My quibbles aside, 4e is a significant reinvention of D&D. It’s vastly easier to prepare material for than 3.5 was, and easier to run. Back in 3.5, the real tactical game was in spell stacking and preparation, and the DM had to outthink all the players. There were far, far too many options, especially in high-level play.
4e strips away a lot of that complexity, but preserves the tactical richness. To do so, it erects a barrier between combat and non-combat play that didn’t exist to the same degree in previous editions. Oddly, this doesn’t make me like the game less, but it does make me more aware of other D&D options. 4e is definitely the best for interesting combats and tactical depth without overwhelming complexity, but I think I’m now much more open to, say, going back to OD&D or one of the other fantasy variants. This isn’t damning with faint praise; it’s a testament to how well 4e does what it sets out to do, in contrast to the kitchen sink of 3.5.
Martial Combat: I’ll quibble about a lot of the individual powers, which often have ghastly names or make no sense in context, but the basic idea – giving every class unique actions in combat – is excellent. It makes fights much, much more interesting, especially with the stunt rules.
Monsters & Encounters: The game acknowledges the imbalance in any rules-heavy tactical rpg – the DM needs to deal with all the bad guys, whereas the players can each concentrate on their individual characters. 4e monsters and NPCs are much simpler to run than a PC of the same level. The experience budget for encounters works fairly well, so far; not every fight is a desperate down-to-the-wire struggle, but a satisfying proportion are.
Magic: Again, there’s a lack of charm to the magic system. The division between spells and rituals has a great deal of potential, but a lot of the spell powers could do with a little more style. That’s easily fixed, though, and having a solid foundation for magic that isn’t overpowering or confusing more than makes up for it.
Rituals have an awful lot of potential, and have opened up a whole new design space. They’re Plot Spells, which are a very handy thing to have, and you can do the ‘dabbler in magic’ character type very easily now with the Ritual Caster feat and a few multiclass feats.
So far, I’m very much enjoying the Company of Heroes game. It’s not quite the D&D of my youth(tm), but it’s fun and challenging in a new way for a roleplaying game. I’m looking forward to seeing what can be done with it.
12/06/2009 at 10:55 am Permalink
Re stunting, in my own campaign I haven’t encouraged it sufficiently. I think I’m still too used to saying “no”, and sensitised to the antics of some players who persistently try to subvert the plot when stunting under the guise of being creative.
Pg 42 of the 4e DMG gives guidelines for what one-off stunts can do in terms of damage and special effects. The 4e power system can definitely feel like a limitation for some people – “I can only do these things printed on my sheet” – but this is a false perception. I think encouraging stunting is a twofold process:
1) prepare stunt-friendly situations and scenery. Chandeliers, ropes, walkways, high tapestries for swashbuckling action, braziers and cauldrons of bubbling liquid for imprompo area attacks etc. Think about how you are going to describe it beforehand as over-the-top descriptions are one of the funnest things in stunting.
2) Inform players (and the DM) that stunts are neither automatically suboptimal nor auto win buttons. Let players have fun with improvised stunts without making them either mandatory or complete wastes of time. Failing in a stunt should be embarassing at worst, except in the most exceptional of circumstances.
I do find that players most often resort to stunts in bar-room brawls, on pirate ships, or in unusual circumstances when there are prisoners to save, a maguffin to snatch, or a ritual to prevent. Especially if they are feeling stretched and desperate.