# Why Changes were made in 4e



## Majoru Oakheart (Sep 15, 2009)

This is a fork of a side conversation from the Marketing of 4e thread.  I felt it was interesting enough to start its own thread.

[/QUOTE]
Even if I agreed that this was a problem, which I would not, it does not explain the need to get rid of the nine alignments, vancian casting, and rewrite the entire demon/devil cosmology.[/QUOTE]

The problem he was replying to was the difference in numbers between the lowest possible character and the highest possible character in 3e.

I certainly think there were reasons to change these things.  Of course, not everyone is going to agree with the reasons.  4e likely wasn't created to fix some of these smaller issues.  I think the issue I mentioned was the main reason to create the edition in the first place.

Still, I think that WOTC went into 4e thinking that if they were going to fix the major problem with the underlying math, they might as well fix every other little issue that they had with the game and that people complained about over the past couple of years.

Off the top of my head, I'd say the reasons for the above changes were:

*Getting Rid of the Nine Alignments*
Constant questions and threads about "How to play your alignment properly", "What would a Lawful Good person due in this situation", "What alignment is Pop Culture Character", "Can Evil characters be in groups with Good characters", "What should Good characters do when they use Detect Evil on someone and they detect it?", "Would a Good church allow Evil worshipers", "How would and Evil character infiltrate a Good church without being detected", "Would a Chaotic Good character turn a prisoner over to the law", and so on.

The 4e version of alignment pretty much says: Most people are Unaligned.  You can be good and still have your alignment as Unaligned.  You can be evil and have your alignment as Unaligned.  If you are particularly evil or good, you might choose an alignment other than Unaligned.  Either way, it doesn't matter what your alignment is, since no one can detect it or affect it in any way.  Thus, effectively removing the alignment system other than a vague role playing tool to help you figure out how to play your character.

*Vancian Casting*
One problem with Vancian Casting as it was used in 1e-3e is that is presupposed a certain number of encounters per day.  If someone has the ability to cast 3 spells a day, they are unlikely to be able to survive even two battles in a day.  Or at least do anything even remotely caster-like in the second one.  If someone has 65 spells a day, 15 of which pretty much allow them to kill or negate an enemy outright, 1 battle a day is almost never going to challenge him.  If the Cleric has the ability to heal 500 points of damage a day with his combined spells, any battle that does only 50 damage to the party isn't going to register on their radar.  If he can only heal 10 points of damage, any battle that deals 50 damage is going to be the only battle they fight that day.

This is pretty much the problem with any "daily" resource.  Once it's used up, people will want to get it back.  Until it's used up, it feels infinite.

The second problem was one of balance a daily resource with an unlimited one.  When you have an unlimited resource(say, the ability to attack with a sword) you can't make it too powerful because you don't want someone to use a powerful ability every round.  So, you have to limit its effectiveness.  The reverse is true about limited resources.  The more limited they are, the more powerful they should be.  Otherwise, why bother waiting for them to come back or even using them?  If you can attack for 1d6+5 damage every round and you can attack for 1d6+4 damage once a day...well, you'll just forget you have that ability and never use it.  Also, if you give one class the ability to do 1d6+5 points of damage 5 times per day and another class the ability to do 1d6+5 points of damage at will, everyone will choose the later class every time.

So, you have a bunch of spells that are limited in the number of times per day they can be used.  They NEED to be more powerful than abilities that can be used at will.  So, you are creating an imbalance on purpose.  Now, people will say "But after those limited resources run out, now that character is LESS powerful than the class with unlimited resources".  That's true.  But now you are just creating another artificial limit on the number of battles you can use in one day.  Use more battles than the caster has spells for and you risk a player getting really bored and annoyed that they have nothing to do during the combat.  You also risk the party turning away from adventures in order to recover spells in the middle of a storyline because they are afraid of continuing without their spells.  Use less battles than the casters have spells for and you are removing all the advantages of the classes with unlimited resources.  Why play a Fighter who can attack unlimited times for 2d6+10 damage when you can play a Wizard who can cast a 10d6 AoE spell every round of every combat?

Sure, some people will play the "bad" classes purely due to theme or role playing reasons.  But the majority won't.  I realized this when the number of non-casting classes played in my 3.5e games slowly went down to 0 as more and more people figured out these facts.

*Rewriting the entire demon/devil cosmology*
This one appears to be somewhat a side effect.  When WOTC sat down to create the new edition, they decided to question everything in the game to figure out HOW it fit in the game.

They appointed a story team whose entire purpose it was to figure out HOW things get used.  They were supposed to examine things like Devils and Demons and say "When a DM wants to use one of these in a game, how do they get used?  What reason is there for the PCs to fight these?  What kind of stories are they involved in?"  And they were specifically told to question everything, no matter how taken for granted they were.

One of the first things they tackled was the planes and their usability in game.  What use was snowbank number 1,634,234,123 in the 243th layer of the Abyss in the game?  What reason did it have to exist in a game about killing things and taking their stuff, while saving the world from evil?  What made it different from snowbank number 2 in terms of how it was used in the game?  What made it different from snowbank number 2 in the 1st layer of the Abyss?  What made it different from snowbank number 2 in Cormyr?

Those questions led to the changes in the planes we see today.  And, once those changes had been made, you need to make sure everything else makes sense.  Demons come from the Abyss.  Why is there an Abyss?  Where is it located?  Why do all Demons come from the Abyss?  What makes a Demon a Demon?  And the worst answer of all when answering these questions is "because it's always been that way".  Especially when you can find a better answer.

So, in this case, they said "The Abyss is a dark, evil hole in the Elemental Chaos.  The creatures that come from there are Demons...evil, corrupted elementals who want to destroy all of reality and rip it apart.  They particularly hate the mortal world.  They hate it because they are the foul spawn of the primordials.  That gives them a reason to be conflicting with the players.  They come to the mortal world to destroy it and the PCs have to stop them."


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## Dice4Hire (Sep 15, 2009)

To me, 4E is a DnD fantasy game, that has a lot of connections to its predecessors, but is mostly a new game. And that is not a bad thing at all. I hope 5E is also a new game. But all new editions should still pay homage to DnD's past. I would not like to see a game that was totally different called DnD.


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## Freakohollik (Sep 15, 2009)

On alignment, I think they wanted to simplify it since a lot of people didn't really get it. But they also wanted to satisfy people who like alignment (people like me). They tried to play it somewhere in the middle. I don't like what they did with it and think they would have been wiser to ditch it entirely and use something like the d20 modern allegiance system. Even in that system you can be dedicated to abstract concepts like law, chaos, good, evil, neutrality.

The closest thing on the top of my head that was change for the sake of change in 4e was renaming martial weapons "military weapons".


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 15, 2009)

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Off the top of my head, I'd say the reasons for the above changes were:
> 
> *Getting Rid of the Nine Alignments*
> 
> The 4e version of alignment pretty much says: Most people are Unaligned.  You can be good and still have your alignment as Unaligned.  You can be evil and have your alignment as Unaligned.  If you are particularly evil or good, you might choose an alignment other than Unaligned.  Either way, it doesn't matter what your alignment is, since no one can detect it or affect it in any way.  Thus, effectively removing the alignment system other than a vague role playing tool to help you figure out how to play your character.




I think that the 4Ed "solution" was rather poor.  Either reducing it to G-U-E or outright removal would have been superior to 4Ed's 5 alignment system- either would have been more intuitive.

And I say that as one who greatly enjoys the 9 alignments and see them as a valuable tool.  All of those "moral quandry" threads to me indicate an interest in role-playing your PC at a deep level.



> *Vancian Casting*
> One problem with Vancian Casting as it was used in 1e-3e is that is presupposed a certain number of encounters per day.  If someone has the ability to cast 3 spells a day, they are unlikely to be able to survive even two battles in a day.  Or at least do anything even remotely caster-like in the second one.<snip>
> 
> The second problem was one of balance a daily resource with an unlimited one.  <snip>
> ...




Your experience and mine clearly differ greatly.  Vancian casting- for me- was part of what gave D&D its unique charm.  It helped set D&D apart from all of the other FRPGs I played,_ NONE_ of which had anything like it.

And in 30+ years of play, I haven't seen the 15 minute day from either side of the screen.  IME, casters who splurge with their spells will soon find themselves throwing daggers and shooting bolts- the party has places to be and foes to kill.  And stopping _here_ because you're out of spells is probably not an option.

Nor have I seen a mass gravitation towards spellcasting classes, though I have seen an increase in people multiclassing their PCs into spellcasting classes post-3Ed's release.  That, however, just reflects the freedom of the 3.X rules...and its arguably worse from a powergaming standpoint the way I usually see it done.

Because its not all about powergaming, I'd have to say that this is a playstyle thing.

I also dislike the way in which 4Ed handled both balancing things out between the classes- the sameness is numbing to me- and the resource management that used to solely be a concern for casters.

IMHO, it was nice to have classes that had almost no resource management (like the Fighter), and I think the Reserve feats were an _elegant _solution that I'd like to have seen more fully developed.



> *Rewriting the entire demon/devil cosmology*
> This one appears to be somewhat a side effect.  When WOTC sat down to create the new edition, they decided to question everything in the game to figure out HOW it fit in the game.




This didn't bother me too much.  As long as there are supernatural baddies for me and my buddies to smack around, I'm OK with that.


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## Jack99 (Sep 15, 2009)

Freakohollik said:


> The closest thing on the top of my head that was change for the sake of change in 4e was renaming martial weapons "military weapons".



Martial weapons is just the name they used in 3.x, it has nothing to do with D&D historically.


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## FireLance (Sep 15, 2009)

Freakohollik said:


> The closest thing on the top of my head that was change for the sake of change in 4e was renaming martial weapons "military weapons".



WotC probably just wanted to avoid confusion. Otherwise, someone somewhere is going to ask something along the lines of, "Can an arcane or divine character use a martial weapon?"


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## CapnZapp (Sep 15, 2009)

*Alignment*
The change in the number of alignments isn't the big thing about alignment in 4E. 

How almost no effect keys off alignment is. 

Getting rid of things like "Detect Evil" (along with level 1 Charm Person spells) is probably one of the most underestimated improvements of 4E! 

*Vancian spell slots*
I think 4E is very successful in how it has balanced "dailies". If the spell slot mechanism had to go, so be it.

Now if only 4E didn't introduce healing surges, and how they bring back the three-encounter adventuring day... 

*Demons/Devils*
I must say I don't care much. This doesn't seem to be a change central to the new edition. Mainly: set your Abyss wherever you like it.


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## avin (Sep 15, 2009)

The new alignment system didn't pleased me. They should have kept the originals or should get rid of all of them.

Never liked Vancian, Mana/Fatigue systems works better for me.

Removing of Yugoloths is $%@¨$&¨#$%##$%!


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## avin (Sep 15, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> Martial weapons is just the name they used in 3.x, it has nothing to do with D&D historically.




Sure, but "martial" sounds better than "military" IMO.


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## UngainlyTitan (Sep 15, 2009)

Personally I am glad they got rid of Vancian style magic. It never really felt like magic to me and promoted the wizard as light artillery feel. 
Now I enjoyed playing sorcerers but they never felt magical in the way characters in fantasy novels did. 
So I like what they have done in 4e and in particular rituals. Rituals now have a natural place in the game. It needs a bit of tweaking perhaps but it is there and now works.


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## an_idol_mind (Sep 15, 2009)

I think there was a reason for every change made in 4th edition. WotC had in their minds a very specific vision of what they wanted D&D to become, and many of the old standards of the game didn't fit that.

As to the nine alignments, WotC envisioned a setting where the good-evil axis was emphasized and the law-chaos axis was not. Lawful good now means really good and chaotic evil now means really evil. Since the law-chaos axis was generally a point of confusion, they probably saw a chance to make alignments more understandable to those who were new to the game. Unaligned is basically the same as neutral, but changing the name separates it from the old tradition of true neutrality, which was once all about maintaining balance.

As to Vancian casting, I think that had to be changed because of the new power structure of the game. WotC didn't want a game where playing a wizard was significantly different in mechanics or complexity than playing a fighter. Since every prior edition of D&D has the fighter as a sort of no-frills entry class and the wizard as something much more complex, they had to shift the casting system all around in order to accomplish their goals.

As to the cosmology, since WotC had decided to change alignment, they had to change the cosmology around, too. The old planes were based largely around the old alignment system and the classical elements, both pieces of the game WotC wanted to get away from. Additionally, they seemed to want to make the planes more accessible without high-level magic. While the old planes were dangerous even to walk in and were inaccessible to most characters, the new planes were designed to be potential adventuring sites even to low-level characters if need be.

WotC had a very specific vision to what they wanted the game to be like and designed the new edition around that vision. Specifically, they seemed to want to emphasize the tactical element of combat more, remove certain imbalances in the system, and get rid of some of the arcane elements of the game that might confuse newer players.

I don't think there was any change for change's sake in the new game. I do think that a lot of people, myself included, didn't see the need for these changes to be made. In many views, tactical combat had already been over-emphasized in 3rd edition, the imbalance between the classes made them feel unique and interesting, and the arcane elements of the game gave it a unique charm that other RPGs lacked. In that regard, some people might use the change for change's sake argument because they don't see the old D&D model as something that needed to be broken out of.

Overall, I think 4th edition does what WotC wanted it to do and does that style of game better than any previous edition. I think the big divide is that some people don't want to run that type of game and see the newest revision of D&D as a step away from the style of role-playing they consider fun.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 15, 2009)

1)  Vancian Casting, prior to 3e, didn't presuppose a set number of encounters per day.  This is an artifact, IMHO and IME, of the time it takes to resolve an encounter.

2)  I think you missed the real reason for these changes:  Distancing the 4e from the OGL.



RC


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## Vurt (Sep 15, 2009)

With the advent of 4e, I can see WotC thinking they had a great opportunity to streamline a lot of mechanics that have the potential for confusion.  In the case of alignment, what works at the game table doesn't work at the bar/restaurant/messageboard.

In my experience, having discussions about an aspect of the game helps to better ground or immerse me in that game.  If I'm discussing a question of alignment with my friends at a pub or here at ENWorld, then I'm functioning as a part of the community and investing myself in the game, and both these things ultimately help me to appreciate and enjoy the game more.  If things are too simple, then there's simply nothing to discuss and no reason for discussion.  It becomes a wasted opportunity in that regard.

We've replaced discussions of "Is this Chaotic Good behaviour?" (largely edition neutral) with "Why Changes were made in 4e" (somewhat edition specific) and cut down the pool of potential replies simply because the community is fractured in some ratio.

Again, better for new players learning the game than for us veterans looking for an interesting topic to read/discuss or situation to resolve.


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## Shemeska (Sep 15, 2009)

Majoru Oakheart said:


> *Rewriting the entire demon/devil cosmology*
> This one appears to be somewhat a side effect.  When WOTC sat down to create the new edition, they decided to question everything in the game to figure out HOW it fit in the game.
> 
> They appointed a story team whose entire purpose it was to figure out HOW things get used.  They were supposed to examine things like Devils and Demons and say "When a DM wants to use one of these in a game, how do they get used?  What reason is there for the PCs to fight these?  What kind of stories are they involved in?"  And they were specifically told to question everything, no matter how taken for granted they were.
> ...




I'd be surprised if it was anything as in depth as that. As with the massive changes to 4e FR, I suspect the reason had more to do with simply making it easier on the in-house team to write new material by not having to deal with previous meta-canon. And given certain comments by various WotC designers on portions of the past 30 years of cosmology, they may not have had a firm working knowledge of the material in places, or that they just plain didn't like certain parts of it, and being in a position to remake what D&D was, they did just that.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 15, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> I'd be surprised if it was anything as in depth as that. As with the massive changes to 4e FR, I suspect the reason had more to do with simply making it easier on the in-house team to write new material by not having to deal with previous meta-canon. And given some comments by various designers on portions of the past 30 years of cosmology, it may also have been that they just plain didn't like certain material, and being in a position to remake what D&D was, they did just that.



Did you read Races & Classes or World & Monsters? It pretty much seemed to me as if they had reasons for all changes they made. (And that'S what made me even more enthusiastic about them.) There was a story team for a reason.


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## ggroy (Sep 15, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> 2)  I think you missed the real reason for these changes:  Distancing the 4e from the OGL.




Has this ever been officially confirmed on the record by WotC?

I wouldn't be too surprised if this was an underlying motivation for the design of 4E.  

In principle, I suppose we'll only know for sure when some of the original 4E designers are willing to "speak their minds" in the future, once they are not working for WotC anymore.


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## Rechan (Sep 15, 2009)

I think the route they took with alignment was a middle-of-the-road-try-to-make-everyone-happy approach.

Namely I'm just glad they untied alignment from the mechanics. I never liked alignment.


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## Wepwawet (Sep 15, 2009)

IMHO, changes were made because they were doing a new edition.

The reasons for doing a new edition may be: excessive gloat (or is it bloat?), making more money, 3.x Grapple... whatever. But in the end its a new edition, it HAS to have changes.

Why would they be doing a new edition and make it just like the old one?

Now, about alignment and vancian magic: they just didn't make sense and were not fun.
That is my opinion, of course, and that of many people that embraced 4e from the start, and I'm happy it coincided with WotC design.


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## Votan (Sep 15, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Your experience and mine clearly differ greatly.  Vancian casting- for me- was part of what gave D&D its unique charm.  It helped set D&D apart from all of the other FRPGs I played,_ NONE_ of which had anything like it.
> 
> And in 30+ years of play, I haven't seen the 15 minute day from either side of the screen.  IME, casters who splurge with their spells will soon find themselves throwing daggers and shooting bolts- the party has places to be and foes to kill.  And stopping _here_ because you're out of spells is probably not an option.




Wow.  When I DM, the only way that I ever get two or more battles into a single day is either to make them trivial or to use ambushes.  Players use teleport, hidden lodge, rope trick and other stunts to race back to safety after hitting hard.  The result is that I always see a full caster nova effect where they unleash limited abilities (sudden quicken, divine metamagic quicken, pinnacle spells) to annihilate an opponent and then flee.

This does have a major imapct on the viability of non-caster classes (although I still get a ranger in the party by making scouting and tracking extremely important).  

This pattern has made me actually ban teleport in the latest round of my rules (to great player annoyance) mostly so that it is possible to get the second encounter (via tracing back the party or ambush) whereas before they would teleport to an secure location and then set up their extra-dimensional hiding palce (remaining until they were back at full power).


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## Remathilis (Sep 15, 2009)

Re: Alignments

I can think of a dozen different systems to reduce alignment to. Think the 9 alignments is too prone to confusion? Do Good/Unaligned/Evil. Want something classic? Law/Neutral/Chaos. Want a bigger group? CG/LG/Un/LE/CE. 

What we got was a 5 alignment that doesn't seem to make sense. How is Good different from Lawful-Good? Is LG mostly lawful with a hint of good, or mostly good with a hint of law? (Its seems the former, since a cleric of Pelor can be good or unaligned, but not LG). Ditto Evil/CE. Is CE are more-evil type of evil?, or is it Chaotic Neutral with a cruel and selfish element?

It seems they wanted to to keep the "concept" of LG and CE (as well as their iconic names) so they tacked it onto a G/U/E system as an after-thought. Seriously, I'd rather they have dumped the G/E off LG/CE and made a 5 alignments C/G/U/L/E. I need my needless symmetry!!!!

I'll refrain from commenting on Vancian casting (that said, you don't know sometimes how much you miss something till its gone) and I really could care less about the demon/devil divide (as long as they are still separate and in thier repective planes, I could care less about their origins).


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## ggroy (Sep 15, 2009)

Back in the day, the 1E AD&D groups I played in gradually dropped the chaotic-lawful axis of the alignment system.  For the most part, we didn't really quite know how it was suppose to be used.


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## Ariosto (Sep 15, 2009)

Detection of Evil and/or Good: "It is important to make a distinction between character alignment and some powerful force of evil or good when this detection function is considered. In general, only a _know alignment_ spell will determine the evil or good a character holds within. It must be a great evil or a strong good to be detected." (_Dungeon Masters Guide_, 1st edition, page 60)

The alignment scheme in 4e is sort of like that in the original D&D set. That had Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic as the main stances; Anti-Clerics additionally were Evil, and Evil High Priests were Chaotic and Evil (Patriarch-level Clerics being Lawful and non-Evil).

"You, as Dungeon Master, must establish the meanings and boundaries of law and order as opposed to chaos and anarchy, as well as the divisions between right and good as opposed to hurtful and evil." (_DMG_, 1st ed., p. 24)

As RC noted, the old spell-casting methods did not presume a certain number of encounters per day. "If someone has the ability to cast 3 spells a day, they are unlikely to be able to survive even two battles in a day" is an utterly bizarre notion.

Between what was actually changed in 3e and how people came to mistake their house rules for The Way It Is, a lot of things got a bit askew. That said, I think the "balance" reasoning behind the powers system is pretty clear.



> What reason did it have to exist in a game about killing things and taking their stuff, while saving the world from evil?



Yes, the project apparently was all about producing "a game about" those and other things this set of designers had in mind. That is not to my mind the same as producing a revised edition of the _Dungeons & Dragons_ rules set.


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## Remathilis (Sep 15, 2009)

ggroy said:


> Has this ever been officially confirmed on the record by WotC?
> 
> I wouldn't be too surprised if this was an underlying motivation for the design of 4E.
> 
> In principle, I suppose we'll only know for sure when some of the original 4E designers are willing to "speak their minds" in the future, once they are not working for WotC anymore.




I really think they made each choice in an attempt to "better" the game.

I think the incompatibility with OGL is, what we'd call, an "fortunate" accident. It allowed them to redefine D&D as "their" game without having to face the OGC clone-games. It also allowed them to release the GSL and sidestep the previous OGL community and "reboot" D&D 3 party support to what it was supposed to be: modules and monster books.


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## Cadfan (Sep 15, 2009)

I think Vancian magic could have been done well if it had been more Vancian.

The big problems with vancian magic as done by D&D are

1. If the wizard doesn't have very many spells, he runs out of them way before he runs out of rounds of combat.  Then he's got nothing he can do well.  He sucks at using a crossbow, and he probably won't invest resources in getting better at it because those resources will be wasted when he reaches higher levels and encounters problem 2.

2. When the wizard has more spells than expected rounds of combat, he can afford to memorize spells to cover just about every contingency with an "I win button" spell.  This ironically makes combat even shorter.

This could be fixed by giving wizards something worthwhile to do when not casting spells.  And then making that something worthwhile stay worthwhile for their entire careers.  You'd also need to reduce the number of spells per day drastically.

