D&D 4E AICN 4e Review Part 2: DMing 4e

[The Little Raven]

How much of a discount do we get by preordering from Amazon?

37% discount on the gift set (3 books + slipcase), along with free shipping. My group put in our order earlier today.

 

[Lizard]

Based on this article, I've been running 4e since Summer of 2000.

Fights mostly against groups of monsters? Check.
Able to quickly adjudicate player actions, like kicking tables? Check.
No magic item stores? Check.
XP for stories, diplomatic encounters, etc? Check.
Complex combat environments and lots of bull rushing, tripping, and other movement-based attacks? Check.

Since this playstyle is impossible in 3e, I guess I've been running 4e all along. Who knew?

(As a side note, what I think people might be reacting to in this article is that it hits each and every one of WOTCs "talking points" on 4e. When a "review" or "playtest report" sounds almost identical to a press release, eyebrows will be raised. It says nothing we haven't already heard from marketing and development releases.)

 

[Lizard]

37% discount on the gift set (3 books + slipcase), along with free shipping. My group put in our order earlier today.

Bah! I shall support my FLGS no matter how much money it costs me. (Besides, he usually gives me 20% off since I drop so much cash there.)

 

[Spatula]

How much of a discount do we get by preordering from Amazon?

I wouldn't preorder from Amazon, unless they've cleaned up their act in that department.

 

[Spatula]

But it assumes that the items are acquired. That's the problem.

Sure, and I have big problems with the expected wealth guidelines myself (though said problems do not include NPCs crafting items for PCs in exchange for goods or services). But complaining about "magic item shops" as being a problem in 3e is disingenuous, because in no way does 3e say, "there are magic item shops." That some DMs have resorted to treating the DMG as a player equipment list is either a convenience or a tragedy, depending on your game style, but ultimately that rests on the DMs in question. The presence, or lack thereof, of magic marts is ultimately more of a taste issue than a system issue, anyway, and 4e isn't going to "fix" that for you.

(also, from what has been said by the designers regarding magic items in 4e, there are still assumptions that players have items of a certain strength by a certain level - the overall strength, and quantity, of the items has just been lessened)

The system assumes that the PCs can sell any item they find, for 50% of list price. It also assumes that they can purchase any item off the list in the DMG at the given price. Changing these assumptions has a dramatic effect on game balance.

So if my players can't buy an apparatus of kwalish, balance goes out the window? Sorry, you keep saying "any" item but that's clearly not true.

Now, if you're going to make dramatic changes to player wealth, that will have a dramatic effect on their power level (I'm not sure it really affects game balance per se). That means you'd need to eyeball a monster's strength before tossing one at the party, without blindly relying on its CR. Which as a crotchety grognard, you should be used to - just like the old days before we even knew what CR was! You have to do this to a certain extent anyway, as the CR system is far from perfect - there's too many variables in party composition, for one thing (undead vs party without cleric, for example). On the flip side, minor changes to player wealth will result in minor changes to their power level, and a correspondingly minor disturbance in the predictive effects of CR on encounters.

But lets say that, for example, you prohibit the sale of magic items. Now all unwanted loot effectively becomes deadweight that has no effect on the party's actual wealth level (since they're not using it and they can't liquidate it). If you wanted to keep them going along at the expected guidelines, you simply throw in an extra amount of gp equal to half the value of the unwanted items into their haul(s). Or you don't, and force the players to find some use for those items ("Fear my army of squirrel spies!").

If you prohibit them from buying items, then they either have to rely on what you give them, or craft the desired items themselves. Since you're the DM, and you decide what treasure they get, how much downtime they have, etc., I don't see the dramatic effect on game balance. Give them what you want them to have, within the wealth guidelines if that's important to you, or give them the time to craft items. Or do both. You're the DM - what the world offers up to the PCs, and how it is offered, is up to you.

Whether the DM makes up hoops for the players to jump through in order to find the necessary traders is immaterial; the game expects you to have those traders and make sure the PCs find them every level or two.

Nope, the game expects the PCs to have a certain gp amount's worth of items. Again, how they get those items is under the DM's control, as it always has been.

