Why I think you should try 4e (renamed)

[Jack99]

I agree. If this is an edition war, what would we call last summer? An edition apocalypse?

LOL - Let me see if I can not find that XP button.

It just seems saying 4e is a good RPG, is like saying Transformers should win best picture. Yeah Transformers is lots of fun if you just want to vedge out, hoot at girls and look at big explosions but, its just not any deeper then that.

I think 4e is one of the best written RPGs out there (in terms of explaining the rules and certain mechanical elements that get to the core of the matter). However, when ever someone comes up with a situation that shows that the game does not work for their group in a situation, the response seems to be that, "Thats not how the game is meant to be played"

For example the fact that a 9th level fighter cant kill a second level character in one blow is a horrible situation to some groups. There are plenty of fixes (make them minions, just narrate it etc.) but, none of them appeal to me as a DM.

Notice bold part. This is basically your issue with 4e. You do not like how they have done things. That's fine. But stop saying that 4e can't do this or can't do that, when it's simply because you do not like how 4e has done things.

Take your example of the 9th level fighter killing a level 2 kobold. I think we can all (or at least a lot of us) agree that baring some very special circumstances, a lowly kobold is not supposed to be a threat to a level 9 character. The level 9 character should also be able to kill the kobold quickly and easily. 4e does handle this. The minion approach is not some weird "fix" imagine by some random people on the internet, but instead, it is a new tool to simulate the increased power of a player character.

Remember, combat in D&D is abstract. Hit point damage can mean a lot of things. So it doesn't really matter that a kobold has 36 hit points when you meet it at 2nd level and only 1 when you meet it at 9th level. That is just the reverse of your damage out-put increasing and it yields the same result.

The kobold with which you struggled at lower level (you needed 4-5 hits) is very easy to kill at 9th level (1 hit).

Regarding skills: Yet again, it's just you who doesn't like how 4e handles skills and skill resolution. There is a tool, which you used. Maybe your DM made a bad SC, or maybe you guys just don't like SC's. Still doesn't change the fact that 4e has a solution to the situation.

For what it is worth, I can't see why you couldn't add some of those missing skills that you seem to like to 4e. Make them cost a feat or background points or something, and then add craft or whatever it is you feel is lacking to the skill list. I have a hard time seeing that would unbalance anything. Of course, if you play RPGA, you are SOL.

 

[tomBitonti]

3.5E and Natural Armor

I'm skipping a lot of posts (this thread has gotten ... quite ... long.)

There is a mechanic in 3.5E which is very similar to the 4E steady AC growth by level. That is natural armor.

As best as I can figure it, natural armor is assigned in the particular amount which is needed to create a suitable AC for a particular CR level. There is a partial explanation for it, in terms of the creature having tougher skin, or what-not, but that never sat very well with me.

As a quick example, a Marilith has a natural armor bonus of +16. That is twice the benefit of full plate.

I think that many concerns over level dependent benefits (AC, BAB, HP, Expected Damage) ultimately translate into concerns over levels as a mechanic. You could model increases in skill by explicit training. Hand out a lot more feats as "training options" and have skills increase only by particular training. (As an aside, doesn't WFRP pretty much work like this?)

To address a different issue raised earlier in the thread, I've considered the minion mechanic to be a simplification of attacks against lower power level creature, where "1 HP" was representative of a single attack being some high percentage (say, 90) likely to kill the creature. (A kind of renormalization.) If a level 9 attack does not have that high of a chance chance to kill a level 2 creature in one shot, then I'd say the in-game math is wrong.

 

[Rechan]

Many such computer games do allow for free range of the party/PC but the lethality is so jacked up that if you just LOOK at something funny, your PC is dead.

What's funny is that in other games, all the monsters level with you. Morrowind/Oblivion is a good example of this; all the enemies increase, to the point that they're dropping "level" appropriate loot. (Trolls and vampirse are the exception, because you need a lot of fire to punch them in the face).

This is all because of the level system whereas in say a sandbox game like the Grand Theft Auto series which doesn't have levelling per se, the threat level across regions remains more or less constant.

I thought in GTA, you couldn't explore areas you weren't supposed to be in, because you had to complete certain missions to unlock the new areas?

