Yellow and Blue make Ork

So, apparently a 5th Edition of WH40k has released sometime earlier this year, and, along with it, a new Orky Codex. This edition continues the gritty ork style of 3rd and 4th edition. To me, that is a such a downer. The new ork deathcopta's, which come in the new main rule set, are very sweet, but other than that, they just don't feel like orks to me. They feel like Goff Orks only, and fairly uncolorful Goff Orks at that.

As a former WH40k Second Edition player, Orks are all about flavor and color. I like the goofy Orky glyphs painted on my Bad Moonz Yellow armor, and the blue face paint for good luck on the drivah of my big red buggy. I want Gretchin with blunderbusses, and Runtherdz pushing snotlings, squig wargear, and all sorts of ridiculous artillery that's only slightly less dangerous to me than the enemy. When I'm playing Orks, I want random, I want crazy, I want to scream "Waaaagghhh!" at the top of my lungs. But most of all, I want the six orky clans with all their flavor and foibles.

And it's a good thing, too, because if it weren't for that disconnect between what I want and what the rules provide, the very charismatic manager at the GW store down the road would have had me sold on that beautiful boxed set with 3 ded sexy deathcoptahs.

Savage Links

A few interesting links that a google search for Savage Worlds turned up:

On some guy's blog from a month ago, he talks about 3 things he hates about Savage Worlds. In adjacent posts he also discusses things he likes about it, and things the GM should avoid, but the "Three Bad Things" post is most interesting to me. Not because I want to bag on the game, but because his 3 nits are different from the nits I pick. I love bennies, and hadn't yet noticed the character generation issues he belabors. He considers the damage system (which I dislike) to be one of the best features of the game. The three consecutive posts make for an interesting read.

This Savage Worlds probability analysis pretty much confirms what I'd felt: the odds in Savage Worlds are a little strange. If the difficulty is 6, you're better off with a d4 than a d6. If the difficulty is 12, you're better off with a d10 than a d12. That much I'd begun to suspect, but I'm glad to see that once the numbers are crunched out further, the differences are only a percent or so off. I was a little worried the mathematical paradox would be far greater. Just the same, I still see little point in taking anything above a d8.

What every new Savage Worlds GM needs to know, according to the Pinnacle Forums. The most useful to me is the "balanced encounters" system. "System" may be too generous a term for it, but it's a step in the right direction. I've been playing Scion for the past year and change, so I'm sick and tired of RPGs that give you no clues how long a fight will last and whether the PCs will slaughter, be slaughtered, or just spin their wheels ineffectively till the GM improvs a solution. In a nutshell, the "almost a system" presented on the forum is this: determine average damage for the heroes. Set the Toughness of the foes at 0-1 points above that average damage. For every PC, add 2 extras or 1 wild card villain, or increase the toughness of an existing villain by 1. Roughly. YMMV.

Savagepedia is a wiki, so anything I say about it could be completely invalidated at the drop of a hat.

Combat Survival Guide is technically just a table of modifiers, but it's organized as a problem-solving tool, so you can figure out what you need to do depending on the situation. Even traditionally "non-combat" characters will find something in that PDF that they can do to help the group win the fight. Tricks and Tests of Will are some of my favorite parts of the Savage Worlds system.

Next Up: Wham Trek

I think sometime in November I will run Wham Trek. In a nutshell, I plan on using Savage Worlds to make a one-shot that's part Star Trek, part the board games of Tom Wham (most especially Awful Green Things From Outer Space and the Snits games). I can use the boards from those games as maps for the PCs to reference.

Right Over My Thick-Skulled Caveman Head

According to the Og design journals at the firefly games site, I missed a pretty major joke in the original Land of Og. Characters never level up. Or rather, it takes 25,000+ xp to level up, and the biggest single award is about 2,000 xp per PC - and that's for the nastiest biggest dinosaur you'll never kill anyway. As Robin Laws describes it, it's like D&D if you had to kill Asmodeus (or some other major demon/devil/dragon/titan) a dozen times in order to get to second level.

I'm so jaded and used to house-ruling XP systems, I completely missed the joke (when I read Land of Og).

