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

[Shasarak]

Why is it "magic user stuff" to craft a magic hammer? Other than tradition, there's no real compelling reason to say that a fighter can't make his own magic weapon. The last Avengers movie showed exactly what it could look like with Thor essentially holding his hand (well his whole body) in the forge so they can make the new weapon. Crafting a magic weapon is only "magic user stuff" because that's the way it's always been.

Thor did not craft his own magical axe, he went to get Peter Dinklage to craft a new magical axe because of course you would. He was not Thor crafter of magical axes after all. Although in the end we find out that Thor does not actually need a magical axe because, like the power of love, the magic was inside of him all this time.

And, well, I'd say you missed the larger point. We're arguing about whether or not a fighter should be able to do stuff at very high levels that a caster can do at much lower levels. In 5e, can your 15 strength character jump 20 feet using skills? Maybe. Depends on the DM and the dice. Oh, you're a caster? Go right ahead, no problems, no DM adjudication and no chance of failure (Jump spell, fly, and I'm sure there are other options). For some, this is a pretty large issue because it strongly narrows the narrative space that you can use unless you play a caster.

Sure, "I" am missing the point. The Fighter can jump 20 foot all day, every day and twice as much on Sundays while the Magic-User better damn well hope that they thought of prepping that Fly or Jump or whatever Piss off the Fighter spell in the morning instead of anything else more useful if the party gets jumped by gawd knows what monster. Because nothing says power like the ability to get past something that a grappling hook, a 50' rope and a Strength check can do just as well.

Now the interesting thing to discuss is what is the Fighter going to give up to get his plot coupons? Every other character class has to give up something so what is your magic axe crafting, ravine jumping, arrow blocking Fighter going to give up for his powers? The Thor character in the Avengers does not give anything up, even Groot had to sacrifice one of his arms to craft the magic axe but Thor loses nothing.

Of course, 5e solves this problem by making pretty much everyone a caster, so, that's one solution.

I guess they just copied the 4e solution in that case.

 

[pemerton]

I think what we're saying is that 5e is very easy to mod if you want to run the game in a different way from the default presented out of the box.

So is 4e. WotC even published two examples: Neverwinter Campaign Setting (compresses the fiction of heroic and paragon tier into the mechanics of heroic tier), and Dark Sun (expands the fiction of heroic and paragon tier into the mechanics of heroic through epic tier, plus significantly narrows avaiable ritual and magic item effects).

As I already posted, I don't know of any actual play example of a 5e fighter emulating the feat I described.

 

[Parmandur]

In 4e when I make changes the clear math gives me very good ideas about the repercussions of the changes can you say that about 5e?

My son made a 5e character his first it was a Paladin who was able to single handedly defeat an encounter that was for a party 3 levels higher. If he did everything right the people making the game do not even understand the implication of their numbers.

Was that encounter in the context of 6-8 combat encounters with maybe a short rest...?

Thing is, the game is balanced are ne a pretty strenuous "work day," and anything less strenuous will play in the players favor. Not that there is anything wrong with that, if folks don't want so much combat.

Of course, 4E could be modded, too, but 5E has way less math, that will beeeend like heck without "breaking" anything. Your son's example is that at work.

 

[Parmandur]

(More than one poster has compared this to AC - the AC of a goblin is the same whether the to hit check is made by a 1st level or 15th level PC).

The math is the same, is the main reason: d20 + Ability mod + Proficiency (if relevant) against a predetermined target between 10-30. That formula goes for basically everything in 5E.

 

[Parmandur]

Strangely enough Essentials became my preferred 4e as opposed to classic which I've gotten rid of most of the books for.

I was checked out by that point.

 

[pemerton]

The math is the same, is the main reason: d20 + Ability mod + Proficiency (if relevant) against a predetermined target between 10-30. That formula goes for basically everything in 5E.

And likewise for 4e, except replace the number 30 with 50. So how is this meant to be a contrast with 4e?

Thing is, the game is balanced are ne a pretty strenuous "work day," and anything less strenuous will play in the players favor. Not that there is anything wrong with that, if folks don't want so much combat.

(1) I don't think anything less strenuous will play terribly much in the favour of the player of the champion or thief, compared to (say) the player of the wizard or cleric.

(2) This is why I think 5e is not very flexible at all. The game's balance depens upon the GM managing pacing and unfolding events in a very controlling fashion. 4e's extreme flexibility in this respect is one of the things that I find very appealing about it.

 

[Shasarak]

I'll post the actual play report again:

Another thing that had been planned for some time, by the player of the dwarf fighter-cleric, was to have his dwarven smiths reforge Whelm - a dwarven thrower warhammer artefact (originally from White Plume Mountain) - into Overwhelm, the same thing but as a morenkrad (the character is a two-hander specialist). And with this break from adventure he finally had he chance.

