On homogeneity, or how I finally got past the people talking past each other part

[Rechan]

So noted. You're also welcome to pmail them to me.

 

[dontmazemebro]

These criticisms of 4E are just baffling to me.

I can only speak for myself, and I seem to have a minority opinion, but 4E actually brought my group back to the game. 3E rules were overly convoluted, grossly unbalanced, and borderline nonsensical. 4E made the game fun again. In 4E everyone is valuable. In 4E everyone is part of a team and can contribute.

The "homogenous" argument is particularly perplexing to me. Would you consider a kicker, wide receiver, and linebacker "homogenous" because they all play on a football field and adhere to the same laws of physics? Heck no. Even though they are playing the same game, the experience is totally different for each player. Just like 4E. A shielding swordmage plays nothing like a tactical warlord who in turn plays nothing like a chaos sorcerer who are all playing on the same battlemap.

4E turned D&D from a game of auto-attacking melees and kitchen-sink casters to an actual team effort where everyone abides by the same laws of physics.

D&D has always had a great mystique and "feel" to it, thanks to its iconic monsters and fantastic settings. The ruleset that has always been the Achilles' Heel of D&D. To this day, I still shudder when I think back to the arbitrary nature of 2E saving throw tables and multi/dual classing rules. Or the broken nature of 3E level progressions (e.g. Ur-priests). With 4E, for the first time in D&D's history, the rules make sense... the rules are f****** awesome now... and people are complaining... it's just plain bizarre to me.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

So noted. You're also welcome to pmail them to me.

Its done.

 

[Dalzig]

With 4E, for the first time in D&D's history, the rules make sense... the rules are f****** awesome now... and people are complaining... it's just plain bizarre to me.

A form of Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps?

I understand both sides of this homogeneity discussion, and actually agree with both of them. 4e does have many tiny details that make characters play out so differently, while still having characters that are 90% the same on paper. 3.5 did have a lot of options that made every character unique, if you worked the system right.

However, for me, 3.5 was simply an atrocious system to play the game with. It was amazing at creating unique characters. It brought stunning life to narratives that used D&D as a basis. But it simply did not facilitate a fun play experience. There were too many glaring problems with game play for it to work out. 4e fixed this, probably with the homogeneity being part of the solution.

Now, if only Wizards could take 3.5 and 4e and shove them together to create balanced, unique, and easy-to-create characters while still keeping the ease of 4e DM'ing... Perhaps when 5e rolls around.

 

[Rechan]

Now, if only Wizards could take 3.5 and 4e and shove them together to create balanced, unique, and easy-to-create characters while still keeping the ease of 4e DM'ing... Perhaps when 5e rolls around.

Isn't having a system with millions of options and subsystems the opposite of "easy-to-create" characters?

You can't have lots of skill point allocations, hundreds of feats, classes that vary widely in their very mechanics and a smorgusboard of spells if you want "easy to create".

 

[catastrophic]

A form of Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps?

I understand both sides of this homogeneity discussion, and actually agree with both of them. 4e does have many tiny details that make characters play out so differently, while still having characters that are 90% the same on paper.

Your assesment of the rules is just not accurate.

4e doesn't have tiny details, it has huge, great honking exception based rules. Thse take up most of the chracter sheet, from the class powers list, to rituals, to item powers.

That's not even adding in exceptions like psionic characters who don't even have encounter powers.

You don't understand both sides of the debate, because you're buying into the claims made by one side of it, even though they're simply not accurate.

 

[catastrophic]

These criticisms of 4E are just baffling to me.

I can only speak for myself, and I seem to have a minority opinion, but 4E actually brought my group back to the game.

You don't have a minority opinion, it's just a minority opinion on threads where people endlessly complain about 4e and make up reasons to criticise it because they don't want to admit that their hostility to it isn't really based on 4e at all, but rather their attachement to 3e and their anger at it no longer being pre-eminent.

I don't doubt that some people have genuine preference issues, whereby 3e fits them better than 4e. But that's not what happens most often. What happens most often is that people make what are clearly highly contrived criticisms, and other people defend these criticisms and give them far more credit than they deserve.

4e is not bad at roleplaying, 4e is not homogenous, 4e does not violate the monomyth, these criticisms are caused by people who are reaching for excuses rather than admitting that it's just not their thing.

These criticisms are usually not expressing genuine preference, they are made by people who are deliberatly muddying and confusing the discussion of design and preference in order to rationalise their nerd rage. And then there's a bunch of people encouraging that, thinking they're beign reasonable, but actually often making it impossible to discuss real issues.

I'm not saying some people aren't expressing genuine preferences, but this constant tug of war is not useful for anyone, it's mostly just a way for people to try and legitimise their hostility to 4e. You want to be hostile to 4e, go ahead, but don't pretend it's because the lack of craft skills make it impossible to roleplay.

It would be great to talk about some of the real contrasts and preference issues, but that won't be possible until people recognise that a lot of the 4e haters are just blowing hot air. Trying to work through all these wierd criticisms isn't going to improve the discussion, it's going to make it worse, more confusing, more frustrating, and ultimatly much more toxic.

I think this is a perfect example of that. We can't talk about real variety or specialisation, because people insist that 'variety' be defined as 'character sheets for different classes look different'.

 

[Reigan]

I know a lot of people who still play 3E. This is flat wrong.

I'm sorry your game sucked so bad. But you are making a substantial mistake in presuming that your experience is representative of mine.

Thanks for implying my games sucked bad are my fault. They sucked bad because the rules sucked bad. Extensive character choices helps cover this up, but if you don't get to play a lot of different characters this doesn't help. Charge/Attack/Full attack is the only game in town, and it gets really tedious after a while. There were other options like tripping or stunning but the resolution of these slowed the game down with very little chance of success.

I'm glad you had such a positive experience but a lot of other people didn't, they complained and rules weren't just tweaked, they were completely redesigned.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

A whole lot of stuff

Seriously, it needs to be a bannable offense to say "NOTHING IS WRONG WITH <edition>, YOU'RE ALL JUST IRRATIONAL HATERS.

Actually, In all seriousness, <edition> hater really SHOULD be a bannable offense for the connotations it has.

Because that's what fosters good communication and discussion. Telling the other side that they're always wrong, and that your game is 100% flawless.

Behead those who insult <edition>, eh?

 

[MarkB]

I've played a lot of 4e since it came out - at least three major campaigns, several one-offs and loads of LFR - and at first, you couldn't have found a more enthusiastic supporter of the system than me. I just loved it, went through characters of various roles and classes, had a blast with both the role-playing and the combat.

But after about six months or so, it began to pall. Yes, there are diverse choices, yes each class has some unique features, but there is an overall sameiness to the general system mechanic that gradually begins to overwhelm it all.

Every single combat, I'm starting out with some nifty encounter powers, maybe risking a daily if things get really hairy, burning through the other handful of encounter powers, then slogging away with the at-wills if we didn't wrap things up soon enough.

And every single combat, we're facing the same small variety of enemies. Oh, not that we fight the same critters all the time - but that's practically irrelevant. In 4e, the monster roles are far more powerful determinants of what sort of challenge you'll face than their species.

In 3.xe, you'd have a huge variety of creature types - dragons, goblins, pixies, giants, demons, zombies, etc. - each with a few variants of build and advancement.

In 4e, however, you get just a handful of types - solo, elite, controller, skirmisher, solider, lurker, minion - each of which has dozens of tiny variants, in the form of their actual species.

Ultimately, combat does boil down to a set of practised choices in response to a very limited set of opponent roles, with the actual opposing creature race in question having only a limited impact on the tactical landscape.