2E grognards and mirrors

[virgil]

I've been thinking about this. I'm starting to understand those people who still think that 3E was a bad idea, and I'm half wondering if maybe we're just seeing a repeat of the old days.

What makes this switch from 3E to 4E any different than 2nd to 3E?

[ubernoob]

4E has more in common with 2E than 3.X as I understand (lack of rockets, few options, no multiclassing to speak of).

[Cynic]

Because god damn it, I shaved my beard just two days ago.

[Psychic Robot]

Did 2e at least have familiars?

[Judging__Eagle]

As in... wizard familiars?

Not as far as I can remember.

[shau]

Baldur's gate had familiars. I think that means one of the versions of 2e did. I played with so many house rules anything I can say about it would be suspect.

[K]

As in... wizard familiars?

Not as far as I can remember.

It did. It was a 1st level spell.

---------------------

2e was fun. 3e, for all it's flaws, was more fun. Multlclassing, PrCs, feats, skills, and even more classes just made more possible. Not only was it less complicated, but you could do more with your character. You could even do more with your enemies with monsters with classes and magic items. Several other systems were clarified, such as monster types, weapons, saves, and a host of little things.

4e is a step back. It's a step so far back that Basic is looking pretty good. It's a minis game that had sex with a card game. It doesn't actually represent anything. Your character is boring. Your monsters are boring. The system isn't even less complicated than 3e despite cutting out several mechanics since they added a half dozen less interesting ones. In fact, not only is your character now a lot less powerful and less interesting from a RP standpoint, but in exchange for that you got a less stable setting and laughably poor engagement from players and DMs because Magical Princess Tea Party is now a core mechanic.

Seriously. I could just play Basic DnD from the Red, Blue, Black, and Gold boxes and have both a faster playing game that takes a fraction of the time to learn, but I'd spend exactly as much time handwaving things.

[Koumei]

Summon Familiar was a 1st level spell, back in the days where you rolled to see what spells you randomly learned. Enough "I want a pet!" players convinced their DMs to fudge the roll and let them have the damn familiar, so in 3rd, WotC gave them the familiar as a free class feature.

And from that point on, people started swapping it for other things (immediate magic springs to mind, but there are so many others).

---

I'm going to agree with K here. I honestly tried to get into 2E, but it wasn't my thing. But I could see how much fun could be had, still, for people who were familiar with the rules and all. When I then saw 3E, it had improvements pretty much everywhere that I had a problem with 2E. It was a huge step forward and I had so much fun that I actually learned the rules.

4E is just... no steps forward, ten steps back? And those steps back would be a stupid slide effect, too.

[Amra]

Hell, yes. I was a 2e stalwart and knew that system inside-out. A lot more stuff happened by DM fiat than in 3.x but it was fun, dammit. Magical Princess Tea Party was certainly a feature of 2e, but mostly by accident rather than design. A lot of stuff was handwaved but at least you could explicitly do really really cool things; the problems lay in the interpretation of those things. I had - and still have - my reservations about the move to 3rd Edition that I won't bore everyone with, but by and large the improvements made to the game and the increased character flexibility more than made up for the shortcomings. And then 4E happened.

As I said a couple of weeks ago, 4th Edition is 2nd Edition with the awesome sucked right out of it.

This makes me very sad. When I saw Tome of Battle, despite the utterly ludicrous situations that arose from the rules (like the Divine Crusader never getting the ultimate stance in his class without burning a feat), I thought "Yay, they're actually going to allow melee characters to drink deeply from the Well of Awesome in 4th Edition" and lo, there was much rejoicing.

Some of the shit you could pull in ToB - and I'm not talking about the brokenness, although there was plenty of it - was really fun. A Master of Nine could *seriously* be someone you didn't want to come across in a dark alleyway. They bollixed up the mechanics to an insane degree, but it looked like a step in the right direction.

But no, they took out everything that made the game difficult without considering that those things were, by and large, the things that made the game.

