D&D 4.5E (Not Essentials)

[pemerton]

A 4e party wouldn't bother. They MIGHT, if they thought the challenge level was extreme, pick up some consumables, change the wizard's spell load-out a bit, etc, but the game is oriented towards simply being able to march into a situation and meet the challenge without elaborate pre-planning. Furthermore you won't really gain a huge advantage by planning ahead. Protective magic is temporary and marginal, surprise has modest advantages, terrain likewise, and no one attack or spell is overwhelmingly effective.

This was a mistake in the design of 4e. It swings too far in this direction.\

I agree with your description but not your evaluation. The lack of need for planning is one of the things I like about 4e, after having found it an increasingly big issue in my RM game.
[MENTION=89838]sabrinathecat[/MENTION] has an interesting skill challenge suggestion that I like, but I don't think that would satisfy the desire for strategic planning of your more old-fashioned Gygaxian players.

 

[pemerton]

Not really. The DMG/DMG2 never say that. They say that appropriate DCs for characters of specific given levels are certain numbers. The DMG then also talks about how more challenging things are described, such as when it talks about the materials that doors are made out of. The understanding I got out of that was that for a level 1 PC when they're going to go do some stunt off page 42 that the environment they are in is "low level" and thus the chasm is only so wide, the rushing torrent so strong, the monster so tough, etc. Nothing in the rules ever suggests that a level 1 PC in 4e should be able to pass a Heal check to heal a terrible disease on a 15 just because he's 1st level and some high level guy needs a 30 to do the same thing.

Sure, but Essentials doesn't change this either. Of course the narration of the fiction needs to match the scaling. Epic PCs face challenges that are epic in the fiction.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I would argue that strategic planning was greatly enhanced, as everyone now has a reason to pay attention and plan what their characters were going to do, how they were going to respond, and put forward their best combination of actions, rather than just have one or two people dictate everything.

I think people consider this usually "tactical planning", while strategic planning would be stuff like "do we have enough rations to reach our destination and get back home, how much rope do we need, do we have someone that can deal with traps, do we have weapons to deal with demons/vampires/fey, do we have the letter from the king that gives us authority to do what we're out to do, do we have a viable light source at night and in dungeons, do we have spells to repair ability damage or drain". Stuff you think outside of combat - partially relevant for combat, partially relevant for exploration and what other challenges you might face.

It was probably not uncommon in previous edition, but particularly 3rd edition, that a lot of strategic planning revolved around having the right spells prepared/available. WHich also lead to the feeling that spellcasters dominate the game. "Petrified by a Medusa? There's an app for that, I mean a spell for that."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The core books have conflicting indications. The DMG suggests scaling DCs on p 42, as you note. The PHB suggests "objective" DCs. The charts of DCs for doors and environmental hazards can go either way, because they can be read as "objective" DCs, or alternatively as guides for how to narrate scaling DCs.

Essentials essentially settled the question in favour of scaling DCs, which I think fits overall better with 4e's design. The one exception is jumping in combat, which still uses "objective" DCs. I think this is one of the particular manifestations of the broader phenomenon of 4e being wonky in its intersection of combat and non-combat resolution.

Well, if you are going to call 'make the high level door Adamantium' a form of scaling then the whole question is rendered pointless. The distinction is "does the DC follow the narrative and thus track in-game logic or not?" If it does, then its fixed DCs applied to specific things (IE adamantium doors are DC30, wood doors are DC 12, not level 30 doors are DC 30, level 1 doors are DC 12).

As for Page 42, it never hints in the slightest way that DC arise purely from level. I don't think that Matt intended that at all when he wrote that section of the DMG. I think it never would have even occurred to him that you would think that way. The logic is simple, you will provide narrative appropriate to the level of the PCs, and thus DCs will be appropriate to those challenges. The DMG then MUST logically provide either a complete laundry list of every possible DC for every situation and grade of situation, or it must provide a basic set of DCs appropriate to challenges of each level in a compact chart. Clearly 4e chose the latter approach, though they did helpfully also provide DCs for a few common things like door breaking, etc.

