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

[Neonchameleon]

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.

The thing about this is that 5e combat is on any scale I use pretty slow. It's faster than 4e because there's little in the way of tactics and reactions. And it's faster than mid level 3.X when there's the buff layers to calculate. But there is serious hit point bloat in the game; an AD&D ogre had 19hp, a 3.X ogre 29hp and a 5e ogre 59hp. And that meat takes time to grind through.

I play games with fast combat, I play games with tactical combat, and I play games with evocative and descriptive combat- and to me 5e succeeds at none of them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Like I said, I'd buy that if I thought I'd need to know it on the fly all that often. That's absolutely not true with the non-in-game relevant ones (and I honestly don't think most of those are hard to distinguish), and the in-game ones I have to look up on a reference when they come up. I've got to say my reaction to the latter is "so what? I've had to do that all the time with all kinds of things in my life."

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.

Summary sheets are a thing you know.

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.

Well, if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't, but I seriously think you're overstating how much of a problem it'd be for most people.

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 don't think it helps much, frankly; there's too much benefit to fishing for a crap saving roll, if one crap one will solve the problem.

(This was even more true in the OD&D days where saves only got so bad. Only reason it wasn't worse was most take-out spells were higher level than many people ever saw, given the slow progression in those days).

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.

As you can see, I don't see these as "obscure" the way you do.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Summary sheets are a thing you know.

Indeed. A statblock basically is a summary sheet containing all the mechanics that you need in one handy place so you can run the NPC it refers to easily while not having much of the context. A summary sheet should not itself routinely need a summary sheet or it has failed as a summary sheet.

Well, if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't, but I seriously think you're overstating how much of a problem it'd be for most people.

It's a problem for me because it basically cuts out an entire style of DMing. And the style I find most fun to both run and play. I love 4e in part because it enables and encourages me to be a free flowing and improvisational DM; Pathfinder 2e hamstrings that for reasons I've described.

I don't think it helps much, frankly; there's too much benefit to fishing for a crap saving roll, if one crap one will solve the problem.

Fireball was a really popular spell for a reason.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Indeed. A statblock basically is a summary sheet containing all the mechanics that you need in one handy place so you can run the NPC it refers to easily while not having much of the context. A summary sheet should not itself routinely need a summary sheet or it has failed as a summary sheet.

Again, I've used some kind of side reference in virtually every game I've ever run; sometimes it was printed on a character sheet with other data, sometimes it wasn't. Just can't view it as a great chore.

It's a problem for me because it basically cuts out an entire style of DMing. And the style I find most fun to both run and play. I love 4e in part because it enables and encourages me to be a free flowing and improvisational DM; Pathfinder 2e hamstrings that for reasons I've described.

I'll just note I've run that way in the past and not found it impossible, while still doing the above.

Fireball was a really popular spell for a reason.

Yes, because it could delete lower level opponents in mass. It wasn't all that useful against anything higher level than you were, and that was true all the way back in OD&D. Best you could say about it was you'd get at least some damage out of it most of the time. But often the reliable damage could be gained as much by Magic Missile if you were attacking a higher level opponent (and wouldn't find out about fire immunities and the like the hard way).

 

[jmartkdr2]

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.

There's a lot of solutions out there - I for one prefer legendary resistance to Incapacitation, but like the HP threshold better than either.

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

Put an asterisk by any trait that has a special rule and isn't just a tag. Include implied tags (ie if everything with the divine tag also has the magic tag, put the magic tag there. It'd be clunky, but much clearer.)

 

[Staffan]

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.

The thing I like about using hp as a barrier instead of just "higher level = no-no" is that it lets you use them eventually. Knock the boss around a bit, and then you can freeze them or whatever you're doing. That makes the KO spells into finishers, not openers.

13th age also supports this with the escalation die: at the end of the first round, put a big D6 set to 1 on the table. Now all PCs add 1 to their attacks (and since 13th age uses the 4e method where attackers always roll against static defenses, the 5e/PF equivalent would be to also add +1 to save DCs). At the end of every round after that, increment the die (and bonus) by 1. This speeds fights up, and gives you an incentive to save the big guns for later when they're more likely to hit. Monsters generally do not get to use the escalation die, though certain special monsters do (often in a limited fashion, like only when it's even, or something happens when the escalation die reaches a certain number).

