Pleased to see greater exposure of the design

[Plane Sailing]

I remember lots of 3e discussions (especially in the early days of 3e) which revolved around the issue of "I wish we knew what the underlying design was here". Some things it was easy to reverse engineer the design principles - e.g. the relationship between damage die, threat range and crit multiplier between simple, martial and exotic weapons. Other things it was much less easy, although various WotC designers assured us that they had their internal design documents which spelled things out somewhat.

We wanted more clarity.

So, with 4e it seems we are getting it, and I'm really glad.

For instance, the 'party roles' of defender, controller, striker and leader could have been kept invisible to us, and just used as an internal "design language" to help the designers come up with new classes and stuff. A decision could easily have been made to just release the new and upgraded classes without it, but they've decided to lift the curtain and show us something fundamental about how they are designing classes now - and I appreciate it.

Another example is the "monster roles". The 3e DMG did have a paragraph or so which said some monsters have a roll such as critter, dragon, fiend, terror, tough etc - but that was never really carried though to the monster descriptions. Looking at a monster, did you know what it really should be? We found out a while after release that dragons were deliberately 'under-CRed' to make them nasty foes for their level. Now in comparison to that it seems that brute, minion, skirmisher, elite and solitary monsters (etc) are being built in from scratch and easily visible in the monster description. (I realise I've probably mixed two axis together there - one is the minion-normal-elite-solitary axis and the other is the brute-skirmisher-controller-whatever axis).

I'm sure that other things are going to become evident too, and I'm really pleased to see it. Understanding the underlying design principles has been a desire throughout 3e, and to see it being brought to the fore in 4e is wonderful.

The unfortunate side effect is that it reveals additional information for some people to fret about, whether in nomenclature or principles, but I hope that WotC won't let that dissuade them from continuing in this practice.

Cheers

 

[Irda Ranger]

I'm sure that other things are going to become evident too, and I'm really pleased to see it. Understanding the underlying design principles has been a desire throughout 3e, and to see it being brought to the fore in 4e is wonderful.

Me too. For anyone who likes to tinker with the rules, or make homebrew worlds, it's invaluable stuff.

The unfortunate side effect is that it reveals additional information for some people to fret about, whether in nomenclature or principles, but I hope that WotC won't let that dissuade them from continuing in this practice.

Informed debate is 10x better than uninformed speculative debate. Questioning assumptions is also good. I think it's great that we have these conceptual, "big picture" design articles and meta-groupings (like Roles); because then we get to ask questions like "Are the four Roles really all there are? Are we missing anything? Do we really need a Leader? Etc."

But yes, Debate can be "lively", and I echo your hope that WotC doesn't decide that it's too lively and harmful to their business strategy/brand. I hope they really meant what they said in the R&C Intro (that the online debates and forums were a wellspring of ideas on how to improve 3.5E); because if they really mean it and believe that they'll know that informing and shaping that debate will only result in even better feedback in the future, driving the game to every greater heights (of both fun and business success).

 

[Brown Jenkin]

For instance, the 'party roles' of defender, controller, striker and leader could have been kept invisible to us, and just used as an internal "design language" to help the designers come up with new classes and stuff. A decision could easily have been made to just release the new and upgraded classes without it, but they've decided to lift the curtain and show us something fundamental about how they are designing classes now - and I appreciate it.

I am not too thrilled with this bit actually. I would have preferred it remain hidden since now I wonder why we even have old fashioned classes. If this is the design philosophy why not take it to the next step and have these as the four base classes with talent trees for Martial, arcane, and divine.

 

[Emirikol]

It's been fun discussing theory based on the tidbits released. Some people take this waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too seriously, and it's been fun ragging on them

The pre-discussion now will help some of the really uptight people get over their fears or stubborness. There is a feeling of "helplessness" however when you see something happening and you know that there's no chance that discussing it will result in any change to the system whatsoever..in which case, hopefully it's not hard to house rule

jh

 

[NewfieDave]

If this is the design philosophy why not take it to the next step and have these as the four base classes with talent trees for Martial, arcane, and divine.

Classes are a sacred cow, and they also help new players conjure an image of their character. A new player might be confused by the term Arcane Leader. "What am I, a Wizard King?"

I do agree that removing classes might produce a better system for the established D&Ders, but I'm confident the class system will work fine in 4e.

 

[Scribble]

I'm wonderign if part of the decision was in an attempt to sort of fend off the 3e like flood of poorly designed 3rd party products?

I think a lot of that could have been presented had the publishers been presented with the "proper" design systems. Sure, you could say that it's not their respoinsability to make sure other companies get it right, but if it's being used as a way to promote their product... it kind of is...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't have much too add - I also really like it.