The Official "4e Critique and Rebuttal" Thread

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 10:23 pm

Here's the thing though. This is D&D. And that means wealth correlates to power. So yes, the magic item merchant will fucking be optimized, and he'll probably be much higher level as well. Because otherwise, he'd have gotten stabbed in the face and robbed long before the PCs met him. Alternately, the entire organization (Red Wizards) has his back, and since Forgettable Realms is the world of over 9,000 epic wizards this is actually fucking worse than just him kicking your ass and taking your stuff.

So regardless of whether all fights are 'challenging' or not, it's a really fucking bad idea to fuck with the magic item merchant. Especially since he's the one keeping you level appropriate.

Also, NPC generators beg the question of why the fuck these guys haven't been Darwined yet. Seriously, level 20 wizards with... Int 16. Epic Fucking Fail.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 10:52 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
You really do, because you can't be sure about how anything in the world works. If the enemy fireball is better than my fireball, I want to learn it.
It's like your cleric seeing a wizard cast a spell like gaseous form and saying "I want to learn that."

Well tough shit bro, you're a cleric and that's not on your list.

A cleric can learn gaseous form, if he's willing to spend some time going to wizard school. But in 4E, there's no "NPC school" that you can enroll in to learn NPC tricks.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 11:24 pm

hogarth wrote: A cleric can learn gaseous form, if he's willing to spend some time going to wizard school. But in 4E, there's no "NPC school" that you can enroll in to learn NPC tricks.

Yeah, you can but it sucks... so you don't.

Honestly, that's kinda how I would expect "NPC school" in 4E, it's so bad you don't wnat to do it anyway, so don't even bother writing rules nobody will use.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 11:52 pm

Roy wrote: Also, NPC generators beg the question of why the fuck these guys haven't been Darwined yet. Seriously, level 20 wizards with... Int 16. Epic Fucking Fail.

Yeah I wondered the same shit. That's why I could never use them. If they didn't generate something remotely level appropriate, they were fucking garbage.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 12:11 am

I'll agree that NPC generation rules need to be faster than PC generation rules do. That's a given because the DM has a lot more characters to generate and a lot less time to think about each one. But it also needs to generate things that feel like they are in the same world and performing the same actions as the player characters or the world becomes completely unimmersive.

4e hits the first required quality and not the second. 3e hits the second quality and not the first. Both are unacceptable.

But it's easier to take a system and cut corners than it is to "add immersiveness." I can take the 3e NPC rules, guestimate it out, and get something playable and immersive in moments. 4e's system can't overcome the fact that the enemy archers don't feel like they are from the same genre or planet a the PC archers do. There is nothing I can do easily or with difficulty that will make a grimlock minion "feel" like it's a humanoid from the same world as the player characters.

-Username17

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 4:26 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Ultimately we would like a program similar to the one you're talking about where you can instantly generate NPCs based on parameters.

Eh, what do you know. It's in development.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drcw/2009July

Hopefully this won't go the same way as the visualiser...

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 4:56 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: But it's easier to take a system and cut corners than it is to "add immersiveness." I can take the 3e NPC rules, guestimate it out, and get something playable and immersive in moments. 4e's system can't overcome the fact that the enemy archers don't feel like they are from the same genre or planet a the PC archers do.

Honestly, I've always had trouble with cutting corners in 3E, because you're always missing something. I mean, you pretty much need to do out all the shit just so you can calculate the bonuses. You can generally skip doing the skills section of any NPC, but as far as feats, magic items, class levels, and active spells, they're generally something you have to do. And if you end up cutting corners on any of that, the NPC actually loses power. Which is seriously bad, because NPCs are already behind PCs due to less character wealth, so it's pretty much essential that you min/max NPCs to make them a credible threat at all.

I really never saw the problem with 4E's system as far as people knowing that they're different. I mean if you want you can just design some NPCs with actual wizard flavored powers. They can throw magic missiles if you want them to. Even if the damage dice happens to be 1d12+6 instead of 2d4+INT, the PCs won't know the difference, nor is it even going to be a huge difference anyway.

