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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5179847" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>KD, seriously you cannot tell me that the conditions are more complex and frequent in 4e. I played and DMed a LARGE number of 1e and 2e games and this stuff was a total tangled mess. I'm PRETTY sure it gets MUCH more involved even in 3.x as I see there are a lot of spells that do all sorts of crazy types of buffing. The durations in 1e and 2e were also totally all over the map from stuff like '1d4+level rounds' to some number of turns (and how do you track THAT exactly? especially in a longer sequence of fighting mixed with other related activity). There were all kinds of other craziness like having to roll to see how many creatures were effected, etc. Overall spells were a royal mess to track. The worst part was a lot of them effected core numbers of the PCs, forcing you to do massive amounts of recalculation (the famous dispel magic catastrophe that stops the game for an hour is NOT a myth, I've seen it).</p><p></p><p>4e's durations and effects are just about 100 times easier to deal with. The effects are all well defined and everyone understands what they can and can't do with them. There are actually only a few durations and each power (which should be on cards, if they aren't then THAT is the problem) clearly spells out which duration it uses. Yes, effects are more common and I don't disagree that that offsets a good bit of the time gained from simpler book keeping, but the book keeping IS simpler.</p><p></p><p>Yes, if a battle is pointless its a DM issue. Maybe a module designer creates a pointless encounter, but any DM that is so unfamiliar with the module he's running that he can't tell its pointless is at best inexperienced. I don't consider that a justification for bad module design, but if you constantly have pointless encounters then something is wrong on the DM side of the screen. If the players initiate an encounter, then I would never consider that pointless as obviously it was pointed enough to the players to make them want to engage (like if they turn a social encounter into a fight or just pick fights). </p><p></p><p>Healing can work fine for monsters. You simply cannot apply the PC healing rules as-is to monsters without thought. Look at things like orcs. Orcs work fine and they have plenty of healing. Most of them don't heal huge amounts of hit points though. If you want healing that works, I'd simply apply an amount of it that is appropriate, so maybe a solo doesn't get back 200 hit points, yeah. </p><p></p><p>Beyond that healing monsters really isn't that exciting for the players. I've never yet seen a player be excited by that, they just look at you like 'you jerk, you're going to make me hit it MORE!'. Just give things hit points and leave it at that. Regeneration is much more fun, the monster gets back a bit of points and the players are all of a sudden urgent to kill it because if they don't then it WILL get ugly. That's tense and fun. Better also to do something like put in a power that throws off an effect or gives extra saves. Its much more thrilling when the monsters suddenly and unexpectedly escapes from the 'sure thing' lockdown vs it sits there locked down for an extra 3 rounds because it healed but still can't DO anything.</p><p></p><p>The issue in 4e is that its easy to make boring encounters. If the enemy isn't tactically interesting then the game devolves down to 1e style stand and deliver, which just makes 4e boring since there's no SOD the MU can drop on everything to end the boredom.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5179847, member: 82106"] KD, seriously you cannot tell me that the conditions are more complex and frequent in 4e. I played and DMed a LARGE number of 1e and 2e games and this stuff was a total tangled mess. I'm PRETTY sure it gets MUCH more involved even in 3.x as I see there are a lot of spells that do all sorts of crazy types of buffing. The durations in 1e and 2e were also totally all over the map from stuff like '1d4+level rounds' to some number of turns (and how do you track THAT exactly? especially in a longer sequence of fighting mixed with other related activity). There were all kinds of other craziness like having to roll to see how many creatures were effected, etc. Overall spells were a royal mess to track. The worst part was a lot of them effected core numbers of the PCs, forcing you to do massive amounts of recalculation (the famous dispel magic catastrophe that stops the game for an hour is NOT a myth, I've seen it). 4e's durations and effects are just about 100 times easier to deal with. The effects are all well defined and everyone understands what they can and can't do with them. There are actually only a few durations and each power (which should be on cards, if they aren't then THAT is the problem) clearly spells out which duration it uses. Yes, effects are more common and I don't disagree that that offsets a good bit of the time gained from simpler book keeping, but the book keeping IS simpler. Yes, if a battle is pointless its a DM issue. Maybe a module designer creates a pointless encounter, but any DM that is so unfamiliar with the module he's running that he can't tell its pointless is at best inexperienced. I don't consider that a justification for bad module design, but if you constantly have pointless encounters then something is wrong on the DM side of the screen. If the players initiate an encounter, then I would never consider that pointless as obviously it was pointed enough to the players to make them want to engage (like if they turn a social encounter into a fight or just pick fights). Healing can work fine for monsters. You simply cannot apply the PC healing rules as-is to monsters without thought. Look at things like orcs. Orcs work fine and they have plenty of healing. Most of them don't heal huge amounts of hit points though. If you want healing that works, I'd simply apply an amount of it that is appropriate, so maybe a solo doesn't get back 200 hit points, yeah. Beyond that healing monsters really isn't that exciting for the players. I've never yet seen a player be excited by that, they just look at you like 'you jerk, you're going to make me hit it MORE!'. Just give things hit points and leave it at that. Regeneration is much more fun, the monster gets back a bit of points and the players are all of a sudden urgent to kill it because if they don't then it WILL get ugly. That's tense and fun. Better also to do something like put in a power that throws off an effect or gives extra saves. Its much more thrilling when the monsters suddenly and unexpectedly escapes from the 'sure thing' lockdown vs it sits there locked down for an extra 3 rounds because it healed but still can't DO anything. The issue in 4e is that its easy to make boring encounters. If the enemy isn't tactically interesting then the game devolves down to 1e style stand and deliver, which just makes 4e boring since there's no SOD the MU can drop on everything to end the boredom. [/QUOTE]
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