D&D 3E/3.5 3.5 and before and 4th edition.

[Alexander123]

I was going to post this in the 4th edition forum, but I decided not to because 1, I don't play 4th edition, and 2, I have heard some negative reviews about 4th edition and wanted peoples opinion with why they don't play 4th edition and what exactly they feel to be the problem with it so I felt that it belonged here. Of course, that it only if you feel something to be wrong with 4th edition, some people may not and they should feel free to voice their opinion also.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Opinions and reasons for playing one game over another are many and varied... and generally accurate only to the person that holds them, so... Responses to this question may or may not useful at all.

As for why I prefer 3rd edition over 4th edition... I have found that some things have been abstracted out of 4th edition that I prefer to be in the game.

 

[Jack Simth]

Opinions and reasons for playing one game over another are many and varied... and generally accurate only to the person that holds them, so... Responses to this question may or may not useful at all.

As for why I prefer 3rd edition over 4th edition... I have found that some things have been abstracted out of 4th edition that I prefer to be in the game.

Heh, pretty much. The pre-4th versions of D&D attempt to be reasonably simulationist (with the addition of magic and magical things) first, and have game-balance second. 4th edition seems to want to have game balance first, and be reasonably simulationist second - there's nothing fundamentally wrong with either set of priorities... I just prefer one over the other.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Heh, pretty much. The pre-4th versions of D&D attempt to be reasonably simulationist (with the addition of magic and magical things) first, and have game-balance second. 4th edition seems to want to have game balance first, and be reasonably simulationist second - there's nothing fundamentally wrong with either set of priorities... I just prefer one over the other.

Agreed.

I don't like 4E for many reasons, don't feel like rehashing it all. Some general points:

-No particular niche protections for classes; as a result they all look too similar to me. Would mind it less if they had done away with the class system altogether and let you just buy up whatever powers you wanted, ironically. As it is, it's sort of like they were aiming for either cliff side of a valley and ended up plummeting down the middle.
-Skill system was disgustingly butchered and skill challenges were completely broken (presumably fixed by now)
-All game balance and 99% of the thought revolves around combat. I play heavy combat games, but that still bothered me that they put so little effort into the world and utility abilities.
-A lot of dissociated mechanics. NPCs use completely different rules than PCs. PCs have healing surges and encounter/daily powers, NPCs have things like recharge mechanics for their abilities. A kobold NPC has completely different racial abilities than a kobold PC. I like rules with internal consistency.
-Everything is a "power," even "basic attacks." When you're using powers every single round, it makes them feel less interesting.
-They'll eratta/patch it at the drop of the hat. Kind of the mirror opposite of 3E, where blatantly broken things were often never ever addressed at all. Instead in 4E, you see them revising a mid level ranger power right at release because it turns out with it a ranger can one-shot orcus. The problem for me is, it's not just extreme examples like that, they seem to just errata things SO much. Since I've found that "internet problems" like the 15 min. adventuring day aren't real issues for me, just the thought of a small pack of whining internet users getting WotC to possibly go and nerf things that were perfectly fine gets under my skin.
-In the lead up to 4E, 3E was frequently disparaged as a reason to switch. Later on, 3E pdfs were taken down along with 4E ones, supposedly due to piracy concerns over new releases. Except there were no new 3E releases, any books for that edition had long since been pirated anyway. Instead it was to make it difficult to find 3E products to force current gamers to switch and prevent newcomers from encountering "their biggest rival." Douchy things like that will make me hate any company and their products.

Umm yeah...that's the "short summary," lol.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I so would've given you some XP for that entire post, SotS. As it is though, there's one bit I'd like to highlight and respond to, briefly:

Since I've found that "internet problems" like the 15 min. adventuring day aren't real issues for me, just the thought of a small pack of whining internet users getting WotC to possibly go and nerf things that were perfectly fine gets under my skin.

I sometimes wonder... actually, I suspect that 4e as a whole is significantly informed by the taking of a sorry pile of internet mantras to heart. From the very start, I mean.


edit: Er... that seemed to work! Well. So, it's only the other bit that's switched off. Huh.

