The "real" reason the game has changed.

[ProfessorCirno]

Ok, WOW

I've been in numerous debates in which 4E fans consider it a low blow to even bring up Come and Get It. So, if you think it is great then obviously you are not very representative of either group. Good to know.

Most likely because it was brought up nonstop and because it's one of the more radical philisophical changes from 3e.

Asinine conclusion there. If CAGI IS the point here, then creativity isn't the question, the ability to turn off all rational consideration and let the mechanics force any level of absurdity is.

Nope.

What CAGI does is put the narrative power firmly in the player's hands to describe. Only when someone refuses to look beyond the mechanics does someone think CAGI turns off "all rational consideration."

I am quite certain that every person in my game can think of multiple ways to justify CAGI under any circumstance. It isn't that we can't. It is that the radical divorce from story integrity that comes with it is opposite of what we enjoy.

Again, the problem is that you either refuse or cannot divorce narrative from mechanics - something utterly absurd when you consider that combat and everything related to combat has always been completely abstract. The very concept of the combat round is an abstract.

 

[pemerton]

The other players are planning to use materials at hand to create hazardous terrain to funnel the bad guys to my fighter.

My 4e players have done this. One in particular is a military history buff, and his PC was leading the other PCs and various NPCs in creating timber-and-rope emplacements designed to funnel wolf-riding goblins into vulnerable positions (modelled on tank traps, perhaps? I know that something modern gave him the idea).

 

[pemerton]

No.

And neither have you.

You may have read the REH story where Conan was crucified, and survived when someone else pulled him off the cross, and took a long time to heal to his normal health (long enough to politic himself high in the group that rescures him), but there is not REH story where Conan pulls himself off a cross. There is certainly none where he is crucified and performs a healing surge!

Oops. I guess my memory of that story had cross-polinated with the mid/late 90s X-Men where Wolverine pulls himself off a cross in the Australian desert (or have I misremembered that one too?).

I nevertheless agree with the editor of the collection in which my copy of that story is found (Patrice Louinet, I think) that that episode marks the departure of Conan from the ranks of mere mortals. And suggests that heroic feats of recovery from fatigue and injury aren't necessarily contrary to the fantasy genre, or even the sword-and-sorcery (sub)genre.

 

[pemerton]

My PHB states that an opponent can be knocked unconscious instead of killing him, but makes no mention of permanent blindness or any other kind of permanent condition being placed on an opponent without DM fiat.

Sooo... 4e is no better or worse at this than any edition and is just as dependant upon whether a DM does or doesn't decide to allow this after an opponent is beaten.

My point was that 4e - by already having multiple options available for interpretation of 0 hp, and by giving the player the choice of which option actually results when the "killing" blow is delivered - makes it very easy to introduce blinding as an alternative. It will have zero effect on the mechanical balance or smooth running of the game.

3E will, in my view, not make it so easy. First, 0 hp and below in 3E have definite meanings - disabled and dying - and inflicting subdual damage has a distinct mechanical meaning and incures a penatly to hit (-4, I think). Where would you insert blinding a foe into 3E as part of the combat mechanics, without having to think about how it interacts with these existing features of the mechanics?

I want to stress - this is in no way a criticism of the 3E mechanics. Exactly the same issue arises in respect of any rule set in which the combat attrition mechanics have a rules-mandated ingame interpretation. So the same issue would arise in Rolemaster and Runequest, for example, neither of which is a game I want to criticise.

3E is manifestly a more simulatonist ruleset than 4e (likewise RM and RQ). That difference has consequences. One is that introducing blinding as simply a player-stipulated consequence of reduction of a foe to 0 hp is not as mechanically straightforward to do.

I have to ask, would you really give your DM grief if he said your crazy rogue can't open the lock by hitting it with his "magic spoon"?

To me that level of re-skinning is beyond an obvious consideration. And, frankly, if anyone truly got hung up on that distinction, I would doubt their ability to provide a really good game experience in any system.

The issue for me here is similar to that with respect to blinding a foe. It's not about hewing to or departing from the published rules. It's about integration into the rest of the game. For example, in 3E, is the "magic spoon" rogue unable to do this trick within an antimagic field? 4e has been deliberately designed so as not to give rise to such questions - another way in which its mechanics are in much looser fit with the ingame causality of the gameworld.

We tried to cleave pretty close to RAW in our 3e games and this would have been problematic in our games simply because 3e was so heavily based around making RAW very important to how the world worked.

Hrm, that came out wrong. let me try again.

For me, 3e was a strongly simulationist system. It tried to have pretty specific rules that covered almost every eventuality. So, we relied on the ruleset to provide answers about the in game reality becuase we largely could.

I would not use 3e for a more free form game to be honest. It's not what it's designed around IMO.

Entirely agreed.

 

[Abraxas]

The issue for me here is similar to that with respect to blinding a foe. It's not about hewing to or departing from the published rules. It's about integration into the rest of the game. For example, in 3E, is the "magic spoon" rogue unable to do this trick within an antimagic field? 4e has been deliberately designed so as not to give rise to such questions - another way in which its mechanics are in much looser fit with the ingame causality of the gameworld.

