Realization: 4e is a really poor match for existing 3e campaigns

[CLAVDIVS]

This might be something that many people have already figured out, but as the only one in my group that seems to like 4e it took me a while.

4e didn't just revamp the rules, it drastically changed many basic elements of the world. I'm not just talking about fluff, I'm talking about how the game system models what is common and even what is possible in the world. Long range teleportation to anything but a limited number of fixed locations you need passcodes for is impossible until epic levels, and then requires extremely costly expendable materials. Human-devil and human-dragon hybrids are now as common as dwarves and elves, and high elves have become a race that lives in another plane and can teleport short distances on a regular basis. Paladins can't detect evil. Many magic items, even ones of the same name as before, work very differently and are in many cases far less powerful (many item powers that were "at-will" in 3e are daily now). Rituals are not limited to spellcasting classes, and now purely martial characters can potentially make us of magics that were restricted to high-level clerics and wizards before. Demons and devils are far more different from each other than ever before, no longer sharing even the same general creature type. Familiars have returned at last, but in a wildly different form.

The new edition changes so much about how things work that even the Forgotten Realms setting needed a century of time lapse and freaking resonance cascade to adapt. Just look at the "Ten Important Facts" in the intro to the FR Player's Guide: Gods are dead, physics is broken, and the planes are rearranged, all for the sake of shoehorning an existing 3e campaign setting into the new system.

So what made me realize this, a geological epoch after everyone else probably has?

Pathfinder.

We recently had our first game of Pathfinder, continuing the campaign we started under 3e. It changes a number of things, but they're often subtle, and they don't shake any major assumptions about the world. The standard races are the same (although elves are now taller than humans, which we'd houseruled ages ago anyway). Magic works in the same way. The same sorts of things are generally possible. It's a parallel world's version of 4e, where they decided not to change the game any more than games usually get changed with a new edition. (Actually, it reminds me of how I heard Hackmaster described as a parallel world's version of 3e.)

As I mentioned above, I like 4e, and I wish I could convince my group to play it. But I think a big part of the negative reception it got may be due to the problem I outlined above. Before we saw the system, we assumed we'd be able to keep playing essentially the same campaign. When we got our hands on it, we saw how different it was, and how some of the things we were already doing under 3.5 just wouldn't be possible, at least without extensive houseruling. I saw plenty that was possible, some of which wasn't before, and liked it, but I was apparently the only one in the group that did. Eventually I accepted that I would've found the changes jarring as well, and that Pathfinder was by far a better fit for the campaign.

So, at long last, I've realized that what 4e needs if anyone in my group, myself included, is going to like it is a new campaign. No more trying to shoehorn an existing one into it; especially after taking a closer look at how WotC did it. Because of how much more primitive and (if you'll excuse the term) metal 4e's implied setting is, I'd briefly considered setting it in the ancient history of our existing campaign, but I'm not sure even that's a good idea. But that's a topic for another thread.

4e is simply so different a beast, that it needs its own world to live in. I'm just glad that I finally figured that out, and can stop being confused by my own discomfort at the thought of using a system I've professed to like.

[Inyssius]

Okay.

One thing:

Human-devil and human-dragon hybrids are now as common as dwarves and elves,

Um, no they're not, unless you think that in 3.X half-orcs were by default as common as humans.

[Cam Banks]

One thing I noticed was the assignment of levels to various monsters. Many creatures are, at least in terms of their default MM presentations, paragon or even epic level threats. Chimeras, for instance, and all drow. You can make weaker versions, sure, but the MM seems to assume that drow are a paragon level threat and wrote them to be so.

Cheers,
Cam

[Intrope]

Okay.

One thing:



Um, no they're not, unless you think that in 3.X half-orcs were by default as common as humans.
And 4e Dragonborn aren't hybrid anythings, anyway.

[giftedmunchkin]

4e is simply so different a beast, that it needs its own world to live in. I'm just glad that I finally figured that out, and can stop being confused by my own discomfort at the thought of using a system I've professed to like.

Even though I am a huge, huge fan of 4th edition, this actually makes so much sense to me I don't know why I haven't thought of it before. The problem though is that these settings are so huge and so popular that there would be a huge outcry if WotC DIDN'T update them to match 4th Edition. And if they attempted to make "similar, but different" settings (I for one want some kind of Eberron, even a bootleg Eberron, to come out) they would get yelled at for having no originality.

Basically, and I'm mean this as delicately as possible, gamers (in a general sense, and myself included) are a whiny bunch.

Aaron

[Gaffa]

One thing I noticed was the assignment of levels to various monsters. Many creatures are, at least in terms of their default MM presentations, paragon or even epic level threats. Chimeras, for instance, and all drow. You can make weaker versions, sure, but the MM seems to assume that drow are a paragon level threat and wrote them to be so.

Yup. That's because drow are the most infamous denizens of the Underdark in the ever-cliched typical D&D campaign, and as the Underdark is now a Paragon-level playground, the basic drow is now a Paragon-level threat.

