Yeah, I've been a bit lax on posting, my apologies to any reader or readers I might have. The basic thing is that I want to talk a bit about the coming 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. This isn't a matter of cheering that 4th edition is gone or getting angry that we have yet another edition or that we don't or do need one. What I want to do is a bit more nuanced, ask a question that I think needs to be asked whenever an edition change is occurring, the question is this "What did we learn?" This is a bigger question than a lot of people might think, it's the question of what successes and failures came from not just the previous edition but all those that came before. It's more than how well things sold, it's also what seemed more popular and why, as well as maybe what things turned out to be better ideas than anticipated or worse than assumed.
I'm not a developer at Wizards of the Coast or any gaming company but I could offer a few ideas that at I and people I've talked to discovered in 4th edition and others, and maybe could help in the creation of the new 5th edition. One thing my group learned is that in design you need to make sure that threats scale properly. In 4th edition a tribe of goblins was a greater threat than a dragon of the same encounter level, that's a bit worrisome. The reason was this, the goblins had an ability where if they flanked they did extra damage, and you could get a lot of minions plus some bigger ones and the players could get carved up. A dragon, a single monster, might do a bit more damage than the flanking goblins, but it was only one thing, and it could be focus fired. The dragon was actually less threatening than a goblin tribe and that kind of kills the majesty of the dragon and also makes the scale feel off, since in fantasy dragons are generally big threats, legendary beasts.
The second thing I'd reccomend is that they do keep the HP buffer at low levels. It was actually a big improvement when you won't get knocked over by an errant wind. The HP amounts should probably be lower at high levels, or monsters need to be able to take bigger bites, but in general the larger HP at base was a nice addition, if only because it provided a way for players to survive a mistake and learn from it rather than having to go through a bunch of characters starting off. This was one of the areas that 4th edition got right in my view, and a lot of people I've talked to have agreed that the higher survival rating starting off helps remarkably.
I think the biggest thing though is that the new edition needs to have enough innovation to be willing to experiment during the games run. 3rd edition put out some great material, and in my view a lot of their best stuff was the more experimental. While incarnum was a bit of a failure it was still fascinating, as I mentioned in an earlier post I called it a beautiful failure. Tome of magic as well as the book of nine swords were probably my favorite releases, along with stuff like the warlock which was a full class of spell like abilities. These were things that tried out new mechanical options, variant casting systems and new power options for martial characters. Options that, surprisingly, meshed well with the existing system and were fairly balanced. 4th on the other hand...while there were new power sources by the time my group quit (PH3) things were getting repetitive, and I chanced to pick up one of the last releases and it did not fill me with hope for the game. It looked like the designers had essentially hit a wall, running out of mechanical options due to the constraints of the system itself and were afraid to try engineering outside of it.
Anyone out there that's reading, what do you think is important for 5th edition, and is there anything you think would be cool to add in? Feel free to share.
Showing posts with label Dungeons and Dragons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dungeons and Dragons. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Friday, September 23, 2011
Edition Changes and updates
Hello to anyone that reads my blog. I have had a bit of trouble coming up with ideas but recently I actually managed to come up with something that might be interesting, game edition shifts and updates. They always tend to cause frustration in people as well as hope, hope for improvements and streamlining. Hope that major issues in the current game will be fixed and that the new system will emerge stronger and better organized. In essence the players hope for a more evolved system, and just as often people fear the changes. They fear the system that they've grown comfortable with changing into something foreign. They fear a system that makes players too strong or weak, that radically changes how things were done. Every time that a game changes editions there is a barbeque of sacred cows.
Talk to anyone that has a favorite game or system, when D&D changed from 2nd to 3rd edition, and when 3.5 came out, and again when it became 4th edition there were complaints on each one, some loud, some quiet. Some reasoned, some simple rage, but the complaints filled blogs and forums. The same is true for the new world of darkness and the new versions of the settings that were brought forward, when Deadlands became Savage Worlds the same thing happened. It happens regardless, but the big question should really be what creates the hostility, and for that matter why do some people jump forward to the new system, only to leave it later?
I already mentioned some of what caused my group to jump to 4th edition when it came out. It created a system where all the classes were in fact playing the same game, gameplay was more streamlined, and overall the system was far more balanced. Now this opinion changed over time, as you can see by going through my archives. What I find interesting is that looking back at it 4th edition seemed to fall apart as fast as it produced new things to fix itself, but I digress. The stuff for Deadlands between the original formats and the Savage World settings are also worth studying. Armor and toughness are different so are the concepts of arcane backgrounds and power growth. While I can see some definite advantages in the new system I find myself preferring the old one.
Gamma world is another example, look at each edition, each one had a different attitude and style, some more serious than others. I will say I quite like the latest incarnation that uses the 4th edition model, and uses it much better than the 4th edition game IMO. What is it that brings us to keep an edition or leap to the new one, I have a few guesses.
1) Fear of change or desire for it can motivate the migration or staying with an edition. In some cases people are comfortable with an older system and are more willing to use a few houserules and argue that a new edition will either be unnecessary or will introduce new problems and headaches, aside from having to relearn the mechanics. Similarly, there are people who get frustrated with a system and having to alter it, remake it, and in some cases have entire books devoted to clarifying rules (The Rules Compendium of 3.5 was a great argument for 4th edition let me say). For world of darkness it could have been trying to juggle rules between different 'settings' like Werewolf, Vampire, Mage, etc. It also could have been the fact that their tabletop and larping systems reacted very differently and had a lot of balance complaints.
2) Sacred Cows, once again this is an area that causes people to want to change or want to keep. People will sometimes look at a game and say "This isn't X" people would say that 4th edition wasn't D&D, that the products for the New World Of Darkness weren't 'really' Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, etc. The usual reason for it was that the sacred cows had ben barbecued, vanican spellcasting was gone, class distinctions were annihilated or reshaped. Principles that had guided design for supernatural beings in the world of darkness were suddenly wildly different. Some people hated these things, I will say that Vancian Spellcasting is probably one of the biggest problems for game balance in 3.5 D&D and in the current Pathfinder. I will also say that getting rid of it as they did also probably helped create some of the problems that 4th edition faced. Some people are afraid of losing something that's been part of the system from the get-go, and others see those things as either anachronisms or bad design choices.
3) Cash, a simple one, and more towards keeping to an older edition. If you have a game that runs well the idea of forking over more money for new books that essentially invalidate your old ones can be infuriating. And it can also be annoying that things you would have been happy to pay money for (expansions on a few new power systems, books for greater customization levels, etc.) are no longer being made for your game of choice, at least in the incarnation you have most of the other stuff for.
4) Simplicity, another argument in either direction. A person familiar with an edition will usually know all the necessary rules or at least have houserules and rulings to deal with hiccups. That being said there can be huge rule cludges that are either avoided or rewritten, things that come up after multiple sourcebooks and errata colliding with one another as well as the ubiquitous problem of player inventiveness. New editions tend to be fairly simple to start off, rules are streamlined and USUALLY the books don't have too many glaring errors or problems, but you usually have to relearn the system and rules not to mention the problem of dealing with new errata and rulebooks adding new features and changing things.
