Thanks for keeping things alive here while I was being a worried nervous wreck.

Nico is better, we’ve already played a ton of Boom Blox (Caspule Review: Remember when your sister spent 15 minutes building a Blocks Tower… and you kicked it for shits and giggles? Boom Blox is that game, except for the crying sister)

50% of the PHB will most definitely NOT be spells in 4e. Each class is completely self-contained, and each takes approximately the same number of pages. I imagine that a single class (including all spells/powers for that class) will take around 15 pages or less. (They have to include 8 classes, the combat rules, skills, feats, equipment, magic items, epic destinies, and more in the PHB, after all, so it can’t be much more.)

At any given level, a character made with PC rules will have no more than 2 at-will powers, 4 encounter powers, 4 daily powers, and a few utility powers (plus options from magic items). Most NPCs will not be made with PC rules, however, and as such will have fewer options, as well as few to no magic items.

If you find the amount of mechanical work to run a D&D3e dragon tedious, you’re certainly not alone. But I’m not sure that’s actually a FLAW in the system. The crunch factor of a game is a selling point – some people like low crunch, some people like high, and some people like both but play different games depending on what their current mood is (I fall into the latter category). For some people, the intricate tactics of a D&D3e battle with a dragon, with all of its “half an hour real time for 6 seconds game time” glory, is part of the fun. For people who don’t particularly like that – and I’d have to say I’m probably one of them – then there’s thousands of other monsters in the Monster Manual that aren’t nearly as tedious to run, and aren’t necessarily less interesting because of that.

Having said that, even for “high crunch” games I’d prefer the crunch to be confined to solo activities. Black Box Traveller is an old favourite of mine – one of the crunchiest games ever written, in my experience, but in actual play sessions it’s highly abstracted and simplified. So there’s a clear balance here that D&D3e missed.

I have to say though that if D&D4e really does manage to eliminate the tedium of a DM running a high level spellcaster or other “highly flexible opposition”, I’ll be intrigued as to how it is managed. Typically 50% or more of the Player’s Handbook throughout most editions of D&D has been spells, and lots of different spells mean lots of different options, which means lots of different choices, which leads inevitably to slowing down resolution as the players and the DM have to make those choices. Does 4e limit the scope of these choices in some way?

Let’s say I’m using an example dragon from the Draconomicon. (They have a dragon of each type of each age category in there, for you to pick and choose.)

I don’t need to create the dragon, choose feats, choose spells, or do anything like that.

But running a dragon is still a hassle. While I don’t need to create it, I still need to adjudicate all of those feats and spells every round, pick and choose what spells to use (if any), decide what spells he already has active (if any), adjust for all of these if/when they get dispelled, etc.

It’s not that dragons are a pain to create, since I can get premade ones. It’s that they’re a pain to run and track.

The more minutiae I need to track as a DM or a player, the more it would make sense to just be a computer game where a computer can handle all that.

Dave T. Games last blog post..Maybe they can get Michael Bay to direct

Now that that’s out of the way… I think that 3.5 isn’t really that much of an open process… There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense, and don’t add up, and really depend on the party… ECL vs CR is one of them. How do they come up with those numbers? There’s no logical source (and LA is a terrible mechanic and I hope it’s gone in 4e…). As another example: My party had a Dragonborn (from Races of the Dragon) in it, so they had a good source of various elemental damages. I designed an encounter with a Half-Red Dragon Troll, just to mix things up. They’re going against it this weekend… I just don’t know how they’re going to get it down and have it stay down because the Dragonborn’s player won’t be there (his father is in the hospital…). There aren’t enough acid damage spells in the game to have it balance out. Especially without me saying “You should take some acid spells for this encounter.” *I* know they can’t handle this encounter as it is, but the only way around it is to completely redesign the encounter. Not every DM (especially amateur DMs) are going to realize just how out of balance this creature is, despite the CR rating (without PC levels: CR 7… for something which only takes lethal damage from one relatively rare source of damage…).

Will it still be possible to create impossible encounters in 4e? Probably. But the system, from what I’ve see, should be streamlined enough that you’ll realize a little sooner… “hmmm… this creature is really a level X, when I expected a level Y… better tweak back a little, or put it on the back burner until they’re ready for it.”

I think 4e will make the process more clear. There’s a process in both of them, but I think it won’t be quite so mysterious. Why is immunity a single element, a breath weapon once per day, all HD upped a die, and a +8 to Strength (plus the possibility of flight) only worth +2 CR? In 4e, at least they say “Breath Weapon once per day is worth +1 Level” (or however it works out). If you ask me, 3.5 is more a black box, it just gives you a lot of boxes and you have to guess which boxes go together.

Anyway… Chatty, I hope the surgery goes well. Good luck to you and yours.

I agree with you Gazza that a lot of what we play for is the mechanical aspect of it, but if the rest weren’t important then you’d be just as happy to sit in your room alone rolling dice, and playing with a calculator. Your whole talk about using a laptop and numerous tools that are “easy to write” hurts my head, and to think that you’re using it as an argument -for- a system is even worse! The system is so broken that you need all of that just to run a single Dragon and for it not to be painful, these things a good design does not make.

Bartoneuss last blog post..Maybe they can get Michael Bay to direct

Obviously you don’t have such a tool, but it’s not a difficult tool to write – I’ve written lots of things like that myself, and there are lots more online. Now, sure, you could reasonably argue that you shouldn’t need a laptop to play, but that’s just the simplest example: there’s really no reason that the Monster Manual 3.5 couldn’t include sample dragons for each age category (and indeed for monsters OTHER than dragons they pretty much do).

