Jason Bulmahn Speaks about DDXP(His take on the system)

[Kwalish Kid]

Not really. I think the problem he pointed out is the Law of Darwinian Game Option Selection - No matter how many options there are in the game, there are always a few, clearly superior options that will always be chosen by players who are driven to succeed.

(Okay, I made that term up, but what I described is rather Darwinian.)

Which is a bit disappointing since that's really not much different from 3.X. Some choices are still better than others.

I think you're on the right track here.

There are two kinds of selection at work before one of these powers comes to our attention. First, the power must be useful, but not overpowered enough, to survive the design process. Second, the power must be one interesting enough to be included in the preview adventure.

The preview adventure may be specifically designed to show off particular abilities at particular times.

 

[FourthBear]

I do think we may need to rethink what we mean by swingy combat. From the design notes, it seems as though the writers wanted to eliminate encounters that simply resulted in resource management issues (i.e., the explicit equal EL should deplete 25% of resources rule of thumb). This would supposedly result in three encounters being uninteresting until you get to the fourth encounter where your life is on the line. Oversimplified, sure. So they've attempted to rejigger the math such that the standard combat gives the feeling of the threat of failure/death, without necessarily bringing you that close to it in actuality. I think this may mean that we may see characters drop more often in 4e in "common" combats, but perhaps see less actual character death due to the rules for healing surges, taking care of fallen comrades and the downplaying of save-or-die.

Of course, as noted, the dragon encounter was placed specifically for the design team to show that encounters in 4e aren't somehow nerfed to eliminate character death and TPKs (a common fear, as it was in the early days of 3e). We'll see if it's "too" swingy in actual play. It would be ironic after all the hand-wringing over nerfing and unkillable characters in 4e if in actual play the dice create more deaths and TPKs than previous editions.

 

[mhensley]

I completely agree with your examples. My point though is this. The saves vs bodaks and the init rolls vs the four armed monkeys of doom are both rolls that the characters can influence with their build. These rolls are clearly outside the PCs (or even DMs) influence (afaik), making them a wild card in any combat (just like the 3.0 dragon breath weapon).

Ok, so these rolls are just like when you fight a demon or devil in any previous edition. If the demon makes the roll to gate in additional demons, the fight just got a lot harder if not impossible. That's part of the danger involved in fighting such creatures.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I thought that making combat, especially low-level combat, less swingy was one of 4e's design goals? Didn't Andy Collins bring up the swinginess of low level combat in 3e as one of his big gripes with it?

4E is swingy if you have a long succession of bad rolls on one side and good roles on the other side.
That's actually not swingy (which either hong wanted to imply or should have said )
4e combat is swingy at first level since only two good rolls (to hit and damage) are enough to take anyone out of combat, and kills many. That is swingy.

 

[Tuft]

Again, compared to Risk or A&A, not really.

It's interesting that people keep bringing up Axis & Allies in this discussion.

I had some friends hat played a lot of A&A (2nd edition). So much that the system kind of "broke" for them.

They noted that there always seemed to be a few extremely decisive armored battles around Leningrad/Murmansk early on in the game. If the German player won a decisive victory, then the Russian player would be so weakened that he fell to the Japanese Armor rolling up his rear through Siberia from Chinese factories. If the Russian player won a decisive victory, the German player was so weakened that the British and the US could get a foothold in Western Europe. Only in a non-decisive draw in these early battles was the rest of the board anything but window dressing.

Very often either the Allied or the Axis side would simply concede after losing these early battles due to bad dice rolls - usually before the US player had time to do little more than to produce a few transports and tanks and ship them over to the UK...


I guess it is that kind of swingyness that the opening post hints at.

 

[Zinegata]

I suggest we all consider something before we worry too much about the options and complexity of 4th edition.

Have you ever demoed D&D or Magic at Gen Con? Or any of their other games? Compare how many options you get in that demo to how it is in the real game.

Actually, I've actually done it for Heroscape. And the thing that worries me is that this feels way too much like the Heroscape demos that I run ^_^.

(One of the major lessons I learned demoing Heroscape though: Players, even kids as young as 5, don't like the Basic version. They want the full version with the special rules. And even the five year-olds can remember terminology like height advantage).

 

[mhensley]

4e combat is swingy at first level since only two good rolls (to hit and damage) are enough to take anyone out of combat, and kills many. That is swingy.

In every test combat I've run so far, it took at least two hits with the most damaging powers to take down a character. And that's pc vs pc. NPC's seem considerably weaker.

 

[Plane Sailing]

In every test combat I've run so far, it took at least two hits with the most damaging powers to take down a character. And that's pc vs pc. NPC's seem considerably weaker.

I think he actually meant 3e in his second paragraph

 

[Zinegata]

It's interesting that people keep bringing up Axis & Allies in this discussion.

Actually, I think only I keep bringing it up.

I had some friends hat played a lot of A&A. So much that the system kind of "broke" for them.

They noted that there always seemed to be a few extremely decisive armored battles around Leningrad/Murmansk early on in the game. If the German player won a decisive victory, then the Russian player would be so weakened that he fell to the Japanese Armor rolling up his rear through Siberia from Chinese factories. If the Russian player won a decisive victory, the German player was so weakened that the British and the US could get a foothold in Western Europe. Only in a non-decisive draw in these early battles was the rest of the board anything but window dressing.

Very often either the Allied or the Axis side would simply concede after losing these early battles due to bad dice rolls - usually before the US player had time to do little more than to produce a few transports and tanks and ship them over to the UK...

Not really. You've actually hit upon the main problem of Axis & Allies: There is only one initial setup. The same number of troops start in the same number of territories each game. Each player gets the same amount of money at the start of every game. It's not really a problem of dice swinginess. It's the problem of having a static initial setup.

And yes, a lot of casual players eventually get tired of it. If you want an extreme example - take a look at Chess which also suffers from the static initial setup problem. Even though there are an almost infinite number of Chess openings that are possible - true grandmasters only use a tiny handful. The trillions of other openings aren't used because they're just not that good.

Given that D&D has very variable "initial setups" (unless the DM isn't very imaginative and runs the same kind of enemies and encounters over and over again), this shouldn't be too much of a problem

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Given that most of these publishers make their livelihood off of 3.x, and the running concerns over 4E licensing, I would posit that they have the most to suffer if 4E succeeds. I do not believe that anyone is cynical enough to consciously dump on 4E for that reason; but I do think it colors their responses on some level.

I dislike these types of "conspiracy" theories.
If 4E fails, that doesn't mean 3.x companies will have an easier time. It will split the fanbase, and as long as WotC doesn't go back to 3.x (which will take a long time, since none of the current designers wants to go back, as far as I can see), many people would see both 3.x and 4E as "dead" games, and move on to greener pastures. Some of these might be OGL companies, but most won't.

I think the reason for critic is more based on personal preferences, and the general attitude people have towards the game. If you're skeptic, you automatically focus on the downsides and downplay the positive sides. If you're optimistic, you focus on the upsides and downplay the downsides.
The general attitude for some OGL publishers is skeptic, since converting to a new system isn't easy, and the fact that they have to use a different license is also problematic.
But that doesn't mean they actually have a business interesting in 4E failing. The moment 4E was announced, the dice have fallen. If 4E isn't a success, things will get problematic. And then, secondly If the GSL isn't up to what the current OGL publishers need, things will get problematic, too, even if 4E succeeds..