posed no significant difficulty on my part. The players did not notice the difference at all. Since then I've strongly hinted that having a striker in their group would probably be a very beneficial thing.

[Olgar Shiverstone]

No long-term advance planning for PC character development.

I'm not sure this is true, as stat requirements almost make it more critical that you careful consider future feat and power preferences before you assign stats. Retraining does eliminate a lot of feat planning, admittedly.

No class is useless in a specific fight.

Heck, yes. Best feature of 4E IMO -- plus 4E significantly increased the importance of team tactics, which is a good feature IMO.

Easier high-level PC creation.

Mostly, yes. I'd argue that it's much easier for high-level spellcasters, and much harder for high-level melee characters.

Fighters are now actually interesting.

3E Fighters were interesting too, if you actually took advantage of the range of feats -- orders of magnitude better than prior edition fighters. I'll grant that 4E fighters are now a step more interesting than even their 3E counterparts, though.

Less-complex high-level spellcasters.

Goodness, yes.

Rituals.

I like these mechanics, but I'm disappointed with the number, and the fact that rituals have essentially killed the prior "clever use of flexible spells" that you could do. It's fun to play "101 uses for a 1st level spell" -- not quite as fun now.

Skill challenges.

Frankly, I see this as a mechanic that isn't unique to 4E -- easy enough to port it back to 3E (and even 2E's NWPs with some further tweaking). The fact that they screwed up the initial SC release in the core rules still irqs me.

Minions.

Again, not a unique-to-4E mechanic. Take almost any 3E monster, reduce to 1 hp = minion.

Easier high-level NPC creation.

Yes and no. If you weren't anal about having every single spell, feat, and skill point accounted for, high level NPCs in 3E aren't really that hard -- you just put together those items that you need for play and wing the rest.

Easier monster creation/modification.

Creation, yes. I'm not convinced that systematic modification is a strength of 4E. Point modification is neither significantly easier or harder than before.

In-depth discussion on building encounters and monster roles.

I wouldn't say that the concepts are any better or worse, but certainly including the design discussion in the DMG is one of the smartest decisions made for that book, and results in a significantly more useful DMG than prior editions (where the DMG was just the place to srtore magic items).

My criticisms of 4E: Missing classes plus limited rituals/spells and magic items compared to prior editions core rules make the initial release feel incomplete; changes to the base "fluff" of D&D feel like "change for change sake" that I have to undue to match my personal vision of the game. Finally, character creation is much more role constraining (pending the release of supplements) -- that's both a bug and a feature.

[Charwoman Gene]

Are my players just gods of combat or something? Fights seem pretty fast for us. Solos are a little boring once we all run out of encounter powers, but otherwise, were good.

[D'karr]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

Crossposted from my blog.

• No long-term advance planning for PC character development.
• Easier high-level PC creation.
• Fighters are now actually interesting.
• Less-complex high-level spellcasters.
• No class is useless in a specific fight.
• Rituals.
• Skill challenges.
• Minions.
• Easier high-level NPC creation.
• Easier monster creation/modification.
• In-depth discussion on building encounters and monster roles.

By all means, please feel free to debate.

I agree with almost all of these. My biggest agreement comes from those points that boil down to Ease with which a DM can modify the game or an adventure. My preparation time is now spent on things that matter to the excitement of the game. Things like adventure design and new and improved plot hooks for the campaign. Gone is the tediousness of attempting to balance encounters for my group.

From your list there are two of those that I just wish they would have added more of. I would have liked to have seen more rituals on the core books. I would have liked at least one additional controller class, and I would have liked to have the Wizard have a little more granularity, specially in spell selection. These are things that I'm actually house-ruling, which is no longer a chore either.

As far as complaints, I've only got two so far.

• Low Level Monster Variety -- I really wish the Monster Manual would have had about 4-5 more creatures for low level play. Every time we have played a low level adventure we've fought kobolds or goblins. Some more variety would have been really nice.
  
• More At-Will Powers as levels increase -- The limitation on 2 at-will powers seems rather contrived. Specially since the economy of actions in 4e already prevents abuse. I'm going to house rule for my campaign that players can select 2 at-will powers at 1st level. One additional one at 5th level and another one at 15th level. Since they can only use them once per turn anyway, unless they use an action point, I can't see much problem with letting them have all the at-will powers for their class as they increase in level.

One major thing that I really love about 4e:

• Ease with which a new player can jump in and start playing

I have found 4e to be a huge breath of fresh air. My wife now games with us on a regular basis. She was a complete newbie to gaming. When we played 3e, she played a rogue and had quite a hard time keeping track of everything. She has mentioned several times that now she is actually excited to play because she does not feel like she is lost trying to find what she should do. Everything is spelled out rather clearly on her sheet. To me that is a major reason to prefer 4e.

[Henry]

Originally Posted by Monkey Boy

This is my hang up as well and is almost a deal breaker. The fights have taken too long and are boring the hell out of me. Fighting goblins shouldn't take this long! I will be implementing half HP for monsters in my current game, hopefully that will fix things for my group.

The one thing to watch out for in this is pre-published encounters with minions; personally I'd advise reducing the number of minions slightly, because an encounter with a half-dozen minions, that each take two or three hits to drop one, could spell disaster for your party whereas the as-written encounter might be intended as an even or a hard challenge.

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Originally Posted by Henry

The one thing to watch out for in this is pre-published encounters with minions; personally I'd advise reducing the number of minions slightly, because an encounter with a half-dozen minions, that each take two or three hits to drop one, could spell disaster for your party whereas the as-written encounter might be intended as an even or a hard challenge.

I would have thought the opposite. Fighting monsters with lots of hit points might get boring if nothing "new" happens, but with Minions you always have the thrill of knowing - if I hit, it's gone. And this results in a lot more actions going on. Ultimately, 4 Minions probably take the same time to take down as an equal level monster, but you have the satisfaction of dropping foes more often.
Or is this entirely subjective?