[Gloombunny]

I guess this depends on the group. Mine had no problem playing Eberron under Fantasy HERO with a completely different element-based magic system. I doubt we'd have really noticed any differences as minor as who can cast teleport and at what level, if we had ever played Eberron in 4e.

[naturaltwenty]

It's all marketing based. I'm not against it but it's a realization. Redefining the rules-set to allow for a more high-powered game does not fit into the mold of semi-medieval kingdoms as put forth in previous editions of Greyhawk, the Realms or Ebberon.

The only way to use those effectively is to rewrite the settings to accommodate for the increased encounter size, number of encounters, etc.

The old standard of single monster encounter on a map may have used to use a 40'x40' room. Now a 40'x40' room has to have 5-10 critters in it for the equivalent group size which makes alot of the cool-ass powers of 4e moot.

Encounter size in 3.x was smaller - not as many beasties in the room (not as many tactical maneuvers either but that's another point) -

http://www.naturaltwenty.com/images/3_encounter.png

In 4e we get more critters but the encounter's physical size needs to be increased to allow some of the better options (warlock port for example) to really be utilized:

http://www.naturaltwenty.com/images/4_encounter.png

The same can be said for campaigns - just like the combat space, the world needs to be adjusted to fit the rules-set.

[Inyssius]

It's all marketing based. I'm not against it but it's a realization.

... say what?

[Capfalcon]

... say what?

I think he might mean that it's not exactly the same scale as previous games, meaning that now fights are assumed to, on average, have about the same number of people on both sides.

So, it's being billed as DnD, but prior versions had a smaller scale?

Maybe?

It made sense in my head...

[naturaltwenty]

From a business perspective it would not be prudent to produce a system (rules set, campaign, expansion books) that allowed you to use previously released products for use with the existing game.

For example - the DND miniature game released series upon series of predefined dungeon tiles. Those tiles, in there existing form, are not large enough to accommodate the encounter size of 4e although they could easily be used by the 3.x version of the game.

If we take that one step further the existing 3.x campaign worlds are not the "points of light" campaigns that are hinted at in the 4e core books. This of course requires that a new series of campaign worlds come out that "fit the encounter size".

Another example is the DND miniatures release format prior to 4e. People pissed and moaned to high-heaven because the encounter format (multiples of lower level minions with higher level masters) of 4e no longer matched the random packaging of the previous 3.x DND miniature release format. WotC announced the release of non-random mini's (but I've yet to see it) - so yet again - the old version of the mini's release did not match the new 4e style. The lag of WotC not releasing mini's in the non-random format is the result of it not being profitable to do it.

The majority of the design decisions are driven not only by the creative forces but also by economic forces.

... say what?

[Morvannon]

And if they attempted to make "similar, but different" settings (I for one want some kind of Eberron, even a bootleg Eberron, to come out) they would get yelled at for having no originality.

4th Ed. Eberron is coming out this summer.

[Gyrfalcon]

From a business perspective it would not be prudent to produce a system (rules set, campaign, expansion books) that allowed you to use previously released products for use with the existing game.

... The majority of the design decisions are driven not only by the creative forces but also by economic forces.
I gotta say, while this rates at least a 9.0 on the snark scale, I really don't think that it was anything like a primary driver behind Why D&D 4e Is Different. Creativity doesn't generally work well when your primary goals are negative, and there's enough energy and coherence behind 4e to convince me that the stuff that's different is different because the design team wanted to be able to do new things and set a new standard, not just because they wanted to make all the old props unusable. The Hasbro suits no doubt salivate that a whole lot of battlemaps, miniatures, adventures and the like are due to be redone from scratch - but I'm confident that the rules and scale changed because the WotC design team decided the basics of the new game they had imagined worked better, not because a key design element stated "Thou Shalt Create Powers And Combat Rules That Insure Nobody Can Ever Have A Fight In A 10' Square Room, Ever Again."

[Nikis-Knight]

Yup. That's because drow are the most infamous denizens of the Underdark in the ever-cliched typical D&D campaign, and as the Underdark is now a Paragon-level playground, the basic drow is now a Paragon-level threat.I think it's more correct to say that basic drow are no longer presented, but a variety of drow of equal strength as paragon parties. Similar to how elves are all low level.
If they are representative of drow & elves in the world, one wonders why all the elves aren't enslaved already.

[Scarik]

"Thou Shalt Create Powers And Combat Rules That Insure Nobody Can Ever Have A Fight In A 10' Square Room, Ever Again."

I certainly hope this wasn't the impetus since it has failed miserably for my group.

I concur with the OP though, 4e is an entirely new beastie and it needs its own world to really break through.

[giftedmunchkin]

4th Ed. Eberron is coming out this summer.

I know that, I was just using it as an example because I don't really know much about any campaign settings besides Forgotten Realms and Eberron.

