Speculation about "the feelz" of D&D 4th Edition

[Neonchameleon]

The concern is more that no one be punished for their preference, IMHO.

Indeed. Which is why although I'd never play a slayer I'm delighted to see them. It gives the players who were historically being punished by being forced to take tactically rich characters that used a paradigm they didn't like choices that didn't punish them.

It'd've taken a little more than the stupid feat, but, yeah. The simple fighter rubric could always have been handled with a pre-build. Completely choiceless to make such a character (just like a classic fighter). If you ever got bored, you could look up the real fighter and start making choices.

No it couldn't have been handled with a pre-build. A pre-build does absolutely nothing to keep the decision tree small during play. A Slayer's biggest choice is who to hit. Other than that it's "Do I keep or switch stances" and "do I use my Power Strike or do I save it?" All three are easy choices. A classic fighter needs to simultaneously pick their target out of however many, multiplying the options by (two at will powers plus however may remaining encounter and daily powers) and they need to decide this all at the same time. This leads to analysis paralysis among players prone to it far more than the slayer tree does.

And when you talk about "the real fighter" and only offering them a pre-build based entirely on choices you could have picked as options for your fighter if you couldn't find better ones you are outright saying that the choice should be a lesser one - i.e. punishing people for their preferences and saying that the only fun should be your fun.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You keep citing the need for an option for people that don't want to wade through powers, ignoring that allowing slayer players to use regular encounter powers instead of power attack would not interfere with that.

No. I'm saying that what you are asking for here is almost impossible to balance. I am saying that thanks to that silly feat the DPR optimisers used to play Essentials classes with powers like Rain of Blows because it used the static damage boosts from the Slayer with a multiattack power that was never designed to have the Slayer static damage.

Edit: I'm also saying that far more important than not wading through those powers in character generation is not wading through those powers in play. Making sure that we don't have players buried under more mechanical options than they are happy with and leading to analysis paralysis.

And more importantly, the non magical guys shouldn't be the simple options, whilenthe magic guys are complex. That is lazy design that restricts play styles to no benefit.

If you think I am saying that when the Slayer turned up the classic fighter should have been excised from the game I want to know where you got that idea. I'm saying anything but that. And I have already mentioned the Elementalist Sorcerer in this thread - a spellcaster that is at about the same level of complexity as the Slayer. Indeed I think I've said that it should have been in our hypothetical PHB4 rather than waiting until Heroes of the Elemental Chaos.

The game is big enough to have classic fighters and knights and slayers. It's big enough to have wizards and elementalists. However the insistence that people who want to play slayers and elementalists should be second class citizens with their classes being treated as inferior options I see as even more silly than the idea that only martial classes should be simple and only casters should be complex.

 

[Tony Vargas]

No it couldn't have been handled with a pre-build. A pre-build does absolutely nothing to keep the decision tree small during play. A Slayer's biggest choice is who to hit.

It also has the choices 'which stance' and 'do I use Power Attack,' and, later, utilities. A pre-build, especially one with custom powers designed for that purpose, could probably have been reduced to what weapon do I draw, who do I hit with it, and how hard through both an encounter and daily version of power attack.

It could've been simpler than the Slayer in play. What's more, as you got used to it, you could branch out when you felt like it seamlessly, and you'd've become familiar with the AEDU progression and resource management in the process. Rather than feeling like that's all you know how to play and getting stuck in a rut.

People under-rate how much consistency simplifies things. The first 4e campaign I played in, I was stunned the first few times we leveled, at how clear & simple it all was. You'e all 2nd level, pick a feat and a utility. What, not everyone look at a different table to see what you got? That's huge. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] made a point like that recently. That 'simplicity' is often more about familiarity. The way the Knight/Slayer/Thief were distorted to avoid choosing a power and instead using an MBA and looking up the attack/damage under the weapon, not the power - all the time seemed a lot more about making the martial characters 'not cast spells' and 'just hit da orc wit ma ax' than any actual simplification. I saw it was returning players a lot. "I'll play a fighter, they're simple to start." (Actually, an archer ranger would be simpler.) "Hey, where's my ax on this sheet? I need to see how much damage I do." (Pick a power, it's all on the power) "So for attack, what do add, my strength modifier, what else?" (Still all already calculated for you, on the power.)