The result might look something like a 4e fighter who's daily powers are all magical effects.

I don't know if WotC _should_ have done that.  But it would probably work mechanically.  They could still do it now, in fact.  But they probably won't because in 4e Thou Shalt Not Mix Power Sources.


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## ggroy (Sep 15, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> This could be fixed by giving wizards something worthwhile to do when not casting spells.  And then making that something worthwhile stay worthwhile for their entire careers.




Back in the day in various 1E AD&D games I played in, the low level wizards frequently occupied themselves with tasks like:  holding a lantern, counting up the number of monsters/badguys, scanning the background for hidden monsters/badguys or traps, etc ...  This was especially the case when the DM was not using any miniatures for combat.  With respect to spells, the low level wizards frequently saved them for attacks on the big bosses or larger monsters.


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## LostSoul (Sep 15, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> Yes, the project apparently was all about producing "a game about" those and other things this set of designers had in mind. That is not to my mind the same as producing a revised edition of the _Dungeons & Dragons_ rules set.




I think this has more to do with the gaming culture and how DMs run their games, and not as much about the rules.


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## SSquirrel (Sep 15, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> What we got was a 5 alignment that doesn't seem to make sense. How is Good different from Lawful-Good? Is LG mostly lawful with a hint of good, or mostly good with a hint of law? (Its seems the former, since a cleric of Pelor can be good or unaligned, but not LG). Ditto Evil/CE. Is CE are more-evil type of evil?, or is it Chaotic Neutral with a cruel and selfish element?
> 
> It seems they wanted to to keep the "concept" of LG and CE (as well as their iconic names) so they tacked it onto a G/U/E system as an after-thought. Seriously, I'd rather they have dumped the G/E off LG/CE and made a 5 alignments C/G/U/L/E. I need my needless symmetry!!!!




Actually the Pelor example feels like something is wrong in the book.  They state that Unaligned can have clerics of anything but good must be good, lawful good must be lawful good.  Then they take Pelor, a Good aligned god, and say they can be eitehr Good or Unaligned.  Which goes against what they just said about Good aligned gods.  So either you can be one step removed from your god's alignment or it has to match exactly.  Or worship someone unaligned and don't worry about it 

When the unwashed masses are all basically unaligned, you have to take a reasonably strong stance in life to even come up as Good or Evil.  It seems like normal Evil you have a much better chance of working together with a minimum of backstabbing.  Chaotic Evil won't ever work together, unless you have them in enough terror of you I suppose.  Lawful good is completely devoted to both law and good, whereas Good will cut some corners that aren't exactly legal if they feel they need to, but they're still mostly good.


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## EATherrian (Sep 15, 2009)

ggroy said:


> Back in the day in various 1E AD&D games I played in, the low level wizards frequently occupied themselves with tasks like:  holding a lantern, counting up the number of monsters/badguys, scanning the background for hidden monsters/badguys or traps, etc ...  This was especially the case when the DM was not using any miniatures for combat.  With respect to spells, the low level wizards frequently saved them for attacks on the big bosses or larger monsters.




Whenever I played a Magic User I always went in with dagger or staff when the spells were dry.  Darts if I felt it was too much danger to get in close.  I never really felt useless, but I seem to be in the minority.


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## amerigoV (Sep 15, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> I think Vancian magic could have been done well if it had been more Vancian.
> 
> The big problems with vancian magic as done by D&D are
> 
> 1. If the wizard doesn't have very many spells, he runs out of them way before he runs out of rounds of combat.  Then he's got nothing he can do well.  He sucks at using a crossbow, and he probably won't invest resources in getting better at it because those resources will be wasted when he reaches higher levels and encounters problem 2.




This also led to having spells at each level that were clearly more powerful than the others. From a combat perspective, everyone had MM, Sleep, Web, Invisibility, Haste (etc). In early editions, the wizard did not have that many slots, thus these Power Spells were critical.

Even into 3.x, these spells were still the best in class at their levels and you saw very similiar spell selection by players (DMs could use different combos as the Sorcerer/Wizard had a life expectancy of 1 encounter).


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## Nifft (Sep 15, 2009)

I personally like the Demon/Devil conflict, so IMHO there should be at least two distinct forms of "evil".

Alignment itself isn't necessary, though. It could easily be replaced by Affiliations, which could work better for a shades-of-grey campaign.

Cheers, -- N


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 15, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> I really think they made each choice in an attempt to "better" the game.
> 
> I think the incompatibility with OGL is, what we'd call, an "fortunate" accident.




So, do you think that the annoyingname monsters were accidentally different from the OGL names as well?


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 15, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> "reboot" D&D 3 party support to what it was supposed to be: modules and monster books.





BTW, this is simply incorrect.  The intentions of the OGL were clearly stated at the time of release, and it was not to have third party support be merely modules and monster books.  Indeed, it was stated directly that part of the intent was to proliferate d20-based games so that the core mechanics would be familiar to a greater number of potential players, because, to paraphrase, "All roads lead to D&D".

If anything, the GSL is an attempt to reboot third parties to _*something different*_ than was intended with the OGL.  What 3pp did with the OGL was exactly what WotC told them to do, in no uncertain terms.


RC


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## drothgery (Sep 15, 2009)

EATherrian said:


> Whenever I played a Magic User I always went in with dagger or staff when the spells were dry.  Darts if I felt it was too much danger to get in close.  I never really felt useless, but I seem to be in the minority.




I dunno. In 2e I usually started campaigns playing a thief, started to feel useless about 7th level or so (fighters were much more effective in melee; wizards were better at stealth), lost my character sheet over summer break (I was in college at the time), and built a wizard.

In 3.x, a low-level wizard with a decent dex can be reasonably effective with a crossbow when he's out of spells, but that's not particularly wizard-esque, and he'll only drop feats on point-blank shot and precise shot (which you need for decent missile combat skill in the long run) if he's planning on doing a lot with ray spells, and I did do some of that.


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## Voadam (Sep 15, 2009)

My 2e wizard started a human fighter with good stats, went to 3rd level then switch classed to mage. At first like most low level mages his spells ran out quick and it came time to pull out weapons, but he was decent at it and had some hp to make it survivable when he soloed.


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## Cadfan (Sep 15, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> So, do you think that the annoyingname monsters were accidentally different from the OGL names as well?



I think they intentionally added adjectives to everything because they learned a lesson from Magic the Gathering about naming conventions in an environment in which you need multiple specific versions of the same general type of monster.


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## The Little Raven (Sep 15, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> I really think they made each choice in an attempt to "better" the game.




I view 4e as a kinda of "Greatest Hits of D&D" or an Ultimate Marvel take on D&D and its long and convoluted stories. There were elements in previous editions I didn't care for, but with the way they redid them in 4e, I really do like them. Like the distinction between demons and devils... previously, it was just a matter of Law and Chaos clashing, and Law/Chaos is not something that I personally vibe with. Now, with devils being the angelic betrayers and demons being elementals turned entropic, I find them much more flavorful and interesting, and have been using them extensively in my games.


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## Voadam (Sep 15, 2009)

I like the condensing of the skill lists and the ease to become good at a non archetypal skill.

3e skills were very fiddly with cross class skills being double cost with half the class skill maximums. The lists were long and there were specific rewards for using points to get one rank to access certain skills, five ranks for synergies, enough to hit certain DCs (concentration for defensive casting and tumble to avoid AoOs), enough to hit certain prereqs (prcs), or maxing out certain ones (opposed role such as spot and listen versus hide and move silent). Skill points were few while the lists are long and the math gets messy if you multiclass. Choices had to be made at every level and strategies figured out to achieve minor mechanical issues.

4e does a good job of simplifying the system while still allowing easy customization.


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## Mistwell (Sep 15, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> I think Vancian magic could have been done well if it had been more Vancian.




Having just finished the book, I strongly disagree.

People talk about Vance's system like it was mostly about memorization of spells.

From my read, it was not.  It was mostly about KILLING ANYTHING WITH MAGIC.  Vance spells, 75% of the time in the book, either kill you outright (or the equivalent) or are avoided or blocked outright.  Almost no wiggle room.  Almost no utility.  Vancian magic was mostly save or die.

In Vance's Dying Earth books, a wizard could essentially cast a handfull of death spells per day.  And it was never dozens and dozens of spells...always a handfull at best, and usually only 3-4.  Most were various gruesome ways of killing someone (teleporting them miles below into the earth, filling them with holes from multiple laser shots, etc...).  A few were utility, like flight or invisibility (Phandaal's Mantle of Stealth) or time stop (Spell of the Slow Hour) or endurance (The Charm of Untiring Nourishment).  Some others seemed like utility were actually similar to auto-kill, like summon something to fly a person across the planet (which in D&D would be nearly the equivalent of death, if a character is separated by a planet's width of space from the party and having no way to return).

So no, we do not want a system MORE like Vance's system.  Vancian wizards are godlike beings that could slay any Fighter on a whim with a single spell if that Fighter does not have protection from magic.


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## Voadam (Sep 15, 2009)

The alignment system reminds me of WFRP 1e where the continuum was:
Chaos->Evil->Neutral->Good->Law.

Didn't like it then, don't like it now.

Still leaves open issues such as whether something is LG or G or CE or E or should be unaligned. You can still play the game of aligning fiction characters (is Voldemort E or CE)

The decoupling of alignment from mechanical effects however is IMO fantastic and makes the still existing alignment definition issues largely irrelevant.


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## Stereofm (Sep 15, 2009)

Honestly, at this stage, I don't think any explanation would make a difference to my opinions, or anybody in my group.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 15, 2009)

Votan said:


> Wow.  When I DM, the only way that I ever get two or more battles into a single day is either to make them trivial or to use ambushes.  Players use teleport, hidden lodge, rope trick and other stunts to race back to safety after hitting hard.  The result is that I always see a full caster nova effect where they unleash limited abilities (sudden quicken, divine metamagic quicken, pinnacle spells) to annihilate an opponent and then flee.




When we went through RttToEE (3.XEd, and I was a player, not DM), we had a stretch in which we went through 6 combat encounters without an in-game break.  (It covered 3 sessions.)

The single-classed mage still had a spell or 2 left at the end of it.  He had spells left because instead of nova-ing, he'd cast a couple of spells, then reach for a weapon.  

The main healer was tapped, but there were other (minor) curatives available.  No front-line warrior had more than 20% of their HP.

By the time that stretch was over, my Ftr/Rgr/Diviner/Spellsword was getting ready to move up to the front...and he'd been there before.

We didn't rest before then because we didn't have the opportunity to.  Though we had made occasional returns to our base of ops to restock & reload, retreat was not an option at _that_ point.

And that's typical of the way all of the DMs in our group run things...even before 3Ed.



> If the wizard doesn't have very many spells, he runs out of them way before he runs out of rounds of combat. Then he's got nothing he can do well. He sucks at using a crossbow, and he probably won't invest resources in getting better at it because those resources will be wasted when he reaches higher levels and encounters problem 2.




Well, in 3.X, that depends on his build- a ranged touch spell afficionado will be nearly as good with his crossbow as with his spells, since he'd probably take feats that serve both pretty well.

But even before then, I never had a problem with this.

My very first D&D game back in '77, my Fighter and another player's Mage were the last 2 surviving PCs when we encountered a Purple Worm.  He launched his last spell- Magic Missile- then fought the rest of the way with his staff.  For a while, he was outdoing my 2hd swd equipped fighter.

No, he never was intended to be a melee combatant.  But the fact that he waded in nearly made the difference.



> This could be fixed by giving wizards something worthwhile to do when not casting spells. And then making that something worthwhile stay worthwhile for their entire careers. You'd also need to reduce the number of spells per day drastically.




The Reserve feats were an elegant way of handling this issue: they give the spellcaster something to do instead of casting spells, something at least as good as using a weapon, and its still "magical"- hopefully satisfying those who lament resorting to using crossbows as "unwizardly."

And ditched in 4Ed, near as I can tell.

Even without those, the creation/use of alchemical items, the use of KS skills and so forth are still constructive uses of non-combat time for spellcasters.

YMMV, of course.


> From a combat perspective, everyone had MM, Sleep, Web, Invisibility, Haste (etc). In early editions, the wizard did not have that many slots, thus these Power Spells were critical.
> 
> Even into 3.x, these spells were still the best in class at their levels and you saw very similiar spell selection by players (DMs could use different combos as the Sorcerer/Wizard had a life expectancy of 1 encounter).




I realize you're speaking in generalities, but...that was never_* my*_ spellcaster.  I may have had a PC with one or 2 of the "power" spells, but never anywhere near half of them...and NEVER Magic Missile.


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## Remathilis (Sep 15, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> So, do you think that the annoyingname monsters were accidentally different from the OGL names as well?




No silly. AdjectiveDeath MonsterName came from the desire to sell multiple versions of the same monster in different DDM packs. The trend started before 4e in DDM when you have a dire wolf, viscous dire wolf, vampiric dire wolf, etc.



Raven Crowking said:


> BTW, this is simply incorrect.  The intentions of the OGL were clearly stated at the time of release, and it was not to have third party support be merely modules and monster books.  Indeed, it was stated directly that part of the intent was to proliferate d20-based games so that the core mechanics would be familiar to a greater number of potential players, because, to paraphrase, "All roads lead to D&D".
> 
> If anything, the GSL is an attempt to reboot third parties to _*something different*_ than was intended with the OGL.  What 3pp did with the OGL was exactly what WotC told them to do, in no uncertain terms.




See, I recall the OGL having a different reason for existing.

1.) To create smaller "niche" items WotC didn't want to make at the time
2.) To sell PHBs.

The OGL did both wonderfully, at first. However, it didn't take long for the cottage industry to figure out (as gamers often do) that the PHB didn't fit all games equally. Eventually, you began the move from "D&D setting X" or "Monster Supplement Y" toward "OGL-based Game Z" with its own rulebook and supplements (Arcana Unearthed, Midnight, Conan, Mutants & Masterminds, C&C, Warcraft, etc). For us gamers, its Nirvana; we had rules that reflected the subtleties of the genre it was emulating. For WotC, it meant they gave the keys to companies to create their own "Fantasy Heartbreakers" that didn't want, or need, WotC-made D&D stuff to play. 

One needs only look at what WotC "closed" in the GSL to see where they thought the OGL went off the rails: no chargen AT ALL, no redefining races, classes, feats or powers. No reprinting monster stats. Closed content on lots of new "monster IP" (Goliaths, warforged, etc). IMHO, that speak volumes as to what WotC wants from its 3pp companions.


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## MerricB (Sep 15, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> The Reserve feats were an elegant way of handling this issue: they give the spellcaster something to do instead of casting spells, something at least as good as using a weapon, and its still "magical"- hopefully satisfying those who lament resorting to using crossbows as "unwizardly."
> 
> And ditched in 4Ed, near as I can tell.




Try "made part of core". There's a very definite reason why Wizards have "at wills" now; Reserve feats were just a way of seeing how it worked in 3e.

Cheers!


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## Henry (Sep 15, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> IMHO, that speak volumes as to what WotC wants from its 3pp companions.




Which is to say, nothing, save Goodman Games and a couple other small outings. Even One Bad Egg closed up shop on its releases, just recently, because the interest just wasn't there.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 16, 2009)

MerricB said:


> Try "made part of core". There's a very definite reason why Wizards have "at wills" now; Reserve feats were just a way of seeing how it worked in 3e.
> 
> Cheers!




As I recall- and I could very well be wrong- "at wills" don't require you maintain a spell in reserve to "power" the reserve feat.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 16, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> See, I recall the OGL having a different reason for existing.




I suggest you go back and re-read.  The WotC quotes have been linked to many, many times in reference to this same argument, and the WotC quotes are not what you think they are.



> One needs only look at what WotC "closed" in the GSL to see where they thought the OGL went off the rails




No....One only can discover what they later decided was costing them money.  WotC right now has a very different business plan that WotC did when the OGL was penned.


EDIT:  Here is the link:  http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/md/md20020228e

Here's the logic in a nutshell. We've got a theory that says that D&D is the most popular roleplaying game because it is the game more people know how to play than any other game. (For those of you interested researching the theory, this concept is called "The Theory of Network Externalities.")

[ Note: This is a very painful concept for a lot of people to embrace, including a lot of our own staff, and including myself for many years. The idea that D&D is somehow "better" than the competition is a powerful and entrenched concept. The idea that D&D can be "beaten" by a game that is "better" than D&D is at the heart of every business plan from every company that goes into marketplace battle with D&D game. If you accept the Theory of Network Externalities, you have to admit that the battle is lost before it begins, because the value doesn't reside in the game itself, but in the network of people who know how to play it.] 

If you accept (as I have finally come to do) that the theory is valid, then the logical conclusion is that the larger the number of people who play D&D, the harder it is for competitive games to succeed, and the longer people will stay active gamers, and the more value the network of D&D players will have to Wizards of the Coast. 

In fact, we believe that there may be a secondary market force we jokingly call "The Skaff Effect," after our own [game designer] Skaff Elias. Skaff is one of the smartest guys in the company, and after looking at lots of trends and thinking about our business over a long period of time, he enunciated his theory thusly: 

"All marketing and sales activity in a hobby gaming genre eventually contributes to the overall success of the market share leader in that genre." 

In other words, the more money other companies spend on their games, the more D&D sales are eventually made. Now, there are clearly issues of efficiency -- not every dollar input to the market results in a dollar output in D&D sales; and there is a substantial time lag between input and output; and a certain amount of people are diverted from D&D to other games never to return. However, we believe very strongly that the net effect of the competition in the RPG genre is positive for D&D. 

The downside here is that I believe that one of the reasons that the RPG as a category has declined so much from the early 90s relates to the proliferation of systems. Every one of those different game systems creates a "bubble" of market inefficiency; the cumulative effect of all those bubbles has proven to be a massive downsizing of the marketplace. I have to note, highlight, and reiterate: The problem is not competitive >product<, the problem is competitive >systems<. I am very much for competition and for a lot of interesting and cool products.

So much for the dry theory and background. Here's the logical conclusions we've drawn:

We make more revenue and more profit from our core rulebooks than any other part of our product lines. In a sense, every other RPG product we sell other than the core rulebooks is a giant, self-financing marketing program to drive sales of those core books. At an extreme view, you could say that the core >book< of the PHB is the focus of all this activity, and in fact, the PHB is the #1 best selling, and most profitable RPG product Wizards of the Coast makes year in and year out. 

The logical conclusion says that reducing the "cost" to other people to publishing and supporting the core D&D game to zero should eventually drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market, create customer resistance to the introduction of new systems, and the result of all that "support" redirected to the D&D game will be to steadily increase the number of people who play D&D, thus driving sales of the core books. This is a feedback cycle -- the more effective the support is, the more people play D&D. The more people play D&D, the more effective the support is. 

The other great effect of Open Gaming should be a rapid, constant improvement in the quality of the rules. With lots of people able to work on them in public, problems with math, with ease of use, of variance from standard forms, etc. should all be improved over time. The great thing about Open Gaming is that it is interactive -- someone figures out a way to make something work better, and everyone who uses that part of the rules is free to incorporate it into their products. Including us. So D&D as a game should benefit from the shared development of all the people who work on the Open Gaming derivative of D&D.

After reviewing all the factors, I think there's a very, very strong business case that can be made for the idea of embracing the ideas at the heart of the Open Source movement and finding a place for them in gaming.​
It is quite clear that WotC _*wanted and encouraged*_ people to create variant rules at the time -- exactly what they are cutting out now -- and that they believed it would increase their market share.


RC


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## Remathilis (Sep 16, 2009)

Henry said:


> Which is to say, nothing, save Goodman Games and a couple other small outings. Even One Bad Egg closed up shop on its releases, just recently, because the interest just wasn't there.




Case. In. Point.


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## MerricB (Sep 16, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> As I recall- and I could very well be wrong- "at wills" don't require you maintain a spell in reserve to "power" the reserve feat.




Which spell would you keep in reserve for 4e? One of your (two) dailies?

Reserve feats had one purpose in 3e: to give Wizards "at will" powers that meant they wouldn't have to use crossbows. With 4e giving wizards the "at will" powers by default, they've become obsolete. There is no design space for them any more to fill.

Cheers!


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## Remathilis (Sep 16, 2009)

Interesting post RC. 

I still don't think WotC envisioned games like C&C or OSRIC when they created the OGL. Still, that's another conversation for another day.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 16, 2009)

MerricB said:


> Which spell would you keep in reserve for 4e? One of your (two) dailies?
> 
> Reserve feats had one purpose in 3e: to give Wizards "at will" powers that meant they wouldn't have to use crossbows. With 4e giving wizards the "at will" powers by default, they've become obsolete. There is no design space for them any more to fill.
> 
> Cheers!




Well, first, I dislike the overall powers structure of 4Ed.

And I particularly dislike that design decision to divorce "at wills" from resource management.

IMHO, the Reserve feat is a better design- I understand that they have no place in 4Ed mechanics, but that doesn't make me like 4Ed's version any better.


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## Cadfan (Sep 16, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> The Reserve feats were an elegant way of handling this issue: they give the spellcaster something to do instead of casting spells, something at least as good as using a weapon, and its still "magical"- hopefully satisfying those who lament resorting to using crossbows as "unwizardly."



That's not really what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about the curve, where you start out not having enough spells per rounds of battle, but never invest in any non spell attack options because soon you'll have more spells than you need, and whatever feats or character choices you invest in non spell options will be ultimately wasted.  Reserve feats kick in too late to really help with this.  In fact, they make it worse, because the problem isn't just not having enough spells early in your career, its having too many spells later.

It wasn't some large critique of 3e or anything.  It was just some musing I've had on how to make actual Vancian magic work.  The big flaw seems to me to be not having enough magic early on, but never developing a non magical alternative because later in your career you'll have too much.  It seems to me that if you get rid of the "too much" effect, then offer viable non magical options, the incentives would exist for the player to do the rest of the work in making Vancian magic functional and balanced.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 16, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> That's not really what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about the curve, where you start out not having enough spells per rounds of battle, but never invest in any non spell attack options because soon you'll have more spells than you need, and whatever feats or character choices you invest in non spell options will be ultimately wasted.  Reserve feats kick in too late to really help with this.  In fact, they make it worse, because the problem isn't just not having enough spells early in your career, its having too many spells later.
> 
> It wasn't some large critique of 3e or anything.  It was just some musing I've had on how to make actual Vancian magic work.




