My First Take

[pariah131]

Utility spells, IMHO are the ones that *most* needed to become flexible, and not be subject to the stupid memorization rules of Vancian casting. Ugh. I'll take a look at the actual rules later I guess, and we'll go from there.

I'm actually happy with this. Rogues have been pretty useless because everything they can do the Wizard could do better. Why hide and sneak when the wizard can invis and silence? Why pick locks when the Wizard could just knock.

Sure the Wizard can still replace a rogue, but now it's quicker and cheaper to let the rogue do his job.

 

[-Avalon-]

Huh?

"Anybody notice that Vance is alive and well? Most of your best powers are 1/day. Fireball? Stinking Cloud? Sleep? 1/day, if you prepare them.

Considering that one of the "driving forces" behind 4E was to make it where every character would always have something "useful" to do, and to *stop* parties from fighting one encounter and stopping for the day, this appears to have accomplished the exact opposite. Since you can't use the same power more than once, your encounter powers are limited, and your at-will powers stink, you wind up fighting one encounter and sleeping the rest of the day to get your dailies back."

Somehow I think you have this backwards... you use your at-will's mainly, and have a decent selection of them so you are not constantly spamming the same exact attack each round if you want. At the lowest levels you only have a couple encounter powers and one daily, yeah that sucks.

But as you level, you get more encounter powers, and different dailies to pick from, and you only have to choose the daily after you rest. If you have 7 encounter powers, you have all 7 for that day. Each encounter, you can use ALL 7, and do it again next encounter. That does not seem Vancian in any way.

Plus, there are obviously several methods to regain encounter powers, gain additional uses of daily powers etc as you level. So it is not as bad as you make it out. Wizards will have plenty of abilities and powers at their disposal constantly.

 

[ExploderWizard]

1. You do expand the number of options as you level. Only your at-will powers are constant from what you selected at level 1. If you want to get a new power outside of the listed breakpoints, you have to switch out powers.

2. Many of the powers scale (and there's no damage cap) so level isn't as good an indicator as before. For example, SLEEP is good all the way to the top.

In a lot of ways, they weren' kidding when they said ToB was their testing ground.

Power "swap outs" do not say campaign suspension of disbelief to me. Gaining levels should involve the expansion of knowledge, not the replacement. In prior editions, your character gained abilities, perhaps not as many or as often as some would like but nothing was "lost".
This seems to make 4E more of a tabletop battlegame than anything else. If my character's brain operates like a hot-swappable hard drive then I can only see it as a playing piece on the board. IMHO this makes 4E a good possible battle game but a sorry roleplaying campaigning system.

 

[tafkamhokie]

re. the lack of "backstory" skills and whatnot.

The mechanic of creating a critter in 3e was unified...all monsters, characters, npc's, mooks, BBEG's, EVERYONE was created using the same set of rules. So you had to have a Craft (leatherworking) and Profession (merchant) skill for the commoners and experts to take. This gave the PC's options for sinking a skill point or two into a "flavor" skill if they wanted to.

The 4e PHB is about creating heroes. Monsters and npc's follow a different mechanic. So the stuff that was necessary for npc's but was just flavor for a hero is left out of the 4e PHB.

The flip side is if you have some flavor to add to your PC, then you just add it. No need to allocate skill points anymore, you just do it. You want him to be the son of a blacksmith, or a librarian, or an assassin, or a lawyer...then that is what he is and you work with your DM to fold that into the story and maybe you get to make a local knowledge (or whatever) check with a circumstance bonus based on your background.

Also notice all reference to physical attractiveness has been removed from Charisma. How good looking you are is irrelevant to the game mechanic, so you just decide whether you are a beauty queen or someone who is so ugly their momma wouldn't hold them and that is what you are. Charisma is your force of personality, not your attractiveness. No more "every priest, paladin, and sorcerer looks like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie" just because Cha is one of their key stats.

You no longer need to spend your precious "hero" resources on flavor anymore. Your effectiveness as a hero is what the PHB is for. Your character flavor is what your imagination is for.

 

[tafkamhokie]

Gaining levels should involve the expansion of knowledge, not the replacement. In prior editions, your character gained abilities, perhaps not as many or as often as some would like but nothing was "lost".

Depends on how you look at it. It may not be that they have "forgotten" a power, but that it is so totally useless they just don't bother with it anymore.

Ever see an NBA player shoot a basketball granny-style? I'll bet at least a few of them first started shooting free throws that way, but once their skill set grew, they abandoned that power in favor of another.

