Fourth Edition just feels... incomplete

[Raven Crowking]

It seems that in both editions, you need to spend money to overcome the short-comings.

The question might be where you have to spend the most? Off course, this is in the end skewed in favor of 3E - you already spend the money to get your options. In 4E, you still have to buy all that stuff promising to give you more...

I will note that, in the case of 3e, almost all of my money ended up going into the pockets of companies other than WotC. Simply put, Exp. Retreat, Monkey God, Green Ronin, Necromancer, Fantasy Flight Games, Bastion Press.....There were places putting out content earlier than the official content, better than the official content, often at a better price, and with significant OGC in the event that I might want to one day share adventures I created using their material.

As these were often the same designers who worked on the WotC materials, I conclude that there is something constraining in the mandate of WotC that produces (to me) sub-standard work. I see the same when I look at, say, Pathfinder vs. 4e., or even Basic Fantasy vs. 4e. A game can be either inclusive or exclusive. With the OGL, 3e made the game very inclusive indeed. WotC has largely been pulling back from that inclusiveness ever since (in opposition to the trend of 3rd parties to increase their OGC), culminating in the 4e GSL and Gleemax TOS, which are (IMHO) the worst thing to come down the pike in a long, long time.

WotC, IMHO, is acting like a hamfisted, egomaniacal DM who uses DM Fiat without purpose or finesse, except to exalt his own ego (or, in this case, pocketbook), who says "My way or the highway" not because his way provides a superior game experience, but because he knows he owns the books, and can force anyone who wants to play to go his way or go home. I wouldn't put up with it at a gaming table, nor do I accept it from a gaming company.

The OGL was designed to promote competition; the GSL is designed to retard it. And, as you know, competition is the basis of viable evolution. To put it another way, WotC is trying to take their ball back, saying "If you don't play our way, you don't play."

The Core Rules in 3e were sufficient to run a complete campaign, and the OGL ensured that there was a lot of alternative material in the event that you didn't want to adopt the official line. How heavily are third parties going to invest in 4e when they know that 4.5e or 5e might include a new GSL that guts the old as the current is designed to gut the OGL?

Pah.

Everything about this new edition, from the deception about when it would be announced, through the cancellation of print magazines to give way to Gleemax and the DI (you can read it, but if you do, we can use anything you post, free of charge, without crediting you....but we never will, trust us), through telling us that what we want doesn't matter (you can watch the clouds, but you can't change their course), through the subscription model (having noticed that you don't want to buy crap, we are sticking crap in with the good stuff you would normally expect in a first release, and packaging that good stuff with later crap), to the lies about tiered licensing (there will be no tiered license, unless you use the English language for the meaning of that term, and then $5,000 buys you into a new tier, but don't worry, since the GSL isn't ready yet, you might not really end up in a new tier anyway), to the GSL itself (4e will be OGL....no it won't....and BTW if you print 4e materials, you cannot use the OGL anymore).

But don't worry they have no intention of using things you post to Gleemax, they just want the right to. Forever. With no recourse to you. But trust them; they were upfront about everything else, right? Didn't do anything else that the community said they'd never do because it would be corporate suicide? Such as, say, spring the 4e announcement (how folks laughed at those who said it was coming!), spring a tiered license (how folks laughed at those who said it was coming!), or dropped the OGL for the GSL (how folks laughed at those who said it was coming!).

Now we have some folks begining to say, "All these classes seem kinda the same" and "I don't really seem to have the options I thought I would; I seem to be doing the same actions over and over in combat" and "What is the point of minions anyway? To make the wizard necessary?" and "This doesn't seem to fix the 3e problems WotC said it would." How many more, do you think, will be saying that in a year? How many people do you think will be posting about how WotC stole their ideas from the Gleemax forums in five years? Ten?

There are always new ideas, new avenues that can be explored. Any living RPG system is bound to grow....simply because playing it spurs the creativity of the players (DM included). Living campaigns spur new growth, in terms of options, in terms of situations requiring rules, and in terms of rules subsets that follow player interests. That is, IMHO, good for a game. It is healthy.

4e is designed, right off the bat, to avoid including things that WotC knows most players think of as "core". This is reinforced by calling the later books "core", which will contain material that should have been in the initial offering. This is done specifically to force players to buy additional books if they want to have all the basic options.

Simply put, I do not think that is good for the game, nor do I think that is healthy. We are not talking about growth and evolution as the system expands; we are talking about intentional retardation of growth in order to squeeze the last buck out of anyone foolish enough to buy a volume of encyclopedias for the content of a single book.

4e feels incomplete because it is incomplete. Intentionally so.

But, if that is your cup of tea, I hope you get good value for your dollars. It is certainly not mine.


RC

 

[Steely Dan]

*snip*

Wow, after reading all of that, I feel like I've given birth, to a rant! *in the voice of Rodney Dangerfield*

 

[Raven Crowking]

Wow, after reading all of that, I feel like I've given birth, to a rant! *in the voice of Rodney Dangerfield*

Sometimes ranting can be good for you.

 

[Imaro]

Well, I just wanted to chime in to agree with the original poster. Not only does the 4e core feel incomplete...the bigger font size it uses (in comparison to 3.5), totally negates the argument there wasn't room for them to fit more. Moreso after reading over the books for a while it feels simplistic (which IMHO is totally different from streamlined), and my players even noticed it when making up characters. There just didn't seem like much in the way of options to make characters unique or interesting. In fact creating a character just feels more limited than before. As an example, it is pretty clear a 2-weapon Ranger is just plain better in the long run than one who uses archery, thus there is really only one path to take when it comes to playing a ranger (and people thought optimization wouldn't exist anymore). It's funny how a game with less detailed rules, more pages, less spells, can end up feeling so inadequate next to the 3.5 core, in both options and fluff.

