4e / GSL WoTC Interview with Rob Heinsoo

[billd91]

Originally Posted by ehren37

And when the wizard and cleric were cashed, you rested. Period. You hopped in your rope trick, played cards for 8 hours until the real party memebrs were ready to do the heavy lifting and moved on.

Oh right, you never rested in 1st/2nd edition...

That is a characterization I never saw in 20 years of 1e and 2e. Rather, the fighter-types and thieves were always on duty and were, in fact, the ones doing the heavy lifting consistently. The cleric backed the fighters up and the wizard tossed around large spikes of damage infrequently. And when they were out of mojo, they relied on wands and darts.

The party stopped to rest when the fighters were low on hit points and the clerics were out of healing... in other words, when the heavy lifters could no longer protect the rest of the party.

[Mournblade94]

Originally Posted by ehren37

Its been my experience that everyone min-maxes, or "optimizes". First edition was easier to break, because it was so poorly designed in regards to balance (among other things). I also didnt see many fighters running around using daggers over longswords.

I have had straight class fighters use only daggers. In fact this is an EXTREMELY common fighter type. I have encountered it often. One time granted it was a fighter mage bladesinger. The 3rd edition I am running now, currently has a straight class fighter who has all specializations in the throwing daggers. I am sure a min maxer would label him 'Stupid".

No hardly everyone min/maxes. I would not even say MOST players min/max. The character concept has always been more important. I have seen many occasions when the min maxer of the group would complain about someone's character choice. There is playing for min.max, and then there is the character concept.

Originally Posted by ehren37

And when the wizard and cleric were cashed, you rested. Period. You hopped in your rope trick, played cards for 8 hours until the real party memebrs were ready to do the heavy lifting and moved on.

Oh right, you never rested in 1st/2nd edition...

There are plenty of tournament style modules that did not allow for this. When the cleric and wizard were done, and the rest of the party was good, we would often push on. You cannot say that once the cleric or wizard is done it is over.

The only time I ever played the way you describe was by playing the video game Baldur's Gate or Never Winter Nights. On the table top, I did not have the same habits. I fear too much of the video game strategy has encroached upon the table top game strategy.

I am not a grognard in that respect at all. I am a hard core video game gamer. I recognize though what makes a good video game does not make a good Table top game and Vice versa.

[Sadrik]

Fun is not a bad word in and of itself, when used as a comparative such as this is more fun than that it runs into the highly speculative. Rob appears to have done that.

[Ariosto]

Using crossbow is not a problem when MUs are limited to daggers ...

[JVisgaitis]

That was a great read. Why didn't they do something like this before the game was released? A lot of interesting info in there...

[Storminator]

Originally Posted by Thasmodious

I certainly think that a trained up wizard having to badly wield a crossbow is a problem.

Crossbow?!?

PS

[catsclaw227]

Originally Posted by DaveMage

See, that's something I don't like. I don't like the idea that at some point, character advancement by level simply ends.

Originally Posted by DaveMage

See, that's something I don't like. I don't like the idea that at some point, the game simply ends. That's like a board game. I don't mind if a company doesn't want to support a game beyond a certain point, but at least leave it open-ended (as 1E/2E/3E are) so that creative DMs at least have the tools to play beyond official support. (Or, you can do the 1E/2E XP progression, where it simply takes a long time to advance levels past a certain point.)

Now, now DaveMage. You know as well as I do that in 1e there were level limitations. Racial and Class level limitations.

How did a dwarf become an 10th level fighter? Or what level of Druid did I take after 14th level?

You might counter with "Then dual class!!" or "Multiclass!". If I am not mistaken, multiclass was something you could only do at first level, and you had to be a non-human and there were only specific combinations available, and these were based upon your race.

With dual classing (humans only), you were denied the use of all your abilities and benefits when you changed classes (except HD and HP). So, I spend 3 years of gaming and 14 levels to become the greatest druid in the gameworld and then (because if course, I didn't want to be saddled with level limitations. I only have 1,500,001 XP and the M-U can get 3,000,000+ and be 18th level!) I became a magic user. I now couldn't use ANY of the abilities of the Druid and if I did, all the XP for the adventure would be lost.

So how are these rules good? My 9th level dwarven fighter is the best he can be. Ever. I would much rather be able to be 20th level or 30th level.

I played and DMed 1st edition for a long time. These rules always sucked. And almost every table I played at dropped the racial level limits not because we wanted the ceiling opened up to infinity, but because we wanted to ceiling raised to the same level for everyone.

