4e failed design goals

[CapnTthePirateG]

Is it just me, or did the 4e designers not deliver on a lot of what they said they were going to do?

Give everyone something interesting to do every round? Sure, spam at-wills.

Eliminate magic item dependency? Nope, you still need neck, weapon, and armor, plus the fact that many optimized builds (such as orbizard) need lots of magic items to work.

Get rid of save or dies? orbizard.

[Lokathor]

But "Push 1" is a totally interesting effect. yeah!

[souran]

Is it just me, or did the 4e designers not deliver on a lot of what they said they were going to do?

Give everyone something interesting to do every round? Sure, spam at-wills.

Eliminate magic item dependency? Nope, you still need neck, weapon, and armor, plus the fact that many optimized builds (such as orbizard) need lots of magic items to work.

Get rid of save or dies? orbizard.

How much have you actually played the game?

At wills are at least better than "I attack with my longsword." Infact, If the intra round speed was faster it would actually not be that unsatifying at all.

My group of players in general likes their at wills, even once they are out of encounter powers they still have something that actually effects combat that is not just damage output to do.

Additionally, the paragon tier seems to be a sort of sweet spot in many ways because the players have 4 encounter powers to use. Most fights, don't last more than 5-6 turns. That means you can use an encounter power each round, and only end up "spamming" your encounter power a time or two.

it is worse at really low levels, but also at levels 1-5 at wills are also strong enough that they really help.

The give everybody something to do really does work, if your group buys into the idea in the first place. Most of my players also play MMO's and they are very willing to commit to a specific kind of combat role and function. Then the game works, and it works well. Now, it also depends on how the gamemaster plays the monsters as well. If you play it like your playing the descent overlord and go for broke trying to takedown the pcs you will. However, if you play that marked monsters generally attack the person who marked them and you don't play "rush the clothies" ignoring anythign that might be in the way then its combat is actually quite entertaining all around.

The magic item dependance is reduced to weapon, armor, and cape/neck. It really is. You can compelte any of the prepublished adventurers with heroe's to who are built for the minimum level of the adventuer and select these three items. No matter how boring you think that is, that means that this design goal was met.

What you cannot do without magic items stacked on like a christmas tree is accomplish a lot of the game shattering feats described by say Lago on these very boards. Now yeah, you can bust all sorts of parts of 4e if you get to stack up your goodies into every slot. However, as has been decried on these very boards christmas tree characters are not a guantee of even ORGANIC play.

The fact that many optimized builds need lots of magic items says maybe those builds are not really as feasable as presented. There is a fundamentally contradiction in complaining that it takes a lot of magic items to make an orbizard really work and that when you get all those magic items its broken.

There really are not save or dies, and the idea that it is not uncomparably less available than in 3.x or 2e or whatever is downright disengenious.

Really, 4e is not given enough credit on these boards. If you want a game that has longer combat than 3e, where mini's and mini movement are much more important 4e is the game you want to play. A game where all players have equal access to the games special powers and the difference between playing a fighter and a wizard is a more like the differance between choosing to an all white magic deck and an all blue magic deck 4e is the game you want to play. If you want to play a game that is willing to admit that really focuses the game down on being an adventurer 4e is for you.

4e works really well if you want to play the game that is in its rulebooks. I happen to like it a lot more than 3e's gygaxian spaltter fest caster orgy but then again my games don't "go off the rails" in the way that phrase is used here. My groups don't mind chassing down mcguffins, defeating darklords, turning back Orc invasions and 4e can do those things really well.

[Roy]

At wills are 'I attack with my longsword' that pretends to be something other than 'I attack with my longsword'. So not only is it not different, it lies about being different.

Also, movement doesn't matter. There are about 5 ranges in the game that matter. 1 square, 5 squares, 10 squares, 20 squares, and 40 squares. And that's it. That's the entire game. Far less than 3.5, which offers at least that many different ranges to each category of character. Fuck, even melee characters have more than 5 ranges that matter depending on their size and the reach factor of their weapon.

