How much of the anti-4E sentiment is actually justified?

[Plebian]

Great Plebian as you've done with everyone else's post you just trivialized and dismissed my complaint. Well I'm not gonna bother any more either the only thing I have a big problem with what you siad is you think its right for one intimidate check, regardless of how successful it is, to lead to automatic failure. Instead of just acknowledging the fact, and it IS a fact, that Skill Challenges, especially the first version that I played with suck you instead turn it into my fault. I fully expect intimidate to fundamentally change how things go but what shouldn't happen is AUTO-FAILURE no matter what.

actually Intimidate only auto-fails skill challenges, as I've seen, if you fail the check. but if you can explain to me why a challenge should continue onwards after you threatened to rip the duke's balls off and he called you on it, please do

[MGuy]

Just to add more clarity. I didn't even fucking intimidate the people we were fucking tried to socialize with. I tried intimidaing a thiird party into HELPING us convince them because the3rd party were ne'er-do-wells that I was threatening to do the *just* thing but by virtue of it being a skill challenge that using INTIMIDATE makes the whole thing fall apart.

[Doom]

actually Intimidate only auto-fails skill challenges, as I've seen, if you fail the check.

Looks like Darwinism hasn't even read the DMG....well, assuming bots can actually read.

[quanta]

The problem with your argument ROLL 1d6,

1. Lago
2. Plebian
3. Psychic Robot
4. Frank
5. Tzor
6. Someone Else (see subchart)

Is that ROLL 1d6

1. "You ignored my point entirely, I still want an answer"
2. "It's hardly unique to 3e/4e, that's a problem in your favorite edition too"
3. "The sales figures I made up are better."
4. "Nothing you say is gonna make me like playing your boring and unbalanced edition"
5. "You forgot what happened in older editions, it used to work like blah blah blah, and by gum we liked it, uphill both ways in the snow whippersnappers and yer videyah games....
6. "Is that I am going to use a small tangent to respond to it with unrelated nonsense, as follows....."

So unless ROLL 1d6

1. "You address that issue soon"
2. "You start making some sense"
3. "You find a real source for your data"
4. "You stop asking for a game to meet contradictory goals"
5. "You stop making such basic grammar mistakes"
6. "Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane"

I am going to ROLL 1d6

1. Repeat my argument with slightly different words until the end of time.
2. Use a bunch of profanity to no real effect
3. Blame you for prior failings within my gaming group
4. Accuse you of being Charlie Sheen
5. Keep right on responding to your posts without actually comprehending them.
6. Put you on ignore

I know Josh has me on ignore, but "best... post... ever".

[Krusk]

I have played a LOT of 4e. I will weigh in with the official End All Arguments Ever Post. Complete with anecdotal evidence showing that these issues are real issues people actually have.

I ran the pre-release adventure H1 with preview characters the day it came out. Encounter 1 the party tries to loot the glue pots and a magic staff this one kobold was zapping them with. I have to houserule stuff into the game in encounter 1. I let them take some glue pots and I let them have the stick straight off the kobold (complete with recharge).

People wanted to sell stuff, and then got pissy with me personally when I said "Non magic stuff doesn't sell" and "Magic is at 1/5th base price" as though I personally was the one scewing them. In the end I gave full price because that is a load of shit and doesn't make sense.

At the first skill challenge, I had to literally stop the players and say "Wait, we are gonna try this skill challenge thing" because they kept trying to use skills to do stuff instead.

They have changed the skill challenge rules since then, but I haven't been able to get a straight answer out of 4e defenders explaining how they work now. No one agrees. I spend a lot of time on WoTC forums. Skill challenges are always a flame war, and usually not because people say "They don't work" "Yes they do" but because "These are the official rules" "No these are". The best I have gotten is "Everyone do their best to cooperate and make the rules work even though they don't always" as the official rules.

My first time playing 4e I decided "Wow the warlock sounds badass". I was literally 100% ineffective. My job became "Provide flanking to the other PCs so they can kill stuff".

Every time we ever play a game at high levels people bitch when it comes to choosing powers because its a pain in the ass. They all do basically the same thing, and no one cares.

