Defenses and To Hits for Your Party ~ Averages

[Nemesis Destiny]

D&D rule .001: If a DM wants to kill your character, your character will die. No amount of optimization will save it.

Tacos or pizza might.

Oh, believe me, I know. I'm no n00b (despite what my postcount might indicate). Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, both as player and DM.

There is a difference between a DM that likes bloody battles and one out gunning for your character. I was referring to the former.

And if it were me DMing, no amount of tacos could save you.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Man, I wish my players would even just mention a house rule once in a while. (I know, I know, 'be careful what ya wish for.') As it is, my group is either too polite to float any opinion at all, or they don't understand the game math, or they're complacent with its flaws like you. Probably, it's a combination of all three.

I don't see it as 'complacency', I just see it as a measured calculation of cost/benefit. I could easily institute house rules, but there's overhead involved. The question I ask myself is always whether or not the price is worth it. I once ran a heavily house ruled 2e campaign. It was a lot of extra work. At the end I concluded that while the players were certainly OK with it that the house rules really weren't all that central to making it a fun campaign. Kinda seeing the same thing with 4e in general. Just my own opinion of course, wasn't trying to put down anyone for house ruling, just not my cup of tea.

Other than that though, nobody even comments on my house rules. I'd probably hear more groaning if my rules made things more difficult, but overall they make players' lives easier. Which I guess is the big secret of house rules being accepted by players: use carrots, not sticks.

Sure, and if my players came in with some house rules they really wanted to use I'd be open to it. If they complained a bunch about a feature of the game I'd make up a house rule to address it too. OTOH my feeling has always been that most house rules are kind of a burden on players. They have to understand not just the game, but the house rules and their effect on this specific game. When the house rules are made on core elements of the game it can be a pain for them.

Okay, I know I've told you this like a dozen times on other occasions but I'll say it again: the real issue really is not optimizers. Believe me, the serious optimizer in my group hasn't said a word about 'feat taxes.' Like you, he just accepts that some feats are stupidly good compared to similar feats, and he takes them.

The real issue is that some of us simply want the game to be played by the design tenets that we like, the design tenets that the devs promised us: that no one option should be stupidly good compared to other similar options. That nobody should have to take any specific feats for the game to play as intended. The devs delivered on their promise with regards to 95% of the game, which is why 4e is my favored edition. It's just that last 5% that irks amateur devs like me [and at least one professional dev].

I don't see any good reason to not fix the math holes with true errata, especially in an edition where errata is such an accepted part of the game. Even if the "we fixed it wih feats so that all players can take advantage" line is true, it can be fixed with errata at the same time. (Hint: feat bonuses don't stack!) I've accepted that it's never going to be truly officially fixed, or even widely officially recognized--until 5e gets announced, possibly, so they can use the math hole problem as a selling point for 5e--but I'll always think of Expertise & Family as feat taxes.

Well, I understand where you're coming from. I'm just rather pragmatic about it all I guess. The game is pretty good. Sure there are some little nitty issues, but they don't seem to present any huge problems that I can see. Back in my earlier days I might have been less patient with it, but I've just gotten to a point where I just want to run a game. If I really get an itch I can write my own system.

I think the reason that deep numeric changes are not going to come to 4e via errata is just that they ARE deep changes. They invalidate a lot of existing material and/or significantly change the balance of things. The devs are loathe to go in and start doing surgery. The knock-on effects can be long lasting and far reaching. Providing a feat or two which provides 95% of the same benefit at minimal cost just makes more sense. Sure, it means that the absolute purity of the "no feat is required" is tarnished a bit. Again it is just a cost/benefit calculation they need to make as the custodians of the game. Obviously opinions will differ on those judgment calls and I'm not claiming anyone is wrong to feel like changes should be made. I think though the devs have probably thought about this a bunch and I'm fairly comfortable with their conclusions.

In the sense of "oh boy, a better 4e than 4e" I'll be happy with 5e coming along, when and if it ever does. OTOH I'm not really eager to have to pick up another new system. This one works well, I'll be happy with it for many years.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

It's funny, because one of the reasons my group is even playing 4e right now is because one of us, also a DM, was tired of all the house rules and bloat that accompanied our 3.x game. We, at that point, felt we needed to houserule that monstrosity of a system in order to be happy with it. I was actually dead set against 4e, and was pushing for Pathfinder, while another of us wanted E6.

This player was just tired of all the overhead of maintaining these houserules, and fumbling through 30 books to find what he was looking for. I suspect he was in the same boat as AbdulAlhazred here. Now, of course, thanks to two years of bad Dragon articles and some overly cautious initial design, we have nearly the same thing.

I think that the lesson to take away from all this is that the game system need only be as complicated as you want to make it.

4th edition certainly helps ease this burden by putting most of the fiddly rules bits into individual little packets that you only need to know if you have an option that uses it, but even so, I think we could use less bloat. It's unfortunate that it took the designers two years to strike a balance in the design that resulted in the Essentials design philosophy.

I actually look forward to seeing what 5e is going to be all about, I just hope that they don't change things just for the sake of changing them. I have a feeling that there will be a lot of pressure on them to do so, if only to maintain a minimum level of version incompatibility. Who knows, it might be like the difference between 1st to 2nd edition, but I won't hold my breath.

 

[Herschel]

They great thing about playing with people who aren't trying to abuse the rules is if I/anyone forgets a bit of errata it's no big deal.