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D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

What are your favorite 4E elements?


I might argue that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] engages in illusionism to some degree. As far as I can tell, he believes that it is his duty to frame challenges for the PCs, and thus it's basically okay to send them up against a set scenario regardless of their choice; that is, it doesn't matter if they turn right or turn left at a fork, you present them with the same interesting situation regardless.
Where's the illusion? If the players know that they are going to be confronted by (say) Orcus cultists whether they choose the right or left path, then the choice of path is mere colour.

In fact I don't think the scenario you've described has ever come up in my 4e game - as best I can recall I've run two dungeons of any meaningful scale in the campaign, both at heroic tier. One combined elements of Night's Dark Terror, Sceptre Tower of Spellgard, and maybe some other stuff that I either made up or found somewhere else. The other was the Well of Demons from module P2.

The former had a map and key in traditional dungeon style, and was not strictly linear, but certainly had a general trajectory to it. It's now over five years ago, so memory has faded, but there was undead/Orcus-y stuff pretty much everywhere the PCs went.

In the absence of divination spells or rumours of the classic D&D variety, the sequence in this sort of dungeon has little narrative/play integrity: when the players are choosing to go down corridor X rather than Y, they are generally not making a meaningful choice. The reason for respecting the pre-mapping and stocking of rooms is to preserve the integrity of the backstory that it represents (and for all I can remember, I may have made changes along the way to strengthen that backstory prior to its revelation).

The latter had two phases that were basically linear (an entry chamber, then a big encounter with gnolls and a demon, that I handled a bit differently from how it is written), then three or four McGuffin-collection phases that are basically arbitrary in their sequence, then a big finish.

This is more than four years ago, so also somewhat faded from my memory, but I remember that this is where the drow PC acquired the demonskins to make his robes as part of the process of becoming a Demonskin Adept. But the big finish was the main thing, and it involved rescuing villagers who had been sold to the gnolls by duergar slavers, and were to be used as sacrificial victims. I remember that the players were very cautious, their PCs lingering in the doorway and taking it slow while the gnoll leader tried to complete his ritual - and as a result one of the villagers was killed.

That was the real decision point, and not illusionistic at all: the PCs could have rescued both the prisoners had they chosen differently (and been successful on their dice rolls).

Most of the travel in my game that is not just handwaved is handled via skill challenges (through the wilderness, at heroic tier; through the underdark, for the second half of paragon tier and again at epic in pursuit of Torog; through the Abyss in early epic tier). In the skill challenges, turning left or right is not to the fore - the decision points are framed via the skill challenge, and are resolved non-illusionistically.

Not too far upthread I described a recent episode of play (and have written a fuller account on another thread). Why did the PCs find themselves fighting Lolth? Because they travelled through a portal to the Abyss with that express objective - one of the PCs was built by his player to be an anti-Lolth crusading drow. The scene-setting was not illusionistic: everyone at the table knows why (at a meta-level) I happened to have the dwarf who missed his attempt to leap onto Ygorl fall down to a githzerai earthmote with an Abyssal portal on it.
 

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Admittedly I may not have a full grasp on the boundaries of illusionism... but it seems to have alot of similarity to both how I have seen SC's explained and ran by many 4e fans... there is a "success" condition and a "failure" condition... but these are usually pre-set before the actions of the PC's are taken into account.
Can you point to the sorts of examples you have in mind, or elaborate further? I've mostly seen critics of skill challenges present them in the terms you describe (ie a dice-rolling exercise to walk the players through the GM's script).

The other instance is in the "fail forward" premise, which again seems like a possibly less hard form of illusionism... where no matter what the PC's actions they will get their goal... but with a cost/consequence/etc
That's not a very accurate statement of "fail forward". Fail forward has two main elements - Ron Edwards and Luke Crane emphasise one, Robin Laws the other. The first is sometimes called "no whiffing" - that a failed check doesn't mean the PC failed at the task, but rather circumstances external to the PC somehow conspired to mean that succeeding at the task didn't achieve the goal.

The second is "no roadblock" - a failed check results in a new pathway opening up, but one that contains a complication or adverse consequence.