Again I adjudicated it as a complexity 1 (4 before 3) skill challenge. The fighter-cleric had succeeded at Dungeoneering (the closest in 4e to an engineering skill) and Diplomacy (to keep his dwarven artificers at the forge as the temperature and magical energies rise to unprecedented heights). The wizard had succeeded at Arcana (to keep the magical forces in check). But the fighter-cleric failed his Religion check - he was praying to Moradin to help with the process, but it wasn't enough. So he shoved his hands into the forge and held down the hammer with brute strength! (Successful Endurance against a Hard DC.) His hands were burned and scarred, but the dwarven smiths were finally able to grab the hammer head with their tongs, and then beat and pull it into its new shape.

The wizard then healed the dwarf PC with a Remove Affliction (using Fundamental Ice as the material component), and over the course of a few weeks the burns healed. (Had the Endurance check failed, things would have played out much the same, but I'd decided that the character would feel the pang of the burns again whenever he picked up Overwhelm.)

In running this particular challenge, I was the one who called for the Dungeoneering and Diplomacy checks. It was the players who initiated the other checks. In particular, the player of the dwarf PC realised that while his character is not an artificer, he is the toughtest dwarf around. This is what led him to say "I want to stick my hands into the forge and grab Whelm. Can I make an Endurance check for that?" An unexpected manoeuvre!

I like upgrading Whelm to Overwhelm, nice.

Yeah I see in a Skill Challenge the temptation to try and use your best skill, you really are forced to leverage those numbers as best you can.

 

[Garthanos]

Was that encounter in the context of 6-8 combat encounters with maybe a short rest...?

Thing is, the game is balanced are ne a pretty strenuous "work day," and anything less strenuous will play in the players favor. Not that there is anything wrong with that, if folks don't want so much combat.

Of course, 4E could be modded, too, but 5E has way less math, that will beeeend like heck without "breaking" anything. Your son's example is that at work.

I may have to ask him more details for us to know. I do know that the games designers including 4e I believe assumed more encounters per day than is really typical and assumes as many at the table as organized play which is more than typical in the wild.

Does a Vengeance Paladin have some spike mechanics which would be altered by number of encounters or is it just his hit points limiting his work day?

 

[cbwjm]

I may have to ask him more details for us to know. I do know that the games designers including 4e I believe assumed more encounters per day than is really typical and assumes as many at the table as organized play which is more than typical in the wild.

Does a Vengeance Paladin have some spike mechanics which would be altered by number of encounters or is it just his hit points limiting his work day?

Smite at level 2 runs off spell slots. If he only has a single encounter then he can burn slots to boost damage without having to worry about later encounters.

 

[Lanefan]

(2) This is why I think 5e is not very flexible at all. The game's balance depens upon the GM managing pacing and unfolding events in a very controlling fashion.

Same can be said for all editions, to a certain extent: if the party intentionally ran themselves on a 5-minute workday (this requires immense amounts of patience on the players' behalf, but I've seen it done) and the DM didn't force the pace, the PCs had a huge advantage. 5e just dials this problem up a bit, then tries to fix its own mistake by letting everyone fully recover overnight...and bang goes the long-term resource management aspect where health and hit points are concerned.

4e's extreme flexibility in this respect is one of the things that I find very appealing about it.

That flexibility comes at a bit of a cost, though: too much recovery between encounters. With the exceptions of a) dailies and b) unusual situations, the party is going to go into pretty much every encounter at or close to full pop. Thus, again other than dailies, it doesn't matter whether you-as-DM throw one or three or ten encounters at 'em in a day. Fine for the DM from the flexibility angle, great for the players/PCs from the gamist angle, but awful for anyone looking for something 'grittier' that provides a hard choice between stopping to recover or carrying on at ever-increasing risk.

A grittier system puts - in fact, forces - much more of the "managing [of] pacing and unfolding events" into the players' hands, as they have to slow down and take things on at a pace their PCs can handle. The DM can then try to force the pace and force ugly choices by putting a little time pressure on things if she so desires, and now and then (but certainly not always) should.

Put another way, one 4e adventure I ran was clearly written on the assumption that the PCs (in a 4e game) would blast through in one or two in-game days tops, due to the fact they'd recover nearly everything between each set-piece and thus - with decent management of dailies - not have to rest. The system in effect said "here, just keep going".

I ran that adventure in modified 1e and it took the party a third of a year. They took something like 5 trips back to town (a week each way; this is where a lot of that time went!), and also rested overnight on site numerous times in order to recover. The players controlled the pace, rather than the DM; and the system said "you've got some choices to make". Far better, IMO.