What people like about 4e.

[tussock]

I dug through a few threads on rpg.net for pure positive comments on
D&D4 from players and DMs. Has to be said, way more DMs than players had
anything like a point.


1: Players like the Warden and Warlord and .... IMO these are the same
players in 3e who like the Cleric and Druid (hi, my name's tussock, and I
like competant characters). It's not coincidental that players like the best
classes in each edition. AD&D Paladins, despite the baggage.

2: Players like the booby dragonfolk (?!?) *because* there's finally a
big-strong race that's noble and good and has women with internal organs and
muscles between their boobs and butt (ah!). So, I can't think of an old race
that fits, a big mammal race that isn't rapey and evil. Dragonlance Ogre and
Minotaur, the ones from Races of Stone, and that's about it. Metallic half-
dragons. Humans? Slim pickings.

3: GMs like the easy prep and highly self-contained monsters. A lot.
Over and over that gets mentioned. 4: The XP budget kicks the ass of CR/EL
lookups/math (*so many people* are scared of math). 5: The characters being
all the same so the prep still works no matter what players use. 6: The
players not being able to influence the plot so the prep still works.

Which is all true. 3e gives you a lot of prep options you probably
should not use. Some of the monsters are incredibly complicated for little
real purpose (should really loosely reference the non-combat stuff, inline
the in-combat stuff, eh). It all implies that a lot of DMs over-prepare
massively, so some guidance there may be in order.


5b: That thing with characters being the same is not much liked by
players. When they do mention it they applaud that classes were basically a
little railroad that gave them no real choices (in more positive words,
something like "it's easy to understand your role and you can't fail to meet
it with your choices"). That's again like how Druids in 3e are awesome at
everything they do and people *like it*.
So, while some folk like succeeding at character-gen, lots like not
being able to fail. Fun mini-game for almost everyone, people just want a
strong _minimum_ result out the end.

NB: 4e people don't much care about /real/ options for characters. Those
that do are busy playing Pathfinder, or not playing at all.


7: Some people like at-will-for-all because they hate running out of
something useful to do. Note, many at-wills aren't really useful, but people
need something to contribute if the team is determined to grind out a win.

But grinding out a win needs to go away. No one likes it at all, most
widely hated thing in the game. So, .... Yeh. The game benefits from
tactical options like retreat being real. Actual choices for players.
Nothing good comes from grinding your at-wills, but Wizards do need a
reliable option just in case that's what the team chooses. AD&D darts maybe.


And then people largely like the idea of various things while admitting
the implimentation made it suck donkey balls. Skill challenges, marking, the
lockstep advancement, minions, longer fights (real-time-wise), pushing folk
around, super-teamwork-combos, .... Some mentioned that character classes
were totally getting better over the life of the thing, but ... well ...
they couldn't exactly get /worse/.

Not a single person stood up for the three defenses, one person
mentioned the save-to-end thing but was directly quoting marketing from 2008
which isn't true (IRL it's totally slower and more work to track than
durations).

--
tussock

And then I'm going biking for a week or so, catch you later.

[Rast]

tussock wrote...

> 6: The players not being able to influence the plot so the prep still
works.

Wow. They should have put that in the 4E promotional stuff.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 4/24/13 1:52 AM, tussock wrote:
>
> I dug through a few threads on rpg.net for pure positive comments on
> D&D4 from players and DMs. Has to be said, way more DMs than players had
> anything like a point.

6: The
> players not being able to influence the plot so the prep still works.
>

What? I mean, seriously, WHAT? How is it POSSIBLE to do that without
having a true railroad game and thus, in effect, no roleplaying? "I do
X." "No, your character does Y." (where "X" is an action you didn't
foresee the person taking and which will totally derail your plot and
"Y" is the action you expected them to take).

Note that I have seen "I do X" events at least three or four times per
major campaign over my 35+ years of gaming, so I don't believe anyone
who says "I can plan for any event". Last such event was a few sessions
ago in my Star Wars campaign, when the PCs -- who had been basically
decent folks but mostly self-centered and not interested in being heroes
per se, decided suddenly, without warning, to try to beat the Empire to
a secret location they'd discovered in the Emperor's files... *AFTER*
having handed over the info on that location TO the Empire, so there was
no doubt that the Empire was on its way. The way they'd been playing, I
had expected them to let the Empire head out and start that part of the
plot brewing while they went back to their own personal plans,
travelling, trading, and training, so to speak.



