Design & Development: Warlord Article UP!

[Vomax]

I should hope not. That would make the game rather inaccessible for new players. I don't see how any new player could hope to understand what is happening without good descriptions.

It also puts an unnecessary burden on everyone at the game table to figure out what is really going on--unless you are strictly looking at the game as a very abstract board game rather than an RPG.

If you're used to 3E then it is a big shift, but if you're just starting it seems like coming up with your own descriptions for your abilities is actually going to help you get into character better. For example, the trip rules in the 3rd edition rulebook paint a pretty clear picture of what happens when you go to trip someone. Whereas a power that simply results in your opponent winding up knocked over leaves it up to you to decide how that happened. Nothing was stopping you from thinking of it differently in 3E, but the way it was written certainly indicated a certain order of operations, so to speak.

 

[Rechan]

PC 1: "We've been doing this superior position maneuver for 20 years now. Tell me again why we cannot do it without the Warlord's help."

PC 2: "Laws of Physics. We are merely pawns of the Warlord. And he is a pawn of the great god Daily."

PC 1: "Oh, come on!"

PC 2: "Yup. Fact of life."

PC 1: "We've watched the rogue gut monsters when he flanks for 20 years now. Tell me again why we can't gut monsters when we flank?"

PC 2: "Laws of Physics. He started out as a street urchin, is skinny, uses a tiny weapon and wears barely little armor."

PC 1: "Oh come on!"

PC 2: "Yup. Fact of life."

 

[KarinsDad]

I agree that the long duration of Pin the Foe is nonintuitive, and that the nonintuitive (from a story perspective) powers can make it more challenging to role play combats and to suspend disbelief.

My best guess is that Pin the Foe typically represents the warlord figuring out how a particular enemy defends itself when it shifts and then showing his comrades how to nullify that defense, at least when two of them threaten the enemy. It's not about physics, it's about tactics at a level beneath the level of abstraction used by the game mechanics.

And, this is a semi-reasonable explanation (not totally since it means that the opponent is never able to change his defensive shift mechanism to mimic some other defender that he sees or has seen in the past, i.e. there is no save).

But, it's more of a problem that it takes 6 forum pages for someone to come up with a quasi-reasonable rational though. It's a real issue if a lot of powers are this non-intuitive.


In fact, I think you've allowed me to sum up one of my issues with this.

This power screams at me that the designers went from game mechanics to fluff, not the other way around. It seems likely that they came up with an idea how to modify game mechanics (in this case, the Warlord appears to modify movement capabilities with some of his powers and so they decided to nerf enemy shifting), then went searching for a rational why a Warlord could do that.

I think the powers would be more intuitive and logical if the fluff idea was thought of first, and then the most appropriate game mechanic was applied to it. Whether this actually happened for this power or not I do not know, it's just so non-intuitive that it seems very likely.

I've felt this way with a lot of the latter splat books like Bo9S and PHB II. A lot of the feats and maneuvers and such in these books follow a general theme, but they appear to be crunch ideas looking for fluff explanations.

 

[physics_ninja]

My best guess is that Pin the Foe typically represents the warlord figuring out how a particular enemy defends itself when it shifts and then showing his comrades how to nullify that defense, at least when two of them threaten the enemy.

I like that explanation. At least it explains why the power continues to work if the Warlord decides to run like a Paladin.

 

[small pumpkin man]

It also puts an unnecessary burden on everyone at the game table to figure out what is really going on--unless you are strictly looking at the game as a very abstract board game rather than an RPG.

Actually, there were three different reactions to ToB style powers in my group(well, four, the fourth being "I don't really care either way"). Mine was "hey, nice options for fighters", my old GM's was "those are stupid/munchkiny/don't make sense", the third one was to use the fact that characters actually get different abilities every round to help create a dynamic description of combat, one which helps to really move the game away from two guys standing in front of each other and hacking at each other.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that describing exactly what happens in the gameworld, what the rules happen to represent in this particular case is for many people the very definition of what makes roleplaying different and worthwhile, and ToB/4e style maneuvers/exploits can help make that more interesting, if not easier.

 

[Vomax]

This power screams at me that the designers went from game mechanics to fluff, not the other way around. It seems likely that they came up with an idea how to modify game mechanics (in this case, the Warlord appears to modify movement capabilities with some of his powers and so they decided to nerf enemy shifting), then went searching for a rational why a Warlord could do that.

I think the powers would be more intuitive and logical if the fluff idea was thought of first, and then the most appropriate game mechanic was applied to it. Whether this actually happened for this power or not I do not know, it's just so non-intuitive that it seems very likely.

I've felt this way with a lot of the latter splat books like Bo9S and PHB II. A lot of the feats and maneuvers and such in these books follow a general theme, but they appear to be crunch ideas looking for fluff explanations.

I don't completely disagree, as some of the powers don't appear to have much basis in reality, but isn't fluff->mechanics really what led to spellcasters being so overpowered in the previous edition? Of course the guy who can shoot lightning from his fingertips and fly around the room is going to beat the guy who waddles around and hits people with his sword, but it's not really fair for the sword waddler.

