Finally got the 4e core books

[LostSoul]

What advice does the new DMG give you about PCs taking captives?

Is it icky, and best avoided? Like half-orcs?

I don't know. What kind of advice do you mean?

I'm full of edits lately. Anyways, I'm not sure how this means Prone + Silence is unbalanced.

 

[Orryn Emrys]

Strangely, in 25 years of gaming, this if the first time I've really ever had to step back and consider what is best for me and my group whilst trying to make each and every decision regarding the direction of my (our) game. It's always been easy to pick up the latest D&D development and toss it on the table.

I've run seven 4E sessions. We took the characters from 3rd to 5th level. It was fun. I purchased the core books and they look nice on my shelf. But for the most part, I'm done with 4E.

There are things I like... the encounter design system is very elegant. (I like Wulf's adaptation of the idea to 3.5/Pathfinder.) And I've been know to agonize over the years regarding how long it takes to stat up an NPC in 3.5... but the restructured class system of 4E, despite its inherent balance (or perhaps because of it) leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It has a lot of great material, and I've already plundered some of its ideas for my own "3.75" system, but I don't like the feel of it as a whole. And most of my players, despite how much fun they had with 4E combat, are just as ready to put it behind them.

Then again, I use a lot of electronic utilities to help me manage my 3.5 game... which weren't really necessary for 4E. But since I have them, I like my 3rd Edition game system considerably better.

It is, as it happens, a very different game... a distinction that's fairly difficult to appreciate without experiencing it.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Arbitrarily doubling hit points mid-combat feels like "cheating" to me.

Arbitrarily allowing a PC to make a DEX attack vs. AC to trip and silence a guard "sounds like" cheating to me.

Assuming they are both done in the spirit of more fun, I don't have a problem with either.

If I wanted to run a simple encounter against, say, Goblins - I had to write up different Goblins, because otherwise, they would all look the same and the adventure needs to be over in two encounters, or the players - and the DM - are bored.

Respectfully: Stop being a slave to the rules.

My current campaign is full of kobolds. Some of them have very few hit points but they wield alchemists fire; some of them have +10 hit points, +1 to hit and damage, and a shield for +2 AC (they're warriors); some of the shaman leaders have +12 hit points and have 3 "virtual" sorcerer levels-- they cast a couple of 2nd level spells and a few 1st level spells, and by then they're dead. None of these are "statted up." I have one SRD kobold statblock printed out and I make changes on the fly. I dare to say I might even have managed a couple of kobold Rogues without breaking a sweat.

Moving on, the PCs were jonesing to fight some ogres, but they'd left the ogre territory and moved into trog territory. Thinking quickly, I grabbed a Large blackscale lizardman miniature out of my bin, and dropped it onto the table. It appeared out of thin air-- it has the same "hand wave the details" camouflage as all the rest of the trogs-- it stunk, and it had +2 natural armor. But otherwise behind the screen I was using the ogre statblock.

Later the PCs were plowing through the troglodytes at a speed I was uncomfortable with. On the fly, I stuck in a big trog warrior in plate (I had the miniature, I wanted to use it) gave him +6 AC, 30 hit points, and +3 BAB.

The game did not grind to a halt. It did not even hiccup.


So... my game prep (per 3-4 hour session) consists of:

• 5 minutes printing out SRD statblocks of any creature that might populate the area (including wandering monsters)
• 5 minutes making notes on what encounters are located where
• 1-2 hours making a full color map

I am curious if the DDI will improve my score on that last item.



EDIT: My frakkin' ginormous tr(ogre)lodyte got pasted in one attack. He jumped out of hiding, roared, forced a few stench saves, and got beaned by a maul for over 60 points of damage. Fortunately, because I hadn't spent even 30 seconds "statting him up" I wasn't left frustrated at his demise.

 

[LostSoul]

Arbitrarily allowing a PC to make a DEX attack vs. AC to trip and silence a guard "sounds like" cheating to me.

I think that's what I'm talking about when I say that rules are king in 3e and fiction is king in 4e.

In the fiction, it made perfect sense that our Rogue, silently sneaking up on the goblin, sweeping his legs out and then putting his knee on its throat, could indeed knock him prone and silence him with a Dex vs. AC attack.

In 3e, since the rules say "This is how you do a Trip," and tend to spell everything that you can do out (or at least give me that impression), it feels like cheating when someone pulls off the above stunt - even though that stunt makes perfect sense in the fiction.

And I still don't see why it's unbalanced.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

You could do this with every edition ever printed. 3E did go a little too far in trying to define everything that you could possibly do with a rule and that wasn't a good thing. 4E is attempting to go back to the days of "let the DM decide" on one hand and smacking you with the mega-thick " heres a zillion pages of exactly what you can and cannot do" on the other.

It's not that defining what you could do was bad. That was my favorite part of 3e. It's that in the process of trying to create rules for everything, they complicated things dramatically.

