WolfStar76  on April 4th, 2010

A terrific overall rebuttal, if I may say so.

Alas, I do have one correction to give you. While I can’t speak to the un-named ORC (formerly WizOs) speaking about 4E being an in-house joke, the devs DID claim there was no 4E.

At D&D eXPerience 2007 (Feb/Mar of 2007) there was an R&D conference. I was in attendance. Someone raised his hand and asked very plainly “When can we expect 4th Edition?”

I had been on the forums a while, and I rolled my eyes. I knew there was no 4E being made.

Sure enough, the dev team confirmed this. “We are not working on 4th Edition” was the answer.

Come GenCon 2007 – a scant 6 months later, Sagamore Ballroom was cut in half. Advertisements in the GenCon catalog, and on all the hotel room keys in town myusteriously said “4dventure” – and 4th Edition was announced.

Now, I *love* 4E, and after actually hearing out the announcements made at GenCon I went from feeling upset/betrayed to REALLY looking forward to 4E (sampling/testing 4E at DDXP 2008 help even more).

However, I can still sympathize with people who feel they were misled by WotC on 4E. While I sympathize with WotC not wanting to announce or talk about 4E when they were asked at DDXP07, the correct answer would have been “no comment” or to at least dodge and say “We’re still working on a lot of 3.5 material”.

To say they weren’t working on 4E (when they later announced they’d been working on it for 2 years) wasn’t a move that gained them any trust.

For what it’s worth.

mudbunny  on April 4th, 2010

Is it possible (and I am just playing devil’s advocate here) that the person who was talking at DDXP had no idea that 4E was being developed? From what I understand from the Wizards Presents books, 4E was held very tightly to the chest for quite a while.

WolfStar76  on April 4th, 2010

I doubt I recoreded it in my notes from the time but it was someone who’d have been in the know. I want to say it was either Mike Mearls or Andy Collins – but it’s been too long for me to pin it down as such.

Again, I totally sympathize with them not wanting to announce anything, I think it was just a knee-jerk “we weren’t really ready for that question” reaction to deny it.

Put simply, it was most likely (IMHO) an honest mistake to word it as they did – but it does give critics a sticking point, much as I’d prefer it didn’t.

Labyrinthian  on April 4th, 2010

Hey Graham. First just wanted to say that I love the site!

Second, thanks for your responses to my concerns regarding 4th edition. As usual your well thought out and lucid counterpoints are a breath of fresh air in an era when most would rather just post a quick, rude and often childish insult.

While people may never agree on what constitutes a good system I do think that we could all do with a little more understanding and a lot more tolerance. I certainly feel more informed about 4th edition than in the past, with more insight than ever about why those who play it love it. Though gamers will likely never all agree that one system is best we are still on the same side on one issue. We all want the hobby, not only survive, but to thrive.

Cheers!
-Lab

faustusnotes  on April 5th, 2010

I’d like to add to your response to just two of the questions.

5) tactical minis
I’m sorry but all D&D has been about tactical minis. In the 80s all the gamers were obssessed with using them and always looking for ways to fit them in. D&D3.5e explicitly used them, and it was really horrible to play with people who were picky about using all the rules for facing, occupied squares, etc. So this is not a “new” 4e phenomenon.

9), 10) and 11) about casters
Players of earlier editions and fans of Vancian magic systems are fond of the notion of “intelligently” using spells at early levels, to make the wizard powerful. In practice there’s no “intelligent” way to use a single spell that does as much damage as a single hit from a fighter. There are actually very few spells at early levels that can be used intelligently and most of those are quite restricted, and depend a lot on goodwill from the DM (I’m thinking especially of the illusion type spells). In my experience the same types of DMs who love Vancian magic and minis in 3.5e are the ones least likely to tolerate any creativity with those spells… plus of course you only get to be creative once a day, whereas the other characters get to be brutal as much as they want, or be creative with traps and stealth as much as they want. The Vancian magic system was terrible and should have been ditched long ago – it’s the first thing people house rule away and no other system restricts wizards to the extent that D&D does. Strong advocates of the earlier systems “as written” need to recognise that they’re in a significant minority of gamers in their regard for Vancian magic.

Stripes  on April 5th, 2010

You said all 4e got from WoW was the role concept.

The 4e devs directly compared the new marks system to WoW’s taunts/aggro managment system. Personally I think it is a great addition.

Some folks think the magic item system is WoW derivitave, I’m unconvinced. Except for set bonuses. Those had to be borrowed back from WoW.

There may be others, but I don’t think “that was WoW derived” is at all a useful way to evaluate how fun or balenced a rule is. Plus I don’t think a game is bad because it is derivitave, or good because it is novel.

(for the record I play 4e and enjoy it, I like the more 1e RP in it, it inspired me to break out my blue box set… But I also like a lot of non WOTC/TSR games)

Grendelwulf  on April 5th, 2010

Graham on April 5th, 2010
The original thread over at the Labyrinth (in no part due to Lar, as he presented a largely reasonable and non-angry post, and didn’t stir the pot in the comments) quickly turned into a 20-comment rant about things not being D&D, hatred of 4e, and even some personal attacks against those who like the game, all interspersed among, and detracting from, the reasonable opinions on both sides of the discussion. Here, there have been no such things.
Out of 20+ comments, you happen to pick three things listed in my two posts. Thanks for misrepresenting me.

