There used to be a time when kobolds were…well kobolds, they were weak and could be killed in a single hit, and couldn’t do a thing unless there were loads of them. Now I send five against a party of five and no onelives to tell the tale. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, the Dragon, once a feared monster of legend, can be taken out by a groupof lowlevel adventurers in a snap.

SkeithInus out

Personally, I think pathfinder is the way to go. It is 3.75 as most call it, a distinct improvement on 3.5, with much better rounded base classes an streamlined rules, and all the fun and feel of 3.5.

4th ed is a shame to be honest.

The rule system changes in 4th edition make it ‘not d&d’. Thats the first crime and the least serious. You could just not buy it if that were the only issue.

However it isn’t. Wizards have abandoned the OGL, hence limiting artistic license to their own very limited imagination, but helping Paizo and 3rd ed supporters by preventing companies developint for 4th ed.

In addition they define D&D. By making 4th ed they have just screwed the whole system. Players have left the game or if you look at gaming sites like Mythweavers and Plothooks where you play by post, 3.5 games still after all this time outnumber 4th ed by 5:1. But it means that unless they scrap all this and bring out a 5th edition that is more traditional, then D&D under its own name is dead. Sure I will be playing Pathrinfer, and loving it, but I’d rather Wizards just sold the D&D name to Paizo or Monte and stopped screwing with the game that got me into RPG’s. They lost the moral right to do so in my eyes, all they have is the financial rights and theyre busy flushing that down the toilet.

The third crime is they messed up all the fiction and other worlds. In the past they had dropped Sigil, dark sun, ravenloft, everything except faerun and eberron. Ok At first I didnt like faerun much but people like Rob Salvatore and Ed Greenwood and many others over the years turned it into a highly detailed and living world. Now wizards throws it all away with their stupid points of light system.

What the hell? Points of Light? The entire idea is designed to break the world into tiny bits so that people can go back to 1st ed style dungeon crawling. We had mostly outgrown that. But they made a completely unrealistic world, destroyed all the faerun story lines, and of course ban any novels being written for the 3rd ed setting faerun.

WoC are a bunch of money grubbing vandals with no idea of game design and in the end too stupid to even be able to design a game that can fulfil their one dream – make cash. Because a crap game in a crap setting isnt going to cut it, and many of us already play WoW or other MMPORGS and dont sit round the table to play more of the same. No thanks Wizards.

Thanks Paizo and Thanks Monte for giving us other games. Lets hope Wizards go bust and a more desrving and respectful company gets the D&D license. Gary must be turning in his grave at the sight of 4th ed.

In some ways, 4e is like the “static chess” game that James mentioned in his opening article. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it can be an enjoyable exercise in its own right, but it does tend to detract from immersion.

So many of the 4e rules deal with position, shifts, pushes, marks, teleports, transpositions, flanks and combination manuevers (between powers of different characters) that it’s almost impossible to track, understand, or use them without minis on a battlegrid. Once the minis are in place (together with terrain features, etc.) a whole range of combat strategies come into play. But it’s a little like chess. I find myself looking at squares and movement options and naturally start thinking in abstract terms. Visually, I’m concentrating on the game mat and most of my mental processing involves “looking ahead” just as I would in a standard wargame or chess match.

I am not independently visualizing the action the way I would if I were hearing a story. It’s a little like chess. When I play a game of chess, the last thing I’m think about are the medieval themes of the pieces.

What I’m suggesting is that 4e is almost TOO good at what it does.

When I DMd previous editions (mostly 2e) the mechanics were usally pretty raw. Boring, even. But as a DM, I’d try to spice it up by descriptive action. Instead of announcing that a monster had rolled a “miss”, I’d often say that it just barely missed, or that the claws raked so and so’s shield, or that he felt the creature’s hot breath just as the jaws snapped shut next to his ear, etc., etc.

We used a lot of the same concepts that 4e embraces – flanking and pushing etc., but it was more a matter of handwaving and discetionary calls by the DM and, as a DM, I had the power to fudge on all of that stuff in favor of whatever made the encounter more interesting, funny or exciting.