The problem is that even when people try to defend 4.Fail, they illustrate the problems with it. Case in point.

The give everybody something to do really does work, if your group buys into the idea in the first place. Most of my players also play MMO's and they are very willing to commit to a specific kind of combat role and function. Then the game works, and it works well. Now, it also depends on how the gamemaster plays the monsters as well. If you play it like your playing the descent overlord and go for broke trying to takedown the pcs you will. However, if you play that marked monsters generally attack the person who marked them and you don't play "rush the clothies" ignoring anythign that might be in the way then its combat is actually quite entertaining all around.

Being forced to play mobs as well... mobs, to not break the game. Instead of 'Lol, most marks suck, so the mob ignores it and focuses fire anyways'. And instead of fixing that by making marks not suck, they just tell you to try and ignore the fucking elephant in the room.

And here's another.

Really, 4e is not given enough credit on these boards. If you want a game that has longer combat than 3e, where mini's and mini movement are much more important 4e is the game you want to play.

4.Fail combat was supposed to be fast. Faster than 3.5 even. That was one of their main selling points. I dunno what game they were playing, but it wasn't D&D 3.5.

About the only part you got right is that 4.Fail does reduce the game to 'being an adventurer' aka killing things and taking their stuff. You're absolutely right about that. However anyone looking for a grind game has video games for that and particularly MMORPGs.

If I want a grind I'll go put my DDO characters on timer for Reaver, Shroud, Hound, Vision of Destruction, Tower of Despair, and anything else I feel like hitting.

[shadzar]

Are at-wills more interesting though? Are they really?

"4th edition is cool, trust us"

"Ze game will change but it will remain ze same"

"4th edition is fun"

At-wills are like those advertising slogans WotC threw out at and before launch. Repetitive things that you do cause you can do nothing else.

I don't think at-wills are interesting at all. Magic Missile. It isn't interesting, just necessary.

Status effects interesting? How about just set the building on fire form the outside and see how the encounter works? Where is the status effect for that? It is much more interesting than being stupid to run in to fight a group of people if you don't have to, to force them to come out in a manner not ready to fight...like rushing form a burning building.

Where is that streamlined rule for burning down a building?

[Crissa]

What at-will does each class have, that does something that isn't damage and isn't something you could have done in 3e?

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty2]

Tactical Combat and having interesting choices: Lets face it, this was a total failure.

4E needed to use its interesting conditions more and make the penalty conditions better. Things like dazed, marked and weakened could be pretty interesting if applied properly. In that people who get weakened now want to use shit that doesn't do damage and marked and dazed people have choices between what target to attack.

The problem is that the penalty of -2 for marked wasn't nearly enough to even get people to care, and you didn't have any other choice other than to do damage when you got weakened.

And in spite of all those small conditions there were also super conditions, like stunned, which were just insanely good. Even something like daze was very powerful against meleers.

Then there were just a preponderance of noneffects, like pushing the target, which means the target just moves back to you. 4E needed a full attack action as well, or at least some kind of feint/aim as a move action or some shit that made it so it was worthwhile to start in melee range. Otherwise you just use your move action (which is worthless anyway) to reclose the distance you were pushed and get on with your life. There's no actual penalty to getting pushed out of range unless you get thrown into a pit or something.

So you have this combination of highly situational powers mixed with base damaging powers that are useful in almost every situation. There's not many instances where you don't want to use your twin strike or righteous brand. So fuck, once you find your favorite general use power, you can count on it all the fucking time.

So seriously, nobody wasted time with the situational bullshit. If you actually got a lot of powers to choose from, then situational stuff might be more useful.

Another main failed concept is roles, because they lead to this totally boring style where everyone does the same thing every combat. There's never a period where the agile rogue draws fire from the giant so the warrior and mage can get in position to nuke it, or where the psion has to shield the party from the enemy mind flayer's mental blasts. No. You've got one defender, and he's always a tank. That's it.

