Easilly assembled encounters, more character driven adventures?

[hong]

Not really. There's a difference between "This is a hobgoblin fighter with weapon focus (Axe),Improved Critical (Axe), and the feat 'Hurt People With An Axe, A Lot' from some random supplement" and "This is a hobgoblin axe-waver, who has two Very Cool Axe Waving Powers that no human fighter -- or, for that matter, a PC Hobgoblin fighter -- can ever learn."

Not really.

Not difficult, just not 'in paradigm'.

The wonderful thing about paradigms is that they are not written out in 2-column, 9-point serif font. As such, even the people who place great store in 2-column, 9-point serif text can ignore them.

 

[ObsidianCrane]

Not really. There's a difference between "This is a hobgoblin fighter with weapon focus (Axe),Improved Critical (Axe), and the feat 'Hurt People With An Axe, A Lot' from some random supplement" and "This is a hobgoblin axe-waver, who has two Very Cool Axe Waving Powers that no human fighter -- or, for that matter, a PC Hobgoblin fighter -- can ever learn."

Oh I love this argument....

So when exactly can the Human learn Sleep immunity as Elves have it in 3.X?

Or get Dwarven Weapon Familiarity?

Or..ah well you get the point hopefully, without someone going through the monster manual and lifiting all the examples of abilities that are only possesed by 1 creature. 3E is already full of these things you are objecting to in 4E, the only difference is that 4E isn't trying to pretend its all the same for everyone.

 

[Lizard]

Oh I love this argument....

So when exactly can the Human learn Sleep immunity as Elves have it in 3.X?

Or get Dwarven Weapon Familiarity?

Is that really the best you can do?

Let me reverse it -- why can't a hobgoblin PC, in 3x, be a warcaster? That was one of the things that gave me a bad feeling about 4e; the introduction, in 3e, of 'unique' monster types which created pseudo-classed-monsters, monsters with abilities sorta kinda a little bit like classed abilities, but without, y'know, classes.

From what I can tell -- and I may be wrong -- PC members of races in 4e follow different rules than "monster" members. You won't be able to recreate a kobold dragon priest by making a kobold PC and taking cleric levels; the dragon priest is uniquely designed to have powers A, B, and C which are balanced for a single encounter; a PC can't learn them under any circumstances.

"Special super secret mystic training" as an excuse for handing out abilities strains credibility when you say there's no way a PC -- even one of the right race and with the right background -- can learn them. Like I said, maybe I'm wrong, and there are rules in the game which do allow taking these abilities when they're appropriate for PCs. We don't know.

And, yeah, 3e broke this rule a lot, making things which should have been race-limited feats into (EX) abilities instead. Since my argument has never been "3x is a flawless game with nothing broken, wrong, or bad about it", I don't see the point.

(And can't a human fighter learn Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Dwarven Whatever)?)

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

If I ran a 3x game without prestige classes, wacky templated monsters, and freeform multiclassing, it would be a bad use of the system.

Hmm, guess I have been using the system in a bad way for quite some time.
Do I get arrested for this crime?
*Quick, pull out the splat books!! its the DM police coming to arrest me!!!*

Sorry Lizard, using the system to create an enjoyable game session is, IMHO, the only right way to use it. It doesn't matter to them whether I throw the entire kitchen sinks worth of {oft broken} rules in.

4e monster design looks to me like it will enable me to do that without having to justify to any rules-lawyers how Critter X took 56 points of damage before dying instead of 54...
{been there, done that.. lost a player I probably didn't need anyway}

As long as 4e levels out the math, provides my players with cool options, and allows to to gen up an evening session off the cuff.. great.
That only works at high levels in 3x if you stick to brute monsters or rely of a limited set of spell like abilities.

If it's relatively simple to turn Special Monster Powers into things other creatures can learn/use, that will answer one of my main objections.

Since the special powers are neatly packaged, I don't see why the option for researching a new spell that replicates the Warcasters 'Force Lance' wont exist. I would be rather surprised if you can't research new spells.

 

[tomtill]

worldbuilding vs. gamebuilding

I agree with Lizard, in a limited sense. For worldbuilding, I loved 3e. It gave me a (more or less) logical and consistent way to explain the world. It always frustrated me that AD&D characters were very limited relative to the rest of the world. They could do only a particular set of abilities, while the rest of the world had completely different sets of abilities. In other words, a lot o AD&D settings made no sense in the context of available abilities. 3e fixed all that. You could pretty much design a world with the 3e ruleset, in a consistent and mostly logical way.

Worldbuilding, however, is only really appreciated by the DM. The players appreciate the game you build. It is satisfying to the DM to be able to come up with rules justification for how that wizard created his tower the way he did, and what prestige class he had to take to get a particular spell. Players only care that it is as believable, as say, a typical Hollywood action movie (A very low standard).

