Quote from: Gizmoduck5000;725378I heard this secondhand, mind you - apparently one of the designers of 4E said during an interview that they engineered the game to reproduce the most epic and memorable fights people had from earlier editions and make that the norm.

On paper this sounds like a good idea: make every single fight exciting and dynamic. The problem however, is that now going through a dungeon, kicking in doors and fighting a handful of kobolds in each room becomes a tedious slog.

I agree 100%. The result of changing the combat system to make every fight epic is that a traditional dungeon like Keep on the Shadowfell turns into a tedious slog. The 30-encounter adventures that WoTC put out at the start of 4e are a nightmare to play through for this reason. Even Dungeon Mag 10 encounter adventures feel very draggy. The huge mismatch between what 4e does well, and the adventures published for it, contributed greatly to its downfall IMO.

What works well in 4e are adventures with 2-4 combat encounters. Eg the 3-encounter Dungeon Delves book works well as a frame to build adventures on. Sometimes I cut out an encounter or add one in, or pretty much just gut the whole thing for NPCs and plots. And only prep stuff 1 session in advance, in response to PC action in the previous session. With a 3-encounter adventure you can have beginning/middle/end as initiation/rising action/climax, and it works.

I remember playing Dark Sun 4E.  

We go wandering through the desert on our way to our destination.

We make survival roles.

We have a random encounter.

Four hours later...time to go home now.

4E would have really benefited from having a way to scale up or down the complexity wanted in combats.

Quote from: One Horse Town;725296My main gripe with 4e uber-balance is that it seemed that every battle was designed to be epic - even 4 goblins at 1st level. Seat of the pants most of the time IME. That gets old very fast in a long running campaign.

Isn't 4E also the edition that introduced the "one hit and he's out" Minion concept to D&D?

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;725484Isn't 4E also the edition that introduced the "one hit and he's out" Minion concept to D&D?

JG

Yes.

In order to make big battles more epic, I believe - normally 4 goblins would be equal opponents for 4 low-level PCs, but you can "pad out" the encounter by say exchanging one of the normal goblins for 4 minions goblins.

Quote from: The Ent;725490Yes.

In order to make big battles more epic, I believe - normally 4 goblins would be equal opponents for 4 low-level PCs, but you can "pad out" the encounter by say exchanging one of the normal goblins for 4 minions goblins.

Yeah, and it got real old, real fast.

Also, paper vampires!

Quote from: James Gillen;725484Isn't 4E also the edition that introduced the "one hit and he's out" Minion concept to D&D?

JG

Technically, they may have.

But in 1E dnd zero level and 1hd soldiers and monsters are essentially one hit minions.

I remember they originally came from another game that was wuxia-inspired.  I'm pretty sure that the designer of that game was involved in 4th edition.  

There are other games that use 'hits' as opposed to 'hit points'.  If an opponent has '3 hits', it dies after 3 successful attacks.  Some of these systems also differentiate weapons by allowing extra hits (ie, a simple weapon might count as 1 hit, but a larger weapon might count as two hits).

Quote from: deadDMwalking;725547I remember they originally came from another game that was wuxia-inspired.  I'm pretty sure that the designer of that game was involved in 4th edition.  

There are other games that use 'hits' as opposed to 'hit points'.  If an opponent has '3 hits', it dies after 3 successful attacks.  Some of these systems also differentiate weapons by allowing extra hits (ie, a simple weapon might count as 1 hit, but a larger weapon might count as two hits).

I thought the minions were taken from Savage Worlds' Extras rules (they're even called minions and lackeys in the SW description).

Quote from: deadDMwalking;725547There are other games that use 'hits' as opposed to 'hit points'.  If an opponent has '3 hits', it dies after 3 successful attacks.  Some of these systems also differentiate weapons by allowing extra hits (ie, a simple weapon might count as 1 hit, but a larger weapon might count as two hits).

That's exactly the same as hit points.

Quote from: The Traveller;725549That's exactly the same as hit points.

As they were originally used, yes.  THat's right

The RPG = D&D crowd will buy anything that is labeled D&D.  The same people that can't buy enough of the LotR and Hobbit stuff.  The int(D100/5) players have just the right intelligence for Hasbro to market to.

Quote from: The Traveller;725549That's exactly the same as hit points.

Well the only difference would be you dont roll damage, so there is greater predictability (get hit x times, you go down). With hit points and wound systems, there is some uncertainty usually how many hits you can sustain before going down.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;725553The RPG = D&D crowd will buy anything that is labeled D&D.  The same people that can't buy enough of the LotR and Hobbit stuff.  The int(D100/5) players have just the right intelligence for Hasbro to market to.

I have no idea what stereotype you're referencing here.

The " RPG = D&D crowd" sounds to me like the people who dont play RPGs, have just heard about them.

At the same time LOTR has very little to do with D&D. It did in the 80s, but WoTC D&D has moved so far from Tolkien archetypes its more accurate to compare modern D&D to videogames and anime. I cant see there being a lot of cross-appeal on the surface.

Quote from: TristramEvans;725566I have no idea what stereotype you're referencing here.

Most likely the compulsive completionist collector crowd.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;725547I remember they originally came from another game that was wuxia-inspired.  I'm pretty sure that the designer of that game was involved in 4th edition.  

You might be thinking of Feng Shui. Its designer Robin Laws worked on DMG II for 4E that I know of, but I don't know of any direct involvement in original system design.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;725562Well the only difference would be you dont roll damage, so there is greater predictability (get hit x times, you go down). With hit points and wound systems, there is some uncertainty usually how many hits you can sustain before going down.

You can get around this a bit if characters make some sort of 'Keep On Trucking' roll when they reach 0 hits or below, instead of automatically collapsing unconscious or suffering existence failure.