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I've been listening to a D&D podcast and it's kind of gotten me wanting to play some 4th ed. D&D. do we have any groups that play (via hangouts or whatever) here at SDN?

Chardok wrote:I've been listening to a D&D podcast and it's kind of gotten me wanting to play some 4th ed. D&D. do we have any groups that play (via hangouts or whatever) here at SDN?

I don't think we have any SDN specific groups but yes many of us do play using RPG Tools or my favorite roll20

I have not heard much good about 4th ED. Wait for 5th or go back to 3.5.

Every thing after 2nd Ed is teh lame.

4th ed. sounds very much like it's very much focused on combat and everyone's basically a wizard and has powers (healing surge, e.g.) but it also means that it's a lot faster-paced than the D&D that you and I are used to, coffee.

4th Ed was described to me as World of Warcraft on paper. That's why I never bought it.

I have pretty much all materials of D&D Essentials (Basically 4.1e) and it is that, Borgholio.

Spekio wrote:I have pretty much all materials of D&D Essentials (Basically 4.1e) and it is that, Borgholio.

Eh, not really. WoW is all about managing your bars and getting timing down. 4e is a tabletop game with grid based movement. Your DM can MAKE it WoW but it's still at heart a tabletop game. Grid matters, base to base matters, and skill management matters.

Calling it a "tabletop game" is really the crux of it - 4.0 was very much a miniatures wargame rather than a roleplaying one.

Everyone has skills and abilities with lots of numbers which take X time to recharge. It might actually be more like League of Legends on the table if you're looking for a comparison, right down to weak, easily-slain "Minion" enemies amid the tougher adversaries.

It's certainly approachable for players who haven't experienced or just don't "get" normal D&D, but my vote stays with Pathfinder.

4e gets a lot more whining than it deserves, and a good deal of it is simple hipsterism (hi there, 2nd edition fanboys!). That's not to say it's all good, no system is, but a lot of the 'the shit?' about 4th stems from 4th edition Forgotten Realms fluff changes rather than the systems themselves.

Debatable: Magic no longer feels like a half-dozen different systems bolted onto a melee-combat-centric game, or melee combat bolted into a half-dozen different magic systems. The flip side is that for people used to wildly different rules between 'normal' combat and all the assorted caster types, they end up feeling like things are samey. I disagree, with the perspective of having played in a very long-running 4th edition campaign with a very diverse party, but I can understand the perspective. Pacing...I don't even get the complaint there, 3.5/Pathfinder is only a slow combat game if your party is, to be blunt, not very combat-focused. I'm not even talking about the really crazy broken shit; it's just not that terribly hard to smite down with furious anger when someone attempts to poison your brother. The only time when 4th is noticeably really fast-paced is when your GM is throwing bunches of 1hp minions at a party and the party is responding with area attacks of some description. That's the GM's problem, not the system.

Worse: The fluff is fucky. There are moments of inspiration and geographical regions of cool (just off the cuff, I recall being fairly impressed with the fluff around Tyr's death, and Thay is quite well-done. There are doubtless others, but those come to mind.), but a lot of the Forgotten Realms setting gets taken out back behind the woodshed. It's telling that much of the 5e fluff is pretty transparently 'how do we reverse most of the the 4th edition fluff.' Minions are overused in a number of the pre-canned modules, which can make for some pretty wild swings in difficulty depending on how much room-clearing death-sorcery a party is packing as opposed to single-target power. That said, you don't always know what's a minion until it's too late, which can produce some hilariously disrupted expectations ('the Orc warband advances through the wall of fire, lightly singed and smoking.' '...fuck. New plan.').

Better: Low-level campaigns are unquestionably more fun in 4e from a mechanics perspective. Level one characters actually feel useful, rather than 'sigh, how many levels until I stop sucking?' Additionally, by and large there tends to be a smaller spread between the combat effectiveness of most classes at mid to high levels, which is a far cry from 3rd edition. That's not to say the balance is a perfect shining paragon, but let's be honest, 3.5 is really, really bad for that, and Pathfinder is only a marginal improvement. Ritual magic allows parties that don't have wizards and/or clerics to actually manage non-combat magical shenanigans if they need to. This opens up a lot more flexibility in party makeup. Healing surges limit the amount of healing you can just cram into one guy even with a cleric around, because many healing powers simply allow the target to spend a healing surge on themselves. This actually makes things play out far less Warcrafty than 3.5 in many respects, simply because there can be cases where you can't keep healing the same guy through that dragon's onslaught forever.

