D&D 4E 4e Compared to Trad D&D; What You Lose, What You Gain

[AbdulAlhazred]

How did I miss that one.... scramble scramble

https://www.strikerpg.com

Odd, it has come up once or twice in threads we've been in.

Strike! has some interesting features. I appreciate the "don't make trivial distinctions" aspect of its design philosophy. This is of course exemplified by replacing the d20 with a d6! If you get a +1, there ain't nothin' trivial about that bonus! lol.

Where I found it lost me was on the "roles and classes are just a matrix" and the attempt to implement 'pick a role'. It works better in Strike! than it would in 4e proper (because the game is very coarse-grained in terms of resolutions, thus tossing a "you get a +1 to-hit in this and that common situation" is HUGE and really does make you a striker all by itself) but it still doesn't REALLY work for me. I think roles work better as an adjunct to class design, helping the developer and the player understand what the class is about, and not as a 'bolt on' module that adds a new widget to characters.

They added several flavors of resolution system, so you can basically run a combat like an SC if you want, or even do things at a more abstract level than that. This is a reasonable addition to 4e which is hard to add after the fact. Again, Strike!'s coarse grained implementation helps here, things feel less different in terms of how they work than they would in 4e where turning a combat into an SC doesn't really create something that feels equivalent.

It is a successful game, in its niche of being almost "more 4e than 4e" but it also seems to lose something that D&D has, at least to me. We really didn't play with it much, but I kind of felt like I might better just play something like DW if I wanted a mechanically more streamlined and story-focused game. No doubt others feel differently...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Potential complications on failure would be:

* Countermeasures deployed in the way of electrification of the exterior.
* A stray Immediate Action laser attack from on of the hoverpods.
* Activation of some kind of countermeasures while inside like a Psychic attack while the helmet is on or maybe activation of a swarm of flying nanobots.

Intruder Detected! Tank will self-destruct in 10, 9, 8...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm way out synch, but: on Skill Challenges. They were always a mess. 4e takes the Gamism up to 11 (and *likes* it)... except for Skill Challenges where it falls back into a weird Narrativism / Gamism mess that doesn't serve either master well. "Tell me a story about how you justify using the highest number on your skill list" is pretty lame design. Equally, "DM imposes narrow list of skills on PCs based on what 'makes sense' in the world" violently clashes with 4e's other design tenets.

Also, I strongly disagree that 4e has any "fail forward" mechanics.

Well, it is FAR better than all other editions "just have the GM call for skill checks (or equivalents) until he 'feels like' its enough." At best 'feels like' becomes "until some narrative condition is fulfilled." As long as 4e DMs are willing to put narrative logic ahead of pure mechanics, then SCs are not worse in regard to being stuck playing out something that has lost logical plot coherency (it happens sometimes).

Nor need it be about your highest skill. In fact ALL of the writeups of 4e SC system go out of their way to say effectively that choosing your highest skill is not an automatic option. There are things that could be said about presentation, but the system seems quite capable of working in a story centered type of game. I think that is pretty coherent with what 4e is aiming for.

I don't think 'fail forward' NEEDS mechanical support. Its available in some games, and can be worked into 4e, but isn't really demanded. Fail forward can, and primarily should be, a matter of framing scenes and developing consequences. 4e certainly has some ways to 'up the stakes', which is fairly closely related to the nature of failures.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Totally. They're not equivalent, as my bolding of your text highlights. And ht to @Ratskinner, whose earlier comments, especially with regard to action economy, preview your post.

That said--and this is intended as a point of exploration, not as one of disagreement--one could rather easily implement the full suite of actions per turn available to 4E characters in combat in a skill challenge. Most skill applications already have an action unit associated with them, which would faciliate this.

And further, implementation of rituals, encounter powers (particularly when a skill challenge is embedded within a combat encounter or vice versa), and daily powers leveraged in SCs do bring an attendant opportunity cost (if I understand correctly what you mean by this).

The former is not 4E RAW (though it's an easy hack), but the latter is.

Again, this is not completely symmetrical design across the two silos, but with a little work the two share far more than what separates them. But I agree that such implementation does require "deft," creative GMing and a willingness to integrate mechanical imperatives from other games to draw the systems closer.

The original pre-errata DMG SC system HAD a turn order, complete with initiative IIRC. It wasn't clearly stated, but seems reasonable to assume, that each PC was obliged to DO something in their turn (though it could be a secondary skill use or AA check). I have talked to a few people who continued to use that system and swear by it.

