When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

[Fifth Element]

But in some hypothetical 4e that took noncombat roles into account, that doesn't need to exclude combat roles. We could still have Strikers and Leaders and Controllers. But now we would have Striker-Negotiators, and Leader-Crafters, and Defender-Naturalists, and Controller-Ritualists. And we would have rules and powers and abilities to use for negotiating and crafting and wandering around in the wild and performing the "swiss army knife" of rituals that equals importance with the rules for marking and healing and opportunity attacks and hit points.

Rather than a complete suite of rules for one half of the game, and nothing for the other.

I'm sorry, are you saying that 4E offers no support for nature skills, negotiating and rituals?

 

[Andor]

I'm sorry, are you saying that 4E offers no support for nature skills, negotiating and rituals?

As compared to it's support for combat? Perhaps not none, in the strictest of senses.

 

[Allister]

I agree with this being a problem in most D&D editions.

But in some hypothetical 4e that took noncombat roles into account, that doesn't need to exclude combat roles. We could still have Strikers and Leaders and Controllers. But now we would have Striker-Negotiators, and Leader-Crafters, and Defender-Naturalists, and Controller-Ritualists. And we would have rules and powers and abilities to use for negotiating and crafting and wandering around in the wild and performing the "swiss army knife" of rituals that equals importance with the rules for marking and healing and opportunity attacks and hit points.

Rather than a complete suite of rules for one half of the game, and nothing for the other.

It's possible, here, to have your cake and eat it, too.

Actually, you can't have DEFINED non-combat roles as that leads to the same problem.

Unless everyone has a chance to contribute in a non-combat encounter, you're NOT going to have DMs actually use said encounter.

Let's take a dungeon-exploration non-combat role. How much can the non-combat "party face" role actually contribute?

That' why I strongle disagree with non-combat roles as non-combat unlike combat, encapulates more than 1 distinct thing.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

This thread has been very insightful. I know exactly WHY I like 4E so much.

I like the fact that outside of combat, classes don't determne role as much.
I like the fact that monsters and players are built on different assumptions.

Do you like the fact that inside of combat, classes determine role as much? Or more, if the designers did what they wanted to do?

If so, why do you like class determining role in combat, but not like class determining role outside of combat?

 

[Halivar]

I'm not speaking about dictums. There's nothing in Monopoly that tells you you can't have immersive roleplay, either. Still, few people do it because there is no reason to. The rules certainly don't tell you to.

The Monopoly comparison is tired. Monopoly doesn't have a chapter on how to craft a character. 4E does. To say they have equivalent rules-based incentive to roleplay simply isn't true.

 

[Allister]

Do you like the fact that inside of combat, classes determine role as much? Or more, if the designers did what they wanted to do?

If so, why do you like class determining role in combat, but not like class determining role outside of combat?

Because out of combat, there's more than 1 possible scenario and it pretty much impossible to have the roles actually enable anyone and everyone to take part.

Take combat for example. Every class has a role and brings something unique to the table. As a DM, I don't really have to worry about "can Peter take part in this combat encounter?".

Contrast this with the other examples I listed for noncombat. The thing is, even the Shadowrun designers realized this ad I think the WOTC designers did as well.

How does Craft (haiku) help in the non-combat dungeon exploration route or the agatha christie murder style plot?

The thing is, I don't consider combat and non-combat THAT different. There just both forms of encounter resolution but it is just that it is much eaier to get combat "defined". How does one make rules for say an encounter where the goal is to convince the court to send oldiers to the frontier?

 

[Cadfan]

1. It is possible for Perform: Haiku to be a useful skill. Ok, this is a true statement.
2. One can imagine a campaign in which Perform: Haiku was just as important to a character's survival as Swim or Jump. Ok, I guess I can.
3. Therefore Swim or Jump and Perform: Haiku are equivalent, equally deserving of mechanical support, and inclusion in the core rules. NO! BAD! STOP!

