Re: |[4E] - Yet another 4E review

On Mar 3, 11:45 am, Marcel Beaudoin <marcel.beaud...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This time by the blog Critical Hits

http://www.critical-hits.com/2008/03/03/first-level-impressions-dd-4e/

Yea! Finally a review that's not just glowing PR crap!

With four games under my belt, along with talking to some of the
designers and developers at length, I'm ready to give you my Critical
opinion of D&D fourth edition! Of course, this was only a preview, and
things could still change, but many of these are pretty core to the
system.

Critical Hits:

* More choices for everyone. Just judging by what you can do at first
level, I'm quite looking forward to higher level characters.

It's starting to sound to much like oblivion to me... everything set
to "your level" and doesn't really change, but we'll see.

* Combat really is more dynamic. More movement around the
battlefield, and they managed to do it WITHOUT changing the interesting
tactics that existed in 3e. You still get attacked if you withdraw from
combat and aren't careful. You still have to plan your movement around.
But there's more powers and abilities that move around, and more
advantages to doing so.

So it's more wuxia. eh.

* Diagonal moves are always 1's rule. Seriously, this might be my
favorite change, and one that makes me angry when people say "it's not
hard!" No, it's not hard to do 1-2-1-2, but it's ANNOYING, and easy to
get wrong. It's a memory condition that makes it take longer for someone
with high movement to take their turn. Good riddance! (Same goes for
reach giving opportunity attacks.)

Blah, blah, blah. Everyone reviewing this is pounding this as being
the best thing since since sliced bread, but it's a very minor rule
change and doesn't matter one whit to the big picture. I don't give a
***.

* Combinations and emergent properties. I feel like in 3.x, the
powerful combinations came from abusing feat/class combinations, often by
ignoring the spirit of the rule. In 4e, the way the different powers in
different classes interact gives a good amount of synergy and creates
powerful combinations on purpose. As a really minor example, Danny used a
power to push a goblin back into a room. This put the goblin within range
of the other goblins so that the Wizard could use sleep on all of them.
There's nothing devastating about that combo, but it felt really, really
fun, and made me want to seek out more of those situations.

More wuxia. Not terribly thrilled.

* Durations are so much better now. I'd be willing to bet I haven't
played a game of D&D 3e where someone didn't ask once per combat, "How
many rounds do you think it's been since I cast this?" Don't tell me it's
the player's and DM's job to keep track... that's just paperwork, and it's
annoying. Last for the day/for the encounter/until saved/one round is
much, much cleaner.

That's great! I like that.

* As far as being like the game that the media portrays it as, D&D is
a lot closer now. To explain, if you watch a tv show with an evil wizard,
you'll see him firing energy blasts every round, with heroes ducking
behind rocks or deflecting them, or being knocked back. Previously in
D&D, that didn't happen... the wizard would talk about re-memorizing his
spells, and warriors would just charge it and start wailing on him. D&D
4e gives that experience for the first time.

That's cool. I thought I wouldn't like going away from Vanician
magic, but this sounds great.

Critical Misses:

* Marks and similar mechanics. These are abilities that let you
designate a certain foe that has certain effects. This is fine in theory.
However, the paladin and fighter's marks counteract each other, while the
ranger's and warlock's don't. Paladin, Fighter, and Ranger can only have
one mark at a time, but the Warlock can have many. Ranger and Warlock can
only affect the closest enemy, others can only mark certain people. What
should be one consistent mechanic not only does a different thing for
each class, but acts different in play.


Wowization. Blech.

* Easily forgettable bonuses are still in full force. There's still
plenty of "I give you an AC bonus this round", then "Oh wait, I forgot
his AC bonus, it actually misses. Wait, was that this round or last
round?"

Hate this and it opposes one of the touted design goals of 4e, which
is one of the things I was excited about. Maybe they'll fix it in
4.5 :/

* The character sheets had a really nicely formatted set of powers
BUT there were pieces on the front that I needed that acted like powers.
(In fact, in one game, I missed a key ability because it was on the front
of my ***.) I really wanted my "charge attack" to be a power instead of
rules elsewhere, my "run" to be a power, my "Second Wind" to be a power,
and my "opportunity attack" to be a power. Instead, I became annoyed that
I had to flip the *** over for those things.

Eh whatever. I can't remember the last time I used an official
character ***. I even made my own way back in 1e days.

* Not sure I like 50/50 saving throws. There are abilities that
modify it, but generally, it doesn't matter how powerful you are, it's
going to be 50/50 to shake off an effect.

Sounds bad. I'm not sure I believe this entirely though. We'll
see...

* The first level pregen character did not have Cure Light Wounds. Is
the spell still in? Was it a casualty of finally declaring (rightly) that
Hit Points are abstract? Not sure, but I was disappointed at its absence.
(Especially with the Wizard still having plenty of classic power names.)

Conceptually I don't like the way they are doing HP, but I'm willing
to try it. Another we'll see.

* I don't like "milestones" and the way action points are given out.
I love the new action point rule- so simple and yet an agonizing
decision. But the milestone system feels very much like a "patch" on the
15 minute adventuring day, a way to encourage players to keep going by an
entirely OOC reward. Then there's this whole system where APs are
restricted to one a combat, and they get reset? There goes some of the
interesting management and tense feeling.

APs are interesting, I'm using the eberron style ones in my games
right now, and while they do add something, there's something off
about them. Sounds like they still haven't got them quite right.

* It could just be that I suck at rolling, but first level felt very
swingy. Lots of luck on both sides. I don't think I can judge that fully
until I see later levels, though.

Not really different than 1st level as is. Just more room for
'swingy' than 1st level as is.

Critical Misc:

* If every DMG came with Mike Mearls to DM for you, everyone would
play 4e. He ran by far the most fun session I played, AND looked like he
enjoyed every minute he was playing.

Well he is playing with a game that is perfect for him. Will it be
perfect for anyone/everyone else though?

* Warlock powers are still hilarious. "I unleash my Curse of the Dark
Dream... with bats, snakes, and blood!"

Ooookaaay.... I'm stepping back slowly.

* As I mentioned in an earlier comment, I see nothing to indicate
that this edition will be any worse or better for roleplaying than any
previous edition of D&D. I will come right out and say that rules can
contribute to roleplaying- the two are not independent. But 4e does not
change the essential atmosphere of D&D for roleplaying.

That's odd, as they've added rules for quest and rp rewards. Which I
used to use back in 2e and they seemed to work great then. I had
trouble getting them to work well in 3e though, and dropped them for
my current campaign. I'm glad to see them reintegrated to the game.

* It really is a paradigm shift for D&D in most ways. Some people
prefer more simulation in their games, and 4e really isn't built for it.
For me, D&D4e supports the type of play I like. Your mileage may vary,
but I keep coming back to one point: there are lots of RPG systems out
there that support different styles of play, and if you prefer something
that "makes more sense" then I highly suggest checking out one of the
many excellent options. For me, I'm going to 4e.

That's too bad. I tend to be more simulationist as a DM. I'm still
going to try 4e, but I'm having less and less hope it will be for me.
I'm going to be plopping down a ton of money on it as I've promised to
buy PHBs for all my players, but I'm liking the prospect far less at
this point. I just hope we can patch it enough to work for me. I
think I might be preferring Keith's patches to 3e more than 4e. Maybe
he'll come out with his own game system :)

- Justisaur

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