My Brainfart

[I'm A Banana]

When you talk about the blacksmith who likes cheese, for example, I have a hard time relating that to... well, ANYTHING rules-wise in any edition. I don't think I've ever seen the phrase "Berserk (cheese) -- +1 to attack and damage when cheese is on the line" anywhere -- so there were no rules that you could use to adjudicate such a thing in the first place.

The absurd examples aren't too drastically different from the kind of things that regularly happen in my games. "Really Likes Cheese" is an interesting bit of flavor to have on an NPC (or even a monster!), and I'd want a way to mechanically represent that so that its not just empty fluff, so that the PC party can reliably and effectively use "really likes cheese" as a tool for interaction with this NPC, however they decide to interact with him.

The problem grows when they do things like try to tame the terrasque and have the magical and skill-based powers to actually pull it off so I feel like I should give them SOMETHING for their balls-out wackiness and adding fun to the game, if nothing else.

But that's perhaps just overstating the core point, which is that I really don't know how to and cannot (and do not want to try to) plan for what my PC's have in store for the hapless residents of my campaign world. So 4e's "Design for their Purpose!" strategy is useless to me. I can only give the players props, the way they use it is sometimes straightforward, but usually, its not. I want to be able to give my players complete props in 4e that can respond to a range of actions.

If they suddenly decide to fight the cheese-loving blacksmith, just treat him, as, oh, an orc, until you have time to do something better. Orcs are strong, right? Take an orc Soldier, slap on one NPC level of Fighter and give him some kind of hammer-based attack and you're good for the time being.

It gets a little sticky, there. If I use something as a baseline, I would need to be consistent with my baseline. If Bill isn't supposed to be an exceptional blacksmith except in the fact that he has this cheese fixation, and I use a given orc for him, the PC's are going to expect that other blacksmiths in the world have vaguely the same capabilities. And when they decide to go fight the orcs, they might be wondering why none of them have taken up blacksmithing, since they're eerily similar...

Basically, good plan, though I would need a baseline that would be good for "unexceptional folk" that I can modify...perhaps I'll re-do the NPC classes from 3e, just 4thify them so that I have an "everyone else" baseline?.....hm....maybe.

What would do this for you in 3e? Would NPC classes for 4e help you in any way? I seem to have seen a thread on the topic in the 4e House Rules forum.

Would you need some kind of "role" (as in "information resource", "combat challenge", "regenerating meat source", not as "defender", "striker", "leader") do it for you? Maybe the community can think up something of the sort for you (I have a couple of ideas there).

Hey, maybe we're getting somewhere!

I'll check that out, it sounds like it could be a big help. While it might not help in cases of Terrasque-taming, for the cheese-loving blacksmiths and joggling bards of the world, that might do fine.

I wonder how I could deal with monsters in the same way?

Is all flexibility fiat to you?

I mean, making up a 'lazer troll' that shoots laser beams from its eyes that instantly kill a target, that's rightly called fiat. Making History a Trained skill, not so much...

If the lazer troll had stats (and they were fair stats), then that would be less fiat, to me, then wiggling around trained skills on the spur of the moment.

It's pretty important to my sense of fair play and also my sense of fun to not have to do that much, if at all. It's also important that if my PC's meet a troll, I don't make it into a troll sage just because they try to get information out of it. It is what it is, and the PC's use it however their imaginations and abilties let them. I don't provide narrative devices, I provide characters, y'know?

 

[gonesailing]

I would need to be consistent with my baseline. If Bill isn't supposed to be an exceptional blacksmith except in the fact that he has this cheese fixation, and I use a given orc for him, the PC's are going to expect that other blacksmiths in the world have vaguely the same capabilities. And when they decide to go fight the orcs, they might be wondering why none of them have taken up blacksmithing, since they're eerily similar...

(Snip)

If the lazer troll had stats (and they were fair stats), then that would be less fiat, to me, then wiggling around trained skills on the spur of the moment.

It's pretty important to my sense of fair play and also my sense of fun to not have to do that much, if at all. It's also important that if my PC's meet a troll, I don't make it into a troll sage just because they try to get information out of it. It is what it is, and the PC's use it however their imaginations and abilties let them. I don't provide narrative devices, I provide characters, y'know?

