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

[Remathilis]

This assumes the adventures aren't designed for the characters. I never use published adventures, and have never been in a game where they were common.

Ah, Tailored vs. Status Quo.

I run adventures that are tailored to a specific PCs, but I do love a good module here or there (I'm currently running Expedition to Castle Ravenloft at the moment). I prefer a game/system that doesn't require me to focus on one style of gaming (hack n slash, cunning narrative) at the expense of the other. Furthermore, I would like to have the diplomancer bard and the half-ogre brute both be viable in a game of political intrigue AND plundering tombs.

 

[AllisterH]

See, this confuses me. There's a number of people with legitimate concerns. There's a playtester who would help assuage those concerns by providing information about the game. But he can't do that because WotC hasn't yet revealed the information. And WotC doesn't seem eager to reveal much information.

I'm not sure what WotC is waiting for. There's ten weeks left. I don't understand why they're keeping us in the dark about major parts of the game (out-of-combat abilities, paragon paths, rituals, item creation, advancement, muticlassing, etc.) and hamstringing the people they could be leveraging to address our concerns about the game with their own experiences in ways other than, "Well, I can't talk about it, but it's great."

Everything's on a schedule.

As a guy who plays and follows M:TG, WOTC HATES leaks until they think it is best. I imagine we wouldn't see much more from WOTC even until 4-5 weeks out.

10 weeks out is STILL too far away is my guess. Look at Iron Man (a couple of trailers, one at the Superbowl admittedly) but there yet hasn't been a dedicated Iron Man push (where's the tie-ins?) and that is being release in 4 weeks. Same thing with video game systems.

From what others have told me, marketing campaigns don't want to start too early or the audience simply forgets or pissed off that the product isn't available.

 

[Spatula]

My take on the oldest editions was that all the combat stuff was the crunch, but all the out-of-combat stuff was the fluff. Thus, everyone could participate in combat and everyone could participate equally out of combat.

I was originally going to say, this is only true if you define "out of combat" as "diplomacy." But that's not even true. Without going into a long, long, long list, all of the rogue skills and at least half of all MU/cleric spells are out-of-combat crunch, which rather disproves your thesis.

 

[Spatula]

Everything's on a schedule.

As a guy who plays and follows M:TG, WOTC HATES leaks until they think it is best. I imagine we wouldn't see much more from WOTC even until 4-5 weeks out.

10 weeks out is STILL too far away is my guess. Look at Iron Man (a couple of trailers, one at the Superbowl admittedly) but there yet hasn't been a dedicated Iron Man push (where's the tie-ins?) and that is being release in 4 weeks. Same thing with video game systems.

From what others have told me, marketing campaigns don't want to start too early or the audience simply forgets or pissed off that the product isn't available.

Uh, the marketing campaign started last year...

WotC was also in charge of the 3e marketing, which was much different.

 

[Campbell]

One of the problems with allowing a great deal of specialization within the confines of a level based system like D&D is that levels cease to be a useful metric for character power.

• Encounter design frameworks are overly sketchy when your group diverges from the platonic ideal.
• Professional adventures are not likely to work for a wide variety of games due to skill load out incompatibilities. In many cases under the current framework using published adventures is nearly as cumbersome as rolling your own adventures. That should not be the case.
• It becomes difficult to challenge your combat monkeys without outright killing noncombatants.

 

[xechnao]

Ah, Tailored vs. Status Quo.

I run adventures that are tailored to a specific PCs, but I do love a good module here or there (I'm currently running Expedition to Castle Ravenloft at the moment). I prefer a game/system that doesn't require me to focus on one style of gaming (hack n slash, cunning narrative) at the expense of the other. Furthermore, I would like to have the diplomancer bard and the half-ogre brute both be viable in a game of political intrigue AND plundering tombs.

One thing that is important IMO is that Wotc perhaps wants D&D to be tailored as much as possible for ease of use in stuff like living campaigns and group competitions. I believe 4e will be the best edition for this kind of activity. But at the expense of modular applicability as a roleplaying game for more tastes perhaps.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

See, this confuses me. There's a number of people with legitimate concerns. There's a playtester who would help assuage those concerns by providing information about the game. But he can't do that because WotC hasn't yet revealed the information. And WotC doesn't seem eager to reveal much information.

