1. Magic items being less essential. I don't like the magic item economy of 3E, and the reliance characters have on their gear to be successful in higher levels of play.
2. Spell durations being simplified. Tracking multiple buffs at high levels is a pain in 3E, especially when you are a dm trying to run battles with multiple spell casters.
3. Races have benefits that are added as you level up. I like the idea of race having more impact on your abilities as your character progresses.
4. Clerics not being healing b*%!~es.
5. More options for fighters. The weapon you choose will have a greater impact on your fighting style. You will have some more tatcial options due to manouvers.
I don't know enough about the system to add much else to the list at this point. There might be more down the road.
Ditto on the magical system. I love the variety of spells in the current system, but this Vancian cast and forget stuff has ALWAYS bothered me.
The problem is, I'm not sure that this Harry Potter thing they are doing is an improvement.
Wait and see. Wait and see.
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Ditto on the magical system. I love the variety of spells in the current system, but this Vancian cast and forget stuff has ALWAYS bothered me.
The problem is, I'm not sure that this Harry Potter thing they are doing is an improvement.
Wait and see. Wait and see.
OMFG!
We agreed on something!
_drops dead_
_pops Second Wind_
_stabilizes at -9_
lol
personally, I think a lot of our quibbling is a combined result of you hastily writing out your ideas and my crankiness.
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1. Gno gnomes. I really do hate those little buggers.
2. Loss of Vancian magic. Not a big 'Huzzah!" from me, but I'm looking forward to checking it out.
3. The lamentation of 3e fanboys is music to my ears.
4. The assertion that it will have less prep time.
5. Evening out the levels so that perhaps high/epic levels don't suck to run.
6. The new cosmology.
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1. I don't mind the new cosmology overall. I think I want to see more.
2. Multi-room/multi-monster encounters.
3. Potentially less prep time. Though I really don't have that much of a problem now, it would be nice if things were streamlined in this area.
4. The art looks great. I have always liked Bill O'Connor's work.
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3. The lamentation of 3e fanboys is music to my ears.
LOL!
At least I made the 1st Post to the Thread. NaNa'na'Nana ;)I have to come clean, though -- I don't like 3E (though not too excited about 4E), I just despise WotC for cancelling the mags, made all the worse with their botching of the 4E PR.
(More than) Enough said.
[/Threadjack]
I like the idea of eliminating Vancian magic but don't want official D&D to be an excersize in Powergaming. Ditto with the same reason regarding fighter/weapon issue.
I like Bahamut, Bane and Asmodeus -- HATE St Cuthburt, dumbass-Kord, Heiron&Hex -- but I think it's wrong to change The Great Wheel because so many groups' games are invested in it.
I don't believe for a second that the "less prep time" method will be useful to any DM who runs a deeper, more mature or developed game -- it's a hoax unless your group plays video game-like campaigns.
-W. E. Ray
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I don't believe for a second that the "less prep time" method will be useful to any DM who runs a deeper, more mature or developed game -- it's a hoax unless your group plays video game-like campaigns.
Asa DM who runs several games with far less prep time than 3e, I assure you that less prep time doesn't mean a video-gamey campaign.
Number crunching 3e statblocks doesn't make a game mature.
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It would be cool if, as people put in what they like, if they have a link to the description (on gleemax, or wizards, or enworld, or wherever) that would be great.
If you've noted any of my posts before, I won't be supporting 4e - but I still want to know about it. :) And where better to hear what is supposed to be the improvement that makes the new rules necessary than from those who are looking forward to them?
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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All this is based on what they have given us. I hope these points are done well "in print", because they are really the "selling points" to me at the moment.
1) Per Encounter Spells. No more "10 minutes of superman, 20 hours of suck"
2) Equal Option Density per class. Face it, "Move and Attack or Full Attack, or dare i declare a Power Attack?!" is not really that interesting an option
3) Easier Encounter Management. Honestly, preparing for a battle about as long as it plays out is pretty wacked out.
Last but not least:
4) Elimination of the Law/Chaos Axis of Alignment. Good, Neutral and Evil is hard enough to get any two gamers really agree on (Especially Neutral vs Evil...), with Law and Chaos it is next to impossible.
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4) Elimination of the Law/Chaos Axis of Alignment. Good, Neutral and Evil is hard enough to get any two gamers really agree on (Especially Neutral vs Evil...), with Law and Chaos it is next to impossible.
Yeah, I like the alignment change too. But, I would have preferred they went with Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic instead. Good and evil can be fairly subjective. Orderly or chaotic, not so much.
Some of the above are for sure to be added to the list.
-Doing a away with alignment (Yeah)!
