I guess the combat orientated thing can be fixed with a little gm house ruling, after all.. d&d has ALWAYS been combat orientated... it's part of what D&D is all about.. dungeon bashing right? heh.

That said, with all systems from Od&D all the way through you could go in a different direction.. you can with any system.

I'm gonna house rule most of the skill crap too... like I did with 3.5 because let's face it... half the dice rolling was so utterly unneccisary for skills.
They have simplified the skills now though which suggests a little more rping involved in the more social skills... though I haven't read that bit too closely yet, haven't had a chance. (too busy chasing a toddler about all day heh)

Overall though, from what I have read... it sounds like it'll take a lot LESS houseruling on my part than 3rd ed every did. Here's hoping it stays with only a few books. The main problem AD&D and 3rd ed had were just far far too many suppliments and add on rules. It got so messy. While i'd love to see some extra classes and maybe a few more races (though the rules at the back of the monster manual do provide a fair few) I don't want all these kits and prestige classes and all the rubbish that littered other editions. Here's hoping they see the folly of their ways and don't go too mad with the extra rules but instead give us alternate settings... which are far far more interesting anyway.

I agree with Zen though, it's a definite improvement over 3rd ed. 3rd ed was a mess, fun yes.. but only once you waded through it all.
4th ed is a lot more plug and play heh. I can see it becoming very popular for one offs with little prep time.

flying_purple_monkfish wrote:I guess the combat orientated thing can be fixed with a little gm house ruling, after all.. d&d has ALWAYS been combat orientated... it's part of what D&D is all about.. dungeon bashing right? heh.

It is very easy to tweak combat encounter to get the feel you are looking for. They explain how the math works and you can go from there. The last session I DM I had nothing more than a couple of miniatures, my campaign and city maps, some dungeon tiles, my battlemat, and my monster cards.

I had an idea of the locales I was using but I pretty much winged the whole thing using the deck of monster to assemble the encounter I wanted.

The only real surprise was how nasty wights are for taking away the party's healing surges. It is a real morale breaker and a lot better than the old level drain idea.

As a general note most combats took a 20 to 40 minutes to resolve. Compared to my regular GURPS Game I was resolving combat encounters a lot faster and it was just as crunchy.

Most combats had a real back and forth feel to them. The someone gets real hurt and the party starting burning healing surges. But the chance is still there that the surge won't be enough and that the next round can take down a party member.

Also for the record, while I do like D&D 4th edition as a game I still like GURPS Better for its realistic flavor.

islestrike wrote:
So I wonder where 4E fits under this view?  It sounds from what people are saying that for the first time the game is shifting back to the left and diminishing the Player Character skills and options in the game.  Now the second question does it go far enough to say that it is getting back to D&Ds old school roots, or is it simply less new school than 3.0/3.5E?

D&D 4th edition is a crunchy combat game where tactics matter. It not like Magic the Gathering where it boils down to luck and the tactics playing your cards. Character stats are important but how you play your character's abilities is just as important if not more.

Remember before Vampire the Masquerade the trend in most RPGs was to get ever more complex with a diversity of tactical options. Games like GURPS, Rifts, HERO/Champions, dominated the 2nd tier of rpgs. These game tend to reward player skills as opposed to character skill.

It is only after the Vampire burst on the scene that you get character skill over player skill. In Vampire pretty the character that can roll the largest number of successes will win out regardless of situation.

D&D 4th combat has far more crunch than OD&D but it exception based rule design rewards good tactical play by the player as opposed to high character stats.

Invincible Overlord wrote:If you are praising 4th Edition because of its current simplicity and the fact that it only has 3 rulebooks, be patient. For the "arms race" that was 3.5 in all the builder books that came out, the same thing will happen in 4th edition. Because Hasbro wants a profit... give them time...

If 3.5 Ed. was some sort of your favorite beer, then 4th Ed. would be the Lite edition of said beer. And I like my beer with all those extra calories...  

Wow, a lot of great posts. One reason why I really love the Acaeum over, say.....the other folks...   Discussion of the 4E game without devolving into idiotic insults and screaming fits of indignation.  

