Fourth Edition just feels... incomplete

[Remathilis]

Ok, I've been a long time supporter (f4nboy) of 4e, but after *ahem* perusing the books for myself, I can't help but feel...

Fourth Edition feels incomplete.

Not unfinished. There is a difference. The mechanics and system are solid. The rules (so far) appear to do their job well.

It just seems soooo much stuff got left on the cutting room floor (excuse me: saved for PH/DMG/MM2)

Each class has roughly two builds and just enough powers to support both of them. There are four paragons per class and four epic destinies. While there are nearly 300 monsters in the Monster Manual, there is really around 120 + variants (orc bloodrager, orc cursespewer, orc beatingtaker, etc). The amount of fluff on each monster is minimal (the descriptions of monsters rarely involve more than 20 words + a picture. No "You see..." text.) and the magic items (even wondrous items) seem to be nothing more than +X and/or Y special effect.

I never thought I'd go grognard, but my first read over left me feeling all substance, no style.

If you played 3.5 core only, you still had a complete (if not boring) game. The game felt like it worked with just PHB classes and races, just DMG items, and just MM monsters. Sure, it was very generic and it left out lots of cool options, but it felt complete.

Fourth edition seems to be screaming: "Here is the starter set. If you want more of X, please buy the book entitled..."

Before people bombard me with the memory of all the splat-books and their feat/prestige classes/spells/magic items/races/class/etc, recall my original statement: 3.5 still felt complete, just boring. Options were to spice up the otherwise bland stew. 4e feels more like a sampler set: enough to get you going, but no where near a complete experience if you stuck to just the three core rulebooks.

Am I alone? Am I crazy? (don't answer that). Does anyone else who has seen the books feel they are a little...empty on the inside?

 

[GameOgre]

Hard to argue or debate feelings. If it feels that way to you then.....it does.

It doesn't to me at all.I find the game pretty complete. To be honest I kinda dread the the untold number of books coming down the pike for it. I will not be getting most of them (I hope). Lets not head down the same road that 3.5 went.

 

[Vaeron]

You don't have to look at the builds, those are suggestions. Like a control wizard doesn't have to take icy terrain and cloud of daggers. You don't have to have a trickster rogue or a brawny rogue, you can mix and match. There are a limited amount of options, yes, to keep it from being a chore to decide what powers you want (and I'll say here that certain powers are more, or less, beneficial than they first appear)..

Additional powers are what splat books are for. 4e is very playable, and fun, as is. But let's not forget WotC didn't make this game sheerly out of the goodness of their heart (though the developers do really seem to care about the product), but to make money. Given that they're ALREADY going into a second printing, I'd say the succeeded.

 

[Styracosaurus]

Yes, I feel we now have 4e core. Just enough class options to test out and learn the rules.

We won't know until the splatbooks how well WotC expands the options.

I expected that to happen, as the splatbook model seems to work well for selling books.

 

[Harr]

Although I have no real problem with it per se, since I plan to and have the means to keeping abreast of splats and cores, I agree to a certain extent. Especially as regards to Epic Destinies.

My question is, what do you think they could have done about i? The books are packed with as much crunch as humanly possible; there is literally almost zero space spent on fluff in any of the books (as you yourself point out for the MM).

So what is it you'd like them to have done, put out 800-1,000 page books? This sparseness is annoying, but I see it as a necessary evil of having a well-organized and effective information layout. It was horrible with 3.5 when magic items and prestiges were in the DMG, I'd have players carrying DMG's like they were PHBs, or else always fighting to borrow mine. Now everything that's for players is in the Player's books. That's a good thing.

Splats will come, and then each player can carry their powers and nothing BUT their own powers in their own splat. Fighters can carry around a martial book full of martial powers, wizards arcane etc. No more lugging around the whole DMG because you have ONE thing that's relevant to your character in there.

 

[malraux]

That's definitely the feeling I get as well. Epic destinies, traps and skill challenges and artifacts all feel incomplete. But I think the starter set is a good example. There's enough there to have a really good time. And given what we have now, it would be pretty easy to create the rest on your own. But its plenty clear what other sort of stuff is coming down the line, because their absence is conspicuous.

Of course, I think this is a wise choice by wotc.

 

[Mort_Q]

3 books for 4e versus the... ummm... 3 shelves of 3.x books...

... of course it's going to feel less complete.

 

[Cadfan]

I don't have the books. But I do have a pretty good idea what's in them from reading the forum.

I had a bit of that feeling at first. I'd look at a particular paragon path, and think, "there's really only one way to go to use this paragon path. Anyone in this path is going to look like anyone else. Power choices are constrained by subclass and path concerns, so its all going to end up the same."

But then I sort of realized that this wasn't a good way to look at things, because I was mentally comparing the options available for an entire 3e character class with the options available for a 4e paragon path.

In 4e, you've got your 8 classes.

Then they divide into about two subclasses, each. Each one plays differently.

Then they divide into paragon paths, with about 2 paragon paths per subclass. Each paragon path plays a bit differently, and influences you to build in a particular way.

So... if I look at it in terms of 3e rogue v 4e rogue, I think the rogue has tons of options. Its just when I start looking at it like "Strength based rogue who's heading for Shadow Assassin paragon path and who wields a rapier," that everything starts looking the same. But that's probably because I'm looking at it from too narrow of a perspective.

So every so often I stop and remember that there are more paragon paths alone in the PHB than there are classes and prestige classes added together in the 3.5 core books. And then I don't feel so bad.

In the end, the only thing that feels shortchanged to me are epic destinies. They feel a bit tacked on, since there are only four of them.

 

[WhatGravitas]

It just seems soooo much stuff got left on the cutting room floor (excuse me: saved for PH/DMG/MM2)

On the other hand, the PHB is still 320 pages thick. And I've heard that it looks packed. I think they had to sort - more powers would have meant less rituals. More weapons less something - and 8 classes are already pretty slim.

I think the culprit is the spacious needs of the new classes, due to the power sets. It's also a shift from older editions where only spells ate up so much space, hence it feels like being less, because it's "just classes", they register less due to experience (i.e. sure the new class format has 10 pages per class, but we think of class as a table plus a page of text, because it was that way before).

Cheers, LT.

 

[MindWanderer]

I concur as well. The facts that multiclassing barely works; that builds (not just the recommended builds, but anything that synergises well) give you very limited, if any, options; that most likely several characters in a party will have the same epic destiny all suggest to me that the core rulebooks are for rules, not content. I can see why Martial Power is coming out so quickly--it and its Divine and Arcane counterparts will be must-haves.

Similarly, while the rules are solid, the specific content seems off. The Careful Attack/Twin Shot design error is one example. Or compare Searing Light with Blinding Light: the Str-based cleric gets a major shaft here. I recall similar examples, but not what they were offhand.