Rules clarifications

[FabioMilitoPagliara]

in this thread on Livejournal

http://jediwiker.livejournal.com/41107.html

Rodney Thompson (gamescribe) and Mike Mearls (mearls) make a lot of clarification on the rules we are using in the lite 4e and the enworld made adventures

it's a long thread, the more useful answers are the following:

In case you guys decide to give it another stab... (gamescribe)
Just in case you guys decide to give it another go, here are some responses to comments/questions:

So far, I've used my cleric's "once per encounter" power--and whiffed. Boy, that blows. (Update: In fact, I whiffed again on my next and only other use of the power. Sigh.)

I'm curious--is this a complaint about encounter powers, or just lamenting the bad dice? If it's the former, do you feel any different than you did in 3.5 when a monster made its saving throw against a spell, or you failed to penetrate SR, or when you miss with that paladin smite?

Monsters running in to join the encounter makes sense--especially given a) the scenario and b) recent 3.5 adventures--but it still feels like drawing aggro in an MMO. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I believe this is part of the adventure design, as it's not anything hard-coded into the rules of 4E.

The "55% save" against effects (like the glue pot) just seems odd--like they really wanted to just make it a coin toss, but decided that that was too obvious, so they made it a "10 or better on a d20.

Well, it does add some granularity to the roll, and allows you to have monsters that have "+4 to saves" or allow an ally to let you make another save at +2, for example. If it was a simple coin toss, it's so binary you can't do anything with it. Also, it may help you to think of saves not as "I avoid taking damage" so much as this edition's version of duration rolls.

We are finding the "passive Perception" thing a bit off-putting. The short version is that, instead of rolling a Perception check against someone's Stealth check, you just add 10 to both.

Stealth still has to be rolled; there's no "Passive Stealth." Likewise, Passive Perception is only used when you're not actively looking for someone, as you probably already figured out. It's a way for the DM to determine whether you notice something without usingthe metagame-inspiring "OK, everyone give me a Perception check."

Despite the dragon being twice our "EL" (yes, I'm using a 3.X term here), and despite us taking huge amounts of damage right off the bat, we survived for several rounds into the fight.

The dragon fight is in there to showcase exactly how the higher-level solo monster interacts with a party of 4. Also, I believe the defenses are all 2 points too high on the stats that are floating around the interwebs.

We're curious as to why the 5-foot-adjustment was in need of a fix ...

Because the importance of movement as a whole has been altered in 4E.

I moved around behind Sean's unconscious paladin to heal him--despite Sean's protestations that he only had one "strike" against him on his stabilization rolls--and took a dragon bite, a dragon tail, and some dragon spit. On my next action, I dropped to -2 hit points.

That seems like an awful lot of actions for the dragon to take as a result of you going to heal someone. It may be that your GM misplayed it...but then again, that dragon is way too tough for most 1st-level parties.

It could be that 4E suffers from the "designer in the box" syndrome--the idea that a game seems a lot cooler when it's being demoed by the people who designed it, but less so when it's demoed by someone who doesn't have the same enthusiasm for the game.

I'm curious, were you at WotC when 3E debuted? If not...how did your first experiences with 3E stack up to this? 3E is a much more radical departure from 2E than 4E is from 3E in my opinion, so I'd be interested to know why you felt this wasn't D&D.

Why couldn't they have posted their demo adventures and cheat sheets and sample characters as PDFs on their website on Monday morning after the show ended?

The sample characters and cheat sheets are available on the WotC website. The adventures are not, because all of the DMs who ran the adventures at D&D XP had access to the 4th Edition PHB, and so the adventures do not include the necessary information to run the game. Now, should those adventures be posted? Maybe so. But the Raiders of Oakhurst adventure is NOT one of the D&D Experience modules; it's fan-made using secondhand knowledge of 4E.

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Re: Examples (mearls)

"Mike Mearls actually said that they'd spotted the problem with the Paladin Mark before the convention, but for some reason hadn't fixed the character sheets. Go figure."

Because the change to the paladin's ability was my personal Helm's Deep! I do not kid - it was me, sitting at my desk, surrounding by five or so people, all telling me that I was wrong to change the paladin's ability. The really, really funny thing is that all the playtesters were abusing the rule, but they *liked* abusing it, so they never reported it as a bug. All we received were non-specific complaints from people that the paladin was clearly better than the fighter.

Noonan was the first one to specifically point out the issue in a playtest. From there, it was a matter of convincing people that gamers would indeed play against the spirit of the rule - sometimes, theme needs a stout wooden stick to back up its promises.

Anyway, we made the change, and then D&D XP served up a big old salad bar of Mike was right. I love it when that happens!

Anyway, it's always interesting to read actual play reports. Thanks for posting this, JD.


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Re: Examples (mearls)
The change requires the paladin to "paladin up" and actually fight the guy.

The paladin's mark is generally better if you fight one big, tough guy. He can force that one opponent to focus on him or take damage.

