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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4711327" data-attributes="member: 2067">"More Efficiently"? Where do you stab an ooze more efficiently? How do you trip a gelatinous cube? And how would anyone raised in the back alleys of a city know how to hit the "weak spot" of a walking graveyard or an elemental or a living shadow? 4e, quite blatantly, is perfectly OK with a results-oriented design motif. If you can explain away attacking a creature made of fire in a way that is "more efficient" than other ways, I'm sure you have the necessary base to explain how the Ranger finds his way through the Teleport Maze by sensing which direction the wind is blowing from, or what happens to the fleas that jump out of Hrothgar's hide armor when he gets by the teleporter. Heck, according to the 4e Skill Challenge system as it exists, you can figure out that puzzle with any skill that you can make a persuasive case to the DM about. Not only that, but the Ranger DOES learn something about Arcana as he gains levels, so it's not like he's never heard the word "teleport" before. The proposed idea is totally in line with the level of abstraction that 4e already assumes. We can debate whether or not 4e is right to assume that level, but, as I pointed out, I'm working within the bounds of 4e with this idea, not to surmount it. This isn't even a particularly hard pill to swallow compared to some of the things that 4e asks of its players.In 4e, the methods don't matter; only the results do. In D&D combat throughout the editions, this is also true: it only matters who wins the HP Attrition War. It doesn't matter if that sword blow hit my hand or my head or my ear or my toe, it doesn't matter if it was a thrust or a slash or a one-two-combo, it doesn't matter if it's six seconds in or six hours in, all that matters is if I can make him stop moving before he stops me. I don't believe out-of-hand that people organize their character around methods. When my players do something, they couch it in terms of results: "I want to shove him off a cliff," or "I want to kill the man that killed my father," or "I want to master the riddles of the halflings." They don't say "I want a character who is intelligent," they say "I want a character who can outfox the Sphinx." This is true for a pretty vast swath of players over three different editions, and while it's just anecdotal experience, I think it at least puts an experiential hole in the idea that people care about methods very deeply.In a lot of ways, 4e takes the air out of that idea. Just like everyone can contribute to a fight against a goblin or an ooze, everyone can ALSO contribute to exploring the woods or the underdark. Even our ranger friend gets Arcana; even our sickly weakling 4e wizards can climb mountains with their bare hands that mere mortals could never attempt. Our city-bred rogue who couldn't draw a horse if it was described to him can charm an unruly stallion into becoming a docile lap-horse. I understand that you might not like that level of abstraction, but the fact remains that it exists, and that was the context in which the idea was presented. It doesn't do anything especially new -- characters in 4e already are not defined by their methods as much as the results. There's a few different misconceptions at work, here. The first is that "no one has nature." Like a combat without a Striker, an exploration team without a Trailblazer SHOULD be a little "unbalanced," but not so much as to handicap them. Like the roles, these are not binary -- there's Striker-like powers in a lot of classes, and other classes might have Trailblazer-esque abilities as well. Like the 4e skill and the 4e combat systems exist now, this system would retain that level of "everyone can do everything" that is already inherent in 4e. In 4e, there is never a situation where no one has Nature. The second is that the challenges are exclusive. Challenges can be nested like little nesting dolls. 4e already has elements of this with traps being common in encounters. There's no reason that an exploration challenge can't have a persuasion challenge put inside of it. That is, essentially, what you're describing: the Persuason Challenge is "Can you convince the centaurs to give us directions?" after the team had already failed the Exploration Challenge. Of course, given the point above, no team should automatically fail an Exploration Challenge just because they don't have a particular role, just like no team should automatically loose a battle because they didn't bring a Leader.That means is already, to a large extent, gone in 4e, most obviously within combat, but also without (everyone gains ranks in everything -- a desert hermit who has never seen a body of water deeper than his arm of 15th level can swim better than a sailor of 1st who has lived his entire life on the ocean). If you don't want to give it up, that's a different debate, but to suggest I'm doing something revolutionary here is kind of bizarre. I'm working well within the bounds of abstraction that 4e has already set. The framework above isn't doing anything that isn't already very present in the game.  Separately, I'd argue that the 4e design team had a good reason for doing this, and that it's a useful approach in designing a game that's easier to learn and play, and, again, encourage those who want more complexity to add more complexity. Roles in 4e already have multiple sub-divisions in power source and class. You could divide them by encounter type, too. The roles I've proposed can vary by power source, by class, by background, by knowledge skill, by environment, by locality, by personality, whatever. You don't want Rangers to be able to find their way in the dungeon? Go for it. Here's the consequence you may have to face (one I'm sure you're familiar with): Sometimes, it might suck really hard to play a Ranger in your game, if the party is, through circumstances, forced to spend a huge portion of the game in a mage's dungeon. Just like a rogue sucked in 3e against a campaign featuring large numbers of undead (or, really, how certain warlock builds suck in 4e against the same adversaries; and how certain paladin or cleric builds are even mightier in those situations). If you're cool with that, or have a solution for it, go wild. If you're not OK with that, maybe you should abandon that level of detail in this particular instance, because it wouldn't add much to your game. But the fact of the matter is that 4e, with or without this system, tells you over and over and over again, don't worry about the fluff -- don't worry about the how or the why. Just worry about what it does. All this system does is take the existing skill system to that logical conclusion.</blockquote>

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