Why Changes were made in 4e

[Dannyalcatraz]

Wow. When I DM, the only way that I ever get two or more battles into a single day is either to make them trivial or to use ambushes. Players use teleport, hidden lodge, rope trick and other stunts to race back to safety after hitting hard. The result is that I always see a full caster nova effect where they unleash limited abilities (sudden quicken, divine metamagic quicken, pinnacle spells) to annihilate an opponent and then flee.

When we went through RttToEE (3.XEd, and I was a player, not DM), we had a stretch in which we went through 6 combat encounters without an in-game break. (It covered 3 sessions.)

The single-classed mage still had a spell or 2 left at the end of it. He had spells left because instead of nova-ing, he'd cast a couple of spells, then reach for a weapon.

The main healer was tapped, but there were other (minor) curatives available. No front-line warrior had more than 20% of their HP.

By the time that stretch was over, my Ftr/Rgr/Diviner/Spellsword was getting ready to move up to the front...and he'd been there before.

We didn't rest before then because we didn't have the opportunity to. Though we had made occasional returns to our base of ops to restock & reload, retreat was not an option at that point.

And that's typical of the way all of the DMs in our group run things...even before 3Ed.

If the wizard doesn't have very many spells, he runs out of them way before he runs out of rounds of combat. Then he's got nothing he can do well. He sucks at using a crossbow, and he probably won't invest resources in getting better at it because those resources will be wasted when he reaches higher levels and encounters problem 2.

Well, in 3.X, that depends on his build- a ranged touch spell afficionado will be nearly as good with his crossbow as with his spells, since he'd probably take feats that serve both pretty well.

But even before then, I never had a problem with this.

My very first D&D game back in '77, my Fighter and another player's Mage were the last 2 surviving PCs when we encountered a Purple Worm. He launched his last spell- Magic Missile- then fought the rest of the way with his staff. For a while, he was outdoing my 2hd swd equipped fighter.

No, he never was intended to be a melee combatant. But the fact that he waded in nearly made the difference.

This could be fixed by giving wizards something worthwhile to do when not casting spells. And then making that something worthwhile stay worthwhile for their entire careers. You'd also need to reduce the number of spells per day drastically.

The Reserve feats were an elegant way of handling this issue: they give the spellcaster something to do instead of casting spells, something at least as good as using a weapon, and its still "magical"- hopefully satisfying those who lament resorting to using crossbows as "unwizardly."

And ditched in 4Ed, near as I can tell.

Even without those, the creation/use of alchemical items, the use of KS skills and so forth are still constructive uses of non-combat time for spellcasters.

YMMV, of course.

From a combat perspective, everyone had MM, Sleep, Web, Invisibility, Haste (etc). In early editions, the wizard did not have that many slots, thus these Power Spells were critical.

Even into 3.x, these spells were still the best in class at their levels and you saw very similiar spell selection by players (DMs could use different combos as the Sorcerer/Wizard had a life expectancy of 1 encounter).

I realize you're speaking in generalities, but...that was never my spellcaster. I may have had a PC with one or 2 of the "power" spells, but never anywhere near half of them...and NEVER Magic Missile.

 

[Remathilis]

So, do you think that the annoyingname monsters were accidentally different from the OGL names as well?

No silly. AdjectiveDeath MonsterName came from the desire to sell multiple versions of the same monster in different DDM packs. The trend started before 4e in DDM when you have a dire wolf, viscous dire wolf, vampiric dire wolf, etc.

BTW, this is simply incorrect. The intentions of the OGL were clearly stated at the time of release, and it was not to have third party support be merely modules and monster books. Indeed, it was stated directly that part of the intent was to proliferate d20-based games so that the core mechanics would be familiar to a greater number of potential players, because, to paraphrase, "All roads lead to D&D".

If anything, the GSL is an attempt to reboot third parties to something different than was intended with the OGL. What 3pp did with the OGL was exactly what WotC told them to do, in no uncertain terms.

See, I recall the OGL having a different reason for existing.

1.) To create smaller "niche" items WotC didn't want to make at the time
2.) To sell PHBs.

The OGL did both wonderfully, at first. However, it didn't take long for the cottage industry to figure out (as gamers often do) that the PHB didn't fit all games equally. Eventually, you began the move from "D&D setting X" or "Monster Supplement Y" toward "OGL-based Game Z" with its own rulebook and supplements (Arcana Unearthed, Midnight, Conan, Mutants & Masterminds, C&C, Warcraft, etc). For us gamers, its Nirvana; we had rules that reflected the subtleties of the genre it was emulating. For WotC, it meant they gave the keys to companies to create their own "Fantasy Heartbreakers" that didn't want, or need, WotC-made D&D stuff to play.

One needs only look at what WotC "closed" in the GSL to see where they thought the OGL went off the rails: no chargen AT ALL, no redefining races, classes, feats or powers. No reprinting monster stats. Closed content on lots of new "monster IP" (Goliaths, warforged, etc). IMHO, that speak volumes as to what WotC wants from its 3pp companions.

 

[MerricB]

The Reserve feats were an elegant way of handling this issue: they give the spellcaster something to do instead of casting spells, something at least as good as using a weapon, and its still "magical"- hopefully satisfying those who lament resorting to using crossbows as "unwizardly."

And ditched in 4Ed, near as I can tell.

Try "made part of core". There's a very definite reason why Wizards have "at wills" now; Reserve feats were just a way of seeing how it worked in 3e.

Cheers!

 

[Henry]

IMHO, that speak volumes as to what WotC wants from its 3pp companions.

Which is to say, nothing, save Goodman Games and a couple other small outings. Even One Bad Egg closed up shop on its releases, just recently, because the interest just wasn't there.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Try "made part of core". There's a very definite reason why Wizards have "at wills" now; Reserve feats were just a way of seeing how it worked in 3e.

