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Dumpshock Forums _ General Gaming _ D&D 4th Edition - The positive, constructive thread
Posted by: Bull Jun 7 2008, 05:53 AM
As the threads title and description states, this is a thread purely for positive and positively constructive discussion about the new 4e D&D. PLease keep the negativity, negative non-constructive criticism, and flat out WotC Bashing in another thread (There's a couple around here).
I'm serious. Behave.
Ok, that out of the way, for those picking the books (or the *cough* PDF's) up and reading through them, what's your read on it so far?
I picked up Keep on the Shadowfell last week to check out the basics. It's a nice, if straightforward adventure. Makes for a decent introductory adventure. It was a tad pricey though. And the rules overview was a bit light. I've been a gamer long enough that I figured everything out easy enough, but a newb would have a hard time tracking some of it.
But, I was interested enough to go out and pick up the core books today. While I played some 3 and 3.5, I never bought any of the books. I was an old school fan, mostly because of nostalgia, but I thought if they were gonna redo the game, they needed to start over fresh and build from the ground up. 3rd didn't do that. 4th does, which I think is a good thing.
I'm still just skimming the PHB, and haven't even cracked the GMG or MM, so I can;t comment too much yet, but I like what I see so far. Mechanically, it borrows a bit from CCG and MMO mechanics and design theory, but to me, this isn't a bad thing. There were what, a couple million copies of 3rd ed sold? Meanwhile, WoW has 10 million current, active subscribers. Even if you assume that half of those are dummy accounts (Gold farmers and "mule" accounts for the real addicts), that's still more than double the number of poeple who bought 3rd Ed. And that doesn't even count in the probably several million inactive accounts from people who've dropped the game over the years.
Likewise, there are probably more kids that have played Magic, Pokemon, YuGiOh, and other CCGs than have played D&D and other RPGs.
So to me, this says that WotC's playing it smart. You put in some familiar aspects, and it makes the game more accessible to folks who might come into the RPG from another medium. Consoles and WoW are really opening up the gaming market some, and hopefully we'll get a little trickle of new players from it.
Ok, that was a bit of a side ramble, but something that's been on my mind since I first started seeing "reviews" of the game and when I started looking the game over myself.
Anyways, I'll post more later once I've had the chance to digest some of it a bit more. But so far, I think it's a positive step forward for the game.
Bull
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jun 7 2008, 06:37 AM
One thing that irks me a little bit is that there isn't some kind of minion-template that you could put upon any monster. A little bit sad that there isn't a possibility to "minionize" every monster with little work, the same as you can turn monsters into elites and even solos by adding simple templates to them.
Also, the number of At-will powers are quite limited. Every player character race can only use two (humans get to use three from mostly four), and there aren't that many at-will powers to chose from. Hopefully, the supplemental books will add some more for that. It would have been cool if there were higher-level at-will powers to replace your old at-wills with.
And the rules-description of some power might perhaps need some more precise wordings, as for example in the test-battle, where a group of level 30-fellas dropped the 1450-hit points-tarasque, people were wondering if the beast really might have been stunned by some warlock daily power.
Feats aren't that much super-important anymore (they only add some small and nice advantages, but that's all), however, if you want to take them, you still have to pre-plan your character statwise for the prerequisites. Although, you had to do that too in D&D 3.X, so not a big deal.
But those are only minor nit-picks. The rest is mechanically sound and really works good. BAB and skill points have been replaced by an automatic half-level bonus, making it absolutely unncessary to waste time thinking how to distribute your limited skill-points. Although a nice idea, 3rd edition proves that class-and-level-based games aren't that good for alloting skill-points, because they become way too valuable ressources at especially higher-level games.
I do hope that the current game designers really didn't intentionally put in some turkey-feats and powers like they did back then in 3rd edition (I'm looking at you, dodge, skill focus and toughness).
Also, character creation is much much faster, especially if you want to start a higher-level game. The one table in the DMG will help creating your super-level-hero in no time, something which could have taken many more hours in 3rd edition if you used spell-caster classes... Or one of those newer and better melee-classes from Tome of Battle.
All in all, a good pen&paper-RPG that will surely become successfull.
Posted by: Bull Jun 7 2008, 07:26 AM
Ok, read a bit more over lunch. Still not nearly enough, but...
I was iffy on the new races at first, but I'm digging them a bit more now. Tieflings still bug me, just for that "oo! Cool!" factor, but I'm liking the Dragonborn, and I like the new Fey race once I realized they're basically High Elves to the Elves "Wood Elves". 
Looking through the DMG a bit, I like the new Ritual stuff. It's kinda cool, and opens up some magic and other stuff as a more generally available ability.
I was highly amused by the "Player Types" break down, as well as the "how to deal with..." sections of it. This is something that's kind of necessary for a GM, but it's something no major game has really tackled in print before. It's simplified and by no means all encompassing, but it's pretty neat (and amusing) to say the least.,
I was moderately amused (and disturbed) by the Experience Awards section, especially when they broke down an average "Advancement Timeline" and said that with average play and XP awards, at 4-5 hours a week playing once a week, the average party would hit 30trh level in a year and a half. I mean, Damn. That's some seriously fast progression there It's easy enough to tweak and what not, but coming from old school D&D, I had characters that hadn't broken level 10 in a couple years of regular play.
This isn;t really good or bad, IMO, just something that would take a bit of adjustment. Plus, you can tweak the XP awards as necessary (And the book even talks about doing this to slow down advancement).
I'm at the point now where I really need to sit down, make a couple characters, and get a couple friends together to try out a game.
Bull
Posted by: Critias Jun 7 2008, 10:03 AM
For those of us without the books yet (who are still in the "I'm certain I'm undecided" camp about the whole edition), does anyone with a positive spin want to give a quick breakdown on character creation?
Same old stats? Same 3d6 (or 4d6 and drop)? I heard you no longer roll for hit points (which are triple digit numbers, anyways, right?)? What races are there? For those of us who were quite comfortable in 2nd and 3.x editions, what is there in this one that'll still feel like home?
Posted by: Bull Jun 7 2008, 10:32 AM
I will honestly have to sit down and actually work up a character before I can really comment on the changes. A lot looks the same, some looks a lot different. More on that when I get home from work, I think.
Yes
4d6/drop or a point allocation system. They seem to recommend point allocation, and even have a small chart with various stat spreads already worked out.
Hehe, not quite. But yeah, each class gets a fixed number, plus your constitution stat, to start. Most classes look like they get between 12-15 + Con to start, and then they get a flat rate per level, rather than a random result.
Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Human, Tiefling, Dragonborn (Basically Draconians with a "Noble Heritage" and a per encounter minor breath weapon), a Fey race called the... Eladin? Something like that. Basically, another race of Elves. High Elves to the standard "Wood" Elves. I think that's it.
Plenty. It resmbles D&D a lot, actually. More than I figured it would. I suspect it will still mostly feel like D&D (More 3.5 than 1st/2nd). There's a lot of changes, some good, some bad, but.. It's still D&D at the end of the day.
Bull
Posted by: Dumori Jun 8 2008, 01:34 PM
What every ones view on the lack on none combat stuff. And what if any races have been dropped. I wont by any 4e stuff as SR and 3.5 are what i play and theres many a reason for that.
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 8 2008, 01:45 PM
Positive: races haven't been "dropped" exactly. The Gnome and the Goblin and the Bugbear are all in the game, you can even play them with DM agreement. It sounds weird to have Gnomes be playable with DM agreement only, but really all races and classes are like that anyway so it's not as big a deal as you'd think. Certianly it would never even occur to me to run a game where dragonborn even existed, so whatever.
Caveat: None of the races outside the Humans, Night Elves, Blood Elves, Half Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Draconians, and Draenei are complete. All the races have roughly balanced stat modifiers (though for weirdly game mechanical reasons you happen to suck if you get a Str/Con bonus, a Dex/Int bonus, or a Wis/Cha bonus), all the races have a set of special feats that they can (and usually will) take, and all the races have a roughly balanced set of abilities. Except that the races other than the "standard" 8 have a short power list and no feats. So despite having writeups that you could nominally play, they aren't really quite playable out of the box.
So close, but so far. They finally just knuckled down and wrote a playable gnoll, a playable kobold, a playable minotaur and so on and so forth, but they didn't actually finish any of them.
-Frank
Posted by: Dumori Jun 8 2008, 01:54 PM
From what I've read doesn't sound like my cup of tea. I normally run combat as a part of the adventer not just all of it use nonecombat skills a lot and such. As 4th is a combat fest from all Ive seen and read it will not be any fun for most of my group Ned the munchkin might like it but screw him. So ill stick with 3.5
Posted by: Aaron Jun 8 2008, 03:46 PM
Don't think of them as "unplayable," think of them as "unlockable," except that instead of playing the game, you wait a while and then pay money.
On the positive side, I'm hoping that the game satisfies my wargame cravings more than it disappoints my inner role-player. Although I would find it ironic if it turns out that Classic BattleTech ends up having more role-playing crunch than D&D 4e.
Posted by: imperialus Jun 8 2008, 05:08 PM
Amazingly enough I found out that people still use Usenet today. He gets kinda philisophical in it but it's still an interesting article
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.dnd/msg/0a891f5ccafcccf1
In it he compares 3.X to the PS3 and 4E to the Wii. He suggests that the two systems are both excellent games but that 4E will be more successful because it is more accessible.
To sum up my take on it, he suggests that while there is a segment of gamers who enjoy deeply complex rule systems that there has been a trend in recent years towards 'simpler' games. As games evolved through the 90's there was a trend towards trying to find a rule for everything. This brought us the Skills and Powers books of 2nd ed, Shadowrun 3, Gurps, the infamous Palladium (god knows what edition) and yes third edition. Since the release of 3.5 however the trend has reversed across the gamer community. The two best examples of this in my mind are "Castles and Crusades" and "True20" though Shadowrun 4 fits the bill too. While the two systems appeal to widely different audiences, C&C is seen as 'old school' while T20 is the indy rock band both are very simple, intuitive, straight forward systems. I think 4E hopes to appeal to both, with the core mechanic of "Roll a D20 and seen what happens" staying the same but with a more progressive framework built around it.
A poster on ENworld said it quite well IMO
Personally I've been entranced by the simpler systems and I'm a wargamer, chits on hexes style. I enjoy wargaming because it is very intense, detail oriented mental gymnastics where you need to understand the workings of the system to do well. I know exactly one other person who I have this in common with. I need more than that for a D&D game. Besides I never got into the D&D system since the actual 'rules' of most wargames are fairly simple too, just implementing them is tough. I game with my sister who after 8 years still needs help doing characters, along side a father of 4. Simpler systems let us focus on what our characters are doing, not how they are doing it.
It's natural for D&D to want to get on this trend. After all it's working.
Posted by: Dumori Jun 8 2008, 07:26 PM
3.5 was never complex for me. I am also a wargamer but I view both RPGs and wargames differently. Most wargames you need the moddles and such its all part of it what make it fun but with RPGs you can run an encounter over lunch (i have done) this with only some dice a pencil and some paper. Some time with a lack of rule you can get into abusive sitiuations or have a shitty Gm who is not in the book so no. Even if a rule no one really uses is in the book at least you can use it any where.
Posted by: last_of_the_great_mikeys Jun 9 2008, 03:38 AM
They dropped half-orcs. Outright. Mikey is not pleased.
Still, seems playable so far. I need to try it out first before I can say "tea" or "nay." Skills are quite simplified. Every skill is available. If you're proficient you get a +5 bonus to the roll. Add the relevant attribute modifier, proficiency bonus and half your level rounded down. Voiala. Instant skill check.
The major change at a glance is how healing works. Every class gets a set amount of "healing surges." A healing surge heals you of 1/4 your maximum hit point total. You can use as many as you like while resting, one during combat. Certain class powers can make more available during combat. That'll take some getting used to.
Posted by: BishopMcQ Jun 9 2008, 05:56 AM
Frank--Did you intentionally mix names from 4E and WoW, or did 4E use the same names as the new WoW races?
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 9 2008, 06:13 AM
That's intentional on my part. The High Elves have been renamed "Eladrin" and now they are the splinter elf faction who are magic addicted and refused to abandon the magic world. The early concept art for the Eladrin was even just dressed as a WoW Blood Elf, it's pretty obvious.
The Tieflings aren't the old D&D tieflings at all. Now they are normal humans who made a pact with Infernal forces long ago and had their world destroyed. And now they all have weird face barbels and giant horns and red skin. They even released a video in which they had a female tiefling whose voice was someone trying to do the bad Eastern European accent of the WoW Draenei women.
I mean sure, they aren't the blue skinned Draenei, they are the red skinned Draenei, which is why they try to convince you to play one as a Warlock (interesting note: despite in-book rants about how you want to be a Tiefling Warlock, you actually don't. Tieflings are genetically inferior as any kind of Warlock except the Fey-Pact Warlock. If you want an Infernal Pact you want to be a Half Elf, a Human, or a Dwarf).
But yeah, the new Halflings are a lot more like WoW Gnomes than they used to be, so the PHB is very explicitly the "Alliance Races" (plus Draconians for some reason). That's not necessarily a bad thing, that's just a thing.
-Frank
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jun 9 2008, 11:01 AM
Impossible. 4th edition halflings are swamp-rats. WoW gnomes are steampunk fetishists. With big noses.
The only thing besides a short size they share is that both suck thematically. Oh well, at least, the Lord of the Rings-movies didn't introduce gnomes.
Posted by: Fuchs Jun 9 2008, 11:05 AM
WoW gnomes are tinker gnomes from Dragon Lance. Also, "magic-addicted" high elves were around before WoW from what novels I dimly recall reading in the 90s (like just about everything else in WoW was around beore WoW).
Posted by: Grinder Jun 9 2008, 12:24 PM
Shocking! 
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jun 9 2008, 12:36 PM
You need a smilie with a hat whose monocle is falling into his tea-cup. 
Posted by: Grinder Jun 9 2008, 12:45 PM
Indeed. 
Posted by: Aaron Jun 9 2008, 02:44 PM
I'm thinking the Eldarin and Elf 4e races are a result of the realization that 3.5e elves were just over the top, and so were split into two races. Each 4e race has aspects of the 3.5e elf.
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jun 9 2008, 03:21 PM
If only. There are still too many elf-races. Normal Elves, Eladrin, Drow, Half-Elves. Pretty sure they'll still (re-)introduce Half-Drows, Half-Eladrin, and other crap like Dwelves or Elarfs, or Drogres and similar silly stuff. D&D always had a crapload of elves. Grey Elves, Sea Elves, Dark Elves, Wild Elves, Green Elves, Wood Elves, Silver Elves, Silvermoon Elves, High Elves, Gold Elves, Sky Elves, Water Elves, Fire Elves, Light Elves, Crystal Elves, Planetouched Elves, Blue Elves... It will take generations to eliminate that silly amount of sub-race crap/creep that pervades D&D. The bad thing is, Shadowrun is trying to imitate it with their own branch of elf-a-hol, making tons of elf-subtypes.
The Horror!!!
And no, I'm not talking about those Earthdawn-Demons.
This is one thing that D&D whateveredition won't succeed. They will try to appeal to the Elf-Fanboys, and re-introduce bajillion sub-elves. Sure, they might say that they don't intend to, but as soon as they roll out those Campaign Setting books, every author will try to blend in his own "unique" touch. After all, that's how all those silly elf-races started in the first place. And these same authors will still continue writing setting-differenting stuff.
Posted by: Dumori Jun 9 2008, 09:54 PM
and what was/is Dragon Lance a campine setting for D&D tush the tinker gnomes are well based in D&D. But WoW stole all it stuff from the huge amount of fantsy works that became part of Warcraft. SOme how Wow made warcraft suck. I still waiting for the Starcraft mmorpg it will come out.
Posted by: Kingboy Jun 11 2008, 05:21 AM
Re: Strange starting racial choices and those that were left behind, et. al.
As this is the "positive" thread, I will make a simple observation and try to refrain from too much editorializing in order to stay on the "behaving" side of the list. In order to do that I will quote a few brief passages, nothing intrinsically rules related though.
Pointe the Firste: The Title of the basic player book is the Players Handbook, same as always. The subtitle is "Arcane, Divine and Martial Heroes". Why is this important?
Pointe the Seconde: To find that out we must move on to page 54, and the sidebar titled "Power Sources". The relevant bits are as such (with emphasis added):
“fuel� that enables members of that class to use powers.
The three power sources associated with the classes in this
book are arcane, divine, and martial.
techniques provide characters of different classes with
powers and abilities. These will appear in future Player’s
Handbook volumes. For example, barbarians and druids
draw on the primal forces of nature, monks harness the
power of their soul energy (or ki), and psions call upon the
mind to generate psionic powers. Future power sources
include elemental, ki, primal, psionic, and shadow.
So, the practical upshot of this is that it is fairly likely that when they bring out additional Player Handbook(s)—with five alternate "power sources", I am betting at least two additional PHBs to come—they will package at least a few new (or in this case old) player races in the books as well.
Precisely...
Whether or not that's a "good" thing is not something I will dicuss, lest I stray into negativeland.
Posted by: Fuchs Jun 11 2008, 07:25 AM
That's how it works for every other system, and worked for every other system. "Unlockable" wasn't thrown around back when D&D or Shadowrun supplements added new races to play. After every new edition, it takes a time until everything from the old edition and its splat books is officially converted.
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 11 2008, 10:51 AM
This is completely true. However what is specifically being complained about is the fact that races which were main book standards in 3rd edition and even AD&D are now relegated to expansion material, while two entirely new races are being added (keeping in mind that the 4e Tiefling and Dragonborn aren't in any way the Tiefling or Dragonborn from 3rd edition).
