Why Changes were made in 4e

Rope Trick originally was a 3rd-level spell lasting 1 hour plus 10 minutes per caster level (minimum 5th = 110 min.).

The Advanced game made it only 2nd level -- but also cut down the duration to 20 minutes per caster level (minimum 3rd = 1 hour). With rest requirements and memorization times (plus limited 2nd-level spell slots), that's probably not going to cut it unless you're of high enough level or in enough numbers not to make it an issue in the first place (and to pull up the rope allows no more than 5 to have climbed it). Happy landings if it's dispelled.

In 3.5, it's still 2nd but the duration is 1 hour per caster level.

Has it been mentioned that there seemed to be a notable case of spell-caster love in 3e?
 

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Rope Trick originally was a 3rd-level spell lasting 1 hour plus 10 minutes per caster level (minimum 5th = 110 min.).

The Advanced game made it only 2nd level -- but also cut down the duration to 20 minutes per caster level (minimum 3rd = 1 hour). With rest requirements and memorization times (plus limited 2nd-level spell slots), that's probably not going to cut it unless you're of high enough level or in enough numbers not to make it an issue in the first place (and to pull up the rope allows no more than 5 to have climbed it). Happy landings if it's dispelled.

In 3.5, it's still 2nd but the duration is 1 hour per caster level.

Has it been mentioned that there seemed to be a notable case of spell-caster love in 3e?
Maybe it's all Monte Cook's fault? He always professed his love for spellcasters. ;)


I wonder if people with the 15 minute adventuring day have played a lot of the Dungen/Paizo adventure paths (we sure did). I think they had a tendency to be forgiving about rests and "compensates" with high action, high powered encounters with really tough enemies. I have only seen the player side, but how much dynamic reactions of the monsters (be it random encounters, reeinforcing defenses nad so on) was suggested or described?

A problem highlighted by the 15 minute nova - only the spellcasters get to do that. Fighter or Rogues always deliver the same performance, the only resource they can spend are hit points, nothing pro-active like Disintegrates, Fireballs or Divine Might.

That is clearly the reason for the 4E change in the resource scheme aka the power system. It doesn't matter if you have a 15 minute adventuring day or run through 2 dozens encounters per day (though that would be quite a feat ;) ) - every character is has the same chance (and responsibility) to contribute and manage his resources.

You don't get to shine during the 15 minute adventuring day as a Wizard and struggle (or get bored) if you can only catch your breath after 12 encounters.
But you get to shine because you managed your resources wisely and have a decisive power ready in the right moment...
 
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This has nothing to do with the rules. This has to do with the DM (and/or the adventure creator) and with the players.

It does have to do with rules. Not 100%, but it does have something to do with rules. It's true that there's no way to use rules exclusively to prevent the 15-minute workday. But you can make it less of an easy choice.

First, everyone has to realize that the 15-minute workday doesn't exclusively mean 15-minutes. It could be 2 hours or 4 hours. It's whenever the group feels like they need to stop at an artificial point. This pretty much means any time it's not night and the party feels the need to rest.

Here are the contributing factors in each edition:

3e:
-A EL X or EL X+1(and sometimes EL X+2) encounter does not challenge an APL X party. They can defeat it without using any resources that would be considered significant by extremely tactical players with somewhat optimized characters(which means using any spells in the top third of spell levels available to them or hitpoint damage that would require healing spells in the top 3rd of the spell levels available). Often these battles can be defeated with the non-casters just attacking until the enemies die and using Wands of Cure Light to heal everyone to full. If this is the power level of the encounters you use, a party can often fight nearly infinite of these encounters a day before stopping to rest. This is directly a rules related issue. It has to do with the math interaction between the defenses of the enemy, the attack bonuses of the PCs, the damage dealt by the PCs and vice versa. If a particular CR 8 monster can be taken down by a APL 8 party in the first round with melee weapons before it has a chance to act, it is most certainly a rules issue.
-A higher level encounter(EL=APL+3 or higher) almost always poses a significant threat to the group. Dire enough to use up significant resources. Higher levels spells are very limited in number. If you are level 5 and have 2 3rd level spells and you need to use them both to defeat one of these encounters, you most certainly won't survive a second encounter of that difficulty. But unless you go to at least APL+4, you rarely actually threaten TPKing a fairly optimized party. Most APL+3 encounters are easily defeatable if you use your higher level spells each round of the combat.
-There is no limit on the number of times you can rest each day other than the 8 hours it takes to do so. Nothing stops a party from starting at 7 am, adventuring until 8 am, then sleeping until 4 pm, adventuring until 5 pm, then sleeping until 1 am and adventuring again for an hour. Even if you have a roleplaying deadline(for instance, when the sun comes up tomorrow the ritual will be complete), you can still get a couple of rests in the same day(in fact, I had a group who would cast 12+ hour long duration buffs, sleep for 8 hours and refill all of the slots used to cast them).
-No rules based drawback to resting.

