D&D 4E Revisiting an old question: 4E Liker - anything you worry about?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Quite some time ago, I created a thread asking what 4E optimists did worry about.
4E Liker - anything you worry about?
So, which of your fears have come true? Which haven't? Anything unexpected happen?


I'll start with my original fears.

Often enough, we read criticism on 4E from people that mostly dislike it.
It often comes down to the same points repeated, and us 4E likers have to jump in and defend what we like (or so we believe ).

But this thread is a chance for those that like most aspects of 4E to describe the stuff they still worry about.
Changes going to far? Changes going not far enough? Weaknesses in the design assumptions? Drawbacks we'd prefer to avoid?

Here are my concerns:
- Fear: Ease of play:
I love the idea of every class getting powers and resources to manage. It was one of the strengths of Iron Heroes, in my opinion. But with that said:
What if it gets too difficult for beginners? It was said that the easiest class to play was usually something like the Fighter - no resources to manage besides hit points, and you only have to find a way to get close to your enemy and hit him hard. It's really simple. Yes, it can get boring over time, but we're talking about a D&D/RPG beginner here.

Fear didn't come true, as far as I have seen. It seems easy to get in, despite having a higher complexity in the resource management and decision-making process.

- Fear: Miniatures/Combat Grid focus:
I don't think 4E is worse then 3E in this regard. But that doesn't mean it would have been nice to get more options to ignore the grid. With area effects and flanking in the game, using a battle map makes things a lot easier. But, again from a beginners perspective, this forces one to use a visual representation. Maybe graph paper and improvised tokens are enough, but it still feels like a barrier to entry.

It's as "bad" as I feared. The combat grid part of the game is a lot of fun, but it's not that I didn't expect that. But I still see this as a barrier to entry. If I consider creating a new or secondary group, I would have problems as long as I don't have the space and the material for a combat mat.

- Fear: Encounter power "spamming":
People will use their encounter powers as often and as much as possible. If the number of encounter powers are limited, this will lead to repetition. Or if they are not limited enough, every attack/action will use an per encounter power, and they lose their feel of "specialness".
Not that Charge/FullAttack/FullAttack wasn't repetitive or lacked specialness, either, but the improvement might not e as big as I could hope for.

The automatic retraining rules take care of that. I didn't foresee this, but it works great for me.

- Fear: Daily powers to powerful/important:
Daily powers might be so powerful that, after some time of game experience, people will return to the 3E 15 minute adventuring day. It's an escalating effect: People learn that any hard encounter can be turned into a cakewalk by novaing. So adventure designers put even harder encounters in the game. Everyone novas all the time, and we're back to square 3.x.

I would have expected spells with damage values like 1d6 damage per level. That didn't happen. Daily powers are powerful (especially all those stances, zones and conjurations stick out), but you want to be careful with them. Especially those powers that hit primarily one target will often be spared for a fight against Elites or Solos, and you don't want to "waste" them on regular monsters.

- General: Hit Points as an encounter resource:
It was already true for the most part in 3.x, thanks to Wands of Cure Light Wounds. Healing Surges might actually get us back closer to HP being a per day resource, but still, the rules seem to assume that getting to 0 hp during a combat is a common occurrence. (and not just for the enemy)
But I wonder if the whole thing shouldn't be changed even more radically. Throw away scaling hit points / HD. Throw away escalating damage. Instead of ablative hit points, use a different resource for general "nastiness protection", like "Drama Points" or "Possibilities". Spend a drama point to reduce your damage, reroll your attack or saving throw and stuff like that. A more narrative approach to modeling damage...

Healing surges are a brilliant way to eat your cake and have it, too, in my opinion. Yes, healing is an encounter resource, but it's also a daily resource. The trick was simply limiting how much you can heal by the healing surges (daily resource) and the "triggers" to use the healing surge (encounter resources). Very neat.

- Fear: Irrational fear:
What if everything that looks like something I like doesn't work that great in actual play?!

So far, I am happy with the game.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Good question! What were my fears back then?

Minor fear -tracking conditions, marks etc in combat will prove a pain in the neck.

Major fear - 4e ends up being a sore spot for lots of people on enworld and a degree of aggro persists, making the lives of mods and admins much less fun than we would like

Minor fear - yes, I'm finding it a pain in the neck to track various conditions, marks, circumstantial bonuses granted by powers for one round and so forth.

Major fear - happily things are starting to quiet down a little bit, and (generally speaking) those happy with 4e are having fun in the 4e forums, those happy with 3e are having fun in the 3e forums and everyone is having fun in other bits of the site.

I think my few fears originally spoke of my cautious optimism at the time, and several things have turned out less attractive than I originally hoped, but I'll not go in that here

Cheers

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

*snip*

Thanks for the reply!

On a tangent note - I didn't notice that this thread would land in the D&D 4E Rules forum - maybe it should be moved to the General RPG discussion? It is not directly about rules questions.

 

[Starfox]

Minor fear - old-time wizard players would feel wimpy in 4.0 - confirmed

Major fear - all the backtalk makes some people VERY reluctant to even try 4E - Confirmed

 

[Bond James Bond]

Healing surges are a brilliant way to eat your cake and have it, too, in my opinion. Yes, healing is an encounter resource, but it's also a daily resource. The trick was simply limiting how much you can heal by the healing surges (daily resource) and the "triggers" to use the healing surge (encounter resources). Very neat.

