Is it worth trying to fix 4e?

[Voss]

Ok, to go off on a tangent about 3.5, kill fast (through HP damage) is actually sub-par (compared to Save or...). But there are a fair amount of tactical options that you can pull out and wave around, even though they are less effective.

However, in 4e, you're left with no choice at all. You *must* grind down the enemies with hit point damage, and there are no strategies beyond that. To be really good, you must stun-lock while doing damage. You can talk basic tactics until you're blue in the face, but it doesn't matter. If you aren't grinding the hit points off your enemies, you aren't doing anything at all.

[Username17]

High level boss fights last 20 rounds. If all 5 characters can contribute 4 rounds of stunlock, then boss monsters don't get to act. At all.

A 29th level character has Daily powers of 29th, 25th, 20th, and 19th (assuming for the moment that for whatever weird reason he can't just prepare 2 29th level and 2 25th level powers as a Wizard). Also has Encounter powers of 13th, 17th, 23rd, and 27th level. This means that in total you can do 8 super moves over the 20 round combat, which means that the entire party can dish out 40 super moves. Since attacks hit half the time, can you smell what The Rock is cooking?!

Every round every player uses a use-limited stunlock move until it works, and then everyone else uses basic attacks. Boss fights at high levels are way more boring than you thought, because a well run party doesn't even really allow them to act.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

However, in 4e, you're left with no choice at all. You *must* grind down the enemies with hit point damage, and there are no strategies beyond that.

Starcraft worked exactly like that pretty much. And it was considered one of the greatest real time strategy games of all time.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad model to have everyone be trying to achieve the same thing.

If anything, it usually ends up breaking the game when you've got mechanics that outright ignore a target's main defenses, like hit points.

[Tydanosaurus]

Every round every player uses a use-limited stunlock move until it works, and then everyone else uses basic attacks. Boss fights at high levels are way more boring than you thought, because a well run party doesn't even really allow them to act.

IMX, that doesn't work.

I haven't spent a lot of time at it, but the way it's played out for us is that if you try to pick a mez, you end up missing out on a high-damage power. If all the players take enough mezzes, they generally don't have enough damage to kill a boss (with the 50% miss rate). Bosses tend to have resistances and regen and need high-damage to go down.

And it's not just the hit points, it's the defenses. You play a lot of rock/paper scissors against Bosses. It's not uncommon to see something like 37/36/33/35. Your to-hit might be +27/+23/+23/+23. You're effectively limited to weapon attacks, and reflex attacks. Otherwise, you get to miss a lot, or hope you have heavy buffs from teammates.

Now look at the Warlock list. How many of your mezzes and high-damage attacks are now, effectively, worthless?

I think WotC drastically underestimated what a boring time sink boss fights are.

[Tydanosaurus]

However, in 4e, you're left with no choice at all. You *must* grind down the enemies with hit point damage, and there are no strategies beyond that.

Starcraft worked exactly like that pretty much. And it was considered one of the greatest real time strategy games of all time.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad model to have everyone be trying to achieve the same thing.

If anything, it usually ends up breaking the game when you've got mechanics that outright ignore a target's main defenses, like hit points.

Not really.

Think about almost every video game ever made. How do you kill the big boss? By finding the kink in the code. It's generally impossible to kill by just using the "normal" rules of the game.

4E could be a similar model. Instead of programming tricks, bosses could need something like a mez that all "control" classes have, specific buffs to attack powers that all "leader" classes have, and damage attacks that made it over damage threshold. Bosses could also be made more vulnerable if they were "defended" in some way that all "defenders" can do, like with certain marks.

[Username17]

See the key is that high damage attacks are a snare and a delusion. You shouldn't even know any of them by the time you're high level enough to care.

The deal is that the "high damage" attacks do like twice the damage (or less) of a bog standard face stab. You have four friends according to the default assumptions of 4e. A 1 turn mezz would be literally twice as effective as an all damage mega strike even if it didn't do any damage at all. And it does.

I think WotC drastically underestimated what a boring time sink boss fights are.

