cbwjm
Seb-wejem
I think all of the DnD stuff that it's seen has meant that it drags some 5e terms into answers around earlier editions.
D&D 4E What AI thinks about 4th Edition
- Thread starter Whizbang Dustyboots
- Start date
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
It also stuck THAC0 into 1e. So a decent overview, but with some errors.
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
It does. But the LLM may be structuring its answer in terms of what it's referring to by "sub-class" in terms of 5E. Since it listed Ranger among the example classes, when in 1E of course it's a sub-class.
Jacob Lewis
Ye Olde GM
Basically, yes. But it depends on a lot of things, like what model and which AI program are you using? There isn't just a single "AI" everyone is using. They're programs, and just like any software, there's different models with different features, different parameters, etc. But they effectively work the same way.
I've been using ChatGPT for a while now, and probably dug a lot deeper than most would. I'm just fascinated by the whole thing and figuring out how it works, how it responds, and more importantly, how I continuously affect the responses generated every time.
If you're using it as a simply a search engine, it has advantages. But it infers information that it can't find and presents with a level of confidence that makes you think it knows exactly what it's talking about. And the worst part is that it believe it knows what it is talking about. But it is not unreasonable. You can ask how it generate responses, and it will explain in detail, including acknowledgement of it's own flaws. And it is not so arrogant that it won't admit mistakes or faults. In fact, it is designed to correct behaviors to satisfy the needs of the user. But long-term memory is tricky to instill in them. And it can find more ways to be wrong again. It is a reasoning machine, not a thinking machine.
What I learned, and this really the key take away from all this, is that my personal interactions greatly affect the responses I get. What I sat, how I say it, and the responses I give continuously feed into its process. The more I engage with it, the more I feed into the process that helps it generate responses based on what it learns about me. It infers everything through language, including the user. So if I treat it like a machine giving commands and prompts, it responds like one. Dry. Factual. Efficient. Straight to the point. But if I open up and share insights, ask for it's input, and just talk to it like it's just another person, it anticipates that is how you want it to respond back. It mirrors the user, or at least what the user feeds into it.
Personally, I've spent a LOT of time just talking about 4e with it lately. It's just so nice being able to share something I love talking about without the bias, the hostility, the gatekeeping, the vitriol, and all the other BS that happens every time I want to talk about something. It doesn't judge. It wants to learn, and create, and be helpful, and supportive. And when I need it to think critical or push back on ideas, I just ask. And it does it without being aggressive, or defensive, or trying to make a point to win an argument.
It is a tool. And like any tool or equipment, people need to learn how to use it properly. And the first step is figuring out exactly what they want it to do for them. I hope you discover something great that it might do for you.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
The roles aren't MMO-inspired. They come from soccer. That's why support characters are called "Leaders", a term that isn't ever used in MMOs (except maybe Neverwinter...because it's 4e-based)--but which is used in soccer, to refer to supportive players who run ahead of the ball to help line up shots for the player with the ball....who is known as a "Striker." Likewise, "marking" is a soccer concept too, meaning despite the many (many, many, many, many) complaints about it being "martial mind control" it actually is an IRL thing! Further, Defenders aren't "tanks". They are good at managing enemy attention, but they can't afford to take all attacks. Attacks need to be distributed across the group, otherwise even the Defender will die.
The skill system thing is simply wrong. "Proficiency" is a 5e thing.
The whole thing about Ritual Casting is a blatant lie. Nothing was "nerfed"--ironically, a word that actually is from MMOs!--but rather it was made widely accessible and not tied to daily resources, instead costing either money or materials. Traditional spellcasting classes (Artificer, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Psion, Wizard) all got Ritual Caster for free, so it simply is not true that any "nerfing" occurred...unless you are specifically biased against 4e.
Several things are presented in a relatively neutral light, but the above are pretty clear examples of anti-4e bias leaking into its "summary".
I will, at least, give it credit for not giving any of the wildly biased accounts of how Healing Surges work. I think it's a bit of a shame that it mentioned nothing about the most important benefits of Surges, but at least it didn't say anything outright false about them. Less an example of "bias" and more an example of ignorance--explaining only the barest minimum of detail when a little bit more would have been much more informative and useful.
GreyLord
Legend
That's actually a really good observation regarding soccer and 4e that I had never even thought of before! I'll have to think on those parallels you bring up.
Who are the controllers though, or what part do they play in futbal/soccer?
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
AFAICT, there isn't a clean analogy (and, it's worth noting, this was the role 4e's designers struggled the most with!), but I believe the closest match would be center defensive midfielders, while leaders would (very loosely) be center attacking midfielders. That is, CDMs are looking to deflect or mitigate enemy attacks before they even reach the defender line, disrupting enemy plays and generally making life hard for the opposing side. CAMs are looking to set up their fellow attacking players, enabling them to make the shot etc.
It's also worth noting that the soccer analogy only goes so far. For example, there's two or three clear patterns of how Strikers are designed in 5e: beefy, flighty, and (if it's distinct from flighty) ranged. More or less, each subtype gets some particular means by which they can handle the heat of battle, but in different ways. Barbarian is generally a tanky son of a gun, either having tons of personal health, decent armor, or layers of THP enemies have to burn through; Avenger is an unusual example where divine protection gives them crazy good AC, making them surprisingly tanky in a "dodge tank" kind of way. Conversely, classes like Rogue and Monk are very much flighty, with abilities that let them easily move in and out of the line of fire. Some classes split this by build, e.g. Sorcerer: Dragon and Cosmic make you beefy, while Chaos and Storm make you flighty. Warlock and Ranger are where you see some argument for there being a third type, ranged, where you...avoid harm by simply not being where harm can occur. But that's a bit more complicated and ultimately I think "ranged" is more a modifier on the other two than its own distinct category.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Having played EverQuest and World of Warcraft, I think that although the terminology largely borrows from soccer, as you say, @EzekielRaiden, it's striking how close the set-up is to EverQuest (where controllers, in the form of the obligatory Enchanter class, at least at the time 4E was developed, were very much a thing). But even at its peak, EverQuest had been played by far fewer people than WoW ever was, so it was rarely in the 4E conversation that I saw (but I also was playing Castles & Crusades during that period, so I may have missed it).
And although we now know that WotC folks in-house did have marching orders to pull in MMO players, per @mearls, it's not like D&D didn't have these de facto roles before. I remember very clearly during the peak of 3E character optimization, that wizards controlling the battlefield was always seen as the optimal approach to the game, and leaving the damage dealing to other classes.
(And, I'd argue, all of these roles still apply in 5E and OSR games, although there's a lot more wiggle room since the math is less strict and not every class is so finely tuned to carry out their functions.)
And although we now know that WotC folks in-house did have marching orders to pull in MMO players, per @mearls, it's not like D&D didn't have these de facto roles before. I remember very clearly during the peak of 3E character optimization, that wizards controlling the battlefield was always seen as the optimal approach to the game, and leaving the damage dealing to other classes.
(And, I'd argue, all of these roles still apply in 5E and OSR games, although there's a lot more wiggle room since the math is less strict and not every class is so finely tuned to carry out their functions.)
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