Before I begin, I want to preface this by saying that this is not a troll, but genuine questions. I really would like someone to explain these to me.
Some issues cited by WotC and others in the pro-4E camp I can understand. Others, I go, "So?" So I am asking for someone to give me their side of the story and to help me understand their point of view as to why these need fixed.
1) The magic system. Arguments I've heard for why it needs changed to a new level of spells every level gained are that it is an assumed setting piece. I don't agree. I see as mere mechanics and just a way to explain a piece of the setting. What else is the problem? Is it just preference? If that's all it is, I can understand it, even if I don't agree. But are there any other problems that I am just missing? You gain spells at every level.
2) Subsystems. Subsystems like grapple work just fine once you get the hang of it. Practice makes perfect. How good do you expect to be at something unless you practice it? I mean if the system is changed to be more like an attack roll, I can see that, even if I feel it is a bit of dumbing down.
3) Roles. I don't understand the need for a pre-defined party role. At all. I can see their need in an MMORPG where you're just trying to beat the game, but when you're role playing, does it matter if your party has the "optimal" build? As long as everyone is having fun, who cares? Telling me that one character is a striker as opposed to a controller only tells me what I can't do with the character instead of what I can do with it. Yea it'll help me to make a character when I am new. So 2 months later, I figured out how to build a character. Why is this necessary? If I want to make a grapple specialist fighter (more akin to a controller) isn't that my preference? If I want to make a suboptimal character, why can't I? Why do I need told how to play my characer?
I'm sure there are more, but I'm blanking at the moment. Others feel free to add their questions. And please, lets keep this thread relatively focused.
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Before I begin, I want to preface this by saying that this is not a troll, but genuine questions. I really would like someone to explain these to me.
Some issues cited by WotC and others in the pro-4E camp I can understand. Others, I go, "So?" So I am asking for someone to give me their side of the story and to help me understand their point of view.
Good questions, I'll see what I can do.
1) The magic system. Arguments I've heard for why it needs changed to a new level of spells every level gained are that it is an assumed setting piece. I don't agree. I see as mere mechanics and just a way to explain a piece of the setting. What else is the problem? Is it just preference? If that's all it is, I can understand it, even if I don't agree. But are there any other problems that I am just missing? You gain spells at every level.
I think "Vancean" magic rubs many the wrong way. Its really an issue with cast a spell then forget it that bothers people. This system comes from Jack Vance who wrote some fantasy novels where magic was...failing and wizards had a hard time grasping and hanging on to it. Contrast this with Say Robert Jordans "Wheel of Time", where magic is something you tap into and weave.
If a level 20 wizard casts all his 1st level spells and no other, but wants to cast a magic missle, tough...he's tapped out despite having an arsenal of death in other spells. His "power" is still awesome, but he can't do the simplest of spells.
You are right that its mechanics that explain (express) the setting but I wouldn't say they are "mere" mechanics. Vancean Magic (setting) implies magic is rare, magic is difficult to use, and magic is fading from the world. This is where many grognards like me cut our teeth. But 3E can hardly be said to be expressing that setting. The fading magic theme is gone and they need a system that reflects a new paradigm for magic.
2) Subsystems. Subsystems like grapple work just fine once you get the hang of it. Practice makes perfect. How good do you expect to be at something unless you practice it? I mean if the system is changed to be more like an attack roll, I can see that, even if I feel it is a bit of dumbing down.
I am not so sure this a REASON for 4E so much as its a rule thats largely forgotten, messed-up, mis-used, or annoying by many players and DMs in 3E. Its not really a fix but a change. If you are going to create a new edition, why not "fix" this? I don't think that its broken, per se, but if no one is really using it or are mis-using it or its not fun, then it needs a change.
3) Roles. I don't understand the need for a pre-defined party role. At all. I can see their need in an MMORPG where you're just trying to beat the game, but when you're role playing, does it matter if your party has the "optimal" build? As long as everyone is having fun, who cares? Telling me that one character is a striker as opposed to a controller only tells me what I can't do with the character instead of what I can do with it. Yea it'll help me to make a character when I am new. So 2 months later, I figured out how to build a character. Why is this necessary? If I want to make a grapple specialist fighter (more akin to a controller) isn't that my preference? If I want to make a suboptimal character, why can't I? Why do I need told how to play my characer?
I don't think 4E will pigeonhole you into a role. I am pretty confident that just like 3E, feat selection, racial selection, talent selection, multi-classing, etc will allow you to express your "fighter" as any role you want it to.
Truth is this roles arise out of class-based systems. Skill-based gaming systems really blur the roles. So, as long as D&D has classes, D&D has roles, whether or not you explicitly spell them out. 3E has roles. Say you build a fighter as an archer...what does this fighter do? in 4E terminology he is a striker.
The idea of roles is one you use for NEW players. "Here is a fighter. His job is defend other characters. Lets start playing". Seasoned characters will always find ways to change it up, its part of the fun of character creation, and I am confident 4E will provide options to do so.
However, I do think it may be a mistake to call too much attention to roles in the CORE books. Talking about them in a meta-game sense or in a design and development sense is one thing. But when you start peppering the DMG and PHB with those terms, I think you may find (particularly new) players feeling they "MUST" adhere to those roles.
The video game analogy is a good one. In World of Warcraft a Priest is a healer, thats their role. But if a choose the shadow talent tree I am really a DPS character.
Swat teams have roles, members of a squad or platoon have roles. You might have a medic, a heavy gunner, a rifleman, etc. No one would say that the medic never fires a gun, or the heavy gunner never binds a buddy's wound. But by and large, the medic does the doctoring and the heavy gunner fires the M60.
I'm sure there are more, but I'm blanking at the moment. Others feel free to add their questions. And please, lets keep this...
I'm sure some changes will be due to the OGL - especially changes where things were working just fine.
That doesn't mean they won't be good changes, but I'm sure that part of the design goal was to remove as much as possible from "open" content to more WotC-controlled content.
If a level 20 wizard casts all his 1st level spells and no other, but wants to cast a magic missle, tough...he's tapped out despite having an arsenal of death in other spells. His "power" is still awesome, but he can't do the simplest of spells.
You are right that its mechanics that explain (express) the setting but I wouldn't say they are "mere" mechanics. Vancean Magic (setting) implies magic is rare, magic is difficult to use, and magic is fading from the world. This is where many grognards like me cut our teeth. But 3E can hardly be said to be expressing that setting. The fading magic theme is gone and they need a system that reflects a new paradigm for magic.
Fair points. And I never did understand where the term "vancean" came from so thank you for the explaination.
I don't think that its broken, per se, but if no one is really using it or are mis-using it or its not fun, then it needs a change.
Ehhhh .... ok. From where I set, it looks like Wizards says that Grapple is the single biggest reason why a new edition is NEEDED and needed right this very second. So I can understand what you're saying but I still don't understand wizards' reasons.
The idea of roles is one you use for NEW players. ... However, I do think it may be a mistake to call too much attention to roles in the CORE books.
While I agree in theory, I am pessimistic in this sense. It sounds rather easy to make class abilities so narrowly focued that a fighter is pigeonholed into the big dumb fighter role.
Swat teams have roles, members of a squad or platoon have roles. You might have a medic, a heavy gunner, a rifleman, etc. No one would say that the medic never fires a gun, or the heavy gunner never binds a buddy's wound. But by and large, the medic does the doctoring and the heavy gunner fires the M60.
True, but I don't think this analogy holds. A Swat team is a preconstructed, optimal make-up group as opposed to "those that happened to be in the tavern when a woman comes in screaming her head off about her stolen baby."
1) The magic system.
The central problem is the Vancian system. There are lots of things that I personally find objectionable, but here's one that's more objective, I think...
It's outside the expectation of someone new entering the hobby today--and new customers are vital to keep the hobby going at all. New people must be attracted. Someone new to the hobby expects that they'll be able to play their character for the duration of the game, not run out of wizard things to do at 9:03 a.m. playing their 1st-level wizard.
As well no one entering the hobby today has ever heard of the Vance books. There are no (or not enough) examples in fantasy movies, TV, or video games (that I can think of anyway) which would suggest the Vancian system is a fun way to play. The fantasy that new people are exposed to expect that wizards would have some powerful spells they can do sometimes--but some weaker ones they can do all the time.
A bonus second reason: The Vancian system keeps D&D from simulating fantasy stories you see in media today, again things that new people would be exposed to. If you want to simulate a world where wizards can cast spells without preparation (say for example a world where after you learn a spell you can cast it at will, so long as you have enough mana or what have you), you can't do it without changing the rules. And changing the rules, especially to that degree, is too much to ask for many people.
The Vancian system fundamentally causes more problems than it solves.
A bonus third reason: In almost every fantasy movie and book that has a wizard, that wizard has a staff. The magic system of D&D discourages the use of staffs because they're horrifically expensive and cannot be recharged. They're more like giant multi-use wands than the wizard's life-long companion we see in fantasy media. 4e seems to be putting staffs back into wizards' hands by making it more like a focus (which is closer, I think, to what people expect).
2) Subsystems. Subsystems like grapple work just fine once you get the hang of it.
Remembering the procedure is only half of it. The other half is that it brings the game to a halt because it's a complex (needlessly complex) procedure that takes an inordinate amount of time to adjudicate.
