Stuff that still bugs me about 4e

[Filcher]

Little makes playing PCs or running monsters more tedious and "bureaucratic" then having to have several buff spells active to just get on equal ground to your respective opposition.

I totally agree, but there is a fine line between "Guys, we need to make a plan and prep for Master Monster X or he is going to paint the walls with my goo. Let's talk to the sage and see about getting some rituals, you go research some weaknesses and rogue --- well, rogue, just stay out of trouble,"

...and....

"I cast X, Y, Z, again, alright ready for combat."

The first is fun, IMO, the second is script-boring.

 

[GlaziusF]

And if you noticed, in other editions, save or dies didn't appear till spel level 4-5 (CL 7-10), so how have things changed, then?

What?

Color spray and even Grease render you pretty helpless on a failed save, and they're level 1. Hold Person is level 2.

Granted, in those cases it's more like "save or wait to die" but still.

 

[Fifth Element]

Not to mention "mundane" defenses like tricking them to waste a SoD on an illusory double or henchmen dressed like you...

Wow, how would that conversation go?

"Look, faithful Tim, I would like you dress like me so that when we are facing a powerful evil wizard, he might just mistake you for me and kill you first."

"Oh yeah, I'll get right on that, boss."

 

[Fifth Element]

Color spray and even Grease render you pretty helpless on a failed save, and they're level 1. Hold Person is level 2.

Granted, in those cases it's more like "save or wait to die" but still.

Not to mention sleep (level 1).

 

[Zsig]

Care to expand on that?

Sure.
It's just that it leads the players to metagame thinking.

No matter how you describe the minions, once the players find out that they're minions, the general attitude you'll see is gonna be something like this:

"Hurry, place a Cloud of Daggers here!"
or
"Ok, next turn I'll move in the middle and cleave them!"
or even
"They're ganna taste my barf!"

Either way, in the end, it doesn't really matter if you're facing orcs, skeletons, ogres or devils or whatever, the only thing that changes is their damage values and their defenses. Once you realize a good way to take them down, it'll serve from lvl 1 to lvl 30, except players will get better and better at killing them, and minions won't get any better.

On all groups I play, on the first/introdutory game, I don't say anything.
When they one-hit kill one guy, they're like "wow, i'm the bomb!" then it's kinda cool. When the battle is over, I explain them what's a minion and how they work, and after saying that they'll never get the same feeling when killing a minion again.

So far, I got 3 groups, and the same experience applies for all of them.

 

[Fifth Element]

"Hurry, place a Cloud of Daggers here!"
or
"Ok, next turn I'll move in the middle and cleave them!"

How do they know which ones are the minions?

 

[Jack99]

Sure.
It's just that it leads the players to metagame thinking.

I see. Did your players metagame a lot in whatever edition you played before playing 4e? Just saying, metagamers will metagame in any edition.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Yeah got to say haven't yet seen metagaming when it comes to minions. Even in places where it is obvious their all minions, ie: a huge swarm of enemies.

The players simply RP. They see a whole swarm of monsters coming after them, they run away as one would in real-life. (Which actually leads to fun situations of the players for example throwing things against the minions chasing them and because of their HP having a definite effect. For example, in a industrial area, cutting support cables as they run by and having wooden beams crash down on the enemies).

 

[Zsig]

I see. Did your players metagame a lot in whatever edition you played before playing 4e? Just saying, metagamers will metagame in any edition.

I'd say only a couple of them used to metagame, even though I never had much a problem with that before. But now it seems something hard to avoid, for example, I never say if a given monster is a minion or not... but once they find out...

Though, now giving more thought to it, I think it's really a problem with the players, but the way minions are designed doesn't help much.

Kinda weird, heh, just realized that last saturday was the first time I had to tell a player to stop with the metagame thinking (on a different issue though).

 

[Mercule]

I abhor healing surges, for example.

Shows how tastes differ. I liked healing surges enough that I ported them to 3.5 and the group loves them. Surges and action points are the only variants that were even considered for a RAW short-run/module-hop 3.5 game one of the other guys is doing. I think the only reason he decided to allow action points and not surges is because action points have an official version on d20srd and surges are my home-brew rules.