My take.

[Ovinnik]

But with intelligence providing Reflex/AC, charisma providing Will, and presumably something like wisdom providing Fortitude the upshot of these rules is that any NPC that acquires attributes also acquires some unwanted attributes. Feeble accountants, aged octogenerians, and little old ladies suddenly are as strong of combatants in thier infirmity as they were in thier youth. This strongly discourages me from treating non-combatant NPC's as even having attributes. Certainly I can't have them following any sort of consistant rules.

It's Str or Con helps Fortitude, Dex or Int (representing quick thinking and the ability to think on your feet) which helps Reflex and (possibly) AC, and Wis or Cha (representing your ability to overcome effects using sheer force of personality or Self) which helps Will. When you think about them, these things make some sense, and feeble accountants and old ladies tend to have low Str and Con both, so they'd still have a low Fort defense.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Which abilities from 3e, that are usable outside of combat, would you like to see in 4e?

This is an unfair and illogical question, I'd suggest. A very large percentage of the abilities we've seen so far in 4E simply did not exist in 3E, or existed in an entirely different fashion.

I mean, Cleave goes from being a special-condition Feat, to an at-will ability. It wasn't an ability before. If we ignore you wording, and look at y'know anything that existed in 4E, I don't think it'd be unreasonable for people to have hoped to see, say, a Fighter "Utility" ability called "Intimidating Glare", which might have both an in-combat AND out-of-combat use (perhaps even different ones), or for some of various bonus to diplomacy or bluff or the like Feats to have become active abilities along the lines of Cleave, but for social situations. I could go on.

 

[LostSoul]

But with intelligence providing Reflex/AC, charisma providing Will, and presumably something like wisdom providing Fortitude the upshot of these rules is that any NPC that acquires attributes also acquires some unwanted attributes.

Do you have a scoop on the NPC creation rules, or are you just speculating?

 

[vagabundo]

It's Str or Con helps Fortitude, Dex or Int (representing quick thinking and the ability to think on your feet) which helps Reflex and (possibly) AC, and Wis or Cha (representing your ability to overcome effects using sheer force of personality or Self) which helps Will. When you think about them, these things make some sense, and feeble accountants and old ladies tend to have low Str and Con both, so they'd still have a low Fort defense.

Hmmm You should see some of the Oul'-ones that live here in Ireland. They are built like tanks.

 

[LostSoul]

I mean, Cleave goes from being a special-condition Feat, to an at-will ability. It wasn't an ability before. If we ignore you wording, and look at y'know anything that existed in 4E, I don't think it'd be unreasonable for people to have hoped to see, say, a Fighter "Utility" ability called "Intimidating Glare", which might have both an in-combat AND out-of-combat use (perhaps even different ones), or for some of various bonus to diplomacy or bluff or the like Feats to have become active abilities along the lines of Cleave, but for social situations. I could go on.

I agree.

Maybe there will be space for some kind of 3rd-party "role-playing" book.

 

[Snarls-at-Fleas]

It is a game which is fundamentally suited for playing like a traditional game. Play it like you would play Settlers of Cataan, Sorry, Roborally, or Decent. Worrying about the game reality is in context really silly. What do hit points represent? Doesn't matter. They are a game resource, and thats really all that matters. Worrying about the larger universe in which the game is taking place is fundamentally pointless.

Hmm. We are quite different people them I guess. Reading those charcter sheets & power descriptions I just couldn't stop imaginging how those things are going in the game reality. And they are so clear and simple that you can drop all thoughts about the system and concentrate on your imagination instead. Well I can.

 

[ferratus]

I have only a funny link to add to this conversation to sum up my feelings on the matter:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1235

As for prior editions of D&D, they had no rules for serious roleplaying other than making Charisma or skill checks. Imagine if they were previewing 2e or 3e, and giving sneak peeks of the rules. Of course there would be more attention paid to the various options your character would have in combat.

As for the more subtle idea that having effective tactical rules and placing the game balance to the point where you can be expected to face most challenges without dying... well I simply don't have patience with that argument.

It is true that in 2e as opposed to 3e you spend more time trying to do things other than combat, but that was because you spent all your time without spells and down to 5 hit points, stuck in a dungeon between monsters you ran away from and monsters you know you couldn't fight. Now this might be okay if you have a DM who simply allows you to use trickery and diplomacy and is nice enough to allow your crazy ideas to succeed, but I don't think most DM's allowed for fiat rules in your favour.

