I think we're done with 4E

[Nightchilde-2]

Another thumbs-up for Earthdawn from me. There's a world with tons of flavor (and lots of awesome sourcebooks), a magic system whose rules have a impact on everything in the world, and lots of cool options for players.

It even has healing surges... I mean, 'recovery tests'.

I heard rumors that Earthdawn is getting reincarnated as a 4E-compatible game.

Sorta. The way I understand it, Age of Legends is a 4th edition verison of Earthdawn, but Redbrick is going to continue to publish classic Earthdawn stuff as well.

 

[jensun]

The trend seems to be that DMs love 4e because it is so predictable, forgiving, and easy to run-- but players quickly tire of it. I think this might have to do with the removal of "mastery."

My, what an enormously broad brush you have.

Try harder next time.

 

[xechnao]

And yet they seem to come up so regularly...



Every system has its adherents who blame the complainers who blame the system. It's foolish to wholly blame either the system or the complainers (and equally foolish to think that one system will suit all tastes).



4e removed the swingyness from combat. It should not come as a surprise that everyone is able to predict the outcome. 4e is designed to be predictable-- one of the reasons DMs love it.

The trend seems to be that DMs love 4e because it is so predictable, forgiving, and easy to run-- but players quickly tire of it. I think this might have to do with the removal of "mastery."

And that's not simply an issue of "no splatbooks yet." If you are the sort of player for whom predictable = boring, you have to hope that the splatbooks unbalance the carefully balanced system. (Then you'll have a new set of complainers.)

Perhaps the solution would be to give unique strategic points to each combat which means that in each combat players struggle to accomplish a different thing. For example struggle to protect an imobilized comrade that the enemies want to kill or capture (example from the fellowship of the ring).
But I think D20 is not optimized for this sort of thing because of its baggage of artificats and absurdities of the whole combat system. It is possible but not optimized. This is my opinion.

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

I run C&C and love it. The have a free quick start pdf book on their website (Troll Lord Games) that you can try out and see if you like the system. The best part about it is the ease of converting 1E and 3E D&D materials to the C&C system. All of the D&D stuff I've gotten over 30 years is now usable again.

 

[NerfedWizard]

Would it be cheeky for me to plug my game, Omnifray - http://www.omnifray.com

I've never seen a match for it in terms of the tactical element and sheer number of options a combat character can have in actual combat (want to mix a vicious strike with a mighty blow at 1st level? be my guest - or do you think you need to spend more energy points and use a death blow this time? maybe you need to save energy points and just do a sure strike - or how about going all out with burst of speed and burst of strength, or throw your toys out of the cot in a berserk rage?). Even if some might be "better" statistically (and that will depend very much on your opponent), you have to save energy points for when you need them, so judging which power is appropriate is important.

Combat can be very quick because although injury is dealt as a percentage (i.e. 100% injury = destruction of victim), mooks do not keep track of injury but instead have an equivalent % chance of dying (and ref's discretion for major injuries etc. if you roll close to the required number).

Omnifray has two basic mechanics which most players seem to really like. It has a continuous randomised "speed of action" system (no "rounds" or "turns" or "phases" or "initiative" - each action takes a random number of "segments" of 0.1 seconds depending on how quick you are, and you just keep track of how long it is until your next action). It also has a core mechanic of matching stat v stat to get a % success chance. Sometimes you make a "rough and ready" roll where, if you have X% success, you have to get under X to get at least a clear success or clear hit.
Then reverse the dice (e.g. 54 becomes 45) and if that's under, you get +1 success category (fail => modest success, clear success => critical success).

Most people who've played Omnifray have enjoyed it tremendously - the only drawback is that sometimes they find it a little complicated, but that's the price you pay for tons and tons and tons of options and total flexibility.

Some convention playtesters who were only exposed to one 4-hour slot of Omnifray felt that (even with non-magical PCs) they had too many options (each 1st level character gets a small menu of feats powered using energy points). However in longer games lasting a few sessions or more people tend to get the hang of the basics pretty quickly.

The general view seems to be that the setting (the Enshrouded Lands) is awesome. It appears non-magical at first glance (inhabitants:- humans and animals), but magic bubbles away beneath the surface, beyond the ken of the common folk. Also brim-full of secret cults etc. which are detailed in the 2nd book (the Expert Manual).