A classic fighter needs to simultaneously pick their target out of however many, multiplying the options by (two at will powers plus however may remaining encounter and daily powers) and they need to decide this all at the same time. This leads to analysis paralysis among players prone to it far more than the slayer tree does.

Meh. Just designing the pre-build powers like power attack... "...when you hit..." takes care of most of that.

And when you talk about "the real fighter" and only offering them a pre-build based entirely on choices you could have picked as options for your fighter if you couldn't find better ones you are outright saying that the choice should be a lesser one - i.e. punishing people for their preferences and saying that the only fun should be your fun.

The idea is they'd be balanced choices, as most power choices weren't too badly balanced, and, the privilege of spamming the same encounter or daily would kinda make up for it, anyway.

No. I'm saying that what you are asking for here is almost impossible to balance. I am saying that thanks to that silly feat the DPR optimisers used to play Essentials classes with powers like Rain of Blows because it used the static damage boosts from the Slayer with a multiattack power that was never designed to have the Slayer static damage.

It would be tough to balance the MBA-enhancing stances with the full game and all it's little MBA-enhancing feats and items, and to balance that with the Slayer's basically OP fighter chassis and striker damage, including the double-dip-DEX-to-damage exploit. But, all that is tough to balance because it's intentionally badly balanced to begin with, to make up for lack of versatility and dailies. A pre-built fighter with simplified powers wouldn't have any of those issues. It'd be a Knight, not a Slayer, because marking, but hey, alternate class feature or two...

One innovation that wasn't completely whacked was changing Roles.

 

[Neonchameleon]

It also has the choices 'which stance' and 'do I use Power Attack,' and, later, utilities.

Would you mind not implying I didn't mention those two. There are, however three points about them:

1. They are made at a different time from deciding who to hit. Which is why I specifically said the largest choice not the only choice.
2. The other choices are binary - a choice of two options. Chosing between two things is easy.
3. There is a default in both choices meaning you barely need to think about it.

This means that it breaks the options down into bite-sized chunks where the largest choice is about who to attack.

A pre-build, especially one with custom powers designed for that purpose, could probably have been reduced to what weapon do I draw, who do I hit with it, and how hard through both an encounter and daily version of power attack.

In short what they did with the slayer.

But the way I suspect you want to force them to make that choice is to give them two at wills, an encounter power, and a daily, all of which are attack powers. This means that if there are three possible enemies on the board for a Slayer you've a choice between three options and two trivial ones. For a hypothetical Tony Vargas Slayer you need to choose your four options at the same time as choosing who to hit. That's twelve separate choices, many of which are superficially similar. Twelve separate options can send people well into the realms of analysis paralysis.

I have seen this repeatedly in play at my table. Where the experience of two players I know has been utterly transformed by giving them scouts, slayers, hunters, and elementalists over classic 4e characters.

It could've been simpler than the Slayer in play.

How? How can the experience of a fighter get simpler in power selection than having the largest and most complex choice you make being who to hit?

What's more, as you got used to it, you could branch out when you felt like it seamlessly, and you'd've become familiar with the AEDU progression and resource management in the process. Rather than feeling like that's all you know how to play and getting stuck in a rut.

I get it. You, [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] do not like the Slayer. You do not want to play a Slayer. And you'd be bored playing a Slayer. So would I. This is why I do not play a slayer and am never going to. But please, for the love of the Raven Queen, stop trying to claim that the character classes that transformed the experience of two players at my table when they had been playing 4e since launch are BadWrongFun and they should be taken away.

People under-rate how much consistency simplifies things. The first 4e campaign I played in, I was stunned the first few times we leveled, at how clear & simple it all was. You'e all 2nd level, pick a feat and a utility. What, not everyone look at a different table to see what you got? That's huge.

I get it. You, [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION], like 4e. So do I. And it meshes with how you think. It also meshes with how I think - and with the OODA loop. People, however, under-rate how much different people respond to different things. And I much prefer a broader game where I do not have 100% of it designed for my personal tastes because it allows more people to have more fun.

The idea is they'd be balanced choices, as most power choices weren't too badly balanced, and, the privilege of spamming the same encounter or daily would kinda make up for it, anyway.

In short the idea is that the entire thing would be built for people that think like [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION], and people like [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] would be able to skim all the best choices off the top rather than ever have to put up with people having fun with a class that wasn't built for them.

