Manbearcat
Legend
Spot-on take. Crushed it out of the park.
Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)
- Thread starter cross ofth carpenter
- Start date
Spot-on take. Crushed it out of the park.
To me, a group that is this reasonable and accommodating will just as easily address overpowered character abilities and set interpretations that put the balance in a reasonable position. Again, we have reasonable, mature players when we discuss Indie, but any other style is rife with immature power gamers whose fun comes from making the game no fun for anyone else.
What I'm seeing is a lot of easily successful rolls, so the player can pretty easily decide "here is what I will ad lib into the story", with confidence his rolls will succeed. That may be a misread and they were highly lucky, but that's not what I'm seeing.
I would expect that, on occasion, a roll fails. Especially when the concept was a Chamberlain very reluctant to have anything to do with the PC's, with an adversarial mindset, I would think he would cause a few problems for the characters. Instead, he just backed off, stammered and folded his tent. No real challenge as a social adversary.
Can't miss
10% chance to miss
5% failure chance
15% chance to miss
5% chance to miss
Needs a 7 - 30% chance to miss (but then, typically, we get to act again next round in combat, so one miss is not the end of the game). I think this is the hardest roll of the entire scene, and will still succeed more than 2/3 of the time.
20% failure chance
I see a 23 bonus, so automatic success again.
Now we need a 13, then an 11, so very real failure chance. But we appear to have lots of opportunities to take a re-roll.
And another autosuccess.
Maybe it's a very lucky convergence, but it looks to me like failure is a rare, freak occurrence, especially when the occasional difficult roll has opportunities for re-rolls. Is it "bog standard" to be 90%+ likely to succeed on most rolls and have plenty of rerolls available for anything problematic? Seems like these charts don't generate a very challenging result, but I'm looking over only one example, so perhaps it is atypical (though hearing "bog standard" chorused by those more familiar suggests that is unlikely).
A medieval tome getting chucked around sounds like a pretty unwise practice to me, but there you go. Where do you leave the Haversack while hiding from all your enemies in the invisible extradimensional space?
Seems more like "not everyone is so hostile diplomacy is futile, but some are that hostile". I have not suggested anyone is immune to Charm, only that hearing arcane speech in a clear voice, then watching the Chamberlain's attitude reverse itself, seems pretty obvious in a culture where magic is real and known to exist. It would be suspected in our real world medieval days when someone does such a sudden about face.
I'd say the fact that the spell is the key to success in one encounter and a wasted slot in another makes for some balance. Just like a sword or a bow can solve some problems, but not all problems. Your constant assumption of arbitrary, even random, rules overrides remains as tiresome as ever, by the way.
Warbringer
Explorer
Quick Math(s)
Based on the scenario [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] laid out, (re-roll listed separately), there is a about a 60% chance of 2 (or more) failures, cumulative, through the skill challenges, and less than 10% chance of getting out without a failure (with the reroll these change to 50% and 16% respectfully).
So there was a high chance the encounter would fail forward with at least one consequences in hand ad a 50-50 for 2+.
Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
Speaking personally, it's not an issue of can or cannot. I'm a veteran of Exalted 2e after all. The juice is just not worth the squeeze. I do not want to expend valuable mental energy on balancing the game as a GM. I don't want to run dungeon crawls or insert filler encounters to complete the workday. As a player I don't like the feeling of not being able to push hard against the game in actual play*.
Honestly, my least favorite part of 4e is the automatic regeneration of resources. When I ran the game I made extended rests dependent on resolution of the current conflict the PCs faced. It's why I like the way Willpower works in post God Machine Chronicle New World of Darkness. The only ways to regain Willpower are to engage in your Vice, pursue your Virtue, or to overcome a breaking point, all of which will lead to more conflict.
* I'm not generally a fan of placing the most important decisions outside the locus of play (character build, spell preparation).
Last edited:
For me, I would count all these as very high priorities.
