The "real" reason the game has changed.

[Mort]

I But that then begs the question of types of damage and continuing damage. How can a "second wind" overcome the effects of poison, etc.?

Since most poisons in 4e have effects other than damage, how does 2nd wind help? As for overcoming the damage, isn't overcoming damage from poison (through willpower, determination, pure luck, etc.) a movie/book/gaming staple?

 

[Abraxas]

The difference is that in 4e, I can do it without actually violating any rules and actually do it completely in accordance with the spirit of the rules.

I just have to ask - what rule would you have been violating in 3.xE?

 

[shadzar]

If you can equate one's commitment to a game hobby to one's commitment to a marriage, then we live in completely different realities.

Really? Commitment is simply to willingness to put effort into making it work/finish it/etc that you are committed to doing. Now it doesnt mean that you give the same amount of attention to one as the other...you choose which has priority. But willingness to make the time if yours and yours alone. If you choose to watch the superbowl and a spouse would prefer you do something/anything else but you do it anyway.... Likewise you can choose those hours to watch that, or do something to get ready for D&D. You make the choices with your free time to do things, and only have yourself to blame when you make ones that leave some things out.

This goes for DM and player, because the excuse to not having time has been made by players when trying to schedule a game, and if you want to be a part of it then be there rather than picking people up at a bar.

It isnt the game "feels" as though the power growth is defining the character growth. It is that it IS defining the character growth.

While adventuring you gather treasure, but never go about taking things, Funny how every even level, though you have never done it before, you are magically getting better at thieving because when you reach that level you get the *DING* that magically grants and imparts this ability unto you, whether you want it or not. All because of some other arbitrarily designed and disconnected system within the game needs it for you to "help others" using this skill sometimes. Whether you want your character to be thieving or not, you are slapped with it. Thats just an easy one, but completely where mechanics dictate the story. That isnt a "feel" unless you feel it when you are slapped in the face when trying to tell the story of someone who doesnt believe in thievery.

Storywise, surges have robbed the game of any connection to reality. That mechanic is for strategy-games, not roleplaying. How can a player relate to simply willing oneself to gain health? Since when can a person without regenerative powers heal oneself? In 4E, everyone can regenerate--an expediency for the game to move more quickly to the next combat and nothing more.

Exactly. The game has no more reality, so you cannot tell stories based on it and are forced to tell silly stories rather than ones more rooted. Again a changed caused by the playstyle trying to be represented by the game. Some people can see it right away, while others only noticed it through play, but sooner or later everyone should be able to see the game has changed forms to a fantastic battle simulator as battle is the prime function of the mechanics, so that you can get to it more often.

 

[Sorrowdusk]

Why doesn't D&D combat in prior editions ever result in broken bones, limb loss, or even blood loss (unless a character is struck by a rare magic weapon, cf. sword of wounding)?

Hit Points: As Long As You Have 1...

Contrast with say, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, or other games.

 

[LostSoul]

Well, like the punchline to the old joke goes, "Stop doing that, then!"

Or better yet, don't start. As in all walks of life, just because an option exists, doesn't mean you have to choose it.

One of the problems - for me - with this approach is that you end up tying one hand behind your back. I like to confront challenges, and if I know that something is going to help, I am going to want to use it. I don't want to hold back.

(That's why I like core-only 3E games, with other material - like Prestige Classes - available only through play. I don't want to hold back, but I don't want to spend hours combing through all the books looking for the perfect feat or class.)

You can house-rule Wands of Cure Light Wounds out of your game, but that seems like admitting that the system isn't working for you, so you change it until it does.

Unless they happen to know of a system that adds value on top of the free form aspects.

Once you add the system, that system begins to inform the choices you make. That's what it's there for. It doesn't completely get out of the way; the point of using the system is so that it does get in the way (that it, it affects your decision-making process).

I may have misunderstood your point:

I'm talking about the actual flow of events.

Role play defines events and THEN mechanics resolve the outcome

is very different from

Mechanics defines the events and THEN the player provides narrative to connect the dots.

We're in agreement here. I think that if you want the game world to be an important feature of play, you have to do the former (RP then mechanics) instead of the latter. I have played using the latter style quite a bit and it doesn't work for me.

Obviously I think that 4E lacks this, because I've spent hours hacking the system with the goal of adding it back in.

 

[shadzar]

I'd like to see an example of "skipping past conflict" in any edition. Why would you ever skip over a conflict? Isn't the entire point of sitting down at the table to overcome conflicts, either combat or not?

