D&D 4E Are powers samey?

[doctorbadwolf]

Because we're discussing how the game feels. It doesn't matter if I can kludge a PC together with a few different powers that don't feel samey. Tom, Dick and Harry will almost certainly not be doing that.

What. How is picking the powers that will be fun to use a “kludge”? That’s just the normal process of choosing powers.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Attack powers are primarily intended to be used in combat. That's not their exclusive function - eg the following example of using an attack power to manipulate the fiction in a skill challenge.

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Utility powers can be combat-oriented (eg Wrath of the Gods is a damage buff) or non-combat oriented (eg Disguise Self, Ambassador Imp) or useful in either sort of context (eg Arcane Gate, Mighty Sprint).

I don't think that second clause is true at all, either in general or in this case. Who knows what is beyond this room? And the lightning pillars are hardly going to move just to follow the PCs.

In which case you free the NPC before stepping back through the Arcange Gate or the portal (either of which can be open for long enough), or before teleporting out using a warlock power. With a move action economy (as per the example) a single wizard can standard, move (and so get two success) and minor to hold the gate open. A friend can come and help if necessary.


When you're talking about "srategic" teleportation then in 4e you're talking about leveraging the non-combat aspects of the resolution system. Skill and rituals are the premier player-side resources for these (with powers and action points as secondary resources); and the skill check and skill chalenge framework are the primary resolution modes.

My staring point here has always been p 42 of the DMG:

If a character tries an action that might fail, use a check to resolve it. To do that, you need to know what kind of check it is and what the DC is.​

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Attacks: If the action is essentially an attack, use an attack roll. . . . Use an opposed check for anything that​

involves a contest between two creatures.​

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Other Checks: If the action is related to a skill (Acrobatics and Athletics cover a lot of the stunts characters​

try in combat), use that check. If it is not an obvious skill or attack roll, use an ability check.​

When it comes to magical phenomena, Arcana comes to the fore, but also Religion for divine magic and presumably Nature for primal magic although that last one has never come up in my actual play. I remember reading accounts online of the use of Arcana to manipulate magical phenomena before I started playing 4e in January 2009. The first example of something along those lines that I remember from play was in what I would guess to be our fourth session, when the player of the paladin had his PC speak a prayer to help fight against an undead creature, which I resolved as a Religion check to grant combat advantage.

There are many published example of using the Arcana skill to modify and manipulate magical effects (see eg skill challenge examples and trap/hazar examples in a range of sources, starting with the 4e DMG). The 4e Rules Compendium, p 136, has these example of improvisation with the Arcana skill:

* Change the visible or audible qualities of one’s magical powers when using them (moderate DC)​

* Control a phenomenon by manipulating its magical energy (hard DC)​

And for thinking about how rituals fit into this, there's also (on p 78 of the DMG) an example of framing the use of a Speak with Dead ritual as a skill challenge - because the corpse "refuses to be compelled by the power of the ritual", thereby signalling the relationship between fictional situation and mechanical framework.

Here are three actual play examples of this sort of thing, one involving magical phenomena and strategic teleportation as a reult of a skill challenge, one illustrating manipulation of an Arcane Gate via skill check and resource expenditure, and the third illustrating maniuplation of a ritual via Arcana check to get a desired result:

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There are no specific rules that cover these sorts of things beyond the general rules for "actions the rules don't cover", skill checks and skill challenges as I've sketched out above. This is why some of us posting in thie thread (eg @Manbearcat, me) regard 4e as a highly-flexible fiction-first enging, especially outside of combat. It is able to be such a thing partly because it has a very standard resolution system (skill checks, skill challenges) and very straightforward resource suites (powers, hp/healing surges, gp) that allow costs and impacts to be easily assessed and applied.

I think messing with portals is explicitly a use of Arcana, but it may be in a magazine issue or an Arcane Power or something. I know at least a couple PP or ED abilities leverage the use of Arcana to change where a portal goes, or other aspects of it.
Arcana is basically Thievery for magic stuff, in 4e and in my 5e games.

 

[Garthanos]

@Manbearcat, me) regard 4e as a highly-flexible fiction-first enging, especially outside of combat. It is able to be such a thing partly because it has a very standard resolution system (skill checks, skill challenges) and very straightforward resource suites (powers, hp/healing surges, gp) that allow costs and impacts to be easily assessed and applied.

I would assess adjusting the gate for bidirectional as a pretty significant thing and set the difficulty on the high end to adjust it that way my player might decide he doesn't like it that chancy and wants to spend a significant chunk more on the ingredients to assure. Additionally the dm might up the anti too as keeping it open when it starts to collapse being double directional might involve another skill check or a full action because the DM is still wanting this to be significant. The player might doubles down with a healing surge for that second check or the player might go wait i can't afford the healing surge at this point and come up with some other plan. The point perhaps being the player sided choices and availability of resources to drive things forward which are less locked in regardless of standardized rituals and powers.... but also the game encourages the DM to enable skills to be much more powerful in 4e and that while the example is with Arcana the Rogue might have been the core player as mentioned earlier or might still be distracting the enemy so that the enemy does not get to react to the appearance of the teleporting characters.

