D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[Starfox]

Is that how it works? I could never find the price listed for wooden, iron, or adamantium doors. At that price, I would expect more down-ranking, then. If an adamantium door isn't going to stop a lvl 20 hero, then replace it with a wooden door and 24 lvl 10 traps; they might only be half as accurate, and deal half the damage, but sheer volume would make them much more effective.

I have yet to see any edition of a fantasy game where the economy makes some sort of sense. It's usually not as bad at low levels, though.

It was never spelled out that it worked like this. 4E had nothing like a working economic model. But since PC gear and loot followed this exponential increase, it makes sense that dungeon upkeep would too. And yes, most door in an epic setting would probably be wood - and thus present no challenge at all. The fighter might actually knock down such a door just testing if it was locked ("taking zero" if you get my drift). For a door to be part of a challenge, it had to be level-appropriate.

This contrivance never worked at my table, and 4E rules didn't do enough to specify this was how it worked, it is something I inferred from the rules, a mechanism to help the rules to make at least a little sense, rather than something that was spelled out.

 

[Starfox]

It is amazing to see that 4E can now be discussed without people becoming overly defensive. There is some defensiveness in this thread, but so far it has not degraded into an edition war. Kudos to all!

 

[Sadras]

In my homebrew game, I have deliberately removed almost all aspects of resource management. There is one resource (fortune points) that renews every session, basically every other resource (including damage short of debilitating wounds) recharges in each scene.

Interesting concept. If I am understanding you correctly do fortune points encompass hit points, surges, cost for powers/abilities and the like? Have you incorporated a similar system for monsters?

When it comes to campaign time, my problem is generally that I want more time to pass than my players want to pass.

Generally I would agree with you and I appreciate downtime, however our current campaign arc, IMO, necessitates the recording of time.

Events have transpired which cannot be ignored: Zuggmtoy has been released, a demon horde has settled in the orc warrens, a displaced orc chieftain with those loyal to him are burning up the countryside blaming the humans for his misfortune (human cultists built the ToEE and brought about the demons), sabotage of a nearby keep is in progress...it is all going pear-shaped rather quickly.

The knights have lost more than half their forces from before, the demons are not stupid, they are not going to wait a season or a few years before asserting their dominance. The bad guys are ready - their plans have been in place for years, the time to strike is now, during political disarray, when the human forces are at their weakest - not when they replenish themselves with forces from keeps and nearby towns... It doesn't make sense to ignore time.

 

[Starfox]

Interesting concept. If I am understanding you correctly do fortune points encompass hit points, surges, cost for powers/abilities and the like? Have you incorporated a similar system for monsters?

No, fortune points are used for one thing only - they allow rerolls with advantage, similar to how hero points work in Villains and Vigilantes. Hit points, healing surges, power costs etc either all recharge each scene or simply do not exist. All powers are at-will, with the exception that some require the player to "focus" - something that can either be done as a short ritual out of combat or by fulfilling a condition in the fight - there are focus powers that let let each player select under what conditions their character can focus.

My game is in a situation somewhat similar to yours, at the end of the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path. See spoiler section below.

So while I can appreciate your game style it differs significantly from my own. If I had your situation, I would make urgency a theme, but since almost none of my rules are time-centric, instead being based on scenes and sessions, the urgency would be illusory. Instead of weeks or months between scenarios, it would be days or hours, but this would not change anything rules-wise.


** Spoiler for Crimson Throne and my Campaign ***

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The evil queen has withdrawn into her magical fortress carrying blood samples from a large part of the population. The players know that she can use these samples to suck the life out of her former subjects to power her own ascent to immortality. But the players trust me to keep the pacing appropriate. We've run several "filler" scenarios exploring the consequences of the end of her evil rule in the city, and also had several encounters along the way. The player can travel to the queen's secret lab much faster than the scenario assumes, so this makes kind of sense. There are also plots within plots here, the net result of which is that the queens ritual cannot succeed unless a specific player character is there to provide the time magic (this character is what in Pathfinder terms would be an oracle of time).

