Well if it didn't cause cancer before..., ...it does now. Options

[Larme]

People who want to complain about a game will find something to complain about, even if they haven't really familiarized themselves with it. Case in point: the Shadowrun forum. Now we're complaining because HP in 4th ed didn't break with D&D's oldest and least changed tradition of the past quarter century. And earlier, we were complaining about how the system in other places breaks with other traditions too much. Which is it -- traditional D&D is good, or traditional D&D is bad? The complainers don't have any real unifying theory of the game being bad, they just have nitpicks, often based on hearsay, that they want to vent, and it doesn't make sense to respond to them as if they were really making valuable arguments. "The way it works is not quite exactly as it would suit me to have it work" is just about the weakest criticism there is. The question in evaluating a system should always be "is it fun to play?" not, "did they design it to my own specifications and desires?"

[nezumi]

Now we're complaining because HP in 4th ed didn't break with D&D's oldest and least changed tradition of the past quarter century. And earlier, we were complaining about how the system in other places breaks with other traditions too much. Which is it -- traditional D&D is good, or traditional D&D is bad?

Both are valid complaints. You act as though an issue that doesn't have a 'perfect fix' isn't still an issue.

The complainers don't have any real unifying theory of the game being bad,

They don't have to. Different people come to games for different reasons. I acknowledge I don't enjoy White Wolf games because I look for aspects of a game they don't provide.

However, a game that fails to please most people or doesn't please any people probably isn't a very good game. So when lots of people say they don't like the game for different reasons, there may be something to that.

[Particle_Beam]

Lot's of people is really, really relative, especially if these "lots" of people congruate on the internet...
And of course, the thing is, D&D will please the absolute majority of people who play it. That's a given.

Heh, hitpoints.

Next, people are going to complain about the use of an icosahedron in the game, or that you don't roll for hitpoints anymore...

[Cantankerous]

"Small wounds" - a paper cut qualifies as a small wound, for example, but wouldn't rate a dmg box in SR4.

EN World has a thread on this:
How Do You Plan To Interpret Hit Points, Healing Surges and Damage?

Personally, it makes sense to me to see hit poits as stamina-like vitality. As I said, it would hurt verisimilitude far worse for me if I actually had a character get hit with each arrow that does 1d8 dmg, but the character would not die. And from what I read, just about everyone said that 4E still sees hit points as turning a blow into a fatal blow, or narrowly evading, but tiring out.

Ok, so the home state would be denial. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

In black and white it was stated, by the designers, that hit points represent the ability to sustain damage and that this damage, once the "bloodied" threshold is past is "wounds" ... and now suddenly we have being hit by a lightening bolt, the example the designers themselves used, equated to paper cuts. Sorry, but in this case you simply didn't know what you were talking about and the quotes provided prove that quite nicely. In such a case arguing on is quite poor sportsmanship.

What the opinion of a bunch of players on this or any other forum is on the subject do NOT equate to the direct quotes from the game itself. Getting cut with a knife can create a small wound too. An 3mm laser bolt would produce and extremely small wound. Or maybe they simply meant that these "wounds", plural, that this single effect produced, weren't instantly fatal in and of themselves.

That the designers didn't say. They simply said that hit points DO equate to damage AND that once bloodied state is past this is sustained as wounds.

Which heal over night...

And if you missed it before Larme, this is the issue I've been talking about since the beginning. The utter and total lack or verisimilitude caused by the over night healing of wounds sustained, especially when said wounds are now shown, by referring to the actual rule books (which certainly should count as familiarization) to be the result of damage sustained sustained and not fatigue or some other nebulous something that can thus be dismissed.

There IS also a de-emphasis of social skills...compared to earlier editions. Perhaps you might be able to successfully argue that neither by itself is fully indicative of the de-emphasis of RP in those supposed RPG, but together, with a few other factors thrown in, become fairly damning. Since what is being discussed as a minus here is the emphasis (as no one is saying that the game is awful...simply that it isn't heroic fantasy...which isn't the only genre in the world, nor the only one worth playing...Shadowrun anyone (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ) being shifted away from the basis of the heroic fantasy genre.


Isshia

[Particle_Beam]

Yes, your denial of what hitpoints are in every D&D-edition is sad and laughable. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)
Here's the direct quote from the 4th edition Player's Handbook:

Over the course of a battle, you take damage from attacks. Hit points (hp) measure your ability to stand up to punishment, turn deadly strikes into glancing blows, and stay on your feet throughout a battle. Hit points represent more than physical endurance. They represent your character’s skill, luck, and resolve—all the factors that combine to help you stay alive in a combat situation.

