D&D 4E How did 4e take simulation away from D&D?

[Tiitha]

I actually DO want to run a game and have them try it, but I can't seem to get it across to them that there is more freedom to the rules now.

Example: Player B doesn't like that there is no Chaotic Good alignment because now she can't play a succubus character, which requires to be chaotic alignment to play. However, there is no rule in 4e that says they have to be Chaotic alignment. In fact, they are now devils so they're lawful now which makes it moot, but that turns off player B because her succubus character had a backstory in the Abyss and not the Nine Hells.

I guess there is no changing minds if they will be so closed minded about it, and I feel like I've wasted money buying the core books to try running a game. :\

 

[Kingreaper]

Normally, I'd agree. However, since the World Record is the best that has ever been achieved in competition, it's only reasonable to posit that it is the result of a '20' on the roll.

The real world works on a bell curve system.

This is a major point of unreality in all D20 and D% systems: The real world has a bell curve for almost every kind of chance. The D20 world has a flat, hard-edged, probability. That is more of an egregious violation than the squares thing could ever be, and it's integral to the very nature of D&D

Because the D&D world isn't the real world. It's kind of similar looking, but that's only skin deep.

 

[Ryujin]

I actually DO want to run a game and have them try it, but I can't seem to get it across to them that there is more freedom to the rules now.

Example: Player B doesn't like that there is no Chaotic Good alignment because now she can't play a succubus character, which requires to be chaotic alignment to play. However, there is no rule in 4e that says they have to be Chaotic alignment. In fact, they are now devils so they're lawful now which makes it moot, but that turns off player B because her succubus character had a backstory in the Abyss and not the Nine Hells.

I guess there is no changing minds if they will be so closed minded about it, and I feel like I've wasted money buying the core books to try running a game. :

There's also no Succubus playable race, though a quick reskinning of Tiefling would do in a pinch. Maybe even Deva or Kalashtar, if a 'rebirth' back-story is the way that player wants to go.

 

[eriktheguy]

I actually DO want to run a game and have them try it, but I can't seem to get it across to them that there is more freedom to the rules now.

Example: Player B doesn't like that there is no Chaotic Good alignment because now she can't play a succubus character, which requires to be chaotic alignment to play. However, there is no rule in 4e that says they have to be Chaotic alignment. In fact, they are now devils so they're lawful now which makes it moot, but that turns off player B because her succubus character had a backstory in the Abyss and not the Nine Hells.

I guess there is no changing minds if they will be so closed minded about it, and I feel like I've wasted money buying the core books to try running a game. :

I see the issue here. The player doesn't care about her succubus character, she is making excuses to not play 4e. You already made it clear that she can do these things in 4e, but she is trying to come up with reasons 4e wouldn't allow her to even after the DM has given her the okay. This isn't about specific problems with 4e, it's about being stubborn.

Also, alignment does nothing in 4e. Her alignment can be good, neutral good, chaotic good, or 'jello pudding'.

Succubi being devils or demons is more of an issue of campaign setting than edition. She would be just as right to protest that here succubus character from Baator won't work in 3.x because the core book doesn't contain an entry about Baator. I'm running a planescape setting right now in which I treat succubi as demons instead of devils. So far this hasn't ruined anyone's life.

Maybe your characters will be receptive if you tell them that the setting/cosmology will be based on previous editions. My current campaign uses 2e planescape splat-books, and mixes in a bit of 4e cosmology by giving each material plane (and some outer planes) their own feywild and shadowdark.

If they are concerned with combat taking too long, you might want to try 50%-75% monster HP like many DMs use. If you are using monster manual 1 or 2, definitely reduce monster HP by at least 25%.
If they dislike skill challenges you can remove skill challenges and replace them entirely with role-playing and occasional skill checks. Some DMs do this. Those are two of the most common problems for people that prefer 3.x/pathfinder. Just remind them that 3.5/pathfinder veterans have been playing 4e for years now. Wizards has corrected a lot of problems with the initial system, and there are tons of house-rules out there to give the game a more 3.5 feel.

Finally, you can entice any fighters in your group by pointing out that their character will still be useful post level 10 ;p. Also, bard is now a viable class.

 

[pemerton]

Metagame mechanics and the generally-accepted idea that the details of the fiction shouldn't have any effect on action resolution.

