My take.
- Thread starter Celebrim
- Start date
Celebrim
Legend
AllisterH said:
This doesn't prove what you seem to think it proves. You are simply reinforcing the 'house cat' problem by noting its also a 'venomous spider' problem. Simply put, the 'size' of a hit point is too large to model anything at a fine scale well. Anytime any feature of the game hits the unit size (1 hp, 1 damage, 1 str, whatever) you run into subtle problems, and this happens fairly often because everything is baselined to numbers like 1HD, 1 die of damage, and average attribute = 10.
I agree that the system was never really meant to model combat between a human and say ordinary crows, sewer rats, house cats, largish bats, foot long centipedes, ordinary scorpions, ordinary venomous spiders, or anything of that sort. Nonetheless it has been called on from time to time to actually do so in alot of peoples campaigns including mine, and monsters of these sorts were included in beastiaries since almost the games inception. Moreover, to the extent that it fails with these sorts of monsters it fails also with things like stirges, giant leaches, undead monkeys, mummified cats, various fey creatures and so forth. If you don't find these sorts of things interesting, you are entitled to your opinion but I think that any monster that can play off people's real fears is an interesting one.
I think a combat system ought to be flexible enough to handle creatures of a wide variaty of scales. One of the great things about 3E is that it made dramatic steps in improving the resolution of combats between creatures of different scales, both from a gamist ('swarm' rules) and simulationist perspective (reach, modifiers resulting from size class, suggested attribute adjustments for changing size class). I didn't want to roll those improvements back. I wanted to see them refined.
Jhulae said:
Normal housecats were never given statistics in OD&D or BECMI. It can be argued that their scratches were negligible compared to the scale of damage (1d6 or 1d8) done by a sword, axe, or arrow. Core AD&D 1E likewise didn't assign damage to cat scratches until the MMII came out and a lot of us think that was a distinct mistake. For me it's preferable to go back and switch cat-scratch damage from 1 to 0, then it is to remake the entire infrastructure of how damage and hit points are assessed in D&D.
Celebrim (and those concerned with believability), though i think your concerns about certain 4e rules are valid, i would suggest you pick your battles, and try not to make your predicament into something larger than it is.
i realize that you are averse to developing the extensive house-rules that would be necessary to realistically represent a system whereby characters could be genuinely inept at certain skills within 4e (for instance). now, my suspicion is that this matter will not go totally unaddressed in the PHB, but even if it does, this is really nothing a little party consensus and/or DM fiat can't summarily deal with. if, because of a character's background, it would be wildly implausible that they'd be any good at jumping, swimming, etc. (even after extensive adventuring), then just make the character do a straight ability check. or impose a -5 penalty to the skill roll. or whatever seems appropriate.
the point here is that formalized house rules are not the only way a group might deviate from the standard rules. the rules are there as guidelines; in cases such as complex tactical combat, it is important to have well-defined, systematic rules so that the multiplicity of declarations, checks, and rolls can flow together in a way that feels challenging, fair, fun, and not overly cumbersome, but even in combat there are many cases where it makes sense to adjudicate certain events on a more ad-hoc basis than the standard rules might indicate. this holds even more so for slower-paced or otherwise non-combat related adjudication. again, in the latter case, it's useful to have rules in place (for social challenges, skill checks, etc.), but they are guidelines above all else. if they lead to wildly implausible conclusions, the DM and/or party can rule on the matter in an ad hoc fashion. i'm sure that the 4e core books will say the same thing.
the same goes for dealing with things like snakes or other low-hd creatures. 4e combat rules were developed as they are because they handle most combat situations well. for outlying cases, use your own discretion. you don't need formalized house rules to decide how fighting individual small animals is covered (and note that fighting swarms of small animals is covered in the rules); you can simply decide how to handle it when you write the small animal fight into your quest. or if it's not something you planned for in the quest, just handle it with on-the-fly judgments.
