How Does "The Rules Aren't Physics" Fix Anything?

[Kzach]

It fixes things by separating the retards from the roleplayers.

 

[Rel]

It fixes things by separating the retards from the roleplayers.

We prefer that you not use the term "retards" and instead say, "FickleGM". Thank you.

 

[Storm-Bringer]

So I'm confused. Are you saying that the raise dead rules have changed from 3e, or not?

You are stringing two different points together as though they are related, then claiming confusion. I would say that is disingenuous.

The first point is, why is healing different than raise dead for NPCs? Can I apply successive healing spells to an NPC to bring them back up to full hit points? Does it work when they are at zero? Or negatives? Does the DM let the entire mission fail because the NPC dies without an 'epic destiny' to allow them to be raised? Or does mission failure count as a 'destiny' for that NPC? More importantly, how is that different than how it was handled in 3.x? I hear all kinds of people talking about how NPCs can be raised by high level clerics, but no talk of DMs simply saying "No, they can't be raised". I didn't seem to have a problem with NPCs getting raised behind my back when I was DMing.

The second point is that the items the other poster mentioned as being 'cleaned up' were offered with no proof of any actual improvement, and I pointed out that Raise Dead had, in fact, not changed one whit, so claiming it has been 'cleaned up' is unsupported at best, and incorrect at worst.

 

[Storm-Bringer]

Raise dead isn't healing. It's a powerful ritual in which you contact the Raven Queen and entreat her to return the soul of one who has fallen. The Queen of the Dead does not grant this favor lightly--only those who have a great destiny before them left unfulfilled will be returned from her halls, and only the greatest of heroes can even ask for such a favor.

I imagine, depending on the Raven Queen's fluff and how it relates to undead, you could spin off an interesting in-world explanation by saying that those with unfulfilled destinies are allowed to be raised because the alternative is a vengeful revenant or restless spectre.

Neither edition of the 3.x PHB says anything about the 'Raven Queen'.

 

[Storm-Bringer]

The effect on the rules implementation may not be any diferent, but from the standpoint of consistent storytelling & world building, the effect is quite significant.

In what way?

 

[senna]

- Poison doing ability damage causes poisons to be much more dangerous than they need to be.

As opposed to poisons that arent' very dangerous at all? I mean, of the poisonous substances in the world, a good many of them are simply lethal. No saving throw. Certain spider poison will cause necrosis of tissues for months or years after the initial bite.

Poison was dangerous because it ruined your character in no time, It was TOO dangerous, a simple poison witch does 1 to 3 con damage were realy dangerous, a little less danger would be a good thing, not no danger at all, but now that poison does damage AND can have carier efects i think we can have the better of the two worlds.

- Grappling giving a size bonus meant that large creatures would nearly always succeed on grapple checks since they would also have very high strength values and a CR appropriate Bab.

So, an Ancient Dragon should have roughly the same chance to grapple as a Kobold?

No, but almost any character can´t escape a great dragon grapple, in a game that expects its character to engange in melee with them the bonus need to be a litle more evened out, with advantage to the dragon of course.

- Ability bonuses being tied into so many different things that changing a score via a buff or a poison / ability drain would require a bunch of recalculation.

Only when you used them. I understand 4e has a crapload of overlapping auras and such that need to be adjusted and re-calculated during combat. Much higher handle time.

Nobody can realy say that with certanty, no one here have seen the full rules. And everybody walks into combat truly buffed with half a dozen spells, sometimes more, dispel was invaluable because of that, and most of the time it results into players feeling that they tossed ressources away and time spent recalculating everything, time that shoul be used in playing the game.

- Monsters playing by exactly the same rules would often result in more book keeping than would be ideal.

DMs who are forced at gunpoint to stat out every goblin child in the game world will be faced with a great deal of bookkeeping. DMs who wisely stat out major NPCs only will not have a substantial task ahead of them.

True, but the game, through npc classes and everybody using the same rules, points to that direction, only experience and time at the table teach diferent to the game master, make the game easier to dm is a good goal.

