Fourthcore question

[Quickleaf]

I was reading up on how Sersa V designed adventures over at Fourthcore (http://slamdancr.com/wp/hardcore-essentials/), and I have a question for anyone familiar with the fourthcore philosophies:

Some traps inflict healing surge damage, others force you to make death saving throws or reudce your daily number of death saves, while still others impose lasting conditions which require healing magic or other thinge to remove. When designing such traps, how do you differentiate between HP damage, healing surge loss, death saves, and lasting injuries? What is the story behind which of these things a Fourthcore trap inflict?

 

[Joshua Randall]

In my opinion, Fourthcore is less about story and more about game. Fourthcore is explicitly game-y.

So the trap inflicts whatever nastiness would make for the best / hardest / most over-the-top game. Story is a secondary consideration.

As long as the players and DM embrace this, you can have a heck of a lot of fun with Fourthcore.

(Obligatory anecdote: when I ran "Fane of the Heresiarch", none of the players ever stopped to ask about the story rationale behind anything. They were too busy having fun with the game.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, it is very old school gamist "this is a dungeon crawling game" type of philosophy.

 

[Quickleaf]

Yeah I totally get that. Maybe fourthcore indeed just throws traps together haphazardly for whatever makes the best challenge. I assumed that there quite a bit more thought to it, maybe I am wrong.

Anyhow, since I'm just using fourthcore as inspiration (and I am not running a strictly fourthcore game), I'll try to come up with my own guidelines:

Healing surge loss: traps involving energy drain, endurance, holding breath, starvation/dehydration, or significant effort over time to escape

Death saves: traditional save or die situations, petrification, powerful necromancy, possibly lethal poisons

Lasting Injuries: particularly vicious traps like deep spiked pits, or traps which obviously target a specific body part (eg. Booby trapped finger slicing scroll case), or traps imposing curses/diseases

 

[Viking Bastard]

I've begun to treat most all damage out of battle as Surge loss. They're just gonna spend a Surge, anyway.

 

[Joshua Randall]

You'll want to think about how different things affect different characters.

X amount of damage -- could be prevented by some characters either via resistance or via interrupt abilities to not get hit in the first place. Assuming it lands, X damage tends to disproportionately affect "squishy" characters over "tough" characters. For example, 30 damage is a big deal to even a Paragon rogue but not that big a deal to a Paragon warden.

Healing Surge loss -- hurts everyone, for sure, but hurts them in different ways. Hurts the low number of surges PCs (rogues, wizards) by taking away one of their precious ~6 surges. Hurts the high number of surges PCs (defenders) by effectively being a massive amount of damage that they can't prevent. PCs who have significantly invested in their healing surge value may have a surge value of one-third to one-half their full HP (as opposed to one-quarter).

Also, healing surge loss forces the PC to "spend" that surge in the least efficient way possible. Whereas the party leader might have granted you (surge value + ManyD6 + ManyBonus) hit points which could be worth a lot more than 1 HS, a straight loss of surge always costs you exactly 1 HS with no bonus healing.

Injuries -- wildly varying results depending upon the PC. A melee attacker might be badly hurt by the inability to use an arm, while a ranged implement user wouldn't care. Similarly a mobile striker might be severely hampered by a broken leg while (again) a ranged character wouldn't care as much.

Death -- death affects everyone equally, right? Not right. Most Epic Destinies and even some Paragon Paths grant a "back from death" ability. Those abilities vary a lot in their wording (sloppy lack of rules precision on 4e's part) to their effectiveness. So being hit by a death effect might be a minor annoyance for some PCs but a major problem for others.

= = =

In conclusion, if I were making a Fourthcore style adventure, I would spend a lot more time thinking about how I want to hurt the party than I would about whether necromancy matches up with Death effects, or whatever. Again, Fourthcore is explicitly game-y. It does not (seem to) care about simulating any "realistic" fantasy world.

But, y'know, it's Fourthcore. If you want to just say "screw it, I'm making a trap" and blow off the mechanical balance -- that's perfectly within Fourthcore's wheelhouse!

 

[Quickleaf]

In conclusion, if I were making a Fourthcore style adventure, I would spend a lot more time thinking about how I want to hurt the party than I would about whether necromancy matches up with Death effects, or whatever. Again, Fourthcore is explicitly game-y. It does not (seem to) care about simulating any "realistic" fantasy world.

