D&D 4E In Defense of 4E - a New Campaign Perspective

[Jhaelen]

But even in its original incarnation, you were expected to play "tougher" characters than average. I don't have my books handy right now, but I seem to recall that in the original 2e version characters started somewhere around 3rd level.

Correct. But 2e also introduced 'character trees', i.e. it was recommended that each player create several player characters to be able to quickly replace characters meeting an unexpected early demise. Iirc, whenever the character you were playing actively gained a level-up you were allowed to level-up one of your other characters, as well.

In my 2e Dark Sun campaign this was an important feature, especially since there were several low level critters with insanely powerful psionic powers. Also, traveling across the desert areas was really dangerous, both due to environmental hazards and the fauna.

4e Dark Sun felt much less deadly. The system was too well balanced ;-)

 

[TwoSix]

My personal tweak for minions was to give every group of 4 minions a shared HP pool equal to an equivalent Standard creature of the same level. Dropping it to Bloodied would knock out the 1st minion, and then every hit after that would knock out another. Getting the pool down to 0 knocked out the last one.

This got rid of the weird corner cases around 1 HP, but still made minions cannon fodder for controller AoE, which I always felt should be one of the main purposes for minions.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I agree with you in general, but that is not what @Saelorn is talking about. He/she has an issue with what he/she feels the mechanics are telling him/her about the game world. When he/she sees a minion at 1HP it makes no sense to him/her - he/she doesn't know what that means and thus cannot role play it. And there several more mechanics that create the same problem for him/her.

These are not issue I or my group had, but they ones for him/her.

I was responding to the OP. Saelorn has me blocked. I know very little of what they had an issue with.

 

[dave2008]

I was responding to the OP. Saelorn has me blocked. I know very little of what they had an issue with.

My apologies - I misunderstood

 

[Garthanos]

My girlfriend has described 5E as "I move up, attack, swing my sword at a bag of hit points until one of us drops." I think that can describe the core 5E experience for players (and DMs) who don't elaborate actions outside the mechanics of the game.

Just reading the 5e monster descriptions suggests that problem would be endemic.

 

[Immortal Sun]

What are your thoughts? Do you think 4E combats ran too long? Do you think the design discouraged roleplaying? How did skill challenges work for your group?

First: Absolutely they did. It was a combination of "things are harder to hit" and "things have more HP. In 3.5 things were harder to hit, but had lower HP, leading to swingier, but far faster combats, a good crit or two could down some major enemies, but may just as well down the players.

Generally speaking, I've resolved this by taking off 1/3rd of monster HPs. I don't mind players have a little extra meat on their bones, since I will make up for the missing HP by adding another monster or two. Takes us back to "A couple solid hits will take this guy down." but "there's more to deal with there."

4E is the only edition I have ever run where I have felt comfortable running dozens of mooks thanks to the Minion rules and I've never had to say "But wait guys, the 15th Kobold still has 2 HP left." It's also the only edition where I've felt like Zombies could be properly represented! Yes I know there are corner issues like minion ogres and stuff, but really, if that bothers anyone, just don't do it. The fact that there could be a minion dragon doesn't mean there must be.

Second: Nothing in 4E ever discouraged roleplaying for me. Arguably some of my most memorable characters and most memorable role-playing still come from 4E games. Probably talking 2/3rds here?

Third: Maybe I misunderstood skill challenges as 4E presented them as a minigame or something, but I've always run, regardless of editions, "encounters" where "hitting it" is not the solution and instead players would need to use their non-combat skills to get through. If I've been doing it right, then I think it's great that this was codified into the game, because it was a great way to address non-combat social or exploration events within the rules. If I'm not doing it as 4E suggested, then no loss really. Not everything in any edition is perfect.

But what if you could attack the goblin, slide it into position to be flanked by the rogue, who is able to deliver a sneak attack on the following round? Or the fighter steps forward to issue a challenge so if the goblin attacks you on its turn, the fighter gets a free attack on the goblin to kill it? Both of these actions have occurred on other players' turns, and they dramatically impact your character's actions. Temporary buffs. Healing. Secondary attacks. Creatures that can trigger ferocious abilities on other players' turns. These are all common features of the 4E design paradigm. And you'd better be paying attention - this isn't a passive game! Every player's turn can be exciting, and it's rarely "I'm going to spam this single attack every turn."