You can't begin quests outside of your "level" because you haven't completed the quests in order to unlock the bigger ones. Or unlock the area where your quests are located.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

:re Sandbox DMing

I actually think many of the more modren day MMORPGs and RPGS might be to blame for this but not in the way people think (providing tailored encounters)

Many such computer games do allow for free range of the party/PC but the lethality is so jacked up that if you just LOOK at something funny, your PC is dead.

This is all because of the level system whereas in say a sandbox game like the Grand Theft Auto series which doesn't have levelling per se, the threat level across regions remains more or less constant.

Would you wander around Azeroth significantly above your level range even though it has great scenery?

This is why I tend to believe 4e is more suited for sandbox play as the common complaint that monsters don't do enough damage means that you won't get one shotted and players would be more willing to explore.

I'm not really jiving with your logic or analogies here. Can you please expand further or explain a little more clearly? Sandbox play to my mind is more built on the characters interacting within a stable well-defined world, not with a focus on character-tailored encounters (what I perceive to be the focus of 4E). Willingness to explore comes from the motivation of the characters (and players), not from less swingy combat.

Every campaign that our group plays is pretty much a sandbox style game - it's what our group enjoys. There is an internal logic to the world and an average militia-man guarding his village will be of the same standard, regardless of where his village is. Part of the fun however, is working out what adventures seem possible, while what other ones seem too hard or difficult. In one game, our group passed up on finding the ancient red dragon and relieving him/her of a certain gem instead preferring the "easier side-quest" of Return to the Tomb of Horrors.

To my way of thinking, I don't feel like 4E would capture the incredible danger we all felt taking on something that we knew was too tough. There's just too much of an in-built safety net mechanically speaking. Am I perceiving 4E wrong in this regard?

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[AllisterH]

I guess I should define what sandbox means to me....

A sandbox game is basically one in which the PCs can say "I want to go exploring over THERE" and they decide when they go someplace (barring plot restraints)

In a game with high lethality, players I find are much less willing to do this as an encounter beyond your level will likely get you grokked and you can't run away quick enough (this is the most important thing IMO. PCs need to be able to beat feet when pressed). Keep in mind that PCs technically shouldn't know what exactly is "beyond the hills" unless there's definite information available.

For example, in 4e, there's nothing I can see stopping a party from simply exploring the world a la previous editions of D&D (1e is championed as the best exemplar of this and it didn't HAVE a skill system so the lack of skills like Profession/Craft should have no problem with it) and it's less lethal gameplay is more conducive IMO to players willing to explore.

A 4e 10th level party is just as dead facing a 20th level monster as previous editions are, but it's more closer to 1e/2e where you can actually take a couple rounds of punishment

 

[Jack99]

To my way of thinking, I don't feel like 4E would capture the incredible danger we all felt taking on something that we knew was too tough. There's just too much of an in-built safety net mechanically speaking. Am I perceiving 4E wrong in this regard?

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

It is correct that 4e is not as unforgiving as the older versions, especially 3.x. But IMO that makes it all the more suited for a sandbox game. Because when you run into something 10 levels higher than you, instead of dying during the first round, you now actually have options. Stay and fight (and lose) or run.

So, in order words, if you want your players to die because they took a wrong turn, then 4e is probably not the right game for you. If on the other hand you want a game that allows your players to live as long as they make the right decisions (baring the usual unluck etc), then 4e works really well.

 

[Intense_Interest]

I would love to see an amalgum of 3.x and 4E brought together into a cohesive whole with some of the "simulation" poured back in. That would be fun to discuss and play (in my opinion of course).

In my 11 years of playing D&D in numerous groups, I have never met a "Simulationist" at the table that was working to do more than DM-proof their personal Rube Goldberg device or Machiavellian plots.

The desire for simulationism, to me, is the desire to pull off unexpected yet reasonable plans that can be retold as an ego-boosting tale. The guy who builds the linked-portal rings / copper-piece box that explodes when broken like an atom bomb, for example. Simulationism, as a RP gaming desire, isn't asking for more granularity and "realism" in worlds; its asking to see the strings and levers that the player can use to their advantage, and the DM can use to interact with the players on a deeper metagame (in the true meaning of the word) level.

