D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[ccs]

Other: Alot of new players locally.
Only a few continued to play 4e after about a year. But almost all of them have continued to game. Other RPGs, minis games, boardgames....
So 4e was a great feeder system to sell people other/better games.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Well, looking at Greyhawk, I must admit that there's no explicit indication of how these abilities are to be used. MANY people have argued Mike's position, which I believe is implicit in 1e's rules at least, but based on the original text there's really very little to go on. There is in fact almost no description of thieves and thief abilities in Greyhawk at all, just a couple tables and some notes. The main description literally has one sentence per ability! Obviously we must accept Mike's assertion however, unless someone else who played in the original Greyhawk is here to say different.

Gygax was definitely an idiosyncratic writer. He produced a lot of text in the DMG, and PHB, and yet elucidated little in terms of a coherent rules process. There's a lot of material that shows how he built a campaign. I don't think he cared that much for rules. Even later when he expounded that AD&D was intended to provide 'the way' for things D&D to be done, it didn't seem like he really meant it, not in the sense that we would take such a statement today at least.

Apparently, Gary didn't design the thief - or psionics, or 1E's "idiosyncratic" take on unarmed combat - so he just blamed other people for the mistakes and lack of clarity and moved on. He didn't quite grasp what it meant when your name was on the cover....

And, yeah, Gary's "one true way"-pontifications really turned me off the man, especially when his "one true way" was an unclear, contradictory mess (but also the best training I ever received in how to read contracts and theology). So much so that when he was revealed here on ENWorld I was amazed that he came across as a fairly decent human being!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Unless you're in metal armor, which was my initial point. Who can be heard 90' away and outside typical encounter distances. Most parties had someone in metal armor.

Actually I disagree. That isn't what the text on page 68 says:

NOISE: Characters in metal armor can be heard for 90', hard boots
can be heard at 60', relatively quiet movement can be
heard at 30'.

This is in the context of characters who are FLEEING remember, not just general discussion of all situations. If you are fleeing in metal armor, you can be heard at 90', and if you use 'relatively quiet movement' (and there's no indication this isn't possible in metal armor) then its 30'. Presumably being 'relatively quiet' has some sort of impact on your ability to move quickly, but the discussion doesn't actually get into that much detail. My guess is, in the context of the discussion in the rest of this session, that Gygax is imagining a scenario where say the party took one path at a fork, got out of visibility range of the fork itself, and then slowed down to a stealthy pace in the hope that the bad guys would take the wrong path, for example. Note the text right above this in the section which discusses exactly this, and includes

Thus, at
a branching passage where there are 3 possible ways which could
have been taken, there is a basic 2 in 3 chance that the pursuer(s) will
take the wrong passage. Likewise, if there are a door and a passage,
there is a 1 in 2 chance of wrong choice. This base chance assumes that
the pursuer cannot see the pursued when choice is made, that sound
does not reveal the direction of flight, that smell does not reveal direc-
tion of flight, nor do any other visual, audial, or olfactory clues point to
the escape path. As DM, you will have to adjudicate such situations as
they arise. The following guidelines might prove helpful:

Again though, I have to note, these rules quoted above are ALL part of the section called COMBAT (PURSUIT & EVATION OF PURSUIT) and it is entirely unclear to what, if any, extent they are intended to be generalized to cover other situations. No equivalent text exists which explains what happens while simply exploring for instance. I think its logical to extrapolate, but you do have to make sure you keep the context in mind. AD&D rules like this are VERY specific and were often written for only a specific kind of situation. Gygax's technique here was clearly to just make up a specific set of rules to cover each and every scenario when it came up, not to generalize some principles and use them over and over.

And Hide In Shadows didn't actually work against most monsters in any case, because they had Infravision.

Actually this isn't ever made clear. That is definitely one way to interpret things. However infravision is generally spoiled whenever you're around light sources. Nothing ever clarifies however EXACTLY what the conditions are where it does or doesn't work or what limitations it might have. So its actually pretty much up to the DM to what degree you can hide around monsters with infravision.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Apparently, Gary didn't design the thief - or psionics, or 1E's "idiosyncratic" take on unarmed combat - so he just blamed other people for the mistakes and lack of clarity and moved on. He didn't quite grasp what it meant when your name was on the cover....

