To much combat and not enough "roleplaying"!

[Doug McCrae]

Rpg rules are mostly about combat so playtests of those rules should be mostly about combat.

That said I think there are going to be new rules for extended social challenges in 4e. They were mentioned in Greg Bilsland's Prophecy of the Priestess playtest. The first couple of sessions of which had hardly any combat, incidentally.

 

[DonTadow]

Weren't there also blogs that said that a lot of inspiration for traps and dungeon design came from the dungeonscape books, wherein traps are more interactive. Of course a book that came out before this, lethal legacies by goodman games, also uses the interactive traps where as someone with good spot or trap sense finds it and there may be a dozen ways to disable it.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Roleplaying doesn't require playtesting, combat and other rules do.

 

[pawsplay]

From all the blogs, playtest reports, announcements and articles I have seen allot of talk about combat and not enough adventuring, skill usage, puzzle working (like traps etc) and social interactions (political play) between players and NPCs. I an missing this from the list above or anyone else feel the same way?

Why would puzzle working and social interactions need to be playtested? For the most part, that changes little between editions. If there are new Diplomacy rules or whatever, they would take some playtesting, but not to the same extent.

 

[Wolfspider]

This is one aspect of 4e that doesn't bother me. I understand why they are focusing on the mechanics instead of role-playing. Makes sense to me.

 

[Remathilis]

Because I've never seen a munchkin exploit all the loopholes and rules to excel with no peer at talking to NPCs.

And to be fair, they've talked a bit about balancing and redefining the skills, encounter traps, and social interaction.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

The new social encounter, skill system etc. will hopefully be presented in some playtest reports later.

The social encounter system is new and may be pretty different from what people expect, so teasers may not be worthwhile until they are ready to reveal a decent amount. I expect it will be something that will be talked about in the last couple of months leading up to release. In the meantime, the combat rules, which are still recognizable to the d20 system, will continue to garner the attention.

 

[Stalker0]

I do hope they give some decent work on the social mechanics, especially social combat which will hopefully not be so hard to run that it ruins the flow of roleplay.

Also, I hope that skill use is being tested as it relates to combat. Skills outside of combat are relatively straightforward, but if skills play a more central role in 4e combat then its important to playtest them. Afterall, if skills are more important in combat, they will be taken more commonly, so they will see more use out of combat as well.

But other than those issues, I agree that playtesting should be about combat. That's where balance is most important and where mechanics are most prevalent.

 

[tecnowraith]

Shoot I totally forgot about the Social Encounter mechanics. Its been a long week . Now the question is which class would use this mechanic more or better? Which class will benefit most from this mechanic? I can almost Rogues maybe wizards and possibility the cleric and warlord.

 

[Woas]

Well, when the only tools in a player's tool kit that have any extrapolation/explaination are: attack, full attack, trip, disarm, cast spell...more combat rules...
Then every problem a player comes to is dealt with in that manner.

So when Baron McNiceguy comes to talk with the characters and give them adventure hooks and/or rewards the outcome is the characters jumping the NPC for his stuff since they don't understand what the rules of speaking with someone are and extracting information from them in a non-violent way.
So it comes down to, DM: "Baron McNiceguy pays a visit. You know he has some info you could use" PC: "Hmm, well the only solid options I know that work are: attack, disarm, trip..."

Not that it's that big of a deal... but just saying, combat is not the only rules that could use playtesting/fleshing out