Tag: 4e

June 18, 2009

D&D 3.5: All About The Future?

A friend of mine who I game with regularly recently made an observation about why he prefers 4e to 3.5. Third edition, he noted, was all about the next level. When people build 3.5 PCs, it is often with an eye toward a particular prestige class or feat combination that the PC won’t have for some time. Some people, when...

March 25, 2009

The 4e Avenger

Someone brought a copy of the 4e PHBII to game the other night. I immediately turned to check out the Avenger. Why? One of the PCs I’ve most enjoyed playing is Tarbold – a priest of Tritherion in a heavily-houseruled 2nd edition game with very generous multiclassing. In 3.5 terms, he would have been something like a gestalt cleric/rogue. Unfortunately,...

December 9, 2008

Episodic Powers

In comics, pulps, cartoons, some episodic TV shows, and similar sources, it is often the case that the hero will display some ability or tactic that he or she has never used before. Even though it might be a generally useful and effective thing to do, it may never show up again. If we wanted to, we could easily incorporate...

November 3, 2008

Fallout 3 and thoughts on edition change

I picked up a copy of Fallout 3 yesterday. This is going to really cut into my productivity. When I heard that the developers had changed, I was a little worried that the tone of the game wouldn’t be quite the same under the new team. The 50s-style post-apocalyptic future that wasn’t is what really appealed to me in the...

October 20, 2008

d20 Patch: 4e-style monsters

It has been pointed out that players prefer 3.5 and GMs prefer 4e. Whether this is true or not, it has enough of an element of truth to gain some traction. Why? GMs really like the ease of preparation in 4e. In 3.5, statting up a monster for a combat that might last a couple of rounds was a headache....

October 13, 2008

4e: What do classes represent?

When 4e first came out, I remember someone asking a question that has strangely stuck with me. The question? “What if I want to play a fighter who specializes in a bow?” The answer? “Play a ranger.” The exchange is profoundly unsatisfying because the question and answer don’t really respond to each other. What is a fighter? In 3.x, it...

September 3, 2008

Summary of a campaign, Part 2

…continued from yesterday’s post. We headed back north with Rogenvald. The lich lived in a strange wild magic zone that was located north of the goblin lands. The only civilized inhabitants of this area are gnomes. Getting into the wild magic zone wasn’t difficult, but there was a checkpoint manned by volunteers – mostly goblins, but they appeared to be...

August 22, 2008

The Hydra: an alternate view

Here’s a slightly odd take on a solution to the hydra problem for 4e. A standard level 12 encounter for 4 PCs would feature (1) Hydra, (1) Skulking Hydra Head, and (4) minion Hydra Heads for a 6-headed hydra. I had to create a new mechanic for multiple monsters sharing a single body. It should, I hope, be self-explanatory. Hydra...

August 11, 2008

Understanding Old-School

The 4e honeymoon is over. There’s a lot to like in it, game mechanically, but I can’t help but feel like there is something about 4e D&D that disagrees with me. I’m pretty sure that the bit which disagrees with me is either the same thing or very closely related to that which a lot of nostalgia-oriented gamers seem to...

July 25, 2008

4e: Is it D&D? Does it matter?

After the game on Wednesday, Jeff said something to the effect of, “I can’t shake the feeling that I’m just not playing D&D” when playing 4e. He reiterated this on his blog. My response was that I think that the difference between 4e and 3.5 is smaller than the difference between 3.5 and any pre-3.0 edition. The thing is, 3.0...