The Id DM Breaks Down the Complexity of 4E with Raw Data

November 30th, 2011 by Ed Grabianowski

The Id DM has become my favorite RPG blog. Any fool can write about RPGs (like me), but it’s something else altogether to conduct scientific analysis of actual statistics and quantify the concepts the rest of us talk about. His latest effort, analyzing the complexity creep of Fourth Edition D&D, is a tour de force.

Players of 4E often complain that the game makes combat overly complex, offering too many options that bog down gaming sessions with 3-hour combat encounters. I’m one of the complainers, to be sure. The Id DM put this truism to the test by analyzing the number of combat options and effects other than damage that occur for different classes, roles and tiers. The final result is actually not a huge surprise — it confirms that 4E combat is complex, and gets a lot more complex in the epic levels. Seeing the data all laid out is amazing, though, so the entire post is worth a thorough reading. Tons of great charts, too.

Related posts:

  1. RPG Attack Simplifies the Process of Analyzing RPG Combat Data
  2. Paizo Breaks Down the Science of Magic Item Creation
  3. 5 of the Best House Rules for Your RPG
  4. Making 4E Damage Feats Less Useless
  5. Divine Power Review: More Options, More Powers

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