D&D 4E 4e Compared to Trad D&D; What You Lose, What You Gain

[Garthanos]

*The Bronze rule in Fate basically allows you to construct and use anything as a character.

hmmm reminds me of something I just read recently for 4e (Hard Boiled Ideas:Armies) where bodies of troops are done up as characters.

Although that isnt vastly different than Swarms

 

[Manbearcat]

Is this so different from 4E, though, ultimately? One could parallel HP ablation in combat to the staged progress of SCs. How does a "success" in combat check (successful combination of d20 roll plus modifiers, inflicting damage or status effect; now it's the enemy's turn to strike back, i.e., GM introduces a complication in the form of HP ablation, status effect, etc.), all as stages toward determining the outcome of the combat, differ from "success" in a SC check (successful combination of d20 roll plus modifiers; GM introduces a new complication)? In short, aren't the mechanics of combats vs. skill challenges basically symmetrical (some number of d20 rolls plus modifiers until a target number of total successes is reached)?

While in theory I like the tightness of the d6 (or 2d6) mechanic as compared with the d20, both systems seem to me to share a rough symmetry in how mechanics work for both combat and noncombat resolution, particularly as DCs in SCs scale to fit the changing fiction, just as Defense scores, HPs, damage, etc. scale with the same.

Here are the issues as I see them:

Combat: A substrate upon which fictional positioning and how it relates to gamestate (the two creating a feedback loop until the conflict has been resolved), action economy, and related opportunity cost dictate moves made and attendant outcomes.

vs

Skill Challenge: A substrate upon which fictional positioning and how it relates to gamestate (the two creating a feedback loop until the conflict has been resolved) dictate moves made and attendant outcomes.

One of these things is not like the others!

Action economy as "game units" and the related opportunity cost creates a situation whereby when the two (combat resolution and noncombat resolution) are coinciding in the same scene, you have an extra layer of fairly significant cognitive workload that has to be worked out expeditiously (so table time isn't exacerbated and so pacing isn't halted) and with precision (so players actually have interesting and meaningful decision-points in their action declarations...if the action economy is a cluster-eff - eg too punitive or too rewarding to commit to action x vs action y - then there are no decision-points to be made...they make themselves).

Now don't get me wrong, this can certainly be done by deft GMing (I've done it aplenty...see the example above with the Fighter co-opting the tank), its just a layer of the system that is at tension and therefore you get push-back when handling it. You don't get the same push-back in a unified resolution framework like Dogs, Fate, PBtA, Cortex+ because there is a natural parity of "game units" between cutting words, cutting blades, and piloting a cutter.

Make sense?

 

[Joshua Randall]

I realize I'm always about 20 posts behind the current discussion, but anyway.

Skill Challenges: they're broken because the math doesn't work (at Complexity 4 and 5 in particular), because skills are lumpily distributed across both ability scores and classes, and because while there may be a statement of intent about fail forward(*) there's no actual mechanics to back it up.

(*) I re-read the DM's Kit version of Skill Challenges and yes, James Wyatt is at pains to say you should allow for partial successes and that failure shouldn't end the adventure. But still... no mechanics around this.

Fate: I've had excellent success integrating Fate Points, and 3 of the 4 Fate actions, into 4e.

Basically, I mapped the d20 result into a degree of success, and that in turn translates into the typical Fate outcomes (fail / tie / succeed / with style).

Overcome is basically a normal Skill Check in D&D terms, but now it offers 4 different outcomes rather than just 2.
Create Advantage becomes a new thing you can do as a minor action. It can generate free invokes like in normal Fate.
Attack, you're piling FP into a +3 bonus. (Math says it should be higher, but I liked the parallelism with the Action Surge feat.)
Defend, I haven't allowed so far, because 4e PCs are hard enough to hit already (lots of classes have defensive interrupts), and I actually really dislike when people use FP for Defense in real Fate.

It still feels like 4e to us... maybe even moreso, because with enough FP the players can exercise more control over when they *really* want their PC to knock something out the park (skill check, or landing a particularly crucial Daily power).

 

[darkbard]

Combat: A substrate upon which fictional positioning and how it relates to gamestate (the two creating a feedback loop until the conflict has been resolved), action economy, and related opportunity cost dictate moves made and attendant outcomes.

vs

Skill Challenge: A substrate upon which fictional positioning and how it relates to gamestate (the two creating a feedback loop until the conflict has been resolved) dictate moves made and attendant outcomes.

Make sense?

Totally. They're not equivalent, as my bolding of your text highlights. And ht to [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION], whose earlier comments, especially with regard to action economy, preview your post.

