D&D 4E Where was 4e headed before it was canned?

[cbwjm]

Essentially auto-crits?

Oh they'll definitely be staying down once hit.

 

[Ratskinner]

This is not entirely off-base, but I think you need more structure than that in order to make it reasonably straightforward for most "I just want to play the game" type folks (about 90% of all players) to get on with it. When they really want to color outside the lines, 4e is quite easy on them in terms of doing it.

I actually think this is a misperception that is common amongst us afficianado types. I think the presentation of "pages of powers", or even "piles of choices" as some other editions and many other games have it, strikes those folks as more problematic than, for example, a 1-page character sheet game with everything you need for your class/character on it. I doubt that most of these casual folks are even aware of how a game like 4e could allow them to "color outside the lines". At least IME, people coming to the game with that attitude have less trouble with abstraction or free-form play than they do with "tax form" style rules and character sheets. Obviously, this is one of those areas with a lot of YMMV attached.

Now, I think its a little more problematic from a publishing/design point of view. Because, if history is any guide, a good portion of those people will eventually want to "get more into it" which puts them in the position of wanting more rule-depth...which, of course a publisher would want to sell them. So that puts you in the position of wanting to have a simple option that plays right next to the tax-form option...which seems a much harder trick to pull off than it looks. Both 4e and 5e have made some effort to that effect, with varying opinions on their degree of success. But I don't think anyone thinks either of them pulled them off spectacularly well.

 

[Parmandur]

I actually think this is a misperception that is common amongst us afficianado types. I think the presentation of "pages of powers", or even "piles of choices" as some other editions and many other games have it, strikes those folks as more problematic than, for example, a 1-page character sheet game with everything you need for your class/character on it. I doubt that most of these casual folks are even aware of how a game like 4e could allow them to "color outside the lines". At least IME, people coming to the game with that attitude have less trouble with abstraction or free-form play than they do with "tax form" style rules and character sheets. Obviously, this is one of those areas with a lot of YMMV attached.

Now, I think its a little more problematic from a publishing/design point of view. Because, if history is any guide, a good portion of those people will eventually want to "get more into it" which puts them in the position of wanting more rule-depth...which, of course a publisher would want to sell them. So that puts you in the position of wanting to have a simple option that plays right next to the tax-form option...which seems a much harder trick to pull off than it looks. Both 4e and 5e have made some effort to that effect, with varying opinions on their degree of success. But I don't think anyone thinks either of them pulled them off spectacularly well.

This first paragraph seems obvious to m: does anybody actually doubt that?

The proof is in the pudding, and I think 5E has threaded the needle better than it has ever been done yet.

 

[Garthanos]

I actually think this is a misperception that is common amongst us afficianado types. I think the presentation of "pages of powers", or even "piles of choices" as some other editions and many other games have it, strikes those folks as more problematic than, for example, a 1-page character sheet game with everything you need for your class/character on it. I doubt that most of these casual folks are even aware of how a game like 4e could allow them to "color outside the lines". At least IME, people coming to the game with that attitude have less trouble with abstraction or free-form play than they do with "tax form" style rules and character sheets. Obviously, this is one of those areas with a lot of YMMV attached.

Free Form or quasi freeform is very understandable to many - ironically 5e seems way more locked down to me than 4e but that may be my game fu at work. Fewer traps.

 

[Parmandur]

Free Form or quasi freeform is very understandable to many - ironically 5e seems way more locked down to me than 4e but that may be my game fu at work. Fewer traps.

It is both more locked down and more free-form, considered in different aspects. It is more locked down in terms of assigning broad archetypes with limited mechanical customization, but in another way it is more free-form in that actions in play are less mechanically dictated and more about player-DM negotiation for the story.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Have you ever formally shared your house ruled version of 4e? I am definitely curious to read through the product.

HoML I think there's a lot of additional things that are possible here. In fact, I'm starting to think that NADs themselves should simply cease to exist and skills should become defenses. This might entail something like basing skills on more than one ability score or something like that, I'm not sure.

Also, the scaling on damage and hit points in HoML doesn't seem quite optimal right now. It is a bit different from 4e because I compressed the level structure to 20 levels, and did some other things which resulted in a 'piles of dice' situation. Its easy enough to resolve (d6 system solved this by simply letting you replace blocks of several dice with their average, which for larger numbers of dice is pretty much just a convenience). I think instead I will do a bit of scaling back. It will have some effect on the power curve, but there are ways to get around that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It is both more locked down and more free-form, considered in different aspects. It is more locked down in terms of assigning broad archetypes with limited mechanical customization, but in another way it is more free-form in that actions in play are less mechanically dictated and more about player-DM negotiation for the story.

