D&D 4E 4E: The day the game ate the roleplayer?

[Derro]

Round 1: Fighter does 10 dps in melee. Rogue does 20 dps by sneak attack. Wizard does 4 dps at range.

Round 2: Fighter does 10 dps in melee. Rogue does 5 dps in melee. Wizard does 4 dps at range.

Round 3: Fighter does 10 dps in melee. Rogue does 5 dps in melee. Wizard does 12 dps to every opponent in a 15' area at range.

At least that's what I've taken out of the roles as they've been described.

Well played, sir.

 

[Pale Jackal]

I really don't like lower level wizards having at will blasts. With the warlock it feels okay but something about immature spell-casters just blithely blasting away doesn't sit well with me.

Understandable, but really, a 1st level PC in 4E is more akin to a 3rd level PC in 3E.

Your first level wizard is more "adept" rather than "apprentice." This has its downsides, but does fit with 4E's "heroic!" theme.

 

[Celtavian]

re

This comes off rather condescending, just so you know. You also used the typical 'D&D is too video game-y/anime-y' argument, which tends to take a lot of weight from what you're saying.

Why? Is it not true? I doubt greatly that you could disprove what I am saying. This generation of people read less and play video games and watch T.V. more. If you are going to design a game, you have to take this into account.

When I grew up the, the first video game was an Atari console. The first video game I recall playing was Intellvision. Games such as that were like the Model T is to the modern hybrid car.

I'm 24. I grew up reading fantasy books and medieval history books. I learned about D&D from watching my brother game in our attic with his friends, and learned about play it when I snuck up into his room and flipped through the Red Box. I was around 6 or 7. I consider myself well familiar with what every edition of D&D was 'about', for clarification.

Good for you. Then you should know the primary source material for original DnD was books. That is why you had a game that wasn't balanced, but fit the tropes of fantasy very well. From the beginning of DnD the casters had an advantage, thus it has been for every version of Dnd until this most recent one.

Balance is not solely important to video games. Its important to all games. Who wants to play a game where you don't get to have as much fun as the next guy?

There are different ways to balance games. In a game like DnD that is more of an exercise in joint storytelling, it is balance of purpose and effectiveness that should be sought. Not necessarily balance of power.

Casters should be powerful and interesting without completely trivializing their companion's existences and marginalizing the roles they play in the party. I don't think its fair to punish players by not allowing them to play what they want to play and still have an effect in the mechanical aspect of the game.

That is how it is in 3rd edition. In a one on one fight, a prepared wizard will defeat just about any other class at high lvl. But that doesn't mean the wizard can solo an adventure. His companions are still very useful.

Nice thing about warriors and rogues is their damage almost always works. They don't have the limitations of a certain number of spells per day, spell preparation, or having to bypass SR and resistances. So it did have balance, just not against each other.

You're basically saying you'd prefer an unbalanced game to one designed for the mutual enjoyment of everyone. I can't really see the reasoning behind that. Its not about being hip; Its about everyone's actions mattering.

I prefer a game that focuses on balance of purpose rather than balance of power. DnD has been this for many incarnations. This is the first incarnation I can recall where the designers attempted to balance power and thrown purpose out the window. Now every class can heal. Every class can do good damage. Every class has special abilities that can do similar things.

The elimination of death saves is another pathetic change in my opinion. As well as the removal of control magic and immunity to fear. For the first time in ages a paladin won't be immune to fear. There are just a ton of changes that are nothing more the watering down of DnD to a level that I do not like. It isn't being done with fantasy books in mind, but purely for mechanical reasons.

4E is all about the mechanics. The designers were making all these claims about trying to remove clunky rules to improve focus on roleplay. But they also removed a ton of rules that were standard fantasy tropes such as death spells and petrification, the fearless knight, and turned swordplay from a skill based endeavor into strange powered swings the like you would see in Final Fantasy rather than Lord of the Rings. So how exactly am I supposed to view these changes as anything other than video game driven?

In video games, you come up with ways to balance regardless of whether it fits. Like World of Warcraft could care less that King Arthur, Sir Launcelot, Aragorn, Sir Jamie Lannister, Conan, and various other fantasy warriors were just very able swordsman with few magical abilities to charge their weapons with. They care about whether the warrior has a formidable attack that can match the wizards in terms of damage.

