D&D 4E First Impressions of 4E / Predictions on 5E

[Khaim]

1. smoother, less tactical combat, as independent as possible from miniatures.

Well, it looks like more people like miniatures than hate them, and by a decent margin. As you said, you can probably houserule that out if you really want. Note that I'm not saying that's a solution; in my mind, having to rule 0 means the game has failed you. But for a lot of us, there isn't a problem. Can't make an omelet...

2. more freedom to customize the system by dropping whatever rule i don't like, without having to get a headache to understand the extension of a give change over many integrated subsytem (please notice that this is not necessarily a call for a return to "illogical" subsystem a la 2e).

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here. D&D rules are going to be integrated, and expecting to be able to easily pull them apart seems a bit silly. That said, we've already shown that you can take out the magic items in under half an hour, which is pretty good. The best you can hope for in this regard is transparency about what rules affect others, and why. It looks like we'll have that transparency.

3. a system that doesn't require me to spend hours to convert old adventures that i collected in my 16 years of gaming, hailing from the days od BECM, 1e, and 2e.

Wishful thinking. It's a different game. You will have to spend time converting adventures, and if you try to remain absolutely true to the source material and duplicated the monsters' stats and abilities perfectly, it will take you forever and not quite work in the end. The good news is that making up monsters in 4e looks to be a lot easier than any previous edition, so as long as you're okay with the conversion being flexible with stats etc, you should be fine.

 

[Khaim]

How do you know how high skills will go in 4E?

Well, we know that PCs get a flat level/2 bonus to skills, along with pretty much everything else. If you'd bothered to research anything before starting a flamewar, you might know that.

 

[Steely Dan]

Can you honestly not see how ludicrous this is getting?

…Getting?

 

[Belphanior]

…Getting?

Hmm quite right. I stand corrected.
See, nothing scary with admitting you're wrong.

 

[Steely Dan]

Hmm quite right. I stand corrected.
See, nothing scary with admitting you're wrong.

You weren't necessarily wrong – we know what we mean!

But yeah, people would rather be dead than wrong it sometimes seems, as if admitting fault weakens them.

These are often the same people who find it hard to compliment or praise others…

 

[Derren]

Oh come on now. Skills, feats, talents, race, alignment, spells, and good old fashioned roleplaying. There is so much out there to distuingishc characters. You're now arguing that characters are identical simply because their untrained skils be equally high, assuming equal ability scores and race. Can you honestly not see how ludicrous this is getting?

How often have you seen characters in your game with the same ability scores in one stat? I have seen this very often.
I find it laughable that a beduine warrior from the desert should have the same swim skill as a warrior who lives near a river but never bothered to practice swimming very much.

I was using your own example of the 10th level fighter with the +5 Ride skill. So the real question is: how do you?

When the skill is 1/2 level + ability score, with a possible +5 or +10 from feats (much less than what is possible in 3E except at very low level) and WoTC said that even untrained PCs have a chance of succeeding, how high do you think a "good" skill modifier is?

*sigh*
So you learn from bards' tales, your enemies, simple trial and error, NPCs you grouped with once or twice, or any of the other sources one can think of.

Bards tales must be really educating when you can practice physical skills just by listening to them.

You say you prefer the living breathing world of 3e over 4e, which has no/less artificial rules barriers. So why do you prefer the fiddly class/cross-class system of 3e which inevitably led to fighters having almost identical skill sets?

First, I never said that D&D had no rules restrictions, just less than 4E will apparently have.
Second, fighters might have the similar prefered skills, but they still could choose individually which skills fit them and which didn't. You can take ranks in a cross class skill if you want after all.
(Thrid, they still had different attributes and race...)

Are you now using my speculation to make a new complaint against 4e? From just a guy on the internet? Your misgivings are starting to make sense...

I'm just telling you what would happen if rings are indeed this quasi-artifacts which would instantly break the game when a 9th level character gets his hands on even the lowest powered one.

Since it's your complaint, the burden of proof lies with you actually. I'm not going to compare several monster books with stats we don't have yet and do your job for you.

Ok, when I have time I will extra for you list every out of combat ability every monster has.......

I'm with you right until the end. We've shown how 3e has quite some rules constraints too. But you brush them aside and claim 4e is worse.

I don't brush them aside. Yes, 3E is also not perfect (nothing is except a complete freeform game) but I learned to live with them and to still create a seemingly living world despite those constraints.
And when I see all the previews and design philosophies for 4E it seems that achieving this in 4E will be much harder than before.

Edit:

Well, we know that PCs get a flat level/2 bonus to skills, along with pretty much everything else. If you'd bothered to research anything before starting a flamewar, you might know that.

