D&D 4E Mike Mearls on how 4E could have looked

Garthanos

Arcadian Knight
Point of complexity: 4e combat resolution is very concrete (mapped terrain, detalied position tracking, etc). But 4e non-combat is very abstract (skill challenges). This can cause ajdudicative challenges at the point of interface. As I think [MENTION=82504]Garthanos[/MENTION] has noted in this thread, it also puts some hard limits on the gonzo eg epic fighters can't easily leap to the moon, because their exploits also have to fit on a battle map tracked in 5' squares.[/indent]

Harder for someone to Pile Drive Impressive Craters when they have to fit on a Game Board
 

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pemerton

Legend
I didn't have to consult any DC by level charts. It was easier just adjudicating the DC between moderate and hard based on the argument put forward by the PCs.
The play example is interesting - thank you.

With 10th level PCs presumably the typical bonus to Persuade is something like +5 or so? (Presumably with a low of +0 for no stat or skill, through to a max of +13 for CHA and expertise.)

So the chance of making a DC 15 or 20 check is not that good for some of those PCs. But the chance of rolling below 11 is probably not that high. That adjudicative decision seems to have been quite important to the mathematics of that encounter.
 

pemerton

Legend
you aren't trying to present a question and determine if your assumptions are correct. You're coming in with an assumption you've already concluded is the correct one and infallible.
How is it possibly controversial that 4e is not good for a certain sort of traditional RPGing? You can barely move on these boards without bumping into a post explaining how 4e is an "uncanny valley" that makes someone or others traditional approach to GMing hard or impossible!

If 4e was good for what most RPGers wanted, then surely they would have liked it!
 

pemerton

Legend
it is perfectly ok to be fighting a serious challenge in the vicinity of a door which remains trivial.
As in 4e, i you're like.

At early paragon tier, the PCs defended a village against hobgoblin attackers. At one point a building was on fire with people trapped inside it - one of the PCs (the paladin?) succeeded on a check to charge through the wall of the building to rescue them. At 1st level that wouldn't have been an acceptable action declaration. At epic tier, if it game up, the wall would probably just be adjudicated as difficult terrain.

You're the one who was insisitng - for reasons that I don't understand - that the DC to open the door the burned-out shack must be level-appropiate; which is to say that you are the one who was taking it as a premise that the door would be meaningful rather than trivial.

OK, so 4E is now funneling my options. I choose to play a game that doesn't do this.
Every RPG funnels options. As far as I know 3E (or variant) is your preferred system, and it funnels options big time. It is a useless system for me, as the sort of RPGing I enjoy is not an option that it provides for.

My advice to anyone who asks is play an RPG which provides options that you enjoy.
 

BryonD

Hero
As in 4e, i you're like.

At early paragon tier, the PCs defended a village against hobgoblin attackers. At one point a building was on fire with people trapped inside it - one of the PCs (the paladin?) succeeded on a check to charge through the wall of the building to rescue them. At 1st level that wouldn't have been an acceptable action declaration. At epic tier, if it game up, the wall would probably just be adjudicated as difficult terrain.

You're the one who was insisitng - for reasons that I don't understand - that the DC to open the door the burned-out shack must be level-appropiate; which is to say that you are the one who was taking it as a premise that the door would be meaningful rather than trivial.
This is a false statement.
Go back and look at post #995 of this thread. I specifically said "it can quickly get silly to have a "particularly well built door" in every burnt out shack because the party level calls for it." to which you replied " There have been on "burned out shacks" in my 4e game since mid-heroic, because I follow the advice on the tiers of play that the default fiction of the game (eg power descriptions, allocation of monsters to levels, etc). " That is *you* insisting that the door must be level appropriate. I'm pleased that you are now backtracking on your prior statement. But that has been the focus of the entire conversation. As has been demonstrated, page 42 of the DMG states this clearly. I pointed that out and in response YOU said that the burned out shacks must have level approriate doors because you obey the rulebook. My whole point was that it gets silly. Saying something gets silly is *not* an endorsement.

Others have claimed that the 4E authors later handwaved and retconed this text. And so be it. I consider this a good thing. But the clear text in the DMG combined with your statement strongly endorsing that approach is both boggling to me and also a vividly clear talkign poitn for why 4E was not "what it could have been".

