D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[Tony Vargas]

My default approach, then, in dealing with this in a 4e game, would be to impose no penalty. The game is predicated on the assumption that rituals and the material components to pay for them are a player resource. The game expects that players will expend these resources to build their characters as they think is appropriate.

Another consideration is the tone of the game and what the ritual is for. If the item made required a specific ingredient that the party just acquired, and will be critical in defeating the enemy, then if the tone of the game is heroic and dramatic, they should squeeze in the ritual and make it to the enemy 'just in time.' OTOH, if the item is just something the ritualist would like to have, and is browbeating the other players into coughing up the residuum for, then arriving late might seem like a just consequence.

If the tone is more that every action has consequences and every resource (including time) must be managed, then there might be a SC to arrive in time, and making the item is an automatic failure on that challenge.

The function of the ritual casting times seems to be to provide some colour, and to somewhat ration them relative to the combat and the rest economies of the game (eg no ritual taking 10 minutes can be used during combat; if a ritual takes an hour then performing it is giving the GM a licence to change the fictional situation quite different from taking a (5-minute) short rest). There is no robust support for using time itself as a type of resource, with rituals one of the things that can be done with it.

If that's true (and it sounds reasonable) it would have made more sense to have rituals have one of two casting times: "perform this ritual as part of a short rest" and "perform this ritual as part of a long rest."

 

[Starfox]

I believe that's why the loss of wizards and Vancian magic ultimately led to the rejection of 4e by so many. For those of us who love conflict play, we understood that wizards were the most powerful class because they had an incomparable ability to render conflict moot. A well played wizard is the ultimate tool for color focused play. A wizard epitomizes the triumph of logistics and planning (a hallmark of color based play) over plot challenges.

Beautiful post, TwoSix. Deserves more than just an Xp.

This might not be the only way to see things, but it definitely is a valid way.

It is a bit funny how I dislike the resource management game and consider wizards <<< skills for color games, but still agree with your basic point.

Edit: This too!

...it would have made more sense to have rituals have one of two casting times: "perform this ritual as part of a short rest" and "perform this ritual as part of a long rest."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Anything you ignore the details of and is taken to a high enough level view will appear the same... I mean everything in the game works the same you just roll a die for uncertain elements...

Everything in modern D&D systems DOES work pretty much the same, especially in 4e! Lets face it, D&D has a special focus on fighting monsters, so yes, they add a few minor details onto the weapons ON TOP OF the 'weapon skill', which invariably applies to EVERY WEAPON IN THE GAME with some minor variation in some versions depending on if you are proficient with that specific weapon type or general class of weapons. D&D does not focus to the same extent on ANYTHING else. So your point seems very weak to me. Are you really suggesting that 4e is crippled because it doesn't have a separate skill for a Lute vs a Ukulele and there's some profound difference between them? If it was 'Rock Band the RPG' or 'Bards & Beholders' then it might matter.

It doesn't add to the character because the system you are choosing to use doesn't make using a musical instrument a character resource, instead one is forced to sub in broad vague skills with tenuous connections or just hand wave it... 5e however does make it add to the character because it is an actual resource that is paid for and can be used...

Its not a character resource because it doesn't add some kind of capability to the character. Like a weapon it is just a vehicle for accomplishing a task. Unlike weapons there are several possible tasks you can accomplish with a song/musical performance, so it could be governed by any of several skills. Honestly its YOU that wants to lump it all into one 'vague skill' where all that matters is how dexterously the character can strum the strings of his instrument and he can try to achieve any old effect equally well, and regardless of the characters insight or any other aspect of his personality at all.

Also I find it more than a little ironic that a fan of a game where it is okay for healing to take place from a totally mundane source... thinks that music has to be magical to affect someone...

That's not what I said. I said that since being able to play an instrument doesn't add any specific capability to a character that the character doesn't already have, in game mechanical terms, there's no need for it to be a controlled player resource that has to be be paid for or rationed. The player should be able to simply decide he can play or not as it suites him. If he does decide to play then NARRATIVELY, in the fiction, yes the music can affect people, it just doesn't do so to any greater degree than other options. Its possible that in some corner case being able to play might open up some otherwise closed narrative option, but given the lack of focus in D&D on playing music I don't believe its necessary to dole out playing ability carefully, any other kind of backstory can equally have an effect on the game.

But you said if it was scary music it would be Intimidate so apparently it's not diplomacy... it's DM fiat when it comes to your system. Now when talking about 5e musical talent is exactly what it says on the tin... how well you can actually play an instrument...