I can certainly see Tordek and Redgar sitting down having a beer in retirement and Tordek saying "Remember the good 'ole days? Back then, I just summoned up every last bit of energy I had to take a mighty swing (i.e. Brute Strike). Sure, it tended to blast the skeletons into a hundred pieces, but there was no precision in it. By the time we were fighting those Vrocks in the Demonweb, I was able to aim that same strike at two at a time...and good luck if they thought they could dodge it (i.e. Dragon's Fangs). Can you imagine if we had to fight that purple worm waving our weapons around like a bunch of noobs? Amazing we managed to survive our youth, isn't it."

 

[Foundry of Decay]

I'm pretty pleased with what I've seen so far. I (and one player) loathed the old magic system. So much so that we simply stopped playing after trying almost every 'variant' system you can think of. So the slight Vancian-ness hardly irks me considering the laundry list that I had to go through for every npc and enemy in the old system.

I've also found out during the 3 sessions we've played with just the *lite* rules that we rarely had to take a break. Honestly, a wizard casting his daily is hardly an excuse to stop dead in your tracks and rest a day.

As for the lack of background skills, it doesn't effect my group whatsoever. We've never seen need to use them as none of them ever needed to have any points in bookbinding or farming to prove that they once were bookbinders or farmers. This is more just how my group never bothered with such, not a reflection on how good/bad the loss of these skills are in the books.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

There is something to be said for that, but there is something to being able to put stuff in place as a real mechanical framework.

D&D 4E loses a lot for anything other than one playstyle.

One playstyle it is REALLY REALLY improved for.

Many other it has good points and bad points.

Some it sucks for.

I'm looking forward to playing and running games in it. My wife is absolutely adamant against it due to the skill system. She likes running skill based characters with wider variations between characters and mechanically supported weaknesses. I see her point myself.

 

[AllisterH]

Power "swap outs" do not say campaign suspension of disbelief to me. Gaining levels should involve the expansion of knowledge, not the replacement. In prior editions, your character gained abilities, perhaps not as many or as often as some would like but nothing was "lost".

This seems to make 4E more of a tabletop battlegame than anything else. If my character's brain operates like a hot-swappable hard drive then I can only see it as a playing piece on the board. IMHO this makes 4E a good possible battle game but a sorry roleplaying campaigning system.

Tend to disagree about 4E being a poor roleplaying campaign system. If given to a new player, do you think 4E will actually discourage roleplaying especially if the player read the PHB from the start?

Seriously, the first 25 pages of the PHB has more "roleplaying" information than the ENTIRE core 3.x line.

That said, I'm not sure why you would equate it to a tabletop battlegame as neither does any tabletop battlegame has anything remotely similar to the swap and replace.

To me, that is a pure D&Dism to facilitate gameplay.

For example, if the rules had said, "you only get new powers, no retraining", it wouldn't break your sense of disbelief I assume since you don't have players "forgetting" new powers as they increase in level but at the cost of gameplay (remember, this "rule" is also the 3.5 sorceror rule and was instituted to increase the fun for the player)

 

[ExploderWizard]

Depends on how you look at it. It may not be that they have "forgotten" a power, but that it is so totally useless they just don't bother with it anymore.

"

That is perfectly acceptable, as long as they COULD use the powers if they so desired. Its like Leon in "The Professional". He kills with a knife because he is that skilled, but that doesn't mean he forgot how to shoot a rifle.

 

[JohnSnow]

That is perfectly acceptable, as long as they COULD use the powers if they so desired. Its like Leon in "The Professional". He kills with a knife because he is that skilled, but that doesn't mean he forgot how to shoot a rifle.

Well, as far as "at-will" powers go...sure, no problem. If you want to use a 1st-level "at-will" when you're 27th-level, be my guest. It's pointless, but go right ahead.

As far as "per-encounter" or "daily" powers, I don't think it's particularly unbalancing to allow them access to their "set-aside" abilities. On the other hand, a reasonable case can be made from a martial arts perspective that those special moves that were your awesome abilities 5 years ago are just not things you practice anymore.

Lack of practice = unavailable.

However, I freely admit some coolness in the following...

In the first book of The Dresden Files (something I bring up a lot whenever magic systems get discussed), the main character, Harry Dresden, is in the fight of his life (up to that point, anyway). He's drained, and doesn't have any energy left for any big spells. He doesn't have his blasting rod, and basically, all he's got the strength for are cantrips. And he's attacked - by giant, magically-animated, scorpions. He's backed into the corner of a kitchen...a broom falls over...he plucks a straw from the brush...and "sweeps away" his assailants. With a cantrip that he'd almost forgotten he knew. It's trés cool.

But that's essentially a super-creative use of "Mage Hand" - an at-will power. I'd never prevent a high-level wizard from whipping out a cantrip. I might even let all wizards have prestidigitation for free.