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

[Imaro]

Something mechanically relevant. I already conceded that the money earned from a performance met that criteria--though so niche, that I don't think it worth the rest of the hassle that comes with it.

So again, we're not judging this objectively on whether there are mechanics or not... it has to meet some CJ seal of aproval... dude if all we're talking about are your particular preferences... you win, because I can't argue what you like.

How is the above mechanically relevant in any way that couldn't be better handled some other way? Game play? The gold amounts are trivial, and the decision points non-existent. Simulation? It is a very poor simulation of medieval crafting, both in the time and materials. Even allowing for magic entering into the crafting (which is not at all supported by the text), it doesn't match any literature I ever read. Narrativism? It is so far off that, I can't even determine an example to show how it fails. But let's not limit ourselves to GNS. How about "flagging player interest"? We already discussed that one. If you want flags, why a silly formula for amount earned? Drama? All the drama from it comes from straight roleplaying. Background? OK, useful, but again not mechanically relevant. (You may get some story relevance out of it, but again, like "flags" , you could have gotten that much easier in several other ways.)

First... "a better way" is subjective and probably very dependant on what a particular group wants... as shown by the fact that some enjoy 4e's approach better while others enjoy 3.x, Earthdawn or Runequest's systems better... so when you come up with an objective measurement for better, let me know.

Gameplay: I have a definite objective measurement of my skill, time it takes to craft something I want to craft and the drama of succeeding or not in a given time frame... I also have something concrete that a creative DM can use to compare against others... which can then be used by the DM to test in appropriate mechanical situations.

Simulation: D&D isn't medieval simulation, it's simulation of the D&D milieu at this point... it's Eberron, Planescape, Dark Sun and a thousand homebrews... so arguing it doesn't simulate medieval crafting makes no sense.

Narrativism: I don't think too much of D&D in any edition supports narrativism outside of that created by D&D.

About the best you can do with it, is that if the DM works at it, he can contrive a situation where the rules will be mechanically relevant--e.g. set up a big scene where the performance must be tried and something dramatic happens either way. But nothing in the mechanics helps the DM achieve that. If the DM is inexperienced, quite the contrary--the banality of the mechanics can drag down whatever the DM was trying to achieve.

This conversation is pointless because you keep using subjective terms... what is banal and uninspiring for one person... like the super broad skills in 4e... aren't necessarily for another... some people actually like broad under-defined skills. Until you understand that this conversation is kinda pointless.

Remember how this tangent started. I'm all for solid mechanics that make crafting or performance mechanically meaningful (in the right system). But barring that threshold, I'd rather not have them at all. They just get in the way. If you want to answer Danny's objection--that certain characters be mechanically supported as superior in some way, then a better way to handle it in 3E would have been to use feats. Take a feat, you can play the flute or work as a blacksmith or whatever. Kind of like "Craft Wand". If, OTOH, you want fine-grain differences, so that Harry the Halfling, gifted amateur flute player can compete against Bob the Bard, trained traveling lute fiend--then a single skill roll on Perform may almost work--but of course, like any opposed checks with d20 skill, you'll have to do that a lot or not pay much attention to the fine print. Hide vs Perception works because--it is done a lot, and that +2 advantage that Snook the Rogue has, matters over time.

Thanks for telling me what you prefer, but again I am not arguing that you shold like what I like... I'm telling you what I like and I like the way 3.x does skills better than 4e period.

In 4E, BTW, a better way to handle this would have been to simply say, given the vibrant, 4-color means of 4E, that bards play music, and that's that. If you want to play and not be mainly a bard, multiclass into bard and pick up that ability. Of course, that still doesn't handle crafting, but you can't have everything.

So you think that the bigger trade off of having to multi-class into a whole other class (with all it's accompanying baggage and feat cost) to be a "musician"... is a better way than sacrificing a few skill points... Hmmm, ok.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Let me ask you, would you have typed out a similar reply if I had said Achilles should probably be a Fighter because he didn't wear Chainmail or Plate and probably wasn't proficient in crossbow, Glaive and bastard swords?

Apples and oranges comparison. Achiles didn't wear chainmail. That doesn't mean he couldn't. And I'd expect Achiles to be lethal wearing chainmail and carrying a polearm. Almost as lethal as with his preferred weapons and armour.

Is Aragon any less a D&D ranger because he doesn't have an Animal Companion or cast spells?

Um... Yes? At least if the animal companion is mandatory. (The spellcasting is fluffable - Athelas as cure [foo] wounds).

Are Jeanne D'Arc, Lancelot du Lac and Roland not paladins because they couldn't summon a mount from thin air?

I'd happily stat the first two as fighters. But that's being picky - replace Lancelot with Galahad and the point stands. The Pokemount was a silly class feature (and IMO at least as gamist as anything in 4e). Bad design IMO.

