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

[Shadeydm]

What 4th edition allows you to do is give him the kobold glue pot ability, the bugbear meat shield ability and anything else you want without having to justify it. And the PCs will never get those abilities, and again you never justify it.

I prefer the 3.5 method. If I didn't, its still not a compelling reason to switch to 4th since "I can do what the heck I want when designing NPCs" is the easiest thing in the world to houserule into any role-playing system.

Ding ding ding we have a winner, Excellent point!

 

[Fobok]

Ding ding ding we have a winner, Excellent point!

I actually think it is a reason to switch. Why? Because with less time being spent by the writers on making sure every NPC is properly statted, it means we're more likely to see better products.

 

[zoroaster100]

Lacyon, I like your quick rules for 0 level characters for use with players that really like starting out with weak characters. I would give each character one at-will power from their class as well so as to give them each a flavor for their class from the start. But I agree the default for starting games should be more like it is in 4th edition, with character that start out as heroes (albeit not very powerful ones yet) rather than incompetent apprentices who are scarcely distinguishable from a commoner.

 

[iskurthi]

zomg teh numbarz

I actually think it is a reason to switch. Why? Because with less time being spent by the writers on making sure every NPC is properly statted, it means we're more likely to see better products.

No stat block format is going to save bad writing and ideas, and having to spend time writing stat blocks at the end of the mod process is not going to magically change good writing and ideas to poo.

 

[psionotic]

Another reason I prefer the new paradigm is that it will take up less whitespace. Less dedicated to statblocks equals more delicious flavoring, perhaps some more tasty crunch per page than what we have now (not only the MM pages, but those brutally long example characters that appear after PrCs in many books: They aren't necessarily useless, but each are wayyy too long).

I also copy monster and NPC stats to my computer frequently and print them out, sometimes onto paper, sometimes onto cardstock which I cut down to 3x5's. The less extraneous or useless information contained therein, the better (at least for me).

 

[Fobok]

No stat block format is going to save bad writing and ideas, and having to spend time writing stat blocks at the end of the mod process is not going to magically change good writing and ideas to poo.

I'm not talking the stat block format, I'm talking about the design process. As Keith mentioned, the writers *have* to fully stat out every NPC to make sure they don't make mistakes. Given the cumbersome process that involves in 3e, that's hours or even days they could have spent editing the other writing.

 

[Benimoto]

Ding ding ding we have a winner, Excellent point!

I am almost exactly on the opposite side of this. So many monsters already had abilities that would wreck a campaign in 3rd edition if the players got them that eventually they had to totally errata bascially every book to remove polymorph-type abilities. Pre-errata as soon as you got a Master of Many forms who says "by the way guys, I'm turning into a War Troll now and forever," any semblance of balance is basically out of the campaign. You have one player as a fighter 12, and the other as a War Troll who has Regeneration 9, Spell Resistance, DR 5/adamantine, +14 natural armor, +20 Str, +6 Dex, +18 Con, and oh, dazes every monster every time he hits, DC 25+.

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?"

 

[Spatula]

Fourth edition fixes this "problem" by having stat blocks you can't check.

I don't think this is true - well, I know that it's not true for certain monster stats, and it remains to be seen how the rest are handled.

XP is an equation based on level (at least up to level 20, where the equation possibly changes), modified by "status" (minion, elite, solo). Since all monsters of the same level and status have the same XP value, this one should be pretty easy.

HP & Bloodied are equations. Already the goblin picador, skeletel tomb guardian, and pit fiend have been flagged as having unexpected HP totals, whereas every other monster that's been seen fits the equations perfectly. Whether those three are typos or there's a reason for the discrepencies (or the reason is just "because"), we don't know yet.

Ability score bonuses. Those are pretty simple, but it's still a likely spot to find typos.

Attacks definitely use the monster's stat bonuses for damage rolls. I don't think we know how attack bonuses are determined. Ditto with defense values. These could be strictly determined, they could be vague guidelines, but I don't see the much vaunted "4e math" working too well with the latter.

"Simpler to check" does not mean "cannot check." The problem in 3e was the cascading effects of various design levers. Modify HD and that changes HP, BAB, saves, skill points, feats, and the DCs to resist innate abilities. Change STR and that changes grapple bonuses, all melee attack & damage bonuses (sometimes with a 1.5 multiplier), possibly special attack damage (rend, constrict, etc.), skill bonuses, and possibly DCs for innate abilities. And so on. It's a tangled web where changing one number requires also changing three others.

 

[Spatula]

The game should be designed so that new players and new DMs can pick up the rulebook, start at level 1, and have a good time. That means level 1 has to be a legitimate level. It can't be some wacky shadow zone for expert players who want a hyperlethal game. If there is demand for apprentice or commoner level characters, it needs to be optional in the DMG so that new players won't be suckered into believing that they should start at level 1, and then ruthlessly punished for doing so.

Ruthlessly punished? One wonders how the game survived for nearly 30 years.

Who knew that I was an expert player when I was 6 years old. And hadn't even played the game yet.

 

[hong]

Ruthlessly punished? One wonders how the game survived for nearly 30 years.

Who knew that I was an expert player when I was 6 years old. And hadn't even played the game yet.

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