D&D 4E 4E's New Direction: Giving the game back to the DM.

[Tony Vargas]

The difference is the ability to do this is directly related to what the players will let you do. In a home game you can make your players angry and lose players if you make changes that make the game no fun for them.

If you're making changes that make your game no fun, you really kinda suck as a DM, and you probably shouldn't be 'empowered' or 'burdened' any further. The idea of changing a game (using variants as a DM) is to make it more fun - maintaining game balance actually helps with that, even if it might disapoint a certain sort of player, some of the time. OTOH, you have a player who is willing to throw fits to get his way, and is only happy with broken crap, you're probably well rid of him.

Rare items are balanced when used in the recommended fashion(1 per PC per tier with a 50/50 split between their common items and uncommon items).

We haven't seen any of 'em yet, so we can't say. What I heard in the article at least suggested that part of the point was to be able to make up items without worrying so much about balance - that 'rarity' becomes the balancing factor. Again, this is something that was done quite a bit in prior eds - and never worked that well.

Essentials classes are designed to be balanced with all of the previous classes.
DMs should not have to adjust any encounters at all simply because everyone is playing Essentials classes.

I have only heard the claim that they are 'compatible.' They litterally /can't/ be balanced to the extent existing classes are. They almost certainly /will/ balance at some intersection of encounter difficulty, number of encounters per day, and information availability. It's up to the DM to find that balancing point and stick to it.

The reason magic item rarity is designed to give DM empowerment is because the system says "Players can't buy Uncommon or Rare magic items nor can they craft them without the express permission of the DM". It enables DMs to do LESS work to police their game.

That's not DM-empowering, that's just player-limiting. And, players don't like being limitted - and they know the DM can give them that 'special permission,' so they'll try to get it. If items are balanced, and players can make/buy what they want, the player is 'empowered' to customize his character a bit, and the DM doesn't have to worry. But, items have to be balanced. If items /aren't/ balanced, but the players can't easily obtain them, then you can bet they'll try really hard to obtain them. "What 'reagent' do I need to make a Phylactery of Brokeness? How about a +6 Gamebreaker weapon? Have I heard legends of such an item? blah, blah, blah..." Of course, you can use all that as adventure seeds - if you really need adventure seeds - but, if you do, the PCs going to be expecting the item at the end.

Again, this is not some brilliant new idea. Rare and uncommon items work /exactly/ the way most magic items worked in AD&D (both eds). In those day, magic items /routinely/ defined characters who obtained them, overshadowed PC abilities, and wrecked campaigns. A good DM could keep that genie in the bottle, but it wasn't exactly a walk in the park. Unlike with the Essentials martial classes (which, at least, face less overwhelmingly potent dailies in the hands of their fellows this time around), I see no reason to expect it to go any better than it did back then.

Worst case: we start seeing 'common,' 'uncommon,' and 'rare,' magic items in booster packs....

They can simply say "Make up characters using the default rules. Everyone starts at 15th level." and not worry that someone will come into their game with something like Frostcheese combinations.

The new rarity system assumes one rare item per tier, and about half your items being uncommon - players can't make or buy them, but 15th level characters also get to /pick/ a 14th, 15th & 16th level item. If you allowed only common items, they're going to be decidedly sub-par. So either you're going to have to let them pick their uncommons and rares, or you're going to have to do it for them, or you're going to have to dial down your game a bit.

Then, there's all those characters already in play. They have a lot of uncommon items. They're not balanced out according to the new rules. You're going to have to take items away from them or something.

The Essentials classes are designed to have less complicated status effects and game mechanics so they can be more easily understood by players and new DMs alike.

I can't read the developers' minds and say with certainty what they're designing classes to do or be. All I can do is look at what we've seen in previews. What we've seen is a lot of stuff that feels very much like it did in prior versions of the game.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

But when I read my 3e books I don't see that at all.

See my above post for a couple examples as to why that was. But it wasn't JUST that. In 2e there weren't rules for a LOT of things. How grappling worked changed from DM to DM. There were rules for weapon type vs armor type but they were optional and most DMs didn't use it. Some DMs used the optional rules from Skills and Tactics, others didn't. Some DMs allowed kits, others didn't. Each and every rule was optional. Mostly because a lot of them made no sense or were completely broken. Some kits made you easily twice as powerful as a normal member of your class. It was all a hodge-podge of optional rules...some of which contradicted others so you had to choose which of the 3 rules for something you'd use.

