DnD 4E mid-level impression

Beholder - copyright Wizards of the Coast

I DM’ed a 4E game (12th lvl) yesterday at Mike‘s.  It was my 3rd time out DMing this edition.

Impressions (vs. 3E):

• Preparing for a level 1 game and a level 12 game take roughly the same amount of time because of the number of good suggestions in the 4E MM.  With experience, a DM could do very similar things and test their theories of EL  in 3E using d20srd and other sources.  Anyway, this was a good thing for 4E.
• Inexperienced players shouldn’t have to prep for this level.  An aside, Level 12 is into the good stuff DnD-wise.  Some of your powers are Real Good ™.  The players are badasses, but they aren’t shattering the world (hopefully).  This is roughly equivalent in terms of feel to a 7th or 8th level 3E character.  Feedback from players suggests rolling up characters took about 3h.  They weren’t willing to speculate on the amount of homework to go to higher level.  Additionally, there aren’t any tools available right now to roll up characters that have all available sources. Pathguy‘s is a good start. It would be nice if the Wizards one was out.
  3E has an edge here in that good tools like DM Genie exist and are mature (however ugly they may be). Overall, I would call this a draw because powers are easier to understand in 4E, but prep time is approximately the same and 3E has better digital tools right now.
• Fights take a long time, and monsters (that I’ve seen and used, which is still limited) don’t have any surprises after the first or second round.  Everything has so much damn HP and no one does any damage.  It’s annoying.  I ran 1 beholder and 3 basilisks vs. the party and the fight took around 3 and a half hours.  There was *some* slow down because the party was still new to its powers, but there wasn’t any speed up button.  My general philosophy in 3E was to make most fights boss fights.  Several different kinds of monster per encounter, very tough to live through, etc.  The variation has been incorporated into the core thinking of 4E, but the difficulty is seemingly lacking.  I didn’t really have the party on the ropes at any point during what should have been a pretty tough fight.  The beholder was little more than a cannon that fired tiny pellets at the party as they healed right through it.  Points to 3E (at low to mid-level).  Fights just don’t take this long, unless the DM is pumping hp into the monster to make it more deadly (which I have done).  3E is my preference.
• Save Ends. I hate this mechanic.  Nothing lasts.  Nothing is permanent.  Blergh.  Preference for me is the 3E save systems, “Save or Die” and all. 3E wins.
• Lots of movement and ways to avoid AoOs.  I love this in 4E.  More crazy 15ft steps in 3E, please. 4E wins.
• My players are good sports to the DM because he messed up his print outs.  Okay, no points for either system.  But the players were happy to be there and seemed to have a good time.

Export Spent Time Column to CSV in Redmine

Follow these instructions to get the spent time field to appear in the default csv export of issues in redmine.

1. To lang/en.yml, add a line at the end of the ‘field_x’ lines (line 182-ish):
  field_spent_hours: Spent time
2. To app/helpers/issues_helper.rb add (at line 142) a new header to ‘headers’:
  l(:field_spent_hours)
3. To app/helpers/issues_helper.rb add (as line 169) a new field to ‘fields’:
  issue.spent_hours

Now you are exporting spent time.

Completed in Redmine 7.0.3

Add Spent Time / Spent Hours Column to Redmine’s Default Issues List

Follow these instructions to get the spent time field to appear in the default list of issues in redmine.

1. To lang/en.yml, add a line at the end of the ‘field_x’ lines (line 182-ish):
  field_spent_hours: Spent time
2. To app/models/query.rb (somewhere around line 108-110 depending on where you want it to appear), add:
  QueryColumn.new(:spent_hours),

Now you have a non-sorting column in your default view.

Completed in Redmine 7.0.3