[Josh_Kablack]

I'm with you on the 4e hate around here being more than is deserved, and I am with you on at-wills being better than just spamming longsword attacks, but

The magic item dependance is reduced to weapon, armor, and cape/neck. It really is. You can compelte any of the prepublished adventurers with heroe's to who are built for the minimum level of the adventuer and select these three items. No matter how boring you think that is, that means that this design goal was met.

is crazy talk.

If you'd said "enhancement bonus items" I'd let it slide, but here's the thing.

Yeah, everybody absolutely needs armor, weapon and NADs items of current enhancement bonuses or team monster is going to win.

But many builds and classes also need additional items:

Any melee class also needs a heavy thrown weapon of at least +1 or there is jack all they can do about monsters that fly or have ranged attacks or are on the other side of a ravine - and there is about one such encounter out of every 5 I've seen in my past 16 months of playing 4e. At paragon and higher this is trivial since it doesn't need to keep all the way current - but at levels 1-5 it's a substantial part of total party treasure for a backup weapon for a single character.

A tempest fighter, melee ranger and others need a pair of weapons of current enhancement bonuses at all levels to stay where the game says they should be on the RNG

Beat clerics and both flavors of paladins need both a weapon and a Holy Symbols of current enhancement bonuses at all levels to stay where the game says they should be on the RNG.

The fact that many optimized builds need lots of magic items says maybe those builds are not really as feasable as presented.

Funny, I thought it said that the designers overemphasized the power of magic items relative to the power of character abilities in YET ANOTHER EDITION of D&D.

If a 12th level ranger is supposed to be able to hit AC 28 monsters (like the Lamia or Githyanki Warrior) with his bow often enough that he counts as a character who is good with the bow, then the +17 maximum total attack bonus available from stat + level + proficiency + prime shot + feat is really not good enough by itself and he needs some sort of enhancement bonus to hit even half the time - and this is a character optimized on stats, race, feats, class features and even proficiency bonus of the weapon in order to be good with it. So even on top of optimizing the character for bow use, he still is dependent upon coming across a magic bow of appropriate enhancement or the means to purchase one - and both of those are still firmly under DM whim.

So in 4e, you can play an archer if you want. But no matter how much you optimize for archery, you cannot play an EFFECTIVE archer unless the DM says that you can.

That's ass.

And the marketing claim that said 4e would reduce magic-item dependency is a hemorrhoid on that ass.

And the fact that after that claim was made the designers set enhancement bonus scaling up as an obvious linear formula based solely on level while deciding not to fold the bonuses into level is like watching that hemorrhoid bleed.

[RandomCasualty2]

Simplified Combat: 4E probably has the most shit to track in combat than any other edition, because fucking everything tends to drop one or more minor status conditions on people, all of which are temporary. To make things worse, you've got tons of small conditionals like prime shot and gnoll pack attacks and shit that you have to keep track of. And of course, those conditions have varied durations. Some end on a save, some end at the end of the attacker's next turn and others end with more obscure conditions. This generally means that for a lot of effects you have to know not only who the effect is on, but also who put it there.

Now that may not seem like a lot, but considering that generally every other action a creature (PC or monster) takes, you're adding a condition of some kind, the combats get complicated as hell.

[CapnTthePirateG]

How much have you actually played the game?

We had a heroic tier game going for a year.

If you want a game that has longer combat than 3e, where mini's and mini movement are much more important 4e is the game you want to play.

Honestly, this was one of our problems. Combat took forever to resolve, and mostly cause the math was set up so we missed a lot against opponents we knew we could beat.

Plus, I just remembered another one. "You don't need a DDI subscription to play." I'd say this is half true. Want charm or necromancy spells that were in the core books for EVERY OTHER EDITION? You need DDI, cuz Greg Leeds needs more money!

[shadzar]

Simplified Combat: 4E probably has the most shit to track in combat than any other edition, because fucking everything tends to drop one or more minor status conditions on people, all of which are temporary. To make things worse, you've got tons of small conditionals like prime shot and gnoll pack attacks and shit that you have to keep track of. And of course, those conditions have varied durations. Some end on a save, some end at the end of the attacker's next turn and others end with more obscure conditions. This generally means that for a lot of effects you have to know not only who the effect is on, but also who put it there.

