6 months later: impressions of 4e

[nightwyrm]

Don't ever read the ecology of the Beholder then. I bet your head would explode, I laughed my tokus off when I read that section of Lords Of Madness.

I know I'll never look at a drooling Beholder the same way again...

Too late. I had that book for years. I just try not to think about the stupid stuff too much.

I actually like the fact that the 4e MM has very little ecological fluff in it since none of the stuff they usually write makes any sense anyways and I just ignore the stuff they come up with when I DM.

 

[FireLance]

I think everything is too constrained. Its HP damage and some small effect. And the HP damage does not scale up very impressively.

If you want to follow the HP damage and some effect model it should be.
Heroic tier HP damage and a small effect is fine.
Paragon tier it should be HP damage and a big effect
Epic it should be HP damage and a holy crap effect.

There are no big effects, there isn't anything close to a holy crap effect.

I hear you. I can only hope that there will be coolness creep (without too much power creep) in future supplements. Perhaps powers that have additional effects on a target already affected by one or more conditions, so getting there is difficult and may require some co-ordination on the part of the PCs, but the results, if they manage to pull it off, are spectacular.

 

[Phaezen]

I hear you. I can only hope that there will be coolness creep (without too much power creep) in future supplements. Perhaps powers that have additional effects on a target already affected by one or more conditions, so getting there is difficult and may require some co-ordination on the part of the PCs, but the results, if they manage to pull it off, are spectacular.

The primal power source seems to be a lot "cooler" than the phb1 power sources. Looking forward to seeing the full Druid and Warden classes.

Phaezen

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Wow, so many science professionals here. I study evolutionary ecology and when I read through the monster manual and see some of the monsters or the ecological fluff that the writers come up with, I often feel an urge to scream "biology doesn't work that way!"

I find it best to just leave my scientist hat at the door when I play D&D. It makes for a much more enjoyable experience.

Heh. While I'm a scientist, ecology is not my field (I'm a physicist) - though I do have a passing interest in the field since my father is very passionate about it. For Urbis, I generally assume that all the creatures which look as if they couldn't have possibly evolved in a terrestrial environment... didn't. They originally came from other planets in the same solar system...

Out of curiosity, which entries were the most grating to you? I'm attempting to make the descriptions of how the monsters fit into the setting at least somewhat plausible (here, for example, is my explanation why wraiths haven't killed off all life in the world...).

 

[Hussar]

The primal power source seems to be a lot "cooler" than the phb1 power sources. Looking forward to seeing the full Druid and Warden classes.

Phaezen

I've seen this a few times and I wonder if the dev's for 4e were too timid when they made 4e. They knew, or at least had to have a pretty good idea, that when 4e hit it would make loads of waves. I almost have an impression that they were constrained because they were producing the very basic structure for the rest of the game. They couldn't go too far into "cool" because it would screw up too many things later down the line. Later supplements seem to be building off of that baseline, allowing the dev's to branch out much further than in the initial books.

Just a thought.

 

[crturley]

My impressions of 4e are that some of it is good and some not so good.
In our group we have on any given night from 6 to 20 players ranging from 12 years old to 46 years old. We have 4 females and the rest are males.
The players under 18 years old find it easier to play 4e then 3e, the rest of us find that it is easier to GM in 4e that in 3e.
We like that the game is more balanced, but now some of the flavor of the different classes are lost. I feel that the cleric has lost most of their healing power and that if you want to heal be a paladin. There should be more at-wills to chose between to make one cleric different from another.
I also wonder about PC vs challenges. In our last game a halfling paladin wandered off from the group and ran in to a group of four skeleton minions he was done to 1/4 hit points and had used his second wind but had not hit any of them when one of the other players arrived and saved him.
On the good side I have not like a version as well since 1e. I like this edition so much that I am taking my 1e modules and translation them in to 4e.
I want to see my players faces when we do S3 Expedition To The Barrier Peaks.
This should be fun.

 

[Lacyon]

Shrug

Your question implicitly presumes one system to be a hammer and the other to be the back of a screwdriver, both for the application of driving nails into wood. That analogy is so asinine as to make a detailed answer pointless.

No. My original comparison (wherein I used "rock" instead of "backend of a screwdriver") was asinine. Which I recognized. So I changed it. Because it was asinine.

Clarification: One system is a screwdriver. The other is a hammer. The fact that you can turn the screwdriver around and drive nails into a plank does not make it a hammer.

Of course, the hammer also isn't a screwdriver.

Tools. Jobs. Something about using the right one for the other.

 

[Imaro]

Well my group and I have just ended our second foray into 4e this past Sunday with a unanimous vote not to go with 4e, that said I don't think 4e is the worst game evah, but it has some problems that don't mesh well with my particular group and our play style.

For me at least, it seems that everything I enjoy comes with a caveat that knocks it back into the con instead of pro realm for me. As an example I like that the stat blocks have been condensed, but do I feel like it makes the game easier to run... sure for people who think a certain way... people who are better at handling a lot of numerous but small scale details will thrive in running combats under 4e... those who are better at focusing on larger but less numerous tasks will probably have a better time running 3e... I'm of the latter part, as are my other players who run.

