4e: Easy to run, but is it as easy for players?

I think 4E morphed into 2 different animals for players. You had the super optimized min/maxers that could practically break the game. Then you had the folks that sort of puttered around and had characters less geared towards optimizing combat game mechanics.

Over time I think material from WotC shifted towards the powergamers (or more specifically to curb them). I think the retooled monster damage and most of the errata was to reign in these guys that could run rampant over anything thrown at them. The big problem I feel with this was that it ended up forcing everyone else to push their character into picking up specific feats and abilities. If they didn’t keep up with the power curve, they were going to be left behind as the math for monsters pretty much accepted that at level X, a character will have Y bonus for attacks from ability scores, Z bonus from magical items, and a W bonus from feats.

I agree with you that there was too much material being put out too quickly. I think this lead to another problem with errata. Stuff likely could not be tested enough to find out all the problems once min/maxers got a hold of the rules simply as the production schedule had to have new content continually coming out the pipe.

In the end I think the player base has a little to do with this also. Once 4E hit, I think most folks immediately wanted everything under the sun in the D&D world. No gnomes? No sorcerers? No druids? No prestige classes? No way. I want those rules for 4E right now. WotC complied and I think you ended up with a glut of material that folks didn’t quite have time to digest and the whole thing mushroomed into material that spilled over into 3+ books needed just to roll up a character.

4E hasn’t really gotten more complex since day 1. The complexity is about the same. Just the number of options have increased. You still choose at wills dailies just like before. Just now there are a million options in a dozen books.

The truth is, we as player need to understand what we want and need. It sounds to me like you needed to drink from the fountain and not the fire hose. SOmething like house ruling PHB1 characters/races/power only, or some such. Its the attempt to keep up that kills the players.

But at the same time, wizards is a publisher, more than anything. They need to sell books…..players books. Once the rules exist, the DM is pretty much done. The rest of the content is for the players. And boy o boy did they deliver content.

I still love 4E. You just have to know how to set boundaries.

But honestly, if even this is not for you, try picking up Castles and Crusades. It’s quite good, simple, elegant. D&D the way it was meant to be.

Or, do like me and play 1E every chance you get. 🙂

I’m bringing to mind running D&D Basic for my current group and running 4e for same group. Using Basic, the players turned to me for adjudication of all the rulings. Even though they had access to the player’s “powers” (class abilities mostly, but spells as well). Because the rules left a lot up to the interpretation of the DM, yes the weight fell firmly on the shoulders behind the screen.

When I started running 4e essentials, all my players had their powers on cards. When they asked me what a power did, I asked them to read their card and tell me what it did. The exception based approached that Daniel pointed out has now put the weight of knowing what to do on the player’s shoulders. So in this, I do see where it has been easier on the DM, especially with the encounter balancing formula.

What I am most sad about is that the game has turned redefined player “skill” (yes PLAYER) from Creative to Tactical. It used to be a skilled player was one who could think outside of the box and push their powers to the max. Now the skilled player is much more like the M:TG player who knows how to put together a kick-ass deck. Tactics can be learned and taught more easily than creativity. I imagine the bell curved for skilled 4e players is more evenly distributed than one for 1e players.

I am NOT saying 4e players are any less creative! I’m saying that there is less room to BE creative when all the options are hard-coded. It takes a different type of creativity to “stack” a 4e character’s deck. Once players step off the battle mat, then there is more chance for them to stretch their creative muscles.

I’m not sure if I am making a coherent point or not; its late. I’ll have to re-read in the morning. Thanks for sharing your thoughts in a post.

At what point does everyone stop and say “man, why are we overthinking this so much?”. The game is what you make it. Role play, min/max, depth, what’s going on?!?

Play how you want. The game is yours. Use what you like and pass on what you don’t.

Everyone on the Internet today seems like they are suffering from information overload. Everyone wants boat loads of options, software, and aftermarket add-ons, and then they get them and realize, it’s just all too much.

Slow down guys and get back to basics. Just play the game!!!

i think its easier for players than dms. i dont think essentials speeds it up that much, at least in games ive played. slow players are slow players. where i think the problem lies is 4 pcs should be the standard and not 5. i enjoy 3 and 4 person games much more than 5 or 6

D&D has certainly got more complicated (both for DMs and players) since 3rd edition. I think most of that comes from the number of products released.

