D&D 4E Is 4E doing it for you?

[Celtavian]

re

It's an ok game. I haven't bought a book yet and don't plan on it. I'd be just as happy going back to 3.5, but my group is committed to 4E and I don't have the energy to push it.

The powers do feel kind of the same. And there are more obvious choices in 4E than in 3.5. Powers are pretty weak too. No more one shot killing in this game even with crits at lvl 7. But mostly we don't have much trouble killing stuff either, it just takes longer than it did in 3.5 because of the lack of spike damage from crits and the large amount of hit points each monster has.

Some feats are better than others too. Like I don't see why a paladin or str-based melee cleric would worship anyone other than Tempus or Kelemvor in the Forgotten Realms. They really didn't think out well alot of powers. Some powers are listed as dailies, but they really should be encounters. There are a few encounter powers that are borderline dailies. That surprises me that there is such oversight and imbalance with powers. I guess it shouldn't as there were plenty of such mistakes in 3.5, but still I was hoping for better power oversight and balance in 4E. Not a bunch of obvious choices for Paragon Paths, Chosen Paths, powers, feats, and especially gods but a free melee crit every encounter with Tempus is far too much to pass up for any player that has even a small desire to have an effective character or weapon focus or Disruptive Shot or Stand the Fallen. All our just the obvious best choices for a given level.

Some of the rules are hokey like the Grab and Escape rules rendering grappling mostly useless. Certain powers make encounters too easy.

Overall the classes are fairly balanced for their given roles. Each class has things that make it shine, some a few more than others, but overall the class balance is pretty good.

I guess D&D 4E is a good game, but very flat and flavorless. It gave up alot of its unique flavor for balance. As my friend says it feels like a RPG boardgame. That is pretty much my feeling.

I was hoping for something more advanced. 3.5 seemed to be moving the game closer to GURPS with skill points and advanced fighting styles. I was kind of hoping it would move closer to a GURPs like game, but it kind of moved in a different direction and kind of reminds me of the old Marvel Superheroes. A very simple, fun game that is easy to run, but not particularly deep, interesting, variable, or realistic. I feel more like I'm playing a Superhero or Anime character than a fantasy character, though I imagine there is some fantastic fantasy that is like 4E. But 4E isn't my kind of fantasy game and it doesn't make me want to write or think of stories. I look at it more like participating in a kids cartoon with funny, inhuman characters with special powers.

 

[Felon]

??????

You discussed 4E design philosophy of choosing simple rules over comprehensive ones, even if the latter is more elegant.

One of the examples you then discuss is grappling. No, you didn't specifically refer to 3E, but it's clear that 4E started with the skeleton of 3E's mechanics, which it then made changes to. So they could have decided to stay with 3E's comprehensive grappling mechanic, instead of the simple grab.

My point was, there's a third option: don't keep the cumbersome grappling mechanic, and don't design a simple mechanic simply as a rejection of the cumbersome mechanic. Just give it good mechanics. Do it right, then you can just let the rest of the chips fall where they may. Isn't that a good idea?

 

[Celtavian]

I think that one of the main reasons for this problem is the paucity of rituals they included in the 4e PHB. If they had included 20 1st level rituals, including a huge range of 1st (and 2nd) level spells from earlier editions, then we wouldn't be feeling this problem with wizards so greatly.

Among the rituals there should also be some 'utility' and 'attack' rituals in my opinion too - there is plenty of design space for that kind of thing, and it would have really made a difference in the perception of wizards IMO.

Cheers

Have you used many rituals? We're lvl 7 and we haven't really had to use them much yet. We used one Raise Dead ritual off a scroll to get a party member back. Other than that our wizard barely remember their rituals because they never find a use for them. One wizard cast Floating Disc, but it was just a nuisance following the wizard around while he was in combat.

Rituals seem kind of pointless. I'm sure they get better, but at the moment they have no use in our group at lvl 1 through 7. Maybe they get more useful at higher level.

4E is so centered around combat that rituals are just an afterthought. Not many doors are locked. Not many effects are permanent that can't be shaken off with a save. There just doesn't seem to be much of a need for rituals. Even the parcel treasure system makes it so enchanting items is a waste of time. Seems like Alchemy will be more useful to most ritual users.

 

[Vayden]

4 is definitely doing it for me. Friday night one of the groups I DM spent cautiously exploring side passages in Thunderspire Labyrinth, then working their way around the Seven Pillared Hall shaking people down for information. 1 combat the whole night and people were yelling at me for calling the game closed at midnight because I needed sleep.

Saturday I ran another group through a little wilderness exploration, culminating in a massive melee on horseback against a small army of skeletons that ended up being one of the best fights I've ever DMed in any edition of D&D.

There are a couple things I don't like, but in terms of fun at the table this is the best RPG I've ever played or run.

 

[aurance]

I would say - if you are saying no to all these things, you're going against the grain.

I think 4e works in the following modes:
-If it doesn't say you can do it, you can't. You need a Power to disarm someone, for example.
-You can try anything that makes sense to people at the table, with the DM as the final authority. You don't need to use a Power to disarm someone, for example. This seems to be the mode suggested in the PHB and DMG.

I completely agree with this - 4e DMG p. 42 is clear evidence that ad hoc combat maneuvers are at times assumed to occur and is supported by the system. The example rogue pulls off a fairly substantial improvised maneuver after consensus from the DM and player.

