Questions regarding 4th ed.

[Syric]

I'm more familiar with 3rd ed but recently picked up the phb for 4th. Reading through it so far I'm fairly disappointed, seems very WoW'ish to me, and far more dedicated to combat than previous editions.

For those who've played 4th I'm interested to hear your opinions. Some of the things I've noticed specifically:

- No ranger companion. WTF? That was something that actually made rangers different from simply being a ranged fighter. Very disappointed to see that removed.

- Rogues. I loved playing a rogue, with tons of skills and skillpoints you had so much versatility. Again, seems as though it's a pen and paper WoW rogue now. Poor defense, decent burst damage. Yawn.

- Wizards. Every single spell seems combat oriented. One of the things I loved about 2nd and 3rd was the ability to gain a "home/tower/lair" and cast various spells to protect it. Traps, magical alarms, permanent illusions, triggered guardian spells etc. With only gaining spells at levelup, where is the excitement of looting a new spell scroll to copy into your book? Am I missing it, or is what made playing a mage through the weak beginning levels and working towards greater power something that's completely gone now? Having to be very careful what spells to prepare, being a specialist wizard, all gone?

- Way too many combat attacks. How slow is combat with each class having 2-6 slightly different attacks to use? Seems as though that is far more micro-management for DM's to monitor. Do encounters take forever?

I have always played DnD as a game of strategy and intrigue rather than mindless hack and slash. We'd often go entire sessions with only one or two combat encounters, yet have an absolute blast. Is that still viable in 4th?

[Bidmaron]

I share your view. I started playing back with D&D boxed set and eagerly looked forward to every edition, but not 4e (I bought the boxed set of rules when it came out, but didn't like what I saw). As Unerwunscht says, 4e is like D&D lite. I'm sure it's fun, but it seems like WotC's Miniatures Skirmish rules on steroids (or D&D Lite). Lots of folks like it and say it's faster. Well, if you do nothing but combat, and those rules are streamlined, then duh, yeah it would be faster.

As I say, I'm not just a stick-in-the-mud-stay-with-the-tried-and-true kind of guy, I've looked forward to and embraced everything up to now.

Stand by for the big debate over editions, but I'm definitely in agreement with you. Personally, I'm looking forward to when Pathfinder goes final this fall. I will likely switch to that. I like all the Paizo materials and am currently running Rise of the Runelords in FG2.

For those of you who like 4e, God bless you, and have fun. It's just not for me....

[Syric]

Glad to see I'm not the only one... and can't believe I forgot to note there aren't any poisons. That's ridiculous imo. I loved being a poisonmaster on my rogue.

[Zoso]

Ranger companions are introduced in the Martial Power supplement. As with most things in 4th Ed, they work differently than the past. Poisons are in in the Dungeon Master's Guide as well as Adventurer's Vault, no need to worry there.

While the powers can be a bit much, the game doesn't have to be all about combat. Irregardless of what the rules are like, the DM and players mentality can shift the balance to or away from combat. In our last 4 hour session, my group only spent about 60 minutes in 2 encounters and the remaining 3 doing RP stuff around town.

[Syric]

That's good to hear. I played WoW for so long that when I finally had enough and quit, thinking to get back into some actual RP to see it so similiar to WoW.... *shakes fist at sky*

I'm currently looking for a group if anyone needs another player.

[EugeneZ]

Look, I don't want to start a flame war or anything but I feel pretty strongly about this so I may inadverdantly say something inflammatory... anyone is of course free to dislike 4E, and I won't begrudge that. The following is 100% personal opinion.

The most common criticism of 4E is that it's more like WoW because it's more combat oriented. In my opinion, that is completely off the mark.

Is 4E really more like WoW than previous editions? YES. I don't really like WoW as an MMO but there is one thing Blizzard did far better than any other MMO developer to date. The presentation, interface, and system rules have all been re-worked with an eye towards fun rather than tedium. Just as Apple has proven in the software world, interface and simplicity are enormously useful towards productivity. 4E shares this viewpoint. Mechanics like power recharge, standardization of powers and "builds" are all examples of following in the path that WoW has paved. These are all good things. There's a reason WoW has so many players.