I think the 4e rulebooks would have been stronger if they'd worked harder to dispel that generally accepted idea - or to make it clearer where it did or didn't apply. For example: fictional location within a scene matters in combat but often not in skill challenges; details of how something is done (eg I hit high or low) typically doesn't matter in combat but frequently may matter in a skill challenge.

Prior to 4E, there was a lot of instances in D&D where you had a mechanic that produced one effect, and the fluff said another. For example, not infrequently the fighter was portrayed in fluff as more scary than he really was, strictly mechanically.

Nice point.

No longer can your characters try to tell a joke to an NPC to lighten their mood, and end up rolling a 1 and completely tick them off instead. Or forage for herbs to make scented soap out of dragon fat

As others have said these are both completely feasible in 4e.

let's think of a wide chasm or other wide obstacle/hazardous terrain. Normally, when imaging the situation, one may think of two possibilities: going around the chasm (slow but safe), or jumping over it (which is risky but cinematic and faster). With the current system, in most cases the only sensible option is zig-zaging past it: jumping over it poses a risk without gain.

I haven't noticed this problem in my game - when I have pits and chasms and the like I get some zig-zagging around them but also plenty of jumping.

It's very hard for me to describe how a fighter can make every foe around them in a 15 foot radius to come next them so the fighter can hit them all.

The fighter in my game who has this power is a polearm fighter. He also has Footwork Lure, and a bunch of feats and items to enhance forced movement. So most of the time when he uses Come and Get It it is just another example of his exercise of battlefield control.

Where a warlord can yell at an unconscious companion and they all of a sudden get back up is really hard to swallow

For this one, I tend to assume that the recovering PC is responding to some earlier experience with the warlord (a bit like Aragorn's dream sequence with Arwen in the Two Towers movie). That is, the player of the warlord spends the power now in order to introduce a retcon into the story. (So a metagame mechanic, but not one that has to be divorced from the fiction.)

If you are cool with a game in which I can yell at a guy and make him get up ready to go, CaGI a mindless automaton to change its pre-programmed behaviour, or push a several-ton dragon, what's a little turn in mid-air among friends?

I've never had the jump or the push come up yet, so can't comment on how I might handle them. For the other two, see above. I don't think either is particularly gonzo by D&D standards.

The oft-cited example of Come and Get It is a problem with the power, not the system - the problem is it automatically moving people, rather than requiring an attack vs Will to start it off. If it did that, I think most objections would be missing.

Well, then I'd object, because it wouldn't work for the polearm fighter in my game.

 

[pemerton]

That would make a fine House Rule, but it is not RAW.

Actually page 42 does canvass a -2/+2 option.

You are missing that DM advice wimp out I mentioned.

<snip>

A good, experienced DM is, of course, going to look around, realize that this particular table will have a more supple game with filling in the narrative, and go with that. If his players screech when he says, "No" or even "only if you tell me how in a way that satisfies most of us here"--then he will have to bring them along.

This was the first house rule I canvassed for my table. In practice, it has been a bit of a compromise - I look to my players for explanations, but am happy to help out if they are having trouble - especially in situations where I (as GM) have a much better handle on the finer details of the fictional environment than they do.

Instead of saying, "No," you say, "Only if you tell me how to screw over your character if you fail".

I don't think of myself as especially rat-bastard, but I do tend to approach page 42 in this sort of way. (And the damage expressions help give me a feel for what counts as a mechanically balanced "screw over".)

Once we get out of tactical situations and into more exploratory or skill challenge situations, I think even the 4e rules as written lean more heavily to the "consequences for failure" style of play.

 

[Barastrondo]

I see the issue here. The player doesn't care about her succubus character, she is making excuses to not play 4e. You already made it clear that she can do these things in 4e, but she is trying to come up with reasons 4e wouldn't allow her to even after the DM has given her the okay. This isn't about specific problems with 4e, it's about being stubborn.

Not knowing the player, I'd throw out a guess that this is not necessarily the case. However, it's possible that she's got a character in mind that is directly inspired by 3e. Those characters are the hardest to transfer over, in much the same way that 4e characters inspired by 4e mechanics/concepts are the worst way to show off what you can do with 3e -- I'd be very disappointed with 3e if I wanted to replicate my brawler fighter or my gnoll warden.

It's tricky getting people to try a new edition or game if they're worried it will take away time from a game they already enjoy. And in that circumstance, they may want to hold on to current inspirations all the more, which makes it more difficult to set them aside and draw from the new thing's sources of inspiration. Unfortunate, because that's of course the best way to relax and have a good time with the new thing.