And, yeah, Gary's "one true way"-pontifications really turned me off the man, especially when his "one true way" was an unclear, contradictory mess (but also the best training I ever received in how to read contracts and theology). So much so that when he was revealed here on ENWorld I was amazed that he came across as a fairly decent human being!

Well, I never talked to the guy myself. People I know who did had various impressions. Some that he was warm and humane, others that he was a pompous annoying nit. I suspect its like anything, there's no simple truth to tell in a sentence about something as complex as a man. There's a lot of genius in the overall design and conceptual framework of D&D, and a lot of eye-rollingly frustrating rules triviality and obscurity in the details Gary choose to put around that. Its largely moot today in any case as 4e was the culmination of an evolution to a completely generalized mechanical framework for the game. It could have come almost 30 years ago with 2e and sadly didn't, but we have it now!

 

[MwaO]

This is in the context of characters who are FLEEING remember, not just general discussion of all situations.

He explicitly labels it a guideline. Given the lack of other guidelines, it is THE guideline. Note how Elves & Halflings 90' away from a party and not in metal armor move so silently so as to have a better than normal surprise chance(pages 16-17 of PHB)? Why 90'? Where did that number just get used?

So its actually pretty much up to the DM to what degree you can hide around monsters with infravision.

No, Hide in Shadows(page 28 PHB) explicitly states that unless there's a heat-generating light source nearby the creature with Infravision or the creature attempting to hide(which prevents hiding...), it doesn't work against Infravision.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

He explicitly labels it a guideline. Given the lack of other guidelines, it is THE guideline. Note how Elves & Halflings 90' away from a party and not in metal armor move so silently so as to have a better than normal surprise chance(pages 16-17 of PHB)? Why 90'? Where did that number just get used?

It makes perfectly good sense. There's a 1 in 3 chance to achieve surprise, normally. If you simply move normally and wear metal armor, you can be heard from 90', and you have a 1 in 3 chance to surprise. If you move relatively quietly, the distance is shrunk to 30', which is closer than the normal encounter distance I note, meaning a relatively quiet party will generally have a chance to avoid an encounter, as their opponents will not have heard them yet, though being surprised could negate any advantage of that. Elves and Halflings (and rangers even more so) operating well in advance of a group, regardless of if it is relatively quiet or not, are more difficult to surprise and gain surprise more easily, presumably because they are 'extra sneaky'. This just means that they can often sneak right up to within 30' of an enemy (the distance that an encounter happens at for the surprised party) or choose to avoid more reliably.

I still don't see anything that establishes a rule that metal armor means you are automatically able to be detected 90' away, and phb/dmg doesn't refer to metal armor specifically when discussing this, just to non-elf/Halfling characters. It isn't even clear what the rules are for a party of ALL elves, though we can assume they simply gain the benefit as that would be the logical conclusion.

No, Hide in Shadows(page 28 PHB) explicitly states that unless there's a heat-generating light source nearby the creature with Infravision or the creature attempting to hide(which prevents hiding...), it doesn't work against Infravision.

Mmmmm, now you want to delve into the ugly of infravision! Really? Are you sure? I refer you to the DMG section on vision for your interested reading. There you will get a LOT more nuanced treatment of infravision. You will learn that it isn't just 'normal vision but in the dark'. You'll also learn that there are FLAVORS of infravision, even though the MM doesn't discuss this point! 90' infravision is MUCH different from 60' infravision (which is what all PCs have, though I'm not sure about Drow). In any case, either type will definitely make Hide in Shadows more difficult, I agree. Its still up to the DM exactly what happens, though certainly PHB p28 suggests that thieves probably should just not bother to pursue their craft in dungeons. Still, my original point, that parties have plenty of scouting and stealth options, stands. A ranger is perfectly capable of moving up to within 30' of many monsters, and can certainly at least move to a point which is out of their line of sight and attempt to listen, smell, take a peek around the corner, etc.

