Mearls: The core of D&D

[Dannyalcatraz]

In pre-3.X all you have to do to run a magic-itemless game is not hand out magic items and not use weapon immune creatures as opponents. Fairly simple.

In 4th edition you have to either recalculate the HP, attack bonuses and defenses of every creature you use or use magic-items and call them something else. The former is incredibly time consuming and the later kind of misses the point of a magic-itemless game.

To my eyes, avoiding problematic creatures is no more difficult in 4Ed than in previous editions. Using larger numbers of lesser creatures (not necessarily minions (), either) is no more difficult than before. Tweaks like boosting weapons from a mundane shortsword to a mundane 2handers is no more difficult than before.

 

[Starglyte]

If it helps any, Dungeon Master's Guide 2 and the Dark Sun Campaign guide both have options for magic item rare settings. It gives bonuses to the players based on their levels.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

If it helps any, Dungeon Master's Guide 2 and the Dark Sun Campaign guide both have options for magic item rare settings. It gives bonuses to the players based on their levels.

Yes, The "Inherent Bonuses" system. Which I have already stated my dislike of.

 

[Thanael]

The mechanics don't make the game.

There's a lot of flavor, atmosphere, and basic flavor elements that link together a lot of what makes (or made) D&D, well, D&D. Mearls is losing sight of that a bit by only focusing on what game mechanics might or might not be central to the D&D experience. But that's much of the reason I haven't much liked the 4.x evolution of the game into something that shed a large amount of the core flavor I appreciated.

And it shed the sparse core flavor of 3e, which was a watered-down hodge-podge of 2E flavor.

 

[Hussar]

And it shed the sparse core flavor of 3e, which was a watered-down hodge-podge of 2E flavor.

Y'know, there's a point.

What core flavour? Basic/Expert? Which had pretty much zero core flavor in the books. It certainly wasn't Mystara by any stretch of the imagination until years later. 3e core flavor? Didn't people endlessly bitch about how 3e didn't really HAVE any core flavor? Maybe 1e core flavor. Which there was quite a lot of, but, unfortunately was pretty mangled and hodgepodge. Was 1e a low magic game a la Conan or high fantasy a la Dragonlance? Depends on who you ask.

 

[Raven Crowking]

That has nothing to do with the fifteen minute day.

The fifteen minute day was born of Vancian magic and the full on nova. The wizard would cast almost all of his high level spells, decimating a single encounter - no matter how hard! - with ease, and then shimmy into his magical invisible undetectable summonable house to rest for a bit, before going off and doing it again.

It never had anything to do with healing.

Sure it does. It has everything to do with the ability to recharge without consequences. So long as it is possible to meet every challenge at full strength, and there is no loss for so doing, it is foolish to do anything else.

The exact nature of the resources, and the exact means by which consequences are mitigated, are immaterial.


RC

 

[Doug McCrae]

The fifteen minute day was a 3e - and a 3e only phenomenon - due to three things.

To be fair, 15-minute daying the 1e module Tomb of Horrors was recommended as a tactic in a recent thread.

 

[Raven Crowking]

No. It isn't.

Sure, it is.

If you can face each challenge with all your resources, then it makes sense to do so. The strength of the "nova" -- how much extra bang you get -- makes a difference, sure. The more finely "balanced" encounters are to an expected level of PC strength, the more useful it is to have any additional strength you can.

Nor is it simply that "3e of all editions removed all threat of resting in a dangerous area due to various spells', but that it was during the 3e era that DMs were first encouraged to cut any "unimportant" non-plot encounters.

This last is a direct result of "bang per buck": In 3e, esp. as you level, combats take so long that a wandering monster can eat up significant play time.

So (1) knife-edge balance + (2) no penalty for resting = 15-minute adventuring day.

Besides that, aren't you precisely the person that has claimed the fifteen minute working day never existed?

Nah, I'm the person that has claimed that the fifteen minute working day never had to exist. In any edition, you can include penalties for resting that remove the problem. If you couple these penalties with a broader range of combats (so that the PCs don't always seem to be walking the knife's edge), the problem pretty well disappears.

(And that removing those factors pretty easily removes the problem is strong evidence, IMHO, that those factors are the real culprit.)


RC

 

[billd91]

No. It isn't.

The fifteen minute day was a 3e - and a 3e only phenomenon - due to three things.

1) Exactly how powerful the spellcaster nova is. 3e caster power was entirely off the rails compared to every other edition.

2) How easy it is to rest up afterwards. Again, 3e of all editions removed all threat of resting in a dangerous area due to various spells.

3) The nature of the nova - namely, you were expelling all of your offense in a single fight to end it as fast as you could. That isn't in any way similar to the use of healing magics.

Healing surges will not ever make you champion a single fight and hurt on all the others. The ways of burning healing surges for benefits are not only rare, they're often not that powerful either, and 4e lacks many of the means of easy, no worry resting that 3e had.

Besides that, aren't you precisely the person that has claimed the fifteen minute working day never existed?

There were styles of play for which the 15-minute day became a pronounced phenomenon in 3e, but it's incorrect to conclude that there weren't elements of a 15-minute day in earlier editions that could appear. In those editions, it was running out of hit points (and the means to heal them) that tended to trigger the effect. If the first fight or two of the day ground out too many hit points and the party healers couldn't compensate, the day could be pretty short.

You identify some factors that contributed to a 15-minute day style of play, but those were never the only factors involved. The primary issue is finite resources and how the players evaluate those resources (a major issue with casters going nova on the 'worthwhile' spells in 3e and calling it a day). In 1e/2e, the most limiting resources were hit points and healing spells. 3e alleviated some of that with easy access to healing wands and potions, leaving the issue mainly to high DC, encounter ending spells. 4e healing surges and the relative difficulty of bringing in external healing puts the game back in the realm of healing/hit points being the major factor in 15-minute day play styles.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Then by your own admission, 4e does not have a fifteen minute workday, as your number of healing surges has nothing to do with your level of strength, nor do they allow for any sort of nova. A fighter with one surge and a fighter with ten surges fight the same. A wizard with one level 9 spell slot and a wizard with ten do not fight the same.

Sorry, but that doesn't logically follow.

In AD&D 1e, a 10th level fighter with 100 hp, and the same fellow with 1 hp, both hit with the same frequency, and both do the same damage, but they are not the same. Nor, to be quite honest, do they fight the same, for it is unlikely (at best) that the player will make the same choices in each of these instances.

A fighter with 10 surges can afford to be reckless. A fighter with 0 surges cannot.

If the fighter's player knows that his DM is likely to be taking his healing surges into account when planning encounters, then he has a rational reason to face each encounter with as many healing surges as possible. Indeed, this can become a vicious spiral:

(1) DM creates tough encounter that the fighter barely has enough surges left to survive through.

(2) Fighter begins trying to maintain more surges; has more extended rests.

(3) This makes other encounters too easy (according to the DM), so he dials them up to 11.

(4) This makes the fighter more prone to want full surges before encounters.

etc.

EDIT: If it helps, I will agree without reservation that the 15-minute adventuring day need be no more a part of 4e play than of 3e. And I believe that it need be no part of 3e play, at all.


RC