D&D 4E 4e death of creative spell casting?

[F4NBOY]

Look at the playtest “Tomb Under the Tor”... The wizard used the same ability over and over… why didn’t he drop a Color Spray? Grease? Something to take the wolves out of the fight for a few rounds? It kind if felt like the wizard was being restricted to a staple ability. Maybe I was reading more into it then I should have been?

Over and over?? it was what? 2 rounds?

But I know what you mean, I also always got bored with the fighter, swinging his weapon over and over again in every single encounter. Good that they are fixing it.

 

[wayne62682]

Strange.. most of what people seem to consider "creative" and "thinking outside the box" I see as "abusing a spell in ways not intended". So chalk me up to liking the idea of spells being able to do x, y, and z and that's it. No more nonsense with creative, encounter-busting spell use that annoys the hell out of the DM.

 

[Cadfan]

I know a person who plays 2nd Edition. She, and her entire gaming group, refuse to upgrade to 3rd edition or 3.5 because they feel it "sucked the creativity out of gaming." I've tried to inquire why, because I honestly couldn't figure out how they reached that conclusion.

None of them could put it into words clearly. But they all seemed convinced that in 2nd Ed, you could be creative, while in 3rd Ed you were tied down by all kinds of rules that sucked out the creativity.

As near as I can tell, what's going on is a difference in play styles. They like a sort of mother-may-I approach to D&D, where they just make up random crazy stuff, and say that they try it. And the DM just decides if it works or not. From that perspective, adding a skill called Balance actually reduces the creativity of the game. Under 2nd Ed, they'd just declare that they were going to balance on something and fight a dragon or whatever, and the DM would decide if it worked, or make up some random die roll based on his ballpark estimate of the chance for success. Under 3rd Ed, they'd be expected to actually have ranks in Balance. If they didn't, their character would fall.

From that perspective, I can see why some people might feel 4e is "less creative." By actually codifying things, the ability to make random stuff up and have it work (if your DM lets you) is lost. Accurate, elegant and balanced codification of the rules is therefore a bad thing from this perspective.

I understand the reasoning. But, I hate the playstyle. This may be selfish, but if sacrificing those players happiness is what it takes to get me the game I want, where I know my character's abilities and can plan tactically based upon them, then I'm ok with it.

I'm sorry for those people who will desparately miss "being creative" by declaring that they're going to use Tensor's Floating Disk as an impenetrable shield against arrow fire or whatever. My vision for D&D doesn't include those folks. But I can recommend a playgroup they might enjoy.

 

[Celebrim]

I understand the reasoning. But, I hate the playstyle. This may be selfish, but if sacrificing those players happiness is what it takes to get me the game I want, where I know my character's abilities and can plan tactically based upon them, then I'm ok with it.

Speaking as DM, that playstyle is really taxing on me as a DM because I'm always forced to make something up. Invariably I end up inventing a resolution system, and then I guess that 'sucks all the creativity' out of it.

I think that the resolution system that players like that really want is something closer to, "Anything I can imagine, no matter how outlandish, has at least a 50% chance of success, and when it does succeed, it succeeds spectacularly." It is very much geared around, "PC's are heroes, and everyone else is not. PC's have narrative force, and can do things, and NPC's do not." I've never met one player like that which was equally entertained by the DM being 'creative'. I'm sure there are some that don't mind when the chandeleer that they fired from the thier bow while leaping over the chasm of lava is deflected by an NPC's Tenser's Floating disk into another PC, knocking them off the ledge, but I just haven't met them.

A mad cap game like that would seem to me to bring things back to the level of, "I shot you. No, you missed. I shot you.", which is where my role playing had stagnated just before I discovered RPGs.

 

[Lanefan]

As near as I can tell, what's going on is a difference in play styles. They like a sort of mother-may-I approach to D&D, where they just make up random crazy stuff, and say that they try it. And the DM just decides if it works or not. From that perspective, adding a skill called Balance actually reduces the creativity of the game. Under 2nd Ed, they'd just declare that they were going to balance on something and fight a dragon or whatever, and the DM would decide if it worked, or make up some random die roll based on his ballpark estimate of the chance for success. Under 3rd Ed, they'd be expected to actually have ranks in Balance. If they didn't, their character would fall.