Now 3E allowed you to basically get any ability you wanted. Even racial abilities, if your DM let you play a medusa or something. But it made the opportunity cost often so high for such abilities (in the form of LA or underpowered classes) that you wouldn't want to burn that anyway. That's basically who I picture 4E monster abilities. Since monsters of even level are weaker than PCs, the price they pay to get those abilities just isn't worth a PC buying them.

And I don't see the issue with that. We basically assume that such a class exists, like goblin hexer, but it's so inefficient the PCs never take it, like if you gave commoners some remotely useful ability at level 5. People still wouldn't take that class.

I mean, if anything that's closer to most fantasy than 3E is. I mean, pretty much all the spellcasters in Buffy/Angel used different spells, Gandalf and Saruman both used telekinesis, but that was the end of their similarities. All the guys in Kill Bill pretty much used their own signature special moves/weapons. And none of that killed any kind of verisimilitude for anyone.

I guess I just don't see what the big deal is with different abilities. If anything, that to me makes things more interesting, not less so. The "Everyone is the same" aspect of 3E really killed me. I hated the fact that every 1st level wizard was just a sleep or color spray spammer. And it was worse than that, because it wasn't just wizards, it was sorcerers, wizards, beguilers and basically any other class that could cast those spells. I mean it was generally so bad that you wouldn't even know you just fought a sorcerer or you just fought a wizard. I don't consider that a good part of the system.

We often criticize 4E because all the PC classes feel the same. It's a bad thing because we don't want everyone doing the same shit. Just like we want a fighter to play differently from a ranger (or even another fighter), I think people also want a different feeling if you're going against an agile elven swordsman or an orc warrior. Now 4E's actual monsters are lacking, because, like the rest of the game, the abilities they handed out are just plain boring. But the actual concepts are good.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 5:25 pm

Wait, so you're arguing 3.x stuff is the same because of... level 1? Seriously?

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 5:37 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
hogarth wrote: A cleric can learn gaseous form, if he's willing to spend some time going to wizard school. But in 4E, there's no "NPC school" that you can enroll in to learn NPC tricks.
Yeah, you can but it sucks... so you don't.

Honestly, that's kinda how I would expect "NPC school" in 4E, it's so bad you don't wnat to do it anyway, so don't even bother writing rules nobody will use.

If NPC powers are terrible compared to PC powers (which I don't think is always the case in 4E), then how can NPCs pose a threat to PCs?

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 5:47 pm

Massive swarms and Iterative Probability.

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 8:25 pm

hogarth wrote:If NPC powers are terrible compared to PC powers (which I don't think is always the case in 4E), then how can NPCs pose a threat to PCs?

They typically don't. In an equal level encounter, the PCs win.

violence in the media · Mon Jul 27, 2009 4:35 am

RandomCasualty2 wrote: I mean, if anything that's closer to most fantasy than 3E is. I mean, pretty much all the spellcasters in Buffy/Angel used different spells, Gandalf and Saruman both used telekinesis, but that was the end of their similarities. All the guys in Kill Bill pretty much used their own signature special moves/weapons. And none of that killed any kind of verisimilitude for anyone.

Doesn't that really have more to do with those characters existing in a continuum they only get to run through once? Not only that, but they don't get to analyze the mechanics that govern their world. The spellcasters in Buffy or Angel don't get much opportunity to learn that Firebolt sucks ass and won't save them from the slayer. But the one guy that knows Invisibility can escape every time and he's not about to share that advantage. The assassins in Kill Bill don't get to compare the relative merits of their styles on the Martial Art Bonus Chart.