I think one of the biggest concerns I have about 4th edition is the apparent need for a battle mat. Those sorts of things really cramp my style – I hate stopping a game to draw on a map every time there’s an encounter, it’s annoying to have to push around lots of monsters, and there’s always a pause while you have to count spell ranges and so on. I’d rather have a less tactical system, personally. But I’d freely admit that this isn’t really new; 3rd edition pretty much assumed you were using a battle mat of some sort as well.

Just one side point: Bartoneus says:
“… that left him all the time he needed to work on the roleplaying, storytelling, and more interesting aspects of the game…”

Personally, if I’m playing D&D, it’s the mechanical stuff that I’m playing for. D&D is unlikely to “work” very well as a rules light system – it’s only marginally less crunchy than Traveller is. In all its incarnations, it’s primarily been about going into people’s houses, kicking in their doors, killing them, and then taking their stuff – great fun, but hardly adhering well to the White Wolf “popularised but poorly implemented” idea of “Storytelling”.

YMMV, of course.

I actually said out loud during the combat “I wish I was using a 4E dragon”.

I’m was going to throw a Balor at them soon, but I may actually use the 4E Pit fiend they posted at WOTC instead.

How does this fit into this debate? When you roll initiative, you just don’t give a darn about the mechanics, you just want it to work and provide a fun encounter for the players.

shadow145s last blog post..3.5 House Rules Rule! Backgrounds

That is precisely what the Wizards folk have been saying. Andy Collins (okay he is a kind of special case) told us that he could plan an entire adventure in about 15 minutes, speaking of the mechanical and technical aspects, and that left him all the time he needed to work on the roleplaying, storytelling, and more interesting aspects of the game.

Bartoneuss last blog post..Maybe they can get Michael Bay to direct

“Re: ECL vs CR.

I don’t this is as broken as you’re making out, as ECL and CR are measuring two different things: CR measures the “value” of a “thing” as a monster to be fought, while ECL measures its value as something on your side. ”

Which is the argument that is always given for the existence of ECL. As far as it goes, and in isolation, it’s fine.

Unfortunately, though, there’s a previously established precedent that ECL DOES equal CR… it works precisely that way for any creature with a level adjustment of +0 and who normally has 1 hit die (or to put it more plainly: humans, elves, dwarfs, goblins, and so on). That leads to the very reasonable question of why it works OK for them and not elsewhere.

Of course the answer to this question is more complex than just “ECL is broken” or “CR is broken” – monsters are designed by different rules than PCs, and something that is handy to have for a PC may not be that useful for a monster – but that is equally true of many class abilities, and it’s ignored for them. An NPC ranger used purely as a combat encounter is probably not going to get a lot of use from his free Track feat; an NPC druid used as a combat opposition is probably not going to get a lot of use from his Pass Without Trace ability; and any spellcaster as an NPC of moderate level is not going to be able to cast their full complement of spells within the encounter. But none of this entails a CR reduction.

Please note that the issue is not that ECL should equal CR – the point is rather that opening the black box and giving explicit rules entails the implication that adhering to these rules will be sufficient to create balanced results whereas leaving the black box shut makes it clearer that you need to exercise judgement.

Heathers last blog post..My Rebuttal

If only 100 GM’s try to design because the other 900 decided they didn’t understand the mechanics enough to try, only 1 of them may be successful if we assume the same percentages. Okay, maybe 2 because the ones that tried are more likely better designers anyway.

You do need to remember one thing.

Nobody, not even WotC, understood how to design for 3.Xe.

As Bruce said, above, every 3.Xe product was primarily guesswork and limited playtesting. Especially monster design, and even more so when it came time to determine CR.

Thus, it is a given that more people (not less) will understand 4e design than 3e design.

If anything I should be looking at the design notes and Preview Books like World and Monsters, Races and Classes, and design blogs. They have been very open with a lot of the design philosphy.

I think a lot will depend on the DMG, and how much it talks about the “why” of design.

You can’t trust Mearls, he is a “caffiene powered robot”. If you turn your back on him for a second, he’ll end up designing a game system on you.

shadow145s last blog post..3.5 House Rules Rule! Backgrounds

The check is in the mail! (it might actually be a ninja)

My take on topic, aside from the fact that 4th Edition ramps up the fun, is that a lot of people’s comments here are assuming the mechanics won’t be explained in the core books. Phil already mentioned this, but I think it stands repeating that they will most likely NOT hide all of those important design things from us.

All else aside, how can you not trust Mike Mearls?

Bartoneuss last blog post..Maybe they can get Michael Bay to direct

Bottom line: I love it but it called me fat!

Loose example of my concern:
If 1000 GM’s try to design, say 10 of them actual become successful and become proffessionals.

If only 100 GM’s try to design because the other 900 decided they didn’t understand the mechanics enough to try, only 1 of them may be successful if we assume the same percentages. Okay, maybe 2 because the ones that tried are more likely better designers anyway.

That’s were the future of the hobby takes a hit. It’s the same reason I was worried about the OGL/GSL changes when originally announced.

But if all the concrete rules are there, as you say with the monster design, then we’re not looking at a black box, but a process response. I’m beginning to think that the 4E mechanics are less opaque than we were initially led to believe.

@Chatty: [Derail] How do you like the Wii Fit? Any chance of a review of it here or at Critical Hits? [/Derail]

shadow145s last blog post..3.5 House Rules Rule! Backgrounds