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

[Parmandur]

Wonder what resource fighting types have that limits their workday.... and which might be lost if they were able to over exert by force of will.

Second Wind, Indominitable and Action Surge have some resource use limitations, but those limitations are pretty minor compared to the resource heavy Classes that lack the consistent, uncapped performance features a Fighter or Rogue have up their sleeves.

 

[Parmandur]

Which is fine to a point. Unfortunately, the whole resource management issue goes out the window at higher levels which is, I thought, what we were talking about. See, the 1st level fighter and the 15th level fighter don't have too different chances of success of throwing that rope. 20%, 30% difference by and large? Meanwhile, that 15th level wizard has so many spell slots that burning a low level one, or, simply using some ritual is such a trivial expenditure that it isn't really a resource management issue at all.

Let's be honest here, how often is a 15th level caster going to blow his or her full load out of spells in a single day? That's one hell of a lot of destruction. And, heck, you keep insisting on levitate. Why? I can mage hand the rope 30 feet and hook the grapple, silently and successfully every single time. Doesn't even cost me a resource.

What I would like to see is high level fighters be able to have a sort of free form power which lets them do amazing physical feats as a limited resource. If we're going to allow low level casters to bypass the DM to surmount challenges, why not let the fighter types do it too?

If a 15th level mage isn't being pushed to their limitations, that's table style, I suppose, nothing breaks per se.

 

[Garthanos]

Second Wind, Indominitable and Action Surge have some resource use limitations.

All the way back to 1e we have had a resource that fit that description, the hero just wasnt allowed any control over tapping it.... hit points and hit die or healing surges in 4e.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

There are assertions to the contrary in some canonical D&D materials (eg Gygax's DMG).

I don't think Gygax was claiming D&D emulated the fiction but was more indicating what his inspirations were, at least in the famous Appendix N. But he might have said different things at different times.

I could easily envisage running a LotR-flavoured game in 4e (Gandalf would be a warlord with wizard multi-class to gain Scorching Burst as an encounter power). Probably Conan also, although that does push some boundaries a bit harder (eg the way 4e healing works - being inspired by a friend's words of encouragement or blessing - fits JRRT better than REH) - I think a Conan game would need to use predominantly minion and swarm opponents, and really emphasise skill challenges as the main focus of play, even moreso than LotR.

4E and 5E certainly could work for some of these sources. I'm more comfortable with 5E in general and in another thread we chewed over building Conan in 5E. I think one can make a pretty solid Conan as a barbarian/fighter/rogue multiclass of about 14th level. Some setting assumptions such as "everybody has the Tavern Brawler feat" and giving out a few extra skills and languages over the course of the game would help. Adventures in Middle Earth is a port of The One Ring to 5E rules. Folks over on the Cubicle 7 forums have run the numbers showing that 12th to 14th level is pretty consistent with the deeds of Gimli and Legolas in Helm's Deep as well. I think there are some pinch points with D&D's general wargame nature and strong emphasis on niche protection. In particular, protagonists in fiction are often fewer and more broadly competent than D&D tends to assume. But nevertheless, these systems work to emulate fiction, particularly if most of the more egregiously magical types are disallowed or downplayed.

 

[Parmandur]

All the way back to 1e we have had a resource that fit that description, the hero just wasnt allowed any control over tapping it.... hit points and hit die or healing surges in 4e.

Which has translated over to 5E, mainly. Fighters have an advantage on that front.

 

[Garthanos]

Bounded Accuracy isn't mentioned in the 5e books. Which is weird that a game concept so integral to an RPG doesn't at any point get brought up given how easy it would have been to do that.

Also, it isn't complicated — 5e is very much so about trying to target a 2/3rds chance of succeeding at a task — most 1st level PCs have a +5 to hit and the average AC for CR 1 = 13 per DMG. So roll an 8+ and therefore 65% chance of success. There just isn't certainty of every single check being 65%.

Did someone earlier say 4e divided by 2...

 

[Garthanos]

Which has translated over to 5E, mainly. Fighters have an advantage on that front.

In 4e there are a number of contexts where the heroes can tap into healing surges. Sometimes magic items enable it. Other times its actually used by wizards in rituals but not often (rituals are driven by pocket change).

