D&D 5E How is 5E like 4E?

[AbdulAlhazred]

@AbdulAlhazred, @Ovinomancer

Here is the breakdown on Malstaph's Arcana skill:

+15 level
+7 INT of 24
+5 proficiency
+6 Sage of Ages
+3 feat (Skill Focus)
+3 item (Ring of Wizardry)
+4 familiar (this is from a Book Imp familiar; +2 is a base feature of it, and the other +2 is because the familiar has the Eye of Vecna implanted in it)

The extra +2 in brackets applies to checks made in relation to rituals, and is the result of the Expert Ritualist feat.

In our game we use themes but not backgrounds (which can grant +2). If the character was a wizard rather than invoker as his main class we could expect +9 for INT of 28. That gets the bonus up towards +50. I don't think it's all that trivial to push it higher to +60 as a permanent feature.

I don't really recall the details, just that there was a CharOps post at one time which delineated a Wizard with a +69 Arcana bonus. I'm guessing some of this might have been somewhat situational, like applying to checks when casting rituals, or at a restricted number of instances per day. It may have also assumed certain 'equivalencies', like rerolls being translated into the equivalent average bonus or something. I'm not sure, its been 10 years. @MwaO is the optimization guru...

I also recall some builds with VERY high Intimidation bonuses. This was a popular trick build, since you could get magic items that would impose bloodied, and then you could AP and force the monster to surrender without actually removing all its hit points, one of a VERY small number of ways to do that in 4e! (and the other ways were pretty much 'be an orbizard' which got nerfed a bunch).

 

[Garthanos]

Yeah, all I'm really trying to get across to people is that 5e didn't 'break the treadmill', NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT. It just made it really really obtuse, because now you have to go through all the arguments you and I just had to arrive at "gosh, I should raise the DCs of meaningful tasks to significant (IE you will often fail) levels relative to the PCs skills." Yeah, DUH! Why can't 5e just friggin' say that? Instead it has to be obtuse and half the GMs in existence WILL get it wrong, because they don't have years of experience, and/or a lot of game fu.

The reason is because they have this song they sing about how you can use lower level challenges and monsters for a wider range in 5e... in 4e you might say it was obscured see 9 levels plus a minion range of 4 more plus swarms at the end is not enough levels to use a monster and that is without making them an experienced/special version.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh, no, 5e didn't really break the treadmill at all. They altered it a bit, but largely it's still there. I feel they were much more honest about the treadmill effect in some ways, though -- bounded accuracy is effectively telling you you're gonna be put in a narrow zone. The difference is that 4e did this exact same thing but never mentioned it -- they just did it through the treadmill. I'm not arguing this at all. I'm trying to figure out why some are adamant that 4e meant you got better because of some white room analysis that you can totes crush low level stuff and 5e means you don't get better because that low level stuff can still do things to you, when, in actual play, the difference doesn't exist. You never go rolfstomping level 1 goblins as a level 20 character in 4e. If you face goblins, they're level 20 (or level 18-22) goblins. And you don't roflstomp them at all.

I don't know why people argue certain things, they just do. I simply don't think that 5e's way of going about it is very transparent. You also run into trouble with things like saves that don't improve (I guess they sort of solved that by almost never invoking saves against certain ability scores).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You never go rolfstomping level 1 goblins as a level 20 character in 4e. If you face goblins, they're level 20 (or level 18-22) goblins. And you don't roflstomp them at all.

While I would not use actually level 1 goblins, your level range is far too restrictive for what I would do, were I currently DMing 4e. For a level 20 party, I could easily see fielding combats from -4 to +4 level. Sometimes even further down the scale, if it were truly fitting. I would likewise try to include, occasionally, skill and ability things that show that even the weenie Wizard has bulked up a little over the adventure, that even the clomping-stomping Paladin can sneak past some things now. Further, I would do so with a range of things much, MUCH broader than I would with combats, mostly because while a level-10 combat might theoretically be fine once in a blue moon, in general a combat that is too far below the party's level will just be boring, so I'll be more likely to gloss over something that might cash out that way and replace it with something else (a montage scene, a skill challenge, just narration, it depends). Purely skill-based stuff, though? That can be quite fun even if it's a level 20 Wizard picking a lock that would be a reasonable challenge for a 1st-level character.

And that's sort of where this argument runs aground. I absolutely would use fights in a broader range than you're allowing for, and I would even moreso use skill DCs across an even broader range than you're allowing for. I would never do those things in 5e, because it would produce bad results. (I would know; I'd say that defines about 2/3 of my personal, lived experience with 5e play.)

