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

[JoeGKushner]

I think in some cases, part of this is system mastery.

If you've got the numbers down for your group, AC's, modifiers, etc..., it becomes pretty easy to figure out what type of oppsition and challenges they need.

On the other hand, sometimes the system isn't as clear as it could be.

I feel that one of the problems with 3.5 is that it wanted to embrass the all uniformity of say, Hero, but clung to so much of the D&D elements that it was very easy for memebers to fail to min-max while others in the party over maxed leaving the GM with glass ninjas and ineffectual heroes.

I hated doing prep for 3E. I didn't have the time or desire to do it, so I ran published modules. The underpinnings of the system weren't shown, so I had little guidance on how to adjust them for my particular group of players. I stopped running 3.5 because I didn't have time to do an adequate amount of prep time. Instead, I ran Shadowrun, a game for which I had to do literally no prep for other than pick a couple of plot points out of the air 5 minutes beforehand, and try and make sure I was consistent with the emerging story during the session. Now, there's significant mechanical differences between SR and D&D (mostly in SR's favor); but the main reason SR was so much easier to run is that I knew what the difficulty of a task should be to challenge the team and/or individuals, and could literally make up opponents on the fly based on those numbers and have it just work.

4E gives me what those numbers are on p42 of the DMG. If I don't mind only having monsters with basic attacks, I could run an entire campaign out of p42, the PHB, and my imagination. Add the NPC templates for spice.

3E D&D was an excellent toolkit. But it offloaded too much of the game design onto the DM. Prep time is a function of the system. It's not laziness to desire a lower workload for DM prep. The less time I spend prepping, the more I spend at the table with my friends, having fun.

 

[Fenes]

So far I saw nothing in 4E's core game that I'd really need in my game. Grid combat doesn't interest me, especially not with shift this and that all over the place. Combat encounter after combat encounter is not how I play the game - going nova once per day/session (or less) suits me more. The lack of perform, crafting and profession skills and the obvious lack of priority the non-combat systems got - or they'd have caught the skill challenge bug - also do not help me have more fun.
Rituals is a good idea, but needs some tweaking, and can be easyly inserted into my 3E game.

So, 4E is definetly not doing it for me. Maybe once it's a complete system, with the classes we had before, with a way to modify classes easily or multiclass better, and much more non-combat stuff, I'll give it a try. But at its current point 4E doesn't offer me anything I want or need that I don't already have, or can ploug into my 3E game.

 

[Zustiur]

For myself 4e did not do it for me. It was to much like a board game and to me has lost the feel of d&d for me to enjoy it. I'll stick with something else this is where I get off guys.

Precisely my problem. I've now had my third game, and the term board game suits it perfectly. It plays like a board game. Particularly in the sense that it feels like it was written for 'ages 8 +' because everything is so balanced that no one can complain or cry 'unfair'. DnD does not require every class to be equally effective in combat. That's not what the game was about. 3E was on the right track with trying to balance classes across the entire game, not just in combat. 4E has forgotten that. The thing that particularly annoyed me in yesterday's game is just how bouncy hit points are. I prefer a gradual grinding challenge with some (clearly magical) healing. Not Fully healed, to dying to fully healed to dying to half healed, to dying to a miraculous recovery through no apparent means just because I rolled a 20.
Yes that's right. I rolled a 20 to recover from dying, and that felt BAD.
Twice during the game I had to remind other players that "it's 4th edition, so it doesn't have to make sense" just to stop the arguments.
I am reminded of one of my previous comments - it's a good game, but it's just not DnD.

So far I saw nothing in 4E's core game that I'd really need in my game. <snip> going nova once per day/session (or less) suits me more. The lack of perform, crafting and profession skills and the obvious lack of priority the non-combat systems got - or they'd have caught the skill challenge bug - also do not help me have more fun.
Rituals is a good idea, but needs some tweaking, and can be easyly inserted into my 3E game.

Seconded. My party fought IronTooth in KotS yesterday, and I'd have given my character's life to be able to 'go nova' and use up the healing spells I would have otherwise had access to. (I'm a cleric) Not to mention what the other characters should have been able to do.

4E doesn't offer me anything I want or need that I don't already have, or can ploug into my 3E game.

amen.

Oh and a final gripe - people have been mentioning not having to look in the books at all during the game. That is not my experience at all. I had the book open almost every round. We had two combats, both lasted 2 hours or more. Admittedly that's with 6 players, and in above average battles, but we're taking 8+ turns to finish off kobolds.

 

[WizarDru]

I've never understood this claim.
...
Prepping also falls under the heading of "having fun", but that is a separate discussion.

I'd say that latter statement informs the first. My group plays as much as yours, but my free time for prepping (which can be fun to me, depending on the task) has diminished greatly since 2000. And even when I had more, I've found that spending extensive time building stat-blocks equals Not Fun to me. The issue of 'we play no matter how much prep-time I take' is a personal choice from DM to DM and group-to-group. I know one DM that won't run a game unless he has a fixed number of hours to prepare, while I can run with no prep-time, if need be (the issue of how satisfied I am with that session is another discussion entirely).

