I'd be interested in seeing those if you happen to have any links. The ones I've tracked down don't generally say what people cite them as saying. (People often say "hasbro demanded D&D turnover fifty million dollars", for example - in fact, that wasnt imposed from above, it was WotC's ambition so that they could access the marketing firepower of Hasbro by meeting the "core brand" level of sales).
FWIW, although its not a popular view, I think D&D fans grossly overestimate the importance of D&D to hasbro - I think they bought WotC for the collectible card games. Everything else is largely irrelevant, I suspect, provided the profit from magic rolls in. I have no knowledge of Hasbro specifically, but I have worked in a corporate structure before and you don't generally mess with the trivial details of your subsidiaries - that's what you pay the subsidiary's executives to do.
This might all be way off base, given the potential of computer games and movies, but I'm very skeptical that Hasbro would have any view as to how D&D tabletop rules should be apportioned between books. Double or halve D&D's tabletop revenue and id guess hasbro won't even notice. It's insignificant, compared with their other properties.
FWIW, although its not a popular view, I think D&D fans grossly overestimate the importance of D&D to hasbro - I think they bought WotC for the collectible card games.
For what it's worth I agree with this part, but I'm not sure (genuinely I don't know) that the popular view is that D&D is important to Hasbro.
I agree with you that they don't care one way or another about the RPG lines; they were mainly interested in the CCGs. Which is why I keep pining for them to just spin off the RPG lines and let someone who does love the game, and the history of the game, pick the RPGs up.
I think the people who worked on designing & developing 4E cared about it. In a way it's almost a tragic circle (not in every detail, of course), except Hasbro is too big to go bankrupt from mismanaging the RPG line. Anyhow that's the sense I have, as nothing but an outsider.
And that's a tale for another time, and another thread.
A lot of creative people did a lot of good work, or at least good efforts if they weren't all perfectly executed, on 4E. It's ok to not like Hasbro as a owner of RPG games, but the people working on the line aren't Hasbro. (This part isn't a reply to Steve Geddes; it's to those who aren't happy campers when it comes to Hasbro. I'm not so much, either, but we should make distinctions).
FWIW, although its not a popular view, I think D&D fans grossly overestimate the importance of D&D to hasbro - I think they bought WotC for the collectible card games.For what it's worth I agree with this part, but I'm not sure (genuinely I don't know) that the popular view is that D&D is important to Hasbro.
Me neither, I guess. I just often see people attribute poor decisions regarding D&D to "Ha$bro" and I think it's more likely to be WotC management making the decisions that matter. (Other than big policy decisions like "we don't sell IP").
I don't have any real knowledge about it though, just snippets from reading interviews/recollections.
Another thing that occurs to me... I loved (and also am saddened by) the flavor attached to the barbarian. Specifically, we moved from a screaming blood frenzy, if I recall the old PHB entry correctly, to channeling the power of primal spirits. The thing I disliked is that it moved the iconic ability of the barbarian into a daily power, meaning you didn't get to do a whole lot of it.
As far as ritual cost, it's been a while since I looked, but when I was playing, we were perpetually cash-strapped, and I'm pretty sure we were underequipped as well. It seemed like the cost of using a ritual was great enough that I was afraid to do it. But then, I'm cheap, and I always have been. I have a historical problem with spending my resources in character.
To get back on topic, here are a few more reasons to love 4e:
1. Errata. The 4e team actually listened to CharOp, and put a heroic amount of effort into patching what relatively few glitches slipped past editing. The dedication to errata really demonstrated the team's commitment to the hobby and to customer satisfaction. (The notable exception being the feat-tax fiasco, but hey, ya can't have everything.) It's free, so nobody's paying for these fixes, and if errata is more bother to you than boon, you can simply ignore it!
2. AC improves with level. This ties in with my preference for defined hit points; I love that 4e PCs get harder to hit as they become more skilled because the other way always created quite a bit of cognitive dissonance for me. Also, AC in 4e isn't 99% reliant on magical bling, which is great in my book!
3. Explicit class roles. Although some gamers looked at the four roles and took them as a sign of rigidity, they've been a great boon to the game. New players know what to expect from any given class, and more importantly, roles provided the dev team with clear design direction. As a result, every class is good at something, and every character can contribute. And roles aren't nearly as rigid as some gamers seem to assume.
Make up your mind! I either have a wide comfort zone because I love 4e... OR I don't have a very big comfort zone because I don't think of it as D&D in any sense of play. It is a whole NEW game with a completely different paradigm for play kinda like... like Mario Bros. and World of Warcraft had a kid. Everyone has clearly defined MMO style roles AND everyone is bouncing, jumping, teleporting, or otherwise being moved all over the battle mat. Don't get me wrong 4e is a blast to play, but it didn't have the varied style of play I expect out of 3.x D&D.
Well you must have a medium-sized comfort zone; big enough to enjoy 4e, but small enough that you have to think of it as another game to do so. :)
Generally because it was more situational and harder to get in 4E. Want a +1 Feat to damage, well it's only Shadow & Fire Powers. But only 6/8 of your powers are that...
Ah yes, that was one of the early game's oddities. I homebrewed an Implement Focus feat to mirror the PHB's Weapon Focus, and then WotC followed my example a few months later. :)
Thus with the difficulty to get consistant bonuses, the most consistant advantage is due to being the right race.
And this is one of the many reasons I DM the C4 clone, rather than RAW 4e; no racial bonuses to make race X the 'duh' choice for class Y. (All the bonuses the game assumes you have are built right into character progression!)
There are a number of things about it I never quite got to like (for a reason unknown to even me, I never really liked how they handled magic items, for example), but as you mentioned any system has drawbacks; none of the D&D games I've loved (and I include PF as an iteration of that) have been without things that annoy me. Each has a mixture of great stuff and less-than-successful stuff (and people's ideas of which are great and which suck varies), so it is what it is.
Agreed 100% with the italicized part.
Your complaint about 4e magical items is not an infrequent one among 4e fans. From what I can tell, some fans feel that 4e items are too watered-down. Personally I like 4e's departure from the You Are Your Gear syndrome, but perhaps it went a touch too far? Well, like you say, it is what it is.
Another thing I couldn't get my head around was splitting the PHB into like 3 different books. This seemed like a cheap marketing gimmick because now these aren't optional books a DM can choose to add or ignore..they're core books that get an extra $50 out of you and are core.
While I love the effect that "Everything is core" has had on the number of PHB-only campaigns, it is just a marketing slogan. All you need to play is the truly core three, as in every other edition.
Oh yeah! This thread reminded me that even though I liked 4e well enough, I did hate the Dragonborn. Haaaated the Dragonborn. And their versions of Tieflings made me ignore the race until I discovered that they were actually pretty awesome in Pathfinder.
4e's homogenized tieflings make me a sad panda. :(
Luckily, writing a table of Random Tiefling Traits wasn't hard!
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I still love your username.Uhm, thanks?
This has nothing to do with the thread.What he said.
Now you just need a pic of a brunnette with a long ponytail. :)
(If you don't know, Kyonko comes from the genderbending of Haruhi Suzumiya, which is unusually popular for a genderbend. Kyonko specifically is called out as awesomely moe.)
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4E allows far better roleplay opportunity for the DM.
