IBL!
Wow! His first and only post is to bash 4e. It shows how much he loves Pathfinder.
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Your ideas are unique and exciting and certainly have not been refuted to death on the internet for the past three years straight!
ALTERNATIVELY
This thread is bad and you should feel bad.
If I come back tonight and by the mercy of the gods this thread remains unlocked, I will consider it open season on the OP. It will not be pleasant.
I have a slightly different perspective than you, though I must say I was slightly disappointed that the content of the post didnt really line up with what I was expecting from the title. Can I ask how much you've played 4th edition? My experience of the game is quite different from yours, although when I read the rules I shared a similar view.
Skills
In previous editions of D&D, skills were an integral part of character concepts. They helped to define and limit a PC to what they could and could not do when it came to things outside of combat.
No doubt part of the difference in our experiences is that my previous D&D experience was AD&D, not 3.5. In the original version of the game only thieves, elves and (from memory) dwarves got skills really. Nobody else could do anything outside of combat, apart from the odd spell which very few people ever took.
Nonetheless, I prefer the approach to cut down the number of skills (adopted by both Pathfinder and 4th edition developers) as when I looked into 3.5, it seemed to me that there were a whole bunch of silly choices which didnt really add to anything.
The wide variety of skills and ranking was created to give each player the feeling that their PC knows something. Fourth edition takes much of this control and diversity away. It condenses the skills to the point of lunacy. No longer can players study nobility, geography, craft a non-magical item, or be a barkeep; these skills were removed completely to make room for the other board game additions.
A fundamental aspect of a role-playing game is the ability to role-play your character based on their strengths an weaknesses. If a character has fewer ways to define who they are, then the system fails to establish itself as a role-playing game (becoming a roll-playing game). The complete lack of crafting is obviously disturbing for most players, as in many previous editions, crafting added a level of control and fun that players enjoyed exploring.
Now, fourth edition didn't get everything wrong when it came to skills. The passive perceptions of Insight and Perception was an excellent way to deal with things seen and unseen before player's rolled. However, this minor strength does not outweigh the multiple other areas that 4th edition d&d lacks on skills. I believe Heinsoo, Collins, and Wyatt dropped the ball completely here.
I think they should have explained better that all those out-of-combat facets of a character were intended to still be utilised. Their aim was that someone with a keen interest in architecture did not therefore become less useful during combat. I dont know if you're referring to an actual survey when you say:
"The complete lack of crafting is obviously disturbing for most players"
since it's a welcome relief to the people I play with (or passed without comment). Is that anything other than an opinion stated as fact?
Skill Encounters
The way in which fourth edition deals with role-playing is as much an insult to the gamer, as it is ineffective as a device for story-telling. While in previous editions the players and the DM had the ability to role-play encounters and occasionally throw a dice to influence certain aspects, in fourth edition there is little or no non-dice role-playing. Skill encounters in 4th are nothing more than, “roll that skill (x) times to get (y) successes to achieve (z) goal before rolling (n) failures. Most of the time the skill checks go a little like this:“You need to get away from the horde of orcs chancing you, while not falling off the cliff. Roll Endurance, Athletics, Acrobatics, and Insight once for a bonus to a single check. 4 sucesses before 2 failures.”
“I rolled 25 on Endurance.”
“20 on Athletics.”
“I rolled insight of 20 to see which way is better.”
“I rolled 22 on acrobatics + his 2 bonus from insight.”
“I rolled 14 on Endurance, fail here.”
“I rolled 20 on Endurance, we win.”Skill Encounter over.
While the intention of skill encounters is to add what happens into the skill checks by the DM it usually is nothing more than, “You run fast, you run faster, you jump over that well, you trip over a log,” etc. In the end, on average, it is about 10 minutes of rolling dice at an encounter that really could have been a device for active role-playing and fun.
I think what you're drawing attention to here is that it's hard to run a skill challenge well (although it appears deceptively simple). In my experience, they take a lot of work to be something more than what you have posted here. If you put that effort in, they're terrific - I've certainly stolen skill challenges and use them in Pathfinder as they're an excellent way to keep everyone involved in a non-combat encounter, whilst also providing some structure and perceived value to the skill allocations players have chosen when developing their characters.
I'd recommend persevering with them, if I were you. Certainly if your experience is as described above, I'd just drop them. Then again - are your skill checks described in the same way? If so, I'd experiment with fleshing them out more too.
Magic Items
One of the most frustrating areas that fourth edition completely fails at is concerning magic items. The vary idea that an economy, in many ways based around magic, can make money in the fourth edition world is beyond belief. You can't make a profit at anything if you have to purchase the materials at the same price that you sell them for. Who thought this was a good idea? In addition, a player has to sell things at 1/5th cost? How does a world which uses 4th edition logic able to even produce magic items?
In addition, there is no other drawback to crafting items. No exp needed, no large amount of time required, not even a skill check! With this set up a DM need never give out any magic at all. They might as well give out magical dust or gold all the time and let players make whatever they want, no one in their right mind would sell magic items for 1/5th value, to begin with, they can just buy them and not waste the time making the item for the same value.
In previous editions it took time, money, experience, and sometimes special items to craft magical equipment. In addition it was only ½ the value of the item to make, so the economy could exist at a “Key-Stone” markup on average (sold at twice as much as you bought it for). However, even this system had its flaws, mostly being that casters who crafted were always behind on experience and levels compared to anyone who didn't craft magical items.
Pathfinder irons out nearly all of the weaknesses of crafting. Players still spend 1/2 crafting value, but no longer was their an exp cost. Pathfinder made it cost time, and a skill check. This is far superior for the economy, and I can imagine a world in which magic is made, sold, and traded under these conditions. In addition the casters no longer were below the exp curve, and their was still a cost for creation and penality for failure (no magic item made). In addition, fourth editions rules mean that any character can take a magical crafting feat who has the skills. Fighters should not be able to cast magical enchantments simply because they have a little arcana knowledge. They must be magically trained and have a well of power that lingers on the items they make. Crafting should not be like MMO's in which anyone can just choose to be an enchanter, it works for World of Warcraft but it doesn't work in D&D.
I think this is all about taste. In my opinion, neither did very well here - I loathe the high magic item dependence inherent in both games. I like the fact 4th Edition has a low-magic item option, although it's still not quite right for me.
I think you're correct though that 4th edition does a very poor job at simulating a magic item economy. If that's important to your game, it's probably not a good ruleset for you. I dont think it's important to that many people though (since in my view, Pathfinder also does a poor job of simulating a 'magical economy' yet there is only a muttering of discontent about that).
Powers
Whoever thought that giving fighters 30 abilities to choose from, was playing too many MMO's and board games. D&D is not a board game, it is a role-playing game which uses maps for it's combat. Wizards and other casters have spells and a large choice of them for a reason, they are casters and that's what they do. Giving Fighters the abilities to completely control monsters, and do ridiculous creature control effects is just turning them into wizards. There is a single class called “wizard” as a game designer I could not see the benefit to having 12 classes that are essentially all wizards.
It all comes down to being more narrative as a player, in my view. We find this a welcome change. FWIW, I dont play board games or MMOs and I dont really see how your position is tenable here. Are you suggesting that fighters in 3.5 are playing an RPG and wizards are playing a board game? I get people might not like it, I dont accept it's a weakness nor that it is 'less RPG-y'.
Next, and most likely the biggest mistake that fourth edition made, is infinite spells. A wizard has never had infinite magic missiles, unless epic, and having infinite “At-Will” powers is nothing more than what you'd find in a video game. Eventually power runs out, and even wizards should run out of energy to fight; that is the price for being a wizard.
This is one of the biggest pluses for 4th edition in my view. Do you have the same objection to cantrips in Pathfinder?
Healing and Encounters
Mostly, this was never a huge issue in previous additions. Healing was seen as a way to balance the power of characters vs. monsters each day, but fourth edition takes this too far. Giving each character the ability to instantly heal themselves, is taking the need for a healer out of the game completely. I have run several fourth edition adventures in which a healer was not required to succeed. Of course there are limits to this healing (surges) But are surges really a limit? There are several powers that read “as if a PC had spent a surge,” “regen x amount without a surge,” “Add x temp hitpoint when you do y,” “Heal an extra y when you do x,” “Heal x more to your allies whenever they spend a surge,” etc. I have run some very long and intense sessions of D&D 4th and can say, with an expert degree of knowledge, that characters are so resilient in 4th that there is little to challenge them within their CR bracket; there isn't even instant death to help balance the scales.
I dispute your designation as an expert based on this analysis. For one, it seems you are suggesting there are non-healing types who have powers which heal "as if the PC had spent a healing surge", which surprises me. However the main thing is querying whether healing surges is a 'real' limit. In our games the only real reason we take an extended rest is that one of the front line fighters has one or zero healing surges. It's our primary contraint determining when we need to stop and rest.
We also find ourselves quite nearly dead very often - maybe we're not as good as your players, but we rarely find ourselves 'going through the motions' in a pre-ordained fight.
