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

[Tony Vargas]

There is no gamist abstraction

That's the system providing no tools, yes.

but real measurements facilitate the imagination easily enough. That 13th Age jive sounds waaaay too fiddley versus "it's twenty feet away."

Well, let's contrast natural-language with 13A's 'fiddley' actual system tools to fascilitate running TotM.

D&D natural language
DM: "it's twenty feet away."
Player1: "From me?"
DM: "Well, no, you're at the back of the party, so it's more like 30' away from you."
Player1: "I take my movement to back away from it since I have plenty of range and don't want to get attacked in melee."
Player2: "I charge*!"
Player3: "I circle around staying well out of it's reach and throw daggers."
Player4: "I move up & attack but don't want to stand right next to Player1 in case it has a breath weapon or something."
Player5: "I'm casting burning hands."
Players2,3&4: "Oh, crap, would I be in it?"

On the monster's turn, it has a 50' cone breath weapon to use, who can it breath on? Well, not player 1, he's 65' away (he's fast), player's 2 & 4, probably one or the other, but what if the monster moves relative to them? And where are they relative to 3 & 5? And what's the angle of the cone, is it 50' long or 50' at the base (depends on the edition, IIRC in 5e, it'd be 53-degrees and yes, while in 1e you'd usually get the base and length of the cone, not the angle).

13A:

DM: "It's close."
Player1: "I charge."
Player2: "I move away and attack"
Player3: "I throw daggers."
Player4: "I engage and attack."
Player5: "I cast burning hands, since there's only one enemy, no need to do it 'recklessly' and risk hitting my friends."

On the monster's turn it uses a Close attack, catching 1d3 PCs, Player 2 has moved away so is no longer 'Close,' Players 2 & 4 are engaged, players 3 & 5 are not, but still 'close.'


Bottom line in both cases is that Player 2 isn't going to get breathed on and the others, well, probably, but not all of 'em. It's just very clear and simple in 13A, because the system supports the technique. In D&D, it's up to the DM either figuring out a lot relative positions some of them based on information the players didn't bother to provide (did you circle to the right or left?) and deciding how 'best' to place the cone, or breaking out a visual aid - or just ruling arbitrarily.


Of course, you're right about something: the natural language exchange in the D&D example probably stimulates the imagination, not so much because it's using real units, as because the players are describing actions in natural language, and you're certainly getting a 'combat is chaotic' sense from it (it's also unlikely anyone's imagining it quite the same way, and that may cause problems when you go to rule arbitrarily about who was in what area).

But, the question wasn't whether D&D encouraged imagination (hey, it's a /game of the imagination/, says so right on the tin!), but whether it's system ever supported the TotM technique of play. Particularly compared to systems that clearly do, like 13th Age, as the example illustrates.

Now, you /could/ go into more detail in describing actions: "I circle to the NE, staying 10' from it, to my full movement of 30'.'" "OK, since you're moving in an arc centered on the enemy who occupies a 10' space, and your movement gives the length of the arc, not the length of the chord, the actual change in your position is only 25' NNE." But, yeah, no. ;P











* no comments about Setting to Receive a Charge, Leap Attack, Fey-charger builds, nor the Charger Feat, please (puns involving credit cards, though, are fine).

 

[pemerton]

Just putting the grid in people's heads isn't really TotM, its just an exercise, like playing chess without a board (something that many chess masters are fully capable of doing).

<snip>

the normal process is objective and doesn't require a DM to do anything (IE in 4e the DM has no role in determining positioning except as one of the players of creatures on the battle map). BY THE RULES of 5e the DM has no more role than this, as every AoE and the position of every creature and its 'space' are pretty clearly spelled out. Thus this role you suppose for the DM is what? Just adjudicating the inevitable disputes that will arise about what the state of the 'mental battle map' is? I don't see how 5e is 'supporting' this, or even suggesting it as a procedure really.

Sure, a good DM to male rulings is needed.

"Rulings" here simply means overriding the stated resolution procedures (which are all spelled out in terms of movement rates, distances, AoEs etc that are multiples of five feet) and going with intuitively-guided stipulation instead ("Yeah, you can get five of the 20 orcs with your Burning Hands").

Nothing about 4e makes this any harder (or easier) than 5e.

 

[Tony Vargas]

"Rulings" here simply means overriding the stated resolution procedures (which are all spelled out in terms of movement rates, distances, AoEs etc that are multiples of five feet) and going with intuitively-guided stipulation instead ("Yeah, you can get five of the 20 orcs with your Burning Hands").

Nothing about 4e makes this any harder (or easier) than 5e.

