D&D 4E Keith Baker on 4E! (The Hellcow responds!)

[Spatula]

One is not designing 4E for 6-year-old Spatula, 30 years ago.

Just as well; apparently 6 year old Spatula was too advanced a player for 4e. (and I'm not that old!)

The zeitgiest has changed, and the playerbase has been moving in this direction for a while. 3e incorporated max HP at 1st level, which was apparently a pretty common houserule in the 2e days. But all this talk about 1st level being punishment and people leaving the game as a result ("BLACKLEAF NO!") is just over-the-top. If it were true, the common houserule would have gravitated towards starting at higher levels (which is what people do in Rolemaster, from what I've been told) rather than just maxing out your 1st HD.

 

[Lizard]

Of course I'm speaking from personal experience, and that, more than anything, convinced me that player abilities should stay player abilities and monster abilities should stay monster abilities and never the twain should meet.

If you've ever had a player polymorph into a choker, hydra,, will-o-wisp or other absurd form, you will have your answer to "why can the bugbear use someone else as cover and I can't?"

Actually, I think 4e makes that problem worse. If the bugbear strangler's ability is a feat/talent/power, you can say, "Well, you sure look like that bugbear strangler. But you can no more use his learned fighting skills than you get Arcana +20 by turning into the head of the mage's guild. Sorry, Charlie."

OTOH if, (as it seems to be in 4e) it's a natural function of the monster type, then, yeah, he gets the power. Well, I dunno. We'll need to see what the polymorph rules are. From what I've heard, you'll have a list of creatures you can turn into, all designed from the get-go to be things-you-can-turn-into, so all the game balance issues -- and, baby with bathwater, all the creative and ingenious things players can do -- are tossed aside. 4e seems to have, as a guiding philosophy, that everything should do one thing, and one thing only, and be extremely restricted and rulebound. Balance uber alles.

I appreciate many of the design *goals* of 4e. I dispute their methods. Under 3e, it was trivial for me to make a half-fiend medusa rogue as a villain, and when he became a reluctant ally of the PCs instead of a foe to be slain, he wasn't grossly unbalanced because he wasn't built entirely on the assumption he would exist for only one encounter and be gone. Every monster in 4e is seemingly balanced on the basis of a single encounter only, and while that may work in 95% of cases, it's the other 5% -- where the game takes an unexpected veer and the plot lurches off the tracks, never to return -- that makes for memorable sessions.

 

[hong]

Just as well; apparently 6 year old Spatula was too advanced a player for 4e. (and I'm not that old!)

The zeitgiest has changed, and the playerbase has been moving in this direction for a while. 3e incorporated max HP at 1st level, which was apparently a pretty common houserule in the 2e days. All this talk about 1st level being punishment and people leaving the game as a result ("BLACKLEAF NO!") is just over-the-top. If it were true, the common houserule would have gravitated towards starting at higher levels (which is what people do in Rolemaster, from what I've been told) rather than just maxing out your 1st HD.

A common houserule for 3E is indeed starting at higher levels. Your point is...?

 

[Lizard]

A common houserule for 3E is indeed starting at higher levels. Your point is...?

That 4e should have said "Players should begin at third level, allowing for a lot of variety and multiclassing options; first and second level should be use for modeling weaker NPCs or if the players desire a challenge. The game presumes a third level starting point for players." Then balanced the game around it.

This:
a)Allows the majority of the world to be modeled as 1st level characters, easily killed by an orc (as opposed to 4e's 30 hit point town guards wielding 1d10 damage polearms, so that each of them can take six whacks or so before going down).
b)Solves the problem of 'fragile' first level PCs.
c)Solves many of the issues of 'front loading' classes and allows for playing 'the character you want' from the start of the game.
d)Allows the 'character woodchipper' style of low level play for those who want it.

Real Problem: First-level play has many issues.
Good Solution: Don't start at first level.
Bad Solution: Make "first the new third", which makes the weakest commoner still unbearably bad-ass. (Unless commoners in 3e are Minions, and explode when the cats attack them.)