Now, I like the way that pathfinder breaks the mold between 3.5 and 4th. They add a little extra healing to classes, like the cleric, but still have the spontaneous casting of 3.5 for positive heals. This gives a bit more healing, without making it ridiculous, like 4th edition. The fear of death should be real for the characters, and fourth edition just doesn't have enough of that fear to challenge the players within their CR bracket. Most encounters of +4 EL or less can be taken by any party without too much difficulty. The only way to challenge the party seems to be going beyond the encounter building rules and adding more to it than is allowed for the CR. Adding additional CR challenges in this way is not fair to the players, and goes beyond what is recommended in the DMG. Staying within the CR +3 bracket in Pathfinder is more than challenging for players, and certainly adds the sense of fear that every player is looking for.
I like pathfinder too. I dont really see why making an encounter challenging (if the RAW result in an easy fight) is 'unfair'. Maybe your group are just excellent optimisers and able to construct ideal parties and utilise excellent tactics. The designers should presumably aim nearer to the centre of the bell curve rather than trying to challenge very tactically competent players.
Classes and Races
I don't see how anyone could completely screw up the fundamental concept of class structure as the fourth edition developers did. Base attack is gone, all attacks are based with + to base attribute with no real bonuses beyond magical and a few feats. While this may look good on paper, in practice it is a disaster. In conjunction with races, it is set up for only races that have those bonuses to the attributes and no other may apply. Even +2 to an attribute more than any other can unbalance the system and tables for CR vs. APL. This sense of “we have to balance absolutely everything about each class, has made each class exactly the same as any other.
I'm always skeptical of 'extensive 4th edition experience' when someone says "All classes are the same". I can imagine claiming a ranger and a rogue are essentially the same, but it's just not the case that a wizard and a fighter (the most common example, for some reason) are the same - sure they read the same. But they are totally different in actual play.
As for multi-classing, forget it. Fourth edition has completely destroyed multi-classing, making it feat based, without the ability to mix and match levels. If you think Hybred is a viable class, make sure to read it well, it's not even close to multi-classing either. Fourth edition is a single class system and there is little or no way to fix it with their setup. (another typical MMO concept)
I think you may be guilty of reification here (a similar charge I would level at those who ask - Why can only a ranger dual wield effectively?). It doesnt matter if you cant multiclass because 'class' isnt a real thing (like number of arms and legs or somesuch). What matters is whether you can describe any character concept you'd like to. It doesnt matter if in 3.5 you'd go with a multiclass fighter-wizard and in 4th edition you'd choose a swordmage. What matters is if your character can be realised within the rules.
On that note, races in fourth are completely misguided in concept. First, making all races with 2 +2 attributes and no drawbacks is against the spirit of the game.
Well it obviously isnt, since it's one of the rules, but that's kind of a nitty point, I guess.
Each race should have a drawback compared to other races. Plus, this system makes humans completely the minority in all worlds, even more so when races have +2 to one stat and +2 to one of 2 other stats of your choice. The humans +2 to a single stat is nowhere close to the power of all other races. Virtually no one plays a human in fourth edition and it is because + 1 feat does not equal +2 to one of 2 other stats + other ridiculous bonuses that each nonhuman race receives. For example:
Human
Ability scores: +2 to one ability score of your choice
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares.
Vision: Normal
Languages: Common, choice of one other
Bonus Feat: You gain a bonus feat at 1st level. You must meet the feat’s prerequisites.
Bonus Skill: You gain training in one additional skill from your class skills list.
Human Defense Bonuses: You gain a +1 racial bonus to Fortitude, Reflex, and Will.
Human Power Selection: Choose an option for your human character.
Bonus At-Will Power: You know one extra 1st level at-will attack power from your class.
Heroic Effort: You have the heroic effort power.Warforged
Ability scores: +2 Constitution, +2 Intelligence or +2 Strength
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares.
Vision: NormalLanguages: Common
Skill Bonuses: +2 Endurance, +2 Intimidate.
Living Construct: You are a living construct. You do not need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep. You never make Endurance checks to resist the effect of starvation, thirst, or suffocation. All other conditions and effects affect you normally.
Unsleeping Watcher: You do not sleep and instead enter a state of inactivity for 4 hours to gain the benefits of an extended rest. While in this state, you are fully aware of your surroundings and notice approaching enemies and other events as normal.
Warforged Mind: You have a +1 racial bonus to your Will.
Warforged Resilience: You have a +2 racial bonus to saving throws against ongoing damage. Also, when you make a death saving throw, you can take the better result of your die roll or 10.
Warforged Resolve: You have the warforged resolve power.The human is far underpowered compared to all other races. Extra at will powers are useless, you'll only need 2 at the most anyway. An extra skill is also useless when there are only 10 to choose from. And the +1 to some defenses is nice, but compared to not having to sleep, eat, breath, and automaking all death saves is ridiculous.
The only drawback to any race is being human, and that is not how it should be. No race should have so much more power than any other unless that class has a level adjustment. Having a negative to a stat is important to balance for each race, and gives each race the ability to be any class respectively.
Again I'm a little skeptical that you've played 4th edition much. One of the main advantages of humans are some of the feats they have access too. That's a difference in philosophy from 3.5 and it looks like you're reading 4th edition classes through the prism of how things would work in 3.5/Pathfinder.
FWIW, I have only had one non-human PC (an elven ranger). The rest have all been human. They're not terrible by any means.
Pathfinder has put the power back in choosing a human, while maintaining the power of other races. It is the perfect way to balance but also so difference amongst the races, bravo to Paizo and the playtesters!
Absolutely. Most of my pathfinder characters are human too.
I'm gonna do this piece-by-piece:
Now that D&D 4th edition has been out for a few years now we, as gamers and dungeon masters, can reflect on its effectiveness as a game product. While most of the gamers I knew had high hopes for the 4.0 product line before it came out, we were confused and let down when it actually did. The system is riddled with flaws, compared to previous editions and competing product lines and I believe a step backwards rather than forward. Fourth Edition does not simply suffer from a few minor flaws, or one large one either, its weaknesses are broad including: lack of skills, altering key defenses, a lack of ingame economy due to crafting issues, and giving fighters millions of powers.
I was under the impression that Options were a good thing and even though there are "millions" of powers, you can only have a very select few of them, so..... how is that bad? Actually the fact is they have listed 424 powers (hardly 1,000,000) but I am being a bit faceitious as is drakesylvan, i'm hoping anyways.
As for ingame economy, I actually laughed out loud as your alluding to the skill Profession. Most of the gamers I knew never used it....ever! The money generated was so low as to not to be bothered with in lieu of actual adventuring. Basically, ingame economy was a way to make it more "real life", giving your character something to do out-of-game and basically a "I roll....18 on (Profession: Sailor) check, how much gold did I make?" aspect. And what you gained went to keeping up your place of employment, where you lived, taxes, expenditures on your employees.....uh sorta like having a real job. Sorry, but I play D&D to escape the hum-drum of real life. If I want to worry about my Profession and employees I'll just go back to the office. And it certainly wasn't a skill to waste your precious ranks on IMO.
And you can still craft in 4E, there just isn't a check and you pay normal gold. So it's there, you just have to actually.....um....role-play that aspect. I know, it's a strange concept but role-playing can be a lot of fun when used without a spread-sheet and a 4 inch book with rules on how to do so.
Skills
In previous editions of D&D, skills were an integral part of character concepts. They helped to define and limit a PC to what they could and could not do when it came to things outside of combat. The wide variety of skills and ranking was created to give each player the feeling that their PC knows something. Fourth edition takes much of this control and diversity away. It condenses the skills to the point of lunacy. No longer can players study nobility, geography, craft a non-magical item, or be a barkeep; these skills were removed completely to make room for the other board game additions.
Yea, but again I don't need rules to tell me "how" to role-play. If I want to be a fighter who was trained as a Blacksmith, I don't feel the need to spend precious, finite resources to flesh out that aspect because for one, it'll hardly come up as an actual mechanic in the game (you know, the reason we need dice and stuff) and two, because I think it's asinine to think in such 2-D character aspects.
A fundamental aspect of a role-playing game is the ability to role-play your character based on their strengths an weaknesses. If a character has fewer ways to define who they are, then the system fails to establish itself as a role-playing game (becoming a roll-playing game). The complete lack of crafting is obviously disturbing for most players, as in many previous editions, crafting added a level of control and fun that players enjoyed exploring.
Wait, so you want more skills that help define game mechanics and that's less "Roll-playing" somehow? Explain that to me. In fact, less mechanics means less "rolling" to utilize those mechanics. Instead, you could actually get into character and role-play those parts out if you want. All of which doesn't require dice at all.
And while there are not offical crafting rules, I fail to see why that would stop players from pursuing those paths. If it truely is an important aspect, I'm fairly certian the DM would be more than willing to make a compromise on you rolling some dice to get a shiney new weapon at a minimal cost of what your trying to make. And honestly, with how cheap things are in 4E (plate being 50 gp and all), I doubt this would be a problem past 1st level.
Skill Encounters
The way in which fourth edition deals with role-playing is as much an insult to the gamer, as it is ineffective as a device for story-telling. While in previous editions the players and the DM had the ability to role-play encounters and occasionally throw a dice to influence certain aspects, in fourth edition there is little or no non-dice role-playing. Skill encounters in 4th are nothing more than, “roll that skill (x) times to get (y) successes to achieve (z) goal before rolling (n) failures. Most of the time the skill checks go a little like this:“You need to get away from the horde of orcs chancing you, while not falling off the cliff. Roll Endurance, Athletics, Acrobatics, and Insight once for a bonus to a single check. 4 sucesses before 2 failures.”