Anyway, the more I've been thinking about this topic, the more I realize how contradictory 4ed is. In many ways, as it has been pointed out, powers have taken a huge step forward, as everyone has access numerous powers at any level. But on the other hand, as was pointed out in the OP, there are a lot of powerful spells, such as portals, that are now only available in the upper tiers.

For some reason, this has never occurred to me before.

Aaron

[MrJamela]

I agree.

When most people say 4e is not D&D, this is what they are usually referring to. The laws of the universe have been completely re-written. So completely, in fact, that you'd have a real hard time just slotting it into your 3e games without breaking the story.

Pathfinder is one option.

Um, so is staying with 3e. Nobody came and took away your books. And you can get all the 3e stuff for a steal.

I'm working on a 4e world that will be unique to the new edition....none of the old assumptions to weigh it down. Its hard though, I have many old-school notions that are hard to look beyond.

Has anyone successfully ported a 3e game to 4e? I'd be curious to see how successful it has been.

[BrianDR]

I guess I don't see it. A lot of the stuff you cite seems trivial.

Dragonborn as common as elves? Only if you assume that all PC races are as common as eachother just because they're both presented as options. You don't want them? Just say they're out. This is nothing that goes to the very guts of the system, removing this race or that isn't going to break anything.

You want to bring back long range teleportation? All it takes is your say so. Paladins can't detect evil? Was that really making or breaking your setting? Demons and Devils have a different origin? Thats just fluff - it changes at the wave of your hand.

4e may favor a slightly different encounter building approach, but there's nothing in the core of its system that means that a setting like FR or Eberron can't work with the 4e rules. I'm a long time fan of Eberron, and I'm confident I could run it just fine right now with just a few easy tweaks.

[Halo2994]

I think naturaltwenty was on the right track on the first page but i would argue that the combat encounters from the two editions would look more like this.

3th edition.
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs004.snc1/2798_573973196433_48208776_34001379_4316194_n.jpg

4th edition.
http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs004.snc1/2798_573973201423_48208776_34001380_5467264_n.jpg

:D

[Elazair]

I think naturaltwenty was on the right track on the first page but i would argue that the combat encounters from the two editions would look more like this.

3th edition.
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs004.snc1/2798_573973196433_48208776_34001379_4316194_n.jpg

4th edition.
http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs004.snc1/2798_573973201423_48208776_34001380_5467264_n.jpg

:D

That is the best and most concise summary of 4E I've ever seen. Thankyou. :)

[andreww]

But on the other hand, as was pointed out in the OP, there are a lot of powerful spells, such as portals, that are now only available in the upper tiers.
Long range teleportation is available from level 8.

Its also worth bearing in mind that 4e scales across 30 levels while 3e scaled across 20 (ignoring Epic of course).

[James Gillen]

This might be something that many people have already figured out,

This is a bit like saying "Napoleon could have used more winter gear in Russia."
It's pretty much the same conclusion I came to in reviewing the FR Players' Guide... the old setting and new rules really aren't compatible without a lot of shoehorning. Of course for commercial purposes, they did it anyway, but the 4E background is more interesting anyway if you accept it as a "reimagining" of D&D instead of trying to make it fit what went before.

JG

[Dionysos]

I think naturaltwenty was on the right track on the first page but i would argue that the combat encounters from the two editions would look more like this.

3th edition.
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs004.snc1/2798_573973196433_48208776_34001379_4316194_n.jpg

4th edition.
http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs004.snc1/2798_573973201423_48208776_34001380_5467264_n.jpg

:D

This is the fucking funniest thing I have seen in a long time. Can't...fucking...stop...laughing....

I think you really have to be part of a 4th edition game for awhile to truly appreciate this.

-Dio, a 4e DM who sometimes looks down at the battlemat and wishes there was a little less shit going on.

[andreww]

Looking at those images I realise that I have let down my players terribly in our 4e game. I have yet to use a doom token or attack them with mutant teleporting sharks.

I feel ashamed.

Does anyone know where I can find the appropriate tokens?

[Nerag]

I think I disagree but it depends on what you mean by shoehorning rules.

Yes you have to change things but I don't have a huge amount of trouble converting encounters; but then the encounters are not an exact match for 3rd edition encounters.

I was thinking of designing a Conan-style setting.

My first thought was that in 3rd edition wizards and priests were much more powerful at high levels. So, in a classic Conan-style setting it seems natural to have powerful wizards and priests ruling parts of the world.

In Fourth edition it is a bit more difficult to get away with the classic Conan idea that the single evil wizard or priest is the ruler, but only a little bit: just make the wizard elite or solo and convert the special magical effects into rituals with exotic components and requirements (and human sacrifice). The more I thought about it, the rituals of 4th Edition are very clever and can be used to simulate a large part of magic in the Conan-style settings with a bit of creativity... and any character class can use them (with the right training).

[LogicNinja]

I think naturaltwenty was on the right track on the first page but i would argue that the combat encounters from the two editions would look more like this.

