This is possibly why he didn't say it was a summary of 2e D&D.
Forked Thread: Disappointed in 4e; 4e upgrade or new game??
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This is possibly why he didn't say it was a summary of 2e D&D.
Thasmodious
First Post
That's really irrelevant, though. Someone could consider rafting a core element of D&D gameplay because all their games have featured a heavy rafting element because their DM is a river guide. D&D has never hidden what its about. It states it clearly in the introductions to every editions core books. It is about the things I said, not because those are what it is about to me, but because those are core concepts the game is built around (not the stuck doors thing, that was just a color comment). It is also irrelevant that other FRPGs use many of the same elements as core elements of their game systems. Other FRPGs are all built from the groundwork of D&D.
If you really wish to examine the editions and accuse one of being less "D&D" than the others, that edition would be 3e and specifically through the area of what many people consider it's major strength - it's wide open multiclassing/character building. In every other edition, including 4th, class is a/the central identity of a PC. It is integral. In 3e, class is more a suite of abilities to plug in as you see fit, rather than your character's defining trait as an adventurer. This is a pretty strong departure from every other edition of D&D, with the semi-exception of late Player's Option 2e. I don't feel, at all, that this change made 3e "not D&D", but many did (it was one of the major sources of 3e hate when the game came out). It was still D&D to me because that introduction described the same game as every other edition, the one I'd been playing since the late 70s.
The day edition x comes along and the introduction reads - "D&D is a game in which you play arsticratic businessmen who seek to blend the pressures of upper crust society with their sensitivities for the broader world of social issues, while managing career and social status through deep, Machiavellian strategies." Then I will take up arms and cry "not my D&D!"
Vancian isn't entirely gone, there are still daily slots, that once used, are gone until after a full rest and wizards still memorize those daily spells, both attack and utility, from a spellbook.
I find 4e easily backwards compatible (core to core, as you say). You just sometimes have to divorce the 3e class from the 4e class (just like if you wanted to make a 1e cavalier in some other edition). Roles matter as much as class name. A lightly armored, speedy, finesse fighter in 3e is a ranger in 4e, for example.
Then you aren't trying hard enough, and your conclusion is entirely faulty. It does not arise from your previous statements. 3e is a very different game than 1e/2e because I no longer use To-Hit tables, is just as invalid a conclusion. Sure, there are some concepts that were built because of what is in a particular edition, especially 3rd, that would seem to be hard or impossible to translate, but, most of the time, those concepts are equally hard to translate backwards as forwards, without substantial reimagining. Still, any concept can be stripped down to basics and adapted to a changing edition (or an entirely new system) in either direction.
ExploderWizard
Hero
Not quite true. There are things that have no translation and are simply missing. I am talking about core to core only things to keep the playing field level.
The Sleep Spell- this translates in name only. Period.
Confusion- same.
Any and all effects that allow an enemy to be neutralized without slogging through every hit point.
Non-lethal damage- The entire handling of this has effects that can remove some of the challenge from certain adventure types. Consider a party of bounty hunting PC's. A lot of rewards for these type of jobs are higher if the bounty is delivered alive. Why? Because capturing a hostile without killing him is more difficult. Not any longer though. This is a place where rules step on fluff and remove any and all tactical approach differences when trying to capture an enemy.
PC's can march in blasting away as usual and simply claim thats its all subdual damage. No planning or thinking required. That gang of brigands holding a struggling hostage..........meh, just throw a subdual fireball into the crowd and clean up later. Balance is maintained within the actual combat so its all ok I guess.
Yeah you can houserule this any way you want.
So 4E is a very different game in both mechanics and feel.
malraux
First Post
I'm gonna call bogus. If 60's camp Adam West batman and dark knight batman have the same themes and cliches, and meet the same expectations, then there's no 2 versions of DnD that also don't.
Thasmodious
First Post
Those are individual items. I was talking about character concepts. Of course some individual spells change, they do in every edition. If that's cause to say a new edition is an entirely new game, then every edition is a new game. I don't see it that way. If nothing changed, there wouldn't be a new edition.
Those still exist, intimidate for example, rendering someone unconscious or helpless or petrified for other examples.
All editions are different mechanically, they have to be. I don't agree that 4e or any other edition has been different in feel. It's all been thoroughly D&D to me. 4e even has more old school feel for me and my group with the emphasis on a bit more on the fly DM freedom.