I was also really disappointed in the Monster Manual which is one of the driest reads I have ever encountered. People claim they would rather just have game stats...and I guess that's great for experienced DM's, but what about new DM's or even those just looking for inspiration for their stories. These books don't have much to inspire in them and I wonder how that will attract new players as it makes the game seem more dry than before.

All in all I'm feeling pretty meh about 4e, and this is in comparison to the 3e core. I will reserve final judgement until we play this weekend but I'm just not really excited about this game after a read through especially in comparison to 3.5.

 

[Steely Dan]

Sometimes ranting can be good for you.

Yep, like a nice, quiet, shat. *in the voice of Kenneth Mars*

 

[delericho]

But then, let's think about it. What kind of options did, say... a Barbarian have? Or a Rogue? Using only the core rules.

The barbarian had very few options available. Arguably, this was a good thing, as it provided a continuum from easy classes to play (Barbarian) through moderately difficult classes (Rogue, Ranger, Paladin), to the most complex classes (Wizard, Cleric). Alternately, it could be seen as a weakness of the design, in that the class was straight-jacketed.

The Rogue was customised through skills (just because received wisdom was that you had to spend all your skills on the same eight core skills every time didn't actually make it so), and through those abilities gained at 10th level and above.

Of course, both classes could then be multiclasses with others in various combinations. Pick up a few levels of Fighter for the feats, or a couple of levels of Sorcerer for some stealth-based spells, or whatever.

Truth is, though, the game would have benefitted from those classes (and Monk and Paladin), in particular, being rather more flexible.

Getting that might cost me some time and money, but my hope is that 4E supplements will provide "more bang for their buck". 3E supplements were usually nice, but contained barely enough material to feel justified. Usually it were 1-3 classes, feats or spells in each book that might be worth it, while the rest got mostly ignored.

In my experience, 90% of the options in 90% of the books I owned never saw use. Either some options were clearly superior, and so were used to the exclusion of all others, or all the options were pretty much the same, in which case the players would just pick one option and stick with it. (And an awful lot of material was just broken, and so saw use once and then never again.)

Will 4e be any different? It's far too soon to say. However, I would expect that the first few rounds of the PHB/DMG/MM will be very solid books, as they detail the 'missing core' to the same depth as the existing options have.

 

[thundershot]

Now, I don't have my books yet, but from everything I've read, there are a lot of things I take for granted in previous editions that are missing.

1) A lot of the "nifty" magic items. Things like the Rod of Lordly Might. Wondrous items. Someone said there's VERY LITTLE. I hope the upcoming treasure book will bring back most of the older items...

2) Familiars, animal companions, etc.

3) Cohorts, followers, etc.

4) A multi-class system that is more than "dabbling". From what I've seen, you have to waste a bunch of feats in order to use powers from other classes. I hope it's not as bad as it sounds once I get the books...




Chris

 

[billd91]

3. Limiting Options, Part Two: During the 2e era, TSR came out with a series of volumes detailing every magic item from every TSR product up to that point. There were many combat-related magic items. There were many, many, many more that were just fun. Tons of kooky items that did things that might aid in exploration, or might just provide some creature comfort, or might have some function in long-term campaign play. One will note how many of these items didn't appear in the far more combat-focused 3e. Treating magic items like any other item of equipment causes designers (including individual players and DMs) to focus on utility, rather than on what might be interesting in the game world itself.

(BTW, anyone who thinks that earlier editions of D&D were as combat-focused as 3e or 4e would do well to examine the Encyclopedia Magica and see how broadly earlier editions defined "interesting" and "fun".)

This is something I certainly wouldn't ding 3e on, or 4e for that matter. The Encyclopedia Magica series included items culled from nearly 20 years (or so) of development in Dragon magazines, modules, supplements, and so on. Both 3e and 4e took a stab at redefining magic items in the new edition's terms. I would say that 3e DMG's magic item list compares reasonably favorably with the 1st edition DMG's.

The main problem for 3e, I think, was pointed out by other posts. Once you give the PCs the power to make their own magic items and define it in a fairly clear and concise way with limited DM fiat, they're going to focus on utility and not oddball random stuff. And 3e certainly did that. While you could make stuff in 1e/2e, the process was barely sketched out, you had to be 11th level or higher (needed enchant an item), and it looked like the DM was encouraged to make it weird and difficult. So who bothered?

I'm sorely tempted, next time I start a 3.5 campaign, to limit magic item construction feats among PCs to scrolls and maybe potions. Force them to rely on looting bodies to get magic items and revise any gear in NPC hands to include the quirky nature of "found" stuff rather than crafted.

 

[DM_Jeff]

Lite

WotC put D&D on a diet, yes.

The new PHB is on a diet. Larger font, loads of less options than before, and lots of missing stuff you would expect in the core.

The new MM is on a diet of fluff. It can't fit the fluff because it stuffed itself on numbers. Half the monsters but more different versions of the same creature! And I'm amazed no one commented on the loads of recycled art from earlier MM's yet.

-DM Jeff

 

[Eldragon]

I'm not ready to associate the "unfinished" feeling of 4e to WotC nefarious deeds. "Never attribute to malice if it can be attributed to incompetence", if you will. But that pretty much leaves you with "The 4e designers are incompetent".

If WotC is reading these threads and corrects some of the common complaints in future books I will forgive them. For example if the "Complete Arcane" dedicates a huge portion of the book to adding many of the 3e PHB spells as powers/rituals the wizard can cast I will be much happier. If however the book just contains more classes and fails to expand on powers existing classes... I'm done with 4e. Which is really too bad, because I like the mechanics, I just hate how thin it is.