D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's a dodge and a cop out.

I was able to make exciting battles with every previous edition of D&D as well. 4e did nothing to make that MORE possible, it just made the grind longer and shifted the importance of the game to combat.

Well, all I can say is it was vastly easier for me to set things up using 4e. If a fight used enough XP to be a level 5 fight then it was pretty much as advertised (a fairly easy but non-trivial challenge to a level 5 party, and a huge challenge to a level 1 party). The monster roles, the encounter templates, the terrain powers, traps, and terrain features all worked well. Skills and even Skill Challenges could be added into a fight in a cool and interesting way. Best of all, you only needed to set a DC for anything and it was ready to go. If someone wanted to collapse the mine shaft, great! I don't think that's a 'cop out' at all. I ran AD&D for years. While I don't think it was monumentally difficult to make a variety of encounters it was QUITE hard to make many others that are relatively trivial with 4e.

Nor do I have real 'grind' problems. Again, grind IME of running 4e a lot since it came out is that a fight that becomes grindy has a flaw. For instance I set up a fight where the party would enter into a big cavern that had some glowing fungi here and there providing a little light. Somewhere inside was an owlbear. I made the mistake of giving it a little side passage to lurk in, with no back exit. Sure as can be the party comes barging in, sees the side passage, and makes a beeline for it. The owlbear is stuck back there trying to bullrush its way out, and the characters are all around slugging on it. That got boggy and went several rounds without much really exciting happening, though the end of the fight was pretty tense with the owlbear ALMOST killing a couple PCs it wasn't a prize encounter. Live and learn. Its OK to have a minor combatant stuck back there in a blind ally, like a lurker or something, but next time I put a big monster in a tight space like that I'll provide an escape route or something else. The situation was just a bit too static.
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] I think the one area where you need to be careful is in terms of players that are not so invested in the story. Often they will try to do the most advantageous thing numerically vs the most dramatically appropriate. So for instance the fighter that will always try to push the huge monsters off the bridge or whatever even when he's got no idea of a way to do it just because there's no specific penalty. 3e fixes that with a fat penalty. IMHO the best way to do it in 4e is to just create serious consequences. "OK, you failed, the giant boots YOU off the cliff!" or something like that (that might be a bit heavy-handed). Fail forward will turn that into "the fighter is always living on the hairy edge, he's crazy" instead of "that guy is a munchkin", at least hopefully. I have some players that are competitive and like to 'win' but they like to RP too, so it hasn't been a major problem. Of course AD&D would generate a different set of issues, you'd get the "McGyver" types and such that would try to gain some big bonus in every situation.

 

[Mournblade94]

Nem was personally targeted. And if you switch 4e to PF, you might be nose-disjointed, too. Here, when I change a few words, this is how it reads. Let me know your feeling:

"So when I say the following, I do it with the utmost respect (targeting you):

Maybe the PF community needs to acknowledge that unwelcome things are going to be said about PF in D&D5 threads, specifically because D&D5 is supposed to improve on D&D in all its forms, no matter how anyone felt about it. Maybe the PF community needs to let it go.

I enjoyed PF. But if I am going to talk about what D&D5 needs, I am going to make negative comparisons with PF. And I do not need my thread hijacked every time I do that. It is counter productive."

I mean if that's not dismissive, "quiet down kids, the adults are speaking" type of tone and approach to a public forum, I'm not sure what is. That is the real trolling. And we were doing so well...

@Scrivener of Doom Black Swan, eh? Hehe not bad. How about "We exist no matter how much you want to deny, undermine, or ignore us- and we're part of the D&D legacy no matter how much it grinds your gears". Maybe a little long for a game title...

As A PF fan, that wouldn't bother me.

 

[Mournblade94]

This made me smile.

(I downloaded the free version of KotS, but have never looked at it. It's reputation precedes it.)

