D&D General Why is D&D 4E a "tactical" game?

[Neonchameleon]

I think my point of argument with this would be that to have exceptions, you have to have a standard.

More seriously, some level of standardization would help. PF2 is good for some of this, with a standardized way of getting rid of many effects like Frightened, Sickened, Confused, etc. Keywords also could help: Incapacitation is a great example of a standardized exception, and having the Fortune tag means you know how that ability will interact with other Fortune effects.

I'm going to disagree hard with Pathfinder 2e's incapacitation trait or even the fortune trait being good game design and the reason is that DM memory is a limited resource. To play D&D 5e I need to know the fifteen or so conditions plus the basic rules. In 4e I think it was twenty and a tiny handful of keywords and traits ("close", "burst", "blast", "aura", "phasing" come to mind but there are 5e equivalents to most of those and as a player a handful of traits for the class like Reliable and Rattling. Anything else was written in the statblock where I needed it.

For Pathfinder 2e? This many traits is all very well for a computer database but IMO far too many for a human. If I look at Calaca's Showstopper (picked at random for the cool name) I find five traits. Spot question: Which out of Auditory, Divine, Duskwalker, Enchantment , and Incapacitation have actual direct impacts on the game rules? (Answer: Auditory and Incapacitation). Which means that I know I can run a 4e power or 5e spell just by having it there in front of me, but Pathfinder 2e is something else.

Standardisation is good, but jargon is a barrier to entry. Even AD&D had some level of standardisation and 5e has much much more.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I would say that 5E leaves making the fight an interesting challenge more in the hands of the DM. In theory you could use weird tactics, etc. in 4E but on a pretty regular basis if I tried to do anything "off brand" even a bit in 4E people would challenge how they did that. So if the monsters burst up out of hiding people would question the specific power they were using when it was really just fluff to make the encounter more visually interesting. For whatever reason I don't see that in 5E.

As with all things, "interesting" is in the eye of the beholder. I like the more freeform and speed of combats in 5E, I can see why people could prefer 4E.

I have literally never had people challenge this sort of thing in 4e. And if it were a setpiece in 4e I'd take the three seconds to write the power or just say "it's a power" - and DMs have pretty much complete control over the powers they write. Indeed I'd go one step further and say that a lot of lurker monsters have precisely the weird abilities you say got challenged.

In my experience 4e almost completely vanished the expectation that the players need to understand the monsters because there is intentionally a lack of parity. I've seen complaints in 3.X that the PCs can't do things the monsters can because in 3.X almost everything is a spell and almost every spell can be learned by wizards. Possibly in early 4e your players were still in 3.X habits?

 

[Oofta]

I have literally never had people challenge this sort of thing in 4e. And if it were a setpiece in 4e I'd take the three seconds to write the power or just say "it's a power" - and DMs have pretty much complete control over the powers they write. Indeed I'd go one step further and say that a lot of lurker monsters have precisely the weird abilities you say got challenged.

In my experience 4e almost completely vanished the expectation that the players need to understand the monsters because there is intentionally a lack of parity. I've seen complaints in 3.X that the PCs can't do things the monsters can because in 3.X almost everything is a spell and almost every spell can be learned by wizards. Possibly in early 4e your players were still in 3.X habits?

Different strokes, different folks. I never really understood it either.

 

[Staffan]

Ugh! I hadn't spotted Insect Plague. That's a mess of a spell.

There are, using unwritten rules for this sort of stuff that normally apply in 5e and I think always apply in 4e in that it's either "At the start or when enters" for things that trigger immediately and you aren't meant to be able to avoid or "at the end of your turn" for cases where a retreat is appropriate. I'm pretty sure 4e has both for different effects; the 4e power rules are a markup language.

Insect Plague is simply badly written as it's "when enters or at the end of your turn". This means that:

• Someone who starts in the insects and walks out doesn't take damage but someone who walks in and walks out does
• The rules are ambiguous on whether someone who walks into the plague and ends their turn there takes damage twice over. (Is "or" implicitly "OR" or "XOR"?)
• It's a mess thematically; why are insects tearing down people immediately when they enter but fine with people starting there. It's one of these many edge cases that's annoying but doesn't fundamentally break things.

Spirit Guardians on the other hand is fine and works exactly the way I'd expect; the main difference I'd expect in 4e is that the entire effect could be written in about a quarter of the word count using phrases like "Enemies in burst" rather than "When you cast this spell, you can designate any number of creatures you can see to be unaffected by it."

