Do you consider 4e D&D "newbie teeball"?

[Obryn]

The fact that we have not discussed those specifics (in this thread) does not mean that anyone is suggesting that complexity is its own virtue.

Come on.

No, and I didn't say that anyone is suggesting that. Complexity is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. The argument is whether or not a specific degree or kind of complexity is necessary for an objectively better - rather than subjectively better - play experience. And, for that matter, where those lines are.

I have zero issue with subjective statements. I might want to discuss them, but that's it - after all, this is a message board, and presumably it's all about the discussions. It's the broad objective statements - such as tee-ball analogies - which I'll debate. (OTOH, specific objective statements are great for discussion.)

-O

 

[rjdafoe]

Have your players in 3e really asked in the middle of a game how the monsters got their AC numbers?

Yes, as well as the following:

There must be something wrong, they are hitting us way too much - explanation of class/creature abilies
That creature/class doesn't exist
That is way tougher than the rules say
That is not what that ability does - it does this
You have to play by the rules that we play
That creature/character cannot do that
Ohhh! you just made it up?!

 

[Voadam]

Yes. Sometimes 3 or 4 times a round. As soon as one of the extremely powergamed characters says "I hit AC 35" and I say "Miss", they immediately say "WHAT? I hit 35. There's no way that missed. How did it get that?"

And then I have to say "Well, it is a creature who started with a +12 natural armor. Then it got a template that adds a +2 deflection bonus. It is wearing +3 Fullplate designed for its size. Then it gets +1 from Dex."

Then they say "Wow...I can't believe you cheesed up the monster by adding a template and giving it custom +3 armor. Most of the monsters we fighter have around AC 25. It's a full 11 points higher than usual."

Because, if I'm off by one point, they'll notice. They'll call me on it. After all, the only way the game is fun for them and for me is if we play "fair". If the rules let you make something, it's fair. If it's just made up, then they might as well not play. After all, it's easy to beat them if you can arbitrarily make a monster AC 36. It's hard if they have to follow a set of rules to get to AC 36. At least, that's how they look at it. Or how they did look at it in 3.5e.

Now, in 4e, I simply say "It's a level 10 monster, it has appropriate defenses for it's level. There's no rules for what AC it can have. This one is higher than normal."

The above gave me pause the first time I read it.

I agree. Luckily the guidelines are ones that create monsters that are "fair" fights. They purposefully "prevent" DMs from coming up with the arbitrary 50 AC monster because they either decided to make it up or found a template that "legally" gave it to a creature.


See above. Precisely right.


Players don't like being hosed over. *I* don't like being hosed over, so I'm with them. The game is no fun when you need 19s to hit an enemy. The battle drags out impossibly long and it likely ends up in you dying. Losing sucks. Losing because you had a bunch of bad die rolls or you made a really bad tactical decision at least feels like a fair loss. It was a loss that was preventable with some better luck at some slightly more intelligent play. Maybe it was because you only a 14 into your strength and the next character you make up with have 18 because you learned.

But if you come across some custom monster that manages to have 10 more AC than every other monster anywhere near its CR...well, it feels like it isn't fair anymore. Of course you're going to lose....even if it IS legal. I spent the better part of the last year of Living Greyhawk(since I was a Triad member, helping to run the campaign) reading mailing lists filled with people complaining about how authors had used what players considered "cheap" but legal techniques to build monsters. A lot of authors retaliated, saying that if there weren't a bunch of players out there using cheap powergaming tactics for their characters, they wouldn't have to write so many nasty encounters...and so on.


Yeah, I know this is legal. I know that it was fairly easy to add 10 points to someone's AC simply by adding full plate and a shield. It was a favorite tactic of nasty authors everywhere. After all, nothing in the rules said to raise the CR of an enemy simply because it was wearing armor....even if the point of CR was to evaluate how difficult it was to defeat something and armor made the creature significantly harder to defeat.

It's a risk/reward thing. CR determines XP for defeating a monster. It also, according to the rules determined how many of a creature you could use against a party. A number of players felt that if a monster was suddenly twice as hard to defeat, they should get twice as much XP for it. But the system didn't tell you to increase CR. So, you didn't get any more.


