D&D 4th Edition [Archive] - Relicnews Forums

Taneru

27th Jan 09, 3:23 PM

Bah! Gnoll-haters can piss off, for all I care. Gnolls are awesome. :)

Having played both 3e and 4e, I have to say at this point I'm divided between the two.

3e has far more material availiable(for obvious reasons), so I found that there's more freedom in what you can do. There are books angled towards specific classes and/or themes, so if you wanted some additional options for say a martial class like a fighter, you can delve into the Complete Warrior for feats and such.

4e, on the other hand, hasn't been out for too long, so there's not as much to choose from. However, I do like some of the changes they made. Clerics not longer feel like 'Cure Light Wounds' vending machines, and as for Wizards, there's no more completely running out of spells in the middle of the battle. I've been playing a 4e Rogue for a while now, and I'm really enjoying it. It's not totally focused on sneaking around unseen anymore, at least not to the extent where the rest of the party is more of a burden than help. It's really all about gaining combat advantage over your foe so you can deal your sneak attack damage, and flanking an enemy with another party member is one of the easier ways do get it.

There are some who say that 4e is more like an MMO than a standard PnP RPGs, and I have to say..... I'm not really seeing it. This may be because I tend to play games like Neverwinter Nights that are pretty much tabletop games ported onto a computer, but they're all still games aren't they?

Surrealitycheck

27th Jan 09, 3:30 PM

There are some who say that 4e is more like an MMO than a standard PnP RPGs, and I have to say..... I'm not really seeing it. This may be because I tend to play games like Neverwinter Nights that are pretty much tabletop games ported onto a computer, but they're all still games aren't they?

I think they are referring to the active ability system. I personally think that 4e is light years ahead of 3rd ed mechanically, which was basically a joke as far as I was concerned. Once it gets the extra rulebooks and material it should be good. The only real problem for me is the major background change, but such is life.

Lomax

27th Jan 09, 3:53 PM

Also, what do you mean when you say "narrative?" I'd heard that combat was more streamlined in 4th edition, which seems like it would be less interesting, but what does this have to do with storytelling?
With narrative I mean for example that they switched from powers and magic you can use exactly so and so often in so many hours to powers and magic you can use once per encounter, once per session, and so on.

D&D was always a very stats heavy game, and it seems like they tried to move a bit away from that. But most D&D players I know play D&D exactly because it is stats heavy.

Langy

27th Jan 09, 3:56 PM

So, whats the changes in this edition?

Everything. It's a completely different game, with a different focus. Personally, I don't care for the changes - D&D 4E focuses way too heavily on combat, combat, combat for me, even more so than earlier editions. Personally, I've almost entirely switched over to playing GURPS, but I've still got a 3.5E game going. I don't think I could be convinced to actually play a 4E game, at least not for a very long while.

EDIT: Personally, I think the game changes made it worse for narrative - instead of defining things in terms of, say, feet or minutes things are defined in terms of 'squares' and 'encounters'. It puts everything in game terms - 4E feels a lot more like a video game like, say, WoW, than a RPG.

Surrealitycheck

27th Jan 09, 3:59 PM

Everything. It's a completely different game, with a different focus. Personally, I don't care for the changes - D&D 4E focuses way too heavily on combat, combat, combat for me, even more so than earlier editions. Personally, I've almost entirely switched over to playing GURPS, but I've still got a 3.5E game going. I don't think I could be convinced to actually play a 4E game, at least not for a very long while.

I don't see how this really follows. It has more interesting and nuanced combat (which can surely only be a good thing) and the stuff outside of combat... well, let's be honest, it was almost entirely up to your DM anyway - and you can steal any good 3.5E mechanics you like!

Langy

27th Jan 09, 4:05 PM

If I need to steal mechanics from another game because the game I've got only has mechanics for combat (or at least primarily for combat) then the focus is too much on combat. You can barely run a non-combat game in D&D 4E; in a game like GURPS you can have an entire campaign without a single hint of combat and it'll still have just as much adventure and fun as a game filled with baddies.

Paladin

27th Jan 09, 4:12 PM

I think the idea was to focus on combat, because outside of combat you don't need mechanical rules. Just roleplay.

I still wish they'd stayed with a more Tome of Battle style ability system than going purely to per encounter, per session etc.

Taneru

27th Jan 09, 4:18 PM

You can barely run a non-combat game in D&D 4E.