The fighter's mark is a little less reliable in that it keys off making attacks. However, the fighter is much better at handling groups of enemies. The fighter puts the risk of extra attacks on foes, and while he might miss he might also crit, or he might carry a big axe and do more damage on average than the paladin.

BTW, both the fighter's and the paladin's abilities are different in the final game. I don't think a week went by in the past 6 months where they didn't change, or we had to spend time talking about a potential change. Both classes figure prominently in Mike's anxiety nightmares about 4e's utter failure. =)


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Re: Examples (mearls)
Yeah, the ranger suffered from a math error in PC correction. I think someone added a bonus twice and then added a slice of bonus damage to Accurate Attack that wasn't supposed to be there.

Yup, that's us, putting our best foot forward, right into our mouths.

Anyway, glad you enjoyed the game.


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Re: Examples (gamescribe)

At least two characters had an at-will power that was obviously worse than another one of their at-will powers. You'd look at your character sheet and say, "why would I ever X when I can Y, because Y is simply better?" Keri's is the best example, she has two at-will attacks that deal damage, but one deals more damage than the other at the same attack value.

Kerri was playing the warlock, right? IIRC, she has eldritch blast which is the big damage-dealer, but she also has eyebite which does less damage, it's true, but also makes you invisible to the target for a round. That's pretty good, as it's a great way for the less-than-hearty warlock to avoid taking damage from a bad guy. Likewise, her ray of frost was a wizard multiclass power, and it also has a slowing effect on it. The damage may be different, but a difference in damage usually comes with other effects.

The paladin has the ability to mark a target with a taunt-like ability, so the target has an attack penalty against everyone but you AND takes damage every time it attacks someone other than you. And players realized at D&D Experience that there's no duration to the ability, so the paladin can mark someone, run away, and that target is marked FOREVER, always taking damage against any target other than the paladin.

As Merric pointed out, that was actually a result of Organized Play using an old draft of the rules. Similarly, you're jumping to a lot of conclusions about the duration of the paladin's challenge, since those D&D XP character sheets had a limited amount of space on them.

Healing surges/second wind are nice, it takes a little bit of the burden off the cleric character. Which is good, because the cleric's ability to heal just plain sucks. JD's cleric could heal people in combat TWICE per encounter. Any more than that, it's second wind and hope for the best.

Also keep in mind that you're playing a first-level character, which is going to have more limited options. And I completely disagree about the cleric healing sucking. A cleric with a good relevant ability score can more than double your healing surge value on a good roll. Our 5th level cleric in my Wednesday night campaign regularly adds 11 points onto my healing surges...and I only get back 11 hp per surge. That's as good as using 2 uses of lay on hands right there, and it doesn't even take into account the cleric's other powers, like his daily that increases the amount he heals someone by even more.

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Re: Examples (gamescribe)

Eldritch Blast does 1d10+4 damage, and Eyebite does 1d6+4. Clearly, Eldritch Blast is better.

From a pure damage perspective? Sure. It's an average of 2 points of damage per attack.

Does that mean any time I attack with my bow (or whatever a basic ranged attack is) I can invoke Eldritch Blast and do EXTRA damage? I don't know enough about the rules to know if that's how this works.

No. Sometimes you get to make a basic attack as a result of a situation or power (opportunity attacks and charges use basic melee attacks, for example). The warlord, for example, has some abilities that let him do X, and then let an ally within Y squares make a basic attack. That's one case where you'd be able to use that particular aspect of eldritch blast, but otherwise it doesn't come into play.

Well, that's kind of neat, but since it expires at the start of my turn, that really limits its usefulness. And if I moved prior to using Eyebite and therefore can't move invisibly after using it, then aside from probably preventing me from being attacked directly (which I never was anyway), it's totally useless.

Against a solo monster? Probably so. But remember that the typical 4E encounter is going to have at least one monster per hero, sometimes more if there are minions involved, so being invisible to someone close to you on their turn is big. It's basically "you can't attack me" insurance. Similarly, if you spend an action point to take another action, you could use that action to move and gain the benefits of that invisibility. Is eyebite more situational? Sure. But...it's an option you wouldn't even HAVE under the previous versions of the game. Also, it's important to note that the warlock is much squishier than the ranger, who gets the benefit of tougher armors, so he needs the occasional attack avoidance/deterrence ability to compensate for lower AC.

Note: I pute in quote the question to which Gamescribe-Rodney Thompson or Mike Mearls are answering, the unquoted test is Gamescribe or Mearls
hope it's clearer

 

[small pumpkin man]

I only read your post, but I'm amused at some of those "eyebite is crap" posts, +5 to AC isn't good enough for people? how is that not worth 2 damage?

It looks a lot like the "sleep is crap" stuff, from people who haven't played tactical games where status effects aren't as powerful as they are in earlier versions of D&D. (where they completely own everything).

