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

[AbdulAlhazred]

In my own experience, the question this raises is - what are the heroes' capabilities? What can they achieve? Are they mundane mortals? Comic-book/action-movie mortals, like Daredevil or James Bond? Or heroes on a par with the elves of the First Age, or Hercules?

I don't feel that classic D&D does a very good job of answering this question coherently - for instance, the same fighter who can lop the head of a dragon with his sword may have trouble scaling a modest cliff.

I find the 4e mechanical approach makes it easier to answer the question - its genre-led framing (with the players' powers setting minimum parameters of genre permissibility), followed by setting a DC, followed by resolving the action.

To try and cash this out by reference to the giant being pushed: First, a PC won't encounter a giant until they are paragon tier (or perhaps upper heroic for a hill giant). So what the mechanics tell us is that we are playing a game of heroic fantasy in which an upper heroic or pargon shield specialist warrior is so deft and strong with his/her shield that even a giant is vulnerable to being staggered or wrong-footed by his/her attacks. Which already tells us something about the PC - s/he is less like the historical Richard the Lionheart, and more like the lengedary Gawain. And by the time the PC reaches Epic, s/he will be more like (a shield-wielding) Hercules, fighting and staggering titans with his/her might thews and shield.

These mechanically-mandated answers to genre questions also then set the tone for adjudication of non-standard actions, skill use in a skill challenge etc. They set a tone/flavour for what a PC can do.

The game isn't identical to a more descriptor based game like Marvel Heroic RP, but it works in something like the same sort of way, and uses something like the same sort of approach to create the space for, and adjudicate, heroic actions.

I think it is fair to say, as you, [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] and [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] have all demonstrated in various ways, that 4e has a bit of an odd contrast between built-in PC powers and improvised actions. If a PC uses Tide of Iron then the expectation is that it just works in the same way all the time, the giant is pushed, or the attack misses and things go from there. A page 42 based action would be more in keeping with variable consequences and procedures (IE failure might leave the PC clinging to the railing of the bridge, etc). OTOH if we're expecting appropriate fiction from players when they use powers (or page 42 either) then its less of a problem. Powers work fine, normally, and most of them require no extraordinary narration in the vast number of cases. OTOH if a PC is Tide of Ironing a giant, I'd like a good narration for that, and this can easily lead into some added resolution. It could be as simple as giving the giant a reaction (remembering that while the DM really shouldn't be unfair to the players in 4e NPCs are really tools for doing cool stuff, not absolute descriptions of in-game reality). This is the "rules are tools" position, and is probably quite a bit like the way a 2e fight would work out (IE the DM might well have the giant pick up the PC and toss them off the bridge or etc if the character fails to pull off a stunt). At least in the 4e case the rules for how to do this stuff are quite solid, in 2e it was far less so.

 

[billd91]

So not a HUGE difference, but I'd be worried as a player that if I fail a check in 3e my character will end up taking damage he can ill afford to suffer. I don't usually worry too much about that in 4e.

I'm not sure I understand why this would be the case. Most DCs for 3e skills are fairly fixed and not based on the PC's level at all. The task may be hard for a low level PC, but mid-level and above, it's probably pretty easy. If worried about the damage, would you say 4e is easier on PCs than 3e in this regard?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not sure I understand why this would be the case. Most DCs for 3e skills are fairly fixed and not based on the PC's level at all. The task may be hard for a low level PC, but mid-level and above, it's probably pretty easy. If worried about the damage, would you say 4e is easier on PCs than 3e in this regard?

But 3e skill bonuses don't advance without spending levels on them, which means often the DCs are permanently out of range for most characters for a wide variety of tasks. Given that higher levels will generally involve more difficult situations its actually rather unlikely that you'll have a 3e PC that can both reliably vault onto a triceratops and handle the beast (certainly possible, but rare). In 4e it is true, it COULD be quite hard for some PCs, but it is likely that many of them have a reasonable chance (lets say difficult Acrobatics check and Moderate Nature check, seems to me you're looking at 50/50 overall anyway, maybe lower for some types of character, much higher for others, but at least worth attempting for more than in 3e).

As for survivability. It isn't so much overall survivability, which is mostly dependent on overall encounter difficulty, but in terms of "I can handle a bad situation for a while" yes, you can take more risks in 4e. The variance is lessened on what the likely bad results are. A PC can survive taking an HS or 2 worth of damage, there's always Second Wind if nothing else, and leaders generally don't mind tossing you a heal. One would of course be advised not to constantly burn HS for little reason, but most of the time you needn't be concerned that failing a check is tantamount to death or will force the whole party to retreat to lick its wounds. In this respect 3e gets somewhat more like 4e at mid-high levels, though many SOD effects do tend to dilute that somewhat.

I know in my 4e games I see a lot of fairly crazy stuff. Its not quite on the level of comic book superheroes or wuxia type stuff at low levels, but it does pretty much get their once you're into high paragon. Players seem to feel quite free to let loose and take a lot of risks. The fun part is you can make it bite them some without it being catastrophic. I always found that in previous editions the game was very prone to break from "we're kicking butt" to "we got our arses kicked" without much in-between.