I fail to see how you can't run a non-combat game in 4e like you did in previous editions.
What exactly is missing? Sure, the skill list is shorter, but it still covers what's needed.

SquidDNA

27th Jan 09, 4:24 PM

Paladin what about knowledge checks?

Dooks Dizzo

27th Jan 09, 5:36 PM

I gota big kick out of 4th. honestly though I have to say it is absolutly a matter of personal taste.

Combat is signifigantly streamlined which I dug.

The non-combat scenario system for 4th edition is awesome to me. You can really do some cool things with a tiny bit of creativity.

Paladin

27th Jan 09, 6:55 PM

Squid: I was never really a fan of rollplaying things like knowledge checks. Just leave it up to GM judgement IMO.

Mokino

27th Jan 09, 7:00 PM

4e's basically overhauled the combat system of D&D completely but has cut a lot of the roleplaying tools at the same time. It's much easier to set up a game in, but if you stick to the core ruleset, you'll be doing a more combat-focused game.

Black

27th Jan 09, 7:07 PM

Roleplaying is better when there are less rules, not more. Why do you want rules for roleplaying?

4e is excellent. It makes combat fun, and it makes roleplaying more freeform. Win/win.

Langy

27th Jan 09, 8:29 PM

I don't neccessarily want rules for roleplaying. I want rules for non-combat based stuff, like climbing cliffs, capturing and interrogating prisoners, analyzing an enemy's battle plan, etc. Rules for trade caravans, hiking and mount speeds over long distances and different terrain, etc. could allow for a very interesting game of trading and economics without any involvement of combat.

Then again, I don't particularly like generic fantasy settings anyways - I much prefer modern and sci-fi settings, myself. I also find the whole concept of 'levels' and 'classes' retarded. Hit points aren't much better.

Taneru

27th Jan 09, 9:59 PM

, like climbing cliffs
Atheletics skill would work fine here, wouldn't it?

capturing and interrogating prisoners
Intimidate and Diplomacy are still in there. Not to mention you can choose to either kill a creature or knock it out when you drop it to zero hit points.

analyzing an enemy's battle plan,
Pretty vague there, but I think Insight would fit well here.

Rules for trade caravans, hiking and mount speeds over long distances and different terrain,
I'm not sure what you mean by rules for trade caravans, but for the others, there ARE rules for them in both the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Player's Handbook.

As for your personal views, I do agree that the level and class stuff is a bit restrictive and unwieldy. I experimented a while back with the Classic Battletech RPG system, which was much different from anything I'd played before. In that, backstory was integrated into character creation, so you develop you character's history as you build them.

Bleh...I'm finding it hard to explain right now, as it's pretty late over here.

Locutus

27th Jan 09, 11:06 PM

My main beef with 4e is that it has dramatically reduced variety in the game. Having played a few sessions of 4e, I would say that there is indeed a strong degree of "sameness" between classes. The list of powers each class has is mostly composed of "pick one of these special abilities + do some damage" and there isn't nearly as much opportunity to be clever with spells, or have fun tricks & synergies with melee characters.

Combat, though streamlined, actually seems to take longer in 4e. Combat might last dozens of rounds, whereas it would be over quickly in 3.5, with combat actually going fairly fast with skilled players.

Radical

28th Jan 09, 12:17 AM

No way am I buying another set of books only for them to collect dust but it's good to hear that they simplified the thing - the endless book keeping annoyed the hell out of me.

Zir

28th Jan 09, 2:08 AM

I prefer 4E. 3E is an aimless hairball of ambiguous rules and I just cannot go back to it. 4E is a lot more gamey, but I much prefer games to telling campfire stories anyway. True roleplayers shouldn't need an obtuse ruleset to vindicate their preferred way of playing. 4E is much more polished, and each new rulebook feels like a class release in your favourite MMO, with well defined and balanced abilities.

The pillaging of WoW is terrible though.

Dyntheos

28th Jan 09, 3:46 AM

4th completely new game with D@D stamped on the books. Played it for a while and we are reverting to 3.5. Screams money making sink hole, having to buy addition players handbooks and whatnot for "Core" classes feats etc offered in 3.5

very disappointed in the direction they took it. battles believe it or not are longer. It's like an RTS where you know you've won halfway through the battle but you still have to kill each and every unit and building to claim victory.

meh.

