To update or not to update? That is the question.

[MrMyth]

True, but I feel like the core 3 from 2008 set a new standard for imperfect out of the gate. The math didn't actually work, necessitating the Expertise feats; the skill challenge numbers were completely out of whack and almost immediately errata'ed (making the challenges trivial, requiring yet another set of errata); and the MM1 monsters decidedly subpar, to the point where you can't use most of them as written after mid-heroic tier or so.

Yeah, but... how much of that perception is due to their willingness to address the areas that need fixing, rather than just saying, "Well, good enough!"

For myself, I'm pretty confident the game works just fine without any of the errata at all - that doesn't mean I don't prefer it with the errata. The issues with the so-called need for Expertise, the flawed monsters, etc - they certainly existed, but it was a matter of not being ideal, rather than being unusable.

I honestly feel that past editions had issues of their own that equally merited fixing, but they chose to not do so - or to wait and do so in big chunks, as with 3.5. But not addressing the problems doesn't mean they weren't there, and the fact that 4E is willing to fix areas in need of it simply makes those areas more obvious, rather than actually more common.

 

[Riastlin]

Particularly with the CB and DDi, I prefer the updates. Simply put I think our options are going to be either a) few options and little to no updates or b) more options but with more frequent updates.

As it stands now, I think that there are a little over 9,000 items in the Compendium. Even accounting for the 6 tiers of magic items, you still get over 1,500 unique items before feats, class abilities, powers, etc. are taken into account. Even with more thorough playtesting, there's just no way to adequately test every option and have it "perfect" out of the box. Honestly, to do so would require combining every item with every possible party makeup including every possible feat, power, item selection, etc. As a result, broken combos are going to find their way into the game no matter how much they try to playtest.

The math didn't actually work, necessitating the Expertise feats; the skill challenge numbers were completely out of whack and almost immediately errata'ed (making the challenges trivial, requiring yet another set of errata); and the MM1 monsters decidedly subpar, to the point where you can't use most of them as written after mid-heroic tier or so.

I won't argue with you on the skill challenges, but your comments about the expertise feats and the MM1 monsters actually contradict. If the math were "broken" then the monsters would be overpowered. If the monsters were sub par, then the math was fine (or too much in the players' favor).

Now, the hit rates may not have been what was necessarily intended, or what people thought they should be, but strictly speaking, the expertise feats were not absolutely needed. As it stands now, it seems as though my players rarely miss during standard encounters. Fortunately, the monster upgrades have helped to off set this a bit. As it stands though, I still have most of my players at level 12 attacking with a +19 before flanking, combat advantage (yes I know it doesn't stack with flanking), power bonuses, etc. are accounted for. Considering how easy it is to get situational bonuses to the attack, it often gets to the point where they will almost never miss.

Anyhoo, I personally like the fact that they continue to look at their product and update it as they go to try and keep it balanced. Will updates eliminate house rules? No, of course not. But I do think it limits the number of house rules.

 

[Mr. Patient]

For myself, I'm pretty confident the game works just fine without any of the errata at all - that doesn't mean I don't prefer it with the errata. The issues with the so-called need for Expertise, the flawed monsters, etc - they certainly existed, but it was a matter of not being ideal, rather than being unusable.

I can't speak for others, and YMMV and all that, but I found the MM1 monsters truly unusable after mid-heroic. Before the damage errata, I had to throw much higher level monsters at my PCs to even have a chance of hurting them, with the well-known result of having two groups of combatants that could barely hit one another slogging it out with at-wills. The fights were farcical and boring. Even with the errata, you still have solos that can't hold up their end of the bargain. The original skill challenge rules were not quite as bad. I suppose they were playable if I didn't look at them too hard.

I get what you're saying about willingness to fix, and I agree. 3.x multiclassing, for example, worked only in limited circumstances, but received only some ugly workarounds like the mystic theurge. It was evident that the rogue was severely underpowered, but no one did anything about it until Trailblazer and Pathfinder. So I'm happy the 4e devs are working on giving us a better game. Maybe I'll limit my complaint to this: I don't think any previous MM1s needed fixing the way 4e's did. You had to realize that dragons were tougher than their CR, but that didn't require any work on your part.

 

[Mr. Patient]

I won't argue with you on the skill challenges, but your comments about the expertise feats and the MM1 monsters actually contradict. If the math were "broken" then the monsters would be overpowered. If the monsters were sub par, then the math was fine (or too much in the players' favor).

I disagree. The "Expertise" problem is that the PCs' attacks didn't keep pace with the monsters' defenses. The MM1 problem was that the monsters' damage didn't keep pace with the PCs' hp. These problems are, I think, independent of one another, and they both lead in the same direction: grind.

 

[MrMyth]

I can't speak for others, and YMMV and all that, but I found the MM1 monsters truly unusable after mid-heroic. Before the damage errata, I had to throw much higher level monsters at my PCs to even have a chance of hurting them, with the well-known result of having two groups of combatants that could barely hit one another slogging it out with at-wills. The fights were farcical and boring. Even with the errata, you still have solos that can't hold up their end of the bargain. The original skill challenge rules were not quite as bad. I suppose they were playable if I didn't look at them too hard.

Really, with the original skill challenge rules, all the errata actually needed was a single footnote. They took that out and adjusted them downward, which led to the challenges being too trivial; they then later fixed that as well as boosted the upper end of the DCs to adjust for the higher skill checks possible from additional options added via supplements. But at launch, that one footnote was the only real problem.