My experience is that this leads to heightened player engagement.

I have to generally agree that this is my opinion on the difference between 4E, 3.5E and 5E combats. 4E demands engagement....until you run out of encounter or daily powers. Though they did a good job keeping even the at-wills creative, realistically they're mostly "basic melee with a little flavor". This goes back to the "was 4E combat a slog?" question because yes, it was, which quickly led from exciting encounters with cool powers to boring slugfests where you could get up and grab a coke while Bob took a 15-minute turn. 3.5 and 5E encounters are certainly faster, but they are much more boring (to me) but I've never run 4E for them so I can't make a comparison.

 

[amethal]

Fourth edition was less concrete about things. Minions have one HP, so we know that they die if they take any damage, but what is that supposed to mean within the game world? They can't really be more frail than a level one wizard with 3 Constitution, can they? Even if the minion is an ogre?

I agree with the general gist of your post, but hit points have always been an abstraction, in any edition of D&D, and has always led to some strange results. My current Pathfinder character has 230 hit points, for example; a 200 foot fall would be a serious annoyance, but is in no way life threatening.

An ogre minion who finds himself up against Paragon tier heroes is seriously outclassed. His luck has deserted him, whilst destiny smiles on everything his opponents do. The signs and portents are entirely favourable to the opposition. Every arrow that hits will hit him in the eye. Every spear thrust finds his heart. Every dagger finds his throat.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

An ogre minion who finds himself up against Paragon tier heroes is seriously outclassed. His luck has deserted him, whilst destiny smiles on everything his opponents do. The signs and portents are entirely favourable to the opposition. Every arrow that hits will hit him in the eye. Every spear thrust finds his heart. Every dagger finds his throat.

And if the ogre falls ten feet, he'll land wrong and snap his neck? Where the same ogre, when faced with much weaker foes (such that he's modeled as an elite brute, rather than a minion), will land on his feet with no ill effect?

I have to admit, I hadn't considered the possibility of luck and fate as meaningful factors within the game world, which completely overpower the tangible factors such as physical endurance and skill. I didn't really get that from the book, when I read it, but I can see the appeal of that approach.

It still seems like an awful lot of system complexity, that tells us very little about how the world actually works. Or I suppose, if you assume luck and fate are real, maybe that's all you need to know?

I agree with the general gist of your post, but hit points have always been an abstraction, in any edition of D&D, and has always led to some strange results. My current Pathfinder character has 230 hit points, for example; a 200 foot fall would be a serious annoyance, but is in no way life threatening.

One of the things that I like about Pathfinder, is that you really can just treat it as an alternate physics engine, if you want to. You can have a high-level character who really is physically tougher than a frost giant, and that's just how the world works, and everything is internally consistent.

 

[Retreater]

I think that arguing that minions are not realistic is a strange argument to make. If you want to discuss realism, think that most creatures in reality would have 1 hp. A solitary blow that actually lands on your epic fighter should kill him or her, regardless of them having 230 hp. All HP are an abstraction and a game element. 4E was just willing to acknowledge this for what we fans think is a better game experience.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think that arguing that minions are not realistic is a strange argument to make. If you want to discuss realism, think that most creatures in reality would have 1 hp. A solitary blow that actually lands on your epic fighter should kill him or her, regardless of them having 230 hp. All HP are an abstraction and a game element. 4E was just willing to acknowledge this for what we fans think is a better game experience.

For most games, you could see HP as an abstract game element, if you wanted to; but you could also take it as just the way things worked, in that alternate reality. It's clearly not our world, because a real person can't reliably survive such hazards as a high-level character could, but exploring an alternate world has always been one of the big selling points for RPGs. (You could argue that minions are realistic, based on how things work in our own world, but they aren't consistent with how everything else works in their world.)

What 4E did was to take a hard stance, that HP were definitely just a game element that didn't signify anything deeper about how the world worked, and force everyone else to either take it or leave it. I don't think the designers necessarily realized how many people would see that as a deal-breaker.