D&D 4E Rambling thoughts about D&D 4th Edition

[Neonchameleon]

I want to run a group through “Keep in the Shadowfell”, but with a better team than the pregens.

I’m thinking, Warlord, Fighter, Paladin, Warlock, and Wizard, with each PC optimized (at least three of them with a “20” in their main stats). You know, an actual “4e” party.

Please don't. Keep on the Shadowfell is a fine module ... until you reach the keep. When it's all just fights in largely featureless rooms; I think there are 17 of them inside the Keep with 14 being basically featureless environments. The best thing you can do to rescue that module is drop a large asteroid on the keep (although the parts before the keep with Irontooth) are fine.

I genuinely think that the module being so bad was more of a problem for 4e than the PHB and MM being released undercooked.

 

[Red Castle]

Please don't. Keep on the Shadowfell is a fine module ... until you reach the keep. When it's all just fights in largely featureless rooms; I think there are 17 of them inside the Keep with 14 being basically featureless environments. The best thing you can do to rescue that module is drop a large asteroid on the keep (although the parts before the keep with Irontooth) are fine.

I genuinely think that the module being so bad was more of a problem for 4e than the PHB and MM being released undercooked.

I suspect that since Keep on the Shadowfell was the first module release, even before the PHB if I recall, it’s one pf the reason why a part of the community thought that 4e was just about combat… if it would have been my introduction to the edition, I could have felt this way too… luckily, we never run premade adventure in our group.

 

[cavalier973]

I have heard the claim that 4e is a nice tactical miniatures game, if one liked that sort of thing, but it isn’t a role playing game.

I will direct everyone’s attention to Matthew Colville’s “Dusk” campaign, available free of charge on YouTube. The players all chose non-humans for their characters, and their (eventual) mission was to guide a group of human migrants through a haunted wood. The players engaged in a lot of role play, as their characters were trying to understand why the humans were acting the way they were. I’m thinking of a scene where some of the humans absolutely refused to leave behind some heirloom furniture, so the PCs had a quick battle, slaughtering the recalcitrant members, and the rest of the humans fell in line. Great fun, and it only took three rounds of combat!

Wait, that’s not what happened, at all. The Eladrin (reskinned as a being that was peculiar to Colville’s campaign world) took the time to listen to the humans, and figured out a way to persuade them to leave the furniture behind.

One of the NPCs was a little girl that took to the goliath PC, and the player became emotionally attached to this fake person.

Even the combat brought out themes and elements of the campaign world. The Dragonborn barbarian was part of the Imperial army, and so was the one PCs that the NPC humans automatically trusted. When he showed off his combat prowess against some spiders (I think) the humans fawned over him as a magnificent hero. Matt described them as seeing for the first time what one of the emperor’s elite troops was capable of doing.

The players were invested in the survival of their wards, even though the humans could be a pain a lot of the time. I see that as role playing.

 

[Red Castle]

Of all the criticism of 4e, the one saying that there is no roleplay or that you can’t roleplay is the one that I’ll never get…

You can roleplay just as much as you can in any other editions! All the rules you need are there, it’s not because 4e has more extensive rules about combat that suddenly the rules for roleplay disappeared, they are still there! heck, you don’t even really need rules for roleplay… just some common sense is needed! In all my time DMing 4e, I have yet to come across a situation in a roleplay environment that I don’t know how to deal with, and I made entire sessions without any fight…

Having no roleplay in 4e is a problem coming from the table, not the game.

 

[Imaro]

I genuinely think that the module being so bad was more of a problem for 4e than the PHB and MM being released undercooked.

I think some of it was this but also 4e not being explicit about it no longer supporting an attrition mode of play.

You had DM's that had played like this across numerous editions but when 4e is played in a similar fashion with its much longer combats (made even longer by the fact that it was new) It becomes a slog where combat is going to eat up the vast majority of the average person's 3-4 hours of play.

 

[Mannahnin]

I think some of it was this but also 4e not being explicit about it no longer supporting an attrition mode of play.

You had DM's that had played like this across numerous editions but when 4e is played in a similar fashion with its much longer combats (made even longer by the fact that it was new) It becomes a slog where combat is going to eat up the vast majority of the average person's 3-4 hours of play.

