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

[Old Gumphrey]

Things that come up very rarely, like "can I start a purple worm ranch" are not mentioned.

Man this thread would make the best campaign ever. Purple worm-ranchin' bridge punchin' gnome monks with adamantine knuckle dusters.

 

[Jhulae]

Digging underneath your enemies frontline is a time tested age old military tactic.

Either you want to get past their walls, or you want to collapse them, or both.

Heck, when I was stationed in Korea the boyz up north even dug themselves under and past the DMZ.

Dirt is not stone. Digging under enemy fortifications was done by removing the dirt, not digging through stone. I'm sure the Koreans were digging in the dirt, not through stone.

I don't need a rule in the book to replace my common sense to tell me that I can't dig through a stone wall with a spoon. That concept is almost as ridiculous as allowing something asinine because the rules can be combined in ludicrous ways (such as the 'bag of rats').

I have to say, really, if you need a rule for *everything* that could possibly occur at any given time and can't allow for common sense to prevail when it should, I don't think *any* game is the right game (except maybe ASL. I tried to read through my brother's copy once. I think my eyes glazed over after the first few sentences).

 

[Family]

 

[Obryn]

In the case of (1), no it has no real effect. It doesn't matter what you use, so long as you do X damage, you bypass hardness. Time, OTOH, I already agreed was the main difference.

My line of argument is that walls should have no hit points at all since using combat mechanics to deal with things better handled by skills is pointless.

And, oh look, that's what they did. Walls don't have hit points AT ALL. You can beat on a wall all day long with a sword and it won't do anything.

mmkay. Then replace "wall" with "iron door." Rinse, repeat.

In a hardness system, a rogue with a dagger can't slowly carve his way through an iron door unless he's Beefy McBeefcake.

You're glossing over the "So long as you do X damage" part of Hardness. That's exactly the point - unless you do a minimum amount of damage, you won't get through ever. Once you do, it could either take a tiny bit of time or a whole heck of a lot of time. I like that for the drama of it, and for game reasons.

But, in any case, there's another reason for the removal of hardness - the removal of Damage Reduction. Yes, there is still energy resistance, but, as far as I know, there is no DR. Hardness is the same mechanic. If we don't have DR for monsters, why do we need DR for walls?

Resist All works the same...

I think my argument against Hardness _at_all_ is that it means that it is sometimes absolutely impossible to destroy something. These are corner cases that might not matter much, but - why can't a Strength 8 Wizard not use a Dagger to scratch on a stone wall, to, say.. remove some iron bars? He's fighting against Hardness 5 (Stone) or Hardness 10 (Iron) in 3E, and deals 1d4-1 damage. No way to get through. A Strength 6 Halfling or Gnome wouldn't even be able to "carve" his way through a wooden door. If we want to go all "simulationist" on this, doesn't this reach to some unreasonable looking conclusions?

I'm not really looking at this for simulationist reasons, believe it or not. Others might be, but they're on their own. From a game perspective, I like the increased drama of a hardness system. I also like to have rules I can thumb through in those rare cases where a dwarf might want to carve through the walls of an inn into the neighboring room. It's fun, and it keeps the very silliest cases under control.

Why can't a Wizard carve through stone and iron? Well, really - should they? Ignoring all arguments from realism, how long do you want this to take the wizard? under the current rules, it's 2 minutes, max. Ditto to carve through his manacles.

I don't need a rule in the book to replace my common sense to tell me that I can't dig through a stone wall with a spoon. That concept is almost as ridiculous as allowing something asinine because the rules can be combined in ludicrous ways (such as the 'bag of rats').

I have to say, really, if you need a rule for *everything* that could possibly occur at any given time and can't allow for common sense to prevail when it should, I don't think *any* game is the right game (except maybe ASL. I tried to read through my brother's copy once. I think my eyes glazed over after the first few sentences).

Well, no, of course you don't need a rule for every situation. I'm not asking for a rule for every situation. I'd like better rules for this situation.

I have no idea why you're comparing this to the bag of rats thing. If you compare every rules disagreement with the bag of rats, you'll quickly find you can't debate about anything.

