D&D 4E 4E: DM-proofing the game

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Actually, I *don't* know this, since it's never been discussed in playtest, and in many projects of this nature, promised features are dropped or moved to later releases.



Pretty much. Mechanically, everyone was a "0 level non combatant" with no means of modeling their actual skills or abilities. I pretty much avoided D&D from when I outgrew 1e to when 3e came out, precisely because it lacked any tools to model skills in the kind of depth I liked in games like Hero and GURPS. 3e brought me back to the D&D fold; 4e seems bound and determined to kick me away again.



I believe I said "Skill POINTS".



Precisely. A good *encounter*. Not a good *character*. If you don't see the difference, we're working on such different levels that I don't think meaningful communication is possible.



Uhm...I *like* them? I like to be able to take a monster of middling level and make him more of a diplomat and less of a fighter by swapping some feats? I like to give different monsters different strengths, such as giving some orcs with bows point-blank shot and some orcs with axes Weapon Focus.

Previously, you looked into the feats table: "What can I do to make this orc a better archer/axe-swinger".
Now, you look at the monster guidelines and look: "What would an Orc with the archer role look like".

Previously, you looked at dozens of feat tables, opened various splat books, to finally find the right combination of feats and skills. Now, you just follow a set of guidelines.

At the end, the PCs will fight your Archer-Orc or your Axe-Swinger Orc. But in the first case, you wasted a lot of time finding the right stats, in the second time you had some spare time to flesh out the look of Archer-Orcs and the reason why he and the Axe-Swinger Orc work together in this particular scene, and even remembered to give the Axe-Swinger a sheet of paper with some map sketches that might lead to the next adventure of the PCs.

 

[Spell]

ENWorld attracts tinkerers.

if i remeber well, wizards used to have a forum for house rules, too...

By all accounts 1e was houseruled a lot more than 3e. That doesn't square with my own experience I must admit but it seems to be the prevailing wisdom.

a wisdom that you gathered from what sources? don't tell me it's from the posts on enworld, because you just said that these forums attracts tinkerers.

i prefer to go with my own experience:

2e: tons of houserules from different supplements (including 1e ones) and of our own making, BUT still very much AD&D 2e.

3e: so many house rules proposed or wanted that i might have just as well stopped playing and/ or finding another system. which i did, funnily enough.

what other people experienced is none of my business. it would make a difference only if houseruling 3e was an oddity, rather than more or less a rather accepted reality.

Although many see it as such I don't think D&D has ever been a toolbox, at least not compared to the likes of HERO and GURPS.

it never claimed to be, but at least it was easier to house rule, in my experience.

No magic but Vancian

player's option: spells and magic. totally integrated systems for alternative magic forms.

insufficient advice for adjusting the magic level (in any edition).

i don't think they were as badly needed as now. and anyway, there were settings with higher (forgotten realms) and lower (ravenloft, lankhmar, masque of the red death) magic level standards. which doesn't solve the fact that there could have been rules for alternative magic systems and adjusting magic levels in the DMG, but i never claimed that 2e was better than GURPS or 3e (well, the last one not on this thread, at least! )

Sure it's a toolbox if you want to run Greyhawk with the names changed and no gnolls. But that's pretty tame in terms of what a fantasy world could be.

on the other hand, the pretty much same system worked to play adventures in greyhawk, dragonlance, dark sun, and ravenloft. not too bad for an edition of the game that was all about restrictions and forbidding players to do what they wanted, which is one of the biggest drums beated by 3e lovers ever since the game was being built.

personally, i don't think that a game should be all about options, unless it's the toolbox we both agree GURPS or HERO can be. having an "everything goes" approach, in my experience, causes the triumph of min/maxing, flatness of characters (everybody wants to multiclass freely and the distinctive roles of the previous editions or other games disappear), and, again in my experience, a serious suspense of disbelief ("so, it took my character 10 years to become a 1st level wizard, and joe can get a level in it after killing some goblins and spending a month in the arcanist's tower?!?").

again, just my experience. yours might be different

 

[FourthBear]

Actually, I *don't* know this, since it's never been discussed in playtest, and in many projects of this nature, promised features are dropped or moved to later releases.

So, you knew that there was a official claim that there would be support for social encounters, but you felt your claim that the 4e DM would be nothing more than a combat adjudicator was justified because social encounter rules *might* have been removed since they were announced?

