How much of the anti-4E sentiment is actually justified?

[Fuchs]

Yeah. The idea that no character ever heard of common monsters from older adventurers or through bardsongs and legends seems very far-fetched - and metagaming.

[FatR]

In cases of chicken stats and similar cases, I resort to a handy principle.

I call it: Who gives a fuck, lets just play the fucking game.

This is a game of heroes who kill monsters, I don't give a fuck if a noncombat creature has 1 or 2 hit points or if it's AC is 11 or 12.

So, now your argument in defense of 4E boils down to... 4E being a shitty MMORPG, except without a CPU to handle calculations, and you relaxing and liking it?

In fact, as the only other argument presented by the troll squad is "4E is Magical Teaparty, if anything is wrong, then that's GM fault (PCs, of course, aren't supposed to have an input in the story)", I would have said that they are intentionally attempting to make 4E and its crowd look as bad as possible, if not for being at a loss for reason why. I mean, it's not like there is shortage of contempt for 4E on this forum, of all of them.

[Psychic Robot]

actually, unless you're stupid and trying to misinterpret me so as to justify your dislike of 4e more, what I said is a dragon's fire breath ability is only usable inside of combat. because outside of combat there is no goddamn reason to know that a dragon does Xd6 die of damage. it can still breath fire, it's a fucking dragon, but the exact amount of damage only matters for combat with PCs.

By definition, a dragon's fire breath ability is usable outside of combat or else it can't breathe fire.

so you want metagame knowledge of monsters, awesome, you can admit it in less words next time.

Trollololol.

[Doctor Kenny Loggins]

Yeah. The idea that no character ever heard of common monsters from older adventurers or through bardsongs and legends seems very far-fetched - and metagaming.

Yeah, it's too bad you can't make an untrained nature/arcana/dungeoneering check to see if you know anything about what you're fighting.

EDIT:

So, now your argument in defense of 4E boils down to... 4E being a shitty MMORPG, except without a CPU to handle calculations, and you relaxing and liking it?

You understand that "the rules don't cover it, therefore you can't do it" is way more like a video game than "the rules don't cover it so here's a quick adjudication" don't you?


Also, psychic robot, you suck at understanding things.

[Fuchs]

Yeah... like "Bears generally live in forests or caves" - DC 15.

And Beholder's lore check result options doesn't even mention anything about their eye rays...

[Doctor Kenny Loggins]

Dungeoneering DC 12 : Though less powerful
than its other beholder kin, a gauth possesses deadly
eye rays and a hunger for power.

It does mention them, but oddly, only in this entry. The only explanation for this I can think of is that beholders are such an iconic D&D monster that they forgot that people might not know about the eye rays.

[Fuchs]

Knowledge Nature/Dungeoneering should tell you how tough a monster is - we all know that an elefant or rhino can take a lot more than a snake, for example. Characters in a fantasy world should know how tough a gorgon is compared to a goblin. That would translate into knowing approx. values of their hp, AC and so on.

And of course, people should know about the gorgon's breath weapon.... but most what the knowledge check tells you about any monster is if they are usually alone or not, tamed or not, and such.

[Doom]

There's all sorts of goofiness in those monster lore checks.

Of course my 4e players don't want that information anyway, it took about 2 combats before "why can't I just make a lore check for its lowest defense?", as opposed to lore information that would only apply in a RPG.

And it very nearly does take a CPU to handle calculations once you hit paragon tier combat. Between auras, autodamage, rider effects and whatnot, it's a real mess to keep track of.

It will always bug me that a game that was clearly built from the ground up to be a great computer game...never actually came out as a computer game. I know there are good reasons for this, but it's still amazing that not even one fool in his garage has cared enough about 4e to write such a program with a 'mini adventure' or whatnot.

[Doctor Kenny Loggins]

And it very nearly does take a CPU to handle calculations once you hit paragon tier combat. Between auras, autodamage, rider effects and whatnot, it's a real mess to keep track of.

Here's what it comes down to for you, eh Doom? Can't handle the complexity in what is apparently baby's first WoW game?

It will always bug me that a game that was clearly built from the ground up to be a great computer game...never actually came out as a computer game. I know there are good reasons for this, but it's still amazing that not even one fool in his garage has cared enough about 4e to write such a program with a 'mini adventure' or whatnot.

It's no more built to be a computer game than any other edition.

[Plebian]

you guys are literally arguing that because you have knowledge of the MM and because your character may know more common things about more common monsters that you should be allowed to use your metagame knowledge of all monsters while playing.

