D&D 4E Got to play 4E today

[Sunderstone]

Sashi and Fitz, you are missing my point. Personally I never said anyone had to buy WotC brand miniatures. I still use my old Julie Guthries.

That said......
1) Yes I like miniatures.
2) Yes I hate painting them.
3) Yes I hat the fact that wotc sells random miniatures so some folks will keep buying till they get what they want, thats an obvious marketing ploy. But we are moving off topic kinda with this.

I couldnt care less that 1st edition is easier to run than 3E and/or 4E. I like 3E so im staying. Im just saying that both 3E and 4E are more tactical in nature than 1 or 2E rules wise. I couldnt care less how many used minis in the earlier editions with house rules etc. It doesnt change the fact that the game has indeed taken a more tactical approach over the RPG element as far as the printed rules go. Im glad the mini-fans got rules incorporated into the books, good for you all.
For me having to draw on a battle mat for almost every encounter (again ymmv), slows the game down while everyone waits till the battlefield to be depicted. I still do it, its just one of the things I hate about 3E and 4E. And to those of you thinking that WotC did not factor in mini-sales into make the games more mini-heavy, all I can say is "lol".



Furthermore, I said specifically that YMMV.

If the increased complexity of 4E bothers you, then don't play it. But 4E isn't trying to be simple, it's trying to be easier to play, and so criticizing it for being more complex than 1E is missing the point, it's like criticizing a VW Bug for not having enough cargo space, that's not one of the design priorities.

Late Edit-- at the risk of a reprimand by the mods, some of you are too gung ho when it comes to posts concerning WotC and 4E. Take the time to read the post before you lock into one word that may offend you, then bring the holier-than-though to the folks you think cant handle the complexities of 4E. This is why I dont post here very often.

 

[Jhaelen]

The purpose of any game is to challenge the players. Characters don't exist. They are the playing pieces manipulated by the players. "Character abilities" may be leveraged for advantage, but it is for the players' advantage, as it is the players' skill that is ultimately tested.

Sure!
However:
The challenges should be solved using the character's abilities not the player's. If a skilled player is more effective it should be because she's using the character's abilities more effectively not because she's invalidating/overriding the character's abilities by substituting them with her own.

E.g. good roleplaying is fine, but a skill check should still be required to determine the outcome of an action.

This might be a matter of personal preference though, i.e. YMMV.

 

[Sashi]

Sorry, the first paragraph of what I wrote was directed at you, and then after that it was more me running my mouth at a theoretical "you" than at you specifically. As I went along the post just kept getting longer and addressed more generically at the 4E haters than specifically at you, I apologize for writing the post as though it were your opinion I was attacking.

Back to the minis thing: I think that WotC making a collectible miniatures wargame centered on their minis was a cold-hearted ploy to sell more minis, any sins you believe them to be committing with Magic: The Gathering they are probably also committing with D&DM. But I don't think that there's any evil mustachioed marketing guy sitting somewhere in the WotC offices going "We'll make D&D completely incompatable to playing without miniatures! Then they'll buy the minis! They'll have to buy the minis! Mua ha ha ha!!!" I just don't think that's going on. There are other sources of Minis, there are people who have all the minis they'd ever need, there are players who will play without minis out of sheer stubbornness. It does WotC no good to alienate these players by raising the price of the system by a few hundred dollars worth of minis.

Now, the dev team has essentially infinite access to miniatures, and they've readily admitted that they all play with and like minis. So the game is turning towards minis. But to say that there's a conscious effort to make the game incompatible (as opposed to merely a lack of concern when a rule makes playing without minis less convenient) to playing without minis is just cynicism.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Sashi and Fitz, For me having to draw on a battle mat for almost every encounter (again ymmv), slows the game down while everyone waits till the battlefield to be depicted. I still do it, its just one of the things I hate about 3E and 4E. And to those of you thinking that WotC did not factor in mini-sales into make the games more mini-heavy, all I can say is "lol".

Why are you lumping me in with Sashi? I've simply stated that I'm not a big fan of miniatures, and I don't have any problem playing 4E without them when I want to.

I also clearly acknowledged that WotC factored mini-sales into the rules. But it's a chicken-or-the-egg thing. They already were making miniatures, so they made rules that made miniature play better. (To support the sales of their miniatures.) They did not make the rules just so they could sell miniatures. It's a subtle but distinct difference.

I also have no idea what YMMV means. I'm not hip to your l33t.

Fitz

 

[SmilingPiePlate]

Your Mileage May Vary.

