Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

[Hussar]

Imaro - if you're trying to prove that you could play a 4e style D&D game with 3e, that's certainly true. It would take a HELL of a lot of work, but, it's true, since 3e lacks most of the 4e abilities for the players to directly influence the situation without the intervention of the DM.

For an easy example, how would you re-create a 4e Warlord's command abilities in 3e? The warlord's abilities generally allow the warlord to take an action which also allows other characters to take actions at the same time. This is in keeping with what a warlord is - tactical commander. There are very few mechanics in 3e that allow anything like this.

You mention extended skill checks. Yup, they were in 3e. In an optional supplement that was never supported, but, yup, they are in there. Compare that to 4e which had extended skill checks codified right in the rules (granted, it did take a few tries ) and an expected element of play. Something that is certainly not true in 3e.

I mean, look at the En World 4e module for Santiago: Myth of the Far Future. The first module is available free and features several skill challenges that are written with the benefit of a few years of experience (available Here ). Again, I don't think anyone will dispute that the skill challenges could have used a LOT more work before they went out the door. Both in how they should be run and clearer examples in the DMG. Pointing to the early examples might not be the best criticism. Not a whole lot of people will defend those as stellar examples of a skill challenge.

Heck, [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s example in this thread serves as a better example than most of the ones in either DMG.

And, to answer the question, yes, I would loathe skill challenges with autofail buttons that the players couldn't be aware of. I wouldn't be thrilled with ones even where the players ARE aware of it beforehand. But, that's just me. I think autofail buttons are a DM failure of imagination. They are needless roadblocks in play and only serve to narrow the field. I certainly would never feature one in any game I ran.

 

[Imaro]

Imaro - if you're trying to prove that you could play a 4e style D&D game with 3e, that's certainly true. It would take a HELL of a lot of work, but, it's true, since 3e lacks most of the 4e abilities for the players to directly influence the situation without the intervention of the DM.

I already stated what my point was... and this isn't it... but if you go back a few posts you'll see it... Lost Soul did. And, I guess that kind of negates most of the rest of your post...

EDIT: To be more constructive... the discussion was centering around "indie" play (as set out earlier by various posters) and whether default 4e was actually geared towards "indie" play out the box and/or could it more easily than other editions be drifted towards it... so no it had nothing to do with running a 4e game with 3e rules.

OAN: Some of the examples I cited were form the DMG 2... so it wasn't just the early years...

And, to answer the question, yes, I would loathe skill challenges with autofail buttons that the players couldn't be aware of. I wouldn't be thrilled with ones even where the players ARE aware of it beforehand. But, that's just me. I think autofail buttons are a DM failure of imagination. They are needless roadblocks in play and only serve to narrow the field. I certainly would never feature one in any game I ran.

Cool thanks for actually answering the question I asked...

 

[N'raac]

And, yet again, we have the DM stepping in to automatically nit-pick and rules lawyer any attempt by the player. Destroying a church is, apparently, not good enough. Starting a war isn't good enough. Killing half the town isn't good enough.

What to you would be a sufficiently evil wish?

Nothing says you can't get the wish. But you have to bargain for it, so you have to offer the Demon something it wants - you actually have to deliver something it wants.

Let's take a step back here. You seem quite offended by the concept that you don't get to use a 6th level spell in order to get the benefits of a 9th level spell without bearing the cost casting that 9th level spell will normally require. But it's the nasty DM who is the problem, not the player who wants a free ride.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

And, yet again, we have the DM stepping in to automatically nit-pick and rules lawyer any attempt by the player. Destroying a church is, apparently, not good enough. Starting a war isn't good enough. Killing half the town isn't good enough.

What to you would be a sufficiently evil wish?

And, again, it's hardly a surprise that your players won't bother you with this sort of thing. Knowing that you're just going to block anything that isn't direct damage, why would the players ever attempt anything else?