Now playing groups and the like are part of it too but those are a bit more subjective and this is more based on personal desires one way or the other. Any other ideas, comments, etc. are welcome. I hope to hear from someone.
Talk to anyone that has a favorite game or system, when D&D changed from 2nd to 3rd edition, and when 3.5 came out, and again when it became 4th edition there were complaints on each one, some loud, some quiet. Some reasoned, some simple rage, but the complaints filled blogs and forums. The same is true for the new world of darkness and the new versions of the settings that were brought forward, when Deadlands became Savage Worlds the same thing happened. It happens regardless, but the big question should really be what creates the hostility, and for that matter why do some people jump forward to the new system, only to leave it later?
I already mentioned some of what caused my group to jump to 4th edition when it came out. It created a system where all the classes were in fact playing the same game, gameplay was more streamlined, and overall the system was far more balanced. Now this opinion changed over time, as you can see by going through my archives. What I find interesting is that looking back at it 4th edition seemed to fall apart as fast as it produced new things to fix itself, but I digress. The stuff for Deadlands between the original formats and the Savage World settings are also worth studying. Armor and toughness are different so are the concepts of arcane backgrounds and power growth. While I can see some definite advantages in the new system I find myself preferring the old one.
Gamma world is another example, look at each edition, each one had a different attitude and style, some more serious than others. I will say I quite like the latest incarnation that uses the 4th edition model, and uses it much better than the 4th edition game IMO. What is it that brings us to keep an edition or leap to the new one, I have a few guesses.
1) Fear of change or desire for it can motivate the migration or staying with an edition. In some cases people are comfortable with an older system and are more willing to use a few houserules and argue that a new edition will either be unnecessary or will introduce new problems and headaches, aside from having to relearn the mechanics. Similarly, there are people who get frustrated with a system and having to alter it, remake it, and in some cases have entire books devoted to clarifying rules (The Rules Compendium of 3.5 was a great argument for 4th edition let me say). For world of darkness it could have been trying to juggle rules between different 'settings' like Werewolf, Vampire, Mage, etc. It also could have been the fact that their tabletop and larping systems reacted very differently and had a lot of balance complaints.
2) Sacred Cows, once again this is an area that causes people to want to change or want to keep. People will sometimes look at a game and say "This isn't X" people would say that 4th edition wasn't D&D, that the products for the New World Of Darkness weren't 'really' Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, etc. The usual reason for it was that the sacred cows had ben barbecued, vanican spellcasting was gone, class distinctions were annihilated or reshaped. Principles that had guided design for supernatural beings in the world of darkness were suddenly wildly different. Some people hated these things, I will say that Vancian Spellcasting is probably one of the biggest problems for game balance in 3.5 D&D and in the current Pathfinder. I will also say that getting rid of it as they did also probably helped create some of the problems that 4th edition faced. Some people are afraid of losing something that's been part of the system from the get-go, and others see those things as either anachronisms or bad design choices.
3) Cash, a simple one, and more towards keeping to an older edition. If you have a game that runs well the idea of forking over more money for new books that essentially invalidate your old ones can be infuriating. And it can also be annoying that things you would have been happy to pay money for (expansions on a few new power systems, books for greater customization levels, etc.) are no longer being made for your game of choice, at least in the incarnation you have most of the other stuff for.
4) Simplicity, another argument in either direction. A person familiar with an edition will usually know all the necessary rules or at least have houserules and rulings to deal with hiccups. That being said there can be huge rule cludges that are either avoided or rewritten, things that come up after multiple sourcebooks and errata colliding with one another as well as the ubiquitous problem of player inventiveness. New editions tend to be fairly simple to start off, rules are streamlined and USUALLY the books don't have too many glaring errors or problems, but you usually have to relearn the system and rules not to mention the problem of dealing with new errata and rulebooks adding new features and changing things.
Now playing groups and the like are part of it too but those are a bit more subjective and this is more based on personal desires one way or the other. Any other ideas, comments, etc. are welcome. I hope to hear from someone.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
When Roles Go Bad Pt. 2
Here I am for a belated part two. I apologize for taking so long but I hope it will be worth the wait. I mentioned that one issue that comes up in the role system is simply that the roles themselves can get in the way and screw things up trying to keep everything balanced. This area is a bit more subjective but can do a lot to impact fun as well as being common in video games as well as tabletop games. In essence it's a matter of things feeling overly similar, or 'samey'. IE two classes that are supposed to be different and distinct end up feeling identical in results and play.
In tabletop games I would argue this is somewhat easier to notice than it is in video games, the main reason I say this is that a video game can mask similar mechanics with graphics and thematic things that a tabletop game has to do a lot more work to conjure. Now things feeling samey is somewhat subject to interpretation and it can come from a lot of different things and have different levels of annoyance or frustration for the person working on things. Some matter more and some matter less, and I will try to address them quickly.
One area is when different classes in the same role start to feel samey, this could be due to similar mechanics or just because build information and damage output end up near identical. This can be frustrating in some regards but it isn't necessarily a major issue. In video games the mechanics, graphics, etc. can be utilized to make the differing classes seem more dissimilar while their overall output is about identical. In a tabletop game this is somewhat more obvious but it can be fairly manageable so long as the gameplay elements keep the classes feeling distinct or at least different enough so that the player doesn't wonder why there are two classes if they functionally do the same thing and are identical in most regards.
Another area has to do with different aspects of the same class, IE if there are different build options but both end up being about the same. On the one hand this can be somewhat expected, but when literally everything seems to be identical a problem crops up, the variant options seem superfluous when the end result is the same. It can make the player feel like their choice meant nothing and it can also feel like the book or supplement that the new option was put in was ultimately a waste. The way this can happen is if power choices, augmentation options etc. end up with a character functionally identical mechanically to the build of another type.
The basic problem is this, if classes feel samey, or if allegedly different options for the same class feel samey, it means that the designers screwed up. Part of the fun in a game that offers customization is making a character that feels unique, that is YOUR character, when the ability to do that is compromised the game suffers a bit. It gets worse when this sort of thing ends up being a means to nip system mastery in the bud, essentially making any abilities that improve hitting, defenses, etc. as a necessary and assumed thing, thus ensuring that there will be little to no ability to make your character 'better' than anyone else. The reason I link this as a problem the role system faces or at least tends to conjure more is that roles by nature have limits and locks on them, a healer should not be doing more damage than a straight damage dealer for example and this can lead to overreaction by designers and a fear that any customization could break the roles set up.
In tabletop games I would argue this is somewhat easier to notice than it is in video games, the main reason I say this is that a video game can mask similar mechanics with graphics and thematic things that a tabletop game has to do a lot more work to conjure. Now things feeling samey is somewhat subject to interpretation and it can come from a lot of different things and have different levels of annoyance or frustration for the person working on things. Some matter more and some matter less, and I will try to address them quickly.
One area is when different classes in the same role start to feel samey, this could be due to similar mechanics or just because build information and damage output end up near identical. This can be frustrating in some regards but it isn't necessarily a major issue. In video games the mechanics, graphics, etc. can be utilized to make the differing classes seem more dissimilar while their overall output is about identical. In a tabletop game this is somewhat more obvious but it can be fairly manageable so long as the gameplay elements keep the classes feeling distinct or at least different enough so that the player doesn't wonder why there are two classes if they functionally do the same thing and are identical in most regards.