K has said it elsewhere; there are just too many stories that can't be told in 4th Edition. That wouldn't necessarily be the crying shame it is if it wasn't for the fact that there are no new ones that can be told as a result. D&D is - or was - the archetypal high-fantasy game. They've taken out the stuff that makes it high fantasy and turned it into a barren wasteland of miniature-combat resolution mechanics with a bit of flavour text and that hurts.

[CatharzGodfoot]

It's worth restating, through, that 4e implemented a lot of good ideas. It was done in a bad way, but there you go.

IMO 4e mechanics are more 'salvageable' than 2e or 3e. The important mechanics are few enough (or nonexistant enough) that you could really just make a few changes, additions, and re-write about 400 abilities to have a great game.

[Amra]

I don't see the key worthwhile mechanics of 4E being significantly different than the same in 3E; and you'd have to throw about the same amount away. The kicker is that in 3E you need to find some way of stopping the fun stuff from breaking the Universe, whilst in 4E you need to write all the fun stuff yourself from scratch because there basically isn't any.

[virgil]

As for not having to rewriting as many things in 4e as 3e, we only have the core three books for 4e. Our required books to make 3e salvageable are alot smaller if we limit ourselves to just the SRD too.

[JonSetanta]

Summon Familiar was a 1st level spell, back in the days where you rolled to see what spells you randomly learned. Enough "I want a pet!" players convinced their DMs to fudge the roll and let them have the damn familiar, so in 3rd, WotC gave them the familiar as a free class feature.

And from that point on, people started swapping it for other things (immediate magic springs to mind, but there are so many others).

I usually swap it for more HP on a mage or a Reserve feat whenever possible.

[K]

As for not having to rewriting as many things in 4e as 3e, we only have the core three books for 4e. Our required books to make 3e salvageable are alot smaller if we limit ourselves to just the SRD too.

To be honest, if you are going to rewrite that many abilities, writing a new edition is not really that hard.

I mean, here are the core problems with each edition:

3e:
-PrCing and feats rarely gives level appropriate abilities when you take them.

-All the melee classes need to be rewritten both for combat abilities and ability to affect the setting.

-Most skills don't work well. for example, diplomacy rules suck and no one knows how Hide works.

-Roughly 60 spell effects (and more permutations) in the core books are broken on first principles, ranging from SoDs to binding spells to shapechanging.

-Monster abilities are "eyeballed" instead of being designed according to any kind of objective criteria.

-Magic items are made Diablo-style, and so have an incredible number of flaws in an open-ended tabletop RPG.


4e:
-No ability to affect the setting, or do something as interesting as a 5th level character can do in previous editions. This means all the abilities, feats, and magic items need to be rewritten.

-Feats rarely give level-appropriate abilities when you take them.

-Most skills don't work well. For example, diplomacy rules suck and no one knows how Hide works.

-Monster abilities are "eyeballed" instead of being designed according to any kind of objective criteria.

-Magic item pricing and treasure allocation is designed for a video game and not a tabletop RPG.

--------------------

Summary: Fixing these problems involves fundamentally altering the game system on every level, regardless of which system you are using.

That's not even taking into account the other small things that need to be added into the game to smooth over the rough edges.

So, in the end, writing a new game is actually less work since you don't need to import any legacy mechanics.

[norms29]

as long as we're talking about second ed familiars, it's worth noting the EVERYONE GOT PETS. By lvl 9 a fighter got an army, a thief got cronies, a palidin had his warhorse, a cleric had followers, a ranger would have some animal that followed him everywere, whether he wanted it to or not.

the reason the find familiar spell was invented was that wizards were the only class that didn't get pets automatically.

[Psychic Robot]

K has said it elsewhere; there are just too many stories that can't be told in 4th Edition. That wouldn't necessarily be the crying shame it is if it wasn't for the fact that there are no new ones that can be told as a result. D&D is - or was - the archetypal high-fantasy game. They've taken out the stuff that makes it high fantasy and turned it into a barren wasteland of miniature-combat resolution mechanics with a bit of flavour text and that hurts.

This, I think, accurately summarizes my feelings about 4e. However, I can't put my finger on what, exactly, can't be told with 4e.

