D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[TwoSix]

I think 4e goes much much further than any other edition to treating PCs entirely differently than NPCs, to the extent that 4e NPC stats are only meaningful in relation to the PCs. In pre-4e NPC stats can reasonably be used for NPC/NPC interactions, at least for combat; this generally works poorly in 4e because the stats are
not intended for that purpose. Eg I tried running a 4e mass combat using Minions vs Minions, it created ridiculous effects - because the orc minions for instance got a free attack on death the dwarf minions were deterred from attacking them, and everyone died far too quickly. Conversely a 4e dragon solo vs dragon solo battle is interminable and boring. In pre-4e (or 5e, I think) the monster stats work decently for monster-vs-monster battles.

I agree that Solo and Minions (and probably Elites as well) are poor for doing NPC/NPC interaction, simply because those states only matter in reference to the baseline PC capabilities. But I think standard monsters work very well against each other. And really, standard monsters are so analogous to PCs that you can hand out a monster stat block to a player with no translation and have the player run the monster just like they would a PC.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I very much agree with all of that. I'm curious what you think about something. Why exactly did people (especially folks who were clearly AD&D fans) work so hard to dissuade the notion that 5e was a modernized extension of the AD&D line?

I think they were just employing some sort of anti-4e logic. The best defense of 4e, to them, is that it is a cleaner and more modern game that is more in keeping with the times. So they saw an association of 5e with 2e as an attack on 5e in comparison. Ironically though I mostly LIKED the tone of 2e, it was really the mechanics that were the issue there. As Pemerton has explained, 2e thematically was supposed to be about story and being a system for all sorts of fantasy, but it is still just basically Greyhawk-era mechanics in a new dress. Mechanics that are quite thorough in their examination of dungeon exploration, but lack any coherent way to deal with anything outside their narrow scope.

Part of me sort of looks at the playtest through the prism that it was, in many ways, just a competing effort of various preferences/cultures to control messaging to the designers/the narrative of the playtest such that the "core" (presumably "the spirit of D&D) was theirs. The big tent thing and the bringing all of the D&D cultures together was front and center, full-court-press at the advent of the playtest. So when one group would seem like they were getting catered to specifically, that group would work breathlessly to obfuscate or outright denounce that narrative. You were either wrong or your playstyle/preferences would easily be attainable via the deep stock of robust modules that would be just around the bend in post-core releases....so stop being a chicken little, whiny crybaby!

You could also see it as the orthodoxy vs the 'rebels', with the 4e crowd being the (albeit new) orthodoxy, and the rest being a kind of rebellion against what presumably would otherwise remain the status-quo (even if a new system was developed it would presumably by default be rooted in 4e without really radical changes, much like 3.5 was rooted in 3e). The real question at the time was which camp were the designers in? MM clearly came down in the end almost entirely on the side of throwing off the agenda of 4e, and given what I've heard and what I saw I have to say I think that he wasn't fond of 4e's agenda. So, to me, the whole 'big tent' thing was just a smoke screen. I don't think anyone significantly influenced Mike at all. Perhaps in his mind he constructed a narrative of being the 'broker', but it seems to me that just let him carry out his plans without having to confront the whole issue himself. Anyone pointing out how AD&D-like the resulting rules were turning out to be was basically saying "who's this guy behind the curtain!" which was not at all welcome.

Call me a cynic, but it looked like OH GOD NO DON'T EXPOSE THE AD&DNESS OF THIS RULESET bunker mentality (for fear that it would be overturned via a cascade of complaints/revolt) during the playtest...and now that its over its more like HELL YEAH AD&D3E (!) or <sheepish, quiet brofist, tee-hee>

Yeah, again, while some have praised the analysis of the game that came out of the whole Edition War, I only really see the scorched battlefield. My appreciation of the D&D Community was greatly diminished, and the whole thing still makes discussions, even in our group, about choices of games to run fraught. Beyond that I can't help feeling that 5e as a game is fodder for the bunker mentality. All innovation has been beaten out of the game. As much as 5e does incorporate one or two ideas into D&D, FUNDAMENTALLY it is simply a rehashing of old material, tropes, agendas, tone, etc. Its a signpost which says "Don't try to make anything new and different out of D&D." No piece of culture can survive that for long. RPGs will go on, but D&D in its formal sense is done, 5e is a tombstone system.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree that Solo and Minions (and probably Elites as well) are poor for doing NPC/NPC interaction, simply because those states only matter in reference to the baseline PC capabilities. But I think standard monsters work very well against each other. And really, standard monsters are so analogous to PCs that you can hand out a monster stat block to a player with no translation and have the player run the monster just like they would a PC.

