D&D 4E What Doesn't 4E Do Well?

[Nifft]

The worst thing you can do in a skill challenge is to roll a skill that's bad (not trained, low ability score). A naive player who assumes that he should "just try the most relevant skill for the sake of it" may result in the party having a very low chance to succeed at a skill challenge that's a very likely bet if the players stick to their best skills.

Agree. If you can Aid Another in a skill challenge -- and maybe you can, I'm not going to argue that either way -- then the optimal solution is to always do exactly that, every round, until you have safely finished it.

And that's boring.

Cheers, -- N

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Agree. If you can Aid Another in a skill challenge -- and maybe you can, I'm not going to argue that either way -- then the optimal solution is to always do exactly that, every round, until you have safely finished it.

And that's boring.

Cheers, -- N

Which is of course why I have been arguing with KD that it doesn't seem at all logical that the designers intended every single skill check to be automatically cooperative and allow aiding. In fact it seems it really should be pretty rare that a skill allows that and is NOT a "Group Skill" where a lead PC is explicit. Not that I never allow it but in general allowing it on primary skills leads to exactly what you're saying, the characters sit back and just aid one guy over and over on one skill.

The problem with the idea that secondary skills REALLY make much sense at all for PCs to use KD is that aiding is so massively easy. Its a DC10, which means a character with even a modicum of skill bonus there is going to succeed on his aid check with a high probability. Once you hit paragon its virtually a sure thing for most characters and even a totally incompetent character will have a 75% chance success rate with it. By the time you consider a likely small stat bonus, racial bonus, background bonus, etc few paragon characters have less than a +7 or +8 in their worst skills. By contrast they are likely to have a lower success rate even with a well-trained skill on a hard DC and could chalk up a failure by risking it. The aid OTOH is stacking a +2 on the guy with the best skill check bonus on a standard DC and thus its better to just go slower and take only these checks that are very certain.

So yeah, a character COULD use a secondary skill, but the math VS aiding is practically never in their favor unless they have a really maxed skill and are low enough level that the DC 10 to aid is a poor choice. That's pretty rare.

Anyway, the upshot is, regardless of what the rules status of aid is as Nifft says, it really shouldn't be allowed in most cases. Instead designate a Group Skill Check if appropriate and at least make them all roll a real DC and not the silly 10.

 

[Elric]

Agree. If you can Aid Another in a skill challenge -- and maybe you can, I'm not going to argue that either way -- then the optimal solution is to always do exactly that, every round, until you have safely finished it.

And that's boring.

Cheers, -- N

Right. Even if you can't Aid Another (edit: and it seems like you can in the rules as written; otherwise, why would Mike Mearls talk about the problems Aid Another causes for skill challenges in this podcast- about 10 minutes in?), there's no reason to ever roll a bad skill.

If you can't Aid Another, you just shouldn't roll a check that could give a failure result unless you're very good at the skills with likely easier DCs for the challenge. If you have to roll a check just for being there; you can't simply go away so you're not physically present, or sit out despite being present, you should figure out a way to use your best skill. Again, to quote the DMG update:

Step 3: Skills
Page 73: In the first sentence of the fourth paragraph, replace “When a player’s turn comes up in a skill challenge” with “When a player participates in a skill challenge.”

When a player participates in a skill challenge, let that player’s character use any skill the player wants. As long as the player or you can come up with a way to let this secondary skill play a part in the challenge, go for it. If a player wants to use a skill you didn’t identify as a primary skill in the challenge, however, then the DC for using that secondary skill is usually moderate or hard. The use of the skill might win the day in unexpected ways, but the risk is greater as well. In addition, a secondary skill can never be used by a single character more than once in a challenge.”

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right. Even if you can't Aid Another (edit: and it seems like you can in the rules as written; otherwise, why would Mike Mearls talk about the problems Aid Another causes for skill challenges in this podcast- about 10 minutes in?), there's no reason to ever roll a bad skill.