Please reread the discussion. The question is how Belphanior knows that +5 will be a rather low skill score. When 10th level adventurers just have +5 to a skill and are still able to do level appropriate things with it then +5 is apparently not that low.
But Belphanior seems to know it better.

 

[Steely Dan]

And when I see all the previews and design philosophies for 4E it seems that achieving this in 4E will be much harder than before.

Okay, right on, that's better.

 

[Kintara]

I think people are equating semantics, internet integration, and a shared lineage (after all, it's not as though you can't say that the Warrior, Priest, Rogue, and Mage haven't always been, well, D&D, not to mention the Druid and "Hunter," i.e. Ranger) with WotC trying to appeal to WoW players by "making the game more like WoW." WoW is like D&D, and it was before, and will be later.

 

[Spell]

Well, it looks like more people like miniatures than hate them, and by a decent margin.

oh, i love them, too. only they are expensive, require storage room i haven't got, and aren't too easy to move around when i move to another nation for months to an end. RPG books are a bitch, too... but i can buy pdfs, or scan mine, or just bring those that i might really be needing.

in my mind, having to rule 0 means the game has failed you. But for a lot of us, there isn't a problem. Can't make an omelet...

you see, that's why i am not too happy about the design people. there are ways to cater for minority sectors, too. like writing a very short "free form combat" chapter, and then add the "advanced tactical combat" rules in a subsequent meaty one, for example. it would probably take 3 more pages off the PHB or DMG. what's that, 15 spells less, if that many?

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here. D&D rules are going to be integrated, and expecting to be able to easily pull them apart seems a bit silly.

i'm not going to comment on the "silliness". suffices to say that i don't necessarily want to implement the idea of feats (especially if they start to become superpowers, more than "special moves"). or that, if i want to remove magical items because it fits my campaign world, i don't want to give arbitrary (as in: "without a logical in game explanation") bonuses to some classes because the game would be wildly unbalanced for those players taking them.
this has to do more with the type of games i like to play than with game design, but, again, i found OD&D and AD&D easier to customise in the way i wanted.

That said, we've already shown that you can take out the magic items in under half an hour, which is pretty good.

not really. i've seen people that know 3.x in and out telling me "if you remove this you will end up with that. these are some options to balance things out, IF you want to", but i don't feel that i would be confident enough with the new ruleset to do that straight away.

and besides, if i can't use older books (like i couldn't if i used, say, GURPS), and if i need to work to change the system to do what i like, why buying the books to begin with? i could play another game that i already have and face a similar kind of work. why spending money on something that i won't be able to use effortlessly?

(granted, i don't know yet, if this is the case. i'm just saying.)

The best you can hope for in this regard is transparency about what rules affect others, and why. It looks like we'll have that transparency.

you have transparency in 3e, too. what i want to make the system easily customizable is simple *rules*... which doesn't mean a simple logic behind the existing rules, but rules that are light enough to be "corrected" without taking a degree in game design

Wishful thinking. It's a different game.

2e with all the kits, the proficiencies (that weren't in 1e core), different magic systems found in PO books, psionics, and so on. was a different game, too. only, the differences weren't so big that i couldn't take a 1e adventure and run it pretty much straight out of the book.

You will have to spend time converting adventures, and if you try to remain absolutely true to the source material and duplicated the monsters' stats and abilities perfectly, it will take you forever and not quite work in the end.

exactly. i could do that using GURPS, so that i could also insert random bits of totally "unD&Dish" that might appeal to my players. like futurist technology, for example (can you tell i just bought Dark Heresy and i can't wait to see what they did in it?!? )

The good news is that making up monsters in 4e looks to be a lot easier than any previous edition, so as long as you're okay with the conversion being flexible with stats etc, you should be fine.

yes, that is indeed good news. if it's just a matter of "every other efreet in the world has Str 15, and these standard attacks, but this one is different" i don't care. if i have to spend time giving feats and skills to each and every creature in a given adventure, no thanks... but it doesn't look the case, if what i've seen about monsters turns out to be true.

 

[scruffygrognard]

Oh, I see. Everything which goes against your opinion is insulting...
Those are my impressions of 4E and I am not alone with them. If you don't agree with them, fine. But don't accuse me of spreading lies especially when you don't even try to understand my arguments.

I got the same treatment in this thread.

I don't get the vehemence against those who have loved D&D for years but aren't happy with what they're reading about the latest incarnation of the game.

Seems to me that forums should be a place for civil discussion not the lobbing of bile grenades. It's very sad that the atmosphere around here has soured over the last few months. I wasn't around for the "edition wars" between 2nd and 3rd edition but it looks like history is repeating itself.