 

[Ariosto]

Then we are in the same boat even as we are on opposite sides.

I am an "edition warrior" not because I think it's better, but to push back the "It's not D&D" "It's shallow" "It's just a videogame/boardgame/whatever derogative dumbed down term". It's a position of defense, like yourself.

To make a point, I don't go at length about what I thought of 3e or why I don't play 3e. But I cannot count how many times I've seen 'Yeah well this is what I think of 4e and why I don't play it' in multiple threads. The only complaint I see from 4e-players in reference to 3e is prep-time for DMs.

I think I'm about as "old school" as anyone more uncouth than venerable Mike Mornard (or industrial Iron Man Rick Loomis) -- but the sense of pioneering is in that context ever so much more evocative to me than slavish devotion to text thereby transformed into a merely "old" museum piece.

I have seen loads of absurdity from some quarters anathematizing "skills systems" and the like. I was (as far as I or my play-testers knew at the time) an early experimenter in the field of the "narrative" game. OD&D is for me nothing unearthed in a "renaissance" but what I have always refereed even though it was considered (from what I saw) passé 30 years ago -- and at the same time I was an early adopter of RuneQuest and GURPS, and a nearly compulsive collector and reader of every work on which I could get my hands.

When AD&Ders sniff about how Dragonborn and Tieflings are This or That (usually knowing even less about This or That than about the races themselves), I just dismiss them as the squares that (Corporation X) Fanboys have ever been.

Come on, really: Dragonewts and Deodanths? Been there; done that; got the T-shirt in 1981.

I don't have a whole lot of patience for that.

But I don't have a lot more for people who insist that Official D&D® should be turned into Something Completely Different.

What is this, Sheep and Shopping Status?

Hobbit and He-Man -- two great flavors that might taste great together (if that's your thing). Frodo, though, is not all that, and Sauron is no Skeletor.

Why is this such a problem?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So you really pretend for your GM to make up a Bare Chested Prestige class just to justify him as a threat?

really? A whole Prestige class just for one encounter?

really?





Okay now I get it. You have trust issues with your GM. You requiere him to prove mathematically everything that happens lest he "cheat" on you.

Well sadly I have bad news for you, in 4E the monsters rules are different than the Players rules. The reason behind this is to ease the work of the DM. No other reason.

Again, if you want an exact/mathematically/rule obsessed game system maybe 3E is more what you are looking for. 4E is an entirely new and different game.

Of course, you can still trust your DM. Those numbers for his monsters - if they are in the ballpark of the guidelines, it was probably a fair challenge and you got the right amount of XP for it.

Well, maybe it wasn't fair, because he pitted 10th level monsters against your first level party. But the numbers are appropriate to the level.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

To go a little more back to the original topic (though maybe not), one thing I particularly like about 4E is a monsters identity and nature is far better represented in the game mechanics then ever before.

Maybe I used the wrong word with "Sneaky" when talking about Kobolds. "Shifty" might be better.
But it is definitely a great example of what the 4E game rules do. The monster race "Kobolds" feel different from the monster type "Orc" not just because they are lower level monsters. They also have different abilities. Kobolds shift as a minor action as their racial ability. That makes them a real pest in melee combat, they constantly evade your attacks and reform their battle lines, making it hard for the party to concentrate on one Kobold.
The Orc instead gets a special attack he can use if he is bloodied that heals some hit points. If you fight an Orc, and you hurt him, you see him lashing out against you and regaining his fighting spirit.

Compare that to a 3E Orc or Kobold? What is so unique about them? The Kobold is just a weaker threat, but he is not different. The only way you "know" that it should play differently is because the flavor text says so. The "simulationist" rules do not actually support much of that. And if you still want to use your Kobold 10 levels later, he's a Kobold with 10 levels in Sorceror and could as well be Orc with 10 levels of Sorceror - you wouldn't notice the difference by the way the battle played out.

So for me, the MM is definitely not dry or devoid of flavor or fluff. Each monster (or group of monsters) has its unique thing that makes it stand out from the others, it has a shtick, something that will come up in play when I use the monster.