4e:
-Most encounters of level=APL or APL+1 don't seriously threaten the party, but they do use up healing surges. Which means that there is a distinct limit on the number of encounters, even easy ones that you can do in a day.
-Most encounters of level=APL+2 or APL+3 seriously threaten the party, but can be defeated without using dailies. They are slightly easier with dailies, but they aren't required. They don't just threaten to spent the parties resources, they threaten to actually beat them. Smart play can defeat these encounters. But not without healing surge loss. And it always poses the risk that a bunch of bad die rolls will still cause the party to lose.
-Encounters of level=APL+4 or higher are extremely difficult. Generally smart play AND dailies are required to survive. Lucky die rolls can sometimes pull you through, even if you don't have dailies.
-Extended Rests are limited to once every 24 hours by the rules.
-Milestones and Milestone activated magic items encourage continuing rather than resting.

What this means is that in 3e you generally have one of two situations:
-The enemy doesn't use up your resources at all(or very little), in which case the PCs don't feel challenged and they have no reason to rest at all
-The enemy is hard enough that you don't want to fight a second encounter of this difficulty without resting, which encourages the party to rest every chance they get.

In 4e, you get 2 situations as well:
-The encounter was a little easy but significant in a long day of easy encounters(after 5-10 encounters of this difficulty, the number of healing surges lost will add up until the party decides to rest)
-The encounter was approximately the right challenge(with some being slightly easier or harder) and feels like it could legitimately defeat the party. There is probably a limit of 2 or 3 of these you'd want to throw at a group in the same day before they'll run out of dailies and decided it's better to rest than continue on.

Obviously, in both editions there is incentive to rest and incentive to keep going. But the overwhelming mechanical incentive in 3e is to rest after every encounter. Or at least after every 2 or 3.
 

When 3e came along casters got more spells per level than before, however they tended to be a bit weaker than their AD&D equivalents. Monsters had good saves and could easily brush off sod/sos effects, the big nova spells like fireball were capped and less impressive than before. The temptation for any caster was to cast more spells so that some of them got through, with a tendency to run out.

In addition, buff spells became so good in 3.0 they had to nerf them in 3.5, they did this by reducing durations from "all day" to "one encounter, maybe two if your lucky". Again this pushes casters to cast more often.

The way AC scaled was also a factor, after a while it seemed everyone got at least one attack that hit on a 2. This created rapid hit point attrition which put more pressure on healers, more so than before.

A good, disciplined dm could of course force casters to be more careful, but this takes some skill and some willful players will always try and call the dm's bluff by casting all their spells and then saying, "do you really want to risk continuing?"
 

-No rules based drawback to resting.
I have to pick up on this.
What are the drawbacks to resting in real life?

Short term, you might get irritable or bored. It will upset your sleeping pattern.
Long term (too much resting, too little exercise), you will become lethargic and your muscles will waste away.

Those are the only examples I can think of that are 'rules' of real life re drawbacks for resting.

The real drawbacks occur outside of the rules - and they look rather similar to the story drawbacks already discussed:
Short term, the shops will be closed when you're more rested. Other people will be out of sync with you that day.
Long term, you'll lose your job, and run out of money.

As already mentioned 4E prevents resting twice in 24 hours. That's about as close as I care to get to the short term 'rule' of getting bored or messing up your sleeping pattern. It's an extremely simple rule which can be applied with no mess to any edition. All other solutions can, and IMO should, remain outside of the rules.
 

I have to pick up on this.
What are the drawbacks to resting in real life?

Short term, you might get irritable or bored. It will upset your sleeping pattern.
Long term (too much resting, too little exercise), you will become lethargic and your muscles will waste away.

Those are the only examples I can think of that are 'rules' of real life re drawbacks for resting.

The real drawbacks occur outside of the rules - and they look rather similar to the story drawbacks already discussed:
Short term, the shops will be closed when you're more rested. Other people will be out of sync with you that day.
Long term, you'll lose your job, and run out of money.

