D&D 4E Are powers samey?

[FrogReaver]

So in 5E that's what I'm doing. I'm just an great weapon fighter or an archer doing my thing round after round. Every once in a while I can push myself even further with an action surge* but I only have so much physical endurance.

Contrast that to 4E. I always had to be thinking in terms of AEDU rules in order to be effective. Am I in position to use encounter A or B? Oh wait, B would be great but I already used it. Should I use my daily in this fight and turn myself into Taz the looney toons tasmanian devil doing his spinning vortex of death and give myself an aura of weapon damage? That play cycle of deciding what power to use was the same for all PCs.

Because of those questions I'm not relaxing and simply enjoying chopping down orcs, maybe double checking to see if I need to go to the aid of the halfling. I'm constantly analyzing what card I should play next and when. It's an extra layer of complexity layered on top. I'm less likely to stay in character shouting battle cries because I'm thinking through my options.

This is a great description of how 4e and 5e play contrast for me as well.

I'm already prone to treating combat more as a wargame/chessboard and tactically optimizing the situation.
4e pushed me into that extreme even more. 5e I still do that some but it's not nearly as pronounced.

 

[Hussar]

This is a great description of how 4e and 5e play contrast for me as well.

I'm already prone to treating combat more as a wargame/chessboard and tactically optimizing the situation.
4e pushed me into that extreme even more. 5e I still do that some but it's not nearly as pronounced.

Which nicely explains why @Oofta doesn't like 4e all that much. Ok, the added complexity is a turn off.

But hardly addresses the notion of saminess. Throughout this thread, people have taken the time to tell me why they don't like 4e, but, rarely, throughout this thread, have they bothered to actually answer the question at hand.

"I find the powers samey because I have so many choices per round that it takes me out of the game" is hardly a description of samey. "The play cycle was the same for all PC's" is, again, hardly unique to 4e - deciding what to do in a given turn is called playing a game.

Put it another way, @Oofta flat out states that his elf is doing the same thing, round after round, with the occasional action surge thrown in, but, it's 4e that is samey? And hey, let's toss in the video game canard while we're at it. It's not like doing the exact same thing again and again is foreign to video games.

Again, "I don't like 4e because it's too complex" is perfectly fine. No problems. "I prefer 5e because it's a simpler game" is also perfectly fine. Totally understandable. But nothing @Oofta says actually addresses sameness. It's all about a dislike of complexity and having too many choices.

 

[FrogReaver]

But hardly addresses the notion of saminess. Throughout this thread, people have taken the time to tell me why they don't like 4e, but, rarely, throughout this thread, have they bothered to actually answer the question at hand.

We've answered about sameyness about 1000 times. Can't help the ear wax in your ears.

 

[Eric V]

We've answered about sameyness about 1000 times. Can't help the ear wax in your ears.

You honesty haven't addressed the points @Hussar makes above, which he is asking about in good faith.

"Can't help the ear wax in your ears?" That tells me you don't have a reasonable answer to his query, and likely can't come up with one.

 

[Hussar]

We've answered about sameyness about 1000 times. Can't help the ear wax in your ears.

Yup, you've answered it about 1000 times exactly the same way that @Oofta here has answered the question.

 

[pemerton]

@Manbearcat - several of your favourites ("dissociated" mechanics, die-rolling exercises, the role of keywords) are all about the fiction, and how it is established by reference to the mechanics.

I'm yet to read @Oofta's reply to me. But my post about the river ambush shows how I see 4e as "fiction first". That encounter was run in Jan or maybe early Feb 2009. The 4e resources it drew on were PHB, DMG, MM and AV. Maybe by that point I also had MotP, but it didn't figure in that first, 1st level encounter. I know that I had Open Grave by the time the NPC prisoner was turned into a wight! - but again not part of that first encounter.

So from those resources, plus the basic idea of the river ambush found in the old B/X module, I was able to conceive of what was (I will say somewhat immodestly) a pretty dynamic combat encounter. And I'm pretty confident that I was using the tools as intended.

Which is why all the subsequent stuff about "dissociation", "wrought iron fences made of tigers", etc, etc made little sense to me. I mean, even if you started out that way due to some-or-other misunderstanding, why not change as soon as you encounte people showing you how to use the tools for a good rather than a bad experience?

 

[Oofta]

Oops

 

[Oofta]

@Manbearcat - several of your favourites ("dissociated" mechanics, die-rolling exercises, the role of keywords) are all about the fiction, and how it is established by reference to the mechanics.

I'm yet to read @Oofta's reply to me. But from my post about the river ambush shows how I see 4e as "ficiton first". That encounter was run in Jan or maybe early Feb 2009. The 4e resources it drew on were PHB, DMG, MM and AV. Maybe by that point I also had MotP, but it didn't figure in that first, 1st level encounter. I know that I had Open Grave by the time the NPC prisoner was turned into a wight! - but again not part of that first encounter.

So from those resources, plus the basic idea of the river ambush found in the old B/X module, I was able to conceive of what was (I will say somewhat immodestly) a pretty dynamic combat encounter. And I'm pretty confident that I was using the tools as intended.

Which is why all the subsequent stuff about "dissociation", "wrought iron fences made of tigers", etc, etc made little sense to me. I mean, even if you started out that way due to some-or-other misunderstanding, why not change as soon as you encounte people showing you how to use the tools for a good rather than a bad experience?

Except that I chose to play a dirt simple fighter. Who plays completely different than a wizard and so on.

But we've had this argument many times and you either have ignored those posts or just choose to ignore things that don't fit your conclusion.

A question was politely asked, you don't have to agree.

