D&D 4E Am I crazy? I've just gotten a hankering to play 4e again...

[Campbell]

I think there is a tendency in tabletop RPG design to fetishize mobility. Mobility is only interesting when it actually makes the game more dynamic. By dramatically increasing everyone's mobility and making movement independent of the action economy 5e actually decreased the dynamism of combat.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

OR they felt necessary to make the base version of monster BLEH and move the interesting things out of them because tedious hit point attrition is a "play style."

I suppose that is possible, though I'm not sure where any such play style would be coming from. Yes, there were a FEW AD&D monsters that might be considered 'bags of hit points', but they all did humongous damage at the very least, and usually had other attributes like very large sizes and vast strength. Most of them at least had a couple nasty surprises they could pull.

Probably the most vanilla 'bag of hit points' monster in 1E is a T. Rex, 18HD, and its only special is to swallow you on an 18+, but it can deliver up to 52 points of damage in one round, most of it in one vicious 5-40 point (5d8) bite. It is fast too, and being 50 feet long (and presumably massing 20 or so tons and having giant-class strength, though none of this is spelled out) it would be quite a nasty opponent.

I wouldn't expect such creatures to be too challenging though, as spell casters should be able to deal with them pretty efficiently (no MR, exceedingly stupid, etc.).

Point being, I don't think 'attrition' has been much of a model, though specific tactical situations might have made it a tactic at times.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think there is a tendency in tabletop RPG design to fetishize mobility. Mobility is only interesting when it actually makes the game more dynamic. By dramatically increasing everyone's mobility and making movement independent of the action economy 5e actually decreased the dynamism of combat.

Yup.

For movement and distance control to create both dynamism and interesting decision-points, at least the following conditions need to all be met:

* There needs to be a compelling reason to move or stay put which integrates not only with situation but with system as well (mitigating present or future risk, meeting a precondition to trigger a move, setting up or synergizing with a future move or with a teammates move, haranguing the enemy's ability to persist in an optimal gamestate).

* There needs to be a cost that must be weighed to moving or staying put (action economy, if I do this I diminish the prospects of, or outright lose, the fictional positioning to do that, expendable/rechargable resource considerations).

* If I do this, the enemy may counter with that (if either team PC or team monster's suite of options is limited, this 4d chess is reduced dramatically).

And there is also a continuum with the three of those. If you stack multiple compelling reasons with multiple areas of integration with multiple cost considerations with a robust suite of enemy responses...the decision-points become have more vitality and become more vital and combat dynamism becomes invigorated.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think there is a tendency in tabletop RPG design to fetishize mobility. Mobility is only interesting when it actually makes the game more dynamic. By dramatically increasing everyone's mobility and making movement independent of the action economy 5e actually decreased the dynamism of combat.

It is an interesting thesis, but I'm not sure I follow you. 5e movement rates are basically the same as 4e (or AFAIK 3.x too). I also don't think 5e's movements are really more 'independent of the action economy' than 4e's. They mucked up the concept of 'actions' for whatever unknown reason, but that's just a terminology thing. Yes, you can attack in the midst of a move, but there were a lot of ways to effectively do that in 4e also, granting they weren't always desirable tactics.

And then, that all being said, why would that 'decrease the dynamism of combat'? I mean, the thing IMHO which does that, if anything does, is the sheer fact that there is very little in the way of tactical incentives to move around in 5e, and it takes a few rounds to kill anything (certainly anything that is at all a real threat). Since focusing damage on one target at a time is always logically favored, movement really isn't. The lack of a 'shift' option doesn't help (by vanilla 5e rules you are pretty much forced to take an OA if you move out of reach of any opponent, unless you forgo your attack for that round and disengage).

So, I agree 5e lacks the mobility tools of 4e, generally, but it is more a matter of specific things being missing vs some fundamental difference in movement or attacks. In fact my Battlemaster in 5e could quite easily 'kite' using the right maneuvers combined with 5e's movement rules. It just wouldn't gain him anything...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yup.

For movement and distance control to create both dynamism and interesting decision-points, at least the following conditions need to all be met:

* There needs to be a compelling reason to move or stay put which integrates not only with situation but with system as well (mitigating present or future risk, meeting a precondition to trigger a move, setting up or synergizing with a future move or with a teammates move, haranguing the enemy's ability to persist in an optimal gamestate).

* There needs to be a cost that must be weighed to moving or staying put (action economy, if I do this I diminish the prospects of, or outright lose, the fictional positioning to do that, expendable/rechargable resource considerations).

* If I do this, the enemy may counter with that (if either team PC or team monster's suite of options is limited, this 4d chess is reduced dramatically).

And there is also a continuum with the three of those. If you stack multiple compelling reasons with multiple areas of integration with multiple cost considerations with a robust suite of enemy responses...the decision-points become have more vitality and become more vital and combat dynamism becomes invigorated.

In terms of this kind of design, one of the things I'm working on with HoML 2.0 is 'defensive powers' (I am also reforming the terminology, but that's beside the point). So you could give a class something like "Flying Defense" which would give them access to a defensive power which only works if you moved several squares on your last turn, or something along those lines. Obviously not every class/build would need/want this kind of thing, but some would. Likewise one could create something like a 'Spell Shield' defense which allowed reflecting an attack back on an opponent that would be available if you stayed still, perhaps.

Another interesting technique would involve making AoEs pretty potent, but making them be pre-targeted a turn in advance. You would certainly think about where you want exactly to be if the enemy wizard starts chanting some nasty AoE spell!

There are a number of these sorts of ways to encourage movement. Actually re-introducing facing as a consideration in melee combat would potentially also be an incentive to maneuver. I'm not so sure I want to add that complexity though...

