Comments on the 4th Ed fact thread

[Strahdsbuddy]

If you're looking at systems specifically, then these ones might work (but they are barebones systems and you must provide all the fluff)

GURPS
Rolemaster
Tristat dX


(dis?)honorable mention: RIFTS. Claims to be a universal system but you'll have to do a lot of trimming to get it working.

Concur on Rifts, having tried palladium's Heroes Unlimited back in the day, it seemed like a lot of rules for not a lot of benefit. For a combat-oriented game, combat was painfully slow.

Regarding barebones, the reason I like the DnD offerings for something like Ravenloft is the frame of reference. I know what a powerful necromancer-vampire is supposed to look like, so when I'm creating my own NPCs I can look quickly to make sure I haven't out-Strahded Strahd and that things are balanced. How do I know what the stats are supposed to tell me out of context, like in GURPS? It is like reading a cricket linescore; full of information, but meaningless to a newbie.

[alhoon]

Alhoon, coming from you, this speaks volumes about the system. As recently as last summer you were still telling me it was more than WoW meets Pen-n-paper.

UPDATE: To put things in perspective: We keep playing "Keep on the Shadowfell". I've never read that adventure so I can enjoy it with another DM.
We played for 5 hours, I have a mage, VAN has a thief.

What I feel:
- A mild frustration (They handed us our butts again on a plate). Not a fault of the system. We the players made a few serious tactical mistakes in the encounters we played.
- Contentment. Like what you feel after a nice meal with family or friends.
- Relaxed. OK, we got our butts handed to us again, but now that we drugged the bluddy remains of our butts out to safety it feels... like watching the morning sun after a night out. (No we haven't finished it. We haven't even finished the first floor)
- Expectant. I just got a lvl and I want desperately to try my new per encounter power on bad goblins. We will play tomorrow and basically I'm just passing time till "tomorrow" becomes "today".
- Impressed. The goblins have a lot of tricks in their lair. Each room is a new trick or trap. Our DM said he has added a few tricks & traps but he said that many/most are in the adventure and that prompted him to add more defenses.

What I don't feel:
- Tired. I could go on playing. 4E in it's simplicity is very streamlined and with a program to do all the calculations for you for hit roll, damage etc it's very easy on the mind.
- The feeling of a "job well done". That has nothing to do with the game system but more with the fact that we packed and left to lick our wounds.

To sum up: The combo of streamlined (even if unrealistic) rules and computer aid helped us have the same deal of RP in 4 hours that we would have in 5-6 hours or more of 3rd edition. And a 3rd edition 2nd lvl wizard would do far, far less in so many rounds.

PS. No spoilers about the adventure please.

[HuManBing]

Or... you can visit your game store, pull down the sourcebooks of five or six gaming systems, and compare them for yourself. Standard free market practice: if the supplier doesn't meet your specifications, go back to the marketplace and look for another provider who makes a product you DO like.

Which is a little like comparing cars on a lot. You get an idea and impression, but not much else.

Depends on how much research you do. If you just flip down the list of ads and then pick one and say "I'll buy that one" then yes, you're going to be screwed because you made a purchase without doing enough research. In my opinion, you would also have richly deserved it.

But if you sit down, make a list of the things you want your system to do for you, and then compare that table against all systems you can find in the store, then you will walk out with a system that's closer to what you need. You might even get lucky like me and find one that does everything you wanted (and then throws in a little extra which I didn't even realize I wanted until I read about it).


Either way, it's better than just sticking with something unworkable just because it's familiar. To continue your car analogy, that would be similar to driving one single car your entire life, and patching it up every time something breaks, while telling yourself "this is the only car available for my use in the entire world". You end up with a car that doesn't really work very well and gets pretty tedious to keep patching.

And I say that as somebody who did exactly that for a long time: I stuck with DnD 3.5 buying every last supplement, convinced that this next book would contain the rules I needed to make the game finally work the way I wanted it to. Never happened. By the end, there were so many house rule patches that the number of exceptions outweighed the number of rules we used. Time to find something else...


For what it's worth, I did record the thought process behind me choosing GURPS. It's here. I used to have the table of comparisons that I drew up while sitting in the gaming store, but that was almost three years ago and the actual piece of paper it's on has been long lost to entropy.

