D&D 5E If an option is presented, it needs to be good enough to take.

Cadence said:

they didn't sell it as doing so as well as you guys do.

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Part of the reason I post write-ups of some of my sessions is just to illustrate what I've found the game can do.

I think WotC could certainly have done a better job of doing that. (Though Chris Perkins's DM's column has some nice examples.) I think they also could have done a better job of explaining how to use some of the tools - skill challenges, for instance.

What I've found helpful has been rulebooks for other indie games that have similar mechanics to 4e in non-combat resolution and in scene framing: Burning Wheel (especially the Adventure Burner), HeroWars/Quest and Maelstrom Storytelling. I know a lot of 4e players swear by the DMG2, and I certainly agree with them that it's not a bad book, but the books for the three systems I've just mentioned are considerably better.

Anyway, if you want to see what's going on in my game you can check out the other thread I linked to a few posts up!

pemerton said:

I thought I'd ignore your last sentence and say something in reply to this!

The Forge places a lot of emphasis on incoherence in game design, and also the idea of drifting. For a lot of traditional RPGs, I think these two ideas are important to understanding their use in narrativist play.

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This is one huge place I part ways with The Forge. Incoherence or rather flexibility is a good thing as it offers things to people interested in more than one type of play and, over a campaign, allows much more flexibilty in the game. Humans aren't pure and don't do well with attempts at purity.

pemerton said:

I don't know 3E well enough to know what other knowledgeable classes you have in mind (the bard? but won't INT be weaker for a bard than for a wizard, so that the wizard will somewhat make up the gap in skill points and have a better stat bonus to Knowledge?).

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The Bard.
Given that BBEGs are normally notable people for somewhere, the Bard can roll for them too. That's an extremely powerful knowledge ability they get for free. And they also have 6+Int skill points/level as against the wizard's 2+Int. Breadth of knowledge for a loremaster character isn't even close.

Neonchameleon said:

The Bard.

Bardic Knowledge

A bard may make a special bardic knowledge check with a bonus equal to his bard level + his Intelligence modifier to see whether he knows some relevant information about local notable people, legendary items, or noteworthy places. (If the bard has 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (history), he gains a +2 bonus on this check.)
A successful bardic knowledge check will not reveal the powers of a magic item but may give a hint as to its general function. A bard may not take 10 or take 20 on this check; this sort of knowledge is essentially random.
​

Given that BBEGs are normally notable people for somewhere, the Bard can roll for them too. That's an extremely powerful knowledge ability they get for free. And they also have 6+Int skill points/level as against the wizard's 2+Int. Breadth of knowledge for a loremaster character isn't even close.

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Yup. The last sentence is precisely why I chose the Bard (especially knowing that JC plays something of a 3.x hack) as the mechanical infrastructure for JC's "Sage" character. I think the Bard works well (in 3e and 4e) for the mundane, scholarly, educated by adventure, travel and curiosity "Sage". I suspect that you could make it work in 4e by using the Warlord/Bard that I outlined upthread and just decoupling the PCs action economy from the PCs own locus of control. The PC is playing "the hand of fate", "veteran unit chemistry", "divine intervention" or "manifest destiny". You could outline an AEDU power structure for the character to play based off of this premise. The only thing lacking would be the positional impact of an extra PC (which you could make up for in other areas). That may not work for JC and his gaming tastes but I think you could drift 4e in this way and create this character easily enough.

Lemme give you an example of the Skill Challenge I have planned for this Sunday (Players, if you're reading this through some odd coincidence, stop. You know who you are~)

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For some reasonably complex reasons, a riot is becoming inevitable in the city. This was brewing a long time before the PCs got to the city, and is due to *things*.

To make a long story short, there's an oppressed quarter of the city that is about to be destroyed in this riot. The rioters are going to start a fire, and the PCs will probably arrive around when it's getting into full swing.

The PCs, as I see it, have three goals here:

- Put out the fire
- Rescue as many people as possible
- Hold back the rioters

How they go about it will be important. Putting out the fire could be fairly involved, but we have a TK psion, and water on hand. They could also wet down nearby roofs (athletics check). They might also realize (history check) that some of the buildings in the quarter are from a previous era that used a high degree of fireproofing, and use them as firebreaks. Or they might realize that some buildings are different from a Streetwise check. They could also overload the magical pumps that drive the water (arcana check) to shower the surrounding areas with water for a short while before the pumps burn out (there's 4 of them).

Rescuing people from the fire could be Endurance, Athletics, or Acrobatics, depending on how they go about it. Rescued people are probably in no shape to help put out the fires, but will obviously be very grateful to the PCs.