[catsclaw227]

Originally Posted by gribble

I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking this! For all the talk of 4e solving the 10 minute adventuring day, I've found in practice it has actually made it a lot worse. A couple of reasons:
1) Rather than just wanting to rest when the wizard/cleric is out of spells, every class now has daily abilities. Typically, at least one PC is out of dailies after 2-3 fights.

This hasn't been the experience in the two 4e campaigns I have run. Our mid-level paragon game regularly had the PCs going 4-6 encounters at a time. Dailies weren't the deciding factor, surges were.

Originally Posted by gribble

2) Healing surges are the killer (literally). At least in 3e, a party could reasonably continue on potions, scrolls and/or wands for quite a while... normally in the ballpark of 4-6 encounters per day before resting. But in 4e, once any single character is out of healing surges, the party pretty much has to take an extended rest. Pressing on at that point, without that character being able to heal at all during an encounter, is akin to that characters death sentence... I've found in our mid-late Paragon game that that point now seems be be about every 2-3 encounters.

This is the case for us, but we still go 4-6 encounters. Maybe the DM is throwing too many "hard" encounters and not enough "easy" and "normal" ones?

[Thasmodious]

Originally Posted by Storminator

Crossbow?!?

PS

Heh, yeah, too many years of 3e. But the older options were even worse. "Oh dear, I seem to have run out of spells, time to hike up my skirt and wade into the front lines with my 'trusty' quarterstaff."

[Ariosto]

If Wizards Did Call of Cthulhu

Library Use as a key skill? No way! Investigation is no fun; shootouts are fun!

It's no fun playing an author, journalist, lawyer, professor or historian/antiquarian. Let's replace those occupations with types like Doc Savage, the Shadow and Tarzan.

It's no fair that cultists of the Great Old Ones get all the best magic. Add "good guy" Elder Gods.

Getting driven insane is no fun. Dump the Sanity rules.

One blast from a 12 gauge shotgun can kill a character? How can anyone have fun playing someone who can't take a couple of bursts from a tommy gun and keep going?

Some of the monsters are just too tough. If you can't kill Cthulhu, then what's the point?

[Branduil]

I don't really get the point of your parody. D&D would suck if it used CoC rules. CoC would suck if it used D&D rules. The games appeal to different tastes.

[Wormwood]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

If Wizards Did Call of Cthulhu

Unfair.

But I do like your summary of Spirit of the Century.

[darjr]

Originally Posted by Mournblade94

There are plenty of tournament style modules that did not allow for this. When the cleric and wizard were done, and the rest of the party was good, we would often push on. You cannot say that once the cleric or wizard is done it is over.

There are plenty of adventures in 4e, RPGA especially, that are entirely of this sort. Out of surges? Out of dailies? To bad. Go on or run away.

[catsclaw227]

Originally Posted by Mournblade94

If your group consists of minmaxers I can see this. Otherwise I have never seen this problem.

Oh come on.... just because a player doesn't like the fact that they are a less effective doesn't make them a min-maxer.

I have DMed many groups of VERY good roleplayers that have, on more than one occasion mentioned how much they felt behind the other players in the group (in 1e, 2e and 3e). Even if I counter it with "Well, just think of all the roleplaying opportunities it will open up", they say "I would rather have some great roleplaying opportunities and also feel like I am contributing with my class abilities like the other guys."

Perfect balance may not be what some people like. Maybe some like the major imbalances of class and race in 1e, but very, very few of the players I DMed in HS, college and afterwards were OK with it.

As stated before, why play a fighter when you can play a fighter-cleric? Oh yea... because in 1e only non-humans can be multiclassed. And a dwarf fighter cleric can be no higher than Ftr9/Cle8. Oh wait, in 1e only NPC dwarves can be a cleric.

Most players I games with, without question, preferred balanced PCs over unbalanced ones. Yes, its only my experience, but I've been DMing since 1978, so that's a lot of players.

Originally Posted by Mournblade94

Your insight is astounding. CLearly you are someone that has played with many groups of so called old schoolers to understand their secret.

Why would someone want to play the fighter? Because they did in fact NOT 'suck'. Most of my cahracters have been a fighting class mostly ranger. This nonsense of the fighters being the weakest class comes from people that did not understand the balance factour of the wizard was his spells per day. If you allowed rest periods like the 4e does, the wizard is never power downed. But a wizard USED to require strategy. You had to pick your spells carefully, and use them carefully or you would... uh oh! Run out of spells!

