d&d 4e

[Hedgehog]

I was just wondering why everyone thinks 4e is a bad trpg

[All-Terrain Monkey]

Here's a couple of pages of answers to your question.

[Jay_Bizzle]

I was just wondering why everyone thinks 4e is a bad trpg

 

Not everyone does. I actually love the system. So do my two groups. We'll never go back to 3.x, we unloaded all of our books and have never looked back. Most people who hate it and gripe about it so much are the people who haven't sat down to give it an actual try... the same thing happened with the change from 2nd to 3rd. I love 4th edition because it fixed a lot of crap in 3.x that I for one could not stand, and it promotes a lot more team oriented game play. I by no means want to get into a heated debate about 3.x vs 4.0 (which is bound to happen anytime you bring this topic up on an internet message board,) but I do believe 4.0 is by far the superior product.

[Kataclysm]

I have always felt the the actual rule set was only as guideline to resolve non RPed interactions. I always encouraged my players to describe their actions or to act out more actively. Which I feel is more fun than "I hit it with my stick again"

 

I personally feel that 4th edition takes away some of that interaction and makes the game some sort of mish mash of card battle game and striped down mmo. That's not to say I haven't played it, but I just didn't care for it.

 

Play what you like. A friend of mine has the big book of everything (i think that's what it is called anyway) And its about as far from either as you can get. It's fun, but its more about the group and how you play than the rules IMO.

[SIGIL]

:D Maybe we shoudl just sticky one of these threads!

[Lars Porsenna]

See my thoughts here.

 

More here.

 

And to respond to Jay Bizzle, We played more than 15 levels of the game, jumping a bit to specifically see how the game plays at higher level.

 

I've gone in the opposite direction, and unloaded what 4e material I have on the internet.

 

Damon.

[Jame]

I have always felt the the actual rule set was only as guideline to resolve non RPed interactions. I always encouraged my players to describe their actions or to act out more actively. Which I feel is more fun than "I hit it with my stick again"

 

I personally feel that 4th edition takes away some of that interaction and makes the game some sort of mish mash of card battle game and striped down mmo. That's not to say I haven't played it, but I just didn't care for it.

 

Play what you like. A friend of mine has the big book of everything (i think that's what it is called anyway) And its about as far from either as you can get. It's fun, but its more about the group and how you play than the rules IMO.

 

I've read it, and while I like what they did with the setting ... it's too much of a powers-based game for me. I vastly prefer skill challenges.

 

I'm going to stick to other games, for example Traveller and Shadowrun. But if someone used, say, the d6 system with the D&D 4E setting, I might be interested.

[Hedgehog]

ok i kind of get it now would u guys think it would be good for a bunch of beginners and my uncle might be willing to GM would it be hard for him to transfer from GMing for 3e

[Dr.Bedlam]

ok i kind of get it now would u guys think it would be good for a bunch of beginners and my uncle might be willing to GM would it be hard for him to transfer from GMing for 3e

 

Interesting you should ask that. I teach middle school, specializing in behavior problems.

 

I have recently begun using D&D as a reinforcer... (and secret math and reading reinforcement) for my kids. It makes 'em read. It makes 'em practice mental math. And its addictive nature means that they'll durn well behave if they want to earn some precious gold and XP during free time at the end of the day, durnit.

 

When I first began considering D&D in this light, I pondered which edition to use. These are kids ranging from eleven to fourteen, with no gaming background, and a fierce hatred of all reading materials not containing nudie pictures. The fewer details the better. I considered the fact that if they got "hooked," they would begin wanting to read up and research their powers and possibilities.

 

Ultimately, I decided to go with 3.5; it was more feasible to strip down each class to its essentials. If they wanted to read up on bonus spells, cleric domains, and so forth, that would be great, but I envisioned them trying to make sense of power cards and class paths, and realized that if I tried to get them into 4.0, they'd get bogged down, get bored, and quit before they even began.

 

Ultimately, first or second edition's the most beginner friendly, but 3.5 offers the most options. And Pathfinder, ultimately, cleans up a lot of the problems in 3.5...

[Alric]

I was just wondering why everyone thinks 4e is a bad trpg

 

I concur with Mr. Bizzle; not everyone does. Having cut my D&D teeth during the first edition years, playing through second edition and avoiding 3e almost entirely (it wasn't compatible with the material I already had, it had too many rules, and it was, in my opinion, a poorly-designed game), I consider 4e to be the best version of D&D yet produced.

 

I sold off all of my old D&D stuff except the rulebooks, which I dust off from time to time for nostalgia purposes, if that's any indication of how much I like 4e. It's very easy to learn, to DM for and to design adventures for. Heck, it's the first edition with a DM's Guide that tells you how to be a DM.

 

As far as your uncle being able to run it, he'll not only find it to be an easier system, he'll be astonished at how little time he'll need to prepare. I sure was.

[chronoplasm]

A big part of it is the emphasis on tactical combat with miniatures. That's nothing new of course; Dungeons & Dragons did evolve from a certain miniatures wargame called Chainmail.

The Feats system reminded people of Magic: the Gathering when it was introduced in third edition. The Powers system is even more similar to a trading card game in that you can actually buy decks of power cards (a useful tool though. It's more convenient to have the game's rules spread right in front of you as cards then it is to constantly flip through the book all the time. I hear this is something that the new Warhammer RPG game does really well.)