In that same vein, people bitch when it is time to level because none of the choices matter, and it is a pain.

We had to house rule the entire MMI. Before the new one came with the erratta that said "House rule everything to work... sort of". Every single person on WoTC was saying "Just subtract the monster HP by a third". How the hell is your math this off?

In the end I will run a 4e one shot, if there are no more than 3 fights, and little to no roleplay outside of combat (AKA dungeon delve). I won't play it. We also won't go above level 5, because even the proponents of the game get bored by level 6. Yes 4e deserves every criticism given on these boards.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm in the same boat Krusk. Bizarrely, I have a lot more fun running 4E than actually playing it. Of course I have a few stipulations, such as never starting a campaign below level 7 and having monsters surrender early. I have a huge list of house rules and I was even using the 'bump monster damage up, deflate monster hit point' houserule for quite some time--I just couldn't believe the large amount of hubris WotC had thinking that releasing a few sentences of errata would fix the problem. But W/E.

[Shazbot79]

I have a huge list of house rules and I was even using the 'bump monster damage up, deflate monster hit point' houserule for quite some time.

Could you elaborate on some of these houserules? You generally have some good ideas and I'm curious to read what you've done with 4E.

Personally, I refuse to play monsters as being dumber than they should be, so I'm not going to have an encounter where a Beholder conveniently floats down to the ground so the beatsticks can hammer it into submission.

So far, the only accommodation I've made for melee characters in non-melee encounters is using the DMG2's inherent bonus system, so that the Fighter's ranged wasn't completely ineffectual. To me, this is only really an issue in some encounters, like vs. a solo beholder...but I'm torn between just accepting that melee classes have to suck in those encounters, just like casters suck in encounters with monsters that can teleport into melee and curb stomp them, or throwing an extra bone to those classes, by letting them blow encounter powers to do more damage on generic attacks or something.

Paladin story: edited for space

That sounds pretty godawful...but I don't think the DM knew what he was doing. Gen1 Paladins are pretty subpar as defenders...that's just a fact, so your experience would have been tainted regardless, but there are a few things your DM did wrong.

1: Ranger's Quarry ability isn't a mark, so it wouldn't have superseded yours.
2: Paladins are supposed to get 4 trained skills, religion and 3 others.
3: If intimidate is a barred skill, then attempting to use it should have resulted in 1 failure, not the entire skill challenge.

G1 paladins and warlocks were a big disappointment in a lot of ways, because they aren't designed to promote their role very well. In other words, they don't do what it said they'd do on the tin.

For example, a Paladin is an inferior defender in every way when compared to the fighter or warden. But is a superior healer to the Shaman, which is a class that is supposed to be good at that kind of thing.

Likewise, a Warlock is an inferior striker in every way when compared to the Ranger...as is every other striker ("damage" is a stupid role) But the g1 warlock made a better controller in a lot of ways than the g1 Wizard, because at the time the people writing the game had no fucking clue what a controller was actually supposed to do, so the Wizard blasted groups of creatures, while the warlock and clerics were the best at dealing out vexing status effects, which later became controller territory.

I like 4E better than 3E. A lot better. But I still feel that 4E failed on a lot of levels, mostly because the designers didn't seem to have a very good idea of what they wanted the game to do. I think it was Rob Heinsoo who said on his blog that the game was pushed out well before it was ready.

At this point, 4E really just feels like a beta test for something else. There are some good ideas there, but I find myself waiting for the time when those ideas bare fruit.

[Plebian]

it's inexcusably stupid for anyone to try and expand their personal dislikes of 4e to include such statements as "4e fails" or "4e prevents roleplay" or "4e is a bad game" because as soon as you say something along the lines of "chocolate is the worst flavor ever" objectively you are an idiot

[Psychic Robot]

it's inexcusably stupid for anyone to try and expand their personal dislikes of 4e to include such statements as "4e fails" or "4e prevents roleplay" or "4e is a bad game" because as soon as you say something along the lines of "chocolate is the worst flavor ever" objectively you are an idiot

4e fails because its own stated design goals aren't met.