Now that may not seem like a lot, but considering that generally every other action a creature (PC or monster) takes, you're adding a condition of some kind, the combats get complicated as hell.

But isn't that how they made it where no one would ever be bored, by giving everyone something to do during combat...tracking status effects...even if that is all you can do.

[Psychic Robot]

At wills are at least better than "I attack with my longsword." Infact, If the intra round speed was faster it would actually not be that unsatifying at all.

This sort of half-truth makes me rage. At-wills are "I attack with my longsword but it has a different name and a minor effect."

3e
Player: I swing with my longsword. Does a 17 hit?
DM: Yes.
Player: Sweet, 1d8 + 6 damage.

Player: I attempt to bull rush him. I rolled a 17.
DM: He rolled a 5.
Player: Sweet, I move him three squares.

4e
Player: I use Tide of Iron. Does a 17 hit?
DM: Yes.
Player: Sweet, 1d8 + 6 damage, and I move him one square.

[erik]

I'm with you on the 4e hate around here being more than is deserved, and I am with you on at-wills being better than just spamming longsword attacks

This isn't anything against Josh as he isn't even the first to make this bold claim... but that claim irritates the hell out of me. Why is that comparison always presented as if 3e was just spamming longsword attacks, whereas 4e at wills are something more than just weapon attacks? I hate that comparison because it isn't remotely accurate on either end.

In 3e you could melee attack, ranged attack, trip, disarm, bull rush, overrun, grapple and many exotic weapons had strong tactical uses as well. This is totally ignoring other combat options that were not simple attack actions (i.e. spells and other class abilities).

I had 1st level 3e characters with more viable and interesting combat options than a 4e character had in at wills.

When I briefly played 4e, I usually found that the players were just spamming 1 at will after expending their daily or encounter ability anyway and in many cases the at-will spammed wasn't even anything different than "I attack for damage".

How is Twin Strike (ranger) or Piercing Strike (rogue) any different than spamming weapon attacks? I'm all ears. Even Righteous Brand (cleric) is not much more interesting than spamming a weapon attack.

[Judging__Eagle]

.... sounds like I've had Wizards in 3.5 who were more interesting in melee combat than a fighter in 4e ever could be.

There's grapples, tripping, holding or waiting on your action, using a ranged, or melee attack, bullrushing, overrunning, hell jump is an in-combat option.

Seriously though, how is terrain treated in 4e? Are they different still?

[Archmage]

Well, technically, you can do most of those things in 4e. You can ready/hold actions, you can bull rush, you can grapple, if you have a mount you can choose whether you want to attack or if you want the mount to do it (not quite overrun, but whatever), et cetera. I'm not entirely sure what J_E's comment about jumping is supposed to mean because 4e characters can totally jump.

The real problem is not that you can't do these things, but that they're pointless trap options. Bull rush moves someone one square, and there are a lot of at-wills that will shove people around. Grappling immobilizes an enemy and prevents them from moving away from you, but that's seriously it--there are no penalties for being grabbed aside from not being able to move out of your square. Most characters are hideously specialized in either ranged or melee and can't switch freely between them.

Of course, you can quite fairly say that trap options are worse than non-options.

[A Man In Black]

But isn't that how they made it where no one would ever be bored, by giving everyone something to do during combat...tracking status effects...even if that is all you can do.

This is actually somewhat perceptive, so I figured I'd quote it for everyone else's benefit.