And as a corollary, it's so complex and game-stopping that grapple becomes eschewed, so the practice you refer to may never take place or be shorthanded and done wrong.
3) Roles. I don't understand the need for a pre-defined party role.
Here's one: In one game I play, everyone made up their characters independently. As a result, everyone (except me) made a multiclassed-to-heck hybrid arcane caster/rogue-like amalgamation. The problem is that everyone in the party was trying to fill the same role and, as a result, we don't have a tank or a healer. Worse, despite being an all-caster party (except for my character) there isn't anyone who's appropriately spell-powered for their character because everyone's multiclassed. My character is an archer/rogue and she's frequently called upon to be the tank. That's wrong. The kicker is that everyone at the table has been playing D&D since 1e. We should all know better but, still, we didn't.
Having roles can help even experienced players be mindful of avoiding such a seemingly simple pitfall and it can dramatically help new people entering the hobby understand what the party is supposed to do.
Certainly you can have classes that fulfill various roles but I see its point as being a way to help to make sure that all roles are filled by someone at least.
1) Magic system and 30 spell levels. On this one, it's hard to know where they're headed, since this is the area they've really told us the least about. My guess is that when they decided they were going to 30 levels instead of 20, they realized that stretching the existing 9 levels of spells across 30 levels of experience was going to cause a mess, and that's when they decided to change it.
2) Subsystems. Yeah, grappling gets mentioned all the time. I think an even better example is Turning Undead. It has a mechanic all its own, that no one can memorize, with a d20 roll on one table and then a 2d6+mod roll. And then, because 3rd edition undead get no Con mod, they end up having huge HD for their CR, so the Turn Undead ability becomes gradually more useless, the higher level you are.
I like the idea of eliminating unnecessary subsystems because it makes the game cleaner, and it makes it easier to create character sheets where absolutely everything you need to play your character (or NPC, or monster) fits on a single page. When I saw how WotC did one-pagers for the 20th level PCs in the Dungeon Delve at GenCon 2 years ago, it became a goal of mine to condense my NPCs similarly, and it really sped up my ability to run the high-level adventures in the Age of Worms. Although I admit, it wasn't quite possible all the time (e.g. Kyuss).
3) Roles. I'm hoping that the importance of Roles is more conceptual, rather than actual.
As in, the role of a cleric is to be a "Leader" which apparently means healing, buffing, and similar support while getting into the front lines in melee. When they design the class, they will have a primary role it will fill. Many of the most synergistic feats will be ones that support that primary role. But (I'm hopng) if you want to play a dwarven priest who is more of a Defender, you can tweak the major class abilities a bit, and/or select daily powers, spells and feats that support more of a Defender role instead.
I have no idea if this will turn out to be true. But from some things we've been told (particularly by Stephen Rodney-McFarland), I'm optimistic that Roles will be guidance, and not strait-jacket.
EXAMPLE: In 3.5, a rogue's "role" is to be in melee. If you want to play a skilled sneaky archer, you're much better off with a ranger than with a rogue in 3.5, something that we struggled with when 3rd edition first came out. "Roles" could help clarify this sort of thing from the outset of the new edition - and maybe make it possible to see how to tweak an existing class to make it fill a different role.
Okay, lost my post, so I'll try it again.
1) The magic system. Arguments I've heard for why it needs changed to a new level of spells every level gained are that it is an assumed setting piece. I don't agree. I see as mere mechanics and just a way to explain a piece of the setting. What else is the problem? Is it just preference? If that's all it is, I can understand it, even if I don't agree. But are there any other problems that I am just missing? You gain spells at every level.
From what I've read, levels will now stretch from 1-25. I dont know if they changed this to 1-30, but as far as I'm concerned its a semantics thing. Like, in 3rd Edition haste is a 3rd level spell. If they make it a 5th-level spell in 4E, meaning you get it at 5th-level yourself, that really doesnt escalate the power level of the spell itself.
However, I think that there is a mechanics reason for stretching the levels. One thing that comes to mind is that if they want to help make multiclassed spellcasters more viable, that by granting spells every level (as opposed to a new spell level at every other level) it will keep them up to snuff.
Basically, I think there is a reason for it that we dont know yet due to not seeing other mechanics.
2) Subsystems. Subsystems like grapple work just fine once you get the hang of it. Practice makes perfect. How good do you expect to be at something unless you practice it? I mean if the system is changed to be more like an attack roll, I can see that, even if I feel it is a bit of dumbing down.
If you use grapple a lot then its likely your group wont have the problem of grinding the game to a halt to reference the rules. Now, as far as rules go grapple is very complicated. Its also not very useful, since if a monster is tougher, stronger, has more legs, or is just bigger than you that it severely hampers your ability to use it properly in the first place.
Since more often than not many monsters ARE going to fit one or more of the criteria above, it can severely impact how useful it is, and therefore how often it gets used.
Also, the inability to use it, coupled with the penalties it slaps on, well...it could be better.
If you arent a group that uses it a lot, then you likely WILL need to stop the game to find out the four steps, and then read what it stops you from doing, etc etc. That in itself might make a character more likely to just throw his hands up in the air, take a -4 to hit, and start doling out non-lethal damage if they want to take someone alive, or just use disarm to remove a wizard's staff, or trip, or something that is much much easier to do and will likely provide a greater advantage.
Grapple seems to be a two-pronged issue: too much complexity for too little gain.
3) Roles. I don't understand the need for a pre-defined party role. At all. I can see their need in an MMORPG where you're just trying to beat the game, but when you're role playing, does it matter if your party has the "optimal" build? As long as everyone is having fun, who cares? Telling me that one character is a striker as opposed to a controller only tells me what I [b]can't do with the character instead of what I can do with it. Yea it'll help me to make a character when I am new. So 2 months later, I figured out how to build a character. Why is this necessary? If I want to make a grapple specialist fighter (more akin to a controller) isn't that my preference? If I want to make a suboptimal character, why can't I? Why do I need told how to play my characer?[/b]
Ah, roles. Roles do not exist to tell you that you must play your character this way, they exist to tell you, in general, what you can expect your character to be immediately good at. For example, making an armorless fighter in 3rd Edition is a pretty stupid idea. You really cant make a swashbuckler-type with that class. Roles will help you easily determine, at a glance, what the class is generally geared for, but like in 3E you are free to break those molds (which the designers have said).
You can multiclass or take training feats, to name two things that come off the top of my head.
People play games to generally have fun. What fun is depends on the person (competition, exploration, escapism, power-accumulation, immersion, etc). Since D&D is generally about a group of characters working together to achieve a goal (ie, win), it makes sense.
The upside is that you will probably be able to branch out and do other stuff more easily without seriously impacting your overall effectiveness. Remember, playing a gimped character doesnt make you a better player.
In the end, they arent saying: this is what this character does, and you must play it our way no matter what. Its like having that role entry in the PH, but summing it up with one word.
1) Magic system and 30 spell levels. On this one, it's hard to know where they're headed, since this is the area they've really told us the least about. My guess is that when they decided they were going to 30 levels instead of 20, they realized that stretching the existing 9 levels of spells across 30 levels of experience was going to cause a mess, and that's when they decided to change it.
2) Subsystems. Yeah, grappling gets mentioned all the time. I think an even better example is Turning Undead. It has a mechanic all its own, that no one can memorize, with a d20 roll on one table and then a 2d6+mod roll. And then, because 3rd edition undead get no Con mod, they end up having huge HD for their CR, so the Turn Undead ability becomes gradually more useless, the higher level you are.
I like the idea of eliminating unnecessary subsystems because it makes the game cleaner, and it makes it easier to create character sheets where absolutely everything you need to play your character (or NPC, or monster) fits on a single page. When I saw how WotC did one-pagers for the 20th level PCs in the Dungeon Delve at GenCon 2 years ago, it became a goal of mine to condense my NPCs similarly, and it really sped up my ability to run the high-level adventures in the Age of Worms. Although I admit, it wasn't quite possible all the time (e.g. Kyuss).
3) Roles. I'm hoping that the importance of Roles is more conceptual, rather than actual.
As in, the role of a cleric is to be a "Leader" which apparently means healing, buffing, and similar support while getting into the front lines in melee. When they design the class, they will have a primary role it will fill. Many of the most synergistic feats will be ones that support that primary role. But (I'm hopng) if you want to play a dwarven priest who is more of a Defender, you can tweak the major class abilities a bit, and/or select daily powers, spells and feats that support more of a Defender role instead.
I have no idea if this will turn out to be true. But from some...
The general idea I get from roles is that they will help you figure out what classes are geared for what job, and not that you will HAVE to have a party that has one or more of each role in order to succeed. That is more true of 3rd Edition, where if you dont have a rogue that you will get hit by every trap you come across, and if you dont have a cleric then you wont be able to heal unless you spend a LOT of downtime (and supplies) resting. Or blowing it all on curative items which in turn just puts you behind on wealth, making it increasingly harder for you to keep up the pace with your level (unless the DM uses houserules or drops a lot of treasure on you to compensate).
My thoughts are that with some racial customization, feat selection, or even a few multiclassing bits that you will be able to fulfill other roles as well. I doubt your dwarven cleric will have the stickyness that a fighter has, but you can probably do a viable build.In 3rd Edition there is a heavy emphasis on making sure that your ranks are maxed out in order to pace traps and monsters of a similar CR (which isnt always correct), and that you have a few key classes whom have exclusive rights to certain abilities.
