D&D 4E Brainstorming a "Phil. of 4e 101" resource

[pemerton]

I'd contend that the exact scaling of things like jumping is such a small detail in 4e that, while you could call it house ruling, its essentially just a matter of taste. Conceivably you might 'break' some sort of published adventure WRT a high Athletics character at paragon or whatever where the scaling starts to make jumping really remarkably better than RAW, but overall its not going to really bend the game, or create issues with other subsystems.

Agreed.

AD&D simply has no mechanical way to express the concept of "higher level PCs can make huge jumps and other athletic feats", though you can simply allow it, much like Pemerton is suggesting you can allow it in a 4e SC, though how to adjudicate any success/fail is of course left as an exercise for the GM in these 'classic' versions of D&D.

3.x certainly allows for variation in scaling, you could adjust the scaling of jumping easily enough, just like you could in 4e, but since there's a rule for all of 500 other activities that you might want to scale differently you could be doing a lot of work there, and these checks are sometimes worked into other subsystems, so there's somewhat more interdependency there that 4e's loose OOC task design doesn't generally have.

Adding to this:

I think these basic system differences are something that a primer would want to address.

For instance, unlike in AD&D where, if the GM allows super-jumping there is no way of adjudicating the consequences, 4e has a way: there are the skill challenge rules, the level-appropriate damage expressions, etc. So a GM can easily allow an action declaration of "I jump to the moon" (or whatever), set a Hard (or Hard+5, or whatever) DC, and if the check is failed apply appropriate damage as the PC falls back to earth. The GM could even tax a healing surge (or something similar) as a cost of permitting the check. And, in the fiction, the GM could easily narrate the PC landing back on earth separated from his/her team-mates and have the party rejoining be a further complication in the skill challenge.

Whereas AD&D has no generic resources to tax as part of the cost of making the attempt, or failing it; and has nothing like a skill challenge framework for determining if and at what cost the party members rejoin one another.

3E likewise lacks these resources and adjudication frameworks, even if one went to the effort of rescaling in the way that you describe. And that means the issue is not just about degree of effort, but degree of game breakage. 3E is already fairly unstable around the amount of mathematical and build effort required to achieve comparable effects via different in-fiction pathways, and rescaling things would run the risk of just increasing that instability.

Whereas, in 4e, a healing surge is still a healing surge, a skill challenge failure still increase the failure count towards 3, etc.

 

[Manbearcat]

High Jumps happen to be one of those nailed down things in 4e. And you might as well be nailed to the floor, for all your chances of jumping to the moon, or even over a castle wall, in that system.

Maybe.

The rules for jumping distance are clearly connected to the combat resolution/movement rules. I think it's an open question whether they're meant to apply in the context of a skill challenge, and that's something a primer would need to discuss.

Yeah, there's that too, but I'd contend that the exact scaling of things like jumping is such a small detail in 4e that... <snip>

Briefly perusing the forums and I wanted to comment on this. When I saw Tony's comment, my brain immediately said what pemerton typed, sans the "maybe." I don't really think there is much in the way of debate on this.

This just gets back to one of the "jarring" components of 4e for detractors. You've got a mix of pseudo-sim + gamist rules which govern the zoomed in combat resolution mechanics. These would be the jumping, climbing, swimming component parts of Athletics with their objective DCs and their increments in "squares." Then you've got the toggle to the tier-based, abstract conflict resolution mechanics which rely on subjective DCs and genre logic (like MHRP's Enhanced, Superhuman, and Godlike tiers for Power Traits).

However, then you have the wonky interactions when you try to integrate the combat resolution mechanics with the SC mechanics. Any primer would need to address this (most unfortunate) issue by working to resolve it, or outright side-step it (which I typically do by keeping those conflict resolution mechanics discrete).

 

[Tony Vargas]

This just gets back to one of the "jarring" components of 4e for detractors. You've got a mix of pseudo-sim + gamist rules which govern the zoomed in combat resolution mechanics. These would be the jumping, climbing, swimming component parts of Athletics with their objective DCs and their increments in "squares." Then you've got the toggle to the tier-based, abstract conflict resolution mechanics which rely on subjective DCs and genre logic

I assume you mean Skill Challenges with the last bit.