By definition, a dragon's fire breath ability is usable outside of combat or else it can't breathe fire.

um, no? because inside of the combat is the only situation that a DM would need to know the attack bonus, area, and damage of a breath attack. as soon as it uses the combat ability, it is in combat, because it wouldn't be using that ability without a target (the PCs).

outside of combat dragons can certainly breathe on a peasant village or set a forest aflame, and in those cases you don't have to say "welp I only rolled 2 to attack that tree, guess the dragon's breath missed" because it's a pointless shoehorning of combat mechanics into a narrative. you just say "the ancient red wyrm flies over a village in the distance, its breath incinerating dozens of hovels in each pass."

[Josh_Kablack]

There's all sorts of goofiness in those monster lore checks

The original 3.5 wording was amazingly worse.

For every 5 points you made your relevant Knowledge Check by, you knew one useful "bit" of information. Which meant it was a DC 39,851 check to know the details of an Orc Warrior statblock.

Say what you will about t4rds, at least they are honest about wanting player character abilities to auto-fail.

[FatR]

You understand that "the rules don't cover it, therefore you can't do it" is way more like a video game than "the rules don't cover it so here's a quick adjudication" don't you?

Did I forgot to mention your fallback Magical Tea Party argument? No, I didn't. Being at the mercy of whatever fancy strikes GM's left heel when the combat music is not playing sucks as much as farming mobs in a shitty MMORPG when it is. The game that delivers both of these experiences fails doubly.

[Psychic Robot]

um, no? because inside of the combat is the only situation that a DM would need to know the attack bonus, area, and damage of a breath attack. as soon as it uses the combat ability, it is in combat, because it wouldn't be using that ability without a target (the PCs).

You don't need to know the attack bonus or damage, but you need to know that it can breathe fire.

outside of combat dragons can certainly breathe on a peasant village or set a forest aflame, and in those cases you don't have to say "welp I only rolled 2 to attack that tree, guess the dragon's breath missed" because it's a pointless shoehorning of combat mechanics into a narrative. you just say "the ancient red wyrm flies over a village in the distance, its breath incinerating dozens of hovels in each pass."

But they're still using their combat abilities to do so.

[Aharon]

Just chiming in with my actual opinion on the topic of 4e:

I don't care wether it is objectively better or worse than 3e. I just found the PHB dreadfully boring to read - I mean, the 3e PHB is bad compared to Shadowrun sourcebooks, but I still found them more interesting to read than 4e. And unfortunately, I don't have games to often, so the rules and rules discussion actually are something that strongly influence my descision wether to buy RPG books or not.

I actually don't think that 4e characters are that much more limited than 3e characters. They can inflict the same status effects that roughly do the same thing: Wether your opponents are immobilized by a web at level 3 (3e) or 5 (4e) doesn't make such a difference, and wether you create a plane with Genesis (3e) or a flying invisible mountain fortress with Raise Land and Conceal Object (4e) is similar.

But since you care so much about objectivity/subjectivity, Plebian: For me, subjectively, 4e manages to make the same effects 3e has sound far, far more bland! That is because they are all very generic - every class gets the same. I think the other thread had Kaelik's Star Craft example, and it is an apt comparison. 4e managed to balance the game by making 3 Terran factions. I know defenders of 4e claim that this appears only so, and isn't the case when you actually play, but the APPEARANCe of this blandless is enough to put me off from actually playing the game.

Plus, objectively, in 4e, you are permanently punished for using rituals that do cool things, by losing money. In a game, I don't want to have this tradeoff. 3e had it to, with WBL that forced everyone to be a murdering hobo with equipment worth the equivalent of multiple nations, but you got some story effect - like Mage's Magnificent Mansion or Heroic Feast - for free.

[LR]

you guys are literally arguing that because you have knowledge of the MM and because your character may know more common things about more common monsters that you should be allowed to use your metagame knowledge of all monsters while playing.

Assuming that your character knows more about the game world than you do is not metagaming. Purposely limiting your character's actions to support the narrative is.

[Novembermike]

I completely agree as long as you're making up your own insane definition of metagame.

[Plebian]

Assuming that your character knows more about the game world than you do is not metagaming. Purposely limiting your character's actions to support the narrative is.

but that's not what you're assuming; you're assuming that your character knows exactly what you know. I understand the allure; when I was playing AD&D in high school I, too, had trouble keeping my knowledge gained from reading everything I could separate from what my character knew. but it's still metagame knowledge despite the mental gymnastics you use to try and justify why your character should know that a cloud giant can levitate three times a day.

purposefully limiting your characters actions to a reasonable assumption of what your character knows and then using skill checks to learn more is simply good RP.

