6 months later: impressions of 4e

[Oldtimer]

I just love an analythical thread like this!

0) I count seven months, but who's counting really (I am, obviously).

1) Agree. There are several powers that are just soo much better. And several that are just lame *cough*sleep*cough*

2) Yes, cards are nice. I've also found that a well-constructed program that generates PDFs à la the character sheets of KotS (where every power has its values precalculated) works fine. And it saves me the time to cut out all those cards.

3) Agree. Except for the combats where the minions pour out en masse. I love those.

4) Agree. I have reduced the hit points of both monsters and PCs to reduce the grind. Monsters have level * role_factor instead of (level+1) * role_factor and the role_factor is 4/6/8 instead of 6/8/10. PCs don't get the higher number for first level, rather the same number as for higher levels.

5) Agree. There is no need to hold back. If I get an opportunity to whack the wizard, I'll just do it. It will scare the player, but not likely kill his character.

6) Sort of agree. Main problem is that they are in PHB. How can magic stuff be mysterious if it's listed in the Equipment chapter?

7) Agree. I love artifacts. Always have, but now I get to use them more.

8) Totally agree. The idea of running non-combat encounters similar to combats is good... so why didn't they? In combat you are not defeated by your misses, but by the opposition's hits. More combatants on your side increases your chance of winning. Not so in skill challenges. They need to up the DCs again, but remove the idea that failures dictate when you lose. Have a set number of rounds to beat the challenge or have the challenge "attack" you and you fail after being "hit" by the challenge three times. Anything that doesn't result in this backwards situation.

Lots of good thoughts here. There's still hope for this game.

 

[ferratus]

I remembered it being released on July 6th rather than June 6th, though a quick wikipedia check shows that obviously the latter is correct. Oops.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

I think that's largely my critique of 4e, six months into the game. Since the thread is here, you might want to post your own critiques that I haven't mentioned, or whether I'm on target with my 8 observations.

I'd say your observations are largely on target. Thanks for sharing your perspective in an objective manner.

For my part, I've realized that 4e is not the magic bullet for which I once hoped. So far, the biggest problem I'm having is that it's more like a well-oiled machine than a mystical contraption. I don't brim with creativity to the same extent as some folks in this forum, so I have to work harder to make encounters exciting when the PCs are harder to threaten. Perhaps in the old days players feared being ganked, but now I worry more about boring them. I suppose any set of rules requires creativity to bring to life effectively. Before you had to avoid focusing fire on the wizard; now I have to give monsters reasons to retreat sooner or go out in a blaze of glory.

That said, I still think 4e is the right edition for me. The single biggest think I love about it is that I can run an entire session without cracking a single book. As a player, the non-spellcasting classes finally seem more interesting to play, and I'm glad that every class will always have something to do in most encounters. I'm not sure yet about whether the ritual system is enough to make me not miss the rich spell lists of the 3e spellcaster.

 

[SteveC]

A good thread. For me, a lot of what I hoped would happen with 4E has not emerged, which has saddened me a bit. I tend to think of each edition as an opportunity to bring new people into D&D without the baggage that years of books and supplements bring. To that end, I'd say 4E has been a bust: no attempt has been made to market the product to people outside the game's base, when, arguably, many changes have been made to gameplay to make the game more friendly to these folks. That makes me sad.

The problems I initially saw in the game when it was released have, well, remained problems. Poor multiclassing rules have not improved with age, and the lack of combat spells that don't do direct damage yet still have a role in combat haven't really improved either.

But, even with that all said, I simply can't go back to 3X anymore. The game just runs so much smoother now, and the changes to the skill system have made it much easier to run the kind of game I like to run: a roleplay intense story game punctuated by occasional high energy combats.

I received the Neverwinter Nights expansion disk for Christmas, and I've been trying to play it (it really is pretty good) but I find myself constantly hitting up against the rules, which means that it's likely to be the last 3X CRPG I end up playing.

I'm not surprised at the number of people who haven't gone to 4E, and that a lot of these people have been gaming for a long time: 4E is different enough that it's not going to be the game that a lot of them want to play. I think that this fact, combined with the lack of any real effort to bring in new blood to the hobby was a mistake.

As a last caveat for these comments: they're all personal reflections and not meant to be universal truths. Many of the folks who haven't embraced 4E are some of the people I respect the most on ENWorld, so I hope that no one takes this personally.

--Steve

 

[malraux]

A good thread. For me, a lot of what I hoped would happen with 4E has not emerged, which has saddened me a bit. I tend to think of each edition as an opportunity to bring new people into D&D without the baggage that years of books and supplements bring. To that end, I'd say 4E has been a bust: no attempt has been made to market the product to people outside the game's base, when, arguably, many changes have been made to gameplay to make the game more friendly to these folks. That makes me sad.

Every time I turn off my adblocking software, I'm amazed at the number of places I see advertising for 4e. Sure there aren't lots of tv ads (as with WoW), but its also not non-existent. The only way to know if they are adding to the ranks of players is through market research, something none of us have access to.