Any party members can help fend off the rioters at improvised barricades, but stopping the crowd will take more than that. There's 4 main thrusts, and it'll take someone skilled with their voice to stop them (Bluff, Intimidate, or Diplomacy). Succeed on a hard check, and they might convince the rioters of the errors of their ways, and get them to help put out the fires in that area.


Success, as I rate it, will be based on the number of buildings saved (there's around 20, and unless they succeed in Athletics or streetwise in the sprint to get there, they're gonna be missing a few off the bat), the number of people the PCs save and organize people to save (yes, they can get the panicked populace to help at any time by organizing them), and obviously stopping the rioters.

Is this rather mechanical? From the backend, yes. From the front end, the first warning the PCs will get is a guard captain, face bloodied and blackened from smoke, telling them about the riot, and the dull orange glow of fire in the distance. Then a madcap race across town to get there in time. They'll rush into a district under siege, with rioters pushing down the streets and only some hastily thrown-together barricades stopping them. They'll see panic in the streets, a woman throwing her baby out a window to someone on the ground seconds before the building collapses, and mass chaos. From there, it's up to them to organize people to stop the fires, save as many as they can, and stop the riots - the guard is really not gonna help them in this (for various reasons).


Could you run this in another edition? Well... probably. The skills would be harder to piece together, because they're much less abstract, and the general framework would need some work (fire threatening, because I take 1d6 damage per round, lemme wander around in it for a while).

But 4E gave me the tools and the vision to really make it happen.

Manbearcat said:

Yup. The last sentence is precisely why I chose the Bard (especially knowing that JC plays something of a 3.x hack) as the mechanical infrastructure for JC's "Sage" character. I think the Bard works well (in 3e and 4e) for the mundane, scholarly, educated by adventure, travel and curiosity "Sage". I suspect that you could make it work in 4e by using the Warlord/Bard that I outlined upthread and just decoupling the PCs action economy from the PCs own locus of control. The PC is playing "the hand of fate", "veteran unit chemistry", "divine intervention" or "manifest destiny". You could outline an AEDU power structure for the character to play based off of this premise. The only thing lacking would be the positional impact of an extra PC (which you could make up for in other areas). That may not work for JC and his gaming tastes but I think you could drift 4e in this way and create this character easily enough.

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I must write more up on how to do a 4e Bard as Sage combination. But in brief a hardcore one has:

• Skald build with Claim to Hospitality (network of contacts)
• Bard of All Trades (+3 to all untrained skills for a total of +4 - even if he hasn't seen it before he probably knows how to do it).
• Ritual Caster (of course). Probably using the Invoker multiclass feat for free Hand of Fate if playing a Skald.
• Bardic Knowledge - level 2 utility power that 1/day gives him the ability to get a natural 20 rather than roll on a check on one of the lore skills*.
• A Streetwise Skill Power that in a villiage or bigger he's familliar with allows him to research by asking all the right poeple and use Streetwise rather than the normal lore skill*. So as well as a damn good loremaster with the ability to really pull things out of the bag he's an even better researcher.
• A collection of encounter powers to grant other people attacks. (Blunder/Rhyme of the Blood Seeking Blade/several L7 options).
• Either Vicious Mockery to deconstruct the enemy's combat or Staggering Note to lure them.

The combination makes him a good loremaster, an even better researcher, able to know something about anything and with some practical use, and with a mostly deconstructive/pseudo-warlord fighting style. The only downside is that it's a Charisma/Int build and not all sages should be high Cha.

It's one way I find 4e very evocative. That "use streetwise for knowledge skills when in a town" tells me not only what my bard knows, but how he researches in a way even Bardic Lore fails. "I may know this. And I can certainly find out."

* Lore skills = Arcana, History, Nature, Religion I think.

@Neonchameleon

That pretty much does the trick exactly. Good stuff.

What would be interesting is if someone like JC could have a good time in a 4e game (where the thematic story infrastructure is in-line with his genre preferences), with exactly the type of character that he was looking for (perhaps this one), was able to decouple his action economy from his internal locus of control (thus allowing him to fully actualize his archetype), and the game was rendered by a very good GM with a group that shared great chemistry and proficiency with the ruleset.

Manbearcat said:

What would be interesting is if someone like JC could have a good time in a 4e game (where the thematic story infrastructure is in-line with his genre preferences), with exactly the type of character that he was looking for (perhaps this one), was able to decouple his action economy from his internal locus of control (thus allowing him to fully actualize his archetype), and the game was rendered by a very good GM with a group that shared great chemistry and proficiency with the ruleset.

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I'm sure I could (and in that setup, would) have fun. I think I'd feel restricted at times, because I like a lot of defined mechanic support (and the skills in 4e are even more abstract than 3.5), but I'd definitely have fun. Give me someone like my brother as GM (he's more dramatist than I am), with my group as fellow players (since we've been playing together for 10 years, and have been close friends each other for half our lifespan), and yeah, it'd be fun. And, that wouldn't work for all systems, either; the good GM and good group goes far, but system matters.

