D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[EzekielRaiden]

Although I'm sure that also varies by the monster. I can't think of any right now, but there must be some monsters which get scarier when bloodied, such that you'd want to burst them down at the end.

This is something that became more common as the edition aged. I believe it's been present from the beginning, but am not encyclopedic in my knowledge of 4e, so I cannot say for sure. Certainly there are a number of monsters that pull a Frieza ("THIS ISN'T EVEN MY FINAL FORM") upon hitting Bloodied and either recharge their expended powers or gain new ones. Especially Elites and Solos, which are supposed to be entire interesting encounters all by themselves.

I could actually see it being really awesome to have a fight with one tough-but-not-terrible solo, that becomes a different creature upon death, thus giving you a total of 3 "form changes" over the course of the battle (first and second monster, both pre- and post-bloodied).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There's a certain mindset which can look at a hand of four cards and only see one. I know this, because I fell victim to it during my brief foray into the edition.

The logic works like this: You have four cards, but not all of them are usable. You can't use the Daily, because you might need that later. You shouldn't use the At-Will powers, because they always give you the least bang for your action-buck. The only card remaining is your Encounter power. Thus, you should open up every fight with your Encounter power, and then go back to your At-Will powers for the rest of the fight. When you gain your second Encounter power, you then have a choice between which order to use them both in, before going back to your At-Wills (and continuing to ignore your Daily powers).

It's possible to break that mindset, over time, but it's not easy.

Yeah, taking people's descriptions of their experiences at face value, which I think we pretty much have to do, you are almost proven to be correct simply by so reading them.

Anyway, I don't really disagree, but what seemed to me to happen was that when I kept, at first, endlessly placing the PCs in these 2e-esque encounters that had marginal amounts of plot and low stakes the players indeed were faced with something like you describe, they might as well use the 2W + whatever encounter power first, and then hold onto the 3W + whatever daily and spam the better of their two at-wills, and maybe trigger something beyond that when some monster got lucky or they chanced into a situation where it was really useful.

What totally changed that was playing the game as an action-adventure plot-oriented game. I didn't bother with ridiculous for-ordained low plot encounters. If the orcs at the mine entrance were just mooks that were there because OF COURSE the orcs would guard the entrance, then they were just minions, and maybe the one guy that was supposed to run and give the alarm was a standard monster, and maybe I'd bring it up to level with a trap or some trick of terrain or something that the bad guys could pull, but basically that kind of thing could be played out without needing to slap down minis, or even just described with the players saying OK, yeah, I blow my encounter power to make sure the guy about to blow the horn goes down!

Then the MEAT encounters can be thrilling and plot significant. The encounter with the goblin shaman triggers a huge raging mine fire and then the PCs have to grab the McGuffin, leap into a mine car and get chased by the goblins as the mine starts to cave in around them all. Do they successfully throw the switch and send the goblins careening into the bottomless shaft? Do they not duck in time and some of them get knocked out of the car and have to try to leap into the car with the goblins and toss them all out? etc.

In that sort of play, powers are great, you can rely on them when the situation comes up where they're good, and you can use your skills and page 42 the rest of the time. You'll still use the powers a LOT, but the situations are so varied that it doesn't matter much.

This is what I mean by what 4e is really all about, what its strength is. Its really quite strong in this kind of play. The characters are tough and have a lot of resources, but they can be knocked back and threatened. It doesn't rely overly on elaborate pre-arranged plans by the PCs (though sometimes they can be quite fun too). Its a romp. I think it can be improved a bunch, but for this kind of purpose the 4e powers work well and don't seem terribly restrictive.

 

[pemerton]

The logic works like this: You have four cards, but not all of them are usable. You can't use the Daily, because you might need that later. You shouldn't use the At-Will powers, because they always give you the least bang for your action-buck. The only card remaining is your Encounter power. Thus, you should open up every fight with your Encounter power, and then go back to your At-Will powers for the rest of the fight. When you gain your second Encounter power, you then have a choice between which order to use them both in, before going back to your At-Wills (and continuing to ignore your Daily powers).

If you care about the action economy, then it's logical to maximize the effect of each action. It's possible that the best course of action would be an At-Will instead of an Encounter power, but At-Will powers are at an inherent disadvantage in that comparison since they have a smaller design budget.