My reasoning - It's far easier to prep for and run the game, so as a DM, I have tons more time available to craft out intricate storylines, design cool adventure locales, and develop cool recurring NPCs. I can also create more of the story as I go instead of having to plan every encounter in advance - it takes me literally seconds to select the critters needed for almost any given encounter, so I'm ready for whatever curveball the players throw at me. And plotwise, I'm far more likely to be the one throwing the curveballs at them.
This element is true but I think it goes beyond this. 4E is actually really well designed to handle things like mystery or political intrigue type adventures and it can do so up to quite high levels.
With my players now 11th level their next two adventures will be about acting as counter intelligence in a major metropolis where a villain has infiltrated herself into the highest ranks of society and is now pulling all sorts of strings. They need to figure out who she is and put a stop to her.
I can do this sort of adventure very well with 4E in because the subsystems support this sort of adventure. For starters there is no real 'face class' and no 'skill monkey'. No one PC that will be the person doing all the playing when out of combat. Every class pretty much is trained in a physical, knowledge and social skill meaning that they are good at it. For this type of adventure its all about the social and knowledge skills but it will not just be one player involved in these scenes but all of them though some are better then others at different times. Each of them has something to contribute.
4E characters are good in and out of combat through out their career. meaning you don't get into a situation where the characters have been to long in the dungeon and no longer function properly when they are in a city based adventure.
Furthermore while rituals can help they where designed carefully and its impossible to use them exclusively before epic level to solve the mystery's poised by the adventure. What I historically found with D&D when doing higher level mystery type adventures was that the solution to such adventures essentially came down to the wizard player making good use of the divination school of magic. Most of the adventure really took place in the room in the inn where the Wizard player carefully utilized magical power to ferrit out what was going on. If one has a problem with quadratic wizards in the dungeon it can be that much worse when your only job as the fighter is to mop her brow while she casts spells.
4E does not really allow that to happen. My players will have to get the answers the old fashioned way (or more or less the same way 3rd level characters did it in other editions). Find the clues and talk with the NPCs looking for more clues. Visit places and discern what was going on.
One of the things that 4E did extremely well - maybe the thing that I like most about it was extend out the 'sweet spot' for political intrigue and mystery type adventures. They went from being something that played well only at low levels to being excellent up until at least Epic (After which the wizards get access to the real powerful plot breaking magic and its back to playing 20 questions with the Gods to answer the questions posed by the adventure'.
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I think 4e does fill a needed niche as an rpg gateway game to pull mmo gamers to the table. It has a very similar feel to mmos, focuses on combat like mmos, but has a few rpg elements yet simplifys them to a form more recognizable to mmo players.
Once players are hooked into ttrpgs then you can introduce them more easily to the more rp focused rpgs (or even hardcore numbercrunchers like gurps) and them not run away screaming from the mere sight of the books.
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Well you must have a medium-sized comfort zone; big enough to enjoy 4e, but small enough that you have to think of it as another game to do so. :)Make up your mind! I either have a wide comfort zone because I love 4e... OR I don't have a very big comfort zone because I don't think of it as D&D in any sense of play. It is a whole NEW game with a completely different paradigm for play kinda like... like Mario Bros. and World of Warcraft had a kid. Everyone has clearly defined MMO style roles AND everyone is bouncing, jumping, teleporting, or otherwise being moved all over the battle mat. Don't get me wrong 4e is a blast to play, but it didn't have the varied style of play I expect out of 3.x D&D.
I don't see what this has to do with comfort zone. They play differently with a very different feel (though I sometimes wonder if some players associate "feel" and "fluff" but they really shouldn't. Do they perhaps just not see the "feel" and assume the fluff must be what is refered too?)
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4E allows far better roleplay opportunity for the DM.
My reasoning - It's far easier to prep for and run the game, so as a DM, I have tons more time available to craft out intricate storylines, design cool adventure locales, and develop cool recurring NPCs. I can also create more of the story as I go instead of having to plan every encounter in advance - it takes me literally seconds to select the critters needed for almost any given encounter, so I'm ready for whatever curveball the players throw at me. And plotwise, I'm far more likely to be the one throwing the curveballs at them.
This element is true but I think it goes beyond this. 4E is actually really well designed to handle things like mystery or political intrigue type adventures and it can do so up to quite high levels.
With my players now 11th level their next two adventures will be about acting as counter intelligence in a major metropolis where a villain has infiltrated herself into the highest ranks of society and is now pulling all sorts of strings. They need to figure out who she is and put a stop to her.
I can do this sort of adventure very well with 4E in because the subsystems support this sort of adventure. For starters there is no real 'face class' and no 'skill monkey'. No one PC that will be the person doing all the playing when out of combat. Every class pretty much is trained in a physical, knowledge and social skill meaning that they are good at it. For this type of adventure its all about the social and knowledge skills but it will not just be one player involved in these scenes but all of them though some are better then others at different times. Each of them has something to contribute.
4E characters are good in and out of combat through out their career. meaning you don't get into a situation where the characters have been to long in the dungeon and no longer function properly when they are in a city based adventure.
Furthermore while rituals can help they where...
I think this depends magnitudes more on the GMs ability then to a game system. A system like this is certainly better for GMs of lesser ability (which doesn't mean good GMs can't love it) but really that is as far as system goes.
I never spent five minutes prepping for any game I ever GMed. I just simply never needed too. Some GMs like too, but really, if they like to spend time prepping, then isn't that prep time something they enjoy?
Also, if a GM can't do good intrigue, then no amount of awesome system design or prep time will let them do good intrigue. (One of my weaknesses unfortunatly)
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I wonder if 4e was just meant to tap into the evermore popular "kick in the door" and "play according to 100% premade rules" styles that seem to be harder and harder to get away from.Ilive in a metroplex for the last 3 years and I can't find anyone who doesn't proscribe to the above styles and that just gets sickening when I am not that style myself.
I blame mmos and video games.
Your complaint about 4e magical items is not an infrequent one among 4e fans. From what I can tell, some fans feel that 4e items are too watered-down. Personally I like 4e's departure from the You Are Your Gear syndrome, but perhaps it went a touch too far? Well, like you say, it is what it is.
Here I'm going to identify part of my negative: My impression (and it's a YMMV impression, obviously), was that it highlighted the "You Are Your Gear syndrome."
Perhaps that's a function of having lurked the CharOp Boards you mentioned too much. But I think a big part of it was: it was even more obvious than normal, IMO, that you needed X bonuses (to AC, primary weapon, or whatever) at Y level just for the rolling to scale correctly. This was a function of the deliberately design effort to make things challenging at every given level, and the attempt to enforce a "PCs hit slightly better than 50% of the time, on average, opponents hit PCs slightly worse than 50% of the time, on average" dynamic (which, of course, properly optimized characters will violate).
But you really couldn't afford to deviate too much from that, and 4E builds on the OP boards tended to incorporate the same magic items, and by the time one had "bought" all the "you need this, anything less is a strictly inferior choice" gear, you were usually out of coin for all but a few "neat/different" choices.
I fully understand that this impression of mine, which I cannot shake even while liking 4E, is not, in actuality, all that different from any iteration of the game.
It's not the only reason I found the 4E magic item system "meh," but it's the aspect I can put my finger on. Even while recognizing intellectually that it's an irrational reason to dislike it (because you are correct that the "You Are Your Gear syndrome" exists outside of 4e. . .and 4E included a mechanic for scaling bonuses without magic items).