That was my first foray into 4e when it came out. It was difficult to get through.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] I think the one area where you need to be careful is in terms of players that are not so invested in the story. Often they will try to do the most advantageous thing numerically vs the most dramatically appropriate. So for instance the fighter that will always try to push the huge monsters off the bridge or whatever even when he's got no idea of a way to do it just because there's no specific penalty. 3e fixes that with a fat penalty. IMHO the best way to do it in 4e is to just create serious consequences. "OK, you failed, the giant boots YOU off the cliff!" or something like that (that might be a bit heavy-handed). Fail forward will turn that into "the fighter is always living on the hairy edge, he's crazy" instead of "that guy is a munchkin", at least hopefully. I have some players that are competitive and like to 'win' but they like to RP too, so it hasn't been a major problem. Of course AD&D would generate a different set of issues, you'd get the "McGyver" types and such that would try to gain some big bonus in every situation.

Doesn't that just replicate the problem of "I can't see into the DM's head and he's going to screw my attempt over; it's better to just hit things"? If attempts result in bad things happening on failure that the player did not anticipate then you end up in a situation where the player won't try or the player is frustrated because "obviously sensible" attempts carry serious penalty -- this would be especially true if the attempt uses a power taken by the player, no? Doesn't that eviscerate one of the major advantages of 4e?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Doesn't that just replicate the problem of "I can't see into the DM's head and he's going to screw my attempt over; it's better to just hit things"? If attempts result in bad things happening on failure that the player did not anticipate then you end up in a situation where the player won't try or the player is frustrated because "obviously sensible" attempts carry serious penalty -- this would be especially true if the attempt uses a power taken by the player, no? Doesn't that eviscerate one of the major advantages of 4e?

I don't think so. First of all if you really do fail forward then its not like failure is bad by definition. It just isn't what the character/player WANT. In any case does anyone really WANT perfect transparency? Some people do, but it is rare and 4e certainly doesn't hurt you there, such a situation would be a joint collaborative story. If not then there's no real issue. The player in 4e at least knows that he can try things and what success means and how likely it is. In any case I find that in practice players engineer their failures by how they describe what they're doing. It isn't perfectly predictable, but unless your DM's agenda is to dink you over all the time it works. Ultimately there's more authority in the hands of the player than the other way around.

 

[Dausuul]

Doesn't that just replicate the problem of "I can't see into the DM's head and he's going to screw my attempt over; it's better to just hit things"? If attempts result in bad things happening on failure that the player did not anticipate then you end up in a situation where the player won't try or the player is frustrated because "obviously sensible" attempts carry serious penalty -- this would be especially true if the attempt uses a power taken by the player, no? Doesn't that eviscerate one of the major advantages of 4e?

When a player proposes one of these high-risk maneuvers, my response is to come up with a benefit for success and a penalty for failure, then announce them and let the player decide whether to go ahead. "You want to leap off the ledge, land on the ogre's shoulders 30 feet below, and use your whole weight to drive your sword into its back? Hmm, okay. 30 feet is 3d10 falling damage. Make an attack roll. If you hit, the ogre eats that 3d10 (plus your regular weapon damage)... but if you miss, you do. Still want to go for it?"

Sometimes they decide not to take the risk, but more often than not they go ahead. I find it works nicely. The excitement of these stunts is heightened by knowing the consequences if they fail, and nobody feels like they got blindsided when they roll badly.

Of course, I can do this just as well in D&DN.

 

[Mournblade94]

Congratulations. You succeeded. I thought about it. And then I decided, "Well, instead of getting all worked up about a hypothetical, the sensible thing to do is go look at what's actually happening and get worked up (or not) about that."

Offhand, I can think of four rules elements specific to 3E/Pathfinder:

• 3E-style multiclassing. This is rumored to be in, but much like the vaunted "advanced tactics module," we haven't seen it yet.
• Monsters built using the same rules as PCs. This is rather obviously out, and I have seen 3E/Pathfinder fans complaining about that. They've gotten a somewhat chilly reception from everyone else.
• Iterative attacks. This is also clearly out. No one seems to care.
• Skill points. Also out. I've seen very little discussion of this.

I dare say one could think of more, but those were what I came up with off the top of my head. 3E didn't introduce the kind of sweeping innovations that 4E did, and many of the innovations it did introduce were carried over into 4E. As such, there's simply far less to debate, unless you want to regard "3E/Pathfinder" as a shorthand for "the sum total of every edition except 4th." But, pound for pound, I'm not convinced there's a big difference in how 3E-isms and 4E-isms are treated.

