D&D 4E 4e -- Is The World Made Of Cheese?

[silentounce]

Not when you stop and realize that the game is being designed with new players/DMs in mind, and not assuming that a DM has experience like the previous DMGs did. An experienced DM may get more out of random generation tables, but new DMs get more out of essays that teach them how to truly take control of their games.

Did you read my post? I said nothing about removing the essays. I understand both the necessity and the purpose. I said remove those random generation tables. Yeah, I suggested that a hardness table could be put in the appropriate section in exchange, but such a table would not be random in nature and would also be of use to inexperienced DMs. Seriously, go back and read my post. Somehow you read it and derived the exact opposite of what I said.

 

[Hussar]

I know this thread has gone way off track, but I still wanted to respond to this:



Here's the thing: believe in the game world first, and use the rules as tools for representing that world to the players. Imagine it to be sensible and self-consistant, and everything shakes out as it should.

I view it like this:

The rules are a spotlight with the PC's in the center. Everything the PC's could reasonably be expected to regularly interact with should be covered by the rules. Anything beyond that can be safely put in a supplement. You want mining rules? Get the Complete Miner. (not to be confused with that other spelling, which is totally illegal )

The core rules cannot cover every possible situation. Trying to do so paints you into some really serious corners.

It all comes back to that whole, "How big do you need the toolbox to be" discussion. In my mind, it's better to have broader, simpler rules, than more specific rules. In this particular example, Lizard, IMO, is attempting to use the wrong rules to model the action. It would be better to use the skill challenge rules rather than the combat ones.

 

[Sylrae]

There are alot of threads like this in the past week or so aren't there?

4e seems to have alot more of "make up what you want to do without rules", than players of 3.5e and previous are used to, and also, more than many like.

the 3.5e threads are virtually dead, so if you make a post there nobody will look at it. this to me means that I really don't have much of a choice but to eventually switch to 4e.

Why do we need to refer back to previous edition for a rule that should have been there? Didn't we buy a full set of rules for $110? Obviously not.

Simply saying that "DM can decide" is freaking cheesy and lazy on the developers part. If I didn't want rules I would be playing LARP!

If you mean like Mind's Eye Theatre, the rules seem about equally in depth don't they. Except Mind's Eye theatre had lots of stuff where you could refer to the main rules, and the only things that were changed were alternate systems to dice rolls. People still had sheets for their characters and such.

and yeah. the issue that the op of this thread, is that a whole bunch of the rules in 4e are either very vague and exploitable, or just incomplete.

I'd appreciate a hardness table, as well as a bunch of other things, and when I start running 4e I'll be bringing my 3.5e rulebooks with me. The missing stuff doesn't make as many issues for when im running it as for when someone else runs it. I'm much more likely to not like how a particular dm houserules things and not want to be in his game. making so many things poorly defined makes it more likely that players will have that issue with me too.

Once I pick up the rulebooks and own my own copies of the 4e books I'll be doing heavy modifications before I consider it usable. Makes me really consider whether its worth buying the books, or just using someone else's. I think I'll be looking at a custom roleplaying system that probably looks little like 4e. I bet I'll have a 100 page word document to give all my players that will supercede 4e. Concise rules are nice, vague rules are bad, and missing rules suck.

 

[LostSoul]

Here's another example. I'm pretty sure nearly everyone here would have gladly traded the tables on page 186 for a hardness table. NPC traits and quirks? Come on. I'm sure you'll all have a defense for that as well. But I don't think anyone in here who suggested that the DMs job is to be creative and imaginative can support those tables over some mechanical tables without being a hypocrit. Those kind of things, dungeon dressing and the like are just as superfluous as having tables for every little mechanical thing.

Random tables can be a springboard for creativity.

 

[Lizard]

Why does Lizard hate freedom so much?

You know, they call it "Kick in the Door" because they can't just kick through the wall, right?

So you'd think, but the rules imply otherwise.

 

[Lizard]

I know this thread has gone way off track, but I still wanted to respond to this:



Here's the thing: believe in the game world first, and use the rules as tools for representing that world to the players. Imagine it to be sensible and self-consistant, and everything shakes out as it should.

I think I understand you, but doing so means, basically, tossing out the rules. A sensible and self-consistent world doesn't have putatively normal humans (or beings with, presumably, very similar biologies) living weeks or months (if they roll well) without water. It doesn't allow, in essence, chalk to scratch diamond. Etc.

If the design intent is to chuck simulationism altogether, and model both wilderness survival and environmental destruction as abstract skill challenges -- that's fine. I have no problem with a highly abstracted system where the DM is expected to provide a believable narrative framework for whatever the dice (and player choice) tosses up. So the question then becomes why the half-baked almost-but-not-quite "simulationist" rules for these things are in there in the first place. Object damage I can see -- if the rules said "Use these rules for damaging objects during combat -- if you have to smash the altar of the evil god before the priest performs the ritual, for example" -- and use skill challenges for longer term out-of-combat actions. (For example, "Escape from prison" could be a skill challenge, and whether it involved digging a tunnel or seducing a guard Kirk-style would be determined on whether the PCs used Dungeoneering or Diplomacy).

Someone on RPG.net said "4e is the first version of D&D that knows what it wants to be". I do not think that is so, and the above is why.

I have no inability to decide that a rule is bad, unbalanced, or unfun. Nor do I have any trouble writing my own rules to replace/enhance the RAW. I do have a problem understanding why it should be necessary to have to house rule a brand new game, one which underwent years of develoment and playtesting, before it can handle simple things as well as its predecessor, instead of it being BETTER than its predecessor "out of the box", which is what you'd expect. Like I said, if someone can tell me where hardness was un-fun, slowed down play, or was otherwise a serious drag on the rules, I'll shut up, but, really, no one has made this point in anything like a convincing manner. Hong has his rules, I'll start my own.