Has the roleplaying in 4E suffered as a consequence? NO. This is where the WoW argument falls apart for me. How is the addition of consice, logical rules, presented in an easy-to-read manner a bad thing for roleplaying? Any system is what you make of it. Specifically, what the DM guides you towards making. If a DM and his group love to roleplay, I don't see how 4E will stop or even hamper you. In fact, its streamlined process for character creation and maintanence means roleplayers can spend less time worrying about rules and more time roleplaying their character.

Can it really be that simple? My perception is completely the opposite! Well, I can understand that. When you pull open a fighter and see that he has nearly as many "powers" as a wizard, you may think to yourself, "Where's the flavor? Now everyone's got spells!" Or you may look at the way magic items are distributed now, in a mathematical pattern remeniscent of WoW and you may confirm your earlier opinion. The thing is, you are, in my opinion, mis-interpreting rule clarity for a watering down of flavor. In 3E, the rules were muddy, confusing, and unclear, and precisely because of this, there was no overall unifcation of the rules, and so much was left to the roleplayers. In 4e, everything fits into a neat little box... fighters are no longer just slashing each round, they are now using something that at first glance appears to be a spell. But a good roleplayer can see that these are just different "slashing" techniques, adding more and more flavor to the fighter. Same with the magic items. It may seem like a DM is giving out a ton, but a DM who feels that there's too much magic in the world for it to be special just needs to get creative. Give the fighter a magic longsword early on, and later allow it to grow in power. You just gave him a new weapon, yet he didn't actually recieve a whole new item.

To address your specific complaints:

Companions were removed because they added an enormous time drain to the combat round. Basically a single player gets two turns. WotC was working on a solution and have released it with Martial Powers.

Rogues are way more awesome in 4e than 3e, in my opinion. They appear, to me, to be one of the most versatile classes. You still get more trained skills and class skills than any other class (haven't checked it, but if not, it's close), and the four different rogue builds are VERY different and play almost like different classes. It's awesome to be able to stealth into a shadowy corner, then jump out using Deft Strike and nail your opponent in the back, rather than simply require flanking all the time. There's more to it, as well. I think some of the more complex classes look simple at first but are really interesting once you learn all the rules. Give rogues another chance.

Wizards and other classes now gain rituals that are essentially non-combat-oriented spells. This is great, in my opinion. In my 3e games, players used to come with cool things to do with the non-combat spells but would rarely spend the time to learn them because, well, no matter how you look at it, DnD is a combat-oriented game. It was a shame. In 4e, you can gain the benefit of both combat spells as well as rituals. Many expansion books introduce a number of new rituals as well, so I'd say 4e now has more non-combat spells for wizards and even better, those wizards are much more likely to actually use them.

Encounters are slow, but I don't think they're slower than 3e. The power list looks daunting at first but the power differences really come down to a small number of factors. After playing your character for a level or two, you already come up with strategies to use for different situations. Trust me, it turns out to play far more streamlined than it appears. The stat blocks are written so that you have one place to go for all the required information, but you'll find that ina single class's at-will powers, there will be very little difference.

As your last question goes, me and my group can easily vouch that 4e offers far greater depth of strategy than 3e. What's more, it's balanced much better so challenges turn out to be much more reliant on strategy than mere numbers.

I hope this hasn't been too long.

[Syric]

Thanks for the reply, wasn't too long at all. I'm still working my way through the Phb, will take some of the points you mentioned into consideration and try and keep an open mind. :)

[Griogre]

I've played every version of D&D since the mid 70's. I like 4E, but one thing about it - it plays *much* better than it reads. I was deeply sceptical until I actually played in a pre-release 4E game.

I strongly believe in Bidmaron's right to like or dislike any RPG - but he missed the point on speed, IMO. If you do *any* combat (other than very low level 3.x) - that part will be faster - but the Roleplaying part takes the same time regardless. I would think, this would be an *advantage* to RP heavy groups because it allows them to get back to the RP faster. My two cents.

[Illrigger]

To add my 2 cents for clarity, D&D 3.x is a good combat system until you hit around 10th level, when powers, spells and number of attacks reaches a "critical mass"; the sheer number of things that each player (and each NPC/monster) has to do in a round suddenly spikes, and even mid sized combat encounters suddenly end up eating entire sessions' worth of time. This effect snowballs as levels progress and by 15th to 18th, there are times you can't even do a single combat in a session. We'd usually end out sessions with "roll initiative", not only because of the suspense, but because we were often committing ourselves to several hours of combat.

