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

[Red Castle]

Monster design in 4e was for me a revelation.

Not only were they easy to build an encounter with thanks to monsters having level for balance (with the ability to easily change their level if you need to) and roles and types to ensure diversity in the encounters, but more importantly, they were easy to use.

Everything you needed during a combat was in the stat block, and it could fit on a card if you wanted to. All their defenses, special abilities, rules, different attacks were there. You didn’t have to look through the spellbook to either read their ability or create their pool of spell. I remember back in 2nd ed trying to avoid monsters with spells because I didn’t want to look through the list. No, everything you might need was there.

But what about non combat spells? If the lich is a spellcaster, surely it should have non combat spells. To which I answer, why limit yourself to what is written in the books? If the lich is your BBEG and you need it to have a spell to create a portal, then just give it to it. You want the lich to have charmed and entire village? Just do it. You are the DM, it’s your world, your playground so do what you want if you think it would be cool! Like pretty much anything roleplay, you don’t need rules, you don’t need anything written in a book, your imagination is your limit! But X creature should never be able to do Y! Why? Why should it not? It could even create a nice hook to learn why it actually can.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

The game balance of 3E depended on "the Big Six" magic items. 4E tried a lot harder to get PCs a balanced mix of magic items, and remove a lot of magic item dependency.

I was not involved in the discourse during 3e era

What are the "big six"?

 

[W'rkncacnter]

I was not involved in the discourse during 3e era

What are the "big six"?

doing a bit of research, it seems like the big six are:

1. magic weapon
2. magic armor (and shield)
3. ring of protection
4. cloak of resistance
5. amulet of natural armor
6. ability score boosters

in other words, it seems like they're the items you need to keep up with the game's math.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I was not involved in the discourse during 3e era

What are the "big six"?

D&D theory published by WotC

• Magic weapon
• Magic armor & shield
• Ring of protection
• Cloak of resistance
• Amulet of natural armor
• Ability-score boosters

That's things that help you do your thing and things that protect you - and all of them are passive so you don't have to remember to activate them. The Ring, armour, amulet, and shield all add to your AC so they make you hard to hit even with the scaling of 3.X. The Cloak and the ability boosters also really help. One of the things 4e deliberately did was cut down from six to three items.

 

[Sanglorian]

I was not involved in the discourse during 3e era

What are the "big six"?

The six magic items almost every high level character had to have:

• Magic weapon
• Magic armor & shield
• Ring of protection
• Cloak of resistance
• Amulet of natural armor
• Ability-score boosters

Here's a contemporary discussion over on RPGNet, and here's the original article.

4E collapsed magic armor, shield, ring of protection and amulet of natural armour into one (obviously there are still magic shields, but not with enhancement bonuses) and got rid of ability-score boosters.

It also made the enhancement bonus of magic weapons a function of their level; there was no longer a tradeoff between a +1 fiery keen longsword of dragon's bane and less interesting but potentially more powerful +4 longsword.

4E was also quite elegant in that you could get a second weapon with one less +1 for 1/5th of the price. So there was a predictable cost for being a dual-wielder.

Other articles from the time are archived here: https://orbitalflower.github.io/rpg/wizards-3e-archive.html

The "Proud Nails" article would give some insights into why 4E monster design is the way it is, too.

EDIT: Ninja'd a few times over!

 

[niklinna]

I was not involved in the discourse during 3e era

What are the "big six"?

They are the Ranger's Bow, Rogue's Cloak, Barbarian's Club, Acrobat's Pole, Cavalier's Shield, and Wizard's Cap.

 

[MockingBird]

Thanks to all that posted what the big 6 are and for the articles! I don't know how much of that carried into PF1e. I jumped into a game (I think it was level 6 or 7). The DM told me to get some magic items. I was very conservative because of didn't want to "cheat" you know. I wasn't aware of the big 6 and I think it puts some things into perspective.

 

[Staffan]

Despite being criticised as putting the game on easy mode or allowing for unlimited healing, 4E's healing surges are actually a much more grounded and limited version of what already existed. In 3E, the magic item rules meant after a few levels magical healing became ubiquitous. PCs could enter every battle fully healed. So why not allow natural healing to get PCs into that position, as 4E does? In fact, the d20 Star Wars RPG was celebrated for having vitality points and hit points, to reflect the difference between glancing blows and lasting injuries. Hit points and healing surges in 4E effectively play the same role: it's the depletion of your healing surges that reflects true body blows. Everything else is scrapes, near misses, running out of luck, etc.

The game balance of 3E depended on "the Big Six" magic items. 4E tried a lot harder to get PCs a balanced mix of magic items, and remove a lot of magic item dependency.

You wouldn't know about the Big Six from reading the 3E rulebooks, because these mechanical underpinnings were obfuscated. 4E refused to obfuscate its expectations around encounter design, magic item distribution and so on - much to its detriment, as it opened it up to criticism. I actually think many of the criticisms of 4E identify real problems, but I would argue that most of these problems were present, but hidden, in 3E.