The rest of your points deal with the way that 4e will be generating NPC and opponent stats. I will note that opponents will be able to have feats, that's trivial. You could add any number of feats to the presented Pit Fiend, since it uses the same characteristics and mechanics as PCs. It is now up to the DMs wishes, rather than the previous monster and NPC creation rules which previously dictated how many feats a creature of given level "should" have. There is no need to clog up stat blocks with Weapon Focus, Power Attack, Improved Critical and similar feats, when the DM can simply change the combat stats and give abilities to the opponents as he sees fit. It has been noted that it will be possible to add class levels onto monsters, if the DM enjoys using PC-like creation rules for his creations.

As to the utility of describing skills that will not see frequent use in a typical D&D campaign, we disagree. I much prefer the ability to have my players and myself choose flavor skills and abiltiies without having to formally keep accounting of them in all character sheets. If a campaign has a PC regularly rolling Profession: Chimney Sweep to overcome actual game relevant challenges, it will be easy to add that skill to the list for that particular campaign. There is no need to have the already complicated core rules filled with skills that *might* come in handy.

 

[Lizard]

Previously, you looked at dozens of feat tables, opened various splat books, to finally find the right combination of feats and skills. Now, you just follow a set of guidelines.

Sheesh, am I the only person who uses tools like PCGen and HeroLab?

At the end, the PCs will fight your Archer-Orc or your Axe-Swinger Orc. But in the first case, you wasted a lot of time finding the right stats, in the second time you had some spare time to flesh out the look of Archer-Orcs and the reason why he and the Axe-Swinger Orc work together in this particular scene, and even remembered to give the Axe-Swinger a sheet of paper with some map sketches that might lead to the next adventure of the PCs.

Maybe it's because I've been playing 3e since 2000 (and D&D since 1978) but it's never taken me 'hours' to swap a few feats around -- even without a computer. And maybe 4e will be easier, but the whole stick-a-finger-in-the-wind method goes against my Hero/GURPSish instinct. (Before you ask -- because everyone here only wants to play D&D, that's why.) I suppose I'll know when it comes out. (The other part of the equation is that creating within a rigid framework adds fun -- it makes it challenging and forces me to think creatively. Complete freedom is antithetical to creativity. Sounds weird, but it's true.)

 

[Lizard]

So, you knew that there was a official claim that there would be support for social encounters, but you felt your claim that the 4e DM would be nothing more than a combat adjudicator was justified because social encounter rules *might* have been removed since they were announced?

You are, perhaps willfully, misinterpreting my post.

The entire focus of the game has shifted to "the encounter". Monsters are built around encounters, and non-combat abilities (even those for "social encounters") are given short shrift -- the Pit Fiend, the cunning, plotting, master of hellish politics, had TWO SKILLS relating to non combat activities, and no kinds of powers, special abilities, tweaks, or gimmicks which might feed into this putative "social encounter" system. This doesn't bespeak a lot of focus on social abilities.

This is what I mean by "combat adjudicator". Monsters have simpler abilities and fewer tactics, so the DM doesn't need to think as much or make as many decisions -- he just moves the monsters on the chess board and rolls some dice. He's a computer in a t-shirt. Monsters have no interesting "flavor' abilities or much of anything of use outside the rigidly defined bounds of the encounter, so there's no need to wonder what the pit fiend might be doing while the PCs are just beginning to investigate his schemes, or work out how the pit fiend controls the arch-lich who is his putative ally. The removal of profession/craft/perform skills sends a vital message: PCs aren't people. They do not have jobs, hobbies, avocations. They are a collection of combat stats, and their main function is to move from one encounter to the next, fighting monsters who spawn into existence when the encounter begins and vanish when the encounter ends. "These abilities never come up in play!" is false. I have had non-bards heavily invested in Perform, and characters in my current game have a lot of Craft skills, since a focus of the campaign is on rebuilding a shattered world. Those who can fix broken machinery or build a new bridge will win the 'hearts and minds' of the townspeople. Handwaving it all down to "Just write a note on the character sheet" cheapens non-combat skills immeasurably.

"But that's what older editions of D&D were like!"

