D&D 3E/3.5 The design processes from 2e to 3e, 3 to 3.5, and 3e to 4e.

[Samnell]

They also understand when the "rationalized" parts created in 3.0 hurt the game, like CR and EL calculation, and mathematical item creation guidelines.

Those were two of the best parts of the game to me. The news that they were abandoning even attempting guidelines for creating custom magic items is the point at which I went from cautiously in favor of 4e to almost certain to do some kind of 3.75e.

 

[Mallus]

Those were two of the best parts of the game to me.

Can I ask why?

 

[Timeboxer]

The designers understand now not only what isn't balanced, but what parts of the game make it less fun. They also understand when the "rationalized" parts created in 3.0 hurt the game, like CR and EL calculation, and mathematical item creation guidelines.
More attention has been paid to how the game plays, how DMs and players actually use it.

I just hope that information doesn't get lost. I'd gladly pay extra for a Directory's Commentary version of the PHB/MM/DMG with design documentation and good advice for designing on your own.

 

[Samnell]

Can I ask why?

They weren't perfect, but CR and EL made it a hell of a lot easier to built up and eyeball the difficulty of an encounter. Imperfect guidelines are inherently superior to no guidelines at all. I'm hoping the references we're seeing to monster level mean we still have more or less the same thing in another form, but I have my doubts. I also adored the CR-to-XP system. The notion that including the CR and EL system somehow hurt the game is the exact opposite of my experience.

I feel the same way about the admission of defeat over the notion of creating magic items inherent in the stated absence of any system for it to be in the new DMG. Plus I never saw anything wrong with the rules for pricing wands, staffs, scrolls, and simple items that only give one bonus.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

They weren't perfect, but CR and EL made it a hell of a lot easier to built up and eyeball the difficulty of an encounter. Imperfect guidelines are inherently superior to no guidelines at all. I'm hoping the references we're seeing to monster level mean we still have more or less the same thing in another form, but I have my doubts. I also adored the CR-to-XP system. The notion that including the CR and EL system somehow hurt the game is the exact opposite of my experience.

Given what's been stated about the game (which it must be reiterated constantly is still in development and many months away from release) what I envision is this:

The core rules will posit 4 (or 5?) ROLES to be filled in an adventuring party. Those ROLES may be filled by more than one class of character and there will be a certain amount of crossover. In any case you have, say, melee damage, spell OFFENSE, spell DEFENSE, ranged damage, or what-have-you. These same sorts of roles will be assigned to monsters in an encounter. One type of monster is intended to fill a melee damage roll, another the spell offense, another performs ranged damage, etc. So, that is how encounters will be built. Pick monsters according the roles you want/need filled for an encounter, THEN the actual capabilities of the monsters are determined according to the level of challenge desired. Hit dice, skills, spells and abilities are determined AFTER you decide how powerful an encounter you want and what critters are in it.

Thus, encounters can be tailored to either exploit a party's weaknesses such as perhaps not having a character filling a spell defense role, or the DM can play only to the party's strengths and then be able to safely, reliably increase the strength of the monsters for even bigger, better fights. Also, terrain will be figuring in much more prominently right from the outset of encounter design by a "battlefield" for each encounter being assembled with a collection of standardized "terrains". For example, an encounters terrain might be composed of two sections of rock, one of water, one of mud, three of tall plants and three more open. This terrain can then be drawn by the DM on a Battlemat, or particularly if using miniatures can be simply thrown down with terrain tilesets that have been created or bought. Each tile has movement, cover, and other bonuses directly associated with it. The intent being to jar DM's out of doldrums of just dredging up yet another roster of uninteresting stat blocks and throwing them at the PC's and MAYBE drawing a few trees and rocks on a blank battlemat. Instead, each encounter is intended to immediately evoke a sense of place and of interest for being varied in terrain - something much more cinematic by design.

Now I have NO idea how close I am to what's planned, but again that's the vision they've lodged in my mind with the isolated little tidbits we have read.