Cheers!

As I recall- and I could very well be wrong- "at wills" don't require you maintain a spell in reserve to "power" the reserve feat.

 

[Raven Crowking]

See, I recall the OGL having a different reason for existing.

I suggest you go back and re-read. The WotC quotes have been linked to many, many times in reference to this same argument, and the WotC quotes are not what you think they are.

One needs only look at what WotC "closed" in the GSL to see where they thought the OGL went off the rails

No....One only can discover what they later decided was costing them money. WotC right now has a very different business plan that WotC did when the OGL was penned.


EDIT: Here is the link: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/md/md20020228e

Here's the logic in a nutshell. We've got a theory that says that D&D is the most popular roleplaying game because it is the game more people know how to play than any other game. (For those of you interested researching the theory, this concept is called "The Theory of Network Externalities.")

[ Note: This is a very painful concept for a lot of people to embrace, including a lot of our own staff, and including myself for many years. The idea that D&D is somehow "better" than the competition is a powerful and entrenched concept. The idea that D&D can be "beaten" by a game that is "better" than D&D is at the heart of every business plan from every company that goes into marketplace battle with D&D game. If you accept the Theory of Network Externalities, you have to admit that the battle is lost before it begins, because the value doesn't reside in the game itself, but in the network of people who know how to play it.]

If you accept (as I have finally come to do) that the theory is valid, then the logical conclusion is that the larger the number of people who play D&D, the harder it is for competitive games to succeed, and the longer people will stay active gamers, and the more value the network of D&D players will have to Wizards of the Coast.

In fact, we believe that there may be a secondary market force we jokingly call "The Skaff Effect," after our own [game designer] Skaff Elias. Skaff is one of the smartest guys in the company, and after looking at lots of trends and thinking about our business over a long period of time, he enunciated his theory thusly:

"All marketing and sales activity in a hobby gaming genre eventually contributes to the overall success of the market share leader in that genre."

In other words, the more money other companies spend on their games, the more D&D sales are eventually made. Now, there are clearly issues of efficiency -- not every dollar input to the market results in a dollar output in D&D sales; and there is a substantial time lag between input and output; and a certain amount of people are diverted from D&D to other games never to return. However, we believe very strongly that the net effect of the competition in the RPG genre is positive for D&D.

The downside here is that I believe that one of the reasons that the RPG as a category has declined so much from the early 90s relates to the proliferation of systems. Every one of those different game systems creates a "bubble" of market inefficiency; the cumulative effect of all those bubbles has proven to be a massive downsizing of the marketplace. I have to note, highlight, and reiterate: The problem is not competitive >product<, the problem is competitive >systems<. I am very much for competition and for a lot of interesting and cool products.

So much for the dry theory and background. Here's the logical conclusions we've drawn:

We make more revenue and more profit from our core rulebooks than any other part of our product lines. In a sense, every other RPG product we sell other than the core rulebooks is a giant, self-financing marketing program to drive sales of those core books. At an extreme view, you could say that the core >book< of the PHB is the focus of all this activity, and in fact, the PHB is the #1 best selling, and most profitable RPG product Wizards of the Coast makes year in and year out.

The logical conclusion says that reducing the "cost" to other people to publishing and supporting the core D&D game to zero should eventually drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market, create customer resistance to the introduction of new systems, and the result of all that "support" redirected to the D&D game will be to steadily increase the number of people who play D&D, thus driving sales of the core books. This is a feedback cycle -- the more effective the support is, the more people play D&D. The more people play D&D, the more effective the support is.

The other great effect of Open Gaming should be a rapid, constant improvement in the quality of the rules. With lots of people able to work on them in public, problems with math, with ease of use, of variance from standard forms, etc. should all be improved over time. The great thing about Open Gaming is that it is interactive -- someone figures out a way to make something work better, and everyone who uses that part of the rules is free to incorporate it into their products. Including us. So D&D as a game should benefit from the shared development of all the people who work on the Open Gaming derivative of D&D.

After reviewing all the factors, I think there's a very, very strong business case that can be made for the idea of embracing the ideas at the heart of the Open Source movement and finding a place for them in gaming.​

It is quite clear that WotC wanted and encouraged people to create variant rules at the time -- exactly what they are cutting out now -- and that they believed it would increase their market share.


RC

 

[Remathilis]

Which is to say, nothing, save Goodman Games and a couple other small outings. Even One Bad Egg closed up shop on its releases, just recently, because the interest just wasn't there.

Case. In. Point.

 

[MerricB]

As I recall- and I could very well be wrong- "at wills" don't require you maintain a spell in reserve to "power" the reserve feat.

Which spell would you keep in reserve for 4e? One of your (two) dailies?

Reserve feats had one purpose in 3e: to give Wizards "at will" powers that meant they wouldn't have to use crossbows. With 4e giving wizards the "at will" powers by default, they've become obsolete. There is no design space for them any more to fill.

Cheers!

 

[Remathilis]

Interesting post RC.

I still don't think WotC envisioned games like C&C or OSRIC when they created the OGL. Still, that's another conversation for another day.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Which spell would you keep in reserve for 4e? One of your (two) dailies?

Reserve feats had one purpose in 3e: to give Wizards "at will" powers that meant they wouldn't have to use crossbows. With 4e giving wizards the "at will" powers by default, they've become obsolete. There is no design space for them any more to fill.

Cheers!

Well, first, I dislike the overall powers structure of 4Ed.

And I particularly dislike that design decision to divorce "at wills" from resource management.

IMHO, the Reserve feat is a better design- I understand that they have no place in 4Ed mechanics, but that doesn't make me like 4Ed's version any better.