Dragon Editorial: Fearless

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This Editorial makes me happy and want to play 4E.

Hey Scott, one concern I have is that all the "perilous" examples people bring up are from combat encounters with a bunch of enemies.

I think part of the issue is the move to per-encounter powers. In 3e, a lone trap that only did 10 damage still had an effect on the party, because it forced them to expend limited healing resources. But if healing is per-encounter 4e, nothing BUT a dead character has consequences outside the context of a larger encounter. No insta-death traps + "free" healing (outside of combat) = why not just stumble through and trigger them all?

I'm worried that my character will basically be invincible until I roll initiative. Can you give any examples where screwing up a standalone trap has proved to be a Very Bad Thing?

I can't speak for Scott, but as far as I understood, healing isn't unlimited. Apparantly, all healing is based on a Second Wind - like mechanic, and you have
- a limited number of times to trigger them per day (uses)
- a limited number of ways to trigger them at all, and how often you can use these trigger options. (triggers)

It seems these "triggers" exist:
- Generic Second Wind: Once per day, you can do it on your own, provided you have an action to spend.
- Class powers (specifically Leader, but potentially "personalized" powers too)
- While dying, there is not only a chance of actually "becoming" dead, but also triggering your Second Wind.
- Heal check

So, even if you figure out how to trigger your healing, it still costs one of your uses per day.

That's just a guess, but I think there have been enough details to make it an educated guess..



4E might actually be the "Torgisation" of D&D - it's easy to make over-the-top action stuff, but don't let that fool you - there are still things out there that can and will kill you.

 

[Derren]

I have to agree with Voss And Celebrim.

Apparently the expected gamestyle in 4E is the one of a suicidal lemming. otherwise I can't explain why in the article it is considered metagaming when you don't take unnecessary risks. Imo its more metagaming when you charge at every opportunity because you know that this won't kill you thanks to care bear rules.

Yeah, it really looks like WotC think that this is the playstyle the (new) target audience wants. And maybe it does but I am not part of that target audience which means that I don't want characters which behave like the mentioned suicidal lemmings, sticking various body parts into every opening they can find while in a unfriendly, trap filled death maze just because they can and if something happens it won't hurt them much anyway.

Some people mentioned action movies in this thread and I agree that action movies are a good inspiration for D&D adventures, but please use intelligent action movies where the main character is not a cross between the Terminator and the teacher of Chuck Norris.

Take the Indiana Jones movies. That would be a in my eyes a very good inspiration for D&D. You have a smart hero who do not posses any superpowers yet still manages to be heroic by taking calculated risks when exploring dungeons or stopping BBEGs from aquiring artifacts. Another good inspiration would be Die Hard when you ignore the latest one. Here again you have a smart hero who does not always charge everything blindly and is still heroic (although he is unlike Indiana Jones nearly immune to injury)

Yet what 4E seems strive to do is not Indiana Jones style adventures but more something along the lines of Tripple X when the hero is replaced by a X-Men and the BBEG are the offspring of Dr. Doom from the Fantastic 4.
Intelligent solutions are possible but not really required as the hero can simply fight his way through legions of mooks which resembles more or less the fighting scenes in Hot Shots 2 just without the comedy in them.

Of course you can change the rules and compromise with your players not to follow the 4E action movie on speed gamestyle but then you could also stay with 3E and save a lot of money in the process.

 

[delericho]

The encounter described (with the mine carts) did sound like fun. I am a little concerned, though, that an untrained Dungeoneering check at level 4 is enough for the sort of jump described. Although he never did tell us what the actual roll was.

Truth be told, save-or-die mechanics were generally poor anyway. Not just because they so often became "don't roll a 1", but also because a successful save usually meant "no effect". So, you high level Wizard either ended the encounter will his insta-kill spell... or had no effect whatsoever. However, it seems to me that the solution to that was to introduce some sort of magical analogue to hit points, allowing a range of damages somewhere between "you're dead" and "no effect".

Removing save-or-die doesn't necessarily mean reducing the lethality of the game, though - it just means reducing the randomness in the system. I get the distinct impression that they have greatly reduced the lethality of the game in addition to all their other changes, and I further get the impression that the pendulum has swung far to far towards the 'nerf' side of the scale (IMO, of course).

 

[Fallen Seraph]

"Take the Indiana Jones movies. That would be a in my eyes a very good inspiration for D&D. You have a smart hero who do not posses any superpowers yet still manages to be heroic by taking calculated risks when exploring dungeons or stopping BBEGs from aquiring artifacts."

Thing is though with Indiana Jones, if he rolled a one while running any of the dungeon gambit in Raiders he would be dead. In 4e, there is a better chance to survive a trap as well as more variety in getting passed them, that scene would be a amazing thing to recreate using a combination of chase-mechanics and the trap-combat system.

 

[hong]

I have to agree with Voss And Celebrim.

Apparently the expected gamestyle in 4E is the one of a suicidal lemming. otherwise I can't explain why in the article it is considered metagaming when you don't take unnecessary risks. Imo its more metagaming when you charge at every opportunity because you know that this won't kill you thanks to care bear rules.

You say this like metagaming is a negative thing.

 

[Steely Dan]

"damn the torpedoes ninjae, full speed ahead"

Never give up, never surrender!


…I could use a cup-holder and a couple of Advil…

 

[hong]

"Take the Indiana Jones movies. That would be a in my eyes a very good inspiration for D&D. You have a smart hero who do not posses any superpowers yet still manages to be heroic by taking calculated risks when exploring dungeons or stopping BBEGs from aquiring artifacts."

Thing is though with Indiana Jones, if he rolled a one while running any of the dungeon gambit in Raiders he would be dead. In 4e, there is a better chance to survive a trap as well as more variety in getting passed them, that scene would be a amazing thing to recreate using a combination of chase-mechanics and the trap-combat system.

Indy basically combines the skillset of a 15th level guy with the hit points of a 5th level guy. This is because he doesn't kill monsters, he just takes their stuff. D&D characters generally have to do double duty.

 

[Steely Dan]

thanks to care bear rules.

Dude, that reminds me of the Care Bear campaign I had back in 87 – insane!

Basically, this article, to me, just reinstates the balanced math of the new system.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'm also disturbed by the implication that 4e will have no obviously subpar character choices ("If you've ever selected the Travel domain with your cleric...").

er - Travel domain is given as one of the powergamer choices

Erase spell was given as a subpar character choice...

And why would you want clearly subpar character choices to be available in the game? Isn't it somewhat better if all PCs have a range of choices of equivalent value or interest?

 

[Plane Sailing]

The encounter described (with the mine carts) did sound like fun. I am a little concerned, though, that an untrained Dungeoneering check at level 4 is enough for the sort of jump described. Although he never did tell us what the actual roll was.

It could have been a DC20 check and they rolled 18 or more on their d20 plus half their level...

It would make the article more interestingly useful if they had mentioned the DC needed though... I'd hope we would be seeing more crunchy details to discuss by this point before release.