Do YOU nod to "realism"?

[Dragon Sin-Camealot]

Note: I had a discussion about this here too I think. Nevertheless, these points should help shed light on what you want out of 4E if not fiction in general.

May I ask why you play DnD?

Fiction's Upper Limit
Overall, what are the general limitations to fiction? There are certain situations that don't normally happen in stories. I'm trying to get a quick list of things that don't happen.

Note: I've posted this question elsewhere but I know I at least want one other source. A FF source.

-The hero/ine usually loses in the end.
-The secondary character's finishes off the main villian. Lives longer than the main hero.
-Any other characters have one greater trait than either the main character or villian that's used once.
-When traveling they actually die along the way or everyone makes it to the destination.
-A victor is determined early and a descisive action is prompt.
-The way things might happen as compared to real time.
-Having to justify plot holes in fiction compared to reality.
-Satisfying a fan base.
-Avoiding your common set-up.
-Finding an unpredictable ending.
-You are expected to believe what the author tells you. (new)

----

The ultimate question is why you believe the author's idea is relevant.

What's relevant to a rollplaying game such as DnD imo is that a victor isn't determined early. You have to fight a few skill challenges and monsters in our experience.

Satisfying a fan base always applies unless you play alone. I know people who won't transfer between other versions of this game and many others.

 

[LurkAway]

I mean, there's no specific reason for gender roles to be the same in a fantasy setting.

I agree... at least one argument to reboot expectations is that magic and sorcery evens the playing field against those who are physically stronger and larger.

The whole faux-Europe thing really needs to die a nasty death in fantasy. It's so bloody cliche.

If "faux-Europe" also means a fantasy world with analogs to historical cultures, I actually think it can be done well. At least one advantage is that you have easy reference points (ie., if a fantasy realm sounds a lot like celtic Britain and that one sounds like pre-Islamic Arabia, so I don't have to write 5 chapters explaining the cultures and society). The more "realistic" the fantasy, the more reference points, and the more everyone's on the same page. The more high fantasy you go, the more uncertainty what is the internal consistency, and the more work you have to do to put the readers or gaming group in sync if you want a cohesive vision. Neither is right or wrong, just different pros and cons.

 

[KarinsDad]

So if someone in your game needs to break down a door, why don't you check his Wisdom score? Checking for Strength would be too realistic, right?

And if a dwarf with 3 Charisma and no social skills whatsoever wants to seduce the elven princess - more power to him! Who cares about "realism"? It's just a fantasy game, right?

This is mostly where I am coming from.

I want plausibility in my fantasy games and I don't want a bunch of stupid feats and powers and such, just because the game designers didn't actually sit down and design the core math of the framework correctly.

For example, the Melee Training feat only exists because some character concepts cannot do something as simple as a Melee Basic Attack (read OA). At first level, the strongest PC is +6 to hit and +6 damage compared to the weakest, but at level 30, it's +10 to hit and +10 damage (without other stuff added in).

On a D20, these numbers are just too far apart, so the math has to be fixed with a feat.

I also have problems with PCs swinging melee weapons with Con or Cha. Int and Wis are quasi-ok, but Con and Cha just bug the heck out of me.

I have stamina, so I hit you easier and harder. WT???

I also have issue with the fact that the scaling of some powers tends to be based merely on the damage or number of foes attacked and not necessarily on the strength of the effect or condition riders.

6 square Teleport, for example, should be ranked: 6 square Move, 6 square Shift, 6 square Fly, 6 square Teleport in order of utility. Instead, Teleport gets handed out at very low level with Encounter powers and even quasi-At Will abilities. Shifting is better than normal movement because it does not provoke OAs. Flying is better than Shifting because although it provokes, it allows the PC to go to hard or even impossible locations, and Teleport is better than either Shift or Fly because it has the benefits of both other effects.


I personally think that 4E is too much of a smorgasbord of conditions and effects. I would prefer it to be more plausible with very well defined meta-rules as to which levels each power source can acquire which effects and conditions along with a detailed ranking system for all effects and conditions.

