D&D 4E Stephen Radney-MacFarland on Conversions and Adventures in 4e

[mach1.9pants]

"Okay, the innkeeper is an experienced old fellow, he is lvl 2. 2+3 for max ranks is 5, as an inkeeper sense motive is important to him, so he probably maxed it. He also needs to be wise more than anything for his job, so let me give him a +1 from a WIS 12. So his sense motive check is +6."

The reason I so like the way 4E is going is because I don't tell the players that at all. I might say the required roll for your sense motive is 16; but more likely I will say 'roll away' and tell them if they made it. Often I will fudge it like hell if it makes the story better And I would eyeball the total
I don't care where the bonus comes from most of the time, just the result. A chart giving an appropriate bonus is great. 4E is for me!
Edit: What I mean is that a chart will stop my eyeballing being rubbish!

 

[Rechan]

The reason I so like the way 4E is going is because I don't tell the players that at all. I might say the required roll for your sense motive is 16; but more likely I will say 'roll away' and tell them if they made it.

I don't care where the bonus comes from most of the time, just the result.

This is how I run when I'm running my rules-lite roleplay-focused game. Just "Gimmie a roll, if it sounds about right, I'll give it to you."

 

[Xethreau]

I'm glad the designers are focusing on the part of the system that matters, and not trying to bite off more than they can chew to facilitate how many days Farmer Brown has syphilis.

Different strokes, I guess. It's a selling point for me.

Same here.

 

[Pale Jackal]

I LOVE the Storyteller system, so anything that brings it closer to it, is icing on the cake for me

Seriously. Why would I care about giving a cultist ranks in climb if he's just going to be stabbed to death? If I think it's appropriate, and the situation comes up, I'll give him some ranks.

My mind boggles that people actually care about this.

Besides, there's nothing STOPPING you from generating the NPC just like you would a PC if you really want to do things "the accurate way" since if you are one of the people who oppose this "NPC-simplification" then surely you want to generate NPCs the same way as PCs right?

Maybe you don't, but if you don't, then you simply want a different degree of NPC simplification.

Whatever, I ramble, I'm done with this.

 

[mach1.9pants]

This is how I run when I'm running my rules-lite roleplay-focused game. Just "Gimmie a roll, if it sounds about right, I'll give it to you."

Yep, although I am more strict about stuff I have prepared b4. Because stuff I have prepared b4 is generally plot/story/campaign important. But on the fly bluffing the inn keeper or slaughtering him I am as you have said above.

 

[Campbell]

Personally, I applaud their approach to creature design. I also applaud SRM's willingness to admit that 4e will not be all things to all people. To do otherwise would be dishonest.

 

[Nymrohd]

I really do not understand why verisimilititude and consistency are intergrally bound to the rules. I would think they are bound to a DM's will to apply them in his game. You don't need someone to tell you with rules what an innkeeper's sense motive check is if you can set it within reason. And as long as you set it purposefully to identify with the innkeeper's skill and not so as to serve your story you are playing a simulative game (instead of a narrative one). Rules inevitably shackle a DM's ability to provide verisimilititude because he feels compelled to adher to them, and even though they may be consistent internally, they are not necessarily persuasive.

 

[HeinorNY]

I really do not understand why verisimilititude and consistency are intergrally bound to the rules.

They are not, it's all about the way DM, but rules can make it easier or harder for the DM.

If the Cleric has an encounter healing power, the DM needs to explain to the player why his character can't pick a fight with a wounded friend, heal him and just stop fighting. If he can't come up with an in-game explanation, verisimilitude is hurt. The players may even understand and accept a pure metagame explanation, for the same reason I don't go to WoW boards asking how come a kobold miner drops a plate mail. Where the heck he was carrying that?? The reason is: it's just a game.

But the "it's just a game" doesn't work for every DM and player. Some people need to believe, they need verisimilitude to be immersed, to have fun. I need it. We don't need realism, we don't need rules simulating real world physics, but we DO need an in-game explanation for everything that happens in the game, actually our characters need it, otherwise the gameworld starts falling appart. It can be even a poor one like "your god knows you are trying to cheat, so your encounter healing power doesn't work". I'll be satisfied with just that, and I can continue to have my fun.

 

[Baron Opal]

I DMed 3E just like that....

I'd never waste 1 minute designing a whole sheet for an innkeeper, or any other non-combative npc.

As did I, but I think that the 3e DMG implied that it was either desireable or necesary to go the whole nine yards. And, in order to have +X Sense Motive you had to be a Y level Commoner, which in turn implied Z. From what little we've read about the 4e DMG I think that they are going to explicity say "make the details you need right now, and if the NPC is going to have non-combat roles you can spend time to develop that later. If all you need is a punching bag, just use these faster rules."

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

But all of that is consistent with the rules. If it wasn't consistent, there wouldn't be tables and formula. If it wasn't consistent, two pit fiends have different stats.

No the only thing that is consistent is the end result. There isn't any rule to create it no underpinning to work from it's just an arbitrary range where the end results are created out of nothing. At a rules level there's a void you can't back-engineer and tweak because the table is the rule and there's no unifying mechanic behind it.

This sort of thing was built into 3rd edition too. While there were guidelines for how much natural armor a monster of a certain size had, or how much damage a slam attack did, there were no hard and fast rules, and the monsters as presented in the monster manuals varied widely. Plus, monsters had fairly arbitrary abilities to vary even weapon damage, such as the cloud giant's ability to wield an oversized weapon.

You're mixing variability with arbitrariness and while the two have overlap they aren't the same. What I'm trying to get at is the underlying hd/attack bonus/skills/saves system. The various monster types were essentially built like classes with a formula of attributes you could reverse engineer and use for other things or rebalance as needed via a global change. In 4e there isn't any of this the monsters are essentially built on an arbitrary framework from the table so it's difficult if impossible to separate the monster from the role as an independent entity. You no longer have an orc with it's own set of universal traits altered via classes templates etc. Now you have an orc brute or an orc leader, and they're characteristics will be derived from the tables rather than being an independent base of Orc to build from via differing methods.