D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[Sadras]

I don't think there's intended to be any constraint on the duration or scope of a skill challenge. It could regulate getting a door open, or a 6 month sea voyage.

We have drifted. In your 80's war-campaign would you use a skill challenge for the entire campaign given that a skill challenge has no restraint on duration or scope? Please note, the question is not could you, but would you. I would guess no. If ones adventure does no have a time constraint and is not part of a skill challenge - answer the questions below (as per my original reply to Pemerton):

Sure, they have a reason to make haste (in-game fiction), but is there a possibility of failure. Are your players aware of this - do they even fear failure? i.e. are the consequences heavy enough to actually warrant the characters making haste.
Where/what are those limits where you say they have just taken too long? How do you measure them

I see nothing ridiculous about it. My example was quite clear. The nature of time as an imprecise resource measure renders it less than totally effective as a tool of dramatic tension

No. If time passing bears no consequence then yes, it will be less of a tool to inject dramatic tension. You can argue that certain adventures are more predicated for the use of time but not that time is an imprecise resource measure that it lacks the ability to impose dramatic tension.

I was quite accomplished as a DM at that time, with more than 10 years of experience. I don't take 1000's of hours either, anymore, but my point is that even with spending vast time on that project it was impossible to account for time adequately enough to make a completely timeline based drama function well.

Were there heavy enough consequences related directly to the PCs - loss of close NPCs (loved ones or allies)? loss of strongholds or lands? loss of treasure? loss of political and/or social influence? loss of history? loss of character investment in background?
loss of power in the war (can also include advantages for the enemy i.e. summoning of a portal to the Abyss)?

If yes, can you tell me why a SC focused on time creates dramatic tension for your players to save a bunch of unknown NPCs from being sacrificed by a bunch of cultists, but your players will not find the above 'losses' dramatic enough in campaign-arc which takes time into account.

Sure, assuming they can become privy to enough information to be able to make informed choices.

Up-thread I didn't deny this. I'm not sure why it is being reiterated here like I was against this point. In my current campaign arc, they are very much informed, of course they do not know all the facts, but they decide which quest deserves their attention more based on the information they have, personal and strategic reasons.

There's nothing at all wrong with having time constraints, but its better to transform them into something else that is a bit more abstract that the players can manage and avoid the awkward questions like "just how long did lunch take, and did that blow the time budget".

Again, more hyberbole. Perhaps this is why 25+ years ago you spent 1000's of hours when you were recording half an hour lunches and how it affected the timeline. Please read my posts upthread to see how and why we measure time.

The whole thread is about 4e...

Yes, but the thread has evolved. We were discussing Illusionism in the general sense.

If the fudging has some minor effect that has no plot consequence, then again it seems like it isn't worth arguing about what its called.

It becomes important when people, who define Illusionism - and paint it negatively, and ascertain that their decisions exclude any form of illusionism when to others the Illusionism in their decisions is so evidently displayed.
If I cheat in a test, but it doesn't change the outcome of my failure (plot consequence) in the test, did I cheat?

Its when the DM is railroading the players by juggling numbers, plot elements, maps, whatever and the players aren't in on it, then its Illusionism.

Exactly "whatever". Whether big or small it doesn't matter! This I can agree with.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Sorry, I don't mean this to be confrontational, but you're looking at 3.5 through rose-colored glasses. There is NOTHING AT ALL WHATSOEVER in that system that sets a DC for building a boat. There is a generalized 'Craft' skill, in which you select a subcategory, but the subcategories are largely undefined. There is thus no SPECIFIC skill in 3.5 that equates to 'boatbuilding'. It could be its own thing, or it could fall under carpentry or maybe even something else.

Beyond that there is NO DC for building a boat. All there is is a list which says 'very simple', 'typical', 'high quality', and 'complex or superior' and gives a DC for each (which BTW all fall within a fairly narrow range of 15 points that the game blows right past for typical skill bonuses within a few levels). I don't know if a boat is a 'typical' item, a 'high quality' item, or a 'complex' item. What if I decide to build a superior boat, is that harder? Because the time required is based on cost and complexity I can't judge that either! 3.5's Craft skill is nothing BUT DM judgement!

