D&D 4E What Doesn't 4E Do Well?

[unan oranis]

Crappy characters.

My favorite characters from editions past were the "useless" underdogs...

Also can you really have greater if you don't have lesser?

I've tried, I really have.

My wizards put all his feats into armor and weapons, multiclassed into warlord and boosted his strength from 10 to 14 throughout his career - and I play him as a complete idiot - yet he still manages to be pretty effective!

The old systems enforced that some characters were going to be just plain better than others, which does ruin the fun for a lot of players... still I kind of grocked it.

 

[Elric]

Skill Challenges are bad. Here's one example from E3: Prince of Undeath: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...ndeath-final-skill-challenge-bad-spoiler.html

"How do I build [X character]?" doesn't work well in general. If you want to build my namesake, try a game like Mutants and Masterminds that is better suited for it. Indeed, M&M's Warriors and Warlocks supplement- for running sword and sorcery games with M&M- has a build that's clearly Elric.

 

[Jhaelen]

Skill Challenges are bad. Here's one example from E3: Prince of Undeath: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...ndeath-final-skill-challenge-bad-spoiler.html

One bad example does not make the concept of skill challenges as a whole bad (and neither do 2 or n examples).

That's like saying 4e combat rules are bad because an encounter vs. a dracolich is bad.

 

[vagabundo]

One bad example does not make the concept of skill challenges as a whole bad (and neither do 2 or n examples).

That's like saying 4e combat rules are bad because an encounter vs. a dracolich is bad.

Th concept is solid; the implementation that shipped with 4e less so.

I think the lack of a good framework for skill challenges is the cause.

 

[Psikus]

The skill math in general is a bit of a mess. Unlike combat math, which they almost nailed, skill bonuses and DCs are all over the place, and you can end up with rolls that are automatic for one character and impossible for others. I would have preferred a more predictable progression (roughly 1 point/ level, like other d20 rolls) and a smaller gap between good and bad scores.

 

[FireLance]

Thanks for all the replies so far, and thanks for keeping it civil!

I just thought of one more issue that bugs me: for most characters, there are two (or at most three) ability scores which offer significantly more mechanical benefits than the other ability scores. Hence, the mechanical cost of playing a character with more balanced or otherwise atypical distribution of ability scores is very high.

 

[avin]

1. Combat Length - we are aware that 4E focuses on combat but that makes out of combat stuff having far less time.

2. Inspiration - less fluff on Monster Manual and some suspension disbelief lost (hello healing surges) makes 4E kinda rough to inspire me. And the game looks like PG-13 now. It's too safe.

3. Economy - the idea of asking the players what they want and making it drop from monsters as treasure parcels is an metagaming wargamist abomination which I removed from my games.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Skill Challenges are bad. Here's one example from E3: Prince of Undeath: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...ndeath-final-skill-challenge-bad-spoiler.html

"How do I build [X character]?" doesn't work well in general. If you want to build my namesake, try a game like Mutants and Masterminds that is better suited for it. Indeed, M&M's Warriors and Warlocks supplement- for running sword and sorcery games with M&M- has a build that's clearly Elric.

There's really nothing much wrong with Skill Challenges. The math before the first errata was a mess, that's all. The problem isn't "The 4e Skill Challenge System sucks", the problem is building and running SCs is an art form and most people haven't yet (and maybe never will) master it that well. There IS no universal framework possible for SCs. People need to stop looking for one because it doesn't exist. I think the goal to aim for is more a library of well designed SCs for various classes of situations where an SC is a good option.

I don't think any edition of D&D ever did stating out specific characters from literature particularly well. Then again very few other systems do either (most are worse than any edition of D&D in this regard). There are a few free form systems like M&M that can handle SOME types of characters pretty well, but M&M has problems with other character types too. I doubt any RPG will ever let you make Elric, Merlin, Tarzan, Gandalf, and Batman all in one system and all true to their literary antecedents. 4e seems to let you do a pretty decent job of making characters along the lines of all of those however, which is not bad.

The one area where 4e gets kind of difficult is when you try to deal with adventuring environments that don't easily present a string of 4-5 encounters in a "day". Then the resource management features are pretty much useless and you either have to twist things around to get you back into the attrition model or just live with the less reliable "one big encounter" that you end up with.

 

[Puggins]

Besides that, it's a magical item.

Why some people have no trouble envisioning a spell that can make you more resiliant against all harm, but a shield having that spell ingraved in it not doing so is beyond me... it doesn't break my versimilitude one bit. Magic doesn't require physical interaction to make sense.

If it were against all damage I'd agree with you- no verisimilitude problem.

But it's only against ranged attacks, which makes it situational already.

Regardless, I probably should've included a more glaring example. The point being that the earlier books include more "gamey" elements at a (admittedly usually minor) cost of verisimilitude. The later books are a lot better with this.

 

[DracoSuave]

Thanks for all the replies so far, and thanks for keeping it civil!

I just thought of one more issue that bugs me: for most characters, there are two (or at most three) ability scores which offer significantly more mechanical benefits than the other ability scores. Hence, the mechanical cost of playing a character with more balanced or otherwise atypical distribution of ability scores is very high.

Ironicly, this has always been a feature of D&D.

In second edition, for example, you had to have a 15 in most attributes for it to positively affect your character... the same statistic advantage is garnered with a 12 in the current system.

And, contrasting with 3e, it's not like +1 to hit is suddenly a different number in 4e than 3e--on the contrary it's exactly the same distribution. What 4e DID do is divorce MAD characters from that problem... Paladins no longer require four different scores to function well... while reducing SAD brokenness... wizards benefit from having a score other than Intellegence.