So Wood Elves went from optional content (fully playable Monster Manual write-up) to PHB content. Gnomes went from PHB content to an advertisement for the PHB2. Half Orcs went from PHB content to unmentioned. Two new races were added that have the names of the Tiefling and the Dragonborn (who were both expansion content, but presumably altogether gone from 4th edition because their names have been given to new races).
Gnomes will be back of course, they have a partially finished writeup in the Monster Manual appendix. But gnome players have a right to be annoyed. Anyone who is kvetching that Drow or Kobolds or whatever aren't fully playable in the new edition is being disingenuous - they weren't fully playable until expansion material came out for the last edition either. But Half Orc and Tiefling fans have a right to be straight pissed - their races seem to have been excised from the edition altogether.
-Frank
Posted by: Fuchs Jun 11 2008, 11:11 AM
And in earlier editions, the same happened to classes like the barbarian, cavalier and assassin, to name three, while the bard went to PHB status with 2E (and was changed a lot as well). Changing priorities is nothing new.
A number of races can probably be reconstructed - like the half-orc with a mix of human and orc and using the half-elf as a guideline. Tieflings probably the same - if one uses the Eladrin as a baseline.
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 11 2008, 11:57 AM
The barbarian and cavalier were not core material, they were expansion material in AD&D and came in as expansion material in 2nd edition AD&D as well. The Bard was in the PHB in AD&D 1st and 2nd edition both. Nonetheless, you are correct that priorities change.
Not really. The Half Elf doesn't have any overlap with the abilities of the Human or the Elf. It's a completely unique thing. Elves get a Wisdom and Dexterity bonus. For reasons unknown the Half Elf actually has a Constitution and Charisma bonus.
I'll agree with you that you can simply write up a Half Orc if you want, 4e races aren't super difficult to construct. But you seriously would be designing a brand new race completely from scratch. The Orc isn't finished either and the Half Elf "guideline" is apparently to just wander off in a random tangent unrelated to either parent.
The old school Tieflings is more problematic. The new campaign material has a new race which is called "Tiefling" and thus bringing in the old Tieflings not only requires you to design a new race, but to make a new name for that race as the name they used to have is taken by a different race in the 4e campaign and rule books.
-Frank
Posted by: Fuchs Jun 11 2008, 12:16 PM
Or you can simply replace the 4E Tiefling with your Tiefling - people used to replace the 3E ranger with Monte's ranger as well.
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 11 2008, 12:29 PM
You aren't seriously comparing house ruling different abilities for player characters of a specific class get to house ruling out a race that the newly published versions of the campaign settings have ruling entire kingdoms are you?
The new version of the FRCS seriously has entire nations and armies of the new "tiefling" race in it. Bringing back the old race called tiefling is in no way a small change to presented campaign worlds. It would be closer to house ruling Elves out of Shadowrun than it would be to house ruling out Satyrs.
-Frank
Posted by: Fuchs Jun 11 2008, 12:37 PM
The new version of the FRCS seriously has entire nations and armies of the new "tiefling" race in it. Bringing back the old race called tiefling is in no way a small change to presented campaign worlds. It would be closer to house ruling Elves out of Shadowrun than it would be to house ruling out Satyrs.
-Frank
Of course I am serious. I'd house rule those armies in a heartbeat.
Without knowing the new background other than what I read in the preview book, I'd simply change the Tiefling empire or whatever it will be in the FR to have spawned the home-made tieflings - instead of a demonic pact, the nobles would have mated with demons, and their half-demon offspring formed the new nobility, and their descendants became the tieflings. And, of course, the Planescape tieflings would still be around - the "Descendants of the Nobility of this empire" tieflings would just be a part of the tieflings as a whole.
Where's the difficulty in that? All one does is use the new stats and (variable) appearance, and change a tiny bit of the origin fluff.
Edit: I mean, to sum it up: We have the 2E/3E Tieflings, who look different and have different powers because they have a fiend somewhere among their ancestors. And we have the 4E Tieflings, who look like they do because their ancestors made a deal with demons or such. It really is not difficult to incorporate the 4E Tiefling background into 2E/3E Tiefling background by assuming that those 4E Tiefling Ancestors did not just make a deal, but mated with the demons. Heck, that's how the elven tieflings in FR, the Fey'ir (or such) were explained- a noble house mating with fiends.
Also, house ruling elves out of Shadowrun would be easy as well. Just replace all elves with humans and ignore the Tirs, and you're mostly done. Or simply let the Tirs be instead populated by racist celtic-flavored extremist cults.
Posted by: Bull Jun 11 2008, 12:53 PM
Just a reminder, try and keep things positive and constructive, rather than critical and negative. We have like 3 D&D threads up right now, there's no reason for all three to be full of bile and "This is why this game sucks".
That said, I've done a bit more reading, and me and a buddy made up a character each the other night. He made an Eladrin Warlock, I made a Dragonborn Warlord.
All in all, it was interesting. I'm still in the "like camp". I'm not gonna say it's the best game ever, as there's a lot of stuff that's either outright missing, or was ommitted as a design decision. But I think some of that stuff makes the game more intriguing, at least for me.
I grew up on old school D&D, so I can handle a game with no solid non-combat rules. A game like Shadowrun needs some in depth social rules, stuff for lifestyles, all that good stuff. But D&D is adventuring, dungeon diving, and killing stuff for loot. THe games never changed, and frankly, it never really will. The phrase "It's Roleplaying, not Rollplaying" gets bandied about plenty, so I'll flat out say it... Really, do you need rules for all that? For some groups, sure, and as I said, for some games, it's a necessary part of teh setting. But for D&D, not really.
I'm not saying you shouldn't rollplay. THe best, and most well defined characters I've ever played and played with were in my old Shadowrun game (Bull, Johnny 99, Mr White, etc). The second best though, miles ahead of any other characters and game, was a 2nd ed D&D game we played back around '94. We played taht game pretty steadily for a couple years, and we really fleshed out our characters, our backgrounds.
So really, i don;t see any of this being missing as a real flaw in the game. It just puts the responsibility of this stuff back in the GM and Players hands, rather than a set of complex (and very, very easily skewed) skills. And it's not like there are no skills, they're there, just simplified a bit.
One complaint my buddy Shawn had was that the books seemed dumbed down, with a lot of stuff getting hashed and rehased that, as he put it, "any gamer should already know". The DMG is at least half full of "How to roleplay" stuff that is almost completely useless and redundant to us (though I maintain that no matter how long you've been GMing, these are useful to review, as sometimes there's new ideas you never thought of, and sometimes it's good to refresh yourself a bit, especially if you play with the same grup of people regularly. You lose track of some of the things that crop up in other games). But as I pointed out to him... Not everyone has been gaming for 20 years.
It's obvious from the design decisions that WotC would like nothing more than to lure in some WoW players. Because as arrogant as we are as gamers, the fact is, WoW is bigger than us. By a LOT. The Alliance Guild I'm in currently is co-run by a guy I knew from the old RN Mailing List (Wolfstar, for some of you old timers). A lot of the folks in the Guild are RL friends of his. But after talking to some of them the last couple weeks, it's become clear that most of them have never done Pen & Paper gaming. A couple were actually completely clueless as to how you could play a game like that without a computer. So obviously, if you're gona get any of these guys into the hobby, you have to give them a simple starting point. And D&D4 provides that.
Frankly, I'm really, really interested to atcually try the game out in a session. I'm hoping to get a small practice session in this weekend with Shawn and a couple others. And I'm gonna go ahead and run a couple full blown sessions at origins with Caine and anyone else I can round up. It's not a hardcore RPG, but honestly, I think that intigues me all the more. It has some CCG type mechanics (Hell, I'm tempted to make up a set of index cards with the powers on them, and encourage players to flip or "tap" them to show they've been used), it has some tactical miiatures/board game elements ala Descennt or Warhammer Quest (Both games I love to pieces), it has some basic, straight forward character design ala WoW, and it's got teh core element of classic D&D behind it.
In it's own way, it's an innovative design. Like I said, I'll need to see how it plays and really mess with things a bit to see how well they hold up in the long run, but... <shrug> I think with the right group, it could be a lot of fun, as it'll provide some of the same type of gaming I get from Descent, but a a lot more open ended and allowing for a greater variety of play.
And for when I want hardcore RPGing, well... I still have Shadowrun.
Bull
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 11 2008, 01:13 PM
Don't do that.
D&D4 has extremely strong Race/Class affinities and there are very small numbers of "effective" builds. Also the game math is predicated on the assumption that you will be using one of them - especially at high levels. Don't play an Eladrin Warlock, because it sucks. Eladrin are kind of on the weak side no matter what you do your bonuses don't fully synergize with any currently published class. But if you do play an Eladrin, you want to be in one of the decent presented archetypes for which there is currently no optimized race: like Control Wizard or Brute Rogue.
There are three kinds of Warlocks, of which only one of them is Charisma based (Fey type), and they are optimized for Halflings, Tieflings, Dragonborn, Humans, or (especially) Half-Elves. The other two are Constitution centric, and thus are optimized for Dwarves, Humans, or Half Elves.
If you're going to play 4e to high levels you have to build your character in the manner that you'd build a WoW character. There are penalties for stepping out of the guidelines and they are large. Being an Infernal Pact Warlock who isn't a Dwarf, Human, or Half-Elf seriously drops your DPS by 17%. Since DPS is your entire job, you can see how that might not be a good plan.
-Frank
Posted by: Caine Hazen Jun 11 2008, 01:16 PM
Well I broke down and got a PH... one way or another I was going to get it anyway (damn collector instinct) but I figured since I had a few folks around here lay into it and like what they saw I'd give it a look. I've gotten a decent read into it, and skimmed over most of the rules for character creation, I do like that its evened down to 1 set of level progressions, although it would seem an odd choise the way the classes are set up really support the leveling system put into place. I also have found myself somewhat enamored of one of the classes I thought I would hate, the warlock. I think the idea of a crazed "archaeologist" who has committed himself to the "gods" of the Far Reaches would be fun to play (yes, I'd have to try and feed the party to my "god", cause it'd be that way). Although the racial changes at first kinda bothered me, I found that really it wasn't too bad. Gnomes weren't core back in the old days, the idea of seperating up the "high" elves and the nature elves was good, the dragonborn I could take or leave and I think changes to the half-elf finally made them a most viable race to play (took long enough!). I love the changes to magic... it doesn't take up 1/2 the book for just a few classes. The split between character "spells" and rituals looks to flow naturally. There are a few things that I don't like as of yet, but I'll save those out for one of the negative threads
Posted by: Bull Jun 11 2008, 01:30 PM
D&D4 has extremely strong Race/Class affinities and there are very small numbers of "effective" builds. Also the game math is predicated on the assumption that you will be using one of them - especially at high levels. Don't play an Eladrin Warlock, because it sucks. Eladrin are kind of on the weak side no matter what you do your bonuses don't fully synergize with any currently published class. But if you do play an Eladrin, you want to be in one of the decent presented archetypes for which there is currently no optimized race: like Control Wizard or Brute Rogue.
There are three kinds of Warlocks, of which only one of them is Charisma based (Fey type), and they are optimized for Halflings, Tieflings, Dragonborn, Humans, or (especially) Half-Elves. The other two are Constitution centric, and thus are optimized for Dwarves, Humans, or Half Elves.
If you're going to play 4e to high levels you have to build your character in the manner that you'd build a WoW character. There are penalties for stepping out of the guidelines and they are large. Being an Infernal Pact Warlock who isn't a Dwarf, Human, or Half-Elf seriously drops your DPS by 17%. Since DPS is your entire job, you can see how that might not be a good plan.
-Frank
Heh. This is so cute
I don't play WoW by this rule, so why should I play D&D this way? Besides, every RPG since the dawn of time has had "Optimal builds". Hell, Shadowrun sure as hell has them. I mean, why play a non-elf Face, or a melee character that isn't a troll?
Unlike a computerized RPG, which has a very unflexible set up with Player vs Computer (Or Player vs Player), RPGs are much more flexible. The GMs job is to set things so they're challenging but fun. If a PC is getting punished for playing an "un-optimized build", well... That's a bad GM.
Now, play nice Frank. Try and leave your sarcasm and derision to the other threads, please
Bull
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 11 2008, 01:57 PM
Oh I am. The 17% wasn't just some random number, that's the actual number for not being the "right" race to play an Infernal Pact Warlock (though it goes up and down as you gain levels). The solid and inflexible math combined with long combats is an advertised feature of the new edition. The Warlock is a "Striker" and his presented role in the party is "DPS." The game math is written assuming that you will play a Warlock of the "right" type and that you will thus hit 50% of the time against normal enemies and 40% of the time against solos. If you play the "wrong" type you only hit 45% or 35% respectively. And since battles are now intended to last 20 rounds or more at high levels, those DPS shifts make a huge difference.
When we say that there are three types of warlocks, that's not character optimization snootiness - that's again an advertised feature of the new edition. There are exactly three types of warlocks that are allowed. That's a feature, and it's there to reduce the number of bad builds fo people to accidentally take and shorten the learning curve.
Frankly I honestly don't know why they didn't go the extra meter and write hard race/class restrictions, because the soft ones they have now are not very soft. Coming to the table with an Eladrin Warlock or a Dragonborn Wizard is like coming to a guild with a Survival Specced Hunter. Making the "proper" synergies is fairly easy (again, an advertised feature of the new edition), and there are a fair number of them for every class (again, an advertised feature of the new edition). There are Laser Clerics and Beat Clerics. There are Tron Paladins and Grind Paladins. This isn't sarcasm, this is explicit designer intent, and real people really like it.
But if you make a Tron Paladin, you go Dragonborn or Human, boost Strength and sub Wisdom. Doing almost anything else is an extremely bad plan. Making a Dwarf or Elf Tron Paladin is possible, but is pretty much restricted to point buy and is considered an unusual build. Making a Halfling or Eladrin Tron Paladin is "wrong." It is an advertised feature of the 4th edition rules that it is very easy to figure out what the optimal builds are, and it is an advertised feature of the game that it is supposed to be played with everyone using them.
-Frank
Posted by: last_of_the_great_mikeys Jun 11 2008, 02:20 PM
Okay, Frank, now say something you really like about the game. You know, 'cause this is the POSITIVE thread.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 11 2008, 05:25 PM
I always reflected that as a GM, I never enforced the whole, "trolls are 2-3 times as tall as you and therefore can't fit though doorways or into cars", since that could be very disruptive and time consuming to games.
Player: "I enter the bar to see the Johnson".
GM: "You ram your forehead into the doorframe."
Player: "I use the shipping door in back."
GM: "You get stuck as you try to crawl through and then the security guards repeatedly tase you in your helpless nuts."
So I guess that in principle playing a troll could be "balanced" by extreme social difficulty, but no GM I know actually wants to spend that much time and energy subjecting the troll to slapstick comedy.
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jun 11 2008, 06:08 PM
Gnomes and half-orcs have been the least popular of the core races, no matter how vocal the players are who are fond of them. We'll have to see if the new (ugly) Tieflings will prove to be popular. Dragonborn will be for sure, especially now that they're a true-breeding race.
Alas, they still have half-elves and halflings. If it were for me, these two races would have gone the way of the dodo.
Posted by: bishop186 Jun 11 2008, 08:09 PM
I honestly love making characters that aren't completely suited for their roles.
I'm the guy that makes Troll Technomancers and Gnome Warlords. I made my Gnome Warlord specifically because it's a somewhat silly thing to do and the Gnome is no longer a PHB class.
Posted by: Nightwalker450 Jun 11 2008, 08:19 PM
Of note, looking at the half-elves they are related to neither humans or elves... But their attributes come from something else entirely.
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jun 11 2008, 08:36 PM
Meh, perhaps heterosis. Could be. The problem is still that there are too many elf-races. Of course, another problem that might be creeping up is swapping too many elf-races through human-races. Shadar-Kai, Tieflings, Cambions, and you can bet that there will be some bajillion genasi-half-human freaks running around.
Oh well, it's a D&D-ism.
Posted by: Cantankerous Jun 15 2008, 09:15 PM
Let's see...something positive about 4e D&D? Well, you don't HAVE TO play it. That's a big positive. Another is that they didn't try to back door their rip offs of WoW, so you can interchange things between the two games fairly effectively. Ok, so it's not a BIG positive, it's still nice of them to be so open about it. And, ahh, oh hey, there is one real positive positive here...the art is better than usual...much better than the earlier editions of D&D in the old AD&D days especially. And ahh, well, errrr, hmmm, yeah! Your 3.x and earlier edition stuff is becoming more valueable on EBay by the day right now and no one is going to come to your house and try to take it from you... yet anyway.
Lock and load brothers.
Isshia
Posted by: Aaron Jun 15 2008, 11:06 PM
I found another positive thing. Well, positive for my wizard, anyway.
I can use Sleep on skeletons.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 16 2008, 12:51 AM
I can use Sleep on skeletons.
SCORE! No more of this "undead are immune to sleep" crap. When it's nappy time for the lich, it's nappy time for the lich.
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 16 2008, 02:19 AM
Immunities in general are mostly gone - probably. There's still some argument over the fact that the description of Undead says that they "don't sleep" and that they aren't listed as being immune to sleep in their actual description. But as soon as that's sorted out, we can probably get to the real heart of the matter: staking vampires in their sleep (something which due to some very badly written rule interactions was physically impossible in 3rd edition games).