KINDA, but monsters are much more 'front-loaded' than PCs in general. They have all their hit points up front, so they have quite a few more than a PC does (median 30hp for a level 1 monster). Some fighters may be in the same league, but generally monsters have quite a lot less hit point potential (standard heroic tier monsters have one HS and no way to access it as NPCs don't get to use the Second Wind action). A PC fighter might have the same 30hp, but he can, and will, access 2-3 healing surges if needed. Monsters also have less damage variance, their primary alpha strike is less potent than PCs best dailies, and they generally only have one 'big move'. They're designed to rock the PCs back onto their back foot and then fade. IME if you put standard monsters vs each other the result is VERY sloggy as once they unleash their encounter power they just beat on each other for modest damage for a number of rounds. Its possible to construct some interesting monster vs monster group fight scenarios, but you have to pick your monsters. An Orc Warrior really plays a lot differently than a fighter, whereas in 1e at level 1 they were virtually identical in play, neither one having any explicit options except move, charge, and attack, or launch a ranged attack.

 

[TwoSix]

KINDA, but monsters are much more 'front-loaded' than PCs in general. They have all their hit points up front, so they have quite a few more than a PC does (median 30hp for a level 1 monster). Some fighters may be in the same league, but generally monsters have quite a lot less hit point potential (standard heroic tier monsters have one HS and no way to access it as NPCs don't get to use the Second Wind action). A PC fighter might have the same 30hp, but he can, and will, access 2-3 healing surges if needed. Monsters also have less damage variance, their primary alpha strike is less potent than PCs best dailies, and they generally only have one 'big move'. They're designed to rock the PCs back onto their back foot and then fade. IME if you put standard monsters vs each other the result is VERY sloggy as once they unleash their encounter power they just beat on each other for modest damage for a number of rounds. Its possible to construct some interesting monster vs monster group fight scenarios, but you have to pick your monsters. An Orc Warrior really plays a lot differently than a fighter, whereas in 1e at level 1 they were virtually identical in play, neither one having any explicit options except move, charge, and attack, or launch a ranged attack.

I agree the playstyle would vary quite a bit. But their overall bonuses to attack, general damage range, and their defenses are in the functional range of PCs of similar levels. They have 6 stats, and they have trained skills. Functionally, most solider or brute monsters aren't very different from a similarly leveled Slayer.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree the playstyle would vary quite a bit. But their overall bonuses to attack, general damage range, and their defenses are in the functional range of PCs of similar levels. They have 6 stats, and they have trained skills. Functionally, most solider or brute monsters aren't very different from a similarly leveled Slayer.

Yeah, 4e doesn't really treat monsters and PCs VERY differently in a mechanical sense, its true. The real difference is just in how they are built. Its interesting because there was certainly an equivalent difference in 1e, for example, but the stats that resulted were VERY different, though again certain numbers are in similar ranges. The mechanics of fighters and monsters however were even more uniform in 1e, or at least AS uniform. It was just that monsters were even less well-equipped to do anything except fight. A 1e orc is basically a 4HP minion, albeit equal to a level 1 fighter almost, but a 4e orc has skills, ability scores, perception, etc.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah, 4e doesn't really treat monsters and PCs VERY differently in a mechanical sense, its true. The real difference is just in how they are built. Its interesting because there was certainly an equivalent difference in 1e, for example, but the stats that resulted were VERY different, though again certain numbers are in similar ranges. The mechanics of fighters and monsters however were even more uniform in 1e, or at least AS uniform. It was just that monsters were even less well-equipped to do anything except fight. A 1e orc is basically a 4HP minion, albeit equal to a level 1 fighter almost, but a 4e orc has skills, ability scores, perception, etc.

I'd agree with that. And really, I'd make the case that the way to tell where the separation is between PC and NPC in any rule set is whether or not there are explicit rules for character progression accrued as a reward for play. Even 3e didn't have that until Savage Species.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd agree with that. And really, I'd make the case that the way to tell where the separation is between PC and NPC in any rule set is whether or not there are explicit rules for character progression accrued as a reward for play. Even 3e didn't have that until Savage Species.

Yeah, DMG2's Companion Character rules do mention XP for companions, and you can relatively easily 'level them up', but it is a somewhat ill-defined process since the character is basically a monster and has nothing like a 'class'. This of course can be a virtue in that you're not really bound by any certain strictures in terms of what kind of progression such a character uses, they can gain/swap powers, acquire or lose pretty much any attribute, etc as desired. About all that is more-or-less mandated is HP, defences, attack bonuses, and damage expressions (roughly).

