D&D 4E AICN Massawyrm's 4E Review - Part 3

[smathis]

I prefer gaming with pen-and-paper as well. I'm a little disappointed because Mearls had stated previously that 4e would support play without minis. I'll hope for a clarification in the PHB or DMG but, honestly, pigs might fly before I see that.

One group I ran 3.x for was very into minis and grids. I didn't have the funds to buy a ton of minis and, honestly, no other group I had run for or played with used them.

So I bought a couple bags of counting bears from Wal-Mart. Check in the school supplies section.

It was priceless to pull out these little bears and place them on a grid, especially after the group had figured out my color-coding.

"Dude! It's a PURPLE bear! He's pulling out a PURPLE bear! Run!"

If 4e's gift to the next generation of gamers is that RPGs happen only on a grid, my gift will be that all monsters are cute, lovable plastic bears in a variety of day-glo colors.

Barring that, the bags of zombies for "Zombies" and catching the Descent boardgame on eBay are great sources of relatively inexpensive minis.

As are the aforementioned glass beads, poker chips and cardstock counters.

Still, I'd prefer to be able to just sit down like we did in 1e and 2e and be able to play 4e without all these props. My imagination works just fine.

Please, if hell holds off freezing over for a few more months, I might see a sidebar or something the 4e DMG...

 

[Rechan]

As someone who has played 3.0 and 3.5 via text, so no grid wahtsoever, let me tell you: IT IS A PAIN IN THE ASS.

Especially when dealing with points of reference, distance, and facing, and oh god AoOs.

I always assumed that "No minis" = no need for a grid, map, and reference points. Not "No pre-molded creatures specific to what you're fighting".

 

[sukael]

I'll be disappointed if one of the first GSL product isn't a full writeup of metallic and chromatic dragons, including smaller-than-Large ones.

 

[Orius]

It reminded my of why I hate AICN -- it tends to be all reviews that either say "This rocks!" or "This sucks!" in many more words. I prefer reading stuff that's a bit more restrained in attitude and is informative rather than just gushing about how awesome something is in a highly sensational manner.

Having said that, it has stoked my interest in 4e even more. There's a lot of things that sound good on the surface. OTOH, the seemingly heavy influences from the game miniatures is a bit distasteful to me, i.e. zombie rotters. WotC might be coming up with newer monsters with good abilities, but the names really don't do it for me. And besides, I like to run my games where the players don't know exactly what they're facing; I never come right out and say what the monster is, but I describe it for them instead. The only exceptions are humanoid types like goblinoid or ogres, but since they include classed NPCs as well as cannon fodder mooks, the players shouldn't always know what to expect.

On the issue of actually unsing minis, it doesn't bother me. I like using minis when I can, because it keeps the players a bit more honest. I've had my share of players who were always in an optimum spot when their turn in the initiative came up, but then somehow teleported acroos the room when the opponents attack: "Uh no, I was over there by the door. There's no way that orc could hit me!" you know, right after his turn in the same round when he opened a nice can of whup-ass on said orc. Bottom line as long as it doesn't matter which mini I'm using, I don't care. If the mini I'm using is maybe a D&D mini of something else entirely, that's my perogative as the DM. Hell, I'll use Reaper minis or my old HeroQuest minis or anything else that looks like the monster.

I also don't like reading that the metallic dragons aren't in. I've already said before that I dislike the idea of leaving classic material out to help drive sales of later PHB/DMG/MMs. Yes, supposedly making 4e versions of the stuff isn't hard, but when the stuff does come out officially, there's always the potential of some pain-in-the-ass nimrod of a rules lawyer giving the DM grief over his conversions. But that's not something that'll be unique to 4e.

 

[MaelStorm]

Well it was an honest review (for all those who complained about the speak no evil clause, it is now clear it was totally unfounded).

Now, the grid and mini-centric approach to 4E is an aspect I really don't like. I truly hate the randomized collectible aspect of WotC minis. I'll try to find tokens before the release of the RPG Player Starter Kit in november but I didn't find any color tokens or something professional that would fit the different size of D&D monsters for the Chessex battlemat.

 

[Orius]

Uh huh. Wait until the real min/maxers get their hands on it.

Agreed. Min/maxing has existed in pretty much every edition.

 

[LordArchaon]

Hi everyone!
Something not very probable but surely very cool occurred to me about the 4e metallic dragons... What if they're from the Feywild? They could then also invent a whole new type of dragons coming from the Shadowfell...

EDIT:
Another guess: we know that black dragons (and surely all other chromatics) are listed as "natural magical beast (dragon)", maybe they plan to make metallics more like "fey magical beast (dragon)", given that they now classify things like that (I make the assumption looking at Shadar-Kai who are "shadow humanoids")...

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I agree that the difficulty of playing WITHOUT minis and a grid has continued to increase at every edition.

1st was fine either way, as was second (though it still helped), third made it very difficult to NOT use figs, and fourth will be even more difficult.

That said, Grid-less, mini-less D&D is a skill that can be developed by a good DM and I"m sure it's still totally possible. Frankly if you could do it in 3rd you can do it in 4th, you'll just have to brush up your skills and find some new tricks.