No, I got you, and even agree to a point.  I just never had an issue with the curve personally- what some cite as a flaw I see as a feature.  To an extent, low level mages *should *struggle with resource management, occasionally being without a useful spell to cast- they're nööbs!

Certain Reserve feats- and a few Alternative Class Features-  fit the bill for correcting this curve somewhat, but as you correctly state, they don't address the low end (as things ended in 3.X).

Which is why I was looking for an expansion of the mechanic in 3.X- which was aborted by the release of 4Ed- or the appearance & blossoming of the mechanic in 4Ed- in which Reserve Feats/ACFs were supplanted by a mechanic that could charitably be called its first cousin.

IOW, had 3.5 continued, I would like to have seen a broader variety of Reserve feats, with varying plateaus of utility and covering more than just attack or summon spells.

(I'd also have modified the way metamagic works, but that's a different story...)

Another thing that might have worked was the way the Shadowcaster was handled.  I have no problem with strict limitations on top spells, but with increasing freedom- eventually leading to "at will"- regarding the lowest-tier spells.  Of course, that would mean that auto-scaling of spells would be _rare._


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## Lanefan (Sep 16, 2009)

*Re Vancian casting*:

The things that have always bothered me about 0-1-2-3e casting rules as written are not that the caster is limited in how many spells per day she can cast, but in both what those spells are (memorization) and having to guess ahead of time what spells will be needed (memorization ahead of time).  The end result was you'd see a magic-user with 10 1st-level spells in her book only ever memorize one or two of them, over and over again.  And how many times have you as DM watched an otherwise ready-to-rock party stop dead for the day because they got to a door that the Thief couldn't open and the bashers couldn't break...and the MU didn't memorize _Knock_.  Aaaaargh!

3e's Sorcerer class was a revelation (though it took me a while to realize it; at first I thought the class was a waste of paper as it seemed so similar to the Wizard) - the answer lay in spell selection flexibility.  In my current 1e-based campaign I've now got all caster types working like Sorcerers - if it's in your book (or on your list, for Clerics) and you have a slot left for that level, you can cast it.  So far the result is that while some spells still get cast far too often, I'm seeing lots of other spells get used that would otherwise never see the light of day.  Remains to be seen if this'll end up horribly broken at higher levels; they're now about the 3rd-5th range and so far, so good.

*Re alignments and mechanics*:

I've always like one aspect of alignment mechanics: that an aligned weapon or item can sometimes bite those of the wrong alignment who try to pick it up.  Otherwise, alignment isn't that big a deal in my games...unless you're a Paladin, Cleric, Necromancer, or Assassin.  But I really like the point raised earlier - and I apologize for forgetting who raised it - that alignment discussions in the pub were *far* preferable to bragging about the latest greatest character build; they showed (and led to) greater buy-in to the game as a whole, more often than not.  And if you didn't care, well, hey, you're in the pub and there's beer; what more do you need? 

One thing to remember, for you history buffs, is that in original D+D there was *no* good-evil axis - the alignments were lawful-neutral-chaotic.  Good and evil came in with 1e AD+D...and have since slowly taken over.

*Re demons and devils*:

I've always seen both these "races" as areas where I as DM can lob in absolutely anything I can dream up.  Particularly demons.  And as for having lots and lots of layers of the Abyss, that's actually quite handy: if I need a particularly whacked-out setting for some off-plane adventure I'm dreaming up, then ::_whoop_:: down to some random otherwise-unused plane of the Abyss they go. 

Lan-"'greedy' is a modifier that can go on the end of any alignment"-efan


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## MerricB (Sep 16, 2009)

Lanefan said:


> *Re Vancian casting*:
> 
> The things that have always bothered me about 0-1-2-3e casting rules as written are not that the caster is limited in how many spells per day she can cast, but in both what those spells are (memorization) and having to guess ahead of time what spells will be needed (memorization ahead of time).  The end result was you'd see a magic-user with 10 1st-level spells in her book only ever memorize one or two of them, over and over again.  And how many times have you as DM watched an otherwise ready-to-rock party stop dead for the day because they got to a door that the Thief couldn't open and the bashers couldn't break...and the MU didn't memorize _Knock_.  Aaaaargh!
> 
> 3e's Sorcerer class was a revelation (though it took me a while to realize it; at first I thought the class was a waste of paper as it seemed so similar to the Wizard) - the answer lay in spell selection flexibility.  In my current 1e-based campaign I've now got all caster types working like Sorcerers - if it's in your book (or on your list, for Clerics) and you have a slot left for that level, you can cast it.  So far the result is that while some spells still get cast far too often, I'm seeing lots of other spells get used that would otherwise never see the light of day.  Remains to be seen if this'll end up horribly broken at higher levels; they're now about the 3rd-5th range and so far, so good.




In theory, it's one of things 4e's Rituals should be good at: allowing the PCs to use utility spells at need. So far in my two campaigns, they've been erratically used, but we've had a few really good uses of rituals that has added a lot to the game - and a lot of time wondering what good rituals are! 

I like your idea of "sorcerer-style" casting for AD&D clerics and wizards; especially with clerics, who had a lot of really interesting spells that just wouldn't get cast. I mean, the reversed spell _snakes to sticks_ is glorious, but when would it ever be used?

Cheers!


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 16, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> Interesting post RC.
> 
> I still don't think WotC envisioned games like C&C or OSRIC when they created the OGL. Still, that's another conversation for another day.




You should read the whole bit I linked to above.

It seems very, very clear that WotC imagined that the D&D brand was strong enough that someone who started in whatever other OGL-based game might exist would eventually buy from WotC.   Since WotC  imagined that the OGL would lead to changes in mechanics (some of which would become official), I really doubt that WotC expected that a retro-clone would damage the game, if they considered it at all.  They certainly expected other SRD-based fantasy games to exist.

The problem for WotC became, IMHO, that several 3pp were "doing it better" than WotC, in the humble opinions of too large of a segment of the gaming population.  So D&D became a feeder to other games perhaps more than WotC would like, and not enough other games became feeders to D&D.

Rather than using the OGL as it was intended according to their own statements -- to make D&D more like the successful 3pp games -- WotC went in the opposite direction.  (Shrug)


RC


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## Betote (Sep 16, 2009)

About the changes on alignments, I can totally understand why LE and CG were ditched. They were utterly strange and alien concepts no one could grasp. I mean, who's ever heard of nazis* or hippies? 

*: I hope this won't invoke Godwin's Law upon me...


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## Hussar (Sep 16, 2009)

DannyA said:
			
		

> When we went through RttToEE (3.XEd, and I was a player, not DM), we had a stretch in which we went through 6 combat encounters without an in-game break. (It covered 3 sessions.)
> 
> The single-classed mage still had a spell or 2 left at the end of it. He had spells left because instead of nova-ing, he'd cast a couple of spells, then reach for a weapon.
> 
> ...




Funny you mention that.  When I ran World's Largest Dungeon, which is really a pretty similar sort of thing, we had 1-3 encounters and rest pretty much every single time.  I ran 2-5 encounters per session for about 80 sessions, IIRC, it was roughly 200 encounters.  And 1-3 before rest was the hard limit.  I think they might have gotten past that once or twice, but, that was the exception, and certainly not the rule.

When I ran Savage Tide these past couple of years, the players stocked up on cure light wands, and then they started having 6-8 encounters before rest.

So, IME, what WOTC stated was pretty much spot on.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 17, 2009)

The Wiz wasn't an item creator- he went straight Metamagic.  Ditto the main divine casters.

We didn't have any Cure wands or scrolls.  A couple of potions per PC, but that was it.


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## Hussar (Sep 17, 2009)

DannyA, to be honest, I really gotta wonder how you did it.  I mean, 6 combats is about 20-25 rounds of combat.  Give or take anyway.  That's some pretty serious beatings for your front line.  

Heck, 3e even specifically assumes 4 par encounters should be as far as you can go in a day.  Were the encounters particularly easy or were there extenuating circumstances that prevented you from taking a lot of damage?

And, does this stand out in your mind because it was the exception?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 17, 2009)

Hussar said:


> DannyA, to be honest, I really gotta wonder how you did it.  I mean, 6 combats is about 20-25 rounds of combat.  Give or take anyway.  That's some pretty serious beatings for your front line.
> 
> Heck, 3e even specifically assumes 4 par encounters should be as far as you can go in a day.  Were the encounters particularly easy or were there extenuating circumstances that prevented you from taking a lot of damage?
> 
> And, does this stand out in your mind because it was the exception?




1) We fight tactically- using cover, obstructions & bottlenecks to limit the number of attackers that can actually get to the party.  Several members of the party have reach weapons so they can attack from the 2nd rank.  Even mundane items get used- alchemical grenades, caltrops, marbles, etc- in order to control where foes stand.

Sometimes, if there is no real ranged threat, the spell-hoarding mage will visibly lob a big spell to open a combat (announcing his presence), then retreat to a "cover" position, knocking the bejuanas out of anyone who travels into his line of fire.

2) That was not a typical stretch of adventures between rests, but neither was it atypical.  Three to four combats between rests was pretty common, and I can't remember any time with only 1 combat.

Of course, not all combats are created equal- some were easy and some were tough- but the DMs in our group tend not to pull punches.  We came close to a TPK once or twice, and several PCs were at death's door during the campaign- some more than once.  Some deaths were avoided by metaplay on the part of some of the players- making their PCs tend to the wounded when that would be an unsound choice 9 times out of 10.  One death was avoided because my PC (and ONLY my PC) actually had levels in Swimming, and could save the party's Rogue from drowning after he got paralyzed by a ___________.

Even though that prompted a retreat, the party still had 2 subsequent combats on the way out.


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## Ariosto (Sep 17, 2009)

Having the sorcerer class as an option is cool -- the more (preferably well-tested) options the merrier, I think!

Think you get too many spells in 1e/2e/3e? In OD&D with Supp. I, you get (assuming intelligence to cast all 9 spell levels) 50 spells at 20th level! That's 7 per spell level through 6th -- and literally daily, unlike 1e's quarter-hour/level/spell preparation time.

It's a long, hard road to such power, though. Especially at low levels, the key to preparation is intel and recon. My personal fave is _charm person_, if I can get it -- but any of the "humbler" spells can be strategically powerful in the right circumstances. 

Before 3e, magic items were not really a direct part of the "character level" deal. Holmes Basic lets you make scrolls even at 1st level, which is handy.

Anyway, the focus of the game has shifted; there's a different, "encounter4zed" structure and strategy. 



> One thing to remember, for you history buffs, is that in original D+D there was *no* good-evil axis ...



Well, good did not get significant mention that I recall until the first supplement introduced the paladin. "Anti-clerics" (with "reversed" spells and no "turning" of undead) were evil from the start -- as proclaimed in level titles culminating the once-infamous *EHP* (Evil High Priest, with The Finger of Death in place of Raise Read).


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 17, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> Well, good did not get significant mention that I recall until the first supplement introduced the paladin. "Anti-clerics" (with "reversed" spells and no "turning" of undead) were evil from the start -- as proclaimed in level titles culminating the once-infamous *EHP* (Evil High Priest, with The Finger of Death in place of *Raise Read*).



(emphasis mine)
He had a pop-up spellbook?


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## Hussar (Sep 17, 2009)

DannyA said:
			
		

> 2) That was not a typical stretch of adventures between rests, but neither was it atypical. Three to four combats between rests was pretty common, and I can't remember any time with only 1 combat.




That jives with my experience as well.  We'd get the odd 1 combat day mostly because of bad rolls.  Four was about max.  2-3 was definetely the usual for us.

Which, effectively, meant 15 minute adventuring days.  Wake up, wander around, fight, wander around, fight, go to bed.  Sure it wasn't literally 15 minutes, but, it certainly wasn't a long line of combats.

That took a wand of cure light for our group.  Then we started rolling over entire adventures without resting.  Not easily mind you, but, the group would keep pushing on because they could.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 17, 2009)

Just to be clear, if we were talking about average # of combats between rests in our RttToEE campaign, I'd have to say that:

1) The Mode (most common value) was 3 combats.

2) The Mean (average of all values) was somewhere close to 4.

3) That we had 6 at one stretch is memorable not because it was unusual, but because it was the last big stretch we had before we finished off the module.

And, in addition, the triggering event for looking for rest spots was not the spells of the arcanists, but the combination of HP of front and second liners (including combat-centric divine casters) and how much healing was left.  Typically, when we rested, somebody was in danger of being killed by a miffed marmot.


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## Hussar (Sep 17, 2009)

Ok, I'll totally agree with that DannyA.  My experience jives with yours.  It was the clerics, IME, not the wizards who dictated stopping places.  

Now, I will go a step further and say that this was true for me in earlier editions as well.  When the cleric ran out of healing, we tended to stop, if we could.  However, in earlier editions, it was easier to push on because each individual encounter tended to be signficantly less threatening.  It was not unusual to come out of an encounter (again in my experience) having only been hit once or twice among the entire party.  Because creatures could not do significant amounts of damage in a single round and, as an added bonus, we tended to play in groups of 6-8, combats were typically a whole lot less threatening.  But, we tended to blitz through a lot more of them, so the end result was pretty much the same.

When the cleric ran out of healing, we stopped.

But, that aside erm... aside, I totally agree with you.  Clerics dictated the pace of my games, not wizards.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 17, 2009)

> When the cleric ran out of healing, we stopped.




I know it may seem like just a semantic difference, but in our case, it was more like "When the cleric ran out of healing, we started looking for a place to stop."

Sometimes, that wouldn't be found for a while- and there were often 1+ combats to get through between the healers running on empty and the party's actual stopping point.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 17, 2009)

We had that problem recently, too. Or rather, my players had it, and the Cleric was just not low on healing, he was low (out) of healing surges, and there was no place to rest.

Pyramid of Shadows can be nasty for that...


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## Storminator (Sep 17, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> We had that problem recently, too. Or rather, my players had it, and the Cleric was just not low on healing, he was low (out) of healing surges, and there was no place to rest.
> 
> Pyramid of Shadows can be nasty for that...




I've played sessions where my cleric had no surges and we just pressed on. Risky, but we did it.

Our next game is going to start with one PC on the final stage of Filth Fever. He has no surges, can't regain hit points, has 1 hp, and penalties to his defenses... and we're trapped in the underground tomb. Getting him back to the surface is going to be quite tricky!

PS


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## Celebrim (Sep 17, 2009)

Real Reasons for the Changes:

WotC wanted a rules set that could be easily ported with minimal changes to a real time computer environment.  Vancian casting, for example, doesn't port well to a computer environment.  The 4e rules set is in my opinion as a programmer who has worked on porting turn based pen and paper games over to real time computer environments, very easy to port over to a computer environment while still maintaining the feel of the PnP game.  For example, compared to earlier editions, 4e is far more suited to balanced PvP combat, which is an expected part of computer gaming that has little role in table top games.  4e also provides a consistancy of play experience across a wide range of levels that you didn't have in earlier editions.  A low level wizard plays very much like a high level wizard, which certainly can't be said of earlier editions.  Also, the tight focus on combat is much easier for a game programmer, because non-combat situations tend to require much more human arbitration and anything that require human arbitration is hard or impossible to program.  The skill frameworks seem to me an attempt to provide a resolution mechanic to game developers for outside of combat situations, albiet the whole skill challenge system has never really seemed to work as intended.  WotC wanted a rules set that could be picked up by an average 12 year old and which would present concepts familiar to that player from outside the pen and paper RPG gaming world.  WotC wanted a clean break with the OGL and 'open source' gaming.  The real problem with the OGL was that Green Ronin was doing D&D better than WotC was.  WotC expected 3rd parties to provide accessories with low profit margins and allow WoTC to concentrate on core books.  Instead, too many players (like me) were using other gaming companies products as core books and simply not buying WotC books (at all).  To break with OGL meant that they had to put out a system that wasn't really backwards compatible so that if you wanted to keep playing the latest and 'coolest' game, you had to stop using their competitor's books.

As for the flavor changes, I think you are really overthinking the issue.  The reason for the flavor changes is quite simple - a new DM was put in charge.  Every DM is going to try to put their own stamp on the official setting.  If there was any overarching motivation beyond that it was again, just simplicity.  The traditional D&D planar setting is very baroque and complicated.  It's not something that people can take in at a glance and understand what's going on.  A simplified core setting serves to get people into the cosmology and its conflicts in a hurry.  Of course, over time I fully expect the new setting to develop all the quirks and complexities of any long lived setting - 'setting bloat' as opposed to 'rules bloat' - but if they had any unifying idea at all it was probably 'keep it simple'.


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## AllisterH (Sep 17, 2009)

ER, Celebrim, I disagree strongly...

4e's rules are perhaps the WORST set of D&D rules EVER you want to be translated to real time.

All those "push and Slide powers" , plus a higher use of out of turn abilities like Immediate reactions....

No wau no how can 4e be turned to a real time game. You pretty much have to neuter EVERY single class to get it to real time.

I'm not sure why you believe Vancian casting is anathema to real time environments....

Furthermore, as a PVP game, 4e would pretty much bite. For example, using the PHB1 classes only, the only viable PVP class is the ranger. 

Warlord and Cleric make no sense in PVP, rogues need somebody to flank with and there's no point in having Defenders in PVP matches.

Seriously, 4e as a real time game? No chance.

Now, if we're talking a turne based grid based game a la FFT/Disgaea...THERE, now that works...


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## Stoat (Sep 17, 2009)

Are there any 4E videogames in the works?


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## Nifft (Sep 17, 2009)

I'm with *AllisterH* on this one. Coding all the interrupt powers would be a major pain.

Encounters are a narrative construct, well suited to actual play by people, but poorly suited to simulation via computer. Tracking time-based durations? Much easier for a computer.

4e is a VERY turn-based, human-centric game.

Cheers, -- N


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## nightwyrm (Sep 17, 2009)

As for Vancian magic being hard to port to a computer game, Final Fantasy I and III both used a version of the Vancian system. (they're more like the 3e sorcerers really...)


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## nightwyrm (Sep 17, 2009)

Nifft said:


> I'm with *AllisterH* on this one. Coding all the interrupt powers would be a major pain.
> 
> Encounters are a narrative construct, well suited to actual play by people, but poorly suited to simulation via computer. Tracking time-based durations? Much easier for a computer.
> 
> ...




I very much agree with this.  People keep comparing 4e to WoW, but it's actually much closer to Japanese tactical RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea.  The only reason people compare 4e to WoW is because there's probably like 1000 WoW player for every JTRPG player.


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## UngainlyTitan (Sep 18, 2009)

I also think Celebrim is wrong on the computer porting issue, I think he has a point on the OGL issue and personally I also think that they had decided on DDI very early and felt it would not really fly without the VTT and intregated DM tools.
In that case and OGL compendium would allow any third party to beat them on the VTT game and the subscription model. So they needed an non OGL game for that to work.


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## Hussar (Sep 18, 2009)

Heh, easiness of porting rules.  Umm, Baldur's Gate?  Icewind Dale?  Neverwinter Nights?

Yup, 3e was virtually impossible to import into computers.


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## Remathilis (Sep 18, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Heh, easiness of porting rules.  Umm, Baldur's Gate?  Icewind Dale?  Neverwinter Nights?
> 
> Yup, 3e was virtually impossible to import into computers.




In his defense, BG, IWD, and NWN all played a bit "fast-and-loose" with their D&D rulesets. Stealth, for example, was a one-click button which sent you into stealth mode that had little to do with how HS/MS worked. The same was true of weapon proficiencies in BGII. And NWN really had to rework the skills and feats of D&D 3.0 to make them fit their Aurora Engine (Parry skill anyone?).

and none of them let you fly, climb, swim or jump.

Granted, all these problems could (and might) exist in 4e game as well. (esp the Z-axis issues).


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## teach (Sep 18, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Heh, easiness of porting rules.  Umm, Baldur's Gate?  Icewind Dale?  Neverwinter Nights?
> 
> Yup, 3e was virtually impossible to import into computers.




baldur's gate and icewind dale used 2 edition rule sets.


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## Opus (Sep 18, 2009)

IMO, the vancian magic system of AD&D --- 3e was a fundamental part of the feel of D&D.  Magic was mysterious and different. Those that wielded it were set apart from the grunts rolling d8 every round of combat.  4e makes magic users fundamentally like every other class.  I think that was WOTC’s intention and the reason they changed the system.  Using the same basic system for magic as other combat makes it easier to balance the classes.  It also gives wizards the same consistency across levels as the other classes.    I don’t want to sound like a crotchety old man but the current crop of 12 year olds is at least 3 generations removed from the progenitors of D&D.  They were born into a different world.  They are used to instant gratification and simply won’t accept that their low level wizard can’t do the same things as everyone else.  The exponential power curve for 1e AD&D simply doesn't appeal to them.  Removing vancian magic is just a way to try and make their product more appealing to their target audience.   I know that is a generalization but I think there is more truth there than not.  

IMO, they removed alignments because they added unintended complications to the game.  My understanding it alignments were intended to identify what was a valid target and what was not, in addition to adding extra challenges and making certain magic items unusable to PCs.  In practice it didn’t work that way and too much time was spent arguing moral issues.  

While I personally miss vancian magic and alignments, I understand why they removed theses things and probably would do the same if I was trying to sell games.


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## SteveC (Sep 18, 2009)

I'd say that the changes in 4E were made to address issues the designers had with the previous canon, going all the way back to the beginning in some cases. Most of the changes that we're talking about here (alignment, planes) were to streamline the game and remove options that weren't used that often, were only there for purposes of being complete, or actually made the game worse (in my opinion, YMMV).

For alignment, what did we really get out of those 9 alignments? From my experience, we had arguments over what a particular member of an alignment would do (e.g., paladins and LG) and had alignments that were more trouble than they were worth (CN). I cringed every time I played in a game with a CN character, since I KNEW they'd being doing some annoying stuff in the name of "playing in character." It was as if the chaotic neutral alignment was specifically put into the game to allow people to play insane jerks. Do I miss it? Not a bit. In fact, I think the game is much better for it's loss.

Now here's the thing: I know that some folks loved that old system, and were/are greatly upset that it's gone. I respect that. On the other hand, the fact that the designers removed it made me like 4E much more as a result...I saw why they made the change and I approve. 

Ditto the removal of the "great wheel" system. I know people loved it, but that wasn't me: it meant I would never buy a book on the planes for example, since it was going to have a lot of stuff in it I thought was beyond useless. The current cosmology is a lot more interesting to me, and I've purchased products as a result. It meant we got rid of the quasi elemental plane of salt and the neutral good heaven, but to me those were features and not bugs.