If a set of metarules like this existed, there would be very little in the way of "these 3 powers are great at level 7 for a Fighter, but these 4 are only ok, and these 3 totally suck and you should never take them". I do not see real balance between the best and worst powers at each level because there are no metarules about how to balance powers.

Powers are designed based on what some designer thinks is cool, not based on what some designer thinks is cool within a rigid framework of options at a given level/power source/role.


I also think that power source should be more important and role should be less important. For example, the Martial power source should do a lot of actual damage (and take less damage), regardless of role within the class. Martial Defenders should often do as much damage as Strikers do in other power sources (strikers in other power sources should do decent damage, but should also throw out more effects/conditions). But, Martial PCs should not be able to heal, go invisible, or do many of the other cool effects until Epic level and they shouldn't be able to fly or teleport at all. There should be metarules that do not get broken.

If a Martial PC wants to heal, he should require magic items, especially at Heroic and Paragon level. Healing should mostly be the realm of the Divine and Primal power sources, not the Martial, Arcane, or Psionic power sources.


My definition of plausibility is not one of whether PCs can shoot fire out of their hands. My definition of plausibility is one of whether certain PC concepts (read classes) can shoot fire out of their hands (or heal, or teleport, or fly, or go invisible, or hide). The distinction between classes in D&D is often blurred where it should be more sharply defined.

If your PC is a mental PC that uses Charisma to shoot psychic damage at foes, you shouldn't be able to use Charisma to swing a weapon. Instead, you should use Str or Dex and the difference between your ability to swing a weapon should be less than someone else's and your damage should be seriously less, but the delta on the math shouldn't be so huge. Part of this huge math delta is the fact that ability scores can change. There is no need for that to occur. It's just a rule and even a rule that didn't exist in many earlier versions of the game.


And the entire concept of elemental magic weapons combining with certain elemental magic feats to gain uber damage is lame. The elemental feats should only work with elemental powers and PCs from a different power source that do not have elemental powers should be left out in the cold for these types of combinations.

 

[Hussar]

I agree... at least one argument to reboot expectations is that magic and sorcery evens the playing field against those who are physically stronger and larger.

If "faux-Europe" also means a fantasy world with analogs to historical cultures, I actually think it can be done well. At least one advantage is that you have easy reference points (ie., if a fantasy realm sounds a lot like celtic Britain and that one sounds like pre-Islamic Arabia, so I don't have to write 5 chapters explaining the cultures and society). The more "realistic" the fantasy, the more reference points, and the more everyone's on the same page. The more high fantasy you go, the more uncertainty what is the internal consistency, and the more work you have to do to put the readers or gaming group in sync if you want a cohesive vision. Neither is right or wrong, just different pros and cons.

I largely agree, but, for my own tastes the cons outweigh the pros. There's no particular reason why a fantasy world which is so different from our own (if nothing else - the prevalence of sentient species all over the place) would develop anything like ours.

Yeah, sure, I can buy a lot of things, particularly the technology end of things since that kinda needs to be there for genre conceits (realistically, why would an elven empire that's been around for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years, still be at the same technological level as the humans next door?) so, I'm not totally without a sense of willing suspension of disbelief.

But, the whole, "It's 10th century England with ELVES!" trope that I see permeating so much of fantasy literature and whatnot just bugs the heck out of me.

 

[LurkAway]

I largely agree, but, for my own tastes the cons outweigh the pros. There's no particular reason why a fantasy world which is so different from our own (if nothing else - the prevalence of sentient species all over the place) would develop anything like ours.

One solution is to have elves, dragons, etc exist mostly as superstition until one decade they actually immigrating to the human world (thru gates from the feywild, shadowfell, and beyond). Until that point, human civilization could have evolved "normally" without the interference of non-humans. As is, this wouldn't work in D&D (because they are so many ancient dungeons of non-human origin) unless the world used to be full of elves, dragons, etc. and then a cataclysm destroyed almost everything, the dwarves hiding under their mountains, the elves withdrawing into the feywild, and the human civilization destroyed (like the Roman empire) and a Dark Ages begins. (In that sense, the original Dragonlance is pretty "realistic".) I would love to see this scenario as a PoL setting for D&D. Unfortunately, it kinda rules out exotic PC choices like tieflings and dragonborn (unless the player is prepated to deal with prejudice, suspicion and hostility) -- and personally, I would be OK with that.