Hmmm I might have just re-elaborated what you said or made the scenario more complex for the sake of it not sure LOL

 

[Garthanos]

What. How is picking the powers that will be fun to use a “kludge”? That’s just the normal process of choosing powers.

When you want your own individual choice about what is interesting and distinct to be more important than other opinions on the same thing at the table.

 

[pemerton]

What. How is picking the powers that will be fun to use a “kludge”? That’s just the normal process of choosing powers.

But won't someone think of Tom, Dick and Harry - who will inadvertantly but inevitably pick only powers that are samey and so build PCs that they hate playing?

 

[Garthanos]

The extent to which 4e's rituals provide out-of-combat capabilities isn't relevant to my perception of (or dissatisfaction with) 4e's powers feeling structurally "samey".)

Thing is we have a set consisting of N,B,C,I,F,G,S,T,U,V,X,Y,Z. We subdivide that categorize it based on parameters so that one set are in under D another other under powers that are A and others E and others U and still others yet are under R,
Of course when someone is choosing they are only looking at one category. Now all the things in R are likely to have commonality and all the things under D are likely to have commonality. The categorization has not changed the nature of the abilities to make them more similar over all... just more similar to what you are selecting from in those categories (Notice how E = Encounter, D= Daily, R= rituals, A=At-wills).

So I am thinking rituals do matter quite a lot... as they are part of the same superset for those who look at them historically as the same as spells and you see in thread that has been something noticed.

 

[Eric V]

Powers/Spells/Maneuvers/Prayers/etc. in 4e are distinctively samey because of...

1) The presentation in the rulebooks. This is generally not so in other editions of D&D, possible exception being spell descriptions.

2) The similar recharge rate they have (AEDU structure). This was not so in other editions of D&D, where some classes had only at-wills, and others had dailies. 4e expanded the breadth of options to all classes, possibly giving a feeling of "samey."

3) The obvious upgrade of powers within some classes. The paladin had an encounter that did x damage plus sanction at a particular level, then 12 levels later, a more powerful version of the prayer was available (3x plus sanction). That could definitely be seen as samey. The idea was that you wouldn't choose both (somewhat suboptimal), but you could if you really wanted to. This was generally not so in other editions of D&D; "upgraded" spells were unnecessary since they scaled with caster level anyway, and martial classes had no powers to upgrade in the first case.

4) The similar effects from different power sources. In previous versions of D&D, if you wanted to inflict a status effect, you had to be a spellcaster (or, in some limited situations, a monk). There may have been some corner-case exceptions. While it's true that status effects in 4e were still primarily the province of spellcasters (Controller role, and there was a notable lack of a martial controller until the end of the run), all classes had a chance to inflict a status effect (if they chose the power to do so). So that could be samey.

These are the ways in which 4e is distinctively samey; any other samey-ness is found in other editions of D&D in spades. If one has an issue with samey-ness that is not found above, but somehow doesn't feel it in other editions of D&D, well, I've already said what I think is going on there.

If the above does in fact cover it...well...looking at 2 through 4, I'd say it's actually about how only spellcasters should be able to do special things; the earlier argument about Blinding Barrage is an indication this is correct. Now, it's a fine preference to have (not at my table, but who cares?), but probably should be stated as such, no?

 

[FrogReaver]

If the above does in fact cover it...well...looking at 2 through 4, I'd say it's actually about how only spellcasters should be able to do special things; the earlier argument about Blinding Barrage is an indication this is correct. Now, it's a fine preference to have (not at my table, but who cares?), but probably should be stated as such, no?

You were doing good till right here.

I specifically liked 4e because they brought spellcasters and non-spellcasters into much closer balance. It was a concern for me when 5e was announced that they would swing spellcasters too far back in the other direction - but 5e found other ways to limit spellcasters and overall I'm happier with how spellcasters vs non-spellcasters ended up in this edition.

 

[Xetheral]

Thing is we have a set consisting of N,B,C,I,F,G,S,T,U,V,X,Y,Z. We subdivide that categorize it based on parameters so that one set are in under D another other under powers that are A and others E and others U and still others yet are under R,
Of course when someone is choosing they are only looking at one category. Now all the things in R are likely to have commonality and all the things under D are likely to have commonality. The categorization has not changed the nature of the abilities to make them more similar over all... just more similar to what you are selecting from in those categories (Notice how E = Encounter, D= Daily, R= rituals, A=At-wills).

So I am thinking rituals do matter quite a lot... as they are part of the same superset for those who look at them historically as the same as spells and you see in thread that has been something noticed.

My post may not have been sufficiently clear. I will try to clarify:

I entirely agree that rituals matter a lot to the discussion, but they specifically matter for purposes of considering how problematic one finds it that 4e powers can feel "samey" due to the fact that they don't cover the full range of out-of-combat abilities found in other editions. Rituals are an important factor because they provide at least some of that missing out-of-combat capability.

In the section of my post that you quoted, however, I was attempting to distinguish the second way in which I find 4e powers to be "samey": the fact that powers use an identical mechanical structure to model both mundane and magical abilities. The types of abilities available with rituals aren't relevant to that aspect of "samey-ness".

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Just wanted to add that the combination of this thread + being off work due to the coronavirus has caused me to start tossing words on paper for a 4e rewrite.