I think the most important for me is being able to push hard against the game. I am not much of a wargamer myself, but I want the mechanics to deliver immersion in the way I described upthread. Having to hold back in mechancial play completely undermines that. And the group that I GM has, over the years, contained two Australasian M:TG champions, a couple of guys who used to rule the local roost in PBM gaming, and others who are serious board- and wargamers. These are players for whom mechanics matter. If something's obviously broken we're all happy to talk about it out-of-play and look for a fix - or perhaps rebuild things to get it off the table - but during play we shouldn't have to hedge around the mechanics. We should be able to use them.
Next is not running filler. Filler is, for me, the enemy of good gaming. And my conception of filler is pretty expansive. As I think I mentioned upthread, there are plenty of published "McGuffin Quest" adventures in which you could subsitute the Princess in the final room for the Artefact in the final room for the Evil Ritual that Must be Stopped in the final room, with nothing much in the rest of the adventure having to change. It's all just filler, to soak up playtime and allow level grinding until we get to the confrontation that actually matters.
I want every encounter to matter. Now, my conception of "mattering" is pretty expansive, too. (I suspect more expansive than Ron Edwards' or Luke Crane's.) I ran a pretty big beholder encounter which really didn't have any direct thematic connection to the PCs. I was inspired by a picture (maybe the cover art from Dungeonscape?) and thought that something like that could really let the players show off their PCs' stuff. Showing off your stuff is part of default 4e play, I think, and for me it's a virtue of the system that it makes it very easy to build encounters that will let that take place. I wouldn't want every encounter (nor most encounters) to be like that, but from time to time they can be fun.
On the site of decision-making, I really want the decisions made during action resolution to matter. Build decisions matter too, of course - for instance, they determine what resources a player will have to bring to bear, and help determine the goals and thematic payload of the PC - but they shouldn't, on their own, determine the outcomes of action resolution. (I want to revist this in another post picking up on @Manbercat's skill challenge.) Another form of "pre-play" decision-making I am less and less fond of is planning. I enjoy crossword puzzles as much as the next person, but I don't want RPG play to be like doing a crossword. I have found high-level Rolemaster and AD&D can both suffer from this very badly (I don't know about high level 3E, but I wouldn't be surprised) - all the intellectual effort is put into planning a spell load-out, a sequence of spell deployment, other aspects of logicstics and strategy - then we press "go" and it all unfurls pretty automatically with no serious decisions to be made until the dust clears and we commence our next round of planning.
13th Age sets the regen on an encounter timer. So to get your result you'd then have to set conflicts on an encounter timer too - every 4 encounters would make up one-overarching "skill challenge" for that conflict.
In my 4e game I use the fairly standard ad hoc methods to make regen less than fully automatic - ingame time pressure, the need for a success in a skill challenge to find a safe resting place, etc. I agree with you that the default (lack of) rules is a weakness in the system.
When I thought I might get involved in this episode, I wrote up an 11th level version of the paladin PC that I built at 1st level (before I knew whether I or a friend would be GMing our 4e game). He is inspired by an AD&D cleric I played, a broken fighter-style charcter from Skills & Powers.
The sheet is attached. Nothing particularly dragon-oriented, but packing what I think is a fairly standard 4e paladin/warlord loadout. In dealing with irritating chamberlains I go with Intimidate first (which is my best social, due to the Power of the Storm) unless there's reason to think they're of or above my station, in which case I go for Diplomacy. The paranthetical Diplomacy bonus applies to those who acknowledge my right to rule; the Intimidate bonus to those who deny it! There's also Call of Challenge for getting the attention of obdurate chamberlains, or even kings in extremis, and Stirring Speech for making the stakes and the need as clear as it can be made - might save that one for the king!
View attachment Thurgon 11.pdf
As per my response to [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] above - is this happening before play or during play? Before play and I can handle it, although too much of it might make ask why I'm not changing systems. During play and it's going to suck - because now every action declaration is subject to some form of arbitration based on the GM's conception of whether or not it is bad for the game.
I think this is pretty similar to what I've just said. I don't want arbitration to depend on how the GM feels from moment to moment about whether what I'm trying to do is good or bad for the game (whatever exactly that means!).