Edit: Plus what AbdulAlhazred just said. There's plenty of places where 5e is, if anything, anti-transparent.

 

[Ovinomancer]

@Ovinomancer's point is that this is true, too, in 4e. (As a general proposition, and ignoring minutiae of differences in build maths.)

Eg with the gelatinous cube: in 5e D&D both a 1st and 10th level PC have to roll to hit the same DC using the same save bonus (assuming it's a non-proficient save); but other features of PC or party build will make the significance of being hit by a cube less (PCs have more hp, the party has more ways to buff saves, etc).

In 4e, the relevant bonus or defence will have scaled up, but so will the cube's DC - instead of a Heroic tier cube that requires a level-appropriate DC to avoid being slowed or immobilised or whatever, we have a Paragon tier cube (that is perhaps standard rather than elite, or even a minion) that on a hit does damage plus slows or whatever until the end of its next turn.

I personally think the 4e approach produces more dramatic fiction, and less of the feel of "bumbling through" that you get when the 10th level character is paralysed by the cube but can brush off the few hit points lost. On the other hand, judging from what gets posted about D&D play both here and on other sites, a lot of players seem to like the "hilarity ensues" aspect that flows from the 5e design choices.

I'd not categorize getting tagged by a gelatinous cube at 10th level as "hilarity ensues." I don't follow that this is any more hilarity than if it happened in 4e. I think that you're considering this as an isolated event, but it's likely not. A cube used against a 10th level party is taking the place of a minion in 4e -- it's something you can't ignore but isn't the main threat. Getting tagged and losing a round is the danger, not really the loss of hitpoints. And that's not really hilarity, unless you're starting from the assumption that all things must be similarly deadly, and a minor inconvenience in hitpoints makes losing a round silliness.

I follow what you're saying here, but it doesn't describe how I experienced GMing 4e. What you're leaving out, that was central to my experience, is that before I go by the fiction I have to have regard to the tier of play. I think this is a hugely important part of 4e, but it seems often to have been neglected (and I don't think the 4e published adventures fully appreciated it either - a bit like your feeling that 5e adventures don't fully appreciate the rules for setting DCs).

I'm confused, because this is exactly what I said my process was, only I used DC space in lieu of tier, but these end up being the same thing -- what things are hard and how should I describe them with regards to what came before and what could come after. Same thing. The last few sentences are describing what happens if you don't do this and just describe things without regard to the DC space/teir. You end up with descriptions/fiction not aligning with the DCs assigned.

<snip>

To me, this seems to describe a framework of "objective" DCs - ie the DC is established by reference to how hard something is in the fiction, where that difficulty is conceived of in some "absolute" sense rather than relative to the person attempting it. So freehanding a sheerwall of volcanic glass is framed as very hard because that's what it is: and the fact that it's actually only moderately hard for the high level rogue (because the rogue is so skilled in freehand climbing) is not factored into the setting of the DC at all - the rogue's superior ability is all expressed, mechanically, on the PC build side which then yields a number applied to the d20 roll to see if the DC of 25 is achieved.

I'm not sure we'd use the term objective DCs the same, but, yes, DCs are set based on what the established fiction is and the action the character is taking.

Games I think of that use this approach are Classic Traveller (without coming out and saying so; it's just absolutely taken for granted), AD&D (ditto as for Traveller) and Burning Wheel (which is very self-conscious about it and gives advice to the GM about how the setting of obstacles in this fashion is a key tool for establishing the feel of the setting; Burning Wheel factors in approach a bit differently from 5e, eg because skills figure differently in PC build and it has a different system for augments based on similar/complementary skills).

Games that I think of that don't use this approach are HeroQuest revised (difficulties are set based on pacing considerations - basically the more previous successes the higher the DC), Marvel Heroic/Cortex+ Heroic (all checks are opposed, either by another character whether PC or NPC, or by the Doom Pool) and Apocalypse World (there are no modifiers to moves for difficulty; that's all handled in framing and consequences).

4e is a bit of a mix but, in the end, I think closer to the second suite of games. In 4e difficulties do have an "objective" dimension in the sense that (say) Orcus has a higher AC than a kobold, and the DC to sneak past Orcus's silent watchers in Thanatos will be higher than the DC to sneak past a goblin sentry. But most of the time this "objective" aspect simply falls out of picking level appropriate DCs and doesn't need to be thought about case-by-case; and the skill challenge structure with its resultant closed-scene resolution also generates a "relative to" rather than "absolute/objective" dynamic to resolution.

