11 Reasons Why I Prefer D&D 4E

[D'karr]

One thing I don't like with 4E is that instead of ramping the martial powers up to the spell power, like Bo9S did, they toned the spells down to melee level. Even the dailies do not really look or feel impressive to me, not compared to spells of 3E, and powers from Bo9S.

I can agree to a certain point but I see it more as a balancing act to enable the game to keep the "sweet spot" for a lot longer period. Going from levels 1-20 in 3e was excruciatingly painful after the mid-high levels and it was hard to survive at the lower levels.

In 4e, the powers had to scale from 1-30 and stay in synch between the classes. So now you are adding 10 more levels and you still want to keep the "feel" of the game as when you were playing in the "sweet spot" of 3e. Invariably something had to give. Fortunately I'm okay with that, though I understand that it is not the same for others. Since my players are having a blast, I'm not too worried about it.

 

[Fenes]

If you don't do this, you will begin comparing 1d8+STR longswords (or magic missile) at-wills with 10d6 fireball dailies (or "Brutal Strike" fighter daily). And you will notice that the fireballs and brutal strikes will over-shadow the rest, and they are still too precious to not recover at first opportunity.

Just having to chose between 1d8+INT vs 2d8+INT vs 3d8+INT powers makes dailies (and encounters) less critical. They are important, but you don't want to use them every time.

But that's my point: I want the fights to be full of such powers, spectacular stunts, massive damage, and flashy moves and spells. I don't want many fights per day, I want few fights, but choke full of 10d6 damage moves and spells. I want player characters to use their best moves in every fight we actually play out.

4E's daily and encounter powers just feel less impressive to me, and that's exactly because they feel barely above the at-wills.

 

[D'karr]

But that's my point: I want the fights to be full of such powers, spectacular stunts, massive damage, and flashy moves and spells. I don't want many fights per day, I want few fights, but choke full of 10d6 damage moves and spells. I want player characters to use their best moves in every fight we actually play out.

4E's daily and encounter powers just feel less impressive to me, and that's exactly because they feel barely above the at-wills.

Well then vanilla 4e will not do that for you.

However, this is actually easily fixable. The math is so simple that if you wanted to scale everything upwards it is mostly trivial to do so. For PCs, add one more die to the encounter powers and add 2 more die to the Daily Powers. For creatures add one more die to the rechargable powers and add 2-3 die to the encounter powers.

This is going to swing the level of damage very disproportionately so you might want to increase the amount of Healing Surges available or at least make them more easily used by players.

 

[Kitirat]

Fenes, a friend of mine said the exact same thing, he wanted more bang for the buck in 4th so he did a simple thing.

At-Wills stay the same
Encounter powers double their damage dice.
Dailies triple their damage dice and add +1 to their AoE if they have it per tier.

So it is 1W+Ability, 4W+Ability, and 9W+ability for most standard abilities at heroic level.

He also changed minutes to round for casting rituals for clerics and wizards.

Makes for a bloodthirsty game with lots of bang.

 

[Hussar]

But that's my point: I want the fights to be full of such powers, spectacular stunts, massive damage, and flashy moves and spells. I don't want many fights per day, I want few fights, but choke full of 10d6 damage moves and spells. I want player characters to use their best moves in every fight we actually play out.

4E's daily and encounter powers just feel less impressive to me, and that's exactly because they feel barely above the at-wills.

The problem with that though is the "massive damage" part.

It makes combat extremely swingy. This was exactly what you saw in epic level 3.5 play. Yes, the characters (whether PC's or bad guys) could do immense amount of damage. Do fantastic feats. But, the combats lasted two rounds for exactly that reason.

The whole point of smoothing off the power curve is that you don't have these massive spikes which are virtually impossible to plan around.

I get what you're saying, and to some degree I agree. But, 3e shows what happens when you can do this sort of thing. The clerics and the wizards at high levels were doing this regularly. And, fights would degrade into whoever won initiative won the fight.