I'm certainly not a 4e detractor, but I did find the 'objective'/deterministic treatment of bits of Athletics jarring. Not because long jumps used squares, nor because they referenced the combat system, but because they were weirdly "realistic" (mapping vaguely to olympic records and the like), compared to rest of the game, combat very much included.

However, then you have the wonky interactions when you try to integrate the combat resolution mechanics with the SC mechanics.

Not really, I've run encounters that included combat while trying to complete a skill challenge, there's nothing weird or wonky about them. SCs use skill checks, making the check has a cost in the combat action economy. I'm sure that's not what you meant - I'm not sure what you did mean, though. Maybe just that SCs are even more abstract than combat?

 

[Manbearcat]

I assume you mean Skill Challenges with the last bit.

Yup.

I'm certainly not a 4e detractor

No, I know. I didn't mean to intimate that if it looked like that.

Not really, I've run encounters that included combat while trying to complete a skill challenge, there's nothing weird or wonky about them. SCs use skill checks, making the check has a cost in the combat action economy. I'm sure that's not what you meant - I'm not sure what you did mean, though. Maybe just that SCs are even more abstract than combat?

For instance:

You're in Epic Tier where you're physical checks in SCs should be producing genre-coherent results. You're a demi-god (see my comparison to MHRP's Power Traits). You're in a social SC where you're demanding King So and So (love that guy) open his gates and let in the flood of refugees from Boopdeville (great town...especially this time of year) in. The opposition are high up on ramparts, big guns (ballistas let's say) trained upon your group on the ground. They aren't interested in your demands and they feel they've got leverage. The Fighter wants to remove that leverage. In the abstract conflict resolution system of an SC, an action declaration of "I leap up on ramparts from the ground and snap the ballista in half with my bare hands" should be permissible based on a reasonable interpretation of genre fidelity of the Epic Tier. Let the PC test their protagonism. They do. A successful result against the Hard DC of 42 should lock in an affirmative result. The Fighter makes the amazing leap and crushes the ballista, removing the leverage.

The tactical combat mechanics and their (extremely functional and expeditious) "simmy/gamist" marriage disagree with that leap. This is because the reach capable in that 42 result goes down to 12ish feet within the tactical combat resolution mechanics vs the genre-coherent 25ish or whatever feet that might be permissible within the SC mechanics. If that situation escalates into a combat (where you're pulling out the full fledged tactical combat resolution mechanics) and you try to integrate that social SC, things go pear-shaped because you're either (a) making what is permissible within the SC mechanics (due to genre-fidelity ruling the roost) suddenly non-permissable or (b), you're giving the Fighter a competitive advantage with tactical movement capabilities that are outside of the allowable scope of the combat resolution mechanics.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You're in Epic Tier where you're physical checks in SCs should be producing genre-coherent results. You're a demi-god (see my comparison to MHRP's Power Traits). You're in a social SC where you're demanding King So and So (love that guy) open his gates and let in the flood of refugees from Boopdeville (great town...especially this time of year) in. The opposition are high up on ramparts, big guns (ballistas let's say) trained upon your group on the ground. They aren't interested in your demands and they feel they've got leverage. The Fighter wants to remove that leverage. In the abstract conflict resolution system of an SC, an action declaration of "I leap up on ramparts from the ground and snap the ballista in half with my bare hands" should be permissible based on a reasonable interpretation of genre fidelity of the Epic Tier. Let the PC test their protagonism. They do. A successful result against the Hard DC of 42 should lock in an affirmative result. The Fighter makes the amazing leap and crushes the ballista, removing the leverage.

The tactical combat mechanics and their (extremely functional and expeditious) "simmy/gamist" marriage disagree with that leap. This is because the reach capable in that 42 result goes down to 12ish feet within the tactical combat resolution mechanics vs the genre-coherent 25ish or whatever feet that might be permissible within the SC mechanics. If that situation escalates into a combat (where you're pulling out the full fledged tactical combat resolution mechanics) and you try to integrate that social SC, things go pear-shaped because you're either (a) making what is permissible within the SC mechanics (due to genre-fidelity ruling the roost) suddenly non-permissable or (b), you're giving the Fighter a competitive advantage with tactical movement capabilities that are outside of the allowable scope of the combat resolution mechanics.

