A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I am observing that in 3e, I can know my character's capability of defeating a 1st level orc warrior, or picking a secure but basically ordinary lock. In 4e, I know none of these things. An "ordinary orc" is probably scaled to my level. A secure but ordinary lock probably doesn't have a suggested DC; if it does, that's somewhat useful in an ordinary situation, but becomes irrelevant if the GM frames the scene as a skill challenge involving lock picking.

These things are absolutely not true in 4E.

If an "ordinary orc" in 3E is an Orc War 1 (and not the elite deathsquad Orc Fighter 8s that your DM has been pitting you against this adventure because you outgrew the War 1s, even though they're legal), then, by extension, you must admit that an "ordinary orc" in 4E is some flavor of orc minion X (or Soldier X). [EDIT: See Neonchameleon's post below, where he access to the actual rulebook rather than my misremembered numbers. Regardless of the specifics, the point, I think, stands.]

Elsewise, you're just arguing that a less-complete Monseter Manual is some form of system benefit (since, plainly, 3E is built under the assumption that your DM can and will, at some point, make Orc Fighter Xs, etc.).

Similarly, a secure but ordinary lock is something that'll be challenging to, what, a 1st-to-5th-level character trained in thievery, but easy for a master locksmith to bypass? That tells you what the DC is.

What 4th Edition does, however, is readily admit that, at some point, you will no longer be fighting "ordinary orcs" and picking "secure but ordinary locks" - just like, in 3E, you eventually stop fighting Orc 1s as part of meaningful combat encounters; you fight ogres and trolls, instead, or leveled orcs. Similarly, there's no need to waste time wondering whether or not you can pick the lock on the inn's kitchen cupboard; instead, you wonder whether or not you can bypass the Moonlock in the Temple of Eternal Shadows.

There is no meaningful difference in the systems here; other than 4E has a better ... DC progression ... in that they don't arbitrarily move in 5-point increments and stop at DC 40.

I mean, when you come right down to it, the 3E DCs for standard locks are:

1. Simple (DC 20):
   • Anyone with any training and the right tools (net +0 bonus) can do this with time;
   • A skilled novice (net +5 bonus) can pull it off about 25% of the time in 6 seconds under pressure
   • A journeyman (net +10 bonus) can pull it off 100% of the time in 6 second when not under pressure, and about 50% of the time when under pressure
   • A master (net +20 bonus) can always pull this off in 6 seconds, even under pressure
2. Average (DC 25)
   • A skilled novice can pull this off with time
   • A journeyman can pull it off about 25% of the time in 6 seconds under pressure
   • A master can pull it off 100% of the time in 6 seconds when not under pressure, and about 75% of the time when under pressure
3. Good (DC 30)
   • A journeyman can pull this off with time
   • A master can pull it off 100% of the time in 6 seconds when not under pressure, and about 50% of the time when under pressure
4. Superior (DC 40)
   • A master can pull this off with time

Succinctly, secure, ordinary locks ("Average") are not even a barrier at all to anyone properly prepared, except when under extreme time pressure - and to anyone sufficiently skilled, they aren't even that.

This holds true in 4E as well - it's just that the rules encourage you to ignore or hand-wave the secure, ordinary lock when running skill challenges at higher levels; either they don't exist in that particular area, or bypassing them is so trivial as to not make a difference in the skill challenge's outcome.

Which, let's face it, is an awful lot like the way it works in 3E, as well - either the lock on the door is hard for your level, and requires you to roll against it or Take 20, or you're high level and it's relatively easy, and you can Take 1 to bypass it (in which case, did it matter whether or not it was there?).

If the problem is, "Well, my players hit 10th-level; where did all the Average locks go?" the problem is one of GM description; merely mention that, while breaking into X, the PCs bypassed multiple locks that were child's play to them, and now they're at the difficult, make-or-break lock.

 

[Aldarc]

I guess we should redesign all the real world locks to scale to level of the locksmith/picker. That would then work so its a good challenge.

Really a lock not being a challenge is a bad thing? Sooner or later someone is going to get so good at it, that no locks are very challenging, yet somehow they will screw up opening the simplest locks.

Locked my keys in my car, and the person supposed to be able to get them out brought the wrong tool for the make/model of my car. Seems to prove higher level skills can easily be twarted by mundane locks to me.