--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

[Justisaur]

On Apr 24, 4:29 am, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"

<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> On 4/24/13 1:52 AM, tussock wrote:
>
>
>
> >      I dug through a few threads on rpg.net for pure positive comments on
> > D&D4 from players and DMs. Has to be said, way more DMs than players had
> > anything like a point.
>   6: The
> > players not being able to influence the plot so the prep still works.
>
>         What? I mean, seriously, WHAT? How is it POSSIBLE to do that without
> having a true railroad game and thus, in effect, no roleplaying? "I do
> X." "No, your character does Y." (where "X" is an action you didn't
> foresee the person taking and which will totally derail your plot and
> "Y" is the action you expected them to take).
>

It's more like whether you do X or Y, Z happens. It's pretty much the
complaint for a lot of CRPGs that have only a small illusion of
choice. The other DM running 4e complained you'd get faster results
with no real downside by going and pissing in a corner as winning a
skill challenge.

- Justisaur

[Justisaur]

On Apr 23, 9:55 pm, tussock <sc...@clear.net.nz> wrote:
>     I dug through a few threads on rpg.net for pure positive comments on
> D&D4 from players and DMs. Has to be said, way more DMs than players had
> anything like a point.

Doesn't surprise me, I like 3e way less as a DM than a player. I
think I'd still have to go with 3e over 4e as a player though after
having experienced it for 18 levels. 4e works better at lower level,
but then so does 3e.

>     1: Players like the Warden and Warlord and .... IMO these are the same
> players in 3e who like the Cleric and Druid (hi, my name's tussock, and I
> like competant characters). It's not coincidental that players like the best
> classes in each edition. AD&D Paladins, despite the baggage.

Ohkaaaay... I only saw one each of those, and they were both sub-par.
The Cleric was far more effective than either. Of course the Cleric
was still better replaced with a Striker, of course that can be said
of everyone, a party of Strikers would probably most effective, and
probably a lot more fun as fights would be shorter, and more
dangerous.

>     2: Players like the booby dragonfolk (?!?) *because* there's finally a
> big-strong race that's noble and good and has women with internal organs and
> muscles between their boobs and butt (ah!). So, I can't think of an old race
> that fits, a big mammal race that isn't rapey and evil. Dragonlance Ogre and
> Minotaur, the ones from Races of Stone, and that's about it. Metallic half-
> dragons. Humans? Slim pickings.

I like dragonfolk, but don't care for the boobies on it, dragons are
not mammalian.

>     3: GMs like the easy prep and highly self-contained monsters. A lot.
> Over and over that gets mentioned.

Yep. Of course anything pre 3e is even easier. I can roll up an
Classed NPC, at least what I need of it in about 1 minute for 1e. If
I want to use classed NPCs in 4e I'm still in for a world of hurt. Of
course you aren't supposed to do that.

> 4: The XP budget kicks the ass of CR/EL
> lookups/math (*so many people* are scared of math).

It works too well. One really needs to vary it a bit more, and
minions just aren't worth what they cost in the budget.

> 5: The characters being
> all the same so the prep still works no matter what players use.

Well they aren't all the same, but you don't really need to consider
any powers the PCs have, there are very few shortcuts. About the only
thing I saw was a 'shadow bridge' ritual and on character with 'boots
of spider climb' both which served to get to places that weren't
expected. Nothing like blink, flying, invisibility, charm, etc.

>     5b: That thing with characters being the same is not much liked by
> players. When they do mention it they applaud that classes were basically a
> little railroad that gave them no real choices (in more positive words,
> something like "it's easy to understand your role and you can't fail to meet
> it with your choices"). That's again like how Druids in 3e are awesome at
> everything they do and people *like it*.

The DM can set it up so that controllers (i.e. wizards) are nearly
useless, I've seen it a few times. At least the power difference
between a poorly made character and a well made one is more like 2 to
1 than 10 or 20 to 1 like in 3e, so even if you suck really bad you
are still contributing.

>     So, while some folk like succeeding at character-gen, lots like not
> being able to fail. Fun mini-game for almost everyone, people just want a
> strong _minimum_ result out the end.

Very true, I also hate playing the character building game.
Unfortunately it's quite alive and strong in 4e, just for a lot less
effect. In a strange way this made it seem even more important to
me. In 3e I'd regularly choose sub-par options for my bard just
because I didn't want to be incredibly more effective than everyone
else (for that matter I was playing a bard!).

>     7: Some people like at-will-for-all because they hate running out of
> something useful to do. Note, many at-wills aren't really useful, but people
> need something to contribute if the team is determined to grind out a win.

The problem I found with this is that some of the at-wills are so
inneffective, especially for wizards, that it really reduced the feel
of being magic. I know some people would rather shoot a ray of light
that singes the enemy's whiskers, but I'd rather be shooting a
crossbow, and then pull out the fireball when it was needed.

>     But grinding out a win needs to go away. No one likes it at all, most
> widely hated thing in the game. So, .... Yeh. The game benefits from
> tactical options like retreat being real. Actual choices for players.
> Nothing good comes from grinding your at-wills, but Wizards do need a
> reliable option just in case that's what the team chooses. AD&D darts maybe.

Yeah, grinding is bad, very very bad. Just what I wanted in a
tabletop, lets replicate the worst part of playing an MMO. There were
some fixes we tried which helped a bit, halve monster hp, double
damage, that sped up and made it much more dangerous feeling, but it
still wasn't enough.

