Is 4th edition getting soft? - edited for friendly content :)

[bowbe]

Vancian magic: agreed.

But after a fashion, "save or die" is a dice mechanic thing that is being changed. The change that saves become defenses.

Bowbe was almost totally ignored in the past few pages, but I think he may be right. There may be no save-or-die because there are no saves. But is that to say there is no "death attack"? That remains to be seen. Even now, HP can be ploughed through by a lucky crit by a big creatures.

Thanks for the big up Psion. Being totally ignored happens a lot to me ( I'm a school teacher by trade) hahaha!

It's kinda like that thread a few days ago about "bait monsters" where it turned out they were talking about pulling popular monsters so you have to wait 1-x years to get the ones you want (or wait for Scott, Erica, Many Others,... Myself) to cook up monsters in the vein and calibur you want for a Tome 4e.

I had thought bait monsters were "mooks" you brought out to get PCs to waste their "per encounter 1 shot abilities and spells" before you hit them with brutes and BBG's. Turns out I was wrong.

Looking at saga, talking to people who play it and like the rules "For star wars" and how it works (for star wars) as a sort of skeletal frame of 4e it becomes apparent that all those "defenses" just mean someone else is rolling against you instead of putting the save in your hands. Heck, sometimes in big battles, I make PCs roll my monster's attack rolls (against their PC) and the damage while I book-keep and direct the actions my baddies take.

In other words just as many reasons to get po'ed at the DM, except this time instead of making you roll the rolls to save your characters life, he's rolling the rolls to kill em off (with magic, psionics, whatever).

I have every confidence that just about every rule in 4e will be able to be broken/twinked/worked around by clever players and DMs as it has in every other instance of the game.

Anyone remember the Godzilla Gerbil? For those who don't thats a 1e trick for a high level druid with a circle of his own to repeated cast animal growth till you have a gerbil the size of godzilla. (or bunny, or cat, or squirrel).

I can't speak to 2e broken stuff as I didn't play it that much, we used bits we liked but stuck mostly to 1e.

3.xe broken combos, spells and such are the bread and butter of en-world's rules section. Well documented. Heck, it didn't take us long to figure out how to get an intelligent, fast moving barbarian with a pole arm into position to turn the guy into a virtual ranged attack weapon with a potential x3 raged crit stacked with power attack. (That got even BETTER with 3.5 edition... I even told guys at Wizards that it would, and thanked them for not taking my suggestion to nix the double strength damage for two handed weapons or clear up the language so you couldn't whirlwind attack everything as described "in reach". Ah well. Worked for me for years!

I've noticed some folks render their dissapointment with 3.5 wizards and I understand their agony. Of course I remember pre-erata 3.0 wizards and the elation a lot of wizard players that I knew had with the 2 spells per round action they were pulling off of haste and quicken spell feat made it even better for some players (3 magic missiles in a round...hootananny! Wraiths and shadows were dropping like flies!)

It will take about a week of the rules being actually in the hands of the gaming public for someone to figure out how to turn every decent offensive spell into a "kill" effect.

I have some friends and former playtesters that are absolutely NUTS about Saga Star Wars and they cannot WAIT to play 4e because they have already broken Star Wars. With the right combo's of talents, feats, action points, force points, and hero points, immediate actions, free actions, standard actions ect... they have managed to figure out how to get re-use of most of their 1 use per encounter force points (One guy is up to 3 re-uses) and how to squeeze multiple actions out of a round (another guy is up to 3 actions). All legal and by the book Rules As Written.

4e will likely be pretty much the same.

If they can do that with star wars and one rule book, I can't wait to see what people manage to pull off in D&D 4e with 3 books to monkey around with.

Case

 

[bowbe]

By the way, reading up on this 4e rumor-milling and the Save or Die thing got me remembering a couple things I had heard from folks in the RPGA that I run into from time to time at various events and cons.

I've heard that one of the decisions for removing Save or Die effects came from an overall dislike of save or die on questionairs and such offered to RPGA/Organized Play.

Another point of interest mentioned was some reputation/bragging rights and opportunities to take part in organized play online, where characters and parties could be ranked and marked as "official" in the way players and team ladders are ranked in other systems and games (yes, like video games "gasp".) I for one can see that as a very popular marketing strategy.

I could be talking out my rear, or have misunderstood the folks who mentioned this to me at any one of a dozen con's i've been to in the last couple years but that was the gist I got.

Please do not take my bringing it up as gospel, or any condemnation of the many fine folks who participate in organized play and have kept D&D going even through some of its darkest hours. Maybe someone involved in RPGA or organized play can verify or flat out squash them as silly coincidence or outright rubbish.

Organized Play is noted as one of the 4 foundations of the "new" D&D. Books (rules), DI, Organized Play and You! (Isn't that how the blurb ran?)

So I can totally see where folks involved in "Living x" would have a wrankle with Save or Die. Their xps absolutely crawl compared to a normal "in my basement" game. Getting a character up to any level of worthiness takles years and involves attending a lot of events and going through a lot of paperwork/official organizations for approval and what not. (At least it did last time I checked).

Organized Play/RPGA (Again if I recall correctly) gets to use all (or most) of the supplement materials for the adventures written for it. A good chunk of characters classes and prestige classes from various books are also accepted. I can see how their voice would make a pretty big difference to Wizards in terms of selling books, because they buy them, and the folks writing the adventures for Organized Play use em. More of a difference than whether or not folks like myself can use the materials or not in a 3rd party publication I would guess!

Sorry for the slide in focus. Just thought that bit was interesting and made a lot of sense when it comes to a ton of these 4e threads and rules hints we've all been combing through in the past couple months.

