Been at work all day. Gonna address some direct questions now.

"I think I do not understand this. The ecounter generates the exp simply because it is an encounter. So it is standardized?"

Bbarsh

Not exactly. Ok, to go from 1st to 2nd level is 1000xp. A standard encounter is 500xp at 1st level, so, 10 encounters is a level. They divide the amount needed by 10, and that's a "standard" encounter. If you want to play hard mode, you make the encounters say 600xp, that drops the amount of encounters needed to 8. See? So, what you can do in 90% of situations is drop ANY 500xp worth of stuff, and that makes an encounter.

"Are you saying that this advancement is guaranteed, assuming you don't die?  By participating in a set number of encounters, do the characters gain a level?  Please clarify if that was merely a handy example, or an actual rule. The only reward for putting in time in old-school D&D is fun itself.  Advancement in D&D cannot be taken for granted.  Just showing up at the table doesn't cut it.  It requires skill, effort, and more than a bit of luck."  

Deimos

No, it's based on the assumption that you "defeat" the encounter, same as any other edition. You can get XP other ways, defeating traps/skill challenges, or quest reward XP. But it's still all based on an "encounter". Hope that clears it up a little.

"Haven't invested in 4e, but I like this aspect of the game. The soul of D&D is in wargaming. Anything that allows a seamless transition from tactics to role-playing is a good thing."

Sauromatian

"If 4E brings Battletech/Warhammer type tabletop wargames to D&D, I think that's a bad thing. It must cripple the DM because DMing on the fly is presumably so much harder, DMing from a page or two of notes, or a fanzine would be difficult at best. I note that when they publish a module for 4E (Like say Hommlet) they have to publish it along with a battlemet in order to make it playable. That's pretty sh!te."

Mbassoc2003

These two statements were kinda linked, so I'm addressing them both at once. I don't know if any of you play video games much, but the Tactical/RPG genre is one of my favorites. Final Fantasy Tactics is a great example. Anyway, 4E is a LOT like that, with facing, flanking, area and burst attacks, line of sight, all playing a MUCH larger role than they have in other games. I like it a lot, the focus in combats almost comes to PCs vs. DM in a tactical grudge match for the ages!! Makes being a DM that much more fun I think.

Mbassoc, we don't use any of the published battlemats in my game. One of my players made a foamcore base with gridding on it and a clear lucite square we stick on top. We then use dry erase markers to draw the maps/battle areas on. As to DMing on the fly, I don't think it's really any different. Actually, it's easier. If you need to drop an encounter in on the fly, you take the standard encounter amount of XP, and drag and drop monsters to fit. Done and done.

My biggest complaint with the game, to be honest, is something I brought up earlier. You pretty much have to have encounters that are full on XP "encounters". If you throw a half encounter at the party for flavor or something, it's a cakewalk with the party's abilities. On the other hand, encounters, when tuned properly, have a real life-or-death feel to them, as quite often my PCs battle HARD to defeat an every-day encounter. You really feel like you're about to die in like 50% of encounters. It's a nice edge to the game.

Any more questions, keep em coming!

Zenfinite

Thanks Zeninfinite for answering our curious questions about 4.0 so well!

I think I'm one of the few who actually liked the kits from the 2nd Ed. splatbooks.  There were some good ideas in there for giving variety to the core classes so every fighter wasn't vanilla.  

Some of the 2nd Ed. artwork is quite good, including Brom's Dark Sun work, and Easley's work in Al-Qadim (actually Easley in most cases), and Robh Ruppel in Planescape.  The artwork in the core 2nd Ed. manuals was bland, but not off-putting like all the tattoos and rings from 3rd Ed. onward.  

As Zeb says in the foreward to the 2nd Ed. books, it's just a refinement of 1st Ed. and all the house rules we had been adding to it anyway to fix the rough spots like the pummeling/grappling/overbearing tables (that Gary himself said was done haphazardly and weakly).

ashmire13 wrote:Amen to that!  

Just bolster the normal bad guys, or as deimos says, make sure its a chieftain as the MM etc list those anyway.

Actually, that's really all I did back in the earlier post.    
It's not that different between the editions.  

You can easily make your standard 1st Ed orc much bigger and badder by giving him better armor, a magic sword, more HD, etc.