Objectively (again to get back on topic about what was good about 4E), they made a valiant effort with the magic item rules to insure that gamebreaker items were weeded out (as much as possible - of course some crept in over time); items gave bonuses, and could have a useful ability with defined terms and defined, limited uses. So, objectively, it was a step in the right direction after decades of magic-item-power-creep. (And, before someone says "uh-ah! What about X" - yes, there were some "broken"/"breakable" items, even so, and more seeped in over time. That's probably unavoidable).
My dislike of the 4E magic item system is simply emotive-taste. It never actually got in the way of my enjoyment of the game as a whole. I guess I just got used to Portable Holes being, well, Portable Stashes, for example. :p
I also felt like 4e made the items feel even more required. It was very clear what attack bonus you needed (as opposed to my general feel of "at least +1 more than I have). Your items had to be upgraded at a particular rate. Coupled with the poor sale rate on magic items (20% value, really?), I felt reliant on the DM to provide exactly what I needed.
That said, I liked that the goal was to make magic items non-essential, and I had a convoluted mechanism in mind for replacing the magic items with personal power.
The goals were great. The flavor was great. (Well, I wasn't too keen on the psionics flavor, but I seriously liked the rest.)
I like roles in a descriptive sense, though I really didn't like the defender role specifically - that was too MMOish for my tastes. But designing explicitly around "this guy is good at killing enemies" and "this guy is good at controlling the battlefield" and "this guy is good at boosting the party" I did like.
I liked that most healing was minor actions, so the leader didn't have to spend his day just healing people, but could do interesting things and heal people as well. I liked that a wider selection of classes had minor actions (compare high-level 3.5 play, where my fighter may as well not have the ability to take swift actions, but the casters are throwing quickened spells as well as special free actions and their standard action spell).
I liked the intent behind changing pet/summon classes to not have action economy (and spotlight time) advantages over other classes.
While I'm not sure about the move towards gamism (I like what it does for simpler rules and ease of making ad-hoc rulings, but I'm not sure I like moving away from the grounding in ability to relate a rule to the real world... just not sure here), I love the shift in monster & encounter design. I love the fully integrated monster rules (though I do hate duplication, I also hate having to have 3 books open; you should see the number of post-its with spell summaries I added to the last module I ran). Most of all, I love that the baseline became 4 on 4 instead of 4 on 1. It's so much easier to adjust from 4 on 4 to 4 on 16 or 4 on 2 or 4 on 1 than it is to start from 4 on 1.
Now you just need a pic of a brunnette with a long ponytail. :)I still love your username.Uhm, thanks?
This has nothing to do with the thread.What he said.
Unless new avatars have been uploaded in the database, just accept the 'elf' avatar that makes me look like a sadist. *Facepalms*
Edit: Yes, I'm aware that there are a few closer avatars up that fit with my nickname. I just like the 'elf'.
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I wonder if 4e was just meant to tap into the evermore popular "kick in the door" and "play according to 100% premade rules" styles that seem to be harder and harder to get away from.Ilive in a metroplex for the last 3 years and I can't find anyone who doesn't proscribe to the above styles and that just gets sickening when I am not that style myself.
I blame mmos and video games.
I think if your playing this way your likely to miss some of its strengths. 4E is really good at interfacing elements in the scene and making them part of the scene, particularly during combat. Once your versed in how 4E uses movement and skills it should be clear that you can use these mechanics almost like lego to build things into the scene and it can by anything the DM can imagine. However you'll likely need to write this stuff down (though I suppose a real master could make up the rules on the fly and try and keep them consistent). What I mean is 4E is very good at letting the DM design an encounter where the PCs are all in Kyacks and its up to the DM to decide how these kyacks behave and interact with the current environment.
I had a scene like this where the PCs had to traverse underground white water rapids on some stolen little goblin boats (while other goblins tried to intercept them). Lots of forced movement and trying to keep control of the boats during the scene as well as a list of what skills allowed the players to do what with the boats - because all PCs are passable at all skills in 4E I did not have to worry that one PCs would not be able to use the boats - though there where some that where straight out trained in some of the skills...they could really go all James Bond in those little boats.
Bottom line is you want scenes with fighting on conveyer belts and such in 4E and that takes some design work...if your DM is just grabbing 5 monsters and putting them in a room with a chest...well that is a waste of the skill system and a waste of the fact that they have all these powers that are each pretty much 'perform a cinematic stunt stolen from an Xena episode'.
This is a big budget movie simulator - play up the cinema! No one wants a lightsaber duel that just sits there. Get the environment in on the action. 4E characters AND monsters are good at moving around - give them places to go.
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I think this depends magnitudes more on the GMs ability then to a game system. A system like this is certainly better for GMs of lesser ability (which doesn't mean good GMs can't love it) but really that is as far as system goes.
I think this is what WOTC thought they where making and it was what they wanted to make but its not what they actually created. This is in fact one of the areas where 4E is weakest. Its great for teaching newbs to be players but its not a good system for the newbie DM.
At its core 4E is a DM fiat with guidelines system. What one gets is DM fiat in the 1st or 2nd edition sense. Huge parts of the game are essentially made up by the DM. There are no rules to cover a ton of stuff in the book - nothing at all except the infamous page 42. How does fire work? The DM makes it up. What happens when the house starts caving in? The DM makes it up and so on and so on. In a DM fiat system every bad personality quirk of the DM can get out there and put a damper...sometimes a big damper on the fun. I suspect those of us playing 1st and 2nd edition as teenagers used to bump into this all the time. The DM on a power trip or the DM that was not confident in herself or any of a wide range of flaws and these could really hurt the game. Its all there with 4E as well...it has all the flaws of a DM fiat system because it is one - the DM does not just have rule 0...rule 0 is half the game.
Now that can be disguised because PCs are anything but rule 0 (this is one place the system diverges from 1st or 2nd). PCs are built and everything they can do is pretty much spelled out so the players can be confident in what their PCs can do but everything else is under the control of a DM who is using pretty much DM fiat to run the show.
There is a little help in 4E in this regard - I said DM fiat with guidelines. The guidelines are in the section on the DMs toolbox. Essentially they are a series of tables that say 'if your PCs are of X level then these are the numbers you should be seeing'. This helps a DM to not make having the burning roof falling on the PCs head be to lethal (or too irreverent) and insures that the DCs for the skills are in line with the players level. Its a good element but it only goes so far...and a good DM can get a lot of mileage out of looking at the numbers and then knowing when and why to break them.
Nonetheless if I meet a DM who really is inexperienced this is when I'm going to be saying they should go and pick up Pathfinder, it'll be great for them. Fantastic Adventure Paths to use as they're adventures and there is a rule for near any situation that might come up. Sure you need to have a whole bunch of books at hand to play but if something is on fire there is a rule for that...the inexperience DM does not have to decide what being on fire means...he can just look it up in the rules. The rules will tell the DM what it means to be on fire or in a blizzard or what have you.
As Sunshadow pointed out to me on these forums if your DM is not very good you get a far better and more consistent game playing Pathfinder then you do playing 4E. Pathfinder tells the DM how to play and mitigates the bad DM. 4E gives bad DMs all the power they will ever need to screw things up royally.
Now if you are an experienced DM then power is good - If you know what your trying to convey with the blizzard then DM fiat allows the DM to sculpt the scene to deliver the look and feel the DM desires but its asking to much to expect a newbie DM to manage this element.