Thankfully I've never encountered this problem in my 4e gaming, because my players make their assessments of rational actions based on the actual situation their PCs are in.

For instance, at 1st level the fighter's encounter power was Passing Attack, which allows an attack, a move, and another attack against a different target. There is no point using this power unless (i) there are two targets to attack, or (ii) you really need the free movement. A further consideration is that every attack the fighter makes lets him mark a target, so that a factor in relation to (i) is whether or not now is the time to mark two targets.

At the same level the wizard's encounter power was Icy Terrain, which is an AoE that knocks targets prone and creates difficult terrain. This power is best used when (i) the enemy are grouped together, and (ii) the PCs will benefit from controlling the enemy's movement (standing from prone costs an action, and difficult terrain reduces movement speed).

Sometimes it is best to open with these powers, but not always. And the number of combats in which it is best for both to be used in the opening round is even fewer - for instance, if Icy Terrain has been used to hold off a chunk of enemies, the fighter might be better engaging the NPC in the van with at-wills while the ranged strikers shoot or blast the others slip-sliding around on the ice.

If in every case players take encounter powers that are nothing but damage-buffs (at 1st level, the closest to this for a fighter would be Steel Serpent Strike: 2W, slowed and cannot shift; for a wizard, it would be Chill Strike: 2d8 and dazed) then perhaps it's always best to lead with them, but frankly if you build a boring PC, complaining that it's boring in play seems like reaping what you've sown!

The PCs in my game are 28th level, about to go to 29th. I've attached a 27th level power sheet to this post, for the invoker/wizard. This character uses At-Will powers in combat (most often Hand of Radiance for multi-target, but sometimes Mantle of the Infidel for range). Working out when to use which power, and co-ordinating that decision-making with the other players, is an important element of playing the game.

Obviously play was simpler at 1st level (many fewer choices) but I don't ever remember it being simplistic.

For improvised actions, you have to factor in some penalty to their effective efficacy based on uncertainty about how it will resolve. If I'm remembering page 42 correctly, though, most improvised actions should be balanced with Encounter powers. If that's the case, and if you're fairly confident that the DM will use that guideline, then it might be worth switching to improvised actions as soon as you run out of Encounter powers.

Well, this takes us back to the issue of illusionism, doesn't it!

Why would a 4e GM not be using p 42? - those are the rules of the game! In my personal experience, especially once the suite of powers open up, players use p 42 to enhance their powers rather than substitute for the - eg they try and push people into damaging zones, or impale or trap them, etc. (Even the example in the DMG is like this - the player uses a Bull Rush - which is an at-will power that all PCs have access to - to push an enemy into a fire.)

In my game, when we resume our next session it will be Pazuzu's turn and - being dominated by the invoker/wizard - he will fly into an Abyssal rift to the Far Realm. Time to apply p 42!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would then argue that you are setting an excessively high barrier (maximizing the effect of each action, rather than simply going for good courses of action), and that you are setting the scope of your optimization too narrowly, e.g. you'll get more bang for your buck by considering both this turn and next turn, and thus hopefully avoid some amount of the paralysis and "nope can't do that, nope can't do that, nope can't..." that applies when you narrowly focus on a single turn.

I recognize the uncertainty; I just think you put such an incredible premium on certainty that everything else is obliterated as "not good enough." Also, knowing whether the DM uses that guideline is as simple as asking, if the DM is honest with you (generally a safe assumption?)

Both of these are thinking patterns that I saw being especially common in players that hadn't played 4e yet. In all previous editions your character, even for many characters at mid-levels, is a fragile contraption with hit points you can count on your fingers going up against a damage scale that makes a 10' drop quite plausibly lethal, and provides no mechanism by which the character might mitigate that whatsoever, except to carry along a 'hit point battery' and hope that it can be applied quickly enough, which it often cannot.

In such a game nobody risks anything. In fact you can see it in many of the things [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] says about 'hating stories because conflict is risky' and such. These players have been trained NEVER to try anything except some last ditch hail Mary pitch the oil flask and run type of move because every last thing you try will probably kill you instantly! Moreover the wizard has all the cards, so if you aren't the wizard you're pretty much ill-advised to do anything except keep the bad guys off his back so he can cast and just hack away for some damage output. The only time you do otherwise is if the story demands it (remember, hate story) or the poop hits the propeller.

