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

[Lizard]

Why should you care, if you weren't going to use those options anyway? Is this an "opinions don't count unless voiced" thing?

But I do stat out commoners. I just don't *play* them.

Overall, 4e just feels more restrictive. Classes are tightly focused, and 3e style multiclassing, where you basically build the class you want from the classes which are there, is out. At tenth level you WILL pick a Paragon Path, at 20th level you WILL have an Epic Destiny. The lack of skill points basically means you can't "fine tune" your abilities. Non-combat skills are reduced to a dismissive "Scrawl it on your character sheet, like anyone gives a damn if you're a blacksmith". Etc, etc, etc.

If you're playing exactly the way WOTC thinks you're supposed to play, 4e is precisely tuned for that. Try to go outside the box...and there's nothing there.

At least that's the impression what we've seen of the rules so far gives me. Perhaps the full thing will show more flexibility and freedom than the previews indicate.

But we've gone from the 3e teaser ad campaign of "Challenge your expectations!" to the apparent unofficial 4th edition motto of "Know your place!"

 

[Kwalish Kid]

You don't find abilities which come and go with the needs of drama to be immersion-breaking; I do. This is a matter of taste. 4e is to your taste; while I agree with most of the design goals and like some of the mechanical improvements, the overarching design model is not to mine.

Fair enough. But let's be clear: abilities like those of the strangler can (probably) be attempted by anyone, even ex-bugbear stranglers.

 

[Psion]

Why should you care, if you weren't going to use those options anyway?

Why should you care so much what he cares about?

Some GMs are "setting builders" as much as "game players."

Heck, I am too, when I can find the time. And find my play benefits when I have a pool of ready to go stuff I can pull from.

 

[hong]

But I do stat out commoners. I just don't *play* them.

If you're not playing them, and if they're not going to be encountered as significant opposition, you have no need to stat them. 4E is a game to be played.

Overall, 4e just feels more restrictive. Classes are tightly focused, and 3e style multiclassing, where you basically build the class you want from the classes which are there, is out. At tenth level you WILL pick a Paragon Path, at 20th level you WILL have an Epic Destiny. The lack of skill points basically means you can't "fine tune" your abilities. Non-combat skills are reduced to a dismissive "Scrawl it on your character sheet, like anyone gives a damn if you're a blacksmith". Etc, etc, etc.

I was unaware the WotC ninjae had found out your address.

If you're playing exactly the way WOTC thinks you're supposed to play, 4e is precisely tuned for that. Try to go outside the box...and there's nothing there.

I had no problem banning wizards, paladins, elves and dwarves in a 3E campaign I ran. I similarly had no problem creating classes and prestige classes to indulge my gearhead gene. I see no reason I'll be unable to do the same in 4E.

At least that's the impression what we've seen of the rules so far gives me. Perhaps the full thing will show more flexibility and freedom than the previews indicate.

But we've gone from the 3e teaser ad campaign of "Challenge your expectations!" to the apparent unofficial 4th edition motto of "Know your place!"

The 4E motto is "play the game". As opposed to thinking about the game. So stop thinking and start playing.

 

[Piratecat]

If you're playing exactly the way WOTC thinks you're supposed to play, 4e is precisely tuned for that. Try to go outside the box...and there's nothing there.

At least that's the impression what we've seen of the rules so far gives me. Perhaps the full thing will show more flexibility and freedom than the previews indicate.

I will value this statement much more if you actually see and play the game before you make it. Drawing this sort of conclusion based on playtest material, especially when multiple playtesters are saying differently, doesn't seem like a great idea.

Why should you care, if you weren't going to use those options anyway? Is this an "opinions don't count unless voiced" thing?

Actually, I'm not a big fan of restrictions unless they make the play experience much better. I don't know yet what I'm going to want to play. I'm willing to put up with some of the extraneous, almost-never-used cruft going away if I get a corresponding increase in fun, but it does make me hesitate.

 

[hong]

Why should you care so much what he cares about?

Because opinions don't count unless voiced.

 

[med stud]

No attack intended, but I've run into a fair share of DM who takes this kind of attitude and it generally turns out to mean that the DMNPC can do what the rules say he can do (or more) but that your PC is subect to whatever 'commonsense' rule would make them look worse than the DMNPC. Needless to say it's made me a bit touchy about the "Rules aren't really rules" attitude.

If that is your experience with that kind of thinking, I understand why you don't like it. For me it's about using the rules where they matter. Cats vs commoners? Irrelevant. Both the cat and the commoner will be kobold-style minions, that is killed by one attack. I don't think about what this means if cats and commoners get into a fight. It's just that if one of the PCs attack either a cat or a commoner, the cat or commoner will die.

 

[Piratecat]

Why should you care so much what he cares about?

"What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!"

 

[Fobok]

Precisely. If they'd designed it correctly, they wouldn't have had to change things in an effort to rescue the game.

Actually, I'd just like to point out that they didn't have to rescue the game. The game was one of the top games out there at the time, it had about 500,000 subscribers. (Which, I think, placed it as the top sci-fi MMO in history.) The problem was, marketting saw that WoW had millions of subscribers, and because Star Wars was such a big name, they assumed they could get those numbers. They didn't take into account that the WoW players already had the game they wanted and changing SWG around wouldn't suddenly make them all change games.

Back on subject, I do like the total freedom approach... in certain games. In, for example, WoD it fits very well, as generic people on the street *can* be a threat in that game. However, in D&D I've always seen the game like the series Xena or Hercules or Beastmaster. Heroic, cinematic action/adventure. The smaller characters didn't need full-out character sheets, they just needed the skills that defined them. Autolycus (sp?), for example, might have been an expert chef... but it never came up on screen, (that I can remember, anyway), so it wasn't important.

 

[hong]

Actually, I'm not a big fan of restrictions unless they make the play experience much better. I don't know yet what I'm going to want to play. I'm willing to put up with some of the extraneous, almost-never-used cruft going away if I get a corresponding increase in fun, but it does make me hesitate.

There are some restrictions that certainly appear ominous right now. The classes are more narrowly focused (at least the rogue and fighter are) than in 3E, the better to fit into their designated role; but this makes problematic character concepts/classes that don't neatly fit into the role framework. This includes a number of 3E classes, like the druid and artificer; it also includes self-sufficient concepts like wuxia monks and swordspersons, who are generally depicted as being good at everything. So not only does the multiclassing mechanic have a lot of heavy lifting to do, but it'll even have to work against a core principle of 4E, since the whole point of roles is to ensure that people aren't good at everything.

However, I don't really see other changes as restricting your options at all. You have monsters with weird abilities, like the kobold slingers that people keep mentioning. These are basically corner cases; you had similar issues with a bunch of 3E monsters. You have the existence of separate build frameworks for monsters and PCs, but nothing stops you building NPCs using the PC rules if you want. You might have issues if someone wants to play a monster race other than gnomes et al, but that's always been problematic (Savage Species notwithstanding).

You might also conceivably run into problems if the DMG doesn't include detailed rules for demographics (a town of size N contains M wizards, X clerics, etc). However, I always thought those rules in the 3E DMG were specious to start with. Just guidelines on power levels, how the tiers interrelate with the game world population (assuming points-of-light, is everyone heroic tier except bad guys?) and so on should be enough for practical purposes.