Confirmed: Magic items and summoned monster stats in PHB

[kennew142]

Alot of the discomfort people are having with 4e is that the game seems to be moving to explicitly or implicitly saying that the way that they play is not the right way to play.

Or alternately:

1) Alot of the discomfort people are having with 4e is that they seem to read into innocent comments made by the designers that the game seems to be moving to explicitly or implicitly saying that the way that they play is not the right way to play.

2)Alot of the discomfort people are having with 4e is that the game seems to be that the rules will now support other styles of gaming in addition to their own preferred style.

EDIT: I'm really not trying to pick on Celebrim here. The two posts I've responded to just happen to be his. I've seen this general tone of argument from numerous posters.

 

[Raven Crowking]

2)Alot of the discomfort people are having with 4e is that the game seems to be that the rules will now support other styles of gaming in addition to their own preferred style.

It seems very unlikely that, by reducing options, 4e will support more playstyles than 3e.

RC

 

[kennew142]

It seems very unlikely that, by reducing options, 4e will support more playstyles than 3e.

RC

No options will be reduced in 4e. Some options will not be PHB1.

 

[Celebrim]

I play alot of different games other than D&D. In addition to RPGs, I play alot of competitive games, and I'm generally pretty good at them. One of the games I'm pretty good at is Bloodbowl. When I was first learning the game, I got extremely frustrated with the rule that says, "If you do anything in your turn before moveing your turn track, you forfiet your turn." It seemed like a really really harsh penalty for what at first seems like pointless bookkeeping, and it seemed really frustrating how the guy who was teaching this first time player was such a stickler about it. It felt overly harsh, since as a highly experienced player playing a casual non-tournement sort of game, he didn't really need to penalize me in order to win. In short, it sucked, and I was angry by about the third time I lost a turn to that rule.

It took me probably a dozen games to realize just how completely fair and important that rule was. I had to deeply understand the game before I understood just how extremely important that minor bookkeeping was and why it absolutely had to be done before the game would work right. It wasn't long before I was that harsh highly experienced player punishing brand new players for not moving the turn track, even though I could see in thier eyes just how unfair they thought the whole thing was and was saying to myself, "I know exactly what you are feeling." One of the ways in which I learned my lesson was playing a game where we were casual about the turn track and seeing then, only by comparison what a mess it made of the game.

My point is not that keeping track of ammunition is nearly as important as keeping track of the turn in bloodbowl. It's not. My point is that there can in fact be things that at first seem tedious and pointless and which just seem like the game would be better off if you treated them more casually so you can get on with the story, when in fact even though it may be fun to ignore them its even more fun to consider them seriously.

 

[Lizard]

Hmm.

We've always run the game as "Players control their own damn menagerie!", including followers (in combat; OOC, they're the DMs little playthings...) One thing I did find irksome about 3x was the expectation that I'd prepare stats for whatever thing the PCs planned to summon, so if the burden is officially placed on them, good.

But if they don't give it Celestial Basket Weaving as a Trained skill, they will NEVER escape the Fiendish Wicker Trap! Bwahahaha!

 

[Lizard]

2)Alot of the discomfort people are having with 4e is that the game seems to be that the rules will now support other styles of gaming in addition to their own preferred style.

What have you seen which implies the scope of play will be broadened, rather than narrowed? At best, it can be argued that the simplification of the rules will make making changes to said rules to support different playstyles easier; I'm not sure how this is superior to a ruleset which is in itself broad enough to support multiple playstyles easily.

 

[Raven Crowking]

No options will be reduced in 4e.

Are you part of the design team?

Some options will not be PHB1.

Ah, now I see. So, I'll have the same level of options in five years, when the PHB V comes out? But I shouldn't complain that I don't have a whole game in the initial release?

Colour me confused, and unimpressed as well.


RC

 

[Mallus]

We must be reading different books...

We're reading the same texts different ways...

I suppose that these works were chosen because, with EN World's "no religion" policy, they cannot be discussed in detail.

Now you're ascribing motives, which is bad form.

I choose the Ramayana because at some point Rama fires two million or so arrows during a battle. I take this as an example of 'not tracking' ammo.

I choose the Old Testament because at some point, all creatures that exhibit sexual dimorphism get shoved into an ark.

In neither case is bean-counting important to the story. The minute details get glossed over. You're confusing the existence of certain details in a text with the importance of certain details in a text.

Funny, but the "I can't be bothered to count ammo/rations" crowd seldom qualifies this as "once I reach Justice League in medieval drag level".

That's not my experience. The people I game with recognize that the game changes a lot as character progress in level. Coincidentally, the 4e designers seem to noticed this too...

 

[Wormwood]

My point is that there can in fact be things that at first seem tedious and pointless and which just seem like the game would be better off if you treated them more casually so you can get on with the story . . .

I see your point, but in my experience these things *were* important and necessary at first. Now that I'm older and more experienced, I no longer believe they are.

Now I have different play priorities, and I prefer to route around that which doesn't contribute to them.

 

[Celebrim]

EDIT: I'm really not trying to pick on Celebrim here. The two posts I've responded to just happen to be his. I've seen this general tone of argument from numerous posters.

No, by all means, 'pick on' me. If you must make a strong argument using someone as an example, pick me, because I want take it personally and go whining to the moderators about how harsh and cruel kennew142 is merely because he disagrees with me strongly and passionately.

In fact, I'll see it as a sign of respect. The posters I don't respond to are the ones who in the long run are making the least interesting and least well considered statements. I don't want to have a discussion with someone who is an idiot, and so I don't. The fact that you want to address me specifically is interpretted to me to mean, at worst, "Even though I think you are being an idiot, I don't think you are hopelessly so.", which is as much as you can really expect from someone that is passionately disagreeing with you.

Alot of the discomfort people are having with 4e is that they seem to read into innocent comments made by the designers that the game seems to be moving to explicitly or implicitly saying that the way that they play is not the right way to play.

"We removed X because it's not fun", is not an 'innocent' comment. We gotten alot of that from the 4e designers, and it is no more 'innocent' than my statements implying things like, 'If you don't think X is fun, it is because you don't really know what fun is. You like what you know, but you don't know what you like.'

2)Alot of the discomfort people are having with 4e is that the game seems to be that the rules will now support other styles of gaming in addition to their own preferred style.

And I agree with RC here, it seems unlikely that the game will support more playstyles by removing more options from the game. There has been a consistant pattern to the design philosophy of 4E where if something seems like a problem, the solution has been to just remove it. And as I've been repeatedly saying, it is alot easier to ignore rules and remove rules and remove subsystems you don't like from play, than it is to put all that stuff back in if you do like them. So for example, one of the selling points of 4E is that the monster stat blocks are streamlined to just the things that you need to run combats. Which is fine if the play style you prefer only has monsters doing things in combat. But if you don't prefer that playstyle, then it is much harder to add back in what has been taken out, than it would be to ignore any extra rules and abilities that the monster has that you don't need.