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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 6079354" data-attributes="member: 11999">You're welcome!  I thought it was important to say that the discussion was making a big difference on my perception of 4e.  I loved the two preview books and agreed with pretty much all of the design decisions outlined in them.  I love the implicit setting in 4e and how the monsters and cosmology have been reworked to create a more coherent world.  I've really wanted to like 4e, but my play experiences kept letting me down.I hope so!  I did start bringing in some elements of Essentials before my 4e game went on an indefinite hiatus, and it seemed to make a difference.  Granted, we didn't actually get that much experience in playing/running 4e.  I'm putting my brief history with 4e in a spoiler block so that it's easy to skip:[sblock]My first time running 4e didn't really count, as it was a single quick game while my wife and I were camping in 2009.  She'd never played before, but was interested so I came up with an adventure on the spot and helped her create a ranger.  A lot of stuff was handwaved, and there were no minis or battlegrid.  My first real experience running 4e was in early 2010, just before my first daughter was born.  We played two sessions of Keep on the Shadowfell,  which didn't exactly leave a positive first impression.I started up a new 4e game near the end of 2010 with two of the same players, and we ran through The Slaying Stone over 3 or 4 bi-weekly sessions.  I knew about the upcoming Essentials releases, so I had one player running a slayer (first using the Red Box and then print-outs from the DDI Compendium).  After we finished the adventure, 2 of the 4 players wanted to take a break from 4e, as they thought it played too slow and was too rules-heavy, so I ran a couple of games using the Mentzer Basic Set.We tried picking up the 4e game again a couple of months later with Reavers of Harkenwold.  I rebuilt my wife's ranger as an Essentials scout (again using the online Compendium), which she found a lot easier to play.  We only made it through one session before taking an unplanned extended break, but it did seem to play more smoothly. [/sblock]I've got the Monster Vault, but I don't have Threats.  I got the original MV for Christmas right after it came out, when I wasn't sure if I'd still run 4e or not; the counters would at least be useful for running any version of the game.  I'll certainly pick up Threats if we start playing 4e again.It seems that way, at least for the martial classes.  My wife was playing a PHB eladrin two-weapon ranger at the start of the campaign, and she didn't like having so many powers to choose from, as she didn't really understand how to determine which one was best to use and was afraid of making the wrong decision.  Yes, Twin Strike was usually the right choice, but that's beside the point.  Also, Hunter's Quarry is needlessly fiddly but forces the player to keep thinking about it nearly every round.  She rarely remembered to use it.  "I move here and attack" is very intuitive and nobody seems to have any trouble with it.  "I move here, attack, and as a minor action... no wait, I move here, set my Hunter's Quarry as a minor action, then attack" is decidedly unintuitive.  I think it's a terribly-designed feature.I think we managed to get through the first encounter in Reavers within about half an hour (Iron Circle brigands), and then the players decided to tackle the Toadswallow Caverns and those encounters took somewhat longer.I've since determined another factor that had a significant contribution to slowing down encounter play time: some of my players are simply too conservative and cautious.  For some reason, these players insist on saving their encounter powers for later in the battle, rather then using them early.  There have been encounters where some of the players only used at-will powers.  I think my sister's bard used her daily power ONCE in the entire campaign, and I can't remember her ever using her encounter attack power.  Vicious Mockery doesn't exactly contribute a whole lot to the party's damage output.4e encounters can really, really drag on when some of the players focus on healing and buffing defenses and routinely hold on to their encounter attack powers "just in case."  If we pick up our 4e campaign where it left off, I think that I'll stress that 4e characters are pretty durable and that they don't need to play so defensively.  Also, I'll suggest "retraining" some of their more situational encounter powers for ones that are more generally usable.This actually wasn't a problem for us, as nobody was playing a defender.  The prime offender was the Bard's Virtue of Valor enhanced with the Strength of Valor feat: granting 1 + Con Mod temp HP to an ally and +2 on damage rolls until the end of his or her next turn when that ally reduces an enemy to 0 HP or bloodies an enemy.  The ranger (later scout) and slayer were the strikers in the group, and were both played by very casual players who really did not like this fiddly tracking (my wife got really annoyed by the frequent "don't forget your plus two to damage" reminders from the bard's player).  So the striker classes, which are generally the most suitable and straightforward classes for new or casual players, are often the optimal targets for the leader classes' "until the end of his or her next turn" bonuses.The two casual players' enjoyment of the game was significantly hindered by this issue.  I think it's primarily the virtually unlimited, 1-round-duration, +1/+2/-1/-2 to attack/damage/defense effects that are behind this.  It seemed as through every round they were adding a different number to their attack/damage rolls, and on top of that the numbers didn't seem big enough to warrant the mental effort of keeping track of them.  If we resume that campaign, I'll encourage any leaders to take it easy on the powers that grant these short-term bonuses.The out-of-turn actions part was mostly about me as the DM.  ;-)  I was constantly neglecting the out-of-turn actions that my monsters were capable of, often when they were associated with its aura.  The MM3-style statblocks should help with that, as they are better-organized.  I probably need to do up an index card or post-it note for each encounter that lists all of the passive or out-of-turn actions/effects that any monsters have.The triggered effects of PC powers aren't technically out-of-turn actions, but amount to the same thing.  Again, it was the leader powers/features that were the primary offenders in our group.  It is reassuring that you can get through a typical encounter in about half an hour.  That was the #1 complaint at my table; encounters were taking so long that some players would ask "so... what were we doing again" once the battle was finally resolved.  On top of that, some of the players would just start getting bored halfway through the encounter.  We were averaging bout 60 minutes per encounter, with a handful of them reaching 90 minutes in length.I'm also happy to hear that most Essentials classes have a lot less analysis paralysis in play and don't just read that way.  Of the Essentials classes, I've only really seen the slayer and scout in action.The design and presentation of published adventures -- even the good ones -- had a negative influence on my gaming experience.  The delve format is great for getting all of the necessary info to run an encounter in one place, but I found that even a fairly non-linear adventure like The Slaying Stone was dominated by combat encounters connected by somewhat glossed-over exploration of and travel through the goblin city.  The one session we played of Reavers of Harkenwold started to feel the same way.  Even when I know better, I start to forget that I can ignore the "monsters immediately attack and fight to the death" statements in many of the encounters.  I forget to check to see if the monsters flee when the tide of the battle turns against them.  Those nicely-formatted and well-organized encounter entries are quick to read at the table, and it would be a shame to not get to use what could amount to half the pagecount of the module...The discussion about scene-framing reminds me that any "scene" which consumes a significant amount of play time should have a purpose relating to the overall goals and themes of the adventure, as well asits own self-contained goals.  I've been stuck in the mindset of using encounters to wear down PC resources or to provide a change of pace (which backfired when I tried it, as it absolutely killed the pacing).  I should design virtually every encounter to have a goal other than killing everything, and most encounters should have a built-in way to end them if that other goal is achieved.  Given how little time we have for playing, and how often a bi-weekly game ends up being bi-monthly, framing interesting situations for the players is probably the best way to maximize our enjoyment of the game.</blockquote>

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