Wizards in 4E have been 'neutered' argument...

[billd91]

~shrug~ It may simply come down a difference in experiences. But my experience in 3rd Edition - especially in the RPGA, where tables are made or broken by having the right classes - was that 3rd Edition had much stricter requirements for party composition. That has not been my experience in 4E. Several elements of the rules seem outright designed to avoid that issue, and I've been pleasantly surprised in playing LFR, and seeing tables have remarkable success with non-standard parties. The same sort of tables that would lead to a TPK previously...

See, I'd take that as evidence that the adventure design for those RPGA scenarios was the deficient element, particularly since they should know darn well they could be faced with a scratch party of any allowed character classes in any proportion.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

See, I'd take that as evidence that the adventure design for those RPGA scenarios was the deficient element, particularly since they should know darn well they could be faced with a scratch party of any allowed character classes in any proportion.

What were they supposed to do? Throw out 50%+ of the monster manual and all of the traps just because they couldn't plan on having the assumed party structure?

That would have made for some varied adventures.

 

[billd91]

What were they supposed to do? Throw out 50%+ of the monster manual and all of the traps just because they couldn't plan on having the assumed party structure?

That would have made for some varied adventures.

Tremendously varied adventures because even with a limited set of monsters, the setup and story of the adventures is functionally unlimited. Limiting the monsters is most relevant if the adventures are little more than glorified monster mashes.

 

[Belen]

Fair enough. Mine is that your definition isn't shared by the majority of players, and doesn't take into account that we're playing a game.

The wonderful thing about previous editions was that different classes fit different styles. If you did not like the strategy of a 2e Wizard, then you could choose another class.

I think that the existence of 4e proves that those earlier systems were doing something right.

 

[Voadam]

Well... yes. In addition to freeing up the ability to get access to skills, 4E also adopted an encouragement that no problem has only one solution. Traps can typically be taken apart by a skilled rogue... or simply beaten apart or plowed through, or often magically disabled, etc. The goal is that having the ideal role should help solve a problem, but not be required to do so (unlike in 3rd Edition).



~shrug~ It may simply come down a difference in experiences. But my experience in 3rd Edition - especially in the RPGA, where tables are made or broken by having the right classes - was that 3rd Edition had much stricter requirements for party composition. That has not been my experience in 4E. Several elements of the rules seem outright designed to avoid that issue, and I've been pleasantly surprised in playing LFR, and seeing tables have remarkable success with non-standard parties. The same sort of tables that would lead to a TPK previously...

I think it does come down to different experiences.

My favorite trap was a puzzle/riddle one that connected up to Norse runes. IIRC if you solved the riddle the answer told you the safe path through the runes unscathed. If you had a rogue he could attempt to disable runes one at a time. If you had dispel magic you could try to suppress individual runes. If you couldn't figure it out you could plow through them and take damage but not be killed or completely stopped, if you ran really fast and jumped you would leap over a bunch of runes and only suffer through a few of them. Lots of options for moving through it.

This was in Doom of Odin a 3.0 adventure.

I never played in an RPGA game so I can't comment on those and didn't have those types of experiences.

 

[Voadam]

This encounter without a cleric is basically impossible. It's nearly impossible unless you have a cleric with Death Ward prepared. Preferably 2 or 3 Death Wards. Of course, the average Living Greyhawk party had a cleric with Death Ward prepared. Because it was such a useful spell, you ALWAYS had it prepared.

12th level clerics generally have four fourth level spells. Death Ward is good. So is Freedom of Movement. There are other good ones too.

I'm not sure I'd design an encounter to expect the party to have a death ward ready to fight a ton of hit and run incorporeal drainers.

 

[MrGrenadine]

This is my experience as well. In Living Greyhawk, there were lots of HARD encounters. Encounters specifically built using a combination of feats, classes, monsters, terrain, spells, and so on to defeat any party that wasn't built well.

I've found that in 4e, encounters specifically built using a combination of feats, classes, monsters, terrain, spells and so on will defeat any party that wasn't built well.

In fact, this is true of every iteration of the game, including, I would wager, every house-ruled version you could find.

What you describe is perhaps bad encounter design, but not a problem intrinsic to the system, since its possible to create endless fun, challenging, exciting encounters in 3.5 that don't require any particular class.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I've found that in 4e, encounters specifically built using a combination of feats, classes, monsters, terrain, spells and so on will defeat any party that wasn't built well.

In fact, this is true of every iteration of the game, including, I would wager, every house-ruled version you could find.

What you describe is perhaps bad encounter design, but not a problem intrinsic to the system, since its possible to create endless fun, challenging, exciting encounters in 3.5 that don't require any particular class.