No argument there.

-Username17

[MartinHarper]

Starcraft worked exactly like that pretty much. And it was considered one of the greatest real time strategy games of all time.

More or less. It had a few effects that ignored the health mechanic. So spawn broodlings was an auto-kill, as was mind control (in a different way). And you had attacks that inflicted status conditions without doing damage (such as ensnare). And you had attacks such as feedback and emp that targeted a unit's mana/energy reserves rather than its health.

The last one makes me want to see 4e powers that discharge one of a monster's rechargable or encounter powers.

Much of the strategy in starcraft was in building units with appropriate attacks to destroy the units that your opponent was building. The corollary to that in 4e would be stances, I guess. So based on your particular set of opponents, you choose a power that leaves you in an appropriate stance. Problem is, with only a few powers, who's going to pick the troll-killer stance power when they might not even see trolls?

[RandomCasualty2]

Think about almost every video game ever made. How do you kill the big boss? By finding the kink in the code. It's generally impossible to kill by just using the "normal" rules of the game.

What? In virtually every video game RPG, you pretty much just beat on the boss until it dies. There are a few puzzle boss monsters, like the queen of summoned monsters in FF4, but for the most part, you just grind them down. IN fact, that seems to be what the 4E solo is based off of. The only difference is that the 4E solo doesn't seem to have the Final fantasy style nova attacks that the FF boss monsters got that could nuke your whole group, and possibly kill you if you didn't heal fast enough from them. Unlike in FF, The 4E boss monster seems to just enter into a straight up war of attrition with the PCs, trying to run them out of surges. Whcih is really boring.

FPS bosses tend to just involve hitting them with you weapons for the most part. Occasionally they're made invulnerable except to some weak spot, but puzzle monsters aren't great for a game when your PCs very well could have read the MM.

More or less. It had a few effects that ignored the health mechanic. So spawn broodlings was an auto-kill, as was mind control (in a different way).

Yeah there were all of two save or dies, on units that people never really used much anyway, mostly because the cost and charge times on those abilities just weren't worth it.

The last one makes me want to see 4e powers that discharge one of a monster's rechargable or encounter powers.

I think 4E could benefit from something like this. It'd be kind of nice to have a mana drain power that automatically expends one of the monsters encounter or recharge abilities at random, or something to that effect.

Or maybe even something to take away one of its non-basic attack abilities.

Much of the strategy in starcraft was in building units with appropriate attacks to destroy the units that your opponent was building. The corollary to that in 4e would be stances, I guess. So based on your particular set of opponents, you choose a power that leaves you in an appropriate stance. Problem is, with only a few powers, who's going to pick the troll-killer stance power when they might not even see trolls?

Well what to build is actually strategy, I'm talking more about tactics. And there were a lot of them in Starcraft. Setting up flanks, avoiding getting bunched up against area attacks, doing air drops against units like siege tanks who couldn't hit enemies close to them. You had special area effects that negated ranged attacks, stuff that prevented units in it from attacking altogether and so forth.

And there were a great deal of tactics there. Tactics for relatively simple units. I have to think that in an RPG with more complex units we could make interesting tactics.

[Tydanosaurus]

The deal is that the "high damage" attacks do like twice the damage (or less) of a bog standard face stab.

Not having the books in front of me, this is my recollection of what our choices broke down to:

Choice of (mez) or (really good debuff) and 1d10+mod, or [w]+mod, or something similar;

or

Choice of 5d8+mod or 2[w]x3 or something similar.

* * *

IMX, the play makes the mez or bust strategy suck a lot of ass. The problem we ran into was that even if you had a lot of mezzes, half of them would be, say, Int v. Will, and Will would be the Boss's strongest defense. With that mez, you miss 70% of the time instead of 50% of the time.

It may be that with different characters, things would play out differently. It's not like we live with the books or anything. IMO, though, unlike 3.x, so far there's not a lot of break the bank powers. The difference between the character your 11 year old cousin made because "he thinks Legolas is cool" and your hand-picked, agonizingly-chosen character is not really that significant IMO.

