Instant Friends

[Majoru Oakheart]

To me it feels as wrong as if it said "This spell creates a stone the size of an egg, only much bigger. It then falls on top of your enemy, dealing a lot of pain."

At some tables that spell would auto kill solos, in others would cause 1d4 damage. Doesn't strike me as good design.

This is exactly my point. Just imagine if all of your attack powers said:

Hit: Do as much damage as if a large rock fell on your target's head.

And then you had to rely on your DM's interpretation of what damage a "large rock" does, and exactly how large the rock is, how far that rock fell before hitting the target, and so on.

The reason we don't have powers like that is because it would drive everyone crazy. It's seems that when they write a power that says "The target treats you like his best friend" which is just as ambiguous, no one seems to see the problem with it.

 

[Psikerlord#]

The difference though is that this spell is out of combat. You need combat powers to be more specific (generally) because combat is highly detailed. You don't need that for out of combat. It's the RPG side of things. It's less clear cut, but that's ok... just work it out with your DM. If you can't work it out with your DM ... well... don't choose this power.

 

[I'm A Banana]

When I say that it's up to the DM to determine the usefulness of Instant Friends, that is not carte blanche for the DM to declare the power useless. Especially if they have a player that's actually taken the power. No; the DM has a responsibility to determine what impact, if any, the power has in the given situation.

True. And if the DM determines that, in every situation it is actually used it, it is not actually useful, the DM has (perhaps unwittingly) hosed the player that took the power.

Completely Reasonable Scenario: The DM has planned a dungeon crawl for tonight's adventure, and in comes the level 2 mage with Instant Friends. The mage proceeds to use it on the Goblin Boss, in an attempt to avoid a combat that the party isn't ready for. The DM already has this combat planned out, and is imagining all the traps and minions and the like, and the mage comes along and tries to say "no, this combat does not occur."

So the DM says "Goblins treat their best friends no better than their worst enemies! You are attacked!"

Later, it happens when the mage tries to use it on some Kobold Guardians, and then it happens when the mage tries to use it on the Adult Black Dragon at the center of the dungeon, too. Back in town, the next adventure is a political intrigue, but when the mage uses Instant Friends to hopefully gain some temporary allies in the courtly drama, the DM rules that the courtly tensions a stretched too thin and that kings have killed their best friends historically, so the spell does basically nothing there, too.

The DM, in hoping to preserve the tension of her encounters, has unwittingly hosed the mage. The mage should have taken Shield, which would have been at least useful in the combats that the party had. The mage has kind of wasted their power choice and has felt like they had a useless albatross around their neck for an entire level.

That's pretty rational on the part of the DM. They're not being vindictive, they just don't think that one power should invalidate their entire encounter or skill challenge. That's a pretty reasonable view.

You can't balance powers on the hope that everyone who is playing is sitting down at their table with a Good DM. Because a Good DM can make FATAL playable. That's not good rules design.

Now, it's also old-school rules design, which I think is the operation here. These are the same problems people would have with Charm Person back in the day. It's intentional. It's supposed to bring back that "old school feel," which is part of Essentials.

The problem with this is that, in this case, the "old school feel" results in old-school arguments about how effective the power really should be.

The difference though is that this spell is out of combat. You need combat powers to be more specific (generally) because combat is highly detailed. You don't need that for out of combat. It's the RPG side of things. It's less clear cut, but that's ok... just work it out with your DM. If you can't work it out with your DM ... well... don't choose this power.

Well, my belief is that this magical divide between "combat needs rules" and "not combat needs you just to talk with your DM" is nonexistent.

You need rules for things you want your characters to be doing, because if they have to ask DM permission and risk DM arbitration each time they try to do something, it makes most people not want to bother doing it.

If you want your characters to be able to charm people and enchant enemies and manipulate kings and gods, you need rules for that. If your character is some "Enchanting Wizard" archetype, you want rules for it, because your character is going to be doing it all the time, in many places instead of combat.

Rules give players an expected result for an expected investment. Without knowing what the expected result can be, the investment becomes "too risky." The only way a player knows what the expected result can be with a "DM judgement call" is if their DM is a Good DM. And most DMs are just Average DMs, so most players don't know really waht to expect when they ask their DM to make a judgement call.