Seems there's no

Spoiler

tag, please excuse this space-consuming layout.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm all for transparency, but I fail to see how 4E achieves that in any meaningful way, compared to something like 3.5 or Pathfinder. As I was saying before, I have no idea what sort of check or Challenge would be required to complete any given task (described in narrative terms), when the difficulty of a task depends not only on quantifiable details like the bonus on your check, but also the DM's perception of how difficult something should be, both in an absolute sense, but also relative to your power level. If I want to build a boat, then the systems in place for that are fairly straightforward in 3.5, but I couldn't even begin to guess what the DM would ask me to do in 4E. Part of that is probably down to familiarity, of course, but could you tell me what kind of check it would require? Would a conference of seven DMs, each with substantial 4E experience, be able to agree on what was required?

The one area where everyone seems to hail the transparency of the mechanics is in the monster creation rules, which will quickly and reliably give the DM stats that allow an NPC to perform its given role within the story, but is that even really transparent? Not to the players, I would argue. After all, as a player, I can't see combat roles or enemy levels. My character can see what armor someone is wearing, or the thick hide of a beast, or how many teeth something has, but those are all meaningless since they don't actually correspond to anything. The upshot is that I have even less of an idea of what's going on than is typical for a game where class levels mean a mortal human can wrestle a t. rex into submission.

How would they fashion a boat and/or repair it? It just so happens that this has occurred 3 times in the course of my GMing 4e. In all cases, it was pretty intuitively managed simply by following the fiction and managing the resolution mechanics. Here is an example below. This follows directly from the Extended Rest after the Find a Natural Shelter Skill Challenge that I relayed above. I'll sblock it for space and analyze at the bottom.

[sblock]This isn't the news I wanted to hear. Although I desperately want to go investigate the burning tree and its surrounding village, I cannot in good conscience leave these children here when there is a possibility that I will not be able to return. I must find them a more permanent place to stay. I must find a village. A village not filled with werewolves that want to eat them.

Villages always find themselves around water. I will follow the stream that led me here to see if I can find a river that can lead me to kind, civilized (preferably non-children-eating) village folk...with horses or other means of rapid transport.

I instruct the blue-eyed girl on how to survive while I am gone--- where to take water from the river, which plants are edible, etc. Most importantly, I give her firm instructions to not go beyond the stream and to never leave sight of the cave.

I fill my waterskin with some cool water from the stream and follow the tributary until I reach the main river. Once there, I will seek out natural plants and trees to make some worthy rope; Dogbane, Milkweed, and Cedar. I've made rope dozens of times so while this is a tedious, time consuming exercise for most, my practiced ability shortens the time considerably. Once I've got enough rope to bind a small barge, I study the surrounding trees and use the sturdiest of limbs and branches to forge a simple raft that will carry me down river. Simultaneously, I will keep an eye out for a long limb that I may fashion a barge pole out of.

---

I will use my Nature modifier to augment my ability to find suitable supplies and then build an unsinkable raft that will last an eternity...or at least a few days.

Secondary Skill: Nature + 13. It automatically passes the Low DC.

Primary Skill: Athletics + 9 with + 2 bonus from above. I rolled a 19. Total of 30 passes the High DC.[/sblock]

The fiction is that she is in a rain-soaked subalpine mountain range (similar to the NW coast US Sierras). She is seeking out a safe village entreat the villagers to take in these orphaned, traumatized children so she can (a) pursue their justice and (b) her quest (which SHOCKINGLY just so happens to be intertwined). She initiates this conflict by telegraphing her overall intent and declaring an immediate action to further those ends. She is going to travel the river down the mountain by way of vessel.

What does the player know about the conflict's machinery?

1) She has 3 Secondary Skills (Easy DCs) and 2 Advantages at her disposal to facilitate success.

2) She also has her suite of PC resources (outlined in the FaNS post upthread) to accomplish this

3) The mechanical obstacle before her is that she must succeed at 8 Primary Checks, 6 @ Medium DC and 2 @ Hard DC, before failing 3 Primary Checks.