Truthfully, if you want a totally sensible system for all of this, you should write up your own, because 1e's just isn't coherent. For instance there's actually no real discussion of how likely it is for say a totally silent motionless skeleton to surprise a party. How would they even know it exists? Yet surprise is still checked in the standard way and so is encounter distance!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Apparently, Gary didn't design the thief - or psionics, or 1E's "idiosyncratic" take on unarmed combat - so he just blamed other people for the mistakes and lack of clarity and moved on. He didn't quite grasp what it meant when your name was on the cover....

And, yeah, Gary's "one true way"-pontifications really turned me off the man, especially when his "one true way" was an unclear, contradictory mess (but also the best training I ever received in how to read contracts and theology). So much so that when he was revealed here on ENWorld I was amazed that he came across as a fairly decent human being!

The folks I know who knew him say he was...not a great person back in the day, but mellowed and grew with age.

Like most folks I know, honestly.

Still, I've always had more respect, in every possible way, for Arneson. IMO, DnD was created by Arneson, and Gygax took the credit. and made it less good.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The folks I know who knew him say he was...not a great person back in the day, but mellowed and grew with age.

Like most folks I know, honestly.

Still, I've always had more respect, in every possible way, for Arneson. IMO, DnD was created by Arneson, and Gygax took the credit. and made it less good.

I think that's not really a very supportable thesis. Gary Gygax was the author of MANY products, a lot of which sold quite well. He was clearly capable of taking an idea and boiling it down from concept to something that people could read and play, even if it wasn't always the MOST coherent in all its details.

I also think you are treading on dangerous ground when you attribute any specific element of D&D particularly to one of either Gygax or Arneson. Arneson had the germ of the idea, and translated it into something he could play himself. What exactly that was is open to a lot of debate. Arneson also basically never produced a finished publishable game product. It seems fair to say, IMHO that Gary was capable of taking a project to completion and Dave wasn't really. He came up with at least the one key idea of the game, and certainly some of the specific elements that made up OD&D (but which ones we can't say for sure). There were clearly other ideas that Dave had that Gary axed, and we don't really know if those were good or bad ideas.

Honestly, a perusal of Blackmoor doesn't really impress me that much. The two classes it provides, Monk and Assassin, are both problematic in various ways. They diverge from the existing pattern of other classes for no discernible reason in ways that are rather limiting for example. The Monk is also underpowered and lacks a coherent role, making it really rather unplayable as written. The Assassin is more playable, but the whole % assassination feature isn't appropriate to a PC, particularly in the context of OD&D. Clearly it at least shows that Dave had a very different style of game than Gary did!

Then we have the whole hit location system, which is just about unplayable and not coherent with the rest of the highly abstracted combat system of D&D. Its telling that this system is basically THE one and only part of OD&D that makes no appearance in any later edition. I'd note that 1e pretty much completely rewrote the Specialists and Disease sections as well, though I don't see where Gary's versions are clearly better.

It seems like a mediocre supplement. There are some good monsters, and it does contain the first real published TSR adventure, though as adventures go its pretty rough going! It seems to me, this being Dave's one and only unequivocal contribution to the corpus of the game beyond some unknown but significant percentage of the core rules, that all indications are D&D in total is more Gygax than Arneson.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think that's not really a very supportable thesis...

It's not a thesis in a formal debate, so...I don't really care?

I'm not sure why you just wrote a dissertation on the subject, but I want to save you time and assure you that I literally don't care at all about Gygax, or being fair to his memory, or whatever.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's not a thesis in a formal debate, so...I don't really care?

I'm not sure why you just wrote a dissertation on the subject, but I want to save you time and assure you that I literally don't care at all about Gygax, or being fair to his memory, or whatever.

You made a factual statement, "DnD was created by Arneson, and Gygax took the credit."

It has nothing to do with 'caring about Gygax' or any other such thing. If you state facts, state correct facts. Your opinion is yours to have, and I don't care if its 'fair' or 'unfair' (whatever that means) but don't mix it with untruths.