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This is a fork of a side conversation from the Marketing of 4e thread. I felt it was interesting enough to start its own thread.
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Even if I agreed that this was a problem, which I would not, it does not explain the need to get rid of the nine alignments, vancian casting, and rewrite the entire demon/devil cosmology.[/quote]
The problem he was replying to was the difference in numbers between the lowest possible character and the highest possible character in 3e.
I certainly think there were reasons to change these things. Of course, not everyone is going to agree with the reasons. 4e likely wasn't created to fix some of these smaller issues. I think the issue I mentioned was the main reason to create the edition in the first place.
Still, I think that WOTC went into 4e thinking that if they were going to fix the major problem with the underlying math, they might as well fix every other little issue that they had with the game and that people complained about over the past couple of years.
Off the top of my head, I'd say the reasons for the above changes were:
Getting Rid of the Nine Alignments
Constant questions and threads about "How to play your alignment properly", "What would a Lawful Good person due in this situation", "What alignment is Pop Culture Character", "Can Evil characters be in groups with Good characters", "What should Good characters do when they use Detect Evil on someone and they detect it?", "Would a Good church allow Evil worshipers", "How would and Evil character infiltrate a Good church without being detected", "Would a Chaotic Good character turn a prisoner over to the law", and so on.
The 4e version of alignment pretty much says: Most people are Unaligned. You can be good and still have your alignment as Unaligned. You can be evil and have your alignment as Unaligned. If you are particularly evil or good, you might choose an alignment other than Unaligned. Either way, it doesn't matter what your alignment is, since no one can detect it or affect it in any way. Thus, effectively removing the alignment system other than a vague role playing tool to help you figure out how to play your character.
Vancian Casting
One problem with Vancian Casting as it was used in 1e-3e is that is presupposed a certain number of encounters per day. If someone has the ability to cast 3 spells a day, they are unlikely to be able to survive even two battles in a day. Or at least do anything even remotely caster-like in the second one. If someone has 65 spells a day, 15 of which pretty much allow them to kill or negate an enemy outright, 1 battle a day is almost never going to challenge him. If the Cleric has the ability to heal 500 points of damage a day with his combined spells, any battle that does only 50 damage to the party isn't going to register on their radar. If he can only heal 10 points of damage, any battle that deals 50 damage is going to be the only battle they fight that day.
This is pretty much the problem with any "daily" resource. Once it's used up, people will want to get it back. Until it's used up, it feels infinite.
The second problem was one of balance a daily resource with an unlimited one. When you have an unlimited resource(say, the ability to attack with a sword) you can't make it too powerful because you don't want someone to use a powerful ability every round. So, you have to limit its effectiveness. The reverse is true about limited resources. The more limited they are, the more powerful they should be. Otherwise, why bother waiting for them to come back or even using them? If you can attack for 1d6+5 damage every round and you can attack for 1d6+4 damage once a day...well, you'll just forget you have that ability and never use it. Also, if you give one class the ability to do 1d6+5 points of damage 5 times per day and another class the ability to do 1d6+5 points of damage at will, everyone will choose the later class every time.
So, you have a bunch of spells that are limited in the number of times per day they can be used. They NEED to be more powerful than abilities that can be used at will. So, you are creating an imbalance on purpose. Now, people will say "But after those limited resources run out, now that character is LESS powerful than the class with unlimited resources". That's true. But now you are just creating another artificial limit on the number of battles you can use in one day. Use more battles than the caster has spells for and you risk a player getting really bored and annoyed that they have nothing to do during the combat. You also risk the party turning away from adventures in order to recover spells in the middle of a storyline because they are afraid of continuing without their spells. Use less battles than the casters have spells for and you are removing all the advantages of the classes with unlimited resources. Why play a Fighter who can attack unlimited times for 2d6+10 damage when you can play a Wizard who can cast a 10d6 AoE spell every round of every combat?
Sure, some people will play the "bad" classes purely due to theme or role playing reasons. But the majority won't. I realized this when the number of non-casting classes played in my 3.5e games slowly went down to 0 as more and more people figured out these facts.
Rewriting the entire demon/devil cosmology
This one appears to be somewhat a side effect. When WOTC sat down to create the new edition, they decided to question everything in the game to figure out HOW it fit in the game.
They appointed a story team whose entire purpose it was to figure out HOW things get used. They were supposed to examine things like Devils and Demons and say "When a DM wants to use one of these in a game, how do they get used? What reason is there for the PCs to fight these? What kind of stories are they involved in?" And they were specifically told to question everything, no matter how taken for granted they were.
