Grognard's First Take On 4e

[ExploderWizard]

What exactly is "old school fantasy combat tactics" and how does 4E no longer qualify as this? Other than its non-old-school-ness, of course!

Old school tactics are simply battle maneuvers that take place somewhat in a world with consistent physical laws. If you want to get a monster's attention you have to do something to grab it instead of "activate a sticky power" to do so. If you want to protect softer party members, you have to find a defensible position.

 

[Mister Doug]

Old school tactics are simply battle maneuvers that take place somewhat in a world with consistent physical laws. If you want to get a monster's attention you have to do something to grab it instead of "activate a sticky power" to do so. If you want to protect softer party members, you have to find a defensible position.

Of course, those old-school tactics only work as much as the DM allows it to. There is not consistency with physical laws within the rules, only within the DM's ad-hoc adjustment of the game and the ability of players to learn to maintain consistency with the DM's interpretation of how things work. There was no way, for instance, to stop the goblins from running past the front-line fighters to attack the softer wizard unless the DM agreed that the goblins had to stop because the position was defensible and the fighters couldn't be overrun.

There is a value to arguing that looser, less-defined systems to allow DMs to insert a set of tactical factors not defined by the rules, but that doesn't mean that the rules support those tactics directly.

 

[Imaro]

I
Imaro - I think you are taking a fairly simplistic view of encounter design. In all honestly, it sounds an awful lot like a 3e design - each encounter is self contained, does not overlap with other encounters and all of the actors in that encounter are known at the beginning.

This is certainly true in the vast majority of modules designed for 3e that I've seen.

4e seems to be moving away from that, from what we've seen. Your encounter should span a number of areas, with various actors entering the combat at various times. In the GRZ podcast, they mention the Lurker role for monsters - something that hasn't been exploited as much in 3e. So, you open the door to the room, see the four undead and think, "Hey, 3 standards and an elite" and open up with your dailies.

Only, you can't tell which one is elite, so, which one do you blast with a daily? And, then it's the monster's turn and suddenly, even though you've blasted two of the baddies with your dailies, a fifth monster pops out of the woodwork (like the wraith can do) and now your dailies are expended.

Plus, you might just have blown dailies on minions. Maybe those four baddies are just minions - zombie minions for example, and you've just dusted them all, only to find that those four brutes come crashing out of their coffins.

Opening with dailies in the first round requires you to have a fair bit of knowledge about the fight in front of you. It might very well be that you will do so sometimes. Particularly if you are ambushing someone for example. But, I highly, highly doubt that it will be the best option in every fight.

In 3e, where encounters were typically self contained, with the actors known beforehand, combined with the fact that any of those actors can kill you in one round, it made perfect sense to blow through your big weapons ASAP. The fight was likely only going to last three, four rounds anyway, so, use it or lose it.

We know that fights are meant to last much longer now. Your example gives the monsters WAY too much firepower. At no point should the PC's be facing creatures of equal power. You have the baddies killing the PC's in the same amount of hits that the PC's require to kill the baddies. I think you will find that encounters should never be that powerful.

Again, I think it's a 3e prejudice, where it was likely true that a given monster could kill a given PC with equal numbers of rounds of attacks. In other words (cos that's an ugly sentence) a CR 10 monster that takes 8 hits to kill, could probably kill a Lvl 10 PC in 8 attacks. We know that this isn't true in 4e. A monster that takes 8 hits to kill probably requires significantly more attacks to kill a PC. Why? Because the monsters aren't meant to be fought alone, like 3e monsters were.

So, your dogpiling monsters will likely take two or three rounds to kill a PC with standard attacks, while the PC's can likely do it in half the time.

I think that's where your example goes wrong.

Okay, let me address a few points. Given that there is no sign on a minions back that says "Minion" how do you ever determine if they are minions, you could again hold onto your daily and still blow it on a minion. Also given that minions are constructed to viably threaten PC's...why does it matter if you use your dailies to kill them. You still reduced the number of attacks that can come at your party. In fact even if 20 more goblins come rushing into a room...you still reduced the number of attacks you have to deal with. I think alot of people are missing this very important point...You have reduced the number of actiona against as well as the amount of damage in a quicker span of time that can affect your party as a whole.

As far as the power level of monsters...what about elites or other types that are as powerful or moreso than the PC's . I think you are making a very general and broad assumption that I do not believe (especially looking at the kobolds vs. 1st level PC's) will not necesssarily be true. But we'll see on June 6th.

