What are the biggest threats?

[jasin]

Check out playtester Crhis Thomasson's comments: "I've played every iteration of 4th Edition. I can easily say, this is the best, by far. Every class did something cool, on every round. And each class approached the game in a different way. The paladin was exacting divine retribution, the ranger was blasting the crap out of stuff with his bow, and the wizard was blowing bad guys up with very cool spells".

In light of what you said, yes, that quote does seem a bit worrying.

An optimistic way to look at it is that the above quote doesn't sound that much different than 3E. Of course, that's optimistic if you like 3E...

Mearls has some bad character design habits that evidenced themselves both in Iron Heroes and in the PHB II's knight. He is very much guilty of "kitchen-sinking" his classes, overstuffing them with every ability he thinks the class should have. It's often not even a tree-based selection which allows some diversity between builds; you generally just get all the goodies.

You might be right here. I can't really see two knights very different from each other.

OTOH, I can easily see two very different swordsages. And IH classes are relatively customizable, aren't they? In addition to feats, which make a greater part of their ability than in D&D, almost every class gets a menu of abilities.

Perhaps the thing with the knight is that when you're designing the 48th core class, you're down to very specific concepts, which inherently don't leave as much room for different sub-concepts within them.

He also like his classes to very self-sufficient, and not have any obvious rock-paper-scissors type of obvious weaknesses.

No obvious RPS weaknesses is a good thing, IMO. It might have some negative impact on teamwork, but it could give more freedom from the fighter-rogue-wizard-cleric-or-DIE framework.

 

[KarinsDad]

OTOH, if PrCs are deliberately designed to be weaker than core classes, the players always have incentive to play fighters, rogues and druids rather than Four Winds Ninjas and duelists.

How is this a good thing?

You are focusing on one aspect of it and ignoring the balance aspect.

What we are discussing here is sacrificing some abilities to gain those special abilities that the player wants. Most of the time, those special abilities are pretty cool and uber in PrCs, so the idea is to weaken the overall character, but make him "the best" in the schtick area(s).

In reality, virtually every PrC is merely a "schtick" and the schtick has unique special abiliites. What we are discussing here is making the PC pay for those unique and often powerful or useful special abilities a little bit more, precisely because virtually nobody else can do those things.

This is not unlike real life. You can buy a Saturn real cheap compared to a Cadillac. You want something special, you pay for it. Or, not unlike Magic Items. You want the uber magic item, you have to pay for it. You want the uber PrC special abilities, you have to pay for it.

This isn't a punishment, it's a sacrifice of x for the gain of y where y is unique and cool and x is slightly bigger to pay for y.

Supply and demand. If you do not do it this way, everybody wants to get their PrC schtick cheaply like in 3E.

But in 3E, clerics are often a lot more powerful than monks.

And WotC has stated that they are addressing this.

 

[KarinsDad]

No obvious RPS weaknesses is a good thing, IMO.

I disagree.

Every character should have weaknesses and plenty of them. That is the reason to have roles and a PC party in the first place. Characters with only strengths and all of the strengths are lame designs.

 

[Imaro]

Exactly:

New player: "Why do I have fireball twice in my spellbook?"

The DM: "No, that's how many times you've memorized it."

New Player: "But I have it twice in my spellbook."

The DM: "But your character would never do that, and…"


This is from a real conversation I had (the DM) about 15 years ago with a very intelligent, at the time 30-years old, friend of mine.

Uhm...how about hey you pick n different spells for your spellbook. Each day you memorize x spells from your spellbook. If you want to be able to cast a spell more than once memorize it the number of times you want to cast it.

Now that wsn't hard...was it?

You don't cross spells off as you cast them in GURPS, you just keep track of points. You can cast a spell an infinite amount of times depending on the mana level and your skill with it. Same with Mage; you hav even less restriction than GURPS, actually; the only thing you ever have to worry about there is your paradox level and the observers.

The other two I haven't seen anyone play in ten years or so, so I can't speak as to them. I ran Earthdawn for many months but I can't now remember a single thing about it save the unique profession system.

Okay the "cross spells off.." was about D&D. It's a simple system.

You ever tried explaining the restrictions and possibilities a player can achieve in Mage the Ascension with different spheres and what exactly those different spheres encompass, as well as how to combine those spheres to create spells, oh yeah let's not forget vulgar vs. coincidental magick and paradox. It is definitely more complicated than D&D


Talislanta isn't more complicated per say, but it takes time to compute how much a spell costs and how difficult it is to cast, and it's hell trying to get someone who's new to the game to create their spells quickly.

