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

[pemerton]

Huh. Railroady/illusionist narrative is basically what underpins the whole adventure path concept, and a lot of people seem to have fun with that.

Not to mention nearly every published WOTC and TSR adventure as well as all of the RPGA adventures ever written.

I didn't say I was part of the majority! But I do hate most TSR adventures (other than some of the Gygax-era classics) and find the WoTC ones are useful only for providing encounters and interesting NPCs - but the plot has to be disregarded.

I don't know any adventure paths, but suspect I wouldn't like them for similar reasons.

I like the old ICE Shadow World modules - maps, NPCs, conflicts but no pre-plotted resolution. And I haven't yet GMed, but want to, a lot of the Penumbra adventures, which have a similar set-up.

That's because it's actua;lly really hard to make a truly open computer game. GTA does a goed job with a sandbox game

I'm not a big fan of sandbox either. I like (either as player or GM) a situation where the GM provides NPCs, place and conflict (hopefully keeping in mind the players own preferences as expressed through character build and backstory) but the players provide the response. I don't like the idea (for example) that it is up to the GM, rather than the players, to decide who is the villain and who the allies. IMO, this is up to the players to choose.

Again, I'm sure I'm in a minority here.

 

[hong]

I didn't say I was part of the majority! But I do hate most TSR adventures (other than some of the Gygax-era classics) and find the WoTC ones are useful only for providing encounters and interesting NPCs - but the plot has to be disregarded.

I don't know any adventure paths, but suspect I wouldn't like them for similar reasons.

You know, if a putative universal theory of RPGs fails to explain the popularity of the majority mode of play, that theory may need a little work....


(Have I mentioned Robin Laws yet? Can I? Huh? Huh?)

 

[Fanaelialae]

Aren't additional hit points the same kind of kid gloves? I don't understand how you can have 'absolutely' no say about what your character does. Any reasonable DM would allow the party to retreat safely if things were going badly. If the DM has the monsters pursue your party until everyone is dead, is that a problem with the rules?

I can see, in a sense, why you would consider additional hp at level 1 to be kid gloves. Unlike a rule that prevents crits or causes all arrows to deal 1 damage until level 3, however, extra hp is not obvious and doesn't cause the disjointed sense of disbelief that those other rules would. It's a matter of consistency. And since 4e also raises the hp of level 1 monsters to the same level, it's really not kid gloves at all. It's just eliminating the swingy nature of level 1 combat without the DM having to house rule or fiat a single thing.

Let me try to explain this again. I died in the first round of the first combat of the campaign.

1. I roll a low initiative.
2. The goblins roll a higher initiative than I do.
3. A goblin archer singles me out and crits me with an arrow.
4. Max damage is rolled, my wizard dies.

I would love an explanation of what I could have done in that scenario to avoid my character dying without DM fiat. Because if there wasn't anything, then I had 'absolutely' no say in my character's fate. Had I won initiative, I could have tried casting sleep on the gobs or taken cover. Instead, I never got to act- I just died.

The DM doesn't have to pursue the party til they are dead, but some level of versimilitude is desirable in our campaigns. Just because the PCs decide to run away doesn't mean the gobs say to themselves, "okay guess those guys we ambushed for their stuff are running away and will never bother us again so we may as well not waste any more arrows on them even though they're running away with all that stuff we ambushed them for in the first place". No offense, but that's just silly. It isn't the DM's job to kill the characters but neither is it his job to ensure their survival (because if the DM is unwilling to ever let a character die, then we might as well just narrate combats and save ourselves the rolling; the result is a foregone conclusion- I used to be exactly this sort of DM when I first started out, so I know firsthand- eventually the players figured out that I didn't have the stones to kill them and I had a choice, kill one to disprove that theory, or give up- I chose the former).

The extra hp in 4e, coupled with weakened crits and slower scaling of damage, means that even level 1 characters can make a mistake or two and still survive to tell the tale. Running away is much more feasible if you can take 2 or 3 more hits than if you know, "Crud, running away will provoke an AoO that will render me unconscious if it connects". I've been there too (terrible luck coupled with a "no one gets left behind" attitude).

