D&D 4E 4e and reality

[Plane Sailing]

When I say "simulationism" I mean what Ron Edwards calls "purist for system" simulationism. Paradigms are Rolemaster, Runequest and Classic Traveller. The idea is that the game mechanics are a model of the causal processes of the gameworld. This is the logic that gives us the 3E grapple rules. It is also the logic that can't cope with powers like "Come and Get It".

Interesting observation, not least because it coincides with my position on games - it turns out that I like "purist for system" simulation games and play them by choice.

I wonder if it is because I played that sort of game first?

 

[Plane Sailing]

Unfortunately, this isn't true at all. The rules are presented as more sacrosant in 4e. When various conditions don't make sense you're encouraged to follow the rules not common sense. When in previous editions it was considered normal that odd "powers" might not work as expected (say, trip on a gelatinous cube) or at all, now players are encouraged to feel entitled for their powers to work as written.

Out of interest, where in the rules does it present this? Is it in the PHB or the DMG?

I can't remember reading this presentation and encouragement, and I'd love to read it up.

Thanks

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

How often is it important to grab a swarm? How often is it important to trip an ooze? There's nothing wrong with banning those occurences by means of immunities - or when you forget to, to suggest the rules should be ignored rather than the fluff in odd cases.

It can be important. Possible very important. Let's say you are a grappler fighter. The entire point of your character is that you grab things and move them to positions where they can't harm the rest of your group. You really like the idea of your character as a sort of "wrestler" so you don't carry any big weapons with you and you pick all powers that grab enemies, move around grabbed enemies, and can only target grabbed enemies.

Now, you run into a solo ooze or solo swarm. You start the combat the way you always do. You use your at-will power that grabs them until the end of the next turn so you can follow up next round with your attack that moves the grabbed target away and slams them into a wall to get it out of reach of the wizard and the archer in your party. Your DM says "You can't grab an ooze or a swarm. I just won't allow it, it makes the game make no sense."

So, now, you have 2 or 3 encounter powers that don't work at all. Possibly a daily or two which don't work, and at at-will power that reads "Do a basic attack against the enemy" since it doesn't allow you to grab anymore.

Your turn reduces itself to "Pick up a d20 and make a basic attack". This lowers the damage the party outputs (since you can't do any 2[w] or 3[w] attacks, they all require you to have the enemy grabbed) enough that the monster survives an extra round or two. Also, your main method of defending(dragging enemies away) doesn't work, so the enemy can make attacks against the wizard every single round.

This can make the difference between the wizard living and dying in some cases. It's kind of a big deal. Plus, it's no fun to have no options.

But that's just one example. Imagine you are playing a wizard who loves fire. You only get so many choices, so you picked ALL your powers to do fire damage. You run into a fire elemental. It has resistance to fire normally, but your DM has decided that "realism" dictates that the enemy can't be harmed at all by fire. Your character then can do absolutely nothing to help out in the combat. Not only is it no fun to sit there and say "I do nothing...OR, maybe I could swing my dagger at it...I can only hit on a 19 or 20 and even if I hit I do 1d4 points of damage. What's the point?" but without your damage contributing, there's a very real chance the monster kills your party.

Contrast that to what happens if you ignore the fluff instead of the rules: Some people's sensibilities are hurt.

Immunities and other wholesale changes are particularly bad when they pervade the system for little reason (*ahem* solo's...). When used in moderation to support the description and narrative, they're fine.

Immunities to any sort of damage are absolutely bad. You never know when you'll stomp on a character that way. Immunity to sneak attacks in 3e caused players to actually quit a game I was running because it frustrated them so much. But it made perfect sense in the narrative.

Also, I'm not sure what immunities solos have. There's nothing they share at all other than a general resistance to daze and stun which is because the game can become nearly 0 fun in the other direction when they are defeated too easily because of these powers.

You don't need 3e's approach of deriving as much as possible from first principles to have consistency. You can have a simple game and a believable game. That's what we can aim for - we don't need to willfully discard any believability just because we can't achieve perfect believability, especially since there's so little to be gained and so much to lose by giving it up.