>     And then people largely like the idea of various things while admitting
> the implimentation made it suck donkey balls. Skill challenges, marking, the
> lockstep advancement, minions, longer fights (real-time-wise), pushing folk
> around, super-teamwork-combos, .... Some mentioned that character classes
> were totally getting better over the life of the thing, but ... well ...
> they couldn't exactly get /worse/.

I didn't really see it. The best classes were still in the first book
or two.

> Not a single person stood up for the three defenses,

It was alright, but it's a minor point.

> one person
> mentioned the save-to-end thing but was directly quoting marketing from 2008
> which isn't true (IRL it's totally slower and more work to track than
> durations).

That's one of the things that really slows down the fights in 4e, way
too much crap to track. Prepwork is indeed incredibly easy for a DM,
but tracking marks, save to ends, etc. etc. etc. is a real headache.

- Justisaur

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

But that's not the fault of a game system, that's a GM's fault, because
the reason that a CRPG has that limitation is that it literally has to
have every choice written down, and CANNOT contemplate new choices.

Players make choices and GMs have to contemplate those choices, even if
they're not ones the GM thought of. Unless the GM is a total railroading
dick, but then that's not the fault of the system.

[dr...@bin.sh]

Alien mind control rays made tussock <sc...@clear.net.nz> write:
> 1: Players like the Warden and Warlord and .... IMO these are the same
> players in 3e who like the Cleric and Druid (hi, my name's tussock, and I
> like competant characters). It's not coincidental that players like the best
> classes in each edition. AD&D Paladins, despite the baggage.

warlords are awesome, and get to use other PCs as awesome weapons.
maybe there's a trick to wardens my group never discovered, we found
them exceedingly squishy and prone to getting in over their heads.

> 3: GMs like the easy prep and highly self-contained monsters. A lot.
> Over and over that gets mentioned.

yeah. i started using the 4e monster manual in my 3.5 game.

> 4: The XP budget kicks the ass of CR/EL
> lookups/math (*so many people* are scared of math).

weaklings.

> 6: The players not being able to influence the plot so the prep
> still works.

purely a function of mindset and play style, i think.
there's nothing hard-coded into the system which says PCs can't do
fun things.

--
n_n n_n dr...@bin.sh (CARRIER LOST) <http://www.bin.sh/>
|"|n_n_n|"| ---------------------------------------------------------------
| | " " | | "Basically, when you can look on CharOp and every single
|_|_[T]_|_| build includes mule ownership, you know there's a problem."
-- firesnakearies

[Telok]

On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 8:55:39 PM UTC-8, tussock wrote:

> 1: Players like the Warden and Warlord and .... IMO these are the same

We played 4e for a year before a player revolt reverted us to 3.5 but none of
us ever touched the warden or warlord. All seven of us derided the warlord's
shout healing. I know people will whine about it not being that or that it can
be re-fluffed as something else, but seven people agreed it was stupid in less
than five minutes and even worse when I suggested re-fluffing it as "morale
heightening urination."

> 2: Players like the booby dragonfolk (?!?) *because* there's finally a

Not us. We liked the dragon people angle but the lizard tits were a source of
derision.

> 3: GMs like the easy prep and highly self-contained monsters. A lot.

> 4: The XP budget kicks the ass of CR/EL

> 5: The characters being all the same so the prep still works no matter what
players use.

Yeah, it was a breeze to choose monsters for a balanced math monster encounter.
It doesn't do anything for the rest of encounter building, but for choosing a
number of monsters for the PCs to fight it's really easy.

> 6: The players not being able to influence the plot so the prep still works.

We did encounter this pretty hard. Nobody had any real ability to solve
problems beyond combat or skills. Using skills just got you a skill challenge
that we usually failed and became a combat. Our biggest way to influence the
plot became just ignoring the plot and going to smash a dungeon 100 miles away.

> 7: Some people like at-will-for-all because they hate running out of

We ended up referring to at-wills as auto-attack because that's what it was.
One of your at-wills was almost always better than the other and basic attacks
sucked. They also removed incentive to get inventive with scenery and stunts
after you had run out of daily and encounter powers. People trumpet "p.43" but
it really didn't work that way for us, by the rules on that page our stunts were
less likely to hit and did less damage/FX than our at-wills.

> And then people largely like the idea of various things while admitting
> the implimentation made it suck donkey balls. Skill challenges, marking, the
> lockstep advancement, minions, longer fights (real-time-wise), pushing folk
> around, super-teamwork-combos,

The published rules for skill challenges took years to get the numbers right,
and it was all basic math anyways. Marking was very meta-gamey for us and we
could never justify the bit about defenders overwriting each others marks.
We had supposedly simple fights last four+ hours (between two players who drift
and can't pre-anything for their turns and 5+ conditions/effects per player),
the last 3.5 fight I had that lasted that long involved a running combat
through the whole dungeon with six salamanders, four noble salamanders, a 22hd
drake, and 6 PCs with one leadership cohort. That fight took three hours.