An example of combat-related "fail forward" from my 4e game: the PCs are trying to assault a goblin fortress, but get lured into an ambush by dead spirits, set up by the goblin shaman. A "TPK" results: but instead of ending the campaign, after discussion with the players about who wants to do what with their characters, three of the PCs wake up in the goblin cells.

An example of non-combat-related "fail forward" from my 4e game: the drow sorcerer is riding a flying carpet in an attempt to take a message from a desolate tower to the town. The carpet has been stolen from an enemy wizard in command of local hobgoblin raiders, and when the PC sees signal lights from the nearby hills, he realises they are probably being transmitted by the hobgoblins. He tries to respond but doesn't know the code; is pursued by wyvern riders, whom he can neither shake off nor blast away, and in the end - after turning back to his friends at the tower - he crash lands 50 squares from his allies and in combat with a hobgoblin captain and his wyvern.

This is fail forward - the goal wasn't achieved (the skill challenge to escape the hobgoblins failed) but there was no roadblock. Rather, the situation transitioned into a geographically challenging combat.

In neither case is their any illusionism. The players know what they are trying to achieve (via their PCs), they know whether or not they succeeded and why (they can track the combat status, or the skill challenge status) and they know why the GM is narrating the relevant consequence.

What's the illusion?
 

Examples of illusionism which I think are pretty common in quite a bit of D&D play:

Pretending to roll secret door dice, but telling the players about the secret door whatever the roll;

Pretending to roll reaction dice, but having the NPCs respond the same way whatever the outcome;

Rolling morale, but having the monster retreat (or fight one) whatever the outcome;

In general, any pretence that an outcome is being determined via action resolution mechanics when in fact it has been pre-planned.​

This is the sort of approach to play that "say yes or roll the dice" is meant to avoid.

There are plenty of other illusionist techniques to, not directly related to dice rolls, and mostly involving changing the fiction (often via manipulation of secret backstory) to undo the consequences of players' action resolution. This seems to be fairly popular in scenarios associated with published campaign settings, in order to stop the home game departing from the metaplot.

One sign that 4e eschewed this particular brand of illusionism was the comment, in The Plane Above (p 97) that the Scales of War adventure path was not canonical: "If you design a campaign of your own featuring the githyanki, remember that the Scales of War path presents just one interpretation of the future of the githyanki. You are free to use or discard that version as you see fit."

Points of Light has a backstory, and a trajectory - everyone at the table knows that the Dusk War might be coming just around the corner - but no metaplot.
 

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]... So then is illusionism more about being dishonest about methodology as opposed to creating the illusion that choice matters on the result?...
 

I agree with @JamesonCourage and @S'mon illusionism was definitely possible in 4e. The mechanics helped some to mitigate it to a degree, but it definitely existed if I wanted to input it. We try play mostly sandbox (whatever the edition) so I find that it assists in pushing against any form of illusionism that I, as DM, might be predisposed to infect the game with.

Admittedly I may not have a full grasp on the boundaries of illusionism... but it seems to have alot of similarity to both how I have seen SC's explained and ran by many 4e fans... there is a "success" condition and a "failure" condition... but these are usually pre-set before the actions of the PC's are taken into account. The other instance is in the "fail forward" premise, which again seems like a possibly less hard form of illusionism... where no matter what the PC's actions they will get their goal... but with a cost/consequence/etc... Can anyone tell me why these both aren't a form of illusionism?

Don't have a lot of time, but right quick:

Illusionism is fundamentally a very simple concept:

If the ruleset alleges to cultivate or outright prescribes an experience whereby when the input of players (PC build choices, action declarations) meets system play procedures (the action resolution mechanics + the system-canvassed type and kind of situation framing and player adversity), play will propel forward inexorably as an outgrowth of those practices...but if at the table it is actually subordinated by GM force (rendering irrelevant the aforementioned inputs), and it is done so covertly, then that is illusionism.

I'll post more later but [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has a few easy examples above.
 

Because you may not have the choice to be proficient in Performance but you can be proficient in a musical instrument, usually via a background... not understanding why that is incoherent? Aren't there people in our own world who can play guitar but can't act?