I disagree, for a subtly-shaded value of 'disagree.'
It's easier to just override the system and cut to the intuitive stipulation in 5e because (a) the players have been conditioned to accept rulings since the rules require them constantly and (b) trigonometry* is not fun for everyone, and while 4e reduces everything to the simplistic geometry of squares (cubes if you go 3D), 5e leaves you with circles/spheres, triangles/cones, and Pythagorean diagonal movement.















* Because, really, D&D gives you no tools for TotM, but English and Trigonometry do, so you can fall back on those.

 

[MwaO]

Sure, a good DM to male rulings is needed.

But that's all that has to happen in 4e too. It isn't particularly hard to do TotM in 4e - you just need to realize that you have to make assumptions about how many targets are in a given burst - similar to those of 'who is in the fireball?' kind.

 

[Parmandur]

I disagree, for a subtly-shaded value of 'disagree.'
It's easier to just override the system and cut to the intuitive stipulation in 5e because (a) the players have been conditioned to accept rulings since the rules require them constantly and (b) trigonometry* is not fun for everyone, and while 4e reduces everything to the simplistic geometry of squares (cubes if you go 3D), 5e leaves you with circles/spheres, triangles/cones, and Pythagorean diagonal movement.















* Because, really, D&D gives you no tools for TotM, but English and Trigonometry do, so you can fall back on those.

Yeah, it's just commonsense stuff.

Sent from my BLU LIFE XL using EN World mobile app

 

[pemerton]

I disagree, for a subtly-shaded value of 'disagree.'
It's easier to just override the system and cut to the intuitive stipulation in 5e because (a) the players have been conditioned to accept rulings since the rules require them constantly and (b) trigonometry* is not fun for everyone, and while 4e reduces everything to the simplistic geometry of squares (cubes if you go 3D), 5e leaves you with circles/spheres, triangles/cones, and Pythagorean diagonal movement.

I'm not 100% sure I follow the trigonometry point: it it that, if the maths to do it "objectively" gets hard enough, everyone becomes more relaxed about just punting it all to GM fiat?

As far as player attitudes go, that might be true as a sociological generalisation (I've got no strong opinion either way), but doesn't seem to explain anything about [MENTION=6780330]Parmandur[/MENTION]'s group. If they were happy with GM fudging of the geometry in 3E, and are happy with it in 5e, I don't see that 4e did anything magical to make it suddenly untenable for them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm not 100% sure I follow the trigonometry point: it it that, if the maths to do it "objectively" gets hard enough, everyone becomes more relaxed about just punting it all to GM fiat?

Yes. Not a phenomenon you can count on around a buncha nerds (I brought up 'well you'd have to calculate the chord of the circle to be sure, once, and an engineer at the table did just that), but it often helps to have intimidating math as an alternative to your DM's judgement.

If they were happy with GM fudging of the geometry in 3E, and are happy with it in 5e, I don't see that 4e did anything magical to make it suddenly untenable for them.

Yeah, my little theory doesn't help, there. If they were uncomfortable with 4e mechanics, it should have made it /easier/ to jump to DM rulings. That's the whole Wolfie "bad rules make good games" theorem*, except with replace 'bad' with 'despised.' ;P










* and if I'd realized I was painting myself into that particular logical corner, I'd've stopped posting a couple pages back....

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But 5e's action economy and resolution mechanics track individual figure position just the same as 3E and 4e, and it seems to have quite a bit of forced movement. The only difference I can see from 4e is that it expresses everuthing in multiples of 5' rather than squares - if that is what counts as ToTM support (qv post 124), though, then I'm a bit surprised! Is multiplying by 5 all that stands between 4e's rulebooks and legions of TotM 4e-ers?

The answer of course is 'no', 4e includes elaborate rules for reactions/interrupts, very specific bonuses and penalties which rely on exact positioning, etc. Some of these exist in 5e, to a degree, but they ARE less prevalent. 5e does NOT actively support TotM, but it does reduce the tactical nature of combat greatly and insure that in a large number of cases position won't really matter too much. There's a lot more 'party vs single monster' for instance, which are always inherently less positionally complex situations.

So, I think the answer is that designers of 5e material, to some extent, have been encouraged to avoid inventing material that is difficult to handle off the grid. Still, 5e has a lot of elements that don't help with that, and actively work against it, and never provides any real help to such designs. For instance all the spells rely on elaborate descriptions of ranges and areas, which if nothing else encourages designers to add more of the same.

I'd actually WELCOME a true TotM kind of design, but I think it would have to be accompanied by a lot stronger story features along the lines of 4e quest design and encounter architecture (or else something entirely different like BW-like elements or something).