> Not a single person stood up for the three defenses, one person
> mentioned the save-to-end thing but was directly quoting marketing from 2008
> which isn't true (IRL it's totally slower and more work to track than

To this day I still get into arguments about EONT vs save-ends. Because there
are situations where save-ends means that your effect lasted less than half a
round and your party hardly benefited from it.

[Justisaur]

On Apr 24, 8:47 pm, Telok <camer...@gci.net> wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 8:55:39 PM UTC-8, tussock wrote:


> People trumpet "p.43" but
> it really didn't work that way for us, by the rules on that page our stunts were
> less likely to hit and did less damage/FX than our at-wills.

Yeah, I tried a stunt once, and the DM gave me the stink eye. You can
intimidate opponents who are bloodied into surrendering too, also got
the stink eye for that.

Never had anyone try either in any game I ran, and I was the only one
who tried either in the games I played.

> >     Not a single person stood up for the three defenses, one person
> > mentioned the save-to-end thing but was directly quoting marketing from 2008
> > which isn't true (IRL it's totally slower and more work to track than
>
> To this day I still get into arguments about EONT vs save-ends. Because there
> are situations where save-ends means that your effect lasted less than half a
> round and your party hardly benefited from it.

EONT -> end on next turn? Yeah I found those to be significantly
better for the most part. Of course there's the other side of save-
ends... had PCs affected by stuff that they never got out of and
nearly died from even after the fights ended. One poor guy got mazed
and taken out of the fight for an entire session. Really long fight,
and he couldn't roll 10 or higher to save his life.

Part of the problem is most of the save ends stuff are daileys for PCs
and if they aren't effective, the PC feels useless - might as well
have used an at-will.

- Justisaur

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 4/25/13 10:59 AM, Justisaur wrote:
> On Apr 24, 8:47 pm, Telok <camer...@gci.net> wrote:
>> On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 8:55:39 PM UTC-8, tussock wrote:
>
>
>> People trumpet "p.43" but
>> it really didn't work that way for us, by the rules on that page our stunts were
>> less likely to hit and did less damage/FX than our at-wills.
>
> Yeah, I tried a stunt once, and the DM gave me the stink eye. You can
> intimidate opponents who are bloodied into surrendering too, also got
> the stink eye for that.

Sounds like your DM had the problem. Yes, if you allow a GM to
basically tell you "you can't try X", and no one says "well, that's
stupid" and starts another game, you're stuck with limited choices, but
that's not the game's fault, it's the GM's fault and the players who put
up with him or her.

[dr...@bin.sh]

Alien mind control rays made Telok <came...@gci.net> write:
>> 6: The players not being able to influence the plot so the prep
>> still works.
>
> We did encounter this pretty hard. Nobody had any real ability to
> solve problems beyond combat or skills.

i still don't get this.
did your 4e set come with a lobotomy kit which mine was missing?

[Tetsubo]

On 4/25/2013 2:15 PM, dr...@bin.sh wrote:
> Alien mind control rays made Telok <came...@gci.net> write:
>>> 6: The players not being able to influence the plot so the prep
>>> still works.
>>
>> We did encounter this pretty hard. Nobody had any real ability to
>> solve problems beyond combat or skills.
>
> i still don't get this.
> did your 4e set come with a lobotomy kit which mine was missing?
>

You didn't buy the Super Ultimate Supreme Edition obviously...

--
Tetsubo
Deviant Art: http://ironstaff.deviantart.com/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/tetsubo57

[Telok]

On Thursday, April 25, 2013 10:15:27 AM UTC-8, dr...@bin.sh wrote:
>
> > We did encounter this pretty hard. Nobody had any real ability to
> > solve problems beyond combat or skills.
>
> i still don't get this.
> did your 4e set come with a lobotomy kit which mine was missing?
>

No, see, your total options when faced with a plot point are Combat, Skills,
Rituals, and Roleplay.

Roleplay is independent of system and completely dependent on player/DM agency.
Unfortunately in 4e if your DM is using The Rules then you realize that 4e
doesn’t have a rule which says the roleplaying succeeds. This isn't a 4e
problem, it's a people problem.

Rituals are really iffy in 4e. Some of them like Comrade's Succour, and Enchant
Magic Item are really useful in the combat numbers meta-game but do nothing to
advance or alter the plot. Ones like Teleport Circle and the scrying rituals
are so limited that they become part of the plot and only let you do what the
DM wants you to do. Most of the others are almost useless and have no effect on
the plot. Plus most people overlook the fact that each ritual requires 8 hours
per tier to write down and another 8 hours per tier to master before you can
use it. Rituals are unable to affect the plot by design.

