To build on what @pemerton has said above about the 4e DMG, it needed a new mindset which many of the fanbase were not at the level to accept or know. The designers had all moved on, incorporating many modern techniques - but much of the fanbase was not there (yet). It needed a page or two to speak to that old fanbase.
I certainly never appreciated 4e for what it truly was until much later and mostly due to these boards which was/is a shame (I only joined Enworld 2011 I think). 4e wasn't the D&D chassis I wanted but I did enjoy the growth in me as a DM because of these new techniques which I can now and often incorporate into my 5e game. You can never go wrong with extra toolkits.
It was either Charlaquin or Neonchameleon (I think the latter) who mentioned upthread about the various at-will fighter powers that could have easily been incorporated as fighter styles in 5e instead of some of the blander +x damage here or +x to hit. That is a golden way to improve that class.
The tinkerer in me is dying to correct this all for our table's next campaign.
I do have the tools to describe it, they’re called DCs. When you tell me your goal and describe an approach, I will tell you the DC. If it doesn’t match your expectations, you are allowed to say “actually, on second thought let me try something else.” In my experience this happens only very rarely, because as it turns out, most folks’ ideas of what it’s reasonable for a human to accomplish aren’t terribly far off from each other.
UNLESS I play a spell caster then I have predictable quantifiable abilities but flank anyone else.
Speaking of which
As a DM -- I want rough parity between the non-combat ability of non-magicals and magicals ie the skilled character needs to be able to invest as much in it as the caster can and achieve roughly analog amounts and what tools did this game give me to achieve this?
That’s a definite shortcoming of 5e, no doubt. I’m terms of damage output, casters and non-casters are actually pretty decently balanced over the course of a 6-8 encounter day, but caster supremacy is definitely back in 5e and it’s one of many critiques I have of the system.
This is actually a selling point of the game. Accuracy numbers don’t inflate like they did in 3e and 4e, which makes low-level creatures a legitimate threat to high-level ones in large numbers, and eliminates the need for a table to set appropriate DCs by level. An appropriate DC at 1st level is an appropriate DC at 20th level, so I only have to remember a single set of numbers for easy/medium/hard tasks instead of a set for each level of proficiency. This is important for making the 5e action resolution system as user-friendly as it is. All you have to know is that 5 is easy, 10 is medium, 15 is hard, and 20 is very hard, and use your own best judgment as to which category a player’s declared action falls under. Far, far easier to adjudicate than 4e’s skill system was, in my opinion.
I know how long an average person can really hold their breath and legendary like Beowulf is absolutely not reasonable by any shake of a lambs tail so I do not even like the base heuristic you mentioned about human ability. I actually do want things to go off the charts and in fact think if you beating up some of these monsters physically at high levels it doesn't make sense unless you really do.
Ok, so use Beowulf as your baseline for difficulty instead of an imagined average human. That actually sounds like it would make kind of an awesome game! And 5e empowers you to do that without having to do a single thing with the system math. You don’t have to adjust any DCs or inherent bonuses or anything, you just have to map 5, 10, 15, and 20 to “easy, medium, hard, and very hard for Beowulf” instead of “easy, medium, hard, and very hard for the average Joe.” And then boom, there’s your way to communicate what the players should expect to be able to accomplish. You just tell them “you’re heroes on the caliber of Beowulf, so you can reasonably expect to be able to do anything he could do.”
Still tell your players the DC before having them commit to the roll though, just in case they have a slightly different concept of Beowulf’s capabilities than you do. Not likely to be a huge problem, but it’s good policy anyway.
Ok, so use Beowulf as your baseline for difficulty instead of an imagined average human. That actually sounds like it would make kind of an awesome game! And 5e empowers you to do that without having to do a single thing with the system math. You don’t have to adjust any DCs or inherent bonuses or anything, you just have to map 5, 10, 15, and 20 to “easy, medium, hard, and very hard for Beowulf” instead of “easy, medium, hard, and very hard for the average Joe.” And then boom, there’s your way to communicate what the players should expect to be able to accomplish. You just tell them “you’re heroes on the caliber of Beowulf, so you can reasonably expect to be able to do anything he could do.”
