Does 4e limit the scope of campaigns?

[korjik]

Better than than giving players unrealistic expectations of what the game can do, I think. Or trying to build a game that is all things to all people.

I don't think there's any game out there that will do everything well. Part of the nature of a set of rules is that those rules are limiting, and that's okay. But then, I'd prefer to see a gaming culture that is less about finding your own perfect game, and sticking only to that, and instead finding the good parts of many games, and swapping between them as you wish.

I understand that, from a business perspective, this is hard on the publishers - it implies having less depth spread over wider areas.

I dont think that there was any aspect of unrealistic expectations with what people wanted from 4e. Most prior editions of D&D were pretty generic fantasy. Vancian magic did put in certain restrictions, but with the immense number of spells you could get, that was not much of a limitation.

The biggest dissapointment for me was that we went from a very wide set of character options to a very narrow set of character options. You get to pick one of 4 powers, or one of 2 if you are certain classes and want to have at least a little optimizing. You MUST pick a paragon path at tenth level. You MUST pick an epic destiny at 20th level.

The 'right out of the box' play is so limited that it turned me off.

It is my view that if they had fixed 3ed instead of tossing it, the game would have been much better.

 

[Rechan]

The issue with Cthulhu-esque horror is that everyone is supposed to run away from the monsters, not kick their asses. Which makes having extravagant rules for monster-ass-kicking kind of irrelevant.

The problem here is that Cthulu adventures assume that the PCs aren't heroes. That the PCs neither fight back, nor have an effective means of doing so even if they wanted to. That they are common joes who are getting their sanity sipped by something Out There. Lovecraftian protagonists either die or go insane.

In D&D you kick a monster's ass with magic swords.

The only way to get this effect in 4e, the only way to get it in 3e (or any series before that), was to put a monster in front of the PCs that they have no way to kill: i.e. one that's far beyond their level, or one that has resistances the PCs cannot puncture (2e's "+3 weapon required to damage" monsters).

D&D is not suited for that.

 

[Umbran]

I dont think that there was any aspect of unrealistic expectations with what people wanted from 4e.

I am not talking about what WotC expected people wanted from 4e. I'm talking about WotC setting expectations on what 4e actually is.

It is my view that if they had fixed 3ed instead of tossing it, the game would have been much better.

Perhaps. But also moot. There's only so much to be gained from retrospective "it would have been better if they had done X". It isn't like we can make then go back and do it over. I would prefer to talk about what is best to do going forward, given the games we have at hand.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The problem here is that Cthulu adventures assume that the PCs aren't heroes. That the PCs don't fight back. That they are common joes who are getting their sanity sipped by something Out There.

The only way to get this effect in 4e, the only way to get it in 3e (or any series before that), was to put a monster in front of the PCs that they have no way to kill: i.e. one that's far beyond their level.

D&D is not suited for that.

Yes, I think that's a good characterization. I mean, you can run D&D with monsters the PCs can't beat, but that's kinda not the point or the focus of D&D.

---

Once again, I am reminded of Torg. The game doesn't have stuff like levels or CR to gauge power, but still, the general assumption will be that the players survive most combats and will engage in combat. There are even realms where you are specifically rewarded for engaging an enemy physically, and there are realms where "Action" is a world law.

But there is also a realm, Orrorsh, where you play the same guys that run around gun-toting, spell-slinging or super-powered in other realms, and you're basically playing Call of Cthhulhu. All the world laws in Orrorsh work to your disadvantage and give the monsters benefits. The only way to really beat the "big bad" are investations and research - and then you might have a (fair) chance in the straight up fight..

Transplanted to D&D, you'd need a new layer of rules that protects the monsters and hurt the PCs. (It's not enough to just say that the monster(s) won't die, it is important to make the monster(s) dangerous all the time.) This is, of course, outside of the scope of Core D&D. Torg literally tries (and manages) to cover all kinds of genres, D&D is "just" a fantasy game (and what it loses in breadth it gains in detail.)

 

[Rechan]

Yes. I think because of the focus on combat powers and roles, characters lose a bit of that non-combat focus present in other editions of the game.

I also don't even get this whole discussion. 4e, in terms of the system, is not very different than 3e. 9/10ths of the book consists of Combat-focused things.

For instance, let's take social skills. 3e had: Bluff, diplomacy, intimidate, sense motive. 4e has: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Insight. In 2e, skills were so unimportant they were called non-weapon proficiencies.

So if you want to run a social game, there's no difference.

How about other skills? The only difference between the two:

Profession skill. Which were so vague. The only use of the profession skill is to gauge how much someone is supposed to earn per week using their profession. Or it's a vague description that using a single skill to encompass so many things that one could take the "Adventurer" profession, and use that skill check for anything that depends on the adventure.

Craft skill. Which is pretty much a hand-waving power. The craft skill isn't going to impact anything besides effecting the GP distribution of item creation. It just makes someone feel nice that they have a craft skill point sitting on their sheet that lets them know their character was trained as a blacksmith.

The exclusion of Profession/Craft skills are not going to impact a campaign scope. If anything, the non-combat skills in 3e were a vestigial tail, providing the illusion of non-combat depth.

What about low magic campaigns? 3e could not facilitate that campaign scope; magical items and healing magic were required. If you didn't have a +2 sword by level 10, you were in trouble because of DR, and inflated AC, and so on. Not to mention the other Big Six. How about healing magic? Unless you where chugging healing potiosn or had a cleric, battles were lethal. Not very Arthurian.