Indifferent: 3.5 is already a positioning-based wargame strapped onto roleplaying modules, so I simply don't even get the 'it's a wargaaame!' complaints. Yes, you can play any map-based wargame on an imaginary battlefield if you so choose, but 3rd edition rules don't talk about ranges and base-to-base contact and threat ranges triggering attacks of opportunity for nothing. If your 4th edition game is light on the roleplay, that's because your GM is running a very combat-heavy game, not because you're running 4th edition.

All that said, I haven't played 4th in quite some time, but that's less because of anything against it, and more that my various gaming groups are...remarkably nomadic.

Let me just say this now, Ritual magic in 4e is hilariously bad thanks to one thing called Casting time. In 2/3/and now 5 I could use something like Sending to get critical battlefield information from my Wizard clear across the other side of the field without interruption but it takes one of my rounds to cast it with messing around with meta magic. But sometimes being able to whisper something unheard can save the day. In 4th Edition Sending is a ritual, it costs gold to cast and takes a full minute to whisper something and thanks to the ritutal cost it's literally cheaper to hire ten peasant couriers at a silver piece per day then have a back and forth conversation.

But that's not the worst example, take something like "Lock" or it's counterpart "Knock". The party is running away from something and either needs to magically lock the door behind them... or magically unlock the door ahead of them. In all previous editions it's a Sorc/Wizard spell that often times a Wizard would keep prepared "just in case" that one time the Rogue can't open the door in time or time is of the essence to instantly lock or unlock a door.

But again in 4th edition break out the incense we've got a full ten minutes to wait (or sixty tries for the Rogue to unlock or jam the lock). Another example, angry tribes are crowded around the party yelling in a foreign tongue... don't worry folks the Wizard has this, the ritual only costs 10 gold pieces and takes ten minutes to cast. Hope you can keep things calm for the next sixty rounds...

Another example, Discern Lies something to tell if someone is lying to you say the High Priest or a person met on the road. In past editions a quick distraction and the Cleric or other magic type could slip off cast the spell in a few seconds and come back. Now it takes you guessed it ten minutes... only lasts the next five minutes after you cast and costs 165 gold pieces per cast and oh yes good liars can still beat it.

Every single ritual that used to be situational useful in combat became "only useful if the DM throws you a bone" Only if like during a sailor moon transformation sequence everyone agrees to let you break out the holy book, lit the incense and shake the prayer beads for ten minutes it takes to cast the spell you need.

The biggest issue I have with 4e and to a limited degree 5e is the idea that balance is essential to a good RPG. In 4e they took a steam roller to any possible power spikes and dips between classes (except for some of the infinite damage combos that slipped through play testing and needed errata) and it left you wondering why you should bother playing one striker over another, or one controller or tank over that other guy. If everything feels the same nothing feels special mechanically and given the rather limited fluff they put into the core books (Name the description for a single ability that isn't a carry over from a previous edition without looking) the whole thing just felt bland.

Plus the way they did magic items was just laughably bad, there was no if you might get an item, it was when the DM got to checking that box off of your characters personal shopping list. Sure 3.x built the expectation that magic gear was going to be common and wealth by level was included as a guideline, but 4e took that shit too far. If you straight follow the DMG players can pretty much count cards and know after each encounter how much closer they are to a gear upgrade. How much more MMO could you get without specifically having the party run the same dungeon over again each week with rolls off a pregen loot table?

That's why I'll stick to a 3.x/Pathfinder hybrid or 2e if I want to run a game. Maybe I'll try 5e, but I'm not holding my breath given how much they lost me with 4e and the killing of the printed versions of the Dungeon and Dragon magazines.

Mr Bean wrote:Eh, not really. WoW is all about managing your bars and getting timing down. 4e is a tabletop game with grid based movement. Your DM can MAKE it WoW but it's still at heart a tabletop game. Grid matters, base to base matters, and skill management matters.