It would be tough to balance the MBA-enhancing stances with the full game and all it's little MBA-enhancing feats and items, and to balance that with the Slayer's basically OP fighter chassis and striker damage, including the double-dip-DEX-to-damage exploit.

But, all that is tough to balance because it's intentionally badly balanced to begin with, to make up for lack of versatility and dailies. A pre-built fighter with simplified powers wouldn't have any of those issues.

Indeed. It wouldn't have any compensation at all to make up for the missing versatility. You are explicitly saying that here. And versatility is power as the 3.X wizard demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt. Therefore you are explicitly talking about punishing people by giving them a less versatile class that is no better at what it tries to do than a classic fighter (because you get to cherry-pick all its power).

Please stop trying to ensure that my friends have less fun playing 4e and characters that are intentionally less powerful just because you don't like the fact that they get toys that you don't like playing with.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No it was terrible halfway to launch. WotC scrapped their working version partway through development and couldn't extend the release date.

No, it just wasn't terrible, and was in fact quite good.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Would you mind not implying I didn't mention those two.

Sorry, quoting as I compose the response. Really should read through first, but I'm still not going to. Just acknowledging that if I were a better person, I would.

In short what they did with the slayer.

Yes! But with backwards compatibility, so you could transition from choiceless mode without re-building your character! And, so that choosing to play that character didn't put you on a different 'career track,' I suppose...

But the way I suspect you want to force them to make that choice is to give them two at wills

I was thinking that, yes. But such that choice of which of the two is based on weapon.

That seems to be something that really bothers returning players, choosing power instead of weapon. An alternate option might be more than two, but all sorted by weapon or weapon type. So when you 'choose you weapons' at chargen, like a traditional fighter, you're also transparently choosing your power. Either way.

an encounter power, and a daily, all of which are attack powers.

I was thinking Encounter & Daily acting exactly like Power Attack. You use it after you roll, not before. It'd be nice to have such a power available, anyway. And in the sense that you just get more uses, and more dice of damage, as you level. Probably skip the weapon specialization riders, though, in the name of actual simplicity.

Just noodling, now, but the Daily could be an after-you-miss instead of an after-you hit power. "You miss.." "Heck no!"

edit: maybe a little something like...

Brutal Attack Fighter Attack
When a foe blocks your attack, you unleash your full wrath, battering him almost as badly through his defenses as a solid hit would have.
Daily Martial, Weapon
No Action Special
Trigger: You miss an enemy with a weapon attack.
Target: The enemy you missed.
Effect: Instead of the usual effects of a miss, the target takes 1[W] damage plus half your normal damage bonus from the triggering attack.
Level 5: use a second time per day.
level 9: use a third time per day.
Level 17: 2[W] damage.
Level 27: 3[W] damage.

How can the experience of a fighter get simpler in power selection than having the largest and most complex choice you make being who to hit?

I was thinking taking stance & power at of it, by tying at-will to weapon choice.

You do not want to play a Slayer. And you'd be bored playing a Slayer.

Not just the slayer, strikers in general. The role doesn't much appeal to me. I did play the Slayer twice and the Knight once. The Slayer is nostalgic fun for about an hour just played on it's own merits. But, it was also ideal for reprising an old character, and the RP made up for it the second time... not for a long while, part of encounter season, but hey. The Knight was more disappointing.

But, no, the point is simple options could have been created without monkeywrenching the system as a whole. And, they needn't have been limited to the Fighter & Thief, the Elementalist could have been in HoFK, for instance.

People, however, under-rate how much different people respond to different things. And I much prefer a broader game where I do not have 100% of it designed for my personal tastes because it allows more people to have more fun.

Consistency and balance can fit more such options into a game, at a lower cost in actual complexity.

Indeed. It wouldn't have any compensation at all to make up for the missing versatility. You are explicitly saying that here.

Yep. But it's also poison to people wanting simplicity. Thing is, 4e pushed versatility with it's blanket rule about never taking the same power twice. With an exception to that rule, you not only simplify the experience of the sub-class you give it a boost in power by letting it 'spam' a particularly nifty limited-use power.

Therefore you are explicitly talking about punishing people by giving them a less versatile class that is no better at what it tries to do than a classic fighter (because you get to cherry-pick all its power).