I think it's reasonable to have good rules for things that come up often. While I don't want anyone carving through the dungeon, breaking down doors and other objects can happen quite a lot in a cinematic fantasy game. And - like I mentioned above - breaking through the walls of an inn.

-O

 

[gonesailing]

mmkay. Then replace "wall" with "iron door." Rinse, repeat.

In a hardness system, a rogue with a dagger can't slowly carve his way through an iron door unless he's Beefy McBeefcake.

You're glossing over the "So long as you do X damage" part of Hardness. That's exactly the point - unless you do a minimum amount of damage, you won't get through ever. Once you do, it could either take a tiny bit of time or a whole heck of a lot of time. I like that for the drama of it, and for game reasons.

My Beef with Beefy McBeefcake is that he should NEVER be able to carve through an iron door with a dagger.
If the dagger is mundane, then at a MINIMUM he will be doing at least half as much damage to the dagger as he is to the door. If it is "Magic" then it all depends on how you interpret magic. Under any system I would rule that it would do damage (to both the door and the dagger) and mutter something about crazy players ruining magic items doing silly stuff

All I have to say is that Characters should use the right tools for the job. If you want to dig holes in my campaign then bring a shovel. You want to chip stone bring chisels and a pick.
The DM should bring the right tools too...using a Skill or ability (with the right tools) is a Skill or Ability Check, not combat. If I remember correctly in the DMG or PHB it mentions that the DM should use ability checks when there is no applicable skill.

For example (and this is off the top of my head):
Chisel through an Iron Door (with Hammer and Chisel):
Ability: Strength
Success DC: 25
+5 Racial Bonus to Dwarves
+5 Bonus to Characters with Blacksmithing or Mining in their Character Bios (DM Discretion)
Failure = Broken Tools


Chisel through an Iron Door (without Hammer and Chisel):
Ability: Strength
Success DC: 45
+5 Racial Bonus to Dwarves
+5 Bonus to Characters with Blacksmithing or Mining in their Character Bios (DM Discretion)
Failure = Broken Tools

I'm not really looking at this for simulationist reasons, believe it or not. Others might be, but they're on their own. From a game perspective, I like the increased drama of a hardness system. I also like to have rules I can thumb through in those rare cases where a dwarf might want to carve through the walls of an inn into the neighboring room. It's fun, and it keeps the very silliest cases under control.

Why can't a Wizard carve through stone and iron? Well, really - should they? Ignoring all arguments from realism, how long do you want this to take the wizard? under the current rules, it's 2 minutes, max. Ditto to carve through his manacles.


Well, no, of course you don't need a rule for every situation. I'm not asking for a rule for every situation. I'd like better rules for this situation.

For the Drama perspective perhaps a Skill Challenge would be better. It would be a party wide event and give every player a way to shine.

Sorry no examples I am still absorbing the skill challenge system.

I think that this solution (that others have proposed) fits perfectly into the Rules as Written. Combat Rules and Non-Combat rules are separate and different in the manual.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Amazing thread really, I think that both sides are irecconcilable but I will throw in my couple of cents worth. I never found the 3.x hardness system realistic because with it you could not do Shawshank or guy that was trying to tunnel out of Chateau D'If that Dantes met. Because these guys did not have adamantine anything or power attack.

Attacking a stone wall a sword should do nothing except damage the sword. Use of a pick should do damage and using a hammer and a drill and a crowbar should do nicely. Still I have knocked a few stone walls in my time with hand tools and it is not a trivial task.

Tunnelling as a campaign activity, I a bit amazed that people do this. Each to his own I suppose but I would have issues with it, how are they supporting the tunnel walls and ventilating the tunnel? For starters.

Breaking down doors and walls, in general, I see little wrong with the rules as they currently exist. In my opinion, they are a bit too generous, I would/will allow brute force for normal doors but re-inforced doors or made of materials like adamantine, stone or metal should involve bringing the proper tools and a skill chalenge. I would allow bonuses for stuff like going for the hinges and so forth.