The thing is, what each person finds believable is different from each other person. That's why it's impossible to have both believability, consistency, and balance at the same time. You have to sacrifice at least one. And the more believable you make the game to you, the less believable it becomes for someone else whose opinion differs from yours. And the problem with believability is that it is often unbalanced.

 

[Aegeri]

Out of interest, where in the rules does it present this? Is it in the PHB or the DMG?

I can't remember reading this presentation and encouragement, and I'd love to read it up.

Thanks

It comes from the PHB FAQ entry on the Wizards site, which asks "Can an ooze be knocked prone". The response is simply to say that it can be knocked prone and that the condition is just representative - something else happens to it like it is knocked out of shape or similar conferring the same effective penalty. Personally I don't mind this at all and it makes consistent logical mechanics.

How often is it important to grab a swarm? How often is it important to trip an ooze? There's nothing wrong with banning those occurences by means of immunities - or when you forget to, to suggest the rules should be ignored rather than the fluff in odd cases.

Often extremely important in both cases. The brawler fighter becomes a neutered worthless defender when swarms can't be grabbed. Many powers become pointless when you can't knock something prone. The odd creature having the odd resistance, immunity or difference is fine though. Whole groups of creatures being immune/resistant to X condition makes for problematic class and power balance. Something that 4E as a whole tries to avoid and it's a very good thing. To me, sacrificing "fluff" is perfectly fine if it makes for a better and more playable game. Where I do make exemptions, they should be for the benefit for the game and not just because I feel it should be that way. Swarms might be difficult to grab, but there is no mechanical reason they need that immunity and so making a whole bunch of monsters blanket immune doesn't make for a more fun combat. Therefore there is no reason for them (or me to remember) they are immune to being grabbed. Same with knocking an ooze prone (there is no tripping in 4E) - there is no mechanical reason they need that immunity and it doesn't make combats with oozes any more fun.

The exception is solos and elites. I feel they need their action economy protected, so ways of dealing with being dazed, stunned and dominated. They need these because they represent multiple monsters at the same time and when you don't, being "locked down" makes for a boring, uninteresting and not very fun combat. Hence, the mechanics need to support that. Knocking an ooze prone doesn't trivialize a fight and make it boring - PCs like their powers actually doing something. Being able to permanently stun lock a solo into doing nothing and trivializing the entire encounter makes it completely boring - so mechanics need to address these things. Specific monsters that mix up mechanics therefore become interesting: Like the tembo that cannot be affected by forced movement and is difficult to knock prone. Or the Earthquake Dragons mark and prone mechanic. The high level guardian daemon that is flat out immune to stun is another example. These become interesting monsters and distinct from everything else - without feeling unfair or denying PCs the use of their powers (one reason I don't mind of solos and elites having more uncommon resistances is because such encounters are not the norm in 4E).

Immunities to any sort of damage are absolutely bad. You never know when you'll stomp on a character that way. Immunity to sneak attacks in 3e caused players to actually quit a game I was running because it frustrated them so much. But it made perfect sense in the narrative.

Also, I'm not sure what immunities solos have. There's nothing they share at all other than a general resistance to daze and stun which is because the game can become nearly 0 fun in the other direction when they are defeated too easily because of these powers.

I couldn't agree with this more. Poison damage in 4E, due to the fact 90% of undead and a lot of other monsters are immune to it makes it virtually pointless for a lot of characters to take without feat investment.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Out of interest, where in the rules does it present this? Is it in the PHB or the DMG?

I can't remember reading this presentation and encouragement, and I'd love to read it up.

It never actually says this. However, it encourages making up your own descriptions for your powers. Also, in the FAQ it says that oozes can be knocked prone since "prone" doesn't need to mean actually prone, you can just apply the same penalties as prone and require the same type of action to get up.

 

[eamon]

[...]

What that experience told me is that "common sense" isn't nearly as common as we'd like to think. One DM thought that if you could grab someone then they'd be completely unable to attack until they could get out. He felt the best rule to simulate this was the person with the highest strength won. This meant that anyone with an 18 strength pretty much could say "I grab him" and disable any enemy. It was better than attacking enemies by far. Since he would let someone instantly slay anyone being held. After all, you could just cut their necks. Seemed to be common sense to him.