I like it for what it is, easy on people whom never played tabletops, and easier for me to translate.

Jub wrote:The biggest issue I have with 4e and to a limited degree 5e is the idea that balance is essential to a good RPG. In 4e they took a steam roller to any possible power spikes and dips between classes (except for some of the infinite damage combos that slipped through play testing and needed errata) and it left you wondering why you should bother playing one striker over another, or one controller or tank over that other guy.

Interestingly enough that is my complaint about pathfinder as well. You can actually see it starting there with the super specific spell descriptions and the like. The whole thing just looks as if they had taken a good look at the internet and every single overpowered built out there and said: "Fuck it! Time to fix it and fix it so good no one can break it again."

I'm kind of feeling like maybe joining a remote campaign (like...via Hangouts or.. skype or whatever) Dip my toes in the water. anyone running one?

Have you tried this place? http://www.myth-weavers.com/forumhome.php
If you ever feel like paying any game on the net its the place to be.

Not to hijack but perhaps we could get a chat based game of 3rd edition or another game going sometime... I wouldn't mind some gaming

Jub wrote:The biggest issue I have with 4e and to a limited degree 5e is the idea that balance is essential to a good RPG. In 4e they took a steam roller to any possible power spikes and dips between classes (except for some of the infinite damage combos that slipped through play testing and needed errata) and it left you wondering why you should bother playing one striker over another, or one controller or tank over that other guy. If everything feels the same nothing feels special mechanically and given the rather limited fluff they put into the core books (Name the description for a single ability that isn't a carry over from a previous edition without looking) the whole thing just felt bland.

Well, the ideal is a situation where everyone is about equally effective (so no type of character is marginalized), but where people have compelling reasons of in-game flavor to distinguish between different kinds of character.

In other words, you should choose to play a warrior or a sorceror because you want to play a warrior or a sorceror, not because one type kills orcs faster than the other.

The problem is that, as you note, making a game rigorously 'balanced' means you have to put most of your energy into the number-crunching side: making everyone about equally useful as a damage-dealer, damage-soaker, or both. And removing any ability whose value is hard to quantify in terms of 'expected damage per round.' Like save-or-die, or utility spells that achieve story goals without doing damage to bad guys.

Which is great for balance but bad for the roleplaying fluff because it means everyone is wandering around prodding each other with what are, essentially, the same kind of abilities that have the same observable consequences. There's no "thanks to the wizard we can just FLY over the attacking army!" There's no "the thief ghosts into the enemy fortress, scales the tower, and kills the general in his sleep so we'll have an easier fight the next morning!"

That's why I'll stick to a 3.x/Pathfinder hybrid or 2e if I want to run a game. Maybe I'll try 5e, but I'm not holding my breath given how much they lost me with 4e and the killing of the printed versions of the Dungeon and Dragon magazines.

I like 2e, although my actual experience of 2e is mostly from the campaigns my father ran which were hybrid 1e/2e, to the extent that he routinely played out of a Second Edition Player's Handbook and First Edition DM Guide.

Simon_Jester wrote:Well, the ideal is a situation where everyone is about equally effective (so no type of character is marginalized), but where people have compelling reasons of in-game flavor to distinguish between different kinds of character.

In other words, you should choose to play a warrior or a sorceror because you want to play a warrior or a sorceror, not because one type kills orcs faster than the other.

The problem is that, as you note, making a game rigorously 'balanced' means you have to put most of your energy into the number-crunching side: making everyone about equally useful as a damage-dealer, damage-soaker, or both. And removing any ability whose value is hard to quantify in terms of 'expected damage per round.' Like save-or-die, or utility spells that achieve story goals without doing damage to bad guys.

Which is great for balance but bad for the roleplaying fluff because it means everyone is wandering around prodding each other with what are, essentially, the same kind of abilities that have the same observable consequences. There's no "thanks to the wizard we can just FLY over the attacking army!" There's no "the thief ghosts into the enemy fortress, scales the tower, and kills the general in his sleep so we'll have an easier fight the next morning!"

