An observation

[subplotkudzu]

4E has now been out for nearly a week, and so far I have one, count them one, comment from anyone on my Friends list about it - drcpunk's comment on how the book lays flat while reading it and she's happy the 3E faux-notebook visual design is gone. 

Is everyone as ambivalent about this new system as I am? Did anyone even buy it? Where's the love, people? Or the hate, for that matter?

Comments

[mneme]

Personally, I don't think minis are any more needed than they are in 3E. Yes, there are attacks of opportunity, pushing attacks, zones, etc -- but if anything, the areas are typically simpler (AoO is adjacent-only, except for a few monsters that get "threatening reach" because that's their thing, all areas on a battlemap are square, allies don't provide cover to enemies), and you can do the same things with these mechanics you do in 3 -- describe actions relative to other combatants and based on intent, and assume the characters more or less know what they're doing. Also, the fact that the fighter, frex, can do his "thing" without knowing his precise physical location (because once he's marked a foe, he's assumed to be getting in their way regardless of where they go) and the fact that you can't just lay down a giant pile of conjured creatures to clutter up the map probably makes boardless play somewhat simpler, despite all the pushing.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Hrm. I've been running 3E (not 3.5) on and off since shortly after it came out and I've never used minis. Nor have I ever really had a major problem. Back when Jonathan Tweet was still writing in A&E he boiled the AoO rules down for me, reducing it to "if you do something that drops your guard, which includes moving more than one pace, people near you get a free swing at you." That was simple, clean and made sense, and has worked for me ever since. The flanking rules are "if you're on opposite sides, the foe is flanked, and you get bonuses" and I assume that all combatants will do what they can to take advantage of that (and defend themselves from it) so a little common sense keeps everyone happy. No Minis required.

I have several aversions to minis - they cost more than I want to spend, they get people focused on a 3'x3' square on the table rather than the tableau in thier head and every time I've played in games that have them I'm seen the characterization and innovation suffer in fight scenes. Your milage may vary, of course, but that's how it seems to me. I just don't have any interest in D&D as a boardgame hybrid. I'll leave that to Battletech (and that might be why i can't get my players interested in a Mechwarrior style game - they don't have any interest in roleplay/boardgame hybrids either).

[mneme]

*nod* And 4e AoO rules are even simpler than 3E ones -- "if you move or attempt a ranged attack while in someone's threat range, you draw an attack of opportunity, but can't draw more than one from the same person, and some movement explicitly doesn't draw (shift, teleportation, forced movement)." That's it, actually; there are no actions other than moving or ranged attack that draw AoO. In some cases, this is because basic actions that used to draw--non-ranged-attack spellcasting, drinking potions, standing up, bull rush, coup de gras, grab (weaker grapple), punch or kick, aid, skill use (including heal)--don't. In others, it's because the action doesn't exist at all as a "standard" action -- disarm, sunder & trip are doable using the new "do anything" rules (basically, ad hoc resolution with a per/level table with difficulties of easy/medium/hard broken out per level), but aren't standard actions any more -- though trip (er, knock prone), certainly, is a not-uncommon power result

Regardless, I think if you can do and prefer 3rd edition without minis, 4th without minis won't be a problem; sure, they refer to distances in terms of squares rather than feet, but you can treat those either as conceptual units (which is, after all, what they are), or multiply by 5 if that's your preference, just like you can treat each round as "6 seconds" or just figure that a round is as long as it needs to be.