Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pbartender" data-source="post: 4609723" data-attributes="member: 7533">It's not always about balance, though.  Especially when it comes to improvization, a lot of it is simply how each of our personal thought processes work...  how do your personal mental cogworks grind?  And like you said, having the wrong set of rules can be like throwing sand in the works.My preference for 4E at the moment, stems from the way I view the rules of games...  For me, if there a is rule or a statistic already in place, I'd rather use it than making something up.  If I know the rule, it doesn't really present a problem.  But if the rule is obscure or I am unfamiliar with it, I often feel compelled to look it up so I can get it right, often wasting minutes at the table to find the appropriate reference -- usually at a dramatically important time when the action should have kept moving.3E had very detailed rules, with DCs and modifers for most situations.  If I was prepared ahead of time, there was no problem.  If an unexpected situation came up, the game ground to a halt.  The only other way to deal with it was to make something up... While 3E was consistant enough to come up with something reasonable, it was inconsistant enough with the "mini-games", that "let's use this, and we'll look up the real rule later" became a constant annoyance.Because 4E rules are a little bit looser about non-combat hazards, I feel more free to make something up on the spot without having to look up a specific rule.And this is pretty close to how I look at it, as well...  Though I fully understand not everyone thinks the same way.Here's how I look at it...<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Decide on a vague description (icy cobblestones, early morning wet grass, a muddy roadway, a light oil slick, an old moss-covered log, etc...)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Determine condition based on description ("the floor is slippery").</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Condition informs consequence ("you fall prone and take light damage").</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Character level determines difficulty ("DC 1/2 level + 10 is moderate for an untrained Acrobatics checks, and relatively easy for a trained check").</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Condition, consequence, difficulty, and local environment determine detailed description ("A cobblestone alley runs down a set of stairs between two buildings and is lightly glazed with ice and spray from the spray of the waves beating against the nearby pier").</li> </ol>With a DM's Screen cheat sheet in front of me, I can roll through that process in the time it takes me to describe the alley and answer questions from the players.So, for determining difficulty, yes, 4E is often "level Y = DC X", but you also have to take into consideration "condition Y = effect X".From my perspective, it was the difference between 3E as "condition Y = DC X" and 4E as "condition W of level X = effect Y at DC Z".  Regardless of number of steps, for me, it's more intuitive to run through in my head, and gives me more options for what I throw at my players at any given level.</blockquote>

Verification