Just to reiterate, what I was saying is that I don't really see character concepts that don't convert between editions in at least some way that holds true to the concept, even if the mechanics change considerably. A couple of exceptions for 4e would be specialist casters like conjurers and enchanters, but that's coming. See my forked thread -here, if discussing character concepts in 4e holds interest for you.
Nah, that's just a difference in tone. Jokey and camp, versus gothic and serious. You can also change D&D's tone without changing it's cliches.
It's like the difference between Roger Moore era James Bond and Daniel Craig era James Bond. Both are definitely James Bond, but just differ in tone.
Dragonborn and eladrin are not a change in tone except towards "wahoo" nonsense, and warlords just don't belong because of what they do to the central conceit of the adventuring party (among other things). They're not at the heart of D&D, should be clearly optional, should be in no way ubiquitous, and shouldn't be in the implied setting.
I’m sorry. I was trying to phrase things in general, not specific, terms. Read “X” as “Any game, edition X” and read “2nd edition” as “edition X + 1”.
Being as it is a generalization, there will be many flaws whenever you fill in those blanks with specifics. That’s the nature of generalizations. Indeed, there have been games for which a new edition really has been more of an upgrade, and this generalization completely fails for them.
To be more specific, I grew dissatisfied with D&D (A or no) when I was expecting it to be something it wasn’t. When I learned to (again) take it for what it was, I found I enjoyed it again. In fact, I enjoyed it more than those games that did give me what I thought I wanted.
So, now when I look at certain “X + 1 editions” of many games, I often see designers who mean to upgrade the system and who do built a good game, but who seem to have missed the point of the earlier edition and really created a different (though good) game that really deserves its own name.
And, again, that’s a generalization, so it doesn’t really hold 100% once you start filling in specifics.
I didn't see 3Ed multiclassing as that big of a change, really.
1&2Ed had 2 forms of multiclassing- multiclassing and dual-classing. Multiclassing was the exclusive purview of the non-humans, and dual-classing was limited to humans.
3Ed dumped almost all PCs into the old dual-classing regime while dropping the "humans-only" requirement and the high primary stat requirements for changing classes (replacing it with "favored class" and an XP penalty for being out of balance).
It kept old-school multiclassing as "gestalt" multiclassing and again, dropped the limitation that it was available only to certain races.
Opened up? Sure. Radical change? Not so much.
Yes, that's quite the bone they threw us.
The fact remains that its gone from being the major form of spell resource management to being an appendix that could well be excised in the next revision.
Its like the difference between real, fresh-squeezed orange juice and Orange Fanta.
What ARE you smoking?
My conclusion stands on solid experience.
Core to Core:
1) All of my gnomes and 1/2 Orc PCs are gone- many DMs of my acquaintance only allow PCs to be generated from PHB races, so no MM races allowed. Even if that were not the case, the racial abilities available to PCs from MM races doesn't compare in quality to that available to PHB races- go for an MM race and you're already gimping your PC out of the gate.
2) Non-blaster mages are absent in 4Ed. There goes 100% of my Wizards (and Sorcerers) going back to 1Ed and all through 3Ed. 100%.
3) Druids also gone.
4) While not core in 1 or 2Ed, Barbarians were part of 3Ed's Core. 4Ed doesn't have them.
5) The thief/rogue role has been gutted. Maybe it wasn't your idea of fun being the scout/trapfinder/stealthy killer/skill monkey, and you're fine with the 4Ed class being the scout-assassin, but not everyone likes having 2 of the class' roles just evaporate.
6) Dating back 20+ years, it is the rare PC in my D&D portfolio who isn't multiclassed or dual-classed, with 3+ classes per PC accounting for fully 1/2 of all my multiclassed/dual-classed PCs. The radical change in the way multiclassing works alters the substance of what my PCs would be capable of doing to the point that the 4Ed version hardly resembles prior incarnations. Conversion of certain key PCs to 4Ed would result in having to retcon 20 years of an active campaign that started in 1Ed, continued through 2Ed, and survived the transition to 3.X with only minor blips.
Backwards compatibility in an RPG doesn't mean I can kludge something together that approximates 50% of a PCs role. While "roles matter as much as class names," I have found that 4Ed versions of my older PCs cannot perform the roles they currently fill.
