Blog post on the feel of D&D (marmell, reynolds et all)

[Fifth Element]

Re-read my original post I did say 'doesn't feel like TO ME'.

1e & 2e no longer 'feel' like D&D to me. Actually they never did. I always had a mountain of house rules and the rules as written did not 'feel' like D&D to me.

Notice I didn't say 1e & 2e are not D&D. Nor did I say 1e and 2e do not feel like D&D.

I did read your post. Please note in my post that I stated everyone determines for themselves whether it feels like D&D to them.

If I'm reading you correctly, 1E and 2E once felt like D&D to you (you said they "no longer" do so). Presumably because 3E is now how you prefer D&D to feel. But if your preference in feel can change between editions, why is it bad that 4E does not feel the same as 3E?

Say you play 4E, decide you like the feel, and therefore that's what D&D's feel becomes for you. What then are we to make of the above argument? If the "feel" of D&D can change between editions, apparently for the better, what's the point of deriding a new edition for not feeling like the old?

 

[catsclaw]

If a monk has a pouch full of sand, how does it make sense that he can only try to throw it in someone's eyes once a combat or once a day?

I would rather remove restrictions and risk unbalancing the game than resort to such heavyhanded, nonsensical rules.

Besides, if a monk in my group kept throwing salt or sand or whatever in the eyes of his opponents, I could easily come up with various ways to restrict or minimize this usage wihtout bending the rules of reality.

Risk unbalancing the game?

You've already unbalanced the game. Your monk is running around throwing sand in the eyes of everything, and the tactic is so successful now the rogue and fighter are doing it too. (Blind your opponent on a ranged touch attack without a save? Sign me up!) To compensate, you now have to ensure the only things they fight are immune somehow. So they exclusively fight undead, and constructs, and oozes, and guys with helmeted faceplates, and things with blindsight. And sand mephits.

In short, you have to start unrealistically skewing the encounters so they're balanced, to avoid the unrealistic "the monk can only throw sand once per day". Now the guy who came up with the "throw sand in their eyes" tactic is annoyed because he can't do it at all. So you now have to go through your encounters and decide what percent of the opponents you're going to let the party have the "I win" button for. And the players will quickly catch on that you're now designing "easy" and "normal" encounters, and play accordingly.

So you ban the thing outright. And you're right back where you started--placing an artificial restriction on a character ability for game balance reasons. Only now the monk has built his character around the tactic, and is angry because you nerfed him.

You're essentially saying "I would rather risk ruining my game with an arms race between the players trying to exploit rules and my trying to patch them, than say 'Only some classes can do this, and the opportunity only arises once a day.'"

 

[Benimoto]

Besides, if a monk in my group kept throwing salt or sand or whatever in the eyes of his opponents, I could easily come up with various ways to restrict or minimize this usage wihtout bending the rules of reality.

Situations where I feel as though I have to modify encounters just to short-circuit a player's abusive tactic are already something that makes me unhappy in my D&D games. I don't see why I would want to keep allowing things that "make sense" only to have to just keep shutting them down when they start interfering with everybody's fun.

(on preview: or what Catsclaw said.)

From my own perspective, no creature fighting you is going to let you take something out of a bag and then just throw it in their eyes. It's like a character with a sword saying "well, I just cut their head off".

There has to be some sort of compromise, and it should fit in with the existing systems in place. If there's some sort of "stunt" system in 4e that allows for moves like this without unbalancing the game, then that sounds great. If there isn't then I think it would be fine to turn this into a power at a level of availability and use that's balanced with other powers.

That sort of thing, to me, seems like actually the least heavyhanded or nonsensical solution.

 

[Wolfspider]

You're essentially saying "I would rather risk ruining my game with an arms race between the players trying to exploit rules and my trying to patch them, than say 'Only some classes can do this, and the opportunity only arises once a day.'"

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

The problems that you describe in your post with my approach would never happen in my game.

Listen to what you're saying, really.

Imagine that we are playing a game of Call of Cthulhu or d20 Modern or Spycraft or Top Secret or whatever.

Does every character in a modern RPG run around with mace spraying it in the eyes of his or her enemies? No, even though it is probably widely available. No, for some characters, that would go against concept.

Even if every character did, I still don't think it would ruin the game at all. I'm sure there would be some adversaries that the character would run into that would not be affected by it, or the mace would realistically run out, or characters would be faced with long-range enemies that would make the mace tactic ineffective.

If you were running a modern game and one of the characters wanted a can of mace, would you try to restrict it to once a day or once an encounter usage in fear of game balance suddenly being broken? How do you think your players would respond to such an artificial limitation?

In my opinion, it would be nonsensical to suddenly say that a can of mace only works once a day.

Now let's step back into the world of D&D. Why should a monk only be able to fling sand once a day? If a character wants to use it, let him. Why have unnatural and rather silly restrictions?

Game balance? There are other ways to balance a game than a rule that flies in the face of reality, and none of them would be as heavy-handed as the examples that you give.

