You don't play 4E, but what did they get RIGHT?

[Plane Sailing]

I don't play 4e at the moment, but some things that I think they got right

1) death and dying rule. The idea of three strikes and you're out, but if you roll a 20 it is yippey kai yey and up pops Brucie (Willis, not Forsythe). I like the drama and cinematography of it.

2) Second Wind. First saw it in Star Wars revised and I've liked it ever since. For me, it ties in well with the abstract nature of hit points.

3) Removing iterative attacks. In high level 3e I found that it made fighters and their ilk the gods of combat, and even the most experienced wizards just had to stand back and watch the fighters demolish foes. I like that everyone is more on the same page there (and it promotes more mobile combat than a typical 'stand still and full attack' option.

4) Bloodied. I like the descriptive and mechanical options it introduces.

Cheers

 

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[Verdande]

What I like is untying the game from the 15 minute adventuring day and making players rest to regain their health and spells after blowing their load on a group of three orcs.

I also like the willingness to redesign their entire game from the ground up. That takes some serious balls. I may not have liked where they ended up, but I respect that they were trying to do something new. I wish they wouldn't have stuck the D&D name on a game that seriously isn't D&D, but, whatever.

 

[Reynard]

What I like is untying the game from the 15 minute adventuring day and making players rest to regain their health and spells after blowing their load on a group of three orcs.

I am not sure that actually happened. I played 4E monthly for about a year and, at low levels at least, extended rests to regain dailies and item uses were just as common as they were in previous editions.

As an aside: the key to solving the 15 minute adventuring day is to not let the PCs to rest safely whenever and wherever they want, and that requires a living, breathing adventuring setting.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

Difficult to say, maybe I try to tell you what you maybe do right...

- Maybe you didn´t misinterpret CR as "a typical combat only has one enemy"
- Maybe you don´t allow scry buff and teleport stupidity
- Maybe you have nice players, that don´t try to abuse the out of some classes

What you may be doing "wrong":

- you say no, when PC´s wants to combo stuff without flavour, just to abuse some feartures of prestige classes
-you may not allow creating every item the PCs want to have
- you may not follow strict monster building guidelines, especially when you are creating "solos"

All of the above, barring the bolded one. I customize monsters onl in epic play, for "abominations". But those are designed to be "ad-hoc".

I found Hiiiigh class level humanoids, Outsiders and Dragon be great solos at high levels. Indeed, I found solos just silly. My best monster combination is 1 big and several weak, or two high mobility ones. (Higher CR, but I applied the -10/-30% experience in the DMG. pathfinder did even better because of the different advancement tables). Action economy is a bitch, but even more, the Big Bad facing a group of several powerful beings alone.. I just can't see it as reasonable.

What you could be doing wrong (i.e. unfair)

- you could design your encounters by cancelling out each autowin button PC´s have. (Which IMHO can lead to very frustrated PCs and DMs)

varies. Some times autowin work, sometimes not - but because this is a general feature of environment and monsters, that I think people generally overlook. But If I allow a nice thing to a player, is because I expect that the player will use it.

And if your players are doing it "right", 3.5 can fall apart on level 3 and

I never found these problems. I never heard of these problems before I discovered that teh internet is for other things than porn ("look! they talk about D&D here!" "porn D&D?" "No, standard D&D." "Nice. Let see..").


BUT I fear we are derailing here. there is a similar thread in the pathfinder part of these boards (about spellcasters), so maybe could be better discuss there or start another thread.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Maybe you don't like 4E as a whole but you realize there are some things you do like about it.

As someone who is on record as respecting 4Ed as a quality game that I don't like as a replacement for 3.X, I'll jump in.

Things I think the designers of 4Ed did right:

1. You get N-Level abilities at level N. It may not seem like much, but I've seen it completely bamboozle some trying to learn previous editions of the game.
2. Dead levels are essentially non-existent.
3. Certain classes- the Warlock, for instance- seem better designed than their versions from previous editions.
4. Ritual magic. Its not perfect, but I think its a good idea. I think that future editions of the game will correct certain things like the disconnect between the level of the ritual and the ritual's actual power and utility.
5. The base classes seem to have better role distinction.
6. Overall, PCs are less feat starved. (I don't like that Fighters lost their Feat advantage, though.)
7. Every stat matters to SOME class.
8. Race, on the whole, matters more. I don't like the way certain versions of the races were redone- Goliaths & Thri-Kreen for example- and I think AU/AE's version of racial classes is superior, but 4Ed is an improvement overall in making racial selection matter more.
9. While I think the game design overemphasizes balance, the result that its much harder for an inexperienced gamer to accidentally "gimp" their PC is an unqualified bonus.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As an aside: the key to solving the 15 minute adventuring day is to not let the PCs to rest safely whenever and wherever they want, and that requires a living, breathing adventuring setting.

Bingo!

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Man oh man, it's taking my players forever to adapt to this. We've been playing 4E for over a year, and they still try to loot every body, no matter how many times they find absolutely nothing of value.

I've flat out told my players in both 3.x and 4e not to loot the bodies, and not to worry about loot. It makes life infinitely easier to handle in both editions. Hell, in any edition. You can make enemies awesome without having to worry about players looting magic items from them.

One thing that was particularly aggravating - and weird - is the player who kept searching bodies. And I mean actually rolling for search each time, like I'm going to hide the loot I put there for them to have. Or maybe they think I'm going to add extra loot if they roll high enough? I dunno, it's just bizarre.

Then again, I see that a lot in general - people jumping in and rolling skills before they're told to. And then they roll a 1 and I'm torn between saying "You uh, didn't actually need to roll anything" or just making them fail because they need to learn somehow.

Also, it's been mentioned a few times - by me, even! - but I need to reiterate just how happy I am multiple attacks and "full attack" is gone.

 

[Fifth Element]

I've flat out told my players in both 3.x and 4e not to loot the bodies, and not to worry about loot. It makes life infinitely easier to handle in both editions. Hell, in any edition. You can make enemies awesome without having to worry about players looting magic items from them.

I've been explicit as well, but several of my players have been playing D&D for close to 30 years, and it's a difficult habit to break, apparently. They seem to see getting loot in large chunks as somehow getting less loot; in the current campaign they found a very large store of platinum pieces some time ago, meaning they're essentially set for many levels when it comes to cash. But a couple have complained they haven't found much loot lately, at which point I refer to the hundreds of thousand of gp worth of treasure they already have. It's just breaking away from the older mindset which is tough.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Just wanted to point out:

(1) Looting isn't the only reason to search a downed enemy. IMO, discouraging searching (as opposed to looting) is taking a lot from the game.

(2) You don't have to give the bad guy three levels of wizard or a ring of invisibility if you want the bad guy to be able to go invisible. Finally getting this idea hammered into my head -- for shameless use in my 3.5 game -- is something for which I'm grateful to 4E. I should have realized it long before 4E, but I didn't, so ... thanks, 4E.