And such locks are not challenging for level appropriate characters. Once your neighborhood locksmith is able to break the lock sealing the Gates of Hell, then maybe you would have a point. Furthermore, nothing is preventing you from making characters roll a skill check just to make sure they do not critically fumble a simple lock.

 

[pemerton]

In all of our interactions you have mentioned Person X from Game Y or something else along those lines that does not have to do with D&D. I have ignored all of it, because I frankly could care les about those games. If I was interested in them, I would be playing them not D&D.

I guess I'm one of those people who thinks that to undestand a game system, it helps to know what designs it has been influenced by, and what designs it differs from.

I will say, though: for someone who seems unfamiliar with a very wide range of RPGs, you make very strong claims about what a good or viable RPG must be like.

Having Dexterity as a stat, EVERY edition has had "fumble" rules.

<snip>

Sometimes you have to stop trying to create some complex system for things and rely on the core of the game. Those 6 stats exist for a reason. Everything is built off of them for a reason. Try to figure out what that reason is, within D&D, and MANY people might gain a better understanding of it, without needing to add 400 subsystems by way of skills and feats to accomplish the same thing.

So tell me: (i) what is the chance, in a Basic D&D or AD&D game, that a 10th level fighter will trip over his shoelaces while charging an orc; (ii) if the answer to the previous question is ZERO, then what is wrong with a game that says an epic rogue does not need to make a skill check to pick a mundane lock?

Also, on the mechanical subsystems point: 4e has virtually none in action resolution - combat, skill checks and skill challenges pretty much cover the field. (4e has more subystems in its character build mechanics - class+build, race, skills, feats, themes, backgrounds, items covering a range of slots, retraining, etc, etc.)

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Just as an example, upthread, I mentioned a balance check as part of getting into a castle, and gave an example of someone using an older version of D&D improvising an ability check. In 3e, most characters will face a somewhat quantifiable level of difficulty. Some characters would make such a Balance check each and every time. In 4e, the DC could vary wildly from a (shall we say) pedestrian difficulty to a fairly formidable difficulty if the GM decides it's part of a skill challenge.

Skill challenges are supposed to add drama, but since the GM sets every aspect of the difficulty, and the base DCs generally scale to level, it's actually a routlette game in disguise, with the GM setting house odds.

Edit: Please note that I submitted this before seeing pemerton's reply to the same post. I do think it interesting that we both independently saw a theory/practice divide.

I think theory and second-hand information is getting in the way here. First, if the GM does what you said above, he is a bad GM. Well, unless he is just running a highly stylized version of the rules on behalf of players that want such (e.g. mere tactical skirmish game or, other extreme, a mere character roleplaying bull session with a bit of die rolling tacked on). But in one of these highly stylized games, skill DCs will not matter all that much.

Second, the presence of a means to measure is not dictating the outcome of the measurement. (It may have subtle influences, of course.) That the 4E GM can determine that a level 5 encounter will have predictable interactions (with the usual caveats) with five level 5 PCs--says exactly no more or no less than that a 3E GM can determine the that 4 CR 5 monsters in an encounter will have predictable interactions (with the usual caveats) with four level 5 PCs. The GM can then use a tougher or easier encounter as desired.

Finally, in practice it very much depends on how the information is conveyed, what the players use to parse and assemble that information, and then how that relates to the situation at hand. In particular, it is going to matter a great deal how much the players memorize and care about those DCs and the labels that go with them.

When we played 3E, if I said that a lock was "mundane" or "fine" or whatever descriptors were in the book, I might as well have said that the flibbet was in the wakka-wakka. Players didn't know, didn't care, etc. I'd just have to translate that into, "You think you have a fairly decent chance of picking it," or, "You are not sure if you can pick this or not," or, "It looks completely beyond you at the moment." Sometimes, over the course of the campaign, the players may come to understand that certain locks are easy enough they know they can pick them, but it is just as likely to be a misunderstanding. They might decide that dwarven locks are very hard when really it was just that dwarves were using fine locks (or these particular dwarves were).

If you are going to say to that, that 3E creates a consistent starting place for players that do care about such things, then I agree, it does. If you happen to like that starting place, and you play with such people, then off you go. OTOH, if you play with people that want to make these assocations based on what happens in play, and you especially want to vary those assocations from campaign to campaign--then that consistent start place not only has tremendous holes in it, it is positively counter-productive.