[Tydanosaurus]

Think about almost every video game ever made. How do you kill the big boss? By finding the kink in the code. It's generally impossible to kill by just using the "normal" rules of the game.

What? In virtually every video game RPG, you pretty much just beat on the boss until it dies.

Halflife. Open the creatures head.

Halo 3. Climb into the spider tank, disable the power supply.

City of Heroes. Kill the right colored cells in order or they respawn.

City of Heroes. Debuff and Immob, or it runs away and heals.

City of Heroes. Well, I could go on.

Those are just games I played in the last month.

[Username17]

Not having the books in front of me, this is my recollection of what our choices broke down to:

Inferlock Ultimate Moves:

Hurl Through Hell: 7d10 + Bonuses and then the target vanishes for one turn and then appears next turn after everyone gets a chance to reposition and use Healing Surges or break out of whatever stunlocks they were in, and then the monster reappears and is stunlocked (save ends), while the party beats on them for at least one turn.

Doom of Delban: 5d10 + Bonuses and you can spend 9 hit points to reuse the power on the same target next turn.


Doom of Delban probably inflicts more damage. Probably. But we're talking like 6 points more damage, and that is absolutely nothing compared to stunlocking and Rodney Kinging an opponent for one turn.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

Halflife. Open the creatures head.

Halo 3. Climb into the spider tank, disable the power supply.

City of Heroes. Kill the right colored cells in order or they respawn.

City of Heroes. Debuff and Immob, or it runs away and heals.

City of Heroes. Well, I could go on.

Those are just games I played in the last month.

Those are only three games. For the most part I can name entire series where the name of the game is pretty much damage dealing.

Basically every Final fantasy game (there are some exception battles, but they are few and far between)
The wizardry series
Baldur's Gate Series
The Might and magic series
The Xenogears/saga Series
Chrono Trigger

Really, it's hard to think of an RPG that uses mostly puzzle based monster destruction. For the most part, you just hack the monster to bits with the game mechanics. There's generally like one puzzle creature in an entire game, like the final boss on Doom2, but as a general rule. Keep hitting it until it stops moving.

IMO, though, unlike 3.x, so far there's not a lot of break the bank powers. The difference between the character your 11 year old cousin made because "he thinks Legolas is cool" and your hand-picked, agonizingly-chosen character is not really that significant IMO.

That's actually a good thing. Killer combos don't make the game more interesting, they actually take away your choices, because now it resets the bar higher for everything else.

[Tydanosaurus]

Not having the books in front of me, this is my recollection of what our choices broke down to:

Inferlock Ultimate Moves:

Hurl Through Hell: 7d10 + Bonuses and then the target vanishes for one turn and then appears next turn after everyone gets a chance to reposition and use Healing Surges or break out of whatever stunlocks they were in, and then the monster reappears and is stunlocked (save ends), while the party beats on them for at least one turn.

Doom of Delban: 5d10 + Bonuses and you can spend 9 hit points to reuse the power on the same target next turn.


Doom of Delban probably inflicts more damage. Probably. But we're talking like 6 points more damage, and that is absolutely nothing compared to stunlocking and Rodney Kinging an opponent for one turn.

-Username17

We didn't have a warlock. Does Doom cost an action on the second attack? If it doesn't, you're getting ~40 more from Doom. If it does, I'm not sure why you'd ever use it.

[Tydanosaurus]

There's generally like one puzzle creature in an entire game, like the final boss on Doom2 . . .

Thank you for proving my point.

[zeruslord]

Mario and Zelda both have puzzle bosses, at least in the newer versions.

The thing is that doing an average of 46 damage on a hit at 29th level isn't some kind of magic replacement for inflicting status conditions or otherwise accomplishing things in the game. It's just something to get you in the door - and barely at that. A Boss monster that you are up against has over a thousand hit points. You'll need to be doing all that and a bag of chips just to kill a boss monster in 20 combat rounds.

so do damage-specialized characters do more than 46 or does everyone have some sort of rider effect?