I could go on, and if anyone really cares I will (yep, I know that's doubtful), but the point is that there were real reasons for the changes that were made, and customers who were asking for those changes. If you don't like what's changed, I can certainly understand that: I pretty much stopped playing D&D with second edition and came back to it for third.

The point is that we have a new generation of designers trying to make D&D their own...is that part of an evil corporate vision? I don't think so at all, but I also understand why it's left some of the old guard feeling left behind. All I would say about that is there were reasons for the changes, just not ones everyone liked. The edition wars will end when people realize that the changes that get made each edition are not meant to be an affront to the old guard, they're just part of a different vision for the product.

--Steve


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## Celebrim (Sep 18, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> ER, Celebrim, I disagree strongly...
> 
> 4e's rules are perhaps the WORST set of D&D rules EVER you want to be translated to real time.




Ok.  Explain it to me.



> All those "push and Slide powers"




Are absolutely perfect for real time play.  One thing that traditional D&D lacks is alot of movement based/movement hindering tactics, which is precisely what you need when you start adding freeform movement and twitch to the mix.  Traditional D&D combat relied on narration more than precise positioning and had elements that just didn't translate well (like full attacks) when you tried to make them anything but abstract.  You can see this in the way games like NWN's work.  

Most movement powers can be implemented as direct pushes and pulls and are really easy to do, and the rest basically add a single mouse click on activation to 'point' where you want to go.  It's not like there aren't existing models of games games of this sort with pushes and pulls.

Plus you are missing things like like the fact that hindering abilities are very short term in 4e.  Getting 'frozen out' of play in a twitchy computer game sucks even worse than it does in PnP. 



> plus a higher use of out of turn abilities like Immediate reactions....




Are actually far far easier to implement in a computer game than they are to track at a table.  Setting up triggers and events in a computer game is trivial, and the computer doesn't forget.  I mean, this is basically how games work - some event triggers some animated response.


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## Imban (Sep 18, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> And NWN really had to rework the skills and feats of D&D 3.0 to make them fit their Aurora Engine (Parry skill anyone?).




I have literally no idea why *Parry* needed to be in NWN, except that I guess they thought it would be fun. It's not like Discipline, which was added to make the "combat maneuvers" (well, Knockdown ) a little more obvious in how they worked.


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## Shemeska (Sep 18, 2009)

SteveC said:


> The point is that we have a new generation of designers trying to make D&D their own...is that part of an evil corporate vision? I don't think so at all, but I also understand why it's left some of the old guard feeling left behind.




How different are they though, generation-wise, from the core 3e design crew? It doesn't strike me so much as a new generation with new ideas, but rather just a new crew with their own ideas for the game once the major 3e figures were no longer with WotC. Age-wise as far as I can guess, I figure most of the 4e design team started the game back in 1e, which doesn't make me assume it's a new generation moving in, just a new group of guys wanting to put their spin on the game now.


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## LostSoul (Sep 18, 2009)

Opus said:


> 4e makes magic users fundamentally like every other class.




Mechanically, yes.

In the game world?  I guess it's up to your group, but I'd say that in my campaign they are fundamentally different.


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## LostSoul (Sep 18, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> Are actually far far easier to implement in a computer game than they are to track at a table.  Setting up triggers and events in a computer game is trivial, and the computer doesn't forget.  I mean, this is basically how games work - some event triggers some animated response.




A PC gets one Immediate Action per round.  I assume in real time that means every few seconds or so.  NPC1 triggers an Immediate Reaction/Interrupt.  I don't care about using it at that point; I want to save it for later.  (Maybe it's an Encounter Power, like Shield; I don't want to use it to block the 4 points of damage from the minion, I want to use it in case the Elite Brute hits with a massive attack dealing 16 damage and dazing me.)

How do I decide to hold on to my Immediate Action in real time?

I'm sure there are ways, but as I understand it that's the difficulty.


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## Ariosto (Sep 18, 2009)

> He had a pop-up spell book?



Actually, Raise Read is a thrifty and charitable clerical spell that lets a scroll be re-used by readers of braille! 

_Monsters & Treasure_ of course taught not to trust Nixies (*In Liar* 100%), and offered swords with the power to *Detect Meal & What Kind*. The 1st ed. _Players Handbook_ put the Grand Master of Flowers in new context by revealing the importance of "monastic *aesthetics* ..."!

_Oh the television man is crazy
Saying we're juvenile delinquent wrecks
Oh man I need TV when I've got
TYPO Rex_


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 18, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> _Oh the television man is crazy
> Saying we're juvenile delinquent wrecks
> Oh man I need TV when I've got
> TYPO Rex_




_Oh...
All the young Druids (hey dudes)
Carry the gnus (where are ya)
Boogaloo Druids (stand up come on)
Carry the gnus_


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## Ariosto (Sep 18, 2009)

But seriously, on the whole "out of spells, so call it a day" thing:

I never encountered it until a few years ago when I saw it mentioned online. That the people with whom I played 3e were apparently not into an Internet D&D scene apart from one fellow -- and he strictly concerned with the Neverwinter Nights program -- might have something to do with that.

On the other hand, I'm sure it's not a new thing. One of the guys in my current group who never played anything but 1e has a touch of that, and the 2e-centric fellow who is DM lately "house rules" away a lot of resource management. (As the player of our only m-u, I've got issues with what this DM lavishly giveth as well as with what he taketh away in too-arbitrary fashion, but that's a whole can of worms.)

One thing I think worth noting is the shift to *assuming* a string of fights. The original "dungeon game" fundamentals seem in some neighborhoods to be a long time lost. For all that I dig _Tunnels & Trolls_, I think that in some of this respect it was 30 years ahead of its time; published T&T dungeons (mostly solitaire scenarios) have always tended to remarkably "packed" and pretty linear gauntlets.

Anyway, we still manage to avoid the "Ten Minute Adventuring Day" despite the strong reservations of the one other guy who knows from 3e and 4e (who happens to be playing our cleric).

My m-u is lucky to have survived some recklessness, but I don't recall so much frustration (which is really not so much) back in the day when the scenarios in my experience were not so combat-oriented as this latest one. It's really the DM's heavy handed determination to spoil stratagems that might obviate slugging matches that irks me -- and not so much that I feel "useless".

It cracks me up that in the last session we were joined by an elfin thief who got in not one back-stab. In melees, she mostly just hung back as a peanut gallery and tossed a few daggers into the fray.

There's still (as we're playing with the old TSR rules) notable variety even in very combat-centric sessions. "Tactics" as I understand the term come up in very varied ways.

Basically, we get really cautious when we're back down to the first-level state of probably getting killed if another round goes against us.


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## LostSoul (Sep 18, 2009)

Ariosto, how do you avoid the "15-minute adventuring day" when smart play would _seem_ to suggest that resting to restore spells is the best course of action?

(I can easily see reasons for it, but I'm just wondering what your experience has been.)


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 18, 2009)

LostSoul said:


> Ariosto, how do you avoid the "15-minute adventuring day" when smart play would _seem_ to suggest that resting to restore spells is the best course of action?




Ariosto isn't my name, but I _did _post how it goes in our campaigns it a little upthread: since we generally have DMs who don't let you stop just because you're "low on ammo" or dinged up a tad (myself included), we use a lot of tactical fighting & economical spell use (nova only when forced to!).

See:



Dannyalcatraz said:


> The Wiz wasn't an item creator- he went straight Metamagic.  Ditto the main divine casters.
> 
> We didn't have any Cure wands or scrolls.  A couple of potions per PC, but that was it.






Dannyalcatraz said:


> 1) We fight tactically- using cover, obstructions & bottlenecks to limit the number of attackers that can actually get to the party.  Several members of the party have reach weapons so they can attack from the 2nd rank.  Even mundane items get used- alchemical grenades, caltrops, marbles, etc- in order to control where foes stand.
> 
> _<snip>_
> Sometimes, if there is no real ranged threat, the spell-hoarding mage will visibly lob a big spell to open a combat (announcing his presence), then retreat to a "cover" position, knocking the bejuanas out of anyone who travels into his line of fire.
> ...


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## AllisterH (Sep 18, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> Are absolutely perfect for real time play.  One thing that traditional D&D lacks is alot of movement based/movement hindering tactics, which is precisely what you need when you start adding freeform movement and twitch to the mix.  Traditional D&D combat relied on narration more than precise positioning and had elements that just didn't translate well (like full attacks) when you tried to make them anything but abstract.  You can see this in the way games like NWN's work.
> 
> Most movement powers can be implemented as direct pushes and pulls and are really easy to do, and the rest basically add a single mouse click on activation to 'point' where you want to go.  It's not like there aren't existing models of games games of this sort with pushes and pulls.




Traditional D&D combat is the easiest combat system to port to computer rpgs. What made 3e tricky was that like 4e, the combat system is discretely dvidied into specific actions. If you move, you get less attacks which is the problem NWN had to deal with...

Let's say we have a power that pushes someone 3 squares away. In a turn-based grid based game, you can use this to your advantage and setup so that the enemy pushed is in a more beneficial position. so that the NEXT character can then unleash their own attack.

In a real time system, you push a character 5 squares away, you can't setup so that the OTHER character then uses their own power since there's no delay allowing for the person to select the right ability.



Celebrim said:


> Plus you are missing things like like the fact that hindering abilities are very short term in 4e.  Getting 'frozen out' of play in a twitchy computer game sucks even worse than it does in PnP.




Er no. The short term nature of hindering abilites doesn't make it hard to code for EITHER turn based OR real timed. 



Celebrim said:


> Are actually far far easier to implement in a computer game than they are to track at a table.  Setting up triggers and events in a computer game is trivial, and the computer doesn't forget.  I mean, this is basically how games work - some event triggers some animated response.




Again, you're missing the idea of CONTROL. Let's say you have an immediate reaction ability but you don't WANT it to trigger ALL the time even if the conditions are met since you only have 1 opportunity to use it. In a real time system, you would have to interrupt the event and basivally freeze the game and say "no, don't trigger now".

Worse, what if you have more than one AND one that actually allows you to basically jump in-between an attack upon a fellow party member?


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## an_idol_mind (Sep 18, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> But seriously, on the whole "out of spells, so call it a day" thing:




I ran into this situation for what might be the first time last week. The party was making an assault on an underground city and the sorcerer was running out of spells and asked to retreat for some rest. However, two party members had been captured, so they had to press on. I had to remind the sorcerer player that her PC had some magic items, including a staff, a wand, some scrolls, and a deck of illusions to fall back on if needed. (Mind you, they reached this point after adventuring well beyond the standard 4 encounters/day paradigm, too.)

The 15-minute adventuring day problem hasn't reared its head in my games much because the monsters don't just wait in a hole in the ground for adventurers to come and kill them. If the PCs retreat and rest, the monsters will either prepare for their return or sometimes track them down and attack as a pre-emptive strike. The "one encounter, rest, one encounter" idea would be a valid tactic, except that each rest potentially ramps up the difficulty of the adventure as a result. Basically, when a group of adventurers first enters a dungeon, they have a bit of a surprise advantage against the critters that weren't expecting them. If they leave, they've made the decision to trade that advantage away in order to replenish their resources. It's a tactical decision that comes with some trade-off.


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## Imban (Sep 18, 2009)

LostSoul said:


> Ariosto, how do you avoid the "15-minute adventuring day" when smart play would _seem_ to suggest that resting to restore spells is the best course of action?




Not Ariosto, but anyway: if you get in the habit of responding to encounters with appropriate force, rather than paving over everything with your highest-level spells as soon as it appears, you won't be screwed when the plot actually instructs you to endure through multiple fights, and there are a *lot* of reasons that this would happen, from wanting to avoid resting in a dungeon to ambushes to being on the defensive to time limits, only some of which are really avoidable.

The thing is, smart play only suggests that meeting everything with maximum force and then napping is the best course of action when you know you can take a nap afterwards. You don't usually know the story ahead of time in D&D because there's no way to save and reload and reading the module is generally frowned upon, so you really just have your  best guess to go on.

(Usually - there are some "abusive" social tactics like making your party so dependent on the 15-minute workday that anything else spells a TPK... which a GM usually doesn't want... and thus he probably won't stop you from taking a 15-minute workday. Sadly this can work for many weaknesses - if you make yourself so totally vulnerable to something you die if it's even mentioned, you're almost immune to it because of the problems including it would create.)


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 18, 2009)

Imban said:


> Not Ariosto, but anyway: if you get in the habit of responding to encounters with appropriate force, rather than paving over everything with your highest-level spells as soon as it appears, you won't be screwed when the plot actually instructs you to endure through multiple fights, and there are a *lot* of reasons that this would happen, from wanting to avoid resting in a dungeon to ambushes to being on the defensive to time limits, only some of which are really avoidable.
> 
> The thing is, smart play only suggests that meeting everything with maximum force and then napping is the best course of action when you know you can take a nap afterwards. You don't usually know the story ahead of time in D&D because there's no way to save and reload and reading the module is generally frowned upon, so you really just have your  best guess to go on.
> 
> (Usually - there are some "abusive" social tactics like making your party so dependent on the 15-minute workday that anything else spells a TPK... which a GM usually doesn't want... and thus he probably won't stop you from taking a 15-minute workday. Sadly this can work for many weaknesses - if you make yourself so totally vulnerable to something you die if it's even mentioned, you're almost immune to it because of the problems including it would create.)



The 15 minute adventure day has never been he big issue when there was no "nap time" guaranteed. Obviously. 

But how do you create a scenario without "nap time" consistently in the presence of Rope Trick, Teleport, Leomunds Secure Shelter, Mordekainens Magnificent Mansion and many more? Just ban the spells? What about the Ranger that removes your tracks? Counter with the opposition scrying everyone? 

If there is no time limit, just the threat of random encounters or assaults at night, there is also another "easy" trick. Just don't exhaust all your reserves. Just enough to take on one or two encounters, and leave the rest for the night and wandering monsters.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 18, 2009)

LostSoul said:


> Ariosto, how do you avoid the "15-minute adventuring day" when smart play would _seem_ to suggest that resting to restore spells is the best course of action?
> 
> (I can easily see reasons for it, but I'm just wondering what your experience has been.)




Also not Ariosto, but here's another voice saying that "Nova-15" is only smart play _*when the DM lets it be smart play*_.  I have a great love for the humble magic-user/wizard at low levels, and when playing that part my largest contribution to many encounters is _*advice and tactics*_ (i.e., the same thing Gandalf provided most often).  

When appropriate, the spells come out (and I make sure that divination spells get used, as they are the most powerful in the game.....knowledge is very often superior to firepower when overcoming threats).

If I am out of spells, it's back to advice and tactics, and the occasional staff or dagger attack when needed.

Now, I would agree that this sort of play could get boring using a game system whose encounters are resolved at a glacial pace.  Luckily, however, that isn't what I am playing.  


RC


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 18, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> The 15 minute adventure day has never been he big issue when there was no "nap time" guaranteed. Obviously.
> 
> But how do you create a scenario without "nap time" consistently in the presence of Rope Trick, Teleport, Leomunds Secure Shelter, Mordekainens Magnificent Mansion and many more? Just ban the spells? What about the Ranger that removes your tracks? Counter with the opposition scrying everyone?
> 
> If there is no time limit, just the threat of random encounters or assaults at night, there is also another "easy" trick. Just don't exhaust all your reserves. Just enough to take on one or two encounters, and leave the rest for the night and wandering monsters.




A few notes:

1.  You could always take a page from the classic modules.  Poison gas that slowly disables you while you try to find a way out of the ruins.  The Ghost Tower of Inverness appears for only one night -- you need to do all you are going to do by dawn.

2.  Less fantastically, the world continues to move while you nap.  In one KotB game, when the PCs withdrew to rest, the orcs evacuated their caves, taking their treasures with them.  Perhaps while you are hiding/napping, a rival adventuring group defeats the final foe (since you paved the way) and lays claim to the goods.  Better yet, the monsters may get reinforcements, lay traps, cast spells, etc., so that the fight becomes a lot tougher.

Basically, if the PCs nova everything in their path, then rest, the remainder simply vanish, taking their loot with them.  After all, it is obvious how powerful the PCs are.  If the PCs seem beatable, but are reliant on magic in repeated encounters, the opponents will negate that magic if they can.

Resting gives the monsters a chance to learn from their defeats, and take appropriate actions.

3.  "Real Life".  If one PC has to make it to his sister's wedding, that's going to affect how long he wants to spend resting in a dank pit.  Keeping a calendar, and allowing events to happen while the PCs are away -- events that the PCs might want to engage in -- prevents too much time-wasting during adventures.

4.  Wandering Monsters.  Leaving enough oomph for one encounter won't help you if, over the course of 8 hours, you have six encounters.  Stop to rest only where you are secure.

5.  Rest Isn't Bad Per Se.  There is nothing wrong with resting from time to time.  But part of the fun of the game is weighing the benefits of resting against the costs.  Getting caught in the "nova-15" cycle removes this fun.  If you find yourself caught in "nova-15" it is because the DM failed to provide sufficient costs to resting, making the benefits automatically outweigh all other considerations.

PCs nova when they expect to be able to rest.  Don't make resting into something that can be taken for granted, and you get far less nova-ing, and, consequently, adventuring days that last more than 15 minutes.

(Note that some PCs may die in order to aid their players in learning valuable lessons about not spending it all in one place.)


RC


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## Hussar (Sep 18, 2009)

It was pointed to me that Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale were 2e rules.  That's true.  However, Baldur's Gate 2 and subsequent additions were 3e rules, as was Icewind Dale 2.

Just sayin'.


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## Benimoto (Sep 18, 2009)

The problem with evaluating whether the 15-minute adventure day was a problem in your personal campaign is that WoTC (probably) wasn't at your house, checking on your campaigns.  Where they were gathering information is on the message boards and at conventions like GenCon, where I frequently saw them observing and playing in the RPGA games.

There's no question that the 15-minute adventuring day was a problem on the message boards.  That's where the problem was identified and named.  It wasn't really as much of a problem in RPGA play, directly, as many modules followed a specific, time-sensitive path where if you waited a day between being ambushed by goblins and meeting with your objective, your objective would move on without you, leaving you stranded.  Where it did exist was as a constraint on module writers.

I do see some other, somewhat polarizing 4e design decisions as being influenced directly by RPGA play.  The idea that every character must at least not be a hindrance in adventuring and combat seems to have been driven by the experience of sitting down with a random player, only to find out he's taken one level of every class he can.  Even the defined roles seem, at least partially, intended to help with taking a mass of 30 characters and dividing them up into 5-6 balanced parties.

With almost every 4e mechanics change, I can probably point to an RPGA experience I had where the 3e mechanics were problematic.  But, of course, don't blame the RPGA for 4e's percieved flaws.  Pathfinder took the same route, and Buhlman and Mona were both RPGA campaign administrators for years.

I think that if you're trying to analyze why 4e changed what it did, it's important to consider where the designers got their data.


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## Shemeska (Sep 18, 2009)

Hussar said:


> It was pointed to me that Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale were 2e rules.  That's true.  However, Baldur's Gate 2 and subsequent additions were 3e rules,




Baldur's Gate 2 and all of its expansions were using 2e rules as well.


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## Campbell (Sep 18, 2009)

Hussar said:


> It was pointed to me that Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale were 2e rules.  That's true.  However, Baldur's Gate 2 and subsequent additions were 3e rules, as was Icewind Dale 2.
> 
> Just sayin'.




You're half right there. Baldur's Gate 2 used AD&D 2e rules, but added in elements reminiscent of 3e (Sorcerer, Barbarian, Half-Orc).


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## Imban (Sep 18, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> But how do you create a scenario without "nap time" consistently in the presence of Rope Trick, Teleport, Leomunds Secure Shelter, Mordekainens Magnificent Mansion and many more? Just ban the spells?




In my opinion, 3/4 of the reason for the 15-minute adventuring day is that it's not annoying enough to rest in D&D. Even in Neverwinter Nights, where it just takes 20-40 seconds and being reasonably far away from hostile monsters, you don't get people napping after every small group because that slooooows thiiiiiiiings doooooown.

Part of my group's unwritten rules are that I generally allow the characters to rest for free between sessions - it's the assumed default unless I specifically instruct everyone to record their current HP and ability uses - but don't typically allow the party to rest during a session, especially not with a one-liner like "I Greater Teleport the party back home, rest for 8 hours, Greater Teleport the party back to exactly where they were, and go through the south door."

But no, I haven't banned any of those spells or changed any except for Rope Trick, which I altered from "Target: 		One touched piece of rope from 5 ft. to 30 ft. long" to "it works like Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion, so don't be a rules lawyer."



> If there is no time limit, just the threat of random encounters or assaults at night, there is also another "easy" trick. Just don't exhaust all your reserves. Just enough to take on one or two encounters, and leave the rest for the night and wandering monsters.




Uh, so if you take on two encounters and then assassins in the night, that's three encounters before resting, which is hardly a 15-minute day...

But yeah, usually the heroes are trying to do things which are a matter of urgency in my games, because that's what makes them heroes. Part of this is that I'm a terrible dungeon designer, so I don't have very many holes in the ground for the heroes to meticulously explore.


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## Stoat (Sep 18, 2009)

Benimoto said:


> With almost every 4e mechanics change, I can probably point to an RPGA experience I had where the 3e mechanics were problematic.  But, of course, don't blame the RPGA for 4e's percieved flaws.  Pathfinder took the same route, and Buhlman and Mona were both RPGA campaign administrators for years.
> 
> I think that if you're trying to analyze why 4e changed what it did, it's important to consider where the designers got their data.




I'm not an RPGA player, but I can say that for almost every 4E mechanics change I can probably point to a pre-4E ENWorld thread in which the changed mechanic was discussed as problematic.

Mechanically, 4E mostly changed things that folks around here agreed were problems.


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## SSquirrel (Sep 18, 2009)

LostSoul said:


> A PC gets one Immediate Action per round.  I assume in real time that means every few seconds or so.  NPC1 triggers an Immediate Reaction/Interrupt.  I don't care about using it at that point; I want to save it for later.  (Maybe it's an Encounter Power, like Shield; I don't want to use it to block the 4 points of damage from the minion, I want to use it in case the Elite Brute hits with a massive attack dealing 16 damage and dazing me.)
> 
> How do I decide to hold on to my Immediate Action in real time?




This is solved in games like WoW like so.  Warriors have an ability called Ovepower.  It is only usable when someone has dodged one of their attacks.  When that occurs, the button lights up and stays active for the next few seconds.  If you have the required rage and hit teh button while it is active, you Overpower your enemy and deal that damage.  If you ignore it, it goes away after a few seconds.  

