Essential Therapy
Hey look! Sam’s therapist, Iddy the Lich. Iddy has appear before right here and I like continuity.
No doubt Sam’s feelings on 4e and Essentials will strike folks differently. He made the choice after Barrier Peaks to do his own thing, rather than play test D&D Next. Most of what he says, like much of Sam’s dialogue, is my own voice but with the volume turned up.
I did some early D&D Next play testing and I’ll be honest, I LOVED the very first draft of the game. It was fast, fun, and super easy to play. My personal concern is that the game will become too convoluted again. After a few packets worth of play, I opted out to focus on consistent game play with Pathfinder and soon, Karthun. Once the Next books hit shelves, I will be there with cash, ready to read it.
With that, Sam’s line about wanting to say “I play D&D” is straight from me. I love Pathfinder and what I am writing for Karthun but there is just something about saying “I play D&D” without the explanations afterwards. But that’s just my feeling.
As for the arc, Trevor, Charlie, and Donnie are on their way to pick up Sam so we’ll see more on Charlie’s career on Monday.
COMMENTERS: I ask that you keep it civil in the comments today. I know gamers. We tend to fight and protect our favorites like a mother displacer beast tending her cub. Be Fonzies. Be cool.
I must admit I generally tell (non-geek) people I play D&D, even though technically I play Pathfinder… At least with D&D, there’s a chance that the person might have at least heard the name, slightly reducing the amount of explanation needed!
Never done Pathfinder, but I tell people not in the know he same when I do Warhammer or Dungeon World.
I LOVE pathfinder but I can never find a game!
There is a lot to consider with what the cartoon says. Very interesting, and for that introspection, incredibly appropriate to have the Id DM there.
Out of curiosity (and with the full understanding that everyone likes different things and that’s okay), what was it about Essentials that really rubbed you wrong? Can you summarize it beyond ‘everything’?
While I won’t speak for others, my issue with Essentials is that it seems like it took the parts of 4E that I enjoy the most and heavily stripped them down. It takes away a lot of choice and doesn’t give you a whole lot back in return.
I can understand it as a starting point, but I don’t think regular 4E is so complicated that it needs a simpler version.
There is no single thing, honestly. It is a pile of small annoyances that put a bad taste in my mouth. Accepting and understanding that companies need to sell books, etc. it felt like WotC pushed out as many 4e hardbacks as they could, as quickly as they could, without a proper playtest of the material. Then, when it was said and done they took the feedback and dropped Essentials on everyone. I felt like I paid to playtest 4e leading to Essentials.
I played and ran 4e. I jumped in with both feet and there are a lot of great things about the system. It is very new player friendly, in my opinion and like every edition before it, I had fun. It was the release of Essentials that turned my head away.
I’ll be back to try D&D Next when it hits shelves, knowing that the playtest is extensive this time around (for good or for ill, depending on your stance) so I have high hopes. Until then, I am playing other games and working on my own.
On again off again on again reader here.
I have played all the iterations and variances and was there to play-test 3 onwards but 4 left me disappointed with a serious sense of Montey-Pythonesque deja vous. Then it hit me, 4e was Diablo II on a tabletop.
Strip it away all the fancy labels to basic mechanics and you are left with 4 skill trees and that is it. Next is just a finger-paint version of 4.
Also – I archive dove and loved the latest story arc.
When I hear people say “I play D&D”, I generally reply with “Which box?”. I am almost always willing to take a stab at 3.0 and everything after it.
And D&D isn’t the universe, or the system, to me. It’s exactly like the AD&D books tells it: If you don’t like something, chuck it. We’re here to introduce an idea, and show you how we play it and balance it, and we’re here to inspire that in others.
Everything, from AD&D, to running a core-planet Cyberpunk-esque Firefly game, to a diceless sexy pizza-fueled conversation because no one brought their character sheets, to HoL, is D&D in my mind. Gygax and crew gave the idea of living in other universes because it sounded like fun… and they ran with a homebrew LotR-esque universe, because hey, it’s a pretty stable universe. I enjoy everything from building new universes to fleshing out the ones I’ve fallen in love with through other mediums, notably Ivalice and Firefly’s ‘verse.
In my head I automatically added another hyphen, so it reads “sexy-pizza-fueled”.
Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/778/
This is completly different from my experience. Where I am playing a published campaign is considered the ‘beginner’s option’. Everyone plays homebrew.
