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Post by Tasha on Feb 17, 2014 17:32:41 GMT
They were actually trying to bring the feel of a CCG into a RPG. It actually worked. I have read interviews with the lead developer that say just that. 4e plays NOTHING like a MMORPG. I disagree with part of your premise here and agree with CTaylor in that I get no CCG flavor out of 4th Ed, and I play a couple of CCGs very aggressively and have played others throughout my time in the gaming space. Before 4th Ed, no one had "anytime" "instance" and "daily" powers; that language reminds people very strongly (myself included) of the MMO world, and the more I reviewed the breakdown, and the overly simplified build mechanics, it did, for me, look like a conversion of an MMO into a PNP. Now, would a CCG work in an RPG format? Sure would, Lord of the Rings: The Card Game does it very well and at a high level, and they just did the new Pathfinder Card Game. Both of those are excellent, co-op experiences, and I would not have associated either of them with 4th Edition. If they wanted to inject the CCG mold into PNP format, I feel that they missed the mark there. 4e was about spending your resources, Powers could interrupt other powers. Heck, people even printed out cards for abilities. The way you choose powers is like building a deck. I was a heavy Magic the Gathering player. The more I played 4e the more it felt like MtG to me. There were differences, but that's to be expected. IN MMO's you do have powers that you can only use at short and long intervals, but get no real choice over what those powers are (Besides by choosing class). Being able to use powers as much as you like is really more like Hero.
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Post by CRTaylor on Feb 17, 2014 18:05:52 GMT
I guess I can see your point, but I think if you examine the rules you can see there's real MMOG feel to it as well with how the powers worked and the combat was structured. The cards are just an artifact to help keep track of all that since you don't have a computer doing it for you. I understand that they were trying to make it more like MTG (their big cash cow) but it was a serious mistake.
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Post by Tasha on Feb 18, 2014 7:28:23 GMT
I think that 4e is mechanically a pretty good RPG. It's balanced it gives classes options. It is setup to allow for Niche protection and allows for multiple people playing the same combat role to feel different. It's also a game that is playable in every powerlevel that the game supports, something that 3.x very much lacks.
Their mistake was marketing it as Dungeons and Dragons. The 3.5 players were expecting something that was closer to 3.5 but with better balance, and clunky rules changed. They got a new game that played very differently from the edition they were familiar with. Also promised online play tools were absent at launch and even the Character Gen program was nowhere to be found. On top of that they mangled a beloved RPG world to appease a loud minority of players who wouldn't buy supplements in that world. They also didn't offer 4e under the OGL instead coming up with licencing fees and restricitons that nearly all publishers said no to.
My friends who run game stores actually sell a ton of 4e to beginning players who seem to actually love the game.
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Post by CRTaylor on Feb 18, 2014 15:16:25 GMT
Yeah I'm sure its popular with new players; Fuzion was too. You just should never do that to a long-established game. There are a lot of ways to kill a game, and game companies seem to stray into them stupidly over the years.
Thankfully you can bring a game back, too. Hero was all but dead when 5th edition came out. It could be brought back again with the right handling, I think.
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Post by CRTaylor on Mar 18, 2014 16:01:53 GMT
I'm gonna take another stab at explaining the Drain-as-Curse concept because it seems like everyone took it to be only for disads and rejected it out of hand. The principle is that since drain essentially imposes negative points on a target, you can do so in more ways than simply weakening powers. That could include disadvantages, but it also would be other builds. And instead of being a super long term major power like transform, it would be short term and fade on its own, rapidly.
Here's an example of an unusual build using this Curse concept that is very difficult to model any other way:
ARCANE ABATEMENT: Makes people's spells slower to cast. POWERS: Drain 2d6 (Curse) Increase spell casting time by +1/4 advantage on up to 50 active points (12 pts)
The idea being that by using Drain to impose negative points on a target, you can actually add limitations to them. That attack that was once instant is now delayed phase. There's a lot of ways this could be used (adding x2 END Cost to a brick's strength, adding an activation roll to someone's defenses, etc).
Now technically you can do this with a naked limitation and usable against others and so on right now, but its a mess to build. I think this has an enormous amount of possibilities and would add a lot to the toolkit, even if it was a separate power than Drain with its own rules (for example, not being open ended, but having an absolute target level you can reach cumulatively).
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kravenkor
Double Digit Master
"We're making a better world; all of them. Better worlds."
Posts: 92
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Post by kravenkor on Mar 18, 2014 17:54:12 GMT
Change Environment would be my go-to for such a thing, CTaylor; you can apply penalties to their "Power: Magic" roll forcing them to take extra time to offset the penalty or risk flubbing the spell. Granted, this is a bit clunky, and your method could certainly work, I just try to avoid outright additions to the game over various houserules
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Post by indianajoe on Mar 20, 2014 12:47:11 GMT
How about reworking Enraged/Berserk as Loss of Control? At its base level ("enraged"), the character would do something inappropriate, useless, or tactically unsound until he recovers. At the extreme level ("berserk"), the character will undertake actions that are actively dangerous to himself and others.
This idea was inspired by the section on Enraged/Berserk in APG1.