Next we have a few magical items missing between the editions. Decanters of endless water, folding boat, etc. The loss of these are not going to impact the campaign scope.

We could discuss the economy. Where the sole purpose of the economy is to distinguish what sorts of magical items you are balanced to have. There is nothing in D&D that costs more than 100gp, except magical items. In 2e, you couldn't even buy magical items, so loot = castles. In 1e, loot = XP.

Next look at feats. The only non-combat feats that 3e had were Skill boosters (hey, 4e has those), and feats based on crafting magical items - which, 9/10ths were combat-specific magical items.

Finally, there's spells. 3e had quite a few non-combat spells. The problem is that those spells allowed plot bypassing. It didn't require any skill or story, but ultimately came down to "I cast this spell, and the DM gives me what I want." Here's a question: how many 3e spells were useful for non-adventurers? For growing crops, building things, etc? Answer: next to none, because the game focuses on adventurers.

So I don't know where people got this idea that 3e supported a huge amount of non-combat games. D&D has never supported non-combat gaming to the extent that people make it out.

Anyone who has ever ran low-combat games in D&D is using a hammer to put in screws, nuts and bolts. It's a round hole and a square peg. Sure, you can do it, but it's not pretty.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So if you want to run a social game, there's no difference.

You're totally ignoring the noncombat abilities of the classes, at least in 3e.

Spells like Charm Person.

Details like the Barbarian's illiteracy.

Bard's music inspiring higher skill checks.

A paladin's ability to Detect Evil.

All of these things added dimension and variety to noncombat sessions in 3e (and in earlier editions).

These, being removed or shunted off to the side in 4e, in many ways, reduce the options and variety of 4e for handling noncombat challenges.

This in turn leadst ot less fun noncombat elements, and less support for them.

Which leads many to play what IS well-supported: namely, (minis) combat.

 

[Pbartender]

All of these things added dimension and variety to noncombat sessions in 3e (and in earlier editions).

These, being removed or shunted off to the side in 4e, in many ways, reduce the options and variety of 4e for handling noncombat challenges.

You see, I look at it a different way...

All of these things allowed players to quickly and easily bypass non-combat encounters without having to actually resolve anything through problem solving or roleplaying.

These, being removed or shnted off to the side in 4e, in many ways, encourages my players to use more thoughtful and innovative methods for handling noncombat challenges... As opposed to relying on skills checks, spells and magic items to solve every problem.

 

[Rechan]

Details like the Barbarian's illiteracy.

If anything, that is an arbitrary rule. It's like saying "All wizards are left handed", and then saying "Because this rule says wizards are left handed, it shows there's depth to the class, and how they differ from other classes!"

Take for instance that bards can only be chaotic. You could say that "shows depth and how they are different", and I think it's an arbitrary limitation that hurts character conception and is there for no other reason than to be there.

Bard's music inspiring higher skill checks.

You mean like the bard's "Inspire Competence" level 2 utility power?

A paladin's ability to Detect Evil.

I would argue with you over this, but I feel that is a different tangent than the topic at hand. I don't feel that being able to deal with alignment adds anything to the equation at all, and matters of alignment are a different topic.

These, being removed or shunted off to the side in 4e, in many ways, reduce the options and variety of 4e for handling noncombat challenges.

There are so few options, and the "dimension and variety" are so shallow, that it's complaining that a radio only gets 99 stations, not 100, and this is a great limitation to the radio.

 

[Thasmodious]

I think one of the issues for me is that D&D in previous editions was more adaptable to different styles than 4e is. The modularity of 1e, the setting-specific fiddly bits of 2e, the universal d20 system in 3e....4e isn't very modular, applies its own philosophy to new settings instead of the other way around, and is more concerned about marketable D&D branding than about opening up the game to new experiments and individual styles.

4e has removed a lot of the things that made D&D in earlier editions capable of handling all those things well enough for a few months of gaming fun.

This isn't a problem if you like 4e's style, but if you're a fan of a different style, D&D might not work for you any more, forcing you to find a different game rather than use D&D.

Again, I think this is very short sighted. The design intent has been simply and repeatedly stated by the designers. The early core is focused on providing strong, balanced gameplay for the core of D&D gaming. The core book sequels and campaign settings will expand gameplay. It doesn't work to give a nod or two to different styles in the core books, because many see that as a core part of the game, when its usually just a single nod or two - here's some clunky firearms rules in the equipment section, people like guns, oh and here's some psionics, over here is an inadequate system to craft things using skills...

To me, it's sound design to start from a strong, balanced core and expand outwards, rather than try to create a mish-mash of subsystems to emulate a dozen different playstyles. If you've used D&D in the past to play games that are very far from the core of D&D gameplay, which has always been the same, then you are used to tweaking (and are not, for some reason, interested in game systems build for that kind of play that likely do it better). 4e is easier to tweak than previous editions because you are starting from a much stronger, more stable ruleset. It is easy to add on the things you need to suit your playstyle.

 

[malraux]

How incompatible are the add on d20 rules from 3e? For example, adding sanity in by copying the UA sanity rules. To me, they would fit just as well as they did in 3e. Or just a minor revamp of the taint rules in Heroes of Horror? Obviously, they'll take a bit of tweaking to get right, but my impression is that it should work pretty smoothly.

edit: oh, and my take on Cthulhu-esque adventures is that 4e would probably do a delta green style pretty well.