The Tragedy of Flat Math

[AbdulAlhazred]

Agreed, and it probably is 4e's greatest design flaw as a game*.

4e presented a lot of rules, and told you to make up the fluff that went along with it. Even with things like knocking ochre jellies prone or martial dailies, the biggest offender was the DC system. I have no idea why a door in a level 1 dungeon is DC 13, while one in a level 8 dungeon is DC 20 other than to account for 1/2 level math.

In 3e, if I want a more solid door, I look at the table for the different types of doors and select the one that either makes the most sense or makes the best adventure. In 4e, I select the level of the challenge to set the DC and then justify why its that high. Is it adamantine? Is it superior dwarven craftsmanship? No answer is given, so I get to pick one or it goes un-explained and the PCs wonder why its getting harder to bash down doors in the new dungeon.

This is non-sense. Please, go get a copy of a 4e DMG and read it. There's a frigging table, which IIRC is on around page 60-something where the DCs for breaking down doors made of different materials is listed. Nowhere is level even mentioned either. It just says "a wooden door is DC X, an iron door is DC Y, and an adamantium door is DC Z." There's no difference between 4e and 3e in this regard and anyone who says there is is making a fool of himself, lol.

From a DM's perspective, I'd rather the rules try to model the game's reality than have to justify their existence. Put another way, I'd rather look up an adamantine door and see its bash DC is 26 than look up a level 8 challenge, see the door DC should be 26, and have to decide that its adamantine. The former feels consistent, the latter arbitrary.

* That is, taken on its whole against other RPGs. Against other forms of D&D, I can count a number of greater failings, but that's neither here nor there.

Here's the problem, the 'latter' is exactly what you do as an adventure designer. You're always faced with deciding how you're going to describe elements in the adventure. Logically for a given capability of protagonist (IE level of adventure you're building) you will need to pick appropriately challenging elements. The monsters, hazards, and terrain, and their associated DCs, will cluster around the selected level. You might also have some elements that are very different levels if your story benefits from them (IE an unopenable adamantine door in a level 2 dungeon, find the key or pack it up).

I don't understand this sentiment that 4e has to constantly explain itself either. Neither 3.x nor AD&D ever stated this kind of thing. The concept should be obvious to anyone reading the door charts, wandering monster tables, whatever from the different editions. There's a graded scale of challenges, and there's a graded scale of PC capability. What would be more obvious than that they match up to each other. Never in the history of D&D have the game's various authors needed to state this utterly blindingly obvious fact.

 

[Blackbrrd]

This is non-sense. Please, go get a copy of a 4e DMG and read it. There's a frigging table, which IIRC is on around page 60-something where the DCs for breaking down doors made of different materials is listed. Nowhere is level even mentioned either. It just says "a wooden door is DC X, an iron door is DC Y, and an adamantium door is DC Z." There's no difference between 4e and 3e in this regard and anyone who says there is is making a fool of himself, lol.

I am quite sure you got the facts right, but not the sentiment 4e actually comes with. As the poster you quoted and myself thought, it would be that you just found the correct DC from level and then if you wanted created (or found) the fluff from the DMG or other sources. 4e emphasises the math, not the fluff.

This general "guideline" that 4e comes soon becomes so ingrained in many players and DMs that it feels much more like a plain game than a role playing game.

Regarding your comment about making a fool of himself, it doesn't belong in this discussion, it's just flame bait.

 

[pemerton]

4e emphasises the math, not the fluff.

This general "guideline" that 4e comes soon becomes so ingrained in many players and DMs that it feels much more like a plain game than a role playing game.

I wonder if you have heard of Robin Laws. Some people would regard him as the single best contemporary RPG designer.

He has designed at least two RPGs in which DCs/target numbers/adversary bonuses are set by reference to the PCs' bonuses: The Dying Earth RPG, and HeroWars (known in its two revised versions as HeroQuest).

This has nothing to do with "emphasising the math, not the fluff" - apart from anything else, calling it "fluff" implies its not important. The point of this approach to design is to make sure that the fiction that is created out of gameplay is compelling for the participants. What it does is deemphasis the importance of mechanical bonuses on PCs (because DCs etc are set relative to those) and emphasise the importance, in play, of the fiction. To give a 4e example, the reason a clash with Orcus is important is not because Orcuse has an AC of whatever it is, but because it is a clash with Orcus, and the future of life, death and undeath are at stake.

Some people prefer more traditional RPG design - you seem to be such a peson. That is their (and your) prerogative. But can you please stop implying that others who enjoy a different approach, closer to that of some of the modern games designed by Laws and others, are not RPGs?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think a bunch more of exactly these kinds of tables (obviosuly covering more than doors, and perhaps giving some alternatives/equivalents) in some DMG appendix for 4E would have been very useful for DMs wanting to build their world with actual stuff coming first and balanced challenges as a result. Those of us wanting a more unique take on the game world could always customise, re-fluff from or simply ignore the tables.

Again though I'm puzzled by why 4e is being constantly beat up about this. 4e tells you what level each monster is, it tells you what level each trap is, and each skill has lists of DCs in addition to the ones for doors, etc. It is no more or less explicit than any other edition of the game. For practically any likely sort of stock situation that arises in D&D games 4e has an explicit answer to what sort of thing would be what sort of DC.

In fact it is VASTLY more informative in this context than AD&D ever was. AD&D listed exactly one set of numbers with no scaling of any kind even mentioned anywhere. All locks had the same chance to be picked, all doors the same chance to be forced, etc. Talk about a system where all the fiction was just set dressing, there it is. At least in 4e you have some choices of challenge level and 'adamantine door' means something different from 'wooden door'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am quite sure you got the facts right, but not the sentiment 4e actually comes with. As the poster you quoted and myself thought, it would be that you just found the correct DC from level and then if you wanted created (or found) the fluff from the DMG or other sources. 4e emphasises the math, not the fluff.

