My first go as a player in 4e
masqueradeball:
Frank: I agree when we're talking about real-world time turn overs... thats my big problem with whiffing in this game and why I think it applies more to this edition of the game. If I roll to-hit every say, few minutes, than that's a different bird then rolling to see if my effect that affects the chance of someone else chances to hit goes off maybe once or twice and hour, which I might be exaggerating, but I think is accurate of the game I played in.
Jim D.:
Fourth edition D&D battles have this weird dichotomy: with players who are good at calculation or understand the system, battles are lightning-fast. I managed to run five in a session with experienced third edition players without an issue; with an equally-sized party of new players, one battle took four or five hours. My turn lasted about 30 seconds, another guy lasted about 30 seconds, the rest reviewed the entire move list, analyzed strategy, asked for about ten definitions, and then ended up washing their hands of the entire business and using a basic attack instead.
The main issue I have with 4th edition is the surprisingly high barrier to entry; since the pace of battle ends up dictated by the newest (slowest) players, action slows to a crawl, and then you end up with boring roleplaying on top of boring combat, which leaves the game tasting pretty sour.
masqueradeball:
Yeah, things would definitely speed up with experience. I wish I has started this game at 1st level, as that would have allowed me to learn with a smaller list of options... but I'm fairly savvy when it comes to games, and the combat still seemed slow. Definitely wasn't trying to optimize for speed, plus the party of 6 was little bloated.
Callan S.:
Jim, that sounds more like analysis paralysis to me rather than who's good at calculation. On the D&D forums I saw many a time the suggestion, supported by others, of having some sort of timer (thirty seconds to decide your move, or such). Of course that's not part of D&D. But what a huge difference such a simple mechanic would make is what I think of when I think system matters.
Jim D.:
Truthfully, Callan, that makes quite a bit of sense. I wanted to sit down with these guys and say "Look here. Using your powers is important. Identify a tactical consideration -- do you want to make that guy really dead, hit that group of guys, help this guy... pick a power that does it and move on, and let someone help you with all the bullshit keywords." But I couldn't figure out a way to do that tastefully, and I think a couple of our party members were just dead set on not enjoying the game anyway. "This is too hard," put succinctly, "so I'm not going to play."
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