And that's why I stopped playing them in my early 20s. I like AD&D 1e for pure nostalgia reasons, but I can't imagine playing it now; I have no fond memories of BECMI and likewise can't see playing something like that today. If 4e is moving back to that model, it is moving away from me. So it goes.

 

[Spell]

See, I think the role of the DM is to arbitrate gaps in player knowledge (about the world, NPCs, etc.) rather than to worry about mechanical systems.

which is what happens with knowledgeable players.

it's another story if you are trying to teach the game to newbies that have no desire to read a 300 page manual to have some fun when they could just go down the pub and watch the match or chat the waitress up. or read harry potter. or /watch/ harry potter. or play WoW.

it's even another story if you are trying to do that, AND you don't particularly like that player #1 says that you can't run the combat like that, because he happens to have read the combat chapter, and you are running the game "wrong".

personally, i don't think this is the case of asking for a kind of rule distribution as it was in AD&D 1e, or as it is in Hackmaster (the GM stuff is in another book, and it's supposed to stay secret as much as possible). hell, when i used to play regularly, 4 out of 5 of my players were DMs, too. some of them knew the rules better than i did.

let me bring you all an example of what i'm talking about.
i bought Dark Heresy, yesterday (the RPG set in the warhammer 40K world).
on the second page of text (page 7, skipping the ToC), it says: "before you can begin, you and your roleplaying group have to make an important decision: who is going to be the Game Master? [...] The GM [...] presents the stories and situations, describes the wonders and perils of the galaxy, plays other characters and adjudicates the rules. the GM is the most important member of your group, so choose wisely. The GM ought to be fair-minded, well spoken and imaginative. An eye for detail is also helpful."

on page 10, in the box called "An Important note about reality", i read: "All the ideas and rules in this book are tools for the GM to use as they see fit. The GM is the ultimate arbitator of the rules and may choose to modify, amend or even ignore certain rules to better suit the playing style of your group. Abide by your GM's decisions as they [sic] are the one doing all the work to keep you and your group entertained!"

so, within the first 5 pages of the text, the concept that if someone spends the time to GM your game, you can't piss in his cereal bowl, and he can do whatever he wants with the rules is pretty well established.

as far as i'm concerned, while "rule zero" is in the PHB, it pretty much likes sounds like an afterthought or one of the old "holy cows" that couldn't be killed, rather than something worth enforcing.

you might all have different opinions on this, and you are welcomed to do so and discuss them. but, as far as i am concerned, if i GM a game, i spend a heck of a lot of time preparing the session (even more so with 3e than before), and i think i am open minded and fair enough with my players. they way i read most of the rules, they implicitly tell the player: "don't mind that bozo behind the screen. what does he know anyway? it's your game. you can do whatever /we/ say you can."

 

[FourthBear]

This is what I mean by "combat adjudicator". Monsters have simpler abilities and fewer tactics, so the DM doesn't need to think as much or make as many decisions -- he just moves the monsters on the chess board and rolls some dice. He's a computer in a t-shirt.

Monsters and NPCs will have precisely as many non-combat and flavor related skills as the DM wishes to assign them. The combat blocks in combat encounters give those characteristics that will be useful for a DM consulting them in a presumed combat encounter. Likewise, in a social encounter, the stat blocks may contain no combat information, but be dominated by details on socially important stats. There is no need to bloat the Monster Manual with all of the various things that a monster *might* be interested in or *might* do.

Let us imagine if the Pit Fiend stats *did* give the usual laundry list of spells and out-of-combat abilities that typically are featured in 3.5e stat blocks. They did not and will never capture adequately the full complexity and possibilities that a creative DM can manage. The Pit Fiend stat block having a limited list of possible abilities no more restricts the Pit Fiend villains any more than having *no* such abilities in the Human stat block limits human opponents. If we can get away from cookie-cutter lists of powers, perhaps we can encourage DMs to tailor special abilities to their particular campaign. Rather than having DMs go through the rather clumsy dance of monster advancement and class leveling to justify something that needs only a design decision on the part of the DM. Where you see limitations due to the lack of lists of abilities, I see the opportunity to tailor to my wishes.

 

[Reynard]

I don't want to be dismissive of these so called 'concerns' about the DM's place, but... I really can't find a way to finish that sentence.

