Monte Cook back at wizards

[UngeheuerLich]

@Abdul:

Hey, you don´t have to argue wth me about 4e´s superiority in general... otherwise I would not be here in this forum.
But then again. The +1/2 per level is now redundant, as most checks assume easy hard and medium tasks set at your own level... So you could as well just drop the 1/2 per level bonus and actually have a much easier table...
The ablity increases also don´t do the skill system much good.
And skill versus defense seemed to have worked somewhere during the design phase...
So while it NOW does the job done quite well, it is not elegant anymore, as it used an seemingly arbitrary table to set DCs...

In 3e i could just say: expert tasks are DC 15 and be done with it... the whole game long...
but as you said: some key abilities were also moved into that system (which was eased somewhat in 3.5 by making animal empathy e.g. a feature instead)

 

[Zaran]

I think the biggest flaw of 4e is that there is no Donkeyhorse. Maybe Monte Cook will bring them back to DnD!

 

[mudlock]

The +1/2 per level is now redundant, as most checks assume easy hard and medium tasks set at your own level... So you could as well just drop the 1/2 per level bonus and actually have a much easier table...

Except it isn't. A 15 foot wide chasm is always going to be a DC 15 athletics check to jump across. But you don't have epic level characters jump across 15 foot wide chasms if you expect to challenge them.

Higher DC checks are suppose to be more impressive things. A hard religion check at level 25 should let you know more impressive stuff than a hard religion check at level 2. The *relative difficulty* of the challenge *for the character* is still going to be the same--"hard"--but it's up to you, as a DM (and a player) to find the "40 foot chasm" equivalent for a religion check. You *have* to give it meaning; *you* have to give it meaning. Otherwise it's just numbers.

The system just tells you the numbers for what's fair. It's clear how athletics scales, but all other skill checks scale (or at least, should scale) too, they just do it in less obvious ways.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Abdul, I agree with you on many of the details, but I think UngeheuerLich is not off base.

The way I see it, in game design (or any design) there comes a point where the designers leave the realm of pure design, theory, early prototyping (glossing over flaws with experience)--and get down to the nitty gritty of making it work--execution, implementation, development, testing. This inevitably involves compromises--i.e. compromising the design.

In fact, this is part of all the wild and sometimes mutually incompatible friction labeled at these recent articles. We are seeing design before compromises have been made, and some people don't like it. They want to make compromises now, and move the game in some direction they think they'll prefer. Or rather, they want to put a stake down to fight over the boundaries of the compromises that will inevitably ensue. Sometimes, I wonder why designers even bother to let us see inside.

But it is also fairly clear to me that the 3E design had some of this same kind of friction internally, during development. Whether it was between the designers, or the designers and the developers, or inherent in the clash of trying to do something new with some fidelity to tradition, or insufficient ability to articulate/defend/manage the design and compromises during development and playtesting--I don't know.

I'm not saying that the 3E design was really good, and then it got all messed up later. I am saying that however good the 3E design was initially, it was seriously messed up during development/testing by some bad compromises.

You can see this in some of the things that got said about what feats and prestige classes (to pick two easy examples) were meant to do, versus their expanded and largely incoherent roles.

Yeah, I think 3e TRIED to be an improved 2e in essence. You can definitely see what they were aiming at. I have to say though, not all of the things that were issues in 3e were simply a matter of things getting twisted up in development. The skill system particularly was simply a bad design. Had someone put out that skill system in say 1978 I'd just chalk it up to the immaturity of game design in general at that time and it would compare favorably with other systems of its vintage. 20 years later, in light of all the excellent work done in the 90's in particular, it was simply a fumbling attempt, 10 years behind the times, and rather uninformed. Again it just strikes me as someone taking the rudimentary NWP system and just generalizing it without actually thinking about how it fit into the greater whole of the game.

In fact IMHO the roots of most of the failings in 3e really go straight back to the design. They aren't the kind of 'math error' sorts of things you see in 4e, or hacks that someone found were needed late in the cycle because of other changes, like Masterwork Armor. Instead they were fundamental misapprehensions about what the purpose and use of various subsystems was. Maybe some things were late issues like adding vastly overpowered buff spells and giving wizards ways to circumvent the restrictions AD&D put on casting in combat. I think the issues started much earlier though with a failure to truly understand AD&D at a deep level. Ironically the first things out of Monte's mouth in this latest L&L clearly seem to demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of 4e as well. I'm not impressed so far.

