D&D 4E Two Camps of 4e Players (a rant)

[Infiniti2000]

Part of this is due to the character builder, which makes (IMHO) atrocious character sheets and even worse power cards. These cards are absolutely crammed with irrelevant details that make the cards hard to read. Instead of one page of actual options, you end up with several pages worth of character sheets and power card printouts, making a quick overview difficult. Even without changing the rules, changing the focus of the presentation could help.

Not surprisingly, I love the character builder and the awesome character sheets and power cards. Almost everything is relevant and handy, and the powers themselves are customizable per weapon. Amazing how perceptions differ from person to person, isn't it?

There are far more effects in play in 4e, and they change more quickly and have less of an impact than similar effects in 3e.

There are far FEWER effects in play in 4E, but they are just more transient. Thank God we no longer have the "Okay, we pause to buff hour per level spells..." "Okay, we pause to buff 10 minute per level spells..." "Okay, we pause to buff minute per level spells..."

[/QUOTE]The game ruleset may be more consistent than 3e, but you also need to track many more things, which makes things tricky.[/QUOTE] This is also untrue. You have to track way more in 3e. Of course, if your 3e game had all fighters, then maybe you'd be correct. My 3e game had a druid, wizard, ranger/fighter, cleric, fighter, and sorcerer/dd. We played these characters from 1-20.

 

[Garthanos]

Does a player really need to write down a buff to his AC for a single round?

Edit:
Granted, there might be several conditions and/or effects, but only for a round no one in our group found it necessary or even useful.

I have 2 or 3 players (depending on the campaign) and it isnt even an issue somebody mentioned having 8 players... ummm I really can see that becoming an issue. Your allies buff you more ... when there are more of you.

 

[eamon]

Not surprisingly, I love the character builder and the awesome character sheets and power cards. Almost everything is relevant and handy, and the powers themselves are customizable per weapon. Amazing how perceptions differ from person to person, isn't it?

To each his own! I do like some things about the character builder - particularly the ease with which you can whip up a character in it. The basic character sheet isn't equally good for all characters, but that's pretty much impossible, so I can hardly fault them there.

There are far FEWER effects in play in 4E, but they are just more transient. Thank God we no longer have the "Okay, we pause to buff hour per level spells..." "Okay, we pause to buff 10 minute per level spells..." "Okay, we pause to buff minute per level spells..."

I play and enjoy 4e - I'm not focusing on 4e's complexities because I want an edition war. 3e has it's own issues. Perhaps it's unfortunate, but it serves as a well known comparison point, which is why I used it - it's just so easy to compare to. In any case, back to 4e...

I do know that in combat, there are many, many effects that "happen", and that we spend a lot of time administering them. It's perfectly normal for attack bonuses, damage and/or defenses of a creature to change almost every round, and even change several times a round or due to several factors. A 4e combat also takes many rounds. All in all, a bunch of effects occur and interact - and that may explain why some people just lose track during combat.

Part of this is fun - the areas of effects are small enough - and forced or voluntary movement effects common enough - to make battle interesting and tactical. But there's also a gray area of effects which do have such obvious tactical aspects but provide a bunch of sources of yet another small boost or penalty to a game statistic. These often encourage a party to cooperate and build characters smartly, so that's fun, but they also involve a lot of administration during combat, which is less fun. It doesn't surprise me that people that aren't into tracking a bunch of numbers sometimes just zone out - or that they focus on what matters to them, and don't have a firm understanding of the combat section of the rulebook - which contains many rules that don't come into play very often.

Just last Tuesday in our game an enemy's immediate action triggered OA's - and many people were surprised that the PC that was interrupted couldn't take an OA. This is just a rule that very rarely sees play, and it makes sense that it isn't a focus for most players.

 

[Turtlejay]

Once again, a promising rules discussion turns to 4e bashing. What is the deal with that?

I like the CB, but give it a 7/10. For sure there is a ton of room for improvement. For instance, most Dragon magazine feats do not include any kind of summary. Since dragon is digital only, you either have to memorize the feat (no problem if it is your PC, bigger problem if you are playing someone else's, huge problem if you are DMing and want to see what the feat does) or print out the relevant article. Silly options that should not be a problem, the CB should have all of the feats summarized. Devote more attention to that and less to a paragraph describing how my character looks. Rules space is on the paper, roleplaying space is between my ears. Print 2 power cards for healing word and it's clones, since you get 2 encounter uses. Allow us to approve/deny specific cards to be printed. There are dozens of tweaks to make the CB better in my opinion.

