Another Big Playtest Post from Michele Carter

[WayneLigon]

I'm all for dropping any pretense that it's not just a book full of game rules. If the designers designed a class to be a defender, I'd like to know that. Maybe I'll play it differently, but there's no reason whatsoever to keep design decisions behind the curtain, so to speak. Players can make better-informed choices with respect to the rules if they know as much about the rules as possible.

I was re-reading some of Monte Cook's journal entries yesterday and came across his mention of how 3E was designed to reward system mastery and how that was done. Do you know why Toughness sucks? Because it has designed into one purpose: to provide extra HP for a wizard in a one-shot game. It's not meant to be used for anything else at all. It was designed that way. The entire reason it (and a few other things) are in the game at all is so that at some point you say to yourself 'Wow, Toughness sucks as a feat when we only get, what, 5-6 over the entire lifetime of the character' - you have figured out in a meta sense an important idea about D&D-the-game: that there are good choices and not-so-good choices to be made.

I'd like to never see such a thing done again.

Back to the playtest stuff: It looks like the statement from the London gameday that 'there would be no WoW-like aggro* mechanic for the fighter' meant 'we gave it to the paladin instead'. I didn't like the very concept of such a thing for the Knight and I like it a whole lot less as a power for a base core class. So, one actual thing that I don't like about 4E, unless they change it.

* Aggro management is a critical feature of most MMORPGs; aggro/Aggression measures the likelihood that a creature will keep attacking you. Most classes in WoW and other games have some means of either enticing creatures to attack them or means of reducing their 'threat' so that a creature may ignore them.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I would definitely rather not have characters saying to each other in-game "Merloc, don't we need another striker for this adventure?"

Because if its in the rulebook, the characters have knowledge of it.

by logical extension, your PCs talk about hit points, alignments and levels.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I would definitely rather not have characters saying to each other in-game "Merloc, don't we need another striker for this adventure?" even if they're already calling things plus-one swords or whatever. It's not a binary issue, it's cumulative.

You're trying to solve this problem in completely the wrong way. It's a player issue, not a rules issue. When speaking in character the players need to refrain from using any rules-only language such as 'hit points', 'armour class', 'fighter' and so forth.

New rules require new terms to describe them. You're putting a ban on new rules, which is effectively a ban on new editions, just cause your players can't roleplay.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

One thing to keep in mind is that with a growing amount of options and the "dilution" of what a class title actually means, it's pretty helpful to include secondary role descriptions in the class make-up. In earlier edition, a Fighter was a Fighter, a Magic-User was a Magic-User, a Thief was a Thief, etc. , and everybody knew exactly what was meant with that. By now, that's not so clear-cut anymore...and the PHB never was an "in-game manual for the aspiring wizard/man-at-arms/conman/insert class flavour" but a book that explained the game to the players, including the roles of the classes. And if the conversations shift from "Damn we're missing a first-aid-kit, Michael, you play a cleric" to "Damn, we're missing a defender, Michael plays the paladin", that's not much of a difference in my book.

 

[Goken100]

I was re-reading some of Monte Cook's journal entries yesterday and came across his mention of how 3E was designed to reward system mastery and how that was done. Do you know why Toughness sucks? Because it has designed into one purpose: to provide extra HP for a wizard in a one-shot game. It's not meant to be used for anything else at all. It was designed that way. The entire reason it (and a few other things) are in the game at all is so that at some point you say to yourself 'Wow, Toughness sucks as a feat when we only get, what, 5-6 over the entire lifetime of the character' - you have figured out in a meta sense an important idea about D&D-the-game: that there are good choices and not-so-good choices to be made.

I'd like to never see such a thing done again.

Back to the playtest stuff: It looks like the statement from the London gameday that 'there would be no WoW-like aggro* mechanic for the fighter' meant 'we gave it to the paladin instead'. I didn't like the very concept of such a thing for the Knight and I like it a whole lot less as a power for a base core class. So, one actual thing that I don't like about 4E, unless they change it.

* Aggro management is a critical feature of most MMORPGs; aggro/Aggression measures the likelihood that a creature will keep attacking you. Most classes in WoW and other games have some means of either enticing creatures to attack them or means of reducing their 'threat' so that a creature may ignore them.

Damn, I hope there's no "aggro" stuff. That's only needed in a game that fails to allow more realistic ways of forming lines and barriers in battle. D&D should make that work better, not make it messy by combining different competing mechanics for accomplishing the same thing (attacks of opportunity, aggresion).

 

[M.L. Martin]

I was re-reading some of Monte Cook's journal entries yesterday and came across his mention of how 3E was designed to reward system mastery and how that was done. Do you know why Toughness sucks? Because it has designed into one purpose: to provide extra HP for a wizard in a one-shot game. It's not meant to be used for anything else at all. It was designed that way. The entire reason it (and a few other things) are in the game at all is so that at some point you say to yourself 'Wow, Toughness sucks as a feat when we only get, what, 5-6 over the entire lifetime of the character' - you have figured out in a meta sense an important idea about D&D-the-game: that there are good choices and not-so-good choices to be made.

I'd like to never see such a thing done again.

It's dead. Mike Mearls posted about this several months over at game designer Bruce Baugh's LiveJournal, and I confirmed it in conversation with him at D&D Game Day last week. They've killed the 'system mastery by including sucker's elements' concept in favor of doing their best to allow you to play concepts that won't cripple your character--you won't necessarily be optimized, but you'll still be able to contribute meaningfully.

I rejoice in its passing.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Ah...no wonder I changed Toughness to "add +1 hit point to your die roll to determine hit points every level" at some point..it was designed to be useless as written over long-term character development.

 

[med stud]

(...)
Back to the playtest stuff: It looks like the statement from the London gameday that 'there would be no WoW-like aggro* mechanic for the fighter' meant 'we gave it to the paladin instead'. I didn't like the very concept of such a thing for the Knight and I like it a whole lot less as a power for a base core class. So, one actual thing that I don't like about 4E, unless they change it.

* Aggro management is a critical feature of most MMORPGs; aggro/Aggression measures the likelihood that a creature will keep attacking you. Most classes in WoW and other games have some means of either enticing creatures to attack them or means of reducing their 'threat' so that a creature may ignore them.

It looks like the paladin has got the old "taunt" spell from 2nd edition. Nothing new for D&D.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Damn, I hope there's no "aggro" stuff. That's only needed in a game that fails to allow more realistic ways of forming lines and barriers in battle. D&D should make that work better, not make it messy by combining different competing mechanics for accomplishing the same thing (attacks of opportunity, aggresion).

Aside from a Taunt/Divine Challenge mechanic, I do not believe a real "Aggro" Mechanic is unlikely for D&D (or any pen & paper role playing game). It would add an additional level of book-keeping.
It works well in a computer game, but imagine the single DM book-keeping the "Aggro" scores for each PC and each NPC! (Also keeping in mind that 4th edition is supposed to support more encounters with several monster) Can you see the head of the DM exploding after 2 combat rounds?

 

[FreeXenon]

Role names in the class description is a good thing...

I think that having the Role Names in the Class Description is a good thing., especially for newer players. Having the Role clearly spell out as well as the Power Source helps a person to have an idea as to what the class does before you even look at the specific description.

This may help decrease the barrier of entry to the game especially when we will end up having a veritable plethora of classes to choose from.