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

[Greylock]

You mean you don't get it?

Gasp! You DO know it's a bannable offense, trying to evade the word filter, right?

 

[DaveMage]

I've recently decided (after playing it a little more) that "No, it's not."

I'm not upset that I bought 4E or anything. There are a lot of good ideas in it. I'll definitely be taking the idea of Spells vs. Rituals with me, for instance. I like some of the Cosmology and the Alignment changes are inspirational (even if I won't use them as written). But as nice as some of the window dressing is, the core of the system just doesn't seem to be working. C'est la Vie

Who are you, and what have you done with Irda Ranger????

 

[billd91]

I'm not upset that I bought 4E or anything. There are a lot of good ideas in it. I'll definitely be taking the idea of Spells vs. Rituals with me, for instance. I like some of the Cosmology and the Alignment changes are inspirational (even if I won't use them as written). But as nice as some of the window dressing is, the core of the system just doesn't seem to be working. C'est la Vie

Spells vs rituals and the cosmology look like good ideas to yoink back into a 3.5 game to me too. I'm also contemplating toning down some of the martial exploits and making feats out of them too. A little bit of position swapping and sliding could be a good thing.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Who are you, and what have you done with Irda Ranger????

I know, eh?

You know it's funny, but it was only after trying the gameplay itself that I realized "Man, this is too boardgame." It was one of those things that I couldn't anticipate just by reading the rules. But all the stuff I was excited about during the rev-up to launch I still really like. Things I like:

1. Most of the new cosmology (on balance, better than the Great Wheel). I really dig the Feywild /Faery World.
2. The encounter design system / monster roles. Makes eyeballing encounters a snap.
2.a Streamlined monster rules. Makes life easy for the DM to design new monsters on the fly.
3. Explicit roles for PCs rather than implicit roles that weren't always acknowledged (leading to conflict).
4. Spells vs. Rituals.
5. Classes that are balanced across 30 levels.
6. Combat that doesn't get weighed down by options at high levels.

etc.

It turned out though that while their ends were noble several design choices they made as to means were sub-optimal for my tastes. 4E combat is now so intricate and battlemat focused that I have to be in the same mood for 4E as I am for, oh, Risk or M:tG. It's a different feel than an rpg now for me. I really hope the decision by WotC developers was made in a honest attempt to make a fun game, rather than sell Dungeon Tiles or Wizards' minis line. No way to know though, I guess.

The "boardgame combat" was true of Iron Heroes, but just a couple degrees less. But I never expected Iron Heroes to feel like D&D, so I guess it just didn't hit me until now. Weird, huh? I find it odd to be typing this.

But like I said above 4E is a good game in many ways, it just didn't scratch my RPG itch like I thought it would.

 

[Zustiur]

Try creating personalities, motivations, and mannerisms for your characters. It's helps dispel that board game feel.

Not enough. Mind you, spending more than 50% of our time in combat has a lot to do with it. Seems 2 defenders, 2 strikers, 1 controller and one leader doesn't have enough hitting power.

Chess is balanced. Are you suggesting balanced games are somehow meant for children?

Hardly. I'm saying the flip side of the same thing. Poker is balanced, that doesn't make it a childrens game. But when making a game for children you should endeavor to make it as balanced as possible, if only to save their poor parents. DnD feels like a boardgame in that sense - it's been altered in such a way as to indicate that the target audience is now much younger than before.

DnD, being a roleplaying game first, and a combat game second, needs less perfection in the balancing. However 4th edition feels balanced to the point that it feels (to me) bland. Gone is the interest in keeping the wizard alive at first level. Gone are the tide turning spells that he used to command. With regard to staying power, I think old fighters were better defenders than the new ones are. We find ourselves protecting the wizard out of habit, rather than need.

Actually, 3e started moving D&D in the direction of making all classes combat-capable

Granted, but that was done while maintaining a sufficient discretion between classes.

Not for everyone. Moving a figure on a grid screams "Boardgame" to me, no matter the characterisation.

Exactly. That's what hero quest et al are for. And when I refer to boardgame, that's what I mean. We're not talking about snakes and ladders here. We're talking about talisman, hero quest, warhammer quest and games of that ilk. They're dungeon crawls with 'lite' rules, miniatures and defined maps. Chess is a totally different type of game altogether.

You know it's funny, but it was only after trying the gameplay itself that I realized "Man, this is too boardgame." It was one of those things that I couldn't anticipate just by reading the rules. But all the stuff I was excited about during the rev-up to launch I still really like.

Turn based effect have a huge part to play in this. The effects have become "You've been hit by the ghoul. Miss a turn" which just screams boardgame. Where as "you've been hit by the ghoul and paralyzed, you will remain so for 1d6 minutes or until 'cured'" promotes story over mechanics. 1d6 minutes promotes fear, where missing a turn is just a yawn.

