The Gaming Den

Hiram McDaniels wrote:

Kaelik wrote:"I like 4e monsters better, because they don't have any monsters with more than 3 abilities, and I'm too stupid to remember what dispel magic does when reading the MM."

It's like someone saying they want to make you some delicious avgolemono soup with salmon and fennel, but when they open the pot it's just scrambled eggs and turds.

I think these statements really encapsulate the general reason for much of the acrimony felt towards 4e. While I've done my best to play it when it was what the group I was with was playing (a Laser Cleric b/c it's easy to integrate anything with Cures into a pre-existing party), but the gameplay was regrettably boring, combats in the adventures were less interesting than DDO (let alone 3e and earlier). Everything I read in the books made me weep.

I think what broke the damn for me was the cosmology illustration. Like; they owned the IP rights to the planar wheel that has been the cosmology for ages. It could have been kept it as a nod to the continued use of the same cosmology of earlier editions of the game... but they presented three pots full of scrambled eggs and turds instead instead, without giving any details as to how any of the locales within the various planar realms were oriented, arranged, interact with those in their planar vicinity, or are otherwise navigable by the PCs more facilely than between the larger planar subrealms.

I imagine they were given the job of "securing the IP", so as to prevent any chance of people using the OGL with it. That's why you have the Adverbnouns everywhere that are at best loosely related to the things they actually do in the game.

Kobold Dragonshield is copyrightable, you see, like Blackscale Bruiser, or Feywild and Shadowfell. The game would obviously be better with Kobold Fighters, Lizardfolk Barbarians, and the Faerie plane and Shadow plane, but you can't own those concepts and write them up with inflated book value in the company ledger.

So part of the reason it didn't look much like a D&D edition is it wasn't supposed to.


On top of that, the thing they playtested was not the thing they published. Player and monster damage was cut way back quite late in the design process, leaving Solo Soldiers as a boring-ass pillow fight rather than the dangerous divided-party kite challenge reported from their playtest. Saving throws as durations and up to 4 encounter powers make way more sense in fights that last 3-4 rounds, or 6-8 rounds vs Solos.