4e monsters don't have feats.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Tremendously varied adventures because even with a limited set of monsters, the setup and story of the adventures is functionally unlimited. Limiting the monsters is most relevant if the adventures are little more than glorified monster mashes.

True in one sense, and incredibly over-stated in the other.

There are lots of creatures in the 3e monster manual who had a clear designation in a rock-paper-scissors relationship with certain PC classes.

Remember that this is RPGA we're talking about. It's not a good DM designing (or re-designing) around his oddball group. It's mass market. There's a lowest common denominator effect.

And you have to remember part of the marketing angle of all this is to show off the content. If you throw out every monster that really, really screams for a cleric, you're not showing off lots of content. If you throw out every monster that would completely hose a rogue-heavy party, you're not showing more than half of the content If you throw out everything that requires a rogue... well you have no traps at all in your low level dungeons, which just doesn't even fit the milieu, wot?

Yes, you can design great, engaging adventures for oddball parties if you know their quirks. But if part of your mandate is to show off the cool stuff the company is writing.... That's not going to fly.

 

[TwinBahamut]

4e requires the same variety of characters. Fighter/ Wizard/ Cleric/ Thief has transformed into Defender/ Controller/ Leader/ Striker, but the concept is the same--a party can best handle a wide variety of challenges if there is a wide variety of skills represented.

If you honestly believe that an assumption of four specific classes and an assumption of four categories of classes are "the same variety", then I really don't think I can say anything to persuade you.

Still I may as well make a simply mathematical comparison. Assuming a four person party that adheres strictly to the "requirement" and a total of five classes for each 4E role... Under the 3E requirement, every party would have exactly the same class composition. Under the 4E requirement, there would be 625 different valid party combinations. Bending these requirements would give both editions a roughly equal amount of an increase to party variety, so the advantage always goes to 4E. I would never call that an equal amount of variety.

For instance, isn't the fact that monster defenses scale past character attacks at high levels make leaders a necessity? And Strikers are needed if ever the party runs into a Solo, and heaven help a party without a Controller if they're swarmed by 20 minions...the list goes on.

The defenses issue can be answered by purchasing certain feats (that is a different debate, though). Strikers are not needed for a solo, they just make fighting a solo a bit easier. A team that gets swarmed with 20 minions is just fine without a controller, as long as the other classes have a few area of effect powers of their own (and there are a number of good powers available for Defenders and Strikers in this regard). Sure, certain roles would be really useful in these situations, but they are not even close to being necessary.

Compare this to something like trying to get past a Wall of Force in 3E. If you don't have a Wizard or Cleric (or equivalent), and you absolutely need to get past a Wall of Force, then you are totally helpless. There is literally nothing you can do except give up. A team of non-casters basically have to hope that their DM will take pity on them and not present them with such challenges, even though such a challenge may be trivial if there was a Wizard or Cleric in the party. It is only because 3E reveled in such absolutes of ineffectiveness that it had classes you could call "requirements", and 4E has nothing of the kind.

I never saw a 3e campaign that absolutely couldn't be finished without a Wizard--that would be poor game design, because even if the party had a Wizard, what if he or she was killed or incapacitated? Throw in the towel? Instead, I saw parties that had to think outside the box when the Wizard wasn't present, (or Rogue, or Cleric, or Fighter, or Druid/Spellsword/Thaumaturge, etc) . And I imagine I'll see the exact same situation in 4e.

Sure, you could easily have a 3E campaign that didn't have a wizard. It just depended on a DM deliberately avoiding all the countless traps, monsters, and magic spells that completely destroy any team that couldn't deal with them. This really is a case of bad game design that is merely being compensated for by decent DMing.

The Wizard in and of itself is not the problem in 3e--it all comes down to player error, player selfishness, and/or poor DMing or campaign design. And 4e, for all its balance, can't possibly protect a party from those things.

Honestly, the Wizard really wasn't quite the problem in of itself in 3E. It just made the problem a lot worse, and other aspects of game design added on top of that. I guess it could be said that player selfishness is the real problem, but the Wizard class and 3E's overall design made it very easy for a player to mistake selfishness for playing the game as intended.

Also, I do think it is possible for good game design to help things like player error, player selfishness, poor DMing, and bad campaign design. If the rules themselves are more clear, the reasoning behind the rules is more transparent, and it is easier for DMs to make fun and well-balanced adventures, then it would help address many of those issues (since many are caused by confusion regarding bad rules and a high learning curve for the game as much as they are by any other factor). I do believe that 4E has accomplished that as much as you could reasonably ask it to.