4e is so tactically tight, though, and we’re all so wrapped up in the mathematics of the manuevers and the potential combinations that emerge from the board, that much of that “flavor” seems to have been lost – the independent visualization of the events.

(It also doesn’t help that some of the “fluff” descriptions – especially in the core books – don’t make a lot of sense. For example, if I hit sombody with a power that causes their blood to boils and poisonous vipers to shoot out of their ears, I expect a lot more than 1d8 + CHA mod damage. But that’s a whole nother rant.)

I have had a lot of players say that the game is okay, so far as that goes, but “it’s not really D&D anymore.”

- another issue –

One the one hand, I really like the idea of the characters being able to go through multiple encounters without having to constantly recharge their spells and hit points (the so-called 15 minute workday). And I like the way that they are rewarded with action points for maintaining momentum. But that does tend to lead to a combat-intensive grind. There are plenty of ways to roleplay characters outside of combat, but it seems like those opportunities don’t arise as much when the PCs are trying to maintain their encounter pace.

The other thing that we miss is the ability to use spells and combinations of spells an items in creative ways – to create traps or get around obstacles or just to blow up buildings. It feels more like we’re either in combat or not, and when you’re in combat, then, no matter whjat else you’ve done, you play by the same set of rules. It is a little more restrictive.

I’m less concerned about the whole “multi-classing” issue than I used to be, now that more and more in-between classes are available (and getting a taste of some of the hybrid rules.)

… anyway, my experience is that the old-timers are almost all agreed that they want to go back to the older systems to recapture the “flavor” that they miss.

The mechanical system does NOTING to support roleplaying other then talking about “hand waving things as a DM”. Why not just hand wave everything then? Why even bother having combat rules?

Paizo – Thank you for carrying on the tradition of 3rd Edition.

-Cal

I’ll admit that most of what made the game fun was the way our players and DM all came together and meshed our characters well, but the same could be said with 3.5. Roleplaying is still very much alive in 4th edition. In fact, with all but the essential rules pared away, I’d say roleplaying is even more open and free than before.

I think 4th edition comes off looking a lot more promising if you view the PHB rules as a set of starting points for playing the game, rather than boundaries. We’ve become so accustomed to the “a rule for everything” mentality from 3rd ed that we’ve lost the ability to imagine and build.

For that matter we do combat just fine without the books on the blog. Which leads me back to my point…the books DO NOT lend to roleplaying. Even the people defending 4th ed say “just use your imagination” well I can do that with combat too so why buy a ROLE PLAYING game that is only about mini’s and tactical combat which I still find done as well in Warhammer. In fact warhammer has a rich history that they use in book. What is presented in D&D is …I don’t know they don’t describe much other than “If you want to be a dragon then be this character” -dragonborn…that tells me alot about nothing.

The point is you are buying a system that has a history and feel, if that is removed it is something else. Rolemaster has an OPEN system and says as much. They are upfront in the intro. Use ONLY what you want but we will provide you with info that fits our system. Meaning if you need to know how good a miner you are, it is there even if you are a wizard.(“Hey where can we find some ozmonium?”.”Well I just happen to have some knowledge about mining”)not the generic skill they have now.
Skill challenges are ridiculous. Apparently a high int anything knows all kinds of things about anything.
The quickness of character gen is gone once you have to build a new character of higher level. Getting your powers and feats to jive and still make an interesting person takes on 2 hours with the char gen doing all the math. Might as well go build a gurps or rolemaster char with all the trimmings.

This isn’t just old foggy stuff. If I wanted ridged rules and no RP I would go play guildwars. Even WOW has more RP built into it than D&D does now. I could play FF tactics just as well for tactical. The whole point of pen and paper games is using your minds eye.

IF some think that “i swing my sword” is how us old timers use to play before “tide of iron, tide of iron, tide of iron, tide of iron” Hey what are you doing? Oh yeah this combat was too long and you are out of dailies/encounters.” Then you are mistaken. But due to the power structure now, no one uses their imagination for solutions, instead will power ‘c’ work with situation a or is power ‘b’ going to be better? As we all wait for this person to complete their thorough analysis of the ENTIRE battlefield.

