Falling off the 4ed bandwagon

[jgbrowning]

Keep in mind the word challenge. Is it okay to cast a single spell and the combat is essentially over? Is that still a challenge? Two spells? What if it's the same spell every encounter? Does it matter that non-casters are left entirely out of the equation, or in other words, does it matter to have a challenge for everyone vs. just for the casters?

The use of the word was in relation to something complex enough to require "a plan" in order to see if a challenge can be brought to a successful outcome in the players' opinions

joe b.

 

[Barastrondo]

That's very possible. I've always been a fly by the pants DM who does very little prep, so that may be a facet I'm downplaying.

Yeah. In many cases it takes a certain willingness to wing it, and to say "you know, I don't need to run the math for all the facets of this villain's class, I just need to figure out what he's going to use most often." Though I enjoyed 3e D&D, I think it hit the apex of the preparation problem, as it combined a robust and complicated antagonist creation system with the lethal "villains are expected to die, not to recur" mentality of D&D, and topped it all off with plenty of player goodies that allowed for the quick kill or quick bypass.

You can absolutely get around those problems, of course. But if you're running the game the way the books teach you to, it's gonna be problematic. You have to not fear a later audit. Of course, for some people the "build a villain" phase is part of the fun. But if it isn't... ouch.

I think that such is a factor in the design, but such goals are almost always in opposition to providing enough fiddly bits to keep the players happy. The more wiz-bang the players can do, generally the more work the GM has to do.

Hence the razor-thin line. It's an unenviable situation, exacerbated by the size of D&D's player base.

 

[keterys]

An rpg encounter can never be "broken" or "cheesed"

While I agree that RPG encounters shouldn't be on rails that you can't deviate from, and seeing the wacky ways people improvise and get through things is great...

I must completely disagree. RPG encounters, plots, and campaigns can most certainly be broken or cheesed. Some systems use a sort of escalation warfare of countermeasures that block teleportation, divination, whatever to preserve certain stories, but there's a certain amount of benefit to the DM preparing two hours to run a game, let's call it Agricola, and not finding out that he actually ended up with Pandemic, a wholly unknown to him option.

Ie, 1st level wizards don't have the power to level towns because it's not necessarily good for the game. Or at least it's likely good for the game for there to be a period of time in which the wizard is unable to do that, before working up to when he can.

Scry and die is not necessarily good for the game. Where/when it is good for the game, well, has a lot of variance of opinion.

 

[RiTz21]

...I'll leave it at that for now. Please don't take this as an attack on 4th edition--I am talking about my own experience of it, which is obviously based upon my personal tastes. But I am wondering if anyone's experience resonates with my own? I've heard a lot of folks not like 4ed from the start, but not many that started liking it but gradually "fell off the bandwagon." Did you start out liking 4th edition and gradually become disenchanted? Or what about the converse--did you start out not liking it and then enjoyed it?

My D&D group (composed of 30-50yrs old) had no liking for what they saw in the new 4th edition system, and decided to stick to 3.5 (they had invested a lot in books for it). More recently, with Paizo's Pathfinder coming out, all our games have switched to Pathfinder - We're still learning the differences from 3.5, but this seems to be the road we will be heading for the foreseeable future... I believe that those who have had a chance to play the earlier systems are less inclined to jump on the 4th bandwagon.

RiTz21

 

[Mort]

My D&D group (composed of 30-50yrs old) had no liking for what they saw in the new 4th edition system, and decided to stick to 3.5 (they had invested a lot in books for it). More recently, with Paizo's Pathfinder coming out, all our games have switched to Pathfinder - We're still learning the differences from 3.5, but this seems to be the road we will be heading for the foreseeable future... I believe that those who have had a chance to play the earlier systems are less inclined to jump on the 4th bandwagon.

RiTz21

My group is also 30s to 50s, all of us have played from 1st eddition or earlier. Yet we are all having a blast with the 4e system (I'm having fun DMing it and they certainly seem to be enjoying playing it). 4e is a certainly a different system, a much bigger change than 2e to 3e but I would not hold your observation as near universal.

 

[Obryn]

I believe that those who have had a chance to play the earlier systems are less inclined to jump on the 4th bandwagon.

RiTz21

I don't actually think you'll find that this is the case on ENWorld.

I've played D&D since the early eighties, starting with the three-punch red book, and moving through 1e, 2e, 3e, and 3.5 before 4e. Lots of others on here are similar. Quite a few never switched over to 3e, and several who started with 3e haven't switched to 4e. (Heck - I still run a 1e game, too.)