If you can't Aid Another, you just shouldn't roll a check that could give a failure result unless you're very good at the skills with likely easier DCs for the challenge. If you have to roll a check just for being there; you can't simply go away so you're not physically present, or sit out despite being present, you should figure out a way to use your best skill. Again, to quote the DMG update:

Naturally, and then secondary skills entirely make sense as a possible option. There are just going to be times though when you have to risk it and make a roll that is less than ideal. There certainly will be challenges where a given PC logically is going to just sit out. That was one good thing about Obsidian, it didn't really matter one way or the other.

 

[Alex319]

Two more things that I see as problems:

1. The encounter building advice in the DMG is entirely based on answering the question "I want to make an encounter that's (easy/medium/hard/impossible) for my party of level X. What monsters/traps/skill DCs are about right?" Where what I think a lot of people want more advice on is "My party of level X is in situation Y. How hard is it for them to get out of it?" For example, I remember reading one thread somewhere where the OP asked "How do you stat out the town guard?" and the advice was along the lines of "Well, if you want them to be minor nuisances, make them minions, if you want them to be a tough fight, make them a full combat encounter, etc...). But part of the problem is that in that situation, that assumes that the DM has some predefined role that they want the town guard to play, when in reality what some DMs want is something that will allow them to figure out how hard it should be based on game world considerations.

2. A major design flaw I see is the way they tried to balance out the attack/defense progression with "+1 per level" on the monsters' side of the equation with a whole series of bonuses on the players' side - the +1/2 level, plus magic item bonuses, plus feats, plus stat bumps, etc. This leads to a whole host of kludgy hacks to make the math work (and even then it doesn't work all the time) such as:

(a) Masterwork armor. It's needed to allow heavy armor users to keep pace with light armor users following stat bumps, but it's caused probably more confusion than any other element of the game.

(b) Non-weapon/implement attacks like Dragon Breath need that tier-scaled bonus (+2/+4/+6) to remain competitive at higher levels.

(c) Things like grabs, bull rushes, and improvised maneuvers become very hard to hit with at higher levels, because they don't get a lot of the boosts (like item bonuses) that regular attacks get.

(d) Since PCs depend so much on their weapon bonuses to hit at high levels, effects which deprive PCs of their weapons are extremely powerful, and thus by necessity very rare. Considering all the threads about reintroducing disarm rules, that seems to be something that is missed by a lot of people.

(e) At higher levels, the spread between high and low NADs becomes much higher because people upgrade the same two stats on each "+1 to two" stat bump, so the NADs attached to those stats increase faster. Thus you have the "The enemy hits my Reflex on a 3 or higher" problem.

(f) All of the so called "feat tax" feats - Expertise, etc. (Those have been discussed to death elsewhere so I won't say anything else about them.)

(g) Classes and builds that use both weapon and implement powers need to be able to use their weapons as implements to keep up (otherwise they would have to pay twice as much to get both a magic weapon and a magic implement, and then keep swapping them.) Thus you have more complexity and confusion about when you can use weapons as implements and which weapon powers function when the weapon is used as an implement, etc.

(h) The "magic threshold" rules for when a monster is wielding a magic item. Again, necessary for balance (since the monster's listed attacks/defenses already include enough to counteract players' magic items, so adding extra would just make them even more powerful) but again causes confusion and makes the game world make a little less sense.

(i) Even classes whose shtick is "unarmed fighting" like the Monk still need weapons/implements in order to get their attack bonuses. This makes a true "class that fights without needing items" hard to make in the system.

---
The "inherent bonus" rules in DMG2 do fix some of this, but not all of it. For example, it doesn't fix the "masterwork armor" thing.