I think the idea with 5e zones is that there are two types:

1. Deal damage immediately, when you enter the zone, and at the end of your turn.
2. Deal damage at the start of your turn or when you enter it.

In both cases, the effect in most cases will be that if you're in the zone when it's created, you will take damage (either at the start of your turn or when it's created). If you move into the zone, you will take damage. If you end your turn in the zone you will take damage, either immediately or at the start of your next turn. This assumes no movement off your own turn. But it would be much smoother if they worked the same. The main difference I see in practice is that if you're knocked into an end-of-turn zone, you will take damage once (assuming you move out on your turn), but for a start-of-turn zone you'll take damage twice before having a chance to do anything about it.

 

[Staffan]

I'm going to disagree hard with Pathfinder 2e's incapacitation trait or even the fortune trait being good game design

I see why they have the incapacitation trait (same as legendary resistance in 5e – it's anticlimactic if you hit the boss with a paralysis spell in the first round and then just murder it to death), but I think the solution from 13th age is better: hit point limits on incapacitating spells. This also provides a knob to adjust when balancing the spells – a fear spell might have a lower hp limit than a stun spell with the same duration.

For Pathfinder 2e? This many traits is all very well for a computer database but IMO far too many for a human. If I look at Calaca's Showstopper (picked at random for the cool name) I find five traits. Spot question: Which out of Auditory, Divine, Duskwalker, Enchantment , and Incapacitation have actual direct impacts on the game rules? (Answer: Auditory and Incapacitation). Which means that I know I can run a 4e power or 5e spell just by having it there in front of me, but Pathfinder 2e is something else.

Standardisation is good, but jargon is a barrier to entry. Even AD&D had some level of standardisation and 5e has much much more.

It would be nice if PF2 had some differentiation between traits that matter in and of themselves and traits that are just "hooks" for other things to interact with.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I'm going to disagree hard with Pathfinder 2e's incapacitation trait or even the fortune trait being good game design and the reason is that DM memory is a limited resource. To play D&D 5e I need to know the fifteen or so conditions plus the basic rules. In 4e I think it was twenty and a tiny handful of keywords and traits ("close", "burst", "blast", "aura", "phasing" come to mind but there are 5e equivalents to most of those and as a player a handful of traits for the class like Reliable and Rattling. Anything else was written in the statblock where I needed it.

For Pathfinder 2e? This many traits is all very well for a computer database but IMO far too many for a human. If I look at Calaca's Showstopper (picked at random for the cool name) I find five traits. Spot question: Which out of Auditory, Divine, Duskwalker, Enchantment , and Incapacitation have actual direct impacts on the game rules? (Answer: Auditory and Incapacitation). Which means that I know I can run a 4e power or 5e spell just by having it there in front of me, but Pathfinder 2e is something else.

Standardisation is good, but jargon is a barrier to entry. Even AD&D had some level of standardisation and 5e has much much more.

Most of the traits are there for organizational purposes and aren't used on a regular basis (outside of maybe character, like choosing a feat from another class or a spell from a different spell-list). Like you say, the only ones you really need to know are Incapacitation and Auditory. The others are about Class, Spell List, and School. All things that are included in stat blocks, but as keywords they are searchable. They aren't quite comparable to the keywords in 4E.

Conditions are a bit different, and aren't the same as traits. PF2 does have more of them, but again they standardized things like Dex- and Str-penalties into specific conditions (Clumsy and Enfeebled) so that sort of ability damage isn't completely personalized to the ability or spell. So while a 5E Shadow does 1d4 Strength drain, a PF2 Shadow causes Enfeebled 1.

I see why they have the incapacitation trait (same as legendary resistance in 5e – it's anticlimactic if you hit the boss with a paralysis spell in the first round and then just murder it to death), but I think the solution from 13th age is better: hit point limits on incapacitating spells. This also provides a knob to adjust when balancing the spells – a fear spell might have a lower hp limit than a stun spell with the same duration.

The thing about Incapacitation that I like is that it works both ways: you can't just ace a PC with a 1st Level Charm spell; you've got to spend resources to do it. Same with something like Ghoul Touch, which can have an outsized effect when it hits in certain editions.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Something else to keep in mind, 4e has a very different focus than 5e. In 5e, the goal is to get through the combats quicker so everyone can focus on the story and the campaign. You're gonna have combat encounters, obviously, but don't dwell on them too much. There's more to get through, and players want to feel like they're making progress with every session.