But leading up to 3e coming out there were articles being posted that said "Unlike 2e, we have rules for the things you wanted rules for and had to make up yourself" and "Unlike 2e, we playtested the rules for balance and tried not to balance a combat advantage with a role playing disadvantage".

And when we got the rules, they were well organized, there was ONE rule for each thing, they appeared balanced, and there didn't appear to be any reason to ban anything outright. Even in play, most things appeared to work fine. So, it was rare that a DM felt the need to change or ban anything. It became the exception instead of the rule. It's so much easier to not have to constantly make rulings about stuff.

I think WOTC managed to develop trust amongst the DMs by putting out fairly balanced stuff that didn't horribly unbalance people's campaigns and rules that made more sense and caused less headaches than 2e. Once you have that trust, most DMs are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt with a new book that comes out. Why not let players take that cool new class they want? WOTC hasn't published anything TOO broken in the past, I doubt they will this time.

Players got used to asking for stuff and hearing yes.

But there's a side effect of having rules that are the default. You need to consciously say "No" to each rule you don't like. In 2e there were no rules for what to do when grappling someone. So whatever the DM said went. There were no rules on how many magic items you should have by the time you were level 10. Nor how powerful they should be. If your DM never gave you more than +1 items by that level, then that's what you should have.

Amongst our group of friends, the prevailing philosophy was one of "Well, if the designers of the game say you should have a +2 item by level X then there is probably a good reason for it. Likely you won't have enough pluses to hit to defeat monsters or you'll come across monsters that require a +2 weapon to hit by them. Better to leave it as is in case there was a good reason for it." The math behind the game was so arcane and convoluted that no one could figure out exactly WHY some rules were there...but they trusted WOTC that there was good reasons for them.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

If you're making changes that make your game no fun, you really kinda suck as a DM, and you probably shouldn't be 'empowered' or 'burdened' any further. The idea of changing a game (using variants as a DM) is to make it more fun - maintaining game balance actually helps with that, even if it might disapoint a certain sort of player, some of the time. OTOH, you have a player who is willing to throw fits to get his way, and is only happy with broken crap, you're probably well rid of him.

Sometimes what is fun for you isn't for your players and vice versa. I use the example of the DM who removed flatfootedness from his 3e game. He thought it was the supreme level or stupidity that an enemy would literally see you coming, but not have time to react to your attack. It ruined the game for him that a really fast enemy who rolled low on initiative would let his guard down enough to let you stab him in a vital spot.

When he changed it, it kind of ruined the game for me. I was playing a rogue with Improved Initiative and my feat choice went from being something I was happy with to nearly useless. I asked him if I could change my feat, which he eventually allowed me to, but even after, I found it reduced the number of sneak attacks my character was able to do to almost half of what it was before. My character's damage went down a lot. I felt like I was no longer contributing to battles. It caused the next couple of sessions to be rather no fun for me until I decided to switch characters. No one else played a Rogue in that game again, however.

Whether the DM was "right" to change the rules to fit his sensibilities even if it made the game no fun for the players...who's to say? I mean, it's possible that Rogues were overpowered with flatfootedness as a rule and I was only happy with broken crap.

My point is that often DMs are really bad at determining what is or isn't balanced. They often think they know best and then go changing things because they feel it works best and end up breaking it in the process, while convinced they are doing what is best.

We haven't seen any of 'em yet, so we can't say. What I heard in the article at least suggested that part of the point was to be able to make up items without worrying so much about balance - that 'rarity' becomes the balancing factor. Again, this is something that was done quite a bit in prior eds - and never worked that well.

It wasn't every done in this way in previous editions. In 2e and 1e, there were no guidelines on how rare anything was supposed to be. As a DM were you supposed to give out +5 Vorpal Weapons at first level? There was an implication that the answer was no...but no actual rules.

This time there are rules that say there are 3 levels of an item. a Common +5 sword gives you the +5 bonus to hit and damage, an Uncommon version gives you that and also allows you to deal fire manage with the weapon and cause a burst of fire from it once a day. The Rare version does everything the uncommon version does and also does an extra 1d6 fire damage with all attacks(for example).

I admit, some of this is guessing. But it's based on what we were told at Gen Con by WOTC(I was lucky enough to be sitting in the room at the time). The idea is to have a system where someone can get a reasonable powerful item...while not giving them TOO many of them or allowing them to choose THE most powerful item for them. Often player choice alone is the most imbalancing factor.

