pawsplay's dealbreaker list

Baen said:
Well then what is D&D to you?

A world of medieval chaos, warfare, and poverty. Dragons and ogres lurking in caves. Rogues and delvers in search of treasure. Vampires, robots, aliens, and gods. Magic missile and sleep. Loot. Chainmail armor. Wresting magical weapons from ancient tombs or fearsome villains. Creative ambushes. The perils of darkness, thirst, and starvation. Fighters, clerics, magic-users, and thieves. Elves, dwarves, and halflings. Roadside taverns. Peasants. Pack mules.

And a lot of that is in 4e, too, but the exact mix that is most appealing varies from person to person. To me, it is very important that weaponry bear some basic resemblance to high medieval arms and armor. It is also central to my D&D experience that PCs are decidedly mortal. Magic is present, but not omnipresent, and decidedly limited. I've also grown accustomed to commonalities in the D&D mythology; red and gold dragons, frost giants, carrion crawlers, owl bears, and so forth.

To me, 4e marks
- A transition from simulation and improvisation toward playability and predictability
- A movement away from medieval verisimillitude toward the towns in Final Fantasy
- Movement away from the Tolkien/Moorcock/Leiber/Vance mishmash and toward Action Figure Land, Magic: The Gathering, or whatever you want to call it. Away from fantastic themes and toward a generic aesthetic.
- Away from deadliness and toward zowie, 90s style action RPGs.
- Away from a modular fantasy world and toward set design.
- Away from options that have slowly evolved over several editions and a retreat into zealous niche protection.
- Away from coherent game design and toward publication deadlines.
- Away from an imagined world and toward a resolution-oriented game design.

Where it succeeds, to me 4e seems like kiddie stuff, genre wise. And where it fails, to me, seem like design mistakes plenty of people could point out and correct. While some praise 4e's emphasis on tactics, to me it seems like 4e has pared away general options and areas for for improvisation and given us menus of powers. I once imagined what would happen if you used something like DDM or Star Wars minis as an RPG and simply impoved anything that wasn't combat; 4e almost reminds me of that.

I don't want "powers." I want a battered longsword, a spellbook, and a skittish mule. Call me a grognard or nostalgic or what have you. I stopped playing D&D around 1987 and didn't start up again until 2000, apart from some pickup games here and there. I've played Talislanta and Rolemaster and Runequest and Warhammer Fantasy Role-playing and Palladium and MERP and even Swordbearer. It's not that I'm not open to new things. I'm simply very picky up game designs. I can judge a game based on A), it's design merits, and B) it's appeal to me personally. I have plenty of nits to pick on both counts with 4e.

I have complete respect for the 4e design team, and obviously they know their stuff, but if they were trapped in an elevator with me for an hour you can bet I would have a few things to say about these designs.

I don't want to be told Ranger is just "a build." I don't accept that fantasy superheroics means it's therefore permissible for rogues to jump over people's heads and stab them in the back. I balk at "encounter" based recharges, a concept I have opposed for more than a decade now except for actual story-based game designs.

I've played GURPS and Hero and Silver Age Sentinels and four editions of Gamma World, and I know what's out there.

When I look at what's happened to 4e, I just reject it. It's not bitterness or naievete or resistance to change. It's a perspective I've gained through experience, breadth, creativity, and reading. It's not that I can't imagine anything outside 3.5, it's that I can imagine so much other than 4e. 3e was what brought me back into the fold. Despite its weaknesses, it's a good design, and it fundamentally feels like D&D to me without me putting too much work into it.

Just to run my most recent D&D campaign in 4e, I would have to tear it down to its chassis and rebuild its engine. Through grand coincidence, nearly every change to a race or monster I've heard about what require a retcon in my game. PCs have a "fifteen minute work day" because that's how people realistically work in the field when they have limited flight time or what have you. And sometimes they get pushed back to the trenches and have to resort to backup weapons and crossbows and flasks of fire and occasionally running. Virtually every single-classed character would turn into a multiclassed character in 4e, despite 4e's basic assumption that people will single-class. The 4e team was not kidding when they said you would want to start a new campaign.

