Confirmed: Magic items and summoned monster stats in PHB

[Celebrim]

4e is getting away from that, which is one of the reasons I'm so looking forward to it.

You are going to be really disappointed then.

3e is the edition with the most in common with a tactical skirmish game.

Of the existing editions, I agree. I've long made various minor complaints against the trend toward requiring minatures to be a part of the game. One of the things about the 4E commercial looking at the history of the game that rings so untrue, is that the players of the first edition of the game are using makeshift minatures to precisely track where thier characters were with respect to the monster. I can't imagine many groups thought it necessary. While I did know groups with minatures for props, it was mostly because the DM really enjoyed painting minatures. I didn't use a minature in play until 3e.

But from everything I can tell about 4e, the requirement to use minatures is going to be even stronger in 4e than 3e. We don't have to speculate deeply about why that is to be. WotC is now in the business of making minatures, so publishing a game the depreciates the value of minatures is not in the corporate interest.

Heck, the entire notion that DM NPCs and monsters have to play by the same rules as PCs is essentially saying that the DM and players are basically playing DDM with some story thrown in.

Err... no. That doesn't follow. I'm not sure that 'essential' means what you think it means. There are quite a few elements of essential DDM still missing.

4e, with its design framework of monsters and NPCs existing only as tools for the DM to facilitate adventure RPing is making D&D LESS like a skirmish game. Not more. 3e is the epitomy of adversarial tactical skirmish play.

I'm not sure that 'epitomy' means what you think it does. I would think that DDM is the epitomy of adversarial tactical skirmish play, and I would imagine that 4E is going to be more compatible with DDM than 3E was. For example, one very good reason for streamlining a monster in the RPG rules is to make its stat block more closely match its DDM stat block. One of the explicit and implicit goals of 4E design is to use the same rules set for PnP, minatures, and electronic play.

UPDATE: It's also worth noting that as 3E evolved, it became more and more of a tactical skirmish game over time rather than less. In particular, by late 3.X, the layout of encounters in official WotC modules was increasingly looking like the layout of encounters in a tactical skirmish game. If you look at the encounter format of something like 'Expedition to Castle Ravenloft', it looks very much like scenarios from a minatures book. What we are being told about 4E, is that these sorts of innovations in late 3.X are previews of 4E. So what we have in 4E is a game more explicitly a tactical skirmish game with possibly some story tacked on than ever before.

UPDATE 2: One of the things that everyone agrees about 4E is that it encourages less 'static' and more 'dynamic' combat. From the 4E playtest reports, one of the things that we can gather that they mean by that is that alot of the 4E abilities include pushing back or moving the target of the attack in some way. In many cases it seems to be the primary purpose of the attack. On one level, that's kinda exciting. But if your style of play involves not using minatures, you don't want to hear too many examples of this because one of the reasons that very few D&D abilities over its history have involved moving around the target of the attack is that such abilities don't really facillitate tracking the location of combatants abstractly. If you want to make pushing someone 5' in some direction really relevant, you really need to precisely track everyone's location and that means at some point using minatures.

 

[Raven Crowking]

In 3e, I hate tracking ammunition for Ranger archers. I rather liked tracking ammunition for my slightly customized shuriken throwing Scout. I sort of resented in general that ammunition had to be tracked when other issues that should be similarly simulationist (or similarly NOT simulationist) were not tracked. So what was the difference?

I would say that running out of ammo is a consequence of a high fire rate, and that part of choosing to play a character with a higher firing rate is knowing that you burn through ammo faster.

Why did I have to count arrows, collect arrows after a fight, and generally do all this bookkeeping when the wizard had a never ending supply of bat guano? He never counted that. He never went spelunking to collect it. He never even really BOUGHT bat guano. One day he leveled up, and now he knew Fireball. Suddenly he had all this bat guano. Where did it come from? Nobody knew.

That bothers me in 3e, too.

RC

 

[Mallus]

So, ultimately, if deities can fire arrows without counting ammo, it follows that PCs should fire without counting ammo?

Past a certain level, yes. But my point was merely that not all storytelling, for example, the mythic kind, relies heavily on minute detail, like arrow counting.

If you want to pick an example we can actually discuss, I'll be here.....?