Ok I'm done...and don't think this can go too much further without the word verissimilitude cropping up.

BTW- There are not that many skills and Knowledge (anything) isn't there. Just use INT and be done.

 

[xechnao]

What I still think you need to know is the various interactive relationships of the smith and their implications. Perhaps as an avid cheese expert he happened to be good friends with some local druidic circle and he was a friendly common point of reference in the relations among towns people and the druids and thus of some importance to both of them. If PCs mess up with him they should try to deal with suspicion of investigations since they somehow were known to be looking for a blacksmith.
If the PCs manage to make up for it perhaps then the towns people may require the PCs to do some service for the smith, for example find an enchanting liquor for his anvil that he asks them to.

 

[Mallus]

If the lazer troll had stats (and they were fair stats), then that would be less fiat, to me, then wiggling around trained skills on the spur of the moment.

My point was that "lazer troll" wasn't fair at all (and that giving a Trained knowledge skill to a plain ol' troll was trivial in terms of game balance).

It's pretty important to my sense of fair play and also my sense of fun to not have to do that much, if at all.

So flexibility is fiat for you. OK. Then you're just going to have to accept that atypical characters like a troll ambassador or a troll haberdasher will give you a headache.

It's also important that if my PC's meet a troll, I don't make it into a troll sage just because they try to get information out of it.

Hey, I though you wanted to make a troll sage?

I don't provide narrative devices, I provide characters, y'know?

Characters are narrative devices.

 

[blargney the second]

I assume you've got a decent amount of system mastery with respect to previous editions of D&D. 4e is a new game - give yourself some time to learn the rules, and I'm sure it will all start coming together. System mastery doesn't happen instantaneously.

 

[F5]

I haven't got my books, yet (GOSH DARN YOU TO HECK, AMAZON.COM!), but I expect I'll be in the same boat you're in. I like to improvise stuff on the fly, and I use the existing stats to riff of of. If monsters in 4E are tailor made with just enough stats for specific encounters, they won't inspire me with ways to use them in other types of encounters, which is what keeps them interesting for me.

From the sound of it, it's supposed to be really easy to modify monsters for new types of encounters, though. And the rules/guidelines to be able to do so seem to be pretty solid and clear.

If that's the case, maybe it becomes a non-issue? You put your NPCs where they belong, with the minimum amount of detail possible, and when the PCs encounter a goblin in the main channel of a sewer and they decide they need a combat encounter, the <goblin 3> becomes a Goblin Skirmisher with 3 HD. If they try to engage the thing in conversation, to get info on the BBEG who fled into the sewers the night before, he becomes a <goblin 3> with an int of 10, and a perception skill of +8. The fact that he would have been a 3 HD goblin skirmisher isn't revealed unless they try to fight him, which makes the act of giving him a skirmisher's to-hit, saves and powers after the fact feel a little less like fiat. That +8 perception roll didn't need to exist before he retroactively had to have noticed that a dude in black skull-motif armor came through the night before.

Monsters and NPCs in 4e are best treated as Schroedinger's Cat. It's not a Goblin Skirmisher with +8 perception until you open the box.

God, that's a painful metaphor. But, there you go. I think this falls under Plan B, though...getting familiar enough with the 4E MM rules that you can pull stuff like that out of the air. I think it may be easier to do this in 4E than in 3E. At least, I hope so.

Also, isn't it possible to stat out monsters as NPCs, with full class abilities, etc? Maybe it's helpful to do that ahead of time for a bunch of commonly-encountered creatures. It may give you a better idea of just what that Troll is really capable of, outside of his roughly-defined, narrative-element role.

 

[The Little Raven]

That's enough to handle him in combat, and perhaps in a skill challenge, but...how long does it take to make those swords?

How long do you need him to take? Who is to say how many of those goblins can help him make those swords, so it's a matter of how much time you need to get the goblins fully armed. I dunno how long it takes to forge a sword, but a Google search turned up a month.

Is he balanced both as a challenge to reward XP and as a helper?