But the current campaign will end soon. That's the nature of it. I'm thinking about my next campaign. Will 4e help me run the games I want to run? Will I be able to get the performance out of the game engine I want? Do the paradigms that shape my campaign style work in 4e?

Star Wars Saga is already a tough pill to me, because of the per-encounter Force powers. Because I know, in truth, powers don't work that way, they are being simulated that way for meta-game reasons. It bothers me. It bothers me knowing that other games have vitality points, or simply make powers difficult to use effortlessly. Or that I have half-written notes for a Star Wars conversion for Hero Fifth Edition. Or that it takes minimal conversion to run Star Wars in GURPS, although I'm still not sure if that's a good idea.

I don't want mind-boggling detail, and in fact I reject unnecessary attention to minutiae as a distraction from the game itself. Simulation naturally takes an intuitive sense. And story is something that requires a lot of interpretation, because RPGs do not have plots.

When I need to make an on-the-fly ruling, it does not help me to know what "powers" someone has. They are as specific and unhelpful as non-powered, generic combat options and skill checks. To build action and stories, I need tools that are versatile and that give me a satisfying underpinning of virtual reality.

To me, it is helpful to know how many wounds an orc minion can really take in case it comes up as something more than an exercising in dramatic mook slaughter. If I know how much damage an orc minion does to another orc minion, I can use that orc minion to do anything that makes sense. To me, that is the underpinning of all RPGs, the freedom to do anything that can be conceived. And 4e apparently doesn't feel it's important to know how tough, REALLY, an orc minion it is. That's a big disconnect from my values.
 

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Baen said:
I am sort of surprised you don't mention Rand Al' Thor in the top crowd, yet do mention Harry Potter? But I do agree, and their are actually several more. For instance the Protagonist of the Book entitled Wizard is one, Anasûrimbor Kellhus from the Prince of Nothing series is another. I actually have a hard time coming up with a wizard that does not fight with a sword at some point (actually, several interpretations of merlin have him as a warrior as well.) Their are a few from the last mentioned series, and Zed from the Sword of Truth fits I believe (can't remember, it has been a while, but Aggie does.) So yes, the majority of fantasy seems to have wizards that also use swords. The problem is that a large amount of these characters are completely overpowered to the point where they don't really work as anything put an npc even in a heroic adventure. How can you write a campaign for a party of Anasûrimbor Kellhus types and not have them just win all the time? Rand Al' Thor? He is already epic as of book 4 or so.

I've seen stats for Batman and Superman. Hope springs eternal for me. :)
 

Well, reading all this has taught me one thing I'm quite relieved to learn: I'm not the only one who thinks Drizz't was the worst thing to ever happen to the Ranger class and that it still has not recovered from his gawd-awful influence. To me, Aragorn is and should remain the archetypal Ranger.

That said, I've also always looked at Rangers - at least in 1e - as a class with a rather serious choice to make: to go "heavy" or "light". A heavy Ranger essentially becomes a front-line tank similar to a Fighter but with a different non-combat skill set. A light Ranger is better at tracking, scouting, etc., but fights as an archer and leaves the front-line work to others. 3e as written took that choice away to a great extent by forcing Rangers to burn a feat (that they could ill-afford) on heavy armour use.

Flavour-and-fluff-wise, the only D+D class or class type I can see as reasonably wanting to learn TWF is a Rogue or Assassin using two small weapons (daggers, sais, etc.) or a weapon and a spiked buckler, mainly because shields are big and bulky and get in the way when trying to sneak through small dark spaces. Otherwise, personally my tastes in Fighters runs to lots of armour, a weapon and shield, or a weapon so big it needs two hands to hold. :)

As for what Wizards do when out of spells - at low levels they might as well dive in and join the fight, as their fighting is almost as good as anyone else's anyway and Mage Armour isn't bad for temporary protection. At mid-to-higher levels the chances are good they've picked up one or more items useful in combat on a repeatable basis (either damage-dealing or movement/action hampering) to augment their spells, and thus they don't need to fight...as much. That, and it's a simple fact of life (that 4e seems hell-bent on ignoring) that not everybody is going to be able to "do something" 100% of the time.

