From the WotC Boards: Mearls on 'Aggro'

[Ahglock]

But it is illogical, because ultimately the things the tank is doing are nowhere near as threatening as what the DPSers are doing. Not to mention the healers. It doesn't take a tactical genius to realize that you can kill the tank much faster if you first kill the extremely fragile guy who's constantly healing him.


That's, um, not an aggro system you're describing there. The whole point of an aggro system is that it shortcuts the design work of making "attack the fighter" a reasonable option and just makes the monsters do it anyway.

The theory isn't absurdly illogical. If Fighter A is super dangerous if ignored, you can't ignore the fighter. Its basic logical theory. The practice in MMOs though is illogical because they just add threat to fighter moves because they want him hit not because its somehow more threatening. Also in MMOs fighters can stay up the entire fight if he is exclusively being pounded on with healer support while a mage will drop in a round. The disparity in pen and paper games is usually not nearly as large. So while the mage is a softer target he isn't a paper target vs a main battle tank target.

What it looks like they did is create a agro mechanic that works on the human mind and not the AI. And yes it is basically a agro system. You are creating threat so the human DM makes the decision to hit the fighter instead of the mage. Just like in a mmorpg you create threat so the AI mind decides to attack the warrior instead of the mage. So instead of saying here is a debuff which we tack on an extra 500 threat with, they instead say if you pass by a fighter you get hit by this immediate action, and trust me you want to avoid that immediate action. Its best you deal with the fighter first.

The only real difference against a human DM instead of an AI you have to make the threat real and not an arbitrary 500 tacked on.

 

[Grog]

In which case it was inspired by GURPS, which would make sense.

Fallout, people may remember, before a disagreement with Steve Jackson Games, was going to be a GURPS system computer game.

Have you played Fallout? It's not at all like GURPS. The disagreement you mentioned meant that the designers had to chuck the GURPS mechanics and replace them with new ones. Perks (special abilities that your character gets every three levels) were one of those replacements. There's nothing like them in GURPS (to my knowledge, anyway).

 

[KoshPWNZYou]

For the folks who are upset that these rules were even considered ... don't forget that Mearls is but one of many designers. These mechanics might have been introduced by, say ... Noonan ... and Mearls has been arguing against their inclusion. They reached a concensus and now Mearls is delivering the news. The points he's illustrating in this post were points he was arguing from the beginning. :\

There are WoW players on the design team and there are people who can't stand WoW on the design team. So you have people acting as a conduit for new ideas from another game system and you have people who are willing to argue against those ideas. That's comforting, no?

 

[Jim Hague]

Have you played Fallout? It's not at all like GURPS. The disagreement you mentioned meant that the designers had to chuck the GURPS mechanics and replace them with new ones. Perks (special abilities that your character gets every three levels) were one of those replacements. There's nothing like them in GURPS (to my knowledge, anyway).

They're called Advantages in GURPS. That it's not a level-based system is pretty much irrelevant here.

 

[Oldtimer]

Steve Jackson, who used to work for TSR in England

I know that the post as such was humorous, but I have to ask: When did Steve work at TSR UK? I thought I knew the people working there and I'm sure I would have remembered seeing him around.

 

[Henrix]

I know that the post as such was humorous, but I have to ask: When did Steve work at TSR UK? I thought I knew the people working there and I'm sure I would have remembered seeing him around.

I think Henry is confusing him with Steve Jackson, the co-founder of Games Workshop. And GW had the British D&D license, right?

The USanian Steve Jackson was busy working for Metagaming then, if memory serves me right.

(And, Hi, Mygel/Oldtimer! )

 

[Oldtimer]

I think Henry is confusing him with Steve Jackson, the co-founder of Games Workshop. And GW had the British D&D license, right?

The USanian Steve Jackson was busy working for Metagaming then, if memory serves me right.

You're probably right. GW was the TSR distributor in UK until TSR UK was started and one of GW's founders was named Steve Jackson.

Confusing a brit with a yankee, are we Henry?

(And, Hi, Mygel/Oldtimer! )

Hi there. Long time, no see.

 

[AllisterH]

Hmm. I'm not quite convinced.

First, I'm not really sure what you mean by this "bodyguard" role of which you speak.

Hmm?

You never heard of a bodyguard? So when the princess makes her journey to her fiancee's castle/kingdom, what do you call the people protecting her?

Second, it makes no sense whatsoever in my mind for a monster who really wants to kill the wizard behind the fighter to feel some unnatural compulsion to first stop and whack on the fighter for a bit. If they want to get to the wizard, they should feel free to try (and take whatever Attacks of Opportunity the fighter "bodyguard" throws at it).

This is an aspect of the HP system and the initative system. A creature isn't going to "ignore" the guy swinging the steel right in front of him. Quick: How many novel scenes where an attacker basically ignores/soaks the damage from the guy in front to attack the guy in back compared with the attacker trying to either feint/remove the guy in front to attack the back row.

Using the logic of your post, would you be in support of a rule that forbade rogues from tumbling past enemies (and their AoOs) in order to get at the badguy behind them? Must they also slug it out with the frontline?

Hmmm....

Actually I am.

I don't allow rogues to timble past automatically the front lines.

HOUSE RULE:I use an opposed roll Balance vs BAB since I always found it weird that a rogue can tumble past automatically even against a foe who is 10 levels higher and said foe has been fighting rogues for the past 10 levels.

 

[Wardo]

And that's what's so strange to me. WotC tried something out, verified that it didn't work, and chucked the rule out. The rule won't appear in 4e, and some posters are still not happy, since the mere thought of the 4e design team even just thinking about trying out some rules is somehow to be derided.

A good designer has the guts to try stuff out. Things that look good on paper might suck, and things that look bad on paper might rock. A designer that sets up needless barriers and boundaries in his own head and thereby refuses to try new OR old stuff is a bad designer, IMO.

/M

I agree with everyone expressing this sentiment; you have to try new things, you have to try things shown to work in other games.

But I think the most important thing that some of the negative posters here are missing, is that they didn't just try something out, and toss it when it didn't work. They replaced it with something that would lead to the same game play experience (monsters actually stopping to fight the fighters) without forcing the DM to do anything with mind-control like abilities. That seems like a 100% positive contribution to me.

And it came from trying another system that accomplishes the same thing, and seeing what they didn't like about it.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Wow, guys.

WotC explicitly says they're not using aggro in D&D, and you get mad at them for experimenting in the first place, because "it's obviously a bad idea".

I'm really happy that they're willing to try new things. I'm even happier that they're willing to scrap some of those new things when they don't work. It shows a commitment to good design and is, I daresay, the hallmark of a good design team.