D&D 4E How do you feel about 4E right *now*? (week of 1/21/08)

[broghammerj]

What does that have to do with the 4th ED books/game?

It is completely optional and unnecessary for play.

Can people stop with that one…?

In reference to the Digital Initiative....It was the thing that interested me the most and seems to have the least support. I agree it's completely optional and unnecessary. Consider it representative of my expectations for 4E. Promises of quicker gameplay, simpler mechanics, easy to learn, streamlined combat, more fun to play per encounter powers, etc. All things I really want but haven't seen much to support the promises. Consider in the promised neato factor of DI, but the apparent void of actual execution then I am left with MEH! This was the mechanism I was going to play 4E with since I moved away from both of my groups.

Then change the settings I like, add unnecessary fluff to core for the sake of change, etc., destroy sacred cows I enjoyed....then I go from meh to thumbs down.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Definitely thumbs down.

What might have sold me on 4E would be if they had mentioned these as the issues to be fixed:

1) "Your wizard will no longer be defined as just a magic-user. His knowledge and intelligence will be as great an asset as his spells." -- instead, we get unlimited magic.

2) "There will be fewer modifiers, buffing spells, and temporary conditions to keep track of." -- no clear guidance here, though hints of a greater number of effects at less variable durations (everything is either one round or one encounter).

3) "The cleric's spell list is being pared back greatly, mostly defensive and healing and not matching the wizard in power." -- instead, they'll likely continue the 1E-2E-3E trend of increasing the cleric's magical firepower, or at least freeze it at the already-insane 3E level.

4) "There will be closer parity between the classes' weapon attacks. A wizard's weapon attack won't be as damaging or accurate as a fighter's, but it won't be insignificant either." -- a moot point as wizards won't ever run out of magical attacks. It's a long discussion, but I prefer the wizard to have limited resources.

5) "Splatbooks won't increase a PC's power. A core-only PC of any class will be basically as competent as one using all of the published accessories." -- instead, the "Splatbook Power Creep --> System Collapse --> Reboot" business model that worked so well for 2.5, 3E, and 3.5 is going to remain.

6) "There will be a hard cap on many statistics." -- no evidence that this will be the case. The open-ended inflation of 3E was a flaw. I like BECMI's limits for PCs of 18 for stats, 9 HD, and -10 AC.

7) "In general, there will be less focus on 'character builds' and abilities." -- with their "no dead levels" quote, it sounds like 4E is even more focused than 3E on what abilities your PC has.

8) "The rules will not be as tightly defined as in 3.5; there will be guidelines for DMs, but they will be encouraged to make judgment calls as needed." -- another of 3E's flaws, the reduced emphasis on DM judgment calls.

9) "No more iterative attacks" -- hey, I like one that they did.

10) "Apprentice levels are back, so multiclass characters can start at 1st as '0/0.' New classes cannot be acquired after 1st level." -- just my own pet peeve at 2E dual-classing and 3E multi-classing, especially with regard to adding the wizard class.

I think BECMI is closer to what I want in a game than 3E/3.5, and definitely it is closer to what I want than 4E will be.

 

[zacharythefirst]

Weakly thumbs-down right now, but really still undecided/neutral. I have not liked much of what I've heard so far (it sounds like old standbys and favorites would be hard to convert, the game may be considering powers and combat over overall class design, and fluff updates I personally feel are unneeded as they are unwelcome, but I owe it at least a read-through (of someone's copy) and a demo first. I'd like to see how everything I've heard/read fits together. It might turn out to be a great/fun game, but that game may not turn out to be "my" D&D.

 

[Voss]

.

5) "Splatbooks won't increase a PC's power. A core-only PC of any class will be basically as competent as one using all of the published accessories." -- instead, the "Splatbook Power Creep --> System Collapse --> Reboot" business model that worked so well for 2.5, 3E, and 3.5 is going to remain.

I was really hoping for this one too. Specifically that each class would be complete and finished in the book it first appears in. No new talents or spells or whatever, just whole and complete classes. If they want to do splatbooks those can include new classes (which are also whole and complete in those books). It lowers the power creep level and prevents absurd piles of broken spells that slip through each book. Because this sort of design contributes directly to the absurdity of the 3rd edition cleric, druid and wizard.

 

[megamania]

I didn't vote but while still on the fence I am at least there. At first I dispiced the idea of 4e but now.....eh... it has few things going for it. I suspect I won't really know until I hold the PHB in my hands and look it over.




I still want by D&D magazines back.

 

[Sammael]

Thumbs down, for pretty much the same reasons as before:

Positives:
(1) Streamlined mechanics
(2) Less prep-time

Negatives:
(1) Re-imagining of classic D&D concepts
(2) Butchering of the Forgotten Realms
(3) Hard-wiring of 4E tropes which make it impossible to continue a campaign from previous editions without house-ruling
(4) Simplification of monsters' abilities to the point where they are nothing but one-trick ponies

To me, the negative flavor changes above weigh much more than all the positive changes made to the mechanics.

 

[Sammael]

Hey!

My old poll's been trumped!

Seriously, though, I was going to wait until after the D&D Experience to post this again, AND I suggest placing this in the "General" forum as it's posible that some who are not going 4E have stopped reading the 4E forum.

Still, numbers are about the same with a slight (7%) improvement on 4E as of this post. (Although, the longer my poll remained, the more the "thumbs down" % grew.)

I think the poll results are skewed because a lot of anti-4E people don't bother coming here anymore.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

General overall shift to the game design being about a long string of encounters, each of which happens in a seeming bubble, instead of being about heroes exploring a living world. That, more than anything, is the change in tone and style which is turning me off to 4e.

How you could extrapolate this from the previews we are getting is beyond me.
And i would like to mention that it seems to me that the people who hate WotC for using the words "cool" and "cool powers" are using these words nearly as often as they do.
Go figure.

 

[Incenjucar]

And i would like to mention that it seems to me that the people who hate WotC for using the words "cool" and "cool powers" are using these words nearly as often as they do.
Go figure.

To be fair, I hate how often they use "cool" and so forth too, and their overall editing quality.

I am still horribly horribly stoked for 4th Edition and have basically recruited over twenty people for it already for DDI or whichever online play method is available.

But "cool" is seriously overused.

 

[pemerton]

Actually, they've stated that there are going to be explicit quest rules, and that the DM can even hand out quest cards as reminders for the players.

If I recall correctly, that caused a bit of consternation and cries "Ack -- they're going to require you to buy collectible quest cards" and other unwarranted conclusions. There's a thread around here regarding it somewhere....

I read some of that thread but had forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder.

From memory, those quest rules (i) are a type of mnemonic, whereby the GM hands the players something to remind them of what they are on about, and (ii) are (controversially, if I'm remembering the thread right) an indicator that bonus XP are available for quest completion.

As they were presented (by Mearls, from memory) they support a high degree of GM narrative control. For gamist play that's fine. For simulationist play it's a big problem, because there is no ingame logic to the XP - but that's true of all D&D XP anyway. For narrativist play, you would want the players to be able to set the quests (whether directly, or indirectly by specifying goals which the GM then turns into quests).

From memory, the amount of XP available for quests wasn't enough to trump the "overcoming challenges" dimensions of play, but might be enough to mean it's not worth doing challenges for their own sake if that delays you getting onto the next quest. This would probably satisfy Voss's worry that the XP system rewards endless and pointless hacking.