A giant chart could exist for DCs like this, and boats might well be a common enough theme that they would get a mention (even though 3.5 doesn't mention them in its craft skill), but in general MANY things will NOT be listed, and that only covers the actual check for the boat, not anything else surrounding that or leading up to it. I don't strongly object to the equipment rules maybe having something like that in them, but its not a real high priority in my view because such a list simply cannot answer all questions and cannot possibly be more than a couple 100 items long at best, out of 1000's of items that PCs may build in the course of a game.

I agree. I had to completely scrap Craft as it stood. Craft time based on GP value? GP value based on usefulness, rather than rarity or complexity? It just wasn't good, in my opinion.

So, I divided Craft by broad materials, rather than jobs (that's all Profession now). So, you might have Craft (Wood), and build a ship or spear with that (since both are primarily wooden). If you want to be a ship-builder, you'd take Profession (ship-builder), and now you can't make things like spears. Easy peasy.

As for DCs, I have different charts with different factors for different things. I have a chart to calculate weapon DCs, one for armor, one for miscellaneous items (like a spoon or desk), one for buildings or ships, one for inventions, etc. So, if you wanted to make a wooden spoon, it'd be a DC 8 diminutive object. If you wanted to make a thick iron chest, it'd be a DC 16 medium-sized object. (Size is based similarly to 3.X, but slightly modified, and can be modified by material hardness.)

Now that you know how to calculate the DC, you consult the Craft DC chart by size to see how long it takes to build that object. For each 1 you beat the DC, you shave off an amount of time as specified in the chart.

For value of the object, you check the DC by size chart. So, that wooden spoon costs 2c, and that thick iron chest costs 51 silver. (My RPG uses the silver standard.)

Players can add traits to objects (from a list) -such as waterproofing-, increasing the DC (and thus the time required to make it and the cost). But, they only get a couple of traits. Then it needs to be masterwork (higher DC, higher time, higher cost, etc.), then masterpiece, and finally mastercraft.

Is it a lot of work to make an item? Niche items, like castles, maybe, yeah. But mostly it doesn't take long to work it out. Best of all, the players can look over all of this, and make decisions without needing to consult me. They can plan out craftsmen, set a goal (make full plate, make masterpiece ships, etc.), and build towards that confidently and without GM permission.

Is it a lot of work? Well, it was to make it, yeah. But it's done now, and I do have most of the common items already worked out and in the equipment chapter (weapons, armor, gear, etc.). But, during play, this is extremely empowering to players. Downside: nuance and sometimes a little bit of time. Upside: complete clarity and player empowerment.

The price by DC / size chart was also figured out after craft time, so it's taking that into account already (so you don't have loopholes for one low DC or high DC item making you rich by scamming the system). So the base economy stays pretty steady. That's one of my favorite parts.

Anyway, sorry for the derail. Tl;dr: yeah, 3.X Craft stuff sucked, in my opinion. Almost worthless to me.

 

[Leatherhead]

Simplified monsters: I rather liked being able to create a monster in about 30 seconds. Great for sandbox adventures or random encounters.
At-will powers: Always being able to do your shtick was cool.
Ritual magic: It was a nice idea, with some bad patches (like Knock, seriously, they overnerfed the heck out of that spell)

 

[Sadras]

e incorporated necessary innovations to deal with the issues of 3e, which were IMHO rampant and quite large.

I have always said that. However given your acceptance of the evolutionary process which occurred with the design of 4e due to (perceived) problems areas in 3e, do you not think 5e is therefore naturally evolved due to (perceived) problems with 4e? It does seem you excuse the one, but not the other based on your own biases for the system you prefer.

I think if WotC's people in charge of D&D had been enthusiastic about 4e and 'grokked' 4e's strengths then they could have gotten a huge amount more mileage out of the system. Designing a new edition was premature and had they had someone in charge who really got 4e and was comfortable with it then better things could have been done than Essentials.