1. It is possible for a duck to be useful.
2. One can imagine a situation where a duck could be more useful than a map or a tire guage or a flashlight.
3. Therefore you should always have a duck in your glove box.

 

[billd91]

From PHB p.70: "All crafts require artisan's tools to give the best chance of success." The type of pen you're using doesn't affect the quality of a poem.

But a thesaurus or dictionary might. A masterwork set of artisans tools for craft (poetry) could be just that and not the pens at all.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

Because out of combat, there's more than 1 possible scenario and it pretty much impossible to have the roles actually enable anyone and everyone to take part.

Not sure I'm understanding you here. Forgive me, it's late. But you seem to be saying that outside of combat, roles cannot be made that will allow everyone to shine. Whereas, in 4e combat, roles allow everyone to shine.

I disagree. I can think of roles that will enable anyone and everyone to take part. How about these for dialogue roles. 1) The Leader. He inspires people, he motivates people, his words have the power to make people move and believe and do. 2) The Joker. He deals with everything with humor. 3) The Soother, or the Peacemaker. He eases tensions, makes people forget about things, washes away differences - or maybe he's just softening them up for the Closer. 4) The Closer. He gets what he wants, he convinces others to follow him, he's rude and unlikable but he gets results.

Is that what you were getting at? I really don't see why you couldn't have roles outside of combat when you can have them inside. Or if you meant that we can't have a single role-category for everything that is outside of combat, couldn't we just have roles for dialogue, roles for chase scenes, roles for mass battle scenes, roles for court scenes? I just don't see why roles are good in combat but not good in other places. I enjoy games with and without defined roles, so I see merits and demerits to the idea of roles. But I see the same merits and demerits in roles everywhere, whether it's in combat or in another type of scene.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm sorry, are you saying that 4E offers no support for nature skills, negotiating and rituals?

No, just that it doesn't support those things as well as it supports, say, the Striker role.

The level of attention the Striker role is paid in the rules obviously, overwhelmingly, trumps the amount of attention that a character designed to be a Negotiator gets.

A Striker has a way to contribute to every combat, in every session.

A Negotiator might not get to roll a Persuasion check for months at a time, depending on the campaign.

There's a disconnect there that doesn't need to be there.

Unless everyone has a chance to contribute in a non-combat encounter, you're NOT going to have DMs actually use said encounter.


Let's take a dungeon-exploration non-combat role. How much can the non-combat "party face" role actually contribute?

It's a pretty simple thing to design non-combat encounters so that every non-combat role can contribute. Heck, they already have a basic system. If I just steal the skeleton of the combat system, it gives me a starting point.

In combat, the Striker will roll CHA vs. Will to do a flashy attack. They deal damage and gain an edge.

In exploration, the "Negotiator" will roll CHA vs. Society to talk her way past some goblins. She makes progress toward the exit and gains a map for later use.

In combat, the Defender will roll STR vs. AC to penetrate the armor. They deal damage and gain an edge.

In exploration, the "Scout" will roll DEX vs. Traps to negotiate the difficult deadfalls and rockslides ahead. He makes progress toward the exit and manages to re-set the trap so that other monsters will have to deal with it.

This isn't impossible, if you make it a goal.

The Monopoly comparison is tired. Monopoly doesn't have a chapter on how to craft a character. 4E does. To say they have equivalent rules-based incentive to roleplay simply isn't true.

It's not an equivalent, but where a minis wargame is one end of a continuum and LARPing is the other, 4e slides you toward the wargame from 3e's ever-so-slightly-more character/world focused stance, because its rules for dealing with things that aren't putting pointy objects into squishy things that scream are more lacking than 3e's were (and 3e's were hardly a bastion of good resolution to begin with, but they were better than a broken Skill Challenge system).

That, ultimately, is the kernel of truth in these "4e feels more like a boardgame"-style observations. They aren't all just gut-reaction 4e-bashing.

And I wouldn't be too surprised to see 4e designers try to handle these concerns in the next 2-3 years. I'd be more surprised if they didn't do anything about it, actually.