The "real" reason the game has changed.

[shadzar]

But, I'm curious how narrative control is given to the DM due to natural healing rules. In what way does the DM gain any control under the older systems?

The DM never really controls the narrative, just an outline of the plot.

The players have total control over the narrative as it is through their actions that the plot comes to life.

You explain greatly how one narrative is lost. A hero coming back from near death being bedridden. Sure the party leaving you behind isnt the most enjoyable things but payback is a...well you know.

So there is a LOT of narrative that could come from that alone, or fights and arguments, if the players are willing to work together.

Many people argue that a PC missing a limb doesnt help the party, but finding a replacement limb or someway to replace it when the magic isnt there to just give it back leaves many stories to be told.

Consider also those dreaded things that most players wish were gone form the game, time sensitive missions. With 4th, those are removed form being harder challenges by the healing system. Sure they have to manage their resources, but not as carefully should there be a risk to something not getting done on time.

Many good stories revolve around things being done in a certain amount of time, and as for cinematics are concerned, these sorts of movies make people more on the edge of their seats when the risk is added to by their being a time limit.

So a good nights rest to recover easily prevents those sorts of stories, and the players would have to figure a way to raise the tension, or just have the DM hinder them with other things that might not make sense which makes the delay seem forced.

Whether your or another's preferred story, it does shift what types of stories can be told.

 

[Imaro]

Do the 4e rules require that I have thieves tools to open a lock?

Do the 3e rules require that I have thieves tools to open a lock?

Unless I'm sticking the spoon into the lock, it's not an improvised tool under even the most lenient interpretation of the rules. A 3e rogue simply cannot, under the rules, do a Fonzerelli bump on the lock and have it spring open. A 4e character can. That's the difference.

First... again whether the spoon can or can't count as an improvised tool is based upon a particular campaigns flavor... so yes, technically you can pick a lock without thieve's tools... but you will have to come up with something plausible (as determined by tone/mood/etc. of your DM's campaign) as an improvised tool... this could be anything from a magical spoon to a jagged rock... depending on the DM.

Wait... are you arguing that being able to somehow pick a lock naked and with no tools... at first level... is a good thing? I'm just checking...

 

[pemerton]

Wait... what? Where is the option to permanently blind a character in one eye at zero hit points in 4e?

There is no such option in the published rules (although I think there might be in a recent number of Dragon - I don't subscribe but saw some thread traffic about it).

In the post I quoted I was alluding back to a previous post in which I said that introducing such an option into 4e would be completely trivial - because there is already a mechanical place in the game at which just that sort of decision must be made by a player. It wouldn't require any new mechanical subsystem, and it would have zero effect on the mechanical balance of play.

AD&D had the advantage to ADDING things that would cause the los of an eye, wherein 4th and its daily healing routine does not let for those things to be possible without stringing the healing mechanics.

Infections while healing, no antibiotics, etc. None of those matter to 4th sicne all such non-magical hinderances are removed the next day.

Two responses.

First, what you say about 4e is not true. Diseases are a non-magical hindrance that, per the mechanics, can easily get worse over time. If you wanted to introduce infection into 4e, you could easily do so by ruling that the PCs are exposed to a disease (let's say Filth Fever - it's pretty generic) every time they fight in a dungeon.

Second, are you really positing that, in the world of AD&D or 4e as played by the rules as written, no one ever loses an eye or a limb simply on the grounds that there are no mechanics that produce such an outcome? I've always taken it to be implicit in either game that some things - like losing a limb as a result of being run over by a wagon - happen in the gameworld even though the mechanics don't deal with them. (Because the mechanics don't deal with them they probably don't happen to PCs - but that's another story.)

My point was that if you want to introduce blinding via combat into 4e, you can do so very easily. I explained how. If you think it's not actually that easy, I'm curious as to why.

it is cut and dry that healing surges CAN be converted directly to HP without interferring with healing, and when you run out you jsut run out.

Except that this would utterly change the mechanics of 4e combat, for the reasons I've now set out in two posts upthread.

It would utterly change those mechanics because those mechanics, currently, depend upon the fact that accessing surges during combat is tactically non-trivial.

The fact surges hinder other parts of the system and powers and "bloodied" condition or whatever are NOT my problem, as that is a problem with the system trying to mix mechanics.

I don't really understand this. Suffice it to say that the narrative tempo of 4e combat - the PCs begin by being nearly overwhelmed by the monsters, but then come back and win as the players make the tactical decisions that allow access to their PCs' surges and their superior powers - is not a problem. It is the essence of the design of 4e's combat system, and surges are integral to it's design.