As a player, you get to learn which spells and techniques and ways of doing things are better than others, and that knowledge tends to carry forward and get dispersed among the player base. Wizards, and their related classes, don't use Sleep because they have to, they use Sleep because it is mechanically the best option in most cases. Don't force some people to play with options that suck out of some misguided desire for diversity.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 5:24 am

violence in the media wrote: Doesn't that really have more to do with those characters existing in a continuum they only get to run through once? Not only that, but they don't get to analyze the mechanics that govern their world. The spellcasters in Buffy or Angel don't get much opportunity to learn that Firebolt sucks ass and won't save them from the slayer. But the one guy that knows Invisibility can escape every time and he's not about to share that advantage. The assassins in Kill Bill don't get to compare the relative merits of their styles on the Martial Art Bonus Chart.

And neither do your characters really. The goblin hexer doesn't know that his abilities are inferior to a PC wizard. He learns his schtick and the PC learns his schtick. It happens of course that the PC schtick happens to be better, which is okay, because protagonists in stories are generally better than the enemies they face.

As a player, you get to learn which spells and techniques and ways of doing things are better than others, and that knowledge tends to carry forward and get dispersed among the player base. Wizards, and their related classes, don't use Sleep because they have to, they use Sleep because it is mechanically the best option in most cases. Don't force some people to play with options that suck out of some misguided desire for diversity.

Well yeah, options within a given classes ability choices should be balanced. But having sleep be worse than acid arrow is just the result of the designers fucking up. It's not really a game design principle.

It's okay for sleep to be better than the NPC wizards forked lightning spell, because you can't choose that as a PC anyway. It's not okay that it's better than other PC wizard spells.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 7:53 am

RandomCasualty2 wrote:I guess I just don't see what the big deal is with different abilities. If anything, that to me makes things more interesting, not less so.

Players should be able to make informed tactical decisions based on the knowledge of what the enemy is. If yu have a random assortment of abilities, you wouldn't know how they interact with each other and what to do other than spam your best attacks and hope to roll high.

Duh, I'm just rehashing Frank's arguments from the aWoD thread in badly worded English. Unique abilities can be good for a story, but they are almost always bad for a game.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 8:07 am

Starmaker wrote: Players should be able to make informed tactical decisions based on the knowledge of what the enemy is. If yu have a random assortment of abilities, you wouldn't know how they interact with each other and what to do other than spam your best attacks and hope to roll high.

Well, yes and no. Players determine what monsters or NPCs can do basically by description. I mean by default you don't seriously know what class you're up against or what a monster can necessarily do unless you read the MM.

So really, as far as what a hill giant can do, you're just kinda guessing anyway. You just know it's big and strong.

Now where I do have a problem with 4E is when there's a disconnect from what you'd expect for no good reason. Like the gelatinous cube having a 16 reflex save. WTF?

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 9:22 am

RandomCasualty2 wrote: So really, as far as what a hill giant can do, you're just kinda guessing anyway. You just know it's big and strong.

Some things you can figure out from the start. For everything else, there's always Bear Lore et al. Thus, even if you personally don't know what abilities a paperclip demon from Dragon 313 has, your character does. Failing that, D&D3.5 might not have the degree of internal consistency Frank is aiming for with aWoD, but it does have tags and SLAs. We actually know how to deal with [Mind-Affecting] or (Sp) Teleport without error.

Concerning the hill giant: It has reach, high Str and Con, Power Attack and some other feats the DM cares to give it. And that pretty much wraps it up for the hill giant. The only ability I have no way of guessing outright is Rock Catching, but I don't care outside of Damocles' Ingot cheese.

Now, it can be an illusion, or a polymorphed something, or a decent rewrite with (say) druid class levels. This can take time to sort through, and time in an RLT environment is precious. (Thus the [awesome] tag for aboleth, dragons and the like.)

4e, not being RLT, can allow the players to spend some time figuring out the best counters to a monster's abilities. But exception-based design essentially throws that option out of the window.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:21 am

RandomCasualty2 wrote: And neither do your characters really. The goblin hexer doesn't know that his abilities are inferior to a PC wizard. He learns his schtick and the PC learns his schtick. It happens of course that the PC schtick happens to be better, which is okay, because protagonists in stories are generally better than the enemies they face.