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Post by CRTaylor on Mar 20, 2014 14:24:53 GMT
There are several clever ideas in the Advanced Player's Guides that would be welcome and useful additions to the toolkit. Some are poorly done and really bad but several are very clever and handy.
Some examples include the Extradimensional Space (yeah its kind of a one-trick pony, but so is Knockback Resistance, and it models something very complex to attempt in any other method), the Density Alteration system, the Accurate Selective advantage modifier to Area Effect, Delayed Endurance, and the Replay and Probability powers.
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Post by CRTaylor on Mar 21, 2014 19:12:34 GMT
And I still really like the idea of the "fire and forget, fades on its own" way you could use Aid to give people powers they don't already have as an alternative or different structure than Usable by others. UBO works, but Aid would too and is so heavily structured and limited that it has its own charm for specific sorts of builds.
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Post by CRTaylor on Mar 24, 2014 16:27:09 GMT
I would also consider tweaking the hit location chart slightly. As it stands right now its easy to use and has a sort of intuitive feel going from head to toes, but its distribution is odd for the bell curve and locations. 12 and 13, two of the more common rolls on 3d6, are very attractive locations to hit due to the increased stun multiplier (and body multiplier on vitals). Maybe something like this would work better:
ROLL LOCATION 3-5 Head (I'd break it down further: 3-back of head 4-face 5-neck) 6 Hands 7-8 Arms 9 Joint (elbow, knee, etc. Same as arm but with a x2 stun multiple for hitting somewhere painful) 10 Shoulder 11-12 Chest 13 Thigh 14 Lower Leg 15 Feet 16 Stomach 17-18 Vitals
Now that's an odd distribution in terms of head-to-toe continuity, but the result is heavily weighted toward center mass and limbs, and high quality locations such as vitals, head, and stomach are at the ends, where you're less likely to roll. I added joints in for two reasons: hitting your knee or elbow hurts a ton but doesn't do much permanent damage, which is a useful spot to cripple someone without killing them, and handy for specialty shots, and because the chart flows better that way.
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Post by Tasha on Mar 25, 2014 19:11:24 GMT
I would also consider tweaking the hit location chart slightly. As it stands right now its easy to use and has a sort of intuitive feel going from head to toes, but its distribution is odd for the bell curve and locations. 12 and 13, two of the more common rolls on 3d6, are very attractive locations to hit due to the increased stun multiplier (and body multiplier on vitals). Maybe something like this would work better: ROLL LOCATION 3-5 Head (I'd break it down further: 3-back of head 4-face 5-neck) 6 Hands 7-8 Arms 9 Joint (elbow, knee, etc. Same as arm but with a x2 stun multiple for hitting somewhere painful) 10 Shoulder 11-12 Chest 13 Thigh 14 Lower Leg 15 Feet 16 Stomach 17-18 Vitals Now that's an odd distribution in terms of head-to-toe continuity, but the result is heavily weighted toward center mass and limbs, and high quality locations such as vitals, head, and stomach are at the ends, where you're less likely to roll. I added joints in for two reasons: hitting your knee or elbow hurts a ton but doesn't do much permanent damage, which is a useful spot to cripple someone without killing them, and handy for specialty shots, and because the chart flows better that way. Remember to think about a bullet or and axe hitting those locations.
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gojira
Double Digit Master
in a rubber monster suit.
Posts: 85
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Post by gojira on Mar 25, 2014 21:46:27 GMT
I'd go for two hit location charts, one for low-tech with swords, and one for high-tech for bullets where center of mass is more likely. Normally I say to simplify, but this is one area where some flexibility might be the better course.
Speaking of simplifying the hit location chart, how do folks feel about removing one column? The multiplier for N Stun and Body X are almost the same, except for two rows where they differ by one-half. I'd say make them the same, and use the Body X values (Body X has x1 for Stomach and x2 for Vitals. That would work well enough for normal damage as well.)
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Post by Thia Halmades on Mar 25, 2014 22:40:22 GMT
So gojira, we could reasonably say that you want two charts: One for melee, where things are a bit more scattered and people can flail, raise their arms, etc., and, One for range, where you're more likely to go center mass/head shot/groin shot (which is similar to the current scale). Also, you'd like to nuke the multipliers and have them just align, am I correct in all that? ~DEM
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gojira
Double Digit Master
in a rubber monster suit.
Posts: 85
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Post by gojira on Mar 26, 2014 2:45:47 GMT
Hmm, I'm not sure about melee vs. range. Bows might reasonably use the low-tech chart. Arrows you can see coming, and getting your hand smacked by an arrow while you try to interpose a shield could be considered more likely than getting hit randomly with a bullet.
Yeah I think I'm sticking to low-tech vs. high-tech. Even if it makes sense to use the low-tech one for melee combat, I doubt I'd put two tables in the same genre book.
And I didn't say to nuke all the multipliers, just one column. Stun X and Body X would remain.
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Post by jamesgillen on Mar 26, 2014 5:59:37 GMT
I think that 4e is mechanically a pretty good RPG. It's balanced it gives classes options. It is setup to allow for Niche protection and allows for multiple people playing the same combat role to feel different. It's also a game that is playable in every powerlevel that the game supports, something that 3.x very much lacks. Their mistake was marketing it as Dungeons and Dragons. Some of us have made that point for a while. JG
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