4e failed design goals

[K]

It then gives you a damage table, DC table, skill table, and a couple other tables, each with three options to pick from.

So getting winged by a ballista, falling into a brazier of flame, falling down a set of stairs, having a predictable bolt of lightning hit you, being forced to listening to chemical romance CDs, being shut into an iron maiden, falling into a pit of flesh eating hamsters.

All of that is going to have the the same 3 damage rolls against you made, the same 3 DCs to avoid, with the only guesswork being in any additional effects you want to add beyond plain damage if any and which skill to roll.

This means there is no interruption in gameplay when a DM has something unexpected occur.

That's not "a good improv rule." That's an "inflexible and boring improv rule."

Basically, that removes any good side to improving. Without flexibility and novelty, improv is just 100% substandard rules.

It's also completely abusable by players. "Oh noes, it's a wall of purple fire with skulls in the flames.... oh wait, this is 4e and I know exactly what it could do based on the improv rules and limited available effects."

[K]

On a related note, anyone who thinks a 8th level cleric is boring must be boring themselves. With a cleric's available spell lists, they can be more interesting than a dozen 4e characters just by changing which spells to memorize each day.

Only a boring person plays them as static healbots. That decision is on them, and not 3e.

[Chamomile]

Its not a contradiction. I am struggling not to sound pretentious, but there are more factors to the feel of one's character, game and development then raw numerical power.

Right. List them, and then tell me why 4e, a setting-agnostic game, could possibly have more to contribute to them than 3.5.

[Verbannon]

It then gives you a damage table, DC table, skill table, and a couple other tables, each with three options to pick from.

So getting winged by a ballista, falling into a brazier of flame, falling down a set of stairs, having a predictable bolt of lightning hit you, being forced to listening to chemical romance CDs, being shut into an iron maiden, falling into a pit of flesh eating hamsters.

All of that is going to have the the same 3 damage rolls against you made, the same 3 DCs to avoid, with the only guesswork being in any additional effects you want to add beyond plain damage if any and which skill to roll.

This means there is no interruption in gameplay when a DM has something unexpected occur.

That's not "a good improv rule." That's an "inflexible and boring improv rule."

Basically, that removes any good side to improving. Without flexibility and novelty, improv is just 100% substandard rules.

It's also completely abusable by players. "Oh noes, it's a wall of purple fire with skulls in the flames.... oh wait, this is 4e and I know exactly what it could do based on the improv rules and limited available effects."

A wall of purple flames doesn't appear on improv. Improv is something unplanned.

On a related note, anyone who thinks a 8th level cleric is boring must be boring themselves. With a cleric's available spell lists, they can be more interesting than a dozen 4e characters just by changing which spells to memorize each day.

Only a boring person plays them as static healbots. That decision is on them, and not 3e.

I'm not going to go into it outside of PM or when the topic is on it.

Right. List them, and then tell me why 4e, a setting-agnostic game, could possibly have more to contribute to them than 3.5.

Options. And non-Numerical scaling.

Rather then list all of them, I will one example.

At heroic you are pushing and pulling enemies

and at Paragon you are teleporting and throwing enemies.

I haven't managed to get a game to epic yet, so IDK about that.

It doesn't have more, but it has precisely 3 tiers of play, three feels.

5 if you consider transitory levels to be a "feel".

Probably less then 3.5 but more isn't always better.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Yeah, same with 3.5. For a wizard:

alter self (humans)>polymorph (limited selection)>shapechange (turn into absolutely anything, anytime)

or fly>overland flight

or dimension door>teleport>teleport without error

Not seeing 4e's advantage here, and we could do this for a lot of classes/spells whatever.

Also, 4e's non numerical scaling is kinda wack -sleep, the first level wizard daily, remains the one power to rule them all for levels 1-30. Except for that other sleep power in HotFL.

[Dog Quixote]

... it has rules for knocking a wall, statue or bench into a guy.

Any sort of foundational upon which some rules could be based?

Yes, P.42 DMG. The golden rules for anything in which the rules for would require too much complexity.

...

there is fantastic terrain and terrain powers.

These rules exist but they are an afterthought. They are not really a defence against this particular weakness in 4E's system.