There is a reason people used rams and in general rams broke the hinges or the locks long before the door was destroyed.

 

[eleran]

Digging underneath your enemies frontline is a time tested age old military tactic.

Either you want to get past their walls, or you want to collapse them, or both.

Heck, when I was stationed in Korea the boyz up north even dug themselves under and past the DMZ.

I thought the term was through, not under? ground =/= wall. No one here has been arguing that digging through ground was bad, we have been arguing that digging through walls with spoons, daggers, fists, greatswords and anything else not made to dig through walls is a bit ridiculous. Ground was made to be dug through, walls were in fact not.

 

[DM_Blake]

What did we gain?

A chance for lizard to troll the 4e forum creating imaginary problems and making the designers regret the design conceit that the average gamer had enough intelligence to deal with tweaking a game system to fit their own needs and priorities?

That would be my guess, anyway.

Sir, you go too far. At least show enough respect to capitalize his name.

And the problems, just because you cannot or will not acknowledge them, could very well still be problems.

I understand to some of you, hardness was some kind of sacred cow, the defining characteristic of a successful fantasy RPG...for some reason. But come on. Claiming that if it isn't in 4e, then 4e has a design problem is just ridiculous. Especially as there are a hundred other threads on here with people whining that some other unnecessary rules subsystem was "left out" or "removed".

Again, too far.

People discussing what they perceive to be issues is hardly "whining". You choose to label it so by way of belittling their opinions because they differ from yours. So, your opinions are paramount, anyone who differs is merely a whiner to be ignored and/or belittled.

In my first quote of yours (see above) you used the word conceit. Perhaps you should review this word and its relevence to your own attitudes regarding differing opions.

If there really are a hundred other threads about problems in the rules, then maybe, just maybe, there might actually be some validity to some of them. There might be actual problems in the rules.

Where there's smoke (i.e. 100+ other threads) there is usually fire (i.e. problems to post about).

Yet, no one seems willing to admit that everything can't be included,

Sure we do.

I know the game couldn't fit every potential rule between the book covers.

I am more than willing to admit that, if you'll listen, if you're not too busy labeling me a whiner and disregarding my input.

I do wish the game designers had been a little less focused on fluff and been a little more focused on basic rules. They could have saved much of the fluff for splat books, where it seems to me it belongs.

or that one man's necessary subsystem is another man's useless fluff,

Ahh, but adding a subsystem is much more work for a DM than ignoring one.

So the designers could have included a subsystem, such as hardness, and it would have taken you a second to decide to ignore it, but it will take me hours to design one that is thorough and robust and suitable to the existing game infrastructure.

I would personally rather have too much detail, so I can ignore some, than too little, which forces me to design part of the game myself (something that I believe the actual, paid, game designers should have done already).

or that there is nothing wrong with houserules.

Oh, there IS definitely something wrong with houserules.

If I go to a game store, find a buletin board, see a DM advertising for players, call him, and join his game, only to get there and find out he has a whole slew of silly house rules with which I do not agree, then I've wasted all that time.

Worse, I then go back to the store, find another DM, and retry the whole thing over again.

Eventually, I might find a dozen DMs, all claiming to play Dungeons & Dragons, but each of whom is really playing a game that is wildly different from any of the others, and none of whom might be playing a game I want to play.

On the other hand, if the rules were complete, unbroken, well-tested, and well-understood, chances are that many of those DMs would be playing identical, or nearly identical, game systems.

People like lizard are actually claiming that if you have to houserule a game to fit your own opinions of what is or is not important, what does or does not break verisimilitude, then the system itself is actually at fault for not anticipating each gamer's unique set of priorities and conceits about fantasy gaming and including them.

No, people like Lizard are actually claiming that we paid WotC to design a game. We gave them money for a set of books that contain rules to a game we want to play.

But they dropped the ball. They gave us part of a rule system. They did some of the work, despite the fact that we gave them all of the money expecting a complete job.

It's little different than if I hire a contractor to pour a driveway for my home, and pay him in full, and he only pours half a driveway.