Yeah, this is why I WOULD 'house rule' and change the tactical scaling of Jumps (and the few other similar things the PHB actually nails down) such that they reflected my desired genre expectations. At that point the combat system and SCs or free narrative no longer conflict.

Like I said upthread, there's some degree of issue in every system as to how that rebalances skill-based capabilities against 'exceptional' (usually class-based, mostly spells) ones. This could be particularly tricky with rogues, who are often built around skill mechanics (also a problem in AD&D where they aren't, but in that case thief abilities are on the possibly overshadowed side of the equation). My perception is that 4e is already pretty loose about exactly what can be accomplished with what, outside of combat, so its mostly a question of "can the fighter/rogue now outshine the wizard, in combat, just by leaping about, etc" and I think 4e's very strong niche protection and role adherence largely mitigates that. 3e lacks these features entirely and what you see in that system is that it never achieves a point of stability where everyone is mostly on par, as soon as one character concept predominates it tends to fill up the whole narrative space and step all over everyone else.

Which maybe leads to another core aspect of the 4e paradigm:

All characters have an equal contribution to make, and are equally worthy of the spotlight - the wizard can never overshadow the rogue. No characters are 'sidekicks'.

 

[Manbearcat]

Yeah, this is why I WOULD 'house rule' and change the tactical scaling of Jumps (and the few other similar things the PHB actually nails down) such that they reflected my desired genre expectations. At that point the combat system and SCs or free narrative no longer conflict.

Like I said upthread, there's some degree of issue in every system as to how that rebalances skill-based capabilities against 'exceptional' (usually class-based, mostly spells) ones. This could be particularly tricky with rogues, who are often built around skill mechanics (also a problem in AD&D where they aren't, but in that case thief abilities are on the possibly overshadowed side of the equation). My perception is that 4e is already pretty loose about exactly what can be accomplished with what, outside of combat, so its mostly a question of "can the fighter/rogue now outshine the wizard, in combat, just by leaping about, etc" and I think 4e's very strong niche protection and role adherence largely mitigates that. 3e lacks these features entirely and what you see in that system is that it never achieves a point of stability where everyone is mostly on par, as soon as one character concept predominates it tends to fill up the whole narrative space and step all over everyone else.

Which maybe leads to another core aspect of the 4e paradigm:

All characters have an equal contribution to make, and are equally worthy of the spotlight - the wizard can never overshadow the rogue. No characters are 'sidekicks'.

Opening up the gamist/sim component of the skill system that is meant for the tactical combat mechanics is one way to address the issue (one way that I'm not averse to at all on the face of it...but again, it does have consequences with respect to tactical movement capabilities).

The other prospect is to use the existing tech of the Roles, Keywords, Healing Surges, the Powers, and the "Rally Narrative" of 4e combat and fully synthesize those into the abstraction of the SC system. It would take a bit of heavy lifting from a codifying perspective, but I think you could Dungeon World-ize 4e combat with deployment of Powers/Role Features contingent upon fictional positioning-triggers. We already have some sound advice in DMG2 (and a few other resources) to turn combats into SCs (of which I have done quite a bit and to good effect). Going the extra mile would improve tactical overhead for players and it would synthesize and cohere combat and SC on the granular < - > abstraction continuum, removing the aforementioned toggle. That way, you would basically have (a) the crunchy tactical combat resolution system, (b) the abstract but still tactically compelling combat resolution system and, (c) the abstract noncombat resolution system.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Opening up the gamist/sim component of the skill system that is meant for the tactical combat mechanics is one way to address the issue (one way that I'm not averse to at all on the face of it...but again, it does have consequences with respect to tactical movement capabilities).