 

[catsclaw227]

Have you used many rituals? We're lvl 7 and we haven't really had to use them much yet. We used one Raise Dead ritual off a scroll to get a party member back. Other than that our wizard barely remember their rituals because they never find a use for them.

The PCs in my campaign have used:

Comprehend Language
Silence
Tenser's Floating Disk
Endure Elements
Detect Secret Doors (after some terrible Perception checks )
Arcane Lock
Knock
Discern Lies
Sending
Speak with Dead

 

[Benimoto]

In Descent, my most effective option in a round could entail two attacks, one attack, or even no attacks at all; there are other goals in a Descent skirmish beyond "kill all enemies", so you don't need to designate the action used to attack as being more valuable than the action used to move.

Sure, I love Descent for that, but like Neuronphaser said above, those are all very similar to things I enjoy in D&D 4e (and 3e). Descent is pretty great, with a lot of fun mechanics. It even has the advantage that it can explicitly promote some "gamist" mechanics, since nobody will complain that they make for inconsistent economics, worldbuilding or etc.

Still, the list of tactical or strategic situations you can set up in Descent but not in D&D is so small that I would argue that it's almost insignificant. It sounds like at least some of the tactical depth you like in Descent is coming from the scenarios. May I suggest that you try to run a game of D&D (3 or 4e) under similar conditions?

 

[That One Guy]

These days, when I want tactical skirmish gameplay, I find that Descent (preferrably with the Road to Legend expansion) delivers much more depth and elegance. In D&D, tactics seem fairly prescribed. Attack as a standard action every round. Move if you need to. If you can get flank, try to to get it. If you can't reach the opponent with a move action, then charge. If you need to heal an ally or pull a weapon or drink a potion or reload a crossbow, those "upkeep" actions have all been conveniently made a minor action so you never have to choose to not attack.

Umm... I've turned tail to hide in the woods to disappear from a fight only to return with a thrown dagger. Just saying I spent a round getting out of combat and not attacking. Soouhh... choosing not to attack was the best option at the time.

Not like that really counters your point. One exception doesn't. I'm just saying that there are some really novel tactics that develop organically in combat that to me feel more narratively satisfying than some other games.
(Although, now I am curious about this Descent you speak of...)

4e feels 'forced' to me. Towards the end of 3.5 (and this isn't an edition war), players were really being creative in using a skill + attack to do cool stuff. There were hundreds of combo's for actions each round.

Now we're forced into your "only good choices" which are the forced action powers which is like playing inside a cardboard box.

Tonight we're going to experiment with seeing if the skill checks can be combo'd with the power actions WITHOUT slowing the game down even more.

jh

Page 42. But seriously, what do you mean? Feinting in combat? Walking along ropes? Jumping down from a ledge and impaling a kobold with your shortswords and taking/dealing falling damage enough to kill it?

If this is something you want to do, I will try and help you do it. I just am not sure what you mean. Halp.

 

[Felon]

I think what's being missed might be the "order" in which things work in 4e.

In 3e they seemed to go from a top down approach. What does the word incorpreal mean? What effects should it have? What things should not effect it, etc. Start at the top and work your way down.

In 4e they take a bottom up approach. Define only the basic needs. You can walk through walls, and take 1/2 damage. Then, as they design other elements they can then add functions based on keywords. This attack does not effect creatures with the "incorpreal" keyword.

Same thing with Grab.

Grab does not = grapple in the 3e sense. Grab is just the first part. The actual, well, grabbing part. It's intentionally minimal because it's the springboard from which your other options start. It's the very bottom level of the bottom up aproach.

I might have a monster with a special power, but it needs to grab first to enact it. I might have a special attack, but it involves a grab to achieve it.

Designing from the bottom up allows you to achieve different effects, without having to plan them all from the start. I could say, invent an action such as "flip." All I need to do is design the base idea of what is a flip, and how to enact it. Then, I can add on powers that utilize "flip" as the basic first step. It doesn't matter how many new things add on, because I haven't designed everything you can do with flip.

It might seem like sloppy or bad mechanics if you try to approach it from the top down angle, but it's not. It's just different.

Here's the net result: in 4e you can grab a swarm and you can shove a ghost with a physical attack. To go with this approach you're proposing, every power that shouldn't work on incorporeal targets would have to include a caveat "doesn't work on incorporeal" along with a list of other things it doesn't work on. That's cumbersome design, since it's a lot easier just to say it once. More to the point, they didn't do it at all. Not top-down, not bottom-up. Wherever that exemption for tripping Casper ought to have been made, it wasn't. Conversely, the rules for the grab maneuver don't allow for things you and I could do to a person without the benefit of martial powers, much less heroes.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Can you elaborate?

I'll try. Characters have a smattering of powers, and they're pretty much stuck with their choices until they can level and respec. If I throw an amorphous/incorporeal foe at them and then put my foot down and declare that it can't be knocked prone or slid around, or tell them that they can't use a sleep spell on a zombie, then I'm not really making them innovate new tactics. Anything they do that isn't using one of their powers isn't going to be very effective, and they can't just get new powers on the fly.

All I'm basically doing is stepping in and vetoing 4e's implicit promise that the small repertoire of powers at a hero's disposal will be reliable because monsters powers work on everything equally well, whether biped, quadruped, big, small, alive, dead, solid, liquid, gas or ether. That's working against the grain. In 4e, homogeneity is a feature, not a bug.

 

[malraux]

In 4e, homogeneity is a feature, not a bug.

I would argue that its a principle of parsimony rather than homogeneity.