D&D 4E 4e: Death of the Bildungsroman

[FireLance]

But really, the best two words to answer "why not start really weak, so that you have that option" are: new players. Someone picking up D&D for the first time is going to start at level 1. If they play at level 1, and die at level 1 because the characters are nearly-incompetent newbs, they will not like D&D very much. WotC has determined that most new players don't like frustration in the game, since it turns them off the game. They probably figure the players who like to start out as dirt farmers are in the minority, and are worth irking if it means that more new players will be able to enjoy the game out of the box.

Incompetence is always relative to the challenges faced by the PCs. In fact, one of the best ways to challenge relatively weak PCs may be monsters that deal small, fixed amounts of damage, no extra damage on a crit, and which die on a single successful hit. WotC ought to think about introducing such monsters into 4e.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

This won't feel right or play right in 4e. Zapping spells all day; doing clever Paladin or Fighter tricks at level 1; teleporting for various races; etc. In fact, for all I know, the PHB or DMG might be explicitly state that bildungsroman is the preferred style of 4e, and that in their view the new 1st level supports the "farmer off the farm" "urchin from the streets" beginning to PC life. But I won't buy it.

I think this is almost entirely a matter of convincing yourself.

None of the prior editions of DnD really supported the sort of thing you're talking about here.

Some classes were better than others for supporting the man off of the street vibe but...

Every edition of thief has been an expert in practical anatomy.

Every fighter, paladin, and cleric has known how to use plate mail or at least mail from first level onward which should, historically, have immediately forbidden any player from using the 'fresh off the farm' story background.

Wizards came closest to utter incompetence at first level, but only if you can accept that any scholar could just happen to learn how to create and direct energy ex nihilo just by being stressed enough to think about it.

If you can accept any of those classes as being pre-trained at level 1 then you really shouldn't have any problem with 4E.

Whereas I, as a loyal DnD player, have had constant trouble with the converse that a character who had trained for the years it took to fight effectively heavy armor would have no tricks at hand other than 'weapon focus' and 'toughness.' Or that a character who could backstab with such incredible effectiveness would be otherwise less competent at theivery than an urchin should be.

Or that wizards would leave the tower at all until level 3.

I don't think this edition will support Bildungsroman any worse than any other, but both the paper first level camp and the cloth first level camp will have to do a fair amount of adjusting to a DnD game that looks like it wants to serve both sides well.



On an unrelated note:

D'Artagnan is both an exceptionally competent swordsman and a clear character in a Bildungsroman.

 

[Dormain1]

Original Post by FireLance
Incompetence is always relative to the challenges faced by the PCs. In fact, one of the best ways to challenge relatively weak PCs may be monsters that deal small, fixed amounts of damage, no extra damage on a crit, and which die on a single successful hit. WotC ought to think about introducing such monsters into 4e.

Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

I understand newbs die young but that can happen with the new rules too

Origanal Post by 5th Element
But when Conan began his adventuring career, he was already seriously badass. I submit that the vast majority of D&D players would not enjoy RPing their characters at 8 years old, or RPing years of slavery, chained to the wheel.

or his career began when he trained to be a gladiator

I like the new rules but I was hoping we could at least keep one baby

 

[Cadfan]

Suppose I started a 3e campaign where all the characters were juvenile dragons. As such, they started out with multiple hit dice, multiple attacks, breath weapons, high ability scores, spell like abilities, and the ability to fly.

And in context, most NPCs were other, much, much larger dragons, or monsters capable of seriously threatening an adult dragon.

Would this mean that my campaign was incapable of modeling a plot arc where the characters start weak and grow to achieve power? Of course not.

There seem to be 3 objections to 4e's ability to model weak characters. 1. Amount of hit points, 2. At will instead of spell slot magic, 3. Everyone has wacky powers.

The above adequately responds to all of those things.

In the meantime, there are a few very important ways in which 4e more effectively models low level characters.

