The Early Verdict (kinda long)

[occam]

During the later years of 1st Edition AD&D, subsystems appeared to support non-combat elements of character development, particularly the nonweapon proficiencies introduced in the Dungeoneer's and Wilderness Survival Guides.

Tangent: Nonweapon proficiencies were introduced in Oriental Adventures.

 

[el-remmen]

Forcing class restrictions on certain things (spellcasting, for example), but not others (melee or ranged combat, for example) is inconsistent design.

I think 4E is reinforcing for me the fact that I like a little inconsistency (I've been referring to it as quirkiness when talking it over w/ folks in my gaming group) in my game rules.

 

[Roland55]

Hey, Mourn, just so's you know, you're edging toward getting booted from this thread. Tone it down a bit.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about 4e. I have now played it a couple times with my wife and daughter. I think it serves well as a cohesive rule system for the kind of games I ran for them. I think the PHB doesn't read particularly well and doesn't inspire me a lot. But that's ok. The game plays fine and I get inspiration from plenty of other places.

But something about it just feels a bit...limiting I guess. I can't quite place my finger on it but I think I'd sort of describe it as a bit of a "movie set feel". The world is pretty and shiny and a great backdrop for the adventures of the PC's. But if you glance behind it, you see that it's just a backdrop and not all that functional.

That peasant over there? He has whatever qualities that the GM decides he needs to be an adequate peasant. No mechanical underpinnings but that's not important. He's only a peasant. Same with the King. He's got whatever qualities a king has. Was he once a Fighter or Warlord? Is he NOW a Warlord? If the PC's aren't going to fight him, who cares?

Is this a bad thing? In many cases, no. I don't need to have the hardness of the walls of the peasant's hut written down. The PC's aren't going to try and knock it down anyway. It's unnecessary. But it also just feels a bit shallow to me.

I know that some of you are going to say, "What? You had the hardness of a peasant's hut written down in 3.x?!" No I didn't. So why can't I shake this feeling? I don't know. I've not puzzled it out yet.

However, I think I've made another realization as well: It may not matter for the foreseeable future.

My next game was probably going to trend towards a "back to basics" style fantasy RPG anyway. Nothing huge and fancy. No intricate backstory or grandiose plotlines already in place. Just some fairly lighteardted, kick in the door plots with enough NPC's and BBEG's to make the whole thing compelling. Maybe a bit of depth will generate itself as we go along.

Perhaps 4e is the perfect vehicle for this. I may give it a more full scale try than I'd been thinking. At very least I'm going to demo it for my gaming group for a night or two and see how it grabs them. If they like it better than Savage Worlds then I may well opt to use it for my beer & pretzels romp of a next campaign.

And if, by the end of that run, I find that 4e has more depth than I'm currently giving it credit for then dandy. We'll get some extra mileage out of it. And if not, no big deal. Plenty of other systems out there that we can use.

I'm having a roughly equivalent and equally 'emotional' response to 4E. And I, too, can't really figure out why. I've never had any difficult enjoying each new Edition of D&D for what it is ... and I've been through all of them.

Is it the newness and some shallowness/limitations (that will hopefully pass with time)? Is it just me -- that I've come to need some of the awkward complexities that have grown into the game over the decades?

4E is a good game with excellent mechanics. It has surely lived up to its promise in the area of balance.

Why am I not getting that 'spark'??

Sigh. I've only played about 4 sessions. I'm not giving up yet!

 

[billd91]

The DMG's advice on this is to just let the player make up whatever backstory they want for their PC and then make it relevent in play. So if your PC is a former cabinet maker, then you get a big bonus on a perception check to notice a cabinet with a false bottom and you let them build a cabinet without rolling if they want to. Yes the DM is "winging it" but not really more so than deciding that this sort of thing come up in any prior edition. The only difference is that now the DM is winging both the situation coming up and the bonus it gives, instead of just the situation coming up.

At this point, why have any skills for role playing at all? I know there are a lot of groups that play like this whether there are social skills in the game or not, but if we're going to just have the player say "Yes, my PC was a renowned chef", why not let them decide how good they are at diplomacy, opening locks, etc.

