Farewell to thee D&D

[AWizardInDallas]

I apologize if it seemed I was pointing at you directly. I used the term "people" to indicate the myriad of posters that have littered the various posts engaging in the behavior I mentioned.

Again, apologies for any implied criticism.

Ah, I understand. Accepted and thanks for your courtesy.

 

[dougmander]

The OP's criticisms of 4e resonated with me. My group has switched over to RISUS and we're having more fun playing (and I'm definitely having more fun DMing) than we've had in years. No rules lookups, no grid, no min/maxing, just characters, story, and action. I actually want to thank WotC for making 4e so far from my idea of a good time that it forced me to jump ship entirely.

 

[sukael]

And I do not invite argument

But you did happen to post this on a forum meant for open discussion...

1. Encounter Powers: Are these supposed to be learned combat skills or spells? If they are, then why must I wait five minutes to use something I learned? When I use an encounter power, I feel as though I blew off my five minute cooldown power and I am now reduced to watching a timer tick down while I use my at will over and over again.

For a non-spellcaster, encounter and daily powers aren't reserves of energy only useable for one purpose or something - they're forms of narrative control. A 29th-level Fighter doesn't think "oh, I will now use no mercy" - rather, once per day in the narrative of the game he takes advantage of an opportunity to strike an enemy's weak point with all his might.

And for powers that are physical feats, why can’t I do them over and over again? Why can I tumble once per encounter and then suddenly I’m so gimp, I just can’t manage such a feat again. It is an absurd and artificial limitation.

To take a look at tumble - "You can shift a number of squares equal to one-half your speed.", as a move action. It's not as though you can't accomplish something very analogous - just taking a move action. It's just that the chance to take advantage of your enemies to dart from Here to There without them realizing until seconds later only comes up very rarely... and once you've done it, they certainly won't leave you the opportunity to do it again.

2. I cannot run encounters as I like to run them. I was one of those DMs that liked to run a few simple encounters with one knockdown, dragout fight that would truly tax and drain resources including magic items. A non-stop edge of your seat, no rest, win or die battle against the big bad evil guys.

Simple - take a single encounter a few levels above the PCs (to make it quite challenging), and then split it however many parts you like, with each "wave" showing up after the previous.

3. Dragons can’t decimate armies of creatures with one blast of their breath unless I make them very small armies. Breath weapons are very limited in range and damage. A dragon would be lucky to decimate a group of lvl 3 Hobgoblin soldiers with their weak breath weapon even at ancient levels.

There's nothing to keep the dragon from simply using its breath weapon repeatedly... and if the level difference is that dramatic, it would be literally impossible to hit by anything other than criticals, making it extremely easy for the dragon to decimate massed forces using its breath weapon, double attack, and tail strike abilities. And that's not even counting its inferno aura...

4. Monster Recharge powers: What is up with this? If I run a vampire and I want it to use dominating gaze, I don’t want it to have to roll a six for it to recharge. I want it to be able to use it when it wants to and needs to use it in and out of combat.

Recharge powers are basically the same narrative construct as non-magical encounter and daily powers... albiet somewhat simplified, because working through a handful of even more powers for an entire encounter at once would be a bit too much of a hassle for most DMs.

So what good is immobilization when there are a party of five or six characters? What? The creature focuses its attack on the immobilized creature while the other four or five characters beat it to death?

This is why 4e encounters are meant to be built with more than one monster. If the players focus on a single ghoul, that gives the other ghouls time to jump in and immobilize all of them, too.

If a 4E wizard were in a book, he would be laughed at if he tried that “mysterious, powerful arcanist” role you see in so many fantasy books.

That "mysterious, powerful arcanist" is, quite simply, much higher level than anyone else around him.

The Star Wars Saga RPG offers a simple but elegant codification of this. A professional criminal might be 1st or 2nd level, but a professional "mysterious, powerful Jedi" is 7th level, at the very least - because anything lower than that is a padawan, no more than a trainee and apprentice.

Small boy picks up a rock and tosses it at a demon minion. He gets a lucky hit and kills the minion. Wow, he one upped even the rogue.