The DMG can handle this. Check out the Allies as Extra Characters sidebar (page 115 or 116 I think). It tells you how to incorporate an NPC into your group as an ally, and how he balances. Once you come up with his combat stats, you should be able to determine that pretty quickly.

And how do I ask for the extra 15 minutes to stat up Bill if the players decide to fight him, or to use him in the Goblin warrens, or want to know how fast he can shod a small army of horses?

Write him up ahead of time for combat. Whether the PCs decide to gank him or decide to recruit him to fight against the goblins shouldn't matter too much (unless you want to make him a solo encounter if they decide to fight him). He'll work as an encounter or an ally either way.

And what if one of the PC's picks up that hammer?

Since it's not a real weapon, it would fall under the rules for improvised weapons.

Was Bill's Greater-Than-10 AC the result of his leather apron?

I dunno, was it? Do you want someone to be able to pick up the leather apron and use it as leather armor? Did he maybe serve in the military at some point and gain some training to explain his defensive capabilities?

What if someone in the party wants to know how many horseshoes they find in the loot?

Now you're just sounding like you want someone else to do all your prep work for you. I don't recall any edition of any game telling you how many horseshoes you'd find in a smith after you kill the smith. Just determine the reward as per the DMG's guidelines, and give them in the form of trade goods (horseshoes, if you want, or ingots, or smelted bars, or whatnot).

And uses them as weapons in the ensuing battle against the guards?

Improvised weapons.

I totally accept that I'm weird for needing this for my games, but there's gotta be an answer somewhere!!!

Okay, I know how to help you. Pretty much everything you're worried about would be solved if you read the PHB and the DMG front to back. Designing Bill will be a snap (you can pick another 1st-level humanoid and file off the serial numbers, swap an ability around, and presto), you've got all the answers for "what if a player picks up something not meant to be used as a weapon" with Improvised Weapons, you've got stats for human guards in the MM if they murder Bill.

The only thing the DMG doesn't give you is how long it takes to craft something like a sword or horseshoes (and the old systems were so far off base in terms of time accuracy), which you can look up online or just fudge.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Are you serious about needing stats for Leather Aprons, and Horseshoes? Did 3rd edition (core books) give those?

Mmm...you're focusing a bit too much on the specifics. I need help running the blacksmith like a game element, rather than as a narrative element. Ditto with the monsters. The actual scenario at the table goes something like this.

[sblock=Longish Example]
For Pre-prep, the group is en route to deal with a dragon problem in the far north of the kingdom of Mourncrest. I pull out a Black Dragon, an encounter with Hippogriffs, and an encounter with Hobgoblins as the major combat for the session. All I do for pre-prep is put little stickies in the MM pages for those monsters. We begin play, the group fights the Hippogriffs, and comes to a small town that I intend for them to use as refuelling...getting new horses to replace the ones lost, but, of course, getting low-quality broken down horses to reflect the decaying nature of the world the closer they get to the Black Dragon's home.