4E won't port over directly to computer games any better than 3E did tho.  The time spans of power refreshes in a tabletop game vs a game like an  MMO don't sync up.  If you just auto-attacked and once every 5 minutes got to use 2 different abilities and once every day you were online you could use another ability, well...you would feel like a Paladin in WoW at launch   B O R I N G !!  The underlying mechanics of the system, the steady increase of all combat abilities, etc, THAT will translate perfectly.  Powers will be tweaked extensively.


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## LostSoul (Sep 18, 2009)

Lots of replies!

My basic thought goes like this: It's always better to face encounters when you are fully rested (though not as fun, but that's my opinion).  If you can rest, and the negatives for resting don't outweigh the positives, you should rest.

Dannyalcatraz: Would I be correct if I said that you rested only when needed, and avoiding having to rest by making smart choices during (and before!) combat?

Were there (generally) external pressures keeping you from resting?  Time pressures, NPC actions, etc.?


an_idol_mind: The PCs don't "spam" resting in your games because the NPCs react to their actions, making resting a poor choice in some situations.

An example would be something like a poorly-defended guard post (a bunch of bored goblins) that gets reinforced and everyone's on the alert if the PCs give them to much time.  Does that sound like something that would happen in your games?


Imban: What are some of the reasons the plot would instruct the PCs in your games to avoid resting?

You say that "meeting everything with maximum force and then napping is the best course of action when you know you can take a nap afterwards."  I agree.  What about this statement: You should use the minimum amount of resources needed to guarantee success in the encounter and then nap afterwards, even if you didn't spend that many resources.  That limits the danger of an unexpected encounter and prepares you to deal with any future ones - since you don't know what you'll be facing up ahead, you'll want to make sure you have as many resources as possible!


RC: Good post, as always.  


It seems to me that the only way to deal with the 15-minute adventuring day (in any edition) is for the DM to create tension between resting and regaining your resources and pushing forward.

In my game (4E) I've done a few things to extend the encounter day.  I altered how extended rests work so that it takes longer to get back all your resources; I added in wandering monsters; I've used areas where it is impossible to rest (Thunderspire Labyrinth); and I have the NPCs react to the PC's actions.  

All these choices that I've made as a DM have been to put pressure on Healing Surges and Daily powers so that each choice the players make becomes more important.


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## Imban (Sep 18, 2009)

LostSoul said:


> Imban: What are some of the reasons the plot would instruct the PCs in your games to avoid resting?




Well, I've been DMing War of the Burning Sky lately, and, with a minimum of spoilers:

Chapter 1 - You're trying to escape a city that's under siege. Taking a week to do this would be distinctly suboptimal.
Chapter 2 - You're travelling through a forest which is on permanent fire, with limited resources for stopping yourself from dying of heatstroke. You can possibly get immunity halfway through the module, though, at which point you are no longer strictly bound to finish as quickly as possible, but you *might* just want to leave the little bit o' hell on earth you're in.
Chapter 3 - This is a city-based adventure, so nothing until the big plot event at the end, where you have only a few hours - enough time for one nap - between its start and the villains winning.



> You say that "meeting everything with maximum force and then napping is the best course of action when you know you can take a nap afterwards."  I agree.  What about this statement: You should use the minimum amount of resources needed to guarantee success in the encounter and then nap afterwards, even if you didn't spend that many resources.  That limits the danger of an unexpected encounter and prepares you to deal with any future ones - since you don't know what you'll be facing up ahead, you'll want to make sure you have as many resources as possible!



Sure, if you're a pansy. 

Most of the RPG video games I play are either built around this paradigm or make it somewhat annoying to do. While "okay, wandering monsters kill you all" is undesirable in a pen-and-paper game because there aren't reloads, making it slightly more annoying to rest until fully healed than just a literal five-second statement while asking what the exits to this room are is something a lot of games do.

Like, in NWN, it takes an actual 20-40 seconds, which is a lot of time when I've hacked up an entire small dungeon map in five minutes in a party. Therefore, you don't rest except when you have to or a boss is upcoming, because it doesn't give you a very good return in terms of additional success compared to time wasted.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 18, 2009)

LostSoul said:


> It seems to me that the only way to deal with the 15-minute adventuring day (in any edition) is for the DM to create tension between resting and regaining your resources and pushing forward.





Hits the nail on the head......but be aware that the pace of encounter resolution/model of attrition will offer a sharp limitation on how a GM can both create that tension and keep the game interesting.  A 40-minute battle with wandering monster ants is generally not so much fun.  This is especially true if, after that battle, there is no change in the characters because no actual resources are consumed.


RC


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## Jeff Wilder (Sep 18, 2009)

In our group, we had a fairly new player playing a warmage.  When we started the Age of Worms adventure path, she habitually went nova, and then would begin pushing for a rest, even though the rest of us were okay.

Gradually, because the rest of us -- and me, in particular -- wouldn't stop and rest, and because the rest of us -- and me, in particular -- offered advice on resource management (e.g., "That monster was going down very fast, so did you really need to use your two highest-level spell slots on it?), she's mostly learned how to make her spells stretch over multiple encounters.

The 15-minute adventuring day is a player issue, not a game-design issue.

That said, our next major fight is going to be with Dragotha, and we're sure as hell gonna go into that one fully rested.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 18, 2009)

It is certainly true that good players avoid allowing rules problems to damage the game (most often by not taking advantage of rules loopholes).  That doesn't mean that there isn't a rules problem, or a rules element to a problem.


RC


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## Jeff Wilder (Sep 18, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> It is certainly true that good players avoid allowing rules problems to damage the game (most often by not taking advantage of rules loopholes).  That doesn't mean that there isn't a rules problem, or a rules element to a problem.



True, in general, but the 15-minute adventuring day is not a rules problem.

Someone in the Boston Marathon can choose to sprint at the beginning of the race, and will then have issues finishing the race.  That doesn't mean that the "rules" for running a marathon are broken.  It means that the "player" managed resources poorly, by choice or in ignorance.

You can argue, if you like, that a rules system that allows someone to mismanage resources out of ignorance is a problematic rules system, but at that point the discussion will have to end.  I personally appreciate that players (and their PCs) have to learn how to run a "marathon."


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## an_idol_mind (Sep 18, 2009)

LostSoul said:


> an_idol_mind: The PCs don't "spam" resting in your games because the NPCs react to their actions, making resting a poor choice in some situations.
> 
> An example would be something like a poorly-defended guard post (a bunch of bored goblins) that gets reinforced and everyone's on the alert if the PCs give them to much time. Does that sound like something that would happen in your games?




That would be an accurate assumption. I don't know of too many situations where a group of monsters are just going to sit in their caves and wait for the PCs to kill them off.


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## LostSoul (Sep 18, 2009)

I think it is a rules issue; however, I think it's best handled by providing DM advice and/or adventure design rules - like a 1-in-6 chance of a wandering monster encounter each turn, or "When creating a dungeon, consider how the monsters will react to PC incursions into their domain.  This should include fortifying defenses, secreting away valuable treasures, co-operation between rival tribes, etc., all to make further incursions more difficult on the PCs.  This will force players to carefully consider how deep to push into the enemy's domain before retreating and regrouping to a safe area."

Expecting me, as a player, to avoid choosing the smart option is like saying I have to provide my own adversity, and I personally find that boring.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 18, 2009)

Jeff Wilder said:


> True, in general, but the 15-minute adventuring day is not a rules problem.
> 
> Someone in the Boston Marathon can choose to sprint at the beginning of the race, and will then have issues finishing the race.  That doesn't mean that the "rules" for running a marathon are broken.  It means that the "player" managed resources poorly, by choice or in ignorance.
> 
> You can argue, if you like, that a rules system that allows someone to mismanage resources out of ignorance is a problematic rules system, but at that point the discussion will have to end.  I personally appreciate that players (and their PCs) have to learn how to run a "marathon."





Please understand that I am not arguing about what is desireable in an RPG.  I am discussing what we are presented.

For the 15-minute adventuring day not to be a problem, going nova must somehow make the PCs "then have issues finishing the race".  If there are no consequences to nova-15, then nova-15 is not mismanaging resources.  There is no player ignorance involved.

In fact, if there is no consequnce for nova-15, then nova-15 becomes the best resource management available.  Rather as though you were able to spend every last dollar in your bank account, then go to sleep, and spend them all again in the morning.  _*Not*_ spending all the money each day becomes a waste of resources if there are no consequences to spending it, and it simply returns the next day.

For there to be no rules element to the problem, there must be a reason why nova-15 isn't the best resource management stategy.  And that element is always based upon consequences for spending all of your resources too quickly.  It has to be; it is tautological.


RC


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## SSquirrel (Sep 18, 2009)

Most of the reasons not to are story based, not mechanics based.  "Well if you go nova on this fight and don't save the princess, she will be sacrificed at midnight when the moons align and a pathway will open for the ta'naari to come thru and destroy the area.  But hey, whatever works for you"


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## billd91 (Sep 18, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Traditional D&D combat is the easiest combat system to port to computer rpgs. What made 3e tricky was that like 4e, the combat system is discretely dvidied into specific actions. If you move, you get less attacks which is the problem NWN had to deal with...
> 
> Let's say we have a power that pushes someone 3 squares away. In a turn-based grid based game, you can use this to your advantage and setup so that the enemy pushed is in a more beneficial position. so that the NEXT character can then unleash their own attack.
> 
> ...




Most of these objections just indicate that any 4e translation into CRPG form would be better as a turned base game. But that's pretty much true of all table-top RPGs. Real time, if you ask me, is mainly appropriate for 1st person shooter-style and general arcade games. I generally dislike real-time strategy and RP games.

It's 4e's powers, with their tightly limited scopes and effects, that have a lot to do with making it the most computer-friendly version of D&D to date. 1e-3e have more open ended spells, class features, and magical effects that require adjudication skills harder to model with a computer algorithm. Hence, the spell lists for most computerized versions of D&D are tightly limited affairs.


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## Jeff Wilder (Sep 18, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> For there to be no rules element to the problem, there must be a reason why nova-15 isn't the best resource management stategy.  And that element is always based upon consequences for spending all of your resources too quickly.  It has to be; it is tautological.



The consequences for spending resources "too quickly" (which, in itself, has no objective meaning; see below) do not need to be in the rules, and, in fact, can't be, really.  If the "solution" to a "rules problem" isn't addressed by the rules and can't be addressed, it's not actually a "rules problem."  You can insert into D&D any "solutions" to any problems you want to insert, but if the problem isn't actually caused by the rules, those solutions are meaningless.

Occasionally, such as when you know your next fight is going to be epic, you will want to choose to cut the day short and rest for that fight.  In my campaign, which is city-based, the characters tend to nova because recuperation is much easier, and because multiple encounters in one day is less likely (and easier to avoid).  In turn, I make each encounter much more difficult, because I'm aware of these factors, too.

This has nothing to do with the rules.  This has to do with the DM (and/or the adventure creator) and with the players.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 18, 2009)

SSquirrel, that is certainly true, and is part of my advice above.  But that doesn't eliminate the rules concerns.  TSR-D&D solved the rules concerns in a few ways:  

1.  wandering monsters
2.  vulnerability/weight of spellbooks
3.  attrition model (no single encounter was necessarily assumed to use 1/4 of the group's resources ala 3e; group resources were not assumed to be automatically replenished ala 4e)
4.  long time required to regain higher level spells

These factors certainly helped prevent 15-nova (even where scenario design did not).  The reduction/removal of these factors has certainly increased the prevelance of 15-nova.


EDIT:  Jeff, I understand what you are saying, and to a degree it is true.  But saying that some consequences cannot be codified in rules form doesn't mean that no consequences can be.  As described above, earlier editions certainly did codify things in the rules to prevent this problem from occuring, and did so effectively for those who used those rules.  

Conversely, I am not at all certain that you understand what I am saying.  A problem can be solveable without resorting to rules and still be partially a rules problem.

Probably better to agree to disagree, though.  (Shrug)



RC


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## SteveC (Sep 19, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> How different are they though, generation-wise, from the core 3e design crew? It doesn't strike me so much as a new generation with new ideas, but rather just a new crew with their own ideas for the game once the major 3e figures were no longer with WotC. Age-wise as far as I can guess, I figure most of the 4e design team started the game back in 1e, which doesn't make me assume it's a new generation moving in, just a new group of guys wanting to put their spin on the game now.



This is true to a certain extent. The big name design crew from the 3X days had left WotC by this point, and so you had both: some of the old crew were still around, but you also had Mike Mearls and Rodney Thompson coming in, who were genuinely new to full-on edition design.

There's a big difference in the ages involved here: the original designers (Gary et al) had completely different mindsets and experiences than the younger crew. Sure Mike Mearls played 1E, but he's a bit younger than me, and I was just a kid when it originally came out! 

Beyond that, the designers of 4E also had freedom to kill some of the sacred cows that the 3E group wanted to but couldn't. When I think of the game designs that Robin Laws and Jonathan Tweet have been involved with outside of 3E, they're very different games which a much more "indie" feel to them. 3E wasn't the time to use a lot of that creativity, but with 4E we're seeing much of it.

When I see the current designers who are working at Wizards they're a very different group than Gary and company originally. I know that's part of the pain for a lot of the old guard: the design and vision that the original founders had is really not present in this edition.

So is it a new generation? I'd say so, even if many of them have been at WotC for a long time: they're just getting to step in and make the changes they feel are needed to keep the game current.

--Steve


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## SteveC (Sep 19, 2009)

I just wanted to make one more comment on this: could we seriously kill the whole "4E is designed to make for an easy computer/console/online game" meme?

The 4E rules would be frightfully difficult to implement in any sort of MMORPG fashion without making significant changes. The interrupts system alone would be a nightmare to get anywhere close to 4E. Don't believe me? Okay, so where are the games? You have one of the largest and most successful gaming IPs out there, and we have exactly 0 4E cRPGs, 0 console games, and 0 MMORPGs. Heck, I haven't even heard of one in development.

To be perfectly honest, the game I've played most recently that would make an excellent transition to a cRPG was Hackmaster, which also goes out of its way to say that isn't one of the design goals.

So if 4E is meant for online play, where's the evidence of the games?

--Steve


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 19, 2009)

Imban said:


> Not Ariosto, but anyway: if you get in the habit of responding to encounters with appropriate force, rather than paving over everything with your highest-level spells as soon as it appears, you won't be screwed when the plot actually instructs you to endure through multiple fights, and there are a *lot* of reasons that this would happen, from wanting to avoid resting in a dungeon to ambushes to being on the defensive to time limits, only some of which are really avoidable.
> 
> The thing is, smart play only suggests that meeting everything with maximum force and then napping is the best course of action when you know you can take a nap afterwards. You don't usually know the story ahead of time in D&D because there's no way to save and reload and reading the module is generally frowned upon, so you really just have your  best guess to go on.
> _<snip>_






Raven Crowking said:


> Also not Ariosto, but here's another voice saying that "Nova-15" is only smart play _*when the DM lets it be smart play*_.  I have a great love for the humble magic-user/wizard at low levels, and when playing that part my largest contribution to many encounters is _*advice and tactics*_ (i.e., the same thing Gandalf provided most often).
> 
> When appropriate, the spells come out (and I make sure that divination spells get used, as they are the most powerful in the game.....knowledge is very often superior to firepower when overcoming threats).
> 
> ...






Raven Crowking said:


> 1.  You could always take a page from the classic modules.  Poison gas that slowly disables you while you try to find a way out of the ruins.  The Ghost Tower of Inverness appears for only one night -- you need to do all you are going to do by dawn.
> 
> 2.  Less fantastically, the world continues to move while you nap.
> _<snip>_
> ...




And the chorus sings on...



> *Jeff Wilder*
> Someone in the Boston Marathon can choose to sprint at the beginning of the race, and will then have issues finishing the race. That doesn't mean that the "rules" for running a marathon are broken. It means that the "player" managed resources poorly, by choice or in ignorance.
> _<snip>_
> 
> I personally appreciate that players (and their PCs) have to learn how to run a "marathon."




I like the "marathon" analogy.  Well put.


> Dannyalcatraz: Would I be correct if I said that you rested only when needed, and avoiding having to rest by making smart choices during (and before!) combat?
> 
> Were there (generally) external pressures keeping you from resting? Time pressures, NPC actions, etc.?




As a rule, our groups rest only when _absolutely_ needed AND when it was permitted by campaign circumstances.  Sometimes, parties even had to flee foes we'd normally wipe out because they were running on empty.  (Which, BTW, led to all kinds of interesting role-play scenarios.)

External pressure was exerted- as others have stated, things like time pressures, wandering monsters, no defensible campgrounds and intelligent foes who leave, reposition, reinforce or would otherwise adapt to our tactics ensured we couldn't camp at will.  (If it helps, think of it like certain computer games in which you can only save your game at certain spots- if you die having completed 99% of the journey from Save Point A to Save Point B, you're respawning at Save Point A.)

For instance, when one party used a Rope Trick to evade foes and rest up- of course, they came out refreshed and recharged.  It worked just as well the second and third times.  The fourth time, however, while the party was resting, the space had been surrounded by a cylindrical wall of force (terminating at the ceiling and the floor), which was then filled with water by an opposing mage.

It was almost a TPK- the party survived because the rogue used the (unconscious) wizard's Rod of Cancellation...which he had to _find_ first...and the opposing mage making the classic Bond villain mistake of assuming his deathtrap had worked.


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## LostSoul (Sep 19, 2009)

Very cool.

There are a lot of good examples of exerting pressure on the PC's ability to rest and recover here!


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## Ariosto (Sep 19, 2009)

Rope Trick originally was a 3rd-level spell lasting 1 hour plus 10 minutes per caster level (minimum 5th = 110 min.).

The Advanced game made it only 2nd level -- but also cut down the duration to 20 minutes per caster level (minimum 3rd = 1 hour). With rest requirements and memorization times (plus limited 2nd-level spell slots), that's probably not going to cut it unless you're of high enough level or in enough numbers not to make it an issue in the first place (and to pull up the rope allows no more than 5 to have climbed it). Happy landings if it's dispelled.

In 3.5, it's still 2nd but the duration is 1 hour per caster level.

Has it been mentioned that there seemed to be a notable case of spell-caster love in 3e?


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 19, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> Rope Trick originally was a 3rd-level spell lasting 1 hour plus 10 minutes per caster level (minimum 5th = 110 min.).
> 
> The Advanced game made it only 2nd level -- but also cut down the duration to 20 minutes per caster level (minimum 3rd = 1 hour). With rest requirements and memorization times (plus limited 2nd-level spell slots), that's probably not going to cut it unless you're of high enough level or in enough numbers not to make it an issue in the first place (and to pull up the rope allows no more than 5 to have climbed it). Happy landings if it's dispelled.
> 
> ...



Maybe it's all Monte Cook's fault? He always professed his love for spellcasters. 


I wonder if people with the 15 minute adventuring day have played a lot of the Dungen/Paizo adventure paths (we sure did). I think they had a tendency to be forgiving about rests and "compensates" with high action, high powered encounters with really tough enemies. I have only seen the player side, but how much dynamic reactions of the monsters (be it random encounters, reeinforcing defenses nad so on) was suggested or described? 

A problem highlighted by the 15 minute nova - only the spellcasters get to do that. Fighter or Rogues always deliver the same performance, the only resource they can spend are hit points, nothing pro-active like Disintegrates, Fireballs or Divine Might. 

That is clearly the reason for the 4E change in the resource scheme aka the power system. It doesn't matter if you have a 15 minute adventuring day or run through 2 dozens encounters per day (though that would be quite a feat  ) - every character is has the same chance (and responsibility) to contribute and manage his resources. 

You don't get to shine during the 15 minute adventuring day as a Wizard and struggle (or get bored) if you can only catch your breath after 12 encounters.
But you get to shine because you managed your resources wisely and have a decisive power ready in the right moment...


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## Majoru Oakheart (Sep 19, 2009)

Jeff Wilder said:


> This has nothing to do with the rules.  This has to do with the DM (and/or the adventure creator) and with the players.




It does have to do with rules.  Not 100%, but it does have something to do with rules.  It's true that there's no way to use rules exclusively to prevent the 15-minute workday.  But you can make it less of an easy choice.  

First, everyone has to realize that the 15-minute workday doesn't exclusively mean 15-minutes.  It could be 2 hours or 4 hours.  It's whenever the group feels like they need to stop at an artificial point.  This pretty much means any time it's not night and the party feels the need to rest.

Here are the contributing factors in each edition:

3e:
-A EL X or EL X+1(and sometimes EL X+2) encounter does not challenge an APL X party.  They can defeat it without using any resources that would be considered significant by extremely tactical players with somewhat optimized characters(which means using any spells in the top third of spell levels available to them or hitpoint damage that would require healing spells in the top 3rd of the spell levels available).  Often these battles can be defeated with the non-casters just attacking until the enemies die and using Wands of Cure Light to heal everyone to full.  If this is the power level of the encounters you use, a party can often fight nearly infinite of these encounters a day before stopping to rest.  This is directly a rules related issue.  It has to do with the math interaction between the defenses of the enemy, the attack bonuses of the PCs, the damage dealt by the PCs and vice versa.  If a particular CR 8 monster can be taken down by a APL 8 party in the first round with melee weapons before it has a chance to act, it is most certainly a rules issue.
-A higher level encounter(EL=APL+3 or higher) almost always poses a significant threat to the group.  Dire enough to use up significant resources.  Higher levels spells are very limited in number.  If you are level 5 and have 2 3rd level spells and you need to use them both to defeat one of these encounters, you most certainly won't survive a second encounter of that difficulty.  But unless you go to at least APL+4, you rarely actually threaten TPKing a fairly optimized party.  Most APL+3 encounters are easily defeatable if you use your higher level spells each round of the combat.
-There is no limit on the number of times you can rest each day other than the 8 hours it takes to do so.  Nothing stops a party from starting at 7 am, adventuring until 8 am, then sleeping until 4 pm, adventuring until 5 pm, then sleeping until 1 am and adventuring again for an hour.  Even if you have a roleplaying deadline(for instance, when the sun comes up tomorrow the ritual will be complete), you can still get a couple of rests in the same day(in fact, I had a group who would cast 12+ hour long duration buffs, sleep for 8 hours and refill all of the slots used to cast them).
-No rules based drawback to resting.

