My take.

[Stormtower]

The worst way 4th edition is going to negatively impact roleplaying is that there will be fewer creative DMs, the kind who create and love to play exciting NPCs. Roleplaying certainly suffers when there's nobody to play your role to.

*delurk* I apologize if I'm breaking protocol by quoting such a early post in a long, mature thread. I intend to read the whole thread after this reply.

I was at DDXP, delved three times, played both LFR 4e previews, and played in 4 LG modules including the excellent Special... this is my first post upon returning home (was w/o 'net at the con).

I only want to say this: I was, and to a degree, I remain, a 4e skeptic. However, the game play seems to hold great tactical promise and a greater degree of challenge than can be easily determined without actual play experience. Whatever you may think of the rules, that's cool... the more I played, the more I enjoyed it. I've been a 90% player/10% DM in the RPGA so far (2006-2008), but I've been playing D&D since '83. Since LG is going away, I've dedicated myself to running LFR as a DM exclusively as my 4E involvement. If you are at my table, there will always be a receptive, RP-friendly DM to "play your role to." I and many other DM's out there pride ourselves on creating hybrid games that are equally tactically challenging and RP-friendly. IME, those are the most rewarding games to DM, and in the most gratifying in which to run a PC.

DM's (or anyone, for that matter) who are concerned about loss of creativity in our next generation of younger players could help the situation by teaching them about the history of the game and honoring the narrative traditions of storytelling within the wargame roots of D&D. It's up to us to transmit our culture and make D&D the game we all want to play... don't stop roleplaying. There seems to be nothing in 4E's design to discourage it, so play your PCs and NPCs to the hilt. It only becomes an ultra-gamist "boardgame" type experience if we define the situation that way. RP traditions in D&D only die if we, the current DMs and players, let it.

Play in the manner of your choosing, in the edition of your choosing. Having fun among friends and meeting new gamers is the most important part.

I hope this post did not sound preachy... it is not my intent to tell anyone what to do or threadcrap. I'm off to read the rest of the post.

Sincerely,
Nick

 

[robertliguori]

Refilled as in "push reset button"? No.

Fallen combatants attended by evil clerics, traps set to welcome the not-so-unexpected-now intruders? Most probably.

Dungeon inhabitants retaliating by attacking and setting on fire the nearest town, so as the PCs know that all those innocent men, women and children have been slaughtered because of their inaction? If the DM is as sadist as I am, maybe

Point the first: Simulationist players rapidly adopt death protocols, based on how easy it is to turn an enemy corpse into a threat again (either via reanimation or resurrection). Good luck turning a pile of neatly quartered corpses into threats.

Point the second: If traps were within the capacity of the monsters before, why aren't they already using them? Also, what happens when the invaders start making ablative runs on the traps, as well as the inhabitants, and simply enter, trigger and then smash the day's traps beyond repair or salvage, and then leave?

Point the third: If the players are camping near the entrance of the dungeon, then the monsters have abandoned the safety of their lair. This is bad. Either the players will attack them in the open and take advantage of their PC-ness, or simply wait until they leave, assault the dungeon while the monsters are away (and cleave through it messily on that account), and then ambush them when they attempt to return home.

So, "make the clock tick faster" would be the solution... to a problem that wouldn't exist if the "rest button" hadn't been implemented. My solution would be just not implementing that button, thus not creating the problem in the first place.

Not to forget the "clock" isn't always something easily sped up...
"We have to find the cure before the illness extends" - "Make the illnes kill in minutes"
"The orcs are amassing an army. Let's put them down while they're few" - "The other armies run really fast"
"This is the day the planes align themselves and Cthulhu comes" - "It's Chtulhu Happy Hour".

This is an excellent way to shift the paradigm away from dungeons-as-invasion-proof; the goal of the dungeon is to delay adventurers past zero hour, not to stop them. If you can engineer a scenario in 4E where every 5-minute rest (and indeed every time-consuming encounter) is an expenditure of a resource not easily regained, then you're on the right track. Once, I ran an adventure in which the evil necromancer had kidnapped an entire village, and was casting them alive into a blatant rip-off of the Black Cauldron and reanimating them as nasty templated zombies at a rate of one every few minutes, and would continue until he ran out of villagers. The PCs tore through the dungeon, and when they got close enough to hear the screams of the latest unlucky villager, the PCs simply ignored the delaying hazards in their way, ending in an epic fight between the zombies already accumulated and the threats streaming in that they had neglected to defeat previously.

But, and this is the important point, once zero hour had passed and the necromancer had run out of villagers, the PCs could have simply chipped away at him endlessly, and reasonably safely. The trick was to portray having to do that as a lose condition, not as a smart tactic.

 

[Hathorym]

I hope this post did not sound preachy...

Absolutely not - I thought it was very well written and I just want to QFT

 

[Andalusian]

This is the thing I wonder about the various house rules.

In 1e/2e, it took days to heal but what would ACTUALLY happen was
a) Cleric on the next day would simply blow all their slots on healing
b) DM would say "ok a week has passed, everyone is back to full".


No-one actually roleplayed the healing downtime and the only scenario where it became an issue was a time-sensitive one (BBEG is going to complete his ritual in 3 days) but even there, thanks to the cleric, it would usually just take 1 day of downtime.

