Speculation about "the feelz" of D&D 4th Edition

[pemerton]

All the level 15 Soldiers printed in rule books - avoiding Dungeon+Adventures - haven't looked specifically at other levels, trying to keep the # of listed creatures manageable

Elder Electric Eel - fly+reach 3
Carrion Tribe Blessed Champion - none, but Eberron Campaign book.
Warlock Knight Vindicator - Reach 2+shift 4 if marked target moves away
Crag Roper - reach 10
Legathus Dython - ranged attack, close blast
Scroll Mummy - reach 2+other options
Red Salad Juggernaut - reach 3
Oristus - teleportation
Squamous Splitter - reach 2
Adult Red Dragon - reach 2
Mooncalf Rogue - reach 6
Yagnodemon - reach 3
Grayspawn Fleshtearer reach 2
Direhelm - nope, Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide
Hell Knight - reach 2
Derro Ironguard - nope, MM3
Red Slaad(Blood Salad) - reach 2
Rakhasa Warrior - encounter invisibility+shift speed
Carrion Crawler - reach 3
Fear Moth - fly+close blast stun+aura 2 that suggests there's a mistake in compendium about its basic attack
Watchful Ghost - fly+phasing
Quom Fanatic - Crossbow
Ebony Knight - pull target as minor action if immobilized, but otherwise no.
Nikolai - fly 1/encounter

Okay, so, out of all level 15 soldiers(24 of them):
3 have zero options. 1 in 8. Only 1 of which is in a Monster Manual-type book.
More than half have at least reach 2.
62% have some sort of basically at-will option to bypass Polearm Gamble.
75% have at least an automatic encounter option to bypass Polearm Gamble
83% if not already adjacent to the Dwarf, have either some way of getting around him to go after other targets - Watchful Ghost as an example can fly into the floor and come out adjacent to the Dwarf.

Here's another way of looking at it - out of all 21 soldiers not from an early campaign guide, only 1 doesn't have any kind of options other than trying to avoid the Dwarf. That's it. Level 15 Soldiers might be atypical - that's the only level/creature I looked at, but that's the kind of problem I'm referring to as being problematic with Polearm Gamble.

It does influence decisions - it might be better to be next to the Dwarf so the Dwarf can't move around them, but that's usually difficult anyway because most of them are some sort of large size and hard to move around.

Of the creatures you list I think I've used the mooncalf, maybe the slaad, and (maybe a lower level version of?) the carrion crawler.

I have files with encounter info on them: looking through the first third or so, I found the following creatures that I've used that had melee reach 1 (I didn't look at everything else, but that's some sort of indication of vulnerability to PAG):

kuo-toa (many varieties)
ghouls (from the Open Grave Bloodtower scenario)
cultists of various sorts
hobgoblins and bugbears (upper heroic through low paragon)
voidsould spectre
various devils, including a warder and an aspect of Dispater
some demons
duergar (many varieties)
fire archons
githzerai​

That's not any sort of statistical sample, of course - it's just what's come up in my game. PAG doesn't come into play every time and all the time. But it comes into play often enough that I find it irritating as a GM, because my creatures can't close, and if their minions they get knocked off for good measure.

 

[pemerton]

D&D is all about careful crawling and exploration while cutting risks. Conan is all about grappling with tests of character in heroic fashion, which usually means taking crazy risks. If you tried to play a D&D character as Conan, you'd be ganked in no time. This is one reason why the Paladin is a problematic character archetype in D&D.

Agreed with all this (if we're talking about pre-4e D&D). I think 4e makes the paladin work pretty well as an archetype. And I think Conan would probably be doable in 4e too (at low levels probaby as a STR/DEX ranger; at higher leves as a warlord with maybe fighter multi-class - obviously if you want to play both over the longer term of a campaign, you need the GM to let you do a rebuild at some point).

D&D stole some superficial elements from the Appendix N works, maybe most from Vance as has been oft noted, and grafted them into its procedural challenge paradigm. D&D is much too thoroughly gamist to really faithfully emulate any genre.

Vis-a-vis Vance, you would need to introduce some sort of "buffer" or incentive for wackiness.

It's not just that classic D&D is gamist; but the game is all about caution and calculation. There are no mechanics to favour spontaneity. Even T&T - another pretty gamist game - probably does better than D&D at a pseudo- (and brutal) Vancian flavour, just becausee chance and spontaneity seem to figure more in play.