 

[Voss]

My big problem with sleep is that it doesn't actually put people to sleep initially. They get to act, and then odds are they aren't affected by the sleep anyway. Anything that relies on the new saving throw mechanic is a pure gamble... in the enemies favor. For a big daily power, thats the last thing I want. Making people unconscious is amazing, tactically. . but not if it usually fails. (And its even worse if they're hobgoblins with a free save attempt or any sort of save bonus). Or if it expires quickly.

On the posts... could they perhaps be cleaned up so its clear who's saying what? In a text block I'm not sure when mike is saying something, when dave is and when its just a question they're responding too. The only thing I got out of it was that they are a very disorganized bunch and that bled into the D&D XP stuff.

 

[med stud]

My big problem with sleep is that it doesn't actually put people to sleep initially. They get to act, and then odds are they aren't affected by the sleep anyway. Anything that relies on the new saving throw mechanic is a pure gamble... in the enemies favor. For a big daily power, thats the last thing I want. Making people unconscious is amazing, tactically. . but not if it usually fails. (And its even worse if they're hobgoblins with a free save attempt or any sort of save bonus). Or if it expires quickly.

On the posts... could they perhaps be cleaned up so its clear who's saying what? In a text block I'm not sure when mike is saying something, when dave is and when its just a question they're responding too. The only thing I got out of it was that they are a very disorganized bunch and that bled into the D&D XP stuff.

Remember that Sleep is a level 1 spell, though. You can't expect too much power from a level 1 AoE-spell.

 

[small pumpkin man]

My big problem with sleep is that it doesn't actually put people to sleep initially. They get to act, and then odds are they aren't affected by the sleep anyway. Anything that relies on the new saving throw mechanic is a pure gamble... in the enemies favor. For a big daily power, thats the last thing I want. Making people unconscious is amazing, tactically. . but not if it usually fails. (And its even worse if they're hobgoblins with a free save attempt or any sort of save bonus). Or if it expires quickly.

When people complain about how it's not actually "sleep", because it very rarely actually puts people to sleep, that's fine, that's unfortunately accurate, but area affect movement denial attack with no save and no attack roll? That's good, that's really good. Again, situational, and no where near as good as earlier editions area effect save or die, but "not as good as something completely broken" doesn't make it useless.

 

[Imban]

I only read your post, but I'm amused at some of those "eyebite is crap" posts, +5 to AC isn't good enough for people? how is that not worth 2 damage?

It looks a lot like the "sleep is crap" stuff, from people who haven't played tactical games where status effects aren't as powerful as they are in earlier versions of D&D. (where they completely own everything).

The opinion there was that Eyebite is great, but in very limited circumstances, which made it crap - limited because if you hit a minion with it, you're invisible to a dead guy, and on top of that, the player's warlock was hiding out in the back of combat all the time, so situations where she could Eyebite someone who had an honest chance of attacking her in the next round did not come up frequently.

 

[GoLu]

The opinion there was that Eyebite is great, but in very limited circumstances, which made it crap - limited because if you hit a minion with it, you're invisible to a dead guy, and on top of that, the player's warlock was hiding out in the back of combat all the time, so situations where she could Eyebite someone who had an honest chance of attacking her in the next round did not come up frequently.

Against minions, the disadvantage of eyebite (lower damage) doesn't matter since they die in one hit anyway. And since eyebite attacks will instead of reflex, you are at an effective +2 to hit against those kobold minions when you use it instead of eldritch blast.

 

[small pumpkin man]

The opinion there was that Eyebite is great, but in very limited circumstances, which made it crap - limited because if you hit a minion with it, you're invisible to a dead guy, and on top of that, the player's warlock was hiding out in the back of combat all the time, so situations where she could Eyebite someone who had an honest chance of attacking her in the next round did not come up frequently.

Yeah, I got that when I read the entire thing, which I hadn't done when I posted. I still the the poster was being completely hyperbolic, at least about eyebite (I can see the point with ray of frost if you didn't realise it was an at will that character only had once per encounter because of it's race). It's an ability to get you out of trouble, and the poster's gone "I was never in trouble, so it's obviously inferior". That's fairly myopic if you ask me.

 

[Voss]

The opinion there was that Eyebite is great, but in very limited circumstances, which made it crap - limited because if you hit a minion with it, you're invisible to a dead guy, and on top of that, the player's warlock was hiding out in the back of combat all the time, so situations where she could Eyebite someone who had an honest chance of attacking her in the next round did not come up frequently.

It seems pretty good (and fairly obvious) against ranged attackers or spellcasters, who can attack you.

But I suspect 4e is going to be fairly meta-transparent on the minions- you'll be able to tell, so bunch them up for the Wizard's fire blast.

 

[Delta]

I'm curious, were you at WotC when 3E debuted? If not...how did your first experiences with 3E stack up to this? 3E is a much more radical departure from 2E than 4E is from 3E in my opinion, so I'd be interested to know why you felt this wasn't D&D.

Wow, I have to say, I think that's sheer madness. If their business case really depends on 4E being a less radical departure (with different races, classes, hp system, healing, magic system, powers, etc.) they could be making a big misstep here.