They know about all that stuff. Custom monsters were considered by everyone in our home group to be super cheap and not a tactic that should be allowed. Mostly by equal agreement of DM and players. Way too easy to unbalance the game that way.

As for the rest of it. Most of my players had memorized the effects of increasing hit dice, adding class levels, adding templates and so on. If you ran into an Orc, there should be some visual clue that it wasn't a normal Orc. If it has metal skin, it might be half-iron golem. Scales? Half-Dragon...and so on. The only thing that didn't have a visual clue tended to be Class Levels. Which is why one of the dirty tricks of LG Authors was to add one level of Warrior to enemies. Since it was an NPC class, it didn't add anything to CR. But it could give a bonus feat and some extra hitpoints to any monster in the game, legally.

My players knew what the general range that an AC could be given the options in the book. Given our "no custom monster" rule, there was virtually no way to increase natural armor of a creature. You were forced to scour books for creatures with the best starting natural armor and then modify them with hitdice, levels, and templates to make them better. If a DM came up with an awesome combination of legal stuff from the rules....players would accept it. But probably still get annoyed if you went "overboard".

Ah I think I see now and can agree with your follow up. But it does mean you were completely mistating things when you said before that

"After all, the only way the game is fun for them and for me is if we play "fair". If the rules let you make something, it's fair. If it's just made up, then they might as well not play. After all, it's easy to beat them if you can arbitrarily make a monster AC 36. It's hard if they have to follow a set of rules to get to AC 36. At least, that's how they look at it. Or how they did look at it in 3.5e

Now, in 4e, I simply say "It's a level 10 monster, it has appropriate defenses for it's level. There's no rules for what AC it can have. This one is higher than normal."

Because it is trivially easy to follow the rules in 3e to get to such an end point and what is important in both 3e and 4e is the utility of the end point not the exact explanation of how you get there.

What you really meant by unfair was significantly tougher than baseline. It doesn't really matter how trivially easy in 3e it is to follow the 3e rules and get an AC of 36. It also presumably wouldn't fly in 4e to say "It's a level 10 monster, it has appropriate defenses for it's level. There's no rules for what AC it can have. This one is higher than normal." since "if you come across some custom monster that manages to have 10 more AC than every other monster anywhere near its [CRLevel]...well, it feels like it isn't fair anymore. Of course you're going to lose....even if it IS legal."

If AC 36 is too high and feels like a cheap shot unbeatable monster to your players it does not matter whether it is in 4e or 3e, whether it was created on the fly, came out of a book, or followed a formula.

The thing 4e improves here is to give a core book guideline for what is a fair range instead of leaving it to be inferred from the MM or the old monster creating article in Dragon Magazine. 4e will presumably say in the DMG that AC 36 is above the recommended AC for creatures of x level.

I seem to recall it gave specific warning about using higher level soldiers even when legal in the xp budget because their nigh unhitable AC would make them much more of a challenge than indicated by the level numbers and xp budget design formula.

I think the role and number range guidelines are a fantastic development in 4e and I like how similar things appeared for 3e/OGL in various products (pathfinder beta has it in their monster section, Adamant's foe and minion generator books derived from spycraft and adapted to 3e and d20 Mdoern, Iron Heroes villain classes, etc.)

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I understand. Its just that in my experience, the difference between the effectiveness of optimized and non-optimized characters in 4e is just as wide as in 3.5--its just that in 4e, a smaller difference, say of +/-3, can be huge. Smaller scale, maybe, but the impact is just as significant.

It isn't as significant though. Yeah, once you get used to the balance of 4e, you start to see the guy who ONLY has +9 to hit while you have +12 as a guy who has no idea what he's doing because his bonus is too low. I'm a powergamer, I understand this.

But, the truth is that with that guy in our group we can still beat challenges, they just do a little more damage and take a bit longer.

But the impact of having someone with +5 to hit while you have a +25 to hit is MUCH bigger. To the point where having them on your team is actually a detriment to winning.