That said--and this is intended as a point of exploration, not as one of disagreement--one could rather easily implement the full suite of actions per turn available to 4E characters in combat in a skill challenge. Most skill applications already have an action unit associated with them, which would faciliate this.

And further, implementation of rituals, encounter powers (particularly when a skill challenge is embedded within a combat encounter or vice versa), and daily powers leveraged in SCs do bring an attendant opportunity cost (if I understand correctly what you mean by this).

The former is not 4E RAW (though it's an easy hack), but the latter is.

Again, this is not completely symmetrical design across the two silos, but with a little work the two share far more than what separates them. But I agree that such implementation does require "deft," creative GMing and a willingness to integrate mechanical imperatives from other games to draw the systems closer.

 

[Garthanos]

Fate: I've had excellent success integrating Fate Points, and 3 of the 4 Fate actions, into 4e.

Basically, I mapped the d20 result into a degree of success, and that in turn translates into the typical Fate outcomes (fail / tie / succeed / with style).

Overcome is basically a normal Skill Check in D&D terms, but now it offers 4 different outcomes rather than just 2.
Create Advantage becomes a new thing you can do as a minor action. It can generate free invokes like in normal Fate.
Attack, you're piling FP into a +3 bonus. (Math says it should be higher, but I liked the parallelism with the Action Surge feat.)
Defend, I haven't allowed so far, because 4e PCs are hard enough to hit already (lots of classes have defensive interrupts), and I actually really dislike when people use FP for Defense in real Fate.

It still feels like 4e to us... maybe even moreso, because with enough FP the players can exercise more control over when they *really* want their PC to knock something out the park (skill check, or landing a particularly crucial Daily power).

I am busy being impressed over here...

Really I started balking thinking about how Aspects felt like they were kind of already in classes, and backgrounds and themes and feats ... and all the nitty gritties

 

[Manbearcat]

...and daily powers leveraged in SCs do bring an attendant opportunity cost (if I understand correctly what you mean by this).

You're understanding me correctly. To be clear:

Opportunity cost in terms of...

If I forgo this Move Action to get in position (instead spending it to push toward success in a relevant SC) to use x Standard Action for Combat I'll have to use lesser effective y Standard Action.

Or, more difficult still, consider the course of action that [MENTION=82504]Garthanos[/MENTION] carved out above:

Fighter spending multiple actions (and multiple rounds to potentially, but not assuredly) take control of the Elite Controller (Leader) Tank instead of deploying his normal combat shtick to lock down enemies, create catch-22s to dictate the melee, and deal a lot of damage/improve his team's survivability.

Getting the action economy and the rider effects (see Dazed on the Elite while he is in the cockpit) is something an average GM could easily miscalculate and a poor GM could cluster-eff entirely.

Those sort of opportunity-cost based decisions must be weighed and balanced by a GM (in real time, on the go).

 

[Garthanos]

Fighter spending multiple actions (and multiple rounds to potentially, but not assuredly) take control of the Elite Controller (Leader) Tank instead of deploying his normal combat shtick to lock down enemies, create catch-22s to dictate the melee, and deal a lot of damage/improve his team's survivability.

Getting the action economy and the rider effects (see Dazed on the Elite while he is in the cockpit)
.

It definitely feels like doing his job by an unconventional but tier appropriate badassery. If combat boom booms were already built around potentially multi-action economy the action economy elements might have more stable translations so that it might be managed more easily. (this is about and idea of where maneuvers potentially have a 1 round build up , and potentially 1 round cool down with a nice big boom in the middle. - or variations there of)

 

[Manbearcat]

So getting back to the L+5 combat above. It would be a combat where the 3 PCs would have to deploy some daily resources to pull out, for sure. Much like my last group (with no dedicated Leader), I would anticipate each member of this group having multiple ways to trigger their own surges or allies' surges. This is what I would anticipate (riffing off of Garthanos's speculative declaration for the Fighter).

Fighter -

Working to lock down and take over the Elite Controller (Leader) Tank. I can see this resolving positively for the Fighter within 2-3 rounds with an Action Point (5-7 actions with a couple of Encounter AoE's in the tank and possibly 1 failure involved), where the tank is Dazed after the 1st round (with the Fighter being inside the tank in a melee with the crew) until the Fighter takes the helm.

Once taken over, he'll lock down the Skirmisher AT-ST's and/or help keep the Hoverpods earth-bound with the Ranged 10 control.

Wizard -

The priorities here would be (a) primarily keeping the Hoverpods grounded so the Rogue can go to work and (b) establishing control on the AT-STs to neutralize their mobility/payload.

