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

[delericho]

All of which is your opinion, and nothing more. I simply will not absolve WotC, or the extreme pro-4e side of the Edition Wars, of all blame in this.

And yes, that is my opinion, and nothing more.

 

[Argyle King]

I dunno, it seems rather easy to me. Limit to martial characters (I've noticed that wizards are either badguys or NPCs), inherent bonuses, no magic items, and make use of a lot of boons. Healing surges make Conan style gameplay easier then ever before.



Naw; stock, cliche stories are just that regardless of the game used ;p.

Really though, think back to every time a character is wounded but manages to draw from their strength to push harder. Healing surge! Every time that godawful Tasslehoff did something "wacky" to an enemy. Stunt! Thief's trick!

For me, I still don't believe I'd be satisfied using 4E for Conan. There are still a lot of areas in which the crunch would make the fluff feel different for me. Different people view things differently. If I were playing through a Conan adventure as portrayed in the movies, I would probably be ok with using 4E, but I think there are a lot of things; a feel I would want to model from the original Howard books which I don't believe would mesh well with 4E.

I don't even really feel that the same 'Points of Light' feel that I got from the 4E preview books made it into the final product. I'm aware that the concept of 'Points of Light' is still the default assumption of 4E, but what I imagine in my head when I hear that, and the impression I got from reading the preview books lead me to an idea which I don't feel made it into the game; a fluff idea and feel that I don't believe the 4E crunch supports nearly as well as I'd like. ...mostly because the idea I had in my head was something closer to my vision of something like Conan; perhaps with some Dark Fantasy ideas added.

As for Dragonlance, part of the reason I asked that question was because a large portion of the original books were written around how the mechanics of the game worked at the time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For me, I still don't believe I'd be satisfied using 4E for Conan. There are still a lot of areas in which the crunch would make the fluff feel different for me. Different people view things differently. If I were playing through a Conan adventure as portrayed in the movies, I would probably be ok with using 4E, but I think there are a lot of things; a feel I would want to model from the original Howard books which I don't believe would mesh well with 4E.

I don't even really feel that the same 'Points of Light' feel that I got from the 4E preview books made it into the final product. I'm aware that the concept of 'Points of Light' is still the default assumption of 4E, but what I imagine in my head when I hear that, and the impression I got from reading the preview books lead me to an idea which I don't feel made it into the game; a fluff idea and feel that I don't believe the 4E crunch supports nearly as well as I'd like. ...mostly because the idea I had in my head was something closer to my vision of something like Conan; perhaps with some Dark Fantasy ideas added.

As for Dragonlance, part of the reason I asked that question was because a large portion of the original books were written around how the mechanics of the game worked at the time.

Eh, I haven't tried to do an S&S style game with 4e, but I'm thinking it would be a LOT more appropriate for this than say 3.5 or PF where the evil bad guy wizard or cleric would laugh heartily and mop the floor with our doughty barbarian. At best you'd certainly have to carefully craft a scenario where Conan would come out on top. In 4e ritual magic would seem really appropriate for an S&S type game, bad guys were always performing demon summoning rituals, sacrifices, etc. In fact you might even build a bad guy evil wizard as virtually nothing but a ritual caster with only some basic combat casting and otherwise needing to fallback on some rather inferior MBA. The other advantage with 4e being you can pretty easily restrict the PCs to appropriate archetypes (IE all martial or something along those lines), and low magic is quite easy in 4e.

Of course none of this is to say that 4e is aimed squarely at this sub-genre and there are other systems that may do this particular type of game better than any version of D&D. Still, I'm having trouble seeing where 4e is terribly inappropriate.

I think there are a lot of ways to potentially interpret PoL. It could go anywhere from a sort of frontier type area where civilization is being pressed hard and has few resources, all the way to a super dark macabre setting ala William Hope Hodgson (The Night Land) where all that remains of civilization are a few redoubts surrounded by terrifying forces of darkness and the sun itself vanished so long ago its existence is only hinted at in the most ancient records.

 

[catastrophic]

The POL settting certainly seems like a generic 'lots of ruins' setting, rather than the savage wildnerness you might see in some other subgenres. But setting is not mechanics when the mechanics make so few refrences to the setting.

All of which is your opinion, and nothing more. I simply will not absolve WotC, or the extreme pro-4e side of the Edition Wars, of all blame in this.

