D&D 4E What's so bad about 4th edition? What's so good about other systems?

[delericho]

Got any links?

Because you asked: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_e5wAUwdmM"]Part One[/ame], [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slLNNbcgiSs&NR=1"]Part Two[/ame].

I must note: while I found much of the 4e marketing poor, I don't agree with the "bashing playstyles" assertion.

That said, the video's characterisation of Grapple was way over the top. The group there took longer just finding the page than it would have taken to resolve the attack.

(It's also worth noting that the 3e Grapple rules were still better than those in the initial release of 4e, which simply omitted them entirely. There's a "Grab" attack, but it's just not the same.)

Oh yeah, and their comments on Gleemax are just brilliant! As is their stuff about supporting all levels of play.

 

[Argyle King]

True, though to be honest I personally don't find 4e has any problems with the types of stuff I see in the PF APs I've read. The couple people I know that have tried them with 4e seemed to have good luck. So I'd observe that perhaps Paizo misjudged 4e.

My personal experience is that I went from running my homebrew setting using 2e to doing it using 4e and experienced no issues. In fact I found 4e to be considerably more flexible. Limited experience with 3e suggests to me that 4e is somewhat more flexible than 3.5 as well. I think 3.5 as a system (and maybe 2e as well) contain more 'wild and crazy' stuff in the books, but in terms of the everyday workmanlike aspects of play 4e wins. A lot of it was just that magic in previous editions had such vast plot power it was hard to devise a lot of credible story lines where the main question wasn't just "and why doesn't a wizard just cast X and deal with this...".

It may well be that the Paizo devs, being very familiar with 3.5 and 4e being new and strange were reluctant to dive in, especially when there were some actual licensing issues in 2008. I think they could have built any of the APs with 4e and been fine, but that doesn't mean they were willing to try and obviously they had an alternative that worked for them. It was a smart move for them, but I'm reluctant to ascribe it to some kind of shortcoming in 4e that I just can't find.

I can't speak on Paizo and Pathfinder; I haven't played it.

The only Pathfinder experience I have is playing one of their adventure paths using a different system.

 

[Zaran]

I think that 4e has too much player content and too little gm content. People say that 4 e has put out so much content but it's all player focused and frankly we don't need 40 classes. I would much rather the effort to be focused on getting gms tools, adventures and settings. The easier it is for gms, the more gms there will be. The more gms there are the more new players will be introduced into the game.

 

[LostSoul]

Compare that to 4e. A bad mechanic in 4e sticks out like a sore thumb, wether it's something a 3pp comes up with, or something wotc comes up with. People playing 4e very quickly came to understand it's problems, because it's a very lucid, coherent design- from overpowered or underpowered powers, to entire classes, to systems like skill challenges, 4e asks more of it's desginers because it's a better core design.

I don't think 4E's harder to design for. I think it's pointless to try to design in the same space that WotC does - that would be things like making new powers or classes to work alongside the PHB and Essentials ones - but if you're making a new game, like "4E Conan", it's pretty easy.

 

[mudlock]

I would much rather the effort to be focused on getting gms tools, adventures and settings. The easier it is for gms, the more gms there will be. The more gms there are the more new players will be introduced into the game.

But 4e IS so much easier to DM for!

Follow the xp budget when designing an encounter, and you'll have consistently-difficult encounters 95% of time, across ALL party compositions. Not so with 3e's CR. (Oops, a construct; your multiple-rogues party is hosed. No cleric? Well, you're kinda screwed no matter what, but undead means you're super-screwed. Multiple enemies? Total crapshoot.)

But people complain the classes and monsters are all "samey".

Treasure parcels make it easier to keep a party at an appropriate level of wealth and magical power. (More than once in 3e I threatened to make a monk w/ Vow of Poverty, simply because DMs kept under-supplying treasure.)

But people complain that's too restrictive, so they kinda-sorta got rid of it, and gave us random tables.

For non-combat mechanics, rather than having no structure at all (except for diplomacy's totally-broken one that no one used) we have skill challenges.

But people complain those're too restrictive, so they keep re-writing the whole concept.