“I rolled 25 on Endurance.”
“20 on Athletics.”
“I rolled insight of 20 to see which way is better.”
“I rolled 22 on acrobatics + his 2 bonus from insight.”
“I rolled 14 on Endurance, fail here.”
“I rolled 20 on Endurance, we win.”Skill Encounter over.
I guess when you look at the mechanics of Skill Checks you could come to that conclusion. But you either had a very poor DM that exercised this sort of Skill Challenge or didn't see the role-playing opportuinities that goes along with a Skill Challenge. Firstly, how does Acrobatics help in this scenario at all? Or Endurance for that matter? How about.....uh...Nature since your running through the woods? Or maybe Perception to actually "see" what's ahead. Possibly Thivery or Bluff to throw them off your trail or Athletics to get over a difficult part of the trail? Yea, seems to work fine for me and it's some good fun to think of interesting ways of using your skills that aren't so apparently cut'n'dry.
Magic Items
One of the most frustrating areas that fourth edition completely fails at is concerning magic items. The vary idea that an economy, in many ways based around magic, can make money in the fourth edition world is beyond belief. You can't make a profit at anything if you have to purchase the materials at the same price that you sell them for. Who thought this was a good idea? In addition, a player has to sell things at 1/5th cost? How does a world which uses 4th edition logic able to even produce magic items?
In addition, there is no other drawback to crafting items. No exp needed, no large amount of time required, not even a skill check! With this set up a DM need never give out any magic at all. They might as well give out magical dust or gold all the time and let players make whatever they want, no one in their right mind would sell magic items for 1/5th value, to begin with, they can just buy them and not waste the time making the item for the same value.
I guess if your the kind of player who likes to sit at the table and describe how your making a specific item or weapon in a lab/workshop while the rest of the party is actually out adventuring, then yea I could see this as being frustrating. Honestly, the game's perspective is that because your an Adventurer, you've got more important things to do than sit around and craft magical items for days on end. Because your most likely out and actually "doing" things, crafting one item could take weeks or even months longer than intended. And during that time, your leveling up and finding magical items on your own. So when you finally get your pet-project done, you're already 3 levels higher than when it might have been useful and it doesn't come close to wielding the gold you've spent on it. And while there are a lot of things that are rare in D&D, Experience Points is by FAR the most precious and spending it on items your better off finding in the market just isn't good game mechanics.
Powers
Whoever thought that giving fighters 30 abilities to choose from, was playing too many MMO's and board games. D&D is not a board game, it is a role-playing game which uses maps for it's combat. Wizards and other casters have spells and a large choice of them for a reason, they are casters and that's what they do. Giving Fighters the abilities to completely control monsters, and do ridiculous creature control effects is just turning them into wizards. There is a single class called “wizard” as a game designer I could not see the benefit to having 12 classes that are essentially all wizards.
Next, and most likely the biggest mistake that fourth edition made, is infinite spells. A wizard has never had infinite magic missiles, unless epic, and having infinite “At-Will” powers is nothing more than what you'd find in a video game. Eventually power runs out, and even wizards should run out of energy to fight; that is the price for being a wizard.
I have this serious doubt that you've played low level wizards or even fighters for that matter. First, the fighters (and other Melee-oriented classes): I'd like to state that Options are "Gooooood" and reducing a fighter to "I swing big sharp thingy at bad-guy" is boring and actually disingeneous of actual sword play. You know there's whole books on fighting techniques with hundreds of strikes, foot-placements, and techniques for various weapons and combinations of weapons/armor/shields? All of that reduced to...."I swing my sword...roll dice." Not realistic in the slightest.
Fighters have a "few" creature control effects, namely pushing/pulling/sliding and knocking prone. Sorry, Domination isn't in their repertoire and neither is forcing them to perform other actions like hitting itself with it's own weapon or walking off a cliff (those belong to Wizards, honestly). So while they can "Goad (v3.5 feat if your interested)" other enemies and knock them back with heavy swings of their steel, they cannot fling them into pits from 30 feet away, they can't stun a whole group of goblins with one attack, they can't create walls of fire that immolate their enemies, they can't....you get the idea.
And as for At-Will powers (like [i[Magic Missile[/i]), I really can't understand the enjoyment of players who run out of spells in low-level games. Even PATHFINDER gave wizards and other full-casters at-will powers (albiet their cantrips/orisons) but still, they're there so wizards at low levels will never have to worry about carring a crossbow again, which frankly is beyond stupid.
Classes and RacesAs for multi-classing, forget it. Fourth edition has completely destroyed multi-classing, making it feat based, without the ability to mix and match levels. If you think Hybred is a viable class, make sure to read it well, it's not even close to multi-classing either. Fourth edition is a single class system and there is little or no way to fix it with their setup. (another typical MMO concept)
While 3E wasn't necessarily at fault for the concept of Min/Maxing, it made it practically essential to character creation. If you'd care to look at any character optimization threads for v3.5 I'd say 90% of those "broken" builds have 2 to 3 base classes with 3 to 4 Prestige classes thrown in for good measure. Yea, easy potential to make obscene characters or horrible characters with one level-dip. Too swingy for average play.
Theres more, sooo much more but I just don't have the time or energy.
I was going to comment, but Steve Geddess said just about everything I was going to. Particularly about old school D&D's lack of skills.
I like how the post barely talks about Pathfinder despite the title. I love Pathfinder, but 4E is a fine game too. Each took different directions and emphasized different aspects of D&D. I for one love my Gamma World and Dark Sun books.
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Dungeon and Dragons 4.0: A Wrong Turn for an Honored Product
No matter how bad you might want it to be, this is not an essay. If you feel as though you have written an essay, you are wrong. Your thread already has a title. You don't need to give it another one just for the sake of the appearance of legitimacy.
What you have written is a pseudoreview that should never have been typed in the first place, because your post demonstrates a fundamental lack of familiarity with the game. Your ego's writing checks your experience can't cash.
Now that D&D 4th edition has been out for a few years now we, as gamers and dungeon masters, can reflect on its effectiveness as a game product.
It's obvious that time played no part in the decision to write this. The only reason time would have been a factor is if you were using that time to become more familiar with the game. It is clear that you were not. You just up and decided you would share your wildly inflamed opinion with the internet.
You really ought to cross-post this to the EN World 4e discussion forum. Oh, and RPGnet's d20 discussion board. I'm sure they'll be understanding.
While most of the gamers I knew had high hopes for the 4.0 product line before it came out, we were confused and let down when it actually did.
That's a shame. The gamers I know are much less easily confused.
The system is riddled with flaws, compared to previous editions and competing product lines and I believe a step backwards rather than forward.
"Forward" meaning "stuff that I like", "backwards" meaning "stuff that I don't like".
Fourth Edition does not simply suffer from a few minor flaws, or one large one either, its weaknesses are broad including: lack of skills,
Uh oh. Not a good start, I'm afraid.
altering key defenses,
Seriously?
a lack of ingame economy due to crafting issues,
Oh good lord, have you ever played D&D? Of any edition?
and giving fighters millions of powers.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Skills
In previous editions of D&D, skills were an integral part of character concepts. They helped to define and limit a PC to what they could and could not do when it came to things outside of combat.
Sort of like what skills do in 4e.
The wide variety of skills and ranking was created to give each player the feeling that their PC knows something.
The feeling of a PC "knowing" something comes not from the choice of a wide variety of skills, but rather from compelling and significant ways in which those skills can be utilized during play.
Fourth edition takes much of this control and diversity away.
4th Edition certainly does remove a lot of superfluous diversity and some illusory shells of control.
It condenses the skills to the point of lunacy.
In the future, consider reserving strong, inflammatory words like "lunacy" for when they are actually called for. At no point should the word "lunacy" be used to refer to an incredibly minor difference in opinion on game design. Hyperbolic language like this would prevent us from taking your arguments seriously, if it weren't for the fact that you've already lost us on that count.
No longer can players study nobility,
History.
geography,
Nature and Streetwise.
craft a non-magical item,
Say to your friendly local DM, "I'd like to craft a non-magical item!"
or be a barkeep;
Say to your friendly local DM, "I'd like to be a barkeep!"
It is obvious that your complaint is not that these things cannot happen in 4th Edition. They demonstrably can, so you'd be (ahem) a lunatic to claim otherwise. Your actual complaint (which you have unfortunately left to inference) is that 4th Edition doesn't have rules that are specific and extensive enough to meet your exacting demands. Which is odd, of course, since one of your primary (and silliest) gripes with 4e is that you think it's a "roll-playing game". You are simultaneously complaining that 4e forces too much die rolling, and complaining that 4e doesn't give you enough opportunities to pointlessly roll dice. It's making your arguments look scattered and contrived, to say the least.
these skills were removed completely to make room for the other board game additions.