As a side note, I do play something of a 3.X system hack, but it's extremely different now. I basically use the bare bones. Only read if you're interested.[sblock]

• The magic system is completely replaced
• economy is replaced, equipment has formulas for pricing objects not listed / determining DCs of stuff not listed / crafting stuff not listed (including a new feature system)
• skills are revised / replaced / combined / added, a semi-skill challenge system is in place (doesn't force everyone to act, for example)
• combat rules got altered / replaced / condensed / revised (attack is calculated differently, there's AC vs melee, ranged, and surprise, etc.), general martial maneuvers, a hit chart, and mass combat was added
• feats got revised / replaced / added
• the system is point-buy and not class-based (though I have a class-based version I'm making for my brother)
• magic items are completely different (goes with the new magic system)
• completely new trait / special ability section added
• HP has been split (HP + THP for actual wounds / other [stamina when I run it]), HP has been greatly toned down (you might have 100 HP/THP total at level 20 as a very tough warrior)
• a Status system has been added
• a Fame system has been added (recognition / reputation / favors / possessions / allies / enemies)
• external challenges and hazards have been revised / added to
• there's a chapter on running the game
• and on and on it goes.

Basically, yeah, it started out as 3.X house rules until it just snowballed to the point where I said "I just want a game that handles what my group wants better than 3.X gives us." I don't even consider is a 3.X branch-off anymore, but I definitely see how someone who has played 3.X that sat down would recognize it. [/sblock]Sorry for the expansion; just giving you better insight to where I'm coming from when I mention my RPG. As always, play what you like

[MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION], good posts.

In 3E, won't the wizard's INT bonus tend to close the gap between the two classes' skill points?

Also, the rules for Bardic Knowledge remind me of one irritating feature of pre-4e D&D: ambiguity on the relationship between various action resolution mecanics.

In 1st ed AD&D, there is the doubt about how a ranger's surprise bonuses relate to the various stealth rules (for thieves, items of elvenkind, etc). And in 3E there is the overlap between Bardic Knowledge and the various knowledge skills. I prefer mechanics that give the Bard some sort of advantage within the skill check framework.

@GreyICE

If I may, I'll suggest a few things that might add something to your Skill Challenge as I've done something similar with a small colony of settlers (woodcutters and trappers primarily) with their settlement threatened by a vast forest fire (due to a few children playing around with an old summoning circle that they found in a ruin nearby and accidentally opening a portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire causing its denizens to pour forth). The PCs had to control/put out the fire, banish or destroy the elementals and close the portal.

1 - In that case I used Swarm mechanics for areas of spreading fire (if you want I could look up my old notes and reproduce it for you). If the PCs failed certain checks in the Skill Challenge, they would accrue a failure and have "combat encounters" with these mundane, animate fire swarms.

2 - I used a "Smoke Inhalation/Exposure" Condition Track (loss of surges > - 1 to Skill/Ability Checks, Defenses and Attack Rolls > and finally dazed) on the PCs that really amped up the tension and made the entirety of the Challenge more dangerous.

They actually narrowly failed this one (if I wouldn't have used the Condition Track and its secondary stage they likely would have won) as the entire settlement burned to the ground and all but a few of its inhabitants perished. They lost the settlement and most of the settlers (the ultimate goal of the Skill Challenge) but they did ultimately destroy the denizens from the EPoF, save the forest, and shut down the portal.

1 &/or 2 might work for you. Or not. Food for thought.

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]

- The sentient fires are really cool, and with your permission I might steal that idea for another part of this campaign (specifically a ), but at the moment I really want to spotlight the tensions within the city and how they're being used and manipulated by various parties, so that means focusing more on the human drama of the rioters and the people whose homes are being burned. I'd be scared that sentient fire would end up stealing too much of the center stage.

I also have a character whose concept is "pyromancer warlock" and I'd really be stomping on his toes if I made an encounter of nothing but fire elementals. That's just mean. Campaign specific problem, obviously~

- The Smoke Inhalation/Exposure track is going to be interesting. I might think about that, especially since it gives the high endurance members a chance to shine. It'll also make the ensuing combat much more interesting - unless they fail abjectly and pitifully, they're going to get to face down the people who started this riot as they show up to 'figure out whose disrupting their plans.' Dazed is a fairly awful conditional to dump on multiple party members at the start of the fight, but perhaps I could have them grant combat advantage automatically. The exposure track might also make them rotate between "rallying the people," "holding off the rioters," "putting out the fires," and "rescuing people trapped in the chaos."

It might be too much detail... I'm gonna have to think on that.