D&D 4E Where the break between pro and anti 4e is

[ferratus]

It seems like they decided the game would be more fun if it was almost impossible to die, right from the beginning and that removes the drama for me. Nothing that cant be changed with a few houserules, but its still a gripe i have.

Use the pregenerated characters, and use the monsters that have been released, and play through the game.

Trust me, it certainly isn't impossible to die. You don't need to put the party against monsters they can't possibly defeat to kill them. Do you know what you do to kill characters?

Get them in over their heads by exploiting their tactical mistakes. Have traps and other defenses go off if they choose to fight monsters on the monster's chosen ground. Make a small battle into a big battle if they aren't smart enough to quietly assassinate the sentries. Choose monsters that will take advantage of the weaknesses in the powers they have chosen.

Most of all, actually build a decent sized dungeon and don't let them nap. Pretty soon I can guarantee you that most of the healing surges will be gone, just in time for the climatic battle. That's the way it should be for all of us who want the story of the dungeon to be told. I can be rewarded for my sadistic plots, creatures and traps instead of being punished for it. How did 2e -3.5e punish me?

By forcing me to come up with reasons not to attack the mage (until he had stoneskin)
By forcing me to come up with a series of boring, easy encounters that barely scratched the party, so they didn't get slaughtered by the big boss.
By forcing me to allow sleeping in the middle of the dungeon.
By forcing my cleric player to blow all his cool miracles on healing.

I'm sorry I'm getting a little angry, but this just really gets my goat. Healing surges make the story flow so much better that I can't imagine going back to not having this mechanic or something like it.

Did I mention you can have 10 challenging fights in a single dungeon, fights that can carry the chance of a risk of death in each fight? Don't you realize how boring 3.5 fights would have to be if you did that in the old system? How pointless the first 9 would have to be?

That's of course if you wanted to be fair. For the rest of you, I remember your games. I HATED them. Continuously trying to get back up to a reasonable amount of hit points so you didn't die if you encountered the next monster. God forbid if you wanted to actually move a little closer to your character's goals or to go up a level instead of squirming around in a corner of a dungeon trying to get enough rest to survive past the next encounter.

Healing surges are for these reasons the best damn thing to happen on both sides of the DM screen since the invention of 3e feats. For the last objection, that saying magic words of healing is more "realistic" than finding a surge of strength and fighting on despite your wounds... what the bloody hell!? If you're not willing to suspend your disbelief for a little bit of superhuman endurance but are willing to suspend your disbelief about the basic laws of causality then that is incredibly flaky.

 

[ironvyper]

i understand what you mean, but if i recall correctly, about 80% of the demo groups during DDXP had a TPK... so its not THAT hard to die = D

I hadnt heard that. Maybe its not as bad as it looks on the surface then.

 

[ironvyper]

It's not too difficult. I was doing it all weekend. You simply say "You are playing D&D. In this game you have a number of actions every round. Here is a list of the things you can do and what type of action each one takes. When you take a class, you get training on how to do some new stuff called Powers."

You can explain anything, doesnt make it any less rediculous to say u can only try to trip somebody if your character has devoted all his life to fighting. It just makes it a rediculous explanation.

Ridiculous? Compared to what? Enemies on a good hit can do 3d6+5 points of damage in one hit. That's a possible 23 points of damage. Enough to drop a wizard in one hit.

I dont know where your getting that # from but the monsters they posted i see the same 1d4 through 1d12 damage as 3e had. you cant count crits as a balancing factor, they dont come up often enough.

 

[Saishu_Heiki]

You can explain anything, doesnt make it any less rediculous to say u can only try to trip somebody if your character has devoted all his life to fighting. It just makes it a rediculous explanation.

If you have devoted your entire life to fighting, and focused on tripping you would have feats to represent this. The RAW give us the baseline and feats can (and probably will) extend this.

I was very well trained to fight in the Army but I would not be able to trip people at will. However, I most likely would have have had weapon focus (assault rifle).

 

[ironvyper]

If you have devoted your entire life to fighting, and focused on tripping you would have feats to represent this. The RAW give us the baseline and feats can (and probably will) extend this.

I was very well trained to fight in the Army but I would not be able to trip people at will. However, I most likely would have have had weapon focus (assault rifle).

See i was also in the army and i am quite confident that i can attempt to trip an opponent at will. But it wasnt from army training, i believe the basic sweep was mastered about 4 sessions into my yellow belt training, when i was 6.

