D&D 4E Concealment in 4e

[Li Shenron]

A flat penalty instead of % chance looks more beautiful on paper, more "into" the standard rules, and avoids an extra die roll. Also what really matters at the end is the success/failure probability (or rate).

There is however a little beauty in having a separate roll, and it is with the fact that how it affects the shape of the probability curve. It affects IMHO more fairly the good and the bad combatant. When you have e.g. a character with 80% hit chance (from the normal attack roll) vs a character with 40%, if concealment gives a flat (e.g. -4 ie -20%), the weak attacker is more seriously affected than the strong one (60% is 3/4 than before, 20% is 1/2 than before). The separate roll (doesn't actually have to be a % itself) affects both characters chance equally.

You may actually argue that the better combatant should also be able to be less affected by concealment. But it certainly enlarges the divide between characters even more.

 

[delericho]

Do any of you find that rolling a miss chance may have slowed combat a little?

Marginally. Roll the dice together, and check both results at once, and it takes about a nanosecond.

So how do you think 4e will handle concealment?

In one of the early Design & Development columns, darkness (and, by extension, concealment) was called out as a 'gotcha' ability, and declared unfun. Therefore, it will be changed. Expect it to switch to a flat modifier to the attack roll.

A mistake, IMO.

It always struck me as drastically dumb that the d20 system asks people to break out the percentile dice to roll against probabilities that could easily be handled by a freaking d20. Hopefully, that will end.

Ah, but there's a good reason for that! d20 rolls were used for anything that was subject to a modifier. Percentile rolls were used for anything that was not. That was why the Blind-Fight feat allowed the user to reroll the miss chance, rather than applying a modifier.

It also usefully made the two rolls very distinct and obviously different, which was especially helpful in allowing both to be rolled at once.

 

[frankthedm]

The nice thing about the 3e concealment is it gave characters an option to use a mechanic for defense besides AC.

Which should still scale with an attacker's skill. Something the 3rd edition concealment failed to do other than the blindfight feat.

 

[Stogoe]

I've always hated the percentile die - it just always seemed vestigial, an ugly artifact of a dead edition. But apparently it's still in the game somehow, as it's mentioned in the 4e Dice Set blurb. Blech.

 

[Fifth Element]

I'm not a fan of adding more die rolls. Needing two separate die rolls for a single attack (maybe three if you have Blind Fight and reroll the miss chance) slows things up for me.

Which is why I hope they don't adopt the SWSE reroll mechanics, which I understand are fairly prevalent (rerolls instead of bonuses in some cases). Though I may be wrong since I don't own a copy.

 

[Ahglock]

The designers have actually mentioned the Concealment roll as something that worked very well at distinguishing Concealment from Cover, but turned into "roll this to have fun".

I expect it will change.

Cheers!

I never really understood that comment on the concealment rule.

Roll this to have fun.

Um, I roll a d20 to hit as well, is that a roll this to have fun as well, should we remove the d20 and just say you auto hit. But how about the damage you could totally roll a 1 and do sucky damage, why don't we just say you do max damage because any roll that can have a disappointing side effect is unfun.

To me the miss chance was fun, I could fail and disappointment from missing adds to the tension of the fight, will we be able to succeed I sucked it up and missed on my full attack this might be a close fight. Success isn't fun if there is no chance for failure. The miss chance was another element to add tension and risk to the game and added to the overall fun. Also it just seemed fitting, if you are attacking the wrong spot it doesn't matter how good the shot is.

Ah well, its just a nit pick. Concealemnt rules aren't a major part of any of my games.

 

[WyzardWhately]

They've talked a lot about 'combat advantage' as a sort of standardized condition, apparently. Perhaps we will see a reverse version of that, 'combat disadvantage,' which represents cover, concealment, etc. Hmm....

 

[D.Shaffer]

I HATED the miss role. Nothing wrecks a good mood faster then hitting something and then having to see if you REALLY 'hit' it. I wont shed any tears if it's gone.

Likewise, I hope for something related to this for 4ed's version of magic resistance.