 

[MwaO]

I'm not 100% sure I follow the trigonometry point: it it that, if the maths to do it "objectively" gets hard enough, everyone becomes more relaxed about just punting it all to GM fiat?

As far as player attitudes go, that might be true as a sociological generalisation (I've got no strong opinion either way), but doesn't seem to explain anything about [MENTION=6780330]Parmandur[/MENTION]'s group. If they were happy with GM fudging of the geometry in 3E, and are happy with it in 5e, I don't see that 4e did anything magical to make it suddenly untenable for them.

Part of the thing to be aware of is that Next focused on a bunch of design concepts that then weren't actually implemented. Because they're kind of unworkable with the assumptions that either D&D or 5e make:
No assumptions of what the day usually ought to look like. You could encounter monsters you're not supposed to be able to defeat! = 6-8 medium/hard encounters with 2 short rests spaced at the 1/3rd & 2/3rds points.

Bounded Accuracy where no assumption of level in to-hit or defense for monsters = Proficiency where level determines bonus to or defense for monsters.

No assumptions about numerical bonuses to hit from magic items = A typical campaign that ought to hand a +3 to hit from magic over the course of going from 1-20. And because of this, is exactly half the speed of 4e's rate of advancement in terms of expected + to hit.

And TotM, which works great when the PCs have almost no options because they're somewhere between 1st and 3rd level = no mention of rules on how to do it. And that makes sense because of what was mentioned about 13th Age - if you actually have rules for TotM, it is going to feel a bit strange and off-putting at first. But if you think that's how the game is played, off to the races...

------

But because those ideas that 5e *could* do those things was a heavily emphasized part of the playtest, some people think 5e actually has those ideas at the center. When they're actually discarded design ideals in the same way that Mearls thought he had a great mass combat system for 5e that we never ended up seeing. Or the tactical modules that would make 5e 4e like. Which again, haven't showed up yet.

 

[Tony Vargas]

[amazingly insightful stuff]

But has XP turned off.

The answer of course is 'no', 4e includes elaborate rules for reactions/interrupts, very specific bonuses and penalties which rely on exact positioning, etc.

'Exact' positioning in 5e, though, is down to a granularity of the 5' square, and that's not very exact. A trigger might require you to be 'adjacent,' for instance, or 'within burst' (and the burst will be 1, 2, 3, or maybe 5 or some multiple of 5 - but the 'burst' will be a simple square).

Some of these exist in 5e, to a degree, but they ARE less prevalent.

More exact, but less prevalent, perhaps - it depends on spell load-out, I guess, whether you'll be dealing with a lot of differently shaped areas or rarely with any. Of course, every class can have some of those spells, so...

5e does NOT actively support TotM, but it does reduce the tactical nature of combat greatly and insure that in a large number of cases position won't really matter too much.

Not so much in the suitability of the system for TotM directly, but in the sense of 'fast combat' tuning, sure. You kill the monster in 1-3 rounds, you have fewer position-tracking headaches than if it took you 6-10, just because there was less to the whole thing.

Sorta: "The rules don't work for this, but even if you don't want to override them and just muddle through as best you can, at least it'll be over quickly."

There's a lot more 'party vs single monster' for instance, which are always inherently less positionally complex situations.

The encounter guidelines are relatively more complicated and less dependable, but easier to figure and not so bad when used for a single-monster encounter, so that encourages such encounters over more complex ones? So support for TotM in the form of making harder-to-do-in-TotM encounters, well, even harder to do, whether you're using TotM or not?

Yeah, I can see that.

So, I think the answer is that designers of 5e material, to some extent, have been encouraged to avoid inventing material that is difficult to handle off the grid. Still, 5e has a lot of elements that don't help with that, and actively work against it, and never provides any real help to such designs. For instance all the spells rely on elaborate descriptions of ranges and areas, which if nothing else encourages designers to add more of the same.

Perhaps there's a goal in there somewhere about avoiding material that might be hard to handle TotM (though, really, it's not exactly a lot easier to handle some of those range/area issues /on/ the hypothetical grid, either), but it's clearly below the 'evoke the classic feel'(z?) goal. So when the choice is write a spell that'll work well with TotM (affects 1d4 close targets, 2d3 if cast recklessly) but will conflict with tradition, or describe the geometrically precise area in feet, you do the latter.

I'd actually WELCOME a true TotM kind of design, but I think it would have to be accompanied by a lot stronger story features along the lines of 4e quest design and encounter architecture (or else something entirely different like BW-like elements or something).

Y'd think they could've done more with a TotM module - I guess that would be admitting that it's not TotM 'by default.'