D&D 4E lack of non-combat crunch is my biggest gripe with 4e atm

[Goumindong]

So let me get this straight

You start by throwing out all of the non-combat crunch that 4e has out of hand, rejecting it implicitly.

Then you say that 4e doesn't have enough non-combat crunch for you.

Something is going on beyond your stated wishes. DnD 4e has more non-combat crunch than any previous edition and most other games. Its non-combat crunch is simple, balanced, and allows for suspense and intrigue across the widest spectrum of classes, races, and levels.

The other day, I ran a couple of impromptu skill challenges for my players, they had to find out who had attempted to assassinate them. They interrogated one of the survivors[diplomacy, intimidation], wen't to collect information[diplomacy, intimidation, perception, insight] and do then tried to identify and capture the thief[insight, perception, athletics, stealth]. They were level 2-3, but i could have ran it for any level of character. They had a blast. If it had been 3.5 they would have simply bought a spell.

Given the other instances of this claim, can i surmise that you previously played a wizard in other editions of DnD?

 

[duke_Qa]

burntgerbil: Indeed thats probably something I would consider doing. I think the core rules will be easy enough, the main problem will be generating enough choices that are balanced and interesting. But with a core rule system its easy for others to add to the system aswell.

LostSoul: exactly, there are plenty of things out there not covered by the basic rules that have room in such a system.

eamon: I agree mostly with what you are saying. a few of the things you mention fit pretty well as rituals, there are abilities that should be more "innate"/a part of a character. One of the bonuses of this system is that telepathy and whatnot does not need to be limited to wizards and warlocks, although thats probably the sort of people that have the basis for such abilities from the get-go. gets you away from the old ways of non-casters-sux.


mlund: i havent played too many sessions of nWod yet, but i'm planning on starting it up properly with a new group now. But i've seen enough celerity users in my oWoD days .
On the rest of your reply I feel it has been answered by others. It's not as much about codifying every little thing, its about finding gaps that can be filled with a rule in a positive and inspirational manner.


plane sailing(at the end as usual ): orly? better get that book and have a look.
What i was planning to do next was to have a listing of abilities that we would like to see in such a system. I'm in a bit of a dry spell right now but i can try to steal the easy ones.

• sharp ears(skill bonus, maybe re-rolls with upgrades. this ability goes for sight, smell and whatnot aswell)[also blind and deaf characters are normal at times, perhaps some system that easily allows for such characters if they use these upgrades?]
• telepath(mind-reading power, memory altering powers on higher levels, mindcontrol on even higher levels)
• arcane sensitive(skill bonus to arcane checks, )
• soulless(bonus to intimidate, handicaps to social situations? can't be ressurected, can be upgraded to some insane far-realm bonus/power later on?)
• mercenary(bonus to streetwise in military zones, intimidate bonuses, higher levels might give better rankings and more privileges)
• necromancer(powers that allows them to create undead, or at least get bonuses controlling them. might get into the murky grey zone between non-combat and combat though)
• illusionist(non-combat illusions at least, but might get tricky)
• polymorphing(think there already are rules for this around, but always handy. should be the cosmetic kind, but theres always ways to split that up)

plenty still out there, bleh I'm tired. and I have to help chop wood and DM a game and change my front brakes tomorrow.

 

[duke_Qa]

So let me get this straight

You start by throwing out all of the non-combat crunch that 4e has out of hand, rejecting it implicitly.

Then you say that 4e doesn't have enough non-combat crunch for you.

Something is going on beyond your stated wishes. DnD 4e has more non-combat crunch than any previous edition and most other games. Its non-combat crunch is simple, balanced, and allows for suspense and intrigue across the widest spectrum of classes, races, and levels.

The other day, I ran a couple of impromptu skill challenges for my players, they had to find out who had attempted to assassinate them. They interrogated one of the survivors[diplomacy, intimidation], wen't to collect information[diplomacy, intimidation, perception, insight] and do then tried to identify and capture the thief[insight, perception, athletics, stealth]. They were level 2-3, but i could have ran it for any level of character. They had a blast. If it had been 3.5 they would have simply bought a spell.

Given the other instances of this claim, can i surmise that you previously played a wizard in other editions of DnD?

Hated wizards, too much paperwork for me, alas it was the easiest way to play the game on the same field as the rest.
Although I guess what I'm thinking about here would also cause more paperwork. what I want here should not be restricted to wizards/magicians, it should be pretty open to anyone who has the basic capabilities to work on it.