In context of the quoted portion, "conflict" was probably not the word meant to be used, but rather combat, since the opposite side mentioned is "non-combat"; as we were discussing combat.

Skipping combat was in EVERY edition that wasn't focused on "killing monsters and taking their stuff". Funny when while working from that statement as being a joke, and one that shouldn't be made by the designers since it was made by others to make fun of D&D, that is pretty much the focus presented in 4th edition.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Quests)

We sometimes joke that the game is all about killing monsters and taking their stuff, but the reality is that the game is about adventures.

If the game was so much about adventures, then why precisely are the components of adventures other than combat, directly told to be skipped over?

Does 4th have any rules on interrogation, or is it just clustered into the "skill challenges", and is it mentioned anywhere, for the player to read, that you should not kill everything, but resolve an encounter with something other than combat?

While first instinct in other editions would be "grab dice and roll for initiative", 4th pretty much shows that at what you should do right away by its heavy focus on combat, and then the most obvious result arrived at for resolving the combat is killing it, not retreating, going around, or really any emphasis on doing things other than combat since you should "Tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun", because "An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun."

So 4th tells you to skip past a conflict right there, before it even gets into combat, while so focused on getting you to combat faster.

 

[fumetti]

Why doesn't D&D combat in prior editions ever result in broken bones, limb loss, or even blood loss (unless a character is struck by a rare magic weapon, cf. sword of wounding)?

I believe the answers are related.

HP is abstract in all editions. It covered ground from specifics like physical damage to vague concepts such as luck. All of that was rolled into a single numerical value that can generically be called a character's "total life."

Surges don't change that in any way. They just give freebie "life points."

 

[fumetti]

Since most poisons in 4e have effects other than damage, how does 2nd wind help? As for overcoming the damage, isn't overcoming damage from poison (through willpower, determination, pure luck, etc.) a movie/book/gaming staple?

It helps by keeping the character alive when that character should have died.

And I really loathe comparing DnD mechanics to movies. Movies are typically so unrealistic they are absurd. I hold roleplaying games to a higher level than that.

 

[Bluenose]

HP is abstract in all editions. It covered ground from specifics like physical damage to vague concepts such as luck. All of that was rolled into a single numerical value that can generically be called a character's "total life."

Surges don't change that in any way. They just give freebie "life points."

So presumably resting (and spending healing surges) restores some of this luck/fatigue/confidence/favour of the gods that enable you to survive. It's not as if Cure Light Wounds is commonly described as making you luckier, yet the abstract is there in every edition. And noticeably, higher level characters require more magical healing to restore their luck/health/whatever than low level characters when they take more 'damage', despite being in less danger of dying.

 

[fumetti]

I strongly disagree with this!

1) Healing surges are essentially reserve hit points with narrative control going mostly to the players - this is a good thing and allows for the players to control the flow of the game a bit better.

By narrative control, you are saying they avoid the consequences of previous actions... their own and their opponents.

I now see surges as a massive RETCON of the previous encounter. What was a dramatic battle with life or death consequences become totally MOOT.

Surges effectively take the risk out of the game. Because if you don't completely did in an encounter, you have virtually no chance of dying.

In older editions, a player had to be more cautious, more cunning, so as not to lose all his HP in one fight because he would be wholly vulnerable at the outset of the next fight. Not in 4E. You're darn near immortal.

I have a 5th level 4EE Knight. He has 53 HP. He has 143 HP worth of surges EVERY DAY--meaning it takes 196 HP of damage in one day to kill him .

And what's better, he starts over with 196 HP the very next day!

That's not a mid-level character. THAT IS A GOD.

2) Healing surges have finally divorced the party from absolute reliance on a cleric and/or other divine healing. Big boost for worlds where Divine is rare or non-existant.

Now the party is relying on healing surges.

I have an idea... don't change the game because (1) your fighter types want no responsibility for their reckless play; (2) your group can't strategize to minimize its damage intake; (3) your party can't function unless it treats clerics as just medics; (4) your clerics don't insist on being something other than just a walking heal spell; (5) you really want your characters to all have x4 HP each day (see Knight above).

Surges are actually worse than just giving characters x4 hp on their sheet. Because you don't need a bunch of healing to get back up to full strength the next day. Surges come back fully charged!

Surges = Monty Haul.

Healing surges were one of the best inventions of 4e - heck when I do a 3e game I might try to figure out a way to port them in (probably not, the feel would be too off, but I'd be tempted).

Your game is your business.

But it should be really easy to port them. Just give your characters 300% extra HP free each day.