3th edition.
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs004.snc1/2798_573973196433_48208776_34001379_4316194_n.jpg

4th edition.
http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs004.snc1/2798_573973201423_48208776_34001380_5467264_n.jpg

:D

Take, like, thirty goddamn internets.
That is AMAZING. You have rolled a natural twenty in displaying your genius.

[Ferrus Animus]

I think naturaltwenty was on the right track on the first page but i would argue that the combat encounters from the two editions would look more like this.

3th edition.
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs004.snc1/2798_573973196433_48208776_34001379_4316194_n.jpg

4th edition.
http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs004.snc1/2798_573973201423_48208776_34001380_5467264_n.jpg

:D

Few things cannot be improved by adding special effects, batman and a couple of nubile nymphs.;)

[Keefe the Thief]

That picture comparison is really the greatest thing ever! :D

And again the interweb proves: people will tell you all kinds of things that cannot work. I converted my 3e grey-box FR moonsea campaing without a single problem. Apparently, that is not really possible, except if i would use a non-D&D system like Pathfinder. Oh well, you live and learn.

[naturaltwenty]

Thanks for the enhancement - that. was. AWESOME! I was not intending to be snarky in any of my posts but you sir have hit the nail on the head.

Kudos to you Halo!

[Subumloc]

Just as a report of varying mileage, I'll say that I converted my homebrew world from 3.5 to 4e and, overall, we gained a lot more than what we lost in translation. To say one thing, the introduction of rituals has codified the extensive plot-device structure that kept the world together, and there are a lot of other little things that work better now. So, I guess it depends on the existing campaign.

[ESkemp]

Just as a report of varying mileage, I'll say that I converted my homebrew world from 3.5 to 4e and, overall, we gained a lot more than what we lost in translation. To say one thing, the introduction of rituals has codified the extensive plot-device structure that kept the world together, and there are a lot of other little things that work better now. So, I guess it depends on the existing campaign.

Yeah, I've noticed that myself. Several character concepts shift fairly radically, but with the assumption that, for instance, "you've spent six months of retraining" and "you've done some magic item trading" will account for a number of character differences.

Of course, it helps that we never really mucked around too much with high-level games. A 15th-level 3e game kind of required D&D to be your primary hobby to run properly, whereas keep it at about 10th at the highest and a casual approach is easier to maintain. So lots of the problems like teleportation being suddenly much rarer weren't problems, as teleportation hadn't really reared its head in the first place.

[uktra06]

The old standard of single monster encounter on a map may have used to use a 40'x40' room. Now a 40'x40' room has to have 5-10 critters in it for the equivalent group size which makes alot of the cool-ass powers of 4e moot.

I understand what you are saying here, but I have to disagree with you.

IMHO, in regard to encounter size, 4e really just gives a DM more options. Yes, many encounters have several minions you fight, giving the other side more teammates. But this is not required. A DM could just as easily have you fight one or two big enemies. You are right, some powers wouldn't be as useful in that fight, but the DM has the right to mix things up.

In older 3.x encounters, it was very hard to simulate fighting a horde of weaker enemies while still having them be a threat. Sure, there were a few, but not as many as 4e. If a DM wanted his players to fight an army of kobolds, he could either put a ton of low level kobolds with no chance of hurting the PCs, or have the PCs fight a few amount of high level kobolds, and use the description of the room to say there were more.

Now in 4e, he could potentially throw 20-30 minions at them, and they would feel like they have a real threat to deal with (as minions can actually do some damage), but still have a good chance of survival. While this is an extreme case, I'm just showing how the rules can be used for things that were not always realistic in 3.x.

But again, this is just my opinions and observations. Part of the reason I like 4e so much is it really seems to give the DM more freedom in building the encounters.

[Jack of None]

Has anyone successfully ported a 3e game to 4e? I'd be curious to see how successful it has been.

Our group switched and we seem to be doing fine.

One person changed their character because they wanted to play a sword-and-board fighter instead of a swashbuckler, but everyone else went over just fine. I'm especially pleased with the change -- I can play a rogue/cleric without totally sucking.

The GM has implemented some house rules, adding a couple of skills (and giving people free extra trained skills to compensate), messing around with some of the religion rules, and re-skinning lower-level magic items as non-magical. But they haven't been big house rules.

[Mostlyjoe]

I guess this depends on the group. Mine had no problem playing Eberron under Fantasy HERO with a completely different element-based magic system. I doubt we'd have really noticed any differences as minor as who can cast teleport and at what level, if we had ever played Eberron in 4e.

Fantasy HERO? Hmmm? That sounds like a fun conversion. Wish I was around you crew Gloom.

[ENHenry]

Chalk up another conversion here. I ran a 4E Eberron game from about July of 2008 to November of 2008 with little problem - we eyeballed most of the things that weren't converted, and I made up the rest based on existing 4E powers (dragonmarks, for instance). It worked through 8th level without a hitch, before we started playing other systems for a change.

