4E
For the most part, I've been excited by many of the things I've heard about 4E. However, there have been things that cause me some concern. I just saw this post on Hordelings that pretty well sums up my concern:
http://www.hordelings.com/forums/postView.php?viewPage=0&post_id=134308
(There's also a good response post far down on the second page)
Now to be fair, I'm a fan of rules complication. In Roborally, I'd like a game more if it uses a whole bunch of boards with 6 flags at locations where you have to criss-cross back and forth over the course for the maximum interaction with board elements and the other robots. But of course such games take forever, so I end up playing on two boards with two flags in a simple there and back. (At least those games get finished.) In Formula De, I like playing three laps with all the optional rules. And so forth.
Both of the mentioned posts bring up that you have to roll to hit with magic missile. I don't mind that so much, but one of them mentioned they want an improved magic missile that acts more like the old version. I don't believe this will happen in 4E. I think its against their design philosophy. Of course, house rules or third party supplements can return a low damage, no-roll-to-hit power, but I think Wizards are trying to "universalize" everything.
Take mirror image. The new version creates three images which have the affect of simply adding +6 to AC. Maybe in 4E, they've rolled back how big bonuses get, so that +6 is pretty hefty, but to me, this seems pretty impotent compared to the original. Everytime you are attacked, one of the images pops, and the AC bonus goes down by 2. And I think it was done this way because they want to work within an existing system (AC), rather than have spells which need their own systems (i.e. determining which of x images is the real you, what the AC of an image is, what happens if somebody hits the real you and they still have attacks in the round, etc).
When Gygax et. al. were originally designing the game, not everything was so codified, so they envisioned what a spell would do, then make a system to have that work. As time went on, some things were changed to work within existing systems - stoneskin becoming DR for instance. But now.....how to say what I'm trying to get across.....ok, back to mirror image. Its now just an ablative AC bonus, and presuming that there is still mage armor and shield, why would you want to waste a utility spell slot on just another AC bonus spell, especially when it goes away that quickly? The reason people are upset that magic missile needs a roll to hit now is that it takes away from what was that spells uniqueness - there have been plenty of ranged attack spells for energy/force damage in 3E, but only one magic missile. (Not literally true, there were higher level magic missile variants, but you get my point).
This comes across as pretty negative, and I'd just like to reiterate that many things about 4E to have me excited. But I think there's still going to be a part of me that wouldn't mind continuing playing 3E, maybe with some 4E touches. 3.75 anybody?
Don't know if I covered everything I wanted to, but I got to get going. Ta.
http://www.hordelings.com/forums/postView.php?viewPage=0&post_id=134308
(There's also a good response post far down on the second page)
Now to be fair, I'm a fan of rules complication. In Roborally, I'd like a game more if it uses a whole bunch of boards with 6 flags at locations where you have to criss-cross back and forth over the course for the maximum interaction with board elements and the other robots. But of course such games take forever, so I end up playing on two boards with two flags in a simple there and back. (At least those games get finished.) In Formula De, I like playing three laps with all the optional rules. And so forth.
Both of the mentioned posts bring up that you have to roll to hit with magic missile. I don't mind that so much, but one of them mentioned they want an improved magic missile that acts more like the old version. I don't believe this will happen in 4E. I think its against their design philosophy. Of course, house rules or third party supplements can return a low damage, no-roll-to-hit power, but I think Wizards are trying to "universalize" everything.
Take mirror image. The new version creates three images which have the affect of simply adding +6 to AC. Maybe in 4E, they've rolled back how big bonuses get, so that +6 is pretty hefty, but to me, this seems pretty impotent compared to the original. Everytime you are attacked, one of the images pops, and the AC bonus goes down by 2. And I think it was done this way because they want to work within an existing system (AC), rather than have spells which need their own systems (i.e. determining which of x images is the real you, what the AC of an image is, what happens if somebody hits the real you and they still have attacks in the round, etc).
When Gygax et. al. were originally designing the game, not everything was so codified, so they envisioned what a spell would do, then make a system to have that work. As time went on, some things were changed to work within existing systems - stoneskin becoming DR for instance. But now.....how to say what I'm trying to get across.....ok, back to mirror image. Its now just an ablative AC bonus, and presuming that there is still mage armor and shield, why would you want to waste a utility spell slot on just another AC bonus spell, especially when it goes away that quickly? The reason people are upset that magic missile needs a roll to hit now is that it takes away from what was that spells uniqueness - there have been plenty of ranged attack spells for energy/force damage in 3E, but only one magic missile. (Not literally true, there were higher level magic missile variants, but you get my point).
This comes across as pretty negative, and I'd just like to reiterate that many things about 4E to have me excited. But I think there's still going to be a part of me that wouldn't mind continuing playing 3E, maybe with some 4E touches. 3.75 anybody?
Don't know if I covered everything I wanted to, but I got to get going. Ta.