D&D 4E Forked Thread: Some Thoughts on 4e

[Danceofmasks]

Well, if you take the line in prestidigitation that says it "cannot duplicate the effects of any other power" literally, then ... there are warlock powers that make one creature attack another.
What's more, whichever creature is targeted by a power will be aware of all the particulars of the power ... so unless the spell is meant to compel the attack, the illusory rat will be known as a fake.

 

[Bond James Bond]

That was one of the great appeals of 3.x - the smarter you as a player were, the more the game rewarded you. If you could twink your fighter out well enough (multi-class, prestige class, broken little feat combos, etc), you were going to destroy other fighters. If you'd carefully picked the right spell or magic item, you were going to defeat the challenge. I won't deny that's very appealing in some ways, and it's definitely missing from 4e (maybe missing a bit too much). I know I've been frustrated quite a few times in 4e to have all my skill with the game get reduced to how well I can roll a d20 at this particular pivotal moment.

But at the same time, the gap between those of us who work hard at the game and master it, and our friends who just show up once a week to play and never crack a book outside of that has narrowed immensely, and it's nice to all be playing the same game again. And you still have little moments that reward smart play, they're just more frequently in the combat itself instead of the character building and pre-combat selection, and the rewards aren't as big as they used to be. It's a fair trade.

A very good analysis.

I feel the same in general, but I do hope that future releases, by bringing up more options, will make decisions in character building more meaningful and rewarding.

A I said before, you shouldnt compare 4E now with 3.5 now. When 3.0 started, it was about the same. Sure, the free multiclass design allowed more freedom from the start, but it took ages and tons of boks (many of them poorly designed) before it became the 3rd edition we all now remember.

 

[LostSoul]

Well, if you take the line in prestidigitation that says it "cannot duplicate the effects of any other power" literally, then ... there are warlock powers that make one creature attack another.

I don't, because it means you can't do anything with Prestidigitation. Anything it does can be done with another power. Even some of the examples - like lighting a candle - don't work, because there are other powers (Light) that have the same effect.

What's more, whichever creature is targeted by a power will be aware of all the particulars of the power ... so unless the spell is meant to compel the attack, the illusory rat will be known as a fake.

The spider wasn't the target of the power. The square with the ogre was the target.

 

[The Little Raven]

WotC is really trying to convince people that people who played Rogues and Barbarians and Fighters were not actually having fun for the last 30 years.

Or, they finally listened to those players who were sick of playing second fiddle just because someone else decided to play a spellcaster.

 

[Verision]

Well, other than the fact that you changed that spell from a tiny minor single object image to a significant illusion of moving creatures that could affect combat, I didn't miss the point. The point is that you had to stretch the capabilities of the spell in order to get it to do anything in combat.

With Illusions, I still had tons more options in 3.5.

I stand by my statement:

"Before, one could use spells a LOT more creatively."

I disagree with your statement. There are very few spells you can use creatively in 3.x. You can be creative in which spell you use, but the spell itself is not creative.

Example of what I mean:
You have to get past a guard at a gate. In 3.x you can:

1) cast invisibilty and walk past the guy
2) cast fly and fly over the gate
3) cast sleep (or some other incapacitating spell) on the guard
4) use an illusion to distract the guard
5)etc

None of the above spells are creative: they all do one thing. But the PC is being creative to get past the guard by using a very specific spell.

But, that is the problem with 3.x. You want to do X? Use spell Y; it does X.
Don't have a Y spell? Buy a scoll of Y.
There is no spell that does X? Spend some XP, some gold and some time and create a new spell Y which does X.

Magic is basically a "get out of jail free" card in 3.x. It doesn't matter what you want to do, if you are a caster then the answer is "magic".

It's like trying to explain something complicated to a small child: "It's magic!!"

Now, I like 3.x, don't get me wrong, and I loved playing a caster in 3.x. But, by the time you reach 10th level, combat in 3.x becomes vinilla itself.
Combat encounter in 3.x:
1st round: caster casts improved invisibilty on himself
2nd round: caster casts fly on himself
3rd+ rounds: caster flys over battlefield casting save or die spells and then damaging spells when he runs out of save or die.

Seriously, 90% of combat in 3.x above 10th level is simply that.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Personally, I never played 3e or 3.5e. I used to play 2e Dark Sun though...and man do I miss that campaign.

