Why Changes were made in 4e

[AllisterH]

Are absolutely perfect for real time play. One thing that traditional D&D lacks is alot of movement based/movement hindering tactics, which is precisely what you need when you start adding freeform movement and twitch to the mix. Traditional D&D combat relied on narration more than precise positioning and had elements that just didn't translate well (like full attacks) when you tried to make them anything but abstract. You can see this in the way games like NWN's work.

Most movement powers can be implemented as direct pushes and pulls and are really easy to do, and the rest basically add a single mouse click on activation to 'point' where you want to go. It's not like there aren't existing models of games games of this sort with pushes and pulls.

Traditional D&D combat is the easiest combat system to port to computer rpgs. What made 3e tricky was that like 4e, the combat system is discretely dvidied into specific actions. If you move, you get less attacks which is the problem NWN had to deal with...

Let's say we have a power that pushes someone 3 squares away. In a turn-based grid based game, you can use this to your advantage and setup so that the enemy pushed is in a more beneficial position. so that the NEXT character can then unleash their own attack.

In a real time system, you push a character 5 squares away, you can't setup so that the OTHER character then uses their own power since there's no delay allowing for the person to select the right ability.

Plus you are missing things like like the fact that hindering abilities are very short term in 4e. Getting 'frozen out' of play in a twitchy computer game sucks even worse than it does in PnP.

Er no. The short term nature of hindering abilites doesn't make it hard to code for EITHER turn based OR real timed.

Are actually far far easier to implement in a computer game than they are to track at a table. Setting up triggers and events in a computer game is trivial, and the computer doesn't forget. I mean, this is basically how games work - some event triggers some animated response.

Again, you're missing the idea of CONTROL. Let's say you have an immediate reaction ability but you don't WANT it to trigger ALL the time even if the conditions are met since you only have 1 opportunity to use it. In a real time system, you would have to interrupt the event and basivally freeze the game and say "no, don't trigger now".

Worse, what if you have more than one AND one that actually allows you to basically jump in-between an attack upon a fellow party member?

 

[an_idol_mind]

But seriously, on the whole "out of spells, so call it a day" thing:

I ran into this situation for what might be the first time last week. The party was making an assault on an underground city and the sorcerer was running out of spells and asked to retreat for some rest. However, two party members had been captured, so they had to press on. I had to remind the sorcerer player that her PC had some magic items, including a staff, a wand, some scrolls, and a deck of illusions to fall back on if needed. (Mind you, they reached this point after adventuring well beyond the standard 4 encounters/day paradigm, too.)

The 15-minute adventuring day problem hasn't reared its head in my games much because the monsters don't just wait in a hole in the ground for adventurers to come and kill them. If the PCs retreat and rest, the monsters will either prepare for their return or sometimes track them down and attack as a pre-emptive strike. The "one encounter, rest, one encounter" idea would be a valid tactic, except that each rest potentially ramps up the difficulty of the adventure as a result. Basically, when a group of adventurers first enters a dungeon, they have a bit of a surprise advantage against the critters that weren't expecting them. If they leave, they've made the decision to trade that advantage away in order to replenish their resources. It's a tactical decision that comes with some trade-off.

 

[Imban]

Ariosto, how do you avoid the "15-minute adventuring day" when smart play would seem to suggest that resting to restore spells is the best course of action?

Not Ariosto, but anyway: if you get in the habit of responding to encounters with appropriate force, rather than paving over everything with your highest-level spells as soon as it appears, you won't be screwed when the plot actually instructs you to endure through multiple fights, and there are a lot of reasons that this would happen, from wanting to avoid resting in a dungeon to ambushes to being on the defensive to time limits, only some of which are really avoidable.

The thing is, smart play only suggests that meeting everything with maximum force and then napping is the best course of action when you know you can take a nap afterwards. You don't usually know the story ahead of time in D&D because there's no way to save and reload and reading the module is generally frowned upon, so you really just have your best guess to go on.

(Usually - there are some "abusive" social tactics like making your party so dependent on the 15-minute workday that anything else spells a TPK... which a GM usually doesn't want... and thus he probably won't stop you from taking a 15-minute workday. Sadly this can work for many weaknesses - if you make yourself so totally vulnerable to something you die if it's even mentioned, you're almost immune to it because of the problems including it would create.)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Not Ariosto, but anyway: if you get in the habit of responding to encounters with appropriate force, rather than paving over everything with your highest-level spells as soon as it appears, you won't be screwed when the plot actually instructs you to endure through multiple fights, and there are a lot of reasons that this would happen, from wanting to avoid resting in a dungeon to ambushes to being on the defensive to time limits, only some of which are really avoidable.

The thing is, smart play only suggests that meeting everything with maximum force and then napping is the best course of action when you know you can take a nap afterwards. You don't usually know the story ahead of time in D&D because there's no way to save and reload and reading the module is generally frowned upon, so you really just have your best guess to go on.

(Usually - there are some "abusive" social tactics like making your party so dependent on the 15-minute workday that anything else spells a TPK... which a GM usually doesn't want... and thus he probably won't stop you from taking a 15-minute workday. Sadly this can work for many weaknesses - if you make yourself so totally vulnerable to something you die if it's even mentioned, you're almost immune to it because of the problems including it would create.)

The 15 minute adventure day has never been he big issue when there was no "nap time" guaranteed. Obviously.

But how do you create a scenario without "nap time" consistently in the presence of Rope Trick, Teleport, Leomunds Secure Shelter, Mordekainens Magnificent Mansion and many more? Just ban the spells? What about the Ranger that removes your tracks? Counter with the opposition scrying everyone?

