"Stuck" playing 4e (i.e. unwilling converts)

[Cadfan]

That's immensely condescending, you know. And it makes you seem tremendously arrogant to boot.

Eh, but I'm right.

1. Some people like the illusion of realism.

2. Some people find that illusion disrupted by looking at the nuts and bolts of a game system.

3. The 4e DMG makes most of the nuts and bolts explicit, as do many of the design diaries over the past year.

4. Therefore, some people have a problem with that.

5. And occasionally they come online and tell other people that they can't stand the nuts and bolts, and want a game without them, and prefer to play a different game where you and I know darn well the same nuts and bolts exist, but the designers chose to hide them a bit.

Its like watching sausage get made. The best I can tell someone is not to look. If you love sausage but can't stand blood and gore, then when someone offers you a tour of their brand new sausage factory, don't go. Just enjoy eating the brand new sausage.

If you DID look, I don't know what to tell you. I guess you can just eat your old brand of sausage and pretend that it wasn't made in a similar factory. But don't expect a lot of sympathy out of fans of the new sausage when you tell them that YOUR sausage brand is made from love and rainbows, unlike theirs which is made of horrifically ground up cattle scraps. Particularly not if you tell people this on a forum filled with individuals who are knowledgeable in the trade of sausage processing.

Generic food metaphor FTW!

 

[LostSoul]

3E did introduce Challenge Ratings for monsters.
4E basically expanded on this for monsters, but also expanded it to cover other types of challenges, most notably skills.

I used to refer to monsters as "this is a level X monster" in 1e/Basic D&D. The difference (maybe a big one) was that level X was the dungeon level.

 

[LostSoul]

Skill DCs are certainly one of the easier things to house rule in 4th Edition (as you have done). But the dissociated mechanics hardly end there. Redesigning class powers and re-statting large swaths of the monsters is hardly a trivial undertaking.

I wouldn't call that a house rule (except in Skill Challenges! oh, forgot about that). I'm not sure what you mean about dissociated mechanics in powers and monsters, though.

Is it the hit points/oozes falling prone/come and get it stuff?

That is not what I said.

It's really quite frustrating that people in this thread apparently find it impossible to actually read the messages they're responding to.

Sorry about that, I guess I just didn't understand. Can you clarify what you meant for me?

Which is hugely problematic. Can you imagine if the real world actually worked like that? Muhammed Ali never wins more than X% of his fights because his opponents are always balanced against his current abilities. An expert locksmith never succeeds at opening more locks than he did as a novice because, for some reason, he's always called to service locks exactly matching his level of skill.

The real world does work that way, to a point! Ali doesn't fight amateur boxers. He doesn't fight featherweights. He fights heavyweights, and contenders at that.

I'm not saying that 4E DMs should always use level-appropriate DCs; I think that they should use varying levels of DCs based on whatever opposition they are facing. However, if you want the PCs to be challenged, you as a DM should set the opposition based on the ability of the PCs. The DMG has already worked out the numbers for you! Now you just have to provide the meaning.

This also helps storytelling because a protagonist who doesn't face fit opposition doesn't have to go through anything to get what he wants.

If the PCs go to the backdoor of the local tavern at 30th level, there's absolutely no reason to assume that the local barkeep has locks forged out Vecna's bones. In fact, it's pretty silly to assume that.

Exactly that. They are 30th level; the PCs should be in the City of Brass, trying to break into the Efreet's palace treasury, where the lock is made out of Vecna's bones. (The local tavern in the City of Brass might have locks made out of some kind of elemental steel - I picture a golden snake, hissing, shifting itself to foil anyone who tries to pick it, biting those who fail badly.)

I mean, I get it. There are people who like the Oblivion method of "all the goblins in the world level up when you do". 4th Edition just takes that principle and expands it to every single aspect of the game world.

For me, though, I find the whole 4th Edition method of doing things silly. If you're that obsessed with everything having that X% chance of success, just grab the percentile dice and roll it. Why go through all the extra rigamorale?

And, more importantly, it renders achievement meaningless. Your characters never really become more powerful in any meaningful sense of the term -- the numbers just get bigger.

I'm not saying that the goblins should get tougher as you level up. I think that's stupid for the reasons you do.

What I'm saying is that you don't need to do this.

People keep talking about Quests as if they were some sort of revolutionary mechanic. But to me they look virtually indistinguishable from Story Awards in 3rd Edition. And similar mechanics were found in 2nd Edition, too.

I think it's because the XP awards for Quests are pretty big. I think there's also some kind of text about players making up their own Quests. Those minor changes go a long way.

 

[LostSoul]

While you're right, it doesn't read/feel that way. It reads as:

When you're level 1, it's a DC 15 lock.
When you're level 5, it's a DC 19 lock.
When you're level 10, it's a DC 24 lock.
And so on.