Under both flavors of 3e, I've found that low-levels are much easier to improvise, while high levels require inordinate amounts of prep-time to make it unique an enjoyable for my players. Simply cherry-picking the Monster Manual ceases to be an entertaining option. I consider prep-time where I make maps, plot adventures and brain-storm to be fun. I consider prep-time where I spend hours going over Excel spreadsheets, reviewing powers and stat-blocks and cutting-and-pasting from various sources to be tedious and busy accounting work that detracts from my enjoyment of the game. If not for fellows like BlackDirge, my campaign might have featured far fewer high-level monsters of note.

While running Pathfinder this past weekend, I was highly conscious of these issues when the party steam-rollered a CR12 opponent with a stat-block the ran a 1.5 pages and I still found myself, 8 years in, trying to locate her saves in the stat-block...and then computing spell-effects...and then searching to see which version (raging versus normal) was in effect...and so on.

Did we have fun? Certainly. But there are elements of 3e/3.5e that have grown more tiresome to me over the years that 4e, at least so far, seems to address. More focus on the 'fun' prep-time for me is one of them.

 

[Mallus]

It plays like a board game.

Try creating personalities, motivations, and mannerisms for your characters. It's helps dispel that board game feel.

Particularly in the sense that it feels like it was written for 'ages 8 +' because everything is so balanced that no one can complain or cry 'unfair'.

Chess is balanced. Are you suggesting balanced games are somehow meant for children?

3E was on the right track with trying to balance classes across the entire game, not just in combat.

Actually, 3e started moving D&D in the direction of making all classes combat-capable (clerics and druids became combat-monsters, spellcasting during combat became safer, thieves got a big boost in combat ability via sneak attack). It's biggest failure is, once again, the martial classes began to lag seriously behind the casters as they increased in level.

 

[Fenes]

Try creating personalities, motivations, and mannerisms for your characters. It's helps dispel that board game feel.

Not for everyone. Moving a figure on a grid screams "Boardgame" to me, no matter the characterisation. It simply feels not the same pushing a figure forward and seeing it all from a bird's eye of view instead of imaging the fight, and describing the action.

I can understand that others do not feel like I do, so I hope they can understand that 4E feels like a boardgame for some no matter the roleplay efforts being done by everyone at the table.

Actually, 3e started moving D&D in the direction of making all classes combat-capable (clerics and druids became combat-monsters, spellcasting during combat became safer, thieves got a big boost in combat ability via sneak attack). It's biggest failure is, once again, the martial classes began to lag seriously behind the casters as they increased in level.

That's what 3E has Bot9S for.

 

[IanArgent]

I've never understood this claim. When my friends are over and we were at the table, we played. The idea that time available for actual play is preempted to go do prep doesn't make the slightest sense.

My group is probably over around 15 hours a month. We play 15 hours a month. If I prep for 30 hours, we play for 15. If I prep for 1 hour, we play for 15.

Prepping also falls under the heading of "having fun", but that is a separate discussion.

But for me the prep time was (and remains) a non-issue and the loss of the rewards for that prep is a major detraction.

If I wasn't prepped, we didn't play. Game cancelled on account of "interference from life". I've never had to cancel my SR game because I wasn't ready to run. Long enough doing that, the game falls apart.

As an experiment, I'm running H1 without having read the adventure until the day I'm running it. I did that with 3.x modules, and the results weren't pretty. *And* I'm doing it with 6 PCs, so some scaling is going to be a good idea.

So far, so good - we'll see what happens once they actually get to the Keep...

 

[Arnwyn]

Nope, looks like 4e is not doing it for me - yet.

Maybe in 5 years when more of what I and my group consider necessary books come out, I might consider giving it another try, but by that time...

 

[Fenes]

If I wasn't prepped, we didn't play. Game cancelled on account of "interference from life". I've never had to cancel my SR game because I wasn't ready to run. Long enough doing that, the game falls apart.

As an experiment, I'm running H1 without having read the adventure until the day I'm running it. I did that with 3.x modules, and the results weren't pretty. *And* I'm doing it with 6 PCs, so some scaling is going to be a good idea.

So far, so good - we'll see what happens once they actually get to the Keep...

I spend about one to two hours per game session preparing for it. That includes typing up what happened in the last session. Using modules would slow me down a lot.

 

[Mallus]

Not for everyone. Moving a figure on a grid screams "Boardgame" to me, no matter the characterisation.

When I first started playing (1e) back in the 80s we always used map grids and minis, so 4e seems like old times to me.

I can understand that others do not feel like I do, so I hope they can understand that 4E feels like a boardgame for some no matter the roleplay efforts being done by everyone at the table.

See, I'm all about the in-character role-playing, funny voices and all. I have trouble imagination how a map and minis could provide a significant distraction from me from enjoying my friends role-playing their (oddball) characters (or my own). YMMV, and obviously does.

That's what 3E has Bot9S for.

I think the Bo9S is one of the best additions to 3e. In fact, I'm surprised that 4e isn't closer to Bo9S, mechanically-speaking.