 

[Droogie128]

This is mostly where I am coming from.

I want plausibility in my fantasy games and I don't want a bunch of stupid feats and powers and such, just because the game designers didn't actually sit down and design the core math of the framework correctly.

For example, the Melee Training feat only exists because some character concepts cannot do something as simple as a Melee Basic Attack (read OA). At first level, the strongest PC is +6 to hit and +6 damage compared to the weakest, but at level 30, it's +10 to hit and +10 damage (without other stuff added in).

On a D20, these numbers are just too far apart, so the math has to be fixed with a feat.

I also have problems with PCs swinging melee weapons with Con or Cha. Int and Wis are quasi-ok, but Con and Cha just bug the heck out of me.

I have stamina, so I hit you easier and harder. WT???

I also have issue with the fact that the scaling of some powers tends to be based merely on the damage or number of foes attacked and not necessarily on the strength of the effect or condition riders.

6 square Teleport, for example, should be ranked: 6 square Move, 6 square Shift, 6 square Fly, 6 square Teleport in order of utility. Instead, Teleport gets handed out at very low level with Encounter powers and even quasi-At Will abilities. Shifting is better than normal movement because it does not provoke OAs. Flying is better than Shifting because although it provokes, it allows the PC to go to hard or even impossible locations, and Teleport is better than either Shift or Fly because it has the benefits of both other effects.


I personally think that 4E is too much of a smorgasbord of conditions and effects. I would prefer it to be more plausible with very well defined meta-rules as to which levels each power source can acquire which effects and conditions along with a detailed ranking system for all effects and conditions.

If a set of metarules like this existed, there would be very little in the way of "these 3 powers are great at level 7 for a Fighter, but these 4 are only ok, and these 3 totally suck and you should never take them". I do not see real balance between the best and worst powers at each level because there are no metarules about how to balance powers.

Powers are designed based on what some designer thinks is cool, not based on what some designer thinks is cool within a rigid framework of options at a given level/power source/role.


I also think that power source should be more important and role should be less important. For example, the Martial power source should do a lot of actual damage (and take less damage), regardless of role within the class. Martial Defenders should often do as much damage as Strikers do in other power sources (strikers in other power sources should do decent damage, but should also throw out more effects/conditions). But, Martial PCs should not be able to heal, go invisible, or do many of the other cool effects until Epic level and they shouldn't be able to fly or teleport at all. There should be metarules that do not get broken.

If a Martial PC wants to heal, he should require magic items, especially at Heroic and Paragon level. Healing should mostly be the realm of the Divine and Primal power sources, not the Martial, Arcane, or Psionic power sources.


My definition of plausibility is not one of whether PCs can shoot fire out of their hands. My definition of plausibility is one of whether certain PC concepts (read classes) can shoot fire out of their hands (or heal, or teleport, or fly, or go invisible, or hide). The distinction between classes in D&D is often blurred where it should be more sharply defined.

If your PC is a mental PC that uses Charisma to shoot psychic damage at foes, you shouldn't be able to use Charisma to swing a weapon. Instead, you should use Str or Dex and the difference between your ability to swing a weapon should be less than someone else's and your damage should be seriously less, but the delta on the math shouldn't be so huge. Part of this huge math delta is the fact that ability scores can change. There is no need for that to occur. It's just a rule and even a rule that didn't exist in many earlier versions of the game.


And the entire concept of elemental magic weapons combining with certain elemental magic feats to gain uber damage is lame. The elemental feats should only work with elemental powers and PCs from a different power source that do not have elemental powers should be left out in the cold for these types of combinations.

I have no problem with using charisma. It represents the ability to feint and psych your opponent out.

Con just represents the toll the magic is taking on your body. As anyone who is using con as a primary attack stat is going to be a magical class.