Minions are minions to the PCs. A rock thrown by a small boy, or any comparable situation, should do nothing - it is simply not appreciable damage.

And the job of a storyteller is to make each character feels like an important part of the story, something I did not have trouble doing even with disparate combat power levels.

Unfortunately, not all people can manage that as easily... and the fact that you have to do something about it, no matter how easy it might be to you, points to bad things about the game itself. I'd say it's much easier to work a cohesive whole from something basically well-balanced but with incredulous points than to do it in the opposite direction.

 

[green slime]

I agree with the OP. 4e just isn't my cup of tea. I tried, but it just doesn't cut the grain with me at all.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

How's that myopia working out for you?

Pretty well, the glasses help. How is that acute lack of context working out for you?

Another couple like this, and I'll be asking, "how's the vacation from the thread working out for ya?"

Keep it civil, folks, and don't make it personal. Those are simple rules to live by.

Kid Charlemagne, ENWorld Mod

 

[ExploderWizard]

Hmm. Whine on message boards?

That was rude.

The only inconsistency arises if you assume that there is a 1:1 mapping between game terms and "fictional world" elements. But that's not the case. Hit Points aren't part of the fiction world. Levels are not part of the fictional world. Even the skills don't map entirely to the fictional world. (or are you telling me there only exist people that know something on every part of history, which is why there is just one "Knowledge (History)" skill, not a Knowledge (History of the Stone Ages) and Knowledge (History of the Roman Empire)?)

For my games that mapping is important IF the element in question is observable to the inhabitants of the world. Exact meanings of levels and hit points are in fact not really mapped this way, I agree. The balloon properties of minions, the artificial cooldowns on ability use for martial powers, and the chronic amnesia that afflicts every adventurer who "retrains" are in fact observable effects in the world. Handwaving away these eyesores of inconsistency are quite possible to do, but not everyone wants to. I don't want to, for games that I DM. In my opinion such painful intruding gamist rules are the result of either lazy or rushed game design. If a rule or mechanic cannot pass my "Jaws IV" plausibility meter test then I usually will not use it.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

That was rude.

No, I fear that's what I might do.

For my games that mapping is important IF the element in question is observable to the inhabitants of the world. Exact meanings of levels and hit points are in fact not really mapped this way, I agree. The balloon properties of minions, the artificial cooldowns on ability use for martial powers, and the chronic amnesia that afflicts every adventurer who "retrains" are in fact observable effects in the world. Handwaving away these eyesores of inconsistency are quite possible to do, but not everyone wants to. I don't want to, for games that I DM. In my opinion such painful intruding gamist rules are the result of either lazy or rushed game design. If a rule or mechanic cannot pass my "Jaws IV" plausibility meter test then I usually will not use it.

But your creating the problem for yourself. If you say: "The only time I someone can make a bone-breaking blow is when he is using Brute Strike", then your creating a 1:1 mapping between game system and real world. But the game system doesn't require you to do so - A Brute Strike might be guaranteed to be a bone-breaking blow if it lands, but any other attack might achieve the same. And that makes the entire thing unobservable.
A Sweeping Strike might knock a foe prone, but any other strike might do something similar - except that only in Sweeping Strikes case, the foe cannot stand up as part of his general movement during combat. But unless turns and rounds are observable concepts in your game, no one can really observe this particular effect.

 

[Celtavian]

But you did happen to post this on a forum meant for open discussion...

I didn't invite because everything you post isn't going to change my mind one little bit. All the reasoning you posted suits you, but does not satisfy me at all. Your explanations may be true, but that truth isn't something I want in the D&D I like to play.

For a non-spellcaster, encounter and daily powers aren't reserves of energy only useable for one purpose or something - they're forms of narrative control. A 29th-level Fighter doesn't think "oh, I will now use no mercy" - rather, once per day in the narrative of the game he takes advantage of an opportunity to strike an enemy's weak point with all his might.

Already knew this. I don't like this form of mechanical narrative control . I want the characters to feel like theirs powers work as though they learned them and can use them just like a trained gymnast can flip whenever he feels like it.

What 4E did was make metagaming the standard form of play, disregarding anything close to realistic simualation. The above example you mentioned is metagaming.