And yes, that is my opinion, and nothing more.

Yes yes, everythng is just a matter of opinion, in other words, nothing. Nobody is allowed to make any kind of concrete statement, ever, because if we did that, if we actually went back and looked at how the wotc was actually acting, if we read over those old threads and looked at the videos and briefings with an open mind, we might actually have to hold people responsible for their behaviour.

But we can't have that, so everything is just a matter of opinion, and all the blame and vitriol is rightly targeted at the mean jerks at wotc, and various other scapegoats.

 

[Talok]

You're being awfully hypocritical. Spewing the same vitriol you accuse others of. Delrecho didn't say that WotC and 4E supporters were completely at fault, just that they were not free from blame. That is the truth, not an opinion.

 

[Argyle King]

I think the hardest time I'd have with 4th Edition would be due to some of the problems I mentioned having with 4th in a previous post. I prefer heroes to be leading armies rather than fighting them. There are a lot of points in the Conan stories where he's leading an army, a crew of pirates, and many other things. While Conan is capable of fighting several foes at a time and winning, even he has his limits, and doing so often leads to injury. In the experience that I've had with 4th Edition (and am still having in the campaign I play in right now... even using upgraded monster stats,) the PCs still tend to annihilate the monsters.

This was especially highlighted during the session yesterday in which the party's gouge wielding barbarian was able to regularly generate more damage with at-will powers than some solos and elites could pull off with their encounter powers.

That's not to say there aren't creatures which are challenging to the party. We had a somewhat rough time with a group of Mariliths, but, in general, the party crushes the enemy. At times I find myself using daily powers more to speed up combat and get the conclusion that I already know is coming rather than because I actually need to use them.

I wouldn't use 3.5 or Pathfinder either. As a new D&D player, I remember taking the leadership feat because I wanted followers. I wanted to build a castle, become a warlord, and amass an army. It's that my dreams were crushed because I realized that no amount of low level followers could hope to even have the slightest chance against even just one creature a few levels higher. The increased power curve between levels in 3rd Edition exaggerates some of the problem.

Really though, combat wouldn't even be the main area where I'd have trouble with getting what I want. The main issue is that I would want less abstraction. Especially when it comes to non-directly combat related things. If I wanted to play a game in which I lead followers (army or otherwise,) I'm the type of person who would want some of the mundane details. Actually, in general, I would want some of the more mundane details.

If I can touch back on the subject of combat again, an example of more detail would be wanting HP to represent something less abstract; represent actual injury. Being able to grapple and choke somebody out (or even just grapple and have it actually do something) would be nice too. On that same note, I'd probably prefer active defenses for a grittier game. Being able to dodge or parry an attack would add a level of detail I would want. IMO, the more static style of defenses in D&D works because the game somewhat expects you to get hit, and you have the big chunk of HP to soak it up. With a more physical representation of HP desired, I'd want a more suited way of handling defenses to compliment that.

That's mostly personal preference. Though, some of those ideas are things that I don't know how to incorporate into D&D. As best I can tell, some of 4th Edition's design ideals were that the majority of those things I want shouldn't be important.

There's actually a lot more I was going to say, but I feel like I'm derailing the topic of the thread. It's suppose to be about 4th Edition; not just my personal views on gaming.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the hardest time I'd have with 4th Edition would be due to some of the problems I mentioned having with 4th in a previous post. I prefer heroes to be leading armies rather than fighting them. There are a lot of points in the Conan stories where he's leading an army, a crew of pirates, and many other things. While Conan is capable of fighting several foes at a time and winning, even he has his limits, and doing so often leads to injury. In the experience that I've had with 4th Edition (and am still having in the campaign I play in right now... even using upgraded monster stats,) the PCs still tend to annihilate the monsters.

This was especially highlighted during the session yesterday in which the party's gouge wielding barbarian was able to regularly generate more damage with at-will powers than some solos and elites could pull off with their encounter powers.

That's not to say there aren't creatures which are challenging to the party. We had a somewhat rough time with a group of Mariliths, but, in general, the party crushes the enemy. At times I find myself using daily powers more to speed up combat and get the conclusion that I already know is coming rather than because I actually need to use them.