There’s a part of me that wants to keep just playing one of the early D&D Next packets. Not that it was finished or perfect, but it was really good, simple gaming fun.
D&D4Ed and Ess. are garbage, it was like D&D dumbed down for the masses. And as I play Pathfinder, I am finding more and more like 4ed. What happened? I have played D&D since ’79, and they “improve” it? not likely. I’d rather play old school D&D, and AD&D.
I completely agree. It seems a lot more like a PnP version of World of Warcraft than anything I’d be willing to call D&D. That’s my personal opinion of it, but I still play 2nd Ed. from time to time in addition to my (slightly homebrewed version of) Pathfinder games.
Interesting. Might I ask in what way you find PF to be like D&D4E? I still find it to be an improved 3.5 but I realize not everyone will emphasize the same aspects.
As someone who got sick of 3.5, read and briefly tried PF and 4e, and eventually settled on ACKS (a B/X derivative) as my D&D of choice, the most important similarity I saw between PF and 4e was that they both eliminated dead levels and just made characters more complicated. When I tried 4e, I got power-choice paralysis, and when I tried PF, there was just too much chrome on my character sheet. I could keep track of it, but it pushed the threshold of “too many numbers to be having fun” down from 13 or so where it was in 3.5.
There were some other minor things, like how both had HP inflation (4e for everything, PF for wizards and thieves), how they changed racial mods to be net-positive, gave at-will cantrips, and both ran the supplement treadmill, but the killing factor for both games for me was essentially in added complexity and slower combat. I used to think dead levels were terrible, and to crave lots of options in chargen, but modern systems pushed it too far for me. So I fell back to simpler, retro systems instead, where I can fit anything but a dragon’s complete stats in one line of notes, combat is quick, decisive, and deadly (mid-level dragon fights take about two rounds to either dragon down or TPK, and about 20 minutes tops of tense real-time), PCs are expendable but it’s OK because it’s quick and simple to make new ones and the system does alright with mixed-level parties, and we can get through two full expeditions into a dungeon in a four-hour session, even with breaks for pizza and distractions and people being late.
Looking from that sort of perspective, PF and 4e really _do_ look remarkably similar.
Oh, man, do I feel this one. I’ve been a D&D player since the Red Box days. A few years ago I tried to get my girlfriend into it, but there were no 3.5 books (the version I was most familiar with) available at the local shop. All they had was version 4.0. I thought, “Well, this can’t be a huge change from 3.5, right?” and bought the player’s guide for 4.0.
What a mistake. I read it with mounting horror and disgust. My girlfriend asked me a few times when we were going to play and I looked at her and said “With this? Never.” 🙂
Eventually I was able to dig out my old 3.5 sourcebooks and we had a couple of nice campaigns. But version 4…..gah.
I’ve played every edition of DnD since the first and you know what? I’ve enjoyed them all. Even 4th. I get why people like pathfinder (personally I don’t), but i’ve been enjoying the DnD Next playest as well. Although I think I’m getting a little burnt out on the constant rules updates and we’re just ready for the game to come out already.
On the plus side, It’s given us a reason to try out other games in the lol. We’ve been enjoying Call of Cthulhu, Dread (thanks to you) and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire.
So sad to see this thread degenerate into edition wars.
Agreed, Andy. It’s cool to disagree but I am asking folks to keep it civil.
The problem we ran into with 3.5 is that while we enjoyed the system for the most part, fights got really boring. With 4.0 fights got a lot more interesting for everyone, but it felt (at least for me) like WoW TCG. From what I’ve read, Pathfinder seems to be a nice compromise of the two. Would anyone say that’s an accurate assumption? If it is, I may just have to take a crack at it.
I am running Pathfinder right now and loving it. Think of it as D&D 3.75. They cleaned up some of the junk rules and it plays very well at low levels (I’ll report back when they hit high level play).
IF we hit high level.
Looking forward to it!
4th edition was the end of D&D for me. I’ve been running Pathfinder for about a year now and I love it. I’ve really gotten into the setting and my players and I are having a blast.
Trailblazer was a pretty nice 3.75-type hack that I prefer to PF, as TB did very a good job of mathematically deconstructing 3.5 and rebuilding it with a consistent vision. PF seems sort of like a noisy set of houserules by comparison.