On topic though, the CB is part of the problem. Not only to I think some players never read the books, relying on the CB to supply their rules for them, in my group there are some players that do not have the CB, and update their character the day of the game on the DM's CB. So not only are they not reading the books, they have not put any thought into their character.

I'm not sure of the cause, but I do know that a good DM (not just someone with good DMing ideas, a good DM that is good with people) can smooth over 90% of the issues. Knowing the rules yourself, and having good players to shore up the bad will keep many problems in line. 4e is certainly not an easy game to learn, but I had a rules dispute crop up in Phase 10 (a card game) last month for heaven's sake. Rules disputes are not only a 4e or pen and paper game problem, any time you have a group of people gather with an assumed set of criteria, there will be disputes. Challenges the the assumtions or what have you. Good DMs and good gaming groups can usually deal with these and move on.

Jay

 

[DracoSuave]

Print 2 power cards for healing word and it's clones, since you get 2 encounter uses. Allow us to approve/deny specific cards to be printed. There are dozens of tweaks to make the CB better in my opinion.

You can do these things. Right click on the power card, duplicate, hide. This functionality exists.

Just thought I'd let you know.

 

[Turtlejay]

You can do these things. Right click on the power card, duplicate, hide. This functionality exists.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Thanks! That thins my list of complaints to a more reasonable length!

Jay

 

[Garthanos]

Thanks! That thins my list of complaints to a more reasonable length!

Jay

I love it and my list is still long...
I want more skinning powers ;-) in the silly thing.
I want to make a skin of an existing race for instance.
There are some things like custom race movement rates = 0 and plain text only descriptions of things which annoy me too.

Being a programmer means if I am annoyed enough and have the time I'd make it myself ... I have not the time nor am I annoyed enough I would however update my subscription if I hear about substantial improvements along these lines.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Interesting. Well, everyone has slightly different perspectives on things. For myself I'd say 4e is a LOT more complex than 1e or 2e in practically every way. 3e I have to pretty much plead ignorance like Garthanos, lol. Even casters in those editions were really pretty simple. A LOT of the "fiddly" rules back then were things you didn't really have to consider during an adventure, like "what's my chance to know a spell?" I mean who cares unless you happen to be learning spells, which happens every other friday at most. All you DID have to know was "I got these spells" and you had a general idea of what they did. Usually whatever that was it was pretty decisive and there wasn't a lot of admin. I hit the goblins with sleep, well, huh, they're asleep... Each spell pretty much did one thing. You memorized a number of them that was in a chart in the book and NEVER changed except when you leveled.

4e in that regard is MUCH MUCH more complex. The fiddly bits stick out more into play time than they did in the old days. They did get rid of things like a STR buffing spell changing a whole bunch of your bonuses, but there weren't THAT many back then to start with. Now you have a dozen conditions and practically infinite effects and then the wizard decides to try to use his cunning dagger and his orb of ultimate imposition one in each hand while his familiar holds his other orb and GGGGAAAAHHHH!

On the other hand in many many ways its a much more fun game and I wouldn't go back.

Interestingly I don't honestly have THAT much problem with tracking stuff in combat either. It could be a result of the way we play. My old D&D buds are all scattered to the four winds, so we can only play online with Maptool. It provides init tracking, condition tracking, and macros that, while a big PITA to write, can really help out with all that stuff. So maybe I'm not so exposed to how easy all that is on the regular table top. Once in a while one of us forgets something or we forget to do a save and have to go back and do it later, etc. I don't think it really hurts anything.

 

[DracoSuave]

4e in that regard is MUCH MUCH more complex.

Except most effects are standardized into conditions and penalties and bonuses, where as each effect in 3e was usually it's own special animal, or part of a small spell chain.

And had ending conditions that were random, sometimes -literally- 'roll a random die or two for the duration in rounds.'

That is not less complex.

 

[Infiniti2000]

To each his own! I do like some things about the character builder - particularly the ease with which you can whip up a character in it. The basic character sheet isn't equally good for all characters, but that's pretty much impossible, so I can hardly fault them there.

The character sheet is extremely customizable. You can hide sections, move them, do lots of things right there in the PDF. Maybe you already know this, but my wife for instance didn't realize you have a lot of options to change the layout. Try some of them and see if you can get a more pleasing layout for yourself.

I'm also not trying to engage in any kind of edition war and could respond to your other comments, but in the interest of avoiding that, I'll refrain. Let me know if you'd like me to respond, however.