What the heck is "Unfun"?

[Kahuna Burger]

But exchange the Vampires with Bodaks, and suddenly he has not time to react in any way, everybody has to make his save and if he is lucky, he keeps living, if not, it is too late.
If the Bodaks would need to concentrate for one full round before they can activate their deadly power, all players have time to react and take their pick on the defense. Some will choose poorly and possibly die. Some will choose wisely and save the party's collective asses...

Small nitpick. Some will also choose heroicly, probably die and save the party's collective asses in doing so. And those are worthy deaths, fully in character and a good ending for some adventurers.

The idea that the safe thing to do is always the right thing to do doesn't work for me as an adventurer. To paraphrase Hong, the farmer didn't die either, he stayed home and plowed his field.

 

[wgreen]

Oy.

Re: tracking arrows: It's not that it's hard, it's that it's expensive, in that it is a small amount of effort for virtually no reward. And it doesn't hurt verisimilitude, either. Verisimilitude is the appearance of realism. If Legolas never ran out of arrows, would you really declare bull$#!@ on the whole situation, or would you assume he maybe refilled his quiver during downtime, "off-camera," because the reader/viewer doesn't need to be bored with such trivialities? Hand-waving inexpensive ammunition is no more harmful to verisimilitude than any other part of D&D.

Re: save-or-die effects, paralyzation, etc., I truly don't understand why so many people are defending a mechanic that tells players to stop playing for modest-to-long stretches of time during a session. I mean, did you come to play D&D, or did you come to play Nintendo while your friends play D&D? That is why so many people want to say good-bye to save-or-die; it's nothing to do with challenge. After all, what's challenging about rolling a 1 and then going to read a book while your pals continue with the fun?

-Will

 

[SavageRobby]

Re: save-or-die effects, paralyzation, etc., I truly don't understand why so many people are defending a mechanic that tells players to stop playing for modest-to-long stretches of time during a session. I mean, did you come to play D&D, or did you come to play Nintendo while your friends play D&D? That is why so many people want to say good-bye to save-or-die; it's nothing to do with challenge. After all, what's challenging about rolling a 1 and then going to read a book while your pals continue with the fun?

What seems to be missed is that the challenge isn't the die roll (thats not a challenge; thats luck). The challenge is in avoiding the need for the die roll in the first place.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

Its called SWSE and reading the designer blogs. It doesn't take much to figure out what WotC is doing.

So....let me make sure I follow your position.

Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons will be a

bland generic easy uberpowered game

because of a few vaguely worded tidbits that might or might not be finalized into the game and include no mechanical content whatsoever, plus the information contained in a d20 game written on an entirely different genre with different play conceits which has been hinted as a "good preview" of the mechanical changes to 4e. Things like skill consolidation and flipped saves.


Removed attack on other poster

 

[Raven Crowking]

If Legolas never ran out of arrows, would you really declare bull$#!@ on the whole situation, or would you assume he maybe refilled his quiver during downtime, "off-camera," because the reader/viewer doesn't need to be bored with such trivialities?

As a note, in the book Legolas does run out of arrows, and you do read that he scavanges the battlefield to recover what arrows he can. Although not explicit, it is implied that at times he takes orc arrows because it's what he can get. When his quiver is depleted, he uses two long knives that are his only other weapons.

In the film version, Legolas has a quiver of endless arrows, which I have seen included in lists of magic items that the characters must have had (low vs. high magic threads) and have heard mocked on many occasions when the film came out. It was no different than Rambo's Wand of Automatic Missile Fire that cannot run out of ammo unless it is a dramatically tense moment.

Speaking of unfun, I can imagine the response to this new rule in 4.0: "Players do not need to track ammunition. However, the DM can have them run out of ammunition at any moment he deems suitably dramatic." That would certainly model action movies, but I'm betting it would go over like a lead balloon.

RC

 

[wgreen]

What seems to be missed is that the challenge isn't the die roll (thats not a challenge; thats luck). The challenge is in avoiding the need for the die roll in the first place.

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean that save-or-dies are challenging because you're supposed to figure out how to avoid them?

So, I'm playing a hero. There's a BBEG what needs killin'. I go over to his house, just like the DM expects and hopes I do, and the BBEG slaps me with a save-or-die which I didn't, and couldn't, know he had. What challenge did I fail to overcome?

-Will

 

[wgreen]

In the film version, Legolas has a quiver of endless arrows

Or, they're just hand-waving the issue.

Speaking of unfun, I can imagine the response to this new rule in 4.0: "Players do not need to track ammunition. However, the DM can have them run out of ammunition at any moment he deems suitably dramatic." That would certainly model action movies, but I'm betting it would go over like a lead balloon.

Give it a good mechanic, so that it's not just the DM randomly screwing with the party, and I'm down with it.

-Will

 

[Sun Knight]

Removed attack on other poster

Wow, I thought mods in this forum has rules against blatant attacks such as this.

 

[Imaro]

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean that save-or-dies are challenging because you're supposed to figure out how to avoid them?

So, I'm playing a hero. There's a BBEG what needs killin'. I go over to his house, just like the DM expects and hopes I do, and the BBEG slaps me with a save-or-die which I didn't, and couldn't, know he had. What challenge did I fail to overcome?

-Will

Gathering information on the thing you were suppose to fight. It's funny how often not being prepared can get you killed in real life.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

What seems to be missed is that the challenge isn't the die roll (thats not a challenge; thats luck). The challenge is in avoiding the need for the die roll in the first place.

Most of the time there IS no way to avoid the roll:

"You turn the corner and up ahead the room becomes very dark"
"Ok, I pull out my everburning torch"
"Alright, everyone make me a save or die as you all see the Bodaks in the back of the room"