D&D 4E Let's Talk About 4E On Its Own Terms [+]

[pemerton]

Here's a very interesting blog post from a first-rate RPG critic:

What is an rpg?

. . .

A better definition would be this:

Roleplaying games are games where imaginary fiction is the focus of play and influences choices and outcomes of play.

. . .

In roleplaying games, the things that aren’t numbered, aren’t rated, might just be the most important things to pay attention to.

“That’s not a roleplaying game!”

Aside from the usual strawmen arguments this gets used in, from throwing it at games that are different than what folks are used to, to using it when the rules are actually expected to be followed, there is a small subset of folks who are basically saying, “I don’t know how to engage with the fiction in this game”. . . . they’re having a tough time seeing how to take fictional choices and carry it over to the mechanical aspects, and then take what the system and Cues deliver and put it back in the fiction. . . .

I see it a lot with crunchy games like Burning Wheel or D&D 4E, where, folks see the rules, but fail to see how and where fiction makes an impact in the rules (for Burning Wheel, it’s embedded in to skills, Helping Dice, FORKs, and Advantage Dice, for D&D4E, it’s all in Skill Challenges, Quests, and pg. 42 on the DMG).

I suspect in both of these cases it has to do with the fact that the major rules for carrying fiction to mechanics in these games has a few pages compared to a few hundred pages of other rules. The monkey-brain easily mistakes quantity for importance.​

Hugely insightful!

Here are some actual play posts (that I also just posted in another thread) that provide some examples of the point being made about 4e, and how the fiction is carried over to the mechanical aspects, and then the system outputs brought back into the fiction:

The most interesting thing here was their response to one particular room. As per the module, I described it as containing a mirror containing the reflection of a woman in great distress - but there was no woman in the room. They worked out that she had been trapped in there by magic, and decided to rescue her. Based on some past experience with trapping mirrors (in Thunderspire Labyrinth) they decided to teleport her out using the wizard level 7 encounter power Twist of Space - which worked.

<snip>

They found evidence of necromantic magic (the aformentioned ogre skull, with large rubies in its eye sockets, and some old scrolls from Bael Turath). When the player of the paladin had his PC look closely again at the scroll describing the cultic burial practices and made a good perception roll, I decided that he noticed a stiffness/crustiness in the paper. Eventually, after use of Object Reading, the PCs worked out this was evidence of invisible ink. The drow then suggested that they should try and render the ink visible in the library outside the laboratory they were in, which would be more comfortable (good Bluff check). Then, lingering (good Stealth check) he pried the gems out of the skull eyesockets (good Thievery check). As per the module, this released the undead spiders inside the skull.

The combat which then ensued with these spiders was quite interesting, although they themselves were only a single level 7 soldier - the drow trying to conceal what he'd done by making Arcana checks to keep his magic quite and using Bedevilling Burst to push the spiders back into the skull. Unfortunately he rolled a 1 on his attack, and being a chaos sorcerer therefore pushed everything over, sending skull and spiders tumbling into the adjacent library. On his next turn he used Thievery to surreptitiously pocket the gems in the middle of combat, while the wizard and defenders tried to kill the spiders without wrecking the library that they were fighting in. This is my first 4e combat in which the "Rule of the Ming Vase" has come into play.

The water weird

The PCs were investigating a hot spring inside a temple bathhouse, and were attacked by a water weird. I had already decided, in my prep notes, to resolve this as a complexity 2 skill challenge ie 6 successes before 3 failures.

The PCs quicly discovered that psychic/Will attacks had no effect - the weird was animated water, with no discernible mind or body. So they decided to (i) try and destroy/move the water, using radiant and thunder attacks, and (ii) to try and plug the spring, by knocking stones down into it and using the thunder attacks to drive them home. (In my prep notes I'd expected the PCs to try and expunge the spirit, and had made some notes on how Religion and Arcana checks might play out. The idea of plugging the spring instead came as a surprise to me.)

The player of the dwarf set up the "plug the spring" idea. On his first turn he considered the situation as I'd described it, and thought "as a strong guy with a big axe my best bet here is to probably plug the spring". I, as GM, then suggested that (i) if he wanted to do that he had to knock off a lot of stone, so I would require him to expend one of his encounter close burst powers, and (ii) to get the stones in the right place would also require a Dungeoneering check. (This is roughly following the model in 4e DMG p 42.)

