Blog post on the feel of D&D (marmell, reynolds et all)

[Wolfspider]

Y'know, I love that book, but it has its own artificial restrictions.

Personally I think the 4E approaches dovetails nicely with it.

BoIM - Blinding Strike comes with penalties to success

4E - But Once a Day or so Random the Rogue can pull it off without any penalties whatsoever.

As long as you make certain BoIM is balanced against the basic math of the system it should be a perfectly all right combination.

It makes more sense to me that a difficult maneuver like Blinding Strike would be more difficult to do--meaning that there are penalties to hit--than it does that a rogue would only be able to try the maneuver once a day.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

This works great in a game like My Life With Master, which is fundamentally narrativist, and so the only thing that matters is the outcome. However, in D&D the whole point is the combat, and so that level of abstraction regarding fancy moves is something that is neither desirable nor likely to survive for more than five minutes of play.

Sure, which is why D&D moved away from the 1st edition rules to a system that attempted to model more and more specifics (with the 2nd Ed Option books as the ultimate expression of this).

Now 4E has moved to a more story-based combat, where the action choice matters to the story and the game rules give players the ability to do pretty much any combat action.

I am stunned when some people say that 4E is restrictive.

 

[Fifth Element]

For me... dropping half-orcs, gnomes, assassins and monks is pretty much a 'jumped the shark' moment for the game. Adding in several new races and classes that either don't have any history with D&D or debated fairly late into the 3E cycle just puts another shark under Fonzie in that jump...

So 2E basically jumped the shark then, other than gnomes. Then 3E unjumped the shark, I guess. And I'm not sure about dragonborn, but tieflings have been in D&D for many years now.

What would the game be if we never added anything new anyway?

 

[Nebulous]

DM:"You did? Oh. Uh. I guess I'll have him make a save vs. Petrification."
Player:"Petrification? Wouldn't it be more like Poison? Foreign substance in the body?" (The player knows the save vs. Poison is bad for this foe's class. Next time he pulls this stunt on a foe with a bad Petrification save, he'll argue for that.)
DM:"Okay, fine." (rolls) "He failed. He's blind for a round."
Player:"Only one? I'd think it'd be at least 1d4."

Oh, man, that made me laugh at first, and then it made me mad! Exactly the sort of argument i've heard before. Well, not mad really, it just brought back memories of frustration with argumentative people.

 

[Lizard]

And if a lot more of their customer's feel the opposite? Then what? How are they supposed to please 100% of the customer base?

Ideally, they please enough old customers and attract enough new customers to equal or exceed the 3e playbase. Then the game is a success. If they don't, it isn't. Pretty simple, really.

 

[eleran]

Ideally, they please enough old customers and attract enough new customers to equal or exceed the 3e playbase. Then the game is a success. If they don't, it isn't. Pretty simple, really.

I don't think it is quite so simplistic.


But, as for me, I haven't bought a 3e product in about 4 years, except Dungeon Tiles. So, they have succeeded in bringing me back to the fold. I guess I cancel you out.

 

[AllisterH]

I like the way he implimented combat maneuvers for 3rd edition. They are fun and seem balanced to me in practice.

I don't like what I've seen of the way such maneuvers are implimented in 4th edition. They seem artificially and illogically limited.

What's with the "Er"?

If anyone "knows" how to balance combat manoeuvers in D&D, it would be Mearls. You yourself stated you liked how he did it in 3E but then you're not giving him the benefit of the doubt that he knows what's he's doing now.

Personally, I do think it is somewhat a different paradigm that manoeuvers can be limited to once per day but for me, it's just thinking a different way (once per day is basically the "Hail Mary" pass that actually works. Or the roundhouse kick that while quite powerful never gets used)

I can see where people think a system which states "Powerful manoeuver has penalties/specific situations" might seem more attractive and realistic but if the end-point is said manoeuver only gets used once per day (or less), then to me, simply stating "powerful manoeuver = once per day" works for me.

I guess for me personally, "game balance" is a good enough reason.

 

[BryonD]

What would the game be if we never added anything new anyway?

The same.

Which is a lot better than if you add one good thing and one bad thing.

 

[eleran]

The same.

Yeah, spelled S-T-A-L-E

 

[Scarbonac]

You don't like it, that's fine, but they haven't been in all versions and they aren't universally regarded as "what makes it D&D". Removing them does not move the game significantly away from "what it is", which is what the original and appropriate interpretation of "jumping the shark" would be.

I think you actually want to talk to arkady.