4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[Neonchameleon]

I would like to take a moment to say that reading through this thread has given me a new appreciation for how D&D 4e is designed. I think that I gave up on it too soon -- the design of the published adventures and my stuck-in-older-editions mindset were working against me. I'm keen to give the game another chance.

A big thank-you to @Neonchameleon , @pemerton , @shidaku , @S'mon , @AbdulAlhazred , @Balesir , @Fox Lee , @Hussar , @D'karr , and of course @Evenglare (for starting this thread in the first place) for sharing their insights into 4e, both in this thread and the "scene-framing" discussion.

There are still three issues that I have with 4e (time to play out an encounter at the table, the number of fiddly bonuses/conditions to track, and the number of out-of-turn actions), but I think that I can reign those in with better adventure design and by encouraging my players to avoid choosing complex or fiddly powers unless they can use them effortlessly.

The way in which character themes play out in the mechanics, the degree of control that a player has over his character's destiny, and the "carrot instead of the stick" approach to encouraging playing to type all go a long way to explain why I've found my recent visits to previous editions of D&D (and playtest of Next) fun yet somewhat unsatisfying.

Now back to arguing about paladins. Some things never actually change.

And thank you. This is one of the major reasons I keep arguing here - most of the people actually arguing are unlikely to change, but the audience matters. You've made my day.

And your three issues are all genuine issues with 4e, but 2012 era 4e, especially including Essentials, has them less prominently than 2008 era 4e.

Time to play out an encounter

This came down for two reasons.

The first is that with the Monster Manual 3, WotC raised the damage on almost all monsters by half their level, and monster design improved so almost all monsters in the awesome Monster Vault are leaner, meaner, and nastier than their Monster Manual 1 predecessors. (Seriously, if you are thinking about trying 4e again pick up Monster Vault (previews) and probably also Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale (previews) - they are in my opinion the two best monster manuals for any edition of D&D). This has the effect of reducing the average combat length from five to six rounds to three to four.

The second is that most Essentials classes have a lot less analysis paralysis. When it comes to attacking, a high heroic tier 4e PC to have two at will attacks, three encounter attacks, and three daily attacks even at heroic tier. That's eight distinct options of how to hit someone - and on top of that you need to decide who to hit. Most people can only hold seven plus or minus two things in their head at once so you get analysis paralysis with people not knowing what to do. Most post-Essentials classes break the decision point up so, for example the Knight has two stances to choose between (and if the knight's current stance is good, there's no reason to change it), then decides who to hit with a melee basic attack (modified by stance), and only after hitting decides whether to Power Strike - i.e. use an encounter power. They still effectively have a full collection of At Wills and Encounter Powers - but the choice is broken up into lots of small, simple choices with only a couple of options rather than one great big choice of everything, and people don't get overwhelmed by choices with a lot of the newer classes. (There's even a spellcaster (the Elementalist Sorceror) who has no daily attack powers and has boosts as encounter attack powers, so the choice to make when attacking is first whether to single target blast or AoE blast and secondly whether to boost or not).

Between the two, I expect to run an ordinary combat in about half an hour.

Bonusses and Conditions

This too has improved. Class design has got a bit better - but the main reason why it's improved is down to one single role. The Defender. A pre-Essentials defender would Mark people. This meant you had one role that should always have at least one condition applied to a monster. The Knight, the Cavalier, and the Beserker don't mark people at all. Instead they have a "Defender Aura" - they own the space around them. If an enemy is next to the defender, they are in the defender aura and subject to the mark punishment if they shift or attack someone else. If not, they aren't. This means the second most common status effect in the game (only Bloodied being more common) can now be seen by anyone at a glance and doesn't actually need tracking.

Also mark punishment for our new defenders is an opportunity action rather than an interrupt - you get one per monster rather than one for the defender to cover the turn. This sounds as if it should slow things down but in practice it speeds them up - it's an automatically triggered effect rather than something for the defender to think about. Extra damage with no decision time - again speeds things up.

Out of turn actions

Other than the Defenders now making opportunity rather than interrupt attacks, the out of turn actions have gone down. More accurately, they haven't gone up while the options have. Most new classes were designed with either zero or one of them (for instance the Cavalier (the Defender Aura version of the Paladin) has the Righteous Shield power to take the damage for a nearby ally and then come out swinging - any other out of turn options they have are legacy options that are available because they can use Paladin daily and utility powers.

