Confessions of a 4E Detractor

[freyar]

People have debated the Encounter Level rules ever since 2001 or so, and whether something SHOULD be a given CR, or whether multiple melee creatures presented the same encounter strength as multiple magic-based creatures, ad infinitum. The 3E Rules forum was rife with it for years, with the end result being a lot of variant systems (Wulf Ratbane's EL rules being quite popular) and a lot of people (myself included) just saying, "eyeball it" instead of even trying to make a system work. That wasn't disingenuous, it was quite true.

General discussion/debate of EL/CR, like you mention, is something I've seen, but claiming that the rules said you could only give EL1 encounters to a party of 1st level characters? Then claiming the rules said 4 orcs are an automatic TPK of that same party? What I quoted seemed a long way from the kind of discussions I've seemed here and also seemed pretty simplistic coming from one of the more esteemed (rightly so) designers/developers of the 3e era. That's why it seemed disingenuous to me. Of course, we can agree to differ.

 

[CleverNickName]

I've never really worried about ELs and CRs, myself. I placed monsters that were fitting to the story and the setting, and left it up to the players to decide if their characters could handle the monster or not. If the encounter got to be too much for them, they would retreat and come back later with reinforcements. As long as I wasn't a jerk about it (making it impossible to escape, making the monsters hunt the party down, etc.), there usually wasn't a problem.

Nice and easy.

 

[Jhaelen]

As long as I wasn't a jerk about it (making it impossible to escape, making the monsters hunt the party down, etc.), there usually wasn't a problem.

Yeah, but that's right where the problem is!

About 5% of the encounters I use have an EL 5 or higher than the party's effective level, iow, exactly as recommended in the DMG.

They managed to beat such an encounter once, had (almost) a tpk twice and have been able to get away with minimal losses the rest of the time.

The encounter they were able to beat was with Rot Reavers and their undead army.

The two (almost) tpk encounters were against mummies (mostly due to their paralyze ability) and (more recently) voidmind werebears (acid/mind blast and grappling tentacle).

As soon as monsters have powers that prevent the pcs from getting away, they're in big trouble. And as we continue to progress through the levels these powers become more widespread. Looking at CR 13+ creatures, almost every one of them has something of that kind.

This has nothing to do with being a jerk, it's just how monsters/powers work. It's not always possible to give the pcs fair warning and the margin for error gets ever smaller. Realizing they are in over the heads often means it's already too late to do something about it.

 

[Hussar]

Can I ask if you read all the Design & Development articles? I'm not being snarky, just curious. Because in this one, Mike Mearls gave an extremely abbreviated list of what he called "the possibilities" for encounters for first level characters in the 3e rules:


(Now, I wasn't around the game in 2000, but weren't there kobolds?) He then went on to say


like the RAW told you 1st level characters weren't allowed to face an EL2 encounter.

Were there honestly people who debated this here back when 3e came out? Or ever? Because this was one thing that turned me off WotC's 4e PR campaign -- what seemed like blatant disingenuity about the 3e rules. I'm personally on the fence about the 4e rules, but it really did seem like they had a deliberate smear campaign against the 3e ruleset.

But, you leave off the next bit of his article:

None of these really excited me. Four goblins on the map might be fun, but a fighter with the Cleave feat put that thought to bed. I wanted Keep on the Borderlands and the moat house from Village of Hommlet. My dungeons felt boring because I couldn’t fit many monsters into each room.

Admittedly, 3rd Edition brought some sense and standardization to encounters that other editions glossed over, but that didn’t change a simple fact—I wanted lots of humanoids running around my dungeon rooms, and 3rd Edition said I could do that only if I wanted a TPK.

He's specifically pointing to what he wants - many, many monsters on the map at the same time. 20 kobolds in a room facing off with a 1st level party. Which is what you got in Keep on the Borderlands. And, you cannot do that in 3e. It just doesn't work. You either mop the floor with the PC's or they cakewalk the encounter.

This has been debated ad nauseum on the boards actually. It was talked about all the time. I've seen and participated in numerous threads talking about CR and EL and encounter design.

Heck, I just watched an entire campaign where the DM never did figure this out. He kept throwing large encounters at us, using the EL system, and then we'd blow the baddies off the map with barely a scratch.

