D&D 4E What 5E needs to learn from 4E
- Thread starter Shadeydm
- Start date
Except it takes several feats to even get to the damn trip button.
I suspect these are not folks who heavily played core 3.0 / 3.5 fighters. Or they just like the "swing, deal damage, move on" aspect of a fighter.
Steely_Dan
First Post
I would never really on the wonky trip-monkey of 3rd Ed; try, try again.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I think there are possibly several answers. One could be that the player feels the character would act in a certain way, so there are RP considerations. There could be purely narrative considerations as well, which may amount to the same thing, or not, depending.
There's also the question of whether or not simply using your powers in unimaginative ways will cut it. If the DM constructs situations where that sort of play is inadequate to overcome the challenges presented, then players will simply HAVE to improvise.
Another consideration is how you handle failure. If failing is simply a matter of losing actions or expending some other resource HP/HS/etc then players are usually not achieving the kind of interesting novelty they seek, at least not always. OTOH fail forward (IE failure creates a more hazardous higher stakes situation) tends to make things more fun. You can also set up situations where the players can 'up the stakes' and then when they fail the hurt is somehow more satisfying, since they're the authors of their own pain.
So far I'm finding I get pretty consistent results using 4e with different groups. I'm sure it won't work for ALL groups, but then neither will anything. I think running 4e has also honed my ability in this area a good bit. I'm not sure what applying it to say AD&D will result in, but we're likely to see soon enough the way DDN is evolving... lol.
Patryn of Elvenshae
First Post
Such as ... ?
And, BTW, I did give my Fighter some feats: Combat Expertise (thanks, 13 Int requirement!), Improved Trip, Power Attack, Cleave, Improved Disarm, Weapon Focus, and Weapon Specialization.
I now have 3 buttons to push, and it's taken me ... 6 levels to get there.
Except, if I'm fighting something that I can reasonably trip, I'm only going to try tripping him - because that only requires a touch attack (easier connection than my normal attack) and I get to follow-up with a normal attack, anyway, against a now-prone opponent.
So, instead of repeatedly mashing the "1" button, I now repeatedly mash the "2" button. Unless my target's a giant, in which case, I switch back to the "1" button all the time. Sometimes, I'll press "3" to disarm him, but that requires, generally, a humanoid opponent, which tend to get pretty thin on the ground later on.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I think the point where I don't follow you is why random on-the-fly encounters are needed to do this. From the player's perspective there's no difference between some random thugs you rolled up and some thugs you put together as an encounter that would happen (or might happen) if the PCs went to place X. Either way the world is equally depicted. It is a constructed world, so there's nothing that actually happens outside of what you decided could happen ANYWAY. All you're arguing for is rolling certain dice in a certain way at a certain time vs rolling other dice in some other way at a different time (or however I'd decide what my 'color' encounter was).
Again, because it is a constructed world, NOTHING in it is ever 'without purpose'. You put thugs in the alley or put them on the random encounter table that includes the alley because you wanted thugs to appear in alleys, that's the world you wanted to depict.
Once you DO present an encounter, well, it COULD be utterly meaningless, sure, but in that case why make it significant and then complain because it is mechanically significant and thus time-consuming. If you want it to be meaningless, then simply make it mechanically meaningless (IE in 4e you can have a few minions jump the party). If it IS significant, then design the encounter with the encounter building tools and don't place it randomly, or at least choose randomly between a few well-fleshed-out significant possibilities.
Well, yeah, but in the real world, people typically have a reason for being in a certain place at a certain time. Maybe they're just passing by on their way to the market. Maybe their car battery died and they need someone to jump start them. Maybe you owe one of them a big wad of money and they've been looking for you, you little blankety-blank—
All of those things are potential stories. So it should be in the game: Even if from a mechanical standpoint, the NPC was placed in the players' path by the whimsy of the dice, in the fiction they ought to have an actual reason for being there. Without that, the scenario looks just as artificial as it is.
And it can also get very "artificial" when just the right people appear at just the right places at just the right time etc...
When you step out of the game then everything has a purpose whether it's getting XP, items etc...
You fight random encounters to get experience so you can level up so you can get more HP, feats etc...
Now from inside the game, all encounters don't have to be a part of the story nor do the outcome. Can it evolve into something that adds to the story or changes it? Of course but each encounter doesn't have to specifically have an "in game" reason to happen.
You fight random encounters to get experience so you can level up so you can get more HP, feats etc...
Now from inside the game, all encounters don't have to be a part of the story nor do the outcome. Can it evolve into something that adds to the story or changes it? Of course but each encounter doesn't have to specifically have an "in game" reason to happen.
Perhaps, but I don't think either Alhazred or I were talking about that.
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