What's the dividing line between whether something should be a skill given rule support or not? It's clearly not the difference between adventuring time and non-adventuring time. Ultimately, it's whatever the DM decides is and is not... and with the shift from 3e to 4e, the designers made that decision for them in the core rules.

 

[helium3]

My view is that optimization is taken care of for you, and that leaves you free to focus on your PC's character and personality.

Maybe in the sense that most possible character "builds" are equally optimized if you just throw stuff together. If there's some particular schtick you want your character to have I guess you can put a lot of effort into perfecting it, but I honestly don't know at this point how much extra oomph that'll get you.

"Optimization" now comes in the form of knowing how to use your character in a particular situation in the most effective manner.

So yeah, if you want to play a character that's bad in combat, just make bad tactical decisions all the time.

 

[billd91]

Well, giving all kinds of abilities to any kind of character kinda defeats the purpose of classes. That's why particular sets of capabilities are drawn together into a single place. It's just like in previous editions, where if you wanted to be a healer or a blaster, you had to be a cleric or a wizard. Forcing class restrictions on certain things (spellcasting, for example), but not others (melee or ranged combat, for example) is inconsistent design.

But it's not really inconsistent design at all. The fighter's equivalent to a wizard's or cleric's spell casting is a fast BAB advancement. The weapon chosen is more analogous, I think, to the spells chosen. They're the tools used in the character's devotion to his craft - specific weapons or spells.

 

[Styracosaurus]

It is so easy to divorce the skill/social system from the combat system that I don't see how this is an issue. Even it 3e when skills were at their apex of importance, you could pretty much wing it and do fine. I know we did. 4e is even easier to divorce the two systems, in fact as the OP pointed out, the skill system ain't much in 4e because it is a combat system. Don't get me wrong, we kept up with the basics and that kept the rogue valuable until the mage did everything better anyway.

I like 4e's approach, that is my bias and I admit it. As a DM, all I need to know is what you want for your character and a decent combat system. I understand that you want to have some variety in character power, but do you want a little? or a lot? You still have speed, ability scores and a plethora of options (like running, prone, etc...) where you can have mild gimping occur.

If you want to seriously gimp a PC, then the party is going to have to agree not to overshadow you or else it is pointless.

As far as roleplaying goes, I do not understand how a rule system affects the ability to roleplay or not. I like to mix in a dice roll every once in a while, but why make it so complicated and turn it into a chore?

 

[helium3]

They do, however seem to inhibit people who want to play characters who triumph by ingenuity, wit and cunning rather than "apply power x to baddies 2,3 and 4 for the win!".

Yeah. But this is completely untrue. 4E REQUIRES characters to triumph via ingenuity, wit and cunning. At least when we're talking about combat.

Outside of combat? Maybe not so much. Honestly though, why are we expecting the game system to handle something that as humans with brains we should be able to figure out without a game system telling us the results?

If you want to play a sub-par character, do so. What's to stop you from applying a -5 morale penalty to all your character's attacks because he's a coward?

 

[AllisterH]

I'm with another poster who said that 3.x was HORRIBLE for non-combat encounters.

Frankly, coming from SWSE, the half-scaling of the skills was CLEARLY the reason why we actually had more non-combat encounters.

When everyone has a semi-decent chance of success and no-one is auto-succeeding, a DM is more likely to use a non-combat challenge.
In combat, EVERYONE gets to take part (even the bard), yet in non-combat situations, only the "face-man" gets to shine?

AND this is considered INCENTIVE for DMs to have non-combat situations?

 

[The Little Raven]

But it's not really inconsistent design at all.

Yes, it is.

The fighter's equivalent to a wizard's or cleric's spell casting is a fast BAB advancement.

No, a caster's increased save DCs and caster level are equivalent to BAB, since they are the method by which you overcome the defenses of the target in order to effect them with your power.

The weapon chosen is more analogous, I think, to the spells chosen. They're the tools used in the character's devotion to his craft - specific weapons or spells.

No, 3e feats are more analogous, since they're the ones that grant you special abilities. In 3e, anyone of any class could pick up certain feats and such and become an archer or a whirlwinder or a two-weapon fighter. Granted, some are better than others. However, in order to pick up spellcasting, you have to multiclass in order to do so, so spellcasting is basically exclusive to classes, while melee/ranged combat capabilities (mostly) were not.