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[Tallifer]

See, this I really don't want in my fantasy settings. For one, your "pre-modern society" is limited to feudal Europe. After all, not every feudal society had serfs/slaves. Gender roles throughout history have been dicey things to pin down as well. Sure, the higher end of the society has its privileges, but, even then, it sometimes came with some pretty hefty prices as well.

I mean, there's no specific reason for gender roles to be the same in a fantasy setting. I loved the fact that Steven Erikson, in his Malazan books, completely ejected all gender roles by and large and made sexual equality pretty standard.

After all, why would an elven society, where you have citizens with lifespans lasting centuries (pre-4e anyway) even remotely look like human ones? Why should dwarven societies practice slavery? Slavery was practiced, by and large again, for economic reasons. Is it economical to keep slaves in a subterranean nation? I don't know.

The whole faux-Europe thing really needs to die a nasty death in fantasy. It's so bloody cliche.

You have a point. But on the other hand, I have only ever seen sincere ONE attempt at faux Europe: Chaosium's Pendragon. Certainly D&D has always been anachronistic with gender equality, slavery as evil, standing armies and police forces, universal translators (not to mention the anachronistic dialogue in its novels).

As for exotic cultures, of course I believe they should be different and exotic. Why would I expect the Goliaths and Dragonborn to have the same culture?

 

[Iosue]

Ironically, a to-hit bonus provided by Strength strikes me at first glance as unrealistic -- a bonus to damage, yes, but how does Str help you hit? But, actually I think all the abilities can be worked to provide a bonus:

Str - swings a heavy weapon more easily, faster "sword speed", as it were.
Dex - Full body movement that helps evade defenses.
Con - Using one's own body for the attack, say a head-butt or forearm that's followed up with the main weapon attack. Or alternatively, their better conditioning allows them a slight edge over their opponent after the circling, feinting, and jockeying for position that occurs in any fight (but is not typically narrated in a D&D game).
Int - See the first Sherlock Holmes movie: knowing just where to hit for best effect.
Wis - Similar to Int, but perhaps based more on personal experience and observation rather than theory and explicit instruction.
Cha - I think anyone who's done a martial art or combat sport has seen examples of people who have a presence that makes them tough opponents. This is an ultimate goal in kendo, for example: rather than beating the opponent with one's superior speed and agility, you want to project your presence so that they are mentally pressured, and then take a tentative posture, or else find themselves induced to attack, leaving them open for swift counters.

Similar justifications can be found for breaking down a door.

Str - Raw strength, naturally.
Dex - Could be contorting to get one's hand through an opening, or perhaps being able to use one's whole body (maybe bracing both feet against a wall while pulling on the handle?).
Con - Rather than an explosive use of strength, a matter of being able to maintain what strength one has for a longer sustained period.
Int - Knowledge of wood, metal, door construction, and weak points in design.
Wis - Same idea as Int.
Cha - This one, you're stuck. Unless one interprets Cha as a kind of "fortune" stat (a la ta'veren in Jordan's Wheel of Time.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I largely agree, but, for my own tastes the cons outweigh the pros. There's no particular reason why a fantasy world which is so different from our own (if nothing else - the prevalence of sentient species all over the place) would develop anything like ours.

Yeah, sure, I can buy a lot of things, particularly the technology end of things since that kinda needs to be there for genre conceits (realistically, why would an elven empire that's been around for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years, still be at the same technological level as the humans next door?) so, I'm not totally without a sense of willing suspension of disbelief.

But, the whole, "It's 10th century England with ELVES!" trope that I see permeating so much of fantasy literature and whatnot just bugs the heck out of me.

Here's the thing though. People want referents. Why are PC races all (generally speaking) pretty similar to humans? Because it is pretty hard for people to relate to a genuinely alien character. Consider what races seem to be popular in 4e for instance. They are pretty much the more human-like races. Not too many people play shardminds, wilden, etc. Even minotaurs, githzerai, and changelings are not really the most overall popular races. You'll have people try them out, but the less easy it is to relate the character to what the player knows and understands the less easy it is to play except in a 'human with a funny forehead' type way.