- Monsters getting abilities that make sense flavor wise but are meaningless in actual game play.

Such as?

Half of the spell-likes of any outsider!

- A skill system that guaranteed it would be impossible to have a skill based challenge that would be reasonable for everyone in the party to have to attempt.

How is that bad? Is Rope Use really applicable when negotiating with a sphinx? Will Diplomacy really help you detect a trap better?

The thing is that everybody should be capable inside and outside combat, and could help once in a while, but the 3e skill sistem make the diference between someone good, and someone mediocre too big. On a second note if you use the skill chalenge of 4e in 3e with only the social skills, bluff, diplomacy, intimidate and sense motive, the fighter rarely can help, intimidate is almost useless, the fighter is beter taking the phisical skills, and an untrained check rarely can make even the easy chalenge, so i think that the 4e take its a step in the right way.

- The implementation of Disarm / Sunder / BullRush essentially being crappy.

In your estimation. Much like Grapple, some have problems, others don't.

True, but mechanicaly or you are realy good at it and do it all the time, or you only do it when you are desperate, thats not a good thing.

- Mounted combat that leads to a 'kill the horse' strategy always being the best.

Which, historically, was the best strategy. How is this a problem?

Because that isn't a 'mount', that is an M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank. You don't sound like you want a reasonable chance of a mount surviving, you want Geico for your horse. If you don't want to lose a horse in combat, tie it up back and the camp and hike over to the battle.

but the only problem its that make the battle boring, you have a cheap shot, a charge, and thats it the players kill the mount, and the knight is toast because every single one of his abilities are about making him a beter knight. This is a case where playability trumps reality!

 

[Kordeth]

Neither edition of the 3.x PHB says anything about the 'Raven Queen'.

No kidding, considering I'm talking about Fourth Edition, as you were considering the specific problem of yours I was addressing was "why can I heal my NPC ally all day but not raise him?" Which is a decidedly 4E mechanic, because in 3.x you can raise anybody as long as they want to come back.

 

[Derren]

Half of the spell-likes of any outsider!

Oh I get it. You judge the effectiveness of any ability just by its value in combat as if D&D consisted only out of a endless string of combat encounters.

 

[Lacyon]

The first point is, why is healing different than raise dead for NPCs? Can I apply successive healing spells to an NPC to bring them back up to full hit points? Does it work when they are at zero? Or negatives?

You can keep on healing them until they run out of healing surges. Just like a PC.

Does the DM let the entire mission fail because the NPC dies without an 'epic destiny' to allow them to be raised? Or does mission failure count as a 'destiny' for that NPC?

As always, that's up to the DM.

More importantly, how is that different than how it was handled in 3.x? I hear all kinds of people talking about how NPCs can be raised by high level clerics, but no talk of DMs simply saying "No, they can't be raised". I didn't seem to have a problem with NPCs getting raised behind my back when I was DMing.

No one outside NDA knows just how raise dead is described to work in 4E. Keith Baker leaked a bit about needing a destiny to be raised but later said that 'destiny' was his word and not necessarily in the rules at all.

The rules may be as simple as saying that nobody below Paragon tier can be raised without direct divine intervention. It fits the available data reasonably well. (Supposedly, when Heroic tier PCs die, the typical response is to roll a new character, whereas Paragon tier characters can be resurrected with the expenditure of monumental effort, and Epic tier characters see death as a "speed bump". Since the vast majority of NPCs wouldn't make it to Paragon tier, and even those that did would still need some pretty major work done to resurrect them, most NPCs just won't get raised, even if they technically could be).

 

[Storm-Bringer]

I am so confused now!

First you said that lack of NPC healing was the heart of the problem with 4e, then that turned out to be wrong.

Then you agreed to move the argument to the way 4e handles Raise Dead, but twice now you've said that Raise Dead hasn't changed since 3e.

So what's the new, improved heart of the problem? (This will be the third heart.)

It looks like the third heart of the problem is your willful misinterpretation.