Yes exactly. I argue that colour should be coming first, and rules last. Rules to fit the colour, not colour to fit the rules.

They could have been better about that, I agree. It does read like the lock doesn't change but the DC does, based on level. (There's one passage in the DMG - Realism under the Narration subchapter - that says differently, but the impression is still there.)

I don't really agree that colour should come first. Colour should come first at the table or in prep; the game rules should not be broken, and that's what the designers should work on. Colour is easy enough to change.

Having a cube go prone IS the problem, because it doesn't make sense. Yes, you can do all sorts of things to work-around the issue. But that doesn't stop it being an issue in the first place.

I think it's an interesting trade-off that they decided to make. The DM now has to figure out how a cube can be Prone, and all that means (given the +2 to defenses vs. ranged attacks, I'd say it "pancakes out" so it's flatter). I think they want everything to suffer the various conditions in combat because it allows for more choices in combat.

WHAT? I fail to see how quests didn't exist in any previous edition of DnD. It's a story mechanic, it's just been given a little more text in 4E.

Playing story games, the best mechanic that helps generate story that I've found is the Flag - when the player has something on his sheet that tells the DM what his PC wants to do.

It's even better when it's tied into the reward mechanics (as Quests do).

It gets even better when the PC has two mutually-conflicting Flags - then there is going to be internal character conflict.

Quests have existed in all prior editions, I guess, but I feel the implementation is much better in 4E.

... *looks up gauche*. Is it? Surely the merit of strolling through goblin warrens is based on WHY you are there.

I was just joking around.

It certainly doesn't cut it for me. I want my example DCs because it allows me to draw comparison to the real world, in order to structure my imagination of the fantasy.

Like I've said, splitting the levels up into Tiers (and providing colour for the meaning of those Tiers) does that for me.

 

[LostSoul]

Have you ever thought, that maybe (contrary to the popular belief that 4e has the best DMG evah) that it is in fact the sloppy nature of how this subject is written about in the 4e DMG and PHB that creates differing perceptions on how it should be handled...as opposed to peoples "LACK OF UNDERSTANDING OF THE RULES"?

I agree, the DMG is pretty sloppy about this.

If it weren't, I wouldn't be coming here to post things like, "You can run it that way, but you don't have to run it that way."

 

[Imaro]

Aye, this one is confusing and makes little sense. However, if you consider that the rest of the core rules operate under the assumption of fixed checks for skills covered in the rules, wouldn't it be fairly easy to assume that someone screwed up? I mean, if you have say 20 pages of rules saying one thing, and a small paragraph saying something else, wouldn't it be logical to assume that the last one is there by mistake?

First it's a hefty amount detailing the whole process, examples, etc....pg. 42... second it has, surprise, surprise, become the defacto answer for most 4e fans when a question arises...in fact I would argue in the reality of the game, pg. 42 has garnered much more weight than the other "20 pages of rules". But the most important thing to my mind is... the question: why is making a choice necessary?

Page 42 is explicitly for things otherwise not covered in the rules. Meaning, things like listening through doors, climbing up ladders and whatever else is covered in the PHB are not superseded by this.

Ok, let's assume this is correct... then we run into other problems...

As I have said before, I do understand why some might have issues with page 42. But I think it's a debate for it's own thread.

But the short version is that while the static DC's from the PHB are skill checks that relate to non-sentient things. Like a ledge doesn't get harder to balance on, just because you become more powerful. Page 42 is however not for those things, since they are covered in the PHB.

And yet there is no way to cover all actions (even just with non-sentient things) in the PHB, thus the chart will be used for those types of actions...as an example, let's say my Rogue wants to run up a wall and somersault over and to the top of a pit, using Acrobatics...the chart will be used at this point. Now again we run into contradictory info, the Acrobatics skill says start with a base of 15 and modify for difficulty...yet on page 42 there is an actual example of an Acrobatic stunt (The rogue and the chandelier) that instead uses the chart?? Again this is sloppy and confusing.

Page 42 is for the weird stunts, the things that are hard to cover unless you want to have 30 pages of lists to wade through. Now, the stunts work under the assumption that even though you get better as you level, the fact that these stunts interact with enemies of (more or less) equal level, the stunts themselves become harder to make. Basically, the premise in 4e is that if it's hard for a rogue to make a tumbling move through the legs of say an orc, it should also be hard for the same rogue in 20 levels to do the same against whatever level-appropriate foe he is facing. Sure, he got like +15 more to his skills, but the monster he is facing is also more apt and quick.

I personally like this approach. It means that epic level characters will shine supreme at common stuff, like running quick over a narrow pole, jumping over a chasm, beating down a wooden door etc, but still not always succeed at wacky stuff in combat, because the foes they face are equally good.