 

[darkbard]

For sure. I was talking about making the suite of actions (standard, move, minor) available to each character within their turn in initiative (or when appropriate to the fiction, if initiative is being dispensed with). Is this what you mean, because I don't remember that in any SC iteration...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For sure. I was talking about making the suite of actions (standard, move, minor) available to each character within their turn in initiative (or when appropriate to the fiction, if initiative is being dispensed with). Is this what you mean, because I don't remember that in any SC iteration...

DMG1's original system didn't talk about actions at all, it just talks about establishing a turn order.

Roll initiative to establish an order of play for the
skill challenge. If the skill challenge is part of a combat
encounter, work the challenge into the order just as
you do the monsters.
In a skill challenge encounter, every player charac-
ter must make skill checks to contribute to the success
or failure of the encounter. Characters must make a
check on their turn using one of the identified primary
skills (usually with a moderate DC) or they must use
a different skill, if they can come up with a way to
use it to contribute to the challenge (with a hard DC).
A secondary skill can be used only once by a single
character in any given skill challenge. They can also
decide, if appropriate, to cooperate with another char-
acter (see “Group Skill Checks,” below).

Here we see that initiative is used, and each character MUST make a check in their turn (or take some other type of 'action'). So, while the combat system's action economy isn't fully implemented, there is certainly a concept of 'opportunity cost' which might exist if a character decided to, for example, use a secondary skill to get an advantage later vs making a primary check now. OTOH since there is no enemy taking actions in return SCs DO have a different dynamic here, the whole party could 'dally' until they are good and ready to get down to action, they just have to be a bit creative about it (and accept whatever the fictional consequences might be, fictional position isn't strictly dictated by success/failure tally).

I'm not sure why they backed off on this element of SC design as quickly as they did. It actually had some interesting potential. The 'Obsidian SC System' was basically a slightly reformulated way of creating the same dynamic.

 

[Garthanos]

DMG1's original system didn't talk about actions at all, it just talks about establishing a turn order.



Here we see that initiative is used, and each character MUST make a check in their turn (or take some other type of 'action'). So, while the combat system's action economy isn't fully implemented, there is certainly a concept of 'opportunity cost' which might exist if a character decided to, for example, use a secondary skill to get an advantage later vs making a primary check now. OTOH since there is no enemy taking actions in return SCs DO have a different dynamic here, the whole party could 'dally' until they are good and ready to get down to action, they just have to be a bit creative about it (and accept whatever the fictional consequences might be, fictional position isn't strictly dictated by success/failure tally).

I'm not sure why they backed off on this element of SC design as quickly as they did. It actually had some interesting potential. The 'Obsidian SC System' was basically a slightly reformulated way of creating the same dynamic.

If you have a "Time is imminent scenario making sure everyone acts could be vital to winning the challenge - not acting could be a failure or automatically make subsequent checks harder.

 

[Celebrim]

I just remembered deciding using a reaction check for any pre-planned significant npc didnt much make sense somewhere around 1980 or so LOL. note I that sentence indicates I was already deciding some NPCs were significant and others weren't so thee you have it

It's less a matter of deciding what NPC is important than it is a matter of deciding what part of the story you want to be scripted, and what parts you want to be unscripted. You can't however know whether the scripted or the unscripted scenes are going to have more impact or going to be treated as being more important by the players, and if you are doing your job right you won't be signaling to the players what they are 'supposed to do' or supposed to treat as important.

The really serious question is why do you decide to treat one scene as scripted and another not. It seems you've already predecided that the reason to do this is based on the importance of the NPC. What does that mean to you?

 

[Celebrim]

Alright, a quick interlude.

So we're at the point in this adventuring day where the following is true:

* Aliens from the Far Realm are invading the material plane with their weapons, their vehicles, their tech, and their psychic attacks. The PCs are at the endgame and cutting through their forces in a direct assault upon their mother ship.

* A Fighter has single-handedly taken down and seized control of the lead "tank AT-ST" of the "armored battalion" of the alien force. He's leaped mightily upon it, torn the hatch from it, decimated the crew, and navigated the alien technology to now man the tank.

* A swashbuckling duelist Rogue has danced, parried, and riposted his way across the battlefield many times over cut down the enemy vehicle force while the Wizard and Fighter (via the lead tank) has run interference.

* A Wizard's regime of flight capabilities is not up to the task of flying the 3 PCs the 1000 feet up to the mother ship. Meanwhile, the Fighter and the Rogue (with a small assist from the Wizard; roughly 9% of an assist math-wise, but very archetype-coherently) have just performed the D&D equivalent of "hot-wiring" alien vehicles to commandeer that tech and make that significant vertical climb.