Every RPG funnels options. As far as I know 3E (or variant) is your preferred system, and it funnels options big time. It is a useless system for me, as the sort of RPGing I enjoy is not an option that it provides for.

My advice to anyone who asks is play an RPG which provides options that you enjoy.
So now we go to the "I know you are but what am I" school of debate. Thanks

I've been playing 3X/PF for nearly 20 years. It sucks at machine guns. But for anything I want to do that is within the "heroic high fantasy" realm, the D20 core system is quite adaptable. I don't know of anything that is comparable to your statement that the locations are presumed to change. You said it. (Just like you said 'There have been on "burned out shacks" in my 4e game since mid-heroic, because I follow the advice on the tiers of play that the default fiction of the game (eg power descriptions, allocation of monsters to levels, etc).')
 

pemerton

Legend
I specifically said "it can quickly get silly to have a "particularly well built door" in every burnt out shack because the party level calls for it."
Right. That's you saying that the door of the burned out shack has to be level appropriate. I also assume you're fastening on burned out shacks because you think they should form a significant element of events for a high level party. If in fact you think they would be trivial for a high level party, then you would agree with me that they don't have "level appropriate" DCs for "particularly well built doors".

to which you replied " There have been on "burned out shacks" in my 4e game since mid-heroic, because I follow the advice on the tiers of play that the default fiction of the game (eg power descriptions, allocation of monsters to levels, etc). " That is *you* insisting that the door must be level appropriate.
No. That's me saying that I haven't used any burned out shacks, because I don't think they are well-suited to paragon and epic-tier play.

As best I can recall, I've only used one door in my campaign since heroic tier, and that is the gate to Carceri. (Maybe there are one or two other instances I'm forgetting - maybe the PCs also had to force the door to the Raven Queen's mausoleum?)

My reasoning is this: doors dont' make for interesting scenery (despite D&D traditionally having a bit of a door fetish); I'm only interested in dealing with doors that are more than scenery; doors of burned out shacks - and indeed burned out shacks per se - are not going to be more than scenery for high level parties; therefore I don't use burned out shack, nor do I use doors thereof, in my high level 4e play.

Nothing there entails that the doors of burned out shacks, if high level PCs should interact with them, have level-appropriate DCs. What it does entail is that if I use a burned out shack and its door in a high level scenario, then I'm resiling from my premise about doors being uninteresting scenery.

YOU said that the burned out shacks must have level approriate doors because you obey the rulebook.
No. I said I don't use burned out shacks. That's not a statement about how hard their doors are to open. It does imply a view about how interestng they are for higher level scenarios (ie not very).

Just like you said 'There have been on "burned out shacks" in my 4e game since mid-heroic, because I follow the advice on the tiers of play that the default fiction of the game (eg power descriptions, allocation of monsters to levels, etc).'
Notice that this says absolutely nothing about the DC of doors of burned out shacks. It is a statement about the fiction appropriate to paragon and epic tier play. I don't really see how you can miss this.

As has been demonstrated, page 42 of the DMG states this clearly.
Page 42 neither states nor implies that burned out shacks encountered by high level PCs have well made doors.

It does imply that DCs should be set in a level appropriate fashion. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=22362]MoutonRustique[/MENTION] regard that as a special case of the more general proposition that encounters are to be built in a level appropriate fashion. That's probably true but for present purposes a side issue.

The key point for present purposes is that p 42 presents a heroic tier example - swinging on a chandelier to knock an ogre into a brazier - and explains how to stat it out. You are, without warrant, inferring that if, contrary to the book's advice, a GM used heroic-tier fiction for an epic-tier encounter, the DC would scale up even though the fiction hasn't. But the book doesn't state or imply that. It doesn't give advice on how hard it is for a demigod to swing on a chandelier and knock an ogre into a brazier because that is not the sort of fiction the game contemplates for demigods.

More generally, you are saying but 4e breaks down if the meaningful fiction is held constant across levels. But the game doesn't assume the meaningful fiction is held constant across levels. Fiction that was meaningful at mid-heroic becomes mere scenery for a demigod. (I emphasise meaningful because p 42 is not about scenery. There are many scenery-interactions the rules don't cover, but p 42 is not giving advice on how to adjudicate them. The advice there is to "say yes and get to the action" - as with the notorious gate guards.)