I think this is what WOTC thought they where making and it was what they wanted to make but its not what they actually created. This is in fact one of the areas where 4E is weakest. Its great for teaching newbs to be players but its not a good system for the newbie DM.At its core 4E is a DM fiat with guidelines system. What one gets is DM fiat in the 1st or 2nd edition sense. Huge parts of the game are essentially made up by the DM. There are no rules to cover a ton of stuff in the book - nothing at all except the infamous page 42. How does fire work? The DM makes it up. What happens when the house starts caving in? The DM makes it up and so on and so on. In a DM fiat system every bad personality quirk of the DM can get out there and put a damper...sometimes a big damper on the fun. I suspect those of us playing 1st and 2nd edition as teenagers used to bump into this all the time. The DM on a power trip or the DM that was not confident in herself or any of a wide range of flaws and these could really hurt the game. Its all there with 4E as well...it has all the flaws of a DM fiat system because it is one - the DM does not just have rule 0...rule 0 is half the game.
Now that can be disguised because PCs are anything but rule 0 (this is one place the system diverges from 1st or 2nd). PCs are built and everything they can do is pretty much spelled out so the players can be confident in what their PCs can do but everything else is under the control of a DM who is using pretty much DM fiat to run the show.
There is a little help in 4E in this regard - I said DM fiat with guidelines. The guidelines are in the section on the DMs toolbox. Essentially they are a series of tables that say 'if your PCs are of X level then these...
This is one of the most cogent, articulate, and helpful comparisons of the two systems that I've ever read. Thank you for this!
Your complaint about 4e magical items is not an infrequent one among 4e fans. From what I can tell, some fans feel that 4e items are too watered-down. Personally I like 4e's departure from the You Are Your Gear syndrome, but perhaps it went a touch too far? Well, like you say, it is what it is.Here I'm going to identify part of my negative: My impression (and it's a YMMV impression, obviously), was that it highlighted the "You Are Your Gear syndrome."
Ah, gotcha. I thought you had meant "4e item powers and properties are kinda forgettable."
When 4e came out, I was disappointed that +X items were still a part of the game. 4e +X items are an improvement over those of other editions for a number of reasons, but I agree, 4e's transparency (and CharOp I'm sure) certainly does highlight D&D's You Are Your Gear syndrome.
No doubt this fact played a part in the last insipid 5e article I read (months and months ago), in which the author claimed that "Magical items will be part of the story, not the math!" There are so many wrong-headed implications in that statement...well, this is a +4e thread so I shouldn't start ranting about 5e anyway. :)
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I think this depends magnitudes more on the GMs ability then to a game system. A system like this is certainly better for GMs of lesser ability (which doesn't mean good GMs can't love it) but really that is as far as system goes.I think this is what WOTC thought they where making and it was what they wanted to make but its not what they actually created. This is in fact one of the areas where 4E is weakest. Its great for teaching newbs to be players but its not a good system for the newbie DM.
At its core 4E is a DM fiat with guidelines system. What one gets is DM fiat in the 1st or 2nd edition sense. Huge parts of the game are essentially made up by the DM. There are no rules to cover a ton of stuff in the book - nothing at all except the infamous page 42. How does fire work? The DM makes it up. What happens when the house starts caving in? The DM makes it up and so on and so on. In a DM fiat system every bad personality quirk of the DM can get out there and put a damper...sometimes a big damper on the fun. I suspect those of us playing 1st and 2nd edition as teenagers used to bump into this all the time. The DM on a power trip or the DM that was not confident in herself or any of a wide range of flaws and these could really hurt the game. Its all there with 4E as well...it has all the flaws of a DM fiat system because it is one - the DM does not just have rule 0...rule 0 is half the game.
Now that can be disguised because PCs are anything but rule 0 (this is one place the system diverges from 1st or 2nd). PCs are built and everything they can do is pretty much spelled out so the players can be confident in what their PCs can do but everything else is under the control of a DM who is using pretty much DM fiat to run the show.
There is a little help in 4E in this regard - I said DM fiat with guidelines. The guidelines are in the section on the DMs toolbox. Essentially they are a series of tables that say 'if your PCs are of X level then these...
This is well written but you're forgetting something.
Any game will require GM fiat when used outside it's design. 4e is clearly design as a tactics game with rpg elements. If you use as such you won't need GM fiat very much if at all. Playing it like you would 3.x does require GM fiat because it wasn't designed for it.
To define the role of a games design, don't look at the name or what the designers say/imply, look at the rules, what is covered iwith plenty of options is the design focus, what is not covered or has few options are things intended as unimportant, or not very important, to general gameplay.
Sure any game can be used outside it's design, but doing so requires GM fiat.
As with many things, 4e's greatest strengths are also its greatest weaknesses.
The focus on game balance is great, except it comes at the cost of making the game feel like a tactical combat exercise. This is further exacerbated by the other great strength of the game, the sheer amount of effort and focus on making the tactical elements more consistent and understandable. That also makes the game feel like a tactical combat exercise.
I love the tactics of 4e. I hate the way characters "feel".
Players who believe that balance is the holy grail of RPG gaming probably love 4e. I'm not one of those players. Players who love the nitty gritty of working out a multi-layered, highly interesting tactical solution to combat probably love 4e. I am one of those players. As such I find 4e to be a playable game and have enjoyed playing it.
But I prefer Pathfinder. For all of its faults, Pathfinder still feels like a fantasy world to me. 4e feels more like a complex chess game.
even PF feels like a game of chess at times with counting squares for movements, the area of spells, Attacks of Opportunity, Flanking etc.
I don't think D&D has been that "non-tactical" since 2e..and 2e started the movement that way with the Combat and Tactics book.
There has always been a tactical element to D&D. It was, after all, created by adapting rules from a miniatures wargame and adding the role playing element to it.
As Sunshadow pointed out to me on these forums if your DM is not very good you get a far better and more consistent game playing Pathfinder then you do playing 4E. Pathfinder tells the DM how to play and mitigates the bad DM. 4E gives bad DMs all the power they will ever need to screw things up royally.
While I think you largely hit the nail right on the head with this post, I always recommend 4e to new DMs who ask. PF certainly has its advantages for the new DM, but overall I think 4e's transparency and 'fiat-guidelines' are more helpful than, to use your example, having a set of exact rules for using fire in a low-level adventure.
In short, I think newb-friendliness is another reason to love 4e!
This is one of the most cogent, articulate, and helpful comparisons of the two systems that I've ever read. Thank you for this!
I think this is what WOTC thought they where making and it was what they wanted to make but its not what they actually created. This is in fact one of the areas where 4E is weakest. Its great for teaching newbs to be players but its not a good system for the newbie DM.At its core 4E is a DM fiat with guidelines system. What one gets is DM fiat in the 1st or 2nd edition sense. Huge parts of the game are essentially made up by the DM. There are no rules to cover a ton of stuff in the book - nothing at all except the infamous page 42. How does fire work? The DM makes it up. What happens when the house starts caving in? The DM makes it up and so on and so on. In a DM fiat system every bad personality quirk of the DM can get out there and put a damper...sometimes a big damper on the fun. I suspect those of us playing 1st and 2nd edition as teenagers used to bump into this all the time. The DM on a power trip or the DM that was not confident in herself or any of a wide range of flaws and these could really hurt the game. Its all there with 4E as well...it has all the flaws of a DM fiat system because it is one - the DM does not just have rule 0...rule 0 is half the game.
