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”.

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

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.

Re: order of the book

Interesting idea. Would be great for an “intro to the game” book, for sure. Less useful as a reference book, though. Maybe we’ll see something like this in the upcoming Essentials “Red Box”.

Re: variant magic system

I actually used this exact system in a d20 Modern/d20 Future/Phantasy Star playtest game once. It was heavily ripped off of the d20 Revised Star Wars game. It worked well enough, and was fairly fun, but the game never got past the playtest stage for various reasons.

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.

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.

Re:

7) While I can see the argument, the first part of the PHB is “You want to play a character? Here’s the info you need.” while the second half doesn’t need to be known before playing. If I don’t know hoe to Bull Rush or what Dazed does, I can still play.

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.

9) That is a brilliant example of why vancian magic was removed in 4e. The limitation of it just doesn’t make much sense to someone who isn’t already used to it.

As for using Raistlin as an example, you are correct that he didn’t cast very often. My main point was that he never did anything besides cast, either. He may have used his dagger a couple times, but most if not all were out of combat.

14) I actually made good use of the “cost of a sheep versus a duck” tables in 3e. I once played a “Chicken Mage” – a Wizard who (with his extra gold) bought as many chickens as he could afford. They followed him around, and he used them as additional material components. His fireballs were quite disturbing, and punctuated with a loud, terrified clucking.

…I didn’t say it was a tasteful use of the table…

—

Now, re: yours.

1) Combat is long, though no longer than 3e in my experience thus far. It might be worse at higher levels.

But I have not had any problems putting a single character at risk of death without risking a TPK. My party will vouch for the number of times a character has hit the end of a day with 0 surges and single-digit hit points, while the rest of the party is beaten, but not broken.

2) Alchemical items in particular have some strangeness to the math, yeah.

As for Paladins/Clerics, I’m a big fan of weapons that function as holy symbols. I’m considering allowing divine characters to use their deity’s favoured weapon as a holy symbol for their powers, for this exact reason.

And for bookcases, nah, your level 16 Ranger just pushed the bookcase a whole lot better than he did 15 levels ago.
Or, y’know, something like that.

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).

I just realised how bad that line came off. It wasn’t meant as a “Ugh, why is he bringing up GNS?”, but as a “Ugh. I shouldn’t have started arguing GNS. It always becomes finicky and complicated, and based on opinion.”

The link wasn’t meant as a “talk to the hand” but rather as a non-sequitur to something amusing.

As for GNS in general, nothing against the use of the terms (though, as you said, some people get carried away). It’s just a topic that I like to avoid, in part due to not knowing just who will get carried away with it, and in part just due to a distaste for some of the community and arguments surrounding it.

However, I seem to be very bad at avoiding it, and usually am in mid-discussion before I realise that I started talking GNS again. As such, I clumsily attempted to break the conversation with some humour.

Stupid attempts at humour, not translating well into pure-text media. *shakes fist*

“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!

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 .