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

[Undrave]

Man... now I wish I was playing 4e again... it was probably my most consistent gaming time so I'm nostalgic for it. I miss the STR/CHA Cleric, even if it was abandoned by WOTC. I miss the Warden, sticky and undaunted with crazy transformations. I miss my Halfling Paladin of Erathis. I miss the great cosmology and myths.

The thing is - validness is individual in context.

Someone could find that one of those actors did the job of portraying batman so poorly that he really wasn't portraying batman. That's a valid opinion.

Someone could find that character of batman portrayed by the show shouldn't actually have been called batman and nevertheless feel the actor played the role perfectly. Also a valid opinion.

IMO, it's not right to try to force others to say something else is valid that they don't believe is.

So .... how's the thread going? All good? We learn anything about Pathfinder 2 yet?

We really should swing back to PF2.

I'm still curious what exactly are those lessons that PF2 should have learned from 4e?

 

[Charlaquin]

Another post that caught my eye!

In my case, I would say that GMing 4e pushed me harder and further as a GM than anything else before, and perhaps anything since. (When eventually I get to GM Apocalypse World I'm expecting to have to revise the previous statement.)

It's possible, even likely, that part of the reason for this was that I had a lot more prior GMing experience.

I think your greater prior GM experience relative to mine is definitely a big part of it. As a first-time DM, I found 4e overwhelming. I would assume if I DMed 4e today, I would not have the same problem, and I might appreciate the greater depth of advice. But 5e was certainly much more approachable to me as a DM, and I felt it taught me the DMing fundamentals in a way I didn’t feel 4e did.

It’s also possible that being along for the ride during the open playtest for 5e played a part too. Watching the sausage get made is a pretty effective way to learn to make sausage.

I take it that here you're mostly paryodying 3E? 4e runs on a DC-by-level chart, with one necessary (and inelegant) exception: the jumping rules that are part of the combat resolution movement rules.

Yeah, that was mostly 3e parody. 4e’s DC-by-level chart is far easier to use than 3e’s mess. That said, I still needed to have the chart in front of me to adjudicate skill checks in 4e, and preferred to have a DC predetermined. With 5e I can easily set DCs on the fly, and in fact greatly prefer doing so.

Interesting. In systems that use difficulties, I generally state the difficulty after the action is declared, and takebacks happen only if it emerges that there's been some fundamental confusion or misunderstanding about what is feasible for the PC given the overall situation in the fiction. I'm trying to think if that's even happened in my last few years of RPGIng and can't remember a case.

I think we’re describing the same thing here. At my table, it might go something like this:

Player: I try to unlock the door with my thieves’ tools.
Me: Ok, that will take 10 minutes and a successful DC 20 Dexterity check - plus proficiency for your Thieves’ tools, of course.

Rarely, it might continue;
Player: DC20? Yikes, I didn’t realize it was such a complex lock. On second thought, maybe we should just try to break the door down?
Other player: Sounds good to me! I’ll use my crowbar to try to force it open.
Me: That’ll be noisy, but you can do it with a DC 15 Strength check. With advantage for the crowbar, of course.

etc. I do that so that the players can make informed decisions about their actions. They should know the potential consequences (10 minutes of time bringing them closer to the next complication roll in the case of picking the lock, noise attracting the attention of nearby enemies in the case of forcing the door) and their likelihood of success. That insures they are succeeding and failing based on their choices rather than random chance.

I think my problem with this is similar to (maybe not identical) to @Garthanos's - namely, that it sits a bit uncomfortably with reams and reams of very precise, level-and-resource-calibrated descriptions of what can be done via spellcasting.

Yeah, this is a problem I have with 5e as well. Personally, the way I would prefer to go about fixing this is to make magic more freeform like skills are, and to give non-magic characters more codified maneuvers they can perform, like 4e powers.

On this issue I find 4e closer to what you are advocating than 5e seems, because it carves up the adjudicative terrain more clearly: in combat, using Athletics (to a lesser extent Acrobatics) to move is codified similarly to teleportation etc powers; out of combat what a skill check can achieve and what magic can achieve are largely left up table interpretation and GM adjudication.

Where I find 4e most wonky is when combat and non-combat overlap with one another. I never really got into the skill-challenge-as-a-subsitute-for-combat thing, though some active posters in this thread (eg @Manbearcat) did find ways to make that work.

See, I would prefer to reduce the contrast between in-combat adjudication and out of combat adjudication. It’s awkward that the game changes so drastically as soon as the DM says to roll initiative. PbtA games handle this much better in my opinion, where violent conflict is resolved just like any other part of the game instead of being its own siloed-off minigame.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think your greater prior GM experience relative to mine is definitely a big part of it. As a first-time DM, I found 4e overwhelming. I would assume if I DMed 4e today, I would not have the same problem, and I might appreciate the greater depth of advice. But 5e was certainly much more approachable to me as a DM, and I felt it taught me the DMing fundamentals in a way I didn’t feel 4e did.

