Rule-of-Three: 06/19/2012

pemerton said:

Between this, and the new Legends and Lore, it seems to be getting clearer that there won't be much support for 4e-style play.
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Tactical combat resolution seems to be being treated as an end in itself, rather than (as in 4e) a vehicle for communicating and generating deeper thematic and story elements.

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This is something I never understand. Tactical combat can always be treated as a separate minigame or as a vehicle for storytelling (or both). I don't see what the rules have to do with it. Whenever I see these comments to the effect of "I play the game better when playing edition X" it always feels to me like a sort of D&D placebo; i.e. it's not the rules that change things, it's the people playing them.

This implies two things: (i) that "story and background" are based on a pre-4e standard, and (ii) that "story and background" are being treated as something indpenent of, and prior to mechanics, rather than something that it is the job of the mechanics to produce.

So instead of hobgoblins who form phalanxes because they get an AC bonus (as in 4e), there will be flavour text telling us that hobgoblins form phalanxes, and that goblins are sneaky, even though mechanically there will be little reason for the hobgoblins not to sneak or for the goblins not to form phalanxes.

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I would hope that story and background would be created before mechanics, and then mechanics would be created that fit them.

I would think that all goblins would have high dex and a Hide bonus for being small, and perhaps more, which is why their behavior is oriented towards sneakiness. I wouldn't expect all hobgoblins to have a bonus for a specific fighting style. If you're running a historic game, would you expect all Greeks to get an AC bonus for phalanx fighting? Sounds like a feat to me, perhaps one that could be suggested for warrior types.

Particularly in light of what Mearls says about monster design, I don't have any hope that we'll see monsters like the Deathlock Wight (uses forced movement + psychic damage to model PCs fleeing from fear at its Horrific Visage) or PC powers like Come and Get It or even Thunderwave.

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I take it this is posited as a bad thing?

When you have disadvantage or advantage, you have it, no matter how many sources you're getting it from. They are binary conditions, and once you have that condition in a certain situation, you simply have it. However, if you have both, then their effects cancel each other out—you roll no additional dice; again, no matter how many sources grant advantage or disadvantage, having both means that you, effectively, gain the die-rolling effects of neither advantage nor disadvantage at that time. Technically, you still have both advantage and disadvantage (for the purpose of things that key on those situations), their basic effects simply negate one another.

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This is just nonsense. If you have ten advantages and one disadvantage they just cancel each other out? That aspect of it is going to need to be looked at. There needs to be some mechanism for stacking advantages.

The domains thing is good. Much more depth than in 3e, it would seem.

Tactical combat sounds like a positive, and with a better approach than previous editions.

GX.Sigma said:

Yeah, did anyone really want facing? Serious question.

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I think I would rather have it than not, *if* it is simple. The no-facing thing always confuses the hell out of my players, I was seriously considering getting 'there is no facing' tattooed on my forehead.

jadrax said:

I think I would rather have it than not, *if* it is simple. The no-facing thing always confuses the hell out of my players, I was seriously considering getting 'there is no facing' tattooed on my forehead.

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Of course, I won't be able to see that tattoo unless I'm facing you.

I don't like the #2 answer, either.

If you have advantage for two different reasons, and disadvantage for one reason, you might still have advantage. Heck, maybe you should actually have disadvantage.

Domains seem to do what they are supposed to do.
The dis/advantage not stacking seems like a simplification for the sake of simplification. I can see where it can get out of control, if you have a horde of abilities that grant dis/advantage. Stacking should be a small number of actions, especially if granting dis/advantage requires an act on the PCs part. Fighting an overwhelming horde of kobolds in bright light, a Guardian should be able to use his power.
Baatezu's advocate, if you are fighting a smaller force of kobolds in the light, they are already disadvantaged and the Guardian can not use his power to help a comrade because the kobold is already disadvantaged. So if dis/advantage is binary, stacks should not matter on either side of the coin.
Answer 3 is a bunch of alpha info. It might have facing, movement and grid shaped AoE. It might also have animated minis and a require Microsoft Kinect. A complete non-answer until we playtest the rules.

pemerton said:

Between this, and the new Legends and Lore, it seems to be getting clearer that there won't be much support for 4e-style play.

