4e "getting back to D&D's roots" how?

[Spatula]

Ah, yes, if we're going to get all pedantic about it, then you're 100% right and that 3e supports encounters with multiple opponents. However, most people are bright enough to realize that multiple is more than 2.

I thought it was 5? But as it happens, multiple means more than 1. It's not pedantic to point out that Scribble said exactly what you claimed no one had said, especially since that was the comment that people were responding to.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Of course, the sheer amount of randomness (a la dice rolling!) in *any* combat encounter should remove a lot of the stress of building a "balanced" encounter. To me, chess is balanced. But a game where *every turn* there are tons of dice rolling to determine results has such a high degree of chance (which is a good thing, IMHO) that the notion of balance automatically is somewhat misleading, I think.

Statistics will "take care" of the randomness. In any particular instance, bad or good luck with the dice can turn the game against you. But overall, you will get the "balanced" results. Your first equal level challenge might go a little bad because your Cleric can't hit to save his life (or yours ), but in the next equal level challenge, the Fighter rolls 3 criticals in a row. Most of the time you will expend more resources in the first encounter, but less in the second one.
Only if the game is set up very swingy this can become a real problem - for example if just one bad dice roll turns the tide of the battle.

You know, first I would say give 4e's xp budget system a chance to be thoroughly tested, I mean honestly there are already vagaries popping up in how encounters have to be structured dependent upon what roles are present in a party. As an example, a large number of minions can either be a cakewalk (if your party has a wizard or two and/or dragonborn in it) or easily become more deadly than their xp cost would suggest if your party lacks these things.

The system not just uses numerical qualifiers like level. It also uses qualifiers like "Elite" or "Artillery". If you notice, Minions don't have a role, and I think this might be because Minions are both a qualifiers in the sense of Elite or Solo, as in Artillery or Soldier. An encounter with many artillery monsters is different from an encounter with many Minions or many Brutes, and thus they give a pointer to what kind of parties might feel more or less challenged by them.

There are of course still some possibilities for errors. Are Soldiers too hard to hit? Should Elites and Solos really have that many hit points? Are Minions to weak?

 

[Hussar]

I thought it was 5? But as it happens, multiple means more than 1. It's not pedantic to point out that Scribble said exactly what you claimed no one had said, especially since that was the comment that people were responding to.

Actually, we're going off of Baumi's point, not Scribbles. Baumi is the one that claimed that you could only have one opponent. Here:

Just wanted to add one little thing that might brought the feel back: Combats are now against groups again, like they were in earlier adventures unlike 3E where it was based arount one Opponent.

Now, to be honest, I missed this. I was going off of later posts as well, noticing this one:

Agreed. Certainly the published adventures for 3e don't reflect that either. Yet this whole "Yay! We can fight multiple enemies now!" vibe seems to be emerging as a major anti-3e myth of sorts.

Which is what I was specifically responding to. Published adventures don't actually use multiple enemies all that often in 3e. Sorry, damn, used that multiple word again. How about groups of enemies? Troops? Bands? What's a good word for more than 4 or 5? Pick one and I'll use that to forestall any further pedantry.

It's not an "anti-3e myth" to state that 3e adventure design doesn't support combat with groups of more than 5 or so. When I see the word multiple, two is not the number that jumps into my mind. But, seeing as where I happen to be posting, I guess I should be consulting Webster's with every post.

 

[Staffan]

You know, first I would say give 4e's xp budget system a chance to be thoroughly tested, I mean honestly there are already vagaries popping up in how encounters have to be structured dependent upon what roles are present in a party. As an example, a large number of minions can either be a cakewalk (if your party has a wizard or two and/or dragonborn in it) or easily become more deadly than their xp cost would suggest if your party lacks these things.

Yeah, of course 4e's XP budget system is only a starting point - there are other considerations to be made as well. But it's a much better starting point than 3e's CR/EL system.

 

[Simon Atavax]

For instance, in 1e it was perfectly acceptable(and expected) to find a well that when you drank from it gave you a permanent bonus to a stat. I probably wouldn't use this one in 4e for balance reasons, but it seems perfectly acceptable by the rules to say "Someone created a ritual to make water that permanently increased the strength of the drinker."

Whereas in 3e, if I found one of those, my thought would be "Wow, that seems like someone would have had to imbue the water with a wish spell that continually refreshes itself. If that's the case, I should be able to drink 5 times in a row and get my strength up by 5 points. It also cost him millions of gold by the magic item creation rules. Which seems odd that they'd just leave it here...being worth more than a couple of kingdoms."

So, it likely wouldn't be done in 3e, because it seems like it is contrary to the spirit of the game rules.

But to be fair, the 3.5 DMG warns against the very kind of metagame thinking you're describing here (see "Metagame Thinking", p.11). We are also told, "The ability to use the mechanics as you wish is paramount to the way roleplaying games work" (p.14). Granted, that section goes on to urge DMs (especially inexperienced ones) to be careful about tampering too much with the rules--which is reasonable advice for *any* RPG, I would suspect.

So the idea of a magic well that automatically enhances a player's ability score(s) is perfectly acceptable within 3.5, both according to the letter and the spirit of the rules.

 

[mmadsen]

So the idea of a magic well that automatically enhances a player's ability score(s) is perfectly acceptable within 3.5, both according to the letter and the spirit of the rules.

There's a world of difference between the rules allow it and the examples encourage it.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

But to be fair, the 3.5 DMG warns against the very kind of metagame thinking you're describing here (see "Metagame Thinking", p.11). We are also told, "The ability to use the mechanics as you wish is paramount to the way roleplaying games work" (p.14). Granted, that section goes on to urge DMs (especially inexperienced ones) to be careful about tampering too much with the rules--which is reasonable advice for *any* RPG, I would suspect.