With that accounting done, what do the decisions and outputs (and obviously related resource suites and resolution mechanics) within these conflicts demonstrate about the differences of 4e and traditional D&D?

I can't tell. I mean, I really can't tell. The closest I can get is that the implications of the scene is that the PC's are fairly high level, and the wizard's comparative impotence suggests that magic is a weaker source of narrative power in 4e than in other D&D systems.

I'm mostly quoting this post as a useful jumping off point for what has been bugging me this entire thread, because the poster seems to think that a lot can be learned about the rules set from the transcript of play, and I'm not at all convinced that that is true. I think that's true only for a certain approach to rules that I consider to be highly untraditional and heavily influenced by the phrase "system matters", and which ironically despite that claim seems to always view rules in a negative manner - as things that are forbidden from play. That is to see, they see the purpose of the rules to strongly exclude from the play everything that isn't in the rules.

This is I would say a viewpoint strongly opposed to the traditional assumption of play in an RPG, and it is a viewpoint that can be applied to any rules set but which can also be eschewed for any ruleset.

The traditional approach to play in a PnP RPG is that you are simulating the world and therefore there is nothing that is not a matter of play. Rather than seeing the purpose of the rules to be to tell you how to play, followers of this traditional paradigm see the rules only as a means of resolving uncertainty or conflict resolution. Traditional rules sets rarely have a strong proposition filter which tells you which propositions are legal. They only have suggested tools for resolving propositions and some sort of table agreement, often unstated, for filtering propositions. In play in the 1980s through mid 1990's this proposition filter was usually, "Is it realistic...", where 'realistic' meant very different things to different people. What really mattered for these tables was how they were thinking about play, not the rules set they were using. With the same rules set, they could have generated virtually any sort of play or any sort of transcript of play, simply by thinking about how to play differently and preparing for the game differently.

One thing that I think 4e did do compared with traditional D&D was adopt the idea that it did need a proposition filter to say what 'moves' were legal to make in the game, rather than leaving that wide open and constrained (if at all) by unspoken table agreements.

 

[Manbearcat]

With a Secondary Skill and a buff from elsewhere (maybe spending a surge or a use of some kind of power), I suspect the Fighter and Rogue could up their odds of one of the two of them making their check by 50 %, so lets assume one succeeds and one fails and the mother ship deploys defenses (as happened in the 5e game) in the form of an L+1 combat (6050 * 3 = 18150 and change). Remember, in terms of the SC, the goal of the combat The PCs would have to defeat the Minions in 4 rounds or less. If that doesn't take place, the PCs accrue another Failure and another wave (6050 xp or 6 more Minions) shows up. I'd give the PCs 3 more rounds to defeat all the Minions. If they haven't defeated all the Minions at that point, the final Failure in the challenge would accrue and the situation would change dramatically (something like envisioned above).

I'd have the Minions all be Attack Drones (Skirmishers) w/ good Ref + Hover, Ranged 20 +27 vs AC; 11 damage + Shift 3 squares. Hard Roll (Encounter - Immediate Interrupt when attacked) = + 2 defense UtEoNT.

The primary stall/foil component of the encounter would be the below Trap:

Entroipic Drone - level 22 Trap (Controller)

Initiative +17
Attack
Move Action - Personal: The Entropic Drones slides up to 6 squares toward the nearest enemy creature each round.
Target: Enemies in CB5
Primary Attack +25 vs. Foritude
Hit: The target is pulled into a square adjacent to the Entropic Drone, takes 2d10 + 8 damage, and the target is grabbed (until escape).. On subsequent turns, the Entropic Drone deals 2d10 + 10 damage to targets that it is grabbing (DC 24 to break). It can grab up to 2 targets at a time. Make a secondary attack against each grabbed target.
Secondary Attack +25 vs. Fortitude
Hit: The target loses Flight (save ends) and the Entopic Drone drops the target.

Countermeasures

Suppress/Destroy (Encounter):

Standard Action by grabbed creature - Arcana or Athletics vs DC 36. The Entropic Drone releases the target and its systems go offline permanently.

Evasive Action:

(Immediate Reaction (Encounter) - The Drone moves into an adjacent square) Athletics, Perception, or Thievery vs DC 27. + 2 AC against the Entropic Drone's Primary Attack. If it misses, Shift 2 squares away from the Drone.