Another area has to do with different aspects of the same class, IE if there are different build options but both end up being about the same. On the one hand this can be somewhat expected, but when literally everything seems to be identical a problem crops up, the variant options seem superfluous when the end result is the same. It can make the player feel like their choice meant nothing and it can also feel like the book or supplement that the new option was put in was ultimately a waste. The way this can happen is if power choices, augmentation options etc. end up with a character functionally identical mechanically to the build of another type.
The basic problem is this, if classes feel samey, or if allegedly different options for the same class feel samey, it means that the designers screwed up. Part of the fun in a game that offers customization is making a character that feels unique, that is YOUR character, when the ability to do that is compromised the game suffers a bit. It gets worse when this sort of thing ends up being a means to nip system mastery in the bud, essentially making any abilities that improve hitting, defenses, etc. as a necessary and assumed thing, thus ensuring that there will be little to no ability to make your character 'better' than anyone else. The reason I link this as a problem the role system faces or at least tends to conjure more is that roles by nature have limits and locks on them, a healer should not be doing more damage than a straight damage dealer for example and this can lead to overreaction by designers and a fear that any customization could break the roles set up.
Monday, April 11, 2011
When Roles go Bad pt 1.
I mentioned before that in 4th edition one of the better ideas that they had was putting forward a solid role system, IE the classes would be set to certain types and their functions would be set around that. Defending the group, healing party members, raw damage, or AoE/Debuffing. The role system is used in other games and there are a lot of advantages to it. For one thing designing classes is a bit easier when there is a clear idea of what the class is supposed to do as well as helping figure out if something is marked too high or low in terms of damage, hit rating, etc. The problem is that roles can also lead to stagnation and can, if used incorrectly, lead to a game that is frustrating, samey, or just plain bad. I am going to try to do this in shorter bursts, I realize a lot of my posts are kind of text walls and it might be easier for someone to follow the posts with shorter posts and maybe my stuff will improve if I'm more focused.
One common problem in role based games comes from a problem in division of labor, especially in the area of the damage dealer. In most of these games everyone is able to deal a certain amount of damage, it isn't impossible for the people healing, debuffing or tanking to also lay a pretty good smackdown. However this leads to a problem, if their damage is comparable to that of the 'dedicated' damage dealer then three questions arise.
1) Why bother playing a dedicated damage dealer if a class in another role can crank out about the same amount of damage and have other options and features besides?
2) What was the point of the pure damage class in question, or even the pure damage role if the other classes in these roles can get near the damage output or perhaps even outpace it?
3) If the pure damage role is able to put out an incredibly high amount of damage, high enough that the other roles can't match it at all, then how do you avoid the idea of everyone simply going for raw damage and trying to overwhelm the targets with speed and a few hard blows.
In fourth edition D&D there were quite a few, for lack of a better term, errata storms that would hit because the Fighter was apparently outdamaging strikers, and then they would dial back the strikers to keep them from doing too much. It got frustrating but it also showed a basic problem, damage isn't exactly a complicated thing compared to what a lot of other classes do but it can still be easy to screw up, and when it goes wrong here it can get worse in other areas. I'll get into the problem of things feeling identical and some of the other issues from the role system in later posts.
One common problem in role based games comes from a problem in division of labor, especially in the area of the damage dealer. In most of these games everyone is able to deal a certain amount of damage, it isn't impossible for the people healing, debuffing or tanking to also lay a pretty good smackdown. However this leads to a problem, if their damage is comparable to that of the 'dedicated' damage dealer then three questions arise.
1) Why bother playing a dedicated damage dealer if a class in another role can crank out about the same amount of damage and have other options and features besides?
2) What was the point of the pure damage class in question, or even the pure damage role if the other classes in these roles can get near the damage output or perhaps even outpace it?
3) If the pure damage role is able to put out an incredibly high amount of damage, high enough that the other roles can't match it at all, then how do you avoid the idea of everyone simply going for raw damage and trying to overwhelm the targets with speed and a few hard blows.
In fourth edition D&D there were quite a few, for lack of a better term, errata storms that would hit because the Fighter was apparently outdamaging strikers, and then they would dial back the strikers to keep them from doing too much. It got frustrating but it also showed a basic problem, damage isn't exactly a complicated thing compared to what a lot of other classes do but it can still be easy to screw up, and when it goes wrong here it can get worse in other areas. I'll get into the problem of things feeling identical and some of the other issues from the role system in later posts.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Time in Preparation versus TIme in Play
I mentioned in my previous post an issue that I had, dragons were one example but it was frequently found with just about any monster that was in mid paragon tier to epic tier. While putting the encounter together was relatively easy, if a bit time consuming if the person running had to copy or type up the monsters stats, the encounters themselves required a hell of a lot more attention and probably more than a few pauses as you tried to figure out what was triggered and anything else that happened. This got progressively worse as you went up in levels, I was actually sorely tempted to shell out an extra 15 bucks a month to Wizards of the Coast for the D&D insider stuff because they had been promising a digital battlemat that a DM could use that would also let me see the ranges for abilities marked on the board as things moved and would actually let me know what went on, even track and calculate damage, ability recharges, and if anything would get triggered. The feature was never implemented for reasons I won't get into her, but had it been done I might have put the money down for it just because I was having so much trouble.
One of the big selling points of fourth edition was supposed to be that it was easier to run and that encounters were quicker to set up and use. This was sort of true but it kind of glossed over a few things. Encounters in heroic tier were in fact fairly quick and easy to run as well as set up, I kind of think heroic tier got the most playtesting and study because of that and it also avoided the HP inflation problems. Encounters above that had problems both in terms of tracking everything and having to stop combats or interrupt turns because they had triggered something, entered an aura, or something similar. The other thing ignored is that unless you typed up the statblocks of the stuff you were using you had to keep hopping around in monster manuals which broke flow and was more likely to make you forget things, and given all the abilities and features there were times where typing up a single regular encounter (where I made NO modification to the monsters) took more time than me building and modifying a 'big' opponent like a dragon or high level spellcaster, and it was also much more tedious since I was just copying things from a book rather than playing with abilities and actually designing something.
A bit older and wiser, a bit more experienced with games and systems and I would have to say that if I have to choose between having to spend more time preparing an encounter or having clunky and issue laden encounters when running I will take having to take more time to prepare almost every time. There are a few reasons for this, the biggest being simply that I have a hell of a lot more time to prepare than I do to play. Unless I am a professional game master (IE I'm being paid to run games and am doing it 5 days a week for 6-8 hours a day) I am probably only running games once a week. Even with a job you can usually take a few minutes each day to mess with a monster or tweak things. Conversely most groups probably only play for about 4 hours, maybe 6 and even then they probably don't game for the full duration of that and if I have to keep halting or dealing with issues during combats it means that the game is bogged down and less progress is made. Part of it is this, I have more time to prep than I do to play and when the game bogs down it's not just my time it's the time of everyone at the table.
