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Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7760760" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>4e is a version of this: in combat, for instance, PC and opponent bases scale at basically the same rate, and so the % chance remains largely the same through the levels; but creatures that are inferior <em>per the fiction</em> relative to the PC tier are framed as minions, and hence die on a hit; or get bundled up as a swarm, and hence get taken down in swathes.</p><p></p><p>4e non-combat has less tight maths, which can produce some of the issues [MENTION=6873517]Jay Verkuilen[/MENTION] has identified (the big offender in my game is the +6 to all knowledge skills that a Sage of Ages gets). But the orientation of the game is still towards what you describe - level-appropriate DCs that try to establish roughly consistent chances of success, with the differences of tier being expressed in the fiction rather than the mechanics.</p><p></p><p>Again, 4e can be considered a version of this (and literally <em>is</em> a version of this if you strip out the level adjustments for creatures and the stat gain and enhancement bonuses for PCs). The differences between tiers are really about complexity (higher level PCs have more, and more complex, options); the range of effects available, which straddles fiction and mechanics (eg flight is available reliably only in paragon tier; stun, likewise, isn't really a feature of heroic tier) and hence also feed into the fiction of the situation (eg <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?330383-Underdark-adventure-with-Demons-Beholders-Elementals-and-a-Hydra" target="_blank">in paragon tier you can run fights that involve the PCs having to avoid falling into lava, and perhaps falling into it and surviving</a> - heroic tier doesn't support that sort of fiction give the lack of flight abilities, the lack of condition-removal that helps the players deal with a mechanically tenable representation of lava, etc)</p><p></p><p>For 4e to work as I've described the GM has to use the level mechanics properly when doing the mechanical side of encounter-framing, and also has to pay attention to the fiction that is implicit in that mechanical framing given the tier of the PCs. I personally didn't find that very challenging (the guidelines are clear and the maths transparent and robust), but I think that need for the GM to think about encounter-framing in mechanical as well as in-fiction terms was quite unpopular.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7760760, member: 42582"] 4e is a version of this: in combat, for instance, PC and opponent bases scale at basically the same rate, and so the % chance remains largely the same through the levels; but creatures that are inferior [I]per the fiction[/I] relative to the PC tier are framed as minions, and hence die on a hit; or get bundled up as a swarm, and hence get taken down in swathes. 4e non-combat has less tight maths, which can produce some of the issues [MENTION=6873517]Jay Verkuilen[/MENTION] has identified (the big offender in my game is the +6 to all knowledge skills that a Sage of Ages gets). But the orientation of the game is still towards what you describe - level-appropriate DCs that try to establish roughly consistent chances of success, with the differences of tier being expressed in the fiction rather than the mechanics. Again, 4e can be considered a version of this (and literally [I]is[/I] a version of this if you strip out the level adjustments for creatures and the stat gain and enhancement bonuses for PCs). The differences between tiers are really about complexity (higher level PCs have more, and more complex, options); the range of effects available, which straddles fiction and mechanics (eg flight is available reliably only in paragon tier; stun, likewise, isn't really a feature of heroic tier) and hence also feed into the fiction of the situation (eg [url=http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?330383-Underdark-adventure-with-Demons-Beholders-Elementals-and-a-Hydra]in paragon tier you can run fights that involve the PCs having to avoid falling into lava, and perhaps falling into it and surviving[/url] - heroic tier doesn't support that sort of fiction give the lack of flight abilities, the lack of condition-removal that helps the players deal with a mechanically tenable representation of lava, etc) For 4e to work as I've described the GM has to use the level mechanics properly when doing the mechanical side of encounter-framing, and also has to pay attention to the fiction that is implicit in that mechanical framing given the tier of the PCs. I personally didn't find that very challenging (the guidelines are clear and the maths transparent and robust), but I think that need for the GM to think about encounter-framing in mechanical as well as in-fiction terms was quite unpopular. [/QUOTE]
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