D&D 4E Late to the D&D 4E Bandwagon - First Impressions

[Alarian]

I love 4e but ther are things I ont like about it. Here are a few bought from one that sees 4e as my favorite D&D version.

1) I LOVE healing surges, however I don't really care for a lot of in-combat healing. Therefore 4e is a lot more fun and deadly without leaders.

That's interesting, I've found the exact opposite in our games. It's almost impossible to kill off someone unless the player really screws up badly. There is so much healing to everyone that it's rare for anyone to drop below bloodied for more than a round. If the player doesn't use their second wind, and either gain one or two healing surges, there is almost 1-3 other players in the group with abilites that result in a healing surge being able to be applied to the person in need. I can't count the number of times (Usually multiple times a battle) where someone is dropped almost to 0 hit points and by his next turn, not only is he back to full, he has bonus temporary hit points. As a player it's great, if I was GM'ing, I would find it insanely frustrating.

2) 4e is much better at the heroic tier than paragon or epic. Combats go a lot quicker but are still a lot of fun.

Again, in our group, we've found the exact opposite. Rarely does a battle last even one gaming session. Most end up taking 2 or sometimes 3 sessions (our sessions are usually around 3-4 hours). It had finally gotten to the point that players were bringing laptops and tablets to the table to fill in the hour long gaps between turns. A few months ago our GM got rid of about 90% of the conditions as having players being affected by 2-5 different ones in a given turn got to be overwhelming. He also simplified abilities and got rid of 1/2 of them because people were spending 5-10 minutes looking over their character sheets before each turn trying to find the most appropriate ability for that given turn. We now have a fraction of the options, but the abilities we do have have a "role-playing" factor built into them so the player can say: "I'm using my utility ability X to perform Y action and attempt to save the day!" If the GM thinks it sounds reasonable, he says go for it. We have one or two hard core 4E players that aren't real fond of the changes but the rest of us love it. For the few that weren't real excited, the GM said they could continue to use their original character, but if they took too long taking their turn they would forfeit it. So far one player is still using his original character sheet, the other is using the converted abbreviated sheet like the rest of us.

 

[Sunseeker]

That's interesting, I've found the exact opposite in our games. It's almost impossible to kill off someone unless the player really screws up badly. There is so much healing to everyone that it's rare for anyone to drop below bloodied for more than a round. If the player doesn't use their second wind, and either gain one or two healing surges, there is almost 1-3 other players in the group with abilites that result in a healing surge being able to be applied to the person in need. I can't count the number of times (Usually multiple times a battle) where someone is dropped almost to 0 hit points and by his next turn, not only is he back to full, he has bonus temporary hit points. As a player it's great, if I was GM'ing, I would find it insanely frustrating.

I have to question: were any of those classes who gave the ability to use healing surges "leader" or "leader-lite"(like the paladin) classes?
When players have high health and available healing, hit them harder, that's how I DM.

Again, in our group, we've found the exact opposite. Rarely does a battle last even one gaming session. Most end up taking 2 or sometimes 3 sessions (our sessions are usually around 3-4 hours). It had finally gotten to the point that players were bringing laptops and tablets to the table to fill in the hour long gaps between turns.

If there's an hour of downtime between turns, that's an issue with your players. Players who don't understand their class, who don't understand the game, who get chatty, take lots of bathroom or smoke breaks. I'm not arguing combat is faster than in other editions, but I certainly feel like my average 4e battle was much more interesting than my average 3e battle.

A few months ago our GM got rid of about 90% of the conditions as having players being affected by 2-5 different ones in a given turn got to be overwhelming.

Why was it overwhelming? Were they forgetting to track them? Sure, if the players are relying on the DM to track conditions, yeah that's a lot of work, but it's not the DM's job to track conditions on your characters, heck, it's not the DM's job to track conditions on NPCs! The Players need to know what they put on who and how long that lasts.

He also simplified abilities and got rid of 1/2 of them because people were spending 5-10 minutes looking over their character sheets before each turn trying to find the most appropriate ability for that given turn.

Well no wonder you find 4e unsatisfying, you took out pretty much everything that was interesting.
Buy an egg-timer if players are taking too much time. Decisions, regardless of edition take up a lot of time when the player doesn't know their class or doesn't understand their class. If your players are routinely taking a very long time to do something, you need to sit down with them and help them master their class. In my first 4e game, we had an egg-timer, 1 minute per turn. You either learned your class or you walked away. I learned my class.