This implies that the people who designed the system did not 'grok' it, yet they expected the playerbase to 'grok' it. So they designed a system with more mileage than they actually knew? It sounds like you knew more about 4e than the designers.

So WoTC were right to design 4e.
They designed a good system with many strengths.
They didn't understand those strengths.
You understood those strengths.
Essentials was designed by those who didn't get 4e.
Even though you were not aware of all the going-on's in the company, you believe going ahead with 5e was premature.
Earlier you wrote its wrong to blame WoTC for fracturing the community with 4e, but according to you its right to blame them for the premature design of 5e.

Ok.

Yet you can read on this or other threads here by 4e GMs how incredibly flexible things could easily be. You can read Chris Perkins writeups of his Iomandra campaign too, which was pretty friggin cool to put it mildly.

And yet you can read how many gamers thought the system was too codified, too closed for their style of play. Just because you don't want to accept it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
What do you think Chris Perkins was describing here when he was discussing 5e “A great deal of my time and effort was spent to inject the fun that had been sucked out of D&D." Do you think he too didn't realise the potential, mileage or 'grok' the strengths of 4e?

Do not get me wrong, I'm not knocking 4e there are plenty aspects of it I like. I think they could have done away with the bajillion powers and instead focused on page 42 of the DMG but included it in the PHB and provided examples. But in saying that they could have improved 4e in a particular direction that was closer to its base instead of going 5e - the same can be said for 3e and 2e.

4e is a customization powerhouse at several levels, you simply have to get out of the mindset of thinking everything is cast in stone or that narrative isn't the real driving force of RPGs.

Agreed, 4e can be customised but its start base was very different to the other iterations of the game, and for some playstyles it required more effort than it was worth leading to the fracture in the playerbase (not saying it was the only reason).

I don't see where 3e or 2e really supported a wider variety of styles of play than 4e did.

How about Musical Instruments?

Again, I think the problem you see with something like Orcus is that the designers simply didn't see where the strengths of 4e really were right off.

But you did?
Another way of putting it is, the designers simply didn't see the weaknesses of 4e right off.

Sure, in some small fashion you can say that bits of 4e float around in 5e like bits of yesterday's hobbit float around in a jelly cube. It ain't getting up and tap dancing...

Proficiency in Tap dancing is not nearly as important as Proficiency in Musical Instruments

"4.5e" or whatever you wish to call it could have done all of that without sacrificing the other innovations of 4e. That game deserved to be made, and 13th Age isn't it, not even close IMHO.

Despite all the grief I have given you, I agree with this statement, BUT I feel the same way about 2e and 3.5e
I'm not convinced "4.5" would have been the right move for WoTC.

And no, the rather mild one-paragraph here and there variant rules don't really address many styles of play. They may address some, but you can't do with 5e, regardless of which variant rules you use, what I was doing with 4e, it just isn't possible without significant fundamental changes. I never thought it would be, but I constantly hear this refrain that I need to 'be happy' because I can 'just use some of the rules variants'. Sorry, it doesn't work for me.

This might sound familiar, but I think it applies...

You may not have bothered to TRY different things, but that's not to say they weren't possible or that the game didn't do them well. Certainly there isn't total overlap, we can agree on that, and I've said as much.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Lastly, I think there may be an answer to this design paradigm in 4e that rankles your sim-shipwright feathers (but probably not). It seems like you just want to create an asset? Is that correct? In 4e, this would be handled via the magic item economy. The aforementioned PCs' ship was an asset but we hand-waved its modification (it was originally...confiscated...ok, they stole it from the corrupt navy...so they didn't build it). Basically like the transition scene montages in "The A-Team" where they build/modify vehicles for the showdown to come (which is very relevant pulp source material for 4e, just like Indiana Jones, X-Men/Avengers, Die Hard, and Diablo). They spent some of their collective group magic item value to trick out the ship with properties/encounter powers (using alternate advancement items as templates). If you wanted to make building a ship or modding it an actual skill challenge, you could certainly do so. It just likely wouldn't be terribly satisfying as the construct and its GMing principles are premised upon creating conflict-charged scenes basically run through Freytag's Dramatic Arc/Structure.