I don't think that 'classic' 4e is wonky at all, it is entirely consistent, objective fictional elements have specific DCs associated, and the DM should see to it that PCs are challenged with fiction that meets their ability, or slightly exceeds it.

Sadly what Essentials did was undermine the whole concept and make the entire skill progression a laughable fiction. At the same time it ruined a perfectly good concept, which was that the DM could easily reskin the world to create whatever fiction he wanted (IE you could have a ridiculous power level simply be changing what fiction mapped to what DC, a 1st level PC could bash adamantium doors and leap 500' chasms simply by changing the mapping of DC to fiction without the rules caring a bit). Now, you CAN still do that in Essentials, but its silly in that a wooden door and an adamantium door will ALWAYS both be DC 12 for a level 1 Essentials PC BTB. Its pretty clear why people found that distasteful and frankly I just put a big red X over the whole skill chapter in my RC (not really, and the rules there are generally more clear, but I would never use their idiotic scaling DCs).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure, but Essentials doesn't change this either. Of course the narration of the fiction needs to match the scaling. Epic PCs face challenges that are epic in the fiction.

No, Essentials says EXACTLY THAT in exactly so many words!!!!

 

[herrozerro]

After reading the whole chapter again, I can see the issue. Though I do not believe it's as big a deal as everyone keeps making it out to be. For the most part it replaced a lot of the Static DC + Target/Effect/Item level, with just Easy/Moderate/Hard of Target/Effect/Item level. For example Detecting magic isn't 15 + Magic's level, it's Hard of Magics's level.

For knowledge checks, even though they scale with level, overall they are easier than the PHB Static DCs, except for Paragon and Epic Hard DCs, which by the end of the tier they are 1-2 points higher. I think a lot of the perceived issues could have been handled with the addition of the line: "or the level of the challenge." added onto choosing the DC of the creature's level.

I can see that there is a scaling issue with some of the skills, but they are almost never the ones cited when this complaint is brought up. Breaking down doors, breaking items, jumping, almost all of the physical things are tied to set DCs. Knowledge Checks, Detect the Prescence of Magic and streetwise have the scaling effect, along with all of the improvise footers (but I wouldn't hold it against those because improv is supposed to be quick numbers).

So if anything, the main issues with scaling is with knowledge checks.

I don't think that 'classic' 4e is wonky at all, it is entirely consistent, objective fictional elements have specific DCs associated, and the DM should see to it that PCs are challenged with fiction that meets their ability, or slightly exceeds it.

Sadly what Essentials did was undermine the whole concept and make the entire skill progression a laughable fiction. At the same time it ruined a perfectly good concept, which was that the DM could easily reskin the world to create whatever fiction he wanted (IE you could have a ridiculous power level simply be changing what fiction mapped to what DC, a 1st level PC could bash adamantium doors and leap 500' chasms simply by changing the mapping of DC to fiction without the rules caring a bit). Now, you CAN still do that in Essentials, but its silly in that a wooden door and an adamantium door will ALWAYS both be DC 12 for a level 1 Essentials PC BTB. Its pretty clear why people found that distasteful and frankly I just put a big red X over the whole skill chapter in my RC (not really, and the rules there are generally more clear, but I would never use their idiotic scaling DCs).

Could you explain better what you mean here about the reskinning? It seems to be contradictory, you say that classic 4e has solid DCs, but at the same time you can just reskin everything?

 

[Quickleaf]

One piece of news: WotC has said that they are going to leave all of the 4E materials and such up on the site, even though they will not be producing any more 4e articles. I think they're also leaving the character builder up.

Did they? That's good news! Do you have a link for that?

 

[sabrinathecat]

Sorry. One of the members of our group has a DDI subscription. He was the one who got the message.