We now have a fraction of the options, but the abilities we do have have a "role-playing" factor built into them so the player can say: "I'm using my utility ability X to perform Y action and attempt to save the day!" If the GM thinks it sounds reasonable, he says go for it.

So, you're not even actually playing 4e anymore. You're just making stuff up as you go an using the 4e framework.

We have one or two hard core 4E players that aren't real fond of the changes but the rest of us love it. For the few that weren't real excited, the GM said they could continue to use their original character, but if they took too long taking their turn they would forfeit it. So far one player is still using his original character sheet, the other is using the converted abbreviated sheet like the rest of us.

I'm not surprised fans of 4e lost a lot of the enjoyment when they found out they weren't playing 4e anymore.

Honestly, it just sounds like your group just didn't know their class.

 

[fjw70]

So is any edition without a healer, but I feel it's something different in 4e because the ability to occasionally heal is available to everyone, so it makes it a very valuable resource when absent a healer.

Agreed. IMO 4e is the only viable Ediion without a healer (or at least significant magical healing resources).

More powerful effects do require this.

Please explain.

 

[Sunseeker]

Agreed. IMO 4e is the only viable Ediion without a healer (or at least significant magical healing resources).

I find it somewhat ironic that while 4e introduced Roles, of all the editions, it's the least likely to need them.

Please explain.

I recall several powers that were "sustain standard" or "sustain move". Generally speaking they provided you something equivalent to that action-type but that was somehow different. A "sustain standard" might allow you to sustain an electric arc bouncing between enemies. A "sustain move" might allow you to teleport 5 squares as a free action once per turn instead of moving. At the same time, since you were only allowed one minor action, multiple "sustain" effects required sacrificing more significant action economy.

 

[Manbearcat]

That's interesting, I've found the exact opposite in our games. It's almost impossible to kill off someone unless the player really screws up badly. There is so much healing to everyone that it's rare for anyone to drop below bloodied for more than a round.

Again, in our group, we've found the exact opposite. Rarely does a battle last even one gaming session. Most end up taking 2 or sometimes 3 sessions (our sessions are usually around 3-4 hours). It had finally gotten to the point that players were bringing laptops and tablets to the table to fill in the hour long gaps between turns.

I've heard both of these statements many-a-times. However, taken together, the situation seems extraordinarily untenable; not from an anecdotal perspective (I'm sure what you're describing takes place at your table), but from a logical perspective.

If something is exceedingly easy to be successful at > and this is understood at the table > then the opportunity for user-error contracts as margin-of-error expands > therefore tactical mental overhead/handling time should be reduced by proxy of choice 1 being as relevant as choice 2 being as relevant as choice 3.

Simply, as margin-of-error expands, relevance of tactical decision-making contracts...and mental overhead/handling time should contract with it. You can put a million and 1 choices in front of a person but if they know that the margin-of-error inherent to the output of their choice drowns out the relevance of their choice, they can close their eyes and point at a power, narrate, roll dice, in-fill narrate the resolution. That shouldn't take too long.

To the first point: Tactical difficulty.

There is an extraordinarily simple, and user-friendly within the system, answer to this. Level + 2 or L + 3 encounters becomes standard (rather than L:L), while difficult and boss encounters move up the spectrum to L + 4 and L + 5. Problem solved.

To the second point: Table handling time.

The handling time that you describe at your time is so, so, so off the charts that I can't even extrapolate the scene in my mind. I think I would have to see it in action to understand. As DM, I can (quite literally) be done with the entirety of my creatures' suite of actions and their accompanying narration in 30-90 seconds per initiative sequence (pending number of creatures). My players (my standard combats are L + 2 or L + 3 so there is more inherent difficulty and thus more stakes and thus more mental overhead/handling time...if I went with L:L, it would take them less time) can resolve their round (tactical decision-making, mechanical resolution, fortune-in-the-middle narration) in about 60 seconds apiece. Our combats are about 4 rounds for standard fights and 5-8 for difficult/boss fights. Given that, our combats are mostly 20-30 minutes with a few stretching out to 40.

Your "most" (2-3 sessions at 3-4 hours apiece) versus my most...25ish minutes; I don't even know how to bridge that gap. Do you play with an absurd number of players? 8 maybe? Everyone takes 8 minutes per turn? Excessive smoke breaks and Mountain Dew runs? 10 round combats? Alien invasions that you guys have to fight back mid-session?