DM (me): (after a battle with hippogriffs) Okay, you've made it safely to Podunk, finally. Your horses did get killed by hippogriffs on the way, but you are all intact. What do you do?
Fargus: If there are any girls there, I want to do them.
DM: Hahahaha...
Fargus: I'm serious. I'm cruising for small-town lovin'. Find me a nice farm girl. Maybe tell her I'll give up my wandering ways and settle down with her and raise a family...
DM:....okay, are you serious?
Fargus: No, it'll be a Bluff check. Do I find any girls?
DM: (thinking about small-town demographics) Uhm...sure. You're walking through Main Street, and you pass by a dress shop, and you see a mother in there shopping with her five daughters, ages...er...about five to sixteen.
Fargus: Okay, I'm only going to hit on the mom...and maybe the sixteen year old...I told you, my character wants a port in every storm, so to speak! It's so one of them might break the family curse!
DM: Okay....we'll...uh....get back to that later? Are the rest of you going to be around to watch this insanity? If not, let me know what you're doing.
Laura: No way, man. Vivian's going to get some horses.
Barry: So is Galbraxas. Galbraxas knows that we cannot trust halflings to pick out good horses because of their tiny tiny tininess.
Shaneque: Frees up me to go to the bar!
Christine: Time for drinks! Woo!
(we resolve everyone else's actions. Laura and Barry meet a stablemaster who will sell them three poor-quality horses and a cart for 3,000 gp total, after they talked him down using Diplomacy. Shaneque and Christine learn that the hippogriffs are stirring due to the strange lights up in the mountain by buying some folks drinks. The town is in an economic crisis becuase the hippogriffs are eating their livestock, and they can't sell much at the market. Everyone is tense and poor and even the most common goods fetch large prices. This is part of the "everything is dying" feel for the campaign that the PC's will eventually right. Meanwhile, Fargus is going to try and get a little...)
Fargus: Okay, about those girls....?
DM: Well, sure. The mom is early 20's-ish. She's not dressed in anything too fancy, but there's a sort of elegance to her tattered sundress and faded bonnet. The kids all look better cared for, rosy and energetic, with dresses in bright pink, yellow, and blue, and red, in ascending order of age, except for the thirteen-year-old, who is wearing trousers, a tunic, and a vest, and has her hair cut unusually short. It kind of looks like she did it herself, beause it's REALLY short, and pretty ragged, better in the front than it is in the back. She'd look kind of boyish if it weren't for those wide country hips. The clerk at the desk is steadfastly ignoring them, paging through a catalogue of new styles from the South.
(All character development. I've decided, as I'm saying this, that the family is poor, but large, and the parents sacrifice to give the kids everything they want. The dress shop gets imports from far away, the most beautiful and trendy styles from the capitol city to the snowy South. I might have notes for each of the five kids, the wife, and, of course, the husband. Note for the husband? "His name is Bill Smith, and he works as the town's blacksmith. He has an unusual fixation on expensive cheeses, but he hasn't been able to buy any recently because of the economic stress. It is making him iritable and grumpy and a little desperate to get his hands on something. The girls are in here shopping to get away from the forge, because Bill was being especially angry." They can't afford anything here, but they're browsing.)
Fargas: Cool, the mom's a little older than me. What's the smallest one doing?
DM: (I'm a little caught off guard, I thought he was just going to smarm his way up to the mom, get slapped, and we'd be on with it. But whatever, I'm the DM...) She's admiring a pretty dress that is pink like hers, but with silver butterflies patterned into the hem. She's got huge dinner-plate eyes, and she's pawing at it a little, you can see that it's pretty expensive fabric. A little out of date for your hometown in the South, but better than anything you've seen anyone in the town wearing so far, especially that girl's mom.
Fargas: Okay, I bend down next to her, and I look at the dress. I say "That's a very pretty dress!"
DM (my note sheet has, for the youngest kid, the note: "friendly, bold, adventurous, likes butterflies") "Yeah, it is! I wanna get it, but momma says we can't get anything today, 'cuz it's too 'spensive." The mom is looking over at you a little warily, this strange bearded man in armor with weapons talking to her five-year-old.
Fargas: I smile and wave, and I keep talking to the kid. "Is that your momma over there?"
DM: "Yes, mister, it is!"
Fargas: "And what's your name?"