[Username17]

I'm actually offended by the claim that 4e did anything positive to the magic item situation. The design goal was specifically to reduce the Christmas Tree Effect. The claim is that they did this based on Andy Collins' claim that there was a "big six" list of magic items that everyone had to have:

• Magic weapon
• Magic armor & shield
• Ring of protection
• Cloak of resistance
• Amulet of natural armor
• Ability-score boosters

Now, a whole fuck tonne of characters actually don't give a fuck about Amulets of Natural Armor or Rings of Protection, because those just affect AC, which is not a defense that every character relies upon once you start worrying about the gold economy and magic items. Even amongst very high level warriors, a lot of them just concentrate on damage mitigation - if you have Elusive Target and Heavy Fortification, you can run around in +1 Padded and be pretty much OK. You'll get hit almost every time (subject to the Miss Chances you've doubtless cultivated), but negating Power Attack and Critical damage you can soak pretty much whatever most brute monsters hand out while you respond with burst damage or whatever. And hey, Wizards, who literally only care about 2 items on that list: Headband of Intellect and Cloak of Resistance.

So what did they do? They went and made 3 or more items "mandatory" for every character. And then they announced that other objects were "optional". But seriously: for a Laser Cleric, how "optional" are Healer's Gloves? For a Ranger, how "optional" are your Iron Armbands of Power? Those items aren't optional, failing to have them makes you suck.

It's not just that they completely fucked up the magic item delivery system - although they did - it's that the basic goal of reducing the number of mandatory magic items was totally not accomplished. The opposite was accomplished. Characters need their magic items more than ever before. In 3e, there are a lot of classes that can actually get by even at 10th level with no magic items at all. And while they are all casters, the fact remains that it's possible. You can't do that in 4e, the game tells you that you can't do that in 4e.

Andy Collins, in announcing that he was reducing the Christmas Tree, actually just increased the Christmas Tree such that the characters in 4e who need the least magic items of all need as many items as the characters who needed the most under 3e rules. It's jaw droppingly terrible.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

One other thing I really, really genuinely hate about 4E (as opposed to just attention-grabbing whining) are magic item dailies. 90% of the equipment in the books are made absolutely useless because of this system. There are no equipment out there that holds up to the magical item dailies of Stone Bands, Salves of Power, Timeless Lockets, that fucking cloak in the AV2 which gives you encounter-long persistent concealment, Battlemaster Spiked Gauntlets, and the Dancing weapon enchantment.

It's really infuriating how badly they fucked this up. If I didn't have a lottery for my game every melee character would be using Frost weaponry (with Siberys Shards), Iron Armbands of Power, Backlash Tattoos, Blackiron/Necrotic Resistance/Vanilla chainmail or heavy armor, vanilla neck slot items, Casque of Tactics/Skull Masks, Frost Gloves, and Boots of Eagerness/Rushing Cleats. Magical item dailies are the big reason why the system sucks so much.

3E sucked for this, too; I think in the DMG a little more than half of the unique magic items were just not worth the price they were asking for. However, in 3E at least most of the equipment they handed out players wouldn't out-and-out throw away in the trash. I don't think anyone would actually spend money to buy a darkskull or a mattock of the titans but people would still be glad to get it. That's a massive improvement over the 4E system where you introduce anything that's not on the Winner's Tier list of magic item equipment and you get blank stares.

When I say that the vast majority of magical items in the game are worthless, I am not kidding. I mean, 3E was awful, with like half of the magical items in the basic book being worthless, but 4E manages to top that.

So here's a list of the useful items in the PHB. I tried to be as charitable as possible, picking items that were either useful at the time even if they're not now (like Bracers of Mighty Striking) or would be useful in the future (like Eladrin boots). I also included equipment with clear exploits like Soulforged Armor or Vorpal Weapons. Equipment that used to be useful but isn't anymore is marked with an asterisk.