When the dwarf's next turn came round, the wizard and paladin had already picked up on his idea and done more stuff with the stone. He then went in for (what he hoped would be, and what turned out to be) the last big effort. The player knew what he wanted to do - use Come and Get it to "pull" the water away from the rocks, so he could push the rocks into the holes. I, as GM, suggested that what might make more sense is if, using his skill at timing his polearm strikes in relation to the fluid movement of the battlefield (as exemplified in part by this Come and Get It power), he waited for the water to surge up again and then pushed in the stone. The player liked that, and went for it. He made an Athletics check to keep his footing and act effectively in the water, and an attack roll to actually drive the stone home. Expending Come and Get It meant that the issue of timing was not a problem for that PC (Come and Get It in this context, as in many other occasions of use, acted as a sort of fate point - "my PC's timing perfectly matches the flow of battle" - than as a model of an ingame action like taunting or luring). His checks were successful, and so, as the water surged up over him, the dwarf pushed the rocks home with a sweep of his halberd. (If this check had failed, then the skill challenge as a whole would have failed and the whole temple been flooded by the surging water weird.)

They have been fighting the hobgoblins and Bane-ites on-and-off for the whole campaign, and have known for several levels that there is a fortress in the mountains. But not until this most recent session did they actually make their way there.

<snip>

the army encampment was much as the module describes it - an encampment of 500 or more, doing army things (eating, sleeping, drilling etc), and with a stairway up to a temple which is where the leader of the army, a fallen paladin, is to be found.

<snip>

they decided to use deception. The wizard PC had memorised Disguise Self for this purpose, and he also got around to filling one of his 15th levvel ritual slots, deciding that the Seeming ritual (from the Eberron book) seemed like a suitable choice.

The wizard Disguised himself as Paldemar, an evil wizard who had been a leader of/advisor to the army, and whom the PCs had recently killed, but who the army (as best they knew) didn't yet know was dead. He flew on the wizard's Flying Carpet (which the PCs had recovered from the wizard's tower after killing him) at the back of the procession.

The dwarf fighter had his hands loosely tied together with some copper wire that one of the PCs was carrying, and the Seeming turned that into shackles, with a chain being held by the party paladin, who Seemed to be a heavily armed-and-armoured wererat enforcer.

The other two PCs - a drow sorcerer and elf ranger-cleric - were changed to appear like wererat thugs. (The PCs had already learned that the wizard and his accomplices were using wererats as agents in the nearest large town south of the fortress.)

With the disguises established, the actual process of making their way across the encampment played out as a skill challenge - or, in fact, the final 4-check leg of a longer challenge (which involved other elements of navigating through the mountains), in which they had already accrued 8 successes and 1 failure.

The sorcerer started with a Streetwise check (aided by the paladin) to try and choose a suitable route through the tents etc where they would not be hassled or crowded (which could reveal their illusion). Unfortunately this failed, so just as they entered the tents in what seemed to be a low density area, a hobgoblin squad marched in front of them from behind a couple of tents. The quick-thinking paladin player responded by immediately barking orders at the hobgoblins, telling them to "Clear a path so that Paldamar can take his prisoner to the temple for interrogation" - and a successful Intimidate check resulted in a success.

As the procession moved through the encampment with the hobgoblin squad clearing a path, Bane-ite thugs who recognised the dwarf prisoner started approaching to throw mud and refuse at him. Not wanting any filth to reveal the illusion (eg by clinging to the fighter's halberd, which the illusion had rendered invisible), the wizard quickly cast them away with a Twist of Space, making sure that the rabble didn't further impede the procession's passage. (This also reinforced an Intimdate check from the sorcerer reiterating the need for unimpeded passage.)

Finally, the procession got to the foot of the temple stairs, where the two Bane-ite wardens asked for the password - which the PCs (and players) did not know. The paladin suggested Diplomatically that it would be sensible for everyone to let Paldemar through, so that he could deposit his prisoner and then rest, and the wardens agreed - and reiterated that all it would take was the password!

And then two actions happened simultaneously (the two players speaking over the top of one another): the dwarf "prisoner" made a break for freedom, charging one of the wardens and knocking him down and unconscious (a Bull Rush assisted by Rushing Cleats and, given the difference in capcity between the PC and the warden as well as the not-yet-in-combat mechanical context, one that I was happy to let knock the NPC unconscious as well as aside); and the wizard used Charm of the Dark Dream, possessing the warden (determined by a random roll to be the unconscious one, given the two PCs acted simultaneously) and hoping to quickly learn the password by reading his mind (a DC 30 Arcana check).