As an example, I recently joined a group of people who had no idea how to optimize. They had a +6 to hit with their implement attacks while I had +10. He had one of the worst characters I've ever seen made. He was a Wizard with Staff of Defense and didn't have a positive Con modifier. He was 5th level and didn't have a magic implement. And yet, he still contributed significantly to the outcome of the battle we had. We would have done better with a better Wizard...but we made due.

 

[Henry]

Yes, as well as the following:

There must be something wrong, they are hitting us way too much - explanation of class/creature abilies
That creature/class doesn't exist
That is way tougher than the rules say
That is not what that ability does - it does this
You have to play by the rules that we play
That creature/character cannot do that
Ohhh! you just made it up?!

Most of those have happened to me, before -- and worse, one of those lines was MY comment to another DM in my group a few years back.

That was when I realized I was too much of a Rules Lawyer for my own good.

 

[rjdafoe]

Most of those have happened to me, before -- and worse, one of those lines was MY comment to another DM in my group a few years back.

That was when I realized I was too much of a Rules Lawyer for my own good.

This is the reason I like 4th edition so much. I DM about 1/2 the time. I like 3.x. I played it from when it came out until 4th edition.

But in my group, the rules of 3.x changed the group to be rules lawyers by (IMO) encouraging the rule for everything mindset and the DM plays by the same rules as the characters mindset.

We never had that problem in 2E or earlier, and we don't have that problem with 4E either.

That is one of the reasons that I do not agree with the tee-ball and intelligent conversation message that has been posted here.

I think there is MORE room for a bad DM to find himself in a bind in 4E then 3E. In 3E everything is spelled out in the rules, in 4E there are guidelines and you are explicitely told to modify for your gaming group. This can get you in trouble fast, if your not careful. (All IMO of course)

 

[JoeGKushner]

And it is a serious problem for products. Many a time the publisher simply got the math wrong

Yes, as well as the following:

There must be something wrong, they are hitting us way too much - explanation of class/creature abilies
That creature/class doesn't exist
That is way tougher than the rules say
That is not what that ability does - it does this
You have to play by the rules that we play
That creature/character cannot do that
Ohhh! you just made it up?!

 

[Voadam]

Yes, as well as the following:

There must be something wrong, they are hitting us way too much - explanation of class/creature abilies
That creature/class doesn't exist
That is way tougher than the rules say
That is not what that ability does - it does this
You have to play by the rules that we play
That creature/character cannot do that
Ohhh! you just made it up?!

Heh, in mine the PCs in the same situations generally say stuff like

They are hitting us way too much, we need to kill them quick or run away.
I've never seen these before.
That is tough.
Wow, that seems different than the normal way those should work, this must be something else or a variant. (If a non PC ability)
Huh? My X does Y. Doesn't it? (If a PC ability).
-
That creature/character can do that?
Is that something you made up?

Maybe it comes from us starting in older editions like 1e where the DM's role as rules adjudicator and controller of everything nonPC in the world including physics was more explicit and most everything was its own unique thing.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

But in my group, the rules of 3.x changed the group to be rules lawyers by (IMO) encouraging the rule for everything mindset and the DM plays by the same rules as the characters mindset.

So true.

 

[rjdafoe]

Heh, in mine the PCs in the same situations generally say stuff like

They are hitting us way too much, we need to kill them quick or run away.
I've never seen these before.
That is tough.
Wow, that seems different than the normal way those should work, this must be something else or a variant. (If a non PC ability)
Huh? My X does Y. Doesn't it? (If a PC ability).
-
That creature/character can do that?
Is that something you made up?

Maybe it comes from us starting in older editions like 1e where the DM's role as rules adjudicator and controller of everything nonPC in the world including physics was more explicit and most everything was its own unique thing.

Well, that is the thing. Most of us started with AD&D (1st edition). That is the way we used to play, and that is the way we got back to playing with 4E.

This whole Tee-ball stuff and intelligent conversation just isn't true. Not being so focused on the rules, have made our games better IMO - "intelligent conversation" has actually been brought back into our games more the way I see it.

We probably could have accomplished the same thing by going back to 1E or 2E as well, but we didn't.