Land of Cha-Ka

It's my turn to GM for the Emerald City Game Feast group this week. Last Friday morning I toyed with the idea of running Land of Og. I've always wanted to play (or GM) Og, the caveman RPG where you get a handful of words to express yourself. The total list is 18 words (Fire, Hairy, Rock, Stick, Smelly, etc), and each character gets just a fraction of them. I love the idea of players using charades, half a dozen useless words, and lots of pointing to try to convey their actions, it makes me laugh.

But, truth be told, Land of Og was a barely playable game. Funny as heck to read, but not a good game, I'm afraid. I've never really admitted that before, as I've met Aldo Ghiozzi (the author of the first two editions) on several occasions, and he's always struck me as a not just a really nice guy, but a really smart man, too. When Wargames West went under, Aldo offered me a part time job despite my being in another state, and you just can't dis a guy who went out of his way to make sure you had a safety net. Aldo is a prince among men. I kept Land of Og around hoping to one day play it, and did my best to overlook unnecessarily complicated rules and the fact that one character class ("Smart Caveman") seemed brokenly better than all the other classes. So, Friday morning, I resolved to play it within a week, and knew I had to honestly look at Og's warts. An hour or two later, I started brainstorming simplified rules of my own based on the Og concept. It was designed during a time when RPGs were clunkier as a matter of fact, and didn't have the benefit of today's more streamlined design ethos, and I planned to update it for my own use.

Later that afternoon, on my way home from my chiropractic visit, I stopped in at Gary's Games, and what should I discover by Og Unearthed Edition sitting on their shelves. I didn't even know this third edition of Og existed. It seems Aldo figured out his awesome concept wasn't being done justice by the previous rules sets. So he hired award-winning game author Robin D Laws to simplify it. Needless to say, I bought it on the spot. I then swung by Top Ten Toys on my way home, where I purchased several quality painted plastic dinosaurs to use for miniatures. At home I found a bunch of D&D minis that, while they won't work for cavemen, per se, they would work for Pakuni, the monkeymen like those appearing in 2001, Land of the Lost, or - get this - the antagonist section of Og Unearthed Edition. I've got quaggoths, primitive orcs, grimlocks, ghouls in animal skins, a dinky little mongrelman, and a really fat Taer. Perfectly mismatched, and just about in-scale for the dinosaurs. I will be running a heavily Land of the Lost influenced Og session this Thursday, and the PCs will be Cha-Ka's clan. It's gonna be fun.

I also hauled out the minis from my Betrayal At House On The Hill boardgame to be Marshall, Will and Holly, or perhaps Sarah Palin's Vice Presidential Action Rangers, gone back in time to prove mankind and dinosaurs coexist. I love it when a plan comes together - especially a plan that mocks young earth creationists.

The Unearthed Edition is an improvement over Land of Og in nearly every respect. It's far more elegant, less fiddly, and both play and character creation look to be much faster. It's no longer level based, and doesn't have numerous derived statistics. You don't start with one word, you start with 1d6+2. You only use d6's, and generally just one per action. The writing remains entertaining, and the game portions are better than ever. You can still "forget how" to do things, so you're still playing dumb cavemen. I'm grateful that Aldo and Robin made this happen.

Here's a cute little "small world" moment. I posted to the group's list saying that I'd decided on Og for Thursday, and Mark replied. Turns out that he, Sophie, Edmund and Laura had playtested this edition of Og before it released last year, so a couple players will already know the system. On closer inspection, their names show up in the credits on the first page of the book. How funny.

Savage Waffles

Brace yourselves - I'm gonna waffle on my Savage Worlds position a little more. In this post I'm gonna criticize it all over again, and then talk about little nuggets I really admire. I have yet to make up my mind fully on the game, and will no doubt be getting my $10 worth (and then some) before I settle on a position.

The damage issue remains the stickler. On further reflection (and after hearing counter-arguments from the rest of the Thursday group), I'm forced to conclude that you do, indeed, add up your damage dice. How'd I miss/misinterpret it? I'd pretty much skipped the Gear chapter, reading the Character Creation chapter and the Rules chapters first. I figured the equipment section of a non-genre-specific game wasn't vital to understanding the way the system worked, since half that equipment wouldn't be available in any given one-shot. Whoops!