I hope that made some sense.

Cheers

Yes, and yet what you are claiming is contradicted by the example given on page 42...read the description for the Rogue grabbing the Chandelier... this isn't against a sentient opponent and yet here we see the chart used, not a set DC.

I would argue furthermore that the type of action you speak of should be covered by a check against a defense...or an opposing skill (as suggested by most of the skills descriptions in the PHB)... so I think there's a pretty big fallacy in your assumptions being the correct way to interpret how the rules should be used, and in fact still assert that they are confusing and sloppily written/explained.

Side Note: Something I've noticed with 4e is that it's fans are often quick to interpret many of it's ambiguous and/or unclear rules and then act as if that is the only way they could possibly be understood or interpreted... when the answer is more likely th rules really weren't explained or written well. And even further this is often held up as a strength of 4e. Now I agree freedom to make rulings is a benefit, but not when the basis to make those rulings on is poorly written and/or explained.


EDIT: Also in the Acrobatics example...stunts actually get harder as you go up in level, not easier. So the somersault to the top of the pit trick starts out with a DC that's roughly the same as balancing on a ledge...yet as you get better and higher level it becomes harder to pull off, yet balancing on the ledge stays the same...This is where that disconnect takes place for me...NOT because I see the nuts and bolts, but because the nuts and bolts don't make sense.

 

[Dragonblade]

Uhm see above...3.5 did not change how difficult it was to search for an item in a room...based upon your level, depending on which of the contradicting ways to determine DC's one chooses from 4e...it does.

Thats because, like with most things in 3e, the skill system was poorly designed and just plain broken. 4e changes the DCs because the 4e designers realized that static skill DCs break beyond a certain level. This argument also destroys the absurd notion that 3e is somehow more "realistic" than 4e. Pretty much anyone at or beyond 9th level is effectively a superhuman in 3e.

I took this from the WotC boards a long time ago. I'm not sure who wrote it, and I'd love to give credit to the original author but it does a good job of illustrating the ridiculousness of the 3e skill system:

9th level Bard. He has 12 ranks of Perform, started with 16 Cha and
increased it twice to 18 (+4). He also has a masterwork instrument
(+2) and a Circlet of Persuasion (+3). His Perform modifier is now
12+4+2+3=+21. This means that, by taking ten, he nails a 31 every
time. According to the PHB, this means that by playing on street
corners, he will eventually attract the attention of extraplanar
beings. Gimble will be sitting around drinking and playing his lute
when a genie bamfs in and asks the gnome to perform at his kid's Bar
Mitzvah.

9th level Rogue. He has 12 ranks of Balance, started with 16 Dex and
boosted it twice to 18 (+4). He gets a +2 synergy bonus from Tumble
ranks, for a total modifier of 12+4+2=+18. Taking 10, he will, every
time, be able to move at full speed across a one inch wide
marble-covered beam. (18+10-5=23 for the check, 20+2(scree) =22 for
the DC.)

9th level Barbarian. 12 ranks of Climb, now has 18 (+4) Strength, for
a final modifier of 12+4=+16. Taking 10, he gets a 26. He can now
climb most mountains while raining, moving 40 feet every 6 seconds.
(Check is 26-5=21 for accelerated climbing, DC is 15+5=20 for climbing
a rough natural rock surface that's slippery.)

9th level Swashbuckler. 12 ranks of Jump, 12 (+1) Strength, +2 synergy
from Tumble. His modifier is 12+1+2=+15. Taking 10 gets him a 25. The
female world record for the long jump is (7.52 meters)*(3.28
feet/meter) = 24.7 feet. This character beats that every time he wants
to. The men's record is 8.95*3.28= 29.3 feet, which his character
could swing pretty easily if he so desired. When the character rolls
instead of taking 10, he can hit as much as 35 feet, blowing past the
world record by two yards.

9th level Beguiler. 12 ranks in Disguise, 14 (+2) Charisma, with a
disguise kit (+2). Total modifier is +16, taking 10 gets him a 26. He
can disguise himself as a woman's human husband (+10 for intimate
familiarity) as long as she has a Spot modifier of 6 or less.

Spoiler:
Because it's fun to pick on Fighters, let's say this woman is Fighter.
We'll generously give her a Wisdom of 14 (+2), which means she needs
4.5 ranks to beat the spread and win the check with a 26.5 (again
assuming taking 10). Since spot is cross-class, the soonest she could
get that many is at 6th level.

May the gods help you if this guy uses Disguise Self to boost his
check by another 10. Or if he's a Bard, kicking his Charisma up
another couple notches.
9th level Monk. 12 ranks in sense motive, 16 (+3) Wisdom. Final
modifier is 12+3=+15. Taking 10, he can instantly tell whether a
person is under the effects of Charm Person or not, every time. (DC
25) And that isn't "I've a sneaking suspicion that something is wrong
here" so much as it's "Hi, my name is Benedict Thelonious. Also,
you're charmed."