[pweent]

I think it depends on what level of fidelity you want out of your conversion. We also converted our 3e game (Age of Worms, set in Eberron) to 4e. It's gone fairly well, though we needed PHB2 & Dragon preview material to make it work for our druid and artificer. The binder became a warlock; the rationale was that he found a new vestige to bind with that he was so taken with that he now exclusively binds this vestige.

There are differences, and if your player set is the sort that can't or won't get past questions like "Why didn't we do this in the past if we always could?" or "Why can't we do this thing that we could in the past?" you will indeed have problems. In our case, we just squint a little and let it go. The rogue/monk spiked chain wielder used to specialize in trip and disarm; she no longer disarms, but she trips a lot more frequently and effectively than she used to. Just as there are things in 4e you can't do in 3e, there are things in 3e you can't do in 4e. For those familiar with the Age of Worms, I think we saved a lot of grief by only converting once we were past the Champion's Games, a cornucopia of weapon-sundering enemies and combat strategies centered on fight pre-buffing. None of that applies to our 4th edition game; but none of that is central enough to the plot that is breaks the story. The characters continue to hunt down leads to stop forces that want to bring about the end of the current age of the world. The characters still do more or less the same things, albeit with different mechanics and with different frequencies. But it doesn't feel like everything is changed and no longer makes sense - on the contrary, I've had players express surprise at how much more the 4th edition version of their characters manage to achieve what they were trying to do with the 3e characters.

[Front Toward Everybody]

Um, no they're not, unless you think that in 3.X half-orcs were by default as common as humans.

Bears repeating. PC races =/= standard commonality. Deva's are also a PC race, but I think it's explicitly stated in the write up that they are far less common than most other PC races.




I agree D&D 4e is a very different animal. I think a lot of the sacred cows were slaughtered to make steaks that serve up as tasty gameplay, but mileage varies, YKIOK, etc. I can see where some of the mechanical changes do make the world of 4e a very different place than 3.5.

[Scarik]

In Fourth edition it is a bit more difficult to get away with the classic Conan idea that the single evil wizard or priest is the ruler, but only a little bit: just make the wizard elite or solo and convert the special magical effects into rituals with exotic components and requirements (and human sacrifice). The more I thought about it, the rituals of 4th Edition are very clever and can be used to simulate a large part of magic in the Conan-style settings with a bit of creativity... and any character class can use them (with the right training).

4e does pulpy sword & sorcery very well.

Consider that the 'evil high priest' can simply be a Fighter with Ritual Caster and no other magical powers.

[Tori Bergquist]

I agree.

When most people say 4e is not D&D, this is what they are usually referring to. The laws of the universe have been completely re-written. So completely, in fact, that you'd have a real hard time just slotting it into your 3e games without breaking the story.

Pathfinder is one option.

Um, so is staying with 3e. Nobody came and took away your books. And you can get all the 3e stuff for a steal.

I'm working on a 4e world that will be unique to the new edition....none of the old assumptions to weigh it down. Its hard though, I have many old-school notions that are hard to look beyond.

Has anyone successfully ported a 3e game to 4e? I'd be curious to see how successful it has been.

I ported both of my own personal campaign settings to 4E with less effort than I thought, but to be fair, I found one of the two settings (which had been around since my 1st edition middle school years) a poor fit for 3rd edition, and consequently it ended up a Castles & Crusades setting for several years. The other setting began as a Runequest campaign in 1992, and was converted to 2nd and then 3rd edition out of necessity and player interest. Although it worked great in 3rd edition, I found many of the implicit assumptions in 4E to be ones I preferred (new cosmology), had house ruled (no absolute good and evil arc defined by spells), or just plain liked (the entire notion of powers vs. rituals in magic). As a result, I found that the adaptation of my campaign from 3rd to 4th was much more natural than I would have otherwise thought, with only minor concessions. Likewise for the other setting, although I did "upgrade" it a bit and moved the timeline ahead, with some new concepts introduced from the 4E concept, to reboot the old 1st edition world in to 4th edition terms.

So anyway, I think it's perfectly doable, depending upon how strict you were about interpreting the background material as written in 3E. Put another way: if you have ever been in a scenario where everyone automatically assumed the red dragon was evil because The Rules Say So, then yeah, 4E may be a bit fo a shocker. But if you enjoyed reinventing the D&D cosmology in earlier editions, and tinkered with the implicit assumptions from campaign to campaign, then 4E is probably not so shocking.

[Andrew Ellis Troubio]

Bears repeating. PC races =/= standard commonality. Deva's are also a PC race, but I think it's explicitly stated in the write up that they are far less common than most other PC races.




I agree D&D 4e is a very different animal. I think a lot of the sacred cows were slaughtered to make steaks that serve up as tasty gameplay, but mileage varies, YKIOK, etc. I can see where some of the mechanical changes do make the world of 4e a very different place than 3.5.

In my D&D Deadwood setting, the local madam/Evil Preistess is a Deva. She lives comfortably because, hell, how much would you pay to sleep with a funky glowing blue chick?