 

[Manbearcat]

yes please.

This; this; a thousand times, this! As has been coming up in this thread and others among the 4E players across the forums here, this is one woefully undersupported aspect of the system that 4E's designers really should have engaged.

Alright, new thread is up. Ported Strong Focus over and looked at Secrets of the City in the first post.

Everyone feel free to contribute, please, analyzing Skill Utilities that you've either seen in play or would like to.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, my view is this.

Second, if the PC does somehow end up in the same place (eg it turns out that the weird ruined chapel the PCs explored at 1st level is really the gate to the prison of the Chained God, which the 25th level PCs now need to enter to learn the truth about the origins of the Abyss) then the GM should - by default, and in my view - be stepping up the fiction in a way that speaks to the change in overall stakes. This could be anything from (i) an angel appearing to stop the PCs progressing through the door (so that the lock is not of any interest as a challenge at all). to (ii) the same angel using its divine magic to reinforce the lock. to (iii) the GM narrating wild colour that makes the check difficult ("When the time comes to break through the gate to the prison of the Chained God, of course the sun is eclipsed, the wind howls and lightning strikes all around you"), to (iv) it being the case that if you want to open the lock and pass through to the prison (rather than simply to the other side of the door on the mortal world) you have to pick the lock in multiple dimensions simultaneously, which is a task of Thievery so challenging that only an epic PC would have any chance of pulling it off!

Just had to say, I love the idea of a mundane door, that if used properly, is not a mundane door.

In fact, I'd make such a door, probably, require either:

a, a key of some kind that makes opening it not require a check

Or

2, a skill challenge, involving a riddle of visual nature, manipulating the tumblers of the lock in a very different way from the mundane case, inscribing formulae on the door to access its underlying magical structure and "code", applying the solved riddle to said structure and code at the same time as the rogue sets the lock tumblers into place. And then into the second state, and then the third, and fourth, in precisely proper sequence.

And then, the door evaporates, and with an unnervingly heavy, unnaturally deep and resonant, "dong", the lock hits the ground at your feet. A mystery for another time, for now, the portal is open before you.

 

[S'mon]

Well, obviously WotC could suddenly decide to release virtually anything, but I don't see this as 'early days' of 5e! This is 3 years since the official release of the game, is it not? I mean, 2.5 years. This is the point in 4e where it was 2011, the PHB3 had been released IIRC, most of the * Power series of books was out, and essentially the game was feature complete. Around this time WotC must have begun working on Essentials, since it was released in 2012.

People forget how brief the 4e era was. 4e came out mid 2008. Essentials came out late 2010.
There were a few post-Essentials books in 2011 but the edition was basically dead by 2012, they
were publishing edition-neutral books like Menzoberranzan & Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms.
I think Dungeonscape(?) was in earlyish 2012 but it was real tail-end stuff. In terms of active life 4e was
3 years, mid 2008 to mid 2011, by when it became clear the Essentials 'hail Mary pass' had
failed and they were cancelling planned releases.

5e came out mid-late 2014 so we are at about the time in the cycle when 4e Essentials was out & WoTC was about to give up on the edition! Clearly 5e is in for a much longer haul with a very different model.

 

[Lanefan]

Here's what's weird about other versions of D&D. Take 'classic' D&D for example, there's NO EXPERIENCE at all for anything you do, except fighting. You get XP for treasure of course, but you could explore an entire dungeon level, map it all out, etc, and if you don't have an encounter (or happen upon some unguarded treasure) you will literally get ZERO XP by the rules, even if you disarm traps, figure out puzzles, find secret doors, sloping passages, and whatever else.

I'm fairly sure there's provisions noted in 1e for giving xp for those sorts of things but there's no hard numbers anywhere I can remember; it's left up to the DM to decide what to give.

But if there's no traps etc. either, then there's not much risk in mapping an empty dungeon...so not much reward (xp) either.

Now, 2e DOES address this, and I think 5e does too (not sure what all you get XP for besides fighting in 3.x), but 4e uniquely is the only D&D where just plain ADVENTURING is explicitly worth XP and its measured out in some degree of mechanically indicated way. 2e and 5e at least HAVE XP for 'doing stuff', but its not at all clear how much to give out or when or even exactly why.

Couldn't you get xp in 3e for some donwtime stuff e.g. spell research; or am I conflating in a house rule?