I'm not approving of throwing away skill challenges and the likes, I'm just looking for more stuff in a area I feel is open. whats in the game works, but i also feel that there is room for more.

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

I'm going to agree with the OP.. sort of. To me, it's a psychological issue. In previous editions of D&D, the whole thing was more freeform and so social roleplaying and combat roleplaying tended to bleed into each other. You disarmed a foe because you really wanted to disarm a foe, despite the lack of damage, and then intimidate him. In order to avoid "I roll to hit" 80 times, you had to invent creative descriptions and that put you in the frame of mind to do non-combat roleplaying. In 4E, a lot of this is premade in combat and so the lack of premade noncombat tricks stands out. There's no actual loss, just a split mindframe of boardgame/immersive RP that takes some time to cross. It's far easier for me to RP 2nd or 3rd ed for that reason; the switch throws me off constantly.

 

[Goumindong]

Hated wizards, too much paperwork for me, alas it was the easiest way to play the game on the same field as the rest.
Although I guess what I'm thinking about here would also cause more paperwork. what I want here should not be restricted to wizards/magicians, it should be pretty open to anyone who has the basic capabilities to work on it.

I'm not approving of throwing away skill challenges and the likes, I'm just looking for more stuff in a area I feel is open. whats in the game works, but i also feel that there is room for more.

But you are, you claim that skills and rituals do not count as non combat crunch. Why do they not count as non-combat crunch, they are the way that you are to handle non-combat encounters.

All of these things you list are simply ways of describing skill training and skill focus. You want to be better at arcana, take a skill focus, describe it anyway you want. Most of the rest seems like you want to ignore non-combat challenges by adding mechanics that side set these encounters. That is the opposite of non-combat crunch, and pushes the game further towards combat as the only consideration.

 

[duke_Qa]

Why do they not count as non-combat crunch, they are the way that you are to handle non-combat encounters. [...]

Because, as I wrote in the OP, I took them out of this context because they are what the game has to offer, and I feel that they are acceptable mechanics but that there is room for others that enhance them.
I never meant that I wanted to remove them from the game and replace them with these hypothetical rules. These rules are supposed to fit in between your character and the skill-challenges/noncombat the way combat-powers fit in between your character and combat challenges.

These rules that I'm hoping to get out of this, are to be usable in non-combat challenges. Be they skill-challenges or single skill-checks or an attack on someone's will save or whatever. they are not "get out of roleplay for free" powercards.


I agree with you that skill training and skill focus are mechanics that does what I'm thinking about to some extent. But as mentioned earlier, when you have to choose a feat that makes you more effective in combat for one that makes you more effective in non-combat, people usually picks the combat feat.
Thats what makes a module like this interesting to me, it allows you to pick quirks and perks and not have it affect your combat capabilities.

 

[Goumindong]

No, as you wrote in the OP

" Right now on the other hand, I feel that 4e's designers have sacrificed non-combat mechanics in the wish of perfecting the combat-mechanics. Nothing wrong about that, the combat system is one of the better I've seen in any game designed to be played by humans and not through machines.

I just really hope that they are aware of this gap in 4e's mechanics, and have not gone down the path of "it's a feature, not a bug"."

This view is fundamentally unsound. You first throw out the non-combat mechanics of the game and then say "where are the non-combat mechanics?!?!"

They are right there, they are skills, use the freaking skills. You are unnecessarily creating a gap and then trying to fill it

I am going to make a second guess. You haven't read page 42 of the DMG have you?

 

[duke_Qa]

And nothing that i want to create here is not going to bypass p42 beyond a few extra numbers on the dc's.

When I say 4e's designers have sacrificed non-combat mechanics, I don't mean that they didn't make any. I'm saying they used more time on combat mechanics than non-combat mechanics.

I'm not saying that I want to throw out the current rules, I'm saying there is room for adding a "middle-man" of powers, quirks, backgrounds and special abilities that you can't easily handwave with skills. How would you handwave telepathy with such rules? arcane skill check, dc hard?

Anyway, you are reading my OP as the devil reads the bible . There are people in the world who agrees and there are people who dissagrees. If I get stuck here discussing what wont work, then I will never be able to get to the point that I can show something that will work. So at the time being I would rather we agree to dissagree and take this argument once we got something more polished and workable to look at . After all, the OP here is my first attempts at putting these things down in writing, its bound to be more understandable when some work has gone into it.

