How Important is Magic to Dungeons and Dragons? - Third Edition vs Fourth Edition

UngainlyTitan · Apr 23, 2009

Greg K said:
Yeah, my issue with rituals is that there are those like Comprehend Languages that are, imo, ridiculous taking 10 minutes to cast.

Then drop the casting times and the costs also if you feel like it. Rituals costs and casting times are there to prevent the casters overshadowing skill using characters. However, if you are willing to accept some imbalance then there is little to loose by shortening casting times to enable some of them be cast in combat.
Alternatively let the players spend some resource to speed up casting line action points.

hong · Apr 23, 2009

billd91 said:
That has been my experience as well, particularly with one-shot, pregen character games. For each bonus that pops up, there's no learning curve to it like there is for multi-round durations. You pretty much get one chance to learn the bonuses and apply them before they're gone.

There certainly is a learning curve. It just happens to be one that works over multiple encounters. Furthermore, a multi-round duration would appear to have precious little to do with a learning curve, given that the duration is fixed once you cast the spell. Not much learning can take place, at least not if it's to be applied to that encounter.

Taking one-shot pregen games as an indicator of how things might fare in a campaign does not seem to be wise. This is something to keep in mind when the default mode of play in D&D is the campaign.

I think we'd have had an easier time with long-standing characters that we had developed over time, but I do think one-shot 4e games above a certain level have serious challenges.

This is something that Scott Rouse has already noted in the other thread.

Mournblade94 · Apr 23, 2009

hong said:
It is not particularly complicated to handle these effects. You simply let the players do the bookkeeping for their own characters, rather than trying to keep track of everything yourself. As someone who has played to 13th level with 2 leaders in the group, this has not been an issue.

I agree it is easy to track effects in 4e. I do not find it any easier than 3rd edition. In fact I find tracking effects to be one of the simplest things I have ever done. Most all things that were simplified to the 4e system did not need to be. I find it hard to beleive that anyone would have trouble with 3rd edition math.

hong · Apr 23, 2009

Mournblade94 said:
I agree it is easy to track effects in 4e. I do not find it any easier than 3rd edition. In fact I find tracking effects to be one of the simplest things I have ever done. Most all things that were simplified to the 4e system did not need to be. I find it hard to beleive that anyone would have trouble with 3rd edition math.

3E state is complicated by duration, and by the fact that the pre-combat buffing ritual could involve up to half a dozen spells (or more) at high levels. Furthermore, you then had the possibility of dispel magic removing a random subset of those buffs, thus forcing a recalculation mid-fight.

You will rarely find situations where half a dozen powers have ongoing effects in 4E. Even if you did, they would probably all vanish at the end of the round, unlike 3E state which required you to track each buff individually (and that could be in rounds, minutes, hours, etc). Nor do you have to worry about dispel magic stripping half your buffs at any instant.

It is possible that some ppl never had to worry about these matters, of course. Perhaps they only played 3E up to 9th level or so, where the buffing meta would still be relatively undeveloped. Or maybe they never had spellcasters in the party. Or maybe they never deliberately looked at buffs. Regardless, they were not the ones who had an impact on the 3E zeitgeist, which is what ultimately informed the changes in 4E.

And ultimately, even if you find things no easier in 4E than in 3E, you will also not find it harder. Hence it's a win-win all round.

Wulf Ratbane · Apr 23, 2009

hong said:
The plural of bonus is bonae. Hope this helps!

The plural of bonus (used as a noun in English) is bonuses (in English).

The plural of bonus (in Latin, a masculine adjective meaning "good") is boni.

Adjectives agree in case, gender, and number with the noun they modify. Thus you could see bonus/boni, or bona/bonae.

Granted it's been 20 years since I took latin, but I'm pretty sure bonus/bonae is the ullshitbay.

hong · Apr 23, 2009

Wulf Ratbane said:
The plural of bonus (used as a noun in English) is bonuses (in English).

The plural of bonus (in Latin, a masculine adjective meaning "good") is boni.

Adjectives agree in case, gender, and number with the noun they modify. Thus you could see bonus/boni, or bona/bonae.