1. Different systems are, to me, different games. I stated such at the Labyrinth. 4E is not D&D. For me.

2. I never said I hated 4E. I play it. It has a different style of play, which in spite of not being D&D, is still enjoyable.

3. I personally would have preferred WotC to have been brave to call it a new game and not just slap a “brand name” on it for sales. I called the WotC designers either “delusional” for a new game by an old name. Again, my opinion. I never name-called players of 4E. I am one of them too. Again, my opinion.

I agreed the most important thing in the RPG community was that it thrived. I share the same interest & oassion about gaming as anyone else here. I already elaborated enough in my response to your last post criticizing me at the Labyrinth, so I will go no further here.

Now, as you say in this blog, you like to debate 4E. Fine. Allow me to do so as well if you mean what you say.

Ciao!
Grendelwulf

Grendelwulf  on April 5th, 2010

“…as do a LOT of D&D players”

So I did. My bad afterall. Focused on the “guys at WotC” so much, I lumped everyone together.

For that insult, I apologise. I guess my milk & cookies weren’t agreeing with me.

I certainly don’t want to waste our time with “it is/it isn’t”.

I’ll be more careful with my wording in the future. I do look forward to discussing more about 4E.

Ciao,
Grendelwulf

Full-Spectrum Thoughts: The Traitors Among Us : Critical Hits  on April 6th, 2010

[…] arguing  and debate mind you, this is necessary and healthy for all creative fields.  I mean that while my good friend Graham occasionally gets on my nerves with his long-winded defences of D&D 4e, I find that he does it […]

user@example.com  on April 7th, 2010

“The 4e devs directly compared the new marks system to WoW’s taunts/aggro managment system. Personally I think it is a great addition.”

(I’m not arguing with you here)

Yeah. Looking at WoW and D&D, fighters (and other defenderish fighter subclasses and the like) desperately needed something aggro-like. In earlier editions, short of physically blocking a narrow chokepoint or doing enough damage to be a bigger threat than the squishies, they had no way of actually defending anyone for more than a turn or so without being very lucky and fighting a single enemy.

The thing is, WoW’s aggro mechanics kinda suck, as do those in most MMOs. 4e took the idea of a mechanic to force monsters to focus on the defender, but didn’t take the actual mechanics – the devs came up with a much better method than the “AGGRO METER HIGH, ATTACK!” method MMOs tend to use. When you look at the way defenders defend, they not only use a different method than MMO tanks, they use multiple good and effective methods, which despite being different for each class all work well and have different tactical implications. That’s a brilliant piece of game design – recognise a flaw, take the basic idea someone else has used to fix it, and build a whole selection of new and improved fixes for players to choose from. Which don’t suck.

Now, hopefully MMOs might figure out a way to steal and improve on 4e’s mechanics, so 5e can steal and improve on something even better, and we’ll get a positive feedback loop of good game design going.

darjr  on April 7th, 2010

Gary Gygax himself liked a less complex rules system than 3e or 3.5e. Was he playing a ‘dumbed down’ version of D&D?

I’d say that he was not.

Geek Ken  on April 7th, 2010

I used to play AD&D and stopped after high school. Loved the game. Ate it up. I had an opportunity to jump into a 3.5 game and found my interest sort of waning. Yeah, all the crunchy bits were there, but at the heart of it was a game that punished players till they hopefully advanced enough to about 3rd level to be able to actually do something.

No thanks. I like how 4E empowers players with options and grants them some ability to actually do something, rather than hope they don’t get whacked by a critical hit (let’s not forget the whole ‘save or die’ bit). I guess some folks find it ‘challenging.’ I call it bad game design. People can still cling to their old editions and play the game. I’m glad WotC has dumped much of that philosophy and made a fun RPG with 4E.

Federico Figueredo  on April 8th, 2010

Combat Focus
False, false, false, and yet I keep hearing it.
Yes, the 4e books and system focus the vast majority of their rules on combat. But the game (in play) does no such thing.
How can this be? Well, it’s simple.
****You don’t need rules for roleplaying!****

—

The ruleset for D&D 4th focuses heavily on combat. This is a design decision (and not a bad one per se.) Other games will have rules that deal heavily with acting or telling a story to the detriment of combat rules. This, also, is a design decision.

We don’t need rules for role-playing as much as we don’t need rules for running combats. Rules regulate the interaction with and production of fiction and each ruleset encourages (and discourages) certain behaviours.

Nicholas  on April 8th, 2010

“Sorry, but I’ve never found someone (and believe me, I’ve asked), who could explain to me how 4e is like WoW in any satisfactory manner.”

I agree with your rebuttal, and do like 4E quite a bit. However, while I do not believe any comparison between WoW and 4E is a negative, I can see where people get such ideas.