That is a neat trick. So as the characters rise in tiers one can realign the baseline much the same way 4e could/did - that way you get your equivalent paragon and epic capabilities.
It was either Charlaquin or Neonchameleon (I think the latter) who mentioned upthread about the various at-will fighter powers that could have easily been incorporated as fighter styles in 5e instead of some of the blander +x damage here or +x to hit. That is a golden way to improve that class.
The tinkerer in me is dying to correct this all for our table's next campaign.
I definitely talked about it, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Neonchameleon did as well. It’s a fast-moving thread, hard to keep up with everything. If you’re considering this though, take a look at Essentials! Even if it’s not your cup of tea, a lot of the Knight and Slayer powers are functionally classic 4e Fighter Powers repackaged as stances that modify your basic attacks instead of self-contained maneuvers.
That is a neet trick. So as the characters rise in tiers one can realign the baseline much the same way 4e could/did - that way you get your equivalent paragon and epic capabilities.
Oh, yeah, I didn’t even think about that! I was just figuring on using Beowulf as the baseline for setting DCs from 1st level. But this is a really cool idea as well!
This is actually a selling point of the game. Accuracy numbers don’t inflate like they did in 3e and 4e, which makes low-level creatures a legitimate threat to high-level ones in large numbers, and eliminates the need for a table to set appropriate DCs by level. An appropriate DC at 1st level is an appropriate DC at 20th level, so I only have to remember a single set of numbers for easy/medium/hard tasks instead of a set for each level of proficiency.
...
Ok, so use Beowulf as your baseline for difficulty instead of an imagined average human. That actually sounds like it would make kind oaf an awesome game! And 5e empowers you to do that without having to do a single thing with the system math. You don’t have to adjust any DCs or inherent bonuses or anything, you just have to map 5, 10, 15, and 20 to “easy, medium, hard, and very hard for Beowulf” instead of “easy, medium, hard, and very hard for the average Joe.” And then boom, there’s your way to communicate what the players should expect to be able to accomplish. You just tell them “you’re heroes on the caliber of Beowulf, so you can reasonably expect to be able to do anything he could do.”
And this is a major place I have an issue with 5e and think that the 4e approach was better but still nowhere near right.
Fundamentally I think that levels should mean something. And not just what magic you can cast or how hard and fast you can swing a sword. 4e did it linearly which was fiddly and confusing whereas 5e doesn't do it at all. But to me it's perfectly fine for a fit ordinary human to be adventuring with a first level wizard - but by the time that wizard has the ability to create a wall of stone with a snap of his fingers the fighter should be Beowulf, and by the time the wizard can turn into a dragon permanently the fighter should be Cu-Chulain, able to cut the tops off mountains with his sword.
4e had its escalator. It also had the tier model, which I think would probably do better. So I'd probably want to measure the minimal casters (including Eldritch Knights, Arcane Tricksters, Monks, Rangers, and Paladins) on the human scale from 1-7, the Beowulf scale from 8-14, and the CuChulain scale from 15-20 or something of the sort. It makes a vast amount more sense to me than just hit points and speed of sword swinging changing without being as fiddly as 4e got.
Edit: Or what @Sadras took about a line to say above
Edit2: @Charlaquin I definitely did as well. And second the recommendation to look at the twocore Essentials books.
When playing a RPG it's always open to the table to do whatever they want. Game rules don't exercise any sort of coercive power.
Being empowered, in the context of a RPG, means having the tools and techniques to produce the desired experience. I personally found 4e D&D quite empowering - it has some pretty good tools and accommodates some pretty good techniques (thought the techniques themselves I frequently picked up from elsewhere - qv my criticisms of the 4e DMG not far upthread).