And it's the same in D&D 3.X. And that's even what Gary Gygax himself wrote back then. Anybody else claiming that hit points are purely physical wounds even though shown these excerpts is just being annoying on purpose.

Other people would rather complain why fighters had maneuvers that they could only use one times per day. But here we have one guy who claims to know what hit points are better than the deceased dude who invented the game, or the other dudes at Wotc who have designed the newest iteration.

Oh well, one person more to add to the ignore list. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif) Thank god for this board having the ignore feature. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Fuchs]

Critical Hit, Particle_Beam.

[Fortune]

I have a question related to Hit Points and healing. If, as you say, the intent of Hit Points has been the same throughout the history of D&D, then why is it that in all previous editions of D&D that this 'overnight healing' effect was not present? Why did it sometimes take days to heal up from even a single battle if healing magic was not available?

[Fuchs]

Well, it took them until 3E to get rid of THAC0 and implement a decent skill system and logical saves. It took them until 4E to decide that the "ok, it's just been 15 minutes since we set out on our quest, but we had 3 fights and our healer and caster are almost out of spells, so we'll rest until tomorrow" way of playing was not that fun.
So, maybe they were just slow.

The easier explanation is though that the devs decided that instead of forcing everyone to have a healer, or sit around for weeks after each fight, they made it so people could heal up without a cleric in a reasonable amount of time - and freed the cleric up to use other spells than cure X wounds each day.

[hyzmarca]

Well, it took them until 3E to get rid of THAC0 and implement a decent skill system and logical saves. It took them until 4E to decide that the "ok, it's just been 15 minutes since we set out on our quest, but we had 3 fights and our healer and caster are almost out of spells, so we'll rest until tomorrow" way of playing was not that fun.
So, maybe they were just slow.

Blasphemy!!!!!

Any D&D game without THAC0 is just wrong. Hit points, we can argue about all day; they can means different things to different people. But no one can deny that THAC0 is awesome. And that's my biggest complaint about 4e - it doesn't have THAC0.


But, seriously, three fights in fifteen minutes is a bit out there. Realistically, people aren't going to get into several fights per day. Adventures aren't going to get into several fights per day. And when they do get into fights they are going to take time to rest because life-or-death battles do tend to take something out of a person.

[Particle_Beam]

Ask Gary Gygax. Cast Speak with Dead. Or, ask Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Richard Baker and so fort. Use Internet.
Of course, the simple answer is, bad rule designs that nobody concentrated upon. It took years to do away with ThAC0, come up with feats and special abilities to make non-casters a little bit better than prior editions, to create official rules for social interaction, simplifying all those various inane save-vs-spoon-in-your-ear-and-similar-corner-cases into 3 save-mechanics, make everybody have the same level-up-progression, erasing other dumb stuff like gaining additional XP when obtaining treasure from a defeated enemy equal to the gold value, or making that every race can be every class.
Back then to the early days of 3.X, they though the healing rules were okay, as every group had a cleric anyway (or so they assumed), just that nobody liked to play one (which was in most cases true), which is why they made clerics one of the best classes there is and overpowered everybody else in D&D 3.X (which was one big mistake they all regret, today). And now, somebody at Wotc finally noticed that they forgot to bring the mundane healing rules into line with the description of what hp were since 20 years.

Of course, seeing as how D&D 3rd edition already made it that even untended wounds would still heal according to your levels (so that a 10th-level adventurer would heal 10 times as fast as a level-1-guy), it was changing to the correct and better way.

As always, the D&D 4th edition mechanics are just an improved continuation of what already occured in D&D 3.X.

And yes, adventurers were expected to get into several fights per day. Heck, that was the whole assumption of D&D 3.X all along. That's why they tried to formalize battles with the Challenge Rating-system, or the Encounter Level-mechanics. To get into four battles per day, and wasting 20-25% of all your ressources like hit points, spells, and consumable items when facing an encounter appropriate to the party level.

After all, this is Dungeons and Dragons, where your heroic adventurers are entering some kind of dungeon-like lair of terror and kill orcs, giants and dragons in there, to either rescue the princess, or to steal their treasures.

[Zombayz]

I argee on the points about HP. But that's never been the issue for me. D&D is SUPPOSED to be at least a little gritty. Heroic things almost always are. You get tired, and beat up, and need time to rest, refit, fix your armor, and sharpen your axe. Ever read a D&D novel, particularily one of the ones by Keith Baker (creator of Ebberon)? The characters actually DO spend time healing up.