Should a 1st level party be fighting even a single ogre? That might be the time to stop and talk to the DM about what the plans are for the campaign.

I never said that we had fought ogres. You brought up ogres. Look back to your original response. For the record, no DM that I've ever played under has had us fight ogres at level 1. I only mentioned them for illustrative purposes, because you had already brought them up.

Rolling max on an arrow is enough to kill a 1st level wizard outright anyway. The crit has nothing to do with it, in that case. I will grant, sitting at -2 is a bit better than -14 with the crit, but in either case, you are out with one arrow. It has been that way since 1st edition. Well, without the crits.

Rolling max on an arrow renders a wizard unconcious and dying, not dead. While dying may not be much fun for the duration of the combat (assuming the cleric can't reach you to cast CLW, in which case it was a short interruption) there is the assumption that your companions will heal you up and you can continue the adventure. At -14, you are dead dead. No more adventuring for you unless you can afford a raise dead spell, which at that level you can't. Thankfully, the designers of 4e saw fit to put a few sacred cows up for slaughter with this new edition. Now, a single arrow will never put any character out of the fight; it takes multiple hits to put you on the ground.

Well, that is something that a group may want to talk to the DM about. There are certainly other solutions to that besides the ones I have suggested.

Ummm... no, our rolling out in the open is not something we need to talk to our DM about. It was something that we decided as a group a good long while back. It is how we prefer to play. We have our reasons (I don't want to derail this thread, so I won't go into it).

I don't mean to impugn your DM specifically, I am talking in generalities regarding this situation.

However, the solution proffered by 4e isn't any different than one that could be implemented in previous editions, and was the more popular, if I recall correctly. It is certainly a valid solution. My quibble is that it is not it is a bad solution, in and of itself. Combined with the other additions, however, it seems a bit overboard.

The problem with implementing extra hp in previous editions was that it made characters more powerful (technically, more durable, but you could take on more creatures than a normal PC and were therefore more powerful).

IMO, it is easier to introduce a less powerful level 0 into the game than it is to balance for making characters stronger than the norm at level 1. There have been a lot of good suggestions in this thread on how to implement level 0 in 4e. However, if you simply added +20 hp to all level 1 3.x characters, you imbalanced the system in the other direction. Those characters would ALWAYS have 20 more hp than the system expected them to have (though at higher levels the repercussions of this would become less and less noticable). If you scale down at level 1 (to create level 0) you affect nothing that has already been established. If you scale level 1 up, then all of the levels that follow level 1 are also scaled up.

I'm sorry that you feel that it is too much. Have you seen the new monsters, as they have been scaled up as well. The weakest level 1 (non-minion) kobold has 24 hp. Characters probably are significantly tougher than farmers, however, if that is your concern.

Personal taste, I suppose. I don't want to point out badwrongfun, so don't take it that way, but I prefer to have a bit of give and take with the narrative. I can't really say exactly how much is the perfect balance at every table, but it sounds like most people have a good idea, or they would be on the internet yelling about it, like we do.

Regarding your first point, I am certain I have heard that in response to some arguments favouring 4e over previous editions utilizing the 'houserule it' counterpoint.
Not from you specifically, that I am aware of

We have give and take with the narrative too. We just express it differently. One of the most memorable encounters from a campaign that my DM ran last year was against some sort of air elemental giant. We faced him in the throne room he had usurped, and an epic melee ensued. Our characters fought hard and well, but one by one we were felled by his might (the DM had a string of luck). Finally, it was just him and Drekalina (character of a friend of mine), who was a cowardly hag with a kobold complex (some of the best comic relief we've ever had in a campaign- Drekalina is fondly remembered to this day by my group). Both were on their last legs. Drekalina's player looks at our DM and says something like, "seeing the rest of the group is down, Drekalina's terror becomes desperation and she lashes out with everything she's got". Our DM let her enter barbarian rage, which gave Drekalina just enough oomph to finish off the boss before collapsing unconscious. Never again did Drekalina gain the rage bonus, but that one time was enough. It made for a truly unforgettable encounter, and the DM didn't fudge a single roll.