Skills, for us, tended to shoehorn us into a skill challenge. Generally
something that could be done in one skill check isn't enough to change the
course of the plot and things using multiple checks are skill challenges. Let
me give you an example, we spent five months of weekly sessions dealing with
a massive gnoll invasion/migration into civilized lands. The army leaders sent
adventuring parties into gnoll territory to discover discover the cause of the
migration and identify or kill the leaders. Our party (fighter, ranger, druid,
sorcerer, rogue, NPC healer) was given several ritual scrolls that let us sent
messages back and sent forth to "scout." We gained three levels before we got
back to civilization, discovered a lot of succubi masquerading as gnoll
leaders, found a magic gate of some sort that we couldn't affect. Skills let
the fighter and ranger jump, swim, and climb. The ranger and thief could sneak
and scout about 2/3 of the time but it didn't help anyone else or let us avoid
or ambush anything. The ranger and druid could track, which led to the next batch of gnolls and the next planned fight. The druid's perception was so high
that level+4 lurkers couldn't beat his passive detection, but he couldn't sneak
either so that just meant no ambushes. The NPC and sorcerer were the ones with
arcana and religion trained but no Int bonuses, they usually failed 3/4 of the
level appropriate checks to know anything. And nobody had the social skills trained so we totally failed to interrogate any captive we took. We ended up not even being able to use our skills to follow the plot, never mind being able to influence it.

Combat is the last category, it's also the weakest for influencing the plot
unless you lose a fight or start one with the people you are supposed to be
using social skills on.

[Seebs]

On 2013-04-24, dr...@bin.sh <dr...@bin.sh> wrote:
> Alien mind control rays made tussock <sc...@clear.net.nz> write:
>> 1: Players like the Warden and Warlord and .... IMO these are the same
>> players in 3e who like the Cleric and Druid (hi, my name's tussock, and I
>> like competant characters). It's not coincidental that players like the best
>> classes in each edition. AD&D Paladins, despite the baggage.

> warlords are awesome, and get to use other PCs as awesome weapons.
> maybe there's a trick to wardens my group never discovered, we found
> them exceedingly squishy and prone to getting in over their heads.

We didn't get the warden high enough level to have strong opinions. I love
warlord, though.

>> 3: GMs like the easy prep and highly self-contained monsters. A lot.
>> Over and over that gets mentioned.

> yeah. i started using the 4e monster manual in my 3.5 game.

This was definitely a big win for me. I could run a 4E game in my spare time.
I don't have the time/spoons to run 3.5/PF.

>> 4: The XP budget kicks the ass of CR/EL
>> lookups/math (*so many people* are scared of math).

> weaklings.

It's not that I'm scared of math, but... boy, do I like the 4E system better,
because doing lots of arithmetic isn't actually fun for me.

>> 6: The players not being able to influence the plot so the prep
>> still works.

> purely a function of mindset and play style, i think.
> there's nothing hard-coded into the system which says PCs can't do
> fun things.

Yeah. I've been in a handful of 4e games, and none of them had anything I
could correlate to that description. People who wanna go off the rails will.

-s
--
Copyright 2013, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet...@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
I am not speaking for my employer, although they do rent some of my opinions.

[Justisaur]

On Apr 23, 9:55 pm, tussock <sc...@clear.net.nz> wrote:
>

>     3: GMs like the easy prep and highly self-contained monsters. A lot.
> Over and over that gets mentioned. 4: The XP budget kicks the ass of CR/EL
> lookups/math (*so many people* are scared of math). 5: The characters being
> all the same so the prep still works no matter what players use. 6: The
> players not being able to influence the plot so the prep still works.
>

I'm reminded of something... Although it's a bit of a problem with any
edition to some extent, 4e really doesn't handle anything but the
default party size well. If you've got 5 PCs you're golden. If you
have 6 or 4 you're o.k. although I've seen issues with 4. If you've
got 7 or more or three the DM has to make some serious adjustments.
It can't handle two or one at all. Party power falls off far more
quickly than the XP budget allows for, and increases more quickly, but
still leaves individuals vulnerable.

- Justisaur

[Anonymous Jack]

On Apr 24, 12:55 am, tussock <sc...@clear.net.nz> wrote:
> Over and over that gets mentioned. 4: The XP budget kicks the ass of CR/EL
> lookups/math (*so many people* are scared of math).

huh, I dislike math as much as the next non-math geek. But it wasn't
difficult to do an Excel sheet where I could list each character &
level level, grab a list of monster names and CRs off the net, and do
an XP calculator.

enter qty of monsters, select monster name from pick list, done.

[Justisaur]

I never had any issue figuring out CR/EL. I had problems with CR
being wildly inaccurate, and power ranges of same lv PCs being wildly
different.