Not to derail the thread, but what stories cannot be told with 4e? (Should I just make a new thread for that one?) I want to point out necromancy immediately, but, to be fair, most undead armies were probably hand-waved rather than calculating animate undead costs and caster level and all that.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

I'd like to point out that no combination of abilities in 4E will allow you to:

Summon an army out of nowhere
Alter the environment significantly, even for a few minutes
Change into another form for any period of time
Throw up persistent illusions
Move or manipulate objects more complex than opening a goddamn lock

So in other words, here's what you can't do in 4E.

There's no Disney movie whatsoever that involves swordination that you can run. This includes Peter Pan, who had the ability to fly whenever the fuck he feels like and summon an army of preteen, emotionally stunted boys at will.
Avengers or X-Men? Forget about it. You can play Captain America and Spiderman if you want to. That's about it.
DCU is so far out of your league that it's not even funny. This even goes for the DCAU canon, where you can't even halfassedly pretend to be a single member of the Teen Titans or Virgil Hopkins (Static).
Exalted is so far out of your league that it's not even funny. If a Solar wants the ability to make his own fortress of solitude or cause an entire opposing army to break down like whimpering babies, they can deviate from their 'My Kungfu is Stronger than Yours' to do so. You cannot do either of these things no matter how hard you try.
If you want to be a Biblical prophet more awesome than Daniel or Paul then you're shit out of luck. There's not a single plague that you can do in this game, which is just goddamn sad.
Wanna turn into a big and scary B-movie monster, even something lame like a werewolf? Too goddamn bad, not even the werewolf race in this game can do that.
Get tired of killing and looting and want to play SimCity for awhile? Good fucking luck with that, there doesn't even exist magic that lets you build a treehouse let alone infrastructure. A 9th-level wizard and a cleric working together could put together a city with goddamn running water and streetlights in 3rd and 2nd, not so here.
Hell, there aren't even any halfassed 2nd edition rules that let you just suddenly find and staff a stronghold out of nowhere. What the Christ is this shit?

You can, however, run a perfectly acceptable game of Bleach and InuYasha. Naruto and Dragonball are out of the question however.

You can also halfassedly simulate the combat portions of God of War and Devil May Cry. However, if you attempt to go off the rails even a little bit or do something that doesn't involve killing dudes or playing Poisoned Monkey Bars then the game explodes.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

You know, we should've paid people more attention when they whined that D&D was becoming too 'anime-like' for their tastes.

I thought they were talking about the visual motif and giving noncasters a share of the pie--I didn't think that the game would literally devolve into a filler arc of Bleach, where the all-powerful heroes can't and won't and according to the fail team of Mearls and Collins don't even want to do anything besides hit people in the face with their magic swords. Score one for the alarmists, I guess.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

IIRC, even if you knew Find Familiar (and did anybody ever actually use those random rolls for spells known? IME, that and level limits were the first things the DM handwaved away in 2e), you had to make a roll to determine whether you actually attracted a pet. To guarantee that one showed up, you had to burn more gold than you had at the beginning of the game. It seemed like, even though it was a 1st-level spell, it was more likely to work at mid levels rather than right off the bat. Unfortunately, I no longer have my 2e books to look it up.

K captured my thoughts on looking at some of the rules of 4e. Multiclassing actually seems to be like a step back to the Basic game, where it didn't exist. In fact, they might have been better served by just turning the races into classes while they were at it. Imagine dragonborn as a controller class based on creative use of the breath weapon. That might make for more flavorful and varied options.

Okay, back to the main point. In some ways 4e is to 3.x what 2e was to 1e. Basically, both 2e and 4e took away beloved classes from the previous edition (though barbarians and cavaliers were in Unearthed Arcana rather than core in 1e), and 4e promises to return the old classes to the game in a much nerfed form, like the 2e barb and cav. Both changed the mechanics enough that the FR development team felt compelled to do radical things to that setting to accommodate the new rules (though this was probably not really necessary for 2e). Both changed the core races, though 2e far less so.

