A Doubters Review

[Melfast]

My First Character -- Fear the 1st Level Magic-User (Or Not)

My first character was a magic user. I joined a group in high school playing OD&D, and just followed along trying to learn the game on the fly. First encounter, I fired my one spell -- magic missle. After that, I just tried to stay away from the monsters with my 2 HP, AC 9, and dagger.

4E is much kinder to 1st level characters. I really did not get to do much with my MU until I reached 3rd level and finally had a couple of spells per day to contribute and over 6 HP so I could have a decent chance of surviving one hit from the monsters.

One nice thing about OD&D, and perhaps 4E, it did not take much time to roll up characters, so you could get back into the game quickly; unlike 3E/3.5E where I find myself taking 1-2 hours to make a character each time.

 

[Greenfaun]

I GMed a 4E game and this is too true. I have no problem with some status effects provided they are basic enough and I prefer the lingering effects that you have a chance to end each round (rather than a "Make a save. You fail? Sorry fighter, you're out for this fight. Go sit in a corner for 30 minutes. Isn't D&D fun?"). but the status effects were stacking so much that it became a big headache during long fights.

Well, I don't know for sure because I still haven't gotten my hands on a playtest or anything, but it seems like the fun way (or the least-not-fun way perhaps) to handle this is to add it into the power cards system. Just print out little cards, or even half-cards or thin slips that have the effect on them, and hand them out when appropriate.

For instance, monsters with lingering conditions/debuffs mean that the DM hands the player a little slip to put in front of them on the table, and when they roll a save they get to hand it back. Keeping it out in view would keep it from being confusing, and if you're already playing with power cards and maps and minis, adding one more fiddly bit wouldn't be any more of a hassle.

It would be a little tangible reward for people using leader-type powers too, because they might get to hand out good slips to their fellow players, and that will foster group bonding because everybody wants the "+1 to attack" candy from the cleric. Trying to remember that you get +1 to ranged as long as you're standing within 3 spaces of the warlord is a hassle, but that same warlord handing you a slip that gives you the bonus a) is fun and b) makes you appreciate having him around.

 

[Ebon Shar]

As the DM of Devyn's game, I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents (I'm really cheap) and respond to some of the points he raised. Before I do, however, I'd just like to acknowledge Tom Ko at WOTC, who gave us the opportunity to play this demo. I know some of you have questioned WOTC's motives with 4E and been skeptical of their business plan, etc, but I have to say that their friendliness and willingness to accomodate their fanbase the way Tom has is testament to their dedication and love of the game. Thanks, Tom!

First off, thanks and kudo’s to Dave B. for running the game, and letting a bona fide 4E doubter in on the action. Modules such as this one, rarely allow a GM to really strut his stuff, and are more designed as an exercise in how to roll dice. But despite that limitation, Dave was patient with the newbies (and grognards) when he needed to be, made decisions on the fly to keep the action going and made certain that everyone had their time in the spotlight. Dave ... ya done good!

Thanks, Devyn. As any DM will tell you, a game is only as good as the players. I know that I feed off of the energy and enthusiasm of my players, and if you had a good experience, then that speaks well of your skill and creativity. I really enjoyed having you in my game and I look forward to future games (/love-fest).

The actual escape from town allowed us to try out the "skill challenge" used for non-combat encounters. This mechanic is both my favorite and most worrisome part of the entire system. As a mechanic it encourages interaction, storytelling, roleplaying and can be just plain fun. But without a “good” (trademarked) GM who enjoys gaming on the fly, is great at understanding & describing the myriad objects, people and opportunities in a given scene, and can guide his players towards their goal no matter what skill, and which direction they head towards, I can see where this mechanic could be minimized (ignored) by many groups or even worse it can be used as a cudgel to beat and railroad the players. Thanks to our GM, we had fun with the encounter. But if I ever play 4E at a Con, I will want some kind of rating system to see the type of GM I’m going to get stuck with. This mechanic, if abused or not properly understood and utilized, will become the death of many games … at least according to my crystal ball.

I agree that the skill challenge portion of any 4E game can make or break the game. With a DM who is unable to "wing it", the game will quickly descend into a simple dice-rolling excercise. Unlike the skill challenge in "Escape from Sembia", most will be impromptu and require the Dm to assign difficulty levels on the fly. Likewise, the path/consequence tree will have to be determined on the fly, which could also be challenging. If possible, I plan to create a simple if/then flowchart for any skill challenges I might want to use. I hope it works.