Nothing was removed to "make room" for anything else. Skills were condensed because there were too many skills that served very, very little purpose from a gameplay standpoint, and encouraged players to make suckers' choices when selecting skills - you can either be useful, or you can be flavorful (e.g. "Hmm, I have four skill points. I can make my character flavorful and interesting by picking up four ranks in Profession (Barkeep), or I can make my character a useful adventurer by picking up four ranks in Search. Oh well, guess I don't get to be a barkeep!"). 4th Edition allows you to be both flavorful and useful by putting control of your character's non-adventuring aspects firmly in the player's hands. If you want your character to be a bartender, he's a bartender (as long as your DM is cool with that).
A fundamental aspect of a role-playing game is the ability to role-play your character based on their strengths an weaknesses. If a character has fewer ways to define who they are, then the system fails to establish itself as a role-playing game (becoming a roll-playing game).
4e has more ways of mechanically defining who your character is than 1e did. According to your "logic", 1e is therefore even less of a roleplaying game than 4e is!
Also, you used the term "roll-playing", so minus ten points from Gryffindor.
The complete lack of crafting
I think what you meant here was "The removal of the necessity to give up valuable character development resources in order to craft mundane items,"
is obviously disturbing for most players,
No, it's not. Almost no one I've talked to gives a damn. No one wasted their valuable time (and skill ranks) forging non-magical swords back in the day. They spent some tiny fraction of their mountains of gold on a sword and then enchanted it with awesome magical powers.
as in many previous editions, crafting added a level of control and fun that players enjoyed exploring.
"Fun", in this case, means having the ability to roll a d20 to see if you forged a sword. Again, this is coming across as wildly hypocritical. You claim to abhor "roll-playing", but here you are calling a nearly meaningless d20 roll "fun".
If I didn't know any better, I'd think that you just had a laundry list of ill-formed complaints about 4e and decided to vomit them all onto the internet without any regard for whether or not those complaints were at odds with one another.
Now, fourth edition didn't get everything wrong when it came to skills. The passive perceptions of Insight and Perception was an excellent way to deal with things seen and unseen before player's rolled. However, this minor strength does not outweigh the multiple other areas that 4th edition d&d lacks on skills. I believe Heinsoo, Collins, and Wyatt dropped the ball completely here.
Heh, I was wondering how you were going to handle the skills that Pathfinder also condensed. So condensing skills are bad and remove player control, except when Pathfinder condenses skills. When Pathfinder condenses skills, it's "excellent".
Brilliant.
Skill Encounters
The way in which fourth edition deals with role-playing is as much an insult to the gamer,
No, just you. But really, can you blame them?
as it is ineffective as a device for story-telling. While in previous editions the players and the DM had the ability to role-play encounters and occasionally throw a dice to influence certain aspects, in fourth edition there is little or no non-dice role-playing.
This is the point at which I start to believe that you are a troll.
You don't understand skill challenges. I mean, you just don't. You don't get how they work, you don't get how they ought to be used, and you don't realize that there are times they aren't supposed to be used.
But still, still, you feel like you know enough to come here and whine about them. You don't.
Skill challenges are meant to provide a rules framework for adjudicating a party's (or PC's) success or failure at a non-combat task. They are NOT designed to replace roleplaying. If you are replacing roleplaying with a skill challenge, you are probably a terrible DM. They should enhance roleplaying. Ideally, the players won't even be made aware that they are participating in a skill challenge (though they might suspect as much). They should roleplay their actions normally, and when the opportunity to make a skill check arises, you use the skill challenge framework to determine whether they succeeded or failed. This lets you determine, in a non-arbitrary fashion, how well the group did at overcoming the challenge, and ultimately allows you to assign experience points in an appropriate way to non-combat encounters.
That's how skill challenges work. You are now educated.
Skill encounters in 4th are nothing more than, “roll that skill (x) times to get (y) successes to achieve (z) goal before rolling (n) failures.
That's how skill challenges work mechanically. If that's how you actually run a skill challenge, you're doing it wrong.
Most of the time the skill checks go a little like this:
“You need to get away from the horde of orcs chancing you, while not falling off the cliff. Roll Endurance, Athletics, Acrobatics, and Insight once for a bonus to a single check. 4 sucesses before 2 failures.”
“I rolled 25 on Endurance.”
“20 on Athletics.”
“I rolled insight of 20 to see which way is better.”
“I rolled 22 on acrobatics + his 2 bonus from insight.”
“I rolled 14 on Endurance, fail here.”
“I rolled 20 on Endurance, we win.”Skill Encounter over.
It sounds like you have been playing with a pretty terrible DM. Or, like you are a pretty terrible DM. But we'll be charitable here, and just call the DM in question "a friend".
While the intention of skill encounters is to add what happens into the skill checks by the DM it usually is nothing more than, “You run fast, you run faster, you jump over that well, you trip over a log,” etc. In the end, on average, it is about 10 minutes of rolling dice at an encounter that really could have been a device for active role-playing and fun.
Again, this is a problem with you and your group. These examples make you seem cripplingly incapable of roleplaying. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if you don't care about roleplaying, but you've decided to come here and complain that 4e doesn't let you roleplay. If you go out and buy a fancy new washing machine, but forget to load it with detergent, you don't get to complain to the washing machine's manufacturer when your clothes come out dirty.
In other words, be a less terrible group. That'll probably do wonders for your play experience.
Magic Items
One of the most frustrating areas that fourth edition completely fails at is concerning magic items. The vary idea that an economy, in many ways based around magic, can make money in the fourth edition world is beyond belief.
Oh god.
You can't make a profit at anything if you have to purchase the materials at the same price that you sell them for.
That's the point.
Who thought this was a good idea?
Everyone.
In addition, a player has to sell things at 1/5th cost?
Yes.
How does a world which uses 4th edition logic able to even produce magic items?
Because there are people who devote their lives to creating items, hunting down buyers and markets, and honing their bargaining skills. Those people are called merchants. Those people are not called adventurers. If you would like to play a savvy merchant who spends all his time and effort looking for the next great deal, you should not be playing Dungeons & Dragons. That is not what this game is for. Go play something else. Or better yet, get online and start trading in real life.
In addition, there is no other drawback to crafting items.
That's right.
No exp needed,
Nope. Because that sucked.
no large amount of time required,
Nope. Because that also sucked.
not even a skill check!
I think you're confused. Skill checks were not a part of magic item crafting in 3rd Edition.
With this set up a DM need never give out any magic at all.
I have no idea what you mean here. You probably won't clarify, so I'm just going to assume that this didn't really have any meaning anyway.
They might as well give out magical dust or gold all the time and let players make whatever they want, no one in their right mind would sell magic items for 1/5th value, to begin with,
Sure they would. If you find an item you don't want, you sell it. Or, if you're planning on doing some enchanting of your own, you break it down into residuum to use for later. But sometimes you just want some quick cash for the party ale-and-whores expense account.
they can just buy them and not waste the time making the item for the same value.
Sure, if you have the gold on-hand. And you're in a large enough city that magical items can be found. And if you don't have spare residuum eating a hole in your pocket.
In previous editions it took time, money, experience, and sometimes special items to craft magical equipment.
Yep. A lot of people thought that stuff was kind of pointless and distracting, so they removed it.
In addition it was only ½ the value of the item to make, so the economy could exist at a “Key-Stone” markup on average (sold at twice as much as you bought it for).
The 4th Edition economic model assumes that you're an adventurer, and don't have time to waste trying to eke out a profit on your magical loot.
If you're not an adventurer, again, you are probably best-served by playing a different game. One, perhaps, that is not explicitly about adventuring.
However, even this system had its flaws, mostly being that casters who crafted were always behind on experience and levels compared to anyone who didn't craft magical items.
That was one of the flaws.
Pathfinder irons out nearly all of the weaknesses of crafting. Players still spend 1/2 crafting value, but no longer was their an exp cost. Pathfinder made it cost time, and a skill check. This is far superior for the economy, and I can imagine a world in which magic is made, sold, and traded under these conditions.
I can imagine a world where magic is made, sold, and traded in 4th Edition. Maybe, I don't know, work on that whole imagination thing? It's not doing you any favors as is.
In addition the casters no longer were below the exp curve, and their was still a cost for creation and penality for failure (no magic item made). In addition, fourth editions rules mean that any character can take a magical crafting feat who has the skills.
Yes.
Fighters should not be able to cast magical enchantments simply because they have a little arcana knowledge.
Ah, I should have guessed you were part of the fighters-can't-have-nice-things camp.
In that case, I'm actually rather glad to hear that you're not playing 4e.
They must be magically trained and have a well of power that lingers on the items they make.
Ah-hah! The corollary to fighters-can't-have-nice-things! The I-know-how-magic-works-and-you-don't line of reasoning!
You clearly believe that magic ought to work in a certain way. I don't know why, really, because it's magic and it doesn't really exist and can therefore be anything we want it to be, so putting an arbitrary (and yes, what you're talking about is arbitrary) restriction on what magic does and doesn't do cannot be anything more than an attempt to keep casters at the top of the heap and non-casters at the bottom (presumably with a sneering, "Where they belong.").
Crafting should not be like MMO's in which anyone can just choose to be an enchanter, it works for World of Warcraft but it doesn't work in D&D.
