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

[jmartkdr2]

Not even sure I know what you mean... the Orc in a swarm of orcs is not an orc... its a completely different thing is that really your assertion?

Yes, swarms aren't the same things as a bunch of people standing next to each other.

 

[Garthanos]

A subtler aspect of PF2 here is the way crits work. Any hit with a margin of 10+ is a critical hit. So a 10th level martial (should have an attack bonus of about +21) fighting a 6th level monster (the lowest that's enough of a threat that you get XP for them) will be targeting an AC of about 24, so you hit on a 3 and crit on 13+. That's going to help a lot with chewing through those hit points.

Revisiting this... picture the Ogre whom in heroic tier is throwing pcs around doing so on one of these critical hit style mechanics. But by epic he will never ever get those.
If he is adversary to epic heroes he will never ever need those. (then the mechanic is no longer needed)

And his defenses are low enough the PCs are basically always going to crit and always going to kill in one shot (the mechanic for even having hit points isn't really even needed) A non-crit might may be rare enough probably not even important.

The making of minions is just a simplification.

 

[Garthanos]

Yes, swarms aren't the same things as a bunch of people standing next to each other.

But the person in an angry mob is still a person narratively. The mechanics are a simplification of those individuals.

 

[Micah Sweet]

We

That runs into issues where for one thing only martial types are bound by this. And casters are quite honestly scaled so far beyond anything in legend and myth that they make holding realism as your model for martials beyond a very few levels just ridiculous.

Well, breaking from reality completely isn't any better. Magic can be made weaker, or more difficult, if that's a problem for you.

 

[Oofta]

But in the fiction, they're the same. They've changed stats, but despite this they are actually the same characters just like the PCs are the same, despite continuing to change in power and ability over time.

I feel like I'm half-a-step removed from the D&D mechanical equivalent of the Ship of Theseus question.

None of which changes the fact that they have different entries in the book and different stat blocks. It's kind of like saying that a 5E guard is the same as a champion because they're both human.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

I get tired of the "you're misrepresenting the game" argument. If you have a specific issue I'm open to discussing. General accusations of "you don't know what you're talking about"? Not so much.

Yes, swarms aren't the same things as a bunch of people standing next to each other.

None of which changes the fact that they have different entries in the book and different stat blocks. It's kind of like saying that a 5E guard is the same as a champion because they're both human.

The specific issue is that you refuse to acknowledge the paradigmn that makes it all work. (you don't have to like it)

In certain D&D games, there is only one mechanical respresentation of a specific fictional contruct of monster. A regular Ogre has X HP, does X dmg, etc. This mechanical representation doesn't change regardless of the who is interacting with this Ogre.

In 4e, there are various mechancial representations for the same fictional contruct depending on who is interacting with it. This is not meant to change the fictional construct. It's the same Ogre. The reason this is done is to better represent the fictional interactions -- a fight with this fictional contruct should look like "this" in the fiction if a Level 1 PC is fighting it and look like "that" if a Level 10 PC is fighting it.

You can make an argument that bounded accuracy / 5e gives you this fictional interaction in a way that you like better.

What people are objecting to is that changing the mechanical representation means you are changing the fictional representation which just doesn't have to be.

A "Swarm" and a "minion" are not fictional constructs in 4e. They are game mechanical tools used to represent fictional constructs. And yes there is a certain about of abstraction to it in return for ease of use and tighter fiction mapping -- the minions get brushed aside like red shirts.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Well, 4E was more constrained and prescriptive of power levels. The assumption that you would have a +X weapon at level N and so on. What I was talking about is that in 5E I can set up a cliff that the group encounters at level 1 that they have no chance of climbing and must find a way around. At higher levels they can climb the cliff with little difficulty.

And I, and every other 4e DM can do this in 4e. Except that thanks to the magic of bounded accuracy you more or less can't do this in 5e except by leaning on the wizard to use their spells. Your level 10 wizard is precisely no more athletic than your level 1 wizard; their strength, dex, and con haven't gone up and neither have their athletics or acrobatics skills.

Meanwhile if you set the cliffs as a medium challenge for level 10 characters (at which point you then give it a static DC) your first level fighter trained in athletics probably has a chance to climb it at level 1 - but good luck getting that wizard up there.

At level 1 that ogre is a major threat at level 10 a single ogre would be a speed bump. But a dozen ogres facing that level 10 party? Now you have a fight on your hands*.

What you have in reality in 5e using a dozen ogres vs a level 10 party is 708 hit points of almost pure lard for the PCs to tediously hack or kite their way through. The Ogres are AC 11 - and the martial PCs will have a +4 proficiency bonus and are likely to have 20 in their primary stat if they took their ASIs, meaning that they probably make all their attack rolls on 2s. And the ogres can't make spell saving throws either unless you're foolish enough to aim at their Str or Con saving throws. (DC 17, and Ogres have -1 on Dex, -2 on Wis and Cha, and -3 on Int).

Yes you could do this in 5e but it would be a truly tedious fight if the PCs had any tactical planning at all. This sort of fight works in 5e as long as the NPCs you're using well out of their level range are, for practical purposes, minions and get one-shotted by the PCs. Goblins or even orcs work well. But the fact it appears to encourage you to do it with enemies like ogres with 59hp each.

In 4E that ogre is still going to be a threat but at level 10 it's going to be the new and improved ogre because a dozen ogres wouldn't stand a chance. Throwing relatively low level monsters against a group at higher level can give them more of a sense of accomplishment, a "Remember back when 1 of those would have been tough? We just took out a dozen!"

And here you're effectively contradicting yourself. The ogres would have dropped off as a serious challenge after half a dozen levels. The idea that you can't have the same story arc with ogres in 4e as 5e is simply risible.