I hope some of that was reassuring

 

[Remathilis]

It's great to see somebody say a thing like that I was pretty heavily invested in 3.5 myself, so I was really sceptical of 4e, but I made a point of trying it anyway because I wanted to be fair. But even now, as an advocate of 4e, I would still play a 3.5e/Pathfinder game if another player in my group wanted to run one - I don't think they're bad systems overall, just not the best for what I want.

I always said I'd play an Essentials-based 4e game. I generally like the direction Essentials took 4e, both in tone (embracing some of the old names like Thief and Mage) and rules. I just don't know any 4e players in my area.

 

[Hussar]

On paladins and bows:

Umm, glancing through my PHB, not counting any additional sources, Paladins straight up get ranged powers at almost EVERY SINGLE LEVEL that you get new powers. There are a few you don't - obviously the at-wills are melee, for example. But, pretty much every time you get powers, you can choose a ranged power.

Granted, the powers are not tied to weapons. That's true. But, then again, why not simply refluff? You use On Pain of Death (1st level daily, range 5) and say that you are shooting with your bow. Granted, you wouldn't get the bow's damage or attack bonus, but, we're role players aren't we? We shouldn't care about getting those additional bonuses.

You could very, very easily reskin a bow using paladin. Might not be the most effective paladin ever, but, for a Cha based paladin, it would work pretty darn well.

Does help to actually read the books once in a while.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But not everyone wants narrative mechanics. For me, I have never really had any of the issues with paladins you raise here. The people I game with come from all different backgrounds, have different world views, but are able to handle paladins following a code of conduct without a problem. I think the key is to not trap the player. It isn't a game of gotcha. As a GM i wont worry too much about cases where there is a lot of doubt. So the paladin challenging local authorities because they do something shady that make them illegitimate in his eyes, I am not going to take away his powers over that. If he tortures prisoners or uses force to bully locals into giving him good armor, then yes I am going to take away his powers. And I am not going to sit up a situation as a trap. If a dillema case does arive, we've already sorted whether that counts or not against him prior to play (and this will vary from setting to setting a bit). I am of the opinion, that if a paladin does something questionable but felt he had to for the greater good (and it wasnt just an excuse to take the easy way out) he will be fine as long as he makes real efforts to repair any harm done by his actions and show his god he regrets having to make that choice.

I just don't understand why this is a good approach. Even assuming everyone is willing to work it out and be nice and you can all agree enough to work things out, what's the payoff? I'm here to play a game, that is D&D is for me an enjoyable pastime, not a session of high level philosophical debate. I'd just much rather play the 4e paladin where the rules say "hey, when you want to be a good guy, play this" and the powers etc I get for playing that generally work well for a "Galahad" type character. If I run into some moral quandary in the course of play I don't have to really sweat it that much, I just decide what my character would do and do that and go on. If the DM or the other players DO really want to make a story element out of disagreeing with that, great, plot hooks are always appreciated. I just don't see how the AD&D approach was better. At best it required a certain amount of philosophical discussion that isn't my taste in Saturday evening beer & pretzels activities.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I just don't understand why this is a good approach. Even assuming everyone is willing to work it out and be nice and you can all agree enough to work things out, what's the payoff? I'm here to play a game, that is D&D is for me an enjoyable pastime, not a session of high level philosophical debate. I'd just much rather play the 4e paladin where the rules say "hey, when you want to be a good guy, play this" and the powers etc I get for playing that generally work well for a "Galahad" type character. If I run into some moral quandary in the course of play I don't have to really sweat it that much, I just decide what my character would do and do that and go on. If the DM or the other players DO really want to make a story element out of disagreeing with that, great, plot hooks are always appreciated. I just don't see how the AD&D approach was better. At best it required a certain amount of philosophical discussion that isn't my taste in Saturday evening beer & pretzels activities.

If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. And if you can't see the payoff, then you it is probably not your style. For me this approach is far more rewarding than the 4E approach. It is not a matter of good approach versus not good approach. They are just different approaches for different taste. For what it is worth, paladins never really became a matter of high philosophical debate at our table. We never really had mamy problems deciding what would be okay and not okay for the paladin to do.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To me this is semantics... if I have no powers in the paladin class that work on ranged weapons... then I effectively loose my powers if I choose to be a bow paladin... The game just doesn't come out and tell you that.

EDIT: In other words previous editions say, you'll loose your powers if you play a non-LG base paladin. 4e says you'll loose your powers if you choose to play a bow wielding paladin. Both are a punishment for choosing to go against the particular archetypes of the game it's just one is explicit and one is implicit.

I'm sorry, I have to disagree with this logic.