4) Everything must follow from the prior established fiction.

5) I am playing all of the adversity that will stand in her way which means:

a) Skill Challenges are a framework meant to capture a dramatic, action/adventure trope/conflcit. Given that, I will use my available Hard DCs akin to how the GM uses the "Doom Pool" in MHRP; eg when I want to escalate things and ramp up the tension/excitement.

b) I will put complications with imminent fallout in her path (that will snowball/be realized if she doesn't deal with it) before her wher she succeeds. Pretty much a "soft move" in Dungeon World.

c) Where she fails, I will charge her a Healing Surge and escalate the conflict in an interesting, and immediately dangerous, way (akin to a 'hard move" in Dungeon World").

d) This will continue until the mechanics cement success or failure. Success will guarantee that she locates a village whereby she can attempt to parley. Failure could mean a myriad of setbacks (based on the evolved fiction of the conflict), but it will basically be like a "hard move" in Dungeon World that always includes the denial of the player goal and the escalation of the stakes.

These things all serve to provide the player with agency when making strategic action declarations throughout the course of the conflict.

---

What does the player know regarding the fiction? I would hope that is pretty clear from my prior post and the sblocked text above. This fictional positioning serves as the context by which she can legitimize her action declaration to the rest of the table (everyone, not just me). I hope that her making the action declaration above makes sense to you (both mechanically and within the fiction):

* She spends 1 of her 3 SSs for a primary skill augment using Nature (harvesting natural supplies in these apline mountains to create the craft).

* She passes her primary skill check using the augmented Athletics putting her at 1/8 using Athletics (The arduous physical work of rope-making and organizing/binding/testing the thing to ensure seaworthiness). If this was at the table, I might have challenged her with a hard DC to get things going. If so, 1 of my 2 Hard DCs would have been spent.

There are certainly other action declarations that would be credible, genre coherent and that the table would be perfectly ok with. But that is what she chose because that is her archetype and the fictional positioning rendered it credible.

Now I would hope that an action declaration such as OMG MY INTIMIDATE IS SUPER HIGH SO I INTIMIDATE TWO TREES INTO LAYING DOWN SO I CAN SKI DOWN THE RIVER WOOT or OMG I HEAL THE PAINFUL CRACK IN THE EARTH WHERE THE RIVER FLOWS SO THE MOUNTAIN IS NOW MY FRIEND AND REACHES UP WITH ITS MOUNTAINY HAND AND WALKS ME TO THE NEAREST VILLAGE are bad faith, uncredible (and the second one is mechanically untenable) action declarations that are wholly unsupportable by the system and by anyone purporting to care about either fictional positioning or genre coherency. Both of which 4e advocates for in its PHBs, both its DMGs, Neverwinter/Feywild and every online article in Dungeon ever.

 

[Imaro]

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.

I'm not following your logic here... you brought up weapons as an example of an insignificant detail, not me... but now you seem to be back-tracking and claiming yest weapons are important because D&D has a combat focus to the game... well then why did you present them as an example?

A few points as to your question about whether I was asserting 4th ed is "crippled"...because it doesn't have a separate lute skill vs. ukulele skill...

1. Hyperbole... can we tone it down? D&D isn't called Athletics and Acrobats... yet it has separate skills for those.
2. This line of conversation didn't start because I commented on 4e... it started because you claimed the tool proficiencies were incoherent and cited the musical instruments as an example...
3. No I don't think 4e is "crippled by not having a Ukulele vs. Lute skill, it's mmusc too broad-based for that... however I do think it should have some type of performance skill... as opposed to a person having to be proficient in whatever the DM deems appropriate at the particular time to perform using various art forms... Of course I don't think this makes 4e incoherent... just incomplete for my own tastes.

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.