DESIGN GOAL: Make classes balanced and interesting.
DESIGN GOAL: Eliminate the magic item Christmas tree.
DESIGN GOAL: Give everyone the ability to be good at skills.
DESIGN GOAL: Create a working skill challenge system.
DESIGN GOAL: Make monsters unique, interesting, and fun to fight.
DESIGN GOAL: Fix the RNG.

[Kaelik]

it's inexcusably stupid for anyone to try and expand their personal dislikes of 4e to include such statements as "4e fails" or "4e prevents roleplay" or "4e is a bad game" because as soon as you say something along the lines of "chocolate is the worst flavor ever" objectively you are an idiot

Any time you say "Killing Jews is bad" you are making a subjective statement. Or you are making a false objective statement.

4e fails is also either a subjective statement (fails to do what?) or a false objective statement (it clearly succeeds in training a troll squad to show up at 3e forums and whine a lot, but I get the feeling calling a literal piece of shit 4e would have done the same).

I will start whining about how wrong the statement "4e is a bad game" is when you start whining about how wrong the statement "Hitler was a bad guy" is.

Until then, please go the fuck away, you are posting in a forum called "In my Humble Opinion" and whining about how it's not fair for other people to have opinions you disagree with.

[Red_Rob]

it's inexcusably stupid for anyone to try and expand their personal dislikes of 4e to include such statements as "4e fails" or "4e prevents roleplay" or "4e is a bad game" because as soon as you say something along the lines of "chocolate is the worst flavor ever" objectively you are an idiot

People don't say that. They say "4e fails at this thing that it stated it was going to do, and here's why", or "4e prevents roleplay because these mechanics hinder attempts to roleplay in this way." If you believe differently, you are supposed to try to rebuff the points by showing that it doesn't do that, or the mechanics don't work like that. This is called Debate, and its what this forum is usually full of when whiny jackasses don't fill up threads with pointless posts like yours.

You'll notice that there is lots of talk about how to make 3e better on here. The first step towards this was admitting that 3e had a lot of things wrong with it. If everyone had kept shouting "uh-uh, Monks are great!" or "No, casters have limited spells so they are even with Fighters!" then things would never have moved forward.

[shadzar]

and then you go and say the game shitted on previous editions, and I'm betting it was said when AD&D was released.

No, WotC started shitting on editions. TSR NEVER once attacked one of its previous editions in that manner, it is the infantile attitudes of WotC and those D&D and other gamers that WotC has created that take this stance.

1st edition came out as a whole new game from OD&D. It may have asked questions akin to "tired of looking through many books to find the rules?", but that was because it wasn't going to be a game of that many books for the whole of the game to be found in different "levels" withint different books.

AD&D just said that there was going to be one book up front, and if you can find and buy it, you would have all you needed to play. So a player didn't need to search through 5 books of BECMI to find their character and convert things.

This wasnt saying OD&D was a bad game, jsut the delivery was wrong in the design method, and now they could do better with the new game.

2nd edition didn't come out and tell people they were playing the game wrong either.

Like 1st edition, 2nd edition came out and said WE (TSR) did something wrong, and are trying to fix it. We had placed errata and some new things in, while better organizing the product.

3rd edition comes out like this:

2nd editoin was fucked up. stop playing that broken game and play this version that finally fixes all those old problems.

But it didn't and had more problems of its own.

4th edition comes out like this:

If you have ever played D&D before you were doing it all wrong, you were playing wrong, and you played badly and should feel bad for it! Here is the way the dead creators of it meant for it to be played when THEY (not us) made it 30+ years ago.

WotC shit on TSR when 3rd came out, 4th shit on D&D and all its players when it came out.

So why are people so strongly trying to fight WotC, their attitude, and the attitude they have passed on with 4th edition to the players? To get rid of the assholes that enjoying sucking off Mike Mearls and James Wyatt, and actually get the game back to D&D rather than a giant pissing contest between the designers.

If the fucktards that created 4th edition are so damn good, then why didn't they created a game in 1974 that lasted as long as D&D did before 4th edition killed D&D in favor of this miniature based wargmae supergeroe fairy tale nonsense shit?

