For a while after 4th edition was published, I kept hearing about how stupid it was compared to 3.5. When a friend of mine joined the D&D Next playtest, he decided that we should try 4th edition so we could compare Next to the most recently published system. We ended up playing 4th for about six months, and we're still playing. After six months of game play, I can say... it's stupid.
In today's post, I'll be discussing some of the good things Wizards did with 4th edition, and the stupidity a veteran 3.5 player will feel when transitioning to 4th.
First of all, 4th edition is newbie friendly. It uses much simpler rules than 3.5. For example, you don't have a half of page of rules describing how to grapple an opponent. In this respect, new players can pick up 4th edition and pretty much know what they're doing in a relatively short time.
Secondly, 4th edition balanced the player classes. No longer is the wizard a low-level weakling who has to be careful not to even get bitten by a dire rat. However, the wizard is also no longer a walking arsenal of arcane might that can end fights with a single spell at higher levels. Every class has a certain role to fill, but some classes can fill more than one roll. Each class has a variety of abilities to pick from as the character gains new levels, instead of just receiving a set ability at each level like they do in 3.5.
Third, fortitude, reflex, and will are no longer rolled by the player, but are instead set defenses like AC. This was, to me, the most obvious step forward. Now, any action made against the player or enemy puts the roll in the attacker's hand. No longer do you have to figure out how your character can ward off a death spell by rolling a natural 20 on his fortitude save, only to succumb to the common cold with that natural 1 the next day. Your character has a set fortitude, a set reflex, and a set will, and it's up to the attack to try to be strong enough to overcome you.
Fourth, in 3.5 a DM designing an encounter would have to reference a chart telling him how many monsters and traps of a certain challenge rating could be added together to achieve a certain encounter level, and if you wanted mixed CRs, with some higher and some lower in the same encounter, well, the chart in the Dungeon Master's Guide only covers multiple enemies of the same level and has a single entry for two enemies of different levels, so I hope you didn't want more than two monsters in the encounter. In 4th, a DM need only consult one chart telling him how many points a specific encounter level is worth, then consult a second chart telling him how many points a monster or trap of a specific level is worth, then spend the points for the encounter level he wants on the monsters he wants. For example, if you're building an encounter for four players of level 4, the 4th edition DMG says to spend 700 points. Now, you'd just consult the chart on the previous page which tells you how many points a monster of a given level is worth, so you could include two level 3 monsters worth 150 each, and two level 5 monsters worth 200 each. Good luck telling me what encounter level two level 3s and two level 5s would be in 3.5.
Alright, now let's turn around and talk about the bad, beginning by taking three of my points above and telling you where they messed up from a veteran's perspective.
First, the game encourages munchkin play. In fact, it's impossible not to. If you try to build a balanced character, you will end up sub-par. Your fortitude, reflex, and will defenses each use the higher of a pair of attributes, instead of just constitution, dexterity, and wisdom. This means there is no real decision on the player's part to try to balance their offense and defense. In 3.5 you may ask yourself: do I want a higher strength so I can hit harder, higher constitution for a better save and hit points, or try to make them even? In 4th, you can just say screw that and max out your strength because if it's higher than your constitution, then it applies to your fortitude. Each class lists one to three attributes that the class cares about. You should put your highest attributes into those and say screw the rest, because all of your class abilities will use one of the listed attributes, either to attack, deal damage, heal, or provide a buff.
Second, the classes are balanced. I said this when talking about the good points of 4th, but it's also a negative, in a way. Speaking as someone who used to love playing wizards and sorcerers in 3.5, when I saw the 4th edition version of the classes, I asked myself "why would I ever play this?" and played a warlord instead. I later made a wizard and tried it out, but I didn't feel like a wizard. My wizard in 3.5 has a limited number of spells, but when I use them, things get real. In 4th, my wizard can use his powers a lot more often, but at the same time, he has to. If he doesn't, things get real, and not in our favor. The wizard no longer felt like a wielder of incredible arcane power, instead he felt like just another character with a set of powers, just like everybody else. In 3.5, I can use my spells to help the party fight better, get them out of a tight spot, or hold back a group of enemies so we can focus on a few at a time. In 4th, I can control enemies to an extent, making it easier for the party to deal with them, but you know what? So can our fighter. Our fighter has an ability that can draw enemies in close to him, and punish them for not attacking him. So, why do we need a controller anymore? We don't, the fighter can force enemies to focus on him so our weaker party members can exploit that.