4e:
-Most encounters of level=APL or APL+1 don't seriously threaten the party, but they do use up healing surges.  Which means that there is a distinct limit on the number of encounters, even easy ones that you can do in a day.
-Most encounters of level=APL+2 or APL+3 seriously threaten the party, but can be defeated without using dailies.  They are slightly easier with dailies, but they aren't required.  They don't just threaten to spent the parties resources, they threaten to actually beat them.  Smart play can defeat these encounters.  But not without healing surge loss.  And it always poses the risk that a bunch of bad die rolls will still cause the party to lose.
-Encounters of level=APL+4 or higher are extremely difficult.  Generally smart play AND dailies are required to survive.  Lucky die rolls can sometimes pull you through, even if you don't have dailies.
-Extended Rests are limited to once every 24 hours by the rules.
-Milestones and Milestone activated magic items encourage continuing rather than resting.

What this means is that in 3e you generally have one of two situations:
-The enemy doesn't use up your resources at all(or very little), in which case the PCs don't feel challenged and they have no reason to rest at all
-The enemy is hard enough that you don't want to fight a second encounter of this difficulty without resting, which encourages the party to rest every chance they get.

In 4e, you get 2 situations as well:
-The encounter was a little easy but significant in a long day of easy encounters(after 5-10 encounters of this difficulty, the number of healing surges lost will add up until the party decides to rest)
-The encounter was approximately the right challenge(with some being slightly easier or harder) and feels like it could legitimately defeat the party.  There is probably a limit of 2 or 3 of these you'd want to throw at a group in the same day before they'll run out of dailies and decided it's better to rest than continue on.

Obviously, in both editions there is incentive to rest and incentive to keep going.  But the overwhelming mechanical incentive in 3e is to rest after every encounter.  Or at least after every 2 or 3.


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## Reigan (Sep 19, 2009)

When 3e came along casters got more spells per level than before, however they tended to be a bit weaker than their AD&D equivalents. Monsters had good saves and could easily brush off sod/sos effects, the big nova spells like fireball were capped and less impressive than before. The temptation for any caster was to cast more spells so that some of them got through, with a tendency to run out.

In addition, buff spells became so good in 3.0 they had to nerf them in 3.5, they did this by reducing durations from "all day" to "one encounter, maybe two if your lucky". Again this pushes casters to cast more often.

The way AC scaled was also a factor, after a while it seemed everyone got at least one attack that hit on a 2. This created rapid hit point attrition which put more pressure on healers, more so than before.

A good, disciplined dm could of course force casters to be more careful, but this takes some skill and some willful players will always try and call the dm's bluff by casting all their spells and then saying, "do you really want to risk continuing?"


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## Zustiur (Sep 19, 2009)

Majoru Oakheart said:


> -No rules based drawback to resting.



I have to pick up on this.
What are the drawbacks to resting in real life?

Short term, you might get irritable or bored. It will upset your sleeping pattern.
Long term (too much resting, too little exercise), you will become lethargic and your muscles will waste away.

Those are the only examples I can think of that are 'rules' of real life re drawbacks for resting.

The real drawbacks occur outside of the rules - and they look rather similar to the story drawbacks already discussed:
Short term, the shops will be closed when you're more rested. Other people will be out of sync with you that day. 
Long term, you'll lose your job, and run out of money.

As already mentioned 4E prevents resting twice in 24 hours. That's about as close as I care to get to the short term 'rule' of getting bored or messing up your sleeping pattern. It's an extremely simple rule which can be applied with no mess to any edition. All other solutions can, and IMO should, remain outside of the rules.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 19, 2009)

Zustiur said:


> I have to pick up on this.
> What are the drawbacks to resting in real life?
> 
> Short term, you might get irritable or bored. It will upset your sleeping pattern.
> ...



Losing the benefits gained by milestones (more daily item uses, more action points) is a further penalty of extended rests. 

It might not be strong enough, but maybe that is also intentional, to make sure no one is accidentally crippled too long. 

Strictly speaking, there is no reason to assume you regain spells or what is now daily powers after a few hours of sleep. Sure, you probably heal a little if you spend time doing nothing, but why should the gods give you your spells back after resting a while, unless you maybe pray to the god of laziness? Why should you regain your luck for sleeping? 

The difficult question is more: What should regain your powers?


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## AllisterH (Sep 19, 2009)

billd91 said:


> Most of these objections just indicate that any 4e translation into CRPG form would be better as a turned base game. But that's pretty much true of all table-top RPGs. Real time, if you ask me, is mainly appropriate for 1st person shooter-style and general arcade games. I generally dislike real-time strategy and RP games.




Well, that's kind of my point. The argument was that 4e changes were made to make it easier to translate to a real time MMO. My point was that 4e is the worst set of D&D rules you would ever want to try and translate.


billd91 said:


> It's 4e's powers, with their tightly limited scopes and effects, that have a lot to do with making it the most computer-friendly version of D&D to date. 1e-3e have more open ended spells, class features, and magical effects that require adjudication skills harder to model with a computer algorithm. Hence, the spell lists for most computerized versions of D&D are tightly limited affairs.





Most of the open-ended spells are now rituals and ironically, 4e is the FIRST D&D edition where you can't actually do a BY the book wizard in CRPGs. 

As you mentioned, CRPGs restrict the spell list, BUT there's no actual modification needed to be done with the actual classes themselves. You don't allow for certain illusion and charm spells but the actual chasis for the wizard doesn't change so the wizard you end up with COULD be a wizard that you simply played in a regular D&D game (Not every one takes illusion and charm spells)

4e's wizard has Light, Ghost Sound and Mage Hand as _*at-will*_ spells. Light might not be a problem but Mage Hand and Ghost Sound (especially this one) would be real pain to code. 

If a cRPG was actually developed using the 4e system, you would actually have to CHANGE the wizard class ITSELF unlike pre 4e D&D cRPGs.


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## billd91 (Sep 19, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Most of the open-ended spells are now rituals and ironically, 4e is the FIRST D&D edition where you can't actually do a BY the book wizard in CRPGs.
> 
> As you mentioned, CRPGs restrict the spell list, BUT there's no actual modification needed to be done with the actual classes themselves. You don't allow for certain illusion and charm spells but the actual chasis for the wizard doesn't change so the wizard you end up with COULD be a wizard that you simply played in a regular D&D game (Not every one takes illusion and charm spells)
> 
> ...




Frankly, I don't buy the argument that you'd have to make adjustments, maybe even drop, a couple of built-in at wills really equates to redesigning the class compared to the computer translation of previous wizards. It's mostly a question of tweaking powers. For something like Ghost Sound, they'd probably just implement some form of audible distraction to a targeted NPC and for Mage Hand just allow the character to manipulate some nearby elements from range. Not really that hard.


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## billd91 (Sep 19, 2009)

SteveC said:


> So if 4E is meant for online play, where's the evidence of the games?
> 
> --Steve




http://www.enworld.org/forum/4766776-post252.html


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## AllisterH (Sep 19, 2009)

billd91 said:


> Frankly, I don't buy the argument that you'd have to make adjustments, maybe even drop, a couple of built-in at wills really equates to redesigning the class compared to the computer translation of previous wizards. It's mostly a question of tweaking powers. For something like Ghost Sound, they'd probably just implement some form of audible distraction to a targeted NPC and for Mage Hand just allow the character to manipulate some nearby elements from range. Not really that hard.




Ah, but still, you ARE changing the fundamental aspect of the 4e wizard. I (ab)use Ghost Sound along with to good effect but just like a typical illusion in cRPGs, you have to script it so that only certain effects are possible.

The cantrps at will are an inherent class feature of the wizard so simply modifying/restricting how they work _IS_ changing the base wizard. Unlike pre 4e D&D rpgs where the wizard didn't change but certain spells did. 

Again, if WOTC was making 4e to be easily ported to the computer, they certainly went in the opposite direction IMO.


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## Ariosto (Sep 19, 2009)

Majoru Oakheart said:
			
		

> There is no limit on the number of times you can rest each day ...



 However, I see in the 3.5 PHB that there is still a *daily limit* to spell-casting. That's highlighted in the set time of day for divine spellcasters. The "recent casting limit" looks to me designed to *prevent* the "midnight mad minute" -- just the opposite of providing for this "daily limit really twice daily" finagling!

With 3e, it is explicit that one need not prepare all one's daily spells at once. It is not even necessary to go through a second rest, just to have an appropriate environment and spend between 15 minutes and an hour. That's a lot of flexibility -- and the whole scheme is a BIG boost for high-level casters versus 1e or even 2e -- but I do NOT think the intent is to void the stated daily limit.


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## Ariosto (Sep 19, 2009)

Reigan said:
			
		

> When 3e came along casters got more spells per level than before ...



The bonus spells for "arcane" casters are I think the most notable addition, although the shift of some former low-level spells into the category of cantrips or orisons is also significant.

The observation about trading quality for quantity really comes to the fore in 4e. With even low-level magicians doing their stuff as often as the warriors do theirs, the one can't be all that much more fantastic than the other.



> The way AC scaled was also a factor, after a while it seemed everyone got at least one attack that hit on a 2. This created rapid hit point attrition which put more pressure on healers, more so than before.



AD&D had high-level fighters hitting plate mail and shield on a basic 2+ (versus 5+ in OD&D), but the monsters did not keep up. With 3e, we can run into the situation of bonuses that keep piling up beyond the former caps.

Despite the "save or die" type of stuff, the combat aspect was/is mainly about attrition from fight to fight (even from day to day) in my experience. With 4e, wearing down happens more within the space of an encounter -- and hardly any hindrance that doesn't kill lasts more than a day.


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## billd91 (Sep 19, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Ah, but still, you ARE changing the fundamental aspect of the 4e wizard. I (ab)use Ghost Sound along with to good effect but just like a typical illusion in cRPGs, you have to script it so that only certain effects are possible.
> 
> The cantrps at will are an inherent class feature of the wizard so simply modifying/restricting how they work _IS_ changing the base wizard. Unlike pre 4e D&D rpgs where the wizard didn't change but certain spells did.
> 
> Again, if WOTC was making 4e to be easily ported to the computer, they certainly went in the opposite direction IMO.




Coming up with a few powers, even frequently used ones, that are harder to translate than others is hardly moving in the opposite direction of making D&D easy to translate onto the computer.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 21, 2009)

To thwart Leomunds Secure Shelter, remember that, despite its origins, its just a step up from a normal cottage.  It is resistant to fire...but extreme heat or cold will affect its occupants eventually.  And if there isn't enough room to create it in the first place- like a Kobold warren- it may not form at all.

(This is a ruling question- whether LSS's result is a 20' square cottage, or a cottage that is of any shape with 20' sq feet of floor space.  And even if you rule it the latter, its clear from the nature of its contents that certain environments would be inimical to its creation)

Mordenkainens Magnificent Mansion?  If its entry portal location is known, its just as vulnerable to attack as the Rope Trick spell, and in exactly the same ways.


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## AllisterH (Sep 21, 2009)

IMO, what kept spells like Rope Trick and Mord's Magnificent Mansion in check was that they were RARE.

If I go through my old PC sheets form my 1e days, there's no guarantees that the wizard would HAVE the spell to begin with (remember how "fickle" shall we say the spell acquisition rules were? Basically, they were DM fiat.)

But even more importantly, without easy item creation/acquisition Mord's had to compete with the OTHER 7th level spells.  And even a 20th level wizard only had 3 slots. Same thing applies to Leomend with compared to 5th level spells.

Now admittedly, 2nd level spells in the PHB were not a great selection, but Rope trick was still fighting for selection with spells like Invisibility, Knock,  Web , Blur and Mirror Image.

(This is why I think partly there had to be changes to the magic spells.

1e/2e balanced spells on a rarity basis. Rarity in being known and rarity in being cast. 

The former restriction meaning that a PC couldn't build around any spell per se, since due to the random nature of spell acquisition, there's no certainity you would even KNOW a spell like say Rope Trick.

The latter restriction meant Knock isn't a problem when even for a 20th level wizard, he's got only 5 2nd level slots. )


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 21, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> IMO, what kept spells like Rope Trick and Mord's Magnificent Mansion in check was that they were RARE.
> 
> If I go through my old PC sheets form my 1e days, there's no guarantees that the wizard would HAVE the spell to begin with (remember how "fickle" shall we say the spell acquisition rules were? Basically, they were DM fiat.)
> _<snip>_
> ...




QFT...though personally I don't have any real problem with the spells/day.


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## Jack99 (Sep 21, 2009)

hulchisfot said:


> The information in your forum is very useful.




Hi. You have been reported.


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## Hussar (Sep 21, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> IMO, what kept spells like Rope Trick and Mord's Magnificent Mansion in check was that they were RARE.
> 
> If I go through my old PC sheets form my 1e days, there's no guarantees that the wizard would HAVE the spell to begin with (remember how "fickle" shall we say the spell acquisition rules were? Basically, they were DM fiat.)
> 
> ...




But there is a flip side to that.  You only had a very limited repetoire, so you made sure (usually by bugging the crap out of your DM  ) that you got certain spells that were almost always going to be useful.  Direct damage spells being probably the ones most likely asked for.

And, in 2e, specialist wizards and certain kits got to choose one spell per level automatically, so, rarity was already going out the door way back when as well.

To be honest, IMHO, rarity isn't a particularly good form of balance.  If something is really powerful, but it appears in a given campaign, it's not rare.  It only has to appear once.  And every wizard you ganked had a spell book to be raided.  It didn't take too much to build up a fairly lengthy spell book.


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## SSquirrel (Sep 21, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Ah, but still, you ARE changing the fundamental aspect of the 4e wizard. I (ab)use Ghost Sound along with to good effect but just like a typical illusion in cRPGs, you have to script it so that only certain effects are possible.




Given the world of CRPGs and MMORPGs, many of the possible uses of Ghost Sound would equate to "nothing happened that influences any character or NPC".  Ghost Sound would likely be used similar to a Rogue's Distract ability [all MMO references will be WoW related], which would be a useful thing to have in a party.  Distract an NPC so people can sneak past or so a Rogue has a nice clear back shot.



AllisterH said:


> The cantrps at will are an inherent class feature of the wizard so simply modifying/restricting how they work _IS_ changing the base wizard. Unlike pre 4e D&D rpgs where the wizard didn't change but certain spells did.
> 
> Again, if WOTC was making 4e to be easily ported to the computer, they certainly went in the opposite direction IMO.




No.  Changing the chasis of the class would be saying that all wizards now wear plate mail, are unable to cast spell without first having picked a bouquet of flowers, and no spells deal damage anymore, they all are heal spells.  Usually in the past, if a power was going to only be used in ways that don't really further the action (ie kill stuff or heal) they don't appear at all.  If the power appears at all, even in limited form, that puts it a step better than prior D&D based games.  

A Cantrip is a wizard spell, they are changing a spell, just like older editions.  All wizards in prior edition had Cantrip and it described a few possibilities and some limitations, but then was totally open.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 21, 2009)

SSquirrel said:


> Changing the chasis of the class would be saying that all wizards now wear plate mail, are unable to cast spell without first having picked a bouquet of flowers, and no spells deal damage anymore, they all are heal spells.





It's funny.  If changing how ghost sound works is such a major change that a CRPG wouldn't be 4e, how can the cumulative (and far more substantive) changes of 4e (and 3e) still be D&D?  

Seems to me that this is a "have it both ways" kind of argument.  Either these are major changes (and therefore the CRPG isn't 4e, but claims that 4e is D&D from the same folks become suspect) or these are trite changes (and there are not problems in accepting that the changes in the CRPG discussion are very minor changes, and that 4e is far more ammenable to CRPG play than previous editions are).

One way or the other!




RC


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## AllisterH (Sep 22, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> It's funny.  If changing how ghost sound works is such a major change that a CRPG wouldn't be 4e, how can the cumulative (and far more substantive) changes of 4e (and 3e) still be D&D?
> 
> Seems to me that this is a "have it both ways" kind of argument.  Either these are major changes (and therefore the CRPG isn't 4e, but claims that 4e is D&D from the same folks become suspect) or these are trite changes (and there are not problems in accepting that the changes in the CRPG discussion are very minor changes, and that 4e is far more ammenable to CRPG play than previous editions are).
> 
> ...




Nice try but you're both ignoring the actual thread.

1. The original assertion was that the changes made to 4e were to make it palatable to a real time MMORPG a.k.a WoW-lite. I think I proved quite conclusively that 4e is perhaps the worst set of rules to adapt to realtime.

D&D across all versions has always been better served in a turn based game and while possible to make ANY version of D&D into a real time game, a tactical turn based/grid based RPG is definitely easier to code and IMO, the only way to do a good job for 4e. 

2. The OTHER argument is that the same power structure makes it easy to code. Again, this is quite wrong as the wizard and sorceror in previous editions didn't actually NEED changing. Their spells did but it was quite possible to have a wizard in cRPG that has the exact same spells/abilities as your tabletop version. The 4e version of a D&D wizard is going to have to modify the actual class itself SINCE the class abilities are too free ranging (they would probably be coded to have a specific effect just like how polymorph in most cRPGs only allows for specific changes).

This of couse ignores that the martial classes in 4e have way more class features (a.k.a their powers) than before....

Quite frankly, the idea that 4e was designed for computer RPGs is just plain weird since WOTC went in pretty much the opposite direction from where it should be (the more simulationist a RPG is, the EASIER it is to code)


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## Betote (Sep 22, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Quite frankly, the idea that 4e was designed for computer RPGs is just plain weird since WOTC went in pretty much the opposite direction from where it should be (the more simulationist a RPG is, the EASIER it is to code)




I think it's more true that 4e was designed *from* computer RPGs (among other sources). And that was a good decision: only fools refuse taking advantage of something that works.


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## Majoru Oakheart (Sep 22, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> 1. The original assertion was that the changes made to 4e were to make it palatable to a real time MMORPG a.k.a WoW-lite. I think I proved quite conclusively that 4e is perhaps the worst set of rules to adapt to realtime.



I don't think you proved that at all.



AllisterH said:


> 2. The OTHER argument is that the same power structure makes it easy to code. Again, this is quite wrong as the wizard and sorceror in previous editions didn't actually NEED changing. Their spells did but it was quite possible to have a wizard in cRPG that has the exact same spells/abilities as your tabletop version. The 4e version of a D&D wizard is going to have to modify the actual class itself SINCE the class abilities are too free ranging (they would probably be coded to have a specific effect just like how polymorph in most cRPGs only allows for specific changes).



Yeah, but spells basically ARE class features for Wizards in 3e.  They don't get any other abilities.  Wizards are instead defined by what their spells do in 3e.

I don't know any Wizard in 4e who defines themselves by their ability to use Cantrip in 4e.  Even if it is a class feature, it isn't one that gets used often.  They are instead fire wizards or illusion wizards or close burst wizards or something.

Whereas, I'd say a good majority of 3e spells can't be translated correctly into a computer game at all.  Some can.  A lot more can be approximated.  But there are at least 30% of them that wouldn't be translatable at all.  Things like all the illusion spells, all the charm spells, all the polymorph spells, and virtually all spells that require you to make a decision on anything other than target upon casting make poor spells for a computer game.  Especially a real time one.

In 4e, the number of powers that you'd have difficulty translating to a computer game is probably closer to 5%.  The power system IS much easier to code into a game.



AllisterH said:


> Quite frankly, the idea that 4e was designed for computer RPGs is just plain weird since WOTC went in pretty much the opposite direction from where it should be (the more simulationist a RPG is, the EASIER it is to code)



You don't understand these terms at all, do you?  Simulation means simulating exactly how an object works.  If you have a dagger, it should be able to be thrown, used as a melee weapon, used as an improvised lock pick, used to pry open crates, able to cut food, can fit into your boot, etc.  It's nearly impossible to code because of the millions of different interactions you can have between objects, spells, feats, class features, and so on.  It's also what makes it difficult to balance.

That's the idea of simulation.  Which is the philosophy of 3e.  4e philosophy is to allow the rules to define the game.  It says that dagger is a thrown weapon that is a light blade with a +3 proficiency bonus that does 1d4 damage.  If a power is usable with light blades, it works.  You add the bonuses together in the standard way and the power functions as usual.

It is so much easier to code into a computer game that it's nearly overwhelming.  On the other hand, I don't believe the change was made TO make it easier to code into a computer game.  These changes were instead made to make things easier to balance.  As I mentioned before.  The more interactions you need to worry about, the harder it is to balance.


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## thecasualoblivion (Sep 22, 2009)

I may be late to the "15 minute adventuring day" party, but here goes...

In my experience, the 15 minute adventuring day wasn't as much a cause as an effect. Once the campaign got to level 7 or so in 3.5E, combat slowed way down. Due to how long combat took, we'd be lucky to get in 2 fights in a single night. Most DMs didn't want to be bothered with tracking resources between game sessions, so basically either ruled or designed rests at the end of each gaming night. When you know you're only going to face one or two fights, there really isn't much reason not to go supernova and just blow everything, which is what people did.


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## Reigan (Sep 22, 2009)

I wonder if facilitating online play (with pick-up groups as well as with an ongoing group) was driver for many of the changes in 4e rather than trying to create something that can be directly ported as a crpg or MMO. This overcomes the issues with interrupts etc. that would cause problems playing as a computer game in real time. It also explains why the grid is so important, it wasn't to sell miniatures.

One of the ways that rpgs like D&D are going to survive into the future is by playing to the advantages they have over MMOs like WoW, like a real life DM who can provide an infinite variety of plots and allow for characters to react "out of the box". If this can be transfered online you can overcome the big disadvantage TRPGs have in that it's much more difficult to get a group together around a table once a week or whatever.

If you are going to play online, perhaps with new people, the other players and especially the dm need to know quickly what characters are capable of. This leads to the sharply defined class roles and the reduced variance in character capability. You need to know the guy who says he has a fighter can do the defender role, in 3e a fighter can mean a whole host of things (I also think this is why 4e didn't end up like Saga).

This also leads directly to the similarities with WoW, the playability and clear cut effect of powers etc. are needed if you are going to play regularly with new people you don't know.

In the end the VTT never made it (yet), but if it does become reality and people do want to do the WoW style "looking for group thing", 4e will do that much better than 3e.

(Note: some of this if from an original post I made on rpgnet)


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## Miphon (Sep 22, 2009)

Majoru Oakheart said:


> You don't understand these terms at all, do you? Simulation means simulating exactly how an object works. If you have a dagger, it should be able to be thrown, used as a melee weapon, used as an improvised lock pick, used to pry open crates, able to cut food, can fit into your boot, etc. It's nearly impossible to code because of the millions of different interactions you can have between objects, spells, feats, class features, and so on. It's also what makes it difficult to balance.
> 
> That's the idea of simulation. Which is the philosophy of 3e. 4e philosophy is to allow the rules to define the game. It says that dagger is a thrown weapon that is a light blade with a +3 proficiency bonus that does 1d4 damage. If a power is usable with light blades, it works. You add the bonuses together in the standard way and the power functions as usual.




