6 months later: impressions of 4e

[Nebulous]

Gauntlets of Ogre Might
Level 8

You are considered to have a strength score of 20 for all strength based skills and strength based checks, but not attacks.

Power (Encounter) You can make a strength based attack as if you had strength score of 20.

I simply don't see how it does anything to break the game. It's purpose would be to give the martial characters who have spread their scores for skill purposes (such as diplomacy etc.) a boost back up, and would serve the same benefit as bracers of mental might to help multiclassers be effective at their encounter powers.

Hmm, i like that. I don't think it breaks anything either.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

Apparently Jan van Leyden and me have independently arrived to the same solution to the "grind problem", which is to to identify the precise moment when an encounter is "over" and just end it.

When all the minions are gone, the artillery is dead and the remaining monsters no longer pose a threat to the party, but still have lots of hp left, it is time to have some of them retreat and to "minionize" the rest.

When done right, the players won't even notice!

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.

Where can one find such a program?

 

[Scribble]

The first is the question "Why the need for a new edition?" I do accept that 3.5 has a number of serious mechanical problems but I would like to point out that the CORE 3.5 is almost as stable as CORE 4E (see my comments below); it was the later supplements/splatbooks that, for example, greatly enhanced the powers of spellcasters versus martial classes. This and the number of extra feats and spells, whilst making for a very interesting game, made for some serious issues of game balance. So in a real sense, WoTC (and some 3PPs) created the monster that 3.5E became, so they can hardly now call this out as the reason for a new edition.

From WoTCs point of view, there was obviously a financial incentive to create a new edition because, presumably, of falling sales. I don't accept that the imperative for 4E came from cruising messageboards and finding many complaints about 3.5Es mechanical problems.

I think they kind of ran into a damned if you do, damned if you don't moment with 3e.

People wanted splats. People like new options and abilities, so WoTC was willing to supply them. Trouble is I don't think the core 3e rules were designed to handle them as well as they could/should have.

So it caused people to want splats, but then get upset because the splats threw things out of whack.

I think the 4e rules are designed with the idea that most people want new splats/options added in the future, but they also don't want it to damage the core game.

 

[Pbartender]

Apparently Jan van Leyden and me have independently arrived to the same solution to the "grind problem", which is to to identify the precise moment when an encounter is "over" and just end it.

When all the minions are gone, the artillery is dead and the remaining monsters no longer pose a threat to the party, but still have lots of hp left, it is time to have some of them retreat and to "minionize" the rest.

Also remind your players that a successful Intimidate check can cause bloodied foes to surrender... My players have often ended a combat (or thinned out the ranks of the remaining enemies) using that tactic.

Also, also... I've always found it reasonable to assume that most enemies (except the most fanatical) will not willingly fight to the death. To that end, I use the bloodied value as a good indicator. Once a non-minion reaches bloodied, they start looking for a way out of the fight and will try to disengage and escape. Likewise, minions will usually start to retreat once all of their non-minion allies are out of commission. It links up well with the "half hit points for monsters" house rule many people adopt, without actually having to change anything.

 

[Scribble]

Also remind your players that a successful Intimidate check can cause bloodied foes to surrender... My players have often ended a combat (or thinned out the ranks of the remaining enemies) using that tactic.

Also, also... I've always found it reasonable to assume that most enemies (except the most fanatical) will not willingly fight to the death. To that end, I use the bloodied value as a good indicator. Once a non-minion reaches bloodied, they start looking for a way out of the fight and will try to disengage and escape. Likewise, minions will usually start to retreat once all of their non-minion allies are out of commission. It links up well with the "half hit points for monsters" house rule many people adopt, without actually having to change anything.

This is how I handle things. Especially with intelligent enemies. If it's evident they can't win a fight, they'll try some other tactic. Run away, negotiate, or turn the odds in their favor somehow if they can.

 

[Felon]

Apparently Jan van Leyden and me have independently arrived to the same solution to the "grind problem", which is to to identify the precise moment when an encounter is "over" and just end it.

