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This is the internet. You should always pass judgement before you even know what something is.

As a 15 year veteran of RPGs and wargaming, I don't think I am passing judgment lightly on this travesty...

D&D 4.0 is pretty for off the mark in terms of role-playing instead of roll-playing. It prioritizes stat building and min-maxing for the sake of actually trying to play a role. More of the character is centered around what they do, rather than who they are. Thank God Gygax is no longer with us to witness this version of his game.

Our local gaming group was playing 3.5 when I started with them. I found the system to be clean, streamlined, but still requiring a good player to be at the table and playing their character. However, this game was revamped by the same people who gave us Magic: The Gathering. They couldn't leave well enough alone and decided to make a good system worse by trying to make it more friendly to the eyes of someone who prefers yelling a computer screen while logged on to World of Warcraft rather than be face-to-face with the same people.

In my opinion, get 3.5 or Pathfinder. The system runs smoothly, but still requires role-playing. If you're looking for challenges, try 1st edition. Let's see how many +5 swords your fighter gets to make now!

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:D&D 4.0 is pretty for off the mark in terms of role-playing instead of roll-playing. It prioritizes stat building and min-maxing for the sake of actually trying to play a role. More of the character is centered around what they do, rather than who they are. Thank God Gygax is no longer with us to witness this version of his game.

This Stament has been made about 1st Edition Oriental Adventures, Dragon Lance, 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition, 3.5 Edition, 4th Edition and will be made for 635th Edition.

It is the Group the Makes the Difference between "Roll-Play" and "Role-Play".

H.B.M.C. wrote:This is the internet. You should always pass judgement before you even know what something is.

Well, I've at least read through the books. I mean, that should count for a little.

That aside, I'm hardly passing judgement. I figured I was being objective. This is me passing judgement:

Ten minutes for a knock spell? Really? Gone is fleeing the mansion/dungeon/whatever, trying to get through the locked door before the unspeakable evil catches up, only to find the door is locked and having to rely on that last knock scroll. Nope. You lose 5 minutes casting it from a ritual scroll, while a rogue would have picked it as a standard action. The wizard would have better luck bashing his way through the door. I guess I shouldn't complain too much. I mean, at least there is only a gold cost; it's not like each casting cost you experience also. There are two suggested archtypes for wizards: Control Wizard, and War Wizard. Gives you some idea as to what they were aiming for when they stripped the magic system. One of my favorite openings to a campaign was that a rival of the party casts ventriloquate and embarrasses the party at some social gathering or in front of nobility. Could have been a bard or an illusionist. They then have to deal with it. It's sneaky, hard to track down, and could have a very long lasting effect on the game based upon how they respond to it. I hate to be so magic centric, but really that's my biggest beef with the system, and as I'm usually playing one of the casters, it's a big deal for me. Again, I'm not saying it's a terrible system. It sounds like an awesome thing for a couple hours when no one really wants to do anything too complex and you just want to roll a handful of fighters and a cleric and dungeon crawl. We just usually play Descent on those nights.

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:D&D 4.0 is pretty for off the mark in terms of role-playing instead of roll-playing. It prioritizes stat building and min-maxing for the sake of actually trying to play a role. More of the character is centered around what they do, rather than who they are.

The exact same could be said of 3.5 except that 3.5 encourages the building of prima-donna do-it-all builds whereas 4th Ed requires team building as well as teamwork--and maybe that is one reason why so many gamers used to 3.5 can't handle it.

daedalus wrote:I'm not saying that 4E is all that bad. I just liken my first impression of 4E to playing a game of the board game Descent. It looks fast to set up, and I'm sure it's fun enough. It's just that I'm looking for a screwdriver that I can precisely and subtly tailor to my exact desired type of game, and 4E offers me a sledgehammer.

For never having played it, you hit the nail pretty much on the head in the red-highlighted part. I cannot agree that 3.5 added much "subtlety" to D&D, however. The better explanation is that you are, as you put it, intimately familiar with 3.5 and have never played 4th Ed. If you built up some experience with 4th Ed, you'd soon know what to tweak to suit your purposes.