I think the removal of immunities went too far myself, we're at the point where using one weapon over another isn't usually a meaningful tactic. But it is easier to have too few monster abilities than too many.
-Frank
Posted by: Aaron Jun 16 2008, 03:04 AM
The MM says "Undead do not need to breathe or sleep." Semantically, they can sleep and breathe (the latter makes sense, as vampires should be able to speak).
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 16 2008, 05:40 AM
Yes, very astute.
Posted by: bishop186 Jun 16 2008, 03:05 PM
Okay, I know this is a positive thread but here's something that really irked me about the art: a lot of it (especially in the MM) is from older-edition books! We sat down and flipped through the pages and were like "Yep, that's from Oriental Adventures," "Oh, the original Monster Manual there", "Miniatures Handbook." I do like the art for trolls, however. Also, pseudodragons are still listed as coveted pets and that made me smile. Right now, that's what my gnome warlord is questing for (other than the complete destruction of the kobold race and the next place where he can get a stiff drink).
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 16 2008, 03:46 PM
That irks you? The recycled art is the best stuff in the book! If all the art was recycled, and it was all awesome stuff like the Bog Hag, I'd have a much higher opinion of the art as a whole. All the dragonborn look like muppets and the new art is much more "Unwired Cover" than it is "Unwired Interior."
I could seriously do without the new beholders. Or the new white dragons. Or those guys with three skull heads.
-Frank
Posted by: bishop186 Jun 16 2008, 05:28 PM
Haha, okay, yeah. The Dragonborn do look like muppets and the beholders do look quite silly, as well. But I place a high value on new art and even if some of it is less-than-par I'd prefer new art to the recycled if nothing else then just for more variety.
Posted by: Bull Jun 17 2008, 12:29 AM
I actually quite dig the Dragonborn. I think they look pretty cool, on the whole, though I think in my games, they'll have tails. (Of course, I also tend to think of them as evolved Draconians as well, so... )
Bull
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 17 2008, 04:59 AM
Draconians trapping your weapon was the pwnest thing ever. (That's positve, right?)
It's like, SIDEARM BITCH!
Seriously.
Posted by: bishop186 Jun 17 2008, 05:42 AM
I dunno, when I envision them with tails they instantly become discolored, super-sized kobolds.
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 17 2008, 06:15 AM
I would've preferred kobolds. Or hobgoblins. Or orcs (especially orcs). D&D already suffers tremendously from race bloat, and I truly don't think that we needed people to make new races of any kind for the PHB. Especially as the new races don't really cover any of the newly defined roles super well.
The Draconians are going to be the Bullysaurus in every group. That's the guy who specializes in Intimidate and demands (and receives) the surrenders of bloodied opponents rather than taking the time to beat them up all the way (this saves an increidble amount of time, especially at high levels). But while every group wants a Bullysaurus, the way the designers talk about it, they seem genuinely surprised that such a position exists in parties.
So color me confused. The Dragonborn don't seem to actually do any of the things the designers wanted players to do. They aren't optimized to be a grind paladin or a tron paladin. They aren't optimized to be a hammer fighter or a sword fighter. They aren't optimized to be a laser cleric or a beat cleric. And while they can walk in as a perfectly acceptable Charisma based Feylock, there are literally 4 other races in the PHB alone that could do that job just as well. The only role in the party they really uniquely fill: the Bullysaurus; is a role that wasn't even "supposed" to exist.
Interesting note: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/dragon/364_ClassActs.pdf.
A severe advantage to having all the abilities in the game be very similar is that you can seriously add relatively large swathes of content to the game very easily. Whole new roles every bit as well defined as "Laser Cleric" or "Bowazon" can be added to the game by writing 2 At-wills, 8 Encounters, 7 Dailies, 7 Utilities, and a Paragon path. Since those abilities are all basically collections of keywords drawn off a half-page list, you can write two to three of these character paths while in the bath tub.
While the game didn't give us a fully viable flail Fighter set of moves, one could just spend ten minutes writing the extra abilities required to make that go. One wasn't granted a fully playable Bugbear, but with the introduction of some racial weapons, two minor abilities, 2 Heroic Feats and a Paragon feat, the Bugbear would be good to go.
In less than half an hour you can make a Bugbear Flail Fighter just as playable as anything else in the game from levels 1 to 30.
-Frank
Posted by: Aaron Jun 17 2008, 02:06 PM
In less than half an hour you can make a Bugbear Flail Fighter just as playable as anything else in the game from levels 1 to 30.
Less, actually.
Average Height: 6' 10" - 7' 2Ë"
Average Weight: 250 - 300 lb.
Ability Scores: +2 Strength, +2 Dexterity
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares
Vision: Low-light
Languages: Common, Goblin
Skill Bonuses: +2 Intimidate, +2 Stealth
Oversized: You can use weapons of your size or one size larger than you as if they were your size.
Predatory Eye: You can use predatory eye as an encounter power.
Predatory Eye -- Bugbear Racial Power
You maneuver into an advantageous position and strike your foe with ruthless determination.
Encounter
Minor Action -- Personal
Effect: If you have combat advantage against a target, you deal +1d6 damage on the next attack you make against that target. You must apply this bonus before the end of your next turn.
Increase extra damage to +2d6 at 11th level and +3d6 at 21st level.
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 17 2008, 02:16 PM
That's incomplete, which was kind of my point. The Bugbear takes very little effort to ring to a playable state.
Creating a viable class path is more difficult, but is still the creation of just a small list of abilities and most of the work is already done for you.
-Frank
Posted by: Fuchs Jun 17 2008, 02:18 PM
A house ruler's paradise then?
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 17 2008, 02:24 PM
Since this is the positive thread, sure. We'll go with that.
-Frank
Posted by: Aaron Jun 17 2008, 04:08 PM
I'll bite. What's it missing?
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jun 17 2008, 04:40 PM
The other abilities. The racial weapons. The racial feats.
It's 3/4 of a playable race. Go ahead and compare it to an Elf. Or a Dwarf. Or a Tiefling. It's not complete. It even says that it isn't complete at the beginning of the section.
-Frank
Posted by: Aaron Jun 17 2008, 04:57 PM
Okay, yeah, I can see it.
Posted by: deek Jun 17 2008, 05:39 PM
We just played our first 4th edition session last night. My normal SR4 group (where I was GMing) came to the end of our story arc (after 2 years) and the timing was right to keep our game schedule but get into 4th edition DnD. We all got the books last week and had characters ready for last night.
My first impressions from reading the books:
1) A ton of balance. Borrowing from the MMO world, balance is king, and I think they've done a really good job with balancing these initial classes, races and powers. There's a lot to choose from but because of the balance, its best to build a group balance as well. Each class fits into a role and by balancing the party roles, you really can increase the level of fun. Not to mention the monsters are also balanced so you can plug in any combination of monsters that equal, say 500 XP and know that your 1st level group of five players, will have a challenging combat experience.
2) Streamlined. Everything seems very streamlined. Every class has at-will, encounter, daily and utility powers. For spell casters, they take the form of spells, but for martial types, they are tactics and combat powers. Saving Throws are a basic 50/50 chance (with a rare few modifiers) and ongoing effects offer a save to end every turn. Their are four defenses: AC, Fortitude, Reflex and Willpower, and different powers target different defenses. There's just a lot of similarity in format, but a wide array of options available to each class/race.
3) Skill Challenges. This blew me away...in addition to combat encounters, DMs can set up skill challenges. There are some great examples in the book, but basically the DM sets up a scene, chooses some core skills and difficulties and then the players can rollplay or roleplay the encounter, choosing different skills (either that make sense or possibly in creative ways). The difficulty factors in based on the target number to hit and the amount of successes needed before x failures occur. Some skills used can open up other skills. Some are automatic failures when used (like trying to Intimidate a noble could count as one failure no matter what) and some provide a bonus to the next player's skill check. All in all, with a little setup work, the DM can set up an encounter that utilizes your skills instead of combat. And the template can be used from anything like negotiating a better room rate at the inn to pursuing a thief through the woods at night. Its really open to the DM to build these encounter challenges, but there is a huge world of creative roleplaying opened, even for those that have trouble with it.
Now, from last nights session, I must admit, it was a blast! We only had time for one encounter, where while foraging for food, we faced off against a group of goblins carrying a stone chest. Combat ensued shortly (although I did make an attempt to pass by peacefully) and we had a lot of fun with all the options available each round. I play a warlord (which is a "leader", the same role as a cleric) and one of my at-will powers is that I can exchange my standard action, to give any ally a melee attack...and I used it a ton last night. There can be a lot of strategy involved in combat, but you could also simply hack and slash. We found that our two damage classes could get up front, attack and draw the enemy towards them, while my warlord buffed their attacks, healed when necessary and output a little damage as well. Then the casters, one single target the other AoE, handled the rest...
What I found was that each round, for each player, wasn't an "oh duh, I attack" moment. Depending on where everyone was situated, everyone had a couple options, and at least one of them involved enhancing the group strategy.
We didn't stumble on any rules, as everything was straight forward with no vagueness and everyone was engaged in the entire time. It was a lot of fun, even though we didn't get any skill challenges last night!
Posted by: Nightwalker450 Jun 18 2008, 03:13 PM
I'm definatly liking what I've seen. Some notes from me:
1. No more squishy wizard: 20 hit points at 1st level easily done.
2. Balance makes everyone feel useful, and everyone has options.
3. The wizard spell addition that Frank referred to was very necessary (they had nothing that attacked Will, everything was Ref or Fort)
4. They actually have a tanking system, that isn't as slapped on as it was in 3.x. No more "must attack", but rather if you don't you will take a penalty.
5. Everything is Roll Attack vs. Static Defense. Before you had the DC for spells, that you rolled saves against, while melee was roll attack to hit defense. This new way is much more streamlined.
6. Encounters are easy to put together.
7. Being able to easily put together new classes/races is good, even if they all look extremely similar once you zoom out.
8. The new system has so much more going for it in terms of tactics. The way the classes mesh, and play off one another looks like a real adventuring party, rather then a bunch of adventurers just happening to be going in the same direction.
9. Strict treasure tables, while some would think are constraining, I feel they give you a good idea of how much people should have for each level. You don't have to follow them precisely but you know the range so if you give less, your adventurers will be weaker, if you give more they will be stronger. Again more points for balance.
Posted by: imperialus Jun 18 2008, 04:35 PM
So my buddy and I sat down, created a 5 PC party that seemed 'typical'. Fighter, Paladin, Rogue, Warlord, Wizard at 5th level and started grinding them through different fights just to see how the mechanics held up.
We did fights above and below their level, fights against different monster combos, from a huge brawl against 20+ Legion Devil Grunts to a classic battle against a Young Red Dragon and the system didn't break down even though the Red Dragon was a Solo, two levels above the party.
Every fight was a challenge but once we got the hang of the system and had a feel for our powers the combat went lighting fast. The Red Dragon killed the fighter, knocked the Paladin down to 1 healing surge, dropped everyone to 0 HP at least once, and generally made the parties life hell. They still managed to win though.
The Devil Grunts swarmed around the defenders and killed the Wizard and Rogue. The Wizard still managed to take about a dozen of them with him though before he was overwhelmed. Rogue kinda underperformed in this battle, but killing minions isn't what he was designed to do. Hordes of nothing but minions is the one thing that did seem to screw the system up a bit. In an actual game I'd strongly recommend against using encounters that consist of nothing but minions, or if you do make sure it's a lower level encounter. The party was just overwhelmed trying to deal with too many attacks coming from too many different directions. The Warlord got brought down too and although the Fighter and Paladin did win, the fight just wasn't much fun.
As far as more balanced encounters went, we found that things started to break down when we were using encounters more than 3 levels above the party, or more than 3 levels less. It didn't seem to matter what kind of enemies we threw at them, as long as the encounter level was right. We did one fight against a whole mass of low level goblins and it was still a challenge, did one against a pack of level 6 Gnoll soldiers with a level 8 leader but kept the encounter level the same as the partys and it was still fun.
One other thing we noticed, is that when the PC's did end up in over their heads we knew it long before we started edging towards a TPK. We kept fighting until the TPK because they were test games but one of the big problems I found with 3.X is that if the DM screwed up the CR calculation things could go very bad for the party, very quickly. In 4E the DM can throw encounters far above the parties level (as in 5 or 6 levels above) at them and the PC's have at least a couple rounds to realize they've stepped in it deep and can make a retreat.
Posted by: Cheops Jun 19 2008, 02:44 PM
As a GM I despised the CR system. It was difficult to use and not very intuitive. The new system is a good mix of AD&D 2nd and 3.X style encounter generation.
Each monster now has an XP value again. They also have a level and a role that tell you how hard they should be and generally how they act/what they're good at. To make an encounter you just grab the XP/Level from a chart, multiply by the number of characters, and then "buy" creatures out of your budget. To adjust encounter difficulty you just alter the XP/level. Easy as pie.
The only negative, as someone pointed out is that the MM doesn't include wandering monster charts or easy reference tables for encounters of a specific level. Each monster enty has at least 1 encounter printed up but no index for said encounters.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jun 19 2008, 05:39 PM
I've tried several encounters so far. (apart from the obviously broken skill challenges) I have to say I like it better than I did after I'd read the rules but hadn't played. I haven't quite figured out if I'm using stealth in combat correctly yet, but overall, despite all the differences, I still felt like I was playing D&D, and I'm really not sure why.
Posted by: Fortune Jun 23 2008, 02:23 AM
I have spent the past week delving the depths of the new system ... and even more perusing the findings of other people's depth-delving ... and have come to the conclusion that I am quite excited about this edition of D&D. That is something that I haven't been able to say since moving from Basic to AD&D way back in the caveman days. I really wish I had some people to play with though. 
Posted by: Fuchs Jun 23 2008, 06:16 AM
Should WotC get the virtual tabletop working you'll be able to find players or GMs online. (Of course, there are already sites who offer online games.)
Posted by: Bull Jun 23 2008, 07:16 AM
I am looking forward to seeing what all their virtual tabletop system will be able to do. Some of the current ones are nice, but they're all, so far as I know, pretty basic and generic. The Virt Tabletop, combined with the 3-D minis, the "create your own avatar" thingy, and all that could rock.
Or, it could suck
EIther way, it bears watching, and could have an impact on how game companies develope their games from now on.
Posted by: Fortune Jun 23 2008, 07:47 AM
I dunno if I'm willing to fork over $15 US per month for that stuff though.
Posted by: Fuchs Jun 23 2008, 08:06 AM
There are other, free sites.
Posted by: Bull Jun 23 2008, 12:08 PM
I assume he was replying specifically to my comment
And I agree that $15 a month is a bit much, but it all depends on whether or not I'm gonna use it, and exactly how flexible and powerful the site ends up being. If I can get an online D&D group together to play a couple times a month, and the features it promses are simple and quick to use, I'll likely go for it. If not, I'll pass. In either event, I'll check it out, just to see what it's capable of.
Posted by: Fuchs Jun 23 2008, 12:15 PM
I don't have the time for D&D online games, so the VTT is of no interest to me.
Posted by: kanislatrans Jun 23 2008, 01:55 PM
Tried it out yesterday. Not as bad as expected.
Positives: easy to play, combat goes fast, controled the rabid power gamers in the group well. nice feel over all. will definitly be playing again.
Downside: only complaint was" It plays like a video game." 
Posted by: raphabonelli Jun 23 2008, 07:44 PM
I can't wait to play D&D4ed... but i just can see myself GM'ing it.
I´ve read some powers in the book and i just can't connect then to anything that i could describe, and this Warlord power is one of then. The powers works much more and a Card Effect (on a CCG) than a real power, move or strategy.
- WARLORD: I will use my Commander's Strike on the Fighter.
- GM: All right. Fighter... the Warlord scream "attack" to you, and for some unknown reason you feel the urge to attack your opponent. Not only this, but you magically becames faster, so you can attack now even if you spent all your actions on this turn. And for no apparent reason you use the Warlord Intelligence attack.
Sorry... but it just don't feel right for me.
Ona positive note, i guess that should be easy to anyone that like Final Fantasy games to adapt it to D&D.
Posted by: DTFarstar Jun 24 2008, 03:53 AM
Karon- Warlord
Barath- Fighter
Observing the flow of battle, Karon waits for the right instant and shouts at Barath "Right thrust low!". Trusting his friend Barath leaves himself open and drops low, left arm stabilizing him on the ground and the orcs clumsily swung club caresses his hair, his right arm flick back and then forward in a thrust, capitalizing on an opening he might never have seen on his own.
I typically like to describe most combats from an end of turn perspective so it would fit even better into the overall frame, but if you are playing DnD and can't let something like this slide, then it probably isn't the system for you. Not trying to be offensive, just saying the ability to help your friend attack is the least of the logic shattering things that happens if you think about it too hard. The main thing I've noticed that helps with things like this is to think of each combat round as it's own little time frame and realize that everyone's actions occur at roughly the same time in that combat round.
Chris
Posted by: raphabonelli Jun 24 2008, 12:28 PM
No offence taken... i´ve already said that D&D4ed is not for me to GM.
Even thinking "in the end or turn perspective", still strange to me. After using all his action, if the players ask for me for one more attack i would say "no, you're not fast enough"... but, then again, he will do one more (or even more if the party have more then one warlord on the group) attack. At least for me, there should be a limitation of how fast the character could attack... no matter if the Warlord scream to him or not.
But i can understand your description, and i guess it work. Just that is not my take this system... just to much abstract for me.
