My Brainfart

[Pbartender]

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!


Fargus: Okay, about those girls....?
DM: Well, sure. The mom is early 20's-ish...

Fargas: Whoa. Wait a minute. The eldest daughter is 16, but the mother's only in her early 20's? She'd have been less than ten years old!

Fixed That For You.



Anyway, here's what I'm hearing from you KM... "I want to have all the details spelled out by the rules, but I don't want to go back to the Edition that use that paradigm."

Later, "I want to be able to make that troll into anything because I don't know what my players will decide to do when they meet him, but I don't want to make him into something just because the players decide to do something when they meet him."

You're contradicting yourself. Either plan it out ahead of time, or don't. You can do that in any edition.

That said, quick stats are easy in 4E... Take a reasonable guess at ability scores (He's a smith, so he's got a 14 Strength, and a 12 Consitution, everything else is 10). Pick his "level" (He's only in his twenties, but he's been apprenticing since he was old enough to walk, so I'll make him "4th Level"). When you roll for a skill or an attack, it's simply d20 + 1/2 "level" + ability score. If it's something that he'd reasonably be skilled or talented in, give him an extra +5. Defenses are 10 + ability score.

That's it.

Everything else is flavor text and roleplaying.


EDIT: I just noticed James posting pretty much exactly what I was thinking. Read his post again, KM.

 

[AWizardInDallas]

What do I mean? I mean the advice in the core books largely boils down to "Design them for their intended purpose." This is all well and good and fine and dandy and filled with bubblegum and candy-coated rainbow pieces of deliciousness

Wow. What a heinous piece of advice. So does this mean characters and monsters are disposable beyond the adventure they were written for? Seems to me that whoever wrote that drivel has forgotten about role-playing's roots in fiction. Characters and monsters are meant to live, breathe and, yes, recur so my only advice is to take your hints from literature. Design a believable person not just another dominoe in the trick.

 

[jdrakeh]

Seems to me that whoever wrote that drivel has forgotten about role-playing's roots in fiction. Characters and monsters are meant to live, breathe and, yes, recur so my only advice is to take your hints from literature.

Seems that whoever wrote the quoted post has forgotten about D&D's roots in wargaming

 

[AWizardInDallas]

Seems that whoever wrote the quoted post has forgotten about D&D's roots in wargaming

Story telling came way before wargaming was ever invented.

 

[jdrakeh]

Story telling came way before wargaming was ever invented.

And?

This doesn't change the fact that D&D has never had mechanical roots in literature as you claim. D&D was, in fact, originally "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playble with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures". It was certainly inspired by literature, though the original rules rarely (if ever) seek to mechanically simulate literature (past the dubious use of race names lifted directly from Tolkien's LotR, anyhow).

Incidentally, wouldn't custom-creating monsters to suit the story, rather than using a cookie-cutter template be more faithful to the concept of literature emulation? Just a thought. Because this is exactly what the "heinous" advice in question suggests -- creating monsters custom-tailored to encounters. Or, as you suggest, making them matter in the context of story.

[Edit: Spelling corrected.]

 

[I'm A Banana]

Anyway, here's what I'm hearing from you KM... "I want to have all the details spelled out by the rules, but I don't want to go back to the Edition that use that paradigm."

Later, "I want to be able to make that troll into anything because I don't know what my players will decide to do when they meet him, but I don't want to make him into something just because the players decide to do something when they meet him."

Well, its more that I want that troll to be able to respond to what the PC's throw at him by having rules for telling me what that troll is like as a baseline. What the DMG and MM are telling me is that the stats for the critter in the MM aren't what the creature is like, they are what a fight with the creature is like (they're not meant to simulate anything aside from the fight). But when I take those stats and I use them in something that's not a fight, I'm going to need a robust system for handling that transition.

Take the blacksmith. He was never meant to be fought, so I don't have a quick way to turn him from three-word descriptions into a combat encounter if I need to. Similarly, I don't have a quick way to turn an orc in the MM into a recurring mentor character, or to advance a kobold that the PC's have recruited as an ally and who has persevered for 10 levels (or turn that kobold into a PC when one of the other characters dies and a player wants to take him over).

By giving me a lot of rules, 3e could handle a lot of that solid baseline. By only giving me things that address a specific type of encounter, 4e leaves me kind of floundering when it turns into a different kind of encounter halfway through. I want to stop floundering, but I don't want to spend time with intricate rules systems or making stuff up.

I can't say "You will fight hobgoblins." I can only say "There are hobgoblins." 4e tells me what hobgoblins are like in a fight, but it doesn't tell me what hobgoblins are, period, in a fight or in a dance contest or when mutating animals.

When I ask 4e "What's a hobgoblin?" it tells me "It depends on what you want to use it for." I say "I don't know," it says "Neither do I, then, until you do."

That's a hang-up for me. I can see what hobgoblins do when beating up PC's, but its harder for me to see what hobgoblins do when those PC's ask to join the hobgoblin army in its march on the kingdom (and thus what hobgoblins do when beating up NPC's, or when on the march, or...)