Since I prefer my game designers to base their designs off books rather that video games. How should I look at this new edition? The first edition to incorporate "per encounter" powers for all classes. The first edition to incorporate "at will" powers for all classes. Powers, not skills. A warrior has almost always been a skilled swordsman in almost every version of DnD with no magical abilities whatsoever unless he chose a particular feat path. Now he has abilities that can be nothing but magical.

I'm sorry. Your criticism is not supported by the reality of the game design. This version is based on video games, the older versions are based on books. I don't like it. It has nothing to do with being condescending unless stating a truth people don't like to hear is condescending.

 

[hong]

Why? Is it not true? I doubt greatly that you could disprove what I am saying. This generation of people read less and play video games and watch T.V. more. If you are going to design a game, you have to take this into account.

I always find it hilarious when people my age try to pull the graybeard schtick.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I prefer a game that focuses on balance of purpose rather than balance of power.

Isn't that exactly what they are doing - balance of purpose?
Striker vs Leader or Controller vs Defender - there is no inherent balance in this fight. It's not supposed to.
The same for the monster roles. Monster with the "Artillery" role will perform badly if there is no front-line that keeps the enemy melee fighters from him.

Is a Ranger balanced against a Fighter if he can fire arrows from distance and run away from him all the time? If it was a pure "balance of power", the Fighter would need some power that would allow him to bridge the distance to the Ranger. But as far as we know, he doesn't. Even his "stickyness" abilities (namely the mark) doesn't help him in the slightest here - the Ranger gets a penalty if he is _not_ attacking the Fighter. Really helpful for the Fighter if he's the only target anyway...

The balance of power emerges only if you use a party / combat unit composed of multiple characters. The balance of power is that you'll miss having a comrade performing his own role.

 

[Xath]

As you wish, Oh great one.

I tried PM'ing you but I guess I can't because I'm not a donater, or something. Anyway, I think you jumped the gun and I don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth. But if you don't like the word sheeple I will no longer use it. It was meant as a "People who follow the book the way sheep follow the herd." Wrong word choice, perhaps. But certainly not the **** you posted.

Wolfen, there are other ways to contact a moderator aside from private messaging. Our email addresses are all posted in the Meta forum, for this very reason. One of the rules here is that we don't derail a thread by disputing moderator decisions within it. As you have violated this rule, I am asking you to step out of this thread for good. If you have a dispute with this, or Umbran's ruling, you can find our email addresses in the Meta forum, and we will be more than happy to discuss it with you.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

There are different ways to balance games. In a game like DnD that is more of an exercise in joint storytelling, it is balance of purpose and effectiveness that should be sought. Not necessarily balance of power.

It IS an effort in group storytelling, sure. Where 75% of it is spent on a grid rolling attack rolls and keeping track of hitpoints and each player plays one character and identifies with it.

Effectiveness and power is the same thing. If you can fly and you get the party to the top of the tower, you are being more effective than I am at getting to the end of the adventure. You are also more powerful. If you can do 70 damage to 10 people and I can do 50 damage to 1 people, you are more effective AND more powerful. If you can open locks without a roll and I need to roll one, you are more effective and more powerful.

As for balance of purpose. If you are essentially saying that the fighter is better at his role(purpose) while the wizard is better at his, then you have to show that it is true. If a wizard can have an AC of 30 and a Reflex save of +12 when the fighter has an AC of 24 and a Reflex save of +8 then the Wizard is BETTER at the fighter's purpose than he is making an imbalance. If a wizard can find traps better than the rogue and automatically open all locks then he is better at the rogue's purpose.

That is how it is in 3rd edition. In a one on one fight, a prepared wizard will defeat just about any other class at high lvl. But that doesn't mean the wizard can solo an adventure. His companions are still very useful.

The ONLY reason a Wizard can't solo most adventures is because the DM designs the difficulty of monsters around having 4-6 party members all doing damage to the creature in one round. If you took a dungeon designed for 7th level characters and put a decently made 10th level wizard against it...he could solo it. It is extremely unlikely that a 10th level fighter could do the same.

Nice thing about warriors and rogues is their damage almost always works. They don't have the limitations of a certain number of spells per day, spell preparation, or having to bypass SR and resistances. So it did have balance, just not against each other.

Which aren't really limitations.

Spells per day doesn't really matter in any campaign I've played in after 5th level or so. At that point there just isn't enough rounds of combat in a day to actually use up your spells.

Spell preparation isn't that big of a deal. It's easy, prepare the spells that are useful most often and carry scrolls of anything you don't use every day.