It works fine for D&D, you're just bothered by it. Because it doesn't work like you think it ought to work. Magic should work exactly how you want it to, gosh darnit, and if they didn't make their arbitrary fantasy magic system in just the way you wanted them to, then they're just big fat dumb heads who clearly have no idea what magic is.
Powers
Whoever thought that giving fighters 30 abilities to choose from, was playing too many MMO's and board games.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
"Man, who gave the fighters nice things? Don't they know they can't have them?"
D&D is not a board game, it is a role-playing game which uses maps for it's combat.
Quite right.
Wizards and other casters have spells and a large choice of them for a reason, they are casters and that's what they do.
"It's this way for a reason! What's that reason, you ask? Because that's just the way it is!"
You need to spend maybe thirty seconds or so asking yourself if you have a supportable argument, or if you're just talking.
Giving Fighters the abilities to completely control monsters, and do ridiculous creature control effects is just turning them into wizards.
That's odd. They play completely differently from Wizards. You'd think that if they turned them into Wizards, they'd be the same. But who knows. D&D is mysterious, and why bother examining it when we already know exactly how it ought to work because you said so?
There is a single class called “wizard” as a game designer I could not see the benefit to having 12 classes that are essentially all wizards.
I think we can all be thankful that you are not a game designer. And, in the off-chance that you are, that you aren't anywhere near the development of games we care about.
Next, and most likely the biggest mistake that fourth edition made, is infinite spells.
You use the word "mistake" here. You probably should have picked a different word.
A wizard has never had infinite magic missiles, unless epic, and having infinite “At-Will” powers is nothing more than what you'd find in a video game.
Or, y'know, any game in which the designers decided that being able to use certain powers at will is totally fine. For instance, the Witch from Pathfinder. Or cantrips in Pathfinder. Or Wizards using Reserve feats in D&D 3.5. Whoops, guess your game(s) of choice are just like video games, now.
Eventually power runs out,
Except, as I pointed out above, when it doesn't.
But, again, this is another case of you knowing exactly how magic works, and the rest of us being idiots because we think magic can work in a different way. Your made-up fantasy trope must be the one true made-up fantasy trope. All others are pretenders to the made-up fantasy throne in your head.
and even wizards should run out of energy to fight; that is the price for being a wizard.
The price for being a wizard is the 750 gp it takes to buy a wand of magic missile, at which point you have an effectively bottomless source of magic power at your disposal that you can replenish next time you're in town. Or tonight, before you go to bed.
Healing and Encounters
Mostly, this was never a huge issue in previous additions. Healing was seen as a way to balance the power of characters vs. monsters each day, but fourth edition takes this too far.
"TOO FAR, I TELL YOU!"
Giving each character the ability to instantly heal themselves, is taking the need for a healer out of the game completely.
Apparently you haven't played this game called D&D 4th Edition. Having someone who is able to heal the party during a fight is pretty much vital, unless you're really super fantastic.
I have run several fourth edition adventures in which a healer was not required to succeed.
Given your abject failure to properly use skill challenges, it doesn't surprise me that you haven't gotten the hang of challenging the party in combat.
Of course there are limits to this healing (surges) But are surges really a limit?
Yes.
There are several powers that read “as if a PC had spent a surge,”
Those are daily.
“regen x amount without a surge,”
Regeneration stops functioning once you're no longer bloodied.
“Add x temp hitpoint when you do y,”
Temporary hit points don't stack.
“Heal an extra y when you do x,”
This is either limited by surges, or requires you to accomplish something in combat. Either way, limited.
“Heal x more to your allies whenever they spend a surge,”
Requires surges.
etc. I have run some very long and intense sessions of D&D 4th and can say, with an expert degree of knowledge,
I can promise you that what you have with respect to knowledge of 4th Edition cannot, even in the most charitable terms, be called "expert".
that characters are so resilient in 4th that there is little to challenge them within their CR bracket; there isn't even instant death to help balance the scales.
I've killed PCs outright using encounters designed to challenge a party of their level. Maybe try fighting a little better?
Now, I like the way that pathfinder breaks the mold between 3.5 and 4th. They add a little extra healing to classes, like the cleric, but still have the spontaneous casting of 3.5 for positive heals. This gives a bit more healing, without making it ridiculous, like 4th edition. The fear of death should be real for the characters, and fourth edition just doesn't have enough of that fear to challenge the players within their CR bracket.
Sure it does. Just not when you DM.
Most encounters of +4 EL or less can be taken by any party without too much difficulty.
You either have super amazing players, or you need to really work on your own tactics. A level+4 encounter should leave the PCs gasping for breath.
The only way to challenge the party seems to be going beyond the encounter building rules and adding more to it than is allowed for the CR.
If that's what it takes to challenge them, do it.
Adding additional CR challenges in this way is not fair to the players,
I'm not sure what "fair" has to do with it. Your goal as DM is to provide a fun, invigorating, compelling game experience, and challenging the party is typically key to accomplishing that. If you need to beef up your encounters to challenge them, do it. "Fair" doesn't enter into it.
and goes beyond what is recommended in the DMG.
Staying within the CR +3 bracket in Pathfinder is more than challenging for players, and certainly adds the sense of fear that every player is looking for.
I'm not sure where career DMs get the impression that players are looking for a high level of fear of character death. Many (if not most) players like a game that challenges them without running too much of a risk of having the character they've spent months (or years) shepherding die.
Classes and Races
I don't see how anyone could completely screw up the fundamental concept of class structure as the fourth edition developers did.
Probably by saying, "You know, this fundamental class structure in 3rd Edition really isn't that fundamental after all!"
Base attack is gone,
Yeah, man, how could D&D possibly survive without Base Attack Bonus?
all attacks are based with + to base attribute with no real bonuses beyond magical and a few feats.
Ability bonus, half-level bonus, feat bonus(es), enhancement bonus, power bonus, tactical bonus(es), proficiency bonus...I could go on, but you already ignored most of those so I don't really see the point. Having a solid argument doesn't appear to be that important to you.
While this may look good on paper, in practice it is a disaster.
In practice it's fine. Of course, you provide nothing by way of example illustrating how this is a disaster, so we're just going to skip right along.
In conjunction with races, it is set up for only races that have those bonuses to the attributes and no other may apply. Even +2 to an attribute more than any other can unbalance the system and tables for CR vs. APL.
No. Please stop pretending you understand 4e math. You don't.
This sense of “we have to balance absolutely everything about each class, has made each class exactly the same as any other.
No, it hasn't.
As for multi-classing, forget it. Fourth edition has completely destroyed multi-classing, making it feat based, without the ability to mix and match levels.
And it works pretty well.
If you think Hybred is a viable class, make sure to read it well, it's not even close to multi-classing either.
Speaking as someone who has both played multiple hybrid characters and run games with hybrid characters in them, it's pretty much the definition of multi-classing. You are more or less equal parts of two different classes. I'm not sure what else you could mean by multiclassing, unless it's not real multiclassing unless you can go Barbarian 1/Monk 1/Paladin 2/Rogue 2 in which case AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Fourth edition is a single class system
Except when it's not.
and there is little or no way to fix it with their setup. (another typical MMO concept)
Except, you know, for multiclassing, dip feats, hybrid classing, etc.
But sure, VIDEOGAMESVIDEOGAMESVIDEOGAMES
On that note, races in fourth are completely misguided in concept. First, making all races with 2 +2 attributes and no drawbacks is against the spirit of the game.
Yes, you are sole arbiter over what is and isn't the spirit of the game. Congratulations on that.
Each race should have a drawback compared to other races.
Yes. That drawback is not having the awesome things the other races get.
Plus, this system makes humans completely the minority in all worlds,
Except for the fact that they're the plurality in most worlds.
even more so when races have +2 to one stat and +2 to one of 2 other stats of your choice. The humans +2 to a single stat is nowhere close to the power of all other races.
That's why humans get a bonus feat. And some of the best feat options in the game. And an extra at-will power. And a free skill. And a +1 to all non-AC defenses.
Virtually no one plays a human in fourth edition
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
and it is because + 1 feat does not equal +2 to one of 2 other stats
Again, let's stop pretending you understand 4e's math, please.
+ other ridiculous bonuses that each nonhuman race receives.
You mean bonuses like an extra at-will power, skill, and blanket bonus to defenses?
For example:
Human
Ability scores: +2 to one ability score of your choice
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares.
Vision: Normal
Languages: Common, choice of one other
Bonus Feat: You gain a bonus feat at 1st level. You must meet the feat’s prerequisites.
Bonus Skill: You gain training in one additional skill from your class skills list.
Human Defense Bonuses: You gain a +1 racial bonus to Fortitude, Reflex, and Will.
Human Power Selection: Choose an option for your human character.
Bonus At-Will Power: You know one extra 1st level at-will attack power from your class.
Heroic Effort: You have the heroic effort power.Warforged
Ability scores: +2 Constitution, +2 Intelligence or +2 Strength
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares.
Vision: NormalLanguages: Common
Skill Bonuses: +2 Endurance, +2 Intimidate.
Living Construct: You are a living construct. You do not need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep. You never make Endurance checks to resist the effect of starvation, thirst, or suffocation. All other conditions and effects affect you normally.