For what it's worth, the only group I know that still plays DnD of any kind uses minis, and has for as long as I've been gaming with them. It's a mishmash of fantasy minis. I doubt they'll buy anything for the new edition (I'm not sure if they plan to convert, honestly), they don't need to. They're much happier just proxying; the minis are just a way to keep track of positioning. You could do the same thing with coins.

 

[BlindOgre]

My take is that it seems generous *only* in comparison to previous editions. Whether or not it is overly generous within the context of the full 4e rules remains to be seen.

For my money, previous editions got it terribly wrong anyway. In the last 20 years I've been involved in exactly ONE D&D campaign that started at 1st level - I was the DM and I had to drag my players kicking and screaming along, and they were 1st level for exactly 1.5 adventures.

Nearly every campaign I've run has started at 1st level and I've even run a few that started with zero-level, unclassed PCs that were actually a lot of fun. Depending on the players and the campaign, second level has generally been reached in two adventures, third after three more, fourth after five or six more, etc., generally with a fair curve in time and challenge. With an experienced group of players over the course of a weekend, we might get through two to four phases (adventures). When less play time was available, those same four adventures spanned a few weekends. Pace, of course, depends on a lot of real-life factors beyond system mechanics and adventure design, no matter which system is used. However, even considering external influences, experience mechanics can have a significant influence on pace and challenge.

One thing to consider about the value of slower low-level advancement is that it can be used to provide more opportunity for establishment and embellishment of characterization from a role-playing perspective (fleshing out the character background, basic tendencies, planning for the future, etc.). Much like in real-life, where a fair bit of our character traits are roughed out while we are in secondary school and college and later refined in our adult lives by work experience. If the first few levels are rushed, a character may soon have many heroic abilities, but not much in the way of a developed personality to add flavor and context to such heroic abilities.

It's up to the DM and the players to make this work well. I've had groups that completed high-level campaigns happily go about creating new characters and spending weeks below 3rd level building and re-enforcing the foundations of their new characters. A heavy-role-playing group will enjoy the exercise, though a group that mainly digs orc bashing as stress-relief might be less interested in the finer points of character development. I've also had groups that had no desire to bother much with levels 1-3 and still managed to do a lot of character development while progressing through the introductory levels rather quickly.

I don't think previous editions got it terribly wrong, just mildly wrong but good enough to only require a few house rules.

BTW, I just canceled my pre-order of the 4e core books and will continue playing using the 3.5 system, for which I have tons of material. I will wait to see and participate in a few more 4e games at my local game shop before deciding whether or not to purchase the 4e set.

 

[parvatiquinta]

My take is that it seems generous *only* in comparison to previous editions. Whether or not it is overly generous within the context of the full 4e rules remains to be seen.

For my money, previous editions got it terribly wrong anyway. In the last 20 years I've been involved in exactly ONE D&D campaign that started at 1st level - I was the DM and I had to drag my players kicking and screaming along, and they were 1st level for exactly 1.5 adventures.

Agreed. First-level 4E characters are less powerful than 80-point Witchcraft characters (the standard power build) and probably even 75-point GURPS characters, although I have less experience with GURPS. If not less powerful, they'll be certainly much less versatile, and that's almost the same (if not better) in many games.
Most of the other games I've played are larger-than-life or simply not comparable to D&D (like BESM, Tri-stat version of course).

 

[Sunderstone]

sorry Fitz I misinterpreted part of your post. I apologize.

 

[drjones]

My take is that it seems generous *only* in comparison to previous editions. Whether or not it is overly generous within the context of the full 4e rules remains to be seen.

For my money, previous editions got it terribly wrong anyway. In the last 20 years I've been involved in exactly ONE D&D campaign that started at 1st level - I was the DM and I had to drag my players kicking and screaming along, and they were 1st level for exactly 1.5 adventures.

Every playtest I have participated in has pointed out that this is completely correct. 1st level characters are not overpowered if you can still kill them with an encounter that is budgeted for their party size and level. If they roll poorly and use bad tactics some of them might croak. Bump the xp budget up a bit (see the dragon encounter) and you can easily have a TPK or the players might eek it out with some casualties or run away if they have good tactics and good rolls.

In what crazyland is this unbalanced?

The one where a first level character should require handwaving and not fighting to survive to 3 so the game can start? I have been there and it did not seem better in any way.

And ogre, you responded before to a post directed at the OP, not to you. In the name of forum decency I won't reply further since there are plenty of other threads which have already 'discussed' the issue to death.