Unfortunately IO you are right.  The realities of gaming nowadays is money, and companies make money by "crunch", or a never ending stream of supplements.  A think a LOT of systems, including the one I use (2E), could have benefitted from LESS extra crap.  3/3.5 certainly became bloated beyond anyone's capability to keep up with (thus the popularity of Castles & Crusades in certain quarters).  It seems like 4E has made a good start, and as I said the few official adventures published for it are definitely straining for that old school vibe.

Then again, I'm one of the old schoolers that love combat....G1-3, and D1, are the only 1E modules besides B1 that I've run multiple times, sometimes for the same players (years apart).  A lot of love for these is because of the great combat situations inherent in each, particularly the mash up battle in D1 that inevitably involves Trogs, Bugbears, Trolls and Drow.  So I'm not entirely opposed to a "miniature battles" type game.

Zen I'd love to know how your classic dungeons run in 4E.

There is still a lot I'm not on board with....but compared to the intro of 3E and the total dismissal of everything before 1999, this isn't too bad.  A shame WOTC seems to have bungled so many things the last year or so, including promotion of this game and a possible reaching out to people disillusioned with 3/3.5.

Mike B.

I like the cover art better than the 3e and 3.5e books.

I'm half tempted to grab them just to have around and possible play with other folks that don't play 1e.

after about 1991 I gave up on 2e and went back to my old mix of Basic (circa) with 1e hybrid. So I just skipped over most of the 2E supplements and 3/3.5 altogether.

As JZ sez... might be ok for us old-schooler to read through, maybe try playing.

Either way, C&C seems like a better bet for all of these DCC modules I'm buying up. From what I can tell it seem to be the best bet to run d20 with an oldschool feel.

Invincible Overlord wrote:If you are praising 4th Edition because of its current simplicity and the fact that it only has 3 rulebooks, be patient. )

We know that they are going to have PHB II, III, IV as well as Monster Manual II, III, IV, etc. Their stated intent is to release a new set of three books every year although not sure will be in a DMG II, etc.


The big problem will be the "It too good to be true" problem of adding powers. Like Magic the Gathering they could introduce a whacked out power that really causes balance problem.

The other issue will be unexpected synergy. Where something in Player's Handbook III combine with the first Player Handbook to make a totally wacked out combo.

In theory it should be easy for a DM to fix, like MtG, by simply banning the power in question and the rest of the system remains useable.

As for complexity it will be about the same as Magic the Gathering.

(Read Below... bad editing on this post...sorry)

Badmike wrote:Then again, I'm one of the old schoolers that love combat....G1-3, and D1, are the only 1E modules besides B1 that I've run multiple times, sometimes for the same players (years apart).  A lot of love for these is because of the great combat situations inherent in each, particularly the mash up battle in D1 that inevitably involves Trogs, Bugbears, Trolls and Drow.  So I'm not entirely opposed to a "miniature battles" type game.

Zen I'd love to know how your classic dungeons run in 4E.



Mike B.

Mike, in 4e, they recommend that players get a level every 8-10 battles. Then, they split the XP up per encounter, like, at level 1, an encounter is 500 XP for 5 PCs. Kobolds are the new kick ass level 1 opponents. So, I  look in B1 and see how many encounters are in the different kobold caves. I figure that if my PCs clear out the 2 sets of kobold caves, they should level. OK, I pick out 10 rooms in the kobold caves there and drop in 10 sets of 500 xp worth of kobolds. Sweet. Now, what about treasure? OK, they also have tables of what they recommend a well balanced group should have in terms of magic items. With some house DM rules (I made up a table with different % chance for each type of item) I roll some dice and place loot throughout the 2 kobold caves.

That's pretty much it man. It's a real breeze, and actually a treat that I don't have to do much work, the module is already done and I get to just drop in new stuff. It took my players and I, all new at this, three gaming sessions to finish off all the kobold caves. We play maybe 4 hours a session. If we really sat down and had a good run, we could polish off probably 5 combats in a 4 hour period. Role play is the same as in any game, it is what you and the players make of it.