1) The idea of “special attacks.”
While yes, you can just make a basic attack, for the most part you use your at-will powers, which often have a special flavor to them. This is very similar to the attack powers in a game like WoW. Sure, you can auto-attack in WoW, but you also might use a Cleave or Heroic Strike, etc.

2) “Cooldowns.”
In a game like WoW, besides your basic special attacks, you also have “cooldowns” which are usually more powerful special attacks or utility powers that have a longer delay between uses to balance their extra potency. These can clearly be construed as analogues to Encounter and Daily powers.

3) Racial Powers.
In WoW, each race usually had some special benefits, some were passive, and others were active, such a the War Stomp of a Tauren or a Night Elf’s Shadowmeld. This idea also exists in 4E, where besides passive bonuses, many races are given Racial Powers, usually Encounter powers, which are also similar to what you’d see in WoW. A racial ability with a 3 to 5 minute cooldown is pretty similar to an Encounter power, given the average encounter in WoW would probably be over before the ability recharged.

4) Metagame rules.
4E is not a simulationist game anymore, and I like that. The rules are more “meta” now, and by that I mean that they describe things to us, the Player, more than they inform the Character.

For example, a sword swing, or cast spell, was probably translated in-game nearly 100%. The game rules of earlier editions are like the physics of the world that the Characters would understand. In other words, you can easily Roleplay the rules.

In 4E however, the rules are not easily roleplayed. A Fighter doesn’t memorize or “rehearse” a particularly devastating swing, such that he can only do it once a day. That is kind of silly. Instead, we as Players understand that the Encounter/Daily type powers are apportioned for game balance reasons, and do not accurately represent how our characters view their world. Or at least I hope people don’t roleplay that way! 😆

So yes, while the analogy is perhaps somewhat overwrought, I do not think it is completely baseless to suggest that MMOs and 4E share some characteristics. But again I do not see this as bad. Who are the younger generation of gamers that D&D needs to attract? People who have grown up playing Computer RPGs. Chances are you ask someone young what an RPG is and the first thing that pops into their mind will be a computer game. So I think that creating cross appeal is not a bad strategy, intentional or otherwise.

EDIT: Also as noted above the Marking system is similar to aggro management rules in MMOs.

Nicholas  on April 8th, 2010

@Graham: Rules Heavy Roleplay games are probably more likely going to be your experimental games, and the kinds that you will see talked about at the Forge, where they are heavily invested in game mechanics.

For example, Dogs In The Vineyard is a game wherein the roleplay and mechanics are heavily connected, because it was created in the spirit where if its in the game (such as RP) it needs to be mechanically supported, or else why is it there? Likewise, extraneous rules should be purged.

lookintomyeyes83  on April 8th, 2010

Hmm, didnt get a chance to read all the way through, but I do see some of the peeps reasons for not liking 4e.

1) The art. It sucks. I LOVED how the 3e books like old tomes. The 4e ones…look like graphic novels for teenagers. I admit wholeheartedly to hating them.

2) “Labels” names. I liked cleric, thief, etc. The new names confuse me no matter how many times I hear them. I think this is largely though because I am more of a roleplaying person and really don’t care what my char’s ‘main goal’ is. In my head, they are there to live in the world thats created around them, and have fun with it.

3) Definitely more mini-heavy. I admit, I LOVE minis, esp ones that look like my char, but again, having to use them to plan tactics makes me go ‘sigh’. Probably because I like area-effect spells better than “push a char X spaces forward/back”

That said, I DID enjoy some things in 4e:

1) Being a cleric sucked a hell of a lot less. You mean other people can heal THEMSELVES?! AWESOME. (Enough said.)

2) Combined skills. Yeah, perhaps it’s cheating a bit, but I enjoy having a char with lots of skills, and it was very difficult with 3e. Its easier with 4e because you can do the same amount with less of them.

And to be fair, I should also comment on things I like about D&D in general:
1) Roleplaying!
2) Die rolling!
3) In a good game with a good DM, you can ‘flavor text’ your char into what ever you want it to be. Turns out for me, being a spellcaster and flavortexting my char into a ‘druid type’ with magic based spells was WAAAY closer to what I wanted than the actual druid class (which wanted me to transform into animals, and i had little interest in).

Finally a note to Graham: Do you still have my char sheet for the cleric that you remembered what spells and rituals I took? (I thought I got it back, so if you don’t still have it, WOW, good memory!)

Federico Figueredo  on April 13th, 2010

@Graham

RE: Saying that D&D 4th Ed is combat focused compared to earlier D&D editions doesn’t hold water.

I agree wholeheartedly (though I reckon I’m not an expert in the matter.) My point was merely to address the statement that “we don’t need rules to roleplay.”

As far as games that have a dense ruleset for certain roleplaying scenarios I’m going to take the easy blow and mention Burning Wheel, a system which boasts a “persuasion system” (if you’d like) almost as complex as it’s fighting mechanics.

OFF-TOPIC: Sorry but is your Gravatar a red mage lying on the floor?

