Legends & Lore 3/12

[Keldryn]

You're right, that does sound rediculous.

The point was that it's not as ridiculous as it may first sound.

Consider these points about my gaming group:

1. We play one four-hour session roughly every other weekend. The Christmas holiday season tends to be busy, so we take a hiatus for about 4 weeks (missing 2 sessions). Real life interferes about once every couple of months, so we'll lose another 6 sessions throughout the year. That leaves us with about 18 game sessions over the course of a year.

2. 3rd Edition assumes 13 to 14 level-appropriate encounters in order to acquire enough XP to advance one level. 4th Edition drops this to 12, I think. For simplicity, I'm going to assume 12 encounters to advance a level in either edition. If we can get in 4 encounters per session, then it will take 3 sessions to advance in level. This means that the party will just be reaching 7th level by the end of one year of play. Four encounters per four-hour session is pretty optimistic, and won't leave a lot of time for non-combat play, so 6th level after a year is more likely.

3. In 24 years of playing D&D, I've never participated in a campaign that made it longer than one year in length before being disrupted by real-life concerns. Sometimes you can take a long break and get started again, but in my experience by the time we are able to get started again, half of the players are different and it's been so long that nobody remembers what was happening anyway.

Given these facts about how we play, many "problems" are complete non-issues for us.

Odds are, we're never going to even hit 10th level, so planning out builds to 20th level is totally irrelevant and unproductive. If we were to continue with 4e, we'd be unlikely to ever reach Paragon and Epic tiers. My wife and I have one child and are planning for a second within two years, and that will likely result in a break from gaming that ends the campaign due to #3.

With a Fighter, to just be 'viable' alongside the barbarians and casters and humungous monsters, you have to have a really good build, planned from 1-20, and you had to try to get the most out of every little combat option there was, or you're just a tin can for the monsters to kick around. It was a lot of fun to build/play a 3.5, fighter, actually, but it wasn't for the 'casual' set.

I think that the more dedicated gamers among us make very different assumptions about the game and how it plays than do less-invested players. In my experience, the more casual players aren't paying attention to how their characters objectively stack up to the others in the party. If they feel like they are contributing and they are having fun, then that's about all that matters. They don't care if they didn't choose the most optimal feats when leveling up, nor if they chose the most tactically-sound actions in battle. Your definition as to what is "viable" in the game is going to be different than my wife's, for example.

My experienced players aren't really into optimizing, and the casual players certainly don't care.

Similarly, the 4e fighter isn't really the ideal beginner character. Archer-Ranger is more straightforward to play, and other PCs can run a little interference for him. Every 4e class is easier to build & play than a 3.5 fighter or caster, though. And everyone of them is harder to build/play than a 3.5 barbarian. :shrug:

Yes, the 4e fighter is a terrible beginner character (marks, combat superiority vs combat challenge, etc). The Slayer is probably the best option for new players.

Bringing this back on-topic: The complexity of building a character is only one aspect of how the game's level of complexity has been increasing over the years. 4th Edition has a much higher degree of front-loaded complexity than does any other version of the game; by that, I mean the minimum level of understanding of how the game works that a new player needs to have in order to sit down and play with a straightforward pre-generated character.

I started working through the how this has changed from one edition to the next over the years, but it's a pretty big chunk of text, and I'm not finished yet. (So I'm not simply making an assertion about 4e's front-loaded complexity and not backing it up. )

 

[Aegeri]

4E has 10 encounters per level actually, which after quest rewards and similar usually turns onto 8 or so encounters a level.

 

[jbear]

Mearls calls us all geniuses and then asks us how complex we like things.

I'm getting the impression that Mearls has a bias. Mearls likes complexity. Mearls likes options. Mearls would love to give everyone 20 options of things to do on their turn.

I am not so on board.

I do dispute the conclusion that complexity is a tendency of a gaming community.

He compares the controller for the Atari 2600 to the controller for the Xbox 360, and makes the case that there is a "tendency toward complexity."

He neglects the system that won the most recent console wars (the Wii) and the newest control scheme that fascinates players (the Kinect) and the expanding market for touchscreen games and devices for gaming.