 

[Neonchameleon]

So in 5E that's what I'm doing. I'm just an great weapon fighter or an archer doing my thing round after round. Every once in a while I can push myself even further with an action surge* but I only have so much physical endurance.

Contrast that to 4E. I always had to be thinking in terms of AEDU rules in order to be effective. Am I in position to use encounter A or B? Oh wait, B would be great but I already used it. Should I use my daily in this fight and turn myself into Taz the looney toons tasmanian devil doing his spinning vortex of death and give myself an aura of weapon damage? That play cycle of deciding what power to use was the same for all PCs.

Because of those questions I'm not relaxing and simply enjoying chopping down orcs, maybe double checking to see if I need to go to the aid of the halfling. I'm constantly analyzing what card I should play next and when. It's an extra layer of complexity layered on top. I'm less likely to stay in character shouting battle cries because I'm thinking through my options.

And here I think we've come to a root difference, and thank you. I think I understand the complaint - and to me it's either "fiddly" or "irrelevant detail" - but calling it "samey" makes no sense at all to me; indeed when you say "samey" you are communicating the opposite of what I mean.

In 5e when I'm facing orcs with a warrior I'm running around chopping them down and turning my brain off. When I'm facing a dragon I'm running around chopping at the dragon. One foe or many it doesn't matter If I'm fighting on a narrow walkway or if I'm fighting on a flat plane or near a cliff edge I run around and chop at the dragon. To me this is quite literally the dictionary definition of "samey". No matter what the "official" situation is I do exactly the same things. Therefore it is samey. And to me I find it harmful to roleplaying that I go about fighting goblins and dragons basically the same way when they are such different foes.

Also it doesn't matter whether I'm using a fighter with a sword and shield or a barbarian with a greataxe. I'm running around and chopping people, moving the same way and hitting the same way. What I'm doing is very very samey. When I'm playing a master of combat I want to be playing someone within the setting who is able to bring out every nuance of what is already there.

Meanwhile in 4e this isn't even slightly true. In 4e if we are fighting near a cliff edge it's entirely possible that the only attack my fighter uses is Tide of Iron. Because giving the monsters very short flying lessons is quite simply more effective than sweeping blows that might do more overall hit point damage but don't push people off cliffs. In another fight I might not use Tide of Iron at all because we're getting swarmed - and I might therefore only use Sweeping Blow and Cleave because it's right for the situation.

By definition therefore the 4e combats are not samey because I am doing different things and making different decisions when the fights are different because my abilities interact with more than just the hit points of my opponent (and even their hit points aren't just a binary switch). So each fight is its own thing.

And no the play cycle deciding when to use what level of power was not at all the same even between two characters in the same class. The resource count was the same - but on that scale a wizard is the same as a cleric. But there's a difference between a proactive "do more damage all combat" and a reactive "spend a healing surge" or even "leap into the enemy's way". You had as many abilities - but that was it.

What I do and how I approach a combat is to me far far more interesting a question than how many times I can shout a battle cry. Indeed I'd consider that interesting roleplaying questions are ones like the Babylon 5 Set

• Who are you?
• What do you want? And what will you risk for it?
• Where are you going? And how the heck are you maniacs going to get out of this fine mess?
• Who do you serve and who do you trust? And who would you risk your life for and how much?

To me a battlecry answers one of those questions (it can be from three of the four questions) - and it answers it in a theoretical way. Meanwhile the 4e powers structure feeds into them all.

On top of that a lot of the powers just wouldn't have worked in a movies like LOTR.

And here I'm going to say two things. The first is that there is a spectacular amount of cast-magic in 5e; that doesn't fit LoTR in the slightest. The second is if you don't think certain powers fit don't take them.

To summarize I get that people come from different perspectives. My issues are not universal and I get that sometimes the analogies I make could be construed as put-downs, but that is certainly not my intent. It's just trying to illuminate my viewpoint.

And thank you for that. Without your explanation I would never have understood that you (and I think other people) by "samey" mean "things are actually different and I have to think about them because I can't just do the same thing". Which is the literal opposite of what I mean by samey.

Or more accurately I think you mean "This detail actively gets in the way of my roleplaying" - something I think about most gear porn games, especially with models of gun listed and given different stats. And I've been getting

 

[pemerton]

Except that I chose to play a dirt simple fighter. Who plays completely different than a wizard and so on.

But we've had this argument many times and you either have ignored those posts or just choose to ignore things that don't fit your conclusion.

A question was politely asked, you don't have to agree.

I don't understand how this post is a response to a post about "fiction first" and the relationship between mechanics and fiction.

And I'm not sure what the argument is in relationship to which I've been ignoring posts.

But in any event, the notion of dirt simple fighter seems to me to relate to mechanics rather than fiction. I'm not trained in martial arts of any sort, but my understanding from those who are trained is that fighting involves making lots of choices.

The 1st level fighter in my 4e game had four powers: Reaping Strike (damage on a miss with his polearm), Cleave (damage to a second, adjacent enemy), Passing Attack (attack, shift, attack a different enemy - encounter power) and Comeback Strike (biggish attack, and spend a healing surge - daily power). So the choices required were roughly similar to whether or not to use action surge (roughly comparable to Passing Attack) and second wind (roughly similar to Comeback Strike).

The extra complexity that stands out to me is that (i) choosing to use Cleave requires thinking about adjacency of enemies other than one's main foe, and (ii) choosing to use Passing Attack requires thinking about proxmity of enemies other than one's main foe.

To me and my group, that is not terribly complex as game play. I'm an experienced RPGer; many of my players are not only long-time RPGers but also have played a lot of wargames and/or board games.

More importantly, though, for us at least, is that a warrior thinking about the placement of enemies seems a natural thing to do, and draws the player into the fiction.