D&D 4E The "We Can't Roleplay" in 4E Argument

[TwoSix]

Where I run into a problem is that a creature that is described as having the barest hint of intelligence (Int 1) can automagically know and understand the moves of a highly skilled swordsman to the point that it knows without fail that if it attacks it will be hit again in a riposte move by the swordsman... and then with a 1 intelligence can make a decision in game with said information.

It's funny, because after reading that rule (monsters are aware of power effects), I never assumed the information had to be used to by the monster. I simply saw it as a DM empowerment tool to ensure that there weren't arguments at the table where players would try to "surprise" the DM with power effects, and feel entitled to keep that information a secret.

I always assumed the DM would filter that information through the NPC's personality and intelligence.

 

[Matt James]

I always assumed the DM would filter that information through the NPC's personality and intelligence.

Quoted for emphasis.

 

[Dannager]

Yep, even a blind man can "see" your positioning according to the 4e rules...

A blind man knows which 25-square-foot area you are in, assuming you are making no effort to conceal your location (by making Stealth checks). Of course, he still takes a -5 to hit you. If you do try to conceal where you are (by making Stealth checks) from the blind man, you'll probably get away with it - blinded creatures suffer a -10 penalty to Perception. And if you beat his Perception check, he really has no idea where you are.

 

[brehobit]

For me, this argument often lands as the ‘ultimate’ ad hominem attack in the arsenal of those who dislike 4e. Why say what you don’t like when you can simply dismiss the entire thing and make everyone who plays it look bad in one fell swoop? Plus it’s a good way to get people riled up.

One could argue that the ad hominem attacks are largely toward those that find RPing in 4e hard. It's clearly our fault. We're doing it wrong or haven't given it a real shot. I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm not a great RPer. I'm good in good RPing groups, but I can't pull a group along with me.

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1 – It’s a new ruleset with some big changes to how the game (and even more so to certain character classes) operates. Suddenly you have to focus on the ruleset because you’re learning it; compared to how it was before the switch it seems that the rules have intruded like never before. Really, they’re likely as present as they were whenever you first got your gaming start, it just seems so much more compared to the ease had with 3e. In short order the rules become second nature and it will recede into the background.

This was a problem early on. At this point I've played and run a LOT of 4e. The rules are rarely much of a problem.

2 – Sudden (seeming) lack of out of combat ‘support’. By shifting this part of the game back into a more free-form DM fiat zone (compared to 3e where everything was becoming strictly codified) it suddenly looks like your character has no life outside of the encounter. Add that now that cleric/wizard spell lists have been stripped of many utility spells, and those spells placed into rituals. A great way IMHO to allow for those more nebulous spells without crowding your spell list, yet they’re often overlooked.

I *love* rituals. They make me quite happy and are one of the best things about 4e. But also, as one might expect of a new (and good) idea, they aren't implemented very well. The costs are too high and to use rituals (at least at the lower-levels (1-7) I generally play at, you are spending a lot of money. I've house-ruled these in the past so that you "accumulate" some amount of ritual $$$$ every day up to some limit (5 days worth). Still doesn't quite work with the wonky money values of 4e, but it works okay.

3 – Divorced from a well-defined default game world. The ‘rule toolkit’ and ‘world books’ model is one that has been tried before in RPG-land, yet it seems to have been less successful/effective here.

Never been a problem for me at least. The rules aren't as fun or colorful to read as the 1e, 2e or even 3e rules (1e is easily the best this way) and that hurts a bit. But way down low on the list of issues.

Any of those could have given the appearance of it being less inviting to RP or immersion.

Note that his presupposes that they were giving it an honest try – there’s plenty of insight to be gleaned from ontology/philosophy/psychology/sociology about how opinions colour our perceptions and experience. It’s why we, internally, are so often right about things. Often I’ve found that when people (and I am a person) say “I am going to give it the benefit of the doubt” they aren’t really, they’re trying it to prove that they’re right (and usually they are). It is possible to have an uncertain or poor opinion of something and still give it a fair shake, it simply takes conscious effort to do just that.

So those of us that really like 4e (and I do) but find it hard to get a good RPing session in are somehow not giving it a fair shot? I think that just because others have different experiences than you doesn't mean that we aren't doing our best with it.

This may not be 100% pertinent to your situation... I run one 4e game (experienced players) and play in another (many new players, plus it’s LFR modules). From my experience in those two groups, how you present/run things can make a big difference. If the DM lets the players say what they are doing, then calls for a certain skill check, RP (and creativity) immersion abounds. If the DM asks for specific skill checks (or the players, for that matter, ask for specific skill checks) then the rules are more than front and centre.

Certainly true. As a DM, I find it hard to keep the fairly complex encounters playing well from a gamest viewpoint (the baddies fighting well) and jump back and forth to providing plenty of color and description. It's just a bit too much for me sometimes.

As I think about it, the biggest problem is that it's hard to run a "gritty" game in 4e. The PCs are so powerful and special. Try to adapt an old 1e or 2e module to 4e. It's really hard. One actually quite scary encounter in Dark Sun was with a plant. It holds water but you can't approach it and you pretty much have no real ranged weapons so you need to engage it if you want the water. In 2e, those hit points lost in the fight _hurt_. At best you were eating your parties limited healing. In 4e not only does the damage not matter (you'll be fine tomorrow) but nearly every party member has a ranged at-will attack that will just crush the plant.

