D&D 4E Keith Baker on 4E! (The Hellcow responds!)

[amethal]

Terry Hogan doesn't have many HPs, but Hulk Hogan has tons.

How many times can he be critted with a greatsword and survive?

 

[Lizard]

Situational rulings != rules.

(I've always found that the game runs much smoother when you make that distinction.)

If your memory for what you did last time is better than mine, this is true. If you have trouble remembering the name of an NPC from one meeting to the next, you're less likely to remember the situational ruling.

Here's a 3x example -- the PCs were fighting a Kuo Toa harpooner, and one wanted to use his whip to disarm him of his shield. The whip in question had serrated edges, so I ruled it could (for dramatic purposes) arguably cut the straps, performing a disarm. The player then wanted to know if this was a 'held object' for various rules purposes, and while technically it was, the rules clearly applied to objects held only with a hand grip, not anything more firmly attached, so he didn't get any of the applicable bonuses, nor could he manage to end up holding it. I basically made several quick rulings on how disarm-with-a-serrated-whip could work on a shield, establishing a precedent the players will rightfully expect me to stick to. I estimate this took 2-3 minutes of fumbling through rulebooks and comparing literal rules to 'what the rules are trying to model' interpretations.

Fortunately, I rarely have this happen in 3x -- the rules do cover most situations which crop up. Based on designer comments about "putting the DM back in the equation" (as if he were ever gone), I expect to be doing a lot more such ruling if I run 4e...and that's not fun for me.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Well, in my case, it's more, "If the bodak were alone in the dungeon, it would have killed everyone. The players, being cunning, will notice this. Thus, armed with the knowledge of what the bodak could do, I must set things up so it can't have done this -- perhaps it's contained somehow, and the PCs will inadvertantly break its imprisonment, or it will be deliberately freed." I find it's usually trivial to set up a dungeon-type environment which has all the encounters you want without having the players ask "Wait, why didn't the black pudding in room 1 eat the orc in room 2?" Because my players will ask that, and assume I have an answer, and that the answer is relevant to the plot.

That's rather silly. It's a dungeon in a game. But, I understand what you mean.

Often there IS an answer to it, but 90% of the time the PCs don't know the answer and will never find out the answer.

If there is a demon guarding an area and he doesn't leave, I MIGHT have a player wondering "Why doesn't he leave? He has no reason to guard this place." However, he has no in game way of finding out the reason and I'm not about to tell him out of the game. So, if the player never finds out and his character never finds out, there doesn't actually need to BE a reason. Maybe the demon signed a deal with the ancient wizard who summoned him. Maybe the wizard put up wards around the dungeon preventing him from leaving. Maybe the demon was threatened by a more powerful demon that if he left he would be slaughtered.

Same thing with a black pudding eating the Orc. It's possible that the black pudding might each the Orc in the next room in a week from now or tomorrow. It's possible to Orc knows about the black pudding and purposefully avoids it. Maybe he's just been lucky and hasn't run into him yet. Maybe the black pudding only came to this cavern through a gap in the wall 2 minutes before the PCs get there.

All that matters to me when I'm running the game is that the black pudding is in this square when I roll for init and the Orc is in this square when I roll for init. If I worried about the rest of it all the time, I'd go crazy. Especially considering 99% of the time the information isn't needed. The battle is going to consist of the players rolling for init, moving around the battlemat and rolling attack rolls and damage rolls until they win.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

How many times can he be critted with a greatsword and survive?

As many times as is required to get people to watch Wrestlemania. Seems like a silly question to me.

 

[Lizard]

Same thing with a black pudding eating the Orc. It's possible that the black pudding might each the Orc in the next room in a week from now or tomorrow. It's possible to Orc knows about the black pudding and purposefully avoids it. Maybe he's just been lucky and hasn't run into him yet. Maybe the black pudding only came to this cavern through a gap in the wall 2 minutes before the PCs get there.

See, this is what interests me.

I like the idea of the gap in the wall. When the PCs begin to wonder about the dungeon ecology, they'll notice that gap. It will be too small to get through, but there'll be light coming from behind it. This tells them about a room to be found, somewhere else...

And so, a 'wandering damage' monster becomes, instead, part of a story.

And that's why we play these games.

 

[Mallus]

I basically made several quick rulings on how disarm-with-a-serrated-whip could work on a shield...

Cool. Improvisational stuff like that is best part of RPG play.

...establishing a precedent the players will rightfully expect me to stick to.

My gaming groups aren't such a big fan of 'sticking to precedent'. When I DM, I want to resolve actions quickly, while providing the players the freedom to try new, inventive, and often uproariously stupid things. I can't get bogged down thinking about how a situational ruling would work as a global rules change/addition. If it sounds cool and the other players are on board, go for it. My groups are more than willing to sacrifice a little consistency for the freedom to try actions not covered in the rules, and weprefer speed/ease of play over strict rules fidelity. Which isn't to say we don't get needlessly bogged down, we're only human (except shilsen, of course).