She is the only one known and probably the only one in the setting unless someone chooses to play one as a PC.

[Tori Bergquist]

Addition to my prior post:
I think some of the flex in going from earlier editions to 4E can also be viewed in this manner:

In prior editions, did you consider the way wizards cast spells as canon? Did your world define a wizard's spell prowess in terms of how many he memorized? Or, like me, did you asume this was a game mechanic for regulating spells, and that in "the real fantasy world" the process may have been somewhat different, even if it mirrored the mechanical process in some manner.

I actually used a spell point system for almost all of my 2nd edition years, for example, loosely draped around the traditional memorization system. When 3rd edition arrived, I more or less retired the spell points since the sorcerer was designed to offer alternate methods of a similar nature. Interestingly, while I found it easier to divorce what was going on "in the story" from the mechanical implementation of 2nd edition (and often had to, due to the peculiarities of 1st/2nd edition mechanics) it was much, much harder to do so in 3rd edition without also implementing new rules to effectively mirror the perceived reality of the game, rather than simply act as mechanical midwives for the process.

With 4E, I feel like I am back to a situation where "how magic works in the setting" is now back to intepretation as desired, and "how magic works in game mechanics" aren't wed together except on the basic issue of "when I can cast, and when I can re-learn a spell/recover enough to reuse/rememorize/insert interpretation of spell recovery here." I like that slight blurring between the lines of assumption that 3rd edition made implicit that the rules were a reflection of game reality, as the 4E approach lets you mirror a wider range of worlds by not implying that just because something works like "this" in the game mechanics doesn't mean it happens that way in the story.

[Tori Bergquist]

I understand what you are saying here, but I have to disagree with you.

IMHO, in regard to encounter size, 4e really just gives a DM more options. Yes, many encounters have several minions you fight, giving the other side more teammates. But this is not required. A DM could just as easily have you fight one or two big enemies. You are right, some powers wouldn't be as useful in that fight, but the DM has the right to mix things up.

In older 3.x encounters, it was very hard to simulate fighting a horde of weaker enemies while still having them be a threat. Sure, there were a few, but not as many as 4e. If a DM wanted his players to fight an army of kobolds, he could either put a ton of low level kobolds with no chance of hurting the PCs, or have the PCs fight a few amount of high level kobolds, and use the description of the room to say there were more.

Now in 4e, he could potentially throw 20-30 minions at them, and they would feel like they have a real threat to deal with (as minions can actually do some damage), but still have a good chance of survival. While this is an extreme case, I'm just showing how the rules can be used for things that were not always realistic in 3.x.

But again, this is just my opinions and observations. Part of the reason I like 4e so much is it really seems to give the DM more freedom in building the encounters.

I still remember the time I had a group of 3.X characters around level 13-15; my players had decided to storm the wedding of an orcish queen (looong story) and there were over 200 miniatures involved in a fight that lasted for 2 sessions totalling maybe 15 hours.

I contrast that with a recent fight two months ago, with my 4E Saturday group which held strong in an ancient ruin being sieged by an army of orcs. The average party level was 8th, and they were up against a force of about 100 orcs, most of which were minions and a handful of "tougher guys." The entire fight lasted about 2.5 hours that evening.

It was a stunning contrast to the previously mentioned fight.....and a lot more fun, to be fair. For one thing, I suspect about 1/3 or more of every 3rd edition game I ran or played in was spent bickering about the rules. The biggest time-waster I've experienced in 4E boils down to players who either haven't precalculated their power stats yet, or who are just learning and get a little overwhelmed at the specific powers and abilities they have access to.

Actually, I have noticed that the more experienced one gets with 4E, the smoother and quicker it goes over time. In contrast, I would argue that the more familiar and experienced 3rd edition players got with the system the longer and more laborious it got....details which would be overlooked by the inexperienced (thus accidentally shortening the experience) would later become contentious points of argumentation and reminder later on.

I still think it's pretty easy to sum up the 4E/3E difference like this:

In a 3E universe, your well equipped adventuring party is fine until they meet a river or a cliff, and then they're basically dead.

In a 4E universe, your well equipped adventuring party is fine until someone charges in to the middle of a gang of minions (or any kobolds or hobgoblins) thinking they're badass, and THEN they're dead.

I used to worry that the barbarian was a bit overpowered until I saw a couple repeatedly in action: get initiative, charge in, get surrounded and beaten to death in 1 or 2 turns max, start over roll new barbarian...

[Tori Bergquist]

In my D&D Deadwood setting, the local madam/Evil Preistess is a Deva. She lives comfortably because, hell, how much would you pay to sleep with a funky glowing blue chick?

She is the only one known and probably the only one in the setting unless someone chooses to play one as a PC.

Awesome idea!

After all....imagine if you had fallen off the good wagon, and realized how impossible it would be to redeem yourself.....a Deva who started down the dark path to furry with reversed hands might very well prove to be alarmingly effective at evil, simply because why the hell, the road to redemption is far too long....