Unlike most electronic games, D&D is what you make of it. There’s hundreds of thousands of micro-rules for 4e at this point, but there isn’t any reason you can’t (and you probably should) put limits on which of these rules you will use at your table.

If things seem too difficult on the player side, limit it to Essentials. Maybe even limit it to just Fallen Lands. There’s still some complications in there (racial skill bonuses, class defense bonuses, etc) but you can (and I have) hand-write a character using these books. If players are having a challenge, perhaps they might consider sticking to one of the simpler classes limited to the Essentials books.

I know you feel that Gamma World isn’t for you, but I found it to be the fastest and most straight forward 4e ruleset I’ve used. The gonzo nature is something you can manage on the DM side with some fun factions and some harder core stories. The world is large enough that you can do just about anything you want with it. It’s a great system.

There’s definitely an interesting mix of players who soak up complexity and those who prefer simplicity. I think 4e is able to talk to both groups and a careful DM can give enough complexity to those who want it without overwhelming players who prefer the simplicity.

I really think thats what essentials was released to address. Players can easily make a character with just the Heroes of the Fallen Lands/Forgotten Kingdoms book (s). Over time the amount of options is staggering, but without those, the game wouldnt be an evolved version of what it originally was.
I, as the DM, still spend a few hours a week preparing for one session, while the Players arrive and havnt done anything all week unless we leveled. Written above is the idea that players asked this to happen, and they did. The 4e game didnt have time to evolve easily, it had to fly through its evolution to have all the classes and races people wanted.
We have brought this upon our selves, we only delayed the growing pains for the game.

So in general: I agree with you, and this is a great post. 4E is dead simple to DM (and create adventures for, which is a side benefit). I also find myself agreeing with Geek Ken that I think the newer material is written with the power gamer in mind, but then they do this schizophrenic thing and also combine it with Essentials- a beginners supplement. I DM’d 3e (and later 3.5) on a weekly basis- for the entire run of the edition. 8 years- with only the occasional week off for illness or “game night fell on Christmas this year” type of issues. I was totally kicking ass at putting together an adventure every week.. I thought it was a lot of work, but I had several great groups. Like.. a weekly game-for 3rd edition? That was some work.

Ok, well counting D&D Encounters, I now run 4e as often as 4x a week and still have to time to play Minecraft. It’s just that much easier.

Here’s my eye-opener moment: a new player scans the battlefield and moves his cleric and says “I cast lance of faith from here.. can I reach the bad guy in the corner?” and I was like “I have no idea, what does your power say?” Because that’s really his responsibility, right? I don’t go around memorizing ranges.

Here’s the issue *(and why Geek Ken’s comment totally struck a chord with me- I agree with him): the commonly accepted paradigm for most people I run across DMing 4e is- I think- very wrong. (Not accusing you all here, but it’s just a common concept I have run into..) Most DMs do this thing where they have the RP scene, and then the battlemat and minis for the battle.. and then the RP scene again, and then the Skill challenge, and then the battlemat and minis again. (etc). It’s a pattern I know well from RPGA stuff and I find more than a little constrictive.

My three main issues:
Everyone is often expected to be A) totally optimized. Even game designers I relatively agree with (Stephen Radney Mcfarland, for example) will offhandedly say things like “oh, just assume every PC has an 18 in his prime stat, and has X amount of magic weapon bonus and etc..”), B) That the standard of an encounter is to be “challenging” (aka- the Dm should take care to use tactics and strategy to the best of his abilility to make battles into what I refer to as ‘chess matches’) and that C) the rules define everything.

And I think A, B, and C are all wrong.

Optimization is fine if thats your bag, but as a DM, I don’t care. And I don’t want to spend all my time trying to outwit the one player who figured out all of the loopholes. If he wants to optimize, cool. But I’m also ok with the PC who has a +1 in a prime stat. I, in fact, *play* a vestige warlock with a 13 con.

I think “chess match” battles (which are pretty much standard in most published adventures and all of RPGA) should only be once in a while, but most battles should on the standard to easy side. But with variance! Dynamics! Highs AND lows. So like .. the increased monster damage? It makes no sense to me, really. And that’s how I can get away with running 4-5 battles in a 4 hour session and still have room to pursue all of the roleplaying and investigative/character development plots. I look at tables to the left and the right and they usually slog through 1 or 2 battles in a session and the PCs can barely remember their names because they are built just for the battle part. I *really* bristle at the slur about 4e being “just a miniatures battle game”, but that’s how some people do treat it.