WingedKagouti

28th Jan 09, 4:08 AM

For classic dungeon crawling, D&D 4E seems more polished than 3E, with (among other things) low level wizards that aren't completely useless after 1 round of combat. But it's still still far behind the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy line. The rest of GURPS does any kind of campaign you could want to run, such as rabbits trying to chase a fox away, kids trying to uncover the secret of a haunted house, high kicking martial artists fighting mythological monsters, a SWAT team trying to stop a terrorist attack, giant mecha space opera or even having the players try to annihilate the Earth as unfathomable Lovecraftian entities.

Of course, the smarter DMs/GMs (and players) will realise that they can utilise other systems than their main one for ideas on how to shape their game. Blind adherence to a single system will lead to everything becomming stale. Even if the company behind it tries to pump out new material every week.

Radical

28th Jan 09, 4:22 AM

4th completely new game with D@D stamped on the books. Played it for a while and we are reverting to 3.5. Screams money making sink hole, having to buy addition players handbooks and whatnot for "Core" classes feats etc offered in 3.5

Really? I thought the entire franchise was always a money making sinkhole, considering how many books and modules 3 and 3.5 had.

SquidDNA

28th Jan 09, 5:14 AM

Black the very reason that DnD exists at all is to stop the sort of "well I'm just going to roleplay someone who wins in every situation / nuh uh your bullets bounce off of my invisible force shield and hit you in the eye" bullshit that people can and will do. It's to turn roleplaying into a, you know, game.

Paladin

28th Jan 09, 5:21 AM

Squid: Note that that mostly happens in combat. Which is why combat rules are necessary. However, ultimately, you don't need rules, you just need a referee.

Giant Moth

28th Jan 09, 5:37 AM

I've been playing two different sorts of campaign for 4th edition since it came out. The first was a regular sword and sorcery high adventure. It worked out pretty well, storyline and plot kept where it's fitting and apropriate, trudging through dungeons and evil lairs. Basically a standard campaign, as the game was created to be played.

The 2nd campaign was a lot more rp heavy, politically and intrigue focused campaign. The system didn't fit very well for that. Not that roleplaying needs that many rules to work, but there are certainly rules, tools and systems that goes a long way helping with the creativity of the players. A classless system would go a long way to help due to players not feeling too constrained by picking just exactly what they are and what they can do, as would even the more choice-heavy prestige class system of 3rd edition help with.

4th edition has a lot of fun and involving rules, but many of the points of the system doesn't help to make it realistic, and some outright destroy the fun. Hit points for example are all regained after one nights of rest. Disregard that slash from the dragon that sent your guts out, all is well after a nights sleep. Balance can also be an issue, and I don't mean in the bad way.
The game expects you to run by their rules of balancing, and none others. Drop a monster one or two levels higher in a fight and the fight can become rediculously hard. Instead, the game offers two extra sets of difficulties; elites and solos. Elites are just harder enemies, and solos are obviously monsters you are supposed to fight alone(as in, your party vs it. Beholders, dragons and whatnot falls under this category). It's a nice way to make big and important monsters seem big and important... loading them out with rediculous amounts of hp, powerfull abilities and special rules.
If you follow their carefully tested balancing rules, you'll end up fine most of the time. Thing is, monsters dont play by the same rules as players. Where players have encounter and daily based abilities, monsters have recharge abilities, which can come back during combat by the lucky roll of a dice from the DM. Monster AC, as well as their hit modifiers, is also balanced to the point of rediculousness. You will -never- be able to hit an equal leveled monster with a roll of anything below 10(and sometimes not under 15, depending on the monster type), without bonus attack modifiers that certain classes can grant. This can lead to some frustration after a while, giving a feeling that the system sometimes is just too balanced for it's own good. Sometime you want the players to be able to own, and they want that too.

So big points, combat and adventuring is done well. And it shouldn't be used for anything else really, as the many quirky decisions just make your eyebrow raise and your suspension of disbelief crash completly to the ground. Examples, full plate armour costs 60 gold, where it used to be almost a 1000 in the past. Items can't be sold for anything bigger than 1/5th of the market value, and magical item creation costs as much as just buying it from the store. Leaving you to wonder how anyone can make a profit out of magical items, with such a strange economical system. Nothing a few houserules can't solve, but the system is riddled with these kind of things. So if your looking for something else than a lot of dungeon crawling, dragon slaying and high adventure, I'd recomend another system really.

Radical

28th Jan 09, 6:03 AM

Hit points for example are all regained after one nights of rest. Disregard that slash from the dragon that sent your guts out, all is well after a nights sleep.