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If you are saying 5E won't be 4E, your right, it probably won't be.

If you are saying that you can't have elaborate battles with unique monster abilities, dramatic maneuvers, forced movement, funky battlefield features...I think you are wrong. They are saying you can have those things. But not everyone has to have them.

Ahnehnois said:

I take it this is posited as a bad thing?

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As I stated in my post, it's posited as a significant element of my impression that "there won't be much support for 4e-style play."

As it happens, I like 4e a lot. So for me it is a bad thing. But that's not the main claim. Whether or not one likes them, Deathlock Wights (and other monsters built on similar principles), Come and Get It and Thunderwave (and other powers built on similar principles) are key parts of 4e as a system.

Ahnehnois said:

I would hope that story and background would be created before mechanics, and then mechanics would be created that fit them.

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I personally don't want mechanics that fit the story. I want mechanics that create the story. For me, that is what is powerful about RPGs as a vehicle for storytelling.

Ahnehnois said:

This is something I never understand. Tactical combat can always be treated as a separate minigame or as a vehicle for storytelling (or both). I don't see what the rules have to do with it.

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This makes me want to ask, What range of systems do you have in mind?

Burning Wheel is probably the best-known example of a system that makes tactical combat resolution a vehicle for player-driven engagement with the fiction, but I'll illustrate the point by comparing two systems with which I have more experience: Runequest and Rolemaster. Both are known for the generally simulationist mechanical leanings. And as part of this, both have active defence in combat - parrying in RM, parrying or dodging in RQ. In RQ, parry and dodge are both seperate skills from attacking. But in RM, the parry and attack bonuses are both allocated from a single pool, with the allocation taking place on a round-by-round basis in a pre-initiative declaration phase.

RM therefore opens up a possibility in play that RQ does not, namely, of the player setting the stakes for the melee - choosing, for example, to take a chance on going first and putting all of the pool into attack, or parrying all out in order to stay alive while someone else comes along to save the day, or any other sort of intermediate strategy.

This makes Rolemaster a very different story-telling vehicle from RQ. The actual mechanics of the tactical resolution system become a vehicle for the player to express an orientation towards the circumstances within the fiction. It takes it closer to Burning Wheel. RQ lacks this.

4e, by linking a PC's identity (race, class, Paragon Path etc) with the broader mythic fiction of the gameworld (not in every case, but in many cases), and then by expressing that identity via a range of powers, which in turn are used against monsters and NPCs that have been built in the same sort of way, makes the tactical combat a vehicle for engaging with and expressing the core of the fiction.

The Deathlock Wight is a simple example: it doesn't just push the PCs away (like a Bull Rush) - it turns them into cowards!

A more complex example, that I used in my game recently, is the Chained Cambion (from MM3). It has the following flavour text:


This "screaming of despair" manifests mechanically in a couple of ways. First, it has a close blast that delivers psychic damage, pushes and dazes. Second, it has the ability to lock adjacent PCs in "psychic chains" such that they take psychic damage at the start and end of any turn in which they are not adjacent.

Obviously, this produces a tactical challenge - the players have to work out how to coordinate two PCs who want to remain adjacent, while the monster is trying to blast them apart. In my own game the tactical challenge of this was increased because the two PCs were a fighter and an archer ranger, and they were on top of a small shrine and had to coordinate their hopping down without becoming seperated and therefore damaged by their psychic chains.

But these powers also reinforce and generate story elements. Because not only is the Cambion giving voice to its despair at being chained. But the players start giving voice to their despair at being chained. The mechanic makes the players of the two targetted PCs live through the Chained Cambions raison d'etre as a story element. As an episode within an encounter it only lasted for a few rounds in my game, but that was all the time that was needed for the players to generate resentment at being chained - resentment towardso one another (particularly as they didn't make their saves at the same time - so one of the PCs was free himself, but still couldn't move away because that would leave the other in the lurch), and a more general frustration at their situation.