The concept (or, at least, the term) was introduced by me (post 1352), as part of an explanation of why I wouldn't want to frame scenes that are simply for the dispensing of backstory. And speaking in funny voices is exactly the sort of thing I meant by it - various forms of mere colour manifested in the play of a PC - so [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] got my meaning perfectly.
Unless they can actually change the fiction, these things are just more colour. In a scene which is simply for the dispensing of backstory, then these things can't change the fiction, and hence are of no interest to me.
There is no contradiction.
Consider the player who has his/her PC do action X rather than action Y because s/he thinks that would be a fun sort of character to play; or because s/he thinks that the sort of thing a character of his/her PC's particular type might do. That player is metagaming - drawing upon considerations that do not exist within the gameworld as experienced by the PC - but is still, in my view, playing his/her PC.
To generate a contradiction you have to add in additional content, such as "playing one's character requires only attending to what is known to have been experienced by the PC in the gameworld". That is a very strict construal of "playing one's character". I don't accept it, and I don't believe I've ever played with anyone who does.
I don't see how you can be a charming con man if you have Duping but not Seduction or something similar. I also agree that a ruthless bastard could have different skill sets from what I described, but I didn't assert otherwise - I didn't say that that was the only skill set from which you could reliably read striking contours of personality.
The fellow with vast social skills was in some ways a ruthless bastard and a user but not merely a manipulator - for instance, he wanted to be loved and respected (as a lawyer, a wizard, a member of high society - I have only given a snapshot of his total skill set). But it is true that part of what is informing my reading of personality from skill set is knowing that a player has built a PC with these skills so as to use them in play - which then tells me something about the sorts of ingame situations they are looking for and likely to try and instigate themselves.
What stands out for me in both these replies is the assumption that "the character may not understand why the effect ended", that "the PC's beliefs are role-played in his belief that "luck" on his part is "divine guidance" by the Raven Queen".
As the scene unfolded at my table, the character knew why the effect ended - the Raven Queen had ended it. It is not about his religious beliefs which may or may not be true. It is about the truth of is religious convictions as demonstrated by his treatment at the hands of providence. While I respect that [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION] does not want to talk about this, for me this is a huge difference in fundamentals of theme and genre - it is the difference between epic, romantic fantasy like Tolkien, or John Boorman's Excalibur, or the film Hero; and modernist fantasy which on matters of religion and providence is fundamentally cynical (or, at best, non-comittal), such as Lovecraft or REH's Conan.
There is something that I want in my game, that is part of playing a character in that game, which cannot be achieved under the strictures you impose, because the type of "solipistic" way in which you are interpreting personality and its interactions with the world is itself (whether true or false in reality - I'm not here to debate Aquinas vs Descartes) genre-and-theme-specific. I've used the religous example because I think it makes the point particular vivid, but for me it generalises to any sort of heroic fantasy.
I'm also struck by the assertion that the player's playing of his PC in this way "has no effect on gameplay/game resolution". It has a fundamental effect! It's not mere colour; it further establishes the basic fictional positioning of the paladin, which in turn frames what is feasible in terms of action resolution, and what sorts of conflicts I might frame to engage the player of that PC. As a gameplay technique, I also note that it's the complete opposite of the GM imposing fictional positioning via secret backstory, which I've noted upthread can have a deprotagonising effect. It's the player contributing to new backstory via establishing his own PC's fictional position via overlaying the colour on a particular mechanical outcome. That's pretty core to "indie" play. It's an example of what I mean when I refer to "player-driven" play.
Outsiders etc are just more instances of the sort of thing I mean by "clerical magic" ie magic-wielding beings whose magic is sourced in a god. By "the working of the divine" I mean things like gods protecting their worshippers, brining relief to the suffering, etc, via their direct influence over events in the world.
In a process-simulation system, in which the roll of the dice is a model for the causal processes of the gameworld, the devout paladin is just as much hostage to the vagaries of fortune as is the most irreligous thief. S/he can use his/her spells as tools, of course, but where is the hand of the divine at work independently of the paladin? The mechanics, under a process-simulation interpretation, rule that out from the get-go. Of coures, you could say that one of the things the dice rolls are modelling are divine providence - but then the rogue is as likely to benefit from providence as the paladin! (This is another version of the Conanesque cynicism I mentioned upthread.)