Again your analogy falls apart... we have weapon proficiencies in 3e, 4e, 5e and even earlier... so if it's not a resource and doesn't add capability to a character why are there weapon proficiencies in every modern edition of D&D? Because it grants you capability in said weapon, in the same way tool proficiency in a musical instrument grants one capability in said musical instrument...

Well no I want it to be under one pretty clear skill as opposed to multiple DM fiat based applications of other skills... as you have demonstrated by swinging back and forth between Diplomacy, Intimidate and a plain old Charisma check... of course you also pre-suppose that the artist never makes mistakes of a physical nature such as strumming the wrong string on a lute, mis-reading a note, etc. which as someone who plays a musical instrument I can vouch that it happens... because then we also need to make Perception checks, and a Dex check and so on... which IMO, makes no sense and is more incoherent to me than just having a musical instrument/perform/whatever skill that encompasses the total package of being able to play a lute or Ukelele... apparently in your world musicians are the greatest enforcers, leaders, and all-around charming people known to man... in mine they can just play an instrument really well.

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.

This all seems rather arbitrary... so a player can decide he's a master musician... but not a master in the rapier without expending resources... why? According to you the rapier didn't grant him any more capability and yet in 4e it is a Superior Melee Weapon and thus resources must be expended to use it.

My issue with your claims of D&D not focusing on playing music is that D&D (at least in 5e) has 3 major pillars... exploration, social and combat... I have seen tons of genre examples where the protagonists ability to play a musical instrument impacts at least 2 of those pillars (social and exploration) and possibly the 3rd, combat (though admittedly in fantasy stories it's often used to avoid this pillar)... In other words the abiliity to play a musical instrument can impact the game just as much as any other skill depending on the DM and players involved. I understand your personal preferences but your personal likes or dislikes don't make the game objectively incoherent...

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).

So basically just let the DM throw a skill out there and hope you're good enough at it... though you are a "skilled" musician... So how dexterous I can play doesn't matter... how well I can recall the notes of the song don't matter... basically nothing surrounding the actual playing of an instrument matters... got it.

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'm assuming if I went through the effort of making the skill of playing an instrument a part of my character... I do care how well he plays. Now in a game where no one cares... it's probably not going to get picked as a proficiency and the DM is probably never going to frame challenges around it because, like you said who cares. Personally I don't think it should be eliminated from the game because a sub-section doesn't care about it... since they can choose not to take it.

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.

Eh, I would say different strokes for different folks. Again you personally not liking something does not make it objectively worse for another thing... apparently many people didn't like 4e's ...focus on "effect" and disregard of "way" For you maybe it works but for me it's simpler, faster and connects more logically when one of my players says he plays his lute to soothe the savage beast and I say ok... add the proficiency bonus for your lute to your Charisma... or he says he competes with the court musician to see who can play the fastest without messing the song up and I say okay roll Dex + lute proficiency...

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.

No it's not one "technical" ability... but cover the proper usage of the tool in accomplishing what you are trying to do... You on the other hand are claiming it's more coherent to call on wildly disparate skills to play the lute... yet never is the actual ability (an all that this entails) used to play.

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?

So your "Background" would be houseruled I believe... is this correct? Because I though the rules for Backgrounds were that you apply a +2 to one skill... I also find this strange because what you're proposing here (a floating +2 when an instrument is used) is doing exactly what the musical instrument tool proficiency would do... add a prof bonus anytime he uses an instrument to accomplish his task... the only difference is that prof bonus in 5e doesn't stack so you don't add it to a skill... but instead to an attribute.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Read them as both player and character are aware and yes the players know their decisions to delay things will affect things. I remember I became frustrated in 4e when the urgency of the in-game fiction for the characters did not carry through to the players - so they would declare rests often and refresh their abilities. It forced me to design every combat encounter challenging enough to warrant their rests. I'm curious, did no one else experience this or have a problem with it?