You CAN convert surges to direct HP and do without surges, you just have to also cut out all the other things surges brought with them. Therefore it gives a finite HP outside of magic and such just like previous editions.

Ie - if you rewrite 4e's rules to get rid of all the features of the game that give it a strong and dynamic combat system, and replace them with a huge hit point sink, then you can probably create a game that would be less interesting to play than 3E or AD&D. I'm not sure what that proves, though, other than that the designers were sensible in not designing that game.

The point of contention is still with the natural healing as discussed in the previous reply.

If you want natural healing to matter in 4e, introduce a rule that only 1 HS is regained per extended rest. This will mean that most PCs require between 1 and 2 weeks to fully regain their surges. This would change the pacing of adventures from the rules as written, but would have virtually no effect on the mechanical balance of the game.

In my own game I haven't done this precise thing, but I have (from time to time) required rest on the part of the PCs, and/or imposed penalties to overland travel skill challenges, and/or ruled that some lost HS (ie those lost to exhaustion) can't be recovered without rest. The effect of all this is precisely to mix up the pacing a bit. It doesn't affect the micro-balance of combat at all. And it's a trivial deviation from the published rules text (or maybe not a deviation at all, depending exactly what one takes to be implied by the skill challenge rules read in conjunction with the environmental exhaustion rules).

You lose narrative control due to the mechanic of healing as a result of the "new day" syndrome. There are just some thing that won't work without corrupting the suspension of disbelief and pulling you out of the game and pushing you into the metagame and having to work around the metagame in order to make the narrative work.

This is another place where actual play examples would help. In my own game, if I have built an encounter assuming that it will be challenging because the PCs will come to it with few dailies, and few surges and hence only limited opportunities for healing during combat, and in fact they have taken an extended rest beforehand and therefore are fully primed and ready to go, I simply rewrite the encounter - adding opponents, or adding levels to opponents. This is easy to do and resolves the pacing issues. (From memory, it is also how the DMG2 suggests dealing with the issue.)

Of course, if the extended rest was a clever strategem on the part of the players precisely to try to deal with the encounter in question then I would normally just let the get the benefit of their stratagem. But in this case, the rest rules haven't interfered with the narrative of the game at all - they have been integrated into it.

Again this was an intended change, but a change that does shift focus and ability from one aspect of the game to another. Call it simulationism vs gamist, roleplaying vs combat oriented, roleplaying vs rollplaying, whatever you want to call those foci, it shifts.

Well personally I call it simulationist vs narrativist. It's nothing to do with being combat oriented. Rolemaster is an RPG that plays out exactly as you seem to want, and I know (from experience) that it can be played in a very combat heavy way.

 

[pemerton]

And sorry to call people out like that, not intending that as a shot

Not remotely taken as one, at least on my part!

I'm not sure I agree with you about the PHB, though.

A new player is going to look at the 4e PHB and probably think the game is nothing but combat.

<snip>

The 4e PHB, OTOH, does not do a fantastic job of giving players tools for interacting with the world. It presumes that players know how to role play and will automatically do it without any prompting from the books.

There is a long introductory section on non-mechanical aspects of character building - the 4e PHB, for example, is the only version of the game I know that tells me how to think about my PC's alignment, religion, personality and social background before telling me how to calculate his/her hitpoints.

There is also a chapter on skills, and a chapter on exploration (in the 4e sense - ie moving around the gameworld and doing stuff that is neither a combat nor a skill challenge). And there is a chapter on rituals, which are useful for exploration, thus reinforcing the earlier chapter.

So I don't think it's as sparse as all that - no sparser than the 3E PHB, for example (I don't know the 2nd ed or 3.5 PHB's - I do know the 1st ed PHB, and I think the final section of that book does give players a better account of what they are meant to do with their PCs in the playing of that game).

While the skills are presented in the 4e PHB, the idea of skill challenges waits in the DMG. Page 42 is in the DMG, so how is a player supposed to know that he can swing from the chandelier and kick the ogre into the fire pit?

Skill challenges are mentioned several times in the PHB, but without much explanation. Even in Essentials, explaining skill challenges continues to be the weakest part of the rules. For example, it is pretty central to running a skill challenge that the GM be prepared to have ingame events unfold not according to ingame causal logic, but according to a metagame logic driven by (i) skill check results and (ii) narrative imperatives. But no where do the rulebooks mention it - the only place you can see the idea at work is in the example skill challenge in the Rules Compendium (because a Streetwise check fails in inspecting a building, the GM in the example has some toughs turn up to hassle the PCs, although the toughs weren't themselves implicated in the scene with the building) and you have to extract it by osmosis.