[...]

And as soon as you start to go down that road, it begins to make more sense to get rid of "realism" to replace it with balance. You really can't have both. Realism encourages imbalance by its very nature.

The way I read your (nice read, btw!) story is that standardization is worthwhile. I see no reason why you can't have balance - however, that balance may not be due to equality but due to differing strengths. Indeed, the way you put it, the 3e effort to enhance repeatability and predictability is in some senses motivation not to undermine but to promote "realism": the idea that the equivalent of the physical laws of the game world are not constantly in flux and that the characters within it should have a reasonable idea of what happens when they try what.

This kind of predictability and fairness enhances both balance and realism to a point.

Balance is fun particularly when it's non-trivial (e.g. SC2). In 4e, PC's are supposed to have different strengths and weaknesses, and that's made somewhat explicit by the roles. It's already the case that swarms are less affected by melee and ranged attacks - why doesn't this disturb the balance? Because it's OK for PC's to have differing strength's and weaknesses, as long as the overall game is balanced.

 

[corwyn77]

What, being prone somehow makes me unable to aim my sword between your legs and *ahem* as you rush recklessly above me? That doesn't make any sense. (I do let combatants move through each other, prone or not, but I give the passive party CA against the one foolish enough to provoke an OA.)

As to the on-the-fly diagonal movement rule, yeah that'd probably irritate me. But the square grid irritates me in general, which is why I use a hex grid.

Sorry, not trying to threadjack, but...

How do you deal with large and larger creatures? Especially when it comes to flanking.

 

[eamon]

The thing is, what each person finds believable is different from each other person. That's why it's impossible to have both believability, consistency, and balance at the same time. You have to sacrifice at least one. And the more believable you make the game to you, the less believable it becomes for someone else whose opinion differs from yours. And the problem with believability is that it is often unbalanced.

I think you're overstating your case. For example with the grabbed swarms and tripped oozes, AFAIK everyone acknowledges that these things don't make sense straightforwardly and require some new fluff to make it work (and for swarms, lots of different, inconsistent fluff has been suggested).

We're all human. What's believable or not does not differ as dramatically from person to person as you claim; although some don't mind as much. And I'm not asking for perfect believability - I'm asking for it to remain on the agenda at all. For example, swarms generally take half damage from ranged and melee attacks. That particularly protection strikes me as a little arbitrary and probably a little weak. But it doesn't matter - what matters is that the resistance makes sense and is in the right general direction. I think the basic approach as evidenced in the game design and the FAQ answer is unhealthy because it teaches that the fluff is irrelevant.

We play D&D primarily because of the flavor and the fluff. Things that undermine that really do undermine the game at a fundamental level for me and certainly a few others.

 

[Aegeri]

It's already the case that swarms are less affected by melee and ranged attacks - why doesn't this disturb the balance?

Because swarms are directly on the flipside vulnerable to bursts and blasts - something that even a melee fighter can get with a power like come and get it. Being immune to prone is, just "immune to prone" or "immune to grab". Additionally you've missed the core point that some of the ways some characters inherently function is based on conditions like grab. If you make swarms immune to grab, there is an entire character build that is suddenly utterly worthless in the entire fight (as an example). A more interesting rule would make it so that a grabbed swarm does something to whoever is grabbing it (enhanced damage or similar).

This is more interesting mechanically and gameplay wise. It doesn't invalidate and make an entire player at the table worthless that encounter. He'll take more damage sure, but his character still actually functions and isn't as useful as having effectively a dood who rolls a d20 for a pittance of damage every round. This is one reason I love that the volcanic dragon is *not* resistant or immune to fire, instead having another mechanic that deals with someone who hits it with a fire power. It's more interesting and produces a more mechanically distinct fight than "This makes X powers useless" or "This is just ignored anyway" (as is often the case with straight damage resistance/immunity).