Third, your defenses only determine how hard it is for a certain effect to begin to affect you, once it has, you need only roll a 10 or higher to save against it (a certain few effects may impose a penalty, but I haven't encountered one yet). So, while a character of 18 constitution will be harder to poison than one with a 10, once both are poisoned, both have a 55% chance of overcoming it. (The same applies to mental effects too!) The save system doesn't take your attributes into account at all. While the system is okay, it just feels flawed.
Now that I've listed a counter-point to my first three original points, I'll briefly discuss what else is wrong with 4th edition from a veteran's viewpoint.
1. You can only heal a limited number of times per day. Each class has a certain number of healing surges, which are based on your constitution. The fighter has more surges than the wizard, for example. While this is okay, it applies to almost every form of healing. Want to take a second wind? Spend a surge. Want the cleric or warlord to heal you? Spend a surge. Want to drink a potion? Spend a surge. There are only a handful of abilities that the "healing" classes can get that allow healing without spending a surge. Also, why should your limited number of surges affect how often magic can heal you? It makes magic less magical. The magic is no longer healing you at this point, but is instead just triggering your body to tap into its reserves, which is alright, if that's what you're going for, but healing is the only thing that works this way. For example, a buff spell actually makes a character stronger, it doesn't require the character have extra reserves of strength for it to work.
2. You can trip anything. For the most part, if a power has a certain effect, it works. There are many powers that can knock a target prone, and the only rule I've found since I started playing 4th is that a flying creature isn't always rendered prone. It depends on how high they're flying, or something, I forgot the exact rule, but needless to say, you can't knock a beholder prone. Spiders, on the other hand, sure! Eight legs? No problem, it's prone. How about a dragon? Yeah, it's only three times your size, go ahead, you can knock it down.
3. Fights take forever. My 4th edition party is up to level 12 now. We started to notice a few levels ago, that if we aren't fighting minions, our enemies have a lot of HP. On average, one encounter takes us about 2-3 hours to complete. Dang. We're lucky if we can get through more than two encounters in one night.
4. Buffing is pointless. In 3.5, passing out the right buff spells before a fight usually meant that you didn't need to heal as much after. In 4th, the buffs don't provide big enough boosts to make them worth it. Pretty much every character in my 4th party has around a +18 to +20 attack bonus, and an AC of 26-29. We get hit pretty much every round, and only rarely do we miss. The buff powers we have available to us can provide a +2 to our defenses, and up to a +5 to our attacks. Half the time we don't even bother mentioning our attack buffs, because they hardly matter. Do you know how much it helps to improve an AC 26 to 28 when the enemies are hitting our AC 29 fighter pretty much every turn? Not at all. In 4th, you're going to take damage. It's just a fact. 4th isn't about buffing to prevent damage, it's a matter of how much can you heal, and can you take down the enemy before you run out of heals?
5. You have limited-use powers instead of static abilities. In 3.5, as you gained levels, you gained new class abilities and those abilities were always active, always available. Once you got it, you added it to your sheet, learned what it did, and it just was there. In 4th, you gain new powers that you have to decide when to use. This means every turn, you have a list of up to 12 different options or so to pick from. Have you ever been playing 3.5 and in the middle of combat had to wait for the caster to go through their list of spells, pick out one to use, then wait for them to read over what it does, only to decide it's not the most effective option, then go through their list again to repeat the process? Imagine every player doing that now.
6. Your powers get replaced. In 4th edition, you are allowed to build up a list of 3 encounter powers and 3 daily powers, in addition to your paragon powers. When you gain a new encounter or daily after that, you have to choose an existing power to give up in order to gain it. I recently looked through upcoming options for my warlord to see what new powers would become available. I was very disappointed to find out that my level 1 and level 3 encounter powers were a better fit for our group's tactics than the upcoming level 13 powers. However, the higher level powers do more damage. So, now I'm forced to decide between keeping a tactically useful power that deals little damage, or swapping for a power that's not nearly as useful just because it hits harder. Finally, I get a meaningful decision, but instead of a decision between balancing attributes or focusing on offense vs defense, my decision is whether or not I fall behind the damage curve of my team in order to keep the usefulness of my old powers.
I could continue to go on with this list, because at least once per game during our first three months of play, I found something that made me say "4th is stupid!", but I've probably forgotten half of those moments, and this list is already getting long, so let me just summarize this by saying that 4th edition is a fun, simplified system that tried to make everyone feel relevant, but when everyone's special, nobody is. It's great for newbies, but probably horrid for veterans. However, if you try not to compare it to 3.5, but just think of it as a different game, it can be enjoyable.
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