D&D 4E Got to play 4E today

[That One Guy]

I agree w/ Fitz on most things he said (except for the anti-3 stuff ).

Thulcondar, thanks for giving us your view on 4e. I think you have a generally positive view of it, and I hope you do enjoy playing it even if you don't ever intend on running it.

I blame the internet for all miscommunication and ouchie toes.

 

[Nytmare]

A second adventure degenerated into a half hour argument/geometry calculation.

Yeah, that's the fireball that I remember. Actually I remember pretty much all of my old D&D games degenerating into arguments over the correct application of various maths, sciences, and spatial relations.

Abstraction and battlemats sure do make for a lot of extra time to actually play the game.

 

[Sashi]

Perhaps so, but they all seem to almost be "too special", if you know what I mean. One imagines the local innkeeper, rather than simply pouring an ale and sliding it down the bar, invoking his Mead of Intoxication at-will power, attacking at Will +3 (cumulative with each attack) until the target passes out. Save means they just tip at 2x normal rate. ;-)

Sometimes just hitting it with your sword is the most appropriate thing to do.

Appropriate in who's eyes, exactly? 4E is trying very hard to even the power disparity between classes, and to do that they gave every class a role, balanced that role, and then ensured the class could fill that role at all times. They did this by making at will powers that fill the role.

In previous editions a wizard gives up significant combat power to cast powerful spells. The fighter, on the other hand, gives up the ability to cast spells to gain significant straight-up combat ability.

Now, if I'm a wizard and I use my first level spell, then I have no spells left. I've used up all that power I traded combat ability for. If I hike up my robes, pull out my dagger, and wade into combat. Hey, look, I'm a sucker. Why? Because I blew all that power that I traded fighting capability for, and now I'm just a fighter with way fewer hit points and a much smaller stick to whack things with.

Now, this is "balanced" because many many levels later, when the fighter comes face to face with a fire giant (who is in all ways a much bigger and badder dude than he is) he is completely outclassed in all ways. And I come along and cast one of my spells (that remember I sacrificed a bunch of fighting power to gain) and I turn the fire giant inside-out, or I take over his body and go stomping around in it, or any number of other things. Well now the fighter is the sucker! Hoo rah!

This constantly happens, any time one class is performing the role of another class he's a sucker. He traded his cow for a bunch of beans, and they aren't even magic beans with a giant at the top who's head you can separate from his body and then cart off all his treasure.

What 4E is trying to do is remove this cycle of suckertude. And they do it by giving every class at will powers that fulfill their chosen role. The cleric trades away combat power for healing power? Well now you've got an at-will power that heals people (okay, temporary HP, but if your HP count is one higher that's like healing, even if it goes away after awhile). Now, it would be pretty boring to just have a power of "be a big health sink for everyone" so they tie it to an attack. I whack things with a stick and also fulfill my primary role HOORAY! I'm a wizard, I blast things with spells. Well now I have a spell that I can blast people with every round if I need to, and it has specific advantages and disadvantages over shooting a bow, or whacking things with a stick, or whacking things with a stick and granting a temporary HP, or any of a dozen other abilities.

Sometimes I may be stuck saying "This is not a situation in which I shine" But I never have to say "Well, right now the best thing I can do is be a poor-man's Ranger."

And that's a good thing.

 

[Sashi]

In all honesty I think the flavour text of the powers are much like hit points and damage. They are badly named/worded and give entirely the wrong impression which is then taken to the extreme and thought of in absolute, literal terms.

The naming conventions and flavour text are doing far more harm than good. I agree, leave the flavour text out of it and let us make up our own minds and be imaginative and creative about their application.

This actually stems from a very specific source, and it's one of my main gripes with Mearls as a designer: Mike Mearls doesn't understand the difference between a description and flavor text.

Just for an example, here is the description for "Expertise" from the 3.0 PHB:
"Expertise: You are trained at using your combat skill for defense as well as offense."
That's fine, that's just a fluffier way of saying "You can turn BAB into AC" which is what Expertise does

And here is the description for the "Combat Expertise" feat tree in Iron Heroes:
"Combat Expertise: You handle your weapon with the elegant speed, agility, and skill of a true master. You can step back and bat aside your foe's attacks with ease or press forward on the attack."

Stop it, stop it, stop it! I am not a skilled dexterous fighter with a rapier. I am a guy with very large muscles and a very large sword, and if I hold my sword closer to my body I reduce my ability to attack my enemy but find it much easier to grin and bear his attacks.

This boils over into everything he designs. It's not enough for him to tell you what an ability does, he has to tell you how it's being done, because he can't tell the difference.

 

[Green Knight]

We were also told, soon into our first combat, that we would be much better off using our special skills than actually trying to use our normal weapons. This is where my grognard-sense started to tingle. The cleric was better off using "divine shield" (or whatever it was called) rather than just clunking someone with his mace, because the special power could be used at-will.

The Cleric actually has an At-Will Power where he attacks with his mace. It's called "Priest's Shield" and it involves the Cleric attacking with his weapon (in this case, a mace) while uttering a prayer to his god to protect him and one of his allies.

Personally, though, I don't see a problem with it. When it comes to the Cleric, his definining feature should be that he's a guy with a direct hotline to the divine. He should be praying to his god in the middle of combat, either uttering prayers while swinging his mace, or while holding his holy symbol before him. Having him act like a Fighter who for some reason is using a mace instead of a sword isn't what I'd call a positive.

Ditto the wizard's lower-level spells like magic missile and scorching burst (which I, playing said wizard, used to great effect many a time). In the particular case of magic missile, you have to roll to hit, so I suppose that makes up for being able to use it every time you're able to do an action.