SR is annoying, but it's basically a tax put on casters to make them feel like they have SOME limitations. Resistances are normally easily bypassed just by casting a different spell.

It's not a matter of against each other, it's about whether I feel my character was just as needed to reach the end as everyone else in the group. In 3rd, I don't.

I prefer a game that focuses on balance of purpose rather than balance of power. DnD has been this for many incarnations. This is the first incarnation I can recall where the designers attempted to balance power and thrown purpose out the window. Now every class can heal. Every class can do good damage. Every class has special abilities that can do similar things.

As I point out above, old editions had the ILLUSION of balance of purpose. In the end the balance was: every non caster has a purpose balanced against each other, casters are way more powerful than all non casters and can fulfill ALL purposes but they can only do it so many times per day. This only mattered whenever there was more battles in one day than the caster could handle(i.e. almost never).

Purpose isn't thrown out the windows at all in 4th. If anything, it was only made stronger than 3rd:

Defenders are the ones with lots of hitpoints and a high AC, their purpose is to take the hits and protect the rest of the party from damage. Arrange the monsters so they are not in a position to get to the back line.

Leaders give out bonuses to the party and provide tactical support. They heal the party as well.

Strikers do damage. Lots of damage. And they sometimes reduce the powers of enemies.

Controllers put up walls, put status effects on enemies and mostly cause enemies to spread out due to area of effect damage.

They are just different roles than they had before. Those were:

Defenders: Take damage so the wizard can do his thing and defeat the monsters.

Leaders: Buff the whole party at the beginning of the day so nearly no one gets hurt. If they do get hurt then heal them.

Strikers: Do nearly nothing in combat except try to get into the right position. Wait until a trap or lock showed up or a wilderness adventure. Ace that one skill roll.

Controllers: Bypass all obstacles, buff the party, do area of effect damage, do individual damage, get the party to its destination.

The elimination of death saves is another pathetic change in my opinion. As well as the removal of control magic and immunity to fear. For the first time in ages a paladin won't be immune to fear. There are just a ton of changes that are nothing more the watering down of DnD to a level that I do not like. It isn't being done with fantasy books in mind, but purely for mechanical reasons.

Immunity to anything sucks from a game point of view. I design a monster whose main attack is that it frightens people so much that they actually DO die of a heart attack. It's a cool idea, I can't wait to try it out....but it isn't possible because the Paladin is completely immune to it making it no challenge against him or any other group that can cast Heroes Feast.

A better idea is to give the Paladin an advantage in that situation without a blanket immunity. It makes it more fun to fight a monster than has a chance of winning than one you know you are immune to. I certainly hate running a game where I'm rolling endless rolls that don't mean anything: "So he uses his frighten ability again, since it's what he does. Oh, right...you are all still immune. Now it's the fighter's turn."

4E is all about the mechanics. The designers were making all these claims about trying to remove clunky rules to improve focus on roleplay. But they also removed a ton of rules that were standard fantasy tropes such as death spells and petrification, the fearless knight, and turned swordplay from a skill based endeavor into strange powered swings the like you would see in Final Fantasy rather than Lord of the Rings. So how exactly am I supposed to view these changes as anything other than video game driven?

You can still die from abilities in 4e. You can even die in one hit if an enemy rolls enough damage. These things aren't out of the game. Sure, it might be that you can no longer run a scenario where King Arthur walks into the room and the wizard raises his hand and the King drops dead immediately. But, frankly, that sounds like the worst story ever.

Instant death, instant petrification and the like are great for NPCs, they suck for players. They are only fun for DMs who like the idea that the players will be REALLY frightened of an encounter because they have these sort of powers.

Plus, one of the at will powers in the Fighter list is Cleave, which is the ability to attack an enemy with a melee weapon and slice right through to something beside it. How is this something that doesn't belong in LOTRs? Another power lets you attack and knock the enemy backwards when you do. There isn't even a backwards in Final Fantasy. My favorite heroes in fantasy books do this sort of thing all the time.

Since I prefer my game designers to base their designs off books rather that video games. How should I look at this new edition? The first edition to incorporate "per encounter" powers for all classes. The first edition to incorporate "at will" powers for all classes. Powers, not skills. A warrior has almost always been a skilled swordsman in almost every version of DnD with no magical abilities whatsoever unless he chose a particular feat path. Now he has abilities that can be nothing but magical.

None of the Fighter abilities listed so far are magical at all. Same with the Ranger.

They aren't basing their design off of video games. They are basing their design around games in general. These same ideas make for a fun game in board games that I played long before I ever played a video game.