Granted it's been 20 years since I took latin, but I'm pretty sure bonus/bonae is the ullshitbay.

Aw mang, don't tell me you've already forgotten that the plural of ninja is ninjae. This is a simple extension of that.

But then noone ever listens to meeee

Mustrum_Ridcully · Apr 23, 2009

Mournblade94 said:
I agree it is easy to track effects in 4e. I do not find it any easier than 3rd edition. In fact I find tracking effects to be one of the simplest things I have ever done. Most all things that were simplified to the 4e system did not need to be. I find it hard to beleive that anyone would have trouble with 3rd edition math.

The advantage of 4E is it tells you exactly what the modifier will do.

You get a +2 bonus to attack and a +3 bonus to damage.

A +4 bonus to Strength in 3E might have done the same, if you were wielding a two-handed weapon. And it would have increased your Climb, Jump and Swim skill. Maybe that's totally irrelevant at the time of casting, and it stays that way. Maybe it becomes important just 3 rounds later, but you have forgotten that the effect applies to this, too. Maybe that's also totally unimportant, since with a +32 Jump modifier (without the buff) you don't have to worry about jumping a 20 ft wide area. Maybe it's important, since you modifier is only +7 normally for the same distance.

Something that seems like one effect actually has several. That's what makes them a little harder.

But: I think people might actually handle modifiers and effects differently. Maybe some find it actually easier to track durations over multiple rounds, or they use combat matrixes describing their various attack modifiers with common buffs. I don't know for sure. I only know that I could deal with both, but prefer the simple duration types of 4E with "End of Next Turn" and "End of Encounter", and buffs that tell me which values I have to modify.

Nebulous · Apr 23, 2009

Mouseferatu said:
That said, everyone can have spellcasting ability, if they want it. Anyone can get the Ritual Caster feat, after all.

I've hardly seen rituals cast at all, that's been our experience. I've handed them out, but the players forget they have them, or there is no immediate use or time is too pressing. Which leads me to another thing, i really don't like the idea of non-spellcasters using rituals, so i'll probably ban that except in extreme situations. That right there will help wizards feel more "magical" and give them an edge up, but what i don't feel is overbalancing. Or if it needs balancing, i would be inclined to lessen their combat prowess.

I'm in agreement with the OP that while i do like 4e and feel it makes many significant improvements over 3.x, the magic system has been somewhat kicked in the nads. Martial classes kick butt though.

Ultimately, i feel that tweaking the ritual rules will make the game feel more like the kind of game i want to run.

Mallus · Apr 23, 2009

Nebulous said:
I've hardly seen rituals cast at all, that's been our experience.

My group uses them fairly regularly to do the run-of-the-mill impossible things like speaking w/the dead.

Which leads me to another thing, i really don't like the idea of non-spellcasters using rituals, so i'll probably ban that except in extreme situations.

Be definition, any character with the Ritual Casting Feat is a spellcaster. Because they can cast spells (they just not combat spellcasters like wizards or sorcerers).

In the same way any character w/Thievery is technically a thief.

ferratus · Apr 23, 2009

I really don't understand why people feel granting the ritual caster feat is any different from multiclassing.

However, I have noticed that my players refuse to cast rituals. I'm handing them out like candy, but the player's aren't checking them out between sessions so they aren't thinking about them in session.

In the other two games I'm playing, I have the opposite problem. Neither DM is handing out rituals, so I'm trying desperately to buy them up. Thank goodness my wizard gets free rituals!

Both situations are getting me frustrated, but it seems to be centering from

a) A lack of ritual cards like we have power cards in the character builder.
b) The lack of a random treasure table that includes rituals. In both games the DM's are handing out random treasure, but they are using AV magical tables as their random tables and that doesn't include rituals.

How Important is Magic to Dungeons and Dragons? - Third Edition vs Fourth Edition

UngainlyTitan

Legend

hong

WotC's bitch

Mournblade94

Adventurer

hong

WotC's bitch

Wulf Ratbane

Adventurer

hong

WotC's bitch

Mustrum_Ridcully

Hero

Nebulous

Legend

Mallus

Legend

ferratus

Adventurer

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