Removing homogenity from 4e

[Fanaelialae]

I don't think it can be boiled down to just that dividing point. There's also:

- 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

and

- whether or not character-building is one of the sub-hobbies you find within gaming.

Good point. I might have been able to bodge the first in under the team-oriented concept, but the other two are pretty much their own thing.

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.

I'm sure I'm not the first to have this idea, but something I toyed with for a bit (which was inspired by a different idea one of my friends had) was reskinning gold as some form of mystical currency (residuum, for example).

You could use residuum for all the normal uses like performing rituals and creating magic items, and also use it to purchase them from craftsman. No one buys magic items (or residuum) for simple gold (because magic is priceless). On the other hand, only those involved with the mystic arts have any use for residuum (you can't buy a loaf of bread with it unless the local hedge mage also happens to be the town baker). Residuum accumulates slowly within all beings, but is attracted to those who alter the flow of fate (people who can change the world, be it on a local or cosmic level; aka adventurers) and can be easily siphoned from a willing individual by any moderately learned practitioner of the magical arts. If residuum doesn't work for you, you could always consider it mana, quintessence or something else entirely.

You could then add mundane gold (at whatever rate you feel is appropriate) into the campaign for purchasing things like horses and keeps. As an added bonus, it adds an extra treasure type to reward the players with. The main thing is that you'd have to keep the magical and mundane economies separate (ritual components can't be purchased with mundane gold because that would allow the conversion of gold into residuum).

Still, I think it could work (and for the right campaign, work very well) and the nicest part is that it seems like it would require only a minimal amount of houseruling.

 

[Nifft]

I want the part of my life back that I lost reading this crap.

Caveat Spector?

I'd think Caveat Lector, but I'm no expert.

Ave, -- N

 

[ferratus]

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.

Again, stats in 4e aren't about what the characters and the monsters can do, its about what happens. The fact that mechanically you'd have to stab the NPC 17 times before he'd die is immaterial to 4e's narrative assumptions. What happened was you threatened an NPC with a knife, succeeded on an intimidate check, and he was cowed.

Some people don't like that 4e mechanics describe a scene rather than character abilities. I love it.

 

[Nifft]

Again, stats in 4e aren't about what the characters and the monsters can do, its about what happens. The fact that mechanically you'd have to stab the NPC 17 times before he'd die is immaterial to 4e's narrative assumptions. What happened was you threatened an NPC with a knife, succeeded on an intimidate check, and he was cowed.

Some people don't like that 4e mechanics describe a scene rather than character abilities. I love it.

Also, of course, the NPC could turn out to be a minion, and be only one small nick away from a PC-dug grave.

IMHO, 4e encourages a suspension of mechanical disbelief in a manner similar to 1e, but with a clearer set of rules behind it.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Thasmodious]

Ferratus, I tried to give you xp as well, but it appears you were among the last couple I gave it to.

I agree with a lot of what Farratus says, especially about 4e describing things in a way other editions of D&D haven't, but many other modern game systems do. I think a lot of the problems some people have with 4e stems from this subtle shift in the narrative. The old model was player says what they do, DM tells them if it works and what happens. That's much less the case now. Even in 3e with some spells that clearly described what happened, it still fell to the DM to confirm it (whether because he had a saving throw to make or spell resistance on the target). In 4e, if the DM gives out the target numbers or confirms a "hit", the player then tells the group what happens to the DMs monster, based on the power - "He is blown backwards 10' and falls over and now he can't move". Then the DM has to deal with that situation. It's a small shift from the way 3e played and a bigger shift from the way earlier editions played.

Someone upthread a bit said it was a fact that 3e had more options than 4e in regards to character creation and action. By the numbers this is true (hundreds of prestige classes, 60 base classes, etc), but despite all these menu options, I found 3e significantly more limiting than I do 4e for a number of reasons.

One is simple menu options. There were many, many choices but even with all that choice if you created a concept without considering the menu available, you often found it very tricky to create the character you want. You had to do some ridiculous contortions (1 lvl barbarian, 2 of fighter, 1 rogue, etc...) to get the mechanics you needed off the menu while ignoring most all the fluff that came with a lot of those choices. No matter how big the menu grew, you still had to choose from that menu and the bigger it grew, the less room it had for out of the box concepts. I much prefer the way all D&D editions except 3e (and 2e with kits) treated classes as broad umbrellas encompassing a number of different ways to go within that class.