Unsleeping Watcher: You do not sleep and instead enter a state of inactivity for 4 hours to gain the benefits of an extended rest. While in this state, you are fully aware of your surroundings and notice approaching enemies and other events as normal.
Warforged Mind: You have a +1 racial bonus to your Will.
Warforged Resilience: You have a +2 racial bonus to saving throws against ongoing damage. Also, when you make a death saving throw, you can take the better result of your die roll or 10.
Warforged Resolve: You have the warforged resolve power.The human is far underpowered compared to all other races.
No, it's not. Humans are one of the top four (if not top three) played races in the game.
Extra at will powers are useless, you'll only need 2 at the most anyway.
Ugh.
An extra skill is also useless when there are only 10 to choose from.
This is the same guy who said that being able to add skills to your character gave you control and made your character more fun. Same guy.
And the +1 to some defenses is nice, but compared to not having to sleep, eat, breath, and automaking all death saves is ridiculous.
Having played a Warforged, the first three are not terribly useful and the last is pretty good but only if you carefully invest feats in making it part of your combat style.
The only drawback to any race is being human, and that is not how it should be. No race should have so much more power than any other unless that class has a level adjustment. Having a negative to a stat is important to balance for each race, and gives each race the ability to be any class respectively.
Pathfinder has put the power back in choosing a human, while maintaining the power of other races. It is the perfect way to balance but also so difference amongst the races, bravo to Paizo and the playtesters!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
as it is ineffective as a device for story-telling. While in previous editions the players and the DM had the ability to role-play encounters and occasionally throw a dice to influence certain aspects, in fourth edition there is little or no non-dice role-playing.
This is the point at which I start to believe that you are a troll.
Really? You got that far before thinking he was a troll?
Dungeon and Dragons 4.0: A Wrong Turn for an Honored Product
Was as far as I got. From the title I wasn't certain. But the subtitle was a dead giveaway.
as it is ineffective as a device for story-telling. While in previous editions the players and the DM had the ability to role-play encounters and occasionally throw a dice to influence certain aspects, in fourth edition there is little or no non-dice role-playing.This is the point at which I start to believe that you are a troll.Really? You got that far before thinking he was a troll?
Dungeon and Dragons 4.0: A Wrong Turn for an Honored ProductWas as far as I got. From the title I wasn't certain. But the subtitle was a dead giveaway.
Benefit of the doubt. The whole no-post-history thing doesn't help his case, but you never know, here.
Scott, since you're here...
"Regeneration stops functioning once you're no longer bloodied."
Do you know how this rule was intended if you become unbloodied (and you're no longer regenerating) then become bloodied again? We have not really settled on whether it means 'regenerate until you're no longer bloodied' or 'regenerate whenever you're bloodied throughout this encounter'.
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Dungeon and Dragons 4.0: A Wrong Turn for an Honored Product
Every thing Scott said plus 1.
I do disagree with some of the arguments in response to the OP, but given I disagree with the OP more I'll just let them be.
One thing that I saw though that I wanted to ask about.
Regeneration stops functioning once you're no longer bloodied.
Where does it say this? I checked where I thought it would mention this in the rules, but I can't seem to find it.
Many of the salient points have already been covered. I'll touch on a couple of points that have not really been mentioned and reiterate a few others because I think they are particularly important.
Magic Items
First off its pretty important to recognize that no edition of D&D actually has a realistic functioning economic model, never mind one that specifically deals with supply and demand in the magic item market. What 4E does have going for it is a well designed game model for dealing with magic items while giving both the players and the DM the major elements they desire from the system.
Specifically the DM gets to be the source of all the most potent and wondrous magic in the game. In effect this addresses the Magic Item Shoppe complaint from 3rd where the players generally preferred to sell most of the magic they found so that they could go 'shopping' for what they really wanted. The system insures that the players can pretty much never afford to buy the really potent stuff the DM get to hand out.
Still players do like to go shopping so the system does allow them to buy magic items (this helps with keeping gold valuable as well). Hence players can shop for magic - just not the top tier stuff that is the exclusive preserve of the DM.
Humans
WotC tells us that the single most popular character made on the CB is human fighter. So its certianly not true that no one plays humans.
In fact in my 5 player group we have 3 humans. What your missing is the fact that a feat is pretty potent to begin with. That extra trained skill varies in value...+5 to a skill rises in value quite dramatically in a game that features lots of skill use but is not particularly important if all you ever do is fight. Finally the extra at will can be an extra at will...or it can be swapped for Heroic Effort (which is a really good power). At my table two of the humans did that swap but our human wizard has a lot in his job description and needed all three of the at wills.
Healing/Surges
Here you show that you have very limited actual experience with 4E. I'm guessing you've played a few sessions at very low level and are presuming that the whole system runs like it does at 2nd for the whole game...it doesn't.
At its root the math is roughly average surge value increases by about 1-1.5 hps per level but average monster damage increases by 3-4 points per level. Needless to say your surges don't keep up. At the lowest levels a character can take around three hits before expending a surge is required to negate damage. However eventually average damage from a monsters hit does more then your total surge value in damage. Net effect is surges start off seeming plentiful - but they become an extremely valuable resource and without significant magical support in no way allow a character to keep functioning for very long.
Furthermore actual magical healing is generally a reasonably scarce commodity in combat - its not that unusual for the leader to announce sometime during a fight that the last of the normal go to healing is completely tapped out. This is usually followed by a general service announcement that he has two more daily healing powers and then all healing in this battle is completely tapped out...obviously the general point is 'watch what your doing - I can't help you any more.
I do disagree with some of the arguments in response to the OP, but given I disagree with the OP more I'll just let them be.
One thing that I saw though that I wanted to ask about.
Regeneration stops functioning once you're no longer bloodied.Where does it say this? I checked where I thought it would mention this in the rules, but I can't seem to find it.
It'll be in the power itself. I don't believe its strictly true that this is always the case...just the majority of the time - probably some powers at Epic without this restriction and monsters often have no such restriction.
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Drakesylvan.....Please don't do this.
just stop, okay?
please?
GRU
Scott, since you're here...
"Regeneration stops functioning once you're no longer bloodied."
Do you know how this rule was intended if you become unbloodied (and you're no longer regenerating) then become bloodied again? We have not really settled on whether it means 'regenerate until you're no longer bloodied' or 'regenerate whenever you're bloodied throughout this encounter'.
Where does it say this? I checked where I thought it would mention this in the rules, but I can't seem to find it.
It'll be in the power itself. I don't believe its strictly true that this is always the case...just the majority of the time - probably some powers at Epic without this restriction and monsters often have no such restriction.
This was my mistake; it's not part of the regeneration rule - the limitations attached to regeneration are noted in each individual power. Just for kicks, though, I flipped through all 53 powers that grant regeneration. All but 2 are daily powers, and all of them end (or are temporarily suspended) when no longer bloodied, or end at the end of the encounter, or both.
Either way, regeneration is not even close to an automatic full-heal button.
I'm a fan of flagging offensive or troll-ish posts, but that's not how I took this. It was basically just a poor review based on a peculiar understanding of how 4th edition plays. (I am skeptical that the OP has played as much as he claims, but exaggeration on the Internet is hardly a flaggable offense).
I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with the OP.
I feel that while 3.5's (and as a result, much of PF's) way of handling magic items, general crafting, and the more pure RP skills is not entirely satisfactory, the whole "it's all in your court, we're not even going to try to figure out how to handle that mess because most players don't care" approach does little to enhance 4E, especially as it makes any attempts at organized play that much harder as players have a harder time knowing what to expect from unknown DMs. In the end though, it doesn't really come up that often in 3.5 or PF, and as 4E is designed around a completely different philosophy, it likely comes up even less there, except when someone tries to make the system something it was not designed to be, which happens to be the most likely scenario it comes up in regardless of the system in question. Whether it's trying to make PF low magic or 4E high magic,
Skill challenges were actually one of the greatest concepts to come out of 4E. The mechanics were complete shambles at release, and they are a challenge to do well in any system, but the fact that they at least tried to emphasize noncombat encounters was helpful, even if they basically left figuring out the actual mechanics up the the DM.
Healing surges I tended to not particularly notice for good or ill. I don't know that I agree with attempts to transport them over to PF, but for 4E they seem to work just fine. The number of powers available falls into the same category for me; they work well enough for the system they were designed for.
To me, whether you end up liking the system or not depends on where you stand on the developer's almost complete abdication of non combat aspects of the game. Interestingly enough, most of the rabid support I've seen for 4E comes from DMs and those who both play and DM, with comparatively little enthuiasm from those who just play. In contrast, most of the rabid support I've seen for PF seems to be opposite. What that means, I don't know, but it does seem to suggest at the very least that the differeing philosophies behind the different systems both have very valid and strong support.
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Interestingly enough, most of the rabid support I've seen for 4E comes from DMs and those who both play and DM, with comparatively little enthuiasm from those who just play. In contrast, most of the rabid support I've seen for PF seems to be opposite. What that means, I don't know, but it does seem to suggest at the very least that the differeing philosophies behind the different systems both have very valid and strong support.
I think it is fair to say that 4e is much easier to DM than 3e, especially in terms of pre-game preparation (I say this a lot, but it doesn't make it untrue). Certainly for this DM, that is a huge win for me.