I'd be interested in what you regard as more pertinent examples. Until I know what you've got in mind, I don't know whether I would agree that (i) they are typical, and/or (ii) that they are bad.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Ah, but once your players catch on that nothing you run is ever filler you'll never be able to have a supposedly-nothing encounter become relevant a long time later due to something overlooked (or thought of as irrelevant filler) at the time, because they'll know everything is important.
As both player and DM I love those moments when we realize that some little thing from some quasi-random encounter was actually a Big Deal, even if we totally missed it. (an example from an old game: our party cast Monster Summoning and got some Hobgoblins; we let them die for us as usual and moved on, and years later we found out they were in the neighbourhood (and thus able to be summoned) because they were scouts/spies for what would become an invasion force - it never occurred to us to ask why we got Hobs where no Hobs should be, or to question them once summoned)
In my current campaign I've been for years dropping occasional hints into otherwise-random bits of adventuring about Important Things yet to come up. I think they've all been ignored, but that's OK - in theory they'll be able to connect the breadcrumb trails later once more info arrives. That said, however, one of my groups considers "information gathering" to be nothing more than a pair of four-letter words, which means I could leave breadcrumbs the size of boulders and they'd still go unnoticed.
And if we never get to the stories those breadcrumbs lead to that's OK too, they just become random bits of irrelevant fluff left in the past.Of course if your players are writing the story it's mighty hard to do this as DM with any hope of it becomeing meaningful later.
Er...I don't get this. You say you want every encounter to matter then proceed to give an example of one that really doesn't. I mean yes, 4e seems great for the set-piece battle and dramatic scene, but without more info or context that Beholder battle sounds like nothing more than a jumped-up wandering monster encounter - in other words, the very filler you claim to so dislike.
Everything that happens in the game matters to someone, somehow. Meeting a few random stray goblins on a forest trail might not matter a whit, except one of them gets lucky and inflicts a long-term wound on the party's main Thief which means it suddenly matters a lot at least to the Thief. And before anyone says "well that encounter shouldn't have even been there" I'll say yes it should; if there's monsters living in the forest then realistically there's a chance you're going to meet some of 'em if you go trucking through it. That's what dice are for.
Lan-"if you go down to the woods today you're in for a big surprise"-efan
[MENTION=14391]Warbringer[/MENTION] has done the maths, saving me the trouble (thanks Warbringer, sorry no XP).
And yes, 4e skill challenge mechanics are based around a good average chance of success per check to ensure a robust overall chance of success. It's very similar to D&D combat. One way of analysing D&D combat is in these terms: that hit points, by letting you suffer hits without losing, grant you rerolls vs your enemies, so that you eventually have a good prospect of taking them down. But those hit points are a resource, and replenishing them costs more resources (spells, surges, time, whatever). And that is part of the dynamic of play. In [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s example the players spend resources (powers, APs) in order to achieve success (in some cases, literally via rerolls). Much like combat.
But what you are calling "ad libbing into the story" is what I call roleplaying. The player says what his/her PC does. That is then resolved, and the fiction changes appropriately - in ways which themselves frame future possibilities of action. When the player of a wizard says "I cast Wall of Iron across the passage, trapping the giants on the other side" do you count that as "ad libbing into the story"? I'm not sure that I see any major difference.
This also goes to the point that decisions that matter are made in play, not outside of it. The player, in order to make a check, has to declare an action - that is, put his/her PC into some new fictional position (such as dressing down the chamberlain). This itself is significant. It is contributing to the fiction, and setting new starting points for the action declarations from the other players as well as oneself.
I explained some of that context in the post you quoted, and more in the post I linked to. "Showing off your stuff", in 4e, reliably brings it's own interparty dynamics, its own need to make choices (both the non-accidental results of key features of the design) which develop theme and stakes even if they weren't there in the framing of the encounter.
As I said, not something I would want to do every time. And not something I think could be reliably done in other mainstream fantasy RPGs. (Perhaps 13th Age via icon rolls?)