 

If you don't like miniatures wargames like Chainmail or trading card games like Magic: the Gathering, then D&D4E probably isn't the game for you. If you do like these kinds of games however, then you may find D&D4E to be quite enjoyable.

It's important to note however that you can strip these elements out of the game should you choose to emphasize the interesting skill challenge mechanic that's been introduced.

[Doug Sundseth]

If you do like these kinds of games however, then you may find D&D4E to be quite enjoyable.

 

Or not. I started playing miniatures games in the 1970s and have written miniatures rules set, I was a playtester for M:tG and several other CCGs, and I started playing RPGs in 1976. I find 4e uninteresting in actual play.

 

I think the classes are very similar to each other and combat encounters tend to have very similar flows. FWIW, I played a Warlock for about a year in 3.5 and to me all of the classes feel very Warlock-y. Been there; done that; bored now.

 

YMMV.

[chronoplasm]

Or not. I started playing miniatures games in the 1970s and have written miniatures rules set, I was a playtester for M:tG and several other CCGs, and I started playing RPGs in 1976. I find 4e uninteresting in actual play.

 

I think the classes are very similar to each other and combat encounters tend to have very similar flows. FWIW, I played a Warlock for about a year in 3.5 and to me all of the classes feel very Warlock-y. Been there; done that; bored now.

 

YMMV.

 

The underlined part might have more to do with your DM then the actual system itself. Can you give us some examples of combat encounters you've faced?

If we're going strictly by anecdotes here then I gotta say I've experienced some of the same and some of the opposite.

 

I played a Warlock in the Keep on the Shadowfell module. I had fun playing the character, but I would have had more fun if not for the fact that KotS sucks and the DM was railroady. In this case, the combat encounters in general did tend to have very similar flows, but this could have been remedied by adding a greater variety of traps, hazards, and terrain features to the battles, and if the DM had integrated skill challenges into the game beyond what was pescribed in the module. I wanted to use bluff and intimidate to force enemies to retreat. The DM wouldn't allow this even though it's allowed in the rules. I wanted to knock enemies out, capture thim, and perform a skill challenge to interrogate them or even persuade to join the party as companion characters. There are guidelines in the rules. The DM didn't use them. It's his call as the DM of course, it's just really railroady.

 

I'm currently playing a half-orc tempest Fighter with a hook for a hand and a handlebar moustache in a PHB game. The campaign setting is based on the popular Castlevania games.

First off, my fighter played a lot differently from my Warlock in the previous game. Beyond the obvious ranged vs. melee divide that separates Warlocks and Fighters, my man 'Captain Conrad' was exceptionally good at charging and making multiple attacks each turn against two or more enemies at once whereas my Warlock 'Nevik' was geared more towards blasting enemies and healing himself. You might think it's all the same, but I saw a stark difference.

The DM in this game has done a very good job of making combat encounters exciting and dynamic.

The first battle against zombies and a warg was fairly standard, of course. It was a good introduction though.

The second battle required the party to help a small group of adventurers cross a street without being noticed while monsters roamed the city. We ended up fighting many fleanmen that bounced around the street like billiard balls, then we fought a homebrewed Frankenstein's Monster boss with an electrical attack. The terrain features here were quite interesting and there was lots of room to fight.

In our last battle we fought against and imp, and his skeletal guards, then several animated cherub statues that were guarding a crypt. The arena was a lot more cramped than any of the previous encounters, and the pillars and sarcophagi made for interesting terrain. My man Conrad found an apparently magical rosary that made him invisible against the statues. That was pretty fun.

 

I also DM games myself when I get the chance.

 

One dungeon I ran featured a battle with a giant centipede that popped out of a coffin and scuttled around, leading the party on a chase through all the chambers of the dungeon. The centipede made its last stand in the sludge pit room, where it dived into a sludge pit that was connected to another through a tunnel under the floor. The centipede would pop its head out of one pit, spit some goo out, then dive back in to reappear the following turn in the other pit. It was fun. The party included a brother/sister dragonborn duo. One was a dragonborn Cleric, the other was a dragonborn Rogue. They both played very differently.

[TaleSpinner]

My group took a serious look at 4e. Several of us own the core set of books, etc... I wasn't thrilled with the Roles and other radical changes, but these were just due to unfamiliarity, and I would have accepted them and probably would learn to like them. There were, however, several changes that made it unuseable by me and my group, primarily centered around a lack of continuity with past versions. I have a rich world that we've developed over 30 years of play. There are many stuctures and NPCs in place in this world that would simply not work in the 4e rule set. 4e isn't "D&D." The company that owns the rights to the name D&D has a right to stamp anything out there with that label, but one can also call a pig a horse and it isn't going to make it whinny. All other versions still had the same basic design. Spells worked about the same way. Characters did things in similar ways. The basic flow of the game changed with each version, but all were modifications on the past skeletal framework. This new game started over and made a neat new game, but it is not compatible with the way in which we play.

 

We're now switching to Pathfinder, the game 4e should have been (IMHO).

[joshuaslater]

People are diggin' Pathfinder. I hear nothing but rave reviews. I looked at the new Warhammer edition, but ultimately, what it boils down to is lack of interest and coin on my part to switch to something else.