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

[Mannahnin]

Gnolls were brutal against bloodied targets, IIRC. I remember we had a PC death to a pack of gnolls when a Warlord wound up wrongfooted and surrounded on a badly-organized round.

 

[Red Castle]

IIRC, Bloodied was positive (well, other than being down 50% hp) if you only looked at your own sheet. But I'm pretty sure there were some monsters that had special attacks that they could only do on Bloodied opponents, or that had increased effects on them.

Oh absolutely, I can confirm there is and they can get nasty!

But even then, it goes in the positive way. Your character doesn’t become weaker, it’s the enemy that gets better against him. Instead of your character getting weaker when bloodied and the combat now just getting longer because it’s harder to hit the enemy, it shakes things up by making the enemy stronger, now you have to deal with the enemy as fast as possible because now he has a taste for your blood!

When someone gets bloodied, there might always have someone that will get stronger because of it, never weaker. That’s what I mean by positive instead of negative.

 

[Voadam]

I sort of divide 4e into two bunches, Original flavor with strong AEDU for classes and Essentials style with more at will and encounter focus and a willingness to deviate from AEDU.

AEDU 4e has a strongly balanced daily paradigm of everybody having the same number of daily attack powers, a bit of variability of utility powers being AED, daily healing surge limits that vary by class, and a potential daily item power. This allows a lot of daily stuff to happen in a fairly constrained manner for a decent daily resource management engagement experience. It also still leaves potentially strong encounter variability of whether every PC will use multiple dailies in an encounter versus people being out of surges and or any dailies. As PCs get higher level with more daily attacks and powers this variability can be significant.

Essentials messes with that strong daily character balance and potential DM planned daily set up. Having lots of at will stances and encounter powers without daily attacks means that healing surges are potentially bearing a lot more of the load for pacing the daily resource management. Essentials characters have less variability in nova power spikes in individual combats so individual combats are easier for a DM to evaluate as a challenge beforehand. And for players who like to nova immediately this means they will generally be better off against end boss fights than under AEDU where they would have already blown their spectacular dailies on earlier fights.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Another aspect about the encounter/daily abilities was that you could use every ability only once. That meant that even if you had found that one super exploitable always perfect power - you only had it once, and even if you had found 3 encounters and 3 dailies of that type (which probably is a real possibility after the first round of "splatbooks" was completed) - you had variability.

It is a bit of a problem for immersion, but for gameplay, it's a really strong choice. It keeps things a bit more varied. Of course, Psionics kinda "broke" that concept.

I wonder if one could have the best of both worlds. LIke, say, everyone has "maneuver points" or "mana points" that they can spend on powers, but the first use of every power is free or you get some refund or something.

 

[cavalier973]

I like how 4e fighters are so awesome that they can hurt you, even if they can’t hit you.

 

[Manbearcat]

I like how 4e fighters are so awesome that they can hurt you, even if they can’t hit you.

HoCH

"Hurt on a Can't Hit!"

 

[Aldarc]

I like how 4e fighters are so awesome that they can hurt you, even if they can’t hit you.

I like how 4e warlords are so awesome that they can heal you, even it's by yelling at you.

 

[James Gasik]

I like how 4e warlords are so awesome that they can heal you, even it's by yelling at you.

Yeah, to do that now I need a feat that lets me use magic duct tape.

 

[cavalier973]

I like how 4e warlords are so awesome that they can heal you, even it's by yelling at you.

“Rub some dirt in it!”

“Walk it off; walk it off!”

 

[Composer99]

"Where there's a whip there's a will, my slugs. Hold up! I'd give you a nice freshener now, only you'll get as much lash as your skins will carry when you come in late to your camp. Do you good. Don't you know we're at war?"