D&D 4E Presentation vs design... vs philosophy

[FrozenNorth]

Just so that I don't always seem negative about P2e, I think its enjoyment is very playstyle dependent (ironically, in this respect it is similar to 4e). By way of illustration, imagine the 1st round of a fight between a 5th level party consisting of a fighter, cleric, fey sorcerer and wizard and the BBEG plus his two goons. I apologize in advance for my Pathfinder 1 example, as it is not a system I know super well.

Pathfinder 1: Moderately optimized characters
The cleric has pre-buffed himself and the fighter. The fighter is a charger build, charges the BBEG and unleashes a full attack on him. Between the pre-buff, the fighter's magic weapon and optimization, the fighter is unlikely to miss and does massive damage. The cleric is next, moves up to the BBEG, attacks once.
Fey sorcerer, save or suck spell against the BBEG. Wizard, save or suck spell against the BBEG (or if the BBEG has already been taken out, against the goons).
After the 1st round, the fight is essentially over. If both the fey sorcerer and the wizard miss on their SoS spells (unlikely), the BBEG is likely to die from attack of opportunity from the fighter or cleric if he moves, or his alternative is to attack the two most armored party members.

Pathfinder 2: Seal Team 6
The cleric has pre-buffed the fighter with Heroism, giving him a +1 to his attack rolls, saving throws and skill checks. The fighter uses an action to move to the BBEG then attacks once, then uses the Demoralize action. Both actions benefit from the +1. The cleric uses 1 action to move, attacks once, and cast Harm with 1 action.
The fey sorcerer moves once, then uses Fairy Dust on the BBEG. Using 2 actions, this catches all three enemies. Fairy Dust benefits from the fighter's Demoralize action, so the BBEG must save against the Fairy Dust at a -1. The wizard moves once, then casts Paralyze on the BBEG. Paralyze benefits from -1 from frightened and -2 from Fairy Dust. Wizard's attack has a 20% chance to crit, which, if it does, takes the BBEG out of the fight.
The party's tactics are additive. To be effective, it is not sufficient to be optimized, you also have to coordinate with your party members. Even if the crit doesn't land, there is a 50% chance the BBEG is paralyzed for the next round, and a 25% chance the BBEG loses 1 of its 3 actions on its turn.

Pathfinder 2: Keystone Kops
The cleric has pre-buffed himself with Magic Weapon on his mace, giving him a +1 to attack rolls and increasing his damage by 1 damage die. The fighter uses an action to move to the BBEG then attacks twice. The cleric uses an action to move, then attacks twice. The fey sorcerer moves once than entangles the BBEG and his two goons, so that he and the wizard don't have to worry about getting attacked. The wizard moves once. He figures that a SoS spell has a 5% chance of a critical success, so it is isn't worth it. He casts an attack roll spell, and the DM informs him that the BBEG has partial cover from the fighter.
All enemies are still up on their turn.

The point I'm trying to make is that P2e encourages cooperation between party members to a greater extent than P1e. If the party is coordinated, small bonuses and penalties can really add up to make your party's squad tactics punch above their weight. On the other hand, if your party can't or doesn't particularly want to invest in coordination, then it is hard to get excited about situational +1 due to a spell or a feat.

The Heroism spell quoted above? It's a level 3 divine spell. Also, to benefit from this additive property of bonuses and penalties, you are required to track both the bonuses and their types.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think it was a point worth an explanation.

Indeed. I didn’t mean to suggest it wasn’t a fair point to raise.

For better or worse - most people identify a fighter by his martial fighting style. It's done in MMA, Boxing and for fictional Fighters as well. I think the choice between Defensive or Particular Weapon Category is a meaningful difference in conceptualization to most people.

Sure, fine, but it’d be nice if Fighters with different Fighting Styles actually played differently instead of having different flavors of +2 average damage.

Also, while not really the main point it will also cause said fighters to feel differently in combat even if they don't actively play very differently - psychological effect is my guess.

It definitely will, but this is why I say people’s issues with 4e have a lot more to do with presentation than they either realize or admit. I’d wager if instead of Tide of Iron and Grappling Strike, you had a Fighting Style where you did the push-shift thing whenever you hit with a bludgeoning weapon and a Fighting Style where you can attempt a grapple whenever you hit with an unarmed attack or whatever, no one would have complained. In fact, the latter is pretty close to the Unarmed Fighting Style from the alternate class features UA. I didn’t see anyone complaining that the grapple part of that fighting style doesn’t make a difference, despite it being more or less Grappling Strike presented a little differently.