Ideally going the other way will result in a much more balanced game, though that will apparently come at the cost of easily understood or "realistic" abilities. I suppose, in the end, it's one of those things that's not going to have an answer that will satisfy everyone. People looking to play a game will want numbers that work whereas people looking to experience a story will want things to make sense (assuming a reasonable suspension of disbelief). Not that you can't have both, but it ain't easy.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

But, why can they not coordinate if the Warlord is back at the inn? Why can they not do this every encounter? Every round? Every opponent?

Again I must raise my concern that 4E is going to be really badly received because it demands imagination of gamers.

In 1E, it was explicitly stated in the rules that the roll to hit during a round was meant to represent the best attack out of a number of attempts during a short period (actually a minute). Later editions appeared to focus on one roll per action. This focus on specific action may have encouraged players to think of each action in very stark terms.

In 4E, it seems that the game designers once again expect that the players will imagine that their characters are doing their best in their attacks and their tactics, more than simply what the single role suggests. However, past editions may have damaged the imagination of the standard D&D player to the point where this edition cannot find a favourable reception.

The D&D rules appear to limit the effectiveness of the attempts of certain combat manoeuvres based on the demands of the narrative of the game. Unfortunately, the D&D player may be demanding a simple game-play mechanic that does not rely on imagination.

 

[FourthBear]

I am somewhat concerned we are seeing martial powers not getting the respect they deserve. In particular, that the class abilities of the Warlord, the martial leader, are being questioned in importance as something that any party should manage if it is at all possible. If a coordinated group can prevent shifting with tactics, why do they need a warlord to do so? Sometimes it seems as if only explicitly magical powers get any respect as abilities that can be modeled by the system and kept exclusive and powerful. If the only way you can imagine a PC is able to coordinate a party's attacks and movements to have powerful effects on the overall flow of D&D's tactical combat system is to have magical powers, then I think you're going to have to declare powers such as Pin the Foe magical. Frankly, I think it's a bit disappointing, since it seems to indicate that the scope for non-magical abilities in many people's minds is very limited. I just suspect that if the Warlord character were a Battle Caster with *spells* that allowed all of these tricks, rather than exploits that result from non-magical tactical ability, we wouldn't be having much of this discussion. This is going to come up again and again, I think, as the designers come up with broad ways for martial characters to compete on the same field as spellcasters.

Every martial character's powers are vulnerable to the question of "why can't everyone do this"? If the only way to get respect is to have magical powers, then we should just go the Earthdawn route and have all of the classes have explicit magical powers. Then the Warlord can have magical battle affecting powers that manage exciting game effects and not have to constantly defend these effects from the charges that they seem too magical. The Warlord's powers are quite straightforward, he has the ability to coordinate attacks, movement and the actions of his allies to allow for additional attacks and movement and actions during combat. In the limits of D&Ds turn based combat system, the designers are modeling this with the powers we've seen.

(Edited to remove controller-leader mix-up)

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I like how people are going after the Pin one, easily the least-objectionable (fluff-wise) of these powers.

How, oh how could they ever justify the warlord denying an opponent the ability to "shift"? Easy! The warlord just smacks the opponent really hard in the shin/kneecap/foot, making him/her/it move more gingerly. The enemy can still move around, but they're limping too much to move agilely and avoid OAs.

The when-anyone-attacks-an-adjacent-ally-gets-to-shift-unless-you-miss- in-which-case-you-designate-someone-who-gets-to-let-his-allies-shift power is MUCH weirder. Make fun of that for a while.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Again I must raise my concern that 4E is going to be really badly received because it demands imagination of gamers.

There's a big difference between imagination, which all RPGs require, and complete suspension of disbelief, which only more contrived rules require. Everyone who plays an RPG is using their imagination, whether it's imagining your character, the castle he's exploring, or the orcs he's fighting. Labeling anyone who is opposed to a rule in 4th edition as lacking or being opposed to imagination is not only condescending and rude, it's simply not true.

The previous poster nailed it. Some games start with imagination, fluff, story, drama and then translate those things into mechanics. The result are rules which are usually pretty well-founded in their universe. Since what characters can do is based upon drama and imagination, the resulting rules tend to be believable. Others always takes mechanics first, and often don't even bother to try to translate that into drama. The result is that what the characters do often makes little to no sense from a dramatic point of view. It's not about imagining it, it's about simply accepting that outcome whether or not it's believable. 4th edition, unfortunately, seems to have been born of the latter approach to game design.

And to those who say "magic isn't realistic, so nothing else has to be realistic either", this really is entirely missing the point. No, magic is not realistic, neither are orcs or elves. But those things can be believable, whether or not they are realistic. Realism and believability are two very different things. Many games go to great lengths to explain how and why magic works in their setting. It's often believable, even though it is obviously not real. And those are the magic systems I tend enjoy the most. In D&D, with the old vancian style magic, it was mechanics first, fluff last. The result was a magic system that left many who saw it thinking to themselves "I can't imagine that if magic were real it would work this way."

And the various explanations that they came up with over the life of the game were quite contrived. From 2nd edition's memorize and forget system to 3rd editions "partially cast in advance", stockpiled spells explanation, the whole system really felt artificial and, dare I say, lame. I think the lack of believability around vancian magic is perhaps the main reason it was so unpopular. From a mechanics standpoint, it worked great. It helped balance magic and provide alot of strategic elements to playing a spellcaster. But it just didn't make much sense. Ironically, 4th edition has largely eliminated vancian-style magic, but lost alot of believability in other areas.