I've played a lot of 4E and I gave up using rules on page 42 pretty quickly. You have to decide on what you're going to (which is the fun part) then the GM has to look up the book and adjudicate how your action will fit the rules. Then you as the player have to decide whether the action you want to do is actually worthwhile tactically. (and frequently it isn't - you're still after all that, often better off falling back on an At-Will - which means you've just made the next guy wait five extra minutes for his turn for no benefit at all.).

Terrain powers are just as bad. They usually require two rolls, (both a skill roll and an attack roll - which means you have two chances to fail to do anything at all) and the damage and effects don't really scale with level (but the difficulty of pulling off the action does. In addition most of them don't even kill minions.)

More to the point everything about 4E encourages you to build your characters carefully and choose powers that synergise with your feats and magic weapons and with the abilities of other characters. All of the really important decisions are made during character creation or advancement. When you've got all these synergies working why would you bother to do something different?

Essentials is a bit different here. If you're just using Essentials (without complicated character building from earlier supplements) you've got a little more reason to be more creative in your approach to individual combats.

[fectin]

Did you create an account just to rebut a 4E apology? That's hardcore.

[Dog Quixote]

Did you create an account just to rebut a 4E apology? That's hardcore.

Grow up.

[fectin]

I... actually meant that un-ironically.

[Dog Quixote]

I... actually meant that un-ironically.

Should I waste everyone's time by starting a special introductory thread first before contributing?

"Hi, I'm Dog Quixote. I bark at Windmills"

[Verbannon]

Yeah, same with 3.5. For a wizard:

alter self (humans)>polymorph (limited selection)>shapechange (turn into absolutely anything, anytime)

or fly>overland flight

or dimension door>teleport>teleport without error

Not seeing 4e's advantage here, and we could do this for a lot of classes/spells whatever.

Also, 4e's non numerical scaling is kinda wack -sleep, the first level wizard daily, remains the one power to rule them all for levels 1-30. Except for that other sleep power in HotFL.

I'm not trying to prove that part as better, just that its not worst, or too worst.

These rules exist but they are an afterthought. They are not really a defence against this particular weakness in 4E's system.

I've played a lot of 4E and I gave up using rules on page 42 pretty quickly. You have to decide on what you're going to (which is the fun part) then the GM has to look up the book and adjudicate how your action will fit the rules. Then you as the player have to decide whether the action you want to do is actually worthwhile tactically. (and frequently it isn't - you're still after all that, often better off falling back on an At-Will - which means you've just made the next guy wait five extra minutes for his turn for no benefit at all.).

This doesn't make a lot of sense, I don't even bother having the book around while I'm playing. Seriously, if you need to open up the book when you are dealing with a set of rules that simple, then you really have a problem.

As for its tactical benefit, yeah it varies and at least half the time it would have been better to use an at-will. But what do you expect? Pulling back a branch and letting it hit the enemy in the face isn't gong to be as good as a normal attack.

Terrain powers are just as bad. They usually require two rolls, (both a skill roll and an attack roll - which means you have two chances to fail to do anything at all) and the damage and effects don't really scale with level (but the difficulty of pulling off the action does. In addition most of them don't even kill minions.)

Rolling a boulder down a hill or toppling over a wall aren't bad, some are lackluster but they are all mundane terrain powers. You don't expect them to be awesome. Thats not a mark against them, and the point isn't how strong they are, its whether or not they are there.

[fectin]

Rolling a boulder down a hill or toppling over a wall aren't bad, some are lackluster but they are all mundane terrain powers. You don't expect them to be awesome. Thats not a mark against them, and the point isn't how strong they are, its whether or not they are there.

So, clarifying and distilling that, 4E is good because it has a lot of bad options?

[Verbannon]

They aren't all bad, they aren't all good, many are mediocre and about on par with an at-will. Some are better, some are worst, and nearly all are highly situational. Its about on par with 3.5 mundane terrain wise.

As far as fantastic terrain goes, I'm not quite sure if 3.5 has fantastic terrain, though it probably does and is as good as 4e's terrain.

I just mentioned terrain to clear up the stated misconception of 4e having no interesting terrain. And everything being a boring flat empty place.

[Verbannon]

I wish there wasn't so much juggling to be done as to what I'm defending.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I... actually meant that un-ironically.