I think this is a particularly striking example of 4e monster design - not all its monsters are so thematically compact, with it all being expressed in a couple of powers - but this general experience - of the mechanics of monster design, and the way they resolve at the table, giving voice to the story without the need for illusionist patter from the GM, or self-deception by the players, is in my experience of the essence of the game. And it depends not just on a grid and forced movement, but intricacies of monster design interacting with intricacies of PC design (eg the frustration of being chained together is far greater in a system with strongly differentiated PC roles).

I'm not seeing any hint that D&Dnext has the resources to deliver this sort of play experience, given it starting points for both PCs and monsters/NPCs.

I don't much care for facing rules. I find them to be too fiddly and nit-picky.

TerraDave said:

If you are saying that you can't have elaborate battles with unique monster abilities, dramatic maneuvers, forced movement, funky battlefield features...I think you are wrong. They are saying you can have those things.

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I think they are saying that I can have tactical combat for its own sake - with exciting manoeuvres and funky battlefield features.

I don't see them saying anything about expressing the story via such things. The contrast with what Worlds and Monsters promised (which 4e delivered on) is pretty marked, at least as I read it.

Here's an analogy, that for a change won't be a food analogy.

Law and Order is a cop show. Castle superficially presents as a cop show - but in fact is a screwball comedy (at least in the earlier series - it's morphed into soap opera under the pressure of its characters and plotline).

The AD&D's tactical combat rules - facing, flanking, shield rules, etc - are a tactical combat chassis, designed to produce a tactical combat experience. 4e presents as a tactical combat engine - but this is just the vehicle for something else, namely, high (if you prefer, gonzo) fantasy storytelling. This is achieved by integrating the mythic stakes at crucial points of PC and NPC/monster design, as well as by giving the players a high degree of control over how their PCs confront those stakes (both in build and in action resolution, via powers, surges, action points etc).

I don't doubt the ability of the 5e designers to deliver a mechanically elegant tactical combat engine, complete with facing. But I am not seeing those other things that make the 4e experience what it is. In fact, I'm seeing things that push in the opposite direction (more like Runequest than Rolemaster, let along Burning Wheel or The Riddle of Steel).

Herremann the Wise said:

I'm hoping you're not correct here. My reading from this using the hobgoblins as an example, is that when the hobgoblin warchief is leading them, that is when they form into a phalanx with the nastiness/special effects that entails. Nullify the leader though, and the organisation dissolves. I think this works well with such group activity and action. However, I would like to think that they will re-introduce iconic individual behaviour such as kobold shiftiness that is not well represented by a leader's influence. Hopefully when they pay a little more attention to monster design, they'll do this. Hopefully.

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That's the way I read it, with one addition. This also ties into adventure as the main unit of design instead of encounter. So while this is not exactly 4E, it is not as far from it as it might first appear. I see it as rather an odd mix of 1E, 3E, and 4E sensibilities:

• The monsters in the adventure are there because that's what makes sense in the world, plus whatever gamist challenge the DM chose to pursue.
• There is a background, simulationist situation implied by this.
• The leader types introduce 4E encounter-based mechanics with the narrative implications.
• However, the leaders can be mix and matched--whether from roaming, wandering, reactions to the party, etc.

So presumably, if you want a more 4E style play, you'll start your adventure design with the leaders and then build up the encounter and adventure design around those--or very consciously choose leaders to apply on top of a more straight-forward adventure design to drift to 4E play. If you want earlier play, you may start with a leader because that is what you had in mind for the world and/or challenge, but you could just as easily start with "orc lair" as a concept. In any case, the leaders will range from something vaguely like 4E, to 3E "leaders," to a more haphazard 1E dungeon approach, where the leaders may have 4E tactical emergent properties or get whacked between chambers, depending on what the players do.

The most interesting implication is that if you play a 1E dungeon romp, then parties that neutralize leaders outside the combat pillar turn the later encounters into either 1E or 3E style fights, but parties that engage the leaders in combat with their followers get more 4E style fights. This means that groups that "go with the flow" are naturally going to get something more to their liking by doing what they want to do.