D&D 5E New L&L for 22/1/13 D&D Next goals, part 3

[pemerton]

Page 42 is nonsense and that's why it's rarely used.

You're saying this based on what? Your own play experience using page 42? A scientific survey? Or are you just making things up?

Those "creative" uses of powers break 4e

I also wonder what your basis is for this claim, given that by your own account you didn't see any creativity in your 4e play.

Only one casting of a particular spell at a certain spell level....eeesh. I could never cast Fly on three people, three times during one day. Half of the cool things I've done as a spellcaster in other editions are literally impossible in 4e.

Are you familiar with the 4e ritual rules? - the limits are based on reagents (and hence ultimately money) only.

what I came up with triangulating their navigation, on an intercept course, flying up, invisible (with the fighters carrying me and the other unarmored people, so we could all fly with my limited uses), and in an area of invisibility we just floated and waited for the other ship to fly to us instead of trying to catch it. We landed, killed the guys on the roof, and did all sorts of interesting things thereafter.

I don't see any reason why this couldn't be done in 4e - triangulate their course (using Consult Mystic Sages or something similar, or just observation), use flying Phantom Steeds or some other flight ritual to fly above them, use some sort of illusion or weather control to conceal your presence, then drop down and kill people.

If a power says "target = enemies" vs "target = creatures", can you not see that allowing the player to house rule that on the fly would be a DMing nightmare?

Fireball in Moldvay Basic says "targets creatures", and fireball in Chainmail talks only about destroying creatures, yet players the world over realised that A GREAT HONKING BALL OF FLAME might set flammable material alight. I haven't found 4e any different in this respect. (Targets enemies is more interesting - exactly how much control does it give over targetting? I require a skill check for fine control of the damage to surrounding objects from such spells.)

I mean, if you're that worried about GMing nightmares and breaking games, how do you cope with creative play in other editions?

 

[Warbringer]

(....I require a skill check for fine control of the damage to surrounding objects from such spells.)

Why? Surely thisis the perfect instance where the player controls the narrative?

 

[bogmad]

Page 42? What are you guys talking about?

Ok, to be truthful I understand from context what you're talking about, but I've been playing 4e for nearly three years now and this is the first I've heard of it. But then I haven't been frequenting forums for that long either, nor have I read the DMG... I still play in 4e games now,and enjoy them, but I have experienced a little frustration with not being able to translate my combat abilities easily to non-combat situations. Though my main observation came from playing with psionics, so take as you will:
"How come my ardent [a non-ritual caster]has telepathy only when he hits an enemy, but can't ever access this ability out of combat without knocking some guy upside the head? Can I talk telepathically to something without an attack roll? Are my abilities only applicable when I'm killing something?"

 

[pemerton]

Why? Surely thisis the perfect instance where the player controls the narrative?

Because I think it's a bit cheesy to say "My Fire Shroud incinerates the orc all the way down to its feet, but spares the cardboard box he's standing on". Requiring a skill check allows the "enemies only" to come into play in a meaningful way, but also creates scope for mayhem and hilarity (along the lines of the Rule of the Ming Vase).

But that's just my take on it - if another table adjudicated "enemies only" as "exactly, precisely where the caster wants it" then that's not a problem.

 

[Gorgoroth]

The big thing for me is - a lot of the stuff you're talking about? This is the sort of caster supremacy I want to move away from for a new edition. (1) I don't like when there's a proper spell for every problem, and (2) wizards shouldn't have vastly more access to creative improv due to clever uses of their fiat capabilities than everyone else.

I don't want caster supremacy in all pillars of the game, just in some, and not all the time either. I'm a big fan of giving fighters and barbarians and rangers back lots of oomph, and yeah I played pathfinder and found melee types were often rolled over by classes like summoners or alchemists. I made a beastmorph alchemist that was easily 10x better in every way than my barbarian. I don't want that either.

Look I get what you guys are saying about creative improv being possible. It's just I never saw it. It's like I said, living in a world of very strict laws and then saying, well we can just make up new ones whenever we want, but if we try it's extremely slow or we get sidelong glances like we were "cheesing it". I don't want to spend all this time picking and choosing powers and then get a daily at level 9 that's worse than what the rogue or the ranger can do at level 1 or 5. Quite often, a higher level power was worse than a lower level one!

I just don't know why we never picked up on the whole improv thing...maybe after spending so much effort learning to strategize around our powers, our minds started to calcify into rigid patterns. We had square thoughts that resisted circles, maybe? I don't know...all I do know is that there was something there, or something not there...that resulted in people giving up on trying to roll those DCs to do creative things and stopped bothering. For one, it ground the entire game to an even slower pace than it already was, even with rigid choices! Decision paralysis. There was *something* wrong...it's hard to put a finger on it...but even though I'm not a game designer by profession, I can see it. Maybe the whole is a great game, it's just not a great D&D game, and probably not even a very good one. 3 years after it came out, I couldn't find a single gaming group in my entire city of 1.5 million people who were still playing it or wanted to try it again. Kind of a pity, I bought so many of the books. Maybe I'm just bitter, lol.

One thing's for sure. I am never, ever playing another game that doesn't immediately grab me. Life's too short to "give it a chance". I've given mediocre or bad games enough of my life already (I've made 17 AA/AAA video game titles, and most I wouldn't care to play again).

 

[pemerton]

Page 42? What are you guys talking about?

Ok, to be truthful I understand from context what you're talking about, but I've been playing 4e for nearly three years now and this is the first I've heard of it.

That's a pity.

If you look in the PHB (pp 259, , you'll see the following hints:

Noncombat encounters focus on skills, utility powers, and your own wits (not your character’s), although sometimes attack powers can come in handy as well. . .

In a skill challenge, your goal is to accumulate a certain number of successful skill checks before rolling too many failures. Powers you use might give you bonuses on your checks, make some checks unnecessary, or otherwise help you through the challenge. . .

Chapter 5 describes the sorts of things you can attempt with your skills in a skill challenge. You can use a wide variety of skills . . . You might also use combat powers
and ability checks.​

Page 42, plus other advice in the DMGs 1 & 2, give GMing advice that deals with this sort of stuff.

How come my ardent [a non-ritual caster]has telepathy only when he hits an enemy, but can't ever access this ability out of combat without knocking some guy upside the head? Can I talk telepathically to something without an attack roll? Are my abilities only applicable when I'm killing something?

Adjudication of this sort of thing I think is always going to vary from table to table. It depends a bit on how everyone sees the ardent as working - eg do the emotional "lines of communication" only open up in moments of great stress? Can you use your Insight skill to leverage your Ardent abilities (and therefore, for instance, make Insight checks even when behind someone by reading his/her mind rather than his/her face)?

In one episode in my game, the PCs needed a password. While the other PCs staged a distraction, the wizard hit one of the guards with Charm of the Dark Dream (a 15th level domination daily from Heroes of the Feywiled). As well as domination, the spell removes the caster from play. We therefore reasoned that this was a bodily domination spell, in which the wizard literally enters the target and takes control of him/her - so I ruled that he could use the ability to try and read the guard's mind. He made an Arcana check but didn't get high enough, and so he got some other interesting info but couldn't dig out the password he was looking for. (From memory they got in anyway without violence because the distracting PCs kept up the bluffing until the PCs were all the way through the doorway.)

As a GM, this is an instance where the skill challenge rules and improvisation dovetail nicely - by using the spell the PC is able to use Arcana to advantage in an otherwise social challenge, and the skill challenge framework tells me how much success/failure to narrate in response to that one check.

 

[Umbran]

It took a year for you to read the DMG and you wonder why your 4e games were perhaps not as fun as they could be?

The DMG is for the game master. The PHB is for players. Not reading the DMG is not a failure on the player's part, and you should not expect a player to know things in the DMG.

Heck, I recall one of the big plus-sides for many people when 3e came out was that they'd have a period when players *didn't* know everything - they'd not have memorized all the magic items and monsters and rules yet. There'd be mystery in the game again! I know several GMs who actively discourage players from reading GM materials, for just that reason.

 

[bogmad]

Oh, I agree it's a pity. But I would say I'm very far from being a lone pitiable figure amongst a large pool of casual/regular players.

I've certainly used combat powers in non-combat situations, and argued for creative uses, but when sometimes it works and sometimes doesn't, depending on the DM, you eventually get in the habit of doing the thing that works every time.

I see people say this a lot, and it always confuses me. So I'll just ask for your opinion: What do you think it was about 4e that made the stuff outside of combat less important/interesting than it was in earlier editions?

I think a thing about "the system" that perhaps leads to pages of forum discussions about it is this: Everything that a power can do in combat is so very specific as to precisely what effect it has and what the mechanical results will be, while out of combat, sure, there are pages in the book that stipulate that you can use powers creatively but instead of "IT DOES THIS" the rules say are more vague, and in fact may just "hint" and say "be creative!" This sets up a weird disjointedness in some players mind when they try to reconcile both approaches.

 

[TwoSix]

. There were dozens of creative combos I came up with in AD&D. Here's an example : We were chasing an enemy pirate ship that was faster than us, and faster than any fly spell. A moving target. Scrying didn't help to teleport to it either, it had serious negatives and if we ended up the wrong place, it would be a bad swim full of sharks. On top of that, our ship was much, much weaker and couldn't possibly survive a one-on-one battle, and the captain forbade us from tomfoolery and playing a game of chicken. So what I came up with triangulating their navigation, on an intercept course, flying up, invisible (with the fighters carrying me and the other unarmored people, so we could all fly with my limited uses), and in an area of invisibility we just floated and waited for the other ship to fly to us instead of trying to catch it. We landed, killed the guys on the roof, and did all sorts of interesting things thereafter. I went up a level for that, since it wasn't an obvious thing to do. Sure, there were other options, such as charming our own captain to let us navigate closer, or make a canoe invisible, but the point is...a wizard in an earlier game, could plan out...take so and so many instances of fly, invis, stoneskin, teleport, fireballs...and deck out the group to take on a pirate king on his own turf. It required weighing all the PCs gear, calculating the speed of the ships and how long we'd have to wait in the sky suspended, contingencies if that failed, escape routes if the plan turned to heck.

I find this example very instructive of the differences in play style, and what people are looking for when they play D&D. Why? Because this example of play: I hate it.

If this sort of stuff went down at a table I was playing at more than once, I'd leave. I hate the strategic, spell loadout, "let's look up the weight limits of our stuff!", everyone is referencing books to find new spells to use, style of play. And this isn't some internet abstraction. I've been in groups where this has happened. In one game, the group spent 3 hours trying to figure out a way to get a pile of treasure they discovered while time traveling back to the present. I almost left then, but I managed to calm down, stayed for one more session (where something similar happened, if not quite as time-intensive), and then politely left the campaign.

I know to many people, that's what D&D is all about. (To borrow Armchair Gamer's D&D flavors, that's a Simulation and Spellcasters game.) Since I'm much more in the Paladins and Princesses mindset, to me, it's the antithesis of what D&D should be about.
I want to use my powers.
I want to interact with interesting NPCs.
I want to fight. Not fight as a last resort, but fight because there are bad guys that need whupping, and I'm the biggest ass-whupper around.
I don't want to be cautious; I want to assume my character can handle almost anything I throw at him short of pure suicide.
I don't want to assume my character is going to die. Not unless I think it's better for the story that he does.
I want to travel the planes, not because I got the right spell, but because the party managed to complete the ritual at the altar of the fallen temple that opened a passageway to Hell.

A well run 4e (where the DM and players know that your powers are not the end-all and be-all of your abilities) is the best expression of what I feel D&D should be.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Fair enough, but I wonder if limiting spells/powers to in-combat (which, let's face it, the level 16 4e wizard fly spell pretty much is), and leaving the players to try to find contortions to use them outside of combat, is precisely why I found 4e so stifling. When I play games, I don't mind that my fireball didn't destroy the environment, or that the wall of ice didn't actually melt and ruin the carpet texture, because it's a limitation of the game engine. When I play D&D, our imaginations don't need such structure, and we're perfectly fine calculating weight limitations once in a blue moon to try and share fly spells or figure out how thin / narrow I can make my walls of stone to help us walk across the chasm, or build up defenses.

But to each their own! Your play style is valid too, it's not just D&D IMO, it's videogamey. I'll say this as a caveat again. I make games for a living. I don't need to play a paper video game. Our imaginations and intellects are much more fertile ground than a set of rigidly encoded fake physics rails can provide. Waaaay too many finicky rules in 4e, that interacted in wierd ways, ways that were vexing and counter intuitive. In an AD&D game, the DM could say, okay this is what the spell description says, or this is how I rule your non-weapon proficiency boosts your social skill or your dex/wis/int affects how well your trap is made.

"I don't want to assume my character is going to die. Not unless I think it's better for the story that he does."

Assuming your character will die unless he's very lucky to make it to a ripe old age and retire in his kingdom, while still doing death-defying things, is precisely the soul of D&D to me. There is a huge disconnect here, because I don't find playing immortal characters in a role playing game or in a videogame very challenging or rewarding. There is no death to defy, and thus no glory. You cannot get truly attached to your character IMO if there is no chance the dice will send him to an early grave. And I'm not saying in 4e there is zero chance, it's just the deck is so stacked against it (no system shock rolls, for example, and no con loss), that in 3 years of playing every week I've seen ONE character die, who basically committed suicide since he just didn't care any more. Our warden kept taunting the enemies because he felt invincible. At a certain point, our DM doubled the enemy damage just to challenge us...but it was too late. We could see the code in the matrix. Everything is scaled to your level or around there, there is no expectation that you cannot beat an encounter put in front of you, so you get blaze and complacent.

Sure, chalk it up to a difference in play styles, but it's pretty clear that 4e failed and even with the survivability knobs turned all the way up, I doubt DDN will expect players to never die or at least fear PC death, because they feel entitled to plot==death immunity, or the game is hard-coded to "Easy" mode. There is only a paltry gold penalty to death in the last edition of the game, no worry at all really. Just a scratch.

Ever play a game where you can save + reload anywhere? kind of sucks the fun out of it, doesn't it. Set save points keep challenge in a game to a good extent, but Save + Reload has no business in a game of D&D. Yes, you should expect to die. If you want the glory of taking on monumental quests that no one else would even dare, you should use your wits and your brawn and take a chance...not assume a few rolls of a skill contest will either get that gate open or leave you only slightly inconvenienced.

When you know a medusa can turn you to stone in a single failed save, and you're hunting medusas in earlier games, you just do some research and get your mirrors out and close your eyes. In our 4e game, I turned to stone, but it was but the work of a moment for a couple arcana checks to make me right as rain again. //sad, sad, sad state of affairs. After that I was like....ouf, you really can't die a horrible death in this game, can you. You really are not expected to use your powers in insanely creative ways to try and overcome crazy odds, and be a real hero. No risk of death = no heroism, no fun.