Should I waste everyone's time by starting a special introductory thread first before contributing?

"Hi, I'm Dog Quixote. I bark at Windmills"

[fectin]

I wish there wasn't so much juggling to be done as to what I'm defending.

I don't think anyone has introduced new points except you. Everything you're being asked to defend is a point which you brought up.

[Stubbazubba]

Verb, you're hedging your statements more and more. Before you were saying 4e had much better development in character power and terrain and tactical options, now you're down to saying that the character development is probably about the same as 3.5 and the terrain rules are comparable, and that the tactical options are hit and miss, which, unsurprisingly, is just about as good as 3.5. I'm also one who thinks that 4e had some good ideas, but they weren't implemented well. You are adept at 4e, which is great, and so you can get it to do all kinds of things for you and be fun, but while it's strengths and weaknesses are different than 3.5's, it is not a uniform step forward in any sense. There are mechanics that seem like good ideas in a vacuum, but all together they don't work as well as the designers, nor the players, were hoping.

[Swordslinger]

It's also completely abusable by players. "Oh noes, it's a wall of purple fire with skulls in the flames.... oh wait, this is 4e and I know exactly what it could do based on the improv rules and limited available effects."

Nice denfail there.

You realize that a special wall of purple flames would use the trap rules and could basically do anything a monster could, right?

Are you just ignorant of 4E or are you being outright disingenuous because you hate the edition?

It's sad when the main opposition to 4E here is based entirely on lies and misunderstanding.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Errata Onslaught
Goal: Unlike in 3E where we had things like Pun-Pun and the peasant cannon get made fun of for years and not get fixed, we'll immediately issue a rules patch in order to fix broken stuff.
Unintended Result: Many. The biggest problem is that the errata is excessively. I don't know what it is right now, but last I checked it was 100 pages. That's fucking ridiculous. They can get away with it to an extent due to the character builder and online Dragon, but as long as they have a dead tree edition of the game this is seriously moving into ripping-off-the-customer territory.

The other problem is that the errata is not applied to A) genuinely game-derailing stuff that B) will probably be discovered by the group. Wizard saving throw penalty douchebaggery did need to be errata'd. Blade Cascade needed an errata. Pray For More + Vorpal Weapon + Demigod is an infinite damage loop but it seriously was not worth the space to close since it is a level 30 damage loop. It only needed a fix the same way that Pun Pun did, that is only to shut people up. Even if something was seriously 'broken' they went way overboard. Yeah, Come And Get It (Fighter 7) used a non-standard effect and had a couple of exploits to it, but the exploits were minor when viewed from the whole of combat. It's not worth the space to fix it. Making things significantly worse is that errata is almost (95% of the time) never done in a way to create equal-but-balanced functionality, it's always done just to snip the balls off like naughty poodles. I have seen people, including myself, ragequit over the game because it killed off builds. They've gotten 'better' at this such that only 10 builds were killed off this year, but seriously, getting your panties in a twist because someone is doing an extra 10 damage a round? Please.


Making every power do damage.
Goal: Make it so that more people want to play healbitches and mezzers rather than passing the cleric off to the guy who got the short straw. It's also done to avoid the 3E problem of people with non-damaging effects tripping over each other.
Unintended Result: This is just an unfortunate side-effect of human psychology, but if a game designer decreed that every console video game came packaged with a side order of the immensely and universally popular Tetris no matter what the game normally was (God of War, Final Fantasy XIII, Madden 2011, etc.) this would actually harm sales. The games would feel less different from each other even though the Tetris-addon would have no effect on the rest of gameplay experience.

That's a big part of the problem that 4E has. Even if the game effects of powers were exciting (they're not), insisting on attaching a weapon dice to everything makes them feel too much the same. I mean the pacifist cleric, despite being nerfed to oblivion and then left to die like a wounded Russian soldier in the rubble waiting for Nazi machinegunners to finish them off, was a refreshing change just because they didn't do damage. Even if the game designers recognize this fact they're still totally fucked because there are like no ways to take out a monster that don't involve hit point grind. This is because the saving throw system is totally fucked and they still haven't really solved the problem of two mezzers tripping over each other. The next edition either needs to get back to accepting the reality of save-or-dies or desperately needs a CAN system or some reasonable fascimile thereof.