Wouldn't you use the D&D Monk for a martial artist in a classic Chinese wushu film even if he mixed his Kung Fu with a spear?

Of course I would. I'd just use the staff/flurry rules. Because in the wushu films I've seen that's effectively how the spears are used. Not a problem.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Something mechanically relevant. I already conceded that the money earned from a performance met that criteria--though so niche, that I don't think it worth the rest of the hassle that comes with it.

How is the above mechanically relevant in any way that couldn't be better handled some other way? Game play? The gold amounts are trivial, and the decision points non-existent. Simulation? It is a very poor simulation of medieval crafting, both in the time and materials. Even allowing for magic entering into the crafting (which is not at all supported by the text), it doesn't match any literature I ever read. Narrativism? It is so far off that, I can't even determine an example to show how it fails. But let's not limit ourselves to GNS. How about "flagging player interest"? We already discussed that one. If you want flags, why a silly formula for amount earned? Drama? All the drama from it comes from straight roleplaying. Background? OK, useful, but again not mechanically relevant. (You may get some story relevance out of it, but again, like "flags" , you could have gotten that much easier in several other ways.)

About the best you can do with it, is that if the DM works at it, he can contrive a situation where the rules will be mechanically relevant--e.g. set up a big scene where the performance must be tried and something dramatic happens either way. But nothing in the mechanics helps the DM achieve that. If the DM is inexperienced, quite the contrary--the banality of the mechanics can drag down whatever the DM was trying to achieve.

Remember how this tangent started. I'm all for solid mechanics that make crafting or performance mechanically meaningful (in the right system). But barring that threshold, I'd rather not have them at all. They just get in the way. If you want to answer Danny's objection--that certain characters be mechanically supported as superior in some way, then a better way to handle it in 3E would have been to use feats. Take a feat, you can play the flute or work as a blacksmith or whatever. Kind of like "Craft Wand". If, OTOH, you want fine-grain differences, so that Harry the Halfling, gifted amateur flute player can compete against Bob the Bard, trained traveling lute fiend--then a single skill roll on Perform may almost work--but of course, like any opposed checks with d20 skill, you'll have to do that a lot or not pay much attention to the fine print. Hide vs Perception works because--it is done a lot, and that +2 advantage that Snook the Rogue has, matters over time.

In 4E, BTW, a better way to handle this would have been to simply say, given the vibrant, 4-color means of 4E, that bards play music, and that's that. If you want to play and not be mainly a bard, multiclass into bard and pick up that ability. Of course, that still doesn't handle crafting, but you can't have everything.

As I've said before though, opposed checks are simply never required in 4e (and in fact the most recent material doesn't even use them anymore, such as the DC to escape monster grabs is now a fixed DC, etc).

The DM certainly might want to have some sort of notion of which characters would have an easier or harder time carrying out some kind of task related to professional knowledge, etc. but at least IMHO there's no reason for it to be anything beyond a notation on the character sheet that the PC has a background in X and the DM can allow them a bonus to their check. In any case you wouldn't in 4e's case hang anything too significant off a single check anyhow, it would be described as an SC and chances success would involve more than say baking a great Linzer tort. Chances are there would be several possible ways to succeed and other things would need to be accmplished as well. That certainly leaves the option open for a character to be a great baker as a part of the PCs background, but doesn't involve sucking up resources and leaves the DM free to work it into the plot easily enough without a uselessly generalized mechanic being stuck in there by the system (one which you can extrapolate for yourself in 5 second anyway if you really need it).

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Here is another assertion: All the problems with skills come at the intersections.

I think it is correct (that is, not merely being devil's advocate here), but I don't think I can prove it. I admit it is as much intuition as anything else, but based on several years trying to make rules in a homebrew that gets around the problem, and scanning other games for solutions. AbdulAlhazred had this one one his list, but I think all the other issues stem from it.

The usual place the "intersection" problem is first recognized is profession skills--or sometimes, craft or knowledge instead. For example, take Fantasy Hero. If you have Profession: Hunter and Knowledge: Wilds of the Western Kingdom and several of the standard skills that feature in "survival"--stealth, concealment, etc--then it is easy to run across a situation where it is not clear which skill will govern.

And even if you happily smooth out the rough edges at your table, fact is that "Aid Another" or "Default" type resolutions don't typically satisfy the players--there are almost always laughably unimportant or dreadfully earth shattering. You'll run into the same problem with most any Profession, and not a few Crafts and Knowledges. But it doesn't even stop there. See the debate on 3E having 4 skills for stealth and opposing perception, versus more streamlined options. Just why is "Bluff" not a subset of "Diplomacy"? How much of engaging in trade is merchant training versus appraisal versus bargaining versus something else? Should merchant training even be relegated to a profession or be represented as a main skill?

