D&D 4E My biggest concern about 4E

[Najo]

Experience has taught me these are the worst sorts of changes. 4e seems to be full of them. I am worried. A failed 4e would be the most devastating blow WotC has dealt to the industry since their ill-advised Fallen Empires snafu (for those not familiar with Magic, in that incident WotC filled all the preorders for Fallen Empires to the surprise of store owners which hadn't been able to get their orders filled on prior sets. Many, many shops folded due to this mistake, and the fact that Fallen Empires is easily one of Magic's worst sets).

WotC, for all their researching and studying, occasionally makes mistakes. They occasionally make big ones. For the sake of the hobby let's hope that this isn't one of them.

Fallen Empires wasn't a mistake because all of the orders were filled. It was a mistake because it was a crappy set. Just like homelands was too.

Since then, Magic the Gathering has a tight development team that produces a compeling setting every year, 3-4 expansions based on that setting and keeps up a ever improving set of game mechanic design that shows creativity and a strong mastery of the game's base mechanics and what is both good and bad in those mechanics.

All the time they come up with creative ways to fix poor draws, resource management, early vs late game cards, reset bottoms, balance of the color wheel, game pacing. Look at mechanics like cycling, kicker, buyback, flashback, drudge, dual mana (from ravnica), split cards, man lands, the new legends rule (from kamigawa).. I can go on and on. All those mechanics control and pace the game flow and resources. They create or take away card adavantage and work around limitations of mana. That is just the tip of the ice berg. Comparing WOTC to where they are now to a mistake they made twice with magic over 15 years is not fair.

 

[Najo]

One problem I think will be with the 3E to 4E conversion is that the 2E to 3E conversion was more or less an expansion back to a lot of frontiers that were contracted from 1E to 2E. Assassins returned; Barbarians returned; the old 1E bard and the dragonlance knightly orders was sort of used as a template for prestige classes; half-orcs returned; clerics were expanded to 9 spell levels; cantrips returned; more rules were added to make swashbuckler-types viable; feats and skills allowed customization that just wasn't well-done or even there under 2E, and so on.

With 4E, we're retracting, even if for only a year or two, back to a core set of rules that may be ultimately more expandable than 3E, but still will not be the full volume of rules released under 3E. We also don't have that mass exodus of players from 3E the same way we had it under 2E. Under 2E, the game was on life support in the late 1990's; now, it may not be as healthy as it was in the early 2000's, but it's still got a very formidable player base going on right now. So there seems to be more resistance to change than there was in 1999 to 2000. It may just be my perception, but I recall quite a lot of enthusiasm in 3E from sources that with 4E just aren't that enthused by what we've seen. If the release of the rules can change this somewhat, I'll be glad; if not, there could well be a lot more fragmentation with 4E than there was with the D&D player base in 2000.

I have alot of respect for you Henry, but I will have to disagree.

1st edition AD&D was very restricive compared to 2nd. 2nd very early on added kits, and many class variants with their settings. They added a early skill system. They had higher levels and more magic items and spells. Once skills and powers came out, the characters were almost to complicated and mutable.

With 3rd edition we did get more options: feats, skill points, prestige classes, removal of racial restrictions. More spells and magic items then we knew what to do with too.

With 4th edition, we are getting even more options. Talent Trees for one. More class flexibility with more bonus feats and choices along the way. Easier multiclassing. Easier prestige classes. Everything else streamlined. Streamlined may mean simplified, but it also means without losing depth.

 

[Najo]

I would like to add my two cents, for what it is worth:

I have played from the beginning. I have watched 3rd edition from the first rumors on Eric's board to now. I have watched 4e too. When 3.0 released, I went to Gen Con and met all of the designers and spoke with them, attended the seminars, etc. I have a signed PHB 3.0 e to prove it, I met everybody.

I have been in gaming retail for 13 years now. I have seen it all with D&D in my neck of the woods, good and bad.

4e, from my perspective, is going to work. It is going to be new and scary at first. For some it will be exciting. Some will be stubborn and say forget it. But it will be better. It will be more flexible, use better common sense, allow for more flexbile adventurers, dming styles and character creation. I think 4e is going to prove 90% of the nay-sayers here wrong.