Drekalina was actually a really good example of a character who I would consider a bildungsroman style character, though it was really more due to how her player roleplayed her than any mechanical property. She started out as an ignorant hag who was under the delusion that she was a kobold and ran away to hide from even the most insignificant threats. She ended the campaign having significantly matured and overcome her delusions, and going toe to toe with an entity that devoured entire planets.

I'm not saying that your style is badwrongfun by any means. Just that our playstyle suits my group well, and that 4e looks like it will suit our playstyle better than any previous edition.

House rules are often a pain because they can introduce unintended resultant effects. We use quite a few of them in our 3.5 games, but they've resulted from years of finageling the system to work more closely to what we want. Expecting newb DMs to create house rules is just asking for something to go wrong, IMO.

 

[Storm-Bringer]

Like others here, I don't use the DM's screen of cheat. All my die rolls are 100% in the open. To many fudging=cheating. But, saying that you should simply cheat in order to facilitate rules seems very strange to me.

I didn't say that. I said you may have to nudge things a bit to facilitate fun. That is the major goal of this new edition, isn't it?

 

[Dausuul]

...because if the DM is unwilling to ever let a character die, then we might as well just narrate combats and save ourselves the rolling; the result is a foregone conclusion- I used to be exactly this sort of DM when I first started out, so I know firsthand- eventually the players figured out that I didn't have the stones to kill them and I had a choice, kill one to disprove that theory, or give up.

This.

I've wrestled with this for a long time in D&D, and so has every other DM I know. The rules as written have always tended toward a fairly high PC mortality rate, higher than most gaming groups (at least the ones I've played in) are comfortable with. But if you consistently fudge the dice to prevent PC death, eventually the players will figure out that it's happening--players are smart like that--and the excitement of combat is lost.

So it becomes a balancing act. You have to fudge the dice enough to bring mortality down to an acceptable level, without eliminating it completely. You have to be careful to make your fudging evenhanded, so you aren't favoring one PC. And you have to know how to do it subtly, so it's not obvious that you just threw the fight to the PCs--players should never, ever know when you fudged a roll; my experience has been that it's better to let a PC die than it is to reveal that you're intervening to keep him/her alive.

Some DMs can manage this balancing act. Many can't.

For the first time ever, 4th Edition seems to be recognizing and addressing this problem. It is my fond hope that I will be able to run my 4E game without any fudging at all. I certainly intend to try.

 

[Fanaelialae]

This.

I've wrestled with this for a long time in D&D, and so has every other DM I know. The rules as written have always tended toward a fairly high PC mortality rate, higher than most gaming groups (at least the ones I've played in) are comfortable with. But if you consistently fudge the dice to prevent PC death, eventually the players will figure out that it's happening--players are smart like that--and the excitement of combat is lost.

So it becomes a balancing act. You have to fudge the dice enough to bring mortality down to an acceptable level, without eliminating it completely. You have to be careful to make your fudging evenhanded, so you aren't favoring one PC. And you have to know how to do it subtly, so it's not obvious that you just threw the fight to the PCs--players should never, ever know when you fudged a roll; my experience has been that it's better to let a PC die than it is to reveal that you're intervening to keep him/her alive.

Some DMs can manage this balancing act. Many can't.

For the first time ever, 4th Edition seems to be recognizing and addressing this problem. It is my fond hope that I will be able to run my 4E game without any fudging at all. I certainly intend to try.

Exactly.

 

[Fifth Element]

Then, avoid being hit. There are plenty of ways to earn XP in previous editions without plunging into combat all the time.

The point is that even a single hit can down a 1st-level character. It's fine to say "don't get hit", but many times it's simply unavoidable. One single mistake, and you're gone.

Point out where I said there was something wrong with the rules. I am offering alternatives ways to counteract this alleged 'swingyness'. I don't think there is anything wrong with the rules as they stand. I recall a good deal of running away and ambushes back when I started with 1st edition. And everyone had a missile weapon.