5 minute workday? This is not caused by 4e, its been a thing, witnessed by the existence since early days of the term '5 minute workday' since the first dungeon was drawn. It was a primary motivating factor for the invention of wandering monster checks. Frankly I thought 4e's inclusion of a 'short rest' during which some limited recovery could take place, plus milestones (rather lightweight, but a help) and just the whole design of surges etc was the best antidote the game has yet seen. I have had plenty of games where the party went on through 5 encounters in a row even without time pressure. At first, when they were new to 4e, they very frequently retreated immediately as soon as a character took damage, but they rapidly realized that being down a surge or two wasn't that big a deal in most cases, and that encounter powers could carry them through even if they had expended their dailies.

Sure, they have a reason to make haste (in-game fiction), but is there a possibility of failure. Are your players aware of this - do they even fear failure? i.e. are the consequences heavy enough to actually warrant the characters making haste.
Where/what are those limits where you say they have just taken too long? How do you measure them?

By the accumulation of failures in an SC, which might be precipitated by doing things which require time. This creates tension directly through the SC mechanics AND obviates the need for the DM to do some highly subjective time cost assignments.

Lets say the PCs stop for lunch on the theory that a well-fed warrior is a good warrior. Let the characters make a check, lets say Streetwise to find the quickest meal. Make the check, you get a quick meal and gain some energy for the hard trek ahead, one success. Fail the check and you're delayed excessively, one failure. Nobody needs to work out the exact times involved, there's plenty of drama as the precious fails mount up towards disaster, etc.

Heck, in the time-keeping scenario the DM says "well, you took a whole half hour to get lunch" but where's the tension? The players may have a sense that this is poor, but they don't KNOW the deadline exactly to the minute, maybe half-an-hour isn't so bad, maybe its game over, they don't even know. At least my players have a sense of building tension.

I'm genuinely surprised this playstyle doesn't see more light.

Back in the late 80's I conceived a campaign that would involve a war between civilization and the forces of chaos. I laid out maps in great detail with resolution down to every tiny hamlet and hilltop in the kingdom. I created a time line that was so exhaustive it explained the doings of every NPC of any consequence whatsoever, every fight and raid, every action, plot, etc of everyone. Everything was mapped out. I knew how much gold everyone had, how many men they could hire, how much militia every area could raise and exactly how long it would take, etc etc etc. I planned out all the different possible branchings of the plot, determined what the key events were, classified the various outcomes into general scenarios, and worked out the progress of EACH scenario from start to end.

It was first of all a VAST amount of work, 1000's of hours of work. And it just wasn't that useful. It really wasn't. No amount of planning can anticipate what turn out to be the real critical factors in that kind of a setup unless the DM simply railroads the whole campaign onto his agenda and MAKES it come out that way. The players weren't interested in playing out large battles with miniatures, they invented entirely new and different agendas to pursue and simply reconstructed the narrative so thoroughly in the process that at best a lot of my preparation was only useful as backdrop, something I could have prepared with much less work.

This kind of play doesn't exist more because it really doesn't appeal to any but a VERY select subset of DMs and players. It sounds nice IN THEORY, but it simply doesn't work. The more you push in that direction, the LESS well it works too.

I had some fun doing the prep work for that campaign, and the actual campaign that evolved out of it was a good one, and I based several following campaigns in the same area and using the same characters and events, but I do not recommend this at all as the best way to make a campaign work.

At our table, in our sandbox campaign, there is no winning strategy. There are better or worse choices.

You missed his point entirely. The conflict that was set up was the PCs against the clock, with the stakes being their dramatic need to rescue the hostages. There is MOST CERTAINLY a strategy for them to follow, go fast, and there's a victory possible, rescuing the hostages, as well as a defeat. The problem is the PCs also face the obstacle of the bad guys, so they have to balance getting there in time with getting there in the best condition to win. There may even be other conditions unknown to the players. If they don't know the exact impact of each time expenditure they can't pursue a strategy, they can only guess. You can call the outcomes 'only better or worse results' but what we're discussing is how do the players know which choices are better or worse?