Which is exactly what the Knight and Slayer did, only while adding overall complexity to the game instead of reducing it.

Now, imagine if it wasn't only a couple of martial classes that got the simplified treatment? Not only would players not be punished with reduced effectiveness and 'agency' for wanting to play in a simpler style, they wouldn't be punished with reduced choice of character concept, either.

 

[Manbearcat]

No, it just wasn't terrible, and was in fact quite good.

Quick chime in to hopefully help clarify (before I hit the sack). [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] are referring to 4e's development (the collapse of its initial iteration Orcus) and the subsequent fallout of putting together 4e from its ashes on short notice with no extended timetable. Despite that, it still delivered an amazingly beautiful and working action-adventure, Romatic/Heroic Fantasy game (which matured/refined at a pace and to a degree in subsequent years like no other game I've ever seen).

Neonchameleon is a huge fan of 4e (even at its release, despite some gripes).

Nagol is not a fan of 4e, but in the above post he is just commenting on 4e development timeline (as laid out by Neon), not 4e at release (though he isn't a fan of it at release). That being said, Nagol is the only 4e detractor on these boards of which I appreciate his commentary on the subject because (a) he has an expansive breadth of play experience outside of D&D and (b) he's always been able to intellectually honestly (and thoroughly...even if I don't agree on certain points) elucidate his position while (c) not falling for or expressing cargo cult/groupthink edition war memes. Beyond that there is the fact that (d), 4e does have serious problems delivering the finer/granular points, or at least in the incarnation he prefers, of his preferred playstyle (hexcrawl-serial world exploration stressing strategic resource management, eschewing gonzo martial capacity, yet still with relative Fighter:Wizard parity). 4e's action resolution mechanics/PC build mechanics/play principles are very much at tension with hexcrawl dynamics, serial world exploration (it is a closed-scene-based game), classic D&D strategic resource management (yet has its own iteration), removing gonzo martial capacity requires a fair bit of refluffing (but doable), but it definitely achieves Fighter:Wizard parity!

So I have some sympathies (even though if I ran a 4e game for him he would want to build a time machine so he could travel back to 2008 and slap the out of himself!)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It also has the choices 'which stance' and 'do I use Power Attack,' and, later, utilities. A pre-build, especially one with custom powers designed for that purpose, could probably have been reduced to what weapon do I draw, who do I hit with it, and how hard through both an encounter and daily version of power attack.

It could've been simpler than the Slayer in play. What's more, as you got used to it, you could branch out when you felt like it seamlessly, and you'd've become familiar with the AEDU progression and resource management in the process. Rather than feeling like that's all you know how to play and getting stuck in a rut.

People under-rate how much consistency simplifies things. The first 4e campaign I played in, I was stunned the first few times we leveled, at how clear & simple it all was. You'e all 2nd level, pick a feat and a utility. What, not everyone look at a different table to see what you got? That's huge. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] made a point like that recently. That 'simplicity' is often more about familiarity. The way the Knight/Slayer/Thief were distorted to avoid choosing a power and instead using an MBA and looking up the attack/damage under the weapon, not the power - all the time seemed a lot more about making the martial characters 'not cast spells' and 'just hit da orc wit ma ax' than any actual simplification. I saw it was returning players a lot. "I'll play a fighter, they're simple to start." (Actually, an archer ranger would be simpler.) "Hey, where's my ax on this sheet? I need to see how much damage I do." (Pick a power, it's all on the power) "So for attack, what do add, my strength modifier, what else?" (Still all already calculated for you, on the power.)

Meh. Just designing the pre-build powers like power attack... "...when you hit..." takes care of most of that.

The idea is they'd be balanced choices, as most power choices weren't too badly balanced, and, the privilege of spamming the same encounter or daily would kinda make up for it, anyway.

It would be tough to balance the MBA-enhancing stances with the full game and all it's little MBA-enhancing feats and items, and to balance that with the Slayer's basically OP fighter chassis and striker damage, including the double-dip-DEX-to-damage exploit. But, all that is tough to balance because it's intentionally badly balanced to begin with, to make up for lack of versatility and dailies. A pre-built fighter with simplified powers wouldn't have any of those issues. It'd be a Knight, not a Slayer, because marking, but hey, alternate class feature or two...

One innovation that wasn't completely whacked was changing Roles.