I mean one of them tried to run KotS (first, and probably last, time DM'ing) for us and told me later he just felt a little overwhelmed by how many things he had to keep track of and account for in running numerous monsters. So it wasn't the fact that the stat blocks were confusing, but that he would have had an easier time running with less opponents. The problem with 4e is that solos... and even some elites are the most boring combats in the new system (it ain't edition war, it's ATTRITION WAR!), thus there is little to no support for a DM who is better at handling information in one way as opposed to another. Another final point about monsters is that in the new format it's hard for players to learn how best to combat a type of monster, since any experience they have is with one particular subset of that monster may or may not be applicable to the next subset... I guess for some monsters this makes sense, but for others I would rather the players learn from their encounters, I think this is a good type of system mastery.

I don't particularly care for the roles/power structure of classes... and for those who claim it's easier to design classes for I wonder... have you figured out whatever formula they used to determine the particular limits by role for such things as damage, movement powers, conditions, at-will vs. encounter vs. daily, etc.? Because I haven't. Also from play I don't know that classes are as balanced as they seem at first glance. In our party the defender routinely stepped all over the rogue and ranger's most damage shtick, by outputting more consistent damage than either of them... while still doing his defender thing. And, IMO, Wizards almost seem to suffer from the "rogue vs. undead" in 3e problem when faced with anything but minions, yeah they can help a little bit but really aren't equal to the other classes vs. everything else. Finally Warlords are the "depend on everyone else for my fun and effectiveness" class, even moreso than clerics in this edition... I just think any class that depends on others to be viable is bad game design, yeah it works in a really good gaming group, but not in one that isn't tactically coordinated.

This leads me to one of my biggest problems with 4e... the cranked up tactical combat feels like playing a separate wargame or a computer tactics game in the middle of our role-playing game and it breaks our immersion blatantly in the way it accomplishes this. I and my players feel immersion in our characters and their actions (whether simulationist or narrativist we don't care as long as it is stated) should have never been sacrificed for what basically amounts to a mini-game of chess every time a fight breaks out. We didn't get into D&D because we wanted to play wargames, we got into it because of the aspects that dealt with imagination and feel that part is being slowly subsumed under sound tactics, best movement positioning and optimal teamwork bonuses... I mean did Elric, Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser fight with the best tactics... no they did what was cool, fun and exciting to tell a story with and 4e (moreso than previous editions) seems to be sacrificing this.

There are more reasons, (the restrictiveness of character options, the value IMO that is not delivered in cost vs. material for the books, the wonky skill challenge rules having clarification articles only available to DDI subscribers, etc.) ...though but I feel this post has gone on long enough. In the end we have decided to stop D&D for awhile and play something else. Not sure what we'll be playing but when we do come back to D&D it will probably be 3.5.

 

[Umbran]

Shrug

Your question implicitly presumes one system to be a hammer and the other to be the back of a screwdriver, both for the application of driving nails into wood. That analogy is so asinine as to make a detailed answer pointless.

Those who wish this to start engaging the egos of others, such that this devolved into argument and warring, please continue using terms like "asinine" to describe other people's positions. The moderating staff will be more than happy to oblige with actions suitable to the tone of the rhetoric seen in the thread.

Those of you who want to avoid that road, I suggest you treat the opinions of others with respect. You don't have to agree, but you can darn well avoid being insulting as you discuss.

 

[nightwyrm]

Heh. While I'm a scientist, ecology is not my field (I'm a physicist) - though I do have a passing interest in the field since my father is very passionate about it. For Urbis, I generally assume that all the creatures which look as if they couldn't have possibly evolved in a terrestrial environment... didn't. They originally came from other planets in the same solar system...

Out of curiosity, which entries were the most grating to you? I'm attempting to make the descriptions of how the monsters fit into the setting at least somewhat plausible (here, for example, is my explanation why wraiths haven't killed off all life in the world...).

Well, just off the top of my head, there's the mish-mash creatures (ie. chimera, pegesus, griffin etc.). Horses doesn't just start flying if you stick a pair of wings on them. Related to that are things that are just too big to fly. Giant creatures that look like scaled versions of earth creatures, the most offensive of which are giant insectoids. All in all, the most offensive creature biologically is probably the iconic dragon who violates a ton of biological principles.

On a more ecological note, there are way too many predators in the MM which creates a tendency for DMs to populate their world with too many predators. Real world predators tends to need about 10 times their number in prey items in order to survive. And you can't have just one individual, the minimum number of individuals in a sustainable, diverse population requires at least 50-200 individuals. Which of course requires a prey population at least ten times that, and so on.

I don't blame the game for not getting it right. Even professional biologists are still in the process of trying to understand some basic ecological principles in the real world. Trying to make stuff up out of whole cloth is probably too difficult for anyone. But I do get annoyed at times when people arguing too much about minor stuff like how unrealistic falling damage is when you can get eaten by creatures that can't possibly exist. Impossible biology gets handwaved by "magic" while people argue about the simulationism of hitting someone with a sword ad nauseum. This is why I leave my biologist hat at the door and my philosophy towards RPG in general has a rather large gamist bent. Nothing in an imaginary D&D world makes sense if you think about it long enough, I just want to play a game and have fun.