Now that can be disguised because PCs are anything but rule 0 (this is one place the system diverges from 1st or 2nd). PCs are built and everything they can do is pretty much spelled out so the players can be confident in what their PCs can do but everything else is under the control of a DM who is using pretty much DM fiat to run the show.
There is a little help in 4E in this regard - I said DM fiat with guidelines. The guidelines are in the section on the DMs toolbox. Essentially they are a series of tables that say 'if your PCs are of X level then these...
He's good like that. :)
As with many things, 4e's greatest strengths are also its greatest weaknesses.
The focus on game balance is great, except it comes at the cost of making the game feel like a tactical combat exercise. This is further exacerbated by the other great strength of the game, the sheer amount of effort and focus on making the tactical elements more consistent and understandable. That also makes the game feel like a tactical combat exercise.
I love the tactics of 4e. I hate the way characters "feel".
Players who believe that balance is the holy grail of RPG gaming probably love 4e. I'm not one of those players. Players who love the nitty gritty of working out a multi-layered, highly interesting tactical solution to combat probably love 4e. I am one of those players. As such I find 4e to be a playable game and have enjoyed playing it.
But I prefer Pathfinder. For all of its faults, Pathfinder still feels like a fantasy world to me. 4e feels more like a complex chess game.
Good post. Your position is well explained, and there is no edition warring/you're doing it wrong overtones. Thumbs up, sir.
This is well written but you're forgetting something.
Any game will require GM fiat when used outside it's design. 4e is clearly design as a tactics game with rpg elements. If you use as such you won't need GM fiat very much if at all. Playing it like you would 3.x does require GM fiat because it wasn't designed for it.
To define the role of a games design, don't look at the name or what the designers say/imply, look at the rules, what is covered iwith plenty of options is the design focus, what is not covered or has few options are things intended as unimportant, or not very important, to general gameplay.
Sure any game can be used outside it's design, but doing so requires GM fiat.
I agree with you that one should look at the rules. Look carefully at the rules of 4E and I think you will see that it was in fact carefully designed to be really good in this department. What is not there can, in fact, be just as important as what is. Of you look at 4E you'll note that the Divination school of magic exists in rituals but even the rituals are very limited in their power...until 21st level when the ability to talk to Gods and such opens up. This would seem to be clearly intentional design meant to keep plot breaking magic out of the players hands until such time as there would be engaged in dealing with otherworldly powers in their own right.
Plot breaking magic is anything the players can use to thwart the adventure either bypassing it or simply finding out all the important bits without going on the adventure itself. So in 4E if your 15th level and your charged by the King to find out why his favourite Mistress has vanished your not going to be able to ferret out the answer to that question through the judicious use of spells. Which is actually how you solve the adventure in other editions.
If you want to solve the mystery of Kings Favourite Mistress your going to have to do it, at 15th level, roughly the same way you solve murder mystery adventure at 4th level in other editions. Look for clues and talk to people. I'm sure it was a clear design choice to extend out how long such adventures where valid since its been common knowledge since 1st edition that murder mystery and political intrigue type adventures only really work at low levels.
Another critical example is the lack of a face character or skill monkey character. In both cases the options that the group gets from these classes still exist but they have been split up and divided among the various classes - and then there was clear effort put into making sure that the characters always functioned both in and out of combat in a reasonably balanced manner. This is a strong feature if your going to do a political intrigue based adventure, you don't want a four hour session where some of the players don't get to really play.
Then there is the reasonably low range between the best PC at a knowledge or social based skill and the average player in that same knowledge or social skill. Its difficult to have a whole party that simply has no way to interact with the NPCs or search for clues at the library.
In the end its adventures about talking to NPCs and discovering the clues that strike me as being ones with a lot of roleplaying and 4E is well designed in that department. While its true that WotC, for some unfathomable reason, never seemed to focus on this aspect its clear to me that Rob Hiensoo did think about this element and made sure that the game would handle it. Even making obviously gamist choices to insure that these types of adventures worked - in 4E you can use magic to raise the dead but if you loose your favorite quill pen some random place in the city you can't use magic to find it again until your Epic level...or until the DM uses DM fiat to grant you three questions regarding your quill pen from an Oracle.
Any game will require GM fiat when used outside it's design. 4e is clearly design as a tactics game with rpg elements. If you use as such you won't need GM fiat very much if at all.
Actually you will. I can't use fire in the adventure without using DM fiat, I can't throw boulders at them without it. DM fiat is embedded in the design. Unless I specifically insure that my rooms are featureless I'm going to be using DM fiat to decide how the features in the rooms work.
Now if I want to 4E gives me a subsystem that is excellent to design whatever the hell it is I want for my encounter and it even provides suggested numbers depending on my players level but ultimately its my job to decide what it means to be trying to cross a rope bridge that is swinging like crazy in the wind. Truth is my answer probably changes if this is an obstacle that is in their way or the stage upon which they will fight trolls. I'm trying to convey a different type of drama depending on whether the answer so I'm going to approach it differently in each case. If its an obstacle I'm leaning toward a skill challenge here but if its a stage then I'm more interested in round by round effects and their consequences.
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Okay here is a repost from a previous thread, with a few more comments added in.
For context, I actually prefer D&D 3.5 to 4e, however I in turn prefer 4e over PF and PF over 4e Essentials (there are a few things about Essentials that I absolutely hate making me want to sell my Essentials stuff without even really having read it).
Anyway...
Here are what I consider the good stuff:
Consistent Class Structure
All classes have a similar structure (at least pre Essentials) so once you know how to create a Fighter it is not a big leap to know how to create a Wizard.
However, don't be fooled into thinking the same structure means characters all play the same - although most characters have the same number of At Will, Encounter and Daily powers, what those powers can do varies greatly!
For example some At Will Attack powers:
Class one (Wizard - Thunderwave): Affects everyone in a close 3x3 blast, targetting Fortitude and does 1d6 + Intelligence modifier thunder damage, and pushes the targets a number of squares equal to the PC's Wisdom modifier.
Class two (Fighter - Reaping Strike with Greateaxe): Affects one adjacent target, targetting AC and does d12 + Strength modifier damage, and even on a miss does damage equal to Strength modifier.
Class three (Warlord - Commander's Strike): Affects one target adjacent to one of your allies, the ally gets to make a basic melee attack against the target (e.g. a Rogue could make an attack with a dagger, targetting AC and doing d4 + Strength modifier damage)
Pacing of Powers
The At Will, Encounter and Daily classifications of powers is great for pacing purposes.
Having At Will powers (including spells for magic users) means a wizard never runs out of spells; and thus there is no need to rest for a night to continue to contribute magic support.
Encounter Powers give that extra big power that you can safely use in an encounter without having to worry about whether you should have saved it for a later encounter with toughter foes (which may actually never happen and so if you did save the spell you effectively wasted it).
Daily Powers are the big guns that you pull out when facing down a really tough foe - they are Daniel's Crane Kick at the end of The Karate Kid but restricted in their use so you don't see the player constantly using it (i.e. it supports narrative pacing).