It seems that 4E will change all that and allow much more lenient party builds.
The first two issues have been described pretty well but I think there is more reasoning behind the issue of roles.
The problem with party or character roles comes in with published adventures and is especially problematic in the RPGA which uses published adventures. Obviously certain assumptions need to be made when designing and creating adventures in order for the creator to have some kind of common framework to work with. The most common assumption (right or wrong)is a party of at least four that has at least one fighter, one cleric, one wizard, and one rogue. That assumption allows the creator to design encounters and adventures that are not only internally consistent (within the adventure) but also consistent across levels and products. So when using published adventures and playing in the RPGA it is expected that certain roles will be fulfilled within the party. That means that when one of those roles are not filled in the party the encounters become much more difficult to run or defeat.
In a homebrew campaign or adventure obviously the DM can tailor everything to meet the needs of the group but with published adventures that is a little more difficult to do.
Personally, I hate the idea of roles within a party but I can understand from the standpoint of an adventure writer/creator that having that assumption makes things much easier.
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It's outside the expectation of someone new entering the hobby today--and new customers are vital to keep the hobby going at all. New people must be attracted. Someone new to the hobby expects that they'll be able to play their character for the duration of the game, not run out of wizard things to do at 9:03 a.m. playing their 1st-level wizard.
As well no one entering the hobby today has ever heard of the Vance books. There are no (or not enough) examples in fantasy movies, TV, or video games (that I can think of anyway) which would suggest the Vancian system is a fun way to play. The fantasy that new people are exposed to expect that wizards would have some powerful spells they can do sometimes--but some weaker ones they can do all the time.
A bonus second reason: The Vancian system keeps D&D from simulating fantasy stories you see in media today, again things that new people would be exposed to. If you want to simulate a world where wizards can cast spells without preparation (say for example a world where after you learn a spell you can cast it at will, so long as you have enough mana or what have you), you can't do it without changing the rules. And changing the rules, especially to that degree, is too much to ask for many people.
Now before I address this point, I want to say that I have moved from viscerally angry about 4e to being a fence sitter. I am doing everything in my power to give this new edition a chance to shine. With that said, let's discuss this point.
I do not dispute that you are right about Vance novels not being popular in the general population today, but I have to ask, why try to move D&D to anime (and is there another fantasy element in "fantasy stories in media today?")? Why not just encourage those that want to play anime to play Big Eyes Small Mouth or run the Tri-Stat dX system? Why munge the greatest roleplaying game of all time when it really is not set to tell stories in the mode of "fantasy stories one sees in media today"? If this is such a popular thing, why doesn't Hasboro create a new RPG that better reflects the stories of today with mechanics that meet this (apparently large and demanding) audience? Is the idea to gamble all of the D&D product base, the existing fans and all of its name recognition on this approach? We already have anime and even a WoW RPG. Something tells me that they are not selling well. Why on earth would they want to take something that has been around for 30 years and make it into a game that is already not selling well (WoW RPG and BESM) enough to sustain more than a niche market?
1) The magic system. Arguments I've heard for why it needs changed to a new level of spells every level gained are that it is an assumed setting piece. I don't agree. I see as mere mechanics and just a way to explain a piece of the setting. What else is the problem? Is it just preference? If that's all it is, I can understand it, even if I don't agree. But are there any other problems that I am just missing? You gain spells at every level.
Can't speak to this one, as I haven't been keeping up on 4e magic.
2) Subsystems. Subsystems like grapple work just fine once you get the hang of it. Practice makes perfect. How good do you expect to be at something unless you practice it? I mean if the system is changed to be more like an attack roll, I can see that, even if I feel it is a bit of dumbing down.
Well, the grapple problem is somewhat misrepresented, I think. Yes, there's a problem in that there's an entirely different suite of rules you use for it that never are referenced or mimicked otherwise; I've been playing D&D since 3.0 came out (to within a month, I believe), and much like flying maneuverability, anytime grappling comes into play somebody has to pull out their PHB or Rules Compendium, because nobody is really confident they remember how it works.
The real problem with grappling as a separate system isn't the (absolutely extant) nobody-remembers-the-rules issue; the issue is that if your character isn't designed for grappling, and you encounter a monster that is, you're hosed. Grappling is sufficiently divorced from the rest of the system in that specialization in grappling is, for whatever reason (and especially for monsters), a much greater boost to grappling than specialization in anything else is a boost to that specialization. Trip isn't devestatingly effective if you aren't using a spiked chain; it gives you a small bonus against your opponent, but a -4 to hit and AC penalty isn't huge for characters who would otherwise be evenly matched.
Now, compare this to grapple. Let's say I'm a level 8 rogue, fighting a behir (along with the rest of my party). I'm flanking the behir with the fighter, and the behir hits me with a bite attack. Now we make an opposed grapple check. I might have a grapple mod of, say, +8 (BAB 6 + 2 strength). The behir has a grapple mod of +25. If the behir rolls a 3 or better, I'm rolling for 20s. I need to make a successful grapple check to do anything at all in subsequent rounds (assuming I don't have a light weapon equipped, which is perfectly plausible). Of course, I can make an Escape Artist check instead of a Grapple check to escape, but unless I've been putting skill points into Escape Artist (which I have, literally, never seen used for anything other than escaping a grapple), that's probably going to be a lower modifier. So, from this point on, I am incapable of doing anything at all unless I roll very well and the behir rolls very poorly, and in the meantime he's making six claw attacks and a constrict attack against me every round, unless maybe he decides to just eat me. In the event that I'm the fighter, not the rogue, I still won't fare particularly well; my grapple check is probably more like +12, but I still have to roll considerably better than the behir to not be absolutely owned. (I'm rolling for 20s if the behir rolls a 7 or better, as opposed to the previous 3 or better. If he rolls a 2, I still need a 15.)
There's some things in D&D which, while not explicitly banned, are taboo; codes of conduct so as to avoid the bigger flaws of the system. You don't take epic feats with your dragonwrought kobold, you don't take away the wizard's spell book, you don't choose something esoteric (like Plant) as a favored enemy (except for thematic reasons, maybe), and you don't initiate a grapple.
3) Roles. I don't understand the need for a pre-defined party role. At all. I can see their need in an MMORPG where you're just trying to beat the game, but when you're role playing, does it matter if your party has the "optimal" build? As long as everyone is having fun, who cares? Telling me that one character is a striker as opposed to a controller only tells me what I can't do with the character instead of what I can do with it. Yea it'll help me to make a character when I am new. So 2 months later, I figured out how to build a character. Why is this necessary? If I want to make a grapple specialist fighter (more akin to a controller) isn't that my preference? If I want to make a suboptimal character, why can't I? Why do I need told how to play my characer?
Pre-defined party roles? They're being renamed from "fighter, cleric, wizard, thief". Your striker/controller example doesn't lose anything if you replace "striker" with "rogue" and "controller' with "wizard". I suspect the new roles are simply an extension of the existing broadening of the old roles; "wizard" became "arcane spellcaster" because you could do it with a sorcerer, too; now "arcane spellcaster" becomes "blaster" or "controller" because you can do it without arcane spells, too. Roles are archetypes; complaining that your guy who hits things with a sword is being classified as a warrior is like complaining that your campaign setting with elves and dwarves is being classified as fantasy.
A bonus second reason: The Vancian system keeps D&D from simulating fantasy stories you see in media today, again things that new people would be exposed to. If you want to simulate a world where wizards can cast spells without preparation (say for example a world where after you learn a spell you can cast it at will, so long as you have enough mana or what have you), you can't do it without changing the rules. And changing the rules, especially to that degree, is too much to ask for many people.
Devil's advocate question: What's wrong with taking the psionic system wholesale, calling it your groups magic system and porting a few other spells over as necessary?
The other half is that it brings the game to a halt because it's a complex (needlessly complex) procedure that takes an inordinate amount of time to adjudicate.
If you're doing a group with a guy that has Improved Grapple, aren't you going to be very familiar with the rules and able to execute them quickly? If you're a character with Improved Grapple aren't you going to have notes on the character sheet on how to do it quickly? I'm sorry but I don't really feel your argument holds any water.
In an upcoming campaign, I'm playing a bull rush specialist. If I was the DM and one of my players said their character is going to be doing alot of bull rushes, I'd make sure that I'd make a note when drawing up characters as to what his "resist the bull rush" is. Sounds like standard DM prep to me.
Here's one: In one game I play, everyone made up their characters independently. As a result, everyone (except me) made a multiclassed-to-heck hybrid arcane caster/rogue-like amalgamation. The problem is that everyone in the party was trying to fill the same role and, as a result, we don't have a tank or a healer. Worse, despite being an all-caster party (except for my character) there isn't anyone who's appropriately spell-powered for their character because everyone's multiclassed. My character is an archer/rogue and she's frequently called upon to be the tank. That's wrong. The kicker is that everyone at the table has been playing D&D since 1e. We should all know better but, still, we didn't.
Having roles can help even experienced players be mindful of avoiding such a seemingly simple pitfall and it can dramatically help new people entering the hobby understand what the party is supposed to do.
I don't see how having "roles" is going to solve players from not talking to each other what kind of character they'd like to play. If they're not going to talk to each other about what kind of character they're going to play, they're not going to talk to each other about what kind of role they're going to play. So again, I can't see your argument.
