D&D 4E In Defense of 4E - a New Campaign Perspective

[Tony Vargas]

Hill Giant swarm?

I've used flights (swarms) of vrocks, and swarms of ground-based demons.

'Schools' of sahuagin in an epic-level under-water battle.

 

[Atlictoatl]

It's certainly a novel idea, but it unfortunately tells us very little about how the world actually works, which I've always taken to be the major goal of having such a detailed system in the first place.

I mean, if a level 16 ranger can fire an arrow for 10 damage, and it has the same ogre-killing capacity as 111 damage from a level 8 ranger, then what do the numbers even mean? It seems like the numbers are arbitrary, and we could get the same level of information with vastly reduced complexity by playing Savage Worlds.

The challenge within 4e is that the system functions on both a narrative and a mechanical level. The game is not claiming that 10 pts of damage at L16 is "the same as" 111 pts of damage at L8. It's stating that, proportionately, one attack from a L16 ranger can kill an ogre, but that same attack only fractionally hurts a purple worm.

The numerical values are there to facilitate us playing the game of combat. The narrative sits above the mechanical game. The same ranger who is entirely unchallenged by an ogre (who *was* challenged by that ogre earler in their career) has to fight for their life against a purple worm.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The challenge within 4e is that the system functions on both a narrative and a mechanical level. The game is not claiming that 10 pts of damage at L16 is "the same as" 111 pts of damage at L8. It's stating that, proportionately, one attack from a L16 ranger can kill an ogre, but that same attack only fractionally hurts a purple worm.

I agree that it is a challenge, and it is an unnecessary challenge at that. There's very little reason why we should play a game where we are challenged to interpret the mechanics on a simple narrative level, when there are so many other games out there that are more straightforward in the narrative meaning of their mechanics.

 

[Atlictoatl]

I agree that it is a challenge, and it is an unnecessary challenge at that. There's very little reason why we should play a game where we are challenged to interpret the mechanics on a simple narrative level, when there are so many other games out there that are more straightforward in the narrative meaning of their mechanics.

For myself, I loved that 4e separated the narrative and the mechanics. For many years, I gamed with about 30 people online in different PbP games who ran with that, separating fluff from crunch and telling the most magnificent tales together, our imaginations freed while simultaneously being supported in the more mechanical aspects of the game. I've been gaming since the '80's and have played every edition of D&D, as well as dozens of other games, and 4e was the first game that really drove home for me the realization of a mechanical chassis supporting a narrative, and that the two could be separated for creative purposes.

I think the takeaway is that some people were enamored with the way 4e did things, in this regard, and others were greatly turned off. Which isn't to say that the latter population doesn't enjoy narrative or even narrative separation, just that the manner in which 4e went about it didn't meet their needs or preferences.

For many of us, though, it was an ideal synthesis. I only wish that published adventures lived up to the design intent, and that they had found a way from the beginning to speed up combat or impress upon people the need for 'featured combat', as was expressed in the OP. And that what 4e was doing appealed to more people, at the time of its run.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The numerical values are there to facilitate us playing the game of combat. The narrative sits above the mechanical game. The same ranger who is entirely unchallenged by an ogre (who *was* challenged by that ogre earler in their career) has to fight for their life against a purple worm.

One thing I saw in 4e (which, to be fair, may not even really have been there, so let's call it a 'potential'), was a way to model what you see in fiction, especially, say, adventure TV shows that's aren't entirely episodic: You'll see a monster first introduced, its mysterious, it's frightening, it puts up a fight that nearly flattens the entire ensemble cast, takes whole episodes to figure out and defeat...
… then, later, knowing how to defeat it, it's just one challenge giving a few moments of excitement as part of an episode …
… and if that kind of beasty keeps coming back, pretty soon the heroes are just mowing through hordes of 'em.

It's not even necessarily all that long a time frame, or that the characters are that much more powerful (indeed, in fiction the power of the protagonist and/or supporting/ensemble cast tends to fluctuate rather than growing steadily as it does in an RPG like D&D, though that's a whole 'nuther thing). It's just, last season's monster doesn't get the screen time it used to.

4e can be used to model that, introducing a recurring type of enemy as Solo, then, as the party, 'demoting' it to a higher-level, elite, then standard, finally minions & swarms of minions. It means a given type of foe can go from Big-Bad to popcorn over time, something no amount of BA & hp/dmg inflation can quite match.