General Competency in skills
Every character gets more competent in the adventuring skills even without having to constantly spend resources such as Feats to train in them. So after 10 adventures even the Paladin has learnt to be a bit more stealthy.
This is great because it allows the party to try stuff as a group (e.g. sneaking into a palace) without having such a disparity in skill levels that one PC is going to succeed without breaking a sweat whereas the others simply cannot succeed.
But again, don't think that means all character look the same. Ability modifiers, Skill Training, Skill Focus and some Utility Powers can still give enough level of differentiation.
For example, a 6th level fighter with Cha of 12 will have a +4 Diplomacy bonus (half level + Cha modifier) but the 6th Level Paladin with Cha 16, Skill Training in Diplomacy and Skill Focus in Diplomacy will have a +14 bonus (half level + Cha modifier +5 for trained +3 for focus). And if he has the Diplomacy Skill Power of Haggle he can re-roll a Diplomacy check once an encounter!
NPCs use different rules
In some ways I don't like this, but in other ways I do. If I as GM want to use a Troll against my PCs, but feel the version in the MM is a little too tough there are simple rules that allow me to scale it down without having to unpick feats, skill points, etc. The Monster modification rules assume the Monster probably does have feats, masterwork items etc to gain bonuses but wraps all that up in a simple set of numbers.
Equally if I then decide a want that troll to be able to be a sole foe in a combat I can simply apply the rules to make it a solo monster - worth extra XP but having more HP, greater attacks (an encounter power becomes At will), better defenses and action points. The rules are literally just a quarter of a page.
Also because of these different rules, apart from perhaps having to look up the odd keyword, a monster's stat block is completely self contained - no need to go looking up feats and spells ala Pathfinder, you can just look at the stat block and know how that monster works (and this is a massive boon, when I run a PFS scenario I spend a good few hours making rules booklets that list all the feats, spells and equipment that the NPCs use - in 4e I wouldn't need to do that at all).
The key thing to remember is that the monster stats are there for how they can interact with the PCs, mainly on an in-combat basis (they do have skills however) - how they interact with other NPCs is completely up to the GM.
So while a monster may only be able to Dominate a PC for a round or two of combat there is nothing to stop the GM saying that the monster can dominate the village mayor indefinately. The PCs are the heroes, they don't get dominated for weeks just for a few seconds before digging deep and shaking it off.
Skills before spells
In 4e there are Rituals that allow for detection of secret doors, unlocking of doors, comprehending languages etc. However because rituals take time and cost a bit of money skills are still the best way to resolve such challenges.
What this does is still allows wizards to be able to solve all these types of problems but without outshining the other PCs who have specialised in such areas. So a rogue could pick a lock before the wizard gets a chance to cast Knock, but if the rogue isn't there the wizard can still do it.
Distributed Healing
While I am not a big fan of 4e's rule that everyone regains full HP overnight, I am a big fan of the fact that every character is able to recover some HP by themselves (short rests) and even in combat (second wind).
This means although its nice to have a healer in the group it isn't as "essential" as many people feel it is in PF. In fact I found PF's Channelling just made the disparity in healing ability of a party with a cleric and without even greater - 4e's solution is much more elegant I feel.
This also solves the issue of clerics having to spend actions in combat healing (and thus not getting a chance to do otehr cool stuff), in 4e a PC can take an action themselves to heal a bit (and a cleric's Healing Word power is only a Minor action too).
Also by making HP more a measure of how long you can stay on your feet fighting, not just a measure of luck and health, you can have non-magic users "heal" HP by giving a morale boost (imagine an army sergeant shouting at a private to get back on their feet and stop whinging like a baby). So even if you do want a "healer" in your party it doesn't have to be a cleric.
Consolidated Skills
4e has just the right amount of skills for me, I maybe occassionally wish it had a craft skill or a perform skill, but its easy enough to call for an ability check with a circumstance bonus for a relevant background (in fact this is explicitly called out in PHB2) .
IMHO 3.5 and Pathfinder still have too many skills (Fly? Swim still separate from Athletics), especially when it comes to Knowledges and Professions - to the point that in my experience many don't get used as the chances of a party having a specific skill (e.g. Knowledge Engineering, Professions Baker) are slim.
The layout of the books
I ma not sure about Essenials but for me the original 4e books, PHB, DMG etc have a great layout. A clean white background with black text that is easy to read, with colour coding and symbols to highlight how a power works, e.g. At Will, Basic Melee Attack (but still having words to back that up). Each race and class starts on a new page making it easy to flip through a find something.
Plus the PDFs I have of the PHB, DMG and MM render pretty quickly on my android phone and Eee PC whereas the Paizo pdfs are really poor (so much so that I ended up buying hardcopy when I hadn't planned to, though the Lite versions a better).
Non combat support
Oh, as a final thought, 4e can seem very combat oriented by reading the books as a lot of space is taken up with Powers. But bear in mind, Powers are something 4e has in addition to all the cool stuff like Skill and Feats that PF has.
So 4e has IMHO as much support for non-combat encounters (investigation, exploration, social scenes etc) than PF does but it also has all these cool powers for combat. In terms of spells, powers are the in-combat spells whilst rituals are the out of combat spells (but even then some powers are very useful out of combat too, e.g. Invisibility that can be sustained indefinitely).
In fact it could be argued 4e has more support for non-combat activities as it has the Skill Challenge mechanic. Although there have been teething issue getting the numbers right, and the presentation perhaps doesn't explain quite how to run them as well as they can be run, they are great mechanisms for determining success or failure in prolonged tasks that require a combination of skills to succeed.
I have successfully used Skill Challenges for investigations, tracking of a fleeing person and escape from a fortress.
Luckily Skill Challenges can be used in PF pretty easily too, and if you don't like Skill Challenges you can just fall back to the way you handle such stuff in PF as individual skill checks to determine success are still there.
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I don't really consider a reprint to be "new stuff".There's a new reprint of the PH with all the errata, etc.Now, they are putting out new(ish) 3.5 stuff, and I bet regretting saying how cruddy 3.5 was.Are they putting out new stuff? All I have heard about is reprints. The only new stuff from an older edition I've seen any mention of is the new A0 module in the Against the Giants reprint, and that's 1E, not 3.5.
Murder at Baldur's Gate will support v.3.5, 4th Edition, and D&D Next rules.
I think this depends magnitudes more on the GMs ability then to a game system. A system like this is certainly better for GMs of lesser ability (which doesn't mean good GMs can't love it) but really that is as far as system goes.I think this is what WOTC thought they where making and it was what they wanted to make but its not what they actually created. This is in fact one of the areas where 4E is weakest. Its great for teaching newbs to be players but its not a good system for the newbie DM.
At its core 4E is a DM fiat with guidelines system. What one gets is DM fiat in the 1st or 2nd edition sense. Huge parts of the game are essentially made up by the DM. There are no rules to cover a ton of stuff in the book - nothing at all except the infamous page 42. How does fire work? The DM makes it up. What happens when the house starts caving in? The DM makes it up and so on and so on. In a DM fiat system every bad personality quirk of the DM can get out there and put a damper...sometimes a big damper on the fun. I suspect those of us playing 1st and 2nd edition as teenagers used to bump into this all the time. The DM on a power trip or the DM that was not confident in herself or any of a wide range of flaws and these could really hurt the game. Its all there with 4E as well...it has all the flaws of a DM fiat system because it is one - the DM does not just have rule 0...rule 0 is half the game.