For the monsters... while I find the new ones an improvement (and maybe even too vicious), the originals worked well enough, even in my epic game. I had a party that was pretty optimized, so we were already used to needing encounters a few levels higher to challenge them. We never ran into PCs and NPCs missing each other - by Epic levels, especially with Expertise in the system, the strikers almost never missed at all, except against the sturdiest opponents (higher level elite soldiers, for example). Maybe it was different at mid-heroic through mid-paragon (I was a player during that portion of the campaign), but it never seemed as noticably a problem as it has since been made out to be.

There were some disappointments, often with solos. I remember breaking out the Tarrasque and... never really having anyone too scared during the fight (aside from the initial emergence, and dropping one or two buildings on people during the fight.)

On the other hand, it wasn't a completely pushover, as it had been when I busted it out at the end of my last 3rd Edition campaign, and it got taken out in the first action of the combat by a shapechanged caster with multiple full-round charging pouncing attacks.

Still, as you say - experiences vary, and that is certainly true. But, at least in my case, I haven't found the base 4E rules as terrible as it might seem simply from looking at the errata. Some areas are serious fixes, but others are more minor tweaks. Which of course is its own question - would the 'middle ground' some prefer involve only making the serious fixes and not trying to perfectly fine tune the system? Maybe. For myself, I like them both, but I think it does make it seem like the initial system was more flawed than it actually was.

Maybe I'll limit my complaint to this: I don't think any previous MM1s needed fixing the way 4e's did. You had to realize that dragons were tougher than their CR, but that didn't require any work on your part.

Maybe... but I always felt the CR system itself was pretty dramatically flawed from the beginning, and never really got fixed. Particularly in the domain of the various rules for modifying monsters - whether advancing hit dice, adding class levels, or adding templates. Some really silly and absurd results would show up that, 'by the book', were supposed to be a certain CR.

Once I realized the best approach was to dismiss the entire system and just play it by feel, my games became a lot more balanced. With 4E, I really can trust the numbers. Whether the initial ones or the current boosted damage, it is much easier - for me as a DM - to feel confident in an encounter being appropriate.

Previously... well, I get that fights being hit or miss was an feature of the system to some folks, rather than a bug. But it was very frustrating as a DM to have such unpredictable encounters in the first place, and even more flawed guidelines on adjusted them to an appropriate level. And that was something that never was really addressed at all.

 

[Mr. Patient]

Really, with the original skill challenge rules, all the errata actually needed was a single footnote. They took that out and adjusted them downward, which led to the challenges being too trivial; they then later fixed that as well as boosted the upper end of the DCs to adjust for the higher skill checks possible from additional options added via supplements. But at launch, that one footnote was the only real problem.

It was a bit more than that, though. Originally, the number of allowable failures scaled with the challenge, so at complexity 5, you needed 12 successes vs. up to 6 failures. IIRC, Stalker0 did the math and realized that this made more complex challenges easier to defeat than less complex ones. So they then went to the 3-failures-and-you're-out rule for all levels of complexity. This was part of the "math being broken."

Which of course is its own question - would the 'middle ground' some prefer involve only making the serious fixes and not trying to perfectly fine tune the system? Maybe.

This is the approach I'd prefer, personally. I'd like them to settle on a cleric already and be done with it.

 

[Mr. Patient]

I should note that I'd feel a lot better about the whole thing if they'd sold me the core books as a set of PDFs or some other format that I could own in perpetuity and which they then "patched" from time to time as issues arose. In that universe, I would be quite pro-updates, and eager even for fine-tuned balancing of unlikely corner cases. But I'm not really a fan of the leasing model that is DDI, and I don't live in that alternate universe, so what I have are partly, or even mostly obsolete paper books, and a set of constantly changing errata PDFs and class updates. They address many of the problems with the game as originally published, but leave me dissatisfied as a customer. Not dissatisfied enough to quit in a huff, but enough to grouse anonymously on the Internet.

 

[MrMyth]

It was a bit more than that, though. Originally, the number of allowable failures scaled with the challenge, so at complexity 5, you needed 12 successes vs. up to 6 failures. IIRC, Stalker0 did the math and realized that this made more complex challenges easier to defeat than less complex ones. So they then went to the 3-failures-and-you're-out rule for all levels of complexity. This was part of the "math being broken."

Good point - I admit I forgot about that element. Still, I'm not trying to claim 4E was perfect from launch - just that other editions may have had imperfections as well, just ones that weren't addressed.

This is the approach I'd prefer, personally. I'd like them to settle on a cleric already and be done with it.

Yeah, I get that everyone has a different threshold for when the benefit of improved rules is outweighed by the hassle of keeping up with them. I agree that a better digital format - whether via Character Builder, PDFs, a Compendium that keeps better track of changes, etc - would go a long way towards helping with the problem, and letting individuals find the right level of errata to suit them.

 

[delericho]

Good point - I admit I forgot about that element. Still, I'm not trying to claim 4E was perfect from launch - just that other editions may have had imperfections as well, just ones that weren't addressed.

Indeed. No game has ever been published that was perfect, and the update strategy is a reaction to that. Of course, 4e is still not perfect, and never ever will be.

Yeah, I get that everyone has a different threshold for when the benefit of improved rules is outweighed by the hassle of keeping up with them. I agree that a better digital format - whether via Character Builder, PDFs, a Compendium that keeps better track of changes, etc - would go a long way towards helping with the problem, and letting individuals find the right level of errata to suit them.

The major problem with a digital format is that I frequently play in areas that don't have easy access to the internet, and in any case don't necessarily want to take my laptop with me (since it's a hassle). Better digital distribution would help when preparing the game, but not when running or playing them.

They might be badly broken, but games that don't have errata/updates at all have at least one major benefit over 4e: at least the definitive version of the game is actually available in print.