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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PrecociousApprentice" data-source="post: 4237472" data-attributes="member: 61449">I have not yet played 4e, but playtest reports have stated that there is still a very real threat of dying in 4e. I am not sure if people are actually comparing 4e characters to 4e NPCs, or if they are comparing 4e characters to 3.x NPCs/PCs. This would make a big difference, and will only be worked out when playing 4e. If anyone has any first hand knowledge, this would be appreciated. All I have to go on is 4e playtest reports about charactes vs kobolds, and the kobolds seemes pretty formidable.Only one magic missile has nothing to do with bildungsroman, and only doing one cool thing in an adventure plain sucks from my perspective. The minions are great, but I think that their role is not to cut teeth on, but to act as hordes of mooks that a hero can hack their way through without the DM accidentally killing the PCs, while still maintaing their threat to the PCs.I definitely understand the desire to run a bildungsroman campaign. That is my favorite type. But I heartily disagree that 4e eliminated it. I think that it is more alive and well than ever before. As I stated above, I think that the threat of death hasn't been eliminated, but the threat of accidental death on the part of the GM has been lessened.I wan't refering to any particular playstyle or charater. I was refering to the fact that if any group wanted to purposly gimp themselves, I am pretty sure that they would be able to. I appologise for sounding pompous, but really, if you want to emulate stories (which is what I got from the OP) or if you want to run weak characters, 4e will not only allow it, but with exception based design, should facilitate it to a greater degree than ever before.You can also consider this a formal apology to two. I did not intend to disparage your playstyle if that is what I did. I was saying that if you wanted to go from "character sucks at everything" to "Greatest Hero in the Land", 4e sould be able to do it. It is all how you conceptualize it. WotC thinks that most people don't like to accidentally die. If you want the possibility to die, they have not eliminated it. The sucks comment was refering to a hypothetical character being devoid of competence and not a value judgement. Sorry for the confusion.And my comments about realative strength/weakness of characters was not developed enough. If one wants weak characters, then there are two ways of going about it. 1)Lower the power of the characters.2)Increase the power of NPCsIf fear of death is desired, and you don't feel like creating rules for creating weak characters, just run more formidable NPCs. I really don't think that this will be necessary (see playtest reports), 4e just makes the "Whoops, your character is dead." less likely.</blockquote>

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