I wouldn't use 3.5 or Pathfinder either. As a new D&D player, I remember taking the leadership feat because I wanted followers. I wanted to build a castle, become a warlord, and amass an army. It's that my dreams were crushed because I realized that no amount of low level followers could hope to even have the slightest chance against even just one creature a few levels higher. The increased power curve between levels in 3rd Edition exaggerates some of the problem.

Really though, combat wouldn't even be the main area where I'd have trouble with getting what I want. The main issue is that I would want less abstraction. Especially when it comes to non-directly combat related things. If I wanted to play a game in which I lead followers (army or otherwise,) I'm the type of person who would want some of the mundane details. Actually, in general, I would want some of the more mundane details.

If I can touch back on the subject of combat again, an example of more detail would be wanting HP to represent something less abstract; represent actual injury. Being able to grapple and choke somebody out (or even just grapple and have it actually do something) would be nice too. On that same note, I'd probably prefer active defenses for a grittier game. Being able to dodge or parry an attack would add a level of detail I would want. IMO, the more static style of defenses in D&D works because the game somewhat expects you to get hit, and you have the big chunk of HP to soak it up. With a more physical representation of HP desired, I'd want a more suited way of handling defenses to compliment that.

That's mostly personal preference. Though, some of those ideas are things that I don't know how to incorporate into D&D. As best I can tell, some of 4th Edition's design ideals were that the majority of those things I want shouldn't be important.

There's actually a lot more I was going to say, but I feel like I'm derailing the topic of the thread. It's suppose to be about 4th Edition; not just my personal views on gaming.

I think it is a perfectly valid type of commentary given the topic of the thread. My observation would be that fairly concrete combat mechanics don't result in a very heroic kind of genre. The problem is that any sort of realistic combat situation (which would presumably be the case with a highly concrete implementation) is going to have to acknowledge that melee combat is horribly dangerous and unpredictable. Thus your heroes will very rapidly run out of luck and take some deadly or utterly debilitating injury. No matter how strong, quick, skilled, etc you are you simply cannot expect to survive combat after combat in any even vaguely realistic system. In other words Conan is utterly unrealistic, and you can only really portray such heroes in a somewhat abstracted system where you can paper over just how unrealistic that kind of fiction is.

 

[Argyle King]

I think it is a perfectly valid type of commentary given the topic of the thread. My observation would be that fairly concrete combat mechanics don't result in a very heroic kind of genre. The problem is that any sort of realistic combat situation (which would presumably be the case with a highly concrete implementation) is going to have to acknowledge that melee combat is horribly dangerous and unpredictable. Thus your heroes will very rapidly run out of luck and take some deadly or utterly debilitating injury. No matter how strong, quick, skilled, etc you are you simply cannot expect to survive combat after combat in any even vaguely realistic system. In other words Conan is utterly unrealistic, and you can only really portray such heroes in a somewhat abstracted system where you can paper over just how unrealistic that kind of fiction is.

I agree that it would portray combat as being deadly. However, I view that as a plus as well as a reason to further support non-combat options. I'd prefer that 'let's just hack through it' not always be the best answer. Sometimes diplomacy and other options might actually be the smarter choice. Perhaps combat *is* the right choice, but you need to use a knowledge skill to uncover an edge or a secret weakness you can use.

Also, I find it somewhat more heroic (especially if I'm going for a gritty game) to succeed in the face of adversity. Conan often does get wounded; in many cases, severely wounded. In one of the stories, without the intervention of a deity, he would have been killed by something as simple as poison.

I will agree that Conan is unrealistic. However, part of my point is that (IMO) 4th Edition is build around ideas which are even more unrealistic. It's also important to point out that while Conan himself is larger than life and gets a boost from being the BA protagonist of the stories, the same can't be said for the other characters nor the world he lives in.

Despite the unrealistic nature of some fiction, it's not unheard of for people here in our own real world to beat the odds. The easiest example I can think of would be Audie Murphy. He was told he would never make it as a combat soldier; that he wasn't built for it. To bring up only one example when he beat the odds, he single handedly wiped out a machine gun crew, and then proceeded to use the machine gun of the crew he had killed to hunt down and destroy other elements of the enemy.

