4E from One Year In

4e PHB alternate cover image I had sitting around... from the German version, maybe?

Fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons is a little over a year old now, and I’ve been playing or running it for almost exactly a year today.  On the whole, I’m finding it a pretty robust system.  It’s not my favorite system, or even my favorite D&D (that would be Cyclopedia D&D), but it’s become my favorite version of AD&D.  A few of my favorite parts:

Philosophy

I’ve said before that I’ve been playing the same game since I first picked up basic D&D.  That game is a cinematic game about daring heroic exploits with the fates of villages, nations, worlds hanging in the balance.  Not every campaign has had the same elements, to be sure; many were high fantasy, but some were low fantasy, or even bizarre science fantasy.  Some were set in mythic Asian locations, some in the Bronze Age, one memorable one in the prehistoric during an ice age.  There were flirtations with dark fantasy and steampunk.  But the game remained the same.  With few exceptions, the characters were heroes and did heroic things (or died trying).

This was a valid approach in earlier editions, but arguably not the default approach.  Many classic campaigns were about nothing more than more-or-less ordinary people seeking their fortunes and trying to survive the rigors of a dangerous venture.  Prior to 4e, I often started my games at level 3, and this is one of the reasons why.

Balance

Balance is unfairly reviled in some circles.  In the end, though, it makes planning for the game easier, and it ensures a reasonable division of spotlight time in combat — and, even in a relatively combat-light game, combat is still a big focus of any edition of D&D.

In prior editions, what I’d see was the wizard dominating the first combat or two, then running out of spells and being relegated to throwing darts, or daggers, or shooting a crossbow.  Meanwhile, the fighter would put out roughly the same damage every round, regardless of anything else — he’d be rolling the same dice every round.  The rogue would be either strictly better than the fighter (if backstab or sneak attack were available), or strictly inferior (otherwise).  The cleric?  Heal, heal, heal.  Until 3e, when he could buff himself and be a better fighter than the fighter.

In 4e, all characters of the same level have the same number of class-based powers available to them.  The effects of those powers still vary, depending on the characters’ roles.  Characters can still outshine one another situationally — but not on a regular basis, not unless the GM is specifically aiming for that outcome.  Everyone always has something to do — the wizard never runs out of spells.  Everyone always has options — the fighter is never stuck with “I attack again” round after round.  The design of the system encourages teamwork among the players, so “lone wolf” glory hounds will find themselves unable to hog attention for long.  The characters with healing powers still get to help smite the enemies, and they do so without trampling on other classes’ area of expertise.

As a result of all this, the system for estimating an encounter’s difficulty is much more accurate than 3e’s version.  It’s not perfect, but it does make designing encounters much faster and easier for the GM.

Balance isn’t a necessity for an RPG, mind you.  The Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG specifically allows two tiers of PCs:  Heroes such as the Slayer and Angel, the combat powerhouses, and White Hats such as Giles and Xander, the supporting characters, who get some other perks to make up for their lack of sheer power.  But D&D has always been theoretically balanced.  Earlier editions, with their separate progression rates, were supposedly balanced based on XP total — a 5,001-xp character would be a level 4 thief (barely), a level 3 fighter (about 25% of the way to level 4), a level 3 mage (barely), or a level 2/3 fighter/thief, but these characters were supposedly equal in capability.  (In actuality, they were not — multiclassed characters in particular were generally superior to single-classed ones.  But that’s another story.)  Since 3e, characters have been supposedly balanced by level — but just look at a level 20 wizard compared to a level 20 fighter, and you can see that’s inaccurate.  4e comes a lot closer.

Ease of Homebrewing

The DMG exposes many of the numbers that went into the system.  This makes it easy for the GM to develop, for example, his own monsters.  Items and powers are not much more difficult.  Page 42 of the DMG allows the GM to easily rule on all sorts of improvised actions in combat and out — and to make taking such actions effective, rather than subpar.  Used wisely, this leads to much more dynamic roleplayed combats than were common in early editions, in my experience.

From the player side of things, 4e explicitly supports and encourages refluffing of powers, use of what the HERO system calls special effects.  This makes it possible to create a good many character concepts that might otherwise seem difficult with the rules-as-written.  A fighter with a bow?  Archery ranger — if you’re not the nature-oriented type, take Dungeoneering as your skill instead of Nature, or ask the GM to substitute History.  Berserk war priest?  You can do that with a barbarian, with a virtue of valor bard, with an avenger, with a fighter.  (The second PHB really expanded the number of building blocks, and the Power series of books does too.)