 

[Rechan]

One option for the "Dragging fights" Mearls suggested was, after all is said and done and people look bored, treat the monsters as minions. The example he used was two skeleton archers who were cornered at full HP, but who clearly could not "do their thing" because they are in melee and stuck. So it didn't hurt to just let them die after a hit or two.

My fights seem to swing back and forth. Usually the PCs chew through the situation rather quickly. The only times that things seem to drag was when the PCs battled with Elites, who have twice the HP.

 

[ExploderWizard]

An interesting observation, but not borne out by my experience. The ultimate decision point tends to rest on what creature roles are left in the fight: artillery that has no defensive line, brutes locked down by a controller and taking punishment from everyone else, etc. If multiple creature roles are left on the battlefield, I would never handwave the fight. Ultimately, the decision tends to be pretty easy, and my players don't ever seem unsatisfied; by the time we're declaring the fight over and discussing attrition, the most exciting elements of the encounter are already over. I also always have the option of declaring the fight over by having free and able-bodied opponents make a break for it.

Oh yes, morale can be a big factor in deciding when the bad guys surrender or flee. As far as the exciting elements of an encounter being over and creature roles, I find that to be an interesting observation. Wizards/casters are typically in the artillery category yet if there were one or two still able to fight then I would hardly call the encounter done because there were no fighter types left, at least using a system where the casters had the potential to do more than grind off some more HP before they went down. With spells like hold person, web, mirror image, confusion, ect. the battle could still turn with some timely spell use.

A 4E caster in this situation could only do some damage and perhaps cause a minor annoyance that would only delay the inevitable which is why calling the fight makes sense in the first place. Thats why the focus on balance kind of kills the magic and excitement of combat IMHO.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

We've been playing 4E for around 16 sessions (We're almost level 6) and we've been running into many of the problems described by the original poster. I love 4E combat, powers, and especially monsters. But as we level up, combat seems to drag and drag. We play for about 3.5 hours and the last few times I kept track of our rolls. Generally speaking I would say that with 5 players, each person gets to go every 15 minutes, so around 12 rounds a night. The odds on average seem to be 50/50. If we optimize all our bonuses, we usually need around an 9-11 to hit. So out of 12 times, we only do something cool 6 times a night. When you throw in constant condition effects that limit our options, spending move actions to keep getting up from prone or being slowed or weakened and so on, I would say that I would reduce doing cool stuff from 6 to an average for 3-4 times a night.

Emphasis mine.

I'm really surprised by that figure of 15 minutes before your next turn. How many players are there in the group?

I'm playing with anywhere between 6 and 8 players, and I'd estimate (because I haven't done any real checking yet) that even with that number we get round to everyone about once every 7 or eight minutes or so. I think you might want to look into ways to speed your combat up.

 

[ExploderWizard]

4e removed the swingyness from combat. It should not come as a surprise that everyone is able to predict the outcome. 4e is designed to be predictable-- one of the reasons DMs love it.

The trend seems to be that DMs love 4e because it is so predictable, forgiving, and easy to run-- but players quickly tire of it. I think this might have to do with the removal of "mastery."

And that's not simply an issue of "no splatbooks yet." If you are the sort of player for whom predictable = boring, you have to hope that the splatbooks unbalance the carefully balanced system. (Then you'll have a new set of complainers.)

I disagree here. I enjoy a bit of swing and upredictability from combat and this has nothing to do with " mastery". The majority of mastery that a lot of players enjoy comes from character building rather than mastery of the resolution mechanics. You can get swingy combat from just having save or die (or suck) effects in the game with no character build options at all.

 

[Lord Vangarel]

4e removed the swingyness from combat. It should not come as a surprise that everyone is able to predict the outcome. 4e is designed to be predictable-- one of the reasons DMs love it.

I'd agree that combats do seem to reach a predictable stage. One player said that it feels like he's just moving his miniature round the board waiting for the combat to end, and another said he wanted unpredictability of previous editions.

As I've said large parts of 4E are great and I'll definitely be taking lot's of its ideas with me. Generally I really like the powers for the non spellcasting classes but not perhaps the implementation. I sort of feel if they'd done powers as mostly dailies with the ability to bring some down to encounters and at wills as they advance in level it would feel different.