All the movement, shifting and dancing has the same issue, but to a lesser extent.

I think what I'm driving at is that DnD has crossed a line (for me) where it now focuses too much on rules over flavour. All previous editions have been flavour first, with rules to describe the situation. Now we have rules for the sake of balance, regardless of any story or explainable purpose.

We have 'you miss a turn because the rules say so' rather than 'the ghoul bit you, so now you suffer the consequences, which incidentally means missing a turn'. We have 'deal 2d4 + int damage by casting magic missile' rather than 'you hurl bolts of force at your enemy. Incidentally this is determined by rolling 1d4+1...'

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Zustiur, I can understand most of your points as just difference of opinion and such. But your last point about Powers confuses the heck out of me.

I don't understand where this, automatically one only describes the rules not the fluff comes from? For myself, having these Powers are extremely liberating in-terms of being descriptive and having more roleplaying in combat.

A Power is a combination of different effects to a certain end. As such it combines what previously be a number of different rolls into a couple. Thus, instead of having to laboriously follow a sequence of rules to both fluff and mechanically describe something. One can now use a Power and since it keeps the middle-man out in terms of rules leaves it wide-open to be rped and fluffed out as one wishes.

 

[rounser]

have it just work.

4E gives me what those numbers are on p42 of the DMG. If I don't mind only having monsters with basic attacks, I could run an entire campaign out of p42, the PHB, and my imagination. Add the NPC templates for spice.

I fail to see what's stopping anyone creating a better D&D than 4E by "doing a page 42" and jettisoning all the other subjectively good, questionable taste stuff like dragonborn warlords surging great fountains of heal.

Can someone contrive such a table for C&C?

Oh, and fix the rogue, set it's power level to something better than "suck", while you're at it. Mearls was right about that one, even if he was wrong about the rust monster.

kthxbye

edit: Maybe I'll run the stats. On second thoughts, I think you'd need a computer program running a Monte Carlo simulation of combats to do it quickly and easily enough though...maybe not then...sounds a bit too much like work...on the other hand, can anyone suggest a nice basic interpreter? That would do the trick. Could make one for traps too.

 

[Fenes]

I think what I'm driving at is that DnD has crossed a line (for me) where it now focuses too much on rules over flavour. All previous editions have been flavour first, with rules to describe the situation. Now we have rules for the sake of balance, regardless of any story or explainable purpose.

We have 'you miss a turn because the rules say so' rather than 'the ghoul bit you, so now you suffer the consequences, which incidentally means missing a turn'. We have 'deal 2d4 + int damage by casting magic missile' rather than 'you hurl bolts of force at your enemy. Incidentally this is determined by rolling 1d4+1...'

In 4E too there's the description of the magic missile first, followed by the mechanics. That didn't change, although I agree that the feeling changed.

Part of it is, for me, caused by the reason the rules are so clear - the use of one term, and just that term, for everything emphasises the mechanics. "I push" "I dodge" "the enemy jumps" "the enemy backs off" "he slides" "he teleports" and so on are all called "shifting" these days. We shift, I shift him, I shift the enemy, I get shifted, the enemy shifts, and so on. Where prior we had measurements in character, yards, feet, meters, we now move in squares.

All those things work together in making the game less of a roleplaying game for me, since they all make it a bit harder to be immersed. Each time I say "shift" instead of "fall back", each time I "Move 2 squares" instead of "advance to the enemy", adds up.

Easier to play, but harder to roleplay.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

But the same was true before, always whenever you saw 5 feet there was a 1 square beside it.

We know in 4e that 5 feet still equals 1 square. So if one wished to use feet instead, it just as readily available. OR if someone wishes to use metric by having squares as the main base it is easier to adapt into a easy measurement of say 1.5 meters for example.

What is to stop you from still saying fall back, charge the enemy, etc? Our group hardly ever uses the mechanical terms, we do our math, move the characters (when we use the board, which is probably 1/3 of the time we have combat, which is probably 1/4 of our sessions) but do all the descriptions not with mechanics but with roleplaying.

 

[Fenes]

But the same was true before, always whenever you saw 5 feet there was a 1 square beside it.

We know in 4e that 5 feet still equals 1 square. So if one wished to use feet instead, it just as readily available. OR if someone wishes to use metric by having squares as the main base it is easier to adapt into a easy measurement of say 1.5 meters for example.

What is to stop you from still saying fall back, charge the enemy, etc? Our group hardly ever uses the mechanical terms, we do our math, move the characters (when we use the board, which is probably 1/3 of the time we have combat, which is probably 1/4 of our sessions) but do all the descriptions not with mechanics but with roleplaying.

Nothing stops me, but it's more work. For me, it feels like going against the stream of the system. All in all, 4E just has too many of those little itches, little bumps to overcome, house rule, override to "do it" for me. Too much "don't think about it" "just call it something else" "just reskin it" "just house rule it".