They didn't because they suck as designers, and are fighter against people that are dead and saying their game wa shit, when in fact Mike Mearls and the rest of his WotC crew couldn't make a decent game that would sell if not for owning the name D&D.

If they could they could have released 4th editon as a whole new fucking game without having to rely on, and destroy the name of the game that WAS D&D.

4th edition deserves every piece of shit flung at it because it is NOT just the collection of rules in the books, but the designers and their attitudes are also a large part of what 4th edition is.

They should feel ashamed and dishonored and commit seppeku, to save some of the honor D&D actually had, because they have lost anything as respectable game designers themselves. Those designers that keep remaining through the lay-offs are the ones that are the problems. Either by kissing corporate ass, or just being shitty designers like Mike Mearls who admittedly doesn't know D&D anymore because he has forgotten previous editions while fucking them up with newer ones.

[CCarter]

it's inexcusably stupid for anyone to try and expand their personal dislikes of 4e to include such statements as "4e fails" or "4e prevents roleplay" or "4e is a bad game" because as soon as you say something along the lines of "chocolate is the worst flavor ever" objectively you are an idiot

Saying 'Worst' means that its subjective, unless you're specifying worst at something.
Or are you saying that all subjective opinions means you're objectively wrong.

Incidentally, "objectively you are an idiot" and "chocolate is the worst flavour ever" fall into exactly the same category as statements, Captain Hypocrisy.

[Data Vampire]

DESIGN GOAL: Eliminate the magic item Christmas tree.

They took until Dark Sun, but they eventually did this with the inherent bonus rules.

DESIGN GOAL: Fix the RNG.

What is "RNG"?

[Psychic Robot]

Random number generator. In D&D, it's the d20. Being "on" the RNG means that you have a reasonable ratio of success-to-failure with each roll. The problem with 3e is that you were rarely "on" the RNG--you either had an auto-success or an auto-failure when rolling.

[Swordslinger]

That's the key you're missing. Yes, 3e has flaws, and you can argue those flaws are as bad sometimes as 4e. But doing so means you're basically the games are both bad, just with 4e you get to pay a ton of money for a ton of bad books. Doesn't that tip the scale a little bit?

Actually not so much really. For anything pre-essentials 4E, you can grab the character generator for cheap and have all the player based info you need. Feats, classes, magic items, all in there. If you want to play essentials classes, it costs you a whole two books, which are both actually fairly cheap. As a 4E DM, I'd recommend you buy the new Monster vault since the monsters are much better balanced, but beyond that you really don't need much, unless you want a setting book. But there's really not even a reason you couldn't run your old 2E/3E settings in 4E.

Now obviously if you already have 3E and are in love with it, there's no need to change, but if you're just getting into the hobby? 4E is a much better choice if you ask me.

[fectin]

Swordslinger - what systems, then, aren't fail?

4E is probably the best I've seen in terms of running a system out of the box. Though that's not to say 4E is by any means perfect. 4E has its own flaws too and I can see people calling it fail as well.

But that's the entire point about my argument. Holding the anti-4E position like most people here do is stupid, because 3E isn't any better, it's just more house ruled. All the impassioned hate for it is needless. It's not like 3E was any better.

How many systems have you seen? Seriously, start listing them off. You picked a terrible standard; most indy RPGs have much better out-of-box playability. My personal hobby horse for that is Danger Patrol, but you can pick nearly any RPG and have better playability out of the box: Ork!, Danger Patrol, H.O.L., Paranoia, any of the Weiss & Hickman creations (even Darksword), any CRPG, DnD 1E, etc.
If you mean "I have an easier time building characters in 4E than 3E," that's fine. Saying it's the best you've seen is just wallowing in ignorance.

3E may have been a shit sandwich, but that doesn't make removing the bread an improvement.

[Zinegata]

The problem with your argument ROLL 1d6,

1. Lago
2. Plebian
3. Psychic Robot
4. Frank
5. Tzor
6. Someone Else (see subchart)

Is that ROLL 1d6

1. "You ignored my point entirely, I still want an answer"
2. "It's hardly unique to 3e/4e, that's a problem in your favorite edition too"
3. "The sales figures I made up are better."
4. "Nothing you say is gonna make me like playing your boring and unbalanced edition"
5. "You forgot what happened in older editions, it used to work like blah blah blah, and by gum we liked it, uphill both ways in the snow whippersnappers and yer videyah games....
6. "Is that I am going to use a small tangent to respond to it with unrelated nonsense, as follows....."

