Saving throws are a coin toss?

[Incenjucar]

You want to tack on another system.. so that the wizard can do everything? Yeah. Wrong edition.

That said, it's entirely possible that they'll have some sort of self-scaling save system. We don't have a clue what happens beyond level 1 yet.

 

[hong]

Actually, what's the bet there'll be charm/dominate/sleep spells with the Sustain Minor descriptor?

 

[delericho]

Phrases like 'sheer stupidity' are getting thrown around a lot in this forum. Is it not more likely that if it is always 55% (and I don't know whether it is or not any better than you do), that there is a jolly good reason for it?

I suspect the "jolly good reason" is that it's clear and simple. I'm expecting to find that modifiers to saving throws are vanishingly rare in 4e, and probably easy to remember themselves - the more modifiers to this roll, the more complex it becomes. (That'll also be why it's a 10+ for success, not 11+; it's easier to remember.)

Personally, I don't like this mechanic. I think I would probably have gone with a duration based on the amount by which the attack roll exceeded the defense (say, for example, a duration of 1 round per 5 points of difference, minimum 1). However, that would definately be a more complex mechanic, especially if the Wizard casts sleep on a bunch of Kobolds, and has to make an attack roll against each (as the quickstart rules seemed to indicate).

 

[Li Shenron]

One thing that bugs me: 10+ is not a 50/50 chance, it's a 55% chance to break the effect. They could have said 11+ and actually had a 50/50 chance, but no. :\

11 is needlessly complicated, the game needs to be simple

 

[delericho]

I actually think I've got a pretty good handle on it. I understand that the "save" mechanic is the way of figuring durations in 4E. The problem I have is that, from what I understand, this is the standard way of dealing with durations of debilitating spells in 4E.

It's an outgrowth of the change to hold person in the 3.5e revision, where you now get a save every round. That was quite a good change, except that it was applied only to that one spell, and not throughout the system.

However, in 4e you have defenses, not saves, so they don't have a readily available way to say "make a save every round". They would need to have the Wizard make a new attack roll every round (potentially for each target), or would have to keep the save modifiers as well as the defense total, so one could make a save. (That might not be bad, actually.)

The other alternative I can see is just assigning these spells a random duration, as was suggested up-thread. But then, that's no better than using a coin flip each round - you're just trading one set of probabilities for another, with the difference that now the incapacitated PC's player doesn't get the illusion that there's something he can do about his character's predicament.

 

[Felon]

That he can slit four thousand throats in a single night, of course! (I know it's supposed to be a Hun or Mongol quote originally, but the Klingons co-opted it the same way they co-opted Shakespeare, the thieving bastards...)

I think the goal of 4e is to remove all "action-removing effects" a la hold person's nerfing in 3.5, and this is one example that I really don't know if you'll ever see altered even in "greater sleep" or whatever. They want to give the critter or PC at the very least one die roll to do in a round, to end the effect if nothing else. At the very least, a party that's ready for it can make great use of this, assuming there's still a delay type action in the round:

count 20: the rogue delays
count 18: the ranger delays
count 15: the wizard casts sleep; two enemies go down.
count 14: the rogue and ranger pop the heck out of two sleeping enemies, and maybe get lucky enough to kill them. If they're really lucky, they were within 5 feet and coup de grace them! Of course, this assumes coup de graces work similarly...

And that they're evil, of course....whoops, don't wanna restart that topic right now.

I just think there's a point where you blew a save and now you're not going to get another one for a minute. If they want to keep the player in the action, then make a rule for a character getting another save if he's helped by another character.

 

[hong]

Actually, what's the bet there'll be charm/dominate/sleep spells with the Sustain Minor descriptor?

WHY??? WHY DOES NOONE LISTEN TO ME??/?

 

[small pumpkin man]

That's a fair point on it's own merit, although I'd expect a level 30 wizard has more interesting options than playing losing odds at putting level 30 monsters to sleep. It still has nothing to do with 3.5E, though. Regardless of how the 3.5E sleep spell works the 4E sleep spell still has the odds against it of actually putting anything to sleep. I made the comment more as an observation than as a criticism, yet the tired old "But in 3.5E..." routine was brought into it anyway.

yeah, sorry, I know it annoys people, I just keep forgetting to not bring it up .

Edit: Just to add, I think it's entirely possible that the spell as written is balanced within 4E as it has other things going for it to even out the odds so long as the caster can make sure he catches plenty of targets in the AoE. However, the smaller the number of targets caught in the AoE the more random the impact of the spell becomes as the 45-55 split approaches pretty close to 50-50 odds. That will probably be a common routine when considering the use of AoE powers in 4E as it looks like it will be in the casters best interest more than ever to get as many targets into their AoE as possible.

Yeah, it does seem like you wanna keep those area effect dailys around untill you can hit a lot of people. (and people said resource management was going out the window, pff)

I think another part of the problem is that the mechanic does feel kinda forced with sleep, it works far better for "you got hit by a fireball, you're on fire until you save" or "you've been hit by a bright light, your blinded until you save", they feel quite natural, whereas the whole "fall unconscious if you fail your first save" feels a tad forced, not to mention it seems far better as an area effect move debuff with no defense than something which you use to actually put people asleep.

*Incapacitate a gate guard without killing him so that he can't open the gate to allow more enemies in while you make good your escape.
*Incapacitate or slow a fleeing NPC who leaves a ton of thugs to block you so you can catch him after dealing with the thugs.
*Kidnap the feisty damsel who doesn't know what kind of danger she's in without beating her her senseless.
*Blind or otherwise incapacitate a lookout while entering stealthily into a fortress.
*Charm a guard into opening a complex series of locks or doors.

Otiluke's resilient sphere works for almost all of those (if you make the attack roll, it lasts until they get through the 100 hp, not sure how long that would take at that level.) I would expect some "utility" spells to work for others, remember, we haven't really seen many low level utility abilities (or many utility abilities at all) although we know they're there. Or they could be overcome with the skills all characters have, including wizards. Or they could be done with some kind of non-lethal damage.

I do see your point, but I do think the previous request of "lets see the rest of the game" fits well here.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I like the new sleep.

I like the fact that is guaranteed to have some effect on all the targets you hit (slowing them for at least a round).

I like the thematic feel that they all get slowed and some of them throw it off, some of them fall asleep etc.

I like the fact that there isn't a number of targets or HD limit, so you can affect as many targets as you catch in the burst.

And In the game I ran last night, one of the hobgoblin archers fell asleep and stayed asleep for 5 rounds. Pretty slim chance if you'd wanted to bet on it, but each round his 45% of staying asleep came up.

Cheers

 

[hong]

And In the game I ran last night, one of the hobgoblin archers fell asleep and stayed asleep for 5 rounds. Pretty slim chance if you'd wanted to bet on it, but each round his 45% of staying asleep came up.

Did the PCs use their pee-pees on him?