Lanefan
 

One other quick note: unlike some here, I've played against and DM'ed Frost Giants on numerous occasions...probably because both I and our other usual DM like to use Norse settings and situations in our games, and opponents just don't get any more Norse than a Frostie. :)

Lanefan
 

I can actually agree with you on quite a few points, but there are a few I just don't see
- A transition from simulation and improvisation toward playability and predictability
- Movement away from the Tolkien/Moorcock/Leiber/Vance mishmash and toward Action Figure Land, Magic: The Gathering, or whatever you want to call it. Away from fantastic themes and toward a generic aesthetic.
- Away from a modular fantasy world and toward set design.
- Away from coherent game design and toward publication deadlines.
- Away from an imagined world and toward a resolution-oriented game design.
Yes, 4th has moved things more towards a cinematic design, although I wouldn't say quite final fantasy esque. The truth is though that it allows for a lot more built in improvisation then any edition before it. Skill challenges for example, are one of the most amazing things I have seen for out of combat scenarios. I can also see to an extent the move from simulation(although the monsters in 4th seem a lot more real to me then in 3rd.) to playability, but not in any way to predictability. The players will have a lot more options at hand then in 3rd, and with the increased importance of terrain I imagine encounters will be a lot more interesting and less mundane then they were in 3rd (not that they were boring, just that every fight with one monster was pretty much the same as the previous time. Terrain didn't do much to effect anyone but dragons or the occasional tactically placed funnel.)

I can't speak for the others, but regardless of the steady move away from a Tolkien theme it seems we will finally be able to truly model the grandeur and majesty of LOTR from the books. On coherent game design, 3rd was far more rushed then 4th, and they have spent a far longer time going over and checking things then they did for it as well. I really can't see 3.x as a coherent system by any definition.

All the other points I quoted are completely separate from an edition. Regardless of the fluff in the books (dwarfs being the slaves of giants) their is NO reason to play them that way. 4th edition in no way is set campaign, or is limiting on the imagination. I actually see it as the exact opposite.

Also from my understanding 4e supports on the spot ruling a lot more then 3rd did, but then that is from the designers mouth.

On versatility, I will point once again to skill challenges. It is also a lot easier to make new encounters because of the way they constructed the monsters this time around. They are also SIGNIFICANTLY easier to modify and change.

I can sort of understand your problem with minions, and with powers as well. I do not mean to project anything on you that is basely false, but this is the best inkling I can gather from your posts. Your problem with 4th edition seems to stem from a design viewpoint. 4th edition is not designed to just be a slash and go rpg. It's design seems to go back to the roots of heroic fantasy, and be based around storytelling and roleplaying. Once again the skill changes. Monsters that fight in ways that makes sense. However the key things are the powers, the minions, and the hp system. HP is now in very little way representative of how many hits a player can really take. They are a representation of an individuals importance to the plot, the story line. This is why solo monsters are so strong, and minions take one hit to kill. Solo monsters are culminations of adventures, minions are just fodder. This is not saying you can't have a fun encounter with minions, the DDXP stuff was almost entirely minions and no one noticed, and most people had a lot of fun. On how much they can take really, that is left entirely up to the dm now. Hitpoints, now connected with the plot, allows the controller of the plot even more freedom with them. On powers, as a person who has practiced combat you would know. Everyone has certain moves that they tend to fall on, since they work. Combat tends to turn into patters, fighters stick with what works. That is to large extent what these powers are about. Their are standard moves you can pull off easily (at wills) things that only come up with a good opportunity (encounter) and things that you rarely take advantage of (dailies.) Now I think of D&D as sort of an interactive story. When I think of a fourth edition encounter I see it less as a video game type brawl where everyone chooses their moves in a metagame fashion then an intense battle where the players get to dictate to a certain extent what happens in the story's cinematic fight scenes. Chop through some orc minions, land a huge blow on the boss. When you think of it as a story, it makes a lot of sense, at least to me.

