Most of the advanatges of 4th ed acan also be duplicated in Star Wars Saga and each class there is very simple. Its hard to say what people anted 4 years after the fact but I think 3.5 gamers wanted an evolution of 3.5. 4th ed was a revolution. I wanted spellcassters fixed probably with large nerfhammers, the skill system overhauled, the classes redesigned and various bugs smoothed out.
Gonna stop arguing over the finer points as most people can probably find various things about either system they like, dislike or whatever and most of it is going to be subjective. Mechanically I thought Star Wars Saga was the best d20 game from 2007-2008 time period as it probably should have been the basis for 4th ed.
4th ed split the player base like no other edition of D&D and alot of that had to do with its design. If you like the design of 4th ed thats fine as its a purely subjective opinion and pats of 4th ed were brilliant and I am hard pressed to play 3.5 now because of some of those ideas like the DMG, and the way 4th ed handled monsters. If we ever played 4th ed again we would probably freeze it in time and that would be the last update of the 4th ed offline CB. TO me that was probably the highpoint of 4th ed (late 2010?). We actually had DDI for 3 years but canceled it when the online CB came along and Dragon/Dungeon were turned into a series of articles.
Reducing a character to a list of dice rolls and modifiers is not role playing*
Most of the advanatges of 4th ed acan also be duplicated in Star Wars Saga and each class there is very simple. Its hard to say what people anted 4 years after the fact but I think 3.5 gamers wanted an evolution of 3.5. 4th ed was a revolution. I wanted spellcassters fixed probably with large nerfhammers, the skill system overhauled, the classes redesigned and various bugs smoothed out.
Gonna stop arguing over the finer points as most people can probably find various things about either system they like, dislike or whatever and most of it is going to be subjective. Mechanically I thought Star Wars Saga was the best d20 game from 2007-2008 time period as it probably should have been the basis for 4th ed.
4th ed split the player base like no other edition of D&D and alot of that had to do with its design. If you like the design of 4th ed thats fine as its a purely subjective opinion and pats of 4th ed were brilliant and I am hard pressed to play 3.5 now because of some of those ideas like the DMG, and the way 4th ed handled monsters. If we ever played 4th ed again we would probably freeze it in time and that would be the last update of the 4th ed offline CB. TO me that was probably the highpoint of 4th ed (late 2010?). We actually had DDI for 3 years but canceled it when the online CB came along and Dragon/Dungeon were turned into a series of articles.
IMHO the problem is that NO evolution of 3.5 was ever going to deliver the things that 4e delivered. To the extent that 4e is different from 3.5 (and a lot of it really isn't THAT different) the differences seem to have been necessary. 3e style ala-carte MCing for instance IMHO was a huge mistake. It practically guarantees that the game will require a LOT of system mastery, present many trap options, and force the design of classes into a narrower range in order to work at all. While 4e shows that something pretty close to Vancian casting can work the whole basic design of spell casters in pre-4e D&D was simply never going to deliver anything close to a play experience free of total caster domination at higher levels (which happened in AD&D as well).
Whether or not some OTHER design besides the one 4e chose would be as good or better will never be known. What is clear is that continuing to just twiddle the dials on traditional D&D was never going to lead anywhere except to produce an endless stream of essentially similar games that would eventually become irrelevant.
Clearly there are any number of things about 4e itself that could be improved, MANY MANY things about WotC's business execution around 4e, etc. I think the game could be perfectly acceptible to the vast majority of players if it is handled correctly. At this point however it is all pointless to argue about. WotC in its blundering way has killed its main product. While I have little taste for PF at least Paizo seems to be a smarter company. I can always hope that in a few years they'll come out with a good RPG. OTOH WotC can take a hike at this point. I don't even trust them to stand behind their product anymore.
Yeah, it was really horrible of WotC to take away 3 classes, and then give you only 2 new ones. That was awful of them. Who would ever want to play a Warlord? and the Warlock... A charisma-based spell caster? wait... isn't that what a Sorceror is? (End sarchasm)
Gee, having to pick which power is better is hard, isn't it? Um... no, not really. Even when my friend and I are playing the same build of the same class, we take different powers. He likes his warlock to become a melee arcane striker. I prefer to stay a ranged striker.
All you want to play is strikers? Try the Devoted Cleric. Before Solar Wrath was nerfed, it was a battle-breaker. And a lot of fun. Serious fun. I could do things with that... But even nerfed, it was still dangerous. The only downside was that for the first 8 levels or so, I was stuck with one of the melee-powers (human 3rd at-will). Then Divine Power came out and I took Astral Seal.
