D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back

[Emerikol]

Every time you mention GNS, a thread bursts into flames.

Sorry

You could easily say that the characters are aware that they are battared and bruised and near collapse, but for ease of play it is not reflected in mechanical penalties.

Yes. I choose to say that the characters keep on going because they are heroic. But thats my nod to unrealism. I don't say they are untouched all the way to 1 hit point. Blood is flowing long before that.

 

[billd91]

No. It's a specific property of one way of writing a book as against another. 4e books are clear, crisp, precise, and I can find anything in them in a matter of seconds. If I want to know how 4e plays, the only books that to me come close are the DMGs - but if I want to know a given piece of information on how to play 4e while at the table then the 4e books are the best edition I've seen. Which, as normal, means that 4e is easier to improvise with than 3.X.

This is meant to support the argument that 4e plays better than it reads? I'll agree that the 4e books are well laid out. The PH is probably the easiest PH to find quick answers in of all of the editions I've read. I don't think that makes it any easier to improvise, though. And in the end, we found it played worse than it read because the grindiness and short-term-bonus-fiddlyness of combat wasn't really reflected in the text.

 

[Mallus]

When I hit your character with a sword he feels it just like your player does.

My character feels only what I decide he feels. Note: this is an important point.

Dissociative mechanics are specific things where the player and character have to think about something differently.

What does a PC think when an invisible magic-user fireballs them, ie when the PC in unaware of the attack?

Does the PC think anything? Do they get a saving throw? What does that saving throw represent -- their Spider-sense maybe? What's the association between the player and their character at that point?

A fate point is an easy and perfect example. If you can use some pool of resources to modify a die whenever you want but only so long as you have points in the pool, then that is dissociative. The character does not know about the pool. The character does not know why he suddenly got better this time. etc...

What does the character know?

That they are lucky.

Dissociated mechanics are a kind of abstraction.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The "dissociated" aspect of hit points is this: when the hit point pool is low the player knows that the next hit will be fatal; but how does the PC know that? (Given that the PC is not tired, or slowing down, nor carrying a "divine favour and luck" meter to measure his/her current state of Gygaxian "health"). In other words hit points are an example of the "dissociated" Fate Points that [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] mentioned upthread.

Nod. Labeling some abstract mechanic dissociative is as easy as constructing a visualization of it that you don't care for. That's very easy to do with hps, which are very abstract and more than a tad vague. It's just as easy to come up with associative rationales: When your PC is low on hps, he knows he's being overwhelmed, that he can't keep up his defenses much longer. Or "hit points are all meat" (even though each edition has stated clearly they're more than that).

 

[Argyle King]

I felt that the bloodied condition went a long way toward giving at least a minimal nod toward giving HP some meaning. I would have preferred a little bit more granularity. Perhaps bloodied would be when you were at 1/2 HP and then something else could have been when you were at some other fraction. I was ok with bloodied though.

One area I had trouble was that I felt that 4E ability scores were somewhat meaningless. (To be fair, 3rd Edition suffers a little bit of the same problem at some of the really high levels.) What does it really mean for a high level monster to have 40 charisma? It mostly means the game says the numbers should be that high, so they are. I would have liked for ability scores to mean something a little more solid. I do not see 5E changing this aspect of the game very much.

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is meant to support the argument that 4e plays better than it reads? I'll agree that the 4e books are well laid out. The PH is probably the easiest PH to find quick answers in of all of the editions I've read. I don't think that makes it any easier to improvise, though. And in the end, we found it played worse than it read because the grindiness and short-term-bonus-fiddlyness of combat wasn't really reflected in the text.

That's not the only reason it's easier to improvise. Scene framing mechanics and eyeballed DCs handed to you on a plate (i.e. skill challenges) are a big one. As is reliably knowing what's going to crush the party.

Someone with a little talent and a couple of years of experience DMing in oD&D, AD&D, or 4e are going to find it about equally easy to improvise as they've mastered the system in all three cases. On the other hand a two month 4e DM is probably going to be a match for a six month or even one year AD&D/oD&D DM as the game's better laid out, the core's simpler, and you have better tools - like skill challenges, balance, and even treasure parcels. (On the other hand you lack random dice roll tables that can be useful). By the two year mark, if you last that long, you've basically either internalised the tools or invented your own set.

