A Thread For Those Somewhere In The Middle

So, we're hearing that people are getting up in arms on both sides of the issue.

Some people think 4e will be the second coming of Gygax.

Some people think 4e will be more like a plague and a pox upon all that is good and holy.

Me? I think 4e will be a lot like every other edition of D&D. It'll be good. Perhaps still the best game on the market. It will have it's flaws. Perhaps some pretty big ones.

But overall, I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm reserving ultimate judgment, and watching the news with interest. I have perhaps a few concerns. I love perhaps a few things they're doing.

So this thread is to assert your neutrality. Tell me you're withholding judgment. Tell me something good, and something bad (but not just one or the other!). Tell me what you hope and what you fear (but not just one or the other!). Give me a deal-breaker and a deal maker! Let us slightly-more-rational individuals have our voices heard!

If you hate 4e already, don't post in this thread.

If you love 4e already, don't post in this thread.

If you're somewhere in the middle, let us know you exist!

I guess I consider myself neutral on it.

I like the idea behind per encounter maneuvers for all the classes. While i loved the style of vancian magic it only really worked if you had enough encounters per day that people had to conserve there spells and use them wisely. I believe the per encounter mechanic can fit a much wider range of game styles, and it will hopefully allow al classes to pull off really cool stunts.

I'm not happy when I hear about things being cut for a later book. Especially when those things cut are fairly basic fantasy concepts, that were previously core. I even more especially don't like it when it was cut for reasons other than space. And i get more frustrated when things seem like they are getting perma cut because they didn't spend the time to fix them,so its just a cut which is easier.

Yeah. Pretty much describes me. I've been seeing encouraging signs, but the things I don't like haven't been deal-breakers.

I really, really like the slower (universal) progression of Base Attack. I love that basci ogres will be usable for more than 2 or 3 levels, which is one of the most frustrating things with 3e for me. I hope that the gap between different classes in melee doesn't get too wide, but overall I'm encouraged by what I've seen there.

I'm not particularly happy about the inclusion of tieflings in the PHB as a playable race. I'm not fond of Planescape, nor of the "tainted by evil" concept for PCs. I really don't know much about how Wizards will handle it, but it doesn't resonate with me.

(The other thing I don't like are some of the new names. Feywild? Urgh. I understand why it's that instead of Faerie - intellectual property. Just don't have to like it).

(Another thing I like is Wizards having implements that do something. I like the idea of having a magical staff that actually helps my magic. )

Cheers!

MerricB said:

(Another thing I like is Wizards having implements that do something. I like the idea of having a magical staff that actually helps my magic. )

Cheers!

Click to expand...

I wasn't fond of how they were introduced, but yeah the concept of a magical focus is cool to me.

cautiously opitimistic.

I can't comment on how good it is until I play it.

Will there be thing that I'll love about 4e? yep. Will there be things that I'll be griping about after playing it a few times? Yep.

I like the direction they've been taking in therory...how well did they put it into play? June will tell.

Kamikaze Midget said:

Me? I think 4e will be a lot like every other edition of D&D. It'll be good. Perhaps still the best game on the market. It will have it's flaws. Perhaps some pretty big ones.

But overall, I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm reserving ultimate judgment, and watching the news with interest. I have perhaps a few concerns. I love perhaps a few things they're doing.

Click to expand...

I'm about the same. There's some good ideas. The idea of a feat tree or whatever sounds good. Points of light? That's an excellent approach to the game.

But there's bad stuff. Leaving out classes and having a PHB every year to add new stuff? That sounds like it will glut things up. Especially if the initial PHB doesn't have Bard or Druid. I can live without Monks, Barbarians, or Sorcs IMC, but Bards and Druids just feel a bit more archtypical to me. And there's some stuff I don't want to use, like Warforged.

Then there's stuff that falls in between. At first, I didn't like the idea of an eladrin race, but now it sounds like they're the weakest ranks of the eladrin, and it kind of harkens back to the Eldar of Tolkien's work. In which case I like it. And wizards? Was Vancian magic really that unpopular? I can see getting rid of it, the places it has ever existed in fantasy was the Dying Earth and D&D. The whole wizard class at this pint seems unrecognizable, some of the elements sound good, but a lot of it is pretty alien to me. OTOH, making sure the wizard can meaningfully contribute in every round isn't necessarily bad, especially in this age of the MMO where a caster's going to be able to to more than 1 1st level spell/day.

I'm gonna remain neutral until I see the books. I mean, there's stuff that sounds great in blog posts, and stuff that sounds bad in blog posts, but how do you really know unless you see it for yourself?

I agree with the general negative sentiment about doling out bits of material in successive iterations of the core books. It may be enough to keep me from buying into the new edition for several years, because I'll want to wait and see how it all looks when it's put together.