If there is no time limit, just the threat of random encounters or assaults at night, there is also another "easy" trick. Just don't exhaust all your reserves. Just enough to take on one or two encounters, and leave the rest for the night and wandering monsters.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Ariosto, how do you avoid the "15-minute adventuring day" when smart play would seem to suggest that resting to restore spells is the best course of action?

(I can easily see reasons for it, but I'm just wondering what your experience has been.)

Also not Ariosto, but here's another voice saying that "Nova-15" is only smart play when the DM lets it be smart play. I have a great love for the humble magic-user/wizard at low levels, and when playing that part my largest contribution to many encounters is advice and tactics (i.e., the same thing Gandalf provided most often).

When appropriate, the spells come out (and I make sure that divination spells get used, as they are the most powerful in the game.....knowledge is very often superior to firepower when overcoming threats).

If I am out of spells, it's back to advice and tactics, and the occasional staff or dagger attack when needed.

Now, I would agree that this sort of play could get boring using a game system whose encounters are resolved at a glacial pace. Luckily, however, that isn't what I am playing.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

The 15 minute adventure day has never been he big issue when there was no "nap time" guaranteed. Obviously.

But how do you create a scenario without "nap time" consistently in the presence of Rope Trick, Teleport, Leomunds Secure Shelter, Mordekainens Magnificent Mansion and many more? Just ban the spells? What about the Ranger that removes your tracks? Counter with the opposition scrying everyone?

If there is no time limit, just the threat of random encounters or assaults at night, there is also another "easy" trick. Just don't exhaust all your reserves. Just enough to take on one or two encounters, and leave the rest for the night and wandering monsters.

A few notes:

1. You could always take a page from the classic modules. Poison gas that slowly disables you while you try to find a way out of the ruins. The Ghost Tower of Inverness appears for only one night -- you need to do all you are going to do by dawn.

2. Less fantastically, the world continues to move while you nap. In one KotB game, when the PCs withdrew to rest, the orcs evacuated their caves, taking their treasures with them. Perhaps while you are hiding/napping, a rival adventuring group defeats the final foe (since you paved the way) and lays claim to the goods. Better yet, the monsters may get reinforcements, lay traps, cast spells, etc., so that the fight becomes a lot tougher.

Basically, if the PCs nova everything in their path, then rest, the remainder simply vanish, taking their loot with them. After all, it is obvious how powerful the PCs are. If the PCs seem beatable, but are reliant on magic in repeated encounters, the opponents will negate that magic if they can.

Resting gives the monsters a chance to learn from their defeats, and take appropriate actions.

3. "Real Life". If one PC has to make it to his sister's wedding, that's going to affect how long he wants to spend resting in a dank pit. Keeping a calendar, and allowing events to happen while the PCs are away -- events that the PCs might want to engage in -- prevents too much time-wasting during adventures.

4. Wandering Monsters. Leaving enough oomph for one encounter won't help you if, over the course of 8 hours, you have six encounters. Stop to rest only where you are secure.

5. Rest Isn't Bad Per Se. There is nothing wrong with resting from time to time. But part of the fun of the game is weighing the benefits of resting against the costs. Getting caught in the "nova-15" cycle removes this fun. If you find yourself caught in "nova-15" it is because the DM failed to provide sufficient costs to resting, making the benefits automatically outweigh all other considerations.

PCs nova when they expect to be able to rest. Don't make resting into something that can be taken for granted, and you get far less nova-ing, and, consequently, adventuring days that last more than 15 minutes.

(Note that some PCs may die in order to aid their players in learning valuable lessons about not spending it all in one place.)


RC

 

[Hussar]

It was pointed to me that Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale were 2e rules. That's true. However, Baldur's Gate 2 and subsequent additions were 3e rules, as was Icewind Dale 2.

Just sayin'.

 

[Benimoto]

The problem with evaluating whether the 15-minute adventure day was a problem in your personal campaign is that WoTC (probably) wasn't at your house, checking on your campaigns. Where they were gathering information is on the message boards and at conventions like GenCon, where I frequently saw them observing and playing in the RPGA games.

There's no question that the 15-minute adventuring day was a problem on the message boards. That's where the problem was identified and named. It wasn't really as much of a problem in RPGA play, directly, as many modules followed a specific, time-sensitive path where if you waited a day between being ambushed by goblins and meeting with your objective, your objective would move on without you, leaving you stranded. Where it did exist was as a constraint on module writers.

I do see some other, somewhat polarizing 4e design decisions as being influenced directly by RPGA play. The idea that every character must at least not be a hindrance in adventuring and combat seems to have been driven by the experience of sitting down with a random player, only to find out he's taken one level of every class he can. Even the defined roles seem, at least partially, intended to help with taking a mass of 30 characters and dividing them up into 5-6 balanced parties.

With almost every 4e mechanics change, I can probably point to an RPGA experience I had where the 3e mechanics were problematic. But, of course, don't blame the RPGA for 4e's percieved flaws. Pathfinder took the same route, and Buhlman and Mona were both RPGA campaign administrators for years.

I think that if you're trying to analyze why 4e changed what it did, it's important to consider where the designers got their data.

 

[Shemeska]

It was pointed to me that Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale were 2e rules. That's true. However, Baldur's Gate 2 and subsequent additions were 3e rules,

Baldur's Gate 2 and all of its expansions were using 2e rules as well.

 

[Campbell]

It was pointed to me that Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale were 2e rules. That's true. However, Baldur's Gate 2 and subsequent additions were 3e rules, as was Icewind Dale 2.

Just sayin'.

You're half right there. Baldur's Gate 2 used AD&D 2e rules, but added in elements reminiscent of 3e (Sorcerer, Barbarian, Half-Orc).