Take a look at monster stats, and compare them to PCs. Specifically, look at what level a PC is expected to be when they first fight a particular monster.

The below is formatted as Monster/3e CR of basic version/4e Level of basic version.

Kobolds/.25/1
Goblins/.333/2
Hobgoblins/.5/3
Orcs/.5/4
I would put human guards in here, but I only have the SRD right now, and I forget their CR. I know you fight them at about level 1 if you like, and in 4e, a generic human guard racks up at Level 3.

Notice something? In the context of their gameworld, level 1 4e pcs are less competent than level 1 3e pcs.

This doesn't prove that characters start out as dirt farmers or anything, obviously they start out with enough training to do interesting things. If you want to play a game where characters start out with literally nothing, then learn the abilities that define them in combat, 4e doesn't give you that out of the box.

But 1) neither did 3e, and 2) the fact that it doesn't is COMPLETELY unrelated to things like amount of HP, or the nature of the magic system.

 

[smathis]

...Conan per the movie was unable to defend his mother when he was a child and became a slave, Frodo another from book or movie you choose...

The Conan thing could easily be handled by a Flashback mechanic. At an appropriate time, the Player narrates a Flashback to their youth to earn an Action Point or some other thingamabob. Limit it to once per session (or adventure) and you're good to go.

Besides, that scene in the movie didn't play a big role in the Conan opus. I'm not even sure if it's in the Howard stories. Maybe someone can clarify that to me. In the stories I've read, Conan is more than competent and fits more along the lines of a competent Thief/Fighter/Barbarian who grows more competent as the tale continues.

And regarding Frodo...

The wise GM would make a Frodo character an NPC that the PCs have to protect and start the story from Rivendell (not the Shire).

The PCs in a game like that should rightfully play Legolas, Aragorn, Gimli and Gandalf. Maybe someone could play Pip or Merry. I could see a case for someone playing Samwise.

But not Frodo.

The problem with Frodo is that he doesn't get much more competent. He doesn't come out of Mount Doom a katanae-wielding bad-bottom. He comes out barely alive and missing a finger.

I'm speaking from experience here too. I had a GM who cast me in the role of Frodo in one of his campaigns. I wasn't Frodo but I was a similar halfling with a magical trinket and a grand quest. It was a nightmare. The party took the trinket and left me for dead, basically telling me to hose off with my quest.

And I was too weak, incompetent and Frodo to do anything about it.

Nope. Frodo definitely belongs in the likeable NPC category. Only the most masochistic of players should volunteering for that role in a D&D party.

 

[smathis]

So what about playing in a low magic setting?

Check out my first and second post in this thread. Those should answer your concerns.

In summary, once Martial Power is out, playing in a low magic setting should be a matter of figuring out how you'll be doling out the magic bonuses. According to Mearls, that takes all of 20 minutes.

And, contrary to popular opinion, 3e did not do low-magic well. Just check the page count for Midnight, Iron Heroes and Conan. It was neither a simple nor an entirely transparent thing to do. And each implementation had it's own serious flaws.

Low magic is my thing. I love it. It makes magic meaningful (to me) by moving it into the realm of the plot point.

And I am solidly of the opinion that 4e owns 3e in low magic play.

 

[Dormain1]

Originally Posted by smathis
Nope. Frodo definitely belongs in the likeable NPC category. Only the most masochistic of players should volunteering for that role in a D&D party.

I totally agree Frodo is lame as a PC

Originally Posted by smathis
And I am solidly of the opinion that 4e owns 3e in low magic play.

I hope so, as someone who preferes Low magic it does look easier to convert

 

[Hussar]

In the fantasy GENRE, very few novels start with the protagonist at level 28 of power.

In fact, none do that I ever read. I'm sure they exist. They just are rather outside the norm (not that that is a bad thing; but I'm looking at the norm here).