Now that can be disguised because PCs are anything but rule 0 (this is one place the system diverges from 1st or 2nd). PCs are built and everything they can do is pretty much spelled out so the players can be confident in what their PCs can do but everything else is under the control of a DM who is using pretty much DM fiat to run the show.
There is a little help in 4E in this regard - I said DM fiat with guidelines. The guidelines are in the section on the DMs toolbox. Essentially they are a series of tables that say 'if your PCs are of X level then these...
This is a good point. On the flip side, I find that in 3.5/PF, sometimes the sense that there's a rule for so much means that if you don't already know that rule, you feel obligated to seek out the proper rule, rather than ad-hoc'ing it. Meaning that I've found myself feeling paralyzed and seeking out the rule or rules that already exist to cover that situation. In a system more like 4e I feel more comfortable just making it up on the fly.
Another thing where I liked the goal but not so much the execution: Skill Challenges. The goal was complex skill checks involving multiple characters. The execution, unfortunately, included, basically, "everyone always roll your best skill and try to convince the DM it applies here", and "Oops, Intimidate is an auto-fail here but that wasn't indicated to the party, sucks to be you." That said, I recall a few articles by Mike Mearls on how to actually use skill challenges which were excellent examples of a viable subsystem, as opposed to the examples in the DMG, which I recall finding terrible.
4e is notably thin on explicit rules for anything outside of combat, which was intentional. I don't mind it. With guidelines on appropriate skill check DCs, I can ad-hoc a non-combat encounter pretty easily.
I'm never sure if I like the way skills work; the fact that everyone improves in all skills. On the one hand, it's a little weird that the wizard gets better at climbing walls. On the other hand, this leads to a much tighter distribution of skill modifiers, which means that you don't quickly reach a point where magical assistance is required to get past what should be a skill-based obstacle. (i.e. if you want to challenge the rogue's Stealth check, there's just no chance the fighter will succeed, and if the fighter has a reasonable chance of beating someone's perception in his heavy armor and without Dex, then the rogue is going to be able to dance on their head without being noticed.) When the only character who can make the Climb check is the fighter, after he removes his armor, you're just going to get up there with fly.
It's one of those bits where they went for gamism instead of simulationism and it makes the mechanics work better (the assumption is that level 15 characters are not dealing with the same category of climbing challenges that they were at level 3), but it does hurt the realism. I'm still trying hard to figure out where I fall on the gamist/simulationist spectrum; especially as I'm trying to build a system myself.
FWIW, although its not a popular view, I think D&D fans grossly overestimate the importance of D&D to hasbro - I think they bought WotC for the collectible card games.For what it's worth I agree with this part, but I'm not sure (genuinely I don't know) that the popular view is that D&D is important to Hasbro.Me neither, I guess. I just often see people attribute poor decisions regarding D&D to "Ha$bro" and I think it's more likely to be WotC management making the decisions that matter. (Other than big policy decisions like "we don't sell IP").
I don't have any real knowledge about it though, just snippets from reading interviews/recollections.
Keep in mind, however, that any decisions made by WotC leadership is under Hasbro's guidelines and within Hasbro's culture. Hasbro may have been interested in the collectible card games but the structures and expectation set up by the purchase of WotC apply to D&D as well. WotC's CEO, now, is also a Hasbro man. WotC may have a fair amount of independence in game design, but Hasbro culture is there to stay in management and probably in legal teams (which probably had an effect on the GSL).
Yeah (this is what I meant by "big policy decisions"). I appreciate there's an impact. However, I don't think it extends as far as "put out three players handbooks, because that will make players spend three times as much".
The prohibition against selling IP is a clear example of policy imposed from hasbro (I think).
Nice response; I have nothing really to add to what you said beyond a kudos to how you broke down the various merits thoughtfully and without implying other systems are bad.Okay here is a repost from a previous thread, with a few more comments added in.
For context, I actually prefer D&D 3.5 to 4e, however I in turn prefer 4e over PF and PF over 4e Essentials (there are a few things about Essentials that I absolutely hate making me want to sell my Essentials stuff without even really having read it).
Anyway...
Ah, gotcha.
^_^
No doubt this fact played a part in the last insipid 5e article I read (months and months ago),
Yeah I'm not even keeping up with the 5E announcements anymore; nothing against the people involved or even the ultimate product. It's just me; I figure if I read a lot about it before it's released, one of two things will happen; I'll either get too excited about it before even seeing it (and about stuff that may not even make it into the final product, which would then cause unnecessary disapoint and bad initial reaction), or too down about it before even seeing it, and based on stuff that may not even be in it when it comes out or PRish statements that rub me the wrong way.
Note: That statement shouldn't be inferred as a dig on 5E, the designers, the playtest/revision process, or anything related. It's simply a matter of a self-understanding of my own personality's pitfalls.
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I don't really consider a reprint to be "new stuff".Murder at Baldur's Gate will support v.3.5, 4th Edition, and D&D Next rules.
Source? The link doesn't mention system, and all discussion I could find on WotC's forms seemed to be of the opinion that it will be for D&D Next, with only a mention for the hope of downloadable 4E conversion, and no mention of 3.5 whatsoever.
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Source? The link doesn't mention system, and all discussion I could find on WotC's forms seemed to be of the opinion that it will be for D&D Next, with only a mention for the hope of downloadable 4E conversion, and no mention of 3.5 whatsoever.I don't really consider a reprint to be "new stuff".Murder at Baldur's Gate will support v.3.5, 4th Edition, and D&D Next rules.
Try this PDF http://www.wizards.com/ContentResources/Wizards/Sales/Solicitations/2013_06 _08_DDBaldur_Solicitation_en_US.pdf. Admittedly its downloadable monster stats rather than in the physical copy, but it is being supported with 3.5.
It's one of those bits where they went for gamism instead of simulationism and it makes the mechanics work better (the assumption is that level 15 characters are not dealing with the same category of climbing challenges that they were at level 3), but it does hurt the realism. I'm still trying hard to figure out where I fall on the gamist/simulationist spectrum; especially as I'm trying to build a system myself.
Note that as a DM you have a fair bit of leeway in how you want to present this. In fact one of the things your going to want to do is answer the question 'are my characters becoming Spiderman or James Bond?' as they move up the levels. There are only a handful of hard coded DCs in the system, the DCs for climbing things is the best example, and even here they call out only mundane things and the DCs don't go too high.
After this the rest is under your control and you can set the DCs according to your own preference. There is no DC for a pane of glass and your not actually required to use the player level = X DC table in that manner - you can reverse the table and read it X level = DC...and decide that climbing a pane of glass is something one might see a mid epic level character pull off...so set the DC as hard for a 25th level character. This of course makes it impossible for your 15th level characters.
In effect you should know what being 15th level means for your campaign. Are they well on their way past human? Or are they nearly as cool as James Bond at this point? Your answer answer will be reflected in the DCs you assign to the things in their environment but you do get to choose.
Personally I sit more in the 'they are James Bond' camp but I think most 4E DMs prefer 'more human then human' camp.