 

[pemerton]

As an empirical matter, I can report that in my long experience with Rolemaster movement in combat was not nothing, but was not a big part of the game. The rules for adjudicating it are rather complex, and nothing about the system really incentivised it.

The contrast with 4e was very great. 4e made it easy to frame combats where movement was a thing - the first combat I remember GMing in 4e had the PCs starting in a boat on a river, NPCs opponents on a raft, a sandbar/island to jump to, missile attacks from the riverbank, etc. The actual mechanical features that helped push mobility were a mix of ranges on attacks - meaningful close attacks, range 5 or 10 attacks which are well within bow-range, etc - plus abilities that generated forced movement triggering re-positioning responses from the victim, and all in a system that made adjudicating movement pretty straightforward so that it was appealing to lean into the mechancis rather than re-route around them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

As an empirical matter, I can report that in my long experience with Rolemaster movement in combat was not nothing, but was not a big part of the game. The rules for adjudicating it are rather complex, and nothing about the system really incentivised it.

The contrast with 4e was very great. 4e made it easy to frame combats where movement was a thing - the first combat I remember GMing in 4e had the PCs starting in a boat on a river, NPCs opponents on a raft, a sandbar/island to jump to, missile attacks from the riverbank, etc. The actual mechanical features that helped push mobility were a mix of ranges on attacks - meaningful close attacks, range 5 or 10 attacks which are well within bow-range, etc - plus abilities that generated forced movement triggering re-positioning responses from the victim, and all in a system that made adjudicating movement pretty straightforward so that it was appealing to lean into the mechancis rather than re-route around them.

Right, there were times in 4e when a character would be rewarded by just standing and 'duking it out' but there were lots of cases where you wanted to be at specific ranges, or not be at some. And as you say, adjudication was designed to be pretty straightforward.

 

[shroomofinsanity]

What I would love to integrate into 5e are some of(not all, if only because the edition couldn't really handle all of it and play well) the movement abilities, whether it be more forced movement, or have flanking matter, but not advantage, maybe literally the +2 from combat advantage. Or even try out a type of mobility to boost AC or something, just to make those dex boys move around more. Maybe importing the rage powers from barbarian as an incentive to get those guys charging more. maybe making sneak attack not work as well if you just stayed still all round. I know this isn't a 5e thread, but I've just been stuck on the problems with lack of movement and while 4e wasn't perfect, it did way more than the editions on either side of it to fix that problem.

What are everyone's favorite movement based things from 4e? be it specific powers, or class features or whatever. For me, I saw sequestering strike(Avenger 3) and swift Panther rage(barbarian 1 daily) do a ton at my tables to get those characters moving all over the place. Runner up goes to Open the Gates of Battle(Monk 1 encounter), it got the monk to dash across the battlefield to hit someone that hadn't been hit yet by the party.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What I would love to integrate into 5e are some of(not all, if only because the edition couldn't really handle all of it and play well) the movement abilities, whether it be more forced movement, or have flanking matter, but not advantage, maybe literally the +2 from combat advantage. Or even try out a type of mobility to boost AC or something, just to make those dex boys move around more. Maybe importing the rage powers from barbarian as an incentive to get those guys charging more. maybe making sneak attack not work as well if you just stayed still all round. I know this isn't a 5e thread, but I've just been stuck on the problems with lack of movement and while 4e wasn't perfect, it did way more than the editions on either side of it to fix that problem.

What are everyone's favorite movement based things from 4e? be it specific powers, or class features or whatever. For me, I saw sequestering strike(Avenger 3) and swift Panther rage(barbarian 1 daily) do a ton at my tables to get those characters moving all over the place. Runner up goes to Open the Gates of Battle(Monk 1 encounter), it got the monk to dash across the battlefield to hit someone that hadn't been hit yet by the party.

You can do it informally. Technically 5e doesn't actually describe rules for playing on a battle map with a grid. It is easy enough to extrapolate, and there are some descriptions of the basic process. Clearly the rules envisage that this COULD be done, but you will have to kind of fill in a bit. Any GM with 4e experience shouldn't really have a tough time making it work of course.

 

[Manbearcat]

In terms of this kind of design, one of the things I'm working on with HoML 2.0 is 'defensive powers' (I am also reforming the terminology, but that's beside the point). So you could give a class something like "Flying Defense" which would give them access to a defensive power which only works if you moved several squares on your last turn, or something along those lines. Obviously not every class/build would need/want this kind of thing, but some would. Likewise one could create something like a 'Spell Shield' defense which allowed reflecting an attack back on an opponent that would be available if you stayed still, perhaps.

Another interesting technique would involve making AoEs pretty potent, but making them be pre-targeted a turn in advance. You would certainly think about where you want exactly to be if the enemy wizard starts chanting some nasty AoE spell!

There are a number of these sorts of ways to encourage movement. Actually re-introducing facing as a consideration in melee combat would potentially also be an incentive to maneuver. I'm not so sure I want to add that complexity though...

In my estimation 4e is just about perfect here so I’d hew as closely to the source material as possible in your hack!

If I were to Hack 4e, what I would do is merely:

(a) Structure the game exactly like Blades (Free Play > Quest > Downtime)

b) Crib Blades attribute, position : effect, action resolution model exactly.

c) Change Stress (the Healing Surge of Blades) to Heroic Surge and come up with a new model of fallout when the meter fills.

d) Sub in 4e’s Quests, Theme, PP, ED for Blades Vice and other thematic do triggers. Though I would definitely keep xp for Desperate Action Rolls (as 4e is every bit about bold daring-do as Blades is).

e) Figure out alternative Win Con/Ladder to tier.

f) Come up with alternatives to Heat and all the other pertinent machinery.

g) Port Clocks in directly and sub out Skill Challenges (they’re basically the same thing with mechanical minutiae differences).