As I said, it's about what defines the class. I loathed playing Wizards at low levels. Why? Because you cast two or three spells, and after that you were done. Then out comes the crossbow. I want to play a Wizard, not a glorified crossbowman. The defining characteristic of the Wizard is that he casts spells. That should be something he does all the time at every level, not just at the higher levels.

Also bear in mind that those "powers", in some cases, are just glorified special attacks. Just look at the Fighter and Ranger for proof of that. Kathra has two At-Will Powers. Cleave and Tide of Iron. All Cleave is is a regular attack in which she swings her weapon wide enough to hit two guys. Tide of Iron is a standard attack which she follows up with a shield bash to shove an enemy away.

Same goes for Riardon. His At-Will Powers are just regular attacks with a little more oomph to them. You've got Careful Attack, where he trades in power for accuracy, and Nimble Strike, which is just a regular attack, except that he can move five feet before or after the attack. In all those cases, you are using your normal weapons. You're just using them in different ways. That, to me, is a positive as I enjoy the variety. It certainly beats saying "I swing my sword" every round.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Hi, Joe

first: thanks for the review. It was a good one and I enjoy reading honest opnions which are neither black nor white.

2nd: Without beeing constrained by 3rd edition rules for 8 years, you can´t really know how free we feel now. And thus, how fanatic some posters act to mild critic of either 3rd or 4th edition.


3rd: Fritz the ruke had the right words:

4E is a step backwards in the right ways. (I'll grant, not ALL, but enough to be IMO the best version to date.)
Fitz

The DM is put back over the rules. Unified skill and ability mechanics courage roleplaying (the 3rd edition rules discouraged that).

I hope you won´t leave the board. You are bashed for no reasons. And you repeately said what some posters here forget:

You keep an open mind.

Thats all we can do right now.

 

[Ximenes088]

This boils over into everything he designs. It's not enough for him to tell you what an ability does, he has to tell you how it's being done, because he can't tell the difference.

I'd suggest that he understands the concept of "flavor text" and its relation to mechanics just fine. The PHB itself explicitly calls out flavor text as to-taste and says to change it if you feel like it- using screaming skulls for Magic Missile is the example it gave. Unless Mearls missed the meeting that put that in, I think it highly likely he groks the difference.

As a designer for a game aiming at expanding the market, my interest in no offending the aesthetic sensibilities of experienced gamers would be much, much smaller than my interest in actually _giving people examples_. Do they dish out a game with 150 pages of powers that are nothing but raw mechancs and say, "Call them what you like!" or do they add a couple sentences of flavor text to each and actually give new players some conceptual handle on what's happening? I can go up to a new player and tell him, "Okay, you can pick Fighter Daily #1. It's Strength versus AC, Reliable, Weapon keyword, does 3W damage plus strength. You figure out what it looks like." Or I can tell him, "You can pick Brutal Strike. When you use it, you grit your teeth and beat the Hell out of your enemy. It's Strength..." Which do you think would actually interest a new player more?

 

[Sashi]

As I said, Mearles doesn't understand the description between a description and flavor text. He gets flavor text perfectly, but then the description also becomes flavor text.

Take Book of 9 Swords, each ability has an italic "flavor text" portion, and then a "description" part, which more often than not adds in another paragraph of flavor text.

Take this ability:

Hearing the Air
Your perception becomes so fine that you can hear the tiniest flutter of air moving past you. Invisible foes and other hidden threats become as plain as day in the area of your heightened senses.

Drawing on your combat training, sharpened senses, and capability to predict your enemy's moves, you become a faultless sentinel on the battlefield. Even the smallest detail or stealthiest enemy cannot hope to evade your notice.
While you are in this stance, you gain blindsense out to 30 feet and a +5 insight bonus on Listen Checks

This is repeated over and over in the book. An italic paragraph of "flavor", then another paragraph of "description" that is actually flavor. This is all over in his stuff (which I love, I am a firm proponent of Iron Heroes, Bo9S, and the like).

 

[Jack99]

As I said, Mearles doesn't understand the description between a description and flavor text. He gets flavor text perfectly, but then the description also becomes flavor text.

Take Book of 9 Swords, each ability has an italic "flavor text" portion, and then a "description" part, which more often than not adds in another paragraph of flavor text.

Take this ability:

Hearing the Air
Your perception becomes so fine that you can hear the tiniest flutter of air moving past you. Invisible foes and other hidden threats become as plain as day in the area of your heightened senses.

Drawing on your combat training, sharpened senses, and capability to predict your enemy's moves, you become a faultless sentinel on the battlefield. Even the smallest detail or stealthiest enemy cannot hope to evade your notice.
While you are in this stance, you gain blindsense out to 30 feet and a +5 insight bonus on Listen Checks

This is repeated over and over in the book. An italic paragraph of "flavor", then another paragraph of "description" that is actually flavor. This is all over in his stuff (which I love, I am a firm proponent of Iron Heroes, Bo9S, and the like).

Mearls wrote Bo9S? That is news to me..

 

[Gizmoduck5000]

You're not very good at math either. Starting in the 80's means you've played for 20+ years, not 30+.

What I find amusing about this is that you're blind to your own argument. 4e no more forces you to use miniatures than 1e did.

Oh, but wait, to you that statement constitutes 1e bashing. Riiiiiight. Methinks you only posted here to troll, not to really engage in thoughtful argument.

Just out of curiosity...could you perhaps cite an example of the most thoughtful anti-4E argument that you've run across on these boards?