 

[pawsplay]

1. Although I like PC/NPC distinction, I think 4e took it too far, with NPCs who lack basic defining traits, and making it difficult to make monster-inspired PC races.
2. 4e just does not have much support for many adventuring situations outside of combat and hazard/puzzle situations. Things like exploration and deception get slim to no treatment.
3. Lack of creative sandbox in play. Special maneuvers are based on rigidly defined powers, and the powers rarely have enough description to allow them to be adjudicated within the framework of the game world. Further, each power is "balanced" which is another way of saying it lacks enough substance as an imaginary thing to allow anything to happen outside the bounds set by the designers.
4. Too many changes. The majority of elements have a clear lineage from the original D&D through Advanced and Basic D&D to third edition. With 4e, there was a clear break. The miniatures that came out for 4e are the first set of miniatures that many of which would not be suitable for older edition play. Races, classes, cosmology all underwent major changes in the core setting, comparable to the most outlying 2e settings.
5. Slow, predictable combat.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

5. Slow, predictable combat.

Nothing quite like knowing the final outcome on round 5 but still not finishing until round 12, eh?

I feel almost a sense of irony saying that, since I have a great love of battlefield control casters (the kind that actually control the battlefield, not an area effect blaster like many 4E "controllers"), and their goal in any combat is to so masterfully arrange the chess pieces as to make the outcome a foregone conclusion as quickly as possible, even if the clean up crew needs several more rounds to make it happen.

Guess it's because for me in 3E it was the result of tactics, while as the 4E grind happens no matter what you do.

 

[Jhaelen]

Of course, that it only if you feel something to be wrong with 4th edition, some people may not and they should feel free to voice their opinion also.

Well, 'something' is wrong with every edition of D&D

Myself, I had a lot of fun playing 3e until we reached ~ level 13, then the flaws of 3e really became obvious. As a DM prep time is very high and combats are painfully slow (it can take over an hour to play through a single turn!).

So, I'm going to be quite happy when we finally make the switch to 4e and I suspect I won't look back. We've playtested 4e for two weeks (playing every day) until about level 4 and quite frankly are having more fun playing it. Even the 4e sceptics in our group agree that it's fun.

What is difficult to grasp or rather difficult to come to terms with for some is the disjunction of pc mechanics and monster mechanics and the rather blatant 'gamist' approach to some things, e.g. the minion concept.

E.g. one of my players asked me how an npc necromancer was able to create an army of undead or how a npc mindbender would be able to dominate a large number of people for an extended time in 4e, since there are no rules for these things.

For me that's precisely the beauty of DMing 4e. Rather than digging through a dozen books trying to find the spells and feats that would allow a 3e npc to do these things, all I have to do in 4e is to decide that, yes, the npc can do this.

As long as I respect the monster math and encounter design guidelines, monsters and npcs can do anything I want them to. It's both creative freedom and less work. I can spend my prep time thinking about story and roleplaying aspects rather than complicated stat-blocks.

As much as I enjoyed tweaking monsters and npcs in 3e, I don't miss the investment of time I had to make.

For players, 4e can be a quite a culture shock, depending on what kind of classes you enjoyed playing in 3e. Here are some examples from my group:

One player would never play anything but a fighter in 3e. Now he's having the greatest time playing a wizard in 4e, because the class is now exactly as complex as any other class and the complexity is something he is comfortable with.

Another player who happened to be one of the 4e sceptics rarely played anything but spellcasters in 3e. He wasn't overly excited about the apparent lack of options in 4e since he enjoys complexity. What he does like, though, is the focus on positioning and group tactics in combat.

A third player was quite excited about more imortant role of skills (skill challenges), since she prefers the non-combat aspects and roleplaying in the game. She's also playing her pc more effective in 4e combat since she always struggled with the more complicated 3e rules.

Finally there's a player who is still rather unhappy that everyone else seems intent on switching to 4e. In 3e the game aspect he seemed to enjoy most was the character building / optimization. He was always stacking levels of all kinds of classes to create jacks-of-all trades. The multi-classing options in 4e just don't cut it for him. He still enjoys playing 4e but to him it's not 'D&D' anymore. It's more like the kind of fun he'd get out of an evening of board games.

 

[IronWolf]

Rather than repeat StreamofTheSky's post near verbatim I will just say I agree with him. And add that 4e just doesn't *feel* like D&D to me.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Well, 'something' is wrong with every edition of D&D

Myself, I had a lot of fun playing 3e until we reached ~ level 13, then the flaws of 3e really became obvious. As a DM prep time is very high and combats are painfully slow (it can take over an hour to play through a single turn!).

So, I'm going to be quite happy when we finally make the switch to 4e and I suspect I won't look back. We've playtested 4e for two weeks (playing every day) until about level 4 and quite frankly are having more fun playing it. Even the 4e sceptics in our group agree that it's fun.

