Creating Mundane Items

[Revinor]

But that's the term WotC is using to describe Arcane and Divine "rituals", so if we call them anything else we then have two words for the same thing. That's not good either.

So why we have spells, exploits and prayers? They are exactly the same.

I think that rituals are from very definition magical. One of the hints is that only wizard and cleric gets them (what about warlock? not sure). I don't think that we have to reuse existing mechanic to explain that it is possible to cook a pie[1]. It is not MMORPG, where you have to find a button under which to put some action.


[1] - on the other hand, description of Wizards discovering and hoarding rituals remind me a bit of housewives exchanging recipes for good meals...

 

[Zaruthustran]

I don't think mundane item creation even needs skills, or rituals. It seems to me to be purely a RP thing. If a player wants to learn how to forge weapons, I just say he apprentices himself to a blacksmith for a certain amount of time. After that he can just forge weapons as long as he spends time and materials as appropriate. I never saw the need to have a skill do that.

In this respect, I appreciate that 4e is getting away from the 3e "rules for everything" mentality.

Totally agree. If player wants to be an armorsmith or whatever, man, just let him. That's roleplaying flavor, same as "I used to a guardsman" or "I used to be an actor."

"Used to be" being the important point, there. The PC's profession is now "adventurer", and the mechanics of 4E need only model/balance skills directly related to adventuring.

 

[MaelStorm]

"Used to be" being the important point, there. The PC's profession is now "adventurer", and the mechanics of 4E need only model/balance skills directly related to adventuring.

Yes, it seems so. 4E design philosophy is mundane=not fun. Maybe that's why a lot of people think 4E has become a video game. Background is irrelevent because the whole focus of PCs is to become a legend and leave the mortal realm.

But what if you don't want to fall back to GURPS and play a D&D 4E with more emphasis on heroic and paragon tier? What if we don't want our PCs to become Exalted? I don't want to play GURPS, as D&D has a lot of advantages that GURPS doesn't have, except I don't completely like the shift of focus on Epic gaming. I don't want to go 3.75 either, I want flexibility and optional rules, so 4E can accommodate different needs. It's a brutal philosophy IMO, it is: adapt to the new version or stay completely away mentality I don't like. It almost sound like the Bush rhetoric: Either you are with us or against us.

I apologize if this post make some people feel angry.

 

[kclark]

[1] - on the other hand, description of Wizards discovering and hoarding rituals remind me a bit of housewives exchanging recipes for good meals...

Which reminds me of those old Dragon articles where the archmages gathered together in some normal guys house to trade spells. I demand more cackling and gossiping about who is dating who during these ritual swap meets for 4e.

 

[Dragonblade]

Yes, it seems so. 4E design philosophy is mundane=not fun. Maybe that's why a lot of people think 4E has become a video game. Background is irrelevent because the whole focus of PCs is to become a legend and leave the mortal realm.

But what if you don't want to fall back to GURPS and play a D&D 4E with more emphasis on heroic and paragon tier? What if we don't want our PCs to become Exalted? I don't want to play GURPS, as D&D has a lot of advantages that GURPS doesn't have, except I don't completely like the shift of focus on Epic gaming. I don't want to go 3.75 either, I want flexibility and optional rules, so 4E can accommodate different needs. It's a brutal philosophy IMO, it is: adapt to the new version or stay completely away mentality I don't like. It almost sound like the Bush rhetoric: Either you are with us or against us.

I apologize if this post make some people feel angry.

I don't agree that background is irrelevant. Just doesn't need mechanics to describe it.

On your second issue, I think you make a valid point. However, I think this is a problem that afflicts all RPGs, not just D&D. Many games handle it in different ways with, IMO, equally unsatisfying results. All games systems have to decide how they want to handle character advancement.

Unlimited advancement eventually leads to deity level characters. Ok if you want to run a D&D epic game with PCs going up against other deity level opponents or if you want to play Exalted. Unstatisfying for games that weren't intended for such power levels.

Putting a hard cap leads to characters becoming forever frozen at a certain point with no further outlet for character growth. Again, equally unsatisfying.

Putting a cap on going up but encouraging breadth ultimately creates cookie-cutter characters where eventually every PC can do everything every other PC can do. Ok in the short run, but not really ideal in the long run.

Or no growth at all. Ok for one shots but I would not want to play a long term game this way.

So what do you do? Players like to improve their character over time. So no matter what style of advancement system you go with, eventually it breaks down. For what it is, I think the D&D system works ok.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Yes, it seems so. 4E design philosophy is mundane=not fun. Maybe that's why a lot of people think 4E has become a video game. Background is irrelevent because the whole focus of PCs is to become a legend and leave the mortal realm.

But what if you don't want to fall back to GURPS and play a D&D 4E with more emphasis on heroic and paragon tier? What if we don't want our PCs to become Exalted? I don't want to play GURPS, as D&D has a lot of advantages that GURPS doesn't have, except I don't completely like the shift of focus on Epic gaming. I don't want to go 3.75 either, I want flexibility and optional rules, so 4E can accommodate different needs. It's a brutal philosophy IMO, it is: adapt to the new version or stay completely away mentality I don't like. It almost sound like the Bush rhetoric: Either you are with us or against us.

I apologize if this post make some people feel angry.

Perhaps I'm just not getting your post, but how do you see 4e forcing players into Epic gaming any more so that 3e did? OK, they are taking away some of the mundane aspects that IME most people ignored in their games anyway, but does that mean you cannot slow the game down and spend more time at the heroic and paragon levels? Can that only be done if you have the ability to spend skill points on Craft: wicker furniture or Profession: Chef?

