A Thread For Those Somewhere In The Middle

[JoeGKushner]

I neither hate nor love 4e.

The fluff and naming is not my cup of tea.

Some of the default changes to the core are not up my alley.

Some of the game mechanic changes sound great. For example I've already houseruled that toughenss works in 3e like it will in 4e.

 

[Imp]

I don't give a rip about the flavor either way, since it's uncommon for WotC to put out much flavor that fits my preferences, anyway. (My expectations are low, and thus I'm perversly almost impossible to disappoint. Plus, I think some of the flavor will be good, if not to my tastes, and I can at least appreciate it on quality grounds. And, they hit my preferences enough to let me enjoy it when they do.)

I'll chime in to agree with this, and also to wonder how people get so unhappy about this part. Flavor is just material. You can get it from anywhere. If it inspires you, great! If it doesn't, so what? If you hate it, replace it. Right?

Not to say I want things to be all crunchy – I like flavor, because there's a chance that it'll inspire me.

(I did get all unhappy about the flavor of the wizard's implements once, until I realized that it's perfectly possible to just change the implements. Headdesk episode right there. )

 

[baradtgnome]

.... One more thing that has me split, is power creep. It doesn't require a 4e-hater to recognize that through the years characters' power always go up (although this time, spellcasters may not go so much up). You can't just compare PCs in different editions directly by level, but the tendency is always to add something to the PC, assuming this means always good. Just to make an example: skills. The 3.0 system was totally fine; 3.5 gave more skill points, made some skills free, and others 2-for-1; 4e will give even more skills and will make you good also in the ones you don't have. Why is it always a power-up? Is it really because the game needs it? Does the game really even get better? I am not so sure! ....

That is an excellent observation. (Am I allowed to compliment someone in a 4e thread? ) I had some of the same concerns going to 3.x from AD&D. Overall, moving to 3.x improved our game, but somehow lost some of the starting from scratch qualities of the earlier games. Sorry if this sounds like a 'we walked to school uphill both ways through six feet of snow' comment, but I miss the days when some problems were solved with a bit of string, spike, chalk and your brain. Now of course even in those older editions you could check you brain at the door at higher levels and just cast a fireball (heh, except if you failed geometry and it came racing back down the corridor at you), but I digress. It would be human nature and typical marketing (more! better! faster! bigger!)for that to happen. I certainly expect power creep to incrementally add to 4e. I don't think that alone is a reason not to move up, but is does make me nostagic for the days when we killed a giant with rope, grappling hooks and a convenient cliff (that and our handy fighter type who could be meat bait )

 

[baradtgnome]

..... Worst-case scenario, of course, is poaching the best stuff for my 3.5 game.

I am thinking the same thing. Are there many of you thinking the same? (sorry if this is a threadjack)

I see things I like, I could be convinced to move to 4e. But if it breaks my homebrew, then it is just a source to raid and create house rules. Interesting thing happened with all this information being shared by WoTC about 4e. We recently broke our compact to play 3.5 RAW with core rulebooks only (99.5%) and opened the flood gates to house rules. That either makes it easy to move towards 4e, or makes it easy to steal from 4e and not move.

 

[baradtgnome]

I don't give a rip about the flavor either way, since it's uncommon for WotC to put out much flavor that fits my preferences, anyway.......

I'll chime in to agree with this, and also to wonder how people get so unhappy about this part. Flavor is just material. You can get it from anywhere. If it inspires you, great! If it doesn't, so what? If you hate it, replace it. Right?

Agree. I don't understand why folks get so violent over flavor items. If flavor items masquerade as key crunchy items that are required for game balance, then that becomes a problem. Or if there are so many flavor items that are just not to your taste and get time consuming and tedious to remove/rename, then that is an issue too.

 

[MerricB]

Actually I don't recall off the top of my head Merric. I believe I read it somewhere on EN World as a quote from one of the developers.

It is entirely possible that the way you described shrugging off damage will be the way its handled. I can live with that!

Not to threadjack, but does anyone have more details about this aspect of the fighter? I bet its derived from Bo9S.