I mean in my group, we each make up our characters independently but we also say, "I'm really excited about my ______." When we do that, we all know, ok, that person is playing that kind of character. Maybe I'll look at something else or a different take on that kind of character.
Good questions, however I don't think any of your questions are driving the motivation for a new edition, simply they are taking the opportunity to make these changes with the new edition change over.
1) The magic system. Arguments I've heard for why it needs changed to a new level of spells every level gained are that it is an assumed setting piece. I don't agree. I see as mere mechanics and just a way to explain a piece of the setting. What else is the problem? Is it just preference? If that's all it is, I can understand it, even if I don't agree. But are there any other problems that I am just missing? You gain spells at every level.
As with most of the things mentioned, a lot of the changers are for new gamers. I think a lot of people forget this fact. WotC is designing the new edition (and writing the books), with the new gamer in mind. As such, it makes more sense that the level of spell you cast is the same as your character level. It is also I assume due to ALL classes getting powers, and it is just easier to say each class gets a new power of their level ever time they level up. It barely makes sense that casters get spells equal to the level * 2 - 1 (actually, as I write that, it makes no sense at all). And it makes even less sense for 5th level fighter to only get 3rd level powers.
2) Subsystems. Subsystems like grapple work just fine once you get the hang of it. Practice makes perfect. How good do you expect to be at something unless you practice it? I mean if the system is changed to be more like an attack roll, I can see that, even if I feel it is a bit of dumbing down.
I don't think grapple on it's own is a reason for the new edition, simply as symptomatic of the flaws in 3.5 they want to fix in 4th. If you don't use it, it is complicated, and slows the game to a halt. It is complicated, and needlessly so. Yes, practice makes perfect. But why do I need to practice it before I even have a vague idea of what it does? This is supposed to be a game. Its supposed to be fun. Again, imagine the new player. They sit down to their first game, and first attack, try to grapple the NPC they need to capture alive. Now the game grinds to a halt while the DM and player try to work out exactly what happens. Doesn't sound like a good introduction to me.
Or even worse, a group of guys pick up the core books from the FLGS and sit down to play their first ever session of rpgs. After rolling up characters, they enter their first combat, and they are grappled by a critter with improved grab. Now the game grinds to a halt as the new DM and the new players try to work out exactly what is going on. Who is doing what, and what everyone can and can't do. My bet is it will take them the rest of the session to work it out. If they persevere at all. More likely they give up completely and never come back to roleplaying, preferring WoW where the server takes care of all that stuff.
WotC wants to make the gaming experience as intuitive and clear as possible for these sorts of gamers, and so is looking to streamline and clean up a lot of the clunky subsystems, of which grapple is only one, but the clearest of the lot.
3) Roles. I don't understand the need for a pre-defined party role. At all. I can see their need in an MMORPG where you're just trying to beat the game, but when you're role playing, does it matter if your party has the "optimal" build? As long as everyone is having fun, who cares? Telling me that one character is a striker as opposed to a controller only tells me what I can't do with the character instead of what I can do with it. Yea it'll help me to make a character when I am new. So 2 months later, I figured out how to build a character. Why is this necessary? If I want to make a grapple specialist fighter (more akin to a controller) isn't that my preference? If I want to make a suboptimal character, why can't I? Why do I need told how to play my charatcer?
Roles don't tell you how to play your character. They more tell you what your character gets for "free" Basically, every character gets the basics of their role as part of the chassis of the class, and then you build your customization on top of that. So you if you are playing a "leader" you get your buffing and healing for free, and then you can choose what to layer over the top of it. So no more needing to spend you feats and action as a cleric to heal and buff your allies. Instead, you will get that for free, and can make choices for your character that you want. Roles don't pigeon hole you, they free you. Instead of devoting all your resources to filling your role, you can devote some to other aspects of your character, because you get all the resources you need to fill your role for free.
Also, people need to get further away from their old conceptions of classes. I think in 4th roles and classes are becoming even more of metagame concepts than they were in 3.5. If you want to play a striker, you play a rogue or ranger, not a fighter. A fighter is a defender (as is a paladin), not a striker. Sure, you could build one to fill the role of a striker, but why? Just so you can write fighter on your character sheet? Just rename the rogue as a fighter if that is what you want. I think 4th is making it even clearer that you come up with your character concept, and then choice the role and power source that fits, which should give you you class as well.
And again, for new players, it is much easier to say here, you are a fighter. You are a defender. Stand at the front and protect your party. Now, it doesn't matter what choices they make, their class will have the capabilities to do so, even if the make sub par choices.
So with the new edition, WotC is designing for new player. Have a look at tome of Battle for this philosophy. It is very hard to accidentally make a weak martial adept. As long as you take the highest level maneuver you can each level, and pay some attention to pre reqs for higher level maneuvers, you will be playable, and able to contribute throughout all the levels. This doesn't mean you choices are meaningless, simply that making obvious intuitive choices can't cripple your character.
If you're doing a group with a guy that has Improved Grapple, aren't you going to be very familiar with the rules and able to execute them quickly? If you're a character with Improved Grapple aren't you going to have notes on the character sheet on how to do it quickly?
It's hardly that easy. Quick, which of the following spells have somatic components, material components, or both: Daze Monster, Blindness/Deafness, Resist Energy, Glitterdust, Ghoul Touch, Alter Self, and Bull's Strength?
If you're a DM, and someone charges up and grapples your spellcaster, you suddenly have to know which spells you can cast and which spells you can't. This invariably results in a lot of downtime and page flipping to figure out what you can even do in that situation.
DMcCoy1693,
I think a large issue here is a mater of perspective.
To the long time home game judge (and hopefully the group s/he is DMing) experienced in the rules is not going to see a great need to change the rules. This person has already either spent time learning a complex subsystem, house ruled it to make it easier, or just glosses over it because it slows down the game. From this perspective its not a problem. Add to the fact that you can game for as little or as much time needed, makes slow downs due to rules issue less acute.
For those playing in Organized Play (e.g. RPGA) where everyone has to play by the Rules As Written (RAW), though slightly modified by the campaign docs, any problems that crop up become speed bumps to play. There is time wasted arguing rules arcana. If the rules themselves slow down play in their execution its even worse. In organized play, you have time limits and bad or broken rules are not your friend. Heck, rules that are just not the best they can be are a problem. From this perspective you don't have the option of ignoring or house ruling a rule. And having to take the time to teach someone how to grapple in a convention or gameday setting is not fun.
Finally, there is the perspective of the manufacturer. Take your table and magnify it by a 100,000 or a 1,000,000. They receive comments, complaints, ideas, and feedback from marketing, customer service, direct observation, other peoples products, and the message boards. All this info floods in. In essence they see the trends and patterns that we as individual players and judges don't see (generally).
So, when you do not understand or agree with what WotC is saying rules that don't work or could work better, you are not wrong... its just from a different end of the observation spectrum.
[EDIT: Added commentary]
So, what is not a barrier to entry for you and your group (usually complex subsystems that may or may not follow the general rules as a whole) becomes a huge issue for new players and those who are doing organized play. By making everyone learn needlessly complex rules you are potentially turning off a new customer, something WotC is going to do everything in their power to eliminate.
[/EDIT]
In (Perspective) Service,
Bryan Blumklotz
AKA Saracenus
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<lots of snippage>
1) The magic system.
2) Subsystems. Subsystems like grapple
3) Roles.
1) Since the very first days, back in the '70s or whatever, I've loathed Vancian fire-and-forget spellcasting. There are a thousand other sources of fantasy magic that *don't* involve wizards spending long hours completely forgetting how to use the powers they've spent a lifetime developing, and I'd rather play something more along that line.
And yet... There are plenty of people who *liked* the strategic decisions about what to prepare in the morning and the tactical decisions of what spells to use in each combat, knowing that you might need that resource *even more* in a future combat. It's very war-gamer-y with the resource management concept, and while I don't care or it anymore than I got my rocks off figuring out how much energy I was going to allocate to ECM and ECCM and how much to put in Reserve Warp, I get that it wasn't made *for me.* So I'd prefer if it wasn't just taken out back and shot, but relegated to a specific class for the people who love it, as they did in 3.X with the Sorcerer vs. the Wizard (and later the Warlock, which out-Sorcerered the Sorcerer!).
Just because *I* don't like something doesn't mean that I want it taken away from the people who do like it. I'm not that selfish, nor am I short-sighted enough to want them to stop buying the game because their preferred playstyle is out of vogue this year.
2) Eh. Grapple seemed simple enough to me. I epically fail at seeing the problem. My only problem with Grapple is that I *also* play Vampire, GURPS, M&M, etc. and I sometimes forget which system has which grapple rules and whether or not I can blow a Hero point or make a Stop-Thrust. :)
3) Roles. This is one of the two* features touted in 4E that worries me enough that I won't be dashing out to buy the books. When 3.0 updated to 3.5 and the Ranger suddenly had a couple of options, and the Monk suddenly had a couple of options, and builds started appearing that had Fighters doing battlefield control with AoO provoking feats and reach weapons, and Wizards doing DPS with metamagicked Scorching Rays and whatnot, I was all aflutter with the sheer possibility. The Fighter didn't *have* to be the meatshield. The Wizard could go for single-target whooparse and not be relegated to the queen of save-or-dies. It sounds like roles are a step backwards, to 1st edition, when all Fighters were only different in that they might use a broadsword for the 1d6+1 or a longsword for the d8. Yikes. More options. Giving a character powers that pigeonhole him into a particular 'role' is only soft-shoeing the character into that role.
