I begin to worry...

[vagabundo]

My biggest worry in 4E is the Warlord :S If there's a thing that can make go away from 4E is that dreaded base class.

Would you really not buy just for one base class?

To be honest I'd probably only have to like half of the races and classes and just most of the rules to buy 4e.

As DM I can allow what I want in the game, 3.5e is proving too much of a drag for me to run any more and my group has never played any RPG other than DND(15yrs), so it is DND or nothing.

And definitely sorcerers/wizards need capping, they are too powerful and the bane of my life. I want to see more negative effects or difficulties to the more powerful spells, or get rid of them (the list could do with slimming down anyway).

I'm not crazy about the warlock or warlord, still if my guys want to run one I probably wont stop them.

 

[Henry]

Here's an example of how you need to change your way of thinking. Remember the duel between Inigo Montoya and Wesley in The Princess Bride....When Wesley disarms Inigo, that signals that Inigo was at zero hit points.

And what's with the irrational condescension in your language? "Fool with a metal stick" versus "man who reshapes the mighty forces of reality, time, space, and the universe with his mighty thoughts!"? You come across as an irrational fan of wizards who (A) won't like the changes to wizards regardless of what they are and (B) is unlikely to be susceptible to attempts to assuage you. If you intended that comment to be tongue-in-cheek, then a smiley would have helped.

I understand his hyperbole, though. Wizards, in stories from which D&D was inspired, were the only one of the two dabbling in wondrous forces that made the story special by dint of its sparing usage. Someone using magic was someone to be feared; Gary Gygax made magic special by making it a very limited resource. They were balanced by that limitation. Now, with magic being increasingly more common over the editions, Wizards have had to be dialed back from what they were - or at least the preview playtests suggest that very thing. It's just a shock to different people at different times. In terms of the power of wizards versus non-wizards, we're moving away from the "Ars Magica" end of the spectrum and more towards the "Feng Shui" side of the spectrum.

(And for those who take offense at that, I'm not talking about "D&D is becoming anime" or any such thing. In Ars Magica, Fighters are literally the grunts that accompany the Mighty Wizards; in Feng Shui, Wizards have just as much "combat coolness" as the Brawler, the Average Joe, the Medic, the Cybernetic Abomination or any other PC concept.)

 

[Dave Turner]

I see where you're coming from, Henry. There are some powers in the Bo9S (I'm thinking of the fiery ones) that give swordsages some overtly magical abilities with regards to slinging fire. In the past, it's only magic-wielders who have been able to do such unnatural things.

That's arguably a nerf to wizard flavor, but that should be a secondary concern next to the mechanics. There are also attacks in the Bo9S that add 100 damage to a fighter's attack. There's no mention of magical effects. It's simply described as a perfect, devastating blow. It's elevating (buffing) the physical warriors to the same mechanical level as the magic-wielders, while allowing the magic-wielders to keep the same mechanical advantage.

Now all classes can deliver 100+ damage with a single action, but with different flavor. The gloss over the wizards is that they bend reality with their minds and do "unnatural" things like shooting fire from their fingers when they do 100 damage. The fighters' gloss is that they're supremely-gifted warriors whose preternatural skill allows them to deliver elegant blows which no common man could ever attempt. What WarlockLord doesn't make clear is whether he's upset because fighters can now do 100+ damage with single blow or whether it's the gloss on the ability (the extra damage comes from fire that bursts from the fighter's body, rather than a perfect blow of a sword) that's seen as a wizard nerf. Hell, if I was a fighter with the "+100 damage to an attack" ability, I'd do far more than describe it as a single sword swing. If it succeeds, that attack is going to kill many opponents straight-out. It represents complete domination of an opponent by the fighter. Assuming I'm fighting a humanoid, I would describe a brief exchange of blows in which my fighter disarmed, hamstrung, and finally decapitated his opponent, all in a span of a few seconds! A +100 damage attack would be a chance to show off in a big way!

If WarlockLord is worried about the gloss or flavor of the 4E martial abilities, then he should just change the gloss! It's like complaining about Emerald Frost. Don't like it? Change the name. If you don't think that martial characters should be able to produce a fire-blast to accompany their sword swings, then just call the extra damage from the fire-blast something else (like a "perfect, devastating blow").

