D&D 4E What's so bad about 4th edition? What's so good about other systems?

[FireLance]

I guess I just like older pre 3.x editions where stronger monsters are actually stronger and not just leveled up versions of the previously encountered monsters. Where you go further from civilization and the hit dice of monsters goes up and where you go deeper in the dungeon and things get deadlier.

To a certain extent, this is true. 4E did reduce the frequency of or remove certain feared abilities such as energy drain and save-or-die effects such as poison, petrification and death effects.

However, apart from that, higher-level monsters were not much different from lower-level monsters except numerically: they had lower ACs, higher hit points, better attack rolls, and dealt more damage. At 1st level, you fight orcs. At 4th level, you fight ogres. At 8th level, you fight hill giants. Even when monsters gained spells and other special abilities, unless it caused permanent changes to your character, it was just an annoyance or just more damage.

It makes sense for a tactical miniatures game for scenarios to be balanced with some sort of points system, but I'm not 100% convinced it's a must have for an RPG. I remember when I, as a player, had to carefully assess what I might be fighting. These days if the party gets into a fight with something and it's *not* a level appropriate encounter, I'd be pretty much accused of cheating as the DM. And they'd be right. The rules of the game we all agreed to play do talk about encounter design.

I would consider this a playstyle choice. As the DM, you can throw all that "level-appropriate encounter" nonsense out the window if you want to. You can run a sandbox-style game in 4E, where the players are pretty much in control of where they go and thus, how dangerous (on average) are the monsters they encounter. They can get in over their heads and be forced to flee, perhaps losing a PC or two in the process.

Of course, to avoid accusations of "cheating", be upfront about this with the players!

That would certainly give them the impression that they're more powerful.

But I want more than an impression. Including lower level monsters is the same as giving them a bonus to hit, damage and defenses against an equivalent level monster.

Monster Manual 3 math on a business card care of Blog of Holding:
http://blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/printablemm3businessfront.gif

If you simply set the level of all creatures to 1 (and the assumed level of skill DCs to the same), removed enhancement bonuses, certain feat bonuses, half level bonuses, HP increases, class features that increase damage, critical range, etc., and just had PCs get more power choices after every 10 or so encounters, the game would run absolutely identically to the current game.

I used to see that as a great feature. Now I see it as smoke and mirrors.

If it is smoke and mirrors, it's smoke and mirrors that has always existed in D&D. Minus all the flavor about whether you're fighting an orc or a dragon, a D&D game basically boils down to: roll dice, do math, compare numbers, (possibly) roll dice again, do math, repeat. The dragon just has bigger numbers.

 

[Tuft]

If you simply set the level of all creatures to 1 (and the assumed level of skill DCs to the same), removed enhancement bonuses, certain feat bonuses, half level bonuses, HP increases, class features that increase damage, critical range, etc., and just had PCs get more power choices after every 10 or so encounters, the game would run absolutely identically to the current game.

I used to see that as a great feature. Now I see it as smoke and mirrors.

4E was the system that really opened up my eyes to the smoke-and-mirrors nature of leveling up. It was just so clear and easy to see when first reading the initial rules and then playing the system.

Once really seeing it, it's hard to unsee, and it's basically ruined the "level-up moment" for me in other games too. If the level-up involves an increased toolbox then it's good, but just increased numbers...

I remember reading an article about when pin-ball machine makers competed by just tagging on extra zeroes at the end of the scores on the score board. These were not hooked up to the scoring mechanism, but just made your numbers look bigger than the competitors' machines - until they added even more zeroes. That's the kind of empty inflation automatic number increase feels like to me.

It's hard to explain to people though - it's so ingrained that bigger numbers must be better.

 

[nnms]

Good points, guys.

I remember when my group house ruled leveling away for a few sessions. Characters were rebuilt without any of the per level math. It was fun, but in the end, the ability to use the character builder and not have to apply house rules for something that was mathematically equal won out.

The smoke & mirrors thing was present in older editions, but their dungeon/wilderness population rules (as contrasted with encounter design rules) weren't concerned with making combats fit the PCs, but with making locales the players needed to choose to enter or not. But that's a really old school approach that has been pushed aside by many ever since people decided they'd rather play games that were about "the DM's story."

When the PCs *have* to go into a certain area for the DM's plot reasons than the power to regulate difficulty by choosing not to go further out into the wilderness or deeper into a dungeon is taken away. It's also usually accompanied by a shift from large dungeons and huge wilderness areas to monster layers and set encounter orders. Story trumps exploration. Which is cool and all, I run my games that way some times.

EDIT: Figured out another thing I loved for the last few years but now dislike:

10) Defined roles for PCs and Monsters

Roles like defender, lurker, soldier, controller, striker, etc., certainly work for the vast majority of monsters and PCs. They describe what they do and give good guidance for running them.