 

[pemerton]

As for Page 42, it never hints in the slightest way that DC arise purely from level.

Yes it does. In the example of the rogue knocking the ogre into the chandelier, the only factor the GM takes account of in setting the DC is the level of the PC (not the level of the ogre, nor the level of the encounter, nor the "level" of the dungeon).

I don't think that 'classic' 4e is wonky at all, it is entirely consistent, objective fictional elements have specific DCs associated, and the DM should see to it that PCs are challenged with fiction that meets their ability, or slightly exceeds it.

No "objective" DC is associated with anything beyond doors and environmental/endurance hazards. All the terrain on pp 67 through 69, for instance, uses the level scaling charts to set the DCs.

Sadly what Essentials did was undermine the whole concept and make the entire skill progression a laughable fiction.

<snip>

its silly in that a wooden door and an adamantium door will ALWAYS both be DC 12 for a level 1 Essentials PC BTB.

No, Essentials says EXACTLY THAT in exactly so many words!!!!

Page 175 of Essentials has a chart with "objective" DCs for doors that is no different from the DMG other than some marginal changes to the actual target numbers.

The jump check DCs under the Athletics skill are also identical to those in the PHB; I haven't checked if the numbers for climing and swimming change, but they are still "objective" DCs.

The only DCs that I can think of in the skill descriptions that change are the Endurance ones (which now match what was said in the DMG for food, air and water - whereas beforehand the DMG and PHB were contradictory) and the Acrobatics ones, which are now given in relative rather than "objective" terms, which matches the approach to terrain DCs in the DMG. The environmental hazard DCs are now also prevented in relative terms, rather than the "objective" DCs on DMG p 159. That also brings them into line with the DMG's treatment of terrain effects.

So I don't see this big shift between the DMG/PHB and Essentials - there is no shift at all with respect to doors - except that of the two somewhat conflicting approaches found in the DMG ("objective" and relative/scaling) the rules opt for a consistent approach to terrain and environment as relative/scaling DCs.

It has always seemed obvious to me that a GM will narrate the ingame situation that produces these scaling DCs in an appropriate fashion - as was discussed early in the life of edition, well before Essentials was published, when high level PCs are slip-sliding around on cave slime it's not just ordinary slime, it's astral teflon slime!

 

[herrozerro]

Yes it does. In the example of the rogue knocking the ogre into the chandelier, the only factor the GM takes account of in setting the DC is the level of the PC (not the level of the ogre, nor the level of the encounter, nor the "level" of the dungeon).

No "objective" DC is associated with anything beyond doors and environmental/endurance hazards. All the terrain on pp 67 through 69, for instance, uses the level scaling charts to set the DCs.


Page 175 of Essentials has a chart with "objective" DCs for doors that is no different from the DMG other than some marginal changes to the actual target numbers.

The jump check DCs under the Athletics skill are also identical to those in the PHB; I haven't checked if the numbers for climing and swimming change, but they are still "objective" DCs.

The only DCs that I can think of in the skill descriptions that change are the Endurance ones (which now match what was said in the DMG for food, air and water - whereas beforehand the DMG and PHB were contradictory) and the Acrobatics ones, which are now given in relative rather than "objective" terms, which matches the approach to terrain DCs in the DMG. The environmental hazard DCs are now also prevented in relative terms, rather than the "objective" DCs on DMG p 159. That also brings them into line with the DMG's treatment of terrain effects.

So I don't see this big shift between the DMG/PHB and Essentials - there is no shift at all with respect to doors - except that of the two somewhat conflicting approaches found in the DMG ("objective" and relative/scaling) the rules opt for a consistent approach to terrain and environment as relative/scaling DCs.

It has always seemed obvious to me that a GM will narrate the ingame situation that produces these scaling DCs in an appropriate fashion - as was discussed early in the life of edition, well before Essentials was published, when high level PCs are slip-sliding around on cave slime it's not just ordinary slime, it's astral teflon slime!

Also knowledge checks.