We don't know if the martial class powers will be overtly magical like the fiery ones from Bo9S. I hope they aren't in the core books. There are plenty of non-magical rationales to apply as a gloss over the mechanics that apply to martial classes. If WarlockLord is getting worried because he's incapable of changing the gloss on the mechanics, then I'm not sure that there's much to be done for him. Some gamers just understand how to change gloss and others can't grasp that.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Expecially since it's actually hard to READ anime. Usually you read manga.

One word: Subtitles.

Edit: Dang it. Beaten to this one by Bagpuss!

 

[Brown Jenkin]

There's nothing to assuage here. You need to fundamentally change understanding of hit points. You're being far too literal. It's not your fault. You can blame Gygax for calling them "hit points." That term suggests that when you lose points, it's because something has hit you. So for 30 years, players have thought that you only lose hit points when an attack damages the character somehow. I'm sure that the designers of 4E would love to change the term "hit points" to something else, like "reserve points" or maybe "life points."

Here's an example of how you need to change your way of thinking. Remember the duel between Inigo Montoya and Wesley in The Princess Bride. In terms of hit points, they were both losing "hit points" during that fight. At first, when Inigo was winning, Wesley was losing hit points. He was being forced back, giving ground, and coming closer to defeat. Wesley turns it around (and starts rolling high on his d20, so to speak) and starts to whittle down Inigo's hit points. When Wesley disarms Inigo, that signals that Inigo was at zero hit points. Inigo was defeated at that point, i.e. at zero hit points.

No one will disagree that the fight between Wesley and Inigo was dramatic and exciting. People want 4E fights to be dramatic and exciting. The Wesley/Inigo fight demonstrates how a fight can be dramatic and exciting without seeing a long series of actual wounds or injuries on the participants. Wesley and Inigo didn't stab each other twelve times with their swords. They didn't need to in order to create excitement.

So when you begin your 4E game, you just have to describe the action differently. When a fighter succeeds on his attack roll (notice I didn't say that the fighter "hits"), you just describe things differently. If the fighter's opponent loses its first 20 hit points (out of 100, so the monster is still relatively safe), you don't describe a gash on the monster's chest. Instead, you describe a series of skillful blows by the fighter that the monster barely avoids or how one of the fighter's swings slices off the end of a protruding horn. If the opponent was humanoid, you'd describe how the opponent's armor kept the blow from being fatal. The humanoid opponent is not bleeding, but has suffered "damage" in the form of fear that he's overmatched. He has lost the will to fight.

Your players will need to help you out. They can't always describe their blows as killing ones. They've got to be more vague at first. At the start of a fight, when opponents are still feeling each other out, they should things like "I feint at his shield to see if he bites." If that attack succeeds, then you, as the DM, could reply with "Your feint works. He overextends himself for an instant. You can't follow up with a killing blow just yet, but you've exposed one of his weaknesses." Later in the fight, when an attack does succeed in bringing an opponent to zero hit points, you can use the earlier color about the shielf feint: "Finally, you take advantage of his shield side weakness you learned about earlier in the fight. Your sword slips under his shield and through his heart! He collapses to the ground!"

Ultimately, you're just going to have to deal with this. There's nothing to assuage you.

The problem is that hit points are being used to describe both vitality and wounds. Your description of the Princess Bride is fine as long as you are talking about hit points being just vitality. The problem is then that you need a wound system to describe physical damage. Where this failing is coming into play is that the Warlord who is martial is doing healing by hitting his opponents. This is fine if hit points are just vitality but they are not. This healing also effects someone who is -9hp unconscious and bleeding out. Now if 4E has a wound/vitality system then I am ok with it, but otherwise it is breaking my suspension of disbelief. Using the hp as vitality without including some form of wound system results in an A-Team type game where no-one ever takes real damage, everyone is just disarmed or unconscious. While it may work for your group, for my group we want to kill the monsters and this means wounding them.

 

[Fifth Element]

Does anyone agree with me about 4E?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Does anyone agree with me about 4E?

Ah, yes. Argument by ridicule. I was wondering how long it would take......

 

[Psion]

Equality sucks when you were the one who had it good previously, right?

I wonder if people who say this are largely fighter lovers.

Because from the GM side of the screen, while the wizard certainly delivers some powerful capabilities to the party, it takes a lot of defense and effort to keep one alive.

I've never seen a fighter type fail to contribute to a game. I disagree with the notion that "only the wizard had it good."

