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What is the essence of 4E?
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<blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 7453475" data-attributes="member: 2656"><p>For me 4e came out with answers to problems I was having with high level 3.5 D&D. I was getting burned out from all the busywork in 3rd ed, humanoid npcs needing long lists of magic items to represent even a minor threat, spellcasting npcs and monsters needing long lists of spells, and the balance being all over the place, so it was difficult to evaluate a particular encounter without simulating or runnning it.</p><p></p><p>I have always used maps and minis as I find it difficult to use theatre of the mind, and track multiple mobiles in space and time.</p><p></p><p>I had already started to take shortcuts, giving monsters the numbers they needed rather than follow the 3e monster progressions, not bothering with item lists that just existed to given necessary bonuses to npcs, reducing spell lists for npcs whose lifetime was generally measured in rounds.</p><p></p><p>I was getting tired of the dependence of 3e parties on exhaustive lists of buff and protection spells to succeed against power creeped, templated foes.</p><p></p><p>So I immediately recognised the innovations that 4e came up with as being useful to me - treating monsters as different to PCs because they serve different purposes in the game, using simplified monster stat blocks that are sufficient for running typical encounters, PCs that all have a variety of useful, reliable powers.</p><p></p><p>4e spreads out the sweet spot for character levels imo, skips the early zero levels where death is common, and IMO makes what they called Paragon and Epic levels distinct and interesting, at least the way I run it.</p><p></p><p>I really appreciated that 4e powers were reliable, in that the GM wasn't supposed to casually forbid their use or apply arbitrarily penalties. My experience of previous editions was that trying anything undocumented was often an exercise in futility, which is why I gravitated to spellcasters in previous editions, which could still be arbitrarily shut down, but not without being obviously unfair.</p><p></p><p>4e reducing the upper limit on power levels allowed them to make powers transparent and reliable, as in players could rely on them not being twisted, ignored, negated or made to be worse than doing nothing. Plot device spells of previous editions could be split up into their different components, powers that it was reasonable for PCs to have, and npc only rituals or monster powers that could be more powerful than pcs powers in the service of the plot.</p><p></p><p>I liked that 4e was designed to run the kind of D&D that I wanted to play, mechanics that didn't fib to it's users, had less random death and craziness, evened out the power levels of different classes, removed the long lists of buff spells.</p><p></p><p>I found 4e much easier to improvise for as a GM, with easy monster reskinning and interesting room features.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aenghus, post: 7453475, member: 2656"] For me 4e came out with answers to problems I was having with high level 3.5 D&D. I was getting burned out from all the busywork in 3rd ed, humanoid npcs needing long lists of magic items to represent even a minor threat, spellcasting npcs and monsters needing long lists of spells, and the balance being all over the place, so it was difficult to evaluate a particular encounter without simulating or runnning it. I have always used maps and minis as I find it difficult to use theatre of the mind, and track multiple mobiles in space and time. I had already started to take shortcuts, giving monsters the numbers they needed rather than follow the 3e monster progressions, not bothering with item lists that just existed to given necessary bonuses to npcs, reducing spell lists for npcs whose lifetime was generally measured in rounds. I was getting tired of the dependence of 3e parties on exhaustive lists of buff and protection spells to succeed against power creeped, templated foes. So I immediately recognised the innovations that 4e came up with as being useful to me - treating monsters as different to PCs because they serve different purposes in the game, using simplified monster stat blocks that are sufficient for running typical encounters, PCs that all have a variety of useful, reliable powers. 4e spreads out the sweet spot for character levels imo, skips the early zero levels where death is common, and IMO makes what they called Paragon and Epic levels distinct and interesting, at least the way I run it. I really appreciated that 4e powers were reliable, in that the GM wasn't supposed to casually forbid their use or apply arbitrarily penalties. My experience of previous editions was that trying anything undocumented was often an exercise in futility, which is why I gravitated to spellcasters in previous editions, which could still be arbitrarily shut down, but not without being obviously unfair. 4e reducing the upper limit on power levels allowed them to make powers transparent and reliable, as in players could rely on them not being twisted, ignored, negated or made to be worse than doing nothing. Plot device spells of previous editions could be split up into their different components, powers that it was reasonable for PCs to have, and npc only rituals or monster powers that could be more powerful than pcs powers in the service of the plot. I liked that 4e was designed to run the kind of D&D that I wanted to play, mechanics that didn't fib to it's users, had less random death and craziness, evened out the power levels of different classes, removed the long lists of buff spells. I found 4e much easier to improvise for as a GM, with easy monster reskinning and interesting room features. [/QUOTE]
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