Okay people, a little wake up call.

[Byronic]

Oh, you want EVERYONE ELSE to be bad at skills you're extra good at? Well, in that case, you're out of luck.

... that's an interesting conclusion. I don't see how other people being bad at something somehow enhances my happiness. Well, at least not in an RPG. Which you hopefully do with friends...

and the renaissance man concept was just an example. It's not something I made.

I'm thinking you might have meant to say something else there that just didn't come across. Maybe you can clarify?

You're quite correct in that. I might look it over later on and try and find out what happened. Maybe I can explain my point better (or perhaps I might be terribly wrong, anything is possible )

Having said that it's quite likely I'll shrug my shoulders, remind myself it's only an internet thread and plan my 4.0 Chronicle and develop my setting. I'm pretty sure I can do most of it by the time my books arrive.

 

[Jack Colby]

4E has aquatic combat rules. 3E didn't have those. It was too dumbed down!

 

[Hussar]

Re: The power of wizards.

Come on. Do a Google search on the general board for every poll dedicated to ranking the relative power of the classes. Cleric/Druid/Wizard come up 1, 2, 3 EVERY time.

Just because CoDzilla was that much farther ahead of the wizard didn't make the wizard not overpowered. Umpteen Polymorph nerfs weren't always directed at the druid.

 

[StarFyre]

problems i find

the problems i find is that all the classes are essentially the same. All abilities do 1[W] or 2[W], etc...or burst 1, 2, etc.

There is no point to having the classes. A better system would have been no classes, just choose whatever powers you want.

I find the quest for exact balance pointless. Instead, DMs and the DMG should strive to learn how to make battles, puzzles, etc something that can involve 75%+ of the party every time.

I can think of 3 large encounters I had in the game I run, where everyone got involved even though, many would argue "the wizard is too powerful, this game sucks". The way I did it, and the improv (due to in 1 case, me forgetting the board!!! <--- most fun players ever had, just doing pure improv), made every player/class have their time to shine. AND, the best partof it all, the areas where they got to shine made sense. The tactical combats that ensued were TRULY tactical and not the artificial/forced tactics of 4E, and everyone was happy.

Sanjay

 

[smathis]

Not true. If the DM considers the encounter dealt with by the skill contest, even in 3E, XP could certainly be involved. 3E dispensed with the idea that the creatures in the encounter had to be killed.

You're right on that. I may have misspoke. My point was more along the lines of "now there is a system for awarding XP for non-combat encounters that's as robust (meaning less handwavy) as the system of rewards for combat encounters".

I know that the DMG said the DM could award XP for solving encounters with non-combat skills. But there wasn't any sort of "This is a skill challenge. It's complexity 4, level 3 and worth 500 XP".

It was more like "There's a tribe of goblins. You used Diplomacy to win them to your side. You get the XP as if you'd beaten them up."

In the context of my post, I'm willing to admit that #4 was probably an oversight on my part.

The granularity of the 3E skill system helped make this easy to do, with non-combat, background-style skills. But then, I always try make sure that these sorts of choices can pay off for PCs every once in a while. It's part of making an ensemble of PCs work so that no single one is the star all the time in the course of a campaign.

It's really a wonderful game no matter what edition, isn't it?

In my experience the granularity of the 3e skill system resulted in wasted skill points that were better spent on Spot, Notice, Hide, Search and Tumble.

That's entirely due to 3e being able to support many different kinds of groups and expectations. I think if you give 4e a try -- or just hang with 3e and keep an open mind about 4e -- you'll find that it's just as robust as 3e in regards to skills.

At the very least, I think it comes down to what's easiest -- giving a bonus for some sort of background keyword in 4e (as Mearls has suggested in his blog) or implementing 4e's skill challenge mechanic in 3e. Because I don't see many groups continuing much farther forward in 3e without bringing that onboard -- as well as the Trained/Untrained skills.

But it's all down to a matter of taste. I think we can respectfully agree to disagree because our experience with 3e is so divergent.

If we were in the same group, I'd run a 4e game and you'd run a 3e game and we'd probably both have a heck of a time.

As long as the dice keep rolling, I think it's all good.

 

[Stomphoof]

Me, my roomate, and my coworker all prefer 4th Ed after having played KotS. I have done some RPing, we had a good hour + in a 5 hour session of RPing and non combat encountery stuff.

Hell, I even made the first night they stayed in Winterhaven the Lords birthday, so there was a party and small talk and stuff

It was amusing to say the least.

And I have even decided what I shall be doing once KotS is done (as I am going to let them make new PC's and new Henchies when we get the full rulebook on Friday) and shall be using KotS as a springboard into a greater story arc with lots of "side quests" and the like. I am even going to incorporate Winterhaven and Fallcrest and the like into a larger world.

Fun times. And the social encounter / skill challenge system has me stoked

In the End I think this can be said

"The game is what you make of it"

 

[Sledge]

I'll admit, you've piqued my interest. What's missing?

