Dragon Editorial: Fearless

[Jayouzts]

Moderately paranoid? Players, in my experience, aren't moderately paranoid. They should be put in straight jackets and locked in padded cells.

Examples I've had to deal with:

<Examples of annoyingly paranoid play snipped>

I agree with you that this style of play is annoying and boring. However, I think it is a flaw of the players and not of the system. If - as has been argued - 4E retains a real risk of PC death then players like this will still be risk-averse to the extreme.

 

[Sir Brennen]

LOL... this is just reminding me of the character from an old X-files episode:

"Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage. "

Seriously, though... I think the element of emotional investment in characters has become more of the norm since 1E (as well as the investment of time in making a new character when one dies), so people are of course more loath to take "heroic" actions which the choices are "Yeah! I jumped across the 10' pit!" and "Aah! I'm dissolving in green slime!" If the heroic action isn't especially meaningful, players are more likely to take the safe route than risk instant death.

However, that doesn't mean there are no consequences of failed actions in 4E. Becoming bloodied, poisoned, catching on fire... all of these add to the excitement of risk taking without the end result being the player starts asking to borrow books in the middle of a fight so he can start working on his next character.

Once a risk taker has gotten the snot beat out of him though, he's back in the same boat as earlier editions, but at least there's more ingame reason than "you instantly die on a roll of 1."

Look at it this way: from a simulationist perspective, it makes perfect sense for a BBEG to place nasty traps on the front door to his lair. From a narrative perspective, it makes for a poor story if the trap outright kills the heroes at the front door, and not at a more climactic point. That doesn't mean the trap should have no effect, and IMHO, makes it more interesting if it results in some handicapp the players now have to deal with as they push on deeper.

 

[mhensley]

Pig Farmer Level is no longer the starting point.

Have you seen the stats for the Pig Farmer mini? He will totally kick your 1st level pc's butt.

 

[delericho]

Well, how often do you expect to need your "Second Wind" in 15 minutes?

I expect people to use it as often as necessary to return to full health, limited only by what the rules will allow. Once they've gone through their reserves for the day, I expect them to retreat and rest.

The corollary to that is that characters will throw all their 'dailies' at the first one or two encounters of the day, because they know they'll recharge them at the same time. Initially, they will find that 'balanced' encounters are a pushover, but DM's will adapt by upping the difficulty of those first two encounters to compensate...

and everyone will wonder just why 4e plays exactly the same way as 3e.

There is a point where going to rest is okay, but it shouldn't be after 15 minutes (or even a single hour), but it doesn't have to be 8 hours or 7 days, either...

Unlike a lot of anti-4e folks, I am in favour of per-encounter balancing of the game. But mixing per-encounter and per-day abilities is a bad idea.

 

[EATherrian]

To be honest, that's how we've played D&D for some time now.

A good cinematic romp is always fun. I also enjoy more gritty adventures, I'm hoping that both can be done with the new edition.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

"You can be brave because the rules support it! Because you could never play a real daring hero before 4E! Oh noes! It wasn't even possible, because you always died if you tried!"

You believe this?

Well, in my last 3e campaign, I killed a PC every three sessions for over 80 sessions. Half of those were to failed saving throws. I stuck to RAW as hard as I could, barring my own incompetence in interpreting rules.

I dunno about anyone else, but, that's just too friggin' lethal. That's not heroic at all. You couldn't be heroic in 3e if you stuck to core, because the game was just too lethal. I wouldn't blame anyone whatsoever for taking the absolute most safest choices each and every time.

On the choices on the mine ride - Sure, they could take the mine ride, but, assuming there would be skill checks along the way, failing any of them results in a dead PC. Why would you even consider it? Never mind the chasm at the end, you don't know about that.

Heck, if you go back into the general forums you'll see a multipage thread about pulling levers. A large number of the posters there said that they would NEVER pull a lever in a dungeon because it would be too dangerous. I don't want to play that way, and, y'know, I'm pretty happy that the default rules are not going to assume that people play that way.

 

[delericho]

On the choices on the mine ride - Sure, they could take the mine ride, but, assuming there would be skill checks along the way, failing any of them results in a dead PC. Why would you even consider it? Never mind the chasm at the end, you don't know about that.

You know, I've been thinking about it, and I've concluded that that "untrained Dungeoneering roll" for jumping the chasm was just for show. The DC was 0, either explicitly or in reality.

Why?

Because if the PCs failed that roll it was basically a campaign ender - TPK. Would any DM really do such a thing? And, conversely, can someone fairly be described as a bad DM for failing to do such a thing?

Heck, if you go back into the general forums you'll see a multipage thread about pulling levers. A large number of the posters there said that they would NEVER pull a lever in a dungeon because it would be too dangerous. I don't want to play that way, and, y'know, I'm pretty happy that the default rules are not going to assume that people play that way.