Some encounters and ideas from 1e-3e are just nearly impossible to implement in 4e. And that includes the things I prefer to run. It's not a big deal, I can run a more high-fantasy game (and do). But it's an annoying limitation. The strong emphasis 3e and 4e put on balance (and thankfully essentials has let drop to some extent) makes some things harder...

Again, I really like 4e. I found 3e to be overly complex past about 7th level. I found 2e to be largely okay and I found 1e to be fun but not a consistent experience (the rules were just too vague). I just think that 4e has it's own problems (as does every game) and we should try to identify what those problems are (though people will of course have different issues) and see if we can't find some good workarounds.

 

[Raven Crowking]

For me, this argument often lands as the ‘ultimate’ ad hominem attack in the arsenal of those who dislike 4e.

I've read quite a bit of fair and reasoned criticism, where people have expressed what they don’t like.

I've also read quite a few responses where a person assumes that, if you criticize aspect X of Z, it means that you dislike all of Z, and all who play Z. That simply doesn't make sense.

Sorry, but I outlined exactly what I thought 4e's problems are (for me), with the hopes that 5e will be different. Esp. so with the current Mearls blogs indicating that 5e might, indeed, be different.


RC

 

[Hussar]

It's actually my sister (the bard's player) who is stuck on this one. Using Viscious Mockery on the Iron Circle soldier of course ended up as "your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries." She thought it was weird that insulting him would cause psychic damage, so I explained that the power is actually a magic spell and doesn't represent her character just hurling insults. Using it on a stirge caused her some difficulty as she questioned how insulting a stirge ("You suck!" of course) could make it angry. I reminded her that the power is actually a magic spell. Using it on the ooze brought up the issue as to whether or not an ooze can feel angry.

I dread the day when it gets used against a skeleton, zombie, or golem.

/snip

If I may, I think the issue you are having here is presuming a single answer for all situations. That's a 3e approach. A power does X and it always does X and it always works in exactly the same manner is how 3e (and for the most part, earlier editions of D&D) operated.

I'd take a totally different tack.

The power's effects change depending on what the PC is facing. A humanoid becomes enraged, flailing wildly, thus dies easier as he forsakes his defenses. A skeleton obviously isn't going to be enraged, but, perhaps the bard's running commentary reduces the horror that the rest of the group feels when faced by undead abominations reaching from beyond the grave, thus making everyone else a bit more effective - again simply mechanically realized by lessening the skeleton's hp.

That's the entire point of decoupling the mechanics from the narrative. You know what happened - the skeleton took X psychic damage. How did it take that damage? Pick a method that makes the most sense in the context of what you are doing at the time.

 

[mudlock]

There's nothing wrong with D&D as comedic farce

Or you could just assume that psychic DAMAGE is, in fact, DAMAGE. The psion does it by, I don't know, making his eyes glow, but so what if the bard does it by insulting your mother? Which he does while wielding a magic wand, I might add. His words have magical power behind them, as potent as any eye-glowy psion's or dirt-throwing wizard's magical powers. Insults don't do damage (if they could, fighters would use them (Monkey Island not withstanding)) MAGIC does damage.

Sticks and stones will break your bones, but bards can kill you with their words.

 

[Hussar]

Because it's the same old badwrongfun bull that's trying to tell me how to play. D&D has always had extensive combat rules. So what? It has them because, in order to have a reasonably fair game between the PCs and the NPCs, you need more rules than you do for peaceful role playing.

But there may be many other parts of the game rules that I like even if I'm not running a combat heavy game. Who is anybody to tell me I'm playing the wrong game?

What do you play in D&D? I don't know about you, but, every game of D&D I've ever played, we play adventurers. What do adventurers do? They go out and adventure. What happens in adventures? They face combat and conflict (in various quantities).

If you are playing D&D and you're not an adventurer, one really has to wonder why you are playing D&D.

 

[Hussar]

Okay let's look at the lore for Ooozes...

DC 15: Oozes are amorphous creatures with only the barest hint of intelligence. They act instinctively and attack due to hunger or because something disturbed them. They use blindsight or tremorsense to percieve their surroundings.

Who said they have a problem with the ochre jelly having ways to defend itself (Armor Class) or being able to undertsand at a base level (blindsight, tremor sense) what is going on around it?

Where I run into a problem is that a creature that is described as having the barest hint of intelligence (Int 1) can automagically know and understand the moves of a highly skilled swordsman to the point that it knows without fail that if it attacks it will be hit again in a riposte move by the swordsman... and then with a 1 intelligence can make a decision in game with said information.

Umm, the monster doesn't know anything. It doesn't really exist. The DM knows and can choose to have the monster act in a manner which he feels is consistent with the group's expectations. The closer the DM hits those expectations, the happier the group will be.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Now I've only talked about combat here, but unless we only have one combat encounter per session -- which then needs to be a major one or else it's a cakewalk when they can use all of their daily powers -- then we spend three quarters of our time moving miniatures across the battle grid.

We were in a similar situation where combats were far too easy because there was just one per day and everyone would go hog wild with their Daily powers. To combat this I would recommend instituting a house rule that an extended rest cannot be taken until after three milestones have been reached. That way you can have only one encounter in the session that is more moderate and won't take up 3/4 of your time, so you can spend the rest of the time on social encounters. And because of the houserule it won't be a cakewalk from Daily spamming.