No, as it happens, I am running a game where all the players are strikers (by design). Rule is that the first character to die has to be replaced by a leader. Next one by a defender. LVL 13, and no one is gone. Another party has 4 strikers and a controller, and they're doing very well. But throw enough minions at them and the game changes.
So you had to wait for a while before you got your pet class. Would you rather they'd rushed it (even more) and produced a lesser product? As it was, the editting and play-testing for some of the classes is suspect. There's too much wasted space? The font is too big? Yeah, it is truly horrible that they designed the books to be readable at a glance so that you could quickly and easily find where you were, and us oldsters didn't need to put on reading glasses or squint.
As for the WotC StarWars game: I'm guilty of the same knee-jerk hate that people seem to have for 4th edition. I looked at it and knew none of my group would want to play it. Was especially disgusted that Wookies were essentially 1/2 orcs. I did try one online PbP, but the other players dropped out. So I'll stick with my 1st/2nd ed WEG hybrid game.
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what I create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
Bow down, my subjects, for I am your master! Yesss.....Show
I wouldn't be throwing around insults about MC due to the way 4th ed made it lol. Spend a feat, gain a minor power poach a paragon path seemed to be 4th ed MC. Saga had had 3.5 style multiclassing and worked great although it needed a tweak as it rewarded skills to much with a single dip into another class. Saga ripped out the 3.5 spellcaster mechanic and added 4th ed style encounter powers but they were basically optional. You could build a soldier for example who hit things hard or added powers via feats, class abilities or force powers. It was kinda hard to screw up your character in Saga as long as you were good at something and out of combat it was better than 3.5 and 4th.
Vancian casting itself isn't a major problem. 3rd ed removed alot of the lmits on it from pre 3rd ed and gave Druids and Clerics level 8 and 9 spells. Saga has vancian casting but has a 4th ed influence in powers and fighters get options and they have fixed the Cleric stacking buff spells penalty. I don't think balance will be perfect at lelvel 19 with spelcasters but at levle 10 it looks quite good as the vancian spells are not as nasty as the 3.5 varients in most cases.
In a way 4th ed turned everyone into vancian casters anyway with dailies. It also more or less let everyone start at level 3, stretched out 10 levels of previous edions through to level 20 or so and scaled the monsters although they messed up the math there a bit.
Reducing a character to a list of dice rolls and modifiers is not role playing*
I wouldn't be throwing around insults about MC due to the way 4th ed made it lol. Spend a feat, gain a minor power poach a paragon path seemed to be 4th ed MC. Saga had had 3.5 style multiclassing and worked great although it needed a tweak as it rewarded skills to much with a single dip into another class. Saga ripped out the 3.5 spellcaster mechanic and added 4th ed style encounter powers but they were basically optional. You could build a soldier for example who hit things hard or added powers via feats, class abilities or force powers. It was kinda hard to screw up your character in Saga as long as you were good at something and out of combat it was better than 3.5 and 4th.
Vancian casting itself isn't a major problem. 3rd ed removed alot of the lmits on it from pre 3rd ed and gave Druids and Clerics level 8 and 9 spells. Saga has vancian casting but has a 4th ed influence in powers and fighters get options and they have fixed the Cleric stacking buff spells penalty. I don't think balance will be perfect at lelvel 19 with spelcasters but at levle 10 it looks quite good as the vancian spells are not as nasty as the 3.5 varients in most cases.
In a way 4th ed turned everyone into vancian casters anyway with dailies. It also more or less let everyone start at level 3, stretched out 10 levels of previous edions through to level 20 or so and scaled the monsters although they messed up the math there a bit.
4e MCing achieved everything it intended to. You can mix in some of another class. If you go PMC you can mix in a LOT of another class. PERSONALLY I'd vote for lowering the overall feat cost a bit, but since you're defending 3.5 with "so what if some options are more powerful than others, it was never a problem" then you cannot suddenly adopt a double standard and say 4e MCing is bad because it is a bit underpowered (and not always at that).
Vancian casting though IS the problem. The fundamental root of the problem is the very nature of the resource control mechanism that is Vancian casting. Anyone who doesn't see that is IMHO highly suspect in terms of having an eye for game design. I hear that it isn't the problem and what other judgment calls have you missed? I think you can design things in better or worse ways, but ANY form of strict Vancian casting will hobble the design and eventually come back to bite you one way or another. 4e is about as close as you can get and have things work out reasonably well.