All these things have a feature in common: They are simpler.

In the case of the Kinect, we don't have 16 buttons, we have ZERO.

Complexity is not a tendency.

The fact is, all those buttons were trying to do one thing: give you a way to better control your character. It turns out, the most efficient way to do that is not to add more buttons, but to take away buttons. Give people a more direct path to what they want to do. Streamline the experience.

If we were to apply that discovery to D&D, we would see that the most efficient way to design the game is to design it so that you give people a direct path to the "D&D experience."

Which is, broadly speaking, rolling dice and pretending to be a fantasy hero.

Options are only useful as much as they enable that experience, and the best control scheme isn't the one with the most things you can tweak, it's the one where everything you can tweak, you want to tweak.

Anyway, lets hear your opinions!

Good points, but Mr Mearls makes good points himself.

Me, I have a wii. I think its great. Is its success in its simplicity? Hmm, debateable. It certainly didn't get into my house because it was more simple than a play3. It got in because my wife condoned it. My wife condoned it because it has social games that we can play when people come around. I thinks that is a major factor in the success of the wii, it has opened a new gamer market previously untapped. I guess WotC would be smart to find a way to do something similar.

But although I, devout gamer, do enjoy the wii, (Mario's great, DKong too) what do i crave for ... Assassins Creed! Now that's a game!

But I also think it is significant that the top 2 answers totalling nearly 70% of the poll don't want a fighter with less options. In the end i'm just glad that they have found a way to begin a dialogue with their public and have opened the gates of communication. Good signs, methinks!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Bringing this back on-topic: The complexity of building a character is only one aspect of how the game's level of complexity has been increasing over the years. 4th Edition has a much higher degree of front-loaded complexity than does any other version of the game; by that, I mean the minimum level of understanding of how the game works that a new player needs to have in order to sit down and play with a straightforward pre-generated character.

The /minimum/ level? For 3e or 4e that's "roll a d20, add these pre-calculated bonuses."

And, it goes from there. In 3e you learn to count squares differently on diagonals than rows, what AoOs are and how to avoid them by taking a five-foot-step that isn't exactly an action, but doesn't provoke, unless you keep moving, then it retroactively does, that there are different actions (moves and double-moves and 5'steps and full round actions, including full attacks, that are compatible with a 5' step, and 'special' full round actions, and partial actions and free actions and move-quivalent actions, and swift actions, and readied actions and opportuniy actions), how to charge - in a perfectly straight line, with no rough terrain or allies in the way, how to roll to hit, roll saving throws, roll skill chekcs, how to resolve contested rolls for grappling, disarming, or sundering, since they're different from d20+bonuses vs target numbers... and that's just getting started for the 'easy' classes that don't have to deal with spells, once spells come into it, there's how to read all the entries at the top of the spell and what they mean, concentration, and so forth, you have daily resources to manage, and long spell descriptions to puzzle through.

In 4e, if your character is already made for you, you have to learn that there are actions you can take on your turn - standard, move, and minor - and actions you can take when it's not - opportunity (1/turn), immediate (1/rnd), and free, and you have to learn to read powers, which each have a specific action, attack type, range, attack, hit, miss & effect lines. And come in at-will, 1/encounter, and 1/day uses. Then you have to be able to read all those hinky little power cards, and manage the expendable ones as resources. You learn to count squares 1 for 1, and that circles are thus squares (that's a toughie). You get hit, healed, and learn about hps and surges. And that's before you get to dealing with spells... which, actually, work just like any other powers.

I started working through the how this has changed from one edition to the next over the years, but it's a pretty big chunk of text, and I'm not finished yet. (So I'm not simply making an assertion about 4e's front-loaded complexity and not backing it up. )

I'm sure that would get complicated. One sense in which 4e is front-loaded is that it uses (or used, before Essentials) the same structure for all classes. So, while it might have been a little easier to 'get' a 1e Fighter or 3e Barbarian than any 4e class, once you got one 4e class, you had the basics down for all of them. It simply has fewer and less diverse sub-systems than prior eds. So it's simpler, as a whole, more complex if you're just trying to take the one simplest slice of it.