 

[Khairn]

1) All powers are not created equal.

2) You need cards.

3) Use large combats sparingly.

4) I'm wondering if monsters should have less hit points.

5) The DM is the enemy.

6) Magical items are boring.

7. Artifacts are awesome.

8. Skill Challenges aren't working right.

Let's see where I'm at ...

#1 - Agreed
#2 - Sadly agree. I don't like to use cards, which means that I have to use more notes and more page flipping than I did with 3E.
#3 - Agreed. The grind of large battles is really ponderous
#4 - Agreed. Ties in with #3
#5 - Agreed. The 4E focus on combat has made the GM more of an adversary and less a story-teller. I'm not certain that this is a good thing.
#6 - Agreed. Very bland.
#7 - I haven't seen any yet, so I can't say.
#8 - Agreed. Certainly not working as well as I had hoped. The system still feels "clunky", but I'm not certain if that is because of a lack of understanding or a problem with the mechanics.

Here are a few of mine.

-Minions give the Wizard and other controllers a purpose. Without using them, the usefulness of the controller role is severely curtailed.

-Similarity of classes with the same role is a problem. We need more variety which WotC is attempting to publish.

-The lack of extensive 3PP support (due to GSL) has had an impact on my enjoyment of the game. I didn't realize just how much I enjoyed 3PP products until it was no longer available.

-Lack of 4E specific settings. Attractive and creative settings are a selling point. Re-imagined settings less so.

-I still have fun playing 4E, but I have to work at it more than I want to.

After 6 months I see more about 4E that is slowly becoming positives, which is a very good sign. But it still has a way to go.

 

[WizarDru]

Sure there aren't lots of tv ads (as with WoW), but its also not non-existent. The only way to know if they are adding to the ranks of players is through market research, something none of us have access to.

We only started seeing TV commercials for WoW when they got into the 9 Million+ range of players. TV has never been that great a vector to attract new players, on a bang-for-your-buck basis, from what I recall hearing. Print ads in video game magazines, comic books and other publications often prove to be more successful. Featured articles and web ads in others seem to have been effective.


D&D, by and large, has market recognition. Those who are interested in it go to it organically and those who are likely to be drawn into it usually get involved through friends. I recall WotC's attempts to mainstream D&D when 3.0 came out, and I was under the impression that these were largely considered only marginally successful. Much of the advertising preaches to the converted.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

WRT the too-many-hps issue, one of the WotC designers at one of the Gen Con panels (I forget which one), said you could easily just halve all of the monsters hps and not have a problem. In fact, I got the feeling he was encouraging it.

For my part, I'm liking 4e more and more the more I play it. And, on a somewhat related note, 4e is an absolute dream to design/write for. It's really re-ignited my design fire.

 

[Obryn]

So far, my players and I are really enjoying 4e. The only problems, for me, come when combat becomes too grindy. So, in those cases, I'm exercising Rule 0 to shave off a few HPs of certain monsters, when appropriate. I haven't yet eliminated 25% of creature hit points or anything, but I'm leaving the option open.

I also think that solo encounters are poorly implemented, at least at low levels. While I'm thankful that there can finally be encounters with a single monster that last more than 2-3 rounds, I find elites to be grindy enough, thankyouverymuch.

As for cards... Well, I personally don't like them. My players, on the other hand, love them.

When I play (rarely), I prefer a checksheet with abilities sorted by At-Will/Encounter/Daily. I check off the boxes when appropriate, and that's that. Still, power management is (imho) the most time-consuming part of character management. I've offloaded some of this from my players, and print out cards for them with the fancy-schmancy color laser printer at work.

I've also noticed that players need to have a bit better grasp on the rules, by and large, than they did in 3e. This is only a little surprising to me. A slow player can make a whole combat drag.

Now, with all this said, I think that 4e does what I wanted 3e to do, but largely better. Not completely, but largely at the very least. To this extent, when I want to scratch other gaming itches, I have branched out to other games. At the moment, I am running a 1e game once a month; and will shortly run a d20 Call of Cthulhu game.

Much like SteveC, the smooth & streamlined aspects of 4e - the things it did really well - have spoiled me a bit on 3e. (And even a bit on SWSE, truth be told... I think SWSE needs to be more 4e-ified in its combat rules, like removing those pesky full-round actions.) I would gladly play 3e, but don't want to DM for it. It's similar to moving from KotOR 1 to KotOR 2; or from Morrowind to Oblivion. While there's a lot to be said for the earlier games in both series, gameplay improvements in the later games make it more of a chore to play the earlier ones.

At any rate, I'm happy with 4e. It's not a perfect game, but it does what I want modern D&D to do better than any other game.

-O

 

[MichaelSomething]

I agree with most of the points in the OP. I would like to point out that Magic items were designed mostly as PC power-ups. It's the Artifacts' job to be the mysterious, awe-inspiring things.