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

[bganon]

I agree with most of the responses here; 4e's changes to the skill system were quite welcome.

But I think OP is trying to get at something a little different, which is that (along with all the downsides) having lots of tiny little options allows for finer-grained differentiation of characters, making them seem in some ways more "real". Yes, in 4e you can (and should) do the joke-telling as a Diplomacy roll, but it means you normally won't see characters who are good at jokes but bad diplomats (or bad at jokes but good diplomats).

The oddities of skill clumping have been discussed before, and IMO if people really want a "solution", just let them (as part of a background, maybe, or even just on the fly) pick a few "sub-skill specialties" that go along with their character, so they can get a bonus on a particular usage. Like being a "swimmer" would give an extra +3 (feat bonus, to avoid abuse) to swim-related Athletics checks.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But what exactly has WotC done with 4e to take that simulation away? I think it mainly has to do with the skill point system taken away, and the skills list tapered down to being more general and combat based.

There were two 'flaws' in the 3.x skill sytem, from a 'gamist' standpoint. Both were about creating incompetency. As a character leveled, he could only maintain competence in so many skills, thus, any skill he didn't invest in, he became worse and worse at (relative to the challenges faced). Similarly, there were an unlimitted number of 'fill in' skills - professions and whatnot. Each time a task became filled by such a skill, everyone without the skill became incompetent at it. While it's realistic for people to be good at things they're trained at, and not to get better at things they've never done, just because they've killed a lotta orcs, it's not very heroic. Thus, the gamist/narrativist aproach of 4e minimized both, by using a finite set of adventuring-related skills and a system that advanced competency in all skills as a character leveled. Realism/simulation was sacrificed from balance/playability.

But that was only one way in which simulation was scrubbed from 4e, and not the most dramatic...

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.

That'd fall under Diplomacy in 4e.

Or forage for herbs to make scented soap out of dragon fat with an alchemy kit (I've done this!).

Nature.

The skills in 4e just end up being a lot broader. The difference isn't in what PCs can do, so much as in what they can't.

What do you think took a lot of simulation away from 4e that 3.5 had?

Much more so than the fixing of the skill system, the use of different mechanics and guidelines to build monsters and NPC than PCs made the game much, much less simulationist. In 3.x, everyone had a class and level. OK, for 70% of the population it was 'commoner' and '1,' but they all had their class, and skill points, and feat and so forth - just exactly like a PC. It made a nightmarish amount of work for the DM, who might feel obligated to stat out not just all the monsters (with their feats and skill points and possiblly class levels), but any NPC the PCs might interact with (need to know the barkeep's Bluff check...).

4e statts out monsters and NPCs relative to the threat/challenge/opportunity thay represent to the PCs. It's very PC-centric. Great for narrative or 'storytelling' or prepping a challenging but balanced encounter - worthless for simulation and deadly to verisimilitude for players expecting simulation.

 

[renau1g]

Yeah Come & Get it is one of the weakest fluff based powers in the game (and one of the only examples people bring up when they make this point).

re: golems - personally I don't miss carrying around the golf bag of weapons (adamantite, cold iron, silver, etc) and I don't miss being a magic user or rogue and facing an undead or golem.

If your DM has a bunch of angels hanging with devils sitting and having tea with demons because their level is appropriate challenge, well that's your DM's fault.

There's tons of examples in movies where someone's "unconscious" and the yelling of a friend gets them back and into the game. Usually sports movies (boxing especially) or many action movies.

 

[Klaus]

I'm a big fan of 3.5 and enjoyed the variety of things you could do to make a game of D&D more realistic, yet creative. I'm disappointed that WotC took a lot of simulation away in 4e, so I've found it not as enjoyable to play.

But what exactly has WotC done with 4e to take that simulation away? I think it mainly has to do with the skill point system taken away, and the skills list tapered down to being more general and combat based. The random element of dice and customization of skills is really what can shape a memorable game, and 4e takes a lot of that away.

