D&D 4E What's Wrong With 4e Simply Put

[Betote]

Many of the best non vanilla settings throughout the history of D&D such as Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Midnight, Ravenloft, etc. surgically remove D&Disms to allow for the setting to actually have a personality unlike Greyhawk (whatever the heck that is nowadays) or the Forgotten Realms (which is at variance with many core assumptions). D&Disms such as all wizards tossing around fireballs, Vancian magic, beholders, illithids, spider kissing drow, dragon-kin kobolds and kitchen-sink fantasy belong in vanilla D&D settings but need to be removed, when necessary, from both published settings and homebrews that desire a certain atmosphere.

Let me end the sentence for you: "[...] that desire a certain atmosphere different of D&D's one"

You seem to imply that the Greyhawk setting lacks any atmosphere. I know there're many GH fans (myself included) who'd say something different.

So I really don't understand why this D&D genre is so valued when so many published and homebrewed settings remove D&Disms to preserve their unique character. Maybe more people play on Greyhawk and FR than even realize it.

Because there are also many published and homebrewed settings which don't remove those D&Disms. Dark Sun, Ravenloft and many other original settings don't use to sell as well as core D&D assumptions, and many times that's so because of the lack of such assumptions.

I'm not saying the D&D style of fantasy is better or worse than any other (I for one am a rabid fan of Ravenloft, for example). It's just that there are many other game engines that support "vanilla" fantasy, or even dark/high/bizarre/whichever fantasy, but D&D is the game system you look for when you want D&D fantasy.

And I'd say there is a lot of people who play Forgotten Realms. WotC wouldn't publish so many FR books if they weren't selling them, don't you think?

 

[Mallus]

What's wrong with 4e even more simply put: It's too early to tell. Check back with me after I've run it for a few months... sometime next autumn.

 

[nutluck]

Changes I already resent:
- Reshuffling demons and devils

Don't like it myself but don't consider it a big enough deal to care as far as buying or playing the game goes.

- At will magics for wizards

Might be good might be bad, depends how they handle it. Though I really dislike the concept of per encounter spells. Now that is something i utterly loath and is one of the biggest things turning me off of 4e right now.

- Eladrin

I like the change of making elves more fey like and less human, what I don't like is leaving in the old elves as well. I wanted to see them all go this route.

- Virtually anything related to the Book of Nine Swords

Good idea that i felt was poorly done all and all, to many of them felt like hybrid melee caster type abilities and doesn't fit my idea of a fighter. Will see how 4e handles it.

- Stripping hit dice/type information out of monsters (why not just simplify it?)

Need to wait to learn more before I have a oppinion on it. Though removing of non combat stuff if they do will annoy me.

- Stripping iconic monsters from the MM

Not to worried, sure they will add them back in later. Though depends on which ones on how much it bugs me.

- Tieflings as a core race, rather than a rare monster

Completely agree, they are ok in concept but not something that should be a main race over say something like a gnome. Hell I would rather see orcs as a main race over them. They should have been added later IMHO

- Invalidating the Fiendish Codeces

Lots of stuff gets invalidated from one edition to another, sure they will redo it. Not sure i will like it cause I did like the old set up, but like the demon and devils. Even though I don't like the change it is not enough to effect me buying or playing the game.

- Changing the damage of fireball. Why?

Actually in favor of this one. I thought fireball was to powerful before comphered to other spells.

Now with this all said, my over all opinion of 4e so far is this. Some stuff i don't care enough about ect. So not counting that stuff I am about 60/40 against 4e right now. There are things I like but there is more things right now that I don't like. Grant this could change as we get more information but with what we have so far, I am disliking more than I am liking what I am hearing so far.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Example: In 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 3.5 editions, you could talk about how your Gnomish Illusionist ran out of spells for the day so he had to lay low for a while. Come 4e, no Gnome PC's

Probably false, and if not, they'll be in a forthcoming supplement.

no Illusionists

Yet.

and no running out of spells.

False. You will run out of your per day spells, can run out of per-encounter spells, and be left with your weak-ass at-will effects, which you can have in 3.5 with reserve feats.

With prior edition changes, they might have done little things like take some classes out (Like taking Assassin and Barbarian out for 2e) or putting in new concepts (like Prestige Classes in 3e, restoring the Assassin in the process), but there was a sense of continuity, that what was there was built on what came before.

You mean, like Fighters, Wizards, Clerics, and Rogues?

There was respect for the collected body of implied setting information (so called "fluff") and even as mechanics changed some things stayed pretty constant, like damage done from certain iconic spells.

Yeah, and I mostly chucked the fluff for my own homebrew stuff like most other DMs do. I also fail to see how fireballs doing 1d6/level or not is anything I should be emotionally invested in.