But I can also see how its taken away some of the more flavorful and “magical” aspects of the game.

I agree that this has detracted a bit from the game for me as well. While Vancian Magic limited mages in 3.5, being able to continuosly spam magic somehow cheapens Magic as a whole in the game. I found that the "Big, Bad Mage" in the scenario was less effective than some of his minions simply because he could not deal as much damage as they could. His spell/power selections were simply not as powerful as the martial power selection of his cohorts. Mages simply will not be as respected nor as feared as they were in previous editions. That role will, perhaps, go to the Ranger, who Devyn aptly described as a food processor. I was simply blown away by his damage output potential. Perhaps as they increase in level and become more versatile, the mage will recapture that mysterious feeling he had. I can say that I was disappointed to find most all the mage's spells to be combat oriented. Perhaps the spell selection was made with the specific module in mind, or perhaps, like others have suggested, combat options have checkmated more role-playing/problem solving aspects of a mage's spell list. I hope not.

-I think that eventually the skill system (not the non-combat skill challenges) will be the part of 4E that I dislike the most.

I wonder if your dislike of the skill system stems from your dislike of the "passive" skills. Otherwise, the skill system seems, to me, to be exactly like it was in 3.5. If you dismiss the passive skills and simply call for a skill roll whenever a passive would have been used, what is your specific complaint?

-4E combat has more action built into it, but requires more attention and record keeping from everyone.

I completely agree. Tracking all the marks, round by round effects, and conditions did put a strain on the game. I tried to be as organized as I could be, having pre-colored chits to mark various conditions, yet I still found myself forgetting some conditions and/or saving throws. I'm sure that my overall lack of familiarity with the system accounts for much of this, but I will have to come up with a method of accounting for round by round changes, especially to such things as AC, speed, and required saving throws. For my next demo, I think I'll use my initiative chart to make round by round notations to each character to assist my memory.

-yes I did get the feeling I was playing an exotic board game at times, and not a table top RPG.

I got this feeling as well, especially with the new emphasis on tactics and teamwork. While I really enjoyed that aspect (I've never seen a group of strangers work together as well or as quickly as I have in this game), I still felt like the game felt like, perhaps, a more detailed version of the D&D miniatures game. Again, the structure of the preview scenario emphasized this feeling and I'll wait until we can mix in a little ol' fashioned role-playing before I make a final judgement.

-yes I did have fun. Enough fun that I will be joining the GM’s “Keep on the Shadowfell” campaign to get a better understanding of the game.

I had fun as well and I'm very much looking forward to our KoTS game. As I said, the players really make the game and I think I've lucked into a bunch of truly creative and energetic people! Well done on the game, Devyn!

 

[Zil]

I wonder if anyone remembers their first time playing their first D&D game, whatever version it was realistically. It was probably just as convoluted. Any new game, or mechanic in a game, is cumbersome at first.

Our first D&D game was downright odd. The very first encounter was some worms that had come to the surface because of rain. Our dog ate them and got sick. I kid you not. Second encounter was a bridge over a ravine. We were so paranoid after the worms that we went and caught this goat (don't remember where the goat came from) and used the goat to look for traps (there were none) but we sure spent a long time at that bridge. The third encounter was a Roc flying overhead. We hid.

As for the mechanics, what mechanics? We were just stating what we were doing and occasionally rolling dice. It was all transparent to us and very real even though a bit odd. From the newbie player perspective, 1E was quite simple... 28-29 years ago.

 

[StarFyre]

artificial

I find the tactics very artificial..almost forced.

Since powers cause movement, regardless of whether they should or not (if a power doesn't have a restriction on it ,could it technically shifta 1000000 lbs dragon?) etc... anyways, it's like they want the party to work together and move themselves to specific positions totake advantage of the shifts that will take place over time automatically due to the powers.

However, this is very artificial.

For real tactics, i would imagine the type of things (that 4E does have to a degree, but isn't really mentioned it appears, since thereis no point due to how the movement stuff forces the artifical stuff)...

I remember the barbarian in the game i DM, picking up a table and using it as a shield wall as he came towards a gnoll archer with armour peircing arrows...some of which went thru parts of the table...before that, the party was ducking behind the tables/chairs and using them for cover as the halfling climbed through a grating and pipe in the wall to sneak down behind the gnoll and fire at him from behind.


