Forked Thread: Rate WotC as a company: 4e Complete?

[The Little Raven]

I'm sorry, but it still blows my mind that people are defending the 3e fly.

Do... do we actually agree on something?

...amazing.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Yes, and with the age-old, and very untruthful 'A Good DM can design games around it.'

Some things break the game, no matter how many backflips the players expect the DM to do.

 

[rounser]

Do... do we actually agree on something?

...amazing.

Not really. I agree with him too. I like a lot of 4E from crunch and metagame perspectives, and agree that this is another thing they got right.

 

[Greylock]

I always found sorcerers with fly to be more of a 'problem' in terms of the flying party issue.

The problem I've always had has been with Sorcerers who have Fly, and Invisibility, and Fireball or Lightning Bolt - And a level of Rogue. Oddly enough, I've never seen a player character built like that, but I have seen a couple of NPCs like that, from two different DMs.

hth

 

[pemerton]

arguably, D&D 4e hits a problem, because while D&D has only ever really emulated D&D, there are certain key things that make up D&D, some of which are missing in 4e - specifically enchantment, summoning and illusion magic. (While the naming of the schools was added later, many of the spells existed even as far back as OD&D - audible glamer, phantasmal forces, monster summoning 1 and suggestion are all present in my copy of OD&D (1978, 2nd edition, reprint).)

Without opening my copy of the PHB, I can bring to my mind a ghost sound at will, which I think is better than AG was in 1st ed AD&D, 2 or 3 illusion rituals (item, creature, wall I think), a summoning ritual in which the caster has to bargain for information from an other-worldly being, a number of summoning/conjuring cleric powers, and a confusion spell for wizards. It's hardly as if there's no summoning, illusion or enchantment.

 

[Fifth Element]

I'm sorry, but it still blows my mind that people are defending the 3e fly.

Agreed. I don't think it's really a huge problem, but it's big enough to worry about.

In my current campaign I just bumped it to 5th level. The wizard player complained loudly. I tried to explain, but he never really accepted it. Then when he hit 9th level, he didn't take fly, explaining that he never wanted it anyway. So this guy basically deals with life as if it were the internet. (I don't really care about this, but I'm gonna bitch about it anyway!)

 

[Rechan]

Do... do we actually agree on something?

...amazing.

I know. It's shocking.

 

[Dinkeldog]

I still don't get why Fly was considered broken in a game that was going "back to the dungeon".

Did you mostly fight in big halls or out in the open, where you could fly up out of reach? And people out in the open never had any defense against flying foes?

I can say that in the campaigns I played in and DMed for, fly wasn't about gaining altitude and staying out of melee range (much), it was primarily to eliminate movement penalties from heavy armor or size.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Yes, and with the age-old, and very untruthful 'A Good DM can design games around it.'

Some things break the game, no matter how many backflips the players expect the DM to do.

If the players are breaking the game and the DM can't control it to the point of saying "hey, we're removing Fly", then there are much bigger problems than any game can fix.

I mean, seriously, you guys that had repeated problems with Fly being abused... did the DM just complain about it and the players ignore?

 

[pemerton]

Again, I don't know if I agree here. First you're making a judgment based on "the future of D&D 4e". Secondly even in the small amount of time it's been out, 4e has produced quite a few rail-roady dungeon crawls. The adventure in the DMG, H1:Keep on the Shadowfell, Rescue, Sleeper is a dungeon crawl with (I believe) one skill challenge, etc. (I haven't looked over Heathen or H2 so I won't comment on those). But I don't see WotC necessarily breaking the dungeon crawl trend anytime soon...It's just easier to write these types of adventures.

I did express it as a hope, not a prediction. After I posted I read through Heathen more closely and I think it's not bad for a WoTC adventure. H1 I haven't seen but reviews suggest it is a dungeon crawl of the sort I don't really like. Sleeper I want to look at more closely but I'm sure you're right. H2 I don't know.

Any time a published module has a set-piece encounter the module design either has to railroad the PCs into it, or trust the GM to get them there. It's a rare writer who extends the GM that trust, and the general tone of 4e gives me little hope that will change.

I'm not sure I share your notion of non-railroading. I'm not talking about sandbox play. I'm talking about an adventure when the players get to choose how they respond to the climax (eg get to decide who to oppose and who to support, and what thematic attitude to take towards the whole affair).

This sort of adventure does require a pre-planned set-piece encounter (sandbox play tends not to produce dramatic climaxes). But it requires the players to be free to choose how their PCs deal with that climax. This generally requires a degree of flexibility in the lead up also, as the players learn more about the different parties to the situation, what is at stake, and therefore what possible responses their PCs might have.

Of d20 modules, the main ones I know that support this approach to play are the Penumbra adventures (especially Maiden Voyage, Belly of the Beast and Ebon Mirror, and to an extent Last Dance, Three Days to Kill and Hallowed Hall). What Evil Lurks, from Necromancer, also does to an extent. So does Heathen, although the adventure author squibs on the most challenging option the PCs might take.

Dungeon crawls generlly don't support this sort of adventure, as they have too many thematicaly extraneous encounters. Most 3E WoTC adventures that I know are very bad for this sort of play, because the adventure only gets off the ground if the players can be relied upon to agree with the GM as to the moral evaluation of the whole situation.