That's not such a huge loss, considering that 3ed never had any rules regarding dragons sending your guts out, what with everything being limited to "bla bla bla, you lost 15 hp".

It also cuts down on the endless dungeon->village->sleep->dungeon cycles.

Elixir

28th Jan 09, 6:24 AM

I’m quite enjoying 4th if I’m honest to myself. I’m just thinking of it as a new game, a new spin on an old idea. Whilst I believe it has been made more combat orientated to appeal to the MMO WOW gaming crowd with its powers system and streamlining of the skill sets I don’t see this as an entirely bad thing. Combat does appear to be taking a little longer but it’s just as frantic when the odds are against you and combo attacks are still possible if you have a good group of players willing to work together. I also believe role-play is due to the crowd you are with and not the combat rules so I don’t feel anything has changed in this regard.

The biggest draw back with the system at the moment (barring the horrible mess they made with the Forgotten Realms setting) is the horrible lack of material. For a long while now we’ve been spoiled with the huge amount of 3.5 material and near endless build options. 4th currently doesn’t have nearly enough character choices/feats/powers until you reach later levels and can start swapping things around a bit. Wizards need to release the other source books in a more timely fashion and dare I say it, at a lower price. Hopefully this will make 4th more appealing and give it the variability it’s desperately missing.

Zir

28th Jan 09, 6:27 AM

Sleeping 3 times in 3E to get your guts back was no more realistic, and basic heavy armor costing a fortune in 3E was one of its many idiocies. It's as vital to the dwarven fighter as the thiefs poxy dagger is, yet you need to fulfill a career of dungeon crawling to buy one if the DM doesn't sensibly let you start with it.

Radical

28th Jan 09, 6:27 AM

barring the horrible mess they made with the Forgotten Realms setting

The Spellplague?

Eh, my main qualm is that my favorite deity died and half the lands got mixed up completely, and another quarter weren't even covered (Silver Marches).

On the plus side, at least Myth Drannor is back.

Giant Moth

28th Jan 09, 6:34 AM

If you'd taken a 100 hit points damage and needed to heal that up, you needed a lot more than just 3 days resting, barring the help of magical aid. A fighter didn't need the full plate at low level, the game wasn't even balanced after that(as was obvious with the warforged race, which was given the equivalent of full plate for the cost of a feat, at level 1). I thought that was better at least, gaining the plate mail was a reward every fighter strived towards, not to mention gaining magical variants of it.

I just don't see the fun in replacing the need for mundane equipment with the (overwhelming) need for magical items. Not that that was much different in 3rd edition, but at least on lower levels it was.

Mantaray

28th Jan 09, 6:48 AM

I personaly have my own roll-playing game baced arround 40k, me and about 10 of my mates play it and it works rather well, i took a lot of the complicated (and quite francly) patheticly explained stuff from dark herasy and just made it easyer...

also i hold a 'justify to me how your going to do it and i will let you' philosophy, so long as it isnt stupid or unballanced too far, like designing a storm-SMG (not unlike its boltgun equivilent) turning it into a 2 handed weapon that fires twise the amount of shots.

also my mate has an incredible WH fantasy roleplay that he's been working on for years. its incredibly simple yets fun beyond explination.

Paladin

28th Jan 09, 7:05 AM

Well, if you're going for realism, then the price of full plate made sense. A suit of that stuff could buy you a whole medieval town, just about. The reason swords and armor were reserved for the aristocracy is that, to a large extent, no one else could possibly afford it (And many minor nobles couldn't even afford a full suit of full plate that was modern for their time).

This is basically the whole reason you have one noble presiding over a whole village... He needs the financial product of that village to equip himself.

So there is a reason plate is so expensive in D&D.

Personally, if I weren't so lazy I'd homebrew a "D&D 3.75". Basically Take the ToB and redo the core classes in that image. Maybe take a few things from 4E, and leave the rest of the system as it was in 3.5

Gorb

28th Jan 09, 7:54 AM

I just get the feeling DnD is now weighted towards the young generation (similar to the one Games Workshop is appealing to with their 'Ultramarines save the galaxy' storyline). I mean, no racial stat penalties, the classes looking a bit "samey", the game more focussed on combat . . . oh yeah, and the Dragonborn. 'Nuff said.

Even with all it's ambiguous rules and conflicting source material, I think I'll stay with 3.5ed for now. That said, 4ed has potential; I'm not dismissing it entirely.