You don't need to know the attack bonus or damage, but you need to know that it can breathe fire.

and you already know that? I don't get your point.

But they're still using their combat abilities to do so.

no, because no combat is happening within the system. while from a narrative perspective it is using abilities that are relevant in combat, from a system perspective it doesn't exist because it would be a pointless time sink to actually run a combat encounter that didn't involve the party.

this is the exact same in other editions; you don't run a combat encounter to see how the dragon murders a bunch of farmers while the party watches, because that would be truly bad gaming. you just say that it happens. no combat abilities are being used in a system terminology sense, but a dragon's natural abilities are being used in a narrative sense.

[K]

you guys are literally arguing that because you have knowledge of the MM and because your character may know more common things about more common monsters that you should be allowed to use your metagame knowledge of all monsters while playing.

Assuming that your character knows more about the game world than you do is not metagaming. Purposely limiting your character's actions to support the narrative is.

People always forget that if you don't have some idea of what a monster can do, you can't make meaningful tactical choices. You end up spamming your highest damage or most debilitating abilities over and over and hoping for the best, and that's boring as hell. At that point you might as well not even have the combats.

Battles are more interesting if you can figure out a mind flayer's range on his Mind Blast and adjust your tactics to stay out of range of it or do better damage because you targeted the one thing a monster was not resistant to. By the same token, it's not fun to cast your Fireball on something arbitrarily immune to fire and there was no way of you knowing.

[Doom]

Here's what it comes down to for you, eh Doom? Can't handle the complexity in what is apparently baby's first WoW game?

Well, at least you see that 4e is a type of WoW game.

And I can handle the complexity, as can most of my table (which in addition to a professional mathematician, has 3 engineers and an IT specialist).

But it's ridiculous just how much is necessary. The non-technically adept gamers at my table struggle like heck to keep up with all the crap going on.

Not everyone can do 120 -15 -6 +5 -1 +2 -20 +7 - 4 + 29 + 11 + 3 in their head easily after all, and doing such calculations a half dozen times or more a round is, well, easy for WoW, not so easy for a tabletop game.

There's a reason why the DMG3, which was to cover Epic level play, never came out: Epic level play in nonviable.

Granted, high level play in D&D is problematic as well, so at least 4e has that much in common with D&D, but the fact still remains (as many, many, many, threads on every forum attest): combat in 4e is a complicated, time consuming affair.

It can be fun, too, of course...but that fun drops off when the complications increase past a certain point.

[Doctor Kenny Loggins]

Well, at least you see that 4e is a type of WoW game.

It's not, but you can't have it both ways. Either it's too simple and or it's too complex.

And I can handle the complexity, as can most of my table (which in addition to a professional mathematician, has 3 engineers and an IT specialist).

NO ONE CARES

Not everyone can do 120 -15 -6 +5 -1 +2 -20 +7 - 4 + 29 + 11 + 3 in their head easily after all, and doing such calculations a half dozen times or more a round is, well, easy for WoW, not so easy for a tabletop game.

If that ever happened all at once you might have a point, but you don't because it doesn't. Why not use actual examples?

There's a reason why the DMG3, which was to cover Epic level play, never came out: Epic level play in nonviable.

You sucking at the game doesn't make it nonviable. I'm in an epic game right now, and it works very well.

[Doctor Kenny Loggins]

FatR: you don't understand the difference between a CRPG and a TTRPG.

[cthulhudarren]

FatR: you don't understand the difference between a CRPG and a TTRPG.

If 4E was just a tiny bit more MMO you could write macros and not even have to sit at the table.

[Doctor Kenny Loggins]

FatR: you don't understand the difference between a CRPG and a TTRPG.

If 4E was just a tiny bit more MMO you could write macros and not even have to sit at the table.

Also 3E or 2E or...

[FatR]

FatR: you don't understand the difference between a CRPG and a TTRPG.

NO U.

[LR]

People always forget that if you don't have some idea of what a monster can do, you can't make meaningful tactical choices. You end up spamming your highest damage or most debilitating abilities over and over and hoping for the best, and that's boring as hell. At that point you might as well not even have the combats.

Battles are more interesting if you can figure out a mind flayer's range on his Mind Blast and adjust your tactics to stay out of range of it or do better damage because you targeted the one thing a monster was not resistant to. By the same token, it's not fun to cast your Fireball on something arbitrarily immune to fire and there was no way of you knowing.

And yet some people love the idea of a hero fumbling around in his golf bag while some unknown monster claws him to death.