 

[Dave Turner]

The problem is that hit points are being used to describe both vitality and wounds. Your description of the Princess Bride is fine as long as you are talking about hit points being just vitality. The problem is then that you need a wound system to describe physical damage. Where this failing is coming into play is that the Warlord who is martial is doing healing by hitting his opponents. This is fine if hit points are just vitality but they are not. This healing also effects someone who is -9hp unconscious and bleeding out. Now if 4E has a wound/vitality system then I am ok with it, but otherwise it is breaking my suspension of disbelief. Using the hp as vitality without including some form of wound system results in an A-Team type game where no-one ever takes real damage, everyone is just disarmed or unconscious. While it may work for your group, for my group we want to kill the monsters and this means wounding them.

With due respect, you're creating an issue where none exists.

Whether we're talking about hit points or a vitality/wound system, we are, at base, discussing a method of notation for determining when we've overcome an obstacle. This is a broad level of analysis, but a crucial one. Regardless of what system we use, the monster is defeated when it runs out of points. From the tenor of your post, you're likely too committed to thinking of the vitality/wound dichotomy and that commitment will hurt your ability to enjoy D&D. Unless you can let go of that commitment.

In a hit point system, there's one pool of points to cover all conditions your foe might experience, from being stunned to being unconscious to being dead, i.e. defeated. In the vitality/wound system, there is a mechanical distinction made between losing all your "consciousness points", and thereby becoming unconscious/defeated, and losing all your "wound points", and thereby becoming dead/defeated. In the end, we're still talking about defeat.

You seem to be worried about the gloss or color of that defeat. You want to kill monsters, but you also want to know when you've stopped destroying their morale and started destroying their bodies. Ultimately, it's an arbitrary designation in any system that relies on a pool of points (whether hit points or the barely-more-granular vitality/wound point pools). We know that 4E will contain a "Bloodied" mechanic, which is triggered when an opponent has lost half its hit points. Why not just create a house rule/convention amongst you and your players that the DM will announce when an opponent is at one-quarter of its original hit points. That announcement is a trigger for everyone to switch their attack descriptions from the "shield feint" type to the "cleave his head" type. Below one-quarter hit points, you simply describe physical wounds. Problem solved!

We're not talking about flaws in the mechanics of the game. If we were, you'd be advocating for different mechanic for tracking your enemy's level of defeat. You might, for example, argue in favor of the wound mechanics in Runequest 3rd. Edition, which feature specific wounds to specific body regions alongside a pool of general hit points. You might argue for a Mutants and Masterminds approach that conists of a simple, tiered system of damage conditions.

Instead, you're just arguing that we should arrange these general pools of points a little bit differently so that you can more comfortably describe what is going on. You're putting the cart before the horse. I've described how, in 4E, the end of every combat doesn't have to be unconsciousness or disarmament. When a foe drops to zero hp, there's no problem with equating that with the monster's death.

To use another movie example, look at the fight between Indiana Jones and the bald guy on the airfield in Raiders. At the end of the fight, the bald guy is chopped to bits by an airplane propeller. In D&D terms, Indy finally succeeded in reducing that opponent/obstacle/threat to zero hit points. When you reduce something to zero hit points, the game is signaling to you that the threat or obstacle is gone. The art in playing an RPG is being able to translate those mechanics into evocative stories and play. Indy punches or hits the bald man with his fists. When the bald guys hit points reach zero, Indy has defeated the obstacle. Whether the bald guy slumps to the ground, unconscious and defeated/overcome. The DM (hopefully with Indy's agreement) describes the bald guy becoming salsa. Same result. The obstacle is defeated/overcome and is never ever coming back. If the game (and the movie) called for the bald guy to harass Indy again, the bald guy would have just been unconscious. But the players (writers) didn't need him in the story anymore, so he's salsa.

The same can go for your own games featuring abstract systems like hit points and vitality/wounds. The problem isn't in the system; the problem is in how you play the system. I understand that you're worried about your suspension of disbelief being broken. That's your own personal Gordian Knot. I'm trying to suggest that you've got Alexander's sword in your hand, if you would only realize that the differences between your favorite mechanic of abstract wound measurement is not significantly different from 4E's general hit point pool.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

2)Anime Names Two Words: Emerald Frost. I have a friend who reads a heck of a lot of anime. He has assured me that this is quite the anime name.

The Golden Dawn was SOOO anime!

Honestly, would we have heard the gnashing of nerd teeth if it was called Emerald Flame? Its really no different, people are just bitching for practice.