Radical

28th Jan 09, 8:07 AM

If you'd taken a 100 hit points damage and needed to heal that up, you needed a lot more than just 3 days resting, barring the help of magical aid.

True, but if you're going too far into realism no amount of resting will help you if you've had your guts opened by a dragon. I also don't think that 3 months of rest and recuperation after every significant battle would make for a fun campaign.

Tempe

28th Jan 09, 8:13 AM

True, but if you're going too far into realism no amount of resting will help you if you've had your guts opened by a dragon. I also don't think that 3 months of rest and recuperation after every significant battle would make for a fun campaign.

I don't think a game where you can go toe to toe with Dragons and suffer no consequences would be very fun anyway. I like dark heresy/wfrp as you can get limbs detached and other ill effects and suffer for them. Does it ruin the game? No, it makes your character more colourful and makes for better roleplaying.

Radical

28th Jan 09, 8:22 AM

I don't think a game where you can go toe to toe with Dragons and suffer no consequences would be very fun anyway. I like dark heresy/wfrp as you can get limbs detached and other ill effects and suffer for them. Does it ruin the game? No, it makes your character more colourful and makes for better roleplaying.

Unless, of course, you end up playing the Black Knight without arms or legs. My point was, 3rd edition didn't do a good job when it comes to realism either.

Noble

28th Jan 09, 8:33 AM

My philosophy on D&D is that the rule set is pretty unimportant. As long as you're familiar and comfortable with a rule set, it will work. What makes or breaks a D&D game is the interaction between the players and the dungeon master. If you're with good friends who have a similar play style, and if you have a decent dungeon master you're all set. It doesn't matter if you're using 3.5E or THAC0 or whatever to determine when you hit and when you miss. What matters is that a story gets told in an exciting way.

That said, I won't be converting to fourth edition any time soon. The rules intrigue me with their simplicity, but I can't bring my self to by a whole new library of 4E books when I already have just about every 3.5E book already. I'll stick with what I'm comfortable with.

There's also the fact that every single D&D circle I've played in, without exception, has had a plethora of house rules that make the game unrecognizable when compared to what's in the books. Often times we will run across a rule, think about it, and all come to the conclusion that it's stupid. We then proceed to either make up a rule of our own or just say "fuck it, DM's discretion, tell us what the outcome is".

The core of D&D is a bunch of grown ups who still want to sit around drinking beer, eating pizza and playing pretend. It doesn't matter what kind of dice you role.

Giant Moth

28th Jan 09, 10:08 AM

Personally, if I weren't so lazy I'd homebrew a "D&D 3.75". Basically Take the ToB and redo the core classes in that image. Maybe take a few things from 4E, and leave the rest of the system as it was in 3.5

Well there is sort of a 3.75, it's called Pathfinder. They redid most of the core classes, tweaked some of the spells, and such. I think it's free to download from paizo.com, as it's in a beta.

I too like Dark Heresy, the rules are simple and flexible. While it too drives a class based system, it lets the player choose from an impressive amount of tallents and skills. And it has something that most roleplaying games tend to forget: consequences. I like how players run the risk of losing limbs in a firefight or melée. Bionic replacements are there of course, but they are not always perfect(and some come with their own advantages, of course)

Hellscream

28th Jan 09, 10:33 AM

I've always asked myself why oh why do some people bring "realism" into a fantasy roleplaying game? It's, for a lack of a better term, stupid.

As for 4e, i've read the rules, seems extremely interesting to play, but our DnD DM has all of the 3.5e books/rules so it's not likely we'll go to 4e, but as Giant Moth stated, Pathfinder is a likely route for us. It converts from 3.5 very easily.

With any game, it all comes down to the DM and the players on how "fun" the game it, no matter what the rules. And hell, if you don't like a certain rule, House rule it!!

Giant Moth: We are playing DH as well, some of the rules are retardo broken, IE: Psyker rules (all of them). It's a fun game though :) (I've got the most metal in our party now, Lungs, kidney, and right arm, lol.)

Lomax

28th Jan 09, 11:12 AM

The most broken rule you'll find in DH is fatigue. Especially if you use the Stun attack and the Auto Fatigue for Grappling rules (Auto fatigue for weaponless melee attacks is gone in the Errata for starters).

If you play by these rules, the most sensible approach your characters can take when fighting, let's say a Bloodthirster or something equally dangerous, is to throw away their weapons and try to wrestle or stun that Beast.