The real kicker is the way they changed the core assumptions about the setting. 2e didn't get rid of the Great Wheel, turn exotic monster races core, or do any crazy shuffles of the alignment system (there's another step back to BD&D). The funny thing is that a lot of their setting changes work better with old editions of the game. The "points of light" conceit would give 1e fighters plenty of real estate to establish their baronies after 9th level). The "us against the monsters" setting motif explains a world in which it's okay for adventurers to abuse the non-standard races, but it would work better if they didn't put the demon-spawn on the side of the forces of light. Increasingly, I wonder if any element of 4e, mechanics or flavor, was really thought out at all.

Oh, about Catharz's point: I do believe they started out on 4e with some decent ideas in theory. For example, giving everybody the same number of powers with the same frequency of use theoretically makes it easier to balance the classes. Of course, we've seen what happens in practice. That said, once you're looking at the finished product, it's got to be harder to rewrite all those powers than to add features to the fighter and nerf a bunch of spells.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

While we're bitching about the core problems of 4E, here's my biggest complaint.

No multiclassing.

Now, I admit that the multiclassing system was broken at its core in numerous tiny ways (skill points), moderate ways (saves), and major ways (caster level accumulation/frontloading). But it was fun.

The paragon system is a woefully inadequate representation of multiclassing. The multiclassing feats are even worse. First of all, they just outright suck (ooo, once a day, I get to add 1d8 damage OR get a +1 bonus to one attack. And SKILL FOCUS!!). Secondly, they're just broken from an objective design standpoint. You spend feats and you go down in ability accumulation, because you replace shit rather than get new shit. Thirdly and most unforgivably they don't even let you simulate being a gish or an arcane trickster or whatever the fuck. A 15th level rogue, after spending 4 feats in trying to multiclass wizard, can end up with fireball, blur, and flame sphere. That they can use once. A goddamn day.

That's not multiclassing! In 3E and 2E, that's a rogue with some magic items.

What the Christ is this shit? In 3E, you looked forward to becoming something. Even the shitty-ass monk could look forward to being a Drunken Master or a Tattoo Monk or a Divine Fist or an Arcane Fist or whatever the fuck. They weren't all that good because they were monks, but they were flavorful and you didn't have to spend your entire life just being a Drunken Master. You could be a Drunken Master Barbarian if you wanted to.

Just... I don't know anymore. Fuck it. Just, fuck it.

[Username17]

You can, however, run a perfectly acceptable game of Bleach and InuYasha.

As long as no one wants to play Noba or Shippo.

-Username17

[Tydanosaurus]

4E is to 3.x as Everquest is to 2E. 4E literally has no opportunity to be broken in any meaningful way because no powers actually effect the gameworld at all.

So, in 3.x, PC's had powers that drastically changed the world by summoning creatures, altering themselves and the world, etc. These were gamebreaking powers, if not well thought out. In 4E, PC's basically just affect mobs, just like in a MMO. You can bash monsters, and that's about it. (Yeah, there's a few arguably "broken" combos that allow the PC's to kill monsters w/o much risk, but that's not broken the way 3.x diplomacy or summons could be.)

IMO, that's the reason there are "so many stories" that can't be told in 4.E. 4.E is about killing mobs, and that's it. That leaves a lot of stories untold by the rules.

[Koumei]

Now I wonder if shopkeepers are Diablo-style NPCs who are just "immune to combat", or Everquest-style NPCs who are (for no apparent reason) maximum level and will fucking kill you the instant you accidentally kick them.

Or it could be like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, where if you're in a town they're immune to combat (as towns are non-combat zones), but if you find a shopkeeper in a dungeon then you can theoretically steal from or attack them (as dungeons are combat zones) but they will kick your ass. And in this case you can't even say "I'm Skitty! I use Sleep/Infatuate/Cute Charm on it, so I seriously take their stuff and do a runner to the next floor while it sits there." as this game has no meaningful status effects (and even if it did, it'd be lucky to last two rounds with the save mechanic).

[Orion]

4e Multiclassing really isn't that bad; and a few simple house rules make it a lot more palatable

You *do* have to use certain very specific builds, down to race and, class, and power sets.

But then, you couldn't haphazardly combine any two classes in 3E either. And honestly, there weren't particularly good gishes in 3.5 core either.