I don't think the expectations of 3e were so much obfuscated as unplanned and emergent. For example, the Big Six turned out to mainly be items that (a) let you keep up with (and to be honest, get ahead of) the game math, and given the page count dedicated in the DMG to encounter and adventure day balance and how the intent is that each fight saps 20-25% of the party's resources (mainly hp and spells) there's no way the wand of cure light wounds was intentional. Many of the problems of 3e come from a two-step process:

1. Systematizing something.
2. That system creating unexpected effects.

For example:

1. Any spell of up to 4th level can be put into a wand, and that wand will have a market price of spell level x caster level x 750 gp (assuming no expensive/XP components), and a creation cost of half that.
2. Wait, that means you can make wands of cure light wounds for 375 gp (or buy them for 750 gp), and that upsets the balance by quite a bit.
   1. It also means that a wand of a 2nd level spell costs 6 times as much as one of a 1st level spell, making that gap pretty damn big. And that in turn means that a wand of a combat spell that's strong enough to be useful (say, one level lower than your max) will generally have too high a cost to be worth it (e.g. a wand of fireball (caster level 5) costing 11,250 gp, which is more than the expected wealth of a 5th level PC (9,000 gp) and more than half that of a 7th level PC (19,000 gp).

Another example:

1. Monsters should be built using similar rules as PCs, with creature type HD taking the place of class levels, and with ability scores modifying stats in just the same way as they do for PCs.
2. Wait, this 10 HD monster has way too few hp to make for a good challenge. How do I get more hp... right, I'll increase its Constitution score. Only, now its physical special abilities also have a really high DC and its Fortitude save is like 10 points higher than its Will save...

4e instead focused on what the goal was, and designed things toward that goal. You want a 5th level skirmisher? Well, then it should have about AC 19, attack +10 vs AC, and 48+Con hp. You don't need to worry about how it gets AC 19, that's just the AC it has. You can go with some justification if you want to, but that's the AC it has.

 

[billd91]

I don't think the expectations of 3e were so much obfuscated as unplanned and emergent. For example, the Big Six turned out to mainly be items that (a) let you keep up with (and to be honest, get ahead of) the game math, and given the page count dedicated in the DMG to encounter and adventure day balance and how the intent is that each fight saps 20-25% of the party's resources (mainly hp and spells) there's no way the wand of cure light wounds was intentional. Many of the problems of 3e come from a two-step process:

1. Systematizing something.
2. That system creating unexpected effects.

DingDingDingDingDing!! We’ve got a winnah!
I can’t stress enough how this sort of thing was emergent. The wealth by level guidelines and magic item pricing indicated that some of this stuff was expected, but not to the degree it took hold. Andy Collins’s Big Six article, dated 2007, was chasing the concept, not offering real design insights.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't think the expectations of 3e were so much obfuscated as unplanned and emergent. For example, the Big Six turned out to mainly be items that (a) let you keep up with (and to be honest, get ahead of) the game math, and given the page count dedicated in the DMG to encounter and adventure day balance and how the intent is that each fight saps 20-25% of the party's resources (mainly hp and spells) there's no way the wand of cure light wounds was intentional. Many of the problems of 3e come from a two-step process:

1. Systematizing something.
2. That system creating unexpected effects.

For example:

1. Any spell of up to 4th level can be put into a wand, and that wand will have a market price of spell level x caster level x 750 gp (assuming no expensive/XP components), and a creation cost of half that.
2. Wait, that means you can make wands of cure light woundsfor 375 gp (or buy them for 750 gp), and that upsets the balance by quite a bit.
   1. It also means that a wand of a 2nd level spell costs 6 times as much as one of a 1st level spell, making that gap pretty damn big. And that in turn means that a wand of a combat spell that's strong enough to be useful (say, one level lower than your max) will generally have too high a cost to be worth it (e.g. a wand of fireball (caster level 5) costing 11,250 gp, which is more than the expected wealth of a 5th level PC (9,000 gp) and more than half that of a 7th level PC (19,000 gp).

Another example:

1. Monsters should be built using similar rules as PCs, with creature type HD taking the place of class levels, and with ability scores modifying stats in just the same way as they do for PCs.
2. Wait, this 10 HD monster has way too few hp to make for a good challenge. How do I get more hp... right, I'll increase its Constitution score. Only, now its physical special abilities also have a really high DC and its Fortitude save is like 10 points higher than its Will save...

4e instead focused on what the goal was, and designed things toward that goal. You want a 5th level skirmisher? Well, then it should have about AC 19, attack +10 vs AC, and 48+Con hp. You don't need to worry about how it gets AC 19, that's just the AC it has. You can go with some justification if you want to, but that's the AC it has.

The interesting was also how it interacted with the CR. WotC didn't say Level = Challenge Rating, possibly because they realized that despite their standardization of PC and NPC mechanics, it just didn't work. But you see hints of what in 4E became Elite and Solo monsters.
Dragon was a type with a d12 hit points, decent skill poins, great saves. Except for the lack of feats, a Dragon HD were better than a Fighter HD. Obviously the mechanics tried to support the fiction that Dragons are really dangerous monster. a CR x Dragon however would usually have way more than x hit dice, and they would have several natural attacks,, great natural armor bonuses, and sorcerer spells. The latter actually could significantly improve the dragon even further than what it mere stat block would suggest - since it's not wearing armor, Mage Armor and Shield would easily boost its AC even further (IIRC up to 8 points, which is a big swing in a d20 system), and that's just 1st level spells. A CR X dragon usually wasn't really a CR challenge. But that was presumably deemed okay because of course you're going to fight the dragon alone, it's not like you're going to drop into a dragon bandit camp or something. Of course, it kinda defeats the purpose of challenge ratings if one CR describes a solo challenge for a player group of that level, and another describes a monster that can be part of a group of enemies for a player group of that level.