(Of course, if DnD is working for you then this entire discussion is purely academic.)

[alhoon]

I find it rewarding to make my own changes for gamebrew campaigns. Like creating the classes or the magic system from the roots up etc. I like that part. Sure, it takes a lot of time and thought but since I enjoy myself, I don't mind.

[HuManBing]

I do too!

The main difference I find is that a universal game system actively helps you do that, by design.

Conceptually speaking, every universal game system must provide GMs with a "toolkit" of rules that they can tweak and select from to make their game flavor the way they want it.

If you look at my Ravenloft in GURPS thread, tweaking is pretty much all I do. "I don't like this rule, so I'll set it aside" "I like that rule - I'm going with that".

The difference is, DnD was more or less conceived to work as a unified whole. The designers already defined the classes for you, they hooked up all the class powers, and then you have to just trust in their vision that they've balanced the classes out for you. Anybody who remembers the "CODzilla" days of 3rd edition knows this did not work. Whenever I decided to restructure some DnD rules, such as making armor into DR rather than a deflection bonus, it meant that I had to rewrite rules for damage and weapons as well.

GURPS, TriStat, and Rolemaster all present you with a huge array of modular rulesets for you to pick and choose from. You can flat-out ignore a given area of rules if it's not to your liking, without collapsing the other portions of the rules.

[alhoon]

I should point out that d20 rules come up with increadible versatility, more so than WoD, which is the only other system I've tampered with.

As for DR for armor, check unearthed arcana and Conan d20. I'm pretty sure there are more d20 products that do just that.

PS. what do you mean "CODzila"?

[HuManBing]

Yeah, the WOD rules are not particularly good. I gather they have even more house-rules generally than d20 rules do. WOD does a pretty good job of having rules that stay out of the way of storytelling, so you can go into descriptions without having to explain around the dice rolls.

d20's rules do allow for some tinkering, but like I said, universal rules systems are the ultimate in user moddability. It's gotten to the point where I like tinkering with rules so much that I flat out will not return to d20 until they make it more universal. Which, given the amount of legacy vestigial rules they have lying around in the system, I'm not confident will happen any time soon, if ever.

Agreed on Unearthed Arcana. I actually reference that book in another thread when they're talking about bullets vs. armor.

"CODzilla" was a term used on the Wizards forums during 3rd ed. to describe the overpowered Clerics Or Druids (COD). One of the druids' main issues was their ability to shapechange and retain all their powers while still in that form. Clerics' spells are much more flexible than wizards', they don't have to forego armor, they can use a lot more weapons than wizards can, and they can select some slots to "burn" spell slots to cast specific spells without even praying for them.

[alhoon]

Actually it was the "or" that confused me. When you mentioned "overpowered" and "3rd edition" my mind immediately jumped to: Cleric, Druid.

PS. As far as clerics go in 3rd, their main issue was armor IMO and that they could become better warriors than fighters at 7th lvl given 2-3 rounds to prepare. They're spells as far as power go weren't better than wizard spells and at 7th lvl and beyond, you hardly had any spells to choose from; they were few and specialized.
About druids, let's not forget those armors that with a +3 enchantment bonus would be usable in animal form. So you got a hide+2, changing for 25K at say 10th lvl and your tiger/treant form had an extra 5 armor.

[alhoon]

I'll slowly make a 4th edition Ravenloft adventure for QtR. Partly because I want to explore Ravenloft under that system and partly because of... skill challenges.

[alhoon]

NEVER FORGET

5th seems good so far. I won't be hyped up again for a fall though.

[starfalconkd]

Amen, brother! Preach on!

[HuManBing]

NEVER FORGET

5th seems good so far. I won't be hyped up again for a fall though.

Wise words, though. I wish the 5th edition design team well and hope their fans love their work.

[alhoon]

March 6 2008

Endpoint I can't wait 8 more years for the 5th edition! It will be the best thing ever in D&D.

So funny now... but I still hope 5th would be the best.

[alhoon]

Stealing things from 4E

OK, 4E seems to be phasing out fast. In D&D next there are so far few things that resemble 4E.

