D&D 4E Should terrain be move vulnerable to damage in 4E?

[SKyOdin]

About the discussion of making it too easy for the PCs to bypass the dungeon:

Right now, it is already possible for the PCs to bypass walls in a dungeon by using spells such as shape stone and move earth, as well as various teleportation and etheral spells. This means that, once again, the mages in the party are better at this than the melee classes. Making walls more breakable would even things out a bit.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

The 4e DM just needs to make all those walls into load-bearing walls and place an NPC engineer with the party. "Don't break through that one! The whole place will come crashing down! We better go find the red key, instead."

nah, skip the npc engineer. Any adventurer dumb enough to knock down walls in an ancient temple willy nilly needs a good cave in.

This line of thought does remind me of the Mythbusters where they tried to copy Underworld's "create an exit in the floor" scene, with no luck whatsoever.

Then I flash to "It's Giles!" "With a chainsaw!" Good times....

 

[mach1.9pants]

I hope your right, and I think that 4E will make it easier. It will be part of the drift from simulationism to more fun gaming being the games goal- you know everybody getting healed from a crit, fighers having a power source, etc. All aimed to make the game more fun but not following much realism even within a magic world.
Hopefully you will be able to bull rush someone through a cottage wall, for real it is pretty much impossible for a human. I have had the pleasure of smashing down a wall which was very similar to wattle (willow sticks intertwined with...) and daub (dung and mud- hardened). It was a wattle and plaster wall of about 1700, hitting it with a sledge hammer meant it went through easily enough but then just got stuck in the withies ... admittedly I didn't try running into it but I think I would of just bounced off, but I am not a STR 20 bloke
But realism aside I would enjoy more walls coming down etc, a bit like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, maybe? hehe more video gamism in DnD *oh noes*

 

[frankthedm]

IBut realism aside I would enjoy more walls coming down etc, a bit like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, maybe? hehe more video gamism in DnD *oh noes*

Heh, even 3E beats out most video games in terms of breakable walls. Yeah some might not be breakable in D&D, but at least most are breakable with time {and random encounters] as the default. In a video game, all walls are unbreakable barriers unless the designer says otherwise.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Heh, even 3E beats out most video games in terms of breakable walls. Yeah some might not be breakable in D&D, but at least most are breakable with time {and random encounters] as the default. In a video game, all walls are unbreakable barriers unless the designer says otherwise.

Yeah your right but what I meant was in DMoMaM the game had a (large) emphasis on hitting pillars, cutting ropes etc in the name of getting stuff to fall on bad guys heads- I loved it. And you got to kick people over cliffs and into spikes.
If 4E puts some of that sort of thing in- using the environment not just for cover and bonus' but actually using it to injure/defeat enemies, I'll be a happy

 

[frankthedm]

If 4E puts some of that sort of thing in- using the environment not just for cover and bonus' but actually using it to injure/defeat enemies, I'll be a happy

Miker Mearls is doing that with 4E. That is a given. No questions asked. Even if it was not already stated, it would still be in since that was the same thing mearls did with Iron heroes.

The issue here is Should NORMAL dungeon walls and obtacles have less HP so there is less diconnect between a normal Pillar and a Break-For-Effect pillar. Right now a typical pillar has 150 HP and 8 hardness, so much that unless the DM basicly says "There pillars look like they have a small fraction of thier normal hp." in some manner, it is FOOLISH to even try to 'destroy for effect' due to the effort needed.

 

[TerraDave]

Ah yes. 3rd ed D&D, where miners are hopping for criticals with their picks.

Dungeons and Dragons does involve Dungeons, and hence ruins, so the easy break terrain is not that out of place.

But sometimes you want "hard to break" terrain as well, as a DM, I would like to have both. And the perfect rational for it.

 

[frankthedm]

But sometimes you want "hard to break" terrain as well, as a DM, I would like to have both. And the perfect rational for it.

Then do you think this could work?

2. decrease wall HP exponentially for thinness under 5'. Thus masonry, thin pillars and maybe hewn walls can be taken down, but digging through the dungeon is not easier, unless the whole blasted thing is made up of thin walls.

 

[WhatGravitas]

*However, those huge HP amounts, if directly transfered to a modern setting, necessitate modern explosives doing 100's of damage to be congruent with their descutive power IRL

That's my main problem with it. The hp values are nowhere "realistic". And miners trying to mine anything are screwed in 3E.

Eh, it's no good for the simulationists nor for the gamists - hence: Away with these rules.

I mean under these rules, a fireball is utterly unable to destroy a tree... and a lightning does 1d10 x 1d8 damage - and is hence utterly unable to blow a tree apart...

There's something wrong. So... it needs to be fixed.

Cheers, LT.

 

[TerraDave]

Then do you think this could work?

Its good.

In addition, I do wonder about magic and walls. (This is also important for keeping things like castles survivable in sieges, which is of course another thread, but anyways.)

You make walls easier to break, but then allow for magical protection, or something similar like "finest dwarven craftmanship". to offset it. Will PCs feel robbed, or that it is arbitrary (even though it might actually make sense in the context of the world). Might be an issue of signaling so PCs don't feel robbed.

Hmm, maybe its just better to stick with thin walls.