D&D 4E The biggest claim about 4E that intrigues me

[Truth Seeker]

Just wonderful...-sigh-

According to the Friday GenCon seminar, Heroic affects things on the local level, Paragon more with kingdoms, and Epic with global- and planar-changing events.

 

[Shieldhaven]

I can't help but look at this claim as missing the definition of "sweet spot." It's the gaming equivalent of Garrison Keillor's famous "the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."

Understand that I am enthusiastic about the bits of 4e that have been revealed to date, but the reason a given level range is called the "sweet spot" is because the game is better then than at other level ranges.

Haven

 

[Moggthegob]

I agree that its a pipe dream and ifear the consequences. Giving something a name doesnt make it so. Also, one of the features I loved about Lg is the low-levels PCs often did things ot affect planar spanningevents and sometimes even high-level pCs couldnt sto pthei nevitable it jsut semed so real. I guess I am afraid of losing that real feel.

 

[Gargoyle]

I can't help but look at this claim as missing the definition of "sweet spot." It's the gaming equivalent of Garrison Keillor's famous "the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."

Understand that I am enthusiastic about the bits of 4e that have been revealed to date, but the reason a given level range is called the "sweet spot" is because the game is better then than at other level ranges.

Haven

My understanding is that the sweet spot in 3E, wherever it is, is because it is not so complex that it takes all day to create a character or to run a combat encounter, but you still feel like you're able to do more than fight kobolds and giant rats. As I understand it, 4E will let you take on a little more at lower levels, and at high levels the game will still play fast. At least that's the goal...to widen that sweet spot so that it's a great game at all levels.

Obviously 4E will likely have its own sweet spot somewhere between 1 and 30, hopefully it will be very wide.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Don't read the 4E board, then?

Now you're ruining his interest in complaining. Guy just can't catch a break around here, I guess.

 

[Campbell]

I agree that its a pipe dream and ifear the consequences. Giving something a name doesnt make it so. Also, one of the features I loved about Lg is the low-levels PCs often did things ot affect planar spanningevents and sometimes even high-level pCs couldnt sto pthei nevitable it jsut semed so real. I guess I am afraid of losing that real feel.

I'm not quite following you here. How could attempting to make a game actively playable across the whole level range be a negative goal?

 

[thalmin]

My understanding is that the sweet spot in 3E, wherever it is, is because it is not so complex that it takes all day to create a character or to run a combat encounter, but you still feel like you're able to do more than fight kobolds and giant rats. As I understand it, 4E will let you take on a little more at lower levels, and at high levels the game will still play fast. At least that's the goal...to widen that sweet spot so that it's a great game at all levels.

Obviously 4E will likely have its own sweet spot somewhere between 1 and 30, hopefully it will be very wide.

According to a secret I was told by some guy I don't know, the sweet spot will be very wide. It will cover rounds 2-4 of the fifth encounter at thirteenth level. Unless it's Tuesday.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

At the D&D QA, the designers seemed to indicate that one way in which they were extending the sweet spot was by dealing with some of the "problem spells." Scry/Teleport were specifically mentioned, but what they were doing to those (and other) spells was not explained.

 

[Li Shenron]

Well, they have said that 4E is going to have three "tiers" of play. 1-10 Heroic, 11-20 Paragon, and 21-30 Epic. Hopefully there will be very different playstyles involved with all three.

But it's been stated that the difference in the tiers is only in the proportion of the quests: save the village, save the kingdom, save the universe. It's been said that there will be no different way to play the game, just the story is different.

 

[Dykstrav]

In 3ed playing at level 1 is different than playing at level 6, or level 12 or level 20. That's a GREAT feature! Different challenges, different types of resource management, different ways to solve obstacles etc. It's especially different to play a spellcaster: at low levels it's all about casting the few spells at the right time, at high levels it's all about stacking your buffs and protections in the most convenient way. I admit that I always have lots of problems running a 3ed game beyond level 15th (or even earlier), I'd like to think that given time I'll manage it tho... But after we go very high up in level, it doesn't feel bad at the end of the campaign to go back at 1st to start the next, because there are challenges which are unique to low levels, and they don't become too easy even for players that have played the high levels.

I like the way it is, because it's like having 3-4 different games in the same ruleset.

I've always felt the same way. Low-level characters should be extremely nervous about any critter (even a kobold) landing a solid hit. I think that low-level D&D should be deadly, insofar as the characters that manage to survive to higher levels are more special because of it. It shouldn't be to the point where you need to bring a stack of characters to every session, but without the element of risk, levels just don't satisfy me as much. I'm far more proud of my 3rd-level wizard that survived a near-TPK than of any of the 4th through 10th-level pregens I've gotten to make.

That being said, I think I can see why WotC would want to extend the "sweet spot" that they're talking about. Most everyone I know that plays 3.5 starts at level 4 and rarely continue the campaign past 12. In my own campaigns, I generally consider 15th level to be "high-level." But I've sucessfully ran high-level campaigns into the epic levels (the highest I've ever ended a campaign was 26th level).