D&D 4E Mike Mearls on how 4E could have looked

[cbwjm]

(1) In 5e the hit points and damage output of that opponent will grow. There's a hp/damage-by-level table (well actually a pair of them - the CR table together with the encounter difficulty table).

(2) The reason, in the fiction, that the AC of that enemy grows is because s/he is tougher - her armour is more mythical, her prowess greater, etc. (Ie stuff that, in 5e, is expressed only by growing hp is, in 4e, expressed both by growing hp and growing defences.)

Yeah, that's something I found in 4e, both attack and defences grew at the same rate which made me think that you could have removed the level bonuses, adjusted the monster defence scaling to be half level +X and just have the players use ability modifiers and magic bonuses and it would have played pretty much the same. I thought 4e had some great ideas, I didn't really think the +half level to attack, defences, and skills was one of them. It was like it was added for the sake of adding it because D&D always had increasing attack bonuses.

 

[cbwjm]

Climbing is a little bit difficult in that Thieves basically have a percentage chance to climb so if we give a Fighter a climbing skill then we would have to give the Thief something to make up for losing their thing. Maybe they just get a flat bonus on top of their stat check.

Didn't everyone have a climb skill in AD&D or was that just in 2e? I remember something like everyone had a climb skill of 40% which could be improved with the mountaineering skill.

How can we balance the Fly spell when the Fighter gets a Griffin mount? All the benefits of Fly plus extra attacks and it only costs gold and can be used the whole day.

Simple, we don't balance it and we give the wizard their own griffon so that they can prepare an extra fireball spell. I know that there were griffon riders back in 2e, might have been a kit. I kind of miss the days of 2e where balance was something you did while walking on tightrope rather than playing a class.

 

[Sadras]

5e PCs progress in their non-combat capabilities as they progress in their combat capabilities (bettern Prof bonuses, stat increases, for many access to more and more impactufl spells, magic items, etc).

The combat mechanics recognise this and build it in (partly by escalating ACs, mostly by escalating hp and damage). But the non-combat mechanics don't. I don't see this as a strength in a level-based game.

To be fair, as the PCs rise in levels they will have to face greater and most likely harder exploration and social challenges which will have far more at stake (escalated damage and other resource loss as well as greater narrative consequences whether you're running success at cost or just outright failure).

EDIT: Level 3 PCs scale a large inn, level 15 PCs scale a mighty fortress in the Nine Hells.

 

[pemerton]

Didn't make sense in 4e either since those goblins you fought at level 1 increase become level 10 when you reach level 10. You might be able to fight and kill more of them (thanks to the minion rules) but their chances to hit you remained largely the same.

Minions do half damage compared to standard level creatures, and typically have less interesting conditions/debuffs attached to their attacks (partly for balance reasons, partly because doing otherwise would defeat the contribution minions are intended to make to ease of play).

A hit from a 10th level minion is thus not the same threat as a hit from a 10th level standard creature.

Yeah, that's something I found in 4e, both attack and defences grew at the same rate which made me think that you could have removed the level bonuses, adjusted the monster defence scaling to be half level +X and just have the players use ability modifiers and magic bonuses and it would have played pretty much the same. I thought 4e had some great ideas, I didn't really think the +half level to attack, defences, and skills was one of them. It was like it was added for the sake of adding it because D&D always had increasing attack bonuses.

Correct - the only reason for having the level scaling in 4e is to emulate, in a more systematic fashion, the scaling of to hit bonuses and defences that has been a traditional part of D&D (the scaling of defences being a bit more piecemeal and ad hoc, even in 3E).

I personally like it, because it helps establish a clear demarcation of GM-side game elements (creatures, traps, hazards, etc) into levels that map onto the tiers of play and help establish the progression in the fiction that is part of the game (start out fighting skeletons, end up fighting Orcus). But stripping it out wouldn't have any effect on the core mechanics - it would just change that relatioinship between mechanics and fiction.

Didn't everone have a climb skill in AD&D or was that just in 2e?

Just 2nd ed AD&D. (Building on some ideas in the WSG.)

 

[pemerton]

To be fair, as the PCs rise in levels they will have to face greater and most likely harder exploration and social challenges which will have far more at stake (escalated damage and other resource loss as well as greater narrative consequences whether you're running success at cost or just outright failure).