Nicholas  on April 20th, 2010

@Graham: I was only arguing that you could find similarities, not that there was some unbreakable link between 4E and MMOs.

As for “At Will” powers, they too have a cooldown, which barring an Action Point spent is wait until next round :-p

And while there were a handful of “daily” cooldowns in OD&D, such as the Paladin’s ubiquitous Lay On Hands, that was usually an exception based part of the rules, not an intrinsic standard which 4E uses with its At Will/Encounter/Daily system.

But at this point we are debating minutiae. I’m confidant that there is a good argument for cosmetic similarities between the two games, but who cares? It isn’t relevant to whether 4E is a good game or not. I do not believe you can argue 4E = WoW.

I think we also may have a slightly different take on Simulationist. To me, Simulationist at its basic is that you try and have rules that adjudicate specific instances of action. For example, a Climb check to see if I scale the wall or fall off of it, or an attack roll to see if I hit with a sword are both simulationist. They do exactly what they describe.

A Gamist perspective might be more abstract. So, you have say, the 4E Skill Challenge. You need to make X Successes before Y Failures. The Skills you employ have to make sense in a Narrative sense, but not necessarily on a one to one basis. So a Skill Challenge might be something like “Break out of Jail.”

For the Simulationist, “Break out of Jail” would require dozens of die rolls, possibly hundreds. Every scaled wall, every lock picked, ever Hide check, every Stealth check, every Listen, every Spot, every Bluff, every attack roll if faced with a Guard, etc. is played out specifically. Whereas a Gamist Skill Challenge in 4E can narratively accomplish the same with 4-6 simple skill checks.

So even though 4E still uses Attack Rolls, most Powers incorporate a number of elements that are still abstract compared to the simple analogy of attack roll = sword swing.

As for Rules Heavy/Rules Light… Dogs in the Vineyard has fairly simply mechanics, but they are used for EVERYTHING.

In that game, Roleplay is not something you do between encounters, or to add fluff to the system. If two PCs have a disagrement about whether they should go right or left it is resolved using the exact same mechanic as if you wanted to shoot an NPC in the head with a shotgun, or chase someone down in a foot race.

It is a really interesting game concept based on the idea that everything should be controlled by the rules, and the rules should be as lean as possible.

dreadgazebo  on April 21st, 2010

This is the single best, most well organized, thoughtful and unbiased defense of 4e I’ve yet to read. Great work.

Jeff Rients  on April 21st, 2010

The Bard appeared in the 1st and 2nd edition PHBs. If you want to argue it wasn’t “core” in 1st edition AD&D, I’ll grant the point seeing it was a weird proto-prestige class in an optional eppendix in the back of the book. But Bard’s have been core since at least 1989.

The 4th edition debacle « The Dread Gazebo  on April 22nd, 2010

[…] thoughts on the subject and I feel I have to put my two cents in on the hobby as a whole, although Graham’s rebuttal to above linked post couldn’t have been put any better in my opinion I’m choosing to still get […]

faustusnotes  on April 22nd, 2010

racial powers were clearly invented in the old editions of D&D, and even if they were largely passive in the PC races, they were active in the non-PC races (Deep gnomes, drow, duergar, etc.) which entered into role-playing lore before 1991.

The daily/encounter/at will power thing was also in 2nd ed at least – all Demons had these, as did a great many other more powerful creatures. Remember Dragons had 3/day breath weapons – it was a well established mechanic. Lots of characters had it too: i can remember at least 3 (cleric, monk, paladin) and I suspect more (bard, druid) had it.

The original roles of striker, tank, healer and controller were also all in the original rules. It may not be written as such but the first level mage’s spells are clearly intended as a controller’s – sleep and charm person, anyone? Confusion, dominate monster, feeblemind, gaseous cloud? Clerics were clearly envisaged as heal bots, and rogues and rangers had a striker role. D&D was new so they didn’t have the language for it (which came later) but even the idea of a balanced party was old in the 90s. WoW was influenced by D&D, not the other way round.

D&D 4e just systematised a bunch of stuff that was developed willy-nilly in earlier implementations, and dropped earlier D&D’s single most despised point – the magic system. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but the criticisms of it are smoke and mirrors.

Nicholas  on April 27th, 2010

@Graham:

“Re: Gamist/Simulationist

Ugh. This is why I hate GNS theory. It always complicates things.

Besides, there’s a far better threefold model that I prefer.”

I am hardly married to GNS, but sometimes it makes it easier to expalin a point. I am not sure how linking me to some rant about GNS helps the discussion.

I would be tickled pink if you could take the very example I gave you and explain it in simpler terms.

You suggested that 3.5 was not simulationist, I provided an example between editions. I made the mistake of using terminology that you dislike. You ignored my point completely in favor of a “talk to the hand” link. Wow, you showed me! :-p

I don’t think any label or style of game one happens to come up with is better or worse than any other. They have their own merits and people play what they like.

However, since gaming is a subject that people do like to wax philosophically about now and again… such as your blog here… I am not sure why having some ideas or terms to discuss is in any way inappropriate.