Do keep in mind that demons and devils are meant to be pains in the ass when it comes to "bargaining" and such. While I do agree the examples given are a bit too much (though not likely for the reasons most would think at first), I can also see that those specific creatures will twist words around a bit because they are conniving bastards. Don't fault a DM for playing them as such because dealing with them is no walk in the park.

The examples highlight a key issue with morality in general: Morality is in the eye of the beholder in quite a few cases. How one looks at it can change what it is, or at least what it is perceived as. Is killing a priest who will end up closer to his deity due to his death an evil act born out of wanting to spill blood, or a good act out of wanting to give his soul better circumstances? Is stealing a loaf of bread to feed your child who could become a benevolent king exalted for hundreds of years later wrong?

If your table isn't mature enough to deal with those kinds of questions then it might not be mature enough to handle the full impact of what demons and devils can actually do, even just through their words. One of the hooks possible with them is they will indeed cause the characters (and perhaps players!) to question their own morality as well as the morality of any number of things about the campaign world.

I find the example of summoning a demon has far too much gravity to simply toss around with the idea of "Ha, I CAN get a wish!" When dumbed down to that level, yes, it's certainly possible to "get a wish" but damn that's a lot of wasted potential for self-realization. I find it a bit shallow but depending on my mood I could give it a swing. I'd prefer to be able to get something more profound out of it though.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Nothing says you can't get the wish. But you have to bargain for it, so you have to offer the Demon something it wants - you actually have to deliver something it wants.

Let's take a step back here. You seem quite offended by the concept that you don't get to use a 6th level spell in order to get the benefits of a 9th level spell without bearing the cost casting that 9th level spell will normally require. But it's the nasty DM who is the problem, not the player who wants a free ride.

I wouldn't say it's either the player or the DM that are a problem. Rather, it's the fact that they're likely playing the game for different reasons and so there will be a huge disconnect. If the DM is going to have the demon react to the player like that when the player clearly won't accept it then those two shouldn't even be playing together.

And as we've seen, there's no way you and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] should be at the same table.

 

[Lanefan]

And, yet again, we have the DM stepping in to automatically nit-pick and rules lawyer any attempt by the player. Destroying a church is, apparently, not good enough. Starting a war isn't good enough. Killing half the town isn't good enough.

I'm missing something here.

This is far from the first time in this thread you have railed against (perceived or real) *A* attempts by DMs to restrict what wizards can do in the game. Yet you also have several times in here brought up the *B* notion that wizards can do all kinds of things that fighters cannot and are thus out of balance.

Given that *A* to some extent helps to correct *B*, why complain about it?

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

Lack of process sim mechanics around healing and spell durations, making scene framing easier (because effects generally don't bleed across scene boundaries) and facilitating "fail forward" adjudication

Hasn't it been claimed that cure light wound wands, scrolls and potions essentially serve the same purpose as healing surges

Perhaps. How does that relate to spell durations?

Monster building charts, traps building charts, DC and damage by level charts, etc, all of which (i) make improv and adjustments very easy and (ii) contribute to reliable pacing and (iii) allow the GM to provide antagonism in a way which is broadly predicatable in its mechanical effects

with the exception of some "gotcha" monsters and some variation with the math (which even 4e is not totally absent of) weren't HD/CR already present and used as rough benchmarks for difficulty?

Perhaps. I haven't played much 3E, but I don't recall seeing many 3E players argue that CR is as reliable as 4e's level-charts. How could it be? 3E is not based around the "metagame first" approach of 4e to assigning monster stats. (And this is a frequent criticism of 4e from 3E players.)

I also see 3E combat frequently described as "rocket tag". This description could never be applied to 4e combat!

I have played and GMed a lot of AD&D, and I know that HD/monster level is not a reliable predictor for difficulty.

Also, none of this pertains to pacing or improv.

Fortune-in-the-middle mechanics all over the place

The classes of BECMI and AD&D 1e, the kits/skills and powers, etc. of AD&D 2e and the feats/prestige classes, etc. of 3.x and higher all alow this (and this is before we look to the OGL for 3.x which gives even more mechanics to serve these purposes.