systematized rules cannot cover everything. i agree that 'simulation' is part of the fun of an RPG, but rule systems aren't there to do the simulating; they are there to assist with the players' adjudication of their simulation, which really takes place within the narrative frame established by the players. in some cases (like when the party has the services of a cleric on hand and can thus be reasonably expected to fully heal over the next six hours), the rules will pose no great affront to believability and may as well be followed to the word. in other cases (like if the fighter has become separated from the party and decides to rest for six hours) the rules will conflict with a believable representation of events, and so must be circumvented. if you find you have to make the same ad-hoc judgment regularly, then you have a house-rule, but there's no need to try to anticipate every single deviation from the standard rules before it becomes an actual issue, or to try to explain every single ad-hoc judgment by the DM in terms of some universal law that is consistent and integrated with all the other rules. it's a lost cause for ANY game, not just d&d.
so i can't help but feel that your claim to 'have no desire to make house rules' exaggerates the significance of rules-deviation. very little effort on your part is actually required to maintain believability in the context of your game. regular ad-hoc judgments will turn into house-rules (or persistent stat-modifications in the case of PCs' characteristics) organically, with virtually no dedicated work toward this end (except maybe to tweak a house rule a little after it becomes formalized). ad-hoc judgments which aren't frequently repeated need never be formalized.
meanwhile, the rules that ARE formalized and systematic manage to do a better job than previous editions of handling those game events that formalized, systematic rules are most necessary for.
i realize that you are averse to developing the extensive house-rules that would be necessary to realistically represent a system whereby characters could be genuinely inept at certain skills within 4e (for instance). now, my suspicion is that this matter will not go totally unaddressed in the PHB, but even if it does, this is really nothing a little party consensus and/or DM fiat can't summarily deal with. if, because of a character's background, it would be wildly implausible that they'd be any good at jumping, swimming, etc. (even after extensive adventuring), then just make the character do a straight ability check. or impose a -5 penalty to the skill roll. or whatever seems appropriate.
the point here is that formalized house rules are not the only way a group might deviate from the standard rules. the rules are there as guidelines; in cases such as complex tactical combat, it is important to have well-defined, systematic rules so that the multiplicity of declarations, checks, and rolls can flow together in a way that feels challenging, fair, fun, and not overly cumbersome, but even in combat there are many cases where it makes sense to adjudicate certain events on a more ad-hoc basis than the standard rules might indicate. this holds even more so for slower-paced or otherwise non-combat related adjudication. again, in the latter case, it's useful to have rules in place (for social challenges, skill checks, etc.), but they are guidelines above all else. if they lead to wildly implausible conclusions, the DM and/or party can rule on the matter in an ad hoc fashion. i'm sure that the 4e core books will say the same thing.
the same goes for dealing with things like snakes or other low-hd creatures. 4e combat rules were developed as they are because they handle most combat situations well. for outlying cases, use your own discretion. you don't need formalized house rules to decide how fighting individual small animals is covered (and note that fighting swarms of small animals is covered in the rules); you can simply decide how to handle it when you write the small animal fight into your quest. or if it's not something you planned for in the quest, just handle it with on-the-fly judgments.
systematized rules cannot cover everything. i agree that 'simulation' is part of the fun of an RPG, but rule systems aren't there to do the simulating; they are there to assist with the players' adjudication of their simulation, which really takes place within the narrative frame established by the players. in some cases (like when the party has the services of a cleric on hand and can thus be reasonably expected to fully heal over the next six hours), the rules will pose no great affront to believability and may as well be followed to the word. in other cases (like if the fighter has become separated from the party and decides to rest for six hours) the rules will conflict with a believable representation of events, and so must be circumvented. if you find you have to make the same ad-hoc judgment regularly, then you have a house-rule, but there's no need to try to anticipate every single deviation from the standard rules before it becomes an actual issue, or to try to explain every single ad-hoc judgment by the DM in terms of some universal law that is consistent and integrated with all the other rules. it's a lost cause for ANY game, not just d&d.
so i can't help but feel that your claim to 'have no desire to make house rules' exaggerates the significance of rules-deviation. very little effort on your part is actually required to maintain believability in the context of your game. regular ad-hoc judgments will turn into house-rules (or persistent stat-modifications in the case of PCs' characteristics) organically, with virtually no dedicated work toward this end (except maybe to tweak a house rule a little after it becomes formalized). ad-hoc judgments which aren't frequently repeated need never be formalized.
meanwhile, the rules that ARE formalized and systematic manage to do a better job than previous editions of handling those game events that formalized, systematic rules are most necessary for.