The trouble is, the application of the consistent 3e ruleset routinely failed to meet the primary goal of any gaming ruleset, that is, it failed to achieve proper balance within the game. The challenge level/encounter level system of matching opponents was horribly horribly broken. Even after hours of preparation designing an encounter, in the end, the DM has to wing it.

D&D is a game of overcoming challenges. We had hoped that applying the 3e ruleset to encounter design from the character level up would create consistently predictable challenges. It failed.

According to the developers, 4e should give you the tools to build an encounter from the top down. Starting from the XP, fill it with these XP units. If your concept is not pre-made, designing a new opponent of a particular level is supposed to come from a table of abilities appropriate to a particular level. This is promised to create consistently predictable challenges.

In other words, 4e should allow better game building (as opposed to world building). You can give your time to the story/fluff that makes your series of challenges particularly interesting for your world. That's a better use of your time, I think.

 

[Duckforceone]

Here is where I have a problem with 3e. I just reached up to my bookshelf and grabbed the nearest monster book. MM3. I randomly flip through the book to find a monster, and here we go: Lurking Strangler.

Its a tiny CR 2 aberration. Seems like a simple enough monster, everything looks pretty straightforward. But wait. It has eye rays. It can cast Cause Fear and Sleep. What does it say in the book? It says they act like the spell. Well, shoot. I don't remember the specifics on either of those spells.

So, now I have to pull out my PHB, flip to those pages and read those spell descriptions. Aaarrghhh! What a pain. I just want to be able to run the monster out of the book. I don't want to EVER have to look at something in another book.

Hmm, lets flip the page. Here is another CR 1 monster. The Mindshredder. CR 1, it should be simple enough to run. Umm wait, there is almost a whole page of combat information I now have to read through. Hmm, it has some Supernatural ability called "Thought Sense" and several paragraphs about how it works and how it interacts with Concealment. And it also has this ability to deal Wisdom damage, but wait the Wisdom damage heals it. But wait, if it grapples it does something different. Oh and sometimes the healing does temp hit points. GAAAHH!!

Screw this, isn't there anything easier to run?

Hmm, flip some more pages. Here is something called a Rage Walker. Its a CR 14. Holy cow, the thing has a two page entry! It has all sorts of special abilities with a paragraph of text describing each one. Plus it has 4 different spell like abilities which I now have to look up. Well, Bull's Strength is one. I'm pretty sure I have that down, so I just need to look up 3. But still!

And these are premade monsters!! Heaven forbid I need to come up with a 10th level NPC wizard on my own. Hmm, what gear does he have? Well I need to know its AC and combat bonuses so I have to give him stats and gear. And then I have to pick spells and read all their descriptions and decides what's cast, and what's not. Calculate all his buffs, etc. Oh and then if a PC casts Dispel Magic, I have to go and recalculate everything in the middle of combat.

This sucks. I'm not even having fun anymore. And all my players, who were on the edge of their seat a minute ago, are now bored and chatting OOC while I look all this crap up. My alternative is to spend a couple hours of prep before the game. But I don't want to do that either. Playing D&D shouldn't require me to do "homework". Its supposed to be a fun hobby for crying out loud! Sure, I could make something up. But what numbers should I use? What if I guess wrong and make the encounter too tough? 3e has no guidelines for anything like that.

Pretty much the only monsters I can run out of a 3e monster book without having to look anything up are physical brute monsters that have no casting, special rules, or anything. That's not real exciting.

Now let's see what solution 4e offers me. Let's see. Hmm, Hobgoblin Warcaster. Its a level 3 monster. Just looking at it, I instantly know its AC, and Defenses without having to deal with any buffs whatsoever. It has 4 different attacks. A staff hit, a staff hit with lightning damage, or it can blast foes at range for damage, or blast foes and knock them back.

EVERYTHING I need to run this monster is right there in the statblock. It's clearly written, easy to understand, and no paragraphs of text discussing an endless variety of obscure corner cases. It has interesting magical attacks and doesn't require me to look up anything in another book.

This is what I LOVE about 4e. This is why I think 4e will be hugely popular not only with players, but with DMs especially. I feel like I can once again return to my 2e DMing style when I ran entire games with zero prep time. Now, if you can do that with 3e and it works for you, then awesome. Good for you!

But, for me, running 3e just sucks the creativity and desire to DM right out of me. 4e so far has had the entirely opposite effect.