 

[Henry]

One interesting thing in Bo9S that I might try for 4e is to allow a character to use a full round action to "meditate" and get back one encounter power. Similar to how a SwordSage gets encounter powers back during an encounter.

I'm using your quote specifically to point this out because it's a good jumping point: For anyone adding "encounter or daily recharge" to 4e,. keep in mind that many of the Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies feature encounter or Daily recharge abilities into their special class features. If you introduce a recharge in Heroic levels available to anyone, it devalues the usefulness of those special paragon and epic features at later levels. If you don't plan to go above Heroic, this works great, but it's worth thinking about for a game you plan to run into higher levels.

 

[Fenes]

Well then vanilla 4e will not do that for you.

However, this is actually easily fixable. The math is so simple that if you wanted to scale everything upwards it is mostly trivial to do so. For PCs, add one more die to the encounter powers and add 2 more die to the Daily Powers. For creatures add one more die to the rechargable powers and add 2-3 die to the encounter powers.

This is going to swing the level of damage very disproportionately so you might want to increase the amount of Healing Surges available or at least make them more easily used by players.

Or I could just keep playing 3E with Bo9S.

 

[Reynard]

The problem with that though is the "massive damage" part.

It makes combat extremely swingy. This was exactly what you saw in epic level 3.5 play. Yes, the characters (whether PC's or bad guys) could do immense amount of damage. Do fantastic feats. But, the combats lasted two rounds for exactly that reason.

The whole point of smoothing off the power curve is that you don't have these massive spikes which are virtually impossible to plan around.

I get what you're saying, and to some degree I agree. But, 3e shows what happens when you can do this sort of thing. The clerics and the wizards at high levels were doing this regularly. And, fights would degrade into whoever won initiative won the fight.

You saqy this like it's abad thing.

More seriously: I prefer "swingy" combat because uncertainty is fun. I'd rather play in a situation in which one die roll can send plans nd tactics down the flusher, for the good guys or the bad guys. Sometimes, the villain goes down like a punk. Sometimes,the PCs have to retreat and regroup. It is preferable by far, IMO, than knowing that, all thing being equal, I need to set aside two hours of game time for the "boss fight".

 

[D'karr]

I'm using your quote specifically to point this out because it's a good jumping point: For anyone adding "encounter or daily recharge" to 4e,. keep in mind that many of the Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies feature encounter or Daily recharge abilities into their special class features. If you introduce a recharge in Heroic levels available to anyone, it devalues the usefulness of those special paragon and epic features at later levels. If you don't plan to go above Heroic, this works great, but it's worth thinking about for a game you plan to run into higher levels.

Yes, I think I mentioned it several posts below. I'm actually not too worried about the devaluation because it will apply across the board.

So if I institute the Action Point to recover one encounter power, everyone will have access to it whether they decide to follow the specific paragon paths or epic destinies that grant them. Since this is a "house rule" I don't mind allowing those classes that have the ability anyway, a way to gain the power from the Action Point and the power from their class ability.

I'm actually also playing with additional At-Will powers at higher levels. I have not decided where exactly yet, but the initial thought is that they'll get one additional At-Will for their class at 5th or 8th level and an additional one at 15th level. I just don't see a great balance shift by doing that and I'd prefer each character to have more options during combat instead of having to rely on the limited amount (2) of At-Will powers.

 

[D'karr]

Or I could just keep playing 3E with Bo9S.

You sure could. You take the good with the bad and since you have a choice then it should work for you.

It is preferable by far, IMO, than knowing that, all thing being equal, I need to set aside two hours of game time for the "boss fight".

See this I've never run into. In 3e most Boss Fights would either be over before they started (2 - 3 rounds) or became a slugfest that took multiple hours. In 4e, a good boss fight, even when the players were inexperienced, took us about one hour. Now that they know what they are doing I've never seen a fight go that long. In addition they get to do a lot more in that hour than before.