Do YOU nod to "realism"?

[KarinsDad]

Are you kidding me? You obviously didn't play summoners very much did you? Because an invisible summoner, standing back about fifty feet so that whole 50% miss chance never comes up, obliterates most opposition if played well. Give me an invisibility spell and a wand of Summon Monster 4 and I can trash monsters well above my pay grade all on my own.

And as a DM, I could easily crush such a PC.

Why?

First off, there is no Wand of Summon Monster 4 in 4E. You must be thinking of 3E. There isn't a single wand in 4E that can summon a creature TMK.

So, let's make an assumption here. The summoner has to use a move action to sustain the Invisibility (as opposed to the Standard action that the Invisibility spell requires today). In other words, a lot stronger than the current 4E Invisibility, but slightly weaker than the 4E Greater Invisibility.

Most encounters don't have 80+ by 80+ foot rooms where the summoner can hang back 50 feet most of the encounter and still attack. Most encounters are in 50 by 50 or smaller areas that fit somewhat easy on a gaming table. So yes, sometimes there is a large enough area to stay out of charge range, but often, there isn't.

The monsters ignore the summoned creatures and attack the summoning PC. Move and charge if possible, or worse case shift and charge. +1 to hit. The monsters know exactly where the PC is, so the Invisibility doesn't prevent attacks in any way.

If the monsters have area or close attacks, invisibility doesn't help the PC versus those attacks at all.

Summoners are typically squishy with lower defenses, and an invisible summoner is shouting that he is a threat, hence, destroy the threat. Normally, a Leader is the biggest threat (once found) and a Striker is the next biggest threat (the biggest until the Leader reveals himself, typically by healing). But an invisible summoning PC just puts himself near the top of the list.

Granted, a PC could use Stealth to up his protection level a bit, but that runs into its own problems. As an example, Dex is usually not a high priority Wizard ability score. So, maybe +2 Dex, +1 race, +5 trained, and +2 misc results in a +10 at most (+8 more reasonably) whereas the monsters will either be in the +0 to +2 range, or in the +6 or +7 range. Other summoner classes might have a higher Dex, but most other summoners like Druids do not have access to Invisibility too often.

And if the PC is putting ability point scores into Dex, he's not putting as much into other ability scores. That means that some melee and ranged attacks will be against a low NAD.

Plus, Hiding requires not talking above a whisper. As a DM, if the summoner cannot talk and is hiding, then the party Leader doesn't know when the summoner is bloodied or seriously hurt or has an effect on him. That means that as DM, I wouldn't allow a player of a Leader PC to heal a hiding summoner or give him a save because the Leader wouldn't know that the summoner needs it. If the summoner asks for healing, fine. Then the Leader knows to heal and the monsters know where the summoner is.

I'd also require that the player of the Hiding Invisible PC take his miniature off the board and tell me as DM where his PC is after each move. That way, none of the other players know where that PC is unless that player makes an active perception check.

Quid Pro Quo.

PC Sorcerer: "Sorry dude. I didn't know you were in that area when I blasted the monsters."

Course, I might do this for any hiding PC depending on circumstances because hiding shouldn't give out of character clues to the other players. But, hiding almost never comes up in combat, so it's usually a bit of a moot point.

And if the monsters are focusing on the summoner and the PC Leader is trying to help that summoner, that means that the PC Leader is typically having to stay within 5 squares of that summoner. That puts the PC Leader (another high value target) in amongst the monsters. He cannot both hang back and try to help the summoner.

Invisibility and hiding is a two edged sword. The monsters are hindered a bit, but so should the other PCs (and hence players) if the DM plays by the rules and/or by not giving other players info they shouldn't have.

If the hiding PC moves more than 2 squares during an action, he must make a new Stealth check with a –5 penalty to remain hidden. So, once the monsters are on top of the summoner, he has to stay in their vicinity, or he usually gives up his Hide advantage. And the summoner only makes a single Stealth check to hide, the monsters each can use a minor action to do an active perception to find him. The odds of a summoner staying hidden are not that high. And, only one monster needs to find the summoner. The rest just go attack the square that the first one did.