And characters in heroic fantasy almost always do alot more then fighting. Those little 'useless, incedental' things like Profession, Craft, Preform and such got used often, in every game we played. So instead of having viable out of combat alternatives to combat, we've got it so almost everything is useless out of combat.

Also don't feed my this bullshit about needing a healer. My group has had acleric or druid exactly ONCE each. The cleric never healed(me playing him, makin undead armies), and the druid was a combat monster(cast cure moderate wounds once, for us a tremendous event). In fact, the only time we've ever had someone healed through magical means is when one of the paladins we often had did it, or my old Artificer zapping one of his constructs with a wand of Repair. And that was rare. We had a guy who always played a frontline fighter using a greatsword, and he did fine without healing. Fight smart, and you'll survive fight that are EL+4, which we often did. And still do!

[Critias]

If you're taking on EL+4 fights regularly, without any sort of magical healing going on, it's more a matter of your GM fighting stupid than of the players fighting smart. Sorry.

[Larme]

Having almost finished the PHB, I think Frank is the only one with a really factually correct criticism of 4th ed. Everything is reduced -- you do less damage, criticals are less powerful, spells are less powerful... I'm pretty sure there isn't even one spell that does 10 dice of damage, compared to many spells doing 15d6, 20d6, or much more in 3.5, at the appropriate level. Attack bonuses between high and low level characters are not that extreme. Armor class differences are not that extreme. Saves are always against 10, with usually only +-2. It's hard to get anything more than +-2 in fact. Flanking gives you a +2. Charging gives you +2. Most powers give +-2 if they affect attack or armor class. The only thing that really goes up and up is hitpoints, I think.

But is that really such a bad thing? 3e sure gave the appearance of powerfulness by having the number scale up infinitely. But in the end, how much difference does it make when you roll 1d20 + 30 vs. DC 40? You need to roll a 10, exactly as if it had been 1d20 + 0 vs. DC 10. It just means that when you're low level, you couldn't possibly in a million years succeed at that task. 4e makes you less worthless as a low character, and less unstoppable as a high character. 3e scales up so fast that it just becomes excessive by the time you're at level 20. You're not humans anymore. Fighters chop things up like a cuisinart without getting tired. If a rogue stabs someone with a dagger, they explode into a fine red mist. A wizard could destroy an army. Goodbye physics, goodbye balance. 4e by contrast keeps everyone human. Nobody achieves godhood until they actually achieve godhood and ascend up to heaven, becoming NPCs (which you can do after achieving your destiny at level 30, by the way).

[Aaron]

One of the issues with 3/3.5e D&D is the "sweet spot" between about level 8 and level 14, where you're pretty cool and can handle what gets thrown at you. Beyond that, you're beginning to stray into the areas where a monster of the appropriate CR can take you out in one shot.

[Particle_Beam]

According to a playtest on ENWorld, it took a group of 5 level 30-characters (with paragon paths and epic destiny powers and all that stuff-we're talking about D&D 4th edition, of course) approximately 7 rounds to kill the Tarasque, a level 30 solo monster with 1000+ hit points. They unleashed all their most powerful daily and encounter power and used their additional action granted by the use of an action point (some attack missed, however, like those of the fighter). Although, the Tarasque was always stunned, but people are discussing and wondering if he really could have been stunned, as there is unclearness concerning the stunning effect of a specified power, which the Tarasque might have been immune, perhaps.

Be it as it may be, in the end, five epic heroes did manage to drop down the Tarasque (not the most ultimate bad mofo, clear, but still one heck of a walking house of hitpoints) in around 7 rounds. That would make it 42 seconds ingame-time, in theory. He-Man, Dr. Strange, Shinobi, St. George and Gandalf punched up Godzilla, or their D&D-equivalent did it.

If damage-wise there hasn't been a mistake, then it proves then that damage-output is okay. Of course, this was one battle where everything powerful was used. If the heroes were to save up their daily powers for another confrontation coming right up, they might perhaps have a slighty bit more trouble. Perhaps, or perhaps not.

We'll see it for ourselves.

[Zombayz]

If you're taking on EL+4 fights regularly, without any sort of magical healing going on, it's more a matter of your GM fighting stupid than of the players fighting smart. Sorry.