Second, 3e had a philosophy of mechanically representing all the things a character could do. Not just as an adventurer, but as a person. I found this severely limiting to what I could do with character backgrounds (and houseruled the heck out of it so my players could make the characters they wanted). This was my problem with craft/profession/perform and why I was very happy to see them go away in 4e. I do not think those aid roleplaying, but hinder it instead. By way of example, a character I've talked about before here in one of my 4e games had a simple, dramatic concept that fit the campaign perfectly. In every other edition, where backgrounds were open and based on RP more so than mechanics, the concept would work, but in 3e it required houseruling. He is an Eladrin based very loosely on Elvis, more specifically on a line from Dogma ("Elvis was an artist. But that didn't stop him from joining the service in time of war. And that's why he's The King, and you're a schmuck"). He was an older Eladrin, alive before a great aberrant corruption caused the elvin people to fall from grace. He was a famous musician, a celebrity of Eladrin culture. Afterwards he turned to the arcane arts and quests to end the corruption and renew his people. It's a couple of lines of background in 4e and when it comes up that he sings or plays (he does so often, in taverns to win over locals, at camp to lift spirits, to remind other Eladrin he encounters of the once greatness of their race, etc) we handle it without much mechanical need. In 3e he would have needed a half dozen skills well above 1st level max ranks to justify the background. I did not like that. Same holds true for making a fighter that was good at anything else. Hell, 3e in general was a low time for the storied fighter, he couldn't even excel at the one thing the system allowed him to do - fight. Practically every other class, especially casters, far exceeded his fighting abilities. Another example I've given before is a dwarf brewmaster I first played in 1e. He was the first son, and heir apparent, in a clan of world famous brewers, his father being the head of the clan. That was supposed to be his life, but he was struck with that wanderlust and thirst for adventure so many of our characters have. He turned his back on that and became an outcast, as an adventurer he was a rare fighter/wizard. This wouldn't work in 3e on several levels. 3e never did fighter/wizard well for one. But the big one is I needed to, but couldn't mechanically represent his background as a master brewer.

To me, 3e was the standalone edition here, the one that changed character conceptualizing into an overly rigid mechanical exercise. I like the freedom of both earlier editions and 4e in leaving backgrounds open and focusing character mechanics on the central purpose for game rules - conflict resolution.

Which is another thing some seem to miss about 4e. It is not all about combat. The rules system exists to resolve conflicts (and build characters). That's what you need in a rules system. You don't need dice mechanics to determine if a fletcher can make arrows or if an NPC blacksmith makes money in a given week. Those are details best left to story. You need mechanics to resolve conflicts when the parties involved are at odds - when the PC wants to introduce steel to an orc and the orc politely wishes to refuse the introduction, or when a rogue seeks to climb a tower that has carefully designed itself to be very difficult to climb.

I like that the game system gets out of the way and lets you play the game. For me, and I would say others who don't see homogeneity in 4e, this is a major reason. A game that constantly requires consulting a number of subsystems for simple task resolution is one that interrupts flow. 4e, with its unified mechanics, has tremendous flow. My group barely ever cracks a book during gameplay. Every once in a while a longer power or ritual description will require a peek over the card summary or a potion or other consumable that we don't generally make cards for might require a lookup. But we rarely have to consult the books to apply the grapple rules, or remember all the steps for a disarm attempt, or have to pause the game to reference three spells to see how exactly polymorph works again.

There are character concepts that work in one edition that don't work in others throughout the life of D&D and I had a great time played 3e and don't "hate" the system or anything. It just was more restricting than I like and I much prefer the openness of a game system that emphasizes a broader, less focused approach. I like broad skill systems (and I do like skill systems as opposed to "player skill"), broad class archetypes (I really prefer classless, but not in my D&D), love the way 4e encourages and enhances DM improvisation and tweaking (page 42, painfully simple monster modification, etc).

Ultimately, I especially agree with Ferratus in that I would simply like to see others who aren't fans of the game to stop referring to it with all the insulting code that has popped up - tactical minis game, all about combat, wow on paper, D&D without the roleplaying, etc. It's one thing to discuss the differences between editions and another to simply bash someone's choice because its not the game for you. The misinformation that abounds about what 4e is "really like" bugs me, like the OP stating that homogeneity in 4e is just an accepted fact. This thread proves it clearly is not an accepted fact but a matter of perception.

 

[Thasmodious]

IMHO, 4e encourages a suspension of mechanical disbelief in a manner similar to 1e, but with a clearer set of rules behind it.