Edit: Better yet why would anyone get a bachelor's degree when they can get a masters? Is that choice also incoherent?
The simplest answer is because its a game and why split hairs? The people who get Performance and/or Musical Instrument are mostly Bards anyway! Why isn't there an acting skill and a juggling skill and a...? Its just not really coherent. I've played, a bunch, and its confusing. The skill system can't make up its mind if its a detailed list of everything you could ever do or if its a system of traits and talents ala 4e. This beast is neither fowl nor fish, its confused.

I disagree... as a simple example... I am trying to determine the answer (or perhaps just a hint depending on how the DM plays it) to a riddle in a dungeon... or a puzzle to unlock a vault... Or maybe I have a map, a partially burnt letter and an overheasrd partial conversation concerning information about a villains plan, through "investigation" perhaps I can put it all together. All of these things have clues and require deduction, as I said earlier.
OK, but does that not fall into the nature of RP? Even if you 'test the character' it still falls under basic intelligence. There's not a learned skill or training that will teach you to put these things together, that's what INT IS, definitionally. Investigation makes no sense as a skill. I have experienced this, I gave my character a high score in it. There simply isn't a situation where it makes sense, in every single case the action is covered by something else without fail. I mean we USED it, but it was clearly confusing and I could as well have put the points into Perception or some knowledge skills. In fact said character is lousy at Perception and yet somehow he's a great investigator, its just not making any sense at all!

I agree about Bluff... but the tools, not so sure...The firsdt sentence of the thieving tools states...

"To use the thievery skill properly you need the right picks and pries, skeleton keys , clamps and so on."

That doesn't seem clear cut to me... It seems incoherent with what the tools do mechanically...
Well, what does 'properly' mean? The mechanics are absolutely clear on how THEY work. You get a +2 to checks which logically rely on tools (picking locks, removing traps, that sort of thing). So, now we know what properly means, it means 'get the best possible bonus'. Now, there could also be narrative impact. A rogue without tools might be told by the DM to improvise, or the attempt might take longer, or have some other undesired side-effect. These kinds of things are, in 4e, entirely within the scope of the DM according to the DMG. He might simply impose some awkward tool-related failure when the check doesn't pass.

Wait what are the "specific actions" it covers? Isn't the action of casting a spell largely dependent on skill with magic? Would this allow one to determine things about Primal, Divine, or Shadow magic... if not what skills align to these types of magic? Oh, and what skill covers psionic knowledge and actions?
It covers determining the nature of a magical effect, detecting magic, and 'sense the presence of magic'. All Arcane casters generally have Arcana as a skill, often an automatic one not even a choice. Casting relies on INT, which is also the governing skill for Arcana. Presumably someone not trained in Arcana who casts spells does so via some other mechanism than expertise, which is covered in those classes. Exactly what constitutes 'Magic' in 4e IS open to interpretation, but yes, Arcana may tell you something about magic from any source. As for what skills align with those sources of magic Divine magic is covered by Religion, and Primal magic is covered by Nature. Psionics are covered by Dungeoneering, which covers everything related to the Far Realm/Aberrations. This is all spelled out clearly in the rules, which explain which type of lore is associated with each skill, and which monster type/origin keywords are related. 4e is QUITE CLEAR about all of this. It is actually QUITE rare for a 4e GM to be faced with any question as to which skill should govern a situation.

IMO... it seems you've internalized how you want these skills to work and that is why you feel there is less ambiguity in the 4e skills...

No, I can quote the rulebooks for you and demonstrate that these things are codified directly into the game in a precise fashion. You can of course come up with situations where someone could do THIS or THAT and the effect is largely the same, but using a different skill, but those are very much edge cases. Probably the 'wooliest' skill in 4e is Perception, which is quite useful to rogues but based on a dump stat. The only convention we ever used in 4e was to allow examination of objects specifically for things like traps and locks to be based on Thievery instead, it was just more fun that way. That's a pretty small nit to be the most serious flaw in the whole system, and 5e didn't even fix that one!
 

What I'm distilling from the above explanations is, as soon as the player/s choice involves dice and you ignore it, that is illusionism, but if the player/s choice does not require dice then everything is hunky-dory. With all due respect, but it sounds like the definition of illusionism is in fact an illusion by those who claim to define it.

