Conditions
I hope this article will “stun” the audience. Okay, bad puns aside, along with the powers that carry them, conditions have become a cornerstone of the new edition. Almost every major attack most characters do carries some rider effect that hinders their enemies. Let us take a look it this system, but first we begin with a history lesson.
Conditions in 3rd Edition
While there were more conditions in 3rd edition than there are now, they tended to be seen with less frequency. Generally spellcasters got most of the conditions, with fighter types left with combat maneuvers like tripping to get their conditions in.
Spellcaster conditions tended to get stronger as the levels increased. At first level you could daze someone for a 1 round. By 15th you could stun an opponent for the entire fight. That’s an important note, not only did the conditions get stronger, but they also got longer. This was the hallmark of high level casters. Why bother with damage when you could simply take a monster out of the fight? Of course, the ultimate condition was death, and so “save or dies” played a large part in high level play. As a counter to this, many monsters and magic items provided immunities to these conditions. The fight came down to figuring out what blanket protections the enemy didn’t have, and destroying them.
For fighter types, combat maneuvers treaded a fine line between “too hard to use” and “too good to pass up”. The trip fighter is a common example. A general fighter didn’t have a lot of use for trip. The possible advantages of knocking someone prone didn’t usually outweigh the loss of attacks. However, give the fighter some tripping feats and a good tripping weapon, and suddenly every attack from the fighter was a trip attack. In this sense, combat maneuvers were not options, they were builds. You didn’t make a fighter that tripped once in a while, you made a tripping fighter, a disarming fighter, a bullrushing fighter, etc.
Against the players, the monsters had a host of abilities that did conditions on their own. Many required alteration in player stats, such as level draining. Others like stunning would knock them out of the fight completely. Conditions were something to be truly feared, as they often meant complete loss in a fight.
The New Mantra of 4th edition
If the condition system had a mantra, I think it would be this: “Conditions are easily applied, short lasting, and hindering…not debilitating.”
While prone used to give a massive -4 to attack and AC, now it provides -2. Further, conditions do not compound like they used to, a character that is prone and flanked has no more penalties than if he was simply prone.
However, characters are no longer forced to give up attacks or take special actions to perform conditions. You get your damage and your condition cake as well. The conditions have been designed so that there penalties are simply to apply, and no recalculation of a creature’s stats is every required. However, with the number of conditions to apply, bookmarking has greatly increased in most fights.
The last major change about conditions is that they tend to last a very short time in the fight. Fights are generally 6+ more rounds, and conditions will often last 1 or 2 of those. This increases the dynamic nature of combat, one moment the fighter is prone, the next he’s knocking someone back 3 squares, etc. The phenomenon continues into high levels. While the conditions do get stronger (dazed replaced with stun, slow replaced with immobilize) they don’t get longer, which keeps the dynamic effect.
The “Realism” of Conditions
One thing about conditions in 3rd edition, especially the fighter ones, is that there effectiveness was heavily dependent on what you were fighting. A fighter could grapple a small creature and render it nigh helpless, while they had no chance in Hades to trip a storm giant, etc. This made a lot of sense flavorwise, though it did mean that many combat techniques became less and less useful at higher levels, which tended to have a plethora of “big” monsters.
In 4e, this is a big change. A fighter can trip a small Halfling or a Titan with almost equal ease, and this has caused a lot of concern in the community that the realism is gone. I can sympathize with this, while the titan might have a slightly higher fort defense than an equivalent level Halfling warrior, there’s not that big a difference to the fighter’s ability to trip. However, I will counter with this argument, for a long long time now players have gotten comfortable with the fact that a fighter carrying a piece of metal about the equivalent size to a toothpick when compared to the titan is able to consistently kill him with it. If we can accept that, is the tripping part so out there? Can’t we believe that a fighter’s magic weapon releases a force that magnifies the fighter’s strength, giving him the ability to trip? Or that the fighter cuts the titan in a vulnerable spot on his leg and knocks him down, etc. Ultimately I think the realism of conditions is a facet of the player’s ability to imagine and describe his actions, and imagination is a lot of what this game is about.
The Final Word….Is the 4e Condition System Better?
I think everyone can agree that the condition system in 4e is radically different than 3e’s, but the ultimate question….is it better?
People are going to have varying opinions on that, but for the most part, my answer is yes. As a player, I don’t like it when my character is out of an entire combat. As a player, I enjoy getting to daze a guy, immobilize him, or knock him prone once in a while.
I do think 4e went overboard on the frequency of its conditions. I’m fine with fighters knocking a guy prone, but when its prone, next round daze, next round immobilize, etc it starts to stretch any specialness conditions have and greatly increases the amount of bookkeeping required by the Dm. In that light, I’d prefer to see more future powers that do more damage and give more general buffs than ones that keep slapping on conditions.
Overall though, I think the new condition system produces more dynamic combats, allows players to participate in more combats and for longer, and limits some of the high level problems 3rd edition saw. In that light I think it is a solid step forward in game design.
