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

[Sadras]

Whereas to me I absolutely can not stand 2e - but it's because of the bits 5e took out. THAC0, Non Weapon Proficiencies, Thief Skills, and Saving Throws all using separate mechanics for no good reason might as well be nails on a blackboard to me.

...(snip)...

Here again what you see if you like something is different from what you see if you don't, even if you've played both games (as I have). For you the stuff I can't stand is no big deal - but for me it's nails on a blackboard. And this was the thing 5e got right.

Perfectly said! I bolded the part that is crucial in these edition discussions.

And what people consider tinker friendly differs; in another thread I showed how to make a goblin on a pogo stick as a character entirely by the 4e RAW and have it feel like one in play Tinkering with 4e is a different art to 2e.

Which brings me on to my biggest disappointment in 5e - it's a level of clean to run that I only otherwise get in 4e in D&D, but the monster creation rules absolutely drive me up the wall. I can create just about any monsters I like but creating my own monsters by the book is, after 4e's MM3 on a business card horrible. So I'd far rather tinker in 4e.

When I referred to tinkering I meant the system not so much monsters as I find that easy in both those editions (not 3e). But I do agree with you messing around with 4e monsters is a joy.

 

[Lanefan]

Whereas to me I absolutely can not stand 2e - but it's because of the bits 5e took out. THAC0, Non Weapon Proficiencies, Thief Skills, and Saving Throws all using separate mechanics for no good reason might as well be nails on a blackboard to me. (Note that it's the "for no good reason" part; I have no trouble at all with e.g. what the saving throws are).

Can't speak to THAC0 and Non-Weapon Proficiencies, never having used either, but the other two are to me features rather than bugs: they're good examples of using appropriate tools for different jobs rather than trying to shoehorn everything into one mechanic.

Thief skills being d%? Absolutely - allows for far more granularity than a simple d20. (ditto for various other things that use d% e.g. system shock rolls)

Saving throws? Absolutely - along with what class and level you are and what stats you have, what you're specifically saving against makes a difference in such a system - it's an added variable. One of these days I'd like to expand this further - maybe go to 8 or 10 different types of save rather than just 5 (e.g. split out Poison, Paralyzation and Death into their own charts rather than have them all the same).

And what people consider tinker friendly differs; in another thread I showed how to make a goblin on a pogo stick as a character entirely by the 4e RAW and have it feel like one in play Tinkering with 4e is a different art to 2e.

Different type of tinkering, I think.

When I talk of tinkering or kitbashing I'm referring to making actual changes to the rules and-or system, rather than using the existing rules to do something unusual.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Can't speak to THAC0 and Non-Weapon Proficiencies, never having used either, but the other two are to me features rather than bugs: they're good examples of using appropriate tools for different jobs rather than trying to shoehorn everything into one mechanic.

Thief skills being d%? Absolutely - allows for far more granularity than a simple d20. (ditto for various other things that use d% e.g. system shock rolls)

Saving throws? Absolutely - along with what class and level you are and what stats you have, what you're specifically saving against makes a difference in such a system - it's an added variable. One of these days I'd like to expand this further - maybe go to 8 or 10 different types of save rather than just 5 (e.g. split out Poison, Paralyzation and Death into their own charts rather than have them all the same).

I couldn't disagree more. A 2% difference in the odds of success (which is the largest possible difference in individual percentile roles from ones rounded to 5% or a d20) on a simple pass/fail check makes a difference in one roll out of 50. One roll in every 50 being different isn't even meaningful in terms of attacks, never mind thief skills. You're adding fiddliness without adding meaningful differentiation. All you are doing is making things unnecessarily fiddly. Adding insult to injury four out of the eight thief skills in 1e are in exact 5% incremements anyway (and climb walls goes to 0.1%).

And saving throws? I'm not arguing with the idea of saving throws being Death/Poison/Paralysis, RodStaffWand, Petrification or Polymorph, Breath, Spell - it works as a strongly gamist system (with paralysis being moved to the save or die group from the save or lose-but-survive group in later iterations due to it normally being followed by a coup de grace). I'm arguing against them gratuitiously using different dice rolling methods with no mathematical reason. 1d20 + modifier vs target number would make no mathematical difference and be easier to learn. You don't even have the excuse here of that oh-so-important 2% difference in probability.

And THAC0 was an improvement in calculation from those attack tables in oD&D that do nothing but enforce a slowness on the game. If you want to use lookup tables for weapons vs armour type Rolemaster (or, better, MERP) at least gives you both flavour and realism from them

When I talk of tinkering or kitbashing I'm referring to making actual changes to the rules and-or system, rather than using the existing rules to do something unusual.

I refer to both. But a better, more adaptable system like 4e or 5e requires a whole lot less in the way of actual changes to have decent sized effects. And also by being cleaner they show much more clearly when planned kitbashes don't measure up.

 

[pemerton]

Thief skills being d%? Absolutely - allows for far more granularity than a simple d20.

As @Neonchameleon has said, it's really not very clear what this granularity actually adds to play.

