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

[Scribble]

My group still has no interest in 4E (same goes for myself as their DM) so I guess it isnt doing it for us .

On a slight tangent, we were getting a new player to join our group but it turns out that she got into a new 4E game during the past month. Her group plays on the nights we are planning to play on.
She's also semi-new to the game (a little 2E iirc) and I dont think shes ever played 3.5.

This is proof that chicks dig 4e guys more.

 

[Psion]

I wonder why rolling for stats is so important to us DnD players. In storyteller, I pick exactly the stats I want. In Mutants & Masterminds, same deal.

IME, how much of a problem that is depends on the importance of your selection balanced against the availability of points. If a system gives you a small amount of points, lets you spend them anywhere, and makes just one or two attributes really important for the character, point buy tends to produce repetitive or even distorted character designs. This, I think, is why I can stand M&M point buy (more than enough points to reach your limits in several categories) as opposed to D&D (reaching limits is expensive but mechanically compelling.)

oWoD deals with this by masking probabilities, but to its credit, it forces you to spend your points in categories. Still, I think the points are a bit slim.

nWoD, while a more solid system IMO, has more of a problem because the probabilities are more clear and it's easier to "game" the character.

I decide what you want to do and your character is as effective as you want them to be. This does not work for a lot of DnD players I've met, and I wonder why.

It doesn't work for this DM because of the aforementioned cookie cutter and hyper-optimized character designs.

I admit, it took my about five years to get into point buy. Now I'll never go back, but before I was very resistant. Rolling those stats was really important to me. Part of it was a way to differentiat myself from other characters. "Yeah, I'm playing a Fighter, but I got an 18 Con, where as Joe over here only has a 13." Another part was the chance of excellent luck, with lots of good stats that you couldn't otherwise get.

Now I prefer point-buy because it levels the mechanical playing field and forces players to think about their characters beyond mechanical stats.

I find that point buy has a much higher tendency to think about your character mechanically. It gets you into little internal debates like "is 2 more points of strength really more than 4 more points in my other stats?", and can even tempt you to sacrifice concept for mechanical efficiency.

There are methods that can produce a middle ground between the randomized and point buy or array styles. But the designers haven't been thoughtful enough to include any such methods in the books.

I had one such method; I thought I had put it in the blogs, but I see I have not. Guess I have an idea for my next blog post...

Edit: and here it is:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/...en-more-equitable-random-stat-gen-method.html

 

[AstroCat]

I admit I haven't read through the whole thread but I can tell you our groups totally dig 4E.

So much better for me personally to play and by far to run over 3.5. Running 3.5 is actually not really any fun for me and feels a lot more like work, while running 4E is an absolute blast and so much more elegant and straight forward.

So big props from me to 4E. I've heard the 3.5 arguments ad nauseam and they never hold up when the person exclaiming them is pressed. No role playing in 4E, oh man that is so weak... blah blah blah... gamers LOVE to bitch and moan, it is part the gamer shtick, plus people can bond when they bitch together. Sorry, I am over it, I just want to game and have fun.

Oh and yes, chics dig 4E way more!

 

[Maugan22]

I should preface this by saying that I was totally onboard with 4th edition from the date of the announcement, followed the podcasts and blogs on the wizards site with fervor.

Got the game, was slightly irked by the lack of crunch and the homogenization of class powers, the proliferations of elves, and so forth.

The nail in the coffin for me was playing keep on the shadowfell with a mixed group of veterans and relatively new players. After the first session all the players were pretty much in a mode of "That was Ok, but when can we play 3.5 again?"

3.5 had some issues, 4th edition patched a few of them, and I've houseruled in a few pieces from 4th. Beyond that the eddition is essentially useless to me, to simple, not enough options, a lack of verisimilitude, It feels like a board game.

I'm looking at upgrading to Pathfinder, I'm willing to play 4th if someone else is DMing, but for the stories and style of my campaigns I want 3.5. Despite it's rough spots remains in my esteme the best base roleplaying system so far concieved.

 

[AstroCat]

I big problem for me in 3.5e is that some people get to play a lot more than others because of the messed up combat balance and the rules are so messy and sloppy with so many unclear bloated documented rules and wacky exceptions it just plays like a mess. Way too much time looking up obscure rules and house ruling "broken" parts.

Plus the horrible stat blocks. Ugh! You have to look up a zillion little rules for each spell and monster ability. Oh man and turn undead, blah! I dont have time for that crap, what a pain. 4E, it's all right there and I can spend so much more time playing the game, role playing and having fun and not so much time looking up dumb hardness rule exceptions, spells of NPCs and used once in a million years monster abilities.

The players are way more active as well, and everyone is playing the game and bouncing around. The combat is so much more dynamic and action packed, even at 1st level.

 

[Simon Atavax]

3.5 had some issues, 4th edition patched a few of them, and I've houseruled in a few pieces from 4th. Beyond that the eddition is essentially useless to me, to simple, not enough options, a lack of verisimilitude, It feels like a board game.

The first time I flipped through Keep on the Shadowfell I was struck by how similar the whole thing seemed to Descent.

 

[MerricB]

The first time I flipped through Keep on the Shadowfell I was struck by how similar the whole thing seemed to Descent.

You could rather say that Descent is similar to Keep... one's a boardgame based on a dungeoncrawl, the other is a roleplaying game doing a dungeoncrawl.

Yes, they look sort of similar, but the play is very, very different. You don't have Splug in Descent. You don't have the party trying to bluff their way past the goblins, nor convince a ghost that they mean well.

In D&D, you don't have one character staying back in the middle of the room to stop monsters spawning!

Not to mention that the monsters and characters are a tad more complicated than in Descent!

 

[qstor]

I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that 4E rely is heavily dependent on high statistics.

I've only played 2 games of 4e so my perspective is limited I'm sure. However since defenses depend on one ability statistic OR another I think you could have a few high stats and several lower ones and it doesn't matter. In other editions saves depending on single stats rather than one or the other.

Mike

 

[qstor]

Plus the horrible stat blocks. Ugh! You have to look up a zillion little rules for each spell and monster ability. Oh man and turn undead, blah!

I think that is the poorest excuse I've seen for not liking 3.5 or another edition. If you an experienced DM you release how spells work and what the monster abilities are.From 2e to 3.x the spells changed a little but overall worked kind of the same.

Same with turn undead. With a DM screen the chart is right there.

Granted at higher levels in 3.x its hard to keep track of all the spells operating at a time but that's why its good to have chart's where the players keep a list of their spells that are up.

I haven't played 4e at higher levels so I can't comment on prayers etc at higher levels in 4e.

Mike

 

[qstor]

Yes. Magic items that just give a numeric bonus seem so bland. It's the special effects that make them interesting.

I haven't read all of Adventurers Vault or the DMG so now its news to me that numeric bonus weapons are gone. Right but getting rid of them ignores the history of the game. They've been a part of the game in each edition. Not having them in loses a part of older editions.

::ack:: I'm having an attack of grumpy old man's symdrome. Thanks for the poster that posted that before.

Mike