Rules overload for players

[Abraxas]

I agree with the OP, more or less.

We've played from 1st to 12th in the last year. Some of the players are always on the ball, ready to go and know what their powers do. Others don't. This wasn't a problem in the first 7 or so levels, but with retraining, more powers, and more powers that provide conditions or key off other powers our combats have been slowing down steadily.

We must also be an odd group - there isn't a session that goes by where we don't have to stop and check out a rule because of the interaction between the player's powers and the monster's plus the multiple conditions every round. It also doesn't help that the DM runs games at the local FLGS and is up to date on all WoTC FAQs & errata, while our players - with the exception of myself - aren't. So often there are different expectations.

 

[malraux]

In my experience with 4e, it takes about 3 sessions, regardless of level, to learn how to play reasonably well. The first session is mainly learning the basic rules ("oh, I really don't need my basic attack for anything", "that's how crits work"), the second session is learning how your powers work, the third is learning how your powers tie into the group's powers. Onto your specific observations:

One thing I've noticed, is that the burden of handling large amounts of rules has - to a certain degree - moved from the DM to the players.

Assuming you mean that what each power does counts as a rule, then yes, 4e moves a lot of that to the players. Of course, IME, players tend to care about what their personal character can do. The rules are pretty decent about being self explanatory.

New players, especially people new to RPGs in general, might feel very intimidated when they open the PHB and run into page after page of powers.

IME, any RPG is pretty intimidating when you first encounter it. The terminology is clearly entrenched with technical jargon, the charts are overwhelming, the big picture of how this relates to the actual game is unobvious at best. That said, I don't know that page after page of powers is more intimidating than page after page of spells. The logical response to both is to ignore them. Obviously, if I'm playing a 2nd level rogue, I really don't need to know 25th level ranger powers.

 

[fissionessence]

I found through play that I quickly memorized my At-Wills (as they were used so often) and I wanted to maximize the amount of room I'd have to list all my encounter/daily/utility powers as the character grows. It's all on one sheet (just double-sided) and I find that during my action I'm on the back and during other people's actions I'm on the front (so when I'm attacked I can record damage and whatnot).

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm sorry; I didn't say what I meant . . .

I meant that a player should have all of his or her powers available at-hand, preferably all one just a few pages constituting one's character sheet, or on power cards. In fact, according to the template I used, it would be impossible to have all of one's powers on one page at higher levels. Your sheet works great; I wasn't trying to say to fit all the powers on one page.

The OP seemed to suggest that his players were all flipping through the PHB each time one of them went to use a power; I was just saying that this method is terrible and a player should have all of his or her powers on hand.

~

 

[Hjorimir]

I'm sorry; I didn't say what I meant . . .

I meant that a player should have all of his or her powers available at-hand, preferably all one just a few pages constituting one's character sheet, or on power cards. In fact, according to the template I used, it would be impossible to have all of one's powers on one page at higher levels. Your sheet works great; I wasn't trying to say to fit all the powers on one page.

The OP seemed to suggest that his players were all flipping through the PHB each time one of them went to use a power; I was just saying that this method is terrible and a player should have all of his or her powers on hand.

I didn't take what you were saying as insulting, but I obviously didn't understand! Thanks for explaining though.

 

[the_bruiser]

I tend to agree with the OP, though perhaps not for 'normal' reasons. We're a bunch of 30s-aged folks, some of whom were hard-core in our college days and some of whom just weren't, We tend to play once or twice per year. The guys who weren't 'gamers' were given fighters or other 'simple' 3E folks before - 'you move this far and attack once at +X, or if you don't have to move, it's +X/+Y.' With 4E - which we've played twice - it's an entirely different affair. We're talking about folks here who show up on game night and are given a character they've never seen before.

For those folks, the apparent compexity is a lot higher than before - the stuff going on in 3E that wasn't 'decision-based' for them was always easy - roll this save, okay you can't move, etc. Now they have much more that they have to take control of, if that makes sense.

 

[I'm A Banana]

At least for me, the OP's observance is true.

I don't want to deal with that many powers, as a DM or a player.

I don't like dealing with that level of complexity, which is why I always veered away from magical classes in 3e and 2e.

I think the problem can be mediated with a strong "theme"-ing, and perhaps some cascading effects, snowballing several powers into each other so that it's only a handful of big powers and a few situational effects that key off of those big powers.

But this could screw with the resource management in 4e...still, of all the ways to tweak the powers system, this seems to have the most promise as possible.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

You don't need power cards, you just need a well organized character sheet.

So, is that like, auto-calculating and form fillable?

 

[Hjorimir]

So, is that like, auto-calculating and form fillable?

It is a form, and most everything calculates automatically. However, you need (or I need) to add code for each new power. If you're comforatable with VBA it's a snap (takes me like 3 minutes to add a new block (copying another), give the fields some unique names, and call a couple of functions (I have one for the Attack Roll and one that calculates both normal and critical damage fields). If there is something odd (like a rider that is 2 + character's Charisa modifier), I just drop in a field and a quick line of code to take care of it.