That's a good analysis, and it is what bothers me about Next. I will say though I like the skill system so far. At first I was miffed about the monsters having a different build than characters, but then I revisited 2nd edition for a few sessions and I have to say it does not bother me.

I think the iterative attacks are back through the martial classes' abilities. In any case I would like to see only martial characters get iterative attacks, and I would like to see at least the fighter ALWAYS get many attacks even after a move.

 

[Nagol]

When a player proposes one of these high-risk maneuvers, my response is to come up with a benefit for success and a penalty for failure, then announce them and let the player decide whether to go ahead. "You want to leap off the ledge, land on the ogre's shoulders 30 feet below, and use your whole weight to drive your sword into its back? Hmm, okay. 30 feet is 3d10 falling damage. Make an attack roll. If you hit, the ogre eats that 3d10 (plus your regular weapon damage)... but if you miss, you do. Still want to go for it?"

Sometimes they decide not to take the risk, but more often than not they go ahead. I find it works nicely. The excitement of these stunts is heightened by knowing the consequences if they fail, and nobody feels like they got blindsided when they roll badly.

Of course, I can do this just as well in D&DN.

The example given was a Fighter trying to push a giant off a bridge and upon failure, the giant reversing the process. Now the example can be flawed or ill-thought out because its a message board post and these things tend to be off the cuff. But it exposes a logic that has been decried before. Namely, applying DM-fiat results that harm or disadvantage the PC that the player did not understand beforehand.

But if the Fighter is using Tide of Iron to push a giant -- an ability with specified outcomes and expected results -- should there be additional DM-fiat penalty attached to the manoeuvre at all considering the PC has invested in this? How is the player to know when the power works as written and when the DM will change the parameters?

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

That's another source of verismilitude, too - the system smoothly delivers the fiction the players are aiming at, and actively supports it. It doesn't have to be fought against.

This last part is so very, very key to my wholesale adoption of 4e. AD&D was serviceable but fairly kludgy in attaining the kind(s) of game(s) I was after, 3.x feels like it's actively fighting me in my attempt to run the kind(s) of game(s) I want, whereas 4e is just a malleable toolkit, and has worked pretty smoothly for me, every time I've run campaigns with it so far. Each one has had a different "feel" and a different "tone" and a different take on houserules, and each time the rules just work, and support the fiction as well as the game in an unobtrusive manner.

I have to say that thing I like about 4th ed's take on verisimilitude, is the way game mechanics offer resources that players can use to confront problems. Rules (especially relating to PC powers) are not just about placing limits or regulating participants they actually let you do things that you could not normally do. The fact they are limited resources means there is resource management side of things and also timing is especially important so there is tactical and synergistic side of things. This strikes me as more realistic and dynamic than most other RPGs I have played.

I also like the ways the 4th ed skill system interfaces (or can interface) with powers in combat. My highlight in 4th ed was using a twin strike attack (Im a cleric ranger hybrid) to shoot a hobgoblin rider off a triceratops, then using acrobatics to climb up the beast and then action pointing and using a nature check to take control of the poor dinosaur. I found this to be realistic because it could have easily failed at any point - but not so unlikely that one would not try to do reckless things.

I like these examples, and I think they illustrate well the advantages of the system.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The moment I started to wonder if 3e is my edition of chice was, when a Player "tried" to calculate his rogue´s chances to kill a guard before he can alert someone and decided not to even try... It is really a bad rationale to just try things where you believe you calculated your chances right. I liked in 4e, that you had some powers like action points and dailies and AP, and things like combat advantage, to guess quite good, if you can kill the target easily. And I especially liked the human racial power and the thief´s backstab mechanic to have some self induced powers to lower the chance of success, when it really matters.

I liked in next so far, that advantage is easy to factor in as a player. Monster AC and HP to a certain degree can be estimated by their appearance. And before the last iteration of the playtest, the halfling had a way to increase his odds twice a day. Now the fighter has an attack increasing maneuver at least. I am however not so sure if I like the random d6.