Hm...maybe I'll have to work out a "NONCOMBAT" section for every MM group that can help me prepare for these things ahead of time...but that's a lot of work, and I'm lazy, so I was looking to avoid that.

 

[Pbartender]

...stuff...

I gotcha...

Essentially, you want a fully-fledged non-combat statblock in the same way 4E provides for a combat statblock.

The trouble is, 4E seems to be focused on providing rules for conflict situations, mainly combat, while leaving the non-conflict roleplaying situations up to, well, roleplaying. It's a throwback to the earlier editions of D&D, and one thing that appeals to a lot of the "grognards" who embrace and enjoy 4th Edition.

In 3E, if you wanted a cheese connoisseur, you give him ranks in Profession (cheesetaster), and Craft (cheese), with Skill Focus in both, etc., etc.

Now in 4E, you just note down that "He likes cheese", and have him act appropriately. He grumbles, because of the rationing caused by the war, the fact that quality has suffered because of it, he elucidates on the flavors of his favorite cheeses using words like "nutty" and "smoky" and "delicate palette", he can expound upon the cheese making process, and is proud to show off his own clandestine cheese-making efforts hidden away in the basement.

4E took a look at that aspect of 3E and said, "Do we really needs special skills and feats for that sort of thing?" This time around, the answer was "No, they're generally useless, and most players don't bother with them anyway."

Anyway, when it comes to dice rolling in ragards to such "backstory hobbies", the 4E rules have some pretty simple, but effective suggestions... Roll a 1d20 + 1/2 Level + Appropriate ability modifier. That effectively represents an untrained skill check. Add a +5 bonus, if it's something the person should be really good at. The target is either an opposed check, the target's AC/Fort/Ref/Will defense, or some flat DC you choose (there's a chart on p.42 of the DMG with DC suggestions by level).

So...

Giving a lecture about cheese? 1d20 + 1/2 Level + Int mod
Trying to taste test cheese? 1d20 + 1/2 Level + Wis mod
Starring in a commercial for cheese? 1d20 + 1/2 Level + Cha mod
Entered in a cheese eating contest? 1d20 + 1/2 Level + Con mod
Carving a cheese sculpture? 1d20 + 1/2 Level + Dex mod
Attempting to win the Olympic Gold Medal for distance cheese throwing? 1d20 + 1/2 Level + Str mod

You don't need to have specific skills for them, because it's all built into the basics. It essentially allows you to easily make up non-combat stats on the fly, without having them effect the combat stats in any way.

Furthermore, you don't need a long list of "Craft (basketweaving) +2" skills cluttering up the combat stats... Just a quick blurb on the creatures personality and habits, which doesn't even have to written down, depending on your inclinations as a DM.

 

[jdrakeh]

Hm...maybe I'll have to work out a "NONCOMBAT" section for every MM group that can help me prepare for these things ahead of time...but that's a lot of work, and I'm lazy, so I was looking to avoid that.

I think that it would simply be easier for you to play a game that supports your stated preference for prescriptive rules, dude -- whether that means playing D&D 3x or Burning Wheel. I mean, it's clear you want rules that tell you specifically what hobgoblins are in the context of a setting and how they will work in said setting. It's also very clear that D&D4e doesn't do this.

This being the case, rather stick with a system that wants you to create your own rationales for how monsters work in your own settings, it seems that you would be better off with a system that spells all of those things out for you, even if that means surrendering some creative control over your setting by way of letting the rules dictate certain facets of it absolutely.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, its more that I want that troll to be able to respond to what the PC's throw at him by having rules for telling me what that troll is like as a baseline. What the DMG and MM are telling me is that the stats for the critter in the MM aren't what the creature is like, they are what a fight with the creature is like (they're not meant to simulate anything aside from the fight). But when I take those stats and I use them in something that's not a fight, I'm going to need a robust system for handling that transition.

The stat-block is not limited to combat, though. Most (if not all) is usually on the lower end of the stat-block, or in the text around.

The lower end of the stat-block contains all ability scores (giving you also insight into the physical and mental capabilities of the creature) and the skills. It's not _that_ different from 3E, really. Aside from the monsters with a lot of spell-like abilities, most monsters did only contain non-combat information in their skill list. The only difference seems to be how this is arrived: 3e uses skill point shuffling, 4E just denotes training.
The bigger change from 3E is that non-adventuring or non-conflict skills are no longer modeled in 4E skills.

 

[AWizardInDallas]

And?

This doesn't change the fact that D&D has never had mechanical roots in literature as you claim.

I never said anything about mechanics at all. Please don't put words in my mouth to support your argument.

It was certainly inspired by literature

And that's where my point ends. Again, I never said anything about game mechanics or simulation at all.

Incidentally, wouldn't custom-creating monsters to suit the story, rather than using a cookie-cutter template be more faithful to the concept of literature emulation? Just a thought. Because this is exactly what the "heinous" advice in question suggests -- creating monsters custom-tailored to encounters. Or, as you suggest, making them matter in the context of story.

Who said anything about cookie cutters or templates? Again, I never said anything about any of that jazz. Really all I'm saying is to imagine characters and monsters the way you would in books and doing so is game system independent.