Do you consider 4e D&D "newbie teeball"?

[Garthanos]

Never said you did. I was responding to a comment made by someone else.

Right but he recognized its as a (sarcastic) paraphrasing of his obnoxious sig but lacking his diversionary... "I didn't say that" ----> "I implied that" element.

 

[MrGrenadine]

My problem near the end of 3.5E was that the curve between the "system master" player characters and the non-system master player characters was too wide of a gap. Both types of player would try to make the best character they could, but the difference in power level made it difficult to design challenges that mattered to the system masters while not destroying the non-system masters on a regular basis.

I have not had the same experience with 4E. The system masters still make better characters, but the non-system masters are still able to make effective characters. One would have to intentionally try to make a bad character to make the gap too wide. And even then I don't think the gap would be as wide as the one in 3.5E.

Thats interesting, because my experience is the opposite. I play a sixth level Cleric/ MC Fighter in a weekly 4e game, and have been slogging through hundreds of feats and powers and Paragon Paths in the Compendium to try to figure out which combinations will synergize best through Paragon Tier. The combinations are endless, and although any combination will work, I hate feeling like I'm missing some better feat/power interplay that would make the character--not optimal--but truly useful to the group.

And thinking of what thats going to be like when we're up to the 5th PHB, with hundreds of new feats and powers in the magazines, and other books....ack.

I'm telling you, after staring at powers for hours, I kind of miss being able to level up by just bumping my hp and saves, choosing a couple more spells and maybe adding a new class power or two.

Then again, I get that in my weekly Pathfinder game. And although 4e isn't my first choice of systems, the group is great, and the DM is one of the best I've ever met, so there you go.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I'm not really sure how else I'm supposed to read "you still have a game that assumes you are bad."

Here's the conversation you're objecting to:

Anyway, I think I get you. You are saying that 4e is easier to run (than 3.x) for a bad DM? If so, we completely agree.

Well, yes, I do think that. But I also add that "easier to run" doesn't take away the "bad DM" part. Now practice with an easier system can certainly be a good step to moving from bad to good. But if you do, rather than move on, you still have a game that assumes you are bad.

I'm missing the part where he conflates New and Bad.

 

[CleverNickName]

During the 2e era, I learned DMing from a splat book called "Campaign Sourcebook and Catacombs Guide". My favourite 2e book by far.

I learned to DM from the D&D Basic and Expert boxed sets. I've got a lot of nostalgia and warm fuzzy feelings wrapped up in those two products.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

1. 4e has rules for what AC a monster can have, there are guidelines in the DMG for ranges of AC based on monster role and level.

I agree. Luckily the guidelines are ones that create monsters that are "fair" fights. They purposefully "prevent" DMs from coming up with the arbitrary 50 AC monster because they either decided to make it up or found a template that "legally" gave it to a creature.

2 3e does not. It has rules on what things add to AC and in what ways, but no rules on how much AC to give a monster. There are no limits on how much natural armor a monster can have for example, only examples of what some exemplar monsters do have in the MM.

See above. Precisely right.

3 Majoru, your example is not that you did not play by the rules and therefore did not play fair, your players are complaining that you played by the 3e rules legally and they don't like it. They want you to stick to core MM stat blocks apparently. You played "fair" by your example of what you say your players required in 3e. 3e rules allow a ton of arbitrary flexibility while still playing by the rules.

Players don't like being hosed over. *I* don't like being hosed over, so I'm with them. The game is no fun when you need 19s to hit an enemy. The battle drags out impossibly long and it likely ends up in you dying. Losing sucks. Losing because you had a bunch of bad die rolls or you made a really bad tactical decision at least feels like a fair loss. It was a loss that was preventable with some better luck at some slightly more intelligent play. Maybe it was because you only a 14 into your strength and the next character you make up with have 18 because you learned.

But if you come across some custom monster that manages to have 10 more AC than every other monster anywhere near its CR...well, it feels like it isn't fair anymore. Of course you're going to lose....even if it IS legal. I spent the better part of the last year of Living Greyhawk(since I was a Triad member, helping to run the campaign) reading mailing lists filled with people complaining about how authors had used what players considered "cheap" but legal techniques to build monsters. A lot of authors retaliated, saying that if there weren't a bunch of players out there using cheap powergaming tactics for their characters, they wouldn't have to write so many nasty encounters...and so on.

NEw monster at AC 36. 10 base, +8 full plate, +2 shield, +16 natural. Done. Legal according to the rules of 3e. And they will only get non magical full plate and a shield as loot.

Yeah, I know this is legal. I know that it was fairly easy to add 10 points to someone's AC simply by adding full plate and a shield. It was a favorite tactic of nasty authors everywhere. After all, nothing in the rules said to raise the CR of an enemy simply because it was wearing armor....even if the point of CR was to evaluate how difficult it was to defeat something and armor made the creature significantly harder to defeat.

It's a risk/reward thing. CR determines XP for defeating a monster. It also, according to the rules determined how many of a creature you could use against a party. A number of players felt that if a monster was suddenly twice as hard to defeat, they should get twice as much XP for it. But the system didn't tell you to increase CR. So, you didn't get any more.

Your players memorize monster stats but apparently ignore the parts about adding levels, advancing by HD, adding templates, and the ability of the DM to create their own monsters.

They know about all that stuff. Custom monsters were considered by everyone in our home group to be super cheap and not a tactic that should be allowed. Mostly by equal agreement of DM and players. Way too easy to unbalance the game that way.