Based on what has been described, any/all decisions taken by a player without dice are not as important as the ones which rely on dice. If the choice exists to take the left or right passage but leads to the same result why bother even offering the choice to the PC?

I remember @Neonchameleon, during a player authorship discussion, telling me that if a character wanted to inject a rock in a story he could without the "yes" from the DM to cut time, well in this case I'm saying if you want to railroad the characters to a planned encounter just do it and cut time, instead of giving the PCs the illusion that their decision to go left or right matters.
Instead use the narrative of the journey to the planned encounter to produce the colour desired.
 
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Can you point to the sorts of examples you have in mind, or elaborate further? I've mostly seen critics of skill challenges present them in the terms you describe (ie a dice-rolling exercise to walk the players through the GM's script).

Well the most readily available examples would be from published adventures where instead of having an open or fluid conclusion... SC's are couched in absolute terms, even before a die has been rolled as to what success will be and what failure will be. Now I will say that after the first2, maybe 3 adventures for 4e I stopped buying them so this may have gotten better as time progressed... but this is how I remember being introduced to professional SC's by the developers and writers for 4e...

That's not a very accurate statement of "fail forward". Fail forward has two main elements - Ron Edwards and Luke Crane emphasise one, Robin Laws the other. The first is sometimes called "no whiffing" - that a failed check doesn't mean the PC failed at the task, but rather circumstances external to the PC somehow conspired to mean that succeeding at the task didn't achieve the goal.

So the first principal is that it's not your fault you failed even if you roll low... interesting, I find this weird since even powerful protagonists in fantasy fiction a times mess up through their own hubris, flaws, etc. Are there usually limits on this? In other words are there guidelines as to when this is and isn't appropriate... or is it never the fault of the protagonist but alwys some external force that happened to cause him to fail at that moment?

The second is "no roadblock" - a failed check results in a new pathway opening up, but one that contains a complication or adverse consequence.

Ah, ok... I think this is what I was getting at and was the aspect of "fail forward" that I have had experience with... I've seen the guidelines above expressed by you before but never made the connection that they too fell under the "fail forward" umbrella.

An example of combat-related "fail forward" from my 4e game: the PCs are trying to assault a goblin fortress, but get lured into an ambush by dead spirits, set up by the goblin shaman. A "TPK" results: but instead of ending the campaign, after discussion with the players about who wants to do what with their characters, three of the PCs wake up in the goblin cells.

Is part of fail forward discussing a change in outcomes with the group? This seems different from what you describe above... in that it's an actual revision and restart as opposed to failing forward... is there a distinction here or am I missing something?

An example of non-combat-related "fail forward" from my 4e game: the drow sorcerer is riding a flying carpet in an attempt to take a message from a desolate tower to the town. The carpet has been stolen from an enemy wizard in command of local hobgoblin raiders, and when the PC sees signal lights from the nearby hills, he realises they are probably being transmitted by the hobgoblins. He tries to respond but doesn't know the code; is pursued by wyvern riders, whom he can neither shake off nor blast away, and in the end - after turning back to his friends at the tower - he crash lands 50 squares from his allies and in combat with a hobgoblin captain and his wyvern.

Were the success and failure parameters set before he entered this SC? If so what were they?
This is fail forward - the goal wasn't achieved (the skill challenge to escape the hobgoblins failed) but there was no roadblock. Rather, the situation transitioned into a geographically challenging combat.

In neither case is their any illusionism. The players know what they are trying to achieve (via their PCs), they know whether or not they succeeded and why (they can track the combat status, or the skill challenge status) and they know why the GM is narrating the relevant consequence.

What's the illusion?[/QUOTE]
 

If I were to try to capture godlike powers in my system (which it only tries to do at the lowest of godlike levels of power), I would first sit down and think of what "godlike powers" include. Then I'd attempt to codify those powers, translating them into mechanics. Then I'd make play stick to the mechanics, hopefully emulating those godlike powers.
So, no extemporizing at all, nothing like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s narrative of near-godlike PCs blasting through the demonweb in their tower or killing Lolth at the last instant with what amounts to plot? It just all seems very stultified and formulaic, and TO ME that's the opposite of what Pemerton's story is about. I've had similar experiences myself, the mechanics just can't hold sway over the plot at level 30. If you try to do that you have some very dull epic play, which in fact is something that was reported by quite a few people who said that "epic was broken."