By suggesting ways that DMs can ignore the rules in order to promote low-level survival, you point out that the rules do not do it by themselves. (And if everyone has a missile weapon, running away won't do you much good...)

In other words, when you can't trust the DM to intervene and make sure everyone is having fun.

As I said before, a problem with the DM, not the rules.

You keep saying that. Are you really suggesting that a DM who does not ignore the rules during low-level play is simply a bad DM? Again, I ask about new DMs. They may not know enough about the rules to realize that low-level characters die unless you ignore the rules. 4E helps this problem by building the rules so that you don't have to ignore them in order for your 1st-level characters survive.

Why not simpy design the rules so that you don't have to ignore them in low-level play?

Most of the changes I have seen previewed and proposed are exactly of this kind. Protecting the characters from the DM.

How about protecting DMs from having to consistently use fiat or house rules for low-level play in order to give 1st-level characters a decent shot of making 2nd level?

Not only will the new edition fail to provide any kind of protection from the DM that is intent on killing off characters, it will encourage that very behaviour from newer DMs, because they will be even more strictly 'following the rules'.

I can't even respond to this. It's a ridiculous argument. By designing the rules so that 1st-level characters have greater survivability per the rules, they will die more often because the rules will be used?

 

[Fifth Element]

For the first time ever, 4th Edition seems to be recognizing and addressing this problem. It is my fond hope that I will be able to run my 4E game without any fudging at all. I certainly intend to try.

This. QFT. Etc.

 

[Storm-Bringer]

I can see, in a sense, why you would consider additional hp at level 1 to be kid gloves. Unlike a rule that prevents crits or causes all arrows to deal 1 damage until level 3, however, extra hp is not obvious and doesn't cause the disjointed sense of disbelief that those other rules would. It's a matter of consistency. And since 4e also raises the hp of level 1 monsters to the same level, it's really not kid gloves at all. It's just eliminating the swingy nature of level 1 combat without the DM having to house rule or fiat a single thing.

Well, that is why you would stop using them about level three or so. Kind of like that fifteen seconds of invulnerability you get in side scrolling video games.

Let me try to explain this again. I died in the first round of the first combat of the campaign.

No, I get it. Why did you rush into combat? Or, if you were surprise ambushed, why didn't the DM let you get away when things turned ugly?

I would love an explanation of what I could have done in that scenario to avoid my character dying without DM fiat. Because if there wasn't anything, then I had 'absolutely' no say in my character's fate. Had I won initiative, I could have tried casting sleep on the gobs or taken cover. Instead, I never got to act- I just died.

I am not arguing against DM fiat. It needs to be exercised every once in a while. For example, the goblin targeting your wizard. Did the DM roll for a random target, and it was your wizard?

I appreciate that your playstyle works for your group, except when you raise a concern where it doesn't. It sounds a lot like that DM is abdicating several decisions to the dice that they should be making themself, to keep the game flowing.

The DM doesn't have to pursue the party til they are dead, but some level of versimilitude is desirable in our campaigns. Just because the PCs decide to run away doesn't mean the gobs say to themselves, "okay guess those guys we ambushed for their stuff are running away and will never bother us again so we may as well not waste any more arrows on them even though they're running away with all that stuff we ambushed them for in the first place". No offense, but that's just silly.

No, there are plenty of wild animals that will simply attack hard enough and long enough to protect their young or their territory. Intelligent creatures will have further motivations, but largely, engaging an opponent until your entire raiding/hunting party is slaughtered is silly.

It isn't the DM's job to kill the characters but neither is it his job to ensure their survival (because if the DM is unwilling to ever let a character die, then we might as well just narrate combats and save ourselves the rolling; the result is a foregone conclusion- I used to be exactly this sort of DM when I first started out, so I know firsthand- eventually the players figured out that I didn't have the stones to kill them and I had a choice, kill one to disprove that theory, or give up- I chose the former).

