Post by gamedave on Apr 19, 2008 8:42:18 GMT -5
So, on Friday, Jeff, Derek, and Suit Chris canceled. Coincidentally, I had been reviewing the great 4E preview document Movie Dave found, along with the embedded links, which included the official WotC 4E demo characters and a couple of home-brew 4E demo adventures, and had thought it would be fun to try a pre-pre-4E playtest.
So, Jeremy, Allen, and Mike each grabbed a demo character, and I ran one of the home-brew 4E demo adventures from EN World.
Overall: pretty fun. I was surprised at how fast and smoothly it ran (albeit with only three players and a partial set of rules). Fights seemed extraordinarily well-balanced - practically every fight ended with one or more PCs unconscious or on the verge of unconciousness, with the PCs bloodied, desperate, but ultimately victorious, and every PC had the chance to really shine at least once during the adventure, if not necessarily during every fight.
More specific observations:
Clerics are stillvital extremely valuable. With healing surges, a second wind, and extended rests, you don't technically need a cleric in order to be able to heal, but since you can only use a single healing surge per encounter on your own, and apparently you will tend to take a lot of damage every encounter, having the cleric available to provide extra healing during an encounter is huge. Plus clerics now have offensive spells.
On the subject of healing, I'm of two minds about healing surges. I understand the game design reasoning, so that clerics are useful but not necessary for every party, and to enable characters to continue through numerous encounters without having to camp for the night after every tough battle. And they seem to work fairly well in pure game mechanics terms. However, for larger campaign/background/story reasons, I still have a major problem with them, as well as with the "6 hours of rest heals everything" rule. It just doesn't make any sense, story-wise, that no matter how gravely injured, ill, poisoned, incapacitated, etc., someone is, 6 hours later, they're fine. It would be a truly weird world that would be hard to relate to if there's no such thing as a threat of serious injury or disease - you are either killed outright or you're fine in 6 hours. Even if heroes are special and use different rules, it still creates a weird world - some people miraculously heal even the most serious injuries and are effectively immune to diseases and slow-acting poisons.
As I've posted before, any evil warlord who wants to maintain power should send out henchmen, perhaps breaking the little finger of everyone in his kingdom, then checking the next day. If the finger is healed, that person is a "hero", and needs to be killed. If not, that person is an "extra", and can be allowed to live.
I'm also of two minds about saving throws. On the one hand, 4E seems to have a lot of ongoing effects, as secondary effects of an attack, to be saved against, such as being set on fire. I'm fine with a 55% chance of ending those effects every round. In game play, it seemed pretty well-balanced. But such iconic D&D spells as sleep and hold person don't seem very useful anymore. Sleep even slows opponents now in addition to putting them to sleep, and it still doesn't seem terribly useful, especially as a daily power.
For all of the above, of course, we'll have to await the full version of the rules on June 6 to see exactly how they work, and what exceptions there might be.
BTW, I don't hate 4E.
So, Jeremy, Allen, and Mike each grabbed a demo character, and I ran one of the home-brew 4E demo adventures from EN World.
Overall: pretty fun. I was surprised at how fast and smoothly it ran (albeit with only three players and a partial set of rules). Fights seemed extraordinarily well-balanced - practically every fight ended with one or more PCs unconscious or on the verge of unconciousness, with the PCs bloodied, desperate, but ultimately victorious, and every PC had the chance to really shine at least once during the adventure, if not necessarily during every fight.
More specific observations:
Clerics are still
On the subject of healing, I'm of two minds about healing surges. I understand the game design reasoning, so that clerics are useful but not necessary for every party, and to enable characters to continue through numerous encounters without having to camp for the night after every tough battle. And they seem to work fairly well in pure game mechanics terms. However, for larger campaign/background/story reasons, I still have a major problem with them, as well as with the "6 hours of rest heals everything" rule. It just doesn't make any sense, story-wise, that no matter how gravely injured, ill, poisoned, incapacitated, etc., someone is, 6 hours later, they're fine. It would be a truly weird world that would be hard to relate to if there's no such thing as a threat of serious injury or disease - you are either killed outright or you're fine in 6 hours. Even if heroes are special and use different rules, it still creates a weird world - some people miraculously heal even the most serious injuries and are effectively immune to diseases and slow-acting poisons.
As I've posted before, any evil warlord who wants to maintain power should send out henchmen, perhaps breaking the little finger of everyone in his kingdom, then checking the next day. If the finger is healed, that person is a "hero", and needs to be killed. If not, that person is an "extra", and can be allowed to live.
I'm also of two minds about saving throws. On the one hand, 4E seems to have a lot of ongoing effects, as secondary effects of an attack, to be saved against, such as being set on fire. I'm fine with a 55% chance of ending those effects every round. In game play, it seemed pretty well-balanced. But such iconic D&D spells as sleep and hold person don't seem very useful anymore. Sleep even slows opponents now in addition to putting them to sleep, and it still doesn't seem terribly useful, especially as a daily power.
For all of the above, of course, we'll have to await the full version of the rules on June 6 to see exactly how they work, and what exceptions there might be.
BTW, I don't hate 4E.
