Convincing 4th Edition players to consider 5th Edition

pemerton · Jul 28, 2012

Tuft said:
What if the opponent(s) get pushed into a trapdoor, off a cliff, or into hot lava long before they reach zero HP? Would that not cut the expected rounds of combat short?

Nagol said:
the PCs may do something to defeat the opponents (and bring the challenge to an end) even if their opponents' hp aren't reduced to zero; heck even calling for surrender can accomplish this.

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
But the hit point issue is one of "end the skill challenge in a success," where "success" is being linked to "killing an opponent."

<snip>

If the skill challenge being undertaken is a negotiation, the players can decide at any point to toss over the table, out blades, and extract their demands at swordpoint. I'd hardly count that as a victory in the skill challenge, though! It's, in fact, a failure in the skill challenge, which the part now has to react to. Similarly, players can exit a combat challenge early with a failure by surrendering

I agree with everything Patryn of Elvenshae has said in response to this line of thought.

pemerton · Jul 28, 2012

AbdulAlhazred said:
4e actually has MORE fluff by almost any measure you could name than any of the previous editions, oddly enough.

Yes. It's as if people didn't read the race descriptions, the monster lore entries, the flavour text for classes and powers, and then complained that there was no flavour text!

I've always found it strange. And it means that while I like MV very much from a mechanical points of view, it's flavour text is an irritant to me (I remember looking at one entry - I can't remember which one, now - and finding that all its flavour text was the same as in the MM, except that it was no longer handily located uner lore check DCs, and so was less useable in play!).

Nagol · Jul 28, 2012

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
But the hit point issue is one of "end the skill challenge in a success," where "success" is being linked to "killing an opponent."

Yes, it's a bit of a strained metaphor because a dead opponent isn't necessarily the only victorious end-state (surrender also works*), but you don't get to dead without going through the HP buffer.** Just in that fashion, you don't get to a victorious end-state in a skill challenge until you go through the success buffer.

If the skill challenge being undertaken is a negotiation, the players can decide at any point to toss over the table, out blades, and extract their demands at swordpoint. I'd hardly count that as a victory in the skill challenge, though! It's, in fact, a failure in the skill challenge, which the part now has to react to. Similarly, players can exit a combat challenge early with a failure by surrendering***.

* But, given that HP represent morale, among other things, and that players may declare an opponent to not actually be dead upon striking the blow that takes the target to 0HP, narrating a "killing blow" as "the enemy surrenders" looks acceptable to me.

** Or using a Save-or-Die - but I don't really care for those for various reasons, so we'll leave them aside.

*** Hah, hah, HAH! No, really, I heard it happened, like, once.

If the only success state is "dead opponent" then the analogy mostly works. The thing is many combat scenarios can end successfully through enemy negation rather than hp attrition -- and that is where the analogy breaks down.

I can adjust the analogy to more closely fit by adjusting the skill challenge to have the add-ons of auto-successes/improved odds for trying various secondary tactics equating to negating an opponent (e.g. trapping a troll in the well is analogous to mentioning the Baron's illegitimate daughter's identity to him as a non-subtle intimidation auto-success), but it is still a stretch.

In many versions of D&D, the purpose of a combat wasn't to kill the opponent it was to negate the opponent -- even though death is the most common and obvious negation. The party wasn't after the opponent -- the opponent was merely an obstacle to get by.

On a 2nd note:

If, in the middle of a skill challenge the PCs pull blades and attack -- wouldn't that normally be an auto-fail on the challenge as the situation moves into the combt rules realm? The PCs have effectively surrendered the challenge have they not?

Patryn of Elvenshae · Jul 28, 2012

Nagol said:
If the only success state is "dead opponent" then the analogy mostly works. The thing is many combat scenarios can end successfully through enemy negation rather than hp attrition -- and that is where the analogy breaks down.

Sure - I think, for purposes of the analogy, we're considering a combat where the goal is, in fact, "Kill the badguy," rather than "obtain the MacGuffin, which happens to be on the other side of the badguy."