Now, the digital initative is going crappy and I miss the dungeon and dragon, but WOTC was never great at that sort of stuff. D&D they been doing a very good job on though over the years.

The irony I find, is everyone is clinging to a system that we know has issues and they refuse to trust the deisgners who have worked on it and fixed those issues with 4e. These are the same WOTC designers that have wowed you over the years, and the new guys are the ones you wanted working on the damn 4e project to begin with.

If anyone doubts me, go buy the Rules Compendium and read all of the designer commentary. It will open your eyes to what is coming. If I am right about this, then we will never have to subtract a level from a character again after that damn energy drain happens. That would be a blessing, as its a pain in the ass.

When the Races and Classes book comes out, I am sure there will be enlightening commentary in there too. I plan on reading it just for that, because I want to get in the designers head and see it from their perspective. I want to understand why power attack needs work, or why the gnome hurts the PHB.

 

[Particle_Man]

Well, I will get the phb when it comes out. If I don't like the extra races, I will restrict people to dwarf, elf, halfling and human. But I am willing to give this a shot.

And hey, I still have my 3.5 books. And Iron Heroes. And C&C. And Savage Worlds. So a one-time investment into a 4.0 phb won't hurt me, if it is not my cup of tea. And if it is my cup of tea, then that is a bonus and I will get more books from Wotc.

But really, this isn't about us anymore, guys. It is about the new players and how *they* will react to 4th ed, never having seen any other version of this or any other roleplaying game.

 

[Goobermunch]

Fixed it for you.

If WOTC truly 'knows' their market, then everything they print would be a smash success.

Which it is not ... and the proof of that is comments on these very boards. Just look at the commentary on any new publication from WOTC. You will find a near even split of people who like it and don't like it as a observation and it not very often that a supplement or book gets a postive thumbs up from a majority of ENWorlders or strikes a accord. For every book that gets high praise, there is about a half dozen who get very mixed reviews.

4E is a gamble. Success is not a guaranteed outcome.

Except that knowing your audience doesn't mean that you necessarily know the best way to implement what your audience wants. A good example of that would be the "Complete Psion." To my mind, the idea was fantastic, and just what I wanted. Sadly, the execution of the product was sorely lacking.

To really test whether WOTC knows its audience, you've got to look at the books they've announced and whether people were kvetching about them before they were released. Once they've been released, you've got issues with execution that may distort the question of whether they've responded to the desires of their customers.

--G

 

[I'm A Banana]

The irony I find, is everyone is clinging to a system that we know has issues and they refuse to trust the deisgners who have worked on it and fixed those issues with 4e. These are the same WOTC designers that have wowed you over the years, and the new guys are the ones you wanted working on the damn 4e project to begin with.

From what I'm hearing, people aren't really worried about the rules.

They're worried about the fluff.

Yes, fluff is changeable, but if the core game isn't going to be able to (say) support Greyhawk right out of the gate, it's going to feel significantly different from the D&D of old, which pretty much everyone on this board is somewhat invested in in one way or another.

This isn't my fear, per se, and it might not matter to the majority of gamers, but the endless possibility of 3e is getting whittled down to purely "points of light" relevant material in 4e. People can see that narrowing of focus, and while it might cause a quicker and more efficient game, people are worried that it will become too narrow. And that's a very valid concern.

It's something that the core products may prove wrong, but the problem isn't with the rules, either way. For most people, it's about forgetting that D&D does a very broad selection of things that don't have to match Points of Light.

I'm optimistic that they'll be broad enough, but it's a very valid concern to voice.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

From what I'm hearing, people aren't really worried about the rules.

They're worried about the fluff.

Yes, fluff is changeable, but if the core game isn't going to be able to (say) support Greyhawk right out of the gate, it's going to feel significantly different from the D&D of old, which pretty much everyone on this board is somewhat invested in in one way or another.

This isn't my fear, per se, and it might not matter to the majority of gamers, but the endless possibility of 3e is getting whittled down to purely "points of light" relevant material in 4e. People can see that narrowing of focus, and while it might cause a quicker and more efficient game, people are worried that it will become too narrow. And that's a very valid concern.

