Do YOU nod to "realism"?

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is blatantly false. Having been a martial artist myself for years taught me this. Not only that, a surrounded martial artist is in trouble. He's not able to press multiple targets. He's too busy trying to defend himself and still counterattack. I suspect that you watch too much Kung Fu Theater. The only semi-safe way to attack multiple foes as a martial artist is to move around or grab a foe, keep him between yourself and the other foes, defeat him, hopefully with an incapacitating blow such as a kneecap, and then moving to the next foe.

If a surrounded martial fighter presses a foe on one side of him, the foe on the other side is free to move away. There is no super glue there. Multi-target defender auras allow for that, but real life doesn't. They are total nonsense from a plausibility POV. They are merely a game mechanic used to allow for other game mechanics to work as the designers desire. Multi-target aggro has to real life example in actual melee combat.

Agreed, but lets consider this. In what edition of the game has the fighter (etc) ever been even faintly realistic? You really seriously think that a fighter could even stand in front of 25 tons of scaly raging dragon for 3 seconds flat? Even slow it down? The very concept is utterly absurd. In fact FAR more absurd than a fighter threatening 2 targets enough to slow them down.

The problem with the concept that in earlier editions the fighter could 'do his job' of defending the 'squishies' was thin at best. It TOTALLY relied on the DM to run the monsters in an almost completely absurd way. I mean, sure, fighters are kinda dangerous, but they're dangerous sort of on a ratio of a rocket propelled grenade is dangerous, and the wizard is dangerous like an H-Bomb is dangerous. Any monster that isn't completely stupid wouldn't even look twice at the fighter on its way to gnaw on the guy behind him. At least now you don't need the DM's permission to do your job.

There have been any number of proposals of 'more realistic' ways to handle this, but IMHO all of them are rather convolved and awkward to actually use at the table. Marking gets the idea across, it works well enough mechanically, and gives the player some control. And honestly, given how unrealistic the whole situation is anyway, can we just play and have fun? Why is it that 4e in particular has to be nit-picked to death and every other edition of the game gets a pass? I don't get it. I've played all of them. They have all been highly enjoyable and I've never had major issues with any of them as long as people were willing to just get on with it and play instead of crawling up the systems tailpipe and get all finicky about it. Really, its a question, WHY do people feel so compelled to get all on 4e's case? There's some sort of bad attitude that was somehow released by 4e changing some things. I'm absolutely at a loss to even begin to understand it.

[MENTION=58416]Johnny3D3D[/MENTION]

I don't know man. I think you play with a group of people that, as much as they may not be raving jerks about it, are extreme optimizing players. There's just no way in heck level 8 characters are crazy overpowered. I'd just have to say that your DM is not super tactical, creates scenarios that heavily favor the PCs, and the players are using really optimum tactics, items, etc.

My experience is I'm reasonably tactical and while I've always had some tactically adept players there were always the other half of the players who varied from tactically daft to routine common-sensical people that took advantage of obvious openings but weren't brilliant. I also don't tend to hand out whole kits of optimum items. Everyone will likely get an item or two that are really good for their builds, but they aren't just going to get handed the best stuff. I play the monsters to win too, within the limits of what I figure monsters would do at least. I figure most monsters are pretty used to fighting and have fairly well rehearsed tactics, and they fight in situations where they can get the tactical advantage. Even at high paragon/low epic I've found that under that set of assumptions and with that sort of group of players the monsters do fine.

I think the thing is that with a game where tactics and teamwork are so much a part of the game that its VERY hard to create a combat system where you can simply challenge every sort of possible group at different skill levels with the same sort of monsters. As much as 4e has set up a very structured framework of math around fights so that the challenge level is consistent there's still a variance of about 2-300% that is accountable to the side of the players. I don't know that there's really any way around it. Maybe just playing a more 'fourthcore' like type of game where everything is just deadly as all hell and the focus gets heavily shifted to the players needing to out think the DM, prepare carefully ahead of time, etc. You can definitely play 4e in that kind of mode. It becomes much less focused on tactical skirmishing as the centerpiece type of challenge. When the PCs DO fight in that sort of game they're usually already in deep doo-doo and the fights are preposterously brutal. Read through that 'Crucible of the Gods' module. I guarantee, there's no group of players that ever lived and breathed that won't find that challenging (honestly I expect the 1st time through success rate for parties in that thing is basically zero and I wouldn't consider it a usable adventure except as a bit of a fun diversion from normal play).

 

[Kalontas]

I don't know where's the discussion moving now, but on the original question: yes, I do try to maintain a sense of realism, in a "logic" meaning. It doesn't have to follow the rules of physics as we know it, but everything has to have a reason and result.

Now the horrifying part: I'm the DM, so I sometimes overrule that a player's ability can't work, like aforementioned Vicious Mockery on a skeleton. My players learnt to live with it and just don't try to taunt mindless stuff, etc.

 

[Hussar]

I don't know where's the discussion moving now, but on the original question: yes, I do try to maintain a sense of realism, in a "logic" meaning. It doesn't have to follow the rules of physics as we know it, but everything has to have a reason and result.