- Justisaur

[WDS906 (less the 906)]

On 4/26/2013 12:08 PM, Justisaur wrote:
> On Apr 26, 9:07 am, Anonymous Jack <M8R-n6u0...@mailinator.com> wrote:
>> On Apr 24, 12:55 am, tussock <sc...@clear.net.nz> wrote:
>>
>>> Over and over that gets mentioned. 4: The XP budget kicks the ass of CR/EL
>>> lookups/math (*so many people* are scared of math).
>>
>> huh, I dislike math as much as the next non-math geek. But it wasn't
>> difficult to do an Excel sheet where I could list each character &
>> level level, grab a list of monster names and CRs off the net, and do
>> an XP calculator.
>>
>> enter qty of monsters, select monster name from pick list, done.

You shouldn't need to have to use a spreadsheet to plan an encounter.

> I never had any issue figuring out CR/EL. I had problems with CR
> being wildly inaccurate, and power ranges of same lv PCs being wildly
> different.

Exactly. One of my fellow DMs and I were recently commiserating about
this. Battles eventually all become either pushovers or TPKs because
things don't work out as the numbers would seem to indicate.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

Of course, the job of the GM is to adjust things to prevent TPKs. And
possibly prevent pushovers, if that's also in the game contract. That
doesn't need numbers, just judgment.

[Seebs]

On 2013-04-26, Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm reminded of something... Although it's a bit of a problem with any
> edition to some extent, 4e really doesn't handle anything but the
> default party size well. If you've got 5 PCs you're golden. If you
> have 6 or 4 you're o.k. although I've seen issues with 4. If you've
> got 7 or more or three the DM has to make some serious adjustments.
> It can't handle two or one at all. Party power falls off far more
> quickly than the XP budget allows for, and increases more quickly, but
> still leaves individuals vulnerable.

I found it somewhat tolerable with 2-3, although it could be a little brittle
-- but every edition of D&D was brittle there. And most had definite
vulnerabilities to large party sizes, too.

There was a famous large group some of my college friends knew of with 28 PCs.
The magic-users sat in the middle and played cards, the thieves would hand
fighters overhead back to the clerics for healing and rotate them back out
when they were healed.

[Seebs]

This is roughly 300x as much work as I want to have to do. :)

[Loren Pechtel]

On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:08:36 -0700 (PDT), Justisaur
<just...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I never had any issue figuring out CR/EL. I had problems with CR
>being wildly inaccurate, and power ranges of same lv PCs being wildly
>different.

Agreed. There's nothing hard about CR/EL for those with any decent
ability with math. Accurate CRs, though...

[dr...@bin.sh]

Alien mind control rays made Seebs <usenet...@seebs.net> write:
>> huh, I dislike math as much as the next non-math geek. But it wasn't
>> difficult to do an Excel sheet where I could list each character &
>> level level, grab a list of monster names and CRs off the net, and do
>> an XP calculator.
>>
>> enter qty of monsters, select monster name from pick list, done.
>
> This is roughly 300x as much work as I want to have to do. :)

who does work?
http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/xp/

or just guess at it. every encounter is worth 1/13th what the PCs
need to reach the next level, +/- as appropriate for their success.

--

dr...@bin.sh (CARRIER LOST) <http://www.bin.sh/>

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone...
Mayday, Mayday...

[Seebs]

On 2013-04-27, dr...@bin.sh <dr...@bin.sh> wrote:
> who does work?
> http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/xp/

Well, yeah, but "enter this stuff in a spreadsheet" is work.

> or just guess at it. every encounter is worth 1/13th what the PCs
> need to reach the next level, +/- as appropriate for their success.

Honestly, this is mostly what I do.

[Telok]

On Saturday, April 27, 2013 4:30:04 PM UTC-8, Seebs wrote:
> On 2013-04-27, dr...@bin.sh <dr...@bin.sh> wrote:
>
> > who does work?
>
>

> Well, yeah, but "enter this stuff in a spreadsheet" is work.
>
> > or just guess at it. every encounter is worth 1/13th what the PCs
>

> Honestly, this is mostly what I do.
>

I just give my players a level after every three finished dungeons or XP worthy
quests that they do. Of course I also mechanically track their reputation and
piety. This means that there are actual dice benefits to doing good deeds (and
boasting about them) and being a faithful believer. I find that this puts some
brakes on the anonymous murder hobo attitude most D&D games seem to turn into.


Back on topic I suppose that the thing I liked most about 4e was how easy it
was to play. I could read a book off-turn and still decide what I was doing and
get my dice rolled in under a minute. Working with the DM to adjudicate AoE
hit/miss and effects for ten critters of four different types took almost five
minutes, but my part of the turn was fast.

Speaking of speed has anyone ever tried to play a 4e interrupt master? I once
had (and now have lost) a bard-multiclass-warlord build that could give two or
three allies actions on it's turn and another ally an action off turn. I never
actually used it because it looked capable of slowing down the fights even more
than they already were. I was wondering if it really did screw up combat pacing
as much as it looked like.

