malraux
First Post
What 4e skills are only useful in combat?
The claim that I am disputing is not that 4e is heavily combat centric, because it surely is, as every edition of DnD has been. I dispute the claim that 4e is only about combat.
Does 4e limit the scope of campaigns?
- Thread starter Wik
- Start date
What 4e skills are only useful in combat?
The claim that I am disputing is not that 4e is heavily combat centric, because it surely is, as every edition of DnD has been. I dispute the claim that 4e is only about combat.
Is this statement based on your experience playing 4th edition or a theoretical conjecture?
That's a fancy argument, Kamikaze, but I have to say, I got awfully sick of trying to run investigative scenarios in 3e and having to deal with Detect Evil, Speak with Dead, Locate Object and the like. I know that a character who solves a murder mystery by just asking the victim what happened is still engaged in investigation, so its not like the story didn't happen. But the ability to bypass interviewing witnesses and scrounging for clues by the use of magic circumscribed my ability to tell an investigative story more than it helped.
I also know that you can get around those spells with carefully crafted scenarios (the bad guy is true neutral, not evil, the victim's corpse was mangled to prevent it from speaking, the murder weapon is too unknown or too far away for you to locate it with magic, etc). But that just meant that investigative scenarios fell into two categories: 1. the very short, and 2. ones that began with me nerfing all of the I WIN buttons the PCs possessed.
I also know that you can get around those spells with carefully crafted scenarios (the bad guy is true neutral, not evil, the victim's corpse was mangled to prevent it from speaking, the murder weapon is too unknown or too far away for you to locate it with magic, etc). But that just meant that investigative scenarios fell into two categories: 1. the very short, and 2. ones that began with me nerfing all of the I WIN buttons the PCs possessed.
GnomeWorks
Adventurer
Which ones are useful out of it? Not nearly as many as those useful either in combat or having a direct impact upon a combat.
The support for non-combat activity in 4e is such that it might as well be only about combat.
malraux
First Post
Again, what skills can only be used in combat? Or are only useful in combat? Please give an example, because I really have not experienced that claim being true in any way.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Harlekin said:
Direct 4e experience. Directly trying to use Skill Challenges, in fact, for almost all of the session (since the session was involving a complimentary fey and some wrongly accused orcs and some angry townsfolk, combat wasn't much of an option for the PC's).
I'm not ignorant about this.
Cadfan said:
That's a fair criticism. But there are solutions that don't depend on getting rid of these elements (rather, working them deeper into the fabric of the game would be the way to go, IMO).
I would have loved it, too, if 4e would have given a more in-depth consideration of these different genres and styles than 3e or 2e or 1e did. Imagine an investigative game where Detect Evil and Locate Object and Speak with Dead were all challenges that every character could contribute to in a unique way, like combat is in 4e, rather than being "I win" buttons. This was entirely within the realm of possibility for 4e.
It kind of went the other way, though...rather than making these things easier to run, they just said "don't bother running them, and if you have to, try this subsystem maybe?" When you try the subsystem, you find that it's not really up to snuff, encouraging you to go with the first option more often than not: just don't do these things in D&D.
I prefer my D&D adaptable, and, it must be said again, that 4e could do this. The only thing stopping the designers is their own idea of what 4e is and what 4e should be.
Imaro
Legend
You know what kind of gets me about this whole "3e's spells solved everything" line of thinking? Well for starters I'm going to assume you're PC's are getting involved in murders with at least a medium level of importance to the campaign world... that said why aren't the murderers using magic as well? I mean I could easily imagine a erudite wizard, genius type serial killer in Eberron (think Hannibal Lecter with magic), who uses spells like disguise self, polymorph, etc. to cleverly impede spell solutions.
The second thing is... aren't the players suppose to "solve" the mystery? I mean I can also see this played for more "what happens during the running around and investigations"... being the focus as opposed to actually figuring out who did it. Perhaps the killer sets nefarious traps and hired muscle as well as a frame up for the meddling PC's... this just means the killer's focus is on stopping them from acting on their knowledge as opposed to covering his tracks. Anyway, just some thoughts.
To steal obryn's line, 4e D&D is very good at being D&D. I would not use it for other things, but rather other games. If I want Cthulhu, I'll play Call of Cthulhu. If I want survival horror, I'll play AFMBE or Dread. If I want wuxia over the top fantasy I'll play Exalted.
On the Cthulhu front, I really feel any form of D&D is inappropriate, as they have opposite themes. D&D is all about the hero's journey, no matter what different spin you put on it. The characters start out barely competent, just a bit over the common folks around them. As they adventure they become more powerful, heroes of legend, eventually becoming lords or kings or demigods or what have you.
