[Was]Forked Thread: GTS 2009 D&D Seminar : [Is] Playstyle & Evolution Discussion

[ferratus]

The difference is that 3Es skill system was more open, especially skills like knowledge and craft which were further divided into several categories. Also 4Es automatic skill gain doesn't lend itself very well to using skills for role playing purposes as, according to their skills, a 4E character can basically do everything.
More than in 3E, skills in 4E are just another level dependant ability.

As one who has definitely approved of the changes, I can tell you why the decision was made. Everyone took the skills that allowed you to survive and thrive as an adventurer. That's what the consolidated skill list is, the skills which allow you to deal with the various story elements that the DM is going to throw at you. If you don't have someone in the party that can climb a wall, open a locked door, or has the knowledge skill necessary to solve a puzzle, it can bring the game to a screeching halt over something trivial. Now a party is generally able to have all the skills they need to generally traverse routine obstacles in a dungeon, and a few can do it well enough to beat the difficult challenges of that skill. It doesn't bother me like it does you, because I don't see it as heroes being able to do "everything" but rather heroes gaining more and more experience in adventuring and having the general skills to do that.

I also don't mourn the loss of profession and craft skills from 3.5. It is nice if you have a skill that allows you to forge your own swords, but after a couple years everyone quickly realized that it was a skill that became useless after level 5, and it didn't help you to traverse Castle Maure. Profession skills generally didn't have much to do with the wider game, and only provided a pittance of income. It allowed you to mark "Smith" or "Basket Weaver" on your character sheet, but it didn't do much else than that. If I want an ability worth putting on my character sheet, I want it to be useful, and if it is of less utility than other abilities I don't want them competing for skill points with the more useful skills that will keep me alive in day to day dungeon crawling.

I do get what you are saying though in that there is a loss of specialization. With the Open Locks, Disable Device, and Pick Pockets skills combined into one "Theivery" skill, all rogues have a general proficiency in "roguishness" but there is no specialization in being a cutpurse, a safecracker, or a troubleshooter respectively. However, I don't think it is worth tearing down the general skill list which allows people to handle the mundane aspects of dungeon crawling. I think you still want the party to be able to handle the obstacles which require a rogue's skillset.

This is what my talents system is trying to accomplish. Keep the general proficiency to handle whatever the DM may throw at you, but add a rather superfluous layer over top that allows you to specialize within a skill or grab a ritual-like ability. So a wizard well versed in creatures of the shadowfell has "umbral lore" as a talent can still know enough of general creatures of the planes to have a chance of meeting the DC's for necessary knowledge checks with his arcana skill, but identifying creatures of the shadow plane in particular comes easily to him.

So not only will a talent system bring back the specialization of the wider 3e skill set, I'm bring back 2e Non-Weapon Proficiencies baby! Now that's specialized skills!

And I don't feel that there was such a big combat/out of combat split in 3E.
Most things you could do in 3E during combat also made sense when seeing through "non combat lenses". The only thing really striking out is falling, and that is a problem in every D&D edition.

This I don't get at all. The mechanics for resolving a skill check are exactly the same in this edition as the last edition.

In 4E on the other hand there is a big rift between how the game world is percieved during combat and outside of combat. That includes for example the different geometry (1-1-1), mechanics linked to having a certain number of combats a day without any regard to what happened in those combats/how long they are (milestones) or having abilities which only trigger when used on level appropriate enemies, but not when used on enemies which are too weak.

I think you might be a little nitpicky here. For example, the way you fight doesn't work fundamentally differently if you're fighting a colossal creature vs. a medium creature for example in either 4e or 3e, and you don't really worry much about that. That's a much more obtrusive suspension of disbelief than getting an extra action after two encounters.

But yeah, having daily, at will, and encounter abilities is all about narration, not simulation. Either you are on board with that, or you're not. Come to think of it, having daily, encounter, and at-will non-combat abilities might be a way to make skill challenges more cinematic as well.

 

[ferratus]

Thanks for pointing this out.

Along with Passive Insight and Passive Perception, we added Passive Arcana to our character sheets.

Ooh, that's a good idea for ambience. My DM hates the "passive" skills because you can roll lower when you are actively looking for something. I love them though, because you can use it to give hints or create surprise. If you are actively looking for something, you usually are taking 10 anyway.

 

[Hereticus]

Regarding skills, we added two house rules:

1) Quickness is a skill, used for initiative.

2) Characters receive eight skill points each level to place amongst the 18 skills as they see fit.

Everyone that has seen this prefers it to the original rules.

 

[Hereticus]

If you are actively looking for something, you usually are taking 10 anyway.

Given time (three minutes / 20 rounds), we usually take a 20.

My DM hates the "passive" skills because you can roll lower when you are actively looking for something.

I believe that one role for "actively looking" means you only put one round into it.

If I were making the rules for "passive checks", I'd probably add a FIVE and not a TEN.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

On the topic of rituals never being used during encounters: The main reason for that is so characters with access to rituals won't outshine other characters who can do the same thing in a mundane way (such as casting knock versus using the Thievery skill).

Here's an idea for people who really want to be able to use rituals in encounters: Let's say that you're trying to break someone out of a prison and want to use passwall on the outer wall. After making sure the coast is clear, the party ritual caster spends 9 minutes and 59 seconds preparing the ritual but doesn't finish the last component to make it take effect.

