Discussing 4e Subsystems: The PC/NPC Divide

[Obryn]

Hey, I did that a lot, too!

Oh heck yeah. It was one of the prices I paid for running the otherwise-really-cool Arcana Evolved. (The other was trying to figure out how to balance everyone vs. the Magister and Greenbond. High-level casters are a bigger problem in AE than they are in 3.5, even though one of the stated design goals was to make the balance better.)

Step 1 to weaning myself off manually calculating huge statblocks was keeping close to "Normal" 3.5 for my Wilderlands campaign. Close enough, specifically, that I could use HeroForge and MonsterForge to 'quickly' stat up anything I needed to.

Step 2 was basically abandoning 3.5 for SWSE and WFRP2.

-O

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Oh heck yeah. It was one of the prices I paid for running the otherwise-really-cool Arcana Evolved. (The other was trying to figure out how to balance everyone vs. the Magister and Greenbond. High-level casters are a bigger problem in AE than they are in 3.5, even though one of the stated design goals was to make the balance better.)

Step 1 to weaning myself off manually calculating huge statblocks was keeping close to "Normal" 3.5 for my Wilderlands campaign. Close enough, specifically, that I could use HeroForge and MonsterForge to 'quickly' stat up anything I needed to.

Step 2 was basically abandoning 3.5 for SWSE and WFRP2.

-O

My Step 2 for DMing was Iron Heroes. At first I was skeptical about these "villain classes". They seemed like cheating and wrong. One can get strange ideas about how the game needs to be played (or prepared) if one isn't careful.

 

[yesnomu]

Not for me, it seems.

Creating some power that's not related to what already exists is painful...

Well, what do you want it to do? It ought to be similar to something in the PHB or MM, there're a lot of powers there!

If you want ability damage or something, it might just not be a suitable effect for 4e, of course. I could see your issue then.

Actually, I forgot one other awesome thing NPC design has caused: The wonderful new statblocks. Three cheers!

No more trying to remember how Snatch works, or how much reach a Long Huge monster has. Everything you need to run a monster is right there in front of you. In 3.x, the Tactics sections were a requirement, thanks to spells and special abilities. Here they're a luxury, and you can figure out some good tactics just from looking at the blocks. Gods from Deities and Demigods were obscene to run, to pick out the most blatant example. 4e Tiamat is also obscene, but in a much more fun way for the DM.

Best of all, with no polymorph, monster designers don't have to go obsessively through a set of stats, picking out which abilities are (Ex), (Su) or spell-like. Monsters can do things, and that's all they need.

 

[ashockney]

Good analysis, StalkerO. Thank you!

I have run across a couple of weirdness issues with npc's, but IMO these have more to do with the verisimilitude. The difference between npc's from 3e to 4e is marked. Unleashing DM's from the 3e design constraints to me are the single biggest win (#1 issue) in the new edition. My biggest concerns were in time, both time to play and time to prepare. The new design parameters for npc's with 4e allow for significant improvement in both of these categories, but especially in preparation. It is unbelievable how easy it is to develop new innovative, and cool, npc's or monsters.

I have two distinct examples of the challenges I've experienced. The first, was with an npc from the FRCG, a rogue npc named Zark. This guy is essentially a level 4 rogue, who is leading a low level lieutenant in a crime ring in the starting town of Loudwater. When the pc's finally uncovered Zark's nefarious crimes, and confronted him, it was clear a battle was to ensue. On the spot, in about 5 min, I whipped up his base stats to that of a "solo" encounter, so that it would be a "good fight". Zark suddenly, unexpectedly, went from a generic npc rogue with about 30 hp to a solo "boss" fight with over 150hp. What a horse! From a story perspective, it flowed great, and the pc's determined what came next with their ACTIONS. From a design perspective, I was able to adapt the encounter COMPLETELY on the fly, which was VERY DIFFICULT in 3e. From a combat perspective, the party was duly impressed with Zark's abilities, and used sound tactics in the encounter to defeat him. From a verisimilitude perspective, what is Zark, exactly? He's not a rogue like the one in our party, although he used some of the same abilities. He's not a fighter, like the one in our party, although he was able to withstand far more damage. If Zark was this tough, what's his boss going to be like???

The second issue I had was in describing 4e to a group of friends. They've never played the new game, but were quite proficient with 1e, 2e, and 3e. I was describing how in the last module, the party fought and defeated an "Elminster" type npc in the starting town. What??? Didn't you say they were 3rd level? Well, yeah. This npc was, you-know, the one sage in the town that everyone turns to for information. He was the classical wizard profile, who had a bunch of information (arcana and history skills), and had a couple of wizard powers. So, in 4e, 3rd level characters can defeat Elminster? Well, no, but they can defeat an npc, who turned out to be a traitor in our story, and so I just made him a 3rd level elite controller... with wizard powers. They literally couldn't get their heads around it, and I had some trouble explaining it.