It's something that the core products may prove wrong, but the problem isn't with the rules, either way. For most people, it's about forgetting that D&D does a very broad selection of things that don't have to match Points of Light.

I'm optimistic that they'll be broad enough, but it's a very valid concern to voice.

I think the Points of Light approach has a considerable advantage: It can be used on Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms just as much as your newest homebrew. In the FR case, the "points of light" is more from the character perspective (since the DM and most players know a lot more about the setting, and will also know the "pools of light" in the setting). For your newest homebrew, its also the DM and the player perspective.

The PoL approach means that there is lot of unknown to characters and NPCs. Which means people might not actually have seen Tieflings or Dragonborn (except maybe the one that just arrived and drinks its beer in the tavern) and don't know that there is (or is not) a major Empire of them just 30 days of land travel away. And they certainly have no idea about the Astral Plane or Sea and they don't really care wether it's Devils or Demons that tempt mortals, because either is a bad thing.

A core rule book based on these assumptions should be very friendly to any setting. Now, adventures might be a different matter, but they always add fluff that wasn't a given for a setting.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It can be used on Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms just as much as your newest homebrew.

In many cases, this means that it can't be used at all.

The PoL approach means that there is lot of unknown to characters and NPCs. Which means people might not actually have seen Tieflings or Dragonborn (except maybe the one that just arrived and drinks its beer in the tavern) and don't know that there is (or is not) a major Empire of them just 30 days of land travel away. And they certainly have no idea about the Astral Plane or Sea and they don't really care wether it's Devils or Demons that tempt mortals, because either is a bad thing.

Not all settings or playstyles desire to support those notions.

But that narrowing of focus means that things like the Great Wheel are tossed out in favor of a new planar schema, rejecting a lot of D&D/Greyhawk setting material. It might not be hard to add in, but the point is that the Core doesn't support it, leaving the work to a DM, and most DM's would rather get to the heart of the adventure than to spend their time figuring out if the Feywild belongs with the Flaness.

The narrowing of focus may also give us simplicity where we desire complexity, such as for me, with non-combat-related monster statistics, or for some when they center around minis combat and neglect to provide rules usable in the abstract as well.

As concerns, they are valid to entertain, and nothing 4e has shown us so far shows them to be wrong (and a few things show them to be possibly or probably right).

But nobody seems particularly worried that, say, the combat in 4e won't be fast-paced or interesting.

We trust the designers to do what they set out to do, we're just not all sure they set out to support the game that we like to play, because they seem fairly concentrated on one particular style of game (at least for the moment) that is fairly new to core D&D.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

I don't mind the changes I've been reading about here. I mean, if it's somthing I REALY don't like I'll just change it, as is the power of the DM.
I mean, sure Tieflings and Dragonborn were never realy solidly in any campaign setting until 4th... so what? They are now? Oh well. It doesn't mean every single person my PCs ever meet will be a wierd "new" race. In fact, most of them will probly disapear into the background of "Random group of insignificant NPCs" or "The Tiefling barkeep" or "The Dragonborn Paladin commander" for me.
And if you don't like how things are missing, wait a bit, it'll come out soon enough.

"Oh Noez, the frost giant isn't in MM1, I have to look through the monster manual to find the gnome, and wizards is being orriginal with a starting race in the first PHB!!! My life is ruined RUINED!!!"

This is what makes me not want to play 4th the most
Its not the WoTC desisions, its not the rules changes, its not the arbitrary desisions. It's the fear I have that the 4th croud may be as "outspoken" about the edition as certain people I've read here.

I mean the least you all can do is wait until official rules come out before you start flaming the edition. At least then you would have a solid SOMTHING to back up why you don't like it instead of speculation.

I think I've sufficiently pissed enough people off now.
My mini-rant is done.

 

[jdrakeh]

I like the existing "story" of D&D.

What story? D&D is a system. If you can show me some kind of "story" (i.e., a defined plot with a beginning, middle, and end) in the three core books, I'll eat my hat. There is no story, unless you're using that word in some new, weird, way unintended by the English language.