D&D 4E How did 4e take simulation away from D&D?

[eriktheguy]

In my dual hp model such damage would be directly applied to physical damage, although you could still "spend" hit points in trying to grab hold of something on the way down to lessen the impact (something that the high level adventurer would be better at than a lower level one).

Exactly. Which is why damage from a knife in the neck while sleeping should go straight to the physical damage part bypassing being able to take it as hit point damage if one was awake and readied. As I said, separating physical damage from hit points provides a natural simulationist clarity to these awkward 3e/4e corner-cases.

This dual HP system would actually be great simulation. I remember even 3e explaining HP in an abstract way, suggesting that your fighter simply knows how to take hits better. That didn't explain why he could survive a coup des grace. Applying such damage directly to health and bypassing hp entirely is an interesting idea.
The closest thing I know is, again, d10. You have 5 or 7 or something levels of health, but any time you take damage you can 'soak' it with endurance or luck or something. You don't get to throw a pool of resistance points (HP) at it, but you get to at least roll some dice. Then there are some forms of unstoppable damage (aggrivated) that simply can't be soaked. They bypass the abstraction mechanic and take out your health directly.
Still, the dual HP system isn't something I would use because I prefer that heroic feel (or more importantly, the players do). Also in the coup des grace or falling cases, I would likely apply narration to determine the outcome instead of using the systems. So yeah, they were also just examples.

That's cool and no need to apologize at all (even though I have a Mathematic's degree and have tutored high school and university students in mathematics for over seventeen years in my spare time ).

My own preference is for a much flatter structure where an exquisitely constructed piece of full plate armour is the most expensive thing that you can actually purchase. There is generally not enough coin around to pay for highly magical items, so such items are either traded for something else (land, title, honour, other magical items or services) or else given away or possibly sold on the cheap in a black market.

Math ftw. Also, you can run a low or no magic campaign. Then you don't need to give the characters stupid money. You can grant the inherent enhancement bonuses based on level and keep a sensible economy.

What you class as overfitting and what I class as overfitting may differ, but I truly grock your point here.

I'm not one to tell another scientist they are wrong without doing a lot of reading first.

Balance?! Magic?? 3E? Pathfinder?

BWUH??!??

I lolled.
To be fair there was some balance in the system. But yeah, clerics and druids were still whack at higher levels. I don't remember any edition of D&D that was fun at the highest levels though. Some on the boards have expressed enjoyment or dislike of high level campaigns, so meh. 4e's epic balance is debatable, both between classes, and between the party and the monsters. It's still tighter than 3e, but it's not nearly as tight as 4e heroic and paragon.

 

[triqui]

I honestly think none of editions of the game are realistic at all. Realism and simulationism jump through the window in the moment you can have a lvl 8 barbarian that can drink cianure as coke, jump from an airplane and survive the 20d6 fall damage or climb the empire state building wearing a full plate.

But it's not something I worry about.

 

[eriktheguy]

@ Herremann
Do you think 3e does a better job simulating than 4e?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Narrow? Levels one to thirteen? This is where the majority of campaigns begin and finish and includes the entirety of Pathfinder Society play. To name it narrow seems a little... narrow-minded.

Peace man and enjoy your gaming.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

I don't know about how good the sweet spot is in PF, but the thing that it doesn't address at all is PLOT POWER.

Casters in all pre-4e editions had enormous plot power. This can't be rectified by slowing down casting in combat as you've suggested earlier nor by the PF method of buffing up non-casters combat power and toning down meta-magic. In fact PF entirely missed the point, it wasn't combat power of caster classes which was the issue (though it is AN issue and may be less so in PF). The issue is the fundamental assumption that casting spells can accomplish virtually any arbitrary effect whereas if you don't cast spells you can have loads of ways to slice things with your steely knives, but you'll never ever leave mundane hotel. The casters get a toolbox that has a tool for every possible situation, the fighter gets a ginsu knife. No matter how sharp it is he's not pounding nails with it or screwing in screws etc.

Basically the 4e devs had a few choices:

1) They could have nerfed magic down to the point where it was nothing but a combat tool on a par with a sword.

2) They could have increased the abilities of mundane characters so that even at 1st level they were as fantastical as casters.

3) They could have made the consequences of magic so harsh that while it was potent it was close to impossible to use.

4) They could have invested all magic in items, eliminated restrictions on their use by class, and done away with combat/utility spell casting entirely.