And 3.5 says a dagger is a simple light melee weapon that can be thrown and does piercing or slashing damage. Neither edition goes out of their way to define other "real world" uses for a dagger.

And in my opinion, 4E's philosophy is not to "allow the rules to define the game", but rather to let each and every group define the game that is most suited to their playstyle and is fun for them. Admittedly, most of this philosophy is evident in the DMG so a strict reading of the rules-heavy PHB may not do the best job of conveying this philosophy.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 22, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> 1. The original assertion was that the changes made to 4e were to make it palatable to a real time MMORPG a.k.a WoW-lite. I think I proved quite conclusively that 4e is perhaps the worst set of rules to adapt to realtime.




Not even remotely.  You _*asserted*_ that this is so, but you haven't shown anything AFAICT which actually supports that assertion.  

My comment was related to the idea that the minor changes required to use 4e's _ghost sound_ in a MMORG were somehow evidence of the same, when even a cursory glance would demonstrate that (1) the same problem would exist in any edition, and often it would be larger, (2) the same problem would exist for a greater number of spells in any other edition.

My comment was also related to the idea that the changes required to work 4e's _ghost sound_ into a MMORG were so great that it wouldn't be 4e, but the changes in 4e itself are not so great that it is still D&D.  What a great bloody sliding bar for standards!



> The 4e version of a D&D wizard is going to have to modify the actual class itself SINCE the class abilities are too free ranging




Examples of specific problems that you see?



> Quite frankly, the idea that 4e was designed for computer RPGs is just plain weird since WOTC went in pretty much the opposite direction from where it should be (the more simulationist a RPG is, the EASIER it is to code)




I don't know that I agree that "the more simulationist a RPG is, the EASIER it is to code" as I cannot think of _*any*_ example of a CRPG that I would agree is "simulationist".

I would also think that the "4e designed for MMORG" meme is compounded by the announcement that specific tools (electronic tabletop, for example) would exist that would include _per force_ at least some of the coding required for the creation of a MMORG, by MMORG terminology in the rules (striker, etc.), and by the wording of the GSL, which strictly limits 3pp software production.  

It is difficult to simultaneously accept that the online portion of the game will be a major part of the 4e experience, and yet that WotC would limit the online portion of the game by intentionally making the rules difficult to code.

If you wanted to actually prove that 4e would be the worst (rather than the best) version of D&D to turn into a MMORG, you would need to provide specific examples of difficulties, and explain (rather than merely assert) why these would be more difficult than similar portions of previous editions to code.

I don't have a stake in it either way.  I don't know whether you are right or not.  Honestly, I don't care if WotC wants to turn 4e into a MMORG -- I would be thinking along those lines, quite probably, if I was WotC because there is a lot of money there.  In fact, I would create a "world" where individual DMs could plug in their "modules" and online players could play with whatever DMs are online, keeping continuity of character over a very wide sandbox.  (Some of the TOS, unless now changed, made me think that WotC was going in that direction with the DI - specifically the term that the material a DM uploaded into the virtual tabletop would become forever usable by WotC without payment of royalties.)

It still wouldn't change the main game into a MMORG, it would certainly promote interest in the game, and it would be a lot of fun.  It might even, eventually, allow people to professionally DM.  I would be happy to see such a setup.  It might even make me want to play 4e.

But I still know that the "proof" of your position is lacking.


RC


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## AllisterH (Sep 22, 2009)

k, let me try again with an actual example.

Let's assume that 4e is designed to mimic a MMORPG. Now, there are 2 types of RPG - turnbased and real time. However, the most common and successful MMoRPG are all real time.

There _ARE_ turn based MMoRPG (Atlantica online is the best/most popular turn-based one and it's not grid based) but to my knowledge, it's not even original EQ level of popularity.

(Funny thing is that it got hailed as being "Innovative" for being turn based AND it gets rated highly because it is not a twitch game and requires thinking)

That said, given that 4e has almost always been compared to WoW and other popular MMoRPGs like Guild Wars, iit would be safe to assume that 4e should make a great real time system.

Now, let's take a simple power.

The Fighter's "Tide of Iron". The ability to push the target can be done in both real time and turn based. However, in real time, you LOSE the major benefit of the power, namely, the ability to SET UP an advantageous situation for the next character since unless the other character has a twitch finger, the pushed enemy will simply move back into the spot where it was pushed from (Remember, the other character has to choose the right power as well so how fast can you cycle through your options?)

Similarly, the problem occurs with interrupt powers. You can code it in both real time and turn based but in real time, you lose the ability to actually choose what interrupt power to use and whether or not you even WANT to use it since you only get 1 immediate reaction per round.

Perhaps that explains better why 4e as a real time MMoRPG would be a laughable failure. The best computer combat RPG analogue to 4e is Disgaea IMO. Turn based AND Grid-based


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## Imban (Sep 22, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> The Fighter's "Tide of Iron". The ability to push the target can be done in both real time and turn based. However, in real time, you LOSE the major benefit of the power, namely, the ability to SET UP an advantageous situation for the next character since unless the other character has a twitch finger, the pushed enemy will simply move back into the spot where it was pushed from (Remember, the other character has to choose the right power as well so how fast can you cycle through your options?)




This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Tide of Iron is at will, so an opportunity comes every few seconds. 

But yeah, I generally can't think of a MMO where forced positioning is a big deal. Positioning is a big deal in Guild Wars, and luring people into AoE death is an easy way to ruin a low-end team utterly, but there's not really stuff in the vein of "knock your enemy exactly where you want them", mostly because people are usually free to start leaving where you positioned them immediately, instead of when their turn comes around.

On the other hand, powers would just be on hotkeys - I mean, you only have about 10 powers, 2/3 of which basically just replace your autoattacks. The control setup there wouldn't be much different from most MMORPGs, or Neverwinter Nights, for that matter.

EDIT: Of course, there are plenty of reasons that you wouldn't want to adapt 4e to an MMORPG directly, starting with the loot rules. If you can't see why they wouldn't really work in an MMORPG, go play basically any of them for more than a few hours.


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## Hussar (Sep 22, 2009)

Good grief.  Are we REALLY having this discussion?

For how many years did people tell us that 3e was all about turning D&D into an MMO or a CRPG.  I have a sneaking suspicion that some of those who claimed that are posting in this very thread about 4e.  Yet, we're still going around about this?  Come on.

4e is probably about as difficult or as easy to port onto the computer as any other edition.  Considering that EVERY EDITION has been brought onto the computer, claiming that one is easier than another or that it's designed that way is ridiculous.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 22, 2009)

Hussar, I wrote a better reply than you're getting, but EN World ate it.  

(1)  Don't assume that a D&D MMORG is a bad thing.  Or that making a game that is easier to translate is necessarily a bad thing.

(2)  Whether or not every edition has been turned into a CRPG has nothing to do with whether or not it is easier with one edition or another.

(3)  Keep in mind that we've already had a designer answering questions on EN World who said that the virtual tabletop (i.e., computer format) was kept in mind during development (although he also said that it wasn't necessarily the most important consideration), so people who think that some portions of 4e are as they are because of coding considerations may well be correct.

(4)  Again, whether this is good or bad (if it is even correct) is a whole 'nother question.  As I said above, some forms of MMORG might make me give 4e another try.



RC


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## billd91 (Sep 22, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> (4)  Again, whether this is good or bad (if it is even correct) is a whole 'nother question.  As I said above, some forms of MMORG might make me give 4e another try.




Or even stand-alone CRPG, particularly if turn-based or even pseudo-turn based like the Baldur's Gates kind of were. While I'm no big fan of 4e on the tabletop, I'd definitely check out a computer game based on it... provided it ran on my Mac or Xbox 360.


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## Celebrim (Sep 23, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Similarly, the problem occurs with interrupt powers. You can code it in both real time and turn based but in real time, you lose the ability to actually choose what interrupt power to use and whether or not you even WANT to use it since you only get 1 immediate reaction per round.




An interrupt power is defined in the turn based game as something you can do on the opponent's turn.  Guess what?  When you go real time, there aren't turns or rounds (per se), and there certainly isn't anything like 'the opponent's turn'.  Different abilities would translate to different sorts of refresh cycles and that's it.

As for the control issue, I think you vastly underestimate the twitchiness of your average gamer, but there are several options for setting up a control system, for exampe allowing you to either preselected the next interrupt you intended to use, or you had some window after the interrupt was 'readied' where you could select which to use.  Will you have the exact level of control in a real time game that you had in a turn based game?  No, of course not, that's ridiculous.  Real time speeds things up immensely.  When I was involved in converting Btech and Star Fleet Battles to real time, as a player with a background in the turn based board games, one of my early frustrations was the lack of control I felt relative to what I was used to, even when the game played at a relatively slow rate as far as the twitch gamers where concerned.  

Would it be an exact port of the turn based game?  No, of course not, but I don't foresee any of the problems converting it that cropped up in converting say SFB.  

For example, when you complain that pushing a character loses its major advantage, what you are really saying that pushing a character loses its major advantage in a turn based game.  In a real time game, what pushing does is give you time to refresh your attacks by putting distance between you and the attacker.  It serves to break up 'mobs' so that you are effectively getting hit less often per second.  At one level, it's practically a 'stun'.  In a real time game, you can push and then run away - you don't just sit there waiting for your 'turn' to come back.  So while the purpose and balance may change some, the idea of battlefield control is still useful.

The only big problem I foresee is the big problem that every internet based real time tactical combat game has - lag.  Dealing with lag is always the hard part of designing a game of that sort.  That's why most internet games with large numbers of players are generally tactically simple.



> Perhaps that explains better why 4e as a real time MMoRPG would be a laughable failure. The best computer combat RPG analogue to 4e is Disgaea IMO. Turn based AND Grid-based




I think that says alot more about your biases than it does about the ability to port 4e to a real time game.


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## Hussar (Sep 23, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> Hussar, I wrote a better reply than you're getting, but EN World ate it.
> 
> (1)  Don't assume that a D&D MMORG is a bad thing.  Or that making a game that is easier to translate is necessarily a bad thing.
> 
> (2)  Whether or not every edition has been turned into a CRPG has nothing to do with whether or not it is easier with one edition or another.




True, but, there is little to no proof that 4e is any easier or more difficult than any other edition to be turned into a CRPG, other than random people making pretty unsubstantiated claims.



> (3)  Keep in mind that we've already had a designer answering questions on EN World who said that the virtual tabletop (i.e., computer format) was kept in mind during development (although he also said that it wasn't necessarily the most important consideration), so people who think that some portions of 4e are as they are because of coding considerations may well be correct.
> 
> (4)  Again, whether this is good or bad (if it is even correct) is a whole 'nother question.  As I said above, some forms of MMORG might make me give 4e another try.
> 
> ...




As someone who has pretty extensive experience playing on virtual tabletops, I can state pretty emphatically that VTT and CRPG have pretty much nothing to do with each other.  A VTT, other than perhaps automating some of the rules (such as adding up die rolls or telling if you hit or not) is no different than sitting around a real table.  

A CRPG is a whole 'nother beastie.  A game could run perfectly smoothly on a VTT and still be a right bastard to code into a CRPG.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 23, 2009)

Hussar,

I don't code, and wouldn't know what is easier to code or not.  All I have done is examine the assertion that it was "proved" that 4e would be the hardest version of D&D to code.....because I do know something about standards of evidence.  


RC


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## thedungeondelver (Sep 24, 2009)

Campbell said:


> You're half right there. Baldur's Gate 2 used AD&D 2e rules, but added in elements reminiscent of 3e (Sorcerer, *Barbarian, Half-Orc*).





man what


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## Campbell (Sep 24, 2009)

thedungeondelver said:


> man what




I realize that Barbarians and Half-Orcs have a long and storied history in AD&D, but they were included in BG2 largely because of their inclusion in 3e which was in development at the time. They also were far more like their 3e incarnations conceptually than their 1e versions if memory serves correctly.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 24, 2009)

BTW, I just logged on, and saw a banner ad for D&D Online, unlimited free play.  I guess this proves that WotC wasn't contemplating something like this.  Wonder what edition they decided to code?



EDIT:  Clicked on it.  "The best combat of any MMO".  Again, if 4e combat is so bloody hard to code, and so bloody hard to work in an MMO, colour me confused.  Sorry, but Celebrim wins this one, AFAICT!


RC


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## Stoat (Sep 24, 2009)

Is D&D Online using 4E now?  It was using a kinda-sorta 3.X mechanic before.


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## mudbunny (Sep 24, 2009)

Stoat said:


> Is D&D Online using 4E now?  It was using a kinda-sorta 3.X mechanic before.




Still using a kinda-sorta 3.X mechanic.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 24, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> Still using a kinda-sorta 3.X mechanic.




As comes to no surprise, I am incorrect.  Seems to be a 3.5-based game.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 24, 2009)

Here's what would make me interested in 4e, at least in terms of a MMORG-type thing:

(1)  Get the Virtual Tabletop working.  

(2)  Make the VT work in conjunction with the MMORG, so that characters could 'port from the VT to the MMORG and back, bringing their changes with them.

(3)  Make this interactive to enough of a degree that someone playing in a MMORG could jump into a VT game with the DM's permission _in media res_.

As I said earlier, I know nothing about coding, so the above might be impossible.  But I would certainly give 4e an extended try to play around with this sort of setup.


RC


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## Benimoto (Sep 24, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> Clicked on it.  "The best combat of any MMO".  Again, if 4e combat is so bloody hard to code, and so bloody hard to work in an MMO, colour me confused.  Sorry, but Celebrim wins this one, AFAICT!



D&D Online uses a version of the 3rd edition mechanics, adapted for an MMO type combat system.

In my opinion, as someone who's worked on adapting a different turn-based game (Battletech) to the computer, 4e is not particularly well-adapted to computer-based play.

It's nice that the rules are well-edited, with less general ambiguity than previous editions.  Perhaps it's that level of precision that make people think "computer", but in so many cases the rules precisely describe something that's easy to do with people sitting around a table and difficult to do on a computer.

As so many people have described here, in a a decent computer game, you really need specific phases of a turn where one person is allowed uninterrupted input, and that just doesn't happen in 4e.  There are optional actions, reactions, optional reactions, and etc.  Around a tabletop it's easy to call out "oh hey, I'm going to use my immediate teleport", but the interface to allow that kind of thing is just maddening in a computer game.

Of course you can adapt things, but as you can see with DDO, that's exactly what they've already done with 3e.  What puts 4e in a bad position is exactly that so many iconic powers are iconic exactly because of their mechanical definition.  In previous editions, a fireball was a fireball, and swinging a sword was swinging a sword.  You could do that in a computer game, and plenty of games did.  But in 4e, if Wolf Pack Tactics or Passing Attack doesn't work the way it does at the game table then what even is it?

As another issue, if you're talking about MMOs here, they use an entirely different system for gear.  In an MMO, acquiring items is another, separate system of character progression.  No edition of D&D has echoed that feel, but 3e came close.  You can see how it was adapted if you check out DDO.  4e goes in the directly opposite direction, making gear into somewhat of an afterthought, with the exception of your weapons/armor/neck slot bonuses.

And finally, if you look at 4e's emphasis on teamwork, while that would make a good turn-based tactical game, most of the games that actually sell these days are first-person with at least a partial emphasis on solo play.

Really I have to agree with the conclusion that 4e seems designed specifically for tabletop play, with little concessions towards what might make a good computer game.  I'm sure it will be adapted, as all the editions have been, but it will be an adaptation, using little of the actual details of 4e.


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## Lackhand (Sep 24, 2009)

Good old double post, what would I do without you?


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## Lackhand (Sep 24, 2009)

Inlines.


Raven Crowking said:


> Here's what would make me interested in 4e, at least in terms of a MMORG-type thing:
> 
> (1)  Get the Virtual Tabletop working.



 Hear hear! 


Raven Crowking said:


> (2)  Make the VT work in conjunction with the MMORG, so that characters could 'port from the VT to the MMORG and back, bringing their changes with them.



 I think that this doesn't make any sense to me, but maybe I'm not understanding you. A virtual table top is only very slightly cooler than a physical table top. 
The only thing that (as I see it) it could take from an MMORPG would be your character's visual appearance. It doesn't know about races, classes, abilities; it doesn't even necessarily know about movement rates, initiatives, and so on. It doesn't enforce rules, display battle options, or so on; it's just a bunch of 3d models hanging out in a bunch of 3d space with lighting and maybe a movement grid.

Maybe you're just asking for a very small feature (Let me do cool stuff with my avatar!), but I don't understand what "changes" you'd bring with you to the table top.

I guess being able to generate a D&D-compatible character sheet from an MMORPG would be pretty cool, though there are some things that just don't translate well between games, as was ninja'd above.



Raven Crowking said:


> (3)  Make this interactive to enough of a degree that someone playing in a MMORG could jump into a VT game with the DM's permission _in media res_.



 Yup, I'm lost


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 24, 2009)

Benimoto said:


> D&D Online uses a version of the 3rd edition mechanics, adapted for an MMO type combat system.




To be honest, I hadn't really been aware of D&D Online.  When I saw the banner, I thought it was new.



> In my opinion, as someone who's worked on adapting a different turn-based game (Battletech) to the computer, 4e is not particularly well-adapted to computer-based play.




I appreciate your analysis.  This isn't an area that I am particularly well versed it (perhaps better described as an area that I am particularly ill-versed in!  )



Lackhand said:


> I think that this doesn't make any sense to me, but maybe I'm not understanding you. A virtual table top is only very slightly cooler than a physical table top.




What I mean is a game where you could play with a real DM, or with the computer MMORG, and keep the same character, with both adding to the character.  In other words, the real DM's work would add to the MMORG world, and all players would potentially gain the benefit of all the work of all DMs involved.  I imagined that the "real DM" games would have to take place on the VT, because the VT would port the information into the MMORG (and vice versa).

I may not be explaining what I mean well, and what I am suggesting might require Star Trek technology to work.  

There would also have to be systems in place to prevent the real DMs from corrupting/unbalancing the overall MMORG world.

If anyone can understand what I am trying to describe, and can describe it better, please do so!


RC


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## mudbunny (Sep 24, 2009)

I*think* that I understand what you are describing. I will try to rephrase it another way.

I start off playing an MMO (Let's say, for sake of argument only, one that is based on the SW:SAGA rules). I get to a point, and I geta  pop up (or other notification) that Raven Crowking is running this over a virtual tabletop. "Do I want to join?" If I say yes, my character is pulled out of the MMO and placed on the virtual tabletop to play with RC as the DM, as opposed to a computer somewhere.

Is that accurate??


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 24, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> I*think* that I understand what you are describing. I will try to rephrase it another way.
> 
> I start off playing an MMO (Let's say, for sake of argument only, one that is based on the SW:SAGA rules). I get to a point, and I geta  pop up (or other notification) that Raven Crowking is running this over a virtual tabletop. "Do I want to join?" If I say yes, my character is pulled out of the MMO and placed on the virtual tabletop to play with RC as the DM, as opposed to a computer somewhere.
> 
> Is that accurate??




Yes.

And when you are done in the VT, your character, _*updated based on the events in the VT*_ returns to the MMO.  Moreover, the VT area becomes "part of" the MMO, and can be modified or run by other DMs using the VT for other players.

(Imagine, if you would, a megadungeon that is, essentially, also _*part of*_ the MMO world, and evolved through the work of other DMs even when you are not running it yourself.)


RC


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## Betote (Sep 24, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> (Imagine, if you would, a megadungeon that is, essentially, also _*part of*_ the MMO world, and evolved through the work of other DMs even when you are not running it yourself.)




My awesometer just exploded.


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## UngainlyTitan (Sep 24, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> Yes.
> 
> And when you are done in the VT, your character, _*updated based on the events in the VT*_ returns to the MMO.  Moreover, the VT area becomes "part of" the MMO, and can be modified or run by other DMs using the VT for other players.
> 
> ...



Pretty awesome but the technical difficulties are huge and there are big issues with the economy and balance with in the MMO.

I think with current technology the best you could hope for would be a living type campaing where the MMO quests and the VTT quests would all form part of the living campaign. So you could level from say 1 to 4 in the MMO and then take the character into a VTT adventure where you gain a level and some toys. The DM signs off on the XP gained and other relevant info (Contacts made and so forth) and that information gets updated into the MMO so when you get back to the MMO the character is now leveled up and has whatever was gained in the VTT adventure. 

From a purely technical point of view, designing a mod mapper that produces 3d terrain and fixtures that looks good is generally a non trivial piece of software that is not easy to use and too much of a learning curve for most DMs as well as being far to complex for the requirements of a VTT. 
In my opinion the VTT should be capable of being used in a very basic fashion. 
It can have a lot of graphical bells and whistles for the artictically inclined or those with the time on their hands to make use of it. But many DMs (myself included) are happy enough with a battle mat and dry erase markers too much fancy graphics in the VTT is too much work.


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## Raven Crowking (Sep 24, 2009)

Like I said, I'm not a coding guy by any means, but I do think that (eventually) coding will allow MMOs and real-GM games to hook up in *awesome* ways.


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## UngainlyTitan (Sep 24, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> Like I said, I'm not a coding guy by any means, but I do think that (eventually) coding will allow MMOs and real-GM games to hook up in *awesome* ways.




Possibly in the medium term and I could see it as an eventual revenue stream for WoTC, in that modules could be sold via the DDI with 3d terrain maps for use in 3d VTTs and eventually these could be imported in to an MMO.


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## Stoat (Sep 25, 2009)

ardoughter said:


> Possibly in the medium term and I could see it as an eventual revenue stream for WoTC, in that modules could be sold via the DDI with 3d terrain maps for use in 3d VTTs and eventually these could be imported in to an MMO.




It would be the height of foolishness for WoTC to develop a VTT and not release adventures to use with it.


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## Hussar (Sep 25, 2009)

RC - that would be very, very cool.  It basically marries the best of both worlds.  You can play D&D by yourself on the MMO, then play with a group.

I suppose an issue would be if you wanted to play with the same group week after week.  If your achievements ported back and forth between systems, how would you do it?  You would have a 1st level character suddenly (possibly) jump three levels between sessions and have all sorts of loot as well.  

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but, it would be very difficult for DM's to run anything more than one shots.