No, it is not 'DM fiat', if you want to scare people, use Intimidate, if you want to tell them a lie, use Bluff, if you want to get them on your side or to do something for you/that you want, use Diplomacy. I'd say if you just want to entertain them then use a basic CHA check, though Insight might also be useful as a way to determine what they'll like (other knowledge skills might work too, History, Nature, etc).

As for "how well you play an instrument" there's two answers to that. Answer one is "well enough to succeed" and answer two is "who cares?" I mean really, who cares how well you play? Narrate it as good or bad playing, its not relevant. If you want to get into a dueling banjos with Asmodeus set a DC to win and make it a DEX check if you wish, but I'd think an SC including again History, Insight, maybe Bluff, etc would be more exciting for such a unique event, and there's probably going to be a lot more involved than just the playing itself.

I don't even understand this analogy... No one does everything at 100% of their capacity, perfectly at all times... You roll dice because there is an element of uncertainty in the action you are taking... in the instant that you are rolling... either your swordplay or your musical talent is or isn't of a quality to defeat/move the opponent you face... your rolls decide that... and your narrative (unless you are purposefully choosing to be incoherent should fit said results). I mean you can blame it on outside forces if you want, but of course a better swordsman or musician could o exactly what you failed to do if he rolls high enough so it still speaks to the quality you showed in that instant. You can call it effect, though I'm not sure what "effect" is being decided besides success or failure and thus the quality of your swordplay in that moment... I don't think failing at something and narrating it as the greatest of all time is consistent... do you?

Sure, why not? Inigo Montoya fences his best and the ogre caves his skull in with an unguardable club shot right to the head. Nothing at all dictates that you 'did worse' because there was a low check. Maybe you slipped, maybe the situation was hopeless, maybe you just had bad luck. I see no reason why a player is required to narrate failure as being a poor performance. Nor is this line of reasoning useful in countering my argument, which is simply that 4e's skill system uses 'check against objective' rather than 'check against means', and I assert that the former is superior to the later and that 5e's skill system suffers for the difference.

You're assuming why music moves people... it's not always a particular message the artist sends you (and this is again why I don't like sticking it under diplomacy), as a simple example one could be moved because a particular song invokes a memory that the artist has no clue about... Or you could be impressed on a technical level because you recognize how difficult the song was... even though you don't personally feel anything when it is played... my point is music sways people for totally different reasons that can't all be placed under diplomacy... but there is no incoherence if their is a skill that represents one's musical talent at a suitably abstract level.

Sure there is, there's plenty of incoherence! I already pointed it out above. You are collapsing the whole thing down to one technical ability check that isn't even necessarily representing only technical ability, since checks represent a lot of different things. Its not better in any way shape or form.

Okay let me try to get an answer to this again... what would the background of fiddler give you a +2 in according to the 4e rules, seeing as how they are very specific this should be easy... Of course according to your own examples earlier I would need a +2 in at least 2 skills (Diplomacy & Intimidation) and possibly more depending on what feelings I would want my music to actually invoke...right?

I'm perfectly happy to give a character who has something like 'Entertainer' a +2 bonus when in a situation where knowledge of entertaining is useful, such as being on a stage entertaining people. This is exactly in accordance with the sidebar in PHB2. You might ALSO be applying a skill bonus from one of several skills depending on the goal of your music. Again, IF this game was 'Bards & Beholders' and playing instruments was a specific focus then I would imagine there would be elaborate rules for exactly which instrument works best for each task, how to play with a group, etc. Its D&D, we can live with "you have the background Entertainer and a note 'can play lute' on your sheet, so yeah, go ahead and get up on stage and try to rally the crowd in favor of the Young Duke! Diplomacy check, add a +2 for background." And, again, if the character is say a Bard and has some special magical resource that will sway people (a ritual or power) then great, that will work even better and it has its own specific rules for using that character resource, which the player paid for in some fashion or other. This is all quite clear, isn't it?

 

[TwoSix]

Beautiful post, TwoSix. Deserves more than just an Xp.

This might not be the only way to see things, but it definitely is a valid way.

It is a bit funny how I dislike the resource management game and consider wizards <<< skills for color games, but still agree with your basic point.

Thank you, much appreciated.

I definitely agree that you can have a focus on color without resource management. It's more of a D&D specific thing, but considering how many games (especially CRPGs) have a large chunk of D&D in their DNA, it becomes a fairly relevant consideration.

 

[Starfox]

If it was 'Rock Band the RPG' or 'Bards & Beholders' then it might matter.

If you want to get into a dueling banjos with Asmodeus set a DC to win and make it a DEX check if you wish, but I'd think an SC including again History, Insight, maybe Bluff, etc would be more exciting for such a unique event, and there's probably going to be a lot more involved than just the playing itself.?