Plus roles that I enjoy, such as Summoner / Necromancer, no longer seem to be available at all, and multi-role characters like Druids have been taken out behind the woodshed. Maybe they'll come back, but it sounds like they'll be unrecognizable when they do...
*The other being 'one set of rules, with *tons* of fiddly level-by-level powers and options, class based, path based *and* race based, which may or may not affect combat differently *every single round* for PCs and another incompatible system of generation for the monsters that consists of the DM getting to play game designer and do all the work himself, rather than have it on a chart for his convenience.'
4E sounds pretty grueling with all this micromanagement, scores of powers and lots of extra work for the DM.
2) Eh. Grapple seemed simple enough to me. I epically fail at seeing the problem. My only problem with Grapple is that I *also* play Vampire, GURPS, M&M, etc. and I sometimes forget which system has which grapple rules and whether or not I can blow a Hero point or make a Stop-Thrust. :)
This is an excellent point. I don't like the grappling rules in D&D relative to the rest of the system, but taken by itself it's a pretty good system. I can say this because I have, as a player, used unarmed combat in GURPS 4e. And that was before the 4e GURPS Martial Arts came out, which probably made things worse.
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I do not dispute that you are right about Vance novels not being popular in the general population today, but I have to ask, why try to move D&D to anime (and is there another fantasy element in "fantasy stories in media today?")?
Harry Potter - all you need is a wand, the ability to wield it, and training. That fan base is one that WotC would do well to bring into the fold of D&D, but the have certain expectations.
For those playing in Organized Play (e.g. RPGA) where everyone has to play by the Rules As Written (RAW), though slightly modified by the campaign docs, any problems that crop up become speed bumps to play. There is time wasted arguing rules arcana. If the rules themselves slow down play in their execution its even worse. In organized play, you have time limits and bad or broken rules are not your friend. Heck, rules that are just not the best they can be are a problem. From this perspective you don't have the option of ignoring or house ruling a rule. And having to take the time to teach someone how to grapple in a convention or gameday setting is not fun.
THAT is a damn fine point that I would never have considered. (Yes, my perspective is from the "home game.")
Do me the favor of continuing to post when you can add to a thread. I'd like to be enlightened further.
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I do not dispute that you are right about Vance novels not being popular in the general population today, but I have to ask, why try to move D&D to anime (and is there another fantasy element in "fantasy stories in media today?")?Harry Potter - all you need is a wand, the ability to wield it, and training. That fan base is one that WotC would do well to bring into the fold of D&D, but the have certain expectations.
Yes that occurred to me but the Harry Potter universe is so removed from Sword and Sorcery it doesn't even qualify as the same genre. No one reading Harry Potter is going to confuse it with high fantasy. You might as well say that Buffy the Vampire Slayer represents "modern fantasy" and therefore we should incorporate the Buffysystem into D&D as well and make sure players can be karate-trained good and evil vampire/witches and whatnot. Again, this may meet some expectation out there of fantasy, but it is not high fantasy; it just isn't D&D. It is, well, Buffy, which I understand already has a roleplaying game for those interested in that genre. (And how well is that game selling btw?) While we are at it, we can review our expectations of fighters, reasoning that many of the fighters in DragonBall-Z can teleport and fly and transform into Super-san mode, so I expect my fighter in D&D to be able to do the same. Thus our new version of high fantasy adventure will consist of Mialee and her teenage vampire friends carrying wands and milling about the dojo just off Platform 9 3/4 looking to fend off the evil staff-waving Voldemort and his posse of tiefling Super-san flying Deatheaters? Something about this just doesn't seem right. I dunno. Call me crazy.
To give another (less snarky) example, saying that Harry Potter fans are ones we D&D'ers should bring into the fold is like telling historical miniature wargamers that based upon sales of Ghost Recon and other "modern military" simulations, the rules for their system will need to accommodate Apache helicopters, laser guided bombs and night vision equipment. I mean really now, what person today conceptualizes war with cannons, muskets and sabers?
And just to clarify, I having nothing against Tri-stat dX, BESM, Buffysystem or other RPGs out there and have played most of them and enjoyed them when I did. I am using them as examples of the niches available, not bashing them.
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If you're doing a group with a guy that has Improved Grapple, aren't you going to be very familiar with the rules and able to execute them quickly? If you're a character with Improved Grapple aren't you going to have notes on the character sheet on how to do it quickly? I'm sorry but I don't really feel your argument holds any water.
This arguement comes up a lot when discussing whether subsystems need revision or not, and I want you to take a step back and look at your core assumption. Many people say "I'm in a group which does grapples a lot, and it seems like a very straightforward system once you give it a little practice." Those people (and you) are completely correct, but hinge on the assumption that a given group will have the opportunities to practice a given subsystem.
However, the nature of a subsystem is that it is only used in specific circumstances. The lesson I take from the pro-grapple folks is that commonly-used systems can actually be quite complex, and will be considered straightforward once understood by their users, who have the opportunity to execute that system frequently. The grapple-revisionist faction, however, teaches us that infrequently used systems need to be simple enough that they can be quickly learned in the rare situations when those rules become relevant.
Putting the two together, it seems to me that the correct answer is to make the core mechanic either very complicated, or very generalized, so as to allow it to adjudicate a wide variety of situations without the need for subsystems. Subsystems can still exist, but need to be very simple to learn, suggesting that they should deviate from the core mechanic in only minor ways.
An (apparently) common mechanic in 4E will be "roll d20. 1-10, bad thing happens. 11-19, okay thing happens. 20, great thing happens." Indications are that there will be relatively few modifiers to that roll. Thus, it can be ported into a wide variety of situations...while a player may not know offhand what the "bad thing," "okay thing" and "great things" are, they can roll that die knowing that when it pops up a 5, they're not going to be happy with the result. I only wish there was that kind of straightforward simplicity when my Enlarge Person'ed Human fighter gets tongue-lashed by a Colossal Toad. Or whatever.
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Yes that occurred to me but the Harry Potter universe is so removed from Sword and Sorcery it doesn't even qualify as the same genre. No one reading Harry Potter is going to confuse it with high fantasy...it just isn't D&D.
Fair enough, but outside of the works of Jack Vance, D&D, and directly D&D derived products, where else do you see the "fire and forget" magic system? There's a very good reason it's refered to as "Vancian Magic."
There's a solid arguement that 4E is a significant departure from prior editions of D&D, particularly in the magic system. But there is no valid arguement that I see equating the elimination of Vancian spellcasting to a departure from the high fantasy genre. Hell, even most of the D&D novels themselves ignore Vancian spellcasting, because it gets in the way of telling the story that they want to tell. The sorcerer in Return of the Archwizards didn't even vaguely resemble a 3E sorcerer's spellcasting, and one goal of those novels was to INTRODUCE the sorcerer into D&D (or at least Faerun).
There has been a compelling case made that 4E is a completely different game, and shouldn't be called D&D. I think it's a stretch, but I see where that perspective comes from. More than anything, it's a marketing choice to call this game D&D. If that bothers you, fair enough, but to paraphrase (I believe) Alan Moore, nobody's ruined anything, and whether 4E succeeds or fails, your 3.5 books will still be on your shelf at home, and nobody's going to destroy them unless you have small siblings or children.
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DMcCoy1693,
For those playing in Organized Play (e.g. RPGA) where everyone has to play by the Rules As Written (RAW), though slightly modified by the campaign docs, any problems that crop up become speed bumps to play. There is time wasted arguing rules arcana. If the rules themselves slow down play in their execution its even worse. In organized play, you have time limits and bad or broken rules are not your friend. Heck, rules that are just not the best they can be are a problem. From this perspective you don't have the option of ignoring or house ruling a rule. And having to take the time to teach someone how to grapple in a convention or gameday setting is not fun.
Sorry saracenus, but I beg to differ : the RPGA is not slightly modified. It is HEAVILY modified. not only you must learn all the damn rulebooks, but on top of that you have to learn the masochistic RPGA own rules system. Which conveniently change every two months or so due to erratas and campaign updates so you have to reread it all over again. kind of law school.
If THAT is not a huge barrier to entry, what is ?
A lot of gamers I know are turned off by the RPGA, and the ones that are attracted to it are the ones who want heavy rules. They turn every session into a slow painful exercise of arguing about the exact effects of the new feat that was just allowed. Yes, the DM should have the right to say : OK, it works like this for this game now shut up.
Also annoying with these games, are the players who insist on playing a combat down to the last hp, even when this is clear the party has won, and make you spend two hours on the first fight, while there are only 4 hours to play.
The solution iMHO is not changing the rules, as I seriously doubt the 4e rules change will have any positive effect on the RPGA games, but it may be changing the players attitude, and stopping to encourage what I described.
Fair enough, but outside of the works of Jack Vance, D&D, and directly D&D derived products, where else do you see the "fire and forget" magic system? There's a very good reason it's refered to as "Vancian Magic."
Now, now... Hold on a second. There is quite a bit of fantasy based products where the magic "system" isn't clear, and it may be "fire and forget." Granted, it might not as well.
Like 'em or hate 'em, here is a quick list I can come up with.
