Playtesting vs a .5 Edition

[Piratecat]

Man, I hate to be compelled to say it, but... holy murgatory, that's just ridiculous. It's the downright craziest thing I've seen written about 4E. "This jump is not that big"?

As a 3e playtester, I actually agree that this jump is significantly smaller than the move from 2e to 3e.

I've been thinking about busting out my old 3e playtesting packet and seeing what was there. If I do, it'll be fun to post about it.

 

[The_Baldman]

As a 3e playtester, I actually agree that this jump is significantly smaller than the move from 2e to 3e.

I've been thinking about busting out my old 3e playtesting packet and seeing what was there. If I do, it'll be fun to post about it.

Ya I was thinking of doing the same. It's just fun to look over now and then and see what was different back then as to compared to now. I think I have 3 different versions of it and part of a 4th that went to triads to start writing adventures 6 months out from release.

Dave

 

[hexgrid]

I think disagreement over how big a change 4e is comes from looking at the same issue from different angles.

Those who see less change are looking only at the underlying concepts of the system- the things that generally stay the same in every d20 game.

Those who see more change are looking at the specific instances of these concepts, or on subsystems built on top of them- the things that do change from one d20 game to another.

 

[Vigilance]

I take it that's what you meant when you posted this before?

Heh, that's funny, I totally forgot I had already posted to this thread.

Seems to me if you are a company saying there will be no .5 editions that you'd want to playtest the new edition MORE than the last one before letting the fans hit it.

I think this edition is not as much of a radical change from 3.5 as 3e was from 2e.

Also, they've already worked out a lot of the concepts here in books like BO9S and MMV.

In short, I think they started this playtest from a much stronger position than they did with 3e, leading me to believe they've learned some lessons.

 

[JoeGKushner]

And yet despite working out various mechanics in 3e as you point out, the game is not designed to be backwards compatible. It's too hard according to them no? They're not going to do it. The baseline assumption is don't bother with direct conversions.

And by their own admission, it's playtested less than 3e was.

Glad you're a glass is half full type of guy but some of the stuff they post by their own admission makes me think not only is the glass half empty (as another poster's sign notes) but it's poisoned!

 

[Raloc]

Even though a lot of stuff that's going into 4e is already in some 3.5e stuff, I think the reason it's much different is because it's implemented as a system wide change. From the way some of the posts about playtesting sound, it seems entirely likely to me that they'll release a 4.5e somewhat down the line, which won't really be backwards compatible with 4e (similar to 3e to 3.5e, where it's "sort of" backwards compatible, but in reality it's a mountain of work to port anything really significant in number of monsters/rules etc.). I really think it's unfortunate too, because buying a bunch of 4e stuff seems like a worse proposition for it.

 

[Delta]

As a 3e playtester, I actually agree that this jump is significantly smaller than the move from 2e to 3e.

I've been thinking about busting out my old 3e playtesting packet and seeing what was there. If I do, it'll be fun to post about it.

We'll definitely have to agree to disagree. The changes to the 4E spell and magic system alone outweighs anything I saw for changes in the entire progression from 1E -> 2E -> 3E.

 

[rjdafoe]

And yet despite working out various mechanics in 3e as you point out, the game is not designed to be backwards compatible. It's too hard according to them no? They're not going to do it. The baseline assumption is don't bother with direct conversions.

I think people are taking this too literal. What I have read is that if you have a 10th level elf fighter, it is better if you make a 10th level elf fighter with the new rules (that is level him up) using the same character background. To me, that is just is better than trying to convert your character from the old system. Just remake him with the new rules! What is going to be hard, is stuff that is not in the new rules from any of the splat books. That is ALWAYS going to be hard.

And by their own admission, it's playtested less than 3e was.

I think that is not a fair assessment at all. Star Wars was playtested. Tome of Battle was playtested. Both are in use right now.

Look at my sig. The quote is from someone (who I cannot find right now) at WOTC

 

[Dragon Snack]

SWSE is a different game though. When you have iconic weapons available to everyone (blasters) that do 3d6 or 3d8, you need the triple HPs at first level. Unless swords now do 3d6 or 3d8, which would make my eyes bleed...

And we found some pretty big loopholes in SWSE even though that game only lasted 4 sessions (Persuasion/Intimidate, I'm looking at you).

Does anyone have an actual link to a quote that says "There will be no 4.5"? I asked before and nobody came up with one. I remember them saying something like that at Gen Con, but if you actually parsed the wording ("You won't see a 4.5 in 3 years like happened with 3.0") it left room for 4.5 (after 3 years, of course).

Sure, they can always "revise" the game without calling it 4.5, but like Skills and Powers - if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...

 

[Scribble]

Aside from the barbarian's rage, per-encounter abilities are not a part of core 3.5. And even rage is more like "X/day" -- when it lasts the duration of an encounter, as it nearly always does, defining it as "per encounter" is meaningless. The new material with per-encounter abilities for fighters and at-will abilities for wizards were SUCH a major change to D&D's game balance principles that I consider late 3.5 really a "3.75."

A game that includes Bo9S, Complete Arcane (the warlock), Complete Mage, Complete Champion, and FCII (the hellreaver) is a very different game in terms of resource management than one using core 3.5. It seems to me that the change from "core 3.5" to "3.75" is greater than the change from 3.0 to 3.5.

What difference does it make if they were core or not? The only thing I can see that effecting is the flow and maybe the "feel" of how the game plays. Aside from that, the systems themselves are just a numbers game. Math is math. The inherent system itself is not being changed, just fine tuned.

Also, so what if per encounter abilities didn't exist before? Per/day or encounter is an abstract concept. In a game, we don't really sit around for an entire day while our in game characters rest up... You simply wait for the DM to say, ok you guys are rested.

Is that really any different then a per encounter idea? All the per encounter is lacking is the DM saying, ok you guys rest for the night.