 

[Gradine]

I would have a lot to quote here, so I'm just going to address points individually.

[MENTION=10021]kamikaze[/MENTION] Midgit:
Most of your examples represent poor uses of the power, and all of them represent poor DMing. First off, I want to know who's trying to use this power to get out of combats. Seriously, trying it on the goblin boss is bad enough, but a black dragon? These are absurd hyperboles set up as straw arguments. Is the Wizard trying to get this spell in the few seconds before the DM gets to say "The goblins notice you and immediately draw their weapons!"? The DM is well within their rights to say "Sorry, that power does not work in this way." The only way the power would work in this situation is if the Goblin Boss and the PCs were in negotiations, and the only way the DM would allow such negotiations to take place is if they planned (or at the very least imagined and accepted) that there would be a way for players to get out of the fight in the first place.

If the DM says "Well, I put all this work into this combat encounter, so anything you do to try to get out of it will meet with instant failure", then that is vindictive, and poor DMing. Saying that the power takes effect and thereby expending the daily use (as in your example) and then having the goblins attack anyway is even worse. If it was my first time playing with a DM I'd never met before and they pulled that garbage on us, I'm probably not coming back for a second session.

So too is your second example. This political intrigue scenario is obviously something the power was designed to be useful for. Any DM who has to search for excuses for it not to be useful is being vindictive. If I'm designing this sort of scenario, and I've got a Wizard in the party who has the power, I am most definitely taking this into account; thinking about who the Wizard might try to use the power on, and what that power use would benefit. I'll probably design a few "targets" for whom using the power on will greatly aid the party (though leave open the use of skill checks if the Wizard saves the power.) If there are figures for whom using the power on will essentially break the scenario (such as the monarch or powerful duke at the center of the intrigue), then I am doing two things:
1: Protect such NPCs with powerful magic antispies or other magical macguffins that make the power ineffective
2: Provide this information to the PCs (either directly via allied NPCs or through multiple hints) before they get a chance to waste the spell
If the wizard uses the power on someone I hadn't anticipated (and I'd make sure I'm anticipating a lot) then I'll likely fall back on the DM's best friend. This is the kind of planning that should be second nature to DMs. In your example, the DM has decided the power has no use in a situation where it clearly should provide some benefit (even if it's minor), basically on a whim. Once again, this is poor, vindictive DMing. If you don't want to have to put this kind of work into your adventure planning, then just tell your wizard player they can't take the power and be done with it. Don't let the poor schmuck take the power and then constantly make them waste it because you can't be bothered to design encounters around your party's build or, perish the thought, improvise and adjudicate on the spot. Poor planning can still be salvaged by judicious use of the DM's best friend. Saying "Well I don't want it to work so it doesn't, sorry" is vindictive. This is the farthest thing from "rational DMing" and anyone who claims that it is has no clue what the term means.

The only thing "old-school" about the power is that it brings back the open-endedness of magic from older editions. "Old-school arguments" over spells like Charm Person and its more powerful ilk only when poor DMs failed to plan around the fact that their players had access to these spells. I'm not saying we should bring back obvious intrigue-scenario-breakers like Know Alignment or other various mind-reading or mind-controlling stuff, but then Instant Friends is incredibly tame and reasonable in comparison to these.

Good design is not pandering to the lowest common denominator. Any design, good or otherwise, that gets broken as the result of poor DMing is the squarely the fault of the DM. Poor DMing leads to poor games, period.

[MENTION=5656]Someone[/MENTION] (and others)
Your initial example of "rocks fall and maybe somebody dies perhaps" is another ludicrous strawman that is, at best, comparing apples to howitzers. Combat is resolved by a detailed and very clearly defined system based on precise mathematics and numbers, punctuated by tactical choices and dice rolls. Because 4e has a carefully balanced system it requires such precise mathematics, which is obviously why there is not nor will there ever be a "rocks fall and maybe somebody dies perhaps" power.