The answer was there amidst the Gear. That chapter explains how damage codes for weapons work. It's still not crystal clear, but it'd be hard to interpret a Str + d6 +2 Katana to do anything other than 4-14 damage in the hands of a character with d6 Strength. Likewise, most rifles do 2d8 damage - compare that to a Bazooka, which does 4d8. Clearly, they intend the dice to be added together - if you were only using the single largest die, the bazooka would roll 3d12 or even 2d20, not the same size dice as all those conventional sidearms. If you were using just the highest die, PCs would laugh off LAW rockets, .50 cal MGs, and artillery. As much as I hate the delay as someone counts up the damage total from 2d8+1 and a d6 raise where 2 of the 3 dice exploded, I must admit that's preferable to PCs soaking Panzershreks.

The more serious offense is the book's complete lack of a clear example that would render it unambiguous. The damage and healing section is pages 74-78, but the muddied evidence of how it works is buried on pages 42 and 53. None of the three "examples" in the damage / healing section involves any actual dice rolls - it says Buck "does just enough damage to get a shaken result" instead of something more useful like "Buck rolls a 2 and 4, doing 6 damage, which is just enough to get a shaken result against the foe's Toughness of 6". This detailed example is not omitted for lack of space, since the 5-page section in question has two large pictures and a quarter column of (wasted) blank space. It's just sloppy, the sort of thing that should have been caught by blind playtesting and fixed in editing.

Oh well, I've seen worse - if this were Scion, the rule wouldn't just be vague, it'd be implied to function differently in every chapter it got mentioned in, with some instances being undeniably contradictory to each other. Savage Worlds dodged that bullet, but I'd still rather see Pinnacle set the bar just a tad higher than it did.

Here's a few other things I'm griping about today:

• Edge Summary: The chart is a pain to read. There should have been three lists - one organized alphabetically, and a second organized by Rank requirement, and a third by category/type. As it stands, you search by the name of the Edge, not by what it does, nor by whether or not it's available to you. Until you're really familiar with the options, that organization scheme is not so useful.
• Chart blindness: For that matter, all the charts in the book could use lined or colored backgrounds to demark entries - it's easy to wander a line up or down the Edge chart by mistake, and the same goes for the Hindrance Summary and the various Weapon charts.
• Social Stuff: The Tests of Will mechanic (see below) is pretty sweet, but ultimately leaves you unable to Intimidate someone into fleeing. I'm happiest with games that allow you to play a character smarter and/or more charismatic than you (the player) are, and Savage Worlds comes really close but ultimately fails. In the end, it seems they were worried that social power would wreck too many plotlines. I think that's a shame, since they could have made social powers really strong against Extras but not Wild Cards without too much effort. It's the sort of thing I could see myself crafting a houserule for, possibly stealing some ideas from 7th Sea's awesome Repartee system.
• Allies: I like that the PCs get to play thier own henchmen. However, I think it's dumb that you can't get Edges to accumulate a sidekick or followers until you've reached Legendary Rank (which means you've played at least 27 sessions). Even worse is that those henchmen are very vulnerable and go away if they die. This seems like it might not have been playtested as thoroughly as it should have been. On a related note, the game deals well with mass combat, and claims to deal well with allies. The truth of the matter is, assigning a squad of 10 allied soldiers to accompany the PCs would bog the game down nightmarishly. Brute squads, were are you when we need you?
  
• First Strike (and the like): This power seems just a bit buff for it's meagre requirements. I guess that's supposed to be mitigated by the GM moving his villains carefully, but it's hard to say how often that will happen as planned. Most disturbing is the fact that many of the bonus-action Edges (of which there are 9 in the book) have similar requirements, so a combat-focused PC might stack several of them. Combining Two-Fisted, Frenzy and Improved First Strike on one PC would allow for a sick number of attacks each round, but at least it's not a combo you can start with as a Novice character.

Rather than ending this on the downer note, I'm going to talk about the bits of Savage Worlds that I really like...