One of which is purely improvisational for application towards significant rolls in the skill challenge context. Additionally you can similarly perform a known ritual appropriate to the situation with the same degree of relevant benefit.

Heck you can if the situation is right improvise the rich mans solution ... throw money at it (anything from hiring troops to bribing guardsman and the amount of money is defined in a based on level of the challenge fashion) However the ritual is significantly cheaper at that point. Martial types do have explicit abilities like rituals but they were under-developed but in effect they allowed one to also spend healing surges towards extraordinary extreme skill oriented effects.

 

[Imaro]

Really? Because that's not the conversation I was having.

My point is, of the four PC's at the table, two are bounded by bounded accuracy to either potentially succeed or fail depending on DM fiat while the other two (i.e. magic using classed PC's) get to ignore the DM and declare success whenever they feel like it.

And somehow that's not a problem. I'm not sure how it isn't a problem. Tradition maybe? But, that's the fundamental issue right there and it's wound in with the bounded accuracy rules. Why should a high level character be challenged by a low level skill check? The magic using characters aren't and never have been.

I mean, a 20th level champion fighter can NEVER push a giant. Ever. Not without some sort of size increasing magic anyway. On his own? Not a chance. But, a 3rd level Way of the Open Hand monk spends a ki point and poof, that same giant flies back 15 feet. There's a save, sure, but, that 3rd level monk can do it. Why do fighters never get anything like that?

Or, a 17th level Open Hand monk hits a dragon and kills it in one strike with Quivering Palm. He can potentially do this. But that 17th level fighter can NEVER do it.

On and on and on. It's frankly baffling to me why this isn't a bigger issue for people. People just shrug and go, "Well, it's magic, so it's okay." Buh? It's okay that half the players get to play a different game than the other half? Seriously?

Ok let's have this conversation then...

So it's baffling that people who choose to play a certain class as opposed to another are ok with the playstyle of that class? Why is that baffling?

Honestly... I just don't think it's a problem for most people who play the game. the only place I see it harped on as a major problem is on forums like this and it's usually by a handful of 4e fans who are trying to convince others to be outraged enough about it to actually care as much as they seem to.

As long as they are having fun playing the fighter in 1e, 2e, 3e or 5e, and I doubt they'd continue to play a game if they weren't (cue the how irrational people can be argument ), they just don't care about this "imbalance" between classes that you feel they should be making an issue about. they probably look at it in the vein of if they wanted to play a magic wielder or a ki channeling monk they would. Instead they picked a fighter and they are a-ok with playing that class because it is fun for them.

On a side note I find it interesting that the game that supposedly "corrected" this still had fighters with the lowest amount of skills, nealry all combat focused powers, nothing equivalent to rituals, and still ultimately relied on DM fiat to allow things like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s forge scene. You want to know what baffles me? How proponents of 4e can claim that edition actually fixed this supposed disparity between the magic wielders and the martial classes.

 

[pemerton]

the Fighters mythic-level abilities are about fighting

If you want to talk about high level play, then by 15th level my Fighter has all sorts of items that bypass all those normal restrictions you complain about.

I hope it's fairly clear why I would read these as essentially reiterations of my point, rather than contradictions of it.

 

[pemerton]

On a side note I find it interesting that the game that supposedly "corrected" this still had fighters with the lowest amount of skills, nealry all combat focused powers, nothing equivalent to rituals, and still ultimately relied on DM fiat to allow things like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s forge scene.

The skill challenge system and the DC-by-level chart are not "DM fiat". They're a resolution system that is broadly similar to one first pioneered in 1997 by Maelstrom Storytelling.

You want to know what baffles me? How proponents of 4e can claim that edition actually fixed this supposed disparity between the magic wielders and the martial classes.

When you show me the actual play reports that have 5e fighters doing the sorts of things the fighter in my 4e game has done, then we can have this conversation.

Until then, I'm going to let the facts as I'm familiar with them speak for themselves. (Which includes multiple 5e players posting in this thread to say that the Forge scene is supernatural and hence falls outside the remit of what even a high level "martial" PC can do on his/her own.)