Immunities to conditions should be exceptional or particularly justified mechanically. It reminds me of sneak attack in 3rd edition, I have a penchant for undead, constructs and similar in that campaign. I remember how frustrated/bored the rogue player got when he was useless 90% of the time. Likewise, in 4E my list of monsters that my players hated the most are all condition immune in some manner. All of them were justified such as being powerful solos or specific monsters - but they were not the norm. It made them stand out from the chaff as exceptional and special. When all the chaff are immune to conditions willy nilly "just because we feel it should be that way" it just doesn't make this interesting anymore. It also means PCs have to play a guessing game as to what powers will work half the time - turning DnD into a "guess what conditions work" game like Final Fantasy. Not something I approve of.

We play D&D primarily because of the flavor and the fluff.

I play DnD because I absolutely love the consistency and balance in the combat system in 4th edition. I love the tactical gameplay and how it all fits together. The story, setting and other aspects on top of this is something that I find adds to it and I love - but I love good challenging tactical battles. Story and the feeling of the world drive those combats for me, justifying them and tying everything together from a narrative point of view. PCs with an invested stake in those battles is important, otherwise there is no reason to fight them but the mechanics have to back that fight up. Your immense badass needs to be an immense badass, if he falls over in one round that's not fun and satisfying for anyone. What I want from a game like DnD - as opposed to say Call of Cthulhu or Promethean the Created - is very fun tactical combat that represents hitting monsters and taking their stuff. Being balanced, fun and consistent in that is a good thing - a large amount of exception based immunities doesn't help that much.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The way I read your (nice read, btw!) story is that standardization is worthwhile.

In some ways, yes. The problem is that "realism" actually is an enemy of standardization. I mean, realistically, a guy twice my size who was trained in fighting and was really strong could beat the crap out of me, hands down. Likely, even if I had the super power to wave my hands in the air and roast him. He'd be faster than me and would likely have me down before I could even think about lifting my hands to start casting a spell.

That's the way "realism" works. It causes somewhat random interpretations. If you have a power that grabs someone, can you use it on a fire elemental? How about a frost giant? A dire wolf? An imp? An ooze? A swarm of rats?

I bet if you ask 20 people those questions, you'll get 20 different sets of answers. But that's because they are all attempting to use "realism". And they all have a different set of standards when it comes to "realism".

I see no reason why you can't have balance - however, that balance may not be due to equality but due to differing strengths.

There are two types of balance. One says that you will have different strengths and weaknesses and your strengths will be so powerful as to be overwhelming, and your weaknesses are so weak as you make you nearly useless to make up for your strengths.

This is the method 1e-3.5e used to balance the classes. They said "You may be a wizard and capable of destroying 20 enemies with one spell, but one hit and you die. And if anyone ties your hands, grapples you, or puts a gag on you, you'll be as weak as a baby."

It causes massive swinginess. It causes things like "I'm sorry, Rogue. The party is headed into an ancient dungeon with no traps. It has oozes, constructs, and undead. You will feel completely useless for the next 30 or 40 hours that we play. But don't worry, I'm sure you'll feel much more useful when you go into a different dungeon filled with traps that the party couldn't get past without your help."

The other form of balance involves each player being nearly equally useful in all situations. Which is the method 4e uses. You may do slightly less damage against that fire elemental because you chose fire spells, but you aren't going to feel useless.

Because it's OK for PC's to have differing strength's and weaknesses, as long as the overall game is balanced.

It's ok for there to be strengths and weaknesses as long as the difference between the strengths and weaknesses don't vary too much from the baseline. Generally a 25% shift in damage up or down doesn't unbalance the game.

On the other hand, the difference between doing 50 damage and 5 damage(or worse yet, 0 damage) is immense and overwhelming. So is the difference between being able to do 10 damage to one creature as your average attack compared to being able to instantly kill 10 enemies at once with an 80% success ratio as a fairly average attack.

Part of the balance in 4e was to get everyone closer to the baseline at all times.

Otherwise you end up with situations like the examples I gave above. Although, that might qualify as "overall game balance", it will be very little comfort to the Rogue who has to do nearly no damage for the next month or two of play.