As for the OP, while I hate to agree with Gorbacz, his suggestion is wise.
I think it is fair to say that 4e is much easier to DM than 3e, especially in terms of pre-game preparation (I say this a lot, but it doesn't make it untrue). Certainly for this DM, that is a huge win for me.
What I find interesting is the amount of player interest this seems to have on the system. Almost all comments from pure players include the caveat "with this particular DM," suggesting that the system itself has little to appeal to players directly. The developers seem to have targetted the system as a whole toward the DM, giving the players just enough to work with, which makes DMing easier, but limits the amount of player generated excitement.
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I dm both pathfinder and 4th Ed. They're both great games. I borrow from both systems when I run my games, as I think they both have things they do better than theother. This is only personal preference though. Neither game is perfect, but both of them are so good in general that my players and I readily overlook the bits we don't enjoy so we can keep gaming.
None of the points the op brought up all under the category of facets we don't enjoy. Admittedly skill challenges used to play out like he suggested at first, but the I learned to run them better and let their rolls drive the story, which then led to what should rolled next in the skill challenge.
Interestingly enough, I've recently had two players decide they had to drop from one of the games or the other, due to time constraints. Both of them chose to drop pathfinder for 4th edition. No reason given other than "I like it more" from both of them.
The game is great fun, for us at least.
On the note about regen, I run the power as kicking in every time you drop back to bloodied for an encounter. It's usually a serious enough situation for my players to be in when they trigger it, and so far it hasn't unbalanced things to do so.
Cheers
Interestingly enough, I've recently had two players decide they had to drop from one of the games or the other, due to time constraints. Both of them chose to drop pathfinder for 4th edition. No reason given other than "I like it more" from both of them.
It sounds like you have a good handle of the system, which in the hands of a good DM and a consistent group can be a far stronger system than PF in retaining player interest. The thing I've noticed is very little of what makes it fun for players comes from the system itself, which is really quite devoid of anything other than basic combat rules laid out with as little fuss and fluff as possible. This is neither good or bad, but it can be challenging for someone coming from 3.5 or PF, or going from 4E to PF, to adjust to, especially if they only play one or the other regularly.
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The descriptive and motivational background material in 4E is presented with more depth than in any other edition of the D&D rulebooks. It's purely the fault of the gamer, if he can't build a launch pad for a personality with what's provided.
The later books must have done better than the original PHB in that regard if that is the case, because that book has almost no descriptive or motivational background material. Pretty much everything is described in purely mechanical terms, and the few times it does attempt to provide fluff, they would have been better off not bothering, as it's so generic as to be largely pointless. The settings books that I saw were better, but the few rulebooks I have from its initial release are extremely bland, and there is very little for the player to work with. The DM support is significantly better than previous editions, but at least early on, there was very little material to aid the player beyond raw numbers.
I do agree that you have to sit down at the table with the right mindset, but I didn't see much in the system itself that directly supports the player to get in that mindset. There was plenty of material that the DM could use to help get his players in that mindset, but very little for the player directly.
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I think it is fair to say that 4e is much easier to DM than 3e, especially in terms of pre-game preparation (I say this a lot, but it doesn't make it untrue). Certainly for this DM, that is a huge win for me.What I find interesting is the amount of player interest this seems to have on the system. Almost all comments from pure players include the caveat "with this particular DM," suggesting that the system itself has little to appeal to players directly. The developers seem to have targetted the system as a whole toward the DM, giving the players just enough to work with, which makes DMing easier, but limits the amount of player generated excitement.
I'd be surprised if it wasn't like that for virtually all games, including 3e. A crap DM is a crap DM. A good DM is a good DM. The player experience will revolve around that much more than anything to do with system. I think people get hung up on systems as an intellectual exercise much more than is actually borne out by play, which is really about interaction between the players, DM included. My experience of in-game play / interaction altered hardly at all between editions. Or, indeed, when we played RQ.
Grognards.txt thanks you for your contribution.
PS: You have never played 4e once in your entire life and if I hadn't already read a billion "reviews" that are blatently false in almost everything I would be shocked at how blatently false your review is in almost everything.
Addendum: on top of 4e, I am also going to wager you've never played any earlier edition either. Just so you know, 3e is pretty different from other editions too!
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The later books must have done better than the original PHB in that regard if that is the case, because that book has almost no descriptive or motivational background material. Pretty much everything is described in purely mechanical terms, and the few times it does attempt to provide fluff, they would have been better off not bothering, as it's so generic as to be largely pointless. The settings books that I saw were better, but the few rulebooks I have from its initial release are extremely bland, and there is very little for the player to work with. The DM support is significantly better than previous editions, but at least early on, there was very little material to aid the player beyond raw numbers.
See, I really don't recall this fabled "player support" in any previous edition. The 3e PHB is a pretty quick trot through a few races and character classes, a bit on combat, and loads of spells (half the book or so). The main difference in the 4e format is that the character class sections are much longer, because the "spells" are brought into the main section rather than being a chapter on their own. The 4e PHB arguably has more content since it also contains magic items in the equipment section. But I simply don't recall in the previous D&D edition PHBs where there was anything much more than that. The 4e PHB isn't really very different in that respect. The 3e classes are all described pretty much in mechanical terms - it just so happens that with the format in the 3e PHB (no spells until the end) they are over quicker. The power descriptions actually contain a bit of fluff for each one ("Calling on the powers of darkness, you smite your foes with tiny needles of force") with the 3e spell descriptions never had (I think Paizo brought them in for the Core Rulebook, but I could be wrong and maybe WotC started it in some supplement). So I really don't buy this stuff, to be frank - it's selective memory or even simply false.
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I think you may be guilty of reification here (a similar charge I would level at those who ask - Why can only a ranger dual wield effectively?). It doesnt matter if you cant multiclass because 'class' isnt a real thing (like number of arms and legs or somesuch). What matters is whether you can describe any character concept you'd like to. It doesnt matter if in 3.5 you'd go with a multiclass fighter-wizard and in 4th edition you'd choose a swordmage. What matters is if your character can be realised within the rules.
As illustrated sublimely, HERE
"A bard, huh? My father taught me that bards were underpowered."
"Really? So, what class are you?"
"I'm a multiclass fighter/rogue/sorceror, who specialises in enchantment spells."
"And that never struck you as needlessly complicated?"
"Not until this moment, no."
This thread was like watching a dude walk into a biker bar and tell the bikers how much he just enjoyed their mothers "company". Then watching the bikers lay the smack down on him with pool cues and an 8 ball in a sock.
Funny...
On the other hand he may have had a crap DM that did the system a disservice and he is venting his frustration not knowing it was the DM not the system.
RE: Characterization:
One thing 4e does for me is make characters play different. A warrior with a polearm and a warrior with a two handed sword both play differently in 4e, and both play differently from rogues, who play differently from rangers, who play differently from etc, etc. A polearm fighter is moving enemies all over the place, pulling and pushing as he stabs and hacks. The two handed sword warrior doesn't care about any of this ninny "movement" garbage and just starts killin' dudes. The rogue is moving constantly to find openings and weak points, while the ranger is running up, unleashing a flurry of attacks, and then backing the heck away.
Though each class can look somewhat samey at first, every playing style contributes differently to how they feel, and the end result is that playing as a rogue makes you feel like you're playing a rogue, rather then "a fighter that has less AC/HP but adds sneak attack to his hits."
I played 4E for a couple years, and then Pathfinder right before they released Ultimate Magic. I still prefer 4E, but each system has plenty of flaws to fill the back closet. I am still amazed to this day on how preference for one system, clouds judgements in regards to the other. I am not immune to that effect.
My only concern or hope (however you view it) is where D&D or it's derivatives are headed, but that may take a while. I already know what each system has to offer.
See, I really don't recall this fabled "player support" in any previous edition. The 3e PHB is a pretty quick trot through a few races and character classes, a bit on combat, and loads of spells (half the book or so). The main difference in the 4e format is that the character class sections are much longer, because the "spells" are brought into the main section rather than being a chapter on their own. The 4e PHB arguably has more content since it also contains magic items in the equipment section. But I simply don't recall in the previous D&D edition PHBs where there was anything much more than that. The 4e PHB isn't really very different in that respect. The 3e classes are all described pretty much in mechanical terms - it just so happens that with the format in the 3e PHB (no spells until the end) they are over quicker. The power descriptions actually contain a bit of fluff for each one ("Calling on the powers of darkness, you smite your foes with tiny needles of force") with the 3e spell descriptions never had (I think Paizo brought them in for the Core Rulebook, but I could be wrong and maybe WotC started it in some supplement). So I really don't buy this stuff, to be frank - it's selective memory or even simply false.
2nd edition had a great deal of text that was pure description in pretty much every single section of the PHB. Late 3.5 books had a brief description for each spell before getting into the crunch. The core book in general did not have long sections of descriptive text, but there was enough of it spread around, often as captions to artwork, through the entire book that it didn't feel like a textbook reading it.