4e just tells you to not bother with putting 700hp of lard on the table where your attacks almost can't miss and instead offers you an alternative by the time the monsters get too lardy so you don't take what sounds in abstract like a fun idea for a fight and ultimately bore the players rigid with it.

*Unless of course they show up in fireball formation when the group has a 5 minute work day. Nothing is perfect.

And this is ridiculous. Fireball is a third level spell; you should be able to throw out a couple of those every fight by 5e's balance.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, 4E was more constrained and prescriptive of power levels. The assumption that you would have a +X weapon at level N and so on. What I was talking about is that in 5E I can set up a cliff that the group encounters at level 1 that they have no chance of climbing and must find a way around. At higher levels they can climb the cliff with little difficulty. At level 1 that ogre is a major threat at level 10 a single ogre would be a speed bump. But a dozen ogres facing that level 10 party? Now you have a fight on your hands*.

In 4E that ogre is still going to be a threat but at level 10 it's going to be the new and improved ogre because a dozen ogres wouldn't stand a chance. Throwing relatively low level monsters against a group at higher level can give them more of a sense of accomplishment, a "Remember back when 1 of those would have been tough? We just took out a dozen!"

*Unless of course they show up in fireball formation when the group has a 5 minute work day. Nothing is perfect.

Sure, but you can do that pretty easily in 4e as well. If the level difference isn't huge, you can simply do exactly this. Certainly I've run encounters with level-5 opponents. Actually the amusing thing is, I once did exactly one of these "Yeah, now we'll just kick the goblin's asses" encounters, and THE PARTY GOT MAULED. I mean, they 'won', but for whatever reason these 'wimpy' goblins just had their number. Everyone rolled crappy and the DM's dice were hot, the terrain slightly favored the goblins, and a couple players just didn't seem to be on the ball, or got complacent. Pretty soon they were all down a bunch of surges and they suffered the whole rest of that adventuring day, lol.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with 'minionizing' a monster at higher levels, either. This is simply a way to acknowledge the change in relative importance of that beast. Now its just a speedbump, and the GM can get a whole bunch of them. Nobody needs to tediously track the hit points of 12 ogres, if you get a solid hit on them, they die (and I'm not against the idea of having higher hit point minions, like maybe a paragon minion could have 4 or 5 or even 8 hit points, it just either takes that much damage and dies, or it doesn't and there's no accumulating damage in that case, this is a commonly used house rule). Honestly, minions can also be quite deadly! I recall an amusing encounter where some orc minions were in an inaccessible location (beyond some difficult terrain). The PCs had to figure it out, some of them got out bows, one waded across the stream, and the wizard deployed a daily AoE because those minions damage added up, there were 20 of them! It was exciting and a fun challenge.

 

[Staffan]

Yes, and then, almost inevitably, in a system as complex as PF2e someone will figure out how to subvert this choice point enough to make it 'not optional' anymore. This is much like what happened with multi-attacks in 4e and lead to a lot of difficulty. All you really had to do in 4e was add lots of small untyped attack and damage bonuses, and then find a way to reliably multi-attack. A LOT of optimized builds are based on that strategy, and in fact it is pretty much THE way to do good epic damage. There are some variations of course, like 'crit fishing' where you would simply max out your critical hit chance, and then apply that to many attacks per round. Certain class features, like the Barbarian's ability to get additional attacks, could also feature in this process. This is why nothing ever really unseated the Ranger from being damage king, Twin Strike is a gold mine, it almost breaks the game right out of the box! I swear, half the "you can't get this unless you have that" restrictions in 4e were meant to stop everyone else from getting TS, lol. Off-turn attacks were another route to the same thing.

So, my guess is that PF2e does (or will over time) spend a LOT of effort trying to root out and shut down ways to negate that -5 and -10, because players are going to really want to find exactly that, it will essentially multiply their offense considerably. As a game designer, I'm not super impressed with this whole rules construct. I think there must be better ways that don't involve this kind of "one thing compensates for another" design.

Thing is, there are already quite a few ways of doing that. However, with the exception of agile weapons (which reduce the MAP to -4) and the ranger Hunter's Edge Flurry (which reduces MAP by 2 against your hunted prey, so -3 or -2 with an agile weapon – and that's basically one of the extra damage mechanics the ranger can choose, and it's not available via multiclassing) they're pretty much all in the context of particular actions/activities which means they don't stack with one another. For example, dual-wielding fighters can learn the feat Double Slice which is a two-action activity that lets them Strike twice at their current MAP, once with each weapon, against the same target and combine damage before applying resistances. It counts as two attacks for MAP, but only after the activity is completed. At slightly higher levels there is Swipe, which is another two-action activity that lets you make a single Strike but potentially hit two foes that are adjacent to one another and within your reach. It also counts as two attacks for MAP, but not until after it's done. But since each of these is a distinct activity, you can't combine them.

That's a common theme in PF2: there are very few optional elements that give you bonuses as such, but instead they give you new and potentially better options. Elements that give you bonuses are probably part of your class chassis, and you might have a choice of which one to get, but you can never double up on them. For example, rangers have a choice of Hunter's Edge: Flurry (reducing MAP), Outwit (giving you skill and AC bonuses against your prey), or Precision (giving you bonus damage on the first hit each round against your prey). But you can never have both Flurry and Precision, and neither is available via multiclassing.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Not quite what I meant. Every ogre can be different if you want, but the same ogre should be the same IMO regardless of who is encountering them and what level they happen to be.

I'll agree with this when you can tell me exactly what a hit point is supposed to be.

If we take the paradigm of "The rules are a user interface to an underlying fictional world" then it's fine for the same ogre having different representations for different purposes. If we take the paradigm of "The rules are a physics engine" then we'll end up in Order of the Stick territory.