The fighter very often carried the party through these times. But you would have to assume an actual 8 hour day instead of 10 minute days. I never worried about that as a fighter.

OK, so at 3rd level, when the magic user in 1e used up his two 1st and one 2nd level spell, he was bonking with his quarterstaff and no armor for the rest of the game session until the part rested. In 1e, we rested a lot too. often 3-4 times a "day". He/She didn't trundle along with the fighter and stand back hoping to roll a 19 or 20 to hit. That did suck, and I had a few new players stop and ask to play a different character (or stop playing altogether) because they didn't quite grok the roleplaying part but felt useless as a character.

[catsclaw227]

Originally Posted by darjr

There are plenty of adventures in 4e, RPGA especially, that are entirely of this sort. Out of surges? Out of dailies? To bad. Go on or run away.

Yep. There are also plenty of 4e DMs that do this with their home games as well.

[DaveMage]

Originally Posted by catsclaw227

Now, now DaveMage. You know as well as I do that in 1e there were level limitations. Racial and Class level limitations.

How did a dwarf become an 10th level fighter? Or what level of Druid did I take after 14th level?

You might counter with "Then dual class!!" or "Multiclass!". If I am not mistaken, multiclass was something you could only do at first level, and you had to be a non-human and there were only specific combinations available, and these were based upon your race.

With dual classing (humans only), you were denied the use of all your abilities and benefits when you changed classes (except HD and HP). So, I spend 3 years of gaming and 14 levels to become the greatest druid in the gameworld and then (because if course, I didn't want to be saddled with level limitations. I only have 1,500,001 XP and the M-U can get 3,000,000+ and be 18th level!) I became a magic user. I now couldn't use ANY of the abilities of the Druid and if I did, all the XP for the adventure would be lost.

So how are these rules good? My 9th level dwarven fighter is the best he can be. Ever. I would much rather be able to be 20th level or 30th level.

I played and DMed 1st edition for a long time. These rules always sucked. And almost every table I played at dropped the racial level limits not because we wanted the ceiling opened up to infinity, but because we wanted to ceiling raised to the same level for everyone.

Oh, I agree, demihuman level limitations sucked, which is why I always ignored them in 1E. Humans, of course, had no level limits.

Thinking about it more though, even if epic rules were something simple, it would be better than a cap. It could be like once you pass level 30, your class changes to "epic". So a 31st level character could be a Fighter 30/Epic 1, but not a Fighter 31.

A possible idea is that an epic character (in 3E terms) gains 5 hit points (modified by Con), an epic (or normal, if desired) feat, +1 to BAB and +1 to all saves. The key is the feat, of course, which can allow a character to gain some abilities that they might otherwise do with a class. Creative energy is now focused on available feats rather than available classes. While going up a level at that point may not be as exciting as getting a level in a particular class, at least it doesn't put a cap on things, and yet still allows for some customability.

[Shemeska]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

If Wizards Did Call of Cthulhu

It's no fair that cultists of the Great Old Ones get all the best magic. Add "good guy" Elder Gods.

So... what you're saying is that 4e is the August Derleth of D&D?

[Treebore]

Just because WOTC capped the game at 30th level doesn't mean innovative DM's and their player groups won't be able to go beyond 30th level. It just means don't expect any company support for such games. Much like such support stopped at 20th level in 1E, 30th level in 2E, and 40th level in OD&D.

You could go beyond those levels, but you had to make up your own rules to do so. Same thing for 4E.

Besides, no one has unlimited potential, and certainly not the potential to become quasi deific, unless the DM wants their game to go there. So in 4E if you wish to go beyond 30th level you will have to make or adapt rules to run "god level" games.

Thats all the 30th level cap means, don't expect WOTC to support play past 30th level. 3 pp's will have to do that.

[billd91]

Originally Posted by Branduil

I don't really get the point of your parody. D&D would suck if it used CoC rules. CoC would suck if it used D&D rules. The games appeal to different tastes.

d20 Call of Cthulhu was a pretty good game. I prefer the BRP version, but the d20 version was well-received.

[Ariosto]

The games appeal to different tastes.

Precisely. D&D appealed to certain tastes, and 4E appeals to different ones. The trouble comes from slapping the "D&D" name on it. Spirit of the Century is (from what little I've seen) a splendid game, but so is CoC -- and SotC is not CoC (or Daredevils, or Justice Inc., or anything but itself).