D&D 4E Presentation vs design... vs philosophy

[FrozenNorth]

My only question about all this pushing and sliding etc. is how often did the opposition get to do it to the PCs? How many PCs did you-as-DM ever push or slide off a cliff or in to the pool of acid?

If I stuck a pit of acid or a thin railing in an encounter, you’d better believe that the enemies had some forced movement abilities. It’s Chekov’s acid pit.

 

[Lanefan]

The silly part of the rules is that you have to intimidate verbally but you are at a penalty if your target can't hear you.

Taken at face value that's not silly at all - in fact, it's eminently sensible.

If your intimidation is coming through your tone of voice etc. even though the target can't understand what you're actually saying, and the target can't hear you, I'd rule you had no chance of success and would need to try something else. Ditto for if you're trying to intimidate through facial expression and body language but the target can't see you.

 

[CapnZapp]

Ugh. I've just looked into Pathfinder 2e feats and skills, but only scratching the surface. I decided to start with Intimidate because it's very easy to mess a skill like that up, and it's car-crash bad.

Thank you too.

Yes, I find that far too many posters defend Paizo reflexively, maybe not even having looked at the system. It's as if you're not allowed to criticize a system, even if you provide well-reasoned arguments...

This feat "car-crash" is a good example of the design philosophy I detested in 4E and which completely blindsided me when I found it Pathfinder 2.

Again my question is the same as in the OP:

How could we end up with a situation where Paizo ended up with some of the worst elements of 4th edition while the game exhibits so little of 5th edition.

I mean, it's almost as if the fact one was a huge disaster and the other a mega smash passed by Paizo completely...!

 

[CapnZapp]

4e [] would probably still be going strong today.

You do you.

 

[CapnZapp]

Personally, I think DMs fret about this kind of thing too much. In my opinion, what Feats like this do is give you a codified way to accomplish the thing. That shouldn’t prevent other characters from accomplishing the thing through non-codified means. The Feat allows the player to say “I use this Feat. Here’s what happens.” Players who don’t have the Feat have to describe what they’re trying to accomplish and how and rely on the DM’s adjudication. That’s my view, anyway, though I know a lot of DMs who are not so comfortable with that.

At some point, it's time to question the design, Charlaquin. Maybe there's a way to avoid all those uncomfortable DMs...?

(Hint: not basing your game around hundreds of niggly little feats worked pretty well for 5E, and compared to 4E/PF2 it worked sweet for 3E too...)

 

[CapnZapp]

Maybe Paizo listened to the latter group.

Maybe.

Since you provided an answer you have my thanks.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Congratulations. You just described a tank's main gun firing armour piercing ammunition as irrelevant. Because there are very few guns out there. Indeed most of what a tank is going to do is maneuver - actually getting into combat is a rare situation.

And you've just described the difference between reality and a game. Reality is allowed to be slow and boring, because the consequences are significant. A game is supposed to be fun, which is why we have multiple life-or-death combats in every single adventuring day. If you were modeling the tank as part of a game, then AP tank ammo would not be an interesting choice, unless most fights involved MDC combatants.

The 3e ranger is not bad because it is situationally good. It is bad because (a) linear fighter quadratic wizard and (b) its baseline is just not that good. Despite this the Ranger is generally considered to be Tier 4 while the Fighter and Monk are considered Tier 5.

It really depends on the specific edition, and whether you're talking just core or opening it up to the supplements. In 3E, the Ranger was an obvious level dip, because it was so heavily front-loaded. In 3.5, it was just a worse Fighter, until later supplements started giving them ridiculous spell effects.

Note that their Favored Enemy doesn't enter into the equation at any point, because situational benefits are usually irrelevant.

1. Even if your abilities are situational you have enough situational abilities and the situations are broad enough that you have wide-scale coverage.

That does not correspond to my observations. With two at-wills, one encounter and one daily, the only thing broadly applicable about any power is its damage.

 

[Charlaquin]

That's the 1e-2e-[sort-of-5e] approach: you can try anything the rules don't specifically disallow.

But both 3e and 4e very much came across as the opposite: you can't try anything unless the rules allow it.

It's a huge difference in philosophy, and that 5e backed away from it is hugely refreshing.

Yeah, this is where the idea that 5e “trusts the DM” more than 3e or 4e rings true to me. It gives the DM permission to use their best judgment when players want to do something there isn’t a hard-coded rule for, where 3e and 4e seemed to be trying to use comprehensive systems to reduce as much as possible the need (some might say the opportunity) for the DM to use their judgment. And it’s what makes 5e my edition of choice.

 

[Charlaquin]

At some point, it's time to question the design, Charlaquin. Maybe there's a way to avoid all those uncomfortable DMs...?

(Hint: not basing your game around hundreds of niggly little feats worked pretty well for 5E, and compared to 4E/PF2 it worked sweet for 3E too...)

I absolutely agree! I think going for a smaller number of higher impact Feats in 5e was a very good move on WotC’s part. I still wish 5e had more character building decision points beyond first level, but I agree that 4e and PF2 are too much in this regard.

Actually, I think 4e and PF2 have a pretty good number of decision points, they just have too many options with too little weight behind them at each of those decision points.

 

[Fanaelialae]

My only question about all this pushing and sliding etc. is how often did the opposition get to do it to the PCs? How many PCs did you-as-DM ever push or slide off a cliff or in to the pool of acid?

I can't speak for @Neonchameleon but I did this quite regularly back when I ran 4e.