D&D 5E How is 5E like 4E?

[overgeeked]

The fiction existed before they began making the game...

The fiction they entirely reworked to make more gameable and playable with their shiny new system? The names mostly stayed the same. That's something. Most everything else was drastically changed.

 

[Garthanos]

I pointed out earlier the action hero mid battle turn around trope where your bad guys start out doing well then the hero has to dig deep to alter the flow of battle and how action points (and the paragon and warlord enhancements) and second wind mechanics and even powers triggered by bloodied states, were explicitly designed with a particular story in mind

They didnt just pop out of oh this makes a better game, sheesh

 

[Garthanos]

The fiction they entirely reworked to make more gameable and playable with their shiny new system?

A fiction which fit perfectly with action heros progressing towards epic potency.

 

[overgeeked]

A fiction which fit perfectly with action heros progressing towards epic potency.

LOL. Yes, action-adventure as a genre predates 4E. I'm talking about the in-game fiction of 4E. The game system was designed first. The in-game fiction (adamantine doors, etc) was fitted to the game system after the fact to justify the numbers.

 

[Garthanos]

The in-game fiction (adamantine doors, etc)

They had those in 1e what are you talking about? Just as Gygax described heavily how fighters were supposed to defend their squishier allies.... ie the defender existed in story.... just often failed in practice. 4e to me followed through on ideas that existed before and made the game support them better.

 

[Garthanos]

Having challenges which were not just the monsters was part of the story from the beginning in the early days however they didnt have much skill advancement (the powerful door you couldn't crush existed to challenge the thief who had real amounts of advancement) and they had spells which might address them. Having non casters able to address tier appropriate non combat challenges I guess that allowing others to use skills against some of those awesome obstacles was a terrible addition to the story /sarcasm.

They expanded the versatility of martial types (other than that thief) and made skill use more applicable in the process.

In 4e your higher level warlord or fighter might bash through the adamantine door...and then the advantage of the thief is now not attracting attention (and being able to close the door readily).

 

[Neonchameleon]

Which was designed first: the game system or the in-game fiction? The game system. The designers first came up with the game system. The designers then came up with justifications for the math working the way it does. They wanted the numbers to work the way they do. Then they made it make sense in the game world. If you're arguing that they designed how the game world worked first and fit the math to that...well.

Modules like the Keep on the Borderlands and Queen of the Demonweb Pits massively predate 4e. The decision to have level scaling was made the second the decision was made to have a D&D-like system and especially to make it a successor to 3.X. The fiction and the style of fiction predates 4e and the game was made to suit the fluff.

 

[MwaO]

Also, I'll just point out that even if Epic is available within the system, doesn't mean people actually play it. Literally, have never played Epic 4e despite thousands of hours of actual playtime. Some of the assumptions of wildly increasing DCs assume you play it, but in actuality, they just really increase twice as fast as 5e does. Which 5e reflects by making more DC20-DC25 skill checks due to +6/expertise and 4e reflects by increasing the DC by a total of 12.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Which was designed first: the game system or the in-game fiction? The game system. The designers first came up with the game system. The designers then came up with justifications for the math working the way it does. They wanted the numbers to work the way they do. Then they made it make sense in the game world. If you're arguing that they designed how the game world worked first and fit the math to that...well.

I'm speaking more to the way things work for the people playing 4e. They don't, or at least I don't, generally say "I need a level 24 encounter." Instead I say "The PCs are hunting Torog in the Deeps, they are getting close, but their Koa-Toa allies have called for help. Can they find the coordinates of a rumored teleportation circle nearby so they can go quickly to the Koa-Toa City and not lose too much time?" These are the thematics of an Epic adventure. Clearly we won't bother to include important elements that are inappropriate in level since they wouldn't form part of the narrative of a challenge, at most they would be footnotes. So, yes, at the time when specific elements may be introduced, the level of those elements, or creating appropriately leveled and described versions, will be important. I, personally, wouldn't start with "well, lets see, level 24 obstacles include drow, bloodstone, chained ones..." and simply brew something and then try to make up some logic for it.

In terms of how the game was designed, yes, I'm sure that a lot of the core mechanical architecture of the game wasn't built ON TOP OF any specific fiction. PoL wasn't fully imagined first, nor did they likely decide the fictional range of each type of monster, "Lets see, Storm Giants should be around low-Epic, and then you'd get Cloud Giants at mid-Epic..." I mean, AT SOME POINT that process happened, but probably after the mechanics were put together. OTOH I would not be surprised if something "gosh, capstone dragons aren't working quite right, can we tweak the rules a bit?" happened either, right? Its a game with mature flavor, so they MUST have had some idea what they wanted, fictionally.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yeah, the problem is that 90% of your 5e GMs are 2e/3e/PF GMs that 'know how it is done' and treat this as a set of checks associated to each action the PC takes. That's just the reality. Even in the cases where the GM kind of knows better, it is hard to get players to match expectations with that, because it isn't a PROCESS, there's not the sorts of negotiations and mechanical decision points that, say, story games, or 4e SCs, give.