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4E is great from a uniformed rules perspective and expected behaviors in reference to roles, class, themes, races, powers, skills, conditions, etc. Rules were isolated and build upon each other. But it went to far in locking choices down to class, like removing mulitple attacks, or offering variance of choice like the essentials mage versus the 4e wizard. And where it had great potential with rituals, martial practices and alchemy sections, nothing was done to make those systems more robust. So Essentials should have been an effort to expand 4E, instead of pulling back to a more simplified format. It is my preferred system overall to date for the ease of developing adventures as a DM.
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It's one of those bits where they went for gamism instead of simulationism and it makes the mechanics work better (the assumption is that level 15 characters are not dealing with the same category of climbing challenges that they were at level 3), but it does hurt the realism. I'm still trying hard to figure out where I fall on the gamist/simulationist spectrum; especially as I'm trying to build a system myself.Note that as a DM you have a fair bit of leeway in how you want to present this. In fact one of the things your going to want to do is answer the question 'are my characters becoming Spiderman or James Bond?' as they move up the levels. There are only a handful of hard coded DCs in the system, the DCs for climbing things is the best example, and even here they call out only mundane things and the DCs don't go too high.
After this the rest is under your control and you can set the DCs according to your own preference. There is no DC for a pane of glass and your not actually required to use the player level = X DC table in that manner - you can reverse the table and read it X level = DC...and decide that climbing a pane of glass is something one might see a mid epic level character pull off...so set the DC as hard for a 25th level character. This of course makes it impossible for your 15th level characters.
In effect you should know what being 15th level means for your campaign. Are they well on their way past human? Or are they nearly as cool as James Bond at this point? Your answer answer will be reflected in the DCs you assign to the things in their environment but you do get to choose.
Personally I sit more in the 'they are James Bond' camp but I think most 4E DMs prefer 'more human then human' camp.
Actually, that's another thing I liked about 3.0, they tried to set the DCs according to reality with lvl 5 being the absolute best humanity has to offer, so it was slightly tied to level in terms of maximum skill ranks but the DCs were set by real people rather then by what each level can acheive. This is a concept I actually took farther in my game and I basically made a DC table of what DC something should be based on who could it (I.E. Einstein could get a 40 on knowledge physics, if he took "20" and had circumstance bonuses, while DC 10 represents things an average adult can do, if the have done it before, without taking "10" or "20") They could have done better research on a few things but mostly it matched, and not just skills but other things too, such as carry capacity (assuming of course that everything is carried efficiently) 4e seems like all the numbers are based off of balance with no reference between the numbers and plausability (which is different from reality)
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Actually, that's another thing I liked about 3.0, they tried to set the DCs according to reality with lvl 5 being the absolute best humanity has to offer, so it was slightly tied to level in terms of maximum skill ranks but the DCs were set by real people rather then by what each level can acheive. This is a concept I actually took farther in my game and I basically made a DC table of what DC something should be based on who could it (I.E. Einstein could get a 40 on knowledge physics, if he took "20" and had circumstance bonuses, while DC 10 represents things an average adult can do, if the have done it before, without taking "10" or "20") They could have done better research on a few things but mostly it matched, and not just skills but other things too, such as carry capacity (assuming of course that everything is carried efficiently) 4e seems like all the numbers are based off of balance with no reference between the numbers and plausability (which is different from reality)
Sounds like the E6 method of which I am a fan.
Calibrating your expectations - Alexandrian.net
The 4E DC's scaled with the players so an easy trap would work x % of the time regardless of level, but an easy trap at level 1 and one at level 11 were very different things they just had the same % chance for the player.
Actually, that's another thing I liked about 3.0, they tried to set the DCs according to reality with lvl 5 being the absolute best humanity has to offer, so it was slightly tied to level in terms of maximum skill ranks but the DCs were set by real people rather then by what each level can acheive. This is a concept I actually took farther in my game and I basically made a DC table of what DC something should be based on who could it (I.E. Einstein could get a 40 on knowledge physics, if he took "20" and had circumstance bonuses, while DC 10 represents things an average adult can do, if the have done it before, without taking "10" or "20") They could have done better research on a few things but mostly it matched, and not just skills but other things too, such as carry capacity (assuming of course that everything is carried efficiently) 4e seems like all the numbers are based off of balance with no reference between the numbers and plausability (which is different from reality)
Note that as a DM you have a fair bit of leeway in how you want to present this. In fact one of the things your going to want to do is answer the question 'are my characters becoming Spiderman or James Bond?' as they move up the levels. There are only a handful of hard coded DCs in the system, the DCs for climbing things is the best example, and even here they call out only mundane things and the DCs don't go too high.After this the rest is under your control and you can set the DCs according to your own preference. There is no DC for a pane of glass and your not actually required to use the player level = X DC table in that manner - you can reverse the table and read it X level = DC...and decide that climbing a pane of glass is something one might see a mid epic level character pull off...so set the DC as hard for a 25th level character. This of course makes it impossible for your 15th level characters.
In effect you should know what being 15th level means for your campaign. Are they well on their way past human? Or are they nearly as cool as James Bond at this point? Your answer answer will be reflected in the DCs you assign to the things in their environment but you do get to choose.
Personally I sit more in the 'they are James Bond' camp but I think most 4E DMs prefer 'more human then human' camp.
True but there are some benefits to the 4E approach. See in 4E there are only something like 4 or 5 things that are explicitly called out for some kind of set DC. Jumping down a 10' drop with no penalty. Triggering an Allies Second Wind, Climbing mundane objects like ladders or walls and jumping.
Besides these points in reality the DC to perform a task is just another aspect of DM fiat. I've been in many arguments with other 4E DMs over just how hard is it to swing from a chandelier. Different 4E DMs have different answers to this question which is fine.
The tricky bit, and here is one example of where our amateur 4E DM gets caught out, is that you actually have to decide - and once you do you need to maintain consistency. You can decide that at 1st level your pure awesome like Xena.
You can decide to mimic 3.5...after 5th level your going to be able to beat Olympic champions...your well on your way to being more human then human.
If your in my campaign you just wish you where so awesome, my 11th level characters could not beat an Olympic Champion at anything...I have the power here and I decide the look and feel of my campaign world...which means I decide what the DCs are based on the look and feel I'm going for - my PCs are very much human...with some cool combat moves that come with some slow mo camera work and those 360 degree spinning camera shots maybe but very much human. I don't call out objects in my adventures that require superhuman capabilities and if my players try and perform such things I set the DCs in the epic range
Our poor newbie 4E DM never realized he had to make a conscious choice at all and now has serous consistency issues. His players are soon b#$#~ing that in the last adventure they where able to pole vault over a lake of hell fire but all of a sudden in this adventure they apparently can't find the rear ends with both hands.
3.x and its derivatives help the newbie by maintaining consistency for him. Its already been decided by the designers what the look and feel of the world is like. In this case 1st is normal human, 3rd is a superior specimen of human, 5th the best humanity has to offer and 7th and beyond - more then human.
In 4th the experienced DM tells the system what the look and feel is - not that it can change even for the same DM. My answer is not the same if I am running Dragonlance versus Darksun - I'm looking for a different look and feel to the campaign and the numbers I choose will reflect that.
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Just out of curiosity, why would this be any different in DL vs DS, (or Eberron, or FR, or Ravenloft for that matter)?
Swashbuckling antics are a little more expected in Eberron than say Ravenloft, but why would the same character (build and stats) find it more challenging to swing from a in one setting and not the other, all other things (such as the circumstances and distance) being equal? Or understand the same book, or open the same lock, etc. . .