I was introduced to D&D with 4E. I didn’t find it hard or convoluted. I’m playing Pathfinder now (soon it’ll be Karthun, I’m sure). Never played 3.5 but from what I’m told it’s a lot like Pathfinder. And even though I’m enjoying the hell out of Pathfinder, I don’t like one more than the other. Both have their strengths and their weaknesses. As I’m sure is true not matter what edition you’re playing.
I’ve been lucky enough to have DMs that hybrid the game between Core Rules and house rules to take the weaknesses out of the equation. The focus becomes more on having fun and enjoying the sessions. Some argue this strips away the purity of the game and I can’t help but disagree. Because the entire reason for existence of the game, at its purest form, is to have fun.
Another thing: Just because you may think Edition X is crap doesn’t mean it is. Different strokes for different folks.
I agree, it’s getting a bloat already and then not.
I like 4e to a degree. Just like I like Pathfinder, but after awhile it gets overwhelming to DM without extra tools to keep tabs on everything. That’s part of the reason I have fond memories of 1st, AD&D and even 2nd Edition DnD. Yes… 2nd. I still love it, THAC0 aside… LOL
From a tactical stand point, 4e was a fun. I know when I had hoards of minions sprinkled in with a few BBG’s for my players to go to town on, they loved it. My Warlock player was teleporting like mad because he’d curse someone every to every other round, and people “gamed” the game more than any other version I know of; short of 3.X and PF.
I miss rolling up a character and “hoping” you get the stats you wanted. Not playing superhero fantasy with unkillable characters. …ugh… you got me ranting. Sorry.
I don’t understand how you can even have an unkillable character…
While no one is technically “unkillable”, a solid 4 man group in 4e almost cannot lose to an appropriately leveled challenge.
I’ve not played 4e myself (my overall experience with D&D is actually quite limited), but a friend of mine was running a campaign with the system. He felt that level 11 and up is when the players became especially overpowered. It finally hit the point where he dropped a god (or god-device; it’s been awhile since he told me this story) on his players, and they just all burned their dailies and killed it, no problem. From the sounds of things, it got kind of ridiculous.
I don’t know about unkillable, but a half black dragon troll death knight with the fire creature template is rather difficult to get rid of, I speak from personal experience
I never say “I play D&D”. Because that’s not how I think of it. I play “tabletop RPGs”. And, yes, I explain what that means when people ask. And, yes, I often include “like D&D” as a starter.
But there is SO MUCH MORE to the hobby than D&D. There’s more to it than medieval fantasy. The edition wars boggle my mind. It’s like people standing at Ben & Jerry’s and debating which kind of chocolate is the best ice cream. You like chocolate. I get that. But there’s a lot more flavors available. I think you’re doing yourself a disservice by assuming that, just because you like chocolate, that strawberry or coffee aren’t going to excite you. And you’re doing the ice cream world a disservice by getting hung up on some dichotomy between plain chocolate and rocky road.
Personally I’m playing Star Wars Saga edition right now *which is as close to 4e as I’m liable to ever get* and enjoying it alot*though the gm I got uses……ALOT of house rules….given the nature of the game he runs they make things more enjoyable though*. I still love 3.5*despite the enormous amount of books* and if I could EVER find someone who runs one I have a pretty large number of super hero rpg books of which some of them seem decent. I even gather books of rpgs I’m sure I’ll never play to get ideas for other things*hoping to find a gamma worlds book at a half price at some point so he can see what all the hype in both directions is about*. So yeah there IS alot. I still seem to enjoy things published by wizard the most though.
I’m in kind of the same boat. Our group last played D&D back when 3.5 was still the current system. In the time since, we’ve predominantly used Anima, minus a brief break for Shadowrun, and a Dark Heresy one-shot I ran. I tend to refer to the sessions as “game”, since calling it D&D is rather inaccurate, but my God, the endless questions and necessary explanations. Gets tiresome after a while.
I just started a game with a bunch of guys who had either never played before or hasn’t played since middle school and when they said they wanted to play D&D (largely because of the Big Bang Theory episode sparking their interest) I thought through what to bring to the table. I decided to brig Dungeon World and I told them that while it “wasn’t” D&D proper it still kinda was. D&D, while an IP and still the forefront in tabletop RPGs, is bigger than just one game. I like the way Bill Cavalier, the Dungeon Bastard put it.
“Does your game have dungeons in it? Does it have dragons in it? If yes, then I want to play this game! Case closed, gamers.”