All but a few 4e monsters are fine as long as you give them decent damage output. In that sense I guess some things are 'off'. Frankly I think a lot of the designers were unable to disengage their minds from 3e numbers where 3d6 is a LOT of damage for a routine at-will type attack. Beyond that monsters are subtle. While they are easy to spec out they are actually pretty hard to make really good. Like ALL of 4e I see its monsters as a work in progress. The whole system DOES need to be tweaked, but not much a lot.
This "Vancian is bad" argument... Where to begin. Well, Let's make it simple. I disagree. I think it is a great mechanic, and everyone in the group I play with enjoys it immensely. In fact, aside from this thread, only 1 person I know has disliked it.
The system I do not like is the Essentials mechanic of allowing the player to roll the dice, find out whether or not s/he hits, and then add on all the modifiers and extra powers. "I missed? Oh well, it was only a basic attack." "I Hit? well, that was my take-down strike, my eldrich wizzbang, and my dread smite, and _____ and ____ and ___." Granted, the original curse/sneak attack/quarry system did allow you to choose whether or not to appy the damage, but c'mon. Why wouldn't you if you could? PH1 rules only allowed the damage 1/round, unless you took a feat. It was the essentials retcon that turned it into 1/turn. The stacking powers after the result of Essentials seemed to be keyed to less mature players who would get upset if they missed with their daily or encounter power. Just as the PH2 strikers, instead of a d6 (or d8 with the feat), add their static secondary stat bonus because people don't like rolling 1s with their bonus damage.
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what I create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
Bow down, my subjects, for I am your master! Yesss.....Show
Theres no real incentive to tweak 4th ed that much though. No money in it for WoTC.
Vancian may not be your cup of tea but D&D is now 38 years old and it has had Vancian casting for 34 of them. 4th ed killed some sacred cows, 4th ed tanked and its probably a large reason why. Its coming back in Next but no one seems to upset that they have added at wills and the spells are less powerful than 3.5 varients. Fireball is capped at 5d6 damage now. 4th ed was in troule in late 2010 or early 2011 depending on who you want to ask, but probably when they started canceling books and the release schdule was revised to a book every 2 months barely 2 years after 4th eds launch.
The rapid bloat of 4th ed was pointed out on these forums very early on yet the posters who doing so were "haters" or whatever. Some of the hard core fanboys thought 4th ed would maintain a PHB 1,2,3,4 etc and DMG 1,2,3,4 and a yearly camapign world for around 10 years before 5th came out. 2 years in I think they had aound 80% of 3rd eds bloat in 2 years compared to 8 years for 3rd ed (feats= feats, powers and paragon/epic paths= PRCs and Spells). Every edition bloats, 4th ed was out of control. Hence why I pointed out earlier the bad design of the 4th ed fighter which required pages of powers that a 3.5 fighter required a handful of feats to do. They could have done a 4th ed different than what they did, evolved 3.5 along the lines of Sga or a bit further, added at wills and options for non spellcasters in compact books. A pre 4th ed varient wizard requires a page or two of material (illusionist etc) 4th ed has to once again release pages of powers over a very simple concept. I actually wish more people had played Star Wars Saga as it was 3.5 inspired but had a very simple class structure.
feat talent feat talent
etc At least people would know what I'm talking about anyway. You could take a feat and gain a handful of encounter powers if you wanted them. Other feats and talents were 4th ed daily powers and encounter powers. A new option required around 1 pafge for a new talent tree or two. Had wizards gone down that path a hypothetical 4th ed could have had an old school type fighter had someone wnated one and you could have built something very similar to a 4th ed style character if you wanted. And it required less design space. 4th ed style monsters could more or less be copied and pasted from 4th ed as written. 4th ed was not really well designed or at least not elegantly designed by comparision. SWSE was probably the cleanest d20 product WoTC made, mechanically anyway but it had some issues as well- no RPG product is perfect.
I don't think to many holdouts will be playing 4th ed in 8-10 years time. I did not jump on board the 4th ed bandwagon but I did not abandon it either (DDI for 3 years). Gave up with the silverlight online CB. Had players turn up to play 4th ed, couldn't print out their PCs off the CB ended up playing Star Wars Saga that day. DDI ran out late 2011, bought pathfinder early 2012.