I have only heard the claim that they are 'compatible.' They litterally /can't/ be balanced to the extent existing classes are. They almost certainly /will/ balance at some intersection of encounter difficulty, number of encounters per day, and information availability. It's up to the DM to find that balancing point and stick to it.

Why can't they be balanced to the extent that the existing classes are? Generally the things you balance a class with are: Damage output, Damage taking ability(hit points, defenses, resistances), Mobility and Tactical ability, and out of combat utility. If you stay within a fairly strict range for these areas, it doesn't matter at ALL what kind of powers the class gets, what order they get them in or whether they have dailies or not. If the new fighter has the same hitpoints as the old fighter, is able to defend nearly as well, does similar damage, has similar defenses, and has to rest after the same number of healing surges(which are the only real limiting factor in 4e D&D) then it doesn't matter that they only use basic attacks or that they don't choose to mark people.

It also means they factor into the math exactly as if they were an original fighter and can be swapped effectively with no change to the game at all.

That's not DM-empowering, that's just player-limiting. And, players don't like being limitted - and they know the DM can give them that 'special permission,' so they'll try to get it.

All rules are player limiting. That's what rules do...limit what you can do. Why can't you take 6 classes? Because the rules limit you. Why can't you get every item in the game? Because the rules limit you. Players don't mind being limited if they feel that it makes for a more fun game.

In fact, the more player freedom and choice you allow the more unbalanced the game gets...even if every item in the game is balanced. The thing is, no game designer, DM, or human in general, can see what every single possible combination is. If you simply removed all of the class names from every power in the game, you'd break the game badly. Not because there are a lot of horribly broken level 1 powers, but because it's not a good idea to let people pick the best defense power and the best offense power on the same character. When it might be perfectly balanced to have them on 2 different characters.

Simply saying "This class of items are rewards for a job well done and not something every player is allowed to choose from at will" doesn't cause every player to start whining. Though some will. I'll just still to the "It's the rules. You can't make Uncommon items no matter how hard you try."

Again, this is not some brilliant new idea. Rare and uncommon items work /exactly/ the way most magic items worked in AD&D (both eds).

See above, but I don't ever remember 1e or 2e having a system of rarity other than "everything was rare". Which is a little different from having 3 levels of rarity with recommended levels on them.

The new rarity system assumes one rare item per tier, and about half your items being uncommon - players can't make or buy them, but 15th level characters also get to /pick/ a 14th, 15th & 16th level item.

Yes, the new rarity system will need new rules for starting at higher levels. I assume that instead of picking 3 items that you might be able to pick 2 Common items and roll for 2 Uncommon items. Or you just get a lump sum of gold and you can only buy common items then you acquire all your uncommon items in play(since it doesn't appear the difference between common items and uncommon items are all that imbalancing).

Then, there's all those characters already in play. They have a lot of uncommon items. They're not balanced out according to the new rules. You're going to have to take items away from them or something.

Yep, likely. That's going to be the hardest part of the conversion. I'm not looking forward to telling my players that they need to give up some of their items. But maybe it isn't all THAT imbalancing to let them keep they items they have now. I think that more common and less uncommon items are an easier to handle game but as long as players don't have 6 of the same +1 item with a great daily power, it probably isn't unbalancing to let them keep their uncommon items.

I can't read the developers' minds and say with certainty what they're designing classes to do or be. All I can do is look at what we've seen in previews. What we've seen is a lot of stuff that feels very much like it did in prior versions of the game.

I'm in complete agreement. There appears to be a lot of backpedaling here in order to appeal to people coming from 1e and 2e.

 

[Jhaelen]

Are you noticing the change?

No. The real change happened in the past when 4e was initially released.

As I've already pointed out in a thread dedicated to discussing the new magic item rarities, it was _never_ recommended to let the players simply pick whatever they wanted and just give it to them. The recommendation was to encourage them to create a _wishlist_.

I don't know, why so many people felt this was supposed to mean that players were entitled to get whatever they wanted.

Imho, it's a misconception of a magnitude similar to the widely spread misconception in the 3e days that pcs should never have encounters with an ECL significantly different from the average party level.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

How long until published adventures come in a box set, and that box set includes "DM cards", cards not for the DM, but replacing the DM. Sort of a choose your own adventure meets playing cards thing?