Police procedurals and mysteries often hang on precise physical details.

Other modes of literature do not.

The relative importance of precise detail --and more importantly, what constitutes "precise detail"-- is a function of the kind of storytelling an author is engaging in.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Past a certain level, yes. But my point was merely that not all storytelling, for example, the mythic kind, relies heavily on minute detail, like arrow counting.

All story telling, including the mythic kind, relies heavily on detail. Calling the detail you don't like "minute" serves very little purpose, unless there is some means by which one can discern what detail is "minute" and what is not.

As I said earlier:

But, of course, that doesn't answer the question as to why rations and ammo are "unimportant" bean counting, but hit points and gold pieces are not. If you only care about what is "dramatically appropriate" on the basis of your "story", then why should you care exactly how much money the PCs have available to them? If you want the PCs to be able to buy something, they simply have the money. Likewise, why bother bean-counting hit points? If you want them to drop, they drop. If it isn't "dramatically appropriate" they do not. Likewise, rather than roll damage, the DM (or players) simply decide how long a fight should last. Indeed, if your primary concern is the "dramatically appropriate" narrative you are creating, why bother rolling dice or having game rules at all? Why is any of the bean-counting important to any degree at all?​

RC

 

[Dragonblade]

This is a very bizarre statement.

The first point is that DDM was built on 3e rules, not the other way around, so that 3e wasn't a skirmish game with story thrown in, but rather an RPG that had a spin-off skirmish game that stripped the story out. The fact that PC's and monsters play by the same rules doesn't indicate skirmish one way or the other necessarily (I'm in favor of the concept, and my games certainly aren't skirmish games -- we don't use minis, or have many combats at all).

The second point is that 4e is actually making their rules CLOSER to what DDM has. The framework is different, but the framework was different in 3e, too. The combats will actually be more similar in 4e than they were in 3e. The rest of the game will be unchanged, because 3e and 4e have basically the same differences from a skirmish game. And, again, the PC/Monster rules don't really affect it's nature as a skirmish game one bit.

So 4e is actually getting CLOSER to being a game like DDM than 3e was.

So.....what was your point?

I think your misunderstanding my point. I'm not talking about combat per se. But even if we were, the 4e combat rules are no more or less skirmish-y than the 3e combat rules anyway. So that argument is moot.

What I'm getting at is more fundamental than that. The underlying assumption in 3e is that DMs and players follow the same rules for characters. This assumption, IMO, contributes heavily to the feel of D&D as a tactical skirmish game.

In 4e, this assumption is no longer in the game. IMO, this is a huge attitude shift and will go a long way towards putting the "RP" back in "RPG".

 

[AllisterH]

So here's a question.

How many people think potions of cure X wounds should've been in the equipment section in ALL previous editions of D&D.

I tend to lean towards, YES, especially given the price disparity between the potions and plate mail

 

[I'm A Banana]

What I'm getting at is more fundamental than that. The underlying assumption in 3e is that DMs and players follow the same rules for characters. This assumption, IMO, contributes heavily to the feel of D&D as a tactical skirmish game.

In 4e, this assumption is no longer in the game. IMO, this is a huge attitude shift and will go a long way towards putting the "RP" back in "RPG".

I still don't quite understand.

How does the assumption that players and DMs follow the same rules make it like a tactical skirmish game?

And how does removing that enhance role-playing qualities like character immersion and motivation?

 

[Dragonblade]

I still don't quite understand.

How does the assumption that players and DMs follow the same rules make it like a tactical skirmish game?

And how does removing that enhance role-playing qualities like character immersion and motivation?

That is a most excellent question! I have derailed this thread enough and I'm guerrilla posting at work. Let me formulate my thoughts and start a new thread later today when I have time, and then you and Celebrim can tear my argument apart.

 

[Wormwood]

How many people think potions of cure X wounds should've been in the equipment section in ALL previous editions of D&D.

I don't know about previous editions---but going forward? Hell yes.

 

[I'm A Banana]

That is a most excellent question! I have derailed this thread enough and I'm guerrilla posting at work. Let me formulate my thoughts and start a new thread later today when I have time, and then you and Celebrim can tear my argument apart.

Be happy to, chap.