Noncombat is (or at least should be) primarily resolved through roleplaying. These situations are sometimes aided by skills (and sometimes rituals, feats and powers) but they are, by their very nature, open-ended. They require imagination on the part of the player and improvisational adjudication on the part of the DM. I had assumed (I suppose incorrectly) that this was a given. Skill challenges (and especially social challenges) should not just be the players saying "I use [Skill]" and rolling a d20, followed by the DM feeding them the results. They should be acted out, both by player and DM, as descriptively as the individual in question is capable of mustering. I mean, I'm not wrong, am I? Most 4e games aren't just Battle, Battle, Skill Challenge, Battle, maybe some sparse conversation with an important NPC, Battle, Skill Challenge, Battle, are they?

If I'm right (and I desperately hope, for the sake of the game, that I am), then there is simply no need to hem in every non-combat aspect of the game to anywhere close to same level as combat is. Even the DMG's skill challenges, the most structured non-combat scenario possible, have in every iteration come with the caveat that players will attempt things you hadn't accounted for, and encourage DMs to award players for their creativity appropriately. Non-combat is open-ended by necessity, and thus they absolutely require careful and fair DMG adjudication. That giving players more tools in these scenarios causes more work for the DM is a positively poor reason against giving players more tools. And practically every reason I've seen levied against introducing powers like Instant Friends have been to this effect. The only other reason I could find was the even more absurd declaration that D&D, even in non-combat situations, should look and be played the exact same way at every table.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

As i said: this power is just something to fall back on, if something went wrong...

One scenario where it would be useful:

You try to bypass the guards, which are neither friendly, nor enemies... until you try to get past them using diplomacy or bluff...

if this fails, you use instant friends and now you have 1d4 hours, in which you can do what you were supposed to do...

Not as good as bluffing or sneaking into the castle, but ok...

 

[Someone]

I[MENTION=5656]Someone[/MENTION] (and others)
Your initial example of "rocks fall and maybe somebody dies perhaps" is another ludicrous strawman that is, at best, comparing apples to howitzers.

Perhaps, if you believe my intent was to make a perfect parallel between the two of them, when I wanted to showcase why the spell's wording is so wrong. Someday I'll learn not to make examples or comparisons when postng on forums: people tend to concentrate on the diferences and ignore the point.

Combat is resolved by a detailed and very clearly defined system based on precise mathematics and numbers, punctuated by tactical choices and dice rolls. Because 4e has a carefully balanced system it requires such precise mathematics, which is obviously why there is not nor will there ever be a "rocks fall and maybe somebody dies perhaps" power.[...]

Even the DMG's skill challenges, the most structured non-combat scenario possible, have in every iteration come with the caveat that players will attempt things you hadn't accounted for, and encourage DMs to award players for their creativity appropriately. Non-combat is open-ended by necessity, and thus they absolutely require careful and fair DMG adjudication. And practically every reason I've seen levied against introducing powers like Instant Friends have been to this effect. [...] The only other reason I could find was the even more absurd declaration that D&D, even in non-combat situations, should look and be played the exact same way at every table.

Well, no. This is a big pile of red herring because nobody is talking about making non-combat encounters the same as combat encounters. What I'm saying is that the spell is so badly worded as to be virtually irrelevant. Two DMs, given the same exact situation where Instant Friends is used, can and probably will rule vastly different outcomes as how the spell works. The wording is so vage as to be useless (let's be generous and say virtually useless). The DM, faced with the spell, has to rule based on how powerful it is (2nd level), what should the role of a utility power be in the grand scheme of skill challenges, how unexpected uses of the spell can affect his campaing, and finally, after doing the game's designer job, how much trusted friends do for their buddies, with the unntentional consequence that now the whole continent is populated with kings that woud backstab their best friend before 1d4 hours. Even Thomas Moore lasted more than that.

The fact that you, the DM, has to completely rule the spell's effect from the ground up every single time is cast goes beyond a sing of bad game design and enters the realm of failing at basic communication.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Ok, let's rephrase that a bit for what I'm actually saying:
-A Skill Challenge shouldn't be something that can be resolved in a single check.
-Any challenge that Instant Friends can actually solve on its own is a situation that already is simple enough it would have been more appropriate as a single Diplomacy check than a Skill Challenge.

So you're saying a single Diplomacy check can get someone to treat you as a trusted friend?

If you believe that Instant Friends delivers the effects of a single successful diplomacy check, then it's going to work just fine when your players use it, fitting seamlessly into any skill challenge that you'd accept a use of Diplomacy in. Many other DMs may interpret it differently, leading to it bypassing skill challenges or being more or less useless.