The other thing is that prep work gets easier and quicker over time due to familiarity, if you have to choose spells there are probably some you use frequently and can simply put in from memory. The same can be said somewhat of things during encounters but that has more to do with remembering what the triggers and area sizes are constantly, and unless the monsters in question are used a lot it's less likely to be easily memorable. Also a lot of the prep work can help familiarize a game master with the system in question, if only in seeing how things like magic systems, special abilities and things like that work and how they interact with other things.
It can also help keep encounters relatively distinct, so that it doesn't feel like you're doing a retread every time you use a certain monster or classed enemy. You can do more to tweak the monsters, alter spell selections or change powers and generally make the creatures feel more unique. It's good for the players because it means they are less likely to get bored and it means that the encounters you make can be adjusted and reused if you end up a bit short on time without feeling like a rerun.
There's another element in this as well about using multiple monsters, this can almost be its own thing but I'll try to stick to the topic at hand. A lot of encounters will have more than one big honkin monster and as mentioned at mid to high levels there is a lot to keep track of on one monster. For groups of them it can be a nightmare, yes, in theory you can keep it all tracked on notes but a lot of them have auras and other trigger effects or things that happened if they became injured. It almost feels like they felt they could get away with doing this because, hey, you usually didn't have to do any special work before the game putting the encounters together, or not very much so it was fine to overload the monsters with all these features. The thing was that at least with prep work it's more like a learning curve, it is initially difficult but the stuff you're working with is fairly simple and you'll be reusing a lot of it as you go through the game. With the other system it should be better in theory, simple stuff at first with more complexities added, the problem is that you tend to get whole boatloads of effects at once around the same time for many different creatures rather than a nice gradual increase and not much of it is similar so it's hard to generalize stuff you learn from one encounter to the next.
I speak on this as someone who mostly runs games. Though I would like to hear what others out there think..and if I have any readers. Comments on this would be most appreciated, thanks.
One of the big selling points of fourth edition was supposed to be that it was easier to run and that encounters were quicker to set up and use. This was sort of true but it kind of glossed over a few things. Encounters in heroic tier were in fact fairly quick and easy to run as well as set up, I kind of think heroic tier got the most playtesting and study because of that and it also avoided the HP inflation problems. Encounters above that had problems both in terms of tracking everything and having to stop combats or interrupt turns because they had triggered something, entered an aura, or something similar. The other thing ignored is that unless you typed up the statblocks of the stuff you were using you had to keep hopping around in monster manuals which broke flow and was more likely to make you forget things, and given all the abilities and features there were times where typing up a single regular encounter (where I made NO modification to the monsters) took more time than me building and modifying a 'big' opponent like a dragon or high level spellcaster, and it was also much more tedious since I was just copying things from a book rather than playing with abilities and actually designing something.
A bit older and wiser, a bit more experienced with games and systems and I would have to say that if I have to choose between having to spend more time preparing an encounter or having clunky and issue laden encounters when running I will take having to take more time to prepare almost every time. There are a few reasons for this, the biggest being simply that I have a hell of a lot more time to prepare than I do to play. Unless I am a professional game master (IE I'm being paid to run games and am doing it 5 days a week for 6-8 hours a day) I am probably only running games once a week. Even with a job you can usually take a few minutes each day to mess with a monster or tweak things. Conversely most groups probably only play for about 4 hours, maybe 6 and even then they probably don't game for the full duration of that and if I have to keep halting or dealing with issues during combats it means that the game is bogged down and less progress is made. Part of it is this, I have more time to prep than I do to play and when the game bogs down it's not just my time it's the time of everyone at the table.
The other thing is that prep work gets easier and quicker over time due to familiarity, if you have to choose spells there are probably some you use frequently and can simply put in from memory. The same can be said somewhat of things during encounters but that has more to do with remembering what the triggers and area sizes are constantly, and unless the monsters in question are used a lot it's less likely to be easily memorable. Also a lot of the prep work can help familiarize a game master with the system in question, if only in seeing how things like magic systems, special abilities and things like that work and how they interact with other things.
It can also help keep encounters relatively distinct, so that it doesn't feel like you're doing a retread every time you use a certain monster or classed enemy. You can do more to tweak the monsters, alter spell selections or change powers and generally make the creatures feel more unique. It's good for the players because it means they are less likely to get bored and it means that the encounters you make can be adjusted and reused if you end up a bit short on time without feeling like a rerun.
There's another element in this as well about using multiple monsters, this can almost be its own thing but I'll try to stick to the topic at hand. A lot of encounters will have more than one big honkin monster and as mentioned at mid to high levels there is a lot to keep track of on one monster. For groups of them it can be a nightmare, yes, in theory you can keep it all tracked on notes but a lot of them have auras and other trigger effects or things that happened if they became injured. It almost feels like they felt they could get away with doing this because, hey, you usually didn't have to do any special work before the game putting the encounters together, or not very much so it was fine to overload the monsters with all these features. The thing was that at least with prep work it's more like a learning curve, it is initially difficult but the stuff you're working with is fairly simple and you'll be reusing a lot of it as you go through the game. With the other system it should be better in theory, simple stuff at first with more complexities added, the problem is that you tend to get whole boatloads of effects at once around the same time for many different creatures rather than a nice gradual increase and not much of it is similar so it's hard to generalize stuff you learn from one encounter to the next.
I speak on this as someone who mostly runs games. Though I would like to hear what others out there think..and if I have any readers. Comments on this would be most appreciated, thanks.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Declining of Dragons
As those who know me personally, and those who see my profile can guess, I am a big fan of dragons. Dragons to me represent a lot of cool things and they're great in a lot of fantasy games because they can be powerful enemies, dangerous masterminds, knowledgeable oracles, puissant allies, you get the idea. In the fantasy role playing game that most people know, Dungeons and Dragons, the Dragon is one of the most dangerous opponents you can fight. They have thick armored scales, razor sharp claws and teeth, they hit like trucks, their breath is charged with elemental energy, the oldest dragons can shrug off all but the most heavily enchanted weapons and of course there's the fact that they can also use magic. The magic thing was probably one of the more interesting things with dragons as monsters, spells offer all kinds of variables and interesting options, it also meant that you could theoretically fight a full string of red dragons and the fights might be radically different in theme and feel based almost entirely on the spell list held by each dragon. Now for some people it was an issue, dragons could theoretically end up more powerful than listed because of a great spell selection or the person running might forget to use them, you get the idea. I mention this because of what they did for fourth edition D&D.
4th edition changed a lot of things, for one thing the vancian magic system was dropped. The vancian system being a setup where you had slots for spells that were expended in casting along with levels of power for different spells. This also meant that dragons no longer used magic, they followed the same format as the other monsters, this was both good and bad. The good was that they were easier to use and required less prep time. But there were two problems that came from this, well I'd almost argue three but some of it is my own bias and not really what I would say a system problem is.
The first problem was that the dragons got very samey, in that while dragons did vary color to color in terms of abilities and tactics one red dragon was more or less identical to another, they did add some stuff in their Dragonomicon supplements but things still felt fairly identical. The issue is that if the fights start feeling similar it's harder to stay engaged in the game and the story. Not to mention that the changes between the dragons in terms of age category (the older dragons get the stronger they get) was really fairly incremental. I understand that that's part of how the system works but it also meant that facing dragons through age categories didn't become inherently more threatening so much as it felt more like they were slightly bigger and maybe hit a bit harder, though once or twice getting a new power.