The main reason I follow this part of the forum is to plunder ideas for hacking the current game.

I feel like the new edition will have certainly a good bunch of problems less than 3e. But I'm saddened by the fact that many of those problems will be eliminated by throwing away the baby with the dirty water. Polymorph is problematic, so 4e has no polymorph at all (at least for a while). Level drain is problematic, so 4e has no level drain at all. Save-or-die are problematic, etc... It's simpler, but at the expense of interesting things.

I think it will be faster to run combats. This is a good thing for everyone: those who love combats can have x3 combats per evening compared to the previous edition (more combats and just as little RP as before); those who don't love combats can spend 1/3 of the time they needed before (more RP and just as few combats as before).

There are lots of small/big changes that point to more cinematics and "gamism". It's hard for me to even choose what I want to play: an exciting gamist's game or an intriguing simulationist's game? I've always oscillated between the two... I hate superheroes, so I don't want Superman or Darth Vader, but if I can make my game remind us of Indiana Jones and James Bond (highly cinematic, but still humans) that's fantastic. Some of the ideas introduced by 4e sound too detached from reality for my tastes (particularly the new healings), and they seem very hard to bring back to the ground. It's just that while I certainly like something exciting, on the long run I will lose interest if things are over the top.

One more thing that has me split, is power creep. It doesn't require a 4e-hater to recognize that through the years characters' power always go up (although this time, spellcasters may not go so much up). You can't just compare PCs in different editions directly by level, but the tendency is always to add something to the PC, assuming this means always good. Just to make an example: skills. The 3.0 system was totally fine; 3.5 gave more skill points, made some skills free, and others 2-for-1; 4e will give even more skills and will make you good also in the ones you don't have. Why is it always a power-up? Is it really because the game needs it? Does the game really even get better? I am not so sure!

I am talking about giving characters more aces up their sleeves, not just bumping up the number which means nothing because they'd bump the monsters' numbers up as well. I know by personal experience that if you give too many aces, the players will not use them, they will just bloat their character sheet. Maybe the player will drool by looking at his 100 spells, but will end up using the same bunch of spells as before. For skills it saddens me, because I've seen so many times players asking for more skill points ("they are so needed") and then never using their damn skills!

And know that personally I am a player of spellcasters, so I definitely want flexibility! I'm just skeptic about when this is done so easily. On one hand, I am certainly happy if Fighters get more maneuvers (note that they already had quite a few in 3e core rules). On the other hand I wonder, if they stack lots of per-encounter abilities, so many that after a few level you can use one (different) per-encounter ability each turn... then what is the point of it being per-encounter anymore?

Lots of questions, lots of doubts as you can see

MerricB said:

Yeah. Pretty much describes me. I've been seeing encouraging signs, but the things I don't like haven't been deal-breakers.

I really, really like the slower (universal) progression of Base Attack. I love that basci ogres will be usable for more than 2 or 3 levels, which is one of the most frustrating things with 3e for me. I hope that the gap between different classes in melee doesn't get too wide, but overall I'm encouraged by what I've seen there.

I'm not particularly happy about the inclusion of tieflings in the PHB as a playable race. I'm not fond of Planescape, nor of the "tainted by evil" concept for PCs. I really don't know much about how Wizards will handle it, but it doesn't resonate with me.

(The other thing I don't like are some of the new names. Feywild? Urgh. I understand why it's that instead of Faerie - intellectual property. Just don't have to like it).

(Another thing I like is Wizards having implements that do something. I like the idea of having a magical staff that actually helps my magic. )

Cheers!

Click to expand...

I'm also mildly optimistic, but I worry about a curveball error/flaw to their logic that ends up ruining it for me. For instance, I worry when I hear talk of enabling fighters to have magic powers of healing at higher levels. Why would this happen for a character who is a non-caster? Why not just multi-class into cleric or another divine spellcasting class?

As for tieflings and other planetouched, I don't mind their inclusion at all. My campaigns typically were set in worlds that were 'cracked' by multi-planar fissures. But then again, it does wreck some DM's more Tolkien-esque mileu. By allowing a cambion as a PC race, one now has to worry about all sorts of campaign effecting considerations.

I also second the notion of worry about an annual player's handbook that includes once-core concepts! Why do I have to wait for mind flayer stats?! That is one of the first monsters I want to see in the new edition (since the BBEG is probably going to be a CR 18 mind flayer sorcerer) and them not being there means I can't convert my 3.5e campaign without doing my own conversion (which I hate doing).

C.I.D.

I can't wait for the new rules set.

But a lot of the implied flavor, the monster redesigns, the DDI and how the concept of the annual new core books has come across make me cringe.


cheers