Lord of the Rings
Eragon
Willow
Shrek
Conan movies
While these may not be a very good argument for Vancian Magic, they can't automatically be used against it either.
In fact, can you point out any products where magic is clearly not Vancian?
EDIT:: Unless you meant RPG products. I thought we were talking entertainment products.
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Fair enough, but outside of the works of Jack Vance, D&D, and directly D&D derived products, where else do you see the "fire and forget" magic system? There's a very good reason it's refered to as "Vancian Magic."
I disagree. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that as rare as Vancian magic is in genre novels and despite the many RPGs out there in the genre that do not use Vancian magic, D&D has by far dominated the market in terms of penetration, sales and general acceptance. I think Monte Cook pointed out that sales of D&D dwarf every other RPG combined. So much so that all other systems live on the scraps cast off by TSR and now WotC. Thus while Vancian magic may not be represented widely in literature, it must have some appealing influence to so dominate the market for so long. Otherwise, other systems with more agreeable magic systems would have eclipsed D&D in the 30 years it has been around.
Given this stunning success against the many challengers to the D&D system, both in literature and in gaming, one cannot out of hand dismiss Vancian magic because it does not match what is found in literature or today's media. It is clear that the system is widely used and accepted despite its flaws. In other words, the very fact that D&D has used this system for 30 years, is prevalent around the world and has dominated against all competitors for decades means that the marketplace has selected it as the way magic is actually supposed to be modeled in an RPG.
Arguing that Vancian magic is a one-off despite its world-wide acceptance and success against challengers simply doesn't make sense. Stating that one cannot use the tremendous success of the system as proof of its popularity unfairly biases the discussion. You might as well be saying "show me why Vancian magic is popular, but don't reference the millions of people that are using it as a basis for for their RPG. I want to see its popularity when removed from the culture that made it widely accepted in the first place.") Using this reasoning, I could say that LotR is not popular because the author used a magic ring as the central point in moving his story along, and how many other authors have done that?
Edit: clarity
Fair enough, but outside of the works of Jack Vance, D&D, and directly D&D derived products, where else do you see the "fire and forget" magic system? There's a very good reason it's refered to as "Vancian Magic."I disagree. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that as rare as Vancian magic is in genre novels and despite the many RPGs out there in the genre that do not use Vancian magic, D&D has by far dominated the market in terms of penetration, sales and general acceptance. I think Monte Cook pointed out that sales of D&D dwarf every other RPG combined. So much so that all other systems live on the scraps cast off by TSR and now WotC. Thus while Vancian magic may not be represented widely in literature, it must have some appealing influence to so dominate the market for so long. Otherwise, other systems with more agreeable magic systems would have eclipsed D&D in the 30 years it has been around.
Given this stunning success against the many challengers to the D&D system, both in literature and in gaming, one cannot out of hand dismiss Vancian magic because it does not match what is found in literature or today's media. It is clear that the system is widely used and accepted despite its flaws. In other words, the very fact that D&D has used this system for 30 years, is prevalent around the world and has dominated against all competitors for decades means that the marketplace has selected it as the way magic is actually supposed to be modeled in an RPG.
Arguing that Vancian magic is a one-off despite its world-wide acceptance and success against challengers simply doesn't make sense. Stating that one cannot use the tremendous success of the system as proof of its popularity unfairly biases the discussion. You might as well be saying "show me why Vancian magic is popular, but don't reference the millions of people that are using it as a basis for for their RPG. I want to see its popularity when removed from the culture that made it widely accepted...
I feel that this is kind of a cop out. Your main point boils down to "It's in D&D, D&D=successful, so it=successful." You may not intend it as that, but that's the way it comes across.
Your first paragraph addresses D&D's sales figures, and it's success over the years. Yes, it has been successful, but that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't change and grow. No RPG is perfect, D&D is just the game toolkit that appeals to the broadest fanbase. While the magic system is part of that, it's important to remember it's not all of it. Some people buy the system despite certain factors. I mean, if you had something you liked, but saw one flaw, and an obvious way around it(don't play a character using the magic system), would you still buy it? I think you'd be surprised at the number of people that do.
I think it's also important to note that while Vancian magic has been core D&D, count the number of books released promoting different magic systems. Heck, all you have to do is count the ones under the D&D third edition banner. Psionics, Incarnum, and if they had more support, Tome of Magic could have been split into three separate books. Five alternate magic systems put out by the parent company within one edition. That's not even counting UA's spellpoint system, or Complete Mage's reserve feats, or Complete Arcane's warlock invocations. Or any non WotC publisher. This is the part where you have to consider what sells because it's core, and what sells because it's popular. I know many groups who won't play with anything outside of core. A bunch of them hate Vancian magic, but they play with it only because it's core.
I also find the declaration of "the world has chosen, and this is the way it's supposed to be" line amusing. Once again, I reference groups that only play with core, or who only play D&D. Their exposure to other systems is slim to none, so how is it clear? If I offer you ham, and only ham, for thirty years, can I then say that ham is clearly superior to chicken because ham is all you chose? In order to make that claim, you have to fairly offer all choices. Fourth edition seems to be going for a change in choice. If consumers decide they don't like it, I'm betting we'll get an All Vancian, All The Time book published.
Finally, arguing Vancian is not a one-off because of its wide world acceptance and success doesn't work, either. Due to shifting culture, the only place you see Vancian magic is D&D. One place. Now, move to view popular culture. Harry Potter, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, hell, Eragon. You have no idea how much it hurt me to reference Eragon on a positive note. All four have distinct magic systems, all different from D&D. All of them are popular. Hell, all aside from Eragon have worldwide acceptance and astounding success. Does that mean D&D should change to model one of them? Hell no. Does it mean it should look to them, see what works, and adapt it to fit? Why not? Our hobby is a niche market. Saying that Vancian magic is king because it's in D&D, and D&D cornered the niche market would be like me declaring myself ruler of the world because every child in the grade school is frightened of me.
Show me Vancian magic's success in the world today without referencing D&D. Then I might accept that it's the surefire way to go. If not, what's to hurt with looking at what the current culture has to offer? If we don't look for new things that work, and hang on to the systems of yesterday simply because that's the way it's always been, our hobby will get left in the past to wither and die.
This comes from someone who doesn't like the Vancian system, but sees that it has good points. I just can't stand to listen to the argument that it should stay in the game because it's always been this way. If that's the only reason we're keeping it, not because it's better than the rest, not because it's simpler, or clearer to explain to new players, then it's not worth having. This sounds to me like what the design and development teams are doing. They're looking at what worked, looking at what didn't, and they're moving on to try something new based on that.
To explain my view on tradition in D&D a bit more:
1)As for the spell system and other games, well I haven't played alot of different systems, so I don't know them all. Yet I did play the HeroQuest board game back in the day and it had a similiar system (you had a set number of spell cards and once cast for the adventure it was gone until the next adventure). And I would probably guess there are other systems where you are limited in similiar ways.
In a kind of fundamental sense the Star Wars Saga does a similiar thing with force powers for individual combats. Once a power is used, it is generally gone until the character has time to rest (1 minute versus 1 day in D&D). But the fundamental idea is still the same, you use it and forget it, the recharge time is the big difference.
As for not being able to use weaker spells, well play a sorcerer, there is nothing stopping someone from using their higher slots for lower level spells. Not good enough, there is psionics and warlocks. These were solutions to people's problems with it, without scrapping the whole system.
Now to Harry Potter. There have been some people saying that in the Harry Potter universe all you need to do is study and wave a wand. I call B.S. on those comments. It is very clear that you have to have some kind of innate talent, those without it are called ... muggles. Yes, study is necessary in that universe to fully develop and control a wizard's abilities but you can't just study and GET magical.
**EDIT**
Also I might point out that there is also another concept in fantasy settings about magic. That it is draining. Often it ages the caster prematurely or as some other harmful effect. Why not use those ideas as well? Because it is "non-fun"? Well it can be non-fun to get hurt, so why not have no damage? And getting killed is defintely no-fun, toss that out as well.
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2)Some have asked, "What if the cleric gets grappled by a creature? The cleric hasn't been planning on grappling, so they wouldn't have studied." To which I say, if the DM was doing half a good job, then he should know the abilities of the creatures he is sending at the party and should be able to walk the other player through it since he was planning on grappling. If the person initiating the grapple doesn't know the rules then they are failing on their responsibilities. As "bad" as the grapple rules are in 3.x, see them in SW:SAGA, they are absolutely horrible there (nice "fix" guys).
3)Required roles? Egad, I hope not. What a horrible way to play D&D. "Sorry you can't play a sneaky guy because someone else is already doing that." Why not just use pregenerated characters? "Ok, we got the dwarf, elf, wizard, and barbarian. Let's roll to see which player gets to pick their character first."
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They're being renamed from "fighter, cleric, wizard, thief". Your striker/controller example doesn't lose anything if you replace "striker" with "rogue" and "controller' with "wizard".
And there's the rub.
They're *not* just 'renaming' the classes, they are changing them to fit these roles. Fighters never had a 'defender' role, although they could be designed in 3.X to serve a defender, striker or battlefield control role. Wizards had a few spells that did battlefield control, but I, for one, never used them, preferring to make arcane strikers or a role that doesn't exist in 4.0, summoners / necromancers.
They aren't just changing some names. They are changing the classes to fit these new names, and taking away from their abilities to turn them into something else, that works and plays quite differently, filling out a specific 'role' in the party.