[Justisaur]

On Apr 28, 2:56 pm, Telok <camer...@gci.net> wrote:
> On Saturday, April 27, 2013 4:30:04 PM UTC-8, Seebs wrote:

> > On 2013-04-27, d...@bin.sh <d...@bin.sh> wrote:

> Speaking of speed has anyone ever tried to play a 4e interrupt master? I once
> had (and now have lost) a bard-multiclass-warlord build that could give two or
> three allies actions on it's turn and another ally an action off turn. I never
> actually used it because it looked capable of slowing down the fights even more
> than they already were. I was wondering if it really did screw up combat pacing
> as much as it looked like.

We did have someone playing an interrupt warlord, but it really wasn't
very valuable, and it did mess up combat order and slow things down
even more.

- Justisaur

[tussock]

Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:

> Players make choices and GMs have to contemplate those choices, even if
> they're not ones the GM thought of. Unless the GM is a total railroading
> dick, but then that's not the fault of the system.

That is what the 4e DMG tells you to do though, railroad them, subtly,
and the modules pretty much follow through with it. The best they managed
was having fights follow the players around until they'd done them all.

And some of the people who like 4e openly like it for that very reason.
That they can prepare a set of fights with interludes and the game tells
them to use all that preparation no matter what the players actually do or
where they go (with a few minor exceptions to better hide what's happening).


So, yes, the underlying system supports more responsive worlds with real
choices and diverging paths (about as well as D&D ever has), but the
examples and advice in the books is very railroady.

--
tussock

[tussock]

Seebs wrote:
> dr...@bin.sh wrote:
>> tussock wrote:

<snip>

>>> 3: GMs like the easy prep and highly self-contained monsters. A lot.
>>> Over and over that gets mentioned.
>
>> yeah. i started using the 4e monster manual in my 3.5 game.
>
> This was definitely a big win for me. I could run a 4E game in my spare
> time. I don't have the time/spoons to run 3.5/PF.

Quick 3e prep is /possible/. Not that I succeeded there often enough,
which is where the Castles & Crusades comes in. Can't really over-prep some
games.

>>> 4: The XP budget kicks the ass of CR/EL lookups/math (*so many people*
>>> are scared of math).
>
>> weaklings.
>
> It's not that I'm scared of math, but... boy, do I like the 4E system
> better, because doing lots of arithmetic isn't actually fun for me.

/Good/ math is about doing as little work as possible, it's true, and
3e's system works well there if you never mix monster types and use the
table for CR -> EL, and the CR -> XP table, and ... oh, math. Hey, it
allowed the flat XP costs on spells and things, not that anyone likes them.

Heh. 4e could've used easier numbers to work with, but it's better.
Shame the XP still comes from mindlessly attacking everything with a
statblock.

>>> 6: The players not being able to influence the plot so the prep
>>> still works.
>
>> purely a function of mindset and play style, i think.
>> there's nothing hard-coded into the system which says PCs can't do
>> fun things.
>
> Yeah. I've been in a handful of 4e games, and none of them had anything I
> could correlate to that description. People who wanna go off the rails
> will.

I'm glad to hear that too, but there's totally people posting that like
every subtle little hint at railroading. I suppose because they started with
3e and had no idea you could even do that.
And DM's who want to keep you on rails, players can't actually change
that. Go left, Ogre. Go right, Ogre. Stay here, Ogre. Go home, Ogre.

--
tussock

[tussock]

Justisaur wrote:

> tussock wrote:
>> I dug through a few threads on rpg.net for pure positive comments on
>> D&D4 from players and DMs. Has to be said, way more DMs than players had
>> anything like a point.
>
> Doesn't surprise me, I like 3e way less as a DM than a player. I
> think I'd still have to go with 3e over 4e as a player though after
> having experienced it for 18 levels. 4e works better at lower level,
> but then so does 3e.

Yep. I look on "don't use the monster options" 3e as being a great game
to run in the same way that "don't use the boxed-text options" 2nd edition
is. Fiddly bits are /bad/ for RPGs, ignore them.

>> 1: Players like the Warden and Warlord and .... IMO these are the same
>> players in 3e who like the Cleric and Druid (hi, my name's tussock, and I
>> like competant characters). It's not coincidental that players like the
>> best classes in each edition. AD&D Paladins, despite the baggage.
>
> Ohkaaaay... I only saw one each of those, and they were both sub-par.
> The Cleric was far more effective than either. Of course the Cleric
> was still better replaced with a Striker, of course that can be said
> of everyone, a party of Strikers would probably most effective, and
> probably a lot more fun as fights would be shorter, and more
> dangerous.

That's (so I read) something to do with synergies you get with multiple
action-granting characters when everyone focuses on basic attacks, and the
way the patches made Strikers less good by comparison.
But yes, there's one patch where the Wizard is the best class, and every
other patch where they're very much not. Depends what you use. If the fights
weren't so finely balanced it wouldn't matter anyway, they're all /close/.