I don't see how any of this relates to fortune-in-the-middle. I don't believe that 3E has FitM all over the place (hit points is the main place I can see) - the presence of FitM in 4e (also known as "dissociated mechanics") is a recurring criticism of 4e.

A non-combat scene-resolution mechanics (skill challenges)

Previous editions had non-combat resolution mechanics in the form of skills, NWP's, attribute checks, etc.

<snip>

including extended skill checks in 3.x

Yes. Non-combat task resolution. They did not have non-combat scene-resolution mechanics. Extended skill checks are not the same as scene resolution. Skill challenges (especially at complexities 1 and 2) can be used as extended skill checks. But have a look at [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s example upthread, or even the examples of play in the DMG and RC. Those are not extended skill checks.

A conflict-laden backstory (see the DMG plus the MM monster descriptions) in which the process of PC building will tend to inherently locate a PC - thus seeding conflict from the get-go

A fighter PC in 4e is no more "inherently located" than a fighter in any other edition...

But that fighter has a race. Perhaps a theme. An alignment and god that establish conflict from the start in a way that is not the case with (say) the default 3E gods.

As I've often said, if all the PCs in a 4e game are halfling archer-rangers, and all the monsters are ankhegs and kruthiks, then you probably won't experience this particular aspect of 4e. But it is very easy to do other than this in play.

A loose backstory which focuses more on "vibe" and the conflicts, then on traditional world-buidling details, which suits the development of details in play using the inbuilt conficts as the skeleton.

As a DM you can focus on building your setting however you want... I think most people running a D&D game focus on conflicts and use inbuilt conflicts as the skeleton for details in play

In principle every GM can write a setting like Glorantha, too.

You asked what makes 4e suitable for indie play. I answered: its default setting does. The presentation of the setting doesn't give us a roll of years for Nerath, or even a geography of Nerath, nor the name of the local currency. Rather it gives us a mythic history which integrates the death of the last empereror at the hands of gnolls with a broader overarching narrative of law (and heaven) vs chaos (and primordials/demons). The world design foregrounds the stuff that indie gaming needs - vectors of conflict that is readily accessible to players and GM alike - and backgrounds stuff that gets in the way of scene-framing indie play (like endless world-building details that impede non-exploratory approaches resolution and prioritise exploration as a goal of play).

D&D has always had explicit if not implicit underpinnings for Level appropriate challenges all the way back to the 1st level dungeon being easiest and difficulty increasing as one traversed higher levels...

This may be true, but I don't see how it has much bearing on the points I made.

I do think they took indie inspiration in how they were presented and how they were expected to be implemented and this is where, IMO, 4e fell flat for many.

<snip>

I still believe that you and many others who run 4e in an "indie" style either resolve the contradictions and problems by taking advice from other games, ignoring it or adding to the game.

And this is the thing I don't get: people were right to drop 4e because it is too indie, but those who enjoy because it's indie are mistaking the nature of the game? How can both those things be true?

have you read the 3e books or actually played 3.x yet? I know in past conversations you tended to base your 3.x knowledge on rolemaster

I don't base my 3E knowledge on RM. I base it on my knowledge of the books, my very limited experience GMing and playing it, the more extensive experience my friends have with it, and my reading of message boards about it. (That said, RM and 3E have some features in common - the availability and importance of buffs; the viability of scry and fry as a tactic; a tendency to rocket tag in combat.)

I think RM is a wonderful if in many ways deeply flawed fantasy RPG. I wouldn't have the patience to GM it any more, but could probably be persuaded to play it without too much trouble. The same is not true of 3E. It doesn't appeal to me, because it seems to me to combine the D&D tradition with more simulationionst/points buy design (a la RM, HERO etc) in a way that brings out the features of both that I least enjoy.

 

[pemerton]

Given that *A* to some extent helps to correct *B*, why complain about it?

Because [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] (like some other posters in this thread) wants to achieve a balance of mechanical effectiveness across classes without the need for that sort of GM force to be used.