This is somewhat like 4e. It has epic powers, epic destinies, epic monster abilities, etc. It's just loose on skills, but it's like that for all of play (from Heroic through Epic).
Actually, I think the 4e skills are quite precisely defined. If you go back and read them now you will see what I mean. Read my last post, 5e doesn't even come close to the same level of precision. 3.x didn't come close either, but for different reasons. I'd be happy to talk about my theories of skill systems, but its probably a long post...

In 3.X, I had to wing epic (my campaign went from level 2 all the way through 31 over some 2,200+ hours of play). I had to throw out most of the rules, come up with new things, and allow random checks that I had to adjudicate all throughout the session. It was incredibly burdensome, and the thought of having to do that again is more than simply discouraging, it's a firm "never again."

Now, 4e is better than 3.X was for this (in my opinion), in that Epic play in 4e is much more balanced and narrow (only through level 30, etc.). So I'd do some things very similarly to 4e (which codified many things, as I mentioned; powers, monster abilities, epic destinies, etc.), but then I'd take it even further. I'd codify skill uses (checks to shape the world, for instance), traits (like omniscience), etc.
I just find it hard to imagine how you 'codify' those things. My players are incredibly creative. They blow past anything I anticipate or consider at the drop of a hat, usually in the first 5 minutes of a session. I could squelch them, but I can hardly believe that would be in the interests of 'empowerment'. It would certainly be predictable!

Now, godlike play isn't very interesting to me. Demigods are pretty interesting, though. But nearly all-powerful beings, with the ability to shape the world in sweeping motions, not so much. Which is why I didn't flesh that out for my RPG. But that's just my personal preference.
Well, I'm not talking about that either, I'm talking about what 4e captures at Epic, particularly high Epic. The PCs mechanically have some crazy abilities, but they're still quite bounded in what they can do. Narratively however the game should be quite open at this point. I know many people don't manage that though.

Anyway, for my system, think of it like 4e, but more codified. You would have rules for shaping worlds, omniscience, pushing your power against another god, getting power from followers, or whatever else I decided I wanted to model.

Yeah, for actual divinities doing fully divine things I'd expect some sort of mechanical framework to exist like that. It certainly hasn't been covered in any mainstream D&D product, maybe Birthright? I've sadly never read Birthright, but if I had a hankering for 'Mythic Tier' play in 4e I'd maybe take a look at that and the Immortals rules, maybe some other games as well.

Honestly though, I'm very happy that 4e doesn't codify all that kind of stuff, or most lesser stuff either that isn't action-related. It makes for a system that is both very complete in one sense, but very open in another.
 

Reminds me of 4e Streetwise.

Streetwise at least is a legitimate knowledge skill, you can ask questions and the GM can reply "make a Streetwise check for that." In some sense it IS similar in many applications though, and its one of those things some commentators have attacked. I note that 5e eliminated that skill, yet they seem to have not understood WHY there was an argument against it since they introduced Investigation, which is like Streetwise but more so. As I say, the only real function I could see for Investigation would be as a knowledge of investigatory procedure, but does that really belong in D&D, its not Gumshoe!

There's another key point here though, 4e has Skill Challenges, and 5e lacks them. At a more abstract level, in an SC if it is so framed, you COULD have skills like Streetwise, Investigation, probably numerous others. In general though I don't think they mesh well with D&D because you'd still want the lower level skills. A noir detective game might well be structured that way however, with more abstracted task resolution and then very specific niche action skills (say Alertness, but no general Perception skill, etc).

In any case its a good point.

Endurance is the other oddity in 4e, because its basically just a trained ability score. I always thought that other ability scores might equally have something like that. Charisma could have Leadership for instance, but its more just a lack of total consistency than a problem. I can see why the picked out Endurance as the one such skill to include since otherwise CON gets nothing at all, and its a nice skill for fighters and such to pick.
 

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