Page 42 being in the DMG only is a problem, I agree. Essentials rectifies this, with DCs and sample stunts/improv integrated into the skill descriptions.

the WOTC modules have not helped matters at all. They are hack fests.

Even as hack fests, they don't make the best use of the maps they include. The DMG2, for example, goes on and on about circular paths. The Chamber of Eyes and the Well of Demons in Thunderspire Labyrinth map out some beatiful and exciting circular paths. And to actually use those paths you have to ignore the written guidelines for running the encounters, and mix them up yourself. (From experience, I know that when you do you get some pretty dramatic fights.)

Again, unfortunate since it presents the game in such a limited light.

They could have done a lot worse than look at the sample modules at the end of the original HeroWars GM's guide, or some of the 3E modules from Atlas Games (like Mearls' own Belly of the Beast) and thought about how you would use 4e to provide that sort of fantasy RPGing experience.

And I'm not even sure it's a case of lowest common denominator tastes dominating the market. Does anyone like the 4e modules as written?

I think the big issue is that people plant their flags in particular books and sections of the rules and argue from that position. Fumetti and Shazar are not wrong in their criticisms. Not really. It's just that they are basing their opinions on sections that others like Pemerton or Prof C generally don't worry about so much. And Prof C and others are not wrong either. Just arguing from a different hill so to speak.

These days I really try to ground my arguments in actual play experience. That's why I'm waiting to see some examples of actual play from the 4e critics - or at least some explanation of why what is being done in actual play by those who play 4e is not to their taste, or is in some way perhaps misguided or confused.

Instead, though, I just keep seeing claims that non-simulationist play must be at odds with good roleplaying/good story. No one that I'm aware of believes this to be true for games like HeroQuest or The Dying Earth. So why on earth should I think that it is true for 4e?

 

[Hussar]

The DM never really controls the narrative, just an outline of the plot.

The players have total control over the narrative as it is through their actions that the plot comes to life.

But, they don't. The mechanics dictate to the players as well as the DM how long they must rest.

You explain greatly how one narrative is lost. A hero coming back from near death being bedridden. Sure the party leaving you behind isnt the most enjoyable things but payback is a...well you know.

Mechanics which force me to remove my still living character from play simply because it's more "realistic" to have me heal slower are poor mechanics IMO.

So there is a LOT of narrative that could come from that alone, or fights and arguments, if the players are willing to work together.

Many people argue that a PC missing a limb doesnt help the party, but finding a replacement limb or someway to replace it when the magic isnt there to just give it back leaves many stories to be told.

I kinda missed in the scrum where the idea of permanent injury crept into this discussion, but, what's the point? D&D has never had any rules for losing a limb or suffering permanent injury.

Consider also those dreaded things that most players wish were gone form the game, time sensitive missions. With 4th, those are removed form being harder challenges by the healing system. Sure they have to manage their resources, but not as carefully should there be a risk to something not getting done on time.

This is not true. In 3e, time sensitive missions are ignored simply because you have healing wands. And the cleric is going to keep you going pretty darn well on his own.

The difference is, I can now have a time sensitive mission in 4e that is measured in hours, rather than days in earlier editions to allow for magical healing time.

Many good stories revolve around things being done in a certain amount of time, and as for cinematics are concerned, these sorts of movies make people more on the edge of their seats when the risk is added to by their being a time limit.

So a good nights rest to recover easily prevents those sorts of stories, and the players would have to figure a way to raise the tension, or just have the DM hinder them with other things that might not make sense which makes the delay seem forced.

Whether your or another's preferred story, it does shift what types of stories can be told.

Not really. This is no different than any other edition where healing was covered magically. If you look at time sensitive missions presented in most modules, you'll find that they have a couple of extra days built into them to allow for the regaining of spells.

-----

First... again whether the spoon can or can't count as an improvised tool is based upon a particular campaigns flavor... so yes, technically you can pick a lock without thieve's tools... but you will have to come up with something plausible (as determined by tone/mood/etc. of your DM's campaign) as an improvised tool... this could be anything from a magical spoon to a jagged rock... depending on the DM.

No, Imaro, in 3.5 you can't. You cannot pick a lock without improvising a tool first. I couldn't find what counts as an improvised tool in the SRD, but it might be in the books. But, tapping the lock with a spoon does not count as an improvised tool and it's pretty disingenuous to argue that it does. Nor would a jagged rock for that matter, although you could break the lock off with the rock.

Wait... are you arguing that being able to somehow pick a lock naked and with no tools... at first level... is a good thing? I'm just checking...

I'm arguing that because the mechanics are divorced from flavour in 4e, the players and the DM are free from the mechanically imposed restraints of the system to decide how a task is resolved in any mutually agreed upon way.