What 4e does right is limiting the number of abilities and attacks any class has at any given level, so each turn every player doesn't have to look through 10 books' worth of materiels to find a given spell, or spend 10 minutes rolling attacks and figuring out modifiers. This makes the game play at the same speed in combat at 25th level as it does at 5th. Everyone makes one attack, one move, and one minor action per turn, and the options and effects for all your powers are written on the power cards right in front of you (or set up as 3-5 mouse clicks in 4e-JPG if you have parsed your books). It's much smoother.

That being said, there feels like a lot less diversity in the classes. When the Primal power set came out, I felt really let down. It was in many ways, more of the same. I get the feeling Psionics will be as well, which is really disappointing because in 3.5 it was sufficiently different from magic to make it interesting.

I understand the need for this; with the classes now all having niches clearly defined, game balance becomes more and more important. But at the same time, there's just not as much excitement breaking open the binding on that new book. The 3.5e PHB2 had the Beguiler and Duskblade - classes I couldn't wait to play, and see how they mixed in with the other classes; with the 4e PHB2 classes, you already know - it says so in the stat block for each class.

All that being said, I haven't had a lot of opportunity to play 4e, so maybe my mindset isn't right. I'm sure if I were to get into a long-running session, I would start drooling over how power "a" from new class "b" would work in a given situation. But right now? I'm impressed with the rules, but underwhelmed by the possibilites for the future.

[Tenian]

In 4E all classes may all look the same and do the same thing but they are mechanically different. Take for example the original PHB and it's striker options Ranger and Rogue.

Both of these classes have an "extra damage" feature. Essentially when some condition is met, they get to roll extra damage dice. In the case of a rogue, it is when they attack a target which is granting combat advantage. For a ranger it is when they attack their quarry. To get combat advantage the rogue must position themselves in melee or be all sneaky and hide around corners. A ranger simply designates his quarry, but it must be the closest target when he designates it and it costs a minor action to do so.

This is how most classes in 4E work, their role defines WHAT they do, and the individual class features define HOW they do it. Often the difference is not apparent until you actually see the class in action.

[Bidmaron]

It seems to me that the rate of book release in 4e exceeds that when 3e came out. A year into it and we already have PHB2 and DMG2 and two separate adventurers' options books. At that rate, you'll be looking through much more than 10 books to find the thing you're looking for. Again, more power to those who are playing it. With my investment in the earlier editions, I just can't see the improvement warranting the money. Right now, I'm so mad at WotC for ceasing availability of their older PDFs that I can't see spending my money supporting their lousy policies.

[Tenian]

They are essentially on the "book a month" plan. Sometimes it's a book of adventure material (Open Grave, Dragonomicon, Dungeon Delves) Other months it's a core book (MM, PHB), power source book (Martial Power, Arcane Power), or a campaign book (FR: Player's guide, Eberron Campaign Guide).

Also the books are well organized. For example Martial Power and the PHB contain all the powers for martial classes. You never even need to look at Arcane Power. The core phbs are the same they contain specific races/classes. There is very little overlap (some feats/paragon paths). Now if you multiclass you could get into a lot of books. The compendium and the character builder really do help a lot however.

[EugeneZ]

The compendium and the character builder really do help a lot however.

+++!!!

Seriously, many players don't buy ANY expansion books. For $6 a month, you get the character builder which contains EVERYTHING not just from the books but also from magazine and even obscure sources like the power cards they give away with the minis. Never need to buy a single book... to a player it just means every month or two there's a bunch of stuff added to their subscription.

And now I feel slightly stupid for actually owning every single book they've made so far... I owned very few 3e expansions and am trying to compensate. ;)

[Zeus]

+++!!!

Seriously, many players don't buy ANY expansion books. For $6 a month, you get the character builder which contains EVERYTHING not just from the books but also from magazine and even obscure sources like the power cards they give away with the minis. Never need to buy a single book... to a player it just means every month or two there's a bunch of stuff added to their subscription.