[MENTION=39596]Unspeakable[/MENTION]
Yeah, I hear you. I think mudlock is right about the 1/2 level thing though. Now, maybe there's some other way to approach that instead of a scaling bonus, but he's got a point. The ability score bumps I agree with you about. I think those were a bad idea on the whole. I get what the idea was, but it really messes with the math a lot and buggers up the range of skill bonuses, amongst other things. Were I making something like 4e now I'd consider alternatives to the 1/2 level bonus, but I'm not sure yet if you can really get rid of it, or exactly what to put in its place.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

In fact IMHO the roots of most of the failings in 3e really go straight back to the design. They aren't the kind of 'math error' sorts of things you see in 4e, or hacks that someone found were needed late in the cycle because of other changes, like Masterwork Armor. Instead they were fundamental misapprehensions about what the purpose and use of various subsystems was. Maybe some things were late issues like adding vastly overpowered buff spells and giving wizards ways to circumvent the restrictions AD&D put on casting in combat. I think the issues started much earlier though with a failure to truly understand AD&D at a deep level. Ironically the first things out of Monte's mouth in this latest L&L clearly seem to demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of 4e as well. I'm not impressed so far.

Could be. I don't put it on Monte, because I've got so much of the Arcana Evolved stuff. What I see there is that when he had a clear design in mind, and developed it himself, it did what he wanted it to do. Whether what he wanted was the best thing is open to debate, but I don't think many people would read his design diaries for AE and think he didn't get what he was doing.

Tell me how we ended up with "Use Rope" skill, and I'll tell you who was to blame for the 3E failings. Was it that the "design" for covering a niche was just to slap on another skill? Or did a developer really go to bat for it? Or did the simulation versus gamism schism in the team get a management compromise instead of a clear ruling? Or was there a flaw in the design revealed by the need for the skill, and instead of revising, they put on a band aid? Or did they simply run out of time and budget, after having done the best they could.

That last one might be generous, but it is also the single most likely reason. But see, I don't know how it got that way. But I recongize a symptom of a screwed up implementation when I see it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Could be. I don't put it on Monte, because I've got so much of the Arcana Evolved stuff. What I see there is that when he had a clear design in mind, and developed it himself, it did what he wanted it to do. Whether what he wanted was the best thing is open to debate, but I don't think many people would read his design diaries for AE and think he didn't get what he was doing.

Tell me how we ended up with "Use Rope" skill, and I'll tell you who was to blame for the 3E failings. Was it that the "design" for covering a niche was just to slap on another skill? Or did a developer really go to bat for it? Or did the simulation versus gamism schism in the team get a management compromise instead of a clear ruling? Or was there a flaw in the design revealed by the need for the skill, and instead of revising, they put on a band aid? Or did they simply run out of time and budget, after having done the best they could.

That last one might be generous, but it is also the single most likely reason. But see, I don't know how it got that way. But I recongize a symptom of a screwed up implementation when I see it.

Yeah, we don't either of us know what really went down. I'm just saying, there was a lot of stuff in 3e that seemed 'wrong' to me that wasn't numbers. Skills had number problems, but they also had more basic issues like just arbitrarily mixing valuable combat skills in with RP fluff at all the same cost. Not that 4e totally fixed that, but if I were going to mess with skills it would be in the vein of tightening up the numbers and maybe documenting how exposition should work and reminding DMs that there are other options besides just a DC. 4e already fully supports 'poke this and learn something' and even 'poke this and if you're trained learn something'.

Anyway, it is all out of our hands and we really have no idea what work he's actually doing for WotC until it shows up as a product announcement.

 

[Argyle King]

I read the 3e PHB & DMG and my reaction was basically "this game is horribly flawed unto total brokenness", which appears to have been basically born out. Sorry, nothing about 3e impresses me except that the people who designed had nary a clue about how to create good workable mechanics. Not so much in the small sense, but in the large. The way things fit together was just borked. The less that team has to do with 4e (or 5e) mechanics the happier I'll be.

Oddly, I thought the same thing about some of 4E's concepts after the first campaign I played in. Suffice to say, the usual GM of the group has banned me from ever buying Dimensional Shackles as well as doing many other things which were presented as viable & non-broken options. However, I will say that -for me- 4E mostly misses the mark on a lot of 'small sense' things and small details.

I also find that -in my opinion- the final 4E product was not the same as what is presented in the preview books (both of which I have and still sometimes read.) I do expect there to be difference between prototype and actual product; it's natural for an idea to evolve during the design process, but -for me personally- the end 4E product ditched too much of what I found exciting about the 4E previews. In particular, I find the tone and feel of the game to be vastly different.

Likewise, while I understand why changes were made to some of the rules with each new round of books, I don't feel confident in the direction the changes took the game. I do feel changes were needed in many aspects of the game due to flawed designs right out of the gate; however, I feel there were instances in which the solution I would have preferred (and the solution that I feel made for a more consistent sent of rules) was much different than the official changes. An example of this would be how multiple resistances interact with damage types; there are other threads here on Enworld which discus the wonkiness which can arise with how multiple resistances are currently handled. In my humble opinion, the rules functioned more consistently in their original PHB1 form than they currently do.