>> 2: Players like the booby dragonfolk (?!?) *because* there's finally a
>> big-strong race that's noble and good and has women with internal organs
>> and muscles between their boobs and butt (ah!). So, I can't think of an
>> old race that fits, a big mammal race that isn't rapey and evil.
>> Dragonlance Ogre and Minotaur, the ones from Races of Stone, and that's
>> about it. Metallic half- dragons. Humans? Slim pickings.
>
> I like dragonfolk, but don't care for the boobies on it, dragons are
> not mammalian.

Half-dragon Humans are though. I think. Maybe? Who knows. That's what
they're based on art-wise. Which is ironic, because that's still fairly
rapey, but changing the name and backstory hides all that.

>> 3: GMs like the easy prep and highly self-contained monsters. A lot.
>> Over and over that gets mentioned.
>
> Yep. Of course anything pre 3e is even easier. I can roll up an
> Classed NPC, at least what I need of it in about 1 minute for 1e. If
> I want to use classed NPCs in 4e I'm still in for a world of hurt. Of
> course you aren't supposed to do that.

Player's Option for 2nd is worse than 3e, kinda like 3e but with a
thousand different mechanics for everything. Still, you can prep it by
ignoring all that. 3e's worse because it's harder to ignore.

>> 4: The XP budget kicks the ass of CR/EL lookups/math (*so many
>> people* are scared of math).
>
> It works too well. One really needs to vary it a bit more, and
> minions just aren't worth what they cost in the budget.

Tricky that. Harder fights get very grindy as everyone runs out of
limited-use powers, while easier fights don't use anything you care to lose
(and gain you things like action points).

<snips>

>> So, while some folk like succeeding at character-gen, lots like not
>> being able to fail. Fun mini-game for almost everyone, people just want a
>> strong _minimum_ result out the end.
>
> Very true, I also hate playing the character building game.
> Unfortunately it's quite alive and strong in 4e, just for a lot less
> effect. In a strange way this made it seem even more important to
> me. In 3e I'd regularly choose sub-par options for my bard just
> because I didn't want to be incredibly more effective than everyone
> else (for that matter I was playing a bard!).

Cool. I mean that more as a general comment about RPGs. Someone I read
was pointing out ... the dndwithpornstars guy I think, Zak ... that options
and variety in characters and monsters should be more to do with colour than
mechanics.
Like for monsters you can use blue goblins who wear rat-skull jewelery
and scream demon-lord names in battle but are just normal goblins
mechanically and that's fine. Even better if it goes somewhere if
investigated or whatever, but that's all you need for a start.

Same for PCs, let players buy language and culture and gods and dress
sense ... and other "exclusive" character details that don't usually matter
mechanically. So being a spooky guy with a mysterious background who can
speak draconic and elven all costs build points, but combat options are just
things that (might) work when you need them to.

Sort of anti-3e.

>> 7: Some people like at-will-for-all because they hate running out of
>> something useful to do. Note, many at-wills aren't really useful, but
>> people need something to contribute if the team is determined to grind
>> out a win.
>
> The problem I found with this is that some of the at-wills are so
> inneffective, especially for wizards, that it really reduced the feel
> of being magic. I know some people would rather shoot a ray of light
> that singes the enemy's whiskers, but I'd rather be shooting a
> crossbow, and then pull out the fireball when it was needed.

I think it's easily handled with a 24-hour spell that enhances your
crossbow or staff or darts or whatever while you use it. So it's magical,
and it's Wizard-only, and it doesn't stack with later magic weapons, and bla
bla bla. Let the Wizard choose it as a spell if they want.
Best of all worlds. Want to be a grognard DM? Ban those spells.

--
tussock

[Tetsubo]

On 5/4/2013 5:18 AM, tussock wrote:

> And DM's who want to keep you on rails, players can't actually change
> that. Go left, Ogre. Go right, Ogre. Stay here, Ogre. Go home, Ogre.
>

It's Ogres all the way down.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 5/4/13 2:10 AM, tussock wrote:
> Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
>
>> Players make choices and GMs have to contemplate those choices, even if
>> they're not ones the GM thought of. Unless the GM is a total railroading
>> dick, but then that's not the fault of the system.
>
> That is what the 4e DMG tells you to do though, railroad them, subtly,
> and the modules pretty much follow through with it. The best they managed
> was having fights follow the players around until they'd done them all.
>

Ah, so it's like AMBER, then, where there's explicit direction to
examine whatever someone's character is like, and then try to break them
until they're the opposite, and in making sure everyone's adversarial
with each other at pretty much all times. Both things that I ignore; let
the players decide where they want to go with their characters and their
trust and don't deliberately punish them for choices. (Yes, if they
choose to trust someone like Brand this will likely go bad for them, but
if they trust someone like Gerard I'm not going to turn Gerard into a
total dick just to make sure they stay paranoid)