Except it doesn't. It describes metagaming as thinking of the game as a game and making decisions BECAUSE it's a game.

There is a difference between "I made a spellcraft check and I know that in this world the only spell that can give you a permanent enhancement is Wish. If you drink multiple rounds in a row, it should give you more bonuses because that's the way the Wish spell works. Also, I know about creating magic items and an item like this would cost HUGE amounts of money." and "The DM is forced to use Wish for a magic item like this, since there's nothing else in the game that does this and he's using the magic item creation rules, so it'll be expensive."

One is perfect role playing and the other is metagaming. Even if they end up exactly the same. The example given in the DMG is the perfect example of this. It explains about a player saying "We should search for a way to disable this trap, because the DM wouldn't put a trap here without a way to get around it." which is metagaming. But it explains that if the player said "Let's search for a way to disable the trap because the people who built this place wouldn't have put in a trap without a way for them to get past it." that it wouldn't be metagaming.

So the idea of a magic well that automatically enhances a player's ability score(s) is perfectly acceptable within 3.5, both according to the letter and the spirit of the rules.

It says that it's good to use the mechanics how you wish. It never says you should use mechanics you make up as you wish. The mechanics say what spells do, how to make them into magic items and so on. In fact, if I was to paraphrase the section that says you can change the rules, it says "You can change the rules, but they work absolutely fine the way they are, and it is better to find interesting ways to use the rules as they exist than changing the rules or coming up with new ones. Plus, since the rules all work together to accomplish the goal of the game, a change of one can have disastrous effects on the rest of the rules. So even though you think it's a good idea, it's still not a good idea. But if you are absolutely, completely, 100% certain it's a good idea then go ahead and change things."

Which is a far cry from "Sure, go ahead and make up a well that gives you a permanent bonus to the strength score of anyone who drinks from it."

The philosophy of 1e and 2e was closer to "There's no RULES about what kind of items or spells exist. If you want something, do it." which caused a lot of things I didn't particularly like, balance wise...but it did create a more open game.

4e gets back to that feel in some ways without opening up EVERYTHING. It says(essentially), "If you need something to make an interesting plot, go ahead and do it...don't let the rules stop you. But a ritual to make the world explode might exist...it just shouldn't fall into the hands of the PCs. Don't treat the rules as the 'physics' of the game world...don't assume that just because none of the classes in the book can do something that it can't be done. Don't assume that if a ritual doesn't exist in a book that it can't be made. But use it only for NPCs and let the rules keep the PCs balanced."

 

[Engilbrand]

Majoru Oakheart hit the nail on the head. 3.5 assumed that everything was equal. Players and NPCs followed the same rules. 4e doesn't do that. New books keep coming out because there's a lot of stuff in that game world. Sure, it hasn't been made available to you or the players, but it may have been made available to an NPC in your world.
The system has character-specific mechanics. Outside of those mechanics, though, lies an entire realm of possibility. This is a game of imagination. I've been in games that adhere too much to the rules. It was a nightmare. By having rules for everything under the sun, 3.5 set itself up to be easily abused by douchebags. For 4e, though, even a decent DM has the freedom to make interesting things happen.
Even though players know that the highest level guy in their area tops out at level 6, there's no way that they're going to mess with him. Why? Well, those are just the highest level powers I've decided to give them. I could also do templates, but why bother? No. I'll just describe the things that happen around the players.
When the Orcish horde invades their town, the players will get involved in a couple of specific areas. While their own fights are going on, they'll be able to see the other things on the battlefield. I'll probably have the general decapitating the enemy and throwing them into each other. Wizards will be chanting together and letting lose with awesome devestation. When the players ask how they did certain things, I'll just tell them that the NPCs have some very specific training. Knowing how I've set up the area, the players will just say, "Ok. Cool. I wish I could learn something like that." It's all in reflavoring.
My favorite bit of flavor for the game:
In our very first session, I through the players against some powerful stuff. I had what looked like an Orc shaman and a dinosaur companion talking to some Orcs. While the players watched, the Orcs threw some meat to the dinosaur. Rather than turning to it, the meat hit its back, and a number of jaws sprang into being and quickly pulled the meat into the body. When the players attacked, the dino was right on the Warlock, knocking him down and dropping its body onto his. The Warlock player was actually surprised and freaked. After destroying the thing, they kept its collar. When they recently ended back in town, they did some research on it and discovered that it had the ability to mix a number of smaller creatures into a larger amalgam. (It was a level 2 Needlefang Drake swarm.) One guy starts laughing and says, "We need to get some kittens."
Me: "Wow. That's just wrong."
The other player: "You know what wrong? I was just thinking that same thing."
Does this thing exist in the rules? Of course not. It doesn't actually do anything. I just used it as a tiny plot point, and as a reason that something was reflavored. I will say that this is one of the thing that the player uses to show that 4e edition has brought back the feel of 1st, though.

 

[Simon Atavax]

It says that it's good to use the mechanics how you wish. It never says you should use mechanics you make up as you wish. . . . Which is a far cry from "Sure, go ahead and make up a well that gives you a permanent bonus to the strength score of anyone who drinks from it."

You'll be amazed to know that I have played with many DMs of 3.5 who actually -- gasp! -- *made stuff up*!!!

As far as I know, no one from WotC kicked down their door and took their books away.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You'll be amazed to know that I have played with many DMs of 3.5 who actually -- gasp! -- *made stuff up*!!!

As far as I know, no one from WotC kicked down their door and took their books away.

Which is very unfortunate and I hoped 4E would have changed that.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-rules/218792-new-job-offers-wizards-coast.html