That's because you are not actually adressing the subject -- you are addressing what you think the subject is. Your 1E example is in, fact, the crux of the isue: 1E has sparse rules outside of combat, so the DM was responsible for much more. You are wrong, however, about their being no support for the DM in AD&D -- the 1E DMG is often criticised for its organization because it is in fact a toolbox full of many different kinds of thing, from diseases to castle construction to society and culture. By contrast, 3E and apparently 4E try and cover everthing in actual written rules. The game-space these rules take up is game-space that used to be occupied by the DM. That those rules are there means there's no need for the DM to adjudicate tose situations, which in turn removes the "danger" of DM fiat and makes things more predictable for the players and creates a focus on engaging the game through the rules rather than through (as someone said upthread) "direct negotiations" with the DM.

It's funny -- Lizard and I share a general distrust of 4E but that's about as far as our opinions coincide. I think the game should be taken back to the 1E days, while I gather that Lizard thinks the game should be more like the "good" parts of 3E.

Reading the pit fiend stat block made me realize that, while it seems kind of odd that the creatures don't seem like they will exist outside of the bounds of a combat encounter, there is in fact a lot of blank space. And blank space is the best thing you can give a DM.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Sheesh, am I the only person who uses tools like PCGen and HeroLab?

I used PCGen for my PCs, but I still find it too much work for many things except for calculating final scores. In the end, I turned to my own OpenOffice character sheets and tables, and using the windows (or nowadays Mac OS) calculator for things I need to calculate.

Maybe it's because I've been playing 3e since 2000 (and D&D since 1978) but it's never taken me 'hours' to swap a few feats around -- even without a computer. And maybe 4e will be easier, but the whole stick-a-finger-in-the-wind method goes against my Hero/GURPSish instinct. (Before you ask -- because everyone here only wants to play D&D, that's why.) I suppose I'll know when it comes out. (The other part of the equation is that creating within a rigid framework adds fun -- it makes it challenging and forces me to think creatively. Complete freedom is antithetical to creativity. Sounds weird, but it's true.)

The problem is that most of the time, I just can't pick a monster from the DMG(s) and have it nearly ready for use. Usually, I have to pick a "base monster" and add HD or levels to get into a CR range appropriate for the characters. And that means tedious work. Putting the right amount of skills (he, this guy is supposed to be a noble? He needs Diplomacy and Knowledge (Nobility), but he doesn't get that as class skill/enough skill points/both.)

Now using Iron Heroes and the Villain Classes, and after reading a lot on D&D 4 monster design, I am no longer this stringent about applying the rules. Suddenly, it became a lot more easier. "I need a powerful fighter that can challenge the PCs? Okay Villain Class Champion, Level of the PCs +1, pick the skills as I like, double its hit points, and Combat Reflexes and Imrproved Initiative would sure be useful. Let's adjust the CR by +1 for that, and add 4 PC level warriors with half hit points. Put there CR at level -3, and be done with it. That should be fun enough for them...

I have yet to see what I'll do if I wanted to switch to a D&D 3.5 campaign again, since I need more spellcasters then in IH there. Hopefully, the players don'T look to close on the #spells they pull off...

 

[Reynard]

The problem is that most of the time, I just can't pick a monster from the DMG(s) and have it nearly ready for use. Usually, I have to pick a "base monster" and add HD or levels to get into a CR range appropriate for the characters. And that means tedious work. Putting the right amount of skills (he, this guy is supposed to be a noble? He needs Diplomacy and Knowledge (Nobility), but he doesn't get that as class skill/enough skill points/both.)

I think this comes from the tendency for some to want to use "classed enemies" rather than MM stat block enemies. 4E isn't going to change that tendency -- nor is it going to make it any easier. one presumes that because PC classes are intended to offer players some complexity-fun in character generation, that complexity-fun is going to remain if the DM decides to make a classed villain. If he doesn't want complexity-fun, he just grabs something out of the MM and goes. That's pretty much the same in any edition of D&D, and a fundamental DM prep question: what do I want, and how do I get it most efficiently.

If the "monster generation" system in the DMG/MM (do we know which book this is in, btw?) is really as simple as some are suggesting, the net bonus isn't increased speed in crating "new monsters" (the fastest thing to do is just pick an ogre and describe it as something else), it is increased predictability. And predictability based on rules is a benefit to both DMs and Players.