The other prospect is to use the existing tech of the Roles, Keywords, Healing Surges, the Powers, and the "Rally Narrative" of 4e combat and fully synthesize those into the abstraction of the SC system. It would take a bit of heavy lifting from a codifying perspective, but I think you could Dungeon World-ize 4e combat with deployment of Powers/Role Features contingent upon fictional positioning-triggers. We already have some sound advice in DMG2 (and a few other resources) to turn combats into SCs (of which I have done quite a bit and to good effect). Going the extra mile would improve tactical overhead for players and it would synthesize and cohere combat and SC on the granular < - > abstraction continuum, removing the aforementioned toggle. That way, you would basically have (a) the crunchy tactical combat resolution system, (b) the abstract but still tactically compelling combat resolution system and, (c) the abstract noncombat resolution system.

Well, one attempt at that is present in the preview rules for Strike!, which in some respects is pretty '4e like' and has both a 4e-like tactical combat resolution system and IIRC TWO more abstract 'SC-like' systems (one that is somewhat like using a pure abstract SC to resolve a 'challenge' that MIGHT be combat, and another that is geared pretty specifically at combat at a bit more abstract level than say 5e or 13a, probably, IIUC similar to some of the things BW does).

Of course 5e and 13a also provide slightly less tactical combat systems than 4e, but are still fairly tied to an 'individual action resolution' model.

I've also tinkered with the different variations of this continuum in my own 4e hacking exercises, where I consider all types of resolution situations to be 'challenges', each falling into the category of either 'action sequence' or simply abstract challenge, with 'action sequence' being further divisible into tactical combat and a more generalized area-based system which is suitable both for quick combats/mass combat or situations that lend themselves to thinking about position and movement but don't strictly focus on fights (IE you might use it to run escaping from a burning building, perhaps with some running combat as a secondary aspect).

These are really rather challenging systems to design, one of the biggest issues being trying to generate results that are reasonably consistent across each mechanic (IE you don't want the tactical system to be much bloodier than the abstract system, as it then becomes a form of meta-gaming).

 

[Tony Vargas]

You're in Epic Tier where you're physical checks in SCs should be producing genre-coherent results.

Not that they every have in D&D before, but, yeah, I agree, that'd be ideal...

In the abstract conflict resolution system of an SC, an action declaration of "I leap up on ramparts from the ground and snap the ballista in half with my bare hands" should be permissible based on a reasonable interpretation of genre fidelity of the Epic Tier.

Maybe. Depends on how the skill challenge has been laid out and just how epic is epic in that epic campaign, but, sure, it's a possibility. 30 STR Demigod, you can kinda see that. 14 STR Epic Trickster, even if he rolled the same result on an Athletics check, probably visualize it differently.

Let the PC test their protagonism. They do. A successful result against the Hard DC of 42 should lock in an affirmative result. The Fighter makes the amazing leap and crushes the ballista, removing the leverage.

The tactical combat mechanics and their (extremely functional and expeditious) "simmy/gamist" marriage disagree with that leap. This is because the reach capable in that 42 result goes down to 12ish feet within the tactical combat resolution mechanics vs the genre-coherent 25ish or whatever feet that might be permissible within the SC mechanics.

SC mechanics are checks and successes. There's no hard number how far you jump, your use of Athletics is either a success, or not. That's a lot more abstract.

I'm basically with you, though, except for one thing. The issue is the skill check, the mechanics for jumping under Athletics, /not/ the combat system. Jumping can be done in or out of combat, and the same mechanics apply. The high jump isn't even scaled in squares like the longjump, is, so there's not even that tenuous connection to combat.

If that situation escalates into a combat (where you're pulling out the full fledged tactical combat resolution mechanics) and you try to integrate that social SC, things go pear-shaped because you're either (a) making what is permissible within the SC mechanics (due to genre-fidelity ruling the roost) suddenly non-permissable or (b), you're giving the Fighter a competitive advantage with tactical movement capabilities that are outside of the allowable scope of the combat resolution mechanics.

Nod. That's not hard to rationalize, though. In the SC, the fighter is pulling a stunt when combat is at most a threat, he's free to pull something that might be impractical in the middle of an actual fight vs meaningful opposition.

