Arguments in favor of 4th Edition

[Draco_Argentum]

A monster has raw numbers and powers. 3e gives you no guidance on generating either for a given CR. 4e gives you the numbers and nothing on the powers. 4e is therefore better but only really marginally. The powers are the hard part where some real help from the rules would help.

[Username17]

If there is an existing stat block that models a new monster, but it needs some levels added or removed, the stat block with added or removed levels is fine.

But there never is, because of the inherently non-scaling nature of actual attacks. A carnage demon's attacks just don't matter to a 10th level party. Just scaling up the carnage demon doesn't really help.

-Username17

[Murtak]

So 4E gives us crappy guidelines to generate new monsters of a given CR and 3E gives us a crappy way to determine the CR and stats of an advanced monster. Looks like a draw to me, especially if neither is even close to working correctly.

[MartinHarper]

But there never is, because of the inherently non-scaling nature of actual attacks. A carnage demon's attacks just don't matter to a 10th level party. Just scaling up the carnage demon doesn't really help.

Pre-errata, the Evistro's attacks don't really matter to a level 6 party either...

Help me out here: are you saying that the damage scaling (+1 per 2 levels) is too small, or are you saying that even if it was bigger, it doesn't matter, because it's not attacking multiple PCs, or doing ongoing damage, or having Reach 2, or whatever else level 10 monsters tend to do?

[Username17]

So 4E gives us crappy guidelines to generate new monsters of a given CR and 3E gives us a crappy way to determine the CR and stats of an advanced monster. Looks like a draw to me, especially if neither is even close to working correctly.

For monsters, yes. Both systems are dumb and don't work very well. There are good solid ideas in both (3e's partially completed thought about advancing in dragon levels, vs. 4e's unfinished monster power by level and role idea). But neither is finished or functional. In either case it is extremely easy to make a free experience demon or a TPK crab.

However, 3e also has an overly time consuming and senselessly frustrating system of NPC generation that really does generate NPCs of roughly the expected power level. That puts it slightly over the top. It takes too fucking long, but it works at all. NPCs generated in 4e's system come out as Elites, which means that they don't work at all.

Both systems could benefit from stealing ideas from the other. And both systems have systemic flaws. But if for some reason I was forced at gun point to choose one, I'd take the 3e version, because at least that way I can make an NPC Necromancer that functions a intended. Een if it does take far more effort than it deserves to.

-Username17

[tic]

Both systems could benefit from stealing ideas from the other. And both systems have systemic flaws. But if for some reason I was forced at gun point to choose one, I'd take the 3e version, because at least that way I can make an NPC Necromancer that functions a intended. Een if it does take far more effort than it deserves to.

Out of curiosity, what's your definition of "functions as intended"? I'm assuming you don't mean the necromancer making undead, because that's an issue entirely separate from NPC/monster generation, and only relevant for a that specific type of NPC/monster. I mean, what are your criteria for "functions as intended"?

[Psychic Robot]

Forgive me if I'm putting wrong words in Frank's mouth, but...

A creature that "functions as intended"...

1. Can challenge the party appropriately. He won't be impossible to harm, and he won't be weaksauce, either.

2. Has abilities that aren't pulled straight from his ass. He functions within the game world the same as other creatures.

3. Won't take seventy rounds to grind down.

[Thymos]

There's more than that Psychic Robot.

The creature can't hose some parties and be hosed by others of identical levels. It's ok to have strengths and weaknesses, but we don't want auto wins and auto losses except in rare circumstances.

No taking out people on a single roll or save.

It has to have verisimilitude. No hitting you with a sword that after he's dead no one can find without explanation (the Balor in 3.x gave an explanation).

There's probably more, those are just off the top of my head.

[Username17]

No taking out people on a single roll or save.

Absolutely fucking not. What is this shit?

In a Rocket Launcher Tag game like D&D 3 or AD&D, you'd fucking better be taking people out in a single roll or save. Anything less is either too weak to keep up, or worse still is just as powerful as the stuff that is dropping people in one roll and then slowing down the game by senselessly filling up game space with pointless extra rolls for something that could be handled in just one roll to get the same effect.

-Username17

[Murtak]

Both systems could benefit from stealing ideas from the other. And both systems have systemic flaws. But if for some reason I was forced at gun point to choose one, I'd take the 3e version, because at least that way I can make an NPC Necromancer that functions a intended. Een if it does take far more effort than it deserves to.

Out of curiosity, what's your definition of "functions as intended"?

In this case I guess that would mean "can not be distinguished from a player character".

[MartinHarper]

If for some reason I was forced at gun point to choose one, I'd take the 3e version, because at least that way I can make an NPC Necromancer that functions as intended. Even if it does take far more effort than it deserves to.

In 4e, I made an NPC Necromancer by taking a Goblin Hexer from the Monster Manual, tweaking it slightly, adding the Death Master template to it, and giving it a (lootable) magic item. This took little time. In combat, it functioned as badly as any other 4e Elite. Out of combat, it relied on magic tea party, like any other 4e plot device.

[Roy]

Enjoy your higher concentration of Fail then.