I like your interpretation, and would be pleased to see WotC update the spell to provide a Diplomacy success, and move the 'trusted friend' stuff to the fluff text.

-Only lasts 1d4 hours.
-Subject won't risk life or property.
-Only makes the caster the friend, not the rest of the party.

Don't forget that the subject may react negatively if the power fails or after it wears off. These are all things that were tried - some from the very beginning - to keep the old spells Instant Friends emulates from being problematic. They never worked consistently. Some DMs might really lean on the limitations, or have different feelings about what 'trusted friend' constitutes, and make the spell useless, other's might let it be far too powerful. It's just a badly formed non-mechanic mechanic.

I don't know. Is the difference between 2nd and 10th level that extreme? Should many movement based challenged be made obsolete by the wizard?

Movement-based challenges are typically 'low level.' Take 'climbing a cliff' as a Skill Challenge, cliffs are cliffs, climbing is climbing, before too long, climb checks aren't going to be much of an issue even for those not trained in Athletics - bypassing such a minor inconvenience at 10th level isn't such a big deal. Social Challenges increase in difficulty more smoothly, as the beings you deal with can simply be much highter level. A utility of any level that /helps/ with social skill challenges is fine. One that bypasses them isn't really apropriate at any level.

Honest, I'd simply like to see it a level 6 power instead of level 2. I don't think the actual capability of it is unreasonable in the game, but is a bit much at level 2 compared to some other options.

I can agree that your take on the capability of the spell (delivering a diplomacy success) wouldn't be out of line for a level 6 power.

I'd hate to see it just become another small skill-based thing - honestly, I've found those are harder to reliably tell how it will work from one DM to the next.

Really? So 'make an Arcana Check instead of a Bluff Check,' say, would vary radically from one DM to the next? Skills aren't the most tightly-defined part of the game, with DMs often needing to make judgement call about which skills might be used to accomplish what tasks. So I can understand finding that skills don't always deliver quite the same thing from one DM to the next (you let a single Diplomacy check win a trusted friend, for instance, which seems excessive to me), but as far as /how/ a power that substitutes or modifies a skill check will work varying, I don't see it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

"Old-school arguments" over spells like Charm Person and its more powerful ilk only when poor DMs failed to plan around the fact that their players had access to these spells. I'm not saying we should bring back obvious intrigue-scenario-breakers like Know Alignment or other various mind-reading or mind-controlling stuff, but then Instant Friends is incredibly tame and reasonable in comparison to these.

It's not, though. You can charm Orcus with it. If you were supposed to fight him, that breaks the adventure.

Or the DM rules that you can't charm Orcus with it and breaks your character instead.

Rules that rely on DM quality to arbitrate are not well-designed rules, IMO. Shield doesn't require a "good DM" to get some use out of. The use is built right into the rules for combat, so if a DM uses combat, it will be useful.

Instant Friends is as much a scenario-breaker as Know Alignment and Fly are.

 

[Gradine]

It's not, though. You can charm Orcus with it. If you were supposed to fight him, that breaks the adventure.

Or the DM rules that you can't charm Orcus with it and breaks your character instead.

Rules that rely on DM quality to arbitrate are not well-designed rules, IMO. Shield doesn't require a "good DM" to get some use out of. The use is built right into the rules for combat, so if a DM uses combat, it will be useful.

Instant Friends is as much a scenario-breaker as Know Alignment and Fly are.

Stop saying that you can charm Orcus with it. You can't, unless you happen to be a higher level than is currently supported by the game. And even that is assuming Orcus doesn't just try to crush you on sight. This has been stated countless times on this thread, by more people than just me.

Rules that require DM quality to arbitrate are necessarily a part of any tabletop roleplaying game in general and D&D in particular; especially in noncombat scenarios.

I have already demonstrated exactly how Instant Friends is only a scenario-breaker if the DM lets it be and you have yet again completely ignored me. You can't just restate your unsupported claims while ignoring the ways in which I've refuted them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Stop saying that you can charm Orcus with it. You can't, unless you happen to be a higher level than is currently supported by the game.

Sure you can, you just have to have some sort of aplicable save penalty. It'd have to be a /really/ big penalty or just you're hoping he'll roll a '1,' but it's theoretically possible.