4e is the EASIEST D&D ever for a new player to start DMing for, and the least time-consuming for an experienced one, because of all these excellent aids. Aids that clearly define the expectations; that smooth out randomness; that contain the chaos of controlling an entire UNIVERSE where the laws of physics don't apply.

So what did people do? Treat the guidelines as strait-jackets; confuse "randomness" with "creativity"; and blame the rules, when the only skill there is to being a DM is knowing when to break the rules.

 

[LostSoul]

But 4e IS so much easier to DM for!

Yeah. I recently ran "The House of the Medusa" and "The Library of Zorlac" from Vornheim - written up for AD&D, mostly - in my 4E game without having to do any conversion work. (I did double the level of Eshrigal and the plasmic ghoul to fit in my campaign, but that was it; I didn't need to write that down.)

Treasure parcels make it easier to keep a party at an appropriate level of wealth and magical power.

Treasure parcels are awesome even if you screw with the core assumptions of the game - that you want an appropriate level of wealth and magical power. Treasure parcels provide an appropriate level of reward for a certain level of risk. Just base the level of the treasure parcel (or roll, in Essentials) on the encounter level.

The economy of my game relies heavily on treasure parcels; you can make them work in reverse to determine what things cost. Since they are linked to adventuring and risk/reward it's perfect.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But 4e IS so much easier to DM for!

Follow the xp budget when designing an encounter, and you'll have consistently-difficult encounters 95% of time, across ALL party compositions. Not so with 3e's CR. (Oops, a construct; your multiple-rogues party is hosed. No cleric? Well, you're kinda screwed no matter what, but undead means you're super-screwed. Multiple enemies? Total crapshoot.)

But people complain the classes and monsters are all "samey".

Treasure parcels make it easier to keep a party at an appropriate level of wealth and magical power. (More than once in 3e I threatened to make a monk w/ Vow of Poverty, simply because DMs kept under-supplying treasure.)

But people complain that's too restrictive, so they kinda-sorta got rid of it, and gave us random tables.

For non-combat mechanics, rather than having no structure at all (except for diplomacy's totally-broken one that no one used) we have skill challenges.

But people complain those're too restrictive, so they keep re-writing the whole concept.

4e is the EASIEST D&D ever for a new player to start DMing for, and the least time-consuming for an experienced one, because of all these excellent aids. Aids that clearly define the expectations; that smooth out randomness; that contain the chaos of controlling an entire UNIVERSE where the laws of physics don't apply.

So what did people do? Treat the guidelines as strait-jackets; confuse "randomness" with "creativity"; and blame the rules, when the only skill there is to being a DM is knowing when to break the rules.

Yeah, but that's the weird thing. It is easy to deal with the basic routine stuff and the game 'just works'. And ironically you then have to actually figure out how to tell a good story, pace the game well, and etc. Those are harder tasks, and to be honest while 4e easily lets you build balanced encounters it isn't giving you much help in the realm of building INTERESTING encounters. Nor does it really let you know how best to break its own rules in that area for best effect. Older editions of the game really didn't have to get into that so much, if the game hung together and the DM managed to keep all the wheels on something crazy would happen.

 

[Argyle King]

But 4e IS so much easier to DM for!

Follow the xp budget when designing an encounter, and you'll have consistently-difficult encounters 95% of time, across ALL party compositions. Not so with 3e's CR. (Oops, a construct; your multiple-rogues party is hosed. No cleric? Well, you're kinda screwed no matter what, but undead means you're super-screwed. Multiple enemies? Total crapshoot.)

But people complain the classes and monsters are all "samey".

Treasure parcels make it easier to keep a party at an appropriate level of wealth and magical power. (More than once in 3e I threatened to make a monk w/ Vow of Poverty, simply because DMs kept under-supplying treasure.)

But people complain that's too restrictive, so they kinda-sorta got rid of it, and gave us random tables.

For non-combat mechanics, rather than having no structure at all (except for diplomacy's totally-broken one that no one used) we have skill challenges.

But people complain those're too restrictive, so they keep re-writing the whole concept.

4e is the EASIEST D&D ever for a new player to start DMing for, and the least time-consuming for an experienced one, because of all these excellent aids. Aids that clearly define the expectations; that smooth out randomness; that contain the chaos of controlling an entire UNIVERSE where the laws of physics don't apply.