There’s plenty of room for the exact same kinds of interpretive and negotiative judgment that all previous editions had, and in 4e the terrible irony is that it’s even baked into the rules that players can try to do stuff not covered by the rules. I’ve even had players argue against their own character “I want to hide.. but I can’t get stealth now.. I don’t have *total* concealment” and I’ll just say “do you want to try and hide or not?” Geez. As an AD&D1e DM, players were always trying to hide around corners or whatever, and there was no skill check involved. Just say what your character is doing. It’s not against the rules in 4e to describe your actions. Once again, I attribute some of this to the extra time many groups spend in combat. Easier combats are shorter combats and you can get back to the development of character. There IS room for the real tough combat..and even the unbalanced battle where the 1st level characters accidentally unleash a balrog too. The point is, don’t be so predictable.

On that note, I have seen very few people able to manage a skill challenge with any.. er… skill. Skill challenges are just a series of skill checks with an XP award. People turn them into dice-roll-offs with carefully scripted predetermined solutions and pretend that a new set of DCs is going to help, and I just have to shake my head.

Here’s how to do a skill challenge: Create a problem with an interesting thing that happens if the players succeed *or* fail. Failure should be just as interesting as success. Do not come up with solutions, let the players do that. Arbitrarily come with a number of steps to “beat” it (this is a guess/estimate). Let the players think up ways to solve it. If they do stuff that’s just clever, that counts as a success. if they roll a (successful) skill check, that’s a success. If they do something that screws it up more or fail a skil check, it’s a fail. Come up with all of the DCs off the top of your head. If you get to the point when the problem is solved, call it a successful skill challenge even if the requisite number hasn’t been met. If the players do something so screwed up that more successes or fails seems pointless, call it a failed skill challenge. Assign XP as normal and improvise what happens next. We’re DMs, not robots.

DMing 4e is indeed easy. But the game doesn’t play itself.

I’m with you on just wanting to roll the dice. Also, I completely agree with your take on the “complexity-creep” of D&D. I’ve been playing since 1979, and went through every edition since then.

Initially, I embraced 3e, but after awhile the complexity started to wear on me. Then I ran a Keep on the Borderlands game using Moldvay edition Basic D&D (the 1981 boxed set) with some friends over the internet. Wow, was that an eye-opener for me. It was so refreshing to have the simplicity back. I couldn’t go back to 3e/3.5e after that. I tried a few times, but I was always dissatisfied with the attempts… playing or DMing, it didn’t matter.

The last 3.5e game I played in, I went for the ultimate experiment in simplicity… I was going to design a 3.5e human fighter to be as simple to run as a fighter from 1st edition D&D. Every decision I made for skills and feats was made to keep the character as simple as possible. I even replicated the “1 attack per level vs less than 1 hit die creatures” idea by giving him cleave and great cleave, but that was the extent of his “complexity”. Other than that, he was a completely vanilla, platemail-and-shield, longsword swinging human fighter. It was great! I had so much fun with that character! I had a few opportunities to divert from my plan, but I resisted each one, and I’m really glad I did.

When 4e was being developed, my group was in on the playtesting of the game, and I loved what I was seeing with it. It was simple to play, even knowing nothing about the rules, and yet you had these really cool powers you could do! My favorite was a ranger power called Ricochet Shot, which apparently never made it into the final rules, but it was really fun to try it out. I had fun with the final version, and it was kept fresh by new options coming out for my Ranger (I even respec’d him from Two-Blade to Hunter style when MP2 came out).

On the flip side, I am running an online game for some old friends back home, and this is their first experience with 4e. The last time they played D&D, it was in 2nd edition (and one of them, 1st edition!). Some are handling it well, and others are finding things a little too complex. They soldier on, but I can tell there’s some frustration on their end. I do what I can to make things easier.