Fitz

 

[Ipissimus]

I’m not certain why percentage of players out there still play this way – but they’re going to have the strongest argument against converting to 4E.

You don't know? Ok, why I don't play with minis despite liking them:

1. RANDOMIZED PACKS. I refuse to buy 6 booster packs trying to get a large black dragon mini so that I can put it in my game. And I hate substitutes, they just ruin the feel of the whole game (this apple is a Red Dragon...). So, If I play in my head, I get the best of both worlds.
2. Money. Plain and simple. I understand WOTC wants to sell more minis and that's fine. They're a business, selling stuff is why they exist. My money, however, is finite and I have better things to spend it on than this, so I exercise my consumer power to vote with my wallet.
3. My friends and I like using our brains, specifically our imaginations, to set the scene and work out problems. We like to play like this is our own interactive novel or storytime. Indeed, if we start delving into minis territory, we might as well go to Heroquest or some similar boardgame or even give it up for an MMO in our opinions.
4. Portability. Ever played on the back seat of a car with minis? You can 'roll dice' with a calculator, making a DnD road trip quite a good time.

The interesting part is that, out of all the people I know who play the game, I don't know anyone who games with minis. I find it incredibly funny that I'm part of a minority I didn't even know existed.

Minis and such are not required to play 4E. 4E is simply written to make full use of tangilble tools, as well. Because for most, it makes the game more fun. etc.

And sells more WOTC product. No, I don't have a problem with that. And I realize that not everyone is into the whole brain exercise thing. Everyone make their own fun, I dig that, and I'm very glad that minis won't be required to play. But it will take a bit more effort.

On the other hand, there are alot of advantages to not using grids and I can think of a few ways in which 4E will help me do this while I make my game feel more realistic IMO.

1. Circular blast radius. Yeah, the grid system makes it crystal clear who's been hit and who hasn't. Partial overlap can be a bugger to adjudicate. On the other hand, it's more realistic. I'll probably give anyone on the outer edge of the blast one of the nice, new, 4E 45/55 saves to see if I have to try and hit them. Funnily enough, like I used to do in 1e!
2. Cross off 'squares' re-write all values in terms of feet. Gives even more flexibility in the environment. If you use a grid, players tend to get trapped in a 2D world mindset and forget about the cieling, etc.
3. I don't know what the rules are for sight in 4E, but it's very hard blacking out squares on battlemaps the PCs don't know about... not something I have to worry about.

I don't know about these abilities what won't translate well. I'm trying to think of any situation where a power that's supposed to be modelled on what a 'heroic' human being can do that isn't translateable. Besides, if it works on a grid, why can't it work in my brain?

 

[AllisterH]

Fighter: The sample fighter has several abilities that require her to know what squares she and her opponents are in:

The ability to OA an opponent who shifts. That makes it pretty important to know who's adjacent to you--even if you're not attacking them.

The ability to push an opponent one square with her shield attack. Why would you want to push an opponent one square? is there a hazard there? Will that put it next to another fighter but not next to you? Does that move it out of range of the wizard if it decides to risk the OA and move in on him? Pushing or pulling an opponent isn't much use if you don't see where you can push or pull to.

Passing attack: Make an attack, shift one square and make another attack against a different opponent. Without a grid it will be difficult to see where that is either A. possible or B. useful.
.

Not really since all you need to know is "Is this enemy in melee range with me" with most of the abilities. For example, the ability to OA an opponent who shifts only works if the enemy is in melee range with you to begin with. The fighter is definitely one class I think you could simply visualize and play. Even the ability to push an opponent isn't that bad since its only 1 square (as a fighter, all you need to ask is "what's directly behind the enemy I'm in melee with?")

Ranger:

Quarry. If you only get the damage bonus against the nearest target then it will be important to know if: A. the target you want to shoot is nearest. B. If there is somewhere you can move to make that target the nearest. C. Whether you will need to take an OA for movement of to shoot from that location.

The one that lets you shift and attack when you are hit. It's going to be important to know if there is somewhere you can shift to and make a ranged attack without provoking an OA. If you're up against a wall or enemies are nearby, there may not be such a square..

This one is kinda the opposite of the fighter in my mind. Since there seems to be nomore "penalties for firing into melee", archery characters no longer need to know the position of everyone and thus don't need to know a marker system. As for specific abiltiies, quarry is no different than trying to figure out in 2E whether or not what range you are at to minimize your attack penalty. I didn't have problems with using archery without visual aids based on the same scenarios (for example, the same question about where one could move and attack when in melee comes up in 2E IIRC due to the fact that you couldn't use a bow when in melee)

As a last thought--are people seriously contending that a game which measures distance in squares doesn't suffer in playability without a grid? Come on folks. We weren't born yesterday.

Yes and no. For me, the game definitely looks like to get the best experience you will require some form of marker system but this isn't because the game is measured in squares since if you changed squares to actual feet/meters, you would STILL need some form of marker system when using say a rogue.