My first proper 4E game - Our reaction.

[Scribble]

Weird. That's totally not how I interpreted them. Other than the "Fey Step", I've been wondering why they renamed the same-old, same-old elves and gave some jonny-come-lately the elf name.

Just goes to show how another man's trash...

I was pretty happy about the change.. it fit almost exactly what I was doing in my last campaign, except my wood elves werre a bit more animalistic in nature...

Shrug.

 

[Bialaska]

The way I see it, 4e is what they should have made after 2e. 3e should then be the next step in the evolution. With each version of the game it should open more opportunities and versatility to the players, I think, but 4e is a colossal step back from the 3.X. Whether that's good or bad is up for discussion. 4e has a lot of good ideas, but many 3.X players are scared off when they find out that they just can't play the character they want to play.

As for roles, I really don't like them. I am one of the players who tend to make characters that cover two or more roles. Might not be as good a striker as a dedicated striker, or as great a fighter as a dedicated defender. But the fact that I can cover where necessary has always been one thing I liked.

 

[The Ghost]

Our first session.

I played my first session of 4.0 over the weekend.

Our opinions before we started were - five guys - two who are interested - two who just want to play - one who hates the concept.

Roles - Not too much concern here; we have never really payed attention to class roles before. We always made characters that we wanted to play and the DM would build a game around them.

Multiclassing - Universally hated by my group. It felt like we were not able to play a lot of the character concepts that we used to. My 3.5 Cleric/Rogue, for example, doesn't translate well into 4.0.

Races - No one wanted to play a Dragonborn or Tiefling. Each other race felt good though.

Classes & Powers - Most of the classes were fairly well received. Fighters felt more powerful, Paladins and Warlords were very flavorful. Only the wizard felt wrong. He seemed fairly limited in scope. All five level one at wills were damage spells? Only one of fourteen level one spells did something other than damage? This did not go over very well with any of us as we all love our illusions and enchantments!

Chargen - Much easier than 3.5. The only stumbling block we had was remembering to take the better ability modifier for defense saves.

Combat - Quick; lots of movement around the field. The big problem we faced here was not having a battle grid. We have a lot of Warhammer terrain that we use for gaming; trying to figure out if something is within a burst two or three was a little cumbersome. We have some templates made already to help out in the future if we go with 4.0.

HPs - We had been scaling up hit points in 3.5 for a while now. This seems like a natural evolution.

Skill use - We were a little nervous about them in the beginning, but, after playing for a while, they worked out pretty nicely.

Conditions & Saving Throws - Very much liked by the group.

Squares and 1-move diagonals - Squares were annoying. Diagonal movement has always been done by a ruler for us.

Minis - We have always used them so this was no different.

Minions - I loved them. As did the rest of the group.

Alignments - It seems odd to see lawful used to modify good but not evil and chaotic modify evil but not good. We would have rather they kept the old system or done away with it entirely.

Play in general - Overall it was a fun game. I don't know that it is the "right" game for our group though. At the end of the night three out of five of us would be willing to give it another go - the other two would rather just stick with 3.5.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As for roles, I really don't like them. I am one of the players who tend to make characters that cover two or more roles. Might not be as good a striker as a dedicated striker, or as great a fighter as a dedicated defender. But the fact that I can cover where necessary has always been one thing I liked.

I can completely understand this, because when I'm a player, I'm the same way. I always want to play a multi-role character, one who doesn't dominate any area but is half-decent in several (like a 2E Bard). It seems like we're not really going to see any 4E classes along those lines, though the Leader classes will probably be closest. My players differ, however, so 4E is working well for us.

Mercule - They're got christmas baubles for eyes, every picture of them has them wearing bright colours and fancy outfits (with a very vague but I think detectable Edwardian vibe), mostly with fancy hair flowing lightly on mysterious breezes, they live in a world beyond ours, teleport every five minutes, and generally, as has been mentioned, like "double elves, now with extra elf". They certainly don't seem much like the +int elves I'm used to, who seemed to be portrayed as more dour and less flighty than the high or wood elves.

Alignments - It seems odd to see lawful used to modify good but not evil and chaotic modify evil but not good. We would have rather they kept the old system or done away with it entirely.