Also, I must disagree with your disparaging of the multiclass feats. Burning 3 feats on power swaps sucks, and I would usually not bother with the utility one except to qualify for paragoning, but the actual multiclass feats are pretty decent on the whole.

Initiate of the Faith: Control Wizards, Rangers, and Pole Fighters meet the requirement naturally. Toughness gives 5 hp per tier, healing word 1/day gives 3.5. Toughness increases the amount healed by surges, while healing word increases the ease of surging. A decent filler feat.

Student of the Sword: Endurance could be a good skill to have, but I'm having trouble finding builds that both need strength and can use the mark effectively. FAIL

Soldier of the Faith: too hard ot qualify for but the skill is good. The Mark is a kind of meh ability, unless you're a warlock, in which case it's really awesome. Mark someone then engage at range with pimmobilizes or eyebite. They can't reach you, take damage if thye attack anyone else. Decent but specialized.

Warrior of the Wild: This is it, this one is made of win. As printed, Hunter's Quarry 1/encounter makes those hydra grinds *way* more tolerable. The errataed, 1 round version sucks. That's okay though, because this feat allows you to learn *perception*. Almost anyone can take this feat, and should strongly consider it.

Sneak of Shadows: Thievery is in most campaigns useless, especialy once someone has it. Sneak Attack once is.... actually comparable to the damage output of Weapon Focus. Still not very good.

Arcane Initiate: This feat works best if you're a nonwizard with high INT, which basically means a Tactical Warlord. If you are though, you can learn Scorching Burst, which even as an encounter spell will essentially remove any need you might have felt to bring along a wizard for your minion-clearing needs.

--- On the whole, the multiclass feats are considerably *stronger* than any random 8 4e feats.
Pact Initiate: FAIL

Student of Battle: like initiate of the faith for fighters and brute rogues. Pick up Heal or Enduranc ewhile you're at it. Solid.






I'll post some of my multiclass builds later.

[K]

I think everyone hit it on the head, for the most part.

4e doesn't have any way to affect the setting that is not specifically the idea of the DM. This makes adventure design wicked easy.

Let's say a DM had a plot where the heroes must go get a huge ruby for a Duke, and then he'll let them get into his library to find the next clue to unravel the campaign goal of "Unseat the Lich King." He's got guards posted everywhere so sneaking doesn't work, and if the heroes try to fight their way into the castle he'll burn the book and denounce them as villains (and his army of 1st level Fighters can kill the PCs).

Now, in 3e the heroes really could do things like summon a succubus to sneak in, teleport into the library and just take it, make a simulacrum of the librarian or a court page to sneak in and get the book, Diplomacize the guards to help, send the Rogue in to get it, or do any number of things that are perfectly viable adventures which are more fun that being a repo man for some Duke.

In 4e, you have to go on the quest because there is no other way to accomplish this plot. A plot that would be a speed bump for a moderately skilled or creative party is now a three session drag-fest about getting a ruby for a duke when they'd rather be fighting the Lich King.

The DM has total control of the plot and how it is allowed to unravel, and so DnD goes from being a "cooperative roleplaying game" and becomes a "minis game." Player input has been reduced to just damage rolls and status effects because it's not even assumed that a PC can get a free beer at the tavern without DM fiat backing him up.

And people will groan "oh, but that's just the core books! It'll get better in later editions!"

No, it won't. Players and their contributions are not respected in 4e, which is why all the classes are just slight variations on each other, why all skill tests are DM fiat, and why there was no playtesting for this edition. Players are just combat units and the DM merely reacts to their actions in his pre-planned out plot. His skills as a storyteller will never be stretched outside of his predefined plot by creative and memorable acts by players, and he actually can spend all 30 levels of a PC's career telling a Fighter that he can't have an army. This system won't even let a character change the plot by putting on a Helm of Alignment Changing or choosing to use a powerful artifact rather than destroying it.

I don't know about anyone else, but railroading DMs are lame in my opinion, and a railroading game is just pathetic. At the end of the day, the PC has been reduced to a MMORPG bot instead of a human roleplayer since his game session has been reduced to rolling hits and damage and announcing new targets.