I laugh at this because I like it. Sounds like a fun game, actually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnepPZChA5U

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Thanks for the post.

In 4e, "flogging your horses to death" would be an element in a skill challenge (eg sacrifice money = to 10% of the value of a magic item of your level to gain +2 to a check). So the only way horses could be flogged to death would be in that sort of context. But as I posted upthread, the timing in this case wasn't being resolved as a skill challenge (as best I can recall): the players declare that their PCs are chasing down the gnolls, and their arrival is narrated. I can't remember all the details, to be honest, but I can be confident that the timing wasn't in issue, because if it was I wouldn't have handled it the way I did!

I'm not even sure that the players (or PCs) knew that the prisoners were slated for sacrifice until they entered the ruined temple and interrogated a (different, less sympathetic) prisoner.

I can understand that it's anathema, but the illusionist bit still puzzles me. It's illusory because the game world's not real? But no one's game world is real!

Well, hark back to 1974. E. Gary Gygax would sit at his desk and precisely map out dungeon levels including all sorts of tricks and puzzles and whatnot, and then his friends would come over and try to dope out how to traverse said dungeon levels and survive. THAT is the model, it hasn't changed since 1974! You PRECISELY map out the world to such an extent that anyone could look at your notes and maps and objectively judge how the actions of the characters will play out. There may be judgment involved, there may be matters of DMs simply keeping stuff in their heads or not writing it up sufficiently to meet that ideal, but the dungeon 'objectively exists' (albeit as a piece of paper).

The agenda represented by [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] AFAICT and as I've experienced this in the past with players with his tastes is to simply extend that process TO THE WHOLE WORLD and create an entire game world in which every single little thing is specified down to a sufficient level to allow objective judgment of the outcomes of at least a reasonably anticipated subset of all the possible actions players could have their characters take.

This is what they mean by 'objective'. It isn't even NECESSARILY simulationist, though it tends to be because then you can rely on people to judge things by real-world common sense standards. Its a lot easier to all agree that yes indeed Joe the Barbarian can leap the 20' chasm on a 12 because he's got a STR of 18 and the world record for a running longjump is 29' than it is to judge if Cuchulain was able to leap the 100' chasm because who knows what a fantastic hero can do?

In any case, that's how it works, and in this world view the DM is arbitrating the hostile world and the characters conquest/exploration of it. Any changes made to the world during the course of that interaction is cheating. Every dice roll must be taken as rolled, every monster and trap must be in the originally specified location and work as indicated by the DM beforehand. Your timeline which works 'at the speed of plot' fails to be 'objective' because you can't ground the whole thing in cause-and-effect game world events. The PCs aren't in time because of the amount of time that it took them to traverse the distance to the temple was identical to the time it took the cultists to prepare. If you specified things that way, then any delay would make the party too late, and any early arrival would be premature. The DM is still free to arrange the elements of the world such as to create drama, but only in a 'realistic' fashion.

I can see why someone might be attracted to the idea of a pre-written timeline from which the GM doesn't vary, though as I posted upthread I think D&D doesn't have very good rules for managing timelines once you get beyond a few basics. But it puzzles me to describe the alternative as illusory! The pre-written timeline isn't any more real or objective!

I think the attraction was that the GM can then be seen as an opponent, or at least that the WORLD is an opponent, a puzzle to be overcome by cleverness. If the world is arranged on plot needs then its not an antagonist, its simply the stage.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's an area where the DM should be able to figure things out based on his or her prior knowledge of the setting, and dice for randomness where the DM is uncertain. That's DM 101 stuff. And if lunch is taking too long, the players may decide they don't have time, and cut it short.

But this is of course where the illusionism comes in. The DM has almost surely come up with a really nifty scenario where the PCs, if they arrive at the nick of time, will encounter much drama and fun. So naturally the DM is highly motivated to have lunch take exactly the right amount of time. Since he undoubtedly can't say how long it WILL take (there are 1000 possible variables) things tend to just work out. Ironically this is FINE in Pemerton's game where the contract allows the DM to do just that, but at your table it is pulling strings and 'cheating'.

Although maybe you're right. Maybe 4E chose to abstract the passage of time in such a manner that it's difficult to track what the exact time is at any give point. That's not easy for me to conceptualize.

