D&D 4E Let's Talk About 4E On Its Own Terms [+]

[James Gasik]

I saw multiple different daily strategies in 4e.

I saw people who used their biggest strongest powers immediately everytime. They wanted to shine and use their coolest powers.

I saw people hoard all their daily resources for what they thought would be either the end boss or emergency situations.

I saw people ration out their daily resources trying to judge the toughness of the current encounter and the expected encounters of the day to efficiently use powers throughout the day (using powers earlier to end fights earlier and save healing resources for later in the day, etc.).

I saw people metagame that travelling encounters or other types of situations would not be multiple encounters in a day so use more daily resources to bigger nova in each encounter to match the expected fewer daily encounters.

I saw people use situational daily utility powers as they became relevant based on situations.

I saw people decide that one daily per encounter was about right and generally stick with that.

I saw mixes of strategies in parties.

I also saw some frustrations with dailies.

I saw the Nova immediately PC who liked to roll big damage get frustrated as encounters continued and they went down in effectiveness.

I saw the hoarding strategy get frustrated when a boss was not reached and they hoarded when it would have been better or more fun to use fun resources that instead went unused.

I saw people get frustrated at trying to measure out dailies and get the judgment wrong for the situations that came up.

I saw some frustration at being incentivized to think about the adventuring day and expected encounters rather than the specific situations at hand. The whole party novaing a wilderness travel random encounter in the middle of a weeks long journey while dungeon end bosses being climactic fights with fewer party big guns for novaing because of attrition uses earlier in the adventuring day felt off.

Given that you did have a hard limit on adventuring (running out of healing surges), I mostly spent my dailies pretty quickly because ending a fight faster felt more beneficial. I remember one adventure with undead that could drain healing surges, where halfway through, the Fighter was no longer able to do their job, because we could no longer heal them!

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I saw multiple different daily strategies in 4e.

These were my approaches to dailies

I saw people hoard all their daily resources for what they thought would be either the end boss or emergency situations.

I saw people use situational daily utility powers as they became relevant based on situations.

I saw mixes of strategies in parties.

I also saw some frustrations with dailies.

I saw the hoarding strategy get frustrated when a boss was not reached and they hoarded when it would have been better or more fun to use fun resources that instead went unused.

I saw some frustration at being incentivized to think about the adventuring day and expected encounters rather than the specific situations at hand. The whole party novaing a wilderness travel random encounter in the middle of a weeks long journey while dungeon end bosses being climactic fights with fewer party big guns for novaing because of attrition uses earlier in the adventuring day felt off.

These. While I loved the idea of AEDU in theory, in practice, for me, these were my feelings. The Dailies were so cool, but I just didn't see/use them but maybe once every 2-3 sessions.

Again, "how would you change AEDU to better match your preferred playstyle" is probably a different thread for a different time

 

[Aldarc]

I think that the idea of AEDU is solid. The implementation, IMHO, was questionable. There are a rising number of 4e-inspired games out there, but even they move away from AEDU or at least try to improve upon the basic idea in some way or another.

 

[pemerton]

This. And also, I do believe that by making them play by the same rules as the other classes (AEDU), they made playing a Wizard more accessible to new players.

I remember the first time I played DnD (it was 2nd ed), I wanted to play a wizard but the spell list, the need to memorise that one spell... it felt complicated, felt like that I could really screw up... so I ended up playing a fighter because I just had to swing my sword.

Fast forward to 4e, playing a wizard is not more complicated than playing a fighter, or any other class... and they're not weak at the beginning... tying Intelligence modifier to AC was a great move I think, it helped the Wizard a lot not getting killed right away. So if a new player was to come to me and say 'I would like to play a wizard!', I could just say 'Go for it!' without risking intimidating by showing him the spell list and explaining how it works.

Yes. This was noticed in the lead-up to 4e's release:

I think it will be a significant change to the game, because the players of those PCs will be able to (and, indeed, will have to) engage in the same sort of decision-making during play that spell-casters currently do (namely, how to optimise the deployment of their abilities given the current situation and the nature of the opponents faced).

As Monte Cook talked about in a column some time ago, it will mark the end of the significant difference between fighters and wizards as far as play experience is concerned - that is, fighters will no longer be a class of interest only to beginning players, and wizards playable only by the old hands.

 

[Zeromaru X]

Sadly, there are quite a few people who think this was the worst decision ever, and magic users should go back to throwing darts. Or oil.

Seriously? What are they thinking?

 

[Kannik]

I saw multiple different daily strategies in 4e.

The most common in our groups was either hoard in case you were meeting something tougher down the road (and then unload them as the adventuring day was coming to a close if not yet used), or expecting one person to use one daily power per encounter (no set structure for this, ppl would just use them as they saw it fit and one daily would usually tip the encounter such that another didn't feel required), or Rule of Cool guiding a daily power use (which could often trump the previous two ).

I think that the idea of AEDU is solid. The implementation, IMHO, was questionable. There are a rising number of 4e-inspired games out there, but even they move away from AEDU or at least try to improve upon the basic idea in some way or another.

It'd be interesting to see what different flavours of structure various people have come up with and hammered out after all the play and playtesting experience.

 

[James Gasik]

Seriously? What are they thinking?

They prefer the old school approach of the Wizard being weak and cautious. They dislike being able to just spew magic whenever. Playing a Wizard is meant to be a challenge, only good players need apply.

Of course, in fairness, I've encountered those with this opinion who totally want magic to be all powerful at high levels. Think of the quote from Aladdin.

"PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER!!!!! ....teeny little living space."

 

[Aldarc]

It'd be interesting to see what different flavours of structure various people have come up with and hammered out after all the play and playtesting experience.

Probably something like 13th Age or the upcoming MCDM RPG, where there are mechanics for encouraging/preventing you from dumping all your powers at the start of an encounter.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Probably something like 13th Age or the upcoming MCDM RPG, where there are mechanics for encouraging/preventing you from dumping all your powers at the start of an encounter.

13a just bugged me because it seemed like every class had some entirely different power system, but what was the point? It really didn't add to the game, more made it harder to play.

Now, in my own game, I switched to power points, which is tweaked to allow you to enhance a power, or heal, in roughly a similar proportion to 4e. You can get a PP back for a short rest though, which adds a few dimensions, potentially. The main issue there is the 'psion problem' where you could get a player who just spams the same power all day and builds around it. There are other game elements which work against that (mainly that 'build' is not a separate sub-game, you acquire boons based on what you do IN PLAY).

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Now, in my own game, I switched to power points, which is tweaked to allow you to enhance a power, or heal, in roughly a similar proportion to 4e. You can get a PP back for a short rest though, which adds a few dimensions, potentially. The main issue there is the 'psion problem' where you could get a player who just spams the same power all day and builds around it. There are other game elements which work against that (mainly that 'build' is not a separate sub-game, you acquire boons based on what you do IN PLAY).

Now I'm just thread busting for no reason, but... Have you shared an alpha or beta version of your game yet? Would love to read, it sounds good