In fact 4e uses a bit of all these options. Magic is somewhat reduced in effectiveness and it is more focused on combat uses. Mundane characters do gain more capabilities which are more on par with spells. Really potent magic with lots of plot power is moved to rituals, difficult and expensive but also open to all classes. Items generally have no explicit restrictions on who can use them.

Anyway, yeah, that is getting off the topic. It does help to illuminate the reasons for the differences in edition design. Notice that the improvement of non-magical capabilities is what seems to generally stick in some people's craws. I don't really think it has much to do with simulationism. Even the way healing works in 4e is really a boon to non-casters. Healing magic is no longer as central to the game, and at least the front line melee types get their hit points back at the start of the day. Creating a separate category of 'physical damage' would just send them back to school again.

 

[triqui]

@ Herremann
Do you think 3e does a better job simulating than 4e?

I specially liked the 3e simulation when a wizard couldnt cast spells wearing a chain mail, becouse of the weight, but could do it easy if they put their chain mail, alongside a full plate, an anvil and 6 dozens of frozen ducks into their backpack.
That's realism

 

[Ryujin]

I specially liked the 3e simulation when a wizard couldnt cast spells wearing a chain mail, becouse of the weight, but could do it easy if they put their chain mail, alongside a full plate, an anvil and 6 dozens of frozen ducks into their backpack.
That's realism

I always considered it to be because when worn the armour blocked the flow of mana and interfered with doing the intricate movements of a spell which it wouldn't necessarily do when carried, but not worn. Other game systems state that a large amount of metal, carried, worn or otherwise, conflicts with the ability to manipulate mana.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And if I was to say one of my favourite 4e things it would definitely be rituals. If the ritual concept was applied back to 3e, then I think you could go a fair way to fixing most of the problems that people had with magic. I am surprised that WotC have not pushed this barrow more than they have.

I couldn't agree more. Rituals for non-combat magic are one of the best parts of 4e and WoTC don't have many of them...

Nobody in our group has touched essentials yet. I have had a DDI account from day dot so my knowledge of essentials is only fair while my play experience is zero. I have not had a reason to bother investing in essentials.

From what you've said, Essentials martial characters are right up your street. Mostly basic attacks - they are just very good at them and can do things no one else can. (And frankly the Mage is a better designed Wizard). Oh, and marks have been replaced by "Defender Aura" - everything in 1 square of a Knight (fighter) or Cavalier (paladin) is effectively marked while in that zone. Essentials Defenders own the space around them.

And I think here you have helped me articulate the primary difference in simulationist play to 4e play ... For others, they must wonder why the hell we bother.

Heh. The older I get the more I think "Don't sweat the small stuff" is the key to happiness.

Obviously not! I was merely trying to highlight that (particularly in 3e where magical effects were generally more powerful than "mundane" effects) that a round of spellcasting should be more exhausting for the caster than a round of combat is for the fighter if one wanted to attempt to restore some measure of play balance between the two.

Or it depends what you mean by powerful. A fireball might be more powerful than a sword thrust. But 7" of steel in the right place will kill anyone and will do it fast. Giving wizards powerful spells but pathetic combat magic might work (the AD&D approach in some ways).

Because the character's stats are meant to represent what that character can do.

Ah. And on the other side I wouldn't care if someone arbitrarily gave themself ten levels in underwater basket weaving. If that better represents their character, good for them - it won't matter in play. If it doesn't it won't matter in play so I don't care. (That's unless they were planning a get rich quick scheme or the like).

I'm not quite as sure but I understand the direction you're coming from here and will look into this on the basis of your good advice. And thank you overall for the time and effort responding.

No problem

Edit: For low magic items, the optional Inherent Bonusses are great. And you make actual expensive full plate actually be vanilla +3 Plate - anything below that is half-plate or the like. Gets it powerful and costing a lot of money.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I think that the 4e designers are trying to hint at the greater depth that you (Crazy Jerome) are looking for, but doing a fairly bad job of it.

I think that there is some scope to introduce mutliple dimensions of player decision-making while still focusing on skill checks as the principle mechanic for resolution, via either (i) secondary skill checks, or (ii) primary skill checks with secondary consequences.

AbdulAlhazred gives the example of unlocking new skills. This is a distinct dimension of decision-making, resembling some of what you talk about in your example of using culture/resources/circles to move the ground to circumstances more fertile for an Intimidate check. Certain uses of advantages might also be deployed in a similar vein - obtaining the advantage might require shifting the circumstances in certain ways, or an advantage might be expended to achieve such a result.