I've been playing 3X/PF for nearly 20 years. It sucks at machine guns. But for anything I want to do that is within the "heroic high fantasy" realm, the D20 core system is quite adaptable. I don't know of anything that is comparable to your statement that the locations are presumed to change.
When I think about my recent Prince Valiant games, 3E has no good mechanics for jousting, for wooing, for social competition between PCs, for resolving a skirmish led by a PC and/or a PC's participation in that skirmish, for mocking a court into calling an animal as a witness in a sorcery trial, or for saying a prayer to receive a vision or a blessing. Nor, as a general rule, does not factor a character's determination, virtue or trepidation into action reolution. (Unless a particular spell or class ability is used to grant a morale bonus or impose a debuff.)

Just to fasetn on the last of those: the only rules for saying a prayer to receive a vision or a blessing involve the rules for casting by the cleric class. So there are no rules for prayer short of an entire PC build. I would call that an instance of "funnelling".

And all those examples are before we even get to the actual play experience that might be delivered. Dice pool games where you roll for successes produce a very differen experience from roll + add system, because no matter how many dice in the pool there is always a chance of failure even against the lowest possible DC. Which feeds into a completely different approach to framing and to outcomes from 3E.
 
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Garthanos

Arcadian Knight
Desperate Moves.
Just some thoughts zero time spent on numbers give these to a standard monster... when they are outclassed and cannot hit or defend themselves these become the only option.

Desperate Attack
this attack is + 6 to hit
but delivers normal damage as above with no special effects
Any Damage you take is multiplied by 2 till next turn (or 4x with exaggerated defense)

Desperate Defense
You gain 6 to all defenses
You cannot perform more than one attack per turn (yes you lose an opportunity attack or a regular one).
Any Damage you take is multiplied by 2 till next turn (or 4x if you have attacked last turn)
And you cannot attack more than once this turn.

A leader might command them to fight defensively and last 2 hits while acting as flankers and barriers to movement.

Some individuals might see either as "careful" as in carefully trying to hit, and carefully avoiding being hit, but they really arent you are leaving vital openings and stretching your luck.

There might be other oddities... they are just a different presentation of minionization.

(one could also insert psych bloodied state and halve hit points because of it...then treat Desperate as a status effect )

Minions are simplified so you do not have to mess with them as though they were the complex and interesting because in current context they really really arent anymore.
 
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Hussar

Legend
The bigger issue here, and the reason I think that posters like [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] and [MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION] come to such different conclusions when talking about 4e is that there are two very fundamentally different approaches to how to look at mechanics.

The reason that, say (and I'm just using you as an example here, not intended at all as any sort of attack on you) [MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION] comes to such different conclusions about Page 42 is that he is looking at the rules as discrete elements in the game. Which is fine when talking about 3e and AD&D. The rules were meant as discrete elements. Healing was largely divorced from anything else - you either healed naturally in down time or you healed magically. 3e had some in combat healing, true, but, again, that was 100% magical. Healing is a discrete element.

But, 4e doesn't work that way. 4e is very much holistic. You can't just look at Page 42 and come to conclusions. You also have to look at the entire game and then come to conclusions, which is why posters like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others have such different reactions. They don't see Page 42 as a discrete element, divorced from everything else. You also have to include the advice in the DMG like "Get to the action" and the tiers of play and the implications of those tiers. You don't have super doors in burned out shacks in Epic level play because, if you're following the advice in the game, you will never go into a burned out shack in epic level play. Why would you? Epic level play you should be dealing with gods and major demons and stuff, not wandering around The Keep on the Borderland. These issues just don't come up, if you follow the game holistically.

This is why everyone keeps talking past each other. You're fundamentally not speaking the same language. Sure, [MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION] is 100% right about Page 42 not making a lot of sense. That's 100% true if you view Page 42 as a discrete element divorced from the rest of the game. Same way as (I forget who made the excellent point) is 100% right in saying that character level both is and is not a determining factor in calculating DC. But, that's only true if you take the game as a whole, and not as discrete elements.
 

Sadras

Legend
The play example is interesting - thank you.