How about a spectrum, with more boardgame-ish examples to the left and more RPG-ish ones to the right?

<---Clue---Talisman---Runebound----Descent-----D&D 4th Ed---D&D 3.5-----------------------AD&D 2nd---White Wolf stuff--->

3rd edition could get pretty broken, I had a 10th level Sorcerer with Heightened Maximized Spell who would use Shocking Grasp to make a Touch Attack to do 60 points of damage twice [CHA 20]. When I made 14th I had added Sudden Quickened Twice to my feats and I could pull off 240 point of damage on any monster in two rounds and all of it 100% Legal.

What 4th has done more than anything is eliminate the totally Broken “Legal” Characters. The DM now can concentrate on Challenging the Players and “How do I cope with parties that can do 500 points of Damage to my Monster in one round encounters.”

The subtlety I referred to was having enough system and enough content to decide what exactly I did and didn't want to include. I can say to my players, "We're using core books and these expansions. Anything out of them is fair game, anything else, you better bring beer and be prepared to beg." I can set up a Ravenloft game and do stuff like say, "Necromantic, evocation, and some enchantment spells are evil aligned and considered forbidden research. You will have some, you can find more, but they might start to drive you insane/evil depending on their (over) use." Now imagine your 4E wizard with highly limited attack spells. He's basically a commoner with a quarterstaff.

@daedalus: It's not surprising to me that your criticisms come from a caster's point of view. D&D 3.5 was as love letter to casters, to the exclusion of other classes--until Book of Nine Swords came out, that is. And that book resulted in more bitching and moaning than anything short of D&D 4th Ed itself. Coincidence?

Casters from 3.5 hate hate hate 4th Ed because they no longer come to dominate every one else's role. Even in your "judgemental post," you note with resentment that a rogue can open a lock faster than wizard in 4th:

daedalus wrote:You lose 5 minutes casting it from a ritual scroll, while a rogue would have picked it as a standard action. The wizard would have better luck bashing his way through the door.

Yes, a rogue is better at dealing with locks than a wizard. Why should it be any other way?

If your criticism boils down to "3.5 had more material," then its losing ground at a steady rate. There are tons of high quality supplements for 4th Ed currently out. I've always had criticisms about their production values but the actual content is, IMO, better on average than some of the schlock WotC put out in the heyday of 3.5.

First, of while I advocate 4th edition, I want people to play whatever they wish. All I ever ask of is that others don’t advocate “Game Bashing”.

My Quote:
o The System is All Important!
o The System is Unimportant.

What I mean by this is, whatever system make the game work for you and your players is the right system. These three come from my groups biggest complaints.

The Pros of 3rd Edition
o Flexibility: There is a lot of Flexibility.
o Resources: There are a lot of Resources.
o Skills: It has a very in-depth Skill system that make certain Character shine in their chosen field.

The Cons of 3rd Edition
o Flexibility: There is a lot of Flexibility, so much so that a DM must now choose what to exclude to maintain Game Play Balance, and [most im important] flavor of the game.
o Resources: There are too many Recourses.
o Skills: When it comes to Skills, if you did not spend your points the right way it could cripple your ability to keep up with the other characters later.

The Pros 4th Edition
o Flexibility: There is still a lot of Flexibility. My number one is you no longer need a Cleric, you could go out with just some healing potions and a party of Fighters and still survive.
o Resources: There are a lot of Resources. A lot of the books now have come out now, there are now around 20 Classes.
o Skills: Have been Simplified and with the way the Target numbers now are not being Trained in a Skill just means that you will have a harder time.

The Cons of 4th Edition
o Flexibility: There is a lot of Flexibility, but as one of my players [a Anti-4th edition player who still plays it and has fun, but wont admit it], it is a Fragile system, it does not react well to House Rules.
o Resources: There is starting to be too many Recourses.
o Skill: It is hard to be the “Specialist” in a Skill, there are usually 1-2 other Character who are Trained in the Same Skills as you.