So what did people do? Treat the guidelines as strait-jackets; confuse "randomness" with "creativity"; and blame the rules, when the only skill there is to being a DM is knowing when to break the rules.

eh... yes and no

Is it easy to learn to DM 4E? yes
Is it easy to learn to play 4E? yes

It's exceptionally easy to get yourself to the minimum bar required. That's a good thing; however...

Is it easy to run some of the same game styles I may have before? no
Was it easy for me to actually make some sense of skill challenge DCs? no
Is there less need for system mastery in 4E? no; not at all

There are other things too, but the main point is that while --yes-- it is exorbitantly easy to get into 4E and achieve the minimum amount of proficiency required to get the game to work. Getting the results you might want out of the game is sometimes very difficult.

 

[Argyle King]

Yeah, but that's the weird thing. It is easy to deal with the basic routine stuff and the game 'just works'. And ironically you then have to actually figure out how to tell a good story, pace the game well, and etc. Those are harder tasks, and to be honest while 4e easily lets you build balanced encounters it isn't giving you much help in the realm of building INTERESTING encounters. Nor does it really let you know how best to break its own rules in that area for best effect. Older editions of the game really didn't have to get into that so much, if the game hung together and the DM managed to keep all the wheels on something crazy would happen.

That's part of what I was trying to say.

 

[catastrophic]

I believe he was talking about them doing modules and accessories.
. . .
Firstly, I submit that that puts you in a minority.

I don't deny that their modules are popular, and i'm not going to pretend that wotc modules have been up to snuff. They totally win that comparison, although I wonder exactly who is buying modules from each company, and why, and how much of sales they account for.

I don't have any problem with the idea that the pathfinder guys write good modules, but they don't design good classes. And I don't think the people who are happy with pathfinder are doing good class design critique.

There was nothing stopping the pathfinder devs from doing more to fix the fighter, apart from their unwillingness to earn the ire of their fans and, potentially, their own failure as game designers. They could have at least given them better will saves. Something. Anything.

As it is, they gave them less than they initially wanted to in beta, because fans rejected the changes, while praising wizard buffs and more.
And fighters are just one example.

And you can't use the 'just a reprint' defence- It's not as if they didn't tweak many other classes, changing them and giving them extra features- even wizards got some based on school of magic- but they left in core failures of design in core classes, in a way that made no sense.

WOTC seem to be struggling, even now, to put out good modules. But paizo has never done good class or system design.

To be fair, there are some styles of play and some types of stories which don't mesh very well with the 4E mechanical structure. For me,

What style of play? What, specifically, do you think 4e doesn't do well?

Because unless it's the style of play where wizards are more important, or the style of play where somebody dies at the start of a fight because they rolled a 1, i'm not seeing it.

4e can be deadly. 4e can be gritty. What 4e doesn't do, is make players helpless.

I think a lot of the time when people say 4e doesn't suit their style, or that they played it and didn't like it, they're missing the fact that people's enjoyment of a game often has to do with factors not related to the design itself.

Certainly, 4e has flaws. Certainly, the grind has a way of creeping up on games, and I can imagine how some people could burn out on 4e, and walk away thinking it was a problem in line with the kind of criticisms that opponents of the systems make- but more often, it's due to the kind of far more valid criticisms that proponents of the systems recognise.

Genre suitability is a pretty clear example of this. Fans of 4e play it in all sorts of genres and styles, and do so successfully. Does that stop them from burning out on the grind? No. If the GM tries to emulate genre or style by making genre- based skill callenges, say based on intrigue, or wilderness survival, are things going to go well? Probably not, since imo the skill challenge system is a failure. But that doesn't mean 4e is bad at a certain play style, especially compared to other editions of dnd. If anything, it's failures are generic.

I mean, if somebody said dogs in the vinyard serviced it's style better than D&D, that I can see, as an argument. But 3.5 doing any kind of fantasy genre better than 4e? How? Because players can have their evening, or an entire character, ruined more easily? Is that really a good play style? And again, it's not as if you can't make 4e tough, or even deadly.