Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 4446828" data-attributes="member: 467">One of the things that turns me off most about 4E is it's almost monolithic focus on combat, particularly in regards to what the PCs are capable of and what monsters are like.  Now, I like the monster stat block for is clean, utilitarian qualities.  But the MM is truly uninspiring.  Same with the PHB.  I cannot for the life of me read through the PHB in preparation for a 4E game I will be playing in and get inspired or excited about an actual character.  All I see is a pair of very narrow combat capabilities per class.This probably wouldn't be so bad if it was only the focus of the rules that was centered on combat.  After all, 1e and 4E are very similar in this regard: the PHB consists mostly of how your character can kill things, while the DMG provides a bunch of material on all sorts of neat stuff.  Unfortunately, 4E took that extra step where the focus of play is centered on combat as well.  the idea, as laid out in the DMG adventure design section, is an hour per combat (too long!) and some time for kibbitzing before and after.  i understand the reason -- combat is fun and D&D is supposed to be fun; 2+2=4 -- but all that other fun stuff (exploration, resource management, followers and strongholds, operational play, etc...) got cut because it was (and I am sure "is", I know my tastes aren't shared by many) not considered fun.  Which leaves combat.Man, I remember some great sessions where there wasn't a bit of combat.  Not because everyone was busy role-playing (though that happened too and it was great, but that's not edition dependent) but because the party was struggling to get from A to B on the way to defeat McBaddie McGuffineister without starving, getting lost or getting eaten by something nasty and horrible and thoroughly out of their league in the middle of the wilderness or the depths of the dungeon.  I remember players statting up, naming and writing out backgrounds for all of their 9th level followers, satffing their keeps and trying to squeeze every last penny out of their won treasure just to make upkeep costs.  I remember parties standing around a statue with a million gp ruby in its forhead, spending forever and a day trying to figure out whether they should go for it, and how, until one party finally broke and went for a straight on grab (soon followed by the clatter of 4d6 drop the lowest).  I remember 4 out of 5 players sitting with rapt attention on me and the wizard player as a magical duel unfolded, never once feeling bored or useless in the process.  All of these sessions were awesome fun, and they happened in every edition up till now.  And every one of those things has been excised in favor of cool combat abilities and "balance".4E has some great ideas for keeping D&D combat interesting.  Too bad it sacrificied nearly everything else to achieve that.</blockquote>

Verification