I’m Thinking of Giving 4e Another Shot

[resistor]

Thus, when the player decides to use it, it's a decision the PC is making, yes; but it's also the game granting the player a tiny amount of narrative control over the world, in that he's stating "Okay, this is the one time that the foes happen to be at the proper angles."

I don't actually play 4e, but this is how I would justify it too.

Basically, I would reason that my character is obviously trying to use his techniques whenever possible, and I have the narrative authority to make him succeed (make the enemy's parry fail, make the sight lines match up, whatever) once per day, or per encounter, or whatever.

 

[Kinneus]

Why's everybody giving this guy such a hard time? He wants to give 4e another shot, let him give it another shot. It's his life. Simple as that.

Now, as to his changes, they all sound perfectly reasonable to me. You can re-flavor martial as ki if you like. Re-skinning and re-flavoring things is very easy in 4e. I repurpose pretty much everything in my games, whether I'm a player or a DM.

As for treasure parcels, they're really just a guideline. That gnoll archer's +2 dagger can just as easily be a +2 bow, if it makes more sense. And if you want to ignore treasure parcels entirely, that's fine. They're just a guideline, after all.

As for your 'Rules as Physics' issue, I'm really not sure what you mean by that. Could you expand it a bit? Maybe give an example?

 

[Samuel Leming]

Wow. There are already so many responses. Please don't be offended that I'm not responding directly to your quotes at this time. I mean no slight. I will respond to a couple of points though.

The flumphs are listed as unaligned rather then lawful good? Feh. It's the April Fools adventure and they've somehow managed to miss out on over half the joke. Pseudo-flumphs!

Ever since I started playing I've been a big proponent of stunts. One of the things that got me into the game was the concept that you could try to do anything. If I do try to run a modified 4e game stunts will be a big part of it.

If there's no difference between using a martial power and trying the stunt than why choose the power? The greater game effect, right? It's obvious why the player would do this tactically, but not obvious why the character would do this in the context of the game world. I want to close that gap and I think going with mystical ki for the martial classes is a good a line of bull as any. Rogues are ninja anyway

It's been over eight months since I've tried 4e and it looks like I may have interpreted the treasure parcels incorrectly. I'll review those rules before continuing with that topic.

Skill challenges? Good in concept, but the math was seriously messed up there. What happened with the playtesting? I hear there's errata for them. Can you get that without a DDI subscription?

Why do this? Because they've recently added many of them elements I thought were missing and I'm willing to give it another chance. For good or ill, 4e is D&D now. Maybe I'll succeed and thus this will not be a waste of time.

Mutants & Masterminds and Castles & Crusades are my favorite systems. I'm currently running a Pathfinder Beta campaign that's coming close to its natural conclusion. We'll probably start a fresh Pathfinder campaign using Monte Cook's Dragon's Delve once the full Pathfinder game comes out in August. It certainly doesn't hurt to have 4e as another option. As things are not it's not an option, but maybe I can change that.

[Edit]
I'm not seeing that anyone is really giving me that hard of a time. I expected to see much worse. I suppose I have Piratecat's warning to thank for that.

I brought up rules as physics because I figured I'd be accused of that.

[Edit2]
I reject narrativism completely.

 

[billd91]

1) How did you justify the barbarian's rage being a certain number of times per day?

2) I tend to view martial encounter/daily powers as basically tricks, special maneuvers, etc, that are not only difficult to pull off but also rely a lot on chance to work. In that context, it's easy to see why you would only use an encounter power once per encounter: it's no easy task, and it's unlikely (but not impossible) that the chance to use it will arise again.

As for me, I can get behind a lot of the encounter powers, for martial characters. They're tricks you can only really pull off once a fight because after that, they're wise to that exploit. It's the martial dailies I have more trouble buying into.

But your barbarian example is pretty much precisely the wrong example to use when trying to compare 3e daily-type powers with 4e. The barbarian rage is simply exhausting. There are only so many times you go balls-to-the-wall a day without getting some serious rest. Heck, it even comes with some short term fatigue right when you come out of the rage. In other words, rage comes with a respectable rationale built into it.
If you want a better analog, look at some of the higher level rogue abilities that are a limited number of times per day.