Later, when the PCs are making their frantic escape the ritual caster approaches the section of wall where the ritual was performed and quickly finishes it with a single phrase. The passwall takes effect and the PCs escape.

Basically I'm taking the concept that spells are prepared in advance except for the last bit to make them take effect and extending that quality to rituals. Why can't you just prepare rituals in advance wherever you want? Because, unlike spells that are used in combat, rituals need to be performed near what they are intended to effect.

On a completely different note, my only complaint with 4E is that some powers are difficult to rationalize. One example is the Celestial Spirit Epic Destiny from PHB2. One of its powers lets you only fly to a marked target within 40 feet, and the flavor text suggest that a pegasus appears from nowhere to carry you to the target. Why can the person with this power only summon a pegasus for one specific use? Even if you ditch the pegasus idea and just say that the character himself flies to the target, why can't the character just get a power that enables limited flight without requiring a specific circumstance?

 

[Hereticus]

On the topic of rituals never being used during encounters: The main reason for that is so characters with access to rituals won't outshine other characters who can do the same thing in a mundane way (such as casting knock versus using the Thievery skill).

You are very correct in this observation.

One current 3.5E game I'm playing allows most characters to use some amount of spell casting, rather than limiting its effectiveness for the few who can. It also limits the schools available to arcane casters so they are not masters of all spells.

 

[Ariosto]

No Dungeons & Dragons rules set would be my first choice for a game without a heavy element of combat, or without a heavy element of magic. There does indeed come a time to pick up a tool better suited to the job at hand, rather than a Swiss Army Knife that needs hydraulics to haul around.

Nor do I think it likely that WotC is going to turn back the tide of rules-heaviness. "Support" for role-playing, story-telling or even really tactical combat is NOT going to mean simply getting out of the way.

Except ... The rules could be more modular.

Perhaps the single most defining characteristic (or at least claim) of WotC games is one that goes back to Hero Games' Champions: carefully calculated "balance".

The design teams have accomplished (or at least attempted) that with thoroughly systematic integration.

I would draw a distinction between that approach and the ease of decoupling in the original RPG "system" -- Chaosium's "Basic Role Playing", first demonstrated in RuneQuest (1978).

 

[JoeGKushner]

I disagree about Champions being balanced. Potentially it's balanced but much like anything, the GM has to engage the players to insure that no one is outshinning the others. Point Buy systems are not balance perfect by any means and the game system, including D&D 4e, will punish those that build sub-optimal characters.

Now the level of punishment may vary. In older editions, like 2nd ed, it wasn't too big a stretch to not be optimized as there simply WASN'T a lot there to optimize. Stat bonuses didn't start often till 16+. Some classes 'powers' were the abilities to weild weapons and armor. The thief of yesteryear is nothing like the rogue of today.

 

[Ariosto]

JGK: Hence the (parentheses) and "quotation" marks.

We want 4e to be a wonderful/robust as D&D was at the end of one of its product cycles (AD&D, 2e, or 3e).

All considered, that usage of robust strikes me as funny!

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Actually, those are the days that never were (at least as far as published modules). Ditto Necromancer's "First Edition Feel" (except to the extent of faithfully treating actual classics).

"My minotaur barbarian can't intimidate because he has a lousy charisma." Haw! I encountered just that, except I was the one playing a halfling rogue. That's the sort of thing that can make a game seem like a parody of itself.

How could you build a better 3E D&D when 3E did what it did so well? ... So instead, they designed 4E to be different.

Rob said that? That's funny, because anyone (else) who says that seems to get labeled a "hater". At least he avoided the obvious question: "WHY?"

The roleplay aspects were completely and absolutely old-school simplified, back to their 1E roots.

That's close enough to technically accurate (apart, for instance, from "skill challenges" REPLACING role-playing) -- but there's a reason those supplements are in actual old-school quarters distinguished (and generally disparaged) as "1.5 E".

It returns right back to the 1E style of storytelling and roleplaying -- namely, everything is non-mechanical, is based on DM/Player interaction, and is completely open-ended.

That, I think, is a misrepresentation that should be evident based only on acquaintance with 4E and more so if one is also familiar with the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game.

 

[Kelon]

Fixed it for you. Monopoly has no "rules" for roleplay, so I guess that means its an awesome RPG....

I don´t want rules support for roleplay. Advise and tips from other dms and pros are welcome but I doesn`t need more rulesystems to handle social encouters.

Which actually weren't any problem to role playing, but required the DM to think more and take this abilities into account.

I tried to write a murdery mystery adventure for 3.5. After reading a lot of spells and magic items and thought about the abilities of potential PC, I qiut and started playing Warhammer Fantasy. With 4.0 I started playing D&D again.
It would be great wizards or a 3rd party publisher would release some city adventures (detective, murder mystery, investigation ect.) Or something like the warhammer adventures only with better mechanics for combat and character abilities.

That too, but in 4E its either freeform in a extremly unlogical setting which requires a big, noticeable split betwen the combat world and non combat world (Think Final Fantasy/The Aeris controversy) or using broken skill challenges....

It would be better if non combat and combat could happen in the same "world", but for that 4E is too abstract. So why not take this separation even further and make non combat into its own (optional) game instead of ignoring it completely?

Logic in Roleplay fantasy worlds is overrated. Meet with friends, play and have fun. Enjoy a good tactical combat with 4.0, have fun playing your charakter or a good investigation. I like that all. If you want simulation try boardgames.