The problem with basing things off of books is that books aren't meant to be games. It's easy to say "Gandalf is a powerful mage capable of taking on the Balrog by himself" then when it comes time to fight orcs for it to be Aragorn to be the one who shines and defeats them. It's easy because you don't have to define the "rules" of how Gandalf's magic works. You don't have a player of Gandalf telling you that he's bored because none of his abilities do anything in this fight. You can simply say "Gandalf doesn't use any magic and fights with a sword this battle...and he isn't as good at it as Aragorn." There isn't anyone playing Pippin who is complaining that he doesn't feel like there is any reason for him to show up for the session since he doesn't seem to ever do anything.

In a book it's all plot. Gandalf suddenly becomes as powerful as you need him to be at any particular moment. You can't do that in a game.

I'm sorry. Your criticism is not supported by the reality of the game design. This version is based on video games, the older versions are based on books. I don't like it. It has nothing to do with being condescending unless stating a truth people don't like to hear is condescending.

It's your OPINION. You know why people try to balance video games though? Because when you sit down to play EQ, WoW, Diablo, or even NWN, you want to have fun and it isn't fun if you lose all the time and it isn't fun if you feel like you should have made a different character because yours sucks.

This thinking doesn't apply just to video games. It applies to all games. It's been a design goal of D&D since the beginning. Every correction made was because "this rule made something too powerful" or "this rule made playing a wizard no fun".

 

[Simon Marks]

This version is based on video games, the older versions are based on books.

Older versions are based on Wargames and Boats.

True Story.

Google Dave Arenson if you don't believe me.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Huh. And here I am under the impression that fantasy books are more popular today than ever before in human history.

Harry Potter, f'rex?

I'm pretty sure most roleplayers are (still) highly likely to be readers, too. Sort of goes with the RPG *books* design decision, for that matter.

And another thing. . .

That is how it is in 3rd edition. In a one on one fight, a prepared wizard will defeat just about any other class at high lvl. But that doesn't mean the wizard can solo an adventure. His companions are still very useful.

(emphasis mine)

*Maybe* will, not just 'will', but either way, an unprepared Wizard is most likely toast. There is balance, right there. I'm not saying it's 'perfect balance', or 'always balanced', or 'balanced in all possible situations', but it is a kind of balance, and it was quite deliberately retained from earlier editions for that reason.

In earlier editions too, magic users / wizards / mages were extremely vulnerable at lower levels. Another balancing factor, relative to other classes' features.

It seems pretty clear that game balance has always been attempted, just not always greatly achieved, and I would say (often) improved upon over time. Not all the time, sure. But generally, yes.

Which, IMO, tends to be a good thing. Games should be balanced, at least to the point at which playing it in any of the usual ways will be enjoyable on the game level. The 'RP' elements of a RPG tend to take care of themselves, or IOW are more the domain of players and DMs rather than rulesets.

 

[Fenes]

The Saga edition of the Star Wars RPG shows the writing on the wall for 4E with its treatment of the Jedi. The force has been stuffed into tiny, neat boxes that in turn make it difficult to emulate anything that you saw in any of the movies. Even though you watched lightsabers cutting up everything in sight and totally slicing dudes in half all over the place, you're hard-pressed to slice some guy's arm off with one in the RPG, much less cut people in half. From the perspective of a game, this is great; you have more balance between Jedi and non-Jedi characters. From the perspective of the Star Wars universe portrayed by the movies, it's insane. The Han Solos and Chewbaccas of the movie didn't need to be as powerful as the Jedi; they were amply good enough at what they did to hold their own in a fight without resorting to tossing lightning or cutting people in half. But once the game comes into the picture, this entire balance thing comes through and pounds each class with a hammer until they're all the same height, concept be damned. This makes combats a smooth and easy affair, but it casts a pall of blandness over the game. Nobody stands out in any particular direction; everything's been sanded down to a homogeneous plane.[/I]

I disagree. For a game, having one class be vastly more powerful than the rest is simply bad design. Han and Chewabacca need to be as powerful as the jedi just so they can hold their own without constructed situations that enable them to shine as well next to the force users.

I don't see it as "sanded down", I see it as - finally! - the other classes pulled up and shaped up to an equal level compared to casters/jedi. I also think it's not really blandness at all if not just casters/jedi have colorful choices, but everyone.

Character concepts are usually not "non-caster/non-force user that only has the use to make the caster/force-user look cool by comparision".