Perhaps my table is out of the mainstream as well but most of the testimonials/anecdotes that I know of (out of curiosity, I've watched an "Encounters" session recently at a local gaming shop...12-14 year olds...they zip through combat) put handling time much nearer my table than what you've described.

I'm curious if you could flesh out your thinking and anecdotes on the above a bit further. Genuinely curious.

 

[Alarian]

[MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] - Part of our problem is our group has(had) really gotten too big. Up until about a month or so ago, we had 8 players + the GM. In the past few months we've lost a few players though, one to College and another to his work shift being changed to nights. And another who's wife decided he wasn't allowed to play anymore (LOL!). This has dropped the group to a much more manageable size. With a group that size you are going to have a wide variety of player types. From the hard core to the casual.

As to healing classes, we have a Paladin, a Cleric and another player who's a hybrid class I'm uncertain about but both the Cleric and Hybrid have little in the way of offensive capabilities but seem to dish out either temporary hit points or a healing surge as a side benefit with just about every action they perform.

As to if we are still playing 4th, I guess in the strict sense we're not. But other than perhaps 1 player everyone is definitely still having more fun. And I would say if you asked anyone in our group what edition are we playing, they would all say 4th. I will say the most vocal player for the changes that were made (i.e. simplifying stuff) it would probably be a safe bet to say he hates 4th. Most of the rest of us just want to play and if the GM is running 4th, that's what everyone will play. I'll be honest and say it's not my favorite version of DnD, but I find I've enjoyed it more as time has passed then I did when it first came out (I would have called myself a hater when it first came out).

 

[Neonchameleon]

Sounds like you've an excellent grasp of what 4e does - other than missing the impact of rituals (don't worry - you aren't the only one) and utility powers.

As for what to buy, do not buy the Monster Manual 1. It's very flawed (literally none of the solos are worth using and higher level monsters don't keep up), and has more or less been replaced by Monster Vault which IMO is the best monster manual for any edition - good fluff full of hooks for using the monster and absolutely superb crunch most of the time. With the higher damage there's a lot less grind (although not none).

As for the PHB, six of the eight classes in there are online (fighter, warlord, cleric, wizard, rogue, warlock) - only ranger and paladin are missing. Which means that you'd be better off buying Heroes of the Fallen Lands or Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms in place of the PHB as they were designed to be alternatives to the PHB (the two combined come to little more than the cost of the 4E PHB). The Heroes books contain classes designed slightly differently to the orthodox pre-essentials PHB classes; of the HoFL classes, the thief is an absolute gem, the two fighter classes are simple to play (and don't have dailies), and everyone except the wizard has far fewer options to build. The wizard in HoFL is tweaked - fluffier than the PHB one (and can at last be an illusionist). As for HoFK, you have Rangers (archery or two weapon), Paladins, Hexblades, and the underpowered druids. All simple to build but with options in play. And there are a lot more obvious non-combat options in the Heroes... classes than in the PHB takes on those classes. (The rangers and druids get Wilderness Knacks, the thief can get a climb speed, the clerics come with domain based utility powers).

As for the DMG, it depends what you want from a DMG - but the Rules Compendium is significantly cheaper and more useful at the table (and has the corrected Skill Challenge rules). Or if you want maps, an adventure and a screen thrown in rather than a standalone book, the DM's Kit is about the same price as the DMG 1 - and probably more useful. I'd recommend saving the $10 or so and just going for the Rules Compendium unless you're the normal DM (and if you want an adventure, I recommend Zeitgeist from here).

A lot of the built time is familiarity - from a standing start in a class I don't know I could build a character in 5 minutes (I timed it from double clicking the character builder to printing out).

@Alarion , 10 minute turns will kill 4e stone cold dead and it has definitely improved as a game sice it first came out. If everyone's having fun it's an improvement whatever the rules say

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

1) Character Generation complexity. Well, honestly, this is quite typical for games such as D&D 4E where you get tons of chargen options and specific powers. The first time we made characters for 4E, it took us two or three hours to get all characters ready and all their powers copied to index cards. We probably copied also stuff we didn't need on the index cards, though. However, compare that to the 10-30 minutes necessary to generate an ACKS character (roll 6 stats, choose class, record attack roll and saving throws, choose proficiencies and buy gear) or the 5 minutes necessary to generate a character in Classic Traveller. Well, that's a good reason why characters don't die easily in D&D 4E, die much more easily in ACKS and die even more easily in Classic Traveller - after all, if all you need to roll up a character are 5 or so minutes, it isn't so much of a setback to the game to have one eaten by acid-blooded arachnids...

