I had a funny thought the other day. In my ongoing, semi-regular Wilderlands campaign there's been a lot of tweaking and adjusting to get the PCs' race-class choices to be "just right" for Castles & Crusades. Two of the characters (out of a group of three) have custom "class and a half" classes, for example, and one of the PCs is a non-canonical race.
That character is the indomitable Rumple-Wumpkin, an otterkin beastmaster. We've finally settled on what exactly constitutes an "otterkin" and what makes her a "beastmaster." Finally. So naturally, after doing so, it immediately occurred to me, "Hey, if we were playing 4e this wouldn't have been an issue." After all, otterkin are a playable race in the Scarrport: City of Secrets book, and the Beastmaster Ranger build was introduced in Martial Powers, if I'm not mistaken. (All this I've found out only through Googling around for "otterkin" and "D&D beastmaster"--I'm not normally this well-read on matters relating to Fourth Edition.)
Plus, since we're gaming online now, the miniatures issue wouldn't be a problem. Programs like MapTool make it an absolute breeze (not to mention free!) to run miniatures-centric combats on battlemats.
So why am I still running Castles & Crusades? A few reasons.
First, we've got a couple D&D newbies in the group who are juuuuuuust starting to cotton on to the C&C system. I feel it would be disingenuous to pull the rug out from under them now. Plus, before we left the Bay Area I gave the half of the group who teleconferences in my old first printing copies of the Players Handbook and Monsters and Treasure for reference, and our resident "rules guy" has started using that to his advantage.
Second, I really do like C&C, especially its cross-edition flexibility. Converting monsters from the Creature Crucible, classes from Second Edition AD&D, and NPCs from the d20 Wilderlands supplements is a snap across the board. I'd hate to be running a system that required a complete, bottom-up rebuild of all those things.
Third is most important. I'd be willing to overlook the other stuff, but I just...can't bring myself to run 4e. There are just too many assumptions built into the core system that I don't like. Making character roles explicit rather than implicit. The vague, abstract damage system. Residuum.
So that's that. No 4e for me. As if it was at all in doubt before, but I guess this golden opportunity to pick up the system and run with it, and my refusal to do so, pretty much spelled things out explicitly. I know that 4e can be tinkered with, kit-bashed, reassessed, and so forth. But so can C&C, and that's a system I'm comfortable with. If I was going to do a system switch at this point, if anything I'd go more old school, building off of a kit-bashed Labyrinth Lord/Red Box ruleset. Hmmm...
The core assumptions of 4e bother me too, but what exactly about damage is "vague"? I mean in relation to other editions of D&D. It's always been maddeningly vague.
ReplyDeleteBasically, in previous editions of D&D, if something caused damage it had a concrete reason to do so. A weapon or a spell that caused some kind of real or illusory damage or falling off a cliff. Even though the hit points are abstracted, what causes of loss of hit points makes sense from a standpoint of the laws of physics.
ReplyDeleteIn 4e, there are attacks that cause damage for no apparent reason. During my brief tenure as a player of Fourth Edition, I memorably used the bardic power of "misdirected mark" (which normally distracts your opponent) to execute a coup de grace on a sleeping kobold. No in-game explanation of how this works is necessary. Even if the kobold had been awake, I'm still not sure on how distracting an opponent deals them damage.
There's an excellent essay on 4e's "dissociated mechanics" (a better term than "vague damage," I'll grant you) here.
Aha, gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. My wizard had a power or two that damaged targets in somewhat unbelievable ways, but as I recall the bard was especially egregious.
ReplyDeleteBased on my own—admittedly brief—experience with 4e, I don’t think a “from published sources” version of a 4e otterkin beastmaster would bear much similarity to one I and my group invented for any other edition of the game. It’s just too different a game, which seems to be guided by a completely different approach than my own.
ReplyDeleteDo you think that 4e otterkin beastmaster would really be a substitute for what you and your group came up with?
That's a good point, and no, it almost certainly wouldn't. I guess I just found it funny that 4e, which I (perhaps unfairly) consider more hidebound and less modifiable than earlier editions, would have furnished exactly the sort of race-class combo this player was looking for, had that been our system of choice.
ReplyDeleteI've been debating on picking up a retroclone of one type or another, and you may have just convinced me that C&C is the right choice. It sounds very versatile and able to absorb tons of old material into its rules. Thanks for the thoughts on the system.
ReplyDelete