Yeah, this is a good point, the parcel system is the proper lever for the acquisition of things. In fact the natural way to work it would be an SC with the resulting loot being whatever object it was that was desired, or at least the acquisition of the requisite 'ingredients', which could be combined with a ritual or some such thing. 4e was very insistent that all the PCs assets fall into its managed wealth paradigm. This was somewhat of a two-edged sword, but does work well for a game where the primary focus is on action-adventure and character assets are all pretty much things they will use to increase their character's power.

It tends to crumble a bit when you get into a more varied genre of play. If you have a little bit of say fortune building, maybe a group of characters that have a ship (which is an item of wealth) if they do a little trading on the side you can just run it as SCs with further treasure resulting, but if the party tries to focus entirely on being merchants, then the game simply has little to say about that, and the whole advancement system being tied in with wealth makes it awkward. Its hard to make a really compelling narrative in which acts of commercial greed result in XP gains and treasure parcels in an adventuring class. Nor are the mechanics present to support it, and the ones that do exist aren't really tuned to presenting that as a challenging endeavor.

Of course no other edition does it terribly well either. People will claim that 3.5 does, but its skill system and economic assumptions are so bonkers that you need to basically write a whole mini-game to make it work, which is really no better off than you are with 4e. 5e is even less helpful, its economic assumptions are the weakest of all, AFAICT as it insists on trying to take valuable items out of the economy entirely, which is nonsensical. Again, at least 4e has an SC system that allows some sort of framing of challenges that aren't combat or basic exploration related.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's still pure Illusionism, though. No matter what the player tries to do, it's going to require a level-appropriate check in order to resolve. Between four and twelve of them, in fact. The conflict must progress in a way that is challenging. That's just how the system is set up.

Its all in the framing of the challenge. The premise is simply that any worthwhile conflict must entail a number of checks in order to be suitably dramatic and challenging. Its very easy to ascertain that this criteria has always existed in D&D because you would never find a combat system acceptable that allowed the DM to simply say "roll a d20 and if you pass the check you win, otherwise you're all defeated!" Its just too course for the focus of the game. So, if a challenge cannot support between four a twelve checks, then it isn't a challenge! It might be PART of a greater challenge, or maybe its just a bit of color or framing.

4e isn't averse to the concept of a lone skill check either, it just doesn't have a ton of weight. This could for instance be quite common in a dungeon where PCs could find a trap or secret door with a single check. Whether they do or don't isn't going to drastically change the plot in most cases. It might decide whether they find the stash of healing potions or take some damage and have to spend a surge, but its not super critical.

Its quite feasible for a DM to just say "well, you run into a small complex here, we'll make exploring it an SC. If you succeed you find your way to a concealed treasure, each failure costs the characters an HS as they run into a trap!" I guess you could complain that failure 'always' means the party ran into 3 traps whereas if you mapped it all out they might find no treasure and still avoid all the traps, but you're only going to be in this scenario ONE TIME. The range of results you can get all fall within the logical spectrum of possible outcomes. There's always a way to restructure it to avoid those problems if you really want. The failures could provoke a special 'make this check to avoid the trap' check. Now any conceivable result of playing things out in detail has a corresponding outcome in the SC.

As for 'level appropriate check', that's not exactly true. It will require a check appropriate to the level of the challenge. If you wish to run a sandbox in which parties can run up against challenges that are of widely varying levels 4e isn't going to stand in your way, the mechanics are perfectly capable of handling this. Of course PCs will mostly fail challenges more than 5 levels beyond them, but that's what you WANT if you have a sandbox presumably...

In any case, I don't consider it 'illusionism' in any way shape or form. The players are QUITE AWARE of how 4e works. The narrative will reflect the mechanics of the challenge and its just a matter of proper framing to see to it that it 'makes sense'. It may not conform to your notion of process-sim, but that's an entirely different topic.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right. They've just eliminated nearly all forms of magic and races (and left you with Wizard and dwarf). Now, 4e when I've played it has had a very respectable number of options as far as races and classes and backgrounds go. So I'm not complaining there. I'm just pointing out that rules, by their very nature, limit things about the game. So, if rules in my hypothetical Epic-level RPG limit things... well, that's what they're meant to do. So my reaction to that is... okay? Working as intended.