Nah, at best it's (ie^4.5)%. I mean, if we're to be using imaginary numbers, I find this formulation much more interesting in general.

I don't disagree, though, that there's quite a lot of this going on. The system isn't written that way. I'll be absolutely glad to accept that we should engage with it this way -- according to those that are not attempting to follow the recommendations of the system but playing it according to what they know -- if we do the same thing for 4e. Arguing that 5e needs to be defined by those that aren't following it's guidance while advocating 4e run correctly is bad pool.

Yes, I don't find this to be a viable strategy for a game to take. I guarantee you near 100% of 5e games work as if you were playing 3e in this respect, and as you have noted, pretty much all the modules assume this too.

Works just fine at my table. I suppose I'm not doing it right? Let's stick with only considering how people not following the system play as definitional of the system.

The modules have an interesting problem -- they need to present a complete enough adventure with good enough guidance to sell. This is hard to do with the guidance that puts everything in the moment. That said, I do find this frustrating, even if I understand why they have done so -- it's to make money. I can't really argue with that. Purity for system is great, but not if you need food.

I'm not totally sure where this came from. In 4e the high level PC wouldn't be rolling at all when they encounter the scree slope (under conditions similar to what challenged the low level PC). It MIGHT factor as a hazard if there was a combat in that area or something. I guess perhaps you MIGHT find an SC check to see if you went up the slope fast enough to beat some time clock or something, maybe. The FICTION is going to inform the choices. If the slope is icy scree halfway up a mountain in Tartarus, then sure, the high level guy will find the DC worth considering. But that's exactly it, high level guys aren't adventuring a mile from their home town, they are adventuring in Tartarus! I mean, sure, you can say "I devised the fictional trajectory of my campaign such that at 20th level the PCs would be in Tartarus, because I need a place crazy enough to evoke DCs that they might not pass!" and I won't argue with that, but IMHO that is just telling me what the design goal of 4e is. This is the beauty of design transparency, the game actually just tells you what will work. You can still tweak it of course. Maybe some people put those DCs on "adventuring at the top of Mount Everest", OK, I'll buy it.

Anyway, I think we're not exactly in disagreement there, lol.

Again, this is not going to fly because we need MORE STRUCTURE to explain the valence of each check. 5e's supposed way is non-viable ON THE FACE OF IT, for that reason. It leaves the player in a limbo of having no idea what the significance of their actions are, even for their own survival.

I have no idea what you mean by valance of a check. The DC spread, according to guidance, will almost always be 10-20. Going outside of this is like selecting a much higher level monster in 4e, like +8 -- something you do for good reasons. The result is that a player succeeds or fails, with failure having a consequence. Yes, 5e is vague on this, but I take success to mean just that -- not a lamed success or one immediately reversed. It is success. Does 4e have better guidance on this? Yep. Does that mean 5e is non-viable? Goodness, no. If you read it straight and don't try to twist it, it works just fine as presented and does a pretty good job.

Nor do you set DCs based on the specific skill bonus of a given PC in 4e. That's what levels are for, and if the players have managed to arrange things such that every challenge they face is exactly tuned to the capabilities they have built into their characters, more power to them!

But see, again, that's where I don't really agree with you. 4e DCs are purely based on fiction. What is or is not a challenge is based on what fiction actually evokes challenging DCs. I mean, if the GM (and players) want to depict their characters frolicking in grassy fields all day, well there won't be any checks made! There's no such thing as a level 20 grassy field, it doesn't exist. In both 4e and 5e the fiction will be set up such that challenge will exist. In that sense, I would not expect the two systems to differ. This is why in the end the 5e system isn't really sufficient, because it seems to want to pretend otherwise. This is confusing and obtuse.

Bolded -- they are not. If they are, why is there a chart in the rules giving DC?! DCs are based on the chart. Good practice is to make sure your fiction aligns with those DCs, but the setting of a DC is not based on the fiction, because the DC range is set before your game even starts. Instead, your fiction is set up to give those DCs support in play.

What requires a check is going to be based on the fiction, which is what I think you're going for, here. The goal of a skill challenge, the action that triggers a check, yes, but the DC? You pick it from a chart. This is the same for 5e. The difference is in how DCs are set. And it's really not all that different here -- the GM picks easy, medium, or hard. The 4e GM also select a level, which is necessary because you need to know where you are on the treadmill. The 5e treadmill is broken -- it stays in the same place, so this step isn't necessary.

Well... OK, someone COULD play 4e under a terrible misconception that DCs are 'magically' set to the level of the PC, I guess. They would have to really avoid a major amount of basic reading. For example all the example terrains in every book are pretty clear, low level challenging terrain is (relatively) mundane. High level challenging terrain is magical, exists in fantastical locations, etc. It seems like a message that is pretty hard to miss.

I don't think it's a terrible misconception at all. It's what the rules suggest -- there's a chart! That you've adopted a good approach that makes sure that you understand the need to up the fiction to match the DC range is cool, but you're still getting the DCs from that range, and have made your choices for the available range prior to crafting the fiction. You said so yourself, above, that you need to send the PCs to Tartarus when they're of a level that challenge DC need that fiction. Cool! I agree.