In our 2e nostalgia campaign that we are playing now, we have one or two combats then we wander around the dungeon looking for a safe enough place to rest and trying to amuse the DM enough to let us pull off crazy schemes to stay alive. That's pretty much what I remember the experience being from 2e campaigns back when I was a teenager as well. That's not a roleplaying feature, that's a wargaming application that doesn't know what to do with itself between skirmish battles.

In 3e, especially when you got to higher levels, diplomacy all but vanished when you could pretty much ensure that you could take anything the DM could throw at you because you bought complimentary magical items, had various types of bonuses stacked together, and had maximized your damage output. Judging by what I've seen so far, 4e has more effects, but I don't think it makes the impossible more commonplace.

I also fail to see how 4e discourages roleplaying more than 3e. Quite the opposite, with the new social rules for handling roleplaying, it will allow the player to shine as a roleplayer even when all the DM's characters are as stubborn and uncooperative as he is.

The objection that fighters abilities are too wire-fu, perhaps this will help. 4e just seems to be putting in game mechanics to explain how exactly your fighter has been able to kill storm giants, red dragons, and astral dreadnaughts all these years. You certainly described it using wire-fu in the past in order to sustain your suspension of disbelief. The only thing different is you say "I'm using my Leaping Salmon technique" rather than "I swing my sword at it", and then the DM does a long spiel of exactly how you hit the dragon in something other than the ankle.

Unless you think that fighters should be plain ordinary guys while wizards shoot pure awesomeness out of their fingertips. If that's the case, be prepared for an all wizard party in every one of the games you DM.

As for the healing surges, I think it really comes down to a choice. Ypu have healing surges to keep yourself going until you clean out the dungeon, or you sleep in the monster infested hell hole to recover your healing spells. Which one snaps the suspension of disbelief again?

 

[Derren]

Do you have a scoop on the NPC creation rules, or are you just speculating?

When you read the rest of the critique you will see that building NPCs differently from PCs is also a bad option so it doesn't really matter if the NPC build rules solve this problem because if they do they create a other problem.

Imo 4E sacrifices too much believeability and "realism" for, game speed. 4E makes a nice miniature game but to roleplay in a believable world you have to ignore much more inconsistencies and silliness than in 3E.

 

[brehobit]

I largely agree with the OP. 3e has the same problem IMO.

The issue is that newer versions of D&D have each had more options and powers for the players. From a gamist viewpoint, this is clearly a good thing, and 4e appears to have done a very nice job with it.

The problem is that IME, in Basic, 1st, and 2nd edition, every fighter was pretty much the same and simple to play. So what we did was roleplay. In the 3e games I've played and run, wacky abilities have been made the focus.

So my basic claim is that the more rule-complex and option-complex the game is, the harder it will be to roleplay as the other aspects take over. I know one group that has done a great job with roleplaying 3e. I played in any number of good RP 2e games and ran a few.

The other problem I have is that a few of the abilities don't seem to make in-game sense. The cleric and paladin seem the worst of the lot that way. Sure it's "just magic" but even the roleplaying justifications given above for the paladin's marking ability seem stretched. The Bo9S took me a while to get comfortable with, but the powers largely seemed acceptable. The damage to a baddy, no save, because he attacked someone else seems odd....

It looks like a really good board game thus far....


Mark

 

[FadedC]

This is an unfair and illogical question, I'd suggest. A very large percentage of the abilities we've seen so far in 4E simply did not exist in 3E, or existed in an entirely different fashion.

Well I think the point is just that there is no way to say that there is LESS roleplaying in 4e then 3e when you have at least the same tools you had before. If your saying that D&D in general has less of a roleplaying focus then some other games, then I can't really deny that. But I wouldn't expect a new edition to dramaticaly change that. And many might debate if having "one per social encounter" abilities would necesarily be a good thing from a roleplaying perspective.

But it's also worth noting that we don't know what types of utility powers and feats there are. Assuming the demo is mostly about killing kobolds I wouldn't expect to see the demo characters with social feats or anything, while it appears that most utility powers don't come until later levels.