 

[Elric]

Two more things that I see as problems:

1. The encounter building advice in the DMG is entirely based on answering the question "I want to make an encounter that's (easy/medium/hard/impossible) for my party of level X. What monsters/traps/skill DCs are about right?" Where what I think a lot of people want more advice on is "My party of level X is in situation Y. How hard is it for them to get out of it?" For example, I remember reading one thread somewhere where the OP asked "How do you stat out the town guard?" and the advice was along the lines of "Well, if you want them to be minor nuisances, make them minions, if you want them to be a tough fight, make them a full combat encounter, etc...). But part of the problem is that in that situation, that assumes that the DM has some predefined role that they want the town guard to play, when in reality what some DMs want is something that will allow them to figure out how hard it should be based on game world considerations.

Why is this hard? Just invert the monster guidelines. "I want the guards to be level 5 soldiers; there are 6 of them in a typical patrol, so that's a level+3 encounter for my party of five level 3 characters."

Minions might be different because of the scale of the threat; simple rule: if a monster would be >=4 levels below the party, convert it to a minion at +8 levels instead (which keeps the ~same XP value). Edit: the same should also be true of monsters that would be too many levels above the party as envisioned- convert to Elites and/or solos. Actually making conversions, or finding monsters to re-skin, could be a bit difficult. These kind of conversions being necessary is kind of antithetical to a sandbox game, but given the +1 attack/defenses at each level, the system simply won't work for party level -6 or party level +9 monsters otherwise.

Do you want the DMG to set standards like "town guards in general are [this powerful]"? It seems like the DM is better suited to that, though specific adventures/settings might have descriptions of what each town's guards consist of.

(a) Masterwork armor. It's needed to allow heavy armor users to keep pace with light armor users following stat bumps, but it's caused probably more confusion than any other element of the game.

(b) Non-weapon/implement attacks like Dragon Breath need that tier-scaled bonus (+2/+4/+6) to remain competitive at higher levels.

(c) Things like grabs, bull rushes, and improvised maneuvers become very hard to hit with at higher levels, because they don't get a lot of the boosts (like item bonuses) that regular attacks get.

(f) All of the so called "feat tax" feats - Expertise, etc. (Those have been discussed to death elsewhere so I won't say anything else about them.)

You've probably seen proposals along these lines, but here's a math fix house rule that gets (at least partly at) the above issues:
1) At levels 5, 15, and 25, characters get +1 to hit and to each defense (including AC).

2) The feats Weapon Expertise, Implement Expertise, Focused Expertise (to-hit bonus) and Robust Defenses/Epic Fortitude/Reflexes/Will (Fort/Ref/Will bonuses) are banned.

3) Masterwork Light Armors do not exist.
Masterwork Heavy Armors are as follows:
+1 additional bonus to AC for heavy armor with a +2 magic enhancement bonus
+2 additional bonus to AC for heavy armor with a +3 or +4 magic enhancement bonus
+3 additional bonus to AC for heavy armor with a +5 magic enhancement bonus
+4 additional bonus to AC for heavy armor with a +6 magic enhancement bonus

This is a math fix for well known scaling issues; characters lose 4 to hit (compared to monster defenses), 2 to AC (compared to monster to-hit), and 4-7 to FRW defenses (compared to monster to-hit) over 29 levels. Doing it this way also removes the need for Masterwork Light Armor, which was an ungainly fix in the first place (I see the need for Masterwork Heavy Armors to keep up with ability scaling). Note that AC in the default rules, using AV/PH II MW armor, still falls behind monster to-hit by 3 for many levels (even by 4, if you don’t get +6 armor until level 28), while in my fix it never falls behind more than 2 if you get better enhancement armor at levels ending in 3/8.

