[High level monsters and powers] What can Graz'zt actually do?

[gizmo33]

I don't see this as just being about simulationism. It's about not really taking into account the contributions of the players to the plot in other than superficial ways ("do you want to win the battle using your axe, or using your sword?").

If you know the mechanics of Orcus' gate spell, for example, you can fairly judge the player's various attempts to close it (or respond to the uses of the Arcana skill) and define it's limitations rather than just arbitrarily decide based on some plot agenda. Combat and Skill Challenges are handled this way already. Why do monsters even have stat blocks? Why doesn't the DM just decide when they die rather than having to track hitpoints and 5-foot steps? The DM following certain rules behind the scenes isn't alien to DnD. In fact, it seems to me to be a central part of 4E. Still.

The whole point of Skill Challenges was to provide a more mechanics-based system for resolving events. Saying "it's not used in combat, so I can just make up the results based on plot considerations" could be used for PCs Diplomacy with the King as well. But really, if you're a story teller and you want to follow plot considerations instead of following rules then why are you getting involved in rules discussions anyway? Who cares what the rules decide to cover - just ignore them as you do anyway.

However, if your players are under the impression that you should be following the rules, and that's the reason that additional rules cause you heartburn (because they'll call you on them), then I think you have bigger problems. The solution IMO would begin by being honest with your players about what kind of game you want to run and outline which types of rules, if any, you intend to follow.

You can always avoid conflict with players by sitting their characters in a featureless gray room with nothing to interact with - but IMO being a good DM includes taking some risks and being able to let players in on the event resolution of the game without freaking out about the loss of control. Akin to the Gray Room is a room where there are a bunch of objects, but the only one you can interact with is a sword, the rest are illusions.

 

[chaotix42]

@ DracoSuave & Felon - Isn't Safer (Seraph) Sephiroth from FF VII? If Sephiroth was in FF XII it's news to me!

@ Gizmo - Your last post seems laden with excessive hyperbole. Are there any DMs in this thread afraid of losing control over their PCs, sitting them in featureless rooms and reading them short stories about their adventures?

 

[Nail]

If you know the mechanics of Orcus' gate spell, for example, you can fairly judge the player's various attempts to close it (or respond to the uses of the Arcana skill) and define it's limitations rather than just arbitrarily decide based on some plot agenda. Combat and Skill Challenges are handled this way already. Why do monsters even have stat blocks? Why doesn't the DM just decide when they die rather than having to track hitpoints and 5-foot steps?

Well said.

..except - in 4e - it's called a "shift" instead of a "5-foot step".

 

[Nail]

Isn't Safer (Seraph) Sephiroth from FF VII?

Yep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephiroth_(Final_Fantasy)

 

[gizmo33]

Gizmo - Your last post seems laden with excessive hyperbole. Are there any DMs in this thread afraid of losing control over their PCs, sitting them in featureless rooms and reading them short stories about their adventures?

It might seem like excessive hyperbole if you read it as a description of someone's game. The featureless gray room was intended to be a thought experiment that goes along with the rest of what I was saying. There *are* DMs that appear to be afraid of losing control over their PCs. It's pretty easy to find those posts in this thread alone, though it's a matter of interpretation because complaining about "rules lawyers" and such never really seems to have much detail.

 

[Regicide]

Anyway... I think the gist of it is that the answer of "What can X do outside of combat: Anything the DM wants" doesn't work for people since X can be a kobold or a demon lord and they clearly should have different answers!

The draconomicon seems to have circle the solution without really hitting it. Lair features and such are nice but for a penultimate villain I think it falls short of giving an idea of the experience the villain will give before meeting them. Can he scry in order to send minions in ever increasing difficulty conveniently equipped with level appropriate loot to make the characters more powerful? Can he make traps so that when he capture the PCs and he can tell him his evil plan then walk out of the room confidant that his fiendish, er, diabolic trap will kill them? Can he control his insatiable hunger and surround himself with armoured troops at all times, or would he eat them? Does he have a few million gold to access all the busted magic items from adventurer's vault and make himself 5x more powerful which any creature with an IQ above freezing would do or is sensible things like this verboten in 4E? Can he do rituals and trigger a stored one to gate in an entire cadre of his followers at a moment's notice? Can he MAKE a portal so that he may have a static portal set to escape with or create one on the fly if the players cunningly destroy his escape plan? Can he block teleportation into his throne room? Can he surround himself with gaurds when he leaves his lair? Can he see someone sneaking into his bed chamber?

 

[JohnBiles]

See, I have the exact opposite reaction.

In 3.5, I had a kobold race, and I could easily create kobold wizards, kobold fighters, kobold rogue/barbarians, kobold whatevers, give them whatever items they needed, give them the skills that made them seem "real". The kobold chief had a high charisma, diplomacy, and bluff, because he needed them to be a leader. It's what a leader would logically have.

In 4e, I don't feel there's a kobold race. There's a kobold hive with kobold being born into castes from birth -- he's a slinger, he's a dragonshield. They feel as if they exist only for the fight; there is no society, no culture, no baby kobolds and old kobolds. There's just kobolds who spawn into the encounter and despawn when the encounter ends.