 

[Mournblade94]

I think there is a genre incoherence in the fighter who can lop the head of a dragon but not scale a modest cliff-face. What heroic archetype would such a state of affairs express?

That said, genre isn't scientific in its precision. Maybe someone else has an archetype in mind.

But this started with Tide of Iron and related questions about verisimilitude. So let's move the pieces around a bit: at the same level that a 4e fighter is pushing giants with his/her shield, s/he is able to lop the head of a dragon with his/her sword, and is able to scale even challenging cliffs while fully armoured (assuming 10th level: +5 level, +5 stat, +5 skill for +15 Athletics, feats to cancel armour and shield penalties; DC for a slippery rough surface is 20, 15 or less to fall, and this PC can't get less than 16 as a check result). That picture does not make me have questions of plausibility or verisimilitude - it is a genre-appropriate picture of a heroically tough warrior.

We might, we might not. In 4e at least that question is pretty moot, though: the wizard can't. (The 21st level wizard's +9 to +11 Athletics bonus (depending on how badly STR was dumped) would be pretty competitive at 1st level, but is nothing but a liability in Epic situations.)

I don't think that's a trivial difference.

In classic D&D, and in 3E, a spellcaster is able to "nova" by unleashing their best spells all in a row. The action point in 4e generalises the capabiilty to nova. And nova-ing is a key part of heroic action - if you have to take two turns to seize control of the dinosaur from its riders, your chances of success go down quite a bit, as the enemies intervene on their turns.

Action points aren't the only way to do it - you could have some sort of cascading effect system, where success begets success (3E's Great Cleave feat is a version of this, though confined to attack rolls), but that strips away much of the player agency that an action point system entails.

There's a lot to be said, in a heroic RPG, to players having the mechanical capability to pull out all the stops.

I think scaling the cliff is completely arbitrary. Just because a fighter lopped the Dragon's head off, I would not then expect him to be able to scale a bare cliff face. One does not follow the other. In any case it is just as easy to do in 3rd edition as 4e. You just have to want to make the climber.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think scaling the cliff is completely arbitrary. Just because a fighter lopped the Dragon's head off, I would not then expect him to be able to scale a bare cliff face. One does not follow the other. In any case it is just as easy to do in 3rd edition as 4e. You just have to want to make the climber.

Again though the primary difference is that a 4e PC in general will have broad competence by virtue of the skill system (or even ability score checks, though they tend to be harder to pass). Even a fighter NOT trained in Athletics (or any other STR primary class) will climb fairly well. Even the weak STR dumping wizard has a CHANCE to pass most climbing checks, and not a bad chance if they're say Medium difficulty ones. A 3e fighter? I don't even think climbing is a class skill for them is it? Certainly for any class which lacks that as a class skill they COULD be good at it, but only at a VERY substantial suck of resources. By level 9 or so you're not going to pass most checks for doing stuff you lack skill ranks in. The difference isn't HUGE, except there are 100's of skills in 3e to master, so any PC is competent only in a small subset of skill use situations. A 4e PC generally will be trained in 20-30% of all skills, and have a primary in at least 10-20% more, and a decent secondary (and/or other advantages from class/race/background/theme) in probably another one or two. Most PCs can at least take a reasonable shot at 50% of the skill checks out there. IMHO that conveys a more heroic sort of ambience, heroes do stuff, they don't worry too much about lacking the skill to do most things. This isn't terribly realistic of course, but it works pretty well.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Again though the primary difference is that a 4e PC in general will have broad competence by virtue of the skill system (or even ability score checks, though they tend to be harder to pass). Even a fighter NOT trained in Athletics (or any other STR primary class) will climb fairly well. Even the weak STR dumping wizard has a CHANCE to pass most climbing checks, and not a bad chance if they're say Medium difficulty ones. A 3e fighter? I don't even think climbing is a class skill for them is it? Certainly for any class which lacks that as a class skill they COULD be good at it, but only at a VERY substantial suck of resources. By level 9 or so you're not going to pass most checks for doing stuff you lack skill ranks in. The difference isn't HUGE, except there are 100's of skills in 3e to master, so any PC is competent only in a small subset of skill use situations. A 4e PC generally will be trained in 20-30% of all skills, and have a primary in at least 10-20% more, and a decent secondary (and/or other advantages from class/race/background/theme) in probably another one or two. Most PCs can at least take a reasonable shot at 50% of the skill checks out there. IMHO that conveys a more heroic sort of ambience, heroes do stuff, they don't worry too much about lacking the skill to do most things. This isn't terribly realistic of course, but it works pretty well.

Personally, I don't care for that kind of rules set. I just happen to be good at a wide range of things just because of the skill system is just not my cup of tea. If I want to be good at something then I want to invest in it whether through feats, traits, and skills.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

In order to meet their mandate of making everyone happy under their "big tent" in Next, they will have to provide options for both camps. Probably a few other camps that we aren't discussing in this thread as well.