A skill challenge is basically someone writing down what a subset of decent DMs do in a complex situation behind the screen and attempting to formalise it as a scaffolding tool.

And the grindiness has been reduced a lot with the MM3 and onwards - the game's a lot better for it. Also over time I think fewer and fewer PCs are using short term bonusses and penalties.

 

[Argyle King]

deleted... I didn't feel like I was adding anything to the conversation.

 

[D'karr]

I'm not so sure I'd agree that it's easy to improvise in 4E or that mastery of the system comes easily. As I said in a previous post, I would agree that 4E made running a game easy. By that I mean 4E made it very easy to get to the minimum bar required to get a game moving. I do not feel that learning more in depth DMing skills were necessarily easy with 4E though.

I found almost the opposite situation. I found a solid framework on which to build to taste. For the first time in a very long time, I found that improvising, within the framework, was quite easy. I also found that it was quick and satisfying. I was able to concentrate on the results I wanted to have, instead of on the "process" to get there.

I found myself doing a lot more work than the system said I should be doing to get the game to work the way I wanted it to. I don't feel I would consider myself a very good 4E DM; only recently would I have dared to say I felt comfortable with the system.

My experience in this respect was also different. After having DMd 3.x for almost 10 years, I found 4e extremely easy to modify and get the result I wanted. I don't consider myself a super DM either, but 4e really allowed me to improvise to taste, and do it comfortably. I found that the rules would pretty much get out of my way when I wanted to improvise.

edit: On the other hand, I found that a lot of my homebrew stuff seemed to work out better than the official material. The way I run skill challenges bears only a token resemblance to how they are written. Likewise, the encounter XP guidelines as well as Skill Challenge DCs that I use are quite a bit different than the official ones.

I've always found that anything that I create is better than the "official" material, but that is usually because my material only has to fit the needs of a very select group of players at my table. I don't have to create material for the entire D&D population.

I agree that almost any run at Skill Challenges from "my system" is better than the officially presented material, but what the Skill Challenge system provided was a good first step to build upon. The most impressive part about that framework was the ease with which I was able to modify it to fit my needs.



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[pemerton]

While I wouldn't say hit points are exactly meat, my characters do know their hit points. So practically it is as if they were meat. This is unrealistic but as I've said many times it's not dissociative.

<snip>

A character knows the general range. If 10d6 is what ten feet of falling does to you then they know that general range. At least as well as any of us know such stuff. I'm not saying the character is thinking a number. But the number relates to a real thing.

As I said in my post, you can avoid dissociated hit points if you treat them as meat. Some people don't like the fiction that this creates.

I don't doubt you believe this. But the mechanics are the game.

How does that relate to 2e modules like Dead Gods, or 1st ed modules like Beyond the Crystal Cave?

I think that D&D is primarily its story elements, plus a certain sort of gonzo play. It's not the mechanical minutiae of AD&D or 3E.

Doesn't this depend on edition though? In 3.0 loosing my last hit point is not fatal only at -10 or lower am I "Dead".

At 0 hit points my character is "Disabled"... at -1 to -9 he is "Dying"... and at -10 Hit points or lower he is "Dead". This seems like a progression that informs the player (with mechanical effects) as to the current state of his PC who "feels" it through these conditions in character.

The point remains the same: the player knows that the next hit will disable him/her (or, at high levels, where minimum damage is more than 10, knows that the next hit will kill him/her). Whereas the PC can't know this.

It's a basic feature of Gygax's "hit points as plot protection (sorrry, "luck and divine favour")" model.

You could easily say that the characters are aware that they are battared and bruised and near collapse, but for ease of play it is not reflected in mechanical penalties.

You could say such a thing. When the player of a 4e fighter uses Come and Get It, you could say stuff too that explains why the enemies move.

One area I had trouble was that I felt that 4E ability scores were somewhat meaningless. (To be fair, 3rd Edition suffers a little bit of the same problem at some of the really high levels.) What does it really mean for a high level monster to have 40 charisma?

Agreed. I think ability scores in 3E and 4e are just abstracted "skill/attack" group bonuses. They don't tell us anything significant about the creature, other than that it's tough, clever or forceful of personality.

 

[Libramarian]

You could easily say that the characters are aware that they are battared and bruised and near collapse, but for ease of play it is not reflected in mechanical penalties.

That's how most people think of it I think.