It's part of the fantasy bildungsroman genre to feature a generally powerless or weak protagonist who becomes powerful over time (via adventures) and who grows/matures while this happens.

I'm not convinced 4e supports this sort of thing that well. 1st level in 4e may well be exactly equivalent to 1st level in 3e (regarding how often PC's die); but to me they don't = equivalent, given 4e's crash-boom-bang abilities starting at level 1, which make the bildungsroman theme hard to swallow.

Hong already addressed this, but, I'd like to chime in here too. The vast majority of short story fantasy characters are in no ways "everyman" characters. And, D&D has always, IMO, modeled short stories far better than novels.

The problem is, novel form doesn't work in the context of a campaign. Campaigns are, by and large, episodic, with each adventure being more or less self contained with a definite beginning, middle and end. While you can string your adventures together fairly tightly, a la Adventure Paths, many campaigns are not so designed. Those orcs you trashed at level one may have nothing to do with the demon cult you're currently stomping on.

And that's where the novel form falls apart. A novel form requires everything to be tied to a single (possibly quite complex) plot. You don't put in a lengthy adventure in chapter 3 that has nothing to do with the overall story. Many D&D campaigns, OTOH, do exactly this. Trying to model a campaign on a novel form is far more difficult, and, again IMO, a far more frustrating approach to campaign design.

Someone earlier mentioned Star Trek and that's a pretty decent way to go. Episodic. Whether your campaign is sandbox based or plot based, it's pretty hard to have a single over arching plot that includes all the PC's without a lot of very heavy handedness. It can be done, but, it's a very fine line to walk.

Skeptic - I wasn't thinking so much in terms of G-N-S theory. My thinking is that players are a thousand times more pragmatic than any character in a story. If they are given something, by and large, they are going to push the boundaries of what they can do with it. My group couldn't be the only one that saw clerics try to create water inside people's chests in 1e and 2e, for example.

This is why you need to model magic in the game as a tool. And, like a tool, it has to be specific to a limited number of jobs. When the tool is too good, then all sorts of balance problems come in - Continual Light spells to the eyes, Create Water as death spells, etc. etc.

 

[I'm A Banana]

And in context, most NPCs were other, much, much larger dragons, or monsters capable of seriously threatening an adult dragon.

Would this mean that my campaign was incapable of modeling a plot arc where the characters start weak and grow to achieve power? Of course not.

Of course, in this context, most NPC's are farmers.

And we have a few villains and monsters that we fight, but which are, for the world at large, not that common.

It's about power relative to the power of most of the populace. In 4e (like in every other edition of D&D), 1st level heroes are supposed to be well above the power of most farmers. 4e makes this more explicit, however, making it more difficult to play a game in which everyone starts as a farmer.

"Most People," in a typical D&D world, aren't going to be Fighters and Wizards and Rangers. They are, perhaps in mechanical terms, going to be minions. By calling this out explicitly and emphasizing it by powering up 1st level characters (compared to said farmers), WotC is making a game where you can't start as a dirt farmer and work you way up to an Archmage.

You couldn't necessarily do that in other editions, either, but 1st level characters weren't as much "above the cut" in 3e (for instance) that it was unbelievable. Both you and the farmer die in one hit, or sometimes two. You had some better training, and a little more defensive ability, and undoubtedly better stats, but you weren't of a different segment of person all together. There were even 1st to 3rd level adventuring-class-weilders in your little hamlett, though maybe only 1 or 2.

In 4e, the difference between a PC and a farmer is written in big bold letters everywhere.

That does miss out on some of the appeal of taking a normal commoner and turning him into a god-slaying object of mythos.

 

[DandD]

Well, if you really wanted to play a nobody who starts as an incompetent dirt-farmer who advances to player-character hero class, you should simply use the minion NPC rules for yourself. After all, some awkward players also took NPC-classes like Expert, Commoner and Aristocrat to show how weak their character was (some even dared to claim that they were therefore better roleplayers... Hah!).