That's reasonable, perhaps, but the stupid part is when your elf wizard PC can't learn Elf (NPC) Magic even though that's what all of his NPC elf buddies use. Saying "elf magic sucks donkey balls" is a stupid answer; apparently elf NPCs are so dumb that they can't figure out "Hey, our PC buddy is using something that's 10 times better than our donkey-ball-suck-magic; why don't we learn that instead? Is it because of this big letter 'N' that's tattooed on my chest?"

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:42 pm

Taking an example off the web at random, here is a "Monster" Elf Predator Druid:
http://tools.dungeonmastering.com/monst ... hared/4314

What is so special or different about this stat block, compared to the powers and stats of a PC Elf Druid? Alternatively, what is so special or different about the way this monster plays, compared to how a PC Elf Druid plays?

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 5:04 pm

Starmaker wrote: Some things you can figure out from the start. For everything else, there's always Bear Lore et al. Thus, even if you personally don't know what abilities a paperclip demon from Dragon 313 has, your character does. Failing that, D&D3.5 might not have the degree of internal consistency Frank is aiming for with aWoD, but it does have tags and SLAs. We actually know how to deal with [Mind-Affecting] or (Sp) Teleport without error.

Tags are good. But the 4E system can easily support tags too.

Concerning the hill giant: It has reach, high Str and Con, Power Attack and some other feats the DM cares to give it. And that pretty much wraps it up for the hill giant. The only ability I have no way of guessing outright is Rock Catching, but I don't care outside of Damocles' Ingot cheese.

Yeah, only because you've seen the MM entry and are familiar with it. It may have fire breath for all you know, and if it did, there's just no way to predict that until you've seen him in action.

4e, not being RLT, can allow the players to spend some time figuring out the best counters to a monster's abilities. But exception-based design essentially throws that option out of the window.

Well it's not so much EBD that does that, as much as the fact that 4E isn't counter based at all. Magic the gathering is EBD, but you have plenty of counters because the cards are designed to interact with each other. You have some that are enchantments and others that destroy enchantments. That's really what 4E lacks. When your opponents are tossing out [fire] powers or [psychic] powers, there's no way to actually stop it. And that's the problem with 4E. There just aren't powers that beat other powers. 4E is like playing M:tG with no summons, no counters, no artifacts... all you really have is lightning bolts and healing salves.

And we can see the 4E devs are really struggling as far as making significant counters. We have magic items in the adventurer's vault that prevent healing effects from working on people. Only monsters don't even have healing, so they're totally pointless. Monsters with the same ability would actually be a significant counter, but instead they put it in magic items. WTF?

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 5:26 pm

MartinHarper wrote:Taking an example off the web at random, here is a "Monster" Elf Predator Druid:
http://tools.dungeonmastering.com/monst ... hared/4314

What is so special or different about this stat block, compared to the powers and stats of a PC Elf Druid? Alternatively, what is so special or different about the way this monster plays, compared to how a PC Elf Druid plays?

Seriously? The ridiculously huge pile of hit points (3x what a PC druid would have with the exact same stats and level- and I'm not kidding: 12 + CON (13) + 5 per level afterwards = 40) and the ridiculous defense scores- all but fort is 2 points higher than what a PC would have. Oh, and the bonus to saving throws. All of this is, of course, a result of the fucking <elite> tag, which much like <solo>, is one of the major fuck-ups of 4e.

Other differences... flame seed is randomly encounter rather at will (with a +1 to damage from... something, flurry recharges for no apparent reason, and she lacks a second encounter power that at PC would have. But other than that, all the bonuses from the elite tag make her _just better_ than a 4th level PC druid.

Its a weird thing with 'classed' monsters in 4e. They're in theory the same as PCs, but have a couple fewer powers (so thats is easier on the DM), but have massive hit points beyond all reason and better defenses that a PC can never, ever get. Despite PC A and NPC B bothing being the same class and level. And the obvious question for 4e players is 'why can't I trade in a power to be superman?'