• Pace: Some games have movement systems that are so vague everyone pictures the fight differently. Other games avoid that by use of miniatures, but this usually results in all humans moving at the same pace, or predetermined speed per character that means if two PCs race the same one wins every single time. Savage Worlds neatly balances this - standard pace is the same, but running gets a nice random (yet measurable) boost, and you can make a character (without too much effort) who's faster or slower than average. It does all this elegantly, to boot.
• Fatigue: The game scores more points by coming up with simple, interrelated systems for resource deprivation and environmental hazards. Staying up all night and not eating for days makes it that much harder to resist succumbing to freezing weather, as it rightly should, but without clunky complexity. Bravo!
• You play your own Allies: The actual system for Allied NPCs isn't terribly innovative (in fact, I complained about it above), but I like that they go to such lengths to clearly spell out that players control their henchmen and followers in combat. I already do as much in most RPGs, but it's nice to see a published book specifically insist on this way of running things.
• Mass Combat: The mass combat system isn't quite as colorful or detailed as the one in 7th Sea, but it's very playable and nicely abstracted. PCs are a major force on the battlefield, without having to play out hundreds of skirmishes.
• Powers: The books only 160 pages, yet they manage to fit in the tools for an a very large number of genres and settings, including 5 different mix-and-match "magic" systems. There's a lot of overlap in those systems, but I'm fairly amused by the way they made each feel different.
• Built For Success: The typical difficulty is 4, which even the weakest / least prepared PC will hit a good 20% of the time. When working in their specialty, the PC has a better than 50% of succeeding on the overwhelming majority of tasks. It's a feel-good experience, unlike many games where the average roll is a miss or failure.
• Initiative: The reverse alphabetical order tie-breaker somehow rubs me wrong, but the rest of the card-based iniative system is beautiful. It keeps combat from getting too predictable, yet the cards serve as an easy reminder of who goes next. I especially like the bonus-effect of the Jokers, and how they provide unpredictable moments in the spotlight.
• Tricks and Tests Of Will: These are likely to become my favorite parts of the combat system, though the game really desperately needs an Edge that removes the multiaction penalty for performing a Trick and an attack at the same time.
• Hold, Standoff, and The Drop: Many RPGs can handle Held Actions, but few provide workable simulations of Standoffs and/or The Drop. In Savage Worlds, if the bad guy has The Drop on you, you play along if you know what's good for you. Pinnacle gets kudos for elegant mechanics to simulate all this.

Definitely getting the hang of the system, now.

On second thought, I actually like Savage Worlds

I picked up the Explorer's Edition of Savage Worlds, wanting to better understand the mechanics that were so infuriating me. Turns out, the system is far better than I'd given it credit for. 2 of my 4 complaints have been significantly reduced as a result of my improved familiarity with the rules. A third complaint is possibly a house-rule or a mistake, and discussion of the issue may fix or mitigate it. The fourth complaint I can side-step whenever I make characters.

My gripes were:

• Most characters get one action, but some get two. Turns out I was wrong on this one. Anyone can take up to around 3 actions (one with each hand, and one with their mouth, maybe a fourth if you're really creative), but the penalties are pretty large. There's at least 4 edges that mitigate this in someway, getting rid of penalties or providing specific bonus actions under certain circumstances. More importantly, there's fairly robust Trick and Social systems that allow non-combat characters to do interesting things in fights. I'd seen those systems in action, but misunderstood and thought you needed specific edges to use them. Now that I know the system better, I'll be having a lot more fun when fights break out.
• Diminshing Returns. I brought up the subject with the folks Thursday. Mark, at least, agreed that there's not much mechanical benefit to going above a d8, but clearly the others hadn't spent much time thinking about that before. Luckily, it turns out there's a number of Edges in the book that give numerical bonuses to rolls - if you want to play a genuine expert at something, you're better off taking the appropriate Edge than high dice in skills.
• Huge damage pools. Well, reading the Explorer's Edition rulebook, there's nothing to suggest that a damage code of 2d6 is "roll two dice and add them together" and not "roll two dice and use the highest die" like all the other rolls. Either it's in the longer version of the rules, or it's a house-rule the group's been using, or someone made a mistake somewhere. I posted to the group, and hope to learn soon whether or not I'm missing something. If we revert to the version written in the Explorer's Edition, combat actions would speed up, the math would simplify, and one-hit-kills would all but dissapear. Fingers crossed.
  Update: I was wrong on this point. Clearly damage is meant to be added together, or else the difference between a rifle and a rocket launcher wouldn't be 2d8 vs 4d8. It'd be 2d8 vs 2d12 or 2d8 vs 3d10 or something with a larger die type than the rifle has. Still, it's annoying that the rules don't cover that in a more explicit example. This also raises the question of: do individual dice explode, or does the roll explode? The answer is individual dice, but the rules don't make that statement terribly explicit, either.
• You roll d4s, generally mixed with other dice. I still hate plastic caltrops, but I can avoid them myself by keeping my stats at d6s and d8s, so it's not a huge deal. Since most of what we play with this group is one-shots I feel no need to affix the judge's eye on other people's rolls. Even if anyone in that group were going to cheat, it's not like it'd have lasting impact on the course of a campaign, or invalidate someone else's character concept by continually outperforming them. In short, I can and should just relax about this one.