 

[Lanefan]

I couldn't disagree more. A 2% difference in the odds of success (which is the largest possible difference in individual percentile roles from ones rounded to 5% or a d20) on a simple pass/fail check makes a difference in one roll out of 50. One roll in every 50 being different isn't even meaningful in terms of attacks, never mind thief skills. You're adding fiddliness without adding meaningful differentiation. All you are doing is making things unnecessarily fiddly. Adding insult to injury four out of the eight thief skills in 1e are in exact 5% incremements anyway (and climb walls goes to 0.1%).

Over the years I've seen enough rolls - very significant rolls - made or lost by just 1% or 2% to make me keep that granularity all day long.

And saving throws? I'm not arguing with the idea of saving throws being Death/Poison/Paralysis, RodStaffWand, Petrification or Polymorph, Breath, Spell - it works as a strongly gamist system (with paralysis being moved to the save or die group from the save or lose-but-survive group in later iterations due to it normally being followed by a coup de grace). I'm arguing against them gratuitiously using different dice rolling methods with no mathematical reason. 1d20 + modifier vs target number would make no mathematical difference and be easier to learn.

That's all saves are now. The big difference is that the target number (i.e. the save matrix) is strictly DM-side info. The player still rolls the d20 and tells me the modified total, and I look at the chart - it ain't that hard.

And THAC0 was an improvement in calculation from those attack tables in oD&D that do nothing but enforce a slowness on the game.

I always found THAC0 hard to grok, personally. The only time it made any sense to me was when the target's AC was in fact 0; otherwise it added an extra calculation I otherwise didn't need to make.

I refer to both. But a better, more adaptable system like 4e or 5e requires a whole lot less in the way of actual changes to have decent sized effects. And also by being cleaner they show much more clearly when planned kitbashes don't measure up.

I've never tried kitbashing 4e or 5e but when playing 3e our DM tried some serious reworking of it, only to find that the unified mechanics (which he tried to maintain) caused far too many knock-on effects: changing something here knocked something else out of whack there and there, and fixing those caused problems elsewhere, repeat...

With freestanding sub-systems, there's no pressure to make any one element procedurally conform to any other element; it is what it is and does the job it does, and can be independently tweaked if so desired without nearly as many knock-ons.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Over the years I've seen enough rolls - very significant rolls - made or lost by just 1% or 2% to make me keep that granularity all day long.

Sure, over the course of years you will see a 1 in 100 chance come into play from time to time. Over a long enough series of rolls, a 1 in a thousand or 1 in a million chance will also come into play. Does that mean you should switch to rolling d1000s or d1000000s?

This isn't to imply that you're doing it wrong. If it's fun for you and your table, then there's evidently no problem.

The point is simply that there comes a point where granularity results in diminishing returns. A +1/-1 on a d20 is fairly likely to come into play in any given game session. A +1/-1 on a d100 might only come into play a few times in a (20 level) campaign. The same on a d1000 or d1000000 will likely occur at some point over the course of years, but not necessarily within the scope of any given campaign. This, of course, assumes that this check is being rolled with fair regularity.

If you like the granularity then by all means use it. But that doesn't make it necessarily significant. Those significant rolls that were missed by 1% could have easily been missed by 1 point on a d20 as well.

 

[Maxperson]

I always found THAC0 hard to grok, personally. The only time it made any sense to me was when the target's AC was in fact 0; otherwise it added an extra calculation I otherwise didn't need to make.

There's only one to two simple steps. You subtract what you rolled on the D20(plus modifiers) from your THACO and tell it to the DM. If your THAC0 is 17 and you roll a 12, you hit AC 5(17-12).

 

[lowkey13]

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[Neonchameleon]

Over the years I've seen enough rolls - very significant rolls - made or lost by just 1% or 2% to make me keep that granularity all day long.

They can be made or lost by that one time in 50 - but that doesn't mean that's a significant difference in character choices.

That's all saves are now. The big difference is that the target number (i.e. the save matrix) is strictly DM-side info. The player still rolls the d20 and tells me the modified total, and I look at the chart - it ain't that hard.

First, no that's not the difference. The big difference is that the old school saves were effects based; you had a better chance on the spell save than the death save whereas in 3.X you throw glitterdust and hold person at the brutes and blindness or stinking cloud at the casters.

Second as a DM or a player why would I want that? As a player not knowing how tough I am blinds me and takes away information I should have making me less connected to the world. And as a DM it's an extra piece of busywork for me.

I always found THAC0 hard to grok, personally. The only time it made any sense to me was when the target's AC was in fact 0; otherwise it added an extra calculation I otherwise didn't need to make.

I'd prefer a simple calculation to a lookup table any day of the week where the output is the same. Especially on something that's supposed to be fast.

I've never tried kitbashing 4e or 5e but when playing 3e our DM tried some serious reworking of it, only to find that the unified mechanics (which he tried to maintain) caused far too many knock-on effects: changing something here knocked something else out of whack there and there, and fixing those caused problems elsewhere, repeat...

4e is either worse or better than 3e that way depending on your perspective. I prefer the 3.X and 4e approach because it imposes some quality control on me - and because it allows me to make far reaching changes when I want to. But there is a much higher barrier to effectiveness.

 

[lowkey13]

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