D&D 4E Who's still playing 4E

[MoutonRustique]

For me, the 13th Age monsters are the best monsters! (as a whole - some are excellent, others... not so much)

They really took what is awesome about 4e (the speed of creation, the "mechanics create fluff and fluff leads to mechanics" loop, the ease of running them, the reduction to what matters, etc.) and added a few new twists and mechanics.

I'm completely sold - it's just perfect that they translate to 4e so elegantly

Would rave some more, but sleep is calling - night.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I completely understand all of your distastes for the system. What doesn't work for you seems to work for me (at least so far, I've yet to play the game), but I can very much respect why these aspects stick in your craw.

Aye, and I can see why people like the game. In fact there's plenty to like in terms of the tone and genre. I thought the icons, though maybe hard to adapt to other settings, were a pretty decent idea. The general background concept is solid, even if I would have liked to see something more like the 4e short skill list to go with it. Its a solid game. Just not quite what I would like to carry on the 4e torch.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Actually 13th Age has a more granularity that D&D (any edition). The DM grants Incremental Advances, suggested every session, each of which gives part of the next level. In the order the player desires. If you play ~5 sessions a level (so 4 IAs and then the full level) that's 45 advancement steps from lowest level to highest. (Once you are the highest level you aren't working towards your next, unless someone comes out with the equivalent of Epic advancement for 13th Age.)

Yeah, but this just puts the work off on the DM (besides being an optional rule). There's no canonical progression and its just a PITA. You have to remember which increments you gave to which players so you don't forget and end up adding something multiple times, etc.

It would have been simpler to just have 20 levels, IMHO.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But it does abandon some of the best things 4e did. The common class structure is gone in favor of resource-varied classes with balance imposed by arbitrary day length. While balance is (somewhat, if heavy-handedly) maintained, the classes end up being a lot less developed, individually, while still presenting a higher bar to learning more than one class or just 'getting' the system, in general. Similarly, it keeps a surge-like mechanic, but abandons some of the coolest uses for it, (though the Commander class does trigger 'rallies' which isn't terrible).

Ultimately, 13A isn't remotely a Pathfinder-like 'clone' of 4e - it's really a lot more like 5e in what it tries to do (and succeeds in doing), just with somewhat less D&D baggage, and a lot more indie innovation (and much better support for TotM, of course).

"AEDU" was really more a short-hand for saying that 4e classes had a common structure (which made them so much easier to balance), than that it had 3 different kinds of resource-recovery.

13A uses different resource-recharge mixes among the classes, and balances them with a large hammer called a 'full-heal up,' that is DM mediated. It works - better than anything done to balance 5e, 3e, or classic D&D, certainly - but it it's clumsy, arbitrary, and just blatantly obvious. For people who don't like 'seeing the strings,' I suspect, it has to be a deal-breaker.

OTOH, 13A monsters and encounters seem to work pretty well, and show clear 4e, as well as indie, influence.

Yeah, I'll basically agree with you. The part of AEDU that matters is that there's a common resource progression. It means everyone is playing the same game at some level.

 

[Blue]

Yeah, but this just puts the work off on the DM (besides being an optional rule). There's no canonical progression and its just a PITA. You have to remember which increments you gave to which players so you don't forget and end up adding something multiple times, etc.

It would have been simpler to just have 20 levels, IMHO.

Running 13th Age, I disagree with every point. It's not an optional rule. The DM has no tracking to do, it's all on the players. Heck, the default character sheets have the possible advances listed so the players can check them off as they use them and then reset when they level.

20 levels means you need to spread out your content to cover 20 levels or worry about dead levels like were a problem back in 3.x. It means that all of the math where you add your level gets doubled over the course of the game, meaning that monsters (now also spread wider) are less usable off level fromt he PCs. A +2 or -2 level monster would be a +4 or -4 level monster with a much wider range of defenses, to hit, etc. I don't see that as an improvement.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Running 13th Age, I disagree with every point. It's not an optional rule. The DM has no tracking to do, it's all on the players. Heck, the default character sheets have the possible advances listed so the players can check them off as they use them and then reset when they level.

20 levels means you need to spread out your content to cover 20 levels or worry about dead levels like were a problem back in 3.x. It means that all of the math where you add your level gets doubled over the course of the game, meaning that monsters (now also spread wider) are less usable off level fromt he PCs. A +2 or -2 level monster would be a +4 or -4 level monster with a much wider range of defenses, to hit, etc. I don't see that as an improvement.

Well, we certainly have different experiences with it. We found it to be annoying and awkward. Given the amount of material that 13a crams into 10 levels I don't believe there would be 'dead levels'. Every single time you level now in 13a you gain multiple new things, just spread them out so you gain half as many per level, it works fine.

As for the math argument, it is perfectly simple, just halve the progression of attack bonus, defenses, etc. This worked perfectly well in 4e and 5e even takes it further in that direction without any issues. Yes, monsters would be usable over 2x as many levels, so what? Its still the same percentage of the total progression.

I just don't see what the POINT is of the 10 level progression. All it does is break the traditional "you get stuff when you level up" paradigm. I don't see an up side to it, unless you count level bonus being "+ your level" which is a pretty small benefit for the extra baggage IMHO.

 

[D'karr]

I think the benefit of 10 levels is that most people never get to play into higher levels (11-30). So compressing the progression makes it more likely that players will get to experience the entirety of the game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the benefit of 10 levels is that most people never get to play into higher levels (11-30). So compressing the progression makes it more likely that players will get to experience the entirety of the game.

Well, I don't know if this actually happens or not, who can really say? Given that each level is effectively 2-3 D&D levels of worth of advancement, there's no actual difference in total advancement, and thus if you for instance preferred 'E6' (IE low level play in 3.x) or Heroic tier 4e, then you'd be jammed into 2-3 total levels worth of advancement in 13a, which I didn't find to be a terribly inviting prospect EITHER, though honestly I hadn't thought about it until now.

My theory is that people who play mostly low level do so because they WANT to do that, not because they can't advance their characters quickly to higher levels if that was what they really wanted to play. If I'm correct, then compressing the game to 10 levels isn't doing them any favors. Likewise if someone really wants to play high level, then wouldn't they simply give out lots of XP or start at Paragon, or whatever? I'd think so!

I don't know that you're wrong, but it seems to me that removing granularity just limits people's options, it doesn't give them MORE options. I sort of felt like there was some fuzzy thinking around this in 13a's design. 5e's designers seem to have erred in some similar respects at times too.

 

[Tony Vargas]

13A's 10-level progression is prettymuch it's take on Bounded Accuracy.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

13A's 10-level progression is prettymuch it's take on Bounded Accuracy.

Yeah, it just seemed like a weird way to do it. As an experiment in level-based game design I'm going to say I don't think it was a success. At least not for a game with the steep power curves of a D&D-like. I could maybe see doing a sci-fi game or something where you just had 3 or 4 'levels' with each one being more like a tier, and some other way of regulating what you get within each level.

I think you're right, they were trying an experiment, "what if we just simplified it to 10 levels." I'm just not sure it was a good idea...