WoTC Interview with Rob Heinsoo

darjr · Mar 13, 2009

I'm very curious about the 'Traveller' style character generation they played around with. I'd like to see some of that.

darjr · Mar 13, 2009

Inn fighting D&D 4e character conversion? I wonder if it could actually be used to substitute combat, miniless so to speak?

Cadfan · Mar 14, 2009

The only thing that I feel is missing from the "every spot is the sweet spot" design is monsters with levels lower than 1.

They kind of need them to make things work right.

Its not a huge issue, but it does mean that your to-hit chances are a little more punishing at level 1 than they will be for most of the rest of the game. You never get the opportunity to fight monsters with easy defenses and low hit points.

Minions sort of fill that role, but not really.

Merlin the Tuna · Mar 14, 2009

I have to agree that most of this has been discussed to death at this point. It's a good resource to steer people towards if they're already gamers don't frequent boards like these and haven't given 4E much thought, but there's not much here for we of the endless banter.

I do still wish that we had gotten different power progressions based on power source, though. It would've made the distinction of declaring the power sources in the first place a lot more meaningful for me.

Plissken · Mar 14, 2009

the wizard was all alone as the first practitioner of the controller role and we stayed cautious knowing that we could improve the class later if we needed to.

Joy...more money to burn.

Third Edition D&D is a good game; in fact, it's so good that some of its problems are easy to miss for long-term players—they're just part of how the game works.

Pre 4e release, WoTC = "3RD EDITION SUCKS!"

Stalker0 · Mar 14, 2009

The only thing I'll disagree with his his notion that 1st level 4e feels like 5th level 3e.

I say its just the opposite. While yes 1st level 4e is more survivable, I feel that I have about the options at 8th level 4e as I do at 5th level 3e. Not saying that's bad, just that I prefer higher levels in 4e than I did in 3e, which makes sense given 4e 30 level progression.

Felon · Mar 14, 2009

Plissken said:
Joy...more money to burn.

This was the one part of the article that made me roll my eyes. "We didn't need to sweat getting the class right, because we knew we'd have the option to 'fix it" later--you know, in some splat book".

So basically, power creep is a feature, not a bug. If in the future, wizards wind up pulling all of their at-wills and most of their other resources out of Arcane Power than the PHB, that's actually part of the design.

I can't buy that logic, just because a lot of 4e's inequities aren't that hard to spot. It shouldn't have taken much to look at fireball and realize "hey, it doesn't matter how big the AoE is, 3d6 + Int kinda sucks". So, the solution we get is, just don't pick fireball anymore. The "fix" for old, weak powers is to eclipse them with new powers.

Having said that, I overall think there's little else to have qualms about with Rob's article. He lays out a good case for how 4e contains some genuine improvements.

NMcCoy · Mar 14, 2009

Ooh, sequel to Three Dragon Ante. Shiny.

Dragonblade · Mar 14, 2009

The only thing 4e needs, IMO are three things that keep it from absolute gaming perfection:

I want a power refresh mechanic. I hate the entire notion of daily anything. Everything should be balanced per encounter.

I also wish each class had a variant suite of powers that excised all the grid based movement mechanics so that you could play it miniless. I like minis, but sometimes I just don't want to bust out the battlemat.

There should also be a mechanic to speed up ritual casting time and you should be able to cast rituals in combat.

Thats it. Other than that, 4e is my ideal RPG.

As far as edition wars go, it was ultimately inevitable. Everything I like in 4e are the very things that some 3e fans hate, and everything they like in 3e are things I hate and consider bad game design. Its just not possible to make a game system that both sets of fans love since our likes and dislikes are fundamentally incompatible.