Before 4th ed…”Charging I draw my mace while rolling under the table to swing at her ankle…I don’t want to kill her just incapacitate her”
” OK make an acro check and roll a d20 +1 to see if you hit with the surprise maneuver. If you hit I’ll see if she stumbles, you can try to grapple her at that point. Good thing you took off your chainmail before going to the tavern, thats a hard maneuver you would have had penalties”

Now. “I use guilding strike so she takes a -2 penalty to a def…how do I knock her out or make her stumble? What about a bonus?”
“well what does your power say? does it say knockout opponent or allow a bonus other than a -2 to a def?…No well roll the d20 to see if you hit. You took off your chainmail…good for you, now roll.”

K guys do you get it. The same imagination you tell us to use in RP we used in combat to get better effects than a fluffy power name with a sorta advantage in the description. You could do the same thing by telling the DM what you wanted to do. Granted you would have to see somepeople do that or have them suggest such an action could be possible, but you wouldn’t be confined either. It was up to the brainpower of the people around the table. Hopefully staying in charter.

My char Beothuk yells” Stormdancer use the table as cover and attack her legs! I’m going to have to have word with you about your name when we are out of this!” While he stand defensively parrying the incoming blow from the duelist.
See not too hard is it. I didn’t even roll a die and the combat I just wrote was more exciting than most of our sessions in the last 18 months of people not being able to remember what each power does. 4th ed is broken and so far with all the extra books put out very little has been addressed. I will say the have given a huge array of powers now, but people couldn’t remember what they had before nevermind now.

But 3.5e gave you so much freedom. There were so many non-combat spells which could do incredible things from an RP perspective, great backstories, so many possibilities in creating a character and really gave you the sense that the world was at your fingertips. That is what D&D was to me, and 4e sharply cut back on it. I have a great 3.5 library and think it is the better game. I have no reason to go with 4e. Maybe I will be back for 5e, assuming there will be one.

4e sucks.

I was sold very early on with 4e because of the fact that it was different and fresh. It does heavily push miniatures more than 3e but anyone that played 3e with miniatures could notice a drastic ease of play vs running without. “Miniatures” don’t have to be fancy pieces sold by Wotc. They can be beads, coins, squares of cardboard with character/monster names on them etc.

There is not less-rp in 4e. Role-playing is something that you bring to the table yourself. The game rules in 4th cover it as much as they need to. How much or how little you rp is up to you. In every edition, there have been hack + slash games and there always will be.

I think that making the game more like an MMO is a cool thing in some ways. What I don’t like about it is that it is harder to play a game if you don’t have all the character roles covered. Sometimes someone may feel forced into a role to balance the group. It’s hard to play without a defender or a striker for example.

I always felt that while I could handle the storytelling and immersion D&D combat felt fudged, too slow, lacking in oomph.

This edition still allows me to wave a story and when combat occurs to see it handled quickly in a more exciting way.

I do think the scenarios I’ve seen so far have been lame – nothing more than battleboard sessions… but surely that’s down to us DMs to manage. My games won’t be combat heavy – they’ll be character and story driven but it does mean I can more easily get new blood engaged in something that they can understand without D&D becoming their life.

My feeling is that nerdy D&D-elitist shmucks will probably always hate it, casual gamers will be able to enjoy it and ROLE PLAYERS will continue to ROLE PLAY.

furthermore, why is there complaint about crafting a story? it’s a mechanic to act out your stories: if the scene that you have in mind doesn’t have a direct correllation between the mechanics and your imagination, IMPROVISE! take leaps depending on what suits the story, ask fo checks that make sense. again, like Antfinney said, it’s a freeform game, no matter what the emphasis is on: USE that to tell the story you want to tell! are you really telling me that there is no way in which you can take advantage of the more fluent, easier to get right into ediion and change what you don’t like?