Also had a battle where wizards weren't able to harm the enemy due to protections that were put up and some resistances..Not a problem. the wizard players were brilliant (which i fail to see so far in any playtest, probably since there is no need due to resistances not being around to any meaningful degree)..the wizards cast firebal at teh ceiling, the blast broke parts of the ceiling (which i rolled for the HP damage done to the stone/mortar, etc) and brought part of the ceiling down on the enemies. Who cares what resistances you have....when tons of rock are coming down on your head..

Fighting a paraice elemental which regenerates if it touches snow/ice/water, warriors began breaking the ice we were all standing on as wizards fired spells at it. the ice broke but we were in an ice tower..so we all fell 40 ft to the level below..the wizards were safe..some warriors held onto the strut supports..the rest fell down below but were able to take out the elemental when it couldn't regenerate...

Fighters using themselves and large shields to try and take hits as a druid spent a long time to cast a summon spell.... while the rest of us were being bombarded with spears and boulders from giants/ogres. It was great... most of the warriors were down due to a few spear hits..but when BIF (we named the creature BIF) showed up..all was well

Stuff like this my players find lacking in our tests of 4E light (granted it is just a light version but still...all indications to the power types, etc are that they are VERY similar to each other to the point of there not really being any meaningful differences anywhere).

I am surprised so many people talk of how tactical the game is...when to us it seems VERY shallow in that respect...sorry, not shallow but forced.

Does anyone find that as well?

We still have the 4E stuff on preorder, but what it looks like players and i have agreed to...is make modifications to the current 3.X chars (which have a bunch of house rules anywyas)..taking what aspeccts of 4E we like, and house ruling the rest.

On the other hand, i like much of the monster design changes and have been doing stuff like that for along time.

strange...never had a situation where liked about 50% of a game system and not the other 50%...

very strange..

Sanjay

 

[Rechan]

Unlike the skill challenge in "Escape from Sembia", most will be impromptu and require the Dm to assign difficulty levels on the fly. Likewise, the path/consequence tree will have to be determined on the fly, which could also be challenging. If possible, I plan to create a simple if/then flowchart for any skill challenges I might want to use. I hope it works.

I honestly think the DMG is going to have something that will look like the CR/EL chart in the 3e DMG, but instead of CRs, it's DCs for skill challenges, so you don't have to come up with DCs on the fly. It'd look something like:

Party Level  Skill Challenge DC
1          Easy (X)/Medium (Y)/Hard (Z)
2          Easy (X+1)/Medium (Y+1)/Hard (Z+1)
3          Easy (X+2)/Medium (Y+2/Hard (Z+2)

Also, the skill challenges receives an entire chapter, so I expect it to be explained indepth.

I still felt like the game felt like, perhaps, a more detailed version of the D&D miniatures game. Again, the structure of the preview scenario emphasized this feeling and I'll wait until we can mix in a little ol' fashioned role-playing before I make a final judgement.

I believe that was the intention of the demo: emphasize the rules. There wasn't really a strong "story" and it felt very much on rails.

 

[MortalPlague]

I wonder if anyone remembers their first time playing their first D&D game, whatever version it was realistically. It was probably just as convoluted. Any new game, or mechanic in a game, is cumbersome at first.

My first time playing D&D was in grade 7... I was the DM. I used the original D&D basic rules, and I introduced a whole group of my friends to the game by running a custom dungeon. This castle housed a red dragon in a room towards the back (yes, really...), and had a whole host of other monsters like orcs and goblins and the like. There was no story, there was no roleplay, it was merely a combat game.

To my credit, though, I was clever enough to have a stoppered vase filled with poison gas as a trap. I thought it was rather smart for a first-ever dungeon.

 

[JesterOC]

Sanjay,

I don't see anything in your examples that could not be done with 4E. So 4E can do all of that plus it builds in lots of cool effects into its powers that allow folks to do even more things.

When people get used to what you can do with the rules normally (as the players in your 3E example have done) then I forsee that even more unique and cool options will open up during D&D games.

As for your examples I think the fireball one would not have worked. Fireball has no concusive effect at least in 3E it doesn't. So the ceiling would only get scorched and that is it. If it did have a blast with a concussive effect that can crack stone, then anytime the players use it, it could bring the house down. For the same effect I MIGHT allow lightning bolt. But its effect would be much smaller. And in 4E I would allow the monster a reflex save to get out of the way.