Likewise with cultures. Why do most settings hew pretty close to the model of a sort of modernized faux fantasy Europe? Because players draw their concepts about society and their basic world view, dramatic repertoire, etc from that tradition. They understand it. Heck, often your average player isn't really enough aware of the way any society but the one they live in works to really even know what actual realistic medieval Europe would be like.

Beyond that there's just a limit to what any given setting designer can deal with. Nobody knows how entirely alien societies might possibly work. Nobody knows what other possible social organizations even COULD be. Even if there are plenty of examples of various societies in history few people know enough about them to easily build them into a setting. Players won't understand them well enough to easily play in them, etc. Again, to consider trying to imagine a completely novel society, let alone evolved in a magical world who's ultimate rules are at best fuzzy, is just asking more than is possible. At best what you would imagine as 'realistic' or at least interesting is likely to seem ridiculous and obtuse to other people.

Now and then you will find someone with the world-building chops and sensibilities necessary to at least make a stab at it that is interesting and playable enough to attempt. Thus you may have worlds like Tekumel, Jorune, etc. Notice though that the VAST majority of games end up set in something like FR vs something like Jorune. It is just vastly easier to run a game in the former vs the later, and even if you do use such an original setting it is pretty hard for DMs to live up to the task of making it work.

 

[LurkAway]

Str - swings a heavy weapon more easily, faster "sword speed", as it were.

Dex - Full body movement that helps evade defenses.

I think it also depends on the weapon. I'd say the best knife fighters use Dex to strike fast (makes them very deadly against unarmed opponents because it's difficult to react in time before you're stabbed). A stronger knife fighter will find it easier to ram a dagger past your arm block and thru light armor and flesh, so high Str + high Dex > high Dex or high Str

Con - Using one's own body for the attack, say a head-butt or forearm that's followed up with the main weapon attack.

But the most effective head-butts and elbow strikes depend on some combination of size, strength, and speed. A thick skull may be part of Con, but runners and other endurance athletes have high Con as stamina without any correlation to thick skulls for head butting. And I think part of Con is fluffed as resolve and grit to live, which I see as mostly defensive. Arguably, resolve can be directed offensively, but if so, it would add a universal bonus to attacks, and then isn't it being conflated with Will?

Or alternatively, their better conditioning allows them a slight edge over their opponent after the circling, feinting, and jockeying for position that occurs in any fight (but is not typically narrated in a D&D game).

If so, it should always apply universally as a bonus to attacks. And then add in Dex too because of the agility providing an extra edge.

Int - See the first Sherlock Holmes movie: knowing just where to hit for best effect.

Wis - Similar to Int, but perhaps based more on personal experience and observation rather than theory and explicit instruction.

That assumes that all PCs' intelligence/wisdom is reflected as fast thinking. PCs with high intelligence based on 'library' knowledge are not going to be able to apply Intelligence very effectively. And you can be 'street smart' at analyzing your opponent's behavior and adapting strategies, but otherwise be considered to have low intelligence/wisdom in other fields, and vice versa.

Cha - I think anyone who's done a martial art or combat sport has seen examples of people who have a presence that makes them tough opponents.

Are they tough because they have presence, or do they have presence because they know they're tough expert fighters?

This is an ultimate goal in kendo, for example: rather than beating the opponent with one's superior speed and agility, you want to project your presence so that they are mentally pressured, and then take a tentative posture, or else find themselves induced to attack, leaving them open for swift counters.

Since Cha is conflated with persuasiveness, personal magnetism, leadership, etc. is it possible to have a kendo fighter with presence who is not a good leader and not persuasive (outside of sword fighting)? Is part of that 'presence' abstracted as any combination of Will, Int, and even character level?

I think applying any one attribute to any attack is unrealistic, because "to hit" uses a combination of attributes at any one time. But if you had to distill it down to one attribute, I think some are better abstractions than others (Con and Cha not being one of them IMO).

Edit: This topic always reminds me how much I'd like to see attributes removed entirely from attack bonuses, and just merge it into class and attack types.