I can adjust the analogy to more closely fit by adjusting the skill challenge to have the add-ons of auto-successes/improved odds for trying various secondary tactics equating to negating an opponent (e.g. trapping a troll in the well is analogous to mentioning the Baron's illegitimate daughter's identity to him as a non-subtle intimidation auto-success), but it is still a stretch.

I'm not sure it's that much of a stretch. Consider the various interesting examples [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and ... uh ... others, have given where, for instance, a character was attempting a skill check in a challenge which they could not fail (e.g., +15 skill bonus against a DC 15).

Even with that, what the player chooses to do to enable that skill check matters. Intimidating the Duke by mentioning his illegitimate daughter has a different result, in the story-of-what's-happened-and-will-come-next, than intimidating him by threatening to expose his ties to the forest bandits in the county next door.

So, mentioning you know who his beloved (bastard) daughter is and where she lives might drop the Intimidate check from Hard to Easy (that you can't fail) or even make it an auto-success regardless of your Intimidate score, while the bandit connection remains Hard, seems like a perfectly good implementation of a piece of a skill challenge.

If, in the middle of a skill challenge the PCs pull blades and attack -- wouldn't that normally be an auto-fail on the challenge as the situation moves into the combt rules realm? The PCs have effectively surrendered the challenge have they not?

Certainly - that's what I said.

pemerton · Jul 28, 2012

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
Consider the various interesting examples [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and ... uh ... others

It was [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] who posted that example.

AbdulAlhazred · Jul 28, 2012

JamesonCourage said:
Right, and this is good to voice, but... I guess I'm missing how this contradicts the post of mine that you quoted. Can you elaborate for me?

Oh, it isn't necessarily in opposition to what you said.

Just something I rarely see articulated clearly. I think at the most fundamental level it is transparency that makes something like 4e attractive to me.

This just depends on your (generic "your") definition or view of what "better" is in an RPG.

As for the rest of your post, like I said, now is the time to express what you want, but it really isn't the time to condemn the game, yet. Express great concern, or even doubt, sure. As always, play what you like

I don't have a huge problem with the little nugget of DDN we've seen so far. It DOES seem a little less transparent, maybe, but then again maybe not. Can't tell. Actually I thought that in general improvements I'd have recommended for a 4e follow-on are there. A bunch of cruft was removed from combat. What's left is pretty close to a good system for playing with minis, given straightforward reasonable minor extrapolations. We played a couple sessions of the playtest with a grid and minis, which worked reasonably well. Frankly I'd want to see better formatted and spelled out powers and monsters.

Frankly I have no particular interest in this whole "every class must have different mechanics" thing, as I've said. Nobody pays a whole lot of attention to mechanics around our table. If you're not 100% engaged by the action in the game something is wrong, there should be and is no time for nitpicking the rules or even thinking about them! Simple, transparent, easy to learn, easy to remember, easy to write down on your sheet, and easy to resolve.

Basically I could care less if it is different from AD&D. WotC is great, but the fan base I'm having deep issues with right now. Most of them I'd be happy to just see get off this bus. Their fascination with 20 years dead fossil D&D minutia to the exclusion of all else is bizarre and foreign to me and doesn't even come close to relating to my own experiences with my own group. I play with people that I played with when D&D was 3 little books, we're just not lost in nostalgia for our early teens or looking to reproduce that experience exactly.

JamesonCourage · Jul 28, 2012

AbdulAlhazred said:
Oh, it isn't necessarily in opposition to what you said. Just something I rarely see articulated clearly. I think at the most fundamental level it is transparency that makes something like 4e attractive to me.

I like not disagreeing

That said, I think the transparency issue you're talking about has been touched on over and over in this and other threads, especially within the last few days.

AbdulAlhazred said:
Basically I could care less if it is different from AD&D. WotC is great, but the fan base I'm having deep issues with right now. Most of them I'd be happy to just see get off this bus. Their fascination with 20 years dead fossil D&D minutia to the exclusion of all else is bizarre and foreign to me and doesn't even come close to relating to my own experiences with my own group. I play with people that I played with when D&D was 3 little books, we're just not lost in nostalgia for our early teens or looking to reproduce that experience exactly.