Other aspects of this are a total lack of any appreciation of tactics whatsoever. This one is particularly rife with 3.x players, where the system is apparently keyed to one shot kills and actually needing to concentrate firepower, flank, etc is utterly foreign. The typical group fresh from 3.5 each picks a different monster to target with their at-will and then their jaws drop when they have basically zero impact in round one and three skirmishers gank the fighter in response (as the other characters invariably will cower behind the defender and whomever else has heavy armor).

This will all wear off in time with a little encouragement. One tactic I found that worked was to interpose a 'sergeant' with the party, some old grizzled veteran CC that has a couple Warlord type leader powers and deploys them mercilessly along with highly cutting remarks, "no lumphead, kill THAT goblin first (Commander's Strike)!" Pretty soon the players begin to note the vast increase in effectiveness and begin to see how their PCs are actually quite tough, if they're not the only guy being hit by all 5 opponents.

DM trust can take a bit to achieve also. The classic dungeon delve addicted process-sim DM will spend a LOT of his time kneecapping players clever ideas. Players that are new to my DMing who came from that environment have to learn that in fact when the players think up some clever idea they will actually have a cool experience, instead of learning how the laws of physics or 'common sense' can be interpreted against them today....

 

[pemerton]

Why would one need encounters and dailies in previous editions when one could declare any action they needed in earlier editions. There was no card system, there was an auto-attack and ANYTHING you want.

Like some other posters upthread, I'm curious about what "anything" means here.

I couldn't declare, as an action, "I run the orc through". All that really meant was that I got to make an attack roll: the resolution was no different from if I declared "I swing at the orc" or "I attack the orc".

At most tables I played at, a 1st level fighter also couldn't declare "I attack the nearest orc, sidestep 10', and attack the other orc". Even when mutiple attacks came into play (via specialisation, or at 7th level) the possibility of moving between attacks was never very clear.

The 1st level fighter in my 4e game had a power that let him do exactly what I've just described. (Passing Attack.) His daily power (Comeback Strike) let him do 2W damage and spend a healing surge. In AD&D I never encountered a GM who let the player of the fighter declare "I am going to make a might attack and, if I hit, I'll do double weapon dice and be revitalised by the momentum of the battle running my way, regaining 1d6 hit points".

And here's another perspective on the issue: no version of D&D has ever reduced the description of spell-users to "You are magical: you can declare any magical effect you can think of, and the GM will tell you what dice to roll to work out the consequences." And the fact that magic consists of rather tightly defined little packets of auto-effect has always been part of what makes spell-casters more attractive to power-players in AD&D.

(The RPG system I am familiar with that does handle spell-casting in roughly the way D&D doesn't is Marvel Heroic RP, although it has dice mechanics and a few other bells-and-whistles that take adjudication out of the realm of pure GM fiat. I'm sure there are others, too.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Both of these are thinking patterns that I saw being especially common in players that hadn't played 4e yet.
<good post snip>
Players that are new to my DMing who came from that environment have to learn that in fact when the players think up some clever idea they will actually have a cool experience, instead of learning how the laws of physics or 'common sense' can be interpreted against them today....

Abdul. Do you ever run online campaigns?

...what would it take for me to join one of these campaigns or convince you to start one?

Because sweet wounded Jesus this is exactly the awesome experience I have longed to have with 4e, and been unable to find/keep going.

 

[pemerton]

It's beginning to sound very much that what you are after is an aesthetic; you want it to feel like a naturalistic, uncontrived world that is not the product of artifice.

This is why, upthread, I posted the quote from Ron Edwards on ouija-board roleplaying.

 

[pemerton]

what seemed to me to happen was that when I kept, at first, endlessly placing the PCs in these 2e-esque encounters that had marginal amounts of plot and low stakes the players indeed were faced with something like you describe, they might as well use the 2W + whatever encounter power first, and then hold onto the 3W + whatever daily and spam the better of their two at-wills, and maybe trigger something beyond that when some monster got lucky or they chanced into a situation where it was really useful.