The Forge people get carried away. No argument here . :-p

Nicholas  on May 20th, 2010

@Graham – No worries, all good :p

Lluewhyn  on May 22nd, 2010

Ugh, I can safely say that I agree with almost none of his arguments, and unfortunately find them quite common in the anti-4E crowd. 4E does have its problems, but seldom do you find reasonable arguments for or against it from the perspective of game design.

A lot of these arguments end up being speculative, such as the WoW argument that “obviously” these changes were done “solely” from a marketing perspective to attract younger players.

IMO, they tend to also often speak from a theoretical standpoint rather than an actual experience(or their experiences are drastically different from me and mine). One of these is the suggestion that “proper balance” is characters being relatively equal in playing ability through the life of a campaign than during any given session. Great in theory, but I personally didn’t see that many campaigns last from 1-20 for everyone to be balanced. Kind of like the old 1E and 2E arguments that although humans were completely weaker than other races, their one main advantage was being able to play any class all the way to 20, while many demi-humans could only advance to 10, or 13, or whatever. Personally, I’ve never witnessed any campaigns where players of such demi-humans were content to sit at their level cap while the rest of the group getting higher in level. This is a specific example though, so I’ll go through the same arguments as above.

1. Dumbed down. Depends on your perspective, I suppose. There are less sub-systems, but characters can still be plenty challenging to play. A new player has an overwhelming array of options for their characters. I like the fact that the game is more *consistent*. I like the fact that 3.0 got rid of the clumsy Petrification/Polymorph, Rod/Staff/Wand, etc. saves from 1E/2E and replaced them with the far more intuitive Fort, Reflex and Will. I like the fact that now all desired rolls should be higher(non-proficiency checks used to want lower rolls). Now with 4E, I especially like that these saves changed to defenses, and now it’s consistent that the attacker rolls against the static defense all of the time. Now, it does get a bit wonky that the icy patch of floor is “attacking” you, but, hey…. 🙂

2. Along with the classes, some races just didn’t get introduced until 10 months later with PHB2. They wanted to introduce a few new things along with the repackaged old ones, so that’s just a marketing decision, take it or leave it. I’m not fond of the Tiefling or Dragonborn, but that’s just me. I’m glad that they revised the Half-Orc to no longer have to be the child of a rapist, gnomes are a lot more distinctive now(they never really stood out much to me before) and halflings are a little more realistically sized to be threatening. I don’t care much either way for the Eladrin, although I guess they wanted to have a more distinct difference between the races of elves.

3. Classes. Like races, they wanted to mix mostly old stuff with a few new ones, and they didn’t have room to include ALL of the old classes. I’m very happy that Druids now have a proper place in the storyline, as before, they meant that Druids were the servants of “Nature”, which never really was represented well in the storylines or books(they always referenced gods instead). I’m still not terribly happy with the mechanical differences between Wizards and Sorcerers currently, as a Sorcerer just seems to appeal more to players who like randomness than a distinct difference between learning magic naturally and learning via high-concept theory and abstractions(compare learning to play music by ear versus compositional theory). The concept of being born into it suggested by both editions also seems a bit weird to me when some classes can multi-class into Sorcerer later in life.

3. Again. One of the easiest ways to get a 4E player’s goat is to say that “it’s just like WoW”. Really, what they’re saying is that WotC changed the rules just to appeal to a market segment overly popular with juveniles and lacking in manners rather than actual gaming routes.

4. Skill merger. The obvious one is Stealth vs. Hide and Move Silently. Honestly, since the PCs were the ones usually moving into enemy territory, the goal was to have to move and to do it without the enemy noticing it. Although there may be a few instances of PCs needing to move silently without having to hide, there were very few times when PCs needed to hide without having to be quiet. Many of the other skills were also just to specific.

5. Minis- Yes, I do miss the days of being able to sit around playing on couches in an apartment rather than in front of a battle-mat on a table. However, those days were 2E, as 3E would be harder to play just narratively describing it versus simulating it with minis. Yeah, 4E requires it more, but it hasn’t changed the habits in my household switching from 3E.

6. Art. Subjective. I liked a lot of Larry Elmore’s artwork from 2nd edition, but don’t really much care either way. I will say, however, that I don’t much like the little introductory blurb given out about each class, like “You’ll have to fight me first, dragon!”. Blah.

7. Layout. I don’t like the layout either. In keeping with 4E’s philosophy, I think it would have made more sense to introduce the rules first(as the general), and then the classes and races later(as the exception). As it is, it’s very tricky to learn because you start reading about a lot of things which have bonuses or effects to certain things which you won’t read about for another 200 pages.

8. Labels
Just used to go by different terms, as you said:
Fighters- Most consistent damage dealers overal and takers with little resource management.
Wizards- Highest damage dealer for a given opponent, physically weak and needing defenders.
Rogues- Poor face to face damage dealing and taking, but could dish out larger sums of damage from behind.
Clerics- Healers and utility belts.