The second problem was a combination of how the dragons got stronger and again an issue with how monsters were designed. If you get a chance to look through monster manuals, (the first through the third one at least since my group more or less dropped the game before MM4 so I can't speak on it), the monsters at mid paragon tier and up level get craploads of extra effects. Not even attack exactly but constant effects, energy auras, things that kick in when they hit half HP, recharge effects, random reaction powers, their standard stuff, synergy effects, etc. The problem with this for me was that while yes, in theory a fight was easier and faster to prepare and design it took a hell of a lot longer to run and was harder to track. I had to keep reminding myself of how big an aura was so that if a monster moved or if a player did I could figure out if there were going to be things kicking in. I had to watch player positions because some monsters, dragons especially, had things talking about what happens if a player is in one place or another, IE player goes behind dragon, dragon automatically smacks with tail, forcibly moves player, and maybe adds a status effect. It meant that I had a much harder time keeping track of abilities and effects, I had players getting angry with me for not explaining something completely but I was trying to track everything and more than once had to pause or I had missed things that were supposed to happen because I was tracking other stuff. There were a few exceptions, the Cobalt Dragon from the second Dragonomicon was actually fairly tightly designed and also a fun monster as an encounter but sadly it seemed to be an aberration as far as that went.
What makes this funny/enraging to me is that back when I ran 3rd edition I had a much easier time running encounters than I did in 4th. I will concede that some of it was experience but that wasn't it alone and when I thought about it I realized why. When I built an encounter in 3rd edition many times I had either spellcasters or I had monsters that could use magic for high level stuff, and in many cases they started the fight with a lot of their magic already in use. They would cast self buff spells, conjure allies or other things. I could write down what the bonuses were and just mark what each thing was from, if someone could strip the buffs off, fine, if not then the stuff was listed there. What it meant was that while I did have to do a bit more work and take a bit more time designing the encounter it didn't take any longer to run or use in the actual battle. It also helped in other ways, spells are beautifully versatile and I can just play with the spell list a bit to change the feel and flavor in a combat as well as alter how the encounters work. Overall it meant that they could theoretically face 50 clerics of about the same level and each fight could be radically different. I'll wrap this up before I go on a full off topic tear but I'd say that it's a lot better to have to take a bit longer to design an encounter than it is to have to keep halting and pausing because you need to double check effects and interactions.
The third problem, and as I said before this is a personal thing rather than a direct problem in the system, is that dragons were demoted to being just another monster. I'll try to explain that in a way that makes sense, Dragons are supposed to be pretty damn powerful, but more than that, in 3rd edition they were best looked at as a kind of super character class, magic, highest base attack, best saves, along with a plethora of abilities, resistances and immunities. Dragons had a kind of majesty to them, and had enough built in options and versatility that dragons could be as varied as the player characters were, possibly even moreso. Because 4th edition is much more tightly structured the dragons were simply another solo monster, they might have been a bit tougher than the other solo monsters at their tier but they still didn't have the same level of oomph or majesty. I will say that a lot of it comes from the mechanics of the system but I am not going to call it a flaw of the system, more a side effect. I know people might have similar views on certain classes or maybe favorite monsters and while the systems format might make them stronger/weaker/whatever than they think the thing in question should be that's more an area of personal taste than a system hiccup.
The other thing in this, again a part of the system, was that dragons went down more or less the same way any other monster did. Back in the old days, I can't believe I'm saying that at my age, beating a dragon quickly normally was either a result of extreme luck or a lot of careful preparation assuming both sides are competent and the encounter is roughly level appropriate. In terms of luck it might be a series of lucky high damage critical hits, maybe the DM can't roll very well, but it comes down more to the players performing feats far above normal expectations, however this is still pretty good so long as it doesn't cause an anticlimax though plenty of groups might just enjoy it for the amusement factor. Careful preparation is a bit more common, the group tries to figure out what they can about the dragon, the color type indicates elemental strengths and weaknesses, the age helps determine size and power as well as hypothetically how potent the magic it can wield is as well as what sort of weapons or tactics might be needed. The other part of the preparation is using spells and consumable items (potions, scrolls, etc.) before the battle, IE you are also consuming a good chunk of resources to fight said dragon and make yourself really powerful against it. In this case they can probably overpower the dragon as well fairly quickly but they had to put a lot of work and resources into it which again is fairly reasonable. This level of planning is somewhat less necessary for other types of monsters barring things like titans, major demons and such, though they also don't have the full versatility either. Conversely in 4th edition the players can just charge in unprepared and the fight will be the same as against any other creature of about that level, though you can't really do out of combat preparations in 4th edition nor are there really many consumable items and such.
I guess some of this is my little lament about how dragons seemed to kind of decline. But also it's this, Dragons are in many ways the iconic fantasy monster, they're the big enemy, a symbol of fantasy. And I think in some ways the way that the dragons are portrayed and used can tell a bit about the game you're in, but that's just me.
4th edition changed a lot of things, for one thing the vancian magic system was dropped. The vancian system being a setup where you had slots for spells that were expended in casting along with levels of power for different spells. This also meant that dragons no longer used magic, they followed the same format as the other monsters, this was both good and bad. The good was that they were easier to use and required less prep time. But there were two problems that came from this, well I'd almost argue three but some of it is my own bias and not really what I would say a system problem is.
The first problem was that the dragons got very samey, in that while dragons did vary color to color in terms of abilities and tactics one red dragon was more or less identical to another, they did add some stuff in their Dragonomicon supplements but things still felt fairly identical. The issue is that if the fights start feeling similar it's harder to stay engaged in the game and the story. Not to mention that the changes between the dragons in terms of age category (the older dragons get the stronger they get) was really fairly incremental. I understand that that's part of how the system works but it also meant that facing dragons through age categories didn't become inherently more threatening so much as it felt more like they were slightly bigger and maybe hit a bit harder, though once or twice getting a new power.
The second problem was a combination of how the dragons got stronger and again an issue with how monsters were designed. If you get a chance to look through monster manuals, (the first through the third one at least since my group more or less dropped the game before MM4 so I can't speak on it), the monsters at mid paragon tier and up level get craploads of extra effects. Not even attack exactly but constant effects, energy auras, things that kick in when they hit half HP, recharge effects, random reaction powers, their standard stuff, synergy effects, etc. The problem with this for me was that while yes, in theory a fight was easier and faster to prepare and design it took a hell of a lot longer to run and was harder to track. I had to keep reminding myself of how big an aura was so that if a monster moved or if a player did I could figure out if there were going to be things kicking in. I had to watch player positions because some monsters, dragons especially, had things talking about what happens if a player is in one place or another, IE player goes behind dragon, dragon automatically smacks with tail, forcibly moves player, and maybe adds a status effect. It meant that I had a much harder time keeping track of abilities and effects, I had players getting angry with me for not explaining something completely but I was trying to track everything and more than once had to pause or I had missed things that were supposed to happen because I was tracking other stuff. There were a few exceptions, the Cobalt Dragon from the second Dragonomicon was actually fairly tightly designed and also a fun monster as an encounter but sadly it seemed to be an aberration as far as that went.