I think I'm still basically playing OD&D, I just bought a whole lot of supplements. The original aesthetic of the game was that there really weren't any rules, just "a whole lot of charts" to give you some resources to use in putting together what you wanted to play. Obviously 4e is vastly more systematic than that in some sense, but its still the way I approach games. In fact I usually come up with some sort of idea for a game and THEN questions like "what rules should we use" get asked. So, I appreciated that with 4e they were willing to explore all the various permutations of things instead of AD&D's attitude of "Nope, we decided that D&D has this particular flavor in which dwarves never use magic!" I got it, and tossing out those sorts of rules wasn't all that hard, but it still violated my sense of game-as-toolbox.

I like faux-medieval settings too, but I appreciate being able to play in a more diverse set of genre and still use the same core rules.

 

[Imaro]

5e is even less helpful, its economic assumptions are the weakest of all, AFAICT as it insists on trying to take valuable items out of the economy entirely, which is nonsensical. Again, at least 4e has an SC system that allows some sort of framing of challenges that aren't combat or basic exploration related.

Wait...what valuable items are you speaking of?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

We have drifted. In your 80's war-campaign would you use a skill challenge for the entire campaign given that a skill challenge has no restraint on duration or scope? Please note, the question is not could you, but would you. I would guess no. If ones adventure does no have a time constraint and is not part of a skill challenge - answer the questions below (as per my original reply to Pemerton):

I haven't personally utilized the technique of 'entire story-arc as an SC' but it is feasible, as you say. Today I might consider approaching it as a key series of 'challenges', but I think it would be more of a plot-arc than a single SC. I would loosely determine what decision points exist and the factors at stake in them, and then compose smaller plots leading up to them and perhaps others that were around them but not tied in directly. Some of those might be extended SCs, but I'm not committing to anything, it requires a lot of thinking about if you're going to make a campaign with a fairly intricate and rapidly evolving plot.

Sure, they have a reason to make haste (in-game fiction), but is there a possibility of failure. Are your players aware of this - do they even fear failure? i.e. are the consequences heavy enough to actually warrant the characters making haste.
Where/what are those limits where you say they have just taken too long? How do you measure them

When using an SC to regulate the 'getting there in time' challenge? Yes, in the fiction the PCs must make haste. That would translate to mechanics as well, since failing to ACTUALLY make haste in the fiction would prevent them from mechanically progressing in the SC. There's nothing that prevents the DM from declaring failures either, in this case inaction would be tantamount to failure, and if the players said "Oh, we're going to rest for a week and THEN take on your SC" I'd just move on with the plot, they've failed, the opportunity has passed and we go on to something else.

SCs aren't some sort of absolute straightjacket that has to be run through to completion. If a party takes some action that removes the relevancy of the SC or is so amazing that it simply mandates automatic success, etc then so be it. Its like combat, if the party decides to hoof it and retreats, then the battle ends, maybe it transitions directly into a chase or whatever, but there are always potentially multiple exit points from encounters/challenges.

No. If time passing bears no consequence then yes, it will be less of a tool to inject dramatic tension. You can argue that certain adventures are more predicated for the use of time but not that time is an imprecise resource measure that it lacks the ability to impose dramatic tension.

Well, according to you. We will simply have to disagree on that point. I don't understand how using an SC would be related to whether or not 'time bears no consequence' though. I'm really not sure where you are coming from on that. If you are trying to say that an SC cannot impose time pressure then I'd say that is simply an erroneous idea, but I'm not really sure what you ARE saying.

Were there heavy enough consequences related directly to the PCs - loss of close NPCs (loved ones or allies)? loss of strongholds or lands? loss of treasure? loss of political and/or social influence? loss of history? loss of character investment in background?
loss of power in the war (can also include advantages for the enemy i.e. summoning of a portal to the Abyss)?