I personally think they should have renamed the alignments, either all of them, or LG and CE, because it seems like a wierd situation right now. I don't see myself getting a lot of benefit out of LG and CE, to be honest. They seem like they're both just subsets of G and E, and kind of defy the rule that "Alignment is not personality", because they both have much clearer personality elements than the other alignments.

 

[Enoch]

Classes & Powers - Most of the classes were fairly well received. Fighters felt more powerful, Paladins and Warlords were very flavorful. Only the wizard felt wrong. He seemed fairly limited in scope. All five level one at wills were damage spells? Only one of fourteen level one spells did something other than damage? This did not go over very well with any of us as we all love our illusions and enchantments!

Did you miss the three non-combat at-wills that all wizards get (i.e. cantrips)?

Powers are divided up into Attack Powers and Utility Powers. Attack powers are a lot more numerous, and you don't get a utility until level 2.

But don't forget the rituals. They pretty much replace non-combat spells, and the wizard is the king of rituals.

-Joshua

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Did you miss the three non-combat at-wills that all wizards get (i.e. cantrips)?

Powers are divided up into Attack Powers and Utility Powers. Attack powers are a lot more numerous, and you don't get a utility until level 2.

But don't forget the rituals. They pretty much replace non-combat spells, and the wizard is the king of rituals.

-Joshua

Doesn't change the fact that scope has been limited, you can like or not like it, but you can't deny that they don't have the breadth they used to. And if you go to the 4e forums you'll see quite a few threads dealing with a significant number of the rituals not being worth the cost under most circumstances. They don't really replace what was removed from the spell lists of prior editions and even in rituals the scope of many abilities have been nerfed to the point of near uselessness.

 

[The Ghost]

Originally Posted by Enoch
Did you miss the three non-combat at-wills that all wizards get (i.e. cantrips)?

No, we saw the Cantrips and Rituals. The Cantrips were fairly similar to what 0 level spells in 3.5. And we actually liked that they were not limited because they were such small effects. What my players had a problem with was that their ability to cast spells like: Cause Fear, Charm Person, Grease, Silent Image, etc. were replaced by spells that mostly dealt damage.

For example, I have one player in my current 3.5 game who had never done combat damage. His character has done this for eleven levels now! Some people may not mind this, but, for this player, he was very upset that he could not play the wizard that he liked. (Side Note: He did not like 4.0 in concept before; this only added to his frustration)

We only wished that that style of Wizard was available in 4.0. Everything else about the edition is pretty good. (Multiclassing aside) Since it is not, or, until it is, we will probably stick with 3.5 for that reason.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

4E - now with MORE ELVES

Glad to read abotu your experiences RE. I hope mine are as positive (will find out this Sunday!)

I'll try to make that happen.

Will directing all the ranged attacks your way help?

Ruin Explorer:

I wouldn't worry about adventures. I've found that adapting adventures from previous editions is pretty easy. I've run a couple of converted scenarios (some bits from 2E, some from 3E, some coming soon from 1E) and I've found that the scenarios there can be adapted pretty easily. More variety has to be thrown in, but it's not something hard to get the hang of. With the variety of things that PCs and monsters can do, I've found that a couple of things to give cover or to fall into may be all that's needed to make an interesting encounter setting. Plus, the old 1E adventures also seem to have interesting terrain features that can really shine in 4E in a way they never could.

I'm not sure I've got the hang of traps yet, though. Ask Holy Bovine in a month or two to see if I can get the hang of it.

 

[HyrumOWC]

I'm becoming more and more convinced now that I've played and looked at the books, that 4e is less the child of 3e and more the child of previous editions, mainly BECMI and 2nd.

As for adventures, there's Dungeon and I also talk about some other products here:

http://savageplanet.livejournal.com/356389.html

Hyrum.

 

[Zil]

Ruin, glad to see the group had fun. I think a big part to the success of 4e, and of course all games, is going to be if the DM running it gives it a fair shot, too. Rules count, but a DM setting the tone positively, or at least neutrally, helps a game succeed or fail on its own merits.

Yes, there is probably quite a bit of truth to this. Our game of 4E went pretty good partly because the DM of the adventure (Keep on the Shadowfell) was really excited about it. Of the the players, easily 3/4s were doubters going in, but we all really enjoyed ourselves in the end. We're still not all sold on 4E as being our version of D&D going forward (we're still heading down the Pathfinder path), but there is no denying that 4E was a fun game to play.