Down to At-Wills

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So basically, sure, in 3e some people are doing the same thing every round for 3 rounds, and in bad cases for 6 rounds. In 4e everyone is doing something interesting for 5 rounds, which can get you through most fights... except for the 20-round knock-down drag-out fights we've heard about in multiple previews, in which people are doing the same thing for 15 rounds, when that not happening is supposed to be a strength of 4e.

I think the problem in the previews regarding this are mostly related with fighting (often solo) monsters above your level. I don't see any problems coming up if you fight groups of monsters. If you get to kill off one or two monsters every one or two rounds, things won't get stale, even if all encounter and daily powers are expended - you will constantly worry about positioning and movement, and this will keep you entertained.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

After the first half of Raiders of Oakhurst Reloaded, one of my players mentioned that they felt combat was boring because he kept using Magic Missile all the time. I responded by saying "How is that different from a Fighter in 3e, who basically swung his sword all the time?" He responded "Well, that's because he's a Fighter." I thought it was amusing that he was willing to accept this for a 1st level Fighter, but not for a 1st level Wizard.

While I think the slim choice of powers is symptomatic to being low level, to a certain extent I agree with the player. By virtue of the multiple applications of Channel Divinity, the cleric and paladin pregens had more per encounter powers to choose from than other characters. Perhaps coincidentally, the cleric's player also was the one who enjoyed the game the most. But I think it's mostly because he's more old school and I think 4e gives off an old school vibe.

 

[Andur]

Or more importantly the non specialized Wizard in 3e (or any edition before) who would get to cast one magic missile A DAY and then get busy with crossbow or if things got real hairy staff, and if they got downright TPK, dagger...

From what we have seen it doesn't look like there are a ton of at will choices, I do hope that either through the natural progression or through feats a character can pick up more at will powers. To me the "magic number" would float around 4, that would give a situational attack, a "defensive" attack, a "standard" attack, and a "power" attack. (It also has the nice side-effect of being able to have one attack per defense )

 

[Kzach]

One of the things I was going to say earlier but felt it would be ridiculed, is that 4e also encourages more cooperation.

So for the warlock in Morrus' encounter, I would've been asking the cleric for Lance of Faith and the fighter to use Tide of Iron to push the dragon closer to me, so that I could combine Prime Shot ability with my readied action to Eldritch Blast it. Then it would get a total of +3 to hit, making it equal to the Eyebite but doing more damage.

Of course, that's not the individual warlock's abilities, but I still think it's valid to offer it as a useful suggestion to highlight the differences in options between 3.x and 4e.

4e gives you so many more tools that if you think outside of the box and use some imagination (not saying Morrus doesn't have imagination), you can get a lot more benefit out of the combat system.

And I do think that for most people, especially those who are used to systems like 3.x, that this will take a bit of adjustment on their part to adapt to a new way of thinking.

 

[AllisterH]

I think this post by Occam is very timely for this discussion,

This brings me to one of my main concerns about 4e, which goes back to the early playtest reports from DDXP, where several people described a feeling of "button-mashing", getting into the same routine each combat once you were familiarized with your powers. The standard response was that if you think 4e involves button-mashing, what do you think about 3e, where you usually don't even have a choice of powers (at least for mundane combatants)? Perfectly reasonable response... except that some, at least, definitely felt it more in their initial 4e experiences. It instilled some worry in me, too, although it took me a while to figure out why.

Ironically, I think the "wahoo" feel of powers in 4e may be the very thing that makes them seem like old hat after a while. In 3e (and before), there usually isn't much to a non-spellcaster's attack: roll to hit, roll damage. Sure, you might occasionally mix it up with a feat or a bull rush or something, but the typical procedure is almost subconscious. You may not be flipping over tables or pushing opponents around the battlefield, but you don't usually notice that.

The dynamic nature of 4e powers forces you to pay attention to the effects of your action, because you're doing all kinds of cool extraordinary things. But after the 5th Tide of Iron, won't it get to seem a little ho-hum? And will you notice that more because the initial thrill is gone? (A thrill which was, granted, harder to come by at all in 3e.)

I have the same concern about monsters. It's cool interesting that a goblin picador can harpoon you and pull you around the battlefield. But how many goblin picadors can you fight before that just becomes annoying, along with most goblins' ability to shift away when you miss them? Earlier D&D goblins are as boring as they get, being nothing but a weapon and a few hit points in combat, but you never expect the coolness from goblins, so you don't usually miss it.