Sure, but there were a mixture of outcomes. The players didn't abandon the central conflict of the story, they simply chose to go about handling it in a way that was very different from what was envisaged. That lead quickly to a situation that was outside of the parameters of the original timeline, and meant that most of its details weren't relevant anymore.

If yes, can you tell me why a SC focused on time creates dramatic tension for your players to save a bunch of unknown NPCs from being sacrificed by a bunch of cultists, but your players will not find the above 'losses' dramatic enough in campaign-arc which takes time into account.

Its not that so much as it is that creating the detailed timeline that is entailed in the theory of 'knowing the consequences of everything' as [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] has explained it is simply vastly more work than simply driving the tension via the SC mechanics. The players would presumably put the same weight on their various goals, but the SC-based technique is a lot easier to use and from the player's perspective more reliably conveys tension. In the narrative the two should be equivalent in as much as the sequence of events which takes place could be explicated using either a timeline or a list of key events.

Again, more hyberbole. Perhaps this is why 25+ years ago you spent 1000's of hours when you were recording half an hour lunches and how it affected the timeline. Please read my posts upthread to see how and why we measure time.

Again, there's no 'hyperbole', because this was exactly the sort of question that was raised further up thread. You just made some statements about "oh, the style of our campaign is very slow paced and time isn't measured in a very quantifiable way." That's fine, so maybe you would never tell the story of the party that needed to get to location X before event Y. I don't think that "we just don't do that" would answer the question though. It sounds like maybe you don't need either timelines nor time-pressure-based SCs! That's fine, nobody is telling you what has to go in your game.

It becomes important when people, who define Illusionism - and paint it negatively, and ascertain that their decisions exclude any form of illusionism when to others the Illusionism in their decisions is so evidently displayed.
If I cheat in a test, but it doesn't change the outcome of my failure (plot consequence) in the test, did I cheat?

I can only state that this question isn't all that interesting to me. If this were a court of law we could argue about 'attempted cheating' etc, but in terms of games? If the DM happened to fudge some fairly trivial thing, lets say he just decided to declare that the hit on the hobgoblin killed it even though the thing still had 50 more hit points to chew through, big deal. If the outcome was a foregone conclusion and nothing interesting is at stake then just move on. Maybe the DM doesn't tell the players he did it, I don't think that's Illusionism, though it certainly is using a technique that could be used in such a way. As with inconsequential cheating on tests, one can ask if its leading to something more significant, but then again there was a benefit to the players (improved pacing). IMHO its better to be up-front about doing these kinds of things since it is more transparent and allows everyone to more clearly see how the game is running.

Exactly "whatever". Whether big or small it doesn't matter! This I can agree with.

See, we agree, probably on many things,

 

[Bluenose]

Those don't really describe how your attack is any different, so much as how the enemy responds to your attack. I get that the first one is like "you swing really hard" and the second is like "you swing to try an unbalance", but then why does the second attack deal more damage? You can also swing really hard to just do a ton of damage (Brute Strike?), but how is a really hard swing (that results in extra damage) any different from a really hard swing (that stuns)? What is the difference in the narrative of your attack, to justify the difference in mechanical resolution?

I assume you're familiar with the various manoeuvres described in medieval combat manuals. There's an extensive library of surviving material, and the one thing you can learn from it is that there's a variety of techniques which serve different purposes, some intended to momentarily stun an opponent, some to put/keep them off balance, some to force them to move, and some merely intended to give yourself some space to recover. So assuming some familiarity with what can be done with weapons, it should be rather easy to pick one of those techniques that performed successfully would have the mechanical effects that the narrative suggests.

We have drifted. In your 80's war-campaign would you use a skill challenge for the entire campaign given that a skill challenge has no restraint on duration or scope? Please note, the question is not could you, but would you. I would guess no.

You weren't asking me, but I've used a HeroQuest extended conflict (which has a close analogue in the 4e Skill Challenge) to resolve an eight month siege in a few minutes of rolling and description. Depending on what the players found interesting I'd be perfectly prepared to resolve a war in the same fashion.