The way you describe here, is actually the way i have run my games for years. I have not used any of the newer monster manuals, i create encounters on the fly, giving my monsters stats that i feel they need. And not giving me anything to look up. If it's a spell caster, i usually only give him a few spells to cast alot of. And if it's really tough encounter, i use pre made spell cards, so i can remember what each does.

and this is what 4e delivers.. i can't wait. For the first time in many years, i'm looking forward to using the monster manual...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Last night's game (3x): About ten minutes of prep==3 hours of game.
Picked monsters from the book (MM and TOH2); ran them as is. Came up with the next arc of the adventure when specifiying treasure. (First I wanted a ring with a sigil...then I decided to add in some more items with the same sign...then I created the royal family to which they belonged, tossed a few plot hooks into them, and presto! Next game is planned.)

Granted, it's still low level -- 6-7 -- but I just don't have this whole "I need six hours to prep!" meme going. In 8 years of running 3x, it's very rare I ever have anything done more than 2 hours before go time. (If a fight seems too easy or too hard, wing it. Have another monster come in and make it look like you planned it all along. Or decide that someone had 20 fewer hit points than you originally noted. This is DM 101.)
.

When you just spontanously use DM 101 to reduce a monsters hit points 20 points lower then originally noted for the monster, why do you need such a strong focus on building monsters by the same rules as the PCs?
There is no Player 101 that allows you to remove or add 20 hit points to his PC, either. (Off course, no DM would object to the removing, I guess, but the RAW doesn't say you can do that)

To the famous Hobgoblin Warcaster Paradoxon:
If a Hogboblin PC wants to become a Hobgoblin Warcaster, he simply can't. He is a PC. He is living a different life then the Hobgobling Warcaster. If he wanted to be like him, he wouldn't be a PC. Off course, there might be ways to get similar abilities then the Warcaster. But he still won't look the same, since the generic Hogboblin Warcaster is not the special adventure/hero type the Hobgoblin PC is.
It's like a Rogue 6 PC suddenly wanting to become a Fighter6. He can sure take 6 levels of Fighter, but he won't resemble a "real" Fighter6. (barring extensive retraining according to the PHB II rules)

 

[Benimoto]

"Special super secret mystic training" as an excuse for handing out abilities strains credibility when you say there's no way a PC -- even one of the right race and with the right background -- can learn them.

There's just no way you should have to encapsulate every monster power into a class or a feat. There are what, 300+ monsters promised for just the first monster manual? How many classes or feats would that translate into? Even if it was only 50 classes, is there any hope of designing 50 classes and keeping them all balanced? Should all these classes come out at the same time as the Monster Manual?

I can see that the concept of PCs and monsters using the same rules excites you. I loved it too when I first encountered 3rd edition, and I still think it's a neat idea. The thing is, it's an unfeasible idea. PCs and monsters have different design requirements.

3rd edition had 175 base classes and 782 prestige classes, and PCs still can't grow new heads like a hydra can. On the other hand, a hydra wizard can happily cast spells like an elf wizard can. The 3rd edition promise that PCs and Monsters use the same rules went unfulfilled. It just ended up being that monsters could take advantage of any of the rules that PCs could, but they also had their own rules.

 

[invokethehojo]

Last night's game (3x): About ten minutes of prep==3 hours of game.
Picked monsters from the book (MM and TOH2); ran them as is. Came up with the next arc of the adventure when specifiying treasure. (First I wanted a ring with a sigil...then I decided to add in some more items with the same sign...then I created the royal family to which they belonged, tossed a few plot hooks into them, and presto! Next game is planned.)

Granted, it's still low level -- 6-7 -- but I just don't have this whole "I need six hours to prep!" meme going. In 8 years of running 3x, it's very rare I ever have anything done more than 2 hours before go time. (If a fight seems too easy or too hard, wing it. Have another monster come in and make it look like you planned it all along. Or decide that someone had 20 fewer hit points than you originally noted. This is DM 101.)

Fights in 4e seem like MORE work to me, because everything has to be the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny with exploding terrain, hordes of minions, and giant whirlygigs of doom. You can't just run into an ettin thug who's the mind controlled pawn of a bloodsucking tree anymore.

Man I am tired of these kind of people. Some people are naturally able to throw together 3e fights at a moments notice and do it well (or thier players just have low standards), some can't (me). The exploding terrain and whirlygigs happens to be not that hard for me, but I'm not going around touting how a new edition is a waste of time because I'm so awesome that I don't need one particular feature of it!

If you are a natural DM that's great, but please, go brag/whine somewhere else!

 

[Patlin]

No matter how good the DM may be, making life easier for the DM frees up resources that the DM can use to make the game even better. Even if some of us (as Lizard says) can fix up an entire night's adventure in 10 minutes, if you could get all of the same stuff done in 5 you could use the remaining time to think up some interesting plot twists. I personally would not be satisfied with ten minutes of prep, allthough if absolutely necessary I could proceed without any prep at all. I think I do a better job of DMing if I prep, that's all.