Furthermore, in 4e the descriptors used to set a level-appropriate DC - easy, medium and hard - are used relatively, not absolutely. So something framed as easy for an epic-tier PC (say, climbing up a wind-and-snow swept mountain side to reach the portal to the Elemental Chaos at its peak) would certainly be hard for a low-level PC. It would also be reasonable at Epic to treat this as just one move in a skill challenge, whereas at heroic tier it would make more sense to frame the climb as a skill challenge in itself.

I think the analysis I've just given of the difference between the 5e and 4e approaches is pretty consistent with the contrasts I see others post, although a bit more thorough and with less obscurity (I'll come back to that at the end).

I think they get to the same point from different directions. In 5e, advancing adventures take place in more dangerous places, so the danger of the world increases and this can affect DCs selected. In 4e, tier/level sets the expected DCs, and a good GM considers this before describing the danger. So, 5e it's danger -> DC, and 4e it's DC -> danger. However, the end result is that the fiction should align with the DC (and here I'm mostly talking about the easy/medium/hard rankings that exist in both). The real difference, I think, is that 5e DCs can be modified by the action taken -- how you deal with the issue can change the evaluation of the challenge. 4e doesn't really have a process that does this.

This confused me a bit. The first three sentences seem to be describing 5e working as intended; but then you say "this is on me as the GM" which implies that the first three sentences are describing some sort of error or clumsiness on the GM's part. That implication is reinforced by saying "the system should be acting to save me from that choice". What's wrong with the choice?

Nothing at all, I agree. The statement was more that there seems to be an expectation that there be a real challenge if the GM presents one. If I don't, and present a mostly non-challenge, then this is my choice as the GM and I should not expect that the system will save me from doing so. I think 4e could do this, if a GM of 4e was willing to declare the slope a challenge despite the fiction and use the higher level DCs. It's very klugey, but if you use the system without consideration of what you actually established in the fiction, then it will save the challenge for you, but leave you with a different mess. In my opinion, others may not care about these things. I would.

In 4e, as I said, the presence of the scree in a higher-level situation would probably be treated as difficult terrain or a DC-adjuster. In 5e, as I also said, the wizard struggling while the fighter trivialises it seems to be working as intended.

What have I missed?

Nothing, in my opinion. This was largely my point.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't know why people argue certain things, they just do. I simply don't think that 5e's way of going about it is very transparent. You also run into trouble with things like saves that don't improve (I guess they sort of solved that by almost never invoking saves against certain ability scores).

Again, the "saves" problem exists in 4e. If you neglect a defense (which is arguably harder to do) and run into a creature that targets hard on that defense, then the way 4e does advancement means that you're not going to have much luck. I mean, a level 1 creature meant to have a very strong attack against REF will have the same chance of hitting a level 20 character that neglects REF as a level 20 creature that has a soft attack against REF. Of course, few creatures are built with soft attacks in 4e (low stat pairs with low bonuses), so this doesn't really get noticed. It's the same issue complained about in 5e, mostly, in my opinion, because it's actually visible in 5e.

You say 5e is less transparent about this than 4e is? I'm not so sure. They tell you up front -- bounded accuracy and why. 4e didn't really explain the treadmill math, but they also didn't hide it. 5e at least tells you what to expect. The math is pretty clear, as well, if you look for it. What isn't clear in 5e is how interconnected class ability resets, rest cycles, and adventuring day XP are. This is absolutely buried (I don't think intentionally hidden), but that's a different thread.

 

[FireLance]

I think that as a general rule, low-level and high-level characters have about the same chance to overcome level-appropriate challenges regardless of edition. So yes, the treadmill is still there. There are maybe three key differences that I can think of offhand.

First, 5E hides the treadmill better (or alternatively, is not as clear and upfront about the treadmill - a terrorist/freedom fighter distinction) as 4E. As previously mentioned, a low-level 5E wizard has about the same chance to make the check to escape a gelatinous cube's grapple as a high-level 5E wizard. However, the high-level 5E wizard has more hit points and spells and has a higher spell save DC, and thus will have a much easier time defeating the same gelatinous cube. A high-level 4E character facing the same gelatinous cube that they faced as a low-level character simply outclasses it numerically as their hit points, defences, attack bonuses, etc. will have gone up considerably.