No, 4e doesn't abstract the passage of time more than other editions really. Its just that no edition specifies how long things take, aside from a few specific dungeon-related activities and maybe a few other very specific things. Its never stated how long a meal takes, or any other mundane activities. Frankly I don't see how you COULD meaningfully specify all those things in a realistic way. All you can do is dice for things. In 4e this is encapsulated in an SC, but you could certainly structure the SC such that for instance each failure means 20 minutes of your 1 hour window has slipped past. Again, its easy enough to find reasons for it narratively in the scenario under discussion.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Now, to go further afield, I'm going to propose that there is a binary at play in all RPGs: an exploration of conflict and an exploration of color. (Have to Americanize it, sorry [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]!)

Sure, you can construct a rationalization for liking game A and disliking similar game B by creating some sort of dichotomy - real, imagined, outright false, or merely arbitrary - that places them in opposition, and exaggerating the degree and importance of it once you've created it. We've certainly seen it done often enough, all the way back to Roll vs Role in the 90s,

I believe that's why the loss of wizards and Vancian magic ultimately led to the rejection of 4e by so many. For those of us who love conflict play, we understood that wizards were the most powerful class because they had an incomparable ability to render conflict moot. A well played wizard is the ultimate tool for color focused play. A wizard epitomizes the triumph of logistics and planning (a hallmark of color based play) over plot challenges.

It's a charitable enough rationale. But, really, it still boils down to wanting to play an overpowered character.

Another of the best things about 4e was that it did have some semblance of class balance, and made it harder for one player to dominate play just because he happened to choose a particular archetype for his character. In 4e, no basic player choice mapped to a 'Tier 1' class (nor a Tier 5), no CoDzillas breathed radioactive flame on your campaign, and everyone had an opportunity to participate fully in play, regardless of the kind of character they had in mind.

Everything in modern D&D systems DOES work pretty much the same. Lets face it, D&D has a special focus on fighting monsters, so yes, they add a few minor details onto the weapons ON TOP OF the 'weapon skill', which invariably applies to EVERY WEAPON IN THE GAME with some minor variation in some versions depending on if you are proficient with that specific weapon type or general class of weapons. D&D does not focus to the same extent on ANYTHING else.

Since being able to play an instrument doesn't add any specific capability to a character that the character doesn't already have, in game mechanical terms, there's no need for it to be a controlled player resource that has to be be paid for or rationed. The player should be able to simply decide he can play or not as it suites him. If he does decide to play then NARRATIVELY, in the fiction, yes the music can affect people, it just doesn't do so to any greater degree than other options. Its possible that in some corner case being able to play might open up some otherwise closed narrative option, but given the lack of focus in D&D on playing music I don't believe its necessary to dole out playing ability carefully, any other kind of backstory can equally have an effect on the game.

It's like any other part of a character's backstory or description that might have a situational bearing on a resolution. If the bouncer at a Tavern hates nobles, then a character described as having a 'noble bearing' is not going to do as well on interaction checks with him. If he likes music, the character described as being a talented musician will do better if he plays something. Probably minor mods in both instances, or flavoring how the results of a check are narrated.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But this is of course where the illusionism comes in. The DM has almost surely come up with a really nifty scenario where the PCs, if they arrive at the nick of time, will encounter much drama and fun. So naturally the DM is highly motivated to have lunch take exactly the right amount of time.

Why would the DM contrive such a thing? Why would the DM want to contrive such a thing? Why would it be "fun" for the PCs to encounter such a contrived scenario?

Its never stated how long a meal takes, or any other mundane activities. Frankly I don't see how you COULD meaningfully specify all those things in a realistic way. All you can do is dice for things. In 4e this is encapsulated in an SC, but you could certainly structure the SC such that for instance each failure means 20 minutes of your 1 hour window has slipped past.

That's kind of what I was getting at, while I was rambling. You could frame lunch as a Skill Challenge where you negotiate through the market, diplomacize your way through the line, and stuff your face with the goal of spending as little time as possible on the task. The time spent depends on how well you do on the Skill Challenge. (And conceivably, since it matters, it's worth XP and someone could gain a level from this.)

Or the DM could describe the relative busy-ness of various market stalls, and the different foods available, so that the time required is a reflection of the circumstances and player choice rather than the result of some number of skill checks. The fastest option is always to just eat trail rations, but how often are you going to have access to fresh food at the market? and do you really want to miss out on this while you're here? Granted, it's all through the lens of what the DM thinks is reasonable, but that's true of everything in D&D, and the DM is a neutral arbiter in all things.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I laugh at this because I like it. Sounds like a fun game, actually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnepPZChA5U

Yeah, I seem to remember there was a CoC campaign that worked that way. The PCs could become the cover band for the big star who turns out to be working up to summoning Yog Sothoth or something like that. It was pretty amusing. I think its part of Cthulhu Now! hehe.