What can't you do in 4e that you could in earlier editions?

 

[Revinor]

Yes, it seems so. 4E design philosophy is mundane=not fun. Maybe that's why a lot of people think 4E has become a video game. Background is irrelevent because the whole focus of PCs is to become a legend and leave the mortal realm.

There is very important distinction here. 4E is about the things you want to tell. It has the _rules_ for combat and adventuring. And it doesn't want you to make a tradeoffs between those aspects and the aspects you want to focus on.

In previous editions, to be a blacksmith, you had to give up on your combat/adventuring power. It was clearly suboptimal choice from game perspective. Just because system for combat and mundane activities was shared, you had to do the tradeoffs here. In some cases it was leading to name calling (every group had a certain level of expected 'gimpiness', if you ignored that, you were not 'roleplaying' enough).

In 4e, idea is that you create your character to be valid character in combat and when going on adventures. This point is self-contained system, classes are balanced against each other. Roleplaying/flavor/mundane part is separate part of the system. Nobody requires you to gimp your character at creation to support your backstory. We still don't know the exact rules, but we know for sure that they are outside of basic spell/feat/skill world.

To be honest - there is no requirement for the system for creating a horseshoe. You just know how to do it, or not. If somebody feels like being master-blacksmith and he can back up it with a nice story, let him do it. Don't check his Wisdom modifier against DC of material with modifiers for the tools he is using. Leave it in roleplaying layer.

I would say that by having less rules about it, 4e can support this aspect of play a lot better. Rule combat without rules may mean chaos, milking a cow without a rules is just milking a cow. I'm coming from city and I cannot do it, but if somebody will show me how, I'll learn in 15 minutes. No need to kill 100 orcs to gain a level so I can spend precious skill point on 'rural activities' and get all the other useless pieces of knowledge at the same time (I will refuse to kill chickens by breaking their necks).

If not for the combat, we would not need a system at all. So leave the system in combat and enjoy pure RPG outside of it.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

There is very important distinction here. 4E is about the things you want to tell. It has the _rules_ for combat and adventuring. And it doesn't want you to make a tradeoffs between those aspects and the aspects you want to focus on.

And that design philosophy has its own tradeoffs. You can easily keep non-combat skills and just silo them away into secondary skills with a separate set of points/proficiencies to apply. Instead they've said "Woooh look at me the rules are made of xaos!" There is no engine to determine HOW proficient characters are at the task. The difference between a horseshoe and the Great Wall of China has been reduced to pure fiat.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

There is very important distinction here. 4E is about the things you want to tell. It has the _rules_ for combat and adventuring. And it doesn't want you to make a tradeoffs between those aspects and the aspects you want to focus on.

Very good post. I agree.

Rule combat without rules may mean chaos, milking a cow without a rules is just milking a cow. I'm coming from city and I cannot do it, but if somebody will show me how, I'll learn in 15 minutes. No need to kill 100 orcs to gain a level so I can spend precious skill point on 'rural activities' and get all the other useless pieces of knowledge at the same time (I will refuse to kill chickens by breaking their necks).

Let's be honest here, unless 'rural activities' is a "trained only" skill, you can milk cows with 15 minutes of being shown how. You'll be slow at it and wouldn't have the first clue about how to treat a cow with mastitis, but you could get some milk out.

Of course I don't know how killing a bunch of orcs should lead to you suddenly becoming better at milking cows, which is why it is better to separate these two aspects of the game.

 

[MaelStorm]

I don't agree that background is irrelevant. Just doesn't need mechanics to describe it.

I OTOH disagree and think background mechanic are very important, so characters are obliged to have a defined past. A background predetermine why the character is a hero now, and why he wants to become a legend in the future. I don't see this as separate fluff that just need a few lines in a character sheet. Most of the times the player's write what they want, sometimes it is left entirely blank, the PC has no personality of its own. It's a problem many DM face and it need to be tackled with rules. If I look back at 3.5 they started to tackle the issue, now with a new edition they decided to leave this undefined. One of the advantage of D&D over DIY games is that you pay to have stuff already prepared for you and that you don't have to work for it. Maybe I'm in the minority of costumers who want this, but that's a pain to be left out. As my concerns doesn't seem to be relevant enough so the game designers take care of this problem with the first Core Books.

On your second issue, I think you make a valid point. However, I think this is a problem that afflicts all RPGs, not just D&D. Many games handle it in different ways with, IMO, equally unsatisfying results. All games systems have to decide how they want to handle character advancement.

Unlimited advancement eventually leads to deity level characters. Ok if you want to run a D&D epic game with PCs going up against other deity level opponents or if you want to play Exalted. Unstatisfying for games that weren't intended for such power levels.

Putting a hard cap leads to characters becoming forever frozen at a certain point with no further outlet for character growth. Again, equally unsatisfying.

Putting a cap on going up but encouraging breadth ultimately creates cookie-cutter characters where eventually every PC can do everything every other PC can do. Ok in the short run, but not really ideal in the long run.

Or no growth at all. Ok for one shots but I would not want to play a long term game this way.

So what do you do? Players like to improve their character over time. So no matter what style of advancement system you go with, eventually it breaks down. For what it is, I think the D&D system works ok.

I agree with you. I don't want to stall growth to a complete halt, it would not be fun. I will maybe tweak the level progression so that PCs have a longer progression. Maybe just 25% more XP needed at the beginning, and if my players want a faster or longer progression I'm going to adjust it accordingly.