It isn't actually the DM saying "You see a weak point you can strike." It is the player saying "I use my power regardless of whether the enemy is weak or not." The player just decides a random time to use his power. The DM must fit it in regardless of the circumstances of necessity.

It is the player controlling the narrative, not the DM. I don't like that. A player should have powers and a DM should control the narrative as to when those powers can be used.

The DM still has that powers for dailies. But he has completley lost that power for encounter powers. The narrative control is completely up to the player with encounter powers. Something I do not like since encounter powers are not learned skills, but repetitious narrative control by the player.

To take a look at tumble - "You can shift a number of squares equal to one-half your speed.", as a move action. It's not as though you can't accomplish something very analogous - just taking a move action. It's just that the chance to take advantage of your enemies to dart from Here to There without them realizing until seconds later only comes up very rarely... and once you've done it, they certainly won't leave you the opportunity to do it again.

They won't leave you to do that in the first place, thus the reason they have opportunity attacks. If this is how you justify tumble, then so be it.

Me, if you can do it, there shouldn't be any reason you can't do it again. It isn't like enemies have the means to stop you from tumbling again other than an arbitary narrative means like you describe.

In essence, you are coming up with excuses why a power works. That arbitrary DMing has worked in every edition of the game.

Simple - take a single encounter a few levels above the PCs (to make it quite challenging), and then split it however many parts you like, with each "wave" showing up after the previous.

This is what you're not understanding. Yes, I can do that. But it is artificial.

Me, I immerse myself in DMing. I think of the enemy as intelligent and I think of them as acting in an intelligent group of creatures. That means giving the players no rest once the fight is set off.

I don't get all these recommendations just to handwave or create artificial encounters that "simulate" what I want to do.

This is in essence the problem I have with 4E. That everything is simulated, artificial, and a bunch of handwaving. It takes me out of the game.

Telling me to design an encounter from a metagame standpoint to simulate what I want to do isn't going to make me feel better. Why do you think that it is?

My biggest problem with 4E is all the handwaving and assumption you are talking about. Did I not convey well enough that I want things to work and work all the time?

For example, let's say I have a recurring villain who has fought the character before in the same adventure. In your example for Tumble, then why wouldn't he be able to stop me from tumbling again since he knows I will do it? But he can't because I can do it once per encounter regardless of what the other characters do.

So why wouldn't I be able to do it all the time? what about against a stupid undead zombie who wouldn't have the intelligence to stop me from tumbling all around. Do I need contrive a different excuse for such dumb creatures as to why I can't tumble more than once every five minutes?

So I need an endless box of excuses for the endless number of times that each character can use his encounter power every five minutes? Seriously, I've heard this argument a ton. All it amounts to is me having to think up endless justifications for encounter powers. Something that ruins my immersion in the game.

There's nothing to keep the dragon from simply using its breath weapon repeatedly... and if the level difference is that dramatic, it would be literally impossible to hit by anything other than criticals, making it extremely easy for the dragon to decimate massed forces using its breath weapon, double attack, and tail strike abilities. And that's not even counting its inferno aura...

Recharge rolls would prevent it. So would the fact that dragon breat weapons are so small. Did you notice that an ancient blue dragon can only hit three targets with that line of lightning?

A dragon waiting for a recharge roll for its breath weapon is yet another thing that takes me out of the game. If it doesn't you, that is you. It takes me out of the game and not a single explanation from you will change that viewpoint.

Recharge rolls for dragon breath weapons are bunk. I like a dragon that knows his breath weapon well enough that he will be able to use it every 1 to 4 rounds, not sweating whether he gets a six over the course of a combat.

I get into my monsters. The recharge rolls take me out of the game.

Recharge powers are basically the same narrative construct as non-magical encounter and daily powers... albiet somewhat simplified, because working through a handful of even more powers for an entire encounter at once would be a bit too much of a hassle for most DMs.

Once again, artificial and as I stated makes the monster for me feel like he is waiting for the dice machine to come up with his number before he can use his power.

As a DM that truly likes to immerse myself into the monsters I play to the point where I alter my voice around the table and think about the personality of the creature, that recharge roll is a big old immersion destroyer. Not to mention a series of unlucky recharge rolls renders a monster much weaker than he would be if the power worked. Since I experienced that a few times why running the game, I was rather put off by it.