What makes this funny/enraging to me is that back when I ran 3rd edition I had a much easier time running encounters than I did in 4th. I will concede that some of it was experience but that wasn't it alone and when I thought about it I realized why. When I built an encounter in 3rd edition many times I had either spellcasters or I had monsters that could use magic for high level stuff, and in many cases they started the fight with a lot of their magic already in use. They would cast self buff spells, conjure allies or other things. I could write down what the bonuses were and just mark what each thing was from, if someone could strip the buffs off, fine, if not then the stuff was listed there. What it meant was that while I did have to do a bit more work and take a bit more time designing the encounter it didn't take any longer to run or use in the actual battle. It also helped in other ways, spells are beautifully versatile and I can just play with the spell list a bit to change the feel and flavor in a combat as well as alter how the encounters work. Overall it meant that they could theoretically face 50 clerics of about the same level and each fight could be radically different. I'll wrap this up before I go on a full off topic tear but I'd say that it's a lot better to have to take a bit longer to design an encounter than it is to have to keep halting and pausing because you need to double check effects and interactions.
The third problem, and as I said before this is a personal thing rather than a direct problem in the system, is that dragons were demoted to being just another monster. I'll try to explain that in a way that makes sense, Dragons are supposed to be pretty damn powerful, but more than that, in 3rd edition they were best looked at as a kind of super character class, magic, highest base attack, best saves, along with a plethora of abilities, resistances and immunities. Dragons had a kind of majesty to them, and had enough built in options and versatility that dragons could be as varied as the player characters were, possibly even moreso. Because 4th edition is much more tightly structured the dragons were simply another solo monster, they might have been a bit tougher than the other solo monsters at their tier but they still didn't have the same level of oomph or majesty. I will say that a lot of it comes from the mechanics of the system but I am not going to call it a flaw of the system, more a side effect. I know people might have similar views on certain classes or maybe favorite monsters and while the systems format might make them stronger/weaker/whatever than they think the thing in question should be that's more an area of personal taste than a system hiccup.
The other thing in this, again a part of the system, was that dragons went down more or less the same way any other monster did. Back in the old days, I can't believe I'm saying that at my age, beating a dragon quickly normally was either a result of extreme luck or a lot of careful preparation assuming both sides are competent and the encounter is roughly level appropriate. In terms of luck it might be a series of lucky high damage critical hits, maybe the DM can't roll very well, but it comes down more to the players performing feats far above normal expectations, however this is still pretty good so long as it doesn't cause an anticlimax though plenty of groups might just enjoy it for the amusement factor. Careful preparation is a bit more common, the group tries to figure out what they can about the dragon, the color type indicates elemental strengths and weaknesses, the age helps determine size and power as well as hypothetically how potent the magic it can wield is as well as what sort of weapons or tactics might be needed. The other part of the preparation is using spells and consumable items (potions, scrolls, etc.) before the battle, IE you are also consuming a good chunk of resources to fight said dragon and make yourself really powerful against it. In this case they can probably overpower the dragon as well fairly quickly but they had to put a lot of work and resources into it which again is fairly reasonable. This level of planning is somewhat less necessary for other types of monsters barring things like titans, major demons and such, though they also don't have the full versatility either. Conversely in 4th edition the players can just charge in unprepared and the fight will be the same as against any other creature of about that level, though you can't really do out of combat preparations in 4th edition nor are there really many consumable items and such.
I guess some of this is my little lament about how dragons seemed to kind of decline. But also it's this, Dragons are in many ways the iconic fantasy monster, they're the big enemy, a symbol of fantasy. And I think in some ways the way that the dragons are portrayed and used can tell a bit about the game you're in, but that's just me.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Hitpoints and Damage scaling in 4th edition
Fourth edition had flaws, maybe one of the biggest areas had to do with the problem of hitpoint and damage scaling. I mentioned that one thing that had worked nicely was that the monsters at the early levels of play could threaten players, but likely wouldn’t kill them outright unless they were foolish or very unlucky. I believe in gameplay that early levels are sort of a time for training wheels, when you should be able to learn the abilities of your character and have some room to make rookie mistakes and learn the ropes. Earlier editions of D&D had it where you could die from a single strike from a blade at low levels, while this can heighten tension it also means that a bad initiative roll can wipe out a whole group before they even get to act. Fourth edition fixed this nicely, a decent sized pile of hitpoints at the beginning with a slow fixed amount gained at each level, it also helped equalize encounters since randomly rolled HP could either doom a player or make them practically impregnable depending how long they sat on one side or another of the luck curve for rolls.
While the system worked well in fourth edition it started falling apart after heroic tier, becoming damn near absurd in the epic tier. The problem was twofold on the monster angle, the first was that their hitpoints grew in great leaps and bounds but their damage refused to grow properly with it. This meant that after level 12-14 the fights began to turn into obnoxious slogs. Part of that was also that the amount of damage dealt by the monsters was fairly low compared to what the players had. While I get that this might have been built around the concept that they would deal more damage overall since they could last longer it didn’t really work out that way. I have described the experience as being something closer to trying to peel a really big potato while it occasionally pokes you with a toothpick rather than fighting a dangerous opponent. This made designing and running fights annoying, in many cases the players had functionally won the battle but their opponents were still fairly alive, so I could either simply declare a battle over with there still being a fair amount of creatures on the board or I could run the battle for another half hour. Despite being touted as being faster and more streamlined at higher levels this proved to be false, at least without some kind of aid, I took much longer building and running encounters than I did frequently in third edition.
Fourth edition had managed to mostly rid the game of rocket tag, where monsters and characters would fire off their biggest ability and try to devastate and destroy. This was good in that in theory battles would require more work and thought as well as more teamwork, discouraging lone wolf behavior. Unfortunately what was created in its place might be described as two sumo wrestlers wrapped in pillow armor trying to fight. Battles became annoying at best and frustrating at worst, the only types of monsters that could produce proper levels of damage were solo monsters and those weren’t really meant for constant back to back use. Part of the problem that came with this also is that battles got boring, players weren’t threatened by the monsters and the battles got to be repetitive and the players lost some of the investment. One of my favorite examples from the books is the printed statblock for Orcus, demon prince of the undead. Orcus had well over one thousand hitpoints, however Orcus didn’t really have a whole lot that threatened physically. Yes, he could probably kill at least one character in the party but it wasn’t of the level of threat that one would expect from the mighty demon prince of the undead. They did upgrade him a fair amount in a later published adventure, but in some ways that’s almost worse in that they had to almost entirely rebuild him to make him viable in any ways or means.
The other area where it got weird was that players hitpoints were more stable in increases but only solo monsters were able to take appreciable bites out of their hitpoints and even then it wasn’t always a sure thing. As mentioned before this makes the fights a lot less intense when those involved are able to take dozens or hundreds of hits before going down. While I sort of get the idea that was being pushed, players were supposed to be tougher and battles could last longer as well as more battles occurring during a day, it also gets hard to feel threatened when huge monsters can’t seem to land a reasonable blow on you. Some of the sense of fun in a game comes from there being difficulty, the problem wasn’t so much that the fights were too easy to win but that they were too hard to lose. While they sound similar it’s not really the same, it’s one thing where a fight is balanced somewhat towards the players but still has them at risk where they are likely to win but might end up with one or more characters badly injured or requiring some sort of expenditure of resources. In this version the players were usually able to strike down targets with fairly high speed and ability with relatively little sacrifice, it got worse when there were multiple leaders, IE those who could heal.