My concern with 4e is, despite PCs and monsters having much more flavorful and tactically interesting choices in combat, that the more flashy and exciting those choices are, the more you'll notice their repetition, thus potentially turning a great strength of 4e against it. I hope this doesn't happen, at least not to the point of making the game unenjoyable for a lot of people. I don't think we'll get a good sense of this until people have gotten some long-term playing in.

 

[Kzach]

I think this post by Occam is very timely for this discussion,

Yes, he's right on the money.

Let's make the game more boring so that it won't get repetitive

 

[Imban]

I don't agree with Occam, actually. I think 4e made powers more boring by canning a lot of D&D's interesting (read as: broken, but don't tell me shapeshifting doesn't appeal to people) powers or reducing them to very simple and uninteresting forms, but I don't think that making everything a neat and unique power makes 4e combat more boring.

As I said above, I think it's just that fights are longer. Also, not everyone really gained in options - for a fighting man, sure, it's a tradeoff between actually having neat options now but fights slogging on past them, but magic-users straight-up have both less options and longer fights now.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Let's make the game more boring so that it won't get repetitive

I think it's more "lets add some fundamentals to these slam dunks" or "lets add some base-hitters to our home run kings."

To an extent, I can agree with this. But I think it's kind of shooting at the wrong star.

The reason at-will get stale has less to do with how wahoo everything else is and more to do with how many options a given first-level character has in combat.

In 3e, a starting spellcaster would be launching a magic missile, but they'd also have a burning hands, a grease, and whatever else when they got bored of Magic Missile (usually in the form of scrolls at this point -- 50 gp wasn't much, even for 1st level). Meanwhile, the starting fighter would be swinging his sword, but he'd also have trip and disarm and grapple and two-weapon fighting and shield bashing when he got bored of swinging his sword.

Note that in both cases, the other options are usually VASTLY situational and quite a bit less helpful. No fighter is going to give up a sword to be able to shield bash better, no wizard would surrender Magic Missile for an extra Grease spell, but the options did exist, and they gave you a feeling of constantly having three or four things to do, even at first level, if you really wanted to.

In 4e, in order to make things more simple, a lot of those extraneous options that weren't really used in the first place get either cut or re-introduced in such a way as that you have to choose them INSTEAD of another power, not along with another power.

This means that you DO have less options, though each option you have is more significant.

Perhaps a sort of "stunt" system would alleviate this almost entirely. It doesn't sound like any of the pre-gen games used anything like that, but I know that if I could try to pin one of the dragon's limbs under a boulder or lure it outside where I've arranged for 10,000 archers to dwell, or whatever, I'd only eyebite two or three times before getting a little...chaotic.

 

[DM_Blake]

As for me, I got a little used to the Tome of Battle classes.

These guys can all recover their really cool stuff right in the middle of the same fight. Multiple times if the fight is long enough.

In fact, they can go:
1. use best ability
2. recycle that ability
3. use best ability
4. recycle that ability
5. use best ability

etc.

4e characters cannot do this.

When I think about it, the TOB way makes more sense. After all, why can a ranger fire two arrows at the same time only once per day? It seems easier to tell my players "it takes time and mental preparation to set up that stunt, but if you want to spend that time prepare to use it again, then you can spend a round recycling the abilty" than it is to say "it is sooooo very very very hard to do, that you can only ever find the time, opportunity, and internal fortitude to pull it off exactly once per day, no more, no less (unless you choose not to use it at all that day)"

Yeah, one of those explanations makes a whole lot less sense than the other (not that either is totally sensible). Or put another way, it's easier for my suspension of disbelief to meet the first version halfway, rather than to have to all the way over to meet the second version.

But that's just me.

So when I say that it's boring to end up just using at-will powers round after round, it's not that I am comparing them to 3x, where I just used basic attacks round after round, but rather it's because I'm comparing them to the 3.5 "preview of 4e" book that everyone was talking about being a precursor of some 4e rules concepts - in this case that precurser was less boring than the actual 4e concept it supposedly precursed.

 

[pawsplay]

This is a very short-lived problem specific to low level hero's fighting SOME solo mobs.

Instead of discussing when it is a problem, here's a list of when it is NOT a problem:

1) Mid and high level combatants: They have plenty of abilities to choose from.
2) When fighting multiple opponents: Movement and targeting options give variability.
3) Controller effects: Mobs with refreshing controller effects provide variability

Hehe. You said mobs.