But 4e monster books rarely went there, they'd present a standard monster, and an inferior minion version of about the same level, and a leader-type elite or solo, of, again, about the same level. ::shrug::

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree that it is a challenge, and it is an unnecessary challenge at that. There's very little reason why we should play a game where we are challenged to interpret the mechanics on a simple narrative level, when there are so many other games out there that are more straightforward in the narrative meaning of their mechanics.

Which game are you talking about?

I mean, there ARE games where this is arguably the case, BRP-based games like CoC and games like Traveler (which has only 'attribute damage') would be possible contenders. Even Dungeon World could be looked at in that light, though I would think it clashes with other aspects of its 'narrative over mechanics' design.

Certainly D&D, any edition, does NOT fall into this category at all! A sword blow against a level 1 PC is clearly most likely to represent a solid blow causing serious physical damage, if not outright death. I guess you could spin ANY non-lethal blow as 'luck and skill', but that seems a bit wrong when you start considering things like falling and poison damage. In any case, the situation when striking a PC with 48 hit points is clearly a lot different, as a sword blow in that case is not even close to lethal, and logically represents largely a sort of 'plot armor' being worn down.

I have no idea why 4e would be singled out as different here. Given the D&D paradigm, 4e is really quite structured in its approach, though you certainly will explain damage in many different narrative ways. This is not a new 'problem'.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Which game are you talking about?

I mean, there ARE games where this is arguably the case, BRP-based games like CoC and games like Traveler (which has only 'attribute damage') would be possible contenders. Even Dungeon World could be looked at in that light, though I would think it clashes with other aspects of its 'narrative over mechanics' design.

Certainly D&D, any edition, does NOT fall into this category at all! A sword blow against a level 1 PC is clearly most likely to represent a solid blow causing serious physical damage, if not outright death. I guess you could spin ANY non-lethal blow as 'luck and skill', but that seems a bit wrong when you start considering things like falling and poison damage. In any case, the situation when striking a PC with 48 hit points is clearly a lot different, as a sword blow in that case is not even close to lethal, and logically represents largely a sort of 'plot armor' being worn down.

I have no idea why 4e would be singled out as different here. Given the D&D paradigm, 4e is really quite structured in its approach, though you certainly will explain damage in many different narrative ways. This is not a new 'problem'.

Believe it or not, people have been describing HP damage as objectively quantifiable for as long as the game has been around. It actually works pretty well, as long as you ignore Gygax's flawed explanation of what he was trying to do, and just take everything at face value. In any other edition, you can assign a consistent value to 48 damage, whether in terms of force applied or severity of injury, and it makes sense.

Fourth Edition is the only edition where a creature's HP total can change depending on who is attacking it. It's the only edition where an ogre might have different stat blocks, depending on whether you approach it when you are level 1 or level 21. That uniquely divorces the game mechanics from any sort of consistent meaning within the narrative. That is why 4E is being singled out here. It's the one edition where you can't ascribe consistent meaning to the mechanics, or else you're stuck trying to explain how any minion survived into adulthood with only 1hp.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I guess you could spin ANY non-lethal blow as 'luck and skill', but that seems a bit wrong when you start considering things like falling and poison damage.

Falling? You luckily fell through a flock of seagulls and they slowed you down a bit, you skillfully sky-dived into a haystack. Poison? You finely-tuned senses detected the poison just before you would have sipped the wine. The envenomed blade slashed through your armor and gambeson but your rolled away in the split-second before it would have broken your skin.

In any case, the situation when striking a PC with 48 hit points is clearly a lot different, as a sword blow in that case is not even close to lethal, and logically represents largely a sort of 'plot armor' being worn down.
I have no idea why 4e would be singled out as different here. Given the D&D paradigm, 4e is really quite structured in its approach, though you certainly will explain damage in many different narrative ways. This is not a new 'problem'.

Because, like 1e AD&D, it actually came out and said what was going on - and more concisely, via the straightforward Bloodied condition, than AD&D, with it's convoluted Gygaxian treatise - while 2e & 3e just left it unsaid, and 5e side-bared bloodied and declined to give it a label or make it a mechanical condition.

And, while it's an old problem, it's also the solution to a much older problem: in the early days, D&D was roundly mocked for the 'absurdity' of characters gaining hps as they leveled up. One old-school player I knew back in the day quipped about splicing the torsos of giants into PC minis to represent what was happening. Gygax's rationalization has stood ever since, even though, when it's inconvenient in the context of some other agenda, it's simply ignored or denied.