In summation: (Despite my protests in recent posts) Thursday's Toon City Vice session and a read of the rulebook convinced me that Savage Worlds is a far better game than I'd given it credit for. I recommend the Savage Worlds system (and strongly recommend it if you're looking for a crunchy yet generic rules set for use with one-shots), especially the Explorer's Edition. That book is light weight and portable, and costs a mere $9.99! A whole RPG for $10 is pretty sweet.

Diminishing Returns in Savage Worlds

While righting that last post, I realized something that almost was a bullet point, but deserves it's own attention as a separate topic. I've long wondered about exploding d4s.

Not some clandestine CIA plot to eliminate Castro's D&D group, though that could make for an interesting tale, I'm sure. Hmm... there's a one-shot concept in there somewhere.

Instead, by "exploding", I'm referencing dice that you get to reroll and add to the total if they score their highest face. I think Savage Worlds calls it Acing the dice, but I first encountered it in 7th Sea, where it's said they explode. If you rolled a "10" you'd roll again and add 10 to the total. If you rolled a second ten, you'd roll a third time and add 20 to that roll.

Exploding dice have strange interactions with systems that use multiple die types. Barring explosion, the average roll of each standard die type is 1 higher than the die type preceding it (except the jump from d12 to d20, of course), so a d4 roll averages 2.5, a d6 roll averages 3.5, etc. However, that flat progression falls away when you start messing with exploding dice. The average roll of an exploding d4 is about 3.56, and the average roll of an exploding d6 is about 4.19. Those numbers aren't quite accurate - I'd have to take the math out past several more explosions to figure out the actual repeating digits. But, it should be clear from these aproximations, that there's diminishing returns. Each consecutive upgrade in die size gives you a smaller boost to your average roll.

It's worth noting that since dice explode, there's technically no upper limit to rolls. Sure, you're probably not ever going to get "6" two dozen times in a row and score around 150 on a roll. But getting a d4 to roll "13" will happen from time to time, and I've yet to see (only 3 sessions of actual play) a difficulty above 10. If that holds true, then die size doesn't end up mattering much. An exploding d6 has a 1 in 12 chance of hitting difficulty 10, and a d10 only has a 1 in 10 chance. The d10s a little better, but not a lot.
The most common difficult I've experienced as a player is "4". A d4 has a 25% chance of hitting that, a d6 has 50%, a d8 has 62.5% chance, and a d10 has 70%. Again diminshing returns.
All this does for me is reinforce my deep-rooted desire to buy my d4s up to d6s.

So, with diminishing returns, and the possibility (though infrequent) of the lowliest die scoring any number the best die can score, you'd expect the system to make high die-code skills fairly cheap.

Nope. To get a high die-code in a skill, you typically first buy a high rating in the Attribute it's linked to. That costs points from a very limited pool, so some other attribute will "suffer" for it. (Again, having the low die in something ain't that horrible, but Attributes also generate some static numbers that are based on non-exploding averages or maximums, so it can hurt if you chump stat the wrong the Attribute.)