So far, (and I can't stress that enough, SO FAR) the combats are very well balanced, and you can pretty much look through the entire MM and pick out 500 xp worth of anything and toss it against a lvl 1 party, and they should be able to defeat it. Remember the ogre cave in the original B1 module? Well, with the new rules, I am able to stick a young white dragon in there, and when the party reaches level 3, it's gonna be a HELLUVA combat. I can't wait. I'll figure something out about how he got in there, but, that's just cool. Party of lvl 3 PCs up against a dragon.

From what I have heard and read about yearly updates to the core books, they aren't going to be as big as the core 3 and aren't going to cost as much. PHB2 will have bards and druids (so I gotta pick that one up), no clue about the DMG2, and as for the MM2, can't ever have too many monsters now can you? The only book I can see myself buying before the new core 3 come out next year is the new book of magic items, which should be out sometime in the next month or two. I'm going to keep my game simple until we wear out a couple level 30 PCs and feel the need to expand our gaming scope, I think. Hope that helps Mike. Anything else, just ask.

Zen

serleran wrote:Why does the party have to be able to defeat what they encounter? Not that I particularly force encounters, but things that would logically be in a place are going to be in that place -- if the party ventures too far, they might get killed, but they might just prove they're better skilled than I expected. That's one of the great things about roleplaying... everything is not "fair."

I agree, but D&D and AD&D hasn't been about this since 1980 or so.  After that, the wussification set in where opponents only seemed to match the skill level of the players (Oddly enough no Beholder or Mind Flayer would ever be leading the orcs in a 1-3 module, for example....).  Personally, when I stock modules I always like to put in that "one step beyond" encounter that MAY be too much for the party....they can either deal with it, get killed by it, or run the other way.  Judges Guild modules seemed to be the notable exception to this.  Ironically, Ruins of Undermountain brought this back into play...nothing says that anything on UM's 1st level is any less or more dangerous than the 3rd level...as a matter of fact the party can encounter some really nasty TPK surprises on the 1st level....

Anyway this isn't a facet of 4E, it's been inherent in the game for almost 30 years now.....

How does 4e handle the ever-popular random encounter, if 8-10 battles is supposed to level the party? Is that where "minions" come in, so you can battle creatures yet earn nothing for it (as opposed to filling out ranks and having huge battles.) I assume, from previous discussions on various boards, that there is a set XP total per level, so introducing random encounters would throw the balance off, requiring later encounters to increase in "point distribution" so I'm curious how this works -- no one ever talks about it, so I'm thinking there is no such thing as a random encounter.

Another tidbit....all old school DMs know the "random encounter" exists for one purpose only...to beat the hell out of players who are fiddle farting around in the dungeon, making too much noise, or generally pissing off the DM.  I'm all for doing away with this (and I basically have done this in my own campaigns)  and again most AD&D modules in the last 20 years or so pretty much side stepped the problem.  Again, notable exceptions include large dungeon crawls (Ruins of Undermountain again) or wilderness exploration.  Personally random encounters in a static enviorment really make no sense anyway.."We're attacked by five bugbears?  But where did they come from? We just came through the only entrance and the doors in front of us were all locked with ancient mechanisms...."  That sort of thing.

How the hell do you feel about a dragon minion -- a 15 HD monster with 1 HP? Does it work better in play than it sounds? I don't think I can wrap my head around the concept of a dragon or demon that can be looked at and dies -- supposed terrors of the game that are completely wussified. Are there controls for what monsters can be minionized? That'd make it more palatable.

The ability to have minions always existed...no rule was ever stated that said monsters had to have maximum HPs, or even average HPs per level.  Having said that, I don't see the point with having a bunch of 1 hp creatures so Rangdar the fighter can brag he brought down 100 kobolds on the way to the dungeon.  Hell make him earn it!

I'm picturing some fighter-type who misses in combat but still does damage to a "minion" and kills like 50 of them because he invokes his "cleave train" or whatever -- does it work like that?

"Cleave Train"......Nice......

Mike B.