The fact that a monster won't do his job as controller or leader because he was unlucky on the recharge roll doesn't sit well with me. Never will.

This is why 4e encounters are meant to be built with more than one monster. If the players focus on a single ghoul, that gives the other ghouls time to jump in and immobilize all of them, too.

I had to double and triple some encounters to make them challenging. I put four ghouls in one encounter and all my players did was trap them in a hallway and kill them two a a time making for a long, tedious battle.

The ghoul is underwhelming. He hits, immobilizes, hopes the player doesn't make his save and that he is able to hit a few more times to stun them. They get one attack per round, thus can immobilize one character which doesn't take that character out of the game. And must keep on hitting the same character.

Sure the other ghouls can go after someone else, that still leaves three other players to beat them down. Then with two minor words from the leader, a second wind from everyone, and temporary hit points from encounter powers for the entire group, let's just say that ghouls were a rather underwhelming fight.

That "mysterious, powerful arcanist" is, quite simply, much higher level than anyone else around him.

I was told to use this excuse for 3E as well.

I could use it. And it would be funny as heck to run a lvl 30 Archmage wizard and wonder why he couldn't level lvl 6 Skirmishers with his "awsome" power.

Even a high level wizard only gets 2d6 for his scorching blast. Levels may make a significant different for defenses, but damage is so depressed in 4E that his damage boost wouldn't be all that much save perhaps when he critted.

The Star Wars Saga RPG offers a simple but elegant codification of this. A professional criminal might be 1st or 2nd level, but a professional "mysterious, powerful Jedi" is 7th level, at the very least - because anything lower than that is a padawan, no more than a trainee and apprentice.

If a Jedi doesn't play like a Jedi, I wouldn't like that game either. Jedi are the strongest in the game bar none, whether it is a 30 lvl jedi versus a 30 lvl smuggler. If the game doesn't have that feel, I wouldn't play. Thus why I never played Star Wars the MMORPG or RPG. I want my games to feel like storybooks, not egalitarian environments where we can all be equal.

Minions are minions to the PCs. A rock thrown by a small boy, or any comparable situation, should do nothing - it is simply not appreciable damage.

Once again you are bringing up the artificial nature of 4E. That is what I was getting at. It is all artificial, a bunch of smoke and mirrors. That lvl 20 demon minion you are fighting isn't really powerful, he just a puffed up smoke and mirror creature for the DM to throw at you.

You want to know what phrase comes up in my mind for 4E over and over again, one that keeps getting confirmed arguments like the one you used above.

"All style, no substance."

That is 4E in a nutshell. It looks great on the suface, but dig a little deeper and you find fluffy cotton in your monsters and balloons filled with air that pop when when you hit with them a +6 greatsword or poke with a finger.

Unfortunately, not all people can manage that as easily... and the fact that you have to do something about it, no matter how easy it might be to you, points to bad things about the game itself. I'd say it's much easier to work a cohesive whole from something basically well-balanced but with incredulous points than to do it in the opposite direction.

True enough. But no, I don't think there is anything wrong with games that aren't perfectly balanced.

It may be easier to work with a well-balanced whole. But as with things that generally easier, they are less satisfying as a whole. It may take more work to make a 3E adventure, but by did I used to feel satisfied when I beat the Big Bad Evil Guy. I didn't feel like he was an artificial bag of hit points with some marginally dangerous powers aimed at creating the illusion of challenge verus being an actual challenge.

And that is how I feel in 4E. I've fought a few solos. TAll those nice hit points don't amount to a hill of beans with one attack per round while five or six people are blowing encounter powers on him and probably dailies as well as using second wind and minor words.

The entire game is balanced in such a way as to make sure the players always win. And so that they don't have to work too hard to do so.

Thanks for continuing to confirm my initial feeling that 4E is all style and no substance. Handwaving and artifice that takes me right out of the game and rings the "this is a game" bell in my head.

I'm not going to convince you to dislike 4E. But don't think for a second you're going to convince me my views are incorrect. I very much understand the intent of 4E mechanics used to simualate narrative events.