This could be a good thing, for some classes, who waffled at the edge of not having a meaningful role (such as Bards), and it's most definitely gonna suck for the classes (such as Wizards, Clerics and Druids) who have been, since 1st edition, able to handle multiple roles (and those who gained the ability to handle multiple roles in 3.X, such as the Fighter).
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Your main point boils down to "It's in D&D, D&D=successful, so it=successful." You may not intend it as that, but that's the way it comes across.
Actually I do intend that. D&D's Vancian magic system (warts and all) is tremendously successful. I therefore believe changing it should be done with great care because it works with the system as a whole. Saying that the world doesn't like or expect Vancian magic when there is 30 years of history showing that despite the presence of other systems they still buy it cannot be dismissed.
I think it's also important to note that while Vancian magic has been core D&D, count the number of books released promoting different magic systems. Heck, all you have to do is count the ones under the D&D third edition banner. Psionics, Incarnum, and if they had more support, Tome of Magic could have been split into three separate books. Five alternate magic systems put out by the parent company within one edition. That's not even counting UA's spellpoint system, or Complete Mage's reserve feats, or Complete Arcane's warlock invocations. Or any non WotC publisher.
I agree. Once again the core of D&D shows itself to be a strong toolkit that incorporates all of these ideas. My question to you is: why break what has worked for so long to pursue one flavor of magic? ANd I find your phrase "if they had more support" when discussing these alternates as very telling.
This is the part where you have to consider what sells because it's core, and what sells because it's popular. I know many groups who won't play with anything outside of core.
And why is that? Why will people only play core D&D? This actually is one of my underlying points. I postulate that there is a certain alchemy associated with the D&D rules system (which I admit is not perfect) that has withstood the test of time. My concern is that tearing apart this system in fundamental ways is risking a great deal in pursuit of sales in what are niche markets of a niche market. You agree that D&D is the great granddaddy of RPGs, that core D&D is widely accepted and that these other systems, even other D&D-compatible systems are not as popular as the core but you still want to say the game has to change to pursue these niches despite the evidence that these niche systems do not meet the needs of the marketplace.
Finally, arguing Vancian is not a one-off because of its wide world acceptance and success doesn't work, either.
I think you are dismissing the proven history of D&D here. See your first point above and my response to it.
Due to shifting culture, the only place you see Vancian magic is D&D. One place. Now, move to view popular culture. Harry Potter, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, hell, Eragon. You have no idea how much it hurt me to reference Eragon on a positive note. All four have distinct magic systems, all different from D&D. All of them are popular. Hell, all aside from Eragon have worldwide acceptance and astounding success. Does that mean D&D should change to model one of them? Hell no. Does it mean it should look to them, see what works, and adapt it to fit? Why not?
Here I absolutely agree with you. I have problems with the D&D magic system. There are a number of things I don't like and I do think it can be improved to make casters feel like they can participate more in the game. What I am against is the complete tearing down of a system that has broad appeal. I am also admittedly very concerned that moving to a WoW-like system will eliminate the many elegant and clever things you can do with the system as it stands today. In the hands of an intelligent player, a wizard's limited spells can be used in tremendously creative ways. I would much rather see a few minor changes to the system (we can discuss those at another time) than the wholesale destruction of a proven system.
Saying that Vancian magic is king because it's in D&D, and D&D cornered the niche market would be like me declaring myself ruler of the world because every child in the grade school is frightened of me.
It would be like saying you are king of the world because you stood up and said it first and for 30 years no one could disprove the claim no matter how they tried and no matter how much you nodded off (2nd edition I am looking at you). It is a fallacy to assume that because D&D initially captured market share it prevented other competitors from arising. Ask IBM how the whole IBM PC thing worked for them. Markets decide their leaders. Small companies with good ideas can defeat the dominant players in the marketplace. The fact that it hasn't happened with D&D despite the many competitors out there tells of the general appeal and strength of the system. Yes it is in need of fixing, but not in need of demolition.
Show me Vancian magic's success in the world today without referencing D&D. Then I might accept that it's the surefire way to go.
So you want me to show you that Vancian magic is popular as long as I don't use it's obvious popularity as proof? Hmm... I will need to work on that.
[...] what's to hurt with looking at what the current culture has to offer? If we don't look for new things that work, and hang on to the systems of yesterday simply because that's the way it's always been, our hobby will get left in the past to wither and die.
I somewhat agree with you here, but I suppose my main concern is that what is holding D&D back is not Vancian magic (or grappling or whatever the pet peeve of the day is) it is that it is PnP. When I was young, pong was the best you could get out of a video game. My four boys (Ages 13-5) play WoW, DDO, have a PS2 on one TV, a PS3 on the big screen and they have access to my XBox360, they each have a Nintendo DS Lite (wireless capable handheld) and all of my PC games. They all have played (and to a degree) still play D&D with me. However, they play with friends from around the country on all of these systems (save the PS2) over my wireless network. What are their favorite RPG games? Diablo II. Oblivion. Neverwinter Nights. Baldur's Gate. Kingdom Hearts. Dragonquest. Heroes of Might and Magic. The kids don't want paper. They want the graphical games to get better at providing more options for their characters and more flexibility and story richness. Stop the average WoW player on the street and ask him if Vancian magic is what is keeping him from from playing a PnP based RPG. Your response is going to be a blank stare until you explain it all to him and then he will ask you if he can mod the UI to make things easier on him. That WoW player already has WoW board games and RPGs marketed to him by Blizzard and my estimate (by the lack of supplements on the FLGS shelf or over at Amazon) the game is not selling well. Once again the market has decided. We can attempt to change D&D radically to pursue this customer, but I strongly suspect we will only ruin what the game could have become and fail to attract those players they hope to claim.
Let's fix Vancian magic by addressing its deficiencies in a way that does not break with the proven success of the system overall.
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Yes that occurred to me but the Harry Potter universe is so removed from Sword and Sorcery it doesn't even qualify as the same genre. No one reading Harry Potter is going to confuse it with high fantasy.
But I think that is the point. In popular media the genre of "fantasy" is much more than LotR - it is Potter, Buffy, Bleach, Xena, Dragonball, etc. For folks like me *cough*overfourty*cough* it is Conan, Elric, and the Grey Mouser. The landscape has changed and new players will have expectations drawn from new sources of inspiration like anime, manga, and stories like Harry Potter.
To give another (less snarky) example, saying that Harry Potter fans are ones we D&D'ers should bring into the fold is like telling historical miniature wargamers that based upon sales of Ghost Recon and other "modern military" simulations, the rules for their system will need...
Oops it got cut off - anyway. Yes miniature gaming went through this too. Flames of War is the most popular WW2 miniature game. Grognard miniature gamers rage against it because it is easy to learn and fast to play. If you think that's bad then you should hear what they say about Warhammer 40K. But tastes change - there are more people playing 40K, Warmachine, and other non-traditional miniatures games then Napoleonics.
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Good Gawd...
The RPGA KEPT me in gaming in the early 90s (I probably would have dropped RPGs to go back into board and war games); they started driving me out around '97 with all sorts of rules tweaks that didn't make sense, the move to "free membership" etc. I haven't done much with them since (in 2001 I DID go to "miniatures gaming only" for two years - then got into HackMaster and resurrected some old Star Wars d6 stuff, with occasional forays into the FUDGE-based "Now Playing" and infrequent d20 variants)... The more I hear about what they've become, the happier I am at my decision... :(
My experience with the RPGA is nothing like the one stereofm described. Yes, rules do become critical because everything is by-the-book and so life and death sometimes hinge on getting the rule right. There is no rule zero in the RPGA so the judge (not a GM) cannot just make it up as he goes.
And not every RPGA gamer is a rules lawyer. Heck, they are not even all that common. Most players just have fun. Not every table at a con or at a local game day is a joyful experience but thousands and thousands around the world love playing in living campaigns.
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Go to "mainstream" bookstores, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Booksamillion, Waldenbook, etc. What do you see in the "D&D Aisle"?
I see MANY rows of manga book, comics, etc. and usually a shelf or three of D&D products, period. Granted, manga stuff is periodical (much like a magazine) and so greater circulation requires more room for "all" back issues and stuff.
In addition, I may see a 9-16 year old sitting on the floor reading manga stuff...and as I step over them and reach the D&D stuff I might, the day of a WotC release, see a fellow 30 year old browsing D&D products.
Thats the reality (albeit anecdotal, but likely factual). Kids aren't buying D&D in the numbers they are needed to make it viable.
Truth is, 4E will reach a point I call "Baggage" but some call "Book Bloat" where any new player sees a couple dozen books and has no idea what it all means. Imagine never playing an RPG and flipping open Incarnum...at 12 years old...my brain would be intrigue, but I wouldn't be able to make any sense of it. Add to this the fact that 8 years into it, I rarely, if ever, see a DMG or PHB on the shelf. So that new player can't even accidentally open the correct "beginning" book.
At that point, 4E will have too much baggage. 5E will be in the offering, and whatever "popular" fads, "house" rules, system fixes, etc will be incorporated.
Welcome to life: Eventually it dies.
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Yes miniature gaming went through this too. Flames of War is the most popular WW2 miniature game. Grognard miniature gamers rage against it because it is easy to learn and fast to play. If you think that's bad then you should hear what they say about Warhammer 40K. But tastes change - there are more people playing 40K, Warmachine, and other non-traditional miniatures games then Napoleonics.
