D&D 4E 4e With No Casters?

[Lizard]

Umm...in the interests of full disclosure Lizard, you did realize the guy whose post you were responding to IS one of the Fourth Edition Designers (Chris Sims), right? So he probably has a fairly good idea of how things actually work, since he's actually seen and played the game.

Of course, since he works for WotC, I'm sure you consider him a "biased" source.

He knows. *I* don't. And that's the crux of it. "It won't work like that" is less helpful than "This is how it will work", because then I can seriously consider the impact on the world and what I can handwave away and what I can exploit. ("The great dwarf cities were carved in a single year by a hundred dwarf warriors who knew the Slicing Stone technique!")

I do understand they can't reveal a lot of hard details yet, so I try to hedge my statements as speculation and worst-case scenarios.

 

[Lizard]

It's important, I think, to say that I respect Lizard's play style. If you're having fun playing D&D, you're accomplishing the game's main goal, all rules aside. I also respect the no-frills kick-in-the-door play style. As James Wyatt's Random Late-Night Dungeon(tm) at GenCon '06 proved, it can be a riot. Especially with Mearls and his warblade on the scene.

I'm assuming my play style is a little more combat-oriented than Lizard's, but I've had games where little/no combat happened, and everyone had a great time.

My major point is that D&D has long supported both extremes and the broad middle. 4e doesn't change that good aspect of its predecessors.

And on the actual topic of this thread, 4e should be much easier to fiddle with in some ways than some previous editions.

Just to be clear, my game-running style is much more combat-oriented than my game-playing style, because I run swashbuckling action and cool adventures better than I run Deep Emotional Drama. Every time I've tried to run a Dark Grim Game Of Heart-Wrenching Choices, it collapses. I can't play it straight long enough. But I've been in those games, run using stock D&D 3x rules, and that's a strength of D&D I'm most keen on seeing preserved through 4e -- the ability to run games across a gamut of styles and intensities, from pure hack&slash to high drama and everything in between. ("More combat oriented" doesn't mean "purely combat oriented" -- spectrum is all. But I'm a big fan of "When things get slow, someone kicks down a door and opens fire" as a literary and DMing technique.)

 

[Khur]

I made a point earlier about D&D traditionally relying on tacit, informal agreements to keep from being under the weight of it's own wahoo --I'm not above repeating the pithy phrases I come up with, no sir. I see no reason to believe that 4e will be any different.

QFT. Should have done that earlier. My apologies.

Like changing the BAB/Defense progression from 1/2 level to 2/3 level or 1/1 level?

Or maybe giving weapons and armor with pluses that are not really magical, but special very well made items like masterwork +1, masterpiece +2, mastercraft +3, legendary +4, epic +5, just to use as an example. But then yeah, the neck item would need a stretch.

Yep. Something like that, although let's not go crazy with 1/1 BAB. Interestingly, 2/3 comes close—but fails to solve the defenses problem. It’d probably just be easier to fiddle with monster/NPC stats with PC attack/defense shortfalls in mind.

He knows. *I* don't. And that's the crux of it. "It won't work like that" is less helpful than "This is how it will work", because then I can seriously consider the impact on the world and what I can handwave away and what I can exploit.

Indeed. But I wonder at the value of worst- or even best-case speculation. Well, maybe not its entertainment value . . . . Entertainment might even be value enough.

But I'm a big fan of "When things get slow, someone kicks down a door and opens fire" as a literary and DMing technique.)

Color my assumption a nice shade of wrong! That sounds a lot like the way I run games, although I can do Dark Grim Game Of Heart-Wrenching Choices. I played World of Darkness, and will again. (Just joking—I've run that sort of game with other rules sets too. I've even run WoD games that resembled dungeon hacks. )

Man, I wish I could play more (as in, "DM? Not it!") . . . and not just in playtests.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

But what If you want a lightly armored defender?

I would rather have a heavily armored defender intercepting blows with his shield in front of me instead of someone relying on his mobility to dodge blows...

I xpect rogues to have quite high AC. But he won´t be "sticky"except when he is trapping a sword between his ribs.

And when am down on th ground, I do admire a defender holding a shield above me even more...

 

[Stormtalon]

<snip> ...even in nonwombat situations.

*sigh* I presume wallabies killed the wombats and took their stuff?

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I guess I lose on this question. I wonder how Mearls envisions a martial controller. Quasi-magical ki user? Or something more mundane, like a reach weapon specialist.

I'm thinking a big guy with heavy armor and a halberd/glaive/spiked chain would be the most likely of martial controllers.

Give him lots of spread attacks ("I hit you, and you, and you, and you, and YOU!"), knockdowns, shoves, and such. Maybe he hits the ground to splash through the enemy ranks. Basically, he'd do a lot of the close range AoE stuff, and as such should be better in melee, but would be weaker at ranged stuff.

The model I'm basing this on is, well, Lu Bu from Dynasty Warriors. The warhulk or whatever it's called from Miniatures Handbook is another example, with its Sweeping Strikes.

Brad

 

[hong]

Okay, so you played "The Witcher" the past few months...

No, I've been caught up with Guild Wars. It's the best single-player RPG I've seen since BG2!

 

[Quickleaf]

I think I'm just going to elaborate on this a little bit, to show what I think is a very GOOD example of teamwork that gives each member a chance to shine in and out of combat.
*snip*

That's a really evocative example. Bravo!

 

[helium3]

I think I'm just going to elaborate on this a little bit, to show what I think is a very GOOD example of teamwork that gives each member a chance to shine in and out of combat.

Whatever. That was like, so Un-Fun. I didn't see the characters level up and get cool new powers even once. And, if I don't get new powers every game I get B-O-R-E-D.

 

[Dragonblade]

You need the items that give enhancement bonuses—weapon/implement (attack), armor (AC), and neck (defenses). Other items are entirely optional, and it’d be easy to gloss over them. As long as you find some way to emulate the three that the system actually does require, you can gloss over magic items altogether. The only one that would require any sort of stretch in a nonmagical world is the neck slot. If you really wanted to do it, you could instead come from another angle and reduce the attack bonuses and defenses in the game to account for a lack of such items.

Very nice! Mearls said as much but this is good confirmation that 4e will easily allow me to adjust magic between none and D&D default. Very cool.

In 4e D&D, a swashbuckler type is a rogue (sneaky) or a ranger (focused on efficient killing), emulating the "swashbuckly" style very, very well. This is without house rules or thwarting design-by-concept characters. A person who wants to play a swashbuckler is going to find a lot more interesting options in the ranger and rogue classes. Those who gravitate to fighters will want armor.

Well well. This is an interesting reveal. I like this a lot. Thanks for posting Chris!