With 10th level PCs presumably the typical bonus to Persuade is something like +5 or so? (Presumably with a low of +0 for no stat or skill, through to a max of +13 for CHA and expertise.)

You are correct.

Battlemaster +0
Wizard +3 (+4 Prof, -1 CHA)
Cleric +6 (+4 Prof, +1 CHA, +1 Other)
Sorcerer +8 (+4 Prof, +4 CHA)

So the chance of making a DC 15 or 20 check is not that good for some of those PCs. But the chance of rolling below 11 is probably not that high. That adjudicative decision seems to have been quite important to the mathematics of that encounter.

I agree. It was either that or give everyone a +4 as per the module, which came out before the 5e Core Books, I don't know if Advantage was a known thing in the adventure designer's mind then.

They still had plenty of resources, including Inspiration, because they had circumvented two major combat encounters earlier (smart play, Stealth and a successful Polymorph spell on my first ever use of a Remorhaz). Our usual 6-hour play session finished in 3-3.5 hours. We were all surprised but the players were happy with the result and that the decisions they had taken had paid off (like bringing the father along and a few others).
 
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Sadras

Legend
Garthanos said:
OK one assertion I have been tracking down is that 4e style play can be leveraged in 5e. ...(snip)...
I am aware of a number of things valuable for that.

Absolutely.

1) allowing people to take a short rest by 4e standards simply by making a skill check of one form or another (it might be a survival one) or something else I know some who are not meticulous just use 4e rules for both this and flanking.

Agree.
RECHARGING: At our table rests are related to but separated from recharging of abilities which latter require a skill check (using your prof and primary ability modifier) with the exhaustion track for failures. However, and very importantly, even once failed you get the benefits of having your abilities recharged. The DC is determined by when you last Long Rested and how many times you have attempt to recharge your abilities.

RESTS: Short rests do not require a fixed hour. Long Rests require a 24 hours period. This works well for travel and city styled games and solves the std short rest rope trick and leomund's tiny hut combo.

FLANKING: 4e's +2 seems like a good fit, like a Lesser Advantage.

2) Using minions almost exactly like they are in 4e.
https://theangrygm.com/more-grist-fo...oups-in-dd-5e/

MINIONS: This works well to create a fast paced but thematic combat. I've not used this mechanic extensively as the PCS are only just 10th level.


This I will look into, but seems pretty intuitive if you have been DMing for a while.

3) General competence for heros... it seems skill based resolution is now more uncertain than it was as you advance. I keep feeling bounded accuracy is fighting the flavor. And several like @Manbearcat think the problem of non-combat uber mages has been compounded. Is there a way to break this?

Some ideas.
Offer an additional non-combat related Feat to mundanes. i.e. some of the lesser played feats.
For each Tier allow mundanes to have Expertise on one roll between Long Rests.
Incorporate those earlier editions Protection scroll spells usable by all (or Ritual Casters at least).

4) Using a healthy amount of magic items to up the zing of martial types in other tiers. (someone mentioned they thought the Adventurers League might have done this? ) might be a tool to address the fade of out of combat zing.

This feels rather blunt and inelegant, not much of a fan using this as a solution.

5) Monsters seem boring the Ogre presented looks like it might be an Ogre skirmisher with all the interesting bits torn off and left by the way side ... and yes I have heard a lot about pulling monster abilities forward into 5e too.

In another thread I elaborated on redesigning monsters, specifically the ogre, by pulling much from the descriptive section of the creature. Also allowing/incorporating shoves, pulls and grapples into the attack especially when so many creatures are so much bigger than your average human.
Another poster has mentioned he has increased many monsters' movement which seems like a good idea - allowing monsters to leap/jump i.e. be more inherently dynamic on the battlefield.

In my recent game, I introduced a remorhaz tearing out from under the tundra automatically creating an Ice Fracture (LotCS Statistics Next page 7). So while the PCs were having to deal with this beast they were also knocked prone and found themselves falling (10-50 feet) into freezing water or hanging onto some icy ledge or outcropping, having to scramble to get to the surface otherwise they were just sitting ducks as the beast had complete terrain advantage.
In my mind all that and more should have been added to the MM for the remorhaz entry.
 
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