But if you feel that you still have something to say that I've missed I won't stop you. Its a free forum after all




On another topic:


regional benefits in the FRplayersguide is a good example of one way that WotC have looked into this. They hand out skills to your class list(still requires training), +1/+2 bonuses to certain skills, +2/+4 resistances to fire and whatnot, rerolling insight checks and additional languages. Hell, theres even one background that lets you have your wisdom score to starting hit-points.

Some of these abilities I even would have thought would be overpowered(akanûl characters gains resist 2cold, fire and thunder, paragon ups it to 3 and epic to 5, and they stack with other resists!, Calimshans gain resist 4 fire, 7 on paragon and 10 on epic, and +5 to thirst-related endurance checks).

These sort of regional benefits are pretty much what i would expect to find in background abilities. Right now i imagine that a non-combat module like this would contain 3 elements(warning, examples may be cheesy):

1. background bonuses(like extra languages, bonuses to certain skills, adding skills to your class list etc, pretty close to what we see in FRPG)
2. Specialized skill bonuses(better hearing, better svimmer, dancer-acrobat etc etc )
3. special non-combat powers.(telepathy, necromancy, illusions, summoning bad things, lying through your teeth etc etc)

 

[Bleoberis De Ganis]

I like the 4E, but when reading the books they look hollow. The word count must be tiny in compared to any previous book.

I don't like the way people think that rules inhibit RP. Unless they think RP is just another word for just making stuff up, and that kind of RP is boring, pointless and usually just a way for a player break the rules for his own benefit and nothing to do with RP. If that is all RP is then they shouldn't have rules at all and just sit around making stuff up.

Craft skills, professional skills and social skills are all missing and I agree that they should be part of a separate silo. I even thought that they should have an independant level, but I'm not sure about that. You could have a 10th level social encounter where you have to defend yourself in a court case. You would have to use intelligence, wisdom and charisma and to make use of them in a way that matters needs some sort of rule structure - otherwise you just have one person saying blah, blah, blah and another person saying either 'I don't like you - you fail' or 'I like you - you win.' It comes down to that in the end. Either way it is a waste of time.

Don't talk to me about skill challenges. I think they got close to release and someone said 'right lets have the social stuff, the non-combat skills, rules for traps, pursuit and evasion, etc, etc, etc' and they thought 'oh crap - what the hell have we been doing for the last 6 years.' and bunged in some crappy skill challenge system.

 

[Goumindong]

I'm not saying that I want to throw out the current rules, I'm saying there is room for adding a "middle-man" of powers, quirks, backgrounds and special abilities that you can't easily handwave with skills. How would you handwave telepathy with such rules? arcane skill check, dc hard?

Insight is your best bet. Make sure you take skill focus.

Your other bet is "Telepathy ruins the game, it was removed because it ruins the game. If you want to play a telepath, don't."

There is no room for adding these "middle-man" powers because the game is based on a very tight balance, where every class has something to do non-combat, and every class has something to do in combat. Non-combat powers break that, because your choice necessarily reduces your combat effectiveness.

Skills have the same balance. They are the system by which you interact with non-combat encounters. They, rather than powers, are that system because non-combat encounters do not have a clear definitive beginning and end while combat encounters do. You do not "deal damage" to "enemies" in non-combat encounters, changing it so that you do completely screws the verisimilitude of the game and simply does not work to model complex challenges. If you do not change the system to be as such, then no "power" system that you want will create a game that is, in any way, balanced. Broadly defined results mean that players will use them to achieve many too many things that remove the difficulty of the campaign. Narrowly defined results hamstring characters too much in the broadly defined category of non-combat encounters.

FR has a different problem with its backgrounds. Its backgrounds are simply power creep, they extend the maximum ability of characters to perform in skill challenges. They are, pretty much, just bad design. Not that bad, but still bad. Skill bonuses are like attack bonuses for skill challenges, handing them out is bad juju.

All of your other wishes either should not be accomplished or should only be accomplished through the current mechanics of skill training, and focus. If they are boosting skills further, they break the d20 system[it is after all a d20, so you only have about 10-15 points of reasonable variation where a challenge can reasonably work], if they are circumventing skills that is even worse.