This is a little counterintuitive for a lot of people, who are used to picking a class and getting a lot of fluff along with it, but once you get used to dissociating the fluff from the mechanics, it works wonders.  Even just reflavoring a power or two allows for some character concepts that might be difficult otherwise, such as a wizard who focuses on manipulating a certain element.

Codifying Traditional Ideas

The idea of a skill challenge framework is a good one.  The idea of rewarding experience for completing goals — quests — on both personal and group levels is a good one.  The idea of ritual magic available to anyone who takes the time to learn it is a good one.  And more.

These are all things that existed in previous editions, often in houseruled form, but 4e provides a structure for them.

I always found this one inspiring

So, that’s some of the fun stuff.  Of course, 4e is far from perfect.  It’s got its share of weaknesses too:

Mechanical Faults

The original rules for skill challenges were broken, and even the revision is somewhat unclear at times.  While I find the skill challenge to be a very useful structure, and I use it often in my games, I don’t use it exactly as written.  I tend, as usual, to greater improvisation and roleplay, and I’ll often alter the form of a skill challenge to better suit my needs at the time.

Likewise, I find the implementation of rituals a little frustrating.  They’re often too expensive to be of use at the levels when they should be appearing (although the cost proves trivial a few levels on, thanks to the exponential wealth curve).  They often take too long to be used in situations when casting them would be useful.  Some of them are fairly worthless overall.  Later books have begun to address these issues — several PHB2 classes get a free ritual each day — but these are patches, and the system needs more attention.  I’ve got houserules for them, too.

Then there’s the slight mistake regarding PC attack bonuses’ scaling vs. monster defenses, which the Expertise feats were apparently introduced to correct.

Combat Time

When I started, I found 4e combat was faster than 3e.  As I play at higher levels, this is no longer the case.  Higher hit point totals and a lack of 3e’s save-or-lose and save-and-lose spells are the culprits here.  Many people suggest halving monster hit points and doubling damage, and this works well.  I used to use 3/4 hit points for most fights, which also worked okay.  Currently, I treat the listed hit points as a maximum and have the party encounter a spread of enemies:  if a kobold slinger is listed at 24 hp, the party might encounter a few experienced slingers in good condition (24 hp) and a few malnourished recruits bullied by their larger peers (18, 16, and 14 hp).

Using lots of little monsters instead of a few solo or elite ones also helps, and tends to make for a more interesting combat besides.

I rarely run more than two combats a night, and often not even that, so this doesn’t affect me much — but for some RPGA adventures, for instance, you can really feel the time.

Accessibility to New GMs

This is a weird one.  In many ways, 4e is the most accessible edition of the game in many years, if not ever.  The 4e DMG is an incredible resource for a new GM, offering the kind of useful advice about running games that earlier editions sometimes overlooked in favor of charts and rules regarding the game itself.  4e also provides a GM with plenty of tools for homebrewing and guidelines for improvising.  It even contains a barebones campaign setting and a basic adventure so you can sit down and start playing.  I consider it the best DMG yet.  So how is this a problem?

It isn’t… for experienced GMs who are used to dealing with these paradigms.

The problem comes in the fact that many newer GMs — and players — feel limited to what it says on the character sheet or the monster statblock.  They’ll play out combats where a power is used each and every turn.  They’ll run skill challenges exactly by the book.  They’ll award experience and treasure according to the parcels provided.

Maybe they’ll have a lot of fun doing that, and that’s good.

But to me, that’s only using part of the system.  The game really starts to shine when the DM and players wing it a little more — like we did in the Cyclopedia days.  I’ve said before that 4e feels a lot like Cyclopedia to me, and this is why.  It thrives on spontaneity, on players and GMs doing things that maybe the rules don’t cover exactly, on making it up as you go along.  4e provides a lot of guidelines for doing that and still keeping the game pretty balanced and smooth.  But it doesn’t provide a lot of guidance about actually doing it.  I think this is one reason people get turned off by 4e:  they try it, stick to by-the-book interpretations, and find it’s not to their taste.

I’d be willing to bet, though, that they don’t play their edition of choice strictly by-the-book.  I’d even go so far as to say that D&D wasn’t meant to be played that way.  House rules and winging it have always been part of the game, and part of its charm.  4e provides a system that makes those things easy, and makes those things not break it too badly, and that’s why I like it.  But while it points out its capacity to handle such things, it doesn’t really encourage them.  It makes them too easy to overlook.

Related posts:

1. Zero Level, Revisited
2. Hanging in the Balance
3. What Skill Challenges Aren’t
4. Zero Level
5. War Week: A Harvest of Men