-Low level mages not running out of spells after 3 castings (yeah)!
-Less time for the dm to spend prepping monsters (well I'll wait and see on this one). Rpgs have always been pretty labour intensive to gm regardless of the system, so I'm not convinced that the prep time can be reduced all that significantly, at least not for someone like me who tends to spend a lot of time preparing for game sessions.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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1) That they've gone and not put all the 'core' mosnters in the MM I upsetting people.
2) That they've drug their feet for so long on hte SRD that Pathfinder 3 is more and more likely to be 3.5
3) That Clark may follow suit with Slumbering Tsar
4) That GameMastery will get to test the waters for 4.0 before Pathfinder does.
5) That people are dumping their 3.x stuff at bargin basement prices.
I hope they make some relatively minor modifications to combat. One of my gripes is the designers' apparent confusion regarding size modifiers and 'hitting' in combat. A halfling gets +1 in melee against a human because of size and less damage with halfling-sized weapons, the rationale being that a halfling has a big target. When they are close enough to be in melee, the human essentially occupies the entire field of vision of a 3 foot tall combatant.
But here are the problems:
1)I agree that a halfling may have a good chance to make contact with a human's body during melee. However, that would be at least balanced by a halfling's challenge to hit, meaning land a blow that causes at least one hit point of damage. I'm sure a young kid could beat me about the knees, but the chances of hurting me are slim. It's
understood that a 5 round melee is more than each combatant swinging a sword 5 times. You can assume that you smack each other's armor and weapons, land light or grazing or glancing blows, and generally 'hit' each other many times. But you're not hitting in game terms every time. In the current system, it seems as if that lower chance to 'hit' somehow migrated into a bonus to hit and less damage, which doesn't really make sense. Likewise, a human has a -1 against a halfling.
Assuming my chance to 'hit' a halfling's body is lower because my target is small, shouldn't that be balanced by the simple fact that a
high percentage of my 'hits' against someone that small would be hits? If you weigh 30 pounds, even if I don't strike a vulnerable spot (let's say I 'hit' your breastplate solidly with a mace), you're gonna feel it. Likely that wouldn't be true if I were fighting someone the same size.
2)The big target argument falls down because a 3 foot tall combatant can't exploit a medium combatant's whole form, including most of the really vital spots which would be 'hits' if you got them. If you're 3 feet tall you're not hitting my head, neck, chest, arms, or upper abdomen. You might not be able to 'hit' my abdomen at all, actually (I've never crossed swords with a halfling).
1. The fact that my fiance will run a game with the new edition, meaning I don't have to sully my hands with it.
2. The lamentations of 4E fanboys when the edition flops.
3. Bargain discount 3.X books.
4. Being a 3.X fanboy.
I like the fact that 3ed books will cost less and that I don't have to worry about timeline anymore for my FR campaign...
Apart from that, I like the fact that D&D 4.5 and 5 will be out in no time and destroy all the arguments of WOTC fanboys...
Ah and I like the latest Clutch album that I'm listening while reading the boards, but this is not really relevant... ;)
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Races gaining abilities with levels (like the whole Raptoran flight thing) sounds much more playable than the LA kludge.
No alignments sounds nice. I've always wanted to play a martial artist who 'flips out and kill stuff.' (Barbarian / Monk, illegal thanks to alignment considerations.)
Being a GURPS / True20 player, I've never been terribly fond of healing being limited to Clerics, who then have to be shoved all sorts of ridiculous crap to make them 'fun.' Ugh. Magic is magic. Magic healing is just like any other type of magic.
More options for Fighters *might* be nice, if it isn't Wuxia crap like Bo9S 'maneuvers' that let me swing my sword and hit everyone in 30 ft. or catch on fire or bizarre non-Fighter-y crap like that (that's what magical fighter hybrids like the Duskblade are for!). Stuff that makes a Fighter awesome at swinging his sword and delivering brutal amounts of damage, rending their armor or imposing some sort of status effects (nauseated from a morningstar to the junk, temporarily blinded from a slashing wound to the forehead or lamed from a leg-shot) sounds fun.
The loss of Vancian spellcasting is a long time coming. I liked his books, when I was twelve, but I've read about 200 fantasy books since then that *don't* use a memorization schema and I'm much more comfortable with a magic system that doesn't use that unique and colorful system. I'd be similarly disinterested in a 30 year old game whose magic system was based entirely off of A Spell for Chameleon, or The Cat in the Hat. Vancian spellcasting is a straightjacket to creativity, although I'd be fine with it being an option, since I've grown fond of some of the tactical nature of prepared spellcasting and I'm sure there are others who like it. More options are always better than less. I don't have to like *everything* in the book. Measure twice, cut once, they say. Better to leave in something that a strong minority likes than accidentally cut too much...