Lizard's First Rule Of Game Design: The ability to easily or trivially fix a broken rule by DM fiat does not make the rule non-broken.

Lizard's Second Rule Of Game Design: The fact something has always sucked is not, in itself, an excuse for it to keep sucking.

The 4e rules, in general, seem rushed and sparse. It looks like page count was set in stone and rules were cut, trimmed and flayed to fit that page count. Just looking at the Dragon articles vs. the 4e rulebooks is astounding; the Warforged article kicks huge amounts of ass. It shows what the developers can do when they're not constrained. (Just compare the 4e pagecounts to the 3e -- and note larger type and wider margins, too. I don't know how much shorter the 4e books are in total word count, but if it's less than 15%, I'll be surprised.)

 

[NewfieDave]

Some people tend to forget that trying to break through a metal door causes copious amounts of noise. As a DM I never forget that, and neither do the three encounters worth of monsters who were just alerted.

Player cheese is best foiled by reminding the group who adjudicates the game.

I feel the rules that made it into the core books are generally good choices. Sure they were limited by page count, but do you really think a 1000 page PHB would be easy to reference at the table?

 

[LostSoul]

Object damage I can see -- if the rules said "Use these rules for damaging objects during combat -- if you have to smash the altar of the evil god before the priest performs the ritual, for example" -- and use skill challenges for longer term out-of-combat actions.

It seems to me that's exactly what the DMG is suggesting. Those object hit point tables are all in the sub-chapter headed Encounter Settings, in "Building Encounters" chapter. If you head back to "Modes of the Game" on page 20, it talks about Exploration Mode and Encounter Mode as being two different things. I don't think the DMG is suggesting running Exploration Mode using the Encounter Mode rules.

 

[Thasmodious]

I think I understand you, but doing so means, basically, tossing out the rules. A sensible and self-consistent world doesn't have putatively normal humans (or beings with, presumably, very similar biologies) living weeks or months (if they roll well) without water. It doesn't allow, in essence, chalk to scratch diamond. Etc.

4e doesn't do that, for one simple reason. No game is going to consist of 22 days of endurance checks while wandering aimlessly in the desert. The rule is meant to apply some pressure when the DM wants to make the harsh environment part of the adventure. It is not meant to simulate the reality of dying of thirst, because dying of thirst is not something that is going to happen to PCs in any type of normal D&D game. If the DM wants to run a game where there is no water for 22 days and the entire game consists of End. checks to try and survive, no conflict, no hope of rescue or salvation, then he can. I don't suspect players will stick around for very long though. And that is not the type of game that D&D is trying to model. Where this rule would come into play is not during a month of wandering aimlessly in the desert, but while making a trip across the fantastic Burning Sands of Real Ultimate Doom. Water is scarce, the threat of dehydration is there and slowly draining resources, but that's a minor pressure compared to the threat of the purple worms that make their home here, or the giant man eating scorpions, or the terrifying rocs, and the sadistic blue dragons. The environment is part of the adventure, not the adventure. The game is not meant to model trying to survive for a month in the desert.


[quoteSo the question then becomes why the half-baked almost-but-not-quite "simulationist" rules for these things are in there in the first place.[/quote]

There, at last, you have something of a point. The answer is simple. Those nods to simulationism that have plagued D&D since OD&D die slowly and put up a fight. 4e is a huge step forward, but some of those nods crept in, or stayed around. Fact is, though, its hardly a big deal. Is it really going to ruin your enjoyment

Object damage I can see -- if the rules said "Use these rules for damaging objects during combat -- if you have to smash the altar of the evil god before the priest performs the ritual, for example" -- and use skill challenges for longer term out-of-combat actions. (For example, "Escape from prison" could be a skill challenge, and whether it involved digging a tunnel or seducing a guard Kirk-style would be determined on whether the PCs used Dungeoneering or Diplomacy).

The rules do say that. That's why the object damage rules appear in the Encounter Design section.

There is no "need" to houserule anything out of the box. Every group houserules things when they find something they don't like or can imagine another way. That's the reason why most of these old holdovers were cut from the system. They were unnecessary and as many groups disagreed with the "realness" of the subsystem as agreed with it and houseruled it themselves. Tinkering with the system to fit your needs and playstyle does not imply that the game is somehow broken or inadequate. That's just a part of the hobby.

 

[small pumpkin man]

I view it like this:

The rules are a spotlight with the PC's in the center. Everything the PC's could reasonably be expected to regularly interact with should be covered by the rules. Anything beyond that can be safely put in a supplement. You want mining rules? Get the Complete Miner. (not to be confused with that other spelling, which is totally illegal )

The core rules cannot cover every possible situation. Trying to do so paints you into some really serious corners.

Sure, I agree, the core rules should cover basic adventuring, and leave the rest for splats, however if the destruction of other people's personal property isn't part of adventuring I don't know what is.

It all comes back to that whole, "How big do you need the toolbox to be" discussion. In my mind, it's better to have broader, simpler rules, than more specific rules. In this particular example, Lizard, IMO, is attempting to use the wrong rules to model the action. It would be better to use the skill challenge rules rather than the combat ones.

The problem is, if that was meant to be implyed, then why are there hp there at all? A set of DCs by material and amount of successes by thickness would have worked(for example), but instead we have a hp system which looks like it could be used out of combat, but actually can't as written, with no explaination for GMs that this is the case.