Weakness by Edition

[vagabundo]

I haven't read KotS or played it. But LostSoul had a thread on it, reporting his actual play experiences, which seemed pretty different from this.

I think KotS is what you make of it. It has a lot of combat encounters all done out, it is a nice framework and a straight forward plot. I've made a number of Mods myself and am now enjoying it more.

Lost Souls thread is definitely the place to pillage idea's from:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...esting-emergent-features-keep-shadowfell.html

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Things I haven't seen mentioned yet:
1e: Most characters of the same class are identical. Fighters are fighters, especially after they get their first set of Gauntlets of Ogre Power and are looking for their first Belt of Giant Strength (hill). Thieves are thieves, wizards all have the same set of maximally useful spells, clerics are all tanks with healing spells, etc. Very little customization.

2e: Customization starts to appear, for some classes. We get speciality priests, but not much else. Sourcebooks annoyingly make reference to the shared-world cosmology suggested by the Spelljammer setting.

3e: Customization-fest, to the point that everything unique gets hacked up and tossed into the grab bag of feats and class levels that characters are built with. The illusionist is gone, reduced to an extra illusion spell per day for a wizard. This gets remedied toward the end of the run when they realize that, hey, sometimes a thing needs special treatment if it's going to be fun to play, and we get things like binders, shadowcasters, and the illusionist beguiler.

4e: They're not releasing splatbooks fast enough, and there are things I want that haven't been released.

 

[TerraDave]

D&D weaknesses through the ages….

OD&D: sometimes minimalist means not enough. But when the enough came in early supplements and articles, the results could be surprisingly not good…

AD&D (1E): Which AD&D tried to fix, pulling in much of the new, but not all of it, thank the many gods of the Deities and Demigods, while still leaving certain issues, like wildly varying capabilities across characters, unresolved. Still, too many baroque rules remained, which forced…

B(E/C/M/I/RC) D&D: first a companion product to AD&D, then a simplified version, this was a better game…but not so much better that people actually chose to play it over AD&D (got that?). It just did not have the zazz that AD&D did, which leads naturally to:

AD&D (2E): Neither the streamlining of basic, nor the “hey, this is cool” elements of OAD&D, the bland core rules was supplemented by, well, massive doses of all over the place supplements that, when mixed in with corporate ineptitude and hate of customer, just about ended the game, that is until…

D&D “3E”: Finally, D&D with serious RPG rules….a little too serious…that easily got bogged down, still had “legacy issues” at higher levels, and was hurt by poorly done “splats” and not supported by, well much, except all that splatitude. A grand success that seemed to run of steam really fast, leading first to 3.5 (and longer splats!) and then…

D&D “4E”: The first version of the game in ages where a bunch of regular D&D players (well, they also happened to be professional game designers) got together and said: how do we make this thing play better. So much reinvention was involved that not enough time was spent developing all the new bits—some powers, rituals, skill challenges, the warlord, monster description…. But the biggest problem of 4E: it does play better, even outside of combat, and too many people don’t know it. Which I am afraid will lead to…

D&D “4.5E”…

 

[thedungeondelver]

Things I haven't seen mentioned yet:
1e: Most characters of the same class are identical.

Thanks for posting that, it reminded me of yet another weakness of 4e: All the characters of any class are just about identical, in that race to Enforce Fun.

 

[Mallus]

...it reminded me of yet another weakness of 4e: All the characters of any class are just about identical...

In 4e you differentiate characters using personality and magic items... just like in 1e!

(except that 4e has other ways to differentiate characters like build path, power selection, feats...).

 

[Obryn]

Thanks for posting that, it reminded me of yet another weakness of 4e: All the characters of any class are just about identical, in that race to Enforce Fun.

You must be playing a different 4e than I am.

Running both 1e and 4e right now...

1e:
* Greater stat variation, with random rolls being the default
* Greater HP variation, also due to rolling
* Zero class ability variation, unless you're a spellcaster...
* Greater spell variability for spellcasters
* Front-loaded racial abilities that don't change

4e:
* Lower stat variation, due to point buy optimization
* Almost zero HP variation - just a few points at most.
* Huge class ability differentiation past 3rd level or so, unless you're a spellcaster...
* Less spell variability for spellcasters
* Availability of Feats to fine-tune a character, including racial abilities.

Both have fundamentally similar Skills, if you use Non-Weapon proficiencies.

Both also allow you to make your character interesting in ways beyond the mechanical.

At 1st level there are very few differences between characters of the same class under either system. Intra-class differences get pretty extreme in 4e by even low-mid levels, though.

-O

 

[thedungeondelver]

D&D “4E”: The first version of the game in ages where a bunch of regular D&D players (well, they also happened to be professional game designers) got together and said: how do we make this thing play better. So much reinvention was involved that not enough time was spent developing all the new bits—some powers, rituals, skill challenges, the warlord, monster description…. But the biggest problem of 4E: it does play better, even outside of combat, and too many people don’t know it. Which I am afraid will lead to…

D&D “4.5E”…

So...4e's only weakness is that it's too awesome. Riiiiight...

 

[pawsplay]

So...4e's only weakness is that it's too awesome. Riiiiight...

It's so awesome, people want to fight with it, but they can't, so 4e has to kill them with a spinning kick.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

You must be playing a different 4e than I am.

I find that I am quite glad that I am unable to see the post you're responding to, but somewhat annoyed that everyone keeps quoting bits of it, so that I am reminded why I am glad that I can't see it.

 

[billd91]

I find that I am quite glad that I am unable to see the post you're responding to, but somewhat annoyed that everyone keeps quoting bits of it, so that I am reminded why I am glad that I can't see it.

Do we really need a post pointedly drawing attention to the fact that you're ignoring someone?