These are two examples to help illustrate the challenge I've encountered. As PC's I think it's difficult to DEAL with a world in which anyone you encounter could have 20hp or 2000hp. How do these changes to the infrastructure of the game, change the voice of the story? I think that most rpg's can deal with these differences within the context of the story, but at this point in development, we don't have the language, experience, and tools we need to answer these questions and explain these differences. In many ways, I'm sure people dealing with hit points, or critical charts for the first time had the same challenges.

 

[Phaezen]

My Step 2 for DMing was Iron Heroes. At first I was skeptical about these "villain classes". They seemed like cheating and wrong. One can get strange ideas about how the game needs to be played (or prepared) if one isn't careful.

Step 3 for me was also in Iron Heroes, when I started ballparking attack bonuses, Ac's and saves for mooks. The players didn't even notice. Towards the end of that campaign statblocks for unnamed npc's were often two or three lines, noting class, level and equipment.

Phaezen

 

[Fallen Seraph]

You know just thinking Stalker0 I hope your saving all these OPs since when you have gotten through them all, this would serve as quite a good reading for anyone considering either getting into 3e or 4e, or thinking about going from 3e to 4e, etc.

 

[malraux]

The above simply makes no sense to me. At all. The only difficulty in making a monster is and has always been picking and balancing the special abilities. That hasn't changed a whit.

Note that 4e doesn't have a cool "special ability generation" mechanism. There is a very simple reason: coming up with such a mechanism is functionally impossible due to being too complicated.

I'd disagree with that rather strongly. First, coming from 3e, I found that monster creation was strongly limited by the racial "classes" (ie that all undead got 1/2 BAB, always d12 HD, only good will saves, etc). It made creating one rather difficult, and with little guidance as to what its AC should be, it was difficult to get the base stats right.

Second, 4e does seem to give somewhat better guidance as to what sorts of general special abilities a creature should have by creating the various conditions. Because the end results aren't nearly as wild, there's a lot more safety in building monsters. ie, I've built a vargoullie (sp?). Should it's scream give the dazed condition or the Paralysized condition? I don't know, but there's basically only an action difference between them. The kiss operates pretty obviously from that.

 

[Hussar]

Just because something was not perfect it doesn't mean that you can make it worse and no one is allowed to complain.

I simply prefer to play a normal human who becomes heroic through his deeds and maybe just slightly better stats than playing a mutant who is radically different from everyone else. For that I would play an X-Men RPG

I'm going to be sorry I did this...

A 1st level fighter in 1e/2e with an 18/X strength, doesn't have "slightly better" stats than everyone else. He is actually physically stronger than any other member of his race can possibly be. No one else (other than subclasses of course) can be as strong as my 1st level fighter.

But this makes me "slightly better"? Being stronger and tougher than any normal member of my race can ever hope to be is just a smidgeon better?

This must be a new meaning of "slightly" that I was previously unaware of.

Never mind that my character is wealthier beyond belief by second, maybe 3rd level. That I can walk into a tavern and obliterate all the patrons without breaking a sweat by 4th level. But, y'know, D&D characters are just "slightly" better than the average joe.

Sorry, you want "average joe" play Warhammer. D&D characters have always been Heroes.

 

[Thasmodious]

D&D characters have always been Heroes.

Shhh, that's a secret nobody every let derren in on.

D&D's never been about the average joe. The trope is a guy who thinks of himself as an average joe, who learns he is exceptional (from Frodo and Sam to Harry Potter). You can do zero to hero in any edition, including 4e, it just takes some tweaking.

I think 4e could do zero level characters better than I managed to do it in 3e. I did it in 3e, but it was very clunky and I was glad to quickly move past it once the game started. With 4e, I could see doing this with a standard array, perhaps giving a couple stat boosts once 1st level starts, starting the characters with a single power or going by the old adventure that introduced the concept (trivia: what was the adventure?) let them explore options in some manner and grant them one encounter power after they make a choice (so the guy who puts in the effort to decipher pages from the magical tome gains a spell, while the guy testing his arm with a sword picks up an exploit). So they'd have basic attacks and 1 encounter power and slowly work up from there until you've achieved 1st level.

On point, though, you're absolutely right and the 18xx example is a very good one.

 

[Lorthanoth]

You're either thinking of Treasure Hunt (great module!) or Under Illefarn. Both 1E.