Now i am not saying that i can successfully trip an opponent at will, but i can sure as hell try. And so could anyone else who would taken even the sort of basics of combat practice that are represented by that first +1 to your base attack bonus. I am not saying that its rediculous that fighters are better at tripping, i am saying its downright absurd that no one else can even try.

 

[ferratus]

Yeah, but if you were a skinny mage would you make it a regular part of your combat repitoire? A sniper? Seems to me the only people who need to trip are the rogues, the fighters, and possibly the clerics or paladins. If you make the power easy enough to aquire then every class can incorporate it as part of their fighting style.

That's the in-game reason of course is one of balance. Giving away attacks that cause your opponents to lose actions and give you combat advantage is too powerful to use without asking a price. It works like a special attack power, so they made it a special attack power.

Easy enough to houserule though. Just have those who want to trip without the trip power to provoke an attack of opportunity from their target. The issue will never come up again.

 

[Gold Roger]

See i was also in the army and i am quite confident that i can attempt to trip an opponent at will. But it wasnt from army training, i believe the basic sweep was mastered about 4 sessions into my yellow belt training, when i was 6.

Now i am not saying that i can successfully trip an opponent at will, but i can sure as hell try. And so could anyone else who would taken even the sort of basics of combat practice that are represented by that first +1 to your base attack bonus. I am not saying that its rediculous that fighters are better at tripping, i am saying its downright absurd that no one else can even try.

"It's not in the rules s I can't do it!"

You know, that's an argument I just don't get. Imo no RPG out there can account for every situation. It's impossible to create such a game.

The total of what you can and can't do lies thus in the hand of the DM.

For example, every character that will routinely want to sweep people of their feet will take the necessary powers. Now, there may occur situations where a rogue, cleric, monster or even wizard without such a power wants to knock someone to the ground. But that's an extraordinary circumstance. And I don't think we need rules for suxh extraordinary circumstances cluttering the corebooks in a game that has a DM.

All we need is a system that allows us to easily adjucate such extraordinary circumstances. And we know from Massawyrms AIC review that ability vs defense can be used for such. He gives the situation of someone lying under a table who wants to kick it so two guys on it fall.

We can be sure he didn't have a power for that.

 

[danbuter1]

UNDECIDED

[6]Healing Surges and the loss of Vancian magic takes away resource management aspect of the game, and may make characters invincible. (Unless of course you fight in several encounters in a row. Instead of calling it the end of the 15 minute workday, they should have called it the end of the 4 easy challenges and 1 difficult challenge workday.)
[7]Using healing surges to recover from wounds may be a good way to simulate an action hero shrugging off broken ribs or deep cuts, but I want a serious wound to cripple or kill my characters.

LIKES

[8]1st level characters can't be killed with one blow anymore
[9]There are too many abilities granted to 1st level characters, which means that 1st level heroes are professionals instead of apprentices.
[2a] I love Tieflings, though I'm not sure I like the 4e iteration of them.

DISLIKES

[1]The reorganization of the planes and monsters is too much of a departure from D&D's established continuity (and/or my personal campaign setting).
[2]Dragonborn are not a traditional race, and are too monstrous to integrate with other races believably.
[3]I will not get to play the race/class combinations that I have been traditionally allowed to play in prior editions.
[4]D&D has embraced wargaming elements too much, making it a tactical wargame instead of a roleplaying game.
[5]Giving martial characters superhuman ability is too cinematic/cartoonish, making the traditional setting of the medieval world with magic and monsters "less gritty" where ordinary people confront supernatural menaces.

 

[fedelas]

I have.

I've seen players forget to flank, move in weird directions, move through threatened areas although it was easy to not do so, etc.

The more tactical rules there are, the more there is to remember and the more there is to forget.

I've heard of people who forgot the house keys, girlfriend birthday and so on...
this as nothing in common with the rulesystem of, er..., the life

 

[DeusExMachina]

[3]I will not get to play the race/class combinations that I have been traditionally allowed to play in prior editions.

As for this one, I always limited the amount of classes and races my characters could use in my campaigns, which were usually not based on classid D&D comoslogy anyway. I feel that certain classes belong in a certain setting. The samurai for example really doesn't belong in the setting I'm working on now.
As 3.5 went on I felt that there were far too many base and prestige classes and that they cluttered the feel or atmosphere of my campaign and hanged it from one with a specific color to a generic everything goes and happens kind of campaign.

My only problem so far remains that 4e seems to be almost impossible to playw ithout miniatures and a lot of condition markers, which most of my players are not gong to like at all.
On the other hand, the more supernatural cinematic abilities might offset that...