 

[cross ofth carpenter]

The example in the book has the player rolling the skill before being told it is a failure...... and yet here is an example of 4e promoting the DM determining the outcome isn't this exactly the "type of "DM force"

I would like to commemorate the 1700th post on this thread, posted by Imaro on Wednesday, October 30th 2013 at 11:41 pm.

This thread has really gotten far in its foundational nature, some would even say it is the pillar of discussion in it's key and important relevance and matter.

 

[pemerton]

]as I said before I still believe that you and many others who run 4e in an "indie" style either resolve the contradictions and problems by taking advice from other games, ignoring it or adding to the game.

I tend to agree with this

This seems to me to relate to the "drifting" thread that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] started a week or so ago. What counts as playing a particular game? Especially a particular edition of D&D, which will involve rulebooks written by multiple authors with perhaps differing conceptions of the details of the play of their game, and in an environment where they are trying to maximise their sales across the whole RPGing community?

D&D 4e as published contains inherent contradictions: for instance, a chapter called "Rewards" goes on to set out an XP system which basically guarantees that 1 encounter's worth of XP will be earned every hour or so of play, and then a treasure system that guarantees that the acquisition of treasure will be a function of level gain, hence XP gain, hence nothing more than spending time playing the game. These aren't rewards - certainly nothing like the role of XP or treasure in classic D&D, where both really were rewards for skilled play! This is XP as a pacing mechanism for the campaign, and treasure as simply another component of PC build as one element within that overall pacing.

Or another example: the contradiction between the PHB instruction on skill challenges, at p 179 - players choose skills - and p 73 of the DMG - GM chooses skills - which is immediately contradicted on p 75 of the DMG - encourage players to choose skills!

Or another example: the DMG sets out level appropriate DCs and skill challenges as the way to resolve treks, environmental effects etc but the PHB skill chapter has 3E-ish process-sim DCs; and the DMG similarly has such DCs in its surprise rules on p 37. Essentials resolves this particular contradiction by rewriting the skill descriptions with reference to level-appropriate skills, and by dropping the process-sim chart in its surprise rules on p 191 of the RC, in favour of opposed Stealth and Perception checks. (In Essentials, the only skill with process-sim DCs is Athletics, for use in combat - because 4e combat movement rules are process-sim rather than FitM, unlike just about every other part of the resolution system.)

Or another example: there is no "Take 20" rule anywhere in 4e except in a single throw-away discussion of searching for treasure on p 41 - which then goes on to actually frame the DCs in level appropriate terms! ie with reference to metagamed DCs that will lead to auto-success if players are allowed to take 20, because they are balanced around the need to actually roll the d20.

In actual play, these contradictions have to be dealt with somehow. I think that the most consistent way of making sense of the whole package, and using it to its best advantage, is to resolve in the direction of "indie"-style play (except for the lingering process sim of in-combat movement - keeping that as process sim is key to making the combat system work, even though it creates headaches at the interface of combat and non-combat resolution).

I think that so many of those who dislike 4e criticise it precisely for its indie-esque features shows that I'm not alone in this. They, too, can see how the game most naturally lends itself to being played. (And I think they are basically the same sorts of RPGers who criticise Marvel Heroic for being nothing but a dice-rolling game.)

I also agree with pemerton that it's easier to run an "indie" style game with 4E than other editions.

Besides the particular reasons I gave upthread, I think the most telling consideration is this: where are the "indie"-style 3E/PF games? I think [MENTION=27570]sheadunne[/MENTION] is the only poster I have seen talk about running, or trying to run, 3E/PF in this sort of way. (I am not sure how [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] runs PF, but I think TwoSix also agrees that 4e is easier to play indie style.)

Indie-style Moldvay Basic, or perhaps a very stripped back style of AD&D, would strike me as more feasible, but I've never tried it. And the PCs may not be mechanically robust enough, at least at low levels - others' thoughts on that would be very welcome!