Removing homogenity from 4e
- Thread starter jmucchiello
- Start date
Jack99
Adventurer
Hyperbole.. Try again
Is there a wrong way to put a knife to someone's throat to make him uneasy?
Well if a wimpy psion put a knife to my throat and tried to intimidate me, I might try to wrestle it away from him. If Vanchku the burly half-orc brutal scoundrel is holding the knife, I might reconsider.
The psion though can not only read my mind to get my greatest fear, he can also make me hallucinate terrible monsters, or cause my body to release a flood of adrenaline into my system to increase my anxiety. He can tell if I'm lying by snatching up my surface thoughts with an insight check, get me to like him by with empathic powers and a diplomacy check, or insinuate a psionic suggestion with a bluff skill check. Psycho-metabolism channeling for athletics and acrobatics checks, etc. Give me a skill and I'll show you how a psion uses his mental powers to make the skill check. He still needs some proficiency in the associated skill, mind you. All the telepathic power to beam images into heads in the world won't help him intimidate if he doesn't have the charisma to make particularly scary telepathic hallucinatory images.
The existence of a power or ritual with similar flavour text does not preclude using a skill check. For example, the monk has a featherfall-esque slow fall ability, and you can do a slow fall with an acrobatics check. Brother Joe is the master of the slow fall technique, while Brother Bob occasionally fails or has a limit on how high a height he can fall from.
The whole purpose of describing a skill check any way you wish is to have a creative and cinematic descriptions in the story. That is why skills aren't about what you do, but about what challenges you overcome. It is a deliberate design choice. It is essentially doing for skills what we used to do in 2e with martial attacks. The mechanic is very simple (roll d20 to hit, roll damage dice) but you were encouraged to come up with imaginative descriptions for what the combat looked like. Of course, it usually defaulted to "you hit" because there was no way to inflict a crippling blow or forcibly move an opponent in the mechanics and people got tired of describing their attacks. The only hit that mattered was the one where the enemy fell over, ran away, or surrendered because that is when your actions had a discernible impact on what happened next.
Now you can just roll skill checks without describing them too, but I think skill checks are better for a highly creative but mechanically simple and abstract mechanic than combat is. A skill check is where a player describes an event beforehand, and the DM sets a difficulty. So the DM merely narrates the next part of the adventure assuming that you have succeeded or failed. I wouldn't want what a lot of people seem to be asking for, which is to to have more powers which replicate the results of skill checks with concrete descriptions of what happens. I think one should have utility powers replicate skill checks when it is appropriate to the class, but mostly utility powers should do what skills can't. I also like the new skill powers, which enhance what skills can do. Goal oriented spells (overcome obstacle x, influence person x, identify magical aura x etc) are best covered by skills in my opinion.
(I wasn't preaching at Hussar, I just like talking about this topic. This spiel was for everyone.)
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Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
Jack99
Adventurer
ExploderWizard
Hero
Well if a wimpy psion put a knife to my throat and tried to intimidate me, I might try to wrestle it away from him. If Vanchku the burly half-orc brutal scoundrel is holding the knife, I might reconsider.
You would? No edition of D&D has ever been able to model this sort of situation well without houserules. Scaling HP means that only the lowest level victims would even be slightly scared by such a situation.
Barastrondo
First Post
Oh, I know the prices for vehicles are out there, and I can jury-rig old prices by looking at books of previous editions if need be. The main trouble I have is that a longship sets you back 5000 gp that has been expected to be factored into your overall character wealth for items-per-level. A stronghold costs money that might mean you don't get your equivalent level NAD-protector or weapon.
Mainly what I would like to see is a "magic economy" that doesn't cross over with a gold piece economy, so you might as well spend those chests of gold on luxuries, home improvement, and legendary debauches. It's doable with house rules, and I do my darnedest to make it work, but of course, it would be nicer if it didn't have to be done with house rules. (If for no other reason than it wouldn't inspire quite as much online fighting.)
I imagine, though, that if I cite the "you can use your gold to upgrade your character with magic items" factor as a problem rather than a feature, it says a lot about me. Like (a) I run more often than I play, and (b) I got my nostalgic golden years of D&D gaming in before 3e ever came around.
No, accurate translation of what was the intention behind
"
- whether or not you want spellcaster classes to be able to do things out of combat that nobody else can do
- whether or not you want "fewer options" as a class feature, such as the old-school fighter
"
where he tries to link people who don't like 4Es system with power hungry wizard players who don't like others (fighters) being able to shine.
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Hussar
Legend
Heh, this is an issue that I've never been able to solve. I love the idea that the players will spend their coin on ships and titles and whatnot, but, at the end of the day, D&D (at least 3e) doesn't do it very well.
Like you say, it can be done in earlier editions where magic items weren't tied to player wealth.
Out of curiousity, how do you do it? I found myself just partitioning things off. That ship or that castle just didn't count for party wealth and the money and resources to upgrade that thing were also kept separate.