And now I feel slightly stupid for actually owning every single book they've made so far... I owned very few 3e expansions and am trying to compensate. ;)

You should'nt feel stupid for buying the hardcover books. Unlike DDI's compendium they contain rule material and flavour which really helps in understanding some of the rationilisation for some of the rules.

DDI is useful if you want quick access to monster stats, magic items, powers and class information, more importantly though DDI membership gets you access to Dragon and Dungeon materials as well as DDI exclusive classes like the monk and assasin and new races like Revenant.

DDI is starting to hot up now with release quality material being published from July way ahead of the material hitting the bookshelves; I guess now that WotWC are no longer supporting PDF releases of their material I expect more focus will now be applied to DDI.

If your like me and love D&D and can spare the cash then £4 a month for DDI + up to £18 for the months hardcover rulebook/supplement is acceptable for what you get.

[Xorn]

My opinions follow:
- No ranger companion. WTF? That was something that actually made rangers different from simply being a ranged fighter. Very disappointed to see that removed.
I always felt that rangers were at the core either two weapon or ranged fighters, and the animal companion was just window dressing. PHB2 expands the options to make an animal companion a core part of the class. I have not comment on if there should or should not be a PHB2 yet, but I liked the book and the content in it.

- Rogues. I loved playing a rogue, with tons of skills and skillpoints you had so much versatility. Again, seems as though it's a pen and paper WoW rogue now. Poor defense, decent burst damage. Yawn.
I'll be sure to let my play group's rogue that he has poor defense the next time he's laughing at my feeble attempts to hit him as he provokes his way to wherever the hell he feels like standing, or throws another defender into the nearest firepit, bottomless well, or hungry living Shadowfel portal. :P

- Wizards. Every single spell seems combat oriented. One of the things I loved about 2nd and 3rd was the ability to gain a "home/tower/lair" and cast various spells to protect it. Traps, magical alarms, permanent illusions, triggered guardian spells etc. With only gaining spells at levelup, where is the excitement of looting a new spell scroll to copy into your book? Am I missing it, or is what made playing a mage through the weak beginning levels and working towards greater power something that's completely gone now? Having to be very careful what spells to prepare, being a specialist wizard, all gone?
Rituals are what you want to take a look at, but yes, the wizard is not the god of all the classes at higher levels. They are still badasses, and will be unrivaled in their ability to bring doom and destruction to groups of foes (except by other controllers), but the fighter has more options than move and attack, or don't move and iterative attack.

- Way too many combat attacks. How slow is combat with each class having 2-6 slightly different attacks to use? Seems as though that is far more micro-management for DM's to monitor. Do encounters take forever?
Combat doesn't seem slower than 3.5 to me, possibly faster. At the heart of things, it's pretty simple: You've got 2 at-wills (3 for humans) you can use whenever. You start with one encounter you'll use most fights, and one daily you'll use every 3-4 fights. As you level that expands--in higher level play you mostly use encounter powers with a daily thrown in, and the at-wills become your backups.

My barbarian usually uses Howling Strike (+dmg strike, usable with charge), or Pressing Strike (in 3.5 terms, 2x 5-foot step, attack + push 1). Once per encounter I can attack everything adjacent to me, and once every 4-5 fights I can go apeshit (rage) and hit harder/gain temp hp every hit for the rest of the battle. But as far as complexity? It's pretty straightforward, in my opinion.

I have always played DnD as a game of strategy and intrigue rather than mindless hack and slash. We'd often go entire sessions with only one or two combat encounters, yet have an absolute blast. Is that still viable in 4th?
Same here. In last week's adventure, my barbarian was busy putting out fires and trying to save some orphans. After that I just narrowly missed a chance to offend the town council before offering to bludgeon a hobgoblin prisoner into a pulp with my bare hands. After following a map he gave us that hadn't been drawn with his freshly spilled blood (thus, a map I didn't trust) it turns out it was a trap, and we found ourselves knee-deep in giant bug-things, which I used my masterwork greatsword of diplomacy to settle a truce: I kill them all, and we take the loot of previously slain adventures.

I have yet to see a game system where the role-play was affected by the rules in any way, outside of the rules' ability to get out of the way.

I kind of liked 3.5; I love 4E... it feels like a hybrid of BECMI & 3.5, to me at least.