This is the style we are currently running. In our campaign I have a pre-determined timeline going 30-50 days ahead, based on the events after the destruction of the ToEE. The timeline is affected by the actions of the PCs - sometimes things are removed or added depending on the choices made by the PCs.
I'm tempted to start a thread when I have more time (excuse the pun) describing my current campaign as point of reference to determine if other Enworlders use time as an important constraint in their games.

I think what you'll find is that the really exciting games take drama much more into account.

As a rough example, information that might be gained by taking the left side of the passageway, which could lead to easier exploration throughout the remaining dungeon. This is all dependent if one is actually utilising a map. From previous posts of yours, you have mentioned that exploration is not one of your driving forces for your games and this is likely the reason we might be on opposite ends of this debate.

I don't think anyone is saying that the left/right choice is never significant and they're just always going to re-arrange things. It can be quite significant, and it can be quite significant in 4e as much as any other edition. It just doesn't HAVE to be. In OD&D it would be virtually inconceivable for that choice not to be fraught with significance at various levels. The dungeon map was the central focus of the entire game. Heck, parties existed AS MAPS IME of that era of play, if you had the map you were the party! There was always the various informational spells too, as Pemerton noted the other day. This can all be done in 4e, though you probably don't want to include certain traditional aspects like combat every 3 rooms with a room full of monsters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Is that how it works? I could never find the price listed for wooden, iron, or adamantium doors. At that price, I would expect more down-ranking, then. If an adamantium door isn't going to stop a lvl 20 hero, then replace it with a wooden door and 24 lvl 10 traps; they might only be half as accurate, and deal half the damage, but sheer volume would make them much more effective.

I have yet to see any edition of a fantasy game where the economy makes some sort of sense. It's usually not as bad at low levels, though.

Yeah, 4e's economy is as nonsensical as any of them, but it does work as noted, higher level stuff is geometrically more expensive. This means a bad guy MIGHT spend some big bucks and concoct a level +5 or so challenge for the PCs, but that's exactly the level of challenge that is intended to be around the toughest they will face.

A bad guy might indeed reason that 'quantity trumps quality', at least up to a point, but ADVENTURE DESIGNERS, and players of the game, are unlikely to find this solution terribly palatable. Still, its feasible in some sense. My solution here would be to 'minionize' such things. In other words if a bad guy placed 100's of simple attrition traps I'd invent a simple one-shot trap design where the trap was at the PCs level, but it counted as a 'minion' and did minion damage. Likewise such a trap would be clearable by a simple procedure that avoided large numbers of checks. In effect they would be a sort of avoidable terrain. If the characters needed to move quickly and couldn't employ the clearance procedure (say if they were retreating) or if they ran out of materials, then it could be more than an annoyance, but otherwise the game would proceed without getting bogged down.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I guess it's probably true that not all rules set limits, but I have a hard time coming up with them. They set how you win (there are no other ways to win), what you can do (all the things you can't do), how to judge things in case of a tie (ruling out all other methods), etc. Rules set limitations which then define the game.

I think what appealed to me most about 4e is that, for me, it was very much about providing process, but not limitations. There were really relatively few straight up limitations that weren't attempts to make workable mechanics. A dwarf can be a wizard, and swing an axe. AD&D was just filled with all these strictures that had no reason to exist, and then all its subsystems were a giant uncoordinated fung of incoherence. Sure, ALL games set up a basic structure of limitations, but 4e did it as little as possible, very consciously. To the point where the places it failed to do it were irritatingly apparent, like swordmages being limited to swords, why can't I be an axemage? There's no actual real REASON beyond 'flavor' for that, if you remove that rule no breakdown of game balance or anything else happens. Things like all classes falling into an AEDU structure are in the same category, simple and coherent and thus enabling. When I DO want to inevitably go beyond what was in the book its very very simple and easy to do that. If a player had a good narrative reason why his fighter could cast Fireball as a level 5 daily, its dirt simple to make it happen, and it isn't having some impact on the relative strengths of the characters, he gave up 'Come and Get It' for the privilege and the game thinks that's probably a reasonable trade off.