If the spoon actually was a magic item then of course it wouldn't work in an anti magic field - but it isn't. As described when it was originally posted - the rogue in question believed it was a holy relic and tapping it on locks caused them to open - but apparently all it really was was a wooden spoon.

 

[pemerton]

I'll take a shot at this.

I think Hussar's example shows why this happens. It doesn't matter if you have a spoon or a set of thieves' tools when you want to pick a lock. Great - that allows players to get really creative in their interpretation of what happens in the game world!

That's only as long as the players get creative. What happens when players don't? Nothing. Resolution is exactly the same - make a Thievery check. The game doesn't care how your character opens that lock. That means that actions in the game world aren't part of the currency of the game.

That's not actually the case - the procedure for making skill checks requires the player to describe the character's action in the game world. However, the game will still work if the player simply says, "I make a Thievery check." I think the game suffers when this happens, and steps should have been taken to make sure it didn't (or happened as rarely as possible).

This is why 3E required thieves tools - it encoded fictional causes into the rules. That's not necessary, in my opinion, because you have a DM. And because you have a DM to make those kinds of judgement calls, I think it's better to rely on that person, their authority, and creativity instead of rules. Rules can create strange corner-cases and are subject to lawyering.​

This habit really shows up in combat, where players (in my experience) usually describe their characters actions in two ways: moving miniatures around a battlemap and declaring the name of their Power in their attack (or other rules constructs, like Second Wind). Both of these are artefacts of the real word, not the imagined world, and the imagined world's "reality" suffers as a result.

LostSoul, I've read a lot of your posts on this before but I thought this captured your view clearly and succinctly.

As I've posted in the past, I find that movement on the battlemat more closely integrates the mechanical resolution into the fiction than it appears to have in your experience. And I find that with skill resolution my players explain what their PCs are doing - or if they don't, I ask them!

What I've personally noticed about 4e is that features of the game - like the action resolution rules, and the XP rules - tend to downplay the signficance of exploration compared to at least some more traditional fantasy RPGs. But when I deliberately decided to run an exploration-based scenario as part of my 4e game, I found it went really well.

What the rules could benefit from, in my view, is more of a discussion of when to use skill checks, when to use skill challenges, etc (comparable eg to what HeroQuest has to say about automatic successes vs simple contests vs extended contests).

 

[pemerton]

If the spoon actually was a magic item then of course it wouldn't work in an anti magic field - but it isn't. As described when it was originally posted - the rogue in question believed it was a holy relic and tapping it on locks caused them to open - but apparently all it really was was a wooden spoon.

My point was that, in 3E, an ability should be classified either as Ex, Su or Sp, and that this is not arbitrary - it reflects something about how the ability works in the gameworld. Generally, the ability to open a lock by wielding a spoon believed to be a relic, while bumping the door in question, would be classified as Su (or even Sp, if interpreted as a particular variant of knock). It is a bit of a stretch to classify it as Ex. In which case it should be affected by an anti-magic zone.

The 3E rules make all these issues salient. 4e, by caring about power source only in the context of PCs' buffs and feats, does not. This is why, in my view, Hussar's spoon trick is more easily handled in 4e than 3E.

EDIT: Furthermore, in 3E I think that there is a strong presupposition that skill ranks represent training. Whereas stats represent innate ability. And feats can represent either of these, or divine blessings, or can even serve a purely metagame role. How does one train to open locks with a wooden spoon? (In this respect, 3E strikes me as being very close to games like RM and HARP.)

Again, 4e is a bit more loose about the relationship between the mechanical elements of a PC and their ingame meaning. Thus in 3E, a character with no ranks in acrobatics, but a good Dex, couldn't easily be presented as a trained but mediocre acrobat. In 4e, on the other hand, I think that this is quite feasible.

 

[LostSoul]

As I've posted in the past, I find that movement on the battlemat more closely integrates the mechanical resolution into the fiction than it appears to have in your experience. And I find that with skill resolution my players explain what their PCs are doing - or if they don't, I ask them!

I think I put a lot of value in being able to picture the game world unfolding in my head. (At times, even games like Burning Wheel and Dogs in the Vineyard didn't go far enough for me!) My viewpoint may be unique, but I like to share.

What I've personally noticed about 4e is that features of the game - like the action resolution rules, and the XP rules - tend to downplay the signficance of exploration compared to at least some more traditional fantasy RPGs. But when I deliberately decided to run an exploration-based scenario as part of my 4e game, I found it went really well.

I read and enjoyed that account of play; I tried to think of some questions to ask but everything seemed straight-forward and obvious! I think that points to the fact that 4E can easily be used to run exploration-based games.

What the rules could benefit from, in my view, is more of a discussion of when to use skill checks, when to use skill challenges, etc (comparable eg to what HeroQuest has to say about automatic successes vs simple contests vs extended contests).

I think my tastes run to heavily-procedural games; "when X happens, do Y". Burning Empires is like this, but X and Y tend to sit at the metagame level. My Life With Master is another example. When I first started playing D&D, with B/X, I played like that; going through every Turn like it was a turn in a boardgame. I remember really floundering when I started playing Star Wars - no specific procedures and no dungeons to fall back on!