Fantasy Hero doesn't solve the problem. It bypasses it by being a system where you get points in dribs and drabs, and can use them how you see fit. That is, if PS: Hunter isn't all that great, neither is it terrribly expensive in the scheme of things--and by good selection of such skills, you may not get to use a particular one that often, but the set will matter. So this fits into Danny's point of if you are going to do this, better to have a long list.

Part of 3E's failure was that it went for a FH design, but wanted to limit the list more sharply, because of concerns that D&D wasn't about skills. 3.5 consolidation, towards what was 4E, made this fairly clear.

4E doesn't solve this problem. It bypasses it by being a system where this is all background and rolled into primary skill by narrative. Burning Wheel doesn't solve this problem. It bypasses it by being a system with deliberately somewhat overlapping skills and a huge push in the mechanics to figure out a way to make work whatever happens to be on your character sheet (and by supporting that push with mechanics that supplement skills). Shadow Run style specialization doesn't solve this problem. It bypasses it by creating two mechanical tiers, one for specialists and one for generalists, so that whichever way your particular concept/reality buttons are being pushed, you've got an out.

That is, everyone tries to cover it up with color/flavor. And I'm not at all sure that for a given system, that isn't the best choice. I've yet to see a system that really bores down into the core skills of humanity, without too much complication. All else being equal, Typists learn to play Piano marginally easier than others. And vice versa. So there is some skill to manipulating things with your hands. I'm sure you can think of a 100 other things that depend upon it. Facility with language--likewise. Consider dealing with abstract concepts, and what it affects (and could affect in Fantasy). (Also consider physical limitations. I'm a decent pianist. But my hands simply aren't big enough to be really good. I can't quite reach the octave and a third necessary to do some fingerings correctly.)

We can try to collapse those into attributes, but we all know how the discussion goes on "Dexterity" versus "Agility" versus "Manual Dexterity" and so on.

When I said that we all handwave skill mechanics in the narrative, this is what I was referring to. We hit some intersection that doesn't quite make sense (to us or the game world or game play or whatever), and we try to smooth it over. The statement frequently made that, "a good GM will find a way to make [apparently marginal skill] useful in play since you have it," is an admission that the handwave is necessary. It just doesn't seem to allow for the idea that perhaps a "good GM" would find a way to houserule around the handwaving if it chafed that much, or perhaps choose a different system that didn't chafe so much.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

(I wonder where my brain was at when I wrote "horse"?)

You were roleplaying! Yeah, that's it!

 

[Raven Crowking]

Agreed, this is another 'weak excuse to have a go at 4e' thread.

That could be so. Crom knows that no one could possibly post because they are actually disappointed with something.

This reminds me, in a way, of that well-known edition warrior, Mike Mearls, posting about how earlier editions compare to 4e on his blog. Obviously, just a H4ter!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That could be so. Crom knows that no one could possibly post because they are actually disappointed with something.

This reminds me, in a way, of that well-known edition warrior, Mike Mearls, posting about how earlier editions compare to 4e on his blog. Obviously, just a H4ter!

Lol, that was XP-worthy.

Speaking for myself I much prefer a well-articulated position I don't agree with to bland consensus. Mike has an interesting perspective, though I suspect we'd have to drag him in here and flesh it out before I'd entirely understand where he's coming from.

 

[Ryujin]

That could be so. Crom knows that no one could possibly post because they are actually disappointed with something.

This reminds me, in a way, of that well-known edition warrior, Mike Mearls, posting about how earlier editions compare to 4e on his blog. Obviously, just a H4ter!

For all that we know, he could be. Things certainly seem to be swinging back towards the way that things "used to be."

 

[Crazy Jerome]

First... "a better way" is subjective and probably very dependant on what a particular group wants... as shown by the fact that some enjoy 4e's approach better while others enjoy 3.x, Earthdawn or Runequest's systems better... so when you come up with an objective measurement for better, let me know.

...

So you think that the bigger trade off of having to multi-class into a whole other class (with all it's accompanying baggage and feat cost) to be a "musician"... is a better way than sacrificing a few skill points... Hmmm, ok.

An objective measurement would depend on the design intents of the system and implementation success of the design--and necessarily some subjectivity will creep in to analysis due to preferences and how people bend that system to their preferences. So I think that the stated suggestion for 4E perform being relegated to bards is superior--within the confines of the 4E design, and compared to having a "perform" skill. That doesn't mean it is the best possible solution.

So let's look at the 3E crafts, professions, and perform skills in the skill system from the angle of what it is designed to do, and how well it does it. Only then can we even allow for any subjective analysis by table.