I don't think my suggestion to use these ideas until approximately level three constitutes 'ever'. For example, triple starting hit points, or even triple max starting hit points, but that is all they get until level three, then they can start rolling normally again. If that seems to much, don't roll crits for weapons until they hit 3rd level then all bets are off. The part where I qualify the suggestions with until third level is the important part, if the issue in question is 'starting level combat is too swingy'.

The extra hp in 4e, coupled with weakened crits and slower scaling of damage, means that even level 1 characters can make a mistake or two and still survive to tell the tale. Running away is much more feasible if you can take 2 or 3 more hits than if you know, "Crud, running away will provoke an AoO that will render me unconscious if it connects". I've been there too (terrible luck coupled with a "no one gets left behind" attitude).

So, why is adding more hit points in previous editions a bad idea, again?

I never said that we had fought ogres. You brought up ogres. Look back to your original response. For the record, no DM that I've ever played under has had us fight ogres at level 1. I only mentioned them for illustrative purposes, because you had already brought them up.

I was continuing the example.

Rolling max on an arrow renders a wizard unconcious and dying, not dead. While dying may not be much fun for the duration of the combat (assuming the cleric can't reach you to cast CLW, in which case it was a short interruption) there is the assumption that your companions will heal you up and you can continue the adventure. At -14, you are dead dead. No more adventuring for you unless you can afford a raise dead spell, which at that level you can't. Thankfully, the designers of 4e saw fit to put a few sacred cows up for slaughter with this new edition. Now, a single arrow will never put any character out of the fight; it takes multiple hits to put you on the ground.

Who decided to shoot an arrow at the wizard?

This is what I am talking about. If your group has decided to roll out in the open for everything, then you will have to take your lumps. That DM was more interested in applying the rules evenly than making sure the group was having fun. Having fun seemed to be more of a priority for you, but the DM decided the goblins would attack everyone the same amount, and prevented themself from being able to adjust the outcome of the attacks.

That DM was refereeing a game. You were trying to tell a story. The problem isn't with the rules, they are with the clash of expectations.

Ummm... no, our rolling out in the open is not something we need to talk to our DM about. It was something that we decided as a group a good long while back. It is how we prefer to play. We have our reasons (I don't want to derail this thread, so I won't go into it).

I suppose I can guess at some of them, but that doesn't mean it is still the best playstyle for that group. Things change.

The problem with implementing extra hp in previous editions was that it made characters more powerful (technically, more durable, but you could take on more creatures than a normal PC and were therefore more powerful).

I thought that was the issue that 4e fixes.

IMO, it is easier to introduce a less powerful level 0 into the game than it is to balance for making characters stronger than the norm at level 1. There have been a lot of good suggestions in this thread on how to implement level 0 in 4e.

I agree, there are good suggestions. None of them are particularly simple, however. Tacking on some extra hit points seems to be the fix people are looking for because... Well, that is what 4e is doing, isn't it?

However, if you simply added +20 hp to all level 1 3.x characters, you imbalanced the system in the other direction. Those characters would ALWAYS have 20 more hp than the system expected them to have (though at higher levels the repercussions of this would become less and less noticable). If you scale down at level 1 (to create level 0) you affect nothing that has already been established. If you scale level 1 up, then all of the levels that follow level 1 are also scaled up.

Wait, I thought the critical hits and such were what made it drastically imbalanced to begin with. Adding a buffer to that, as you mentioned above, should bring it closer to balanced, not imbalanced in another direction. It certainly could, I will grant, if you go totally gonzo with the extra hit points. As I mentioned above, you aren't really giving them extra anyway, just borrowing the next two levels worth, and doing things normally after third level.

I'm sorry that you feel that it is too much. Have you seen the new monsters, as they have been scaled up as well. The weakest level 1 (non-minion) kobold has 24 hp. Characters probably are significantly tougher than farmers, however, if that is your concern.

I have seen the new monsters. Their larger hit points isn't much of a balancing factor, when their damage output is greatly reduced.