[Bleach]

Um, 3e changed 1e/2e worlds VERY radically. Magic became KING in 3e and it was much less so than in 1e/2e.

It is easier to run convert GH 1e/2e world to 4e than it is to convert to 3e.

I think people have forgotten the assumptions that 1e/2e had.

1. Multiple opponents per PC. An earlier poster mentions that the 4e switch from one monster to multiple monsters is a big change. Say what?!?!

This was standard in 1e/2e. Unless it was THE climatic battle, the core assumption of pcs versus monsters was that the monsters outnumbered the pcs and many times 2 to 1.


2. Teleport WAS a high level spell and one that few mages learnt and certainly didn't cast wily-nily (remember things like casting time AND the fact that the spell itself could screw you over big time? and not the namby pampy version 3e had


Another example is the simple knock spell. In 1e/2e with no easy way to bypass the cap on spell slots (a.k.a 3e's wands and scrolls), you certainly didn't have the wizard encroaching on the toes of the roues ALL THE TIME.

I think people need to read the rules on magic in 1e/2e and class limits (no such thing as a high level non-human I might add in 1e) before they talk about how 4E is NOT D&D.

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't think the designers broke backwards compatibility for economic reasons. I think that they were told not to worry about backwards compatibility at all, and to produce the best game they could. Now, if you tell someone that, then you probably will lose most of backwards compatibility. All you will retain is the what you get from going after a similar "spirit of the game" with a new design, and any happy accidents. For example, they experimented with all kinds of ways to replace hit points and armor as AC, but found that none of them worked as well for their design as hit points and armor as AC. So we got some backwards compatibility here, but it was a happy accident.

Granted, the guy up high that gave the design team that mandate, if he has any sense at all, had to know that a lot of backwards compatibility would get broken, and thus the economic consequences would occur. But someone deliberately breaking backwards compatibility just to be breaking it would have produced a different design.

As for hard hard/easy to convert, they did tell everyone at launch that the best way to use the new edition was start a new campaign. They were very emphatic about it, and that was part of the reason for not initially doing a character conversion document.

Of course, how hard or how easy it is to transition a campaign depends a lot on what the campaign was like, and how good a fit it was for the system it started under. I've run several campaigns that would have been very easy to convert for the simple reason that they didn't work as well as 4E would have, initially. "Hey, let's retcon all this baggage that we only put in there because this other system didn't handle X," is all positive to me. :D I've had other campaigns that were very good fits for particular editions--and not surprisingly, these would not convert very well, if at all.

[Ben Rasmussen]

This is why all my D&D games take place in the same crappy ill defined nebulous "fantasy world". I don't have these problems when I change editions, or even systems. I just apply some handwaveium and ignore any potential problems and glare at players who poke at the inconsistencies. It's also handy for wanting to ram in what ever thing piques my interest at the moment.

Not that I haven't run Eberron or older official D&D settings, but even they sort of wind up as crappy and ill defined in my hands. Consistent and fully fleshed out settings are not my strong suit. Goes with out saying that I like PoLand very much.

[MetaDude]

And 4e Dragonborn aren't hybrid anythings, anyway.
Well, they aren't human, and they aren't dragons, but some form of combination of the two. I believe that would qualify them as being a hybrid. Being presented as a species doesn't negate the fact they are a combination of different creatures, conceptually. :D

The 4th edition killed some sacred cows, but it also slew some bovines I hadn't even known existed until they were hamburger. The change that hurt me the most were culling down the extensive spell lists to about 4 powers per level. Now, clerics and wizards have access to as few tricks as their martial counterparts! Yeah, I know I'm supposed to be thinking, "Now fighters have as many cool tricks as wizards and clerics!" Alas, I never needed fighters to compete with wizards in the number of powers available - only the kinds of powers available.

I had created my own custom spell lists, so that priests had only about a third of spells in common. The vast majority of a religion's spells were available only to priests of that religion. The goddess of healing provided NO offensive abilities other than what the cleric was born with (and she discouraged using those, too!). I did the same thing with arcane spells, diving them into six exclusive elements and one "grey" element that was a catch-all. The result was that different religions and schools of sorcery had fundamentally different tools at their disposal. The choice of which god to worship or which school to specialize in was a significant choice that had far more impact on the character as he gained levels. Players weren't permitted to simply pick what they liked from the entire list of spells...

When I converted to 4th edition, I lost all of that work. I'd do it over again, except now there's not enough to work with. How can I have exclusive spell lists for ten gods and six elements when I only have four powers to split among them? I'd create my own damned spells, but there are no guidelines for creating powers other than following the examples provided. I tried to make sense of them, to tease out a system, but it's not like Hasbro followed a specific formula. It's just too much work to hammer a square peg into a round hole.

I really miss my spell lists. They didn't have the combat balance of 4e's lists, but they didn't need them. I never expected the healing cleric to provide any firepower to the party. Under 4th edition, I question whether a dedicated healer even has any business in an adventuring party. There's an assumption that everyone is a combatant...