Granted, the summoner doesn't even need to Hide. He could just summon a creature on round one, go invisible on round two, and then move (or for some summoners double move) around the battlefield, always trying to keep multiple other PCs between himself and any foes. This tactic might even work in some scenarios, but it's probably wishful thinking in many scenarios because the monsters can often still get to him (with the exception of a few monsters that might be locked down by a defender or controller).

Finally, most summon spells are Dailies. So this "uber tactic" here requires that the summoner throw at least 2 Dailies into the Encounter. The vast majority of his other Encounter and At Will attack powers are mostly worthless during this encounter which for summoners like Druids, halve their effectiveness.

Sure, if the DM is a noob, or unaware of how the rules work, or not willing to take off the gloves, those tactics might work on a consistent basis. But, because Invisibility is a Daily (assuming it was a Move to maintain and not a Standard), it also means that the summoner only gets to do this trick once per day, twice per day once he acquires Greater Invisibility.

I'm not impressed and don't see where this is any more uber than a dozen other tactical options in the game that are even stronger. A simple one is "My Eladrin teleports up to an inaccessible or hard to reach place, and then rains down attacks over the entire battlefield". This tactic negates nearly all melee attacks, the majority of attacks in the game system. It cannot be used every encounter, but neither can invisible summoning. Course, if your DM does a lot of two dimensional encounters with little in the way of 3D directions, then this isn't something that one could do a lot. But, all tactics have pros and cons.

Special note: when the Invisibility spell was first written, there were no summoners in the game system. To assume that the designers knew that summoned creatures combined with invisibility might be potent and how summoned creatures would work is disingenuous. Once they brought them in, summoned creatures changed each time because the designers over-nerfed them the first time out.

 

[keterys]

The effectiveness of invisibility is _way_ off topic from whether you make a nod to realism or not.

A laundry list of complaints about 4E has nothing to do with the topic, and is not appropriate in this thread.

 

[Aenghus]

"Realism" is subjective, and people often disagree about reality even in the real world, which has a lot more bandwidth.

One reason I like 4e is specifically because it tries to provide some separation between the mechanics and subjective impressions of the game reality. I can't remember how many times in previous editions (and other RPGs for that matter) that I was wrongfooted as a player because my conception of the game reality was different to that of the GM and the other players, so actions that looked reasonable to me didn't to them.

By spelling out the mechanics of powers, communication is improved and its easier for players to understand what is happening in the gameworld and act on it effectively without constant "gotchas" coming out of left field.

For me some simplifications are a small price to pay for increased engagement in the game and lowering some of the walls to participation. Requiring group telepathy to play the game is too elitist for me.

 

[Argyle King]

Just happened to watch Krull the movie a week or two ago. Fantasy movie that has EXACTLY the weapons you are talking about, produced twenty or thirty years ago.

The idea of Pew Pew lazer guns in fantasy is hardly a new one.
.

I've seen Krull. Good movie.

Though what I'm trying to say is that -for me- to enjoy 4th Edition more easily, I've found that it's easier for me to change my vision and change the style I want to portray than it is for me to bend the game to the vision and style I would normally want otherwise.


@ KarinsDad

I have to somewhat disagree with a few of your posts.

While 4th Edition epic PCs may not have some of the tricks of their 3rd Edition counterparts, I believe that 4th Edition PCs in general are more powerful when compared to the 4th Edition world around them versus the power level of a 3rd Edition PC versus the world around them. It only gets more exaggerated as the levels increase. In a different thread a few weeks ago, I talked about how the most recent game in which I was a player concluded with the group of PCs at level 30 completely obliterating what the GM designed to be a level 37 encounter; it wasn't even close. In fact, the battle was so lopsided, that the GM of that game has said he doesn't want to GM anymore for a while. This surprised me because he's by far the most pro-4th Edition member of the Saturday group.