There are certainly a few posters here who have the feelings you describe, but I'd say the huge majority don't express this view. So, with that in mind, I'm a little confused by this view, but I see it expressed often enough.

I have my own issues when people express things, though. People who play using minis are playing something foreign to me, and needing rules that mandate their use seems off from what I can personally relate to. I understand it, but it's foreign to me. The same goes for wanting an extremely rules-light game. Or no way to adjudicate social situations mechanically. And on it goes.

I understand those views, but it's still all foreign to me. So, I get your feeling there, too. I guess I just see the "it needs to be like AD&D but a little different" posters as the very small minority. There is a larger movement of "return to the roots of D&D" and such, so maybe that's what you meant? And, if that's the case, count me as one of them. I have my own RPG for generic fantasy; if I ever pick up D&D, it's so that I can play with all the D&D tropes, from Lawful Good Paladins to color-coded dragons. I get why people don't like this approach (they don't have my RPG

), but that's why I have the view I do. As always, play what you like

Tony Vargas · Jul 28, 2012

pemerton said:
Yes. It's as if people didn't read the race descriptions, the monster lore entries, the flavour text for classes and powers, and then complained that there was no flavour text!

Nod. People don't always complain about what's really bothering them. Maybe it wasn't the amount of flavor text so much as the divorcing of flavor text from mechanics (which made mechanics clearer and less subject to 'abuse' or 'creativity' depending on how you looked at it)? Maybe it wasn't so much the amount of flavor text but the way it was presented? I don't know, and I don't see how WotC could have known, so it's hard to blame them for giving people exactly what they said they wanted and thereby getting it 'wrong.' Especially considering how much they get flogged for being 'unresponsive.'

I've always found it strange. And it means that while I like MV very much from a mechanical points of view, it's flavour text is an irritant to me (I remember looking at one entry - I can't remember which one, now - and finding that all its flavour text was the same as in the MM, except that it was no longer handily located uner lore check DCs, and so was less useable in play!).

For a setting-specific resource like Threats to the Nentir Vale, though, that presentation really works.

AbdulAlhazred said:
Basically I could care less if it is different from AD&D. WotC is great, but the fan base I'm having deep issues with right now. Most of them I'd be happy to just see get off this bus. Their fascination with 20 years dead fossil D&D minutia to the exclusion of all else is bizarre and foreign to me and doesn't even come close to relating to my own experiences with my own group. I play with people that I played with when D&D was 3 little books, we're just not lost in nostalgia for our early teens or looking to reproduce that experience exactly.

Maybe it's a perspective difference between those who have stayed active in the broader hobby continuously - playing other games, playing every version of D&D as it came out, etc - vs those who left the hobby and came back to it, or settled on one game or one edition for an extended period before coming back and checking out a later one? For the former, change from one ed to another (and within each) is incremental and related to the changes in the broader hobby as a whole, for the latter, change is sudden, jarring and betrays the core 'feel' of the beloved game?

Blackbrrd · Jul 28, 2012

Personally I think it's time for a pull back to previous levels of complexity, but keeping the streamlining 3e and 4e introduced. The flattening of the power curve and removal of the gear dependancy introduced in 3e and 4e is something I would welcome.

I do like the tactical combat of 4e, but I hated the 100 splat books with additional powers, feats and races. If 5e is a bit less tactical but more streamlined I would welcome it.

The best part of 4e was probably the monsters and I don't really welcome the bag-of-hp monsters back. At the same time it did become a bit much as a DM. Something between 3e and 4e would be welcomed by me.

Incenjucar · Jul 29, 2012

Blackbrrd said:
but I hated the 100 splat books with additional powers, feats and races.

This is basically how RPGs do DLC, in addition to adventures and monster books. It's why the core books are often a sold relatively cheaply, or in discount sets - they want you to buy a steady stream of supplementary content. It's the RPG business model. To get away from it, they would have to have some sort of new product breakthrough.