Posted by: Kingboy Jun 26 2008, 09:49 PM
Speaking of flexible, is there word yet on payment options for all of this yet? I ask because, having spent my time in the MMO trenches, I'd personally never pay for anything like that (or a standard MMO for that matter) on a recurring subscription basis. I much prefer "time cards". They are much more flexible, available to anyone regardless of age or credit card availability, and more importantly to me, are not an automatic source of income for the billing company whether I use the site or not.
Posted by: Caine Hazen Jun 27 2008, 03:28 AM
We're playing through right now, typing during the drink break. So far I''m having fun, and the fights are playing smooth. And I have brough thte glory of BubbaThulu to many people's lives.
I like my Warlock much.
Posted by: baburabi Jun 30 2008, 09:29 PM
okay,
just now have a chance to sit down and reply
I was in that game with Caine (thanks Bull), it was my first time even cracking open the books for more than a glance and i must say had a lot of FUN, it is most definelty very different from previous editions but has enough left in there to still be DnD, it definetely PLAYS much better than it READS!
My only criticism i have for all those people who say it isnt roleplaying anymore is WHAT?! When has a games rule system ever determined how to roleplay your character.
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 1 2008, 06:51 AM
just now have a chance to sit down and reply
I was in that game with Caine (thanks Bull), it was my first time even cracking open the books for more than a glance and i must say had a lot of FUN, it is most definelty very different from previous editions but has enough left in there to still be DnD, it definetely PLAYS much better than it READS!
My only criticism i have for all those people who say it isnt roleplaying anymore is WHAT?! When has a games rule system ever determined how to roleplay your character.
The game rules system makes it impossible to role play a human being in 4ED&D. Human beings do not go from a quarter inch from dead (negative hit points) to completely fine and able to perform at absolute peak efficiency (full hit points) after a spare few moments breather. We had this happen in game, where the groups Fighter made a heal check on the Cleric in combat (the Cleric was at -1 HP, dying as per the rules) to allow him a second wind healing surge. The combat then ended and the Cleric used three more healing surges immediately to go from dying, to 2hp below maximum immediately, with NO MAGIC and no other reason than he took a few moments to get his breath.
When the game system makes it impossible to get hurt (oooohh, you can die, obviously, but getting an actual wound must be completely impossible) in combat it makes role playing more than difficult. It makes it untenable for anything even vaguely man like.
Isshia
Posted by: baburabi Jul 1 2008, 12:06 PM
yes it is not realistic, but when has DnD ever been realistic
and yes the healing system is one of the things im not completely sold on, i need to play more to se how many times that kind of situation comes up
but still the pc are supposed to superheroic more than "human" bigger than life heroes so i dont see where that changes how you would roleplay, for one that only affects combat situations, which in my campaign is less than half of the adventures usually, and two your combat tatics and actions should be determined by your archtype (or what is it they call it ... role) not "how quickly will i recover from this?"
Posted by: deek Jul 1 2008, 01:44 PM
While I agree, its not realistic, I can also say I have not been in a world with magic, monsters and adventurers crawling through dungeons with a magic wand.
The whole healing system, surges and the like, are a game mechanic to allow the group to go longer without needing to rest. I played in my second session last night and we had two more combats as we entered a decrepit manor house. I'd say our group of 5 was average 2 or 3 healing surges per encounter, which included taking a short rest to replenish our encounter powers.
Its a game mechanic, and frankly, works quite well in practice. Now, if you need to justify this or don't like the fact that at the end of the day, your hero is going to be at 100% (as it only take 4 surges for anyone to get back to full health) without magic...well...I don't know what to say. There are a lot of rules in a lot of games that I don't necessarily see an easy way to justify, but it is a game and the rules are there for a reason.
I suppose you could do away with healing surges, but then you make a lot of powers somewhat useless. For me, at the end of the day, we are playing heroes and I don't need an in-game justification on how my group just barely got by the epic fight but after a 5 minute rest we are back to full power, maybe minus some daily powers...
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 1 2008, 05:53 PM
The problem isn't realism...who wants realism in a fantasy game, but rather verisimilitude.
If you have even the thin excuse of magic you can ignore such stupidity, it's magic after all, it doesn't have to make sense, even in a vague way, or act in an understandable manner because who can dispute it?
BUT
Healing is a natural thing. If you do this to healing it is no different from all water now suddenly being tens of thousands of degrees hot and freezing you therefore on contact. If it should make sense BECAUSE it is supposed to represent a part of the natural and normal environment, you don't fuck with it thoughtlessly, which is what has been done.
And it isn't just the PCs who heal this way. If you pick up a barmaid who is traveling with the group for whatever reason, she too can do this (the healing surge). This has nothing to do with being larger than life. It's there WoW for the table top solution to having everything work the same way for everyone.
The barmaid gets wounded unto death by a broadsword stroke that brings her to -1 hit points. Ohhh, no! Never fear, the most it can take her to heal back to full and complete health is two days of taking normal six hour naps after having worked all day in the bar from fifteen minutes after having taken her deadly wound!
Verisimilitude is an important component of actual ROLE (as opposed to Roll) Playing. If normal, natural things don't work in something at least resembling broadly the same way they do for us, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify with the character. If water suddenly flows upwards, naturally, normally, and gravity only works every other Thursday and water is suddenly dry....
And if you heal from near death to perfect health in two days if you are the average peasant ...
The game fails to be a Role Playing Game. If they were to market it as a Roll Playing Game so that Role Players wouldn't waste their money on it, it would be far more palatable.
Isshia
Posted by: DTFarstar Jul 1 2008, 06:42 PM
If healing surges bother you, then find a way to explain them. I am going to run a little 1 or 2 shot dungeon crawl just to test the system for me and my friends sometime soon- maybe tonight- and I will probably explain healing surges inside and outside of combat differently simply because of the flavor.
During combat, healing surges will mostly just be a focus thing.
Wizard - "Klavas stops for a moment and concentrates- compartmentalizing his pain and storing it away for later- allowing him to push his body past the point it would normally stop."
Angry Fighter - "Baras roaring in challenge, is momentarily overcome by his rage, no longer feels the wounds on his legs as nothing matters beyond the next kill.
Keep in mind that the human body can sustain massive trauma and survive. In fact, it is a lot less likely that you will die if that trauma is spread out. Healing surges actually almost represent the ability of the human body to take X amount of trauma and go into shock, and either die or wake up and be capable of taking more punishment.
Out of combat will be more meditative. Especially for the cleric, something along the lines of "Darian reaches out and connects with his god for a brief instant that lasts an eternity- feeling his love and approval(anger and pain, stoic dedication, etc.) rewarded, Darian wakes mere seconds later to find that a pleasant aftermath of his brief connection is that some of his wounds have closed."
Similar things could be used for the other classes.
Chris
Posted by: Malicant Jul 2 2008, 08:51 AM
A Hero goes from -2 to full health in minutes? "Dude, weren't you like dead?" "Yeah, but I'm better now" classic TV trope.
Posted by: Bull Jul 2 2008, 09:00 AM
Yeah, healing is now an Action Movie Hero kind of thing, more than an actual physical representation of damage.
Posted by: Caine Hazen Jul 2 2008, 01:58 PM
Except there are no negative HPs now, you drop to zero and get 3 saves before you die. Also as a note, most characters can only get 1 "second wind" (healing surge) per encounter, they still need Warlords, Paladins and Clerics to get them any more healing surges, thus their roles are not negated completely. As a second wind equals 1/4 of the starting HPs its not too big a gain.
People who can't abstract HPs past damage are sad sad souls indeed.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jul 2 2008, 05:38 PM
That's not entirely true. You don't lose hp when you're dying, and if you get healed you apply that healing from zero rather than from your actual negative hp (so any negative hp you had are instantly forgiven), but you still track your negative hp, and when you hit negative hp equal to your bloodied value you die, irrespective of death saves.
Otherwise, it would be impossible to kill a downed enemy.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jul 2 2008, 05:48 PM
As for the healing surges, I agree with the action movie metaphor. If you get all beat to hell (like the protagonist does at the beginning of the action movie) and then use your healing surges to get up to full hp, even if you rest for a day and get all your surges back, you still look like hell. You still have manly cuts on your face, and bandages, and you wince heroically when you take your shirt off, and maybe you limp a bit, but when the next big fight comes, do you hobble for a moment and then get whooped? Of course not, the big action hero suddenly fights fantastically, his abilities apparently unhampered by his previous injuries (*handwave* adrenaline *handwave*), and then at the end of the fight he wipes the blood from the corner of his mouth, fires off a witty one-liner, and goes on to fight the next set of baddies.
So you have to think of it as: full hp (end even full surges) does NOT necessarily mean you are not hurt. This is a big departure for some people, and I think they're having some trouble looking at it like that, or maybe just refuse to. It means that your action-hero abilities are unimpeded. You may well be hurt, and look like hell, and you should be role-playing that, but you can still roundhouse-kick-to-the-face as well as ever.
Here is it:
Hit points and healing surges are not health, or wounds, or luck, or dodging ability, they are plot points, which mechanically represent how many successful attacks you can withstand before you get a big GAME OVER, and there is no reason why their fluffy description should be consistent from attack to attack, character to character, or moment to moment.
Posted by: Bull Jul 3 2008, 02:05 AM
I'd like to see (And at some point, expect to see) some additional rules to add to the whole HP thing. If I ever run D&D again full time, I might add something to them myself. Something similar to what Star Wars d20 did, with HP and... I don;t remember the term off hand., But basically you had the standard HP pool that kind of worked like stun damage, or cinematic damage, and then you also had a "real" set of points that represented actual, serious damage.
The mix of the two would be nice, I think, for long term play, and to make the PCs feel a little more threatened. Though considering how badly I was kicking them around with Kobolds at Origins, not sure they need to be threatened much more
Posted by: baburabi Jul 3 2008, 02:38 AM
uuhhhhmmmmm ..... yeah i dont think we needed threatened anymore than we were
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 3 2008, 02:52 AM
Bah, we should just make Max Payne: The RPG already. It'd have more angst roleplay than a game of Vampire!
Posted by: Bull Jul 3 2008, 06:25 AM
Look, just cause your fighter ate a crit on turn one, random max damage on turn two, and another crit on turn 3...
Heh. Good times.
Bull
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 3 2008, 08:35 AM
People who can't abstract HPs past damage are sad sad souls indeed.
Hit points aren't just damage, but according to both the DMG and the PHB they represent the amount of damage your character can sustain. They don't even say, in those books, that it ALSO represents this, which is what I have been saying. Their direct quotes talk about how much damage the character can sustain.
What's really sad is fan boys who will eat garbage because it has a certain label on it and compliment the chefs on the taste and then damn anyone who dares say: "but it's garbage".
Isshia
Posted by: Fuchs Jul 3 2008, 08:54 AM
Star Wars D20 revised had the hp mechanics very well done and explained with their WP/VP system. D&D 4E can do the same if one subs the sub-zero mechanics for the WP.
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 4 2008, 08:22 AM
I could probably easily live with a system that used hit points to track just fatigue/luck/will of the gods/skill if below it there did exist a negatives "wound point" type system. I should have thought of that idea myself, as it's integral to GURPS and has been for more than 20 years, but now the problem becomes designing a working universal one that doesn't destroy other balance issues.
And then fixing the skill challenge system.
And then fixing the rigidity of the not only class, but class and "role" (Controller, Defender, Leader, Striker) system.
Ahh, the hell with it. It's just not worth it.
Isshia
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 4 2008, 10:38 AM
Hit points and healing surges are not health, or wounds, or luck, or dodging ability, they are plot points, which mechanically represent how many successful attacks you can withstand before you get a big GAME OVER, and there is no reason why their fluffy description should be consistent from attack to attack, character to character, or moment to moment.
The problem is you can't plot point an RPG like you can a movie... unless you don't want the RPG to do ANYTHING but be able to reproduce (cheesy) movies.
Isshia
Posted by: Daier Mune Jul 7 2008, 06:10 AM
vs. the people who continuously nitpick at details in something for the explicit purpose of finding something to hate. kind of equally sad in my eyes.
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jul 7 2008, 04:23 PM
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 7 2008, 08:19 PM
Of course, it seems odd that when you talk about large, significant parts of the game engine and how that engine works (or doesn't work) that you are being accused of nit picking. If this is nit picking, and the whole game was the size of Texas, then it's a nit roughly the size of Kansas. Actually, it's several nits, one the size of Kansas another roughly the size of Mississippi and another the size of Vermont. Add it all together and you've got a MASSIVE nit that imbalances the whole structure.
And after trying said new system, and finding after use, that it had problems to big to surmount, it got dumped.
Isshia
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 7 2008, 09:47 PM
Can you prove this statement? Who on this forum has 1.) stated they disliked D&D 4th ed but at the same time 2.) still plays it?
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jul 8 2008, 11:02 AM
What exactly constitutes "nit picking" in stating categorically that the rule set publishes a set of rules for handling "everything you do outside of combat" and that those rules don't work at all? This is not a small thing, this is half or more of every role playing game that I have ever played, and the rules presented are actually worse than the ones in Cowboys and Indians where you "just make something up."
Heck, the official line from the publisher is that for now you should just accept that characters can't win and simply have the DM write adventures where the players failing over and over again at everything they attempt to do causes them to win in the end for no god damn reason. That and they promise that there will be additional rules in a year or so that you can pay another 35 dollars for that they promise for sure this time will actually function.
This is not nits, this is a completely broken product that has no business being sold in its current state. It's a pre-alpha, and they intend to charge you for it and the beta release patch in a year whether or not that one is functional! By what standard are we supposed to think that the next build will be any better? The current one does not work, and it was sold as a finished product despite the fact that even using it once would convince you utterly that it was a dismal failure. The monumental hubris of this is astounding.
And the pathetic Candidism of people who blindly accept that the Great Leader has "reasons" for everything looking exactly like it totally sucks is just as astounding. They. Lied. To You. And like an abused wife you just keep going back and hoping that Mearls only sold you broken, unfinished products with the DMG. And Iron Heroes. And the PHB2 Knight. And everything else he ever wrote as far as I can tell.
4e Apologists are a sad lot. You all start sounding like http://www.enworld.org/forum/showpost.php?p=4363311&postcount=44. And with good reason. If you weren't willing to accept that all the crap you are being fed was actually chocolate pudding you'd have already left in disgust.
-Frank
Posted by: Fuchs Jul 8 2008, 12:28 PM
I have to point out that there are "apologists" in every game system - Shadowrun too. One can always find a justification or house-rule fix for just about everything in a system. If one is a critic or an apologist of comes down to whether or not one likes a system, piece of fluff, or rule. If one likes it the flaws can be fixed, glossed over or justified. If one dislikes it, fixing the flaws is "too much work" or "Not worth it", or the flaws are "too crucial".
Posted by: deek Jul 8 2008, 03:03 PM
That's a very good point...I've bitched about SOMETHING in every game system I have ever played. But, I've never stopped playing them, because they were fun. I think most of this depends on one's attitude. Its easy to criticize something you never actually are invested in or enjoy doing.
I have a friend that read about every 3.x DnD book...spent hundreds of dollars acquiring this huge library...and talked about all the good and bad things...but, never played. To him, reading the rules were enjoyable even if he never played the game. Some people are like that.
On the flip side, some people don't need published rules to play a game...
I just think a lot of the "bark" on this site doesn't have much "bite"...but the bark is enough to turn a lot of people off, which is unfortunate, as everyone should be allowed a chance to discover for themselves. I don't think the Class/Role thing is broken...its a different way to balance a group...its a tool...some may like the balance and others will be pissed because their Figher (a Defender) may never be able to out-damage a Rogue (a Striker). I can see some people being upset with that...others, appreciate the balance and the group dynamic.
The skill challenge system is broken, no question about that, but is a system that some DMs may never even put out on the forefront of play. And those that do, are either going to use the system, fudge a few things and make it work, read up on some little tweaks that allow the system to work with a lot of handholding or just find/design a better way to utilize it. Frankly, there's a difference, a big on I think, between saying something doesn't work and saying it doesn't work as it was designed.
...anyways...
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jul 8 2008, 03:24 PM
So Wizards of the Coast should get actual money from every single person so that we can have a referendum on whether they did a good job and deserved to get our money in the first place?
I've got a better idea: how about some of us get the books, read through them exhaustively, play through some of their scenarios, then give up in disgust, take the books back in for a refund and warn other people that the books are unfinished, unfun, and unintelligently written.
-Frank
Posted by: hyzmarca Jul 8 2008, 03:33 PM
The simple truth of the matter is that the combat system is good, but substantially too videogamy and CCGy for my tastes. The skill system, as everyone has stated, has extreme flaws and needs a major overhaul.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jul 8 2008, 04:02 PM
Yeah, I'd agree with all of that. The CCG combat system, the strictly defined roles, etc; these may not be the makings of my ideal RPG, but they do work.
The skill challenges don't work. At all. That's a shame. They sort of look like a system which would work, as long as you don't look too closely, try to use them, or think about it too much. A strikingly similar system could be made to work very well, I'm sure. While I'm not returning my 4e books, I can assure you that their skill challenge system, and the lack of a wholesale, multi-page errata and blubbering apology will weigh heavily in my decision to buy any and all future products from them. In addition, most of the "utility" powers have no use, and sometimes even no meaning, outside of combat. The game seems very combat-centric. This is also not to my tastes, but not technically a flaw.
All that said, (I realize this is the positive thread, I'm going somewhere positive, really) I have had a lot of fun playing it. I won't call it my favorite RPG, it's not even my favorite edition of D&D, but I have had fun, despite the flaws. But I fully acknowledge that that may be more me than it is the game.