Thasmodious
First Post
It was THE fundamental shift of 3e. In all other editions, class defined the character. In 3e, it was a suite of abilities. Adding barbarian1 at 8th level had nothing to do with being a barbarian, it had to do with the speed boost, rage, hit points, etc. In previous editions, you didn't suddenly add barbarian to yourself. A wizard/thief was always a wizard/thief. A dual classed character had to actually quit his first class like it was a job before he could move on to a new class.
4e isn't exactly a return to old school there, but I think its a good split between the old and the new direction of 3e. Limited training to gain a couple abilities that are part of another class allows PCs to diversify, and paragon multiclassing allows for full immersion, and is more similar to the old dual class rules. Point is, in 4e, like older versions of the game, class is central. 3e's experiment was great, it taught class/level based design a lot, including the limitations of too much freedom within that type of framework. Why keep the semblance of class if there are a couple hundred of them, why not just abandon class alltogether and use a level based point buy system to purchase your own custom suite of abilities. Actually, many people really wanted to see 4e go that direction, it being a logical follow up to the shift of 3e.
1. "My DM won't allow me to play it" is not part of a core to core comparison of editions. One of my players is quite happily playing a gnome barbarian that he played throughout 3e.
2. That's one of the few valid areas where you can say something can't be pulled off in 4e. But that's already changing. A whole suite of illusion powers rolled out in Dragon, we just saw a preview of the bard and the return of enchantments, we have a good look at conjuring from things like animal companions and bag of tricks. A lot of that can really be done with flavor retooling anyway. Damage is not direct, HPs are abstract and represent a wearing down as much as anything else. So retooling wizard powers as enchantments or illusions or psychic damage is not difficult. Similarly a necromancer would be quite easy. Magic Missile becomes a necrotic bolt, cloud of daggers (as someone else suggested elsewhere) becomes a zone of grasping skeletal hands, thunderwave a blasphemy type effect.
3. Not now, really. First, its coming, soon. But right now, it would be easy to reflavor cleric for a more traditional druid or fighter w/ animal companion for a more 3e druid.
4. Fighters make excellent barbarians. Before the class actually rolled out, the player of that gnome barbarian used the fighter class. He wore hide armor, carried a large hammer, and picked heavy damage abilities like brute strike and crushing blow. He flavored second wind as his rage ability and it fit quite well. He'd get hit, go nuts, rejuvanate, and gain higher defenses through his rage.
5. Your statement here doesn't stand up to any kind of actual examination. The 4e rogue still has stealth, perception, thievery. He can do all the things he's always been good at - stealth, backstabbing, thievery, picking locks, finding and disabling traps. Nothings changed for him.
6. The concept is not the class. What was the purpose of your 3e PC with 8 classes? If your whole concept is merely a collection of mechanics designed for uber awesomeness, yeah, you might find it a bit difficult. But if your wide ranging multiclassed character is actually built around an RP based concept, it's hard to imagine you can't make it work in 4e.
If the problem is just a refusal on your part to apply your imagination or creativity (as in, hey, you can't reflavor things), then there's really no point. I'll just smile and say, you're right, you can't convert, go play something else. But this is a game of imagination. If you're unwilling to bend and only want to highlight "differences" to complain about 4e, then there isn't much that can be said. But if you have a legitimate interest in finding ways to convert your character concepts to 4e, I started a thread for that, its linked above.
And its not chicanery that allows for the conversion. A concept should have legs outside of the mechanics of any system. A character is represented by the mechanics of a system, not defined by them. That is, ideally, you develop a character then make the mechanics work. Lamenting that you can't convert your lightly armored, agile, 3e two weapon and archery fighter because the 4e fighter class doesn't do either is the kind of thing I am talking about. That concept is not Fighter, the class, it is the style of fighting. That style in 4e is represented by the ranger and the concept is easily converted.
Of course, many times we develop a character specifically within the system we are playing. We see a cool prestige class, and develop the concept from there rather than creating the concept in a way that is detached from the system. That is not to say you can't port that character to entirely different systems, it just takes detaching the concept from the mechanics of the old system and looking how to bring that concept to life in a new system. For a happy while I played WoW on an RP-PvP server that actually had heavy RP and a lot of dedicated RP players (Twisting Nether). My characters on that server were all characters that I had played extensively in D&D over the years. Divorcing them from the mechanics of D&D, they were easy to reimagine in WoW, and my play experience with them made RPing them in the game a breeze. I had some of the better RP experiences of my life playing an MMO.
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