 

[Psion]

So I can totally see where folks involved in "Living x" would have a wrankle with Save or Die. Their xps absolutely crawl compared to a normal "in my basement" game.

Given the rules that tournament characters operate under, so can I. But then, I'm not a big fan of traditional organized play, and I've seen rules conventions apparently conceived for that environment that doesn't work in the larger "group of friends" environment, and I'm concerned that it appears 4e is banking primarily on the RPGA for playtesting. (Not that the playtest period appears long enough to make too much of a credible difference.)

 

[FourthBear]

Given the rules that tournament characters operate under, so can I. But then, I'm not a big fan of traditional organized play, and I've seen rules conventions apparently conceived for that environment that doesn't work in the larger "group of friends" environment, and I'm concerned that it appears 4e is banking primarily on the RPGA for playtesting. (Not that the playtest period appears long enough to make too much of a credible difference.)

BTW, does anyone know if there are any big character optimization gurus in the playtests? Are such players represented well in the RPGA? There definitely are some people with a positive genius for finding exploits and abuses in the rules. It would be nice to think that such people at least get some time with the 4e rules.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

This isn't about hosue rules -- it is about the 4E design team making a decision that limits D&D's appeal across playstyles for a reason that amounts to "51% of people we polled don't like it." The other 49% buy books too, though, at least they'd like to unless the game goes so far from its roots as to be unrecognizable.

Really? Where is this poll that WOTC sited as the source of their decision? Do you have a link? I'm really curious, because what the designers have been saying lately is that, for 3e, some of the sacred cows remained the game for the sole reason that playtesters said "Keep this." They've sited rules like monk/paladin multiclassing and spells like magic missile, items that were different from their current versions but were ultimately molded to look like previous editions, simply for nostalgia's sake.

Touting this as a reason for some of the imperfect designs in 3e, I would think the current design team would've learned a lesson about player polls: you can't always obey every suggestion, even if it's in the majority.

So, I'm not sure if you're using hyperbole or you're basing your response on an actual poll. I'm guessing the former, but if it's the later I'd like to see that poll, because I have my doubts about the 4e team basing their entire design philosophy solely on what the majority want. I'm more inclined to believe that, in this particular case they opted for this route because they feel it is ultimately better for the game. Whether or not one agrees with that is a matter of personal preference. I have played with this system in Star Wars Saga, and it makes things much faster, which I appreciate. And I assure you the sense of lethality remains.

As for the removal of save-or-die effects "limiting appeal across play styles"... well, I think the logical extension of your line of thought has been spelled out be several others already. If they do not eliminate something and include everything, the game will cease to be DnD. I may like point-based systems better than level-based systems, but I think it would be unrealistic of me to demand that they include those in the core rules.

Now, save or die effects are not such a stretch, but in the process of creating a new edition, some rules are going to be kept, others changed, and still others eliminated. That's just the way it goes. In this particular case, I seriously doubt the game will become "unrecognizable," as you suggest. But again, that is a matter of opinion. Everything that I have seen has been very representational of the iconic game, AFAIC. Some have gone as far to say that this current version of the game is much closer to ODnD and 1e than its predecessors.

Personally I am more concerned with the overall design philosophy for 4e, and my willingness to try the system is not going to be based on the inclusion or exclusion of particular rules.

 

[Henry]

Touting this as a reason for some of the imperfect designs in 3e, I would think the current design team would've learned a lesson about player polls: you can't always obey every suggestion, even if it's in the majority.

The perfect game that people don't like and don't play, however, is a failed game... Even if it causes headaches, something that a majority of fans want to stay, should stay. I'm not equating the "save or die" business with this, but it applies to ANY change that gets a large number of fans in an uproar. New Coke is a good example of this lesson, no matter how much better it was and how many blind taste-tests it won.

 

[DandD]

However, the majority can change its opinion over the course, it seems. Or actually, the new majority might not like the decision of the former majority that are still in the game.

 

[Baby Samurai]

Chain swords and light sabers are not legacy elements that have always existed as a part of the game...

I just hope the designers have the balls this time (I'm looking at you, Mr 3rd Edition!) to finally ditch some of the crap legacy artefacts (turning rules, the Gygaxian magic system, multi-classing restrictions, etc, etc).

 

[Henry]

I just hope the designers have the balls this time (I'm looking at you, Mr 3rd Edition!) to finally ditch some of the crap legacy artefacts (turning rules, the Gygaxian magic system, multi-classing restrictions, etc, etc).

Turning rules: Those were ditched in 3E, in my opinion for a worse system. I'd love 4E to see a return to something easier like 1st Edition's system, and make it a talent choice for those who don't want every cleric in the world to turn undead.

Vance magic: Check - well, it looks like 80% of its prevalence, anyway (based on that quote that said a wizard that cast his one-a-days would still have about 80% of his power left).

Multi-classing: Looks like it's a go, there, with additional improvements to spellcasters, to boot.

 

[Baby Samurai]

1.) and make it a talent choice for those who don't want every cleric in the world to turn undead.

2.) Vance magic: Check - well, it looks like 80% of its prevalence, anyway (based on that quote that said a wizard that cast his one-a-days would still have about 80% of his power left).

1.) Totally, I don't think very cleric should be vehemently opposed to undead, just "because".


2.) I was really bummed when I first opened my 3.0 PHB to find that the magic/spell system was basically a cut&paste of the antiquated, overpowered, Gygaxian magic system from previous editions.

I'm serious, go read your 1st edition PHB and you'll see.

Thanks god it is finally evolving.