Here's something good about it: (At least at low levels) The combat encounter building scheme actually works pretty well. Before 3e, the DM would come up with a "good" fight for the PCs by eyeballing everyone's stats, as well as the monters, and just picking what looked right. Higher XP monsters were generally tougher, but the appropriate level for the party was largely a matter of "feel". In 3e, they introduced the CR. Which....sort of worked, but was often misleading, didn't scale well, and which generally boiled down to the exact same system as before, the GM still has to have a good feel for everything and just eyeball it.
With 4e, (and I'm only speaking about low-level stuff here, I have nothing to say about high-level 4e) if you assemble a fight based on the experience budget thingy, and as long as you're not pushing the boundaries of encounter level and/or creature level which they lay out for you, you're going to get the expected level of challenge. Granted, when you start pushing the boundaries things may get iffy, but that's why those are the boundaries. You push them, you take your chances. So, at least until they publish more classes, feats, powers, monsters, and options, the combat encounter level system works. Yay!
Posted by: deek Jul 8 2008, 04:23 PM
I've got a better idea: how about some of us get the books, read through them exhaustively, play through some of their scenarios, then give up in disgust, take the books back in for a refund and warn other people that the books are unfinished, unfun, and unintelligently written.
-Frank
No, Frank, I didn't say that, so if I gave that impression, I apologize. Word of mouth accounts for 10 other people's opinions, generally speaking. So, your adamant dislike of the new edition, has turned off 10 people from even giving it a shot. Granted, you feel that is warranted, as its an unplayable system, which I respect your opinion (just that I disagree with it from my own playing experience).
If we are talking about money being given away, about every game company screws its customers...the trend has been to create a core set of rules and expand on that, often times requiring future supplements to really play the entire game to its fullest potential.
I don't know, sometimes I wonder how you determine when to give up in disgust (i.e. DnD 4th Edition) versus spending hours of your free time rewriting everything you don't like (i.e. SR 4th Edition). I mean, its obvious that you are disguested by aspects of both systems (at least from DSF posts), yet you want to call one system unfinished, unfun, unitelligently written and want to lineup for a refund and another system, you'll pour a lot of effort into "fixing" for a handful of gamers that support your vision.
To me, your view on both systems is the same, yet you treat them vastly different. I just don't see any consistency in your behavior...
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 8 2008, 07:07 PM
Discover for yourself is one thing, if you get to do it with a game bought by another poor sap, or if you have a hundred to burn for no better reason than burning it, but god s above, the thing I personally am trying to do is to keep someone from hearing only the light and airy and oooohhh wow fan boy schlock alone.
I've fixed the flaws in five other editions of D&D, if you count 3.0 and expert (since only basic was available when I first got the game) set as seperate games, four other editions otherwise. Likewise I've fixed two other editions of Shadowrun, other than the 3rd edition, which also needed a fair amount of fixing, which I am running now. Likewise with just about every other game I've devoted time to. But some games I bought just weren't worth the time it would have taken to fix them. And D&D4E tops that list for me.
Isshia
Posted by: deek Jul 8 2008, 08:14 PM
I've fixed the flaws in five other editions of D&D, if you count 3.0 and expert (since only basic was available when I first got the game) set as seperate games, four other editions otherwise. Likewise I've fixed two other editions of Shadowrun, other than the 3rd edition, which also needed a fair amount of fixing, which I am running now. Likewise with just about every other game I've devoted time to. But some games I bought just weren't worth the time it would have taken to fix them. And D&D4E tops that list for me.
Isshia
And I think this kind of feedback (maybe with a tad more detail) is good to share. I mean, yeah, we don't want to hear only the fanboy comments or just the hater comments. We need to hear them all, but besides giving a personal opinion, we should let those comments stand and let the reader decide what to do next.
We've heard a lot of various opinion (and some facts). We know that 4th edition has some problems (skill challenge math, strict role definition, dumbed down "WoW" feel, buy-in cost etc) and we've heard some praise (more powers to choose from for each class, more strategic combat, faster gameplay, etc).
But to then go on and on about any of those...I just don't think its productive for anyone. I don't need someone to tell me, that if I hate WoW that I wouldn't like some aspects of the new edition. If I read that my fighter is never going to pour on more damage than a rogue...well, again, I'd like to know up front, but I don't need the poster to go on and on about how the whole universe crashes to a halt and its the worst waste of money every because of that.
State your opinions (although in this thread, they should be constructive and positive, as the topic indicates) and move on. Just because you say something 10 times, doesn't make it any more valid...
I'm curious, Cantankerous, with DnD4.0 topping your list, what were the biggest pieces broken?
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 8 2008, 08:38 PM
We've heard a lot of various opinion (and some facts). We know that 4th edition has some problems (skill challenge math, strict role definition, dumbed down "WoW" feel, buy-in cost etc) and we've heard some praise (more powers to choose from for each class, more strategic combat, faster gameplay, etc).
But to then go on and on about any of those...I just don't think its productive for anyone. I don't need someone to tell me, that if I hate WoW that I wouldn't like some aspects of the new edition. If I read that my fighter is never going to pour on more damage than a rogue...well, again, I'd like to know up front, but I don't need the poster to go on and on about how the whole universe crashes to a halt and its the worst waste of money every because of that.
State your opinions (although in this thread, they should be constructive and positive, as the topic indicates) and move on. Just because you say something 10 times, doesn't make it any more valid...
I'm curious, Cantankerous, with DnD4.0 topping your list, what were the biggest pieces broken?
My biggest problem with the system is that no one it it is human, even vaguely so, any longer. But it's all been said, in this very thread, by myself and others, several times now.
When the game system makes it impossible to get hurt (oooohh, you can die, obviously, but getting an actual wound must be completely impossible) in combat it makes role playing more than difficult. It makes it untenable for anything even vaguely man like.
Isshia
If you have even the thin excuse of magic you can ignore such stupidity, it's magic after all, it doesn't have to make sense, even in a vague way, or act in an understandable manner because who can dispute it?
BUT
Healing is a natural thing. If you do this to healing it is no different from all water now suddenly being tens of thousands of degrees hot and freezing you therefore on contact. If it should make sense BECAUSE it is supposed to represent a part of the natural and normal environment, you don't fuck with it thoughtlessly, which is what has been done.
And it isn't just the PCs who heal this way. If you pick up a barmaid who is traveling with the group for whatever reason, she too can do this (the healing surge). This has nothing to do with being larger than life. It's there WoW for the table top solution to having everything work the same way for everyone.
The barmaid gets wounded unto death by a broadsword stroke that brings her to -1 hit points. Ohhh, no! Never fear, the most it can take her to heal back to full and complete health is two days of taking normal six hour naps after having worked all day in the bar from fifteen minutes after having taken her deadly wound!
Verisimilitude is an important component of actual ROLE (as opposed to Roll) Playing. If normal, natural things don't work in something at least resembling broadly the same way they do for us, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify with the character. If water suddenly flows upwards, naturally, normally, and gravity only works every other Thursday and water is suddenly dry....
And if you heal from near death to perfect health in two days if you are the average peasant ...
The game fails to be a Role Playing Game. If they were to market it as a Roll Playing Game so that Role Players wouldn't waste their money on it, it would be far more palatable.
Isshia
What's really sad is fan boys who will eat garbage because it has a certain label on it and compliment the chefs on the taste and then damn anyone who dares say: "but it's garbage".
Isshia
When you get labeled as a hater, as someone who can't even abstract, the Fan Boy comments come swiftly and easily to the lips.
Isshia
Posted by: DireRadiant Jul 8 2008, 09:01 PM
I played 4th edition the other day and I enjoyed it.
Mechanically it's a change, but it sticks to it's roots of primarily being a tactical simulator based on fantasy fictional elements. This part works.
Roleplaying, skills, good enough. It depends far more on the Gm and other players working on having fun together then needing rules to get it accomplished.
I hope I put this in the right thread....
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 8 2008, 10:25 PM
Mechanically it's a change, but it sticks to it's roots of primarily being a tactical simulator based on fantasy fictional elements. This part works.
Roleplaying, skills, good enough. It depends far more on the Gm and other players working on having fun together then needing rules to get it accomplished.
I hope I put this in the right thread....
I'd argue strongly that D&D was ever "primarily a tactical simulator", or even secondarily one, but it certainly IS primarily (and one would be tempted to argue that NOW it is solely) a tactical simulator now. And since it simulates nothing vaguely human or human like any longer, I think it fails miserably at it's only goal, unless that goal has become to create a tactical simulation of WoW for the table top, sans graphics and without WoWs speed of play. That it does admirably.
Isshia
Posted by: Aaron Jul 8 2008, 11:11 PM
I have noticed that D&D 4e rather scratches the same itch that BattleTech does for me.
Posted by: imperialus Jul 9 2008, 05:46 AM
Well here's my experience playing 4E for the first time. I stuck it in spoiler tags because it has some Kobold Hall (the adventure from the DMG) spoilers
Posted by: Critias Jul 9 2008, 11:07 AM
So, how's that "positive, constructive thread" workin' out for ya, Bull? 
Posted by: Bull Jul 9 2008, 12:25 PM
Smartass
Despite a couple folks who have trouble "letting go", it's actually not been that bad. I'm enjoying reading the mostly unbiased reports of folks who have actually tried playing it so far.
And considering how important math is to certain folks, I'm still trying to figure out how they could have played Shadowrun for so long without going insane, especially with that nagging 7/13/19 problem that's always plagued earlier editions
Posted by: Fuchs Jul 9 2008, 12:29 PM
As I said, I think it's all a question of whether or not one likes a system. If one does like a system, such problems are either not important or can be fixed by house rules. If one dislikes a system, such stuff breaks it.
Posted by: deek Jul 9 2008, 12:33 PM
Well, back to the positive...
If it hasn't been said already (as this thread is starting to get long in the tooth), I really love multi-classing. Its obviously a huge deviation from prior editions, but for the cost of a feat, you can dabble in another class. I think the feat selections give the player a really good taste of a secondary class.
Having been playing a Human Warlord, multi-class Rogue, I've been having a blast. Getting the extra feat from the Human made it a simple task to use it for multi-classing without hurting my Warlord side. So, now I can run around, healing and commanding battles, but when needed, can pull out my blade and get in a sneak attack for solid damage.
The Leader role classes, so far, have got to be my favorite addition to the game!
Posted by: Bull Jul 9 2008, 12:49 PM
Oh, totally agreed. There's a couple things in D&D4e I've seen that I'm gonna tweak already. I have a couple SR 4E houserules I use. I can;t even count how many houserules and tweaks we had for 3rd ed, let alone 2nd.
Honestly, there's not a game out there that I haven't made at least a couple small changes to, and there's a few games that no matter how many changes you make, I just won;t like the system. GURPS is like that for me. I can't even really explain it, other than the system is just too damn crunchy for my tastes, and no matter how narrow you focus the game, it feels, well, Generic.
Bull
Posted by: Drogos Jul 9 2008, 01:00 PM
Bull
That made me chuckle
Posted by: DireRadiant Jul 9 2008, 01:51 PM
Isshia
Argue away. All the versions I've played since Chainmail came out seem to be focused on tactical combat simulation. Compare the volume and precision of rules related to combat versus other type of play content.
Never stopped me from primarily role playing in the systems though.
Posted by: Bull Jul 9 2008, 01:55 PM
Never stopped me from primarily role playing in the systems though.
I read something somewhere, about a million years ago, probably on the RN list, and it stuck with me. I'll paraphrase here, since my memory is spotty at best...
"You don't need rules to roleplay. Rules do, however, act as a crutch for bad roleplayers. Take that whichever way fits."
I've had some great in character RP sessions over the years. All versions of D&D, Star Wars (D6 & D20), Shadowrun. And dice were barely touched, if at all, in every one of the sessions I remember so clearly.
Posted by: DireRadiant Jul 9 2008, 02:06 PM
Multiclassing and flexibility of choice in the system looks good to me. I really like the ritual magic is available to anyone willing to expend 1 or 2 feats. All you need is Arcane/Religion and Ritual Caster, and some money, and you can now have access to a lot of spells. Buy a multi class feat, and you can choose encounter powers from another class, I haven't analyzed this much, but I'm sure there are some interesting things you can do with this. Anyone can do the disable traps/pick pockets by choosing the right feat, it's not a choice restricted to certain classes.
So, you can have the Wizard with thieving skills, a Fighter who at 8th level can Raise Dead, and Cleric that can cast lots of Arcane spells. And it's all pretty easy to get.
Posted by: Bull Jul 9 2008, 02:22 PM
So, you can have the Wizard with thieving skills, a Fighter who at 8th level can Raise Dead, and Cleric that can cast lots of Arcane spells. And it's all pretty easy to get.
Yeah, and considering that feats are all pretty minor overall, this is pretty cool. I want to play a Rogue with Magic Missile, so he doesn;t need a ranged weapon
Bull
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 9 2008, 03:27 PM
That really bothers me, unless the character can scream "hadouken" while throwing his non-magician magic missile.
Posted by: FrankTrollman Jul 9 2008, 04:30 PM
It doesn't bother me in the slightest. Since all 4e Rogues are Taki, Voldo, or Xianghua and they can't ever aspire to being other Soul Calibur characters, the prospect of one of them training with the Soul Edge for a while and shooting lasers at things is just fine.
The problem is that the combination is completely mechanically non-viable. As a Rogue you do all your damage with powers and class features that can only be used with your rogue weapons and not with neebly beams that you got from setting a couple of feats on fire. That and the fact that all your Rogue powers run off of Dex/Str/Cha and Magic Missile runs off of Intelligence. If you make concessions to having a good Intelligence, your actual Rogue powers won't be level appropriate. The stat bonuses are calculated into the numbers you need in order to hit the defenses of the enemies of your levels, if you spread them out all of your attacks don't work.
-Frank
Posted by: Bull Jul 9 2008, 05:32 PM
You know what, that's it. Knock the thread crapping off right this instance.
Constructive posts stating that why you dislike a game is fine. Constantly posting such things, especially when thread starters and other memebrs have asked you not to repeatedly is not ok. State your case, and move on. ANything else is a combination of trolling and baiting. Aka Threadcrapping, pissing on others parades because you feel like being an ass.
Frank's got a time out coming, the rest of you, consider this a blanket thread warning for here and elsewhere.
Posted by: DireRadiant Jul 9 2008, 05:59 PM
Anyone had a chance to do Mounted Combat yet? That looked really interesting to me. No one needs the mounted combat feat to ride. But if you do take the Mounted combat feat, and when you do get a mount, no prices or taming animals rules...., the way to use them on combat looks very straightforward, and you get access to the special mount powers! So if you are riding a Manticore, you can fire off a special spiked tail range attack as your standard action.
The trick is finding creatures you can use as mounts in the monster manual.
Posted by: Malicant Jul 9 2008, 06:01 PM
And convincing your DM that you can actually tame and ride the creature of your choice.
Posted by: Bull Jul 9 2008, 06:02 PM
The trick is finding creatures you can use as mounts in the monster manual.
I hope you're not too tied up GMing this year at Gen Con. I wanna get a game or two of D&D4e in and try out some of this. So far I've only been able to do the one basic session down at Origins to try out some basic combat
Seriously, we're gonna kidnap you and make you play with us
Posted by: DireRadiant Jul 9 2008, 06:29 PM
If you can peel yourselves away from Rockband, I can take a look at preparing a set of 5th, 15th, and 25th encounters, terrain maps, and scenarios and we can run through them to exercise the rules. Bring, same or different, characters of those levels and we can see how much fun we can have. Totally a tactical exercise, but we can have fun with it.
Posted by: hyzmarca Jul 9 2008, 07:48 PM
-Frank
My solution to D&D stat priority issues is to simply reroll until I get 18s in everything. It can be tedious, but it works wonders and is still perfectly viable in 4e . A player with enough common sense to create his character using this method should have no difficulty creating a rouge who is also a viable magic missile caster.
Posted by: Malicant Jul 9 2008, 08:51 PM
Unless you actually paid attention and read the rules that force a reroll when your stats are too high. Ah well, so much for 18 in everything.
Posted by: deek Jul 9 2008, 09:00 PM
"You don't need rules to roleplay. Rules do, however, act as a crutch for bad roleplayers. Take that whichever way fits."
I've had some great in character RP sessions over the years. All versions of D&D, Star Wars (D6 & D20), Shadowrun. And dice were barely touched, if at all, in every one of the sessions I remember so clearly.
Very good point...it mirrors my most memorable experiences role-playing as well.
In fact, in my latest SR4 campaign, I sat back and marvelled at my players in this one session. No dice, no combat, just three of them interacting, in character and productive to the game. When you don't have that in your game a whole lot, its just really awesome when role-playing just comes about from your whole group at the same time!
And yeah, we didn't need any guide or rules to have a successful role-playing encounter.
Posted by: hyzmarca Jul 9 2008, 09:09 PM
There is no such rule in 4e.
The appropriate rule is.
In other words, this trick only fails if your GM is an asshole or if he has the slightest bit of common sense. The trick is to systematically beat down his emotional defenses until he is willing to agree to it. Then you can mention that since you're going to use this trick anyway it would be faster and easier if you all just skipped rolling and everyone has 18s in everything and when the rest of the group agrees with that he won't have much choice in the matter.
Posted by: Malicant Jul 9 2008, 09:23 PM
In other words, if he is not a complete tool. So, yeah, that rule exists. It's not even optional.
Also, you can circumvent any rule you don't like by talking your GM into it. Bullshitting is the first ability any gamer should acquire.