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 with an alchemy kit (I've done this!). You COULD do these things, but you'd have to shape the rules a lot, or the DM could make them objectives... but the fact that my character could do it just as well as any other character and not be SKILLED at it takes a lot of fun away from it.

What do you think took a lot of simulation away from 4e that 3.5 had?

Bad joke ticks off NPC = untrained character failed Diplomacy check against a moderate DC, or even tried to use Streetwise instead of Diplomacy because he's trained in it (but then the DC was hard).

Foraging for herbs to make soap = Nature check.

Anything else?

 

[RangerWickett]

Bad joke ticks off NPC = untrained character failed Diplomacy check against a moderate DC, or even tried to use Streetwise instead of Diplomacy because he's trained in it (but then the DC was hard).

Foraging for herbs to make soap = Nature check.

Anything else?

This reminds me of a GM who ticked me off. I had a +17 Diplomacy modifier, and I rolled a 1. The GM decided I had royally offended the person I was talking to, ruining my attempt to put some negotiation into a combat game. The rest of the party chimed in with jokes of how I'd insulted the man's wife and so on.

But c'mon, a 1 on a skill check is a failure, not doomsday. It's irksome when GMs assume failure means horrible setback rather than just, y'know, failure.

 

[Chronosome]

Here's another option for threefivey adaptation:

Why not just make your own skill and set its DCs? All "trained" means these days is a +5 bonus, so make Craft (soap) or Perform (comedy) into 4e skills with an Intelligence and Charisma base, then write up what these new skills can do. (Hell, use the 3.5 craft calculus if you must, it'll probably turn out similar.) I promise it'll take less time than you're expecting and be just as fun.

 

[delericho]

I'm a big fan of 3.5 and enjoyed the variety of things you could do to make a game of D&D more realistic, yet creative. I'm disappointed that WotC took a lot of simulation away in 4e, so I've found it not as enjoyable to play.

As others have said, D&D has never been a very good simulation of reality. However, I will agree with you that at least the designers of 3.0e paid at least lip service to notions of realism, where the designers of 4e were unabashed in creating a game without reference to the real world (or even the fictions that people think they're emulating when they play).

It probably started with the design of d20 Modern, by the way.

But what exactly has WotC done with 4e to take that simulation away?

I'm not going to go into an anti-4e rant. However, things like the 1-1-1-1 diagonal, the change to the baseline expectation for character abilities, and the increased rate at which injuries heal all seem to have been introduced with the aim of making the game more fun, while deliberately moving away from notions of realism.

Viewed purely as a game (board-, video-, whatever), each of these things probably makes for a better experience. But I'm with you: each of these strains my suspension of disbelief just that bit further. And it can only stretch so far, beyond which I can't treat D&D as a roleplaying game.

(The 1-1-1-1 diagonal particularly hurts my engineer's brain - every time a mini moves that way, I can clearly see that it is wrong. It seems very odd to me that 4e is a game so dependent on exact positionings and movements relative to a grid, and yet 4e also took the step of throwing out any notion of correct geometry.)

 

[UngeheuerLich]

3.0 had 2-2-2 diagonals which is exactly like no diagonals at all...

as a sidenote: i would have liked a mix of both skill sytems... 4e sytem is a little bit too old school for my tastes, but i can live with that.

edit: 1-1-1 is as good as 1-2-1 geometry. It is just a different norm that is applied (Maximum Norm). You could argue that mathematically it is more correct...

 

[delericho]

3.0 had 2-2-2 diagonals which is exactly like no diagonals at all...

No it didn't. 3.0e expressed distances in feet, and didn't assume the use of the grid at all.

3.5e used 1-2-1-2 diagonals.

edit: 1-1-1 is as good as 1-2-1 geometry. It is just a different norm that is applied (Maximum Norm). You could argue that mathematically it is more correct...

Pythagoras, Euclid, and the real world all say you're wrong. Feel free to measure it out.

 

[Kzach]

How many years has it been since 4e was released? And yet we're still getting threads like this :/