Personally, when I look at 5e I don't feel terribly empowered because, for me, it seems to offer no answer to the crucial question how to enforce the 6-8 encounter "adventuring day"? other than use GM force to maintain the correlation between the pacing of encounters, the passage of ingame time, and the taking by the PCs of rests. There are other features also that don't appeal to me - I have a default preference for situation-oriented rather than scenario-oriented RPGing - but the point I've just mentioned is the main one for me.
And I happily frame it as a lack of empowerment - as in, the game doesn't provide a capacity that I regard as crucial for RPGing, namely, that the system itself operates to ensure it's own smooth functioning without the need for injections of GM force from outside. (Of course it's far from the only RPG to have this problem - but I don't play those ones either!)
One place where 5e’s philosophy of DM empowerment can be seen is in how it frames task resolution around the conversation between players and DM instead of around the skill system. I don’t recall how 3e handles this (because I never DMed it), but 4e encourages players to ask to use their skills and encourages the DM to say yes to these requests unless there was a compelling reason to say no. Now, these are not bad guidelines by any means. They’re very good guidelines for running 4e. But they do put the player in the driver’s seat, and asks the DM to exercise their power as little as possible.
In contrast, 5e says the DM describes the environment, the players say what they want to do, and the DM determines the results, calling for a check if necessary to resolve uncertainty in the results. This was a HUGE change for me
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Instead of being told to let the players decide when they wanted to use a skill and only saying no if I had a compelling reason, it encouraged me to take a more active role in the task resolution process.
<snip>
It made me feel empowered to just let things succeed that seemed like they should succeed, to have things fail when it seemed like they should fail, and determine DCs on the fly, rather than making me feel like there was a system that had to be followed to insure the game ran correctly.
This is another one of your posts that caught my eye!
There's no doubt that the 4e DC-by-level chart (whichever version - I use the Essentials one, which I think is the best across all the tiers of play) is more intricate and constraining than the 5e DC chart. So I'm not going to quibble with that. (I'll just say that, for a two-decades Rolemaster GM, it's nevertheless simplicity itself.)
But your comments about how to adjudicate actions really surprise me. Here's the relevant rules text I'm familiar with from the 4e PHB (p 178, early in the Skills chapter ; player addressed in second person) and DMG (pp 72-76, in the chapter on skill challenges, and p 105 on "fun"; GM addressed in second person), slbocked for length:
When you use a skill, you make a skill check. This check represents your training, your natural talent (your ability modifier), your overall experience (one-half
your level), other applicable factors (relevant bonuses), and sheer luck (a die roll).
The DM tells you if a skill check is appropriate in a given situation or directs you to make a check if circumstances call for one.
It’s not a skill challenge every time you call for a skill check. When an obstacle takes only one roll to resolve, it’s not a challenge. One Diplomacy check to haggle with the merchant, one Athletics check to climb out of the pit trap, one Religion check to figure out whose sacred tome contains the parable - none of these constitutes a skill challenge. . . .
When a player’s turn comes up in a skill challenge, let that player’s character use any skill the player wants. . . . Always keep in mind that players can and will come up with ways to use skills you do not expect. Stay on your toes, and let whatever improvised skill uses they come up with guide the rewards and penalties you apply afterward. Remember that not everything has to be directly tied to the challenge. Tangential or unrelated benefits, such as making unexpected allies from among the duke’s court or finding a small, forgotten treasure, can also be fun. . . .
It’s also a good idea to think about other options the characters might exercise and how these might influence the course of the challenge. Characters might have access to utility powers or rituals that can help them. These might allow special uses of skills, perhaps with a bonus. Rituals in particular might grant an automatic success or remove failures from the running total. . . .
In a skill challenge encounter, every player character must make skill checks to contribute to the success or failure of the encounter. . . .
