Ask the Guy Who's Seen DnD 4th Edition

The Game Room
21

That was my complaint with 3 & 3.5. We found it harder and harder to “house rule” something and not have a side-effect imbalance created elsewhere. For example, we dumped the cludgy attacks of opportunity and action order mess and reverted back to a simple “we fight, then they fight” mechanic. However, players complained because it neutered many feats, skills, checks, available to them.

D&D needs to be more modular (sorry, couldn’t resist ;)) again. Someone mentioned Unearthed Arcana, which is a perfect example of that. You could add or delete easily as you saw fit from that resource, without damaging or forcing a retweaking of existing characters or resources.

22

Also got an early copy. My review is below. Note that I’ve been playing D&D since the white box set in 1977.

Third Edition seemed to me to be “2e on Steroids”, wherein everything was expanded and complexity increased. It blew my socks off and reinvigorated my love of the game. I said before and I’ll say it again: I will continue to play 3.5 whenever I can.

Fourth edition is like taking the “sweet spot” of 3rd to 12th level and expanding it out to 1st to 30th level for a game that seems suspiciously like what you’d get if someone was trying to make a D&D-like game that didn’t necessarily violate copyright laws; while at the same time taking a heavy nerfbat to elements of the game that some found too complicated or that some less imaginative DMs had trouble dealing with - like the Fly spell.

Save or Die, or ‘Save or be taken out of the fight’ effects are largely nerfed, allowing saves to be made against them every round. I’m ambivalent about this. I always HATED being taken out of the fight in the first round or two - it leaves you sitting at the table NOT having fun. But it tends to make those spells a lot less useful.

Healing is obscene. You can now heal several times your base HP every day, often without a Cleric in the group. This is a far cry from the 1e “In my day we only had Cure Light Wounds, and we liked it!” While I am sure this change appeals to a certain crowd, I do not like it. The limitations on healing in previous editions made for good drama on how much you could accomplish at one time. Now you just keep blasting through, like a freaking computer game.

Shifting, Pushing, Bonuses, Penalties. Sure, they only last for one or two rounds for the most part, sometimes to the end of the encounter. But damn people, if you had problems keeping track of conditions and mods in 3e, this is not the game for you!

Limited damage. Like DeadlyAccurate said, combat is going to take forever against things like the 336hp Chimera (my namesake of sorts) when you’re only doing d8+4 damage (for a Fighter with a Longsword and 18 Strength) and the Wizard is popping off his d6+Int Bonus effects.

Which really seems odd. People complain about two round combats in 3e. Then they complain because people are so slow in figuring their shit that it takes two hours to run those two rounds*. So we replace that system where it may only take 10-15 minutes per round**, but it’s going to take a great deal more rounds to complete the combat.

  • Which only happens when no one is willing to piss off Bob by telling him that they don’t appreciate him taking 20 fucking minutes to figure out that he’s going to move 10 feet and cast Magic Missile for 3d4+3 damage.

** Assuming that it doesn’t take Bob that same 20 minutes to decide which of his powers to use. If it took 20 minutes to decide to move and cast a spell in 3.5, it’s probably going to take just as long for him to decide which of his At-Will, Encounter, Daily or Utility powers he wants to use, count off squares, figure angles and add up his various bonuses from whatever other powers other people have used.

23

Another amusing bit: remember how it used to be a joke that people would jut mark “II” after their character’s name when he died? Well, that’s now a standard rule the player can use. Down to keeping his magic items. :smiley:

Magic items themselves aren’t as interesting. They basically give you an ability or a bonus, but there are few bonuses to get and few abilities you need, so… IN any case, you can just invoke a magic effect, toss gold into the spell, and get anything you want. This says some very odd things about their default world.

24

Again, do they define “encounter”?

The reason I ask is that one of our playtest characters could teleport “once per encounter”.

So, if we’re walking along and he wants to teleport to a ledge 30’ up, can he? Or is he still tapped from the last time he used it in our last fight? Will he be tapped for the next fight, since he just used it?

-Joe

25

Encounter powers may be used many times during a day of adventuring, but you have to rest a few minutes between each use.
So, if he teleported, then got whacked by a monster by surprise? He’s screwed for that encounter. He teleports, looks around a bit, then finds a monster? He’s good.

26

I’d have to check again (sorry missed the question before) but… it’s vague. An encounter is, ummm… a thingy. Usually a fight. I don’t think they really had anything else in mind when they designed the system.

27

It’s vague, but not ambiguous. An encounter is simply a challenge that the party has to overcome. It can be a fight, it can be a particularly tough cliff face, it can be a diplomatic negotiation, anything that presents an obstacle in the party’s path where they have to use their skills.

28

The key is the ‘ability to rest for a few minutes’ between each use. So if he teleports, looks around, he can teleport again. Think of it as running a brief wind sprint. Don’t really want to do that twice in a row, but, run a sprint, take a breather, run a sprint…

29

That’s the problem.

The designers seem to be thinking solely of brief combats, or maybe an action scene which maybe takes a few minutes of “in-game-world” time. They didn’t really think about other kinds of challenges.