We switch being DM. We all fight smart, but everyone knows what the hell they're doing when making a character. Fluffy, but optimized, and intelligent(assuming int isn't your dump stat), always. If a member of the party can't take a monster of the same CR+1 by themself, several times a day, then in our group, they die. On the rare occasions when we got new people, they'd learn quick, since we have no objections to throwing a new character into the group(as long as they don't appear at random). And whoever is being DM doesn't pull out all the stops for absolute tactical massacres since I pretty much forced the issue (killed a party of 3 level 8s and one level 7 with a wyrmling White Dragon,), and another one of us used those imfamous kobold warriors to almost TPK the party. And you'd be amazed what happens when use use divination first, so you'll know of what to bring.

And back to the point, having the smaller numbers at high levels and higher at low ones certainly isn't bad in of it self. However, it makes it feel less like an epic adventure, or gritty battle when you're just starting out. Having the Paladin built for criticals powerattack, Smite Evil, double crit a Red Dragon(just for the stereotype) with a Scythe (yes, we had a Pally who used a scythe, with fluff reasons) feels alot smaller with 4th ed. Instead of the epic blow that hits with nuclear force(maxed out hit, 280 damage), it's a weenie little bash in comparison.. Still carves off some HP, but nowhere near the same FEELING. The immersion isn't there. You're no longer tearing the throat out of a bigassmotherf*ckin fire breathing, flying, spell slinging, swims-through-lava dragon, while the bard sings, the artificer commands his constructs, and the rogue/barbarian cuts his way out of it's stomache, you're just hitting it a bit harder then normal while you give your eyes a break from WoW.

You see the difference? It's there. The soul of the game is gone. It's not gritty, or epic. Balanced yeah, but the CharOp boards have probably changed that already. The feeling of being there is gone.

It's just a videogame without the picture.

[Aaron]

It's just a videogame without the picture.

Hey, then I don't have to buy a new video card.

... I'd just have to buy the books ...

[Zombayz]

*face+palm=eyetwichfacepalm*

[Particle_Beam]

How much damage did one do when one scored a critical back then in all D&D-editions prior to 3.X? It was 2xdice roll, and damage boni resulting from high strenght and magical enhancement was only applied once... And critical hits were optional, back then...

D&D 3.x introduced a lot of things that wasn't really D&D.

The funny thing is, back then, everybody bashed D&D 3.0 and said that it was just a badly ripped-off computer-game. Back then, it was compared to Everquest (which incidently was inspired by D&D)...

Ah, some things never change. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
Now, they claim it's WoW. I wonder to which game D&D 5.0 will be compared...

[PBTHHHHT]

Ah, some things never change. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
Now, they claim it's WoW. I wonder to which game D&D 5.0 will be compared...

Age of Conan?

[Larme]

If the Tarrasque dies in 7 rounds, I think we can declare the players to be not underpowered. The fact is, there are enough powerful moves that it's not going to become 50+ rounds of everyone using their at-wills. One thing though: I wish they had more advanced at-will powers... Just having 4 to choose from starting at level 1 isn't that cool. They don't need to become wildly more powerful, but change would be nice.

Regardless, the only real (and valid) criticism of 4e is that it's not 3e. If it is 3e, then you'd be wasting your money (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) And if you like 3e and want to keep playing it and aren't interested in a different game, then you'd be wasting your money. But if the endless optimization across a dozen books of random crap that has never been playtested doesn't turn you on, I think you'll enjoy 4e's "do what you think is cool and it probably works well" style.

[Critias]

If anyone that's gotten (or just had 'em on preorder and ends up not liking 'em, whatever) the 4th Edition books genuinely dislikes them, PM me and maybe we can talk price so you can at least recoup some of your cash. I'm curious about it and wouldn't mind owning a copy, but at the same time I'm leery enough I don't feel like paying full price if I can help it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Maybe we can both come out ahead if folks are eager to get rid of 'em.

[Aaron]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8UldMTTDJ4

NSFW. Germane to the conversation. Funny.

[Wounded Ronin]

THAC0 was the last time I understood the rules. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) I don't get all these non-negative armor classes we're seeing now.

And Fuchs, if I were planning to walk 10 miles to grandma's house, but within the space of 15 minutes I was assaulted three times by little dog men with rusty knives whom I was forced to beat into submission and then loot, I just might decide to take it easy for the rest of the day. I don't see what's weird about that.

[Particle_Beam]

So you're telling us that THAC0 is easier than adding a bonus to a dice-roll? Hmm, either you're trying to bullshit us, or you're trying to sarcastically mock pre-D&D 3.X in a very strange way that isn't noticeable.