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

The sense of the mage JUST watching the show so often at low level was one such contribution to the feel of not being part of a team

Why was the mage just standing there watching instead of sticking her nose in and trying to clobber something with her staff whenever she could? Yes, mages were poorer than others at physical combat, but that didn't mean they were completely helpless; and if you picked your spots well sometimes that occasional extra hit made all the difference.

Well, and certainly up through 1e, there was a whole subtext of a party being a bunch of cutthroats that were out for themselves and damn the party! Gygax had his player's characters charging each other fees to cast spells, pitting their hirelings against each other, backstabbing, etc. One of the goals was to create an empire of your own, and clearly in the early days part of that was pitting it against the empires of the other Players!

Admittedly there were also admonishments to be a team player and such that appeared in 1e and I'd say that was the primary message in all later editions. Still, the game wasn't born to be a team cooperation exercise exactly. It was expected that each character was uniquely talented, but also self-reliant.

This clearly points to one way in which the "feelz" of the game has changed through the years...some might say for the better, others not so much...and it started with original 2e's sharp turn towards playing more heroically-aligned individual characters to appease BADD and their ilk. With 4e it seemed to shift again, this time toward a more team-oriented approach as defined by the 4 roles: the overall party could in theory have any ethos it wanted (though coming out of 2e-3e many just stayed with Good/heroic) but within that party you're part of the usually-well-oiled team as long as you fulfill your role; and the whole becomes more than just the sum of the parts.

Lan-"it's difficult to pit your hirelings against each other when the game doesn't even have them any more"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, the AD&D fighter literally has 2 class features. He gets up to 3 attacks per round at high levels (but remember, an attack is pretty abstract and simple, and does fairly basic damage, though he might get enough giant strength to make that fairly substantial).

Minor stuff perhaps; but they also get the best range of allowable weapons and armour, get more weapon proficiencies (remember, in 1e each different weapon is its own proficiency), and have less penalty when using a non-proficient weapon.

His other class feature is he gets a whole bunch of followers that are 9 levels lower than him, which he must pay a fortune to attract, and which he must pay to maintain. These guys are useless in adventuring terms, considering his appropriate foes are greater undead, the largest dragons, etc. If he's lucky he will get a leader for them that is of useful level, but presumably has to remain with the troops (preferably hidden in a stronghold where they might be safe) most of the time. If you are REALLY REALLY lucky, like a couple % chance, said leader might have a substantial magic item (and without magic items even a 7th level fighter follower is fairly weak, though you could obviously find stuff to equip them with, but again that's not part of your class features).

Keep in mind that by 9th level a 1e Fighter is probably rolling in wealth, so paying for a stronghold and people in it isn't that big a deal.

So, basically, the fighter's class features amount to a simple scaling of their basic function, and a story feature that contributes very little mechanically in most cases, and at best imposes a bunch of narrative constraints on the character. Its actually kinda grim! At least fighters have good saves and a really substantial amount of hit points, though that hardly makes them interesting to play...

I disagree about the "interesting to play" bit. A fun, interesting character doesn't need game-mechanics backing for everything that makes it tick (a philosophy cruelly squashed by 3e in particular).

My namesake character here - Lanefan - is a single-class 1e Fighter...has been since 1984...still active today and still a blast to play!

 

[Nagol]

Yeah, the AD&D fighter literally has 2 class features. He gets up to 3 attacks per round at high levels (but remember, an attack is pretty abstract and simple, and does fairly basic damage, though he might get enough giant strength to make that fairly substantial). His other class feature is he gets a whole bunch of followers that are 9 levels lower than him, which he must pay a fortune to attract, and which he must pay to maintain. These guys are useless in adventuring terms, considering his appropriate foes are greater undead, the largest dragons, etc. If he's lucky he will get a leader for them that is of useful level, but presumably has to remain with the troops (preferably hidden in a stronghold where they might be safe) most of the time. If you are REALLY REALLY lucky, like a couple % chance, said leader might have a substantial magic item (and without magic items even a 7th level fighter follower is fairly weak, though you could obviously find stuff to equip them with, but again that's not part of your class features).

You are underselling the Fighter.

He is great at surviving with probably more than double the hp total of a matching magic-user (expects 5.5/ level plus up to +4 Con bonus compared to 2.5 per level + up to +2 Con bonus and gains 3 times the hp after name level +3 vs. +1) and a much better set of saving throws. He gets access to the best armour and has the best weapons known.