Earthdawn(I actually loved this game...at least what I can remember) had you casting a spell from a grimoire from memory or from a spell matrix( with a variety of penalties or bonuses dependant upon which method you used. You then had to weave the spell threads( taking the time and making the roll to do this succesfully) unless it was a spell matrix which you could "hang" part opf a spell on, and finally make a spellcasting roll to see if the spell is successful.

What I'm asking for is that someone show me a list of spell systems that are simpler than D&D's. I won't say it doesn't exist, but I honestly believe there are way more that have greater complexity than D&D.

 

[Celebrim]

Paying attention to people who don't really like D&D in the first place.

QFT.

About the only thing that they could do to kill D&D is change it from being the game that has absolutely dominated the pen and paper industry for 30 years now. I remember when it was trendy to get rid of hit points. "Too abstract...not realistic...stupid...", etc. But you'd be hard pressed to find a successful cRPG that doesn't have them. Heck, the hit point concept dominates virtually every sector of the video game industry. Alot of non-hit point pen and paper systems have come and gone, but D&D still rules.

Just because you don't like it, don't understand it, and can't explain it, doesn't mean that it doesn't work.

I tired of a vocal minority that obviously has no love of the game talking about how much things have to change. Get your own system that you like. Don't screw up mine.

 

[Hairfoot]

I hope they don't make the tactical part of the game too much like a boardgame. It should have rules for highly tactical play, and a set of quick combat rules for those that don't use minis.

I agree, even though I love using minis and big tactical battles. A quick-combat system would make the game more flexible. It would also cut into potential miniature sales, which is why it won't happen.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Paying attention to people who don't really like D&D in the first place.

There is a vocal minority out there who prefer games like Hero or Exalted.

3.5 is my favourite rpg but I'd still like to see massive change in 4e. The way I figure it, there's no downside. We're getting something new and losing nothing. If 4e doesn't work out, I can always go back to 3e.

 

[WayneLigon]

What I'm asking for is that someone show me a list of spell systems that are simpler than D&D's. I won't say it doesn't exist, but I honestly believe there are way more that have greater complexity than D&D.

Oh, certainly there are. Mage is insanely more complex than D&D is, if you're not 100% comfortable with the rules and I don't think anyone was until Mage Revised. Spell Law is cetainly more complex. Ars Magica is, when you add in all the stuff about Vis and magical laboratories, etc.

I think of both True20 and Savage Worlds system of basic powers simpler than D&D; They would certainly vastly easier to master in total even if in detail they were not simpler. Just off the top of my head, In the Labrynth had a perfectly servicable set of spells with very simple rules governing their use.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Compared to what? Mage, Gurps, Talislanta, or Earthdawn. You pick your spells and cross them off as their cast...what exactly would be simpler to grasp?

How about a system where you know a set number of spells, and cast them by subtracting their MP cost from your MP total? Seriously, this is the era where people play videogames... And the very fact that people are disagreeing with you is proof that there is room for disagreement, so constantly repeating your assertion that it is inarguable will get you nowhere.

As for the topic of the thread as a whole... I echo the statement that the biggest problem is that they don't have the courage to change what needs to be changed, and keep too many legacy issues hanging around.

Well, actually, I think the biggest theat to D&D is a total failure on their part to open up D&D to new audiences, and add new inspirations and ideas to the game. New mechanics and flavor is a good idea, but it should have new inspiration as well, or else it will simply be a repackaging of what came before, and won't bring anything that will attract new players.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

That they continue to drag the mouldering corpse of uninformed* near-random* game design through the decades to placate an increasingly bitter and self-alienating group of grognards who really have no interest in the design ideals of 4e anyway, leaving us with an awful Frankenstein of new thought and legacy issues that pleases no-one. The only true master of the D&D brand is profit, has been since the 80's, and continuing to produce books for an audience whose primary interest is "how few books can I buy so as to use my mountains of old stuff?" is -death-.

D&D's legacy issues really struck me when my replica Septim arrived in the mail, and I realized that the gold standard for fantasy worlds is absurd - and could have been derived from no other source than D&D.

* Uninformed as denoted by there being NO game design before this, so it was largely extracted from wargames.
* Or, as the random denotes, by "making up stuff they thought would be fun". Like the cleric.