 

[Samnell]

The core rules will posit 4 (or 5?) ROLES to be filled in an adventuring party. Those ROLES may be filled by more than one class of character and there will be a certain amount of crossover. In any case you have, say, melee damage, spell OFFENSE, spell DEFENSE, ranged damage, or what-have-you. These same sorts of roles will be assigned to monsters in an encounter. One type of monster is intended to fill a melee damage roll, another the spell offense, another performs ranged damage, etc. So, that is how encounters will be built. Pick monsters according the roles you want/need filled for an encounter, THEN the actual capabilities of the monsters are determined according to the level of challenge desired. Hit dice, skills, spells and abilities are determined AFTER you decide how powerful an encounter you want and what critters are in it.

So all monsters are more like dragons are now? How would that possibly mesh with the notion that 4e is supposed to have less upfront prep needed? It sounds like the opposite. I've made dragons. It's not bad, but it's not what the tenor of information about 4e to date has suggested.

I don't necessarily object to that being the case, but it's certainly not the expectation they seem to be trying to generate.

 

[pemerton]

The notion that including the CR and EL system somehow hurt the game is the exact opposite of my experience.

Given the high degree of effort the designers seem to be making to bring the play experience into accord with the metagame priorities of players and GMs, I'd be very surprised if there are no encounter and reward rules of the sort found in the current EL/CR/XPs/treasure rules.

These rules play an important role in helping all the participants correlate in-game character building and equipping with metagame expectations about what players are expected to do with their PCs.

Hopefully, however, those rules will be less clunky than they currently are.

 

[Atlatl Jones]

They weren't perfect, but CR and EL made it a hell of a lot easier to built up and eyeball the difficulty of an encounter. Imperfect guidelines are inherently superior to no guidelines at all.

Oh definitely. But the guidelines are imperfect, and the calculations are a bit obtuse and sometimes counterintuitive. So are the guidelines for creating monsters, and the monster 'types.' In a recent D&D podcast, one of the designers said that while they were creating monsters for a more recent MM, they said that the original ways of designing a monster - with a 'monster type' hit dice - didn't have much if any relation to the power of the monster, and had lots of baggage with it, like big creatures (whales, etc) having massive attack bonuses, numbers of feats, etc just because they had to have lots of hit dice. They said that while creating monsters for a MM, they created some guidelines for what sorts of saves, attack bonuses, ACs, etc are appropriate for a given CR. After they had it, they realized that that's what they should have had at the beginning, to make monster design easier and more balanced.

That's the sort of progression I was writing about. In 3e, monster design is very logical - it works just like PC design, but without the inherent balance. In (presumably) 4e, they look at monsters more holsitically, in terms of how they actually function in the game, not in terms of an arbitrary hit dice level mechanic.

 

[Andor]

I think it's important to keep in mind that 3e was going strong for WotC into this period. For the first time in maybe 20 years, we're seeing an edition made from a company in a position of strength. They're not trying to save the game, because it doesn't need saving: they want to make it better, and they have the tools, the long design cycle, the feedback about the previous edition, and the talented designers to do it.

This is actually one of the most interesting thoughts I've seen yet about 4e. And you're right. They could have happily kept churning out stuff for 3.5 for years, and we would have happily kept shelling out cash for it. The edition change is in fact almost certainly going to reduce income for the next several months, followed by a big shot of cash and then a reduced income as everyone gets up to speed on the new edition. And a 3 year development cycle is a long time for designers of the caliber they've brought on board. Good thought, it certainly has a lot of positive implications.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

I personally feel that 3E went through a huge amount of playtest opposed to 4E, for which playtest seems to mean a designer or two running a campaign based on an underdeveloped system. I think the main reason for this was the product being pushed forward (quite obvious based on statements made earlier by WOTC etc.) As such, the design philosophy and the lack of playtesting points towards a system that is a lot more untested and error prone. And I don't think the development lifecycle has been "3 years," even if that is what WOTC states- most of the development has been made in the last year, which mean less than a year "in development." [ I'm not even going to get into playtest to production part of the cycle]