I don't think there's any connection between D&D experience, and whether or not a given player or DM enjoys 4e. It's a matter of preferences, and what you value in a gaming system - nothing more.

-O

 

[Jack99]

My D&D group (composed of 30-50yrs old) had no liking for what they saw in the new 4th edition system, and decided to stick to 3.5 (they had invested a lot in books for it). More recently, with Paizo's Pathfinder coming out, all our games have switched to Pathfinder - We're still learning the differences from 3.5, but this seems to be the road we will be heading for the foreseeable future... I believe that those who have had a chance to play the earlier systems are less inclined to jump on the 4th bandwagon.

RiTz21

I think its the opposite. It's all based on personal experiences of course, but the vast majority of people I know or heard about who haven't switched, are people who discovered D&D during the 3.x era.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I commend you for it, and adhere to the same philosophy, but that would be a house rule. The default assumption is that the players (PCs) can either create or buy whatever they want. Perhaps not whenever they want or wherever they want, but that level of customization is assumed.

Terrible design decision, FWIW.

As got pointed out, long before 4e was announced - the 3.X rules do not say that magic items can be easily purchased, nor is that even particularly implied, except possibly for certain (Forgotten Realms?) settings - so no, it is not a even house rule, but rather a setting decision. What they do have is how long it takes to create magic items - and that it takes just as long for an NPC as it does for a PC. And since the village priest is ministering to the village for most of his day, he will get around to the scrolls when he gets around to it.

He is more likely to have some potions of healing, since he will not need to be there to personally use them, an assumption that he is likely have for a stockpile of scrolls...

As for Wizards creating their own scrolls... they have a few that they keep for contingencies. Knock comes to mind, put they much prefer if the expendable professional thief property relocation expert opens the door for them - scrolls cost money. Now wands.... a wizard seems more likely, in my campaign, to carry about two wands of regularly used offensive spells than anything else - for some reason Fireball remains the most popular, with Magic Missile for those things that are immune to fire.

Then again, I have never experienced the 15 minute adventuring day problem either, so likely it is my crew. (Hey guys! I just said something nice about you!) It seems like everyone pretty much holds the line together, the wizard does not go Nova, but conserves his spells, though until the Reserve feats came out he was still the limiting factor on the adventuring day (just closer to six hours than fifteen minutes, and once I had to pretty much tell the players that a fifteen hour adventuring day was not a good idea, they would have been facing the big bad while sorely depleted).

Another consideration that comes to mind 3e vs. 4e - I wonder if the fans of versatile wizards are one of the major chunks of resentment toward 4e? I know that it is for me, though my own biggest bone is the GSL (grrrrr). Play for them has to be one of the biggest edition changes.

The Auld Grump, rambling because he needs to eat....

 

[Mort]

As for Wizards creating their own scrolls... they have a few that they keep for contingencies. Knock comes to mind, put they much prefer if the expendable professional thief property relocation expert opens the door for them - scrolls cost money. Now wands.... a wizard seems more likely, in my campaign, to carry about two wands of regularly used offensive spells than anything else - for some reason Fireball remains the most popular, with Magic Missile for those things that are immune to fire.

when our characters were about 9th level, we explored a wizards tower. Every door of any consequence was wizard locked; meaning the rogue (in all of his pixie 30 DEX glory) had exactly 0% of opening any of the doors. Knock, on the other hand, got through the doors quite nicely. It's disparity like this that sours me a bit (and I was the one playing the mage, the rogue was even less thrilled).

 

[Barastrondo]

I've played D&D since the early eighties, starting with the three-punch red book, and moving through 1e, 2e, 3e, and 3.5 before 4e. Lots of others on here are similar. Quite a few never switched over to 3e, and several who started with 3e haven't switched to 4e. (Heck - I still run a 1e game, too.)

I don't think there's any connection between D&D experience, and whether or not a given player or DM enjoys 4e. It's a matter of preferences, and what you value in a gaming system - nothing more.

Very similar experiences here; fell down the hole because my mother got me the red box with the Erol Otus art at a highly impressionable age. I don't think it's about what editions you played; I think it's about what kind of experiences you've gotten out of gaming, and what you want to get out of future games. For instance, 4e enables a lot of gaming habits that I picked up in my 2e days back in college in ways that 3e didn't. Not that 3e isn't an excellent system, and not that 4e doesn't have anything I would rather they'd done differently, but I find I must be squarely in the 4e target audience for some reason or another.