Another Grognard Reviews 4e based on KotS

[Korgoth]

A reasonable review, though I might quibble with a few points (D&D's hit points have never been realistic and were not intended to be so, for instance).

One thing that strikes me, though, is that it is not necessary to worry about Tieflings (which I think are stupid) and Dragonborn (which I think are mega-ultra-ur-stupid). Just because they're in the PHB doesn't mean you have to use them. If you are the DM, you get to design the world. So if you don't like a particular race, don't include it! Or make it NPC-only. If some punk with a bloated sense of entitlement complains that he can't play a dragondude / flying elf / kender / etc. in the campaign that you spent your time designing, just don't play with him.

This has always been the case. What if my campaign world doesn't have any orcs? Then obviously nobody can play a half-orc. If somebody had his heart set on being a half-orc, he can either pick a different character more appropriate to the parameters of the campaign or take a hike. No big deal. It has always been that way.

 

[jeffhartsell]

Counter quote (Gygax, 1979, DMG):


D&D has never, and hopefully never will, attempt simulationism.

I'd wager if the internet had existed when D&D came out grognards would have complained. I agree that D&D was and always will be a game more than a simulation of anything.

 

[Ebon Shar]

Solid review haakon. The parts I've quoted above are those area's where you and I have very similar opinions of the game so far. My honest opinion about 4E is that WotC has done a good job of making an enjoyable combat or miniatures game.

Here's a bit of your bias showing through, Devyn. Honestly, we've only seen combat in the few demos and examples that have been released, as WOTC intended. We all already know how to "role-play". The game seemed like a miniatures game because that is how it has been played by the majority of preview players so far. 3.x would feel the same way if given the same preview treatment, right?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

And when Fighter 2 does the same thing, you suddenly become less pressed by fighter 1? And you can't decide which foe is more dangerous and focus on them?

"Mark erasing", while perhaps vital from a game balance perspective, really strains any attempt to narrate what's happening in combat. If a target of multiple marks could choose to allow a new mark to take effect or remain with the original mark, maybe, but as it reads now, anyone marked is basically a puppet of multiple markers, and there's no way to "sustain" a mark against someone else's attempts to override it with their own.

Yes, that's a weakness in my eyes, too. I can see people trying to find better house rules, or the designers itself later creating new powers based around a different "marking" effect.
The problem off course can be minimized by not having to many Defenders in each party, and playing "nice" with the monsters. And in case of Paladin/Fighter mark superseding, it can be "hand-waved" - in spirit of the Paladins Challenge, it protects the target so that the Fighter marks effects are lessened, or that the challenge of the Paladin just ends.

Quick house rule idea:
Marks can coexist, but the restrictions for the mark penalties are lessened.
- The -2 penalty applies only against foes that didn't mark you.
- If a mark ability is triggered if you do not attack the marker, you just have to include one of the marking characters to avoid the trigger for all such marks.
- If a mark ability is triggered by you moving or shifting away from the marker, it is only triggered if you shift outside the reach of all marking characters.
It is a bit more complicated to adjudicate, and there might still be abilities that do not fall under these 3 cases. (If there is, the solution becomes unwieldly. Maybe that's the reason the designers chose the simpler approach)

 

[mhensley]

-- No longer a simulation of anything but itself.

And this is where they lost me.

 

[Jim Williams]

Try and review it again when you have the books (if you buy them), maybe youre mind changes then.. Now you are trying to review an movie on an 10 second trailer.

I read the review and I got a middle-of-the road opinion from haakon1.

It sounds like his biggest hangups are largely with trying to reconcile what will be available in the initial 4E release with his campaign. It's easy to slice out unwanted content (such as dragonborn or warlorks). It's much more difficult add missing content - bards, half-orcs, etc.

Additionally, there are some notable fluff changes implemented in 4E that do not jibe with previous additions - largely cosmology.

If you are a person running a "life campaign" as haakon1 is, the work required to retrofit the campaign (or the rules) to mesh with the concept can seem daunting. "Starting over" might not even be considered an option - "What!? Abondon all this hard work!?"

I'd be interested how many folks with reservations about 4E are "life campaigners" and simply do not want to convert. I've seen a number of people say "not my campaign, but I'll certainly give it a shot".

 

[haakon1]

And, at least for me, I can finally see running a Conan type game with 4e. Hit points are mostly fatigue, so of course they come back with second winds. Rarely are actual wounds dealt. Hit points just aren't wound points. And I know everyone would mention grazes in previous editions, but really, look at the fantasy literature you've read. How many grazes does the average hero suffer? Isn't he mostly just losing momentum, ground, etc. when a fight is going badly?

Good point. With the right explanations, these rules could be fairly cool and "realistic". I just read "Marked" as a psionic control or aggro mechanism (a la WOW), rather than "the guy is in your face, you need to deal with him".

