D&D 4E 4E tidbits from WotC blogs (Updated:David Noonan on Social Interactions)

[Felon]

This assumes that the party always faces foes which they can take down before taking significant damage from them. Unless you're consistently fighting under-CRed enemies, that won't be the case.

The way CR's work, an opponent whose CR is equal to the party's level is pretty light work. You have to "over-CR" enemies to have a good chance of a player getting gacked.

Plus, just as there are lots of counters for damage-avoiding tactics, there are lots of counters for damage-dealing tactics as well. The wizard likes to throw empowered fireballs? He's in trouble when the party encounters fire-resistant enemies or enemies with high SR. The barbarian likes to use Power Attack to get in big damage with his greatsword? That's not going to work too well against high-AC enemies. The rogue hits hard with sneak attacks? High AC shuts that down, too, and so do crit-immune enemies.

The point is, unless your DM specifically chooses not to take advantage of the myriad of options at his or her disposal, a party's offensive tactics aren't always going to work as well as they'd like. And when that happens, they're in big trouble if they don't have a primary healer.

Well, I suspect that if your DM decides "specifically takes advantage of the myriad of options at his disposal" to design encounters that hose his players over by pulling the kind of counter-tactics you suggest, the players have a bigger problem at hand. The DM who thinks entertaining encounter design is about intentionally devising ways to negate the PC's strengths needs some schooling.

 

[SSquirrel]

Let's look at this oft-cited number more seriously.

Who's bringing their corporate work computer to the game table? Let's scratch those out of the target market demographic.

Who's bringing their home desktop tower to the game table? We could scratch all those, but I'm guessing a percentage will be gaming online from their home PC. Still we keep hearing market speak about using these tools on laptops. So . . .

So what's the home user laptop percentage? Apple's share of retail (online and physical stores) notebooks sales is now 13%, and growing 2x faster than the PC market.

Then just the target demographic of college student where Apple now has a 27% share of laptop sales and 14% total sales to college students. That laptop number is significant.

Right so 75-80% of the market is still purchasing machines w/Microsoft OSes on it. Still more than enough reason to focus on Windows first. Remember, they don't say it will never come to lInux or OSX, just that it won't be there at first.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Still more than enough reason to focus on Windows first. Remember, they don't say it will never come to lInux or OSX, just that it won't be there at first.

If you are of the opinion that any single platform must be done first. Okay. Whatever. Other developers do they at the same time.

My problem is not just that they are not doing Macs/Linux/smartphones now, it is that they are choosing to use an engine powered by DirectX that darn nearly ensures an expensive crossplatform transition. Okay, understand they made an expedient choice to just get-r-done and out the door. They don't say they won't deliver a cross platform option, but they have as good as signalled it won't happen for years, likely never.

I'd like then an option for D&D Insider where I don't have to pay for features that are not designed to work for my platform and I won't then have to "subsidize" someone else.

 

[Grog]

The way CR's work, an opponent whose CR is equal to the party's level is pretty light work. You have to "over-CR" enemies to have a good chance of a player getting gacked.

Light work if you have a healer. Without one, even an equal-CRed enemy can be a potentially deadly foe.

Well, I suspect that if your DM decides "specifically takes advantage of the myriad of options at his disposal" to design encounters that hose his players over by pulling the kind of counter-tactics you suggest, the players have a bigger problem at hand. The DM who thinks entertaining encounter design is about intentionally devising ways to negate the PC's strengths needs some schooling.

So you're saying that if the party relies on fire damage for most of their damage output, the DM should never send them up against fire giants and/or red dragons? Or that, if the party uses Power Attack a lot, the DM should never have them fight enemies with ACs above 20?

 

[Glyfair]

Added posts from Chris Perkins' blog. Subjects covered include discussions with Paizo and other 3rd party publishers and Asmodeus being "promoted" to god status.

 

[Cake Mage]

So you're saying that if the party relies on fire damage for most of their damage output, the DM should never send them up against fire giants and/or red dragons? Or that, if the party uses Power Attack a lot, the DM should never have them fight enemies with ACs above 20?

I don't think thats what he ment. I think he ment more along the lines of; if said DM only played against the players strengths, then there is a problem. The DM should be able to give the players a chance to shine using their strengths and still be able to challenge as a group.

Thats the philosphy at least. It is difficult in practice to do so in 3.x. Do-able, yes, but not without a good amount of prep work.

hopefully 4 ed makes this job easier as a DM.
I think thats what we're all hoping for.

