D&D General New Interview with Rob Heinsoo About 4E

[niklinna]

it's when you don't like something it feels like it's wrong... when you like it, then it is a minor issue.

just like me and my buddy can watch the same TV show and pick it apart or not based on us likeing it or not.

The mark of a true scotsman gentleman is being able to pick apart something you like!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The mark of a true scotsman gentleman is being able to pick apart something you like!

my wife HATES that I make fun of the stories I like too... I try to explain it's a different pick apart when it's done out of love...

 

[Staffan]

I think a lot of this discussion is arguing for and against the idea that I cannot tell the difference from anime and say an action movie.

I don't think anime is quite the right term for 4e martial heroes. A better term is probably wuxia, albeit usually a more westernized version.

In Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, no-one is calling the incredible feats of the main characters "magic". When Jin kicks the butt of every adventurer in the tavern, people are amazed by her skill, but no-one goes "that stuff's impossible." That's what 4e martial exploits are like.

We are all in agreement on that point, but it's really weird on 5e feels like a VERY selfish game. There's near zero occasion where spending your action improving an ally is more optimal than inflicting damage yourself. Adventurers work together but they very rarely feel like a team. It almost feels purposefully designed to enable single PC games.

I think there are two reasons for that. One is the low resolution of bonuses in 4e – it's basically advantage or nothing (or sometimes an added die). And advantage is a pretty chonky bonus, so if you want advantage to be a rider on another ability, that ability has to be either very weak or highly limited. But at the same time, giving someone else advantage is generally not as good as what you could do yourself – at best it's a 50% increase in hit probability. There could be some room in setting someone up with advantage for use with a powerful but limited-use ability, but 5e doesn't have many of those that use attack rolls (I remember considering this for a wild mage, but pretty much all spells that deal decent damage use saves – and that's fair, because that generally means you don't waste a slot on a miss).

The other is that combat is usually over pretty fast in-game. Is spending an action and a 1st-level spell slot (and concentration) on giving allies +1d4 to hit with bless better than casting guiding bolt for 4d6 damage and giving an ally advantage on the next attack? Bless math gets wonky because of probabilities, but I figure it should be about a 10-20% increase in damage per target, so how many attacks do your party need to make to balance out the 4d6 damage + 50% boost to a single attack?

 

[pemerton]

I don't think anime is quite the right term for 4e martial heroes. A better term is probably wuxia, albeit usually a more westernized version.

I posted my fighter build not far upthread. How is it wuxia? How is it, in the fiction it creates, any different from a high level AD&D fighter: there is fighting, and toughness, and that's it.

Compared to, say, a monk who might dance about the battlefield, jump up onto things, balance on waves and clouds, etc.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I don't think anime is quite the right term for 4e martial heroes. A better term is probably wuxia, albeit usually a more westernized version.

Actually appropriate would be 'cinematic action'.

Like they're actualyl capable of doing cool stuff beyond attackattackattack.

 

[Staffan]

I posted my fighter build not far upthread. How is it wuxia? How is it, in the fiction it creates, any different from a high level AD&D fighter: there is fighting, and toughness, and that's it.

That's what I meant by "westernized version". Less jumping from tree to tree and more ferocity and toughness.

My point was more that the feats done by the main characters in CTHD and other wuxia movies are clearly impossible in the real world (without the aid of wire-fu and such). But to the characters in the movie, that's just someone being badass, not someone using magic. 4e martial heroes are the same, but usually aiming that skill in a slightly different direction (though I could definitely see a wuxia-type warrior in 4e as well).

 

[Cadence]

Yeah. That. Everyone having the same (or similar) goals does not mean they're working together as a team.

In my experience with B/X and AD&D, the players worked together as a team. There was no mechanical support for it per se. But everyone understood their character's strengths and weaknesses and worked together to cover each other. In 4E, the players worked together as a team. There was tons of mechanical support for it. You could easily argue that was the point. To mechanically reinforce the "no really, teamwork wins" aspect. In 5E, in my experience, the players all happen to be near each other and vaguely working towards the same (or similar) goals, but there's basically zero team work in play and there's almost nothing encouraging teamwork in the game. The aid action is "suboptimal" in just about every circumstance. A few buff spells exist, sure. But they're used as basic min-max spells and there's no real mechanical push for proper synergistic, all together as a team kind of play.

I'm assuming this was serious?

In 5e, without making much effort, the vanilla martials can move around to flank so folks get advantage, the cleric pops up the downed person, and can't paladin's take hits designed to hit someone else (say the caster who is conentraing)? That feels like more than we did for each other back in the B/X, 1e days (except for the Cleric) in terms of going together in combat.

 

[pemerton]

That's what I meant by "westernized version". Less jumping from tree to tree and more ferocity and toughness.

My point was more that the feats done by the main characters in CTHD and other wuxia movies are clearly impossible in the real world (without the aid of wire-fu and such). But to the characters in the movie, that's just someone being badass, not someone using magic. 4e martial heroes are the same, but usually aiming that skill in a slightly different direction (though I could definitely see a wuxia-type warrior in 4e as well).

But AD&D warriors are the same also. Like Aragorn and Eomer on the Pelennor fields, they can cut their way through hordes of enemy soldiers to meet one another on the field of battle.

4e fighter's are mechanically more intricate than AD&D ones, but I don't see how they are more supernatural.

 

[Vaalingrade]

4e fighter's are mechanically more intricate than AD&D ones, but I don't see how they are more supernatural.

Because they can convince people already trying to kill them to try and kill them harder.

And... like move and deal glancing blows.

David Blane, Kris Angel stuff.

 

[Cadence]

But AD&D warriors are the same also. Like Aragorn and Eomer on the Pelennor fields, they can cut their way through hordes of enemy soldiers to meet one another on the field of battle.

4e fighter's are mechanically more intricate than AD&D ones, but I don't see how they are more supernatural.

Well, their invisible force-fields that keep them completely protected from all physical damage (except maybe poison, until the field goes down and they fall unconscious and start dying), recharge a lot easier in 4e (and 5e) than they did in AD&D. None of that only recharging the field up by 1 "hit point" per day or 1 "hit point" per "level" per day anymore! Quicker recharging seems more supernatural, right?