Did noone else catch the reference to Chastity Valor in the second panel? Masterfully done sir! Bravo
I’m in a homebrew now and I just tell people it’s D&D. It’s easier that way. At the core I learned to play table tops on D&D so in my head it’s still D&D, unless it’s something really out in left field like something out of the Cthulhu mythos.
I’ll try to do this without getting too rage-y. I started in AD&D, and I really enjoyed it, but I won’t defend it as the holy grail of D&D. 2e was a mess rules wise and balance was a laughable concept whispered in dark corners.
3.x was, IMO, the best iteration of D&D. It had balance problems and a huge bloat issue; the “pimp my character” books were either overpowered as all get out or complete crap. But the core rules were relatively simple and straightforward, and the game still had flavor and fun.
4e was a huge misstep to me. They traded fun for game balance, the classes lost their flavor a felt like a bunch of people sitting around, pushing buttons to do damage. My biggest gripe was the way skills were handled: it homogenized a too much leaving the classes feel….empty to me.
Pathfinder, it started off a little rocky to me but managed to pull through by dint of good writing. I like the system because it is basically 3.x, but tweaked a little. The balance issues are still present but the different classes have tons of flavor and most are fairly well written. The real selling point is the adventure paths. The add tons of neat flavor to the world, are, with exceptions (I’m looking at you Jade Regent), incredibly fun to play, and usually add some really fun options to the game. Personal favorite so far is Skull & Shackles, the pirate system therein is something I’d wanted to see for years.
Now, if we want to talk Shadowrun I definitely have nothing but nice things to say, but that’s another conversation.
Hey look who it is :D. And i feel ya sam i do. The dread of homebrew has had me groan dozens of times cuz of high school. So many terrible ideas. At least half a dozen adaptations of various final fantasies. At least one or 2 where the dm plays the game in front of you saying “this is what you see”. An unnessesary cross between dnd n white wolf. Ive read from novels and turned us into part dragons. i was once a half tarrasque. Post apocalypic this n that. Ive seen a gammut of bad homebrew ideas. Oh n a xena/herculease ripoff too. So i understand his groan. I love dnd (most versions) and it is simpler and has a greater cummunity connection to say thats what you play. Moreso if you have a world like greyhawk, dragonlance, or even my beloved dark sun. Homebrew can be good and im rambling this morning. I support sam in whichever decision he makes. Hell he can always run more than one game right? Weregeek has several games going at once. That way sam can spread his wings and create his world. And he can also dabble in the settings we all grew up in for dnd siliness n fun. I would miss your beholders if you stopped drawing them. Theyre the best. So dnd probably has more fuel for silly game jokes and the homebrew whose spelling i wont try n butcher is good for roleplaying creating and sam truely earning his rank as a dm. Go sam go.
There are things about D&D as presented (or Pathfinder) that irk me. I feel like an expert can optimize a character that steals the spotlight. There really shouldn’t be any bad mechanical choices in a game, so I don’t like the “game within a game” thing.
Personally, I have been running Fantasy Craft, and it is a superb balanced fun d20 iteration. I have not seen any bad choices for feats or classes, and the customization is amazing. Combat flows better (no AoO, no iterative attacks), and the mechanics for Reputation and Lifestyle are well done. I think it scratches the D&D itch without many of the mechanical gotchas many GMs find themselves house ruling.
I’ve heard that kind of complaint a lot, and I never got it. In any complex system there are going to be optimal configurations, the only way to make it so there are no bad choices is to make there be no good choices either, and really, to make there be no choices at all. The idea of a system where you have no ability to tweak your character sounds bland as fuck. The whole point of the game is creating a cool character and then being them.
Wow. Okay, I started on red box (when ‘elf’ was a class! And clerics didn’t get spells until level 2!), and quickly ‘graduated’ to 1E. That’s right, old school, where fighters and rogues were everything (apparently, Gygax hated casters?) We upgraded to 2E, and I loved it… more flexibility, more info on casters, etc.
Fast forward decades to the recent past. I have played 3.5 (one session), but having skipped 3.0, and never having played 4E or Pathfinder, I can’t really make a comparison. Although I did have one question: what’s everyone’s beef about THAC0? You had a chart, you rolled the die, you checked the chart, you did damage. (Hopefully.)
Miss playing D&D quite a bit, actually. Any gamers (or gaymers) in the East Inland Empire?