In practice, a few problems emerged. It’s interesting to me that people bring up things like WoW, because earlier fantasy video games were more like older D&D in this model, and then changed the model when they realized the flaws. Fighters wanted to have something more interesting to do, Rogues wanted to be useful in situations other than just backstabbing, Clerics wanted to do more than just heal, etc.

Also, the earlier systems didn’t have the same abilities to “control aggro”, to borrow the MMO terminology, or a way for the front-line fighters to keep enemies from killing the softer guys in the back apart from just physically standing in the way. The idea of giving defenders more options to protect their comrades wasn’t a concept stolen from WoW, but has its origins in the Attacks of Opportunity. Heck, even 1E had a stab at this with the old classic SSI Gold Box games which had characters attack enemies who just walked past them to attempt to kill the guys in the back. I happen to actually like the 4E way of doing it, as still giving the enemy a choice of who to attack(albeit with consequences) rather than a simple hard-wired decision ala the MMO Aggro or the 3.5 Knight’s Challenge.

9. Resource Management…..ugh. This is one of those ones that I consider more theoretical than reality-based. Perhaps the proponents of this played in games where they were able to gain a lot more information going into an adventure than I did. For my part, although you could maybe make some decisions in general(such as knowing that you’re going into an old crypt, or after an arch-wizard, demon, etc), a lot of spells were useful but wouldn’t likely be known at the time, such as wandering into a basilisk in a dungeon or having a spell to counter a Harpy song in the jungle. If you memorized a spell like Hold Portal, or Stone to Flesh, odds are it wouldn’t get used very much. As a result, mages typically memorized a variety of attack spells and then picked up a few scrolls for those specific instances.

My step-son played a Sorcerer for the first time. He often blew his spell-tree early on, and then wanted to rest(the classic 5-minute work day, a problem I’m still not convinced 4E has solved). When the rest of the players suggested that he conserve his spells more and just fire a crossbow or something, he said “I’m a sorcerer, I’m supposed to be casting spells”. It was kind of hard to argue with that logic.

As an aside, I’m not sure that using Raistlin Majere as an example is the best idea. For the first couple of books, he *wasn’t* that terribly useful, and typically only casted 1-2 spells per battle before running out. Due to the low-magic setting, the other party members were actually impressed by him using spells like Sleep and Friends.

10. Versatility. Depended upon your level. Mostly, wizards became more “versatile” because they had a collection of wands and scrolls in addition to their spells. However, yes, 4.0 Wizards do have less options.

11. Casters vs. Noncasters. Once again, the theoretical argument that balance is achieved if each character gets to feel more or less the same level of usefulness during the span of the campaign. However, not all campaigns(or even most, IMO) ranged from 1-20.

In my 3.5 campaigns, when characters were being created at 1st, more people were wanting to play fighter-types. When new players came in when the campaign was at higher-levels, they were more willing to play wizards and sorcerers. However, one player who started a 10th level sorcerer later fudged his rolls to let his character die at one point when everyone was around level 12 or 13 because he felt that the character was too powerful and outshining all of the others. He knew then that it was only going to get worse, and didn’t want to make it a one-man show.

As I said above, demi-humans used to be more powerful than other races because they would have a lower-level cap. Maybe fine in theory(or not), but seldom worked in practice. As a result, 3E had to tweak the Human to make the race much more palatable. 4E keeps most of these changes so they’re a fully playable race, although not as specialized for certain classes as others.

12. Healing Surges. A bit of a rough mechanic, but functionally fine as far as game balance. Just keep in mind that the player characters are *not* usually suffering severe wounds. In 3.X, we used to graphically describe every hit. In 4.0, that’s somewhat inappropriate, as Hit Points are not an actual log of serious wounds received, but rather an abstraction of luck running out and fatigue setting in. One example I like to think of is the fight between Inigo and Wesley in The Princess Bride. Once Wesley starts fighting right-handed, Inigo starts getting badly beaten until the point he’s disarmed. You can actually see him start to fight more and more wildly, as his parrying gets less effective, even though he hasn’t actually suffered a wound. I like to think of the “Bloody” state of the point where the audience realizes he’s soundly being beaten and the point where he’s disarmed is when he runs out of HP(this also somewhat uses HP as an abstraction for parrying, as there really isn’t a built-in system of thrust, parry, counter-thrust, etc. in the system). At that point, Inigo is completely defeated, not just from the lack of his weapon but also partly from being worn out and partly from being completely rattled. From this perspective, it’s easier to visualize a Second Wind or Warlord Inspiring Word.

13. Magic Items in the PHB vs. DMG. Well, if you are playing in a world where the PCs can buy them(and 3.0 mostly started this), it’s much easier this way. Otherwise, the DMs have to pointlessly create magic-item lists for every shop(or Enchanter), or allow the PCs to read the DMG, at which point it’s better to just have the items in the open. Honestly, I prefer the idea of having Enchanters custom-making items rather than large stockhouses of enchanted goods. Having the magic items be available makes it easier for the PCs to figure out what they want to buy without having the DM needing to get involved. If the DM doesn’t like an item, they can always veto it.