So we have a class that has the best non-magical AC (and greatest chance of best magical AC as well), highest expected hp, and best saving throws that also gets the most known weapons, best to-hit chance, and grows in number of attacks per round as he levels (ignoring the ability to just slaughter <1 HD critters). Weapon damage may seem paltry by modern edition standards, but 1d8 adds up when demon lords/gods like Lolth have 66 hp and the largest (non-deity) evil dragon only has 88! He also has the best chance of being able to use any found magic weapon and the static bonuses actually add a fair percentage of damage when your base is 1d8/1d12! Additionally, the game offers a modest number of ways to increase/replace your Strength score to gain a second bonus to-hit and damage beyond simple magic weapons.

The followers and keep are also noteworthy. The keep generates the most income of the class strongholds (though still nothing compared to treasure hoards). The followers offer the ability to project force in areas the fighter is not and to perform tasks (such as searching/traffic control/anomaly detection) in controlled areas that one person simply can't do. As for magic items for the leaders, the fighter can probably scrounge a few sets of old armour and weapons he has kicking around should he feel the need and gets unlucky with the follower gear.

So, basically, the fighter's class features amount to a simple scaling of their basic function, and a story feature that contributes very little mechanically in most cases, and at best imposes a bunch of narrative constraints on the character. Its actually kinda grim! At least fighters have good saves and a really substantial amount of hit points, though that hardly makes them interesting to play...

His class feature is by and large being the one alive at the end to tell the stories. Breadth is gained outside his class abilities most notably through henchmen choices and miscellaneous magic items found.

 

[pemerton]

I'm fairly sure there's provisions noted in 1e for giving xp for those sorts of things

The PHB (p 106) says that

[T]he Dungeon Master will award experience points to the character for treasure gained and opponents captured or slain and for solving or overcoming problems through professional means.​

It then goes on to refer to "[g]aining experience points through the acquisition of gold pieces and by slaying monsters", but then the sources of XP open up again towards the bottom of the page:

Monsters captured or slain always bring a full experience point award. Captured monsters ransomed or sold bring a gold piece: experience point ratio award. Monsters slain gain a set point award.​

This leaves it ambiguous as to what XP one gets for a monster captured but not ransomed. The comment about "always bring[ing] a full experience point award" is also contradicted by the DMG (p 84), which establishes that monster XP can be awarded fractionally for mis-matches, just like treasure XP.

Pages 84 and 85 of the DMG present kills and loot as the default means of gaining XP. (I say "kills" deliberately, because there are multiple occurrences of "slaying"/"slaying monsters"/"monsters slain".)

However, p 84 also says that

Tricking or outwitting monsters or overcoming tricks and/or traps placed to guard treasure must be determined subjectively, with level of experience balanced against the degree of difficulty you assign to the gaining of the treasure.​

As with captured monsters in the PHB, it's not clear whether this is identifying a discrete source of XP, or a potential factor to be taken account of in the award of treasure XP. (Ie if the degree of difficulty was low, award only fractional XP.)

Finally, pp 85-86 have the following optional rule for a "Special Bonus Award to Experience Points":

If your campaign is particularly dangerous, with a low life expectancy for starting player characters, or if it is a well-established one where most players are of medium or above level, and new participants have difficulty surviving because of this, the following Special Bonus Award is suggested:

Any character killed and subsequently restored to life by means of a spell or device, other than a ring of regeneration, will earn an experience point bonus award of 1,000 points. This will materially aid characters of lower levels of experience, while it will not unduly affect earned experience for those of higher level. As only you can bestow this award, you may also feel free to decline to give it to player characters who were particularly foolish or stupid in their actions which immediately preceded death, particularly if such characters are not "sadder but wiser" for the happening.​

And a slightly tangential point: in the DMG (p 86), fidelity to class role is used to measure training time (from 1 week if Excellent, to 4 weeks if Poor). But p 106 the PHB suggests that fidelity to class role is used to adjust XP earned:

Finally, clerics' major aims are to use their spell abilities to aid during ony given encounter, fighters aim to engage in combat, magic-users aim to cast spells, thieves aim to make gain by stealth, and monks aim to use their unusual talents to come to successful ends. If characters gain treasure by pursuit of their major aims, then they are generally entitled to a full share of earned experience points aworded by the DM.​

This probably makes more sense than the DMG approach, although what the fraction should be is left unstated (maybe full for Excellent, 5/6 for Superior, 2/3 for Fair and 1/2 for Poor - or a formula of [7-rating]/6).