I like how Nifft expresses the point of half my post in a single line while owning me with his sig. That was worth some xp. And I agree entirely. This is why a lot of older 4e players describe the game as having a healthy dose of old school in it.

Now, someone may well come back and reference Come and Get It or the dreaded 'knocking a cube prone' to challenge this notion. To that I would refer to Ferratus discussing how 4e described what happened not what people can do. And if you can't figure out how the modifiers under the Prone category would be applied to a cube, I refer you to the scene in Terminator 2 when Arnie puts an explosive round right into the middle of the T-1000.

 

[Barastrondo]

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.

As the person who posted it: sorry, that's a highly inaccurate "translation" of my "intention." My intention was to post valid critiques of the system to show that people can have more problems with it than simply a preference for one form of genre or another.

For instance, the "fewer options" fighter is something I see requested by people who like to play simpler fighters, not by spellcaster players trying to keep those uppity martial guys in check. Some people just want to write down a few stats and go. They don't like resource management of encounter or daily powers at all, with maybe the exception of tracking ammunition. Therefore it's a valid criticism of 4e, and also a divisive one because it can be a bug or a feature depending on your viewpoint.

Rein in the psychoanalysis, please. It's kind of insulting, particularly when you miss the mark completely.

 

[Barastrondo]

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.

Therein lies the inspiration, of course. I started running fairly serious D&D in college with 2e, and was never allowed to stop, really. The campaign world has, at my players' request, remained the same even as we've adopted new editions. (Note to married gamers out there: if your wife really likes something about a game you run, you've got a great motivation to like it, too!) A few house rules and the occasional retcon have been inevitable to keep the mood generally consistent. So in a way, I enjoy 4e because in some ways it plays more the game I learned to run with 2e.

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.

That's one way of doing it, yeah; treating deeds and captured ships and things like that as a different kind of "parcel" to track, sort of like letting PCs find ritual components that don't count against the party wealth so nobody has to pay a "ritual income tax."

I've also tried to encourage the thought of magic items as sort of existing in their own economy. You don't sell those three +2 swords you liberated from the dwarven forge — you wind up going to the government and exchanging them at the state armories for something more your style, or (more frequently) to a powerful temple. I figure the potent temples are likely to accumulate magic items not quite in their priests' style via their adventuring templars, and are willing to make exchanges when PCs bring back other things. This allows for a more fair "market value" exchange rate, without having to muck around with residuum or whatnot, and encourages roleplaying with civic leaders besides.

It's an imperfect solution, mind, but I find it works much better in 4e with the much, much-reduced emphasis on expendable magic items. There's now much less reason for the party wizard to ask for a tithe from other party members to produce a bunch of protection from fire scrolls so he can firebomb the bejeezus out of their immediate area. So far I've mostly been running low-level stuff, though; once I move back to Atlanta I'll have more experience with paragon tier forthwith. It should be educational!

I'm sure I'm not the first to have this idea, but something I toyed with for a bit (which was inspired by a different idea one of my friends had) was reskinning gold as some form of mystical currency (residuum, for example).

(snipping the rest) Yeah, that actually would work well with many games. Ars Magica and Mage invoked the concept of Tass, for instance, essentially mana that's in material form. I have a Fantasy Hero supplement that talks about setting up your own approach to mana as a resource, from naming it in various ways (ten "points" of mana make a "star," ten "stars" of mana make a "constellation", for instance) to figuring out its relative wealth.

I unfortunately never introduced such a concept to my game, so at this point I would be looking at retcon-time. It's something I'd want to talk to the group about, if introducing it would be jarring or if it would simply be bringing "what was happening all along" to the forefront, with a more technical look at the step after "acquire cockatrice feathers" — i.e., extract Tass or residuum or whathaveyou.

It's an intriguing concept, especially when it comes to figuring out neat ways for it to enter the "economy." Wouldn't it be interesting if particularly magical monsters had little bezoars of Tass in their gizzards, or infused in their body parts? Or if a wizard's tower managed to, with the right equipment, bleed and coalesce a small amount monthly from the heavens, sort of like an arcane gold mine? Ideas abound. I must consider this.

 

[Remathilis]

Rituals
Hallucinatory Item allows you to make illusions of objects.
In fact rituals, like Animal Messenger, are specifically designed so PCs can do cool things out of combat.