14. Combat Focus. Yes, the game is combat-focused. All of the editions pretty much were. The actual story segments pretty much stay the same. What they took out is charts for mundane aspects of the game, such as random weather conditions, travel distances, and the cost of a sheep vs. a duck. A lot of that stuff is better left to DM fiat than having to consult obscure charts, IMO.

However, I dislike the argument that RP has nothing to do with the mechanics. It is true that a player *can* RP regardless of the game mechanics, but I think that ignores human psychology. For example, I think that in some ways 4.0 tends to encourage more RP when it comes to encounters because the players know that they’ll still get the same xp from solving an encounter diplomatically as they would slaughtering everything. In previous editions, there would often be temptations to “not be good aligned” because you wouldn’t miss out on XP and loot from being nice to everything. For a counter-example, however, 4E having a larger focus on minis and the terrain as mapped out I think tends to get the players less engrossed in the world.

15. The feel- too subjective to argue for or against.

To be fair, I had said previously that I think that there *are* problems with 4E. Some of the bigger ones:

1. Combat can take too long. Yeah, there are ways to try to adjust for this but it’s still a persistent problem. Everyone has too many HP for the damage dealt out, and it’s easily possible to have a fight with a foregone conclusion drag on for another 30-60 minutes. Also, in my experiences, unless you have special encounters that can separate party members, it’s harder to have the risk of a PC dying without risking a TPK. Generally, as long as the group is still up and fighting, a PC seldom has a risk of dying unless just about everyone else falls or their group sucks.

2. The monsters attacks and defenses all increase by one for every level. The PCs’ stats only increase by one every two levels. Essentially, the game assumes that you’re taking every stat bonus in your main stat, you have Expertise, have the proper magic items for your level, etc. It leads to a bunch of weird situations where you have attack bonuses to power abilities at certain levels just to keep up(such as the Dragonborn breath), or that you have to buy higher “level” versions of items like Flaming Oil to successfully hit creatures of your level. As a negative effect, it means oddball situations like a non Ranger would seldom carry a bow or other ranged weapon past the first few levels as they couldn’t hit anything with them, Clerics and Paladins have to seriously consider whether to take both Implement and Weapon powers because it will require them to maintain additional inventory, and that territorial effects of objects are higher level based upon their location(so a bookshelf in a Drow city has a much better “attack bonus” to push over onto someone than the same-sized bookshelf in a hobgoblin camp).

Lluewhyn  on May 25th, 2010

“So I can see why they split it as they did. Dropping 50 pages of rules into the book for newbies to read before they got to be imaginative in character creation probably would have been a bad idea. As long as the DM knows those rules, you can start playing.”

I can’t remember if it was the 2nd or 3rd edition DMG, but there was actually a section where a 3-member party(2 fighters and a cleric) traveled through a dungeon. The brief narrative was separated by expanded discussions of the rules, so you got to be introduced to the rules a little at a time and see how they would come into play.

I was imagining something along those lines, where you gradually expand the discussion of how the game works and what you would expect a typical character to be doing, and then lead into different types of characters near the end.

Lluewhyn  on May 25th, 2010

A few more points, more or less in order. They’re also not necessarily arguments, but some reflections.

Raistlin(and Dragonlance mages in general) were set to represent very fixed aspects of the game as it existed back in 1st edition, such as the idea of alignment, limited weapon selection for mages and memorized spells. When the game editions changed, there were a lot of awkward fixes to the game to explain it.

Unfortunately, the story didn’t even perfectly reflect the rules as they were back then. Gilthanas multi-classing as a Fighter/Wizard is more similar to 3E or 4E than the Hybrid-style of multi-classing back then.

Raistlin’s style of Vancian magic was slightly different(and more logical and useful) than the actual rules allowed- for example, he seemed to have every spell in his spellbook memorized at any given time, but he was limited by the physical taxation of casting spells and the fact that he could cast each one only once before having to study. This contrasts with the actual rules which allow you to memorize the same spell multiple times but only keep a limited number of spells memorized.

Before we switched to 4E, I was pondering a way of completely revamping the spell system to make it more open-ended and similar to the skill-based system, where each spell school was a different skill that you could put points into. Thus, a Specialist would not be a distinct class but one who focused more points on a given school than others. You could also attempt to cast any spell you wanted or try different things only limited by your imagination. However, the DCs and consequences for failing may discourage you. Finally, the “taxing” effect would be subdual damage. Sadly, I never got the idea finished because it would not work at all under 4E.

As far as livestock, I once read a Dragon magazine article(maybe 2nd Ed?) where a cleric spent all of his remaining funds on sheep(they were something like a silver apiece), and simply flooded the dungeon with his flock, crushing the monsters or strongly hampering them. This was a convention game, and the DM was reportedly very annoyed.

Nicholas  on June 1st, 2010

@Lluewhyn

Interesting stuff! On Raistlin’s magic style, IIRC the rules for Dragonlance play were the same Vancian as regular D&D (plus the changes they made to the Magic User class vis a vis Black vs Red vs White etc.) and the mechanic you describe was one they used in the novels as sheer literary license, because let’s face it, Vancian Magic just sounds goofy if you try and play it too literally in a narrative.