4e takes that respect for the past and trashes it, it builds a whole new fantasy RPG from the ground up and attaches the name "Dungeons and Dragons" to it, in that sense it's a far bigger jump than the 1e to 2e, the 2e to 3e or the 3 to 3.5 jumps, it's an active severing of D&D from it's heritage, it's telling longtime veterans that they are obsolete and WotC wants new players.

Actually, it looks just like D&D to me. Just like all the other non-tolkien-esque D&D settings look like D&D to me; just like the myriad alternate spellcasting systems people have written look like D&D to me; just like the inclusion of unique races, monsters, and spells looks like D&D to me. It's telling me, a longtime veteran, that they're trying to keep this stuff fresh and aren't afraid to try out new ideas to invigorate a system that has needed to get the cobwebs knocked out of it for ages.

It's telling a lot of players that what they've come to expect and love about D&D is "wrong" and not fun and was not fun all along.

Man, I laugh every time I see this written, which is about once a day.

I've got bookcases and bookcases full of D&D books, I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on D&D books since the early 90's, and I'm looking at 4e and seeing it as a signal from WotC that my money is no longer desired, they'd rather be selling to pre-teens as a way to compete with WoW

I see them making my life as a DM much easier by streamlining combat and reducing prep time. I see them making it easier for me to teach the game to newbies. I see them eliminating tons of problems I had with 3.5, rebuilding the core system from the ground up with an eye for streamlined play and adjudication, while allowing for all the complexity and tactics that a game of D&D should involve. I also see them making me wait until at least PHB II for druids, so it's not all sunshine and cake for me over here. But overall, I am seeing a hell of a lot of improvements--enough to justify the new edition--improvements that couldn't be made by just fiddling around with 3.5.

 

[Zamkaizer]

Example: In 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 3.5 editions, you could talk about how your Gnomish Illusionist ran out of spells for the day so he had to lay low for a while. Come 4e, no Gnome PC's, no Illusionists, and no running out of spells.

You say it as though gnomes were always a core race. Or that vanican spellcasting was actively liked, rather than tolerated and accepted. Or that they're actually getting rid of vanican spellcasting.

4e takes that respect for the past and trashes it, it builds a whole new fantasy RPG from the ground up and attaches the name "Dungeons and Dragons" to it, in that sense it's a far bigger jump than the 1e to 2e, the 2e to 3e or the 3 to 3.5 jumps, it's an active severing of D&D from it's heritage, it's telling longtime veterans that they are obsolete and WotC wants new players. It's telling a lot of players that what they've come to expect and love about D&D is "wrong" and not fun and was not fun all along.

Have the desigers actually declared something you love (and not in the, "Oh Dungeons & Dragons, you card," sense) as being wrong, or implied as much by irreconcilably changing it?

Are you also suggesting that Wizards, as a business, ignore sound capitalism and pander to an established audience till it becomes the new mainstream comics industry, inaccesable and locked in an endless cycle of diminishing returns?

I've got bookcases and bookcases full of D&D books, I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on D&D books since the early 90's, and I'm looking at 4e and seeing it as a signal from WotC that my money is no longer desired, they'd rather be selling to pre-teens as a way to compete with WoW

Hooray! Rhetoric that's been soundly countered a dozen times on this board already!

 

[Sundragon2012]

Let me end the sentence for you: "[...] that desire a certain atmosphere different of D&D's one"

You seem to imply that the Greyhawk setting lacks any atmosphere. I know there're many GH fans (myself included) who'd say something different.



Because there are also many published and homebrewed settings which don't remove those D&Disms. Dark Sun, Ravenloft and many other original settings don't use to sell as well as core D&D assumptions, and many times that's so because of the lack of such assumptions.

I'm not saying the D&D style of fantasy is better or worse than any other (I for one am a rabid fan of Ravenloft, for example). It's just that there are many other game engines that support "vanilla" fantasy, or even dark/high/bizarre/whichever fantasy, but D&D is the game system you look for when you want D&D fantasy.

And I'd say there is a lot of people who play Forgotten Realms. WotC wouldn't publish so many FR books if they weren't selling them, don't you think?

Well if it comes down to it, I like Vanilla fantasy myself....wizards, dragons, pseudo-medieval kingdoms, elves, etc. However I would argue that one doesn't need a whole lot of D&Disms to make that kind of setup run properly.

You can have an outstanding and thoroughly D&Dish campaign running without having the Great Wheel, Illithids, Beholders, Fireballs, Mordenkainen, Bigby, Asmodeus, Magic Missle and Drow. In fact I would think that new players would likely be envisioning their fantasy concepts without these things to begin with because no non-D&D fantasy literature or film includes these elements.

Only after playing D&D for years, does a player become D&Dized into thinking these things are needed elements of any fantasy, even D&D fantasy. Prior to this, the potential D&D player who has cut his teeth on Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, ect. would be wondering, "What the hell is a Great Wheel?" "What's a drow and how on earth did any elf get associated with arachnids?" and "Why the hell do these wizards suffer a mindwipe after casting a spell?"