In 2e, I used to get annoyed because if someone attempted any number of things in combat, I'd have no idea how to resolve them. I'd have to make up rules on the fly for disarming, grappling, tripping, and any other number of things. One one hand, it was good because it let me do whatever I wanted and to get the rules to exactly what I wanted. On the other hand, it slowed down the game a lot as my players and I had arguments over whether the rules I came up with were realistic enough or if they gave an unfair advantage to one class or another.

In 3e, I was glad they added rules for all of these. But the problem was that the rules weren't balanced. There were some tactics that were clearly better than others. Some feats were clearly better than others and some classes and PrC that were clearly better than others. And when you combined options together using the multiclassing rules, not only was the game complicated and difficult to understand but the gap between individual PC power at a table increased a lot.

It's the same problem I discovered while I used to play and run Rifts all the time, with the freedom to choose 200 different races and classes and skills and spells, you inevitably have options that are dramatically more powerful than others. Which makes it hard to DM and write adventures for.

Also, because EVERYTHING is spelled out, there's very little room for making the game my own. I can't decide that this wall of force cannot be destroyed by disintegrate, because there is no such spell and my players call shenanigans on me when I make stuff up as pure plot devices. There is an implied philosophy that says that the reason the rules exist as they do in 3e is to be balanced and that making up new stuff as a plot device is bad form.

4e attempts to take what I like about 3e: codified rules for most things, but removed the interaction of rules that caused the most problems. Most of the complicated and headache inducing parts of 3e was when someone combined feats, classes, races, PrC and spells together in such a way as to stack 5 different things together. That's also when the rules became the most broken. 4e removes these cases simply by not allowing full multiclassing. It also removes some interactions of rules that had problems, like what happens when you use a certain ability to gain more attacks per round but use them all as grapple attempts or trips instead of normal attacks? It does this by making things exclusive: Either you using a power that lets you trip people or you are using a power to get more attacks, not both.

Meanwhile, since its rules revolve mostly around combat, it opens up non-combat scenarios to be controlled more by the DM. Rituals can do anything I want them to instead of needing to fit into the vancian system.

If we embrace the DM freedom why did we pay all that money for these huge rulebooks?

Because they have rules in them. See, you can have DM freedom in one area: Say coming up with an adventure, the plot, the actions of the bad guys, how the wards on the castle works, etc. While still having rules for combat that are detailed and precise.

Does anyone here who supports the 4E "power back to the DM" design concept remember all the "mother may I" arguments that flew back and forth during 3E rules discussions?

Yes, since i was the one making most of them. I dislike playing mother may I with combat rounds. It sucks to say "Can I grapple him? How does it work? Is it even possible numerically? Are you going to tell me how it works before I try it or wait until after to tell me it was impossible and I was an idiot for attempting it?"

On the other hand, I don't have a problem with trying to figure out that we need 4 keys to pass through the shimmering walls that block the corridor that appear to be indestructible or that the BBEG cannot be scryed on because he has a magic item that prevents all scrying. That's the plot of an adventure and fully up to the DM. Sometimes it needs plot devices that aren't in the books to work correctly.

I found that having codified rules for out of combat stuff just made it all formulaic. No need to find the keys to get past the wall of forces, we know that a couple of disintegrates work just fine. No need to search for the BBEG, we know that there is almost no way to stop us from scrying on him, we can come up with a plan that there is no counter to in the rules.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Arbitrarily allowing a PC to make a DEX attack vs. AC to trip and silence a guard "sounds like" cheating to me.

Assuming they are both done in the spirit of more fun, I don't have a problem with either.



Respectfully: Stop being a slave to the rules.

I can't. Or rather, I can, but only within limits. I need some guidelines. And exactly the guidelines I always wanted I now, finally, have found.

My current campaign is full of kobolds. Some of them have very few hit points but they wield alchemists fire; some of them have +10 hit points, +1 to hit and damage, and a shield for +2 AC (they're warriors); some of the shaman leaders have +12 hit points and have 3 "virtual" sorcerer levels-- they cast a couple of 2nd level spells and a few 1st level spells, and by then they're dead. None of these are "statted up." I have one SRD kobold statblock printed out and I make changes on the fly. I dare to say I might even have managed a couple of kobold Rogues without breaking a sweat.

But if that's what you are doing - why do you need the HD by type, skill points by HD & type, feats per HD, and all that at all? You are fine to write-up monsters as you see fit - a system that tells me "this is how a level X monster should like - try to be in the same ballpark" would be a lot more helpful then that.

I am not sure if you count yourself among the "simulationist" or not, but what you are doing doesn't sound like it - so what benefit does the system give you?

Moving on, the PCs were jonesing to fight some ogres, but they'd left the ogre territory and moved into trog territory. Thinking quickly, I grabbed a Large blackscale lizardman miniature out of my bin, and dropped it onto the table. It appeared out of thin air-- it has the same "hand wave the details" camouflage as all the rest of the trogs-- it stunk, and it had +2 natural armor. But otherwise behind the screen I was using the ogre statblock.

Later the PCs were plowing through the troglodytes at a speed I was uncomfortable with. On the fly, I stuck in a big trog warrior in plate (I had the miniature, I wanted to use it) gave him +6 AC, 30 hit points, and +3 BAB.