No self-buffs.
Goal: Kill off the cleric archer.
Unintended Result: I did a thread on the board why getting rid of self buffs are almost always more unbalanced than allowing them. You can read that. 4th Edition D&D is a perfect example as to why No Self-Buffs not only didn't do what they want but did the opposite--yet no one in the fanbase notices because they just buy the hype.

You realize that a special wall of purple flames would use the trap rules and could basically do anything a monster could, right?

Are you just ignorant of 4E or are you being outright disingenuous because you hate the edition?

Anyone who used the trap rules for this effect is either a moron, a Monty Hauler, or a Gygaxian asshat who doesn't intend to play fair because you get experience points for overcoming traps. Yes, seriously.

[Dog Quixote]

Did you create an account just to rebut a 4E apology? That's hardcore.

Ok. Now I see what you meant. Apologies for being rude. (I think maybe I spent too much time on rpgnet )

[Dog Quixote]

Rolling a boulder down a hill or toppling over a wall aren't bad, some are lackluster but they are all mundane terrain powers. You don't expect them to be awesome. Thats not a mark against them, and the point isn't how strong they are, its whether or not they are there.

Well they're there. But they're relegation to an afterthought does tell us something about the system. 4E tactically is about building an effective character, choosing powers and feats and magic items to this effect and then finding the most effective ways to use these abilities. A good DM will vary monster tactics and terrain to increase the potential uses for the powers the PC has so fights are a bit more varied, but the game doesn't encourage or reward thinking outside the box. It's disappointing when you get a new player at the table who wants to try all kinds of cool and inventive (and cinematic things) and you have to tell them to use their At-Wills because their ineffectiveness is hurting the party.

It's a game that encourages and rewards system mastery and this is necessarily going to limit it's appeal. It's not really particularly cinematic. Pushing a statue over on a villian, or knocking over a cauldron full of boiling liquid on some mooks (Like in the Conan movie) are cinematic things. Sure you can do these things in 4E, but the times when they're actually the tactically most effective actions are vanishly rare. Instead you use 'Attacks on the Run' or 'Rain of Steel' or 'Twin Strike' but any cinematic aspect to these actions comes from the player's description, not the powers. Some powers are different enough that they invite a cinematic description (such as Come and Get It.) But I find they're repetition diminishes them over time. (If you use Come and Get It every combat then it's going to become predictable and less interesting - and even if you continue to describe how you use it every time, the chances are that everyone else will stop listening.)

It's a pity because I think the 4E combat chassis is quite well worked out in itself. I think it could reward these things, but it would require a different approach to character creation.

[hogarth]

That's not "a good improv rule." That's an "inflexible and boring improv rule."

Basically, that removes any good side to improving. Without flexibility and novelty, improv is just 100% substandard rules.

It's also completely abusable by players. "Oh noes, it's a wall of purple fire with skulls in the flames.... oh wait, this is 4e and I know exactly what it could do based on the improv rules and limited available effects."

Wait -- are you claiming that guidelines as to what is a good challenge for level N characters are a bad thing? 'Cause that's just stupid.

[Lago PARANOIA]

It's a pity because I think the 4E combat chassis is quite well worked out in itself. I think it could reward these things, but it would require a different approach to character creation.

It is? Bullshit.

I think the combat chassis is a total crock, even after you account for the unbalanced array of powers and Mike Mearl's well-known hardon for Martial Classes and the wizard Mage. For many reasons.

• The immediate interrupt/reaction system is an unnecessary layer of complication. And it needs to go. Seriously, everything should be an opportunity action. Yes, that means that people will be able to do multiple Combat Challenge reprisals or whatever in a round. Either put a limit in that class ability or just fucken deal with it.
• The health/damage assymmetry is just unacceptable. From a practicality standpoint. I am skeptical of any system that has hit points in the double digits, reaching four digits is simply madness. While players aren't exactly good at it, repeated single or low-double digit subtraction/addition is easier than a single high double-digit or triple-digit subtraction.
  