I think recent editions of RPG's often tend to think that balance is a goal to be reached at considerable cost. Ideally there would be balance to be had in a game, but balance should mean that everybody shines about as often as the other guy. Instead we get balance in he form of everybody can kill x orcs in y turns for z resources expended. Some of the newer players who expect RPG's to be at least as balanced as WoW are what WotC seem to want as fans, but they're losing their core audience while courting them. Yes, scry and die and rope trick resting places were stupid as were permabuffed Clerics and Druids that were never to be seen in their original form. Yet these are things that should have been toned down not excised entirely. Summoners aren't even going to exist in 5e so that's two editions where an iconic build has fallen by the wayside because of balance.

I guess it all comes down to wanting a fun game over a balanced one. It's like how War Thunder is more realistic than WoT, but I still have more fun with WoT for all its flaws.

I like 2e, although my actual experience of 2e is mostly from the campaigns my father ran which were hybrid 1e/2e, to the extent that he routinely played out of a Second Edition Player's Handbook and First Edition DM Guide.

I started out by just reading a collection of 2e campaing modules and the PHB, but didn't start playing until I started DMing 3e for my high school buddies. I'd wanted to play 2e, but haven't had the chance to do more than dip a toe into the system.

Simon_Jester wrote:Well, the ideal is a situation where everyone is about equally effective (so no type of character is marginalized), but where people have compelling reasons of in-game flavor to distinguish between different kinds of character.

Well it's hardly ideal given that you have very adequately explained why it sucks, now is it? Truth be told I agree with Jub on this one. An ideal system is one that allows each character to have a very distinct and unique playing style. And allows for as many of these styles as is possible whilst at the same time ensuring that in an average game each one of them can shine about an equal ratio of times. Ultimately what this means is that the system needs to ensure every character is equally effective with every other in the things that they specialize in. A thief needs to be as good a thief as a fighter is a fighter. But a fighter should suck at being a thief and vice versa. It also needs to ensure that generalist characters can work but are always inferior to specialists in the specialists chosen field. The key here is NOT to make a system where everyone is as good as everyone else in everything, something which seems to be a trend these days but one where everyone gets to play an equally important role in the greater adventure.

I haven't played 4th ed, but I did witness the 2e->3.5e evolution of D&D, and it seems like 4e was an accelerated version of the change that was already happening toward more streamlining. 2e is the opposite of streamlined. Almost every spell, item, skill, and class, etc. (let's call them game elements for simplicity) exists in a vacuum separate from the others, with practically no thought given to how elements compare to others of a similar level or how they might combine to make an unstoppable killing machine. While this leads to many hilariously broken or totally useless elements, it creates a sort of mental treasure hunt for enterprising players to find the best elements and beat the system. This can be a lot of fun to people with certain personality types, but it stops being fun when the optimal builds are found and the whole campaign quickly goes to shit. Maximized builds faceroll pretty much anything level-appropriate in the Monster Manual, and the GM's new beefed-up monsters curbstomp any PC's that don't take advantage of design weaknesses. A highly streamlined system solves these problems (assuming the devs do a good job), but the joy of discovery is gone. If you know the formulas, you know what to expect from possible builds, treasure, the monsters you'll be facing, etc. Either way, the game falls short.

I believe the only solution is to build the game around tradeoffs. If my character specializes in hand-to-hand combat, do I focus on offense or defense? Speed or accuracy? If I focus on high damage, will it be hard for me to land hits on a nimble fighter, and if I can hit said duelist, will it be tough for me to damage a heavily armored knight? A system built this way can be extremely well balanced, yet not be boring because there are no optimized builds, only optimized against certain opponents but vulnerable against others. I used this philosophy when designing my d10 system, and I wish popular commercial systems would do more than pay lip service to tradeoffs. While they try to offer different paths, there are always builds and character design philosophies that are far superior to others. Without meaningful tradeoffs, it seems like the pendulum will simply swing back and forth along the streamlining spectrum in the coming years just like it has in the past.

Mr. Coffee wrote:Every thing after 2nd Ed is teh lame.

Heretic. I stuck with 1st Edition.

