D&D 4E 4e Cartoon Mickymouse Roleplay - tame !!

[Obryn]

I give this a 5/10. Bonus points for Disney references and fragmented grammar. Next time, include more froth and spelling errors, and you might just get a 7/10!

-O

 

[francisca]

No edge to it like the original version is there, almost impossible to die unless you really balls it up.

If your character does die, unless its a complete wash, there are absolutely zero consequences, its just like cartoons where you just jump up again after dyeing and keep running around again.

There is no permanent loss to Consitution when you die like the old days, no ressurection % roll to see if you actually can come back, tame and limp, where is the edge ?

Even the cost to "Raise Dead" is neglible, it used to cost a fortune and the whole party had to scrimp and save to find enough gold to bring someone back, now its a paltry fee relative to the tear you are in.

Even the monsters that destroy magic items, cursed items, spells and effects that can destroy magic, or limbs or some sort of consequence.

Cant they designers ramp up the consequences a little, add a little bit of spice to the threat of death.

But does it fail in every way? I mean, it's no d02, you know?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I give this a 5/10. Bonus points for Disney references and fragmented grammar. Next time, include more froth and spelling errors, and you might just get a 7/10!

-O

Eh, he's articulating a complaint about the 4e system and some of it is worth a bit of discussion.

As far as it being simply too easy for PCs to survive, that just isn't particularly true. Its more true for epic level play, but only at a superficial level. Its quite easy to deal death to heroic tier characters, trivial even. They just don't usually get slaughtered due to a bad die roll. Paragon is more dependent on the sort of players you have. A group of real hard core players that go all out will be pretty hard to kill in the ordinary course of things but you can certainly do it. I don't think epic play is really about killing characters or intended to provide a lot of character death in the ordinary course of things, its more reserved to the DM to serve it up to order.

Raise Dead really isn't all that different than it ever was. Honestly even in 1e and 2e where you couldn't avoid the CON loss aspect most characters weren't going to miss a point of CON much anyway. If you died enough times that it started to get to be a real serious issue then basically you got what you deserved. So its not like 4e is really actually all that different. As other people have said, things like Raise Dead are easily tweaked by the DM. The default is you can get your character back in action for a reasonable cost. Its not entirely trivial but neither is it crippling. The DM can easily change that if it suites the group's style of play.

Other types of consequences simply aren't really things that SHOULD be codified by the rules IMHO. Really 1e and 2e (and I'm not really that familiar with 3.x) had very little in the way of such things. There were a few really high end items that could mess up your character somewhat permanently, but that was it. There never were rules for losing a leg or something for instance, so 4e is no different there. In fact 4e has a tighter rein on what PCs can do with magic, which actually makes it tougher to get out from under something like that. In the old days you just slapped on some regen and you were as good as new. That isn't so easy anymore (depending on how you look at the short duration temporary regen effects that 4e does have). In other words this kind of stuff was always on the DM to work out. You want to poke out a character's eye and make him go around one-eyed? Just do it, same as ever.

What 4e does do is elevate the power of plot and storytelling, so at least now the DM has a better framework for fitting significant events of these sorts into the game.

 

[Nifft]

Tell that to my players who had a TPK in their first encounter. All of us had played D&D for around 30 years. I'll take the blame as DM; I thought the much-vaunted hyperpowered 4e PCs could handle a half-dozen giant frogs... :/

Those frogs are pure hopping murder. Very poorly designed critter IMHO.

Cheers, -- N

 

[TarionzCousin]

Cleric players should be required to successfully remove all organs in a game of Operation in order to bring a dead PC back to life. If they fail, the PC stays dead.

Spoiler

... while in the back of a car travelling at least 70 miles per hour!

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I've looked at a lot of D&D sources and played every edition from the Red Box on (as well as a wide variety of other RPGs). A great deal of DM resources and house rules often went into keeping PCs alive or to resurrecting them. In 4E, players are welcome to embrace house rules that go the other way.

Why do so many people seem to assume that with the publication of 4E, all players lost the ability to think up house rules?

 

[ExploderWizard]

Why do so many people seem to assume that with the publication of 4E, all players lost the ability to think up house rules?

Its because of the "official" mentality that grips helpless players enthralling them to their rules writing overlords. The kind of thinking that demands that something has to be published by X before being acceptable to use.

That is part of the reason. The other part is that WOTC makes it very difficult to houserule on the character sheet side of things because of how closed off the CB is. Of course nothing is stopping anyone from writing whatever house rules they desire and experience the joy of writing out a paragon level character sheet by hand.
Since most people prefer that playtime exceed the time it takes to produce a character sheet, the software and its piped in rules are used.

I abandoned custom magic items that had to integrate into the math of the character sheet. It just isn't worth the hassle. My house ruling is all done from outside the CB. Because the monster builder is easy to actually customize, I can use that to houserule without any difficulty.

Thinking of content is easy. Implementation is the difficult part.

 

[renau1g]

Meh, I need to go through my sheet with a fine toothed comb anyways as the CB frequently misses bonuses and I need to make sure things all flow together.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Meh, I need to go through my sheet with a fine toothed comb anyways as the CB frequently misses bonuses and I need to make sure things all flow together.

Yeah. That Character Builder is awesome but leaves gaping holes on the character sheet.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

If your character sheets have gaping holes in them, I think you would be better off looking for either a new printer or better paper.