Another Grognard Reviews 4e based on KotS

[Jim Williams]

I prefer a campaign where the characters I played and my friends played as kids...Being able to tell a good friend he could use his first ever D&D character in my 3e campaign...the idea that though a player can die, their characters live on forever.

Very cool haakon1...very cool.

I was a Navy brat and did my own time in the Army. I've settled down since, but a long-term campaign like this was not in the cards for me.

I think it goes without saying that the game needs to be fun, otherwise why play it. Even if 4E winds up being a blast, the continuity ramifications will impact long-term campaigns differently. These creations are labors of love and the amount of work to convert to a new ruleset will just be too daunting (or just plain distasteful) for some folks.

For you specifically haakon1, your campaign sounds very personal and too cool to worry about converting unless 4E suits you and your group. And so I say game on as you always have because fun is more important than whatever edition you're running.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

^^^
This is perfect. No value judgements about any style or edition. Game on in the way that suits you.

 

[Mister Doug]

Actually, many many aspects of it are real life. Gravity. Wind. Weapons. Food. Commerce.

The argument that DND does not simulate these well does not mean that it does not model them.

DND is a model of the real world combined with a model of a magical world. Always has been. The real world model elements allow people to comprehend and co-relate to what is happening, regardless of whether what is happening is magical or not.

A fireball still burns.

The Fighter in 4E now has powers. People can model those powers in their head as mundane, but they really are not. The ability to automatically damage a creature because it does not do an attack against you is not mundane weapon skill or positioning advantage. It is a superpower (or a different type of magic) disguised as a mundane combat ability.

I would argue that modeling a consistent world has never existed in the rules. Hit points, leveling, classes, falling damage, class abilities, etc. have all been criticized for a long time for good reason.

AD&D is not a simulation even of a fantasy world. This is not a criticism, but holding up one version of D&D as more realistic than another is like claiming one type of fried chicken is more healthy than another. There may be a difference, but we're splitting hairs pointlessly in the comparison.

Now, different flavors of D&D may better fit your taste, your sense of verisimilitude, or whatever, but none of those makes any edition of D&D a particularly accurate, complete, or developed model of anything.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

I would argue that modeling a consistent world has never existed in the rules. Hit points, leveling, classes, falling damage, class abilities, etc. have all been criticized for a long time for good reason.

AD&D is not a simulation even of a fantasy world. This is not a criticism, but holding up one version of D&D as more realistic than another is like claiming one type of fried chicken is more healthy than another. There may be a difference, but we're splitting hairs pointlessly in the comparison.

Now, different flavors of D&D may better fit your taste, your sense of verisimilitude, or whatever, but none of those makes any edition of D&D a particularly accurate, complete, or developed model of anything.

Except itself. Until now. I like 4e because they have claimed that you will easily and reliably be able to change it to model other fantasy literature sources than D&D. I will admit it will model them as badly as it did itself, but at least it can model them as well.

 

[Henry]

There's one thing that bugs me:

*People complain that 4e is not a good game*
"Why are you complaining about a game you haven't seen?

*People play the DDXP demo and offer criticism*
"That's like criticizing a movie trailer!"

*People play Keep on the Shadowfell and criticize 4e*
"You still haven't seen enough to critique it!"

*People critique the game with the full rules*
"Did you even really read the rules? I bet you weren't running them right!"

I haven't seen the last one yet, but I'm fully expecting to.

My question is: If you don't critique with even the full rules, when CAN you critique? I would argue that if people don't like parts of 4e, or even any of it, by Keep on the Shadowfell, then they stand a very good and valid chance of not liking the game. The first two instances I can sympathize with; the DDXP still wasn't enough to get the full experience.

However, having seen the rough stages of Keep on the Shadowfell (not the full module yet), and knowing where they planned to go with it, what it intended to introduce, it's as close to playing the first three levels of D&D 4 as you're going to get; it's not some half-approximation of the first three levels, it's at the least 90% the same. If it can't give you a good idea of the rules, then nothing, not even the full rules, will do a lot better. The full rules might help a fence-straddler, but it's not going to be radically different from what is in the rules.

That said, I liked the review, Haakon. I honestly think it's a game system that even grognards of 1e could probably live with, if they got to know it without condemning it automatically, due to its many elements that hearken back to earlier editions of the game. Even more, it's more modular than 3e in practice, from what I can tell, and you can fiddle with some very basic conventions like healing surges without destroying everything.

 

[mmadsen]

The Fighter in 4E now has powers. People can model those powers in their head as mundane, but they really are not. The ability to automatically damage a creature because it does not do an attack against you is not mundane weapon skill or positioning advantage. It is a superpower (or a different type of magic) disguised as a mundane combat ability.

I don't find it the least bit supernatural that a skilled swordsman can do "free" damage to someone who doesn't fight back. That's actually fairly realistic. What doesn't work is that this ability is specific to some tiny subset of fighters in the game -- who aren't Fighters but Paladins.

People complained about the "Sorry, you don't have that feat" element of 3E, but 4E seems to be taking the idea much, much further. (Or am I missing something?)

 

[Fifth Element]

The Fighter in 4E now has powers. People can model those powers in their head as mundane, but they really are not. The ability to automatically damage a creature because it does not do an attack against you is not mundane weapon skill or positioning advantage. It is a superpower (or a different type of magic) disguised as a mundane combat ability.