I’m currently running Gamma World irl, and I’m going to be starting an Essentials webcam game soon. I think those are going to be much better… I’m even contemplating giving my online players the opportunity to recreate their 4e characters as Essentials characters instead, but I think they’d just get even more confused. heh. 🙂

@scott,

That power still exists for Rogues and there is a magical weapon that does it as a daily. And yes, it’s very cool. Being a person who is particularly fond of the Ranger class, it saddens me to know that they almost had that for a power choice. Would LOVE to have had that on my ranger.

@mbeacom My ranger has the bow that can do it, but this power was slightly different.

It was a daily, I’m pretty sure, but it’s hard to recall, since we renewed all powers between encounters for the playtesting, so it might have been an encounter. You could get up to three targets with it, but you had to hit in order for the shot to ricochet, though. So, if you hit the first target, you could bounce the shot to a second target, and if you hit that target, you could bounce the shot to a third target. During the playtest, I was able to hit two targets, max, with it. I was determined to hit all three, but never had the chance. heh.

I would have loved to have that as a regular power for my ranger. Great fun! 🙂

While I find myself disappointed with 4e, I still consider it to be a fantastic experiment with much to learn from. The biggest lesson I take away from it is that the expansive exceptions based design is a mistake, for the very reasons you’re citing.

The group I played 3rd Edition with stuck with the three core books for a very long time, only occasionally taking something from another book. This is because the core covered all the bases really well, and explicitly explained much of it’s design philosophy, so it was easy to make things up if you needed them.

Over time, we developed a decent amount of rules mastery. We knew what most of the feats and spells did.

In comparison, the 4th Edition core books were really just a skeleton of the game. By using powers to describe a character’s abilities, it took at least two Players Handbooks, the Adventurer’s Vault, and four powers books to catch up to the 3rd Edition Players Handbook. I couldn’t even begin to memorize all the powers, feats, and magic items.

I find this unfortunate, because the core system in 4th Edition is better. It’s simpler, but not stupid, and it’s easy to work with. I’d just prefer to see something different built on top of it.

@wolfsamurai,

If you read my first comment above, I think we’re in lock step.

“4E hasn’t really gotten more complex since day 1. The complexity is about the same.”

I particularly liked your point…”Many DMs inadvertently push this sort of decision making on the group by not adjusting to what the players bring to the table.”

This is huge. As a DM, it’s important to take into account your players capabilities when you design, particularly combat, but skill challenges too. Just like you’d not want a negotiation that will require tons of history/diplomacy for a group of athletics/acrobatics types, so too you don’t want to design combat that requires min/maxed characters when your PCs are designed for more RP.

I’ve actually gotten into arguments on the wizards forums about this. Many gamers think that you should create encounters without regard for the abilities of the players, that otherwise, you’re “tailoring” to them and “exploiting” their weaknesses. The truth is, IMO, a good encounter/combat/campaign will take into consideration, all the characters, their strengths and their weaknesses and use them all equally to make things as interesting and fun as possible.

THis is exactly why I don’t think the game forces complexity, we do. If my PCs are not min/maxed, the combats will NOT be more difficult because I base the difficulty on what they can do, not what they COULD do. Thats why I don’t understand the point of min/maxing. If my PCs were all min/maxed, I would simply skew combat more difficult. This would pretty much negate the act of min/maxing. At times, I feel bad about this, but then I realize there are more ways to reward players than with easy combat.

In the end, I’m saying I agree. I think WE as consumers drive the complexity and it very where may be with Newbies group that they’ve driven the complexity the point that it has hurt/ruined their experience with the game.

An interesting followup article to this might be, “How does one repair the damage?”.

Sorry, forgot to subscribe

@mbeacom you are right the DM needs to take into account the PC’s abilities. If you run a session and not a single player chooses a divine class you miss out on most Radiant damage, now run them against the undead in the adventure. I think most players will first acknowledge upon seeing the undead they are in for a tough adventure.

I think I take that portion of the process out of the equation as I make the characters for the group. Now my current campaign is a 80-20 mix of essential and classic 4e builds. But I put a cavalier and a warpriest in the game to cover certain things like healing, I have played in games where no one wanted to be the healer and I took my ranger and multiclassed into a cleric in our 3.5 game.