At the risk of sounding like a crotchety old grognard, I played a bunch of 2E games without a single magic item shop anywhere, and never once did I see PCs trying to offload magic gear.

Well, how could they go about selling the items if it was clear there was no market for them?

Magic items were too rare and precious.

That's fine, that's how you prefer to play, but the published adventures from TSR certainly did not support that worldview. And that's what a lot of people were weaned on. Perhaps if MerricB is here he can dig up his (? I think it was his) analysis of the magic item glut from the official AD&D modules.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Based on this article, I've been running 4e since Summer of 2000.

Fights mostly against groups of monsters? Check.
Able to quickly adjudicate player actions, like kicking tables? Check.
No magic item stores? Check.
XP for stories, diplomatic encounters, etc? Check.
Complex combat environments and lots of bull rushing, tripping, and other movement-based attacks? Check.

Since this playstyle is impossible in 3e, I guess I've been running 4e all along. Who knew?

(As a side note, what I think people might be reacting to in this article is that it hits each and every one of WOTCs "talking points" on 4e. When a "review" or "playtest report" sounds almost identical to a press release, eyebrows will be raised. It says nothing we haven't already heard from marketing and development releases.)

The question is: How often did you use the rulebook to do this stuff, and how often did you just use your DM experience on how to do this stuff?

The guidelines for non-combat XP in the 3.x DMG are... sketchy. They don't go into details or even examples. The guidelines for adjudicating anything not explicitly spelled out in the rules are... absent? Barely existent? Not well eloberated on?

 

[Fallen Seraph]

37% discount on the gift set (3 books + slipcase), along with free shipping. My group put in our order earlier today.

I have a bookstore near my house where they order things from Amazon for you, and I got about $65 worth of gift-certificates for the store, so it will only cost me about $10

 

[The Little Raven]

The question is: How often did you use the rulebook to do this stuff, and how often did you just use your DM experience on how to do this stuff?

The guidelines for non-combat XP in the 3.x DMG are... sketchy. They don't go into details or even examples. The guidelines for adjudicating anything not explicitly spelled out in the rules are... absent? Barely existent? Not well eloberated on?

Yeah, everything Lizard listed is a testament to his skills as a DM, rather than 3.X's support for doing those things. And even what rules support those received were hampered by things like ability checks being nigh unto impossible unless you set DCs that are laughably easy, and quirks like unarmed attacks (sliding under a table and kicking it out from under the guys fighting on it would have provoked AoO for the movement, then another for the unarmed attack).

 

[Lizard]

The question is: How often did you use the rulebook to do this stuff, and how often did you just use your DM experience on how to do this stuff?

To be perfectly honest---I don't know. I have been DMing since 1978. I do a *lot* of stuff by 'feel'. Last game, my database was corrupted. I got to the game, opened my world notes, and got 'data file error'. (Thank all the gods the nice folks at ConnectedText restored 99% of it!) So all I had was a few combat cards and my dim memories of the plot. Ran the game anyway. Next week, the players might find some names have changed, but the general plot was intact.

It was very 4e. All I had for monsters was combat stats. Fortunately, I vaguely remembered the rough Bluff/Intimidate numbers for the bandit, so I could fudge the inevitable interrogation to within +/- 2.

The guidelines for non-combat XP in the 3.x DMG are... sketchy. They don't go into details or even examples. The guidelines for adjudicating anything not explicitly spelled out in the rules are... absent? Barely existent? Not well eloberated on?

You might be right. But the mechanics needed -- attribute checks, etc -- are all in there, and until I see the new DMG, I'm going to be hesitant about the whole "ZOMG! You can now IMPROVISE RULES!" meme. I did that when all we had was the 1e PHB -- no DMG for another year. And we had to walk 20 miles to the game store. Barefoot, and uphill, both ways!

 

[hong]

You might be right. But the mechanics needed -- attribute checks, etc -- are all in there, and until I see the new DMG, I'm going to be hesitant about the whole "ZOMG! You can now IMPROVISE RULES!" meme.

This is very significant, however, because it represents a reversing of the "take the DM out of the equation" meme that governed 3E's development.