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

[I'm A Banana]

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.

But then we still have the problem of swingy 1st-level combat.

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!).

Sure, but this is a completely different issue, more related to the "narrative flow" of D&D levels 1-30 than about any kind of high numbers.

Effectively, you have to reconcile these two facts:

#1: PCs and NPCs operate under different rules.

#2: People want to play characters that are "no different" from NPC's, at least at low level, and who then grow to become something different.

4e completely disregards the second part of that, using previous editions as a guideline and guessing (perhaps correctly) that people want to play heroes all the time, and never really want to play dirt farmers who go on adventures.

Using minion rules for PC's just re-introduces the problem of swingy 1st level combat, which isn't something that has to necessarily come with "being like a commoner" (as a few other posts have pointed out).

 

[drjones]

Ok so raise your hand, who is going to play a worthless farmer for your first PC?

 

[KevinF]

...

If you didn't want to play low level D&D in 3e, you could start everyone off at level 3. You are safe from a one-hit critical, pretty much. You have a nice assortment of spells, lasting 2-3 encounters. Fighters have some feats, etc. etc.

But what if you want to play a budding mage who ran away from his village in 4e? It was easy in 3e. Just play a 1st level sorcerer or wizard. But what about 4e?

Do I have to create an artificial level 0?

Don't you remember how satisfying it was in 3e when you looked by (10 levels) and said to your friend "remember when those 3 goblins in the alley scared you to death - and almost killed you?"

There is a satisfaction which arises from moving from a state of weakness to that of strength.

I don't feel that 4e supports this.

I've played quite a few encounters using the new rules (as best we know them), and if a first level wizard goes into an alley with three goblins (1st level - not minions) the wizard will probably die every time unless they are extremely lucky.

Its true that first level characters are less fragile in 4E, but even 1st level kobolds are deadly and won't fall from a single attack (unless they are minions).

So if you want to create a real sense of vulnerability, minimize the use of minions and your characters will always be struggling to survive against the monsters.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

But then we still have the problem of swingy 1st-level combat.



Sure, but this is a completely different issue, more related to the "narrative flow" of D&D levels 1-30 than about any kind of high numbers.

Effectively, you have to reconcile these two facts:

#1: PCs and NPCs operate under different rules.

#2: People want to play characters that are "no different" from NPC's, at least at low level, and who then grow to become something different.

4e completely disregards the second part of that, using previous editions as a guideline and guessing (perhaps correctly) that people want to play heroes all the time, and never really want to play dirt farmers who go on adventures.

Using minion rules for PC's just re-introduces the problem of swingy 1st level combat, which isn't something that has to necessarily come with "being like a commoner" (as a few other posts have pointed out).

i disagree:

you now have enough space to have powerless constitution = hp players which can group together and kill a goblin or maybe an orc, just by using their base attacks and one or two aps...

I tried it, and it worked...you just have to improvise a bit... if you start powerless in 3.5, your hp are so low that one solid blow will kill you...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Ok so raise your hand, who is going to play a worthless farmer for your first PC?

*hands up*

ok, actually i force my players to play kidnapped farmers... adventure already began and we are havng fun... I played the same adventure in ADnD and i DMed it at lest 5 times in D&D 3.x and right now the 4e variation is quite fun (and would eb even more fun with the full rules in my hands)

 

[Timeboxer]

The bildungsroman concept works in literature. Everyone wants to understand their own coming of age and they can relate to a character going through the same process. The problem when you apply this to RPGs is that the bildungsroman has one thing in his favor that PCs do not.

Seconded. I don't understand why you need a mechanical construct to represent the bildungsroman. If you really want this theme of really weak characters, it seems to me what you should do is not use any mechanical rules until the characters are sufficiently powerful to become Level 1.

I mean, it seems very anticlimactic for the PCs to die at the very very beginning of the campaign, after all, if they're on a journey to adulthood. The solution to this would seem to be to remove randomness, and therefore the rules, and just let narrative take over.

 

[marune]

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.

Forgot the GNS terms if you don't like them, the important thing you describe here is the "what if"/open-ended playstyle of your players.

You can force them to quit it by playing 4E where magic is much more codified than in 2E for instance, but IMHO a better solution would be to make them understand the problems of this playstyle in general.

 

[Fifth Element]

or his career began when he trained to be a gladiator

No, since he wasn't adventuring then. He was still a slave. Eat-sleep-train-fight-eat-sleep-train-fight is not the life of an adventurer. In an RPG, all that stuff would be backstory. If the Conan movie were an RPG, the adventure would begin when he is released, or possibly before his final fight.

 

[marune]

Seconded. I don't understand why you need a mechanical construct to represent the bildungsroman. If you really want this theme of really weak characters, it seems to me what you should do is not use any mechanical rules until the characters are sufficiently powerful to become Level 1.

I mean, it seems very anticlimactic for the PCs to die at the very very beginning of the campaign, after all, if they're on a journey to adulthood. The solution to this would seem to be to remove randomness, and therefore the rules, and just let narrative take over.

At least, not using D&D, others RPG can deal with "weak characters" without resulting in deaths. And that is much more interesting than "free-form roleplaying".

 

[Timeboxer]

At least, not using D&D, others RPG can deal with "weak characters" without resulting in deaths. And that is much more interesting than "free-form roleplaying".

Depends on whether you need conflict resolution, which, in my opinion, you don't for the purposes of the OP. If the character actually fails to reach Heroic tier, then that kind of undermines the entire bildungsroman. As such, this needs to be a foregone conclusion, which to me means removing randomness -- at which point we're then talking about collaborative story construction between the GM and the player.

Another way to think about this: The OP is asking for a mechanical construct to describe the prologue to a Level 1 4E character's adventuring days. But the purpose of this construct isn't to start the character off weak, in narrative terms -- it's to make the player feel weak. I'm not convinced that you can both accommodate player weakness and narrative certainty simultaneously.