D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Micah Sweet]

In precisely the same way as you might treat a creature as a different weight class in 4e. Whenever the GM decided it was more sensible for you to do so, largely for administrative reasons or to make a creature more challenging over a larger level range.

Can you give me a page number or quote the rules? I have no memory of this specific rules widget you are describing.

 

[Gimby]

Is there anyone who agrees with this not a fan of 4e?

It's something that we can determine fairly straighforwardly by looking at the text. There's very little mechanically in there that doesn't have precedent elsewhere. At Will spells have precedent in 3e Reserve feats. Non-AC Defenses are described almost exactly in Unearthed Arcana (under "Players Roll All the Dice" - the only difference is that it's attackers rolling rather than players) , Martial Dailies and Encounters have their origin in Barbarian Rage. Healing Surges are fairly novel but the concept of a pool of health characters can access fairly rapidly is described in Reserve Points in UA, as is level dependant defence bonuses for AC.

Class roles date back to at least 2e in the class groups

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's something that we can determine fairly straighforwardly by looking at the text. There's very little mechanically in there that doesn't have precedent elsewhere. At Will spells have precedent in 3e Reserve feats. Non-AC Defenses are described almost exactly in Unearthed Arcana (under "Players Roll All the Dice" - the only difference is that it's attackers rolling rather than players) , Martial Dailies and Encounters have their origin in Barbarian Rage. Healing Surges are fairly novel but the concept of a pool of health characters can access fairly rapidly is described in Reserve Points in UA, as is level dependant defence bonuses for AC.

Class roles date back to at least 2e in the class groups

Does this answer my question? Do you like 4e?

 

[Gimby]

I don't remember ever seeing that. Sometimes individual creatures joined many others of the same kind to become a swarm but that's an entirely different thing.

Can you give me a page number or quote the rules? I have no memory of this specific rules widget you are describing.

For 3e? The stat blocks in the relevant monster manuals. Mobs are described here : Template - Mobs - sorry, don't have the original text handy but I know they popped up in later Monster Manuals

If I am a GM and I am creating an encounter with a large number of (say) bats in it, I can chose to represent them by a large number of individual bats or by one (or possibly more) swarms. Or if I wanted to make a horde of orcs a relevant encounter to a higher level 3e party, I could treat them as a mob instead.

There's no rule stating that I should do this one way or another but it should be pretty clear at some point it's much more convenient to treat them as a swarm. In precisely the same way that while you can treat the same creature in 4e as a minion or standard of different levels, it's more convenient to treat them one way or another depending on context of the combat that's happening.

No rule in 3e prevents me from throwing 100 orcs at a level 15 party to have them slowly hacked down one by one just as nothing in 4e prevents me from putting a level 5 creature up against a level 10 party.

 

[Gimby]

Does this answer my question? Do you like 4e?

I don't think that's relevant - the text is the text and we can see if the things being held up as new feature are actually new or not. Unless you think it's just impossible to objectively review the rules text of games?

 

[FrogReaver]

Um... that's entirely what the discussion is about. @pemerton said he didn't dislike non-4e D&D. For some reason, people don't believe him because he said he preferred 4e. He wasn't making an objective statement about the game. He was talking about his preferences.

Hmmm, we very much believe he preferred 4e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think that's relevant - the text is the text and we can see if the things being held up as new feature are actually new or not. Unless you think it's just impossible to objectively review the rules text of games?

I have never seen anyone claim that 4e's changes weren't that significant unless that person liked 4e.

 

[Pedantic]

I would have to go back and look, but I think the 3e DMG2 and MM4 and MM5 were moving in the direction of more simplified stat blocks, or at least discussing it.

It was certainly a fairly prevalent topic in various discussion sites throughout most of later 3.5.

I just don't see it. You could maybe make a case for less daily resources? Late 3e was mostly marked by experimentation with resource systems altogether though, casting that as an obvious precursor to a unified progression model feels wild.

 

[Gimby]

I have never seen anyone claim that 4e's changes weren't that significant unless that person liked 4e.

Grand, does that have any impact on the concept that we can analyse whether or not the changes did or did not have precedent based on reading the rules text? You can certainly disagree about whether you like the changes made, but whether or not they had precedent should be pretty objective. I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that the changes from late era 3e to 4e are much smaller than were claimed by some people but that's largely down to late era 3e being quite different from early era 3e. And you can certainly argue that the issue was those precedents were applied too widely for people's tastes, but that's very different to denying that they exist.

 

[Gimby]

I just don't see it. You could maybe make a case for less daily resources? Late 3e was mostly marked by experimentation with resource systems altogether though, casting that as an obvious precursor to a unified progression model feels wild.

The argument, I think, would be that experimentation with resource systems might lead the designers to find one that they really liked and them deciding to apply that universally to see how that worked.