9th level Bard again. 12 "ranks" in Speak Language nets him 12
languages, because Bards are awesome like that. There are only 20 of
the things listed in the PHB, one of them is Druidic, and he starts
with a few because of race and intelligence. He learns this from
hanging out in bars, and in addition to everything else he can do. I
don't think there are many people in the world that can boast that
kind of repertoire, and finding one in his mid-20s that's also a
competent in battle, magic (which we can approximate to some degree
with science or technology), and whatever this guy is burning his
other 5+Int skill points on is fairly definitely impossible.

9th level Ranger goes tracking. 12 ranks in Survival, 14 (+2) Wisdom,
+4 from Search and Know: Nature synergy, and +2 from some manner of
tracking kit. Modifier is 12+2+4+2= +20, which means he takes 10 to
get a 30. To match this, the DC is going to look like this: 4+5+1+20.
That comes from tracking a single Toad (+4 DC for being Diminutive)
that is covering his tracks (+5) after an hour of rainfall (+1) over
bare rock (20).

By 9th level, you're pretty much past the point of being able to use
"It's not realistic!" as any sort of relevant complaint in a D&D
environment.

 

[Ahglock]

3E did introduce Challenge Ratings for monsters.
4E basically expanded on this for monsters, but also expanded it to cover other types of challenges, most notably skills.

But just like 3E CR rules didn't demand of you to only ever use equal level enemies (quite the contrary), the 4E rules don't demand you to only ever use equal level challenges for your PCs.

It was not demanded no, heck I can't think of anything that is demanded in an RPG. But I think 4e pushes you towards it more than any previous edition.

While we are still having fun, but I think the reduction in simulationist gaming will probably effect the replayability or long term enjoyment of the game for us.

 

[Gothmog]

Thats because, like with most things in 3e, the skill system was poorly designed and just plain broken. 4e changes the DCs because the 4e designers realized that static skill DCs break beyond a certain level. This argument also destroys the absurd notion that 3e is somehow more "realistic" than 4e. Pretty much anyone at or beyond 9th level is effectively a superhuman in 3e.

I took this from the WotC boards a long time ago. I'm not sure who wrote it, and I'd love to give credit to the original author but it does a good job of illustrating the ridiculousness of the 3e skill system:

You sir, have won the thread.

Wow, I hadn't ever really thought about how broken the 3e skill system was until I saw those examples and checked them with my 3e PHB. The 3e skill system worked pretty well up until about 5th or 6th level, but past that things got silly very quickly with static skill DCs (and doubly so with synergies and magic item bonuses). While there is a lot to be said for realism and consistency in the game, I think people also need to realize that without chance or risk of failure, the game simply isn't fun. So while sliding DCs for skills dependent on level may not be the absolute best answer (I tend more towards the simulationist side of things myself), they are better than what we had before, and I appreciate what the designers were trying to do with them. The game is perfectly playable and doesn't break down with the sliding DCs, even playing it from my more old-school, simulationist perspective.

I can justify the relative consistency of chances to hit in 4e combat a lot easier than I can the sliding DCs for skill use. As you get more skilled, it stands to reason your opponents will get tougher and more skilled as well. Sure, a level 20 fighter might run into a dozen level 5 orcs- and he'll have an easy time hitting them and mopping the floor with them- but how is that different than any other version of D&D? What is different is that the level 20 fighter meeting an equivalent level opponent won't auto-hit on his attacks (at least the first two iterative attacks) like he would in 3e. Thats a feature, not a bug.

 

[BryonD]

Thats because, like with most things in 3e, the skill system was poorly designed and just plain broken. 4e changes the DCs because the 4e designers realized that static skill DCs break beyond a certain level. This argument also destroys the absurd notion that 3e is somehow more "realistic" than 4e. Pretty much anyone at or beyond 9th level is effectively a superhuman in 3e.

And yet 11th level in 4E being by game definition "paragon" is ok?

I mean, it is perfectly fine to me, but to embrace that and complain about this is absurd.
The whole thing gets back to this stupid "I have my one narrow minded view of 'realistic'" and *to me* this cherry picked example disproves it, therefore your enjoyment of the game must be wrong."

It is resoundingly ignorant.

If you can not grasp the distinction between superhuman and the in game concept of "realism" then you have no business being in the conversation. And since you posted this foolishness, you either can't grasp it, or you are simply being intentionally dishonest.

I think calling the 3E system broken is laughable. I don't think the 4E system is broken either. Sadly constrained, yes, but not broken.