That's what I've tried to do in my hack - writing specific sub-systems that are triggered by certain events occurring in the game world.

 

[Hussar]

Permerton, would you please be my sock puppet? You explain my points so much less abrasively than I do. This bit:

3E is manifestly a more simulatonist ruleset than 4e (likewise RM and RQ). That difference has consequences. One is that introducing blinding as simply a player-stipulated consequence of reduction of a foe to 0 hp is not as mechanically straightforward to do.

is, IMO, spot on. It's not about better or worse. It's about achieving different goals using different tools.

----------

On the Conan sidebar. This is from the story, A Witch Shall Be Born. Here is the relavent text:

The first impact of the battle-ax against the wood and its accompanying vibrations sent lances of agony through Conan's swollen feet and hands. Again and again the blade fell, and each stroke reverberated on his bruised brain, setting his tortured nerves aquiver. But he set his teeth and made no sound. The ax cut through, the cross reeled on its splintered base and toppled backward. Conan made his whole body a solid knot of iron-hard muscle, jammed his head back hard against the wood and held it rigid there. The beam struck the ground heavily and rebounded slightly. The impact tore his wounds and dazed him for an instant. He fought the rushing tide of blackness, sick and dizzy, but realized that the iron muscles that sheathed his vitals had saved him from permanent injury.

And he had made no sound, though blood oozed from his nostrils and his belly-muscles quivered with nausea. With a grunt of approval Djebal bent over him with a pair of pincers used to draw horse-shoe nails, and gripped the head of the spike in Conan's right hand, tearing the skin to get a grip on the deeply embedded head. The pincers were small for that work. Djebal sweated and tugged, swearing and wrestling with the stubborn iron, working it back and forth--in swollen flesh as well as in wood. Blood started, oozing over the Cimmerian's fingers. He lay so still he might have been dead, except for the spasmodic rise and fall of his great chest. The spike gave way, and Djebal held up the blood-stained thing with a grunt of satisfaction, then flung it away and bent over the other.

The process was repeated, and then Djebal turned his attention to Conan's skewered feet. But the Cimmerian, struggling up to a sitting posture, wrenched the pincers from his fingers and sent him staggering backward with a violent shove. Conan's hands were swollen to almost twice their normal size. His fingers felt like misshapen thumbs, and closing his hands was an agony that brought blood streaming from under his grinding teeth. But somehow, clutching the pincers clumsily with both hands, he managed to wrench out first one spike and then the other. They were not driven so deeply into the wood as the others had been.

He rose stiffly and stood upright on his swollen, lacerated feet, swaying drunkenly, the icy sweat dripping from his face and body. Cramps assailed him and he clamped his jaws against the desire to retch.

Olgerd, watching him impersonally, motioned him toward the stolen horse. Conan stumbled toward it, and every step was a stabbing, throbbing hell that flecked his lips with bloody foam. One misshapen, groping hand fell clumsily on the saddle-bow, a bloody foot somehow found the stirrup. Setting his teeth, he swung up, and he almost fainted in midair; but he came down in the saddle--and as he did so, Olgerd struck the horse sharply with his whip. The startled beast reared, and the man in the saddle swayed and slumped like a sack of sand, almost unseated. Conan had wrapped a rein about each hand, holding it in place with a clamping thumb. Drunkenly he exerted the strength of his knotted biceps, wrenching the horse down; it screamed, its jaw almost dislocated.

One of the Shemites lifted a water-flask questioningly.

Olgerd shook his head.

"Let him wait until we get to camp. It's only ten miles. If he's fit to live in the desert he'll live that long without a drink."

The group rode like swift ghosts toward the river; among them Conan swayed like a drunken man in the saddle, bloodshot eyes glazed, foam drying on his blackened lips.

Note, Conan actually does pull out his own nails. Not all of them, but a few. And then he rides ten miles afterwards.

In the same story: A Witch Shall Be Born one of the characters is brained with a mace and left for dead on the ground. He wakes up a few minutes later, stumbles around for a bit, but then joins the fight valiantly.

Sounds a lot like a second wind mechanic to me.

 

[Abraxas]

My point was that, in 3E, an ability should be classified either as Ex, Su or Sp, and that this is not arbitrary - it reflects something about how the ability works in the gameworld. Generally, the ability to open a lock by wielding a spoon believed to be a relic, while bumping the door in question, would be classified as Su (or even Sp, if interpreted as a particular variant of knock). It is a bit of a stretch to classify it as Ex. In which case it should be affected by an anti-magic zone.

The 3E rules make all these issues salient. 4e, by caring about power source only in the context of PCs' buffs and feats, does not. This is why, in my view, Hussar's spoon trick is more easily handled in 4e than 3E.

OK - I see where you're coming from. I, however, would just call it an improvised tool unique to the character and treat it's use just like any other use of the Open Locks skill. It doesn't need to be classified as Ex, Su or Sp - especially if it's presence makes the game more fun for everyone.