One of the problems with earlier editions of D&D, and from the sound of it this was probably true of 3e, was that Wizards were sort of an Uber-Class. In Dark Sun, for example, there were all sorts of things you could do in the end game. Druids could become giant nature creatures, clerics could become elementals, defilers (a type of Wizard in that campaign) could become giant Dragons. Fighters just became...well...better fighters.

And talk about repetitive combat! All I could do was attack. Sure, I could attack 3 times/round when I was dual wielding, and I could pull off some pretty cool ranged combat moves...but it was basically just attack, attack, attack, monster dies, new target, attack, attack, etc...

One of the things that nice about 4e is that different classes have different abilities now. I don't view the fighter powers as "magical" in any way...they're just powerful. I can sweep my axe around hitting everyone adjacent to me, or I can rally my allies and give them all an AC bonus, or I can strike an opponent for massive damage and trigger a healing surge.

The Wizard can do the same thing, if you're creative. He can create a sound to distract guards and draw them out, or he can light up a dark dungeon for us. He can give me horns and glowing red eyes that might give me a bonus to my intimidate, or use his ghost hand to trigger a switch that no one else can reach. He can drop Icy Terrain and knock the enemies prone and put them in difficult terrain, then making them ripe pickings for the Rogue. And that's just at 1st level!

Later on he can entomb enemies in a prison of ice, effectively taking them out of the fight for a round. He can create an invisible inter-dimensional mansion for crying out loud! He can also commune with gods for assistance, open any door, create an all-seeing eye to warn of danger, leave a chest half a continent away that he can call forth to store whatever he desires, summon phantom steeds for your party to ride, or create a passage straight through the enemy's formidable wall and into the heart of their keep.

And you call that boring?

 

[darkadelphia]

I'm with you Karinsdad. 4E magic system is boring. The only people that like the new magic system are those that weren't particularly good at the old one or never bothered to play a caster.

Even priests were far more interesting in 3E.

Nice generalization--I happened to be a very good caster player in previous editions (esp. AD&D) and prefer 4e.

 

[ProdigalTim]

It almost seems like Wizards looked at 3rd edition, saw that different characters of different complexities existed and figured no one could possibly enjoy a simpler, brawnier character whose development and fun came through personality and out of combat expression. I happen to disagree with this - I've played characters who did little in combat but run at the enemy and attempt to smash it to pieces.. because that's what I was trying to RP. And it seems like it was possible to play a character like that in 3.5 without severely gimping your group, but if you were to try to play a 'dumb fighter' in 4.0 who didn't - from level 1 - have the temperament to intelligently use all these various powers and to wisely save important powers and abilities for later, it just wouldn't work. In my opinion, 4.0 assumes and is balanced around the notion that every character has an intelligence of 18, regardless of what the character sheet says.

 

[KarinsDad]

The spider wasn't the target of the power. The square with the ogre was the target.

Which is precisely why the Spider should not have attacked the ogre. Your own words:

"I'm going to use Prestidigitation to create an illusion of rats swarming around the ogre's body so that the spider will go after him."

"The result - the spider attacks the ogre."

The Spider should not have attacked the ogre, it should at best have attacked it's food source: the rats.

The reason you made the knowledge roll was to figure out what type of food the spider liked.

Personally, I think that your idea was imaginative, but the DM allowed it to go beyond the capabilities of the spell and also allowed it to go into the realm of compulsion when it is a simple little cantrip.

Beyond the fact that you and your DM stretched the rules a lot (a single minor image became a moving complex set of images, and the spider was effectively compulsed into acting out of character with a spell that cannot compulse) in order to allow your creativity, that's hardly a rousing endorsement of 4E spell creativity capability. Everything you did here could have been done by bending the 3.5 rules the exact same amount, or it could have been done actually using 3.5 spells.

All you illustrated is how limited the 4E spells really are.

"Can I do this: No.
Can I do this: No.
Can I do this: No.
Can I do this: Ok, I'll break the rules to allow that."

 

[ExploderWizard]

Later on he can entomb enemies in a prison of ice, effectively taking them out of the fight for a round.


And you call that boring?

If I can only take someone out of a fight for a single round and I am a high level wizard I go and find the idiot who told me that hard work and study would bring great power.........and beat him to death with my much more effective staff.