EDIT: Level 3 PCs scale a large inn, level 15 PCs scale a mighty fortress in the Nine Hells.

If there is going to be an implicit DC-by-level table, then I would prefer it be explicit.

 

[Sadras]

Minions do half damage compared to standard level creatures, and typically have less interesting conditions/debuffs attached to their attacks (partly for balance reasons, partly because doing otherwise would defeat the contribution minions are intended to make to ease of play).

A hit from a 10th level minion is thus not the same threat as a hit from a 10th level standard creature.

All of that is inconsequential.
The claim was that in 5e a goblin can still hit a 10th level character due to mostly static AC whereas in 4e the AC improvement due to level makes this unlikely to impossible.

If you want to talk damage, debuffs and interesting conditions that is a separate conversation.

 

[Sadras]

If there is going to be an implicit DC-by-level table, then I would prefer it be explicit.

What I read into this is that it is somehow more difficult to adjudicate difficulty in 4e than 5e and a table is needed.

 

[Garthanos]

Didn't make sense in 4e either since those goblins you fought at level 1 increase become level 10 when you reach level 10. You might be able to fight and kill more of them (thanks to the minion rules) but their chances to hit you remained largely the same.

Many of those goblins at level 1 were already minions (too meek to minionize but a swarm of goblin cutters could be done)

Or we can give both the systems a break and acknowledge that in one case hit point increase could represent misses because hp are abstractions of misses and fatigue and similar things AND in the other the desperate minor damage they are able to apply as minions are the effect of settling for very minimal openings they would not have taken/accepted when the hero was lower level.(they arent getting access to the opportunity to make that badass head chop so they are settling for a minor lower
arm cut which is easier)

 

[Imaro]

I haven't played it. I'm familiar with the concept of a MMO. Wikipedia tells me that "As in previous The Elder Scrolls titles, gameplay is mostly nonlinear, with a mixture of quests, random events, and free-roaming exploration of the world." The word fiction appears nowhere in the Wikipedia entry.

I do have a general sense of the ability of computers to engage in literary criticism, because of my familiarity with experiments in AI assessment of student essays. That ability is poor. I draw on that bit of knowledge to inform my understanding of the extent to which The Elders Scrolls Online will treat the ficiton as an element in adjudication - namely, it won't.

How did we get to this point in the discussion? Here's how:

​

Given that you think I would get what I want out of RPGing from playing the Elder Scrolls online, but I know that I wouldn't, you obviously have little grasp of what I'm talking about when I talk about the way a RPG system works to generate a play experience. That you continue to insist that I will get what I want from playing a game that I know has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm looking for in RPGing is just bizarre.

For extra clarity, there is zero connection between a good RPG system - which will reliably deliver awesome moments of play without needing to be ignored or "transcended" - and "consistent, expected and (at least by the goals they've set) enjoyable gameplay purely through strict adherence to their coded systems". The starting point for explaining why is the word coded (as I posted upthread in relation to The Elder Scrolls Online, it's all maths).

So you've never played it but have declared it "not an rpg" and you "know" it can't deliver what we were discussing (awesome moments of play through leveraging the system)... yeah ok this doesn't really need to go any further as there's no discussion to be had when someone has already made up their mind...but honestly your reasoning is full of assumptions and very little basis on actual experience or familiarity with the game being discussed.

On a side note do most rpg's in their description blurbs actually reference leveraging fiction?

 

[Garthanos]

All of that is inconsequential.

My dad once pointed out to his teachers in martial arts that if he smacks an enemy in a exposed spot perhaps in an arm it was both easier to hit than those vital deadly hits they were pushing but was still a set up to increase the chance the follow up could be that deadly spot. (They actually asked him to become a teacher but that would have meant staying in Korea longer)

Basically its saying damage and to hit are inter-related. (going up on one goes down on the other)

Its quite reasonable when attacking enemies that are harder to hit with big deadly or massively impairing strokes you take easier but less effective openings... so minionized enemies are doing that they are settling for less effective hits hoping they will get the bigger ones later.

The zero change in ac while levelling could be perceptually fixed if people accepted that some of those hits were really misses because of the abstraction of hit points -- but we cannot have that no never that.