Jub wrote:I think recent editions of RPG's often tend to think that balance is a goal to be reached at considerable cost. Ideally there would be balance to be had in a game, but balance should mean that everybody shines about as often as the other guy. Instead we get balance in he form of everybody can kill x orcs in y turns for z resources expended. Some of the newer players who expect RPG's to be at least as balanced as WoW are what WotC seem to want as fans, but they're losing their core audience while courting them. Yes, scry and die and rope trick resting places were stupid as were permabuffed Clerics and Druids that were never to be seen in their original form. Yet these are things that should have been toned down not excised entirely. Summoners aren't even going to exist in 5e so that's two editions where an iconic build has fallen by the wayside because of balance.

I guess it all comes down to wanting a fun game over a balanced one. It's like how War Thunder is more realistic than WoT, but I still have more fun with WoT for all its flaws.

Agreed. I think part of the problem is that a lot of RPG campaigns (computer and tabletop alike) degenerate to where killing things is the primary occupation of the party. Thus, the guy that excels at killing and has a few out-of-character tricks (like spells that augment his diplomacy abilities) tends to outshine everyone else.

Purple wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:Well, the ideal is a situation where everyone is about equally effective (so no type of character is marginalized), but where people have compelling reasons of in-game flavor to distinguish between different kinds of character.

Well it's hardly ideal given that you have very adequately explained why it sucks, now is it?

The problem is that certain areas of specialization intrinsically outshine others. This is particularly conspicuous with magic-using classes. D&D magic (at least up to and through 3rd Edition) was versatile enough that a caster could usually outperform other classes by a considerable margin if they did anything but blasting away with direct damage spells. And, arguably, even then.

A thief needs to be as good a thief as a fighter is a fighter. But a fighter should suck at being a thief and vice versa. It also needs to ensure that generalist characters can work but are always inferior to specialists in the specialists chosen field. The key here is NOT to make a system where everyone is as good as everyone else in everything, something which seems to be a trend these days but one where everyone gets to play an equally important role in the greater adventure.

Well, the problem is that the easy way to make a gaming system balanced is to create a single unified metric of success (points of damage being the classic one. So that all player abilities have a utility that is directly comparable to that of other abilities. The ability to soak up X damage or deal Y damage or debuff an enemy to reduce their damage output by Z can be compared in value using basic algebra.

The ability to totally avoid an encounter, or to fly, or to magically convince people to do your bidding... the value of these things is not commensurate with a fighter's ability to deal X damage per round with his sword.

So the balance game gets harder, and a lot of modern RPGs (including all computerized ones I know of) have taken the lazy way out by not trying to play the balance game that way. Instead it all turns into a DPS competition or whatever.

Simon_Jester wrote:The problem is that certain areas of specialization intrinsically outshine others. This is particularly conspicuous with magic-using classes. D&D magic (at least up to and through 3rd Edition) was versatile enough that a caster could usually outperform other classes by a considerable margin if they did anything but blasting away with direct damage spells. And, arguably, even then.

It's possible to get around this problem in an unorthodox manner by just having everyone play a spellcaster. There are enough alternate class features and prestige classes in 3.5 that you could easily have an all-wizard party without just being all wizards - something like a Cleric/Conjurer for the divine spellcaster, a Warblade/Transmuter for the fighter, a Rogue/Illusionist for the thief and a Sorcerer/Evoker for the arcane spellcaster.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I haven't played 4th ed, but I did witness the 2e->3.5e evolution of D&D, and it seems like 4e was an accelerated version of the change that was already happening toward more streamlining. 2e is the opposite of streamlined. Almost every spell, item, skill, and class, etc. (let's call them game elements for simplicity) exists in a vacuum separate from the others, with practically no thought given to how elements compare to others of a similar level or how they might combine to make an unstoppable killing machine. While this leads to many hilariously broken or totally useless elements, it creates a sort of mental treasure hunt for enterprising players to find the best elements and beat the system.

This is just baseless speculation on my part, but I've always felt (A)DnD 1st and 2nd edition were designed to be RPGs first and worry about rules as a distant second. "We need to some rules to handle X, just come up with something that sounds right." Not trying to defend earlier editions of DnD or say rules aren't important, it's just my feeling on the system.

DnD 2.0 has a lot of faults, but one reason we'd go back to it on some nights is because it's stupidly easy to get a game going and I can't recall a single time we ever got bogged down in dice-rolls.