DM: "I'm Lydia! I'm five years old!" At this point, the mother has started walking over to you guys, you've got time to say one more thing before she approaches.
Fargas: Okay, I say "Do you think your mom would mind if I bought the dress for you?" As I say that, I look right at the mom.
DM: (I have a sudden realization of his strategy, and I think...wait a second...this is going to last...knowing what I know about the family, he'll be able to get in their good graces very well! Smooth, Fargas, smooth!) She stops, and looks a little shocked. She speaks a little hesitatingly. "L...Lydia, come here, you don't know that man." Lydia jumps up and runs over to her, transparent five-year-old joy on her face, "Momma momma! He said he'd buy the butterfly dress for me!" The mom looks at you, and turns away and says "I'm sure we don't need his charity, Lydia..."
Fargas: I stand up and I say "But perhaps you'd like my services? I'm an artist, you see, and I think little Lydia here would just be lovely as a subject, in that dress in fact..."...I look over her Skittles Rainbow of offspring...the Red is the oldest right? Okay, I look at Red a little longer than the rest..."In fact, I'd like to buy your whole family new dresses, and paint you all!"
DM (Now I'm caught off guard again...this plan is almost pointlessly elaborate. He's an orc-killer not a painter!) There are gasps and the ten year old in blue squeals a little (my notes for her include: "Materialistic, longs to be wealthy"). The thirteen year old kind of rolls her eyes. The clerk looks up from the catalogue. Uhm...the mom kind of approaches you, she's shocked, and she whispers low to you so that her girls can't hear, and she says "Sir, don't play with my girls' hearts like that, we are not people of means! We cannot repay this favor!"
Fargas: Okay, okay....I say "Ma'am, it is a favor of the king to you! Your family is a beautiful representation of the lovliness inherent in our kingdom, and the portrait of you six lovely ladies will hang in the gilded halls of Castle Mourncrest! You are the nobility of the townsfolk, and you would honor our fair nation by appearing in it."
DM: Fargas...you're kidding me?
Fargas: (smiling like a weasel) Time for that bluff check yet?
DM: Oh, heck yeah! -5 penalty for blatantly outrageous claims, even! Dude, you're courageous.
(Fargas went in prepared for this, and his character has a habit of lying to every attractive woman he sees, so he's trained in Bluff, and, at any rate, would have no large trouble beating an untrained commoner...and he doesn't roll a 1, either.)
DM: They....uhm...believe you. Congrats, in their minds, you are now some sort of royal artist.
Fargas: Okay, I whisper back to the mom, specifically, "I'd like to get you something special, too, it seems you haven't been graced in all the fine fabrics a woman of your inesteemable beauty would deserve."
DM: Bluff again, -10 this time
Fargas: Is she ugly? Can I Diplomacy instead?
DM: (I look at my notes...she's got no penalty for ugliness or anything of the sort). No, okay, but keep the -5 because you are laying it on thick like molasses, man.
Fargas: Oh, these naieve peasant women...hahahaha
(Fargas rolls, and succeeds again...not hard to do vs. untrained peasants if you're prepared like he was...they didn't stand a chance!).
Fargas: So I buy everyone dresses...except the thirteen year old! I give her my sword. It's masterwork, I tell her it has killed over 20 enemies of the king. How much do the dresses cost?
DM: She thinks that's REALLY COOL. Dresses are (...noble's outfit?)...300 gp each, so that's 1,800 GP.
Fargas: Nuts, I only have 500. I give them that and tell them its a down payment, for the rest, they can send to the Royal Treasury. I give them some BS address...
(It goes on like this for some time, Fargas almost constantly succeeding on his Charisma checks vs. untrained commoners. I even give him a circumstance bonus for spending hard cash on something that is basically a plot device he'll never see again. That kind of character investment is cool to me. He fails once, when he tries to hit on the sixteen year old, but he's getting everywhere with the mother, who is undoubtedly charmed. He even pulls off "drawing" them by Bluffing and pretending to doodle on some parchment, while telling them they can't see the pictures because they're not finished yet, but that they will be invited to the palace to see them when it opens. He milks this all day in some field on the outskirts of town, and then tells the mother to meet him late tonight in the inn he's staying at. He does manage to find out that she's married. He doesn't really care, because his character expects to be gone in the morning, with fresh horses. He doesn't yet know about the three broken-down nags that cost a king's ransom.)