I'm getting sick of them though.

I think the main reason is that they end up being so character defining. If someone is in a given role, they're going to do certain behaviours and have stats within a certain range and have average damage of a certain range, etc.,. While there is variance, the similarities are for more important for the functioning of a cohesive party than the minor differences.

D&D has always had roles. But the rules in previous editions let the players figure out what they were and if there were multiple options, they could choose themselves as they developed the character. Essentials (thankfully) reintroduced some of this with their classes for more than one role like the leader sentinel druid, a striker slayer fighter, etc.,. Those classes, however, are even more tightly focused and leave even less room for a player to drift them towards their preferences.

Something to remember about the various lists of issues people have with 4E is that they are all pretty much features of the game. All 10 of my issues I formerly defended as features. I've even defended the larger amount of time combat takes because tactical miniature gaming is interesting and fun and fits for D&D as it is part of its history and development.

The game is just getting so "samey" to DM. The game trundles along between its game modes like exploration, encounters, skill challenges, etc., and the players all have a blast. They actually care about getting past the enemy town and finding the river that will lead them to the secret lair. Along the way there will be skill challenges and encounters of various levels with different combinations of monster roles present. Just like every other session.

The players all tell stories about how awesome it was and how each thing was memorable and different, but it's really not. The challenges are illusory as play stops if they fail. Monsters seem unique and interesting and nastier and deadlier as they do larger and larger numbers of HP of damage. They get more save or die chain effects, nastier status effects, etc., but that's accompanied by an increase in the number of granted saves from items, feats and powers. Character creation is too complex and requires too many pages to be printed or written out to just jump right back in like you would in Basic D&D so presenting a real challenge like in pre 3.x old school play creates a hassle with every character death.

And if the goal is the story, than there's not much in the way of rules with regards to narrative rights. As the DM, I just have them all. And most DMs function under the illusion that being the author of the story while someone else is in charge of the actions of the main characters is both possible and desirable. Someone's input will be rendered meaningless. So if story is the goal, there are tons of games out there which actually concentrate on narration rights and having thematic stories produced during the actual process of play that are better suited.

I feel like I can coast as a DM and still produce excellent game play for the players. I know people who are new to DMing long for when everything is effortless, but I'm starting to get bored. The players continue to see everything as new and interesting, but if they actually looked at what's behind the curtain, it's really not.

So another feature of 4E that I now see as a downside:

11) Super easy to DM.

What a great feature when I was new to the system! Now it's easy to the point of boredom.

 

[FireLance]

The game trundles along between its game modes like exploration, encounters, skill challenges, etc., and the players all have a blast. They actually care about getting past the enemy town and finding the river that will lead them to the secret lair. Along the way there will be skill challenges and encounters of various levels with different combinations of monster roles present.

...

The players all tell stories about how awesome it was and how each thing was memorable and different

...

Monsters seem unique and interesting and nastier and deadlier as they do larger and larger numbers of HP of damage. They get more save or die chain effects, nastier status effects, etc.

...

The players continue to see everything as new and interesting

Well, at least someone's having fun.

 

[nnms]

One of my players and I are working on a distributed DMing kit for 4E. He's interested because it would let him play without a DM around. I'm interested because DMing isn't holding my attention and the tasks a DM does are so easy to distribute to the table.

The fundamental role of a system in an RPG is to decide what is accepted as credible in the shared story. If you never need to have a single individual who's the ultimate decider, you can take all the various pieces of the job traditionally given to the player known as the DM and spread them around. As long as you still can work out what is accepted into the shared story, you'r good to go.

 

[nnms]

Well, at least someone's having fun.

It's why I'm posting about this. Games die when DMs aren't having fun anymore. I like that my friends are enjoying the game, but I just don't know how long I can keep doing it without something changing. I'm just simply not enjoying the majority of my time during each session. And I think the particular features of 4E are contributing to that.

 

[Pentius]

Well, you could switch it up and try DMing something else. As was pointed out, RPGs tend be about smoke and mirrors. A new game might at least give you a new set of smoke and mirrors to find. Or avoid finding, at your choice.

 

[nnms]

Well, you could switch it up and try DMing something else. As was pointed out, RPGs tend be about smoke and mirrors. A new game might at least give you a new set of smoke and mirrors to find. Or avoid finding, at your choice.

Probably a good idea to do something else. My group is *not* going to be happy. I think they were hoping we'd go all the way to level 30 this time (we're at level 10 now).

I don't know if I accept that all RPGs have to be smoke and mirrors. There are games with power ranges that are not about maintaining the differential between damage and HP, attack bonuses and defenses, etc.,.

The old BRP editions of Runequest (same system as call of cthulhu) are a good example. You end up with functional caps to HP, armour, attack and defense stats, etc.,. If someone is at a 50% and another person has a skill of 35% and another has 88%, you don't have them maintain the differential after every time one of them develops that skill.