How do you mean doesn't support attrition? It's a bit of a different form of attrition, but Healing Surges still give you a fairly hard limit on how much adventuring you can do in a day. And once you're out of Daily powers that also normally gives you some pause and makes encounters harder and longer, which discourages pushing on until you hit the harder healing surge limit.

4E has a bit more of an attrition limit than 3.x does once people discover (and assuming they choose to use) wands of CLW (or that other spell which gave a guaranteed 11 points over 11 rounds at 1st level).

I do agree that 4E combats will tend to suck up a lot of time if you let them. Though this can be adjusted for by changing the long rest rules. Similar to how 5E combats tend to eat up a lot of time if you follow the 6-8 encounters per adventuring day guideline, and how 1-2 random encounters in a day of overland travel tend to be meaningless unless you adjust the resting rules to make long rests take longer or only be available in town.

 

[Imaro]

How do you mean doesn't support attrition? It's a bit of a different form of attrition, but Healing Surges still give you a fairly hard limit on how much adventuring you can do in a day. And once you're out of Daily powers that also normally gives you some pause and makes encounters harder and longer, which discourages pushing on until you hit the harder healing surge limit.

4E has a bit more of an attrition limit than 3.x does once people discover (and assuming they choose to use) wands of CLW (or that other spell which gave a guaranteed 11 points over 11 rounds at 1st level).

I do agree that 4E combats will tend to suck up a lot of time if you let them. Though this can be adjusted for by changing the long rest rules. Similar to how 5E combats tend to eat up a lot of time if you follow the 6-8 encounters per adventuring day guideline, and how 1-2 random encounters in a day of overland travel tend to be meaningless unless you adjust the resting rules to make long rests take longer or only be available in town.

Where I think attrition isn't well supported in 4e is in the length of real time (at least for me and my group) that running a relatively unimportant combat takes. On top of that my experience was also that 4e was a more difficult edition to play in a TotM style so there was also map and mini setup even for fairly simple fights... all of this again led to a larger chunk of play time being eaten up by combat.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I have heard the claim that 4e is a nice tactical miniatures game, if one liked that sort of thing, but it isn’t a role playing game.

...

The players were invested in the survival of their wards, even though the humans could be a pain a lot of the time. I see that as role playing.

Honestly I find 4e the best edition for roleplaying. First you roleplay in combat - and the abilities support the type of character you are. But more importantly the 4e skill system is clean and understandable (5e is little different) but unlike 5e you have a solid tool (after about three iterations) for handling absurd PC plans, and unlike other D&D editions there isn't much magic that renders challenges simply irrelevant.

I think some of it was this but also 4e not being explicit about it no longer supporting an attrition mode of play.

You're replying to someone who in different campaigns had an invoker and a warlock tank because the front liners were out of healing surges. The idea attrition style wasn't supported is simply wrong. (Indeed with everyone having dailies and with no Wands of Cure Light Wounds attrition is probably better supported than it was by 3.X with skilled players).

You had DM's that had played like this across numerous editions but when 4e is played in a similar fashion with its much longer combats (made even longer by the fact that it was new) It becomes a slog where combat is going to eat up the vast majority of the average person's 3-4 hours of play.

Which means that the 3.X players were playing as if it was 2e or even 1e rather than pushing 3.X - or were playing at very low level.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Where I think attrition isn't well supported in 4e is in the length of real time (at least for me and my group) that running a relatively unimportant combat takes. On top of that my experience was also that 4e was a more difficult edition to play in a TotM style so there was also map and mini setup even for fairly simple fights... all of this again led to a larger chunk of play time being eaten up by combat.

Ah, because I'd say that "low importance combat" is badly supported - but it is far from the only thing that causes attrition. And it is also the sort of combat that Wands of Cure Light Wounds render irrelevant in 3.X

 

[Mannahnin]

Where I think attrition isn't well supported in 4e is in the length of real time (at least for me and my group) that running a relatively unimportant combat takes.

Oh, sure, like 5E, but with more tactics involved. Though the length can be tweaked with hacks like reducing monster HP and increasing monster damage.

On top of that my experience was also that 4e was a more difficult edition to play in a TotM style so there was also map and mini setup even for fairly simple fights... all of this again led to a larger chunk of play time being eaten up by combat.

Definitely true of being even more linked to a battlemat than 3.5 was. But we got pretty efficient with those.