(Back at the inn, he's got no gold for a room, but he doesn't really need one...he just stands outside, waiting....I, as a DM, now have to decide if the Momma is so charmed that she'll break her wedding vows tonight. It's entirely believable, but I don't want to let Fargas off so easy. Fargas is staying at the inn, which is serving cheese and bread and wine, classic fantasy fare, so there I have it...Fargas and Momma get caught by Bill, who was in the neighborhood to sample the cheese that the inn got in. When I wrote Bill, he was just a name, and some personality quirks...now, in the middle of the session, the mantra has changed and he might very well be a combat encounter. I need stats! In 3.5, I know what those stats might be, because there are NPC classes and those NPCs have HP and BAB and saves even though they rarely need them, and right now, I need them, and Bill needs them, even though he didn't a minute ago, because I never guessed that a party that could fight hippogriffs would get in such trouble at a simple rest stop....but they are players, its their job to surprise me. In 4e, I'm not sure what I'd do aside from stop the game for 15 minutes, which isn't really desirable.)

(Perhaps after their fight, in order to mix it up and unify the dangling threads of story, I turn Bill into the one person who might be able to help them get those horses, since Fargas spent all his money on dresses. Or perhaps they steal the horses in the night. Or perhaps they walk, and Bill's wife, thrown out of the house by her extra-grumpy husband, tries to follow the party, maybe tries to strangle Fargas in his sleep for ruining her life, and thus SHE needs combat stats. I don't just want to declare "she miraculously avoids all danger and finds Fargas at an awkward moment," or to simply declare "the hobogoblins have killed her and put her head on a pike," and maybe the note I had for the mother, that she "likes to cook things with berries in them.")

(And then, from the monster side, we've got a party with less-than-ideal mounts, maybe they try to ride the black dragon back to town rather than fight it, making a deal with it that it can eat the idiot king and melt the city to the ground, and then, what kind of challenge can I throw at a party with a black dragon on their side?!)
[/sblock]

That was kind of long and mostly pointless, but it was kind of fun to write, and might help clarify the DMing style that I need help fitting a little better?

It boils down to: I don't know how this black dragon, or this blacksmith, or this treant, or this goblin, or this sword, or this horseshoe, or this spear, or this troll....I don't know how they are going to be used by my PC's, nor do I wish to really declare them only usable in methods XYZ, nor do I wish to try and figure out the thousands of different things my PC's could do when faced with it and then design it for every one of those (that's kind of what 3e did, after all).

I want my game elements to work as game elements (things you can play with) and as world elements (things that don't change properties because of metagame considerations), not as narrative elements (things that serve the purposes of a given plot), because my PC's will use them not as narrative elements, but as game and world elements.

I need something that will help shift the burden of 4e's "Design them for what they'll be used for!" into something that is "They have properties X, Y, Z, regardless of how you use them."

Maybe I need to go to Plan B and re-write the Monster Manual for that? Booooo....

 

[Doug McCrae]

In Pendragon, you'd know how much he loves cheese.

 

[thatdarnedbob]

That was kind of long and mostly pointless, but it was kind of fun to write, and might help clarify the DMing style that I need help fitting a little better?

Okay, here's my advice: You are over thinking things.

Your example shows that you're clearly a prepared and skilled DM, especially with the prewritten character qualities for small children in town. What you should do is continue to create detailed characters, and only think about the "new monster design philosophy" when you're assigning numerical values to them. Here's what I would do with this family of 6:

The youngest child has almost no real world experience, so I'd give her a wisdom of 4 or 6, and no training in Insight. So a charismatic manipulator would have to roll against a 7 or 8 passive insight total, which with skill training is ridiculously easy.

The mother and the eldest daughter might be more worldly, but still are not known for wisdom, so 14 is probably the max for their scores with 10 being most likely. Their passive insight is likely a 12, still easy.

For a shopkeeper, bargain sense is important, so even at 1st level he'd get a 14 at least, and possibly training in the insight skill. The player is then looking at beating a 17 with his skill check at least, which while higher is still not a huge challenge.

These numbers could literally (not literally literally) roll out of you head while the player is explaining what he's doing, but if you feel like you need to prepare them, go ahead. Here's how.

Create the personality of the NPC as you normally do, then assign a level based on their stature in the world. A peasant is usually 1, a village mayor 5, a city-state senator 15, and so on. Choose which abilities and skills are most important to that character, and assign them appropriately. If the character would be dangerous in battle, go ahead and choose a weapon, armor and class for them. It shouldn't take any more time than the same process in 3rd edition did.

Anyways, I think you're kind of freaking out about your style because a lot of the new edition is unfamiliar. The point is your old style still works, there's just different numbers in the stat block! You don't have to worry.