 

[hong]

Old school tactics are simply battle maneuvers that take place somewhat in a world with consistent physical laws.

4E has perfectly consistent physical laws.

If you want to get a monster's attention you have to do something to grab it instead of "activate a sticky power" to do so.

In 4E, if you want to get a monster's attention you grab it by activating a sticky power.

If you want to protect softer party members, you have to find a defensible position.

In 4E, if you want to protect softer party members, you tell them to find a more defensible position.

 

[hong]

Okay, let me address a few points. Given that there is no sign on a minions back that says "Minion" how do you ever determine if they are minions, you could again hold onto your daily and still blow it on a minion.

You determine it in exactly the same way you determine who is the 1HD orc warrior grunt and who is the 15HD orc barbarian chieftain.

 

[Mistwell]

You do realize don't you that you've just created the perfect analogy for the people complaining that 4e won't let them run the kinds of games they like? If the fork won't ever let you consume soup, then it's all the more reason to ditch the fork.

It's very possible that 4e won't work for what he used to use 3e for.

Yes Henry, that was my point. He tried to use 4e rules to replicate a 3e game. If 3e was the perfect system for him, 4e won't work as well for the types of games he likes.

However, most people do not think 3e was the perfect system.

If he does think 3e was the perfect system, then obviously he should use that system for his games.

 

[RigaMortus2]

[off-topic]
But such a "vow" to not do something reminds me of myself as a child.
"No, I don't want to try the salad! I will hate it!" "At least try it!" "Grr." *puts tiny amount of food in mouth* "See, don't like it!" "Okay, at least you tried." (And this would happen regardless how much I'd might like the new taste. I couldn't just go back and say "You know, I was wrong). Ah, well, that was me as a child...
[/off-topic]

Haha, sounds like me (both as a child and presently...

I just discovered the wonderful world of Sushi (although, I only do the spicy tuna roll... still afraid to try other types, but ya got to start somewhere.)

 

[AndrewRogue]

Of course classes have always been limited by thier selection of abilities, the addition of a role just adds more.

This is fairly arguable when you consider what realistically constitutes an option. I'll yield that, in the most literal sense with the most open classes? Sure. Generally though, I'm not seeing a huge decrease in options.

I agree that jack of all trades types in a class based game never work out very well.

They suck pretty hard in point buy games too. Even real life isn't too kind to them.

A fighter could be a swashbucker with a high DEX, a lighter weapon and a selection of feats that supported this concept and didn't have to be a heavy tank.

Of course, the only way to really have this option be supported is to multiclass and PrC. Core Fighter doesn't make a great light fighter. But, then again, why should every class necessarily need to support multiple play styles? Why can't there be... say... multiple classes dedicated to filling out multiple concepts.

Like, say, a class for heavy types who are all defendery and a class for the swift and clever swashbuckler?

To simplify the question... why does the Fighter (class) have to be able to support both archetypes, when the swashbuckler type is better supported by the Rogue (class). Your class title isn't everything. It is simply the means to an end.

A rogue could be a second story type of lockpicking wizard who only engaged in combat as a last resort.

I don't see anything stopping you from doing this in 4th. Feel free to ignore your combat abilities and suck it up in a fight. Again, this isn't new. Even a diplomatic scoundrel who barely ever touched a weapon, spent all his time talking his way out of problems and the like still had a 3/4 BAB and 10d6 worth of sneak attack under his belt.

If by streamlining you meant pigeonholing a character concept into the most efficient combat model possible then I guess 4E did a pretty thorough job.

Show me a concept that can be realized in the core of 3rd that is somehow explicitly prohibited by the 4th Ed design model, and I'll give this to you.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Yes Henry, that was my point. He tried to use 4e rules to replicate a 3e game. If 3e was the perfect system for him, 4e won't work as well for the types of games he likes.

However, most people do not think 3e was the perfect system.

If he does think 3e was the perfect system, then obviously he should use that system for his games.

I agree wholeheardedly. What gets me though is the number of people not just telling me to use a fork instead of a spoon, but that the soup I'm eating isn't any good.

 

[Imaro]

You determine it in exactly the same way you determine who is the 1HD orc warrior grunt and who is the 15HD orc barbarian chieftain.

Uhmm...and that would be...