Personally, I am a fan of a clear separation between Narrative and Mechanics. Why? Because it is very very hard to have one thing do both. People who favor very literal play have denounced 4E to me based on arguments such as that it is “stupid” for Fighters to have Encounter/Daily powers – What they only know how to swing a sword extra hard once every five minutes? And I would agree that if you tried to explain the Game Rules as the narrative laws of physics, you’d end up with Erfworld, rather than Lord of the Rings :-p

So I would much rather rationalize the narrative /around/ mechanics then rely on having mechanics that needed to make “sense” if examined under ‘real-world conditions.’

I also believe that 4E is much more relaiant on the metagame than D&D ever was before. Effects such as Forced Movement, for example, and the synergies between Roles rely on it. There is no “real world” justification for why a Warlord hitting an Orc with a Sword could make the Wizard’s Lightning Bolt do more damage… You just have to accept it as a result of teamwork synergy and describe it as best suits the scenario.

Lluewhyn  on June 1st, 2010

Well, I wish they would have taken that literary license and changed the rules, because Raistlin’s way of doing it was a more viable and interesting mechanic to me.

Oh, and because I omitted the clarification earlier, I was referencing Gilthanas because he is a “dabbler” in magic. 1st and 2nd edition envisioned multi-classing as being a complete hybrid or choosing a completely new career. The ability to just take a little bit of a class’s abilities while concentrating more heavily on your primary class didn’t come around until 3rd and 4th editions.

Warlords probably wouldn’t fit well in any literary narrative because their powers make more sense as a leader of a decent-sized cohesive fighting unit, not a small group of rag-tag adventures.

Apart from that, I think 4.0 would work VERY well with a narrative, provided you weren’t forcing the character to reuse the same powers over and over again, especially martial-based. 4.0s powers work somewhat on the “Rule of Cool” concept, where you can do a cool thing at will, an even cooler thing a few times a battle, and a show-stopping dramatic move once or twice a day.

So,
Legolas can shoot arrows very, very fast(At-Will, similar to Twin Strike).

Or, he can shoot two arrows at once to hit two different targets(At-Will, or possibly Encounter)

Or, he can stab an enemy with an arrow as a melee attack, and then use said arrow to shoot another enemy(Encounter)

Or, he can jump on a shield allowing him to move quickly down the battlefield while still firing arrows all the while(Daily)

Or, he can climb an Oliphaunt, cut its harness, ride the harness all the way to the top as it’s falling off, shoot several arrows into the oliphaunt’s brain(see the multi-arrow ability above), and then jump off gracefully as the oliphaunt falls over dead(skill challenge)

The only problem with this is the fact that, mechanically, the game wants you to use the same move over and over again instead of doing special moves to fit the scene. One, that keeps the game from bogging down more than it already does, and two, it lends to the ideas of “builds”.

DonMoody  on February 23rd, 2011

I know this post was quite a while ago but I just stumbled upon it and have to comment.
The “30 pushups” analogy is pretty false.

Let’s take a more realistic view of combat and damage.
You get in a knife fight and take damage.
The damage you would incur in such a fight is the type that would require stitches (for confirmation on that point, just ask any emergency room health care professional).
OK – so you’ve just gotten stitched up.
Now for round 2 of that knife fight.
Sorry but you are *not* as good as you were before you needed to be sewn back together like a piece of cloth.
And if you are not careful, you will rip your stitches and be *worse off* than before.

The problem with the abstract aspects of 4e (or any RPG) is someone will make false analogies like the above ‘doing exercise is like getting hurt in combat’ to try and justify what is, from a realistic point of view, unjustifiable.
Exercise is not combat; taking damage is not like a workout at the gym.

The game plays faster and simpler if you let players quickly heal between fights and fully heal after a single night’s rest.
But making record keeping easier for the player’s and the GM is exactly that and nothing more – certainly that has nothing to do with how actual human beings incur damage and recovered from that damage.

DonMoody

4e D&D Plays Like a Video Game, and That’s Awesome. « The Dread Gazebo  on April 11th, 2011

[…] the game flow along nicely. I do understand hit points are abstract and that there are a ton of plausible ways to view healing surges from an in-game perspective if there is a need for such thing, but I truly don’t think there […]

The 4th edition hot button « The Dread Gazebo  on April 15th, 2011

[…] thoughts on the subject and I feel I have to put my two cents in on the hobby as a whole, although Graham’s rebuttal to above linked post couldn’t have been put any better in my opinion I’m choosing to still get […]

UriK  on August 20th, 2011

I have a different way of justifying healing surges. I like to say, “remember when Boromir got hit by half a dozen arrows, looked as if he’s about to die any minute now and then got back with double vigor and killed a million more orcs? This was a healing surge.”

Uri K.
DNDkids

DocRyder  on October 28th, 2012

Just found the post.

Great article! Good discussion!