  From an immersion standpoint it's just stupid. Why are players the only ones with healing effects? Why does my NPC rival transform into a tank when I duel him for leadership of the tribe? Why do monster vs. monster battles turn into cripple fights? Why can my party wizard completely one-shot the glass cannon of the party? Etc. etc.
• The PC/NPC magical item separation. I personally really hate the fact that PCs are dependent on magical items but NPCs aren't. It makes the PCs look like pussies. If the magical items were nice-but-unnecessary bonuses you weren't expected to have that'd be acceptable, but when a paragon-tier PC fighter stripped to loincloth and sandals and given a spear gets into an arena brawl with an NPC fighter who also has a spear the PC is going to get his ass handed to him.
• Non-standard duration effects. The fix isn't as simple as 'make effects end at the start/end of the initiator's next turn' because a lot of powers incorporate their unique timing into their supposed balance. You'd seriously need to audit every power in the game, which at that point you may as well start a new edition.
• Coupling every power with a side order of damage. I talked about this a couple of posts ago. There is no simple fix to it because of the health/damage assymmetry.
• An unprecedented amount of gameplay/story segregation in game effects. I can totally accept my character being able to summon Bahamut but not blow down some pesky walls in Final Fantasy because the game engine just can't account for this possibility. The game designers telling me that while I can push a colossal sized dragon back 20 feet with the right combinations of powers/feats/items I can't use the same power on a stone statue is retarded. This is probably the worst legacy of Book of Nine Swords and I can't believe that the game decided to run with it. I'm aware that there will have to be a small amount of it in order to keep the game playable, but 4E's battle system went way, waaay too far. I mean, Jesus, there's actually a caveat in the goddamn Dungeon Master guide telling you that it'd be really mean to abuse an effect that allowed you to give dozens of people an extra attack despite the fact that the class's name is WARLORD and its first two epic destinies were WARMASTER and LEGENDARY GENERAL.
• The vast shortening of effects. Okay, so, I'm facing a mob that is described in fluff as having crazy mind powers to create thralls. In 3E D&D this works to some extent (fuck you, autofail a save on a 1) because the game designers didn't have a white-knuckled fear of stuff lasting outside of combat so if someone gets targeted with a Dominate Person you can come back a week later and be all 'yep, definitely dominated still'. The fact that 95% of mind control powers in the game don't even last for an in-game minute is pathetic. It all comes down to that stupid saving throw system of course. There have been a few half-assed non-fixes like the disease system and some 'fail three saving throws and you're a thrall' bullshit but they don't get used because it's a waste of precious space.
• Too many status effects that don't make the enemy easier to kill. Yeah, there are a precious few number of powers that make enemies easier to kill like that one wizard one which leaves an enemy helpless but still conscious, but the vast majority of them don't speed up combat. While stuff like slow, immobilize, daze, stun, prone, create difficult terrain, etc.. makes it more likely for you to survive a particular combat it sure as hell doesn't reduce the grind. The game needs to primarily have effects that increase the squishiness of opponents, not turn them into unthreatening blobs of hit points.
• A shitty resource management system. Of course I can't fault them too much for this, 3E D&D's resource management system was slightly worse. Fortunately we have a solution to this, whichs should become the standard for D&D. You can read about it here.

There's more than that but I think that this is enough to get people started.

[echoVanguard]

It's not really particularly cinematic. Pushing a statue over on a villian, or knocking over a cauldron full of boiling liquid on some mooks (Like in the Conan movie) are cinematic things. Sure you can do these things in 4E, but the times when they're actually the tactically most effective actions are vanishly rare. Instead you use 'Attacks on the Run' or 'Rain of Steel' or 'Twin Strike' but any cinematic aspect to these actions comes from the player's description, not the powers.

It seems to me that from a design standpoint there's a bit of a catch-22 here. If you make player powers inferior to environmental attacks, people will complain that their class abilities are boring and useless, but if you do the opposite, you get the argument we've outlined - and if you implement a system which makes each effect more or less powerful at different times, people will complain that your system is too complex.

echo

[Dog Quixote]

By chassis I meant the rules that exist prior to either powers or character classes. I think the whole way powers were designed is a mistake.

Rules for moving, knocking prone, dazing etc. Standard, move, minor actions etc. Even immediate actions I think are fine (as long as they're rare. If you had to spend an action point to use them they'd be fine).

One of the things that 4E does well is that it creates mobile combats.