[Those who like 4ed] What has been lost?

[wedgeski]

The latter seems tied to the concept of 4e's pacing. Earlier D&D searched slow and fought fast. 4e runs on the opposite; expanded set-piece combats punctuated by some minor dungeon-fluff in between. I especially hated WotC's "An encounter in every room" method of designing modules. Some of the best 4e adventures I ran was when there was one combat and lots of exploring, RP, and problem solving (most of which could be done in any edition). When I tried to run 4e by the spirit of the modules (lots of combat, skill challenges, and a dash of story) it felt hollow and boring.

I haven't been driven from 4E (far from it) but I know exactly where you're coming from. IMO H1-H3 are, on the whole, dreadfully monotone dungeon crawls with only small sparks of interest, but the irony is that the system itself works on a far more interesting level than that.

My campaign thus far has probably been 50% exploration/pure RP, and 50% combat, but judging by the structure of those first few modules, you'd think we were playing completely at odds with the design intent.

Why those adventures go so far out of their way to send such false signals about 4E remains a complete mystery to me, and it's something I intend to ask Mearls after he's fallen inevitable victim to the layoff cycle.

In the meantime, the trappings of 4E have served us exceptionally well in creating exactly the kind of game we've enjoyed running for many, many years, for which I'm very grateful.

 

[Nebulous]

Agreed, H1-H3 seems to shoot for "a fight in every room." I'm running Pyramid now and i actually have a powerful NPC moving through the dungeon ahead of the party (it's Paldemar from Thunderspire) and he's knocking out many of the encounters the party would otherwise be forced to face. It's kind of a race to see who can get to the big baddie first. Although ideally i want them to team up, via roleplaying, and take on the challenge together as temporary allies.

 

[Stoat]

The Paragon and Epic tier adventures are worse. Linear, not enough interesting non-combat encounters, bad maps, bad structure. Ugh.

Individual encounters in 4E adventures might be awesome, but the adventures themselves much less so. Which is weird, because I don't have trouble homebrewing good adventures with 4E.

 

[Dausuul]

Agreed, H1-H3 seems to shoot for "a fight in every room." I'm running Pyramid now and i actually have a powerful NPC moving through the dungeon ahead of the party (it's Paldemar from Thunderspire) and he's knocking out many of the encounters the party would otherwise be forced to face. It's kind of a race to see who can get to the big baddie first. Although ideally i want them to team up, via roleplaying, and take on the challenge together as temporary allies.

One of my rules of adventure design is not to have more than two combat encounters in a row without throwing in a social encounter, skill challenge, or puzzle of some kind.

 

[Melkor]

Chaos.
I wouldn't change the official recipe, though for my own campaign I've put the chaos back in with wild surge tables and stuff.

Do tell what this is all about!

Thanks.

 

[Overman1977]

I have not been playing 4e for long and am leaning towards filing the rulebooks on a bookshelf under the heading 'Good Effort'.

Like many others who have posted, I too feel that 4e has lost 'that loving feeling'. Having started playing ye old D&D red box when I was young, skipping over 1e and diving right into 2e, then hitting 1e for some cool ideas and ambiance, I noticed a common theme amongst them all: Adventure.

I may be wrong, but in my opinion 4e is too mechanical and is best for power-gamers (sure, there are some who customize their games and that's awesome; I am however, only speaking about a strict adherence to 4e rules and 4e gameplay). I miss the atmosphere that so defined the former editions, I miss the minutiae of the seemingly trivial items for purchase and the detailed settings that gave me a tickle in my stomach; I miss the beautiful artwork that since 3e has succumbed to a more modern look rather than a true medieval interpretation of fantasy settings. And most of all ;-) I miss the little bits of humour accompanying the sketched artwork in the 1e rulebooks, they made me smile.

That being said, these are things that I myself as a DM can bring to my game (except the art, as even my stickmen are not up to par), though I feel as if 4e is not helping me in that capacity.


BTW, my first post. Happened upon the website an hour or so ago and look forward to interacting with the people here. Unlike many other forums, I noticed far less trash talk and flaming here ( I'll look harder :-D). Three cheers for civility!

 

[AllisterH]

re: Magic items

The reason why magic items are so "bleh" in 4e (and 3e for that matter) is that players have full control over which items they have. While a 1e/2e character could have more magic items (if you go by the treasure in a module), the fact that you couldn't buy that +3 sunblade meant that a decanter of endless water WAS a item that would see use.

Personally, I think all the "oohh that's cool" has been transferred to the artifact system. 4e's artifact mechanics are the best mechanical implementation of artifacts since D&D introduced artifacts.

Especially in 1e/2e, there didn't seem to be THAT much of a difference between an artifact and a powerful magical item.

 

[Nifft]

The reason why magic items are so "bleh" in 4e (and 3e for that matter) is that players have full control over which items they have. While a 1e/2e character could have more magic items (if you go by the treasure in a module), the fact that you couldn't buy that +3 sunblade meant that a decanter of endless water WAS a item that would see use.

In my experience, what sucked the wonder out of 3e items was how many were required. You must have an Intelligence-booster to play an Intelligence-class. Everyone needs a save-booster item. Etc.

4e gave back some overall flexibility by reducing the Big Six to the Big Three, but I'd rather see zero "Big" (i.e. required) magic items.

IMHO what killed the Decanter of Endless Water is that it either did little, or it did far too much -- like drowning everything in a dungeon with poor drainage. Basically, anything that could defeat a whole adventure "with a little creativity" (aka "by arguing with a weak DM") had to go. That took out a lot of fun little spells & items, but it made the game stable enough that you could throw many more different fun little items into it -- things that can give you an advantage for a scene, but not win a whole adventure by themselves.

Also, I think your Artifact observation (elided) is spot-on. 4e finally has the artifacts that I've always wanted.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Lord Xtheth]

This might just be my group I'm talking about, but I miss seeing characters that were NOT optimized. You know, the characters that were CHARACTERS, not just modifiers and dice.

 

[AllisterH]

This might just be my group I'm talking about, but I miss seeing characters that were NOT optimized. You know, the characters that were CHARACTERS, not just modifiers and dice.

The only way to get that back is to restrict player choice.

I mean, even in 2e there was optimization paths. For example, the optimal weapon was the longsword since it was the most common magical weapon you could find. Thus, you specialized as a fighter in longsword.