The fact that some people are upset about various changes is very much *not* something I enjoy (I'll likely just play a 3.75 with some of the best features of 4E folded into a 3.5 game anyway). I'm too old to get the 'kewlness' of revelling in others discomfort. I must not have pulled enough wings off of flies as a child or something...
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The fact that some people are upset about various changes is very much *not* something I enjoy (I'll likely just play a 3.75 with some of the best features of 4E folded into a 3.5 game anyway). I'm too old to get the 'kewlness' of revelling in others discomfort. I must not have pulled enough wings off of flies as a child or something...
OK, that made me laugh. :) I agree that it's too bad some folks have come into this thread to kind of spoil it like that. I, for one, am watching this thread for a collection of the "selling points" of 4e to see what people are really understanding about what the new edition is claiming to offer. Nobody should expect me to be converted to 4e, by any means, but I can be civil and supportive of those who are actually looking forward to the new edition.
And there definitely are things that I've heard that I like about the new edition (I think all of which have already been mentioned), there are also things I don't like... the things I like I will easily retrofit into the 3.5 rules, though, as you've suggested as well.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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OK, that made me laugh. :) I agree that it's too bad some folks have come into this thread to kind of spoil it like that. I, for one, am watching this thread for a collection of the "selling points" of 4e to see what people are really understanding about what the new edition is claiming to offer. Nobody should expect me to be converted to 4e, by any means, but I can be civil and supportive of those who are actually looking forward to the new edition.
Well, the OP did ask for things we've heard about 4E that we like. I tried to be positive about it. WotC's decisions have benefits for me, I listed them ;-)
Seriously, I hope 4.e keeps the game alive for another 10 years. I don't want my friends' grandkids watching us old farts rolling dice and saying "Gramps, that's so 20th century."
Based entirely on what's been published on ENWorld, my favorites are (in no order):
End of (or reduced) Vancian system
This is what kept me from enjoying playing a wizard. It's fundamentally bad way to manage a game and absolutely no way to entice new players into the game.
No more save-or-die effects
Nothing says "hero" like turning a corner and dropping dead because you saw a bodak.
No more touch or flat-footed ACs
When it comes into play it still to this day slows the game down because there's always someone who's forgotten to calculate it, or didn't write it down, or something.
No more CRs
They don't work to the point of being meaningless--best to be rid of them.
Unified progression of BAB and saves
Yay!
The idea of codified at will, per encounter, and per day abilities
This is pretty big actually and will have a lot of impact on how the game is played. Mainly, it means spellcasters can continue to do something past 9:03 a.m. and I'm all for that.
Fewer feat trees
The amount of choices can be overwhelming, especially to new players but also to exisiting players.
Prestige classes gone in favor of progression/paths/&c.
I like the idea of continuing to be who you are rather than stopping and becoming someone else. If this helps prevent people from having to multiclass so much, or if this helps with multiclassing being such a choke chain in character progression, I'm all for it.
Magic item creation no longer requires XP
Having to spend XP on anything is bad. I don't know of anyone who actually uses that rule, but it's good that it's gone anyway.
Whatever the overhaul of Grapple is
I dunno what it is but I can't wait to see what it is.
Consolidation of skills
Hide and Move Silently are a single skill? For the win!
What I'd like to see:
Spell level and caster level parity
By that I mean: To cast a 5th-level spell, you need to be a 5th-level caster. There's no valid explanation for why you have to be a 5th-level caster to cast [i]3rd/[i]-level spells. Try explaining it to someone new in the game and there's really no reason other than "that's the way it's always been."
Revamp/simplifcation of shapechanging
Polymorphing, wildshaping, &c. are by far too horrifically complicated than they need to be. I've had one person in my group stop being a druid because it was too complicated, had another person in another group just stick with three or four forms because it was so much effort to recalculate everything, and so on. It needs work, it needs major change.
Honestly, I'm not sure. The whole thing has become such a muddled morass in my head that I have a hard time separating stuff they've actually said from stuff they've implied, stuff that people have exaggerated, and stuff that I've read between the lines.
Their initial comment that Star Wars Saga Edition was "a significant preview" of 4E was welcome news, as I like it quite a lot. (Heck, I've created my own sword & sorcery variant.) On the other hand, the actual mechanics they've revealed don't seem to have a whole lot of connection with SWSE that I can make out.
The -principles- of reduced item dependence, "multiclassing always works," and so forth, certainly appeal to me. The reality of them, based on what we've seen, I'm very dubious of.
-The Gneech