As already mentioned 4E prevents resting twice in 24 hours. That's about as close as I care to get to the short term 'rule' of getting bored or messing up your sleeping pattern. It's an extremely simple rule which can be applied with no mess to any edition. All other solutions can, and IMO should, remain outside of the rules.
Losing the benefits gained by milestones (more daily item uses, more action points) is a further penalty of extended rests.

It might not be strong enough, but maybe that is also intentional, to make sure no one is accidentally crippled too long.

Strictly speaking, there is no reason to assume you regain spells or what is now daily powers after a few hours of sleep. Sure, you probably heal a little if you spend time doing nothing, but why should the gods give you your spells back after resting a while, unless you maybe pray to the god of laziness? Why should you regain your luck for sleeping?

The difficult question is more: What should regain your powers?
 

Most of these objections just indicate that any 4e translation into CRPG form would be better as a turned base game. But that's pretty much true of all table-top RPGs. Real time, if you ask me, is mainly appropriate for 1st person shooter-style and general arcade games. I generally dislike real-time strategy and RP games.

Well, that's kind of my point. The argument was that 4e changes were made to make it easier to translate to a real time MMO. My point was that 4e is the worst set of D&D rules you would ever want to try and translate.
It's 4e's powers, with their tightly limited scopes and effects, that have a lot to do with making it the most computer-friendly version of D&D to date. 1e-3e have more open ended spells, class features, and magical effects that require adjudication skills harder to model with a computer algorithm. Hence, the spell lists for most computerized versions of D&D are tightly limited affairs.


Most of the open-ended spells are now rituals and ironically, 4e is the FIRST D&D edition where you can't actually do a BY the book wizard in CRPGs.

As you mentioned, CRPGs restrict the spell list, BUT there's no actual modification needed to be done with the actual classes themselves. You don't allow for certain illusion and charm spells but the actual chasis for the wizard doesn't change so the wizard you end up with COULD be a wizard that you simply played in a regular D&D game (Not every one takes illusion and charm spells)

4e's wizard has Light, Ghost Sound and Mage Hand as at-will spells. Light might not be a problem but Mage Hand and Ghost Sound (especially this one) would be real pain to code.

If a cRPG was actually developed using the 4e system, you would actually have to CHANGE the wizard class ITSELF unlike pre 4e D&D cRPGs.
 

Most of the open-ended spells are now rituals and ironically, 4e is the FIRST D&D edition where you can't actually do a BY the book wizard in CRPGs.

As you mentioned, CRPGs restrict the spell list, BUT there's no actual modification needed to be done with the actual classes themselves. You don't allow for certain illusion and charm spells but the actual chasis for the wizard doesn't change so the wizard you end up with COULD be a wizard that you simply played in a regular D&D game (Not every one takes illusion and charm spells)

4e's wizard has Light, Ghost Sound and Mage Hand as at-will spells. Light might not be a problem but Mage Hand and Ghost Sound (especially this one) would be real pain to code.

If a cRPG was actually developed using the 4e system, you would actually have to CHANGE the wizard class ITSELF unlike pre 4e D&D cRPGs.

Frankly, I don't buy the argument that you'd have to make adjustments, maybe even drop, a couple of built-in at wills really equates to redesigning the class compared to the computer translation of previous wizards. It's mostly a question of tweaking powers. For something like Ghost Sound, they'd probably just implement some form of audible distraction to a targeted NPC and for Mage Hand just allow the character to manipulate some nearby elements from range. Not really that hard.
 


Frankly, I don't buy the argument that you'd have to make adjustments, maybe even drop, a couple of built-in at wills really equates to redesigning the class compared to the computer translation of previous wizards. It's mostly a question of tweaking powers. For something like Ghost Sound, they'd probably just implement some form of audible distraction to a targeted NPC and for Mage Hand just allow the character to manipulate some nearby elements from range. Not really that hard.

Ah, but still, you ARE changing the fundamental aspect of the 4e wizard. I (ab)use Ghost Sound along with to good effect but just like a typical illusion in cRPGs, you have to script it so that only certain effects are possible.

The cantrps at will are an inherent class feature of the wizard so simply modifying/restricting how they work _IS_ changing the base wizard. Unlike pre 4e D&D rpgs where the wizard didn't change but certain spells did.

Again, if WOTC was making 4e to be easily ported to the computer, they certainly went in the opposite direction IMO.
 

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