 

[Atlictoatl]

Fourth Edition is the only edition where a creature's HP total can change depending on who is attacking it. It's the only edition where an ogre might have different stat blocks, depending on whether you approach it when you are level 1 or level 21. That uniquely divorces the game mechanics from any sort of consistent meaning within the narrative. That is why 4E is being singled out here. It's the one edition where you can't ascribe consistent meaning to the mechanics, or else you're stuck trying to explain how any minion survived into adulthood with only 1hp.

Are you belaboring the bolded section to make a rhetorical point, or do you legitimately not understand how to explain minions at your table? Because we understand your rhetoric, and have pointed out why it's flawed and rhetorical. To continue picking at it implies either an inability to engage beyond what you've already said on the subject, or some other agenda.

In the assumption that the conceptual intent of minions in 4e escapes you (though I suspect you do understand it, and are simply pretending confusion because you disagree with the design principle), let me briefly explain:

If you want to represent an ogre surviving in the wild against the many forces other than PCs who are also in the wild -- when PCs aren't present -- then use the L8 Savage or Skirmisher. You can simulate a combat between it and the goblin band living nearby, or the dragon who wants to eat it for lunch. That shouldn't be complicated or confounding.

However, plopping two L8 Ogre Savages and two L8 Ogre Skirmishers into a squad with a L16 Treant and two L16 Savage Minotaurs and setting them against the PCs isn't a good idea within the mechanics of the game. 4/7 of the encounter will feature creatures which can't really hit and which can't defend at all, and ultimately reduce them to bags of 100 HP that can be mostly ignored while the true threats are dealt with, until the party has to hack down 400 HP of creatures that pose no threat. Verisimilitude, maybe. But more on the side of tedious than fun.

By introducing the abstraction of a L16 Ogre Bludgeoneer minion, the game introduces a gameable element, something which represents a minor threat that can actually bite but will perish very quickly. The party, reveling in their status as L16 planar heroes, can tear through a squad of four ogres while they fight the Treant and Savage Minotaurs. There's color there, there's nostalgia, there's the revelry of ginsu'ing something that once was a scary challenge, and the game doesn't bog down in a slog in pursuit of pretend verisimilitude.

If 4e didn't use ogre minions at L16, in order to achieve the same narrative effect the PCs would have to be able to dish out 450 damage/round, and Savage Minotaurs would have to have at least 800 HP, and there would be massive numerical inflation. Instead, 4e came up with minions, which are a mechanical representation of the idea of exponential PC superiority at L16 over themselves at L6.

The way you explain Ogre Minions is... "yeah, that's an ogre, you're just so much better than them now that you're able to kill them easily. If you want, think about the 12 damage you just did as at least 120 points of damage to a L6 PC. Badass, huh? It also means that, to a L6 PC, this Treant has over 3000 HP. Fortunately, the game has scaled things for play at the Paragon Tier so things are more manageable and fun. The takeaway is... you all are serious badasses now."

If you can explain how dragons can be understood when they speak Common, how it is you can press animals from another plane into service when you summon them, and how Mimics disguise themselves convincingly as treasure chests, you should be able to explain the design intent and reality of a Minion without a ton of effort.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Are you belaboring the bolded section to make a rhetorical point, or do you legitimately not understand how to explain minions at your table? Because we understand your rhetoric, and have pointed out why it's flawed and rhetorical. To continue picking at it implies either an inability to engage beyond what you've already said on the subject, or some other agenda.

What I can't do is explain how much punishment a creature can really take, because that explanation doesn't actually exist. The only possible explanation of how to use minions is to deny that numbers have inherent meaning, and that's a line I'm not willing to cross. That's not something that any other edition has asked of me, and I'm honestly a bit offended that the designers would do such a thing; I thought I knew what I was buying, when I chose to buy those rulebooks, but they tricked me. That's why 4E is different (to answer the reply from the other poster).

I get it. Some people don't ascribe objective meaning to game mechanics. Those people can play 4E as easily as they could play 1E or 3E. Not everyone falls into that category, though. If the designers were really intent on crossing that line, then the least they should have done was to warn people. That's all I have to say on the topic. I thought I'd already made that clear, before you decided to drag me back in here.