Now about the House Rules Comment.
I am not talking about This Race/Class/Skill/Feat/Power is not available, but ones like this one that was proposed.

My Character has 3 Encounter Powers, a 1st, 3rd and 7th. Why can’t I just make it so I can use any of my Encounter Powers 3 times regardless of their levels. Which lead to the next “House Rule Request”, “Why can’t I just keep my lower level Powers?”

The balance to me always seemed as though the wizard could be the best at absolutely anything he felt like... a couple times a day. The worthiness of the fighter and rogue is that the fighter can power attack-cleave-weapon specialization-godknowswhat his way through baddies all day long, and the rogue can pop locks, disarm traps, and sneak attack as long as he wants to. Maybe our group just doesn't power-game, but as the wizard, I do the most damage not casting a single attack spell. Invis the rogue. Levitate the ranger for a better shot. I'm not saying that this isn't stuff that could happen in 4E. I'm just saying that the same arguments of why ROLE-playing still works in 4E are the same arguments that say that 3.5 is for powergaming. It's the player's fault, not the system.

daedalus wrote:I'm just saying that the same arguments of why ROLE-playing still works in 4E are the same arguments that say that 3.5 is for powergaming. It's the player's fault, not the system.

You are right there.

Role have become very much a part of the Game, there are 4, Controller, Defender, Leader and Striker.

Controller
o Wizard
Yes the Role of the Wizard has changed from the Damage monster he was in 3rd to the “Controller”.
A Wizard is now the “Traffic Cop” on the Battlefield. He make the battlefield his own, channeling the monsters into the fighters keeping them busy so the Rouge can put a knife in their back.

Defender
o Fighter
o Paladin
They put the hurt on monsters and absorb damage. They also have the ability to make the monster suffer for ignoring them.

Leader
o Cleric
He is your Healer and Buffer.

Striker
o Ranger
o Rouge
They Choose a Target and Kill it and then move onto the next.

I am not saying that a Wizard cant get into Close Combat, in fact there are a few Powers that are best used in the front line. In my local META, everyone plays a “Striker”, the Paladin, the Sword Mage and the Wizard all act like Strikers. The moment they figure out what the “Boss Monster” is it eats the wrath of the party. I can tell you the number of times the Elite Leader Monster dies quickly leaving the 20 Minions left and untouched.

daedalus wrote:The balance to me always seemed as though the wizard could be the best at absolutely anything he felt like... a couple times a day. The worthiness of the fighter and rogue is that the fighter can power attack-cleave-weapon specialization-godknowswhat his way through baddies all day long, and the rogue can pop locks, disarm traps, and sneak attack as long as he wants to. Maybe our group just doesn't power-game, but as the wizard, I do the most damage not casting a single attack spell. Invis the rogue. Levitate the ranger for a better shot. I'm not saying that this isn't stuff that could happen in 4E. I'm just saying that the same arguments of why ROLE-playing still works in 4E are the same arguments that say that 3.5 is for powergaming. It's the player's fault, not the system.

This is one of the problems that 4E fixed. Since 1st Ed the fighters and others protected the wizard until mid teens when suddenly the Wizard could do everything and the rest of the part played second fiddle.

They finally figured out that being able to do something slightly cool all day long isn't the same as being able to do something REALLY cool a few times a day. This is especially true when many groups only play a few encounters per day. It meant that spell casters dominated 1st through 3.5 because of this. Your wizard could do anything I could do better. Seriously. In 3.5, there was nothing you couldn't make a wizard do with enough expansions. It made everyone else really secondary and not so fun to play. If you weren't playing a character who could get 9th level spells, you weren't going to be terribly useful at high level.