They seem to have the 'no skills' camp covered with raw ability checks, and they have the 'skill investors' covered with the current packet with its open-ended list of fiddly skills. Currently nothing for those who want a shorter list of broad competencies, but with more granularity than 'no skills' offers. They had a somewhat interesting system going with the open-ended list that was not locked to a specific stat, such that you could try an leverage your stats to work with what you were trying to do, but that has been dropped from the playtest.

It's unclear if that's gone for good, or if they're just trying out a different variant. I'll be happy to see them implement a 4e style system as an option for playtesting, but I'm not holding my breath. It's too bad, because the 4e system is the first one I didn't hate, and didn't feel like my characters were bumbling fools in all but the handful or less skills that they had the resources to train properly.

I'm more ok with skills being narrow if the resources to build them up are siloed away from resources for other pillars of character creation and play. IMHO, you should never need to choose between Skill Focus and Weapon Focus.

Digression aside, unsurprisingly, I find myself agreeing with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] on this. The expectations I have of PCs as regards the genre fiction is a much closer match in 4e than 3.x, though even 2e did a better job of this with even a small investment in Intelligence. I'm not saying that 3.x does a bad job of meeting everyone's genre expectations (obviously), just that it doesn't match my expectations. That isn't passing universal judgement on one set of expectations over the other, only highlighting that there is a difference and that those differences ought to be respected if they want to write a game that D&Ders of every stripe want to play.

 

[Derren]

By level 9 or so you're not going to pass most checks for doing stuff you lack skill ranks in.

Only if the DC of a task scales with player level. And I can't think of any instance where 3E gave any indication that this should be the case. A lot of people seem to have played this way, but by the advice/rules in 3E the DC of the obstacle is independent from the PCs level.
Imo a lot of problems people had with skills in 3E come from this misunderstanding. By scaling the DC of obstacles the only way for PCs to keep up was to focus on a few skills and max them (PRC requirements were another reason). If the DCs were calculated only by the difficulty of the task spreading skill points around would have been much more viable.

IMHO that conveys a more heroic sort of ambience, heroes do stuff, they don't worry too much about lacking the skill to do most things. This isn't terribly realistic of course, but it works pretty well.

Different skill systems for different type of games.
The 4E skill system is good for scene based games where the PCs are not supposed to fail (fail forward which gets mentioned here and there also falls into this category).
The PCs meet an level appropriate obstacle, everyone rolls dice to "combat" it and when it is defeated they continue to the next scene. And much like 4E doesn't allow someone to be bad in combat, it doesn't allow someone to be bad in skills as in the end both are just a type of obstacle.
The 3E skill system is much better for goal based games. The PCs are given a goal and can decide by themselves how to approach it. Depending on their skills and the situation at hand they can try different methods and failing just means they have to try something else. Here being bad at something is not a problem as you can choose to approach the problem in a way you are good at.

5E seems to fall more into the "never fail" category like 4E even just by the virtue of flat math and the D20 allowing people to succeed at most tasks. And the lack of skill points is really troublesome to me as now everyone is born good in a skill instead of trained to be good in a skill.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Only if the DC of a task scales with player level. And I can't think of any instance where 3E gave any indication that this should be the case. A lot of people seem to have played this way, but by the advice/rules in 3E the DC of the obstacle is independent from the PCs level.
Imo a lot of problems people had with skills in 3E come from this misunderstanding. By scaling the DC of obstacles the only way for PCs to keep up was to focus on a few skills and max them (PRC requirements were another reason). If the DCs were calculated only by the difficulty of the task spreading skill points around would have been much more viable.


Different skill systems for different type of games.
The 4E skill system is good for scene based games where the PCs are not supposed to fail (fail forward which gets mentioned here and there also falls into this category).
The PCs meet an level appropriate obstacle, everyone rolls dice to "combat" it and when it is defeated they continue to the next scene. And much like 4E doesn't allow someone to be bad in combat, it doesn't allow someone to be bad in skills as in the end both are just a type of obstacle.
The 3E skill system is much better for goal based games. The PCs are given a goal and can decide by themselves how to approach it. Depending on their skills and the situation at hand they can try different methods and failing just means they have to try something else. Here being bad at something is not a problem as you can choose to approach the problem in a way you are good at.

5E seems to fall more into the "never fail" category like 4E even just by the virtue of flat math and the D20 allowing people to succeed at most tasks. And the lack of skill points is really troublesome to me as now everyone is born good in a skill instead of trained to be good in a skill.

I hate the less fail option because I don't play D&D to win or succeed, I'm there to play and accept whatever outcome happens.

 

[Derren]

I hate the less fail option because I don't play D&D to win or succeed, I'm there to play and accept whatever outcome happens.

I am also not a fan, but it is obvious that other people are.
WotC tries in my eyes to please both groups by not specifically saying that they use the "everyone is good at everything" system, but by keeping the math flat having a system which is exactly that.
Will it work? Only time will tell.