I'll challenge this one. Take a 4e Fighter. What's he doing that meaningfully differentiates himself from another 4e fighter?

Again, the non-damaging parts of their Powers, which in aggregate can make a huge difference.

Whereas in 5e that differentiation happens at the subclass level and it's effects are huge! Casting spells vs Defender Mechanics vs Superiority Dice vs Champion. Nothing in 4e got close to that level of differentiation for a fighter.

Some classes fared better than others in this regard but I'd give 5e the edge in terms of aggregate differences.
There's nothing 4e has in terms of roles on the same level as the divide between a 5e Champion Fighter and a 5e Wizard

I’ve been over why I don’t think most subclasses make a significant difference in the way the character plays (though as I’ve said, the Battlemaster and the spellcasting subclasses for non-casting classes are exceptions). I don’t see much point in going over it again, suffice to say we will never agree on this point.

 

[Lanefan]

It was 4e - no actual dice rolling. So not an issue. (No dice rolling at 1st level in 3.X or 5e normally IME - but hit point rolling at other levels.)

Rolling for stats has been the default char-gen mechanism in every edition. 1st level hit points are locked in at max in 3e (and 5e I think), 4e seems to want to lock 'em in all the way along, which might play into the 'samey' argument a bit.

It may be a personal thing, but I find tablets a lot friendlier than laptops as a reference tool - they don't create a DM screen style barrier. On the other hand if taking extensive notes it's a laptop every time.

Personally I can't stand either for actually trying to do anything on other than browsing.

And that I find just weird. I like to know what my character can do, and absolutely hate stalling the game out to look something up in the rulebook.

The reason character sheets stay with the DM between sessions is so the game can still be played if a player can't or doesn't show up. Your character's still in action, even if you're not there - it doesn't just fade out for the session.

The first time I forgot it I'd have kicked myself. The second time I forgot it I would have rewritten my character sheet so that there was no third time.

And I still would have missed it. (the table setup at that game had us stow our character sheets, drinks, etc. under a raised grid-board - the table wasn't big enough otherwise - and what this meant was character sheets were largely out of sight, out of mind much of the time)

But of course I'm used to control of my character sheet - it's my tool, not the DM's. And if it's leading me astray it should be re-written.

It's not that it's leading me astray, it's that I don't often reference it (or want to reference it) particularly if my character's not a spellcaster. Which means even though my sheet's right there I'm usually running from memory, which in 3e is a real headache as there's so much to remember; and thus things like Alertness got forgotten.

Why not both? I'd have the most common use and the default case on the sheet.

One could, I suppose, but that would end up with almost a different set of numbers for each weapon carried.

I'm not surprised. But when I'm summoning monsters I need their statblocks handy. And when one of my feats actually changes their statblock I'm going to want my own version so there's no calculating on the fly - instead I calculated it between sessions. The 33 pages by the way doesn't count the size of the monsters I'd levelled out of summoning and so deleted off the sheet. And when I complain about crunch that sort of thing is what I mean.

You had the advantage of knowing what you could summon. In 1e it's random what you get, and that's how we did it in 3e as well just for variety.

 

[Lanefan]

A 5e champion fighter at first level can swing a sharpened piece of metal hard and fast against someone within 5ft of them and at 20th level can swing a sharpened piece of metal exceptionally hard and fast against someone within 5ft of them.

This is all I ever want a Fighter to do in any edition! Oh, and effectively shoot or throw hard or pointy things at foes more than 5ft away; and maybe be strong enough to bash down a locked door and tough enough to withstand some abuse.

Everything else difference-wise between one Fighter and another comes from characterization and personality, not mechanics.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The reason character sheets stay with the DM between sessions is so the game can still be played if a player can't or doesn't show up. Your character's still in action, even if you're not there - it doesn't just fade out for the session.

And I still would have missed it. (the table setup at that game had us stow our character sheets, drinks, etc. under a raised grid-board - the table wasn't big enough otherwise - and what this meant was character sheets were largely out of sight, out of mind much of the time)

It's not that it's leading me astray, it's that I don't often reference it (or want to reference it) particularly if my character's not a spellcaster. Which means even though my sheet's right there I'm usually running from memory, which in 3e is a real headache as there's so much to remember; and thus things like Alertness got forgotten.

