D&D 5E With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base

[Shadeydm]

2) You originally claimed that "most" 4e combats ended up with a grind.

Now, it might be that most 4e combats in your experience end up with a grind. If I were to contest that then I would be accusing you of "making stuff up" - but that wasn't what you said. You said "most 4E fights end up with the defender having no choice but to spam an at will round after round". I contest that because the experience of me and several others both here and elsewhere is that "most" 4e fights do not end up this way, so even if most of your 4e fights end up that way, the claim of "most" overall is at best speculative.

So by your standard I need to spend my time linking and quoting the multitude of threads and thousands of post where people have observed that 4E combat drags out in which even 4E fans and w4rriors claim that the fix is to spontaneously kill off the monsters/enemies regardless of remaining health so that battles don't drag on needlessly? So that you can dissmiss them as anecdotal or subjective...pass... I've seen this play out in many a thread I don't feel the need to participate in this timesink thanks though.

 

[Neonchameleon]

So by your standard I need to spend my time linking and quoting the multitude of threads and thousands of post where people have observed that 4E combat drags out in which even 4E fans and w4rriors claim that the fix is to spontaneously kill off the monsters/enemies regardless of remaining health so that battles don't drag on needlessly? So that you can dissmiss them as anecdotal or subjective...pass... I've seen this play out in many a thread I don't feel the need to participate in this timesink thanks though.

Which monster manuals are you using? Because there's normally a disconnect between the 4e critics of 4e argue against (2008 era 4e) and the 4e the advocates of 4e enjoy. Monster grind was mostly fixed by the MM3. Two years ago. Or half the lifetime of 4e ago. They raised the damage and put out some much better monsters (I think even [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] would agree that the Essentials Monster Vault is much better mechanically than the MM1). I've never seen that sort of argument made post MM3/Monster Vault.

 

[Shadeydm]

Which monster manuals are you using? Because there's normally a disconnect between the 4e critics of 4e argue against (2008 era 4e) and the 4e the advocates of 4e enjoy. Monster grind was mostly fixed by the MM3. Two years ago. Or half the lifetime of 4e ago. They raised the damage and put out some much better monsters (I think even [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] would agree that the Essentials Monster Vault is much better mechanically than the MM1). I've never seen that sort of argument made post MM3/Monster Vault.

I don't DM 4E I'm just a player (although 4E does boss fights so well in some regards it makes me wish otherwise). I have no idea when the MM3 came out or to what extent its been used in the games i've played in. In a typical battle i'm using one or two attack encounter powers maybe a daily then its all at will until the bugger is dead. Doesn't bother me but if you don't like spamtastic I can see where it might be problematic.

 

[Balesir]

So by your standard I need to spend my time linking and quoting the multitude of threads and thousands of post where people have observed that 4E combat drags out in which even 4E fans and w4rriors claim that the fix is to spontaneously kill off the monsters/enemies regardless of remaining health so that battles don't drag on needlessly? So that you can dissmiss them as anecdotal or subjective...pass... I've seen this play out in many a thread I don't feel the need to participate in this timesink thanks though.

Well, you can go to that much trouble if you really want to, but I'm not advocating it. Another possibility would be to claim only what you have experience of or evidence for to hand. I would be happy with you doing either - or even neither - as long as you don't make unfounded swipes for reasons of your apparent dislike of elements of 4e; take your pick

 

[Argyle King]

Which monster manuals are you using? Because there's normally a disconnect between the 4e critics of 4e argue against (2008 era 4e) and the 4e the advocates of 4e enjoy. Monster grind was mostly fixed by the MM3. Two years ago. Or half the lifetime of 4e ago. They raised the damage and put out some much better monsters (I think even @Tony Vargas would agree that the Essentials Monster Vault is much better mechanically than the MM1). I've never seen that sort of argument made post MM3/Monster Vault.

I disagree. The monsters were given higher damage values. Yes, that did help. However, part of the math changes also meant lower defenses for a lot of creatures as well. Most of the time (in my experience,) that higher damage didn't come into play because the monsters died before they could use it.

For me, most of the encounters I've been a player in have gone one of two ways. The first way is that the players figure out pretty early on that the monster isn't much of a threat, so they don't want to use their good stuff and just widdle away at its HP for a while. The second way is that the PCs unload and the monsters are turned into XP dust before they've had a chance to do anything.

I will say that I believe dragon design improved greatly toward the end of 4E. However, Solos still had a lot of problems to overcome. One of the groups I am a player in used some houserules which helped.

 

[Tony Vargas]

No, it was in my list.

So it was. Must be going blind in my old age. Sorry. ;(

As I think we've discussed on another thread, the compilation and marketing aspects of Essentials - as in, which stuff goes in which books and how is it all packaged up and preseted - was absurd, with the exception of the Monster Vault which was excellent.

Some rules material is reproduced 4 times, over the two Heroes books, the RC plus the DMG kit. Ludicrous!

Be that as it may (and, OK, is), 'Essentials'-only is just sub-classes from HotFK/FL.

I meant a fighter who is focused on battlefield control, positioning and forced movement. And relying, as part of this, on all the apparatus of immediate and opportunity actions, encounter powers etc that tend to trigger the "dissociated" button.

Hmmm... OK.

