D&D 4E New 4e Info! GAMA Tradeshow Scoop

[hong]

Sorry. I have a weakness for playing semantic games. It was not my intention to accuse you of anything. Please accept my apologies for any offense given.

No, that's not how I would roleplay a prayer. That's just my snarky reaction to these metagamey attack/buff powers.

Not really but thanks anyway for trying.

 

[pukunui]

[sblock]

[/sblock]

 

[The Little Raven]

I have a friend named Tui, who is actually named after that beer.

 

[pukunui]

I have a friend named Tui, who is actually named after that beer.

Really? That's intriguing! I've met a few women named Tui since I moved here but I think they were all named after the bird rather than the beer ... but you never can tell with these Kiwis!

 

[ThirdWizard]

Giant kitten?

It's obviously coming down in a flying saucer!

 

[Ximenes088]

Precisely.

I don't have a problem with a paladin or cleric calling upon his deity to grant him some divine (magical) power to do a specific thing. What I have a problem with, as I said before, is tying two seemingly unrelated effects to a single cause.

Acolyte: "Why, honored elder, is mighty Bahamut's blessing denied unless we are smiting our foes?"

Priest: "By the terms of the Compact of the Gods, our lord is forbidden from interfering directly with the world, lest his struggles with the other gods destroy what they would claim. Only by the rites and forms we have inherited may we call upon Bahamut's power, and only then is he permitted to aid us."

Acolyte: "But what has this got to do with crushing people's skulls?"

Priest: "You are of the Order of the Scale of Memory, the ritualists dedicated to enacting the holy struggle of our lord against Tiamat at the dawn of the world. As you strike your foes, you partake of the shadow of that great event, and so our lord is permitted to extend you some tiny echo of his power. Other orders call upon their powers in other ways, all ordered and limited by the Compact."

Acolyte: "So I bash someone and somebody else gets protected?"

Priest: "The Canticle of the Lowered Wing reenacts the sacred verses in which our lord buffeted the dark one with his shining wings, sheltering the loyal dragons. As you strike your enemies, so too do you shelter your allies in the echo of your lord."

Acolyte: "But Brother Knute made that happen when he smashed _you_ in the head when he got drunk and thought you were a burglar! How could that be?"

Priest: "Bahamut permits us to use his gifts as we see fit, and understands that we will err from time to time."

Acolyte: "So I can learn the canticle and then punch you to shield this bag of rats I've got?"

Priest: "Bahamut is not stupid, my child."

Acolyte: "I'm not a violent person! I don't want my miracles to have anything to do with hitting people!"

Priest: "Wait for a new book of doctrine to come out, my child, or betake yourself to theologize a solution."

Acolyte: "But I want the Order to change!"

Priest: "Go play GURPS, my child."

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

1) We want to do away with needless symmetry. By the way, we're introducing some new metallic dragons, one of which is the metallics' dumb brute counterpart to the chromatics' white dragon.

Yes, there is a difference between needless symmetry and useful symmetry. If you want a campaign against metallic dragons then it's handy to have one that has a more brute feel to it than a more tactical feel, so that battles against multiple types of dragons don't get boring from being exactly the same.

The symmetry they were talking about is: Good people go to a good plane when they die. That must mean there is an evil plane...and a neutral plane, and a neutral good plane, and so on. Now that we have all these planes, there has to be creatures who live in them all. So now we have angels for the good planes, devils for the LE plane, demons for the CE plane, and so on.

That sort of symmetry adds more monsters and more things to know, but it doesn't make the game any easier to run.

2) We want to make it clear that Hit Points really don't just mean physical damage. While you're here, check out this cool new monsters we came up with -- it's a goblin that impales people on a harpoon and then drags them around!

They wanted to make it clear that hitpoints were as much morale as they were wounds. So, there are non-magical ways to heal people. And there are monsters that actually wound you as well.

This helps the game because you don't have to keep track separately of morale that is dropping as well as each wound you receive then have to figure out which spell or which character can heal you.

3) We want mechanics to make sense from a fluff perspective. We also don't want people to get stuck playing a walking band-aid, and since this new edition is an exception-based ruleset, we're going to create an exception to the fluff-mechanic rule so that players of divine characters can do something cool (attack an enemy) and buff their friends at the same time.