It was years into me DMing before I used many of the D&Disms at all except as behind the scenes realities that I could change at any time without any loss or damage to my campaign. I swear that if I have used green slimes, gelatinus cubes, mimics, stirges, rust monsters, modrons or D&D's other purely D&D monsters (read: monsters seeming to exist only to dwell in dungeons, justify alignments and mess with PCs) 20X in 23years I would be surprised.

D&D is IMO the mechanics, the spells, the stats, ie. the system. It is a system that can be ported to any number of fantasy concepts and that IMO is its strength. I shouldn't have said Greyhawk didn't have flavor. I should have said that 3.0-3.5 core setting Greyhawk is flavorless, souless and evil. It is the demonborn bastard child of the original Greyhawk and souless "suits" who merely wanted to jack up 3e sales by adding the Greyhawk name for the sake of brand recognition and grognard cred.

Greyhawk deserves more respect than it has gotten in the 3e era.


Sundragon

 

[Lurks-no-More]

I've got bookcases and bookcases full of D&D books, I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on D&D books since the early 90's, and I'm looking at 4e and seeing it as a signal from WotC that my money is no longer desired, they'd rather be selling to pre-teens as a way to compete with WoW

What you're seeing is in the eye of the beholder.

Also: if you already have bookcases full of D&D books, this tells me that youre either the sort of guy who happily buys new and not-sucky (A)D&D stuff even though it overlaps and replicates the stuff you already own, in which case you (in the sense of generic you, now) are most likely to continue doing so with 4th edition; or you aren't, in which case you are interested in only a fraction of what WotC puts out, and that fraction is more likely to go down than up.

In either case, the fact that you own tons of D&D already is not really an argument for the WotC to tailor their output to match your tastes.

 

[Aage]

Reshuffling demons and devils

Couldn't care less.

At will magics for wizards

YES!! Yess!!!

Eladrin

Love it. Would have preferred high elfs as a name though.

Virtually anything related to the Book of Nine Swords

I love ToB, so anything derived from it is positive.

Stripping iconic monsters from the MM

Depends on which monsters.

Tieflings as a core race, rather than a rare monster

I'd rather see Orc or Goblin.

Invalidating the Fiendish Codeces

See reshuffling demons and devils

Changing the damage of fireball. Why?

Depends on what they change it to.

 

[The Little Raven]

It would mean I would have to convert a lot of creatures that have appeared in my recent campaign if I wanted to keep running it. Which the designers have basically said, "Don't bother, it won't work." The succubi issue is not so big, since I can simply state that their are lawful succubi in my world on the other time, but the other changes are annoying.

This is false. They said they aren't releasing a 1-to-1 conversion guide like they did for 3e, because it was an inaccurate failure in terms of conversion. They've made it plenty clear that you'll be able to rebuild characters and monsters, so long as you worry about concepts more than converting numbers over exactly.

So you consider making elves less magical an improvement? You think it's better that many if not most pre-4e elven fighter-mages would make more sense as eladrin in the new edition?

Yes.

Eladrin = Sun/High/Gray Elf.
Sun/High/Gray Elf = Wizardly type.

Therefore, Eladrin = Wizardly type.

Makes more sense than a savage becoming a wizard.

Stereotype much? Should I mention I've played dozens of non D&D games and I'm a semi-pro game designer? I don't need your encouragement to "do what I want."

Semi-pro? Ummm.. that's not really possible. Either you're a professional (you get paid for it), or you're an amateur (you don't get paid for it).

This tielfling-warlock-Nine Swallows Drunkenly Lolling Emerald Whisper Strike-gnomes and frost giants will be included in exciting new EXPANSION SOURCEBOOKS which will all be core (even Monster Manual XII) stuff... just is not a continuation of the game I became interested in.

I know you like throwing around exaggeration as some kind of support for your point, but could we seriously drop this misinformation about gnomes? It's been made clear many many many many times that they are in the first Monster Manual, so continually saying that they'll appear in some other book down the line is just intentionally sowing misinformation.

 

[Dragonblade]

I've got bookcases and bookcases full of D&D books, I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on D&D books since the early 90's, and I'm looking at 4e and seeing it as a signal from WotC that my money is no longer desired, they'd rather be selling to pre-teens as a way to compete with WoW

So do I. And what WotC is telling me with 4e is that FINALLY they are making rules changes that I have wanted to see for a long time!

No more Vancian casting!!! No more $%#$ing level drain!! Per encounter and at will abilities!! More Book of 9 Swords!!! Monsters I can run or build on the fly!!

YES!!! This is shaping up to be the BEST edition of D&D ever published. And I would know since I my vast collection spans hundreds of books across every edition and I have played every edition extensively.

June can't come fast enough for me. Keep up the good work WotC!!