D&D 3E/3.5 4E Simulationism: Did 3.5E Really Do That Good of a Job?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Have you been lucky never to have run into the pervasity of players?

I am really blessed these days to have such a great group, but it hasn't always been this way. I have run games for players who seemed determined to make the game misery for everyone involved.

If that is their goal, or at least feels like it, you already lost. The game system won't help you anymore. That's the point where you can hope that you can talk with the players and change their attitude. Or you evaluate if you still get "enough" fun despite these players efforts, and decide to continue or stop playing the game.

 

[Lizard]

I

Frankly, there is NO system on the intricacy level of an RPG that isn't going to have some loopholes. That's what a DM is for. The system doesn't have to be perfectly inviolate to be a good one.

Of course, this is all my observation of what you percieve to be an issue. And perception is king in most ways of life. If its a bug for you, then I gues its a bug for you, but I think much of the grousing here is overwrought and, purely, a matter of different tastes.[/I]

Just to be clear, these aren't critques of 4e; they're analysis of things which need to be considered in worldbuilding. Each game comes with assumptions built into the rules. In Traveller, human-habitable worlds are dirt common. This tells you a lot about economics, government, travel, and so on. A Traveller game which didn't change the rules, but which treated human-habitable worlds as rare and precious gems, would be one which was hard to play in and maintain believability. Likewise, classic Runequest had everyone capable of minor magics, and this was part of how the world worked.

To pick just one example, wars will be more brutal. In 3e, clerics were rare enough and spells limited enough so that healing would be saved for officers and leaders; the common grunts would get Treat Injury checks and bed rest. This meant that wounding a soldier could keep him out of battle for a day or two, at least. In 4e, this doesn't work -- if you want to win a war of attrition, you have to *kill*, both because clerical healing is much more common and because all non-fatal wounds heal overnight. It has nothing to do with honor or brutality; you're trying to win a war, after all. In the "real world", a wounded soldier is a weapon -- he drains resources, and is a constant reminder to other soldiers of the risks of war, draining morale. In 4e, there are dead soldiers, and soldiers who will be perfectly healthy in the morning. That's the world, and the people who live there will adapt to it. (Unless there's special rules for NPC healing we don't know about yet...)

3e (and D&D in general) has features which require thought before worldbuilding; 4e adds some new ones, different enough that they haven't had easy 'conventional wisdom' solutions built up over the past 30 years.

 

[Valdrax]

Personally, assuming the player even let the guards catch him in the first place, I'd have them throw the eladrin into a cell. 5 minutes later he'll be out on the streets, which will provoke some confusion, cause the guards to come running after him and possibly throw him in jail again. 5 minutes later he'll be out again, causing even greater confusion.

You know, there's no indication that the Eladrin can choose to take or not to take any possession or other items with him. It could be as simple as tying him up (since he can't teleport out of the ropes) or even just chaining him to a wall with manacles, making him unable to "step" away.

Feyaday cages should keep those Eladrin in prison.

Kill yourself.

 

[Lizard]

This makes me sad (on many levels).

Do you enjoy arms race style role-playing?

I enjoy players who take my world seriously enough to ask questions about it, like "If this is true, shouldn't that be true, too?"

I enjoy players who don't metagame by thinking "Well, obviously, the plot expects us to do X", but think, rather, "We are facing thus-and-such situation, these are the abilities we have, these are the goals and desires of our characters. What's the best solution to this problem that is consistent with both who we are and what we can do?"

I enjoy players who always find option 11 after I've carefully accounted for options 1 through 10, and I enjoy being a good enough DM to never have to say "No, you can't do that, I didn't think of it. Pick again." (I may take a five minute bathroom break to work out what's going to happen, of course...)

I enjoy players who will debate ethics and morality and even sometimes come to (virtual) blows over issues, who treat NPCs as if they didn't have s big sign on their head reading "NPC", and who form relationships with the world because the world exists outside their immediate view.

I enjoy players, in other words, who treat their characters and the world I labor to build as real, and act accordingly -- not who constantly remind themselves "it's all a game" and tread gingerly around the tissue-paper set so as not to push too hard on the scenery and cause it all to come crashing down.

 

[Cadfan]

3e (and D&D in general) has features which require thought before worldbuilding; 4e adds some new ones, different enough that they haven't had easy 'conventional wisdom' solutions built up over the past 30 years.

While this is undoubtedly true, you are being overly fervent in your efforts to create specific, large differences where there are at best minor ones.

Regarding the overnight healing:

1) D&D does not have a wound system. It didn't have one in 3e, it doesn't have one in 4e. If you want one, make one, or add optional variants in.

2) I see no obligation to use the same overnight healing for npcs, whom I also refer to as "plot points." When a PC is stabbed and nearly dying, and regains his hp overnight, I can describe that as him being bandaged up and ready to fight. When an NPC is stabbed and nearly dying, I don't think I'm cheating to describe him as having a severe, irreparable stomach wound that will keep him off the field for months. If that's what I want, that's what I do. Its only a violation of realism if you believe that "pcs regain hp overnight" is a law of physics instead of a guideline for how to best describe player characters.

3) This whole matter is overblown because in 3e it takes a typical NPC almost no time to regain all their hit points.

You regain your level in hit points per full night's rest. If you do full bed rest all day, you regain twice your level. A healer can double this rate with a skill check for up to six people per day, and still cast all their cure spells. Even without a healer, if your NPCs are getting bed rest, you can expect them back up to full power in very few days. For a 4 HD NPC with a d8 hit die and no constitution bonus, that NPC would probably have 18 hit points, and would heal from 1 hp to 17 hp in two days.

