Another Grognard Reviews 4e based on KotS

[Fifth Element]

While your post is generally good, Treebore, a couple of things:

Obviously a large number of 3E players and GM's secretly disliked/hated 3E and are now anxiously waiting to play the new game on the block.

This is an unfair generalization. For most people, what they disliked (not hated) about 3E was not secret. ENWorld has been full of threads of people discussing their issues with 3E, long before the announcement of 4E. I have been playing 3E for 8 years despite its flaws, because I still felt it was the best game for me.

4E caters to the "new crowd". They are the ones who will like 4E, because its new. Its different. It does things differently.

This, along with the last sentence I quoted above, implies that those excited about playing 4E are excited only because it's new, that they would play any new version of D&D just because it's new. This is also an unfair generalization. While I'm sure it applies to some, I for one am excited about 4E because of many of the specific changes they have made, not simply because there are changes.

So while your post has a "play what you want" vibe, your comments about those who choose to play 4E seem rather backhanded. Hopefully that was not the intent.

 

[DonAdam]

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.

What Dacileva said is quite good.

I would also add:

1) "Rounding error." Its a way to approximate facing or attention with substantially less homework to do. You sacrifice some possibilities for playability, in the same way that we don't have the possibility of heroes going down in one shot.

2) I don't think it would break the system if you allowed multiple marks and said that the marked creature had to attack any one of the pressing creatures. I mean, he's already extra pressed by suffering multiple attacks a round.

3) As long as you don't have multiple paladins or wussy running away or ranged paladins, I also don't think it would be very problematic to just let multiple marks be there, as long as players really try to press the creature instead of abusing it.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

But of course, KotS only offers sufficient preview material for praising 4e.

 

[Psion]

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

Incorrect. Simulationism is not (necessarily) about realism or emulation. It's about treating the game as a functional model of a world and making that a central goal of the rules. 3e and before DID feature this approach in large measure.

Of course, this is disjoint from what Haakon was saying, and I would agree with you that D&D has carved out its own niche long ago. Though I would agree with Haakon that it has drifted even further from its roots since then.

 

[BryonD]

No, you're missing the general anti-4E point: there is only one way to imagine the in-game effect of any particular rules mechanic.

Is this a lesson in that open-mindedness you were teasing me about yesterday?

 

[AllisterH]

Incorrect. Simulationism is not (necessarily) about realism or emulation. It's about treating the game as a functional model of a world and making that a central goal of the rules. 3e and before DID feature this approach in large measure.

.

Er, you want to explain magical healing/natural healing with regard to HP in 1e-3.x is a good functional model of the world

 

[Henry]

But of course, KotS only offers sufficient preview material for praising 4e.

You said it better than I did.

 

[ThirdWizard]

But of course, KotS only offers sufficient preview material for praising 4e.

Finally, someone brings a balanced opinion to the conversation!

 

[BryonD]

Er, you want to explain magical healing/natural healing with regard to HP in 1e-3.x is a good functional model of the world

A world <> "the" world

And a long established abstraction that works for one thing doesn't remotely harm the point.

 

[mmadsen]

You admit that people can model these powers as being mundane. That's all you need.

"Can" and "need" are such binary terms for something that isn't simply true or false. Yes, you can come up with a convoluted explanation for all kinds of strangeness in D&D, but that doesn't mean that the game couldn't be better without that strangeness.

All of this stuff is make-believe

Of course it is. That doesn't mean that any model is as good as any other, just because they're all make-believe.