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.

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

Blah, blah, blah, enough already. Sheesh, what is it with you people? A change to playability and fun is negative?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

I had heard that D&D was supposed to "work" for any four characters, even be they four wizards.

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).

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.

1st level is the hardest of them all. One hit means usually instant-death. Fortunately, the rather flawed CR system in 3.X expected four player characters to gang up on one monster of a CR equal to their average party level. At level one, you could throw them two orcs as opposition, or one gnoll, for one battle.

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.

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

Except maybe that that's what this thread is set up for.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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!

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

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...

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.

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.

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!

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.

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...

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

Eh...shows how much in know about CoH/V...

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

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

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

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.

Here's a first official errata, which even changed the DNs for the skill checks: http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20080716

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

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

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?

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?

Let it be. Cantankerous has already been warned by the mods not to derail this thread anymore.

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.