 

[innerdude]

Which monster manuals are you using? Because there's normally a disconnect between the 4e critics of 4e argue against (2008 era 4e) and the 4e the advocates of 4e enjoy. Monster grind was mostly fixed by the MM3. Two years ago. Or half the lifetime of 4e ago. They raised the damage and put out some much better monsters (I think even @Tony Vargas would agree that the Essentials Monster Vault is much better mechanically than the MM1). I've never seen that sort of argument made post MM3/Monster Vault.

So you've essentially admitted that for two full years D&D players had to play "slogfest" combats using 4e's rules as written.......

Monster math and skill challenge math in the original release of 4e was downright shoddy and broken--even the developers admitted it, though not in so many words. Being forced to defend a system that took two years to get the internal math correct isn't a point in that system's favor, IMHO. In very few industries will a company survive by making consumers wait that long for a working version of its product.

You can defend 4e for doing a lot of things right; the baseline damage math of the original product release isn't one of them. And expecting playgroups to hang around for 2 years while the math gets "patched" isn't a winning formula for success in today's market. If the baseline math is broken in 5e, I can guarantee I'm not going to wait around for two years for Mearls and Co. to fix it. I've got way better options for my RPG time than that.

 

[Steely_Dan]

So you've essentially admitted that for two full years D&D players had to play "slogfest" combats using 4e's rules as written.......

Monster math and skill challenge math in the original release of 4e was downright shoddy and broken--even the developers admitted it, though not in so many words. Being forced to defend a system that took two years to get the internal math correct isn't a point in that system's favor, IMHO. In very few industries will a company survive by making consumers wait that long for a working version of its product.

You can defend 4e for doing a lot of things right; the baseline damage math of the original product release isn't one of them. And expecting playgroups to hang around for 2 years while the math gets "patched" isn't a winning formula for success in today's market. If the baseline math is broken in 5e, I can guarantee I'm not going to wait around for two years for Mearls and Co. to fix it. I've got way better options for my RPG time than that.

Exactly, and one thing I do when running 4th Ed is to remove the cancerous sore that is that 1/2 level malarkey to attacks, defences and skills.

 

[Neonchameleon]

So you've essentially admitted that for two full years D&D players had to play "slogfest" combats using 4e's rules as written.......

No. I've admitted that things have improved. Even before the MM3 math revision I never found that there was a slogfest in heroic tier if you gave the monsters motivations and avoided certain crap monsters (which regrettably included most solos). Of course every edition has crap monsters (1e fewer than most although it brought us the flumph).

I think 4e is the only edition of D&D in history where literally every monster manual has been a significant improvement on the previous one.

Monster math and skill challenge math in the original release of 4e was downright shoddy and broken--even the developers admitted it, though not in so many words. Being forced to defend a system that took two years to get the internal math correct isn't a point in that system's favor, IMHO. In very few industries will a company survive by making consumers wait that long for a working version of its product.

Good job that the math of 3.0 was correct on launch then. And we've never had a 3.5 revision two and a half years later. Or a pathfinder revision. And these have all been perfectly balanced.

Also it's a good job that Gygax didn't seriously have to power up the 1e fighter significantly in Unearthed Arcana six years after he released the PHB.

In fixing the math, 4e has been amazingly fast by historical D&D standards. It could, however, have done with a lot more playtesting than it received; they threw out Orcus in 2006 for being insanely complicated and started over (and what's left of Orcus became the Book of 9 Swords - in Orcus literally every class had a different recharge mechanic, and there were at least half a dozen different codition tracks).

You can defend 4e for doing a lot of things right; the baseline damage math of the original product release isn't one of them. And expecting playgroups to hang around for 2 years while the math gets "patched" isn't a winning formula for success in today's market. If the baseline math is broken in 5e, I can guarantee I'm not going to wait around for two years for Mearls and Co. to fix it. I've got way better options for my RPG time than that.

Do you play 3.X? 3.X/Pathfinder's math hasn't been fixed after twelve years. And when I looked at the idea of playing a Summoner I realised that the summoner I wanted to build could outsneak the rogue using the Eidolon, outfight the fighter using Augmented Summons, and out utility cast a sorceror due to a very nice spell list and not having to use top level slots for combat due to opening most fights with a Summon Monster.

 

[pemerton]

Hmmm... OK.

You sound sceptical? - but I'm not sure if you're sceptical of the build, or just of my terminology.

So you've essentially admitted that for two full years D&D players had to play "slogfest" combats using 4e's rules as written

Even before the MM3 math revision I never found that there was a slogfest in heroic tier if you gave the monsters motivations and avoided certain crap monsters (which regrettably included most solos).

I seem to have turned into Neonchameleon's sockpucket at the moment, but I want to reiterate what he says here.

I didn't play any paragon tier using the old maths (and with the new maths, I haven't found it grindy at all). At low heroic, where a good number of monsters are higher level than the PCs (for the obvious reason that the PCs are at or near the bottom of the level range), I used few or no soldiers, and plenty of low hp, high damage artillery and low defence, high damage brutes.

And just to put my own spin on it, I've even had multiple good, non-grindy encounters using so-called "crap" monsters like wraiths (weakness and insubstantial) and the young black dragon (darkness).