Certainly on hit points, losing some "mojo" instead of getting a minor wound is one take people have had on HP, and perhaps works best in D&D. But I've usually viewed it as John McClain in "Die Hard" -- the PC's actually are getting stuck with arrows, zapped with spells, and slashed with swords, it's just that they are hard as nails and keep on fighting. If it's "mojo", Healing Surge makes sense. If it's "Die Hard", the rules in the older editions -- overnight rest or magic are the only things that can heal -- make more sense.

So if HP are "mojo", how would you describe a hit that doesn't do significant damage? Somebody grunting as they get kicked back by the swordsman or something, SF movie style?

 

[Bayonet_Chris]

Review

No offense, I generally try not to take too seriously any review by someone who has not actually played it. Honestly, it plays a lot differently than it reads. I had one of my players yesterday say "Man, I thought I would hate the minion rules, but they worked out really well." The wizard is not underpowered by any stretch of the imagination. Ours almost single-handedly turned the tide of a major encounter.

 

[haakon1]

And when Fighter 2 does the same thing, you suddenly become less pressed by fighter 1? And you can't decide which foe is more dangerous and focus on them?

"Mark erasing", while perhaps vital from a game balance perspective, really strains any attempt to narrate what's happening in combat. If a target of multiple marks could choose to allow a new mark to take effect or remain with the original mark, maybe, but as it reads now, anyone marked is basically a puppet of multiple markers, and there's no way to "sustain" a mark against someone else's attempts to override it with their own.

Interesting . . . the tactic just occured to me of "remarking" your own guys to help them escape. If the mage gets marked by an enemy, can a friendly fighter "remark him" with a pulled punch of some sort, so that he can get back without an AOO? We shall see. I could see allowing that under the logic that the friendly Fighter is "providing cover", or disallowing it as games lawyering.

I'm guessing "unmark friend" will be a power of some sort anyhow.

 

[haakon1]

The wizard is not underpowered by any stretch of the imagination. Ours almost single-handedly turned the tide of a major encounter.

I said "uppowered", not "underpowered", but re-reading my own spiel this morning, I had to do a double take on that because I read it as "underpowered" too.

All I meant was that the wizards has more spells and hp, closer to about a 3rd level Wizard in 3e (because of the Acid Arrow spell and lots of Magic Missiles and Sleeps).

The tradeoff of unlimited Magic Missiles but you have to roll to hit, I'd have to see in play, but it sounds mostly different rather than a change in power level. But if I had to guess, I'd guess it makes them slightly stronger in most situations, at least against multiple opponents/something that takes a while to go down.

As for the complaints that D&D was never meant to simulate anything, sure, it's not super realistic of anything, but I believe the rules were created to simulate -- to be like -- something outside the game. That's not necessarily real life -- though I remember commentary on range of bows being limited indoors compared to crossbows because bows need to follow an up curving trajectory to gain range, whereas crossbows are more direct fire weapons -- but real life was not irrelevant to thinking about rules and interpreting them. Certainly, how traps worked and how to detect them and secret doors could be quite realism based in AD&D. And rules like encumberance, while skewed fantastic, were meant to get at a real world idea that you can't take everything -- unlike in DDO, where you can have 7 swords if you want. And in general, I think AD&D rules were simulating fantasy literature and trying to be true to it.

Whereas I think 4e is true only to itself. It's sui generis -- generated from itself -- rather than trying to fit into some other narrative. So rule decisions like my call that X feat was OK because I've seen it illustrated in "Warfare in the Classical World", whereas Y feat is not OK because it couldn't actually be done wouldn't play into 4e design. Whether that sort of thinking was "meant" to be in earlier editions is a slightly different question -- I say yes, others say no. But I do get the impression is not there at all in 4e, or is way tuned down.

As for the idea that the main reason I'm hesitant on 4e is that I have a "life campaign", that's fair. I prefer a campaign where the characters I played and my friends played as kids, and the ones from Lake Geneva we learned about from "Rogues Gallery", and the ones from other died off campaigns, are all still in there somewhere, waiting to come out. Being able to tell a good friend he could use his first ever D&D character in my 3e campaign (after I reviewed it and saw it was not craziness), with the guy's Greyhawk history intact and no deep stat, item, or ability changes was really nice, even if it was only a cameo for a few sessions. There's just something magical about that, and not to get too sentimental, but also about the idea that though a player can die, their characters live on forever. One of the guys I've played and who was good friends with several of my current players did die, and it's awfully nice to able to have side references to the idea that his character is still alive somewhere far far away, with one of the PC's (of a guy who knew the player but joined the game later) buying a magic item he sold to the local magic store and being told about the old character by the NPC's who fondly remember him, that sort of thing. I guess it could be done in 4e, but the feel might be off, and it would certainly be a lot of work to convert. I hope WOTC does put out a conversion manual, though.