What it ultimately boils down to was that both sides had so many hitpoints relative to damage dealt that fights went on past tedium and the players weren’t especially threatened by monsters, not even the larger more potent creatures like dragons. This wasn’t the biggest problem in the game by itself though it was one of the biggest. The problem itself was a piece of what made my group walk away from the game but there’s more coming on that front.
While the system worked well in fourth edition it started falling apart after heroic tier, becoming damn near absurd in the epic tier. The problem was twofold on the monster angle, the first was that their hitpoints grew in great leaps and bounds but their damage refused to grow properly with it. This meant that after level 12-14 the fights began to turn into obnoxious slogs. Part of that was also that the amount of damage dealt by the monsters was fairly low compared to what the players had. While I get that this might have been built around the concept that they would deal more damage overall since they could last longer it didn’t really work out that way. I have described the experience as being something closer to trying to peel a really big potato while it occasionally pokes you with a toothpick rather than fighting a dangerous opponent. This made designing and running fights annoying, in many cases the players had functionally won the battle but their opponents were still fairly alive, so I could either simply declare a battle over with there still being a fair amount of creatures on the board or I could run the battle for another half hour. Despite being touted as being faster and more streamlined at higher levels this proved to be false, at least without some kind of aid, I took much longer building and running encounters than I did frequently in third edition.
Fourth edition had managed to mostly rid the game of rocket tag, where monsters and characters would fire off their biggest ability and try to devastate and destroy. This was good in that in theory battles would require more work and thought as well as more teamwork, discouraging lone wolf behavior. Unfortunately what was created in its place might be described as two sumo wrestlers wrapped in pillow armor trying to fight. Battles became annoying at best and frustrating at worst, the only types of monsters that could produce proper levels of damage were solo monsters and those weren’t really meant for constant back to back use. Part of the problem that came with this also is that battles got boring, players weren’t threatened by the monsters and the battles got to be repetitive and the players lost some of the investment. One of my favorite examples from the books is the printed statblock for Orcus, demon prince of the undead. Orcus had well over one thousand hitpoints, however Orcus didn’t really have a whole lot that threatened physically. Yes, he could probably kill at least one character in the party but it wasn’t of the level of threat that one would expect from the mighty demon prince of the undead. They did upgrade him a fair amount in a later published adventure, but in some ways that’s almost worse in that they had to almost entirely rebuild him to make him viable in any ways or means.
The other area where it got weird was that players hitpoints were more stable in increases but only solo monsters were able to take appreciable bites out of their hitpoints and even then it wasn’t always a sure thing. As mentioned before this makes the fights a lot less intense when those involved are able to take dozens or hundreds of hits before going down. While I sort of get the idea that was being pushed, players were supposed to be tougher and battles could last longer as well as more battles occurring during a day, it also gets hard to feel threatened when huge monsters can’t seem to land a reasonable blow on you. Some of the sense of fun in a game comes from there being difficulty, the problem wasn’t so much that the fights were too easy to win but that they were too hard to lose. While they sound similar it’s not really the same, it’s one thing where a fight is balanced somewhat towards the players but still has them at risk where they are likely to win but might end up with one or more characters badly injured or requiring some sort of expenditure of resources. In this version the players were usually able to strike down targets with fairly high speed and ability with relatively little sacrifice, it got worse when there were multiple leaders, IE those who could heal.
What it ultimately boils down to was that both sides had so many hitpoints relative to damage dealt that fights went on past tedium and the players weren’t especially threatened by monsters, not even the larger more potent creatures like dragons. This wasn’t the biggest problem in the game by itself though it was one of the biggest. The problem itself was a piece of what made my group walk away from the game but there’s more coming on that front.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
4th Editions good points
I’m going to be a bit rough on 4th edition and while plenty of people are likely to agree that it deserves some of the lumps it’s getting it also needs to be pointed out that they actually did do some things very right. Some of them aren’t necessarily ideal for all games but they were improvements or at least worthwhile ideas. I’ll try to cover each of them and explain where I think things went well and where…well where they kind of screwed up. The main point of this though is that because I have seen a lot of examples of people strongly disliking 4th edition the goal here is to provide a kind of counter as well as try to give a more balanced take on what worked and what didn’t and trying to figure out why. Now I stress that pretty much all of this is opinion but I will explain my views as much as I can on each.
One idea that was a major winner in my view was the change they made to hitpoints. Just to clarify hitpoints were an abstraction showing how much damage you could take before you died. In the earlier games you started out small, especially if you were an arcane spellcaster, and in many cases even if you were incredibly hardy one good sword hit could knock you out or even kill you. The main issue I have with this is that it wasn’t a matter of doing something stupid and dying, it was a stray shot killing someone who had just started. It was making a situation where you could easily go through two or three characters in one night at low levels, especially at first through third level. The issue with this is threefold. First, new players were likely to experience a great deal of frustration, losing one character let alone two or more could make them wonder what the point is (and I am mostly using D&D as the example here, I know some games with very fast generation can allow for instant generation and thus death is less an issue). Second is that when starting the game a player is, at least in theory, learning their characters abilities and the rules of the game at low levels the game should have some form of training wheels be it more durability, comparatively fast recovery or something in that nature. Third was simply that it meant that the players weren’t constantly outnumbering each enemy they faced, IE four people to kill an orc or goblin creatures not exactly known for their supreme power.
Greater hitpoints meant that a player could handle attacks from a few more creatures, it also meant that they had time to try to get a handle on their abilities. They could learn about what their class did, what the others in the group were capable of, and figure out how to use abilities together. Part of it was also that hitpoints were gained more slowly, a flat small amount each level rather than wild swings as levels progressed. It made it easier to balance and build encounters on the designers end as well as helping things on the playing end. An encounter could exist where the players were outnumbered and not end with their characters all dead. It also meant that the players could be a bit more daring, stupidity would likely still end up with a dead or badly injured character but now they were unlikely to lose one simply due to one bit of bad luck or a rookie mistake.
The second improvement would be in the reintroduction of the roles system. I say reintroduction because in a lot of ways what they did was simply put in a more codified version of what we had back at the start of the game ‘Fighter, Thief, Magic User, Cleric’ or ‘Defender, Striker, Controller, Leader.’ The role system caught a lot of flack, claiming that it was ‘video gamey’ but the truth is that most games, at least many fantasy ones, run with the idea of a class focused on damage, a class focused on being ‘tough’ a class that heals and probably some skill classes or AoE ones. The concept of roles existed but either weren’t as codified or weren’t set in stone. The role system allowed for a few things, from a design standpoint it helped benchmark class abilities and figure out if something seemed too high or low since they had a clear set of parameters to test it against. From a playing standpoint, well it helped to know what the class was meant to do, in 3rd edition there were classes that I seriously had no bloody clue what they were meant to do because their design felt off, a class with full armor proficiency and full weapon proficiency and yet with the same attack bonus as a primary caster is a class that seems like the designers weren’t really thinking or at least weren’t considering how such a design looked. In some cases a class was made that was interesting but didn’t seem to have a hint as to what it was meant to do or how it worked in a group.