As for the rest of it. Most of my players had memorized the effects of increasing hit dice, adding class levels, adding templates and so on. If you ran into an Orc, there should be some visual clue that it wasn't a normal Orc. If it has metal skin, it might be half-iron golem. Scales? Half-Dragon...and so on. The only thing that didn't have a visual clue tended to be Class Levels. Which is why one of the dirty tricks of LG Authors was to add one level of Warrior to enemies. Since it was an NPC class, it didn't add anything to CR. But it could give a bonus feat and some extra hitpoints to any monster in the game, legally.

My players knew what the general range that an AC could be given the options in the book. Given our "no custom monster" rule, there was virtually no way to increase natural armor of a creature. You were forced to scour books for creatures with the best starting natural armor and then modify them with hitdice, levels, and templates to make them better. If a DM came up with an awesome combination of legal stuff from the rules....players would accept it. But probably still get annoyed if you went "overboard".

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Thats interesting, because my experience is the opposite. I play a sixth level Cleric/ MC Fighter in a weekly 4e game, and have been slogging through hundreds of feats and powers and Paragon Paths in the Compendium to try to figure out which combinations will synergize best through Paragon Tier. The combinations are endless, and although any combination will work, I hate feeling like I'm missing some better feat/power interplay that would make the character--not optimal--but truly useful to the group.

And thinking of what thats going to be like when we're up to the 5th PHB, with hundreds of new feats and powers in the magazines, and other books....ack.

I'm telling you, after staring at powers for hours, I kind of miss being able to level up by just bumping my hp and saves, choosing a couple more spells and maybe adding a new class power or two.

Then again, I get that in my weekly Pathfinder game. And although 4e isn't my first choice of systems, the group is great, and the DM is one of the best I've ever met, so there you go.

My point wasn't that players don't "slog" through hundreds of feats and powers. The same players who did that when I ran 3E do the same now. The players who did not do that in 3E, still don't. The difference is that with the balances put in place, the two types of players produce characters that can be challenged equally. I was finding it increasingly difficult to challenge every character properly in 3E and that made the game no fun to run anymore. This isn't just an observation from a 4E fan. I was ready to quit playing D&D altogether after 20+ years because 3E had become such a drag. This was after I had taken a break from the DM side of the screen to see if it was just burnout. I was trying to decide what I wanted to do for a couple of months when 4E was announced and what I heard appealed to me.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

My players do this exact same thing to me. It really makes me confused on if I'm running encounters that really are too difficult, or if they are just being crybabies. They keep surviving, so I must be doing things ok.

I think there's a fine line. I think part of it is the whole "wish fulfillment" portion of D&D. When a lot of people sit down to play D&D, they do so because they want to feel awesome. You get to play that awesome swordsman that you'll never be in real life. That awesome swordsman is supposed to be able to show off how good he is by chopping through his enemies, despite the fact that they are nasty powerful. It only proves that he's better.

That's why you have to create a proper balance between easy and hard. If an encounter is too hard, even if the PCs win, they still won't have that much fun beating it. If it's too easy, they won't consider it worth their time to have fought it.

 

[MrGrenadine]

The difference is that with the balances put in place, the two types of players produce characters that can be challenged equally.

I understand. Its just that in my experience, the difference between the effectiveness of optimized and non-optimized characters in 4e is just as wide as in 3.5--its just that in 4e, a smaller difference, say of +/-3, can be huge. Smaller scale, maybe, but the impact is just as significant.

 

[Mallus]

I'm missing the part where he conflates New and Bad.

But you're still left with his assertion that 'harder to use' = 'better', which is the part I find a little nutty.

He almost treats the rules as one of the monsters or puzzles that D&D players --well, DM's-- have to prove themselves against.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

No it doesn't.

"I just want D&D to run smoothly, palpate my gamer gland, and bring the metal."
That sentence clearly states that if D&D brings those three things, two of which are pointedly visceral, then everything needed is present.

For that person, intelligent conversation is clearly quite optional. That doesn't even say that intelligent conversation is absent. But it is most certainly optional.

To me it is not optional. I require it as part of the fun.

That is all my sig says.


Do I think this is a decent soundbite for the subgroup of 3E haters who are now 4E fans? Yeah. Does it represent every individual? Hell no.

But it is a snapshot of how I perceive the center of mass of the appeal of 4E vs 3E. If added simplicity and rawr rawr are the start and the end of the improvements for the "new" fans, then that is a shame.

So, to sum up:

1. Your sig isn't inflammatory
2. It makes an insulting presumption on the part of the anonymous quote
3. You disagree with the anonymous quote that conversation is optional
4. You call a group of people haters, in addition to presuming their opinions
5. You end with another insulting presumption of 4E fans in general, and add that if their opinion is genuine, then that is a shame.


Regardless of what you say, intentional or not, your sig is taking a shot at 4E fans, and since it is your sig you take a shot at 4E fans every time you post. Mods in this thread have pointed this out. Now, whether you mean to take a shot at 4E fans or not, your sig has had that effect. People have said so, and you have indicated that you listened. This tells us that either you intended to take this shot, we are misunderstanding you and you are perfectly comfortable with our misunderstanding, or that you didn't intend the sig as taking a shot at 4E fans and are perfectly comfortable with the sig having that effect despite your intentions.

It is also worth noting that people quote that sig along with the meat of your non-sig posting as to your motives and intentions. The fact that you continue with it says that you are comfortable with people making those assumptions.