Removing homogenity from 4e

[ferratus]

It might be a good idea to recover a daily per milestone anyway. The monsters have a lot of hit points and can probably take it (and would speed up combat by a round or two). You generally want your dailies for the climactic encounter, which means you probably hoard them more than you should. The barbarian is the only one who is encouraged to spend his dailies, because his rage lasts the entire encounter, and I believe he can only have one going at once.

This also might be a horror to some, but I hate spell resource management. I like managing healing surges more because I don't mind if the party retreats because 1 or more of the PC's has gotten the snot beat of them. The party retreating because they've run out of spells or even worse "dailies" seems rather anti-climactic to me.

As for the wider issue of "homogeneousness" I seem to remember all the character builds in 3e being about maximizing outgoing damage and minimizing incoming damage no matter what class you played. I also remember combat as being a lot more static and uninteresting as well. So it plays as less homogeneous to me because the narrative is more varied (in my games anyway) both in combat and out of combat. I'm afraid I can't really mourn differing mechanics and subsystems as long as the narrative needs are met. It would just be too meta for me to care about differing mechanics between weapon and caster classes for resolving attacks. As long as a foe is zapped with a spell or hit with a weapon, I don't care whether the underlying mechanic is the same or not.

In short, I don't appreciate mechanics in and of themselves, I only notice them when they don't work.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Everything is relative. There are games out there with vastly more variety built in to the mechanics. Compared to those games, 4E is quite homogeneous.

I understand 4E very well. And the homogeneity is shining bright.

Frankly, I can't even see the homogeneity in the mechanics. And I spent quite a bit of time looking at and thinking about the system when it first came out, not simply in order to run a game, but in order to teach a university class on RPGs that included a number of academic papers on RPGs and other media. I mention this only to try to establish that I really, really, have spent a lot of time and effort onstudying this system. (At least that semster, it was paid time!)

4E uses a number of different strategies for every class (and within each class) to produce the game experience. The fighter alone, with the differences in weapon types, has a great variety internal to the class.

Does 4E have limitations? Yes. Do I sometimes look at a PC and wish that there were some other options at certain levels for that specific PC? Yes. However, I could probably get around that with the hybrid class rules if I really wanted to. As the publications for the product increase, there will be more and more options. I could sit down and write something up if I really wanted, or I could re-skin a power to give it the flavour I wanted and forget about some specific mechanic and focus on what it presented during play rather than how it shaped the course of the game in another way.

Perhaps, if you wish to actually contribute to a solution oriented discussion, you will quit offering shallow preconceptions of your own regarding other people's experience with the game you enjoy. Because, you are wrong. Deeply wrong.

The issue is that there simply is no problem to address. At least not one that is well-posed. It might be that we can discuss ways to add different mechanics to 4E, but that discussion might better take place with specific design goals in mind to shape and assess the mechanic.

I think you claim regarding mechanics vs tactics is pretty sketchy at best. But even with that, why can't we have both?

We do have both. The tactics comes about because of the differences in mechanics.

Also, I'll clarify that it is the game I referenced as homogeneous, not specifically the classes.

In a wider sense, the game is not homogeneous. The basic mechanic provides a core for play, indeed, it is called the "core mechanic", but much of the actual rules are very specific for circumstances and for the flavour of specific attempts. In skill challenges alone one can see a vast difference of how the core mechanic is adapted for differnt play goals.

 

[Mircoles]

Homogeneous? I don't think so.

I've played a wizard, a feylock and currently I'm playing a chaos sorcerer.

My play experience has been very different with each of them even though they are all arcane casters. One controller and two strikers.

The feylock and the sorcerer are the most different in play,even though they're both strikers. The feylock is a striker/controller and during combat I was obsessed with cursing every enemy in sight. With the chaos sorcerer it's more a matter of "Now what!" oh, I blow up or something bad and interesting happends to the target and I need to keep track of what I roll on the dice, just even or odd, so not too bad.

I'm having a lot more fun with the sorcerer, though I do miss cursing enemies. You get quite obsessed with it as a warlock.

So not homogeneous in play, just in how they are layed out in the book.

 

[Barastrondo]

The problem is, everyone participates.

You know, I totally get the desire to shine and to take turns, but man, this sentence. Identifying "everyone participates" as a problems is just... well, I don't agree.

At any rate, it may be a matter of play style, but I don't see a contradiction between "people have a chance to shine" and "everyone participates." In any given skill challenge, I've found that everyone participates, but some people shine more in skill challenges that stress their character's strengths and "merely" pull their weight in others. Tracking some bastard across wilderness territory? The people with strong Nature and Perception shine, and everyone else participates. Negotiating with the canny madam of the high-rent bordello? The people with strong Diplomacy and Insight shine, and everyone else participates. Everyone has a shot at either "pulling your own weight" and "oops!", but super rolling or your skill build adds in the third possibility of "being really impressive."