 

[Ingolf]

All this talk about 1st level being punishment and people leaving the game as a result ("BLACKLEAF NO!") is just over-the-top. If it were true, the common houserule would have gravitated towards starting at higher levels (which is what people do in Rolemaster, from what I've been told) rather than just maxing out your 1st HD.

I haven't played in a D&D campaign that started at 1st level since 1982. I have run exactly one campaign that started at 1st level since then, and it was pretty much gain-a-level-per-game-session until about 3rd, when the game gets a lot more reasonable with regards to lethality.

 

[hong]

That 4e should have said "Players should begin at third level, allowing for a lot of variety and multiclassing options; first and second level should be use for modeling weaker NPCs or if the players desire a challenge. The game presumes a third level starting point for players." Then balanced the game around it.

That's dumb. New players see level 1, and they expect to start at level 1. Every other game worth mentioning starts you at level 1. Certainly every CRPG starts you at level 1. For D&D to deliberately go against this is just being perverse.

See Cadfan's previous post.

Real Problem: First-level play has many issues.
Good Solution: Don't start at first level.

Poor solution for anyone who isn't already a D&D veteran.

Bad Solution: Make "first the new third", which makes the weakest commoner still unbearably bad-ass. (Unless commoners in 3e are Minions, and explode when the cats attack them.)

Commoners exploding when cats attack them is easily solved by application of Hong's 2nd Law.

 

[Scrollreader]

Just to throw my (anectdotal) two cents in. I see alot of gaming groups, because I do almost all of my gaming online. As such, I see dozens of different DMs house rules. I can't think of the last game I was in that started at level 1. I've been a in a couple that started with apprentive classes (I'm not sure /why/, but I was) and one that involved a mandatory npc class level before we started play. But in all the games where we started out heroic, we started at level 2 or 3. Level 1 in 3.5, IMO just doesn't do a good job of filling /either/ the 'commoners with gumption' role (since PC classes are so much better than NPC classes) OR the 'brave young heroes' role (Since they can be oneshot so easily).

 

[Spatula]

A common houserule for 3E is indeed starting at higher levels. Your point is...?

First I've heard of it. My point was that I was agreeing with your zeitgeist comment.

I haven't played in a D&D campaign that started at 1st level since 1982.

Your game does not a common houserule make. I can just as easily say that I've never played in a D&D campaign that started above 1st level since 1981*, and it would have been true until a month ago when my group started a game at 8th level.

* excepting Dark Sun games, which don't have 1st or 2nd level PCs.

 

[hong]

First I've heard of it. My point was that I was agreeing with your zeitgeist comment.

Fair 'nuff.

 

[catsclaw]

a)Allows the majority of the world to be modeled as 1st level characters, easily killed by an orc (as opposed to 4e's 30 hit point town guards wielding 1d10 damage polearms, so that each of them can take six whacks or so before going down).

I never know why people have this attitude. Actually, that's not true, I know why, but I'll never understand it.

It seems to me there are a lot of people that don't want to design role-playing campaigns so much as play with model trains. And for them, the thrill comes from building every NPC just so, so there's working lights in every tavern, and lovingly prepared cotton snow covering every surface during winter. And every PC, monster, and NPC are all built according to the exact same rules. It doesn't matter that the only people who have any chance of tripping others are the ones built for it--everyone must have the ability, because otherwise you're cheating, the same as if you used an HO scale house next to an S scale track.

What 4e is saying is that's a lousy way to design a campaign. Sure, it's fantastic if the party manages to convince the evil boss to switch sides and he signs on as a torchbearer, but the horror of adding 4 Fighter levels and 4 Rogue levels to every monster, just on the off chance that the party will talk to it rather than slaughter it immediately--that's a serious drag on campaigns once they reach higher levels. It's great to know that Blue Dragon Sorcerer can cast Acid Splash and Detect Poison, but the chance that's going to be important is so vanishingly small, and the effort of doing it for everything so great, it's not worth the effort. The books shouldn't go out of their way to encourage it.