If the group decides that a 1st level character can open locks naked with no tools, then more power to them. It might make sense for a specific character, such as the one that I created. I Fonzerelli bump the dungeon door and it springs open, "Blessed be to His Hairy Toes!"

I can't do this, by RAW in 3e.

 

[Banshee16]

Sorry, respectfully, I don't buy the "I have a life" angle. If someone out there wants to play D&D (or game system of choice) or wants to prep said game they will find the time. I have yet to meet a gamer who didn't compromise in order to arrange their game and their prep (and that includes one player who has a partner and 3 young kids!).

Whether you "buy it" or not is irrelevant I would tend to agree with a lot of what was said. Of course, whether I agree is also irrelevant. Every family unit is different, and it's very difficult to draw parallels, because different couples will have kids that behave differently, and require more or less time.

Life does get in the way to a degree. I'd love to run a game again......but my wife is pregnant with our first child, after being laid off I started my own company and that takes an immense amount of time....the only players left from my group who are still playing are the ones who are single males in their 30's.

My understanding is that WotC aimed 4E at attracting younger gamers.....likely realizing that there is a certain attrition to the ranks of their customers as those customers aged.....so I don't think the OP is unique in his observation..

Banshee

 

[Abraxas]

No, Imaro, in 3.5 you can't. You cannot pick a lock without improvising a tool first. I couldn't find what counts as an improvised tool in the SRD, but it might be in the books. But, tapping the lock with a spoon does not count as an improvised tool and it's pretty disingenuous to argue that it does. Nor would a jagged rock for that matter, although you could break the lock off with the rock.

What counts as an improvised tool is not in the books - so your rogue's spoon could be considered an improvised tool by the DM - and this wouldn't violate the rules. No where in the books does it say how your improvised thieves tool has to be used - just that you have to have one - so it was just as easy in 3.xE for the DM to say the rogue's fonzerelli bump with the spoon does open the lock. You appear, to me at least, to be adding restrictions to the 3.xE version of the skill (needing a specific type of tool and using it in a specific manner) that aren't there.

Now, the 3.xE rule text that says you need some sort of tools to open locks may have put a crimp in your RP style - but I know more than 1 DM that would look at the 4E rule and say your rogue's spoon trick wouldn't work.

There isn't text in either edition that says you have to be able to see the lock or touch the lock - so wouldn't it also be just as reasonable to assume that in both editions you could just wave your thieves tools (3.xE) or fingers (4E) in the air and locks just pop open? Now that is just being a bit silly, but you have to draw a line at some point - I really don't see why the crazy rogue's spoon couldn't work in either edition - especially if it made for a fun game...Oh well YMMV and all that.

I can't do this, by RAW in 3e.

Yes you can.

 

[shadzar]

Question so i don't have to look, does it say a "tool" is required or "lock picks", improvised or otherwise?

Just trying to follow along...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It must be Thieves' Tools OR improvised tools. If you don't have tools of some kind, you're out of luck.

So, depending upon the lock in question, the tone of the campaign, and the particular DM, yes, a spoon- perhaps with its handle twisted and cut by other tools, scraped into shape on concrete or whetstones- could be used as an improvised lockpick.

OTOH, unless the game is very lighthearted, I doubt most DMs would approve the Fonzarelli Bump as an improvised tool...though it may be the somatic component for a Knock spell.

 

[pemerton]

I think that a 3E GM who let Hussar's PC's trick with the spoon work wouldn't be doing the best to get the strengths out of 3E's character-build and action-resolution rules - for example, what is the point of having all those rules about skill selection, and skill use, and the difference between Ex/Su/Sp abilities, and the Arcane Trickster class, etc, if a player can just reskin Pick Locks as a knock spell. How is that meant to interact with anti-magic, for example.

I think the deliberate looseness of fit between mechanics and ingame interpretation is a clear and deliberate difference between the design of 3E and 4e, and it is precisely this that Hussar is exploiting.

That said, I can see different groups approaching it differently. By the published rules, for example, there seems to be an intention that Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies be more tightly integrated into the gameworld than, for example, basic class powers (which are expressly said to be subject to flexibility on p 55 of the PHB). How skills are intended to be located on this spectrum is a bit ambiguous. (In Forge terms, the rules text of 4e might be described as "abashed" - it reads almost like a game that wants to be played in a non-simulationist fashion, but at certain key points in the rules it can't help but slip back into simulationist terminology and presupposition.)

EDIT: Dannyalcatraz's reply seems to fit exactly what I had in mind in my comments about how 3E best handles this - in 3E terms, what Hussar is describing is a knock spell.