 

[Neonchameleon]

Again, I've used some kind of side reference in virtually every game I've ever run; sometimes it was printed on a character sheet with other data, sometimes it wasn't. Just can't view it as a great chore.

One of the many reasons 4e really caught me was that I realised a few months in that none of us had touched a rulebook other than the Monster Manual in the course of play in a couple of months or even glanced other than at one specific lookup table. It is far from the only RPG I've run where I can say this (and there are other games I run where I do have a few lookups but no monster statblock to cross-reference them with). There is to me a vast difference between glancing at something that enables the setting and glancing at something that enables the rules.

It might not be a great chore to cross-reference things. And nails across a chalkboard might not be a great pain. But being forced to lose the flow of the table and the flow of the setting because the rules are large, clunky, and complex is for me on the "nails on a chalkboard" level of annoying. It is the game getting in the way of letting me do what I want to do - and I know it can be done better because I have run games where it is done better. (5e I can often get there - and with the new monster statblocks it should get more frequent).

And when I'm pointing out 4e as one of those games where it is done better it should be obvious that it's not because these games are hyper-simplistic or lacking in depth or complexity.

 

[Justice and Rule]

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.

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.

Have you actually tried? I mean, I feel like this comes more from ignorance than an actual systems critique. PF2 blocks are fairly compact and basically carry all the info you need on them: I can literally go to AoN, pick a monster, and outside of the most complex it'll fix comfortably on my phone screen. They don't list off roles like 4E does, but I'm not sure that's necessary within the system as it's built.

I say this as someone who has improvised his share of encounters just by looking something up real quick and running with it. You saying that it's impossible to run your style of game does not really match my reality of playing it.

The thing I like about using hp as a barrier instead of just "higher level = no-no" is that it lets you use them eventually. Knock the boss around a bit, and then you can freeze them or whatever you're doing. That makes the KO spells into finishers, not openers.

13th age also supports this with the escalation die: at the end of the first round, put a big D6 set to 1 on the table. Now all PCs add 1 to their attacks (and since 13th age uses the 4e method where attackers always roll against static defenses, the 5e/PF equivalent would be to also add +1 to save DCs). At the end of every round after that, increment the die (and bonus) by 1. This speeds fights up, and gives you an incentive to save the big guns for later when they're more likely to hit. Monsters generally do not get to use the escalation die, though certain special monsters do (often in a limited fashion, like only when it's even, or something happens when the escalation die reaches a certain number).

The escalation die is cool. The HP idea is interesting but given how saves are generally done in PF2 I like the gradation in what's happening. I feel like up-shifting a result is a simpler, more easily-applicable solution. But this is preference we're talking about.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Have you actually tried? I mean, I feel like this comes more from ignorance than an actual systems critique. PF2 blocks are fairly compact and basically carry all the info you need on them: I can literally go to AoN, pick a monster, and outside of the most complex it'll fix comfortably on my phone screen. They don't list off roles like 4E does, but I'm not sure that's necessary within the system as it's built.

I say this as someone who has improvised his share of encounters just by looking something up real quick and running with it. You saying that it's impossible to run your style of game does not really match my reality of playing it.



The escalation die is cool. The HP idea is interesting but given how saves are generally done in PF2 I like the gradation in what's happening. I feel like up-shifting a result is a simpler, more easily-applicable solution. But this is preference we're talking about.

I love the concept of the escalation die, but I also dont think the PCs really need more help in fights.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I love the concept of the escalation die, but I also dont think the PCs really need more help in fights.

I mean, if I remember correctly the Escalation Die is a double-edged sword: you open up more stuff, but so do monsters. I haven't played 13th Age, but the Escalation Die and the monster design were things I really liked when I heard about them (so much so that I looked up the latter and used it in 5E).