*Angelsteel Armor: Would be worthless if the effect couldn't be applied to AC, which it can be. Since it's a defense.
Black Iron Armor: Necrotic and Fire damage are two of the three most common damage types in the game (missing poison resistance), so this armor is actually really helpful. Especially in epic.
Bloodcut Armor: This armor is pure gold if you're on a one or two-encounter workday. It sucks anus if you are.
*Curseforged Armor: Epic-tier versions of this armor is good depending on how your DM rules things. It's a good armor if the DM reduces the penalty by -1 with each save instead of going straight down to a -1 penalty.
*Dwarven Armor: Great! Surgeless healing. Excellent level 2 and level 7 armor, kind of sucks from then on. Oh, well.
Eladrin Armor: Funnily enough, this armor is practically worthless in the base PHB because the heavy-armor classes (unless you were building a Hammer Dwarflock before Pact Hammers got nerfed) DON'T TELEPORT. But there are various stupid ways to finagle small amounts of teleport in later expansions.
Hydra Armor: You should just pretend that this armor doesn't exist. Even if used 'normally' it's a ridiculous exploit, letting people heal for 250/500 hit points if they get a critical hit. Way to encourage people falling asleep in battle thar.
Soulforged Armor: There are various silly effects that restore hit points to you without using regeneration. If set up properly, such as two clerics wearing this armor while using Stream of Life on each other, this is some 'I win the fucking game forever, biatch' armor.
Trollskin Armor: As a magical item daily, you heal all of your hit points. If you get banged up in one encounter, ambush a foe after waiting for two minutes (healing 100-200 hit points) and then win the batte you heal all of your hit points again. Awesome.

*Dancing Weapon: If you're at super-epic levels (like level 25+) then you need to load up on these things and spam them for each encounter. Yes, you'll be two points of attack behind (and will miss 2/3rds of your attacks if going by the basic book) but it's an extra attack that lasts until the end of the encounter which makes this the most damaging use of your daily in the game.
*Flaming Weapon: Weapon of choice for basic-book only Stunlock Tieflings, because of their dumbass Hellfire Blood feat.
Frost Weapon: Lasting Frost + Wintertouched for the fucking win. Best weapon in the book, took a backseat to Bloodclaw and Reckless--roared back with a vengeance with the release of Gloves of Ice and Siberys Shards--is now king of all of the weapons except for some oddball ones like Staggering and Cunning.
Lightning Weapon: You only want this weapon for one reason. But it's a pretty gigantic reason. You get to abuse the awesome Mark of Storm feat. There's also a really nice PP in the Eberron's Player's Guide which gives characters using lightning/thunder keyworded powers +1 attack/+CON damage to all of their attacks at level 11.
*Vorpal Weapon: Had a pretty trivial infinite damage loop with the Astral Weapon. Now mostly just kind of sucks. Sad.

Symbol of Power: Stackable -2 penalty to saving throws. Would be ridiculously useful except that there are only FOUR divine class powers in the basic *book past level 9 that actually have a (save ends) effect and all of them are ongoing damage/minor d20 roll penalties.
Symbol of Victory: Gives you or an ally an action point when they score a critical hit. Which means that you get an extra action point for winning the encounter. This is actually very useful if you are doing a workday with more than one encounters in it.

*Staff of Power: Extra daily powers are always very nice. Completely subsumed by Salves of Power.

*Bracers of Mighty Striking/Perfect Shot: When going by just the book, this provides a perverse incentive for non-rangers to spam basic attacks over their At-Will powers. Nice going, 4E.

Shield of Deflection: Enormously good magic power, especially the level 22 ability. If you don't have Iron Armbands of Power or if you're something like a Laser Cleric then you get this shit.

Acrobat Boots: Eh, they're practically cheap-as-free after awhile and the minor action thing does come in handy now and again. Might as well ahve it.
Eladrin Boots: See my earlier note on Eladrin chainmail.

*Gauntlets of Destruction: Before we had Strikebacks these were the gold standard of hand slot items. Already REALLY insanely annoying to use in actual play. If you're online, sure, 2d4+whatever becomes 2d3+2+whatever, but why unnecessarily slow the game down in real life?
Gauntlets of the Ram: Essential for the Thunderglaive wizard build.

Helm of Battle: Someone has to bite the bullet and wear this for the team.
Helm of Ghostly Defense: Gives that coveted resist 10 necrotic. But the real prize is the insubstantial as an immediate interrupt. You take half damage for one attack and for the rest of the attacks that round as an encounter power.
Horned Helm: Important factor in the San Diego Supercharger build.