This of course gets back to what I thought was a great attribute of 4e, a lack of 'structural crunch'. Where 3.x might impose a 'system' on such NPC advancement, 4e simply indicates that the existing XP system can be applied to a Companion and avoids something like a supplement full of "NPC Classes" or something that would tend to constrain people's ideas and expectations about them. Admittedly DMG1 did dabble in it with the class templates and instructions on making pseudo-classed NPCs, but its also clear WotC realized they didn't want to go in that direction anymore since AFAIK no class templates were ever released beyond PHB2 classes and they never did expand on or even use in any published source or comment on anywhere the pseudo-classed NPC option. It was basically stillborn.

I'd assume there was some significant debate within WotC early on about direction, and there were some concessions made by each side, or perhaps there simply wasn't enough other material to pad out the page count of the DMG and so some stuff was included that didn't quite match up with the game's ultimate direction but which they thought might be useful to someone. I seem to recall there was a guy here who published a huge book of NPCs generated via those DMG rules. I think I used one of them once, and then pretty much concluded that basic stat blocks (and ultimately ones built to the CC guidelines) were a much better option.

I'd still love to see all the options and rules variations that were considered in the 4e design process and rejected.

 

[Tony Vargas]

All innovation has been beaten out of the game. As much as 5e does incorporate one or two ideas into D&D, FUNDAMENTALLY it is simply a rehashing of old material, tropes, agendas, tone, etc. Its a signpost which says "Don't try to make anything new and different out of D&D." No piece of culture can survive that for long. RPGs will go on, but D&D in its formal sense is done, 5e is a tombstone system.

While I don't think you're factually wrong in your premises, I can't agree with the conclusion. D&D has historically done well when /not/ innovating. It'll always be the first RPG. It remains the only RPG with mainstream name recognition. Keeping it familiar may be a solid strategy: people coming to D&D find what they've heard of, people returning to it find what they remember. Maybe not a good strategy for growth, but for maintaining the brand, keeping costs low, and minimizing risk. Not a tombstone, perhaps, at worst a place-holder until a new opportunity presents itself.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

While I don't think you're factually wrong in your premises, I can't agree with the conclusion. D&D has historically done well when /not/ innovating. It'll always be the first RPG. It remains the only RPG with mainstream name recognition. Keeping it familiar may be a solid strategy: people coming to D&D find what they've heard of, people returning to it find what they remember. Maybe not a good strategy for growth, but for maintaining the brand, keeping costs low, and minimizing risk. Not a tombstone, perhaps, at worst a place-holder until a new opportunity presents itself.

Nobody has a orb to look into the future with of course. Still, WotC's strategy with D&D is to do nothing to upset the apple cart. There's no SRD or rules for designating compatible materials like with 3e, so AT BEST it appears all we will see going forward are 3rd party OGL-based undeclared compatibility material. WotC presumably will put out SOMETHING perhaps, but even that isn't clear. What at this point would drive them to do anything but maintain a caretaker staff to publish some adventures now and then, and provide a couple in-house guys to provide research for novels, video games, etc? If the conclusion is that the remaining fan base is no longer interested in ANY innovation, and those are the fans they've targeted, then its a tombstone. The hobby and the culture will simply leave D&D behind, and any future D&D-like game innovation will take place outside D&D-proper. Already we can see the result, there are now a really quite large array of "D&Ds". To 'play D&D' no longer means to ACTUALLY play some version of D&D. Its arguable whether that's been true for a while, but in effect WotC has relegated itself from market leader to relic. At least with 4e and any follow-on to 4e they were going SOMEWHERE. It might have left a chunk of the community playing Pathfinder and OSR games, but they'd have at least been in control of the future of their own product in some sense, and people could always come back and rejoin the fold. NOW? They'd have to release 6e, as a 4e-scale redesign, which I think we can clearly see has zero chance of happening.

5e is classic short-term thinking. It probably boosted sales, for a while, but it hamstrung the product in the process by driving out the people that were likely to innovate with it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

D&D PCs until 3e were always different from the vast majority of NPCs, who had stat lines like "Normal Man hp 3", a small number of classed NPC individuals would get full stat blocks. I'm not sure that NPC stat gen methods (rarely used in practice) are a significant difference between pre-3e editions.

When they only gave you a monster stat block, including THAC0 and Hit Dice and AC and Intelligence range, it's because the vast majority of the creatures of that type would have stats that fall close enough to the listed that the differences didn't matter.

If you just needed the stats for a bandit, then it didn't matter whether that bandit had Wisdom 8 and Dexterity 13, because you needed extremely high or low stats before they had any impact on combat. It's not that NPCs didn't follow normal 3d6 distribution, so much that the chance that any of that would matter was low enough that actually generating stats would be a waste of time.