[MetaDude]

Has anyone successfully ported a 3e game to 4e? I'd be curious to see how successful it has been.
Even though I've already posted once to this thread griping about what Hasbro took away from me (extensive spell lists), I have actually converted my 3.5 game to 4e, and I'm as happy with it as I possibly can be...

While many of my old house rules had to go by the wayside, I found myself able to work things in well enough. An old god has been tinkering with the Laws of the Universe, which has resulted in all sorts of dramatic changes for the characters.

One of the side-effects of switching to 4e was my epic-level big bad guy had to come down several dozen notches. My campaign went from "figure out how to stop the unstoppable" to "become powerful enough to stop the unstoppable." My campaign's nemesis was previously so high a level that it was obvious that the PCs wouldn't be taking him in a direct fight.

Now, I'm not so opposed to a direct fight. My demonic demigod may be more easily slain, but it will still be the toughest frickin' fight the party's ever had! The PCs still have the option of outwitting him, but now the brute force path has been opened up because the system wouldn't let me make him so powerful that he can't be fought eventually. While I could still make the demon too tough to ever fight, I'd have to go outside the system to do that. In essence, 4e made combat more accessible to me and my players.

That's my biggest success story with 4e - combat. I love being able to accurately set up a challenging fight. 3.5's Challenge Ratings often meant nothing!

[Dormammu]

I had created my own custom spell lists, so that priests had only about a third of spells in common. The vast majority of a religion's spells were available only to priests of that religion. The goddess of healing provided NO offensive abilities other than what the cleric was born with (and she discouraged using those, too!). I did the same thing with arcane spells, diving them into six exclusive elements and one "grey" element that was a catch-all. The result was that different religions and schools of sorcery had fundamentally different tools at their disposal. The choice of which god to worship or which school to specialize in was a significant choice that had far more impact on the character as he gained levels. Players weren't permitted to simply pick what they liked from the entire list of spells...
You do realize you're describing a set of house rules so extensive that it's not even the same game other people play? Saying a new edition isn't compatible with your game is kinda like saying it's not compatible with Rolemaster. It's a whole different game!

That being said, I'm not surprised some people feel this way. I suppose I'm fortunate that the main Wizard player in my group is so ecstatic he can cast Magic Missile more than once every fight (and never use physical weapons) that he loves the 4E version of Wizarding.

[hong]

In my D&D Deadwood setting, the local madam/Evil Preistess is a Deva. She lives comfortably because, hell, how much would you pay to sleep with a funky glowing blue chick?


http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/masseffect/images/1/18/Asari_Codex_Image.jpg

Mass Effect is about 40 bucks half-price now, IIRC.

[soviet]

Our D&D campaign started in 1991. It's gone from 2e to 2.5 to 3 to 3.5 and now to 4e. The transition from 3 to 4 was mostly pretty straightforward. We're playing in Greyhawk and a lot of the modules we're using are from 1st or 2nd edition, so the monster translation process actually got easier for our GM than it had been under 3e.

We were level 12 under 3e. We decided to start the new rules at level 10, so we could get more familiar with the system before we committed to paragon paths. We're now level 11 and all the characters are still recognisably 'themselves'. Our half-demon fighter-thief became a tiefling rogue with a touch of warlock multiclassing, which is actually a better fit for his concept than the 3e version was. Our all-powerful elf fighter/mage/thief has now become a much toned-down but still interesting eladrin wizard with the spiral tower paragon path. We introduced a new dragonborn paladin PC by simply retconning the dragonborn as mainly living in *remote and far-off place that I've forgotten*. My barbarian/fighter/ranger had started to suffer from the martial:magic imbalances of 3e; now under 4e he's a fighter with ranger multiclassing and I'm having much more fun with him.

The only problem character we had was our cleric of olidimarra. He was always more of a thief/bard with flamestrike and cure light wounds than a cleric as such. This didn't really translate too well, so he's had to play him as a laser cleric with roguish tendencies for now. I guess this is the risk you take when you build such an unusual character in the first place. However, the Bard has just come out via PHB2. and Divine Power is on the horizon, so we should be able to do a decent translation of him soon.

In actual play I don't think we've been having any more fight scenes than we used to. They tend to take a bit longer, maybe, but they are also a lot more interesting to play out. So I think it's time well spent.

[Dormammu]

soviet's post matches my experiences as well. A lot of it is simply predicated on interest. If you're not interested in 4E, there will be issues to be sure. But if you like the game and want to play it, the small details won't matter so much. You can still do all the stuff you did before.

[That Idiot]

soviet's post matches my experiences as well. A lot of it is simply predicated on interest. If you're not interested in 4E, there will be issues to be sure. But if you like the game and want to play it, the small details won't matter so much. You can still do all the stuff you did before.

I agree. If you have issues, it may well be that you are just not interested in the game.