Amulet of Health: Aaaand here's where that missing poison resistance went. Pair this with Black Iron armor and you can breathe a lot easier.
Cloak of Survival: Cold is the fifth-most common damage keyword (fire is the second or third, I'm not sure) and the +enh. bonus to Endurance was very important back in the bad old skill. Not a back neck slot item.

Iron Ring of the Dwarf Lords: These things are A) cheap and B) give out a healing surge. You get these rings unless otherwise noted (for example, you want a Shadow Band), especially if you are spamming Salves of Power.
Ring of Regeneration: Makes Trollhide Armor obsolete. Get back all of my hit points AND a healing surge? Su-weet.

176 items, only 30 of them are any good (I do not count vanilla implements/weapons/neck/armors). This means that 5/6ths of the magic items in the fucking Player's Handbook are completely worthless.

And you know what? The Player's Handbook has the biggest ratio of win/suck out of any book with a substantial equipment list. It's a goddamn gold mine compared to, say, Eberron's Players Guide or the Adventurer's Vault.

[RandomCasualty2]

3E sucked for this, too; I think in the DMG a little more than half of the unique magic items were just not worth the price they were asking for. However, in 3E at least most of the equipment they handed out players wouldn't out-and-out throw away in the trash. I don't think anyone would actually spend money to buy a darkskull or a mattock of the titans but people would still be glad to get it. That's a massive improvement over the 4E system where you introduce anything that's not on the Winner's Tier list of magic item equipment and you get blank stares.

This is basically the consequence of any gold valued magic item system, where you can simply trade one item for another. Regardless of how you assign value to items, at some point, there's going to be a winner's tier of items that come to the top.

As far as 3E versus 4E, in 3E, I found that people were much more apt to sell shit than 4E, simply because 3E characters got a much better return on magic item sales. So while it might be cool to have a mattock of the titans or a dark skull, the temptation to just sell it off is far too great because you're getting such a big chunk of change. In 4E, selling items is a big ripoff and I think PCs are more reluctant to do it.

Though I don't really have all that much 4E experience... so mostly my group just goes with its gut and it generally hates being ripped off that mcuh.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I didn't say that 3E's system was good, just that 4E's system was just that much worse.

If you decided to be a heavy-handed dick and rip players off for selling darkskulls and all that happy horseshit then it'd still be a better system than 4E's. People would still keep darkskulls around. If you give a player a Flameburst longsword and don't let him sell it then that thing is going in the fucking trash. Character sheet space is precious.

[Username17]

This is basically the consequence of any gold valued magic item system, where you can simply trade one item for another. Regardless of how you assign value to items, at some point, there's going to be a winner's tier of items that come to the top.

Gold isn't the important fact here. It's resource management. Every time you can't have everything because of some kind of resource restriction, there are going to be winners and losers based on how much resource they consume. The reason why 4e has so many trash drops in it, is because it has three separate resource tallies. Gold Cost, Item Slot, and Item Dailies Slots. In order to be worth having, an item has to be competitive across all three categories.

So let's say you introduce an item. It's a pair of boots, it does something or other. Statistically it's something tangentially related to movement, but whatever. The point is that when determining whether people care, it has to pass the following three tests:

• Gold Cost: If there are other items that are better than it is at its level, people will get those other items first, and since people don't get magic items very often or reliably, if they get something else first, they probably won't get it at all before they move on to getting higher level stuff and it's time to upgrade your cape again. Remember: you only get 4 items in five levels, and three of them are supposed to be upgrades to your implement, your cloak, and your armor.
• Item Slot: Regardless of whether the boots in question are good compared to other items of their level, the fact is that they specifically a pair of boots, and each character has only one boots slot. So if there are other boots that are more competitive for that single slot, even if they are lower or higher level, no one is going to grab the boots in question. They'll keep their old boots or save up for the bigger better boots and fill other slots in the meantime.
• Dailies Limit: If you don't have items that provide daily abilities, you can't use your Item Dailies slots for anything. But once you've successfully invested yourself with some item whose daily power you intend to use, any other item you get that provides a Daily power is just dead weight.