Complexity on the players part will be dependant on just how dedicated to the game they truely are. Now with my approach I have an uphill battle because they did not make the character, so they do not have that attachment to it. But in the design process I made them shine is a particular area (hard to do with now 8 players in the group)

The slayer is a beast with just his MBA. He hits and right off the bat he does +12 damage. The hunter has the ability to make difficult terrain and then gets combat advantage on those in it. The Knight is great with his cleaving ability, he and the hunter team up against the groups of creatures. The Pyromancer Mage is just well lets say lighting things on fire is his forte and when you need a ranged damage dealer call him up.

In the first combat they did real well against overwhelming odds and they all thought they were bad ass. I had their buyin. In the town the social skill players shined and I had the additional buyin from them. I have a 70-30 mix of roleplayers to hack n Slashers and if they are all excited about their characters going into the 2nd session and soon the 3rd and learning as we go I am happy.

When I first gave them their powers on one or two sheets they were staring blankly at it. The mage had his powers cut and in sleeves (by me, short on prep time for the rest sue me) and he was all over them showing them how to pick the powers what would work best and soon they were all understanding it past my initial walk throughs in the first encounter. By the 4th encounter it seemed like old hack.

The buy in I think is essential I think. Even in the days of letting my players make their own, or in campaigns where they let us. Almost always even when there was group disscussion on party mix and who should cover what, you had someone who always ended up wanting the lime light and going for the skills that would get him noticed. (since 3rd edition) but this also is true for any game with skills (happened in my 2e Mutants and Masterminds campaign)

Now if I have someone suffer from a death they will get to roll up the character, I will try to steer them onto the path of a similar niche to fill in the party though I have it pretty well covered with 8 players lol.

Don’t discount just simple burnout. We all get burned out on things that we do too often. Obviously, you are passionate about the hobby. It may be unrealistic to expect your players to have the same passion, to put in the same amount of prep, the same amount of time. That is the problem I have had to come to terms with. I would play 2-3 times per week, as a DM or player, if I could, but my group is perfectly happy getting together every1-2 weeks. I try to look at it optimistically, I have more time to plan awesome adventures, they are always excited to play by the time they get a chance to.

The suggestion I have is, rotate who DMs, if your group is getting frustrated with their characters, let them have a chance to see the game from the other side of the screen and play different characters in different settings. Everyone has a different style of DMing and playing and different combinations of players and DMs, even within the same group can help keep the game fresh. We shouldn’t give up on something that we find enjoyable just because we get stuck in rut. Good luck.

My play group meets every other week for about a five hour session. We love 4e. We also loved 1st, 2nd, UA, 3.0, 3.5 and played them all. The consistent part of the game? We played a role-playing game. You picked a class and race, named him, and went out into the world. When did all of this become so complex? IMO every edition of the game was as simple or complex as you wanted to make it….weapon speed factors anyone? How about armor type vs. weapon modifiers? Non-weapon proficiencies? The incredibly elegant grappling rules of 3.5? The game has had add-ons and esoteric rules from the beginning. Get over it. Choose what you want to use, make a decision, and stick by it.

I do agree with several previous posters that many players are lazy with regard to knowing their powers. It’s their loss.

So WOTC decides that monsters need a damage-dealing boost in 4e? Do you agree? If not use the older monster books. Why is any of this difficult? The idea that “you can’t play X” because the game doesn’t support it is ludicrous. If you want to play a two-weapon fighter ghost owlbear who only adventures during full-moons talk to your DM and your fellow players, if everyone says go for it….then go for it!

As a DM, I have a 4 player group. Almost all of my encounters are party level +2 to +3 and balanced for five players. Why? Because that’s where the numbers “feel” right, and oddly it works. Did I know that magic formula for success after running my very first combat? Nope. I had to learn through trial-n-error (what a concept!).

To DMs: Keep playing the way you want and that your players enjoy. If they don’t want to even name their character and just want to see how many 5 hour combats they can have and everyone is having fun….you’re doing it right.

To Players: If you want to do something “not in the rules” do it! It’s your DM’s job to make a ruling. Play the game, not the system!

/end rant

@mbeacom @wolfsamuri Agreed!

I have to admit – I think the complexity issue revolves VERY much around your player’s play-style.

Take one of my Players I’ll call “Max” – Max loves to have choices, he’s the guy swinging from the side of the ropebridge in order to swing up behind the enemy. He’s the guy that always wants dramatic moves, wants to leap the monster or attack the dragon from above. He THRIVES on options.
And he loves 4e with a passion of a thousand burning sharks. The choices make him giggle, the things he has done to me as a DM have made me cry. He loves tactics and loves the choices.