Even if your example were accurate (and as pointed out above, it is not), you're only arguing from your own perception. You admit that people can model these powers as being mundane. That's all you need. Just because you have trouble doing so does not mean that they are "really" magic. That's only your perception. All of this stuff is make-believe. To argue that certain parts of this make-believe can only be interpreted in a certain way is simply ridiculous.

I'm sure if I tried hard enough I could argue that all the warlock's spells are just mundane powers dressed up as magic.

Edit: Just to make sure I'm clear - you state: "People can model those powers in their head as mundane", and then argue they are wrong. But everything that happens in D&D happens in people's heads! It's a game of imagination! If it happens as a mundane power in someone's head, then it's a mundane power because the game world only exists in the minds of the players.

 

[Dacileva]

Good review, but I had a few points I wanted to address.

-- No longer a simulation of anything but itself.

At no point has any edition of D&D ever been anything else. Every edition has had glaring inconsistencies that didn't mesh with any set of fantasy literature, movies, myth, or reality.

Fighters did what fighters did in medieval times -- wear armor, swing weapons, fire bows, kill and be killed. The fighter class, for the first time since Chainmail, has been deleted in all but name.

And good riddance--doing nothing but swinging weapons and wearing armor is boring. The fighter class in every edition prior to 3.x was by a large margin the least interesting class to play. The fighter in 3.x was getting a bit better, but when there were alternatives that were more interesting and filled the same role, people frequently took them.

The fighter has now has magical power of healing

No more so than any other character (and see below, though others have also addressed it so far).

and of mind controling enemies into attacking them.

The fighter does not mind control anyone into anything without multiclassing into a mind-control power. Neither does the warlord or the paladin.

But wait, it doesn't mention magic or psionics to explain what a Healing Surge is or what it means to Mark an Opponent.

Perhaps that would be a good indication that these effects are neither magical nor psionic.

Since hit points in 4e are even more explicitly not directly tied to physical injury, but more often a combination of fatigue, minor injuries and near-misses, healing surges would therefore be more like a bolstering of one's reserves of energy, a grim setting of the teeth to fight on through fatigue and minor injuries... Akin to gaining a "second wind", if you will.

Marking is, from its effects, the act of pressing a foe in such a way as to make it difficult for the foe to ignore you. That's all. Nothing about marking "forces" anyone to do anything; it just means the foe's attention is split when they try to attack someone other than the marker.

And on that note, elsewhere in the thread, Lizard brought up multimarking:

And when Fighter 2 does the same thing, you suddenly become less pressed by fighter 1? And you can't decide which foe is more dangerous and focus on them?

"Mark erasing", while perhaps vital from a game balance perspective, really strains any attempt to narrate what's happening in combat.

Jim Fighterson: I attack the ogre, then press the attack, feinting and jabbing and otherwise keeping the monster's attention (in other words, I mark the dragon).

GM: Okay, the ogre is marked. He's now at a -2 penalty to attack without including Jim in the attack, and Jim, since he's pressing forward, has his "usable against marked foes" options available. Sam, your turn.

Sam Piouspaladin: Well, the others seem to have the minions and the caster well in hand, so I'll attack the ogre myself, calling down the wrath of Bahamut upon him. By "divine wrath of Bahamut", of course, I mean I mark him with Divine Challenge.

GM: Right. Sam pushes close to the ogre and smashes his mace against its side. It reels, swinging away from Jim. Sam's furious attack now has the ogre's attention, and Jim, Sam being in the ogre's face makes it too difficult for you to keep up your pressing, so you fall back and your mark fades. Sam, the ogre's now marked by you, and is at a -2 penalty to attack without including Sam in the attack (and he'll take radiant damage from the wrath of Bahamut if he does, anyway).

Seems pretty feasible to me.

 

[Treebore]

ITs simple. Buy 4E if:

You don't like what your doing now.

Are looking to play an RPG and you can only find 4E games.

You know, at first I was very upset about 4E. I've been outside of mainstream D&D for several years now. 4E is just making me that much further outside of "D&D".

Fortunately I now have my own games going with teh game I prefer to play.

So now all 4E is to me is just another way to play a fantasy game. Its in the same company with GURPS, Paladium, HARP, Rolemaster, etc... Its another way to play a fantasy game, trying to find whatever it is you want to find in a fantasy game.

4E is not what I want to find in a fantasy game. Simple as that. If you have similar feelings its OK. You'll still find your game, if you wish too.

Obviously a large number of 3E players and GM's secretly disliked/hated 3E and are now anxiously waiting to play the new game on the block. Hopefully they will find whatever it was they weren't getting out of 3E.

Those of you still happy with 3E, keep playing. As long as its fun, who cares?

4E caters to the "new crowd". They are the ones who will like 4E, because its new. Its different. It does things differently. Who knows? It may actually have superior mechanics. Still, it is not going to give everyone what they like or want out of a fantasy game.

For those people, there is 3E. There is GURPS, there is HARP, True20, Rolemaster, older versions of D&D, or a system that can utilize all of them (mine). There are other things entirely.

We just need to quit with all this attitude about "what I play is the best way to play!" It is, for you and hopefully your group. What I like isn't what everyone else likes, what is 4E isn't what I like, but is going to be liked by many.

I have accepted this, and I think gamers in general should accept this as well, and stop with the "Mine is better than yours!" stuff. We are gamers. We play RPG's. We share a hobby. Thats all that matters.

Lets game!

 

[Fifth Element]

Seems pretty feasible to me.

No, you're missing the general anti-4E point: there is only one way to imagine the in-game effect of any particular rules mechanic.