D&D 4E Is 4E doing it for you?

[Brown Jenkin]

Not doing it for me. I think it is a good tactical miniatures game, but that is not what I am looking for. I have never enjoyed mianatures games.

 

[Scribble]

I'm loving it, and so is my group. I think it took the good parts of 3e and the good parts of earlier editions and mashed them into something better.

 

[Kelanen]

My friends and I are having a great time playing 4E.

 

[Desdichado]

Not playing it, and not planning to. We just finished up a 3.5 game, are about to start a BRP Cthulhu game.

Although we haven't really looked this far ahead, another 3.5 game (Shackled City) seems to be the front runner for the next game after that. In six months or so.

After that, we've got Star Wars, Shadowrun and even Traveller proposed. Nobody is proposing a 4e game, and the proposals already on the table will probably keep us busy until 5e at least.

 

[Benimoto]

As for clarification for the versatility if you have a 4E human wizard s/he'll know 3 at wills, when you add 2 more human wizards they will be duplicated in what powers they choose. 3.5 if I had 3 wizards not one of the spells has to be duplicated and I am not taking splat books into account either. If they put the magic items back into the dmg and used those extra pages for more at-wills, encounter & dailies that would have been better. I also think if you could learn more than just 2 at wills that would be extremely better

I was just making a new 3.5e character this last weekend to play a Pathfinder scenario (which still uses the 3.5 rules now) and I have to say, that while 3.x gives you more choices than 4e, a lot more of them are "false choices".

For example, while you can theoretically pick any of the 39ish spells as your 2-3 choices at first level, only 4 of them do any sort of direct damage. About another 12-17 are reasonable non-damaging choices by my estimation, and then the rest are stuff like erase or hold portal, which while they might be useful on scrolls or something later, are way too narrowly focused to be a good choice for a 1st level caster.

Pathfinder adventures are pretty combat-heavy, so I'd really want to have a damaging spell, and of the 4, probably magic missile, since it's the only ranged one and I have like 5 HP. And then I have another 1-2 spell picks, but they're coming off a pretty small list too.

And then, after about 4 rounds of combat, I'm out of spells and my versatility is reduced to making potshots with my crossbow, while the 4e wizard still has 2-3 at wills.

So yeah, 3e theoretically has a lot more versatility, but when it counts, it only has a little more, and sometimes even less.

 

[Felon]

That's an interesting point of view. Why do you believe that? Erm, let's say, what in the books makes you think that?

Well, I'd already covered a lot of it in a previous post in the second page of this thread. There are a lot of 4e rules that just have sloppy mechanics, fostered by a philosophy that goes something like "a flawed, ham-handed rule is better than an elegant, comprehensive rule if the former is simpler than the latter: make rules for people who prefer the straightforwardness of a club over the intricacy of a rapier".

If you're into game mechanics, if you like to tinker with that element of the game, then you don't want to look under the hood and see duct tape and rubberbands. Some people would look at that and say "hey, it gets the job done, so who cares?" These are the people who want a nice, light game. The mechanic finds it off-putting, but even worse, it limits the potential to tinker further.

So, for instance, when a designer's faced with figuring out how grappling should work, with all the elements that come with it (establishing a hold, escaping, throwing, choking, squeezing, dragging), or how rules should apply to incorporeal or amorphous opponents (can they be grappled, pushed/pulled/slid, knocked prone, etc), he's got the choice to use the club or the rapier. Be meticulous, or just duct-tape the sucker. In the end, D&D went for "grabbed = immobilized, no pinning, no squeezing", and "incorporeal = half damage, otherwise treat just like everything else". There's a spartan principle at work that some folks like, but the mechanic has good reason to regard D&D as a "lite" game, and if he wants something deeper, he can't tinker within the system. If I want to pit the players against a foe that they can't deal with just by cycling through their power cards, then I'm working against 4e's grain, not with it.

 

[Desdichado]

So yeah, 3e theoretically has a lot more versatility, but when it counts, it only has a little more, and sometimes even less.

That's because of your playstyle, though.

If you played a game with more intrigue and less combat, that wouldn't be true at all.

 

[Kzach]

I'd appreciate if you stopped with the "you're complaining" rhetoric, it's inflammitory.

Lol, and your entire post from the very start isn't?

You are complaining. That's all you've done so far in this entire thread. Stating that isn't inflammatory when it's the simple truth. If you're friends don't like 4e so much, then don't play it.

The fact of you asking someone not to be inflammatory in a thread designed to inflame is breaking my irony meter. Don't worry, I'll leave your thread alone from now on. There's already enough crap in it.

 

[ExploderWizard]

So far, we've tried a couple of sessions of 4e, just to get the mechanics down. They work well enough, but they don't incite our collective imagination much on their own.

it may be that 4e is good because it gets the mechanics out of everyone's way, but we kind of prefer rules that actually support what we're trying to do a bit more than that.

Oh how I wish 4E got the mechanics out of everyone's way.

We are playing 4E to give it a good test run but I can't say that I am overly impressed. It does the job of providing a game that my friends and I can all play together but to really " Do it" for me, a game has to make me want to run it. I don't want to run 4E.

 

[catsclaw227]

I think it is a good tactical miniatures game, but that is not what I am looking for. I have never enjoyed mianatures games.

For me, 4e has a nice tactical miniatures subsystem, but it is far from all it is. Roleplaying is the same as it has been in all past editions.

The mechanics seem to better mesh with the RP aspect of the game better than 3.x did for me.I am not as worried about having to justify every NPC power or ability with a core or splat book entry so that my players don't cry foul. Monster deisgn is quick and easy, Skill challenges, while it still needs some work is a far cry better than the binary win/lose of 3.x skills (or lack of a skills mechanic in some previous editions)

4e is doing it for me. I am having fun DMing again, I am not spending hours putting together NPCs, reading 2 page stat blocks and having my encounters die with a bad save.

I am also finding it very easy to convert 3.5 adventures, so I can still use that whole part of my 3.5 library. We are running Age of Worms for 4e and the players are now 12th level. There is a LOT of depth in the way combats are played out, they are definitely not the same every time.

There is also a lot less of the pre-programmed aspect of entering combat (buff, nuke, exit) and the in-between recovery mechanics are elegant enough to be able to disregard the 3.x requirement of CLW wands and such.

We have also removed the 15-min adventuring day from our game (duck, here comes the questionable "we NEVER had that problem" arguments).

All in all, a very good experience for me.

I liked 3.x for along time, though it became a real chore to DM from about 12th level on. I liked 2e and 1e when I played them as well, but there were too many arbitrary and ambiguous rules and wonky disconnected subsystems.

I say, if you like your version of the game, then play it!