In fact, he’s horrified by Essentials. “They don’t have choices!” he cries. He is worried that the old classes won’t have new choices created for them. And the idea of making him play an Essentials class is the furthest thing from my mind. He’d be furious at me.

Now take another player I have – We’ll call him “Buddy” – Buddy likes to hack, slash and not think that much. Often his character calls out “Uh, wadda ya think I should do?” He’s the lovable dumb human fighter in reality. He tried to play a mage once in 3.0 and 3.5… lets just say he was miserable the entire time. He never felt he was helping, he always would say three rounds later “Oh, I totally forgot I could do *insert awesome fight-saving thing*” With 4e, he chooses powers that are simple – classes that are basic, not complicated. He loves it. Essentials makes him giggle – he loves the idea – and I love the fact he can play one of the characters if he likes.

Truly, “complexity of play” can be something the players actually do want. And for the first time with 4e (especially adding Essentials to the mix) you can have as easy or complicated a character as a player.

What I find TOTALLY hilarious? When as the DM, I chose to change a campaign in mid-swing to 4e from 3.5? I had two players quit. Reason? There wasn’t as many options in 4e. It was too simple. 😉

Each player has his style – 4e as it stands now, with the addition of the Essentials characters, can be as easy or as complicated for the player as the PLAYER wants it to be 😉

indeed 4th edition is a grand experiment for getting dnd forward….

sadly it kept some 3rd edition kludge

my pet peeve are
stat dependency
item dependency

I want bonus to be based on class and level and I want not a big difference between a 18 and a 11 str fighter (at most +3… at most), I don’t want serial magic items there should not be +1/+2/+3 items, just “special” and very rare item that give you an edge but not a direct one (e.g. Sword of the 7 seas: this sword can best any magical resistence -e.g. hit even creature hit only by magic-, can float into water, can trasform into a boat and never rust! not +5 to hit and damage!)

and race, please just powers not bonus to stat

SwordDM makes a good point. I’ve found that those on-the-fly judgments often make the game that much better. I encourage my players to do things, both in combat and out, that are not statted anywhere on their character sheet. I’ll find the check that applies, or if it’s awesome enough, I’ll find a way to quasi-allow/handwave it, usually, I say something like, “yes, with your skillset, that would definitely work, no roll is needed”.

I like my players to think like their character would and if the PC SHOULD be able to do something, then I might make them roll, but it will be with an easy DC and if they fail, they may actually succeed, but there will be some funny/exciting/challenging consequence rather than flatout failure.

It is too late but next time you may want to mix more roll playing, puzzles and skill challenges into the game. I do not think it is the rules but the adventures. Most 4E games are run with battle encounter after battle encounter which can be a grind. Many of the adventures are written with the roll playing as a bridge between battle encounters. My group was starting to feel the grind and then I thought about doing something different as I had heard on a real play podcast or read in a blog.

I ran a series of encounters that the first encounter required solving a puzzle. The second encounter was a skil challengege while they were hallucinating. Let me explain. They walked into a room with hallucinationon gas that smelled like roses. There was a set of doors at the opposite end of the room that would not open but had no locks on them. I had the characters roll and add their constitution modifier. The upper half got cards saying “You enjoy the smell of roses and feel relaxed and refreshed.” The lower half got cards that represented hallucinations like, “A spirit appears to you and tells you are the chosen from your group. It instructs you to cut off your hair and burn it as an offering to the god. This will please the god and allow all who offered there hair to pass.” I also instructed the group they must stay in character and there is to be not telling the others what is on your card and no meta talk. It was a skill challenge. I told them any or no skills could be required. They did stay in character and had fun trying to do goofy things like convince the others to cut off there hair and burn it. Finally, one of the sane members of the party found the secret door “that had such fine dwarven construction that an elf could nonormallyly detect.” There was an other puzzle in the next room.

Not one battle in the three encounters to get the helm but the group loved it and is looking forward to the next game session. I am glad I have reinvigorated the group and I hope you or other 4E DMs can use my experience to help your game also.

Tu travailles beaucoup ta technique?de lancer de saucisson??