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

[pemerton]

Isn’t it kind of the games fault if people hate it so much?

Sounds like you are blaming people for disliking a game.

I find this a bit weird.

I've never watched the Transformer movies. I never plan to. Glimpses I've seen of them have had zero appeal to me. I don't hate those movies; thought I might hate, or at least strongly dislike, being forced to watch them. But that wouldn't be their fault. Nor my fault. It's not something to which the concept of fault is relevant.

Hating 4e seems just a bit misplaced. Hating playing it is fine, but why is that anyone's fault? It's just taste.

 

[CapnZapp]

Your actual argument seems to be "How could Paizo make this obviously terrible and horrible mistake of copying 4e instead of making a clone of 5e"

You assume they are making a mistake
You assume you know what the mistake is
You assume the correct answer is to copy their competitor
You assume they never discussed that direction

Despite all that, I have repeatedly tried to show that the very premise that you are starting with, that Paizo is copying 4e, seems to be incorrect.

That is engaging with your argument, because it is addressing the very foundation of your argument. If PF2 is not copying 4e, then your entire argument falls apart, because your argument is founded on that idea.

Okay you're done - you're making up things that are easy to shoot down. You are arguing in bad faith and will waste no more time on you.

To everybody else:

This is what I actually said. Feel free to compare to Chaosmancer's feeble straw men:

Personally I think there exists a deep similarity between 4E and PF2 as regards design philosophy that goes right to the heart as to respective games popularity or lack thereof.

The difference between 3E, PF1 and 5E on one hand, and 4E and PF2 on the other, is that players aren't allowed to influence the power of their characters to any substantial degree. If everybody is special, nobody is.

And having feats and options and magic items that really make a difference is mostly fun and cool and evocative. Not something that must be repressed and controlled, like in both 4E and PF2.

tl;dr: I think the downfall of 4E was its overbearing controlling nature, and I see the same in PF2. This goes far deeper than merely "presentation", and even deeper than shallow gameplay comparisons.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think that's five pages without a single mention of PF2, so I won't read every post any longer - unless you quote me, I'm probably going to miss it.

 

[Don Durito]

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."

So you think it was rigorously tested and reiterated over time? I've never heard anyone make that claim about 4E before.

To my mind it seems pretty incontestable that 4E was designed and balanced around certain clear mathematical assumptions and that in many cases, perhaps most, powers were clearly designed around those mathematical benchmarks. I mean, yes in certain cases some powers drift further afield, such as controller ones, but even then within carefully circumscribed bounds. (The obvious ones being that encounter powers tend to last one round while only Dailies tend to last whole encounters, resulting in the fact that any damage resulting in accident overpower is very limited - and also protected by the fact that while you can have multiple dailies or encounter powers you can't reuse the same one more than once - as in many cases players would be inclined to spam one.) There's also a fact that a lot of the errata they released seemed to be clearly the result of things that were quickly obvious after release and that should have been caught had there been extensive playtesting.

I'm not sure, mind you, that there really is a better way for a rpg to balance a game with lots of options. To actually open things up and design along the lines of 3.X and Pathfinder and achieve balance would require a level of playtesting and reiteration that would take years and is probably well beyond the resources and ability that any print rpg could do (perhaps a computer based company could manage it). If you want a game that is genuinely tighty balanced, then you probably have to do it 4E's way.

But I think it's pretty clear that achieving that balance does circumscribe the breadth of options somewhat.

What if I want to trade off my combat capability to become really good at skills - I can't (There's a good argument to be made of course that allowing PCs the ability to do this is not a good idea as it creates in effect the 'netrunner issue' - but well, who said breadth was always good?)

 

[pemerton]

But the "X doesn't play like a D&D game" is a ship that should have sailed in the mid 1980s. The play of the incredibly popular Dragonlance adventure path (of course it wasn't called an AP back then) is incredibly different to that of the sort of old school sandbox that I think @Lanefan enjoys.

3E made big changes too - eg changing saving throws from a metagame, "fortune in the middle" mechanic where fighters (at all levels in B/X; from mid-levels in AD&D) were strong, into a simulationist mechanic where fighters were weak.

Another couple of examples: doubling down on simulationist grappling rules, and adopting simulationist "touch attack" rules, that completely changed the way a whole heap of monsters and spells played.

The skill rules also bear little resemblance either to the OA or Survival Guide versions in AD&D.

 

[Don Durito]

Does 3E feel like D&D?

Just ask Castles and Crusades.

 

[pemerton]

4e’s system was just too intricate and precise, it never felt like it was my game. It felt like it was a game that existed independently of me that needed someone to execute it.

<snip>

4e gave me a very well-crafted recipe and told me I could change it if I wanted, but 5e taught me the fundamentals of cooking and encouraged me to experiment and create my own dishes.

Another post that caught my eye!

In my case, I would say that GMing 4e pushed me harder and further as a GM than anything else before, and perhaps anything since. (When eventually I get to GM Apocalypse World I'm expecting to have to revise the previous statement.)

It's possible, even likely, that part of the reason for this was that I had a lot more prior GMing experience.

I don’t know it. It has been perfectly adequate for me, and in fact, having that as the guideline instead of a gigantic list of tasks and DCs and modifiers I have to memorize has made it considerably easier for me to adjudicate actions. Never again do I have to worry that I misremembered the DC for weaving an 11th level masterwork basket or forgot to apply the penalty for doing fiber arts underwater, or the bonus for expert weaver’s tools. I can just go “yeah, that seems like something that could succeed or fail and has consequences. Make a moderate difficulty Dexterity check with disadvantage for being underwater.”