One of the first things they tackled was the planes and their usability in game. What use was snowbank number 1,634,234,123 in the 243th layer of the Abyss in the game? What reason did it have to exist in a game about killing things and taking their stuff, while saving the world from evil? What made it different from snowbank number 2 in terms of how it was used in the game? What made it different from snowbank number 2 in the 1st layer of the Abyss? What made it different from snowbank number 2 in Cormyr?
Those questions led to the changes in the planes we see today. And, once those changes had been made, you need to make sure everything else makes sense. Demons come from the Abyss. Why is there an Abyss? Where is it located? Why do all Demons come from the Abyss? What makes a Demon a Demon? And the worst answer of all when answering these questions is "because it's always been that way". Especially when you can find a better answer.
So, in this case, they said "The Abyss is a dark, evil hole in the Elemental Chaos. The creatures that come from there are Demons...evil, corrupted elementals who want to destroy all of reality and rip it apart. They particularly hate the mortal world. They hate it because they are the foul spawn of the primordials. That gives them a reason to be conflicting with the players. They come to the mortal world to destroy it and the PCs have to stop them."
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To me, 4E is a DnD fantasy game, that has a lot of connections to its predecessors, but is mostly a new game. And that is not a bad thing at all. I hope 5E is also a new game. But all new editions should still pay homage to DnD's past. I would not like to see a game that was totally different called DnD.
On alignment, I think they wanted to simplify it since a lot of people didn't really get it. But they also wanted to satisfy people who like alignment (people like me). They tried to play it somewhere in the middle. I don't like what they did with it and think they would have been wiser to ditch it entirely and use something like the d20 modern allegiance system. Even in that system you can be dedicated to abstract concepts like law, chaos, good, evil, neutrality.
The closest thing on the top of my head that was change for the sake of change in 4e was renaming martial weapons "military weapons".
Last edited by Freakohollik; 15th September 2009 at 10:12 AM..
Off the top of my head, I'd say the reasons for the above changes were:
Getting Rid of the Nine Alignments
The 4e version of alignment pretty much says: Most people are Unaligned. You can be good and still have your alignment as Unaligned. You can be evil and have your alignment as Unaligned. If you are particularly evil or good, you might choose an alignment other than Unaligned. Either way, it doesn't matter what your alignment is, since no one can detect it or affect it in any way. Thus, effectively removing the alignment system other than a vague role playing tool to help you figure out how to play your character.
I think that the 4Ed "solution" was rather poor. Either reducing it to G-U-E or outright removal would have been superior to 4Ed's 5 alignment system- either would have been more intuitive.
And I say that as one who greatly enjoys the 9 alignments and see them as a valuable tool. All of those "moral quandry" threads to me indicate an interest in role-playing your PC at a deep level.
Quote:
Vancian Casting
One problem with Vancian Casting as it was used in 1e-3e is that is presupposed a certain number of encounters per day. If someone has the ability to cast 3 spells a day, they are unlikely to be able to survive even two battles in a day. Or at least do anything even remotely caster-like in the second one.<snip>
The second problem was one of balance a daily resource with an unlimited one. <snip>
You also risk the party turning away from adventures in order to recover spells in the middle of a storyline because they are afraid of continuing without their spells. Use less battles than the casters have spells for and you are removing all the advantages of the classes with unlimited resources. Why play a Fighter who can attack unlimited times for 2d6+10 damage when you can play a Wizard who can cast a 10d6 AoE spell every round of every combat?
Sure, some people will play the "bad" classes purely due to theme or role playing reasons. But the majority won't. I realized this when the number of non-casting classes played in my 3.5e games slowly went down to 0 as more and more people figured out these facts.
Your experience and mine clearly differ greatly. Vancian casting- for me- was part of what gave D&D its unique charm. It helped set D&D apart from all of the other FRPGs I played, NONE of which had anything like it.
And in 30+ years of play, I haven't seen the 15 minute day from either side of the screen. IME, casters who splurge with their spells will soon find themselves throwing daggers and shooting bolts- the party has places to be and foes to kill. And stopping here because you're out of spells is probably not an option.
Nor have I seen a mass gravitation towards spellcasting classes, though I have seen an increase in people multiclassing their PCs into spellcasting classes post-3Ed's release. That, however, just reflects the freedom of the 3.X rules...and its arguably worse from a powergaming standpoint the way I usually see it done.
Because its not all about powergaming, I'd have to say that this is a playstyle thing.
I also dislike the way in which 4Ed handled both balancing things out between the classes- the sameness is numbing to me- and the resource management that used to solely be a concern for casters.
IMHO, it was nice to have classes that had almost no resource management (like the Fighter), and I think the Reserve feats were an elegant solution that I'd like to have seen more fully developed.
Quote:
Rewriting the entire demon/devil cosmology
This one appears to be somewhat a side effect. When WOTC sat down to create the new edition, they decided to question everything in the game to figure out HOW it fit in the game.