Then there was problem two. Healbots. Playing a cleric sucked. Ultimate cosmic power and access to every spell in the book, but because of the nature of the game you were restricted to memorizing 42 different types of heal spells and maybe one or two useful spells. That was not a fun mechanic. There is a reason that so many DM's just play the Cleric themselves in earlier editions so as not to saddle the players with the character that didn't have a lot of tactical options.


Keep in mind that these are broad generalizations. I played wizards who weren't demigods and clerics who balanced fun and healing, but I had to go through some serious convolutions to do it. The game directed you that way. In 4th ed, everyone has fun things to do. The Roles are still there if your group and DM enjoys them. There are still skill systems and non-combat interactions. No one is saddled with the Healbot. No one has to feel like they are playing second fiddle at high levels.

Don't mix nostalgia (which I have a lot of) with reason. I have fond remembrances of critical hit and fumble tables and insanity charts. Were they a good idea or did they add value to the game? Hell no, they were nothing that I don't do in my games with description when someone misses. And I don't decapitate players when it doesn't fit the story, which numerous tables did.

Also, please try it before passing judgement. It is fun and is definitely DND.

In one high-level session of 3.5, a dual-progression caster literally pushed our rogue out of the way after he failed a disarm check. She cast dispell and then made a cutting remark about how we should leave the rogue at home. No one besides her was having fun by that point. After a session of 4th Ed with that same group, people were talking about how much fun they had getting out of tight spots by figuring out how their roles worked together--except for that same caster, who was totally sullen. She then proceeded to complain that 4th Ed was just a WoW boardgame that had no room for roleplaying.

Manchu wrote:In one high-level session of 3.5, a dual-progression caster literally pushed our rogue out of the way after he failed a disarm check. She cast dispell and then made a cutting remark about how we should leave the rogue at home. No one besides her was having fun by that point. After a session of 4th Ed with that same group, people were talking about how much fun they had getting out of tight spots by figuring out how their roles worked together--except for that same caster, who was totally sullen. She then proceeded to complain that 4th Ed was just a WoW boardgame that had no room for roleplaying.

lol That is exactly the difference. You just can't break things like you could in 3.5. That is 3.5's one lasting legacy in my opinion. There has been no edition of D&D before or since where you could break the game at such a fundamental level just with multi-classing.

If that is what you like to do, be the star of the game and do everything yourself, than 3.5 is for you. If you like making a team work together, go 4.0.

Can you break stuff in 4.0? Sure. Can you play together in 3.5 as a tightly knit team? Sure. Is it the focus of the game, no.

Manchu's succinct point highlights it. You have to work together in 4.0, whereas in 3.5 it was all about one-upsmanship.

What is wrong with you people there is no 3rd Sucks/4th Sucks Yelling.

I have found it true about the play style of the players can also influence the game.

The old [1979] player cannot grasp the concept of the “The Team”

His Paladin got a Mountain Shield, that has the power to prevent and adjacent character from being moved against his will. He can not get a grasp of it and thinks its totally worthless. He also has a problem with the Warlord, he is constantly amazed at how well I play one. Now my Warlord has some issues, for one the moment I sit down to to play him my Dice go Arctic Cold. My most powerful weapon is Minron the Minotaur Figter as I have a lot of power that are “I do something and a Party member can Attack the Target Powers”.

I was always a fan of having the whole party breaking their characters in 3.5 and making the DM cry when we slaughtered monsters 5-6 CR higher then us without much of a problem.

I do feel that Wizards and what not were nerfed a bit in 4th. They did need it. But most of the classes have the same feel to me now.

One thing I do really dislike about 4th is that I can't make a viable skill monkey/monster anymore. Dominating through skill rolls was so fun for me.

Manchu wrote:In one high-level session of 3.5, a dual-progression caster literally pushed our rogue out of the way after he failed a disarm check. She cast dispell and then made a cutting remark about how we should leave the rogue at home. No one besides her was having fun by that point. After a session of 4th Ed with that same group, people were talking about how much fun they had getting out of tight spots by figuring out how their roles worked together--except for that same caster, who was totally sullen. She then proceeded to complain that 4th Ed was just a WoW boardgame that had no room for roleplaying.