Succubi being devils or demons is more of an issue of campaign setting than edition. She would be just as right to protest that here succubus character from Baator won't work in 3.x because the core book doesn't contain an entry about Baator. I'm running a planescape setting right now in which I treat succubi as demons instead of devils. So far this hasn't ruined anyone's life.

Yeah, I agree. One of the advantages of 4e is that you can change things like demon-to-devil and back with incredible ease: you just change, what, a line of resistances and a keyword? The sense of identity is far more closely tied to how things are presented in-character than to the rules foundation. Of course, that can be a low point for some players rather than a selling point. Personally, I love that I can reskin a krenshar into a scarecrow with ease and have the players react to what they directly experience rather than to their metagame knowledge of krenshar stat blocks. But for others, the less flexible ruleset gives a greater sense of consistency. Either is pretty valid.

 

[P1NBACK]

Metagame mechanics and the generally-accepted idea that the details of the fiction shouldn't have any effect on action resolution.

Spot. On.

I can't believe this comment hasn't gotten more XP (and, I've given you too much lately apparently).

Seriously, this is the main disconnect between 4E and the "sim" mentality. And, honestly, this is where the board-game comments come in. Not that the entirety of 4E is a board-game, but certain aspects such as this pull it closer to that status.

It has little to do with how many "skill points" you get, or even what skills are available, or whether you're using "powerz" as a format, or how many squares it costs to go diagonally. These are scapegoats.

The truth is, the fiction should have more impact on action resolution and vice-versa. Otherwise, we're drifting away from roleplaying and more toward board-gamey, and that's not good for the game as a whole imo.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I admit that I am a bit confused.

I have been told by many since 4e came out that, in order to grok 4e, one had to accept that the rules weren't meant to simulate what occurs in the game universe. That the rules should work as written (so as to not negate or nerf carefully balanced characters).

Now, in this thread, where that idea is being questioned, I keep hearing the opposite. And I could be wrong, but it seems as though I am hearing the opposite from some of the same individuals.

Which is it?

Should the RAW take precence over the fiction (i.e., the fiction must be shaped to explain the outcomes by RAW) or should the fiction take precedence over the RAW (i.e., the RAW is only applied as makes a priori sense from the fictional world)?

Either one is okay, although it will obviously colour your view of the game based upon what you want. But to imagine that the game doesn't do simulation whenever the question comes up why X is a poor simulation of Y, and then to imagine that the game has simulation in spades when the question comes up why it doesn't do simulation well, seems to me more than a little wonky.

While it might be fairly said that all editions of D&D fail at providing true simulation, it must be noted that there are degrees of failure.

IMHO, and certainly based on my reading both of the designer blogs and on this board, 4e doesn't attempt to simulate outside of combat (where it attempts to simulate a specific type of combat), but rather attempts to facilitate collaborative storytelling between combats, where the mechanics spur creative narration (rather than arrising from and arbitrating the outcome of narration).

To help make the difference clear, you can either look at Strength and say "This is what strength is....what should that mean in game terms?" or you can say "This is the balanced effect that we want within game play.....how should the fluff reflect this?" There is a degree of each in all rpgs, but how much of each has a drastic effect on design and game play.


RC

 

[Puggins]

Joe is a 1st level Human Fighter, with a 20 Str, trained in Athletics, and with Skill Focus(Athletics), for a total skill modifier of +13. Here's the layout:

...


Using the assumed scale of 1 square = 5 feet, that's a 30 foot jump, which is just over the current World Record. If diagonals had their 'real' length, it would be considerably more. And, of course, it's impossible to jump in that manner.

At 1st level, per the rules as written, Joe has a 20% chance of success (DC 30, means he needs to roll a '17' +13 or better).

The three absurdities:

1) At 1st level, Joe can jump further than our World Record holder. At that point, at 1st level, he's already superhuman.

While I will certainly agree with you that such a situation certainly sounds absurd, you're arguing from a position that 4e is fundamentally more absurd than 3.5e, which is wrong.

20str human (attainable using 30 point buy) + 4 skill ranks in jump + skill focus in Jump = +12 in jump.

DC for 30 foot jump = 30. The 1st level, somewhat exceptional commoner can make or beat the world record as well.

You can certainly argue a slight matter of degree (17+ vs. 18+), but the fundamental absurdity is still in place.

The bending in mid-air I won't argue. The easy fix (one that should be made, IMO) is that you can't go both west and east or both north and south on the same jump.