The game did not grind to a halt. It did not even hiccup.

And what you have done looks as if someone stole from your brain to create the 4E monster guidelines. (And I am sure in a way, that's true - the designers looked at what they and others did when DMing and creating new monsters, and eventually decided that they should write up the monster system exactly that way.)

So... my game prep (per 3-4 hour session) consists of:

• 5 minutes printing out SRD statblocks of any creature that might populate the area (including wandering monsters)
• 5 minutes making notes on what encounters are located where
• 1-2 hours making a full color map

I am curious if the DDI will improve my score on that last item.

Maps. A good map tool would be nice, indeed. I am not happy with my results. Of course, I would love if I also had a printer that would allow me to print out a complete battle mat. Dreams...

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Wow, Wulf, stop picking on the poor guy. This is how I've read your posts over the last few pages, and I've gone from irritated to confused, to really just amused by you.

"The old edition allowed you to do things on the fly too, you could just make things up. By the way, you know how you were just making things up? Allow me to present an essay on how you did that wrong."

Yeah, after a dozen posts you threw in one line about "Well if you're having fun, that's fine", but that doesn't change your overall (extremely confrontational) attitude at all. You've basically articulated my argument as to why I've moved to 4e by your overall attitude, better than I possibly could have. Which is, in a nutshell, "Yes, you could make a DM judgement call in 3.x, as long as you were prepared to get into a pointless argument about rules minutiae."

In contrast, 4th explicitly says "Make a quick call, make sure the table's cool with it, and get back to the action." Being able to do something and being supported (in tone, rule design, and overall philosophy) are two different things.

LostSoul, I can't see any problem with what you were doing. An improv'ed stunt is an improv'ed stunt. Rules are not absolutes and they don't have to apply to PCs in exactly the same way as they do NPCs. It's all good. I'm totally on board with "The fiction is what matters" as far as playstyles, so I hear ya.

 

[Gothmog]

Again, you are confusing your limitations and preferences as universal truths.

Possibly, but I believe you're doing the same thing as well. If you agree that every action needs a separate mechanic and subsystem in a game for the game to be fun or viable, that character creation needs a huge number of options (many of which are nearly useless or subpar), or that system mastery is an important component of a RPG, then more power to you. But those aren't universal truths either, and they aren't needed to run an immersive and deep game.

I'd personally rather see a game with a level of DM fiat and subjectivity, where its easier for the DM to make the game his own, rather than shoehorn a system inherently unfriendly to certain types of games into situations it doesn't handle well. I've been gaming and DMing for over 25 years now, and I have a good grasp on 3e and 4e mechanics. I have seen 3e's many limitations to the type of game I want to run (namely lots of roleplaying, low-magic, horror, intrigue, mysteries, and investigation), and while 4e has some limitations too for the kind of games I enjoy, they aren't as jarring and are easier to work around then 3e's problems and design assumptions. Many of 3e's mechanics and subsystems are also clunky and labor-intensive to use (which isn't subjective- 3e and 4e designers have admitted this over the years), wheras 4e's are streamlined to put the focus back on game play, rather than game design, which is where it belongs IMO. If a computer program (say a spreadsheet) was released that was as work intensive as 3e was to set up, we'd hear no end of complaints about how broken and user-unfriendly it was. I understand some people develop an emotional attachment to a certain version of a game, but NO system (which includes both 3e and 4e) are without their design flaws. Why is it so hard for some folks to admit that?

 

[SweeneyTodd]

This might be off topic a little, but I think LostSoul will get a kick out of it at least, since it ties into what he's talking about.

I'm playing D&D online with some folks last night. We take out some bandits that have been infesting the trade routes. Due to the random treasure drops, we get a few really nice gems after a long dangerous night of hit-and-run battles.

In fact... we realize, hey, these darn bandits are richer than the people they're robbing! What gives?

Some people might have gone "Man, the DM did this wrong. This is totally unrealistic."

The party instead went, "Okay, something's definately fishy... these guys have been put here by someone." And indeed, whether that was the DM's original idea or not, it does indeed turn out someone's paying these guys off to block the trade routes.

Why I bring that up is that you've got, roughly, 3 things involved
- The game (kill, get reward, etc.)
- The fictional world (NPCs doing their own thing)
- The fiction itself (The story of the PCs, etc.)

The game part (the treasure tables) gave a funky result. You could just as easily argue "Bandits shouldn't drop this much loot" as you could "Silencing a guy by covering his face with your torso is inbalanced". But in neither case is it a general rules about the fictional world. It's a specific instance, in the fiction, something that happened involving the PCs.

I'm just saying, this whole "Make a ruling and keep the action going" thing works great if you're not worried about the world as some clockwork universe that keeps playing itself when nobody's in it, and only worry about "Does stuff make sense in terms of how the PCs interact with it."

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

OK - if people can't discuss the differences between 3E and 4E without insulting each other, then this thread is going to have to close. I'm going to leave it open for now, but we'll keep an eye on it.