I hope this article will “stun” the audience. Okay, bad puns aside, along with the powers that carry them, conditions have become a cornerstone of the new edition. Almost every major attack most characters do carries some rider effect that hinders their enemies. Let us take a look it this system, but first we begin with a history lesson.
Conditions in 3rd Edition
While there were more conditions in 3rd edition than there are now, they tended to be seen with less frequency. Generally spellcasters got most of the conditions, with fighter types left with combat maneuvers like tripping to get their conditions in.
Spellcaster conditions tended to get stronger as the levels increased. At first level you could daze someone for a 1 round. By 15th you could stun an opponent for the entire fight. That’s an important note, not only did the conditions get stronger, but they also got longer. This was the hallmark of high level casters. Why bother with damage when you could simply take a monster out of the fight? Of course, the ultimate condition was death, and so “save or dies” played a large part in high level play. As a counter to this, many monsters and magic items provided immunities to these conditions. The fight came down to figuring out what blanket protections the enemy didn’t have, and destroying them.
For fighter types, combat maneuvers treaded a fine line between “too hard to use” and “too good to pass up”. The trip fighter is a common example. A general fighter didn’t have a lot of use for trip. The possible advantages of knocking someone prone didn’t usually outweigh the loss of attacks. However, give the fighter some tripping feats and a good tripping weapon, and suddenly every attack from the fighter was a trip attack. In this sense, combat maneuvers were not options, they were builds. You didn’t make a fighter that tripped once in a while, you made a tripping fighter, a disarming fighter, a bullrushing fighter, etc.
Against the players, the monsters had a host of abilities that did conditions on their own. Many required alteration in player stats, such as level draining. Others like stunning would knock them out of the fight completely. Conditions were something to be truly feared, as they often meant complete loss in a fight.
The New Mantra of 4th edition
If the condition system had a mantra, I think it would be this: “Conditions are easily applied, short lasting, and hindering…not debilitating.”
While prone used to give a massive -4 to attack and AC, now it provides -2. Further, conditions do not compound like they used to, a character that is prone and flanked has no more penalties than if he was simply prone.
However, characters are no longer forced to give up attacks or take special actions to perform conditions. You get your damage and your condition cake as well. The conditions have been designed so that there penalties are simply to apply, and no recalculation of a creature’s stats is every required. However, with the number of conditions to apply, bookmarking has greatly increased in most fights.
The last major change about conditions is that they tend to last a very short time in the fight. Fights are generally 6+ more rounds, and conditions will often last 1 or 2 of those. This increases the dynamic nature of combat, one moment the fighter is prone, the next he’s knocking someone back 3 squares, etc. The phenomenon continues into high levels. While the conditions do get stronger (dazed replaced with stun, slow replaced with immobilize) they don’t get longer, which keeps the dynamic effect.
The “Realism” of Conditions
One thing about conditions in 3rd edition, especially the fighter ones, is that there effectiveness was heavily dependent on what you were fighting. A fighter could grapple a small creature and render it nigh helpless, while they had no chance in Hades to trip a storm giant, etc. This made a lot of sense flavorwise, though it did mean that many combat techniques became less and less useful at higher levels, which tended to have a plethora of “big” monsters.
In 4e, this is a big change. A fighter can trip a small Halfling or a Titan with almost equal ease, and this has caused a lot of concern in the community that the realism is gone. I can sympathize with this, while the titan might have a slightly higher fort defense than an equivalent level Halfling warrior, there’s not that big a difference to the fighter’s ability to trip. However, I will counter with this argument, for a long long time now players have gotten comfortable with the fact that a fighter carrying a piece of metal about the equivalent size to a toothpick when compared to the titan is able to consistently kill him with it. If we can accept that, is the tripping part so out there? Can’t we believe that a fighter’s magic weapon releases a force that magnifies the fighter’s strength, giving him the ability to trip? Or that the fighter cuts the titan in a vulnerable spot on his leg and knocks him down, etc. Ultimately I think the realism of conditions is a facet of the player’s ability to imagine and describe his actions, and imagination is a lot of what this game is about.
The Final Word….Is the 4e Condition System Better?
I think everyone can agree that the condition system in 4e is radically different than 3e’s, but the ultimate question….is it better?
People are going to have varying opinions on that, but for the most part, my answer is yes. As a player, I don’t like it when my character is out of an entire combat. As a player, I enjoy getting to daze a guy, immobilize him, or knock him prone once in a while.
I do think 4e went overboard on the frequency of its conditions. I’m fine with fighters knocking a guy prone, but when its prone, next round daze, next round immobilize, etc it starts to stretch any specialness conditions have and greatly increases the amount of bookkeeping required by the Dm. In that light, I’d prefer to see more future powers that do more damage and give more general buffs than ones that keep slapping on conditions.
Overall though, I think the new condition system produces more dynamic combats, allows players to participate in more combats and for longer, and limits some of the high level problems 3rd edition saw. In that light I think it is a solid step forward in game design.