If you are not really happy about 4th eds demise (yes its technically still alive), that was the 3.5 fanbase back in 2008. 4th ed was very different than 3.5 and in hindsight it was probably a bridge to far. Grognards don't mind change contrary to popular belief (apart from a very small and loyal 1st ed fanbase IDK??) but each previous editon change evolved on what came before (BECM,AD&D, AD&D 2nd ed). 3.0 was a large departure I suppose but alot of the changes were things people had houseruled years ago (no more racial level limts, any race can be any class etc). The big change was d20 mechanics. You are never gonna please everyone in edition changes but you upset the applecart and you don't have as many customers. IDK if a majority of D&D p[layers rejected 4th ed but it is certainly a large chunk, probably more than 25% and over 50% would be believeable. 4th ed wasn't bad as such and was very good at what it was designed to do. No point trying to sell a chocolate gateau when the market wants a boysenberry ripple cheesecake though.
Reducing a character to a list of dice rolls and modifiers is not role playing*
The system I do not like is the Essentials mechanic of allowing the player to roll the dice, find out whether or not s/he hits, and then add on all the modifiers and extra powers. "I missed? Oh well, it was only a basic attack." "I Hit? well, that was my take-down strike, my eldrich wizzbang, and my dread smite, and _____ and ____ and ___."
If you allowed this, it is all on you.
Dread Smite, Holy Smite and Backstab are all applied BEFORE the die roll. If this was a problem in your games, it was because you allowed your players to trick you about powers you could not be bothered to read for yourself. You obviously felt that it was abuse, why did you not educate yourself?
Granted, the original curse/sneak attack/quarry system did allow you to choose whether or not to appy the damage, but c'mon. Why wouldn't you if you could? PH1 rules only allowed the damage 1/round, unless you took a feat. It was the essentials retcon that turned it into 1/turn. The stacking powers after the result of Essentials seemed to be keyed to less mature players who would get upset if they missed with their daily or encounter power. Just as the PH2 strikers, instead of a d6 (or d8 with the feat), add their static secondary stat bonus because people don't like rolling 1s with their bonus damage.
Your gripe here isn't really making any sense either. Sorcerer damage was all front loaded, but it is the equivalent of an average bonus die roll, and was harder to maximize. The Avenger didn't have bonus damage at all. Their "bonus damage" is all about hitting more often. Monk Flurry damage is static, but could also be spread around. Babarian base damage was high, but bonus damage required them to use a Daily power.
The Essentials Power Strike was intended to replace Encounter power damage and special effects. In exhange for greater damage potential, it provided reliability. Why is this bad?
This "Vancian is bad" argument... Where to begin. Well, Let's make it simple. I disagree. I think it is a great mechanic, and everyone in the group I play with enjoys it immensely. In fact, aside from this thread, only 1 person I know has disliked it.
The system I do not like is the Essentials mechanic of allowing the player to roll the dice, find out whether or not s/he hits, and then add on all the modifiers and extra powers. "I missed? Oh well, it was only a basic attack." "I Hit? well, that was my take-down strike, my eldrich wizzbang, and my dread smite, and _____ and ____ and ___." Granted, the original curse/sneak attack/quarry system did allow you to choose whether or not to appy the damage, but c'mon. Why wouldn't you if you could? PH1 rules only allowed the damage 1/round, unless you took a feat. It was the essentials retcon that turned it into 1/turn. The stacking powers after the result of Essentials seemed to be keyed to less mature players who would get upset if they missed with their daily or encounter power. Just as the PH2 strikers, instead of a d6 (or d8 with the feat), add their static secondary stat bonus because people don't like rolling 1s with their bonus damage.
PHB1 fighters and to a lesser extent rogues and rangers have powers with the RELIABLE keyword. This is not substantially different from a triggered damage rider like the Slayer etc use. It is true that AFAIK there aren't reliable non-daily PHB1 powers, but remember, Slayers etc don't HAVE daily powers. It is more of a difference in overall implementation than anything else.
As for 'true' Vancian (IE AD&D-like casting), it IS problematic because all the spells are daily use. The problem is that this requires a large number of spell slots at higher levels, which encourages an overly broad power selection and also overly potent individual powers. It also encourages the designers to build in ways to get around things like interruption and weak defenses so that these one-shot powers can be delivered. Overall it is dubious mechanic that encourages overall bad design. At best it is less flexible than the AEDU style design used by 4e in terms of the range of spell power and the ability to have both a slightly narrower set of overall capabilities plus plenty of spell 'slots'. 4e, because of this, allowed for a slightly narrower focus in your caster and a bit less easily unbalanced caster. It also deals with the issue of casters vastly greater alpha strike capability, which allowed them to dominate virtually every plot significant part of the game, except at the lowest levels.