The rest of your points are stuff I honestly can't argue with, we have simple differences of opinion. The only reason I am arguing is I want to first make sure I am not missing something, and make neither of us have misconceptions about the limitations of the new system. This is not an insult or anything, both of us have our biases. I am what most would call a 4e fanboi, hardcorz. I have been blinded by quite a few things on 4th. You have a far more in-depth experience with D&D and other tabletop rpgs then I do, since this edition is taking an entirely new direction (it really is ) they have changed a lot of things you liked. I guess I just want to isolate what is really different, what doesn't make sense, and whether the game is good. Lots of it comes down to opinion, which is fine by me, but whatever truth whether good or bad we can garnish from it is good.
 

pawsplay said:
Every time this comes up, I can come up with more wizards who fight than ones who don't.

Wizards who fight: Gandalf, Grey Mouser, Galen (from Dragonslayer), Harry Potter, Darth Vader, Belgarion, Richard Cypher, Rod Gallowglass, Elminster.

You forgot Musashi.
 

Fighter may be a misnomer, but any class name is going to grab the imagination in ways that probably don't all apply to a given character. A Rogue that always does exactly and only what and how a Rogue is supposed to do is cookie-cutter, predictable and boring. A lot of people play this way and don't seem to mind...if you don't mind playing a stereotype, you probably shouldn't mind your class name.
Musashi by 4E's definition is a Ranger, and from the looks of it much more of a 4E Ranger than a 3E Fighter that take twf feats.

Just gots to learn to take the titles of the classes with a grain of salt.

I have to live with Warlord, after all....
 

The funny thing is the minion concept is the first time D&D has EVER modelled satisfactorily the classic LotR scene where Aragorn takes on a horde...

You can't get more Tolkein than that and yet D&D has always previously had a problem modelling this...
 

Just to add my 2cp...

I like the minion rules. I don't think I want to go into a fight against nothing but 50 minions, but I do like the idea and how it would work when the big bad sends his final wave of grunts against the PCs in hopes of getting a couple of spells off before entering the fray himself...

Or my having the PCs have to fight their way through the grunts to get to the Big Bad before he completes the ritual...

Or to model that big fight at the castle gates where in 3.X you would get bogged down just to give the PCs a challenge while now you can have the gates actually be guarded by more than the main bodyguard (who actually has levels) which is whom the fight is actually all about.

Frost Giants - There are more than enough giants in the first book and the Frost is likely to be easily modeled (from the Fire Giant). I'm sure they have some new stuff that they think warrants a prime release (if they are correct remains to be seen) so something had to go. Frostie isn't the first critter I think of when I think of D&D Monsters; I doubt it'd even be in the top ten.

I've fought more far, far more Fire Giants in my time gaming than I have Frost Giants.

TWF - I hope those outside of the ranger class can pick this up easily (without multiclassing). Using 3.X terms: Having a workable Fighter built Martial Artist is higher on my priority list (like how WotC's Star Wars martial arts feats were set up). I'll be sad if the Ranger is the only way to get since I'd be afraid it would limit ideas. It doesn't sound it would be AS limited as if 3.X rangers only got TWF, but this remains to be seen.
 

AllisterH said:
The funny thing is the minion concept is the first time D&D has EVER modelled satisfactorily the classic LotR scene where Aragorn takes on a horde...

You can't get more Tolkein than that and yet D&D has always previously had a problem modelling this...

The interesting part is the high attack bonus from minions. That makes them dangerous, since they won't be requiring natural 20s like 3.5 "minions", low level creatures being one-shot by higher level characters.
 

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