Sometimes, a player tells you, “I want to make a Diplomacy check to convince the duke that helping us is in his best interest.” That’s great—the player has told you what she’s doing and what skill she’s using to do it. Other times, a player will say, “I want to make a Diplomacy check.” In such a case, prompt the player to give more information about how the character is using that skill. Sometimes, characters do the opposite: “I want to scare the duke into helping us.” It’s up to you, then, to decide which skill the character is using and call for the appropriate check. . . .
In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn’t expect to play a role. Try not to say no. . . . This encourages players to think about the challenge in more depth and engages more players by making more skills useful.
However, it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation. If a player asks, “Can I use Diplomacy?” you should ask what exactly the character might be doing to help the party survive in the uninhabited sandy wastes by using that skill. Don’t say no too often, but don’t say yes if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the challenge. . . .
Skill challenges require the players to make rolls at specific times. Call for these checks according to the pace of the narrative and the nature of the challenge. . . . Skill checks usually count as successes or failures for the challenge, but sometimes a specific use of a certain skill in a challenge just provides a minor benefit or penalty. . . .
As much as possible, fast-forward through the parts of an adventure that aren’t fun. An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun. Tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun. Niggling details of food supplies and encumbrance usually aren’t fun, so don’t sweat them, and let the players get to the adventure and on to the fun. Long treks through endless corridors in the ancient dwarven stronghold beneath the mountains aren’t fun. Move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter, and on to the fun!
I've presented the DMG text in the same sequence as its occurrence in the book. And I think that reveals some significant infelicities of presentation/editing - eg the remarks about the use of powers to augment checks, or rituals to obviate checks, are separate from, rather than integrated into, the discussion of the need for checks to make sense in the fiction. The DMG2 goes quite a way to remedying this, but it would have been better that it not need fixing!
There's also this, on p 20 of the 4e DMG (under the heading Exploration), and on pp 28 & 98 (on improvisation):
1. Describe the environment. Outline the options available to the characters by telling them where they are and what’s around them. When you detail the dungeon room the PCs are in, mention all the doors, chests, shafts, and other things the PCs might want to interact with. Don’t explicitly outline options. (Don’t say: “You can either go through the door, search the chest, or look down the shaft.”) That’s putting unnecessary limitations on the PCs’ actions. Your job is to describe the environment and to let the PCs decide what they want to do with it.
2. Listen. Once you’re done describing the area, the players tell you what their characters want to do. Some groups might need prompting. Ask them, “What do you do?” Your job here is to listen to what the players want to do and identify how to resolve their actions. You can and should ask for more information if you need it.
Sometimes the players give you a group answer: “We go through the door.” Other times, individual players want to do specific things, such as searching a chest. The players don’t need to take turns, but you need to make sure to listen to every player and resolve everyone’s actions.
Some tasks involve a skill check or an ability check, such as a Thievery check to pick the lock on a chest, a Strength check to force open a door, or a Perception check to find hidden clues. Characters can perform other tasks without any check at all: move a lever, take up a position near the entrance to watch for danger, or walk down the left fork of a passage.
3. Narrate the results of the characters’ actions. Describing the results often leads to another decision point immediately or after time passes. “Behind the door is a passage stretching off to the left and right” gives the characters an immediate decision point. “The sloping hall leads you hundreds of feet down into the earth before finally ending in a door” sets up a decision point after some time. Whenever you reach another decision point, you’re back to step 1.
A character’s actions can also lead right into an encounter. . . .
As often as possible, take what the players give you and build on it. If they do something unexpected, run with it. Take it and weave it back into your story without railroading them into a fixed plotline. . . .
it’s better to say yes and go from there, rather than coming up with an arbitrary reason why their plan doesn’t work. Let the players feel clever, and reward their ingenuity.
This reveals more infelicities: there's a clear tension between the account of how exploration should work, and the advice on moving quickly from encounter to encounter. And nothing is said about how to reconcile this tension, though that can be done (see eg aspect of the GMing advice in Burning Wheel). There is also tension between the discussion of narration, which emphasises GM control over revelation of content, and the advocacy of incorporating player ideas into the shared fiction. Again, nothing is said about how to reconcile this - whereas, to use BW again as an example (I'm thinking of its Wises checks), it is possible to have both good advice and sound mechanics that manage this.