If instead you choose to buy the skill above the corresponding Attribute, then the higher levels cost double. That double cost hardly seems worth it, since you're at the point of diminishing returns. Especially since those same value in points will buy you another Edge. Edges are special powers (like Feats in D&D) - they make your character unique, and they are almost always of greater benefit than just rolling a slightly larger die.

Damnit. Now I've worked myself into a weird place. I've pretty much convinced myself that there's illogical flaws in the Savage Worlds system. However, I have friends playing said system, and I've very much enjoyed meeting them, gaming with them, etc. I'm quite certain I'll continue playing with them. I'm tempted to steer them to Fate (or more Wushu), but doubt they'll make that switch based on my recommendation. After all, I haven't even read the Savage Worlds book, and haven't given it a fair try, and I'm still the new guy of the group. I've done an analysis that tells me that taking a skill above a d8 is dubious, but I see d10 skills on PC sheets at game night quite often. Either there's something I'm missing, or they just haven't analyzed the math. My personal code of conduct won't let me sit quiet on this discovery. Munchkins game the system and keep the secrets to themselves - not me. But you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Clearly, any future PCs I make will be from an informed viewpoint. So I'm going to have to point it out to the group, which will lead to spirited conversation. Natural human reaction is to say "no, I'm not in error" and debate, so they'll want to. Since I've never read the book, I'm inadequately prepared for that debate - there could be balancing factors I'm missing. So that means I have to go buy a book for a game I would not choose to run. I'll be buying it for the express purpose of talking my friends out of running it, and/or figuring out the optimal character builds, should talking them out of it be impossible. That whole situation stinks. I kinda wish I'd never run the math that lead to this conclusion.

(And no, I can't just ask to borrow theirs. We've known each other for a short time, or rather, a small number of events over several months. Long enough that someone might spontaneously offer, but still new enough you'd seem impolite to ask. Besides, if I'm going to turn a whole group off of a company, the least I can do is throw one final sale in that companies direction. Luckily, I think there's a $10 or $12 pocket guide to the game, which will assuage my guilt without hurting my budget.)

Miscellaneous d4-related thoughts

These are things that crossed my mind while writing that last post, but didn't quite fit.

• There's a few alternate d4 designs. There's d8s numbered 1-4 twice, and d12's numbered three times. I have one of the latter, which is cool. Sadly, most games that require 1d4 will make you roll 2d4 or 5d4 somewhere along the line, so having one such d12(1-4x3) does me little good.
• There exists a patent for an alternate d4 design that looks much better. It's made of four isoceles triangles, and you read it by looking at the top face, just like any non-d4 die. Probably it would roll better than existing d4s, but I have nothing but theory to support that. Nobody is making them currently, and the patent rights prevent duplication by other companies for another 5 or 10 years. Hmm... it's a TSR patent. I wonder if Andy would know anything about it? Haven't called him since September - this could be a good excuse.
  
• Speaking of whom, what was Andy (or whichever of his WotC colleagues) thinking in making all those 2d4 damage weapons in 4th Ed? It's almost like they think 2d4 is some sort of intermediary between 1d8 and 1d10. It's not. Higher minimum, slightly higher average, but most importantly: steep bell-curve. Every other weapon die has a flat damage probability, but those 2d4 scythes and 2d6 mauls do very predictable median damage amounts with only rare excursions to the upper and lower damage totals. I haven't been able to deduce the logic behind why those particular weapons are given the otherwise non-existant curve. Definitely going to have to ask him about this.
• Of course, though I'm complaining about 2d4 becoming a regular feature of D&D 4th, it could be worse. In the Savage Worlds RPG, there's times you end up rolling 1d6 and 1d4 at the same time. The dice explode, d6 on a 6, d4 on a 4, you gotta figure out which ones you're rolling again, and your neural pathways go kaplooie. (See previous post. Math and movement use different sections of the brain.) At least D&D only has you roll d4s alone, or together with other d4s, so one motion gets all the dice tumbling in their most randomizing trajectory.

This last bit I'm not going to bullet point, since it's unrelated to the other thoughts.