It'd be trivially easy to balance the stances with encounter powers.

Restrict their benefits to basic attacks. Done.

I also don't think the e-classes need to be structured exactly the same as previous versions. They just should have been more compatible, and the class features could easily have come in at the same levels as the powers they replaced, to make mix-matching easier, and make the E classes more compatible.

Even having MBA-boosting stances and Daily powers would be fine, as long as the stances can only boost basic attacks or movement.

If they released a 4.5 right now, and it did something along the lines of the following, it would work fine:

*at level 1 you choose either at-wills or a class feature that boosts basic attacks, with options like the thief's tricks

*at levels where 4e gives you encounter powers, each class has a basic encounter power like Power Attack or Assassin's Strike, and classic 4e powers, so you fluidly choose multiple uses of Power attack, more dice for Assassin Strike, or a new classic power

*at levels where 4e gives daily powers, you choose daily powers or class features like stances. Stances only affect Basic Attacks.

*add more utility powers to the progression

*have class feature options that are appropriate to a given level that you can take instead of a new power.

I'd play the crap alutta that. And it'd be very easy to present some classes in essentials style for "simplicity".

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Quick chime in to hopefully help clarify (before I hit the sack). [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] are referring to 4e's development (the collapse of its initial iteration Orcus) and the subsequent fallout of putting together 4e from its ashes on short notice with no extended timetable. Despite that, it still delivered an amazingly beautiful and working action-adventure, Romatic/Heroic Fantasy game (which matured/refined at a pace and to a degree in subsequent years like no other game I've ever seen).

Neonchameleon is a huge fan of 4e (even at its release, despite some gripes).

Nagol is not a fan of 4e, but in the above post he is just commenting on 4e development timeline (as laid out by Neon), not 4e at release (though he isn't a fan of it at release). That being said, Nagol is the only 4e detractor on these boards of which I appreciate his commentary on the subject because (a) he has an expansive breadth of play experience outside of D&D and (b) he's always been able to intellectually honestly (and thoroughly...even if I don't agree on certain points) elucidate his position while (c) not falling for or expressing cargo cult/groupthink edition war memes. Beyond that there is the fact that (d), 4e does have serious problems delivering the finer/granular points, or at least in the incarnation he prefers, of his preferred playstyle (hexcrawl-serial world exploration stressing strategic resource management, eschewing gonzo martial capacity, yet still with relative Fighter:Wizard parity). 4e's action resolution mechanics/PC build mechanics/play principles are very much at tension with hexcrawl dynamics, serial world exploration (it is a closed-scene-based game), classic D&D strategic resource management (yet has its own iteration), removing gonzo martial capacity requires a fair bit of refluffing (but doable), but it definitely achieves Fighter:Wizard parity!

So I have some sympathies (even though if I ran a 4e game for him he would want to build a time machine so he could travel back to 2008 and slap the out of himself!)

That's fair.

And I would still love to see what 4e would have been if it had been built after Star Wars Saga was fully released and some bugs worked out, because IMO SAGA does a lot of stuff better than 4e.

But that said, I think most of 4e's shortcomings are so minor, and so based on presentation, pure numbers, and not explaining how to accomplish different playstyles with the system (because there is no major playstyle if can't do, and do well, IMO), that they are trivially fixed in a 4.5 that ends up being 95% compatible with 4e.

But, to me, 4e is a strictly better game than what came before, by a wide margin. So, there is that. ;D

 

[Tony Vargas]

It'd be trivially easy to balance the stances with encounter powers.

Restrict their benefits to basic attacks. Done.

Problem was a stance-enhanced basic attack was the equal (often nearly precisely so) of an at-will, but at that point, an at-will all the cheap/cheasy only-amp-basic-attacks-so-no-big-deal items and whatnot could add to. Then, of course, the nature of Power Attack meant that they were basic attacks you could upgrade to encounter-attack damage. All pretty whacked, really.

I also don't think the e-classes need to be structured exactly the same as previous versions.

'Need?' Does a game need consistency? What's the payoff for the added complexity of making them arbitrarily different?

They just should have been more compatible, and the class features could easily have come in at the same levels as the powers they replaced, to make mix-matching easier, and make the E classes more compatible.

Sounds, to me, like the simplest, most consistent, lowest-overhead way to do that would be to just same structure. :shrug: