D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[billd91]

The example given was a Fighter trying to push a giant off a bridge and upon failure, the giant reversing the process. Now the example can be flawed or ill-thought out because its a message board post and these things tend to be off the cuff. But it exposes a logic that has been decried before. Namely, applying DM-fiat results that harm or disadvantage the PC that the player did not understand beforehand.

But if the Fighter is using Tide of Iron to push a giant -- an ability with specified outcomes and expected results -- should there be additional DM-fiat penalty attached to the manoeuvre at all considering the PC has invested in this? How is the player to know when the power works as written and when the DM will change the parameters?

My take on any situation of this sort, whatever the game I'm running, would be to approach the situation in-setting first. There's a giant standing on a bridge - what does that entail, what does that imply? A PC wants to try to push the giant off the bridge - what would that entail if he succeeds, if he fails? Then I put the best fitting mechanics to it, explaining to the player how we'll handle it and laying out a general description of the risks involved. In the sample situation, I'd tell the player that bull rush, bantha rush, reposition, or an opposed check (or whatever is in the system) is how we'll handle it. I'd tell him that the giant is stronger and bigger and those factors will work against the PC. I would also say that failure puts you right in the giant's center of attention, close enough to pound on you or even, if he likes your idea, close enough for him to try the same move on you. And then we'd go over any modifiers or abilities the PC had to bear.

 

[Manbearcat]

You are onto something Nagol. The rub with 4e combat is often the inverse of prior editions. In prior editions the formula typically turned out as:

- Is this improvised move or feat-borne tactic worse than my full attack action economy? Yes? Ok, stand there and press attack buttan.

- Is the DM-fiat ad-hoc formula for this improvised attack too punitive or too dangerous (for me) relative to my full attack action economy? Yes? Ok, stand there and press attack buttan.

In 4e its:

- Is this improvised move (or forced movement rider inherent to my own power) whereby I'm forcing the enemy into a hazard or terrain feature better than my suite of maneuvers? Yes? Continue to force enemy into hazard or terrain feature ad nauseum.

However, in 4e, there are multiple mitigating factors and legitimate decision-points at work that are at tension with this reality manifesting:

1 - Mobile PC's/Monsters and their ability to afflict each other with forced movement riders such that they can reposition themselves away from trouble. Fights are dynamically mobile in 4e due to this. System-mitigating factor.

2 - Outside of "cliff" (which is mitigated by 1 and 4), virtually all of the truly punitive terrain features and hazards are limited-use (once and done). Some are at-will (perhaps a spreading fire) but that will be a theme that the GM puts into the fight (collapsing building/cave, spreading fire, dragon's lair with lava pits, mad alchemists lab with cauldrons) in order to make it dynamic and thematically compelling. Or, the players will introduce it themselves as an obstacle or feature to interact with. System-mitigating factor.

3 - The varying monster and PC roles work together with enough synergy that taking advantage of your ally as a force-multiplier is compelling enough to force a decision-point. Legitimate decision-point.

4 - Being near a dangerous hazard/terrain feature brings about a decision-point unto itself. Given that it is legitimized as a tactical option as it has its own damage expression and rider...anyone can do it. If you fail and you don't have a movement mode that gets you out of harm's way...you're now vulnerable to the hazard/terrain feature yourself. Your enemy can now afflict you with it on a successful attack. Legitimate decision-point.

And beyond that, like anything else it takes proficiency by the GM to understand how to build compelling, dynamic encounters and it takes corresponding understanding (and pro-activity) by the players. Of course there are going to be inactive, apathetic duds that sit there with their arms folded under their chin and say "I use < insert power >", disinterestedly roll and resolve the action when there is something cool and tactically compelling to interact with right next to them. That says nothing about the rules system. You can turn anything dynamic and compelling into a rut through apathy, inactivity, lack of pro-activity and general disinterest. I've run probably over a thousand combats in 4e with my 3 players; creative, tactically driven players. I have never experienced this with them.

Only 1 time have I experienced this "hazard conga line" and it was because I was brand new to the system and I was "doing it wrong" both from a setting up encounters perspective and I had the damage expressions all borked and made a hazard far too powerful...and the 4 players I was playtesting with didn't want to be there, had their minds made up before we even sat down, so they willfully turned it into a Benny Hill routine. It made me appreciate my players a million-fold.

 

[billd91]

I also like the ways the 4th ed skill system interfaces (or can interface) with powers in combat. My highlight in 4th ed was using a twin strike attack (Im a cleric ranger hybrid) to shoot a hobgoblin rider off a triceratops, then using acrobatics to climb up the beast and then action pointing and using a nature check to take control of the poor dinosaur. I found this to be realistic because it could have easily failed at any point - but not so unlikely that one would not try to do reckless things.

This is different from shooting the hobgoblin off a triceratops as a standard action, using a move action with a tumble check to climb up the beast and then making a handle animal or ride check to take control of the dinosaur? The main difference I'm seeing is the action point allowing all of that to happen in a single round rather than in two. How is engaging in actions like this particular to 4e?

 

[Mistwell]

It's actually pretty civil and informative . There's a lot of why behind the preferences, and in a topic around playtest of new edition, very enlightening.

I think you can have civil, informative edition warring. I think you can have edition warring where people explain why they are warring. I don't see how any of that makes this something other than edition warring. I see a lot of really polite, well thought out reasons to tell others why their preferred edition sucks.

 

[Dausuul]

I think you can have civil, informative edition warring. I think you can have edition warring where people explain why they are warring. I don't see how any of that makes this something other than edition warring. I see a lot of really polite, well thought out reasons to tell others why their preferred edition sucks.

If it's civil and informative, why is it a problem?

 

[Warbringer]

.... tell others why their preferred edition sucks.

At which point it stops being civil, polite and informative

 

[Manbearcat]

I think you can have civil, informative edition warring. I think you can have edition warring where people explain why they are warring. I don't see how any of that makes this something other than edition warring. I see a lot of really polite, well thought out reasons to tell others why their preferred edition sucks.

I don't agree with this. We all have to use our game theory acumen and past experience with various rulesets as the language conduit such that we can even begin to communicate our thoughts on our shared hobby; specifically as we address various premises with respect to the new system's formulation. Warring is not advocating for your position or attempting to clarify the position of someone else in order to understand it; because what else can you do in dialogue/communication? I've played every edition of D&D and tons of other games and enjoyed most all of them. I've certainly enjoyed every edition of D&D as I've got 5 + years of fun invested in each. I know that you can have loads of fun with every single ruleset in the history of our game...but I also know that I have my preferences just as everyone else does. Just be polite, fair, attentive, considerate and not dismissive in your disagreements; and when baited, try to walk away or not respond in kind and escalate things (the hard part!).

I just took a hard position on the prerequisites of edition warring (based on the context of my study of ethics/logic coupled with a lifetime of social interaction) implying that I (naturally) don't agree with those who don't hold that particular position. I would hope you don't hold that that makes me an edition warring prerequisite warrior? Would that, in turn, make every mod an edition warring prerequisite warrior given that they have complete fiat in this matter? Surely not.

And I don't feel like anyone has told me that my preferred edition sucks. I've seen that on this board aplenty but not in this thread. I've seen plenty of mostly well-considered, unpacked thoughts on various folks' issues with the ruleset and why it doesn't work for them. However, I haven't seen (if its there then I've missed it) any version of "4e is not D&D", "4e is just a tactical skirmish game thus you are deluded into thinking you're RPGing" et al. There are reasons to not have 4e as your preferred game of choice for D&D. I know them well, can elucidate them on command, and I can completely understand how folks of that creative agenda/playstyle preference have them. When they express them, I don't remotely think they are edition warring or slighting my preferred iteration of D&D (least of all slighting me).

 

[Balesir]

The example given was a Fighter trying to push a giant off a bridge and upon failure, the giant reversing the process. Now the example can be flawed or ill-thought out because its a message board post and these things tend to be off the cuff. But it exposes a logic that has been decried before. Namely, applying DM-fiat results that harm or disadvantage the PC that the player did not understand beforehand.

But if the Fighter is using Tide of Iron to push a giant -- an ability with specified outcomes and expected results -- should there be additional DM-fiat penalty attached to the manoeuvre at all considering the PC has invested in this? How is the player to know when the power works as written and when the DM will change the parameters?

If the suggestion was that failed roll => PC falls off bridge, I would agree with you, but I didn't think that was what [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] was proposing. I thought the situation was simply this: if the PC dashes/charges onto the bridge to Push the giant off and they fail, then the giant will get the opportunity before the PC's next turn to return the favour.

If we are playing 4E it's actually pretty certain that the giant will get such an opportunity, unless the PC has help, because of the way "pushing off cliffs" works in 4E; the giant has to be Pushed/Pulled/Slid so that its entire base is off the bridge/cliff/whatever before it will fall. Thus, Tide of Iron alone will not do it (it gives a Push 1 and the giant is Large or larger, assumably, and thus has at least a 2x2 base). Two PCs acting together could Push the giant twice (and off the bridge, if it was only Large and not Huge), but one PC acting alone would need some sort of boost to the Push. The giant Pushing the PC off the bridge, on the other hand, would only need to get the PC 1 square beyond the edge (there being no Large or larger PC races).

 

[Raith5]

This is different from shooting the hobgoblin off a triceratops as a standard action, using a move action with a tumble check to climb up the beast and then making a handle animal or ride check to take control of the dinosaur? The main difference I'm seeing is the action point allowing all of that to happen in a single round rather than in two. How is engaging in actions like this particular to 4e?

I may have had to use another action in that example forcing me to action point to take control of the dinosaur because I didnt want it to run away or keep attacking.

Underlying my post I was thinking that 4th ed is more than powerz game where players play their powers like a collectable card game! Sure creative play is possible in other games, but the game mechanics in 4th ed for me seem to foreground these possibilities. I do think action points are very important at a mechanical level to enable unpredictable and creative tactical play. Utility powers likewise. I also think out of turn actions also help make combat more dynamic than previous editions - but at the cost of slowing things down.

 

[pemerton]

My take on any situation of this sort, whatever the game I'm running, would be to approach the situation in-setting first.

In my own experience, the question this raises is - what are the heroes' capabilities? What can they achieve? Are they mundane mortals? Comic-book/action-movie mortals, like Daredevil or James Bond? Or heroes on a par with the elves of the First Age, or Hercules?

I don't feel that classic D&D does a very good job of answering this question coherently - for instance, the same fighter who can lop the head of a dragon with his sword may have trouble scaling a modest cliff.

I find the 4e mechanical approach makes it easier to answer the question - its genre-led framing (with the players' powers setting minimum parameters of genre permissibility), followed by setting a DC, followed by resolving the action.

To try and cash this out by reference to the giant being pushed: First, a PC won't encounter a giant until they are paragon tier (or perhaps upper heroic for a hill giant). So what the mechanics tell us is that we are playing a game of heroic fantasy in which an upper heroic or pargon shield specialist warrior is so deft and strong with his/her shield that even a giant is vulnerable to being staggered or wrong-footed by his/her attacks. Which already tells us something about the PC - s/he is less like the historical Richard the Lionheart, and more like the lengedary Gawain. And by the time the PC reaches Epic, s/he will be more like (a shield-wielding) Hercules, fighting and staggering titans with his/her might thews and shield.

These mechanically-mandated answers to genre questions also then set the tone for adjudication of non-standard actions, skill use in a skill challenge etc. They set a tone/flavour for what a PC can do.

The game isn't identical to a more descriptor based game like Marvel Heroic RP, but it works in something like the same sort of way, and uses something like the same sort of approach to create the space for, and adjudicate, heroic actions.