I have the opposite experience. The existence of Dragonshields, slingers with glue pots, etc. gives me a distinct feeling for the roles of Kobolds in war, whereas a Kobold Fighter 3.5 style could be customized so many different ways it gives me little to no feeling of Kobolds as a culture.

Plus, it is so easy to tinker with monsters in 4E that I can easily make baby kobolds, old kobolds, PHD in Physics Kobolds or whatever else I need.

Now, this can be mitigated. The rules make it easy enough to build kobold NPCs. You, the DM, can tinker with trained skills and modify equipment and attributes -- give the Dragonshield more charisma and make him Trained in Bluff if you want him to seem more leaderly, etc. But the rules as written do not actively encourage this. Instead of a kobold race, you have a box of miniatures. Pick the ones you want for the fight, and get on with it. Fights over, put them back in the box.

I'd say the exact opposite, they do encourage you to do this by providing both simple and more complicated ways to tinker with them or invent your own and making these methods quick and easy to use without breaking the universe.

Maybe it's because I always used programs like PCgen and Herolab, but all of my humanoids are classed, which meant I could use them across all levels pretty easily, and they never felt boring of 'same old', because any kobold (or orc or hobgoblin or whatever) could have any of the abilities a PC could -- magic, psionics, incarnum, whatever. You couldn't say, "Oh, it's

If you had to do it all by hand like most of us, 3E customizing was an infinitely more painful process.

 

[Squizzle]

Anyway... I think the gist of it is that the answer of "What can X do outside of combat: Anything the DM wants" doesn't work for people since X can be a kobold or a demon lord and they clearly should have different answers!

The draconomicon seems to have circle the solution without really hitting it. Lair features and such are nice but for a penultimate villain I think it falls short of giving an idea of the experience the villain will give before meeting them. Can he scry in order to send minions in ever increasing difficulty conveniently equipped with level appropriate loot to make the characters more powerful? Can he make traps so that when he capture the PCs and he can tell him his evil plan then walk out of the room confidant that his fiendish, er, diabolic trap will kill them? Can he control his insatiable hunger and surround himself with armoured troops at all times, or would he eat them? Does he have a few million gold to access all the busted magic items from adventurer's vault and make himself 5x more powerful which any creature with an IQ above freezing would do or is sensible things like this verboten in 4E? Can he do rituals and trigger a stored one to gate in an entire cadre of his followers at a moment's notice? Can he MAKE a portal so that he may have a static portal set to escape with or create one on the fly if the players cunningly destroy his escape plan? Can he block teleportation into his throne room? Can he surround himself with gaurds when he leaves his lair? Can he see someone sneaking into his bed chamber?

It's important to remember that 4E is a very modern RPG, in that it focuses on one thing (direct conflict, most particularly combat) and does it very well. It is not an attempt at creating a "world simulator" or dice-driven physics engine, like so many RPGs created from the mid-'90s through the turn of the millennium were. If you can't satisfy it with martial conflict or a skill challenge, it's probably not worth rolling the dice, in the current iteration of D&D.

I consider focus a strength, but I can understand why others might be miffed by this. I cannot offer much solace to those who prefer more "world simulator" gameplay excet to note that everything tends to become popular again eventually; if they wait long enough, generalists will likely see some innovative gaming satisfaction.

 

[Regicide]

It's important to remember that 4E is a very modern RPG, in that it focuses on one thing (direct conflict, most particularly combat) and does it very well. If you can't satisfy it with martial conflict or a skill challenge, it's probably not worth rolling the dice, in the current iteration of D&D.

In other words, it's not an RPG, it's WotC's answer to Necromunda.

 

[Lizard]

I have the opposite experience. The existence of Dragonshields, slingers with glue pots, etc. gives me a distinct feeling for the roles of Kobolds in war, whereas a Kobold Fighter 3.5 style could be customized so many different ways it gives me little to no feeling of Kobolds as a culture.

What, mechanically, gives you the feeling of "kobolds as a culture" in 4e? There's no "base kobold", no set of traits ALL kobolds have. I can say "This is a kobold who breathes acid, has bat wings, and is a vegetarian", and there's nothing non-koboldy about it. In 3x, by contrast, there were racial traits that all kobolds had, and this shaped all the choices for them -- assuming a standard attribute array, for example, you could see where kobolds would naturally gravitate towards rogues and ranged fighters, and towards sorcerers over wizards. The strongest kobold would never be an effective barbarian, at least not compared to, say, an orc with the same stat array before racial modifiers. In 4e, I can just say "This is a kobold ass-whooper" and give him a 20 strength. On the one hand, this is freedom, on the other hand, it is a lack of definition. Mechanically, I can reskin an orc into a kobold and other than the description of its size, I would not need to recalculate anything -- his attack bonuses, damage, etc, are all derived from his role and level, not his attributes or his race. What you have, in 4e, is basically a list of statistics to which you can add any flavor text you wish. There's no such thing as a "kobold", mechanically.

If you had to do it all by hand like most of us, 3E customizing was an infinitely more painful process.

PCGen is free and cross-platform. No one "has" to do it by hand, at least not anyone who can post here.