For me, I suppose it comes down to why I prefer Captain America over Superman. Both are very similar heroes. However, Cap -to me- is the better hero (in the moral sense of the word) because of his ability to succeed in the face of adversity. Likewise, he still chooses to do what he feels is the right thing with the knowledge that he can get hurt and/or killed just like anyone else would.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree that it would portray combat as being deadly. However, I view that as a plus as well as a reason to further support non-combat options. I'd prefer that 'let's just hack through it' not always be the best answer. Sometimes diplomacy and other options might actually be the smarter choice. Perhaps combat *is* the right choice, but you need to use a knowledge skill to uncover an edge or a secret weakness you can use.

Yeah, obviously various systems will provide more or less focus on non-combat options. 4e tends to depict the PCs as being pretty capable in this department, so they're somewhat encouraged to fight, but obviously the DM can make this a more or less viable tactic in various ways. AD&D, with its more fragile PCs, tends to emphasize this kind of play more. Naturally systems with much flatter power curves do so to an even greater degree.

Also, I find it somewhat more heroic (especially if I'm going for a gritty game) to succeed in the face of adversity. Conan often does get wounded; in many cases, severely wounded. In one of the stories, without the intervention of a deity, he would have been killed by something as simple as poison.

Right. I guess there could be an implied idea there that 4e is 'easy' and the PCs don't really face adversity. I haven't found this to be true. In fact I'm pretty sure the players in my game would testify to any number of times when I've beat the tar out of them (and others where they've managed to succeed anyway). I don't think that particular aspect of play is more or less true of any decent system. I mean after all, what would be the point of an adventure with no danger?

I will agree that Conan is unrealistic. However, part of my point is that (IMO) 4th Edition is build around ideas which are even more unrealistic. It's also important to point out that while Conan himself is larger than life and gets a boost from being the BA protagonist of the stories, the same can't be said for the other characters nor the world he lives in.

Yeah, all fantasy fiction is pretty unrealistic, as are RPG adventures, etc. It is all really a matter of what set of rules sets the tone you want. I don't disagree that 4e isn't necessarily the ideal system for it.

Despite the unrealistic nature of some fiction, it's not unheard of for people here in our own real world to beat the odds. The easiest example I can think of would be Audie Murphy. He was told he would never make it as a combat soldier; that he wasn't built for it. To bring up only one example when he beat the odds, he single handedly wiped out a machine gun crew, and then proceeded to use the machine gun of the crew he had killed to hunt down and destroy other elements of the enemy.

Sure, there are plenty of other such stories. I'd expect if you could statistically analyze such heroics you'd probably find that in all of WWII large numbers of people found themselves in the kind of situations Audie Murphy was in. He was the lucky one that did the equivalent of flipping a coin and coming up heads 10 times in a row. With a game system you need to be able to make that the expected (or at least reasonably possible) outcome. Maybe a system that does that can be less abstract than 4e, but I don't think 4e is really THAT abstract by comparison to other RPGs. I think how the participants in the game fluff things makes a big difference.

For me, I suppose it comes down to why I prefer Captain America over Superman. Both are very similar heroes. However, Cap -to me- is the better hero (in the moral sense of the word) because of his ability to succeed in the face of adversity. Likewise, he still chooses to do what he feels is the right thing with the knowledge that he can get hurt and/or killed just like anyone else would.

Yeah, but again if we relate that back to 4e are you really saying that 4e characters are like superman and suffer no reasonable possibility of defeat? That hasn't been my experience at all. The game may avoid depicting gruesome debilitating wounds and instant-kill effects, but if the PCs aren't experiencing any danger something is eschew... It sure isn't designed to work that way.

 

[Argyle King]

I also want to add that I'm not incapable of enjoying unrealistic things. Looking back over my posts, I started to think that I may be viewed as someone who can only enjoy a certain type of game. That's not true; nobody implied it was; I was just wanted to say so. There are a lot of things I enjoy which are highly unrealistic. I also understand that there are times when the needs of the game to be playable outweigh the wants of a designer to be plausible.

That being said, I do have a general range which I tend to like. It's not an unbendable nor unbreakable range. Depending on what I'm sitting down to do (watch a movie, play a game, etc,) the range may slide one way or the other; there may be more things I'm willing to accept from one thing before I get outside of my comfortable range than there are things I'm willing to accept from something else.

An example which comes to mind would be the Transporter movies(starring Jason Statham). I highly enjoyed the first movie. There were many elements of the movie which were unbelievable, but there was at least a token effort to try to add a sense of at least some amount of bare bones plausibility to those elements. The scene in which he fights a group of enemies would be an example of that; he coats the floor in oil and then finds a way to fight with an advantage while they're stuck trying to retain footing on the oil during the fight.