Hallucinary Item [sblock]
Hallucinatory Item
Component Cost: 25 gp
Market Price: 250 gp
Key Skill: Arcana
Level: 5
Category: Deception
Time: 10 minutes
Duration: 24 Hours
You create the illusion of a single inanimate object that appears, to all intents and purposes, to be real. You can use this ritual to create an illusory wall, door, weapon, or other object.
Your Arcana check result determines the illusion’s maximum size.
Once you create the illusion, you cannot move it, and it can’t include moving parts.
Creatures that view or interact with the illusion are entitled to Insight checks to detect the fact that it is false. This check’s DC equals your Arcana check result. A creature is allowed a check the first time it sees the illusion and each time it interacts with it. A creature that touches an illusion automatically determines that the image is a fake.[/sblock]
Silent Image [sblock]
Silent Image
Illusion (Figment)
Level: Brd 1, Sor/Wiz 1
Components: V, S, F
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Effect: Visual figment that cannot extend beyond four 10-ft. cubes + one 10-ft. cube/level (S)
Duration: Concentration
Saving Throw: Will disbelief (if interacted with)
Spell Resistance: No
This spell creates the visual illusion of an object, creature, or force, as visualized by you. The illusion does not create sound, smell, texture, or temperature. You can move the image within the limits of the size of the effect.
Focus A bit of fleece[/sblock]

So now, my "illusionist" gets to pay 25 gp and spend 10 minutes casting a ritual to create a door THAT ANYONE TRYING THE HANDLE WILL KNOW IS FAKE!

Progress. Least he can still deal PSYCHIC damage with his illusions!

Animal Messanger, 3.5[sblock]
Animal Messenger
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Mind-Affecting]
Level: Brd 2, Drd 2, Rgr 1
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One Tiny animal
Duration: One day/level
Saving Throw: None; see text
Spell Resistance: Yes
You compel a Tiny animal to go to a spot you designate. The most common use for this spell is to get an animal to carry a message to your allies. The animal cannot be one tamed or trained by someone else, including such creatures as familiars and animal companions.
Using some type of food desirable to the animal as a lure, you call the animal to you. It advances and awaits your bidding. You can mentally impress on the animal a certain place well known to you or an obvious landmark. The directions must be simple, because the animal depends on your knowledge and can’t find a destination on its own. You can attach some small item or note to the messenger. The animal then goes to the designated location and waits there until the duration of the spell expires, whereupon it resumes its normal activities.
During this period of waiting, the messenger allows others to approach it and remove any scroll or token it carries. The intended recipient gains no special ability to communicate with the animal or read any attached message (if it’s written in a language he or she doesn’t know, for example).
Material Component: A morsel of food the animal likes. [/sblock]
Animal Messanger, 4e[sblock]
Animal Messenger
Component Cost: 10 gp
Market Price: 50 gp
Key Skill: Nature
Level: 1
Category: Exploration
Time: 10 minutes
Duration: Special
You target a nonhostile Tiny animal, such as a sparrow, a raven, a fox, or a carp. The animal must remain within 5 squares of you for the time necessary to perform the ritual. Once the ritual is complete, you whisper a message of up to 25 words to the animal and name a recipient and a location. The animal bounds off toward the location, in search of the recipient. The animal avoids danger along its path. Upon finding the recipient, the animal approaches until it is adjacent to the recipient, and then your whisper issues from the animal’s mouth, conveying the message. When the animal delivers its message or the ritual’s duration ends, your influence ends and the animal reverts to its natural behavior.
Your Nature check determines how long the animal is affected by the ritual.[/sblock]

10 minutes? Check. 10 gp? Check. I'm ready to cas... Hey, where'd the squirrel go?

Neither of these rituals are fast ("Quick, the ogre is coming! Make an illusion of a door!" Ok, can you hold him off for 10 minutes while I try?") both are expensive (costing gp per casting, whereas the 3.5 spells had negligible cost) and while Hallucinatory item lasts 24 hours (rather than concentration of the 1st level spell) it doesn't pass the sniff test the minute you touch, or interact, with it (whereas the 3e spell allows a will save to disbelieve).

You'd be better off spending 10 gp on art supplies and have the illusionist PAINT a door on for 10 minutes for as useful at that is!

 

[Nifft]

You'd be better off spending 10 gp on art supplies and have the illusionist PAINT a door on for 10 minutes for as useful at that is!

He'd have to multiclass to gain access to a Martial Practice like that.

Cheers, -- N