And, let's face it, this is Mike Mearls. He has enough modules under his belt, modules that are generally very highly regarded at that, to be able to have some credibility in his claims.

That's what I'm talking about. These are elements that had been bashed about on boards for years. But, when WOTC says them, suddenly they're bashing the game?

 

[CleverNickName]

This has nothing to do with being a jerk, it's just how monsters/powers work. It's not always possible to give the pcs fair warning and the margin for error gets ever smaller. Realizing they are in over the heads often means it's already too late to do something about it.

True; I didn't mean to imply that only a jerk would TPK his game. Simply because something has never happened at my table, does not prove it isn't a problem.

My players are pretty resourceful when it comes to getting out of hot water...more than most, I daresay. They are the sort who marks walls with chalk as they explore, maps everything carefully, doubles back to make sure their exit is clear, and always keeps strange and relatively inexpensive gadgets on hand (robes of useful items, decks of illusion, potions of expeditious retreat, dust of disappearance...not to mention smokesticks, wands of deeper darkness, dust of tracelessness...) I guess that over the years, my players have gotten accustomed to running for their lives.

 

[freyar]

He's specifically pointing to what he wants - many, many monsters on the map at the same time. 20 kobolds in a room facing off with a 1st level party. Which is what you got in Keep on the Borderlands. And, you cannot do that in 3e. It just doesn't work. You either mop the floor with the PC's or they cakewalk the encounter.

This has been debated ad nauseum on the boards actually. It was talked about all the time. I've seen and participated in numerous threads talking about CR and EL and encounter design.

Heck, I just watched an entire campaign where the DM never did figure this out. He kept throwing large encounters at us, using the EL system, and then we'd blow the baddies off the map with barely a scratch.

And, let's face it, this is Mike Mearls. He has enough modules under his belt, modules that are generally very highly regarded at that, to be able to have some credibility in his claims.

That's what I'm talking about. These are elements that had been bashed about on boards for years. But, when WOTC says them, suddenly they're bashing the game?

Look, I think Mearls has plenty of credibility, too, and I generally find him to be very thoughtful about RPGs, etc. And I agree about the large encounters and general wonkiness of some parts of CR/EL. However, I find it a bit misleading to set up the argument by claiming that there were only 5 allowable monster encounters for 1st level characters in 3e (I mean, there aren't even kobolds on the list). It's certainly not a claim I would expect from someone I consider one of the top RPG experts. Am I making the distinction I see clear? If he wanted to say that large fights work better in 4e, I have no problem, but claiming first that 3e only allowed 5 different encounters at first level seems like setting up a strawman.

In any event, we've probably spent enough time on this subject, since it wasn't really a big deal. But this is one instance among several that felt to me like a bit of a smear campaign, so I wanted to mention it. And I do apologize if I came off a little confrontational.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Mike Mearls did not say "Only the following possibilities" my reading of the quote and the original article interperted the subsquent list as a sample of the possiblities and viewed that way it is an accurate statement.

The rules do not present 15 kobolds and a goblin as a possibility (at least not in 3.0/3.5).

 

[Steely Dan]

The rules do not present 15 kobolds and a goblin as a possibility (at least not in 3.0/3.5).

Yeah, but I've been using minions for years, just now they're "official".

 

[dmccoy1693]

Is 4E "teh best version evar!!!!!111"? Nope.
Does that make it the worst? Nope.
Is there anything else to say on the matter? Nope.

sums up my feelings quite nicely. I have my edition of choice (Pathfinder) and I find I care about 4E as much as I care about GURPS or Fudge or whatever other system I don't play: I just don't care.

I have found it interesting that the change in the market has had a significant impact on my internet habits. I very rarely drop by Wizards anymore, and even my time here on EN has gone down dramatically.

Ditto this. There's a reason why my Paizo post count is about double my ENWorld post count, despite signing up for a paizo account after my ENWorld account.

 

[CleverNickName]

I was about to post a long and exhausting rant over in the D&D Next forum about the upcoming release (specifically, I was about to respond in a corrosive manner to an already highly-corrosive post that someone had written). I realized that my writing was all starting to look familiar. Then I remembered this post that I wrote back in 2008, not long after the release of 4th Edition.

As Umbran said, perspective is sometimes hard to get when one keeps one's nose to the monitor.

Sorry about the thread necromancy. Happy New Year, everyone.