D&D 4E Let's Talk About 4E On Its Own Terms [+]

[FrogReaver]

Sure, but there's ~4 encounters in a work day. Killing one enemy in round one of encounter one is nowhere near as good as killing two equivalent enemies in round one of a later encounter, especially late in the day when resources are running low.

1. That would still depend on the enemies.

2. Outside minions/frost cheese/dailies/action points it’s going to be hard to take out a single enemy on turn 1 (even with focus fire) let alone 2. Technicalities that aren’t practical don’t really have a place in a discussion about what players should do for combat efficiency.

3. There’s a risk associated cost with waiting for a situation that may never materialize.

Within a single encounter, that's usually true. But which encounter(s) in the day you unload in matters a lot, and the first one is often a poor choice.

Why? I mean I’m not suggesting all players use their dailies in one encounter, but why would 1 player using a daily in the first encounter be a poor choice?

 

[Retreater]

Sounds solid! Out of curiosity, when you use minions, how many do you typically use and how many regular enemies?

Typically, around 4 minions when I use them. I will typically have 2-3 regular enemies and the minions. I don't want to have too many bodies and actions when I sometimes have 6+ characters.

Also which kinds of encounters do they struggle with the most? Big solo and a few minions, lots of minions, 4 mostly equal power enemies? Etc?

It's the mostly equal power enemies. Like, if I have 5 characters and 4 at-level monsters, that's usually likely to cause trouble.
The solo monsters have largely been underwhelming - even when supported by other monsters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Narrativist play still has to interact with the game mechanics, and for better or worse 4e is based on long rests being spaced out over roughly a four-encounter work day. If your players are regularly taking half the day off, the narrative moving forward has to compensate for that. Players aren't the sole deciders of what happens, and there are NPCs out there pursuing their own goals. Whether its rivals growing proportionately stronger, patrons denying rewards for taking too long to accomplish a task, or the more basic "have a harder fight because you gave your foes time to prepare" approach, taking early long rests has to have a cost or your players are going to find themselves feeling unchallenged pretty quickly.

As I said, I'm not really a fan of the "directly trump their hidey-hole trick" approach myself (preferring to adjust the opposition's schemes and/or encounter difficulty instead) but having played with DMs who do so I can say it didn't produce the negative effects you're afraid of here. The key is being open about it. If you're going to homebrew ways to get at the players in their hidey-hole, make it known in advance that such things can happen, and that the PCs can access the same means against baddies who try holing up themselves.

And while it's always iffy to talk realism in 4e, things like the exodus knife are so potentially powerful that it's hard to believe that someone out there wouldn't try to find a counter. The players will almost certainly ask about doing so the first time they're shafted by a villain escaping pursuit by using one, and I don't blame them for doing so.

I agree you will create a different narrative, and if the players are using it to rest after every other encounter it's going to necessarily alter the composition of encounters. I'm entirely neutral as to if that produces the game people want. On the rest, we seem to mostly agree. Threatening the PCs with some knife subverting ploy is fine if it is signalled. The obvious one being " Your opponent marshalls an overwhelming force at the exit point and waits for you..."

 

[James Gasik]

yea, 4e powers just aren’t models or simulations of your in universe always on capabilities. Expecting them to be since 3e was so much that is understandable, but will ultimately lead to the kind of experience you describe. If you accept 4e powers for what they are - essentially player narrative control to declare the circumstances to gain the benefits for a particular power coming up in the fiction then the problem you mentioned goes completely away. You still may not like the aesthetic, I get that, but it’s not because the game is doing something illogical.

It's funny since X/day abilities have been part of D&D for decades, but suddenly in 4e, that took people out of the game. Two examples from 2e's Complete Fighter's Handbook:

Never once did I hear anyone claim that "it doesn't make sense" for these non-magical abilities to be limited to x/day. But suddenly we roll around to 4e (or the earlier 3.5 Tome of Battle), and the idea of only being able to use Vorpal Tornado once every 5ish minutes had people crying "my immersion".

 

[FrogReaver]

It's funny since X/day abilities have been part of D&D for decades, but suddenly in 4e, that took people out of the game. Two examples from 2e's Complete Fighter's Handbook:
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Never once did I hear anyone claim that "it doesn't make sense" for these non-magical abilities to be limited to x/day. But suddenly we roll around to 4e (or the earlier 3.5 Tome of Battle), and the idea of only being able to use Vorpal Tornado once every 5ish minutes had people crying "my immersion".

To be fair, you could play those versions without ever encountering such things in actual play. With 4e it happened at level 1 for all characters.

2e also didn’t really have to deal with the internet - so what people thought of such mechanics at the time is largely lost. When we sit down to play with friends we don’t analyze things in the same way.