The templates, levels and monster advancement in 3rd Ed essentially accomplish the same thing- make the monster tougher.

Exactly. An orc is an orc, and should remain so. It shouldn't have demonic powers, or 55 HD, or any of that crap. If you need a tougher monster, put in a REAL demon.

Gnat the Beggar wrote:Colton played for ELEVEN hours in one game session last year at the NTRPG Convention (He played in Davids 3.5 Ed. Game).
There were (IIRC) 10-12 players, so I recon they got through one battle, perhaps two from 6 PM to 5 AM the next day.

Whereas a 1E super-module can be run through in a single weekend, if you imbibe sufficient quantities of caffeinated sugar water and make a  pact not to sleep unless your PC dies.  It took 33 hours straight, IIRC, and it was not the highest caliber role-playing near the end.  (I think it was G1-2-3, but it might have been T1-4.)

deimos3428 wrote:Whereas a 1E super-module can be run through in a single weekend, if you imbibe sufficient quantities of caffeinated sugar water and make a  pact not to sleep unless your PC dies.  It took 33 hours straight, IIRC, and it was not the highest caliber role-playing near the end.  (I think it was G1-2-3, but it might have been T1-4.)

Yeah, we did a lot of that while I was in the US Navy in the late 70s and early 80s.
When in port, we would play all weekend with little or no sleep for several days at a time and even when at sea we would often play when not on duty sometimes with no sleep between duty periods.
We did go through the G series but we did so one module at a time as there were no super modules then.

Gnat the Beggar wrote:Colton played for ELEVEN hours in one game session last year at the NTRPG Convention ... 10-12 players, so I recon they got through one battle, perhaps two from 6 PM to 5 AM the next day.

Wait a minute, I thought we were talking D&D. How did this forum slide into Star Fleet Battles?

Hell, that is even slow for a game notorious for being slow.

bbarsh wrote:
The xp thing is based on five characters right? Otherwise, you lost me with the math somewhere...
Still, 10 enocunters and everyone is second level seems a bit off-balance to me. And I like the idea of different xp ranges for different classes. It is one of those we like to bitch about but would never change.

I like the battlemat idea. I was a big fan of the D&D Challenger products that came with the cardboard figures and and large-scale maps for miniature use. I like the wargame aspect of D&D combat. Now that said, all the extra stuff - flanking, burst attack (whatever that is), etc., seems to create something a little more cumbersome. Give me battlemats and minis with AD&D combat and I am happy.

Yeah, with 5 characters. You got the math on target. 10 encounters works well, I have found, because you typically do an hour an encounter, if you're firing on all cylinders. So, 10 hours of just combat, and say another 10 hours of RP, exploring, all the other stuff that doesn't involve swinging a sword? That's a level every 20 hours or game play, say every third game if you play 7 hour games. So, if you played every week, it would take you 90 weeks to level from 1 to 30 (max lvl in 4E), about two years of weekly sessions. That's a lotta D&D!!

The extra stuff is what adds the flavor and the strategy to the wargame aspect. Flanking gives you +2 to hit. A burst attack is just a targetted AE attack, so range 10, burst 1 is any square within 10 squares and every square that touches it. Blast is a square eminating from you in say a 3 x 3 pattern. You can force movement on things too, so I could shield bash the orc backwards to get him flanking with the rogue, who then backstabs his pants off. It's VERY team-oriented, with each class having its role to play in the combat squad. Just like you'd imagine a military squad would be IRL, actually.

Anyway, that's about that. If anybody is near New Jersey and wants to check out an actual game, just drop me a PM I'd be happy to let you sit in on a game, see what you think.

Zenfinite

Gnat the Beggar wrote:
I am willing to guess that it took like ten minutes just to write down all the plusses to hit and plusses to damage for ONE fighters 3 strikes for one round against one foe.

How long do full round actions take in real life in 3.5 or 4th edition?
I mean for the entire group, not just one fighter.
.

It's not that bad  

You crunch your numbers on character creation, and it's all set. You have to know basic math, when you're doing Power Attack, since you can change the variable depending on your Base Attack bonus... and buffs (like Bless, Haste, Prayer, etc.).

So you're just announcing your actions, rolling your dice, etc. It's not that different from a 1.0 game.