Well, we typically ran 1E/2E games with both indoor and outdoor random encounter tables. I always felt this was fair... you could decide to camp in a location and try to heal up as long as you wanted, but there's a risk that something might come along and potentially hurt you worse (most of the random encounters were designed to be fairly weak, but a small percentage were moderately strong enough to challenge a weakened party). This tended to keep us from waiting around to heal every last HP up. Kind of sucked to be the cleric, though, since he'd usually have to blow all his spell slots on cure spells to get everyone up and running as quickly as possible.

 

[LostSoul]

If you can engineer a scenario in 4E where every 5-minute rest (and indeed every time-consuming encounter) is an expenditure of a resource not easily regained, then you're on the right track.

That's pretty easy - the dungeon is one encounter.

That means you switch from "an encounter is a unit of time" to "an encounter is an exciting scene", like watching a movie or TV show.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Refilled as in "push reset button"? No.

Fallen combatants attended by evil clerics, traps set to welcome the not-so-unexpected-now intruders? Most probably.

Dungeon inhabitants retaliating by attacking and setting on fire the nearest town, so as the PCs know that all those innocent men, women and children have been slaughtered because of their inaction? If the DM is as sadist as I am, maybe



So, "make the clock tick faster" would be the solution... to a problem that wouldn't exist if the "rest button" hadn't been implemented. My solution would be just not implementing that button, thus not creating the problem in the first place.

Not to forget the "clock" isn't always something easily sped up...
"We have to find the cure before the illness extends" - "Make the illnes kill in minutes"
"The orcs are amassing an army. Let's put them down while they're few" - "The other armies run really fast"
"This is the day the planes align themselves and Cthulhu comes" - "It's Chtulhu Happy Hour".

The problem in previous editions - as far as I can tell - is this:
- There isn't always a ticking clock. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense. This invites people to approach threats carefully, including making early retreats. And it's sensible to do so, both from a pure metagame perspective as well as from the role-playing perspective.

- The clock in 3E ticks in 24 hour ticks. If for some reason there is only one encounter in this 24 hour period, the play balance shifts towards those that have a lot of daily resources (traditionally: Spellcasters)

These drawbacks limit your adventure design possibilities - at least if you want to be "fair" to everyone (having the fighters shine as much as the spellcasters, as well as having the party as a whole run a series of encounters they can beat if they don't act to stupid...)

 

[hong]

Or, to put it more succinctly: basing your entire ruleset on the assumption that there will always be a ticking clock is bad design.

 

[BryonD]

Not really IME.

But that was my point, just because your experience misses certain things doesn't remotely mean that everyone else's experience is likewise hampered.

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%).

The idea that any and every wizard has a fair chance of climbing any surface that the rogue can climb and any and every fighter has a fair chance to know any arcane fact that the wizard could know is a terrible idea to me.

Obviously this is just down to difference in opinion. But it is not at all plausible to me that the meaning of expert would be so constrained. And secondly, having this avenue for putting real challenges in front of the party removed would be a big negative for me.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

But that was my point, just because your experience misses certain things doesn't remotely mean that everyone else's experience is likewise hampered.


The idea that any and every wizard has a fair chance of climbing any surface that the rogue can climb and any and every fighter has a fair chance to know any arcane fact that the wizard could know is a terrible idea to me.

Obviously this is just down to difference in opinion. But it is not at all plausible to me that the meaning of expert would be so constrained. And secondly, having this avenue for putting real challenges in front of the party removed would be a big negative for me.

In case of the wizard, I like the idea of "flavouring" his physical skill checks differently then that of a martial character. The wizard is actually using magic to help him climb - the effects are subtle, but noticeable.

I also happen to think that a difference of 8-15 points between untrained and trained characters (due to ability modifiers and training modifiers) is sufficient to model all the scenarios are like:
- The "easy skill challenge". It's unlike that non-trained characters will fail (especially with retries), and trained characters will never fail it.
- The "average" skill challenge. Non-trained characters have a fair (50 %) chance to succeed. Trained characters will almost certainly succeed.
- The "difficult" skill challenge. Non-trained characters have little chance of succeeding. Trained characters have a fair chance.
- The "impossible" skill challenge. Non-trained characters probably don't need to bother to try. Trained characters have a chance to beat it.

 

[Derro]

In case of the wizard, I like the idea of "flavouring" his physical skill checks differently then that of a martial character. The wizard is actually using magic to help him climb - the effects are subtle, but noticeable.

What happens when your flavor is soured by crunch though? Wizards climb poorly in anti-magic zone or under the affects of magic suppression? All of there untrained skills suffer because they can't access there power source? Niggling I know but somewhat valid.

Personally I don't have any specific problems with the new skill system. 3.x just got way too bloated with competence bonuses and magic bonuses and synergy bonuses and gaaah. Skills, if anything, should be simple to figure and simple to use. While the new take does not have the degree of grain that I usually prefer it looks serviceable nonetheless.

I also happen to think that a difference of 8-15 points between untrained and trained characters (due to ability modifiers and training modifiers) is sufficient to model all the scenarios are like:
- The "easy skill challenge". It's unlike that non-trained characters will fail (especially with retries), and trained characters will never fail it.
- The "average" skill challenge. Non-trained characters have a fair (50 %) chance to succeed. Trained characters will almost certainly succeed.
- The "difficult" skill challenge. Non-trained characters have little chance of succeeding. Trained characters have a fair chance.
- The "impossible" skill challenge. Non-trained characters probably don't need to bother to try. Trained characters have a chance to beat it.

It also serves to keep DCs under control. The method of scaling skill DCs in 3.x is so opaque. I stopped using the rules a long time ago and just started saying 20 +/- 3-5 for conditions relevant to the task. Within reason of course.