 

[James Gasik]

To be fair, you could play those versions without ever encountering such things in actual play. With 4e it happened at level 1 for all characters.

2e also didn’t really have to deal with the internet - so what people thought of such mechanics at the time is largely lost. When we sit down to play with friends we don’t analyze things in the same way.

Most of the time, I think it got a pass because x/day abilities were normally supernatural. Why can a Paladin Lay on Hands for a set amount of hp each day? The Gods say so! Why can a Marilith use Polymorph Self exactly 7/day? It just can, ok? Lol.

But there were also non-magical abilities with similar limitations, as I demonstrated. While you're correct that without the internet, if individual tables did have problems with this sort of thing, it would be hard to know (barring a letter or article in Dragon or something).

Oddly, the only thing I can remember ever hearing about it was a developer comment about how that was a bad design choice, stating: "if you give a player the ability to do something 1/day, they will go out of their way to use that thing each day".

This apparently didn't stick, as we have such things to this day. What really amused me was how few times I hear people complain about things like the Battlemaster only being able to use a couple of Maneuvers without taking an hour-long nap (let alone stuff like Action Surge or Second Wind).

But then again, I've long said 4e was ahead of it's time. What was seen as immersion-breaking then is just how things work now.

 

[cbwjm]

But there were also non-magical abilities with similar limitations, as I demonstrated. While you're correct that without the internet, if individual tables did have problems with this sort of thing, it would be hard to know (barring a letter or article in Dragon or something).

The two abilities you mentioned, kiai shout and the spell like ritual seem rather supernatural, but yes, there were limited use abilities that seemed a little weird at the time. I thought they felt off in 2e and it felt worse in 4e. This is why I felt better with essentials, I wasn't fond of fighters with weapon powers that were daily or encounter, so the essentials fighter felt better to me.

I'm not saying 4e was bad but, like every edition, it had quirks that you just had to accept and keep playing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To be fair, you could play those versions without ever encountering such things in actual play. With 4e it happened at level 1 for all characters.

2e also didn’t really have to deal with the internet - so what people thought of such mechanics at the time is largely lost. When we sit down to play with friends we don’t analyze things in the same way.

Well, I was around when 2e was written, nobody that I know complained about it. Heck, there's a ton of once-per-day stuff in 1e as well! For example a 7th level Druid (Initiate of the 5th Circle) gets "Ability to change form up to three times per day" which is actually even more restricted to only allow each form to be assumed once per day. Paladins get 'lay on hands' once per day, and Cure Disease once per week (more uses gained at higher levels). Paladins have the most time-restricted ability of all 'call for his warhorse' ONCE EVERY 10 YEARS. Monks have a once per day 'self heal' ability, and the 'Quivering Palm' which can only be used once per week.

I'm pretty sure ALL of these strictures predate 1e as well, as all these classes appear in D&D or one of its supplements, or in SR/TD. I don't disagree that 4e surfaces this kind of mechanic to a much higher degree, but still, nobody made so much as a peep before 4e.

 

[Staffan]

Well, I was around when 2e was written, nobody that I know complained about it. Heck, there's a ton of once-per-day stuff in 1e as well! For example a 7th level Druid (Initiate of the 5th Circle) gets "Ability to change form up to three times per day" which is actually even more restricted to only allow each form to be assumed once per day. Paladins get 'lay on hands' once per day, and Cure Disease once per week (more uses gained at higher levels). Paladins have the most time-restricted ability of all 'call for his warhorse' ONCE EVERY 10 YEARS. Monks have a once per day 'self heal' ability, and the 'Quivering Palm' which can only be used once per week.

I'm pretty sure ALL of these strictures predate 1e as well, as all these classes appear in D&D or one of its supplements, or in SR/TD. I don't disagree that 4e surfaces this kind of mechanic to a much higher degree, but still, nobody made so much as a peep before 4e.

Devil's Advocating here: all the abilities you mention are at least semi-magical. I think most of the ire directed at 4e regarding limited-use abilities were for martials, whose abilities supposedly are grounded in raw skill. I don't mind them personally, and I think later versions could use more limited-use martial abilities, but I can see how it'd upset some folks.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Devil's Advocating here: all the abilities you mention are at least semi-magical. I think most of the ire directed at 4e regarding limited-use abilities were for martials, whose abilities supposedly are grounded in raw skill. I don't mind them personally, and I think later versions could use more limited-use martial abilities, but I can see how it'd upset some folks.

Martial power is just as much magic as any other power source. I mean, do you think there's any non-magical way a guy with a sword fights a 12' tall 1000+ lb humanoid? OK, what about a dragon? It is, and always has been, pretty much all 'magic'.