(1) Reflavoring. Go for it if you want to (I did it in 4e from the first session when the monk wanted a hammer but only had a club, or something). But it's not what the rules say.

The rules are silent on this. They simply tell you what the mechanics are and provide flavor text. If the monk's 'hammer' is mechanically a club then no rules have even been referenced, let alone had a say, IMHO.

(2) Doesn't it take like 24 hours? Or is that another ED? I don't have DDI my subscription anymore. If it is 24 hours, I guess it could be a really, really long jump.

I believe it does take 24 hours, yes. That seems OK with me. Especially given that it is a feature of an ED and not a power or even a feat it seems like it should be more open to interpretation though.

Page 42 was tremendous. I just wish it was in the hands of the players.

Yeah, I think most everyone nowadays that comments on 4e is of the opinion that Page 42 should have been located in the PHB. Nothing is perfect. I suspect every edition has had some sort of similar 'duh!' sort of element.

Doesn't Athletics have defined rules for jumping? I don't remember, but I thought it did.

That aside, this is a weakness of the system, in my opinion. Players have no floor from which to stand from moment to moment. This is straight up "mother may I" in my opinion. They have to play the GM -find out what's okay with his views, and run with that. They have no other option for this, because they aren't given the tools themselves. (Page 42 is the GM's tool, not a player tool, and that's too bad.)

Yes, athletics has a formula for the DC equated to different jumps. Obviously if you were to drastically rebase Athletics then you'd have to probably add some sort of non-linearity to that. Generally the game DOES have a 'base'. Various materials are consistently indicated to be associated with various levels and thus DCs, as are certain terrain elements. Falling damage also helps to scale things concretely. Still, the system is very straightforward and everything works on the basis of consistent DCs, so rescaling isn't that hard. It may not be any harder in 3.x in theory either, except 3.x has this large array of little subsystems and modifier tables and such that all have to be addressed. 4e has a LOT less of that.

Well, simplicity. But I prefer nuance over simplicity in my RPGs, so I have a ton of this stuff in my RPG (societal racial traits, biological racial traits, national traits, regional traits, flaws, quirks, complications, personality traits, etc.).

I tend to favor simplicity and then I'm always free to have some kind of loose system for something if I want. 4e for instance has personality traits and quirks for NPCs, they just don't have any mechanical significance attached to them. Obviously they COULD impact modifiers in some cases, but they are primarily narrative tools, as are PC backgrounds for the most part. Its also a question of setting independence. In my own 4e hack I can add in these sorts of things if I want and they might mesh well with my setting, but while 4e espouses 'PoL' as a CONCEPT, it makes very few assumptions in its mechanics. In fact there is a profound LACK of mechanics impacting these sorts of story considerations in 4e. I liked that myself.

But, staying to 4e, yes, the stuff presented really opened up the imaginations for PC backstory for my players, and that really gave me something to hook them on from session one. It was really nice.

13a of course really took this to even another level, but they also had to tie it much more into the assumptions of their campaign world. Its kind of a trade-off. 4e walked the line pretty well. Honestly earlier editions didn't do terribly badly here either. They had more of an assumption of a medieval type of society built in, but it was never really too hard to override that, except in equipment choices where players tend to resist being restricted.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So, let's say you're right, and that's the narrative they intended for the Power. What am I doing when I activate the ability? I alter my appearance - in the eyes of a single target - who might not even be looking at me? The goblin looks at me, sees something spooky, and then dies?

In order: Casting a spell. In 4e combat, there's no facing, so everyone is looking at any given other creature in the battle at least some of the time. And... yes, magic can do crazy, impossible things. That's why it really feels like magic.

I wish they could have just said that outright, though.

Seems to me they did.

There are a lot of Powers that have fairly similar but subtly nuanced mechanical resolutions, so descriptions are really important in order to explain why those mechanics vary in the way that they do.

For powers, specifically, those little italic blurbs of description are just examples. The jargon of the power block describes in detail exactly what the power does (accomplishes), it doesn't need the description to clarify it.