If I don't remember a number (and the number to remember is the total) I look it up. And if it takes me any noticeable time then it's a problem with the character sheet.

Of course the 32 + four families of skills in 3.5 is kinda ridiculous; I find GURPS skills easier.

One could, I suppose, but that would end up with almost a different set of numbers for each weapon carried.

Not really unless I had a golf-bag of different magic weapons. I only need two sets of numbers for anything that isn't a primary weapon.

You had the advantage of knowing what you could summon. In 1e it's random what you get, and that's how we did it in 3e as well just for variety.

Knowing what I could summon still produced plenty of variety. I had a mainline summons I wanted at each level - and then some situational ones such as either a herd of rampaging aurochs (who were an effective fireball spell but were turned into hamburger before they could turn round and come back through the enemy) or a a pack of octopuses for crowd control. (The tentacles were the one summon my GM actually objected to - mostly because each octopus has nine attacks (one per tentacles plus a bite) and each of the tentacles if it hits gets a followup grapple for a potential fifty one attacks in a turn if I got three octopuses).

This is all I ever want a Fighter to do in any edition! Oh, and effectively shoot or throw hard or pointy things at foes more than 5ft away; and maybe be strong enough to bash down a locked door and tough enough to withstand some abuse.

Everything else difference-wise between one Fighter and another comes from characterization and personality, not mechanics.

I have no objection to that being all someone wants a fighter to do. I just want a level cap on this at about level 5 as that one ability stops being so meaningful compared to someone who can literally create their own demiplane. Either that or explict acknowledgement in the game's write-up of the class that the fighter class is War Machine - who's a badass, but the only reason he's sitting at The Avengers' table is that Tony Stark built him a suit of powered armour.

Me? If the wizards are casting spells like mythological demigods I want the fighter to be Heracles or CuChulain. Either that or for a more sword & sorcery approach where the allied wizards can cast spells but it takes time so the fights are decided by steel. I enjoy both mortals and demigods - but mixing the two in a party when they claim to be the same level is I find an issue.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Pathfinder 2: Seal Team 6
The cleric has pre-buffed the fighter with Heroism, giving him a +1 to his attack rolls, saving throws and skill checks. The fighter uses an action to move to the BBEG then attacks once, then uses the Demoralize action. Both actions benefit from the +1. The cleric uses 1 action to move, attacks once, and cast Harm with 1 action.
The fey sorcerer moves once, then uses Fairy Dust on the BBEG. Using 2 actions, this catches all three enemies. Fairy Dust benefits from the fighter's Demoralize action, so the BBEG must save against the Fairy Dust at a -1. The wizard moves once, then casts Paralyze on the BBEG. Paralyze benefits from -1 from frightened and -2 from Fairy Dust. Wizard's attack has a 20% chance to crit, which, if it does, takes the BBEG out of the fight.
The party's tactics are additive. To be effective, it is not sufficient to be optimized, you also have to coordinate with your party members. Even if the crit doesn't land, there is a 50% chance the BBEG is paralyzed for the next round, and a 25% chance the BBEG loses 1 of its 3 actions on its turn.

Pathfinder 2: Keystone Kops
The cleric has pre-buffed himself with Magic Weapon on his mace, giving him a +1 to attack rolls and increasing his damage by 1 damage die. The fighter uses an action to move to the BBEG then attacks twice. The cleric uses an action to move, then attacks twice. The fey sorcerer moves once than entangles the BBEG and his two goons, so that he and the wizard don't have to worry about getting attacked. The wizard moves once. He figures that a SoS spell has a 5% chance of a critical success, so it is isn't worth it. He casts an attack roll spell, and the DM informs him that the BBEG has partial cover from the fighter.
All enemies are still up on their turn.

The point I'm trying to make is that P2e encourages cooperation between party members to a greater extent than P1e. If the party is coordinated, small bonuses and penalties can really add up to make your party's squad tactics punch above their weight. On the other hand, if your party can't or doesn't particularly want to invest in coordination, then it is hard to get excited about situational +1 due to a spell or a feat.

The Heroism spell quoted above? It's a level 3 divine spell. Also, to benefit from this additive property of bonuses and penalties, you are required to track both the bonuses and their types.