Somehow hitting it less and having to chew through the giant pile of hit points makes it more challenging than just treating it like a PC. Really, which would be more fun? Fighting two of these bitches and 4 random level 4 elven minions, or 5 NPCs that are built like your PCs are? I'd say the latter, because that could be an interesting fight, while I know exactly how the former will go: the minions will get blown the fuck up as incidental damage from area attacks, one of the bitches will get stunlocked, and everybody else will dogpile on bitch #1, then repeat the gangbang on #2.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 5:51 pm

The monsters have more hit points than PCs because they aren't supposed to be healing during the battle. Realy the PC Druid can take MUCH more damage what with second wind, healing words, and so on. The Monster just gets all his HP up front for ease of play.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 5:54 pm

Voss wrote: Somehow hitting it less and having to chew through the giant pile of hit points makes it more challenging than just treating it like a PC. Really, which would be more fun? Fighting two of these bitches and 4 random level 4 elven minions, or 5 NPCs that are built like your PCs are?

That's a rather unfair strawman since you could just have 5 NPCs that are built as standard non-elite NPCs and it would be more interesting than the two elites.

And while that's an argument for why elite monsters (and especially solos) are generally a bad concept, it doesn't do much to prove how NPCs should be created.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 5:56 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
There just aren't powers that beat other powers. 4E is like playing M:tG with no summons, no counters, no artifacts... all you really have is lightning bolts and healing salves.

Freakin' QFT.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 6:10 pm

Boolean wrote:The monsters have more hit points than PCs because they aren't supposed to be healing during the battle. Realy the PC Druid can take MUCH more damage what with second wind, healing words, and so on. The Monster just gets all his HP up front for ease of play.

Really? Your argument is that he gets 8 'virtual' healing surges as non actions throughout the encounter (and up front) and that makes it acceptable? Even though no one can actually do that? Because each of that 4th level druid's surges would be 10 hp, and you'd seriously need 3 leader classes focusing all their encounter healing class features on just this guy, his second wind (which is in action), and someone else with an 8th healing power from a multiclass feat or just some random utility power to pull this crap you're suggesting off.

Sorry, that shit doesn't fly. Each elite npc is not fucking accompanied by a train of 3 virtual clerics.

Even if acceptable on a mechanical level (which it isn't, because it makes fights with elites as boring as shit, clunky, and turn into 5+ rounds of 'I hit it with my 'at will' power, again'), it still has serious problems when two elf druids of the same level are totally different creatures because npcs are playing a completely different game.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
Voss wrote: Somehow hitting it less and having to chew through the giant pile of hit points makes it more challenging than just treating it like a PC. Really, which would be more fun? Fighting two of these bitches and 4 random level 4 elven minions, or 5 NPCs that are built like your PCs are?
That's a rather unfair strawman since you could just have 5 NPCs that are built as standard non-elite NPCs and it would be more interesting than the two elites.

And while that's an argument for why elite monsters (and especially solos) are generally a bad concept, it doesn't do much to prove how NPCs should be created.

Uh, RC... this is how classed NPCs are created in 4e. It certainly illustrates why creating them this way is fucking terrible. Which is also why it isn't a strawman: the dm throwing a handful of PC write-ups in as NPCs is actually a better system than doing it by the book. Plus they'd have more depth (useful, if they're important npcs) than doing 'standard non-elite npcs'

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 6:14 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
Voss wrote: Somehow hitting it less and having to chew through the giant pile of hit points makes it more challenging than just treating it like a PC. Really, which would be more fun? Fighting two of these bitches and 4 random level 4 elven minions, or 5 NPCs that are built like your PCs are?
That's a rather unfair strawman since you could just have 5 NPCs that are built as standard non-elite NPCs and it would be more interesting than the two elites.

And while that's an argument for why elite monsters (and especially solos) are generally a bad concept, it doesn't do much to prove how NPCs should be created.

How is that a strawman? The actual rules suggest that when you make an NPC that you take a monster and use the "class templates" which make the monster into an Elite. While you could come up with many better ways to put Halfling Fighters on the board as enemies using the 4e engine, the actual rules are a pointer to their non-functional Elite subsystem.

-Username17