The ranger-cleric tried to do something at this point (Intimidate, maybe?) but failed the check, distracted by the fact that "Paldemar" had vanished. But he quickly reappeared - the Arcana check failed. The player had spent an Action Point to make sure that his spell hit its target: he gets +3 from Action Surge and the best of two rolls from his paragon path, and being a generous GM I let him have two rolls for his Arcana check also. He rolled a 4 and a 7, which with a +19 bonus was not enough, so he left the body of the unconscious warden without having learned the password.

But the sorcerer made a DC 30 Bluff check and led the paladin to grab the Dwarf (one on each side) and drag him up the stairs, while yelling "This is a dangerous prisoner, and we need to get him inside!" The wizard cast Glorious Presence (? 13th level Encounter power from Heroes of the Feywild) to push back the awed wardens and hobgoblin soldiers. In the circumstances, this was enough for the PCs to get inside the temple fortress while the NPCs dithered in confusion and dissaray.

In skill challenge terms, the inability to provide the password was a failed final check - leading to 3 failures - but with some mitigation of the failure by the quick thinking of the players (and their PCs) to somewhat cover for their inability to work around the password. That is, they successfully made it into the temple, but with their deceit likely to be discovered in short order, when the unconscious warden recovered consciousness and was able to report (1) that the dwarf who charged him felt like he was under an illusion concealing helmet, weapons etc, and (2) that someone/thing had temporarily possessed him and tried to read his mind.

As the PCs continue through the tunnels, I described them coming to a cleft in the floor, and got them to describe how they would cross it. The drow sorcerer indicated that he would first fly over (using 16th level At Will Dominant Winds) and then . . . before he could finish, I launched into my beholder encounter, which I had designed inspired by this image (which is the cover art from Dungeonscape, I think):

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I'm not sure exactly what the artist intended, but to me it looks as if the central beholder is hovering over a chasm, with uneven rocky surfaces leading up to it (archer on one side, flaming sword guy on the other). I drew up my map similarly, including with the side tunnel (behind the tiefling) which on my version ran down into the chasm, and the columns, stalactites, etc.

I didn't use four beholders, only 2 - an eye tyrant (MV version) and an eye of flame advanced to 17th level and MM3-ed for damage. And also a 15th level roper from MV, introduced on a whim when the player of the wizard asked, before taking cover behind a column, if it looked suspicious. (Response to result of 28 on the Perception check before adding the +2 bonus for knowing what he is looking for - "Yes, yes it does!")

Anyway, the terrain was pretty awesome, though hugely punishing for the PCs. I managed to get both ranged strikers down the 200' drop into the stream below early in the encounter - the drow sorcerer made it back up (Dominant Winds again, using his Acrobatics to land on ledges on the cliff at the end of each movement) but the ranger-cleric, after getting about 120' back up on his flying carpet, got knocked back down to the bottom. He still ended up being pretty effective, though, shooting up at long range with Twin Strike.

I failed in my attempt (as an eye tyrant) to use my TK ray to impale the dwarf fighter on a stalactite, and then the PC invoker did that to me instead - twice - using a slide effect from his zone of darkness and cold (Shadowdark Invocation; I resolved the stalactite as 2d8+8 and immoblised (SE), which seemed OK for a 17th level situational but multi-use option).

The PCs then waited for worldfall of the tower. When it arrived, they got into an argument with its hag owners - the PCs insisted on entering the tower so they could cross over to the Feywild, but the hags refused to let them in. The PCs, and their players, (correctly) suspected the hags were helping the Winter Fey, and a home invasion ensued. The one surviving hag ended up agreeing to let the PCs in. But before even a short rest could be taken, the Aspect of Vecna reappeared bringing back up (undead cultists, lich vestiges and four demons under its control).

Despite having just come off the back of a 30th level encounter with the hags (and hangers-on), and having no recovery except action point refreshment (my one concession to a plea for something in lieu of a short rest), the players had no trouble dealing with this 28th level follow-up. In the first round the invoker dominated Vecna and made him dismiss one of his summoned demons. (I had described the demon appearing by means of gate. The player had his PC order Vecna to end the summoning. The established fictional positioning made this clearly feasible, and so it happened.) And then before Vecna's turn could come around again, the cleric-ranger stunned him with a reasonably newly acquired daily power. To add insult to injury, the chaos sorcerer rolled a 1, pushing Vecna 1 square. Vecna failed his save and went tumbling 100' to the ledges below the earthmote. Then something (I guess one of the demons?) hit the paladin and pushed him over the edge. At which point an Acrobatics roll was requested, to "do a Gandalf" (from the Two Towers film) and fall down on top of Vecna. The roll was successful, and the paladin dealt damage to Vecna with a successful basic attack, as well as taking damage himself for the fall.