To get back to the original point, I don't really see 4e as a game rife with homogeneity, myself. But there's a caveat here that I think is important: I don't build D&D characters for fun. Never have. I have friends who take character-building as a hobby, and who like specialized rulesets to govern their world-building, and 4e just isn't good for them. The rules-monkeying away from play just isn't as robust of a "sub-game" in 4e. I think that's a powerful advantage, myself — I also like playing Blood Bowl with very basic teams and letting my tactics emerge in play, and I also love how Spirit of the Century makes character generation a group sub-game rather than a solo sub-game — but I absolutely understand how it's a disadvantage for the solo fiddler.

 

[ExploderWizard]

You know, I totally get the desire to shine and to take turns, but man, this sentence. Identifying "everyone participates" as a problems is just... well, I don't agree.

At any rate, it may be a matter of play style, but I don't see a contradiction between "people have a chance to shine" and "everyone participates." In any given skill challenge, I've found that everyone participates, but some people shine more in skill challenges that stress their character's strengths and "merely" pull their weight in others. Tracking some bastard across wilderness territory? The people with strong Nature and Perception shine, and everyone else participates. Negotiating with the canny madam of the high-rent bordello? The people with strong Diplomacy and Insight shine, and everyone else participates. Everyone has a shot at either "pulling your own weight" and "oops!", but super rolling or your skill build adds in the third possibility of "being really impressive."

If by "pull your weight" you mean "aid another or sit and watch" then sure. The system as written encourages this.

 

[Nifft]

You know, I totally get the desire to shine and to take turns, but man, this sentence. Identifying "everyone participates" as a problems is just... well, I don't agree.

At any rate, it may be a matter of play style, but I don't see a contradiction between "people have a chance to shine" and "everyone participates."

Very much agreed.

I did not like 3.x niche protection. ("Hey it's a trap guys! Everyone except the Rogue, sit on your hands.")

4e's skill challenges, when run well, allow spotlight on skill choices and good creative uses of unexpected skills & powers, but don't require that everyone other than The Chosen One leave the room for a smoke break.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Barastrondo]

If by "pull your weight" you mean "aid another or sit and watch" then sure. The system as written encourages this.

Not even a little bit what I meant, actually. Of course, my opinion comes out of practical play, so bear in mind that it's more about my personal experiences than anything else. Sometimes there's an aid another if somebody isn't feeling totally creative, but usually someone can find something to do wherein they have a fair chance of success, if not a splendid one. That's the point of the skill challenge, after all.

I won't say the skill challenge system is perfect, of course; nobody says that. The main trouble I encounter with skill challenges is that too many of the examples given encourage too few skills to contribute to success. If you limit the number of skills that "count" for successes to only three or four per skill challenge, it will be a much different experience than if you say there are two to four skills that will give you successes on moderate DCs, and about three to eight skills that will contribute on hard DCs. I think Piratecat writes exceptional skill challenges, for instance.

I hope DMG2 talks more about unscripted skill challenges, actually. I was glad to find out I'm not the only person who uses them, and they're absolutely fantastic. Set the problem, then say "This is going to be a skill challenge. Tell me what you're going to do to try overcoming it." This works great with creative players: it's all that old-school creativity, but enough of a complicated framework to really feel like there's structure to the activity.

Example: A villain has a hostage out on a promontory. He's expecting a given NPC to show up and do a prisoner exchange. The PCs are then told "Okay, it's skill challenge time." In this example, the PCs used Nature checks to find natural tinctures and Bluff checks to disguise the dwarf so he could look like the expected NPC and approach from a distance, and then the more primal-aspected ones used Perception, Nature and Stealth to locate a back route and creep up on the villain and his hostage from an alternate direction. It was a splendid encounter, and all the players came away feeling like they shone.

I could have scripted this out by only earmarking specific skills, but then it would have been my plan, not theirs. I'd like to see more discussion in, say, the DMG2 about how to call unscripted skill challenges as a way to adjudicate proactive player plans. One of the things I really like about 4e is that it strives to make things easier to ad-lib; with a little more attention to skill challenges with that same spirit in mind, fewer players might come away from them feeling like their only option is to aid another.

 

[LostSoul]

I hope DMG2 talks more about unscripted skill challenges, actually.

Me too.

 

[Rechan]

If I'm going to do overt "Here's a skill challenge and here is the rules", I'll go PCat's way.

Unscripted but Overt is nice.

Speaking of skill challenges, did anyone read the DMG2 preview that's up? Monday's was on skill challenges.

 

[Barastrondo]

Speaking of skill challenges, did anyone read the DMG2 preview that's up? Monday's was on skill challenges.

By Rob "Spirit of the Century" Donoghue, no less.