I just prefer the mechanics 3E used to simulate those same narrative events. They feel more real for me and do a better job immersing me in the story. If 4E does that better for you, then I'm happy that the new version makes you happy. I certainly wish I could say the same.

 

[Gothmog]

What you say is true. I liked what they did for melees in 4E. I'm going to try to import some dailies to 4E. I feel dailies better allow me to run things as I like to run them and will give the melees some better options.

I won't be importing encounter powers though. I like that a simple sword or axe swing will work the majority of the time. That is real fighting to me. I like when my melee characters fight using a particular fighting style rather than blowing off one shot powers that they can't repeat for an artificial amount of time.

If I were a 4E designer, I would have worked on improving fighting style options. Not making everyone into the equivalent of a spellcaster with abilities that once used cannot be used again for an arbitrary amount of time.

Hey Celtavian, I think I might have a workable solution for you that my group has messed around with in 4e. Like you, not being able to use encounter powers again in an encounter bugged a couple of my players, and I prefer to run a few tough fights rather than 3-4 smaller ones during a given adventuring day.

So we started a side-campaign from 1st level exploring 2 additions to the rules about how powers are used.

1) Any character can expend two healing surges to gain one encounter power use back. This can be done multiple times per combat if desired. We explain this as drawing on innner resolve and adrenaline to power martial maneuvers, and channeling magical or divine power through the caster's body for arcane or divine power. In any case, the effort leaves the character tired, sore, and somewhat drained.

2) I think you were the one who mentioned that spells don't seem to do enough damage in comparison to older editions. One of my players who likes wizards a lot had the same problem, although he loves the rest of 4e. Our solution was to allow a character to burn one healing surge to increase the damage by 1W die. All Heroic level characters can burn 1 healing surge this way on a single attack (for +1W), Paragon can burn two (for +2W), and Epic three healing surges (+3W). Wizards can burn twice this number of surges per attack, and gain higher damage (+2W, +4W, or +6W). However, if the attack misses, the healing surges are still burned away, so its a chancey propasition for most casters.

We've played to 3rd level using these rules, and so far they seem to work. Since we prefer fewer encounters per day, we had found most PCs ended the day with 2-6 unusued healing surges. Using these rules, the PCs have to be a little more careful with their surges, and there is a chance that the character might exert himself too much/strain or damage muscles/channel too much energy and not be able to heal any for the next day (no more healing surges left). We haven't found that burning surges for extra encounter powers really affects combat balance much, but burning surges for extra damage can be very dramatic and fun. I don't know how it will play at higher levels yet, but so far its made the wizard lover happy, and given all the PCs an extra way to manage resources that they seem to enjoy.

Would this fix help any with your problems?

 

[ExploderWizard]

No, I fear that's what I might do.

That was misinterpreted then, my apologies.

But your creating the problem for yourself. If you say: "The only time I someone can make a bone-breaking blow is when he is using Brute Strike", then your creating a 1:1 mapping between game system and real world. But the game system doesn't require you to do so - A Brute Strike might be guaranteed to be a bone-breaking blow if it lands, but any other attack might achieve the same. And that makes the entire thing unobservable.
A Sweeping Strike might knock a foe prone, but any other strike might do something similar - except that only in Sweeping Strikes case, the foe cannot stand up as part of his general movement during combat. But unless turns and rounds are observable concepts in your game, no one can really observe this particular effect.

With a hit point wound system, I wouldn't bother about bone breaking injury at all. Brute strike is an extra hard hit that takes more out of an opponent.

The sweeping strike example is more of a problem. Prone is an actual condition that is both obvious to the world's inhabitants and carries mechanical consequences for those in that position. Once a combatant is prone, they must get up (barring the use of some ability that allows instant stand). In the example you gave, are you saying that a regular strike can score a knockdown but allows the target to stand up without spending movement? If that is the case do other foes get combat advantage against this guy(because he is prone) until his turn when he can stand up as a free action? These are the types of things that affect the flow of combat as they occur and are not only observable, but are able to be acted upon by the observers.

This is the reason why I think the whole, save vs knockdown only when it would cause additional effect is BS.