Yeah, I remember such threads. Personally, I'm of the view that one should check for traps, and take-20 when doing so (and scan it with Detect Magic too, just to be sure). If, however, those searches reveal nothing untoward, then the level should be safe to pull. Of course, miss any of the sensible steps, and you're just asking to have the floor drop out from under you and drop you in lava.

There's a middle ground between "operate with extreme paranoia" and "be as reckless as you want - no one mistake will ever kill you". Unfortunately, it doesn't look like 4e has found it.

 

[tomBitonti]

Let me start by saying this: Racing through a mine in a mine cart Temple of Doom-style should be mandatory for all D&D adventurers, at least once in their careers. Complete with jumps, hairpin corners taken on two wheels, monster attacks and collapsing tracks, it was possibly the most fun sequence of encounters I've ever had in a D&D game. In previous editions, I never would have considered taking this risk. I would have been afraid that my fragile character, especially at 4th level, would never have survived the jump or 40-foot drop off the top of the raised tracks. Instead, "the only thing missing," my character Deimos gleefully shouted to Mat Smith's character Garrot, "is fire! We need some explosions!"

Just to be perfectly clear, here: the player proposing this incredible venture in the first place (yours truly) is playing a character with Wisdom 8, to another player (Mr. Smith) playing a character with Intelligence 8. If that's not a match made for the Darwin awards, I don't know what is.

We also learned a lot about cart/monster physics in that adventure. For example, did you know that darkmantles have trouble grabbing your face when you whip by at 30 mph? In fact, if they make impact with a resilient surface—say a shield held out as a windbreak—they splatter like bugs?

But perhaps the best moment was when the other character on our little side adventure, the dragonborn warlord Abraxus played by Andrew Finch, saw the gap in the tracks ahead. Thinking in 3rd Edition terms, I'm sure, he decided the wise choice was to tumble out the back of the cart, taking just a few points of damage rather than risk "certain" death by mine cart. But after Garrot and Deimos made their jump—pulling an untrained Dungeoneering check out of their, well, you know—Abraxus could only marvel that as strange as it seemed, he made the wrong choice by falling out.

So ... to quibble, int 8 plus wis 8 doesn't quite seem to be darwin awards territory, but that's just IMO.

I have a little problem with the description of the choice to jump out as being wrong. Seems to have been a valid choice based on the information available, and certainly not wrong in terms of "did the character have fun with the decision". The text is self-contradictory in this regard: Was the untrained check really "pulled out of their [expletive deleted]", in which isn't the decision to not attempt the jump seems rather correct? (If the check was unfailable, or had no real consequence on failure, then as the player who decided not to take the jump I'd be a bit annoyed.)

My biggest problem with the example is that it doesn't really support the conclusion. That is, that "4E allows for more risk taking". I agree with other poster's that the car ride could have been run perfectly well using 3.5E rules.

Also the "physics of darkmantles" is partly by DM fiat. But, in my approximation using the 3.5 rules, a 30mph collision is about a 30' fall, so 3d6 would be the expected damage, so a "splat" effect seems about right.

To step up out of the particulars of the argument, what I'm seeing is a failure in the form of the argument that is being made. The conclusion may be true, but the reasoning that gets us there doesn't actually support the conclusion.

Thx!

 

[Ipissimus]

Stop being reasonable. Dream up all problems you want, it's the internet!

I have a theory about that. I think that all the unreasonableness on the internet is due to the 'balance' of reason/unreason shifting in such a way that I get all the reasonableness. Now all I have to do is figure out how to sell an unquantifiable resource and I'm set for life.

I agree with you that this style of play is annoying and boring. However, I think it is a flaw of the players and not of the system. If - as has been argued - 4E retains a real risk of PC death then players like this will still be risk-averse to the extreme.

Certainly, my only hope is that if they have a better chance at success and the penalties not as severe (no save or die effects are going to go a long way here), they'll be more inclined to take a few more risks. I'm already loathe to outright kill a PC on the roll of a single dice, it's my heartfelt belief that PC death should only occur if the player is silly or if the odds are really stacked against them and they can't retreat or if they bite off more than they can chew; anything less seems cheap. But if they have a real chance and still muff it, it was a good try, better luck next time. I think my PCs and I can live with that.

This isn't to say it shouldn't be nail-bitingly close in places. If you're fighting a BBEG, all bets should be off.

 

[Hussar]

There's a middle ground between "operate with extreme paranoia" and "be as reckless as you want - no one mistake will ever kill you". Unfortunately, it doesn't look like 4e has found it.

I dunno. Looks pretty good to me. We know that 4e can be lethal - PC's do die in the playtests. But, it also means that I don't have to play my PC as a member of a special forces team every time I go underground.

As I said, I found 3e extremely lethal by RAW. I can agree that death should still be on the table, but, let's knock down the lethality a bit. Dropping the crits down to just max damage is a good start. Removing save or die goes a long way towards mitigating arbitrary random deaths.

But, it appears that the game will still punish blatant stupidity. Not always, but, quite possibly in the long run.