Ydars said:
It is almost as if the party is now the focus, not the individual characters, at least in combat. I have tested the combat system and it plays very well, but there is something "not right" and I could not define it before.
I guess there is an association in my mind with a sophisticated sort of wargame. This type of game is great fun, but it is not an RPG. I am not saying 4E is a wargame, but there is an uncomfortable association that perhaps makes many of us unconciously uneasy.
I've never played a "big sandbox in a dude's garage" sort of wargame, nor have I played the D&D miniatures game. None-the-less, I don't think that 4E quite falls into the category of a wargame.
Here's the best explanation I can come up with.
In actual violent conflict, the tactical units that are the most effective are those that have a high degree of ability to work together as a team. Often, this requires that they know each other very, very well and have a fairly strong emotional bond with one another. You can't really make an effective fighting unit by throwing a bunch of highly skilled strangers together and telling them to execute the mission. On some fundamental level they don't really trust each other and can't anticipate each other's actions on the fly.
In 3E, it very much felt sometimes that the characters all just happened to be in the same place and fighting the same monster at the same time. The system itself seemed to encourage this by creating huge rewards for players that could think up twinky character builds. Essentially, while great for a more sim style of play, 3E was also a great system for anti-social prima donnas that didn't really care whether or not anyone else was playing beyond there being a cleric to heal them.
4E (what little of it I've played so far) seems to insist as a system that players work together in a way that people used to 3E just aren't familiar with. I'm having difficulty describing this difference beyond just saying that it requires the formulation of a good strategy before the encounter starts and the use of good on-the-fly tactics once the encounters starts and everyone starts "projecting power."
So yeah, combat encounters are definitely much more tactical and require players to think about what's going on and mentally engage. You don't want to take the option of "I hang back and do something sub-optimal" because that'll get the other character killed and you certainly can't be one of those players that does the whole "I'm helpless and refuse to learn how to play my character well" because (a) it's not hard to learn all the applicable rules now and (b) if you don't everyone dies.
And this is a good thing. Requring teamwork is AWESOME because it makes some of the more corrosive player behaviors that the hobby has long tolerated as typical "gamer behavior" a lot less tolerable.
Players that showboat, that lone-wolf, that don't pay attention or that simply refuse to play along are not going to like 4E and their groups are going to be a lot less willing to put up with that sort of behavior.
The only players I feel bad for are the ones that are only interested in roleplaying and are simply doing D&D because no one else wants to do anything but. Even then, the game's simple enough that they should still be able to contribute fairly effectively if another player has a lower level co-hort or something.