I take it that here you're mostly paryodying 3E? 4e runs on a DC-by-level chart, with one necessary (and inelegant) exception: the jumping rules that are part of the combat resolution movement rules.

 

[pemerton]

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.

<snip>

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.

Interesting. In systems that use difficulties, I generally state the difficulty after the action is declared, and takebacks happen only if it emerges that there's been some fundamental confusion or misunderstanding about what is feasible for the PC given the overall situation in the fiction. I'm trying to think if that's even happened in my last few years of RPGIng and can't remember a case.

And so, skills would probably be able to achieve different results in your game than in mine. And that’s ok! This is the fundamental shift in thinking between 4e and 5e. Consistency between tables is no longer the goal. 5e embraces the fact that each group’s experience will be unique and tailored to their participants’ interests and preferences. There is no objective standard for what skills are capable of nor should there be. You are no longer bound by someone else’s idea of what a skill should be able to do. It’s your game, do with it as you will.

I think my problem with this is similar to (maybe not identical) to @Garthanos's - namely, that it sits a bit uncomfortably with reams and reams of very precise, level-and-resource-calibrated descriptions of what can be done via spellcasting.

On this issue I find 4e closer to what you are advocating than 5e seems, because it carves up the adjudicative terrain more clearly: in combat, using Athletics (to a lesser extent Acrobatics) to move is codified similarly to teleportation etc powers; out of combat what a skill check can achieve and what magic can achieve are largely left up table interpretation and GM adjudication.

Where I find 4e most wonky is when combat and non-combat overlap with one another. I never really got into the skill-challenge-as-a-subsitute-for-combat thing, though some active posters in this thread (eg @Manbearcat) did find ways to make that work.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To my mind it seems pretty incontestable that 4E was designed and balanced around certain clear mathematical assumptions and that in many cases, perhaps most, powers were clearly designed around those mathematical benchmarks.

I'm trying to think of an edition where this isn't the case. They then tweak that balance - but a lack of balance in any edition of D&D doesn't mean a lack of trying, it means having screwed up. 4e was just that bit more open about things and a whole lot more willing to iterate after publication by producing errata.

What if I want to trade off my combat capability to become really good at skills - I can't (There's a good argument to be made of course that allowing PCs the ability to do this is not a good idea as it creates in effect the 'netrunner issue' - but well, who said breadth was always good?)

That depends how much of your combat capability you want to trade off. Have I made a 4e fighter far more skilled in the broadly defined arts of stealth and thievery than any 3.5 rogue of equivalent level? Yes I have. (4e skills being in many cases much broader than their 3.5 equivalent helped). Would he have been more powerful in combat if I'd spent his feats and utility powers on combat related stuff rather than enhancing my skills? Yes. So I have traded off combat capability to become really good at skills - and done a better job of that than is possible for any other version of D&D. Remember I'm comparing a 4e fighter base to a 3.5 rogue here and coming out ahead. Of course the 3.5 fighter can't do this; all their fighter feats have to be about fighting, they have no utility powers to give up, and they get fewer and significantly less impactful general feats. And the 3.5 rogue doesn't start to be able to pick extra non-combat abilities until 10th level.

What I can't do is rearrange my magic so on Monday I'm packing my stealth spell kit and on Tuesday I'm packing my battle magic spell kit. But when it comes to being good at actual skills I have more flexibility to trade my combat ability for skills than in any other edition I think.

 

[pemerton]

So you think it was rigorously tested and reiterated over time? I've never heard anyone make that claim about 4E before.

Not particularly, though I imagine there was some of that (I mean, at the time I read reports from WotC people talking about doing that and they probably weren't lying). I think that those Warlock powers that I posted are counterexamples to the claim that options were designed in such a way as to be easily comparable. This has to result in a trade off in breadth. For instance, how is communicating near-instantaneously with someone 100 miles away (Ambassador Imp) easily comparable to being able to fly but not atack for 5 minutes (Shadow Form) or teleporting up to 30 feet without requiring line of sigt (Warlock's Leap)? Even if a player is interested in combat potential, there are three escape options there: become intangible and fly away (Shadow Form), negate one lot of damage (Shielding Shades) or teleport out (Warlock's Leap). Are these easily comparable?

And where is the lack of breadth?

What if I want to trade off my combat capability to become really good at skills - I can't

There was a PC in my long-running 4e game built exactly along these lines: an invoker/wizard whose Epic Destiny is Sage of Ages. At 30th level, of 18 feats 6 directly buff skills and/or grant knowledge of languages; one grants a familiar which is not primarily a combat option but further boosts skills; one is a multi-class feat that gives a skill (as well as encounter power Thunderwave); one gives knowledge of the wizard spell Arcane Gate which is not really about combat ability; one grants at will teleport 2; and maybe other not-very-combat-y stuff that I'm missing on a quick skim of the sheet.

The character's main schtick is skills and rituals. His ritual book has 50 rituals; on a quick look through maybe there are a dozen or so rituals there that he hasn't cast at least once.

Across the five PCs he has the lowest AC, by far the lowest Fort defence (6 behind the next lowest, the ranger-cleric), the second-lowest Reflex (equal to the fighter/cleric, ahead of the paladin) and the second-highest Will (equal to the paladin, one ahead of the ranger-cleric, and behind the sorcerer/bard). His hit points are just over half the defenders' (139 compared to 222 and 224; and only 7 surges, whereas both the defenders have at least double that number - I think 14 for the paladin and 16 for the fighter/cleric).

This character has traded off combat capability to become really good at skills and related stuff. It's there on the sheet and it reveals istself in play.