We have give and take with the narrative too. We just express it differently. One of the most memorable encounters from a campaign that my DM ran last year was against some sort of air elemental giant. We faced him in the throne room he had usurped, and an epic melee ensued. Our characters fought hard and well, but one by one we were felled by his might (the DM had a string of luck). Finally, it was just him and Drekalina (character of a friend of mine), who was a cowardly hag with a kobold complex (some of the best comic relief we've ever had in a campaign- Drekalina is fondly remembered to this day by my group). Both were on their last legs. Drekalina's player looks at our DM and says something like, "seeing the rest of the group is down, Drekalina's terror becomes desperation and she lashes out with everything she's got". Our DM let her enter barbarian rage, which gave Drekalina just enough oomph to finish off the boss before collapsing unconscious. Never again did Drekalina gain the rage bonus, but that one time was enough. It made for a truly unforgettable encounter, and the DM didn't fudge a single roll.

But, was she a barbarian?

Drekalina was actually a really good example of a character who I would consider a bildungsroman style character, though it was really more due to how her player roleplayed her than any mechanical property. She started out as an ignorant hag who was under the delusion that she was a kobold and ran away to hide from even the most insignificant threats. She ended the campaign having significantly matured and overcome her delusions, and going toe to toe with an entity that devoured entire planets.

It sounds like she wasn't. How do you reconcile letting a non-barbarian gain a barbarian rage bonus with 'didn't fudge a single roll'?

I'm not saying that your style is badwrongfun by any means. Just that our playstyle suits my group well, and that 4e looks like it will suit our playstyle better than any previous edition.

Honestly? 'Wizard died from a critical arrow hit' doesn't exactly mesh with 'suits my group well'. If the first part was more along the lines of 'We were swarmed by gobbos, and my Wizard went down in the first round from an arrow! My next guy was a...' But it isn't. Clearly you were not pleased with the outcome.

House rules are often a pain because they can introduce unintended resultant effects. We use quite a few of them in our 3.5 games, but they've resulted from years of finageling the system to work more closely to what we want. Expecting newb DMs to create house rules is just asking for something to go wrong, IMO.

But, in order to avoid houserules, the game would have to be something like flawless. If the game isn't flawless, and house rules to correct the problems generally result from years of experimenting, how can new DMs be expected to run a reasonably enjoyable game?

 

[Storm-Bringer]

The point is that even a single hit can down a 1st-level character. It's fine to say "don't get hit", but many times it's simply unavoidable. One single mistake, and you're gone.

I don't get it. A mistake has consequences? It's possible for single hit to drop a PC?

By suggesting ways that DMs can ignore the rules in order to promote low-level survival, you point out that the rules do not do it by themselves. (And if everyone has a missile weapon, running away won't do you much good...)

The rules don't do anything by themselves.

You keep saying that. Are you really suggesting that a DM who does not ignore the rules during low-level play is simply a bad DM? Again, I ask about new DMs. They may not know enough about the rules to realize that low-level characters die unless you ignore the rules. 4E helps this problem by building the rules so that you don't have to ignore them in order for your 1st-level characters survive.

No, I am suggesting that a DM who doesn't nudge things a bit when the players are expecting a low mortality rate and the ability to reach mid to high levels is a bad DM. Likewise, a DM who is fudging every roll when the players are expecting to survive or not based on their planning and use of the rules is a bad DM.

Why not simpy design the rules so that you don't have to ignore them in low-level play?

You don't have to ignore them in low level play.

How about protecting DMs from having to consistently use fiat or house rules for low-level play in order to give 1st-level characters a decent shot of making 2nd level?

You state that as though it were a first cause. If this were a valid premise, there would be no instances of the converse. Everyone would complain about having characters killed off constantly. That tells me it isn't a problem with the rules. Only the application of the rules.

I can't even respond to this. It's a ridiculous argument. By designing the rules so that 1st-level characters have greater survivability per the rules, they will die more often because the rules will be used?

No, they will die just as often, because the DM will feel at greater liberty to throw harder monsters at them. As shown in DDXP, the reports seemed to indicate characters going down with about the same frequency, so what has it fixed?