That's all probably too abstract. So try this: I'm doing a particular campaign. In this campaign, we decide that dwarves are master craftsman. One of the ways this manifests is that dwarven locks are generally hard to pick. Stop! That's all we need to know at this stage (and even getting specific with locks was really too much information).

As a GM, I put together the world. The party decides to invade a kobold lair. The kobolds took over an abandoned dwarven outpost. There is a locked door. I look at the hard DC for a level 1 encounter. Naw, not high enough. Hard is something that is tough, but not unlikely for highly trained characters. I look up a few levels, and decide that by the time the party reaches 5th, they could be picking dwarven locks. Boom, DC is set. All dwarven locks will now hover around this DC for the rest of the campaign (barring dwarven master thieves or paragon dwarven bank security or other flavor reasons why the DC would go up.)

This is no different in function as to the way I would have done it with 3E. It's merely that the labels that get associated to the concept vary. If the GM wants to set something up ahead of time, and lock these down, same thing.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You're begging the question. I do not accept that these two things are equivalent and it is up to you to persuade me, if you are so inclined.

I am observing that in 3e, I can know my character's capability of defeating a 1st level orc warrior, or picking a secure but basically ordinary lock.

What is "ordinary"? DC 25 for average or DC 30 for good? Both to me count as ordinary - and the difference between DC 25 and DC 30 is huge.

In 4e, I know none of these things. An "ordinary orc" is probably scaled to my level.

From Monster Vault:
Battletested Orc: Level 3 Soldier
Orc Savage: Level 4 Minion Brute
Orc Archer: Level 4 Artillery
Orc Reaver: Level 5 Skirmisher
Orc Rampager: Level 6 Brute
Orc Pummeller: Level 6 Controller
Orc Storm Shaman: Level 6 Artillery.

All the Orcs in Monster Vault (i.e. the Essentials Monster Manual) are in a tight range of levels, with an "Ordinary Orc" being either a savage (and easy to take out) or battletested. If so-called ordinary orcs are outside that level range then there's something unusual going on. All other monster manuals combined have three orcs outside this range; the Bloodrager (7, elite - and therefore noticeably powerful; an Elite is just that), the Chieftain (8, elite - and you have got to be joking if you expect the chieftain to be an ordinary orc - customarily they are the strongest orcs going) and the Orc Warrior (9, minion) who might be higher level but is worth a quarter of an ordinary 9th level monster and is used for the times when a party wants to fight the entire orc tribe or an army of marauding orcs.

I therefore hear what you say but find that it doesn't reflect the 4e I know or the 4e of the actual rulebooks.

A secure but ordinary lock probably doesn't have a suggested DC; if it does, that's somewhat useful in an ordinary situation, but becomes irrelevant if the GM frames the scene as a skill challenge involving lock picking.

So your objection is the framing. Right.

In 3e, my character's capabilities, at some level, relate to the imaginary world. In 4e, they primarily relate to the GM's chosen difficulty level.

Which are one and the same thing.

Just as an example, upthread, I mentioned a balance check as part of getting into a castle, and gave an example of someone using an older version of D&D improvising an ability check. In 3e, most characters will face a somewhat quantifiable level of difficulty. Some characters would make such a Balance check each and every time. In 4e, the DC could vary wildly from a (shall we say) pedestrian difficulty to a fairly formidable difficulty if the GM decides it's part of a skill challenge.

If it's part of a skill challenge then it's difficult and part of something else. Damn right it's much harder to balance if you're e.g. trying to race against time or are carrying your own bodyweight on your back than it is if you have all the time in the world and are barely encumbered. If your DM lets you do something easily but suddenly and arbitrarily makes it harder just because it's part of a skill challenge then he's doing it wrong. One of my rules of thumb for skill challenges is that PCs shouldn't explicitely know they are in one.

Skill challenges are supposed to add drama, but since the GM sets every aspect of the difficulty, and the base DCs generally scale to level, it's actually a routlette game in disguise, with the GM setting house odds.

Which is exactly what happens in combat every time the GM adds levels to a monster. You are playing roulette with the GM setting house odds. This is absolutely no different. Or do you believe GMs shouldn't customise monsters?