Actually, quite likely from SAGA.

We do know that "Second Wind" mechanics will be in the game. (As a swift action, regain your CON in hp, usable once/day). I've been using them in my 3.5e Savage Tide campaign and they rock utterly. I expect that the Fighter will have expanded usage of Second Wind - more times per day, better recovery levels, etc.

Paladins, Clerics and Warlords will likely have Bo9S healing mechanics - hit something and heal someone else at the same time, as demonstrated in the Smiting article.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

One more thing that has me split, is power creep. It doesn't require a 4e-hater to recognize that through the years characters' power always go up (although this time, spellcasters may not go so much up).

Hmm. I'm not quite so sure about that assertion.

In AD&D, fireball and magic missile were not capped. A 20th level magic-user did 20d6 damage with his fireball.

In AD&D 2e, that same fireball did no more than 10d6 damage.

In D&D 3e, the fireball was dealing 10d6 damage... and monster hit points had dramatically increased.

My feeling is that the relative power of the Wizard has been going down through the editions, whilst the Fighter has been increasing.

Cheers!

 

[Brother MacLaren]

My feeling is that the relative power of the Wizard has been going down through the editions, whilst the Fighter has been increasing.

Certainly the relative power of the evocation school has gone way down -- but the expanded spell list and the number of no-save spells has balanced this somewhat.

Can I post in this thread? I'm really not interested in running 4E, but there's a number of ideas I'd like to poach from it:
1) Removal of iterative attacks
2) Expanded monster utility (probably means reining in the various bonus types that can increase AC, and maybe curtailing HP inflation)
3) Limiting "Christmas Tree" effect -- VERY interested to see the approach they take
4) A unified mechanic for saves is something that I would use intermittently. Wizard fireballs a group of mooks? Roll to set DC. Dragon charges the party? Roll saves vs. fear -- it adds coolness if at least once in a while the barbarian makes this Will save while the cleric fails his. Static saves become "anything you can do I can do better" between PCs.
5) Flavor -- the "points of light" concept is far more appealing than settings that presume large numbers of PC-classes, magic shops, etc.

 

[Darkness]

My interest in 4e is just a Sort of want on a scale from Kill it with fire to A winrar is you.

On one hand, nothing I've heard about the game so far has seriously rubbed me the wrong way. Some features actually seem pretty awesome (e.g., less of a Christmas tree effect) and many others sound good to me (e.g., PHB races, magic item level, Bane as a core deity, Points of Light, demons & devils, Wizard). Also, I really like the concept of yearly 'core' books.

On the other hand, I'd rather run GURPS or Vampire: The Requiem (or M&M or Scion or Exalted or BESM or ...) than D&D and 4e isn't likely to change that. Further, without Dungeon magazine there are going to be fewer things that I'd like to run with the game in any case; a digital substitute simply isn't of interest to me at present. Pathfinder probably isn't, either.

Everything told, I'll probably get the 3 core books to see for myself how the new edition is but whether they're going to see a lot of use or gather a lot of dust (or something in between) remains to be seen.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Certainly the relative power of the evocation school has gone way down -- but the expanded spell list and the number of no-save spells has balanced this somewhat.

The relative number of no-save spells actually has probably *dropped* rather than risen over the course of edition changes... not to mention the fact that certain save substitution factors (magic/spell resistance, hp thresholds, etc.) are easier to achieve in 3e than in 1e/2e. SR and higher hp makes maze and the power words (respectively) much less deadly in 3e than in 1e. So I'd agree with Merric that the trend is definitely toward reducing the power disparity between casters and fighters at high levels (and perhaps inversely at low levels in the case of 3e, though I think 4e will *really* close the gap between casters and fighters at low level with the emergence of at-will abilities for casters).

To continue, though: Poaching is probably how I'll end up going as well, although that does of course raise the question of whether partial or house-ruled adoption of 4e counts as a "maybe." I'm walking into the new edition (as I did with 2e and 3e) assuming that I'll house rule the heck out of it just as I tinkered with 1e. Does that attitude put me in the "maybe" camp or the "definitely" camp?