Is the statement that it is "crunchier" than 2e accurate? Heavier systems are a turn off for my group.
A bit, but not much. If you can handle 2nd ed, you can handle 4th.
Is the statement that it is "crunchier" than 2e accurate? Heavier systems are a turn off for my group.
Unfortunately the new edition comes across as a bad fan job of 2E.
Almost every conceivable option has been tweaked.
Individually graded, many of them are even quite nice. You can easily point to a page and claim they solved this or that problem with the previous editions.
However, when you put them together, the multitude of changes creates a huge mess. The game sinks under its own weight.
This game is incredibly convoluted and massively more crunchy than either 1E or 2E. Combat runs at a crawl with loads of die rolls.
That reviewers haven't caught this is probably because it takes time before the structural flaws become apparent.
I don't have much experience with 2e, but 4e is definitely crunchier than 1e. When reading it, I've noticed a tendency to define a lot of things like downtime activity and combat maneuvers. Some people appreciate having that sort of thing defined, others would prefer to wing it.
One thing I do like is that you can have unlimited advancement without switching careers. In 1e, you could only ever get +10 to WS and BS as a mercenary - if you wanted more than that you needed to become something else, like a Mercenary Sergeant/Captain - and if you were playing by the rules, that basically meant that you needed to be part of a mercenary unit and become promoted. That's something we usually ignored, because our characters were adventurers and being blocked in your advancement is no fun, so we basically just paid the XP and moved on. But in 4e, there's nothing that says you can't boost your WS as high as you want it as a Recruit or Soldier - advancing to Sergeant offers the chance to learn other things, but if you're happy being a soldier you can keep on keeping on.
One thing I'm less happy about is increasing stats and skills in increments of a single percentile. I think increasing them by fives would be much easier (so instead of paying 10 XP each for the first five advances in a skill, you'd pay 50 XP for +5).
Yes, it is significantly more detailed and laden with special rules than 2E.Is the statement that it is "crunchier" than 2e accurate? Heavier systems are a turn off for my group.
Our group is very experienced, but unfortunately it was far too much.The combat mechanics look like they should internalize relatively easily, and speed up, but it's going to slog until players learn it.
Mostly that it feels off to have some things you pay for with tens of XP (percentile increases), and others you pay for with hundreds (talents). It feels like the main benefit is to be able to pay slightly less in order to bring some stats/skills up to various breakpoints (mostly even 10s). But that's based on playing it once and then reading it once or twice, so it might work better in practice.What is the issue about the 1% increases? It gives granularity and allows you to improve multiple stats in a single spending of XP. Also if you didn’t break it down the escalating cost would mean improving a stat to +30 would take 450 XP and might take several sessions of no improvement. It’s quite nice being able to spend half your points scaling your main stat slowly whilst spending the other half on a talent, new spell or advancing a new skill or stat quite a bit.
Tracking multiple conditions is a red flag for my table right off the bat I must say. Can anyone flesh that out a bit?
Flipped though it at the store and didn't care for the art style at all.
if anything I'm excited to see TEW updated.