He bumped it up to what the encounter guidelines said was a lvl 37 encounter based on XP budget because -after seeing what we had done to pretty much every other battle during the campaign- he wanted the end fight of epic tier to be... well... epic. He did not want it to be a cakewalk. After upping it to 37, he also then doubled the HP of the (level 34) BBEG to ensure that the BBEG might survive for more than a round. He also had a set of Gauntlet style monster minion generators which required a skill challenge to shut down. He also made interesting use of terrain. He did what the book says you should do for an interesting and challenging encounter (and then boosted it in hopes of it lasting more than a round or two.)

I think the whole combat took 4-5 rounds. This was with not all of the PCs even trying. As a player, I felt kind of bad about what my character was capable of doing. I did not want to ruin the encounter for the GM> So, being that my character was also the skill monkey of the group, I spent my time doing the skill challenge. I did not use anything I had available to help boost the group's output. (My character was a bard; while I did not say so in other threads, my character is the same bard who counted as all races -epic destiny from Primal Power- and virtually* all classes.)

* I did a lot of multiclassing. As a metagame goal to challenge myself, I wanted to see how many races and classes I could collect.

Oh, I also forgot to mention that the GM houseruled that the BBEG would get multiple initiatives during the combat.

Result? It was a slaughter; not even close. I think there was a moment in the first round when one of the PCs got in trouble due to a string of lucky rolls by the GM, but that was it. With only about half (another character, the party sorcerer helped me with the skill challenge for the same reason) of the party engaging a fight which was (by the book) 7 levels higher than we were, the PCs squashed the other side.

To bring this back on topic, that's one of the issues I have with 4th Edition's 'realism.' After seeing the PCs' abilities compared to the abilities of what the fiction says are some of the most horrid and feared creatures throughout the land, it's difficult for me to take that fiction seriously. What was going on with the game mechanics and what the fiction & 'reality' of the game world were saying was going on didn't match up. That's a portion of the reason why I chose to change the fiction and paint it differently in my game.

I've also done some work to rewrite XP charts, skill challenge DCs, how Elites work, and how Solos work as well. I'm also somewhat liberal about giving out benefits based on back stories; for example, the party fighter in the game I'm running said he was part of the military leadership where he was from, so I granted him a few warlord features. So far, the changes I've made in how I view the game as well as the overhaul I've given to some areas of the game itself have allowed me to have a better experience with 4th Edition.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

[MENTION=12759]Kari[/MENTION]n´s dad:

the paladin of 4e is so much nicer than the 3rd edition one... playing a paladin of 3rd edition was even more depressing than playing a fighter...

both a fighter and the paladin are now fun to play.
Even though i believe, the defender aura is mechanically better than divine challenge/marking mechanism, but actually both are great additions to the game.
And IMHO aggro mechanics work differently... but thats IMHO and so on.

The only problem I see, and you identified it, are "psychic", nonmagical powers that don´t allow saves. If you accept a feint granting CA, a bluff tricking someone into attacking you is not so different.
It is just, that some creatures need to be immune to such things.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I don't J3D. Certainly OOTB epic stuff is hard to challenge well-designed PCs with (though I've seen players that really weren't tactical or savvy enough to do well). It boggles my mind though that well-designed modern solos overleveled by 7 levels are trivial. Something seems a bit eschew there.

I think its true that the PoL world concept is going to lead to epic PCs being relatively exceedingly powerful compared to what you'd likely find in that kind of world (IE high level NPCs and whatnot), but the conceit there is you don't generally match up against WORLDLY opponents. In other settings like say FR that also wouldn't likely be true, as there are some REALLY powerful NPCs.