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 9 2008, 09:48 PM
Constructive posts stating that why you dislike a game is fine. Constantly posting such things, especially when thread starters and other memebrs have asked you not to repeatedly is not ok. State your case, and move on. ANything else is a combination of trolling and baiting. Aka Threadcrapping, pissing on others parades because you feel like being an ass.
Frank's got a time out coming, the rest of you, consider this a blanket thread warning for here and elsewhere.
Not to be an ass, but will that hold true as well on the threads where the game is being panned for it's perceived faults? Or will the opposite of critique be allowed ad infinitum while critique is panned?
Isshia
Posted by: hyzmarca Jul 9 2008, 10:04 PM
Also, you can circumvent any rule you don't like by talking your GM into it. Bullshitting is the first ability any gamer should acquire.
It's optional in the sense that its use explicitly depends entirely on the GM's taste. If the GM feels that the character is too powerful or too weak then he may adjust the ability scores as he sees fit.
Posted by: DireRadiant Jul 9 2008, 10:33 PM
Bull
Isshia
Oooh oooh, I can answer this...
Hmm, no, actually, it's better if you figure it out yourself.
Posted by: Bull Jul 10 2008, 01:55 AM
Much as I'd love to take it to Gen Con, I won;t have Rock Band with me. Lack of Hotel Suite means no place to set it up. Regular hotel rooms are just too damn small.
Still, sounds like fun
Posted by: Bull Jul 10 2008, 02:09 AM
Isshia
Here's the thing. Positive posts (Which I assume you mean the opposite of critique) generally don't engender a negative atmosphere. A negative atmosphere drives away posters and limits discussion to just those who enjoy arguing rather than discussing. While we try to give you guys the freedom to discuss things as you see fit, we also need to try and encourage an atmosphere where anyone feels free to post and discuss things.
When anytime someone posts anything about a subject, whether it's D&D 4e, Unwired and the new hacking rules, or Cooking with Roadkill, and one or more posters continually pop up in that thread, and all subsequent threads just to bitch, whine, and tell everyone how bad the game is... Very quickly, few people want to participate in that discussion.
Now, I made it very clear in my original post that this thread was designed to be separate from the (at the time) 2 other threads that were pretty much nothing but 4e and WotC bashing. And despite my general warning, folks still decided to drag it into the dirt. My original topic title and description were silly, and intended that way, but I also figured it would give a clear indicator that this was not the thread for bitching. Apparently, it was seen as a challenge instead. I let it slide for quite a while, a lot longer than I should have, really.
Now, to answer your questions, I'm leaving the other threads be for now, so long as everyone is respectful of the opinions of their fellow posters. There is no right and wrong when it comes to opinions, and even less so when it comes to RPGs. They're games, everyone approaches them differently, everyone wants different things out of them. Remember that, respect that, and there's no problem.
Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jul 10 2008, 02:20 AM
It is a pretty valid point about the system though. If you do want to play it 'down the line' as a GM, your players need to be very careful to maintain focused characters. The game assumes that you will do a reasonable job of building a focused character with a degree of optimization, which, for better or worse, means that the multiclassing isn't that hot per say.
Actually its not optimization, its synergy. The game's mathematical foundations are crafted on the assumption you will build highly synergistic characters and decisions that deviate from that synergistic line of build adversely impacts the very carefully balanced combat mechanic.
As a GM, possible mitigation strategies include hand waving limits or artificially boosting people to they are not penalized for not delivering on synergy. it does require careful collobration and critical examination of character concepts, and potentially tactical house ruling to fix the issues on a case by case basis for people playing outside of the 'synergy' line.
Posted by: Aaron Jul 10 2008, 02:39 PM
Bah. Leave the instruments aside until they're to be used, then push the beds aside and break out the rawk. A standard hotel room can host a game of Crisco Twister with room left over, so there's plenty of room for Rock Band.
Posted by: Halabis Jul 10 2008, 04:02 PM
Are we actualy sure of that? I was under the impression that one of the 4e design goals was to make i so that you couldn't build a useless character. Therefore even if you made suboptimal choices you would still be able to have a meaningful impact on the game. Basicly everyone is saying you have to optimize to be effective, but has anyone actualy sat down and run the numbers of unoptimized characters against a level appropriate challenge?
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 10 2008, 04:08 PM
Bwah hwah hwah, yes. It's one of the reasons we needed a seperate positive thread.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jul 10 2008, 04:13 PM
Hmmm, interesting question. And a tough one to answer, too, at least for me. I think it would be difficult to deliberately make a sub-optimal character, because if I'm intentionally making sub-optimal choices, I think I could make a pretty gimped character, but making a deliberately gimped character is not the same thing as a sub-optimal one. I'm sure that if I try my best I can make a worthless steaming pile of a character, but that's not really what you're asking.
What we really need is to have an 8-year-old child who doesn't know the rules of the game (or doesn't game at all) make all the design decisions. They'll certainly be sub-optimal, but not deliberately crappy. Hmm, or maybe someone's non-gamer girlfriend.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jul 10 2008, 04:16 PM
Cool, what did you make? Details, details. (although possibly in another thread)
Posted by: Halabis Jul 10 2008, 08:21 PM
I see where its been done with skill challenges, and I certainly agree that they are broken, but i dont see that anywhere with the combat engine.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 10 2008, 09:57 PM
Right, I just meant re the skill challenges. I don't know about that other stuff. I expect we'll hear it from somebody, though.
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 10 2008, 10:08 PM
Actually, the combat engine is much the same as it always was, albeit I think that the one major change in it was utterly and completely a negative change, and that is the way the healing of damage is handled, but otherwise the d20 mechanic is pretty much still the d20 mechanic, with a few alterations, a few new bells and whistles that, hey, aren't ALL bad. I've even cherry picked their skill challenge idea...I am going to fix the bloody thing before implementing it, but the concept itself is a good one without a doubt...just badly executed. I've even thought about importing the multiple challenge matrix into something for GURPS, for social or creative skills anyway.
Isshia
Posted by: Malicant Jul 10 2008, 10:28 PM
Blah, blah, blah, enough already. Sheesh, what is it with you people? A change to playability and fun is negative?
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jul 11 2008, 12:07 AM
It's just the last death-throws of people fighting the inevitable, truly believing that the more time they yell and whine on the internet against the newest edition, it will fall. Like indians singing and dancing around to make rain fall, but less productive, and more desperate.
Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jul 11 2008, 01:00 AM
It is unquestionably easy for you to design a useless character, which is unfortunate but a property of any system that lets you assign stats.
However, yes, to keep up competitively with the monsters increasing defensive scores you need to carefully focus your synergies in a limited range of archtypes that have been pre-defined from the box (There are some unexpected archetypes, like an intimidate character who subdues everyone who is bloodied, but most possible characters are 'designed' like decks in new expansions in MTG). Also, the maths is built on the assumption that your race and class choice will be complementary. The maths is very good when this is the case, and it is impossible to be pushed of the RNG, but characters not leveraging synergies will hit significantly less often with their abilities.
As the combat system is very carefully balanced if you take synergistic choices (I have other objections, but it is balanced) the increased number of 'rounds' in combat promote a revision to the mean in combat performance. This means that over time - and time can be one combat vs a solo - it will become very noticeable that a non synergistic character hits 10-20% less often than the character that leverages synergies as intended.
Now your GM can certainly compensate by handing out gear or manipulate the system to compensate for non synergistic choices - but he must be careful. A GM who's players choose to build non synergistic across the board can just tweak monster numbers, but a GM with a mix of synergistic and non-synergistic characters is in a more awkward position.
Thinking about it, in many ways they've moved to an MTG model - and not using a deck (archtype) designed by R&D requires a brilliant innovation, or is doomed to be facestomped by the system. However, when USING decks (archtypes) designed by R&D the game is well balanced and the different archtypes are functional in combat.
Posted by: Critias Jul 11 2008, 10:57 AM
Finally scored a copy of the core books (just $65 for all three at Amazon), but haven't really had the chance to sit down and really read them yet. A buddy wants to run a game on-line so I told him I'd fling a guy together and we'll be trying it out.
I like the look of the book so far, the layout, the artwork, etc, etc. Things seem to be set up very neatly for readability's sake (class abilities all in one place, suggested starting 'builds' right there with the class description, suggested classes for each race, etc), so far. I am picking up a bit of a dumbed down/MMORPG feel from that, but not enough to turn me away from the game just yet. I've got Champions and Shadowrun for when I want to roll up my sleeves and really work on building a character. D&D has always, for me, been a beer-and-pretzels sort of game, and if it's a little less time consuming to make a character (or to play one), so far I'm fine with that.
Posted by: deek Jul 11 2008, 01:22 PM
I do think that 4th edition was designed with a group of synergistic characters in mind. The balance, therefore, is between the group of players and the encounters, not between individual characters.
Take the warlord, for example (I play one, so I am most familiar with that class). I could have 10s across the board and still contribute to the party. The simple fact that I am withing 10 squares of a player gives them a +2 initiative bonus. Twice per encounter, as a minor action, I can allow an ally to use a healing surge + 1d6. Every single time its my turn to act, I can give any ally a free basic melee attack. None of these require any rolls, so it doesn't matter what my stats or equipment does...
Now I think the days of wondering if your wizard can kill the fighter or rogue in the group is over in this edition. There are some classes, as defined by their role, that make one on one combat unbalanced, but with the overall concept being to play in a group, that's obviously not as important.
I think it was a very bold step, to actually treat the player group as a single unit. Instead of having a bunch of individuals that could all be good at the same thing, 4th edition separated everyone by roles and basically capped certain things each class could actually excel at.
I mean, my warlord, is never going to do huge amounts of damage when compared to a rogue, ranger or even a fighter...but you put him in a fight with a couple allies, and the group strength has increased a lot more than just adding another striker.
Posted by: DireRadiant Jul 11 2008, 02:10 PM
It's very easy to pick a character and start. The pattern for advancement is also very simple. Got your xp, pick a power. On to the the next encounter.
It's group focused. There are things you can do to enhance or screw up your individual build, but it's really the group synergy that makes the big difference. One character can debuff NPC Will rolls, but then doesn't have any Will attack powers. No big deal, someone else in the group probably does! There don't seem to be that many builds that are totally optimized by themselves, but are optimized in conjunction with other PCs. I like this emphasis on needing effective teamwork to unlock the true potential of the group. The PCs need each other and the various roles.
Posted by: deek Jul 11 2008, 03:45 PM
It's group focused. There are things you can do to enhance or screw up your individual build, but it's really the group synergy that makes the big difference. One character can debuff NPC Will rolls, but then doesn't have any Will attack powers. No big deal, someone else in the group probably does! There don't seem to be that many builds that are totally optimized by themselves, but are optimized in conjunction with other PCs. I like this emphasis on needing effective teamwork to unlock the true potential of the group. The PCs need each other and the various roles.
I agree and like it a ton...granted, I also play WoW and have learned that without the appropriate group makeup, you cannot complete level appropriate instances.
And that is a huge departure, IMO, from earlier DnD editions. You could make about any class/race combination before 4th, and the DM could have a great campaign, tailoring a lot, but still. In 4th, that can still happen, get any race/class makeup and have the DM tailor your encounters, BUT if the DM follows the encounter building rules, then I don't think its going to work. The balance is based on 4-7 players with a fairly broad role makeup. If you don't have that role makeup in the group, you are likely in for a much rougher playstyle...
Posted by: DireRadiant Jul 11 2008, 04:07 PM
You mean if you don't use it as intended it sometimes doesn't work?
That shouldn't surprise anyone. Almost all systems break down when you go to extremes.
I do like that it makes it clear it's intended for groups and group play. It's one of the things I've always liked about Shadowrun, a single player can't do everything, you'll need a group to get the most out of things, and to be able to handle most variety of things.
In 4th Ed it's very explicit that a group of 4+ with various roles is the core mechanic. But it doesn't seem limiting to me so far, there a variety fo ways to go with any particular character, and even the Wizard, a single role and class, has within it an enormous variety of options for play.
I think it's good when both the mechanics and genre encourage group gaming. It helps with the fun and socialization.
Posted by: deek Jul 11 2008, 06:40 PM
Good insight, DireRadiant.
And I was just thinking, with multiclass feats, maybe a pair of characters, both multiclassed into additional roles, could fill some of those missing gaps. I mean, you never have to be in a party without thievery skills, as anyone can pick it up as a multiclass feat.
Posted by: Nightwalker450 Jul 14 2008, 06:40 PM
I'd like to say I'm liking the group synergies. With every character being a benefit to their ally, instead of a competitor, you'll spend more time thinking "how can this ally help me more", rather then "I'd be better off without him". I'm also a warlord, and did the Inspirational one to boot, and being at the heart of the group tactics it is a very different form of combat than in previous editions.
We just made level 2, and I will have to say that the even numbered levels are going to get annoying. This is because all skills, attacks, and defenses, have Lvl/2 bonus on them. Its a simple conversion (until you notice you forgot Initiative or something else), but there's alot of places. Maybe I'll work on some new sheets that have these grouped for easy conversion.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jul 14 2008, 07:06 PM
We just made level 2, and I will have to say that the even numbered levels are going to get annoying. This is because all skills, attacks, and defenses, have Lvl/2 bonus on them. Its a simple conversion (until you notice you forgot Initiative or something else), but there's alot of places. Maybe I'll work on some new sheets that have these grouped for easy conversion.
It's true, pretty much every number on your sheet changes at the even levels. I've taken to using auto-calculating pdfs or excel sheets (like Heroforge) and then just printing a new one each level. It's just easier. Of course, it also means that I'll never generate an old, wrinkled, food-stained, eraser-worn, hand-written sheet of a much-beloved character.
The new classes (some more than others, particularly the leaders) definitely allow for more synergy than most classes in previous editions, and that's definitely a cool thing, IMO. It's not that players/characters weren't cooperative in previous editions, but there were fewer cooperative powers. In 4th, every class has at least a few abilities that can benefit everyone, even if it's just pushing your enemies around the battlefield to set them up for a teammate.
Posted by: Aaron Jul 14 2008, 11:30 PM
I had heard that D&D was supposed to "work" for any four characters, even be they four wizards.
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jul 15 2008, 12:19 AM
Depending on the game master, it may work, the same as in 3rd edition a game with four wizards could work.
What is certain is that D&D 4th edition wizards have a little bit more staying power at the lower levels and can fight moderatly well at the higher levels. The healing surges will also ensure a little bit more longevity of the faboulus four.
It's much more survivable, if you play wizards without henchmen armies and stuff. But it's not going to be a cake-walk, if your group isn't balanced in the other three roles. Even less if all player wizards choose the same spells (and have thus the same weakness).
Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jul 15 2008, 12:23 AM
A party of 4 wizards in 3rd (and pretty much in 3.5) edition was awesome, and would cause most GM's nightmares. You needed pro strats to survive the rocket launcher tag for the early levels, because of the lack of healing (though that said, it was supposed to be 4 encounters until a rest, and you had 8+ sleep spells that would cause people to save or die when you CoD them right in the face).
Once you hit 7th and got polymorph other it onto easy street.
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jul 15 2008, 01:00 AM
Once you hit 7th and got polymorph other it onto easy street.
Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jul 15 2008, 01:23 AM
Yeh, but one hit can mean instant death for a cleric or a rogue too. I'd probably set up fairly high con characters if I knew I was going to be doing that sort of thing
Something like Str: 8 Dex: 14 Con: 16 Int: 18 Wis: 12 Chr: 8 -> Then we make him a dwarf will have 8 hitpoints at level one (whoo, I know, but that minimizes the chances of being one shot) and is still long term playable.
I'd then add a grapplemancer with an octopus familiar, looking like
14 10 16 16 10 8 -> Who is the other front liner who has +10 or so to grapple at level 1 and can seriously outgrapple any CR1 challenge
Then we have a controlmancer and a diplomancer to bring up the rear.
Would be pretty strong.
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 15 2008, 06:03 AM
Ok, since this has been addressed directly, I feel completely at ease with answering it directly. I see absolutely NO IMPROVEMENT to either playability or fun by making every being on the planet nigh immortal. Actually I see it doing both, making the game LESS playable and FAR LESS fun to have this, as it all but completely makes heroism (the ideal of HEROIC Fantasy, the supposed genre of this game) impossible.
What is fun about getting in to a fight and never, EVER really getting hurt? If you aren't dead, your good to go? This is PRECISELY like cheating playing solitaire. Where is the fun in it? Where is the challenge? It was always hard enough in D&D to get seriously hurt...there were never many repercussions to it. Now, there are none whatsoever. Why not act like a berserk moron in combat? Why bother to ever think or strategize past the present fight? You can always just heal up and keep right on going.
THIS is 90% of the reason why I DO agree that D&D 4E has been massively dumbed down. They've taken away that last and final bastion of necessary thought in the game. Is this negativism? Sure it is. Because these aspects of the game itself ARE negatives.
Compare this to Shadowrun. How much fun would Shadowrun be if you could never get hurt, never feel pain or fatigue and KNOW that as soon as combat halted for even the briefest of moments that, video game like, you could just surge back on? If Shadowrun ever goes in this direction I'll drop it like a hot rock, just as I have D&D.
This isn't hate for a new edition either. I was one of the people on the WotC boards who were the most strongly and openly LOOKING FORWARD to the new edition. I was the poor idiot telling people, hey, give it chance. If it's broken, then yell, but don't hate the new edition simply because it's new. Meet the thing on it's own merits, give the designers a chance to present the finished product, instead of going off, as sooooo many were, on the possible problems inherent with the glimpses of the game that we were getting.
I don't think ANYONE actually believes that their complaints amount to a hill of beans. Certainly I can't think that ANYONE who has brains enough to type is actually brain dead enough to think that they will make the new edition fall. At the same time, there is no need to be a fan boy and close your minds to the faults that DO exist.