But, y'know, it's Fourthcore. If you want to just say "screw it, I'm making a trap" and blow off the mechanical balance -- that's perfectly within Fourthcore's wheelhouse!

Sounds like consensus about Fourthcore traps is "do whatever the frick you want!!"

So allow me to rephrase my OP: Taking inspiration from Fourthcore's unique trap design (see my OP), how might a DM establish a set of trap creation guidelines which also take into account the fictional logic behind the trap?

 

[Viking Bastard]

I think in that case, your last post is a pretty good benchmark:

• Depletes you of "steam": Surge loss.
• Direct bodily harm: HP loss.
• Save or Die: Three Saves or Die.

 

[Joshua Randall]

the fictional logic behind the trap?

There is no fictional logic behind Fourthcore traps, is what I'm saying. The traps exist because they make the game fun and challengeing, not because they "make sense".

(As a side note, the very concept of a trap-filled dungeon doesn't "make sense" to me at all. It's a great game premise, though.)

Look at some of the traps in Fane of the Heresiarch:
[sblock]B. Observatory - Glass Dome
If you pry out the wrong gems, you could get sucked into space and instantly killed. Why is this instant death and doesn't give you a chance to catch yourself on something or have another PC grab you? There's no logic here, just "hah hah sucker, you pried out the wrong gems" (because other gems that you pry out give you a bonus).

B. Observatory - Birth Sign Puzzle
If you touch the wrong sign for your player's birthday, your character takes a penalty. The penalties are completely arbitary and are not balanced against each other. There's no logic here.

C. Gauntlet of Walls
This entire trap is completely illogical, yet crazily fun. Why is there a corridor full of walls with completely random and insane traps on them? "Because The Heresiarch built it that way" is one answer, but that's about as satisfying as "because a wizard did it".

For that matter, why is one of the special gems that is the key to The Heresiarch's chamber just resting, untrapped, at the end of this gauntlet of walls? Answer: because in game terms you need to reward the players for defeating this series of traps. Again, no "fictional logic" here.

Note: the individual wall traps do make a certain amount of sense in that their mechanics more or less line up with "what they do"; i.e., the Sleep Ray Games knock you unconscious, the Disenchanter Saliva-Filled Pit destroys a magic item, etc.

But note that some of these effects are completely outside the bounds of normal 4e mechanics. Unconsciousness is a normal status effect, yes; but the Tomb-Touched Vorpal Razorjack Wall that decapitates you on a crit is not a normal 4e mechanic. (And, why does it decapitate you instead of chopping off an arm or a leg or a hand or a finger? Answer: because this is a funny, game-y thing to do.)

D2. Confessional
Fail the role-playing here and you die, no save. What "fictional logic" does this fit? Why is this Confessional trap instant death, but falling into a room literally full of acid (in the Death Wyvern's Crucible) is not instant death?[/sblock]

I think that's enough examples to illustrate my point. The traps in Fourthcore are all over the map, and trying to impose logic on them just doesn't work.

If you want to make a game where the traps are Fourthcore-level lethal but have some kind of logic to them, you can do that, but you're going to need to make up your own rules about how to match "logic" with "game mechanics".

 

[Quickleaf]

If you want to make a game where the traps are Fourthcore-level lethal but have some kind of logic to them, you can do that, but you're going to need to make up your own rules about how to match "logic" with "game mechanics".

Yes, this. I'm not into the save or die stuff, but I do like the increased threat of Sersa's trap design.

Here's the core of my problem: Most of the Fourthcore traps are magical, which allows you to say "screw logic! it does this!" I'm soon going to be running my players thru Dragon Mountain, and the premise for most of those traps is that they're designed by kobolds (low-tech, high-design, non-magical) or else were part of the original dwarves settlement and have been repurposed by kobolds. Since these traps are mostly mechanical in nature, I need some logic behind their functioning. That helps me narrate, and helps the players create solutions.

For example, if I introduce a dart wall trap and then ask for a player hit to make a death saving throw, they might suspect the darts are coated with some kind of lethal poison. The mechanics (sort of) gel with the narrative: you can only have so much poison in your veins before it becomes lethal, and your body is working daily to purge the poison. Death saves model that pretty well.

However, if I had a falling block of stone and asked for a death save, both me and the players are going to be scratching our heads: is there some invisible meter tracking how many times you can get squashed by rocks? magically the third times the killer rock fall? isn't that what HP are for?

Now, that falling stone block might be a good place to impose an injury...