Now the horrifying part: I'm the DM, so I sometimes overrule that a player's ability can't work, like aforementioned Vicious Mockery on a skeleton. My players learnt to live with it and just don't try to taunt mindless stuff, etc.

And really, if your players are groovy with that, everyone wins.

I've often wondered why it's such a bad thing that the baseline is set one way instead of another. In 3e, the baseline was set that that something like Vicious Mockery wouldn't effect skellies, but the DM could change to taste. Unfortunately, this lead to all sorts of issues, like sidelining the poor rogue in an undead adventure or making the bard suck even worse than he normally does.

Why is it whenever we criticise a system, we must absolutely adhere to the rules, but when its a system we like, suddenly anything goes? 4e's baseline is that everything always works. It's right there in the rules that this is the baseline. Changing that, so long as the group is happy with the changes isn't exactly earth shakingly difficult.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I don't know where's the discussion moving now, but on the original question: yes, I do try to maintain a sense of realism, in a "logic" meaning. It doesn't have to follow the rules of physics as we know it, but everything has to have a reason and result.

Now the horrifying part: I'm the DM, so I sometimes overrule that a player's ability can't work, like aforementioned Vicious Mockery on a skeleton. My players learnt to live with it and just don't try to taunt mindless stuff, etc.

That is too far for me to go.

Plus stuff like that is just too hard to remember session to session.

 

[pemerton]

Aggro is a totally unrealistic and artificial concept shoved down the DM's and player's throats in 4E and one of the reason some people fled to Pathfinder or other versions of the game.

If I'm fighting you and you are pressing me, there should be combat techniques for me to sidestep you and go fight the main threat behind you. Locking down a foe completely with no types of defenses or counters to that is totally artificial and that's a problem with the aggro mechanisms.

At least now you don't need the DM's permission to do your job.

There have been any number of proposals of 'more realistic' ways to handle this, but IMHO all of them are rather convolved and awkward to actually use at the table. Marking gets the idea across, it works well enough mechanically, and gives the player some control.

I'm with AbdulAlhazred on this one. Marking is, at least to some extent, a metagame state of affairs - it gives the GM a mechanical incentive to focus his/her monsters' attacks on the defender. There may be questions to ask about whether particular marking mechanics are balanced or not, but the basic idea of the mechanic seems just one aspect of 4e's metagame-heavy approach.

Given this, criticising the mechanic for ailing to correspond to anything in the gameworld seems to miss the point - if it's a metagame mechanic, it doesn't correspond to anything in the gameworld.

 

[technoextreme]

That's a bit of a stretch.

The Warden is from the primal power source and uses evocations. So does the Barbarian.

Neither of them would be considered primal spell casters. For example, I don't know of anyone who thinks that a Barbarian casts spells.

The Barbarian only makes sense in the context I present it. In fact so does the warden. I can't believe the fact that they don't use implements broke your mind.

As for the Warlord, the game designers never understood the concept that buffs should be +1 for an encounter, or +2 or +3 for a single attack. Instead, they are often +4 or even +stat and it becomes totally nonsensical from a game mechanics POV. They did errata some of the powers, but even adding +4 to hit in a D20 system is grossly unbalanced. WotC hands that out as an encounter racial power. Sigh.

They added that in as an at-will power also and its not really all that imbalanced.

 

[LurkAway]

Why is it whenever we criticise a system, we must absolutely adhere to the rules, but when its a system we like, suddenly anything goes? 4e's baseline is that everything always works. It's right there in the rules that this is the baseline. Changing that, so long as the group is happy with the changes isn't exactly earth shakingly difficult.

Theoretically, what you say should be true. In practice, I think it is difficult when players are trying to "win" against the DM and when anyone views the rules as enforcing "this is how it always works" instead of "this is how it usually works" and when the presentation and wording implies to some people (fairly or not) that the baseline is inflexible (or cannot be bent without significantly 'breaking' gameplay).

 

[LurkAway]

That is too far for me to go.

Plus stuff like that is just too hard to remember session to session.

Seriously?

 

[LurkAway]

Given this, criticising the mechanic for ailing to correspond to anything in the gameworld seems to miss the point - if it's a metagame mechanic, it doesn't correspond to anything in the gameworld.

Conversely, I think that criticizing someone for criticizing a metagame mechanic that isn't used in a way that nods to realism is missing the point (in context of this thread anyway).

 

[Gort]

Now the horrifying part: I'm the DM, so I sometimes overrule that a player's ability can't work, like aforementioned Vicious Mockery on a skeleton. My players learnt to live with it and just don't try to taunt mindless stuff, etc.

This kinda reminds me of when rogues couldn't backstab vampires and the like. It might "make sense" from a "fantasy realism" point of view, but it's pretty lame when your main bit of combat utility is taken away from you.

(although whoever thought making vampires - you know, the guys who are extremely vulnerable to decapitation and being struck through the heart - should be immune to sneak attacks and critical hits was bloody stupid)