The point of failing faster is not to do it more times, but rather to do it once or twice, then go out and get laid.

Or could can just ya know, not Fail, and then get laid.

[RandomCasualty2]

But there never is, because of the inherently non-scaling nature of actual attacks. A carnage demon's attacks just don't matter to a 10th level party. Just scaling up the carnage demon doesn't really help.

Surprisingly this isn't as true as you'd expect. Unless you build anti-scaling into the system, a lot of base attacks remain viable so long as you up the numbers.

Color spray for instance (assuming you remove the hit dice caps) is a fine spell to work at almost any level. If you keep raising the DC, it's definitely good. Really, any kind of stunlock or Save or die can just have its numbers raised so it can penetrate the saves of higher level characters, and you're good to go. Really only the actual damage based attacks need to get changed around.

Both systems could benefit from stealing ideas from the other. And both systems have systemic flaws. But if for some reason I was forced at gun point to choose one, I'd take the 3e version, because at least that way I can make an NPC Necromancer that functions a intended. Een if it does take far more effort than it deserves to.

I would never choose the 3E system (in fact right now I run 3E with a 4E style monster/NPC gen system), simply because it takes too damn long and it doesn't even remotely produce the CR that you want most of the time.

As far as making NPC necromancers, honestly I always found the 4E system to be better at that shit, because you can hand the NPC any ability you want. Where as in 3E, if the NPC isn't 9th level he can't even fucking raise skeletons. Yeah, a necromancer who can't even fucking raise skeletons. What kind of fucking bullshit is that?

You can't even have your typical sword and sorcery necromancer, because he needs to be 9th level to even have skeletons and by then, you're not even playing sword and sorcery level, you're playing flying fucking superheroes. So I can't generate a necromancer to challenge Aragorn, since at 9th level Aragorn isn't even a viable concept anymore.

How does that even remotely function as intended?

So 4E gives us crappy guidelines to generate new monsters of a given CR and 3E gives us a crappy way to determine the CR and stats of an advanced monster. Looks like a draw to me, especially if neither is even close to working correctly.

It would be a draw. Except for one thing. 3E system is painfully slow, and 4E is fast. That really creates a decided advantage to 4E. If neither system is more precise in terms of generating challenges, you might as well use the system that's faster. Normally the choice is between speed and accuracy, but there is no accurate system here, and one that is definitely faster. Advantage 4E generation.

[Avoraciopoctules]

As far as making NPC necromancers, honestly I always found the 4E system to be better at that shit, because you can hand the NPC any ability you want. Where as in 3E, if the NPC isn't 9th level he can't even fucking raise skeletons. Yeah, a necromancer who can't even fucking raise skeletons. What kind of fucking bullshit is that?

This lets you have 1 skeleton at level 1. You can raise another after you lose it.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/class ... etalMinion

If you can use a feat to grab this domain's spells, you can have skeletons at level 5.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spellLists/cl ... eathDomain

[RandomCasualty2]

This lets you have 1 skeleton at level 1. You can raise another after you lose it.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/class ... etalMinion

If you can use a feat to grab this domain's spells, you can have skeletons at level 5.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spellLists/cl ... eathDomain

Yeah, I'm aware there's a bunch of variants you can call on to create this stuff.

And yeah, clerics get them at level 5, but if you're talking about making a necromancer, I'm assuming you're making a wizard.

But the point is that you've got to go digging through splatbooks to find some obscure variant rule to create a monster with the ability you want. Where in 4E you can just say "fuck it... i want him to be able to create skeletons. Ok I'm writing that down!"

And then you're done.

Where in 3E, I need to be playing under some kind of rules variant to even get a necromancer that has a skeletal minion before level 9!

And the reason for that is simple, it goes back to that bullshit NPCs balanced as PCs crap. PCs having minions is pretty awesome because it gives them more firepower. NPCs having minions isn't even an ability because those minions are just part of the encounter. Whether the goblin king has goblins or the necromancer has skeletons, they shouldn't even have to pay an ability for that.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I see your point.

How do you think things would play if the players controlled groups of monsters vaguely equivalent in effectiveness to a PC? I think the tactical combat could be a lot more interesting if you played a warband that traded out monsters and added templates as it advanced.

[RandomCasualty2]

I see your point.

How do you think things would play if the players controlled groups of monsters vaguely equivalent in effectiveness to a PC? I think the tactical combat could be a lot more interesting if you played a warband that traded out monsters and added templates as it advanced.

If the CR system was set up properly, I guess you could do that. Where one PC commanded a warlord and another commanded a bunch of monster minions instead of a PC. Now, this would actually be easier to do in 3E, because one of the weaknesses of 4E is that there's no real equivalency between PC and monster. In fact, a PC is supposed to beat a monster of even level, unlike in 3E where equal CR means an equal challenge to one character. This means that we don't really know how many level 1 skeleton minions are supposed to equal one warlord or fighter.

Though it'd be like a step back from RPG back to wargame, since you're no longer commanding just one character anymore, but rather a group of soldiers. Though technically it should be able to work. The only real issue is that monster versus monster combat isn't going to be as balanced simply because monsters aren't as complex as PCs.