Rogue (assuming a Swashbuckler/Duelist build) -

The priority would be enacting active defenses (either Encounter Utilities or riders to Encounter Powers in the Duelist suite of abilities) and navigating the battlefield to take out each downed Hoverpod with big payload (which would also trigger OA's in melee with their exclusive ranged attacks). Once those three have taken all of their damage from being knocked from the sky, the Wizard's control attacks, and the Rogue's Striker damage, its move on to the AT-STs.

Obstacles - The difficulties facing the PCs would be the terrain issues and the many mobility-based control effects facing them (hence the importance of (a) the Rogue activating defenses or negating attacks via Immediate Actions, (b) keeping the AT-STs off the Rogue, (c) making the Hoverpods readily available for the Rogue to dish out the big damage. This set-up is a melee skirmisher's nightmare, so the Rogue (Duelist) would have to pull out the stops to stay mobile (and survive) and his allies would have to help the effort. Lucky for them, they have tons of Encounter Attack Riders to buff defenses significantly and Encounter Utilities to avoid attacks and be absurdly mobile.

---

There is a stark contrast between they dynamics (probable action declarations by the PCs, what is mechanically feasible, the interaction with battlefield dynamics, and the related changes in gamestate/fictional positioning) that would emerge from this prospective 4e fight than that of traditional D&D.

These sets of obstacles and PCs framed into conflict in BECMI or 1e would play out radically, radically different.

 

[Garthanos]

So getting back to the L+5 combat above. It would be a combat where the 3 PCs would have to deploy some daily resources to pull out, for sure. Much like my last group (with no dedicated Leader), I would anticipate each member of this group having multiple ways to trigger their own surges or allies' surges. This is what I would anticipate (riffing off of Garthanos's speculative declaration for the Fighter).

Fighter -

Working to lock down and take over the Elite Controller (Leader) Tank. I can see this resolving positively for the Fighter within 2-3 rounds with an Action Point (5-7 actions with a couple of Encounter AoE's in the tank and possibly 1 failure involved), where the tank is Dazed after the 1st round (with the Fighter being inside the tank in a melee with the crew) until the Fighter takes the helm.

Once taken over, he'll lock down the Skirmisher AT-ST's and/or help keep the Hoverpods earth-bound with the Ranged 10 control.

Wizard -

The priorities here would be (a) primarily keeping the Hoverpods grounded so the Rogue can go to work and (b) establishing control on the AT-STs to neutralize their mobility/payload.

Rogue (assuming a Swashbuckler/Duelist build) -

The priority would be enacting active defenses (either Encounter Utilities or riders to Encounter Powers in the Duelist suite of abilities) and navigating the battlefield to take out each downed Hoverpod with big payload (which would also trigger OA's in melee with their exclusive ranged attacks). Once those three have taken all of their damage from being knocked from the sky, the Wizard's control attacks, and the Rogue's Striker damage, its move on to the AT-STs.

Obstacles - The difficulties facing the PCs would be the terrain issues and the many mobility-based control effects facing them (hence the importance of (a) the Rogue activating defenses or negating attacks via Immediate Actions, (b) keeping the AT-STs off the Rogue, (c) making the Hoverpods readily available for the Rogue to dish out the big damage. This set-up is a melee skirmisher's nightmare, so the Rogue (Duelist) would have to pull out the stops to stay mobile (and survive) and his allies would have to help the effort. Lucky for them, they have tons of Encounter Attack Riders to buff defenses significantly and Encounter Utilities to avoid attacks and be absurdly mobile.

---

There is a stark contrast between they dynamics (probable action declarations by the PCs, what is mechanically feasible, the interaction with battlefield dynamics, and the related changes in gamestate/fictional positioning) that would emerge from this prospective 4e fight than that of traditional D&D.

These sets of obstacles and PCs framed into conflict in BECMI or 1e would play out radically, radically different.

Yes I am struggling to picture a high level ad&d fighter declaring he would tackle a tank

 

[Manbearcat]

Yes I am struggling to picture a high level ad&d fighter declaring he would tackle a tank

Yeah. It’s not happening.

Here is the interesting/frustrating thing.

An epic level Fighter jumping up and climbing upon an AT-ST, ripping off its hatch, jumping in and killing the crew, navigating the alien technology. That’s all too gonzo.

But confronting a Collosal Red Wyrm in mortal, physical combat, and winning...completely legit?

I think if you asked your average person (who hasn’t inherited D&D’s genre blind spots) which was more unbelievable, they’d go with the latter.