What totally changed that was playing the game as an action-adventure plot-oriented game.

Both of these are thinking patterns that I saw being especially common in players that hadn't played 4e yet. In all previous editions your character, even for many characters at mid-levels, is a fragile contraption with hit points you can count on your fingers going up against a damage scale that makes a 10' drop quite plausibly lethal, and provides no mechanism by which the character might mitigate that whatsoever, except to carry along a 'hit point battery' and hope that it can be applied quickly enough, which it often cannot.

In such a game nobody risks anything. In fact you can see it in many of the things [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] says about 'hating stories because conflict is risky' and such. These players have been trained NEVER to try anything except some last ditch hail Mary pitch the oil flask and run type of move because every last thing you try will probably kill you instantly! Moreover the wizard has all the cards, so if you aren't the wizard you're pretty much ill-advised to do anything except keep the bad guys off his back so he can cast and just hack away for some damage output. The only time you do otherwise is if the story demands it (remember, hate story) or the poop hits the propeller.

Other aspects of this are a total lack of any appreciation of tactics whatsoever. This one is particularly rife with 3.x players, where the system is apparently keyed to one shot kills and actually needing to concentrate firepower, flank, etc is utterly foreign.

Thankfully I never had these issues.

My own inclinations, combined with the 4e DMG advice on encounter building, meant that I never designed poxy-little piddle-about-and-achieve-nothing-significant encounters (the sort of filler that a module like Q1 is full off). And from the start I think my players worked out that playing the game - which means putting your PC out there and trying to do stuff - is fun.

Our first combat encounter in 4e, at 1st level, was adapted from Night's Dark Terror. The PCs' boat is attacked by bandits, who use a chain strung across the river to block it. I placed an islet/sand bar or two, plus gave the bandits a raft with their magic-user on it. And so in our first combat encounter we had PCs jumping from boat to sand bar, some ending up in the water, taking command of the enemy raft, the warlock teleporting around to take control of dry ground, and eventually the PCs making it to the shore to take down the enemy slinger.

The thing is, the DMG makes it plain as day that this is the sort of encounter the system supports. And there are modules out there - like Night's Dark Terror - that have this sort of thing in them. If people ignore the encounter building advice, and ignore the player-side advice, and then complain that they get these silly little grinds where nothing happens - well, what do you expect when you ignore the advice?!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Who said that I wasn't satisfied? I'm one of those people who actually likes the basic-attack Fighter. I just don't like jumping through hoops in order to carry my weight.

In 2E, improvised actions were rarely better than just attacking, so I could just attack and I would be fine.

In 4E, improvised actions are often better than At-Will powers, so it makes sense to use them whenever I run out of Encounter powers. The fact that At-Will powers have additional effects is not relevant, since most powers (and improvised actions) have effects beyond just damage, and it's the relative strength of any power which makes it an attractive option.

Its not all about mechanics though, I'd assume you ROLE PLAY your character, you were after all the one talking about how your way was actually role playing, so presumably you might use the power that makes sense in character-logic.

Beyond that though its quite easy for at-will powers to be the best option. They can be quite heavily optimized. Usually there will be SOME encounter powers that are better at a given moment, assuming you have that particular power available at that moment, etc, but 4e is not so cut and dried that there's just clearly one single best choice or routine that you play out every combat. Its not even close to being like that, unless again your DM is putting you in a very narrow range of very dull encounters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've also been thinking about this a bit.

I think in my game there is an informal understanding of "momentum" or "tempo".

While the PCs are not resting and are pushing forward, they (and thereby the players) have tempo, and so it would be unfair for me as GM to radically reshape the gameworld around them. But once they stop and take an extended rest, tempo shifts and I'm within my rights to reframe things to keep the pressure on.

A practical example: they got to take the fight to Lolth, and win (or so it seems - that conflict is still in its denouement phase). But once they stop and rest (which seems likely) then as GM I've got licence to change things up in response, have Orcus notice and take precautions or act pre-emptively, etc.

As I said, I think this is all informal, but seems to be implicit in the way we approach the game.

Sounds about right. I probably won't normally just invent some vast new resources for the current bad guy, but it depends on the situation. Certainly the bad guys will react, gather their forces, put plans in motion, strike back.