Second, there is a difference in the fiction. In 4E, in order for the gelatinous cube to be a level-appropriate challenge, its hit points, defences, attack bonuses, etc. will need to increase in line with the PCs', but fictionally, it should not be described as a run-of-the-mill gelatinous cube. It should be a gelatinous cube infused with Juiblex's ichor, for example. You could do the same in 5E, but you could also have a run-of-the-mill gelatinous cube as part of a level-appropriate encounter featuring more such gelatinous cubes or other monsters (maybe as part of the entourage of an aspect of Juiblex).

Third, magic items. 4E's underlying math assumes the PCs will get level-appropriate magic items, 5E's underlying math assumes the PCs don't have any magic items. Either way, if you don't follow the assumptions, you will have to make adjustments if you want to maintain the same level of challenge. If you don't give our magic items in 4E and don't make any adjustments, challenges become relatively tougher as you reach higher levels. If you do give out magic items in 5E and don't make any adjustments, challenges become relatively easier as you reach higher levels.

As seems to be obligatory for me in this thread, here are my "how to run 5E like 4E" suggestion for this post:

1. Class Skills: The skills that a character can choose to be proficient in by virtue of their class are considered class skills. From 2nd level, characters can add half their proficiency bonus when making ability checks with class skills that they are not already proficient in. This is essentially the bard's Jack of All Trades ability, but generalized to all classes.

2. Breadth of Knowledge: At 5th, 11th, and 17th level, you can choose to either add a skill to the list of your class skills or gain proficiency in a class skill.

3. Heroic Resilience: At 5th, 11th, and 17th level, pick an ability score for which you do not have saving throw proficiency. You can add half your proficiency bonus when making saving throws using the selected ability score. If you subsequently gain proficiency in saving throws using that ability score, select another ability score for which you do not have saving throw proficiency and apply this benefit to saving throws using the new ability score instead.

 

[Garthanos]

Third, magic items. 4E's underlying math assumes the PCs will get level-appropriate magic items, 5E's underlying math assumes the PCs don't have any magic items.

I read there was a mathematical way that proved that 5e actually did assume the magic items (I think they used the Champions math to do it but I do not remember the details).... meh its a bit like the people complained about the 4e advancement of player to hit not keeping up with the monsters ... but my warlord and other leaders too had so many ways of spiking to hit and similar things that those particular feat taxes were kind of laughed at by people like @Manbearcat and some others who play epic all the time in practice it was not needed.

 

[Garthanos]

Again, the "saves" problem exists in 4e. If you neglect a defense (which is arguably harder to do) and run into a creature that targets hard on that defense,

IF yes, I would call it easier to fix and more obvious with so few defenses where as in 5e you always always have weak saves no real way to fix.

I can build a fighter that is generally poor at dealing with minions in 4e but its a special case.

 

[Garthanos]

While I would not use actually level 1 goblins, your level range is far too restrictive for what I would do, were I currently DMing 4e. For a level 20 party, I could easily see fielding combats from -4 to +4 level. Sometimes even further down the scale, if it were truly fitting. I would likewise try to include, occasionally, skill and ability things that show that even the weenie Wizard has bulked up a little over the adventure, that even the clomping-stomping Paladin can sneak past some things now. Further, I would do so with a range of things much, MUCH broader than I would with combats, mostly because while a level-10 combat might theoretically be fine once in a blue moon, in general a combat that is too far below the party's level will just be boring, so I'll be more likely to gloss over something that might cash out that way and replace it with something else (a montage scene, a skill challenge, just narration, it depends). Purely skill-based stuff, though? That can be quite fun even if it's a level 20 Wizard picking a lock that would be a reasonable challenge for a 1st-level character.

And that's sort of where this argument runs aground. I absolutely would use fights in a broader range than you're allowing for, and I would even moreso use skill DCs across an even broader range than you're allowing for. I would never do those things in 5e, because it would produce bad results. (I would know; I'd say that defines about 2/3 of my personal, lived experience with 5e play.)

Didn't they mention in like the DMG2 occasionally including an actualy "beat down" in the game for the purpose you mention.... ie demonstrating exactly how much the advancement has occurred?

Recurring monsters can be useful for that to? D&D with its "deadly resolutions are the norm" are not so good at generating those.
However as was mentioned fighting relatively normal ogres over a range of levels (8 or so then minionizing them should also demonstrate the advancement)