Isshia
Posted by: Critias Jul 15 2008, 08:23 AM
Except maybe that that's what this thread is set up for.
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 15 2008, 10:14 AM
What? Closed mindedness?
Look, while I'm all for enjoying differences, what I am decidedly not for, and respond badly to, is being characterized as delusional because I disagree with a stance.
I'd like to DISCUSS the problems, not ignore them or call them a solution in and of themselves. Different styles exist? Sure, grand! Provide for the differences, allow something that CAN keep you just going and going and going ad infinitum, when you are wounded. Like magic maybe. Being what it is it doesn't need rationalization. It's bloody magical.
But when you take a standard way in which the world works and change it so out of kilter that there is no longer the possibility of ignoring the paradigm shift, it destroys the suspension of disbelief. Fire is suddenly icy cold. Water is suddenly dry. These things make it nigh impossible to act and react in anything like an understandable manner as a person. the ONLY thing you can be in 4E D&D is a game construct. You can no longer portray a person of any mortal sort, period. That is the crux of my problem with 4E. You can NOT role play within it unless you ignore the ability to engender the suspension of disbelief almost entirely.
Isshia
Posted by: Fuchs Jul 15 2008, 11:23 AM
This thread is for positive things about D&D 4E. You can discuss and debate the negative things in the other thread. It's not hard to understand.
Posted by: deek Jul 15 2008, 01:21 PM
Having just played last night and seeing our rogue die, I'd have to gravely disagree that our 4th edition heroes are immortal. And I am not talking about unconsciousness, this was death.
While I think many complaints focus on the healing surges, if you actually take a look at them in play, they aren't infinite. While you can use them at-will outside of combat, you certainly can't do it during a fight. In order to use any healing surge, a player needs to use Second Wind...and that's a standard action, once per encounter. So, while you may have 6 or 7 surges to use for the day, inside of combat, you get one. And its in place of an attack. And one surge is equal to 1/4 full health...not a lot of immortality going on there.
Now, add a warlord...the warlord can enable anyone to use a healing surge on his action. But that is limited to twice per encounter. Again, not immortal there. Our combat last night had our rogue step through a door against two drakes. They had some insane bonus of +9 to damage if adjacent to an ally. Our rogue took 32 points of damage and went two points past his negative bloodied value in two hits...dead.
And it wasn't cause he was stupid or the opposition was overpowered...its because 1) we had never seen monsters gain that type of benefit before and 2) he walked through a door, attacked one then got ganged up on...
So, one can certainly complain about healing surges making everyone inhuman, but you certainly can't say any of the heroes are immortal. In fact, the fight just before, my warlord hit -3 and that really put a hurt on everyone else. When you are fighting and the warlord spends his two Inspiring Words and then everyone realizes that they have one chance to use Second Wind, instead of attack, and we have no other healing...it puts things in a very different perspective. And it didn't take an overpowered combat to make this happen, just some strategy by the DM.
Posted by: deek Jul 15 2008, 01:42 PM
And I think this sums it up best: "Healing surges represent the maximum amount of healing your body can take during a given day without actually stopping and sleeping for 6 hours." That was from a person on another board, but I think it hits the mark right on the head.
Unlike previous editions, each player does have a daily cap to healing. If you took 100 clerics into battle, they could only heal you so much, as healing surges are triggered actions. So, the warrior with 100 clerics backing him up, still isn't immortal...if he started the day with 11 healing surges, he's only going to be able to use 11 until he has to go into an extended rest. Because of these surges needing to be triggered, the clerics can only do so much.
Now, just reading the rules, I didn't realize this until it came to practical use at our table last night. Our dragonborn fighter needed healing, my warlord had already used his inspiring word twice, so the only options left were the fighter to use his second wind or someone adjacent to the fighter using first aid to allow the fighter to use one of his 11 healing surges.
Posted by: Critias Jul 15 2008, 01:51 PM
Look, while I'm all for enjoying differences, what I am decidedly not for, and respond badly to, is being characterized as delusional because I disagree with a stance.
I'd like to DISCUSS the problems, not ignore them or call them a solution in and of themselves. Different styles exist? Sure, grand! Provide for the differences, allow something that CAN keep you just going and going and going ad infinitum, when you are wounded. Like magic maybe. Being what it is it doesn't need rationalization. It's bloody magical.
But when you take a standard way in which the world works and change it so out of kilter that there is no longer the possibility of ignoring the paradigm shift, it destroys the suspension of disbelief. Fire is suddenly icy cold. Water is suddenly dry. These things make it nigh impossible to act and react in anything like an understandable manner as a person. the ONLY thing you can be in 4E D&D is a game construct. You can no longer portray a person of any mortal sort, period. That is the crux of my problem with 4E. You can NOT role play within it unless you ignore the ability to engender the suspension of disbelief almost entirely.
Isshia
Rwar! CAPS LOCK FURY! Rwar! Underline of justice! Rwar! Multi-paragraph response!
Calm down. Reread Bull's opening post, and several of his semi-chastising posts since then. This thread is for "close mindedness," if you want to call it that, in that he doesn't want all the "boo, hiss, this edition sucks and dingoes ate my baby!" nonsense to spill over into it. He wants all that shit in all the other threads, not this one. If you can't say something nice (or, at least, neutral and optimistic) about the new edition, quite plainly, he's asked you to not say anything at all.
Posted by: DireRadiant Jul 15 2008, 02:40 PM
Every system has faults. You are free to discuss them. You can even discuss them here. If you are able to introduce and comment in the style of "Despite this problem X I still was able to do Y and overcome this and have fun and enjoy myself, or at least accomplish something.".
You are contributing nothing positive to this discussion in this thread at all.
Your experience of 4th edition, and description of such experience you are relating in this thread, has no bearing on my opinion of my experience with 4th edition. You may wish to consider what your continued comments and participation in this thread are doing about my opinion about you.
I'm certain here are many things in life that I dislike that you enjoy, and you are free to do so, and I am not going to repeatedly and continually harass you about your personal enjoyment of such things that I do not like.
Posted by: DireRadiant Jul 15 2008, 02:49 PM
At first glance it appears you can't run out of hit points or health, but based on gameplay so far, you can get seriously hurt and in danger of dying quite easily. A simple tactical mistake, a good NPC maneuver, can put you in a position can get you down and hurt very easily. And there's a limit to how much healing you can do in a single encounter.
But what's fantastic is in a dungeon crawl, right after that first encounter, you just keep on going. None of this wait for 8 hours or sleep to get back that Cure Light Wounds for the next round of fighting. Even if you've done your daily powers, you can at least engage, evaluate the next encounter, and attempt to disengage! You can sweep through the entire complex and clean things out. Also some of those situations where there is an encounter only a hallway or doorway away are now somewhat reasonable in that the NPC may have heard the fighting and are simply waiting for the group. The day sof wondering why the roomful of elite guards didn't check on why their outpost hasn't checked in with them overnight are gone!
Posted by: deek Jul 15 2008, 05:45 PM
I will admit, it did kinda suck having to trek back to town for a raise dead, but the PC was dead. Had he only been unconscious, we could have revived him ourselves, gotten in a short rest and moved on at pretty much full power. We were down a couple of daily powers and several of us only had a surge or two remaining, but we still would have been able to handle some more fighting.
I think this is exactly the reason I like the new edition so much. After your encounter, you can get back up to close to full power and move to the next obstacle. We have yet to be in a fight that was a cake walk or a fight that we felt everyone was dead. And in fact, I like the feel of the group losing a player early. Now we have gone through that, know that the new edition has some teeth and are all excited for the next session.
And that raise dead, -1 penalty to everything for 6 encounters...no more rolling a new character or being gimped because you died...I really like that!
Posted by: Nightwalker450 Jul 15 2008, 06:56 PM
We've been through 4 encounters. 5 players, 1 Warlord (Me), 1 Rogue, 1 Ranger, 1 Paladin, 1 Fighter
First one was GM testing the waters, 4 human bandits (level 2 each), and the only encounter of that day.
Our rogue took 9 points of damage, and I think the paladin took maybe 3.
Second one was 2 halfling archers, I think 4-6 halfling minions, and 1 halfling rogue (I can't remember all the details, but close)
This was an ambush we were lured into while in town, and so the Paladin and Fighter didn't have their armor. This one was quite draining, I had to use all my healing words during that encounter, even take a second wind for myself, the paladin used 1 lay on hands, as well as his second wind. Coming out of it we still had to take a rest, but it wasn't so bad that we had to delay our town departure.
Third one was 4 stirges, this one had moderate damage and some of it friendly fire (dragonborn). We were pretty weakened and set up camp after that.
Fourth encounter, only the rogue had gotten his extended rest (Eladrin), the rest of us were basically woken up. This was against (assuming the GM stated it correct, it was homemade), level 7 solo controller Oni. He didn't use all his powers, nor did he have equipment. Basically it was an introduction of a boss for later. Only 2 of us had armor on at all myself (my guard shift) and the rogue (he was awake by then). This battle was pretty crazy with some heavy damage taken at times, but (due to some very lucky criticals, and everyone using dailies that they hadn't used yet) we managed to drop it into bloodied when it fled.
I don't think any of the characters ever have felt invincible. We feel like we've had a very rough day, instead of when in 3.5, this probably would of taken us 3 days having to sleep between each battle. I think the characters feel heroic, able to trudge on despite getting roughed up, not having to sleep off a halfling mugging.
Posted by: deek Jul 15 2008, 08:15 PM
Nightwalker450, tell me a warlord is just plain fun to play! I'm a warlord in our group of five, a fighter, rogue, warlock and wizard round out the group.
As a long time gamer, its honestly just a lot of fun to have the warlords tactical combat options at my disposal. I honestly feel like I am so much more invested in each attack, each move on the board. When it comes my time in the round, its rarely just me doing something and being done. I'm either quickly directing an ally's next move so they can maximize my action, holding an action to spring it on the enemy after an ally acts or even just positioning myself in a way that we'll be in a stronger position for the next attack.
Just a heck of a lot of stuff to do, which is so much more fun than I've had in a while!
Posted by: paws2sky Jul 15 2008, 08:52 PM
All this Warlord talk reminds me of an old Champions character someone in my gaming club made up in high school (mayn moons ago). Encouragement Man! He was basically useless, except that he could buff the hell out of his allies with a few Words of Encouragement! Yeah, he was a superhero Bard, basically. I wonder if Bards wouldn't have been so marginalized in 3.x if they'd been called Warlords? Warlord is, after all, a much cooler name than Bard. Hmm.
FWIW, I did run through a sample fight (encounter, whatever) a couple days ago (just myself since no one else I know will touch this edition with a 10' pole). I see how all the pieces fit together, but I still can't get past the MMOness of 4e, its just too much of a turn off.
-paws
Sticking with 3.x/Modern
Posted by: deek Jul 15 2008, 09:11 PM
Hehe...yeah, there's a lot of MMOness in there. Granted, I play WoW on a regular basis with a subset of that group also playing tabletop RPGs. So, its just another night of getting together with my friends, just face-to-face with food and soda, for DnD:) With WoW, we are all at our separate homes, but talking and joking around on vent...
I think the thing with the warlord is that the powers are not just morale buffs or bonuses to hit/defend. The warlord can allow an ally a free basic melee attack, every round. That's pretty huge. Also, the encounter power I have, allows me to attack, and if I hit, an adjacent ally gets an attack.
I mean, there are still bonuses being given out as well, not to mention triggering some healing surges for the party, but the warlord is generating extra actions for the party. Now if the bard was able to do that in 2nd or 3.x, I'd think it wouldn't have been such a marginalized class...
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jul 15 2008, 10:06 PM
D&D 4th edition isn't WoW. It's Tactics Ogre. Or Final Fantasy Tactics. Or if you prefer the funny approach, Disgaea, with exploding penguin troopers. And there are Ninja-Pirates in the sequel.
Perhaps D&D 4th edition PHB II will have Ninja-Pirates.
Posted by: Malicant Jul 16 2008, 08:30 AM
I stopped reading here, since that proves you have no idea what you are talking about. Diverting any attention to you in this thread would be a waste of time.
I really wish WoW was more like 4e.
Posted by: deek Jul 16 2008, 01:06 PM
While I agree DnD4 is not WoW, they are quite similar. And, trust me, I do not mean that as a knock. I like both games quite a bit.
But, the comparison is pretty easy to make. Roles are divided up into defender, leader, striker and controller. In WoW, you get tanks, healers, DPS (both ranged and melee) and crowd control. That's a mirror image, both in name and in gameplay.
Then you have the powers. At-will, encounter and daily...and WoW has a cooldown system. Bigger powers can be used less often. So, that's the same concept as well.
Now you could compare talent trees to feats, but I won't, as feats and skills have been in DnD for quite some time.
Looking at other aspects, you have questing rewards in both games. DMG has tables to balance encounters, while WoW will show if you enemy/quest is Green, Yellow, Orange or Red. So that concept is in both as well.
If you look at any prior edition, the only comparison you could make is that they are both set in a medieval fantasy world and that they have races and classes. But, that's pretty common in any RPG.
I know a lot of people mean it as a negative when comparing the two, but I do not. I think their similarity is good and for me, a lot of fun!
Posted by: Nightwalker450 Jul 16 2008, 02:58 PM
Actually Striker, Defender, Controller, and Leader I believe are the exact same names City of Heros/Villains uses for its character types.
I see nothing wrong with DnD taking a page from MMO's and working towards balance, and better durability of characters. What would you think if an MMO copied previous DnD and didn't balance the classes, while at the same time requiring you to log off after any major battle so your character could heal or gather their spells again. I think its a good idea DnD took these so your characters can work in tight time constraints without everything turning fatal. The powers got rid of tedium, of basic attack, full attack.
To deek, I'm definatly loving my warlord. We had one encounter where our fighter was getting close to being flanked and had at least 3 or 4 creatures on him. Step in with Tide of Iron, knocking one of the creatures back and stepping up beside him. Inspiring word so he could heal some more. Then spend an action point so I can perform wolf-pack tactics so the paladin steps up beside me to the other side. I was waiting eagerly for my turn when I saw this setup that my warlord was going to easily turn from a loosing situation to us at the advantage.
Posted by: deek Jul 16 2008, 03:06 PM
Sweet...yeah, those warlord tactics are insanely fun.
And when you start using that action point to generate another standard action...yeah, a few well-placed warlord powers and you can really turn the tides and get back on the advantage side. Certainly a fun type of character to play!
Yeah, good point, those roles are from CoH/V...I forgot about that...
Posted by: paws2sky Jul 16 2008, 06:24 PM
Not quite.
City of Heroes uses:
Blaster - High Ranged DPS / High Melee DPS
Controller - Control / Buff
Defender - Ranged DPS / Buff
Tank - Melee DPS / Tanking
Scrapper - High Melee DPS / Faux Tanking
City of Villains uses:
Brute - High Melee DPS / Faux Tanking
Corrupter - Ranged DPS / Support
Dominator - Control / DPS (range and melee)
Mastermind - Ranged DPS / Faux Support / Faux Tanking
Stalker - Insane Melee DPS / erm... yeah
Because of CoX's flexible system, you can spec your character into team role not normally associated with the class, especially hero-side.
Controllers, for instance, can be spec'd for control (AOE or single target) or DPS (via pets and ancillary powers, if they're high enough level) or support/buffing. Or they can be a generalists, dabbling in all three areas.
And so it is with pretty much all the other classes.
-paws
Posted by: deek Jul 16 2008, 07:54 PM
Eh...shows how much in know about CoH/V...
Posted by: Cantankerous Jul 16 2008, 10:42 PM
Yeah, a barmaid can, without any magic being used whatsoever, go from failed two Con checks, just this side of dead, to fine, fabulous, wonderful, never felt better in under three days. So can each and every serf with cow dung on his feet wrappings and the ninety seven year old grand mother of the barmaid for that matter. Yep, she can have a goblin stab her with a spear, fall unconscious to the ground, have a wandering PC perform first aid on her, get a couple of nights of sleep (even after working all day, well as much as granny is capable of doing) and be as healthy as she is ever going to get the morning of day three from her near death experience...with that being as near to death as she is ever going to get without actually dying.
Yep, don't have a clue at all of what I'm talking about.
And ohhh, for the hypocrisies are us crowd, I notice how far away from the threads that are con D&D4e that YOU all have been staying.
Look, when things are great it's ok to say that, agreed, but when they aren't this needs to be said too. It isn't to engender hard feelings anymore than those of you are big fans of 4e are trying to engender hard feelings on the Con threads by praising it there. The idea is to do more than "me too" things to death and actually create dialogs that are more meaningful than "I stopped reading here".
Isshia
Posted by: DTFarstar Jul 17 2008, 12:43 AM
Well, I have created a little mini-dungeon crawl situation that I will be running some of my friends through in the near future, classic little "Help the small town out with a problem" scenario just to test out the system and see what we think about it. I'm excited, I don't know if it will replace 3.5 for us or not, but I think it will definitely be a fun game to run on occasion. When I finally get everyone together and we play through it I will let you know how it goes.
Chris
Posted by: Hocus Pocus Jul 17 2008, 03:09 AM
i like the picutres, very good art. wasn't able to really take a good look at it as i had the rug rats with me. I would have bought the core book if i had the money
Posted by: Redjack Jul 17 2008, 04:42 AM
This topic is the POSITIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE THREAD. If you want to lambaste the rules, create a new topic. Intentionally going off topic in order to be argumentative in considered TROLLING (also referred to a 'Thread Crapping'). Trolling is a violation of the TOS (see Terms of Service link in the upper left). Violating the TOS makes cranky mods who've had a bad day break out out the Administrative Warnings.