That sounds more like a problem with a player than a system. We've had more than our fair share of those, though for us they're seldom casters (for some reason, I'm the only one eager to jump into it, and I'm playing a Dwarven transmuter, no power gaming there). Ours were mostly Fighters, or the occasional Fighter/Monk/Dragon Shaman/Duelist/Swashbuckler/Weretiger/Vampire, but I suppose that also proves the point. Our solution was just to be rid of the players themselves, as we realized they weren't really contributing much to the gaming anyway. To be fair, 3.5 wasn't really a system for us until we stopped saying, "show up with 10th level characters," and we actually started sitting down with whomever happened to be DMing at the time, and say, "This is who my character is. It is well thought out, makes sense, and isn't abusive. How can he fit into your world?" The secret, no matter what system you play I suppose, is to make sure you're playing the character, not the spreadsheet. Starting from level 1 helps also. With respect to your example, did you guys start from humble beginnings? What was the relationship between the caster and the rogue at that point?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grimpost wrote:One thing I do really dislike about 4th is that I can't make a viable skill monkey/monster anymore. Dominating through skill rolls was so fun for me.

I know! One of my favorite things to do was to make a bard and focus everything on skills. Between jack of all trades, the ones that gave you bonus skill points, and other zaniness, there was nothing you couldn't do! (Except fight)

Grimpost wrote:I was always a fan of having the whole party breaking their characters in 3.5 and making the DM cry when we slaughtered monsters 5-6 CR higher then us without much of a problem.

I do feel that Wizards and what not were nerfed a bit in 4th. They did need it. But most of the classes have the same feel to me now.

One thing I do really dislike about 4th is that I can't make a viable skill monkey/monster anymore. Dominating through skill rolls was so fun for me.

It was not completely their fault. They wanted to bring out 4th edition in 2010, but Haz-Broken said do it when we want you to.

You can build a “Skill Monkey” still. You may not have 10 more “Ranks” than everyone else, but, you can gain bonuses from Feats, Powers and Items [both Mundane and Magical]. There are also a lot out there that lets roll one Skill [Like History] instead of another or a Ability Checks and a lot of ways to get more than one roll.

daedalus wrote:That sounds more like a problem with a player than a system.

It's certainly a player problem. But it's also a system problem in that the system allows this specific player to cause that specific problem, whereas the other system does not allow it.

With respect to your example, did you guys start from humble beginnings? What was the relationship between the caster and the rogue at that point?

We were in the homestretch of a two-year campaign (with a break for summer where we played another campaign) that started from level 1.

As a huge fan of 3.5 Swords and Sorcery Ravenloft myself (it is by far my favourite setting) I can totally see your point of view. D'n'D 4th doesn't do that specific setting very well at all. There are loads it does really well though, and don't dismiss all of them. 3.5 for was bad at certain settings too, it didn't make it a bad system. (I think it was needlessly clunky and unbalanced to hell at high level, but it had a lot going for it too.)

@DaBoss: Did you play the Ravenloft "boardgame" yet?

I did, I bought it and played a solo adventure. It's nothing like the 3.5 setting, which was all gothic horror and victorian in a beautifully put together package (except the awful monster manual, that thing sucked).
It's a fun dungeon crawl though, and it's very quick and easy to play.

I hear pathfinder are doing a Ravenloft-esque setting soon, which I might look at. A good friend and old gaming buddy of mine wrote a "mistfinder" ravenloft adaption for pathfinder, which was pretty good

If you dont care about what you are doing and just want to sit down and play WoW without playing Wow. 4th Edition is the perfect set of rules.

Though, in truth my contempt for 4th edition isnt so much with the rules, but with what they did to Forgotten Realms in order to justify their new rules.

Da Boss wrote:It's nothing like the 3.5 setting, which was all gothic horror and victorian in a beautifully put together package (except the awful monster manual, that thing sucked).