I've never heard anyone ever say that they want mechanics to make sense from a fluff perspective. They wanted there to be at least ONE explanation that would make sense if you were willing to accept it. There are all sorts of explanations that make sense for these powers. However, you can cut them all down if you want to fairly easily and accept that none of them make sense as far as you are concerned. Then, none of them will make sense and you'll be annoyed at them.

These powers can be described as:
-a quick prayer to your god and an attack that have nothing to do with each other, but you do them both on the same round because the rules are built that way. ("Please, heal my ally! Crap, there's an enemy attacking me. *slice*")
-a bargain with your deity to smite the enemies of your god, promote the cause of good, protect the lives of his followers, and so on and in exchange the deity will heal one of their allies or guide his aim.("My ally is in need of healing. I will smite your enemies if you will use your divine powers to help him.")
-a power source to power your buffs.("I hit the enemy with my mace. This causes a ripple of power out of the fabric of the universe as a trickle of his life force slips out. I catch that ripple and direct it using my training towards my ally.")

Still, every one of the designers and developers I've spoken to or seen posts from has said that when they had to make a choice between simulationism and gamism they chose the gamism method. So when faced with a decision like:
"It's no fun for most people we've talked to to sit at the back and be expected to heal every round. They want to use their powers to beat enemies, not to heal or buff their allies. At least not every round. But healing is necessary for the game to work. So, if we make the primary method of healing a Minor ability then clerics can attack and heal in the same round. But we can't make a minor power for every small buff you could possibly give an ally. Especially when we need to restrict the number of powers the cleric has to a small number. Given a choice between giving an ally +2 to hit and attacking for normal damage, all the playtesters chose the damage. But we want the cleric to feel different than a fighter. So, why not combine buffing and attacking as one action so people don't have to choose between them."

And I'm guessing that playtest reports showed people enjoyed that better than the other way. I've said it before and I'll say it again, this edition is less apologetic for combat being a board game. The impression I get is: "It's always pretty much been a board game that you play with a bunch of roleplaying and plot in between the board game. However, a lot of board games play better than this one. They are easier to understand and more fun to play. A lot of people put up with the flaws in the the board game part of D&D because of 'roleplaying' reasons. Things like, 'I'm not supposed to be any good at hitting enemies, I'm a wizard' and 'I'm supposed to bad at killing undead, I'm a rogue'. So, if we are going to make a board game, we should at least make it the best board game we can without being hindered by those things."

 

[pukunui]

LOL. (EDIT: this was in reference to Ximenes' post not Majoru's)

If 4e divine characters can only buff their allies by attacking their enemies, so be it. I'll I can live with it. But that doesn't mean I have to like it ...

As I said before, these attack/buff divine powers aren't the only ones that bother me. The ranger's Split The Tree bothers me as well. Can anyone explain why a ranger should only be able to do that once a day? Once an encounter I can understand (because it could fall under the "your enemies won't fall for that trick again" explanation) but only once a day? This isn't a magical trick. It's a trick gained through physical training ...

EDIT: @ Majoru ... while I appreciate the effort you put into your response, I was really just being snarky and grumpy for the sake of it. I don't have a problem with the symmetry thing or the hit points thing. They were just examples.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Can anyone explain why a ranger should only be able to do that once a day? Once an encounter I can understand (because it could fall under the "your enemies won't fall for that trick again" explanation) but only once a day? This isn't a magical trick. It's a trick gained through physical training ...

Because opportunities for doing so are few and far between.

When you were learning to shoot a bow, you discovered that on occasion, if the two deer broke for cover at just the right angle, you could nail them both, two arrows but one shot. Later, as you became an adventurer, you discovered that the technique worked just as well in combat; the moments when the enemies were moving at just the right angle were few and far between, but when they did, bam! You were ready to take advantage of it.

In other words, some of the powers allow the player to take a tiny bit of narrative control. You're not just deciding "my character is using his power," but also "my character has spotted the opportunity to do so."

Thus, it's a combination of ability and opportunity both. Sometimes you have one, sometimes you have the other, but only rarely--in game terms, once a day, for ease of play--do they both align.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Don't want to delve to much into this, since there have already been massive threads about these mechanics but... Just quickly: Martial Daily represent powers that are extremely hard to pull off and are dependent upon many different circumstances to have a chance of working, as such you the player (not the character) decides when the character manages to pull of such a feat.

Edit: Aww, ninja'ed. I need to start typing faster. But yeah, Mouseferatu explained it quite nicely.