 

[Imaro]

@pawsplay: I think I get exactly what you are saying and I agree with it to a large extent...

In 3e I know a very simple lock is a DC 20... and I also know my PC's Open Locks score... and because this information is actually in the PHB and accesible to me as a player we can assume it was intentional that a player understand the DC's as they related to in-world actions and not just the game. This in fact does allow me to estimate what my chances are to open a particular type of lock by it's description... which is actually cool because as a trained thief you would think I would have some idea of my chances with locks of various workmanship.

In 4e I am not able to make an estimate of my ability to pick a particular lock by it's in-world description because the DC's for locks in the PHB are based on tiers instead of connected to some real world descriptor (and honestly those tiers can mean totally different things to different DM's). On top of that in a skill challenge, if following the rules as written in DMG 1, the lock may have a different DC depending on the DC's for a skill challenge of a certain complexity and level... in other words if you want any idea of your chances with a lock you must in fact rely on the DM to tell you it's DC... or at least explain his particular schema for mapping tiers to in-world descriptors and to let you know if it is different in a particular skill challenge.

Am I correct? If so... yes I see exactly what you are saying... and experienced this myself a few times when playing 4e.

 

[Nagol]

The players are only in a skill challenge because they initiated actions or reacted to same that put them in a situation where several players are making skill checks, these skill checks are sufficiently varied to be interesting, there is a real chance of failure and subsequent consequences, and thus the whole thing is worth some XP.

If I find this to be the case, I'm recording successes and failures. If it stops being the case, I stop recording successes and failures. The players only vaguely sense when this occurs, though some of the more mechanically savvy ones can probably guess.

They get a big lump of XP at the end of the session--and it's the same for the whole group, and not infrequently rounded off to make our leveling hit a good time in the story. (I'm really only using XP as a rough guide for leveling to keep from being too stingy or generous.) So there is nothing there to clue them in on whether they finished one or not.

As far as I'm concerned, written skill challenges (in a module or in my notes) are similar to those boxed flavor text capsule that were so popular in 2E adventures, or incomplete monster stat blocks, or the like. They are a convenient way to quickly convey the salient points of what the writer had in mind. That is, a skill challenge is more or less an outline of how things might go. I would no more stick to one when the situation changes enough to invalidate part of it, than I would read the flavor text straight as opposed to using it as a guide to roleplaying an NPC, or would force a combat to go another 5 rounds when it is clear that the monsters are beaten and should start running.

As a strict rules procedure, to be used or not used in a situation, I find skill challenges lacking. As a note taking device and general statement of intent, I find them highly useful. YMMV.

Edit: I realize that failed to directly answer your question. I see some repercussions to doing things this way, but none that trouble me much.

I was meaning repercussions of the in-game variety. If the PCs are far enough along an "interesting" situation and decide to abandon it, shouldn't those actions often have an effect on the world that should have consequence?


*edit* In other words shouldn't an abandoned skill challenge almost be the equivalent of a failed one?

 

[ProfessorCirno]

In 3e I know a very simple lock is a DC 20... and I also know my PC's Open Locks score... and because this information is actually in the PHB and accesible to me as a player we can assume it was intentional that a player understand the DC's as they related to in-world actions and not just the game. This in fact does allow me to estimate what my chances are to open a particular type of lock by it's description... which is actually cool because as a trained thief you would think I would have some idea of my chances with locks of various workmanship.

And how do you know it is a "Simple Lock?" For that matter, why is the simple lock DC20?

 

[Hussar]

Imaro - the problem is, do you want your game world to be dictated by the game rules? Seems like 3e would actually be limiting here, since in game world elements are dictated by the rules, not by the game world, or by the DM.

I've said this multiple times before. 3e does a 3e game world fantastically.

 

[Umbran]

And how do you know it is a "Simple Lock?" For that matter, why is the simple lock DC20?

Because, a high-dex 1st level character can easily have a +8 modifier on the roll, so hitting a DC 20 is a decent shot, but not an outright given, for a generic 1st level character of the sort you'd expect to be picking locks.

It is a genre thing, really: Starting characters have a shot at dealing with simple, basic stuff, but it isn't handed to them on a silver platter.