YMMV. When I started DMing 4e I hadn't DM'd anything face to face in over a decade - and when I wasn't a teenager I wasn't a good DM (because teenager and because I'd tried to DM using the 1e books and for several other reasons). 4e felt incredibly approachable - moreso than games I knew much more thoroughly and knew all the detail of. Of course playing with actually good DMs (rather than other self-taught teenagers) also helped.

 

[prabe]

I think we’re describing the same thing here. At my table, it might go something like this:

Player: I try to unlock the door with my thieves’ tools.
Me: Ok, that will take 10 minutes and a successful DC 20 Dexterity check - plus proficiency for your Thieves’ tools, of course.

Rarely, it might continue;
Player: DC20? Yikes, I didn’t realize it was such a complex lock. On second thought, maybe we should just try to break the door down?
Other player: Sounds good to me! I’ll use my crowbar to try to force it open.
Me: That’ll be noisy, but you can do it with a DC 15 Strength check. With advantage for the crowbar, of course.

etc. I do that so that the players can make informed decisions about their actions. They should know the potential consequences (10 minutes of time bringing them closer to the next complication roll in the case of picking the lock, noise attracting the attention of nearby enemies in the case of forcing the door) and their likelihood of success. That insures they are succeeding and failing based on their choices rather than random chance.

This is similar to how I try to do it. I don't want the players committed to the action if they don't have enough information to make an informed choice. I also (usually) announce DCs for saves if it's affecting half or more of the party, and I usually announce ACs after a round or two of combat.

Sometimes I keep the DC secret, but that usually reflects one of two things: There's information the characters don't know, or I'm doing something off-label with the check, like determining extent of success or something.

See, I would prefer to reduce the contrast between in-combat adjudication and out of combat adjudication. It’s awkward that the game changes so drastically as soon as the DM says to roll initiative. PbtA games handle this much better in my opinion, where violent conflict is resolved just like any other part of the game instead of being its own siloed-off minigame.

There is something to be said for having combat play like everything else, but there's also something to be said for having it play differently. Among other things, combat is (rarely) decided by a single roll--those games where that can routinely happen end up with a reputation for lethality. Having, e.g., an interrogation play out like a combat as far as the mechanics go can work, but I think that plays better as an exception than as an expectation. Obviously, YMMV.

 

[Minigiant]

Seems all that is still going to depend on ones personal opinion of things.

But that's more an argument of was are the core aspects of the game/series/medium rather than it the instance is a valid representative of it.

All the 15 versions of D&D have all the core aspects of D&D.

 

[FrozenNorth]

In a few hours I'll start a new thread with a list of at will attack powers that I remember either playing or seeing used in play. I'll also post a list of classes (and sometimes subclasses) they were used with. I'll then be curious as to how they are too samey and see who can guess which class they are from.

At wills chosen because they are the category most likely to be seen as samey as they are most similar in power and have least in the way of riders.

If you do, don’t neglect to include the modifications on those powers that come from class. Limiting discussion to powers without discussing how class modified the powers doesn’t reflect how the powers played “on the table”.

 

[Garthanos]

If you do, don’t neglect to include the modifications on those powers that come from class. Limiting discussion to powers without discussing how class modified the powers doesn’t reflect how the powers played “on the table”.

Or how my cleave acts differently than his cleave because a feat allows it to do ongoing damage if I have no adjacent enemy to dig in to, because I take a feat (not an optional character differentiating resource). Because there were a whole slew of feats that adjusted powers.

 

[Oofta]

In a few hours I'll start a new thread with a list of at will attack powers that I remember either playing or seeing used in play. I'll also post a list of classes (and sometimes subclasses) they were used with. I'll then be curious as to how they are too samey and see who can guess which class they are from.

At wills chosen because they are the category most likely to be seen as samey as they are most similar in power and have least in the way of riders.

Feel free, but what are you trying to accomplish?

To me, the "samey" feel came from using the same basic structure as was alluded to in an earlier post. The designers were not given enough time to develop the game they wanted. Basically the whole at-will and cool-down powers with everyone having what I would consider supernatural abilities.

 

[Arilyn]

Have been watching the Castlevania series on Netflix. 4e would be the perfect system for this, but probably not PF2. I guess that says something about the two versions.

 

[Garthanos]

5e exchanged real encounter powers which for martial types I generally presented as a trick I cannot really pull off more than once right away against the same enemies (because you know its a trick)
with getting tired like wizards do with their magic.