The way healing surges work out was one of my major fears in 4e as well - I couldn`t at first get used to the idea of everyone being able to "selfheal". However, it all worked out really good, as you say.

Another fear of mine was the lack of different build options, with the old multiclass system gone.

That turned out to be true so far, but`ll guess I have to wait until all the class books have come out.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Mine fears were fairly generic:

Fear: Complexity! What I've seen doesn't look as much simpler as I hoped, especially tracking status effect and bonuses.

I think this one was born out. 4e is simpler, yes, but I would have liked them to have gone a bit further.

Fear: Tedium! "I hit" has been the standard for 1st level fighters; with the slow increase in powers known, for how many levels will 4th ed characters have only a couple of combat options?

Some people have complained about this, but I haven't found it much of a problem myself. Perhaps starting with an extra encounter power would have been nice.

Fear: The Unknown! What horrors lurk in as-yet-unrevealed sections of the rules? Only The Designer knows...

Let's see, I posted that on the 9th of March. The major rule section we found out about after that that I can recall were the multiclassing rules. Paragon multiclassing is still a bit of a disappointment, but the base feat system is I think sound.

 

[jensun]

Minor fear - yes, I'm finding it a pain in the neck to track various conditions, marks, circumstantial bonuses granted by powers for one round and so forth.

We find using poker chips for marks, quarry etc works well. Tracking conditions has been a bit of a pain but we are about to start using different coloured tiddly winks.

 

[Belphanior]

Fear: Spamming leads to a rote pattern. Encounter, best at will, best at will, best at will. Daily if it starts to take too long and then rest immediately afterwards.

Not at all. For most classes there's no such thing as an at-will that's always the best choice. The battlefield is dynamic enough to make the two (or three) at-wills you've got a real meaningful choice.

Encounter powers are usually not unleashed right away either, as they're more useful if you set them up right or wait to get better bonuses to hit a little later on. Correct strategy and teamwork is key.

Fear: No (good) support for cohorts/followers. I want my sidekicks. I want my paragon level fighter to build a keep and attract followers.

As of yet this isn't implemented. But I've found myself caring less about this issue lately. You don't need a chart to build a castle and pay people into becoming your servants. Dedicated sidekicks and cohorts a little trickier to handle, but I've found myself quite unconcerned about the whole thing for some reason.

Fear: After a while every power starts to feel like every other power. Roll, hit, apply damage and standardized status effect. Nothing to break the mold and feel unique.

On paper it reads like this should be true, but in practice I haven't seen it. There's enough unusual effects going around, especially in the newer materials, and monster abilities interact sometimes in funky ways with powers (so far without causing a "fatal error"). The way powers work means they create interesting situations, and the manage to do that with a minimum of work. It's just efficient.

Fear: Saving throws working out that a 1st level basketweaver has a 55% to shrug off a condition caused by a 30th level mage.

There's numerous effects to modify saving throws for those who want it. And really, a 30th level mage can just close the book and put away the dice and take over the DM hat for a few minutes while he narrates how the peasants are no match for him. They're powerless before him anyway. Heck, he could resolve it as a skill challenge using Arcana and do it legit.

 

[eamon]

Fear: The similarity of mechanics would give all classes the same feel, with as a side effect making the game feel less open and flexible.

Status: Ambivalent. I'm happy to say the class features are quite distinctive, but I'm less happy with powers. Powers seem to feel less varied than 3.5 spells or similar rules, and you get less of them. Feats may be less powerful, but aren't all that different in essence. Counter-intuitively skills seem to be more flexible - although you seemingly get a lot less flexibility, you effectively seem to get more, since it's less of a "mega-optimized vs. hopeless".

Outside of combat, however, classes have largely lost their distinctiveness. It's a real shame out-of-combat rules are so slim. In 3.5 the "toolbox" spellcasters may have had a few problematic tricks up their sleeve, but in 4e, they simply removed even non-problematic spells completely, with the minor exception of the wizard's cantrips, or added prohibitive costs (in the form of time and resource consuming rituals). Fey step and swordbond are pretty cool - but I wish this kind of thing was more the norm and less the exception.

 

[Wormwood]

My old post

1: High-level play may remain complicated and unfun as 3e

2: Multiclassing may allow for inherently broken combinations. I'd rather see no multiclassing in that case.

3: They won't go far enough in removing legacy elements which contribute to unfun.

4: The grid is here to stay---making wife's departure from D&D effectively permanent. Regardless, I'm willing to accept the (godforsaken) battle grid *if* combat is fast and fun for all involved.

5 months later:

1. Fear Unfounded. The limited high-level play I've done has been fluid and fun. As a DM, it's a godsend in comparison to interminable 3.5 high-level combat.

2. Fear Unfounded. Multiclassing has been reigned in.

3. Fear Unfounded. The 4e team did an good job scraping accumulated barnacles off the system.

4. Fear Semi-Confirmed. Grid-based play is more hardwired into the system than ever. That said, it is faster and more engaging than 3.5 ever was---on either side of the screen. So while the grid is here to stay, I no longer mind it.