In all fairness, raveloft 3.5 was not a WotC product.

I hear pathfinder are doing a Ravenloft-esque setting soon, which I might look at. A good friend and old gaming buddy of mine wrote a "mistfinder" ravenloft adaption for pathfinder, which was pretty good

That does sound exciting and I would love to see your friend's work.

True! I just think it was superior to WotC ravenloft.
http://rapidshare.com/files/387037780/Mistfinder.pdf.html

Ask and ye shall recieve. I think he did a pretty good job!

daedalus wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grimpost wrote:One thing I do really dislike about 4th is that I can't make a viable skill monkey/monster anymore. Dominating through skill rolls was so fun for me.

I know! One of my favorite things to do was to make a bard and focus everything on skills. Between jack of all trades, the ones that gave you bonus skill points, and other zaniness, there was nothing you couldn't do! (Except fight)

Da Boss wrote:I did, I bought it and played a solo adventure. It's nothing like the 3.5 setting, which was all gothic horror and victorian in a beautifully put together package (except the awful monster manual, that thing sucked).
It's a fun dungeon crawl though, and it's very quick and easy to play.

That was exactly what I figured. That makes me sad, but at the same time, very happy that I did not spend money on it. I wanted more Dracula, and it looked like it was all Castlevania.

I hear pathfinder are doing a Ravenloft-esque setting soon, which I might look at. A good friend and old gaming buddy of mine wrote a "mistfinder" ravenloft adaption for pathfinder, which was pretty good

I caught wind of the Pathfinder setting, and I'm eagerly awaiting it. If you have access to your friend's "mistfinder" and he doesn't mind, I'd love to give it a look through. That's exactly what I'm running right now and I'm sort of adapting rules and fine-tuning as the sessions go on. It would be great to have some of the underlying groundwork already.

See the link in the post above, I'm sure Damien won't mind you using it, he'd probably be happy to hear that people are.
Post any comments here (or in another thread, don't want to drag this one OT too much) and I'll point him at them

I forgot to add there is a theme (like a level 1 Parargon Paths) in Dark Sun that makes a Bard even more skillmatic. Is that a word? I just invented it, it is mine: skillmatic™.

I believe that a proper Ravenloft Campaign book for 4th is coming out sometime next year which makes sense considering Players Handbook 4: Heroes of Shadow comes out next year and has 'dark' classes that use Shadow as a power source. The only classes I know in it are Hexblades and Necromancers at the moment. It was speculated Assassin may finally make it's way into a book but it won't be in there as apparently it is supposed to be a DDinsider subscriber exclusive class, which is silly considering the rules are readily available.

I'm skeptical that it'll be anything like the Ravenloft that I know and love, but pretty openminded that it might be good in it's own way.
Swords and Sorcery Ravenloft wasn't much like the old 2nd edition stuff in some wayse either. It emphasised certain aspects over others and gave it a very unique flavour. I imagine WotC will go for more of a mass appeal, probably tapping into people's desire to play as "tainted" characters like Werewolves and Vampires. That's a pretty big departure from old school ravenloft, where a taint like that was something to be absolutely avoided at all costs if done right. It didn't work out well for a lot of groups though, because the "path to corruption" mechanics were easy to abuse for someone who didn't care about storyline (had it happen to me, but was able to incorporate it and get some cracking mileage. The mechanic basically means that if you commit an evil act, there's a chance the dark powers will gift you with a power or increased strength that makes it more likely you'll succeed if you commit such an act again, but also give you a kicker to lure you deeper into corruption. The further down the path you go, the harder it is to turn back. Eventually, you will end up with all the power you desired, but the curse will have strengthened and made it so that you cannot get what you wanted because of it. A good GM can come up with some really imaginative paths for players, it's very satisfying. The difficult part is that due to the nature of the temptation, the first couple of steps are pretty mechanically beneficial to most characters. Anyhow. That's a big digression, but I don't think something like that will fit into the design philosophy of 4th, and it's a bit of a shame)