It also did help to avoid a problem that seems to come up frequently with classes that do the hybrid thing or ‘jack of all trades master of none’ schtick. The idea of a jack of all trades kind of class is nice in theory but in practice they will usually run into one of two walls. In one case their abilities are spread too thin to be anything more than middling in any area, if you have to take over for a teammate that falls you can’t really duplicate their skills in that role or you often just find yourself outperformed in everything. The other side of it is when a class is too potent, say 75% ability in a few roles of a base class coupled with synergy and while they might not be as good at X as the class focused on it they’re close enough and bring other things to the table so that the non hybrid ends up being worse in comparison. It can be a tricky balance and it often either falls into over or under power. There is also the fact that it can be hard to objectively determine balance when clear roles aren’t established and many classes can perform multiple roles, in some cases they can do it nearly simultaneously.
I also give them partial credit for making the monsters more interesting, or maybe it’s more accurate to say making the battles work more cleanly. At low levels players could face swarms of enemies, the minion rules and higher starting hitpoints made things like goblins and orcs a threat and it wasn’t a situation where you needed four people to kill one of them. The battles felt more interesting, the players felt stronger and scope of the campaign felt more epic. Also the idea of having monsters in different style categories similar to player roles helped new DMs design encounters and things like Elite and Solo monsters also helped people set up fights with a clearer concept of scale and threat.
They also did manage to make good on the promise of greatly reducing dependency on magic items. Bonuses to hit and damage and various things provided by items were often less important than player abilities and powers and I actually think that this was a fairly good thing. That being said, the changes did help make it so that you were no longer a set of items wearing a character for some of the classes, now the magic items while useful were no longer the defining characteristics.
In later posts I will point out flaws and issues and why my group walked away from 4th. Some of their initial plans went haywire and some things went wonky, but at the very least 4th edition did some good things and I feel they should be mentioned first.
One idea that was a major winner in my view was the change they made to hitpoints. Just to clarify hitpoints were an abstraction showing how much damage you could take before you died. In the earlier games you started out small, especially if you were an arcane spellcaster, and in many cases even if you were incredibly hardy one good sword hit could knock you out or even kill you. The main issue I have with this is that it wasn’t a matter of doing something stupid and dying, it was a stray shot killing someone who had just started. It was making a situation where you could easily go through two or three characters in one night at low levels, especially at first through third level. The issue with this is threefold. First, new players were likely to experience a great deal of frustration, losing one character let alone two or more could make them wonder what the point is (and I am mostly using D&D as the example here, I know some games with very fast generation can allow for instant generation and thus death is less an issue). Second is that when starting the game a player is, at least in theory, learning their characters abilities and the rules of the game at low levels the game should have some form of training wheels be it more durability, comparatively fast recovery or something in that nature. Third was simply that it meant that the players weren’t constantly outnumbering each enemy they faced, IE four people to kill an orc or goblin creatures not exactly known for their supreme power.
Greater hitpoints meant that a player could handle attacks from a few more creatures, it also meant that they had time to try to get a handle on their abilities. They could learn about what their class did, what the others in the group were capable of, and figure out how to use abilities together. Part of it was also that hitpoints were gained more slowly, a flat small amount each level rather than wild swings as levels progressed. It made it easier to balance and build encounters on the designers end as well as helping things on the playing end. An encounter could exist where the players were outnumbered and not end with their characters all dead. It also meant that the players could be a bit more daring, stupidity would likely still end up with a dead or badly injured character but now they were unlikely to lose one simply due to one bit of bad luck or a rookie mistake.
The second improvement would be in the reintroduction of the roles system. I say reintroduction because in a lot of ways what they did was simply put in a more codified version of what we had back at the start of the game ‘Fighter, Thief, Magic User, Cleric’ or ‘Defender, Striker, Controller, Leader.’ The role system caught a lot of flack, claiming that it was ‘video gamey’ but the truth is that most games, at least many fantasy ones, run with the idea of a class focused on damage, a class focused on being ‘tough’ a class that heals and probably some skill classes or AoE ones. The concept of roles existed but either weren’t as codified or weren’t set in stone. The role system allowed for a few things, from a design standpoint it helped benchmark class abilities and figure out if something seemed too high or low since they had a clear set of parameters to test it against. From a playing standpoint, well it helped to know what the class was meant to do, in 3rd edition there were classes that I seriously had no bloody clue what they were meant to do because their design felt off, a class with full armor proficiency and full weapon proficiency and yet with the same attack bonus as a primary caster is a class that seems like the designers weren’t really thinking or at least weren’t considering how such a design looked. In some cases a class was made that was interesting but didn’t seem to have a hint as to what it was meant to do or how it worked in a group.
It also did help to avoid a problem that seems to come up frequently with classes that do the hybrid thing or ‘jack of all trades master of none’ schtick. The idea of a jack of all trades kind of class is nice in theory but in practice they will usually run into one of two walls. In one case their abilities are spread too thin to be anything more than middling in any area, if you have to take over for a teammate that falls you can’t really duplicate their skills in that role or you often just find yourself outperformed in everything. The other side of it is when a class is too potent, say 75% ability in a few roles of a base class coupled with synergy and while they might not be as good at X as the class focused on it they’re close enough and bring other things to the table so that the non hybrid ends up being worse in comparison. It can be a tricky balance and it often either falls into over or under power. There is also the fact that it can be hard to objectively determine balance when clear roles aren’t established and many classes can perform multiple roles, in some cases they can do it nearly simultaneously.
I also give them partial credit for making the monsters more interesting, or maybe it’s more accurate to say making the battles work more cleanly. At low levels players could face swarms of enemies, the minion rules and higher starting hitpoints made things like goblins and orcs a threat and it wasn’t a situation where you needed four people to kill one of them. The battles felt more interesting, the players felt stronger and scope of the campaign felt more epic. Also the idea of having monsters in different style categories similar to player roles helped new DMs design encounters and things like Elite and Solo monsters also helped people set up fights with a clearer concept of scale and threat.
They also did manage to make good on the promise of greatly reducing dependency on magic items. Bonuses to hit and damage and various things provided by items were often less important than player abilities and powers and I actually think that this was a fairly good thing. That being said, the changes did help make it so that you were no longer a set of items wearing a character for some of the classes, now the magic items while useful were no longer the defining characteristics.
In later posts I will point out flaws and issues and why my group walked away from 4th. Some of their initial plans went haywire and some things went wonky, but at the very least 4th edition did some good things and I feel they should be mentioned first.
To 4th Edition
I'm going to be taking a break from Deadlands for a while, I intend to focus on D&D in its various iterations. My plan is to begin with 4th edition, both because it's the current one and also because frankly it's a fairly divisive edition and I want to offer thoughts on both sides of it. Now I will begin by saying that while I have played it my group does not use it any more. The reasons will be explained later, that being said, I do not think it is a BAD system per se but that its format does not work for me or my players in many respects. I will go into further detail in the future, hope you all enjoy it however many are reading it.
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