As if, if hardness were a part of the object damage system of 4e, there wouldn't be a thread about how ridiculous left in that silly, unnecessary, and unrealistic system of item hardness.

Maybe.

It's likely that someone would post about not wanting to use such a system. They might speculate about what could have filled that space between the book covers, something they feel would have been a better use of the space.

And no doubt, you would call them whiners too.

Undoubtedly, such a thread would have also been started by lizard.

You probably should let Lizard speak for himself. He might not have posted such a thread at all.

And in that vein, I hereby retract my previous comment that you would have called such a poster a whiner - I should let you post such a characterization yourself.

 

[DM_Blake]

Digging underneath your enemies frontline is a time tested age old military tactic.

If you are doing this as a matter of course in a Dungeons and Dragons game, then you are playing it wrong.

Wow.

Just wow.

Your post count doesn't give you the authority to dictate how anyone else should play the game.

Just because you don't enjoy or can't imagine a Dungeons & Dragons game that involves tunneling to achieve a military objective, doesn't mean that other players are unable to enjoy that objective, and it certainly doesn't mean those other players are wrong.

Heck, when I was stationed in Korea the boyz up north even dug themselves under and past the DMZ.

The boyz up north are NPCs and follow their own rules.

Wow again.

So you're saying that a group of humans, defending a location against another group of humans up north (with identical racial characteristics) are not subject to the same set of rules?

Sure, maybe the boyz up north have magic spells to teleport or fly over the DMZ. Maybe they can go ethereal or incorporeal and bypass the DMZ. Or maybe they have picks and shovels and spend some time tunneling under the DMZ. Or maybe they just hitch a tow cable to a domesticated purple worm and follow the tunnel it makes under the DMZ. (I haven't cracked my Monster Manual yet - are purple worms in 4e?)

In any case, aren't they playing with the same rule set that the boyz down south are using? Theoretically, couldn't the boyz down south do all these things too, if they had the right spells, picks, or worms?

What line of reasoning leads to the assumption that PCs have a set of very limiting rules, that don't even account for swinging a pick at a mountain, but NPCs can do whatever they want because they're not limited by the same set of rules?

I think I missed that in the books. Cite a page number for me please?

 

[Obryn]

Sir, you go too far. At least show enough respect to capitalize his name.

...and the June 11 Taking The Internet Too Seriously Award goes to...

I mean, not that Thasmodius isn't, too, but... really, not capitalizing someone's name on a message board is ... well, it's nothing.

I do wish the game designers had been a little less focused on fluff and been a little more focused on basic rules. They could have saved much of the fluff for splat books, where it seems to me it belongs.

That's the opposite complaint from normal. I don't think anyone's accused books like the MM of having too much fluff!

Oh, there IS definitely something wrong with houserules.

If I go to a game store, find a buletin board, see a DM advertising for players, call him, and join his game, only to get there and find out he has a whole slew of silly house rules with which I do not agree, then I've wasted all that time.

OK, I think you might be taking gaming too seriously. Look, I agree with your main premise that the object damaging rules are kinda crummy, house rules are a time-tested tradition of RPGs going back probably to the second game, ever.

On the other hand, if the rules were complete, unbroken, well-tested, and well-understood, chances are that many of those DMs would be playing identical, or nearly identical, game systems.

... You've met gamers before, right?

No, people like Lizard are actually claiming that we paid WotC to design a game. We gave them money for a set of books that contain rules to a game we want to play.

But they dropped the ball. They gave us part of a rule system. They did some of the work, despite the fact that we gave them all of the money expecting a complete job.

It's little different than if I hire a contractor to pour a driveway for my home, and pay him in full, and he only pours half a driveway.

That's a really dramatic statement. The 4e rules are very complete - I think they mis-stepped on one or two places, but within the covers of all 3 books, I see a complete game with few loose ends. It's modular enough that you can add more, but save the arguable point that they didn't cram every basic race & class in from 3e, I don't see anything outright missing.

They've clearly provided a system for breaking stuff. The fact that I don't like it doesn't mean it's an incomplete game.

-O