ALL PCs in 4e do some things better and other things worse. It is just a basic reality of the design of characters in an RPG which is making any attempt to balance PCs, they will each have areas of greater and lesser strength. The wizard is being 'punished' for using a melee weapon and wading into battle, and the paladin is being 'punished' for using a bow. This is trite, they are each just showing a weaker aspect of the character, and they each also show a stronger aspect. Even if you insist on calling this 'punishment' it is not unique to ANY one PC or type of PC, they all get it equally. If every person in the country has to pay a 10% income tax is one of them being punished for not emigrating? No, the same rule applies to all of them. Its the same way here, paladins are no more punished than wizards, rogues, clerics, and every other class in 4e.

NOW, in 1e the situation is CLEARLY different. A 1e paladin IS being rewarded simply for being a paladin. The character is superior in EVERY SINGLE RESPECT to a fighter. HOWEVER the paladin is also punished for violating his alignment in a way that is FAR more severe than for any other character.

Moreover, semantics of reward and punishment aside, the nature of the mechanics in each case is QUALITATIVELY different. The 4e paladin might not fight as well when the player chooses to act against type and be a coward or use a bow. The 1e paladin loses ALL of his abilities permanently and without any hope of redemption the instant he carries out one of a vast and undefinable category of actions that the DM may label as evil. These are drastic qualitative differences. One character has some small strengths and weaknesses which are in line with those of all the other characters he can choose to play to or against using well-defined mechanics, the other character has an absolute rule which eviscerates the character if he violates some open-ended set of very specific rules.

This should be wrapped at least back into the more general topic of how 4e handled design issues and how that differs from say 1e. Obviously the paladin's mechanics aren't unique. In 1e there are 11 classes, Thief, Assassin, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, Magic User, Illusionist, and Bard. Of these SEVEN have alignment restrictions. ALL of these classes also have severe racial restrictions and/or level limits. ALL characters are subjected to serious negative effects for, in the DM's judgment, violating their alignments (and many could lose their sub-class). There are other explicit restrictions on use of armor, weapons, poison, and oil, as well. Clearly AD&D has a significant amount of constraint-based design. Even 3.5 retains some of this. It is virtually non-existent in 4e (and where there are a few minor exceptions they are actually more based on simulationist logic than anything else, such as halfling weapons).

1e's design was definitely 'building fences', 4e's was definitely handing out carrots.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

4e was really bad at that. While 3e had classes for a variety of specialized roles (and bit of overlap) 4e was really good at making 4 or 5 classes out of what was once one class. Pre-Essentials, you had two options for ranged, martial PCs: Ranger (bow) or Rogue (crossbow) and that was it. Heaven forbid you want to be a bow-using rogue or a crossbow-using warlord (and not just make basic attacks)!

In some areas, 4e was nonsensically limiting. Why do fighters just get scale and not plate? Why can't rogues use their powers with bows? I get focusing weapons and armor to imply a theme, but sometimes it seemed like they limited weapons and armor for no other reason than to limit the number of miniatures they'd need to produce.

Actually 4e rogues can use their powers with a short bow IIRC, then there was errata and then there was more errata. The errata was in that case pretty stupid if you ask me. OTOH this is the sort of thing you ran into ALL OVER THE PLACE with previous editions where half the game was often "you can't do that". I agree, it is annoying. 4e is definitely marked by minor imperfections. OTOH let us not even mention that evil foulness that was 2e's attempt at an unarmed combat system... In the grand scheme of things 4e's flaws seem small somehow.

You can play an archer warlord (bow or crossbow, any ranged weapon actually) using MP2. I think we could make a better design for some of that stuff, the choice of attaching an attribute to a power was probably too limiting for weapon powers, but overall it works pretty well in practice. Not all the things that seem like oddities are pointless either. Fighters can get access to plate with a feat, Paladins get it for free. The difference is subtle but combined with the different types of higher level armor enchantments it lets the game make a meaningful distinction. Fighters are any old guy that has learned to fight. Paladins are high class warriors who have the very highest tech equipment their society has to offer.

 

[Fox Lee]

I'm hardly being hypocrtical, merely pointing out that, by your own reasoning, the barbarian-paladin debate is moot if the fluff is mutable.

Actually, you are being blatantly hypocritical, as we will see with basic logic. You make these claims:

a) I can't be class A because my concept doesn't fit with its fluff.
b) I should be class B, even though my concept doesn't fit with its fluff.

Claim A is only valid if flavour is law. Claim B is only valid if flavour is not law. It is impossible for both of these things to be true at once, yet you are making both arguments in one breath.

Making two contradictory arguments at once is pretty much a perfect example of hypocrisy, ergo, you are absolutely being hypocritical, and another person can point that out regardless of whether they agree with either, neither or both of your claims.