While the other PCs cleaned up uptop, the paladin successfully solo-ed the now-bloodied Aspect, but (at the behest of the invoker) only knocked it unconscious (and then used his Marshal of Letherna daily utility to prevent any regeneration that might let it come back to consciousness). The invoker then came down and used an Undead Ward ritual, with the Aspect as a focus, to try and sever the connection between Vecna and his Eye. This was successful (between stats, feats and Sage of Ages the character has bonuses of around +40 to most of his ritual checks), so the imp came back to life, still powered up by the Eye but no longer subject to Vecna's influence.

 

[Aldarc]

Another awesome bit that I've noticed as we have started a new 4e game is 4e's skill list. Definitively compared to what was before, and still when compared to 5e's. Dungeoneering as an adventuring equivalent to Nature; Streetwise for ground-level interactions; Detect magic through the Arcana skill; Thievery to handle the gamut of scoundrels... skills that have a solid use in the adventuring life.

Agreed.

As to what's come in 5e, the re-introduction of Performance is nice.

Performance in 5e is in a weird place. It doesn't really do anything. It's mostly a bard only skill. Moreover, it feels redundant with the introduction of tool proficiencies, which includes musical weapons. It's like WotC's left hand didn't know what it's right hand was doing.

And Deception as a skill name might be better than Bluff, while I'm 50/50 of Diplomacy vs Persuasion. But Thievery as a clear thing is much better when compared to the tool proficiency vs skill proficiency weirdness that exists in 5e. Or what is Slight of Hand used for -- its seems like it'd just be a small subset of Thievery. Then there's the reintroduction of the Investigation vs Perception confusion from the 3e days.

Agreed.

On the other side of the coin, Endurance often ended up feeling anemic in 4e; that might be one that could be put aside.

I appreciate that they tried to give Constitution something to do. In some respects, it felt like it was trying to also fill any potential gaps from moving Constitution saving throw to a defense score.

 

[EternalDungeonMaster]

I ran a seven-year-long 4th edition campaign. I have been playing D&D continuously since 1st edition. I currently DM and play 5th edition.

At no time during my seven-year tenure as a 4e DM did I ever feel like 4e was not D&D. I don't believe my players ever felt that way either. I thought it was a good edition. I derived a ton of pleasure from it.

For me, 4e grew a bit out of hand in terms of what could be handled easily without digital tools. The online Silverlight-based character creator and monster creator were, to me, essential to prepping and running games. When that tool became unavailable and the system went out of print, it just didn't make sense for me to continue using it.

To this day, I miss 4e. I don't think I have ever missed a past edition. I've always moved on and not looked back. There was something about 4e that just had a unique flavor and an accessible, engaging set of rules. I don't need any rules to roleplay or to encourage my players to roleplay. For me, the rules are mostly for handling combat and tactical scenes. 4e was unrivaled in that regard, in my opinion.

If I were to ever "retire" from being current with D&D and just fall back on a forever edition, 4e would be a very strong contender.

 

[Kannik]

Performance in 5e is in a weird place. It doesn't really do anything. It's mostly a bard only skill. Moreover, it feels redundant with the introduction of tool proficiencies, which includes musical weapons. It's like WotC's left hand didn't know what it's right hand was doing.

Heh, performance is indeed another victim in 5e to the Heisenberg tool/skill overlap. It's so mucked up I sometimes wonder how it got through playtesting.

Thinking about it more, suddenly, what do adventurers usually use performance for? To influence someone... which in many ways could be handled by a Diplomacy or Deception or Intimidate check.

(And for other uses of performance, crafting, or other type skills, I ended up writing a supplement for what I called Trade Skills. Each was intended to be able to be applied very broadly, and every character got one for free. Works splendidly.)

 

[Kannik]

Another one to add to the list: The "Unaligned" alignment.

 

[Staffan]

Heh, performance is indeed another victim in 5e to the Heisenberg tool/skill overlap. It's so mucked up I sometimes wonder how it got through playtesting.

Thinking about it more, suddenly, what do adventurers usually use performance for? To influence someone... which in many ways could be handled by a Diplomacy or Deception or Intimidate check.