 

[Samuel Leming]

Doesn't really address the OP's issue, though, which is (if I understand it correctly) that there is no way for the player to be in the PC's mindset when making this decision. The tactical question involved in using a daily power is, almost always, "Do I want to burn a daily power in this fight? Is this a good time for it, or should I save it for later?"

If the opportunity to use a daily power comes from chance and specific circumstances, then the decision is a no-brainer from the character's perspective - hey, look, it's a chance to use my super-deadly uber-trick! I better seize the opportunity while it's here, I'd be an idiot not to. The decision is purely a metagame one.

I have not yet thought of a way around this problem. Closest I can come is to explain it as some kind of stamina thing; you only have so much oomph in you per day, then you have to rest. But this doesn't explain why you can't swap out your daily powers, i.e., use power X twice instead of power X once and power Y once.

I think you understand it correctly and I'm quoting you because your example of the problem is a very clear one.

I think by making the martial powers explicitly mystical and backing up that the encounters and dailies are expending ki resources that the character himself is a aware of you do enough to remove the metagame thinking from the equation.

 

[Dice4Hire]

What it boils down to: 4e lacks out-of-combat powers.

Not totally, and the newer classes seem to have more, at least in PHBII. This would be a good area for a 3PP to step in.

 

[Rechan]

Not totally, and the newer classes seem to have more, at least in PHBII. This would be a good area for a 3PP to step in.

Well, compare some of the various utility powers to the 3e Charm Person, which lets you turn an enemy into a friend and do all sorts of goofy things. Or the Leadership feat. Or Bardic Knowledge. Etc etc. It's not an issue of roleplaying, but not enough mechanics that are not involved in combat.

But that's a topic for a fork; let's not clutter up the OP's thread.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

Along the lines of what people are saying about "flumph" and the effects of powers, I've been playing around with using the D&D 4e system for a sci-fi style game, using the exact same rules and powers, just switching around the "fluff" or non-rules justification for the powers.

For example, a Warlock gets some teleportation ability via curses and so forth... the sci-fi re-skin, the Navigator has a jump pack with an unspecified (ie, cinematic) number of charges, or perhaps he can warp space with his big wormy sci-mind.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think making martial powers to be "mystical" (Ki) isn't wrong. It kinda makes sense that you can't beat supernatural monsters like dragons, beholders and hydras without some kind of "magic" tricks, either. really, even if they are not explicitely magic (as I would put the default assumption), beating a dragon in melee combat isn't really something ... dare I say.... "realistic"? Aside from that the dragon probably doesn't work without some magical help, fighting a big monster 25 times your weight and 5 times your height with scales as hard as metal with a big sword should be impossible without some extra tricks up your sleeve.

Skill challenges? Good in concept, but the math was seriously messed up there. What happened with the playtesting? I hear there's errata for them. Can you get that without a DDI subscription?

There is a very good podcast on them on the WotC website. D&D Podcast: Skill Challenges (April 2009)

It explains a little on the "evolution" of the rules (e.g. the errata) and how to interpret them. The most important thing might be not to feel to straightjacketed by them. They are guidelines.

For example, the DCs are per default set (with the errata) so that an untrained character has a chance to contribute to them. When creating your own challenge, don't just have to consider the party level, but you could also think about what kind of person you expect to succeed at a check half the time, and then figure out what his skill modifier would be and thus what the DC would be. (e.g. the skill challenge has its own level - the party might happen to have the same level, or they might not.)

More importantly from a "feel" of the challenges, ensure that there is a concept of "rising tension" - failures and successes have notable effects on the in-game scene, and you should try to set up the challenge in a way to be able to describe them. (An example they mention is the "stealthy approach" scenario, where failures lead to guards being more alert and more guards coming out from the barracks. Another example was a social challenge where the king was not entirely convinced during the challenge and suggested to get his Grand Vizier for aid, and the PCs would want to avoid that with their next checks because the Vizier of course hates them). Also large complexity challenges might sometimes be served better by splitting into multiple lower complexity challenges, to give a better feedback and make it easier to identify "partial" successes. For example, in an investigation scenario, the party might fail to interrogate an important subject, but they succesfuly secured all evidence from the crime scene. This distinction makes at least the DM aware on how the plot can or should continue...

 

[Jack99]

Skill challenges? Good in concept, but the math was seriously messed up there. What happened with the playtesting? I hear there's errata for them. Can you get that without a DDI subscription?

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