Yes! Yes this is my point exactly! What did not happen is that all of the Neopolonic people had to move to Warhammer 40K because more people like it. There is an obvious demand for Warhammer and Flames of War. These systems met this demand and have grown and (I would wager) the Neopolonic market has continued to shrink. What seems to be happening in D&D is that (to use your example as an analogy) the makers of the Neopolonic rules have decided they want to participate in the Warhammer niche so they are adding Warhammer-like rules and units to the Neopolonic game. This new hybrid not only does not compete well with Warhammer but it ruins the existing market for Neopolonic games. In the same vein, adding WoW/anime rules to D&D ruins what could have been a great opportunity to address the problems with D&D but still does not meet the needs of the marketplace for anime/video game players. In fact, I continue to postulate there is no market for PnP based anime/WoW RPGs based upon the lack of sales and general interest in the systems that are already available. To return to your example as an analogy, it is like there is no market for Warhammer or Flames of War-like games, yet Neopolonic rules makers are going to add in futuristic elements to their rules because Saving Private Ryan and Starcraft were so popular.
If you're doing a group with a guy that has Improved Grapple, aren't you going to be very familiar with the rules and able to execute them quickly? If you're a character with Improved Grapple aren't you going to have notes on the character sheet on how to do it quickly?It's hardly that easy. Quick, which of the following spells have somatic components, material components, or both: Daze Monster, Blindness/Deafness, Resist Energy, Glitterdust, Ghoul Touch, Alter Self, and Bull's Strength?
If you're a DM, and someone charges up and grapples your spellcaster, you suddenly have to know which spells you can cast and which spells you can't. This invariably results in a lot of downtime and page flipping to figure out what you can even do in that situation.
Or I flip through my spell cards (3x5 index cards with the spell information on them) in a couple seconds. Granted, this isn't something most beginning DMs would do, but it's not tremendously difficult to do with planning and preparation, either.
Fair enough, but outside of the works of Jack Vance, D&D, and directly D&D derived products, where else do you see the "fire and forget" magic system? There's a very good reason it's refered to as "Vancian Magic."I disagree. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that as rare as Vancian magic is in genre novels and despite the many RPGs out there in the genre that do not use Vancian magic, D&D has by far dominated the market in terms of penetration, sales and general acceptance. I think Monte Cook pointed out that sales of D&D dwarf every other RPG combined. So much so that all other systems live on the scraps cast off by TSR and now WotC. Thus while Vancian magic may not be represented widely in literature, it must have some appealing influence to so dominate the market for so long. Otherwise, other systems with more agreeable magic systems would have eclipsed D&D in the 30 years it has been around.
Part of the reason is that it is very easy to adapt Vancian magic to other systems such as Recharge Magic, Spell Points, or spontaneous spellcasting (the sorcerer or Spontaneous Divine Casters). It is less easy to adapt a system where each "spell" is a specific at will, per encounter, or per day special ability/power to other systems.
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Why not just encourage those that want to play anime to play Big Eyes Small Mouth or run the Tri-Stat dX system? Why munge the greatest roleplaying game of all time when it really is not set to tell stories in the mode of "fantasy stories one sees in media today"? If this is...Because that doesn't make Hasbro/WotC money, and it's ineffecient (and a possible violation of Sherman Antitrust laws) to buy tons of little companies who are "doing it right" just so you can profit from that; better to realign your own product to draw in the fans.
Specifically, which fans are those? Which PnP RPG fans has D&D lost because of DnD's inability to keep up with the market's concept of fantasy?
I continue to propose that the flagging sales of D&D among the next generation are the result of a sea change in the way fantasy is played (via computer rather than PnP) not because the D&D system is unrepresentative of modern fantasy. (Monte Cook speculates that it is because many of the products are crap and have flooded the market to the point that no one buys books for fear the book is bad. My point stands on its own, but this is a fair idea as well and can't be entirely ignored). What Hasboro/WotC is doing is they are hoping to rescue the outdated gaming mode of PnP-based play by trying to tap into the modern gestalt of WoW and Harry Potter. My position is that this is a squandered opportunity for D&D, which is in need of significant maintenance in some places. However, D&D has consistently proven it does PnP right, or as right as it can be done.
Furthermore, how old is 3E anyway? I think it is something like (I am guessing here) 7 years old. Let's calls it 8. It sold amazingly well then and for a good time thereafter. Eight years is hardly "un-modern". My point is that the rules are not old and crusty things that people have had to live with despite the great advances in popular culture. D&D 3E could have been rejected right then and there by all of the popular culturists if it did not meet their need. But it wasn't. It flourished. If people were so against Vancian magic why did they buy 3E D&D after seeing the alternatives in popular culture and having access to Rifts, GURPs and other RPG's with non-Vancian systems? Surely there was manga and anime prior to 3E as well to help point out 3E's obvious flaws. Why did it succeed?
And what has happened since then? We have had WoW and Harry Potter of course. But neither of these supports a viable PnP RPG market indicating that D&D 3E has missed the boat. All that we are seeing with flagging D&D sales is that the market (such as it is) is saturated with material and is collapsing under its own weight and the relentless advance of technology. Laying the blame of this failure at the feet of this or that rules mechanic entirely misses the point and wastes valuable resources that could otherwise be put toward making the game better.
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Part of the reason is that it is very easy to adapt Vancian magic to other systems such as Recharge Magic, Spell Points, or spontaneous spellcasting (the sorcerer or Spontaneous Divine Casters). It is less easy to adapt a system where each "spell" is a specific special ability/power to other other systems.
This is an excellent point. In my gut, I feel that the warts and blemishes of Vancian magic can be removed by somehow working with these systems to create a cohesive whole. This is what I would like to see from 4E. I only wish I had the talent to be able to make it happen.
I think there's actually a very simple argument to be made against Vancian magic, and I don't think I've seen it in here yet.
Think back to when you were first learning D&D, and when you first learned about how spellcasting works. When you got to the part about how, after casting a spell, a spellcaster forgets the spell, did you say "Oh, that makes sense"? Show of hands.
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I think there's actually a very simple argument to be made against Vancian magic, and I don't think I've seen it in here yet.
Think back to when you were first learning D&D, and when you first learned about how spellcasting works. When you got to the part about how, after casting a spell, a spellcaster forgets the spell, did you say "Oh, that makes sense"? Show of hands.
It actually made sense to me and still does. I have always believed magic was rare and wondrous and was not readily available nor easily controlled. It was part of the 1st Edition culture. When I moved to 3E I had to accept that the encounters were scaled for a more magic-rich campaign but I also felt that magic spell power increased as well and so Vancian magic was not weak, especially at mid to high levels of play.
I have now come to the realization that Vancian magic has its limitations, that parties can become too reliant on the caster and the power he wields and it causes rest breaks too frequently. I believe there is considerable room for improvement in the system to improve game play, but I still do not have any problem with "fire and forget" magic.
Edit: I would like to add that I really like the Sorcerer, the Warlock and Psionics though I have balance issues with the Psionics rules. I also see flaws in the Vancian system, but believe that a move toward "cooldown-based battle magic" fundamentally destroys the elegnace and power of the existing system and makes adaptation of other systems very difficult in a homebrew setting.
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Remembering the procedure is only half of it. The other half is that it brings the game to a halt because it's a complex (needlessly complex) procedure that takes an inordinate amount of time to adjudicate.And as a corollary, it's so complex and game-stopping that grapple becomes eschewed, so the practice you refer to may never take place or be shorthanded and done wrong.
I disagree to this point completely! On average, a group who has grappled previously and practiced the rules can take 4 grappling rounds in the amount of time that a normal fighting round takes. I have done an experiment with 3 different groups of 6 who all know the grapple system. in each time, the group grappling did 4 rounds in amount of time it took the same group to do 1 round (a round consisting of all of the PCs acting)
I think there's actually a very simple argument to be made against Vancian magic, and I don't think I've seen it in here yet.
Think back to when you were first learning D&D, and when you first learned about how spellcasting works. When you got to the part about how, after casting a spell, a spellcaster forgets the spell, did you say "Oh, that makes sense"? Show of hands.
This is a really good point. It seems like a lot of what they're trying to change is the stuff that makes a new player say, "That makes no sense!"
I started becoming dissatisfied with 3.5 when I tried teaching the game to my then-12-year-old nephew (a really bright kid and an avid reader)last year. It really threw into sharp relief some of the difficulties of the game, particularly when it comes to bringing a whole new generation into the fan base.
I don't think that the game needs to be so simple it can be mastered in 20 minutes by a 12-year-old. When I was 10 and started playing AD&D, I didn't understand all the rules for quite a while. But my preference is for a game that the 12-year-old can play along with, quickly mastering the basic rules he needs to run his one character, and later, gradually, learning the more complex stuff. And based on my experience with the nephew, 3.5 is not that game.
When you got to the part about how, after casting a spell, a spellcaster forgets the spell, did you say "Oh, that makes sense"? Show of hands.
You see, I decided in my own head awhile ago that wizards simply have to do X amount of prep (taking about 1 hour) and they have to do it when they are thoroughly rested and have their minds clear of distractions (requiring 8 hrs of sleep). So the "forget" thing to me really didn't apply.