When all the minions are gone, the artillery is dead and the remaining monsters no longer pose a threat to the party, but still have lots of hp left, it is time to have some of them retreat and to "minionize" the rest.

When done right, the players won't even notice!

My players would notice. If I made a habit of it, they'd know what to expect. They'll nova their encounter attacks, the enemies will use up their encounter powers, and then like clockwork the fight will summarily end a couple of rounds later because everyone's run out of cool stuff to do.

 

[WizarDru]

From WoTCs point of view, there was obviously a financial incentive to create a new edition because, presumably, of falling sales. I don't accept that the imperative for 4E came from cruising messageboards and finding many complaints about 3.5Es mechanical problems. I think it came from falling sales of splat-books as the market became saturated.

One thing you haven't factored in to the new edition is the changes in WotC staff in the past several years. 3.5 itself reflected the design goals of a different team and of a team that had considerably more time to asses the workings of the system. 4e's approach certainly reflects a different approach to the rules. It would be naive to think that there wasn't a financial component to WotC's decision to release a new system, but that doesn't have to mean that it still couldn't be driven by a desire for some of the team to want to fix what they percieved as system problems within D&D.

I'll take your word for it that they claimed that 4e would be mathematically more sound...I wasn't aware of that as a goal.

But it is FAR worse for a newbie player playing any 4E first level character than for a newbie player playing a 3.5E first level fighter. There is alot more to contend with with the powers and with complicated synergies resulting from movement and PC co-operation.

I would argue the exact opposite. A first-level 4e character has abilities that are all boiled down to single powers and easily segmented and analyzed. A 1st level fighter in 3.5e has a couple of dozen combat options open to him that a new player will be boggled by; shield bash, bull rush, disarm, trip, coup de grace, etc.

 

[El Mahdi]

I'll take your word for it that they claimed that 4e would be mathematically more sound...I wasn't aware of that as a goal.

This part is true. One of the goals of 4E was to eliminate the 3.5E "sweet spot" (approximately 3.5E levels 5 through 10) that many felt existed. This was the idea that the game played or felt best between these levels (or 3rd through 10th, or 3rd through 8th, etc. - agreement on where the sweet spot fell depended on the individual person). The general agreement was that this was because of the math, i.e.; at low levels characters couldn't hit anything; in the sweet spot levels there was a feeling of balance between success and failure; at higher levels characters couldn't miss. One of the design goals of 4E was to design the underlying math so that all levels of play (1st through 30th) would feel like the sweet spot of 3.5E. I don't know how well, or if, 4E achieves this, since I don't play it, but it was one of the design goals.

 

[Lacyon]

I would argue the exact opposite. A first-level 4e character has abilities that are all boiled down to single powers and easily segmented and analyzed. A 1st level fighter in 3.5e has a couple of dozen combat options open to him that a new player will be boggled by; shield bash, bull rush, disarm, trip, coup de grace, etc.

It is generally true, though, that newer players don't have those abilities on their character sheets in 3.x, so the options can be ignored until they come up in play ("I wanna push this guy off the cliff!") at which point the DM or a more experienced player explains how the rules work (or, lacking an experienced player, you either look it up or make it up).

 

[WizarDru]

It is generally true, though, that newer players don't have those abilities on their character sheets in 3.x, so the options can be ignored until they come up in play ("I wanna push this guy off the cliff!") at which point the DM or a more experienced player explains how the rules work (or, lacking an experienced player, you either look it up or make it up).

4e, at least on the surface, appears to do that better than 3e/3.5e, IMHO. If you ignore the powers, then the situation is, at worst, the same. The powers themselves, however, are far less esoteric. In our last game, even after NINE YEARS OF NEARLY WEEKLY GAMES, we still had to look up some rules cites. Things like grapple, turning checks and dispels are the kind of subsystems that 3e features that 4e doesn't that make it more appealing to me.

It's a lot easier to explain how power attack works in 4e than 3e, and Sure Strike is much easier to explain and use than Combat Expertise. Grab versus grapple are light years apart. You could argue, rightfully IMHO, that in many cases 4e has traded flexibility for simplicity...but that translates into an easier system for a new player.