So the net result is that you only hear about Rushing Cleats and Eagerness Boots. No one talks about their Dwarven Greaves, because there are 7th level items people would rather get, and there are better feet slot items, and people have better uses for their Item Dailies than to negate forced movement once as an interrupt. The sad fact is that because of the non-fungibility of 4e Item Resources, people would not wear Dwarven Greaves even if they were free. And if they were made to also not take up space on the body, players still wouldn't ever use them because they'd rather use the Daily on their Dwarven ring that also makes them immune to forced movement for a whole turn (and let's face it: they are only wearing the ring because it comes with a free Healing Surge).

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

Gold isn't the important fact here. It's resource management. Every time you can't have everything because of some kind of resource restriction, there are going to be winners and losers based on how much resource they consume. The reason why 4e has so many trash drops in it, is because it has three separate resource tallies. Gold Cost, Item Slot, and Item Dailies Slots. In order to be worth having, an item has to be competitive across all three categories.

Well, separate tallies can actually be a good thing because they can create more complex decisions and thus it becomes more situational. Now you have have to trade off between if you want something cheaper that occupies a more valuable slot or something more expensive that uses a slot you don't need.

[Crissa]

I don't see how the 4e system was at all attractive to players who aren't into system mastery. (Although I've seen it; they generally talk about their tea-party and not anything involved in the rules.)

Every thread like this just makes it see so complex for so little reward as to wonder why they bother pretending to be playing 4e at all?

-Crissa

[shadzar]

But isn't that how they made it where no one would ever be bored, by giving everyone something to do during combat...tracking status effects...even if that is all you can do.

This is actually somewhat perceptive, so I figured I'd quote it for everyone else's benefit.

Sadly if you watch the video podcast with the former WotC employees, you will see this to be just what happens.

I forget who exactly, but while in the grasp of the mind-flayer, one player can just sit and try to make saves.

The DM is Dave Noonan, one of the former designers of 4th. So that must be how the game should be played right?

I just really don't see that combat all streamlined or balanced. Nor does it look like everyone is having fun.

It really is a commercial for the 4th edition system, and the best thing i have sen to express how the system works.

I haven't really seen a game work differently than that video, with the exception of maybe having to look a little les up, depending on the amount of extra material you use.

With the whole combat map also laid out, it doesn't give a player the option to even do that for the rest while unable to participate in the combat.

Combine that with you always have to figure out who else is using your healing surges and keep track of them when anyone else uses them....

I would rather be tracking ammo and be able to get up and go to the bathroom, than just be able to make a save or check for any number of status effects.

[Username17]

I don't see how the 4e system was at all attractive to players who aren't into system mastery. (Although I've seen it; they generally talk about their tea-party and not anything involved in the rules.)

Every thread like this just makes it see so complex for so little reward as to wonder why they bother pretending to be playing 4e at all?

-Crissa

You could ask the same question about White Wolf. A unique mechanic for like every little thing and every power and in many cases even the same power when used by a different character? That's like Rolemaster levels of fiddliness and virtually the last thing that a "system light" teaparty player should be after in life. And from the standpoint of actual play, this is totally true.

And yet, they do line up to suck White Wolf cock. Or at least, they did back in the days before nWoD and the great market share collapse. Back when they printed a quarter as many titles and sold more than twice as many books, and therefore had like ten times as many people buying their products. And no, it wasn't because the mechanics supported magical teaparty play in the slightest. It was because the designers and even the books themselves said that they supported Magical Teaparty.

For people genuinely uninterested in rules, having rules that support a rules light game is genuinely less important for determining their preferences than being told that the game has their back. The introduction to the Skill Challenge system is well written, which made people who couldn't do basic math assume that it worked out. People like Phillip defended it angrily from people like me until they actually played it a few times and really grasped how completely it didn't work. People with even less mathematical inclination held on as Skill Challenge supporters for months. Some of the Magical Teaparty players throw so much random "Roleplay" static into the mix that they haven't figured out that the core mechanic is less than worthless even today.

-Username17