 

[Wolfspider]

There has to be some sort of compromise, and it should fit in with the existing systems in place. If there's some sort of "stunt" system in 4e that allows for moves like this without unbalancing the game, then that sounds great. If there isn't then I think it would be fine to turn this into a power at a level of availability and use that's balanced with other powers.

That sort of thing, to me, seems like actually the least heavyhanded or nonsensical solution.

Yes, there is.

For such "stunting" I use the rules from the Book of Iron Might in my D&D 3.5 games.

This book offers a wonderful system for judging a lot of combat maneuvers, like flinging sand and hamstringing, without artificial restrictions like "once a day" powers.

 

[Wolfspider]

Situations where I feel as though I have to modify encounters just to short-circuit a player's abusive tactic are already something that makes me unhappy in my D&D games. I don't see why I would want to keep allowing things that "make sense" only to have to just keep shutting them down when they start interfering with everybody's fun.

I do not modify encounters in my games to "short circuit" any of my player's abilities, unless it makes sense in the game. For example, the party's monk kept jumping on the backs of large creatures in order to pummel them from a vantage point they couldn't reach--a logical tactic. He used in several encounters against giants and evil treants and other enormous beasties.

One encounter left several enemies alive, which allowed them to report back to their overlord. He heard of this tactic and made plans to counter it, covering his body with acid that would hopefully burn the hapless monk.

Of course, during that encounter, the monk decided NOT to jump on the BBEG. Figures.

In any case, I do not shut down anyone's fun. I let my player's try anything they can imagine, although success is another thing completely.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

what i thought about dailies and encounter powers:

once per day the player can chose to do it, all the other times it is the DM who can grant aditional uses:

imagine trip as daily fighter power:

- once per day the fighter may say: i feel the situation is right to trip my enemy.

- a different time, when I roll a 1 on a charge attack: "He charges to you, but misses and nearly stumpled over his feet." Player: "I try to help him on his way down" Me:"You may use your trip daily power again." (or if the character is not a fighter: you may make a trip attack with -2 penalty)

 

[small pumpkin man]

You know, apart from this thread not really being the correct place to discuss this, I have the impression we'll simply have to agree to disagree and let it go that way. I simply don't share your assumptions and conceptions, or problems in having to look up a table for size modifiers, and I feel we won't gain on either side by trying to pound that nail to death. You got your game that allows you to rule stuff on the fly, and I got mine, we can both be happy campers in the first place.

Sounds good.

But why should something like throwing sand in the eyes actually scale in an appreciable way? That's one of the conceits of 4e that I don't get: that scaling in such a way is a good thing. Some tactics should scale down as the threats characters face scale upwards. Should throwing salt work against a dragon? I should think not at all. The creature's simply too tough to be bothered by a little grit in the eye.

As is obvious if you read my post or know how touch attacks work at high levels, I meant that it's really really easy at high levels, and 1d4 rounds of blindness, no save is a powerful ability, even at high levels.

 

[Fifth Element]

As is obvious if you read my post or know how touch attacks work at high levels, I meant that it's really really easy at high levels, and 1d4 rounds of blindness, no save is a powerful ability, even at high levels.

Yes. And as such a powerful ability, it only makes sense that intelligence monsters would use it as well at higher levels. So now we have everyone on the battlefield throwing salt and sand around, and most combatants spend several rounds each combat blinded. This eventually leads to a gentleman's agreement between the DM and players that the PCs won't use such a tactic as long as their opponents don't either.

Much better that such things are handled succinctly by the rules (4E seems like it will be able to handle it nicely) without having to go through the trouble of sorting it out.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

This whole "feels like D&D" is a tough one. Each individual's opinion is going to be different. I think 1E AD&D probably gives the most folks the most "D&D feel", but who knows? There's no way to find out. Each edition forward from that arbitrary starting point probably gets a little less of the "D&D feel" vibe. Just my assumption.

Now - what does that mean? Answer: Squat.

Who cares? What matters is whether you like the game (whatever the version) or - in the case of 4E - whether you like what you've seen thus far. (I'd argue that there seems to be a lot of zealous opinions about 4E considering we haven't seen much, but c'est la vie.)

3E was a great game. No game is perfect. 4E promises to address some of the warts. PF, Monte, and perhaps Pramas also are trying/have tried to address some of the flaws. Will these other systems deliver on their promise? Again, who knows?

Was 3E more complicated then previous versions? I'd suggest 95% of folks would say yes. Was it a better game? I'd suggest the vast majority would say it was. Was 3E too complicated? Again, the vast majority would likely say it was. Sure, you have your savants on this thread and elsewhere who say the complexity never affected them, but I'm talking about your normal Joe gamers here, not the supra-geniuses among us.

In fact...I'm a little confused as to what's being argued here. And just as confused as to why I wasted 10 minutes typing if nothing is being argued. Dammit.

W.P.

p.s. I do have to give props to Fifth Element's airtight rebuttal of Senor Smetzger's "D&D feel" list. Good stuff.