 

[Victim]

First, I'm guessing you only played at low level, if potions were your group's only method of battlefield healing.

Second, all the methods that PCs can use to avoid taking damage in combat can be gotten around in many different ways. Defensive buffs can be dispelled. Battlefield control spells are ineffective against certain types of enemies (Evard's Black Tentacles, one of the popular ones, doesn't work against flying enemies, for instance). Building high-AC characters works fine - until you run into enemies who use spells or supernatural abilities or touch attacks.

The point is, there is no tactic that you can rely on which will prevent damage in combat all the time. If there were, every party would use it. So if your group never found themselves sorely missing a primary healer - well, either you got very lucky, or your DM specifically chose not to use any of the methods available to counter your damage-avoiding tactics. In other words, your DM tailored the campaign to the characters you were playing - and that option will work just as well in 4E as it does in 3.x.

No, lots of my play experience has been at higher levels. Using potions, weak wands, and stuff like limited wish for true emergencies is hardly ideal, but it is possible. Especially if badly injured characters tend to run away. One of our current games which is just about to end now that we're 15th level has been rather short on healing through the entire game. There's a warforged artificer who can heal himself and his cohort and now a Dread Necromancer with Tomb Tainted Soul, but the other 4 characters are forced to rely on items (and they're the ones who generally take the most damage).

The party doesn't just lose healing if they don't have a cleric. Assuming that there's the same total number of characters in the group, the party also gains some additional capability via not having a cleric because they'll have some other character. Lose healing: gain X. While no strategy is going to be universally applicable, it doesn't seem unreasonable that X can often be leveraged so it often replaces the need for major heals.

 

[Felon]

Light work if you have a healer. Without one, even an equal-CRed enemy can be a potentially deadly foe.

Barring fantastically-bad luck, an equal-CR'ed enemy can't deal enough damage to kill a single character before it is killed by the party.

So you're saying that if the party relies on fire damage for most of their damage output, the DM should never send them up against fire giants and/or red dragons? Or that, if the party uses Power Attack a lot, the DM should never have them fight enemies with ACs above 20?

Nope on both counts. Presenting a foe who happens to have fire resistance or high AC can be entertaining because it entices players to switch their picthes up. It also gives certain characters a chance to shine, as they step up and become the primary damage dealer. If your players are effective at beatdowns, they can adapt to the challenge of a foe who happens to have a particular set of defenses. My evoker may have a staff of fire and a ring of mystic fire, but he's proven that he's still quite capable against red dragons.

Assuming a beadtown squad have diversified eggs in their basket, the only way to esnure their doom is to cauk the opposition up against every possible tactic the players may throw at it, and I would call that pretty bad encounter design. At GenCon I played in a 7th-level RPGA game where the party faced some hag blackguard who had AC 29, high saves, 10 DR against every weapon used against it, SR 20+, and energy resistances. We ultimately took it down, and didn't need any healing to do so, but it was a tedious and unsatisfying fight by everyone's account, including the DM's.

 

[Grog]

Barring fantastically-bad luck, an equal-CR'ed enemy can't deal enough damage to kill a single character before it is killed by the party.

No? A 7th level fighter will have 64 HP on average with a 16 Con. A hill giant (CR 7) gets two attacks per round for 2d8+10 damage each. Since the fighter is going for pure offense, he isn't likely to have a very good AC, so the giant could definitely kill him in two rounds, and that's with only average rolls for damage.

Nope on both counts. Presenting a foe who happens to have fire resistance or high AC can be entertaining because it entices players to switch their picthes up. It also gives certain characters a chance to shine, as they step up and become the primary damage dealer. If your players are effective at beatdowns, they can adapt to the challenge of a foe who happens to have a particular set of defenses. My evoker may have a staff of fire and a ring of mystic fire, but he's proven that he's still quite capable against red dragons.

While I agree that good parties can adapt to many different sets of challenges, and good DMs won't throw their players up against hopeless odds, a party simply cannot prepare for every contingency they could possibly face. Pure offense will not always carry the day - and a party that focuses completely on that is likely to be in serious trouble when their tactics don't work.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Rich Baker's updated, and among other things, he drops the following hint:

It's great to talk with fellow gamers and explain things like our thoughts on resource management, character role, or "flipping" saves to attacks.

Emphasis added. Looks like the 'attacker always rolls' from SW:SE has made it into 4E. Another step into a larger and more elegant world.