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

After all this talk of why changes were made, allow me to re-introduce my tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.  I freely admit I have nothing more than circumstantial evidence and this has some very serious holes in it.  But, in my mind, I think that there is a very strong, single element that informs almost all the changes made with 4e.

The RPGA.

Let me present my evidence, such as it is.  What is the biggest impediment to organized play?  To me, it's vague rules that allow players to do stuff the designers can't prepare for.  So, 4e yanked almost all those elements.  Organized play runs much, much smoother.

Think about it for a second.  Take cohorts/pets as an example.  It's extremely difficult to prep an adventure with the assumption of cohorts/pets.  They can dramatically increase the abilities of the party.  ((Imagine for a second that 4 players sit down to a RPGA game and all have cohorts - that's a much stronger party than 4 players without))  So, cohorts/pets are gone.  This has a secondary effect I'll get into later.

We saw this as well in late 3e Living Greyhawk with the various rewrites of polymorph.  Polymorph in a home game probably wasn't that big of a deal.  In organized play, it was huge.  So, yank, gone.

Another thing is the whole "everything is core" idea.  In RPGA, everything _is_ core.  You can generally use any book outside of setting specific ones.  So, if you are going to focus on the RPGA, why not make that the standard?

Going back to the cohort/pet thing.  In organized play, it's quite possible that players have paid to play.  I'd be pretty annoyed if I sat down with my rogue and my turn in combat takes thirty seconds and the guy next to me takes five minutes because he has a pet, summoned creatures AND a cohort.  And that's if he's on the ball.  If he's not on the ball, the game grinds to a halt.

Same with the more complicated rules like grapple.  Sure, in a home game, you work out how grapple works as a group.  But in RPGA, you don't play with the same people all the time and it's quite possible that the DM or a player doesn't have a firm grip on the rules and you spend way too much time futzing about.  So, again, yank, gone.  This also has the effect of not limiting adventure design.  You have to design for a 4 hour session.  That means you can't use a bunch of grapple monsters (for example) because you will grind the session to a halt.  Removing grapple removes that issue for designers.

RPGA is now giving very tangible rewards.  We've seen a few posts on people getting nice little goodies from the RPGA for playing.  That's gotta be a huge expense.  But it sure brings in people to the group.  Everyone likes getting free stuff.  And getting free stuff for playing D&D?  WIN!

Another post here talked about how at a recent large con, there were no 4e games.  It wasn't that there were no 4e games, but all the games were under the auspices of the RPGA.  That's a huge shift.  And, in my mind, a sign of things to come.

To me, this also explains the abandonment of the OGL.  After all, OGL material isn't used in RPGA play.  It doesn't do anything for the RPGA and actually allows people to play D&D in a non-RPGA environment.  Keeping everything under the WOTC umbrella means that even non-RPGA tabletops are still playing RPGA style games (at least rules wise) which makes transition very easy from a regular tabletop to an RPGA tabletop.

To me, the reason that 4e looks the way it does is to facilitate RPGA play.  It's easier to design for and the rules have a lot less fudge factor, making it much easier to adjudicate for strangers.  It's not to create a MMO.  That doesn't really sell books.  But, a strong RPGA means you can sell books forever.  Last RPGA number I saw, which was a few years ago in Dragon, put RPGA membership at about 150 000.  Imagine for a second they can ramp that up to 500 000.  That's 500 k players, many of whom will buy the latest book because they will very likely USE it in their RPGA games.  And they can use it because it's core.  

Anyway, that's my conspiracy theory.  Take from it what you will.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 25, 2009)

hussar said:


> After all this talk of why changes were made, allow me to re-introduce my tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.  I freely admit I have nothing more than circumstantial evidence and this has some very serious holes in it.  But, in my mind, I think that there is a very strong, single element that informs almost all the changes made with 4e.
> 
> The RPGA.
> _<snip>_
> Anyway, that's my conspiracy theory.  Take from it what you will.




*4Ed is made of people!*


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## Hussar (Sep 25, 2009)

DannyA - How did you manage to remove all the caps from only the first paragraph of your quote?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 25, 2009)

"Humans are smarter than apes!"

Errrr......

It was actually the site itself.  I wanted my part of the post to be in all CAPS, but instead, ENWorld _eliminated_ all of the caps.  I put back what I could remember of yours when I went back to edit mine.


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## Remathilis (Sep 25, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Anyway, that's my conspiracy theory.  Take from it what you will.




Hussar, I think you hit the jackpot...

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that nearly EVERY change 4e had was made with an RPGA mindset. 

A variety of classes filling 4 unique mechanical niches? Not so useful in a game that can be tailor-fit to PCs, but immensely useful for RPGA/module scenarios.

Skill checks codified to create "non combat" encounters that have fixed result options, set DC/success ratios, and allow all PCS to be involved? Yup.

The Delve Format? Yeah. 

Moreso than anything else, 4e seems to reward predictability. If not from the players, at least from the game mechanics. 3e was trending this way; 4e broke the barrier. Your wizard might have a few cantrips for creating mischief, but none of the plot-altering spells like charms, summons, polymorphs, or illusions. Rituals are too long and costly (not to mention specific) to use them to break plots. Even the monster design allows a lot more "villain runs away" elements (high hp, AP, solo-save bonus). Lastly, you know the rogue can sneak/steal, the cleric can heal, the wizard shoot lightning, and the fighter has a big weapon and armor (No more oddball parties of diplomat rogues, enchanter-wizards, archer-fighters, and battle-buff cleric-tanks). 

All those things are key if you want the game to have certain universal assumptions. Assumptions you need to create scripted scenarios. For modules, the RPGA, VTT-style games, and MMOs.


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## Hussar (Sep 25, 2009)

Well, I've already disagreed on the MMO thing.  But, I'll leave that to people who actually know anything about coding to argue.  Again, considering that every edition has been turned into a CRPG, which means it was possible, I'll certainly agree that its possible to do it with 4e.  I'm only disagreeing with the idea that it's somehow easier.  I don't know, and I highly, highly suspect that many of those claiming that it's easier don't have any idea either.

As far as VTT style games, I actually have to disagree.  4e and 3e are both a PITA for VTT because of the focus on battlemaps.  You have to have a battlemap and minis prepped for every single session you play on a VTT.  I would say about half my prep time in 3e is spent prepping minis and the battlemap and, after seven years of doing it, I'm pretty quick.  Plus, all those damn rules makes coding macros a PITA as well.

I just prepped 4 scenarios for a rules light game called Sufficiently Advanced.  Took me an hour.  1 macro for all actions.  Done.  No battlemaps because the game doesn't use grid combat.  Half an hour to troll Google Image Search for background images, another half an hour to get some cool images and I'm totally prepped for 4 scenarios.  It took me a lot longer to get the actual scenarios written.

For a VTT, if you want easy, use 1e or 2e.  Again, you don't need battlemaps and you have so few options that creating macros would take you little or no time.

You want to see what it takes to automate 4e in Maptool?  Look here


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## ggroy (Sep 25, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> Hussar, I think you hit the jackpot...
> 
> In fact, I'd go so far as to say that nearly EVERY change 4e had was made with an RPGA mindset.




A better question is what proportion of 4E WotC books have been purchased by RPGA players.  I would guess that if there is a significantly large proportion of 4E books sales that went to RPGA players (in comparison to non-RPGA players), it would make sense to cater to the RPGA.


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## thecasualoblivion (Sep 25, 2009)

Hussar said:


> After all this talk of why changes were made, allow me to re-introduce my tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.  I freely admit I have nothing more than circumstantial evidence and this has some very serious holes in it.  But, in my mind, I think that there is a very strong, single element that informs almost all the changes made with 4e.
> 
> The RPGA.




You can also look at things in the opposite direction. That 3E, with its wide spread of system mastery and infinite possibilities served RPGA badly. From what I've heard about 3E era RPGA, it was set up for the hardcore convention audience. Players in 3E were free to build crippled failures or world smashers, and its hard for a standard format to accommodate both. Again, from what I've heard, 3E RPGA tended to try to challenge the world smashers. In addition, spellcasters were more free to stack up on world/battle changing "campaign smasher" spells due to the effective nerf placed on simple blasting spells, which were too useful to ignore in AD&D. 3E also contained a much larger variety of those types of spells. 

From that viewpoint, better serving the RPGA is more of a side goal, simply correcting something the previous edition didn't do well. Its hard to argue that 4E hasn't led to an explosion of RPGA play in casual FLGS and home formats.


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## thedungeondelver (Sep 25, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> *4Ed is made of people!*




Or,

"YOU MANIACS!  YOU BLEW IT UP!"


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## ProfessorCirno (Sep 25, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> You can also look at things in the opposite direction. That 3E, with its wide spread of system mastery and infinite possibilities served RPGA badly. From what I've heard about 3E era RPGA, it was set up for the hardcore convention audience. Players in 3E were free to build crippled failures or world smashers, and its hard for a standard format to accommodate both. Again, from what I've heard, 3E RPGA tended to try to challenge the world smashers. In addition, spellcasters were more free to stack up on world/battle changing "campaign smasher" spells due to the effective nerf placed on simple blasting spells, which were too useful to ignore in AD&D. 3E also contained a much larger variety of those types of spells.
> 
> From that viewpoint, better serving the RPGA is more of a side goal, simply correcting something the previous edition didn't do well. Its hard to argue that 4E hasn't led to an explosion of RPGA play in casual FLGS and home formats.




What?

RPGA was more or less in the dumps even before 3e came around.  3e wasn't really anti-RPGA.  it was more "RPGA doesn't really matter at this point"


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## thecasualoblivion (Sep 25, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> What?
> 
> RPGA was more or less in the dumps even before 3e came around.  3e wasn't really anti-RPGA.  it was more "RPGA doesn't really matter at this point"




D&D was in the dumps before 3e came around. I don't know that the RPGA being in the dumps at the time means anything, though I'm curious where that information comes from. 

I wouldn't say 3E was anti-RPGA, as doing so would mean that it was intentional. I would say that the design of 3E(particularly the wide disparity of power levels available in character creation) had the unintended side effect of not really serving an organized shared campaign well. Think of the outcomes of a well optimized party of Cleric/Druid/Rogue/Wizard vs. badly optimized Bard/Samurai/Monk/Hexblade.


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## Hussar (Sep 25, 2009)

Actually TCO, I'd have to disagree.  One of Ryan Dancey's stated goals was to see the RPGA get going really, really strongly.  WOTC threw a LOT of weight behind the RPGA during the 3e era, and Living Greyhawk certainly proved that a living campaign could be very big.

ProfC has a point I think.  TSR just didn't really care too much about the RPGA towards the end.  Not a lot of effort was being spent on growing organized play and it was all pretty much a grassroots sort of thing.  3e managed to get the RPGA much better organized and grew their numbers pretty significantly.

I don't think 3e served the RPGA badly really.  The RPGA jumped up in numbers pretty well throughout the run.  Like I said earlier, 150k RPGA members is hardly anything to sniff at.

I agree with Dancy at the end of the day.  A healthy RPGA means a constant stream of revenue for WOTC.  It's basically tying the MMO subscription model to tabletop gaming.  Free to play, but, you pay for the extras is a model that is working quite well for a number of online games.  If they can grow the RPGA to say, half a million (a very big growth I admit), selling the next rulebook becomes a breeze.  

And, I wonder as well, what proportion of the DDI are RPGA members?  That could also generate a regular stream of income as well.

If they do hit the half a million members mark, I imagine that you will not see a new edition for a VERY long time.


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## UngainlyTitan (Sep 25, 2009)

Hussar, I think you could be on the money wrt the RPGA and D&D4e but given you experience with VTTs, do think that WoTC could have also being envisioning expanding RPGA to an online campaign using a custom VTT and DM tools?
Would such ultiities make much of a difference, given that WoTC could leverage its own artwork and maps and so forth for release to the VTT?


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## billd91 (Sep 25, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Well, I've already disagreed on the MMO thing.  But, I'll leave that to people who actually know anything about coding to argue.  Again, considering that every edition has been turned into a CRPG, which means it was possible, I'll certainly agree that its possible to do it with 4e.  I'm only disagreeing with the idea that it's somehow easier.  I don't know, and I highly, highly suspect that many of those claiming that it's easier don't have any idea either.




The very things you cited that would make 4e easier to deal with in an organized play structure also serve to make the game easier to code. The removal of ambiguities and vagueness makes the rules easier to adjudicate algorithmically. 

I test software for a living and I have to say that, from my perspective, the limited scope of the 4e powers as a body of work would be a lot easier to write into a set of code specifications, test cases, and expectations than any other edition.


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## AllisterH (Sep 25, 2009)

billd91 said:


> The very things you cited that would make 4e easier to deal with in an organized play structure also serve to make the game easier to code. The removal of ambiguities and vagueness makes the rules easier to adjudicate algorithmically.
> 
> I test software for a living and I have to say that, from my perspective, the limited scope of the 4e powers as a body of work would be a lot easier to write into a set of code specifications, test cases, and expectations than any other edition.




That's not actually true about what the original point was.

Once again, REAL time is not the same thing as TURN BASED which is what the original claim was.

The claim was that 4e is best suited for a real time MMORPG. I believe (and others with experience in actually coding turn based games) do NOT believe this is true.

In fact, 4e is perhaps the worst edition to code for a real time game.

Furthermore, if WOTC was designing this for the computer, why would they design it so the combat system is better suited for Disgaea than World of Warcraft?

That was one part of the argument/discussion

Personally, I disagree with the belief that previous editions are hard to code the martial classes are bloody easy and I think only 25% of the spell list in the PHB can't be coded properly - half of those would have to be limited in some form but could still be coded (polymorph for example would be limited to only a few forms) 

Illusion and Charm Schools might lose 80% of their spells but most other schools aren't losing more than 10% (Transmutation might be half and half since it contains a lot of polymorph effects)


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## billd91 (Sep 25, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> That's not actually true about what the original point was.
> 
> Once again, REAL time is not the same thing as TURN BASED which is what the original claim was.
> 
> The claim was that 4e is best suited for a real time MMORPG. I believe (and others with experience in actually coding turn based games) do NOT believe this is true.




Hussar's point was broad enough to include CRPGs and not just real-time ones. He's the one who brought in every other edition of D&D being made into one. 
But my point about the powers being easier to draw up into program specs would stand with either turn-based or real-time. Turn based would be the easier of the two, no doubt, but translating 4e into a real-time MMO would benefit from the powers' tight format as well.


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## AllisterH (Sep 25, 2009)

billd91 said:


> Hussar's point was broad enough to include CRPGs and not just real-time ones. He's the one who brought in every other edition of D&D being made into one.
> But my point about the powers being easier to draw up into program specs would stand with either turn-based or real-time. Turn based would be the easier of the two, no doubt, but translating 4e into a real-time MMO would benefit from the powers' tight format as well.




Again, though, what good is if the format is clear if the power can't be expressed in a suitable real time fashion?

I agree, a 4e turnbased grid based game a la Disgaea would be perfect. But a real time interpretation of 4e's rules? It would be the worse implementation of a D&D game system EVER.

I honestly don't think I'm expressing how badly WHAT the powers actually do (and not just the clear format) means for trying to translate to real time.


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## avin (Sep 25, 2009)

4E as TOEE = great, 4E as Wow = epic fail.


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## billd91 (Sep 25, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> I honestly don't think I'm expressing how badly WHAT the powers actually do (and not just the clear format) means for trying to translate to real time.




Oh, you're clearly _expressing_ it, but you're not very convincing as a number of other posters here have pointed out.


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## SSquirrel (Sep 25, 2009)

Of course WotC wants to support the RPGA.  That brings more people to conventions and, in theory, it also brings more people out to the local gaming stores to play in RPGA games.  3Es marketing was all built on ever-branching out system.  

We produce the core rules and everyone will buy those, but then they might also buy your monster book, adventure or main system book.  Even people who leave our game for another (Arcana Evolved instead of 3.5 for example) might still buy a book or 2 to enhance their game, which is more than we would have gotten if they had left to play Champions or RIFTS.

We emphasize the Living <gamerealm> and encourage participation at conventions and local game stores.  This brings more money to conventions and to game stores, both of which assist in selling more of our product.


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## AllisterH (Sep 26, 2009)

billd91 said:


> Oh, you're clearly _expressing_ it, but you're not very convincing as a number of other posters here have pointed out.




Heh

It would be so much easier if I could simply say "Think Disgaea could be a real time RPG?" and have people get it.

(Even the breakdown of the round into minor, move and standard should be an indication of how tricky morphing it into real time would be)


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## Benimoto (Sep 26, 2009)

billd91 said:


> Oh, you're clearly _expressing_ it, but you're not very convincing as a number of other posters here have pointed out.




Again, as I mentioned in my earlier post, it's true that a number of the powers in 4e seem fairly simple to translate.  Attacks that do something like "2[W] + daze (save ends)" or "Area burst 2, 4d6 fire" are a breeze to translate to the computer.  This was the case with previous editions too.  A sword swing did 1d8+3 or a fireball did 5d6 damage.

But, at almost every level of play there are powers that would require a more complicated interface than any tactical RPG or even MMO I've played and I've played a lot.  The warlord is full of them.  At level 1, Wolf Pack Tactics requires you to pick a target, then pick an adjacent ally and move that ally before you make the attack.  That's a lot of clicking (or whatever) for one attack, and many of his powers have similarly elaborate targeting and resolution requirements.  And then there's all the interrupting.  Quite a few of his powers have a trigger like "you or an ally take damage".  Is the game going to interrupt you every time someone takes damage to ask if you want to use a power?

Other game mechanics, like the Evoker's multi-target attacks would be nearly impossible in a real time game, and sort of elaborate for the state of turn-based games, as I've seen them.

It's not that I'm saying the powers can't be implemented in a computer game.  Looking at them at least 90% of them would not be that complex to implement.  It's just that, as I envision it, the interface necessary to support many of those powers would be so baroque, complex and potentially frustrating that the game would just not be fun to play.  Maybe I'm wrong, and such a game would be a hit, but it would look nothing like the popular games on the shelves today.

4e is clearly designed to be played with all the players sitting around a game table, calling out targets, negotiating, interrupting each other, taking things back, and getting all their hands all over the miniatures.  It's quite satisfying that way but almost all of those things are things computer interfaces are notoriously bad at.


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## MichaelSomething (Sep 26, 2009)

Hussar said:


> After all this talk of why changes were made, allow me to re-introduce my tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. I freely admit I have nothing more than circumstantial evidence and this has some very serious holes in it. But, in my mind, I think that there is a very strong, single element that informs almost all the changes made with 4e.
> 
> The RPGA.




Funny, I thought it was the message boards.

Character Optimization boards to show the world just how crazy powerful to make your PCs.

Dozens and Dozen of 20 page threads talking about how Wizards > Fighters or who is what ailgnment. 


Someone at WOTC must have read all of that and thought to themselves, "If I make an edition that solves those complaints, people will be happy!" Boy, were they wrong.


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## Betote (Sep 26, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> It would be so much easier if I could simply say "Think Disgaea could be a real time RPG?" and have people get it.




On an unrelated note, is Disgaea any good? I'm almost finishing Chrono Trigger and it's time to look for another NDS RPG goodness...


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## Imban (Sep 26, 2009)

Betote said:


> On an unrelated note, is Disgaea any good? I'm almost finishing Chrono Trigger and it's time to look for another NDS RPG goodness...




Disgaea's quite fun and has a hilarious plotline, but it's the exact opposite of a rigorous tactical RPG. It is (quite intentionally) broken, and part of the fun is how you can get your level up into the thousands and create characters who utterly crush the game.


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## Derren (Sep 26, 2009)

The 4E rules are horrible for CRPGs, both real time and turn based if you want to stay true to the rules.

Its pretty obvious that real time does not work with interrupts and pushing targets to specific squares (the latter once can be done with a pause mode whenever you need to make such a decision, though).

In turn based fights on the other hands you would be spammed to death by interrupt questions (Enemy moves a square -> "Do you want to interrupt" popup -> Enemy moves another square -> Popup, and so on)

The actual effect of powers are very easy to code (X damage + effect), but the interrupts are what makes coding hard.
Rituals would most likely be removed as were many utility spells in previous D&D games.

In the end, you would get a real time RPG which will be about as close to PnP 4E as Dawn of War (think Starcraft) is to the Warhammer 40K Tabletop.
Turn based games don't sell often unless the development was not very costly (see Blood Bowl which also shows which Tabletop rules can be converted into a PC game faithfully). And Atari is not in the position of being able to make fan games which please the fans but might not break even (Only EA and maybe Activision might do that) and D&D is/was one of its few franchises which generated profit so they won't hurt that brand by making a cheap game.
The only real possibility of a turn based D&D game likely is for handhelds and only if the D&D PSP game sold well.


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## Xris Robin (Sep 26, 2009)

Hussar said:


> You want to see what it takes to automate 4e in Maptool?  Look here




You hardly have to automate it to play it.  Macros just make gameplay faster in exchange for more setup.  Done once.  But you can play it fine without most of that.


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## AllisterH (Sep 27, 2009)

Wow, I even got Derren to agree with me?

But of course, I _HAVE_ to disagree with you in a way Derren.


I think while a real time 4e cRPG is right out, they could make a decent turn based RPG even with the problem of interrupts.

As or the issue of 4e being a videogame/easy to code...the fact is, it is easier to understand for normal humans mainly because the *fluff* is distinctly separated from the *crunch* of the power in that the italics are simply the description of the power.

You could do the same thing with earlier editions if they wanted to (how many of us had shall we say, interesting gaming discussions about spells because the flavour text of the spell was intertwined with the actual mechanics of the spell?)


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## Hussar (Sep 27, 2009)

ardoughter said:


> Hussar, I think you could be on the money wrt the RPGA and D&D4e but given you experience with VTTs, do think that WoTC could have also being envisioning expanding RPGA to an online campaign using a custom VTT and DM tools?
> Would such ultiities make much of a difference, given that WoTC could leverage its own artwork and maps and so forth for release to the VTT?




I gotta admit, I thought they would have pursued this.  I'm not really sure why they aren't to be honest.  It would make perfect sense to me.  Adventures could be built specifically for the VTT, plug and play and away you go.  



Christopher Robin said:


> You hardly have to automate it to play it.  Macros just make gameplay faster in exchange for more setup.  Done once.  But you can play it fine without most of that.




You missed my point.  To fully automate 4e, and, if you're going to use a VTT, why wouldn't you, is a massive undertaking.  To fully automate earlier editions would be far, far easier, simply because you have so few choices.


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