Design: The authors didn't talk much about the design of this part, at least not anywhere I could find, circa August 2000 to 2003. If you know of anything, I'd like to see it. We know that Monte Cook dropped Professions from his Arcana Unearthed (later Arcana Evolved) ruleset, very deliberately. So there was design decision there, much speculated upon on his boards at the time, but I don't think he ever commented publically on why. We know that the 3.5 group didn't really change these skills much, if at all.

So design criticism has to somewhat divine the intent. That divination is necessarily somewhat subjective due to potential bias, but the thing itself is not. (I can't state categorically that the designers were thinking X. I can state categorically that the designers were thinking something.)

Well, what do we know of their intent from other parts of the ruleset? We know that they wanted to split the middle on making the rules map to the simulated D&D reality, while also preserving some of the play and traditions of D&D. We know that they struggled with this, because it wasn't easy. We know that they made trade offs that they weren't always happy with later, because they've told us so. So first, it seems pretty apparent, that whatever the design intent was here, it was somewhat of a compromise between those conflicting goals.

Second, we can reasonably guess that they did not spend a lot of time on design, with these skills. How can we tell? The design doesn't actually integrate into the rest of the system very much--for just one example, you don't really need "Crafting" to get good equipment. Again, perform is a bit of an exception here, and it is not surprising, considering someone spent at least enough time on it to pull it out of the rest. (On the surface, just why exactly would you have a perform skill partially working as a profession, instead of making it a profession? There was a reason, whatever it was.)
Third, there is the negative evidence of what skills did get elevated to their own set of rules. "Use Rope"--are you kidding me? In the design, "use rope" was deemed important enough to make full skill, with a set of DCs, etc. So the designers thought this more important than crafts and professions, at least individually.

My subjective opinion of the design, given the above, is that there wasn't much of a design. It was glossed over with a few labels, or someone fought for it on simulation grounds and got it, much like 2E NWP. There just doesn't seem to be any evidence that the designers much cared about it one way or the other. Which leads us to implentation.

Implementation is a different set of criteria. I actually think the implementation was pretty well done, given the design they had to work with. If you are going to try to thread that needle between simulation and game play, with something as niche as craft and professions, then you might as well go for a little crunch that on the surface fits the crafts. And you might not know exactly how masterwork equipment was going to play out, and have to retroactively fit that in. And certainly, you won't have complete access to the equipment list beforehand, and thus can't be responsible if some of the things on it are priced crazily within the sytem. And of course, it really helps a lot that all of this is optional, and thus not inflicted on people who don't like it. For that reason, better to make it underpowered rather than overpowered, and the development team delivers here.

But what you end up with is something where the developers had to more or less guess what was wanted and/or bend it to fit the rest of the game design. Given some of the statements issued since, by people there at the time that wanted something closer to Hero or GURPs, and others that wanted to resist that direction in favor of traditional D&D play (whatever that was in their eyes), it is not clear which battles were fought, let alone who won them.

So I have no trouble whatsoever stating that anything systematic done with minimal to non-existent design influence could be bettered with a more careful design.

I also have no issue with someone valuing the result of the 3E effort more than the decision of the 4E design. The 4E design team looked at the results of the 3E effort and decided it wasn't worth pursing in the new edition. That doesn't change the fact that the 3E developers did fairly well within their constraints. I've also seen pieces of software put together with very little design and heroic development effort. Sometimes, they are even worth using. So, in summary:

1. My preference, which is subjective (but based on objective experiences), is that if you aren't going to bother doing good design, then don't bother at all. Obviously, that doesn't answer anyone who wanted something done.

2. My claim, which is objective (as any such claim can be), is that the 3E craft, profession, and perform parts of the skill system could have been significantly better than they were, with better design. As much as people may value the efforts of the development team on same, those people would be better served by the same effort built on better design.

This is hardly a 3E versus 4E point. The same exact objections that I have made to the 3E craft, profession, and perform skills could be equally made of the 4E skill challenge rules.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For all that we know, he could be. Things certainly seem to be swinging back towards the way that things "used to be."

Are they? Certainly you could see some of the newer class designs as having some characteristics that are reminiscent of AD&D, but the system is still very different in the must fundamental ways. I'm not convinced that Mike is going backwards at all. I think he's searching the design space for optimal solutions and there will be things he's going to try that hark back to older games. At the same time I don't see anything he's said that indicates he isn't aware of the fact that in the context of 4e they work very differently than they did in AD&D. I suspect he's a far cleverer game designer than to think that he's going to make 4e more like AD&D simply by emulating a few peripheral characteristics of that system.

If his goal was to reproduce AD&D style PLAY he'd have started in a very different place than spreading class features out over a few levels and reducing the amount of power selection fighters get.