This post is in no way meant to bash 4E. It's a game which I play. Neither is it meant to defend 3E; as someone who played 3E for a long time, I am very familiar with the bugs in the design. However, as I sit and watch many of these threads, there seems to be (I could be imagining things) an underlying implied message which insists that the 4E methods and ideals are some sort of bastion of excellent design. There are many things I feel 4th Edition does right and does well, but there are also many things about 4th Edition which I do not believe work well; they prompted and pushed me to explore rpgs outside of the D&D brand; something I had never willingly done before 4th Edition.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Except it isn't. A 15 foot wide chasm is always going to be a DC 15 athletics check to jump across. But you don't have epic level characters jump across 15 foot wide chasms if you expect to challenge them.

Higher DC checks are suppose to be more impressive things. A hard religion check at level 25 should let you know more impressive stuff than a hard religion check at level 2. The *relative difficulty* of the challenge *for the character* is still going to be the same--"hard"--but it's up to you, as a DM (and a player) to find the "40 foot chasm" equivalent for a religion check. You *have* to give it meaning; *you* have to give it meaning. Otherwise it's just numbers.

The system just tells you the numbers for what's fair. It's clear how athletics scales, but all other skill checks scale (or at least, should scale) too, they just do it in less obvious ways.

I know about the Idea... and some skills actually have static DCs...
but there are skills that scale with your own level... (look at rules compendium)
I am also not against a scaling bonus... but I believe it is better if you can decide which skill you focus more...

Even if you just have a seperate pool of talents to increase skills. Not as many skillpoints as in 3rd edition. Actually the old ADnD proficiency was not that bad in hindsight... the +1/2 level to ALL skills is not the best solution i could imagine...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oddly, I thought the same thing about some of 4E's concepts after the first campaign I played in. Suffice to say, the usual GM of the group has banned me from ever buying Dimensional Shackles as well as doing many other things which were presented as viable & non-broken options. However, I will say that -for me- 4E mostly misses the mark on a lot of 'small sense' things and small details.

I also find that -in my opinion- the final 4E product was not the same as what is presented in the preview books (both of which I have and still sometimes read.) I do expect there to be difference between prototype and actual product; it's natural for an idea to evolve during the design process, but -for me personally- the end 4E product ditched too much of what I found exciting about the 4E previews. In particular, I find the tone and feel of the game to be vastly different.

Likewise, while I understand why changes were made to some of the rules with each new round of books, I don't feel confident in the direction the changes took the game. I do feel changes were needed in many aspects of the game due to flawed designs right out of the gate; however, I feel there were instances in which the solution I would have preferred (and the solution that I feel made for a more consistent sent of rules) was much different than the official changes. An example of this would be how multiple resistances interact with damage types; there are other threads here on Enworld which discus the wonkiness which can arise with how multiple resistances are currently handled. In my humble opinion, the rules functioned more consistently in their original PHB1 form than they currently do.

This post is in no way meant to bash 4E. It's a game which I play. Neither is it meant to defend 3E; as someone who played 3E for a long time, I am very familiar with the bugs in the design. However, as I sit and watch many of these threads, there seems to be (I could be imagining things) an underlying implied message which insists that the 4E methods and ideals are some sort of bastion of excellent design. There are many things I feel 4th Edition does right and does well, but there are also many things about 4th Edition which I do not believe work well; they prompted and pushed me to explore rpgs outside of the D&D brand; something I had never willingly done before 4th Edition.

No, but what strikes me is that the flaws in 3e were deep issues of fundamental organization and the totality of the game that was delivered, where the issues with 4e are all of the 'dimensional shackles' variety. I can change dimensional shackles or get rid of them. I suppose I could also rip out the 3e skill system and replace it, but obviously these are tasks of greatly different magnitude. My 4e game sans dimensional shackles (or even with some feats given out for free etc) is still fundamentally 4e as designed with at best a couple of tweaks to the size of some bonus. 3e with a different skill system is a whole new game. Maybe one that is pretty similar to 3e, but you'd have to explain the differences in detail to a player new to your table. I don't even have to mention that dimensional shackles don't exist, and I can explain 'get Weapon Expertise for free at level 1' in 2 sentences and not expect to even have to mention it again.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

[MENTION=58416]Johnny3D3D[/MENTION]

I also own both preview books, and i do have the same feeling about them... The initial design seemed to have been better than the end result... and I have the feeling, that previewing the rules was one of the reasons... there was so much hate around... every innovation incited a big flamewar... and some things in the initial 4e releases seemed half baked as a result....