A monster will react more like a unit in a strategy game with one particular function. So it's up to the controller to mix up his unit selection to accomodate different tactics. Otherwise it'd be like in Warcraft 3 if one guy chose all grunts and another guy went wyverns. The grunts are pretty much guaranteed to be fucked.

PCs on the other hand are supposed to be designed to deal with a variety of threats.

[Doom]

Original Post:


So, post why 4e is worse than 3e, or 2e, or any other edition of D&D. I'll try to refute/concede each argument.

---

Arguments

1. Skill Challenges - Claim: The skill challenge system is a bad system.

My opinion is that the system works fine. I concede that there is no good argument in favor of Skill Challenges.

(Tally: 0- for, 1- against)

Has he made it to 1 refutation yet?

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

[Psychic Robot]

He stopped posting.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, I'm aware there's a bunch of variants you can call on to create this stuff.

And yeah, clerics get them at level 5, but if you're talking about making a necromancer, I'm assuming you're making a wizard.

But the point is that you've got to go digging through splatbooks to find some obscure variant rule to create a monster with the ability you want. Where in 4E you can just say "fuck it... i want him to be able to create skeletons. Ok I'm writing that down!"

So your argument is that the 3e monster creation system prevents you from making up abilities not related to anything?

Seriously?

Pick an outsider, any outsider, chances are pretty damn good that the person who created that outsider was like, "Well fuck, I want it to be able to cast fucking dispel magic, but I don't want it to have spell casting! I know, I'll just write something down!"

If you want to arbitrarily add ability X to a monster, you can do that in either creation system. The difference is that in one of them, you have to actually make up every ability they have because there are no standard abilites that come with being a level X Y, and in the other, you get a bunch of abilities from being a level X Y and you only have to invent bullshit when those abilities are insufficient.

[RandomCasualty2]

So your argument is that the 3e monster creation system prevents you from making up abilities not related to anything?

Yeah, pretty much.

3E you have to go dumpster diving to assign NPCs abilities you want. Yet it doesn't produce a better balanced NPC, it's just more work.

So yeah, at that point, I would rather just make shit up and save myself the 20 minutes of dumpster diving through a huge collection of splatbooks. It's one thing if doing that produced more balanced encounters but it doesn't.

So again your choices are between:

unbalanced and slow
versus
unbalanced and fast.

So seriously yeah, I'll choose unbalanced and fast any day of the week. It's not even much of a choice. 3E just has you put in a bunch of extra work to churn out a turd instead of churning one out in a minute or two. If neither system is going to produce something of better quality, I'd rather do it fast.

If you want to arbitrarily add ability X to a monster, you can do that in either creation system.

That's not true. If you want to make a necromancer in 3E you have to build it with classes. You can't just make shit up. It's why NPC creation in 3E is atrocious.

Even monster creation, while allowing you to basically do what you want similar to 4E, has a bunch of red tape bullshit for generating a monsters numbers, since we're more interested in a monster's hit dice than it's CR. Only in designing encounters, guess what? CR is the most important thing.

Seriously I don't even know how people can defend the 3E monster/NPC creation system. It is the biggest pile of shit that I've seen in any RPG.

And as far as 4E not having any centralized rules, that's not true either. Things like phasing, tremorsense, incorporeal, status conditions and so forth are contained in the rulebook. It's just the actual powers which are custom designed. Which honestly, since 4E is so simple, might as well be, since it saves people from remembering what the damage was on a fireball. The only real advantage to pointer references is when the text you're referencing is huge. In cases of things like polymorph or dispel magic, that makes sense. Because you don't want to bloat the game by reprinting that. But a 4E power, the entire thing can literally fit on one line. So the space it would take to write "Fireball" isn't much less than writing.
"Fireball (std, enc): Area burst 1 at 20, +9 vs Reflex, 2d6+6 fire damage to all targets in burst."

And at that point for ease of reference we might as well just write that down. I mean it's nice having personalized bonuses and damage scores for that monster. For 3E we're always having to add that stuff up manually. We need to know the caster level and the spell level, and the bonus to spell DCs. All just to get the stats on a simple spell like fireball.

[Psychic Robot]

In 3e, you needed the CL for things like SR. Which is a mechanic that I hate anyhow, so good riddance to it.

[crazysamaritan]

He stopped posting.

He has been too busy over the Christian Holiday Weekend (Spring Break for some of us) to respond to posts. When free time allows, he will return to apologize for his tardiness, and review the discussions that have proceeded without him.

[Crissa]

Where in 4E you can just say "fuck it... i want him to be able to create skeletons. Ok I'm writing that down!"

...Or you can do that in 3e, too.

-Crissa

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I think RC is referring to the fact that Exception Based Design allows you to pull things out of your ass without reference to anything else or having to be consistent.

Of course, I don't think there's anything to prevent you from giving a lower-CR 3.x monster a higher-level spell-like ability. I mean, if clerics can create skeletons at lower level than wizards, why not monsters?