I started playing in 74. And everytthing was homebrew. Every time you a gm had new players they’d start by explaining the house rules. And everytime a player brought an existing character into a new world the gm had to pick through it. My games always started in a place called “the Dispactcher’s Office” where the characters had to leave a lot of their equipment in a locker, then the Dispatcher would teleport them to the adventure. Some gms had so many rule changes, it required a multipage handbook. No matter, it was all D&D to us and we loved it.
oops, suplerfluous “you” in second sentence.
If The Id DM scheduled therapy sessions and charged for them during GenCon, he’d make a killing.
I started on 2nd edition AD&D, switched to Shadowrun for a few years, then came back when 3.5 was in full swing. Read a few chapters in the 4e handbook and set it down.
My thing is, AD&D required you to be a GREAT DM if you’re playing with any group more sophisticated then the “kill kobolds, take treasure, repeat” crowd. You have to be willing to make up rules on the fly when the player gets an awesome idea not covered by the rules. You have to decide what to do when the player wants to, say, ride a horse to safety but did not spend one of their tiny, tiny number of proficiencies on Riding.
In the 3.5 set (I am using Pathfinder, myself, mostly because of the re-kerjiggered skills and the Combat Maneuver system), you have a framework for those sort of problems. Riding is not impossible without the skill, just hard.
Also, in reply to a previous question, “What’s wrong with THAC0,” the answer is nothing. But AD&D use modifiers to THAC0, and to attack rolls, and if you’re a good DM, you will be faking terrain mods and spells and so on. For anyone not used to it, it can be… vexing. Time consuming. Breaks flow of battle for those unfamiliar with it.
One of the things I like most about ACKS is the Adventuring proficiency, which covers ‘everything possible within the world and not covered by another proficiency’, and which all PCs get at 1st level for free. Hammering iron spikes into stone, climbing a knotted rope, estimating gemstone value, swimming, keeping weapons and armor in good repair, poking stuff with a 10′ pole, and riding horses out of combat are all nicely available to everyone, with other proficiencies providing capabilities above and beyond what we might expect of a ‘normal adventurer’ (like climbing sheer surfaces, fighting from the back of a charging warhorse, and so forth).
The rules are a starting point, not an ending point. The manuals themselves will tell you that. I cast Stone to Mud on the rules.
“Stone to Mud on the rules.” Your quote had been stolen, repurposed, and archived for posterity due to awesome sir.
Yes! Morale bonus!
Me and the guys still play 3.5, I have yet to try out pathfinder though alot of them have moved on (some of them even to 4e eew) We tried some other stuff though to fill the gap like Deathwatch and an assortment of other random games. I still love 3.5 though which is what we play but with some custom rules these days to keep things fun.
Is it just me, or is that Lich like the BBEG from Order of the Stick, just more fleshy?
Have heard about e6 yet? Essentially it’s a hack for 3.x that stops level progression at 6th while still allowing feats and everything else to progress. It keeps that “low hit point, cheap gear, and devil may care attitude”.
Quite frankly i consider it absolutely necessary. At higher levels 3.x is simply broken. Casters become godlike and non-casters become useless. And at higher levels your gear determines success more than your character. It’s just not fun after awhile. 6th is a great stopping point or 8th but after 12th it’s all over.
Love this so much. Thank you for bringing Iddy back into the fold.
So I hear these debates all the time about which is better Ad&D 3.5, 4e and a homebrew versions of any of those 3. And I ask mysel “Do other games suffer from this strange debate. Do regular Monopoly players hate Star Wars Monopoly. Do Monopoly purest hate people who put taxes/fines in the free parking. Every game Risk, Poker, hopscotch have many deviations from the 1st or original game. To say 4e is not D&D is to saw Basketball is not really basket ball cause they don’t throw the ball in peach baskets. D&D has been around for around 40 years now. I am 40 and played the oricinal red box when I was 12. I rolled 2 Hit dice for my spell caster and died 40 minutes in. SO we made a rule that we started every new character with max hit dice as I’m sure a lot of players did back then and do now. Is that homebrew? Probably.
People don’t house-rule “max hp at level 1” anymore, because it’s been rules-as-written since at least 3.0.
For D&D burnout there is in fact a cure. Try Beyond the wall and other adventures and experience fast paced immersive roleplaying with minimum prep that does away with all the faff, all the superpowers, minmaxing and the hours of rulebending arguments. It was a revelation for me as GM so my apologies if I sound almost religious. I can honestly say that as a group it is the most fun we’ve had together for some time.
I love that Sam’s therapist is a Lich.