But for all of it's many faults, 4E also had some cool stuff that I liked and that I plan to steal in anycase for the game system I'll use be it 3E or 5E.

Skill challenges:
Simply the best addition to the game by 4E IMO. Detailed rules about skill challenges, rewards and all. OK, it seems that they won't return in 5E. But the rules can easily be translated and in some cases... improved.

Primary and secondary skills: You use Primary skills to advance in the challenge and gather the successes. You use secondary skills to snatch a success here and there or gain bonuses.

Numbers of Successes vs Numbers of Failure: 3 Failures seems fine to me and that's what's used in 4E (and SWars Saga). For large skill challenges it can be increased to make the challenge easier or there can be skill checks that "nullify" a failure.
Now the number of successes, is something of statistics. The more successes required the harder the challenge. Since you can use "aid another" in many cases and secondary skills to improve odds of success, the CRating or level-equivalent of the challenge doesn't need to increase with successes required; It just counts as more enemies XP-wise. I.e. A challenge that needs 9S before 3Failures could be equivalent to 3 enemies of that level.

DCs: The DCs should be such that on average the PCs succeed on a check with a roll of 6 or 7 when you want them to succeed like 2 out of 3 times (Assuming 9S vs 3F).

Cost of Failure: Sometimes even a single failure comes with penalties even if the challenge isn't lost. For example the "lost in wilderness" check where the PCs try to get back to civilization a failure costs the PCs Healing Surges.

At will powers: For those of us that like to play wizards, low levels are kinda tricky. You have like 5 spells for the whole day and you'll see like 20 rounds of combat. Sure you can do 1d3 damage to the ogre by throwing rocks or acid blast but that's not really worth it.
In 4E the wizard had some kinda-usefull spells that could be used at will. Not as good as encounter spells etc, but still better than throwing rocks etc.
A feat that allows the wizard to "lock" one attacking spell of 0, 1st or 2nd lvl spell as at-will can be implimented in any system (along with a list of legit spells; not all spells should be spamable).

Damage for "unconventional" attacks and actions of the PCs:
Another very handy trick of 4E. The thief actually cuts the rope holding the chandelier so it crashes on the bad baron's bodyguard. How much damage it does? The fighter overturns the big brass brazier so that it falls on the ogre, coals and all. How much damage it does?
4E had a nice table about that. Not the most realistic thing, but it depended on level.
The Idea behind the table was "on par with a per-encounter attacks of a monster of this level" which made sense.
So... here's the answer for all systems: On par with the damage/effects of a monster's attack that's a challenge for the PCs or a PC power of that level.
Is the rogue that throws the chandelier 5th lvl in 3e? The Chandelier is a "reflex or negate" for the Bad bodyguard DC average for 5CR attacks (like 16-17) and it could deal 3d6+6 damage (i.e about as much as the sneak attack of the rogue would do/equivanent of "per encounter" power).
Is the fighter that overturns the big brass brazier a 4th lvl fighter in AD&D 2nd edition? The attack could deal 2d4+5 damage (I.e. as much as a minotaur's charge), save vs dragon breath (or wands) for 1/2 damage.

[Jester of the FoS]

I've been re-reading this thread to remind me of the past and see how my thoughts and opinions changed and grew and how predictions bore out.

I found this interesting:

Of course, the problem with this is there wouldn't have been enough products for WotC's insistent book-a-month schedule. That alone probably shaved a couple years off 3E's lifespan as regular books of declining quality (as the A-talent, and even likely the B-talent, moved to developing 4E) meant sliding sales which further pushed the 'necessity' of 4E to boost sales.

I'm a little hopefully (although probably naively so) that 4E will correct this vicious cycle. Fewer products of better quality released less often would probably yield better total sale numbers. People would save-up and anticipate the new books and with less filler and more usable material more people would be interested in the books. And books covering less-specific and more broad topics (new classes and races with new feats, options for old) will appeal to larger audiences. A PHB2 is a much more interesting book than any single Complete X book.

Nope. They went the opposite route and continued the book-a-month and doubled down on books that covered more-specific and less broad topics, mostly with options for new characters.