Check your DMG, it already has rules for DM-less playing... nobody paid them any attention (that I know of)

If you are going to play a choose-your-own-adventure book nowadays, you might as well download a decent videogame.

The superiority of Tabletop Roleplaying is in the DM which is infinitely superior to any AI and to any mass-produced MMORPG raid anywhere

 

[Neonchameleon]

As a 4e DM I already have most of the game under my control. PCs can make items - but rarely (and honestly, the best items are often ones with properties anyway). They control their powers and I've seen nothing too broken (the game's still heroic, and I ban hybrids - the Feystepping Slasher mentioned above has been erata'd to one slash per round). And even feychargers were nothing compared to what a decent Wizard, Cleric, Druid, or Artificer could do to a 3e game.

So I control the world, the setting, the monsters, what rules they play under, and most other things. I leave the PCs characters (and not even most of their items) to them. I should want more?

 

[P1NBACK]

No. The real change happened in the past when 4e was initially released.

As I've already pointed out in a thread dedicated to discussing the new magic item rarities, it was _never_ recommended to let the players simply pick whatever they wanted and just give it to them. The recommendation was to encourage them to create a _wishlist_.

I don't know, why so many people felt this was supposed to mean that players were entitled to get whatever they wanted.

Imho, it's a misconception of a magnitude similar to the widely spread misconception in the 3e days that pcs should never have encounters with an ECL significantly different from the average party level.

Some of you are missing some important tidbits. Maybe you haven't read the Dark Sun Campaign Setting.

I'm not talking just about magic item rarities, although I think this is one rule that does give some control back to the DM, explicitly. For one, the players can assume that not all magic items will be available. Period. This wasn't very clear in the PHB text.

In the Dark Sun CS, there are several places where the text gives the DM explicit control over the material, whereas in previous books that text wouldn't be there. I foresee WotC taking this direction with other books and the Essentials books.

Like I said, we're talking explicit authority (the DS setting book and Essentials previews) vs. implied authority (previous 4E books).

Maybe this has to do with the fact that the player stuff was also included in the same book as the DM stuff also. This is a new direction as well, where previously the players had books and the DMs had their separate books.

 

[MrMyth]

I find it really ironic that this is the prevailing opinion, and that it was accepted by so many people, because the 3e books (far more than any previous edition) where chock-full of stuff about the DM setting the rules, DM saying what goes, DM adjusting things to suit their own campaign, rule 0 etc.

I don't think 3rd Edition ever set in stone that the DM had to 'play by the rules' - but I know that, at least for me, the overall tone of the books very much drilled that into me.

Oh, I certainly felt free to create - I know I ran one game that I made a new class for. (Though no one played it, so no idea how balanced it was.) And a handful of prestige classes and races.

But actually making rulings on the fly, or breaking out of the standard design of existing rules?

It wasn't until the tail-end of the edition that I finally realized that I didn't have to spend hours designing NPCs 'by the book', or using the terrible rules for advancing and templating monsters to customize them to the right CR. I always felt like if I didn't design perfectly by formula, I was no longer 'playing fair'.

I don't know if that was the intention or not, but it was definitely the message that the books gave to me.

 

[Jack99]

I find it really ironic that this is the prevailing opinion, and that it was accepted by so many people, because the 3e books (far more than any previous edition) where chock-full of stuff about the DM setting the rules, DM saying what goes, DM adjusting things to suit their own campaign, rule 0 etc.

Monte etc had the plan to make it harder to be a poor DM by regularising a lot of stuff, but clearly wrote into the 3.0e books lots of stuff about the DM being in charge.

However, I presume because there was an implied underlying logic to stuff, and more and more players books were published, an expectation of player entitlement grew up. I further presume that many DMs bought into this for some reason, hence the prevailing wisdom that 3.x removed DM control.

But when I read my 3e books I don't see that at all.

Cheers

IMO, it wasn't anything written in the 3.x books per say, but as you mention it was the tone and the way releases were focused on players, not the DM - and for example the magic item rules. I have no doubt what the intend of Monte and co was, but IMO, it did not quite work out the way they intended.

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

IMO, it wasn't anything written in the 3.x books per say, but as you mention it was the tone and the way releases were focused on players, not the DM - and for example the magic item rules. I have no doubt what the intend of Monte and co was, but IMO, it did not quite work out the way they intended.

Too true. Look at the way that prestige classes were done in the 3.0 DMG and how they were handled in all the 'splatbooks' that came after, and the change in conception for 3.5 DMG was complete.