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I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
But "Make Stuff Up" is not a rule.
So, what would we be paying the designers for, again?
And what would be more work, adopting the good parts in 4e for 3.x play, or using the Fiat Machine on 4e whenever it proved to be not up to the task?
I'm thinking the first option is probably more palatable to a lot of people.
While technically true, many of us have been running games with houserules for a great many years. It is therefore hard for us to dredge up a great deal of sympathy for someone who insists that it is unfair for them to have to houserule a matter of slight and frankly idiosyncratic importance.Kamikaze Midget said:
It comes across rather like a wealthy child at summer camp complaining bitterly to all his middle and lower class campmates about having to do without his butler.
BryonD said:
Not really IME.
Here's what I want in the skill system. Basically, I want to have everyone involved in the skill system at the same time a la combat instead of the pre 4E Shadowrun system where basically, you get one guy in the spotlight and everybody else simply watching on (and IME, people simply leave the table if it takes more than a couple of rolls).
An expert should have a high chance of success (but it should not be automatic ~85-95%) while the general case everyone else should be slightly sweating it (40-60%).
Right now, the skill system is akin to everyone going to fight the BBEG yet only 1 guy actually fights the BBEG and everyone else simply watches on. Yeah, yeah, CoDzilla probably could do this and that's a problem there as well
Furthermore, I want to be able to use the skills even without experts in the party. In a lot of the published adventures, they seem to lack skill checks since I imagine the writers have no idea what is a good skill challenge for a Level X party.
You know what's a challenging but beatable combat encounter for a Level X party and I want a skill system that can do the same for skill challenge encounters.
Now admittedly, Craft and Profession are a problem but then again, those tend to be individual skills that I don't really consider group checks. Those two skills, I wouldn't even mind that they use the 3.X skill system as I do think they that system better models those specific 2 skills.
re: Miniature creatures.
I think BECM and OD&D were on to something by not stating such creatures. Personally, I think an earlier suggestion of Passive Perception check with failure indicating poison being taken. As soon as the person recognizes they've been bitten, do active perception check and a success indicates venomous creature is killed.
I don't know what "combat" means here.Celebrim said:
I mean, last night I engaged in "combat" with my housecat, grappling her and putting her in her night-time room. This morning I engaged in "combat" with some ants, squashing them. From time to time my nearly-2-years-old daughter engages in "combat" with sea gulls and pigeons, chasing them through the park.
I'll reiterate what I and another poster upthread said: scorpions, spiders, snakes etc are traps/hazards, not combat encounters. Likewise swarms of bats or crows, I would think.
And just for extra fun: when it comes to squashing a spider, I think that the hilt of a shortsword would be easier to use then the hilt of a greatsword, and an armoured fist even easier. Do we therefore need "reverse damage rules" to handle these "combats"?
Barring magical intervention that never fails to intervene so that the above scenario never actually happens, yes. Is it important to you that highly improbable things that will never effect the players be nonetheless possible?
The practical effect of making "magical" healing required for everything is to make magical healing trite and taken for granted. Adventurers in 3rd edition didn't lie around in bed for months at a time, they downed miraculous healing potions like gatorade, invested in magic "make-better" sticks, or, if really desperate, hit the sack and gave the Cleric 8 hours to get his magic mojo back so he could, like he did every morning, call upon his phenomenal divine power to make everyone all better again. Even at low levels, the only long-term injuries were stuff like ability damage, and that's only because the party cleric hadn't learned lesser restoration yet.
This is a different sort of flavor, but one that I'd hesitate to call flatly superior. At least the healing surge system introduces the notion that there is only so much abuse a persons body can take in a day, no matter how many healing wands and cure-all potions they've got in their backpack.