It doesn't matter rulings get forgotten, either. If things don't always work the same way, so be it. D&D is pretty abstract. Chalk it up to different (unnamed) situational modifiers.

 

[Vempyre]

That 4e should have said "Players should begin at third level, allowing for a lot of variety and multiclassing options; first and second level should be use for modeling weaker NPCs or if the players desire a challenge. The game presumes a third level starting point for players." Then balanced the game around it.

No.

 

[Hellcow]

Real Problem: First-level play has many issues.
Good Solution: Don't start at first level.
Bad Solution: Make "first the new third", which makes the weakest commoner still unbearably bad-ass. (Unless commoners in 3e are Minions, and explode when the cats attack them.)

Perhaps this has been answered already; I thought this had been addressed earlier in the thread. There's no such thing as "a first-level commoner" in 4E D&D. And as a matter of fact, when I was running an adventure on a ship recently, I DID make the majority of the crew minions (which among other things meant that when trouble started, the PCs had to work hard to save them - because they would go down if attacked by the villains). NPCs don't rely on the same rules as PCs. If you want to make an NPC who's identical to a first-level PC, go right ahead. But that's not a requirement or an expectation.

As for the idea that "minions will explode when cats attack them", this is trying to apply realism to a concept that isn't supposed to be realistic. Yes, minions are defeated when they take damage. This isn't supposed to suggest that they are walking soap bubbles that pop if a 4-year-old pokes them. The same creature can have hit points when used against lower-level characters and be treated as a minion at higher levels - because when fighting epic level characters, devils that would slaughter a 1st-level character are now trivial (a principle you see in a range of media - for example, in season seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when one turok-han beats the crap out of Buffy, and by the end of the season the gang is slaughtering them in droves).

A minion is a dramatic category, not a physiological condition. Minions are creatures who pose little threat TO THE PCS and who can be defeated swiftly and easily by the PCs. It's not a new idea; Feng Shui did the exact same thing with mooks long ago, and I'm sure it's not the only other system with this sort of creature. If the cat attacks the minion, it's up to the DM to decide if a cat is even capable of inflicting significant harm on a human being (domestic cats don't get a write-up in the 4E MM). If the DM actually chooses to assign a damage value to a cat, then sure, the cat can defeat minions - and as a DM, if it occured in a combat scenario, I'd be sure to describe how amazing this is, because if that cat can take down a person, it's pretty good. Seeing as how things that drop to zero hit points may be rendered unconscious instead of being killed, I'd likely rule this the case in the cat attack; the cat can't just kill someone with a swipe of a paw, but it can slash at the minion's eyes, at which point he drops to the ground screaming and clutching his eyes, and is out of the fight.

Minions are an example of a rule designed for cinematic effect as opposed to realism - just like the mooks of Feng Shui. The aren't supposed to be brittle-boned hemophiliacs who die from the slightest contact; they are supposed to represent foes that a PC of a particular level can quickly defeat and move on. They're in there for the Kill Bill mob scene. Sure, in the past you could just say "They have 5 hit points, almost any hit will kill them" - but if you want to run a scene with 50 of them, tracking those few times the players do roll fewer than 5 damage can be a pain. Like the mooks, the point is simplicity: if you hit them, don't worry about damage - the attack is challenge enough.

First level may be the new third for PCs. This has no impact on the world at large; on the contrary, the commoner IS likely to be a minion, making the PC stand out all the more.

 

[Hellcow]

And, of course, if you DO want to play the "living on the edge" rule, you could just make the PCs minions... though with that said, I think there's been some good suggestions for 0-level PCs on this thread.

"Different zeitgeist" is really what I'd say. If you want the system where you can choose to start out at a weak "two-magic-missiles-then-the-crossbow-for-the-day" first level, virtually doubling in power when you hit second, there's a game out there for you - 3E. Quality companies like Paizo are going to continue to support that system. 4E is doing something different. It's not that 4E is some sort of new-fangled revolution in gaming, or that it is unquestionably better than 3E in all ways - right here we've identified one way in that it's not, namely that it's not as good if you WANT the fragile first level character. It's designed for a particular flavor of play. Personally, I'm really enjoying it. But I have no doubt that others will prefer 3E - which again makes it a good thing that some companies intend to continue supporting the system.

 

[IanB]

How many times can he be critted with a greatsword and survive?

Change "greatsword" to "folding chair" and then think about the question you're really asking here. Hulk Hogan also clearly makes use of second wind and healing surges, as well as at-will and per-encounter abilities!

EDIT: You know the more I think about this, the more astounding the parallels between professional wrestlers and 4e PCs are.

I'm going to demand entrance music for mine I think.