If you dislike the concept of Masterwork Heavy Armor, you can make this extra AC bonus an inherent part of the enhancement bonus for magic heavy armors. Same effect, different flavor.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

2. A major design flaw I see is the way they tried to balance out the attack/defense progression with "+1 per level" on the monsters' side of the equation with a whole series of bonuses on the players' side - the +1/2 level, plus magic item bonuses, plus feats, plus stat bumps, etc. This leads to a whole host of kludgy hacks to make the math work

Except this is simply the way RPGs ARE. There is always a power curve. The power curve on bonuses in 4e is actually IDENTICAL to what it was in all past editions. Fighters in Old D&D, 1e, and 2e got a +1/2 levels to hit, other classes get a slightly lower progression but also mostly had spells which gave a save progression of about +1/2 levels. Its funny that people criticize the '4e math', but its the same math that existed in all previous editions of the game. It was just a little bit hidden under the hood.

The problem with say flattening this curve more than it is now is that the curve steepness is really set by the most powerful thing you are going to ever fight in the game and the rate of progression players need to stay interested. The game could end when you get up to fighting say Ogres and getting there could be a much flatter progression, though each level gained would be pretty trivial. The game could have 500 levels of play, but for characters to progress acceptably to keep players interested you'd be leveling up once an hour. Sure the curve would be shallow either way, but I'm kind of skeptical those would be as interesting games as what we do have.

The problem with having monsters and PCs use exactly the same progression is that they are not exactly the same kind of thing. Suppose the PCs had +1 per level just like the monsters do. There would be no room at all left over for bonuses of any kind. You couldn't have a single solitary +1 to-hit added on to the character in its entire 30 levels beyond that. Even if you DID add a couple of pluses that would just mean you're math is broken again.

There really weren't much in the way of viable design choices open to the 4e designers once the basic game concept of a level based game with armor class and a d20 hit mechanic are established. Things pretty much only work one way from there.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yes. I absolutely wouldn't describe the concept as a design flaw, more like a design "genius" - since it allows you to keep monster statistics simple but give the players a lot of opportunity to tweak stuff and set different focuses.

The flaw might be more in the detail. The Expertise feats - are they required, are they optional, it doesn't matter. They change the math between PHB 1 and PHB 2. I would not be surprised if they considered 3 points a marginal difference to not bother, nor would I be surprised if they always planned for the feat but wanted to have them in PHB 2. (Just like Adventurer's Vault added missing masterwork armor.). (at least in the latter case, we can be reasonably certain the math is working as intended now.)

Another detail is how the "bad" defenses improve over level. They don't keep up their pace, so if you started weak, you end even weaker compared to threats on your level.

And finally as a third aspect - it seems skills were a little neglected in "the math". Magic Items, racial bonuses, feats, and ability increases can create a wide gap. (Of course, still nothing compared to having or not having a +10 bonus from a magical item on Disable Device or not.). But, at least the bonuses to skills from magical items improve at the same pace as Defense and Attack bonuses.

 

[Alex319]

The flaw might be more in the detail.

That's what I was trying to say. The fact that there's a power curve isn't the problem. The problem is all the different bonuses that have to line up right in order to make the power curve work.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's what I was trying to say. The fact that there's a power curve isn't the problem. The problem is all the different bonuses that have to line up right in order to make the power curve work.

Well, we could argue endlessly of course as to how well the various bonuses stack up in 4e for players to create the existing curve and if every different element of characters does (or should) fall on exactly the same curve. 4e did a great favor to the game in general by hanging its mechanics out there for everyone to see very plainly at least.

I guess my point is IMHO its hard to say "4e does this badly" when basically it seems to do it a LOT better than previous editions did. I mean it was VERY hard to say in a 1e or 2e game whether or not your fighter aught to have a +2 weapon or not at some given level. You could unravel the math of the game but since monsters had no defined power level that was at all meaningful there was nothing to compare to except to say "well, I can hit the monsters that we usually face pretty often". I can remember a lot of 1e/2e games where getting a hit with a melee attack was pretty hopeless. There were other cases where it became trivially easy too. Often you'd have characters in the same party at both extremes vs the same monster.

Things seem much better now. At least you can tweak things and know more or less what the ramifications are.