I just want to talk about this for a second. The "Seal Team 6" example is, to me, unlikely to be terribly good play - mostly because of the fact that you're relying on three saving throws all failing. And the rule of thumb when evaluating a plan that complex is to add up the possibility of failure of each part to get the total probability of failure. (Yes that isn't how it works mathematically - but compound chances of failure are nasty). First you have the Intimidation check - with a significant chance of an entirely wasted action. Then you have Fairy Dust - which is a spell I haven't been able to find anywhere. And you're assuming both of these succeed when you calculate the probability of paralysis even successfully trading two of the wizard's actions (plus one fighter action plus two sorcerer actions) for a turn of the BBEG's actions. That's five PCs vs three NPCs and the PCs get the drop on the NPCs? And the wizard and sorcerer are basically unprotected?

 

[Sadras]

3.x and PF1 required much system mastery, I'd expect PF2 to have much of the same and now with this plethora of feats it can only make the system heavier. I also felt 4e suffered from its many powers. IMO any system that requires a program for character creation will be viewed as cumbersome.

EDIT: I'm not saying 5e is perfect, but it is the system I'm playing right now.

 

[Undrave]

Shadowrun causes people to tap out fairly regularly.

Shadowrun doesn't have that much crunch, it just has too many equipment tables

 

[FrozenNorth]

I just want to talk about this for a second. The "Seal Team 6" example is, to me, unlikely to be terribly good play - mostly because of the fact that you're relying on three saving throws all failing. And the rule of thumb when evaluating a plan that complex is to add up the possibility of failure of each part to get the total probability of failure. (Yes that isn't how it works mathematically - but compound chances of failure are nasty). First you have the Intimidation check - with a significant chance of an entirely wasted action. Then you have Fairy Dust - which is a spell I haven't been able to find anywhere. And you're assuming both of these succeed when you calculate the probability of paralysis even successfully trading two of the wizard's actions (plus one fighter action plus two sorcerer actions) for a turn of the BBEG's actions. That's five PCs vs three NPCs and the PCs get the drop on the NPCs? And the wizard and sorcerer are basically unprotected?

I didn’t want to get too “inside baseball” in a long post, but there are responses to your concerns:
-First, the plan does not rely on all the parts succeeding: neither the Intimidation nor Fairy Dust succeeding are a pre-condition on casting Paralysis. The wizard has eyes on the ground, and based on whether the debuffs succeed or not, can make an educated guess on the chances of a crit. If nothing hits, he switches to a different spell.

• Second, since this is Seal Team 6, presumably the fighter has invested in Intimidation for this tactic to have a chance to work, whereas a 2nd attack would be subject to the MAP and made at a -5 (or -4 due to the Heroism). It’s a judgment call, not a wasted action.
• Third, Fairy Dust is the Fey Sorcerer special Focus spell. Would have to check, but I believe it has the necessary effect even on a success, just not on a critical success.
• Fourth, I didn’t assume the heroes got the drop, just that their initiative was higher than the monsters (the confusion was my fault in trying to simplify the example).

Either way, the purpose of the example was not to provide a definitive plan: it was to illustrate that if your group enjoys a more “wargamey” playstyle, where you can’t trivialize encounters through charop and you enjoy coordinating your small bonuses to increase your squad effectiveness, P2e offers something that neither P1 nor 5e really do as well.

That isn’t a playstyle I enjoy: I am more narrative focussed, but I can see that some gamers may enjoy it.

I didn’t choose “Fairy Dust” by accident : it is a Focus power that is pretty useless for the person that casts it, since in all likelihood, it expires at the beginning of your turn.

 

[Charlaquin]

3.x and PF1 required much system mastery, I'd expect PF2 to have much of the same and now with this plethora of feats it can only make the system heavier. I also felt 4e suffered from its many powers. IMO any system that requires a program for character creation will be viewed as cumbersome.

EDIT: I'm not saying 5e is perfect, but it is the system I'm playing right now.

Actually from my experience with PF2, system mastery is not nearly as important. Like, there’s a lot of system jargon to learn, but unlike PF1 and 3e, you don’t need to know the system inside and out to build an effective character. It is much more like 4e, in that it is balanced enough that you can just pick whatever seems cool and you’ll probably be up to par. There’s some room for optimization, but you don’t have to worry about ending up with a useless character just because you didn’t plan your whole 1-20 build in advance.