D&D 4E Presentation vs design... vs philosophy

Saelorn said:

Qualitatively speaking, "do more damage" is distinct from "do standard damage, and apply an effect".

As often as not, those additional effects were irrelevant. You use the moves you have, because you have them and they deal damage. It's irrelevant whether or not you also pushed the enemy, or knocked them prone. Those things aren't nearly as important, in the grand scheme of things, as how much damage you deal or whether you have higher AC.

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Saelorn, this is why these conversations tend to be so frustrating.

Here is the thing. In the last 12 years I've seen statements like this and the "sameness" statement repeated.

There is only one answer to what is happening here.

User error.

User error in the same way that a GM constructing an uninteresting dungeon crawl in Moldvay is going to yield an extremely uninteresting experience, bereft of interesting decision-points at the Exploration Turn level, bereft of stimulating thematic puzzle-solving, and bereft of strategic overhead at the delve level.

Moldvay GMs could construct crappy dungeons experiences.

The solution?

Get better at your craft.

The same thing goes with 4e combats in creating/incentivizing movement, interesting terrain interactions with Forced Movement, and difficult decision-points in dealing with diverse interesting forces, their positioning with respect to each other and the terrain elements, control elements from Controllers (especially Solo Controllers) and how that interacts with all of the former, and their force multiplication capabilities within their "team."

It_is_utterly_impossible for (a) different classes to feel the same and (b) for their not to be interesting decision-points when dealing with a well-constructed battlefield + enemy force + interesting objective.

Unless...your GM is not good enough at their craft (and both DMGs do a pretty great job of describing how to do the above, and simple repetition and creativity should increase the process over time).

Its ok for people to struggle. User error is ok. What is not ok is to blame something/someone else and refuse to get better.

The same thing goes for 4e Skill Challenges. If you come away from the table saying "4e Skill Challenges are 'an exercise in dice rolling' "....then you need to work on your game. You need to develop a better ability to change the situation dynamically, create interesting thematic complications, escalate current ones, and develop your fail forward game.

Garthanos said:

Raw numbers you write on your sheet and forget 99 percent of the time are interesting is kind of faerie tale like to me too.

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I think we must differentiate between interesting tactically and interesting conceptually.

The sole difference in many powers were akin to whether you could slide an enemy 1 or whether you could slide yourself 1. Powers like that aren't interesting conceptually or tactically.

Fanaelialae said:

@CapnZapp I just skimmed through my PF2 GM Guide and it looks like there are a few interesting rules variants that might address some of your concerns regarding mechanical expression and differentiation. Specifically the Dual Class option (basically, gestalt, where you have 2 classes) and Skill Points (which allow more nuanced skill assignment). This might allow for some more of the optimization it sounds like you'd prefer from the game.

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Im familiar with the concept of simulationism, I’m just unclear what “simulationist combat differentiation is very cool if that’s what props your tent” means in the context of this discussion. Came across as a bit of a non-sequitur to me.

HarbingerX said:

Speaking from my own personal experience with 4e, I found every class had a 'sameness' because their mechanics were all identical - do 'at-will' with damage plus small class specific effect; do 'encounter' with more damage plus bigger class specific effect; do 'daily' with lots of damage plus class specific effect. And the effects were 'magic-like' no matter which class you were playing.

I personally tried to be descriptive with my attacks to try to make them a bit more interesting, but a lot of other players at the table wouldn't even bother mentioning the attack name - they'd just say 'I do 2[w] and mark this guy'. The tactical focus of all the powers were just not what I was looking for in a game.

So for me, having a great weapon fighter reroll 1-2 or a duelist get +2 dmg or two-weapon fighter roll two attacks feels much more interesting than Tide of Iron or Grappling Strike ever did; I feel like a fighter with his speciality.

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Whereas for me there is nothing less interesting than a great weapon fighter rerolling 1s and 2s or a duellist getting +2 to damage. For me the physical act of calculation is trivial. Either I am being made to focus a little on the arithmetic (as for the great weapon fighter), slowing things down for both me and everyone else at the table while not making a significant change to the outcome (making the whole thing negative and nails on a blackboard annoying) or if I get a +2 to damage from duellist I will include it on my character sheet and then proceed to ignore it, lumping it in with all the other bonuses. It doesn't affect any of the choices I make during play and doesn't do much to make me feel like a fighter other than in the sense of "Number go up". And neither help provide interesting descriptions for attacks.

Meanwhile Tide of Iron actually reflects the way I fight in reenactment combat. Using my shield aggressively to get in my opponent's face and drive them back - and this is in no way magical. Not all my characters do this - but it's a fighting style I understand rather than one that involves walking up to my opponent and playing patty-cake until one of us has a number drop to zero.

Further Tide of Iron opens up options for both using the environment and for teamwork. For using the environment, unless you have a boring DM who makes every fight in a featureless room it opens up the mantra "monsters belong in their own pit traps" without making it an either with respect to pushing them or lowering their hit points. It also opens up teamwork in a whole lot of ways - from getting flanking to teamwork to push monsters into pit traps or bonfires to being able to push monsters off the wizard to allow the wizard to get some distance.

And this tactical aspect, thinking about positioning and how to actually carry out combat makes me feel a lot more like an expert fighter. Meanwhile fiddly and annoying +2s are fiddly and annoying.

And if you want to know why 4e fans are still pissed off there has been precisely one edition in which being a fighter wasn't simply about spamming an attack and then playing paty-cake with the monsters until someone's hit points hit zero. I don't begrudge you wanting to play a fighter I find an excercise in both boredom and being prevented from thinking the way I would think. Indeed I'm one of those who was glad when the Slayer was added to 4e even if there was precisely zero chance of me ever playing one.