There are situations where the existance of the d4 is justified. Back in the hatbox days, I designed a game system for a one-shot. The scenario was a success, I ended up running 6 sessions of it, for 4 different play groups. It used d4s, amidst a lot of other dice. In the system, you wanted to always roll low. Each PC had a variety of traits rated at various die types, including a single very narrow specialty that rolled a d4. This was your one best subskill, the thing you were expected to always succeed at. The GM (me) didn't have to worry about weird rolling habits (or cheating) with that d4, because the player was nearly always going to win in that arena anyway. With that mechanical base to support it, the d4 worked perfectly well. It occurs to me, upon reflection, that I could have just made that specialty an auto-win, and left out the d4 entirely, with only minor impact on the way it played. Also, the experience taught me that all gamers are psychologically trained or wired to want to roll high - nothing spells "false hopes" like rolling a "20" and then remembering it's the worst possible result.

Death by Plastic Caltrop? Death To Plastic Caltrop!

Man, do I hate d4's. I stepped on an old untumbled d4 once, and it was bloody murder, but that's not why I hate d4's.

• I hate them because they don't roll like normal dice.
• There's a single motion that makes a d6 bounce a couple times, and a d12 or d20 roll across the table. Most of us have that motion as muscle memory, and we do it automatically. (I know one gamer who just can't roll dice, but that's another story). But apply that same motion to a d4, and it just flops onto the table and lays there.
• As a result, you have to think before you roll them. You either have to really bounce them around in your hollow cupped fists, or throw them high into the air and impart a spin. Anecdotal evidence over the years tells me that most gamers can't parse the motion of rolling d4s at the same moment they are doing math. In a really rules-light game it's no big deal. But if you have to add numbers together, apply modifiers, or choose the highest die, the parts of the brain the get used to do so are not the same as the part of the brain reminds you to roll your d4 differently. Either you roll them the wrong way, or it slows down the process as you transition between dice and math.
  
• Rolling them the wrong way results in the same number getting rolled again and again. It's an honest mistake, almost never is it cheating. It's the just the reality of how the d4 fails to tumble if thrown with the wrong motion.
• That it has only 4 sides compounds that. A d20 that never flips more than one adjacent side wouldn't be a problem, since the "20" is next to the "2", the "8" and the "14". There'd still be plenty of variation from roll to roll.
• What's more, if someone rolls a "20" on, say, 5 consecutive rolls of a d20, you know the odds are seriously against it, and they know it too. You can suggest they need to shake the dice more, without it sounding like an accusation of cheating. Hell, if you think they are cheating, you can say it to their face, and they'll forgive you for thinking that, 'cause it looked mighty suspicious. But, "4" on 5 consecutive rolls, given all the above factors, doesn't strike most people as all that unlikely. But the chances are actually less than 1/10th of a percent. Most people just don't realize the odds are that extreme. Roll 5d4 a thousand times, and you'll probably get that maximum total (5 fours) just once - assuming the dice are being rolled in a truly random fashion, and d4s rarely are.

So, we have all that related die-rolling trouble, and we compound it with a variety of other minor strikes against the d4.

• Most games want you to roll high, but these are the smallest / lowest-rolling standard dice. Your own psychology is wired to get excited when you roll high, but again, you can't.
• Rolled in multiples, d4s create very steep bell curves. Fewer but larger dice create a more gentle curve.
• d4s come in top-reading and bottom-reading variants which can be disorienting if borrowing or mixing dice.
• That same variance makes it harder for a GM to casually spotcheck a player's rolls from a distance. As I said on the first list, it's harder to document cheating via d4s since a bunch of 4s doesn't stand out like a bunch of 20s does - so making it harder to surreptitiously read the dice sure doesn't help the situation.
• Q-workshop accidentally produced some beautiful but defective dice with bottom-reading d4s that escaped quality control since the numbers were so strangely placed. We used to have some at the games store I managed. They looked cool, till you rolled a 4...or was it a 2... well, these twos sides say "4"... but that one says "2". Grrr... I paid $20 for these?!?
  
• And yes, they hurt if you step on them.

For all those reasons, I hate d4s. When I'm designing / homebrewing game systems, I avoid d4s if at all possible. When I'm making characters, I avoid any powers or stats that will force me to roll a d4.