Please play nicely.
Posted by: Grinder Jul 17 2008, 08:20 AM
Here's a first official errata, which even changed the DNs for the skill checks: http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20080716
Posted by: Bull Jul 17 2008, 09:42 AM
That was an expected Errata, considering tehy've said from day one that the Skill Check thing was wrong.
I only gave it a quick skim, and don;t have my books with me, but bascially, looks like they dropped the DC TN's by 5, asnd removed that "+5 to Skill Check DCs" thing that never made much sense anyways.
If I'm reading that right, I think that actually makes the DCs a little too easy for anyone even moderately skilled, since it looks like at level one a moderate DC is now 10, and trained character with even a modest attribute bonus is gonna be getting a +6 or +7 to the skill check.
But then, it's 5:40 AM, work has been kicking my ass, I'm half asleep, and again, don;t have my books so... Maybe I should wait till morning to think about this
Posted by: paws2sky Jul 17 2008, 01:15 PM
Don't feel bad. I played CoX semi-religiously for almost 3 years. I'm pretty clueless about the numerous things that have changed since I left.
-paws
Posted by: deek Jul 17 2008, 03:22 PM
Yup, major changes to the skill challenges in DMG. That table on page 42, basically everything got reduced by 5. So an easy DC is now 5. They removed the footnotes as well, so no more +5 to non-combat challenges. These should be a lot easier now.
They also changed complexity. The Failures column is all 3s now. So, no more 4 success before 2 failures or 12 successes before 6 failures. Failures are always 3, but the DCs are so much lower.
Plus, its not required that everyone participate. So, if you choose not to, you don't have to. It also recommended to limit a group check to one or two helpers, instead of the whole party.
All in all, a lot of good stuff that should allow us to actually succeed at skill challenges more often than not!
I'd like to see how the "math" is now changed. I think before it was an 11% success rate with everyone having a +9 to their check roll. I'd have to think a moderate challenge (DC10) at first level is going to be pretty easy, but at a higher complexity, you have to get more successes with only 3 chances to fail. Frank? You willing to run the numbers again?
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jul 17 2008, 04:02 PM
Maybe the problem is that you're trying to use an epic high-fantasy game as a Barmaids & Grannies simulator. I'm not convinced that failing to model the healing process of unheroic commoners is really a failing of a game designed for high-fantasy heroics. I'll freely admit that healing in 4e is unrealistic, but I have up on "hit points" in D&D being realistic a loooooong time ago.
Now I will agree that there is currently a dearth of lasting conditions. Everything pretty much kills you within five minutes, or, if it's really nasty, forces you to stop, have lunch, and maybe a nap. But it is critically important to note that this is an exception-based ruleset, and practically every time a new power or ability is introduced it's going to break an existing "rule" in some way, but that's how it's designed to function. I consider it near 100% certainty that we will see, in upcoming books, conditions which prevent the recovery of healing surges, or require rituals to get rid of, or otherwise suck for a period greater than 6 hours.
Maybe you should consider a house-rule that anytime someone takes damage from a single hit greater than their bloodied value, they receive a "lasting injury". You could limit their max hp to their bloodied value, and/or prevent them from regaining healing surges until they've jumped through appropriate hoops, such as a DC-whatever healing check, or received healing from a source which does not consume one of their own surges.
Now I realize that I am suggesting a house-rule, and this does nothing to defend the rules-as-written, but your whole problem seems to be that healing in a heroic high-fantasy game isn't quite realistic enough for you, especially for non-heroic NPCs, and therefore the entire game is a giant steaming pile pressed between two pieces of cardboard, in triplicate. I guess what I'm really asking is, why is this such a problem? Healing easily or with greater difficulty can't really be a fundamental flaw in a system unless it runs counter to the intention of the system, and in this case I think it's fairly clear that it's working as intended. Of course it can certainly run counter to personal taste, and obviously does for you.
So, seriously, enough ranting, help me get a handle on your position:
Is it really the rapid recovery of non-heroic NPCs which destroys this game for you?
Is it the action-movie hero who is beat to hell but keeps on fighting just fine aspect which destroys it for you?
Is the game not destroyed for you? I'm not trying to strawman you, but you're making an awful lot of noise about this issue, and I'm not seeing how it's quite as much of a problem as you seem to think it is.
Given that the exception-based ruleset allows for lasting conditions to be added, and I predict they will be future books, as well as even just adventures (ooh, this case has a mushroom that does x to you until you get the secret ritual from the hermit in the cave at location y) do you feel that this is somehow an irredeemable flaw? If so, why? Or do you just feel that this is something which really, REALLY should have been in the core books?
Posted by: Particle_Beam Jul 17 2008, 06:29 PM
Let it be. Cantankerous has already been warned by the mods not to derail this thread anymore.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jul 17 2008, 07:14 PM
Meh, you're probably right.
Hey you know what I like about 4e vs 3e? Less powerful feats and more of them. With less feat slots and more powerful feats in 3e, feat choice was of such critical importance that if a feat was ever so slightly underpowered it could not be considered, because you were too busy finding those ever so slightly (and sometimes not so slightly) overpowered feats to take instead. By toning them all down, but letting you have more of them, (not to mention the safety net that is retraining) feat selection is a lot more relaxed.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 17 2008, 07:54 PM
Since this thread is positive and constructive, perhaps it's important to skip words, logic, and Infocom parsing about D&D 4th ed, but simply put the emotions it invokes into music so that others can feel the way you ("you" used collectively) do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnrXiaPVeHY&feature=related
Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jul 17 2008, 11:15 PM
I'd like to see how the "math" is now changed.
At a glance, the problem is now not that the maths is broken - reducing all the DCs by 10 is definationally going to sizeably increase everyone's chances by pushing them right across the RNG - the problem now you're back to the 'send out the specialist while everyone else says nothing' model of doing things which is an upshot of the skill system. So now you're back to third edition except you have to roll the dice lots of times as opposed to once.
I've thought of an altenative but I'll have to let it brew a bit, probably focused on keeping everyone on the RNG
Edit: The maths http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=236190
I'm also liking the murder pinball idea kicking around.
Posted by: deek Jul 18 2008, 04:58 PM
Thanks for that link.
Yeah, looks like they overcompensated the maths. Now, things seem to be too easy and the steps a lot wider when you're in Hard DCs.
I do wish they would have left the group participation in there. I mean, that was a really good idea to "force" everyone to participate in a large challenge. Now we are back to the same model as before.
There was something to be said about a PC with no skills actually hurting the group. That is a type of min/max protection right there on the non-combat side. With that removed, only one person has to worry about skills...
I'm thinking that no matter what the RAW turns into, we'll be having house-rules for this at my table. Luckily, that is something we were used to in our prior SR4 campaign (with the same group of friends), so we'll be good!
Posted by: Critias Jul 18 2008, 06:03 PM
I have played in my first tiny little fight. My 3rd level Eladrin Fighter (I wanted to "buck the suggestions" and make a class/race combination that would be less than ideal) has officially stabbed the shit of a skeleton. So far, so good! Onward, to glory!
...I sometimes really wish on-line gaming was a little faster. It took us the better part of 36 hours to finish these two combat rounds.
Posted by: DTFarstar Jul 18 2008, 08:49 PM
Not sure if it works this way by RAW, but if there is a skill challenge ongoing and they are present then I will probably force them to contribute(or not). Now if they have decided to stay indoors and everyone else is out there, fine. If it is a physical challenge, then sure they can not do it, but even the nonverbals of a person in the background known to associate with you will effect the attitude of the person you are dealing with. Don't let the fighter stand behind you pick his nose and roll his eyes while you are trying to get information, I guess is what I am saying. I also enforce roleplaying with people where the non-charismatic character is typically unaware or uncaring of his affect on others because that is a very common condition. How many people have you met who seem to think they are awesome but everyone you know secretly(or not so secretly) thinks they should just crawl off somewhere and die?
Chris
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jul 18 2008, 09:01 PM
Chris
I agree. If the situation is such that one or more characters could, reasonably, opt-out then I see no problem with it. Of course, as with any plot I'm going to try to design it such that the characters either can not, or do not want to, opt out. But if, occasionally, there's no benefit to anyone else contributing I see no problem with a character who has gone out of their way to be the ultimate skill-monkey saying "Stand back guys, I've got this one." But it's my job as GM to make sure that a good percentage of skill challenges have some sort of disincentive to that strategy, even if they don't outright forbid it.
Posted by: deek Jul 18 2008, 09:02 PM
Chris
Yeah, based off the current errata, they removed the part where you roll initiative and everyone participates in initiative order. They even added a sentence to allow anyone to opt out of participating.
But I am in the same camp with you. If everyone is in the tavern or whatnot, talking to a bartender, then unless a party member actually waited outside, then they would be having to participate in some way.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jul 18 2008, 09:17 PM
I agree. If someone opts out by leaving, or maybe even sitting quietly in a corner, there will be realistic consequences to that above and beyond the pass/fail of the skill challenge. The bartender, who now likes most of the party, still doesn't trust that one party member, or thinks he's up to something, etc. Or sometimes, maybe it's no big deal at all. But most of the time, completely independent of the skill challenge system, there are realistic in-game disincentives to occasionally bowing out of group and sitting on your ass waiting for everyone else to do all the work for you. And sometimes there aren't. That doesn't actually bother me.
What does bother me is that you're just going to pick your single best check and hammer away on it to the exclusion of all others as much as possible, and unless you limit every skill to x number of successes or something you're not going to get away from that. You could, and they even do in the examples, limit a skill to being used once, but if you do that for every skill then designing the challenge gets really monotonous.
What might be interesting (but yet more complicated) would be if the DCs were slightly variable from turn to turn, such that one turn you're better off using diplomacy, but due to (known, or discernible) DC fluctuation on the next turn you're actually better off trying to bluff, or intimidate. But like I said, that would add yet more complexity, and I'm not really sure the benefit/complexity ratio is favorable.
Posted by: DTFarstar Jul 21 2008, 10:10 AM
I finally managed to run the little quicky one shot I've been trying to get people together for for awhile now. Our two normal games take up everyone's free nights so it's hard to find a day. Anyway, I have to say that I am actually quite pleased. I didn't see it lose the DnD flavor I kind of thought it might, and while all the characters were of roughly equal power levels(part of that might be that I made them all, but I think it was mostly the system) they were all distinct in their advantages and strategies. It works really well with our group in that we have a lot of good roleplayers, but only a couple of people(namely me, if I'm honest) who are really good at making characters and so normally there is a power gap- sometimes a significant one- between the characters in a party and so some people don't feel as though they can contribute. This was not a problem with this system.
To give you an overview, I read the PHB and found the monsters I wanted in the MM, and looked at the skill challenges part of the DMG, I wanted to put some traps in, but I wanted to try out different encounter types and didn't have time for both, so the traps fell by the wayside.
Party -
Tiefling Fey Pact Warlock - Kairon
Human Control Wizard - Quinn Tolar
Halfling Artful Dodger Rogue - Tark
Dwarf Wisdom Cleric - Vontal
Dragonborn Str Paladin - Balasar
Encounter 1 -
8 kobold minions
2 kobold slingers
1 stormclaw scorpion
Pit Environment Hazard
Encounter 2 -
2 Fire Beetles
2 Goblin Warriors
1 Goblin Blackblade
Forge Fire Hazard
Encounter 3 -
1 goblin arcanist
2 kobold slingers
2 stirges
2 stormclaw scorpions
Fire Lines and Pit Hazards
The scenario was this - the PCs were on the initiatory quest for a relatively large low level adventuring guild called The Rabble. They were headed to Lauringdale to stop the rampage(theft and attacks- no deaths just some burning) of some monsters in town. The game started as they arrived and I had built one pre-made of every class and used all the races once as well. The villagers were very skittish as the Dragonborn resembled a larger version of some of the creatures plaguing them and the Tiefling Warlock decided at the last minute to be a cross-dresser.(I had apparently originally told him that the premie warlock was a girl, but then designed a man and there was some confusion he decided to solve)
The only real skill challenge came after the mayor came and re-briefed them on the attacks, it was a streetwise challenge to assemble all the garbled and frightened fragments of information and make something useful out of them. They rolled exceedingly well, not even using the accessory skills I had set up for the challenge and managed their 12 successes with only 1 failure so they figured out/found out where they could find the trail leading to the monster lair. If they failed they were going to find a different trail nearby that led to a different cave that had a fruitless battle in it.
They proceeded inside and walked into their first combat- 8 kobold minions, a stormclaw scorpion, and 2 kobold slingers. The rogue hopped out in front, got clawed, grabbed and stung(poisoned, immobilized) before they dropped the scorpion and laid waste to the minions who managed to make a fair showing with their rain of javelins. The warlock and wizard got to shine a little as they pounded the kobold slingers to death from afar with magic. Oh, Slingers were on a 15 foot high cliff at the end of the room and there were two pretty deep pits on each side of the like 13x8 room. Rogue almost positioning struck the scorpion into the pit, but missed.
Rogue climbed the cliff, found the ladder hidden above and let everyone else up and they proceeded to the next room. Irregularly shaped room with a forge based around a magma flow on one side. The forge was during a period of activity and so it did fire damage in a radius due to heat. They fought 2 fire beetles, 2 goblin warriors, and a goblin blackblade in this room. The blackblade went first and injured the paladin, and then everyone stomped it to death(Witchfire + Sly Flourish and both hitting for nearly max damage) One goblin warrior happened to be in a bad position when the beetles unleashed their flames and went bloodied, the rogue slid the other goblin warrior into the forge and nearly toppled him into the lava, and then the mage used sleep and successfully put both beetles and the scorched warrior to sleep. The party easily finished the other warrior and coup de grace'd the rest of the critters.
In the final room, I had the mastermind behind the theft and organization, a gnome arcanist, hidden on a raised dias with two more slingers guarding him. He had two pet stirges and two more scorpions in the room and the room had two small pits and several 6 inch deep 3 inch wide wavy lines in the rock. Turned out those were filled with something very flammable and the slingers used their firepots to light them while the PCs were standing on them. A lot of grabbing later, things were not going well for our PCs till I forcibly reminded them to use action points, then the warlock saw the gnome finally, tried to E-Blast him and missed, got pissed and used Curse of the Dark Dream and threw his ass into one of the pits. The cleric moved just close enough to save the paladins life and the paladin got free of his sturge and went after the kobolds, an action pointed double scorching blast, everyone elses dailies and encounters later and everyone was just using at-wills trying to kill the last two kobolds and missing. Finally whittling them down, I forgot about the paladin's challenge and the kobold attacked the rogue and took enough damage to knock it to -1 where they could finish it off and return all the stolen goods that weren't foodstuffs and get paid.
Everyone had a lot of fun, and I am a lot more excited about this edition now. It only took about 6 and a half hours and that was with several interruptions and 3 people cooking during the game.
Chris
Posted by: DTFarstar Jul 21 2008, 10:16 AM
Oh, as an aside, I heartily recommend taking the data(scan your PDF, buy the PDF, download it if you already own the books) and printing your monsters you will use and the powers for all the characters on 3x5 or 4x6 notecards. It made bookkeeping with powers and monsters really simple and allowed us to have the pertinent effects at hand so no one had to look up their powers in the book in the middle of combat.
Chris
EDIT: I also put all racial powers and lengthy class features on note cards for my players.
EDIT2: This more the kind of positive posts you were looking for Bull?
Posted by: Bull Jul 21 2008, 10:39 AM
This is something I think WotC is REALLY dropping the ball on. The D&D Mini's come with stat cards that have the 4e Game stats on them. But between the random distribution of the mini's game, and the cracked out selection of figures (Most sets only have one or two "common" monsters, like orcs or kobods or goblins, and are full of really bizarre critters), they're totally not worth buying if that's all you want them for :/
WotC could make a MINT if they'd start selling some reasonably priced packs of 20 or so figures of the common humanoid monsters, at least. Or better yet, Mini's Packs to go along with their modules.
Not every post needs to be full of sunshine and light and kittens and puppies and gushing praise for 4e, I mostly just wanted to filter out the complaints and whining. That was shot long ago, but... Whatever. <shrug>
Either way, glad you had fun with your session. I really wish I had the oppurtunity to try it out a little more in depth. I may get a game or two in at Gen Con.
Posted by: Nightwalker450 Jul 21 2008, 03:08 PM
I've been typing up sheets for our characters with all of their powers that they have selected listed, they're pretty much by the book. I think when I GM I will probably do the same for creature write ups so I don't have to flip through the MM constantly especially when dealing with seperate types of creatures at the same time.
Oh for those that are interested in power write-ups, after I'd already typed up the ones for all of out current characters I found these:
http://www.emass-web.com/index.php
Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jul 25 2008, 04:50 AM
What the skill challenge system really needs is something like primary, secondary and tertiary roles, which all contribute to the challenge but test different attributes. Primary contributes to successes, secondary eliminates failures and tertiary does..something?
But then with different tests against each you'd be in business. Like your normal diplomancy encounter could have
Diplomancy <-- good cop
Bullyasurus/intimidate <-- Bad cop
Stealth/gather infomation/knowledge: some crap/whatever <-- bonus powers?
as the three attributes, and if your doing some role, you cannot participate in the other roles. Like the good cop cannot also be the bad cop, and neither of them can sneak out the back and have a sleuth around.
Posted by: paws2sky Jul 25 2008, 12:47 PM
That's a pretty good idea, actually...
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