Even so, in terms of pure capability to do any old arbitrary thing epic 3.x characters are on a whole other level. That is at least they are given tools by default (if you're a caster) that are beyond anything any 4e character can do by the book. Of course you're probably going to want to give 4e epics some of those kinds of abilities as well now and then, but the nice part is they are resources the DM controls access to. The worst you can say is 4e epic can be made to work. 3.5 epic just doesn't and never really will.

Of course by the time you get into high epic play 'realism' should be pretty much irrelevant.

 

[KarinsDad]

To bring this back on topic, that's one of the issues I have with 4th Edition's 'realism.' After seeing the PCs' abilities compared to the abilities of what the fiction says are some of the most horrid and feared creatures throughout the land, it's difficult for me to take that fiction seriously. What was going on with the game mechanics and what the fiction & 'reality' of the game world were saying was going on didn't match up. That's a portion of the reason why I chose to change the fiction and paint it differently in my game.

I've also done some work to rewrite XP charts, skill challenge DCs, how Elites work, and how Solos work as well. I'm also somewhat liberal about giving out benefits based on back stories; for example, the party fighter in the game I'm running said he was part of the military leadership where he was from, so I granted him a few warlord features. So far, the changes I've made in how I view the game as well as the overhaul I've given to some areas of the game itself have allowed me to have a better experience with 4th Edition.

Yes, but this isn't necessarily a probably with the reality per se, it's a problem with two areas:

1) The plethora of splat books where each one has to be just a tiny bit more bigger, better, and badder where balance slowly bends in favor of the PCs. It gets to the point that very few players have PCs that are not heavily optimized.

2) A general problem with there being no design metarules to control powers, items, and feats at given levels due to the power of the synergy of effects and conditions. In other words, combining immobilized/slowed with prone is a fairly potent ability for monsters with no ranged attacks, almost equal to sending the NPC offstage for a round (e.g. sending it to the Feywild, turning it into a frog, etc.). At the levels that immobilized/slowed and prone are readily available, the monsters need to start acquiring abilities to overcome the tactic. Even by having most every high level monster with a ranged attack or with resistance to getting knocked prone or immobilized, this tactic becomes less viable.

These are game mechanic design flaws that result in the PCs being a lot stronger than the monsters as they get higher in level, not necessarily reality problems for most players. When at Epic, I want to be playing a DemiGod that feels epic. I just also want my challenges to be epic as well and that cannot happen with the original epic monster design.

Btw, if you restrict the books (and specifically items) available to the players, some of this disappears because many of the cool tricks and synergies disappear. Players don't have the absolute best powers and feats and combinations anymore.

I think it is important for the higher level monsters to challenge the players so that battles FEEL epic and hence, support the reality of the game world. As DM, it's a DM's responsibility (like you are doing) to alter the monsters of the game world as the PCs get higher level so that they are challenging to the players in order to reintroduce the fiction that he wants for his campaign. Too many DMs tend to play monsters how they are written in the books and because of the vast plethora of options to players, that's a mistake for the fiction.

It's also a mistake to hand out the absolutely best perfect items for given PCs as part of treasure parcels. PCs should, for the most part, get relatively typical type items that help the PCs, but are not perfect matches. All perfect matches should be instigated by the players and found via quests or serious effort. That allows the higher level fiction to be a bit closer because the PCs cannot do every uber thing that the optimization boards suggest.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

[MENTION=6667620]poi[/MENTION]nt 2:

I don´t think you should always alter monsters, but try to work with what you have... sometimes a magic item can be used to give the monster a power it needs and the player is rewarded, both by a better challenge and the item he has really earned...
but not giving players everything they want is the most important thing.. maybe they will be not very amused at first, but in the end they are rewarded by a much better play experience...

 

[KarinsDad]

[MENTION=12759]Kari[/MENTION]n´s dad:

the paladin of 4e is so much nicer than the 3rd edition one... playing a paladin of 3rd edition was even more depressing than playing a fighter...

Not for all players.

both a fighter and the paladin are now fun to play.