This didn't bother me too much. As long as there are supernatural baddies for me and my buddies to smack around, I'm OK with that.
The closest thing on the top of my head that was change for the sake of change in 4e was renaming martial weapons "military weapons".
WotC probably just wanted to avoid confusion. Otherwise, someone somewhere is going to ask something along the lines of, "Can an arcane or divine character use a martial weapon?"
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Last edited by FireLance; 15th September 2009 at 02:36 PM..
Personally I am glad they got rid of Vancian style magic. It never really felt like magic to me and promoted the wizard as light artillery feel.
Now I enjoyed playing sorcerers but they never felt magical in the way characters in fantasy novels did.
So I like what they have done in 4e and in particular rituals. Rituals now have a natural place in the game. It needs a bit of tweaking perhaps but it is there and now works.
I think there was a reason for every change made in 4th edition. WotC had in their minds a very specific vision of what they wanted D&D to become, and many of the old standards of the game didn't fit that.
As to the nine alignments, WotC envisioned a setting where the good-evil axis was emphasized and the law-chaos axis was not. Lawful good now means really good and chaotic evil now means really evil. Since the law-chaos axis was generally a point of confusion, they probably saw a chance to make alignments more understandable to those who were new to the game. Unaligned is basically the same as neutral, but changing the name separates it from the old tradition of true neutrality, which was once all about maintaining balance.
As to Vancian casting, I think that had to be changed because of the new power structure of the game. WotC didn't want a game where playing a wizard was significantly different in mechanics or complexity than playing a fighter. Since every prior edition of D&D has the fighter as a sort of no-frills entry class and the wizard as something much more complex, they had to shift the casting system all around in order to accomplish their goals.
As to the cosmology, since WotC had decided to change alignment, they had to change the cosmology around, too. The old planes were based largely around the old alignment system and the classical elements, both pieces of the game WotC wanted to get away from. Additionally, they seemed to want to make the planes more accessible without high-level magic. While the old planes were dangerous even to walk in and were inaccessible to most characters, the new planes were designed to be potential adventuring sites even to low-level characters if need be.
WotC had a very specific vision to what they wanted the game to be like and designed the new edition around that vision. Specifically, they seemed to want to emphasize the tactical element of combat more, remove certain imbalances in the system, and get rid of some of the arcane elements of the game that might confuse newer players.
I don't think there was any change for change's sake in the new game. I do think that a lot of people, myself included, didn't see the need for these changes to be made. In many views, tactical combat had already been over-emphasized in 3rd edition, the imbalance between the classes made them feel unique and interesting, and the arcane elements of the game gave it a unique charm that other RPGs lacked. In that regard, some people might use the change for change's sake argument because they don't see the old D&D model as something that needed to be broken out of.
Overall, I think 4th edition does what WotC wanted it to do and does that style of game better than any previous edition. I think the big divide is that some people don't want to run that type of game and see the newest revision of D&D as a step away from the style of role-playing they consider fun.
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1) Vancian Casting, prior to 3e, didn't presuppose a set number of encounters per day. This is an artifact, IMHO and IME, of the time it takes to resolve an encounter.
2) I think you missed the real reason for these changes: Distancing the 4e from the OGL.
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With the advent of 4e, I can see WotC thinking they had a great opportunity to streamline a lot of mechanics that have the potential for confusion. In the case of alignment, what works at the game table doesn't work at the bar/restaurant/messageboard.
In my experience, having discussions about an aspect of the game helps to better ground or immerse me in that game. If I'm discussing a question of alignment with my friends at a pub or here at ENWorld, then I'm functioning as a part of the community and investing myself in the game, and both these things ultimately help me to appreciate and enjoy the game more. If things are too simple, then there's simply nothing to discuss and no reason for discussion. It becomes a wasted opportunity in that regard.
We've replaced discussions of "Is this Chaotic Good behaviour?" (largely edition neutral) with "Why Changes were made in 4e" (somewhat edition specific) and cut down the pool of potential replies simply because the community is fractured in some ratio.
Again, better for new players learning the game than for us veterans looking for an interesting topic to read/discuss or situation to resolve.
Rewriting the entire demon/devil cosmology
This one appears to be somewhat a side effect. When WOTC sat down to create the new edition, they decided to question everything in the game to figure out HOW it fit in the game.
They appointed a story team whose entire purpose it was to figure out HOW things get used. They were supposed to examine things like Devils and Demons and say "When a DM wants to use one of these in a game, how do they get used? What reason is there for the PCs to fight these? What kind of stories are they involved in?" And they were specifically told to question everything, no matter how taken for granted they were.