There is a big gulf of experience on this point though. My experience is similar to that of a number of other people. We find the lack of any structure to actions in play to work off of much more limiting. So, in 4e, I could leverage skill mechanics (which have some defined uses), 'page 42', powers, terrain powers, and the SC structure, along with keywords and a general 'up the ante' kind of play to guide what and how things could work when you did something that wasn't clearly 'vanilla'. Because it was possible for a player to come to a fairly objective estimate of what this process would look like, it became very easy for players to simply jump in and say "Oh, I do X; I'll make a Y check to see if it works." or at least know that the GM would be calling for a check of that sort (albeit sometimes difficulty level determinations and what are entailed in success/failure are not immediately obvious, but usually they are).

If I am involved in the same sort of thing in 5e, lots is simply up in the air and impossible to predict. 4e has a rep as very easy to GM, and this is also a factor, you can just go with the obvious solution, it is almost always the 'right' one. Even a lot of details are hard to nail down with 5e, like "is this an attack, or is the target going to make a save?" is indeterminate unless you're using some pre-existing ability or it is a fairly orthodox use of a spell. When things go beyond that it can get pretty nebulous and there are a lot of players who are not good at dealing with that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Anyway, the above points out another area of potential evolution in 4e. That is creating a more solid framework for "what happens when I...". HoML, for instance, goes in the direction of adding levels of success for checks, making all non-combat checks become part of an SC, and creating a bit more robust system for stake raising (IE you can spend resources in defined ways to increase your chances of success). I think even more is possible, such as a way to adjudicate wagers (IE I shatter my sword on the stone attempting to cut it in half!). Actually thinking about it, you can sort of do that in HoML now, there are just some restrictions on the situations where it is possible.... Anyway, this is a thing that 4e COULD have added. I don't know if it ever would have.

 

[Parmandur]

There is a big gulf of experience on this point though. My experience is similar to that of a number of other people. We find the lack of any structure to actions in play to work off of much more limiting. So, in 4e, I could leverage skill mechanics (which have some defined uses), 'page 42', powers, terrain powers, and the SC structure, along with keywords and a general 'up the ante' kind of play to guide what and how things could work when you did something that wasn't clearly 'vanilla'. Because it was possible for a player to come to a fairly objective estimate of what this process would look like, it became very easy for players to simply jump in and say "Oh, I do X; I'll make a Y check to see if it works." or at least know that the GM would be calling for a check of that sort (albeit sometimes difficulty level determinations and what are entailed in success/failure are not immediately obvious, but usually they are).

If I am involved in the same sort of thing in 5e, lots is simply up in the air and impossible to predict. 4e has a rep as very easy to GM, and this is also a factor, you can just go with the obvious solution, it is almost always the 'right' one. Even a lot of details are hard to nail down with 5e, like "is this an attack, or is the target going to make a save?" is indeterminate unless you're using some pre-existing ability or it is a fairly orthodox use of a spell. When things go beyond that it can get pretty nebulous and there are a lot of players who are not good at dealing with that.

Fair enough: I'd call that a series of features, rather than bugs. It is easier to improv the possibilities using common sense and some simple dice math (only need five numbers that are in the DM screen and a flash judgement for DCs). The 4E approach might be "predictable" but possibly less hilarious as a result. I like some of the DMG alternate Skill systems that are even more loose than the PHB version.

 

[Hussar]

Fair enough: I'd call that a series of features, rather than bugs. It is easier to improv the possibilities using common sense and some simple dice math (only need five numbers that are in the DM screen and a flash judgement for DCs). The 4E approach might be "predictable" but possibly less hilarious as a result. I like some of the DMG alternate Skill systems that are even more loose than the PHB version.

THis I tend to disagree with because people are notoriously bad at calculating risk vs reward. That "flash judgement" for DC's is almost always punitive for the benefit of the improvised action which results in players who simply never try improvised actions because they can see that there is no actual benefit to attempting them.

For example, say the PC has normally a 60% chance of succeeding a standard action - attack, skill check, whatever. Now, if you reduce that success chance to, say, 35% (say by raising the DC one "level" or +5 to the DC) but the results of a successful check are only 50% better than if I just did a normal action, then, there's no point. That's a suckers bet. You need to give me 100% better results for a -5 (or 25%) penalty to success, otherwise, there's no point.

But, very, very few people actually understand that. There's a reason that the -5/+10 feats are written the way they are. -5/+5 is totally not worth it. If I am significantly increasing my chances of failure (and going from 60% to 35% is almost doubling my chances of failure), then my reward needs to be even more than what I am risking. Otherwise, it's not worth it.

And, "common sense" and "flash judgements" are almost universally wrong.