Setting up flanks, avoiding getting bunched up against area attacks, doing air drops against units like siege tanks who couldn't hit enemies close to them. You had special area effects that negated ranged attacks, stuff that prevented units in it from attacking altogether and so forth.

We might try adding the list of abilities in Starcraft to the list of things a character might do in a round. Most of them should definitely be represented. The unit abilities and attack types that make these work should also be a factor in any redesign we do.

[Voss]

A 30th level demigod fighter with his big damage-only power as a 29th level daily can get up to ~81 if he maximizes his damage output. (2d6 weapon, kensai bonus, weapon focus and power attack, but note that he's at an effective -3 to hit because he's power attacking and not using a sword) Thats his best attack and its about 6% of the Tarrasque's HP. Before its damage resistance.

Whee.

[Psychic Robot]

So...he can't even kill something a third his level in one hit, can he?

[Voss]

An 8th level character is hard to one-shot. For a 30th level fighter. >.>

[RandomCasualty2]

An 8th level character is hard to one-shot. For a 30th level fighter. >.>

I don't really think that's even a big deal.

I mean, first, a 30th level fighter isn't going to be fighting an 8th level character in a session. So it's a nonfactor.

Second, even thouh the 8th level guy can survive one hit, he's not going to be able to mount any sort of offense against the 30th level guy, so he's pretty much screwed.

[Voss]

Hmm. Neither of those are good things.
The first is pure Oberoni fallacy material, and the second is simply that if you've got 40 8th level guys, they can't do shit against 30th level threats. You really need entire armies for that.

[RandomCasualty2]

Hmm. Neither of those are good things.
The first is pure Oberoni fallacy material, and the second is simply that if you've got 40 8th level guys, they can't do shit against 30th level threats. You really need entire armies for that.

That's not Oberoni fallacy, that's just being realistic. It's assumed in an RPG that you're going to face level appropriate challenges. At 30th level, an encounter with a bunch of level 8s just isn't very interesting, and pretty much isn't going to happen.

[Username17]

That's not Oberoni fallacy, that's just being realistic. It's assumed in an RPG that you're going to face level appropriate challenges. At 30th level, an encounter with a bunch of level 8s just isn't very interesting, and pretty much isn't going to happen.

But it is circular reasoning. We don't use large numbers of 8th level opponents to challenge 30th level characters because it isn't interesting. But it isn't interesting because the game has a genuine flaw where fighting opponents outside your level range is uninteresting.

In 3e, for example, a 20th level character can get some genuine risk and enjoyment chopping through dozens of CR 6 monsters. The fact that the equivalent action in 4e is as you put it "uninteresting" is not a good thing.

-Username17

[Amra]

We don't use large numbers of 8th level opponents to challenge 30th level characters because it isn't interesting. But it isn't interesting because the game has a genuine flaw where fighting opponents outside your level range is uninteresting.

Hmmm, I think you've put some unnecessary extra words in that last sentence, Frank. Let me fix it for you:

But it isn't interesting because the game has a genuine flaw where fighting opponents is uninteresting.

Ah. Much better

[Fwib]

In 3e, for example, a 20th level character can get some genuine risk and enjoyment chopping through dozens of CR 6 monsters. The fact that the equivalent action in 4e is as you put it "uninteresting" is not a good thing.

-Username17

I would have thought it was the other way around: a 20th level character is not at risk from low-CR threats in 3e, since he has so many ways to get unlimited resources, but an epic party in 4e can still be worn down by enough heroic-level monsters, since they do not have unlimited healing resources (barring infinite loops in 4e, which I expect WotC to errata with extreme prejudice)

[Koumei]

True, an army of level 8 people can indeed wear down a party of level 30 people, but the problem is that the whole thing takes so long that no-one actually cares enough to do it. The players will break down into tears and leave the table, the DM will drink himself into a stupor and even the dice will be likely to try to commit suicide.

In 3E, the players will hack the low level people apart quickly, and they will enjoy it. But every now and then something will clip them and hurt them a bit, and if they keep it up/have a bad run they will need to stop and heal before continuing.