Edit: I find this annoying, but it’s not even on my my top 10 list here. One of my friends finds this incredibly irritating and it frustrates the hell out of him just thinking about it.

30

The bottom line with Encounter Powers is that you can use them about once every five minutes.

An Encounter is a “Scene”, or set piece. “Such and such happens, what do you do?” Whether or not you could hit your party with a bunch of monsters, have them fight them, wait one round and hit them again and call it one or two separate encounters is pretty much up to you and your group. If my GM did that and called it one encounter once, I’d shrug and soldier on. If it got to be a habit because he didn’t want us using Encounter powers, I’d be pissed and certainly let him know that it wasn’t going to continue to work that way.

31

steps forward

S’been interesting reading this thread - and it reminded me that i’ve been meaning to post this one for a little while about getting into DnD (in case anyone here fancies imparting some advice).

goes back to thread-lurking

32

I’ve seen no less than 3 different versions of the 3 main books posted on Usenet.

I read through them and I’m not very enthusiastic. They simplified some things, but made others stupidly complex. It’s looks a lot like an overly complicated tabletop wargame now. I don’t think I’ll be switching to this any time soon.

33

In fairness, D&D has always been an overly complicated tabletop wargame. I’ve studied a few other RPG systems, and not one has the obsessive detail to distances and movement that D&D (and D20 in general) does. It has more in common with Battletech than World of Darkness as far as mechanics go.

34

Never seen GURPS huh?

The mechanics I saw are now purely for tabletop miniature games, there’s very little that doesn’t revolve around moving on a grid.

D&D defined it’s mechanics in mostly absolute terms (a fireball does X damage, has Y range, etc), and WoD defined it’s mechanics in mostly relative terms (attacker rolls X dice, defender rolls Y dice, whoever gets the most successes wins, damage done is related to the successes, etc). WoD has a simpler system, but this just opens up things to interpretation when specifics are needed, whereas they’re already defined in D&D. This has advantages and disadvantages, I’m not going to say one is better than the other. But I’ve played lots of D&D without any minis.

35

Or Champions.

But we’re starting to run dry on rules heavy RPG’s. They haven’t been a popular design choice for a long, long time.

36

I’m not talking about simply rules-heavy games. I don’t know Champions and GURPS, so I can’t speak to them, but WoD, Feng Shui, WEG, etc., can all be fairly easily played with just your character sheets and dice. You don’t have to have a grid or figurines, you can play simply by talking and rolling the appropriate dice. D&D does need a grid, and combat places a very heavy emphasis on tactics and group formation. I’ve played D&D abstractly, and it’s very difficult to do. The roleplay and social aspects are easy enough, sure, but combat is hard as hell without that grid.

D&D Minis is a slightly simplified D&D without the roleplay, and it absolutely is a wargame, as much as Warhammer or Clix or Battletech. AIUI, 4E and Minis were both designed to come together even closer rules-wise than 3.5 and Minis were.

Anyway, sorry to get off on a tangent.

37

I would agree with this. 1st and 2nd edition DnD did not need a grid, although it could be helpful. 3rd edition kinda sorta did. In 4th, it’s virtually a requirement.

Actually, 2nd edition actually rather had a lot of noncombat proficiencies. If you were so inclined you could have a neat game with just them.

I think the big change I dislike about 4th - the single biggest pet peeve - it that all the characters are essentially alike. They’re gonna have very similar bonuses, about the same amount of damage in mostly the same situations. Every character is likely to have identical scores in their offensive rolls, and similar ones on the defensive rolls. All characters now have identical BAB and defenses, with some slight differences for armor and such but the bases are identical.

This makes levelling up actually rather pointless. Does it really matter that you have a few more hit points or higher BAB and defenses when everyone has exactly the same? You get mroe abilities, but why even bother with changing the defenses and so on? Every character could start with a (higher) hit point total - like 50 for fighters down to 25 or so for wizards. And every now and then the DM could give you a new ability pick or whatever.

After all, it really only helps you relative to the monsters now. But so what? I mean, if the Gm wants to run your experienced adventurers against some goblins, why not? It’s not classic heroes didn’t run into similar troubles, and just because they killed a liche last week didn’t make the cruel little vermin this week any easier.

Ah well.

I am thinking of runing a comic-type game in a world which takes all these rules seriously, though. :smiley:

38

Huh? You can use a grid in any game for the same reason you’d use one in D&D - to mark relative locations. I’ve played D&D without a grid, and I’ve played it with, and I have to say I prefer it with because of the confusion you can get without knowing where people are. It introduces a different kind of combat style, with people debating the advantages of moving to this square or this square, but it helps a lot. The thing is, I’ve seen this confusion with ever other game I’ve played, WoD included. There is nothing inherent to the systems that makes them immune to it. If you have a good GM he can reduce or maybe eliminate it, but I’ve never seen a system that did.

39

That’s not D&D. That’s Paranoia! What’s the fun if your character isn’t at risk? (mutter mutter)

40

You can, but you don’t have to. I’ve played D&D with and without, and like I said, for combat it’s damn near impossible to work without a grid. For the other systems I mentioned, a grid is useful but not at all necessary.