D&D 4E 4e -- Is The World Made Of Cheese?

[drjones]

So I paid 75 bucks for...what, exactly?

Something to endlessly nit-pick about. Should have saved your money and complained about the weather.

 

[small pumpkin man]

Something to endlessly nit-pick about. Should have saved your money and complained about the weather.

There are internet message boards where people complain and have heated arguments about the weather?

I wuv you internet.

 

[Dacileva]

You know, they call it "Kick in the Door" because they can't just kick through the wall, right?

So you'd think, but the rules imply otherwise.

You might have missed the refutation to this in the other discussions going on, but...

• The hp/object rules are for objects.
• For the purposes of hp/object rules, doors and walls are not objects.
• Doors and walls have separate rules listed prior to the hp/object rules.
• The door and wall rules include Break DCs.
• Wall thicknesses for those Break DCs go up to 3 ft.
• If a character is trying to tunnel through walls greater than 3 ft thick, they have left the rules for damaging objects or breaking walls/doors, and should probably, as suggested elsewhere in the thread, be using a skill challenge instead.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

ETA: My own feeling is that walls greater than 3 ft. thick are not able to be broken purely by damage or damaging attacks. They require abilities or tools intended for excavation, and would involve skill or ability checks, likely in a challenge structure.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Why do objects actually need hardness?

Is it totally impossible to use a dagger and damage a brick wall? Or a wooden door? Do I even need a lot of strength for that, or more a lot of endurance?

What's the English expression for "Steter Tropfen höhlt den Stein?"

Why should it be impossible for a Strength 8 Wizard to absolutely ever damage a stone wall? (1d4-1 vs Hardness 5?) Or for a Strength 6 Halfling to cut through a wooden door (1d4-2 vs Hardness 2?).

 

[hong]

I think I understand you, but doing so means, basically, tossing out the rules. A sensible and self-consistent world doesn't have putatively normal humans (or beings with, presumably, very similar biologies) living weeks or months (if they roll well) without water. It doesn't allow, in essence, chalk to scratch diamond. Etc.

Correct. It also doesn't need text in a single-spaced, 9-point, serif font to tell you that.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

In 3e, they had lots of charts for this kind of stuff. That meant that if the DM wanted to do things "right," he had to consult those charts. If he chose to ignore those charts, diligent PCs would immediately become aware that they were being railroaded.

In 4e, they took out the damn chart, so DMs can feel free to actually use their common sense rather than looking up the official numbers.

Frankly, I'm a big fan of the 4e approach. I'm also glad that object HP rules are in the Encounter Design section, so DMs can make use of them only when they're conceivably relevant to a specific encounter; most of the time, it'd make a lot more sense to just say, "You hack at the statue until it crumbles." But in those rare situations where you might have to smash the marble icon before the demon summoning is completed or whatever, it could be nice to have guidelines.

 

[silentounce]

There, at last, you have something of a point. The answer is simple. Those nods to simulationism that have plagued D&D since OD&D die slowly and put up a fight. 4e is a huge step forward, but some of those nods crept in, or stayed around.

That's great if you're not a simulationist. A lot of us would consider this a step back and wouldn't consider "plagued" an appropriate description of those editions. D&D has always had quite a bit of simulationism inherent in its structure. When you hear some of us on here saying things like "this doesn't feel like D&D anymore," well, this is one reason. Yeah, it's still D&D in name, but it's changed so much from the game that we played when we were younger.... A lot of people's response to this is go play something else then. But we don't want to play something else, we want to play D&D and we're upset that it's become something so distant from what we're used to.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

That's great if you're not a simulationist. A lot of us would consider this a step back and wouldn't consider "plagued" an appropriate description of those editions. D&D has always had quite a bit of simulationism inherent in its structure.

As much as I disagree with Gygax on many things, he was absolutely right when he, in the 1e AD&D DMG pointed out that the game's intended to be a game, not an accurate world simulation.

Anyway, how did Lizard and the other people complaining about this ever deal with admantine weapons in 3.5? They ignored the hardness of objects, meaning that by the rules, you could cut your way through walls and doors with impunity. Yet no campaign I played in, or know of, featured adamantine-armed people boring through the dungeons.

(There was the time when a gnome monk with admantine knuckle-dusters pummeled a dwarf-made stone bridge into rubble, but the guy running that game was a very good example of a bad DM.)

 

[ProfessorCirno]

4e doesn't do that, for one simple reason. No game is going to consist of 22 days of endurance checks while wandering aimlessly in the desert. The rule is meant to apply some pressure when the DM wants to make the harsh environment part of the adventure. It is not meant to simulate the reality of dying of thirst, because dying of thirst is not something that is going to happen to PCs in any type of normal D&D game. If the DM wants to run a game where there is no water for 22 days and the entire game consists of End. checks to try and survive, no conflict, no hope of rescue or salvation, then he can. I don't suspect players will stick around for very long though. And that is not the type of game that D&D is trying to model. Where this rule would come into play is not during a month of wandering aimlessly in the desert, but while making a trip across the fantastic Burning Sands of Real Ultimate Doom. Water is scarce, the threat of dehydration is there and slowly draining resources, but that's a minor pressure compared to the threat of the purple worms that make their home here, or the giant man eating scorpions, or the terrifying rocs, and the sadistic blue dragons. The environment is part of the adventure, not the adventure. The game is not meant to model trying to survive for a month in the desert.

Isn't the plan to remake Dark Sun? I'd say that's very important if they do

Also, holy cow, I've been quoted.

 

[ruemere]

Suggested solution:
- request update at Wizards page since the feature is missing from core books.

I still fondly remember a challenging fight between the party and a Terminator-like golem, which kept breaking through the walls while pursuing them. 3E rules were very handy in that respect.

Regards,
Ruemere