All that said, I don't think anything here is very different from 5e in terms of how skill checks are to be approached, except that there is a stronger suggestion that it is table consensus, rather than just the GM, who decides whether a particular declared action fits under a particular skill, or whether a particular attempted action makes sense given the established fiction.
So I'm surprised that you found it otherwise, and wonder where that came from. Not that you're alone in what you've said - I've seen others post it also - but I don't know where it originates, because I can't find it in the rules text.
If someone says they hate a thing and you look them in the eye and tell them that thing is absolutely amazing - are you treating that person badly? Are you treating them as if your opinion of a game is more important than their feelings?
Your dynamic fails because it doesn't work both ways - it only expects "empathy" from whatever side you already believe is in the wrong. IMO
I think that the best way to approach this is by showing some basic human decency, empathy towards others, and learning how to be an adult, which admittedly not all adults in our hobby know how to properly do. It's being able to say, "I am glad that you like this game. It's not quite to my liking, as I prefer these games instead. But don't let that stop you from enjoying the game that you enjoy playing." This can diffuse a LOT of the tension right there.
But this rarely happened in the Edition Wars or, if it did happen, it was frequently shouted over by a lot of "4e is not D&D."
I also wonder what would have happened if WotC had made the decision to support multiple editions. So there would be a team that would continue writing and supporting for 3E and another team supporting 4E, much as B/X and Advanced. Where would we be now in our hobby? How much less metaphorical spilt blood would there have been?
I'm not concerned about flooding message boards. People flood message boards because they are passionate about the topic. When different passionate people come to a similar realization but not all at the same time you see message boards repeat the same discussions again and again.
The flooding of message boards did include a lot of harassment and some cyber-bullying. A lot of D&D message boards at this time were not some tame Wonderland of milquetoast disagreement about the game. It was pretty darn toxic, and it turned a lot of people off D&D and 4e.
OK. I think the list of options for a 10th level warlock refutes your assertion that "4E was as balanced as it was not because it's options were rigorously tested and reiterated over time. It was balanced because it's options were designed in such a way as to be easily comparable. This has to result in a trade off in breadth."
The problem is not expressing that you felt 4e was a departure from previous editions. In fact, I think most 4e fans would agree. The problem is setting up what you view as the feel of D&D as objective. The reason this is objectionable is because it implicitly invalidates others’ views on the matter. If the way 4e felt to you was not the way you think D&D has historically felt, or the way you think it should feel, that’s just fine and dandy. If you suggest that the way you think D&D has historically felt or the way that you think D&D should feel is objectively correct, you are suggesting, implicitly, that people who have different opinions about those things are objectively wrong. You are presenting your opinions as factual and other people’s opinions as counter-factual. And that is what many 4e fans object to.
D&D 4E simply didn't hit the same niche and style as previous editions, it didn't feel like an evolution of the previous games but a nearly complete departure from core game concepts and structure. It didn't feel like previous editions to a lot of people. I don't understand why that's controversial.
It's controversial for precisely the reason state by Charlauqin - not everyone agrees that 4e doesn't feel like an evolution of the previous game or that 4e is a nearly complete departure from core game concepts and structure. For instance, I believe that it is obviously an evolution of the game system invented by Arneson and (perhaps moreso) Gygax - eg metagame hit points, metagame saving throws, classes with specialised and distinctive functions in play, races that bring implicit backstory with them, etc - but evolved so as to support the play that has become prevalent since their time, which is no longer wargaming, beat-the-dungeon play but rather play that focuses on the character and the characters "narrative"/thematic relationship to the rest of the fiction.
This evolution makes it a departure (though not a nearly complete one) from AD&D and 3E, but not at all a departure from core game concepts and structure. It's a realisation of them!