Two days. Now its one day. And with a heal check, its one day in 3e as well for our wounded example NPC.

This is not the immolation of verisimilitude. What's happened is just that an edge rule that already broke verisimilitude and that you probably ignored at times for plot reasons has been highlighted by the edition shift. If you play 4e, feel free to continue to follow or ignore this rule as necessary in exactly the same way that you did before.

 

[iskurthi]

What is real and what is fantasy?

I enjoy players, in other words, who treat their characters and the world I labor to build as real, and act accordingly -- not who constantly remind themselves "it's all a game" and tread gingerly around the tissue-paper set so as not to push too hard on the scenery and cause it all to come crashing down.

Maybe not so much "real" as "internally consistent".

 

[SteveC]

But the question is, what does this do to the world?

How would a town react to Eladrin? Would the guard shoot to kill in even the most minor of crimes, knowing they can't be held? Would there be lead cells (if lead blocks teleportation in 4e), or oubliettes too deep to teleport out of (assuming LOS is required)?

I want PCs to be heroes -- not gods. To have to interact with the world, not command it -- especially not at first level.

To me, a lot of what you're talking about makes the game more interesting from a roleplaying perspective and not less: so Eladrin can teleport short distances every five minutes. When a character like that is captured, if his captors know this, they will likely try and engineer something around it, whether it's a lead room (maybe cold iron is more appropriate for their powers?) or just keep kickin' the character to keep him unconscious. Maybe the guards might just think about killing the character outright since they can't hold him ... and have to be persuaded by the rest of the group to not do so. Thinking about the roleplaying possibilities for this kind of a situation makes for, to my mind, a more interesting game.

Similarly, suppose a character has a power that will allow them to knock down a metal door in just a few minutes. As long as the GM is aware of this, there's no problem, he just has to keep it in mind. "We can just knock down the vault door with my 'Mountain Hammer!'" "Okay, but won't that put all the guards in the entire fortress on alert?" "Hmmn, well we'll just have to chance it ... "

If there is a published adventure, one would hope that the designers would take this into consideration.

I've run a lot of HERO (and, more recently, M&M) so I see the opportunity to do a lot of unusual "outside the box" thinking as a good thing: it keeps me on my toes when I run the game!

I think the only situation where this would be a bad thing would be where you have an awful GM who is trying to run an entirely railroaded plot. Since I've read Lizard's posts literally for years, I strongly suspect that there will be no problem with bad GMing in his games: quite the reverse!

--Steve

 

[Thyrwyn]

To pick just one example, wars will be more brutal. In 3e, clerics were rare enough and spells limited enough so that healing would be saved for officers and leaders; the common grunts would get Treat Injury checks and bed rest. This meant that wounding a soldier could keep him out of battle for a day or two, at least. In 4e, this doesn't work -- if you want to win a war of attrition, you have to *kill*, both because clerical healing is much more common and because all non-fatal wounds heal overnight.

Wars will still be brutal - grunt NPCs are "monsters" and have no healing surges, and Clerics and Paladins (even NPC Clerics and Paladins) are still rare. Actually, most are probably minions and die if they lose any hit points at all. I am assuming that PCs and NPCs will have the ability to heal NPCs.

It has nothing to do with honor or brutality; you're trying to win a war, after all. In the "real world", a wounded soldier is a weapon -- he drains resources, and is a constant reminder to other soldiers of the risks of war, draining morale. In 4e, there are dead soldiers, and soldiers who will be perfectly healthy in the morning. That's the world, and the people who live there will adapt to it. (Unless there's special rules for NPC healing we don't know about yet...)

First of all, the concept of the "wounded as weapon" is a very modern one. Even as late as the US War of Independence, a unit was considered "combat unready" if it suffered 10% casualties (injured, captured or killed) in any given engagement. Warfare was not about killing the opposition, it was about reducing their morale and ability to fight as a cohesive force to the point where they couldn't continue. Units typically 'broke' long before there members suffered significant injury. As always, there are the occasional exceptions - mostly notable by the fact that their nations saw fit to decorate the unit as a whole. That alone should indicate that it was rare.

Secondly - Losing hit points does not equate to 'being injured' as we define it in the real world. Consequently, recovering hit points does not always equate to recovering from an injury.

Thirdly, the rules of the game are designed to function when the narrative spotlight is focused on the events at hand.

3e (and D&D in general) has features which require thought before worldbuilding; 4e adds some new ones, different enough that they haven't had easy 'conventional wisdom' solutions built up over the past 30 years.

While this is true, the changes to how healing works aren't among them

 

[hong]

I enjoy players, in other words, who treat their characters and the world I labor to build as real, and act accordingly -- not who constantly remind themselves "it's all a game" and tread gingerly around the tissue-paper set so as not to push too hard on the scenery and cause it all to come crashing down.

So you should be welcoming 4E with open arms then, since it brings new and exciting challenges, free of 30 years of musty convention and orthodoxy, for you to direct your labour towards. Hail the new dawn of D&D as character-building!

 

[Lizard]

So you should be welcoming 4E with open arms then, since it brings new and exciting challenges, free of 30 years of musty convention and orthodoxy, for you to direct your labour towards. Hail the new dawn of D&D as character-building!

That is a positive factor, yes. I have an entirely new set of contradictory rules to justify.