DMG2 also gives some ideas about how to bring extra player resources into the mix, which don't necessarily add new mechanical axes but do add new dimensions to the decision-making - for example, it provides an equivalence between gp spent and successful aid-another checks, and also tries to deal with encounter and daily powers, and rituals, as meaningful contributors to a skill challenge.

In my view, then, before new mechanical axes are introduced, what is needed is a thorough and systematic attempt to bring all this existing stuff together and give a coherent account from the designers as to how they see it all working, and how a GM and players can work through it in the course of resolving a skill challenge. For example, do the designers envisage skill challenges permitting anything like a "quick take" in Maelstrom - where a player can make a check that is distinct from the overall resolution of the scene in order to lock-in some more local outcome - or not? And what would be required to secure such a result (eg spending an action point)? I'd like some of these basic questions to be sorted out.

I think I should probably start a new topic soon. I should have time next week.

But briefly, it is my contention that the kinds of design issues here rearing their hydra heads, are symptoms of collapsing orthogonal modeling dimensions into too few. In 4E's case, specifically collapsing at least three dimensions into one. So while I agree a coherent and systematic account would be good, I also assert that if this account precedes on the assumption that there will be one dimension (skill checks) to handle skill challenges, and everything will roll into those checks, then they might as well not bother.

If instead, this account was done from first principles: This is the ground we want to cover, this is where we want to abstract, this is where we want the model to tie into the narrative, and this is where we want gamist resource decisions to occur--now make it fit--then it might work.

There would, of course, be some trade offs done for simplicification of understanding the model and ease of game play. But those should only be made after the primary dimensions are determined.

4E is very encouraging and discouraging at the same time on this question, because the removal of craft and profession "skills" from the skill checks is a necessary prerequisite for this kind of thinking. They just didn't carry it to the next logical conclusion and ask how those things could be modeled outside of skills.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

@ Herremann
Do you think 3e does a better job simulating than 4e?

From my own experience, I can bash and bend the 3e ruleset to my preferred style of play more easily than I can 4e. 4e has quite a few features (that I highlighted upthread) that make the effort seem not worth it. When I play/GM 4e, I prefer to embrace these things and play/run it as it seems the designers intended it (aside from some skill challenge adjustments). While not my preferred style, it is still very enjoyable.

From an interview with Rob Heinsoo, he talks about a variety of things but the following being most pertinent to this thread:

“I think that the most interesting shift for people is that this game does have a different paradigm, in the sense that previously simulation was king...
Now that doesn’t mean that simulation is dead, that means that before 3.5 was on the simulation side of the middle ground, and now we’re on the gameplay side of the middle ground.”

In terms of my own position which this thread has helped me articulate, I would say that the big shift here is the "black box" design philosophy that Mike Mearls talked about on a D&D podcast (I can't remember which one so please excuse the lack of reference). If the end result matches up with what you are after, it doesn't really matter what was in the black box that produced the result. In other words if the process that produces the desired result is simple and easy to use, then that is good enough as it will keep gamers focused on the game rather than the mechanics that make it happen. Cool, fine and dandy. However, the simulationist picks apart the black box, sees how the process does not follow the perceived, logical "reality" of what the action is "supposed" to be simulating and comes to the conclusion that the process does not make sense - even if the result is suitable. For me, I love seeing good mechanics that mesh really well with the flavour they are attempting to represent.

I suppose I have two primary modes when I play/DM: the first is actor mode and the second is mechanics mode. Actor mode encompasses all the personalities, voices, the story, the description I give the players or the characteristics and personality I display when just playing a character. Mechanics mode is when I'm calculating the result of actions to determine what happens. The thing is I also use the mechanics to help me provide some commentary and details of what's going on. If these mechanics are simulating the action then it's a nice help and assists in keeping in the zone of gameplay. 4e compared to 3e gives me a different set of information and so is a little more disjoint for me if I try to do things in my traditional way. Instead, I just go with the flow a little more.

I hope that helps explain my position on why personally I feel 3e does a better job (for me) in simulating things compared to 4e. The two are very different but certainly enjoyable in their own way.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't know about how good the sweet spot is in PF, but the thing that it doesn't address at all is PLOT POWER.

(snip lots of good stuff)

I have to spread XP around again. And I so wanted to give you XP for embedding an Eagles alusion into an already excellent post.