What would you use in 3E, a dex check? I don't know I ahve not played 3E in a long time. But Dex checks don't scale with levels. It seems in your example that they had no chance of a save. Seems that if they had no save then everyday would be bring down the house day.

JesterOC

editied the last paragraph for clarity.

 

[Staffan]

How did you manage to see all this, without the actual PHB and its 500 powers and 400 feats?

I just want to say that 500 powers might sound like much, but it isn't really. For one thing, it's split among 8 classes. That's 62.5 powers per class. I reckon some of those powers are racial and other non-class-based stuff, so let's say 60 powers per class.

Over the course of a character's 30-level career, he will choose quite a few powers.
* 2 at-will powers at level 1
* 7 encounter powers at levels 1, 3, 7, 13, 17, 23, and 27 (some of which replace earlier choices), as well as a Paragon path encounter power at level 11.
* 7 daily powers at levels 1, 5, 9, 15, 19, 25, and 29 (some of which replace earlier choices), as well as a Paragon path daily power at level 20.
* 5 utility powers at levels 2, 6, 10, 16, and 22, as well as a Paragon path utility power at level 12 and an Epic destiny utility power at 26.

That's a total of 25 powers, out of 60. Even not counting the Paragon/Epic powers, the count is still 21. Sounds like at any given level where you get to choose powers, you have 2-4 to choose from.

 

[Khairn]

Have to say, though, one comment that has pushed my frustration button is your comment on hit points becoming less health points. I keep seeing this worry being thrown about. The reason I get my frustration grumpy head on is this: Health has only ever been a small part of hit points. Hit points have always been a massive abstraction - luck, skill, will to keep going, divine favour, arcane infusion, etc. At least since the red box basic set to my knowledge.

I just wanted to clarify my comment about 4E hit points not equaling the health of the character.

I have played a few systems where hit points are really abstract or not even a part of the game (Harnmaster for example). But in D&D, my internal paradigm regarding hits was always that they were an abstract representation of a characters physical health. When a character was damaged, a cleric healed his wounds... when a character was taken below zero he was going to bleed to death in a short period of time unless he was stabilized first and then healed. Yes I always had a problem with a character being just as effective when he had just 1 hit point left, as he was when he was at full hits ... but that was just a quirk of the game.

That internal paradigm of mine kept giving me fits when I was trying to get my head around the concept of personal healing surges and second wind. 4E appears to make hit points an even more abstract concept than in previous editions of D&D. I'm not saying its good or bad, only that for me it was a hurdle I was having some difficulty in overcoming.

I am surprised so many people talk of how tactical the game is...when to us it seems VERY shallow in that respect...sorry, not shallow but forced.

I completely understand where you're coming from. Part of the reason why I agree with you is that the 4E tactics aren't precious nuggets that you discover after playing the game for a bit. 4E tactics are designed to be bold, up front, and have become an openly visible (and dare I say mandatory?) part of the game. That makes them appear (perception not fact) somewhat forced in my eyes as well.

I agree that the skill challenge portion of any 4E game can make or break the game.

You and I haven't had the chance to discuss the game since we played (how did the soccer games go?) so its nice to see we're both on the same page with this one. I love the mechanics. But I am concerned about the number of GM's who won't have the communication and impromtu skills to use it effectively.

I wonder if your dislike of the skill system stems from your dislike of the "passive" skills. Otherwise, the skill system seems, to me, to be exactly like it was in 3.5. If you dismiss the passive skills and simply call for a skill roll whenever a passive would have been used, what is your specific complaint?

My concern wasn't necessarily the passive skills, although I do see those as a not very useful part of the game. Sort of like the appendix of the skill system.

My concern regarding skills was not something that could have been dealt with during the playtest. It is more around how skills will be selected by characters. 3E brought to D&D a skill system that allowed players to customize their character to a greater degree than ever before. I'm not saying that the system was perfect, or that it couldn't do with an overhaul, but it was a step in the right direction. (IMHO) From what I have read, 4E skill selection seems to be a step backwards to a more predetermined system, where certain skills advance irregardless of either the type of adventures you've been playing or how your character is developing. I'm not going to be able to scratch that itch until I have a chance to read the books.