I'm not sure what WotC is waiting for. There's ten weeks left. I don't understand why they're keeping us in the dark about major parts of the game (out-of-combat abilities, paragon paths, rituals, item creation, advancement, muticlassing, etc.) and hamstringing the people they could be leveraging to address our concerns about the game with their own experiences in ways other than, "Well, I can't talk about it, but it's great."

Hey, in 10 weeks, you can know everything there is to be about the D&D 4 rules! That's what WotC is waiting for!
Why do they need to tell you now, if the Message Boards will be full of people dissecting the new game in 10 weeks?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I'm not sure what WotC is waiting for. There's ten weeks left. I don't understand why they're keeping us in the dark about major parts of the game (out-of-combat abilities, paragon paths, rituals, item creation, advancement, muticlassing, etc.) and hamstringing the people they could be leveraging to address our concerns about the game with their own experiences in ways other than, "Well, I can't talk about it, but it's great."

There are a bunch of reasons for this:

-Too much information too early is not a good thing in terms of marketing
-If you release information and it changes people complain
-Giving people reason to buy the final product(actual things they don't know when they open the book)
-No one except those people at WOTC have actually seen the final rules so anything we say about them COULD be wrong

I'm willing to bet that even with the information already released it'll be enough to intrigue most people into buying the books to find out about the rest of those things listed even if they end up not liking the final product, they'll still have bought the book. Whereas, if you tell everyone all the information a large number of people won't bother to buy the book because they KNOW it isn't for them.

 

[Lizard]

Whereas, if you tell everyone all the information a large number of people won't bother to buy the book because they KNOW it isn't for them.

Or, alternatively, people WON'T buy the book because what they've seen isn't for them, and don't assume the rest of it will make up for it.

How many times have we heard "Oh, 4e isn't at all like you think it is, you just haven't seen all the rules!"?

 

[nutluck]

However, take this from a different point of view.

Who would you want to back you up in s street fight; Stephen Hawkings or Indiana Jones (assuming he was a real person)? Stephen can give you insight beyond your wildest dreams on scientific topics, and is probably a helluva lot smarter than Dr. Jones, but when you have 4 guys with table legs coming at you, Mr. Hawking's insights don't amount to much.

I think a better example would be Conan and Indy as your choices. Since Mr Hawking has disabilities and that makes it impossible for him to add anything to a fight. Conan is a much better fighter than Indy is so i think that is a better example. In that choice I would choose Indy.

D&D, by its very nature, is a game where a street fight can break out at any time. And its assumed that a character should be able to handle his weight in the combat. Granted, not equally (a wizard shouldn't be as good of a fighter as a fighter) but they should all add something. A non-combat character (one that has no offensive capacity) essentially becomes deadweight in combat, while a character who has some ability in combat and some out of combat is extremely desirable (It should be noted that the character that is all combat and nothing outside of combat is equally bad: see fighter 3.5)

I agree a complete dead weight who can add nothing to a fight rarely helps in a RPG.

Thus is the tale of the rapier-wielding fighter, the diviner wizard, the pacifist cleric, the diplomat rogue, the floofy bard, and countless other non-combatant class and builds. They drag the group down, unless the DM is especially designing a game to emphasize non-combat encounters and actively seeks to minimize combat, but that is a niche area of D&D's overall style (which emphasizes dungeons, monsters and exploration).

I disagree completely, I think they add a lot to a game unless you have idiot players who on purpose make it drag the game down.

rapier-wielding fighter - had one was a noble concept, worked well and added a lot of flavor and RPing to the game as a whole.
pacifist cleric - had something similar, a cleric who refused to take the life of another ever. He would still hold person or use subdue damage ect.
diplomat rogue - had one the can work very well, he was a spy for a kingdom.
floofy bard - had one but was a noble class(from a 3rd party book) and worked much like the fighter above.

non-combat builds does not make them useless in combat. And while DnD might emphasize dungeons, mosters and exploration that is far from the only style that can or should be played with it. Many styles can work it is only a matter of what the group enjoys. So what you see as a problem I see as a strength as it caters to more people.

I don't mind the idea that it is impossible to build a weak combatant; it means everyone is holding up their end in the street fight and doing something useful outside of it.

Once more disagree, it limits what a player might want to play and it limits certain game types that might not be heavy combat focused. Which yes most DnD games are but they don't have to be.