What is difficult to grasp or rather difficult to come to terms with for some is the disjunction of pc mechanics and monster mechanics and the rather blatant 'gamist' approach to some things, e.g. the minion concept.

E.g. one of my players asked me how an npc necromancer was able to create an army of undead or how a npc mindbender would be able to dominate a large number of people for an extended time in 4e, since there are no rules for these things.

For me that's precisely the beauty of DMing 4e. Rather than digging through a dozen books trying to find the spells and feats that would allow a 3e npc to do these things, all I have to do in 4e is to decide that, yes, the npc can do this.

As long as I respect the monster math and encounter design guidelines, monsters and npcs can do anything I want them to. It's both creative freedom and less work. I can spend my prep time thinking about story and roleplaying aspects rather than complicated stat-blocks.

As much as I enjoyed tweaking monsters and npcs in 3e, I don't miss the investment of time I had to make.

For players, 4e can be a quite a culture shock, depending on what kind of classes you enjoyed playing in 3e. Here are some examples from my group:

One player would never play anything but a fighter in 3e. Now he's having the greatest time playing a wizard in 4e, because the class is now exactly as complex as any other class and the complexity is something he is comfortable with.

Another player who happened to be one of the 4e sceptics rarely played anything but spellcasters in 3e. He wasn't overly excited about the apparent lack of options in 4e since he enjoys complexity. What he does like, though, is the focus on positioning and group tactics in combat.

A third player was quite excited about more imortant role of skills (skill challenges), since she prefers the non-combat aspects and roleplaying in the game. She's also playing her pc more effective in 4e combat since she always struggled with the more complicated 3e rules.

Finally there's a player who is still rather unhappy that everyone else seems intent on switching to 4e. In 3e the game aspect he seemed to enjoy most was the character building / optimization. He was always stacking levels of all kinds of classes to create jacks-of-all trades. The multi-classing options in 4e just don't cut it for him. He still enjoys playing 4e but to him it's not 'D&D' anymore. It's more like the kind of fun he'd get out of an evening of board games.

Kinda busy today, so I'll just comment on two things.

1st: 3E advances in "quartiles"; every 5 levels or so, the power level of the game has gradually changed into new areas. Generally, 1-5 or 1-6 is considered the LotR, "realistic," or "gritty" levels, then the game feels more like heoric fantasy, then wuxia/wire-fu, and finally as you near epic, you're basically superheroes or even demi-gods in terms of power level. So yeah, 4E is playable at level 20 or 30 and 3E often is not. But that's only because they flattened out the advancement and cut a god chunk off of each end, limiting your play options. I'm just not that impressed with it, you could accomplish the same thing for the most part in 3E by just starting at level X and slowing down the xp and treasure gains to make the game end before the PCs reach a power level you don't want them to.

Minions: I HATED minion rules when I first saw them! Especially insulting to my intelligence was that you could only kill them on a hit, even if on a miss you dealt damage. That was a really needess distinction and prevented some nice synergy for powers like Reaping Strike when facing minions. I mean, they're so easy to kill, why's it matter if a player has a power to auto-kill one, or the wizard can auto-kill a 20 ft area of them? If the PCs have those kinds of abilities, let them shine... getting back on track...

Nowadays, I stil think they're abominable as used in 4E, but I have used similar rules for 3E games. I found one singular use to justify minions: In a lot of videogames and movies, there are scenes where the enemies just continuously spawn and are insanely large in number. They drop easily enough, but slaughtering them isn't the goal. They're more of an added danger and annoyance, "background" to the actual goal. Whether it's to kill an important NPC or evacuate someone, etc... Once the goal is completed, the minions run away or surrender (think like how bashing a swarm in doesn't actually mean killing all the creatures in it, but merely dispersing them), or the PCs otherwise evade them, as appropriate to the encounter. So, I use "minions" except instead of just 1 hp, I use a threshold, usually 5. If you do 5 or more damage (regardless of if they saved, you missed, etc...), minion dies. If you do less, it effectively gains a "wound point" and instantly dies the next time it takes damage, no matter the amount. The minions as a whole add a set amount of XP/CR to a fight, it doesn't matter how they're dealt with by the PCs, they always will yield the pre-determined amount. Dispatching them in droves just helps reduce the attacks the PCs recieve; accomplishing the goal faster likewise simply keeps the PCs from being beaten up as much. I think it's pure absolute folly to actually assign minions individual xp values like they're normal monsters. But as an encounter hazard for the entire lot of them, it's acceptable to me.