Epic Podcast - good, bad or indifferent?

[doctorhook]

What shine?

While I like the direction that the game is headed in, its patently obvious that we've been sold an Alpha level playtest as a finished product.

Obviously you feel strongly that 4E is incomplete or undeveloped.

Personally, I feel that 4E is definitely a stable release, but that there are still plenty of bugs to work out. This is natural for a new system, and will take a buttload of time and feedback to work past.

4E is a great game; time and regular revision will make it even better!

Maybe if WotC had decided to go with the game they previewed at GenCon '07 we would have a finished product, but this aint it.

This is highly unlikely.

 

[ronin]

What if minions were handled in this way-

Heroic minion- dies in one hit
Paragon minion- dies in two hits
Epic minion- dies in three hits

 

[DrSpunj]

The nice thing about minions is you don't have to keep track of hit points or previous hits or anything else. Their utility is largely defined by the simplicity of their (lack of) bookkeeping.

Personally when we get to Paragon levels I'm going to consider JMcM's Zombie rules (Prone & then out) or give them a chance to save before they die. Both of them can be handled pretty quickly when it matters and don't require me to keep track of anything.

 

[KarinsDad]

Obviously you feel strongly that 4E is incomplete or undeveloped.

Personally, I feel that 4E is definitely a stable release, but that there are still plenty of bugs to work out.

The problem is that it is design bugs more than mis-prints. Major design bugs will never be fixed shy of a brand new release. Too much momentum.

 

[James McMurray]

The problem is that it is design bugs more than mis-prints. Major design bugs will never be fixed shy of a brand new release. Too much momentum.

Such as? I haven't seen anything that would require an entire new release to fix. Some would mean changes so big they're unlikely to make them (such as minions at higher tiers), but nothing that would need a total reboot.

 

[Griogre]

I consider myself a 4E Fanboy, so it disheartens me to hear of these sorts of problems with my favorite game. Alas, the honeymoon couldn't last forever.

4E will eventually need a revision, as the shine is already wearing off and the flaws in the design are beginning to show. Personally, I welcome the thought of an eventual revision, rebalancing the game elements in the context of the whole, after all the power sources have been released. Then again, I'm the sort of guy who loves updates, too.

Still leagues better than 3.5E was, mind you.

Personally I never had any expectiations for Epic being functional. I was just hoping they could keep Paragon level functional through the mid to upper teens.

I am nervious about the upper level minons. I like how the work in heroic so far.

At Paragon levels the fall down and twitch minion rules seems workable as is a straight save to see if the Minion lives on a solid hit and have it outright die on a crit. Still no real book keeping and you can fiddle around with the saves to make things feel right.

 

[James McMurray]

Epic is definitely functional. We've been playing it for several sessions now and have only needed a few house rules. If we weren't using Dragon articles, we'd only have two house rules: one to make minions usable and one to prevent Orb wizards from giving someone -15 to saves.

Everything else has worked pretty well, though we haven't gotten to 24th, when the destinies start really shining.

 

[MrMyth]

The problem is that it is design bugs more than mis-prints. Major design bugs will never be fixed shy of a brand new release. Too much momentum.

Do you have any specific examples in mind? I've actually found most of the issues that have cropped up in 4E have been relatively isolated and easily fixed with a simple errata - as compared to something like Polymorph in 3rd Edition, which went through dozens of fixes without ever turning out truly usable.

There are areas of 4E that I'm not entirely satisfied and likely to House Rule (Weapon mechanics overly punishing Small characters and overly benefitting Acts-As-Large characters), but even without the changes I'm likely to make, nothing about the system strikes me as so fundamentally flawed as to make the game unplayable.

 

[Mercule]

1) Instead of "minions don't take damage on a miss", change it to "minions only take damage on a hit." This prevents auto-damage effects from killing minions and means that, in order to kill them, players must be actively trying to take them out.

Heroic minion- dies in one hit
Paragon minion- dies in two hits
Epic minion- dies in three hits

I don't think we want ticky marks for minions. Part of the point of minions was to eliminate book-keeping on them. Plus, at three tickies, you run the risk of having minions outlast standard monsters by virtue of those crits and great rolls not mattering.

I think a reasonable solution could be to allow a save on "effect" (or even "area") damage. Sure, there's still the chance of a minion outlasting an elite, but the odds are pretty strongly against it. And, there's no book-keeping for them.

I wouldn't worry about a damage threshold, though. My assumption would be that damage actually is scaling as the PCs level, but minions are used to represent anything out of scale. That's why a minotaur is a standard monster at 8th level, but a minion at 12th (or whatever the numbers actually are).

 

[doctorhook]

I don't think we want ticky marks for minions. Part of the point of minions was to eliminate book-keeping on them. Plus, at three tickies, you run the risk of having minions outlast standard monsters by virtue of those crits and great rolls not mattering.

I think a reasonable solution could be to allow a save on "effect" (or even "area") damage. Sure, there's still the chance of a minion outlasting an elite, but the odds are pretty strongly against it. And, there's no book-keeping for them.

I wouldn't worry about a damage threshold, though. My assumption would be that damage actually is scaling as the PCs level, but minions are used to represent anything out of scale. That's why a minotaur is a standard monster at 8th level, but a minion at 12th (or whatever the numbers actually are).

Hmm, I like these ideas:

• Minions exposed to 'autodamage' effects (taking damage without being subject to an attack roll) get a save to avoid being destroyed by it.
• Also, Minions have Resist All equal to their level.

These are simple 'adjudicate them as the happen'/no-bookkeeping rules that give minions a bit more durability.