I noticed a similar thing with the Entertainment skill in The Troubleshooters. The game has lots of examples of "to do X, use skill Y" (or use a skill challenge with skills A, B, C, D, and E). Almost none of those included Entertainment. So I thought a little about it, and what sort of things you'd otherwise possibly use Entertainment for, and came to the conclusion that pretty much everything fell under another skill. So I decided to do away with it and have the Artist ability cover the things you'd potentially use Entertainment for (basically giving bonuses to various things if you're able to perform).

Perhaps a similar thing could be done in 4e or other D&D versions, where you'd have a feat that gives +X to various social skills against those who have seen you perform.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Heh, performance is indeed another victim in 5e to the Heisenberg tool/skill overlap. It's so mucked up I sometimes wonder how it got through playtesting.

Thinking about it more, suddenly, what do adventurers usually use performance for? To influence someone... which in many ways could be handled by a Diplomacy or Deception or Intimidate check.

(And for other uses of performance, crafting, or other type skills, I ended up writing a supplement for what I called Trade Skills. Each was intended to be able to be applied very broadly, and every character got one for free. Works splendidly.)

The issue IMHO is not correctly thinking about what skills and skill checks are about! With 4e, or 5e, skill system something like performance or craft make no sense. The skills are not skill! They're preferred approaches, basically. Your not measuring thespian ability, you're measuring how well your activity fulfills your goal. Did putting on Hamlet raise certain suspicions at court? That's being persuasive (diplomacy). Now, I think the names could be better for some of them, but it works great! It unties the outcome fictionally from the immediate act, the play can fall because the audience is afraid of raising the question instead of only because you're an incompetent actor, etc. Note how 'long list' skill systems fail at this approach inherently. This is a deliberate design feature of 4e!

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I sort of divide 4e into two bunches, Original flavor with strong AEDU for classes and Essentials style with more at will and encounter focus and a willingness to deviate from AEDU.

AEDU 4e has a strongly balanced daily paradigm of everybody having the same number of daily attack powers, a bit of variability of utility powers being AED, daily healing surge limits that vary by class, and a potential daily item power. This allows a lot of daily stuff to happen in a fairly constrained manner for a decent daily resource management engagement experience. It also still leaves potentially strong encounter variability of whether every PC will use multiple dailies in an encounter versus people being out of surges and or any dailies. As PCs get higher level with more daily attacks and powers this variability can be significant.

Essentials messes with that strong daily character balance and potential DM planned daily set up. Having lots of at will stances and encounter powers without daily attacks means that healing surges are potentially bearing a lot more of the load for pacing the daily resource management. Essentials characters have less variability in nova power spikes in individual combats so individual combats are easier for a DM to evaluate as a challenge beforehand. And for players who like to nova immediately this means they will generally be better off against end boss fights than under AEDU where they would have already blown their spectacular dailies on earlier fights.

Huh - never read the Essentials books, we were enjoying standard 4e too much to change things up. But I don't often hear of downsides to Essentials - this one is interestig

 

[Eyes of Nine]

The issue IMHO is not correctly thinking about what skills and skill checks are about! With 4e, or 5e, skill system something like performance or craft make no sense. The skills are not skill! They're preferred approaches, basically. Your not measuring thespian ability, you're measuring how well your activity fulfills your goal. Did putting on Hamlet raise certain suspicions at court? That's being persuasive (diplomacy). Now, I think the names could be better for some of them, but it works great! It unties the outcome fictionally from the immediate act, the play can fall because the audience is afraid of raising the question instead of only because you're an incompetent actor, etc. Note how 'long list' skill systems fail at this approach inherently. This is a deliberate design feature of 4e!

Interesting perspective.

I have a player in one of my 5e games who continuously says things like "I go and Perceive that thing" and I'm like - "but what do you actually DO? Like, if this was a movie and we were watching it, what would we see on screen?" And then in that way I can tell him if I think he's Investigating or Perceiving (or even Arcana-ing or History-ing etc etc). tbh, this player struggles with that - but that's maybe a different thread on a different day

I don't recall how things went in 4e, but boy the several sessions I ran a skill challenge, the way I ran them I thought it worked great

 

[Zeromaru X]

I have a player in one of my 5e games who continuously says things like "I go and Perceive that thing" and I'm like - "but what do you actually DO? Like, if this was a movie and we were watching it, what would we see on screen?" And then in that way I can tell him if I think he's Investigating or Perceiving (or even Arcana-ing or History-ing etc etc). tbh, this player struggles with that - but that's maybe a different thread on a different day

That's a "roll vs role" question. Interesting enough, the 4e DMG has advice about how to deal with that.