Cthulhu is about the spiral downward. Your character at the start is competent, and doesn't really get much more competent as the game goes on. Skill may go up a bit, but not in a game changing way. The sanity rules though, mean every character feels like a ticking time bomb. If you play the same character long enough, they might get eaten by a monster. But eventually the *will* go crazy. Its all a matter of what you can do before you've Seen Too Much.
On the Cthulhu front, I really feel any form of D&D is inappropriate, as they have opposite themes. D&D is all about the hero's journey, no matter what different spin you put on it. The characters start out barely competent, just a bit over the common folks around them. As they adventure they become more powerful, heroes of legend, eventually becoming lords or kings or demigods or what have you.
Cthulhu is about the spiral downward. Your character at the start is competent, and doesn't really get much more competent as the game goes on. Skill may go up a bit, but not in a game changing way. The sanity rules though, mean every character feels like a ticking time bomb. If you play the same character long enough, they might get eaten by a monster. But eventually the *will* go crazy. Its all a matter of what you can do before you've Seen Too Much.
Wik
First Post
As an aside, have you ever seen Pushing Daisies? It's an investigative TV show where the main character basically has the power to Speak With Dead (with a few caveats). He usually speaks with the corpse within the first fifteen minutes of the show, and then spends the next 45 minutes trying to make sense of what the corpse said.
So, yeah, you can use magic to enhance a storyline, not to provide an instant "I win".
In fact, that's what I had in mind with my earlier mentioned "CSI: Eberron" model. Since players KNOW going in that it's an investigative game, as opposed to a combat game, you'll see players make characters with that in mind. I'd be making a streetsmart Spellthief with ranks in Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, and Streetwise - and if we used the Contact rules in UA, a bunch of street-level contacts. You might make a bard, or a diviner-type wizard, or a sorcerer focused on Speak With Dead.
Our adventure will probably have those talents in mind. We could speak with the corpse, and get a vague clue as to who the killer is. Or, we might not even be able to find the corpse, because it's been animated as a zombie and is now killing people. When you use Detect Evil to find the bad guy in the slums, you suddenly realize that you're standing in a PIT of evil, and it's hard to find the villain. And so on.
Compare that to 4e, as written. We know we're in an investigative game. So, we start taking classes. Now, I could be a rogue or a bard, with some very useful skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, Streetwise, Thievery, Perception)... or I could be a wizard, with some useful rituals. Now, let's say I go with the rogue... since most of the feats are based around combat (Which isn't going to be as useful in this game), I might take Ritual Casting - meaning, I can now do most of the same non-combat things as our mage. Our mage, trying to stay even with the rogue, takes "Jack of All Trades" (+2 to all untrained skills) as a feat... or starts taking training in useful skills.
The overlap between characters in 4e, as written, is rather large. To be honest, I like this, but only in a combat-based game - it gives characters a range of backgrounds. But, in an investigative game, this level of play is not as well supported as it was in 3e.
I really should clarify something I said earlier, though. Earlier, I said something along the lines of "4e Doesn't do Investigative as well as as 3e did". What I mean is, as-written, 4e doesn't encourage investigative play as well as 3e. You could argue that many 3e powers nerf investigative play (Speak with dead, for example, though I've given examples in this post how that spell can be used to ENHANCE the scenario) - but the fact is, they're there. They are in the game.
As for Cthulu in D&D, I have run it in both 2e and 3e. When I ran it in 2e, I wasn't familiar with Lovecraft, but the horror adventure I ran wound up being very Cthuluesque. When I ran it in 3e, I used the sanity rules from CoCd20, and the game was a blast. Both worked fairly well, because the culture of the game had been modified to discourage direct combat. I think, in 4e, it might be a bit harder to modify the inherent assumptions of the game to support a "run away!" style of play. When characters are 95% hammer (ie, Combat), everything starts to look like a nail.
Hopefully, we'll see a 4e Unearthed Arcana which we can use to tweak the game to our heart's content.
There's a lot of debate over whether or not 4e can run investigation or cthulu horror. But what other genres does it have a problem running? And, to broaden the question a bit, beyond basic combat, what sort of genres is 4e GREAT at running? I believe I mentioned that it runs large-scale combats (20+ participants) pretty well. I could imagine using it to run a Vietnam-like campaign, against jungle-dwelling orcs. I think, as a whole, 4e fits pretty well with Eberron (though some tweaks need to be made). I imagine it could also be used to run a DARK SUN game better than 3e ever did (because the game burns out much of the inherent magic in the classes that happened with 3e).
Three physical skills (Acrobatics, Athletics, Endurance)
Six knowledge skills (Arcana, Dungeoneering, History, Nature, Religion, Streetwise)
Four interaction skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight, Intimidate)
Two sneaky skills (Stealth, Thievery)
I count 15 skills which are useful out of combat which is all of them. Acrobatics and Athletics get used for stunts so they've got importance, Intimidate can be used so it's got that. I don't think the actual skill support your assertion.
