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"Fear of Monsters" back into 4th Edition
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7214583" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>I hear this again and again about how this or that edition is 'more dangerous', but this is ENTIRELY up to the GM and the table! You can play with as much or as little character mortality and as much or as little adversarial challenge type of play as you wish in any rule set of D&D. Even given the basic standard conditions and expectations of, let us say, 4e the variation can be huge (IE there is no hard and fast rule about how much difficulty a party has to face in a day, and mechanically you can impose harsher or less harsh DCs and whatnot within a broad range and still live within the guidelines in the DMG). </p><p></p><p></p><p>I agree, everything seems to be solved with magic by default assumption in D&D. I think this is simply a dimension of the D&D fantasy genre where wizards and priests can do pretty much anything. Obviously it could be made harder, AD&D tended to have things like curses/diseases that required high level clerics to fix, etc. but that wasn't a really good answer IMHO. These things need to be more plot-driven, which D&D is not good at by default.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I just don't think that 4e is built to be generate nothing but even-level challenges. This is a bit different from the 'old days' where in 1e a 1HD monster was roughly a challenge for a 1st level PC. However, this was NOT universally true AT ALL, and most monsters had special abilities that made them FAR more deadly than a PC of the same nominal 'level'. All 4e ACTUALLY did was make level have a well-established and reliable MEANING. You want hard 4e? Use level+3 encounters stock everywhere and you're very close to what you'd probably run into in most 1e adventures. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The problem is it is the wrong kind of dread. I mean, its a fine thing, there are beholders that are just something you never ever face, because they're stupid deadly. However, things you don't ever face aren't really part of the game... OTOH if you make a creature that has effects that are plot relevant, curses that make you seek out widgets that cure them, or whatever, then you have something that is still terrifying (the curse can have all sorts of terrible effects) but its a LOT more interesting than all the 1e monsters that just poison you to death instantly as soon as they hit unless you save. I never understood what was fun about that. 4e didn't exactly get it right, but it laid a lot more of the groundwork for that possibility (though certainly you can do the same in any edition, I'm not really criticizing one more than another).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7214583, member: 82106"] I hear this again and again about how this or that edition is 'more dangerous', but this is ENTIRELY up to the GM and the table! You can play with as much or as little character mortality and as much or as little adversarial challenge type of play as you wish in any rule set of D&D. Even given the basic standard conditions and expectations of, let us say, 4e the variation can be huge (IE there is no hard and fast rule about how much difficulty a party has to face in a day, and mechanically you can impose harsher or less harsh DCs and whatnot within a broad range and still live within the guidelines in the DMG). I agree, everything seems to be solved with magic by default assumption in D&D. I think this is simply a dimension of the D&D fantasy genre where wizards and priests can do pretty much anything. Obviously it could be made harder, AD&D tended to have things like curses/diseases that required high level clerics to fix, etc. but that wasn't a really good answer IMHO. These things need to be more plot-driven, which D&D is not good at by default. I just don't think that 4e is built to be generate nothing but even-level challenges. This is a bit different from the 'old days' where in 1e a 1HD monster was roughly a challenge for a 1st level PC. However, this was NOT universally true AT ALL, and most monsters had special abilities that made them FAR more deadly than a PC of the same nominal 'level'. All 4e ACTUALLY did was make level have a well-established and reliable MEANING. You want hard 4e? Use level+3 encounters stock everywhere and you're very close to what you'd probably run into in most 1e adventures. The problem is it is the wrong kind of dread. I mean, its a fine thing, there are beholders that are just something you never ever face, because they're stupid deadly. However, things you don't ever face aren't really part of the game... OTOH if you make a creature that has effects that are plot relevant, curses that make you seek out widgets that cure them, or whatever, then you have something that is still terrifying (the curse can have all sorts of terrible effects) but its a LOT more interesting than all the 1e monsters that just poison you to death instantly as soon as they hit unless you save. I never understood what was fun about that. 4e didn't exactly get it right, but it laid a lot more of the groundwork for that possibility (though certainly you can do the same in any edition, I'm not really criticizing one more than another). [/QUOTE]
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