This general "guideline" that 4e comes soon becomes so ingrained in many players and DMs that it feels much more like a plain game than a role playing game.

Regarding your comment about making a fool of himself, it doesn't belong in this discussion, it's just flame bait.

No, its a reminder to look at the system you're talking about in order to intelligently comment on it, but lets move on...

The fact is that you're applying a double standard. When 3.x talks about doors you assume this is a rule to explain what the DC to break a given type of fictional door is. When 4e talks about the same thing in the same terms it is a mechanical framework that you just slap some narrative paint on like an afterthought. In order to discuss the whole topic in a sensible fashion some people need to leave their bias at the door. That's all.

I disagree strongly that one system emphasizes math or flavor more or less than the other. I'm tempted to just leave it at that, but then it seems to me that the heart of the whole scaling debate is really the same debate. My feeling is that players are aware of math and it colors their perceptions.

If a PC doesn't really advance and become tougher in a mathematical sense, then the players are at least partly taken out of the illusion. They are handed an extra cognitive task, imaging why it is that they're required to go kill the dragon when the town guards are mechanically quite as much up to it as they are. This is one of the greatest sources of success for D&D, that it has over all the years consistently portrayed a steep power curve and a wide range of PC power over the course of the game. It isn't TOTALLY unique, but the game hit a pretty nice balance in that respect right off from the start. IMHO messing with that is foolish. 4e was already flatter than AD&D. I'm not real sure they want to go even flatter. Especially when flat math mostly disadvantages melee combatants.

 

[Blackbrrd]

...
Some people prefer more traditional RPG design - you seem to be such a peson. That is their (and your) prerogative. But can you please stop implying that others who enjoy a different approach, closer to that of some of the modern games designed by Laws and others, are not RPGs?

Now, if we had this discussion a year or two ago, I would have conceded that you were right here. I have played 4e and I played it like a RPG, but for me it doesn't encourage role playing. That I have taken from my AD&D and 3E days.

Somehow 4e did not bring what I thought it would bring to the table, and instead made me think about the math and how many magic items the players needed to keep up with the gear treadmill and the ever increasing correct DC's for traps, doors, and so on.

I can see how you want cleaner guidelines like 4e had, but the implementation in 4e was in my eyes not so good. Some of it comes from in my eyes too much scaling. For instance, instead of effecting +1 to hit every level I would rather have +1 to hit every two to five levels.

Btw, I haven't heard of the guy you mentioned. I have tried some other game systems (Vampire, Warhammer, Runemaster, etc), but never felt comfortable in them. I think it has more to do with setting than system though.

 

[Argyle King]

This is non-sense. Please, go get a copy of a 4e DMG and read it. There's a frigging table, which IIRC is on around page 60-something where the DCs for breaking down doors made of different materials is listed. Nowhere is level even mentioned either. It just says "a wooden door is DC X, an iron door is DC Y, and an adamantium door is DC Z." There's no difference between 4e and 3e in this regard and anyone who says there is is making a fool of himself, lol.

.

I just wanted to point out that the HP and such listed for those things in 4E are somewhat poor. It's exactly that table which plays into my comments in other threads about how easy it is for the PCs to -literally- break the game world.

 

[Blackbrrd]

No, its a reminder to look at the system you're talking about in order to intelligently comment on it, but lets move on...

The fact is that you're applying a double standard. When 3.x talks about doors you assume this is a rule to explain what the DC to break a given type of fictional door is. When 4e talks about the same thing in the same terms it is a mechanical framework that you just slap some narrative paint on like an afterthought. In order to discuss the whole topic in a sensible fashion some people need to leave their bias at the door. That's all.

I disagree strongly that one system emphasizes math or flavor more or less than the other. I'm tempted to just leave it at that, but then it seems to me that the heart of the whole scaling debate is really the same debate. My feeling is that players are aware of math and it colors their perceptions.

If a PC doesn't really advance and become tougher in a mathematical sense, then the players are at least partly taken out of the illusion. They are handed an extra cognitive task, imaging why it is that they're required to go kill the dragon when the town guards are mechanically quite as much up to it as they are. This is one of the greatest sources of success for D&D, that it has over all the years consistently portrayed a steep power curve and a wide range of PC power over the course of the game. It isn't TOTALLY unique, but the game hit a pretty nice balance in that respect right off from the start. IMHO messing with that is foolish. 4e was already flatter than AD&D. I'm not real sure they want to go even flatter. Especially when flat math mostly disadvantages melee combatants.

Ey, you did it again with the slight prod about intelligence! I am only commenting on it since I think it detracts from your otherwise sound arguing.

Anyway, I do agree that D&D needs quite a lot of scaling, but I don't think it should be done the way 4e did it. It might come from the around 50% hit and to-be-hit chance everyone had. Somebody mentioned somewhere on this forum that it's more "fun" with a system with 70% chance to hit. Sounds good to me since the difference in +1 bonus to hit is less important in a d20 system if you hit on a 7 instead of on a 11. AD&D and 3E was a lot closer to the 70% to-hit mark than 4e was in my experience.

 

[Bluenose]

I wonder if you have heard of Robin Laws. Some people would regard him as the single best contemporary RPG designer.

Greg Stolze might like a word with you. Also Neko and Florrent, and Francisco Nepitello. On the other hand, they'd all agree that if you want to make an RPG to reflect a particular play idea - a Simulation, as some might call it - then you need to have the probabilities work to support that idea rather than against it.

 

[B.T.]

Namedropping game designers is a weak argument.