Giant Moth

28th Jan 09, 11:15 AM

No, the point of a roleplaying game is to a bit to immerse oneself. Sometimes to escape the dullness or stress of reality as well. Varying from person to person is the suspension of disbelief, the ability to imagine it vividly and push aside your disbelief. You know things doesnt work that way, that magic doesnt exist, but you suspend the disbelief for the sake of immersion. Too many things grinding against that however can destroy a persons suspension of disbelief. Overnight healing of all wounds in 4th edition is one of such things(for me anyway, it varies), while I can imagine that magic or gifts from the gods can knit together bones and heal wounds, I'm having a harder time accepting that every wound can be cured by a good nights sleep. And you know there is no good reason for them to be, as the system doesnt even try to justify it. And thus a bit of the immersion is destroyed.

Even though it's a fantasy, you still need some realism to anchor it down to something concrete, otherwise you won't be able to imagine it.

Zir

28th Jan 09, 12:08 PM

Again, for me there is no horrendous line crossed between one night and and several nights sleep. Getting offended over such an arbitrary difference is just snobby. If your problem is with one miniscule rule, why can't you just change it?

Paladin

28th Jan 09, 1:45 PM

Moth: I think the idea is that the player characters are inherently magical. That's why they can do all the things that they can do, and why they heal so quickly with just a night's sleep.

And I know about Pathfinder, but I'd be aiming for less of a gritty, low powered game and more of a four color player characters as superheroes game. More in line with the Tome of Battle.

Dark_Avenger

28th Jan 09, 1:54 PM

4th Edition feels more like WoW than DnD. You don't just attack them anymore. you "Heroic Strike" them :S

Lomax

29th Jan 09, 1:48 AM

To all the people saying the rules are not important: If so, why do you buy D&D that has a core rule book consisting of nothing but rules? If I remember correctly, there's absolutely no background in there, apart from a few generic races and gods.

In my opinion, rules set the general tone of the game. What can your character know, how can he develop, how quickly does he die, how tough are enemies? All important questions to give your roleplaying a background, to know whether you play a game where you will one-attack every unimportant goon away, or one where every fight might have lasting consequences.

Surrealitycheck

29th Jan 09, 2:59 AM

4th Edition feels more like WoW than DnD. You don't just attack them anymore. you "Heroic Strike" them :S

And that's a GOOD thing.

Playing a melee character in 3.5 ed was probably one of the most boring experiences I've ever had.

Elixir

29th Jan 09, 4:58 AM

The fact that they became redundant at higher levels if you weren't power gaming is what really irks me. In all the games I've played magic users dominate the battles after level 12. Melee characters are a shield wall at best.

Lomax

29th Jan 09, 6:05 AM

Elixir, you might try Earthdawn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthdawn) . In that one, everyone's a magic user to some degree. Also, the setting is pretty cool for a FRPG.

DoomKnights

29th Jan 09, 11:19 AM

I would say you would need to get a game going where in 3.5 that a group doesn't have a fight, rest, fight, rest going. If you have a castle to go through, don't allow rest while the things not cleared. This forces magic users to use their stuff more as a MUST over a could use. And of course once they run out they become the shield heh.

Giant Moth

29th Jan 09, 1:25 PM

This is how you deal with fightingresting groups. It's no damn video game.

"We want to rest?"

"Okay... you're in the middle of the enemy lair, where are you going to rest?"

"In this room over here of course."

"Ok fine, you strike camp and get a few hours of rest, untill a patrol notices you, and goes to alarm the rest of the cave. Within minutes, it will be swarming with monsters. What do you do?"

Zir

29th Jan 09, 1:28 PM

*Rolls initiative.*

Radical

29th Jan 09, 1:40 PM

@Giant Moth

As I see it, there are two alternatives:

a) Replace fighting/resting with fighting/going to village/resting/going back to dungeon/fighting.

b) Continue your encounter until all the characters are dead.

Off Topic: What's the chance of this evolving into a D&D campaign?

SquidDNA

29th Jan 09, 2:01 PM

It's probably not up to chance.

Elixir

29th Jan 09, 3:42 PM

I doubt anyone here who currently runs/plays DnD on-line has the time to start another campaign.

Tempe

29th Jan 09, 4:08 PM

But say, if anyone was interested in playing/running Dark Heresy...