One of the first things they tackled was the planes and their usability in game. What use was snowbank number 1,634,234,123 in the 243th layer of the Abyss in the game? What reason did it have to exist in a game about killing things and taking their stuff, while saving the world from evil? What made it different from snowbank number 2 in terms of how it was used in the game? What made it different from snowbank number 2 in the 1st layer of the Abyss? What made it different from snowbank number 2 in Cormyr?
Those questions led to the changes in the planes we see today. And, once those changes had been made, you need to make sure everything else makes sense. Demons come from the Abyss. Why is there an Abyss? Where is it located? Why do all Demons come from the Abyss? What makes a Demon a Demon? And the worst answer of all when answering these questions is "because it's always been that way". Especially when you can find a better answer.
I'd be surprised if it was anything as in depth as that. As with the massive changes to 4e FR, I suspect the reason had more to do with simply making it easier on the in-house team to write new material by not having to deal with previous meta-canon. And given certain comments by various WotC designers on portions of the past 30 years of cosmology, they may not have had a firm working knowledge of the material in places, or that they just plain didn't like certain parts of it, and being in a position to remake what D&D was, they did just that.
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I'd be surprised if it was anything as in depth as that. As with the massive changes to 4e FR, I suspect the reason had more to do with simply making it easier on the in-house team to write new material by not having to deal with previous meta-canon. And given some comments by various designers on portions of the past 30 years of cosmology, it may also have been that they just plain didn't like certain material, and being in a position to remake what D&D was, they did just that.
Did you read Races & Classes or World & Monsters? It pretty much seemed to me as if they had reasons for all changes they made. (And that'S what made me even more enthusiastic about them.) There was a story team for a reason.
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2) I think you missed the real reason for these changes: Distancing the 4e from the OGL.
Has this ever been officially confirmed on the record by WotC?
I wouldn't be too surprised if this was an underlying motivation for the design of 4E.
In principle, I suppose we'll only know for sure when some of the original 4E designers are willing to "speak their minds" in the future, once they are not working for WotC anymore.
IMHO, changes were made because they were doing a new edition.
The reasons for doing a new edition may be: excessive gloat (or is it bloat?), making more money, 3.x Grapple... whatever. But in the end its a new edition, it HAS to have changes.
Why would they be doing a new edition and make it just like the old one?
Now, about alignment and vancian magic: they just didn't make sense and were not fun.
That is my opinion, of course, and that of many people that embraced 4e from the start, and I'm happy it coincided with WotC design.
Last edited by Wepwawet; 15th September 2009 at 05:01 PM..
Your experience and mine clearly differ greatly. Vancian casting- for me- was part of what gave D&D its unique charm. It helped set D&D apart from all of the other FRPGs I played, NONE of which had anything like it.
And in 30+ years of play, I haven't seen the 15 minute day from either side of the screen. IME, casters who splurge with their spells will soon find themselves throwing daggers and shooting bolts- the party has places to be and foes to kill. And stopping here because you're out of spells is probably not an option.
Wow. When I DM, the only way that I ever get two or more battles into a single day is either to make them trivial or to use ambushes. Players use teleport, hidden lodge, rope trick and other stunts to race back to safety after hitting hard. The result is that I always see a full caster nova effect where they unleash limited abilities (sudden quicken, divine metamagic quicken, pinnacle spells) to annihilate an opponent and then flee.
This does have a major imapct on the viability of non-caster classes (although I still get a ranger in the party by making scouting and tracking extremely important).
This pattern has made me actually ban teleport in the latest round of my rules (to great player annoyance) mostly so that it is possible to get the second encounter (via tracing back the party or ambush) whereas before they would teleport to an secure location and then set up their extra-dimensional hiding palce (remaining until they were back at full power).
I can think of a dozen different systems to reduce alignment to. Think the 9 alignments is too prone to confusion? Do Good/Unaligned/Evil. Want something classic? Law/Neutral/Chaos. Want a bigger group? CG/LG/Un/LE/CE.
What we got was a 5 alignment that doesn't seem to make sense. How is Good different from Lawful-Good? Is LG mostly lawful with a hint of good, or mostly good with a hint of law? (Its seems the former, since a cleric of Pelor can be good or unaligned, but not LG). Ditto Evil/CE. Is CE are more-evil type of evil?, or is it Chaotic Neutral with a cruel and selfish element?
It seems they wanted to to keep the "concept" of LG and CE (as well as their iconic names) so they tacked it onto a G/U/E system as an after-thought. Seriously, I'd rather they have dumped the G/E off LG/CE and made a 5 alignments C/G/U/L/E. I need my needless symmetry!!!!
I'll refrain from commenting on Vancian casting (that said, you don't know sometimes how much you miss something till its gone) and I really could care less about the demon/devil divide (as long as they are still separate and in thier repective planes, I could care less about their origins).
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