The 3.5 PHB TOC goes:
Intro
Steps for Character Creation
1. Abilities
2. Races
3. Classes
4. Skills
5. Feats
6. Description
7. Equipment
8. combat
9. Adventuring
10. Magic
11. Spells

The 4E PHB goes:
1. How to play (which includes the introduction and core mechanic, which is actually it's own heading now)
2. Making characters (includes Ability Scores and Creation Summary)

These two chapters at around 30 pages replace 1, 6, and bits of 2, 3, 8 in terms of mechanics. This piecemeal grab makes it very hard to judge size but I would say that most of description didn't make the transfer.

3. Races

due to additional mechanics and the additional race this section is actually bigger now.

4. Classes

Much more page space here as well, however if we exclude the lists of powers and pretend they are spells then we seen that the fluff and base information has dropped to around half of what is in 3e. This from my reading is most of the material you would find in each class before that "game rule information" heading.

5. Skills

This area everyone knows is cut down. It is 26 pages cut to 11 or so when you account for font.

6. Feats

For a section with supposedly many more feats (haven't counted them myself) this section is just a tad smaller than 3 when we account for font.

7. Equipment (including magic items, which is new)

Okay now with so much additional information this should be huge, and even with the font increase accounted for this section is about half again the size it was in 3. Now if we are picky we note that the content that somewhat matches 3 is in only the first quarter of the chapter.

8. Adventuring

With a font comparision this chapter has lost a couple pages. One of which (carrying) was squished into equipment though.

9. Combat (which has a page # for bull rush, grab, run, etc)

This is a sneaky little chapter because so much of combat is actually spread out in earlier chapters. This means that after accounting for font size this chapter is a few pages smaller than in 3.

10. Rituals
What's missing? (and if you say "spells" I will personally cast Defenestrating Sphere on your ass)

Well I'm sorry but that is where the remainder is... even adding the powers to the rituals as an all encompassing "magic" category, 4e has reduced this section by something like 40plus pages. This is also while giving massive quantities of powers to every single class. Some of this is countered because by stripping 90% of the fluff powers are much smaller than spells used to be. Still the wizard and cleric have gone from around 120 pages to something like 40 pages.
Now I would be interested if anyone has done an actual count of how many powers each class has and how many rituals there are and how that compares to spell counts in 3e.

 

[Serensius]

the problems i find is that all the classes are essentially the same. All abilities do 1[W] or 2[W], etc...or burst 1, 2, etc.

There is no point to having the classes. A better system would have been no classes, just choose whatever powers you want.

This. I totally agree; reading through my 3e splatbooks now, what draws my interest when reading about new classes/feats etc is their mechanical distinction, like "Wow, this ability is awesome!". I just can't see that happening while reading a 4e book.

Instead, DMs and the DMG should strive to learn how to make battles, puzzles, etc something that can involve 75%+ of the party every time.

Problem is, most DMs don't WANT to strive: They want to play D&D.

 

[Mark Hope]

According to the SRD, "Complex Skill Checks" are only performed with one skill (rolled against multiple times). And there's no guidelines for failed rolls. As in, "4 failures mean you lose".

Just wanna chip in on this, as Unearthed Arcana and its SRD do contain this information (at least, the one from Sovelior Sage does - not sure which you're referencing):

"In such a case, a specific number of successful skill checks must be achieved to complete the task. The complexity of the task is reflected in the DC of the required check, the number of successful rolls required to complete the task, and the maximum number of failed rolls that can occur before the attempt fails. In most cases, one or two failed rolls does not mean that a complex skill check has failed, but if three failed rolls occur before the character makes the required number of successful rolls, the attempt fails. Although three failures is a common baseline, game masters are encouraged to change the number if the situation warrants it."

That same passage is also in the UA SRD, right near the start of the section on Complex Skill checks.

2. Skill challenges / complex skill checks can now span wider breadths of time. Rolls no longer need to be performed in successive "rounds".

Again, this is also covered in UA and in the SRD:

Each die roll is one portion of a complex skill check, and each die roll in the attempt represents at least 1 round of effort (it might represent more time, depending on the skill or task in question).

(Emphasis mine.)
See also the examples of extended skill use in UA, such as Bluff, Craft, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Sense Motive and a few others for more specific suggestions of this type.

3. Players can roll against pretty much any applicable skill in a skill challenge. And they can even roll against non-applicable ones if they come up with a good enough reason.

Yes, this is something that 4e presents very well. It's not a big leap to houserule it into 3e, but it's a strength of 4e that it's in the core.

4. Players now get XP for Skill Challenges. Whereas before, that was not possible RAW (at least according to the Unearthed Arcana SRD).

As pointed out above, you can approximate this result in 3e by assigning xp as if the creature had been defeated or (better) giving the skill challenge its own CR, but I agree that it is again a strength of 4e that these challenges are assigned their own ratings and rewards.

Anyway, not wanting to pick your post apart or anything . Just happens that I use the UA system in my 3e games, and wanted to mention that "5 successes before 3 failures" and skill checks over more time than rounds was present in that system .

 

[jdrakeh]

I promise all of you will will be okay with 4th edition.

Some of us simply don't have an interest in 4e. I, for example, have nothing against 4e personally and do not think it impossible to play my past campaigns therein. I simply have no interest in doing so.