Again, not for all players.

Even though i believe, the defender aura is mechanically better than divine challenge/marking mechanism, but actually both are great additions to the game.
And IMHO aggro mechanics work differently... but thats IMHO and so on.

Of course. It's mostly opinion. The issue is one of flavor. There was no real concept of "aggro" a decade or two decades ago. The realism, fiction, flavor, verisimilitude, or whatever you want to call it has changed for Paladins. Although they were often in the front line, they didn't have an official job of gaining aggro.

In fact, aggro was at the determination of the DM. If the Fighter was the biggest threat, the enemies often attacked him. If the Wizard was the biggest threat, the enemies often attacked him. If the Druid was the biggest threat, the enemies often attacked him.

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. There are no game mechanics counters to them shy of teleporting and even teleporting doesn't work against the Paladin's aggro mechanism.

It gets worse realism-wise when the Defender has an aura or a multi-target market. How exactly is the Fighter or Warden pressing the guy in front of him and the guy behind him at the exact same time??? That's not plausible (and yes, someone is bound to through a stretch rationale out about it).

Every mechanism in the game should have some way to effectively counter it and there is no way TMK to 'dispel magic" a defender mark shy of knocking him unconscious.

The only problem I see, and you identified it, are "psychic", nonmagical powers that don´t allow saves. If you accept a feint granting CA, a bluff tricking someone into attacking you is not so different.
It is just, that some creatures need to be immune to such things.

Well, they seem pretty different to me. For one thing, the former doesn't result in forced movement of the recipient. For another, CA is a positional advantage which can be granted by mundane things like flanking or total concealment. It's not quite in the same ballpark of effectiveness or rarity or even magical-ness.

I do agree that some creatures need to be immune. In Revenge of the Giants, some of the Giants are immune to Come and Get It. It's just a few creatures out of many thousands with the immunity isn't enough.

My flavor beef with 4E is that magic doesn't feel like magic anymore. The game became a game of super heroes with everyone throwing out little conditions and effects all over the board (which is the number one problem with 4E, too many effects and conditions with differing types of durations on the board that have to be tracked).

It's not just a balance issue of spells versus melee, it's that melee PCs can do supernatural type things that should be relegated to other power sources (e.g. Warlords healing). The balance in previous editions was that spell casters were squishy and melee PCs were tougher with better defenses in most cases. Now, spell casters are still squishy, melee PCs are still tougher with better defenses in most cases, but they both have similarly balanced super powers. For example, the spell caster can targets with a D6+4 close burst and the melee PC can target targets in a wpn+4 close burst (and the melee PC has more feats and better damage with the weapon, so his bursts tend to hurt more).

I have a picture in my head of what D&D is and my "reality" of it was only nudged with 3E, it was absolutely shattered with 4E. Course, the reality of how we view D&D and the reality of game effects within D&D are two different things.

My daughter never played 3.5 or earlier versions. For her, D&D means 4E and she'll might go through the same transitional pains that some of us went going to 4E when she goes to 5E.

 

[technoextreme]

It gets worse realism-wise when the Defender has an aura or a multi-target market. How exactly is the Fighter or Warden pressing the guy in front of him and the guy behind him at the exact same time??? That's not plausible (and yes, someone is bound to through a stretch rationale out about it).

Every mechanism in the game should have some way to effectively counter it and there is no way TMK to 'dispel magic" a defender mark shy of knocking him unconscious.

The Warden is incredibly easy to explain that when its mark enforcement utilizes the roots and plants to shift players around. And you would be hard pressed to find any decent martial artist that isn't able to to press multiple guys at once. Also, mark voiding powers are common place. Once again the "Have you ever actually played the game" issue starts to crop up when non existent complaints start appearing.

If there were a CSI episode in which one of the agents were shot in the face, but -then he's in next week's episode looking perfectly fine- it's going to raise some questions about 'reality.'

Pretty much how the show operates.