Fudge (and Fate) is another good example. Your ability can be terrible, poor, mediocre, fair, good, great, superb or legendary and that's that. If you move from being a good swordsman to great, the system doesn't assume that all opponents will then increase one trait level in response.

 

[herrozerro]

I just wanted to throw out my opinion as well on the smoke and mirrors aspect of the game.

I also saw what could not be unseen, what really gets to me is the fake numbers, well not fake but artificial numbers. (Half level bonus I am looking at you!)

I realize that this is probably the best way to get all the math to go in one direction. Though I had thought about working on a method to simplify 4e math a bit more, take out all the half level bonuses and just give out +-1 bonuses or penalties for each level the party and the monsters are apart.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I guess I just like older pre 3.x editions where stronger monsters are actually stronger and not just leveled up versions of the previously encountered monsters. Where you go further from civilization and the hit dice of monsters goes up and where you go deeper in the dungeon and things get deadlier.

Yeah, I don't understand this at all. Lets look at my 1e AD&D fighter. His to-hit increases by... +1 per level! His saving throws (aka NADs basically) also increase by level in a similar manner. While technically his AC doesn't change automatically he will probably start out with chain armor at level 1 (or even studded leather if he rolled bad for GP and nobody else in the party will front him a few gold). At level 2 he'll probably manage to buy himself some scale armor, then banded, then maybe after a couple levels plate armor, or he'll find some magic armor/shield etc. His hit points also increase at a good clip, doubling at level 2, etc. Honestly the situation is not much different from 4e.

Monsters still get tougher in the same exact fashion they did in the old days too. At level 1 kobolds are a weak monster, goblins are about equal to a PC, and orcs are a bit tougher than a PC. Go up a level and now its hobgoblins that are equal to the party, gnolls are slightly tougher, and at 3rd level its bugbears that are equal, then ogres, etc. Same thing happens in 4e. The escalation of defenses was a little slower in 1e and less consistent, but each level of monsters did a bit more damage, averaged a bit better defenses, and generally had this or that new trick. There were also ranges of types within many monsters. All humanoids had 'higher level figures', so there were sergeant orcs, captain orcs, and chieftain orcs, and even spellcaster orcs.

I'm just not really seeing the difference. The progression was a bit jumpier and a 1e level was more like 2 4e levels, but the concept was the same. Characters DO get more powerful in each game, in the same way. A 5th level 4e PC laughs at kobolds, kills goblins easily, fights orcs on about an even footing, and worries about ogres. The exact levels are different, but you can put together the same old layer-cake dungeon as of old if you want.

It makes sense for a tactical miniatures game for scenarios to be balanced with some sort of points system, but I'm not 100% convinced it's a must have for an RPG. I remember when I, as a player, had to carefully assess what I might be fighting. These days if the party gets into a fight with something and it's *not* a level appropriate encounter, I'd be pretty much accused of cheating as the DM. And they'd be right. The rules of the game we all agreed to play do talk about encounter design.

Note that those rules are ONLY in the DMG. Never in the PHB, the book which explains the rules which are held in common between DM and players is encounter budget or monster design even mentioned. PHB talks about encounters mechanically in the ways that players need to understand them, but you'd never be breaking a rule in that book by doing your encounter design differently. Nor does the DMG call encounter design 'rules'. It describes how an encounter can be designed in 4e. It doesn't say you have to do it that way. Chances are MOSTLY you do want to do it that way, but even then they give you leeway of up to +4 levels for encounters. They just tell you it will be a HARD encounter. Not too much different than if 1e level 1 PCs run into an ogre or two. It will be a hard encounter. Maybe too hard, but that's really up to you to decide. It might be what the players will have fun with.

That would certainly give them the impression that they're more powerful.

But I want more than an impression. Including lower level monsters is the same as giving them a bonus to hit, damage and defenses against an equivalent level monster.

I guess I don't know what "more than an impression" would be. If actually being able to easily defeat monsters that were a challenge before isn't ACTUAL power increase then what is?

Monster Manual 3 math on a business card care of Blog of Holding:
http://blogofholding.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/printablemm3businessfront.gif


If you simply set the level of all creatures to 1 (and the assumed level of skill DCs to the same), removed enhancement bonuses, certain feat bonuses, half level bonuses, HP increases, class features that increase damage, critical range, etc., and just had PCs get more power choices after every 10 or so encounters, the game would run absolutely identically to the current game.

I used to see that as a great feature. Now I see it as smoke and mirrors.

You could do that. It is something that I've pondered, and something along those lines would certainly work with the right tweaks to other parts of the game. I don't think it is a trivial change. It will create a very different game, and I don't think that game will be as close to AD&D as 4e is now. It might be a cooler game, but we wouldn't know until we tried doing it.