If your character is an atheist with anger issues, he's not a paladin.

You're factually wrong. In 4e I am under no obligation to make my paladin religious, nor to say she has no anger issues. You simply are not talking about 4e here - whether or not it suits your preferences, it is not what you are describing.

He sounds like a barbarian to me.

Then your idea of the character is wrong, because as I pointed out, there are numerous mechanical (i.e., non-mutable) reasons that barbarian is unsuitable. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you didn't notice that, since you also seem to think she is a man.

Or, if you really object to the barbarian, he's a fighter. Otherwise you're going to have to explain why your atheist non-divine paladin has healing powers and the ability to blast his enemies with light.

Except my paladin is divine, which is one of the reasons why I said barbarian was unsuitable - true for fighter as well, though fighter is at least closer than barbarian since it has to spend fewer feats to reach plate armour. But paladin is still by far the best match; it has all the things that I envision this character needing, like plate proficiency, melee focus, divine powers, defender category, being super tough (in the form of more healing surges and HP), powers that heal and shield allies, and abilities that function better when it takes hits and surrounds itself with foes. In fact, the ONLY way in which paladin does not match is in flavour - and only certain parts of its flavour at that - which is the only completely malleable aspect of a class.

If the only thing you need to change is the one thing you are told you can change as much as you like, then you have your match.

There is no way for you to get around this - the only way that your advice is true in 4e is if you pretend that flavour is rules, and it simply isn't. Your advice is objectively bad.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would like to take a moment to say that reading through this thread has given me a new appreciation for how D&D 4e is designed. I think that I gave up on it too soon -- the design of the published adventures and my stuck-in-older-editions mindset were working against me. I'm keen to give the game another chance.

A big thank-you to @Neonchameleon , @pemerton , @shidaku , @S'mon , @AbdulAlhazred , @Balesir , @Fox Lee , @Hussar , @D'karr , and of course @Evenglare (for starting this thread in the first place) for sharing their insights into 4e, both in this thread and the "scene-framing" discussion.

There are still three issues that I have with 4e (time to play out an encounter at the table, the number of fiddly bonuses/conditions to track, and the number of out-of-turn actions), but I think that I can reign those in with better adventure design and by encouraging my players to avoid choosing complex or fiddly powers unless they can use them effortlessly.

The way in which character themes play out in the mechanics, the degree of control that a player has over his character's destiny, and the "carrot instead of the stick" approach to encouraging playing to type all go a long way to explain why I've found my recent visits to previous editions of D&D (and playtest of Next) fun yet somewhat unsatisfying.

Now back to arguing about paladins. Some things never actually change.

LOL, indeed, must make just ONE more comment on silliness of two-axis alignment system, cannot resist! hahaha.

I think 4e could have been a more informed design. I feel like they DID a lot of good stuff, but there wasn't total buy-in or at least total understanding. Ironically some of the things that 5e wants to do are exactly what 4e needs, but I too find DDN unsatisfying. I can't get past the sort of hodge-podge stick another mechanic on it design, or the way now and then it will suddenly take a left turn and plunge into blatant AD&Disms that just seem out of place in a more modern FRPG. There's a game out there that is not exactly 4e, but is 4e as it could be, perfected. It SURE as heck IMHO isn't DDN. I mean they have a year left to work on that presumably, but its hard to see Mike and Co suddenly waking up and smelling my coffee. I think 4e's implementation of the whole d20 core system is about as slick as that is going to get, and I just LIKE the power system, it can do a lot of things and I suspect with the right treatment there's a game in there that can kick the ass of any FRPG out there.

 

[Fox Lee]

On paladins and bows:

Umm, glancing through my PHB, not counting any additional sources, Paladins straight up get ranged powers at almost EVERY SINGLE LEVEL that you get new powers. There are a few you don't - obviously the at-wills are melee, for example. But, pretty much every time you get powers, you can choose a ranged power.

Oh, a bow Chaladin! That's quite a nice idea actually, and there's no reason it would be less mechanically-effective than your average Chaladin. If somebody wanted to play that in my game, I would probably make a "weapliment" bow for them, using the bard-targeted Songbows as a template, to reward them for trying to play something so creative. The Crescent of Corellon or the Silver Arc or something like that.

This is like one case in another 4e game, where a player saw her kokiri mage carrying around a staff, but was confused by the 2H-weapon plus implement plus small character rules. The solution? "You don't want to use it to hit people with? Then it's just a big wand. You're really short anyway ". Worked like a charm.

... is really easy in 4e.