From that perspective, I can see why some people might feel 4e is "less creative." By actually codifying things, the ability to make random stuff up and have it work (if your DM lets you) is lost. Accurate, elegant and balanced codification of the rules is therefore a bad thing from this perspective.

Putting my own viewpoint in words better than I could. Nicely done.

I understand the reasoning. But, I hate the playstyle. This may be selfish, but if sacrificing those players happiness is what it takes to get me the game I want, where I know my character's abilities and can plan tactically based upon them, then I'm ok with it.

I'm sorry for those people who will desparately miss "being creative" by declaring that they're going to use Tensor's Floating Disk as an impenetrable shield against arrow fire or whatever. My vision for D&D doesn't include those folks. But I can recommend a playgroup they might enjoy.

I suppose I could say my vision for D+D doesn't include those who are only happy when everything has codified borders like chess and you always know what you (and your opponent) can do...but that would be pointless; the game can include everyone provided enough house rules are written.

I *do*, however, like the creative anything-goes playstyle you seem to so detest, and I have no problem whatsoever (either as DM or player) with an on-the-fly resolution to whatever gets dreamed up. The key word is *creative*...at its heart, this is a game of imagination, and with imagination comes creativity.

Lanefan

 

[ThirdWizard]

I think that the resolution system that players like that really want is something closer to, "Anything I can imagine, no matter how outlandish, has at least a 50% chance of success, and when it does succeed, it succeeds spectacularly."

Hey, that's d02!

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Now with 3.X and coming 4e, spells have become so formulated that the “thinking outside the box” which made playing spell casters so fun in the old additions is pretty much dead…

Unfortunately, this is a double edged sword. We used to play like this back in the day as well. I remember the problems it caused as well as the fun.

For instance, we were playing a mix of 1st and 2nd edition for a while. One of the things I remember is when the DM decided to have the BBEG in the campaign confront us months and months earlier than we would have ever actually met him, knowing full well that he was so powerful we couldn't beat him.

So, while he was bragging about his plot to us....one of our party members cast Grease on him. The BBEG laughed at us because it was only Grease and he was way too powerful for him to care about it. Then the PC cast Burning Hands. He argued that Grease was flammable in real life, so of course it was in D&D as well. And if you've ever been doused in grease and set on fire, it hurts a LOT. And it continues for a while. Surely, it has to do at LEAST the damage of a level 10 fireball, being completely immersed in fire. And it would do that damage every round until the grease spell ran out.

The DM said "Wow...that makes sense....ok, he teleports out." And the PC argued "What? He's going to cast a spell while ON FIRE? Surely he's in WAY too much pain for that." And the DM said "Oh, yeah...well....he....umm...dies..."

And it turns out that if you are able to defeat a level 15 enemy when you are level 6, you can cause the entire party to gain 3 levels. Plus, our DM gave out XP for magic items we kept based on their gold piece value. So, our wizard who got the spellbook of the enemy managed to go up 2 more levels from the XP from that. And the DM had to rewrite the entire adventure.

And it sucks when the PCs figure out that using spells in nonstandard ways is WAY more powerful than using spells in the way they were intended. Then suddenly, it's way cooler to play a wizard than any other class, since you are WAY more powerful than everyone else. Not only that, but it's much better to cast a grease and a burning hands than it is a fireball, so it becomes the ONLY tactic.

Sure...you say "But that's a DM problem...if the DM didn't let players push them around like that, they would have just said 'No, it isn't flammable' or 'no, it only does 1d4 damage a round'". However, each DM would have a different interpretation of the spell and it's "out of the box" effects. That's the problem. One DM lets you use spells in nonstandard ways in order to defeat enemies with almost no danger whatsoever and the next decides that nothing happens at all. No way to tell what will happen.

Plus, there's the problem when DMs start using those strategies AGAINST the party. It's no fun when you face certain death with almost no way of stopping it from first level spells because of an interpretation the DM made about how they work together.

Also, there's the problem of what happens when players and the DM disagree about the effects of a spell. Suddenly, everyone else in the group is sitting back and listening to a large argument about how the spells work together. Not fun for anyone.

I say, better to say "1st level spells have X power...they don't do anything else no matter how good of an interpretation you might have for them." That eliminates more problems than it creates. Yes, it is sometimes nice to have some creativity and I miss it somewhat. But I'm willing to put up with that loss in order to lose the rest of it.