4e, by design, places greater emphasis on the encounter. So naturally, the rules are going to be more tactical in nature, highlighting the centerpiece of every session, which is the combat encounter. That doesn't make it more or less D&D than any other system; it's just a different approach with a focus on one of the major aspects (or pillars, to use the more current vernacular).

And there are still plenty of rules and advice on supporting the other aspects of social interactions and exploration.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For Pathfinder 2e? This many traits is all very well for a computer database but IMO far too many for a human.

I'd agree if that many came up frequently, but they don't. Most of those are special flags to tell you interactions of unusual combinations, some of them not in combat ("multiclass" has no during-play significance, for example, nor does Dedication or Archetype; Downtime and Exploration are terms that describe spheres of play that something can engage with). As such, many of them either you don't need to know very often, or at most need to refresh you memory on when you choose a particular uncommon type of opponent. And no, I don't think distinguishing these is difficult; in your question about the five traits later in this post, I immediately knew which three were not relevant in play, and I'm just a player.

Its like saying there's too many words in the English language for people; its literally true, but in application nowhere near the issue it would seem to be.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I see why they have the incapacitation trait (same as legendary resistance in 5e – it's anticlimactic if you hit the boss with a paralysis spell in the first round and then just murder it to death), but I think the solution from 13th age is better: hit point limits on incapacitating spells. This also provides a knob to adjust when balancing the spells – a fear spell might have a lower hp limit than a stun spell with the same duration.

Yeah, Incapacitation is probably not the best way to do that sort of thing. Another approach I saw years ago when the Warlock guys were hanging out at CalTech was how they handled Paralysis; they had Paralysis "damage" that when it accrued would finally do the job.

But I think its hard to argue that "this takeout spell should work at anything no matter how powerful if it just rolls crap" is good design; there's a reason they came to be called "Save or Suck" spells during the 3e period.

It would be nice if PF2 had some differentiation between traits that matter in and of themselves and traits that are just "hooks" for other things to interact with.

I'm not sure there'd be any way that wouldn't just add complexity to the nomenclature.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'd agree if that many came up frequently, but they don't.

Honestly that's the problem. If something comes up twice or three times per session I'm going to learn it within about two sessions because I'm using it all the time. After I've done that the keyword is simply faster and lets me pick up other examples of it more easily than having to copy and paste the entire text box. On the other hand if I only have to use it every five or ten sessions and I'm playing weekly it's likely more than a month since I last saw the keyword; I'm going to have forgotten what it does in the past month.

Most of those are special flags to tell you interactions of unusual combinations, some of them not in combat ("multiclass" has no during-play significance, for example, nor does Dedication or Archetype; Downtime and Exploration are terms that describe spheres of play that something can engage with). As such, many of them either you don't need to know very often, or at most need to refresh you memory on when you choose a particular uncommon type of opponent.

This, I'm afraid, only makes it worse. There have frequently been times when either my party has completely left anything I considered plausible behind or have run past what I prepared. Or our regular DM took ill and I'm winging things. In any of these cases with a good set of descriptions and statblocks (which 4e does) I can learn everything I need to know just by reading the statblocks.

In PF2e I can't do this. I need to have actively prepared every monster I'm going to use by cross-referencing it. And to add insult to injury when 90% (arbitrary guess) of the flags I don't know the odds are good if I'm in any sort of hurry (and I'm often in a hurry even when I'm not trying to run the game on the fly) I'm just going to guess that whatever this random word is it's one of that 90% that has no mechanical effect rather than open a different book and look it up.

This means (a) that I almost physically can't run PF2e in the free flowing style I prefer unless I need to touch any obscure monsters and (b) unless I take far more precise prep than I like, thanks to the shortcuts, I'm likely to get the rules wrong.

Yeah, Incapacitation is probably not the best way to do that sort of thing. Another approach I saw years ago when the Warlock guys were hanging out at CalTech was how they handled Paralysis; they had Paralysis "damage" that when it accrued would finally do the job.

One of the best approaches was that used in the TSR era of D&D; the spell saving throws differed by what you were trying to do to your target with death/poison/paralysis being the easiest to save against. (On a tangent paralysis moved from the petrification/polymorph group where the victim is out long term to death I suspect because paralysis was too often followed up with a coup de grace). This gave wizards an incentive to cast the direct damage spells rather than the debilitating ones because they were more likely to do something.

I'm not sure there'd be any way that wouldn't just add complexity to the nomenclature.

Put the ones with actual mechanical weight in italics. Or the ones without mechanical weight in italics. I don't care which. Or put them on different lines. Or better yet don't use obscure tags with mechanical weight.