So unless ROLL 1d6

1. "You address that issue soon"
2. "You start making some sense"
3. "You find a real source for your data"
4. "You stop asking for a game to meet contradictory goals"
5. "You stop making such basic grammar mistakes"
6. "Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane"

I am going to ROLL 1d6

1. Repeat my argument with slightly different words until the end of time.
2. Use a bunch of profanity to no real effect
3. Blame you for prior failings within my gaming group
4. Accuse you of being Charlie Sheen
5. Keep right on responding to your posts without actually comprehending them.
6. Put you on ignore

This is the most awesome TGD post ever.

Can I sig this?

[Kaelik]

I'm a little pissed because I posted in this thread more than Tzor or Lago.

[MGuy]

Ok now that I'm back from work. I have to say restate my biggest grievance with 4E because now I got into a discussion with a coworker that (though he PREFERS pathfinder) plays 4E regularly and I had to seriously spellthis out for him as well.

Why the fuck is it silly to think that I should be able to light my campfire with a radiant attack? I assume that by igniting my weapon in light and dealing radiant (IE Light Damage) I should then be able to turn around and use the same power on something as mundane as tender for a fire. Why do people scoff and say "how are you supposed to ignite something with light?" but don't do the same when it is considered to be damaging someone or something?

A weapon made of damaging light would HAVE to give off heat. There's no other way I could FATHOM it hurting anyone! If it doesn't give off heat what the fuck are you damaging people with? Light hits people every day. If we turn it into a weapon that would be lazers and beam swords which both give off heat. If I as a paladin can at any time I want to create this damaging light why the fuck is it silly that I then hold the charge and use it to heat up some tender?

YES i know I can make a fire in other ways but that's not the fucking point! I can hurt someone with a bow but that doesn't stop people from picking up a sword. So tell me why is it silly that I get completely pissed off at the game because this particular mechanic isn't allowed by the rules. I can fight off a fucking demon but I can't fight off hypothermia with my god damn powers and that's fucking bullshit!

[Novembermike]

Radiant damage isn't necessarily "heat". It's more of a concept of holiness than anything else. If you try to go the pseudophsyics route it doesn't really work out since an undirected "light" energy strong enough to start a fire would blind everyone around you.

It's something that a reasonable DM would probably allow (lighting a small fire isn't exactly an enormously powerful ability) but it's not something that naturally follows from the rules or flavor behind the ability.

[Kaelik]

Protip: Light is actually just a form of heat. It's not that everything that gives of light happens to also give off heat, it's that light is in fact a form of heat, because both of them are energy being moved from a single thing/object/place/bond to a wider area, spread across multiple things/objects/places/bonds.

Technically, if all your photons go to the same place, that doesn't happen, but since holy fire is visible from more than the direct target of the attack, that clearly isn't the case.

TLDR: MGuy stop being such a min maxing powergaming whore, wanting to do something the DM didn't specifically decide he wants you to do is plot breaking. Next you'll expect your Wizard to cast a spell that makes him invisible.

[Psychic Robot]

Science + D&D doesn't work. That road leads to madness.

[Novembermike]

Radiant energy is closer to Positive energy from 3e than any pseudoscientific physical light concept. You could conceivably have a monster that is resistant to fire but weak to radiant, which doesn't make much sense from the perspective of radiant = light = fire but makes perfect sense from the perspective of radiant = holy.

EDIT: Explain the theory of Conservation of Energy with respect to "Delayed Blast Fireball".

[PhoneLobster]

Next you'll expect your Wizard to cast a spell that makes him invisible.

Wait, wait, wait, no, really?

I mean, I read the 4E core, back in the day, well, enough of it anyway, I followed the critique threads.

I never noticed that specific one before.

Because really, you are totally shitting with me right, Wizards don't turn invisible?

Really?