I think it is actually something you can vary a lot with 4e. For instance after playing for a bit so I understood the PHB and the various choices and had all the basic stuff commited to memory I could do a PC in 10-15 minutes. It depends on if you are really going for serious tweeking with stuff or are just happy with a fairly vanilla character with one or two 'interesting' extras. If you feel a need to min/max then yes, you'll spend a lot of time (or actually you'll just get a DDI sub, but that's neither here nor there). It is very true that 4e is not BECMI or some other fairly lightweight D&D of yore. OTOH a lot of 4e's options are pretty cool, so it is a fair trade IMHO.

2) Combat grind. Combat takes a long time - seemingly as long as in 3.5E and maybe even longer - and both monsters and heroes have high HP, so it takes a lot of time to kill one even with Encounter Powers. The fastest kill in the convention game was does with a Daily - a Fireball - killing several enemy archers in one hit in a particularly satisfying manner. Other than that, people die slowly.

3) Everything seems to be very combat-oriented. Almost all powers are combat-specific and anything done out of combat uses the good, though quite sketchy, skill system. I don't recall seeing any exploration-oriented spells in 4E, but I might have just missed them due to the combat-heavy nature of the convention game.

Combat is not as fast as it can be in AD&D say at low levels, that's entirely true. However, IMHO it is not a problem because you want to imagine your 4e game as something like a Steven Spielburg movie, not a tactical slugfest. If the PCs aren't running after something, running away from something, sneaking past something, or fighting in some moving, changing, burning, collapsing, crashing, trap-filled, etc etc etc place then something is wrong. 4e fights where the players slug it out to the death with monsters are (almost) always just not the way to go. Play generous with minions, always have goals or other concerns besides kill the bad guy, and definitely make maximum use of the environment.

4e SHINES in this sort of game because the characters are tough and resourceful and can make mistakes and come out the other side and and win. The DM is free to pound on the PCs and knock them the heck back on their back foot but they have the organic means to turn around and make it work anyway.

Another aspect is that 4e does really well at themed groups of characters. You want a whole stealthy intrigue party? The fighter can be stealthy, the wizard can be stealthy, so can the cleric (well, best get the cleric a bit of magic help, but even so...). 3.x was fine for this too, but took more of a toll in optimization and game mastery for it. In 4e it is as easy as picking the skill you want, get it via a background or MAYBE a feat, and you're good, maybe emphasize a certain secondary ability over other possibles, but it is always doable.

I think there's more out of combat stuff than people notice at first. They always notice that their PCs POWERS are mostly attack powers. That's about it for strict combat resources though. Its a lot, but feats can do both, themes, PPs, EDs, etc build a lot on your concept, then you have the big stuff, rituals, practices, skill powers, even things like boons. It is more diverse and less structured than the combat stuff, but I also like the way a lot of it is really maleable. It is easy to create a fairly holistic idea of how your character works and to build up what you can do around a concept. That was HARD in older D&D where each class pretty well fed it to you fully realized.

The 4e campaigns I've run (4 total now IIRC) have been pretty heavily action-oriented gung-ho adventure, but they were always fun and the characters have been uniformly well-drawn and fun. It isn't the sort of meat-grinder dungeon crawl game of the late 70's, but I've definitely been having a lot of fun with it and 4 years has been not even close to enough time to scratch the surface of what we could do with it.

 

[Sunseeker]

If the PCs aren't running after something, running away from something, sneaking past something, or fighting in some moving, changing, burning, collapsing, crashing, trap-filled, etc etc etc place then something is wrong.

I just pictured a part of adventurers running away from a dragon while trying to kill another dragon and yet somehow sneaking around both of them in a burning castle that is falling from the sky while exploding. It was like watching Transformers only with more dragons.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I just pictured a part of adventurers running away from a dragon while trying to kill another dragon and yet somehow sneaking around both of them in a burning castle that is falling from the sky while exploding. It was like watching Transformers only with more dragons.

HAHA! Well, my current campaign (one of them anyway, the other is pirates) is ALL about dragons and more dragons. So far the party has wiped out six dragons in 8 levels, lol. So... lets see... running from one dragon while fighting another. I might be able to do that. The burning castle I think is going to have to be a volcano. Yeah, I can pretty much pull that off!

Oh, and I think the 'elf/orc hybrid = human' thing is brilliant. It would definitely be the dwarvish explaination for the origin of humans...