I think your reading a little more into the abstraction of n successes before 3 failures of the SC than strictly needs to be there. While that abstraction leaves you free to visualize a success however you want, including something the character making the success couldn't do in some other circumstance, that freedom doesn't create a contradiction, you do when you choose to imagine the success as something the character can't do, according to less abstract mechanics.

Personally, I find the deterministic rules used in a few skills out of place in 4e. But I can't see extending that issue to the combat system - indeed, I tend to find them at odds with that, as well as with SCs.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

On the subject of the muddy situations that result from the skill challenge system directly interacting with the combat system, wouldn't that be the perfect place to apply penalties for failures, both resources and "narrative" costs? E.g. if you fail, you're not just fallen to the ground, you've lost a healing surge worth of HP (or even straight to bloodied, for Epic) and now the ballista operator is spooked, might open fire immediately, might do so if one more fail happens, etc. This seems like a great place to take a leaf out of Dungeon World's book and provide advice on "hard" and "soft" responses the DM can use to make high-advantage actions carry a sting without making them worthless.

As for the most recent topic, ironically I'm reminded of TBS games and their combat systems. Typically, combat can be "tactical" or "auto": one takes longer to resolve because you actually direct your unit(s) on the field of battle and exploit the terrain; the other is very fast because it's just RNG plus raw numbers, but tends to be riskier or at least fail to use any clever play and this costs more.

Pursuant to that idea, it might be interesting to make a system with concepts like "passive damage" (analogous to passive Perception), a "standard encounter effect/damage," and a few other little ideas like that. It's assumed that people use encounter powers, two hits = 1 HS (maybe 3 hits for Defenders?) Attacks are rolled rapidly with little or no attention to movement, etc.

This is getting a bit too homebrew-y and less about how to leverage the system more or less as-is. I don't think it's *bad* to talk about such things--they can really help with solving the "combats are forever" problem--but it's sort of...I dunno. It feels weird to be trying to explain the frame of mind and successful strategies for running a game...by making up entirely new rules for that game.

Edit:
Another way to say this is, "Are we really talking about a 'primer' for 4e or the 'philosophy' of 4e if we're drafting our own mechanics?"

It's one thing to say something like "Don't limit yourself to taking Healing Surges (or page 42-appropriate costs) for failed tasks in exploration or socialization--consider context-relevant narrative costs too." It is, or seems to be, a whole 'nother ballgame to say "here's an abstraction of the combat rules that resolves quickly without using any form of battlemap." The former feels like "don't limit yourself to the obvious/simple," which seems more useful and appropriate (for the 'main' document anyway), while the latter feels like "use this custom-built addon rather than worrying about the system itself."

 

[pemerton]

Well, one attempt at that is present in the preview rules for Strike!, which in some respects is pretty '4e like' and has both a 4e-like tactical combat resolution system and IIRC TWO more abstract 'SC-like' systems (one that is somewhat like using a pure abstract SC to resolve a 'challenge' that MIGHT be combat, and another that is geared pretty specifically at combat at a bit more abstract level than say 5e or 13a, probably, IIUC similar to some of the things BW does).

<snip>

These are really rather challenging systems to design, one of the biggest issues being trying to generate results that are reasonably consistent across each mechanic (IE you don't want the tactical system to be much bloodier than the abstract system, as it then becomes a form of meta-gaming).

Another system that can handle this toggle between abstraction and zooming in is HeroWars/Quest - anything, from a debate to a combat to an overland journey to a courtship can be handled as a simple contest (one roll, either opposed or vs a static DC) or an extended contest (analogous to a 4e skill challenge).

To constrain the metagaming element you point to, I think it helps to have other devices for handling the way consequences feed back into play. So that if, say, one system is more likely to be bloodier than the other, the rest of the game can make use of the impact of "I got particularly badly bloodied by this situation that I really cared about and so wanted to resolve in detail."

To give an example of what I have in mind: In BW, an extended resolution is likely to consume more fate points than a simple resolution - which can give rise to the sort of metagaming issue you describe - but there are benefits in terms of PC development to spending fate points on skill and stat checks, so the incentives cut both ways rather than pushing in just one direction.