I had forgotten about the flavor text for the powers, but aside from that and the race descriptions, there is very little flavor text or even artwork to break up the wall of text throughout the book. The presentation and layout of the material didn't help, but to me at least, it was the little things like not even trying to describe distance in anything but squares. I understand they probably had good reasons for that kind of thing, and for what they were trying to accomplish, it worked, but it wasn't a particularly pleasant book to try to read; it was more of a reference book than anything else. Neither the 3.0 nor the 3.5 PHB felt quite that bad overall, though I will admit certain places managed to accomplish that feeling, and compared to the 2nd edition PHB, they feel just as dry as the 4E PHB feels compared to them. The overall presentation in those books was equally hindering, and they were at least readable as something other than an encylcopedia, to me at least.
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RE: Characterization:
One thing 4e does for me is make characters play different. A warrior with a polearm and a warrior with a two handed sword both play differently in 4e, and both play differently from rogues, who play differently from rangers, who play differently from etc, etc. A polearm fighter is moving enemies all over the place, pulling and pushing as he stabs and hacks. The two handed sword warrior doesn't care about any of this ninny "movement" garbage and just starts killin' dudes. The rogue is moving constantly to find openings and weak points, while the ranger is running up, unleashing a flurry of attacks, and then backing the heck away.
Though each class can look somewhat samey at first, every playing style contributes differently to how they feel, and the end result is that playing as a rogue makes you feel like you're playing a rogue, rather then "a fighter that has less AC/HP but adds sneak attack to his hits."
I think a lot of the problem with the character's not feeling different is that the early books did not make it particularly apparent that there are differences. A lot of it is the layout, with every class being presented in exactly the same way with no variation making it hard for the unique aspects to pop out, something that the unified power system across all classes contributed to as well. It may sound silly, but when everything looks the same, the human brain has a tendency to equate that with everything is the same. When the brain sees variety, it is more likely to think variety.
Interestingly enough, most of the rabid support I've seen for 4E comes from DMs and those who both play and DM, with comparatively little enthuiasm from those who just play. In contrast, most of the rabid support I've seen for PF seems to be opposite. What that means, I don't know, but it does seem to suggest at the very least that the differeing philosophies behind the different systems both have very valid and strong support.I think it just means you have a biased sample group. :) I would be hesitant about extrapolating those experiences to be in any way universal. Specifically, I suspect you mostly encounter 4E 'defenders' online, and internet activity tends to have a greater share of DMs since they tend to be more involved in the product, and more likely to engage in discussion about it.
What I find interesting is the amount of player interest this seems to have on the system. Almost all comments from pure players include the caveat "with this particular DM," suggesting that the system itself has little to appeal to players directly. The developers seem to have targetted the system as a whole toward the DM, giving the players just enough to work with, which makes DMing easier, but limits the amount of player generated excitement.Do you have any support for these "comments from pure players"? Again, while I can understand your conclusion based on your premise, the premise itself doesn't seem to have much support for it. Many of the changes and developments in 4E were improvements for players, or intended as such; I know many players who enjoy the game because of that.
I don't think that my experiences are universal, mind you, but I think I'd need more proof that the majority of 4E players find "little direct appeal in the system itself". Again, I suspect this may be an issue simply of exposure, unless you've actively seen threads where these sorts of comments are common.
Please note that I was describing what I had seen of rabid supporters. The average supporter for either system would probably not see any difference, but it is interesting to note that the kind of fan that is driven to support each system by carrying their views to the internet is different. Also note, that most of my experiences and truly reliable personal conversations came early in the system's development. It may well have developed into a more player friendly system, but early on, it was very definitely player neutral with most of its emphasis on making life easier for the DM.
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I had forgotten about the flavor text for the powers, but aside from that and the race descriptions, there is very little flavor text or even artwork to break up the wall of text throughout the book. The presentation and layout of the material didn't help, but to me at least, it was the little things like not even trying to describe distance in anything but squares. I understand they probably had good reasons for that kind of thing, and for what they were trying to accomplish, it worked, but it wasn't a particularly pleasant book to try to read; it was more of a reference book than anything else. Neither the 3.0 nor the 3.5 PHB felt quite that bad overall, though I will admit certain places managed to accomplish that feeling, and compared to the 2nd edition PHB, they feel just as dry as the 4E PHB feels compared to them. The overall presentation in those books was equally hindering, and they were at least readable as something other than an encylcopedia, to me at least.
The first time I read through the 4E PHB I thought "This reads like freaking stereo instructions!". I agree it would have been nice for a little more 'fluff' to break up those mind-numbing character class write-ups or even more artwork to show off more of the powers in action. Imo it is a major failing of the PHB that probably turned off a lot of potential players.
That said I do enjoy 4E and have played it off and on for the last 3 years.
It sounds like you have a good handle of the system, which in the hands of a good DM and a consistent group can be a far stronger system than PF in retaining player interest. The thing I've noticed is very little of what makes it fun for players comes from the system itself, which is really quite devoid of anything other than basic combat rules laid out with as little fuss and fluff as possible. This is neither good or bad, but it can be challenging for someone coming from 3.5 or PF, or going from 4E to PF, to adjust to, especially if they only play one or the other regularly.What 4E books have you read? That description doesn't match my experiences with 4E books, and I've seen many folks inspired by both background material and specific mechanics in the products.
I know in the past you've offered a number of conclusions about 4E based on secondhand descriptions of the material, rather than actual knowledge of the content. I suspect you may be doing so here again.
I get that you yourself have certain feelings about 4E. But you seem to do an awful lot of speaking on behalf of 4E fans and 4E players. And almost universally, the words I've seen you putting in the mouths of 4E players don't match my own experiences with the game.
All that said, I do think your earlier point - that a good DM and a good group matter far more than system - is absolutely true. But I'm not sure it follows that, "Your 4E group has a good DM, thus, the players enjoy it because of the DM and do not actually find anything fun in the system itself." That seems to be making a couple of logical leaps right in the middle there without anything really to back them up.
This is based off my actual reading of the original PHB and experiences I had at the table when it first came out. While all systems are DM dependent to an extent, 4E is moreso than many others, and definitely more so than 3.5 was. It isn't so much that the player can't find enjoyment in the system, but rather that 4E sets it up so that the DM stands between the player and the system at all times, and the system will often just plain not function if you remove the DM.
This is not true for 3.5, where a group could usually muddle through temporary difficulties and the occasional bad DMing. 3.5 was setup to largely deliver and sell itself with the DM there to get over the speed bumps, whereas with 4E, the DM is the delivery system, and the majority of the rules are there to aid the DM in that task. Neither is good or bad, one just makes the underlying system more transparent to the player, and one relies almost entirely on the DM to serve as a filter.
Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses, and I am not trying to attack either, it's just the observation that popped into my head after reading the OP. 3.5 was designed to and marketed to players. Early 4E was clearly marketed to and designed around the DM.
I think a lot of the problem with the character's not feeling different is that the early books did not make it particularly apparent that there are differences. A lot of it is the layout, with every class being presented in exactly the same way with no variation making it hard for the unique aspects to pop out, something that the unified power system across all classes contributed to as well. It may sound silly, but when everything looks the same, the human brain has a tendency to equate that with everything is the same. When the brain sees variety, it is more likely to think variety.
I had the exact same impression - to the point where I bought 4th edition, read the books, then got rid of them all without even playing it. Ultimately I think it is purely a matter of presentation though - I dont think the rules themselves are actually less useful for players, merely that they appear dry and samey. The common lament that "Wizards and Fighters are identical!" is likely to come from someone who has read the book rather than someone who has played the game extensively.
Once you understand the game, the experience of reading the rules is a very different thing, in my experience. (Plus the later print products and the digital content provides considerably more flavor - I also think the Player's Handbook is pretty much a reference book, not much of a source of creative inspiration).
Again, though, it seems more likely that the most likely to be rapid supporters are those more invested in a system, which tends to be DMs. It is the same thing you see on sites like ENworld, whenever there is a poll about running games - you've got far more DMs on the site than players, even though there are a lot more players out there overall. But the fans most invested in the game tend to both be the most likely to DM, and the most likely to get involved online.
As for claiming 4E was "very definitely player neutral", I'm still not sure where that claim comes from. 4E definitely offered the DM quite a bit - easier monster design, a return to DM judgement calls, etc. But it also addressed many player concerns - providing more balance among classes, less arbitrary PC deaths, removing cascading math attacks, more focus on character abilities over magic items.
Now, many of the changes it made are not to everyone's liking. And that's fine. But once again - many 4E players liked the changes, and are playing the game. You are not one of them, which is not a problem in and of itself - but claiming to speak for those players, and explain why they liked the system, is really just not something you have any right to do.
The things you point out about what players gained are why I say player neutral instead of anti-player. From the player's perspective, and while I can't speak about recent developments, I can speak about early experiences just fine, the losses and gains were about equal. I don't feel that it necessarily took anything away from the player, but it did definitely shift the focus of where the players got their information from, and overall, the DM gained, or regained, a lot of power, giving the perception that somehow players lost something at the same time.
While I agree that the most rabid fans are likely to be DMs, I find it noteworthy that the word of mouth that sustained, and still sustains, the OGL came as much from regular players as it did from DMs. In contrast, almost all of the 4E advocates I've come across on the internet or in the local game stores that are really pushing the system are DMs. That could just be a local thing, or something else entirely, but it is something that deserves at least some consideration.