Now, I don't think there aren't potentially other spell system mechanics that could deliver similar improvements. OTOH how many of them also make good unified mechanics for other classes? Some of them might, but I suspect they will tend to be the less 'Vancian' options.
Theres no real incentive to tweak 4th ed that much though. No money in it for WoTC.
Vancian may not be your cup of tea but D&D is now 38 years old and it has had Vancian casting for 34 of them. 4th ed killed some sacred cows, 4th ed tanked and its probably a large reason why. Its coming back in Next but no one seems to upset that they have added at wills and the spells are less powerful than 3.5 varients. Fireball is capped at 5d6 damage now. 4th ed was in troule in late 2010 or early 2011 depending on who you want to ask, but probably when they started canceling books and the release schdule was revised to a book every 2 months barely 2 years after 4th eds launch.
The rapid bloat of 4th ed was pointed out on these forums very early on yet the posters who doing so were "haters" or whatever. Some of the hard core fanboys thought 4th ed would maintain a PHB 1,2,3,4 etc and DMG 1,2,3,4 and a yearly camapign world for around 10 years before 5th came out. 2 years in I think they had aound 80% of 3rd eds bloat in 2 years compared to 8 years for 3rd ed (feats= feats, powers and paragon/epic paths= PRCs and Spells). Every edition bloats, 4th ed was out of control. Hence why I pointed out earlier the bad design of the 4th ed fighter which required pages of powers that a 3.5 fighter required a handful of feats to do. They could have done a 4th ed different than what they did, evolved 3.5 along the lines of Sga or a bit further, added at wills and options for non spellcasters in compact books. A pre 4th ed varient wizard requires a page or two of material (illusionist etc) 4th ed has to once again release pages of powers over a very simple concept. I actually wish more people had played Star Wars Saga as it was 3.5 inspired but had a very simple class structure.
feat talent feat talent
etc At least people would know what I'm talking about anyway. You could take a feat and gain a handful of encounter powers if you wanted them. Other feats and talents were 4th ed daily powers and encounter powers. A new option required around 1 pafge for a new talent tree or two. Had wizards gone down that path a hypothetical 4th ed could have had an old school type fighter had someone wnated one and you could have built something very similar to a 4th ed style character if you wanted. And it required less design space. 4th ed style monsters could more or less be copied and pasted from 4th ed as written. 4th ed was not really well designed or at least not elegantly designed by comparision. SWSE was probably the cleanest d20 product WoTC made, mechanically anyway but it had some issues as well- no RPG product is perfect.
I don't think to many holdouts will be playing 4th ed in 8-10 years time. I did not jump on board the 4th ed bandwagon but I did not abandon it either (DDI for 3 years). Gave up with the silverlight online CB. Had players turn up to play 4th ed, couldn't print out their PCs off the CB ended up playing Star Wars Saga that day. DDI ran out late 2011, bought pathfinder early 2012.
If you are not really happy about 4th eds demise (yes its technically still alive), that was the 3.5 fanbase back in 2008. 4th ed was very different than 3.5 and in hindsight it was probably a bridge to far. Grognards don't mind change contrary to popular belief (apart from a very small and loyal 1st ed fanbase IDK??) but each previous editon change evolved on what came before (BECM,AD&D, AD&D 2nd ed). 3.0 was a large departure I suppose but alot of the changes were things people had houseruled years ago (no more racial level limts, any race can be any class etc). The big change was d20 mechanics. You are never gonna please everyone in edition changes but you upset the applecart and you don't have as many customers. IDK if a majority of D&D p[layers rejected 4th ed but it is certainly a large chunk, probably more than 25% and over 50% would be believeable. 4th ed wasn't bad as such and was very good at what it was designed to do. No point trying to sell a chocolate gateau when the market wants a boysenberry ripple cheesecake though.
Meh, warmed over 3.5 design.
The question you should be asking is whether or not there's jack all money in warmed over AD&D for WotC. I can tell you this, I don't know a single person that I play with, and that's a pretty decent sized crowd these days that cares at all about DDN. Of those people I know a total of 3 D&D games going on, and 2 of them are 4e (the other is a heavily houseruled 3.5 game). I'd be worried if I were WotC.
