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

[Irda Ranger]

Previous editions you randomized stats (or not).

Barely, in theory; not at all in practice. Everyone who picked their class and then rolled stats quickly gravitated to point buy or 4d6/drop-low/arrange. The actual "randomness" was highly non-random. For those who rolled stats first, they then proceeded to pick the class that best suited the stats they got. Either way you ended up with a character with a 16+ in their primary stat every time.

Ok, fine - 98% of the time. The difference between that and 4E is a rounding error.

4E is designed for at least the 17/18 in the main stat to maintain balance, ... I just don't see where maxing out your main stat & then having to keep it maxed so you don't get worse for your chances to hit as you level up is a strength.

All I can do here is quote Mustrum: "If your ability scores affect other numbers on your sheet, you want them to be good, especially for the numbers that count for what you want to do with your character."

Either play a game where stats matter, or don't. Your call. In D&D they do - in every single edition. The fact that the 4E designers took this into account when designing the game is only a good thing.

I don't have to agree with it.

Would you like to propose an alternative? How do you plan on fixing this? I'm all ears. I like Mustrum's recommendation, actually.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Unfortunately that's no longer true as of the Adventurer's Vault...

You'd have to elaborate, I haven't seen AV yet.

 

[Fifth Element]

Besides, how can not wanting to be near the books be any less rational than wanting to own every D&D book ever printed? Six of one, half dozen of the other, IMHO.

Yes, but I don't see what that has to do with what I was referring to, which had nothing to do with wanting to buy every D&D book ever.

If you like the system, you'll want to have the books. If you dislike the system, you should be indifferent to the presence of the books, since you have no interest in them.

It's like saying you don't like Billy Ray Cyrus' music, so you don't even want to be near one of his CDs.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

...exception based design is going to suck, especially when things start to get bloated. It will get irritating.I agree with some of what you said but not all...

However, I think you raise an interesting point here in regards to exceptions based design. Based on the Mike Mearls interview (Theory from the Closet Podcast), the aim of this was to produce a similar scenario as you find in Magic the Gathering (also a fine example of exceptions-based design).

The aim is to have a game where if you know a few basic things (such as "defender" or "Flying" in MtG or "Burst" in D&D4E), then the game can run itself without referring to the rules or books (pretty funny actually if you consider the reference book style of 4E and whether such an approach was necessary). In MtG, all the information was on the cards. in D&D4E, all the information a player needs to know is on their character sheet. The need to refer to the PHB is taken away (or at least they have tried to design so that the PHB as Mike Mearls says is something that you look at in between gaming sessions, or if you are about to level up).
Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

I find that the M:tG exception based design works because the exceptions are kept limited. Each new cycle brings in new keywords and exceptions but the balance and playability are maintained because the old sets are cycled out. As a player I need only keep track of the current card rules and don't have to worry about or remember keywords from several years ago.

I too can see this sucking in a few years as rule bloat starts to occur (PHB2-6 and Splats) and more and more keywords are brought in. It also keeps creating more work and chances for the designers to miss an interaction between exceptions they weren't anticipating.

 

[Darkthorne]

IR,
I like Mustrum's idea as well. I think if 4E balance design was targeted at 15/16 range and not all the improvements on that one stat then give more feats that tie into the non specific class stats where the player could get some benefit/perk that the person that maxes out his main stat won't get. That way the person that maxes out his guy gets an obvious benefit (raw damage/higher chance to hit) but doesn't have the stat requirements now maybe to get a feat that increased your defense/speed/extra attack or whatever.
Thanks

 

[Mallus]

Either way you ended up with a character with a 16+ in their primary stat every time.

Or if you got uniformly bad rolls, you asked the DM if you could roll another set, which the DM would agree to, with the obligatory caveat "don't keep rolling until you get all 18's". At least, that's what the groups I played in did. We always played in campaign mode, with the intent that it would run a year or more. Handicapping someone for the length of the campaign (or until their PC died) because they had a run of bad luck on char-gen day was considered bad form.

Oh, and thanks Idra for posting what I intended to post before I actually got around to posting it.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

IR,
I like Mustrum's idea as well. I think if 4E balance design was targeted at 15/16 range and not all the improvements on that one stat then give more feats that tie into the non specific class stats where the player could get some benefit/perk that the person that maxes out his main stat won't get. That way the person that maxes out his guy gets an obvious benefit (raw damage/higher chance to hit) but doesn't have the stat requirements now maybe to get a feat that increased your defense/speed/extra attack or whatever.
Thanks

Though you have to be careful about this. If you diminish the value of high statistics and offer more benefits to characters with several mediocre statistics, you just get another type of "optimum" build - the one with mediocre stats. That can also lead to "cookie-cutter" characters - everyone with stats in the 12-15 range, and most getting even the same feats!

You need to keep a happy medium between both.

 

[Darkthorne]

Mustrum,
I'm not saying to remove anything from the high stated character. If the target bar was lowered a bit for balance, then added benefits in one form or another for a higher non standard stat I believe it could increase versalitity. The other added benefit for the maxed stat character is they are slightly above the curve and will hit more often/do more damage which for some people would be great. I apologize if I am not explaining this well but I hope you understand my point.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Mustrum,
I'm not saying to remove anything from the high stated character. If the target bar was lowered a bit for balance, then added benefits in one form or another for a higher non standard stat I believe it could increase versalitity. The other added benefit for the maxed stat character is they are slightly above the curve and will hit more often/do more damage which for some people would be great. I apologize if I am not explaining this well but I hope you understand my point.

Hmm. In that case, you have to ensure that this versatility actually counts for something. In a cooperative, party based game, specialization is often rewarded more then versatility. Look at the 3E Bard - he can fight a little (Medium BAB, some nice weapons), has lots of skills (6+INT), he can buff (Inspire COurage), he can cast healing spells and more buff spells. Yet, if you had the choice between two Bards and one Cleric and a Wizard, you'd better off with the latter two. The Bard can do a little bit of everything, but to really turn the tide in any given situation, you're better off more specialized.

In the 4E paradigm, this probably would need to result in players getting more powers if they have non-focused statistics, or something like that.

 

[Mallus]

Dark, Idra and Mustrum posted most of what I was going to, but I'd like to address some points they didn't.

I also don't agree that damage output should be the primary concern of any character.

Nor do I. But we were talking about making a swashbuckling fighter, and a fighter should be able to fight, no?

If you want to build a brute/tank/warmage type then fine but to me having damage output being the primary concern for all character types is more like playing a computer game and not an RPG.

A character can be both competent and well-characterized. The two things aren't mutually exclusive.

A fighter w/ an 18 str is neither original or unique and rather predictable.

Neither is a fighter with a 10 STR automatically interesting or well-characterized.

Let's call this the Incompetence Fallacy; the belief that a character is inherently deeper, better rounded, and/or more interesting because they're bad at what they're supposed to good at. A dim, poor study of a wizard, a puny barbarian, etc. This is just a simple, mechanical playing-against-type. It could yield an interesting character, but no more so than a character that plays-to-type.

Going along with this is the Competence Corollary; a character get less interesting the better he or she is at what they're supposed to be good at. This is nonsense, too.

Good characters are more the result of the personalities and mannerisms you give them, their motivations, the non-mechanical thing they contribute during play. Sure, mechanics inform a character, but seeing as D&D is a game heroic fantasy, implicitly about larger-than-life characters, it's not surprising that there are some similarities between characters where it comes to their core competencies.