Then we get to the second movie. I hated it. Granted, part of the reason is probably because I found the story of the second movie to be pretty cheesy --even for the standards of an action movie, but what really killed it for me was how over the top some of the stunts were. Even considering the protagonist's skill at driving, ...well, let's just say this scene speaks for itself: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7BJ74aeKpM&feature=related]YouTube - ‪transport 2‬‏[/ame]

The first movie --even while being unrealistic-- set a tone; a set of expectations concerning what could happen and what couldn't. Going into the second movie, I still expected that, but what it delivered violated (quite severely) the range of things I was willing to accept and still be able to enjoy it.

I highly enjoy Conan. I am capable of enjoying 4th Edition. However, if someone were to tell me they were running a Conan game, I think I would go into it with expectations which the 4th Edition structure would violate in a similar way that Transporter 2 violated the ideas I had about the world those movies were supposed to be taking place in.


Getting back to Superman and your response to my post...

Yes, it has been my experience there is not often a reasonable possibility of defeat for the 4th Edition characters I've played.

It could be that I play with a group which works together better than the average group. I don't think so, and I do not want to come across as riding a high horse. I only dare making that comment to consider the possibility due to the large discrepancy between my anecdotal experience in playing the game and the experiences that are reported here on EnWorld as well as some of the other fora I peruse.

Typically, when I've made similar comments in other threads (here and elsewhere,) I tend to get the response of 'well, defeat can mean different things than death or injury.' I totally agree with that; however, that brings me back to Superman once again with what I call the Superman problem.

Superman is so powerful that one of two things is usually required by the story. 1) There continually needs to be new characters created who can match his power or 2) the people he cares about need to be put in danger. The second is what I'm mainly looking at here with this response.

Superman loves Lois Lane. Superman is virtually impossible to defeat. As such, the story demands that Lois is the clumsiest and most trouble causing person on the face of the planet (or so it would seem by watching some of the newer cartoons.)

Now, I do highly support the idea of giving a character attachments to the world. That is very good; I highly support it. However; maybe it's just me, but, if I were Superman, it would get old needing to save Lois all the time. It's a cool plot hook sometimes, but when it becomes the only plot hook, it gets really old.

"Haha Superman, I finally have my doomsday weapon complete!"
"Not so fast..."
"Superman, help! I broke a nail."
"Sorry world, Lois needs me."

If we translate this into rpgs, I can imagine that plot hook getting old. Every time I'd want to do something with my character, I would need to rush back to my home village instead because it was in danger. From my character's point of view, I'm eventually going to decide that I can't afford to adventure because something bad happens every time I leave, or my character is going to dump his NPC girlfriend because it's not worth the trouble.

None of that even touches upon the other problem with using that plot too much. The problem of the character who doesn't care. "Pfft, I'm evil, why do I care if the Tarrasque Swarm eats the shopkeeper's daughter?"



I will say that Dark Sun seems to be a little rougher though. I haven't experienced much of it yet, but one of the other games the same group is playing (there are two separate games going on; different days) has used some of the material from Dark Sun, and the creatures do seem to fair better. The guy DMing that game also tends to build a lot of his own monsters from scratch.

I will also say that I will agree that the MM3 guidelines help, but only to an extent. While the monsters have gotten a little tougher, so have the PCs; some of the new PC options are undeniably better than what came before.

PHB1 feats ---> Expertise ----> Versatile Expertise (which was like 2 expertise feats in one) ----> the new Expertise feats in Essentials (now with extra bonuses!)

Also, part of the new monster design math means that, while some creatures hit harder, some also have lower defenses. A dead MM3 monster does just as much damage as a dead MM1 monster. This is not the case in all of the new monsters though; mostly Solos and Elites from what I can tell at a glance.


Unfortunately, I never had the chance to play AD&D. Growing up in a small rural town during the 'D&D is satanic' boom wasn't exactly helpful to a kid who had an interest in roleplaying games. I've heard a lot of people say that 4th Edition returns to older roots. While I've not played AD&D, I have read some of the material for AD&D that one of my friends has. Mentally, I have a hard time imagining the same style of play, so I am unsure what is meant when people say that. Not having actually played AD&D myself, maybe you could shed some light on any similarities or differences the two versions of D&D might have.