Koozer

29th Jan 09, 4:46 PM

I've been press-ganged into playing D&D (3.5) a dozen times by a mate of mine, and have played Dark Heresy once. D&D is dull, Dark Heresy is amazing. It is also perfect for roleplaying myself in - a detached, self-absorbed and mildly unsociable techpriest.

"...the cart has a huge time bomb in it, set to blow the town to pieces in 1 minute!"
"I'll disarm it."
"wait, what?"
"I've got 20 points in Demolition."
*rolls*
"So, Koozer the techpriest has disarmed the bomb. Right, er, let's leave it here for now..."

I'm not a techpriest in reality by the way.

Giant Moth

29th Jan 09, 4:59 PM

a) Replace fighting/resting with fighting/going to village/resting/going back to dungeon/fighting.

b) Continue your encounter until all the characters are dead.

c) Do not design encounters, dungeons and whatnot that is so stretched out and tedious that you need to stop and rest in the middle of it to regain your strength.

When was the last time you saw in a film, where the good guys stormed the castle(or what evil base they had) and stopped in the middle to have a good nights sleep? I prefer cinematic, high action encounters, preferably driven by plot rather than just random monsters. And while D&D might not be built for them, it is posible with a bit of tinkering.

Zir

30th Jan 09, 11:04 AM

Since when have you seen an action movie in which the characters have hitpoints, or a fantasy film in which the mage "forgets" a spell every time he uses it and has to sleep to get it back?

DnD is a game and has rules that inexorably seperate it from realism.

WingedKagouti

30th Jan 09, 12:20 PM

DnD is a game and has rules that inexorably seperate it from realism.
There you go with that "realism" thing again, while talking about magic of all things.

I'd buy "suspension of disbelief", but we are still talking about something that's supposed to bend the rules of nature as we know them. And it's a decent explanation as to why mages aren't using non-mages for labor and experiments without fear of consequences. That it results in low level mages who have to sleep 8 hours (+1 or so hours of study time) between each battle they want to be effective in is another debate.

Anyway, D&D didn't invent the memorize/cast/forget magic system. It's usually called Vancian Magic for a reason (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Earth).

Zir

30th Jan 09, 12:26 PM

There you go with that "realism" thing again, while talking about magic of all things.

Uh, that's basically what I said. People are using real life as an example of why DnD is silly, because that sooo couldn't happen in real life!

Radical

30th Jan 09, 1:11 PM

c) Do not design encounters, dungeons and whatnot that is so stretched out and tedious that you need to stop and rest in the middle of it to regain your strength.

...and somehow hope the players don't deviate from your carefully planned path and end up in a situation you had not foreseen.

While I share your appreciation of cinematic role-playing, I doubt that D&D was ever the medium for it.

Giant Moth

30th Jan 09, 1:58 PM

I fail to see what cinematic role-playing(or at the very least, cinematic combat) has to do with railroading. But you are right, D&D is hardly the best medium for it, though it's not imposible with a little bit of work and houserules.

And this thing about realism, just because it's a game why should we stop trying? It's still a game of make believe, not just a computer game where doing is all you need. You like reasons as well.

Trizzdog

30th Jan 09, 3:02 PM

I haven't tried 4e myself, so I won't comment on it. I will comment on general roleplaying, however.

I agree that the rules aren't too important in a PnP RPG. The ultimate rule you need is "is it fun?". Rules help the GM decide results without being arbitrary, yet due to the basis on dice rolling, can give way to randomness and unexpected things that can be accepted by the group (see "you shot me; nuh-uh, bullets bounced off).

I like the DnD ruleset myself, because the setting is familiar to most people (woo dwarves and elves!), and the rules are easy to understand. Some other systems handle certain aspects better (hp is one of those things that bugs me about DnD), but for the most part DnD can fit to whatever I want to do in my campaign. House rules can be a beautiful thing.

Finally, regardless of what goes on in the campaign (but fantasy, lol), realism is a great thing to base decisions on. The ability to rationalize decisions on realism helps them become more acceptable to the group, rather than saying it happened "because of maaaagggiiiccc!"... although I myself am horrible guilty of performing boulders-from-the-sky "miracles" upon the party.

Also,

Off Topic: What's the chance of this evolving into a D&D campaign?

Like squid said, not up to chance (http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=197584). I have been running a 3.5 campaign for awhile now. Thing is with internet people, is that their attention span is quite short (for whatever reason they have), and I have closed off my campaign because of this. I might change my mind if people showed interest and real dedication again, however.