But why in the name of the little black pig, just because you don't resonate with an approach, did it have to be removed from the game almost entirely? Why were people that vindictive against 4e just because people liked things they didn't? Why are 4e martial fans the one group left with thin gruel barely worthy of the name "fighter"? Does other people visualising their character in ways you don't actively harm your experience?

And just so I can understand what is so interesting about rerolling 1s and 2s as some sort of fighter?

FrogReaver said:

The sole difference in many powers were akin to whether you could slide an enemy 1 or whether you could slide yourself 1.

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1 sq is kind of minor effect but if its augmented by a feat like the ones where instead of shift 1 my ranger can now shift 3 it becomes a lot more interesting. The complaint about lots of little things well they compound.

Also the distinction of If I can slide an enemy that is usually better at saving an ally or putting the enemy in a more dangerous position with regards to things other than me.

I find that some of it valuable for character expression too. There is a motivation and personality in how you move them though often it might be role determined.

Fanaelialae said:

It would be fairly effortless to incorporate it by offering the player who rolls a failure the opportunity to treat the roll as a success, but at a cost. Admittedly not quite the same as the approach used by Strike!.

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Could very well be. I don't know the game holistically enough to have an opinion.

The major problems with trying to "bolt on" a "Success With Complications/Costs" paradigm to a game that isn't built around the premise is that the generation of Complications/Costs aren't integrated with the system as a whole. Its especially a problem on games that are as action-economy-intensive as a game like PF2 seems to be as Complications/Costs are meant to be a "snowball effect" generator. You can have very wobbly downstream effects pretty trivially in a system that isn't well-integrated and well-balanced.

I suspect its doable, but it would be no small engineering feat to get it right. I'd much, much rather prefer that the designers made this a foundational element of play (elegantly integrated and balanced).

There are too many good games out there competing for my interest and time to spend the time necessary to engineer a significant hack (even if the game is otherwise very good...which I suspect PF2 is). I'll just let all of the people who enjoy the game enjoy it (which is something that would have been awesome to happen around 2008-2012)!

Aldarc said:

So when will you be requesting their medical records as part of the vetting process?

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I'm not sure that would be helpful. But I can see a background check revealing if the person might be best with a rogue. And a job history might reveal work in the medical field indicating cleric, gardening(druid) or whatever.

Charlaquin said:

Not sure what you mean by “simulationist combat differentiation.”


Not quite. Most PF2 combat feats are activated by spending a number of actions (usually 1 or 2), which might otherwise be used for an attack. Power Attack is a good example. It costs 2 actions to use, and allows you to make one attack (at your current multiple attack penalty) that deals double damage dice on a hit. So a character who wants to spend their whole turn attacking has the baseline:
• Attack at no penalty for 1[W] damage
• Attack at -5 to hit for 1[W] damage
• Attack at -10 to hit for 1[W] damage

With Power Attack, that character could do the above, or
• Attack at no penalty for 1[W] damage
•• Attack at -5 for 2[W] damage


or:
•• Attack at no penalty for 2[W] damage
• Attack at -5 for 1[W] damage

In all three cases, the character can deal up to 3[W] damage, and each action seems to be “worth” 1[W] damage, but Power Attack basically allows you to combine two of those attacks into one, trading an additional chance to do some damage for a better chance to do more damage. Ultimately not a super interesting choice, but the math gets more complex if you want to do anything on your turn besides attack, or if you have other Feats you want to use your action on.

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Okay, none of the feats you posted mentioned giving up an attack to utilize them, so I did not assume it was a general rule that applied to all feats.

Are there any feats that do not work by costing you an action?

FrogReaver said:

I think we must differentiate between interesting tactically and interesting conceptually.

The sole difference in many powers were akin to whether you could slide an enemy 1 or whether you could slide yourself 1. Powers like that aren't interesting conceptually or tactically.

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I'm afraid I must disagree with you and use 5e to do it.

Eldritch blast allows you to push an enemy 5 ft when you hit if you have repelling blast (or was it 10?). Do you know when that was the most fun we ever had at the table? When the warlock repelling blasted an enemy through a Wall of Fire and a Blade Barrier.

When you can create hazardous zones, which I know 4e characters could do for a fact, then even a push as minor as 1 square can be a tactically advantageous ability. If you can move 5ft as part of an attack, this opens different options which is tactically important.

Perhaps they are not interesting conceptually, but tactically? They can give you a lot for very little. And we should remember, these were basic abilities, not high level ones. They should not have been incredibly powerful by themselves.

FrogReaver said:

I think we must differentiate between interesting tactically and interesting conceptually.

The sole difference in many powers were akin to whether you could slide an enemy 1 or whether you could slide yourself 1. Powers like that aren't interesting conceptually or tactically.

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Interest is subjective. Personally, I’d agree that the difference between slide yourself 1 and slide your opponent 1 isn’t conceptually that interesting to me, but I disagree strongly that it isn’t tactically interesting. If it doesn’t interest you tactically, fair enough, but it does have a lot of potential to affect the encounter in very different ways.

Chaosmancer said:

Okay, none of the feats you posted mentioned giving up an attack to utilize them, so I did not assume it was a general rule that applied to all feats.

Are there any feats that do not work by costing you an action?

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Most Class Feats give you new ways to use your Actions and/or your reaction, but certainly not all of them. Off the top of my head, there’s a Fighter Feat that gives you an extra Reaction that you can only use to do a shield block. There are Druid Feats that give you access to new wild shape forms. In the playtest there was a Rogue Feat that let you use Sneak Attack with bludgeoning weapons that didn’t have Finesse, but I don’t think that one made it to the final product. Some Feats let you do special effects when you crit with certain weapons. I’m sure there are other examples.